Today is a big day for Republican presidential hopefuls, as the sheeple faithful gather in Ames, Iowa for the Iowa Republican Party's straw poll.

What are your predictions? What is the conventional wisdom about who's candidacy will get a bump from the straw poll results and who will be forced to drop out because they are gettin' no love from the base?

Some data, my predictions, and a poll are after the jump.

Chris Cillizza, perhaps cribbing from the NY Sun, gives us the names of some notables who have written checks for the Fred Thompson campaign. The one that jumped out at me is Doug Feith, "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth," who ponied up for the maximum $2300 donation.

Here are some other names you might recognize:
David Bossie, Whitewater provacateur and Clinton smear artist
Al D'Amato, Whitewater provacateur, former Senator, and Clinton smear artist
Dick Wolk, creator of the "Law and Order" television series
Peyton Manning, quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts, who is not known to be a Clinton smear artist (yet)
Christopher Demuth, Nixon Assistant, neo-con hack, and president of AEI

After reading this article, about how Condi told Cheney (a.k.a. "Shooter," a.k.a. one of the "new crazies") to kiss her grits on Iran policy, I had a brief moment where I thought to myself, "Hmmm. Maybe she's getting the hang of this statecraft thingie."

Well, perish the thought.

Sue Schmidt has got the goods in WaPo this morning:

Federal prosecutors have notified a former deputy secretary of the interior, J. Steven Griles, that he is a target in the public corruption investigation of Jack Abramoff's lobbying activities, sources knowledgeable about the probe said.

The article says that Griles met with investigators Friday and told him his false statements to St. John of McCain's Indian Affairs Committee are the reason he's in deep doo-doo.
There's this little nugget:

The investigation has examined donations made by Abramoff's Indian tribal clients to an environmental advocacy group run by Italia Federici, who was involved with Griles socially, the sources said.

Paging Mr. Starr...Mr. Kenneth Starr...there's a hummer that needs to be investigated.

Among the many Americans with vested interest in the al-Zarqawi hit are family members of some of his victims. Soledad O'Brien of CNN interviewed Michael Berg, father of Nicholas Berg. I admire the dad for his committed pacifist stance:

O'BRIEN: Mr. Berg, thank you for talking with us again. It's nice to have an opportunity to talk to you. Of course, I'm curious to know your reaction, as it is now confirmed that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man who is widely credited and blamed for killing your son, Nicholas, is dead.

MICHAEL BERG: Well, my reaction is I'm sorry whenever any human being dies. Zarqawi is a human being. He has a family who are reacting just as my family reacted when Nick was killed, and I feel bad for that. I feel doubly bad, though, because Zarqawi is also a political figure, and his death will re-ignite yet another wave of revenge, and revenge is something that I do not follow, that I do want ask for, that I do not wish for against anybody. And it can't end the cycle. As long as people use violence to combat violence, we will always have violence.

More in extended...

NPR had a nice, loooong bit (almost nine ever-loving minutes) on Morning Edition this AM that gave the perspective of a Christian Evangelical minister who was "used" by Tom Delay's associate Ed Buckham to give a thin veil of legitimacy to the Abramoff/GOP Culture of Corruption.

Here's a link to the audio

and I've transcribed a good bit of it for your edification on the flip.

So I was reading loudocracy's diary about Wilkerson's latest indictments of the Cheney cabal. I follow the link to Froomkin's White House Briefing in WaPo, and scrolling down, I come across this little tidbit from today's New York Times:

More on the flip...

Check your local listings, people, to find out whether your National Public Radio affiliate carries the program Fresh Air out of WHYY in Philadelphia. Terry is, IMHO, a great interviewer. Kind of like Tim Russert, only she stays on point instead of letting her guests spin BS and get away with it.

Terry's guest today was the self-identified SLOTUS (Second Lady of the United States)Lynne Cheney, who was ostensibly being interviewed about her new children's book When Washington Crossed the Delaware: A Wintertime Story for Young Patriots.

Streaming audio of the interview is available here.

Sy Hersh, the author of Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, spoke at Iowa State last night. He's not on the Bush/Cheney bandwagon to say the least. His talk was apropos, coming as it did on the day that Bush nominated Alberto "The Geneva Conventions are quaint" Gonzales as AG.

He started his talk with, "I've got some good news and some bad news...The good news is that Gonzales is not going to be nominated for the Supreme Court. You can guess what the bad news is..."

Much more below the fold...

With the help of a Kossack, I found a decent template for my pumpkin, George. I did a whack job on ole George and came up with the following:

Darkened Pumpkin

It says, "Fear More Years," in case that's hard to see. We didn't have any votive candles in the house, so I jerry-rigged some birthday candles in a plastic cup. Here's the lighted version That glint in Dubya's eye is him saying, "Look, you dumb-ass librul Democrat. My operatives are going to burn your house down, unless you vote for me on 11/2." I extinguished the small fire and replied, "Bite me, Shrub. I already cast my absentee ballot for John Kerry!"

The pumpkin is now saluting volunteers as they come and go at the county party headquarters. Happy Halloween!

This week's World Series sweep by John Kerry's beloved Boston Red Sox certainly added a little bit of mojo to the campaign, but Sunday's NFL game between the Washington Redskins and the Green Bay Packers could hold even more significance for Dem's hopes to regain the White House.

We're All Cheeseheads Now! Quote by Kerry and one channeling Karl Rove contained herein.

For the past 72 years, if the Washington Redskins (who were the Boston Braves in 1932 and the Boston Redskins in 1936) win their final home game before a presidential election, the incumbent or their party retains office. If they lose, the challenger takes the White House. The chance that the games and elections results matching up in the last 18 elections is 1 in 263.5 million, more than 2,600 times higher than the chance of being killed by a lightning strike in a lifetime, according to Dave Dolan, an assistant professor of statistics at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

Handicapping the game below the fold...

[Former] Ambassador Joe Wilson, he of the "What I did not find in Africa"-yellowcake-uranium-from-Niger-bound-for-Iraq-where-it-would-be-refined-into-fissile-material -and-could-become-the-smoking-gun-in-the-form-of-a-mushroom-cloud fame spoke in Ames, Iowa on Wednesday night. He was a lovely contrast (but just as effective and inspirational a speaker) to Michael Moore who was here on Sunday. He spoke to about 200-300 as part of a campus lecture series. There were as many or more faculty, staff, and local community members in the audience as there were students. [more after the break & a poll!]

I just got back from Moore's Ames, IA installment of the Slacker Uprising Tour. I would guesstimate that about 8,000 were there, including a handful of hecklers, Bush/Cheney acolytes, and Michael Moore haters. The haters were leafleting outside, but the critical thinker in me found their counter-arguments weak, consisting mostly of bash the messenger "facts".

Moore was about 90 minutes late taking the stage. He indicated that his plane was held on the runway in Wisconsin and then refused permission to land in Ames (runway not long enough for his charter?), so they had to divert to Des Moines. Most of those present at 7:30 for the published start stuck around to hear him speak. Representatives of the Story County Democrats took full advantage of the later start time by circulating through the crowd getting people signed up to vote absentee.

There was a diary here yesterday suggesting MM had walking pneumonia, but he showed no visible ill effects tonight. He went on a couple of harangues that would have left me in a coughing spasm, but he would just take a sip of water and keep right at it.

The signature moment of the talk came when he asked for all unregistered voters to stand and identify themselves. There were fewer than 100! Of course, ACT, New Voters Project, Iowa Democratic Party, and others have been harassing students on campus for weeks. I teach three classes of 25 [mostly first-year students] each, and I can't get any of them to admit they aren't registered. He got a few more takers when he asked if there were people of voting age that didn't vote in 2000 and he passed out Ramen noodles and underwear to these "slackers."

Moore showed 6 or 7 satirical commercials he had produced for Bush/Cheney, which were funny and biting. He read letters from soldiers stationed in Iraq/Afghanistan and their families. He read from My Pet Goat (aside: I knew that the goat foiled a robber in the story, but didn't realize it was a "carjacking." It makes Bush's point about staying in the Booker classroom for 7 minutes after being told of the 2nd flight impacting the WTC because he "didn't want to alarm the children" sound even more hollow when you learn that the 3rd graders were reading a story about a car getting jacked.) Moore also "debated" with a Naderite in the crowd, to the delight of most of those in attendance.

For the most part, though, MM was on a diatribe about the fictitious reasons for going to war and the terrible harm that will come to our country if the Bush/Cheney junta steals another election. It was rambling and unscripted, but the crowd responded positively.

As I was leaving, I saw about 20 seniors piling onto the retirement village shuttle bus. If only I'd known of the Bush Social Security leak reported in today's NYT, I would have climbed on board and added some fuel to the fire!

Ambassador Joe Wilson will be here Wednesday, and hopefully we'll have a big turnout for that event, too.

It was nicely done. It was flattering without being over the top.

I was all of six years old when Saigon fell, and while I've read Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History my grasp of events in SE Asia and back in the U.S. during that period is generally weak. I emerged from the movie with a new-found appreciation for the man who will be the 44th President of the United States.

The parallels between what Kerry discovered when he went to Vietnam and what our fighting forces in Iraq are encountering presently were profound:

1. the powers that be in Vietnam sent inadequately armored shore patrol boats into the "ambush alley" of the Mekong Delta and the powers that be in Iraq have sent inadequately armored Humvees to face Iraqi insurgents armed with RPG's;
   
2. soldiers in Vietnam were issued Geneva Convention cards and briefed on their rights, not their responsibilities leading to atrocities and war crimes, which is being reprised presently in Iraq;
   
3. Vietnamization seems to be paralleling Iraqification or de-Baathification; pacifying an insurgent people while trying to democratize them are wholly inconsistent objectives
   
4. anti-war activists, critics, dissenters, and all those who would change horses in the middle of a river are subject to the most brutal personal attacks by Freepers and ReThug minions sanctioned at the highest levels of the Oval Office
   
5. John O'Neill was as much of a punk in 1972 as he is today
   

A bit more below the fold...