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Big G.O.P. Bid to Challenge Voters at Polls in Key State Republican Party officials in Ohio took formal steps yesterday to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.
posted by Skygazer at 8:35 PM PST - 94 comments

"The sissy institution of marriage must not be perverted by sinners who are capable of abstaining! The sacred union of church and state must prohibit the immoral union of men and women capable of the discipline of sexual abstinence." This message, among others, was placed in the Oregon voters' guide by the Special Righteousness Committee. (A little more explanation here.)
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:12 PM PST - 8 comments

Iraq success story! 87% of Iraqis look forward to voting!... but not for Allawi! How about Abdel Aziz Hakim instead? He's the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and former leader of his own Iranian-trained and armed paramilitary army. Hakim was once part of Da'wa, an organization that bombed the US embassy in Kuwait in '83 and gave birth to Hezbollah. In the '90s, Da'wa and SCIRI seperated ideologically, with claims that SCIRI were Iranian lackeys. SCIRI now claims to have gone political, and although they enforce Sharia standards in Basra, they now claim to be pro-democracy and opposed to an Islamic state. Many secular Iraqis don't trust Hakim's motives or his close ties to Iran, however.
"(The U.S. occupation) is primarily responsible for (the death of my brother) and the blood that is shed all over Iraq every day. Iraq must not remain occupied and the occupation must leave so that we can build Iraq as God wants us to do."
- Abdel Aziz Hakim
posted by insomnia_lj at 7:26 PM PST - 12 comments

Becoming what you hate : Nathan Sproul, case study in moral relativism on the Religious Right "former head of the Arizona Republican Party and of the Arizona Christian Coalition....Sproul is connected with the Republican National Committee-funded voter registration organization, Voters' Outreach of America Inc." - Sproul's firm is accused of fraud and the destruction of voter registration forms. He also failed to pay his workers and his office rent. Rick Perlstein, in the Village Voice, comments on the Sproul scandal : "Both sides are not equally bad, and any reporters who don't recognize that conservatism's very core has become shot through with a culture of mendacity should turn in their press badge..... It used to be that we could count on the conscience of conservatives to protect our democratic institutions."
posted by troutfishing at 3:08 PM PST - 37 comments

Tiny Mix Tapes might seem like just another album review site, but if they also have this great "Automatic Mix Tape Generator" that produces gems like these: 1 | 2 | 3.
posted by sciurus at 3:06 PM PST - 3 comments

Crashes and explosions as art: (QT video) So the folks at Coudal.com had a one day video editing contest. the trick was to set Nasa crash test footage to music... And some amazing entries followed. (Warning: if you are freaked out by airplane crashes move right along [no one was hurt in this endeavor])
posted by edgeways at 2:27 PM PST - 10 comments

Star Wars: The Changes compares screen shots of the original movies with the special edition releases and the new DVD.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:21 PM PST - 40 comments

U2-style Friday Flash Fun. They join the ranks of Flash game marketeers in the promotion of their new single, Vertigo, and upcoming album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. And by the way, someone found the contents of that briefcase that got stolen in Portland 23 years ago.
posted by udeups at 2:09 PM PST - 5 comments

My Hed Iz Pastede On Yay. This Thread Iz Pastede On Yay! My S2 Iz Pastede On Yay! My red iz pastede on yay! My gold medal iz pastede on yay! My Bond iz pastede on yay! Your face iz pastede on yay? Your religion iz pastede on yay. Six months on, the meme is only just getting started. (Support provided by the Google Meme Observatory.)
posted by Mo Nickels at 1:48 PM PST - 19 comments

As matteo's thread noted earlier this week, the Godzilla PR Monster is rampaging over the University of Kansas, but that's just a stop on the way to his ultimate destination: The Hollywood Walk of Fame, where the Big Green Guy will get his own star just in time for the premeire of his latest flick, joining previous ficticious recipients Big Bird, Bugs Bunny, Kermit the Frog, Pee-Wee Herman, Mickey Mouse, The Rugrats and Woody Woodpecker (and maybe Clayton Moore as The Lone Ranger), and ahead of Donald Duck.
In other news, The Democratic Republic of Congo is comparing Belgium's foreign minister to Tintin (and not in a nice way).
And Daffy Duck is running for president. (Throwing his beak into the ring?) The state of American politics must be pretty pathetic if Daffy gets the nod over Bugs Bunny...
posted by wendell at 1:35 PM PST - 3 comments

Golem XIV by Stanislaw Lem.
posted by sonofsamiam at 12:23 PM PST - 8 comments

Conan follows John Stewart: Triumph the Insult Comic Dog conducts interviews in Spin Alley.
posted by Tlogmer at 12:02 PM PST - 27 comments

Netscape DevEdge sidebar replacement. for those of you (like me) who used the old DevEdge sidebar as an essential tool in web development, the quick and easy CSS/HTML/DOM reference sidebar for mozilla has been rescued, thanks to the power of the internet wayback machine. this made my day - hope it helps some of you.
posted by caution live frogs at 11:57 AM PST - 3 comments

wow..and it can fly a flight sim using only the power of its mind.....via boing boing
posted by ShawnString at 11:30 AM PST - 7 comments

A Walk in the Woods. Farewell to the original Cold War warrior: Paul Nitze, the college professor's son who went to Hotchkiss and Harvard and worked as investment banker before going to Washington in 1940, where he quickly became one of the chief architects of American policy towards the Soviet Union. His doctrine of "strategic stability" became its cornerstone for half a century (Nitze held key government posts in Washington, from the era of Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan's, when he was the White House's guru on arms control). By the end of 1949, Nitze had become director of the State Department's policy planning staff, helping to devise the role of Nato, deciding to press ahead with the manufacture of the H-bomb, and producing National Security Council document 68, the document at the heart of the Cold War: in it, Nitze called for a drastic expansion of the U.S. military budget. The paper also expanded containment’s scope beyond the defense of major centers of industrial power to encompass the entire world. (NSC-68 was a top secret paper, written in April 1950 and declassified in the 70's, called "United States Objectives and Programs for National Security"). More inside.
posted by matteo at 11:23 AM PST - 7 comments

Bigfoot Field Researchers' Organisation.
posted by plep at 11:04 AM PST - 1 comments

Feeling lonely? Terrified? Isolated from the World Community? Call now. Real girls are standing by to tell you exactly what you want to hear.
posted by glenwood at 10:23 AM PST - 8 comments

Let's Pie! Let's pie! Nincompoop guys! (or girls).
posted by Otis at 9:59 AM PST - 2 comments

Mercedes Benz site Mix Tape. Free downloadable MP3 mix. Features mostly downtempo, wallpapery tracks.
posted by anathema at 9:19 AM PST - 11 comments

MP3 4U.com is like a Metafilter for free, legal MP3s. Looks like it's been around a while, but never caught on.
posted by fungible at 9:03 AM PST - 12 comments

Blackbox Voting, take 6. While lawsuits elsewhere seek to require paper trails or block e-voting altogether, early voting in some states is already using the controversial machines. Take New Mexico, for example: "I voted for Kerry and a check mark for Bush appeared." It's not that funny anymore — especially when most of the fears aren't about what you do see, but what you don't.
posted by rafter at 8:57 AM PST - 15 comments

University Study - Most Bush Voters Are Extremely Stupid [Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format]
posted by Pretty_Generic at 8:39 AM PST - 57 comments

Think that Bush has the Catholic vote sewn up? Think again. Despite the efforts of some to make Catholics one-issue voters, many Catholics are more concerned with the views on social justice [pdf] of the Church in this hotly contested [Real] race. It’s a weird year to be a Catholic voter.
posted by TungstenChef at 8:36 AM PST - 22 comments

Don't Forget to Pack the Scimitar (NYT Link): Mainstream media covers Live Action Role Playing in a way that makes us sound only a little like freaks.
posted by Karmakaze at 7:49 AM PST - 5 comments

Shakeskin.com — An international gallery of faces in motion.
posted by o2b at 7:48 AM PST - 2 comments

The Spectator, a family newspaper conceived and edited by 16-year-old Nathaniel Hawthorne, is the portal to this Flash exhibit commemorating the bicentennial of the author's birth.
posted by steef at 7:18 AM PST - 2 comments

Red Sox "Nation" After the Boston police take full responsibility for the killing of a student at the ALCS celebrations on Wedensday night/Thrusday morning, the Mayor takes aim at thugs and threatens bans on alcohol sales, bars showing the series in the city, and expulsion of students. The city wants more police presence at the World Series. Many news reports refer to mayhem and riots, but "video footage from the scene showed large crowds but no sign of rioting." Is this the face of the new Sox?
posted by grimley at 6:50 AM PST - 38 comments

Fellowship 9/11 is Michael Moore's latest damning documentary looking at how the Aragorn administration has twisted the hearts and minds of Middle Earth, ranging from interviews with Rep. Grima Wormtongue (D) to the folks at Minas Flint, a obscure, small town in Mordor used for recruiting. Online at iFilm.
posted by adrianhon at 2:23 AM PST - 10 comments