Molly Priesmeyer at City Pages has an article about the increase in brain injuries suffered by our soldiers in combat, and how the Army “retires” the wounded when the bills start showing up…

Like many families of Iraq vets, they’re not sure how, or even if, all the medical and travel expenses they are bound to incur will be covered. The Army to which Bob dedicated almost 14 years as a reservist has abandoned them, they say. Three months after his injury, the Army medically retired Bob and shifted his benefits to the VA, leaving unclear how his future care will be paid for.

Read the complete story here.

the laweekly tells us that, since absentee ballots are still being counted in caleefornia, it’s turning out that gov. ah-nold got his butt kicked even worse than anybody thought:

so the numbers keep coming in, and factoring in the late returns, the results are quietly astounding. the biggest story is turnout. in each of the other two special elections (that is, elections featuring ballot measures but no candidates) in california over the past two decades, turnout was roughly 37 percent. schwarzenegger’s consultants assumed that this time around, inasmuch as turnout has been steadily declining in state and out over the past four decades, they could count on 36 percent of voters actually bothering to participate. the consultants for the unions who ran the campaigns against schwarzenegger’s measures figured that they had to boost turnout at least to 41 percent. in the days before the election, the office of secretary of state bruce mcpherson figured that perhaps 42 percent of voters would cast ballots, and that was the figure most commonly cited on election day itself.

and they were all wrong. as the count proceeded this past weekend, the percentage of california voters who cast ballots was up to 47.3 percent. when the count’s all done — the county registrars have to wrap it up by december 8 — that figure may be close to 48 percent, 11 points higher than each of the two preceding specials…

it’s also a testament to the scope and efficacy of the campaign the unions ran to pull their voters — and not just union members, but black, latino and progressive voters more generally — to the polls. in l.a. county, not only was the turnout surprisingly high, but the margins against arnold’s measures were huge. as of this weekend, proposition 74, extending the probationary period for teachers, was losing by 22.8 percent among l.a. county voters; proposition 75, curtailing unions’ ability to wage election campaigns, was trailing by 23.2 percent; proposition 76, limiting funding on schools and giving the governor unilateral power to cut spending, was down by 35.6 percent; and proposition 77, establishing a mid-decade reapportionment, was behind by 32 percent.

the article goes on to mention the latimes’ new hard tack to the right (under new management), and thereby how out of touch with its core readership the paper is now appearing. the op-ed page not only endorsed 3 of ah-nold’s 4 propositions, the editors, after the loss, chided, deridedand broad-sided the citizenry of the state for failing to pass them.

howard dean predicts the dems will take back the house and the senate in 2006. after listing the advances the dems have made this year (in the dc publication the hill ), dean lays it out:

in 2006, democrats will take back the house and the senate. the democratic senatorial campaign committee and the democratic congressional campaign committee have done an excellent job recruiting strong candidates, and we are already investing in the local infrastructure to ensure they win. but the key to winning is running a national campaign based on our different vision and the themes that democrats around the country have put forward.

americans of all political persuasions are tired of and worried about the culture of corruption that republicans have brought to washington and to so many statehouses around america. we will offer real ethics reform and election reform so that the government accountability office can report in three years that we can have confidence in our voting machines.

thanks and a tip of the bush kangaroo hat to kitty’s dkos diary for the link!

While we customers of the U.S. corporate media spent the last weekend learning important details about rogue parade balloons and which discount merchants were advertising sales most likely to incite rioting, other news happened:

Al-Jazeera staff last week held protests demanding an investigation into the reports. At the station’s HQ in Doha they held pictures of Sami al-Haj, a colleague who is an inmate at Guantánamo Bay, and Tarek Ayoub, an al-Jazeera journalist killed in April 2003 when a US missile hit his office in Baghdad. The US state department said the air strike was a mistake.

In November 2002 al-Jazeera’s office in Kabul, Afghanistan, was destroyed by a US missile. No staff were in the office. US officials said they believed the target was a terrorist site.

There are many slimy rocks under which to look when it comes to the BushCo regime, but I’m going to put the story behind the "Let’s bomb al-Jazeera" memo at the top of my wish list.   War crimes should be exposed.

The Guardian