1. The Washington Post suspects High turnout and new procedures may mean an election day mess. “Election officials across the country are bracing for long lines, equipment failures and confusion over polling procedures that could cost thousands the chance to cast a ballot.”

   Premier Election Solutions, the company that makes many of the nation’s voting machines, last month acknowledged that software used in 34 states, including Virginia and Maryland, could cause votes to be dropped. The company, formerly called Diebold, said it has no fix for the problem now, but election officials can catch the errors and recover the votes through a routine process of double-checking electronic memory cards.

2. The LA Times reports Tempers flare as Hurricane Ike relief efforts continue. Bolivar Peninsula northeast of Galveston “has essentially become an island” and 200 to 250 people in the area refuse to leave. Tens of thousands of people from the region remain in shelters. The death toll has risen to 50 people. The Houston-area death toll is at 23.

   Over 1 million people in the Houston area are still without electricity. “State officials worry that it will take weeks to restore basic utilities in towns like Galveston and communities near the Texas-Louisiana border because power substations have been demolished and key infrastructure systems are down.”

   The Houston Chronicle reports Galveston may have power in 10 days and FEMA is being criticized by the city of Houston.

   FEMA took another round of criticism today from the Houston mayor’s office after ready-to-eat meals ran out at a distribution center at the University of Houston’s Robertson Stadium.

   Deputy chief of staff Terrence Fontaine’s outburst came shortly after noon when, after serving about 8,000 meals, the center ran out of food.

   “I’m trying to figure out right now where the truck is,” he fumed. “I’ve been waiting on it for three hours. We need it to come from the command station at Reliant (Park). FEMA is saying nothing – nothing. Not yet. I’m waiting on the product to come up the line. . . .All I’ve heard is, the product is on the way.”

Four at Four continues with news from Afghanistan and Iraq, Mexico’s violent drug war, and a 2 for 1 bonus environmental disaster news from the Arctic and Pacific coast.

1. The Washington Post reports McCain Able to Skirt Limits of Federal Financing. Despite “Obama’s record $66 million haul in August” and “McCain’s decision to finance his bid with a single $84 million infusion from the federal government — has not given Obama a clear financial edge.”

   “Senator Obama’s advantage is not emerging as people thought,” said Lawrence M. Noble, a former Federal Election Commission general counsel and an Obama supporter.

   The reason has less to do with Obama’s fundraising… than it does with McCain’s ability to maneuver within the confines of the Watergate-era funding program, Noble said.

   With backing from the Republican National Committee, McCain has taken advantage of loopholes such as “hybrid” television advertisements and joint fundraising committees that may keep him close to financial parity with Obama…

   The hybrid ads and the use of joint fundraising committees are, in Noble’s view, “the final distortion” of a presidential financing system that many have considered outdated for years. Because McCain has found other ways to both raise and spend money during the general-election race, Noble said, “it effectively means he is getting an $84 million subsidy for his campaign.”

Four at Four continues with two stories of the decline of the United States on the international stage and a report from the American Physical Society.

1. The Guardian reports Pakistan orders troops to fire on US cross-border raids. “Pakistan’s military said today its forces had received orders to fire on US troops if they entered Pakistani territory, after a cross-border raid inflamed public opinion.”

   “The orders are clear,” General Athar Abbas, an Pakistan Army spokesman, said. “In case it happens again in this form, that there is a very significant detection, which is very definite, no ambiguity, across the border, on ground or in the air: open fire.”

   Yesterday there were reports that Pakistani troops fired warning shots over the heads of U.S. soldiers near the border. According to BBC News, “Reports say the firing lasted for several hours. Local people evacuated their homes and tribesmen took up defensive positions in the mountains.” (Hat tip Edgar.)

   [UPDATE] The NY Times is now reporting, Top Pentagon official makes a surprise visit to Pakistan. “The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, America’s top military official, made a hastily arranged visit to Pakistan on Tuesday for talks about a recent incursion by American commandos based in neighboring Afghanistan. The visit by the chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, came as an uproar continued to grow in Pakistan about the incursion on Sept. 3…” Pakistan stated there was “no change in policy”.

Four at Four continues with Iraq standing up (so American can stand down), CYA GOP, and John McCain invented the Blackberry.

After 8 years in the United States of the war on science by the Bush administration, things wouldn’t be much better during a McCain presidency. From the Bad Astronomy blog at Discover magazine: John McCain: literally antiscience. “I am not a fan of John McCain… I have had my doubts on his support for science, but my fears have been at least in part confirmed.”

Phil Plait goes on to quote McCain from an AP story, as he changes the subject away from his running mate to Obama:

“That’s nearly a million every day, every working day he’s been in Congress,” McCain said. “And when you look at some of the planetariums and other foolishness that he asked for, he shouldn’t be saying anything about Governor Palin.”

1. An update on our two wars. Starting with the most recent, Patrick Cockburn of The Indpendent reports Iraq Violence is down – but not because of America’s ‘surge’

   Ongoing violence is down, but Iraq is still the most dangerous country in the world. On Friday a car bomb exploded in the Shia market town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, killing 32 people and wounding 43 others. “The smoke filled my house and the shrapnel broke some of the windows,” said Hussein al-Dujaili. “I went outside the house and saw two dead bodies at the gate which had been thrown there by the explosion. Some people were in panic and others were crying.”

   Playing down such killings, the Iraqi government and the US have launched a largely successful propaganda campaign to convince the world that “things are better” in Iraq and that life is returning to normal. One Iraqi journalist recorded his fury at watching newspapers around the world pick up a story that the world’s largest Ferris wheel was to be built in Baghdad, a city where there is usually only two hours of electricity a day…

   The perception in the US that the tide has turned in Iraq is in part because of a change in the attitude of the foreign, largely American, media. The war in Iraq has now been going on for five years, longer than the First World War, and the world is bored with it. US television networks maintain expensive bureaux in Baghdad, but little of what they produce gets on the air. When it does, viewers turn off. US newspaper bureaux are being cut in size. The result of all this is that the American voter hears less of violence in Iraq and can suppose that America’s military adventure there is finally coming good.

   And Afghanistan is in its worst shape since 2001, reports the International Herald Tribune.

   One of the most experienced Western envoys in Afghanistan delivered a depressing review Sunday of the situation there, calling it the worst since 2001 and urging concerted American and foreign action even before a new U.S. administration takes office to avoid “a very hot winter for all of us.”

   Francesc Vendrell, who has just stepped down as European Union envoy in Afghanistan and has eight years of experience in the country, in particular criticized the growing number of civilian deaths in attacks by U.S. and international forces. These have created “a great deal of antipathy,” and helped widen the growing distance between the Afghan government and its citizens, he said…

   Bluntly, Vendrell traced what he called a long series of foreign mistakes in Afghanistan, and recommended action to ensure that the local Afghan authorities and foreign agencies followed up any military successes against the Taliban with concrete assistance to local citizens, to convince them that Westerners and the Kabul government can deliver security and some minimal well-being…

   It was a mistake by the United Nations to limit the mandate of foreign soldiers to Kabul, and for the world to get distracted by the war in Iraq, Vendrell said.

   Just thought somebody would be interested…

Four at Four continues with warning shots from Pakistan at U.S. troops, Hurricane Ike’s aftermath, and growing doubts about Georgia’s version concerning South Ossetia.

1. The Associated Press is reporting news of another devastating suicide bombing — Car bomb in Iraq kills at least 32, wounds 43. The last big attack that I mentioned in 4@4 came about three weeks ago where 25 people were killed by a bomb at police station in Diyala. Today’s attack — “a car bomb ripped through a crowded commercial district — came in Dujail, a mainly Shiite town north a Baghdad. The target of the attack was another police station, but instead the bomb “badly damaged a nearby medical clinic”. According to the Iraqi police, “concrete barriers largely protected the police station”.

   Earlier Friday, a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of a Shiite mosque farther north in Sinjar as worshippers left prayers at midday, killing two civilians and wounding 15, police chief Col. Awad Kahlil said.

   So much of what happens in Iraq is not reported by the Western media because the country is not safe. Bush’s “surge” is permanent until, at least, he leaves office in 2009. The Iraqis know that America is paying off most of the country’s militia groups to keep them quiet. And yesterday, even Gen. David Petraeus said he would not use the word victory to ever describe Iraq.

   The “surge” was to keep the situation in Iraq from blowing up while Bush was in office and to distract Americans from the ongoing occupation so to help select the next Republican for the White House… and it is working.

2. The NY Times reports Democrats reluctantly embrace offshore drilling. Despite decades of opposition to new offshore drilling, ‘a core principle of Congressional Democrats”, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is leading the Democrats to moderate their opposition on drilling.

   Under a measure being assembled for a vote in the House next week, oil rigs could go up 50 miles from the shores of states that welcome drilling and 100 miles off any section of the United States coast – a stark reversal on an issue that has been a Democratic environmental touchstone since the 1980s.

   However, this “reversal” is not good enough for Republicans and their friends in the oil industry. The Democrats’ legislation does not “go far enough to satisfy them” and, according to them, “a decision not to share any new oil royalties with the states eliminates a prime incentive for states to say yes to drilling.”

   In a tactical move, Pelosi is attempting to out fox the foxes. What really is at stake is ban on offshore drilling that will expire in three weeks. With $4 a gallon gasoline and Republicans hell bent on drilling makes renewing the ban an impossibility this year.

   So rather than see the moratorium expire and open the way to drilling as close as three miles from the coast, they said they were pushing any drilling at least 50 miles offshore, requiring states to agree to it and tying the whole package to a series of clean energy initiatives that have so far languished in Congress.

   “The reality,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters Thursday, is “if we don’t have something in the bill, it’s drilling three miles offshore.”

   Please read Meteor Blades’ essay explaining the stakes in more detail.

Four at Four continues with weak retail sales, the climate threat posed by nitrogen, and a bonus story about illegal logging in Mexico threatening Monarch butterflies.