Friday, October 28, 2005

GAO report on vote fraud, not just Ohio

This is big, guys!

Check out this excerpt form the article:

"Powerful Government Accounting Office report confirms key 2004 stolen election findings":
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
October 26, 2005

"# The exit polls showed Kerry winning in Ohio, until an
unexplained last minute shift gave the election to Bush
Similar definitive shifts also occurred in Iowa, Nevada and
New Mexico, a virtual statistical impossibility."

Click on the title of this post for the whole story!

Monday, October 24, 2005

On Stolen Election, called "The Most Important Thing I Ever Sent You"

Please click the above title for a very concrete telling of the rigging of the 2004 election in Ohio and a bit
on why simply employing "I Hate Bush" rhetoric doesn't do the trick.

Let's Get Out of Here: The View from Maine

Let's get out of here......
Well, the US is poised for two new hurricanes. No..... not Wilma and Alpha. The potentially far more potent "Fitzgerald" is predicted to come ashore in Washington, D.C. as early as this Wednesday. Expected landfall is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House. All the talk about Plame, Wilson, Novak, and Miller suddenly switched this past week to Libby, Rove, Cheney, and even Bush.

While the speculation has swirled about who would be indicted for what, the War in Iraq is the eal story here. The larger question is how did the lies concocted among all these players find their way into the fraud that became the case Bush made
for the war. It's serious, maybe even treasonous. Whether indictments or convictions are brought or succeed is really immaterial. The American public is now discussing the War in Iraq as not only a blundering disaster leaving thousands of lives, Iraqi and American alike, in its wake.......but also as a travesty, indeed a crime.

The second hurricane is barreling it's way into America's "heart" land. That is 2000, not a named storm (although
it will have a name), but a number marking another milestone in the Iraq War, the death of the 2000th soldier. As the millenium held us in its thrall of anticipation of a new beginning, this 2000 holds us in dread of another bitter ending.
With an average of two lives lost forever each day, and the toll standing as I write on Sunday at 1996, that terrible goal
will be reality by the time readers see this ink.

Cindy Sheehan's plans to go to see George again at the People's House will have made news, and peace vigils planned in
cities around the nation will have left candle light's waxy residue on cement, along with tears, broken hearts, and frustration. The internet video, "What does 2000 look like", shows a blink by blink look at what 2000 faces of lost soldiers look like, moving through your sight so fast that they become a blur, and ending long minutes later with the statement "you've just seen 500. In order to understand 2000, you would have to watch this video three more times". Everyone should see it. George Bush should see it.

Many families have created websites in memorial to their fallen loved ones lost in Iraq, including the family of Lt. Ken Ballard. The photos of Ken as a child and then as a soldier make you wish you could know him. He was a hero. He is dead. The website invites comments from people who have visited it. 11,000 people have written their heart-felt thanks
and sympathy.

When George Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" on May 1, 2003, the death toll stood at 139. Obviously the war has
escalated since then. The death throes of the insurgency have become another Cheney lie, and a nightmare of reality. Cold statistics show that of those lost in Iraq, 49% are Army soldiers, 25% Marines, and 15% Army National Guard. Over 1/2 are from only10 states:California, Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Florida, Illinois,Georgia, Michigan, and Virginia. 80% were Staff Sargents or below. 28% were killed by Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's), including 40 in August, a record, and 35 so far in October.

Despite Bus and Blair declaring success after success in the face of failure after failure, the UK Ministry of Defense commissioned a poll, reported in this Sunday Telegraph, which lays bare the collapse of the "hearts and minds" policy they said was essential for victory. 45% of Iraqis support attacks against coalition troops, 65% in the British occupied sectors. Less than 1% think that US/UK military involvement is helping improve security in their country. 82% are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops, and 67% feel less secure because of the occupation. Their personal lives don't get favorable marks either. 71% rarely get safe drinking water. 47% never have enough electricity. 70% say their sewage system rarely works. Iraqis have waited day after day, already over a week, to finally learn their election results. So far, fraud has been ruled but...... one can't help but wonder if by the same methods used in Ohio in 2004.

Distraction and diversion seem to be favorite tactics of the Bush administration. In late December Gary Berntsen,
the CIA field commander at Tora Bora, will say in his book, which the CIA has tried to keep from publication for over two years, that he and other U.S. commanders had definitive intelligence that Osama bin Laden was there. He had been tracked, and could have bee caught. It would appear that bin Laden wasn't the goal, that Saddam was. The war shifted to Iraq, the original plan anyway, and bin Laden slipped out of grasp. Bush didn't finish one war before he began another. Now,
we have a $25,000,000 bounty on al-Zakari, who started as a local terrorist based in Jordan, fomenting insurgency
in Iraq.

Since we launched these twin wars against terrorism, Al Queda has spread to 40 countries, with Iraq now its epicenter. These two murderous thugs must be smiling at their success at our expense. It seems now that Syria may become our next household name. Bush and Blair are pushing a UN investigation into the killing of Lebanese leader, Hariri, and coalition troops are plying and penetrating the Syria/Iraq border searching for insurgents, all reminiscent of the run-up to the Iraq war. Sec. of State Rice has launched unspecific but aggressive threats against Syria, while British Foreign Secretary Straw has pointed out "false testimony being given by senior people" in Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's regime.
Hmmmmmm.......................

While America squares off this week with these two hurricanes, one carrying winds of truth, the other of death, the
war machine drones on and on, 2000 and counting. While death and failure are tolled in numbers, so is the hope and demand for peace as it spreads across America. We must bring stronger, louder voices forward to demand both
truth and peace. While we are so often distracted by one scandal or another or incompetence we can't ignore, we must
keep focused. We either get the leadership we insist on.......or deserve. If we don't demand peace, we're sure to get war and more war. Barbara Carr New Harbor, Maine

Sunday, October 23, 2005

"Three Men and a Party"--excerpt from Slate Magazine

We always hear the dems have no ideas. I'm sick of it! Have you ever looked at the daily congressional record?
Most of the democratic ideas die in the republican Congress. Anyway, read on!

"On Sunday, Tim Russert was gobsmacked to discover that when he asked his usual showstopper, "But what are the Democratic ideas?", Illinois congressman and ex-has-been Rahm Emanuel actually had an answer.

Rahm could have said, "Three things: Convict DeLay. Filibuster Miers. Stick pins in our voodoo dolls of George Bush and Karl Rove." Instead, he spelled out five real ideas: making college universal, demanding a budget summit, cutting energy dependence in half with a hybrid economy, creating a science and technology institute to rival NIH, and making health care universal over the next 10 years.

You might have your own ideas, but that's the point—when you listen to a Democrat with ideas, you don't fall into a deep funk or get hungry again half an hour later. (Full disclosure: Rahm Emanuel is my best friend in Congress, and next to him, I am his biggest promoter.)

You're Hired: If you do have a new idea, Andy Stern and the Service Employees International Union just created a platform for it. This week, Stern launched a Web site called www.sinceslicedbread.com, which will host a nationwide competition over the next two months to find the best new idea to promote economic opportunity for ordinary people.

The winner will receive a prize of $100,000; two runners-up will win $50,000. In the past, Democrats only gave that kind of money to consultants who had no ideas. Now everybody has an incentive to solve the country's problems.

Wherever it leads, the competition itself is such a great idea that Fox and the other networks must be kicking themselves for not coming up with it. Real people going head to head in a cross between the Nobel Prize and American Idol. It's just what Democrats need: reality thinking.

As if a nationwide search for ideas weren't encouraging enough, it's especially intriguing that Stern and his union are behind it. When Gary Hart first whetted Democrats' appetite for new ideas 20 years ago, his argument was that traditional Democratic interests were the ones standing in the way.

One key to Clinton's success in 1992 was persuading Democrats across the spectrum to be the party of change, not the status quo. Democrats can only win back a majority if they learn that lesson again, and Stern understands it better than anybody.

Truth Teller: Last Friday, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., posted a brilliant essay on Daily Kos called "Tone, Truth, and the Democratic Party." Obama used the split over John Roberts, whom he opposed, as an occasion to warn activists that hostility toward Democrats who don't always share their views is actually an impediment to a progressive majority.

Obama explains that "the storyline that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists"—that Democrats must grow a backbone, enforce Rove-like ideological purity, and polarize the electorate along our terms—plays right into Republicans' hands:

"Whenever we exaggerate or demonize, or oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. A polarized electorate that is turned off of politics, and easily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate, works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government."

Obama points out that like litmus tests, arguments over "framing" and labels are beside the point. Instead of striving to be pure or predictable, Democrats need to be bold and unorthodox. That means being willing to "innovate and experiment with whatever ideas hold promise," and giving voters the benefit of "a real and authentic debate about the issues that matter."

Ironically, the desire to be bold and unorthodox may once again be the best bond to unite the Democratic Party. Like most Americans, most Democrats are profoundly disappointed by the performance of both parties in Washington. Whatever differences we might have over tactics, young guns like Kos and Has-Been reformers like me share an abiding contempt for the status quo, and want Democrats to state boldly and clearly what we stand for and what we'll do for the country.

The Obama essay may be the most intelligent advice Democrats have been given in the Bush era. There's nothing wrong with the Democratic Party or the country that can't be turned around by an honest debate, a civil tone, and above all, a bold, unorthodox agenda.

Iconoclasts like Andy Stern, Rahm Emanuel, and Barack Obama are the future of the Democratic Party. If the party listens to them, Democrats will prosper even if none of our favorite Republican bogeymen ends up rotting in jail. ... 8:43 A.M. "

Three Men and a Party

We keep hearing the dems have no ideas. Really they have so many. Click the above title and read on!

Saturday, October 15, 2005

RE: "Harriet Miers" flap: Whaddya expect from the GOP?

Sven says there is no point in asking even the rhetorical question in the post below, since republican
politics have been full of hypocrisy since Nixon. He adds, "And it's not just the republican
elite who made Bush 43 president. It was half the country which voted for him twice. Don't
you think I want to shake each and every one of them and ask them, "What were you thinking?!"

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Harriet Miers

Any schadenfreude for the GOP aside, my husband and I are watching the news this week
like the moon is in the seventh house!

Harriet Miers not qualified?

I'd like to know something:

Where were these same people who say this now-- when Karl Rove first said, "I can make this guy president"?

Re: "Kerry Won": A Reader Responded:

Common Cause is biased. Let's assume Kerry won.
His Supreme Court picks would have been more to our
liking. But I doubt he would have been a distinguished
president re Iraq, nuclear disarmament, global
warming, universal health care, race, poverty and any
other big ones. FDR was described as having a
second-class mind but a first-class personality. He
surrounded himself with eggheads, listened to their
competing ideas, and chose what he liked and thought
he could sell to the country, e.g. social security.
Kerry is 180-FDR: fine mind, terrible personality. I
doubt he could have sold even Paradise to his
advisors, to Congress and most important, to the
American people. I hope the Dems can come up with a
candidate better than either Kerry or Gore for 2006.
Too bad Obama's so young and green.

I answered:

Well, you know, I want to take some time and
consider what you're saying. Jimmy Carter also had trouble selling
some of his prescient ideas. You're basically saying Kerry wasn't
politcal enough, that he's not a people person. And it definitely matters.

But in my blog I'm talking about something more
basic, like the issue of whether the election was stolen.

I think Gore had the environmental background to
move us to de-couple from the huge degree that we depend
on oil and therefore the mid-east. And I'm not
entirely sure Gore is really so apolitcal as he came off in the
public media of the time. I don't buy it[Wouldn't
any intelligent person sigh talking to Bush 43?]
But I agree these things matter.

On the other hand, Bush 43 packing the Supreme Court
is a huge, huge issue. The presidential election is not a test, as
the WSJ has told us, and we lost(or did we win?) it.

The reader replied:

When a reporter asked George Meany his opinion of
President Nixon, labor's big jefe replied: "Please,
dere's ladies present."

Take Back Jesus

"Oct. 7, 2005 | Harriet Miers, should she be confirmed to the Supreme Court, will be the resident evangelical Christian. She shares her religious background with George W. Bush, whose claim to have chosen her based on "knowing her heart" has as much to do with the born-again faith he shares with her as with her long service in his inner circle. This choice might have left secular conservatives perplexed or downright dissatisfied, but is an obvious crowd-pleaser with the Christian right. Above all, it reflects the importance of Christianity for Bush, widely described as the most devout president in history.

But as we brace for more battles over abortion rights, gay marriage, stem cell research and so forth, it's time for ask just how Christian the supposedly pious Bush administration really is. Because what happened in New Orleans, and what has been happening in Iraq, raises serious questions about whether Bush & Co. deserve to be called Christian at all."

This excerpt is from an Article by Alessandro Camon on http://www.salon.com

I have been thinking this myself for a couple of years at least, but worried tht such an argument made in the public eye
might backfire against liberals. Howard Dean has not been afraid to say this.

(Not Only Gore but also) Kerry Won

Please click on the above post title for the stud by a team of academics.

If you agree with the idea of verifiable voting, encourage your representatives in the house to pass
H.R. 550, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005, which insures individual
permanent records(paper ballots) before votes are cast.

Sven heard somehwere tht there may be a movement to re-draft Gore for 2008. If so, let's all be ready
with responses to the superficial and stupid argument that is no argument: "Gore's so wooden."