Guest blogged by David Edwards
Yesterday, Oprah choked up while speaking at a memorial service for Coretta Scott King.
The funeral is scheduled for noon today.
Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...
  w/ Brad & Desi
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  w/ Brad & Desi
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BARCODED BALLOTS AND BALLOT MARKING DEVICES
BMDs pose a new threat to democracy in all 50 states...
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VIDEO: 'Rise of the Tea Bags'
Brad interviews American patriots...
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'Democracy's Gold Standard'
Hand-marked, hand-counted ballots...
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GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
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The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...
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MORE BRAD BLOG 'SPECIAL COVERAGE' PAGES... |
Guest blogged by David Edwards
Yesterday, Oprah choked up while speaking at a memorial service for Coretta Scott King.
The funeral is scheduled for noon today.
Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...
Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org
USAToday and AP report that election officials fear the 'year of the glitch'. However, when a 'glitch' is defined it has nothing to do with machine failures. Apparently they are going to stick by the misinformation from the vendors about the reliability of voting technology and they are preparing to blame all errors on elections workers and the voter. I wonder who was responsible for Diebold TSx counting more votes than voters who cast votes in Montgomery Co., OH or in Alaska?...
Have been watching the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings on warrantless domestic NSA wire-tapping all morning (since 6:30am PT!)
All of the Cable News Channels are ignoring them for the most part. You can watch them on C-SPAN and via their website.
Feel free to use this thread to post your thoughts on the hearings. Mine: Alberto Gonzales should be investigated.
UPDATE: C-SPAN will rerun the hearings in full beginning at 8pm ET. Crooks & Liars has the opening salvo where the Republicans fought to keep Gonzales from testifying under oath (and they won). Scroll further down his page for some other high/lowlights from the hearings. Though the best parts came late in the day. Hopefully he'll have some up later. Or perhaps we will.
Diebold Inc., one of America's largest voting machine companies, likes to claim that there's never been any substantial problem with their touch-screen machines in any election in America.
You may not be surprised to hear that claim is patently untrue.
As reported in yesterday's Middletown Journal, a special "re-vote" will be held tomorrow in Montgomery county, OH on an issue where last November's election results were set aside due to more votes being cast on Diebold's AccuVote TSX touch-screen voting machines than there were actually registered voters who voted!
This is the second time in three months this levy has been before voters. Last November, the levy was narrowly defeated.
But those election results were set aside due to voting irregularities from the new electronic touch screen voting machines.
More votes were cast than there were registered voters in the city's Montgomery County precinct. The city contested the results, and the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court ordered Tuesday's special election at Montgomery County's cost.
Montgomery County is one of 41 counties in Ohio to have added new Diebold AccuVote TSX touch-screen (DRE) voting machines for last November's election.
In that election, remarkable and virtually inexplicable results occurred across the state in regard to four Election Reform initiatives on the ballot, all of which were predicted to pass by large margins in a historically accurate poll released just prior to Election Day. We wrote about the "staggeringly impossible" results of that election back in November. Those results have still not been explained, despite 44 of 88 counties in the Buckeye State using all-new touch-screen voting machines for the first time in that election.
Guest Blogged by John Gideon, of VotersUnite and VoteTrustUSA
The "DVN Top 5" is a feature in the weekly voting newsletter of VoteTrustUSA. The January 30 edition can be found here. The selection of what will be the "Top 5" for each week and where it goes on the list is all mine. The fact that you may disagree with my choices is great because it shows that you have been reading the DVN articles that I've posted throughout the week here on The BRAD BLOG!...
Velvet Revolution's ImpeachMobile has so far received nothing but thumbs-ups and high-signs from those who've seen it! (With the exception of a few cops who have pulled it over to make sure all papers were in order. They are.)
That may change this week, as the intrepid Velvet Revolutionary drivers take the rolling billboard into a few less-friendly settings. We'll see!
In the meantime, we still (The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of VR) welcome and appreciate your contributions to the effort. They help to fill up the gas tank, as well as to pay for future billboards. Perhaps we'll not be so subtle next time with our message
Yes, that's right. The War on Iraq is now costing the United States $100,000 of your tax dollars per minute:
Most of the new money would pay for the war in Iraq, which has cost an estimated $250 billion since the U.S. invasion in March 2003.
The additional spending, along with other war funding the Bush administration will seek separately in its regular budget next week, would push the price tag for combat and nation-building since Sept. 11, 2001, to nearly a half-trillion dollars, approaching the inflation-adjusted cost of the 13-year Vietnam War.
...
No large-scale reconstruction projects are included in the spending, officials said.
Currently, the Defense Department says it is spending about $4.5 billion a month on the conflict in Iraq, or about $100,000 per minute.
Heckuva job.
By way of contrast, you may remember what Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress about the cost of the war on March 27, 2003: "We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
And before that, while the Administration was ensuring we'd go to war with Iraq no matter what, Rummy said on January 19, 2003: "The Office of Management and Budget, has come up come up with a number that's something under $50 billion for the cost. How much of that would be the U.S. burden, and how much would be other countries, is an open question."
Here's a few other similar statements from members of the most failed Administration in the history of the United States.
Guest blogged by David Edwards
Why actually improve National Security when you can buy just as many votes with effective marketing?
Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org
CommonDreams has now voiced their concerns over regressive and restrictive voting rights legislation in GA, OH, and PA. Newspapers in PA are now editorializing against the VoterID bill that will reduce turnout and ensure some voters do not vote. Officials in Vanderburgh Co., IN are now talking about a probe into why 46 machines sat unused in a warehouse in Nov. 2004 while voters waited in long lines to vote....
Yes, that's right. The War on Iraq is now costing the United States $100,000 of your tax dollars per minute:
Most of the new money would pay for the war in Iraq, which has cost an estimated $250 billion since the U.S. invasion in March 2003.
The additional spending, along with other war funding the Bush administration will seek separately in its regular budget next week, would push the price tag for combat and nation-building since Sept. 11, 2001, to nearly a half-trillion dollars, approaching the inflation-adjusted cost of the 13-year Vietnam War.
...
No large-scale reconstruction projects are included in the spending, officials said.
Currently, the Defense Department says it is spending about $4.5 billion a month on the conflict in Iraq, or about $100,000 per minute.
Heckuva job.
By way of contrast, you may remember what Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress about the cost of the war on March 27, 2003: "We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
And before that, while the Administration was ensuring we'd go to war with Iraq no matter what, Rummy said on January 19, 2003: "The Office of Management and Budget, has come up come up with a number that's something under $50 billion for the cost. How much of that would be the U.S. burden, and how much would be other countries, is an open question."
Here's a few other similar statements from members of the most failed Administration in the history of the United States.
Josh says (he said it yesterday, but I'm just getting caught up with it today)...
In court, his lawyer, John Durkin, said that when Raymond was executing the election tampering plot he "was acting at the behest of the state and federal Republican parties (italics included)."
The call came from the campaign committee run by Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN). Jim Tobin, who's now appealing his conviction, was the guy who worked for Frist's committee, the NRSC.
This investigation ain't over.
For more info on that Republican Election Phone-Jamming case, see this previous coverage, as well as this report for details on the RNC itself footing the legal bills for Tobin and friends. For still more, search BRAD BLOG for the word "Tobin".
Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org
VoteTrustUSA has provided us an excellent article on effective testing of election software. We also have an article on HR-4666, the House bill to slow up the implementation of HAVA. Is the state of Florida manipulating the certification of AutoMARK to ensure it is not used in the state? (February 3, 1959 "The Day The Music Died")...
Page one at WaPo today describes an inquiry, now underway, of the NASA Inspector General's failure to investigate several charges and his retaliation against whistle-blowers.
BRAD BLOG Readers familiar with the Clint Curtis story, however, will note a very interesting development here. Emphasized in bold in the quoted text below...
Written complaints and supporting documents from at least 16 people have been given to investigators. They allege that Cobb, appointed by President Bush in 2002, suppressed investigations of wrongdoing within NASA, and abused and penalized his own investigators when they persisted in raising concerns.
The complaints are being reviewed by the Integrity Committee of the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency. The complaints describe efforts by Cobb to shut down or ignore investigations on issues such as a malfunctioning self-destruct procedure during a space shuttle launch at the Kennedy Space Center, and the theft of an estimated $1.9 billion worth of data on rocket engines from NASA computers.
...
IG auditor Carroll Tom Hassell described how "a person in a South American country" over three days in late 2002 logged into the Marshall Space Flight Center's supposedly secure computer system, stole space shuttle data valued at $1.9 billion and shipped it to a third country.
I have several meetings today, so I can't get into too much detail for the moment. But for those not familiar with Clint Curtis, among his allegations is that Yang Enterprises Inc. (YEI), his employer back in 2000 in Florida, was spying on NASA via their contracts with the space agency. He alleges, in a sworn affidavit, that YEI inserted "wire-tapping modules" into software they were contracted to write for NASA, and that an undocumented Chinese worker, Hai Lin "Henry" Nee, was in charge of the programming that pulled it all off.
Nee was charged, some years later, for attempting to send Hellfire anti-tank missile chips from YEI to China, eventually pleading guilty.
Curtis took his charges to Raymond Lemme, from the Inspector General's office in Tallahassee, FL. Lemme allegedly told Curtis that his investigation had traced these matters "all the way to the top"; two weeks later, Lemme was found dead in a Valdosta, GA hotel room. The police ruled the case a suicide, but several inconsistencies in their report remain unexplained, including the claim that the photos taken at the crime scene could not be developed --- those same photos were later found, and published, here at BRAD BLOG.
At the time, the general counsel and registered lobbyist for YEI was U.S. Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL), who also served as the in-coming Speaker of the Florida Legislature, and who is most famous for his claim during the 2000 Florida Election Debacle that the electoral votes in Florida would be delivered to George W. Bush no matter what the Florida Supreme Court had to say about it. Feeney --- who continues to receive money from YEI and their attorneys, and houses his campaign headquarters in their building in Oviedo, FL --- now sits on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. Feeney also ran as Jeb Bush's running-mate for Governor in 1994, and has most recently been implicated in the Abramoff/Tom DeLay scandals for participating in one of the now-infamous lobbyist-paid golf trips to St. Andrews, Scotland.
Clint Curtis made his claims to members of the House Judiciary committee in sworn video-taped testimony, and has successfully passed a lie-detector test in regard to these charges.
And, oh yes, Curtis, a computer programmer --- who was a Republican at the time --- claims that Feeney asked him, while they both worked for YEI at the time, to create a touch-screen vote-rigging software prototype. But you'll have to read up on the quick summary of Curtis' story to catch up on that part of it.
We'll be keeping our eye on this one, naturally...
Says the Freeway Blogger in a note to The BRAD BLOG about his new flash video/song: "It's full effect as a propaganda device will become apparent an hour or two after first viewing. You'll see."
And, as usual, he was right!
Hopefully this will be my last words on the disgraceful incident involving the arrest, removal and detention of Cindy Sheehan, who gave the life of her child in defense of this country, just prior to Tuesday's State of the Union address.
This latest canary-in-the-coalmine story made the front page of WaPo today, and reveals quite clearly both the Media's and at least one Republican's bias against those who do not agree with the George W. Bush Administration...As well as the disregard for our Constitutional Freedom of Speech. At least by the Republican.
The WaPo article, written by Petula Dvorak, first reveals the pro-administration media bias and/or their consistent inability to fairly report on an unfair situation. Note this early graf:
In other words it's implied here that Beverly Young, the wife of Congressman Bill Young (R-FL), who was removed from gallery at some point during Bush's speech wasn't arrested because, unlike Sheehan, it didn't come to that. Mrs. Young must have been polite (she wasn't) requiring no arrest, while Sheehan must have been unruly (she wasn't) requiring arrest and hours of detention.
The fact of the matter, however, as clearly explained later in the article, is that Mrs. Young was never threatened with arrest at all, unlike Sheehan who was frog-marched out of the chamber and handcuffed from the get-go. And that was even with Sheehan being polite in every respect, by all accounts of the story, while Young was abusive towards the cops, calling them "idiots" (that night, and even later after their eventually apology) and, as WaPo points out, "Witnesses said her words for him were much saltier the night before."
As I mentioned yesterday in my article on "Cindy Sheehan's Unequal Treatment Under the Law", the Wingnuts who've been busy trying to equate Sheehan's treatment with Young's ("They were both asked to leave, so clearly there's no political bias here!" say the apologists) have also overlooked the fact that Young was asked to leave much later. After the cops already had an embarrassing situation on their hands. As WaPo reported...
She said she angrily challenged officers to explain what law she had violated, and they threatened arrest.
She said an officer mentioned that Sheehan was removed earlier and therefore "it was kind of only fair" that she be asked to leave, too.
It's clear that Mrs. Young would have been left alone with her "Support the Troops" T-shirt and would not have been asked to leave, had not the cops already had the Sheehan situation on their hands, and needed to cover their asses.
Finally then, it's revealed in the story that the hypocritical Congressman Young himself would likely not have said a word about Sheehan's treatment (which was much worse than his wife's) had his wife not been asked to leave. He admits as much:
So the woman actually arrested, detained, and perhaps even "roughed up" was no problem for Young's "standards" because he "totally disagree[s] with everything she stands for."
Welcome to the amazingly slipperly slope...as it gets still slipperier and slopier every damn day in this country.
Still unclear? See how Judge Anthony Napolitano --- who defended Sheehan on Fox News, ostensibly, once it became clear she broke no rules or laws --- reportedly contrasted Young's T-shirt with Sheehan's. Young's, said Napolitano, in regard to the "Support the Troops" T-shirt, was "a Republican T-shirt."
Fox happily took up the meme on their website:
The "opposite message"?!
It's a dangerous fucking line we're crossing here in America 2006. Pay attention.
ALSO... It's not just the MSM who get the story wrong in their rush for political points. Blogger Glenn Greenwald reports on tons of Wingnut bloggers who couldn't wait to lie about the Sheehan story to their readers...and then refuse to correct themselves after it was proven how incredibly wrong they were.