(NOTE: This entry guest blogged by Jaime)

photo courtesy of Reuters

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot

He's preaching the spread of democracy all over the world, and especially in the Middle East. Sounds great, doesn't it? He wants you to think so! But he doesn't want you to realize this: George Bush [or his inner circle] will decide which governments are democratic, which are autocratic; which will stand and which will fall. And the decisions will have nothing to do with democracy.

One case in point was mentioned recently by fellow guest-blogger Jaime in his excellent item, News You Might Have Missed. Here's another example for your consideration:

Pro-Democracy forces in a Middle-Eastern country turned out more than ten percent of that nation's population out for massive and peaceful demonstrations. It happened a week and a half ago, in Bahrain. Did you hear or read anything about it? Don't feel badly if you missed it; the way it was played in the major media, it's almost as if they wanted you to miss it!

Never fear! The Brad Blog is here! You haven't missed anything!

(NOTE: This entry guest blogged by Jaime)

The last three weeks have been saturated with Terri Schiavo / Pope's Death news. While the American Main Stream Media has been focused on these two stories an injustice to democracy is occuring on the other side of the world. Zimbabwe's "President" Robert Mugabe retained and strengthened his grip on power gaining 46 of 120 open parliamentary seats and appointing an additional 30.
His opposition rival, leaver of the Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai called the election a "disgusting, massive fraud"

Despite international scrutiny over the outcome of this "election" Mugabe seemed unfazed by his critics, laying out the political plans his newly gained mandate will allow him to push through.

In a post 9-11 / Iraqi Freedom world such an event would not stand, could not stand, should not stand with George Dubya Bush. Yet Mr. Democracy himself has been oddly silent in regards to the apparent steady repeal of Democracy in Zimbabwe. Dubya could not be taken away this weekend from his vacation clearing brush and chasing Arma-dillas with Barney to comment...he'd already broken into his free time to attend to the Schiavo matter.

Bush has had time to applaud Victor Yushchenko's victory as he met with the newly minted Ukranian President today. He also poked his nose in Lebanese affairs .

Yet very, very, quiet on Mugabe's election swindling. Mugabe has used many of the same fear mongering tactics and demagoguery as Bush is known for. Their media was also not so independent in its coverage of the election.

Mugabe seems to ape Bush's style. Intimidation, media control, false mandates and vote rigging; a more brutal riff off the American election template. When our foreign policy has been rhetorically pushed to 'freedom when we want it, where we want it, how we want it" a Democratic injustice in an African nation isn't worth the attention of steroids in Major League Baseball. Bush is on vacation while the media is out to lunch. It now seems democracy in Zimbabwe has gone the way of Terri Schiavo, the Pope, and Mark McGwire's legacy, yet one wouldn't notice these days.

I will be working my way towards Nashville this week for the National Conference on Election Reform where I'll be speaking at several of the seminars on a number of topics, being trailed by documentarians, and (hopefully!) speaking with a lot of media in order to continue to get the word out on all of the below (meaning, the last 5 or 6 months or more of reporting/crime-fighting here on BRAD BLOG!)

Thanks, in no small part, to your generous donations to BRAD BLOG, I'm able to afford to make what I think will be a very important trip!

Of course, if you're in the vicinity, please come on by, say hello and join up for the 3-day conference! And, in case you need more of a reason than saying hello to me to show up, here's another 5 Great Reasons to Come on Down!

Don't know what kind of net access I'll have on the road throughout this week and over the weekend during the conference, so for the moment, please assume I'll be gone for the week, and therefore, I'm turning things over to Guest Bloggers Winter Patriot, Fin and Jaime to help keep things lively in my absense.

Be kind to them, and keeping making noise!

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Gandhi

The Open Voting Consortium (OVC), a non-partisan group with Republican, Democratic, Green Party and Libertarian Party support, has today become the first Election Software Developer to publicly endorse Velvet Revolution's "Divestiture for Democracy" campaign!

In an open letter sent today to VR by OVC President, Alan Dechert, the group announced their intentions of adopting the standards set forth in VR's February 21st letter to America's Voting Machine companies, calling on them to do the right thing for their country by --- amongst other things --- voluntarily opening hardware and software for inspection and certification to ensure transparency in our electoral system.

Dechert calls, in his letter, for the voting process to be "clear, transparent, fair, trustworthy, orderly, observable, and auditable." We couldn't agree more. Why so many seem to be frightened by such an idea, is beyond us. If you haven't already, please join the Revolution by sending an Email to America's Voting Machine companies stating your support! It'll take you 60 seconds!

OVC joins a growing list of supporters to the VR "DV4D" Campaign which, along with over 100 Voting Rights and Electoral Reform groups, also currently includes 23 U.S. House members, and 2004 Presidential Candidates David Cobb (Green) and Ralph Nader (Independent). All of these Americans are now calling for a trustworthy, auditable, transparent and verifiable voting system in the world's most important democracy!

The VR Press Release, with the full copy Dechert's letter of endorsement is available here.

On Thursday, USCountVotes.org, a Utah non-profit organization of statisticians and researchers, released a new scientific statistical analysis of the "2004 Presidential Exit Poll Discrepancies" [PDF]. Here is the executive summary of the report [PDF].

This study is a real one. A scientific one. Produced by a real group of non-partisan investigators, statisticians, university professors and mathmeticians --- unlike at least one phony GOP disinformation front group comprised of paid Bush/Cheney/RNC staff that we know of.

The USCountVotes.org report is in response to the one released by the Exit Pollsters, Edison/Mitofsky themselves who had tried, in their report, to explain away their own data as somehow being flawed. As explained in the USCountVote report's executive summary:

In describing the report, USCountVotes.org says that:

Here is just one graph from the report, of particular note to BRAD BLOG readers Velvet Revolution supporters and true advocates of Election Reform and Voting Rights (unlike other phony advocates of voting rights that we know of.)

Stephen Dyer of the Akron Beacon Journal has done a fine job of summing up some of the report's key points. As we've been too busy to do a thorough job of it ourselves (and likely will continue to be for the next several days at least), we associate ourselves with Dyer's summary. As well, we share the contemptable reactions to the report which he received from the office of the man responsible for ensuring fair elections in Ohio, Sec. of State (and Co-Chair of the Bush/Cheney Re-Election Comm.) J. Kenneth Blackwell via his spokesman, Carlo LoParo --- both of whom seem to continue to display an utter contempt for their country, its founding principles and its constitution...

Off on fools errands all day. TV appearances. Trouble making. No time for fooling around. Sorry...But you can. Open thread...

In an apparent attempt to shore up the discredited American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) (see BRAD BLOG's Special Coverage on ACVR for more info) --- the phony "Voting Rights" group set up by Bush/Cheney/RNC operatives to provide a smoke-screen from what really went wrong in the 2004 general election --- GOPUSA, the phony "news" service created by Republican operative and shadowy money-meister, Bobby Eberle, most famous for creating the phony Talon News group, headlined by professional hooker cum phony journalist James Guckert (better known for his phony White House Correspondent name Jeff Gannon) is re-running the story published yesterday by their sister-phony-"news" group, Cybercast News Service (CNS) on the phony ACVR operation.

Got all that?

And just to advance the story another peg on the desperate attempt apparently being made by the "patriotic" hucksters of the GOP Spin-Machine to pull the wool over American eyes in an effort to help save ACVR's wholly discredited reputation (as if they ever had one --- calling oneself a "non-partisan" organization when you're actually paid staff members of Bush/Cheney 04 Inc. and the Communications Director for the RNC certainly doesn't lend much credibility to the scammers who invented the ACVR with baseless self-proclamations of being simply "longtime voting rights advocates") there is the Scott Hogenson connection to both CNS and ACVR.

We did find it curious when the far-rightwing propoganda service CNS contacted us early on about doing a story on ACVR. The resulting biased, misleading and un-balanced article, written by Kathleen Rhodes, was little surprise. But the genesis of the article in the first place and its purpose was always of interest to us.

As it turns out, Hogenson --- the Founding and Executive Editor of CNS and also (no conflict at all here) the Radio Services Manager at the RNC Press Office! --- is the longtime compadre to one of the two known lead scheisters at ACVR, Jim Dyke.

Dyke, who has worked hand-in-hand for years in his position at the RNC with Hogenson, was the 2004 RNC Communications Director. (For example, here's a press release where Hogenson and Dyke are listed together just last year.)

Down the rabbit hole, into the Bizzarro GOP World of baseless Rightwing claims of "Liberal" bias in the media, we suppose it's only natural for no conflict or bias to exist when the Executive Editor of a "News" Service claiming to offer "unbiased news" happens to concurrently be the Republican National Committee's spokesman and talk radio coordinator. Saddam was also just 45 minutes from launching a nuclear attack on the United States when George W. Bush single-handled wrestled him to the ground and grappled the uranium right out of hands.

So the gears of the GOP braintrust must really be turning at this point for such a panicked and coordinated effort to be launched by the Rightwing Echo Chamber in order to find a way to give credibility to the Bush/Cheney/RNC hoaxsters behind this ill-conceived ACVR scam.

The fact that GOPUSA would re-run the silly and deceptive CNS story to try and shore up the group --- who appeared GOPUSA/Talon News-like out of nowhere on March 17th, only to be given a coveted slot testifying as a "witness" before a U.S. Congressional Committee claiming to be investigating Election Problems in Ohio just three days later --- is an irony so rich that you'd think even GOPUSA wouldn't want to call attention to it or themselves in the bargain.

Either they just don't get it (unlikely) or they strongly believe that nobody in the Mainstream Media or elsewhere will actually call them on the continuing scam they are perpetuating on the American people (very very likely).

Well, we've called them on it. For whatever that's worth. Now we continue to wait for the MSM'ers in the once-great 4th Estate to realize their responsibility to the American People to do the same. It's only democracy at stake after all. We fear, however, we may be waiting a while.

In the meantime, the ACVR/RNC/GOPUSA/CNS axis-of-evil-acronyms sends their undying gratitude to the MSM! Keep up the bad work, guys!

For more information on the "non-partisan" tax-exempt ACVR scam and the snakeoil salesmen who invented it, Bush/Cheney '04 National General Counsel Mark F. "Thor" Hearne and RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke, please see BRAD BLOG's full Special Coverage of the "American Center for Voting Rights" at https://BradBlog.com/ACVR.

Decrying the "Millions of Americans [who have] lost faith in our elections" due to the secret counting of our public votes by the private companies who now peform the governmental function of counting America's votes --- in secret --- two-time Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader has joined Velvet Revolution's "Divesture for Democracy" campaign!

Nader joins Green Party Candidate David Cobb as the second 2004 Presidential Candidate to join the campaign! As well, 23 U.S. House Members have also endorsed by sending strongly worded letters to the nine major American Voting Machine Companies vowing to withhold all government funding from companies who do not voluntarily adapt the VR recommendations!

In his letters, Nader declares it "shameful" that "our country has lost its moral authority" in the process of the companies insistence upon keeping their software secret and adding to the collapse in confidence by American's in their electoral system.

As well, in a letter to Velvet Revolution Co-Founder, Brad Friedman (author and editor of The BRAD BLOG), Mr. Nader --- who has taken on Corporate America before, and won! --- vows to "support the next step of divestiture in the event these companies fail to do the right thing."

Read Nader's full letters to the companies and to VR here...

With two of the five major 2004 Presidential Candidates, we await word on who may be next. Paging Mr. Badnarik...Senator Kerry..."President" Bush?...

It'll be little surprise to BRAD BLOG readers who are by now aware of the phony "non-partisan" "voting rights" group recently created by high-level Bush/Cheney/RNC officials, but the coordinated strategy for smoke-screening what really happened in Election 2004 now seems to be in full swing.

In an Email sent yesterday by the RNC Political Director, Mike DuHaime, members of the huge RNC Email list are pointed to the 31-page hoax report [PDF] created by the three day old Talon News-like, tax-exempt, self-proclaimed, "voting rights" group, American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR).

The ACVR is anything but "non-partisan" and their so-far known ringleaders are actually Mark F. (Thor) Hearne, the National Counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. and his partner-in-crime Jim Dyke, the RNC's Communications Director. (Click here for our Special Coverage page on the ACVR for more details.)

The ACVR report was presented by the GOP front group to Congress in a U.S. House Adminstrative Committee hearing on the Election Mess in Ohio. The then-three-day old group, masquerading as a "voting rights" organization, was the only such group called as witnesses in the hearings convened by the committee's Chairman, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH).

As well, the creation of the ACVR seems to be smartly-timed with the creation of a supposedly "bi-partisan" blue-ribbon commission convened to study and recommend solutions for Electoral Problems in 2004. The Commission was seated in secret, announced on Thursday at 2pm, and lauded in a Press Release published by ACVR just 24 minutes later!

The commission, as announced, is set to be co-chaired by James A. Baker, III, the mastermind and architect of the 2000 Bush/Cheney strategy to ensure that votes were not counted in the state of Florida. The other co-chair is former-President Jimmy Carter who led a similar commission with respected elder statesman, former-President Gerald Ford after the 2000 Election debacle led by Baker on behalf of the Bush Family.

The RNC email, sent to believers on Tuesday, described the ACVR report as "document[ing] massive amounts of voter intimidation by Democrats and their third-party allies".

Of course, the report doesn't. Neither does it document the thousands of verified instances of real election fraud, irregularities, intimidation, disenfranchisment, miscounted and uncounted votes that occurred in Ohio and elsewhere in the last general election. Many of the real documented reports of evidence of went actually went wrong last November are contained in a 102-page report submitted to Congress after months of investigation by the minority staff of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

But in GOP Land, where black is white, wrong is right and where Republicans seem to have divorced themselves from reality...simply saying something makes it so. The Email and the link to the report is even now being circulated widely on Rightwing blogs and "centrist" newspapers and news services.

Here is a copy of the disingenous and misleading email sent yesterday by the RNC Political Director about the "non-partisan" report created by the RNC Communications Director and Bush/Cheney '04 Inc.'s lead attorney...

Our hope when speaking to Cybercast "News" Services' Kathleen Rhodes about the recent BRAD BLOG special coverage exposing the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) as little more than a bogus front group created by desperate high-level GOP operatives to create a smoke-screen for the real problems in the 2004 general election, was that the clear evidence for the sleaziness of this obvious and cynical bunch would be impossible for even a Rightwing "news" service to cover for.

Apparently we were wrong. Is there any GOP turd that can't be polished by their friends in the "Conservative" media?

The CNS article out this morning is exactly what we've come to expect from the hard-right groups who deceptively label themselves as "news" services in hopes of swindling a gullible American populace and inculcating them with "conservative" propaganda.

On that level, Ms. Rhodes and CNS have succeeded spectacularly!

Displaying an apparent contempt for the sacred privilege of casting a vote in the world's greatest democracy, she succeeds in minimizing and apologizing for the known ACVR ring-leaders' active ties to the RNC and Bush/Cheney '00/'04 Inc., attempts to legitimize the tax-payer subsidized status of the ACVR as a "non-partisan" 501(c)3 corporation, recharacterize them as a "Voting Fraud Watchdog Group" and attempt to villify those who would criticize them for their cynical and brazen attempts to undermine democracy in America.

We have sent the following letter to the Editors and Ms. Rhodes at CNS...

Bush Family friend, loyalist, operative and architect of the 2000 Bush/Cheney strategy to keep American's votes from being counted has no place as Co-Chair of bi-partisan commission with esteemed former-President Jimmy Carter!

Velvet Revolution calls for Baker's immediate removal from the Commission! VR's Full Statement...

The Lone Star Iconoclast, the newspaper in George W. Bush's "hometown" of Crawford, TX, has jumped into the "American Center for Voting Rights" (ACVR) fray by reporting on the nascient self-proclaimed "Voting Rights" group (actually a GOP front group staffed by Bush/Cheney/RNC employees) and their testimony before a U.S. House Committee just three days after appearing out of nowhere (Talon News-like) on the Internets.

Their article, headlined "Crashing The Party? - Mystery Surrounds ?American Center For Voting Rights' Group" is right here.

The Iconoclast covers many of the bases that we've covered so far here at BRAD BLOG, the key articles for which can now be easily tracked for reference at this BRAD BLOG Special Coverage page.

For more information on the "non-partisan" tax-exempt ACVR scam and the snakeoil salesmen who invented it, Bush/Cheney '04 National General Counsel Mark F. "Thor" Hearne and RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke, please see BRAD BLOG's full Special Coverage of the "American Center for Voting Rights" at https://BradBlog.com/ACVR.

Over my head today on at least ten or twenty fronts...Therefore, your turn to save democracy for a bit. Until further notice...Open thread, baby!