They're melting down...

Developing...More shortly...

Fox "News", of all sites, posts the full lyrics to Neil Young's "Let's Impeach the President" tune to be released this Friday online along with his Living With War album.

[See BRAD BLOG's (p)review of the album as posted last weekend.]

Says Roger Friedman at Fox about the album; "[It's] an incendiary, moving, totally American document of peaceful protest that is going to make a lot of people crazy one way or another."

He calls it "serious and searing" and an "extraordinary and eye opening new recording."

About "Let's Impeach the President," Friedman describes it as "a melodic, rocking, campfire ode" and "the catchiest protest song since Country Joe and the Fish's anti-Vietnam ditty, 'I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die.'"

Enough hype for ya? Okay, then...

While waiting for Friday, be sure to check out Op-Critical's new protest songs (and video contest), which RAW STORY covered a day or two ago, along with Justice Through Music's collection of protest tunes to hold you over.

UPDATE 4/28/06: The complete album --- as well as the single "Let's Impeach the President --- is now released online for your listening pleasure...

BRAD BLOG reader and kick-ass blues man Shannon Williford (that's him at right) sends us a rockin' blues ditty titled simply "Election Reform".

While we're fairly certain it's the first blues tune to include the word "blogs" in the lyrics, we're damn near positive it's the first one to include the words "BradBlog.com" in it. And even "VotersUnite.org" (shout out to our pal John Gideon!) makes the cut for that matter. And others as well!

Shannon posted the lyrics, some observations on playing this song around Nashville and a few other thoughts on the current state of anti-establishment music in this comment on our Neil Young Living With War album review.

The tune certainly makes me smile. Hope it does the same for you. Turn up the speakers and...Give it a listen!

(Here are additional details on Williford's Delicious Blues Stew!)

We've truly enjoyed watching the contortions of Bush's GOP dead-enders who spin each and every new poll showing Bush at his lowest approval ratings yet, by trying to say that the numbers have "bottomed out", "can't get any lower" and therefore "have nowhere to go but up."

We (not so) respectfully disagree.

On the heels of last week's Fox News Poll showing Bush at 33% (which also revealed Republican voters as desperately out of touch with mainstream America,) followed by today's CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll just out showing Bush at an all-new new low of 32% with Republican support dropping off precipitously, we see no reason why numbers in the 20's (and falling) shouldn't be far behind.

Do you?

Ralph De La Cruz writes today in his South Florida Sun-Sentinel column titled "Could a sharp eighth grader swing Florida election?":

As Mr. De La Cruz writes for a South Florida paper, and includes his email address and phone number at the bottom of his column, perhaps a few of you may wish to thank him for his coverage of Ion's story, and suggest to him that he cover Clint Curtis' story in a future column as well.

After all, in Curtis' affidavit, he says he was told that the vote-rigging prototype Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) asked him to create was meant "to control the vote in South Florida."

For those unfamiliar with Curtis' amazing story, a good primer is always available at this address: www.BradBlog.com/ClintCurtisSummary.htm.

While we're on the topic, please remember that Curtis is now running for Congress against Feeney and his massive DeLay/Abramoff/Top-Tier-GOP Money Machine and your support is needed if he is to stand a chance of beating Feeney in the very "conservative" district which Feeney carved out for himself when he was Florida House Speaker. See below for more details on how you can help him take on one of Congress' most corrupt Friends-of-the-Bushes...

Koo-Koo-Ka-Choo...

(Hat-tip Justice Through Music for being the first, of about twenty places, that I found linking to this song over the last 24. Check out JTM's anti-war, anti-Bush song collection page, btw.)

Russ Feingold blew through town this weekend, and called on a few bloggers to meet him for lunch.

I'm happy to report that upon introducing myself, he informed me that he's well familiar with The BRAD BLOG. On the other hand, he's a very good politician, so I'd have said the same thing to me too

I'll mention up front, that of the current cadre of '08 Democratic Presidential contenders --- which, of course, he claims not to be thinking about --- he's just about the only one I'd seriously consider supporting at this time (though I'd certainly be open to the idea of Al Gore if he jumped back in, and Wes Clark hasn't yet done anything to piss me off yet, but barring any other fresh ideas, I'd likely be forced to go the third-party route as usual. But I digress...)

Feingold, in person, is as affable and charming and smart and impressive as he is on TV. Probably more so (especially after his BRAD BLOG compliments. I'm a cheap date!)

I had two major points that I was curious about and hoped to get a sense of from him during our meeting. 1) Why he chose not to tell any of his Dem colleagues about his Censure Resolution condemning Bush's warrantless domestic spying program before announcing it on This Week and then introducing it in the Senate the following day and 2) If he understood the extent of the havoc being wreaked on our country and democracy in the wake of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

I was able to get fairly informative answers to both questions...

"These machines are a problem. This is not some Internet conspiracy; this is a serious problem that faces American democracy. These machines are not reliable and they shouldn't be used. We should not be using machines in this country where the results of the vote can't be verified after the fact. Period. Any machines."
-- DNC Chair, Gov. Howard Dean, 4/19/06

David Grossman (formerly of MediaMatters.org, currently of PoliticsTV.com) attended a breakfast with Howard Dean the other day. He asked Dean about his concern over Electronic Voting Machines. Dean's answer was interesting (transcript of complete answer is below.)

While I'm encouraged somewhat by Dean's response --- he seems to have a general grasp of the concerns --- it seems to me that he's still vastly "misunderestimating" the disastrous situation now afoot in the country in the wake of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). He just doesn't yet seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation and the extent of the problems and dangers posed to our democracy.

To that end --- in case there are any of Howard Dean's peeps reading this --- I will make the same offer I've previously made to people close to John Kerry, Wes Clark and, personally today, to Russ Feingold (more on that later). Namely, I'll be happy to brief Dean and/or his staffers by phone, in person, or any other way they might like to full explain what we are now dealing with in this country, and how incredibly important it is that they pay attention and take action now. They may feel free to contact me here, if interested in taking me up on the offer.

Dean also speaks, in his full response, about his experience a year or so ago in 2004 hacking a Diebold GEMS central tabulator with "someone" on "live TV". That "someone" was Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org and the live TV was a CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown which Dean was Guest Hosting. The clip of him hacking the machines with Harris is right here. He added, in his response, that he didn't know for sure, but it "could have been a program that was elaborately programmed to fool me into thinking I was doing something I really wasn't doing."

No, Dr. Dean. It wasn't anything of the kind. We'll assume you were kidding. But what you did on live TV was exploit a vulnerability allowing a malicious user to hack the Diebold GEMS central tabulator, in about 30 seconds, to change the reported results of a Diebold election.

That is, of course, precisely what the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT, a branch of the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security) warned about in a "Cyber Security Bulletin", as published prior to the 2004 Election.

Of course, nobody reported the US-CERT "Cyber Security Bulletin", originally posted on August 31, 2004, anywhere in the media until The BRAD BLOG did so more than a year later on September 15, 2005. As far as we know, nobody in the Corporate Mainstream Media has bothered to report on the warning even since then.

A huge thanks to David for asking Dean his question about Diebold! David's full blog item is here. The complete transcript of his exchange with Dean on this matter follows...

According to a BRAD BLOG analysis of the Fox "News"/Opinion Dynamics poll [PDF] released yesterday, which showed George W. Bush's latest approval rating at an all-time low of 33%, respondents in the poll who identified themselves as Republican are revealed by the survey time and again to be completely out of touch with mainstream American voters.

A review of the 13 questions asked in the survey where Republican majority responses differed completely from Democratic majority responses to the same question, finds that those identifying themselves as Independents agreed with the Democratic majority opinion nearly 100% of the time.

For example, on the question "Do you think it is appropriate for retired military generals to openly criticize Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during wartime or not?," 71% of Democratic respondents said YES and just 24% said NO.

On the other hand, Republicans had the opposite opinion - YES: 36% and NO: 62%.

Breaking the tie then, were those identified as Independents who agreed with the Democrats on the matter by answering YES: 64% and NO: 32%.

In virtually every single case where Republican majority opinion disagreed with Democratic majority opinion, the Independents agreed with the Democrats --- suggesting that Republican voters, even in (or especially in) a Fox "News" poll are completely out of touch and out of step with mainstream America.

The only minor exception was on the question: "Do you think Donald Rumsfeld should resign as secretary of defense?" Democrats said YES: 57% and NO: 22%. Republicans said YES: 18% and NO: 67%. The tie was broken by Independents barely breaking in Republican favor with responses YES: 41% and NO: 42%.

The poll, however, has a margin of error of plus/minus 3% points. So the response from Independents wasn't conclusive as to whether they agreed more with Dems or Reps on that one question only.

After five years of malicious propaganda by Republican opinion-leaders attempting to paint Democrats as "out of touch with mainstream America," it's interesting to find that the Republicans' own Fox "News" Poll reveals that it is the GOP --- not the Dems --- who now seem to be on the "kook fringe" of American political public opinion.

Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) is continuing his negotation, on behalf of more than 50 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, for the release of documents related to the Bush Administration's plans for War in Iraq long prior to the beginning of hostilities, according to new letters written by the ranking member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and obtained exclusively by The BRAD BLOG.

After the revelations in Spring of 2005 from the so-called Downing Street Memo and other related documents --- a series of secret memos created by British officials documenting Bush Administration efforts to "fix" the "intelligence and facts...around the policy" of going to war with Iraq no matter what --- Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests were filed by 52 House Members [PDF], including Conyers, for the release of documentation of Administration Iraq policies going as far back as the day after the 2000 Election.

The original FOIA requests were filed [PDF] with both the Departments of Defense and State, in June of 2005 after the disclosure in May, by Sunday Times of London, of the initial memo. Both federal agencies have largely stonewalled in response to the request. Correspondence from the agencies have claimed that the House Members must first agree to pay large fees for the requested material on the grounds that they do not meet FOIA standards which allow such fees to be waved.

The Dept. of Defense has estimated [PDF] the fees chargeable for answering the FOIA request would be approximately $110,000. The State Department has not yet given a similar estimate, but has also informed the members that they would have to agree in advance to such payment.

FOIA, however, allows such processing and copy fees to be waived in cases where the information provided will be widely circulated to the public and will "contribute significantly to the public understanding of activities or operations of the government."

Several communications from both DoD and State have suggested that since the requests for information did not come formally from a U.S. House Committee, the members' request does not meet the standard required for waiving fees or expediting the release of the information.

Conyers' disagrees...

How will the poor Fox "News" Bush dead-enders cover for their man now that their own poll is out showing Bush at all-time lows with just a 33% approval rating. That number includes a full 20% drop in Republican support from one year ago!

Just over a month ago, when CBS released their poll pegging Bush Approval at 34% the Fox Wingnuts bent over backwards to dismiss the poll as untrustworthy:

"This is not representative of the --- of the population of the country in any way, shape, manner, or form. Nor is the fact that Bush has 34 percent. ... You just know that's not possible. It simply isn't possible," Rush Limbaugh said on February 28th, when the poll was released.

Brit Hume on Special Report said, "[T]here's good reason to be skeptical of this CBS poll. It's wildly oversampled Democrats."

Sean Hannity spun with, "The first thing we find out that nearly two to one they polled Democrats."

And John Gibson joined the dead-enders-in-denial with, "Of course, it's weighted with more Democrats, so you've got to take that into account."

The CBS poll put Cheney's approval rating at 18% at the time, by the way. The Fox "News" poll, though it asks about the approval ratings of Condi Rice and Don Rumsfield, seems to have failed to poll on Cheney's approval rating for some odd reason. Go figure.

(Hat-tip to MediaMatters.org for tracking Fox "News" and their lack of touch with reality on this matter last February.)

In the latest amongst a spate of lawsuits being filed against Electronic Voting Machine Companies around the country, the Oregon Sec. of State has announced today that they have filed a complaint against Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) for breach of contract in failing to provide the state with disabled-accessible voting machines, as promised, in time to meet the January 1, 2006 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) deadline.

The complaint, filed yesterday on behalf of the state of Oregon in Marion County Circuit Court, is downloadable here in full [PDF, 8 pages].

In a statement just issued by the office of Bill Bradbury, Oregon's Sec. of State, he said, "I'm disappointed in ES&S. They agreed to provide us with voting machines, they didn't follow through on that agreement, and that failure directly punishes people with disabilities."

The press release goes on to explain the history of ES&S's broken commitment to provide disabled-accessible electronic AutoMark voting systems to the state in what seems to echo problems that ES&S and several of the other electronic voting machine vendors are now having in meeting contractual obligations all around the country. The problem in Oregon is just the latest to come to light, as the voting machine vendors have been snatching up any and all available agreements with states, in light of Election Officials' attempts to comply with various mandates set forth, and funded by federal tax dollars, in the disastrous HAVA legislation of 2002. John Gideon, has written several articles on the epidemic recently for BRAD BLOG; two them are here and here.

As the Oregon Secretary of State's release explains:

In addition to failures to meet such obligations as simply providing hardware and software as promised to states and counties, companies such as ES&S, Diebold, Sequoia Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic, have failed across the country to provide hardware and software that actually works and actually counts voters votes accurately as they intended to cast them.

HAVA was passed in 2002 by Congress after efforts led by Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) --- and funded by Diebold lobbyists including Ney's former chief of staff, David DiStefano --- convinced lawmakers that the bill would correct perceived problems revealed with voting systems during the 2000 Florida Election debacle.

The bill, which cleverly includes a provision requiring at least one disabled-accessable voting device in every American polling place as of 2006 --- a provision which has led jurisdictions to believe they must upgrade their voting equipment to use poorly designed, secretive and hackable electronic voting devices --- has been an unmitigated disaster so far.

The Oregon lawsuit is just the latest in a growing array of suits filed by voters and election officials around the country in light of HAVA implementation that has seen officials scrambling, apologizing, making excuses and, in many cases, left to come up with alternate plans to carry out impending primary elections in 2006. Voters, in the meantime, have been largely ignored, left hanging, and crossing their fingers in hoping that somehow their vote might be counted accurately this year --- or even counted at all. Unfortunately, given the way most of the new voting systems work, there is little or no way for those voters to have even the slightest clue whether or not their vote will be counted at all.

Amongst just some of the lawsuits and other legal proceedings now underway in light of HAVA implementation around the country...

In addition to the state and county suits, a class action Securities Fraud complaint has been filed by shareholders against Diebold for, amongst other reasons, failing to disclose known problems with their electronic voting systems. Additional legal proceedings are currently in the works in several other states as well, The BRAD BLOG has learned, and so far we've only had two of 50 state primaries in 2006, the first year that HAVA kicks in in full. Both primaries so far, in Texas and Illinois, revealed massive electile dysfunctions as machines failed, tabulations were found to be inaccurate, and final results were delayed due to numerous equipment problems.

Stay tuned to The BRAD BLOG for (unfortunately) virtually exclusive continuing coverage of America's 2006 E-Voting Meltdown...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

ED NOTE: This "Daily Voting News" was posted yesterday, but due to a software "glitch", it was somehow overwritten by another post. We're reposting it here. Good thing we had a paper trail backup!

The Allegheny County Pennsylvania suit brought by voters and PFAW against the county, state and federal government will be heard beginning next Tuesday in Pittsburgh. Summit County, Ohio's election director has predicted failure of the voting machines in their primary on May 2. A recount of ballots in Kane and DuPage County Illinois has been asked for partially because some voting machines were shut-down early due to the polls running out of paper for the DRE vvpat printers. Sequoia is over two months behind in delivering Advantage machines to New Jersey counties. In Indiana, MicroVote has been given until May 2 to make their uncertified equipment meet all state requirements or counties will not be able to use it in the primary...

The Progressive Patriots Fund, a Political Action Committee of Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), has released a new video ad, critical of George W. Bush's warrantless domestic spying program.

The video, directed by Bob Newhart Show alum and former Friends director Peter Bonerz is in support of the Senator's Censure Resolution and features a twist ending.

-- The video can be viewed online here.

The organization has issued a press release touting the video's premier last night in Texas. That release follows in full...

It's been a looong day. Up at 7am in a strange city, meetings all morning, a drive across the state to do an hour of radio in Sacramento in studio with the delightful Christine Craft, another hundred or so miles down the road towards home with an hour and a half long conference call at 75mph, before a motel stop finally at 10:15pm and a phone-in radio appearance on Crane Durham's rather ironically named, "Nothing But Truth" radio program broadcast out of my old hometown of St. Louis.

Exhausted but ready to discuss matters of Election Reform and Integrity, which I can speak about, at this point, in my sleep (and sometimes do).

But Crane wanted to talk about something else --- the War on Iraq --- during my first appearance on his show. What I didn't know, was that apparently tonight was "Tuesday Night Fights" on Crane's show, when he invites a guest on who he perceives will disagree with him. Tonight, he found one in spades.

-- Have a listen [MP3] (We might suggest it'll be worth it.)

"I feel like Foreman after Ali," the host would say later after I'd left..and most of his usually supportive callers agreed he had lost. Except for the one who said Crane delivered a "coop de grace" (pronounced as spelled).

-- Follow-up callers after I left [MP3] (Also worth a listen. Broken link now fixed.)

To Crane's credit, he admitted defeat. "The decision's been made, and I lost that debate," he said graciously to the callers who hated to agree with him. He is, therewith, the first wingnut, perhaps in recorded history, to have admitted to defeat --- out loud. For his graciousness in that regard, we give him many props.

He invited me back after the show to return on another night, heavily promoted, for a full two hours. He'll need it.