Sue, Bill, sue! Enough is enough! Go get 'em!...

(Hat-tip @Frank_Schaeffer)

Incredible. This would be the equivalent of appointing the sitting Vice President of Exxon Mobil to an EPA advisory committee, but Ed Smith has now been appointed to the disastrous U.S. Election Assistance Commission's (EAC's) Technical Guidelines Development Committee as one of their new "Technical and Scientific Experts."

From the EAC's email announcement on Friday (posted in full at end of article):

So Smith went from voting machine company Hart Intercivic to voting machine company Sequoia Voting Systems and is now at voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems, where he is a VP, selling e-voting systems to jurisdictions around the country that receive federal money doled out by the EAC. And now he'll also sit on an advisory board at the EAC helping to advise which one of those companies sees their systems certified for use in U.S. elections by the EAC. Just amazing.

But that's not even half the story of why this is just incredible, and another huge black eye for the EAC. (How many eyes do they have left to blacken at this point?) If you're not a long time reader of The BRAD BLOG reader, and don't recall who this Ed Smith is, read on. It's simply stultifying...

I'll be appearing for a Q&A in St. Louis on Tuesday (12/15 @ 7:30pm), after a screening of Patty Sharaf's award-winning documentary, Murder, Spies & Voting Lies: The Clint Curtis Story featuring both myself, and our reporting here at The BRAD BLOG on the Republican computer programmer turned vote-rigging whistleblower.

The screening is part of the traveling Burning Fuse Film Festival which hits Webster University's Film Series this week. Murder, Spies... will screen Tuesday, December 15 @ 7:30 in St. Louis at Webster's Winifred Moore Auditorium, 470 E. Lockwood, Webster Groves, MO, Directions/Map, More info: 314-968-7487.

Hope you'll stop by and say hello! Here's a flier [PDF] if you're in the hood and feel like helping to spread the word!

(NOTE: If you're not near St. Louis, or even if you are, but would like to support our work, we are still offering DVDs of the film, as signed by both myself and Sharaf, as premiums to supporters of The BRAD BLOG. We enjoy no corporate or foundational funding, so we appreciate whatever you are able to offer to help us continue our work. See this item for details...)

From AP today:

Multitudes of climate science denialists have inundated The BRAD BLOG over the past several weeks with comments alleging that the stolen e-mails, offer "proof" that global warming is a "hoax" or the decades of science behind it is a "sham."

Despite repeated and open-minded requests for links to any actual email --- out of more than 1,000 stolen and posted --- demonstrating evidence of such a "hoax" or that the science behind global warming has now been revealed as incorrect, as many claimed, so far none of those denialists have been able to produce a single such a link.

Presumably they found what AP did: that despite cynical disinformation to the contrary from manipulative corporate operatives and stooges in the wingnut media hoping to play the disaffected rightwing rank and file as suckers (yet again), no such email or evidence actually exists. In short --- as with the ACORN nonsense, as with the WMD scam, as with the CIA leak case, etc. --- the tea baggers have been had, and played as useful fools and tools for rightwing corporatists who couldn't give less of a damn about them, other than where they can trick them into serving as their own unpaid PR disinformation squad.

ADDENDUM 12/13/09: And, in a related toon...

My latest special to the Right-leaning Gouverneur Times of Upstate NY details multiple "urgent" warnings that state and federal officials received over the last year from multiple election advocacy groups concerning the dangers and pitfalls of the state's e-voting pilot program which came crashing down on voters during the recent NY-23 Special Election for the U.S. House.

They were warned, over and over and over again, about the dangers of using uncertified e-voting systems in real live elections, yet, despite the concerns expressed by experts about using real voters "as guinea pigs," it appears officials took no action in response.

Here's my exclusive over there...

Those "conservative" Fox "News" fans sure do use a lot of F-words in their death threats.

We're used to various death threats by now, of course, even from Drudge's poodle, Andy "Big Government" Breitbart, but those socially "conservative," American "values"-lovin', Fox "News" viewers have really outdone themselves this time.

On Monday night, FoxNews.com featured a story on the latest announcement from VR's StopTheChamber.com campaign, concerning the offer of a $200,000 reward for insider information leading to the arrest and conviction of Tom Donohue, the CEO of the right-wing corporatist lobbying group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. [Disclosure: The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of VelvetRevolution.us]

Apart from his work at the Chamber, Donohue has run a number of major corporations into the ground, as his tenure as CEO at each was generally plagued by improprieties, plunging stock values (coupled with soaring executive pay), scandal, various forms of illegal behavior, and SEC investigations. He was found by the FEC to have made millions of dollars in illegal corporate campaign contributions in 2004 and is now facing a criminal investigation by the DoJ about that, even while he runs the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in many ways, as nothing short of a criminal racket.

Unlike many similar campaigns VR has run in the past, offering such rewards for whistleblower information about wrong-doers over the years, this one caught the attention of the folks at Fox for some reason, and they decided to splash it on the front page of their website this week with a bold graphic shouting: "HUNTED BY THE LEFT: Bounty Put on Head of Chamber Boss." For good measure, in the story itself, they used the word "Liberal" a total of four times before they even finished the second graf. (An email to the story's author, Judson Berger, explaining that VR is a non-partisan group and works with folks of many different political bents, including Republicans, led them to change their headline from the wholly misleading "Liberal Group Puts Bounty on Head of Chamber of Commerce CEO" to the slightly-less misleading "Activist Group Puts Bounty on Head..." etc.)

Anyway, while there is no bounty on anybody's "head," and no one is being "HUNTED," the StopTheChamber.com campaign does feature a reward for information leading to Donohue's arrest and conviction. Roll Call also covered [$-only] VR's announcement on Monday, though much more responsibly (in a far less inflammatory way) than Fox did.

But this story is not about that, it's about the unbelievable amount of email that was sent from, presumably, those "socially conservative" Fox "News" fans in which a good 98% of those notes contained one or more of the following:

• Threats of death or violence;
• The F-Word (or similar);
• Accusations of Nazism and/or Communism (never mind that it's difficult to be both) or Marxism or Socialism;
• Racist slurs against Obama;
• Accusations that VR is working with or for the White House or the Democrats (which is somewhat amusing if you know anything about VR).

And, of course, many of them offer the cruelest cut of them all; they wish VR a "Merry Christmas." Ouch, that one hurts!

So here are just a few samples from some of those friendly emails from those good "conservatives" of Fox "News" willing to send out death threats, we'll guess, in support of the millionaire corporate lobbyists and billionaire corporations of the U.S. Chamber who've spent more money buying Congressmembers than anybody else in the country. These, apparently, are the Fox "News" "conservatives" --- Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly's "patriots" and Sean Hannity's "great Americans" --- as almost all of them came in at the same time that Fox's story on VR's reward offer was posted on the front page of FoxNews.com.

Out of an abundance of generosity, we're not posting the emailers names here (each bullet-point quote below comes from a different note) but the ones which include threats of violence have been given to the FBI [PDF] in D.C., along with a request for an investigation to find out if the Chamber itself might be behind the hit campaign.

As many of these are not safe for work, we'll post them below the fold...

Via RAW STORY...

RAW STORY has the video of the complete interview with Turley from last night's Countdown.

Velvet Revolution's DisbarTortureLawyers.com campaign is right here. Please sign on to join the call for accountability and disbarment of the many attorneys who violated the Rule of Law and the U.S. Constitution by justifying illegal torture through twisted and factually unsound "legal findings," and the conspiracy to carry out that torture during the Bush Administration. [The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of VelvetRevolution.us]

David Kurtz at TPM avers "It never stops":

And, guess what? If you think that's bad, just wait until we get to Climate Legislation proper, where the Petroleum Industry, some of the largest and most profitable corporations in the history of civilization --- in no small part, thanks to enormous federal subsidies --- have a direct financial stake in the outcome.

(Yes, the world's most profitable corporations benefit mightily from U.S. government welfare, your tax-payer dollars, to the tune of some $72 billion over the last seven years in permanent subsidies. See the handy chart below the fold to see how those subsidies stack up against other energy industries, such as renewables. Never mind the worldwide recession. Exxon Mobil profited more than $45 billion last year, Chevron $23 billion, and the federal subsidies keep coming nonetheless, even as their stooges in the Tea Party denialist "ClimateGater" crowds have been duped into mindlessly continuing their dirty work for them.)

The Oil and Coal (Fossil Fuel) Industries have played no small part in ginning up the tea bagging fight against health care reform if only because it further serves to stall Climate Legislation.

It's horrible, an abrogation of what the Founding Fathers likely had in mind (nowhere, to my knowledge, does the support for unbridled corporate spending as "free speech" come into play in the Constitution at last read) and yet all signs suggest it's only going to get far worse before it gets any better --- if it ever does.

See the chart below to understand how the federal welfare queens from Exxon Mobil and Chevron et al. make out, thanks to your hard-earned tax dollars, and keep it in mind every time you hear yet another global warming denialist out there --- and even here in comments at The BRAD BLOG --- hoping to punk the world for more such free money and endless, record corporate profits...

[Now updated at end of article.]

Notice anything wrong with these Fox "News" reported poll numbers?

That's right, according to Fox, 120 percent of Americans have an opinion on global warming issues in the wake of stolen emails from climate scientists, and 94 percent of them believe it's at least "somewhat likely" that those scientists falsified research while 26 percent feel otherwise. That's tea bag math for ya.

Simon Malloy at Media Matters offers his best guess on how Fox "News" came up with their falsified numbers, though it's also worth noting that out of 120 percent or more of Fox "News" viewers, not a single one of them has so far been able to identify, at least to us, a single stolen email that demonstrates the science of global warming is in any way inaccurate...

[12/7/09: Updated again at bottom of article. Petruna standing by story. Sort of... & Now again on 12/8/09 as other passengers on flight say Petruna "living in a fantasy world".]

More evidence --- rather hilarious, or sad, depending on how you choose to look at it --- that rightwing Muslim-fearing Fox "News"-addled cowards live in an alternate-reality fantasy world entirely of their own making. In this case, quite literally.

First read the email frantically circulating around wingnut sites, according to Josh Marshall at TPM, including Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project site, as if it were fully based on reality.

Then read the airline's detailed account of what really happened, wholly debunking the email of Tedd Petruna, the "heroic" passenger from Texas, and his account of single-handedly saving a plane full of good Americans from 11 Muslim terrorists on an Airtran flight in Atlanta as it prepared for takeoff to the Houston-Hobby airport.

Your appetizer: Mr. Petruna, the courageous Texan who authored the email describing his own heroics, wasn't even on the plane that he claims to have personally saved from the evil Muslim terrorist hijackers, and the plane was never canceled at all, having continued to the Houston-Hobby airport as scheduled.

As we've been highlighting for some time now here at The BRAD BLOG --- our Rise of the Tea Bags video paints such a picture, and Frank Schaeffer has done a fine job illustrating it as well, most recently here and here) --- we really do now, officially, live in two different Americas. One actual America, with all its flaws, failures, and frustrations, and another world completely existing only in the minds and self-produced group hallucinations of wingnut media-addled fantasists, fear-mongers, and phonies. How that changes at any time in the near future is a question to be answered by someone well above our pay grade.

UPDATE: A bit more info for ya...

"Biased thermometers" are to blame for scientific data documenting a precipitous rise in global temperatures, according to Marc Morano.

Morano was Rush Limbaugh's former producer and a columnist at the rightwing "news" site, Cybercast News Service, before becoming denialist-extraordinaire Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)'s top aide on the U.S. Senate Committee on Environmental and Public Works. In 2003, Inhofe described global warming as "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," a statement which he stills stands by today.

Morano now runs the climate denialist website ClimateDepot.com and is, essentially, the very heart of the entire climate change denialist echosphere.

On CNN on Thursday, he debated with James Balog, photographer and former "climate change skeptic" with a degree in geomorphology....

From AP last night:

The story goes on to list a few of the efforts from governments around the world taking measures to deal with climate change issues already affecting the citizenry, such as:

Other than that, all is well and global warming has finally been exposed as a "hoax" --- cuz, gosh darn it, those emails say something or other that proves it conclusively! Also, ACORN commits voter fraud, and Iraq had WMD. Oh, and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Andy Breitbart and Matt Drudge also asked me to mention: "There's nothing to see here, and these aren't the droids you're looking for."

On the road and short on time, so forgive the lack of background... Politico tells the story --- though they fail to use the word "caging" because, well, it doesn't make the GOP look so great, and that's what the main interest of Politico seems to be in just about everything they do. They do, however, liberally use the Orwellian phrase "ballot security" instead, as the GOP no doubt appreciates.

These grafs from Politico, summarizing the RNC's rejected argument for moving to throw away the national consent decree they were forced to sign in the 80's, after getting busted caging minority voters from the voter rolls (illegally suppressing their vote) are rather amusing...

We're watching the speech tonight with you...

TPM: Prepared text of Obama's speech
RAW STORY: Obama orders 30k troops to Afghanistan, plans 2011 withdrawal
AP: Obama: Afghanistan not lost, remains challenge
NYTimes: Obama Vows to Fight Al Qaeda ‘Cancer’

Your thoughts, as always, are welcome in comments...