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... |
We're back again tonight filling in as Guest Host during drive-time for the good John Scott on the "Progressive News" program on San Francisco's Air America affiliate Green 960am (formerly "The Quake").
Tonight we'll be joined by NAOMI WOLF, author of The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot, on the rapidly creeping fascism in American society.
We'll also have news from the Republican and Democratic debates this week, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly fighting to save their asses (again), America's shameful turn into a "Bed-Wetter Nation" and the question of who you fear more, Iran's President or America's?
Plus another Green News Update from our own Desi Doyen, more Daily Voting News from VotersUnite.org's John Gideon and your calls at 1-866-960-5753.
Agent 99 will once again host an Open Thread here during the show (Hit the Comments link below, and then post and refresh to your heart's content.)
Please join us for another rip roaring two-hour BradCast at 4pm PT (7pm ET)! Listen up on-air at 960am in the Bay Area or LIVE streaming online here!
POST-SHOW UPDATE/ARCHIVES
HOUR 1: Guests Naomi Wolf scaring the crap out of us, and John Gideon with today's daily voting news.
Download MP3 or listen here...
HOUR 2: CA Sec. of State Debra Bowen gives us a call, plus Desi Doyen's Green News Update and a rant on American cowards.
Download MP3 or listen here...
[ED NOTE: Rogers has now posted his story, and our suspicions about who the name of the previously unnamed Congressman was correct! See update at bottom of article for more details! Also: The bad code that caused this article to freeze up in Microsoft IE has now been corrected.]
Investigative journalist Mike Rogers of PageOneQ and BlogActive promised us a scoop during this evening's "Progressive News." We're Guest Hosting the show for the vacationing John Scott today and tomorrow on San Francisco's Air America affiliate, Green 960am.
The man who outed the not-yet-resigned Sen. Larry Craig delivered his tantalizing scoop during our final minutes on today's show. (Full show details, archive here.)
"A United States Congressman who, while he was living in one place and claiming a tax break for that fact was registered and was voting in an entirely different state," he told us.
"The person owned the house with another man," Rogers teased, adding "the man that he owned it with, when you found out what he did, it almost makes this Congressman look like an angel."
LA Times is reporting tonight that the good guys may have won one for a change...
Plagued by a lack of money, supporters of a statewide initiative drive to change the way California's 55 electoral votes are apportioned, first revealed here by Top of the Ticket in July, are pulling the plug on that effort.
In an exclusive report to appear on this website late tonight and in Friday's print editions, The Times' Dan Morain reports that the proposal to change the winner-take-all electoral vote allocation to one by congressional district is virtually dead with the resignation of key supporters, internal disputes and a lack of funds.
The scam of the attempted Electoral College coup was best exposed in August by Hendrik Hertzberg at New Yorker and more recently found by SF Chronicle to have been backed by a mysteriously funded Missouri(!) front group tied to Rudolph Giuliani.
More at the Times' blog, though we'd urge caution. GOP attempts to steal 2008 any way they can will not end here, not by a long shot, even if this particular initiative really is dead.
A leading opponent of the measure, Democratic consultant Chris Lehane, told the Times, "We want to to make sure this is not the Freddie Kruger of initiatives...that comes back to life. We'll continue to monitor it."
As will we. Good on the Dems for (maybe) nipping this one in the bud...for a change.
This is somewhat amusing.
Describing himself (without apparent intended irony) as "we, real people," former exceedingly powerful Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey stammers and stumbles through a quick video pitch (seen at right) to members of his FreedomWorks mailing list for the awkwardly named "Pick Dick Armey’s YouTube Flick Contest."
The premise, if we're understanding the seemingly drunk Armey correctly, is for "normal" people to decide what question they will allow Armey to ask for them, on video, for the upcoming Republican CNN/YouTube debate. Or something.
It would seem the point of such a debate is for actual "we, real people" to submit questions without the help of bloated former Texas power brokers like Armey. So we'll hope that his question, whatever it ends up being, gets no preferential treatment from CNN, who selected a few dozen from among thousands submitted for the Dem version of their YouTube debate a couple of months ago.
That is, if he can even get through such a question. What really leaves us chortling aloud here, is that old Dick apparently couldn't get through his 48 second pitch without flubbing it up, several times, making this video funnier with each viewing. Hope you real people will enjoy it as much as we did.
We're delighted to fill in as Guest Host during drive-time tonight for the good John Scott on his "Progressive News" program on San Francisco's Air America affiliate Green 960am (formerly "The Quake").
My scheduled guests tonight include: Congresswoman SUSAN DAVIS (D-CA) on her effort to amend the Rush Holt Election Reform Bill to include a restriction on the use of DRE touch-screen voting machines; ERIC BOEHLERT of Media Matters on Dan Rather and CBS, the truth about Dubya's National Guard service (or lack thereof) and other colossal MSM failures; and our big gay blogfather, MIKE ROGERS of PageOneQ and BlogActive on his "outing" of Sen. Larry "I Am Not Gay" Craig and much more. (Mike promises to break another congressional scoop for us tonight as well!!!)
Plus a Green News Update from our own Desi Doyen, Daily Voting News from VotersUnite.org's John Gideon, your calls at 1-866-960-5753 and whatever the hell us comes up or breaks between now and then that I feel like covering.
As usual, this blog item will be an Open Thread during the show, hosted by the frequently gruff but always lovable Agent 99. (Hit the Comments link below, and then post and refresh to your heart's content.)
The two-hour BradCast begins at 4pm PT (7pm ET)! Listen up on-air at 960am in the Bay Area or LIVE streaming online here!
POST-SHOW UPDATE/ARCHIVES
HOUR 1: Guests Rep. Susan Davis and Eric Boehlert, plus Green News Update from Desi Doyen.
Download MP3 or listen here...
HOUR 2: Guest Mike Rogers (with an exclusive scoop!) and John Gideon with breaking Daily Voting News. Plus a few laughs in our top of the hour news with Sebastian Koonz...
Download MP3 or listen here...
Whatever they have to do to win. And given the odds against them in '08, expect them to pull out every stop imaginable between now and the election in order to "win."
Add this to our "DoJ is the New ACVR" article last week, describing how the DoJ has now institutionalized "vote caging" at the federal level via, among other things, a recent letter sent to 10 states ordering them to purge their voter rolls. While Thor Hearne's ACVR is no more (at least officially) and the RNC is barred from minority-targeted caging by a court-ordered consent decree, state parties can do whatever the hell they damn well please, according to our friend Greg Gordon at McClatchy today...
Backers of the new laws say they're aimed at curbing vote fraud. But the statutes also could facilitate a controversial Republican tactic known as "vote caging," which the GOP attempted in Ohio and Florida in 2004 before public disclosures foiled the efforts, said Joseph Rich, a former Justice Department voting rights chief in the Bush administration who's now with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.
Caging, used in the past to target poor minorities in heavily Democratic precincts, entails sending mass mailings to certain voters and then using the undelivered letters to compile lists of voters for eligibility challenges.
...
Asked whether they might employ vote caging in 2008, Executive Director Jason Mauk of the Ohio Republican Party and spokeswoman Erin Van Sickle of the Florida Republican Party said they couldn't discuss election strategy.
See Gordon's complete report for more details.
As well, we'll have more on all of this Thursday and Friday while Guest Hosting for "Progressive News with John Scott" on San Francisco's Air America affiliate Green 960am (formerly "The Quake"), where we'll be bringing these issues to drive-time listeners (4p-6p PT) in the Bay Area! Hope you'll tune in! (See "Media Appearances" box at top-right for more details.)
We're getting really tired of picking on Democrats. But with clueless Senators like Nebraska's Ben Nelson, it seems like we continue to have little choice.
Picking up from where we left off yesterday regarding this morning's vote in the Senate Rules Committee on whether or not to send a recommendation for approval on the FEC nomination of the DOJ's GOP "Voter Fraud" flim-flam operative, Hans von Spakovsky, to the full Senate. Again we again defer to Paul Kiel's TPMMuckraker report that the Democrats, thanks to a defection from Nelson, were unable to reject the nomination outright and will have to pick up the fight on the Senate floor, where the GOP (unlike the Dems) will march in lockstep to get what they want. Even from the minority...
Next up is a vote before the full Senate, and how that vote will occur will be determined by negotiations between the Democratic and Republican leadership. Republicans are likely to seek a vote on all four nominees at once and have threatened to spike all the Democratic nominees if Democrats seek to block von Spakovsky.
Feinstein only said during the hearing that a Democrat had advised her that he would support von Spakovsky's nomination. In comments to reporters after the hearing, she identified that senator as Sen. Nelson.
More on the evil von Spakovsky here.
More details on today's negotiations here, including Feinstein's statement: "I don’t feel that this is an unbiased individual." Minority Leader Mitch McConnnel's (R-KY) hardball in return: "None of these nominees will move across the Senate unless they move together."
In related your-right-to-legally-cast-a-vote-is-under-attack news, as Arlen Parsa covered for us in a bit more detail earlier, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a Democratic challenge to Indiana's voter disenfranchising Photo ID law.
The very smart Election Law Blog's Rick Hasen sees this as good news for opponents of such laws, but we've got our money on a 5 to 4 ruling in favor of the GOP law, created (by Thor Hearne and Friends) in the hopes of keeping Democratic voters from being able to cast their votes on Election Day. We hope we're wrong, but Bush's Supreme Court hasn't given us much to be hopeful about.
You'll note the supporters of the restrictive, Jim Crow-type legislation have been unable to offer a single case of a voter in the state voting as someone else at the polling place.
Perhaps Sen. Ben Nelson would like to issue a resolution in support of such laws? Idiot.
California Secretary of State Debra Bowen's Election Fraud Unit has just announced that felony charges have been filed against a Sacramento woman who appears to have forged the names of five voters while gathering signatures for a 2006 ballot initiative.
The initiative was sponsored by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), which hired the woman to gather signatures for a petition to get the initiative onto the ballot. She earned 75 cents per signature, netting her a total of $3.75 from the allegedly fraudulent signatures, according to the press release just sent to The BRAD BLOG by the SoS's office. (Complete press release posted at end of article.)
The signatures were excluded before the initiative qualified for the ballot, which eventually passed during the June 2006 election.
So why all the effort and resources expended to bring felony charges for such a paltry sum, for an election that's already over, particularly when the signatures weren't even used?
The reason, as we see it, is two-fold. And there are lessons to be learned from both explanations. And not just in California where powerful GOP operatives are hoping to gain enough signatures to put an Electoral College busting measure on the June 2008 ballot in desperate and cynical hopes of splitting the Golden State's electoral vote on a proportional basis in order to game the 2008 Presidential Election.
The new Secretary of State of Ohio would do well to take away the important lesson, once again from her sister in Sacramento...
We don't normally re-run entire items from elsewhere here. This one, however, is important (and short) enough to merit it. From Paul Kiel over at TPMMuckraker...
It's not immediately clear what will happen tomorrow. Howard Gantman, staff director for the committee, said that Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wants a vote on each nominee separately (as opposed to considering all four nominees, Democratic and Republican, in one vote) and that she continues to have serious concerns about Von Spakovsky. He also said that no deal had been struck.
Former employees of the voting section mounted serious opposition to von Spakovsky's nomination, with a group writing in a letter to the committee that he'd been "the point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division's mandate to protect voting rights." Von Spakovsky, however, portrayed himself during his confirmation hearing as just a lawyer in the section who gave advice when it was asked. It was a portrayal with real problems --- as von Spakovsky himself tacitly acknowledged when he modified his testimony in later written answers to the committee.
Von Spakovsky also sought to spike accusations that he'd retaliated against wrong-thinking employees (i.e. lawyers overly-preoccupied with African-Americans' voting rights) by, among other things, adding negative comments to their performance evaluations. But two former lawyers told us that he'd done just that --- and then went so far as to stifle their appeals of the changes.
President Bush put von Spakovsky on the commission as a recess appointment in December, 2005.
You can register your opinion on Hans von Spakovsky, who is as evil as his name evokes, with the Senate Rules Committee and Feinstein (D-CA) here: 202-224-6352, or via their website.
Let's play Republican-like politics.
Turns out, some 50 (mostly Republican) members of the Senate are in favor of attacking "the honor, integrity, and patriotism" of those who have served honorably in the U.S. Armed Forces.
We knew that already, and not only from the Republican filibuster of a bill that would have given members of the U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq as much time off as they were forced into serving in the field.
But a less-discussed vote in the Senate last week underscored just how much Republicans despise honorably serving members of our military, and how impotent Democrats seem to be at exploiting that fact...
[UPDATED POST-SHOW]
Santa Cruz County Clerk, Gail Pellerin joined us on the Peter B. Collins Show again tonight, live, to follow up on last week's interesting and rather spirited (at times, contentious-ish) hour.
The audio archive and full text transcript of last week's hour is posted here if you missed it.
The audio from this week's show, along with the transcript, courtesy of Santa Cruz voter Emily Levy of VelvetRevolution.us.
Since last Friday's show, CA SoS Debra Bowen has pronounced that the voting machine "sleepovers" Pellerin told us she'd planned for her Sequoia voting systems again in 2008 "don't comply with the security requirements" for those voting systems in California.
As well, we've gotten the opportunity to chat a bit via email with Pellerin since then, and are encouraged that we can begin working more together than apart, as is necessary, I think, for Election Integrity advocates and Elections Officials. It's the voting machine companies who are the real villains in this matter, and they've been quite successful at driving an opportunistic wedge between advocates and officials.
UPDATE, AUDIO & TRANSCRIPT: The show went very well. Pellerin stuck around for the entire hour and it was a great discussion with several interesting and newsworthy revelations, along with some very good callers as well. I think we may be getting somewhere. At least I'm hopefully tonight for the good folks of Santa Cruz...
As we could all use something to lighten things up around here, and it's so amusingly off-base, and it's a slowish posting day, and clearly someone needs some attention, why not...
Some pseudonymous blogger named "Vigilis" with some blog named "Molten Eagle" has called me out. I am so wounded to the core by his stinging and ingeniously well-supported critiques and barbs that I just must respond in desperate defense of my once-good name.
In his item called "Confronting Brads Baloney Blog", our man (I presume) "Viligis" instructs his readers (reader?) that "today's leftist propagandists...refuse to stand and debate" before alluding to me (presumably) as "con artists and their ilk [who] shift topics as rapidly as possible by disparaging opponents with both charges of falsehoods and rancorous name-calling."
"Of course," our friend "Vigilis" ironically charges: "this is done without citation of the slightest facts." (More on that in a minute.)
But it's not just me of whom the anonymous blogger is critical. It's you! You commenters! Especially you female commenters, whom "Vigilis" calls out not once, but twice in his amusing post:
I have "frontmen"?! Cool!
But wait, it gets more tickling!
"Vigilis" then asks, "How can serious people behave so irresponsibly?" before dropping the most absolutely, amusingly ironic (read: immeasurably foolish) graf, particularly in light of his earlier charge that "propagandists" and "con artists" like us ply our trade "without citation of the slightest facts."...
We just spoke with Greg Palast, whose Armed Madhouse paperback (or "mysterious 'yellow book,'" as lazy Washington Post blogger, Emil Steiner "reported" it), was being waved and alluded to by University of Florida student Andrew Meyer just prior to his being Tasered by UF cops earlier this week.
Palast says he is offering the journalism student a job as a paid intern. Meyer had described Palast, in his question to Sen. John Kerry, asking why he conceded the 2004 Presidential Election so early, as "the top investigate journalist in America."
"Did you notice he never let the book touch the ground?" an impressed Palast wryly noted.
Meyers was Tasered by the authorities as the majority of the students in the crowd sat passively during their fellow student's pleas for help and shrieks of pain. He was then arrested and charged with a felony for "inciting a riot and disrupting a school function." (Police report here [PDF])
"His attorneys seem to be keeping him on ice," Palast told us, when we asked if he'd been able to officially offer the gig to Meyer.
Indeed, our note to Meyer sent Tuesday, inviting him to Guest Blog his experience here at The BRAD BLOG, has so far similarly gone unanswered.