From Noah Schactman at Wired's "Danger Room" blog...

Seriously, people. Why won't somebody please buy me off?! I'm a "prominent blogger," or close enough to it. I'm starving over here. Where are you, CIA? Military? George Soros? It's tax time for crying out loud, and rent is due!

In lieu of the big bucks, hopefully you will consider buying me off. Therefore, with plenty of premiums to "sell" you in return, I am now cutting the price for 'em!

See this post for how you can receive your choice of any or all of the following, beginning at just $5...

• DVD of Uncounted, signed by the filmmaker, David Earnhardt
• CD of Duhmocracy, signed by the singer/songwriter Victoria Parks
• Copy of Troubletown Told Ya So book, signed by cartoonist/author Lloyd Dangle
• Copy of Politics as Usual board game, signed by nobody (though I'll sign it if you really want me to!)

Take your pick from the premiums above, most available beginning at just $5/month sustaining subscription to The BRAD BLOG. We could use it. Seriously.

...At least until Wal-Mart, Diebold, or the U.S. Army come knocking.

And if you don't wish to become a sustaining monthly supporter but still want to support, you can, of course, just toss us a few bucks. We'll take that too. $50 or more tossed this way, will get you that signed copy of Uncounted, a gazillion dollar value!

(Hat-tip BRAD BLOG read "TH")

As mentioned last Friday, over the weekend, I spoke at CA Common Cause's "Media Reform Conference" out in Pasadena. The panel discussion, "Have the media undermined our democracy?" included myself, along with Congresswoman Hilda Solis (D-CA), Alex Nogales of National Hispanic Media Coalition, Jonathan Taplin of USC Annenberg School of Comm. and Kevin Uhrich of the Pasadena Weekly. It was moderated by Tracy Westen of the Center for Governmental Studies.

The short video of my opening remarks, naming names and doing what I do, along with my comments on the panel --- naming still more names and still doing what I do --- during the Q&A section, follows below. Text transcript (courtesy of VelvetRevolution's Emily Levy), follows below that...

Text transcript of the remarks follows below...

"Mission: To encourage citizen ownership
of transparent, participatory democracy."
- Creekside Declaration, 3/22/08

The statement is deceptively simple. Yet I think it best underscores all that we fight for here, and what we hope those who claim to be toiling for the same cause will measure themselves against.

I was privileged to spend last weekend with a dozen or so Election Integrity advocates and heroes of mine in Palo Alto, CA, at the Creekside Inn. Those in attendance had experience in election administration, data analysis, media watchdogging, voting rights activism, voter advocacy, computer programming and security, boots-on-the-ground oversight, election auditing, and even voting system vendor perspective. We stayed, after viewing the near-final cut of Dorothy Fadiman's soon-to-be-released Stealing America: Vote by Vote on Thursday night, to chat, strategize, and otherwise spend some time in person with a few of the folks we so often spend only virtual time with.

The declaration was created as several of us determined it would be helpful to define the cause as specifically and directly as possible. Once it was finalized, I signed it first, in large letters, as the Hancock legend goes, "so that King George can read it without his glasses."

My hope is that anyone --- any person or organization, or even candidate for office, claiming to be in the fight for clean, fair, honest, accurate democracy --- would both commit to this simply stated mission, and then measure his or her efforts against it.

Will People for the American Way, Common Cause, Verified Voting, and Rep. Rush Holt sign on to the mission stated above? If so, does advocating for touch-screen voting systems with so-called "paper trails" encourage citizen ownership of transparent, participatory democracy? Does vote-by-mail?

Will our current crop of Presidential candidates, D and R and anything else, pledge to support the mission inherent in the Creekside Declaration? If so, will they then stand up for a paper ballot --- one that is actually counted --- for every vote cast in America?

The BRAD BLOG pledges to adhere, and fight for, the values contained in the Creekside Declaration. Will your Election Integrity group do so? I hope you will ask them, and yourselves. And if so, I hope you'll state as much publicly, and will then proceed to test all that you do, and fight for, and stand for, against the simple, yet monumentally important, ideas in that declaration.

Tribune Media Columnist Bob Koehler, who joined us over the weekend, is one of the few voices within the corporate mainstream media who seem to truly understand what's at stake, the price it may take to ensure it, and the cost of not doing so. He has more in his column this week, on both the weekend, the declaration, and the ideals that I believe we are all duty-bound, as Americans --- and even as World Citizens --- to pledge to fight for.

His column begins this way:

I hope you'll read the rest...

Folks in photo identified here...

Some guy named Patrick Ruffini, at the right-wing Townhall blog of right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt, is using the space to disinform readers as to the reasons for the current shutdown of the FEC. And he's dishonestly misrepresenting a BRAD BLOG article from last year (we're the "left-wing blogger" he links to in his comments below) in order to help fool his presumably gullible readers...

UPDATE: We desperately need your support. So we're cutting prices in half on our monthly sustainer Premium Offers! -BF

We hate to ask, but we must. We've promised to continue our fight for American democracy in 2008, and against the continuing failures of the mainstream corporate media (and even against the failures of the supposedly-Progressive blogosphere and any other organizations who are failing their promise.) We believe we're keeping our promise, but we continue to need your help.

Please consider a sustaining monthly contribution to The BRAD BLOG. Sooner, rather than later, if possible.

Please see the blue form on the right side of this, and every, page to quickly sign up for a monthly sustaining subscription for any amount you like. We're also happy for a one-time contribution as well, of course, but sustaining our work on a regular basis is very much needed right now!

Remember, your crappy cable subscription likely costs you upwards of $50 or more per month already. Isn't what we're doing here at The BRAD BLOG worth at least a fraction of that? We wake up every day hoping so.

We receive no corporate or foundational support for our work, so it's all up to you! Hopefully, what we do is already well worth your support, but we're happy to up the ante with a few new collector's edition premium offers courtesy of several generous folks. See below to take your pick of one or more of 'em!...

[UPDATED: See end of article for information on who this "DHinMI" tool actually is.]

Markos Moulitsas and the band of self-important anonymous losers that he's allowed to dominate the front page at the world's largest supposedly-Progressive blogsite continue their cowardly march towards full self-destruction.

Today's example comes by way of a comment from the anonymous (read: cowardly) "DHinMI", one of the loudest, most obnoxious and knowledge-challenged of Kos' stable of front-page sidekicks hell-bent on further discrediting the once-prestigious website:

Though, unlike Bev Harris and ourselves, who put our real names behind everything we do, "DHinMI" enjoys anonymity as he/she spews his/her unsupported, fact-free allegations. He/she does, however, offer an email address where folks might try to offer this numbskull a few facts if he/she ever becomes interested in any (which seems rather unlikely at this point): DHinMI@yahoo.com

"DHinMI's" comment, ironically enough, is posted in support of a front page article by Moulitsas himself today, in regard to a NYTimes article reporting that some 80 precincts in some of NYC's most African-American dominated precincts registered 0 votes for Barack Obama in their unofficial tallies. Kos then goes on to wonder if the article thus indicates that NYC's "voting machines don't spit out paper ballots? That should be SOP for these things."

NYC, of course, still uses the old lever machines which, of course, do not "spit out paper ballots", something that it seems great champions for the cause of Election Integrity, such as Kos and "DHinMI", ought to know by now.

What "should be SOP for these things," is that people who write at high-profile, influential Internet sites ought to learn what they're writing about before they write about them so that they don't mislead folks into believing they know what they're talking about.

Today's Daily Dose of Daily Kos loser-dom comes on the heels of yesterday's report in which they ominously threatened former CIA agent, Larry Johnson, with permanent banning should he have the temerity to continue his support of Hillary Clinton on their site. Why they seem hell-bent on proving Bill O'Reilly right over there remains a mystery to us, and further begs the question of how long it'll be before the dKos readers who tend to "get it", even as the front-pagers don't, will continue on at that place.

Previous BRAD BLOG-reported examples of dKos front-pagers, including "DHinMI" and Kos himself, busily destroying dKos' previously good name can be found here.

UPDATE: "DHinMI" isn't that anonymous after all. And whaddaya know, he's a member of the official Democratic Party machine. Knock us over with a feather...

The BRAD BLOG is four years old today! Though it feels like 40 for some reason.

If you're in the mood to leave us a much-needed birthday gift, we'll happily and gratefully accept it right here.

If you're in the mood to really make this year "count", please consider creating an automatic monthly support subscription of any $ amount you wish. It'll take you about 60 seconds. See the blue form on the right side of this page to set it up quickly.

We'll send a gift (we've got a number of cool premiums we'll contact you about) to anyone who signs up for $10 or more per month.

NOTE: I'll be "celebrating" by driving back up to Northern California for the bulk of the day, to speak this weekend at an alternative media conference in Santa Cruz. So I'll be "off the grid" until later tonight. If you're near Santa Cruz, please come on by if you can! There will be a bunch of great folks there, including (ironically enough) a panel I'll be speaking on Friday night, along with Elizabeth Kucinich and Elizabeth de la Vega (author of The U.S. v. George W. Bush). While I've spoken to both Elizabeths on the phone previously, I'll look forward to meeting them in person. Especially now!

-- By Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG

Counting ballots is not done to find out what went wrong, but rather, to assure the results are right.

ATMs are fairly reliable. But I have a feeling if you get $300 from one of them, you'll likely count, by hand, all three hundred dollar bills to make sure they are there. Right? You'd be an irresponsible fool to do otherwise.

But with election results? Um, not so much.

Mahjoun at "Drunkard’s Lamppost" --- a blog which brands itself as "Politics with a spreadsheet and a calculator" --- offers a concise and easy to read summary of the results, as reported, in Diebold vs. Hand-Counted precincts in New Hampshire, along with a very sober analysis (notable for such a "Drunkard") of what may, and may not, be taken away from such an analysis.

Writes Mahjoun:

We concur. Although earlier in his piece, perhaps inadvertently, Mahjoun does a bit of "jiggery-pokery without any real evidence" himself, by stating:

Did she? Is there any evidence for that?

As they like to say over at Daily Kos, after all, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." But that only seems to work one way. So, what exactly is the "extraordinary evidence" for the "extraordinary claim" that for the first time in United States history, a woman has won a Presidential Primary Election, while staring down the barrel of dozens of independent pre-election polls, all predicting she would take a thumping?

Mahjoun's point might have been more accurately stated as "In the end, Clinton won because Diebold machines reported having tallied the ballots more in her favor in large precincts."

That can be proven, after all. The Diebold machines did report, after they, and they alone, counted the paper ballots, without examination or independent verification, that Clinton received more votes in enough precincts to be announced the winner of the election. But unless there's something I'm missing, that's the only thing in this whole matter which can proven.

Some democracy, huh?

In conclusion though, Mahjoun gets it dead right, by pointing out what is, perhaps, the most important take-away from this entire mess, unless you are the sort, unlike me, who enjoys seeing these nightmares and questions repeated over and over again, in election after election in this country:

Bingo. Buy that drunkard another drink!

But such responsible coverage, from the mainstream media --- or, more disappointingly, the supposedly-Progressive blogosphere, which has had no shortage of new epithets for The BRAD BLOG and its founding father, Brad Friedman, over the past week --- has not been easy to come by.

Rigging the Coverage...

Syndicated Tribune Media Services columnist Bob Koehler bumps up our serious concerns about last night's wholly untransparent, and still-uncounted (by anything but a hackable Diebold computer, and a company with an executive criminal past, to say the least) New Hampshire Primary election results, from "blogger conspiracy theory" to mainstream media concern.

Here are the first few grafs of his column, set to run in tomorrow's editions of subscribing mainstream media papers...

The rest of the column is just as good, in which he discusses the MSM's "inability to incorporate news of ongoing voting-machine insecurity into actual election coverage."

Full column now posted here...

I was interviewed last week by IT Business Edge technology reporter, Carl Weinschenk, on the current state of e-voting as we head into yet another big election year.

During the course of the conversation, poor Carl was clearly growing increasingly distressed by the answers I had to offer to his questions. Understandably, he was looking for signs of hope. Here's a few snippets from what we'll call "the hopeful sections" of the full interview published over the week, and headlined "Bits, Bytes and Votes"...

The entire Q&A, including the less hopeful sections, is published right here...

Here's to hoping that the coming year will be far better than the last. But no matter, we're glad to be going through it with you. Thank you for all of your kindness and support throughout 2007. We'll see you on the other side...

Previous BRAD BLOG New Year cards: 2005, 2006, 2007.

If you haven't noticed yet, and this morning notwithstanding, we're under "light posting conditions" in general until after the holidays, barring anything that must receive massive and immediate attention. We're trying to catch our breath a bit.

But, a few year-end and holiday housekeeping items during the lull before the '08 Storm...

• First, upon arriving back in town a week or so ago, we were barraged with an extraordinary run of news (which we also hope you noticed). In the bargain, I haven't been able to offer a proper thanks, until now, to the good Jon Ponder of Pensito Review for filling in so smartly while we on the road in November and beyond. I hope you enjoyed his Guest Blogging work --- and the periodic break from me - as much as I did. Hopefully he'll stay an active presence at The BRAD BLOG, even while I'm around, as well as in the future when the road beckons again, as it looks like it may again shortly. You can join me in thanking him by adding the lively and informative Pensito Review to your daily rounds. You'll not be sorry.

But wait! That's not all!...

• As well, I'd like to toss in my thanks to so many who contribute here on a regular basis, whether I'm around or not. The list is large, but, of most notable distinction, my thanks to John Gideon, Alan Breslauer, Agent 99, Czaragorn and Des for daily or near-daily efforts above and beyond. Thanks also to Emily Levy for transcripts-in-a-jiffy, and other regular contributors throughout the last year here --- Arlen Parsa of The Daily Background, D.C. Correspondent Margie Burns and the very wise and tenacious Michael Richardson come to mind for starters. Additionally, my thanks in advance, to those who have indicated they'll be joining us more frequently in the future. Stay tuned for that.

MSNBC's Live with Dan Abrams special week long series, "Bush League Justice" has been extended. It continued yesterday with a bonus installment covering John Tanner's resignation as voting chief in the DoJ Civil Rights division, and his shuffle over to a different position within the same Civil Rights department. The video of the segment is posted at right.

Abrams was outraged at the lateral move for Tanner, and his attempted re-writing of the history of his shameful record, in his "farewell email" to colleagues. Guests David Becker, a former DoJ Civil Rights Division attorney, now of People for the American Way (PFAW) and Washington Post's Dana Milbank, both concurred that Tanner's comments, as video-taped, and originally reported by The BRAD BLOG were instrumentally in his "demise".

The extension to the investigative series shores up Abrams' promise which concluded last week's "final" episode...

Abrams once again showed a clip from our video, and this time with proper credit (Thank you!). He initially reported on the Tanner controversy, using a clip from our video, in the opening episode of the series last Monday.

As well, we heard yesterday from a producer on the show who told us they felt there would likely be much more to come in what may now be a now-continuing series. In the bargain, we were able to discuss a number of other BRAD BLOG stories which may be of interest to them in future shows. So, stay tuned...

(Hat-tip to Alan Breslauer for both the above video, and the original video-tape of Tanner which started it all, from last October's National Latino Congreso here in Los Angeles, where he made his now-infamous remarks!)

Try not to laugh. But here's Diebold's response to the new study from the state of Ohio showing their crappy, untested, inaccurate, unsecure voting machines --- and those made by their equally duplicitous friends at ES&S and Hart Intercivic --- to be extremely vulnerable to tampering with the use of household items as simple as a magnet or a personal digital assistant.

As if to continue pushing their bad luck with yet another dare, the Diebold statement says, "It is important to note that there has not been a single documented case of a successful attack against an electronic voting system, in Ohio or anywhere in the United States."

Okay, guys. This is getting exhausted (and just plain sad), but be careful what you wish for.

"Even as we continue to strengthen the security features of our voting systems," Diebold/Premier writes, "that reality should not be lost in the discussion."

"Continue" to "strengthen"? (Supply own joke here)

Yet, the company who is so proud of their work that they changed their name from Diebold to Premier for no other reason beyond the fact that the horrible, corrupt and fraudulent work of their voting division has disgraced the parent company, says "Premier has performed a host of modifications and enhancements to its software to further strengthen system security. Our new suite of products is expected to soon complete the yearlong federal certification process, and will be available for installation in 2008."

Goody. We'll buy a new supply of magnets right away.

Finally, and without evidence, they add: "We should also not lose sight of the very real improvements in voting accuracy that have been achieved with the deployment of modern touch screen systems."

Really? Where's the evidence for that? Unfortunately, Diebold is not alone in making that specious claim...

By Brad, from Denver...

Damn bloggers. Following you around everywhere you go, with their nosy little cellphone cameras, writing down every little thing you do or say. Someone should make a law or something...bastards...

P.S. Thanks to the Coloradoans for Voting Integrity (who need a website!) and ProgressNow.org for inviting me to their Denver Roots Camp and for all the great grassroots work they are doing in their fights for truth, justice and the American way! Supermen (and women) all! Looking forward to coming back soon!