"explosive" and/or "will knock your socks off"

How about the image of a "controlled demolition" of the Bush Administration!

ooooohh

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

With a "D" attached to it, I wonder how well it will fare in the themepark we call the MSM...

Well done, PetGoat.

Several thoughts from a skeptic:

Have Howard Dean, Donna Brazile and the rest of the DNC been silent on the question of election fraud in 2004 because they were waiting for this? Seven-and-a-half months later? After all we've seen and heard, beginning on Nov. 3, 2004? After the Green and Libertarian parties fought the battle the Democrats were afraid to fight? Not very brave.

As Peg C. suggests, it has a Democratic party label attached. What will the retort be when Scottie McClellan announces, "The president sees this as a partisan attempt to embarrass him. It's time to move on."???

If this report includes new facts that are truly explosive and/or are grounds for impeachment on the basis of election fraud, that information should have been revealed at the time it was discovered, not saved until a report was completed. If there's no such information, I hope someone will explain to John Conyers why this report is important but his 102-page report wasn't.

17,000 Lawyers they said ,it better be good.

Blackwell and the "mother machines": I should have mentioned this earlier, but better late than never. According to a Bob Fitrakis radio interview, Ken Blackwell --- Ohio's corrupt Secretary of State --- had direct access to the central tabulators in the 2004 election. (You may also want to hear this.) Letting the Republican party's state chairman have this sort of access is like giving John Dillinger the keys to a bank vault.

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/

Somebody here better tell the DNC that adults do not like sore losers; and this will appear to the media to be all about a bunch of sore losers looking to direct the blame away from them, their party, & their platform.

Somebody here better tell the DNC that adults do not like sore losers; and this will appear to the media to be all about a bunch of sore losers looking to direct the blame away from them, their party, & their platform.

PetGoat, it's all about the meaning of "fair-minded," isn't it?

Where I grew up the term implied, "Respectful of opposing sides in any dispute." It meant, "Putting the concept of playing by the rules ahead of selfish interests." Its corollary was, "We're a nation of laws, not men."

All that has changed. It's about "winning" now, and the end justifies the means. The Republicans don't even deny it; they say, "We're creating our own reality." What's fair is whatever they want. If that means stealing elections, fine. If it means lying to advance their agenda, O.K. If it means sending imbecilic hatemongers to disrupt bloggers, just do it.

In the new political marketplace there is no such word as "fair-minded."

Horkus re:#6 - I know what you mean, I'm afraid to get my hopes up too.

And I've lost faith in the Democrats - they are definitely summer soldiers and sunshine patriots.

Still..can't wait to read the report.

Like others I hate to get my hopes up, but I will. There have been so many horrid illegal breaktroughs already. But, between Conyers and Boxer, I am growing prouder by the day, but alas it's not enough (and don't tell me things move slow in DC....that's a bush line), we've known since 2000 of the fraudulent voting machines to include the opti scanners and we are now faced with the 2006 elections and not enough time to 'fix' them. Basically allowing more seats to fraudulently go to republicans in 2006.

Why hasn't a representative or senator given up their chance to run again (like a soldier is willing to give up their life even for a lie to support their family), to daily fight the fraud, by submitting bills to mandate states to fix voting before the 2006 election on a daily basis, bill after bill till congress and the senate drown in paper!

Why haven't charges been files yet Conyers report was great and further investigations officially started would have found more of course, throughout the country?

Why were the 2000's election forgiven...I guess we should just forget about it, huh?

Why did our representatives in DC allow James Baker to be head of a commission to investigate voting, had neutral parties been assigned, they could have solved something already? We've heard 'nothing' form that commission! That assignment a slap by bush to us, on top of Blackwell and Harris scams is an insulting sting, yet it went without comments in any news media.

Why haven't the democrats fought like the republicans in Washington state?

Why has not one representative or senator submitted or passed a law prohibiting any election officials from having worked on or currently working on/being associated to a campaigns or running for office with the party of any contested election for a certain time period (like 10 years)?

Weren't Harris and Blackwell roles in the election frauds 'insider trading' or worse?

Where are Kerry's balls? I pray he don't run again, he lost me and I worked hard for him. F... the excuses that he couldn't because all would cry partisan, let them cry, so long as we scream louder and get action! Where's the Kerry that returned a hero from Vietnam, asking DC officials how can we send our young men to die for a lie? Gone....never to return? Kerry owes Americans, to save face he must go for the impeachment of bush, cheney, rumsfield, rice, ashcroft, wolfy, perle, and gonzales! Shame on him if he don't act and soon!

Bottom line, we can't depend on government officials and must hit the streets in masses.

Both correcting voting, and impeachment hearings are too far behind!

Sorry...to much to say and I'm sure I said it all wrong, but fustration is pouring out of my pores!

For once a troll said something that made sense. Yes, the media probably will treat this report as Democratic "sore loser" talk. Because like the Bush administration, like Corporate America and Wall Street, today's media aren't interested in truth for truth's sake. They are interested in preserving an imperialist status quo where free-market capitalism and freedom are interchangeable nouns...and any critic of one is marked as an enemy of the other.

The best hope for this report is that it catches on with a few influential people outside politics who will give it more respect than the DNC will. Someone apolitical whose patriotism is beyond question, possibly a Walter Cronkite or a David McCullough.

Mr. Mills #14

An excellent definition of "fair minded," and diagnosis of the
"policital marketplace."

The essay by the Republican vote integrity activist Chuck
Herrin is an insightful view of the Republican mindset. It starts
out:

"I was talking to a dear friend of mine yesterday, and he asked
me what I had been up to. 'This voting machine security thing' I
told him. 'It looks really bad. I can't believe how insecure these
systems are and how easy they would be to Hack.'

"He chuckled and said to me, very sincerely, 'Well, just as long
as they go Republican, right? Heh, heh.'"

http://www.chuckherrin.c.../ConservativeEmpathy.htm

Last fall I had some discussions with a Republican activist who
was claiming the exit poll discrepancy was the doing of
busloads of democrats driving around to the sampled precincts
to flood the poll-takers with "chatty Dems." Supposedly they'd
do this to inflate Kerry's numbers and demoralize potential
Republican voters so they'd stay home.

"It would require a massive conspiracy," I said.

He denied that, and continued to spread this claim, insisting no
conspiracy was involved. "It would only require one person,"
he said, many times. "Just one person at Mitofsky-Edison to
leak the sampling locations."

"But what about the Dems?" I asked him many times. And
failing to get an answer I finally realized that in his mind
busloads of party operatives driving around to be surveyed
again and again and again and subvert the exit polls was no
conspiracy--but only what is to be expected of loyal party
members. That's who we're dealing with here.

I'll remain "hopeful."

Since literally *no one* I know on the ground in Ohio was even contacted by the committee I'm not holding my breath.

RLM - 6 or 7 of us should bookmark this thread so we can send it to the editors of every paper that uses "sore loser" in reaction to the study, if, that is, it's really as good as it's being cracked up to be. They might get nervous if tons of people started accurately predicting their upcoming headlines and could back it up with dated proof! We might even start a little pool here, betting on what the NYT will say about something or other, for instance. Just a suggestion for finding some amusement and thereby staving off just a little period of the increasingly usual sense of despair that is settling in.

This meeting is the top story at DemocraticUnderground.com this morning.
Hope it goes somewhere.
Any word on further Downing Street meetings?

From the Executive Summary of the report:

I. The statistical study of precinct-level data does not suggest the occurrence of widespread fraud that systematically misallocated votes from Kerry to Bush.

• The tendency to vote for Kerry in 2004 was the same as the tendency to vote for the Democratic candidate for governor in 2002 (Hagan). That the pattern of voting for Kerry is so similar to the pattern of voting for the Democratic candidate for governor in 2002 is, in the opinion of the team’s political science experts, strong evidence against the claim that widespread fraud systematically misallocated votes from Kerry to Bush.

• Kerry’s support across precincts also increased with the support for Eric Fingerhut, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, and decreased with the support for Issue 1 (ballot initiative opposing same-sex marriage) and increased with the proportion of African American votes. Again this is the pattern that would be expected and is not consistent with claims of widespread fraud that misallocated votes from Kerry to Bush.

SHORT ANSWER TO A VERY LONG REPORT: DEMOCRAT CANDIDATES AND PLATFORM COST THEM THE PRESIDENCY!

Something tells me that this thing was watered down in order to avoid getting the Sour Grape complaint and to get the MSM to take a look at it.

Who referred to this report as "explosive" and/or "will knock your socks off" ?

Ed Schultz? Lieberman?

Brad,

This is why the Democrats don't speak for me.

They seem to be backing Kerry's weakness (to me anyway).

I fight for one person, one vote, one voice. That is necessary in a democracy.

The neo cons deny "We the People" of our voice and our votes. And now, the Demos show no backbone to stand up to them.

Has anyone heard anything further yet?

Peg,

The complete report was placed on the Democrats website.

It is possible that Bu$h won the election legitimately.

However, the chances of a legitimate election are about the same as getting struck by lightning.

The sun could also explode today, too. (Much less likely though.)

However, if he did win legitimately, why are they not bothering to address our concerns????

If you look closely at the places where overt fraud was most likely allegedly committed in Ohio, it was in Republican precincts, not democratic ones. As Fritakis points out, some of the most Republican precincts boasted higher than 100 percent turnout. Impossible. Tracing democratic voting patterns won't address this avenue for fraud at all. Obviously, it's easiest to fudge the numbers in a largely Republican precinct, where Democrats won't have as much watchdog authority, if any. Adding some republican votes and keeping dems from voting could easily have been enough to tip the election. We'll see if the dems address this at all.

Don't you think the neo-cons are gonna send their little neo-con soldiers out to collect all of the printed material?

I've just read the first section of the "knock your socks off" report. My socks are still on.

So far, the report reads like a Roper poll. People were asked, "How confident are you that your vote was counted?" The percentages are given. The focus isn't on election fraud, it's on the problems faced by individual voters (long lines in particular).

In other words, dear friends, the report reads like a post-election John Kerry speech. Yes, African Americans weren't treated well. Yes, we have work to do. No, there's no evidence of fraud.

Nothing about the Warren County lockdown. Nothing about the all-day vote-flipping from Kerry to Bush in Youngstown. Nothing about the impossible vote totals for third party candidates in Cuyahoga County, or about how Judge Connolly, virtually unknown outside of Cleveland, ran tens of thousands of votes ahead of Kerry on the Democratic line in Southern Ohio.

Just like a message from John Kerry. All that was missing was the request for more money.

After seeing what went on in Ohio and the rest of the 2004 election, this will have to be pretty damn big to be called "explosive" in my books.

Kenneth Blackwell set that threshold to the nosebleed section of the corruption meter.

Nope, you're not getting my hopes up. I still remember the big MSM media paper that was planning on printing the Clint Curtis story. That went over well.

What's their solution gonna be? Have a paper trail like Nevada, but do nothing to verify the paper results to the machine results? Maybe they'll get bold and propose that
only 4% of the machines get audited like the state of Washington.

When I hear the words, open source code + paper trail +
verification vote for vote, then I'll be happy. My job here will be done, and only then can I fly off to Venus to fight Tom Feeney's purple Martian invasion.

All of the above was tongue in cheek, of course (except for the purple martian part).
Really, I hope they make some real demands. What fair minded person would be against voting rights and
verification?

Robert Lockwood Mills:

That is what I have been trying to tell you all along: your "party" just wants your money and your leaders would sell their own mother (or our Soldiers) for political power.

But a few in your party have been forcing them into corners with outright fabricated so called election frauds and errors and demanding action of some sort out of them.

Frankly I don't know why they put up with the small percentage of Democrats that are conspiracy advocates and that keep forgetting to take their meds in the morning.

I guess it is because if the Democrats lose even a small amount of their "band of wierdos that found a party that they can whine to"; they would NEVER WIN A SINGLE ELCTION AGAIN IN AMERICA!

Finally, Robert Lockwood Mills, who ELSE has been hitting you up for donations, HMMMMMMMMMMM? I can give you a clue:

Please Help To Suppport the BRAD BLOG
And The BRAD SHOW via PayPal!

I wonder if we shouldn't make our own fliers and distribute them door to door in the precincts where there were problems.

It's a lot of voters and many tri-fold fliers and many hours of canvassing.... but it might, in the end, be an issue that has to be raised directly.

In Ohio, people are already well aware of the fact that the Republicans there are crooked as hell. People went walking precincts to register voters... why not walk precincts to make voting possible again.

Plus, talking about it with people who directly experienced shenanigans in their areas might help us get more volunteers. This is such a serious issue that it just can't be swept under the rug...

Especially if we frame the fliers in a non-partisan way... explaining that some people feel that this last election was a fraud... and that it is crucial that we take dramatic steps to restore faith in our electoral process through the use of paper ballots that are resistant to tampering, etc. You all know the pitch... but it is certainly something that people on the street will "buy" because there is nothing partisan about wanting paper ballots, clear records, a transparent process, etc. The only people who would hate this idea are people who don't want all votes counted.

I think we should stick with grassroots... because it is working, it is consistent with our political tradition, and it does a lot to bring people together. I mean, I can goof around online, and I do care about many of the people that post in here... but I would really like to see your faces. Most political inaction in this country comes from the fear that we might be all alone... that we might speak our minds in a room full of people and get shouted down. But then you try it, and you realize that lots of people are sick and tired of the crap that our leaders and their mouthpieces say and do in our names.

I mean, look at the meanness that a troll can bring and inspire.... face to face.... these sort of things don't happen so much. Everyday people from across political ideologies have much more in common with each other than we do with most leaders of our respective political parties.

"What fair minded person would be against voting rights and
verification?"

What fair minded person would oppose counting the votes in Florida in 2000?

What fair minded person would solve the problem of the possible discrimination of having their votes counted under a different method than a person in another county with the cure of not counting their votes at all?

What fair minded person would sidetrack the legislation that would have outlawed unverifiable voting machines, and sabotage through inadequate appropriations the Election Assistance Commission that was supposed to develop standards for the voting machines funded under HAVA?

What fair minded person would claim in Congress that there was "no evidence" of voting irregularities in Ohio when Rep. Conyers had just released a 102-page report?

What fair-minded person would deride the concerns of expert computer scientists over unverifiable electronic votes as "tinfoil hat conspiracy theories"?

What fair-minded person would look at a blatant Jim Crow election in Ohio and shrug it off as "a few problems"?

What fair-minded person would dismiss the refusal to release the exit poll raw data and the secrecy of the machines and their
programs despite the debunking of the only innocent explanation for the statistically-impossible discrepancy?

What fair-minded person would expect us to go into 2006 expecting to vote again on those same tainted machines?

Hey! what's up? some of the previous comments are missing.

re #33 Hey Big Tobacco: I couldn't agree with you more ...

Most political inaction in this country comes from the fear that we might be all alone... that we might speak our minds in a room full of people and get shouted down. But then you try it, and you realize that lots of people are sick and tired of the crap that our leaders and their mouthpieces say and do in our names.

re #34 dunno, VG ... but we're having some software problems at the moment ... so hang tough and we'll see if we can get them sorted out!

In case anyone (like Jimmo) is concerned about my party affiliation, I AM NOT A DEMOCRAT AND NEVER HAVE BEEN ONE. My first presidential vote was for Barry Goldwater in 1964. The only Democrats I have ever voted for for president are McGovern and Kerry...in both cases, because I regarded the incumbent Republican as a crook. I was right about Nixon, and I'll be proven right about Bush.

I told the Democratic party (and Kerry) seven months ago that I wouldn't send them a nickel unless they confronted the issue of election fraud. The party, to its credit, has stopped asking. Kerry's people are so infuriatingly stubborn that they ignore every request to cease and desist.

I don't need the Democrats, or Kerry, to know the last two elections were stolen. My brain functions separately from partisan politics, for which I thank my Creator God. Jimmo and other trolls should understand that there are people who think for themselves out there...immune from politics as usual, immune from Orwellian groupthink, immune from fundraising demands.

Jimmo # 32
Glad to see you acknowledge in your post :
----Please Help To Suppport the BRAD BLOG
And The BRAD SHOW via PayPal!
----

Your views and opinions are expressed and printed so you reap the benefit of the Blog, thus can we expect the good Attn Jimmo to 'Belly up to the Bar' and send a Large Donation?

Perhaps you can get together with your mate B-s and make a big buck matching fund pledge? Or is freeloading the only predictable tradition of
republicanism?

Testing software.

> What fair minded person would oppose counting the votes in Florida in 2000?

They were counted over and over and over again by the media and Bush still won. Gore asked for only three heavily democratic counties run by Democrats to be re-counted. He did not ask for an all state recount. What about the military vote the Dems tried to suppress? Every vote counts but only every legal vote and only one vote per person. Voting fraud has always been connected to Democrats – see Daley and Chicago in 1960. It’s always dead “Democrats” voting. Two people were convicted in Washington State for the 2004 elections (their dead wives voted) and they are investigating three more people.

> Because like the Bush administration, like Corporate America and Wall Street, today's media aren't interested in truth for truth's sake.

Why does the left kook fringe have problems with Corporate America? They only employ 20% of the population. The major Corporations offer same sex benefits. Corporate America is just an entity and it is not inherently good or evil. People are good or evil. Every "evil" corporate decision can be traced to an individual or a group of individuals.

The percentage of Americans employed by Corporate America is beside the point. It could be 10 percent and it wouldn't matter.

What is very much to the point is that Corporate America controls politicians through its bribes and the media through its ownership. Elected officials owe their souls to corporations, and newspaper and TV networks are part and parcel of the corporate structure.

There was once a time in history when media were independent. For example, during World War II NBC had two networks, Red and Blue. Antitrust regulators forced NBC to spin off the Red Network into ABC, reducing the influence of a single news provider. Since the Reagan Revolution the reverse has happened; media oligarchies have consolidated through mergers and takeovers, putting fewer of them in charge of news delivery.

This is not a "left kook fringe" notion. Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican with close ties to Wall Street, and he believed in enforcing antitrust rules. It's time for another Teddy Roosevelt.

Corporate America is just an entity and it is not inherently good or evil.True
It can still be perceived as "doing evil" by way of its actions, for instance why did Union Carbide operate its plant "off-shore" ,its better to risk the lives of non-Americans with lower safety standards,lower wages,poor working conditions etc. and why ,because it IMPROVES THE BOTTOMLINE.

Campaign finance reform has basically failed. There are too many escape valves. A corporation can donate to a party or a P.A.C., knowing the monies will end up with a candidate, but I can't donate the same amount to the candidate directly. Is this reform?

Ask yourself, "Is anyone on Capitol Hill in office without the help of Corporate America?" Possibly Russ Feingold is the exception that proves the rule. But the simple truth is that because of campaign bribery and the 24/7 presence of corporate lobbbyists, politicans are compromised and cannot serve the public interest first.

Washington, D.C. is a cesspool, folks. When Capitol Hill becomes an entry hall for a K Street lobbyist's job for ten or twenty times the pay, the system is corrupt.

One final point for Paul the Troll. The lower the percentage of Americans employed by Corporate America, the greater the number of illegal immigrants and indigenous Indonesians who are taking over the work. By asserting a low number (I suspect it's really lower than 20 percent, in fact) of Americans employed by U.S. corporations, you are affirming the lack of loyalty Corporate America has shown toward its own citizens.

So there's the paradox. Multinational corporations outsource jobs overseas while illegal immigrants take over domestic jobs because they're willing to work for below minimum wage and without benefits. Despite this, Corporate America maintains its grip on the political system...thus it has the best of both worlds. Control without reciprocal loyalty.

The media don't expose it, because the media are part of Corporate America themselves.