Great, except that a true wingnut would never roll over like that. They'd continue to fire back with the phony voter fraud justification and damned by any facts.

...should have been "damned BE any facts."

The ruse and myth of individual voter fraud is a non-story to the informed, but the catch-all and be-all for the uninformed.

We need to put all the voting machines in the trash until they are not hackable by elementary school kids.

That is where it is at ... even the GAO report got it.

I guess I'd love to see some well informed wing-nut come here with links to actual "proof" of "voter fraud"..

I don't doubt that there are shenanigans with registering "voters".. and I've heard the stories about "dead people on the resgister", but never really seen anything "official".. Heard about the "tires slashed on get out the vote vans", but IDs can't fix that anyway.. Police standing around poll stations to scare people off (it's not just criminals who don't like cops, but if I have to explain that, you don't care).. We even had a guy say here that an election came down to a few votes, and the "fraudulent votes" were the ones to swing it (though, no proof that I saw or recall.. perhaps I'm forgetting for convience?), but never addresses who those votes were for (his team or the other team, though he implied it was for the other team).

And, we saw how a LEGITIMATE VOTE was "tossed out" by the Rethugs to secure a raffle instead of losing by one vote. Had they WON by one vote, I assure you, they would be screaming about "it's fair, no fraud, we won!".. but they lost, so they tossed out a known "opposition ballot"? Used the courts.. AGAIN.. to take an election, one that was legitimately LOST by them? Had to appeal TWICE to find a judge that would help them steal the election? I guess you won't see "honest Republicans" bitching about that.. they seem to think it's ok to discount votes, they will believe the bullshit put up by their team (that 2 judges dismissed).. will say "it's different if it's a contract, you can't get out of a contract on a technicallity.. but you can have your vote rejected"..

Yet, with all the CONVICTIONS (and outstanding indictments) in Ohio, all the OFFICIAL complaints about those horrid machines, all the EVIDENCE to support "election fraud" aided by electronic voting machines, the Rethugs and Conservatives want to burry their heads and the info.. What more "proof" do you need to see that our system is being hijacked by the "better cheater" (or, in some cases, just the 'last' cheater)? We need a system that doesn't let crooks win elections (for EITHER/any party)

Does anyone question if McCain is a "true" Republican ?

Seems to me, with all the evidence that Rove was directly involved with leaking classified information that lead to the loss of a national security asset that it's a NO BRAINER is Rove should lose his clearance.. Yet, McCain defends him?

sickening..

In related news,

http://www.dailykos.com/...nly/2005/11/6/13376/7516

Savantster #5 Agreed. He is a strange politician with strange contrasts that really do not make clear sense to me.

I mean I can applaud his no-torture efforts, but I can't applaud "its ok for white house folk to leak" names of covert agents and weaken security.

That is like Steve F, a "gay conservative", not realizing the conservatives are anti-gay.

American government has been damaged by this admin because what they call and practice as "politics" is really crime.

That seems to have warped many elected officials such that some of their positions are wacko.

That goes for all parties but clearly the republicans have suffered the most. That is because they are the "lucky" ones the neoCons and neoConvicts choose to infect.

hey everyone check out my 911 video comiliation:

LINK

it is set to the greatest: BACH

people educate yourselves about 911. the truth about 911 will bring down the bush administration

{ed note: Long Link shortened. Note to all: If you don’t know how to use the Brad Blog Community Assistant, which is located by clicking on the CLICK HERE for help adding links in comments & much more! just above the Comments Box, PLEASE – use a Tiny Url.}

I don't understand McCain either after bushco smeared him. I wonder how his wife feels about his friends. He is much more forgiving than I am, I can only surmise he is getting his $$$$'s on a regular basis. (When all is said and done it is always about money and power). M4

STOP DIEBOLD TODAY!!!!!!!!!!

Bring lawsuits, RICO charges and start tearing down Diebold once and for all.

Diebold attempts to take over North Carolina!

Forward all comments to Voters unite immediately and demand the state/justice department to start an inside investigation.

contact1@votersunite.org
AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

It's time for DIEBOLD and their vendor helpers compuware to be taken down!!!!!!

Doug E.

The GAO report will get more coverage. I have been obsessed with the Libby thingy.

It's all connected. More people will finally believe all the voter fraud "tin hats" when they see how Bushco has lied to the American People about the reasons for war.

Go Brad!

"Voter fraud" is the end that justifies the means. Create a phony "Democrats are trying to steal elections" scenario, then anything is rationalized as O.K. to oppose it.

Remember Clint Curtis' testimony. He was asked by Feeney and YEI to devise a vote-rigging prototype TO COMBAT DEMOCRATIC EFFORTS TO RIG THE VOTE IN SOUTH FLORIDA. Idea: Democrats are cheating, thus anything we do to prevent that is legitimate.

It's a carbon copy of the Iraq policy. Saddam Hussein is trying to kill us with WMD, which justifies a unilateral invasion of Iraq. Pretend we're under attack, and strike first. Call it the "Gulf of Tonkin" defense.

RLM
Gulf of Tonkin. Wow. Major flashback. It's like every 20/30 years there is a swing.

Military/industrial vs quality of life.

And this time my son is on the line. Instead of my friends.

To the WingNuts & the pRez:

RLM #12

I have struggled to find commonality in this admin's policies. The thing that seems common throughout the admin on policy is incompetence.

The Katrina catastrophic success is an illustration. Brownie, head of FEMA, was a horse trader before he was trusted with millions of lives.

Now we find that the fella put in charge of weapon procurement for the Iraqi Army was a car salesman before he was elevated (link here).

Everywhere we look in the admin we see incompetence.

In the white house, where honesty and openness of government was to be the character of this admin, we see incompetence.

The people there have no experience with honesty and openness. Now they want them to pick it up in a quickie ethics class taught by Miers.

Voting machines they advocate are incompetent to resist hacking and vote corruption.

The white house contract procurement agent was hauled off in chains. He too had no experience in honest dealing.

They need to be sent back from whence they came ... the underworld of crime and deceit.

You bet, Dredd. The question is how to do it and keep faith with the Constitution.

The founding fathers required "high crimes and misdemeanors" as a standard to impeach, and a 2/3 majority in the House to convict, because they didn't trust a two-party system not to seek to oust a president for political reasons.

What these august gentlemen didn't anticipate was crooked elections. They used what was almost a parliamentary system, where a president was chosen by rich white males; election disputes were settled by dueling pistols (e.g. Burr/Hamilton). The notion that huge blocks of votes could be misappropriated by someone toying with a machine
never entered anyone's mind, obviously.

The tragic, irrational, criminal and bizarre truth is this (and why can't our national "leaders" grasp on to it?): IF ELECTORAL FRAUD IS IGNORED BY THE MEDIA, AND TRIVIALIZED INTO "VOTER FRAUD" BY SELF-PROCLAIMED BI-PARTISANS WITH A HIDDEN PARTISAN AGENDA (like Baker), THEN THE PROBLEM CAN'T BE FIXED. NOT EVER. THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE TO REPUBLICANS STEALING ELECTIONS WILL BE DEMOCRATS DOING THE SAME THING.

Deliberate election fraud should be a high crime or misdemeanor. But the attitude on Capitol Hill and in the ivory towers of the mainstream media is: 1) "Both sides do it, so anyone who wants election fraud punished is just a partisan sore loser," and 2) "Demonstrating that the president holds office illegitimately would weaken the office, diminish our prestige, and cause the stock market to implode."

Today the New York Times' headline on page A3 was "Azerbaijan Votes, Amid Accusations of Fraud and Abuse." The insert headline read, "The reputation of the nation and of the president are at stake." They sang the same song with the Ukraine election last year. Election fraud overseas is real, here it's conspiracy theorizing. Their blatant double standard doesn't embarrass the Times one bit.

"THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE TO REPUBLICANS STEALING ELECTIONS WILL BE DEMOCRATS DOING THE SAME THING."

Or... what's happened in all major societies now and again, and has happened here. We just don't want to think we have to backpeddle that far.. but revolution is on the way. I don't want -anyone- in office that stole an election..

So what can we do in the way of positive action???
Here in Tennessee we (a group called Gathering to Save our Democracy - you remember us, we threw the first National Election Reform Conference back in April...) are trying like hell to mandate Voter Verified Paper Ballots (VVPB) to use as the ballot of record and to use for a random manual recount.
This past Saturday we had a Tennessee Election Security Conference where we had a number of distinguished guests to discuss these issues.
On the national level, our Nashville congressman, Jim Cooper, appeared (he brought his mom as traveling companion, a nice touch...) and was solidly in our corner. He is a co-signer of H.R. 550, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005, and ammendment to HAVA, which mandates mandatory paper record audit capacity. Cooper says that as long as they don't get 12 House co-sponsors to this bill, it will never even get a hearing. He stated that what is needed is at least 12 Republican moderates to jump on and co-sponsor.
So. That's what y'all can do. If you live in a Dem congressional district, get your Representative on board if they are not already. If you have a Pub Rep, hammer them ("hammer 'em..." Oh, I crack myself up...), and get your friends to hammer them to consider this bill. The Republican party is weakening now and the moderates would like a chance to save themselves so the right wingers don't pull them down, too. Show them that this is a chance; and if they don't, hammer 'em (oh, stop!) with it in November 'o6. So there it is kids. That's what needs to be done.
Also, amazingly, our Congressman Cooper had not heard of the GAO report (introduced by an evenly matched bipartisan group of 12 Representatives) on flawed voting systems released a couple weeks ago, even though his TN Dem neighbor, Bart Gordon, was one of the ones who did it. Just shows how busy these guys are. So, while you're contacting your congressional folks, be SURE to make them aware of the GAO report. You can find it here on Bradblog at:

https://bradblog.com/archives/00001940.htm

(sorry, ignorant about understanding how to do the CLICK HERE for help adding links...)

Make both Senators and Representives aware of this, and especially if you have Republicans. We're looking for a few of them who are ready to jump their ship that's listing to the right.

And, for any Tennesseans on this list (the rest of y'all might wanna know what we're doing in case y'all need to do it in your states):
NOW is the time to contact your state representative and state senator, as the next election commission meeting is next week and the General Assembly folks are the ones who appoint the commissioners. They need to know that DREs should not be purchased using HAVA funds. They need to know that (Congressman Cooper told us) there is no looming deadline to use the Fed HAVA money or lose it. Cooper said Congress has few if any strings attached to the money, and there is no mandate to get rid of, say, punch card systems (which ARE a paper ballot system...). They need to know that any county buying DREs is risking having NO paper ballots to count if a recount is called for (as happened in Memphis recently in a primary and a final election for a state senate seat - a problem for both a Dem and a Pub loser...) by state law in a close election, which then can set them up for lawsuits. Basically, tell your to contact the 5 state election commissioners and encourage VVPB election equipment purchases and mandatory recounts.
And, if you are in Tennessee and have not made contact with our Gathering organization. Please e mail me and I'll make the hook-up...

I know y'all can do this, so let's get busy!

Sorry so long, but, as y'all know, the nitty and the gritty of vigilance to protect freedom is sometimes about perserverance through the system.

peace out,
shw

Shannon #20

Good Work!!!

Sorry, but this belongs here...

"President Bush said Sunday that some want to roll back democracy in Latin America by playing to fear and blaming others for their failures."

and

" “The other seeks to roll back the democratic progress of the past two decades, by playing to fear, pitting neighbor against neighbor and blaming others for their own failures to provide for their people,” Bush said. "

Heh.. kind of like what Bush is doing HERE?

Simply amazing...

"Democrats cleaned up big in off-year elections from New Jersey to California, sinking the candidate who embraced President Bush in the final days of the Virginia governor's campaign. They also turned back all four of GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's efforts to reshape state government. " (link here).