This is it. The citizens of Wisconsin respond to Governor Scott Walker's anti-union agenda today at the polling place with six Republican state Senators facing unprecedented recall elections all on the same day.

If Democrats succeed in winning three of today's races they will wrest control of the state Senate from the GOP in what is clearly being regarded by all sides as a referendum on Walker's radical agenda. (Democrats will also have to defend two seats of their own in two more recall elections next Tuesday.)

Yesterday, Public Policy Polling (PPP) came out with their final round of polls from over the weekend finding, in the four races surveyed, the Democrat with a healthy lead in one district, the Republican with a healthy lead in another, and two races too close to call either way, both statistical dead heats. PPP polled the other two races back in June, finding the D leading in one and the R leading in the other. (Eric Kleefeld at TPM has a few additional numbers from alternate sources.)

According to the pre-election polls then, this thing is believed to be incredible tight all around. Some $40 million is being spent on these races (only $3.75 million was spent on the entire slate of 15 Senate seats and all 99 Assembly seats last November) and dirty tricks are likely to be flying. But the bottom line seems to be that nobody knows what might happen given the unprecedented nature of six recall elections happening at once --- in the middle of Summer. There is simply nothing to compare this to.

The one thing about which all pundits and partisans and partisan pundits seem to agree at this hour: It'll all about turnout.

That's almost true. In addition to turnout, it'll also come down to the electronic vote tabulators used across the Badger State. Most municipalities in WI allow voters to vote on hand-marked paper ballots, but most of those ballots will be tallied only by oft-failed, easily-manipulated computer op-scan systems. Additionally, to their shame, the state has absolutely no mechanism for post-election human examination of optically-scanned ballots to ensure the computers have tallied them accurately. Once the computers (made by Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia) report the supposed results, there is no double-checking of those computer tallies other than in the event of a recount...and readers of The BRAD BLOG know how well those go in the state of Wisconsin.

So we'll be watching as close as we can today, and hope that voters in WI will be doing the same, from the moment wards open at 7am CT through close at 8pm CT and then throughout the tallying of ballots after polls close inasmuch as they can. Photographs and video tapes of ballots bags and poll tapes at the wards at the end of the night will be a very good idea tonight at every polling place.

If you spot any problems or concerns you feel we should know about --- in the media or at the polls --- please feel free let us know. We'll do our best to keep an eye on comments today. In the meantime, we'll be praying for six blowouts...one way or another.

On Saturday we posted an article detailing the similarities, and apparent coordination, in misleading "Absentee Ballot Application" mailers sent out to Democratic voters by both the David Koch-founded Americans for Prosperity - Wisconsin and a mysterious group calling themselves United Sportsmen of Wisconsin.

The Americans for Prosperity mailer, sent out in Wisconsin last week in advance of tomorrow's state Senate recall election of six Republican state Senators, included instructions that absentee ballots must be submitted by August 11th --- even though the election in question is actually tomorrow, August 9th.

The PO Box described as the "Absentee Ballot Application Processing Center" on those mailers belonged to a Rightwing family group tied to the anti-abortion movement. A spokesperson for the group, as we reported, said that while they were part of a "coalition" with AFP, they claimed to have had no idea AFP was using their PO Box on the mailers until they started receiving them, and that they hadn't seen the mailer before it went out. For their part, AFP claimed the incorrect date was simply a "typo" in two districts where they had sent the mailings, and that "liberals" were making a "mountain out of a molehill" about it all. Late last week, however, in a followup mailing, the group admitted that it had gone out to "everyone" in all of the state Senate districts, rather than just the two where Democrats will face recall elections next week (as opposed to tomorrow's GOP recalls) and blamed the incorrect date on their printer.

The United Sportsmen of Wisconsin (USW) mailers, almost identical in form, font, content, and type-setting, as we showed, had no information about who had paid for the mailings on them, and instructed voters that they needed to return their absentee ballots to the elections clerk by August 4th --- even though ballots may be delivered to the Wisconsin election clerks as late as the close of polls on August 9th.

Since we ran our article over the weekend, which suggested, among other things, previously-undocumented coordination between AFP and USW, and since there was little information to be found about USW on the web, a number of readers have been digging in to try and figure out exactly who the so-called United Sporstmen of Wisconsin actually are, as have we.

And, whaddaya know, a bit of digging reveals that the group was very recently founded by one John W. Connors, a long-time staffer and director of Americans for Prosperity, a College Republican leader, and a rather prolific founder of a number of hard-right political front groups with a record of deception in recent Wisconsin elections...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Last Friday, Aug. 5, in a 15-page letter [PDF], the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asked the U.S. Department of Justice to deny pre-clearance of South Carolina's photo ID law, as signed into law by Gov. Nikki Haley (R), pursuant to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Pre-clearance must be denied if the law was enacted for a discriminatory purpose or if it has "the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color."

As the Voting Rights Act of 1965 addressed specific barriers to voting that had been enacted by the Jim Crow South, the ACLU letter, of necessity, focuses upon the disproportionate impact upon South Carolina's African-American electorate who are amongst the 178,175 registered South Carolina voters who do not possess the forms of photo identification required by the state's new polling place Photo ID restriction law. However, the ACLU's discussion of pretextual justifications for the Palmetto State's new law exposes a GOP intent to suppress the vote on the basis of class as well as race not only in South Carolina but in the spate of similar photo ID laws that are being pushed in state after state by the GOP, and supported by their paid partisan shills in the right-wing media...

No doubt by now you've heard of the deceptive absentee ballot applications mailed to Democrats in Wisconsin by David Koch's Americans for Prosperity, WI, as reported earlier this week by David Catanese at Politico.

As seen below, the mailer instructed recipients to return the application to the "Absentee Ballot Application Processing Center" by August 11th, even though the recall elections for 6 Republicans is next Tuesday, August 9th...

The wrong date on the mailing, however, was not the only problem with it. The address where the application was to be submitted is also a problem, but one that is worse than has been widely reported so far, according to some digging from a Wisconsin activist and election integrity advocate.

Moreover, a comparison to another absentee ballot application mailer from a different, supposedly unrelated, Rightwing group, suggests a coordinated effort by a number of these groups to defraud and disenfranchise voters in Wisconsin in advance of the unprecedented state Senate recall elections to be held next Tuesday...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Earlier today, Brad Friedman reported that, despite high unemployment and food stamp usage at an all-time record high, U.S. corporations were experiencing record profits.

Simultaneously, Los Angeles Times reported that Senate leaders have reached an accord to pass three more NAFTA-like "free trade" agreements (Panama, Colombia, and South Korea) when Congress returns from its August recess. The Times stated: "Proponents [e.g., the U.S. Chamber of Commerce] say the trade agreements...will pump as much as $14 billion into the U.S. economy and add more than 250,000 jobs."

The reality was better captured by Ross Perot during a 1992 Presidential Debate when he warned (video reminder below) that NAFTA would produce "a giant sucking sound of jobs headed South"...

One of the GOP's greatest new (and most cynical) propaganda successes is the invention of the absurd, misleading, inaccurate phrase "job creators" as a euphemism for corporations, or rich people, or their wealthy patrons, or whoever it refers to in reality.

But those corporations don't "create jobs." People do. When they have money to spend on things, they do. Surely, even fake "conservatives" are familiar with "Supply and Demand." It's just not politically convenient or expedient for them to mention that phrase out loud right now. People who don't have jobs don't tend to buy much. If they have jobs, those people become job creators because they buy stuff.

That the rich, corporate fat cats who now run the country (instead of "we, the people" as was formally the case --- in theory) are not "job creators" is underscored plainly by these two recent news items:

1) Despite nearly unprecedented unemployment numbers, profits for U.S. corporations were at an all-time record high in 2010. Fancy that. And they are now on pace to break that record in 2011.

2) Despite profits for U.S. corporations at record highs, for the American people, the real "job creators," food stamp usage is now also at an all-time record high...

See any problems there? And contradictions between items 1 and 2?

"Job creators" my ass.

On Tuesday, we highlighted some of the many failures of e-voting systems in the Jackson, Mississippi (Hinds County), metropolitan area during their statewide primary election that day. Apparently enough systems failed, touch-screen systems that simply malfunctioned and refused to allow votes to be cast, names missing from electronic "ballots," etc., that the Clarion-Ledger quoted a senior Democratic party official yesterday offering this remarkable statement:

What? Verify an election before announcing results?! Candidates refusing to concede before that's done?! And how exactly will they be able to "verify" those numbers from 100% unverifiable electronic voting systems? My goodness. It's anarchy in Mississippi!...

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On my Pacifica Radio show on KPFK in Los Angeles today, I interviewed Karen Bernal, chair of the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party (CDP) on their new resolution in support of a primary challenge to President Obama. [Audio posted below.]

My article on the matter (which includes the full text of the resolution), was posted earlier today here.

I was struck during my conversation this afternoon with Bernal when she mentioned the CDP had actually considered "punishment" for the caucus for, apparently, even daring to suggest such a challenge to Obama, much less for overwhelmingly passing a resolution in favor it by some 75 of their members. While attacking the party's nominee might be in violation of the party's rules, the fact is, to my knowledge, the DNC has yet to nominate a candidate for the 2012 Presidential election.

It seems the CDP might do well to remember what the "D" stands for in their name.

Since today's interview, the San Francisco Chronicle's Joe Garofoli has posted a column on the matter, including some comments from Bernal and, of more note here, some, uh, colorful comments about the Progressive Caucus resolution and the idea of a primary against the President, by California Democratic Party chair John Burton. It's worth noting, as Garofoli did, that Burton supported the primary challenge against President Jimmy Carter by Sen. Ted Kennedy back in 1980. He's singing a different tune now. Of course, Kennedy didn't win that primary challenge, Carter won the re-nomination and he ended up losing in a landslide to Reagan --- for whatever that comparison may be worth. (Not too much, in my humble opinion.)

Also, progressive author and journalist David Swanson sent me a link to this new website, StopHoping.org, at which you can vote on whether Obama should be primaried and, if so, by whom.

And, a quick note of correction, during the show I accidentally mischaracterized Ernie Canning's piece last Friday calling for a primary challenge to Obama. His correction to my mistatement, posted in comments here, reads:

My apologies for that error. Enjoy the show!...

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 28 mins]...

[NOTE: My radio interview today with Karen Bernal, head of the CA Democratic Party's Progressive Caucus, on my KPFK/Pacifica show, about the groups' resolution in support of a Democratic primary challenge to Obama, as detailed below --- and the state party's troubling reaction to it --- is now posted here. - BF]

No sooner did our own Ernie Canning call for a Eugene McCarthy-like progressive Democratic primary challenge to President Barack Obama last Friday afternoon, than Current's Countdown featured an interview with Ralph Nader to discuss exactly that on Friday night...

Nader argued that without a primary challenge and vigorous debate on issues important to the Democratic base, Obama would "be able, for another four years, should he win, which is likely, to turn his back on the liberal progressive base and become Obama/Bush Administration 2. Just look at all the similarities with the Bush Administration."

Host David Shuster challenged Nader by suggesting that "a primary challenge to President Obama would hurt him, cause fissures in the democratic party and possibly impede the party efforts in the the general election."

"Well, it's just the reverse," Nader countered. "It will challenge him, bring the best out of him and there's nothing worse for a candidate in terms of lessening the enthusiastic level for him than to go through an unchallenged routine of repetitious primaries."

The former Green and then independent Presidential candidate discussed a soon-to-emerge, campaign by Democratic progressives to organize an initiative in the coming days "not designed to defeat [Obama], in the Democratic Primary, but designed to generate a robust debate, and put the liberal progressive issues on domestic policies, including job production and foreign and military policy, on the national Presidential agenda in 2012."

He said that without such a challenge, Obama would be allowed to continue serving little more than just "the corporate warlords and corporate barons of Wall Street."

By the way, in an article last January, Canning called on Nader himself to register as a Democrat and consider exactly such a primary challenge to Obama.

Nader is not the only high profile figure to discuss the possibility of a primary challenge to the President. Vermont's extremely popular Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said on Thom Hartmann's radio show the Friday before last that he thought "it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition."

Then, over this past weekend, as word of the debt ceiling "deal" brokered between Obama and the Republicans, featuring historic spending cuts but no increases in revenue, leaked out, word came in that some 75 Progressive Caucus members of the California Democratic Party (CDP) had passed a controversial resolution in support of, you guessed it, a Democratic primary challenge to Barack Obama.

According to a statement posted with their resolution at WarisaCrime.org: "Gathering in Anaheim during an Executive Board meeting of the CDP, the group overwhelmingly endorsed the resolution following a discussion on the importance of not only challenging the far-right agenda of unmitigated corporate greed but also the current administration's willingness to slash 650-billion dollars from Social Security and Medicare."

That resolution, passed by the Progressive Caucus of the CDP follows in full below...

It's Primary Election Day in Mississippi and so, in a preview of next year's nightmare to come, a quick look at the early reports of voting machine problems coming out of the Jackson metro-area as reported by the Clarion Ledger who, as is required by law for MSM reporting on such things, refers to the reported voting machine failures as little more than "technical glitches." That, even in one case where 3 out of the 4 voting machines in use at a single precinct had failed. Good thing they had paper ballots on hand --- and that this wasn't a Presidential election!

So here's a quick roundup, from the Clarion-Ledger's running blog earlier this morning, of some of the technical "glitches", "hiccups", "snags" and "snafus" reported before noon near Jackson where, unless they break down, fail, won't start up, have the wrong names on the "ballots" or feature other problems that keep voters from being able to cast their vote on anything but a verifiable paper ballot, they use 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting machines.

Oh, and the Dept. of Justice is deploying monitors to 11 counties in the state today for some reason...

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And a house divided is united, ever so briefly, as Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) made a surprise appearance tonight during the U.S. House vote on the contentious debt ceiling agreement. The dramatic appearance on the floor to cast her vote in favor, was her first since being shot in the head in Tucson on January 8th. The chamber erupted into applause.

"I had to be here for this vote," she said in a statement. "I could not take the chance that my absence could crash our economy."

Giffords voted against raising the ceiling previously, in December of 2009 and February of 2010, but voted in favor of it today, as her staff noted that "this vote was substantially different, with the strength of the U.S. economy hanging in the balance."

The measure passed in the House following Giffords' appearance, by a vote of 269 to 161, with most of the 74-person Progressive Caucus, the largest in the House, voting against it. Democrats ultimately split their vote 95 to 95 on the controversial bill brokered by President Obama and Republicans, featuring the largest spending cut in the nation's history. GOP members voted overwhelmingly in favor of passage, 176 to 66.

The U.S. Senate is scheduled to take up the bill tomorrow, prior to the August 2 deadline when the U.S. Government is said to be no longer able to pay all of it's obligations unless the debt ceiling is raised. Both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have already expressed their support.

UPDATE 8/2/11, 11:03am PT: Debt ceiling agreement has passed in U.S. Senate by a 74 to 26 margin. 19 Republicans and 7 Democrats voted against it. The President signed the bill, promising some $2 trillion in spending cuts, just moments ago, privately in the Oval Office. Mission Accomplished.

Please don't say we didn't try to warn you. We even caught a bit of flak from folks on the "Left" and were quoted by Brit Hume on Fox "News" for our comments at the time.

Back on April 1, 2007 --- in what wasn't an April Fools Day joke, unfortunately --- The BRAD BLOG highlighted pretty much everything you needed to know about Barack Obama. In the middle of a tense debate over a military spending bill passed by Democrats and threatened with a veto by George W. Bush since it included a requirement for the President to set timelines for a withdraw from Iraq, Obama told AP that even if Bush vetoed the bill, Senate Democrats would simply send back another bill that didn't include the timeline requirement.

In short, he sold out his own caucus by showing their hand and thus paved the way for Bush to call their bluff with a veto without consequence. That's exactly what Bush did.

As we reported at the time...

Yes, President Obama has been forced to deal with an unprecedented extremist GOP willing to use terrorists tactics to get their way, creating phony "hostage crises" time and again --- in the latest episode putting a gun to the head of the world economy. But negotiating with terrorists only ensures the likelihood of the bad guys taking another hostage in the future, which the Republicans have repeatedly done, and will continue to do. Capitulating to them, as he has now done time and again, is inexcusable.

Following whatever the resolve may be of this phony debt "crisis" created by the Republicans, the FY 2012 budget debate will very quickly begin and we're likely to see the very same tactics and Republican victory resolution played out all over again. (Bookmark this post for use in October, when the FY '12 year begins and the GOP will be staging another hostage crisis.)

What was clear to us as long ago as 2007 was that Obama was the worst. negotiator. ever. His time in office to date has done nothing to assuage us of that initial assessment, as he has negotiated with himself and capitulated to terror tactics again and again, acceding to virtually every demand of the hostage takers by the end.

From giving away the store with un-stimulating tax cuts in a much-smaller-than-needed stimulus package, to giving up away the public option (much less single payer) right off the bat in the health care reform bill, to capitulating on extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich earlier this year, and now accepting a "bargain" which tosses out everything he had formerly promised to be a "bottom line" for any debt ceiling deal, the President has done almost precisely as he projected he would 4 years ago when we pointed it out, so that we could "get a sense of how the next president will make decisions."

If you didn't notice then, please don't blame us. We tried to tell you.

On the wonky details of the President's latest capitulation...For one of the best critiques that we've seen to date, on the dangers posed to jobs and the economy by the current Dems-give-all-GOP-gives-nothing "deal," please see Krugman, who charges "The President Surrenders." He offers an argument that his "deal" will make things much worse, rather than better, both economically and politically. He says that "we're witnessing here...a catastrophe on multiple levels"...

Matthew Vadum will lie about anything he needs to in order to collect his wingnut welfare paychecks apparently. American values such as democracy be damned. It's partisan politics (and paychecks) at all costs.

Vadum has, of late, taken over from the disgraced Bush/Cheney general counsel turned fake "voting rights advocate" Thor Hearne of the fake "American Center for Voting Rights" (ACVR), and the disgraced liar John Fund of the Wall Street Journal as the moment's GOP master of media misinformation meant to confuse the public about polling place Photo ID restriction laws passed by the GOP in statehouses around the country over the past few months in order to suppress the legal Democratic-leaning vote in advance of 2012.

Like Hearne and Fund before him, he's very good at his job. He's very aggressive. And there is little he is unwilling to blatantly, if cleverly, lie about to fool his gullible constituency.

Vadum's latest misinformative article, as published by Tucker Carlson's The Daily Caller and, predictably, echoed around the intellectually dishonest and incurious wingnut blogosphere last week, picks up where his recently published propaganda book about ACORN leaves off.

That book, which he was kind enough to send us a copy of recently, is pitched on its cover and its publicity sheet as an exposé uncovering the truth behind the former four-decade old community organization who he describes as "Ballot Box Stuffers," "Urban Terrorists," and "Gangsters."

That his silly book fails to detail even a single ballot box "stuffed" by ACORN is little surprise. There exists no actual evidence, after all, of any illegal vote ever having been cast by any voter who was improperly registered by an ACORN worker. But this is all politics as usual to partisans like Vadum. So preposterous propaganda meant to directly undermine American democracy is merely all in a days work for dudes like him.

The same disingenuous "voter fraud" sleight-of-hand used in his book is once again recycled in his latest "news" article. Like his book, the article is meant to do little more than dishonestly reinforce support for reprehensible voter suppression laws that offer an advantage to Republicans at the ballot box. As Vadum knows, it's far easier for Republicans to "win" elections by keeping their opposition from being able to cast their legal votes --- and certainly easier than risking jail time by gaming electronic voting systems --- than it would be to actually garner popular support for their actual agenda. That's the game for which Vadum gets paid.

He's a rather silly man, and its child's play, naturally, to demonstrate, using his own words --- as we've been doing similarly for years with now-disgraced 'voter fraud' fraudsters like Hearne and Fund --- how Vadum knowingly lies to his constituency. But we guess it's necessary to do it one more time here with Vadum, if only to place it on the Internet record to help those who don't know about him or his pernicious scam, and how it's meant to mislead otherwise good folks with clever "voter fraud" rhetoric that represents the problem as something far different than what it actually is....