{Blogged by Brad, yes, still on the road...}

It was a joy to be in-studio yesterday evening with Peter B. Collins up here in Monterey on KRXA 540am. An honest-to-goodness Progressive radio station not owned by a corporate monolith! In fact, I was honored to have been greeted, upon my arrival, by Station Manager and co-owner Hal Ginsberg before spending an hour on-air with Peter, the other co-owner and Program Director and host of their afternoon show drive-time show.

They're new on the airwaves out here, and a very welcome addition. Hopefully more folks will buy up more stations and program them similarly to help give the truth a chance of getting out where the Corporate-run Media are simply failing America.

And I don't say all of that merely because they're interested in carrying The BRAD SHOW on KRXA. (Though such things never hurt!

If you're interested, here's the hour [MP3] I spent yesterday with Peter on air. Includes at least one wingnut caller! Enjoy!

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

According to Arizona Citizens for Fair Elections:

This looks like good news. And there's more at the Arizona Citizens for Fair Elections website.

Guest blogged by David Edwards

Guest blogged by John Gideon of Voters Unite dot Org

Soon after the release of the much awaited Baker-Carter Report, and after the immediate, loud, and overwhelmingly negative response from voting activists, bloggers, some MSM, and even some members of the Baker-Carter Commission, the reactionaries on the far right have finally let their opinion be known.

In a clear attempt to bolster sagging public opinion on some of the Baker-Carter Report's 87 points, Phyllis Schlafly has joined the fray with a new column called Thanks, Jimmy Carter.

Ms. Schlafly lauds the commission for including a verifiable paper trail as a solution. Actually, Ms. Schlafly is wrong. The commission report suggested that a voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) should be provided. A VVPAT is a voter verified paper ballot combined with a random, robust audit using those ballots. This is a far-cry from Ms. Schlafly's 'verifiable paper trail'.

But it seems the whole reason for Ms. Schlafly's diatribe is really to bolster the conservative agenda item that would require a voter ID before anyone can vote. On the way to her goal, Ms. Schlafly took the opportunity to sling mud at Tom Daschle, who was a dissenting voice on the panel with regards to the voter ID issue. Ms. Schlafly, of course, didn't mention that Mr. Daschle was joined in his dissent by fellow commissioners Raul Yzaguirre and Spencer Overton.

Ms. Schlafly says:

She fails to quote directly from the report where it says:

In fact, some commissioners have called this "issue" a solution in search of a problem.

In a fit of obfuscation, Ms. Schlafly says that 24 states require voters to prove their identity at the polls and 12 other states are considering it. She forgets to mention that voter registration cards, driver's licenses, utility bills, and library cards are all acceptable identification in most of those 24 states.

In what seems to be a page from the "conservative reactionary handbook", Ms. Schlafly proceeds to scare the reader with stories of far-right politicians who only lost because hundreds of illegal aliens somehow voted against them. She forgets that Bob Dornan was a loud-mouthed bully that no one liked, especially his constituents.

Ms. Schlafly seems to forget that the GOP is supposed to be small-government and balance the budget. Voter ID is another big government proposal that will take someone to oversee it (a position for a Bush cronie) and may cost over $4 billion. The state of Georgia wants to charge $30 per voter ID card. There are over 142 million registered voters in the United States.

Ms. Schlafly has also decided to ignore the fact that not everyone has a photo ID and not everyone can get a photo ID. Not everyone drives or has a drivers license; certainly not the poor, disabled, or elderly. Not everyone even knows where to go to get a birth certificate to prove they are an American citizen. I guess Ms. Schlafly would like to just forget about the people in the Gulf States?

So let's be honest about all of this. Our elections are not controlled by illegal aliens whose only wish is to defeat conservative candidates. The present identification requirements are just fine, thank you. Give the states a chance to institute the Help America Vote Act state-wide registration data bases and clean those lists of felons and dead voters and those who have moved away. Let's give Carter and Baker a pat on the back and tell them both, "Nice try, guys, but we can take it from here". After all, it is our democracy and our voting system. It certainly does not belong to Ms. Schlafly or her ilk and it does not belong to either Jimmy Carter or James Baker.

{Blogged by Brad on the road...}

Last week, The BRAD BLOG reported that one of the co-founders of the self-described "non-partisan" group calling themselves the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), was "boning up on his non-partisan creds" by being employed by the White House to sell George W. Bush's Harriet Miers nomination to the American press and public.

This week, the great "non-partisan" voting rights champion, Jim Dyke, has been promoted according to a report from TIME magazine filed last week. His new job will be to "take up the slack" for Steve Schmidt, "counselor to Vice President Cheney and one of the White House's most aggressive strategists."

Schmidt is suddenly heading to Iraq for the next month, where he will, according to a report today by RAW STORY, be unavailable to take any questions regarding the mounting charges that sources within Cheney's office may have been at the heart of the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Dyke will undoubtedly remain as "non-partisan" in his new job with Dick Cheney, as he was in his previous position as press spokesperson for ACVR.

Dyke was RNC Communications Director for years, before becoming "non-partisan" enough to join with the "non-partisan" Mark F. "Thor" Hearne (National General Counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc.) to found the new tax-exempt, "non-partisan" "Voting Rights" organization.

As BRAD BLOG reported some months ago, the Internet domain registration for ACVR claims to be located somewhere in Dallas, TX, despite Hearne's residence in St. Louis, Missouri, and Dyke's in South Carolina (when he's not working out of the White House). At the time of initial investigation, Dyke reported to us that the Dallas TX address given for ACVR was that of the company who created their website. He had forgotten the name of the company, despite the website having been created just days before our interview with him.

Why precisely, Dallas, TX, is given as the location of ACVR remains somewhat of a mystery. Along with who funds this shadowy organization of cynical democracy-haters. Our earlier report on their location, at least, was able to unearth a photograph of ACVR's main office, which is undoubtedly populated by very very tiny "non-partisan" Republicans:

Amongst ACVR's "non-partisan" work has been testifying before a U.S. House Administrative hearing, led by Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) on Election Irregularities in Ohio during the November '04 Presidential Election. At that hearing, held three business days after ACVR appeared for the first time on the Internet, Hearne testified to being a "long time voting rights advocate." He apparently forgot to mention his ties to Bush/Cheney '04 Inc.

ACVR was the only "voting rights" group called to testify at those hearings. As well, they sat on the Advisory Panel, and helped form the ill-fated Baker/Carter National Election Reform Commission. Recently, the ACVR released a "non-partisan" report entitled: "Democrat operatives far more involved in voter intimidation and suppression in 2004 than Republicans."

You can read that report, along with their other "non-partisan", tax-payer subsidized news and activities at their website. It's the one with Fox News' Tony Snow currently smiling on the front page.

For more information on the "non-partisan" tax-exempt ACVR scam and the snakeoil salesmen who invented it, Bush/Cheney '04 National General Counsel Mark F. "Thor" Hearne and RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke, please see BRAD BLOG's full Special Coverage of the "American Center for Voting Rights" at https://BradBlog.com/ACVR.

Guest blogged by David Edwards

Newsday and CNN are reporting that the highly publicized recent subway terror threats in New York were, in fact, a hoax:

CNN Video in Windows Media format...
CNN Video in QuickTime format...

The additional security measures in New York came Friday only hours after President Bush gave a speech which promoted increased terror fears. Police even shut down parts of the subway due to a suspicious unattended Pepsi bottle.

Across the country, other terror threats alarmed citizens. On Friday, the Washington Monument was evacuated due to a bomb threat. A Rolling Stones concert in Virginia was also temporarily interrupted due to another bomb threat the same day.

MSNBC's Countdown plans to investigate the correlation between politics and terror threats on Wednesday night's show. Last night, Countdown's host, Keith Olbermann noted:

Special BRAD BLOG / Velvet Revolution coverage
of the Sep 24-26 Rally in D.C.
Guest blogged by Katrina Wilcox

So long fellow warriors … these last few photos conclude our coverage of the DC rally. It was a privilege and pleasure to share our first protest experience with each of you. It is our sincerest hope that next time we march on Washington each of you will be there to add your voice to ours and the rest of the millions that show up to demand our country back. Our special thanks goes out to Brad for his suggestion that we guest blog our trip, to Winter Patriot and David for their expert help, and to Chris, Charles, Mark, Larisa, Brad, and Stan for adding their voices to our coverage.

As difficult as a leaderless revolution is to get started, once begun it is impossible to stop. There is no leader to destroy through lies, propaganda, or bullets. We are a Rainbow River made up of millions of droplets all flowing towards a common goal. A river that will always flow over or around whatever is put in the way to stop it.

Always remember that en masse we are invincible. Once we all realize that … swirl the sound of that around in our brains and cling to it with all of our collective stubbornness and strength - we will have won. In that one frozen instant of shared realization … we will have won …

(more photos in the "entire story"... )

{Blogged by Brad from the long --- very long --- and winding --- very winding --- road.}

It was just a few weeks ago that I was exposed as being a "CIA Internet Fake" --- whatever that meant --- by the nutcase Fintan Dunne over at BreakForNews.com. Mr. Dunne still seems to have a problem contacting me, or at least writing me back upon my inquiry to ask him "What the hell are you smokin', son? And can I get some?!"

But I digress. For now comes the news that I'm actually a Zionist disinformation artist secretly taking over the anti-war movement in order to...do...something. In fact, I've read the article twice, and I still can't really tell what I'm actually supposed to be doing in my new secret role, because I can't make much sense out of the article written by Eric Hufschmid. (Seriously, can't these conspiracy theory whack-jobs at least try to make some sense when making these cases?) Other than that, all I can figure is that it's Hufschmid who might well be the disinfo artist he's accusing everyone else in the world to be, and that he seems to hate Jews and he seems to be a Republican (or at least hate anybody who ever supported a Democrat...I guess...good luck if you can make any more sense of it than I).

Anyway, if you can get through his incredibly long and confusing report, you'll see that near the end, I am, along with Velvet Revolution, part of the great big super-secret scam to control the world!

Now if I could just figure out what the great big super-secret scam is, and when I get paid for it, we'll all be in great shape!

Of course, as with the earlier shocking exposé revealing my secret work for the CIA, and my subsequent ridicule of the notion, my similar ridicule of...whatever Hufschmid's premise is...would be exactly what I would do if he really was on to something! I'd try and discredit him with an article just like this one so that the horrible truth revealed via his cunning investigation would be laughed at and subsequently ignored!

So, once again, you --- dear BRAD BLOG reader --- don't know what to believe any more do ya?! And, of course, that's just what us Super-Secret Anti-War Zionist Internet CIA Fakes hope!

Phew...Hopefully, my evil agenda is now safe once again!

Man, this shit is exhausting.

Guest blogged by David Edwards

I found myself agreeing with Robert Bork on several of his arguments (ie spending, deficit) against bush. I feel so dirty.

Bork says that conservatives consider the nomination of Miers to be "the final straw" for the support of Bush.

Here's the video:

Streaming video in Real Media format...
Video in Windows Media format...

Guest blogged by David Edwards

It has long been the goal of the Republican Party to push the courts to the right by stacking them with radical conservatives. As the right-wing has become fractured over Bush's Miers nomination to the Supreme Court, conservative media sources have been a force in speaking out against the nomination.

The conservative outrage against Bush's nomination has further exposed the right-wing agenda of media sources. As Arianna Huffington points out, Meet the Press featured a debate between two conservatives on this Sunday's show as if right-wing opinions were all that matters with regard to the Miers nomination. Arianna explains:

During this weeks edition of Fox's Fox News Watch, conservative pundit Cal Thomas notes how conservative media were part of the "conservative team" working on a Supreme Court agenda. Fox employee, Jim Pinkerton, added that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are aligned as part of that "conservative team".

News Hounds sums it up like this:

Watch the video of Fox News pundits admitting their network's bias towards the conservative agenda... Windows Media format or Quicktime format.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Hi again. Brad's not here. It's just me, Winter Patriot, your lowly and nearly frozen concierge. I thought you might like a quick newsy update, or at least a fairly simple post to start your day. So, to press ... or to URL ... or something

Listen: Brad's still on the road. We've heard from him several times, always from undisclosed locations, [?!] since he left Portland and the National Summit To Save Our Elections. He says he'll be back soon.

How soon? Only a fool would hazard a guess. Maybe Wednesday.

In the meantime, as regular BRAD BLOG readers well know, the lunatics have recently taken a more active role in running the asylum. It started as a triumvirate --- yours truly working very quietly behind the scenes along with the now not so secret weapon David Edwards and the redoubtable Joseph Cannon. But lately we've also heard many other voices, including those of Stan Goff, Katrina Wilcox, and John Gideon. Personally, I've remained very quiet lately, building up a head of steam, it appears, before finally erupting Sunday morning in a blaze of rambling and disjointed fury which I am still trying to disassemble.

Quite a mixed bag, to say the least, and there's more where that came from. We might hear from Brad sooner than I think. He might even be back sooner. And I might be very bloggy in the near future. Or I might go very quiet again, like I have been lately. There's no way to tell. Brad will definitely be back in the chair soon --- but clearly The BRAD BLOG will never be the same again.

In case you missed it, I want to remind you that the audio portion of last Saturday's BRAD SHOW is now available in the archives. Click here to go straight to the good stuff.

We haven't had an open thread in a while and we probably need one. So please feel free...

Just click the bottom right hand corner of this post ... right there ===>

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

UPDATE: Your lowly and nearly frozen blogger has added heavily to the original text of this post, and in so doing has realized that it was probably posted too soon. Apologizes to those who were confused and I hope the series of updates inserted here will help. And apologies to first time-readers of this text as well. if you think this is a mess, you should see what it looks like in here [points to own head].

Disaster everywhere.

I've been reading the BBC and I'm seeing this:

Quake crisis overwhelms Pakistan

Guest blogged by Joseph Cannon

Did Rove lie to Bush?

The AP has just reported that, back in the fall of 2003, Rove denied to Bush that he (Rove) had any connection to outing Joseph Wilson's wife. So far, we don't know just who gave the Grand Jury that piece of information.

We now know, of course, that Rove discussed the matter with Matt Cooper. So Rove's report to Bush was fraudulent. Unless...unless someone has lied to the Grand Jury in order to cover W's farthole.

Or was W covering his own farthole?

From an under-appreciated piece by Murray Waas, which the AP story has now largely confirmed:

I suspect this means Waas got word from Bush's counsel. (Prosecution lawyers aren't allowed to talk to the press about Grand Jury proceedings, but witnesses --- and their lawyers --- may do so if they wish.)

Did Rove lie to the FBI?

More from Murray Waas:

Lying to the FBI...? Isn't that how Martha Stewart ended up in the slammer?

The Great Judy:

Judith Miller just now discovered notes of a June, 2003 meeting she had with Libby. We should presume that these notes are relevant to the outing of Valerie Plame/Wilson.

The chronology has suddenly become very strange --- June, 2003 was before Wilson publicly criticized the administration.

My take on this won't be popular.

I've hinted at it in previous posts: I think the neocon cabal had reason to expect Wilson to "confirm" the Niger forgeries. For some reason, they trusted him to go along with their plans --- and they felt double-crossed when he did not. So they cobbled together a "get Wilson" strategy even before he published his piece.

I admire Wilson, but I suspect that he has not told all.

What did the President know and when did he know it?

In light of all of the above, the following grab from Jason Leopold's latest column on The Huffington Post has profound implications:

Presuming that this evidence holds up: Does this mean that the "Rove-denied-it-to-Bush" testimony (discussed above) was fraudulent? Lying to a Grand Jury can get one impeached --- and imprisoned.

{Blogged by Brad on the road...}

The fight for democracy in America --- even as we still scratch our head with continued wonder that a "pro-democracy" movement is actually necessary in the United States of America in 2005 --- continues to be a difficult one. But the fight is well worth it. Even as our victories tend to come in small, but continually accruing pieces.

We're not supposed to be talking about this issue at all, 11 months after November 2nd, 2004...and yet more and more are doing so every day. The Mainstream Corporate Media may not get it yet. But the ranks of great patriots who give a damn about their country continues to burgeon as the noise in favor of an accountable democracy increases every day due to the folks like the good readers of The BRAD BLOG who take their civic duty to heart.

Here are just a few of the latest positive signs in the continuing fight for a free, fair, verifiable and transparent democracy that many would prefer we simply didn't even discuss. We will continue to do so nonetheless. The burden is well worth carrying. The rewards for doing so are well worth the effort.

Debra LoGuercio, editor of Winters Express and columnist in Daily Republic and elsewhere, makes it a hat trick with her third column in as many weeks on our tenuous Electoral System. She was haunted by the siren sounded by our first article on the Diebold insider we dubbed DIEB-THROAT, who alerted us to the Dept. of Homeland Security website where a Cyber Alert was issued last year prior to the election about the vulnerability to hackers in Diebold's central tabulator software. That vulnerability has, by Diebold's own admission, never been addressed.

In her latest column titled "E-voting fraud is an American issue" LoGuercio joins the ranks of those of us who continue to be stunned at the remarkable indifference by the Mainstream Corporate Media to what DIEB-THROAT refered to as "one of the greatest threats democracy has ever known":

Again, read her full column to find out about her response from AP and NBC affiliates when she contacted them about all of this, and see if you can find a way to help swim together with her efforts. It's well worth it, and the support means the world to folks like us who go out on a limb on these matters...even when doing so may be neither popular nor the easiest thing to do.

In the meantime, there are signs that more and more folks are taking notice of what is going on and walking out on that limb as well. C-NET's News.com ran an article yesterday by Declan McCullah headlined "E-voting hobbled by security concerns".

The first couple of grafs:

The article covers both the ongoing concerns, and the internal debates --- even amongst election reformers --- about how and when to produce and count paper ballots...or "receipts" as they are regrettably becoming known in many circles.

On the point of the difference between reformers on these issues, I hope to produce a one-page "Declaration of Democracy" in the next couple of weeks, a page on which we worked diligently at the Portland Election Reform summit. I believe we can bridge the differences between reformers on these matters to get everyone on the same page. I've been working hard on that effort personally behind the scenes, and hope to have something to show for it in the next couple of weeks. Just by way of a heads-up...So that perhaps we may be able to "swim together" on these issues.

A second article from News.com published yesterday over at ZDNet covers a similar discussion on the problems with E-Voting vulnerability and the need to open the software for inspection:

And finally, there it was yesterday...smack dab in the middle of The New York Times: a full-page ad that asks the the too-obvious questions, "Would you trust a bank that refused to issue ATM receipts? Will you trust your democracy to voting machines without them?"

The ad calls for support of Rep. Rush Holt's (D-NJ) H.R. 550 "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005" which we generally support as a good first step towards accountability. (You can send your words of support as well to your folks in congress quickly by using Velvet Revolution's easy Email generator here.)

Here's the very welcome ad, signed by many election reformers. Amongst them, our friend the heroic Robert Koehler (listen to our interview with Koehler at the Portland Summit as broadcast on The BRAD SHOW by clicking here and selecting HOUR 3.)

To read the full text of the ad in PDF format, click it, or click here.

Let's all keep swimming...together...

If you need some added inspiration to keep up the fight for democracy, we'll strongly recommend this great song [mp3], courtesy of Victoria Parks. "It's well worth fighting for..."

Guest blogged by David Edwards

Republican House members DeLay, Barton, Hastert and Blunt held the vote open on a controversial energy bill until they were able twist enough arms for the bill to pass.

Although only 5 minutes are allotted for voting, Republicans refused to close the voting for 40 minutes until enough votes had switched to pass the energy bill which will gut environmental standards in favor of building more oil refineries.

Video in Windows Media format...
Video in QuickTime format...

As reported by Reuters:

UPDATE: Jesse from Stakeholder has more, including this quote from Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-NY):

FURTHER UPDATE: ThinkProgress has more, including the C-SPAN version of the video...