The Corporate Mainstream Media may not give a damn about our democracy. Neither might the bulk of our politicians on both the Left and Right side of the aisle. But clearly the citizens do, and even one rightwing blogger who has recently seen at least some of the light...

The response to our article on the "staggeringly impossible" results of last week's election in Ohio on several Election Reform initiatives which would have struck deep into the heart of far-right Republican Ohio Sec. of State J. Kenneth Blackwell has been notable to say the least.

We felt the report was notable enough that we decided to cross-post it both at BRAD BLOG and at HuffPo, where --- though it was never added to the front page as a "featured blog" --- it has already received an extraordinary 93 comments as of this posting.

To give you an idea of what that story documented, here are the numbers from just one of the four Election Reform initiatives which all ended up failing by numbers which defy reasonable explanation when compared to the historically accurate Columbus Dispatch poll, completed and published just days before the Election in the Buckeye state:

ISSUE 3 (Revise campaign contribution limits)
PRE-POLLING: 61% Yes, 25% No, 14% Undecided
FINAL RESULT: 33% Yes, 66% No

The results on that issue alone was so far askew that it was enough to give the usually dubious Mark Blumenthal of Mystery Pollster pause enough to comment, "These results had MP seriously wondering whether the pollsters or election officials had mistakenly transposed 'yes' and 'no' in their tables."

See the original post for a comparison of Polling vs Final Results for all of the initatives, but suffice to say while the one above was the most inexplicably out-of-whack, the others, with the exception of Issue 1 --- which was the only one supported by Ohio's Republican Governor and on which the Dispatch poll was virtually right on the money on "Yes" voters --- all of the initiative Final Results bring the entire election machinery in Ohio once again under deservedly fresh scrutiny.

(We'll remind you that Ohio's results in the '04 Presidential Election squeeker, where just 6 votes for Kerry instead of Bush at each precinct would have changed the entire result for the nation. And also that the results from that election remain completely suspect, largely uncounted, and never recounted according to state law even while several elections officials have either been indicted or remain under investigation for their role in gaming that fiasco...the one in the state which gave Bush enough electoral votes to claim the Presidency).

The original report we filed, discussed an article by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman of the Free Press in Columbus where they've been detailing an extraordinary amount of the election chicanery and "irregularities" under the iron-fisted rule of Blackwell, the Ohio elections arbiter and Bush/Cheney '04 Co-Chair in a state which is currently a snakepit of Republican machinery and out-and-out corruption.

Amongst the comments at both BRAD BLOG and HuffPo where the blog item was posted, a few, as expected, have knee-jerked that it must have been the Columbus Dispatch polling that was wrong, rather than the Final Results reported by the State which added brand-spankin' new, and wholly unaccountable, unrecountable, untransparent, and undemocratic Electronic Voting Machines for the first time in this election to 44 of its 88 counties. Machines which use secret software on which voters are asked to trust --- but not verify --- that their votes will be recorded accurately...or at all.

In addition to those 44 counties (41 of them using the same machines by Diebold, Inc. that the Republican Sec. of State in California recently decertified for their 20% failure rate), several other counties already use Electronic Voting Machines, and nearly all of them use electronic tabulating machines of one brand or another to count those votes.

We spoke yesterday to Fitrakis about the Dispatch poll's "historic accuracy" (which he described as "legendary" in our phone call) and about the various wingnuts who predictably presume the polling, instead of the election results, were wrong...

Guest blogged by David Edwards

Representative John Murtha (D-PA), a Vietnam veteran, is known for support of the Pentagon and the Iraq war. Today, he called for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

Murtha is the top Democrat on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. He explained that the American people are ahead of congress on this issue. Murtha choked back tears as he explained the failures of the Iraq war that lead him to call for the immediate withdrawal of troops.

AP reports on Murtha's speech:

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UPDATE: Stakeholder has the full text transcript of Murtha's speech, along with the text of his resolution. Right here...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

If it feels like 1984, that's because it is. We're 21 years late but we're there all the same. The Ministry of Information is busy changing our past. Fiction has become the news. And Truth has become an enemy of the state.

Whether you measure by severity or frequency, it's clear that the falsification of our national history has recently reached an all-time high. Bush's declaration that we don't torture was a clear sign that the truth is definitely behind us now, and his assertion that his opponents are rewriting history raises the level of absurdity to a level one would prefer to call unimaginable.

The propaganda that has been catapulted lately --- like all good propaganda --- contains almost enough truth to make it somewhat slightly plausible. For example, the CIA has from time to time acted as a rogue agency, Congress did vote to grant Bush the power to do something to Iraq; and Bush may have believed some of what he was saying about Iraq before he started the war. So the lies are not totally false, and we can't dismiss them entirely. We have to pick them apart very carefully, in order to show that, even though said claims do contain an occasional nugget of half-truth, the claims themselves are overwhelming false.

It's hard work!

And in the meantime, like all good propagandists, the White House Spin Machine has a vast assortment of Spinnerettes at its disposal. [And make no mistake, the Spinnerettes are definitely disposable!] The Spinnerettes keep repeating the lies, over and over and over, generating an ocean of falsehood that comes at us in wave after wave after wave, until most of us must struggle to discern what is true and what is false.

Of course the wise men among us have no such trouble. So it's always a good idea to read Robert Parry, and his newest column, in my opinion, is one of his best.

Here's a sample [with emphasis added]:

Kaboom! Game, set and match!

What's that? You want another game?

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

While Ohio SoS Ken Blackwell characterizes last weeks election as a success the dirty truth is just now coming out. In Lucas County, for instance, the election board's call logs for the Nov. 8 election, reviewed yesterday by The Toledo Blade, show that paid poll volunteers made more than 180 requests for help. Many of the calls involved broken machines. Does that sound like a success Mr. Blackwell? In Detroit, the city elections director suspects there are problems with their Nov. 2 vote count and she wants to do a 5% hand recount. The state is keeping her from doing that....

RAW STORY scoops Woodward on Woodward scoop by revealing what Woodward wouldn't.

The just posted story at RAW reports that "attorneys close to the investigation and intelligence officials" identified National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley as having revealed Valerie Plame/Wilson as a "CIA analyst" to WaPo's Bob Woodward.

Hadley's leak to the reporter who gained fame via his investigative work with Carl Bernstein on the Watergate scandal, would have occured prior to any other known leaks to journalists on the matter, and prior even to Joe Wilson's now-infamous NY Times Op/Ed which was critical of the Bush Administration's assertion that Saddam had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger.

They've already come under some harsh criticism (also here and here) from the left for their far-right leaning Editorial Board and unbalanced collection of blogs, but the group previously known as Pajamas Media has opened for business-proper today under the name "Open Source Media". Discredited former NY Times "journalist" Judith Miller was the keynote speaker at their launch. (Both BuzzMachine and Kos have some worthy thoughts on that).

OSM was founded by rightwingers Roger Simon and Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs. The latter blogger, at least, being quite fond of disparaging his political opponents by labeling them as "moonbats".

Nonetheless, and despite their currently massive lack of editorial "balance", several of their staffers have claimed in various recent conversations I've had with them that they hope to change that hard right tilt in the near future. The proof, however, will remain in the blog pudding.

During their testing phase, I participated in a "BlogJam" with three other bloggers for them. That's their term for an online debate forum. The no-brainer topic about which we debated a week or two ago was "Are left-right politics becoming too polarized?"

That debate is now available online here as one of their first offerings.

I had fun doing it, as you may be able to tell. You'll let me know how I did...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

"We fondly remember Mayberry; but it was a fictional town. We have to move on."

So said Catherine Carpenter, the Administrative Assistant and self-described "Queen of Town Hall" and "Jill of All Trades" in the once sleepy little southern town of Bluffton, South Carolina.

Last night was the last time that the citizens of Bluffton would vote using paper ballots after going to the only polling place they ever needed: Town Hall. It has been a long-standing tradition that at the end of the day, when the polls closed, the citizens of the town would gather in the hall and watch as the votes are counted.

Each vote is marked with a slash mark on a chalk board and audience members call out "tally " each time a group of five votes is recorded.

But now, according to Carpenter, the town has grown too large to do that anymore. Since 2000 this once little town has grown from 1278 citizens to over 4800. They are very quickly being swallowed up into the retirement community craze that has swept north from Florida. And that means Tuesday's gathering of citizens to watch the tally of the votes and to call out "tally" will move on too...

A group of 16 former intelligence officials sent a letter to George W. Bush earlier today expressing their outrage over "the breach of trust between this Administration and members of the intelligence community that has resulted from the Valerie Plame case."

The letter is described by former CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson as having been signed by a "bipartisan" group "representing a variety of political views."

"We are agreed on one thing," said Johnson in an Email receved by The BRAD BLOG this evening, "we are Americans and believe this country is worth defending."

Johnson had been a classmate of Valerie Plame/Wilson's during training at the CIA.

The missive, sent late this afternoon from a variety of former and retired officials, calls on George W. Bush to keep his "promise to restore honor to the White House," and demands accountability for any staff members "implicated in the leak of Valerie Wilson's classified identity." It goes on to decry the "bond of trust" that was "shattered with the exposure" of Wilson's identity.

One White House official, so far, I. Scooter Libby, has been indicted on charges relating to an ongoing investigation into the matter by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

The former intelligence officials express that whether her exposure was "unwitting or intentional" the action's by Administration officials has destroyed both Wilson's career and her intelligence network "which was devoted to protecting this country from the threat of weapons of mass destruction."

They call on Bush to "immediately suspend the clearances of all White House personelle" who spoke to reporters about Wilson's CIA affiliation while taking the occassion to remind Bush about Dick Cheney's dismissal of the Air Force Chief of Staff who inadvertantly disclosed classified information to the press.

The letter, which was CC'd to several members of Congress, follows in its entirety...

This from a friend and emailer who attended today's protest over the recent dismisal of liberal columnist Robert Scheer at the LA Times. Scheer's apparent crime was being right on this administration and their trumped-up war from the get-go. That won't do as the LA Times works hard to both destroy itself and appease the Bill O'Reilly McCarthyites of the New American Right. You'll be delighted to know that while Scheer was removed, wingnut Jonah Goldberg has been added to the Opinion Page. Scheer's own website will continue to carry his columns, along with other papers around the country.

The LA Times can be reached at Letters@LATimes.com if you have any thoughts for them.

UPDATE: More details sent to me on how to contact the folks who need to be contacted:

Several additional photos from today's protest follow...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The little town of Bluffton, SC will decide to cease hand tallying their paper ballots after an election today. They have always had a town meeting after the polls close in which the votes are read off and tallied on chalk boards with the audience yelling “tally” after each group of five slash marks is put on the board. Now some feel the town is getting too big and they will go to DREs in the future. ...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Important words from P. Sabin Willett, from the Washington Post, Monday, November 14, 2005; A21. Emphasis added.

Detainees Deserve Court Trials

Death of a thousand cuts...That's what seems to be in store either for American democracy, or what will be required to finally take bring down the entire anti-democratic Electronic Voting cabal in this country, as aided and abetted in their crimes against American Democratic Values by the Corporate Mainstream Media.

We take heart that there is more and more coverage of these matters these days, even if there are more and more unfortunate reasons to have such coverage in the first place. VotersUnite.org's "Daily Voting News", now posted each day on BRAD BLOG, gives one some sense of how much is going on --- both good and bad --- in regards to Election-related issues in this country, and just how much of it does make it into the news somewhere, if only (and too often) on just the local level.

At least the public's and the media's awareness continues to grow --- slowly, but surely --- even as the incidents of democracy in disrepair increase exponentially along with that awareness (and along with the obscene outpouring of virtually unchecked HAVA money to States and Counties in the bargain).

Nonetheless, we always look for reasons to be optimistic, and our usual coterie of Election Reform Media All-Stars continues to both grow and produce stellar work. In addition to the recent Free Press exposé by Fitrakis and Wasserman on the inexplicable in Ohio's election last week, which we mentioned previously here (as well as at HuffPo), there are a few other notable heroic voices of late that you should know about.

Debra LoGuercio, the editor of the Winters Express and syndicated columnist for a number of smaller West Coast papers, continues to take both her democracy and her role of media watchdog seriously. Her latest column this week, "Where in the World is Democracy?" [link fixed] picks up on my previous calls (both at BRAD BLOG and later at HuffPo) for Mainstream Corporate Media coverage --- hell, even a single sentence would do! --- of the recent landmark report from the non-partisan Governmental Accountability Office (GAO). That report, which confirms so many of the problems with Electronic Voting that we've been reporting on here for more than a year, is apparently less important to the corporate media braintrust, according to LoGuercio, than figuring out where in the world Matt Lauer is.

We're happy as well to welcome one Kathy Gill into the still-all-too-exclusive club of journalists who give a damn about democracy. She's posted an article on that GAO report yesterday at About.com. Welcome to the small, but still-growing club, Kathy! Glad you're on board and please keep up the good --- and important --- work!

And as Election Day unravelled last week, our friend Robert Koehler of Tribune Media Services once again opines on the MIA MSM in regard to Election Fraud in America's once-great democracy in his latest piece, "A Crime Without a Name - 'Concern' about election fraud is useless without guts and anger". He speaks, amongst other things, about John Kerry's failure to stand up for what is right here, and the unwillingness of the mainstream media to investigate and report without that kick in the pants.

The always sharp Dave Astor of Editor & Publisher has added some visibility by picking up on Bob's column in a quick article about it yesterday. For this, we are pleased, since so many of Bob's Tribune Media clients have shown neither the guts nor the anger required to save our democracy, and have chosen instead to avoid running many of his important articles on Election Reform issues altogether. It'll be interesting as usual, to see how many of them don't pick up Koehler's latest, despite --- once again --- the elegant way in which he is able to express the nightmare of our crumbling democracy.

To poorly paraphrase a famous movie tagline; In the corporate-conglomerated media world of the 21st century no one can hear you scream. But some have heard, and will continue to yell even louder...And we'll keep at the rest of them until they realize what's at stake...no matter how many cuts it takes.

Guest blogged by David Edwards

The Daily Show's Rob Corddry reports on the President's Veterans Day speech. Bush attacked Democrats for "re-writing" history and sending "mixed messages" to the troops. The Democrats and others have been critical of the Administration for misusing intelligence and misleading the country into the Iraq war.

Corddry reports that "getting us out of Iraq is going to require tremendous misleadership..." He continues by saying:

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Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

It was a relatively slow news day today. There are a few races, across the nation, that have still not been decided and at least one may end up being re-voted. In Louisiana it has been recommended that any New Orleans election be delayed for awhile. ...

"Torture" is not really torture. It is now officially: "enhanced interrogation techniques".

That, according to National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley yesterday whose latest job, it seems, is to clarify that when Bush said last week "We do not torture," what he really meant to say was "We do torture, but we just refer to it as 'enhanced interrogation techniques' so we can trick ourselves into being able to sleep at night."