I've covered the problems and failures in NY-23's recent Special Election for U.S. House in a number of previous articles here at The BRAD BLOG, detailing some of the early problems with results as they emerged, pointing out that, thanks to Republican precedent in 2006, it now no longer really matters whom the actual voters may have voted for, but arguing that a full manual hand-count of paper ballots would be appropriate nonetheless.

Over the holiday weekend, the good Richard Hayes Phillips --- author of the book Witness to a Crime, in which he painstakingly detailed, ballot by ballot, the scandal which was the Ohio 2004 Presidential Election --- reported on some curious numbers he's now found in that election, over at the right-leaning Gouverneur Times. As luck would have it, Richard is a resident of NY-23 himself, and seems to be finding that both "impossible" and then many more "improbable" tallies were certified, as NY tested its Seqouia/Dominion e-voting systems on live voters, in a real, live election, for the first time earlier this month.

Both of his pieces are worth a quick read over there.

And now, the Gouverneur Times has asked me to put together a bit of a "backgrounder" for them on all of these e-voting nightmares, and how they pertain to NY-23, since it seems that right-wingers, for some odd reason, are somewhat lacking (up until now anyway) in real information on just how dangerously insane our privatized system of e-voting in public elections has become. Too much time spent being fooled by ACORN-conspiracists like Andrew Breitbart and Fox "News," I guess.

My piece for them, "NY-23, Sequoia and the Private Corporate Takeover of Your Once-Public Democracy," as written over the weekend, following the latest in a string of embarrassing "concessions" and "un-concessions" by the Conservative Party's Doug Hoffman, is now their front page lead story if you (or Breitbart) care to give it a look.

[Updated several times at bottom of article...]

Rightwing con man, ACORN conspiracy monger, Drudge protégé, and, naturally, Fox "News" perennial, Andrew Breitbart tweeted in favor of the murder of a climate scientist yesterday...

...as part of a Twittered string of his usual lies about global warming, ACORN, and whatever other stuff he feels like making up, as he and his desperately shameless ilk of pretend "conservatives" are wont to do.

But Hansen's murder wasn't the only one Breitbart subsequently called for to his flock of gullibles...

Guest blogged by Frank Schaeffer

Op-Ed Columnist Thomas Friedman's editorial in today's New York Times , "America vs. The Narrative", sparked this thought:

If the Islamic world has a fantasy "narrative" about America and our intentions, don't we ourselves --- those within the American religious right --- have a similarly misinformed "narrative"?

Here's my thought experiment: Read Friedman's original, posted below for your convenience, then read my Americanized version which follows. All I've done is change a few names and issues and you'll get the point.

We have our own religious/political myths and they are no less dangerous...

Sarah Palin's tea baggers are ready to give the Presidency to her, even as they don't seem to have a clue what her policies actually are. Go figure. Kudos to Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll of New Left Media for telling the story of these folks --- as we strongly encouraged others to do in our own not-dissimilar film, Rise of the Tea Bags --- at a Going Rogue book signing event recently in Columbus, OH, even if they're a bit less "confrontational" than we were...

And, again, if you missed it previously, here's our own Rise of the Tea Bags...

Keep telling the stories, folks!

One small step for man...

[Hat-tip Sibel Edmonds, for whom we are always thankful.]

And while things are decidedly imperfect this year, we remain thankful nonetheless that, unlike last year, these are not the photos we are forced to see on our Thanksgiving open thread this year.

Mostly, we are ever thankful for those of you who share your time, generosity, goodwill, feedback, tips, thoughts and well wishes with us here at The BRAD BLOG, even as you continue to spread the word and keep fighting the good fight however, whenever and wherever you can.

And what do you find yourselves thankful for this year?...

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: The hidden costs of fossil fuels; Sick of turkey? Recycle those Thanksgiving leftovers!; California sets new TV efficiency standards ... PLUS: "Cash for Caulkers" ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA': Solar’s rapid evolution makes energy planners rethink the grid; Texas plant reverses course, won't burn Mexican PCB materials; IRS Disclosures Show Extent of Oil and Coal Groups' Outreach; Glacier loss on Kilimanjaro continues unabated; Biotech crops cause big jump in pesticide use...

...PLUS: So you want a green career? Here's what you need to know....

Info/links on those stories and all the ones we talked about on today's episode follow below...

Yesterday I posted what I learned while driving across Kansas. Someone asked in comments if I'd seen "Any Obama=Hitler type signs yet?" Well, here's what we saw today while driving across Missouri (my home state, I'm sorry to say) just outside of Kansas City...

(Looks like Fired Up! Missouri noticed it too a few days ago, and ThinkProgress followed up on it with a bit of additional info, including the billboard it replaced. Couldn't be prouder.)

UPDATE 11/28/09: Jill C. at Brilliant at Breakfast on this billboard: "When leftists talked about revolution in the 1960's, we were called traitors. Today when the right wing does it, it's called patriotism."

First, my thanks to Michelle Malkin, and all her of sycophantic re-linkers in the wingnut echosphere for all the swell traffic yesterday while I was on the road all day.

Second, how desperate the poor, sad, angry woman must be to try to find some story, somehow, somewhere, by someone, that she thinks she's gotten right and others must have gotten wrong, after having gotten so many stories completely and embarrassingly wrong over and over again over so many years.

Her latest: Apparently she believes that Andrew Sullivan and/or The BRAD BLOG (both of us, great mavens of "the Left," dontcha know?) have something to "retract" concerning the story of U.S. Census worker Bill Sparkman whose death by hanging in Clay County, KY, last September --- which appeared to be a possible murder by rightwing fomented "Fed"-haters --- is now believed by officials to have been a staged suicide meant to appear as such a murder...

Spent the entirety of today driving across the entirety of Kansas. Here's what I learned...

(And, as long we're on on the subject...)

I think it's outrageous that the religious elite continue to deny the Theory of Evolution from being taught in Religion classes.

IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Flooding around the world; Icebergs in New Zealand?; The not-so-great drywall of China; No 'amore' for foreign nuclear waste ... PLUS: Climate scientists' emails --- hacked! ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

CORRECTION TO OUR AUDIO REPORT: The hacked emails referenced in our report today were from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, not the Hadley Center, which is a separate institution.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA': US to announce emissions standards ahead of Copenhagen conference; Industrialized Nations Unveil Plans to Rein in Emissions; Toll in Chinese Mine Explosion Rises to 104; Sarah Palin’s book spreads falsehoods about clean energy legislation; Oceans rising faster than expected as climate change exceeds grimmest models; Report Warns of Rising Water Demand; Uh-oh: Tamiflu-resistant swine flu rears up in the U.S. and U.K.; the Coal Industry's $47 Million PR Spending Spree ...

PLUS: Have a 'greener' Thanksgiving!....

Info/links on those stories and all the ones we talked about on today's episode follow below...

Guest blogged by Frank Schaeffer

Following my recent appearance on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, where I was talking about my new book Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism) and where I warned her viewers that that the religious right is now “trawling for assassins” with the use of inflammatory items like T-Shirts calling for President Obama’s death, I got a lot of email. What is interesting to note is just how unimaginative and downright stupid the hate mail from the right is.

Speaking of “trawling” (this time for reactions to President Obama) I’d unwittingly conducted a little experiment without meaning to: a basic intelligence test of the right and left...

John Conklin, the Director of Public Information for New York State's Board of Elections has now issued a statement in response to the Gouverneur Times' article by Nathan Barker last week, alleging a "VIRUS in the VOTING MACHINES" [caps in original headline] which, the paper says, "tainted the results" of the recent Special Election for the U.S. House in NY's 23rd Congressional district.

We responded to Barker's detailed article ourselves over the weekend at some length, noting both the accurate and inaccurate information and assertions included in the online publication's coverage.

Conklin's response has drawn two responses in turn from the Gouverneur Times, as the right-leaning publication appears to have joined in the fight for election integrity, at least on behalf of their favored Conservative Party candidate whose apparent election loss has indeed been "tainted" by the very same concerns about which The BRAD BLOG has been warning for years. We're happy to see their new-found concerns, even as Republican partisans in political alignment with the Times have been ignoring and/or disparaging similar reports for years following elections in which Democrats have been the apparent victims of similarly failed voting systems...

On Thursday, Nathan Barker of upstate New York's Gouverneur Times --- a far-Right online publication (featuring columns by the likes of Michelle Malkin, Oliver North, Chuck Norris, and all the rest of the wingnutters) --- filed a lengthy, and somewhat breathless, report alleging a computer virus had infected several of the new e-voting systems in first-time use during the November 7th Special Election in NY's 23rd Congressional district between Democratic candidate Bill Owens, Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, and Republican Dede Scozzafava (who dropped out of the race just prior to Election Day and threw her support to the Democrat).

Barker charged that a "VIRUS in the VOTING MACHINES" [his caps] resulted in "tainted results," "casting doubt on the accuracy of counts retrieved from any of the machines" used in the election.

Owens was reported to have won the election by a small margin on Election Night --- made smaller as errors were discovered during the post-election canvass --- before being hastily sworn in to the U.S. House just a few days later, in time to provide a crucial Democratic vote in favor of the health care insurance reform bill.

Barker's detailed report clearly offers a hard-right undertone, obviously in support of the Conservative Party candidate Hoffman. The article also advances several unsubstantiated conspiracy theories and features a number of out-and-out inaccuracies as well. A number of the piece's key allegations, though important, are also disputed by election officials, and at least one lead member of New York's election integrity community --- which is, itself, split between supporters of the new optical-scan e-voting systems and those calling for the retention of the Empire State's long-used mechanical lever voting machines.

Nonetheless, Barker raises a number of significant points and important concerns, about which The BRAD BLOG has been warning for years, often in the face of derision, notably from the same Rightwing circles crying foul now, who had previously dismissed such concerns as those of 'tin-foil hat wearing, sore losers and conspiracy theorists' despite actual hard evidence and scientifically-sound details proffered about such concerns.

It's somewhat amusing to see some on the Right, now that they have concerns about a close election, suddenly find religion on the very issues they'd derided as nonsense so stridently in the past. It's very tempting to either disregard them now entirely, or torture them mercilessly on that point. But we'll try to take the high road here since their central concerns, now that they've finally arrived and no matter how long overdue, have been ones that we've shared for years, whether or not they might have stood to adversely affect Democrats, Republicans or independents.

The bottom line is that whether a computer virus, malicious or otherwise, affected the results of the NY-23 Special Election or not --- we've seen no actual evidence that it did, and state officials offer a differing explanation for the e-voting system failures that did occur --- it certainly could have. The direct threat to democracy inherent in the concerns expressed by Barker (whether substantiated or not), underscore the foolishness of using such secret vote-counting systems at all. In New York --- where voters, in real elections, are essentially being forced to serve as beta testers of these new, federally-uncertified systems, made by a company with a long track-record of failure, lies, obfuscation, near-bankruptcy, secretive foreign ownership, election disaster after disaster, and dissembling to the media, as well as federal, state and local officials --- the foolishness is all the more apparent, unnecessary, unfortunate and a clear and present threat to democracy itself...