Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Beside the articles discussing the failures in last week's election we also still have lawsuits playing out in some states. In Arizona the SoS has spoken out about the suit she is fighting. Her opinion, as printed in the Arizona Republic, she is less than factual and completely ignores the reason for the lawsuit; op-scan tabulation problems. In New Mexico the counties are doing all they can to keep the plaintiffs in a lawsuit from looking at the voting machines in question. We also hear complaints from Texas and Ohio regarding DRE voting machines not allowing voters to vote in private....

We've failed to report too terribly much on it to date, but there is a very important lawsuit quietly proceeding in New Mexico which is challenging the results of the 2004 Presidential Election there. The final result of that election was very close, and Election Reform advocates --- and indeed a great deal of evidence --- suggest that something was amiss there. Michael Collins wrote a good article about the suit a couple of weeks ago for New Zealand's SCOOP.

Yesterday, VoterAction.org sent out an email about some roadblocks that the plaintiffs are suddenly facing in the discovery phase of the trial. They were supposed to have been allowed to have experts inspect --- for the first time --- the Electronic Voting Machines that were used in the '04 Election, along with the actual results that they gave.

All of a sudden, Voter Action says, the county clerks have flat-out refused to permit the inspections by the plaintiffs' experts. That, after some interesting evidence has already been found by the experts during discovery, like tests where they were able to see votes for one candidate being registered for their opponent (as has been so widely reported as happening in so many elections of late!) and ballots being confirmed with NO choice for President at all, which wasn't supposed to have been possible on at least one of the machine types being looked at.

Voter Action didn't post the article from their email on their website, so we'll post it here in its entirety. Check it out...

From LA Times...

Josh Marshall has been doing some excellent reporting on this case as it's developed over the last year or so. This link should get you caught up.

Of note here, keep in mind that a) Tobin was working for the national Republican Party, he wasn't some loose-cannon, bad apple, lone agent, b) The phone-jamming scandal was in the '02 election, yet the RNC hired Tobin to head their '04 Northeastern Regional Campaign even after they knew he was in trouble for the '02 shenanigans and c) The RNC, as of August, had so far covered his $700k legal bills, that much before the trial had even begun.

Next time a wingnut tosses you the canard about some tires slashed in Milwaukee by a couple of kids, remind them of this guy, still on the RNC's payroll.

While I was up recently to speak at the "National Summit to Save Our Elections" in Portland, OR, I was asked to sit down for a few minutes with Clint Curtis to do a quick interview for "SourceCode" on Free Speech TV. Apparently their episode devoted to Election Fraud has been airing all week to folks who have satellite TV (which I don't).

I haven't yet had time to watch the entire episode, but here's the specific segment in which I interview Curtis. It's a quickie (about 4 minutes), so we don't get into too much detail for folks who already know the story, but hopefully the interview is worthwhile nonetheless.

The longer audio and text transcript of the interview I did with him onstage at the conference (as noted previously) is available here.

ALSO...I've just been informed --- at the very last minute, sorry --- that Curtis will be speaking at an E.R. event near Orlando today and tomorrow. Info follows...

What: "Achieving Election Reform: A Florida Statewide Conference"
Where: SeraLago Hotel & Suites, Kissimmee (just south of Orlando)
When: Saturday and Sunday, November 12-13, 2005
Time: 10 a.m. Saturday until 1 p.m. Sunday
Hosted by: Florida Fair Elections Coalition (FFEC)
Cost: Free (donations accepted)

Clint will be speaking at 4pm ET Saturday the 12th (that's today!) and will be available to meet with conference goers from 9a to Noon on Sunday the 13th. Go say hello if your read this in time and happen to be in the 'hood!

In today's Veterans' Day speech, Bush attempted to send the latest Talking Points out to his troops. Not the ones that fight, the ones that talk. Judging from Carol Platt Liebau's latest at HuffPo, the message was received from Dear Leader and is even now being delivered to whoever is left to buy it.

Here was "the message":

In other words, after years of questioning the patriotism of those who criticized his decision or the conduct of the war, he'll give up on that battle as long as we all stay away from the one point that is likely to bring the entire house of cards crumbling down, namely; How the war began. Or more aptly, how he began it.

It is, of course, the latest last-ditch effort (and there have been plenty of late) to save his Presidency. And of course, the way to do that...is to blame everybody else.

So who is actually the one rewriting history today? Bush (and Liebau and the other dead-enders) mislead yet again by claiming "More than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate who had access to the same intelligence voted to remove Saddam Hussein from power."

Setting aside that those Democrats didn't have "access to the same intelligence" that Bush did, Atrios helpfully points up Bush's condensed re-written history on that "vote to remove Saddam Hussein from power." We condense Atrios' work still further...

Got that? Good. Now let the next last-ditch Talking Point commence...bring it on.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall drops an elegantly concise case on Bush's latest "Rewritten History" gambit and his now-lost causes gone astray. It begins this way:

...And ends this way:

Go read the middle.

From Reuters...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today, amongst the reports of failures in elections across the country, there was good news from Wisconsin where their Assembly voted nearly unanimously for a vvpat. One newspaper in New Jersey reported that Sequoia Voting still had to verify the election before it could be certified. Have they really turned over their elections administration to a private company? And, election poll printouts have reportedly been found in the weeds outside a gas station in Lucas Co., OH. Is this a sign of a problem? Something illegal? Just a human error?...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

On November 11, 1918, World War I finally ended. Of course it wasn't called that at the time; it was called The Great War. How could anyone have known that it was to be the first of a series? Who could have guessed that barely twenty years would pass before the beginning of the next one?

The day when peace finally arrived was given the name Armistice Day. Thereafter, it was commemorated every year with solemn ceremonies and sacred vows of "Never Again". My, how things change.

In many English-speaking countries, November 11th is now called Remembrance Day, and it's still commemorated every year with solemn ceremonies.

I'm feeling extremely solemn myself. Disturbing and graphic content follows.

In a response just issued by OpTruth.org, "the nation's first and largest organization for Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," their Executive Director Paul Rieckhoff expressed disappointment in George W. Bush's just-completed Veterans' Day speech to troops in Pennsylvania.

"Those of us who fought in Iraq deserve to know why we became Veterans in the first place," Reickhoff said in a statement that went on to call for a "real investigation into prewar intelligence."

In a speech staged in front of military gear to an audience of enlisted men and women at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania, Bush took the opportunity to take a few swipes at his political opposition. "Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and mislead the American people about why we went to war," Bush said before taking the opportunity to manipulate those listening with the Administration's latest misleading talking point to deflect criticism of their use of prewar intelligence.

As reported by AP...

"More than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate who had access to the same intelligence voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power," Bush went on to say. Leaving out the nuance that the intelligence those Democrats were allowed to see was gathered and selected by the Administration's own intelligence agencies. He further failed to mention that the vote by Congress to give Bush the power to wage war, was based on promises to exhaust all diplomatic options before doing so.

Recent investigations into prewar intelligence, indeed, has not shown that the Administration applied pressure to intelligence agencies. However, the investigations that led to those reports specifically avoided examining the Administration's use (and/or misuse) of the intelligence available to them. The Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KA) had promised to look into those matters two years ago but, to date, have failed to do so. That failure resulted last week in Senate Minority Leader Harry Ried's (D-NV) invoking of Senate Rule 21 to force the Senate into a closed session in order to pressure the committee to deliver their promised investigation.

Rieckhoff, who gave up his job on Wall Street after 9/11 to join the active army in the "War on Terror," expressed disappointment at Bush's failure in his speech to support veterans by calling for a thorough investigation into the way intelligence was used to sell Congress and the American people on the war that they are now stuck fighting. "It's unfortunate," he said, "that the President doesn't think he owes that to the people who have been unwavering in their bravery while carrying out his plans.”

The Iraq War veteran, who led troops into Baghdad at the start of the war, is dismayed at Bush's lack of support for those who still fight the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. "On Veterans' Day, the President spoke a lot about the reasons for the war in Iraq, but very little about how he plans to take care of the people fighting that war, and what the future holds for them."

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

More and more scattered voting problems are being reported. Of course, almost all are being blamed on people and not the machines. In some locations where they are using op-scan but elections officials want to use DREs there are complaints about how slow op-scans are. It's also very strange that Ohio's SoS has announced what a great success the machines were in his state while counties are reporting wide-spread problems and his deputy is promising to investigate problems in Lucas County. Diebold and AccuPoll have both put out press releases bragging about successful elections on their machines...

The mind boggles at how Fox "News" and the rest of the Rightwing Echosphere would attempt to destroy the lives and livelihoods of any Non-Rightwing clergymen or TV commentators were they to invite the wrath of God and/or al-Qaeda on Republican voters who didn't vote the way they would have preferred, but that's exactly what wingnuts Bill O'Reilly and Pat Robertson have done today.

O'Reilly welcomed al-Qaeda destruction of San Francisco, because their citizens had the temerity to vote against military recruitment in public high schools and colleges.

Robertson may have topped him, however, by warning citizens of Dover, Pennsylvania, not to ask for God's help in the case of disaster there. All because the rather intelligent voters of Dover tossed out all eight school board members who were up for re-election last Tuesday after they'd tried to force the teaching of "Intelligent Design" in public school science classes.

On his radio show today, as reported by Media Matters, the smear merchant and media mogul O'Reilly spun last Tuesday's rejection by the voters of San Francisco of military recruiters in their public schools as worthy of denial of all federal funds, and even the destruction of the entire city by al-Qaeda [emphasis added]:

Meanwhile, as CNN reported today, man of God and "conservative" "Christian" Pat Robertson warned Dover, PA residents not to be surprised if disaster stikes them since they chose to express their will at the voting booth that Science classes should teach science, not religious theory. If disaster does strike, Robertson warned, the citizens of Dover shouldn't turn to God for any help:

We're reminded of all the wingnuts who declared Democrats "cry babies" after the Presidential Elections in 2000 (and again in 2004) simply because they felt that all the votes should actually be counted, and the winner of the election should be the candidate who ended up with the most votes. In contrast now, we've got elections with decisive losses to the wingnuts' initiatives and candidates and in return they order up hopes for destruction and annihilation for entire cities --- presumably even for the voters in those cities who voted the way they would have wanted them to.

We'd love to call folks like O'Reilly and Robertson sore losers and cry-babies, but that seems rather trite given how morally loathesome and reprehensible in fact they actually seem to be.

UPDATE 11/12/05: Despite his cursing me, Joseph Cannon has, as usual, some worthwhile thoughts on all of the above.

Isikoff and Hosenball are reporting in NEWSWEEK today that the CIA had raised doubts about the information that the Bush Administration (and indeed Bush, himself) relied on to sell the War on Iraq to the American People and to Congress.

The newly uncovered CIA document seems to echo a DIA document previously released that similarly expressed doubts about the information received from Al Qaeda detainee, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi who recanted his claims that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members. That, however, didn't keep the Bush Administration from using the bad intelligence anway...

Lots of meat in the piece, but the following graf speaks to those wingnuts who still enjoy describing Harry Reid's invokation of Senate Rule 21 last week as "a stunt" after two years have passed without Sen. Pat Robert's (R-KA) promised investigation into the Administration's use and/or mis-use of prewar intel matters [emphasis added]:

They all sound like good questions to us and about which the American People and Congress deserve answers...as the wars...all of them...rage on.

Guest blogged by David Edwards

While we are not certain of Representative Weldon's motives, he does manage to keep the "Able Danger" story in the news. In this interview with CNN's Lou Dobbs, Weldon asserts that intelligence from the "Able Danger" group could have prevented the bombing of the USS Cole and the attacks that took place on September 11, 2001.

Weldon was also quoted in an article published earlier today by Eric Rosenberg of Hearst Newspapers:

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Guest blogged by David Edwards

As we reported on Monday, President Bush categorically denied that the United States uses torture while implying that interrogators would use any means necessary in the name of protecting Americans. Meanwhile, John McCain has been advocating a bill, recently passed 90 to 9 in the Senate, outlawing torture in all cases.

Already, President Bush has threatened to veto the bill but that may not be possible given Bush's waning popularity. Vice President Cheney is now arguing to exempt the CIA from the torture legislation. So, how does the GOP explain this position to the American people... "We're against torture and we're against outlawing it (wink, wink, nod, nod)."

John Gibson hosts Fox News' Big Story. In this video clip Gibson interviews Reagan's National Security Advisor, Robert McFarland, who seems to agree with the new torture law. Of course, Gibson offers his own contrary yet confusing opinion about the torture bill. He starts by saying "I'm with John McCain on this..." and then goes on to confound his audience by saying: It has been revealed that the U.S. maintains a string of secret prisons (well, they're not secret now) in Eastern Europe where we have stashed captured Al Qaeda guys and I'm not in favor of telling these guys what we won't do to them. ... In my way of thinking, the benefit gained from telling the world that we have a law that forbids torture is outweighed by the bad guys knowing that we have a law that forbids torture. ... For the record, I'm against torture. I'm also against outlawing it. These are not mutually exclusive concepts. It may take a nimble mind to manage both ideas but I assure you, it's worth the effort. A nimble mind, indeed. Video in Windows Media format... Video in QuickTime format...

The White House press corps seemed to also pick up on the discrepancy between President Bush's torture denial and Vice President Cheney's desire for an exemption allowing torture by the CIA. MSNBC's Countdown put together this clip of reporters trying to get an explanation from White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. Howard Fineman of Newsweek calls McClellan's attack on reporters "Nixonian". Video in Windows Media format... Video in QuickTime format...

Jon Stewart acknowledges the torture confusion. He asks Ed Helms about the "ticking time bomb" scenario. TV Shows like the Fox series 24 depict torture as the the dramatic solution while most experts believe that torture provides dubious intelligence under any circumstance. Who are you going to believe? Kiefer Sutherland's character, Special Agent Jack Bauer or "the experts"? Video in Windows Media format... Video in QuickTime format...

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This is a day or two old, but I'm in the mood for a bit of lighter fare at the moment after the last couple of days of various mayhem, so I thought I'd share it with you. From yesterday's LA Times account of Charles and Camilla's visit to San Francisco...

If the news was like this every day, I could retire.

(Hat tip to Desi, who just can't get enough of those lovable royals...and the Schultzes)