Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot

Steve asked for a new open thread ...

Hey, Steve: You're welcome!

(NOTE: Blogged by Brad from Nashville...)

From a late-breaking AP item last night...

This announcement comes as the result of a probe of problems with Electronic Voting Machines in the Keystone State which began in early January (as reported here).

UniLect is the California company that manufactured the voting machines in Carteret County, N.C. that lost some 4,500 votes entirely last November 2nd resulting in the need for an unprecedented re-vote in the county. They are also one of the nine major American Voting Machine companies currently targeted by Velvet Revolution's "Divestiture for Democracy" campaign calling on the companies to voluntarily implement standards of transparency and accountability with their machines or face a massive and sustained divestiture/boycott by the American People.

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot

It will be interesting to see how long this will last:

Good luck, George! We'll be watching!

(Blogged by Brad in Nashville...)

One week after the November 2004 election, we blogged an item we called "Why It Matters: The World is Watching". The piece covered the way in which Russia's Pravda wondered aloud, "Did Bush fix the election"?

Just over two weeks later, Ukraine's own fixed election, and the Bush administration's infuriatingly hypocritical outrage brought more condemnation from Pravda, this time as they chastised the American administration for having the gall to question anyone else's election after our own --- which was even more askew than Ukraine's. Our item headlined "Home to Roost - or, Democracies That Live in Glass Houses" covered the continuing degradation in esteem from our once-promising Russian ally.

And today, it's The Moscow Times who joins the World's America Hating Party in a damning article suggesting the game is over and the forces of Democracy in the previously-Free World have lost.

UPDATE: Chris Floyd's column The Big Fix, which was published in The Moscow Times, is now available to subscribers only, but you can read it on Chris' blog. Click here.

Unlike their compatriots in the American Media, The Times covers the Clint Curtis story in their article by way of referencing much of what The BRAD BLOG has reported on that sorry affair. They've even beaten the American Media at reporting on the latest Baker Commission Blue-Ribbon "Election Reform" fix which America can now look forward to --- even if they're not paying attention --- unless something is done about it.

The rest of the world recognizes news, and what it may mean for this country and the world. Even if the American Media does not.

Though that may change a bit over the next few days as a major American Newspaper may indeed be jumping into the Clint Curtis fray. We'll do our best to keep you abreast of those developements even as we're otherwise occupado down here in Nashville...Stay Tuned...

(Brad here, catching some quick net time, and unable to avoid blogging this one! Even from the road!)

Yesterday in the phony Republican "news"paper The Washington Times:

The Times article disinformation even goes so far as to suggest that it was Senate minority leader, Harry Reid's office that was responsible for the now-infamous talking points memo!

And then this, today in the real newspaper, The Washington Post:

Even the phony Republican media machine --- which is by now quite sophisticated, smart, insidious and powerful --- could not keep the truth from coming out about this one. Though we have a feeling that today's Post story may not receive quite as much coverage from Rush and friends as did yesterday's phony Times piece.

We wish we could reveal to you all that we know about how the phony Rightwing press actually works hand-in-hand with the high-level politicos it supports. We've learned quite a bit, for example, about last week's "story" attempting to shore up/legitimize the ACVR which made it's way into the GOP Propoganda via the phony Cybercast News Service last week. For various reasons, at this time, we are unable to report all we know about that here. Suffice to stay, the story that CNS ran was a setup which ran, the way that it eventually did, at the instructions of top RNC officials.

If you have any doubt about the sophisticated propoganda machine being run by the GOP, any question in your mind that perhaps it's all just some crazy "conspiracy theory" being floated by the Left, hopefully the illustrative comparison of stories on the Schiavo Memo will end any doubt that you may have. It's real. It's powerful. It's sophisticated. It's insidious. And it's all meant to decieve you, the good people of America, in a cynical and dangerous way. And it's been working for some time.

Thus, it's time for serious Media Reform. Recently, Velvet Revolution has opened up the issue of Media Reform as the second major problem in this country that VR will be taking head-on.

More to come on that...we've only just begun to fight back!

Now, back on to the road to Nashville!

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot

Peg C doesn't have to ask more than ... um ... twice!

Open Thread!

(NOTE: This entry guest blogged by Jaime)

photo courtesy of Reuters

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot

He's preaching the spread of democracy all over the world, and especially in the Middle East. Sounds great, doesn't it? He wants you to think so! But he doesn't want you to realize this: George Bush [or his inner circle] will decide which governments are democratic, which are autocratic; which will stand and which will fall. And the decisions will have nothing to do with democracy.

One case in point was mentioned recently by fellow guest-blogger Jaime in his excellent item, News You Might Have Missed. Here's another example for your consideration:

Pro-Democracy forces in a Middle-Eastern country turned out more than ten percent of that nation's population out for massive and peaceful demonstrations. It happened a week and a half ago, in Bahrain. Did you hear or read anything about it? Don't feel badly if you missed it; the way it was played in the major media, it's almost as if they wanted you to miss it!

Never fear! The Brad Blog is here! You haven't missed anything!

(NOTE: This entry guest blogged by Jaime)

The last three weeks have been saturated with Terri Schiavo / Pope's Death news. While the American Main Stream Media has been focused on these two stories an injustice to democracy is occuring on the other side of the world. Zimbabwe's "President" Robert Mugabe retained and strengthened his grip on power gaining 46 of 120 open parliamentary seats and appointing an additional 30.
His opposition rival, leaver of the Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai called the election a "disgusting, massive fraud"

Despite international scrutiny over the outcome of this "election" Mugabe seemed unfazed by his critics, laying out the political plans his newly gained mandate will allow him to push through.

In a post 9-11 / Iraqi Freedom world such an event would not stand, could not stand, should not stand with George Dubya Bush. Yet Mr. Democracy himself has been oddly silent in regards to the apparent steady repeal of Democracy in Zimbabwe. Dubya could not be taken away this weekend from his vacation clearing brush and chasing Arma-dillas with Barney to comment...he'd already broken into his free time to attend to the Schiavo matter.

Bush has had time to applaud Victor Yushchenko's victory as he met with the newly minted Ukranian President today. He also poked his nose in Lebanese affairs .

Yet very, very, quiet on Mugabe's election swindling. Mugabe has used many of the same fear mongering tactics and demagoguery as Bush is known for. Their media was also not so independent in its coverage of the election.

Mugabe seems to ape Bush's style. Intimidation, media control, false mandates and vote rigging; a more brutal riff off the American election template. When our foreign policy has been rhetorically pushed to 'freedom when we want it, where we want it, how we want it" a Democratic injustice in an African nation isn't worth the attention of steroids in Major League Baseball. Bush is on vacation while the media is out to lunch. It now seems democracy in Zimbabwe has gone the way of Terri Schiavo, the Pope, and Mark McGwire's legacy, yet one wouldn't notice these days.

I will be working my way towards Nashville this week for the National Conference on Election Reform where I'll be speaking at several of the seminars on a number of topics, being trailed by documentarians, and (hopefully!) speaking with a lot of media in order to continue to get the word out on all of the below (meaning, the last 5 or 6 months or more of reporting/crime-fighting here on BRAD BLOG!)

Thanks, in no small part, to your generous donations to BRAD BLOG, I'm able to afford to make what I think will be a very important trip!

Of course, if you're in the vicinity, please come on by, say hello and join up for the 3-day conference! And, in case you need more of a reason than saying hello to me to show up, here's another 5 Great Reasons to Come on Down!

Don't know what kind of net access I'll have on the road throughout this week and over the weekend during the conference, so for the moment, please assume I'll be gone for the week, and therefore, I'm turning things over to Guest Bloggers Winter Patriot, Fin and Jaime to help keep things lively in my absense.

Be kind to them, and keeping making noise!

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Gandhi

The Open Voting Consortium (OVC), a non-partisan group with Republican, Democratic, Green Party and Libertarian Party support, has today become the first Election Software Developer to publicly endorse Velvet Revolution's "Divestiture for Democracy" campaign!

In an open letter sent today to VR by OVC President, Alan Dechert, the group announced their intentions of adopting the standards set forth in VR's February 21st letter to America's Voting Machine companies, calling on them to do the right thing for their country by --- amongst other things --- voluntarily opening hardware and software for inspection and certification to ensure transparency in our electoral system.

Dechert calls, in his letter, for the voting process to be "clear, transparent, fair, trustworthy, orderly, observable, and auditable." We couldn't agree more. Why so many seem to be frightened by such an idea, is beyond us. If you haven't already, please join the Revolution by sending an Email to America's Voting Machine companies stating your support! It'll take you 60 seconds!

OVC joins a growing list of supporters to the VR "DV4D" Campaign which, along with over 100 Voting Rights and Electoral Reform groups, also currently includes 23 U.S. House members, and 2004 Presidential Candidates David Cobb (Green) and Ralph Nader (Independent). All of these Americans are now calling for a trustworthy, auditable, transparent and verifiable voting system in the world's most important democracy!

The VR Press Release, with the full copy Dechert's letter of endorsement is available here.

On Thursday, USCountVotes.org, a Utah non-profit organization of statisticians and researchers, released a new scientific statistical analysis of the "2004 Presidential Exit Poll Discrepancies" [PDF]. Here is the executive summary of the report [PDF].

This study is a real one. A scientific one. Produced by a real group of non-partisan investigators, statisticians, university professors and mathmeticians --- unlike at least one phony GOP disinformation front group comprised of paid Bush/Cheney/RNC staff that we know of.

The USCountVotes.org report is in response to the one released by the Exit Pollsters, Edison/Mitofsky themselves who had tried, in their report, to explain away their own data as somehow being flawed. As explained in the USCountVote report's executive summary:

In describing the report, USCountVotes.org says that:

Here is just one graph from the report, of particular note to BRAD BLOG readers Velvet Revolution supporters and true advocates of Election Reform and Voting Rights (unlike other phony advocates of voting rights that we know of.)

Stephen Dyer of the Akron Beacon Journal has done a fine job of summing up some of the report's key points. As we've been too busy to do a thorough job of it ourselves (and likely will continue to be for the next several days at least), we associate ourselves with Dyer's summary. As well, we share the contemptable reactions to the report which he received from the office of the man responsible for ensuring fair elections in Ohio, Sec. of State (and Co-Chair of the Bush/Cheney Re-Election Comm.) J. Kenneth Blackwell via his spokesman, Carlo LoParo --- both of whom seem to continue to display an utter contempt for their country, its founding principles and its constitution...

Off on fools errands all day. TV appearances. Trouble making. No time for fooling around. Sorry...But you can. Open thread...

In an apparent attempt to shore up the discredited American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) (see BRAD BLOG's Special Coverage on ACVR for more info) --- the phony "Voting Rights" group set up by Bush/Cheney/RNC operatives to provide a smoke-screen from what really went wrong in the 2004 general election --- GOPUSA, the phony "news" service created by Republican operative and shadowy money-meister, Bobby Eberle, most famous for creating the phony Talon News group, headlined by professional hooker cum phony journalist James Guckert (better known for his phony White House Correspondent name Jeff Gannon) is re-running the story published yesterday by their sister-phony-"news" group, Cybercast News Service (CNS) on the phony ACVR operation.

Got all that?

And just to advance the story another peg on the desperate attempt apparently being made by the "patriotic" hucksters of the GOP Spin-Machine to pull the wool over American eyes in an effort to help save ACVR's wholly discredited reputation (as if they ever had one --- calling oneself a "non-partisan" organization when you're actually paid staff members of Bush/Cheney 04 Inc. and the Communications Director for the RNC certainly doesn't lend much credibility to the scammers who invented the ACVR with baseless self-proclamations of being simply "longtime voting rights advocates") there is the Scott Hogenson connection to both CNS and ACVR.

We did find it curious when the far-rightwing propoganda service CNS contacted us early on about doing a story on ACVR. The resulting biased, misleading and un-balanced article, written by Kathleen Rhodes, was little surprise. But the genesis of the article in the first place and its purpose was always of interest to us.

As it turns out, Hogenson --- the Founding and Executive Editor of CNS and also (no conflict at all here) the Radio Services Manager at the RNC Press Office! --- is the longtime compadre to one of the two known lead scheisters at ACVR, Jim Dyke.

Dyke, who has worked hand-in-hand for years in his position at the RNC with Hogenson, was the 2004 RNC Communications Director. (For example, here's a press release where Hogenson and Dyke are listed together just last year.)

Down the rabbit hole, into the Bizzarro GOP World of baseless Rightwing claims of "Liberal" bias in the media, we suppose it's only natural for no conflict or bias to exist when the Executive Editor of a "News" Service claiming to offer "unbiased news" happens to concurrently be the Republican National Committee's spokesman and talk radio coordinator. Saddam was also just 45 minutes from launching a nuclear attack on the United States when George W. Bush single-handled wrestled him to the ground and grappled the uranium right out of hands.

So the gears of the GOP braintrust must really be turning at this point for such a panicked and coordinated effort to be launched by the Rightwing Echo Chamber in order to find a way to give credibility to the Bush/Cheney/RNC hoaxsters behind this ill-conceived ACVR scam.

The fact that GOPUSA would re-run the silly and deceptive CNS story to try and shore up the group --- who appeared GOPUSA/Talon News-like out of nowhere on March 17th, only to be given a coveted slot testifying as a "witness" before a U.S. Congressional Committee claiming to be investigating Election Problems in Ohio just three days later --- is an irony so rich that you'd think even GOPUSA wouldn't want to call attention to it or themselves in the bargain.

Either they just don't get it (unlikely) or they strongly believe that nobody in the Mainstream Media or elsewhere will actually call them on the continuing scam they are perpetuating on the American people (very very likely).

Well, we've called them on it. For whatever that's worth. Now we continue to wait for the MSM'ers in the once-great 4th Estate to realize their responsibility to the American People to do the same. It's only democracy at stake after all. We fear, however, we may be waiting a while.

In the meantime, the ACVR/RNC/GOPUSA/CNS axis-of-evil-acronyms sends their undying gratitude to the MSM! Keep up the bad work, guys!

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.