w/ Brad & Desi
|
![]() |
  w/ Brad & Desi
|
![]() |
BARCODED BALLOTS AND BALLOT MARKING DEVICES
BMDs pose a new threat to democracy in all 50 states...
| |
VIDEO: 'Rise of the Tea Bags'
Brad interviews American patriots...
|
'Democracy's Gold Standard'
Hand-marked, hand-counted ballots...
|
![]() |
GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
|
![]() |
The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...
|
![]() | MORE BRAD BLOG 'SPECIAL COVERAGE' PAGES... |
Well, that was fun. Just finished up the interview on the Pacifica Network's LA/Santa Barbara affilliate KPFK with host Jerry Quickley about blogging the whole story of the Election 2004/Voting Irregularity, Fraud, Mistabulation mess.
A fairly wide ranging conversation about how the blogs have played a key part in the story, the nap the mainstream media is largely taking, and how important it is that bloggers (aka CITIZENS!) are willing to examine what the corporate media, by and large, is apparently afraid to touch until the actual smoking gun shows up in their lap for them.
Quickley, by the way, is a madman. He also rocks. I look forward to doing it again soon.
I was able to nab the live stream from KPFK's site, so listen if ya like. About 17 minutes in your choice of 3 deliciously flavored formats:
God save Public Radio.
Justice Through Music (jtmp.org) has just announced this morning that they have doubled their previously announced $100,000 reward offer for evidence of voter fraud to $200,000!
Sources have also informed the BRAD BLOG that even that amount may be rising in the future, but I'm not prepared to confirm those details here yet.
For specific details on reward requirements, please see the Justice Through Music website.
All information and evidence should be submitted ASAP to reward@jtmp.org, while any questions about the reward or offer should be sent to questions@jtmp.org.
Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org is posting some interesting information from their "Fraud Audit" in Florida.
They're currently in Volusia County, FL and seem to have found some...oddities.
Markusd from DailyKos has a nice roundup of Harris' troubling postings, today on Democratic Underground.
UPDATE: More on this as I've had a better chance to plow through a lot of the postings on this. Bev Harris' main report may be easier to read via her original Democratic Underground posting version. The same information has also just been posted to the front page of BlackBoxVoting.org
Apparently there was missing poll data, discovered "poll tapes" (still trying to determine exactly what those are), differing counts on the differing tapes for atleast one precint in Volusia (Precinct 215, reportedly an "African-American" one where there were extra votes for Bush and other Republicans), items found in a trashbin ready for shredding instead of given to Harris in compliance with their "Freedom of Information Act" and Public Records requests, attorneys, cops, and the eventual "lockdown" of the central GEMS tabulation system in Volusia County and other information.
The bulk of it, perhaps as importantly, caught on film by the cameras of the VoterGate.tv folks who, Harris mentions later in the thread, are "running on fumes" and could use either money, or additional hands on deck as they also hope to cover the coming action in both Ohio and New Hampshire.
While the folks at DU seem to consider this as a "smoking gun" found, I will be waiting and watching for further, more specific details. It's certainly interesting and bears close watching.
And then, this rather tantalizing morsel, a short reply on the thread from Andy Stephenson, one of Bev's partners down there, who posts at DU under the name "God_bush_n_cheney". Here it is in total:
AP reports that the Sec. of State in New Hampshire has given the go ahead for the first look at the Diebold "accuvote" machine totals in several counties. It will begin on Thursday, and Nader will then have the right to ask for recounts in more counties as needed.
A series of investigative stories (here, here, and here) by WISHTV.com in Indianapolis from April of this year, have just come to my attention (sent by several different readers).
They concern yet more troubling reports about the Election Systems & Software (ES&S) company, who's software and tabulating machines, along with Diebold's, are responsible for tabulating about 80% of the votes in America. Both companies were founded by the same man, who just happens, along with the rest of their Boards of Directors to be big donor/supporters of the Republican Party.
The series of reports from WISH-TV earlier this year tell of ES&S employees surreptitiously installing illegal, uncertified software, into the voting and tabulating machines in Marion County, Indiana. They then ordered their regional ES&S project manager to lie about it to county officials. She refused. As had her husband in a previous ES&S incident, where he was also a project manager, in a different Indiana county. He was fired for his refusal.
In one of the reports, the Marion County Clerk Doris Anne Sadler is quoted as saying that ES&S "has willfully and purposely deceived me and the Marion County election board...[W]ith complete disregard for business ethics and with intent to deceive, [ES&S] deliberately worked to keep their actions from the Marion County election board and its employees."
The county's election board vice chair added, "Throughout the process, there have been missteps and outright fabrications and mistruths given to us by the vendor implementing the election process."
The assiduous BRAD BLOG readers will note that ES&S has popped up time and time again in so many of these stories of "irregularities" related to electronic voting and tabulating machines. Amongst the many troubling incidents so far reported here:
Additionally, DailyKos reported late last night on yet another Indiana county where the U.S. Congressional results are now in doubt and a recount may be coming shortly due to revelations from nearby Franklin County where a recount was already held after it was discovered that the optical-scan tabulating machine was counting straight Democratic ticket votes as Libertarian votes!
I've been hearing more and more drumbeating lately for either an entire national audit of all the votes in this year's election, or even more drastically, a re-vote of the whole damn thing. The more I learn about what an ungodly mess we have on our hands, the more I am beginning to think such ideas may not be crazy after all.
And along with all of these continuing reports I'm still left to ask, where the hell is the mainstream media who should be all over these stories that rock the very core of our democracy?! This is about our voting system for christsake! Clearly we can't count --- for now --- on the Republican cronies at the Justice Department to look into these matters. This time, it's up to the citizenry it seems, and we sure as hell could use an assist from that supposedly "Liberal" Media right about now!
An attorney for John Kerry and associate dean at Yale Law School asks in a Nashua Telegraph editorial, "Did lawyer-observers on Election Day miss fraud incidents?". A few highlights...
Thousands of the country's most credentialed lawyers flocked to Florida to guarantee a fair election. Did we inadvertently miss an election debacle even greater than that of 2000 and negligently allow our client to concede?
...
There was the sense that the data from the precincts where I had worked understated what felt like a Kerry landslide.
...
And that's when I realized that I might have been an unwitting accessory to fraud.
Like every other Democrat, I had prepared to avoid the problems of 2000 only to be blindsided by new problems in 2004. We had been so worried about the safekeeping of paper ballots that we neglected the security of digital memory devices.
...
We should have had trained observers - computer scientists, not lawyers! - verifying the integrity of polling data from machine upload through the tabulation of countywide and statewide results.
Somehow we neglected the most vulnerable step in the vote-counting process, leaving a gaping hole for error and fraud, casting in doubt the validity of election results in many states.
...
My client conceded the race on the belief that the results were clear. The results are anything but clear, however, and American democratic legitimacy requires an honest reappraisal of the events in Florida and around the country.
...
The mainstream media must immediately realize that this issue rises above partisanship and demands attention.
The time is now for voters from all states that used electronic voting machines to request an audit of results and a manual recount of ballots if possible.
We have a duty as Americans to fix these problems for the future and make sure there is a transparent and trustworthy voting system.
What's at stake is not merely the outcome of a close election; what's at stake is our faith in democratic government and the rule of law.
Hear, hear!
(Thanks tipster Mazelle for the link!)
A good Presidential Library represents both the man and his Presidency. The new Clinton Library seems even more fitting than I might have thought. Tell me...is it just me?
Sure, there's a bloodbath purge going on in the Administration. From cabinet positions ("See ya, Colin! And thanks for nothin'!") being populated with hardline Bush sycophants like Alberto "Torture's Fine With Me, thanks!" Gonzales and Condoleezza "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, Lie me a River" Rice to the incidiously overt KGB-like politicalization of the previously and historically nonpartisan CIA. (By the way, all of America's failures in the last four years? They weren't the CIA's fault, no matter what your political leaders / radio talk show hosts are selling you.)
While American Moderates/Undecideds had hoped for about two minutes that "we might all come together now", I have a feeling that it won't be long before even those ostriches will soon begin to see that Bush 43 v2.0 will do little but solidify his aptly-deserved legacy of "Worst President Ever".
Which is just one reason to make sure he actually won this time.
In any case, my hope is that it won't take a full four more years, incurring irreconcilable international damage to our country, or increase the already scandalously-under-reported body count and human carnage to record proportions before the American sheeple finally "get it" and demand better for themselves and their country which deserves so much more. But this morning, I'm not particularly optimistic.
In the meantime however, now that Condi's moving to State and the position of NSA is therefore currently wide open, I'd just like to toss the idea out there that I'm available.
Don't make me beg, people. You have my number. Just get it out of my FBI file.
I'll be happy to speak with you any time.
Though I fully realize I'll probably be overlooked yet again. Bastards.
The Green and Libertarian party efforts to raise funds for their jointly requested recount demands in Ohio have been successful! They've raised the initial $150,000 in just four days from over 3,000 American citizens!
Now, they are raising funds to mobilize for the effort, with a goal of $100,000 by November 22nd. If you can help, click here to donate.
Additionally, they are also seeking folks in Ohio to act as "witnesses" to the recount. If you can help them out, be sure to click here to volunteer!
In the meantime, it seems to me that the Mainstream Media is once again taking a nap. I'm not sure that it's yet hit them that a complete recount of Ohio's 11,306 precincts in 88 counties will soon be taking place. Some 70% of those counties, as I understand it, are punch-card ballots, which means we'll soon be counting hanging chads again. Oh, well, they'll figure it out eventually.
For the record, unlike Florida in 2000, there is a specific statewide standard in Ohio for determining the eligibility of a vote on a punch-card ballot. If two corners are detached, it counts as a vote, so the ridiculous argument of "equal protection" that Bush was able to argue to the Supremes in 2000 shouldn't work here. Though I'm sure they'll be coming up with something...Stay tuned...
UPDATE: Looks like someone's finally waking up to what the Greens and Libertarians are up to! The graphic above appears broken as of this update because there is either incredibly high traffic over at the Green Fundraising website (where the graphic comes from) or someone is attempting to hack the site. Either way, looks like their little Cooperative 3rd Party "coup" is finally getting some attention!
According to the Nashua, NH Telegraph it appears that Ralph Nader's demand for a recount in New Hampshire will in fact occur:
Cities and towns in New Hampshire all either use paper ballots or these optical scan ballots manufactured by the Diebold Corp., whose chief executives contributed to Bush's re-election.
...
Nader campaign officials questioned Gardner this week about why Bush got a much higher percentage of the vote in southern New Hampshire communities against Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry than he did four years ago against Vice President Al Gore.
All eight communities that Nader has asked to be recounted first - Litchfield, Pelham, Sandown, Newton, a ward in Somersworth, Danville, Salem and four wards in Manchester - are within a half-hours drive from the Massachusetts border.
“They couldn't understand why Senator Kerry could do so well in these communities in the primary and then under-perform compared to the 2000 election against Bush,'' Gardner said.
...
“We made every effort to accommodate the Nader campaign's recount request, and as a result it will come to pass,'' Fitch added.
While Rush Limbaugh told his listeners this morning about the "really great news" in Fallujah, some folks may see it differently.
In case you haven't been paying attention (and the media, as usual, hasn't much helped), we've now lost 1189 1194 U.S. troops in Iraq since the who charade began. 68 died in the 11 days following the election alone at the rate of nearly 7 dead U.S. troops per day.
So far this month, troops are dying at a higher rate than any since the invasion of Iraq in March of 2003.
As to the "really great news" in Fallujah, Bilal Hussein, a photographer from AP didn't see it quite that way. The story of his harrowing escape from Fallujah is recounted in this AP report. Here's a highlight of some of the "really great news" from that report, like the incident where U.S. forces shot a family of five as they tried to escape the onslaught:
"There was no medicine, water, no electricity nor food for days."
By Tuesday afternoon, as U.S. forces and Iraqi rebels engaged in fierce clashes in the heart of his neighborhood, Hussein snapped.
"U.S. soldiers began to open fire on the houses, so I decided that it was very dangerous to stay in my house," he said.
Hussein said he panicked, seizing on a plan to escape across the Euphrates River, which flows on the western side of the city.
"I wasn't really thinking," he said. "Suddenly, I just had to get out. I didn't think there was any other choice."
In the rush, Hussein left behind his camera lens and a satellite telephone for transmitting his images. His lens, marked with the distinctive AP logo, was discovered two days later by U.S. Marines next to a dead man's body in a house in Jolan.
AP colleagues in the Baghdad bureau, who by then had not heard from Hussein in 48 hours, became even more worried.
Hussein moved from house to house — dodging gunfire — and reached the river.
"I decided to swim ... but I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river."
He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross.
Yes..."Liberty is spreading". And it's all "really great news", isn't it?
Windows Media Player Version · QuickTime Version · Other Versions...
May not be safe for work...though it depends where you work.
(Via Oliver Willis)