'Twas Right Before Christmas

'Twas Right Before Christmas
by Randy Taylor

'Twas right before Christmas, when through the White House
Not a brain cell was stirring, least not from the Louse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas wouldn’t be there;

Jenna and Babs were all snug in their beds,
While visions of coat-tails danced in their heads;
And Laura in her 'kerchief, and George in his cap,
Were doing a few lines before a long winter's nap.

Secret Service was warned, Homeland Security on alert,
The perimeter was to be held against that liberal subvert!
Upon his throne, George dove into a snack,
And thought up another nation God wanted him to attack.

When on the Front Lawn there arose such a clatter,
George sprang up in horror to see what was the matter.
Away to the window he flew like a flash,
Put down the pretzels and threw up the sash.

The count from the polls in a corrupted state
Gave the illusion to King George that he got a mandate;
When, what to his fear-ridden eyes should appear,
But a peacenik sleigh, and eight progressive reindeer,

With a liberal old driver, so lively and quick,
He knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than bald eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted the roll call by name;

"Now, DEAN! now, KUCINICH! now, GORE and CLINTON!
On, KERRY! on EDWARDS! on, OBAMA and FRANKEN!
To the top of the Hill! to another brick in the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

St. Nick is a Democrat, so it says on the roll,
For generosity and freedom, and the promise they hold;
This pit stop for justice against unnatural selection,
Would take back for the people what George stole in the election.

And then, it was tinkling he heard on the roof;
The prancing and pawing of each left hoof.
As George called security and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
His red clothes made by outsourced manufacturers to boot;
A tire iron and empty sacks in his clutches,
Left George to fear going to his inaugural on crutches.

George’s guards did not arrive, left completely aghast,
For fear that even Kucinich would put a cap in their ass;
For financial destruction and a war without reason,
It was plain to the eye, it was Bush hunting season.

His eyes -- how they pierced! his presence was hard!
George wanted to flee as he did from the Guard!
Nick’s droll little mouth was drawn tight and pursed,
At the sight of the President history would see as our worst;

The stump of a pipe held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled smelled like Baghdad and Tikrit;
He had a stern look, and an involuntary twitch,
For the one who sold out our soldiers to benefit the rich.

He worked out to get buff, now a solid old elf,
And he saw all the gifts George kept for himself;
The squint in his eye and the shake of his head,
Soon told George he had everything to dread;

He showed his union card, then went straight to his work,
Took the gifts and stockings, then turned toward the jerk;
Gave Bush the finger, the middle one he chose,
Called him a thief, and up the chimney he rose.

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But we heard him exclaim, ere he left without hitch,
"HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, EXCEPT THAT SON-OF-A-BITCH!"

Common Ground Common Sense

Common Ground Common Sense

Democratic Underground Forums - psssst...Kerry is getting into the game tomorrow...

psssst...Kerry is getting into the game tomorrow.

..stay tuned...

...also, something fun on the Triad front will hopefully be ready by morning.

By WilliamPitt @

Democratic Underground Forums - psssst...Kerry is getting into the game tomorrow...

Rummie should get 1200 copies of this card

Common Ground Common Sense

Daily Kos :: a christmas message

Daily Kos :: a christmas message

I've been reading some of the noxious media tripe about attempts all over, I guess, to put the 'Christ' back in 'Christmas'....

I'm sorry, but I'm still waiting for them to put the Christ back into Christianity.

Diaries :: kid oakland's diary ::

Let me tell you something about the Jesus that I know.

He was a real man. Born in a poor region to working poor parents. He loved learning, he loved his mother and his father.

But he left them and spent his life with the poor, the outcast, the rejected, the defiled, the sick, the sinners, the bedraggled, the bereft, the self-hating, the lonely, the banished, the foul, the miserable, the desperate and finally, those sick with their own power.

He did this, not because of his ideology or his creed. He did this not because of his doctrine. He did this, quite simply, because he loved them. He preferred them.

Their company, their stories, their lives, their environs, their plight and their faith.

And they loved him. Because he touched them. He looked them in the eye and believed in them. Because, at the end of the day, when they looked to him they saw that his commitment to them was a commitment unsullied by qualifier or clause. It was a commitment to love them, even upon pain of death. And they saw in him, a love that promised to love them as they were, who they were...fully, without judgement or flinching glance, or hypocritical accomodation.

This man, Jesus, was surrounded by friends and disciples whom he mentored....not by carping or enforcing rules...but by example and teaching. By the force of his actions. By his resolute commitment to the least, the smallest, the most in need.

For me, the most potent aspect of the gospels is not the love of Jesus. Which at times, as written by the evangelists, seems to be an inhuman love. It is the love of those little people who in turn loved Jesus, who ran to him. It is the the hope they had in him. What rose in them when they saw him: Hope for healing, for change, for acknowlegment, for a chance to be made whole, a chance to overcome their shame and claim personhood again. Whenever the gospels tell of Jesus healing someone...he tells them it is their faith that has healed them and set them free.

And when the gospels tell of Jesus and his parables...the hidden story, that no one ever talks about...is that those parables...those words...would not live today without the work of the people who heard them..who kept those words alive by absorbing them and remembering them and repeating them each to each. Jesus, aside from writing with his finger in the sand, never wrote a thing.

At the end of the day...when folks want to put Christ back into Christmas...it is clear to me they mean a creche....or a plastic glow in the dark Jesus with a beard. They want to be able to say 'Merry Christmas' on TV.

The Jesus I know is bent over washing the feet of a prostitute. He is visiting a widow. He is feeding the hungry. He has laid his hands on a leper. There are people today who, inspired by that man, will do such things this Christmas day.

At the end of the day...scholars tell us...the Jesus hidden inside the gospels...the real man...the enigma behind the man heralded as the 'founder of Christianity'...is actually the source of those words and actions that most grass roots Christians cherish to this day: The Lord's prayer. The beatitudes. The parables. A number of sayings about poverty and wealth and faith and trust. And numerous accounts of healings and encounters with the poor and the outcast.

That, at the end of the day, is all we know of the historical Jesus. That, and the fact that he was killed by the Roman authorities sometime a little less than 2000 years ago.

When that man will return to the forefront of the religion that claims him...is something we are still waiting for. In some ways, he has been there all along in the faith of all those little people who love him to this day and cherish his words and life...but with so much that has been added and accumulated over the years, that it is hard to say what Jesus would make of the religion and churches built in his name.

When folks say they want to put Christ back into Christmas....I wonder what they really mean. Do they mean Jesus? Jesus from Nazareth?"

Daily Kos :: a christmas message

TomPaine.com - Rewarding Incompetence

Time Mag: Rewarding Incompetence


Rewarding Incompetence

Cindy Sheehan
December 21, 2004

TomPaine.com seldom runs open letters. This week, however, we're making an exception. In only a few days, Christians around the country and the world will be celebrating the birth of Jesus, also called the Prince of Peace. The backdrop to Christmas this year, of course, is the war in Iraq that a majority of Americans now believe was a mistake. Sheehan's heartfelt rebuke to Time offers a perspective we hope the nation will hear more of in 2005 as we contemplate the consequences of our leaders' recklessness.

Cindy Sheehan lives in California.

Dear Time Editors:

My son, Spc. Casey Sheehan was killed in Iraq on 04/04/04. This has been an extraordinary couple of weeks of "slaps in the faces" to us families of fallen heroes.

First, the Secretary of Defense—Donald Rumsfeld—admits to the world something that we as military families already know: The United States was not prepared for nor had any plan for the assault on Iraq. Our children were sent to fight an ill-conceived and badly prosecuted war. Our troops were sent with the wrong type of training, bad equipment, inferior protection and thin supply lines. Our children have been killed and we have made the ultimate sacrifice for this fiasco of a war, then we find out this week that Rumsfeld doesn't even have the courtesy or compassion to sign the "death letters"—as they are so callously called. Besides the upcoming holidays and the fact we miss our children desperately, what else can go wrong this holiday season?

Well let's see. Oh yes. George W. Bush awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to three more architects of the quagmire that is Iraq. Thousands of people are dead and Bremer, Tenet and Franks are given our country's highest civilian award. What's next?

To top everything off—after it has been proven that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, there were no ties between Saddam and 9/11 and over 1,300 brave young people in this country are dead and Iraq lies in ruins— what does Time Magazine do? Names George W. Bush as its "Man of the Year." The person who betrayed this country into a needless war and whom I hold ultimately responsible for my son's death and who was questionably elected, again, to a second term, is honored this way by your magazine.

I hope we finally find peace in our world and that our troops who remain in Iraq are brought home speedily—after all, there was no reason for our troops to be there in the first place. No reason for my son and over 1,300 others to have been taken from their families. No reason for the infrastructure of Iraq to be demolished and thousands of Iraqis being killed. No reason for the notion of a "happy" holiday to be robbed from my family forever. I hope that our "leaders" don't invade any other countries which pose no serious threat to the United States. I hope there is no draft. I hope that the five people mentioned here (and many others) will finally be held responsible for the horrible mistake they got our country into. I hope that competence is finally rewarded and incompetence is appropriately punished. These are my wishes for 2005.

This isn't the first time your magazine has selected a questionable man for this honor but it's the first time it affected my family so personally and so sorrowfully.

Cindy Sheehan

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/rewarding_incompetence.php


TomPaine.com - Rewarding Incompetence

President Authorized Abu Ghraib Torture, FBI Email Says

mong a new batch of documents rights groups have forced the gov't to release, a Bureau communication refers to a presidential Executive Order endorsing some forms of torture witnessed at Iraq prison.

Dec 21 - Repeated references in an internal FBI email suggest that the president issued a special order to permit some of the more objectionable torture techniques used at Abu Ghraib and other US-run prison facilities around Iraq. The email was among a new batch of FBI documents revealed by civil rights advocates on Monday. Other documents describe the initiation of investigations into alleged incidents of torture and rape at detention facilities in Iraq.

The email, which was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, represents the first hard evidence directly connecting the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and the White House. The author of the email, whose name is blanked out but whose title is described as "On Scene Commander -- Baghdad," contains ten explicit mentions of an "Executive Order" that the author said mandated US military personnel to engage in extraordinary interrogation tactics.

An Executive Order is a presidential edict -- sometimes public, sometimes secretive -- instituting special laws or instructions that override or complement existing legislation. The White House has officially neither admitted nor denied that the president has issued an Executive Order pertaining to interrogation techniques.

The specific methods mentioned in the email as having been approved by the unnamed Executive Order and witnessed by FBI agents include sleep deprivation, placing hoods over prisoners’ heads, the use of loud music for sensory overload, stripping detainees naked, forcing captives to stand in so-called "stress positions," and the employment of work dogs. One of the more horrifying tools of intimidation, Army canines were used at the prison to terrorize inmates, as depicted in photos taken inside Abu Ghraib.

The correspondence is dated May 22, 2004 -- a couple of weeks after images of torture and humiliation at the prison broke in the world media -- and was sent between FBI officials attempting to clarify the Bureau’s position on the terminology to use when categorizing and reporting such techniques. The author repeatedly states those techniques were, at least temporarily, permitted under the mysterious presidential directive. The author also wrote that Pentagon policy had since restricted most of the techniques to require specific authorization from the chain of command.

"As stated, there was a revision last week in the military’s standard operating procedures based on the Executive Order," the letter reads. "I have been told that all interrogation techniques previously authorized by the Executive Order are still on the table but that certain techniques can only be used if very high-level authority is granted." The author goes on to recount having seen a military email that said certain techniques -- including "stress positions," the use of dogs, "sleep management," hoods, "stripping (except for health inspection)," and blaring music -- cannot be used without special authorization.

The author wonders if techniques that fall within the scope of the Executive Order should be referred to as "abuse," since they are technically legal. Unless otherwise advised by the Bureau, the email continues, agents "will still not report the use of these techniques as ‘abuse’ since we will not be in a position to know whether or not the authorization for these tactics was received from the aforementioned officials."

The author does believe that interrogation methods that involve "physical beatings, sexual humiliation or touching" clearly constitute "abuse," suggesting they are not within the scope of the repeatedly referenced Executive Order.

The email says that FBI personnel operating at Abu Ghraib witnessed but did not participate in prisoner interrogations that involved actions approved by the Executive Order. That statement upholds separate documentation also obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests backed by a lawsuit on the part of the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups.

As reported by The NewStandard, documents revealed in October showed that FBI agents had witnessed abuses like those mentioned in the email, in addition to many more severe actions.

The email that was revealed on Monday is the first official document to state that the Oval Office was the source of directives permitting abuse and torture.

After the ACLU released the documents, White House, Pentagon and FBI officials told reporters that the author of the email was mistaken, and that the order was not an Executive Order, but a Defense Department directive. All sources refused to be identified in news reports.

The White House does not appear to have ever officially denied that President Bush issued an Executive Order specifying interrogation techniques, though none has been made public. The ACLU and other organizations involved in forcing the release of documents regarding prisoner treatment at Abu Ghraib as well as prison camps in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba have demanded the White House "confirm or deny the existence of such an order," according to an ACLU press release issued on Monday.

Last June the president insisted that the only authorization he has issued with regard to interrogation procedures was that American personnel "would conform to US law and would be consistent with international treaty obligations."

But as the unidentified FBI official noted in his email, techniques are made legal under US law if and when the president issues an Executive Order rendering them so.

Asked more directly less than two weeks later if President Bush had ever approved particular prisoner handling methods, White House spokesperson Scott McClellan responded, "In terms of interrogation techniques related to what the military may carry out in Guantánamo Bay or Iraq, those are determinations that are made by the military, and we expect that those techniques fit within the policies that this President has instituted."

The president and his legal advisors have repeatedly said that the US government neither condones nor commits torture. The Bush administration’s conservative definition of torture, as expressed at a June 22 press briefing by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, incorporates only acts bearing "a specific intent to inflict severe physical or mental harm or suffering."

If White House statements are to be taken at face value, then, they still leave considerable room for the possibility that President Bush has authorized specific acts that civil libertarians and international law consider torturous, including the methods listed in the FBI email.

The United Nations Convention Against Torture, which the United States Congress has ratified, defines "torture" far more broadly as including "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession."

Also included among the newly released documents were notices regarding the initiation of criminal investigations pertaining to abuse of Iraqi detainees.

One of the documents is a memo stating that the US Army’s Criminal Investigation Division had commenced an inquiry "regarding the alleged rape of [a] juvenile male detainee at Abu Ghraib Prison." The name of the investigating officer or unit has been blanked out, and no identifying information is offered pertaining to the case.

Another document notifies Valene Caproni of the FBI’s Office of the General Counsel, that two FBI agents who were stationed in Iraq were to be interviewed by Army investigators looking into the alleged torture of an Iraqi detainee. Gary Bald of the Bureau’s Counterterrorism Division wrote the email message, in which he notes suspicious military paperwork on a detainee whose name is redacted. He also writes that the two FBI special agents were with the military police unit that held the Iraqi and signed receipts claiming to have seen him before he was transferred to Abu Ghraib for further interrogation.

While the email states that the prisoner does not mention the FBI in his complaint, he described his treatment in troubling detail. "They tortured me and cuffed me in an act called the scorpion and pouring cold water on me," the email quotes the detainee’s complaint as saying. "They tortured me from morning until the morning of the next day, and when I fell down from the severe torture I fell on the barbed wires, and then they dragged me from my feet and I was wounded and, and they punched me on my stomach."

President Authorized Abu Ghraib Torture, FBI Email Says

Daily Kos :: Bush's War

Probably obvious to most who read this blog, but a good thing to e-mail those conservative relatives you've got...


Bush's War
by kos
Wed Dec 22nd, 2004 at 11:40:38 CDT

So, who is to blame for all the deaths in Iraq? Let's mull this one over a bit, shall we?

Bush claims Saddam is a threat. Bush claims Saddam has WMDs. Bush claims Saddam has ties to Al Qaida. Bush and his administration promote questionable intelligence that supports their preconceptions and prejudices, and reject that which counters it.

Bush puts Rummy in charge of the war. Rummy fires general who says "we need more troops". Rummy says we can do more with less. Rummy says "lighter is better than armored". Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld say we'll be met with flower petals. They say the war will be entirely paid for by oil revenues. They say the reconstruction will be paid for entirely by oil revenues.

Bush says he's giving diplomacy a chance, but he's giving the world a middle finger. Powell says he's showing the Security Council evidence of Saddam's duplicity, but he shows them pictures of warehouses. Bush claims a coalition of the willing, that's really a coalition of the billing -- a mish-mash of third-world nations with token contributions. Only England offers tangible support.

Bush sends the troops into battle, claiming he had no choice. But Saddam had caved on every Bush demand (inspectors were allowed back in, his long-range missiles were being destroyed).

No WMDs are found. No ties with Al Qaida are found. No military capable of threatening Iraq's neighbors is found. Saddam's army collapses quickly and the country's defenders retreat into "insurgency" mode.

Bush declares mission accomplished. Bush taunts the insurgency. The insurgency kills our men and women. The commanders on the ground scream for more troops. They scream for armor. They scream for protected mess halls. Those screams fall on deaf ears.

More soldiers are killed. 1,320 Americans, 74 Britons, seven Bulgarians, one Dane, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Hungarian, 19 Italians, one Latvian, 16 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and nine Ukrainians. The wounded number in the five figures.

Nevermind the innocent Iraqis who have been "liberated" to death. And while we scream about Saddam's torture chambers, we create new ones of our own.

So thousands die, for a war built on false justifications, managed poorly, with underequipped, undermanned, and under-armored forces. And to add insult to injury, we've had to pay for this mess, to the tune of $200 billion.

So who sent our troops into Iraq on false pretenses? Who sent them in unarmored? Who refused to provide enough troops to stabilize the country effectively? Who taunted the Iraqi opposition with "bring 'em on"? Who approved the American-branded torture chambers? Who has rewarded the secretary of defense who has negligently ignored the armor shortage in Iraq?

And who keeps them there as they continue to die?

Daily Kos :: Bush's War

Daily Kos :: Criminal negligence in Mosul kills 20 soldiers

No one could imagine a tent mess hall was puting troops at risk ?

--------------------------------------------
Rocket attack on U.S. base kills more than 20
Strike could be deadliest on U.S. forces since invasion

U.S. troops help a wounded comrade after an attack on a dining facility at a base near Mosul, Iraq.

MOSUL, Iraq (CNN) -- A midday rocket attack on a U.S. military base in northern Iraq killed more than 20 people and wounded another 57, U.S. military and civilian officials said Tuesday.

The exact death toll remained unclear late Tuesday.

In Washington, the Pentagon said 22 people, including 19 U.S. troops, were killed in the attack. Details on the other three dead were not immediately known.

Meanwhile, military contractor Halliburton Co. reported seven deaths -- four employees with its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root -- and three subcontractors.

It's unclear whether the three other deaths cited by military officials include any of the Halliburton workers.

Pentagon officials blamed the blast at Camp Marez in Mosul on a rocket attack. One rocket hit the dining hall. Another landed on the ground of the base but did not cause any casualties.

Two other rockets landed outside the base, which the U.S. Army shares with the Iraqi national guard, Pentagon officials said. The attack occurred while soldiers were sitting down to lunch in the mess tent.

CNN.com - Rocket attack on U.S. base kills more than 20 - Dec 22, 2004

Criminal negligence in Mosul
by kos
Wed Dec 22nd, 2004 at 12:07:06 CDT

Soldiers at the Mosul base knew it was only a matter of time.
CNN personnel who have visited the base said the dining area is a tent-like facility with no hardened protection -- and that soldiers had specifically raised concerns that they could be targeted by insurgents at meal time.

One had told CNN it was only a matter of time before there was an attack on the mess hall.

"There is a level of vulnerability when you go in there, and you don't feel like there's a hard roof over your head," said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, an officer at Camp Marez.
A new mess hall was being built. But why wasn't it finished?
A sturdier structure designed to replace the mess is being built at the base, but the work has been plagued by delays. Hastings said workers from KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, were supposed to have completed it by Christmas.

...Without those delays, the mess hall would've been finished, and the troops would've been protected from these sorts of attacks.

Daily Kos :: Criminal negligence in Mosul

The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Count Every Vote

Every vote is supposed to count in America, but candidates too often maneuver to disqualify votes that they think might go to the other side. A month and a half after Election Day, battles are still raging in Washington State and in San Diego over whether to count all of the votes that were cast. The answer to that question must be yes.

In Washington's gubernatorial election, Dino Rossi, a Republican, and Christine Gregoire, a Democrat, finished in a virtual dead heat. With nearly 2.9 million votes cast, Mr. Rossi initially led by 261 votes. A machine recount took his lead down to 42. Ms. Gregoire requested a hand recount. During it, King County, a heavily Democratic area that includes Seattle, found 723 absentee ballots that had not been counted because election workers made errors like failing to verify the voters' signatures.

Republicans, fearing that those ballots would throw the election to Ms. Gregoire, have gotten a lower court judge to prevent them from being counted, at least temporarily. But there is no reason these ballots and other valid ballots that have turned up during the recount should not be counted. The right to vote cannot be taken away because an election official did not do his or her job correctly.

In San Diego, the No. 2 choice of the voters for the mayor's job may be headed to City Hall. Donna Frye, a write-in candidate, came within 2,108 votes of defeating Mayor Dick Murphy. But Ms. Frye's vote total does not include more than 5,500 ballots on which voters wrote her name, but failed to darken a bubble next to it. There can be no doubt that those voters, who would easily give Ms. Frye a majority, tried to vote for her, but were tripped up by poor ballot design. The voters' intent should be recognized.

In Ohio, where a recount of the presidential election is under way, it is becoming clear that as important as recounts are, they are not enough to ensure the integrity of our elections. Representative John Conyers Jr., a Democrat from Michigan, has charged that an employee of a company that makes vote-counting software used across the state may have tampered with one county's vote tabulator after the election to make the recount come out right. If people other than election officials have free access to the tabulation software, it can make a recount an empty gesture.

Clearly the American election system needs significant improvement, starting with voter-verified paper trails for every vote cast electronically. In the current flawed system, the best chance we have of producing accurate results is to be on guard for manipulation of electronic voting machines and tabulation software, and to conduct conscientious recounts when the outcome is at all in doubt..

The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Count Every Vote

If the vote was not hacked then we have to ask: Why not?

if the vote was not hacked then we have to ask another important question. Why not?

It wasn't the security that prevented it. It wasn't a lack of opportunity, or a lack of motivation. Why would such a vulnerable voting system, with so much at stake, NOT be hacked?

When this election came out in the near reverse of polling and expectations we had an indication that something might have been wrong with the integrity of the vote. And because of the lack of traceability and trackability of the vote, we were left with few ways of investigating.

That is the fact that motivates me more than any other. The lack of recourse.

By spending our time trying to decide why Kerry lost, who should be the next DNC chair, and how to sweep homosexuals under the rug (or not), we lost the opportunity to question the integrity of the vote.

We should have said 'I don't believe Kerry lost, I definitely don't believe he lost by this much, and I want to look at the tabulators, I want to lockdown these machines.'

The reason we should have done this is because without rejecting the process of this election it will not be fixed.

Two years from now we will have Congressional elections with no paper trails, on unsecured tabulators, with partisan election boards.

We will complain about voter suppression and maybe even make significant improvements on registration and the equitable distribution of voting machines. But we will not have restored confidence in the actual counting of the vote.

Only by screaming foul and rejecting the integrity of the vote from the outset would we have been able to get action.

Now that is a risky thing to do. Number one, as Kid Oakland points out, it further erodes confidence in the fairness of voting, leading more people to not participate. Number Two, it makes us look hysterical and paranoid and we become easily marginalized if our investigations do not turn up significant fraud. Number Three, it is a distraction from proveable instances of voter intimidation and suppression.

All of this is true. And it's why Kerry bowed out.

But goddamn it! It felt to me like Kerry won.

And I believe that if we look in the right places we will find hacking.

And more importantly, we have to point out that, under current conditions, we have NO WAY of knowing whether hacking occurs.

That cannot go on. It has to change. And there is no better way of getting that change than by making it crystal clear that we think there was fraud and they can't disprove it.

If enough people are on the record as thinking the election was stolen then they will realize the current system is dangerous and undermines our democracy.

But if we keep watching our Cleland's and Mondale's get beat in non-recountable elections we will deserve to live in Bushland.

Daily Kos :: Kerry Won- Get Over It (More on the election issue)

It goes to show WHY the GOP has the WH

They used a clear problem as an opportunity for their party.

Instead of calling anyone who raised the issue a tin-foil hat.

Instead of moaning and crying without any ACTION


Daily Kos :: Freepers very worried about vote-rigging

Daily Kos :: Freepers very worried about vote-rigging

Freepers very worried about vote-rigging
by luaptifer
[Unsubscribe]

Mon Dec 20th, 2004 at 07:39:06 CDT

but that was in 1999!

even more fascinating!? They found a 1996 article detailing many of the arguments we have here and now!!

...from the nearly 13,000 word piece in Relevance Magazine:

-- 1996 remember! --
Could a national election be fixed? As an illustration, Shamos laid out the following scenario for he and his hypothetical henchman:

[snip]

"I'm going to change ten per cent of the votes, or five per cent-some small number-and that software is going out to pivotal jurisdictions in the country. And that is going to shift the national election."

Eva Waskell told Relevance that the most likely election-rigging scenario would entail picking key states, counties and precincts rather than going after the entire vote. This would ensure that the vote switching isn't too far out of line with public expectations. "What you would do to prevent that is to know how these precincts have voted in the past and just modify them a little bit."

more below the fold


Diaries :: luaptifer's diary ::

Update [2004-12-20 10:51:38 by luaptifer]: encountered on my search:
- beginning of my trek, a conservative railing We've been had! against the bu$h win: http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/columns/bushwon.htm
- archival
http://www.votefraud.org/primer_archive_articles.html
http://www.lewisnews.com/section.asp?ID=56&Name=Citizens+For+A+Fair+Vote+Count+
- summary or others demonstrating possibility/evidence of fraud even back to 1964:
http://www.jonathanvankin.com/vote-fraud.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/041503Landes/041503landes.html
http://www.newswithviews.com/Devvy/kidd72.htm
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0211/S00067.htm
--

yup, 1996!

You pick the swing precinct in a heavily populated county and that's the one you fiddle with. Three to five per cent is enough to have the election outcome changed.

[snip]

Dugger's article also quoted Peter Vogel, a consultant for the Texas Secretary of State, who agreed with Shamos that the Presidency could be stolen by computer "because of the electoral college...If you have a majority in the right states, it doesn't matter who has the majority of the votes in the country. If you program the right states for the right elections, I think you could control the Presidential results."

jedediah smith was the concerned programmer sending a wakeup call to his fellow freeple, presented a concise summary following Part III. It was a Twilight Zone moment when I felt the angst-vibes of a freeper rippling their way through time and space deep into my own bones:

1. Breakdown of U.S. vote-counting methods: computer-counted punch cards (36%); computer-counted optically-scanned ballots (21.5%); direct-recording computer counters (4.3%) and mixed (some electronic, some mechanical) (8.3%); lever machines (approximately 27%); and hand-counted paper ballots (2.7%).

2. A day or two before an election, some precincts run a few dozen cards to test vote machines, but possible hidden "subroutines" of code for vote fraud are never considered..

3. Computer voting expert Howard Strauss, director of Advanced Computer Applications at Princeton University, scoffs at these so-called "logic and accuracy tests," saying: "That doesn't prove a thing. Any system that was designed with...any kind of fraudulent thing in it could pass that test easily...There are a hundred ways you could do this and probably any freshman in any school that teaches computer programming could figure out a half dozen ways...[The test] doesn't tell you what's inside the box."

4. Dan Rather asked Strauss if a national election could be fixed. He responded: "Get me a job with the company that writes the software for this program. Then I'd have access to one third of the votes. Is that enough to fix a general election?" [Note: He was referring to the most commonly-used vote-counting computer program at that time. Incidentally, one company now has access to over 50% of the votes].

5. Peter G. Neumann, of Stanford Research Institute, International in Menlo Park, California, says computer vote theft could be concealed and regards such theft of the Presidency as a distinct possibility.

6. Only one examination of computer source-code for vote fraud has been conducted. In a court case, a computer scientist was allowed to examine the questionable computer system and source-code without proper equipment, and still discovered "trap doors," "wait loops," and Christmas trees" for undetectable vote fraud. In the presence of the company president, system programmer and others, and he "added ten thousand votes to the total of one of the candidates in a mock race for President." The judge excluded his testimony of an internal program 'debugger' which was also a Trojan Horse and barred the jury from seeing his fraud demonstration.

7. Computer scientist and election consultant Dr. Michael Shamos told how he could fix a national election given the opportunity:

" Working in a company headquarters, I'm writing some election software, which will be sent by Federal Express to jurisdictions in executable object code. I'm going to program this thing so that if there are more than eight hundred people voting in a precinct I'm simply going to trade some votes, take them from other parties and dump them into the party that I want to win. So all the totals are going to be exactly right. I'm going to change ten per cent of the votes, or five per cent- some small number-and that software is going out to pivotal jurisdictions in the country. And that is going to shift the national election."

Vote fraud expert Eva Waskell said the most likely fraud would entail picking key states, counties and precincts rather than going after the entire vote, to ensure the results aren't too far out of line with public expectations. "What you would do to prevent that is to know how these precincts have voted in the past and just modify them a little bit. You pick the swing precinct in a heavily populated county and that's the one you fiddle with. Three to five per cent is enough to have the election outcome changed."

In the last presidential election Dole won more counties than Clinton (1580 to 1534), but Clinton won the more important "swing jurisdictions" in vote-rich states. Peter Vogel, a consultant for the Texas Secretary of State, agreed that the Presidency could be stolen by computer "because of the electoral college...If you have a majority in the right states, it doesn't matter who has the majority of the votes in the country. If you program the right states for the right elections, I think you could control the Presidential results."

8. Leonard Gates, a 23-year employee of the Cincinnati Bell telco, swore under oath that in the late 1970s and early 1980s his company wiretapped election phone lines to alter vote results. The election headquarters' phone lines were tapped to provide a link-up between the county's vote-counting computers and parties unknown to him on another phone line in California. He was told they could actually alter the votes, and that "This was just small compared to what was going on." Some computerized voting machines have modems which could allow outside manipulation during voting. Some may also have hidden cellular modems for such control with complete secrecy.

9. Only a handful of companies control computerized voting. Sequoia Pacific competes in several regions of the country and won a mammoth New York City contract. They are owned by the transational Jefferson Smurfit Group, an Irish firm. Its board includes the former Prime Minister of Ireland, a former member of the European Commission, a member of the board of Ireland's Central Bank a number of top Irish or European banking and air line officials, and a member of the board of Gannett News Services, one of the largest newspaper chains in America. So basically foreigners count a substantial percentage of our votes.

A Washington election official responded to questions about foreign control of vote-counting, rampant industrial espionage against America and possible foreign vote fraud, with, "I suppose that anything is theoretically possible but the likelihood of that happening is virtually impossible. The structure of our electoral process in this country does not lend itself to this." She was equally unconcerned about another foreign-owned company which is eyeing the U.S. vote-counting market-Computer Devices Canada. This type of glib, yet unreassuring, response to serious questions seems to be typical.

But you can always tell a freeper, the pedigree shows through any amount of thoughtful consideration: he got the damn president wrong!!


In summation: Computerized voting + national vote fraud + foreign control of vote counting + foreign campaign contributions = President Bill Clinton

The worst president in U.S. history wasn't even elected.

As it took me some time to discover, the article is not freely available online so jedediah's post in three parts may be accessed by a trip to freeperville:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

If you can handle it, reading the posts and comments in situ is worth the discomfort as proof that this is truly a non-partisan issue.

The damn voting system must be repaired!

If such an adventure is too much for your constitution (;-), I did a temporary transcription to my blog. Who knows, it may be they don't like the traffic or, on a whim, feel the need to pull the article for some reason.

Pandora's Black Box: Did it Really Count Your Vote?

I was mainly amused when I first came upon this among the freeple, "Gee, just who is calling libs whiners?"

Then my blue-blood kicked in, "See, it concerns all Americans!".

On review of a few key points, however, it came back to me even through penta-ply tinfoil: "Damn, that's right: this forum gave birth to the Swiftbot Liar campaign. Might this have sown some seeds!?" After all, in early April of 1999 it was another of the flock who described his quick and dirty vote-rigger an easy task (halfway down the page):


This took me about 30 minutes. If you have a BASIC interpreter, you can copy it and try it on a file named "votein.txt". I have one question. How do they keep the programmers from going public about the software? Someone has to know what is going on....

From: Varmint Al (varmint@DittosRush.com) *
04/08/99 13:50:29 PDT

Might Al be a political consultant by now? I wonder...

Daily Kos :: Freepers very worried about vote-rigging

OHIO & Lakoff: The Right Wing Power Grab Frame

From Daily Kos:

OHIO & Lakoff: The Right Wing Power Grab Frame
by Paul Rosenberg

Sun Dec 19th, 2004 at 18:17:28 CDT

What matters to me most about Ohio are 3 things: (1) Racism. (2) Voter Suppression. (3) The Right Wing Power Grab.

For me, the essence of the right wing power grab as a reality is self-evident. If we do not confront and fight it directly, we will, quite simply, always being playing defense. And we will invariably lose. First let me quickly run down the reality, then I'll turn to the matter of framing.

Diaries :: Paul Rosenberg's diary ::

From at least the time of Watergate onward, major forces within the GOP have beleived that they have the right to rule America, and the the Constitution is simply a hindrance. The stealing of Carter's briefing book during the 1980 debate--as well as the never properly investigated October Suprise--were the first big electoral example. The attempt to smear Clinton in state elections before he bacame a national candidate was another piece of this same pattern. The coverup of Bush's involvement in Iran-Contra was another piece. And the two-term campaign to impeach Clinton--investigating the man to search for a crime, rather than the other way around--was a climax, of sorts. But then came Florida 2000, DeLay's unprecedented mid-term redistricting caper, the California recall, and finally election 2004, with Ohio in the center ring.

All this is perfectly consistent with the conservative Strict Father model.

In a brief telephone interview this week, George Lakoff told me, 'They [Strict Father Republicans] see themselves in all out war of good versus evil and you can use the devils own tricks against him, so that there is a no-holds-barred situation. Anything goes in confronting evil. The Democrats have assumed that the election process is not war, that it replaces war. That's why you hold elections instead of having war.'

Thus, it's perfectly consistent that the GOP feels entitled to steal elections, if necessary. They are fighting the devil. All's fair in love and war. Democrats seem to recognize this sometimes, but we fail to really see how crucial it is."

GOP & Lakoff: Don't Think of An Elephant

In his book Don't Think of An Elephant, George Lakoff has a chapter about the California Recall. In it, he runs through a number of rightwing frames that came to dominate the media coverage of the campaign. And he shows how they each had some grain of truth, while also hiding a good deal as well. The two I saw as most important were the Voter Revolt and The People Beat the Politicians.

The Voter Revolt frame hides the national Republican effort over several years to make Davis look bad by hurting the California economy. It hides the fact that energy deregulation was brought in by Republican governor Pete Wilson. It ignores the fact that there was no real energy crisis. ...


Daily Kos :: OHIO & Lakoff: The Right Wing Power Grab Frame

Gamer buys $26,500 virtual land

A 22-year-old gamer has spent $26,500 (�13,700) on an island that exists only in a computer role-playing game (RPG).

The Australian gamer, known only by his gaming moniker Deathifier, bought the island in an online auction.

The land exists within the game Project Entropia, an RPG which allows thousands of players to interact with each other.

Entropia allows gamers to buy and sell virtual items using real cash, while fans of other titles often use auction site eBay to sell their virtual wares.

Earlier this year economists calculated that these massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have a gross economic impact equivalent to the GDP of the African nation of Namibia.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Gamer buys $26,500 virtual land