Court victory lets preserved Ohio 2004 ballots tell new tales of theft and fraud as indictments and convictions mount
Ohio election protection activists have won a landmark court battle to
preserve the ballots from 2004’s disputed presidential election, and
researchers studying those ballots continue to find new evidence that
the election was, indeed, stolen. Among other things, large numbers of
consecutive votes in different precincts for George W. Bush make it
appear ever more likely that the real winner in 2004 should have been
John Kerry. Meanwhile, indictments and prison terms are mounting among key players in that tainted contest.
New news is bad news
AUSTIN, Texas -- Noshing on the news ...
-- The National Intelligence Estimate, agreed upon by 16 Bush-controlled spy services within the U.S. government, says the war in Iraq is making the war on terrorism harder and worse. It gives the phrase "leaking intelligence" a new meaning (a line not original with me).
We've been having a debate in this country about whether to continue the war -- or "the comma," as the president calls it -- until it has become a semi-colon. Now, the debate is over, and what we need to discuss is the best way out. This war is not a goddamn comma.
-- According to The Associated Press, the directors of the Legal Services Corp., a program for poor people, have been trying to get rid of their inspector general, who has clocked them for, among other things, expensive meals, using limousine services and wasting money on a ritzy headquarters.
-- The National Intelligence Estimate, agreed upon by 16 Bush-controlled spy services within the U.S. government, says the war in Iraq is making the war on terrorism harder and worse. It gives the phrase "leaking intelligence" a new meaning (a line not original with me).
We've been having a debate in this country about whether to continue the war -- or "the comma," as the president calls it -- until it has become a semi-colon. Now, the debate is over, and what we need to discuss is the best way out. This war is not a goddamn comma.
-- According to The Associated Press, the directors of the Legal Services Corp., a program for poor people, have been trying to get rid of their inspector general, who has clocked them for, among other things, expensive meals, using limousine services and wasting money on a ritzy headquarters.
Nuclear winter, global warming, or impeachment
Some say the globe will end by warming,
Some say nuclear war.
At the risk of being too alarming,
I hold with those who favor warming.
But if religious feuds can't wait
I think I know enough of hate
To say that just a few more missiles
Could end us first
While Dubya whistles.
Apologies to Robert Frost, and to you, and your family, and what would have been your great grandchildren. We are sending missiles to Iran on a ship departing my home state of Virginia next week, and the water the ship will be passing through is warmer than it used to be, and there's more of it.
Some say nuclear war.
At the risk of being too alarming,
I hold with those who favor warming.
But if religious feuds can't wait
I think I know enough of hate
To say that just a few more missiles
Could end us first
While Dubya whistles.
Apologies to Robert Frost, and to you, and your family, and what would have been your great grandchildren. We are sending missiles to Iran on a ship departing my home state of Virginia next week, and the water the ship will be passing through is warmer than it used to be, and there's more of it.
Stealing America...Vote by Vote
"Stealing America...Vote by Vote "
A Film by Dorothy Fadiman
Ohio Premier at the Drexel Gateway Theater, Columbus, Ohio
Sunday, September 24, 7:30 pm.
Dorothy Fadiman's powerful, moving, infuriating, comprehensive and brilliant new film might well be re-named "The Crime of the Century."
We all now know that the elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen. The only thing that the American people can be proud of about George W. Bush is that they (or we) have never chosen him President.
Fadiman's many awards include an Emmy and an Oscar nomination, and in this excellent film, we can see why. She uses these 70 cinematic minutes to patiently, methodically and convincingly dismantle any possible remaining arguments against the reality of what was done to the American democratic process in 2004, primarily in Ohio.
A Film by Dorothy Fadiman
Ohio Premier at the Drexel Gateway Theater, Columbus, Ohio
Sunday, September 24, 7:30 pm.
Dorothy Fadiman's powerful, moving, infuriating, comprehensive and brilliant new film might well be re-named "The Crime of the Century."
We all now know that the elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen. The only thing that the American people can be proud of about George W. Bush is that they (or we) have never chosen him President.
Fadiman's many awards include an Emmy and an Oscar nomination, and in this excellent film, we can see why. She uses these 70 cinematic minutes to patiently, methodically and convincingly dismantle any possible remaining arguments against the reality of what was done to the American democratic process in 2004, primarily in Ohio.
Stealing America...Vote by Vote
"Stealing America...Vote by Vote "
A Film by Dorothy Fadiman
Ohio Premier at the Drexel Gateway Theater, Columbus, Ohio
Sunday, September 24, 7:30 pm.
Dorothy Fadiman's powerful, moving, infuriating, comprehensive and brilliant new film might well be re-named "The Crime of the Century."
We all now know that the elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen. The only thing that the American people can be proud of about George W. Bush is that they (or we) have never chosen him President.
Fadiman's many awards include an Emmy and an Oscar nomination, and in this excellent film, we can see why. She uses these 70 cinematic minutes to patiently, methodically and convincingly dismantle any possible remaining arguments against the reality of what was done to the American democratic process in 2004, primarily in Ohio.
A Film by Dorothy Fadiman
Ohio Premier at the Drexel Gateway Theater, Columbus, Ohio
Sunday, September 24, 7:30 pm.
Dorothy Fadiman's powerful, moving, infuriating, comprehensive and brilliant new film might well be re-named "The Crime of the Century."
We all now know that the elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen. The only thing that the American people can be proud of about George W. Bush is that they (or we) have never chosen him President.
Fadiman's many awards include an Emmy and an Oscar nomination, and in this excellent film, we can see why. She uses these 70 cinematic minutes to patiently, methodically and convincingly dismantle any possible remaining arguments against the reality of what was done to the American democratic process in 2004, primarily in Ohio.
Reclaiming Omelas
"In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads stand near a rusty bucket. . . . In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops."
- Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"
Now that even Republicans are gagging on the war on terror, as lavish descriptions of psychosis-level torture seep into the mainstream - and as a flailing, unpopular president clings in the face of reason to his right to maintain a gulag of "enemy combatants" (for God's sake, George, most of them are innocent) - Americans are finding themselves on the brink of the moral debate they've been trying to avoid for the last, oh, 50 years or so. It's been brewing my whole lifetime.
- Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"
Now that even Republicans are gagging on the war on terror, as lavish descriptions of psychosis-level torture seep into the mainstream - and as a flailing, unpopular president clings in the face of reason to his right to maintain a gulag of "enemy combatants" (for God's sake, George, most of them are innocent) - Americans are finding themselves on the brink of the moral debate they've been trying to avoid for the last, oh, 50 years or so. It's been brewing my whole lifetime.
Here's why it's personal
It's personal for a lot of people. 9-11. So personal Keith Olberman wrote an essay on why it's personal to him. It's personal to me.
September 11, 2001. My mother, who was born in the city at Cornell Med was in the city staying at my sister's apartment then.
She and her friend were on the way to the World Trade Center as part of a tour. They overslept so did not get there as planned right at 8:30. They got to the Metro late and were turned away just as they were shutting down the metro at West 72nd street. September 11, 2001.
A plane allegedly went down in the next podunct town in Pennsylvania to where I spent summers on a lake at my grandparents house. Indian Lake. Shanksville. Who the heck ever heard of these places? I did. I knew it so well I knew that the official story of a plane plumetting and disappearing into liquid earth of a reclaimed coal field with body parts floating in the lake five to ten miles upstream made zero sense unless the plane exploded or was shot down.
September 11, 2001. My mother, who was born in the city at Cornell Med was in the city staying at my sister's apartment then.
She and her friend were on the way to the World Trade Center as part of a tour. They overslept so did not get there as planned right at 8:30. They got to the Metro late and were turned away just as they were shutting down the metro at West 72nd street. September 11, 2001.
A plane allegedly went down in the next podunct town in Pennsylvania to where I spent summers on a lake at my grandparents house. Indian Lake. Shanksville. Who the heck ever heard of these places? I did. I knew it so well I knew that the official story of a plane plumetting and disappearing into liquid earth of a reclaimed coal field with body parts floating in the lake five to ten miles upstream made zero sense unless the plane exploded or was shot down.
A tortured debate
AUSTIN, Texas -- Some country is about to have a Senate debate on a bill to legalize torture. How weird is that?
I'd like to thank Sens. John McCain, Lindsay Graham -- a former military lawyer -- and John Warner of Virginia. I will always think fondly of John Warner for this one reason: Forty years ago, this country was involved in an unprovoked and unnecessary war. It ended so badly the vets finally had to hold their own homecoming parade, years after they came home. The only member of Congress who attended was John Warner.
A debate on torture. I don't know -- what do you think? I guess we have to define it, first. The White House has already specified "water boarding," making some guy think he's drowning for long periods, as a perfectly good interrogation technique. Maybe, but it was also a great favorite of the Gestapo and has been described and condemned in thousands of memoirs and novels in highly unpleasant terms.
I don't think we can give it a good name again, and I personally kind of don't like being identified with the Gestapo. How icky. (Somewhere inside me, a small voice is shrieking, "Are you insane?")
I'd like to thank Sens. John McCain, Lindsay Graham -- a former military lawyer -- and John Warner of Virginia. I will always think fondly of John Warner for this one reason: Forty years ago, this country was involved in an unprovoked and unnecessary war. It ended so badly the vets finally had to hold their own homecoming parade, years after they came home. The only member of Congress who attended was John Warner.
A debate on torture. I don't know -- what do you think? I guess we have to define it, first. The White House has already specified "water boarding," making some guy think he's drowning for long periods, as a perfectly good interrogation technique. Maybe, but it was also a great favorite of the Gestapo and has been described and condemned in thousands of memoirs and novels in highly unpleasant terms.
I don't think we can give it a good name again, and I personally kind of don't like being identified with the Gestapo. How icky. (Somewhere inside me, a small voice is shrieking, "Are you insane?")
Saying the same thing louder doesn't make it true
AUSTIN, Texas -- Is it just me, or was that the worst presidential press conference in history? So I went back and read it over. Of course, in print you don't get the testy tone: I heard it on radio and thought the man was about to blow up -- not just because he was being questioned, which Bush appears to consider an offensive action in the first place, but because people continue to refuse to see things the way he does. How can they be so stupid or malign, he appears to wonder.
I ask: How can he be so repetitive, repeatedly using the oldest tactic of a verbal bully -- saying the same thing louder, as though that would make it true?
Last Friday's Rose Garden press conference seemed so awful I thought it worth wading through it again to see what set him off. Maybe if you saw it on television, it seemed better. Perhaps his banter with reporters works better on TV. But I left with the impression that this is a spoiled man whose frustration level when someone disagrees with him is that of a 3-year-old and that he's the last person you want to see operating under a lot of stress because he doesn't handle it well.
I ask: How can he be so repetitive, repeatedly using the oldest tactic of a verbal bully -- saying the same thing louder, as though that would make it true?
Last Friday's Rose Garden press conference seemed so awful I thought it worth wading through it again to see what set him off. Maybe if you saw it on television, it seemed better. Perhaps his banter with reporters works better on TV. But I left with the impression that this is a spoiled man whose frustration level when someone disagrees with him is that of a 3-year-old and that he's the last person you want to see operating under a lot of stress because he doesn't handle it well.
The brilliantly profitable timing of the Alaska oil pipeline shutdown
For The Guardian (UK) -- Is the Alaska Pipeline corroded? You bet it is. Has been for more than a decade. Did British Petroleum shut the pipe yesterday to turn a quick buck on its negligence, to profit off the disaster it created? Just ask the "smart pig."
Years ago, I had the unhappy job of leading an investigation of British Petroleum's management of the Alaska pipeline system. I was working for the Chugach villages, the Alaskan Natives who own the shoreline slimed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker grounding.
Even then, courageous government inspectors and pipeline workers were screaming about corrosion all through the pipeline. I say "courageous" because BP, which owns 46% of the pipe and is supposed to manage the system, had a habit of hunting down and destroying the careers of those who warn of pipeline problems.
Years ago, I had the unhappy job of leading an investigation of British Petroleum's management of the Alaska pipeline system. I was working for the Chugach villages, the Alaskan Natives who own the shoreline slimed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker grounding.
Even then, courageous government inspectors and pipeline workers were screaming about corrosion all through the pipeline. I say "courageous" because BP, which owns 46% of the pipe and is supposed to manage the system, had a habit of hunting down and destroying the careers of those who warn of pipeline problems.