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Sunday, November 07, 2004
Dem Radio Address

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to Deliver Weekly Democratic Radio Address

Washington, D.C -- House Democratic Leader of California will deliver the Democratic Radio Address this Saturday, November 6, 2004.  In her address, Pelosi will discuss the partisan split in the country and the need for bipartisan action to address the challenges ahead.

Below is a transcript of her remarks:

Embargoed until Saturday, November 6, 2004 at 11:06 a.m. EST

  “Good morning.  This is Nancy Pelosi of California, Democratic Leader of the House of Representatives. 

“Throughout our nation's history, hope and optimism have defined the American spirit. As a nation, we have always emerged from difficult times of war and economic uncertainty stronger, and more unified. And every generation has struggled to leave our children a world that is stronger and more secure than the one left to us.  That is our legacy, and it must also be our commitment.

“President Bush faces great challenges in the days and months ahead.  There is danger abroad and unfulfilled promise here at home.  And as it has been for the past four years, the country is divided.

“But our partisan split, rather than being an excuse for inaction, must be a call to compromise and common sense.  We stand strongest as a nation when we stand on common ground.

“I hope that in this term President Bush will fulfill his renewed promise to be a uniter, not a divider.  A new term is indeed a new opportunity to bring America together.  House Democrats stand ready to work with the President. 

“Despite our divisions, there are many places where we should be able to agree. 

“More than three years after the horrific attacks of 9/11, we know we are not as safe as we should be.  As we came together after Sept. 11, 2001, we must come together now to enact the urgent recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

“We must move to address our domestic priorities: creating good jobs, better access to health care, and the best possible education for our children. Even on these crucial issues, there is broad bipartisan consensus on concrete steps we could take right now.

“To create jobs, we can begin by passing a robust transportation bill that will create 1.7 million new jobs nationwide, while modernizing our infrastructure.

“We must also reform the tax code; we must stop rewarding outsourcing. As a matter of basic fairness, no taxpayer should have to subsidize the outsourcing of his or her own job.

“Congress should take up legislation to extend health insurance to more parents and children. There is also broad agreement that one of the ways to bring down the cost of health care is to allow the safe reimportation of drugs from Canada and elsewhere.

“To improve education, we must not only keep the promise of No Child Left Behind, we must also match the reforms with the resources necessary to make them work for our children. And we must make college education more affordable, so that every student who has the motivation to continue his or her education beyond high school will also have the means to do so.

“There are places where we differ, as well, and Democrats will stand our ground.  The President has proposed privatizing Social Security, which would cut the benefits that provide financial security for millions of seniors and the disabled.  Democrats have always protected Social Security and we will continue to do so.

“The President also pledged to cut the deficit in half.  But in the days after the election, he said he wants even more tax cuts and proposed yet another increase in the debt limit.  Democrats will continue to fight for fiscal responsibility.  And that begins with an honest discussion about how to reduce the enormous deficit.  We must pay as we go.  

“Within the Congress itself, there must be more discourse and less discord.

“Democrats and Republicans are on different sides of the aisle, but we have a shared oath and a solemn obligation to serve our country together.  As elected officials, our commitment must be to build a future worthy of the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform and worthy of the aspirations of our children.  That is my hope for this Administration and this Congress.

“As President Kennedy said in his Inaugural Address: “Let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking his blessing and his help, but knowing that here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own.”

“This is Nancy Pelosi, House Democratic Leader.  Thank you for listening, and God bless America.”


Posted at 11:51 pm by blog swarm
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Bush Man-Date

Maps and cartograms of 2004 US presidential election results

Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman
University of Michigan

[Correction: The figures for numbers of counties were off because of a bug in one of our programs. We've fixed this and corrected the text below. Thanks to Kevin Drum for pointing this out. (All the actual maps are perfectly fine however.)]

On election night and in the days since then, we have seen many maps that look like this:

The states of the country are colored red or blue to indicate whether a majority of their voters voted for the Republican candidate (George W. Bush) or the Democratic candidate (John F. Kerry) respectively. The map gives the superficial impression that the "red states" dominate the country, since they cover far more area than the blue ones. However, as pointed out by many others, this is misleading because it fails to take into account the fact that most of the red states have small populations, whereas most of the blue states have large ones. The blue may be small in area, but they are large in terms of numbers of people, which is what matters in an election.

We can correct for this by making use of a cartogram, a map in which the sizes of states have been rescaled according to their population. That is, states are drawn with a size proportional not to their sheer topographic acreage -- which has little to do with politics -- but to the number of their inhabitants, states with more people appearing larger than states with fewer, regardless of their actual area on the ground. Thus, on such a map, the state of Rhode Island, with its 1.1 million inhabitants, would appear about twice the size of Wyoming, which has half a million, even though Wyoming has 60 times the acreage of Rhode Island.

Here are the 2004 presidential election results on a population cartogram of this type:

The cartogram was made using the diffusion method of Gastner and Newman, which is described in detail in this article. Population data were taken from the 2000 US Census. Iowa and New Mexico, which at the time of writing were officially undeclared, we have assumed to have a Republican majority -- all indications are that this will be the final declaration once recounts are complete.

The cartogram reveals what we know already from the news: that the country was actually very evenly divided by the vote, rather than being dominated by one side or the other.

But we can go further. We can do the same thing also with the county-level election results and the images are even more striking. Here is a map of US counties, again colored red and blue to indicate Republican and Democratic majorities respectively:

Similar maps have appeared in the press, for example in USA Today, and have been used as evidence that the Republican party has wide support. Again, however, a cartogram gives a more accurate picture. Here is what the cartogram looks like for the county-level election returns:

Again, the blue areas are much magnified, and areas of blue and red are now nearly equal. However, there is in fact still more red than blue on this map, even after allowing for population sizes. Of course, we know that nationwide the percentages of voters voting for either candidate were almost identical, so what is going on here?

The answer seems to be that the amount of red on the map is skewed because there are a lot of counties in which only a slim majority voted Republican. One possible way to allow for this on a map, suggested by Robert Vanderbei at Princeton University, is to use not just two colors, red and blue, but instead to use red, blue, and shades of purple to indicate percentages of voters. Here is what the normal map looks like if you do this:

And here's what the cartogram looks like:

In this map, the red counties occupy only a rather small portion of the total area, most of the country appearing either in blue or in shades of purple.


Posted at 11:44 pm by blog swarm
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Voting Fraud in the 2004 Presidential Election

Vote Fraud

The exit polls were dismissed as being innaccurate. But their accuracy depended on the type of voting machine that was used, implying that the machines, not the polls, were inaccurate.

 

Florida

The counties that used optical scanner machines to record votes showed a consistent pattern of far more votes for Bush and far less votes for Kerry than projected, based on the number of registered republicans and democrats. (Data for this and the next chart from http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm.) (click to enlarge)

The counties in Florida that used touchscreen voting had a relatively normal distribution of final votes for Bush and Kerry compared to the amount of registered democrats and republicans and the projected turnout. (click to enlarge)

Compare just the counties that had from 80,000-500,000 voters.

 

Broward County

Early Thursday, as Broward County elections officials wrapped up after a long day of canvassing votes, something unusual caught their eye. Tallies should go up as more votes are counted. That's simple math. But in some races, the numbers had gone . . . down.
Officials found the software used in Broward can handle only 32,000 votes per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward. Why a voting system would be designed to count backward was a mystery to Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman. She was on the phone late Wednesday with Omaha-based Elections Systems and Software.

Collier County

Voter Turnout was 127,409. 128,352 votes were cast for president.

Duval County

Voter Turnout was 379,257. 379,614 votes were cast for president.

Glades County

Voter Turnout was 3,446. 4,188 votes were cast for president.

Highlands County

Voter Turnout was 33,996. 41,491 votes were cast for president.

Lake County

Voter Turnout was 123,751. 123,938 votes were cast for president.

Miami Dade County

Voter Turnout was 716,574. 768,553 votes were cast for president.

Okaloosa County

Voter Turnout was 89,485. 89,707 votes were cast for president.

Orange County

Voter Turnout was 386,104. 387,752 votes were cast for president.

Osceola County

Voter Turnout was 63,589. 82,178 votes were cast for president.

Leon County

Voter Turnout was 136229. 136,314 votes were cast for president.

Palm Beach County

Voter Turnout was 452,061. 542,835 votes were cast for president.

Volusia County

Voter Turnout was 209,052. 228,358 votes were cast for president.

Indiana

Laport County

The day after a two-and-a-half-hour delay in counting ballots due to a glitch in a computer program, LaPorte County election officials are still trying to figure out what happened. "Maybe there was a power surge," LaPorte County Clerk Lynne Spevak said. "Something zapped it." At about 7 p.m. Tuesday, it was noticed that the first two or three printouts from individual precinct reports all listed an identical number of voters. Each precinct was listed as having 300 registered voters. That means the total number of voters for the county would be 22,200, although there are actually more than 79,000 registered voters.

Mecklenburg County

Questions started arising Wednesday when Republicans pointed out a significant discrepancy in the original unofficial results: more early votes than early voters. Elections officials immediately moved to audit the early vote totals and released new numbers Thursday. In response to Observer questions Friday, Dickerson said some vote totals were typed in by hand election night rather than electronically downloaded because of a computer glitch. ...Dickerson said he believes the county's voting machines functioned properly.

...The audited vote totals issued Thursday derailed a Democratic sweep of the three at-large county commissioner seats -- for now, at least. It left the second, third and fourth vote-getters within fewer than 100 votes of each other.

North Carolina

Carteret County

More than 4,000 early votes were lost because the electronic voting system could not store the volume of votes it received. The county was told by the manufacturer of the voting system that its units could store up to 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes.

Chowan County

Elections board officials were busy tallying corrections Wednesday to results in Guilford, Yadkin and Chowan counties, Bartlett said.

Craven County

A systems software glitch in Craven County's electronic voting equipment is being blamed for a vote miscount that, when corrected, changed the outcome of at least one race in Tuesday's election.

Then, in the rush to make right the miscalculation that swelled the number of votes for president here by 11,283 more votes than the total number cast, a human mistake further delayed accurate totals for the 40,534 who voted.

Ohio

Cuyahoga County has an inverse relationship between voter turnout and support for Kerry. Raw data compiled by Joe Knapp.

In Parma, precint 6450 the turnout was 94%. 40% of the voters left the presidential candidate blank, according to county records.

Franklin County

Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.

An electronic voting machine added 3,893 votes to President Bush's tally in a suburban Columbus precinct, even though there are just 800 voters there.

Warren County

Citing concerns about potential terrorism, Warren County officials locked down the county administration building on election night and blocked anyone from observing the vote count as the nation awaited Ohio's returns.

County officials say they took the action Tuesday night for homeland security, although state elections officials said they didn't know of any other Ohio county that closed off its elections board. Media organizations protested, saying it violated the law and the public's rights. The Warren results, delayed for hours because of long lines that extended voting past the scheduled close of polls, were part of the last tallies that helped clinch President Bush's re-election. Bush actually received 365 votes in the precinct, Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, told The Columbus Dispatch.

Pennsylvania

Mercer County

Lark charged that a number of voters may have been disenfranchised by the problems that shut down voting machines for all or most of the day. Some precincts didn't have enough paper ballots for people to fill out, and Lark said he suspects some people didn't bother coming back when a new supply of paper ballots arrived. He had no estimate on how many people may have missed a chance to vote, but he did have some questions Friday about the accuracy of the count coming out of the electronic machines that were working.

Lark cited statistics collected by a poll worker at the Farrell municipal building poll, which showed the voting machine recorded that 289 people cast ballots. The machine, however, recorded a total of 48 votes for U.S. Sen. John Kerry and three votes for George W. Bush in the presidential race. Lark said he finds it difficult to believe that only 51 people out of the 289 who voted actually cast a ballot in the presidential race.


Posted at 11:41 pm by blog swarm
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Vote Fraud Links

Growing Collection of Vote Fraud links: ATTN Global Media

The list of evidence is growing that the US election was anything but a fair vote. Who could possibly think that all of these voting problems are just a minor aberation? The long lines are always in Democratic counties, that the computer ’glitches’ always favor Bush, and the new e-machines were made by a Bush ’Pioneer’ (top donor) that pledged to deliver for Bush. Funny how Diebold makes bank machines which print paper receipts millions of times daily, but they couldn’t get the printer to work in the voting machines.

All Europeans must recognize that this vote fraud is no laughing matter- Bush might be coming after ’old Europe’ in the future.  Climate Change, senseless killing worldwide, more death and destruction in the name of profits will continue if Bush remains idiot emperor in chief. Since the US press is burying this vote fraud evidence, the world needs the reporters in Europe to help us bring this mountain of proof to light and make this an international scandal that the US media can no longer ignore.

Evidence Mounts the Vote was Hacked
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm

USA today- Machine error gives Bush 3,893 extra votes in Ohio
http://tinyurl.com/65dgz

Damschroder said the malfunction occurred when one machine’s cartridge was plugged into a laptop computer and generated faulty numbers in several races.
Why is a vote cartridge being plugged into anyone’s laptop?

from above story- Franklin county pdf file: http://tinyurl.com/4kq35
screenshot of page 23- cropped for bandwidth/ease, numbers remain the same

<emb247|center>

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Statistically impossible coinidence of many more repub votes than registered repubs ONLY in Florida optical scan counties
http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm

Graph highilighting absurdity of Florida counties in above story- it looks like they just reversed the results!
http://www.rubberbug.com/temp/FloridaChartsMed.jpg

Florida county anomalies discussed here
http://blog.democrats.com/florida

***************************

Palm Beach Post- Broward machines count backward
http://tinyurl.com/674mj

Computer Loses More Than 4,000 Early Votes
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/11/302304.shtml

Too Many Irregularities to be coincidence
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=4175

Washington Dispatch- Palm Beach County Logs 88,000 More Votes Than Voters
http://tinyurl.com/6w756

Florida Sun-Sentinel- 58,000 votes lost in heavily democratic Broward County, Florida
http://tinyurl.com/4z27r

Group Finds Voting Irregularities in South
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1105-25.htm

3 members of Congress call for an investigation
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=4188

Democracy Now- Voting Problems Widespread in Florida, Pennsylvania
http://tinyurl.com/44ct9

Scrub voter rolls in NY
http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/129692/index.php

Philly voter suppression
http://www.phillyimc.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/04/1613256

Ohio-not enough machines-flyer says vote wed
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/11/301710.shtml


Links about the potential for vote fraud before the election- Where were Kerry and Edwards on this issue- NOWHERE! Consider the first article at CommonDreams above with Bev Harris demonstrating on CNBC how to fix a vote in 90 seconds... Why wasn’t the Kerry/Edwards team challenging this ridiculous system long before the election? And why did Kerry give up when he was only down by 136,000 votes in Ohio with 250,000 still to count?!

How they can fix the election via modem link to central tabulators
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/11/301589.shtml

Global monitors find faults
http://tinyurl.com/4tgva

Reasonable Doubt that the primary vote has been tampered
http://www.benfrank.net/nuke/dk/primary_vote.html

imagicke.blogspot.com- huge collection of background info
http://tinyurl.com/4dgpw


Take Action!
************************
Black Box Voting has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud. We are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in the most massive Freedom of Information action in history.

We need: Lawyers to enforce public records laws. Some counties have already notified us that they plan to stonewall by delaying delivery of the records. We need citizen volunteers for a number of specific actions. We need computer security professionals willing to GO PUBLIC with formal opinions on the evidence we provide, whether or not it involves DMCA complications. We need funds to pay for copies of the evidence.

http://blackboxvoting.org/

************************

Shouldn’t most Republicans want a real victory, or would they be happy if their guy stole it- anything to win and stop those evil gay people from getting health care. Are they really that shallow?

I think all honest Americans know there is something fishy about both political parties backing electronic voting machines that are so open to hacking. Why should the Great USA have million dollar voting machines that don’t produce a paper trail? If the new Bush ’mandate’ is truly the will of the people, they really won the popular vote, then they shouldn’t be afraid of a little transparent auditing and hand recounts.

So many were disenfranchised by waiting in long lines, 58,000 votes LOST, name taken off voter list, etc.... I think it would be worthwhile to have a nationwide re-vote, all paper ballot and hand count. Millions of dollars to produce new ballots? Hardly- just create one ballot put it on a website and computers across the country can print the simple Bush/Kerry/Nader. Sure, Nader too, this will get the Bushies to sign on to this re-vote... but we need to also toss in a quick 50% majority to win rule- Why not Mr. Bush and fellow boner Kerry? Why wouldn’t you support a 50% or runoff rule... do you think this might give Nader a fighting chance?

It doesn’t have to take that long, just hire more counters.  Imagine that we could hire millions of jobless, even if it’s temporary it’d sure be a boost to them and the economy, and we could hand count every single ballot in the nation.

It is unacceptable to have longer lines in the city than in rural (republican) areas- the cities need more polling places- period.

ps- to all the name calling Republicans calling "sore loser" and "get over it"- are you afraid of a recount?


by : Richard Lofgren
Sunday 7th November 2004

Posted at 11:24 pm by blog swarm
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Diebold Vote Fraud

Diebold Vote Fraud Gives Bush Cheney Extra Votes 
    by JOHN MCCARTHY

This is another bitch slap to US voters from Diebold and AP (Asociated Propaganda)

AP(Asociated Propaganda)An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said. Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush's total should have been recorded as 365.

Bush won the state by more than 136,000 votes, according to unofficial results, and Kerry conceded the election on Wednesday after saying that 155,000 provisional ballots yet to be counted in Ohio would not change the result.


Deducting the erroneous Bush votes from his total could not change the election's outcome, and there were no signs of other errors in Ohio's electronic machines, said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell.


Franklin is the only Ohio county to use Danaher Controls Inc.


Other Top Stories

Diebold Vote Fraud Gives Bush Cheney Extra Votes by JOHN MCCARTHY
Outrage in Ohio: Angry Voters Storm State House by DAVID SOLNIT
Bush-Cheney 'Wins' Again: Vote Fraud Conspiracy by DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND.COM
Could the Associated Press (AP) Rig the Election? by LYNN LANDES
AP: Sole Source for Vote Counting Fraud by PEOPLE'S DAILY ONLINE
Ready -Set - Vote Fraud from Hart-Intercivic/ ES&S by DAVID ALLEN (BLACKBOXVOTING.COM)

Posted at 11:23 pm by blog swarm
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Stolen Election

Electronic Voting: The Stolen Election of 2004
by Larry Chin

The stolen election of 2004: welcome back to hell

Using a variety of criminal methods that they have perfected over the past four years, the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney-Karl Rove syndicate stole another election, and extended their illegal occupation of the White House. Experienced, informed and unblinking observers were not fooled by any aspect of this utterly predictable goose-step towards full dictatorship.

But to those who are "shocked" as they watched the election night numbers mysteriously slip away amidst controversy; those who are struggling to understand "what happened" let this cold realization serve as bracing edification.

Welcome to hell. Welcome to the horrifying reality that whistleblowers have suffered and fought through every day, over lifetimes. No more illusions. This is reality.

It Is a Rigged Game

The US political and economic system, exemplified by Bush-Cheney, is deeply criminalized. It is designed to profit by killing things. It thrives on war and oppression. It is sustained by collusion, fraud, lies, and cover-up, and the indoctrination and manipulation of minds. It does not, and never has, represented its people. Its operatives heed no laws. They "make" law. These facts must be burned into the consciousness of every decent human being.

As Mike Ruppert writes in Crossing The Rubicon :

"That profits of crime and war, which are destructive of human life, of labor, of happy, healthy neighborhoods (whether in the US or in Afghanistan, Africa and Iraq) are in effect a keystone of the global economy and a determinant of the success in a ruthless competition, is a compass needle for human civilization. One cannot expect to follow the recipe for roadkill stew and produce a crème brulee."

Criminals do not obey laws. Criminals do not believe in "democracy".

Criminals do not "permit" elections.

It is foolish, then, to expend one’s energies in "clean" election activities, and expect good results. To quote one of George W. Bush many recent Freudian non-slips, "we make elections." The 2004 presidential election was just one more "manufacture".

How John Kerry Unwon the Presidency

How Bush-Cheney stole the 2000 election was a matter of obvious historical fact, confirmed by post-facto mainstream media reports of a Gore win, and detailed by numerous investigators such as Greg Palast in his book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Voters complained about old machines and paper ballots.

Then came the "black box voting" machines. (For detailed analysis of black box voting, read the work of Bev Harris .)

In the 2002 mid-term elections , the Republicans "shocked" Democrats by solidifying their power in Congress, using the same fraudulent methods, along with new and improved black box technology.

"The technology had a trial run in the 2002 mid-term elections. In Georgia, serviced by new Diebold systems, a popular Democratic governor and senator were both unseated in what the media called ‘amazing’ upsets, with results showing vote swings of up to 16 percent from the last pre-ballot polls. In computerized Minnesota, former Vice President Walter Mondale—a replacement for popular incumbent Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash days before the vote—was also defeated in a large last-second vote swing. Convenient ‘glitches’ in Florida saw an untold number of votes intended for the Democratic candidate registering instead for Governor Jeb "L'il Brother" Bush. A Florida Democrat who lost a similarly ‘glitched’ local election went to court to have the computers examined—but the case was thrown out by a judge who ruled that the innards of America's voting machines are the ‘trade secrets’ of the private companies who make them."

In 2003, black box voting also helped oust Governor Gray Davis and installed Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Democratic stronghold of California.

The probability of a fix was obvious throughout the 2004 presidential campaign. Corporate media polls continued to predominantly favor Bush, never dipping his rating below 48 percent, despite his trouncing in three straight debates with Kerry, and despite mushrooming war scandals. This was in stark contrast to independent surveys that showed Kerry with commanding leads. Kerry momentum, and massive Kerry/anti-Bush voter turnout, was evident on election day, and confirmed by exit polls with dominant Kerry numbers.

Then what?

Greg Palast reveals in exhaustive detail that John Kerry won the 2004 election and had it stolen through such methods as "spoilage", intimidation, polling place chicanery, ethnic cleansing of polls. (See Kerry Won .)

Once again, criminals do not "permit" elections. They make them. This time, the Bush forces had years of unencumbered time to orchestrate it, from Ohio (where its notorious secretary of state is the head of the Bush re-election campaign), and, of course, Jeb Bush’s Florida.

The Triumph of the Bush Machines

But there is one overriding fact that has been left out most of the ridiculous post-election punditry that renders all other analyses completely irrelevant. It is also the reason why the smiles on the faces of Bush crime family members are so bright, as they watched the returns on election night.

Air America Radio’s Mike Malloy gave the most succinct and passionate explanation in his Wednesday, November 3, 2004 , program [my links included-LC]:

"The American vote count is controlled by three major corporate players, Diebold , ESS , Sequoia , and a fourth, SAIC , Science Applications International. All four are hard-wired into the Bush power structure, the Bush crime family.

They have been given millions of dollars by the Bush regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines that were just used in the 2004 election. The technology involved had a trial run during the 2002 mid-term elections. Georgia had Diebold machines in every precinct. As a result, a popular Democratic governor and senator were both unseated in what the media called an "amazing" 16 percent swing.

Diebold’s Walden O’Dell, a top Bush fundraiser, publicly committed himself to delivering his home state Ohio’s votes to Bush. At Diebold, the election division is run by Bob Urosevich. Bob’s brother, Todd, is a top executive at "rival" ES&S. The brothers were originally staked by Howard Ahmanson, a member of the Council For National Policy , a right-wing steering group stacked with Bush true believers. Ahmanson is also one of the bagmen behind the extremist Christian Reconstruction Movement , which advocates the theocratic takeover of American democracy.

The four companies are interconnected; they are not four "competitors". Ahmanson has large stakes in ES&S, whose former CEO was Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. When Hagel ran for office, his own company counted the votes, and his victory was considered "an amazing upset". Hagel still has a million dollar stake in ES&S.

Sequoia is the corporate parent of a private equity firm, Madison Dearborn , which is partner in the Carlyle Group . (Also see here .)

Meanwhile, SAIC is referred to a "shadowy defense contractor". They have gotten into the vote count game both directly and through spinoffs by its top brass, including Admiral Bill Owens, former military aide to Dick Cheney, and Carlyle Group honcho Frank Carlucci and ex-CIA chief Robert Gates. SAIC’s history of fraud charges and security "lapses" haven’t prevented it from becoming one of the largest Pentagon and CIA contractors, and will doubtless encounter few obstacles in its entrance into the vote counting business.

The mad rush to install these unverifiable computers is driven by the Help America Vote Act, signed by Bush! The chief lobbying group pushing for the act (while we dumb asses sat out here and thought, ‘That sounds like a good idea!’) was a consortium of arms dealers including Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin .

When you hear people saying, ‘take a deep breath, we will pull through this’, ‘we need to work harder’, ‘we need to organize’—no. We will not. It’s over.

Unless electronic vote tabulation is history, and these companies are driven out of business, it’s their country. Not ours.

Nobody knows, and no one will ever know, what the actual vote count was.

There are no checks and balances left. The US Senate now has 55 of these Republicans. When they hit 60, which is what will happen in 2006 mid-term elections—trust me—that means that no matter what Bush and the crime family want to do, they can do it. The House (of Representatives) is gone for the next two to five generations. It’s gone.

The last thing rational people in this country need right now is this whistling-past-the-graveyard horse hockey. Nothing is going to happen; it’s going to get worse. There will never again be a legitimate election in this county.

Until we get rid of the machines.

The people who put the software together—do you think that they are in this business to promote democracy? To promote representative government? Then you are a fool, and you don’t deserve anything other than the lash.

Kerry did not lose the election. The vote was stolen. Get that through your head."

The Bush syndicate owns and runs the machines that make the votes. They control all branches of the federal government.

There is nothing more painful than witnessing the Kerry voters, liberals and progressives as they agonize over "what went wrong," second guessing their Herculean efforts, grasping for solutions in outdated ideas, and vowing how "next time, we’ll work harder, and we’ll really get out the vote!", and that "we’ll nominate even better candidates!"

Still others are asking reasonable questions. Why aren’t Walden O’Dell, Jeb Bush, and J. Kenneth Blackwell under arrest, or in jail? Exactly how did Associated Press pull it off on election night? Will any of the Bush administration criminals ever be punished for their war crimes? Then one must ask, who is going to prosecute? Who is going to hear the cases? The Bush Justice Department? The Bush FBI? The Supreme Court?

When you play fair in a rigged game, it doesn’t matter how hard you work, or even what you do. Insanity is repeating the same mistake, expecting a different result.

Kerry Welcomes Fascism with Open Arms

John Kerry’s pitiful and immediate capitulation, surrendering with even less of a fight than Al Gore in 2000, despite clear, overt and gross vote fraud across the country, including Ohio—Diebold’s home state—was sickening.

Bush’s Skull & Bones fraternity brother then spoke of "healing" and uniting behind Bush, a speech grotesquely reminiscent of Al Gore’s sickening 2000 declaration that Bush was "mah president."

Twice now, with Gore and Kerry, Democrats have won the White House, and then refused to speak the truth about the crime, and fight for the people who bled for them. Twice, America has been sold out.

Could it be that this time, Kerry played the American people in just another game of bait-and-switch?

Will those who supported Kerry actually heed his command, and obediently march in step, "without anger or rancor," and follow George W. Bush, the strutting tyrant, and the most dangerous and irrational collection of mass-murdering war criminals in modern history?

In a cynical view, and one that is likely accurate, the election of 2004 may have been nothing more than an elaborate trial balloon, a "good cop-bad cop" theater that is mandated every few years to uphold the appearance of legitimacy. Our candidates lie, all the while gauging the effectiveness of long-term manipulation programs. They think, are the people still gullible and uninformed? What slogans and illusions can we fool them with? Is the "war on terrorism" mindset still unwavering? How far can we push them? Will they accept the baseball bat in the face, or the velvet glove to the nose?

How many beatings will this republic take, before its people wake up? When will the people realize what is really happening, and "chase us down the street and lynch us" (as George H.W. Bush said to reporter Sarah McClendon )?

To hell with Bush. To hell with Kerry. Wait, We’re All Already Here.

As sadistic Bush slurred in his "acceptance" speech, "a new term is a new opportunit." If the last four years brought the world to its knees, imagine what is to come as Bush-Cheney giddily pry open a new set of larger Pandora’s Boxes.

Webster Tarpley , author of the Unauthorized Biography of George Bush writes:

"If Bush retains control of the White House, we can expect a neocon fascist dictatorship or martial law emergency regime in 2005 or 2006, possibly as the result of synthetic terrorism. The neocons are in a desperate flight forward mentality which seeks to avoid the penal consequences of what they have already done with Valerie Plame, the Niger yellowcake forgeries, the Israeli mole scandal, and the Chalabi betrayal of state secrets. The neocon preference is for early war with Iran. War with Russia and China cannot be excluded somewhat further down the road."

Add to that the relentless horror that will be inflicted when the effects of Peak Oil (also see From The Wilderness and Richard Heinberg ) crash home in earnest, the body bags pile higher with new wars, and the lives of Americans (including Bush drones) and people all over the world continue to be destroyed.

Some members of the current Bush crime organization may leave or retire, and the possibilities include Donald Rumsfeld, and John Ashcroft (possibly replaced with Marc Racicot, a long-time friend of George W. Bush, and W’s first choice for attorney general in 2000). Expect their replacements to be less well known criminals who, if anything, may be more toxic.

Robert Lederman wrote of Racicot:

"Numerous members of the Bush family, including his father and brothers and at least one of GW's prospective cabinet appointees—potential GW Bush Attorney General Marc Racicot—have a history of alleged involvement in drug running at the highest levels. We're not talking about buying drugs for personal use here but massive importations of heroin and cocaine with the full involvement of foreign dictators like George Bush pal Manuel Noriega and the Mafia." (See Murder and Drug Running in Montana )

In Robert Payne’s biography The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, he writes of Hitler (whose Third Reich was, in fact, financed by the Bush family ): "For all the foreseeable future, he will remain to haunt us, more alive than ever although he is dead. He hides in shadowy places and at the pinnacle of power, always urging men to commit the ultimate crime, the perfect atrocity, the most ferocious massacres. Into the ears of generals and politicians he whispers:

"Be merciless. It is very easy now because I have lived. I have reduced the value of man to a fraction of what it was before. You will find, if you continue along the path I have opened for you, the value of man will decline still further. Remember, mankind is always valueless and its only use is to serve our interests. We alone are transmitters of civilization, and the people are nothing but cattle. Napalm is good for them."

Hitler himself wrote:

"The victor will not be asked, later on, whether he told the truth or not. In starting and waging a war, it is not right that matters, but victory. Have no pity."

Hitler had nothing on the George W. Bush administration.

What, if any, silver lining can be found in the wake of this new goose-step in the abyss? Perhaps only that the same bellicose, predictable and clumsy villains remain right where they have been for the last four years: right in front of us. Better that than a crafty and likeable neoliberal John Kerry administration that lulls the world to sleep before poison is administered.

We cannot be fooled.


Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHI411B.html


Posted at 11:21 pm by blog swarm
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Demand Ohio Recount

demand ohio recount!
by Cedwyn
 


Sun Nov 7th, 2004 at 16:16:19 PST

a presidential candidate from ohio's ballot can call a recount.

unfortunately, if kerry won't do it, the only options are badnarik and the "constitutional" party wingnut.  but hey...i'm writing him.

here is my letter to mr. wingnut - feel free to use it.  just please get everybody and their brother to write these guys and ask that they demand a recount.  and please recommend this thread.  

comments can be sent to the constitution party guy here:
https://secure.giftwrapplus.org/donorlite/defaultInqot.aspx?cid=1003

and badnarik is here:

campaignmanager@badnarik.org           
(512) 637-6860 or 1-800-807-7552

please get as many people on this as you can!

many thanks!

Hello:

<insert intro here>

As I'm sure you know, Green candidate David Cobb has requested a formal investigation into numerous complaints of voter intimidation and suppression in Ohio.  There also appears to be a conflict interest regarding Diebold's CEO, a Bush supporter who pledged to "deliver Ohio to Bush in November."

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65044,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1

I have collected more background information here:

e-voting machines recorded almost 4,000 extra Ohio votes for Bush:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=694&e=1&u=/ap/voting_problemsAnyhoo,

Here is an analysis that shows Kerry as taking Ohio and New Mexico:

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

The Cleveland Plain Dealer covered Palast's work and made an excellent observation:

"Today, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports there are a total of 247,672 votes not counted in Ohio, if you add the 92,672 discarded votes plus the 155,000 provisional ballots. So far there's no indication that Palast's hypothesis will be tested because only the provisional ballots are being counted."

In this Salon Magazine article,  Mark Crispin Miller opines:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/11/04/election_reactions/index.html

"First of all, this election was definitely rigged. I have no doubt about it. It's a statistical impossibility...that Bush got 8 million more votes this time. I think it had a lot to do with the electronic voting machines. Those machines are completely untrustworthy.  

...80 percent of our touch-screen electronic voting machines have no paper trail and are manufactured by companies owned by Bush Republicans."

Bev Harris is filing FOIA requests to get access to the machine's inner logs and records to investigate their legitimacy:

www.blackboxvoting.org

At least two NC counties reported significant anomolies with voting machines:

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/10104576.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

"The roller coaster of fate was caused by vote-counting glitches in at least five counties besides Mecklenburg. Foul-ups ranged from stubborn levers to a computer error that changed some results by 22,000 votes and, in Carteret County, 4,500 votes that were lost and may not be recovered."

I realize that the last article is about North Carolina, and not Ohio, but those incidents further underscore the notion that electronic voting machines are not reliable.  If we are to have confidence in our elections, we have to know that the votes were counted properly.

Beyond the unreliability of the voting machines - and many computer experts argue they are not secure - are the myriad personal accounts of voter disenfranchisement.  Many people in Ohio, especially democratic counties, had to wait up to 10 hours to exercise their constitutional right of suffrage.  Those people were, essentially, subjected to a poll tax, which violates the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/109956451462000.xml

"Columbus - Excruciatingly long waits to cast a ballot amounted to a denial of the right to vote, a federal judge said Tuesday night.

U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley ripped into county boards of election for failing to adequately plan for the huge voter turnout. Marbley said boards of election failed to take adequate measures to ensure all had a chance to cast ballots."

Nader wasn't even supposed to be on Ohio's ballot, yet Ken Blackwell decided it was simply too expensive to re-print accurate ballots.  Absentee ballots with Nader as a presidential candidate were sent out, despite Ohio's court ruling saying he is not eligible for the Ohio presidential race.

http://www.onnnews.com/Global/story.asp?S=2398430

This is especially troubling in light of Ken's attempt to disenfranchise thousands of voters because their registrations weren't on thick enough stock paper.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1329707,00.html

"Kenneth Blackwell, attempted to enforce a rule by which only registration cards printed on heavy, 80lb paper stock would be accepted, claiming lighter cards might be shredded by postal equipment (meaning that voters who have to re-register on the heavier paper might not make it on time). And last summer the chief executive of Diebold, which makes many of the voting machines, said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes" to Bush.

...In Ohio, Mr Blackwell also told election boards that anyone who turned up at the wrong polling station would not be able to cast a provisional ballot (to be verified later). The Democrats successfully sued, saying that the ruling would disadvantage minority and poor voters, who tend to move more often."

Ken Blackwell also enacted rules regarding provisional ballots that were declared in violation of the Help Americans Vote Act.  Democrats sued Blackwell on grounds that thousands would lose the right to vote -- especially the poor and minorities. As you know, attempting to prevent minorities from voting is a violation of federal law.

The acts of voter suppression and disenfranchisement, combined with the known voting machine malfunctions, seriously call into question the results of the Ohio vote.  In the interest of democracy, it is imperative that one of the Presidential Candidates demands a recount for Ohio.  The outcome was decided by the narrowest of margins, on faulty equipment and under dubious circumstances.    

A recount might not even change this election, but it would set a precedent regarding electronic voting machines and the importance of a verifiable paper trail for accurate recounts.  The main objective in this is to initiate voting reform so we can once again be confident that every vote counts and every vote is counted.  

Please contact Ken Blackwell at the address below and demand a recount of Ohio's votes.  Your country will thank you for it.  I already do.

Mailing Address:
J. Kenneth Blackwell
Ohio Secretary of State
180 E. Broad St. 16th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
election@sos.state.oh.us

1-877-767-6446
1-614- 466-2655

Sincerely,


Posted at 11:18 pm by blog swarm
Comments (2)  

We HATE Bush

San Francisco in no mood for tolerance after Bush win 
Sun 7 November, 2004 14:13

By Andrea Orr

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The summer of love has given way to the autumn of fear in San Francisco, a liberal stronghold where residents bitterly disappointed by the Bush victory are in no mood to reach out and mend divisions.

Rather, they are waving "United States of Canada" maps, redrawn to show Canada extending down to include California, New England and the other so-called "blue states" that voted decisively for Massachusetts Democratic Senator John Kerry in the U.S. presidential race.

Some are cancelling plans to travel to neighbouring "red states," where Bush drew most of his support. They are asking serious questions about the future of American democracy. And the usual post-election bravado about moving out of the country when a favoured candidate loses is sounding different this year. It sounds a lot more serious.


Posted at 11:16 pm by blog swarm
Comments (21)  

Backdoor Draft

Backdoor draft
by kos
Sun Nov 7th, 2004 at 19:54:40 PST

Jesus, this one hits too close to home:
David M. Miyasato enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve in 1987, served three years of active duty during the first Gulf War and received an honorable discharge in 1991. He remained on inactive status for five more years, until 1996. Since then, the Kaua'i resident has married, started an auto window tinting business and this year, he and his wife had their first child.

But in September, Miyasato received a letter from the Army recalling him to active duty and directing him to report to a military facility in South Carolina on Tuesday.

"I was shocked," Miyasato said yesterday. "I never expected to see something like that after being out of the service for 13 years."

Miyasato is now suing the Secretary of the Army, asking a court to prevent the Army from ordering him to active duty. He is also asking for a court judgment declaring that he fulfilled all his obligations to the military.

This dude has been out longer than I have. This is the first reported callup of a soldier who had already completed his inactive reserve obligations.

The draft is coming.


Posted at 11:00 pm by blog swarm
Comment (1)  

tough love

A hospital has been razed to the ground in one of the heaviest US air raids in the Iraqi city of Falluja.

Witnesses said only the facade remained of the small Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the centre of the city. There are no reports on casualties.

A nearby medical supplies storeroom and dozens of houses were damaged as US forces continued preparing the ground for an expected major assault.

UN chief Kofi Annan has warned against an attack on the restive Sunni city.

It is the third time since the end of the US-led war that US and Iraqi forces have tried to gain control of Falluja.


Posted at 10:59 pm by blog swarm
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