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Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

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john.he.is

by Election08, LA-based comics and actors on politics. Featuring veterans of MTV, ABC, NBC, The Daily Show, Second City Chicago, Reno 911, Current TV, and Showbiz Show With David Spade.

Dear Superdelegates

We have two wonderful candidates remaining in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Barring a series of landslides in the remaining primaries, it is likely that neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton will win enough delegates in the primaries and caucuses to win the nomination - thus throwing the choice to the 796 "party leaders and elected officials" - you superdelegates. Many of you have already pledged your support and vote to one of the candidates, and the rest of you are bound to have a preference, you will have each voted your choice in your state primary or caucus, but please, I beg you to hold your vote at the convention in trust for the Democratic rank and file who have voted and caucused in their state contests.

We Democrats have to be acutely sensitive to the need to live by our democratic ideals, and none are greater than our dedication to clean and fair elections. It would be anathema for us to reject the elected choice of the people in a brokered convention. Particularly after two presidential contests that were nullified by judicial coup and election fraud. A brokered convention would legitimize our nation's continued movement towards a political system independent of the will of the governed.

Please, endorse you choices, campaign for them, support them, and vote for them in your state contests. Exercise your leadership by shaping public opinion and promoting your choice, but please, above all else endorse democracy by holding your convention vote in trust for the people - your opinions, your choices, mean nothing if you do not support the democratic process first.

The End of the Middle Class

The stock market has reached an all time high. Total wages grew by 9% in 2005. But the party will soon end. Indeed it ended for all but a privileged few years ago. That 9% wage increase went entirely to the very rich, 90% of Americans saw their income decrease. The real US economy is going into the tank. And that fall is by design.

Consumer spending has been a way of life in the United States. It is the foundation of our economy.

It may not be for much longer.

Unfortunately there has been a war against the middle class over the last 30 years. The standard of living that used to be provided by a single income in the average home now requires two incomes - how many families do YOU know where only one spouse works? - when I was growing up it was about 90%. Unfortunately half of all children now live in single parent homes, many at poverty levels. The American Dream of each generation living better than their parents ended in 1973, today's kids can expect a lower standard of living than their parents.

Good union wages have slipped away as laws that previously protected the right to unionize have been turned against workers and are now used to bust unions and take rights away - union membership is at its lowest rate in nearly a century.

Refusal to punish companies who employ illegal workers at below market wages puts downward pressure on all wages. You won't see any immigration reform that doesn't allow the illegals to stay as "guest workers" of some sort at near slave wages - they are needed in order to keep the middle class poor.

Almost all the tax cuts have gone to the very richest Americans - those Americans who don't turn their extra income into consumer spending like the middle class and working poor do - instead the bulk of their tax cuts go into sheltered investments that provide little economic stimulus, or worse go to luxury goods and foreign investments - there is no "trickle down", only trickle up.

Real wages have fallen - 95% of Americans make less today than they did 6 years ago.

But since consumer spending IS the basis of the US economy, we have seen economic growth over the last 6 years. The big corporations have done well even as main street has had the lights turned off. The richest have never been richer, but 95% of us are not even keeping up.

We 95 percenters HAVE been sustaining the economy. How? By continuing to buy as if our incomes hadn't fallen. In 2005, for the first time since the Great Depression, private debt in the USA exceeded savings. How did we keep spending as if we weren't getting poorer? By borrowing on a spree fueled by the rising equity in our homes - the one economic bright spot in the majority of American's fortunes - our homes continued to increase in value far above the inflation rate due to a housing boom and low mortgage rates ensured by Chinese support of our national debt.

But that is all over now. The housing bubble has burst. Especially on the two coasts much of the equity rich middle class has suddenly discovered they owe more on their homes than they are now worth. No more consumer spending fueled by home equity.

New laws have allowed the credit card companies to rape consumers with usurious rates and fees that quickly force consumers into bankruptcies that, thanks to other new laws, no longer protect assets (unless you are very wealthy and can take advantage of an "Asset Protection Trust"). These are the waning days of the great American consumer driven market.

America is being transformed into a third world nation. Ultimately, when the middle class all but disappears we will be a source of cheap (but very productive) labor for multinational corporations that sell to Europe and Asian markets. We will only consume the very cheapest and tackiest of goods. From Walmart.

Soviet Era Secret Laws come to Amerika

Ignorance of the law is mandatory.

There is a staple of legal tradition called Ignorantia juris non excusat - Ignorance of the law is no excuse. It prevents the use of willful ignorance as a defense in lawbreaking (unless you are the president and and claim plausible deniability, or Attorney General and can't remember why you fired people). In effect it means that you are responsible for learning the law before you engage in actions that may break the law. Thus a builder can't do as he wishes and then claim that he is innocent of violating the building code because he didn't know the building code.

• A side note; ignorance of the law doesn't mitigate guilt, but it can mitigate the sentence or punishment - a case where a businessman contacted customs officials about importing gambling equipment from Canada and was told it was legal, only to be charged later with illegal importation and found guilty, was given the sentence of an absolute discharge - no punishment.

A principle condition of Ignorantia juris non excusat it that the law is knowable - that it has been publicly published and available to those seeking to comply with it. The opposite of that is a Secret law, once a staple of the Soviet Union and Eastern European authoritarian regimes. It has now been embraced by the United States - authorized without notice by the Homeland Security Act.

The validity of secret laws in the United States has been upheld in federal court in cases related to TSA security directives. Where else they may apply we cannot know.

We aren't allowed to know.

THE ARRIVAL OF SECRET LAW

Secret Laws - Washington Monthly

L'Affair Plame - It Doesn't End with Libby

OK folks, the MSM (mainstream media) is in full Libby obfuscation mode - trying to color him as a loyal victim deserving of a pardon. Meanwhile the media is totally avoiding what we have learned from this case, namely that there was indeed a concerted deliberate centrally organized administration effort to expose a covert CIA agent to the press as an act of political vengeance, a conspiracy that included Cheney, Libby, Rove, David Addington, Richard L. Armitage, and George W. Bush.

There is something else that was revealed by the testimony in the case that hasn't been analyzed by the MSM - the timeline proves that the outing was NOT just in retaliation for Joseph Wilson's July 6, 2003, op-ed column, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.” - the plot to expose Valerie Plame Wilson began well BEFORE Ambassador Wilson's article was published.

• May 29, 2003 – Libby calls Marc Grossman, then an Under Secretary in the State Department, asking how and why Joe Wilson was sent to Niger about uranium.


• “late May and early June, 2003” according to Grossman’s testimony --- Grossman gives oral interim reports to Libby that Wilson was the ambassador who went to Niger (mentioned but not named in a May 6 NYTimes piece by Nicholas Kristof, “Missing in Action: Truth”).


• June 9, 2003, according to Grossman’s testimony – Grossman had a conversation with Wilson, who was “upset” about Condoleezza Rice’s claim the day before on Meet the Press that the White House was unaware of doubts about the Niger uranium story. (In his book, Wilson says this conversation “elicited the suggestion that I might have to write the story myself”; he got in touch with the NYTimes the same day. p.332.)
  


• June 9, 2003 – classified documents from CIA are faxed to the Office of the Vice President to Libby and colleague John Hannah, mentioning the Wilson trip but not naming Wilson.


• June 10, 2003 – a classified State Department memo written by State’s Bureau of Intelligence & Research (INR) gives Grossman the background on Wilson’s Niger trip, refers explicitly to Valerie Wilson as Wilson’s wife and “a CIA WMD manager.” The memo also strongly debunks the Niger uranium story.


• June 11, 2003 – Robert L. Grenier, then “Iraq mission manager” and “point person for Iraq,” receives a phone call from Libby, then is summoned from a meeting with the CIA Director to talk with Libby about Wilson; tells Libby Wilson’s wife is in CIA. (Grenier is no longer with the CIA.)


• June 11/12, 2003 – Marc Grossman has a “30-second discussion” about Mrs. Wilson with Libby, according to Grossman’s testimony.


• June 12, 2003 – Libby is informed by Cheney in a phone call that Wilson’s wife is in CIA (handwritten note: “CP: his wife works in that div”).


• June 12, 2003 – David Addington, Cheney’s government lawyer, receives the same notes from Libby’s office mentioning Wilson’s wife in CP (typed copy).


• June 13, 2003 – Richard L. Armitage tells Bob Woodward, on tape, that Mrs. Wilson works for CIA, suggests that Mrs. Wilson sent Wilson on the Niger trip.


• June 14, 2003 – CIA daily briefer Craig Schmall briefing of Libby at Libby’s home notes question about Wilson (“ex-amb”) and the Niger trip, notes Wilson and Valerie Wilson by name.


• June 23, 2003 – Libby has a discussion with Judith Miller, mentions Wilson’s wife at “bureau” (CIA). (Miller had returned to the U.S. on June 8.)

• July 6, 2003 – Joseph Wilson’s op-ed criticizing the Niger story finally appears in the NYTimes. (Brad Blog)
  

So why was the Cabal determined to punish Ambassador Wilson and burn Valerie Plame Wilson even before Joe Wilson wrote his op-ed? Some suspect it was a pre-emptive strike. But it still begs the question - why burn Plame? Finding out that an ex-Ambassador's wife is a top American spy doesn't exactly discredit him, heck, it bolsters his credibility.

Why Discredit Ambassador Wilson?

The official line in the Administration is that Ambassador Wilson had lied when he claimed the Vice President had sent him on his fact finding mission to Niger. Except that Wilson did not make that claim - he correctly stated that the Vice President's office had made an inquiry to the CIA, and that it was the CIA which then sent him to Africa. But that is such a minor detail that it is hardly worth wasting an official statement on, much less orchestrating career ending media leaks in retaliation. We should also note that Wilson was not the first to assert that the Niger yellowcake claim was bogus - that had been well known inside and outside the administration, and had been reported upon in media by Seymour Hersh and others. Wilson's voice was just another confirmation.

Why ignite a firestorm around discrediting Wilson? One of the basic tools in Karl Rove's tool chest is to bury an inconvenient story by creating a controversy on the periphery of the story - that controversy will focus all attention to itself, leaving the underlying inconvenient truth unexamined. We saw that tactic brilliantly played out in the Dan Rather epsiode where forged documents were created that revealed the truth about George W. Bush being AWOL during his National Guard service. The forgery and Dan Rather became the sole focus of all media attention, ignoring the truth of the AWOL allegations - even though they had been independently confirmed by other news sources (US News and World Report, and The Boston Globe) using only US Government documents.

The attack on Wilson served to draw attention away from the forged Niger yellowcake document. That it was a forgery became a given, all reporting examinined the storm around Ambassador Wilson. Media attention was drawn away from the forgery itself - and its source. That is the essential element; no one should examine how and when the poorly forged document came into being.

We can trace this story back to January 1, 2001, when Niger's Rome embassy was broken into, but only inconsequential items were stolen, among them a wristwatch, perfume, worthless documents, embassy stationery, and some official stamps bearing the seal of the Republic of Niger. That break-in has been linked to former Italian intelligence operative Rocco Martino, who had close ties to Karl Rove's national security advisor Michael Ledeen and has been alleged to have been working for him. Ledeen was an early point man in the Adminsitration's efforts to 'fix the facts' in favor of an Iraq war even before Bush took office. According to Italian sources the items Martino stole were used in making the forged Niger document.

In October 2001 Italian Prime Minister Silvio Burlusconi presented the forged document to George W. Bush - but the State Department and CIA immediately identified it as a fake. Not to worry, Ledeen had a plan to make it useful - he convened a December 2001 meeting in Rome between his Italian connections and top Administration 'fact fixers':

This is where the plot thickens, though. A team of investigative reporters in Italy, working for the respected newspaper La Repubblica, learned that a group of people, allegedly including Michael Ledeen, Defense Department Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith, Defense Intelligence Agency Middle East analyst Larry Franklin, Pentagon Office of Special Plans member Harold Rhode and convicted bank swindler and Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, met secretly in Rome. Also present, reportedly, were Pollari and the head of the Italian Department of Defense. The La Repubblica reporters, led by investigative reporter Carlo Bonini, claim that it was at this unusual meeting that a plan was hatched to recycle and launder the bogus and discredited Niger documents through British intelligence, so that they would come back to the White House as "new evidence" of Hussein's nuclear ambitions.
Dave Lindorff

Clearly the Administration could not stand up to exposure of its role in manufacturing false evidence. By making Ambassador Wilson the center of the story attention was diverted from the White House's complicity in the creation and dissemination of the forgery. They were then able to stick to their story of being duped by the forgery, and of using it later by mistake - without confronting inconvenient evidence of their complicity in creating it.

Why Burn Plame?

Valerie Plame ran an extensive CIA cover operation out of the Boston brass plate firm Brewster Jennings and Associates. Brewster Jennings' cover was as an energy consulting firm, its role was to investigate, infiltrate, and compromise the trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction (CIA Counter-Proliferation Division).

Brewster Jennings was a NOC operation - Non Official Cover - that means that the CIA employees working for Brewster did not have diplomatic cover, and if exposed would have no protection. These are your basic "mission impossible" rules where "if you are captured, you will be disavowed". In other words - dead meat.

By burning Plame, the White House also burned Brewster Jennings & Associates, and exposed all its overseas operatives, their contacts, and families to arrest and retaliation by foreign powers, mafias and terrorist networks. Unofficial reports are that the fallout in lives was extensive - including the assassination of at least one CIA agent, and that prosecutor Fitzgerald may have received a detailed damage assessment account of Brewster Jennings exposure from the CIA, but was not permitted to use it or place it into evidence.

Why in the world would the White House deliberately destroy a premiere counter-proliferation operation?

Perhaps because the CIA operation had foiled a White House plot to salt Iraq with WMD's just prior to the war, so that they could be found by our troops.

November 11, 2005 -- New aspect of Valerie Plame/Brewster Jennings exposure revealed. According to U.S. intelligence sources, the White House exposure of Valerie Plame and her Brewster Jennings & Associates was intended to retaliate against the CIA's work in limiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

WMR has reported in the past on this aspect of the scandal. In addition to identifying the involvement of individuals in the White House who were close to key players in nuclear proliferation, the CIA Counter-Proliferation Division prevented the shipment of binary VX nerve gas from Turkey into Iraq in November 2002.

The Brewster Jennings network in Turkey was able to intercept this shipment which was intended to be hidden in Iraq and later used as evidence that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction.

U.S. intelligence sources revealed that this was a major reason the Bush White House targeted Plame and her network.

CIA counter-proliferation network prevented a WMD "salting" operation by Bush White House in Iraq.

In fact, U.S. intelligence sources report that the first shipment of VX nerve gas to Saddam Hussein was carried out between 1988 and 1989. The gas was shipped to Iraq by a U.S. company that was established in 1987 -- The Carlyle Group. Washington Post Blog

So ...

Who thinks the Plame story is all over now?

Treason

In a shocking act of treason, a group of American citizens have been exposed as providing millions, perhaps billions of dollars to Sunni Extremist Jihadis and members of Al Qaeda. The very same militias who are responsible for the deaths of 92% of the American troops lost in Iraq.

The only crime defined in the Constitution is that of levying war against the United States or "in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort"; Treason.

United States Code at 18 U.S.C. § 2381 states "whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States."

Who are this group of American traitors? According to an investigative report by Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Sy Hersh, they are:

• Vice-President Dick Cheney
• deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams
• former Ambassador to Iraq and current United Nations Ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad
• Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
• George W. Bush.

THE REDIRECTION by SEYMOUR M. HERSH, The New Yorker

Dare I say that the Patriot Act should be used on President Bush? by Mary MacElveen, OpEdNews

Bush is Funding al-Qaeda, Making Him an Unlawful Combatant by DAVE LINDORFF, The Baltimore Chronicle

"Liberal Media" Needs to Apologize

Just about the entire American broadcast media establishment willfully misrepresented remarks by John Kerry to falsely imply he had insulted the intelligence of the American troops in Iraq.

On the day before Halloween, one week before what promised to be a disastrous midterm election for the Republicans, all discussions of the policy failures, criminal misdeeds, and the leadership fiasco in the Iraq war were put aside because of the "botched joke" by John Kerry that was characterized as insulting the troops.

Of course it was nothing of the kind.

Kerry was insulting George Bush - not the troops. A fact that everyone with a pulse who was present at the speech in Pasadena that morning was aware. He made several jabs at Bush, including "George Bush used to be from the state of Texas, now he is from the state of denial," followed by the only two sentences the rest of America ever heard from the speech “You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” - those present understood from the context that Kerry was talking about George Bush. His "botch" was to leave out the word "us" as in "you get us stuck in Iraq."

But none of the rest of us knew the context. The media carefully edited out the context and repeatedly and only played a 4 second clip of just those two sentences. Absolutely none included his previous sentences or made it clear that the context was Bush's lack of attention to details that led us to the Iraq fiasco.

Got that?

The entire US broadcast media participated in disseminating a carefully edited smear.

Alone in the broadcast media only Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews seemed to be able to report the truth - on cable.



The rest of the broadcast media continued to uncritically shill for the GOP.

So much for the "Liberal Media" myth, unless "Liberal" means to willfully participate in spreading false propaganda to benefit the conservative establishment. Is that what it means?

It is time for the "Liberal Media" to apologize to the troops for deliberately selling them the lie that John Kerry had insulted them.

And then you and I, dear reader, should apologize for believing them, even if just for a moment.

Lawsuit Filed to Prevent Blackwell Stealing Another Election

Ohio Lawsuit to Reinstate hundreds of thousands of Purged Democratic Voters

by Rob Kall

http://www.opednews.com

Ohio voting rights activist and attorney, Bob Fitrakis, says the Ohio elections may have already been won, responding to reports of massive voter purges in Democratic precincts.

Dr. Fitrakis, told OpEdNews, "Essentially, by purging these rolls, the Republicans, by shrinking the electorate, have already won in Ohio. If they can't win, which is what the polls show among registered voters, the way to win is to use their nuclear option-- to target black voters, young voters and the working poor-- by purging them so they can't vote.

Reports indicate that starting as early as shortly after the 2004 presidential elections, but particularly recently, hundreds of thousands of voters-- mostly urban apartment dwellers (likely black) and students-- who are primarily Democratic-- were sent notifications that they would be purged from the eligible voter lists if they did not respond the letter. But, reportedly, the letter was designed to be easily overlooked, perhaps treated as junk mail. Failure to send in a response caused the voter to be removed from the voting roll.

Fitrakis observes, "They aren't challenging voter eligibility in Republican areas. This is coming from the republican party. They're not targeting their own base.
We asked, "Is there any chance that this can be turned around."

"Yes, A federal judge can issue an order to reinstate all the purged voters." says Fitrakis.

"I would urge the DNC-- the party can't let this stand. They could proceed to Federal court and argue that this is a civil rights case-- against blacks and young people. They could file their own suit. They could join our suit. There are a lot of ways they could do it procedurally. They could intervene as an independent party. They could join our lawsuit I would welcome any action by them.

"They have to realize the election might have been decided by these purges. My book, that I wrote with Harvey Wasserman, reported that in 2004, the only reason the race was even close was because of the purging done in 2004 in the Democratic counties.

"When we go, we'll ask for an injunction, amending this to our existing, arguing that this irreparable harm to the civil rights of hundreds of thousands of Ohio voters, that they're being targetted because of their race and age."

According to Fitrakis, the letters were sent out and purges timed, so voters could not get their voting eligibility status reinstated, because the voting registration period just ended. Worse, there was no reason to purge the voters, which is usually reserved for people who have died or moved out of state. They should have been moved to inactive status.

Fitrakis explained, "They were probably purged because they moved. If they were registered to vote, they were eligible to vote simply by going to the board of electioin. They should have been moved to inactive status. There was no reason to purge these people."

Read the entire article.

They don't give a damn about our freedom

In the years since 9/11 we have become accustomed to a War on Terrorism that does not include the prosecution of terrorists as criminals. That wasn't always the case, after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing the Clinton administration hunted down, captured, prosecuted and convicted all the principal conspirators in the bombing - every single one of whom is now serving a life sentence in federal prison.

The Bush administration did bring one would be terrorist to traditional justice - Richard Reid, the "Shoe Bomber". He was found guilty and sentenced in 2003 to life plus 130 years. Judge William Young made the following extraordinary statement in his sentencing comments:

This is the sentence that is provided for by our statutes. It is a fair and a just sentence. It is a righteous sentence. Let me explain this to you.

We are not afraid of any of your terrorist co-conspirators, Mr. Reid. We are Americans. We have been through the fire before. There is all too much war talk here. And I say that to everyone with the utmost respect.

Here in this court where we deal with individuals as individuals, and care for individuals as individuals, as human beings we reach out for justice.

You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or that happens to be your view, you are a terrorist.

And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not treat with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists.

We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.

So war talk is way out of line in this court. You're a big fellow. But you're not that big. You're no warrior. I know warriors. You are a terrorist. A species of criminal guilty of multiple attempted murders.

In a very real sense Trooper Santiago had it right when first you were taken off that plane and into custody and you wondered where the press and where the TV crews were and he said you're no big deal. You're no big deal.

What your counsel, what your able counsel and what the equally able United States attorneys have grappled with and what I have as honestly as I know how tried to grapple with, is why you did something so horrific. What was it that led you here to this courtroom today? I have listened respectfully to what you have to say. And I ask you to search your heart and ask yourself what sort of unfathomable hate led you to do what you are guilty and admit you are guilty of doing.

And I have an answer for you. It may not satisfy you. But as I search this entire record it comes as close to understanding as I know.

It seems to me you hate the one thing that to us is most precious. You hate our freedom. Our individual freedom. Our individual freedom to live as we choose, to come and go as we choose, to believe or not believe as we individually choose.

I agree with most of what Judge Young so eloquently said.

It is proof that terrorists can and should be treated as criminals. Not promoted to supervillians who's very existence requires us to sacrifice our liberties just to cling to our own safety.

The only thing I disagree with the judge upon is the notion that the terrorists hate our freedom.

They don't give a damn about us - and they certainly don't give a damn about our freedom.

They aren't trying to change how we live in America - except for taking pleasure in our fear - they are lashing out at us for all the wrongs they feel they or their people have suffered - most imagined, some real. Yes, they'd like to break our spirit. But mostly they just don't give a damn about us.

They don't give a damn about us.

What they really want is to win the hearts and minds of the people in their homelands. They are too weak and too impoverished of spirit to do it through good works, education and inspiration. So they do it by inciting fear of the other, by exalting in taking revenge against a bogeyman they invent.

Look at Hezbollah. Shooting 4000 missiles into Israel did nothing to make Lebanon more free, more prosperous, or less threatened by the Jewish state. Indeed it only brought destruction and hardship upon their homeland. But it was successful because it represented a futile swipe at a hated bogeyman - Hezbollah became immensely more popular despite bringing nothing but pain and ruin to Lebanon. Ironically there is another side of Hezbollah, separate from the terrorists, that provides social services, schooling, medical services and reconstruction aid. That Hezbollah could have made Lebanon a better country, instead it is now tasked with treating the wounds inflicted by the terrorist wing. Those terrorists made life much worse for the Lebanese people, for no good reason, but they became heroes.

That is what a terrorist triumph looks like.

The Al Qaeda attack on America was a dismal failure. It didn't break our spirit. It didn't gladden the world at the humbling of a bogeyman. It did the opposite. The world stood with us. In all its diversity the world stood with us in unity. Even the Islamic world stood with us - large crowds gathered spontaneously in Iran to stand in solidarity with the people of America at candlelight vigils. Only a very few people in the entire Muslim world celebrated, most stood up and called us brother.



9/11 was al-Qaeda's most colossal misjudgment. It took billions of dollars, thousands of lives, and years of breathtaking stupidity, megalomania, mendacity, and malice for George Bush to turn Osama Bin Laden's monumental failure into a success.

You see, what George W. Bush wanted to do was win the hearts and minds of the people of America. He was too weak and too impoverished of spirit to do it through good works, education and inspiration. So he did it by inciting fear of the foreigner, by lashing out almost randomly and exalting in taking revenge against a bogeyman.

For a time it worked.

Olbermann Channels Murrow

Keith Olberman deconstructs Donald Rumsfeld's comments equating anti-war sentiment with appeasement, and turns the administration's new fascism meme against itself. Clearly inspired by Edward R. Murrow's commentary on Joseph McCarthy, Olberman directly quotes Murrow at the conclusion.



The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald S. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable comments to the Veterans of Foreign Wars yesterday demand the deep analysis - and the sober contemplation - of every American.

For they do not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence - indeed, the loyalty — of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land;

Worse, still, they credit those same transient occupants - our employees — with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; And not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile… it is right — and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

More from Crooks and Liars

The Constitution in Crisis

Even though the mainstream media has failed to report on it, the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff has released an exhaustive report on the crimes of the Bush Administration.


The full report is 350 pages. Download it in PDF format HERE

Taking My Country Back

The Second BlueHorde CD mix, Country Style.



These songs come from all over; peace sites, commercial download sites, and my own collections. I've posted listening or download links when available, in some cases videos, in other cases I'm just posting a link to a paysite like iTunes or Rhapsody - Please support our artists. I have not limited my choices to only those songs on a single site, so no iMix for easy purchase. Sorry.

If you are looking for great CD downloads of Country songs with conscience, I recommend the Music Row Democrats 20 Songs for 20 Bucks, and Homeless in America by the Nashville Session Players. Several of the songs in my mix are from these collections.

No Dixie Chicks or Willie Nelson - they were represented on the first mix, but there are some familiar names like Brooks, Kristofferson, and Haggard here. And some less familiar talents that deserve attention.

Listen and enjoy.

1] Honky Tonkers for Truth - I'm Takin My Country Back - play
2] Ronnie Kimball - US Steal - iTunes or play
3] Merle Haggard - America First - iTunes and video
4] Tom Chelston - Bushwhacked - mp3 download and video
5] U.S. Jones - Writing on the Wall - play
6] Kris Kristofferson - Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down - iTunes - 1 minute sample
7] John McCutcheon - Let's Pretend - play mp3 and video
8] Old No. 8 - Talkin' Blues - play
9] John McCutcheon - Duct Tape - video
10] Old No. 8 - Somewhere Down The Line - play
11] James McMurtry - We Can't Make it Here - iTunes and video
12] Kris Kristofferson - In The News - iTunes and video
13] The Mavericks - I Want To Know - iTunes or play
14] Darrell Scott - A-OK in the USA (Goodle USA) - iTunes or play
15] U.S. Jones - Muddy Channel Radio - play
16] Scott B. Bomar - Two Paper Town - iTunes or Listen on MRD Player
17] Sarah Crews - What You Preach - iTunes or play
18] Johnny Cash - The Man in Black - iTunes or play
19] Garth Brooks - We Shall Be Free - Rhapsody and video

This mix was created for personal use - all rights remain with the original artists.
Please support our artists.

How Ill is George W. Bush?

There is definitely something medically wrong with George Bush. His intellectual decline over the last decade is remarkable and obvious to anyone who knew him in Texas before he entered national politics, see this video:



Some are calling it pre-senile dementia - similar to what affected Ronald Reagan during his White House years, but was undisclosed to the public until after his death. Others speculate it is the result of years of cocaine and/or alcohol abuse - so called " Dry Drunk " syndrome or Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome.

Comedian and press commentator Harry Shearer has identified a new Bush tic, the chin swivel or "hula chin". Here's video compiled by Shearer. According to Randi Rhodes at Air America, people who work in drug addiction intervention identify this as a definitive sign of long term cocaine abuse.

Then there is the mystery bulge noticed on George Bush's back during the Kerry Debates.



Although most speculation was that it was a transmitter used to feed cues to Bush during the debate, his poor performance argues otherwise, as does the evidence that he wears the device, whatever it is, at other times, such as while vacationing on his ranch as in the photo above left.

Others suggest it is a medical device such as a LifeVest wearable defibrillator meant to counter atrial fibrillation - a possible culprit in the 2002 fainting spell that was blamed on a pretzel.



Given the president's history of being equilibrium challenged (3 bicycle accidents and falling off a Segway scooter - which is designed to be nearly spill proof), I'd suggest another possibility - the bulge is a personal gyroscope designed to keep the president walking upright.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Again

A 9 minute documentary about CSN&Y's Freedom of Speech '06 tour. Although there is an inescapable deja vu of their anti-Vietnam war activities of the 60s and 70s, this tour relegates the nostalgia to mere backup for a modern message of ending a new misbegotten war and reclaiming democracy tightly focused around Neil Young's sudden masterpiece Living With War released this Spring.



Neil Young: Living With War Today - webpage

The Sundering of Democracy

It's an election year, but will YOU get to vote?

CNN's conservative pundit Jack Cafferty is showing alarming signs of joining the reality based community. Watch his Cafferty Files editorial on attempts to protect our rulers from elections. YouTube embedded link:





Over at Rolling Stone read Robert F. Kennedy Jr's article about how the 2004 election was stolen in Ohio.



Here's Rolling Stone's helpful bibliography for those of you who want to dig into the facts of how the world's greatest democracy was overthrown.

New! Follow up to Kennedy's Rolling Stone article:

Ohio 2004: The Jesse Jackson Interview

Ohio 2004: The Howard Dean Interview

Blackwell Amok: More Dirty Tricks in Ohio

The Voice of Voting Reform

Tom Noe: Bush “Friend” Admits Laundering Money to 2004 Campaign

Finally, Salon publishes an instant article debunking Bobby Kennedy's Rolling Stone piece, while Think Progress debunks the debunking.

Battlefield Earth

Entire US a Battlefield - Constitution Suspended

The Bush Administration has declared the entire world a battlefield in the Global War on Terror - including every square inch of United States territory.

Article two of the Constitution grants the President war powers that give him full authority over the battlefield.

Clearly the forth Amendment is not valid - an army scout does not need to present probable cause to a judge in order to receive a warrant that allows him to spy on the enemy.

The 2nd Amendment does not apply - weapon possession is subject to military authority exclusively.

The First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech, press, and religion cannot be extended to the battlefield.

All operations, activities, and personel on the battlefield are under the absolute authority of the commander in chief until such time that hostilities cease.

Sounds like a story from The Onion. But it isn't. The Bush administration has quietly used the 'battlefield' argument to justify its illegal acts, such as wiretapping, detention of Americans without charge, and the violation of privacy laws.

The administration claims that the Supreme Court has approved this doctrine in the Hamdi case, even though they lost that case.

This is no joke, this doctrine is the basis for absolute dictatorial powers for George W. Bush, and this doctrine has already been claimed as law;

A top government attorney declared Tuesday that, in the war on terror, the United States is a battlefield, and therefore President Bush has the authority to detain enemy combatants indefinitely in this country.

...

Bush & Co., however, has not only turned loose the military to spy extensively on the American people, but has also asserted the right to do so in perpetuity. Its claim is that 9/11 turned the homeland into a foreign battlefield, so the nation's historic prohibition against military surveillance of Americans is null and void. And since this war on terrorists has no end ("the long war," Rumsfeld calls it), the Bush-ites maintain that the Pentagon can engage in domestic spying ad infinitum.

...

The core problem—for Gonzales and for the nation—is that the administration’s constitutional assertion of war-making authority at home contains no plausible stopping point. By its own terms, it demolishes restraints not only on surveillance, but also on indefinite detention, on coercive interrogation and even on torture. As the Solicitor General Paul Clement revealingly asserted last summer in oral argument to a federal appeals court, all the world’s a battlefield, and the United States is but one front.

U.S. a Battlefield, Solicitor General Tells Judges
Myth #7: The Supreme Court approves
Seeking Truth On Wiretaps
Inside Donnie Rumsfeld's Orwellian Pentagon

Music for the Horde

Here's some of what I've been listening to while I prepare The Blue Horde blog for launch.



Sing Peace is a mix CD list, most of the cuts are available for free download, I've included listening or viewing links for the few that can't be.
1] Dixie Chicks - Not Ready to Make Nice - plays on webpage2] Pink - Dear Mr. President - download and video3] Low - Nowhere Man - download4] RX - Imagine ... Walk on the Wild Side - download and video5] Jackson Brown - Lives in the Balance - video6] Willie Nelson - Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth - download7] Jonatha Brooke - War - download8] Nerina Pallot - Everybody's Gone to War - Video9] Thomas Pace - Home No More - download10] Ryland Bouchard - Life (What Warriors Sing) - download11] Amy Martin - Consequences - download12] Cat Power - Maybe Not - download13] Neil Young - When God Made Me - plays from webpage14] DJ Monkey - Jerusalem - play15] Elly K - Sing - plays on webpage 

This list is a CD mix I put together for personal use - all rights remain with the original artists.

The Blue Horde is coming

The Blue Horde is the progressive majority; the Democrats, the Greens and the Independents. We are the traditional Republicans who have been left behind by a party that no longer practices the values it preaches. We are the soldiers sent to fight and die for lies. We are the mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters of patriots whose lives were carelessly spent for the ambitions of the unworthy. The Blue Horde has been ignored by the corporate media, disenfranchised by corporate voting machines, and marginalized by gerrymandering. The Blue Horde has been marketed to, spun to, and lied to by those who were supposed to serve our interests. The Blue Horde has watched the sundering of a great Democracy.

We've noticed.

We are the Blue Horde, and we're not going to take it anymore.

Democracy is coming to the USA.