2004 DEAD IN OHIO PT. 1

Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell grudgingly consented today to delay the destruction of the Ohio paper ballots from the presidential election of 2004. This may represent a toe hold for those – including myself – who would like to see further investigation, if not a proper lawsuit concerning election fraud that may have put George W. Bush back in the White House.

Even before the Ohio results were in, questions were being raised about the execution of the election. Ken Blackwell is a controversial figure, which is my polite way of saying that he sucks tremendously, and was roundly criticized in the lead-up to election day for rejecting absentee ballots that hadn’t arrived in his office on anything other than 80-point card stock.

Blackwell is currently overseeing the Ohio gubernatorial election. Blackwell is also currently running for governor of Ohio. Again, disputes have arisen over rules - instituted by the Secretary of State's office - that make voter registration more difficult, proving that Blackwell is the archetype figure for Republican Get Around The Vote efforts. Read more here.

In the last two years, a number of concerns have been raised over potential inconsistencies in the Ohio balloting. For starters, and finishers on this post, I will leave you with the short fact sheet compiled by Lewis Lapham, until-recently Editor of Harper's Magazine, in his NOTEBOOK piece from January 2005:

- A precinct in Franklin County, Ohio, possessed of only 638 voters awarded 4,258 votes to Bush.

- In forty-seven of the sixty-seven counties in Florida, Bush received more votes than there were registered Republicans.

- Of the 120,200,000 votes cast on Election Day roughly a third were processed by electronic voting machines supplied not by government but by private corporations, at least one of them (Diebold) controlled by a zealous partisan of the Republican Party who made no secret of his wish to bring victory home for the holidays. The software programs enjoyed the protection granted to commercial trade secrets.

- In three states that relied extensively on paper ballots (Illinois, Maine, Wisconsin) the exit polls corresponded to the final tally. In six states that relied extensively on electronic touchscreens (North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio) the discrepancy between the exit polls and the final tally invariably favored Bush.

- In ten of the eleven swing states the final result differed from the predicted result, and in each instance the shift added votes for Bush.

- Voters in six states, most particularly those in three Florida counties (Broward, Dade, and Palm Beach) reported touching the screen for Kerry and seeing their ballots marked for Bush.

- The electronic machines in Broward County began counting absentee ballots backward once they had recorded 32,000 votes; as more people voted, the official vote count went down.

- Exit polls in states equipped with verifiable paper receipts corresponded to the final tally; in states employing electronic touch screens the margin of difference between exit polls and the final tallies was as high as 5, 7, and 9 percent.

To be continued...

REGISTER TO VOTE

TODAY is the LAST DAY to register to vote [for Deval Patrick] in the Mass Democratic Primary on SEPTEMBER 19TH. Offices are open until 8 pm for any working folks.

I would tell you all about how to get this done, but they already did it better at Blue Mass Group. Follow the link for answers to all your voter registration questions.

You know, you know, you know. Go, go, go.

IF ONE CANDIDATE LEAVES HIS STUMP AT 10:30 SAYING RESULTS EVERY THIRTY SECONDS FOR SIX MONTHS…

Chris “C.R.E.A.M.” Gabrieli published a word problem today in the Boston Globe, regularly hitting his ‘Results’ note, espousing accountability, and offering some stats to back his proposals.

Mostly, Gabrieli talks about money, and how he will or will not spend it, and how the Healey administration cannot “protect” your money as promised in her ads. His ideas are decent, if un-lively, and his rhetoric is lifted and tweaked straight from the Patrick campaign. Gabrieli does make one wise move, offering this isolated, ever so quotable promise:

If elected governor, I will cut income taxes to 5 percent. The people voted for that, and with the cost of living out of control, middle-class families need help.

Dolla' Dolla' Bill Y'all! Gabs goes on to qualify however, offering that cutting the income tax right away would be “reckless” and that he won’t submit to the “easy politics” of assuring an immediate rollback. If only he brought up the property tax, we could have a comprehensive re-wording of what Deval Patrick has been saying for a year and a half. Gabrieli says?

…passing this burden to cities and towns, forcing higher property taxes, would be a mistake.

Hat Trick!

Also: According to some rumblings at Blue Mass Group, there appear to be certain connections to the Tom Reilly campaign and today’s Boston Herald story that attempts to link Deval Patrick to a convicted rapist.

Years ago, Patrick disputed the conviction of Ben LaGuer, and questioned the execution of the case against him:

“I therefore have serious misgivings about the integrity of the criminal justice system in this case, as I believe any citizen would.”

I am unclear about specific details, I only know that LaGuer has a number of supporters, and that the Herald story is absolutely terrible, stating inflammatory facts about Patrick and his record without offering any context whatsoever. See this BMG post for more info.

The Reilly connection comes in the form of internet activity, in which Reilly’s campaign was tracked at the LaGuer website a few minutes previous (2:24p.m. and 2:41p.m.) to the arrival of the Boston Herald (2:42p.m.).

So with the other candidates both biting Patrick, all is normal in the Mass Democratic Primary race.

And just a reminder that the Primary vote is scheduled for September 19th.

I’M TIRED OF THESE MUTHA[redacted] SNAKES IN MY MUTHA[redacted] WHITE HOUSE PT. 2

In an even more mysterious turn of events, the mysterious Evolutionary Biology major has mysteriously disappeared from the Department of Education’s mysterious Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) list. The omission has been dubbed a clerical mistake, but has raised suspicion because it un-mysteriously means that the Federal Government will not be awarding any education grants to students who wish to specialize in theory of evolution.

Under the National SMART (Science and Math Access to Retain Talent) Grant Program, low-income students are awarded up to $4,000 in various iterations of math and science fields, as well as for “foreign languages deemed ‘critical’ to national security.” The SMART Grant uses the Ed Department’s CIP to catalog its own approved courses of study. So when major 26.1303 Evolutionary Biology disappears from the big list, it disappears from the little one too.

The notion that this was in fact a data entry mistake has been viewed with heavy skepticism by the scientific community:

Mr. Nassirian said people at the Education Department had described the omission as “a clerical mistake.” But it is “odd,” he said, because applying the subject codes “is a fairly mechanical task. It is not supposed to be the subject of any kind of deliberation.”

“I am not at all certain that the omission of this particular major is unintentional,” he added. “But I have to take them at their word.”

Scientists who knew about the omission also said they found the clerical explanation unconvincing, given the furor over challenges by the religious right to the teaching of evolution in public schools. “It’s just awfully coincidental,” said Steven W. Rissing, an evolutionary biologist at Ohio State University.

The Government responded: “The theory of Intentional Omission is merely a theory, and is only one of many possibilities for explaining the disappearance of Evolutionary Biology from our list. It is important that we respect all belief systems in reaching any conclusions in this matter, without giving priority to incomplete, inconclusive reasoning.”*

So by Occam’s Theory of Parsimony, we should follow the line of logic involving the lowest number of assumptions. Which is the most likely conclusion?

1) A heavily debated, highly contentious subject on a vast list of subjects is accidentally eliminated by a fluke error.

2) A heavily debated, highly contentious subject on a vast list of subjects is deliberately eliminated by an administrator who has both access and enmity towards that subject.

3) God has determined to prove the veracity of Creationism through the wrath of clerical error, removing the option of federal funding for the study of evolution.

It’s science.

*I did not actually read of any formal governmental response beyond the one in the Times story linked above. I can only assume that this approximates the spirit with which the current government addressed this issue.

GEORGE ALLEN: CLASS ACT?

In a mysterious turn of events, George Allen, the anti-matter Al Gore, has personally apologized to S.R. Sidarth, the Jim Webb aide he referred to as “macaca” at a fundraising event last week.

Allen called Sidarth personally and owned up to his mistake, saying he was unaware of the gravity of his horribly ostracizing remarks. Sidarth made no reports of hearing emo music in the background.

Allen's actions actually seem kind of classy, but unfortunately only highlight the newest potential scandal in the Allen campaign: the candidate’s propensity for drunk dialing.

I’M TIRED OF THESE MUTHA[redacted] SNAKES IN MY MUTHA[redacted] WHITE HOUSE PT. 1

The Internal Revenue Service announced this weekend that it would be outsourcing its debt collection duties on amounts less than $25,000 to several private collection firms, a move, Paul Krugman notes, that takes us right back to the good old 16th century.

The decision was not made in order to reduce fraud, streamline collection, and reduce the burden on the federal budget. Privatization of collection forces will in fact increase the likelihood of fraud, complicate collections, and cost us more. The real reason behind the change is that Congress will not authorize the hiring of more I.R.S. agents. The real reason behind the no hiring policy is the easy attack to be made on any politician even remotely friendly to taxes, tax collectors, or the government in general.

With all this, no one has even bothered to patronize us with fortune cookie assurances:

“The main objection so far to the privatization program is that it is more expensive than internal collection. ‘I freely admit it,’ Mark W. Everson, the tax commissioner, told a House of Representatives committee in March.”

You would of thought they could at least re-hash the old "enemy that lurks, America is under attack" business.

According to the New York Times, private collection will bring in about $1.4 billion of revenue over the next decade. By hiring internal agents, the I.R.S. could instead bring in $9 billion each year. For you neo-cons out there, this means that expanding the current agency would net us six months of Regime Change each year, whereas outsourcing only brings in a few weeks of Regime Change per decade.

Check off another Win-Win for Conservatives, who get the privatization they always want, while taking a swipe at the most reviled institution in the federal government. For other highlights in Clandestine Infrastructure Realignment for Ideological Purposes, check out what the Bush Administration is doing to face down the Estate Tax.

Also: For any interested parties, I left a little note at Blue Mass Group this morning.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN BIGOTS STOP BEING POLITE

George Allen, seen at right in the unused portrait for his Donruss Diamond Kings card, made things harder for himself this week by shooting out a racial slur at a Republican fundraiser. What's so shocking about that you say? Well unlike the hundreds of other racial slurs at Republican fundraisers across the nation this week, Allen said his into a microphone.

S.R. Sidarth, a Virginia-raised, UVA educated supporter of Jim Webb, Allen's Democratic rival in the Senate race, was welcomed by Allen to America and "the real world of Virginia" and addressed as "macaca." Sidarth is of Indian descent, and macaca is a common racial epithet in a number of African and Asian countries. So at least Mr. Allen manages to be cosmopolitain in his bigotry. The name may also have been a reference to the macaque money, which displays Allen's broad understanding of tropical ecology alongside his back-woods podunk prejudice.

Like his old pal Mitt Romney, Allen played the naivete card on the remark, claiming not to know what "macaca" meant , and offering that it was a reference to Sidarth's mohawk haircut. The haircut gambit is a no-go, obviously, and the naivete only makes things worse, I would say.

If Allen was unaware of the import of his slur, that means that he was spontaneously able to locate, through the universe's great spheres of racial hatred, an appropriate remark with which to denigrate this young man. If you balk at the mystic rationale, you might simply conclude that Allen is such a sharp racist tack that he managed to pull something plenty hurtful - and vintage hateful through its monkey reference heritage - out of the thin Virginia air.

In addition, the New York Times reports:

In 1984, as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, Mr. Allen opposed a state holiday honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. After being elected governor in 1993, he issued a proclamation honoring Confederate History Month. He also kept a Confederate battle flag in his home, according to The Almanac of American Politics.

This is bad for Mr. Allen, and should haunt his 2008 aspirations. But let's be fair; it's not like he kicked off his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, known only for the savage murders of three Civil Rights protestors. And it's not like his next stop was Stone Mountain, Georgia, birthplace of Jefferson Davis the Confederate President who he referred to as "one of my heroes." He's not a monster.

That was Reagan that did that.

In the end, the real tragedy here is not young Sidarth, who gets to be an awkward martyr for his own campaign, nor is it Mr. Allen's political pursuit, which was already a tragedy. The true sting is felt by me, a proud Virginian living in the North East, who must now further confront the stigma of Allen's so-called "real world of Virginia."

FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

Some news today from the Governor's race:

Deval Patrick received a thorough and thoughtful endorsement from the Editors at Blue Mass Group - the blog of record for lefties in Massachusetts - and launched Deval Patrick TV, where you can watch some video from the campaign, including Deval's Democratic convention film, which I highly recommend.

Reilly, flailing in what may prove a fatal riptide from his Killer Coke fiasco, once again called for Patrick to release his tax returns, and suggested that Deval come clean about his corporate record, which happened on Sunday. Perhaps, like Bush, Reilly also disdains the "filter" of the main stream press.

And I heard two guys talking about Chris Gabrielli on the train. For those of you unfamiliar with him, he is the guy on TV who lectures to his kids with a pie chart before taking out the trash.

TERRORISM SNOOZEFEST

To find video of the statement, follow the link below, scroll down to the small box labeled Video, roll over the “More Videos [+]” button and choose “Bush Issues Statement on Terror Plot.”

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Cracks are beginning to show in the Bush Administration’s famous resolve, as evidenced yesterday in President Bush’s terrible little address to the American people.

Bush, who looks and acts like he was abruptly awakened from one of his frequent naps, stepped onto an airport runway or something to deliver his boilerplate about the dangers we continue to face, how we are a country at war, looming threats, vigilance, all the old chestnuts. After he thanks the British for their efforts and touts the cooperation between international and national agencies as “solid” and “excellent” respectively, he disintegrates into stock phrases. He sounds, as per the ususal, like one of those dolls with the string in the back. Only now the recoil unit is wearing down, and the rhetoric is starting to dip and drag. Some highlights:

“The recent arrests…are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascist-ist who will use any means ta...to destroy those of us who love freedom. To hurt our nation.”

“…obviously we are still not completely safe, because there are people who still plot…”

“It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America.”

“The inconveniences [to travelers] occurs because we will take the steps necessary to protect the American people.”*

“The American people need to know that we live in a dangerous world…”

and my personal favorite, because he can’t even say it without a grimace:

"This country is safer than it – eehughh – was prior to 9-11."

He only uses the word “freedom” once, which must have been a challenge, but he does use “to protect the American people” or some close variation about 4 or 5 times. What is noticeably absent is the bold face Bush used to put on these things. Where is the “Our resolve is strong” or the “greatest country in the history of the world” stuff? The only noticeable call to action is that travelers should be patient and vigilant. No jet engine sound of freedom bullshit. All we get here is the clitter-clatt of cloven feet.

Bush was completely lifeless yesterday, and brought none of the 5th grade ballast and bellicosity that we have all come to expect in the standard Terrorist Threat speech. His performance had all the charisma of a Vegas comedian on the night before he starts checking apartment prices at craigslist: Branson MO, and if he is not at least going to be entertaining then this is the [most recent] last straw.

Which leads me to wonder what else is at work. Unfortunately, we must also be vigilant about uncovering political motivation in the timing of major threats, arrests, or battlefield gains. Only days after papers are running headlines about the Lamont victory being a referendum on Iraq, when Republicans are out like parachute pants, Bush doesn’t muster up the cussedness to capitalize on his bread and butter issue? He seems downright distraught. He seems unhappy. He seems scared.

That frightens me more than anything to date.

*The grammatical inconsistencies applied here between the subjects, verbs, and the tenses of the clauses are to be ignored based on a Signing Statement applied to recent legislation.

PROPOSAL: GEORGE W. BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY

It can be called The Library For Presidents Who Can't Read Good And Who Want To Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too. It will only stock Highlights, Cracked Magazine, and the backs of cereal boxes.

FOX HOLE

The Lieberman-Lamont face-off takes place today, and if anyone needed any more reasons to support Ned Lamont, they just got them in the form of Fox "News" scaremongering for Joey Joe Joe (as reported on Daily Kos):



OMG! Have they?!? Apparently, if we abandon our blind support for a war against a country that had nothing to do with September 11th then Osama Bin Laden has already won.




Is it?!? I don't know...seems to me that martial law might be a bigger stumbling block towards democracy.






In other news, joe2006.com, Lieberman's website crashed today. I can only hope that this was unfortunate coincidence and not the work of pimply Lamont supporters, though given the kinds of Stupid Campaign Tricks they have subscribed to in the last few weeks, I wouldn't rule out some foul play.

WORK TO WELFARE

It is always startling to observe how those that are unwilling to allow for the idea of biological Darwinism will advocate for Social Darwinism of the cruelest kind. I can understand the reasoning: It is easier for the elite to thrive if the populace is obsessed with a ruling God, and I’m sure they prefer for people to chalk up being out on their asses to Intelligent Design.

On that note, The Washington Post reported today that rollbacks in the welfare program, added in a Bush Administration Era round of revisions to Clinton’s welfare reform, will be taking effect in the coming weeks.

In lieu of being able to disband welfare and use the poor as a source of Renewable Alternative Energy – they care about the environment – Republicans and no doubt some “Democrats” have taken aim at the criteria for eligibility in the welfare program. This legislation is still rolling strong on the fuel of Reagan’s Welfare Queen accusations, in which he detailed abuses of the system by the financially solvent. And by “detailed” I mean fostered the cartoonish image of a [black female] jabberwocky who laughs all the way to the bank to cash her federal assistance check.

On that note, the government issued new definitions of the acceptable work a welfare recipient can do, and upped the number of required hours they must spend working to retain eligibility. Time spent looking for work, or time spent getting treatment for drug addiction have also been curtailed. Oh, and:

“Studying for a bachelor’s degree no longer counts by itself as an acceptable way for people on welfare to spend their time.”

Good to stop throwing away cash on higher education, which never helped move anyone off of social assistance.

Many states are reacting by shuffling participants into new categories to prevent them from losing benefits. The new standards also increase the amount of paperwork necessary to track and account for the activities of welfare recipients. The underlying logic goes like this: more paperwork = more bureaucracy = greater cost = bigger government.

The GOP: Over 55 years of ensuring that the country’s left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing.

LIEBERMAN-LAMONT LOCKDOWN: NED NETS NUMBERS ON NET, JILTLED JOE JUST JIBBER JABBERS

So: Ned Lamont pulled ahead of Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic Senatorial Primary polls this week, making his run for office the first in what I hope will be a number of long-shot Democrat Cinderella stories of the coming election cycle. The switchboards are all abuzz and the bloggers are all aflutter with talk of the surging viability of netroots and how the digital realm carries some serious analog force. And the misty-eyed sky gazers among us can say that it looks, for now, like the Democrats may actually have gotten their groove back.

I like Ned Lamont for what little I know about him, that being that he is against the War in Iraq. More to the point, I like the spirit of his campaign. The changing dynamics of fundraising, advertising, and media coverage brought on by the internet have begun to crumble the wall surrounding politics and Lamont’s campaign is a solid example.

Lamont is not exactly a poster child for web populism – he wasn’t cobbling shoes before entering politics, and he didn’t step up because old ladies were getting rolled on his block. He is, like so many office seekers, in media ownership (arguably another dynamic altered by the internet), and is worth millions from both his financial ventures and his family. This guy is J.P. Morgan stock; his teenage kids are worth something like $11 million. Despite that, the Lamont campaign demonstrates that web action is no longer a fringe activity, and that its proprietors are no longer destined for the legitimacy burnout of Dean 04.

What makes these changes in the landscape most interesting is their effect on other aspects of more traditional campaigning. With the media pie being sliced into smaller portions, unbeatable outlets like television are slowly losing prominence. TV advertising is not antiquated, but the shift has left it as less of a factor. Additionally, there is plenty of free coverage coming in the form of news stories about the use of new technologies.

We can see proof positive today in the Massachusetts Democratic gubernatorial primary race. An early July poll showed long-shot candidate Deval Patrick taking a substantial lead over his better-known opponents – both of whom rolled out strong TV ad buys for the last weeks of July and early August. Millions of dollars of television ads later, the second and third runners are still second and third, and the only changes occurred within the statistical margin of error, meaning that there is a possibility that numbers 2 and 3 just traded their cows for some magic beans.

Which brings me to another heartening point: Grassroots campaigning has been granted a renewed importance. Because the game is no longer simply one of name recognition, traveling a state can accrue the right candidate enormous dividends. However, this only happens when the candidate is willing to be inspiring and persuasive. Not the kind of thing you get from guys like Lieberman.

Back in Connecticut, Mumbly Joe pulled his own Stupid Campaign Trick this week, playing the old My Opponent Is Too Rich To Understand The Public card. This, to me, is one of the sillier moves to make. Conventional wisdom says that very few people really care how much money a candidate has, and unless Lamont starts outfitting himself in bling, it is unlikely that anyone will even notice. Our two-term president is testament to the fact that acting like po’ folks is perfectly easy, even if you are lousy with wealth from guns, grease and Nazi gold.

Lieberman should be out. He is the typical milquetoast Democrat who claims backbone by pandering to conservative views and calling it independent thinking. It is the failing strategy of the last two decades, the attempt to court swing voters without understanding that swing voters aren’t asking to be appeased, they are asking to be swung.

This methodology has also resulted in my least favorite political trope since the good old Communist witch hunt: the “flip-flopper” charge. This is a bullshit appellation applied when Dems constantly equivocate about issues. So now we have to put up with that.

I am happy to see a shift in the discourse, despite my concern over the glee in taking down of a fellow Democrat. Joe Lieberman is a decent person, and, I guess, a fine politician for a different age, but his time is gone. I wish him plenty of [Joe Lieberman looks like Falcor the] luck [dragon] in the future.