CANNONFIRE

I still cannot return to regular posting. Give me another week or so.

Right now, I'm going to make a confession. I'm going to put a troubling matter "on the record." I do so with some hesitation, since the business under discussion could ruin whatever small reputation I may have gained.

The question of the day comes down to this: Do you believe in ESP?

I grew up immersed in Fox Mulder-ish lore (Tom Delay wasn't kidding when he said that sites like mine belonged to the "X-Files" wing of the Democratic party), but over the years, my attitude slid into skepticism. I've met a lot of people who claimed to have had preternatural experiences or abilities. These claimants invariably turned out to be irritating and unreliable.

Magic? UFOs? Ghosts? Visions of the Virgin Mary? The internet and your local library abound with many a wild story, but proof remains unobtainable. Even the best-attested incidents become less impressive upon close examination.

I thus segued into cynicism and curmudgeon-hood.

(Yes, my ladyfriend and I have a tradition of dining out at "haunted" restaurants on Halloween, but we do so out of a sense of romance and fun. We don't expect to see anything.)

Curmudgeon that I became (and remain), I still tended to place ESP in the "maybe" category, if only because Dr. J.B. Rhine and other scientists have claimed to validate the existence of the phenomenon in the laboratory. (By the by: Did you know that Sir Richard Burton coined the term "ESP"?) On the other hand, scientists such as Dr. Susan Blackmore have persuasively disputed the existence of the phenomenon. (See here and here; if you'll click the latter link, you'll discover that the hard-headed Dr. Blackmore sports a rather surprising look these days.)

As I said: I came to view ESP as a maybe. Not a likelihood, but a possibility.

And then I met a woman (no, not my current ladyfriend) who transformed that "maybe" into an "almost certainly." Here's the catch: While this woman was able to prove her ability to me, she could not do so in a way that allows me to prove it to you.

That's the hell of it. By her own account, whatever ability she once possessed always manifested itself in spurts -- rare spurts. She could never turn on the spigot at will.

Remember the old Chuck Jones cartoon starring "Michigan J. Frog"? The amphibian who could sing "Hello, my baby" -- but only to an audience of one? The moment an audience showed up, the magic stopped.

Hate to admit it, but this story is one of those stories.

I hope I haven't yet alienated all of my readers. Because in this case, the singing frog predicted World War III.

The wake-up call

In July of 1999, the woman with whom I was romantically involved at that time -- call her Gabrielle -- woke up, woke me up, and announced that she had just had an exceptionally vivid dream. A prophetic dream.

A dream in which airplanes flew into the World Trade Center -- "or buildings like the World Trade Center."

I had met Gabrielle over the internet; she was visiting me from out of state. As mentioned earlier, she claimed to have had psychic experiences, especially when younger, although those experiences had tapered off in recent years. The stories she told me about the earlier days were weird and fascinating -- and, of course, unprovable. I made no secret of my stance on ESP: I had become a cynic, but even so...maybe. She understood that, for the most part, I was now much more of a Scully than a Mulder.

And that's why I immediately looked for a conventional explanation for her nightmarish vision of disaster striking the World Trade Center.

I immediately presumed that her dreaming mind had merely processed images from a half-forgotten news account. "Maybe you're thinking about the time a jet crashed near LAX," I suggested, referring to an incident from the 1980s.

(Nota bene: For purposes of readability, this account will include snatches of dialogue. The quotes are as exact as memory allows. Obviously, I didn't have a tape recorder running.)

No, she answered. Not low buildings. "That happens later. It won't be what they say it is."

The main vision, she insisted, involved skyscrapers. "Like the World Trade Center."

She saw people jumping. Then the buildings would tumble to the ground.

Gabrielle spoke to me for about twenty minutes or so. Her voice and her eyes were odd. She seemed hypnotized. I never saw her act quite that way on any other occasion.

To be honest, I must specify that, throughout this conversation, she almost always referred to buildings "like" the World Trade Center; she confessed that she could not even be sure that the event would take place in New York City, although she did describe a cloud of smoke over the water. "I think it is the World Trade Center," she said at one point.

Naturally, I wanted to know who would commit such an act. "It won't be who they say it is," she answered.

She mentioned that there would be a war in Iraq as a result, even though Iraq would not be responsible. (She also mentioned Saudi Arabia, but the reference was quite vague. I could not discern how that country figured into this scenario.)

Then I brought up an unpleasant matter that had dominated a previous series of allegedly prophetic dreams.

What comes next

Before continuing, I should fill in some more backstory.

In the mid-1990s, before she met me, Gabrielle had had a series of troubling dreams depicting a "small" nuclear explosion in Chicago. In each dream, she viewed the event from a closer perspective. In one dream, she saw it from the point of view of a reporter flying in a commercial airliner not far from the event.

I was not the only person to whom Gabrielle described these dreams, which she considered visionary and predictive. She and I had discussed these dreams at some length (via IRC) well before we ever met. (I may have a log of the chat on a disc somewhere, although I have yet to find it.) I believe she discussed these forecasts with members of her family, although the person with whom she confided at greatest length passed away recently.

She stopped having those dreams a year or two before she met me, and presumed (for whatever reason) that she would never again have a major psychic experience.

That presumption seems to have been premature. Here she was, in a trance-like state after having awakened from a vivid dream of the the World Trade Center's collapse.

Naturally, I wanted to know if the New York event was connected with the nuclear event in Chicago. Yes, she said. In a way. But the explosion in Chicago would happen later.

(Incidentally, Gabrielle spent her life in a small town in the Pacific northwest, and had not traveled to either New York or Chicago -- in fact, she almost never left her home state. Oddly enough, I've never visited either of those two cities myself, although I've seen many other parts of the country.)

Would the same people be responsible for both events, I asked?

Not really, she answered, although the events are linked. In both cases, she emphasized, "it won't be who they say it is."

"Terrorists?"

"Yes and no. It's like people from the government are involved. Or at least they know about it."

She said that the public would be told that Iran was responsible for the Chicago event. "After that, it's World War Three."

She intimated that things would not play out the way "they" planned, and that the war would spin out of all control.

I asked for more details about the "small" nuclear event in Chicago. She mentioned the Sears tower.

Water played a role in the scenario she envisioned; the device would be transported via boat. I reminded her that Chicago is on one of the Great Lakes. (For some reason, I couldn't remember which one!) She said that the boat would not be on a lake. "You know those movable bridges?" she asked. One of those bridges had something to do with the event.

"You know that picture of the farmer and his wife?" she asked. I took this as a reference to Grant Wood's American Gothic, which I once saw on loan in San Francisco. (Incidentally, the woman in the painting is actually the man's sister.) I vaguely recalled that the work's "home" is in Chicago. She felt that the painting would be destroyed by the blast, and that we would subsequently see the image reproduced ad infinitum in news accounts.

(One doesn't need ESP to foresee how the lost work would take on symbolic, even propagandistic, value.)

Since her unusual trance-like state might never occur again, I attempted to pinpoint a date for these events. She could give neither year nor month, although she insisted that the Chicago event would occur after the fall of the skyscrapers in New York City. (She did not intimate how long after; for some reason, I came under the impression that the two events would occur within fairly quick order.)

"Who is the president when the bomb goes off in Chicago?" I asked.

A long pause. Then she asked: "Is there someone named Kerry?"

I told her that there were two guys with that name in the senate, and that she was probably thinking of Bob Kerrey, who had run against Bill Clinton in the 1992 primaries. But I also told her that a new Kerrey run was damn near impossible, since Gore would surely have the nomination sewed up.

Keep in mind: This conversation took place in late July of 1999. I thought entirely in terms of the 2000 election.

I decided to try to get at the chronology from another angle. "Who's the president when the planes hit buildings in New York?"

"Bush," she said. That answer made sense. I didn't like it, but it made sense.

I asked if she foresaw a match-up between Bob Kerrey and George W. Bush in 2000. She seemed puzzled, and said no. That path of inquiry seemed exhausted, so I dropped it.

"When the bomb goes off in Chicago, do you see snow?" She didn't. It won't happen in the winter.

She said there may be still another event on the west coast -- perhaps in Los Angeles, perhaps elsewhere. This event would also involve another tall building. But she had no other details this incident, and felt less certain of this business than of the disasters in New York and Chicago.

Then she fell back asleep! And I mean fell. She plopped back down on the bed, and was unconscious within seconds.

Aftermath

When she awoke, she had little recollection of the dream or of the subsequent conversation.

That night, I took her to see downtown Los Angeles, to see if any of the buildings in that area "resonated." None of the sights there seemed to coalesce with her vague forebodings of a West Coast event, although she did spend a long time drinking in the cityscape visible from the overpass leading to the Bonaventure. (That sight must have made quite an impression on a small-town girl.)

Later, we visited San Francisco. While dining on Fisherman's Wharf, she told me that the west coast event would happen in that city, if it happened at all. The Transamerica building and the Bank of America building both seemed to unsettle her, particularly the latter. Perhaps her reaction can be ascribed to the unusual architecture. I should emphasize that she is not a "sensitive" person who becomes unsettled easily.

Our relationship ended shortly afterward.

The fault was entirely mine. If my readers knew just how badly I treated her, those who bear some affection for my writings would form a new opinion. That's one reason I've always hesitated to discuss Gabrielle's forecast: Anyone attempting to contact her for verification purposes would hear quite an earful about what a bastard I was. My behavior at that time was inexcusable; the world need know nothing more.

Before the break-up occurred, the thought occurred to me that I should describe her "prophecy" (if I may use that word) online before the event, just in case something really did happen to the World Trade Center or the Sears building. But at the time, her description seemed too vague, too contradictory. The fact that she had mentioned both Kerry/Kerrey and Bush as presidents had led me to dismiss the likelihood of all that she had told me. I simply did not consider the possibility that the two "main events" might be widely separated in time.

Here's where we encounter the "Michigan J. Frog" effect.

I mentioned the prediction of a strike against the World Trade Center to only one friend before the event. Alas, he does not now recall my having done so. Of course, after September 11, 2001, I told a number of people about Gabrielle's prediction, and I described her forecast of a "small" nuclear bomb taking out the Sears Tower.

Gabrielle married a man much better than I am. He's a rational-minded "Skeptical Inquirer" type, a member of the local atheists' society, and rather opposed to all talk of ESP and similar matters (or so I gather). Consequently, Gabrielle does not now like to discuss her previous claims of psychic experiences.

Some months ago, I contacted her via email, and wrote up a lengthy description of the conversation described above. In one reply, she said she had only vague recollection of a dream involving the World Trade Center. In a second response, she denied that she had ever had such a predictive dream, and she does not remember any part of the conversation that followed.

Her message was rather testy. Lord knows I gave her good reason to feel that way.

(At least she still admits that she once had a series of dreams involving the Chicago event. Of course, she has discussed those dreams with several people.)

Perhaps the prankster gods of fate have decreed that "proof" of ESP always comes in an individualized fashion. Gabrielle convinced me that the ability exists. But I cannot convince you. If you have not experienced anything like the incident related above, you should be extremely skeptical of this story.

So why did I write this column?

Certainly not because I plan to turn this blog into a forum for discussion of ESP! Frankly, I hope never to mention the topic again.

Nevertheless...ever since the "jets flying into skyscrapers" forecast came true, I've believed that the Chicago event would also come to pass. Perhaps the "West coast" event will take place as well, although Gabrielle seemed far less certain of that prediction.

Although I've made fleeting references to the Chicago event in previous posts, I've never described in detail why I believe a bomb will go off in that area.

Today, of course, we have an administration which has sent unmistakable signals of its intention to conquer Iran. Cheney has pretty much confessed that there are plans afoot to have Israel launch a strike against a putative Iranian nuclear facility. If -- when -- such an airstrike occurs, most Americans will naturally presume that Iranians deserve the blame for any subsequent terror strike within America's borders.

Progressives will no doubt frame the debate in a shortsighted fashion. They will claim that Bush/Israeli adventurism created the nuclear counterstrike. But if Gabrielle's vision really does prove to be predictive, then the matter will go far deeper.

Throughout her conversation with me, Gabrielle insisted on one important detail: The media and the administration will not tell the American people the truth about the individuals responsible for setting off a "small" nuclear device in Chicago. Fingers will point to the wrong party.

I hope this event never comes to pass.

I hope ESP does not exist. I hope that Gabrielle's 1999 dream about planes flying into "buildings like the World Trade Center" was mere coincidence. I hope that, years from now, this column will be viewed as the product of a paranoid person living in a paranoid era.

By all means, laugh at what I've just written. I hope one day to laugh along with you.

I had a horrible dream last night. In it, someone showed me a newspaper, dated 2024. The headline read: "President Jenna Bush Makes Horse Senator."

I woke up in a cold sweat -- and then I realized that since no-one in the Bush family has read history, no-one in that family would make any attempt to re-live it.

At any rate: Yes, I've been absent from blog-land for a very long time, and may be absent for a bit longer. Eventually, I hope to re-establish a presence. Right now, life has tossed an obstruction in my path. It's not the sort of thing that will keep me stuck in place for long.

See you soon...

While attending an institution of higher learning, you may have encountered a professor who directed your attention to Ivan Stang's theory of the three human archetypes. According to this analysis, each human being is one of the Three Stooges.

(Before proceeding, let me make clear that I always preferred Laurel and Hardy to the trio from Columbia studios. Nevertheless, I can respect the Stooges, and I feel that Stang's thesis has merit.)

Moe is the leader, the idea guy, the one who somehow cajoles the others into following his schemes. Eavesdrop on any group of sixth grade boys and you'll discover that, although any of them may suggest a course of action (e.g., "Let's go to the comic book store"), only one member of the group can always expect everyone else to act according to his plan. He is the Moe of that band.

Larry is amiable, dull, and more-or-less law-abiding (except when a Moe tells him to break the law). Larry is defined by his inability to conjure up an original thought. Stang claims that Larry is so caught up in his own Larry-ness he does not even realize that a heirarchy exists. I would refine this argument: Larry may well be dimly aware of a pecking order, though he would never dream of challenging it. Most people are Larrys, although only the Larriest of the Larrys will admit to being who and what they are.

Curly is the rebel, the artist, the bohemian, the clown, the outsider, the mystic: God's Holy Fool. Curly knows damn well that a heirarchy exists, and he knows that he's not in the top spot. Therefore, he constantly tries to undermine the natural order -- never with success. Rebellion requires numbers, and the masses of Larrys will never (well, almost never: See below) abandon Moe leadership to follow a Curly.

Stang believes that Curly is the always most lovable of the three, but I would dispute him on that point. History books describe more than a few unpleasant Curlys. Rasputin, for one. Lenny Bruce. Buddy Rich. Michaelangelo. Yes, Michaelangelo: A hobbit-sized smelly bohemian who paints gay porn all over the Pope's walls has achieved the very quintessence of Curly-ness.

I question Stang on another point: Mobility between the three classes. Stang seems to believe that such mobility is impossible. I would argue, however, that Adolf Hitler was a man destined for Curlyness.

I mean, just look at the guy: An artist. Ocassionally homeless. A (likely) virgin until his 30s. Cultivated a bizarre appearance. Farted all the damn time. Took every drug he could get his hands on. Prefered bizarre, esoteric reading material to "respectable" literature.

Yes, Adolf was a born Curly. Not a funny Curly, not a lovable Curly, but a Curly nonetheless.

Yet this natural-born-Curly somehow achieved Ultimate Moe Power. How did this insult to the natural order come to pass? This conundrum underlies our continuing fascination with the Nazi era.

Please understand that I do not like admitting that Adolf was a Curly who migrated to Moe status. I too am a Curly, and I do not enjoy confessing that Hitler also belonged to this breed.

There was a time when I longed for Moe-hood, for I considered myself brighter than many of the Moes running our world. (As you may have noticed, there are some rather dim Moes out there.) But, having reached a certain age, I have come to understand that, although a few Larrys have been kind enough to smile at my antics, they will not go to the comic book store when I say "Let's all go to the comic book store." Neither will they invade Poland on my say-so.

Now, I bring all this up because the current world situation forces us to confront another insult to the cosmic order. I refer, of course, to the Bush dynasty.

Does anyone (including the Republicans) doubt that the Bush folk are a clan of Larrys?

Larrys with money, yes. But still Larrys. They have always been and will always be bereft of charisma and leadership ability. No Bush has ever had an orginal thought.

Poppy Bush may be the most Moe-like male ever to slink out of the Bush gene pool. Yet even Nixon (a Moe with pronounced Larry and Curly tendencies) considered GHWB to be something of an amiable non-entity.

Prescott Bush may have done business with Nazis, but only because his mentors told him what to do and how to do it. Otherwise, he was the Larry who played golf with Ike.

Dubya is a fundamentalist Christian Larry of the type exemplified by Ned Flanders. Yes, he's an evil, lying, war-mongering creep. But let's face it -- he carries out the plans concocted by other people. Will W ever come up with an original thought? Hell, he's more likely to grow penises out of his nipples.

(Cheney is a Moe. But you already knew that.)

The Bush twins are the very definition of young female Larryness. Laura is so bloody Larry-like she would probably even cop to her own Larryhood. Neil is a very (very) crooked Larry, but he's still a Larry -- I mean, I can't imagine him coming up with a new and unusual way to bilk people. I don't know enough about Jeb to make a final judgment, but to my nostrils, he still conveys a Larry stench. Barbara, I must admit, has a certain Moe musk, but she's the only creature in the whole bloody family thus perfumed.

So my question to the world is this: How did this bland clan of dull, unimaginative Larrys gain power beyond the dreams of most Moes?

I always assumed that if anyone were to overthrow our democracy, the new overlord would at least be a Moe, goddammit. Or perhaps (I thought) the tyranny would come from some demonic Curly who, having made a pact with Satan, achieved upward Moe-bility. Just like Adolf.

Instead, the Babbits of Bush-dom have gained the throne. Larry is the new divine Julius.

How can such a thing be?

Steven Roach, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley, thinks your house costs too much. Way too much.

In a piece in Forbes that a reader kindly brought to my attention ("World on Brink of Ruin" -- catchy title, eh wot?) this expert blames Alan Greenspan for bringing the Unites States to the edge of the economic cliff, and draws specific attention to "the biggest bubble of all: residential property." Of course, this is a bubble unlike most others: The Dutch didn't really need tulips, but people do need a roof overhead. Still, one can't excape a few anxious shivers when experts sound apocalyptic warnings parlously close to those heard from down-at-heels bloggers and usenet ranters.

No more touch screens in Ohio. Ken Blackwell has ordered that all 88 counties in Ohio scrap touch-screen voting and use optical scan paper ballots. This move has angered some count officials who aren't sure how they will pay for the conversion.

Before you crow that we've won this round, keep in mind: Our major concern has always been the central tabulators -- the counting machines that those optical scan ballots are fed into. They can be hacked.

Do the paper ballots provide an audit trail? Yes -- and here, perhaps, we have taken a step in the right direction. But, as the recount oddities have taught us, much of the problem now comes down to questions of security and chain of custody.

Those paper ballots have to be stored somewhere. The paper trail will be double-checked only in the event of a recount, and the legal process to initiate a recount takes time. Much mischief can occur during this period. Buildings have keys; seals can be easily broken and replaced.

In short: It is no difficult trick to insure that optical scan ballots conform to the numbers generated by the central tabulating machines.

Blackwell has not cleaned up the election process; he has mandated a methodology which can make theft more persuasive to a skeptical public.

The exit poll disparity. A vote-fraud skeptic on Democratic Underground linked to a study which called into question the accuracy of exit polls. This led me to muse on the prevailing theories used to explain the exit/actual disparities which now seem to mark our every election. Correct me if I'm leaving anything out, but it seems that the explanations boil down to a mere three:

1. The "Chatty Dems" theory. According to this notion, Dems love to shout their views to all and sundry, and especially to exit pollsters -- while Republicans are, by nature, tight-lipped Deep Thinkers, not unlike the cowboys of yore. This idea might have appealed to me if I hadn't encountered so many verbally aggressive -- make that abusive -- Republicans.

2. The "Evil Dems" theory. Proponents of this view hold that Mitofsky is but the latest incarnation of the eeeeevil librul conspiracy which has plagued Christendom since the days of Adam Weishaupt. He and his media comrades-in-deviltry therefore concocted false numbers in order to depress the Bush vote. The problems with this theory are manifold. To name but two: Why didn't the media bigwigs publicize their fake numbers? And where is the evidence that exit polls have ever kept anyone away from the ballot box?

3. The "Oopsie-daisy!" theory. This is the one favored by people of all political stripes who like to consider themselves scientific-minded blokes. The argument boils down to this: Exit polls are by their nature inaccurate, and these inaccuracies are accidental. Ornery nay-sayers like yours truly insist on countering: Why do the "accidents" always veer in one direction, election after election? Why do we never see an exit poll call it for the Republican when the Democrat has actually received the most votes? Ask that impertinent question, and your average scientific-minded bloke will ahem and harrumph and twiddle with his tie until you finally take pity on him and allow him to switch the subject.

Does anyone recall a theory which exists outside the three categories listed above?

"Clear!" Most people haven't heard, but there is a recount underway in New Mexico. Despite this inconvenient fact, New Mexican election officials are clearing the electronic voting machines.

Speaking of NM: Here's a good piece on Democratic Underground. A choice excerpt:

How the GOP Targets Minorities: A New Mexico Case Study

The Five Pillars of Minority Disenfranchisement:
1. Keep Them From Registering to Vote
2. Purge Them From the Rolls
3. Keep Them From Reaching the Polls
4. Keep Their Votes From Counting
5. Vote For Them Ahead of Time

Registration Fraud: The well-reported account of Voters Outreach, a Republican National Committee sponsored organization, canvassing states to register voters as Republicans or to illegally destroy registrations of Democratic registrants is well-known. The strong possibility exists that this was not an isolated incident. Incident reports in New Mexico suggest there may have been a campaign to collect registrations from Hispanic voters with no intention of turning them in. Can't register enough of your own voters? Why not pre-empt Democratic registrations by sweeps through county fairs and Wal-Marts and then trash them? If the purportedly registered Hispanic voters show up on election day and try to vote, then they are the ones who look suspicious -- besides who's going to believe a poor Hispanic voter?

A side-note: Wal-Mart never allows political workers to operate outside their stores unless the operators favor conservative interests. Never fill out a registration form anywhere near a Wal-Mart.

Daniel Hopsicker on Sequoia: In his latest radio interviews (go to part one and part two), this odd-but-interesting Florida-based independent journalist looks into the shady history of a major vote-counting firm. You think you've heard the worst? Think again.

He discusses the history of this company in the 1990s, including the indictments issued after a shady vote on a New Orleans gambling initiative. One of the individuals caught with his fingers in the cookie jar was Jerry Fowler, who went to jail. Hopsicker connects Fowler to a bete noir, Adnan Khashoggi -- whose name, you will recall, came up in our discussion of Triad, or rather the various companies bearing that name. (Khashoggi, it is said, had an interest in a proposed casino, and thus in the electoral results.)

I remain of two minds concerning Hopsicker's contention that Triad GSI, which behaved so unusually during the Ohio recount, has an link to the various firms bearing that same name owned by Khashoggi. But as long as we're talking about Adnan, take another look at this fascinating older piece by Sy Hersh on Khashoggi's middleman efforts between Saudi interests and Richard Perle -- yes, the same Perle whose motto seems to be Israel Ueber Alles.

But I have digressed. Hopsicker goes far beyond the matters I've mentioned above, and gets into the nitty-gritty of questionable vote counts in various Florida counties. Not least, he puts some new info on the table concerning ES&S.;

The spies in our midst. I will refer only glancingly to a brouhaha which has remained mostly confined to email and various lists. Certain individuals involved in vote fraud research have been accusing certain other individuals of being fakes. Plants. Disinformationists. Republican ringers.

Such accusations had legitimacy in a few instances; I'll always recall "Brad Menfil" and "Jack Seymour" with a certain skewed fondness. But in recent days, the paranoia level has expanded past the boundaries of reason.

As I've noted before, hysteria of this sort once spread among the JFK assassination researchers. ("Mark Lane is an agent! He's CIA, I tell you! See-freakin'-eye-AY!") Word to the wise: The moment internal dissent devolves into the Goody-Proctor-is-a-witch stage, the public stops paying attention to your issue.

Yesterday, I discussed an interesting-if-flawed forecast by one Phil Scott (not an economist; just an average fellow exercising his right to rant on unsenet) of how the "economic Ragnarok" scenario might play itself out in the United States. A reader named Lynn sent me her own response, which I would like to pass on the readers:

A good friend of mine is a retired investment banker, and he has been keeping me abreast of the impending doom for a couple of years. First of all, one great source is foreign econo-mags. They have a much more realistic sense of what is going on than we do here. Big surprise.

But, from what my friend explains to me (and I don’t begin to pretend I have an independent clue), there are numerous more factors involved than Mr. Scott lists. And you’re right to take issue with his unilateral perspective on the tax, which points straight to the largest issue that he completely misses, namely the increasing class chasm. Mr. Scott presents taxes as if only the little guy gets them, but all along taxes have been (theoretically) structured to impose greater burdens on the wealthy. In fact, that's a tax keystone that dates back to Athens, the awareness that a society's privileged must support those less fortunate, as well as supply the lion's share of the society's infrastructure funding.

All that being said, Scott may well be referring to Bush's intent to go for a flat tax, which would have much the effect he describes, though he interestingly leaves out the exceedingly wealthy here, who would only benefit. Every aspect of his economic policy has been structured to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor; he is definitely creating a banana republic. Argentina comes to mind.

The problem is, our debt is so huge, those carrying it -- dutifully -- will soon just stop; Japan has been really taking it on the chin, but so has China, mainly because we are the greatest consumers of their cheap goods. But the dollar is so worthless now that these countries -- and others (most Central and South American reserve banks have been quietly converting to the Euro in recent years, and Russia announced just before the election that not only was it considering doing just this, but it wondered why oil trade did not convert to the euro as well, the death knell for the US) -- will no long find any benefit to investing in it.

Every economist my friend knows feels the crash will come in the next few months, this year, anyway. The real estate bubble will burst, and values will plummet, but Mr. Scott is likely correct to presume that rents will remain high or increase due to property tax increases. If you’ve spent any time in New England, or any intact neighborhoods from the 30s, you are aware of what happened to once large homes or even mansions during the Depression; quartered into multiple dwellings or made into boarding homes.

We’ll all be forced to live closer to the bone, a sort of imposed "back to basics." But this may not be all bad. Our culture has been way too long dependent on all these superficial and superfluous baubles, things that require others less fortunate work and live as slaves, essentially. Pride always comes before a fall, and we have a lot of humble pie facing us, but we’ll get the opportunity to not only see the other side of exploitation; we’ll be in a better position to explore the true meaning of democracy.

A couple of years ago, when it became clear we were no longer really living in a democracy, I started reading Ghandi and Vaclav Havel. In a nutshell, their hopeful observations are that government requires the cooperation of the governed, and general poverty compels everyone to take care of the community's needs at the local level. The more this is done, the less the government is involved or needed, and it simply disappears. The wall fell.

Yep, the world will abandon the US economy, and we will have a helluva time convincing anyone to help us out. Mr. Scott's notions about our military may be close to reality, I'm betting, although I don't see how we could possibly run it without major economic power to buy the oil products necessary to make it all move. So many trillion dollar door stops and sand collectors. Our children starving while they drop it all on another barrel. That old domestic abuse, substance abuse cycle writ large.

What worries me at this point is the increasing chuminess of Russia and China; combined they have a fairly impressive military, and though Russia's economy is pretty sad right now, China's is, of course, solid and growing. They're going on the gold standard; getting off that was the stupidest thing we ever did. Or that Tricky Dick ever did. But those two countries could easily just take us over, just like that, when the time comes.

Honestly, the way the Bush cabal is driving this truck like they stole it, I fully suspect that there may actually be some deliberate scheme to it. I know it's sick, but what a canny way to get rid of not only a whole host of "weak" people who are really just a drain on the system, right? But it also gets rid of the democracy and imposes the kind of tyranny conservatives have long envied of Roosevelt.

And what do they care? With all the power in the corporations anyway, they don't even need a country.

No small number of us have already had a taste of humble pie, of course, and we yearn for other vittles. Economic devastation in the United States will certainly hurt everyone in the world -- to whom will the Asians sell their goods if we are reduced to gathering in caves?

One scenario that I consider likely: Bush takes over more oil fields in the Middle East. Once a porta-nuke takes out the Sears building and the Art Institute of Chicago (followed by a media hate campaign in which Grant Wood's "American Gothic" sees much maudlin symbolic usage), our beloved-of-Jesus prez will have sufficient "political capital" to take out virtually any country he chooses. Iran? Saudi Arabia? Both? In the end, Bush will control the substance that will keep the Asian up-and-comers beholden to American corporations.

Some of you may be familiar with the longstanding story of a pedophile sex ring, based in Nebraska, which serviced prominent members of the Republican party during the 1980s. The ring was -- allegedly -- run by a locally-prominent GOP bigwig named Larry King, later convicted in a massive fraud case involving a credit union.

One of the Republicans mentioned prominently in these accounts is none other than George H.W. Bush, the former president.

The whole complex narrative has been told many times, most completely in John De Camp's underground bestseller, "The Franklin Cover-up."

I've spoken to people in Nebraska who followed the unfolding scandal as it happened, and who became convinced that the witness testimony was concocted or exaggerated. The main witness, Paul Bonacci, once fell into the company of a religious extremist, and one can only guess how that association might have tainted his recollection. There are many claims loosely connected to this case which I simply cannot believe -- at least, not without a great deal more evidence.

As some of you may know, there exists a sizable subculture of troubled individuals who make wild claims about child sex, ritual abuse, mind control, and sundry other activities. Many of these assertions come from attention-seeking individuals who should be regarded very, very skeptically.

Even so, fairness dictates that each case should be judged individually. I hope you will take the time to view a suppressed documentary on the Nebraska affair. The 1994 film is called "Conspiracy of Silence,." It was originally intended to be broadcast on the Discovery Channel in the U.S. and on Yorkshire television in the U.K.

At one time, many believed that no copies of the film remained in existence. However, a work print of the film survives and can now be seen online. A few shots are missing, as are the opticals. (The musical temp track is highly appropos, and shuld be quite recognizable to David Lynch fans.)

It was one thing to discuss -- and perhaps dismiss -- the veracity of de Camp and his witnesses when they remained inky abstractions on the printed page. This film, however, gives us a chance to judge body language, vocal timbre, demeanor, and other subtle indicators of veracity.

I'm still not quite sure what to make of this case, and I've no intention of devoting much of this column's space to this or allied controversies. But I must admit that "Conspiracy of Silence" makes its argument in a striking and compelling fashion.

The film does not directly mention Bush (except in a glancing reference to Iran/contra). But "Poppy" looms large over the investigation, particularly during the closing sequences.

Watch this documentary, seek out information from all sides, and make up your own mind.

The Arnebeck suit is over. We were promised "smoking gun" evidence. Looks like we will never see it, if it ever existed.

"This is not the end, this is merely the end of one state action," said Cliff Arnebeck, the challenge's lead counsel. "More importantly, it signals the emergence of a much broader effort where we plan to investigate and litigate county by county, ward by ward, precinct by precinct."

I hope that's true, but it sounds a bit like Saddam Hussein's declaration of "victory" at the end of the first Gulf War.

Newsweek tells us that if exit polls conflict with final results, then the polls must be wrong. Except in other countries, of course.

Writer Brad Stone blames the exit poll disparity on an oversampling of women. Of course, investigators had established by November 5 that the results were weighted for sex as they were taken. Remember how Mickey Kaus used the term "weighting" as though it were a bad thing? Now Brad Stone pretends that no weighting occurred!

Such is the nature of our new culture of deceit: If a lie is exposed, one need merely wait a couple of months. The false proposition will be repeated, and the exposure will remain in some dusty, forgotten internet archive.

"Exit polls are full of holes," says Joan Konner of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, who co-wrote an internal report for CNN about the 2000 debacle. "Nobody should ever take these things seriously."

Uh huh. Yes. Right. A few questions, Joan: Why are we to take "these things" so seriously in the Ukraine? Why were we so often told to trust exit polls before the advent of audit-free voting? And why do the errors always favor the Republicans, year after year?

Conyers versus Blackwell. Ken Blackwell, fingered by the Conyers report as being a violator of both the law and his oath of office, has fired back at the congressman. "I think Rep. Conyers' inquiry and motivation speaks for itself." A man who once expressed admiration for the way Katherine Harris made out like a bandit -- forgive the grammar: I should have said as a bandit -- has now questioned the motivations of John Conyers. Incredible!

Two views. Anthony Wade presents a fine piece on the "Boxer" rebellion and the Republican audacities which led up to it. He offers a rebuttal to all the robotic Republican talking points.

What do you think is going to happen over the next four years? Do you honestly think that the GOP will enact any significant reform of an electoral process which they completely control? If they were so put off on January 6th to have to discuss the rampant disenfranchisement of thousands of voters in Ohio, for two measly hours, the only answer about their sincerity to reform has to be no. The Help America Vote Act has about as much credibility as the Healthy Forests Initiatives or the Clear Skies Act. The forests are not healthy, the skies are not clear, and America was NOT helped to vote, period.

By contrast, those looking for a prime example of left-wing antipathy for this cause -- and there was plenty -- should check out this wrongheaded piece on the Tom Paine website. The article bends over backwards to be "fair" to the Bush forces. For example:

Also, although incoming voter registration figures showed surges in certain areas, that didn't mean the newly registered would necessarily vote. And certainly not in greater numbers than in many established precincts where a high percentage of registered voters typically went to the polls.

Does this explanation even begin to cover the many areas in which voting machines were fewer than in previous elections? The areas in which the general election saw fewer voting machines than in the primaries?

As for Diebold and other vilified companies, in all probability, they didn't, and wouldn't, risk the ignominy and consequences of fixing an election. The primary reason so many people are suspicious of Diebold in the first place is because of the CEO's ill-advised promise, in a GOP fundraising letter, to do everything he could to see Ohio's electors awarded to Bush. That was an outrageous thing to say, but even on its face more likely a sign of cluelessness than of hidden plans to alter the outcome.

Diebold and the other vilified companies have a proven history of hiring convicted criminals. (Felons cannot vote in some states, but they can count the votes.)

Tom Eschenberger, vice president of ES&S;, was fingered by charges of bribery and kickbacks. Phil Foster and Pasquale Ricci of Sequoia were indicted for paying a large bribe to the Louisiana Commissioner of Elections. (Many believe that this is the method by which the major vote-counting companies got their contracts from the various states.) The owner of this same company once tried to bribe a sitting Supreme Court justice. Sequoia has even been linked to one member of the Gambino crime family. As for Diebold: Jeff Dean, the senior programmer and VP at this controversial firm has been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft. Five senior figures have rap sheets.

Are we really supposed to believe that such men would balk at vote-rigging for fear of "ignominy"? Must we presume that such men would be unwilling to take a risk?

What risk?

If we toss out the concept of computerized vote fraud, how else do we explain the solid reports of computers which would "count backward" once the Democrat reached a certain amount? How else do we explain the fact that so many e-vote machines would register a vote for Bush on the confirmation screen, even though the voter had pressed the Kerry button? (This scenario was reported frequently; the reverse scenario remains but the rarest of rumors.)

Indeed, the false explanations as to why computerized voting cannot offer paper receipts (e.g., "the technology is not there yet") should be regarded as strong evidence of intention to commit fraud. Why would anyone but a vote-rigger bother to tell such a lie?

Tom Paine refers to the conspiracy theories as "half-baked." But this attempt to reassure the progressive community is worse than half-baked -- it has barely been thawed.

The revolution WILL be digitized: Brad Friedman has given birth to (or linked up with?) the Velvet Revolution, dedicated to sparking the kind of "street power" that we saw in the Ukraine.

"Collusion" is probably far too extreme a word to apply in this situation. Better, perhaps, to say that six degrees of separation have suddenly narrowed to an uncomfortably close three.

We are working with the Indonesian government on disaster relief -- and that government is working with affiliates of Al Qaida. Such, at least, is the conclusion drawn from this Democracy Now interview with Alan Nairn. The tsunami has given the Indonesian government an opportunity to ship Bin Laden supporters into the strife-torn Aceh region, where the outside militants will help repress the rebellion.

Yes, they brought them into Aceh. Some of them are walking around with Bin Laden T-shirts. They go up to foreign reporters and present themselves as Acehnese even though they are not, and James Kelly of the U.S. State Department just said, there's worry that such militants might attack U.S. troops. Well simultaneously Powell was announcing the U.S. is going to aid the Indonesian military, one of the rationales being the Indonesian military is needed to fight such Bin Laden-style military.

This, Nairn alleges, is the real reason for those shocking photos of American aid being handed to men wearing Bin Laden couture.

Nairn's analysis stands in stark contrast to the simplistic "America good, Muslims bad" view, as exrmplified by this Austrailian editorial.

Today I found that rare exchange on usenet which deserves a wide audience. On misc.investing.stocks, one poster had this to say about the housing bubble (to which I had made reference the last time I got online):

I was in Hollywood a few weeks ago and visited a place which looked like a trailer without wheels to me... But they pay $1350 rent a month. The materials were kinda cheap, it was cold... How long is this bubble going to last?

A respondent named Phil Scott (who immediately got onto my good side by calling himself "Phil Scott" instead of some inane nick) offered a view of the housing crisis which expanded into a forecast of economic apocalypse. I wish I didn't find his analysis compelling.

Now, I know nothing about this man beyond what you read below. No doubt, he is no economist -- just an average Joe. Like me. There are times, though, when the world would be well advised to pay more attention to what the Joes have to say.

Granted, this essay amounts to a rant. Granted, it is hyperbolic. No, I don't agree with every point.

I am in particular disagreement on the subject of taxation: The "low taxes" mantra is the very mechanism by which the empire-builders have achieved power, and no amount of propaganda or historical revisionsim can disguise the fact that this country has always prospered during times of highly progressive taxation. Employers, not IRS auditors, force most people to "work themselves to death."

Even so, I find this warning quite interesting. I hope Mr. Scott does not mind my repeating his words here, substantially edited for style and length (but not for content):

The US will most likely continue to handle this mess as they have over the last four years: by debasing the currency. In that case, dollar prices for real estate will rise or stay level as real value erodes. The banking structure will stay intact because the banks are also paying off their loans with devalued dollars.

The real problem occurs when wages cannot match the inflation of the dollar. That's because the only way to pay off the debt (and it has to be paid, or the nation collapses) is to over-work the working class. That factor will decimate the US as a nation. First its economy will falter, then its world hegemony will disappear.

This is happening now. It will get worse at light speed over the next four years as the core of the work force ages and dies or retires, with few competent replacements.

The real estate bubble may never burst. It may just hyper-inflate.

If the state and federal governments begin seizing property to satisfy tax liens, that tactic will fail. In the first place, the home 'owner' has less actual equity than the property is worth or can be sold for. In the second place, a large number of distressed properties will crash the real estate market, even with hyper-inflated dollars.

So the feds won't even be seizing homes -- just threatening to do so. But when the home "owner" finds that his job has moved to China -- and that he has no job prospects, no income, and pays no taxes -- he will not be able to respond to threats from the government. The turnip will have been bled dry. Even shipping him off for Abu Ghraib-type abuse will not bring any revenue. No jobs, no revenue, no taxes -- as state and federal debt skyrockets.

That will be the major problem.

How will it be handled? Look at the rest of the world, and you will see examples everywhere -- in Russia, India, even in many parts of Europe. We will see more people living in less space, and closer to the bone.

That's the 'solution.'

That solution will stay in effect until a national government decides to tax its people to starvation levels. When the government receives no tax income, it will finally have to let the bureaucrats starve as well. Those bureaucrats will then individually begin to extort the citizens, a la the Mexican police. As that process continues, complete collapse ensues.

That's the secenario for nations which seek empire and spend their national treasure on wars.

For those nations like Sweden and Denmark, which seek no empire, a balance is reached between a bloated government and over-taxation. Everyone eats well and lives fairly decently, unless a tyrant comes to power.

The United States -- because of its built-up infrastructure, farms, shore lines, huge land mass, etc. -- will simply lose its empire as its tax base collapses...

First, economic losses of huge magnitude will occur over the next four years. But we will still have empire and be able and willing to carpet bomb any recalcitrant nation into a bloody pile of meat and bones.

Then, as China rises to dominate world commerce, we will face crippling economic sanctions from the rest of the world. This will cost us world dominance.

With loss of empire, loss of control over oil prices, loss of world markets, and no way to rip off third-world nations via our bogus loan programs, the U.S. economy will suffer very badly indeed. The piper will have to be paid in full. By then, over half (the top and most experienced half) of our current working population will be old and retired or dead. Meanwhile, China and India are growing exponentially and already have world-class universities.

On the real estate issue, you will see civil servants as the new upper class, buying up the distressed homes. For instance, San Francisco police officers can buy distressed property from the state at half the price paid by a private citizen.

The individual who wants to do well can either become a landlord and hope to hold the property against ruthless taxation -- or he can stay small, live cheaply, and work modestly so there is little to tax and nothing to seize for non-payment. Most will end up in this last category. The smartest people will develop world-class skills while living in this fashion, which may allow them recreation time and a relaxed life. But if too many people fall into this category, their host government will be decimated. The government needs most members of the public to work themselves to death in order to pay taxes, to insure that the government will survive and civil servants can retire at five times the average annual income.

The culture does indeed go quite insane during the final stages of empire.

Work is once more interfering with "real" life -- that is to say, my internet life. That's why I've gone two whole days without writing anything.

On that note, I've put together a handy-dandy guide for those of you contemplating a move to Los Angeles. Here's how to determine how much rent you should expect to pay:

1. Add up the sum total of your yearly earned income from a full-time job. (Be sure to include overtime).

2. Give that sum to your landlord.

3. Supplement your income via moonlighting, faith healing, tarot card reading, prostitution, drug smuggling, murder for hire, etc.

4. Give all supplemental income to your landlord.

5. Borrow from relatives, credit card companies, banks, etc.

6. Give all borrowed money to your landlord.

Just follow those six easy steps and you may be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles at current market rates. If you still can't make rent, consider counterfeiting.

The preceding guide may give you some explanation as to why posting will be irregular for the next week or two. Yes, I still plan to astound the world with shocking exposes of reactionary conspiracies against peace, progress, decency and reason itself. I do have a few goodies lined up.

But the posting will come in explosive spurts, following periods of abstinence.

I will be grateful to any reader who can re-word the previous sentence in such as way as to render it devoid of all sexual overtones.

Please tune in again tomorrow -- at which time I should be ready to, er, spurt.

Some of you have tried to send your expressions of gratitude to Boxer and the noble 31, only to run into a problem: Some of our elected representatives have set up their home pages in such a way that they cannot accept email from people outside their districts.

To get around that roadbloack, go here. (And thanks to Katie for the suggestion.)

Yesterday, we directed your attention to the work of Daniel Hopsicker, who notes (as did we all) that one of the election companies in Ohio which behaved -- er, let us say, unusually -- was Triad Governmental Services (a.k.a. Triad GSI). He further noted that none other than Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi/Egyptian financier and arms merchant involved with Iran-contra, has a penchant for naming many of his companies Triad. Moreover, Khashoggi used Palm Beach, Florida -- the original home of Triad GSI -- as one of his home bases.

Incidentally, this DOD document identifies Khashoggi as the supplier of arms to the Medellin drug cartel. (It's a pdf file; scroll down to paragraph 69.)

So the question of the day is: Did the fellow who sold bullets to the guys shooting at our DEA agents also help tabulate the vote?

In this light, I should note -- as I did not have time to note yesterday -- that the owner of record for Triad GSI is a fellow named Tod Rapp. He's a donor to (but of course!) Dubya and the G.O.P. -- although, truth be told, he didn't give much. Triad software was used to tabulate punch-card votes in Ohio. Needless to say, the code is very hush-hush.

A number of members of the Rapp family are involved with the day-to-day running of the business. The firm seems to be very much a family affair.

Now, I've had some semi-harsh words in the past for Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.org (and I still want to know what happened to those poll tapes in Florida -- are we now to consider them her personal property?). But she offered an interesting response to Hopsicker's report:

Well, I went down that path. The name "Triad" as well as the names "Global" and "World" do crop up often in connection with just about everything, including voting machines. But, I do find one of the assertions in the article to be lacking in factual underpinnings.

The author writes that:

"While there has been no suggestion of it anywhere in the media, the name "Triad" was used extensively by Khashoggi at exactly the same time (the early 80's) and in exactly the same place (Palm Beach, Florida) as the "Triad Governmental Systems" involved in Ohio's current election "difficulties." "

Well, actually, at that time the company was actually called Rapp Systems Inc., after the owners, who are mostly named Rapp.

I found literally thousands of companies named Triad, with little to no correlation among owners. In fact, my husband is an occasional producer, and our preferred recording studio in the Seattle area just happens to be called Triad Studios. I can assure you I would be astonished if there were any world domination types there.

Fair enough.

Even so, I'd like to learn more about the company history of Triad GSI. Was there in fact a name change? Why and when did it take place? Hopsicker offers this from the company literature:

Incorporated in 1982, TRIAD GSI was founded to provided quality support and services for Rapp Systems' Election products, with election experience that spans a quarter of a century.

Privately-owned companies experiencing an uncertain year have been known to take financing from outside investors, and sometimes those investors do not want their names bandied about in public.

In that light, you may want to sift through this article -- an oldie-but-goodie from Jim Hougan, a terrific investigator who now writes spy thrillers under the name John Case. The article represents his contribution to a 1978 compendium titled "Crime At The Top: Deviance In Business and the Professionals." In it, we learn more about Khashoggi's Triads, and his strange relationship with Lockheed, which had to make certain payoffs (it is alleged) to get Saudi contracts:

For instance, rather than paying Khashoggi directly, a "second-tier" subsidiary based in Geneva would employ the "marketing services" of a subsidiary on the "first tier," based in California. In its turn, the California firm would "subcontract" all or most of those services to Khashoggi's Triad Corporation.

Hougan then goes on to relay the mind-boggling details of the mechanisms Khashoggi used to hide his direct involvement in such affairs. (Worth noting: Khashoggi seems to have pissed off both the Americans and the Saudis in his dealings. So why did they keep using him as a middleman?)

The story of the Lockheed/Triad scandal is long and incredibly involved, and Hougan provides as good an overview as you are ever likely to find. His recounting of that bit of history may shed light on Hopsicker's allegation of a possible hidden link between Khashoggi and the Rapp family's company.

That said, I have yet to find find any concrete link between the Triad GSI and Khashoggi.

But let's not stop looking. Shady characters tend to pop up every time we look into the election services industry...

Side note: A reader who kindly sent me a load of research material on Triad (most of which I haven't had time to examine) directs our attention to another firm called Triad -- Triad Strategies. It's a lobbying firm. You'll love their company motto: "We've found there are almost as many ways to influence behavior as their are behaviors to influence." Ah yes. How about passing the time by playing a little solitaire, Mr. Shaw?

Close to the top of this Triad's client list is -- Accenture. You remember them. Accenture counts the military vote.

Now, I'm pretty sure that this really is just a coincidence. Still, it's a cute coincidence, n'est-ce pas?

A surprising number of people came out in the rain to show their support for Senator Barbara Boxer's courageous action. This portfolio of images will definitely warm your heart.

I'm still not sure how to assess the latest update from Daniel Hopsicker, but I nevertheless urge everyone to read what he has to say. As an appetizer, he connects Wally Hilliard, the ultra-mysterious "flight school" owner linked to Mohammed Atta, with Adnan Khashoggi.

Hopsicker goes on to report that Khoshoggi has a large stake in at least one company used to count the votes. And that's where matters get really interesting.

Khashoggi's name, as most of you will know, comes up often in parapolitical research -- see the Wikipedia article here, to get just the barest taste of it. Any number of news reports have tied Khashoggi to Iran-contra, to "Poppy" Bush, to BCCI -- and even to a cadre of high-level escorts servicing the world's richest men. (Never underestimate the "hooker factor" in cementing American relations with the Saudi royal family.)

Khashoggi also has a notable preference for naming his companies "Triad."

Was Adnan Khashoggi a principal in a company which has been counting the votes of American servicemen overseas? Answer: highly likely.

Both Election.com, and Triad, the election company cited for causing most of the problems in Ohio, should receive close scrutiny for evidence of Khashoggi involvement.

While there has been no suggestion of it anywhere in the media, the name "Triad" was used extensively by Khashoggi at exactly the same time (the early 80's) and in exactly the same place (Palm Beach, Florida) as the "Triad Governmental Systems" involved in Ohio's current election "difficulties."

Khashoggi owned a number of companies named "Triad."

Khashoggi owned "Triad International Marketing."

Northrop, the Los Angeles-based aircraft and electronics manufacturer, owes Triad International Marketing, S.A., a Liechtenstein corporation controlled by Khashoggi, $31 million in commissions on sales to the Saudi air force," reported the L.A. Times on August 29, 1987.

Khashoggi owned "Triad America."

Hopsicker goes on and on in this vein, listing Triad after Triad under Khashoggi control. (Triad is also mentioned in the Wikipedia article.)

You may be particularly struck to learn of Khashoggi's ownership of Triad Farms in Kentucky, which played a prominent role in the massive drug ring described in a book called "The Blue Grass Conspiracy." Although that volume was one of the best works on true crime to hit the bookstores during the last couple of decades, it did not go far enough. The same crime ring (which seems to have had high level protection) had ties to the China Lake naval weapons station, not to mention the murder of a judge by Charles Harrelson. (Yes, I am talking about the convicted father of actor Woody Harrelson -- where do you think Woody got that maniacal gleam in his eye? -- and yes, this is the same Charles Harrelson who once claimed to have participated in the JFK assassination.)

Hopsicker also uncovers a 1988 election incident in which Triad employees behaved in a fashion suspiciously similar to that which we observed more recently in Ohio.

According to Jackie Beville, a former employee of the Supervisor of Elections in Hillsborough County, Triad workers adjusted the software to clear up a ballot-counting problem shortly before the election, and the machinery should then have been recertified following the work.

When questioned, she was told that Triad workers were just fixing problems caused by a lightning strike.

Beville disputes that the weather had anything to do with the repair work

Hmm. Does that fortuitous "lightning strike" remind anyone of a certain "bad battery" incident in Ohio?

One thing Hopsicker does not mention is that this is not the first time Adnan Khoshoggi's name has cropped in connection with a dubious Dubya election. Back in the year 2000, Slate published a piece by Timothy Noah titled "Did Adnan Khashoggi Throw the Election to Dubya?" Noah's piece, written for Slate's "Chatterbox" column, is, for the most part, written in a humorous and even snide vein. Still, he does note the verifiable fact that Theresa LaPore -- remember her? -- was a Khashoggi employee before she played a role in the Florida election scandal.

"And not just Triad," says Hopsicker -- who goes on to make a few further points that I cannot help quoting:

Election.com should be examined for the invisible hand of the Saudi financier and CIA “fixer.”

News reports stated Election.com was owned by an offshore Saudi front company in Bermuda consisting of five unnamed Saudi billionaires, until scrutiny forced a sale to Accenture, the remnants of the disgraced and disbanded Arthur Anderson, the accounting firm which made Enron possible.

Many have expressed mixed feelings about Hopsicker's work in the past, but the Khashoggi-Triad connection is one that we should be able to firm up. And once we do -- well, the election controversy rockets to a whole new level.

Incidentally, you can hear an interview with Hopsicker here. The interview is far more discursive and amorphous than the afore-cited article -- frankly, it sounds like the sort of thing you might hear from a couple of old conspiracy buffs kicking back brewskis -- but it is still worth a listen.

As I said, I'm still unsure what to make of all this. But I encourage readers to check and double-check Hopsicker's work. If you can take his argument further, great. If you want to knock his work down, great. But let's get a discussion going!

From time to time, I've drawn parallels between the JFK assassination controversy and our much more recent fight to have Republican vote fraud recognized. In both cases, an underground resistance struggled against the prevailing wisdom of both parties. For the Warren Commission critics, the holy grail was either a new investigation or a new trial. After much effort, both goals were reached, and on both occasions, hopes shattered.

The critics then set a new goal -- the battle for history.

This objective seemed the most difficult of all. Even the most fervent JFK activist (and those guys could get pretty damned fervent) had little hope of ever seeing a college or high school textbook which repeated anything but the Oswald-did-it scenario.

Well, last night I read a textbook -- yes, a genuine college-level text, used in a course on 20th Century American history -- which presented both sides of the assassination controversy, in a brief but reasonably fair fashion. Indeed, the authors of the text seem to express a slight bias toward the anti-"lone nut" position.

Unfortunately, the pro-conspiracy side of the book's argument segued into a discussion of Oliver Stone's film. An unfortunate choice, that. Even Stone would probably agree that students should be referred to any number of books (choose your author: Russell, DiEugenio, Lane, Davy, Scott, etc.) and not to any made-in-Hollywood product. (Hell, this thread offers newbies as good an intro as any.)

Even so, the fact remains. We're in. We made the textbooks. We're winning the battle for history -- at least on that front. Yes, the fight took 40 years -- but many expected it to take longer.

Now we must engage in another battle for history. Our new front concerns the question of Bush's legitimacy and the Republican party's control over electronic voting. We can win this fight too.

And thanks to the internet, thanks to the new rapidity of communications, we won't need 40 years to do the job.

Investigations and lawsuits are fine. Never shy away from an opportunity to meet the enemy in those forums; even if the opposing forces should prevail, the struggle itself will always uncover new facts. For example, there are rumors that the Arnebeck suit has a hidden Ace -- a "smoking gun" piece of evidence. Even if his suit is tossed out (and don't be surprised if Moyer does just that), the evidence, if it exists, may still see the light of day.

This is a battle for brains. We cannot right the wrongs committed by the far rightists and the fundamentalists until we change more minds. The Republicans themselves made this point repeatedly during the debate over the challenge to Ohio's electors: They complained that we are undermining the country's faith -- and the world's faith -- in the American electoral system.

True enough; that system is broken. Faith should be undermined. The less faith, the better. We are advocates of reality, not faith.

According to one poll, 42% of our fellow citizens think that vote fraud played a small or large role in the last election. That's no small number. We have come close to convincing the majority of our fellow citizens that our position has merit. When the number of doubters shoots past the 50% mark, we will have achieved the most important victory -- and other victories will follow.

A side note: Those of you who watched the debates may have noticed that the Republicans kept repeating (in their usual scripted way) the same theme: They screamed that the Democrats were alleging that George Bush personally changed the vote "from a computer in the White House."

I know of no-one who has seriously made that suggestion. (Maybe someone somewhere tossed out that idea in a humorous fashion; if so, I'm unaware of the particulars.) So why do the Republicans keep trying to convince their constituents that vote fraud activists made such a claim?

I'm reminded of the attacks on Gary Webb. When the L.A. Times and other media snipers decided to smear his CIA/contra cocaine stories, they pretended that Webb had claimed the CIA agents were literally out on the streets of Central Los Angeles selling crack. Of course, Webb made no such suggestion. But he was easier to demonize once a "false Gary Webb" was held up for public ridicule. The number of people who heard the smear campaigners' goofball misrepresentation of his work exceeded the number of people who read his actual reportage.

If the trick worked once, keep working it...

Overviews. The morning-after accounts of the electoral challenge are coming in. The best I've seen is Democracy Now's interview with ground-level Ohio activist Harvey Wasserman, who compares this fight to the civil rights struggle. (Indeed, the current fight is an extension of the civil rights struggle.)

Steve Freeman -- yes, the same University of Pennsylvania prof who provided a seminal analysis of the exit polls -- has contributed a superb editorial to the San Francisco Chronicle. Freeman makes the important point that the U.S.-sponsored exit polls in the Ukraine were far less trustworthy than the ones conducted here:

So why is the response rebellion in the former Soviet Union nations but passive acceptance here? It's not that exit polls are reliable everywhere but here. In fact, both of the exit polls in the Ukraine were flawed. One did not adequately cover the strongholds of the government candidate; the other used face-to-face interviews, thus asking respondents to risk retribution. Both polls are alleged to have been sponsored by the West, principally the United States, hoping to install a friendly, pro-NATO government. The U.S. exit poll, in contrast, was independent, well-funded and run by the most experienced exit pollsters in the world

.Freeman has much more; this is a good piece.

Salon has a few words to say about the fight, although their story concentrates on the concurrent Gonzales fiasco.

You'll also want to read what Bob Fritakis has to say. Here's a point I should have raised earlier:

Even the Senate's new Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, joined the challenge -- a startling, unexpected but hopeful twist. Indeed, he spoke not of voting problems in Ohio but of problems in Nevada.

"Today, our brave men and women of the armed forces are working to bring the right to free and fair elections to Iraq," Reid said. "Their sacrifice absolutely demands that we work to ensure our own elections are fair. That is what today’s debate is about." Reid cited problems in his state, saying: "In this past election in my home state of Nevada, phone calls were made to heavily African American parts of Las Vegas to trick those voters into not voting. Those calls, which we were unable to trace, told voters that Election Day was November 3rd, not November 2nd. Our registration process in Nevada was also tainted by the proven destruction of Democratic voter registration forms. That fraud is still under investigation."

We discussed Nevada in these pages fairly earlier on, but the hullaballo over Ohio tended to overshadow all other concerns.

In state after state, reports cropped up of attempts to mislead black voters into thinking the vote was on November 3, not November 2. We should place in the same category the "pseudo-GOTV" telephone campaign designed to make independent voters think that John Kerry supported gay marriage.

Not long ago, I came across a GOP site which laughed at these attempts to mislead voters: Anyone dumb enough to be taken in by such tactics (the writer argued) deserved to have his vote taken away. So let's say I'm a scamster, and let's say I use a ruse to convince your grandmother to give me her credit card information. According to the Republicans, if she's that stupid, she deserves to be robbed.

Lovely philosophy, that.

Oh...and for a note-perfect parody of the arguments raised by Republicans during the debate, check out The Common Ills. Funny stuff!

THANKS, EVERYONE! I've already written a note of gratitude to Barbara Boxer. (I even told her "I love you" -- an outburst which shouldn't bother my girlfriend, since she feels the same way.) If you want to express your thanks to her and to the noble House members who supported the challenge to the objectors, Buzzflash gives you an easy way to contact each and every one.

And let me offer my own gratitude to the readers who had kind words for my own humble efforts. I'm tempted to say that your notes almost brought a tear to my eye -- but that admission might injure my rep as a cantankerous ol' grizzly bear. So let me just say...thanks.

My main reaction to the challenge to the electors is below. The issue of vote fraud is not dead -- for one thing, there's still the lawsuit.

In the meantime, I just discovered something odd, thanks to Google. If you go to your browser's URL field and type in www.conspiracy.com, you will be redirected back here -- to Cannonfire. At least, such was the case for a short while today. But why? Has this been going on for a while? Do the people who run www.conspiracy.com redirect readers to a new site each day? I certainly had nothing to do with this!

First, let me express the pride I now take in my vote for Senator Barbara Boxer. She displayed true political courage. The Democratic party leadership begged her not to support the challenge to Ohio's electors, yet she stood up for democracy nonetheless.

I doubt that she will win re-election. The Republicans will target her as they never have before. Next time she runs, they'll make sure that a formidable, supremely well-funded candidate stands against her. (Another try by Michael Huffington? Ghastly thought...) Until then, she will be subjected to a non-stop barrage from the radio rightists. Keep in mind, California is becoming redder and redder each year.

The other heroes, of course, are Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, John Conyers, and all the other House members who took a stand for democracy. All 32 of them.

Our side did not have the votes, of course. We did not have the media. We did not even have most of the left-wing websites. Hell, most of the time we didn't even have Michael freaking Moore.

Yet somehow, the heroes listed above managed to assure that George W. Bush will forevermore have an asterisk beside his name in the history books. The integrity of the results in both of his elections has been questioned. When historians ask "Why were the electors challenged in 2004?" -- they will turn to the Conyers report, which presents overwhelming evidence of fraud.

That is our victory.

Ah...but what happens when unborn schoolchildren ask their instructors why the 2004 results were formally challenged? Alas, I'm not sure that the events of this day will be allowed to enter their history books -- and even if they are, I'm not sure that teachers of the future will be apprised of the outrages detailed by the House Judiciary Committee.

We are the only ones who can make sure that the true history of what just occurred is preserved.

As I watched the proceedings on CSPAN, I was often filled with outrage. Republican after Republican claimed that "everyone agreed" that George Bush won this election, even though one poll reports that 42% of the electorate believes that vote tampering played a small or large role in Bush's victory.

Republican after Republican claimed that there was "no evidence" of vote tampering in Ohio, even though the Conyers report overflows with such evidence. Obviously, they never read that report.

One Republican offered a shot at the many internet citizens who have followed this issue closely: "Blogging doesn't make it so."

At least bloggers don't mind doing a little reading. Most congressmen could not be bothered to skim the details of the investigation central to their vote.

Time and again, Republicans made statements indicating that they had not informed themselves of the basic issues. They referred to the recount as if it were a full hand recount, and not a three-percent-of-the-precincts recount. They never once mentioned the fact that this "three percent" was cherry-picked, not chosen at random as the law requires. According to one Republican congressman, exit polls are as believable as "a Godzilla movie;" in fact, such polls have a history of high accuracy and remain our sole method of verifying a vote lacking a paper audit trail. (Why didn't this same congressman laugh off the exit poll disparity in the Ukraine?)

Time and again, the Republicans made reference to the bipartisan make-up of the various boards of election in Ohio. But those board members serve at the discretion of Ken Blackwell, whose activity was nothing short of criminal. Besides, how can a lowly Democratic member of a county board doublecheck the software of a tabulating system deemed proprietary by its Republican owners?

The Republicans claimed that computerized voting systems could not have affected the many votes cast with punch cards and optical scan cards. Our side has been screaming for months that all such cards are fed into a very-hackable central tabulating system. (Yes, the punch cards provide an audit trail, but only a small fraction of their total number were actually audited in the recount -- and we haven't even begun to discuss the serious chain-of-custody questions.)

Not a single Republican -- and no Democrats, for that matter -- mentioned the fact that the directors of Diebold and Sequoia include felons, and that they have been caught putting illegal "back doors" into their software. Our democracy is in the hands of people with serious criminal records.

Neither did any participant in the House debate mention the fact that the Ahmanson family, which largely owns ES&S;, prefers theocracy to democracy. The results of any election tainted by the machineries of Diebold, ES&S;, Sequioa and Triad are about as believable as -- well, I'm tempted to make further reference to the filmography of Inoshira Honda.

In short: The Republicans painted themselves as realists, even as they cobbled together a fantasyland version of the events of the past two months.

Displaying a love of fantasy that even J.R.R. Tolkien would have considered excessive, many congressmen took this opportunity to castigate Michael Moore. Moore, they insinuated, was the covert leader of the movement to challenge the electors. One Republican devoted his time on the floor to outlining the alleged sins of Michael Moore, as though one film-maker's personal history was somehow relevant to the details of the Conyers report.

The facts: Michael Moore was not (from our point of view) "good" on this issue. He did not challenge the legitimacy of the November 2 election until very recently. His website published very little material which people in our fight considered useful or sympathetic. Most of the time, his name simply did not come up -- not in my correspondence with fellow writers, not on the websites I visited, not on the email lists devoted to this topic, not at the rallies against voter disenfranchisement, not in the major stories published by writers devoted to fair elections. Those of us who gave his name any mention at all did so only to express disappointment with his apparent cowardice.

Hell, my dog played a bigger role in this movement than did Michael Moore. (That's literally true. Pooches are natural antidepressants, and lord knows I needed something to keep me cheerful over the past two months.)

The fact that Republicans attempted to switch the topic to Moore only buttresses the point I made yesterday: Conservatives now claim an Orwellian sovereignty over reality itself. I'm sure that their demonization efforts will lead the dittohead faithful into blaming Moore for the electoral challenge. Millions of Republicans will come to believe in that absurd scenario -- just as they believe that the American military found WMDs in Iraq, and that Osama and Saddam were partners.

Maybe the GOP propagandists can blame the tsunami on Moore as well. Why not? Reality is now what the Republican party says it is.

If we don't want them to commandeer the epistemological debate the way they have commandeered democracy, we must redouble our efforts to demolish their lies. Earlier today, Tom Delay referred to folks like you and me as "the X-Files wing of the Democratic Party." I'll take that as a compliment.

After all, the motto of that show was: "THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE."

This is a huge news day for those following the vote fraud controversy.

The Report on Ohio vote tampering is here. Just a day before the ratification of the electoral votes, the House Judiciary Committee has just released its findings on the election horrors in Ohio. Yes, it's a long pdf file -- but it is filled with must-read material.

In fact, this report offers everything we could have hoped for. From the summary (emphasis added by me):

We have found numerous, serious election irregularities in the Ohio presidential election, which resulted in a significant disenfranchisement of voters. Cumulatively, these irregularities, which affected hundreds of thousands of votes and voters in Ohio, raise grave doubts regarding whether it can be said the Ohio electors selected on December 13, 2004, were chosen in a manner that conforms to Ohio law, let alone federal requirements and constitutional standards.

This report, therefore, makes three recommendations: (1) consistent with the requirements of the United States Constitution concerning the counting of electoral votes by Congress and Federal law implementing these requirements, there are ample grounds for challenging the electors from the State of Ohio; (2) Congress should engage in further hearings into the widespread irregularities reported in Ohio; we believe the problems are serious enough to warrant the appointment of a joint select Committee of the House and Senate to investigate and report back to the Members; and (3) Congress needs to enact election reform to restore our people's trust in our democracy. These changes should include putting in place more specific federal protections for federal elections, particularly in the areas of audit capability for electronic voting machines and casting and counting of provisional ballots, as well as other needed changes to federal and state election laws.

With regards to our factual findings, in brief, we find that there were massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio. In many cases, these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio.

The document presents page after page filled with courtroom-quality evidence against Blackwell -- and let me tell you, this stuff is damning. This vile manipulator should, must go to jail. He is nothing short of a criminal mastermind.

On page 32 of the report, Blackwell -- who had the audacity to compare himself with Gandhi and King -- is quoted as saying that he would rather go to jail than to comply with the rulings of Judge Carr (a "liberal" judge, according to Blackwell). Why this show of defiance? Because that judge ruled that the Secretary of State issue specific guidelines on the use of provisional ballots. Somehow, I doubt that Gandhi or King would have disagreed with that ruling (which, I should note, was overruled on appeal; these days, the bad guys often win).

Well, Kenny-boy -- if you long for a stay in the joint, we'll be happy to see your wish granted.

Blackwell stands specifically accused of direct violations of the Help America Vote Act, as well as Article 1, Section 5 of the Ohio Constitution (see page 48 of the report) -- not mention the first amendment to the United States Constitution (page 49), the Voting Rights Act and all constitutional guarantees of due process (page 52), Ohio statutes regarding ballot tampering (page 59), the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (page 65), and possibly the National Voter Registration Act (page 69). He also has a statutory obligation to investigate election irregularities; the paper documents numerous problems, most of which received no investigation from Blackwell's office.

The report damns Blackwell for deliberately delaying the official count to render the recount challenges moot:

By setting the vote tally deadline so late and then delaying the declaration of results -- it took a full 34 days after the November 2 election for the results to be certified -- Secretary of State Blackwell insured that the time for completing recounts, therefore, was pushed to after the date of the Electoral College meeting. As a result of this intentional course of conduct, it appears tha Mr. Blackwell has ensured tha the controversies concerning the appointment of electors could not be resolved by December 7, 2004, thereby causing Ohio to lose the benefit of the electoral college safe harbor so that the appointment of electors is not necessarily binding on Congress.

Oh -- and do you recall Blackwell's nonsensical ruling that all registration forms must be on 80-lb paper? Turns out that forms obtained from his own office were printed on 60-lb stock. (See page 38.)

This is a powerful indictment. It speaks not just to Blackwell's criminality, but to the exit poll controversies, the recount controversies, and the bizarre behavior by Triad: "...it appears that Mr. Barbian's activities were not the actions of a rogue computer programmer but the official policy of Triad." Moreover:

We have received several additional reports of machine irregularities involving several other counties serviced by Triad, including a report that Triad was able to alter election software by remote access...

After these incidents -- there were more than a few -- are detailed, the report states:

Based on the above, including actual admissions and statements by Triad employees, it strongly appears that Triad and its employees engaged in a course of behavior to provide "cheat sheets" to those counting the ballots. The cheat sheets told them hoe many votes they should find for each candidate, and how many over and under votes they should calculate to match the machine count. In that way, they could avoid doing a full county-wide hand recount mandated by state law.

Does this pattern of activity violate state and federal law? Appears so. Check out page 84 of the report.

There is much more.

We were asking for a political miracle -- a new piece of evidence that would give much-needed credibility to a challenge by a Senator. (Perhaps Senator Kerry? Alas, he is reportedly away, and has sent an email to supporters announcing that he will not participate in a challenge to the electors). This paper offers "credibility cover" -- and more. It places all the evidence acquired heretofore in damning context.

I have never seen a more hard-hitting report by any congressional committee. Ever.

Exit polls: The Big Lie gets a big push. Since no-one now believes the "chatty Dem" theory of the great exit poll disparity, the Republicans must now publicize their "fall-back" position. Yep, they will try to convince the country that Mitofsky intentionally skewed the results to help Kerry.

So far, this nonsensical notion has been relegated to the dark corners of the net. (You may have noticed the snipings of a particularly obsessive right-wing conspiracy theorist in the comments section of this very blog.) But now the GOP Ministry of Love is making this idea the new Party Line. Yes, the meme is making the big time -- if you can call GOP flack Mickey Kaus the big time. Rush should be getting his copy of the script any day now.

The very concept is inane, of course.

Supposedly, Mitofsky -- formerly a long-time employee of Republican-run Viacom, whose firm is funded by a consortium of mainstream media outlets (also owned by pro-Republican interests) -- is a fervent Kerry supporter. So fervent is he, in fact, that he was willing to salt the exit poll results on November 2, in order to depress the Republican vote.

And were these faked exits leaked via ABC, AP, CBS or any similar mainstream outlet that might actually have reached a whole bunch of people? Nope. The big media could have discussed the polls openly -- no law prevents them from doing so. After all, they did pay for the data, and they no doubt would have publicized it heavily if the numbers showed Bush ahead. But the large broadcasters kept silent about the (preliminarily) good news for the Democrat.

Instead, on election day, the exits leaked out via blogs not so very unlike the one who are reading now. Atrios. Daily Kos. Guys like that.

As we all know, those conservative farmers in Iowa just can't get through their day without regularly checking on what good ol' Kos has to say. According to the conspiracy theory, those Iowa farmers saw the exits and said: "Shucks! Looks like Kerry's gonna win! Why bother voting? Guess I'll just stay here and plough the north 40..."

Talk about your tin foil hat notions!

Yet that's the scenario the Republicans want you to believe. After all, the only alternative scenario has a distinctly Ukrainian flavor.

The latest attempt to push this inane line centers on mysterious files posted to this site. Although no-one has verified their authenticity, and no-one knows how they got on the net, we are told that here, at last, is the gen-yew-ine raw exit poll data.

In recent days, I've been given this link by a horde of correspondents who never wrote to me previously -- always a sure tip-off that Rovian trickery is afoot.

I was particularly amused by Kaus, who claims that the exits favoring Kerry were the results of "weighting." All polls weight the results, of course. If, for example, you've interviewed ten men and twenty-five women, you'll have to weight the results to reflect the actual male-to-female ratio of our society.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Don't be surprised to see Mitofsky himself give credence to the Big Lie. Better than most, he must understand that we no longer live in a democracy. To thrive in an empire, one must parrot the lines assigned by Power.

Fritakis does it again. Bob Fritakis has another fine story on the Ohio debacle, as well as New Mexico and Florida. He quotes from various affidavits testifying to GOP malfeasance. His account nicely complements the House Judiciary COmmittee's report.

Here are some samples -- and as you read the following, keep in mind Ken Blackwell's recently-disclosed bragging about "delivering" the Ohio vote:

"I was a volunteer all day on Nov. 2 and noticed a big discrepancy in the number of voting machines. Where I vote, in an affluent neighborhood, a voting machine had been added (total of five machines). In the lower-income neighborhoods, there were two-three machines and people waiting over three hours to vote!"

Here's what the vote was like in a rich, white neighborhood:

"No problems. I was a runner in Bexley precincts 1A, 1B, 1C. There were no lines in my visits to these precincts three times. I will point out that 1B is perhaps the wealthiest precinct in Franklin County – including the Governor, OSU (Ohio State University) President, etc."

Here's what the vote was like in poor and black neighborhoods:

"Long lines. My vote would have been for Kerry. Not enough machines for people to vote. About 200 people in line ahead of me and it was pouring down the rain and freezing cold. I had worked all day and had the flu."

"I waited in line for 1 hour 45 minutes. A friend of mine left after voting. At this time I was standing where he was when I came in. I have a 1 hour 45 minute wait until I get to vote. Total three and one-half hours. My voting place had three voting machines and appears to be 90 percent black voters."

"11:30 am. I visited the Columbus Precinct 25C, where 1275 voters had voted. I observed three voting machines only… 4:30 pm. I visited the 25C precinct again. The lines were longer, well past the inside front door. I personally observed at least 175 voters in line, plus babies and children. The building was hot and uncomfortable. Almost all people in line were black. Less than 20 were white."

"The lines were three hours long. I have three children and no one to watch them for that long. I was not able to vote. However, I would have liked to have voted for John Kerry. I wish we could have the chance to vote again."

"I reside in Columbus… My race is black. I am, or believe I am, a registered voter in Columbus, OH. I have been registered for 40 years. On Nov. 2, 2004, I arrived at the polls at 9:45 am. I left at 1.15 pm. There were only three voting booths. I had to wait three and one-half hours to vote."

"I had a lot of people in my precinct who vote religiously and some of them, their names were not in the poll books."

"There were two unidentified lines. It was not clear which line to stand in."

This last complaint is repeated many times. Keep in mind the the names were rotated on the ballots, and that one voting place served more than one precinct. Thus an intended vote for Kerry would emerge as a vote for Bush. (We've spoken about the cross-voting phenomenon before, and will again -- below.)

Back to the testimony:

"Imagine the sight, in a Black neighborhood where a lot of young black voters are showing up for the first time, you have full police presence, even though they are sitting in cars…. You have six cars in the parking lot, and you have a well-known Republican businessman in the community asking people, 'please disperse, please get into your cars.'"

Then there are the electronic problems:

"The electronic voting machine would not take my vote although I tried repeatedly by pressing the "vote" button. Election officials tried to help, then finally the screen (front of machine) went black and I was told I had voted." I felt that I had been blocked from voting. Multiple calls resulted in no help."

"I pushed the button besides John Kerry’s name and my vote jumped up to George Bush. I began complaining about them cheating again this year. The attendant ran over to my booth and announced “just push the button again, that’s been happening a lot.” I then pushed the button again. It remained on John Kerry. Many others in different precincts experienced the same problem."

Anecdotal evidence, you say? Yes, but look at the size of it. I've given you just a sample of what Fritakis has, and he gives you just a smaple of what is available. Has anyone seen a single first-hand anecdotal report -- anywhere in the country -- of an intended vote for Bush coming up Kerry?

The certification of the electors is a mere day away. I am not among those demanding that Kerry join with Conyers in challenging the electors, although I would note that Robert Parry makes an elegant plea for the Democratic candidate to take that step.

Parry reports that "One Kerry adviser told me the senator may be traveling outside the country on Jan. 6." That would be bad form on his part.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of Robert Byrd stepping up to the plate. Although if Edwards does the duty, he could capture some of the hard core support that Howard Dean now commands.

Kenny "the kapo" Konfesses: Raw Story editor John Byrne has uncovered an explosive letter in which Ken Blackwell, Ohio's controversial Secretary of State, reveals his true face. Before the votes were counted, he bragged about being "truly pleased" to "deliver" Ohio's votes to Bush. That phrasing will, of course, remind most people of Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell's infamous declaration, which used the exact same wording.

In apparent disregard for his nonpartisan role as Ohio's chief election official, the Republican Secretary and chairman of Bush's Ohio reelection campaign slammed Senator Kerry as a "disaster" who would have reaped "terrible" and "horrible" results on both Ohio and the United States.

More:

"I have never shied away from giving the liberals fits," he remarked in the letter. "And I'm sure that with all the voter fraud we prevented during this last election, they will be looking to get even with me in my next political campaign."

Uh...Kenny? There's a typo in your letter. The word "committed" was misspelled as "prevented." As for the "get even" remark: You bet your ass!

Recount challenged. What do David Cobb (Green), Michael Badnarik (Libertarian) and John Kerry (Democrat) have in common? Aside from the facts that they all ran for president in 2004 and all challenged various aspects of the Ohio vote count, they now have one further common denominator: They now also claim that the recount was highly dubious. Specifically, they allege tampering by Triad, based upon the affidavit of Sherole Eaton. (Is this the same affidavit that was tossed out by Moyer in the Arnebeck suit?)

The lawsuit appends an affidavit by computer specialist and voting consultant Douglas Jones, who addresses the issue of Triad's visits to various Boards of Elections. Jones claims that Triad's activities compromised the integrity of the process.

The recount of the presidential election in Ohio has been extremely well publicized, and certainly every county Board of Elections was aware of the pending recount. By allowing a representative of Triad GSI to unilaterally access the voting machines, without anyone notifying the candidates seeking the recount and providing them with the opportunity to be present for any modification in the tabulator, undermines the fundamental right of all parties involved in an election to observe the handling of the ballots...

It may also be a violation of Ohio Revised Code 3505.32(c), which requires that such interaction with voting equipment be conducted in the presence of the Board of Election and anyone entitled to witness the official canvass of the ballots...

The Eaton affidavit states that the Triad representative stated that he could "put a patch on and fix it." This assertion, and its wording, are both troubling. The reported justification for working on the voting machine in the first place was a dead battery. If one is simply replacing a dead battery on a voting machine, there is no need to patch anything... In general, the word "patch" used in the context of computer systems refers to changes to the software, and it is generally the case that state election authorities must approve all such changes...

Moyer, of course, dismissed Eaton's affidavit as containing hearsay. Dig it: If I confess a murder to you, and you later report that confession to a judge, you are merely relaying "hearsay." The only testimony that counts is my recollection of what I said. That's first-hand stuff. So, how do you like the new rules of jurisprudence?

Clinton Curtis -- the fellow who claims to have been asked by his former employer (Yang inc. of Florida) to cobble together a prototype vote fraud program on behalf of congressman Tom Feeney -- will be on Alan Colmes' Fox News radio program at 11 p.m. tonight. (Wednesday night.)

When Brad Friedman first sent me this news, my first reaction to was to make a snide comment about Colmes. On his site, Friedman informs us "Alan is a regular BRAD BLOG reader, so be nice! ;-)"

Well, all right. I'll try.

Incidentally, yesterday's LAT carried an op-ed piece about Feeney. It seems the Floridian -- who has a reputation for language so harsh as to make even a blogger blush -- wants to do away with the hoary rule prohibiting members of one house of Congress from saying insulting things about members in the other house.

Obviously, the GOP hopes to turn all political discourse in this country into something resembling the "debate" available on the Free Republic web site. What's next -- "three minute hates," a la Orwell?

We need a senator. According to Brad Friedman, staffers working for Bill Nelson of Florida (a Democrat) intimated that Nelson might join congressman Conyers in challenging the Ohio slate of electors. No such luck, alas. Will Robert Byrd step up to the plate tomorrow?

Talking Points. Howard Dean supporters have compiled a list of talking points which we can use to counter commonly-heard misperceptions about the election controversy. This paper demonstrates some good, original thinking -- it presents arguments that don't just retrace those previously heard.

It's never too early for polls! According to the recent Ipsos poll, if the presidential election were held today, a generic Republican would lose handily to a generic Democrat.

Republicans may do that which Democrats may not. In Texas, three unsuccessful Republican state legislature aspirants are challenging their defeats. Whiners! Sore losermen! Conspiracy theorists! Tin foil hats! Black helicopters! Oliver Stone! Get over it! The time has come for the nation to move on...

(Did I miss any of the major cliches?)

More to come soon (check for updates)

Every few days, I recommend a new piece as the single best article on vote fraud currently available. But the work I'm about to bring to your attention will be hard to top.

"Eye on Ohio: The Informed Citizen's Guide to the 2004 Elections," is written by a Daily Kos diarist who operates under the name of georgia10. The title isn't a grabber, and I was never a big fan of "cute" internet pseudonyms, but don't let those niggling concerns throw you off.

Georgia has created a 57-page Word file with a number of charts, and her writing style suits her task perfectly -- it's lively, yet dense with information. The monograph is written to a higher standard than you will find in many professionally-published books. The author presents her case in an organized, easy-to-follow fashion which does not presume party affiliation. This is the expose of vote fraud to show to scoffers.

If you work in an office, consider running off a few copies of this piece. Bind them nicely. Leave them "just lying around." Alternatively, if you have conservative relatives, you may want to consider forcing them at gunpoint to study every page of this fine work. Do whatever you can to spread these words around; they provide the oil necessary to the gears of democracy.

Oh boy. Where to start?

Wayne Madsen caused quite a stir with his Online Journal pieces on electoral tampering, in which he claimed that money to pay the vote-riggers was channeled through a shady entity called Five Star Trust. His unnamed sources also gave him a copy of a $29 million check used in the operation.

The check, alas, proved to be a phony. Moreover, one of Madsens' sources seems to have been Marion "J.R." Horn of Five Star Trust, who had made the news after a conviction for wire fraud.

Since Madsen has kept most of his sources unnamed, and since the fake check fiasco left a sour taste in many a mouth, most commentators on the vote fraud controversy stopped citing his work. My own views remained -- and remain -- conflicted. Madsen may have stumbled onto something important, but could we be confident of his abilities to separate the Hersheys from the horseshit?

Now his latest article -- if it really is a formal article (it seems to have originated as a private letter to a Kos diarist) -- has seen publication under not-quite-reputable circumstances. Even if your info is solid, even if you've received the straight skinny from the archangel Michael himself, you do not want your words presented to the world on a website with a name like "Conspiracy Planet."

Well, presentation doesn't really matter. What of the substance of the piece?

Oh boy. Where to start?

As my ex- once said, "This isn't an essay. It's a brain dump." Free association provides the primary organizing principle. Madsen wanders far -- very far indeed -- from the topic of electoral fraud.

For example, Madsen interrupts his essay to provide a list of "mystery deaths." Many are genuinely mysterious. But most of the names (Danny Casolaro, David Kelley, John Tower, etc.) have nothing to do with the present election controversy. Even if we allow for a topic switch ("I'll take 'Mystery Deaths' for 400, Alex"), some of the names on this list strike me as something of a stretch.

For example, Madsen brings up Paul Wilcher, a name which some may recognize. In the 1990s, right-wingers often cited Wilcher as a "victim" of the Evil Clinton Conspiracy. I've read Wilcher's magnum opus -- another unorganized brain dump, which took the form of an open letter to Janet Reno -- and came away with the impression that its author was not someone who could have mounted a serious challenge to anyone in power. The guy was a flake.

Madsen also claims, intriguingly, that the late journalist Gary Webb "was investigating ACS and contract fraud in CA when he committed suicide on Dec. 10." ACS is Affiliated Computer Systems of Dallas, which Madsen links with possible vote hacking. (Or does he? His wording, to be frank, is unclear.) Webb had, in fact, written about ACS, but not in a context connected with elections. Moreover, Robert Parry, who has spoken to Webb's relatives, reports that Webb wrote several suicide notes to various people close to him, and that the family considers these missives genuine. (I will confess that one need not be paranoid to look askance at published reports that Webb shot himself in the head twice.)

Madsen also finds parapolitical overtones in the death of Chandra Levy and the attendant smearing of Gary Condit. I say that a vote-fraud story that veers into Condit-land has veered too far.

So why do I ask you to read what Madsen says?

Because, if nothing else, his work is interesting. Yes, his latest piece is a pile of unassembled pieces from several different jigsaw puzzles. But others may be able to organize this material, discard the extraneous, and conjure up a congruent image.

I strongly encourage researchers to do whatever they can to double-check Madsen's allegations regarding two Florida companies, Datamaxx and Seisint. These firms, he avers, are "personal data miners." They provided information helpful to the vote-riggers in 2000 and 2004 -- for example, Datamaxx provided the names of black "felons" who weren't' really felons in the earlier election.

Or so, at least, claims Madsen.

His most intriguing data nuggets concern a Christian cult called the Fellowship -- the roots of which, so far as I can tell, go back to the work of a Methodist minister named Abraham Vereide in the 1930s, although the group was not formally named the Fellowship Foundation until 1972.

This is the same group which frightened the readers of Jeffrey Sharlet's seminal work "Jesus Plus Nothing: Under Cover Among America’s Secret Theocrats." Sharlet's article presents a frightening picture of religious zealotry and naked political ambition. Incidentally, the Fellowship -- also known as the Family -- owns a "Fellowship House" near the House of Representatives, where a number of politicians have stayed.

Madsen claims that the Fellowship story goes deeper than most of us suspected. He connects the group to the scamsters behind the "Nigerian" emails. Is this notion feasible? Missionary work did put the Fellowship in Africa, and the Nigerian scam was far more than a mere email ruse, since it involved on-the ground operatives in that country.

So far, I've seen no evidence for Madsen's allegation. It should be noted, though, that many variations of the Nigerian letters include theological overtones reminiscent of the Fellowship's beliefs. On the other hand, American churches were prime targets for the scam.

According to Madsen,

Some of those "419 emails" have been discovered by US intelligence to contain coded instructions to the money launderers and financial manipulators in the States and in off shore bank havens like the Bahamas and Tortola.

This allegation will strike most readers as far too Ian Fleming-esque, but don't be too quick to dismiss the notion. If you study the material produced by international scamsters, you'll come across passages which -- to put it bluntly -- make no sense whatsoever. Using "Nigerian letters" to convey coded data strikes me as downright ingenious.

Of course, we have no hard evidence that such trickery has taken place.

"Wait a minute," I hear you saying. "What on earth does this convoluted Nigerian business have to do with vote fraud?" Well, the Nigerian scams do connect with the Five Star Trust -- or so it has been alleged, and not just by Wayne Madsen. And Marion Horn of Five Star may possess links to the Fellowship -- links forged during his stay in the pokey:

The Fellowship has some very unsavory founders -- all pro-Nazis: Abraham Vereide, Frank Buchman, and Gustav Gedat, J. Edgar Hoover and James Jesus Angleton were close to the Fellowship.

The use of prison ex-cons like Marion "JR" Horn in KY, John Elder and Jeffrey Dean in WA, and others in the financing and carrying out of the rigging, was mostly arranged through Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries, an organization that has carte blanche access to anyone deemed of value, especially computer programmers, after their incarceration and upon their release, especially if they promise service in return for parole.

SO far, I've seen no proof backing the claims in this paragraph. But I do note that Horn received a ridiculously attenuated sentence for massive wire fraud, which he committed while on parole for another offense.

I'll have to look more carefully through the bios of Angleton and Hoover to see if the links alleged by Madsen really do exist. (Alas, I've forgotten far too much of my Angleton lore. Wasn't he Catholic? His mother was a lovely lady from Mexico...)

Here are a few other Madsen allegations vis-a-vis the Fellowship:

The Prime Minister of Norway has just been outed as a member of this group.

In fact, most of the so-called "Coalition of the Willing" nations' leaders are members of The Fellowship, e.g., Tonga, Macedonia, Palau, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Solomon Islands, Uganda, Rwanda, Guatemala, El Salvador, Denmark, Romania, Iceland, Fiji, Georgia, Colombia, possibly also Howard of Australia and Blair of Britain.

The Fellowship believes that ANYTHING is permitted in order to bring about a 1000-yr Kingdom of Christ on Earth, and that includes stealing elections and even murder.

Some of the money used by the Fellowship to obtain real estate and maintain their group came from Saudi Arabia through lucrative defense contracts and pass throughs like the Islamic Institute.

And:

In their group homes in Arlington it is obvious they keep the troubled teens of GOP big businessmen and politicians out of sight through a combination of intensive Bible study and "drug treatment."

Noelle Bush may have been one of their "Guests/Victims."

There should be a focus on Infinity Software of Tallahassee, the place Noelle was put to work when she was busted for trying to illegally obtain prescription drugs in 2002.

(C'mon. Admit it. Even if you think Madsen is full of it, that allegation about Noelle must bring a wicked smile to your face -- presuming, of course, that you don't like the Bush family.)

Finally, and most importantly...

Tom Feeney, Ashcroft, DeLay, Bush (Dubya and Jeb), Cheney, Sean O'Keefe, Condi Rice, John Bolton, Ed Meese, [Charles] Colson, Brownback, Ralph Reed, Frank Wolf, Ernie Fletcher, Katherine Harris, [Newt] Gingrich, JC Watts, Burr, Jindal, Lamar Smith, Zach Wamp, Scalia, Ensign, Kyl, [Kenneth]Blackwell, Bob Ehrlich, Karl Rove, Jack Kemp, James Baker, Clarence Thomas, Tom Coburn, Asa and Tim Hutchinson, Gens. Boykin and Myers, DeMint, Curt Weldon, Grover Norquist, George Allen, [Rick] Santorum, are all in this group. The late Lee Atwater was close to this group.

The Fellowship, which has strong links to the "Rev." Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, operates in cells and not only takes over governments but also local church congregations to further their goals.

Moon, as all must know, wants an end to democracy; he has made no secret of this ambition.

He also has access to seemingly illimitable wealth, which he uses to fund the right. Nobody knows where the money comes from. Some have alleged that his church launders recovered WWII booty -- popularly known as "Yamashita's gold." We thus return to Madsen's initial allegation that Five Star Trust was involved with transactions involving Yamashita's gold.

How much of this story squares with the facts? I'm not sure. Hell, I'm not really sure I yet comprehend the story!

In the Revolutionary war, General Washington's spies placed certain information in a special category: "Interesting, if true." That's my assessment of Madsen's work. He may be on to the story of the century -- but until his facts are both confirmed and organized, we cannot be certain.

The best single article on vote fraud available today comes to us -- but of course! -- by way of Bob Fritakis. His argument provides compellinig reason why a senator must join with Conyers to challenge this vote.

I will (with permission) repeat his ten points. I've edited the text, so consider what follows a precis, not a quotation -- and I strongly urge you to consult the original:

1. More than 106,000 Ohio ballots remain uncounted. As certified by Blackwell, Ohio’s official results say 92,672 regular ballots were cast without indicating a choice for president. This sum grows to 106,000 ballots when uncounted provisional ballots are included. There is no legal reason for not inspecting and counting each of these ballots...

2. Most uncounted ballots come from regions and precincts where Kerry was strongest....

3. Of the 147,000 combined provisional and absentee ballots counted by hand after Election Day, Kerry received 54.46 percent of the vote. In the 10 largest Ohio counties, Kerry’s margin was 4.24 to 8.92 percent higher than in the certified results, which were predominantly machine counted. As in New Mexico, where George W. Bush carried every precinct whose votes were counted with electronic optical scanning machines, John Kerry's vote count was significantly lower among ballots counted on Election Day using electronic tabulators.

Interrupting: I have, on a couple of occasions, given my reasons for believing that the 54.46 figure ought to be higher.

4. Turnout inconsistencies reveal tens of thousands of Kerry votes were not simply recorded... Most striking is a pattern where turnout percentages (votes cast as a percentage of registered voters) in cities won by Kerry were 10 percentage points or more lower than in the regions won by Bush, a virtually impossible scenario.

In Franklin County, where Columbus is located, Kerry won 346 precincts to Bush’s 125. The median Kerry precinct had 50.78 percent turnout, compared to 60.56 percent for Bush. Kerry’s lower numbers are due to local election officials assigning more voting machines per capita to Republican-leaning suburbs than the Democrat-leaning inner city – a political decision and likely Voting Rights Act violation...

5. Many certified turnout results in key regions throughout the state are simply not plausible, and all work to the advantage of Bush. In southern Perry County, two precincts reported turnouts of 124.4 and 124.0 percent of the registered voters. These impossible turnouts were nonetheless officially certified as part of the final recount by Blackwell. But in pro-Kerry Cleveland, there were certified precinct turnouts of 7.10, 13.15, 19.60, 21.01, 21.80, 24.72, 28.83 and 28.97 percents. Seven entire wards reported a turnout less than 50 percent...

6. Due to computer flaws and vote shifting, there were numerous reports across Ohio of extremely troublesome electronic errors during the voting process and in the counting. In Youngstown, there were more than two-dozen Election Day reports of machines that switched or shifted on-screen displays of a vote for Kerry to a vote for Bush. In Cleveland, there were three precincts in which minor third-party candidates received 86, 92 and 98 percent of the vote respectively, an outcome completely out of synch with the rest of the state (a similar thing occurred during the contested election in Florida, 2000). This class of error points to more than machine malfunction, suggesting instead that votes are being electronically shifted from one candidate to another in the voting and counting stage. All reported errors favored Bush over Kerry.

7. In Miami County, two sets of results were submitted to state officials. The second, which padded Bush's margin, reported that 18,615 additional votes were counted, increasing Bush’s total by exactly 16,000 votes. Miami County’s turnout was up 20.86 percent from 2000, but only had experienced a population increase of 1.38 percent by 2004. Two Miami County precincts were certified with reported turnouts of 98.55 and 94.27 percent. In one of the precincts this would have required all but ten registered voters to have cast ballots. But an independent investigation has already collected affidavits of more than 10 registered voters that did not cast ballots on Nov. 2, indicating that Blackwell's officially certified vote count is simply impossible, which once again favoring Bush.

In Warren County, in southern Ohio, an unexplained Homeland Security alert was cited by Republican election board officials as a pretext for barring the media and independent observers from the vote count. In Warren and neighboring Butler and Clermont Counties, Bush won by a margin of 132,685 votes. He beat Gore in these counties in 2000 by 95,575 votes, meaning an implausible pickup of almost 40,000 votes.

But Bush’s numbers meant 13,566 people who voted for C. Ellen Connally, the liberal Democratic candidate for Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice, also voted for Bush. In Butler Country, Bush officially was given 109,866 votes. But conservative GOP Chief Justice Moyer was given only 68,407, a negative discrepancy of more than 40,000 votes. Meanwhile, Connally was credited with 61,559 votes to John Kerry's 56,234. This would mean that while Bush vastly outpolled his Republican counterpart running for the Supreme Court, African-American female Democrat running for the Supreme Court on the Democratic side outpolled Kerry...

8. Democratic voters were apparently targeted with provisional ballots. These ballots require voters to fill out extensive forms at the poll. Under extraordinary rules established by Blackwell these ballots were set to be discarded if even minor errors were committed... At Kenyon College and Oberlin College, liberal arts institutions, there were severe shortages of voting machines when compared with nearby religious-affiliated schools. Students at Kenyon waited up to eleven hours to vote. Provisional ballots were also required of mostly African-American students at Wilberforce College.

9. Ohio's Election Day exit poll was more credible than the certified result, according to intense statistical analysis. In-depth studies by Prof. Ron Baiman of the University of Illinois at Chicago shows that Ohio's exit polls in Ohio and elsewhere were virtually certain to be more accurate than the final vote count as certified by Blackwell. Ohio's exit polls predicted a Kerry victory by percentages that exceeded their margin of error. Compared to the voter access, voting technology and vote counting problems in Ohio, the exit polls were far more systematic and reliable. Critics of the exit polls’ accuracy say too many Democrats were sampled, but a detailed analysis of that assertion shows no credible evidence for it. The stark shift from exit polls favoring Kerry to final results in Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio all went in Bush's direction, and are, according to Baiman, a virtual impossibility, with odds as high as 150 million to one against.

10. The Ohio recount wasn’t random or comprehensive and may have involved serious illegalities. Under Ohio law, 3 percent of the ballots in a precinct are examined by hand. If the numbers match what was counted on Election Day, then the rest of the ballots are compiled electronically. In many districts, Republican Secretary of State Blackwell chose the precincts to be counted in a partisan manner, weighing the choices toward precincts where there were no disputes while avoiding those being contested. Moreover, there have been numerous confirmed instances where employees of the private companies that manufactured the voting machines had access to the machines and the computer records before the recount occurred... In some counties, vendor companies conducted the recount – not public election officials. At least one county---Shelby---has admitted to discarding key data before the recount could be taken. In Greene County unrecounted ballots were left unguarded in an unlocked building, rendering the recount moot.

Fritakis is one of the few real investigative writers left in this country.

Provisionals in Florida. This fascinating account informs us that most provisional ballots handed out on election day were tossed out, primarily because voters went to the wrong precinct or county. What is fascinating is the part left out by this account: Why did so many provisionals go to people in the wrong place? Think about that one...

Think, too, about this memorable line:

Had the election been closer - had it not, as one expert put it, "exceeded the margin of litigation" - postelection court fights over the inconsistent use of the ballots would have been a near certainty.

The margins of victory were, from the Rovian viewpoint, just right -- too wide to justify lawsuits, not so wide as to create widespread disbelief.

From a labor point of view. David Swanson, of the International Labor Communications Association, has compiled a fine piece on the differing attitudes toward exit polls in the Ukraine, as opposed to this country. Swanson also reminds us that the same "journalists" who tell us that the vote fraud story is a mere conspiracy theory also tried to peddled whoppers about Iraqi WMDs.

His list of vote fraud indicators deserves repition, though we could expand upon it considerably:

1. The manufacturers of voting machines who have made them easy to hack and impossible to verify by a meaningful recount, as well as making clear their loyalty to Bush.

2. The U.S. Congress and President, who have failed to make obvious corrections to our election system following the 2000 election, including requiring paper trails and non-partisan officials.

3. The television networks that have refused to release the exit poll data and refused to cover the story, all companies with a clear - and in several cases, clearly stated - interest in having Bush, rather than Kerry, control the FCC.

4. Bush-Cheney Ohio Campaign Co-Chair / Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, whose undisputed public actions before, during, and since the election have served to disenfranchise thousands of citizens.

5. A group of Republicans, claiming to be from Texas, who made illegal calls in Ohio to scare off potential voters. (This, I think, offers a fun, human interest story should an editor be in search of one).

6. Ohio judges who have refused to require that evidence be preserved and have refused to admit challenges to the election, including a judge whose own election could be affected but who refused to recuse himself.

7. Election workers in various counties, hired by Blackwell, who failed to open polling places on time, failed to equitably distribute machines and workers, directed voters to the wrong lines, resulting in the elimination of their votes, wrongly required identification, wrongly denied voters provisional ballots, shut observers out on grounds of "homeland security," failed to randomly select precincts for the recount, etc.

8. Activists who sought to intimidate voters outside of polls or distributed flyers sending people to the wrong polling place or telling them the election was on the wrong day.

9. Triad, a company that has admitted it tried to rig the Ohio recount.

The final point is, I think, irresponsible; Triad has made no such admission. As for the rest, one can only concur.

The Ahmanson family. For months now, I've spoken about the bizarre theocratic beliefs of the family which owns so much of the machinery of our elections. A reader reminded me of Salon's expose of the Ahmansons, as published a year ago. This piece, in turn, led me to discover the acrimonious follow-up exchanges the Ahmansons and their defenders had withe Salon writer Max Blumenthal. Interesting stuff -- and frightening. You'll want to read all about it here and here.

Bottom line: A small group of religious madmen control our fates.

First, my apologies for irregular posting. The reason comes down to three words: "Work, work, work."

Not long ago, I spoke to a recount volunteer in Ohio who asserted that the real conspiracy may be to keep us all working so hard just to pay sky-high rents that we have no time to think about larger issues. Conversely (or perhaps as illustration of that very point), a former friend recently let me know that anyone in today's society who allows himself a few hours each day for non-paid activity -- such as, say, running a blog -- must be a Seutonian decadent. As I said, he's now a former friend.

Forgive the bitching. That's not why you came here.

Right now, I'd like you to meet one Larry English, whose qualifications you will soon read. He has cobbled together an open letter on the subject of our troubled vote.

I'm not sure I agree with any analysis which argues that the problem is one of process, as opposed to criminal intent. And his suggestions for improvement bring us, as always, to the question of how to bell the cat.

Still, he makes some good points. So I thought I'd pass along his words.

To Concerned Citizens:

I am a professional in the area of information quality. I am very concerned that the election processes apparently are still severely broken even after Congress appropriated $3.86 Billion for Election "upgrades" in 2002. The evidence is clear from continued issues observed in the press and online discussions.

There are several things we understand in our field that are not well understood at large or by those who have the ability to "reform" the election processes. I would like to briefly speak to some of these points because they are particularly relevant at present.

Please let me share briefly some of my credentials to speak to this matter. I have been called one of the top authorities in the world in assessing and improving the reliability and accuracy of information processes. My book, "Improving Data Warehouse and Business Information Quality," was called "the Information Bible for the Information Age" by Masaaki Imai, creator of the Kaizen quality system, used by many world-class firms. It has been translated into Japanese by the first information services organization to win the Deming Prize for Quality. I was featured on the cover of the American Society for Quality’s "Quality Progress" Jan 2000 issue, as "One of 21 Voices for the 21st Century."

I conducted a major analysis of the 2000 Presidential Election, "Information Quality Mandate for Election Reform," in "DM Review," a four-part series beginning in Oct 2001. A PDF file of the complete article is found at http://www.infoimpact.com/newspdf/DMR_10.01IQLessonsFromElection2000-w-Links.pdf.

Problems with 2004 Electoral Information Processes:

Despite the considerable attention and concern on the part of both the government and concerned citizens for the issue of the reliability of electoral information processes since 2000, there are still numerous, recurring problems that have been observed in the 2004 election. A very small sample includes:

* Washington State has had multiple recount(s), including belatedly discovered ballots

* 46,000 voters were discovered registered in both Florida and New York

* 58,000 absentee ballots "disappeared" in Florida

* 38,400+ Election 2004 incident reports have been filed according to Verifiedvoting.org

* Numerous irregularities and controversy in Ohio, including write-in votes allegedly incorrectly defaulting to one candidate when run through the voting machine

* Voter registration problems persist

* Provisional ballot problems, including rejection of two thirds of Florida’s provisional ballots

* Electronic voting machine malfunctions

* Electronic voting machine failures occurred this year in Georgia, Maryland, California and other states, but the companies that certify the machines refuse to discuss the flaws.

Some Important, Relevant Principles:

Assuring the reliability of electronic technology is not a mysterious art; it's an established field of practice in use by many information professionals. As I examine these reports and many others, it strikes me that it may be helpful to present a few key principles that seem particularly relevant at present:

First, automating a process doesn't assure accuracy. Machines or computer software cannot guarantee accuracy in themselves. Assessing the accuracy of election processes requires human observers, since only human observers comparing against a real world entity (ballots, in this case) can play that role. Many software applications implement "edit and validation" rules in a way that causes errors. Furthermore, producing accurate data requires processes and data collection devices that are clearly defined and controlled, as well as clear guidance for the information producers (the voters, in this case).

Second, while assuring the integrity of capture of the individual ballots (and their count) is the central issue in any election, assuring accurate vote capture and counts requires assessing the reliability of the electronic voting devices and processes, not just individual ballots. Inaccurate votes are produced by defective processes. Not focusing on the process can lead to bias in conclusions. For example, some of the apparent "errors" we're hearing about may be caused by sampling error, such as an apparent lack of random selection of districts that's been reported for the 3% test recounts in Ohio.

Third, before use of electronic voting devices processing election information in private, we had defined election processes that could be audited (recounts). Apart from voter anonymity, all steps of the process were subject to examination. When electronic voting devices are used, they entail the need for rigorous assessment of all components, including hardware, software, backup and recovery, against various types of failure (hardware, data storage, software, power outage, etc.) integrity against tampering, chain of custody control, and ability to audit the results for recount purposes.

My Recommendation:

My recommendation is that there should be a vigorous investigation into the systemic and pervasive problems in the integrity and reliability of the election processes, including but not limited to voter registration, early voting, provisional voting, election-day voting, vote counting, vote recount, electronic voting, chain of custody, etc.

As an American citizen, I am very concerned about the persistent problems.

As an expert in applying quality management principles to information processes, I would be pleased to share my insights or provide expert testimony to the problems, root causes, and to the real reforms (process improvements) required to error-proof this most- sacred privilege Americans have, to select our representatives in government. Some requirements for real and sustainable election reform include:

* Accessible, easy and open registration processes

* Voter-friendly ballot design (regardless of voting technology)

* Well-defined voting processes that are error-proofed, reliable and controlled and auditable

* Chain of custody controls to prevent tampering

* Training of election workers so they can error proof their processes

* Training of voters (as to types of problems with the voting devices & how to prevent errors and disqualified votes)

Thank you for allowing me to help improve one of the most important, but one of the most broken processes in our democratic society.

Sincerely,

Larry English, President INFORMATION IMPACT International, Inc. Larry.English@infoimpact.com

These are strange days. If you want to know how strange, just buttonhole someone old enough to recall the heyday of the JFK assassination controversy, and remind him that Dan Rather and Arlen "single bullet" Specter are now damned as liberals.

As long-time readers will know, I closely followed the "Memo-gate" controversy, in which right-wing bloggers "triumphed" over a mainstream news organ. Blogging was then considered a very good thing. Only left-wing bloggers are ever denounced as irresponsible rumor-mongers.

Yet the blogosphere's attacks on the controversial memos always struck me as spurious.

Rightists claimed that the memos could be reproduced using Microsoft Word. But the similarities between the bloggers' reconstructions and the CBS "originals" turned out to exist only when the pages were seen from a distance. Close examination showed clear differences in character formation.

Contrary to the bloggers' assertions, the font used in the memos matched neither Times Roman nor Palatino. Instead, it matched a proportional-spaced version of a typewriter font, just like the ones often used in books produced in small runs before the late 1980s. (You can see many such "typewritten" books if you pore through a good research library. Typesetters did not work cheap. I used to know one; she drove a much better car than I did.)

The raised superscript became a point of controversy. But Word always places that superscript in a different location (relative to the rest of the line) than is seen in the CBS memos, where it is much higher. The difference was obvious to me even when the comparison flashed on the TV screen during "Hardball."

The right-wing bloggers lied about that point. They continued to lie even after Dr. David Hailey, of the University of Utah, pointed out the problems in a cautiously-worded paper. Freepers attacked him like a pack of Nazi thugs, demanding his dismissal.

Rightists on cable news programs (Pat Buchanan, for one) declared the memos to be proven fakes. No such proof has ever existed; the authenticity of the papers remains a point of controversy. They even claimed that CBS did the faking. Some rightists who (willfully or otherwise) misunderstood the nature of the Burkett controversy will even tell you that CBS confessed that the memos were fakes. They never made any such confession, nor should they have done so.

Odd, isn't it? This was always a story about journalistic integrity. Yet the rightists felt free to lie and lie and lie.

And they called for blood whenever an expert voice dared to make a comment contrary to their script. Rather not only lost his job, he even had his masculinity questioned by the brownshirt brigades.

If you want to read an excellent retrospective on this controversy -- one which puts a few new facts on the table -- this piece by the Columbia Journalism Review is a must-read.

I was most interested to learn about those who appeared on TV defending Bush against Burkett's claims. These people were presented as disinterested parties, yet they were anything but. In fact, they had strong links to the Bush campaign.

For example, Joe Allbaugh was usually identified in press accounts -- in The New York Times, the Baltimore Sun, and USA Today, to name a few -- as Bush's old chief of staff. He is much more. In 1999 Allbaugh, the self-described "heavy" of the Bush campaign, told The Washington Post, "There isn't anything more important than protecting [Bush] and the first lady." He was made head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency after Bush's victory, resigned in 2003, and went on to head New Bridge Strategies, a firm that helps corporations land contracts in Iraq.

Danny James, a Vietnam veteran and the son of "Chappie" James, America's first black four-star general, is also a political appointee whose fortunes rose with Bush's. He had his own reason to dislike Burkett. Burkett's 2002 lawsuit in a Texas district court against the Guard claimed that the staff of then adjutant-general James retaliated against him for refusing to falsify reports. It was dismissed, like other complaints against James and the Guard, not on the merits, but because under Texas law the courts considered such complaints internal military matters. Without further investigation, we are stuck at he said, she said.

I think the turning point for any political party -- the point at which it ceases to be a traditional American-style party and becomes an Orwell-style party -- occurs when Party leaders demand sovereignty over reality itself. That which is real is that which the Party declares to be real. "Memo-gate" offers one demonstration -- among many -- that the Republican Party has descended to an Orwellian depth.

I'll never forgive Dan Rather for lying about the Zapruder film, or for his deceptive attacks on the Warren Commission's critics. But the ignominious end of his career -- clawed to death by the same reactionary monster he helped to inflict on our nation -- almost makes me feel sorry for him.

(And as for Arlen? Fuck 'im!)

(Note: Scroll down for the main round-up of vote fraud news. This post is a late addendum.)

We've all heard of the spooky mysteries in the land of the blue corn enchilada: That "haunted" spiral staircase...Roswell...the Penitentes. And now we have another New Mexican legend to add to the list: The Phantom Voter!

The "Phantom Voter" phenomenon occurs when a precinct reports a higher number of votes than is justified by the number of ballots cast. For details, go here and here.

How many phantom votes contributed to the narrow Bush win in this state? Over 2000. Of course, the existence of even a single phantom vote testifies to a conspiracy to steal the election.

There is also the cognate phenomenon of undrvotes -- ballots which register no preference in the presidential race. A small number of undervote ballots occur in every state, but the number in NM has long been very high -- suspiciously high.

To make matters worse: The undervotes can mask the phantom votes. That is, the ballots in which no presidential choice can be discerned (perhaps because they were pre-punched) are not only bad in and of themselves -- they will also hide any attempt to "salt" the totals by tossing a few fake ballots into the stew.

Tales of rigged votes on Indian reservations are common, of course.

When you think about it, 216 years is a pretty good run, as democratic experiments go. Even so, let's all do our damnedest to keep the experiment going. Do not go gently, and all that.

Exit polls. "TruthIsAll," the nomme-de-net of a poster on the Democratic Underground, directs our attention to a startling new interpretation of the exit poll figures. I hope no-one will mind if I republish the material here.

Our attention is drawn, first and foremost, to this CNN page displaying exit poll information. (The page takes a while to load.) TruthIsAll then asks:

Am I reading this correctly? If I am, we have the SMOKING GUN:

1) 59% of the 17% who did NOT vote in 2000 but who did in 2004 voted for Kerry. Just 39% for Bush.

2) 65% of those who did NOT vote for Bush or Gore in 2000 voted for Kerry. Just 13% for Bush and 16% for Nader.

3) 91% of those who voted for Gore, voted for Kerry.

4) 90% of those who voted for Bush in 2000, voted for Bush in 2004.

On the face of it, these exit numbers are just as damning as anything to come out of the Ukraine.

More on exit polls. Dr. Steven Freeman has updated his investigation again. This summary says it all:

National Election Pool pollsters have acknowledged that their polls deviate from official totals by 1.9% nationwide (a 3.8% shift from Kerry to Bush) and intimated that this deviation was caused by disproportionate numbers of Bush voters refusing to participate in the polls. Analysis of the available data and theory, however, strongly suggests that at least part of the discrepancy is due to miscount. Moreover, a review of 2004 election processes suggests little reason for confidence that the count reflects either the intent of the electorate or the way that the votes were cast.

I expect this claim will meet with incredulity and anger. The idea of mass-scale electoral fraud in a US Presidential election may be difficult to fathom - or to stomach.

The paper is a draft version, labelled "not to circulate." But it is nonetheless on the net for anyone to read -- so read it.

Nota bene: If you've been following this controversy, you'll get a huge kick out of part 2 of Freeman's new work, in which he skewers "The Prevailing Theory" of the exit poll/actual tally discrepancy: "Bush Voters' Disproportionate Refusal to Participate." (Participate in the exit polls, that is.) In the past, I've called this the "chatty Dem" theory, which presumes that Republicans are preternaturally reticent to express an opinion. If you've ever met a Republican -- or if you've ever sampled the nazified thuggery over at the "Free Republic" site -- you'll understand why I've always considered that presumption a gut-buster.

Freeman addresses the notion that Republicans are "busier" than Democrats -- too busy to talk to pollsters. But as the CNN chart cited above makes clear, the lower income groups all broke for Kerry. The working poor have far, far less free time than do their economic superiors.

Conyers will challenge. John Conyers will formally challenge the Ohio slate of electors, and he will not be the only House member to do so. Conyers believes that the flagrant illegal activity on the part of Kenny "the kapo" Blackwell justifies discounting the Ohio electors. The point appears indisputable, even if we restrict the argument to the deliberately lengthened election lines in Democratic districts.

As noted, Byrd might step in as the Senator supporting this objection. If he does, then the Bush 2005 election will always have an asterisk next to it -- the first election in well over a century to be formally challenged. And that, my friends, will constitute a victory of sorts. Politics has always been a dirty game, but the Republicans have made matters far filthier, and this gesture -- even if symbolic -- will help awaken the world to that fact.

The recount. The recount in Ohio is over, although we have (as noted earlier) no reason to believe that the new count was any cleaner than the first one. Under Ohio's "three percent" rule, three percent of the precincts in each county were to be chosen at random for a confirmatory count; if the tallies were off, the full county would be recounted.

The Republicans, alas, had a very elastic interpretation of the words "at random," which they took to mean "not at random." The recount, in short, had more "fudge room" than Willy Wonka's factory. This illegal maneuver -- and I have cited but one among many -- alone justifies the Conyers challenge to Ohio's electors.

Precinct cross-voting: In the past, we have discussed, briefly, how the rotating order of names on the Ohio ballots may have helped Bush in Ohio. The situation, we now learn, was worse than we once thought. This fine site explains the crime in detail, with lots of graphs and charts and all that good stuff.

The basic problem: A number of voting places served more than one precinct. The order of the names differed between the precincts. If a voter took a ballot into the wrong booth -- a not-infrequent occurrence -- his Bush vote might register as a Kerry vote, or vice-versa.

All right, you say -- but shouldn't that error skew in both directions? Not if the problem stays within a district such a Cuyahoga County, which heavily favors the Democratic party:

For Cuyahoga County, 602,048 votes are reported, more than 1/10 of the Ohio vote. Since John Kerry received 66.75 percent of the vote in this county, on average, given random events, he would lose two votes to cross-precinct voting to every vote Bush would lose. This estimate assumes a random distribution of cross-voting in relation to candidate support.

The statistics indicated otherwise -- a third mystery. Why is cross-voting unevenly distributed? Finding an answer to my question was not going to be simple. Since the precincts in the county are not all split 2:1 in Kerry's favor, where cross-precinct voting occurs will impact the ratio of lost and switched votes.

There's much more. The bottom line is the the cross-precinct phenomenon occurred primarily in Democratic areas -- and that this phenomenon will almost always artificially boost the numbers of the less-popular candidate.

Additional indicators of fraud. If you are looking for a single story to send to Robert Byrd, send this Truthout expose of vote fraud in Ohio. (If Byrd receives about a trillion copies of this piece, he'll have to read it at least once.) I can't help passing along a choice quote:

In the heavily Republican southern county of Perry, Blackwell certified one precinct with 221 more votes than registered voters. Two precincts - Reading S and W. Lexington G - were let stand in the officially certified final vote count with voter turnouts of roughly 124% each.

In Miami County's Concord South West precinct, Blackwell certified a voter turnout of 98.55 percent, requiring that all but 10 voters in the precinct cast ballots. But a freepress.org canvas easily found 25 voters who said they did not vote...

By contrast, in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County, amidst record turnouts, a predominantly African-American precinct, Cleveland 6C, was certified with just a 07.85 percent turnout.

Nothing suspicious here, folks.

Provisionally speaking. Here's a fun fact you may want to pass along to your red state relatives:

Some 14.6% of Ohio votes were cast on electronic machines with no paper trail, rendering them unauditable. But on election night, electronic machines and computer software were used throughout the state to tabulate paper ballots. The contrasts are striking. Officially, Bush built a narrow margin of roughly 51% versus 48% for Kerry based on votes counted on election night. But among the 147,400 provisional and absentee ballots that were counted AFTER election night, Kerry received 54.46 percent of the vote. These later totals came from counts done by hand, as opposed to counts done by computer tabulators, many of which came from Diebold.

The story does not end there. As I've noted earlier, we have good reason to suspect that Blackwell simply tossed out a number of provisional ballots that went for Kerry. Allow me to repeat a point I made on December 12:

According to an AP report, four out of every five provisional ballots were deemed acceptable. Yet in Cuyahoga County -- Kerry country -- that figure dropped to two out of three.

In order to reach the state-wide figure, the acceptability of the ballots must have been judged by a very, very lenient standard in counties outside Cuyahoga.

In Bush-land, Kenny's attitude was "Provisional ballots? Sure! We love 'em! No need to examine the details very closely -- we trust the voters!" Yet in Kerry-land, Kenny became a hard-ass: "Provisionals? I dunno -- these things can be mighty iffy. We'd better double-check and triple-check. Make sure the addresses and signatures are valid."

Despite this differing approach, and despite the fact that absentee/military votes often skew Republican, Kerry won 54.46 of the provisional/absentee ballots.

Recusal. Interestingly, Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Moyer refused to recuse himself in a case involving his own re-election. Here in California, any party to a minor lawsuit can ask for -- and receive -- a new judge without offering any reason for the request. But in Ohio, an elected official is allowed to decide a matter involving his own election.

Is there a non-corrupt Republican judge anywhere in this country?

Didja know? Angry Girl, a blogger who is also in the band Nightweed, has compiled a superb list of 20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA. I'll reprint just the facts; go to her page for the many supporting citations.

Did you know....

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.;

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S; are brothers.

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S.; He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S; machines.

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S; by the Senate Ethics Committee.

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.

8. ES&S; is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.

11. Diebold is based in Ohio.

12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html

13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of General Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States.

14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.

15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.

16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it!

17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.

18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.

19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.

20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.

A fine start, Angry One, but there is oh-so-much-more. A few more fun facts:

21. The money power behind ES&S; is the Ahmanson family, which also supports Dominionism, an anti-democratic form of Christian theocracy.

22. In Warren county, Ohio, the el-fake-o "Homeland Security" alert allowed the Republicans to keep media observers out of the Board of Elections. Not only that, all Democratic and third-party observers were kept out as well.

Gee -- you think they'll have something to say about the vote? Rev. Jesse Jackson has announced that he and Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs-Jones will hold a press conference at 2 pm on Sunday, January 2nd, at the Olivet Institutional Baptist Church, 88th and Quincy in Cleveland.

Jackson has already said that the Ohio recount "was not conducted in a meaningful manner based on uniform standards as required by the equal protection and due process provisions of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution."

Code orange. There is an international movement to make orange the official color of vote fraud protest. Not my favorite color, frankly. My lady hates orange. How about black? Black is both elegant and funereal -- very much in keeping with the title of this particular post.

The exit poll. Jonathan Simon and Ron P. Baiman will no doubt come in for the usual ad hominem attacks -- after all, when the Republican propagandists can't go after the data, they always go after those who dared to compile it. Even so, let's do what we can to publicize their latest, updated analysis of the exit poll controversy.

Here's the summary they offer:

There is a substantial discrepancy -- well outside the margin of error and outcome-determinative -- between the national exit poll and the popular vote count.

The possible causes of the discrepancy would be random error, a skewed exit poll, or breakdown in the fairness of the voting process and accuracy of the vote count.

Analysis shows that the discrepancy cannot reasonably be accounted for by chance or random error.

Evidence does not support hypotheses that the discrepancy was produced by problems with the exit poll.

Widespread breakdown in the fairness of the voting process and accuracy of the vote count are the most likely explanations for the discrepancy.

In an accurate count of a free and fair election, the strong likelihood is that Kerry would have been the winner of the popular vote.

For the full report -- pdf-style, alas -- go here.

Will Byrd fly to the rescue? For reasons given yesterday, it may not be politically wise for John Kerry to challenge the Ohio electors. Two other names have been mooted: John Edwards and Robert Byrd.

Edwards, it is said, felt that the concession was premature. He will be out of the senate soon. However, he is nothing if not ambitious, and plunging headlong into a sea of national ridicule can do nothing for his goals.

But Byrd...ah, now that is an idea. He's an ornery old lion. He hates this administration. And he's reached the age at which a man speaks his mind and just does not give a shit what anyone has to say in reply.

In my eyes, Byrd is the best man for the job. Perhaps we should write him and encourage him to speak up in favor of fair elections?

I'm grateful for the response on my email conundrum (although I remain allergic to Macs -- sorry!). I do wish that all virus-writers had but one neck, so I could wring it.

By the way, have any conspiracy theorists mooted the idea that Symantic and allied companies are the real creators of the many viral attacks in the wild? Cui bono, and all that...

Feeneygate. Each day, this drama becomes more interesting. YEI, the former employer of Clinton Curtis (the guy in Florida who claims Tom Feeney asked the company to create a prototype vote-rigging software) is now also making serious lawsuit noises against the Seminole Chronicle, the Florida paper which gave coverage to Curtis' story. According to Brad Friedman, the letter from YEI's attorneys bears striking similarities of language to the letter written by Feeney's representatives.

Not that they're working together, or anything like that...

The lawyers also allege "at least one of Mr. Curtis’s former employers has stated under oath that Mr. Curtis is a pathological liar." Odd that this former employer goes unnamed. Someone at YEI, perhaps?

To my nostrils, these legal missives carry the stench of the bluff.

Olbermann. In a private email, a reader made a good case in defense of Keith Olbermann's recent work. Unfortunately, I was asked to keep the letter private. Suffice it to say, I now somewhat regret my harsh stance of yesterday. Somewhat.

The Ohio lawsuit. Remember the affidavits testifying to highly-suspicious behavior on the part of that Triad employee? Chief Justice Moyer tossed 'em out today, even though the events in question were (to a large degree) verified.

The reasons for this dismissal were largely technical. Moyer claims that the affidavit by Sherole Eaton relies on hearsay. (I would question this; I thought Eaton was careful to specify what she witnessed personally.) He also argued that her affidavit lacks a statement from the notary that he or she personally witnessed Eaton's signature. Moreover, the Chief Justice makes clear that even if the affidavit were unassailable, it remains "unclear" that the Triad employee engaged in ballot tampering.

Much the same objection is lodged against the deposition of Catherine Buchanan. First, we get technical objections: "Neither the exhibit nor the contestors' motion, however, specifies who Buchanan is, where she works..." Then we get to the meat of the matter:

Buchanan testifies that an employee was going to reprogram a machine. Even assuming the specified machine was an electronic voting machine that was used in the presidential election, however, there is no evidence in the deposition excerpt concerning how this would necessarily affect the recount -- or more important -- this election-contest case.

Dig it: It's not enough for a tech to get access to a voting machine under legally dubious circumstances. It's not enough for him to reprogram a machine that should not be reprogrammed (an activity some churls might consider downright illegal). It's not enough for him to utter those incriminating remarks about a "cheat sheet," which surely speak to the integrity of the recount process.

No, Moyer won't allow evidence in unless the Triad guy had announced in plain language: "Hi, everyone! I'm here to help George W. Bush cheat his way to victory in the recount!"

And even if Eaton had heard the guy say those words, the judge would still toss out her affidavit if the notary public failed to state specifically that he or she saw her sign the damn piece of paper.

The Chief Justice also sees no particular need for emergency relief to preserve evidence in Ohio despite the fact that "Tabulator test deck reports were discarded after the election."

The case is still ongoing -- but will the evidence remain intact? Or will we continue to read about those pesky accidents?

Open letter to John Kerry. Bob Fertik has just written an open letter to Kerry, asking the Massachusetts senator to challenge Ohio's electors on January 6. As you know, I have long been a Kerry supporter. Yet I remain of two minds as to whether he should lead the fight on January 6. Fertik makes some points worth repeating here:

But Monday night, your attorney Dan Hoffheimer told Keith Olbermann your investigation is over:

"There are many conspiracy theorists opining these days. There are many allegations of fraud. But this presidential election is over. The Bush-Cheney ticket has won. The Kerry-Edwards campaign has found no conspiracy and no fraud in Ohio, though there have been many irregularities that cry out to be fixed for future elections. Senator Kerry and we in Ohio intend to fix them. When all of the problems in Ohio are added together, however bad they are, they do not add up to a victory for Kerry-Edwards. Senator Kerry's fully-informed and extremely careful assessment the day after the election and before he conceded remains accurate today, notwithstanding all the details we have since learned."

I beg to differ with Dan Hoffheimer. Let me address two issues:

1) When do "many irregularities" (Hoffheimer's own phrase) rise to the level of "fraud" and ultimately "conspiracy"?

2) How much fraud would it take to "add up to a victory for Kerry-Edwards"?

1) When do "many irregularities" (Hoffheimer's own phrase) rise to the level of "fraud" and ultimately "conspiracy"?

"Irregularities" happen by accident or neglect. "Fraud" happens by design, when someone intends to interfere with a free and fair election. "Conspiracy" happens by coordination among those intending to commit "fraud."

The first challenge is proving the "many irregularities" were not accidental, but were intentional "fraud."

Later, we read:

Now what about Ohio in 2004?

A large group of detectives are painstakingly examining evidence and interviewing witnesses. As in all difficult criminal investigations, key discoveries are being made in fits and starts, and key questions are being highlighted. I have documented all of the key discoveries on one page: http://democrats.com/ohio

Have we found the "smoking gun"? Not yet. But we have made many important discoveries that suggest the "many irregularities" were outright "fraud." And we are close to uncovering a "conspiracy," which seems ever more likely because of Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's fierce effort to block any investigation whatsoever.

The Republican effort to steal Ohio's electors began long before Election Day, and continues to this very moment.

Later still:

On October 13, thieves broke into Democratic headquarters in Toledo and stole computers with crucial data - while ignoring office cash. In 1972, a similar campaign break-in at the DNC headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington DC - which President Richard Nixon brushed off as a "third rate burglary" - ultimately led his resignation when the conspiracy behind the break-in - and the conspiracy to cover it up - were fully exposed after a year of bi-partisan hearings.

Later still:

In the week before Election Day, Democrats received flyers telling them to vote on Wednesday. Cleveland Democrats were visited by canvassers who illegally offered to collect and deliver completed absentee ballots to the election office, and got phone calls incorrectly informing them that their polling place had changed. Lake County voters received a memo on bogus Board of Elections letterhead informing voters who registered through Democratic and NACCP drives that they could not vote. A 25-man Republican-backed "Texas Strike Force" in Columbus threatened ex-convicts not to vote.

Fertik goes on to detail many similar attempts at disenfranchisement. He then summarizes subsequent developments, familiar to all regular readers of this column:

As polls closed on Election Day, the National Election Pool's exit poll showed Kerry winning Ohio by 3.2%. Two polling experts, Steven Freeman and Ron Baiman, independently concluded the chances of the exit poll being so different from the "official" results are "impossible." Those polling experts - and Rep. John Conyers - asked the NEP to release the raw data, but they have adamantly refused.

On Election Night, officials in Warren County - which alone produced 35% of Bush's margin of "victory" - cited a bogus "homeland security" warning to prevent the media and the public from observing the vote count.

In Miami County, officials mysteriously added 19,000 votes to their original tally. Several precincts reported nearly 100% turnout; a recent canvass by the Free Press found many voters did not actually vote.

A comparison of the Presidential race with the Ohio Supreme Court race found C. Ellen Connally, a black woman from northeastern Ohio, did far better than John Kerry in southwestern Ohio suburbs. This unlikely result is a key element of the Green/Libertarian contest - and possible evidence of "vote-flipping" software in the voting machines or tabulating systems.

Rep. John Conyers and other dedicated Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have held several hearings in Washington DC and in Ohio. They have examined dozens of fraud allegations and sought answers to 36 specific questions from Ken Blackwell. Blackwell replied with utter contempt. This lack of transparency and accountability alone is sufficient to justify a challenge to Ohio's electors on January 6.

Fertik then goes on to outline recount oddities:

By law, each county is required to chose precincts (totaling 3% of the vote) at random for the recount. But in 86 of 88 counties, officials chose the precincts in advance, giving tabulating vendors the opportunity to rig the recount.

Recount observers were prohibited from examining the 92,672 "spoiled" ballots (undervotes and overvotes) that were rejected by vote-counting machines. As the Florida recount proved, many of these "spoiled" ballots were in fact "valid" ballots cast on defective machines in poor precincts, and the failure to count them most likely hurt John Kerry, as Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips has documented.

Recount observers were mostly prohibited from inspecting sign-in books to compare the number of votes cast with the number counted (see Miami County above). On November 15, in violation of Ohio's open public records laws, Blackwell ordered all 88 Boards of Election to prohibit any public inspection of poll books until after certification. When the ban was lifted in Trumbull County, Dr. Werner Lange found 580 absentee votes for which there were no absentee voters identified in the poll books - a major fraud. If extrapolated state-wide, there could be 62,513 fraudulent absentees. In Perry County, the number of voters exceeded the number of people who signed the books in at least 11 of 46 precincts.

There is much more, of course. Much of the argument depends on exit polls, and the Ukrainian comparison.

I agree with Fertik's points; we all must salute his superb work. But one factor troubles me: Obviously, the Republican party should suffer politically from the outrages listed above. But they will suffer nothing, for the mainstream media will not repeat the list of charges given above, even if Kerry proclaims himself an aggrieved party.

If Kerry challenges the electors, Kerry -- not Bush -- will suffer politically.

On the other hand: If Kerry does not challenge the electors, he will suffer politically within his party. The Democratic faithful -- which is to say, the many small contributors -- will view John Kerry as someone who would not stand up for himself.

However he stands, he stands damned.

What can change the situation? A political miracle. We need a striking new piece of evidence. It need not be conclusive, but it must grab attention. And we need this evidence within a week.

I've been getting a lot of "bounce back" messages (undeliverable email) from sites to which I have not sent any mail. The sites include Michael Ruppert's, Rense, and something called "Right Turns." (I did once write to Rense, but that was quite a few months ago.) The returned messages are filled with code -- signifying either a virus or an image file. I am not sending this stuff out. If some creep is spoofing my email address, I'm not sure what to do.

Major corrections: Contrary to my statement yesterday, Tom Feeney has not filed a lawsuit against the Seminole Chronicle. He has, however, made serious noises about doing so. As always, I blame Satan for the error. (I also blame Old Scratch for the many typos in yesterday's post.)

Speaking of errors: The other paper in Feeney's home town, The Oviedo Voice, is putting together a response to the vote-theft coverage offered by the rival Seminole Chronicle. The Voice labeled Christopher Bollyn, a reporter for American Free Press, as a guest writer for the Brad Blog. I am quite sure that Brad Friedman writes all his own material. (I speak with the authority of one who, on a regular basis, cribs from that fine site -- with Brad's cheerful acquiescence.)

At the same time, the Voice saw fit to note that bloggers are "not always totally accurate." Which is true, of course. Even so, don't you love it when the traditional media -- you know, the advertising-supported venues which can afford editors, proofreaders, fact-checkers and so forth -- commit serious mistakes even as they score bloggers for sloppiness?

On a similar note, you'll be entertained by Brad's response to the latest anti-Curtis barrage by Keith Olbermann. Face it, folks: Olbermann's no longer on our side. That's not the problem. The problem is, he seems to have gone over to the other side.

Subpoenas for the Prez, Cheney, and Rove? The Nashua Advocate asserts that the lawyers involved with Cliff Arnebeck's suit in Ohio will attempt to depose the men who run our country, and will also seek a deposition from George W. Bush.

The Free Press also reports that Blackwell is doing his damnedest not to make any statement about the election under oath:

Richard Conglianese, Ohio Assistant Attorney General, is seeking a court order to protect Blackwell from testifying under oath about how the election was run. Blackwell, who administered Ohio's November 2 balloting, served as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign.

James R. Dicks, Miami County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, filed a motion to block a subpoena in his county while Conglianese filed to block subpoenas in ten key Ohio counties.

All of which has a "we've got 'em on the run" flavor." Alas, matters are not so simple. The Supreme Court of Ohio has moved to dismiss a large part of Arnebeck's case. That Court, dominated by Republicans, has also been asked to quash the subpoenas on Bush and his comrades.

For a fine analysis of the trouble the Ohio Supremes have just handed Cliff Arnebeck, go to georgia10's extremely helpful diary on Daily Kos. You'll have to scroll down to the update at the very end.

Arnebeck on the Ohio recount. I'm gratified to learn that Cliff Arnebeck has made much the same point I've tried to make. From the Guardian:

Cliff Arnebeck, an attorney representing the voters in the challenge, wasn't taking much stock in the recount effort. He questioned why there was no independent investigation into the accuracy of counting machines to determine whether the machines had been tampered with.

"You're allowing the original error to be repeated a second time, so it's not a meaningful recount," he said.

In this light, you'll want to pay close attention to the Triad story below. You'll also want to savor the following choice oddity...

This blogger's account from December 18 shows evidence that Coshocton County, Ohio, showed a wide variety of reported vote totals. At some point between Blackwell's official count on December 6 and an official county announcement of vote totals issued on December 10, the number of votes jumped from 16,242 to 17,300. The recount brought the number up to 17,329. Over a thousand new votes were "found."

But, but, but...

According to today's AP story on the recount, "Kerry gained 734 more votes in the recount, and Bush picked up 449." Math was never my strong suit, but I tote those numbers up to 1183 new votes found statewide.

Were the additional votes all found in Coshocton County? Is that likely? Is that possible?

To my eyes, these recount numbers look seriously questionable. I'll be happy to stand corrected if anyone out there has a counter-argument...

Let's all hang with the Kerrys: There is a movement to maintain a vigil outside John Kerry's house, in order to pressure him not to certify the electoral college vote on January 6. That would be a real "Profiles in Courage" moment, wouldn't it? If Kerry challenges the slate of electors from Ohio or Florida, he can kiss goodbye any hope of running in 2008. He would probably also lose his senate seat in the next election. On the other hand, if he doesn't speak out against vote theft, who will?

Vote hopping. Even the Washington Post acknowledges the problem: On electronic voting machines in Ohio (and elsewhere, if numerous anecdotal reports count for anything), the default vote went to Bush. The damned machines were programmed to operate in that fashion. Of course, a small sector of the electorate will not cast any vote in the presidential election. Did those votes automatically go to W?

You gotta love it. Dick Morris offers this observation on the election in the Ukraine:

In both previous elections, Yushchenko actually got upward of 60 percent of the vote, only to have the government falsify the results. Fortunately, he adopted a technique I had found useful when fighting against the PRI, the party that controlled Mexico's government for decades: using exit polls to establish the real winner, and so expose the government's count of the votes as rigged.

So there you have it: According to Dick, the exit polls demonstrate which candidate should be a "shoe-in" -- in every country except the United States.

By the way...is it true (as this story claims) that shadowy Republican pollster Frank Luntz helped run the exit polls in the Ukraine? For an eye-opening run-down on Luntz' startling career, check here.

More on Triad: A professional computer consultant offers a few choice words on Triad's "ever so helpful" system of offering modem access to tabulating machines:

Triad non-chalantly used this modem method to reset machines in preparation for the Ohio recount. No doubt that this is a practical short-cut: Makes sense; it saves gas, time. In fact, this is the same mechanism that I -- a computer consultant -- use to support 200 computers spread out across North Carolina.

It is now public record that Triad "legally hacked" into Van Wert County, Ohio on December 9th, and other counties on different dates in preparation for the recount...

The big picture: Everything is fine until you consider that passive modem-access means that these machines have been available for remote re-configuration for months if not years. We know this because nothing special was done (like Triad calling Van Wert’s elections board) to prepare for this recent remote connectivity.

The revelation that Triad used a modem to hack into the tabulators before the recount is verified by the Green Party Website. (You'll have to scroll down.)

It's been said before (many times, many ways), but there is no legit reason to attach a modem to any machine linked in any way to the counting of our votes.

Video proof. Want to see a strong video demonstration of the outrageous efforts to disenfranchise black voters in Ohio? Click here.

An anti-Conyers editorial in an the Port Clinton News Herald (an Ohio newspaper) includes this noteworthy bit of snarkiness:

If Conyers was so concerned about voting problems, where was he in 1998 when election officials in his hometown of Detroit took a disgraceful two weeks to count ballots due to lost poll books and miscounting of precinct totals?

Where was he in 2001 when the counting of absentee ballots in Detroit had to be halted in midstream by state officials after it was discovered that the city clerk was simply ignoring state requirements for the use of software that would eject ballots that couldn't be read by machine?

And where was he when a memo allegedly drafted by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's aides in 2002 claimed that Detroit's voter rolls were overstated by about 150,000 people -- a strong hint that something may be seriously amiss in the Detroit election process, threatening the value of the ballot for people who are genuinely qualified to vote?

"A disgraceful two weeks"? Jeez, we would have loved it if Ken Blackwell had finished the official Ohio vote count within two weeks. Would it be churlish of us to mention his election-night promise to complete the work within ten days? Instead, he dragged out the process for more than a month, obviously with the intention of making the recount efforts moot.

Back to the article quoted above: Do we have any evidence that the incident in 2001 was not rectified as soon as it was discovered? In the absence of such evidence, why is the Port Clinton News Herald trying to imply culpability on the part of John Conyers?

The same can be said of the 2002 memo, which remains controversial. The issue comes down to the question of whether or not Detroit has no more than 450,000 registered voters, as Kirkpatrick estimated. According to the Detroit News:

But Detroit Elections Director Gloria Williams maintains there are 611,321 registered voters in the city. This summer, the city spent $143,363 to mail registration cards.

"That's way wrong," Williams said of the 450,000 figure in Kilpatrick's memo.

By the way, we also do not know which side would be favored by these alleged ghost voters -- if they exist. Would John Conyers or his Republican opponent feel a greater need to pad the Detroit vote?

I draw attention to this attempt to smear Conyers because it gives us a hint as to the propaganda barrage the Republicans will surely mount, should his efforts justify a major counter-attack.

Funny, innit? The anti-Conyers forces in Ohio have become very worked up by a memo from 2002 estimating (based on what evidence, I know not) a lower number of registered voters in Detroit. But Conyers' critics do not see much wrong with the situation in Perry County, Ohio, where the number of votes significantly exceeded the number of people who signed the books. Democrat Bill Crane, who lost (by a razor-thin margin) the vote to retain his auditor's position, is filing suit...

We haven't even mentioned the ballooning absentee vote numbers in Turnball County, Ohio:

The Trumbull County investigation showed some 650 more absentee votes than there were absentee voters identified in the poll books examined. If the absentee vote inflation rate there were consistent statewide, then over 63,000 votes were up for grabs in Ohio. This unexplained problem would have been brought to light much earlier had it not been for an unlawful directive by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to prevent any public inspection of poll books prior to vote certification.

Let us summarize.

A right-leaning Ohio newspaper damns Conyers because of an unproven allegation of "funny numbers" in Detroit. But when similar allegations come backed by actual data, and when the dubious activity occurs in Ohio, and when a Democrat suffers -- that isn't anything for an Ohio newspaper to worry about.

Comprende?

We are all stunned by the Asian disaster; the images have been wrenching. I was gratified to learn that Arthur C. Clarke, who lives in Sri Lanka, escaped the tsunami. I thought I would pass along a message he posted just today on his site:

I am enormously relieved that my family and household have escaped the ravages of the sea that suddenly invaded most parts of coastal Sri Lanka, leaving a trail of destruction.

But many others were not so fortunate. For hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans and an unknown number of foreign tourists, the day after Christmas turned out to be a living nightmare reminiscent of The Day After Tomorrow.

Among those affected are my staff based at our diving station in Hikkaduwa and holiday bungalow in Kahawa – both beachfront properties located in areas worst hit. We still don’t know the fully extent of damage as both roads and phones have been damaged. Early reports indicate that we have lost most of our diving equipment and boats. Not all our staff members are accounted for – yet.

This is indeed a disaster of unprecedented magnitude for Sri Lanka which lacks the resources and capacity to cope with the aftermath. We are all trying to contribute to the relief efforts. We shall keep you informed as we learn more about what happened.

Curiously enough, in my first book on Sri Lanka, I had written about another tidal wave reaching the Galle harbour (see Chapter 8 in The Reefs of Taprobane, 1957). That happened in August 1883, following the eruption of Krakatoa in roughly the same part of the Indian Ocean.

Between the holiday cheer, caring for a sick puppy, repairing a sick computer, and keeping the wolf from the door, I haven't had much time for holiday blogging. Here are a few things I've learned during this holiday: Chocolate-covered strawberries are among the finest things in all creation, MSI mainboards should be avoided, and vets are the nicest people in the world.

Kerry files. William Rivers Pitt reports that John Kerry has filed motions to preserve possible evidence of electoral fraud in Ohio. I'm glad that he is getting into this, and I'm glad that the dialogue is turning to "fraud," as opposed to "problems."

Of course, as anyone who has ever been involved with a lawsuit knows, the filing of a motion does not mean that a judge will allow it. But if it is allowed, Triad will have to offer a sworn deposition. It'll be interesting to see who pays the bills for his lawyer.

Unconcession? you may have heard a rumor that Kerry will "un-concede" on January 6 (the feast of the Epiphany and Joan of Arc's birthday). If that happens, I'll eat the hat I got for Christmas.

Revote in Florida and Ohio! Sign the petition! Do I think that these petitions serve much purpose in real life? Um...hard to say. At any rate, big numbers will hearten everyone who cares about this issue.

Feeney sues. Representative Tom Feeney has filed a lawsuit against the Seminole Chronicle for the story they did on Clinton Curtis, the programmer who has claimed under oath that he was Feeney tasked him to come up with a prototype vote-rigging program. I strongly suggest that you read not just Brad Friedman's in depth reportage, but also the very revealing reader commentary.

Computer vote fraud in Texas. The office is a small one, but the issues loom large:

"As I look back over the General Election held on Nov. 2, 2004, I know that voting is a 'right' that is being taken away everyday," writes Brenda Denson-Prince. But she is not writing about far away places like Ohio or Florida. She is writing about her own attempt to become the first woman in Kaufman County, Texas to sit on the County Commissioners Court.

Bottom line: The central tabulators stole the election from her. The problem was, of course, labeled a "glitch." She called for a recount, which was also gamed:

On Wednesday morning, Nov. 10, Joan D. Neeley represented the Democratic Party at a sorting of early ballots. Of 30,000 votes cast in Kaufman County, 16,000 were early votes.

“We kept noticing ballots in the wrong piles [voting boxes] as we continued through our process and because of this we all decided we would double check each pile [voting box] for accuracy after sorting was complete," noted Neeley in a signed statement, dated Nov. 16. But according to Neeley's statement, the double-checking was never completed. It was interrupted on Nov. 10, and when on Nov. 12 Neeley requested a resumption, she was informed that a court order would be needed to break the seals on remaining boxes.

The hand-count of ballots showed clear signs of erasures (despite the fact that voting booth pencils have no erasers attached) and even white-out.

Sometimes a small story casts light on a larger one...

Dominion. As you know, the vote-riggers justify their criminality through a belief in Christian Reconstructionism, or Dominionism. This is the weltanschauung of the Ahmanson family, which runs ESS, the company that counts so many of our votes. I urge you to check out this video on the Dominionist menace.

The term "Christo-Fascist" has seen some recent currency. I think the label works, and I hope to increase see it in greater circulation.

If you came here looking for the latest on voter fraud, scroll down. Meanwhile...

To celebrate the holiday season and the impending triumph of Theocratic Fundamentalism, I thought I would discuss the ever-popular topic of Satanists who feast on the flesh of infants.

Dare ye scoff, heathen? Check out this report on Christianity.com (one of the more respectable web sites of our new fundamentalist rulers), which offers first-hand testimony by a former Satanist called "Sharon":

"I saw babies be killed all the time," Sharon continues. "When I was 17, I was impregnated by the high priest and made to carry his child. And then they took this child from me and I saw this baby be sacrificed before my eyes and was made to eat a part of her heart. They took my baby out of me, and I heard the infant cry, and even though I was only 17, my maternal instincts reached out for that little crying baby. And the next thing I know, they had placed that baby on like an altar -- really it was a pulpit -- and then my father took his fist and crushed her skull and at the same time was removing her heart. And then they took off body parts. They took her little arms and lifted up my baby. They chopped off her head and had this infant dangling without a chest cavity in front of my face to terrorize me and say, `This is what's going to happen to you. This is what's going to happen to your sister.' So this stuff is real."

Those debunkers who refuse to face this ghastly truth may be interested to learn the origin of the baby-eating accusation. The very first people in history to be on the receiving end of such rumors were...

...the early Christians.

So, at least, states Norman Cohn in his excellent text on the origins of the witch persecutions, Europe's Inner Demons.

Back in the old, old days, before Constantine decriminalized the Christian religion, most of the faithful did not meet openly in churches. Instead, they gathered together for what were, in essence, pot-luck dinners. These meals were called "Agape" feasts. During these secret gatherings, the officiating priest would celebrate the eucharist -- drink the wine, chew the wafer, you know the drill.

Word on the Roman street had it that the Christians used these covert meetings to "eat the flesh of the Son of Man." In Greek, this phrase sounded indistinguishable from "eat the flesh of the son of A man."

The Christians tried to explain the technical meaning of the phrase, but their explanations sounded like ex post facto rationalizations. All the best people in the empire, including the "good" emperor Marcus Aurelius, became convinced that Christians were baby-eaters.

In desperation, the Christians countered that they were innocent of all such practices -- but that those pesky Gnostic heretics probably were not. You want to meet some baby-eaters? Check out those nasty old Carpocratians. Those people also have ritual sex. Sex! Without even being married! They're capable of anything!

Then as now, Christians had a rather loose interpretation of the commandment forbidding false accusation. From that day to this, the charge of infanticide has perfumed all reports of "heretical" practice circulating within the Christian community.

In the early 19th century, a German scholar dug up the old anti-Christian cannibalism charges which had circulated in the days of Marcus Aurelius. This scholar published a book which took the accusations at face value. The work excited various advanced thinkers of that era (Marx was taken in by its argument for a brief time), until subsequent scholarship established the truth about early Christian dietary practices.

But in the eldritch realms of modern fundamentalism, neither scholarship nor evidence counts for much. So our evangelical friends will continue to circulate reports similar to the lovely anecdote relayed to us by "Sharon."

Some of you may now be wondering about my own religious beliefs, and perhaps my own dining habits. I usually do not speak openly of my own ideas, which are vague, contradictory, and continually in flux. Suffice it to say, the above reference to early "heretics" reminded me of this rather Gnostic passage from Moby Dick, in which Ahab disses his Demiurgic Creator:

Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten: Certainly knowest not they beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, of, thou omnipotent. There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness mechanical.

Happy holidays, everyone.

Default settings. Remember the stories that have circulated ever since November 2 that voters in many compu-vote states would press buttons for Kerry only to see the name "Bush" appear on screen? That mountain of anecdotal evidence forces attention on the latest piece by Richard Hayes Phillips, who claims that electronic voting machines had "default settings" directed toward Bush.

E-vote machines were used in Mahoning County, Ohio. According to Phillips,

Mark Munroe, Chairman of the Mahoning County Board of Elections, said there were 20 to 30 machines that needed to be recalibrated during the voting process because some votes for a candidate were being counted for that candidate’s opponent.

Moreover:

Mahoning County utilized ES&S; Ivotronic touch screen machines. The administrative password for these machines was reported on the ES&S; website itself.

By default, the password is 1111. According to http://savethevote.com/issues/glitches.htm this password cannot be modified easily, which would mean that anyone who knows the password could change other default settings on the machines.

Phillips goes on to present evidence indicating that default settings may account for suspiciously high numbers that Bush received in various wards. Also:

But the most damning evidence about Youngstown Precinct 2E is the fact that no undervotes were reported. This is the precinct where two voters selected Kerry and Bush’s name came up, where one voter had to scroll through five times before his votes were finally recorded, and where three voters said that the presidential option never appeared at all while they were trying to vote, and that this happened on two different machines.

Video interview. We've heard the excuses Triad has offered for the strange doings by Michael Barbian, the Triad tech in Hocking county whose behavior during the recount caused so much angst. In a videotaped interview, he seems like a pleasant, soft-spoken fellow with nothing to hides. One should note, though, that the interview reveals that he also "visited" six other counties.

Keith Olbermann observes that...

...the issue in Hocking is not so much what was or wasn't done to the machine, but the efforts of the Triad man to find out which of Hocking's precincts was to be subjected to the mandatory 3% hand recount.

To be specific:

Ohio law is specific about the 3% sample that must be hand recounted in each county: it's supposed to be selected randomly. If the effort is made -- either by an election official, or somebody else (like a manufacturer's rep) -- to decide in advance which 3% of the vote is to be recounted, the concept of random selection is thoroughly contaminated and once again, a puff of smoke rises from the entire recount process.

Mr. Whidden told me by phone this afternoon that there are a lot of puffs of smoke. "86 of Ohio's 88 counties have pre-selected their random precincts," he claims.

Which brings us back to Mr. Barbian of Triad. Although he insists he did nothing wrong, John Conyers and other feel that this video raises more questions than it answers.

We still don't have answers about the "cheat sheet" remark. That's what rankles Conyers:

I have just reviewed a tape prepared by the documentarian Lynda Byrket of the hearing held by the Hocking County Board of Elections on December 20, and based on the tape I have more questions and concerns than ever before about the conduct of your firm in connection with the Ohio presidential election and recount. In particular, I am concerned that your company has operated -- either intentionally or negligently -- in a manner which will thwart the recount law in Ohio by preventing validly cast ballots in the presidential election from being counted.

You have done this by preparing "cheat sheets" providing county election officials with information such that they would more easily be able to ignore valid ballots that were thrown out by the machines during the initial count. The purpose of the Ohio recount law is to randomly check vote counts to see if they match machine counts. By attempting to ascertain the precinct to be recounted in advance, and then informing the election officials of the number of votes they need to count by hand to make sure it matches the machine count is an invitation to completely ignore the purpose of the recount law.

The bottom line: Anyone figuring out a way to "game" the election must also figure out how to game a potential recount. Did the "three percent" rule in Ohio provide the entranceway for mischief?

How did Ken Blackwell rig the Ohio recount? According to Glenn Sanders of the Votergate Resource Center, the job was accomplished by a variety of tactics.

The various county Boards of Election had to chose -- at random -- three percent of their precincts for a recount; if the new numbers differed from the old ones, a county-wide recount would have been instituted. But were the precincts chosen randomly?

Many say they were not. Precincts were chosen which had fewer than 550 ballots; factors such as precinct size, voting history and affluence affected the supposedly "random" choice. As noted by Olbermann above, 86 out of 88 counties used "pre-selected" precincts.

Moreover, as this report from David Cobb's site specifies...

Anomalies were found. Almost all of the witnesses that I spoke with felt that the ballots were not in random order, that they had been previously sorted. There would be long runs of votes for only one candidate and then long runs for another, which seemed statistically improbable to most.

From what they were able to get through, witnesses found that signature counts were very much different from the official recorded number of ballots.

More than that, anomalous numbers did not trigger a full recount:

When the hand recount of the 3% test sample did not match the official vote totals, a full recount should have been ordered for all county ballots. Instead, the recount was "suspended" by county officials who said that Secretary Blackwell recommended that the recount should begin again "from scratch." The Green recount observers then were told that it was 4:00 PM, the building was closed, and all had to leave. The Republican contingent, however was allowed to stay in a conference room for an additional ten minutes or so for a private discussion.

In short: We have no reason to express faith in the integrity of this recount effort.

Kerry navigates the Ohio river. This story is related to the above.

According to William Rivers Pitt, John Kerry "will be filing a request for expedited discovery regarding Triad Systems voting machines, as well as a motion for a preservation order to protect any and all discovery and preserve any evidence on this matter." He would have filed yesterday, but was prevented by a snowstorm.

Bravo! This move will not lease the Democratic Kerry-haters, of course. (You know the rule: When a Republican loses, his/her supporters blame the opposition; when a Democrat loses, his/her supporters blame their own candidate. Come to think of it, that's also what happens when a Democrat wins.)

A self-proclaimed lawyer on the Democratic Underground offered these quotable observations on Kerry's post-election conduct:

That concession speech was the smartest thing he could have done

He removed himself immediately from the fray everyone hoped would ensue, and, in fact, that's what's going to take place in Ohio now. So, Kerry didn't flip-flop - he just made a brilliant strategic choice and preempted any possibility of the Republicans taking anything to the Federal court system.

That was what happened in Florida in 2004, and we all know how well THAT turned out, right? Gore let the Republicans take control of the legal process, and he never got it back.

In this case, Kerry's been staying quiet, letting the appropriate people - the Greens and Libertarians - build the proper foundation for an entry into Federal court, where his standing is --- ahem ---- unimpeachable.

It's what I've been saying would happen since November 3, and you cannot imagine how excited I am to see this happening.

My crystal ball on November 3 did not operate in this fashion. Even so, I'm glad to see movement.

Ohio, we have a problem. According to the New York Times, Ohio has election "problems." "Fraud" and "tampering" are verboten words. The accusation of intentional disenfranchisement constitutes Thoughtcrime Most Foul. But...there were problems.

Take the first example cited by the Times:

Mr. Shambora, an economics professor at Ohio University, moved during the summer but failed to notify the Athens County Board of Elections until the day before the presidential election. An official told him to use a provisional ballot.

But under Ohio law, provisional ballots are valid only when cast from a voter's correct precinct. Mr. Shambora was given a ballot for the wrong precinct, a fact he did not learn until after the election. Two weeks later, the board discarded his vote, adding him to a list of more than 300 provisional ballots that were rejected in that heavily Democratic county.

Accidental? Perhaps. But when anecdotal report after anecdotal report indicates that these "accidents" target Democrats and almost never Republicans, some of us don't feel comfortable keeping the talk restricted to the level of the accidental.

If you find that someone has "accidentally" spilled tar on your office chair five dozen days in a row, you may come to the conclusion that you are disliked.

Brad Friedman has examined this very same NYT piece, and noted:

1. The writers quote Blackwell without noting his key position within the Bush campaign.

2. The piece damns punch cards, which are in fact more easily recountable than e-votes.

I will add this: Why is it that mainstream media reports on election "problems" usually resolve with calls for high-tech solutions that will only make matters worse?

(A serious post should arrive soon; for now, a bit of fluff...)

Once, I was a massive film buff, but the Bush economy has forced me to, well, economize. My lady, however, insisted that we see the movie version of "Phantom of the Opera."

The story, I was surprised to learn, boils down to a love triangle in which a rich young guy competes with a black-clad, talented, tortured misfit with a homicidal streak. Fortunately, ladies still have a soft spot for the bad boys; our Phantom might have won the competition, had he kept his body count to a manageable level.

A mere five years ago, Andrew Lloyd Weber's score would have evinced the expected snarky commentary, but now -- perhaps as a sign that the purulent ichor within my veins has turned to syrup -- I find myself asking: If cobbling together a hummable tune is such an easy trick, why do so few others manage it? The lyrics were often silly and obvious, but the same complaint can be lodged against most grand operas. As Christine, Emily Rossum is splendid, but Gerard Butler, in the title role, didn't have the range or the power. I'm not a fan of pretty-boy Phantoms.

My attention turned toward Jennifer Ellison, and not just because of her notably plush cleavage. My ladyfriend informed me that her character, Meg, is the daughter of Madame Giry, the Phantom's secret helper. A thought occurred to me as I drifted off to sleep: Is the Phantom Meg's father?

The film contains a number of subtle visual clues which may support the idea. I never saw the stage version or read the book. Has this idea existed within the material all along, or did I just imagine things?

I'll be back within the hour, with something more serious to say. In the meantime, happy holidays.

A short note to ask a short question. Why are right-wing "journalists" allowed to misrepresent the facts while other are not?

MSNBC recently hired conservative radio host Monica Crowley. As this piece in Media Matters illustrates, Crowley has a history of lying and plagiarism -- for example, she misrepresented the findings of the 911 commission and relayed a false story that an elementary school had banned the Declaration of Independence because it mentions God. So far as I know, she never acknowledged her errors or offered an apology.

She gets a promotion.

Dan Rather trusted a source prematurely in the great National Guard documents fiasco. Rightists claimed, falsely, that he deliberately used forgeries created with Microsoft Word. In fact, the only expert in questioned documents to study the papers favors their authenticity; genuine or otherwise, those documents most certainly were not created with Word. Still, when the source for the documents changed his story about how he obtained them, Rather quickly put the new information on the air and apologized.

Rather lost his job.

Why the differing standards?

Friends, I have to admit -- the number of vote fraud stories is thinning. I will continue to relay the information as long as new information pops up. But I am beginning to worry that the issue will die soon unless we catch a big new break.

Black disenfranchisement. An African-American writer named Shanikka comments on the official Democratic response (or lack thereof) to Republican measures to keep blacks from voting:

So, as I said before, y'all don't get it. I am becoming increasingly convinced that you will never get it because, in the end, it's all about you, and not about us. What is happening now with the Democratic "leadership" (including its strongest advocates and mobilizers in the blogosphere) is making crystal clear that you are quite happy to allow our rights to be sacrificed for some "larger good" that you are seeking (one which conveniently doesn't negatively impact YOUR rights or access to power).

As I mentioned in the last post I made, I've been a lifelong Democrat. My mother was in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. However, my mama also didn't raise no fools. I'm African-American first and no matter how much other folks tell me that they care about my people's rights, the proof is in the pudding.

These words have truth, but do not suffice. Let me raise a counter-argument.

I'm old enough to remember both times my city burned. Obviously, my memory of the second event is clearer -- I still recall the smell of the smoke and the sound of the Emergency Broadcast Signal used for real.

And what caused that uprising? A jury in Simi Valley had acquitted the cops who beat a black motorist.

I'm not saying that the grounds for revolt at that time were insufficient. But the grounds are far more compelling now. The theft of the black vote will continue until the disenfranchised respond with outrage, mass action, and...

...well, we all know the meaning of the words "by any means necessary."

It is not fair to accuse all white Democrats of doing nothing. I've devoted roughly an eighth of all my waking hours since November 2 to the task of getting some attention focused on this issue. Many others have done far more.

I called for revolt and unrest before the election. (My suggested method of protest: A mass refusal to pay taxes.)

Scowling at the Democratic leadership will accomplish little, since -- in the present conservative political climate -- they can do little. They have little power.

"Street heat," properly applied, could provide that power. Black people have a source of power denied to the Democratic leadership, for blacks have an undeniable greivance. The victims always possesses a unique ability to address the consciences of the oppressive and the ignorant. They -- perhaps only they -- can shock this country back to its senses.

If a schoolyard bully steals your lunch money and you do not fight back, chances are he will steal it again tomorrow. This is hardly the first time black people have had their votes stolen.

Clinton Curtis. Keith Olbermann has mounted an attack on Curtis' credibility. Brad Friedman, natch, has mounted the counter-attack. Any objective party who reads both pieces will have to admit that Friedman scores several direct hits.

Olbermann, it seems, made no attempt to contact Curtis. This is the point at which many will mutter something about "Journalism 101" -- although, truth be told, standards are much more relaxed in the blogosphere. What rankles me is the fact that Olbermann did bother to contact Congressman Feeney, the target of Curtis' accusations. If Olbermann wants to take the reportage to that level, why not speak to both sides?

Friedman correctly scores Olbermann for the charge that Curtis threatened his former employers "in writing." If he did, where's the evidence? Where is the evidence that the police were (as Olbermann reports) contacted as a result of this alleged threat? Olbermann has here simply functioned as a stenographer to the monied, never bothering to double-check the allegations of Feeney and Yang.

The Brad Blog delivers many more details, of course. The site even reprints the farewell card given to Curtis by his former office-mates -- a nice bit of visual evidence which tends to disprove the oft-heard line that Curtis is a mere disgruntled employee.

Friedman deserves an ovation for his efforts.

Are there any Democrats at Diebold? Robin Baneth of North Carolina wants to know. Indeed, she is offering 500 smackers, cash money, to any Diebold or Triad employee who can honestly testify that that he or she voted for Gore and Kerry.

A brilliant move, Robin! I'll bet there are no takers...

Recount in Ohio: Most of the counties have been counted (remember, Ohio law mandates an initial three percent recount) and Kerry has picked up an underwhelming 242 votes. Keep in mind that this recount does not look into undervotes, and does not double-check the voter logs, which is where much mischief may lie.

Can the recount be rigged? We've seen indications that it can be. You will recall the unpleasantness in Greene County, where ballots were kept from the recounters but made available to anyone else who cared to walk into the building.

Contrary to law, precincts were not selected at random for the three percent recount -- a factor which renders the whole recount effort somewhat farcical.

In some cases, election officials went to a private room to compare the hand counts to the machine counts, declared that the counts matched, yet wouldn't let the observers see the printouts. In other cases, the the 3% handcount did not match the machine count, yet election officials refused to do a full handcount as required by Ohio law. Election officials in many counties also won't give access to poll books, absentee ballots, and provisional ballots as required by Ohio law. To this day, we've still not seen any investigation of why an ES&S; official was on a tabulator before election day. We've also not seen any investigation or reasonable explanation for the lockdown in Warren county. Other election officials have been caught in boldfaced lies (e.g., claiming under oath that all machines were distributed on election day when we now know that 81 sat in a warehouse). Blackwell himself won't answer the 36 questions posed to him by congressman Conyers, and now says he refuses to go under oath and considers the request "harassment."

Any plan to steal an election must, of course, include a contingency plan to rig a recount.

Exit polls: Mark Blumenthal's "Mystery Pollster" column has consistently argued against Dr. Freeman's work, and against the notion of vote fraud in the 2004 elections. "Exits: Were They Really "Wrong?'" attempts to demolish Freeman's analysis.

However, this response at Democratic Underground mounts a persuasive counter-argument.

Let's sample the debate. First, the Mystery Pollster:

Some have asked that I calculate my own estimate of the joint probability of an error in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. I am reluctant to do so for two reasons: First, the rounding error in Freeman's data alone renders this sort of hairsplitting moot. Second, and more important, it really doesn't matter. Everyone concedes there was a small (2%) but significant average error in Kerry's direction. For those concerned about problems with the count, what matters most is why that error occurred.

Now, from the Democratic Underground respondent (as in original; apologies for the "all caps" approach):

DON’T JUST LOOK AT FL AND OH AND PA. LOOK AT ALL 51 STATES. AND CALCULATE THE PROBABILITY THAT 16 OUT OF 51 STATES WOULD MOVE BEYOND THE MOE IN FAVOR OF BUSH.

I AND OTHERS AT DU HAVE CALCULATED THE ODDS THAT THIS COULD OCCUR DUE TO CHANCE:

ONE OUT OF 13.5 TRILLION.

IF YOU CONSIDER THAT FOR EXIT POLLS, THE HISTORICAL NORM MOE = +/- 2%, THEN 23 STATES DEVIATED BEYOND THE 2% MOE IN FAVOR OF BUSH.

THE PROBABILITY OF THAT IS ZERO.

If I follow the Mystery Pollster's argument correctly, he takes the end-of-day exit numbers as gospel. But as we have seen, these numbers were contaminated by (or, as some prefer to put it, "conformed to") the incoming "actuals." So the earlier numbers remain the closest thing we have to an independent check on the official tallies.

And even the conformed"numbers leave that small but significant error in Kerry's direction. This error remains mysterious to all, even the Mystery Pollster.

Bev Harris. I always feel a little guilty when I offer critical words about the woman who first opened many an eye to the dangers of the e-vote. But my feelings of guilt evaporate when I think about those poll tapes she is allegedly hoarding. Dammit, I wanna see 'em!

For the other side of the story, check out this laudatory piece. Here's a noteworthy slice:

In the blue states, Bev Harris is a standard bearer, a pioneer, and a patriot. In the red states, many who know her believe that Bev Harris is a conspiracy nut, a rabble rouser, and an agitator.

And yet, as we are continually reminded, she runs a group which remains officially non-partisan. (So does Pat Robertson, but few doubt that he voted for W.)

In paranoid moments -- yes, believe it or not, I have a few -- I wonder if some Rovian trickster tried to foist some data on her which would tend to implicate Democrats in vote tampering?

Slide show: If you want to direct newcomers to a site that provides a terrific introduction to the topic, go here.

My last post on this topic disappointed a few readers, and sent at least one correspondent into a fit of anger. To be frank, I partially regretted airing a critique of Bev Harris -- her work opened our eyes to the dangers of electronic voting.

But: I'm still waiting for an explanation of the story she told regarding the poll tapes in Florida. You remember: The "original" tapes that conflicted with the copies election officials tried to palm off on her. The conflicts all show changes favoring Bush.

Or so she has said. I suspect many donated to her organization because they hoped to hear more about that very incident.

Those tapes are public property, and we have a right to see the evidence. As you will recall, when she was asked to produce copies, her response was:

"OK. Please go ask Greg Palast to produce all his investigative material during the middle of his investigations. See what HE says."

I have just discovered an exactly parallel situation involving that very reporter, Greg Palast. He wrote a famous article titled "Jim Crow in Cyberspace," about the stolen election of 2000. In the middle of that investigation, Palast was contacted by a producer who worked for CBS:

The CBS hotshot was happy to pump me for information: names, phone numbers, all the items one needs for your typical quickie TV news report. I freely offered up to CBS this information: The office of the governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, brother of the Republican presidential candidate, had illegally ordered the removal of the names of felons from voter rolls -- real felons who had served time but obtained clemency, with the right to vote under Florida law. As a result, another 40,000 legal voters (in addition to the 57,700 on the purge list), almost all of them Democrats, could not vote.

The only problem with this new hot info is that I was still in the midst of investigating it.

So now we know what Greg Palast would say: Here's the info; take the research forward.

Ms. Harris...? Look, I don't want to dislike you, and I don't necessarily want any of my readers to re-think making a contribution to your work. But you are the one who brought up Palast's methodology, and that analogy simply does not work in your favor. Can you give us another reason for keeping the evidence secret?