Via Google News last night...

Wow. What an amazing game.

Though, as an old (St. Louis) Cardinals boy, I would have preferred a different outcome. Oh, well. Will have to take solace in the fact that Obama's team beat McCain's. Again.

(Via Bob Geiger's Saturday Cartoons, hat-tip BRAD BLOG emailer "BS")

Brad's anchoring along with Peter B. Collins from 3p-6p PT (6p-9p ET), and then with Mike Malloy from 6p-9p PT (9p-Midnight ET), and then he will finish it out, bradcasting live from Los Angeles for the rest of the night from 9p-Midnight PT (Midnight-3am ET).

In other words, all night long, covering reported results and concerns about election issues around the country. If your local affiliate is not carrying it, listen live online right here.

The show thread started here earlier today, but everyone's page will load and reload faster if we split this up.

***DON'T FORGET TO CHECK BELOW FROM TIME TO TIME BECAUSE THERE ARE GOING TO BE ELECTION NEWS UPDATES COMING ALL NIGHT.***

love, 99

[Like, I don't think I'm dreaming, I could swear I just heard them telling me that Tom Feeney is FINALLY losing in Florida.... Yes!]

Please read my column this week at the UK's Guardian on "The Republican Voter Fraud Hoax".

It's a disgrace that these issues are often covered better in Great Britain and even in Russia, than they are in my own country. If you can, please join me in trying to change that.

The second Mac-style "Paper Ballot v. Voting Machine" campaign ad from Jason Osgood, an election integrity advocate turned Democratic Secretary of State candidate in Washington state, has now been released.

We wrote, in some detail late last month, about Osgood and his reasons for running, as he released the first in a series of humorous 60-second spots that take off on the popular "PC v. Mac" television ads. In his first ad, the slick-looking, yet hapless "Voting Machine" character had lost a few ballots (see that video and the article with it, here). In Osgood's latest spot in the series, our friend "Voting Machine" is having just a bit of trouble due to the heat and humidity...

By the way, since we ran our initial article on Osgood, he has signed the StandingForVoters.org pledge to not concede his election unless and until all votes are counted, counted accurately, and all serious election challenges have been adequately resolved. The BRAD BLOG, which is a co-founder of VelvetRevolution.us, the initial sponsor of the SFV campaign, thanks Osgood for his commitment to the voters. We'd similarly welcome his Republican opponent, incumbent Sam Reed, signing the pledge as well!

Also...we're happy to note that last week, the Green Party's Cynthia McKinney became the first Presidential candidate to sign the SFV pledge. In her case, she signed the "Super Pledge" which includes a few more commitments, such as speaking out about election integrity concerns, and working with SFV to educate voters on the issue.

While guest hosting Mike Malloy's nationally syndicate radio program last week, during an interview with McKinney, we discussed her signing of the pledge, and other issues related to election integrity in some detail. Earlier in the show, independent Presidential candidate Ralph Nader also committed to signing the pledge, so we hope he'll do so soon. The interviews with both Nader and McKinney are posted online here.

Has your candidate signed the pledge yet? It's the least they can do. If they won't stand up for you, why should you stand up for them? Please demand your candidate takes the pledge, whoever, they may be, at StandingForVoters.org! Otherwise, donate to a candidate who has pledged to use their standing to stand up for you, or, hell, send The BRAD BLOG a donation, since we do pledge to stand up for the voters, every damned day!

We'll presume he wasn't just trying to be ironic --- on both points...

I'll withhold most of my personal thoughts here for the moment, since Gail Pellerin, County Clerk for Santa Cruz County, CA, has agreed to come back to continue this discussion on the Peter B. Collins Show this Friday. For the moment then, I'll just let you listen and offer your own thoughts on this conversation from last Friday's show.

Pellerin and I appeared on PBC's radio show to discuss issues of Election Integrity, CA SoS Debra Bowen's "Top-to-Bottom Review" and the Sequoia Voting System that Pellerin uses in Santa Cruz, the hometown of former CA SoS Bruce McPherson.

She is on the public record as having said last July at the public hearing in Sacramento for Bowen's TTB Review: "I can guarantee that every eligible vote is counted accurately," about which, you can imagine, I challenged her on the show. As well, in the interview (complete audio below) she commits to sending her voting systems home yet again on "sleepovers" with poll workers in next year's elections. I also had a thing or two to say to say about that, as you may have guessed. Suffice to say, it was a lively interview.

Pellerin --- presumably a Democrat, as she once worked in the CA state assembly for then-Speaker Willie Brown --- was scheduled only for the first half-hour of the show, but fortunately called back for the final segment to answer some of the questions that I didn't have time to ask her about when she was on the air. I greatly appreciate her willingness to do so and to stand up to the fire.

You'll want to stay tuned for that final segment.

As well, be sure to tune in this Friday at 5pm on the PBC Show (listening link here), where she has agreed to come back and pick up where we left off. I greatly appreciate her willingness to do so. The continued discussion can only benefit voters both in Santa Cruz (one of the locations where Peter's show is heard live on the air) and across the nation, where Elections Officials and Election Integrity advocates must continue to find ways to work together to solve our problems and push back at the damaging, cynical, divisive, selfish, and inaccurate propaganda being forwarded by the Voting Machine Companies.

NOTE 9/22/07: Pellerin returned for another full hour on 9/21/07, the week following this broadcast, in order to follow up on this week's interview. That subsequent second interview and text transcript has now been posted here...

-- Santa Cruz County, CA, County Clerk Gail Pellerin and Brad Friedman on the Peter B. Collins Show, 9/14/07 (appx 41 mins. w/ commercials now removed):

Complete text-transcript of the hour now follows below...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

UPDATE: The original video had one error identifying Frederick Kagan as a co-founder of PNAC. In fact, it was Robert Kagan, Freddie's brother who co-founded PNAC with General Kristol. Freddie is merely a rank and file member of PNAC and signatory to some of the reports generated by the neocon think tank. (hat tip Robert Danow)

Neoconservative co-founder of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and author of Bush's recent Iraq "Surge" plan, Frederick Kagan, shared a virtual propagandafest with Brit Hume on Fox 'News' Sunday yesterday. BRAD BLOG covered the entire charade that was Kagan's Plan for Success back in January along with a timeline evidencing Freddie's ever-changing call for a troop surge which began with 50,000 additional troops and ended up with either 20,000 or 33,000 more soldiers depending on the day of the week.

Perhaps the only thing more amazing than Kagan's lack of honesty and empathy for our troops is Fox's audacity for continuously giving Kagan and his warmongering kin, including "General" Bill Kristol, a platform to spout their neoconservative rhetoric. If Fox 'News' had any integrity whatsoever it would implement a Mendoza Line type requirement for its pundits. In baseball, all one has to do to stay even with the Mendoza Line is get a hit 1 out of every 5 at bats. Imagine if Fox made it a requirement that Kagan had to be right on at least 1 of 5 matters that he weighs in on. Actually, as far as I know, if the minimum requirement were merely to be right once he wouldn't make it on the air.

Guest blogged by Joy Williams

Bush's speech yesterday and Cheney's interview this last week on Meet the Press, were the first salvos in their attempt at business as hideously usual during this election cycle. It's still fear, terror, and divisiveness, and Bush's speech last night had nothing new, except that he said there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11 but then spent the rest of the speech trying to convince us there was a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. His speech was an example of the politicization of 9/11 that is to come. Oh, the spin, the spin.

What is coming next is an ugly and cynical attempt to scare voters into voting to maintain the do-nothing Republicans in Congress.

Democrats need to be prepared with a counter-Rovian strategy. According to the Dallas Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Republicans are spending 90% of their campaign funds on negative ads, where they will attempt to dig up as much dirt as possible on their Democratic competition. And Rove has a strategy to politicize 9/11. Rove's Fall Election Strategy is revealed at Andrew Sullivan's blog...

Go, Ion, go!...

John Conyers op/eds in tomorrow's WaPo on Impeachment. Or a lack thereof. Or otherwise responds to the strawman nonsense from the Republicans of late running on the notion that a vote for Dems this fall is a vote for impeachment of Bush by the incoming Judiciary Committee Chair, John Conyers.

While it may ultimately turn out to be a vote for impeachment, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney will have only themselves to blame. Not John Conyers.

And, as one might expect, his response in WaPo to those sad charges and transparently desperate attempts to scare America, displays his usual grace, dignity and old-style statesmanship...in stark contrast to the nattering nabobs of fear-mongering that are today's disgraceful Congressional Republicans.

Not to give anything away, since we hope you'll read the whole thing, but the last line underscores why John Conyers is a hero for all times...

Bravo. And thank you, sir.

By John Gideon, www.VotersUnite.Org and www.VoteTrustUSA.Org May 15, 2006

Yes, the wheels are wobbling on the locomotives. The vendors --- ES&S, Diebold, and the rest --- attempt to keep a stiff upper lip as they both fail to perform, yet continue collecting tax-payer dollars from the county election coffers. Meanwhile some elections officials have just turned a blind-eye to what is happening while they continue to make excuses for their vendors: The private corporate American Electronic Voting Machine behemoths that are being paid to take over America's Public Electoral system.

And the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) which was put in place by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), theoretically, to keep all of this from occurring? Well, all they do is raise their hands and shrug and tell anyone who asks, that they don't do voting systems certification so they just don't know anything. The Sergeant Schultz Defense, perhaps?

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Just hours ago Betty Ireland, the Secretary of State of West Virginia filed a formal complaint against ES&S with the federal Elections Assistance Commission. A story in the State Journal quotes Secretary Ireland:

There have been failures all over the state. A small sampling of problems gives us:

The national media? Mums the word for them, it seems.