'Course, at the end of the day, most prison bitches put away the shiv, hide it in the mattress, or behind the brick, and go on receiving the fucking, behaving graciously that at least his husband is protecting him from real harm, you know. So Sensenbrenner ended his opening remarks at his "Reckless Justice" hearing by praising the President for the 45-day period of sealing the documents seized from Jefferson's office, saying, "The President has allowed for precisely the sort of reasoned deliberation on important issues of separation of powers I expect this hearing to accord with today." Yeah, now come on back to Daddy and drop your panties. It's lights out on the block.
But the shoplifting of those votes in Ohio was just the tip of the theft-berg. November 2, 2004 was a national ballot-box bonfire. In total, over three million votes (3,600,380 to be exact) were cast -- marked, punched, pulled -- YET NEVER COUNTED. I'm not talking about the Ukraine or Uganda. I'm talking about the United States of America "with liberty and justice for all."
How will they pile up five million un-voters in 2008? Let's start with the three million "disappeared" of 2004:
Step 1: "Spoiling" ballots -- 1,389,231 of them. In the vote-count game, these are called "undervotes" and "overvotes." You can recognize these lost ballots by their hanging chads, punch cards without punches (an Ohio specialty), paper ballots eaten by scanners, and touch screens that didn't know you touched them.
Step 2: Rejecting "provisional ballots" -- 1,090,729 in this pile. Voters finding themselves at the "wrong" precinct, or wrongly "scrubbed" from voter rolls get these back-of-the-bus ballots first inaugurated in 2002. In '04, provisional ballots were passed out like candy to voters in the poorest precincts. They handed them out -- then threw them away -- one million dumped in all. In Ohio, Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell changed state rules, allowing him to toss out the ballots of legal voters who cast ballots in the wrong precinct although these citizens were told their vote would count after confirming their registration.
Step 3: Not counting absentee ballots -- 526,420 of them. At least, that's what we figure from official stats. But it's anyone's guess how many mailed-in votes were dumped. (However, in one case, in Palm Beach, Florida, Jeb Bush's candidate for Elections Supervisor, Theresa LaPore, counted more absentee votes than absentee ballots mailed in. Not the brightest bulb in the vote-fix biz, that Theresa.)
Step 4: Scrub'm, Purge'm, Block'm. These are the voters who never got to vote at all. This group includes those who found their registrations were never entered on the voter rolls. In Ohio, about one-fourth of those registered by Jesse Jackson's 2004 voter drive, found their registrations delayed beyond the election date or lost.
Add to this un-voter group, those who were wrongly "scrubbed" from registries as "felons." For example, there was Bernice Kines, purged in Florida in 2004 because she was convicted of a felony on July 31, 2009. I repeat: 2009. There was something especially odd about the Ohio felon purge: ex-cons are ALLOWED to vote in that state, Mr. Blackwell.
I wish I could give you a book on a page, because information is our weapon: Turn on the lights and the cockroaches scatter. That's why I'm asking you to read RFK's article on the "Theft of Ohio" (link is to Truthout - G) in Rolling Stone magazine -- and GET ANGRY. Then read, Armed Madhouse: The Scheme to Steal '08 -- AND GET READY.
(New York - WABC, June 1, 2006) - Thirteen-year-old Katherine Klose, from Spring Lake, New Jersey, won the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday night.
Klose correctly spelled the word 'ursprache' to claim the title of America's best speller, televised live on ABC.
...
Street people and loft residents have joined forces to block removal of the name "Skid Row" from the sides of firetrucks and rescue ambulances that are assigned to the beleaguered downtown zone.
Firefighters and paramedics - as well as some residents - said the skid row label helps instill a feeling of community in a district struggling with homelessness and crime.
But top fire officials say they've received complaints that the name is derogatory and ordered "Skid Row" stripped from Station 9's two fire engines, its hook-and-ladder truck and its two paramedic ambulances.
"If it's offending people, we don't want to be doing it," said Battalion Chief Lou Roupoli, adding that residents of the new condominiums and lofts popping up in the area have complained that the fire engine label is objectionable.
Some of the developers who have been converting old bank buildings into luxury lofts on the edges of skid row have increasingly been using the less-gritty name "Central City East" to describe the district.
To the firefighters at Station 9, the skid row name is more than just a way of identifying the neighborhood they serve. They take pride working at what is considered the toughest assignment in the Los Angeles Fire Department, where the station can respond to more than 60 calls a day. Off-duty firefighters also wear T-shirts printed with the slogan "Wino Nino Firehouse Skid Row."
The Al Gore-produced global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth is being panned by critics nationwide who claim the 90-plus minute environmental film is "too disturbingly realistic and well-researched to enjoy." "I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief in man-made climate change for the first half-hour - and utterly impossible after that - which makes for a movie-going experience that's far more educational than it is enjoyable," said New York Post film critic Skip Hack. "Gore's film overwhelms viewers with staggering amounts of scientific information until nothing about global warming is left to the imagination, and that's just not good entertainment. Two stars." Some critics have called the film's claims that sea levels could rise 20 feet somewhat sensationalistic, although most agree that this is not enough to save the film from being unwatchably factual.
"Once you scratch and sniff, you realize he would be a very credible senator, and that makes him a very credible candidate," said George Jepsen, the immediate past chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee. "If he was a nut, Joe wouldn't have a problem. But he's intelligent. He's accomplished. There are no personal warts. He teaches in the Bridgeport public schools. How many people of his pedigree and background go do that?"
Mr. Jepsen, who supported Senator Lieberman in past races, has not taken a public position in the primary. He is among many Democrats, however, who predict that voters who are angry with Mr. Lieberman are likely to turn out in great numbers in the primary. The senator, he said, is "genuinely threatened on Aug. 8."
When no one else would step up to challenge Senator Lieberman and everything he represents, my family and I made the decision that the time was indeed right. I hoped that the fundamental humanity and decency of everything America stands for in its core values would call upon others as it had me to rise up and say no more. And when the final votes were tallied at the state's Democratic convention, our faith was vindicated. In the face of unbelievable odds and some pressure from the party brass, Connecticut Democrats called out for change. My belief in our party, our delegates, and in the people of my state has never been firmer.
I realize that our campaign would have been much more difficult without the netroots. I never had to make promises I did not want to keep to big donors because netroots citizens gave five, ten, twenty dollars at a time to my campaign with no strings attached. Before the mainstream media were taking us seriously, bloggers told my story with honesty and insight and compassion. The free exchange of comments and ideas in the blogosphere carried the tale and forced the traditional media to take notice. Ordinary people with video cameras, with petitions, with websites volunteering their time and their passion forged an army that no K Street lobbying money could buy. To all of you I am eternally grateful.
...You can be sure Cheyanne, Wyoming and Zanesville, Ohio got their fair share...
...Meanwhile, grants for cities like Louisville, Omaha and Charlotte, N.C., each jumped by about 40 percent, to about $8.5 million each...
(Washington-WABC, May 31, 2006) - Next year, New York City will get just $124.5 million in anti-terrorism grants from a special program for cities at high risk of attack. That's a cut of some 40 percent from the previous year. [my em]
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Bob Schieffer of CBS News made a good point on "The Charlie Rose Show" last week. He said that successful presidents have all skillfully exploited the dominant medium of their times. The Founders were eloquent writers in the age of pamphleteering. Franklin D. Roosevelt restored hope in 1933 by mastering radio. And John F. Kennedy was the first president elected because of his understanding of television.
Will 2008 bring the first Internet president? Last time, Howard Dean and later John Kerry showed that the whole idea of "early money" is now obsolete in presidential politics. The Internet lets candidates who catch fire raise millions in small donations practically overnight. That's why all the talk of Hillary Clinton's "war chest" making her the front runner for 2008 is the most hackneyed punditry around. Money from wealthy donors remains the essential ingredient in most state and local campaigns, but "free media" shapes the outcome of presidential races, and the Internet is the freest media of all.
[...] Their hope: to get even a fraction of the 50 million who voted for the next American Idol to nominate a third-party candidate for president online and use this new army to get him or her on the ballot in all 50 states. The idea is to go viral - or die. "The worst thing that could happen would be for a bunch of old white guys like us to run this," Jordan says.
"Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians.
Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life