Sunday 2/20 Election Fraud, Reform, & Updates Thread

In order to organize and document I thought it would be a good idea to have a daily thread to place items related to reform, fraud, protests, and other items. This also make it easier to "catch up" when we are away from the computer for a while.

Please help us. If you see something that isn't here post it with a link to the thread and a thanks to the author. Thanks to everyone who is helping with this project.


Link to the thread from yesterday: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x330417

continues today. Jeff gets press from around the world.

The strange case of a White House accredited reporter

Indo-Asian News Service, India

New York, Feb 20 (IANS) A "reporter", who has been described as a gay prostitute by at least one respected late night comic and who gained access to the White House despite his dubious credentials, has quit his job.

Jeff Gannon, an alias used by James Guckert, announced on his personal website www.jeffgannon.com "Because of the attention being paid to me I find it is no longer possible to effectively be a reporter for Talon News.

"In consideration of the welfare of me and my family I have decided to return to private life." The website describes him as "a voice of the new media" which has now "gone silent".

The case of Gannon, an unconcealed supporter of President George W. Bush's Republican Party, is raising all sorts of questions about ethics, White House security, partisan politics and the media.

More: http://www.eians.com/stories/2005/02/20/20of.shtml

in The NovaScotian



Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

subscription for full acccess

Link: http://www.herald.ns.ca/cgi-bin/home/dispsecfront?2005/02/20+NovaScotian+2005/02/20

Planting a stooge in press corps not out of character for Bush

Leonard Pitts Jr. / Syndicated columnist


Weeks later, I'm still waiting for a good explanation of what Jeff Gannon was doing in the White House. And for you to be upset about it.

Gannon is the fellow who made himself memorable during last month's presidential news conference by asking about Democratic pessimism regarding the nation's economy. Specifically, he asked if President Bush could work with "people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality."

The unusually partisan phrasing prompted reporters and liberal groups to ask the same question: Who is this guy? Well, it turns out that Gannon is not really Gannon. James Guckert says he prefers that pseudonym for "commercial" reasons. It also turns out that a company he owns is the registered owner of several sexually suggestive Web addresses. Hotmilitarystud.com, to name just one.

Most curious of all, though, is that it turns out he is not really a reporter, at least not if that term still denotes a disinterested observer of events. Rather, Guckert writes for a Web site, talnonnews.com, which is linked to another site, GOPUSA.com. That site serves, as you might gather, to promote the Republican Party.

>>>snip

Frankly, the only thing more galling than the brazenness with which the White House abrogates the public's right to know is the sheeplike docility with which we accept it, with which we become complicit in our own hoodwinking.

More: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002184419_pitts20.html

Boss denies writer favored

Web site operator says he knew of reporter's 2 IDs

Ralph Blumenthal
New York Times
Feb. 20, 2005 12:00 AM

HOUSTON - The operator of an activist GOP Web site and news service said Friday that he had known for two years that his White House correspondent had two identities.

But the operator, Robert Eberle, denied in an interview that the correspondent was an administration plant or was given preferential treatment as a Republican partisan to ask soft questions at briefings.

Breaking his silence on the events, which have been portrayed by Democrats as a Republican effort to manipulate news, Eberle said "it took me by surprise" in early 2003 when the freelancer he had taken on as Jeff Gannon said he was gaining White House accreditation under his given name, James D. Guckert. "He said Gannon was his professional name; he didn't like the sound of his other name," Eberle recounted.

Eberle, 36, an aerospace engineer with a yen for conservative politics, said the disclosure raised no red flags about Guckert's journalistic credentials or professionalism.

More: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0220gannon20.html

The news is broken: Journalists find scandals, image eroding credibility

By Greg Gatlin
Sunday, February 20, 2005

That the public thinks journalists are only slightly more believable than used-car salesmen may not come as a shock, given scandals that have damaged media credibility in recent years.

What's more sobering to some media observers is that the hits continue to come.

``Times have changed, and there is a growing distrust of the media and there is a feeling that reporters are out to make money or make celebrities of themselves,'' said Robert Bertsche, a media lawyer with Prince, Lobel, Glovsky & Tye.

Timothy Karr, executive director of Mediachannel.org, a not-for-profit media issues group, says the story of declining media credibility has itself become a major media story. ``In many ways, it's the biggest story of the year,'' Karr said.

More: http://business.bostonherald.com/businessNews/view.bg?articleid=69460

Where Are All the Resignations of Editors Who Ran Bush Propaganda?

By Dave Lindorff, ILCA Associate Member

When CBS goofed up, people were fired and quit in disgrace. But when dozens, maybe hundreds of news outfits run Bush administration-made propaganda posing as legitimate news reports, nobody has to resign. What gives here?


Okay, so we know now that the Bush administration has been using all kinds of devious means to push propaganda on the American public--fake news generated by the Pentagon for overseas, and ultimately, courtesy of blowback, U.S. consumption, fake news reports by fake reporters peddled to local TV stations, bought reporters and syndicated columnists paid to shill for the administration's policies, and even fake reporters salted into the White House press corps to ask puffball questions if the president or press secretary start getting too much heat.


But why is this all happening? Surely the Bush administration isn't the first to push its story out there. And sure, the administration should take some of the blame for this Soviet-style manipulation of public opinion.


But what about the media?


This column already made the point that if the White House press corps were doing its job and asking tough, probing questions, James Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon, would have stood out like a stallion with a hard-on--er, excuse me, a sore thumb.

More: http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1866&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

NEWSWEEK PERISCOPE: Gannon's Enemies List

Distribution Source : PRNewswire

Date : Sunday - February 20, 2005



NEW YORK, Feb. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- NEWSWEEK PERISCOPE item:

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050220/NYSU006 )

Jeff Gannon is considering suing liberal interest groups, bloggers and others for a "political assassination" that drove him from his job as a reporter for a conservative news outfit called Talon News, he told NEWSWEEK. Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, singled out Media Matters -- a "well-funded" liberal group headed by longtime "attack dog" David Brock. ("Everything we wrote about him came from the public record," Brock replied.)

It remains unclear how Gannon got routine White House press access for nearly two years; he acknowledged he first began getting clearance to White House press briefings in early 2003 as a representative of GOPUSA, a group headed by Texas GOP activist Bobby Eberle-months before Eberle even created Talon News. Gannon said he had no access to White House aides outside the press room, nor did he try to interview any. When President Bush called on him at a press conference last month-during which he asked a question with false info about Sen. Harry Reid-"nobody was more surprised than myself," said Gannon.

-- Michael Isikoff and Holly Bailey

Link: http://press.arrivenet.com/bus/article.php/593643.html


edited to add discussion: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1251933

and http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x330814

The mole, the US media and a White House coup

The reporter who wasn't is part of a wider press scandal, writes Paul Harris in New York

Sunday February 20, 2005
The Observer

For two years Jeff Gannon cut an unobtrusive figure at White House press conferences. The shaven-headed, craggily handsome man worked for an obscure news agency called Talon News, known for its conservative sympathies. He was often the subject of jokes by colleagues on weightier news organisations.

No one is laughing now, because Gannon was far from being a harmless distraction. He was writing under a false name and working for a Republican front organisation. Suddenly, his 'softball' questions to White House officials looked less like eccentricities and more like plotting by an administration which has frequently displayed a dark mastery of the arts of press control.

When it emerged that Gannon was also linked to gay prostitution websites and might be a gay prostitute himself, the scandal as to how he was allowed daily access to the White House grew even murkier. The American media is now being forced to confront the possibility that Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, was simply a Republican plant, used by officials, including President George W Bush, to ask easy questions in difficult press conferences. 'The idea of having a mole in the White House press corp is amazing, but that's what it looks like,' said Jack Lule, a journalism professor at Lehigh University.

But the Gannon affair, which has shocked much of America's political establishment, is just the latest scandal in the media establishment. Newspapers including the New York Times and USA Today have been hit by plagiarism and forgery scandals. Other papers and television stations have been consumed with a soul-searching inquest into how they were misled about non-existent Iraqi weapons programmes. Added to that is growing evidence of a White House campaign to bypass or control the media in its everyday presentation of government policy , which included paying one journalist hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote its policies.

More: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1418539,00.html


Thanks to Bozita here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1251419

While the Jason Blair 'scandal' was unfolding--which, as I recall, involved Blair inventing some quotes and locations, out of laziness, but not materially or seriously affecting any event or person--the Bush Cartel was slaughtering 100,000+ people in Iraq, with their MAIN P.R. COVER provided by the New York Times which printed and promoted LIE after LIE after LIE about Iraq WMDs. Spring 2003.

Blair was crucified for his relatively minor journalistic sins. The mass murderers not only got away, they retained control of the U.S. government, and now want to kill another hundred thousand Muslims in Iran. And the criminal propagandists who are promoting and profiting from these war crimes, the New York Times news organization, is still in place, and their chief liar, Judith Miller, is still employed there.

Similarly, the CBS 'scandal' about a 'forged document'--one item among many facts, documents and corroborating witnesses that firmly establish that George Bush disobeyed orders and failed in his duties in the Texas Air National Guard--provided cover for the most serious criminal political operation within the US that we have ever seen, the theft of the 2004 election. The focus of the lapdog media became CBS rather than Wally O'Dell and H.F. Ahmanson. It furthermore distracted people from the torture scandal--a scandal of immense criminality within the White House.

Back a few years, we had the media obsessing on the Gary Condit-Chandra Levy story (and of course focusing only on the salacious aspects of that story, not the political ones, which were significant), while Dick Cheney was meeting in secret with Kenneth Lay and assorted energy criminals in the White House, pouring over maps of Iraq--spring 2001--and SOMEBODY OR OTHER was plotting 9/11. The lapdog media went absolutely nuts over the Condit-Levy story, which could almost be read as deliberate COVER for some of the worst crimes ever committed in the White House.

So...the question we need to ask ourselves is NOT whether the Bush Cartel would use a phony journalist whose other identity was a gay prostitute for asking puff questions of puppet Bush in press conferences--because the answer to that is obviously YES, they would use, abuse, backstab, poison, blackmail, threaten, kill, destroy, and nuke anybody or anything to enhance their power, and they are utter hypocrites in what they will use.

The question is: What is this a cover story FOR?

2/20/2005 10:30am

Gannon Gate

While the Gannon scandal breaks into the maainstream media this weekend, the story behind the story -- why the story was intitially ignored -- is beginning to be examined, not just in the blogosphere, but in the international press. As this story continues to develop, it is worth examining this question, and the additional question of whether the liberal blogosphere successfully shamed the mainstream media into doing their jobs. If this is the case, are we finally developing a progresssive media to counter the right wing noise machine?

--J.C.


Link: http://www.johnconyers.com/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={B166974A-C132-4EC3-9682-FE6E08C1A584}

• February 20, 2005 | 7:52 p.m. ET

Separating the Gannons from the Guckerts (Keith Olbermann)

NEW YORK - So, the artist formerly known as Jeff Gannon is considering suing everybody.

Well, this will separate the Gannons from the Guckerts.

Gannon told Newsweek that he is contemplating “suing liberal interest groups, bloggers, and others,” for what he termed “political assassination.” Don’t see that in the statutes anywhere.

He is presumably pondering some sort of libel action, or perhaps he harbors some vague hope of proving invasion of privacy. This would, of course, require that what’s been said about him isn’t true (though he hasn’t denied it), and was maliciously published or broadcast by people who knew it wasn’t true or made no effort to confirm or refute it. Of course, he had told Editor & Publisher last week that he would no longer talk to the media, then followed that up five days later by a complaint to the same magazine that nobody was trying to contact him (and in the same interview denied he was giving an interview with CNN, an interview which he taped about an hour later).

More: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/

Ohioan bidding for office hopes to get bids on eBay

Sunday, February 20, 2005
Julie Carr Smyth
Plain Dealer Bureau

Columbus - It's come to this. People are now running for Ohio governor on eBay.

The way Larry Bays sees it, what better way to raise money and boost his profile than putting himself out for hire on America's most popular electronic auction block?

>>>snip

Bidding began at $900 for the services offered by Bays, "a Republican for the working people."

He offers to work for the high bidder one eight-hour day a month painting, cleaning or doing odd jobs at the auction winner's home or business. The contract would run for the entire first year he is in office.

If perchance he is not elected, the ad states, he will still do the work.

As of Saturday evening, no bidders had stepped forward.

Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office, said Bays may have found "a gray area in the law."

More: http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1108895609259751.xml

Values, taxes move U.S minorites right:

: WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 : U.S. minorities are shifting to the right, Conservative Political Action Conference organizers said Saturday, because conservatism has a new appeal.

CPAC officials said the 2005 conference demonstrates minorities are now more open to the U.S. conservative movement because of values, issues and taxes.

Ohio GOP Secretary of State Ken Blackwell said the significant increase in support for Bush among blacks in the 2004 election was due in no small part to the president's support for traditional marriage.

Blackwell, one of nation's most prominent black elected officials of either party, said, "Values voters won Ohio and won the presidency for George W. Bush."

Minorities, CPAC spokesman Ian Walters said, "are more open than ever before to conservative ideas... because they are more accessible and applicable than what the Democrats and the traditional civil rights groups, with their reflexively liberal leadership have to offer."

More: http://www.newkerala.com/news-daily/news/features.php?action=fullnews&id=74558

Changing numbers call state's election accuracy to question

By Eric Pryne

Seattle Times staff reporter

As she watched hundreds of votes appear and disappear in the dramatic recounts of last year's governor's race, Michelle Anderson wondered why the numbers were changing so much.

"It surprised me," the independent voter from Lake Stevens said.

"Look at our banking system. I can go anywhere in the world and withdraw money at an ATM, and it balances out to the penny."

The shifting recount totals have taken a back seat in the titanic struggle over the governorship as Democrats and Republicans wrangle in a Wenatchee courtroom over provisional ballots, dead voters and felons.

Still, for many people the numbers were the first indication that the accuracy of Washington elections — and maybe elections in general — is not what they had imagined. Doubts persist, as state lawmakers debate election-reform proposals and King County officials review their own procedures.

More: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2002185379_accuracy20m.html

Video - ABC, FOX, CNN report on secret tape from then Gov. Bush - 2/20 @ 9 AM ET

Combined clips from FOX, CNN and ABC Sunday morning shows:

• Doug Wead, advisor to GHW Bush, secretly made 9 hours of tapes of Gov. GWB
  
• Says Ashcroft would be good pick for Supreme Court or VP
  
• Admits to trying marijuana / cocaine
  
• He wouldn't fire gays due to evangelical demands
  
• Calls Gore a "pathological liar"

Video in Real Media format (128k stream / 5 minutes):
http://www.edwardsdavid.com/BushVideos/fox_abc_cnn_sunday_bush_tapes_050220-01.rm

---

February 20, 2005

In Secretly Taped Conversations, Glimpses of the Future President

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK


ASHINGTON, Feb. 19 - As George W. Bush was first moving onto the national political stage, he often turned for advice to an old friend who secretly taped some of their private conversations, creating a rare record of the future president as a politician and a personality.

In the last several weeks, that friend, Doug Wead, an author and former aide to Mr. Bush's father, disclosed the tapes' existence to a reporter and played about a dozen of them.

Variously earnest, confident or prickly in those conversations, Mr. Bush weighs the political risks and benefits of his religious faith, discusses campaign strategy and comments on rivals. John McCain "will wear thin," he predicted. John Ashcroft, he confided, would be a "very good Supreme Court pick" or a "fabulous" vice president. And in exchanges about his handling of questions from the news media about his past, Mr. Bush appears to have acknowledged trying marijuana.
...
But Mr. Bush also repeatedly worried that prominent evangelical Christians would not like his refusal "to kick gays." At the same time, he was wary of unnerving secular voters by meeting publicly with evangelical leaders. When he thought his aides had agreed to such a meeting, Mr. Bush complained to Karl Rove, his political strategist, "What the hell is this about?"

Mr. Bush, who has acknowledged a drinking problem years ago, told Mr. Wead on the tapes that he could withstand scrutiny of his past. He said it involved nothing more than "just, you know, wild behavior." He worried, though, that allegations of cocaine use would surface in the campaign, and he blamed his opponents for stirring rumors. "If nobody shows up, there's no story," he told Mr. Wead, "and if somebody shows up, it is going to be made up." But when Mr. Wead said that Mr. Bush had in the past publicly denied using cocaine, Mr. Bush replied, "I haven't denied anything."


more: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/politics/20talk.html

...what is it a cover story FOR?

February 20, 2005

Letter - NC Voter alerts Dean about stolen elections

From an email:

What's going on with the Dean's at Democracy for America, and the DNC, is crucially important. The national Democratic Party has failed us catastrophically on the integrity of our voting system--and, given what just happened in California, with the loss of our anti-Diebold Secretary of State, Kevin Shelley, the state Party leadership is also a catastrophe in many cases. The national Party either helps us NOW to restore our right to vote, or it is a dead political party. Election integrity is necessarily a local fight (the BushCon Congress ain't gonna help--mark my words). People need help and organization LOCALLy--in some cases to BY-PASS the entrenched Dem leadership. The Dean's are savvy on this matter, and provide hope.

Video - CNN interviews John of AmeriBlog about Gannon - 2/20 @ 11:30AM ET

Author of AmeriBlog, John Aravosis, broke parts of the Jeff Gannon story. He is interviewed by Howard Kurtz on CNN's Reliable Sources with comments by the author of the PowerLine blog.



Video in Real Media format (100k stream / 5 minutes):
http://www.edwardsdavid.com/BushVideos/cnn_reliablesources_gannon_ameriblog_050220-01.rm

From tuscaloosanews.com:
February 20, 2005

Fla. early voting, runoffs among election laws in need of streamlining

By BRENT KALLESTAD


Supervisors of Elections across the state want the runoff repealed, saying it's expensive, outdated and would force them to make difficult changes the election calendar.
...
"To have a politically appointed bureaucrat having total control over duly elected independent officers, it's unheard of," veteran Okaloosa County elections chief Pat Hollarn said. "Even if some of them are not good, let the county voters decide this."
...
Hood appeared before a joint House and Senate elections committee in January and asked legislators to change in voter registration deadlines and restrict campaign volunteers from approaching people waiting to vote early.

She will also ask lawmakers to end voting the Sunday before Election Day to give supervisors a day to update their voter rolls, said Hood spokeswoman Jenny Nash.


more: http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050220/APN/502200521&cachetime=3&template=dateline

California ALERT!

Election fraud TEACH-IN's next weekend
in Oakland Feb. 26, and Santa Monica Feb. 27

OAKLAND, Calif., Sat. Feb. 26

ELECTION RIGGING 101
A National Teach-In
On the 2004 election and what we must do to restore democracy

With Bob Fitrakis
Ohio Attorney, Editor, Columbus Free Press
(one of the four attorneys fighting sanctions in Ohio for Moss v. Bush)

Saturday, Feb. 26th
10am - 4pm
1st Congregational Church
2501 Harrison St., Oakland, CA

$10 suggested donation
please bring lunch
more information to be posted soon at: www.democraticrenewal.com

How to Rig It:
-11 hour lines for democrats only
-"kerry" votes defaulting to "bush"
- registered voters purged
- exit polls ignored
- recounts that weren’t
and much more.

How to stop it:
- stunning documentary footage
- speakers
- action

Butch Wing, Rainbow Push
Larry Bensky, KPFA
Walter Riley, East Bay Votes
Speakers from Blackboxvoting.org
VotersUnite.org
Open Voting Consortium
the MMOB
and more

www.democratic renewal.com

------------

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Sun. Feb. 27

"Who Got Glitched: An Election Reform Teach-In"
Sunday, Feb 27th, 2:00 - 5:00 pm
The Church at Ocean Park
(2nd and Hill, Santa Monica)

Presenting:
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Maxine Waters!
Bev Harris, Black Box Voting, Investigator
Bob Fitrakis, Columbus Free Press,
(Attorney, Moss vs. Bush/Cheney/Blackwell)
The Jonas/Quinn/ Ritt legal team for Ohio
Blair Bobier, Green Party, ‘The Ohio Recount’
Great Film Clips &
‘Building a Civil Rights /Voter Rights Coaliton’
Moderated by Ian Masters, KPFK
with Butch Wing, Rainbow Push
Medea Benjamin, Global Exchange & Codepink
Brad Freidman, Velvet Revolution
Kevin Spidel, Progressive Democrats
Blair Bobier, Green party
Susan Clark, Pro-Democracy Advocate
Mandeep Gill, Citizen Lobbyist ..and YOU!

Tickets $10 - No one turned away for lack of funds
Ticket orders & info: tickets@citizensact.org
Seating limited. Reservations recommended.

http://www.citizensact.org/pages/2/index.htm

--------------

See emlev posts for additional details, discussion:

OAKLAND

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=327393&mesg_id=327393

SANTA MONICA

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x329512

And here's another:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x330544

See this forum...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=327393&mesg_id=327393

February 20, 2005

Power to the people

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist

THE DEEPEST divide in American politics is not the one that separates Republicans from Democrats or conservatives from liberals. It is the gulf between Insiders and Outsiders -- between the incumbents who treat public office as private property and the increasingly neutered electorate in whose name they claim to act. You may have learned in ninth-grade civics class that lawmakers are the people's servants, temporarily entrusted with power that the people can take back at any time. But ninth grade is light-years away from the reality of Congress and the statehouses today, where many legislators regard their positions as lifetime entitlements that voters must not be allowed to tamper with.

The incumbent-protection racket takes many forms, from high ballot-access hurdles to onerous campaign-finance rules. But nothing does more to turn elections into shams than gerrymandering -- mapping congressional and legislative districts so that they become wholly owned subsidiaries of one political party.

Gerrymanders aren't always used to suppress partisan minorities. Sometimes both parties collude, as California lawmakers did in 2001. The Los Angeles Times recalled last week that ''Democrats and Republicans struck an agreement ensuring that whichever party represented a district at the time would get or keep a registration advantage. The sweetheart deal worked better than the drafters had expected. In 2002, only three legislative seats changed parties. Last November, not one of the 153 congressional and legislative seats on the ballot switched from 'R' to 'D' or vice versa."
...
Arnold Schwarzenegger agrees. Unlike the Supreme Court, he intends to do something about it. The charismatic California governor has launched a full-scale attack on redistricting abuse, demanding that the power to draw election maps be taken from the Legislature and turned over to a committee of retired judges. Legislators hate the idea, but they know Schwarzenegger can go over their heads. People's Advocate, the organization that spearheaded the effort to recall former Governor Gray Davis in 2003, has already begun collecting the 600,000 names on petitions it would take to bypass the Legislature and submit a redistricting initiative directly to the voters.


more: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/02/20/power_to_the_people/

...har, har, har, har, har, har, har, har...I'm on the floor...

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Demos split on electoral strategy in South
Some write region off, but Dean not one

By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau


WASHINGTON -- As former Vermont governor and Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean took the helm of the Democratic National Committee a week ago, he declared he would make the party competitive in all 50 states, including in the South.

It was a bold promise for a party that has not won a single Southern electoral vote in the past two presidential elections. To Southern ears it sounded all the more unlikely coming from Dean, who famously remarked early in his failed presidential bid last year that he wanted to be the choice of the "guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks."

With Republicans having tightened their grip on the region in 2004, some Democrats openly advocate writing off the 11 states of the Old Confederacy as a lost cause. But others are busy hatching plans to regain a footing in a region the party dominated for much of the 20th century.

Next week, the liberal Center for American Progress is co-hosting a conference at the University of North Carolina called "New Strategies for Southern Progress" that will probe topics such as "The Mind of the South" and "Rethinking the Role of Faith and the Community," according to the conference program. The centrist Democratic Leadership Council has gone even further in forging a new Democratic identity, crafting a how-to manual for candidates on how to talk about hot-button issues such as gun control, abortion and affirmative action without alienating Southern voters.



more: http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-3/1108883359180510.xml

THE DEMS JUST DON'T GET IT!

By Mary Pitt


The Democratic leadership just don't get it! Day after day, we hear them whine that we must become more Republican Lite in order to win. We should "move right" and be more conciliatory to our opponents if we want to earn more votes. In the Senate, our "leaders" bow to the will of the president in confirming the nominations of people who should not be allowed to serve in any capacity, but we hear the whine that "The President is entitled to have the people he wants to work with him". The House knuckles under to proposals to remove the only method by which the people can hold the feet of the corporate victimizers to the fire for their marketing of shoddy workmanship, defective products and dangerous drugs.

These people are tone deaf to the messages they received during the late unlamented Presidential campaign. Due to the exhortations of such people as Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, and yes, even Al Sharpton, the Democratic Party for the first time exceeded the financial contributions of the Republicans and their sponsoring millionaires. Common people who had never before stirred themselves to bother, registered to vote, contributed their hard-earned dollars, and campaigned with hope in the prospect of regaining their government. For the first time in several administrations it appeared possible to elect a "man of the people" who would stand up to those who had, by Executive Order, suspended many of our Constitutional rights, slammed the hated Patriot Act through Congress before it could even be read, and plunged our nation into a pre-emptive war that is costing the lives of our sons on a daily basis.

But this was not to be. The Republican propaganda machine and the "Beltway Media" came out in force, ridiculing this, the first populist uprising in a century, as a looney-left movement and very carefully steering the promotion of a more acceptable "mainstream" candidate. It took the airing out of context of "the scream" by Howard Dean to write finis to the yearnings of the "huddled masses". It took little of the voter suppression that has become typical in our national elections to discourage those who had so eagerly contemplated a return to a "government of the people" and to convince them that voting would again be a waste of their time. They had hoped to assist a real leader to arise and give the Bush administration the thrashing they so richly deserved and to place the nation back on the right track.

This hope was dashed by the failure of John Kerry to step up to the plate and to fight for the principles in which they so ardently believed. Senator Kerry failed this test by refusing to defend himself against such CREEPs as the Swift Boat Vetereans for Truth or adequately to speak out on the pressing domestic issues. It became a case of trying to be more Bush than Bush. Yes, it was right to invade Iraq, even though the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction and complicity in the bombing of the World Trade Center were proven to be convenient lies. No, we would not soon be recalling the troops who were being kept there in literal involuntary servitude to the point of exhaustion. No, there was no reason to institute a draft in order to provide them with replacements. Kerry strutted onto the stage and "reported for duty" as if directing the same war of which the people so disapproved and ignored the plight of those who are having trouble coping with layoffs from work and ever-dwindling paychecks while their children are attending sub-standard schools and suffering from inadequate health care. Further, in the back of every non-Republican mind was the admonition, "Be careful what you say. Be careful what you do." Why would any freedom-loving American who had enjoyed living in the United States waste their time by running the gauntlet to the polls only to vote for "more of the same, with a slight difference"?


more: http://www.opednews.com/pittMary_023005_dems.htm

...writer (Mary Pitt) politically, I think it's vitally important to understand what really happened, in order to devise the correct remedy.

It may well be that the Democratic leadership colluded in the Iraq War--in fact, it's more than "maybe," they DID. But what is far worse--more devastating in the long run, and more ruinous to our democracy and thus to our ability to control our government--is their collusion on BushCons controlling the voting system, through private ownership of the secret, proprietary programming code that counts--or doesn't count--all our votes.

In California, we're having to fight DEMOCRATS to get this changed. And Democrats sat in Congress and watched this happen, and SAID NOTHING.

The remedy is very clear: A state by state, county by county, knock-down drag-out over election reform. Congress is not going to do anything. They CREATED THIS PROBLEM. We have to solve it ourselves, locally. Get busy!

Were more votes stolen through suppression, tabulators and DREs or were more votes stolen through sheer manipulation of public opinion?

Either way, the neocon manipulation of public opinion is election fraud.

---

George W. Bush and the Personality Cult

by Mary Shaw


Democrats and other liberals and progressives watched in incredulous awe as George W. Bush won a second term as U.S. president. How could so many people vote against their own best interests? How can they believe that they voted for "moral values", when the basic core values that make this country great, like access to jobs, health care, education, and the American dream, are being slowly whittled away by the Bush administration? How can we explain Bush's inexplicable popularity? Perhaps the answer lies in the theory of the personality cult.

Personality cults sometimes form in power-hungry regimes, such as Stalinist Russia or Mao's China. Through extensive government-led propaganda campaigns, the leader is elevated to an almost divine level. He is venerated as a liberator and a savior in the war against good and evil. He wins the blind adulation of an effectively brainwashed public. And he is neither questioned nor held accountable.
...
Most of the credit for the Bush administration's public relations bamboozlement goes to Karl Rove, George W. Bush's Senior Advisor and chief political strategist. Rove's propaganda machine has turned Bush into a messiah while at the same time demonizing all of his political opponents through lies, smear campaigns, and an ingenious repertoire of dirty tricks. All in the name of doing God's work and protecting our "freedom" and "democracy".

Rove distracted the American public from the war in Iraq and the failing economy by focusing the election on three key
issues: God, guns, and gays. Added to the formula was a hefty dose of fear, the true mind killer. that, if Democrats won the election, we would take away their bibles, take away their guns, and force the whole country into same-sex marriages. Despite the sheer absurdity of it, it worked.


more: http://www.opednews.com/shawmary_022005_bush_personality_cult.htm

Most unpopular president in history. Approval ratings sank to FORTY-EIGHT PERCENT on his INAUGURATION DAY!!! --and were absolutely dismal, and unprecedented, since before the "election." Writer is promoting a myth. Doesn't have the facts, or can't face reality.

I DO think it's important to understand how ANYONE--aside from the super-rich, and out and out insane people--can have voted for the Bush Cartel, and how the Coup uses propaganda and the lapdog media to create this DELUSION of democracy. But that understanding MUST BEGIN with the facts about the election, and, if it does not, it will mislead the reader, and give over-emphasis to certain factors, as this article does.

The fact of the matter is that a MAJORITY of voters rejected the Bush Cartel, and could not get their will enforced, due to massive election fraud. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO KNOW, because it means that ordinary Americans SAW THROUGH all the lies and propaganda and crap that was thrown at them.

It is THEY who should be the focus--the vast majority who believe in fairness and honesty--and not the idiots or self-servers who voted for the Cartel anyway. This majority is not being represented in Washington, and most don't know what happened. Journalists--if they are worthy of the word--should be informing them.

-----

Note: As Dr. Steven Freeman has shown, Gore 2000 repeat voters + huge blowout in new Democratic voter registration in 2004 (Dems 57%, Repubs 41%) + huge jump of Nader voters to Kerry = a 4 to 8 million vote Kerry margin that mysteriously disappeared on election day.

Exit poll analysis shows where it was stolen from (20 battleground states, mostly). Johns Hopkins, and others, show how--in their reports on the insecurity of electronic voting. News sleuthing shows who--those who own and control the secret, proprietary programming code that counts all our votes (2 Bush "Pioneers"--Wally O'Dell, head of Diebold, and chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio, and rightwing nut billionaire H.F. Ahmanson, of ES&S).

February 19, 2005

Editorial: Voter ID doesn't get to real election problems

One person, one vote has become the bedrock foundation of American democracy, ensuring every legal citizen's vote matters, is accurately counted and thereby influences elected officials to reflect the intent of the majority of the electorate.

But problems during the last two presidential elections - not to mention local elections in Bernalillo County - suggest our national, state and local election systems might not be living up to this standard.

Officials in Santa Fe, including Gov. Bill Richardson, seem obsessed lately with requiring voter identification on Election Day, reportedly to minimize vote fraud. But many citizens are more concerned with whether their votes actually are being counted.

Requiring voter ID, while not a bad idea, seems to be a solution looking for a problem.

There is very little, if any, credible evidence of fraudulent voting - nothing that even comes close to suggesting election results are being compromised by a swarm of fraudulent ballots.


more: http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/op_editorials/article/0,2565,ALBQ_19867_3563017,00.html

Video - Face the Nation Commentary on Jailing Journalist - 2/20 @ 10:50AM ET

Commentary from Bob Schieffer regarding federal prosecution of journalist regarding Valerie Plame leak. This certainly seems to be partisan prosecution as Robert Novak, who originally published the leaked story, is not being prosecuted.



Video in Real Media format (128k stream / 3 minutes):
http://www.edwardsdavid.com/BushVideos/cbs_schieffer_jailing_journalist_050220-01.rm

Kennedy seeking clear run in '06

He's raising funds to stem challenge
By Frank Phillips, Globe Staff | February 20, 2005

Although his political account bulges with $4.7 million in cash and he has no opponent in sight, US Senator Edward M. Kennedy is on a fund-raising rampage from coast to coast, a campaign that Democratic supporters say is designed to leave him without a Republican opponent for the first election in his four decades in the Senate.

The Kennedy fund-raising bandwagon comes to Boston March 4, when the senator and his family are throwing a birthday party for him expected to raise at least $500,000. Kennedy, who is turning 73, is pressing the state's Democratic establishment for the event that will hit donors up for a minimum $1,000 donation.

But the birthday party is only a small part of Kennedy's travels across America as he attempts to build an $8 million campaign fund by the end of this year. A similar $1,000-a-head birthday fund-raiser is scheduled next week in Washington, helping Kennedy raise close to $500,000 more, aides say.

He just returned last weekend from a swing through California, where he held a series of events that yielded several hundred thousand dollars. In October, a fund-raising party in New York City raised him another several hundred thousand dollars.

More: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/02/20/kennedy_seeking_clear_run_in_06/

Thanks to ckramer here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1612136

Saturday, 19 February 2005

SCOTT RITTER SAYS U.S. PLANS JUNE ATTACK ON IRAN, ‘COOKED’ JAN. 30 IRAQI ELECTION RESULTS
By Mark Jensen


The principal theme of Scott Ritter's talk was Americans’ duty to protect the U.S. Constitution by taking action to bring an end to the illegal war in Iraq. But in passing, the former UNSCOM weapons inspector stunned his listeners with two pronouncements. Ritter said plans for a June attack on Iran have been submitted to President George W. Bush, and that the president has approved them. He also asserted that knowledgeable sources say U.S. officials "cooked" the results of the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq.

On Iran, Ritter said that President George W. Bush has received and signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005. Its purported goal is the destruction of Iran’s alleged program to develop nuclear weapons, but Ritter said neoconservatives in the administration also expected that the attack would set in motion a chain of events leading to regime change in the oil-rich nation of 70 million -- a possibility Ritter regards with the greatest skepticism.

The former Marine also said that the Jan. 30 elections, which George W. Bush has called "a turning point in the history of Iraq, a milestone in the advance of freedom," were not so free after all. Ritter said that U.S. authorities in Iraq had manipulated the results in order to reduce the percentage of the vote received by the United Iraqi Alliance from 56% to 48%.

Asked by UFPPC's Ted Nation about this shocker, Ritter said an official involved in the manipulation was the source, and that this would soon be reported by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist in a major metropolitan magazine -- an obvious allusion to New Yorker reporter Seymour M. Hersh.


more: http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2295/

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1611925

I just read this a few minutes ago. Sometimes I wonder if there is any hope in stopping this. :cry:

...our right to vote. That is why I've turned from environmental and anti-war activism to election fraud activism and reform. We the people are without power. We cannot get our will enforced. What's also clear is that too many Democratic leaders actually support this war in the Middle East. We are virtually without representation in Congress (and obviously in the White House) on a war that nearly 60% of Americans OPPOSE.

We can tear our hair out. We can put a million people in the streets of DC. It will not make one particle of difference.

We need to get this through our heads. This is a FASCIST COUP--and one that was pulled off with more collusion by the Democratic Party leadership than we even know about.

And there is only one way out of this--state by state, county by county, we MUST recover our right to vote!

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Kerry on the rebound

Tribune Editorial


Kerry is carving out a role for himself as the Bush administration’s critic-in-chief on Capitol Hill. He was one of 13 senators — one of only two on the Foreign Relations Committee — to vote against Condoleezza Rice’s nomination as secretary of state.

You can question the wisdom of the politics of voting against the popular Rice, but there was no question of where he was coming from on the nomination. His action seemed an indirect rebuttal to critics who found him indecisive and wishy-washy on the campaign trail.

In recent weeks he introduced a major piece of legislation, called “Kids First,” designed to extend health-care coverage to 11 million children through expansion of Medicaid. The $2 billion projected cost of the program would be paid for by — no surprise here — repealing parts of the Bush tax cuts.
...
Whatever one thinks of Kerry, American democracy is an adversarial system and demands a certain hot-blooded level of partisanship. The disorganized and disoriented Democrats have offered little in the way of alternatives to Bush’s agenda. If losing the campaign has made Kerry an effective and forceful leader of the opposition, good for him.



more: http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=36756

Monday, February 21, 2005; Page A26

Fixing Campaign Financing

THE SYSTEM for public financing of presidential campaigns is like an old car that is broken down and needs costly repairs before it can run again: Before you get out your wallet, you ought to think hard about whether such an investment makes sense, whether you should try a new model or whether you might be able to get around without a car at all. Should the presidential campaign finance system be junked or fixed? We've previously argued that a fix is warranted and worth the cost, but in light of the 2004 campaign, which featured spending beyond anything imagined, it's at least prudent to consider alternatives.

The current regime, set up after the Watergate scandals, has two parts: During the primary campaign, candidates who agree to a set spending limit receive federal matching funds on the first $250 of every donation. For the general election, the two major-party candidates are eligible for a grant that is supposed to constitute full financing for their campaigns. The primary system is by far the more broken of the two, but neither is working as planned and, absent changes, the 2008 campaign is likely to witness further decay.

In 2004 the primary campaign spending limit was $45 million, but both major-party candidates, opting out of the system, raised multiples of that amount -- President Bush about $270 million and Sen. John F. Kerry about $235 million. While both candidates took the $75 million grant for general election financing, that represented just a fraction of general election spending; all of the president's supposed primary spending, and the vast majority of Mr. Kerry's, was in fact directed to the general election campaign, and their parties spent millions more. Whether this level of spending was an anomaly fueled by the unusually heated nature of the 2004 race, or whether it augurs an even more frenzied pace next time around, is an important factor in considering any overhaul.
...
As painful as it may be to start thinking about the rules for 2008 with the 2004 election just a few months past, the political reality is that the rules need to be overhauled soon, if they are to be fixed. As the commissioners put it, "If Congress does not act within the next two years, the system runs the serious risk of being totally irrelevant in the 2008 election and beyond."




http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40625-2005Feb20.html