I incorrectly made mention of Altnet in my last post. I apologize. It really should be alternet. Link to the relevant story is attached. rojoo

I have taken time of off writing anything to actually gain a sense of perspective and sanity. Between work, kids and everything (still can't get my checkbook to balance) I needed a little space.

But here are two issues worth looking at. The first is the television show that showed the run-up to the Iraq war. The war that shows we have no moral high ground and can be fat and happy as occupiers, not just as consumers. It is Bill Moyers Journal and the link will show you the reporting that was not done, except by Knight-Ridder (now McLatchey) news service. God, it is good to have Bill Moyers back again. He is what a Texas Christian should be. Watch the show and be amazed. Digby, as usual, had a marvelous comment.

One other item is tracking the vote in Ohio in 2004. Altnet had a very wonderful article that took a couple of days to sink into my feeble brain. During the 2004 election, the Secretary of State Blackwell, he who certified the election before the recount was even started, let alone completed--he who threw out tens of thousands of voter registrations because they were on the incorrect bond paper, he who provided so few voting machines in black neighborhoods (predominantly democratic voters) so that hundreds of thousands inner city voters could not vote even though they waited in line over 8 hours, he who lost over 50,000 thousand provisional votes, and he who certified election results in counties with 587 voters as giving over 1300 votes to Bush!, yes that man who is now facing possible felony charges for voter fraud. Well, it has been traced that the computer address that ran the election count after 10 pm election night (Kerry had a fine lead then) was not the Secretary of State's computer. He ceded control of the count from his computer to the same IP address as the IP address as the Republican National Committee computer. The same server that has lost 5,000,000 Karl Rove emails. Avedon Carol has condensed two links on her excellent website, showing this story.

How hard is it to win (or fix) an election when you control the count from party headquarters? We need paper trails on all votes! Otherwise businesses like Diebold can fix elections. By the way, does it seem strange to you that one week after the Democrats won the House and the Senate and the oversight was going to begin--JUST ONE WEEK--Diebold put their election machine division up for sale. All of a sudden after 6 years it is no longer profitable.

rojo

1) I am not a fear monger or a conspiracy theory nut job, except when it comes to Kennedy's assassination (one guy and a magic bullet that changes direction. even I am not that gullible).

But today I happened across an entry in dailykos regarding who knew that the French warned of imminent air attack. The time lines presented were somewhat surprising in that Ashcroft refused to fly after that time. Tells me somebody said something. But I am still open to the fact that warnings were general in nature and NBD. Mr. "Don't Show Me Boobs" is kind of weird after all.

But, in the comments section--someone posted that there were war games (probably headed by Cheney) that day were being run and that there were 22 "hijacked airplanes" on the FAA's screens that day. (google war games + 9/11 + Cheney and see what you get) And East Coast fighter planes were in Canada tracking a phantom long-range nuclear bomber (this in the era of ICBMs and subs???) so there was confusion as to if and what may be the real hijacked planes and that there were no interceptors available. It makes sense that the media could not actually tell us for a while how many hijacked planes there really were. No one knew because of the bogeys.

So we warned of an imminent attack that week. War games happened to fall on the day of the attack, confusing the issue. These are facts. So either this administration are the unluckiest SOBs on the planet, except for the FEMA command sight was set up the night before as part of the war games. Or someone was complicit in the plan. Or there were tremendous security leaks letting terrorists know when there would be radar confusion.

I don't know what to think. I would never want to believe that someone could be complicit in planning the attacks to further a political agenda. My heart would break that people could be that unscrupulous. Unlucky--can't be that unlucky. Security leak, probable. or maybe a combination of all of the above. God help us all (if you believe in that) if this was a plan involving officials of the U.S. government.

rojomojo

This from an article in www.salon.com today:

Blackwell, for his part, said liberals are trying to use the Fairness Doctrine to accomplish what they could not in a free market, and asserted that liberals are "terrible" at making talk radio. "If liberals think it is just too hard to compete with the Sean Hannitys of the world," Blackwell said, "then they should focus on what they do best -- make ice cream."

Blackwell was the wonderful head of the Committee to ReElect GW. Some of his shenanigans included voter disenfranchisement (sending people to the incorrect districts in Hamilton County), voting rights issues (all voter registartion had to be on paper of X bond material, surprised he did not say with a Cartier watermark, which cancelled the voing rights of thousands in predominantly balck and poor counties), was so soundly beaten in his race as Governor that teh RNC pulled all his funds and may yet receive a jail sentence if the new Ohio Attorney General continues investigating voter fraud.

So let's see--what does he do best. Oh yes, that is lie, cheat and steal and sleep at night becasue his "tricks" to keep Republicans in power have cost over 100,000 lives and have further sunk our country "SURGE ON, dudes!" into a quagmire where we are not wanted (rose petals, my ass.) Free market--how about free voting place? When you really look at the economy in the U.S., it has never really been a free market economy. There have been tariffs to keep imports down, keeping jobs in America. There has been little Outsourcing to other countries until the past 15 years. The amount of money given to farmers and agribusiness is more than to welfare queens. The Savings and Loan (rememebr Neil Bush) bailout cost business nothing, just the taxpayers.

Face it. If you want free market, you had better be one of the top 1% in America. Business Weekly, I think, showed that that 6% of America controls and profits from over 50% of the economy. The middle class and the upper middle class were consciously made by trade unions and the New deal. It has been slowly dismantled by the far right in teh name free trade and free market. Correct me if I am wrong, but if I made all the incorrect projections that Bill "Fish Lips" Cristol has made in my workplace, I would be pushing a broom. "It's good to be the King."

Keep that in mund as we listen to people speak about how liberals don't know how to do anything. Create the middle class. Make higher education affordable. Give voter rights and expand the decision making base in the U.S. so it not just rich white guys who can perform militia justice.

Make ice cream my ass. Without a liberal agenda, Blackwell would not even have voting rights.


rojo

I mentioned Ohio voter fraud in my last post and here is an update. It will be interesting to see if 2008 results differ much.

rojo

From Josh Marshall's talkingpointsmemo.com

"I feel really bad about the server problems the White House/RNC seems (no, not a typo -- they appear to be a single entity) to be having on the email front. Believe me, I run a small business that is heavily dependent on cranky servers and other gizmos. So I know how hard this can be. But I think this might be a case where that NSA 'terrorist surveillance program' may really come in handy. I'm told the NSA has some very capable data recovery tools they've developed. And even if those guys are too busy hunting al Qaida, doesn't the FBI have some pretty good forensic computer geeks? What happens when, say, a company like Enron (okay, perhaps not a great example) says some emails were 'mishandled' and now are gone forever. I guess that's just the end of it, right? Normally, it's not kosher for a government agency to offer direct assitance to a private entity or political organization. But, hey, we're pretty far down that road I guess. So let's have the FBI go down and take a look at these servers and see if these emails have really disappeared forever."

-- Josh Marshall

I work at a business and when the email gets lost we have IT guys come in and fix it. Now, they can't always find every email. But, what are the chances that a whole batch of emails on a specific topic from a certain time period gets lost? I am always amazed that in the electronic age, even without going to the NSA extent that Josh Marshall jokes about, that people feel that lost emails is an excuse. Get real.

I believe that there are charges such as failure to cooperate with an investigation, obstructing justice and so on that can be brought to bear as a cudgel. How many low level flunkies will allow themselves to be sacrificed in order to get to the head of Hydra (ooops, sorry, this is not Marvel comics). How much fear is instilled by the ruling minions that no one has yet rolled?

The worst part about this is that MSM is not really covering this in depth. Only geeks are reading this sort of thing and the average worker bee does not know how deep or how high this corruption and borderline legality may go. But what this does is reshape any idea the average citizen has about routine rights to privacy and voter rights. The arguments have been pushed so far to the right, favoring a ruling class of honchos that can place you under surveillance, and limit voting that no one knows how much they are being manipulated. Specific rights won in the 60s by minorities are disappearing so fast that "separate but equal" rules could be favored by some and then placed on talk radio and covered in MSM as a serious discussion and then would become part of the general lexicon of the American speech. If you think I am joking, just remember that Ted "Tubes" Stephens kept a job after his gaff and that Tom "Let's Bomb Tehran" Tancredo was not only not laughed out of office, but was reelected! I am sure that Tancredo is a native American name and he does not look anything like the dark-skinned immigrants he is always beating up in speeches. I mean, did not the Italians emigrate from somewhere, Tom? Wittgenstein was right in the sense that redefining words will redefine the thought paradigms of a culture. And dictate the limits of the debate.

The past two U.S. elections have been decided by voter rights manipulation. Ohio election officials have been charged and convicted with rigging the recount which cost Kerry the election. How many lives (Iraq death toll is now over 650,000) have been lost over someone's LUST FOR POWER AND CONTROL?! How many people know that felonies were committed in Ohio? Where is the media outrage? Civic outrage?

And these people have the balls to call themselves Christians? Nice ethics.

rojo

I have always thought this woman was one of the hottest women (Joni Mitchell and Annie Lennox, too) in the music business. I have often scoffed when people talk about Brittany or Beyonce. and am amazed at Christine Aguilera's talent, but this from one of my favorite woman pop stars--

A better Democratic strategist - Tori Amos: ""The way to really combat the right wing is to not be subservient to them on any level, particularly when it comes to ideology," she continued. "Therefore, you better offer up another ideology that can combat theirs, and as a preacher's daughter, I understand their ideology inside and out. Frankly, they've all hijacked Jesus and his message. I'm sorry, but 'Love thy neighbor as yourself' is nowhere to be found, especially in our current regime, who, in the name of God, is sending our young men and women to die over there [in the Middle East]."

rojo

About two weeks ago, i went on a rant about Circuit City and workers wages. I did not have a handy-dandy visual showing the differences in worker's hourly wage vs. CEO salary pay. Well, here it is. Hourly wages up 4.3% since 1995 and CEO wages up 298%. Yeah, trickle down sure as fu works. rojo

I am very depressed. I have taken the time to watch a very good video entitled Unprecedented. It shows how the election in 2000 was thrown in Florida. Thrown, stolen, whatever. Let's not mince words. It was brother sucking off brother.

I really do not want to hear how it was all fair. Governor Crist deserves kudos for his current action.

What depresses me is that we have, because of the action in Florida in 2000, have cost over 500,000 lives, lost any moral primacy that America has ever had world-wide (to the point we are viewed internationally as an occupying force), placed America in deeper debt, and has ruined our reputation world-wide.

All for brotherly payback. may they rot in hell, regardless of their self-religious beliefs. At the very least, they should be fined and family fortunes lost. I have often wondered if a class action suit by the survivors of the Iraqi debacle action the personal fortunes of GW would be worth anything.

rojo

Welcome to your generation's Vietnam. I hope fervently that Iran does not become the new Cambodia. There is a little more at stake here other than the Domino Theory. Like the world's oil supply. I hope I do not sound callous or indifferent to the loss of lives in either conflict.

This administration would have been happy in the Red Scare days of the 50s. Now we have the terrorist scare of the 00s. What the hell are people thinking? Civil Liberties have been rolled back. Good paying jobs are leaving in droves as free market global economic theory is king (at least it isn't called trickle down theory anymore). The middle class is dissolving (this was a political and union creation). The Conservative Supreme Court finally had to step in and say "Wake up, what the hell are you doing?" when it comes to the EPA and air pollution.

Where is the moral and emotional outrage?????? I am getting up off my fat senior ass and starting to join planned demonstrations. I actually hoped that I would not have to as there are many other young people who should be more pissed off. Think ahead -- what will life be like without health insurance when you are 50 +? Or will you be a member of the ruling class? Civil Liberties won in the 60s are disappearing. Environmental rules are being rolled back.

And for a President who does not want pork in his budgets--Why is this war not in the budget? Did he forget it was going on? He reminds me of Pee Wee Hermann when he falls of his superbike during his adventure -- "I meant to do that." How in the hell can you say there should be no pork and unfunded mandates (no, not Jeff Gannon and Karl Rove) and forget to fund the war!!!!!!

Why aren't people incensed?

rojo

Livin' the dream in the U.K.

Yes, record profits on investments and workers wages are stagnant. Gotta love any attempts at explanation of trickle down economics. Sure, it makes it to the working class.

It is troubling that people still believe that shit. But maybe because they are of the investor class and it all looks good there. And who cares about sub-prime mortgages because those who lose their houses aren't me---and the government will bail out business. Again

rojo

Gakked from rocketboom.com --

"Austrian Hans Steininger was famous for having the world’s longest beard (it was 4.5 feet or nearly 1.4 m long) and for dying because of it.

One day in 1567, there was a fire in town and in his haste Hans forgot to roll up his beard. He accidentally stepped on his beard, lost balance, stumbled, broke his neck and died!"

rojo

From Atrios 9and the local newspaper)--

"Money Makes The World Go Round

Circuit City's variation on this is to fire its more highly-paid and more experienced workers and then to let them apply for the same jobs at lower wages:

The electronics retailer, facing larger competitors and falling sales, said Wednesday that it would lay off about 3,400 store workers. The laid-off workers, about 8 percent of the company's total work force, would get a severance package and a chance to reapply for their former jobs, at lower pay, after a 10-week delay, the company said.

Neat, isn't it? Of course Circuit City could have made similar savings by first firing its CEO, Philip J. Schooner, who earned around 2.17 million dollars last year and then letting him reapply at the "market" rate for CEOs.

Now why would a firm openly admit to doing something like this? Could it be a way around possible age discrimination suits? Many better paid workers are not only more experienced but also older."

I know I will never shop at Circuit City again.

That said, you have to give them points for honesty. "We need to raise our margins...blah..blah...blah. So we are hiring kids from MickeyDees as teens know more high tech shit then you..."

And they are losing 3,000 workers at $4.00 change for 2080 hours per year plus benefits plus overtime or roughly $33,000,000. What this tells me is that if they cannot make margin at $12/hour to the employees, then something is wrong. In Colorado (probably California too) you cannot raise a family on that. It highlights that perhaps wages may be too high on the management end. Without doing the research for this comment, I know that executives never made what they are making now, particularly if it is in proportion to what hourly workers are making. That skews margins ridiculously. But even if you trim management salaries a little (or a lot) all the way down the line, where do you make up $33 mill? One other non-populist part of the equation is Americans want more toys and at cheap prices. Screwing other Americans so we can get our fix is a part of the equation. Makes you feel all warm and cuddly inside to know you are (I am) part of a complex problem that is based in greed.

Living wages would be nice, less money to executives would be nicer and do we really need a 60" TV? or a home theater system? or a house that is thousands of square feet for a family of 4.5 people? I see over 3000 square feet for a family of 4 and wonder who they are hiring to clean.

rojo