More on voting machine rigging

I've never been much of a conspiracy fancier. There's just too much going on for real to be bothered with tales of the Bavarian Illuminati or pin-the-blame on the Black Helicopter outfits, but there is some real possibility that we may actually get to the bottom the the suspected vote-rigging problem, although certainly not before the Electoral College casts their votes (who counts their votes?).

Zogby International (the pollster guy), considered to be the best in the business, has posted an article from the Missoula, MT Independent that pretty much covers all you need to know on the status quo (yeah, I actually wrote that). A sample:

"The Bush administration’s “fix” of the 2000 election debacle (the Help America Vote Act) made crooked elections considerably easier, by foisting paperless electronic voting on states before the bugs had been worked out or meaningful safeguards could be installed."

Further:

"The Wall Street Journal recently revealed that “Verified Voting, a group formed by a Stanford University professor to assess electronic voting, has collected 31,000 reports of election fraud and other problems.”

The article goes on to talk about "mathematical impossibilities" in voting patterns. It's all very well reported and hat's off to Alan Waldman, the Missoula Independent and Zogby. You might want to check out Black Box Voting while you're at it. Additionally, a good summary of the situation can be found at T r u t h o u t, here.

We’re not a democracy

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."-Samuel Adams, 1776

Perhaps we should sent a cable to the DLC with the above quote.

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."- Thomas Jefferson

So said Sam and Tom these two hundred plus years ago to the Torys. But the fact is, the shit still goes on. Some more recent quotes:

"There's no end to the rascality of these flinty-hearted bastards..." - Sen John Dingle (D.Mich) speaking of Republicans, quoted on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, Nov. 11, 2003

“It’s a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we’re a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy.” - Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General

"Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy" - John Pierpont Morgan

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."- Abraham Lincoln

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson."- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini

“The corporate octopus is stifling the natural growth of humanity. It spreads tyranny, poverty and economic serfdom. It defies the simplest laws of ecology. Warfare is the extension of corporate power by other means ... their one aim is to perpetuate the insane concept of limitless expansion on a limited planet, with permanent conflict as its desired outcome.” from Absolute Friends by John le Carre

The fight goes on. We never were and are not now at peace with the forces of corporatism, oligarchy, theocracy, facism and just plain stupidity. Remember the Know-Nothings? An actual political party, and one that seems to have resurfaced lately, backed with corporate funding.

Keep on blogging, folks and remember to vote early and vote often. Illigitimi non carborundum.

Notahoax

So, okay, we got an update on the hoax angle on the Florida software writer. It turns out that this may be the hook that brings in the big fish. What looked originally as faked paper is just another computer glitch, this time for real. Stay tuned.

Poll: Fla. Voters Had No Voting Problems!

The insanity just goes on and on. Now a poll taken in Florida (again) shows that "three out of four voters were very or somewhat confident their vote was counted" in the presidential election.

Which leaves 25% who weren't confident!

Wake up! These turkeys can't even see their beaks in front of their eyeballs.

Florida's vote-fraud software writer confesses

And you thought that vote-rigging was a wingnut fantasy. Turns out that right-wingers plan ahead.

Apparently, back in 2000, an employee of a software development company in Florida was tasked to work on a software package at the behest of then Florida Congressman, now U.S. Congressman, Republican Tom Feeney of Florida's 24th, that could transform Dem votes into Rep ones and not be detectable. Turns out, it can and easily. (But we computer geeks knew that already. ) So we got this guy in Florida just this morning signing an affidavit swearing to his code-writing and Feeney's plans for "vote suppression." Beautiful. Feney eventually became Speaker of the Florida House, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002, and is now, get this, a member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

So far, no mystery. Here's where the mystery comes in: is Big Media going to pick up on this? or is this going to go down the sinkhole?

Update: This thing may be a hoax. See here, about 2/3 of the way down the page. Hmmm. Maybe you can't trust anything you read on the Internet anymore.

It's a rainy day

The weather here in southern California has been a tad chilly and wet of late. I’m guessing that it’s probably an early effect of global warming; even though it seems counterintuitive to have colder winters as a result of it. Still, it’s about par for the course as we start the wind-up for the end of the world, what with bad weather, worse politics and an economic crash coming. But it’s a reasonably good excuse to stay indoors and blog the day away.

The stuff you read here isn’t all that original. You didn’t read it here first, mainly. As with most blog authors, I cherry-pick the news sites and the opinion sites and basically throw stuff together, mostly to fill space until this project starts to jell, or I begin to have some original thoughts. In the meantime, what I have gleaned and thrown into this stew are factoids and opinions that reflect my own jaundiced view of the world.

The Internet is a fascinating place; just about every side of every question is out there and with a quick Google, Mamma, Yahoo, etc etc meta search you can reference just about anything, and I mean anything, quickly hyper-linking article to site to blog. It’s a far cry from my first fanzine, banged out on a used Underwood typewriter on Ditto mimeograph waxes and caretakingly illustrated with my own drawings. One mistake and the whole wax page was ruined. I bought the Underwood for $35, saved from my earnings as a soda jerk at Priscilla’s Tea Room, a real soda fountain in Nashua, New Hampshire, the shop itself dating from the Thirties and looking like a Hollywood movie set version of itself. I was 14 and eager to bring my ravings to the waiting world. It’s a long way away now, both in time and space. Today I can see my published results in minutes (and in glorious color) instead of the days that it used to take, what with lugging pounds of Ditto pages to the printer and back, then the post office to send my scribblings out into the void. Amazing, really.

Well, it's stopped raining and the world hasn't ended yet. I think I'll go for a walk on the beach. Later.

Later: The news just keeps sucking me back to the typewriter: "We call it a war on terrorism, but Muslims in contrast see a history-shaking movement of Islamic restoration. This is not simply a religious revival, however, but also a renewal of the Muslim World itself." --Defence Science Board

Kos and others are reporting that a Department of Defence Science Board white paper is very much at odds with the Busho take on the wonderful world of terrorism. Not that any sane person wouldn't have figured out the state of the world with just a few rational moments contemplating our foreign policy. Still, it is somewhat refreshing that somebody in our over-priced government has an inkling of the truth.

Now, if Bushboy would just read what people write for him. Also, while the mainstream media mainly avoided this story (the report was released in late September) the NY Times did mention it, although they too have failed miserably in follow-through.