Founding Freedoms Past General Posts Of 2005

Click Below To View A Short Animation Animation That Answers The Question On The Screen.

12-28-05 Listen Very Closely To The Defense That Bush And Cheney Are Using To Spy On Americans. For those of you that remember it is the same lines that Nixon used. Maybe there is some truth in that joke that is going around the web and on bumper stickers... "Will Some One Give Bush A BJ So We Can Impeach Him".

12-28-05 Economic Slowdown On The Way According To Market. The kind of activity in the bond market yesterday usually happens when there is an economic down turn in the winds, consequently lost over 100 points. The numbers are: The Dow Jones industrial average fell 105.50 points, to 10,777.77. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 12.12 points, to 1,256.54, and the NASDAQ composite index fell 22.53 points, to 2,226.89.

Crude oil futures fell. A barrel of light crude was quoted at $58.16, down 27 cents, in trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Now the interesting thing is that Oil is below $60.00 a barrel for

Why Is It Gas and Home Heating Oil Is STILL OVER $2.00 a gallon. it should be $1.40 to $1.60 a gallon with cruse at those prices. Links Here

The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.341 percent, while the two-year Treasury note closed at 4.347 percent. Read More

12-28-05 Download Some Reading Material For Your Holiday Traveling. It's a report by John Conyers Jr. entitled Constitution In Crises. It's about the numerous lies of Bush and Cheney. Either Right Click here and choose to save as or just click here to download a copy to read.

12-24-05 From The NY Times: “Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report”. What the Times story is showing just another reason that BushCo cannot be trusted. The NSA is now admitting to gathering Large Volumes of information without court orders, of even going back to the FISA courts later, this practice of spying on American Citizens started in 2001. Publicly BushCo has said it was a small operation, the story points out that the NSA was monitoring Large volumes of calls that include non suspected Americans with the excuse that “they needed to look for patterns and to compare them to terrorist calling and email patterns.

The questions that I know that BushCo will never answer is… What have they done with the information of those American Citizens that were not involved with terrorism? Who Did they share the information with? And lastly Who Are the Americans that they spied on, in direct violation of the Constitution, that George SWORE TO UPHOLD!!!

This Is An Impeachable Offense, of High Crimes and Misdemeanors!!! This Is why Our Founding Fathers Created an Impeachment Clause! This is a Crime warranting Imprisonment.

Think about this... if you boil down what BushCo is saying it is that he did it for you...

How does it feel that you were Raped Only Just A Little Bit, but BushCo did it to make you feel safer.

12-22-05 This Is A Quote For Today "Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution." by: George W. Bush April 20 2004.

I have nothing else to say, except... IMPEACH BUSH NOW! He has complete contempt and disregard American Citizens the Constitution, and the Law. What ever happened to "The Rule Of Law" Mr. Hastier and the Republicans were so quick to spread around just a few years ago when it involved a Democrat over sex?

12-22-05 From The N.S.A. "Court Order Required "We are, I would offer, the most aggressive agency in the intelligence community when it comes to protecting U.S. privacy," General Hayden said. "We just have to be that way."

It was one of General Hayden's favorite themes in public speeches and interviews: the agency's mammoth eavesdropping network was directed at foreigners, not Americans. As a PowerPoint presentation posted on the agency's Web site puts it, for an American to be a target, "Court Order Required in the United States."

In fact, since 2002, authorized by a secret order from President Bush, the agency has intercepted the international phone calls and e-mail messages of hundreds, possibly thousands, of American citizens and others in the United States without obtaining court orders. The discrepancy between the public claims and the secret domestic eavesdropping disclosed last week have put the N.S.A., the nation's largest intelligence agency, and General Hayden, now principal deputy director of national intelligence, in an awkward position.

12-20-05 Bush Is Now Trying To Use The Nixon and 911 Defenses. From The NY Times...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - President Bush and two of his most senior aides argued Monday that the highly classified program to spy on suspected members of terrorist groups in the United States grew out of the president's constitutional authority and a 2001 Congressional resolution that authorized him to use all necessary force against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

As I show you in my Editorial "Drunk With Power Or Just Plane Delusional" There is no constitutional authority that allowed him to do so. To claim that congress authorized all necessary force is not what the statement meant, it was referring to military actions, as in combat. not spying on American citizens. Now in is mind everyone is responsible for 911. I thought it was Bin Laden, than Sedum, then the country of Iraq. This is the "McCarthy which hunts" all over again, by a paranoid delusional person. If that's how he is going to interpret that line that he can just go and Nuke Ohio, because he personally thought it should be done. No oversight, no other reason than because he wanted to, because king George said to.

What are you waiting for... This man is a danger to everything that our Founding Fathers stood for.

12-16-05 What Ever Happened To “I’m not going to comment on an ongoing investigations.” Any time the white house was asked any question about Valerie Plame, Karl Rove, torture of detainees and so on, the standard reply was “I’m not going to comment on an ongoing investigations.” Now today after Tom Delay has used all his legal tricks including his “get out pf jail free” card, (the a change of judges) Tom Delay is going to stand trail on money laundering charges. In fact he even tried to have the charged dismissed by saying he use a check and the law refers to cash. To me that’s an off-handed admission of guilt.

But the big news is "The president of the United States said a jury does not need to assemble, that Tom DeLay is innocent," said Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). "To have someone of his stature, the president of the United States, prejudge a case is something I've never seen before."

When Scott McClellan was questioned as to George’s statement Scott McClellan called the apparent inconsistency a "presidential prerogative." "The president was asked a question and he responded to that question in the interview yesterday, and made very clear what his views were," McClellan said. "We don't typically tend to get into discussing legal matters of that nature, but in this instance, the president chose to respond to it. Our policy regarding the Fitzgerald investigation and ongoing legal proceeding is well-known and it remains unchanged."…"Call it a presidential prerogative."

12-16-05 Bush Is Agreeing To Abuse Detainees With McCain’s Blessings. What Bush agreed to is Mr. McCain's measure which would establish the Army Field Manual as the uniform standard for the interrogation of prisoners and ban the kind of abusive treatment of prisoners. SO WHAT!!! Read my post just below dated 12-14-05 Bush has already had a new draft of the Army Field Manual that allows abuse, so in effect Bush is agreeing to abuse detainees with McCain’s blessings.

12-15-05 Novak , Outs Bush As Knowing The Source Of The Leak. Today in the Washington Post is a story in which Bob Novak told a luncheon audience at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, N.C., on Tuesday, according to an account published yesterday in the Raleigh News & Observer.

Novak said, "I'm confident the president knows who the source is," "I'd be amazed if he doesn't. So I say, don't bug me. Don't bug Bob Woodward. Bug the president as to whether he should reveal who the source is." Links To Story Click Here

12-14-05 BREAKING : Due to contractual non-performance and security design issues, Leon County (Florida) supervisor of elections Ion Sancho told Black Box Voting that he will never again use Diebold in an
election. He has requested funds to replace the Diebold system from the county. He will issue a formal
announcement to this effect shortly. This comes on the heels of the resignation of Diebold CEO Wally
O'Dell, and the announcement that a stockholder's class action suit has been filed against Diebold by
Scott & Scott.

Black Box Voting: http://www.blackboxvoting.org
Leon County Election Supervisor Ion Sancho:
http://www.leonfl.org/elect/MeetTheSupervisor.htm

Finnish security expert Harri Hursti proved that Diebold lied to Secretaries of State across the nation when
Diebold claimed votes could not be changed on the memory card.

A test election was run in Leon County Tuesday Dec. 13 with a total of eight ballots - six ballots voted "no" on a ballot
question as to whether Diebold voting machines can be hacked or not. Two ballots, cast by Dr. Herbert
Thompson and by Harri Hursti voted "yes" indicating a belief that the Diebold machines could be hacked.

At the beginning of the test election the memory card programmed by Harri Hursti was inserted into an
Optical Scan Diebold voting machine. A "zero report" was run indicating zero votes on the memory card.
In fact, however, Hursti had pre-loaded the memory card with plus and minus votes.

The eight ballots were run through the optical scan machine. The standard Diebold-supplied "ender card"
was run through as is normal procedure ending the election. A results tape was run from the voting machine.
Correct results should have been:
Yes:2
No:6
However, just as Hursti had planned, the results tape read:
Yes:7
No:1
The results were then uploaded from the optical scan voting machine into the GEMS central tabulator.
The central tabulator is the "mother ship" that pulls in all votes from voting machines. The results in the
central tabulator read:
Yes:7
No:1
This exploit, accomplished without being given any password and with the same level of access given
thousands of poll workers across the USA, showed that the votes themselves were changed in a one-step
process. This hack would not be detected in any normal canvassing procedure, and it required only a single
a credit-card sized memory card.

On Oct. 17, 2005 Diebold Elections Systems Research and Development chief Pat Green specifically told the
Cuyahoga County (Ohio) board of elections that votes cannot be changed using only a memory card.
Video of Pat Green, Cuyahoga County

According to Public Records responses obtained by Black Box Voting in response to our requests shows that
Diebold promulgated this misrepresentation to as many as 800 state and local elections officials.

In other news, a stockholder suit was filed today against Diebold by the law offices of Scott and Scott:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/12-13-2005/0004233556&EDATE=

Diebold CEO resigns: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=175001748
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Black Box Voting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501c(3) elections watchdog group. This organization is not affiliated in
any way with any political party or any vendor. Without your important support, we do not exist. To donate:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html or mail to:
Black Box Voting
330 SW 43rd St. Suite K
PMB 547
Renton WA 98055
The original research of Black Box Voting and its founder, Bev Harris, has been covered by ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC,
CNN, and Fox TV national news, as well as by the New York Times, Time Magazine, and most other major news outlets in the U.S.

12-14-05 If You Can't Beat Them... Change The Rules. As you may know The Bush Administration is willing to veto, (for the first time in his Presidency) a Pentagon appropriations bill for this year, if John McCain and most of the congress, (9 Senators Opposed) inserted langue that said that the military should not abuse and torture prisoners, by following their own rules. Well Dick and George decided to change the classified set of interrogation methods in the Military code of conduct. The techniques are included in a 10-page classified addendum to a new Army field manual that was forwarded this week to, the under secretary of defense for intelligence policy, for final approval.

Bottom line if they change the rules then agree to follow the rules then that means... You guessed the new talking point when questioned about abuse and torture will be... "To the best of my knowledge the Military is not doing anything that is in conflict with their code of conduct". Read the story Click here or Click here if link is bad

12-14-05 A New Low Even For Bush... The Military Is Now Returning Fallen Service Men and Women By Shipping Them Back Home as Freight. Fortunately in California Barbra Boxer Interceded and at least one solider was greeted with honor and respect. When reporters from 10News called the Defense Department for an explanation. A representative said she did not know why this is happening. The Story is here with video

12-09-05 The House Of “Republicans” Is Now Trying To Run The Seniti. The House Of (“Republicans”) Representatives Is at it again with Billion dollar tax Giveaways to Anyone earning over 1 million dollars a year while Cutting social programs, like Medicaid, food stamps, student loans and child-support enforcement. The government is already borrowing extensively for the war in Iraq and the new prescription drug benefit for Medicare. The house of Republican leaders is also plotting to make it easier to get the unnecessary tax cuts for investors through Senate. Their deceptive plan is to organize their legislation for the tax reductions for investors to be inserted into a fast-track tax bill, which will, under special rules, be protected against any filibusters when it comes up for a final vote in the Senate. That will make it far easier for senators to abandon all restraint and vote for the House agenda. Tax cutting to the wealthiest few who do not need nor will they spend the money that they get on us, must be stopped in the face of deficits, looming budget crises and the increasing painful sacrifices being demanded of the rest of us Americans. Source: NY Times

12-09-05 Mega Churches Cancel Christmas If It Falls On A Sunday. This is a news story to end all news stories. As you well know that Fox "Foe" News and a lot of connectives and leaders of these mega churches continue to rag on that the “Liberals” and the ACLU for tiring to take Christmas away from Christians. Which they are not. However what they are saying is that we should not use Government funds to choose a religion, thus allowing all religions to exist equally in our country. If your store wants to put a display, have at it, but don’t expect the town hall to pay for it or put it, or put it on town property if it offends someone else. I personally don't think that public tax dollars should be used for religious displays. However if a religious originations on local business want to decorate their building or shops have at it.

Well When I was young I remember that, if you were the type of person who attended church services you most certainty attended Christmas services. Your Pastor expected you to show up on at least one day and it should be Christmas day, and if Christmas fell on a Sunday, well you had no excuses at all for now showing up because it was not only “Gods day of worship, but it was the Birthday of his sun as well.

Well now in a story that could have come only from the twilight zone these Mega churches that want to have government push their religious belief on the entire country no matter what your religion is are just too lazy to practice their religion for themselves. In fact they themselves are canceling Christmas. They them selves are quite literally canceling canceling Christmas all by them selves, while demanding that everyone else weather you are Jewish or Buddhist, you should accept their religion and the Government should pay for it. It should be government sponsored religion. While in reality they are the ones trying... no make that they are the ones who are taking Christmas away. They are the ones saying that when Christmas falls on a Sunday, “the Lords day” that they are not going to have church services. So let me get this they think they should not conduct services on the Birthday of Jesus, when it is falls on Sunday, “the Lords day.”

So everyone else please practice their holiday for them, while they blame you for destroying Christmas, because they are going to take that day off. Click here for the story

12-09-05 This is a story From The NY Times Entitled, “Rice Appears to Reassure Some Europeans on Treatment of Terror Detainees” It is about assurances that the US will not use torture. What struck me is the Paragraph in the very beginning of the piece “But at a meeting here of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an important plan to send 6,000 more troops to Afghanistan became entangled in the issue on Thursday”. It does not say rotate 6,000 troops, it says 6,000 MORE. To me this seems to be an escalation, of the war in Afghanistan. Story Here

12-07-05 Coincidences or Planned Why Is it when the number of troops killed on any one day is high there suddenly is an even more pressing story, involving a Al-Qaeda leader who is possibly caught or killed is released to the news cycle within hours or even minutes of reported death of American soldiers. Then that day and the next day the Al-Qaeda story takes over the news cycle for the next 24 hours, and the death of the troops is pushed out of the news. Here are some examples, Curtsey of The Thom Hartmann Show.

Dec 2, 10 US marines Killed............"Whitehouse claims to have gotten a top Al-Qaeda Leader"

Nov 19 9 US Soldiers killed..............Next day "Al-Zarkowi dead, Perhaps killed in fire fight"

Nov 16 8 US Soldiers killed.............Again shortly after death of Solders, "Key al-Qaeda officer Captured"

Nov 2 8 US Soldiers killed................First thing Nov 3 "Top al-Qaeda leader Believed Captured"

Sept 28 7 US soldiers killed...........Within minutes of that story "Al-Qaeda chief Killed"

This is how BushCo and the Republicans support out troops, burry the news of their death and the sacrifice of American families with fake PROPAGANDA.

12-07-05 How Long Do We continue To Turn A Blind Eye To The Appalling Behavior, This compliant Republican Administration Under George W. Bush Is Conducting World Wide In Our Name. How long do we act as though it’s ok... it isn’t that bad... after all they are doing it to protect us. Who is going to protect the world from our authoritarian belief that we have the right to rule the world. We have the right to defy the laws of any government including our own and abuse people in the name of protecting us. If we continue down this road then we most assuredly will be at war with the world for many more years to come. We are the bullies that will be attacked by any way that they can. It’s time to stop saying “Oh my government won’t do that”. Well This Administration will and does read the links below, The world knows, When will you stat to know and believe. Here is just one tiny piece of what is said about the US outside of the American sanitized Press.

"Iraq and Afghanistan wars are the initial events in a scenario which will eventually develop into a third world war. What we see in the actions of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz and others is the same sort of greed and madness that drove the Nazis to attack Austria and Czechoslovakia, and later Poland, France and other countries during World War II.

Like the Nazi drive for world domination, which resulted in the utter destruction of Germany despite its military might, the American campaign with the aim of dominating the world will result in the utter destruction of the United States and a place in history for it as disgraceful as that now held by Nazi Germany".

Since then There have been an additional 465 Americans Killed. That's nearly 25% of all the American's killed to date.

And to date in this quarter there are now 575 Americans killed and the month has just started. At the present rate we are on track to equal or surpass the last quarter which was the highest quarter. Each quarter has more American Dieing then the one before it.

12-03-05 Bush's speech at the Naval Academy (Alt Link) in Annapolis, Maryland yesterday. Don't these guys look excited to hear the president?

12-02-05 GM To Add 30% To Work Force In India While Laying off 30,000 Americans here at home. We need to change our trade policies by re establishing tariffs as we had for the first 175 years in the country and just walk away from NAFTA and CAFTA and the rest just as BushCo walked away from the Kyoto treaty. This way if a manufacture wants to make a shirt over seas for a $1.00 and it costs $5.00 to make it here in America then you need to put a $4.00 tariff on it, this way it does t two things. First it puts both products on a equal playing field, for if you don't then you must realize that sooner or later this policy of unregulated trade to the lowest paid worker is only going to reduce the wages of everyone here in America. No one in America will have a job if they won't work for the same or lower wages that are paid to workers say in China, which is about $1.00 an hour. How long do you think you can live here in America on A buck an hour?

12-02-05 Has The Fear Propaganda Gotten So Bad That We Now Are Demanding To Loose Our Freedoms? Tonight on the news when they reported the story of relaxing the regulations as to what items to allow onboard airlines, my first thoughts were that we were finally getting back a minute part of our freedoms guaranteed to us by the Constitution, and removed from us by the fear mongering of BushCo and the Republicans. Instead the news was quick to find people to say that they thought it was a bad idea. What these people were saying and not realizing it is "no I don't want my freedoms, you take them, and make me safer". To Quote Ben Franklin "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety".

12-01-05 Troop withdrawal? Things To Consider Before You Start Celebrating… Although George W. Bush and the rest of the Republicans continue to act as though everything is just fine in Iraq and that they want to bring the troops home consider this.

Well first of all everything is not just fine, in fact the number of attacks per week are now at their highest levels since the fighting began, they are running at about 100 per week. Let us not forget that during the 2004 election campaign as I wrote about, there was large amounts of munitions missing that I called "Weapons of Large Scale Destruction" in the unguarded ammunitions dumps. Why? Because Bush did not allow enough troops to guard the depots. Well at the current rate of attacks with IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices) enough explosives were taken to supply the attacks at the current rate for over 400 YEARS. Good move there George.

BushCo is still building 16 military bases and one of the most expensive embassy ever. With that in mind then it only stand to reason that those bases will need to have troops stationed there right? What I already said back in August this year in my Editorial Bits And Pieces is that BushCo will up the troops for the elections again, then say he is withdrawing them, and we find that it’s just the old shell game when we are back to where we started again.

In March2003 we had 100,000 then by November 2004 it was 138,000 as we added troops for the elections, and other countries pulled out their troops. As of November 2005 the number went up to 155,000 as we added more troops for the vote on the construction. Now if all goes well the Defense Department says that we may reduce the number of troops to 100,000. WAIT A MINUTE… Isn’t that the number we started with before we temporarily added troops for the various elections…? If that’s the case BushCo, IS NOT withdrawing any troops at all, IT’S ALL NOTHING BUT A SHELL GAME.

The Troops are NOT COMING HOME, it is all just an Illusion contrived to win the mid term elections in 2006. We have 27 military bases Including Army And Air force in Germany that has about 56,000 troops. In South Korea we have 6 bases, with 28,000 troops. As you can see that the more chances there is for a hostel environment the larger the troop contingency is, so knowing what you know now about BushCo and Iraq just how many troops do you think we will need in Iraq's it's 16 bases? 28,000? 56,000?

If you use the South Korea model of around 4,700 men per installation, we would need a minimum of 75,000 troops, but we are not in combat in South Korea. So the final number should be somewhere between 75,000 and 155,000 which brings us back to the original number of troops around 100,000.

11-29-05 Home Sales Fall 2.7%, Sales of existing homes fell 2.7 percent last month and the inventory of houses and condominiums on the market rose to the highest monthly level in more than two years, an industry trade group reported yesterday. Click Here Or Here If Link Is Bad Source: NYTimes

11-29-05 Where In The World Is Scott McClellan? He Is Conducting Press Conferences Via The Whitehouse web in a letter, with questions asked by an unknown source. Read The Interview Here or Here

11-29-05 The Short List Of Where The Republican Loyally Lie, and Where They Are Leading America.

Representative Randy Cunningham, a Republican from San Diego pleading guilty to taking at least $2.4 million in bribes to help friends and campaign contributors win military contracts.

In the Senate, Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee and the majority leader, is under scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission for the timing of his trades in the stock of his family's health care company

In the House, Representative Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, was forced to step down as majority leader after he was indicted on conspiracy and money laundering charges.

I Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted last month on charges of perjury and false statements in the investigation of the leaking of the name of a C.I.A. operative.

Other White House officials, including the senior political adviser Karl Rove, remain under investigation in that case.

This offense is just the latest example of the culture of corruption that pervades the Republican-controlled Congress, which ignores the needs of the American people to serve wealthy special interests and their cronies," Ms. Pelosi said in a statement.

Last but not least the Downing Street Minutes prove that George W. Bush Lied us into an illegal invasion and occupation of an unarmed nation.

11-28-05 The New Deception... Core Inflation. We keep hearing inflation is still under control, and yet when you go to buy something like say gas or heating oil, or say food to eat, it seems that it was cheaper just the day before. Well it was and inflation is much higher than it was reported on the news. When the current inflation numbers are reported, we keep hearing the core inflation is now running at 5% excluding Oil and Food, that means the they do not include the increase in the cost of food or oil. So if you don't drive a car, or buy anything that needs oil to transport it, or need oil to heat your home, and If you don't need to eat either then inflation is not a problem for you. However if you do need to... say eat or drive pr stay warm, then the numbers that they decided to omit are kind of important wouldn't you say? Especially since those are the items the you are effected by the most, unless of course you don't eat or buy anything that needs oil to make or transport it.

11-25-05 From We, the People to our public servants: This isn't what we ordered. Send it back.

WHO COOKED THIS TURKEY?

It's about the size of an elephant, and it took a long time to cook. Preparations began in the 80s when some Texas powerbrokers went on an acquisition spree, converting the elections industry from diverse locally-based mom & pop businesses into a handful of firms peppered with criminal indictments and salted with political connections.

THE ROASTING BAG

Elections officials had to be bagged up and propagandized. A privatization advocate, the Council of State Governments, was run by Abe Frank, who became a founding director for The Election Center in 1990.

The Election Center, which has been run by former used computer parts salesman R. Doug Lewis since 1994, undertook the task of organizing and training local elections officials.

At the same time, vendors flexed their influence in the pay-to-play National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) -- You pay your fees, you get your face time. Secretaries of state, who often aspire to run for governor, cozied up to the very people who -- literally -- can make that happen.

THE RECIPE: INGREDIENT LIST

- ONE SIX-MEMBER FEDERAL ELECTIONS COMMISSION:
The FEC makes the rules for voting machine certification, the so-called "1990" and "2002" FEC standards (which have been removed from the FEC site, but can be found here).

The FEC left themselves a loophole. They never codified the FEC standards into regulations, so that the force of law cannot be applied to force voting machine makers to comply. The FEC standards are "voluntary guidelines".

- TWO TESTING LABS, HUNTSVILLE ALABAMA BRAND

Test how ripe they are before using: Jam a pocket calculator halfway into a banana, see if they'll certify it as a voting machine for the right money.

Three labs were authorized, but vendors chose to use only the Huntsville brand -- Nichols/PSInet/Metamore/Ciber, a series of companies that repeatedly passed the hot potato to a
tester named Shawn Southworth, and handed another portion of the testing to Wyle Labs' Jim Dearman.

These labs were supposed to do source code and functionality reviews, but here's the catch:
They are paid by the vendors.

The testing labs are called "ITAs" for "Independent Testing Authorities" but there is nothing independent about them. According to Shawn Southworth, in a taped interview conducted by Black Box Voting, the labs don't like to write anything negative in the reports because the vendors don't like it, and they're paying for it.

- One Voting Systems Panel from the National Association of State Elections Directors (NASED).
This panel approves the voting machines after the ITAs recommend approval. They are supposed to check over the ITA's paperwork, after which they assign a "NASED number" signifying Federal certification.

The NASED panel sometimes issued cert numbers before reading the reports, and has routinely certified systems with "not tested" and "untested" notations on the recommendation forms.

NASED got some operational support via cash donations from the big vendors, and apparently never saw anything odd in the fact that two old ladies and a gun nut from Black Box Voting were running circles around the ITAs, exposing hard-core voting system defects like the GEMS defect and fundamentally flawed memory card architecture that the ITAs forgot to mention.

These defects were subsequently confirmed by reports commissioned by the secretaries of state of Ohio and California, causing ITA labs and their apologists to offer this excuse:

"THE FEC STANDARDS WERE TOO WEAK."

Not.

You don't need to be a computer scientist to understand plain English: Both 1990 and 2002 FEC standards prohibit something called "interpreted code." The Diebold memory card architecture relies on interpreted code, executing logic on the memory card by passing memory card code through -- drum roll, please -- the interpreter.

You also don't need to be a computer expert to understand that another item forbidden in the FEC standards, "nonstandard computer language" is being used. Diebold decided to make up its own language, calling it "AccuBasic." Only Diebold uses it, no one else in the world. Apologists for the ITAs explain that the AccuBasic language is similar but different to the C++ computer language. That's like saying German is English because the languages are "similar."

But the FEC standards are deficient in some areas. Here's something that doesn't take a statistician to figure out: The FEC standards set a failure tolerance so low that 10 percent of the voting machines are allowed to fail on the first day of use. Would you buy a TV set if you knew there was a 10 percent chance it would stop working the first day? Hello? This is good use of taxpayer money?

The NASED voting systems panel appears to have gone rogue years ago and their certification oversight ability is being stripped from them and given to the new Election Assistance Commission (EAC) -- which isn't functional yet.

That hasn't stopped the California Secretary of State from inviting many of the most problematic members of the NASED voting systems panel in to an invitation-only meeting on Nov. 28 and 29 to help California set "best practices."

- Add to the mix: Various academics and "experts" who were supposed to be checking this stuff out.

Even the best of them (Dr. Doug Jones of Iowa and Dr. David Jefferson of California) didn't want to get too vocal about known problems, especially early on. Others like Georgia's Brit Williams and Florida's Paul Craft cannot possibly explain their unabashed cheerleading of systems which have now been proven to be defective.

There were a small number of notable exceptions: The outspoken Dr. Rebecca Mercuri who has been telling it like it is since 1989.

HAVA: WHO ORDERED THIS TURKEY?

The Help America Vote Act was lobbied in by defense contractors and manufacturers looking to make a buck
on the backs of U.S. taxpayers. (Documentation: See Black Box Voting book, chapter 16)

Demand a Hold on HAVA -- Megan Matson of Mainstreet Moms Operation Blue(MOB) has the right idea:
"Hold on HAVA." The National Alliance of County Officials (NACO) wants to extend the HAVA deadline, at
least until standards are set and adequate funding is available. The Election Assistance Commission, charged
with supervising HAVA, is months behind its own deadlines.

IS ANYONE GOING TO BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THIS TURKEY?

The Election Center and NASED ignored ITA ommissions the size of the national defecit for 10 years. When
this became undeniable, after the work of ordinary citizens to expose the flaws, secretaries of state at first
commissioned independent studies, from the SAIC, RABA, CompuWare, and recently Steve Freeman.

These studies became inconvenient, however, when they confirmed the GEMS defect, the memory card
executables, and numerous other critical defects. So people like Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell simply
hid the reports, while California whispered suggestions into Diebold's ear, encouraging it to quietly resolve the
issues. There was no investigation, and no one has put either the vendor or the ITAs under oath to question
how this came to be.

Vendors like Diebold knew nobody was watching the store, so they acted like a pack of Goths sacking Rome.

To criticize Diebold is to critique the WHOLE SORRY HOUSE OF CARDS who all act like they were members of
the same happy club -- and in fact, they are. People from one part of this structure typically relocate to other segments.

- Indicted vendors become election officials (Lance Gough, Chicago).
- Convicted felons who were vendors become elections consultants (John Elder, Diebold ballot printing.)
- Regulators become vendors (Ralph Munro, Bill Jones, Sandra Mortham, Lou Dedier).
- State elections officials become convicted felons (Ark. sec. state Bill McKuen, Louisiana elections director Jerry Fowler).
- County elections officials vacation with vendors (Los Angeles' Conny Drake McCormack, Diebold's Deborah Seiler).
- Political powerbrokers become voting machine lobbyists (former DNC chairman Joe Andrew, now Diebold lobbyist.)
- County elections officials hire PR firms and lobbyists who work for the vendors at the same time (Riverside County/
Sequoia/O'Reilly PR; Ohio Association of county election officials share their lobbyist with Diebold)

The interchangability of elections officials, regulators, lobbyists, indicted personnel, and vendors is a gigantic
set of Tinker-Toys.

That's why companies like Diebold have been so protected. If Diebold goes down, people might look too closely,
causing the whole thing to collapse in scandal.

- At Black Box Voting, we've been told that we need to leave these TinkerToy Turkeys a graceful way out.
- We are told that it is rude to tell it like it is.
- We are told that the situation can't be fixed if we are politically incorrect.

That's probably true, if you leave this to legislation. But We, the People, can never again leave it up to others to
fix our broken election system.

At some point, we've got to hold this turkey's feet to the fire. Now all the people who cooked this turkey are
jockeying for position in the free pass line.

Is that what we want? Do We, the People, really need to be that polite to those who took away our ability to oversee our own elections? Have we become a nation of bootlickers, cowed to politeness before the very people whose corrupt practices invaded our most fundamental right?

What our public servants brought to the table was not what we ordered. Send it back.

Now have a happy Thanksgiving!

Black Box Voting

Permission to reprint granted, with link to http://www.blackboxvoting.org

-----------

Black Box Voting is a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501c(3) elections watchdog. We are fighting for your right as
a citizen to view and oversee your own voting process. Our focus is on increasing your access to the
elections process, obtaining crucial public records to document what is going on in elections, and exposing
procedural problems that corrupt the integrity of the election.

Black Box Voting is supported entirely by citizen donations. You can support this important work by
clicking here:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html
or by sending to 330 SW 43rd St. Suite K, PMB 547, Renton WA 98055Black Box Voting

11-23-05 First Schmidt Said In Congress And I Quote: "A few minutes ago, I received a call from Colonel Danny Bubp. He asked me to send Congress a message: Stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message: that cowards cut and run, Marines never do." Now Schmidt claims that she Is "The Victim" after she said "There's no way that I remotely tried to impugn his character," Schmidt doesn't understand what the fuss is about, she said in a statement. "I have been attacked very personally, continuously since Friday evening." So lets see First you attack then your the Victim???

11-23-05 Oil Deal With Venezuela President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela signed an agreement on Tuesday with Citgo, the American subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company, to provide discounted home heating oil this winter to thousands of low-income Massachusetts state residents. Citgo will supply over 12 million gallons of heating oil over the next four months at 40 percent below market price. Representative Bill Delahunt, Democrat of Massachusetts worked out the deal with Hugo Chavez.

NO American Oil Companies, not even EXXON after making the largest Profit last month in the history of the planet have come forward to make any sort of after let alone match the deal of Hugo Chavez.

"What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label 'Liberal?' If by 'Liberal' they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of 'Liberal.

' But if by a 'Liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal,' then I'm proud to say I'm a 'Liberal' . . ."

". . . I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves . . ."

". . . Our responsibility is not discharged by announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons that liberalism is our best and only hope in the world today. For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies."

September 14th, 1960
John F. Kennedy

11-20-05 Patrick J. Fitzgerald Said On Friday That He Would Use A New Grand Jury In His Continuing Investigation. This development seems certain to extend the political cloud hanging over the Bush administration and could draw new players into the investigation. Fitzgerald told the Federal Judge that he would begin additional proceedings before a grand jury different from the one that brought an indictment last month against I. Lewis Libby Jr. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/19/national/19leak.html If Link Is Down Click Here

11-18-05 Today Is The Day That The "Swift Boating" Of John P. Murtha A Highly Decorated Vietnam, Veteran will begin in earnest on Rush, Fox, and the rest, Why, you might ask? Why slam a Decorated War vet Because he Slammed the Bush Administration, and demanded the withdrawal of our troops from the "New Vietnam" spelled I-r-a-q . VideoLinkshttp://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/18/politics/18military.html?pagewanted=print

I for one want to know when the American Public is going to stand up, by, and for our military when these "Swift Boat liars" keep slandering, and degrading our service men. People who have fought for our freedoms, only to be belittled by these lying cowards who looked for every excuse not to serve, but rather that claim they did not believe in war as many did, they claimed that they was just too busy to serve.

These are the same people that wore pink band aids to mock the purple hearts to John Kerry but in doing so they mocked every single solider who has ever received one.

War and death, and mangled bodies is just a joke to this administration, what do you expect when the ring leader George W. Bush himself stood there mocking the dead and dying when he ran around stage at a fund raiser claiming "No weapons of mass destruction over here"

11-17-05 More Republican Lies, The Republicans Voted To Scrap The $442 Billion On The Alaska Bridge to nowhere, But instead voted to give the money to the state transportation department of Alaska and if they decide to spend it on the bridge...Oh Well.... At least the Congress didn't Build it. No... They only gave them the money. These deceitful liars need to be voted out of office in 06. Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/17/politics/17spend.html If link is down Click here

11-17-05 Anatomy Of A Lie In PDF From 2004 By UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM — MINORITY STAFF SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS DIVISION MARCH 16, 2004

President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice In 125 separate appearances, they made 11 misleading statements about the urgency of Iraq’s threat, 81 misleading statements about Iraq’s nuclear activities, 84 misleading statements about Iraq’s chemical and biological capabilities, and 61 misleading statements about Iraq’s relationship with al Qaeda.

11-17-05 Complaints To The FCC 23,577 Amount Of Actual People Complaining 6 Where did the other 23,542 complaints come from? From the PTC (If they had their was we would all only be watching the animal planet and the Disney channel), The Parent’s Television Counsel, which has a membership of about 60 people is attempting to hijack what the other 200 million of us think and feel and what to watch, buy duplicating a complaint over and over again. The Parent’s Television Counsel is subsidiary of Media Research Center, That in turn is funded by extreme right wing groups. Now just what do you think caused the drop in complaints, then the sharp increase? I think I have the answer, which also tells me that our Legal courts is now in jeopardy of a hijacking.

The common thread is that they were spending all their energy on getting Judge Roberts On to the supreme court, then again to keep Harriett Meyers OFF the court.

11-17-05 Sheehan Planning Return To Bush Ranch For Thanksgiving, in spite of the new County laws passed to restrict protests in Crawford. One ordinance bans parking along all 14 roads within a five-mile radius around the ranch. The other prohibits camping or placing portable toilets in any county ditch. Read More Here.

11-15-05 Yesterday It Was The Democrats Fault For The Iraq War, According To Bush, because they believed Bush's Lies. It does not matter that the Downing Street Minutes proved that the war was planned for years before by Bush, and that he was going to war no matter what and he was going to fix the intelligence to match the reasons to go to war. Now Today It Is Saddam Hussein Fault For Not Telling The Truth. (Click Here) As Bush Said "Only one person manipulated evidence and misled the world — and that person was Saddam Hussein," If you remember Saddam released thousands or pages of documents that proved he had no weapons, The UN inspectors proved he had no weapons, only George Insisted Saddam had weapons pf mass destruction. Only Powel, insisted that Saddam did. Only Rice Insisted Saddam did. Now George is the one trying to do what he is accusing everyone else of doing and "Rewriting History. (Click here).

In Bush's world the War In Iraq is the fault of the people who believed Bush's lies (Click Here)... It is now the fault of the people who were lied to. ... Not The Liar who told the lies! Not The Liar who caused the deaths of over 2000 Americans, It is not George W, Bush, who told the lies in the first place.

11-13-05 And The Lies Go On This week on Meet The Press Ken- the Talking Point-Mehlman repeated the same line that everyone saw the same information as the administration did. Ken then cited the Silberman-Robb Commission as evidence that the White House has been cleared of any manipulation of intelligence.

Well according to an article in the Washington post: President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence. Neither assertion is wholly accurate.

Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions.

But the only committee investigating the matter in Congress, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has not yet done its inquiry into whether officials mischaracterized intelligence by omitting caveats and dissenting opinions. And Judge Laurence H. Silberman, chairman of Bush's commission on weapons of mass destruction, said in releasing his report on March 31, 2005: "Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry."

Bush, in Pennsylvania yesterday, was more precise, but he still implied that it had been proved that the administration did not manipulate intelligence, saying that those who suggest the administration "manipulated the intelligence" are "fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments." In the same speech, Bush asserted that "more than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power." Giving a preview of Bush's speech, Hadley had said that "we all looked at the same intelligence."

But Bush does not share his most sensitive intelligence, such as the President's Daily Brief, with lawmakers. Also, the National Intelligence Estimate summarizing the intelligence community's views about the threat from Iraq was given to Congress just days before the vote to authorize the use of force in that country.

11-10-05 Lindsey Gram To Introduce A Bill Today To Eliminate Habeas Corpus, for anyone in Guantonamo bay.

11-10-05 The Republicans In Congress Will Not Call A Hearing To See If Bush Lied About The War, They refuse to have a hearing about Libby, They refuse to have any hearings to see if Karl Rove leaked Valerie Plame, BUT they call for a hearing to see who leaked the story to the Washington Post, that America now has secret prisons...only to find out that the information was gotten from a Republican fundraiser while they were bragging about the fact that the CIA had created these secret prisons.

11-10-05 Marriages Of Any Kind Is Now Illegal In Texas, in their race to ban gay marriage in Texas for a third time, by making it a part of the Texas constitution, the wording used seems to have made any marriage illegal.

11-07-05 Rather Than Fire Karl Rove The White House ORDERED, Karl To Take A Remedial Ethics Class

11-07-05 More Bad News About Jobs, There was only 56.000 new jobs in September as well as the figures for July and August were over stated and are actually 34,000 less than original reported.

11-07-05 Now That The Patriot Act was Renewed In the Middle Of The Night While You Were Sleeping, some alarming numbers are coming out, like the The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms, which means if your one of the chosen ones your Cell Phone records, your bank records, you employment records, your medical records every thing about you is under scrutiny. Under the old legal test, the FBI had to have "specific and articulable" reasons to believe the records it gathered in secret belonged to a terrorist or a spy. Now the bureau needs only to certify that the records are "sought for" or "relevant to" an investigation "to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities." That standard enables investigators to look for conspirators by sifting the records of nearly anyone who crosses a suspect's path. FBI rules established after the Patriot Act allow the letters to be issued long before a case is judged substantial enough for a "full field investigation." Source:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/05/AR2005110501366.html

11-04-05 Bush's Job Approval Numbers Are Now 35% However he is considerable much further ahead of Dick Chaney who's approval rating is 19%.

11-02-05 It Just May Be In Tom Delays Over Zealots Need To Be In Control may be the undoing of himself. If he ever hoped for a mistrial he removed his best reason by playing his "Get out of jail free card" too soon. Yesterday after protesting that the Democratic Judge in his case be removed from his case because he once donated to Move On.org. Notice that their claim started with the fact that the "Judge was a Democrat". So I guess that only Republicans can judge Republicans, sort of like what is going on now in Washington, and no matter what Tom Delay does wrong it either gets covered up or ignored. Well it now appears that A Republican Judge will be pulled out of retirement to hear the case.

11-02-05 CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons, The Washington Post reported today This us a short excerpt from the report that is very telling that the Republicans under George W. Bush and Dick Chaney continue to to violate ever principal that America stands for. This Administration continues with their actions to in sure an ever growing body of terrorist that want to do harm to American Civilians.

The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.

Read The Rest Of The story Click Here or Click Here If Link Is down or cannot be displayed.

11-01-05 If you need to know anything all about Samuel Alito political leanings it is this, we are once again hearing from the right that “He deserves an up or down vote”. Nicknamed "Scalito" by some who compare him to Scalia, He voted to uphold a Pennsylvania law that required a woman to notify her husband before an abortion, a law later rejected by the Supreme Court. Alito while holding hundreds of thousands of dollars in Vanguard stock, and having years earlier stated that he would recuse himself from any cases involving Vanguard, when a case came up involving Vanguard Alito ruled in favor of Vanguard and later hard his ruling removed from the case.

Larry Lustberg, a former federal prosecutor who has known Judge Alito for 22 years said "Make no mistake: he will move the court to the right, and this confirmation process is really going to be a question about whether Congress and the country wants to move this court to the right."

11-01-05 Look For The New Art Greenwald Movie on Wal-Mart. "The High Cost Of Low Prices"

10-31-05 The Party Of Life (The Republicans) Voted On Friday To Remove 300,000 people from the food stamp program, with all the Republicans (25) voting for their removal and all the Democrats (20) voting against the cuts. This at a time when the amount of people in America suffering from hunger has risen for the fifth straight year under Bush, as a new government report just hours before the vote was released.

10-31-05 U.N. Inspectors Are Invited to Guantanamo Bay The U.S. has invited three U.N. human rights experts to visit the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. The only thing is, is that the inspectors want to see the prisoners and how they are treated, what they will get to see is the empty cells, the gates the offices the walls, everything but the prisoners. Somehow I don’t think that they get it they are “the human rights experts” not decorators, looking to spruce up the place. Story:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102802043.html

10-30-05 Here Is something From Back In 2004 That Is Worth Watching Again Now That It's Fitxmass Time Click On the Picture to view the short movie.

10-29-05 Bush Administration Backs Down On Davis Bacon, the question is now that the the contracts have been given out and the illegal immigrants have been hired will they now pay them more money? will they fire the lower waged illegal immigrants to pay more money to a Louisiana resident?

10-29-05 Of the 650,thousand tons of heavy explosives that Saddam Hussein had over 250 thousand tons were stolen from the unguarded depots according to the pentagon. Back then during the initial occupation when guards were not placed at Saddam's animation dumps, Rumsfeld said, “Just let it go” That much explosives can continue to create IED (improvised explosive devices) used on American troops for 10’s of years and years to come.

10-28-05 "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Fitzmass", Libby Receives 5 Counts. Among them conspiracy, now as far as I know you cannot conspire with yourself, which means more names are yet to come. Rove is still under infestation, and so Rove is not out looking for a legal team, he is readying for a battle using tactics that he has used so often, he is looking to assemble a better PR staff.

10-28-05 Exxon Has Just Posted The The Largest Profit Of Any Corporation In The History Of The Entire Planet. Question. Why are we giving billions of dollars to privately owned oil companies to develop more oil supplies?

Consider this with the billions given to the oil companies of tax payer money we are paying all the cost for the oil companies to build the oil drilling rigs and transportation and refineries. Then they get to sell us back "our own oil" at full price even though the oil came from public lands.

10-28-05 As Of October 27 2005 The Price of Crude Was $61.09 a Barrel. The other day on the in a financial report it was stated that the price was down due to higher than expected reserve of crude. Shouldn't the price at the pump be under $2.00 a gallon again? Link to current Crude Price. One other thing does anyone remember paying over $2.00 a gallon for gas during the Iran Iraq war? In fact the cost was around $1.50 a gallon Link To Past Gas Prices The reason I ask is that during that war crude was over $60.00 a barrel. Link To Past Curd Prices. Click Here For Charts

10-28-05 Ohio 04 Election Trail Still In The News, In Toledo a grand jury charged Tom Noe with Illegal contributions to George W. Bush. Noe sing the names of others to funnel money to Georges Re-election campaign. In a separate investigation Noe is under investigation for loosing money in an investment of rare coins. Noe's invested $50 million of Ohio's Bureau of Worker's Compensation in rare coins on behalf, Ohio, has said up to $13 million is missing from the investment Fund.

t's not just Noe "taking a bullet" for dear old George. It's a Republican Neo-con corporatist "taking a bullet: for the cause of the further Republican Neo-con corporate take over of America. If you think this is just pie in the sky thinking than just look at ever single thing George and the Republicans have done. Every law, every change every program dismantled has had only one thing in mind to benefit corporations at the expense of the people.

10-27-05 Click Below To View A Short Animation Animation That Answers The Question On The Screen.

10-25-05 Today Marked The Death Of 2000 Americans In The Fighting In Iraq.

10-25-05 The Whitehouse Still Insists That They Need To Use Torture, How can These Republicans under George and Dick insist that the torture committed in the past was just an isolated act of a 2 "rogue soldiers", that they san they need to exempt the CIA and allow the CIA to torture people. Then they say that the people committing the act under the approval of this corrupt and morally bankrupt administration acted on their own. Click Here Fore The Story

10-24-05 List of Foiled Plots Puzzling to Some, White House Document Mixes Half-Baked Plans With Serious Terrorist Threats. A White House list of 10 terrorist plots disrupted by the United States has confused counterterrorism experts and officials, who say they cannot distinguish between the importance of some incidents on the list and others that were left off.

Intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the White House overstated the gravity of the plots by saying that they had been foiled, when most were far from ready to be executed. Others noted that the nation's color-coded threat index was not raised from yellow, or "elevated" risk of attack, to orange, or "high" risk, for most of the time covered by the incidents on the list.

What the story points out something that a lot of us have been thinking for some time now, were not safer and BushCo trots out terror alerts when ever he needs to prop up his and the Republican Party's image, at our expense.

10-24-05 Republicans Doing What They Do Best, When They Are Caught With Their Hand In The Cookie Jar, Attack And Blame The The Person That Caught Them.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 - With a decision expected this week on possible indictments in the C.I.A. leak case, allies of the White House suggested Sunday that they intended to pursue a strategy of attacking any criminal charges as a disagreement over legal technicalities or the product of an overzealous prosecutor.

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, is expected to announce by the end of the week whether he will seek indictments against White House officials in a decision that is likely to be a defining moment of President Bush's second term. The case has put many in the White House on edge.

Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., who is Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, have been advised that they are in serious legal jeopardy. Other officials could also face charges in connection with the disclosure of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer in 2003.

On Sunday, Republicans appeared to be preparing to blunt the impact of any charges. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, speaking on the NBC news program "Meet the Press," compared the leak investigation with the case of Martha Stewart and her stock sale, "where they couldn't find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn't a crime." Click Here For Full Story

10-24-05 This is something that I could not have said better myself, It is from someone who's witty commentary and insightful thoughts I enjoy very much, so without further exhalations I give you the mind of Rachel Maddow.

A group calling itself Christian Exodus is trying to set up their own little theocracy... in South Carolina. They want 2500 people to move to northern South Carolina in the next year to set up a little constritution-free taliban nation where abortion is illegal, gay marriage is banned, there's no public schools or medicaid or medicare, or hell, let's get rid of voting rights, too.

They say they want to make the whole country over in their image, and if they fail, they'll secede. Oh please, oh please, oh please! They've got about 14 adults (and their many poor children) already, which to me indicates that they'd fit nicely on a boat. Where they could happily practice pushing walls over onto each other, and not having abortions.

Rachel

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10-21-05 National Guard Has Only 34% Of Their Equipment For Use Here At Home The Rest, In Iraq. Bush and the Republicans have striped this country of our, future by spending over 300 Billion on a war of choice for oil. They Have Striped America of it's respect by other Nations. They have promised us better security but have created more territories and now the more we look the more we see that the cost of the war is even higher. Higher b y using dubious methods of stripping equipment meant to protect our citizens and our country here at home and sending it into Iraq, that bill for equipment won't be seen till the Guard needs to replace that equipment and then it will not be considered part of the Iraq war debt.

10-21-05 Pet Projects Stay, While Cutting Detecting Home Mortgage Interest, Food Stamps, and other social programs to pay for Bush and the Republicans War, and The Gulf Cost Devastation. Yes the war does matter, because if we were not there we would not have Billions of dollars in new interest on the borrowing money to pay for it, it could have went into paying our national debt, which by the way is now approaching 8 Trillion dollars, with the so called "Conservative Republicans."

10-20-05 Another Blow To Economy Has Arrived. About 30% of spending in the economy was from people getting home equity loans to the tune of 600 billion dollars a year in 2004. That number this year has stopped, as interest rates rise. That means if it stays flat 30% of the money fueling the economy is gone.

10-20-05 No Rise in Minimum Wage, The Senate voted yesterday 51 to 47 to reject increasing the minimum wage to $6.25, an increase of $1.10 an hour over the next year and a half . The minimum wage has remained at $5.15 an hour since 1997

10-20-05 We Now Know, That Bush Knew, That Rove Was The Leak, as the article in the NY Daily News reported yesterday. (Click Here To Read Article) Bush rebuked Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair. With that in mind Bush continued to lie to the public about not knowing who the “senior official” was. Now according to the story Bush made his displeasure known to Karl," a presidential counselor told The News. "He made his life miserable about this."

Just how miserable could he make it after all in Feb 8 2005 Bush issued the following statement:

President George W. Bush today announced that he has named Karl Rove Assistant to the President, Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor.

"Karl Rove is a longtime advisor and trusted member of my team. His hard work and dedication have been invaluable. I appreciate Karl's willingness to continue to serve my Administration in this new position," stated President Bush.

Since 2001, Mr. Rove has served as Senior Advisor to the President, overseeing strategic planning, political affairs, public liaison, and intergovernmental affairs at the White House.

Prior to joining the Administration, he served as chief strategist for the Bush for President Campaign. From 1981 to1999, he was President of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin, Texas-based public affairs firm. Mr. Rove attended the University of Utah, the University of Texas at Austin and George Mason University. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/02/20050208-13.html

Excellent work Mr. Schumer, now will the news pick up on your letter? Better yet will you or the American Public get to not only see the letter but will they get to read or hear the answers?

This will more than likely be just another letter added to the Bush's circular file.

10-19-05 Bush Pushes again for Immigrant-Worker Plan, "We're going to get control of our borders," Mr. Bush said. Let's see now first Bush dumps Davis Bacon act, now we have thousands of immigrants crossing the border to work in New Orleans while Bush and FEMA sends the indigenous residents hundreds if not thousands of miles away. Then the companies working in the area house the illegal workers in local housing that could have housed the New Orleans citizens who could have and wanted to do the work. Now he wants to allow the immigrants to stay here as a guest worker. SOURCE:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/politics/19immig.html

10-19-05 Senate Panel Drops Plan to Cut Back Food Program, afraid of a backlash over spending cuts that could be portrayed as targeting the poor. A Senate panel on Tuesday decided to drop their plans to cut the food stamp program by over $500 million, as Congress starts on a contentious round of budget cuts. Keith Williams, of the Agriculture Committee, said the reason was because several committee members had concerns that the action could have cut off food stamps to an estimated 300,000 people. This at a time when Bush and the Republicans screwed up In Louisiana and Mississippi, and hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs, their homes, their towns, their cities, and desperately need help. SOURCE:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/politics/19cong.html

10-19-05 Harriet E. Miers Backed Ban on Abortion in 1989 Campaign, In a survey taken by Miers "If Congress passes a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution that would prohibit abortion except when it was necessary to prohibit the death of the mother, would you actively support its ratification by the Texas Legislature?" Miers answered yes. She told the group she would support a state ban on abortion, oppose public financing for abortions, participate in "pro-life" events and use her "influence as an elected official" to "promote the pro-life cause." The White House was quick to point out that Ms. Miers's personal views should not be used to predict how she would rule on any case. Right just as Roberts is now living up to his past actions supporting large Corporations as soon as he was put on the court. SOURCE:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/politics/politicsspecial1/19confirm.html

10-19-05 Hurricane Wilma Went From A Tropical Storm To A Class 5 Hurricane Overnight, with winds of over 175 mph. This is the fastest that any storm in reordered history has ever done that in the Atlantic. But not to worry that Global Warming thing is just not real, and as Bush and the corporate controlled Republican congress said a while a ago "I think it requires more study" .

10-18-05 Pentagon has created an illegal database of 30 million 16-25 year-olds, including names, addresses, email addresses, cell phone numbers, ethnicities, social security numbers, extracurricular activities, and areas of study? The notorious No Child Left Behind Act includes a sneaky section that requires high schools to turn over private information on students to military recruiters? Parents can download a form here to opt out of the Pentagon's recruiting database on high school kids and college students.

10-18-05 Cheney may be target of probe. As the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's name nears an apparent conclusion, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has zeroed in on the role of Vice President Dick Cheney's office. The prosecutor has assembled evidence that suggests Cheney's long-standing tensions with the CIA contributed to the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame.
SOURCE : http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usleak1019,0,2962042.story?coll=ny-top-headlines

10-17-05 "Valerie Flame?" In Judith Miller’s notebook a reporter for The New York Times, appear two small words: "Valerie Flame." Miller should have written Valerie Plame Ms. Miller spent 85 days in jail for refusing to reveal her confidential source. On Sept. 30, she told the grand jury that her source was Libby, the chief of staff for the vice president. But she said he did not reveal Ms. Plame's name. When the prosecutor asked her to explain how "Valerie Flame" appeared in the same notebook she used in interviewing Libby, Miller said she "didn't think" she heard it from him. "I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall." SOURCE : http://nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national/16leak.html?hp&ex=1129435200&en=ae9961705f60a5d9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

10-14-05 Al Gore May Be Convinced To Run Again. I heard something today that may help give some hope depending on if you liked Al Gore or not, considering that Al Gore is the only elected President that never served. Today someone called in to Thom Hartmann who is a friend of Al Gore, to say that the news put out only half the statement that Al Gore said the first part was "I have no intentions of running at this time". What they left out was "I won't rule out any future interest". Then Dillon went on to say that Al Gore is truly undecided and that if he were pushed he probably would run again. Dillon set up a web the URL is http://www.algore.org/

PS Dillon was the person that Al Gore helped out during the 2000 campaign when his son needed medical care and he was having trouble with his HMO.

10-14-05 EVERY TIME YOU HERE, " WE'LL FIGHT THEM OVER THERE SO WE WON'T HAVE TO FIGHT THEM AT HEAR HOME"

THE MINUTE THE LEVEL IS ELEVATED HERE, WE SPEND HUNDRED'S OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS, MOBILIZING POLICE, FIRE, AND RESCUE WORKERS. WE MUST CONSTANTLY BE IN FEAR OF AN ATTACK. WE MUST BE READY TO FIGHT HEAR AT HOME . WE MUST BE READY TO DEAL WITH THE CARNAGE AND THE AFTERMATH OF AN ATTACK.

REMEMBER IT WAS ALL A LIE. IT DID NOT WORK. IF IT DID WORK THEN WE SHOULD NEVER HEAR A THREAT LEVEL ELEVATED ABOVE GREEN.

JUST ANOTHER GEORGE W. BUSH SOUND BITE CREATED TO DECEIVE, FOUNDED IN A LIE.

10-14-05 From Knock Off To Subsidies. Interesting thought came to me tonight as I was watching The News Hour; there was a segment about knock-off items. It seems that nearly all of them are coming from the country that has most of our manufacturing jobs… China. It also seems that China does not believe in the concept of intellectual property. How nice for them, first we give them the manufacturing plants, then the technology to produce the product. Now the next logical step for a country that does not believe in intellectual property is to copy it and sell it for far less money. Well Wal-Mart found a way to deal with the problem. Because people do not make that much money in China movies that usually cost about $20 bucks in Wal-Mart can be bought on the street for $3 bucks, so Wal-Mart decided to lower their price to $3 bucks. Well I guess that is why movies still cost $20 bucks at Wal-Mart here in the US. So let’s see first Wal-Mart helps to send our $15 to $20 dollar manufacturing jobs to China, then they replace them with $5 to $8 dollar an hour jobs in the US at Wal-Mart, then we subsidies the Chinese, the same people that now have our jobs, by helping to pay for what they buy at Wal-Mart. Ain’t it great to be in country run by Republicans.

10-13-05 With 50% Unemployment In Iraq Halliburton Is Importing Labor, is it any wonder there is an insurgency in Iraq? I guess that Halliburton is only getting people to do the jobs that Iraqi people do not want to do? I think not it is just a matter of money, and how much Halliburton, Bush, Cheney, and the Republican Corporate Controlled party can steal from Iraq. The wage paid to the imported labor is $1.56 an hour. Click Here For More Info.

10-13-05 SEC Issues Subpoena To Frist, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has been subpoenaed to turn over personal records and documents. Frist said that he did nothing wrong and that he sold the stocks to eliminate potential conflicts as he considered a 2008 presidential run. Funny he didn’t think that is was a problem while he was making and passing laws in congress that made more money for HCA the family owned stock, among which he held private issue stocks as well as public issue stocks. Click Here For More Info.

10-12-05 Tom Delay Using Typical Republican Tactics And Attacks Texas Prosecutor. Click Here

10-12-05 Religion Running Our Government? It may seem so when you consider that this Republican Administration under Bush Jr. is spending double the amount of money on abstinence programs then on vaccination programs. It may seem so when you consider that this Republican Administration under Bush Jr. is spending double the amount of money on abstinence programs then on vaccination programs.

10-12-05 Blind Trust Or Blind Logic, Or Just Plane Blind? Vice President Cheney has a puzzling view that he does not have a financial interest in Halliburton. On the September 14, 2003 edition of Meet the Press in response to questions regarding his relationship with Halliburton where he was employed as CEO for five years, from 1995 to 2000, Vice President Cheney said: "And since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had, now, for over three years." Cheney continues to received a deferred salary from the company. According to financial disclosure forms, he was paid $205,298 in 2001; $162,392 in 2002; $178,437 in 2003; and $194,852 in 2004. How can you own stock options and not know about it or how much you have or what it is worth, while the rest of the world knows about it and somehow even though it is talked about and printed in the news and even listed on your Federal tax return. Then you hand out NO BID contracts ALL the time to that same company every thing is just fine, and there is no conflict of interest. Vice President Cheney continues to hold 433,333 Halliburton stock options, now worth $9,214,154.93. If Cheney had no stock and handed out the contracts that would be better, but you can bet that as soon as he got out of office he would be handed a multi-billion dollar job, complete with insensitive bonus to make up the difference he would have made if he held the stock. Maybe a politician should never be allowed to hold any stock at all while in office, and they or their families can never work for that company or any if their subsidiaries after leaving office. Until things change the corporations and the rich will continue to steal the public funds to add to their riches, leaving nothing for us… the citizens… “We The People”.

10-11-05 More Military Action Planned For American Citizens By Bush And The Republicans The military is now planning just how to deploy our Standing Army rather than the National Guard, during natural emergencies. Bush has urged Congress to consider laws allowing a greater role for the active-duty armed forces in disaster relief. My question is what happened to our state run National Guard? The reason given by this Administration considering this plan is Katrina. The answer I have is, If you did not send more than half of the National Guard from the region along with all of their specializes equipment, on a illegal war and occupation this is a concept that would not now even need to be brought up. Another question is why is our Standing Army, that is trained to Fight a war, left at home to be deployed on Americans, on American soil while our National Guard that is trained to deal with national emergencies deployed over seas on Foreign soil fighting in a war of choice? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

It is said that Art imitates life; well this is a quote I heard on the new Battlestar Glacial that may have come from somewhere else but belongs to be said here in the context of this story, as a closing thought.

“There is a reason why you separate the military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state. The other serves to protect the people When the military becomes, both…the enemies of the state tend to become the people”.

10-11-05 It's Beginning To Look Like More Campaign Terror Threats Bushes numbers fall, and Bloomberg is running for reelection, and up pops the terror threats once again. The evidence now appears not to be creditable as reported in the story linked below. The only problem is that instead of reading My Pet Goat these people should have read Chicken Little. You cannot keep yelling that the "Sky Is Falling . The Sky Is Falling" and keep expecting people to believe it.

10-11-05 After Listening To NBC "Foe News" I've Come To The Conclusion, That They Should Be Known As "The Gannon News Hour's" All morning no mater who was interviewed they employed the "Jeff Gannon" also known as the Republican "Push Poll" line of questing to their guest. Included today was Bush Jr., at his photo op in Louisiana at Habit for Humanity's building project, which by the way he never once mentioned Jimmy Carter for creating the organization or for starting the massive effort for fundraising and volunteers to build the homes that Bush Jr. now jumped in to steel the spot light, and act as though it was all his idea.

10-10-05 Energy bill OKd in vote GOP, Measure Scrapes by After Arm Twisting On House Floor The House of Representatives descended into bedlam Friday as Republican leaders kept a five-minute vote open for more than 40 minutes -- and arm-twisted two of their members to switch their votes -- to pass a new energy bill. The bill, which would offer incentives for oil companies to build new refineries, sparked angry accusations by Democrats that GOP leaders were abusing House rules to squeeze through the controversial measure. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, asked at one point: "Doesn't this make the House a banana republic?"

Democrats chanted "shame! shame!" as the presiding speaker announced that the measure, in response to the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, had passed on a 212-210 vote. The scene was reminiscent of the House's vote on a Medicare prescription drug benefit in November 2003, when GOP leaders kept the vote open for nearly three hours while trying to persuade reluctant members of their own party to back the measure.

The vote was tied at 211-211 when Republican leaders convinced Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, R-Md., to switch his vote to "yes" 44 minutes after he had voted "no." His spokeswoman declined to comment on why he changed his position. Delaying a vote does not violate House rules, but lawmakers from both parties have long denounced it as an unfair tactic. "The Republican majority will go to any length to satisfy the greed of the energy companies," Pelosi said. The energy bill that passed the House of Representatives by a two-vote margin after a controversial extended vote would:

Outlaw price-gouging and give federal regulators the authority to impose fines of as much as $11,000 per violation.

Limit the number of gasoline blends refiners have to produce from 17 to six, eliminating many blends designed to reduce air pollution.

Allow a city or region to petition for more time to meet Clean Air Act standards if it can show the pollution comes from another area.

Funny thing but it only deals with giving more money to the very people that are steeling our money already, it does not provide any money at all for alternative energy like solar or wind, It does not provide any money to improve or expand mass transportation. Why don't these Republicans just call it what it is. It's another hand out with our money to not only the ultra wealthy but business a usual for for the Robber Barons.

10-08-05 Bush Plan Shows U.S. Is Not Ready for Deadly Flu A plan developed by the Bush administration to deal with any possible outbreak of pandemic flu shows that the United States is woefully unprepared for what could become the worst disaster in the nation's history. A draft of the final plan, which has been years in the making and is expected to be released later this month, says a large outbreak that began in Asia would be likely, because of modern travel patterns, to reach the United States within "a few months or even weeks." Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/08/politics/08flu.html?hp&ex=1128830400&en=2d36703f52765687&ei=5094&partner=homepage

10-08-05 The Bush, Rove Plan For Reconstruction Labor In New Orleans...Hire Illegal Immigrants, while they ship the locals that live there to another state, and give away their jobs. Let's follow this pretzel logic. First you move the local population hundreds of miles away to another state, taking away even more money from Louisiana, while there were places within the state to send them. Next you bring in outside workers and give them the local housing to live in while the work there, you certainly don't think that they commute every day to work do you? So just why is it the locals were not given those places to live? Why is it the locals were not given those jobs? The locals certainly would have wanted them as opposed to no job at all to rebuild their lives. More info: http://www.washtimes.com/business/20051007-101928-3995r.htm

10-08-05 35 Thousand Is The Current Claim of job losses By The Bush Administration In Louisiana. Now If that figure is based on unemployment filings I wonder how many people are not counted in that figure? There are over 80 thousand Louisiana citizens shelters in other states, according to these numbers that means that 2/3rds of those people were not working. Now add to that as many as 500 thousand people evacuated the city... something just does not add up. I wonder how many people that are now in other states that have not filed for unemployment? I Wonder how many were denied unemployment benefits because they are now in another state, or the place or employer where they worked cannot be found to verify that they even had a job before?

10-07-05 On Bush And His Speech Of Fear, this time though bush added a new twist to up the fear anti, because apparently he has used the be afraid of terrorist so much so the it has almost no effect anymore. So with his poll numbers on the express elevator to the sub basement he now adds Communism to he fear mongering rhetoric. Click Here for the Transcript. The speech contained the obligatory 911, and the linking of Iraq and A Qaida when he said "I would remind them that we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001, and Al Qaida attacked us anyway". First of all Al Qaida was not in Iraq either on 911, but thanks to Bush they are there now. Second if Al Qaida was not in Iraq on 911 and Al Qaida attacked us what the hell are we doing there George!

10-07-05 Karl Rove To Be Questioned For The 4th Time by the grand jury, according to Roves lawyer, the prosecutor cannot guarantee that Rove will not be indicted, even though Rove has not received a target letter. A target letter means that you have become the object of the investigation. Rove at this time was not offered immunity in exchange for his testimony either.

10-07-05 "God told me to invade Iraq", Bush tells Palestinian ministers. Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'" Abu Mazen was at the same meeting and recounts how President Bush told him: "I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state." SOURCE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/print/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/10_october/06/bush.shtml

10-07-05 Fact To Ponder. GM was at one time the largest employer in America, now Wal-Mart is the largest employer. That means a lot more than you think, in 2003 the average Wal-Mart sales associates, the most common job in Wal-Mart, earned on average $8.23 an hour for annual wages of $13,861.The 2003 poverty line for a family of three was $15,260. Cashiers, the second most common job, earn approximately $7.92 per hour and work 29 hours a week. This brings in annual wages of only $11,948. Union wages were on Average $740 a week. so think about it, if hundreds of thousands of people were earning more money, then there would be billions of more dollars people would have to spend, creating more demand for products creating more jobs. Just how much spending do you think that someone is going to do after paying rent and food and transportation when you earn between $230 to $294 a week? Now if you have a child or two... Forget about health care the average policy is up to $10,0000 a year for a family. Health care came with the union job. Now what do you think helped the economy more? Hundreds of thousand of people with money to spend or the Walton's who own Wal-Mart making 8 Billion dollars a year divided among 9 families? Oh did I mention that they only pay 15% Federal income tax thanks to George W. Bush and the Republican Party?

10-06-05 Bush To Veto For The First Time A $440 Billion Spending Bill For The Military, And Why? Because of an amendment that outlaws...torture, President Bush says he will veto the bill. The Bush administration officials say the legislation would limit the president's authority and flexibility in war. The amendment Sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., also would require all service members to follow procedures in the Army Field Manual when they detain and interrogate terrorism suspects. "This amendment strives to establish uniform standards for the interrogation of prisoners and detainees as a means for helping ensure our service men and women are well trained, well briefed, knowledgeable of their legal, professional and moral duties and obligations," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. All but nine Republicans voted in favor of the legislation. First Bush claims that the torture was an isolated incident but now he claims he needs it for flexibility in war? There is no flexibility or any other excuse for Americans to use torture under any circumstances. What this story also implies that the torture in the past was not limited to "Just a few rogue soldiers", and that they really were following orders from higher ups.

10-06-05 1918 Killer Flu 'Came From Birds' The Spanish flu virus that killed 50 million people in 1918-19 was probably a strain that originated in birds, research has shown. US scientists have found the 1918 virus shares genetic mutations with the bird flu virus now circulating in Asia. Writing in Nature, they say their work underlines the threat the current strain poses to humans worldwide. A second paper in Science reveals another US team has successfully recreated the 1918 virus in mice. “We are revealing some of the secrets that will help us predict and prepare for the next pandemic” said Julie Gerberding The virus is contained at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under stringent safety conditions. It is hoped to carry out experiments to further understand the biological properties that made the virus so virulent. The virus was recreated from data produced by painstaking research by a team from the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

Lung tissue samples Working on virus samples from the remains of victims of the 1918 pandemic, the researchers were able to piece together the entire genetic sequence of the virus. They found the virus contained elements that were new to humans of the time - making it highly virulent. And analysis of the final three pieces of the virus' genetic code has revealed mutations that have striking similarities to those found in flu viruses found only in birds, such as the H5N1 strain currently found in south east Asia. This strain has so far killed at least 65 people. Many experts believe it is only a matter of time before H5N1, or a similar strain, causes many deaths in humans - possibly after combining with a human flu strain. Crucially, the mutations identified by the US researchers were found in genes which control the virus' ability to replicate in host cells. The researchers say these mutations may have helped the 1918 virus replicate more efficiently. At this stage, they say the H5N1 strain shares only some, and not all, of these mutations.

Increased virulence But these mutations may be enough to increase the virus' virulence - and give it the potential to cause serious human infection without first combining with a known human flu strain. The researchers believe the two other major flu pandemics of the 20th century - in 1957 and 1968 - were caused by human flu viruses which acquired two or three key genes from bird flu virus strains. But they believe the 1918 strain was probably entirely a bird flu virus that adapted to function in humans. Julie Gerberding, director of the US Centers for Disease Control, said: "By unmasking the 1918 virus we are revealing some of the secrets that will help us predict and prepare for the next pandemic." And Dr Jeffery Taubenberger, lead researcher of the Nature study, said: "Determining whether pandemic influenza virus strains can emerge via different pathways will affect the scope and focus of surveillance and prevention efforts."

Warning Professor John Oxford, an expert in virology at Queen Mary College, London, said the suggestion that the virus had the potential to jump between humans without first combining with a human virus made it even more of a threat. "This study gives us an extra warning that H5N1 needs to be taken even more seriously than it has been up to now," he said. Dr Terrence Tumpey, of the US CDC, defended the decision to recreate the 1918 flu virus. He said: "We felt we had to recreate the virus and run these experiments to understand the biological properties that made the 1918 virus so exceptionally deadly. "We wanted to identify the specific genes responsible for its virulence, with the hope of designing antivirals or other interventions that would work against virulent pandemic or epidemic influenza viruses."

10-05-05 The most recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll showed only 37 percent of Americans approve of Bush's handling of Iraq, with 62 percent disapproving.

You want to be embraced by the grassroots and the netroots, respond to me and tell me you are listening to my pragmatic and dismal day-in-day-out realities. And it gets even worse. I have no right to complain, my realities aren't a fraction as bad as the dire circumstances of most Americans.

All this bickering about centrism, too left, not quite left enough, DLC, Hillary Hate, is bullshit. For starters, just promise me that on day one, you're going to make healthcare a right not a privilege.

Your fellow citizens are really worried. Right now, Avian flu is particularly horrifying. Talk to me you moron democrats, tell me what you're going to do to protect me from the health insurance industry, the oil companies, Al Queda, unaffordable energy prices, unequal education, incompetent FEMA, a shortage of flu vaccine. How about leveling with the American people about Peak Oil?

Corruption and competence matter, but how to pay my skyrocketing health insurance premiums matters just as much.

Listen to my cries, mine is the voice of millions of Americans--voting Americans.

Taking these criminals down is glorious. Now I plead for just one democrat to step forward and assure me that they recognize that we can't hang on much longer. The middle class in this country is being destoyed in just the same way as the middle class in Iraq has been all but vanquished.

Read the comments that we get every day here. Heartbreaking is what they are! The pleas of ordinary, hard working, tax paying Americans, desperately juggling two jobs, skyrocketing costs and a seemingly out-of-touch democratic party. Mr. Obama, next time you (or more likely your staff person) writes a lengthy Kos diary, please use a paragraph or two to acknowledge that you recognize that many Americans are losing the struggle.

We won't win unless you give me reason to hope again that there is a future for me and my family in this country. We won't win until you not only address, but give concrete solutions to the problems that are haunting and destroying so many decent American citizens.

America is setting all sorts of records under Bush and the Republican Administration... and their ALL BAD. Bush was a Failure at everything he has done in his life, and now he is making America a Failure as well.

10-04-05 A second Texas Grand Jury Had Now Indicted Tom Delay, this time the charge is money laundering. This was a different Grand Jury handing down the charges, if convicted, the charge carriers a term of up to life in jail. Another interesting note is that the justice department has asked British Police if they can question the Prime Minster of England Margot Thatcher, about her meeting with Tom Delay when he was there on his Jack Abamoff paid Golfing trip. Indictment Copy Pg1, Pg2, Pg3, Pg4, Pg5, Pg6, Pg7, Pg8.

References:[1] The House Ethics Committee found that DeLay offered to help former Congressman Nick Smith's son Brad, who was running for Congress at the time, in exchange for Smith's vote on the Medicare prescription drug bill. The House Ethics Committee gave DeLay a public admonishment. Smith originally claimed that DeLay mentioned $100,000 in contributions but later stated that no specific figure was mentioned. (Roll Call, 11/22/04)

[2] DeLay used a federal agency for partisan politics, an action prohibited by House Standards of Official Conduct. On May 12, 2003, DeLay's office asked the FAA for assistance in locating an aircraft carrying Texas state legislators (Summary of Complaint against Rep. Tom DeLay Filed by Chris Bell, 6/8/04). The House Ethics Committee admonished DeLay, stating, "Your intervention in a partisan conflict in the Texas House of Representatives . . . raises serious concerns under House standards . . . that preclude use of government resources for a political undertaking." (National Journal Congress Daily, 10/7/04)

[4] "A Foreign Agent Paid for a Luxury Trip to South Korea for DeLay and His Wife." The trip was paid for by the Korea-US Exchange Council. The group is registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act and was created with help from a lobbying firm headed by DeLay's former chief of staff. The cost to send DeLay, his wife, and other lawmakers [to South Korea] for three days was $106,921. (Washington Post, 3/10/05)

10-04-05 GAO Ruled That The Government Cannot Pay For Fake News. The GAO has ruled that Paying for and producing Foe news stories to promote the policies of the Bush Administrations and the Republican Party is Illegal, a more common term for what they have and are still doing is “Propaganda”. Unfortunately there is no penalty for this crime. This a crime that has mislead many people through their duplicity, causing people to believe something that is founded in a lie. The accountability office said on Friday: "The failure of an agency to identify itself as the source of a prepackaged news story misleads the viewing public by encouraging the audience to believe that the broadcasting news organization developed the information. The prepackaged news stories are purposefully designed to be indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to the public. When the television viewing public does not know that the stories they watched on television news programs about the government were in fact prepared by the government, the stories are, in this sense, no longer purely factual. The essential fact of attribution is missing."

10-04-05 Who is Harriet Miers? Besides the fact that she is BushCo’s next pick to the Supreme Court, she is also a loyal Bush supporter. Her past duties have been to clean up Bush’s record, or hide items that were too damming. Other then the fact that she has never judged 1 single case, meaning no experience what so ever has not stopped Bush from nominating her to the highest Court in the land. A court that is to be the example for all another lower courts, the court that has the last word, and defenders of the constitution. She is now challenged by of all people but the right wing. Could it be because there is so much bad news coming out Bush wants a big public fight to take the heat off of him, and if by some chance she gets in, so what, the country and it’s laws means nothing to Bush or this Republican party. You can be sure of on thing is that no matter what ever her decisions are they will always support the party at the expense of America. This time when we find out that BushCo has appointed another "Brown", the damage will take even longer to repair than the damage wake of Brown.

10-04-05 Just A Few Points About Louisiana And Katrina. First only 2.6% of all the contracts to rebuild Louisiana are going to Louisiana. Next there is no evidence that anyone fired on rescue helicopters. See. Third, last week when they went to collect the bodies, from the dome, they found that there were no bodied that showed signs of murder or rape. And there were less than 10 bodies in the dome. Curious, the right wing media kept insisting that people were shooting at the helicopters. Curious, the right wing media kept reporting that there was mass murder going on in the dome. It seems that Bush and his inexperienced appointed FEMA and Homeland Security heads committed the only murders. Reff: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12801034.htm

10-01-05 Interesting Prospective. We were told during the 2004 election, when there were record numbers of people showing up to vote, people standing in lines for 8 to 10 hours in the rain in some places in the country and in the searing sun in others. We were told that, or should say that, they meaning the Karl Rove talking heads, that all those people turned out to support the norm, the status quo. If that's the case then why is it that last weekend when 200,000 to 300,000 people showed up to protest the war... then tell me if that logic that says that people only show up to keep the status quo... why is it that only 300 to 400 people showed up at the rally to support the war? It seems to me that nothing radical has changed in society, people turn out in large numbers when they want change.

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10-01-05 Just a thought. This week an interesting static came out about indecency complaints to the government. In the last quarter the number of complaints went from an average of over 150,000 to just about 6,000, now just what is different. The television industry is still playing the same shows in fact they are in reruns. The Cable and satellite companies still are pushing the same commercials and violent and sexy programming. Could it be that the people complaining have deiced that they like all that stuff now, or have they just gotten tired of complaining? I have a different train of thought. Maybe the groups complaining just don't have the time to complain anymore. What do I mean? well think about... If the complaints are by right wing, they have been kept very busy trying to defend Bush and than Republican party with the Karl Rove mess, Katrina's mass, Brownie's mess, Then lobbying for Roberts, attacking Cindy Sheehan, and not to mention both house leaders under investigation, oh and high gas prices...I think you get the idea. So maybe most of the complaints most of the time are just from small bunch or right wing cranks, who just can't multi task. Perhaps there really are not that many and they just don't have the time to keep complaining in someone else's name to make it look like there are more of them then there really are.

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09-22-05 What If The Charge Of Vote Fixing Proves To Be True? What if it turns out to have been on a large scale and that the take over of the Senate and house and including the Presidency was accomplished with a use of electronic voting. Now let's say we lock up the people responsible, but do the holders of those offices get removed? Are we then stuck with all the bad legislation like tax reform or Supreme court nominations like Roberts? Finally if nothing it reversed then doesn't that make the crime worth committing because in effect it's like a suicide bomber, you may die but you advance the cause by becoming a martyr for the cause.

09-21-05 Something else about Bush and the Davis Bacon act has come to mind. If you think about several things Bush has done, it is getting easier and easier for Bush and this Republican Administration to screw everyone easier and easier. If you remember Bush wants to institute a guest worker program, he also wants to allow ill-legal aliens to continue to work in this country. Second, Bush and the Republican party changed the bankruptcy laws, in a way that even if you loose your home you still need to pay the bill. Third Bush now transport a large portion of the work force that lived in New Orleans hundreds of miles away, making it near impossible to work on the rebuilding, thus removing them from the work force. Fourth Bush is already planning on having Karl Rove of the rebuilding and that means in charge of handing out the contracts. Now I am quite sure that many of the people besides the fact that they are Bush Republican insiders, also employ a large number of Latino's some are probably legal but I'll bet a good number are not. Now put it all together, the people who lost everything and cannot find work but had a home in New Orleans, will be forced to sell their property to settle a bankruptcy, and never get what it was worth, and will be paying for it for years to come, and not owning it in the end. Next Bush and Republican insiders will be using workers that they feel are not worth the price, because as they put it "they are doing jobs Americans don't want to do". The fact that they do not want to pay what the job is worth is another story not addressed. I'm sure that Bush and the Republicans feel that their friends should not have to pay their workers a higher wage, because it might spoil them and then it could set a precedence at paying them more money for jobs that they are already doing for less money. What it boils down to is another Tri-Fecta for Bush and the Republicans. The American public gets stuck again with another bad deal by Bush. Bush and his Friends get the house and we the people get the morgue, they get all the gold in the gold mine and we the people get the shaft.

An insider comes forward to say that there was in 2004 and are security flaws and back doors into the "Gems Central Tabulator" that counts all the votes nationwide. Not only was the security problems known in the Diebold company, and everyone remained silent at a threat to their jobs, but this Administration knows as well and did nothing to stop the problem. Read the full story Click here

After years of accusing the Democrats of wanting to take away people's guns...take away your guns in a place that according to the Republicans has "Sunk into Lawlessness"...a place which is the prime example that the NRA used as it's PR to say why they needed citizens to keep guns for protection. If you guessed the Democrats you would be wrong. The Democrats at least bring the issue up to a public forum so that it can be debated openly and fairly, and if the issue is defeated so be it the will of the people prevail. But Bush and the Republicans just marched in and took away your guns without warning without discussion, they just took them away. It is George W. Bush and the Republicans, yes the Republicans! No mater what the reason they The Republicans are taking away your guns period. You have to admit that it is the party as well because have you heard one Republican senator or congress men stand up to protest? No. They are taking away ALL guns. Not just assault weapons or automatic weapons, they are taking away ALL GUNS, except unless if you are with Blackwater Security, which are private contractors. You know the same private contractors that you heard about in Iraq, They meaning the Republicans found that if you call them private contractors people felt sorry for them when they are reported killed in Iraq. Maybe because when you hear that a private contractor is killed you think of a carpenter or a plumber, or an painter, well guess again, they are a heavily armed private army. Please don't misunderstand me the killing of anyone is wrong, when reason can prevail. Isn't amazing though, Bush could not get food or water to the people but he can send in a private army, and take away your guns at gunpoint as well. "Four million NRA members intend to stop this unconstitutional power grab." But will you do it by getting rid of the Republican party, the ones who actually are taking away your guns? The ones who are taking away your guns just in the exact situation that gin owners say they need guns for? The Democrats no matter how bad the situation was in any disaster never took away your guns, limit yes take away...No. Maybe, just maybe the NRA and the Dem's have more in common then you think. Read the posting from the NRA's web.

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A version of a magic show or a con game, we know that we are not entertained so it must be a con.

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09-05 05 Use This Link To Send A Message To The Senate To Oppose John Roberts As Chief Justice Of The Supreme Court. Click HERE

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So many of us support Cindy Sheehan but we either don't know what to do, or we Want to Go down to Texas but we can't afford to do it because we may not have the money or we can't afford the time off. Well here's an idea.

Let's all stand together across the country across the world. Send this idea to as many people that you can to show Cindy that we may not be physically standing by her side in Texas, but we are standing beside her in sprit, and she has our full support.

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Do You Want Answers As To What Is Happening In Our Country's Government Today? I was Listening to Tom Hartmann On Feb 8 and heard a very interesting talk with the founder of http://www.Theocracywatch.org/ Go to there and download the two videos and you will suddenly realize what is happening with the Bush Administration. This is the link to the video page http://www.theocracywatch.org/audio-video.htm . Please send this page and links to everyone you know, time is of the essence to get the word out.

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My truth By Giuliana Sgrena. The story from the Italian News Reporter Herself as published in the il manifesto Click Here or Click here if this link does not work

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08-29-05 At first I did not want to say anything about Pat Robertson because what he said was so outrageous. But now it gets even worse. Pat Robertson first says 1 We should kill Hugo Chavez then he says he didn’t, say it. You decide.

Then he comes out the next day and says, “I didn’t say assignation I said quote our special forces should take him out” Take him out, if you didn’t mean kill him than I guess you meant you want someone to take him out to diner and a movie?

Now when that didn’t fly, he says he "spoke in frustration". Funny but most people would call that lying, not frustration.

Why is it that when Robertson, a self proclaimed minister of God. I say self because we cannot ask God if he approves of Pat Robertson, although Robertson tells us he hears God talking to him, like when God told him the stock market was going to go up. Funny there's that reference to money again, and oddly enough the messenger was God? Nonetheless Robertson just strings a pack of lies together one after the other. He starts out calling Hugo Chavez a dictator, which he is not. He was elected in a democratic process, and when a coup, which the US said and did nothing when it started, failed, Hugo Chavez by popular support regained power. Hugo Chavez did not destroy the economy it was done by his predecessor concretive economic policies, (much the way Bush and the republican policies are now doing to America). Then Robertson advocates killing another person, because it is cheaper than another war, and he meant cheaper in dollars because he expressly said another 200 billion dollar war. No mention in the cost of human lives. But he does talk about their Oil as if it belonged to him. No mention at all about the innocent civilians that will be killed, nothing about the dead soldiers fighting the war, no just that it would be cheaper then in dollars…money, you know the stuff that Jesus said render to “Caser what is Caser…” This really pisses me off, this man is truly the false prophet (see my previous Editorial The False Prophets Among Us) Jesus warned us about, in the book that Robertson loudly proclaims he is teaching. Which by the way it has made him a billionaire. As I recall Jesus gave everything he had to the poor, and everyone he met. Robertson says he is trying to spread the word of Jesus is the biggest hypocrite of them all. He advocates killing, he then lies about it, and made and kept billions of dollars, rather the giving it all back to his parishioners

Now today The Venezuelan Government has now called for the extradition of Pat Robertson to stand trial in Venezuelan For calling for the assignation of their President Hugo Chavez.

1 ROBERTSON: There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.

You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with. Source: http://mediamatters.org/items/200508220006

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I have not only made up signs for my car, I have made up t-shirts with a marker, I have called Talk shows with the idea, I have decided to create a forum where everyone that wants to do the same and have a place to post their pictures so all including Cindy can see them.

I have created a new web "I'm Standing With Cindy Sheehan" in support of Cindy Sheehan and it is at http://www.imstandingwithcindysheehan.com We are posting pictures of people holding sign or pictures of sign saying "I'm standing with Cindy Sheehan". Please visit this site and email it to anyone who you think would like to be part of this effort to tell Cindy that you are standing with her. Time is of the essence

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Click Here to down load a ready made Sign or Right click and choose save as to save file to use again or send to a friend.

you can also choose to use t shirt transfer paper to make an Iron On by setting your printer to "Landscape" and choosing the paper option as Iron On or transfer.

Click Here For Just A jpg Image To Resize And Use As You Like Or Right Click and Choose "Save Image" or "Save Picture as" to save Image.

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Cindy Sheehan is bravely demanding Bush explain why her son died fighting in Iraq.
"Mr. President...don't spill our country's precious lifeblood."

Ways to support Cindy and Gold Star Families for Peace:
*Donate to the Crawford Peace House, Military Families Speak Out or GSFP
*Join us in Crawford Texas
*Contact you representatives in Congress and demand they support the Resolution of Inquiry into the Downing Street Memo
*Work for Peace everyday be patient.
If you have recently e-mailed us thank you for your support. We will try and answer all e-mails as soon as possible.

Gold Star Families For Peace Web Site Of which Cindy Is a Founding Member. http://www.gsfp.org/

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If Your Sound is turned off Please turn it on then click here to get the full effect.

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Then Bush Embarks On His 50th Vacation in 5 Years ~~With No Set Time To Return~~. Make that 5 Weeks.

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07-28-05 CAFTA Passed By 2 Votes Republicans hold the vote open illegally to get CAFTA passed by 2 votes. Tom Delay Did it again the vote was against it when the time expired for the vote and then Tom Delay broke the house rules and held the voting open for an additional 2 hours till he twisted enough arms to get the votes to pass the bill. What this means is that American jobs will be subject to even more OUTSOURCING.

We need to stop chasing the next shiny object and stay on point. If we did months ago perhaps Tom Delay would have already gone down and his replacement would have never tried this stunt knowing that there would be repercussions. But what have we got now? Rumsfeld, dropped to chase Halliburton, dropped to chase Delay, dropped to chase the Downing street memo, dropped to chase Rove, dropped to chase Roberts. What do we have to show for it? Just a lot of exposed stories allowed to fade into memory and the same bunch or criminals running everything as before, but doing even more horrific things, ignoring the laws and screwing America.

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Well it’s 4^th of July and there are fireworks shooting into the sky from every neighborhood on Long Island . Yes, that’s Long Island NY and if you were sending a truck or car full of fireworks to this area (only Grucci specialty fireworks are made here) it would pass through the City of NY on the way. Don’t we have new security measures, truck inspections, explosive detectors and other measures that would prevent all these explosives from entering NYC? How did they all get here? I’m not talking about a few fire crackers and bottle rockets in a car, I’m talking about huge quantities of every possible type of pyrotechnic display. What’s going on here?

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07-21-05 Washington Post Above The Fold ...Valerie Plame's Name Was Marked Secret In The Memo

CIA Operative's Identity Was Secret, Memo Says Any Bush administration official who read the document should have been aware information was classified, say government officials.

OK Karl, Bush, and all you Righties! Now we all know, that you knew, and the proof is in the memo Valerie Plame's name was marked SECRET.

SECRET means you cannot tell any one (as the law reads) "You cannot divulge the persons identity", by saying Joe Wilson's wife you in effect gave away her Identity. Joe Wilson only has one wife.

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07-21-05 House and Senate Democrats, plan their own forum Friday .Senate Republican Congressional Committee Chair Elizabeth Dole declared, "It is incredibly irresponsible for individuals and organizations to make accusations based on rumor and innuendo. It is unfair to the investigation and even more unfair to Karl Rove."

The Supreme Court used similar langue to stop the vote count in Florida saying that a recount would do irreparable harm to the candidate, meaning Bush. I think that you Republicans need some new lines the old ones are wearing a little thin.

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07-19-05 We Now Have the Next Big Distraction From the Bush Administration.

Every time the Bush and the republican party gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar it's stall, lie...stall, lie...and stall and lie some more. Then create another disturbance even bigger than the last one and while no one is minding the store the old "last big issue" gets swept under the rug. Just a refresher to the last few forgotten items, "Osama dead or alive", no armor for the troops, Halliburton lost millions of dollars, billions of dollars allocated for Iraq are still missing, Enron... Tom Delay... Downing Street Memo...Karl Rove. So now he nominates someone of very strong conservative background that believes that Roe ( Of Roe v Wade) should be over turned, even though 60% of the country does not want it overturned. In a brief Roberts had filed with the Supreme Court while serving as deputy solicitor general in the Reagan administration. In the decision, Roberts said "Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled," referring to Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that established a woman's right to abortion. It looks like Bush has picked the next "Big Distraction" to take the heat off his good buddy Karl Rove, or should I say Karl Rove picked the Next "Big Distraction" to take the heat off himself?

Then we need to Impeach George, put him in a federal prison, along with Dick, Karl, Delay, Bill (as in Frist), and all the rest for treason and lying us into a war for no other reason except Profit... profit for a handful of select few.

In the mean time contact your Senator and tell them NOT To Confirm John G. Roberts

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07-18-05 Basically the new Republican House Plan For Social Security Is that If you Choose a private account you loose the Guarantee of any Social Security Benefits at all. See Story Here Or If the link is down Click Here

So let's say you loose everything in your account to say something like say ENRON... or World Com... now you don't have a dam thing to fall back on, But The CEO.s of the failed companies get to keep all your money and now you...you get nothing, not even Social Security.

Just like everything else they the cannot destroy all in one shot they will destroy one piece at a time. This time by again attacking "F.D.R.'S New Deal" in spite of the overwhelming national opposition to changing Social Security so they will do what they do best, if all else fails... Dismantle the program one brick at a time

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You need to Click Here to see how you can help expose the lies of George W. Bush

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There was some discussion on the web and radio yesterday about the backdrop used by Bush for his speech, Specifically that the folds in the flag in the blue field is the top of the #9 and after folding back several stripes to leave only two 1's hence 911. Well the Flags were planned. I downloaded the Pix and took it apart in Adobe Photoshop, and found that they are ALL one flag, just duplicated. If you look at the video you can also see when it is on a larger screen the small ones just behind Bush in the background are copies of the same flag as well. Why go through the trouble of duplicating one image for no reason? Once you have the idea in your minds eye in the larger flag by the folds creating the 9. Then in the eye the smaller flags create the "911" image much more quickly. Let's not forget that these are the same people that duplicated troops in the photo op during the elections as well and did not fess up till pressed for answers.

1 "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." - Joseph Goebbel s

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06-29-05 After 117 words in on a 3,641 word speech, it only took Bush 55 seconds to play the 911 card. then to repeat it over and over and over again and over and over. In fact if you do not count the greeting to the troops of Fort Bragg it took a mere 20 words in to play the 911 card. If you listen he was just repeating old speeches, recycling old themes. Bush then once again implied that Iraq attacked us on 911, and that is why we then attacked Iraq. We now have the proof with the Downing Street memos that prove other wise. It is also worth noting that Bush received applause just once in the middle of his speech when a White House advanced team member started clapping in an attempt to get everyone else to clap, which they did... reliantly.

Bush then said "The lesson of this experience is clear: The terrorists can kill the innocent – but they cannot stop the advance of freedom. The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September 11 … if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi … and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like Bin Laden. For the sake of our Nation’s security, this will not happen on my watch".

But Bush did abandon the Iraqi people and our troops as well to men like Zarqawi! For when Bush was given the opportunity 3 time in fact to get Zarqawi... Bush chose not to! According to NBC, "Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam." (Click To Read The Story)

Bush now said the there are now 160,000 trained and equipped security forces. Odd but before the 2004 elections we were told that there would be 250,000 trained troops, by the years end, Why is it we train our troops for 13 weeks and send them into Iraq without proper equipment but we cannot train Iraqis troops to defend their own country after 2 years.

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06-26-05 And now the feds are arresting doctors and patients in California, for using medical marijuana... even though 75% to 80% of the country want to see it used a a means of treatment... even though most Americans cannot understand why marijuana is not legal in the first place. The Government calls it a gateway drug, but we all know that Alcohol and cigarettes is the first drug almost everyone uses. Alcohol and cigarettes have far more damaging effects over a lifetime including death by cancer and liver failure.

06-16-05 Further proof that the Idea can work to take back our government in the next election. Yesterday in the house an amendment that would have placed a one-year moratorium on federal raids against medical marijuana patients was defeated mostly along party lines by a vote of 161 to 248 Click here to read the story

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06-16-06 The Truth Is Starting To Come Out That Over 9,000 American Solders Have Died In Iraq…. The Policy Is If You Die In A Chopper On Route To A Hospital Or You Die In A Hospital In Germany Their Death Does Not Count…. You Must Actually Die On The Battlefield In Iraq To Be Part Of The Official Body Count...Tell That To The Dead Soldiers… Tell That To Their Family’s…. Their Death Does Not Count! Like It’s Some Sort Of A Game… But You Can Not Shout Out “Do Over, Do Over, That’s Not Fair”.

WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE....HOW MANY MORE DEAD BODIES IS IT GOING TO TAKE...HOW MANY MORE LIVES DO YOU NEED ON YOUR CONSCIENCE...OR ARE YOU JUST WAITING FOR IT TO BE ONE OF YOUR OWN,... FOR YOU TO FINALLY GET INVOLVED AND SAY...

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06-15-05 Sensenbrenner has effectively shut down all conversations in the House on the issues most damaging to Republicans-- the Patriot Act and the Downing Street Memo. Conyers is not only forbidden from holding a hearing, he also can't have a room to hold unofficial hearings. He has been relegated to the office space at the DNC. Amazingly his chief of staff is quoted in The Hill (see article below) from an email he wrote to a minority staffer saying, “I’m sitting here watching your ‘forum’ on C-SPAN,” McLaughlin wrote. “Just to let you know, it was your last. Don’t bother asking [for a room] again.”

This Is the Party that says "Trust us with your rights" as the Republicans want to extend and increase provisions in the Patriot act as they do it in secret.

This from the party that just told the Democrats to shut up and removed their rights to speak, or hold a government meeting in government building.

This Republican party is leading us down the same road that Germany was lead in 1933 in Hitler rise to power.

If you value this country NOW is the time to get involved in it's political future. Now is the time to begin talking about political issues with every one you meet.

This Republican party under George W. Bush, is taking away our freedoms one at a time "To protect us" ?

But What rights will be left to protect us from them If we cannot speak up, or know what they do in secret?

If the Financial Services Committee is the best in the House when it comes to bipartisan comity, then the Judiciary Committee may well be the worst.

In December, ranking Democrat John Conyers (Mich.) began holding “forums” — gatherings with all the trappings of official hearings — after Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) refused to hold hearings on topics Conyers requested. The forums have been held in smaller committee rooms, often with C-SPAN coverage and formal witness lists.

In a sign of how far relationships on the committee have soured, majority staff recently announced a new policy to deny any request from a committee Democrat for the use of a committee hearing room.

Majority spokesman Jeff Lungren said the Republicans have given Democrats three opportunities to make clear that the forums are not official committee business. Nevertheless, Lungren said, in at least one case, members were addressing Conyers as “Mr. Chairman.”

“They were unwilling or unable to make those changes,” Lungren said. “At this point, if they want to hold these forums, they’ll have to find some other place to do it.”

Sean McLaughlin, deputy chief of staff for Sensenbrenner, recently wrote to a minority staffer in more pointed language.

“I’m sitting here watching your ‘forum’ on C-SPAN,” McLaughlin wrote. “Just to let you know, it was your last. Don’t bother asking [for a room] again.”

A committee source said committee Democrats are still planning to hold the forums when they find other available space.

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06-14-05 Today I put this idea out there on The Thom Hartmann Program. If you think it might work then tell every one you know about it... Hell, even tell people you don't know as well!

As I wrote about prior to the 2004 elections the Polls were being skewed so that when they drag out the Electronic voting machines to steel the elections no one would question what went wrong. Well the exit polls showed John Kerry winning that night, then the next morning the exit polls were changed, to match the voting machines.

We already know by polls taken several times by several sources that 75% to 80% of Americans want to see Medical Marijuana approved. We also know that over 60% of America wants stem cell research. Now let's take a page from the last election play book, when we were told that people came out to support a ban on Gay marriage initiatives.

Well let's make the candidate the initiative, by putting up and supporting only a candidate the promises, that once elected they will introduce legislation that will decriminalize medical marijuana, and expand stem cell research. We should also put on the ballot of all the states medical marijuana, and expand stem cell research.

By doing this the candidate becomes the initiative. We also know that going into the elections that they have a much wider margin of approval based on the initiative. Maybe this way the margin to steel the election will be far to wide.

We also need to have the Democratic party and possibly the greens fund an independent Exit polling service.

Lastly No Democratic candidate pulls a John Kerry and give up without a full and total recount.

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01-27-05 Do you Know What a filibuster is? Do you Know That It Is A Check And Balance That Is over 200 Years Old?

The filibuster isn't just talk - it is one of our democracy's most important checks on the power of the majority in order to preserve minority rights.

A filibuster can be used to stop a narrow majority from forcing an extreme agenda - like packing the Supreme Court with right-wing ideologues - through the Senate.

It works like this: if at least 41 senators strongly oppose a bill or nominee, they can vote to continue debate and block a final vote on the issue. A final vote can only be taken if and when the majority wins 60 senators' votes.

In practical terms, the filibuster means that 60 Senate votes are needed before the most extreme right-wing judicial nominees can be confirmed , rather than a simple majority of 51. For two centuries, our leaders have supported the tradition of the filibuster in order to promote cooperation and compromise and because they know that the majority in the Senate doesn't always represent the majority of Americans.

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My truth By Giuliana Sgrena. The story from the Italian News Reporter Herself as published in the il manifesto Click Here or Click here if this link does not work

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01-28-05 Well the Dem's may have finally found their spin yesterday. Every Dem on the committee voted against approving "The Torturer" Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General. Thank You for finally standing up for Democracy.

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01-13-05 The 4 day celebration is not for the BushCo Coronation, but it's a celebration of the corporate take over of America, with the rigged voting machines. That's why the price of admission is so high. It's to say this is not a celebration for the average American.

01-12-05 FYI. The Washington Post reported today that the Pentagon has stopped looking for the vast stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq last month before Christmas. Needless to say that none were found.

12-26-04 There is ever increasing evidence that just as I said before that the vote was hijacked throughout the country wherever computerized voting was used which is approximately 80% of the country. In Washington the Republican candidate for governor was declared the winner by only several votes...until the Democratic candidate asked for a recount. During the re-counting the Republicans did not want to count the absentee ballots. So what else is new the Republicans are always saying STOP counting the votes whenever they are ahead, but low and behold now that a hand recount is over the Democratic candidate is winning by several hundred votes.

As we have been writing about for weeks now there is overwhelming evidence of serious voter FRAUD in Ohio. Ken Blackwell, George Bush, and Dick Cheney, have been subpoenaed to testify as to "voter irregularities" in Ohio. Ken Blackwell has Refused to testify, and there has been no response from Cheney or Bush.

Barbra Boxer, and several other Senators have refused to challenge the electoral collage vote in Washington in January, saying it will cause a Constitutional crises. John Kerry won't do it because he says it will be self serving.

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12-26-04 If you choose to remain silent than you are then just as guilty as the ones who committed the fraud.

I reprinted the short pro below which dates back to the times of the Nazi takeover of Germany. I know that you all have heard it...

IF YOU DO NOT ACT NOW YOU MAY NOT EVER GET THE CHANCE TO ACT AGAINST THIS FRAUD EVER AGAIN!!!!

"First They Came for the Jews"
By Pastor Niemoller

First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

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Sun Oct 2nd, 2005 at 11:13:57 EDT

"First They Came for the Jews"
`By Pastor Niemoller`

Sun Oct 2nd, 2005 at 11:13:57 EDT

"First They Came for the Jews" By Pastor Niemoller

"First They Came for the Jews"
`By Pastor Niemoller`