ANOTHER FLORIDA OFFICIAL SEES LIGHT ON TOUCHSCREEN FAILURE
BRAD BLOG - Kurt Browning, the new Florida Secretary of State, says
that he's "physically and mentally exhausted from having to defend
touch-screen voting systems." That is, of course, a tremendous victory.
Particularly in Florida. Particularly from a previously "ardent
supporter of touch-screen voting systems" as he admits.
"If voters don't have confidence in their voting systems, what do they
have confidence in?" Browning smartly asks. His statements dovetail
smartly with new Florida Republican Governor Charlie Crist's recently
announced initiative to replace all DRE/touch-screen systems in Florida
with optical-scan, paper-based systems . . .
Now if we could just get the Democrats and some of their knee-jerk
supporters out there to see the same light, perhaps we'd be closer to do
the day when we can finally declare: "Touch-Screen Voting - Game Over!"
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4129
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
OHIO VOTE COUNT BOSS SHREDDED DOCUMENTS BEFORE LEAVING
MARK NIQUETTE, COLUMBUS DISPATCH - The shredding of documents before J.
Kenneth Blackwell left office as secretary of state is one reason his
successor wants a complete audit of the office. The new secretary of
state, Jennifer L. Brunner, hand-delivered a letter to Auditor Mary
Taylor seeking a top-to-bottom review of the office's finances and
operations. Brunner cites five major concerns that prompted her request,
including the revelation that a member of her transition team witnessed
"many shredding machines in operation" while Blackwell was in office -
and those machines are no longer in the office. "We hope that this does
not affect your ability to perform the complete and thorough audit that
we request," Brunner wrote.
She also cites more than $80,000 in bonuses Blackwell paid to departing
employees, a depleted budget and 50,000 unsent letters to businesses
canceling their corporate charters, with a suspicion that Blackwell
destroyed or removed the envelopes. . .
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/
2007/02/06/20070206-D3-02.html
MORE POLITICAL NEWS
http://prorev.com/politics.htm
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
BUSH NOT EVEN A BABY EINSTEIN
NICK GILLESPIE, HIT & RUN - Most nauseating moment for me personally
beyond all the foreign policy stuff: The shout-out at the end to the
creator of the Baby Einstein videos, Julie Aigner-Clark. On a certain
level, the Baby Einstein phenomenon is the perfect embodiment of yuppie
angst about our children and their place in the world--our rug rats
can't get out of diapers without having been dazzled and improved by
endlessly watching expensive, whirling toys to a classical-music
backbeat it seems. Yet the BE stuff is good product, a real cut above a
lot of the other, even more tedious crap that's out there for kids.
However, my objection is the way Bush tries to take credit through
association for the $200 million company she built (what, was he key
grip on Baby da Vinci: From Head to Toe?). Screw that, pal.
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/118268.html
MORE POLITICAL NEWS
http://prorev.com/politics.htm
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CAMPAIGN NOTES
THERE IS an anti-Obama website up - Obama Truth - and the interesting
thing is that it doesn't appear to be a GOP job. The anti-Obama video
has a highly professional voice narrating and the topics seem more like
those that would give the edge to one of his Democratic competitors.
It's going to a rough campaign.
http://www.obamatruth.org/
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
DENNIS CONRAD, CHICAGO SUN TIMES, SEP 2006 - For the Barack Obama
household, 2005 was a very good year. Not only was Obama sworn in as a
freshman U.S. senator, but he reaped big bucks from book deals and his
wife got her own promotion and hefty pay raise. Their total reported
household income surpassed the total from the seven previous years
combined.
Book royalties and advances brought in about $1.2 million for the
senator-author. In late 2004, Obama landed a three-book deal worth $1.9
million. The first book under the contract, The Audacity of Hope:
Reclaiming the American Dream, is scheduled for release in mid-October
and is to focus on his political convictions and how he became the
Senate's only African American.
During 2005, the South Side Democrat's income as a public official
almost tripled to $154,047, after he left the Illinois state Senate for
the nation's capital.
His wife's income as an administrator at the not-for-profit University
of Chicago Hospitals nearly tripled to $316,962, from $121,910.
In 2005, she was also elected to the board of directors of west suburban
Westchester-based Tree House Foods, which calls itself the nation's
largest pickle and pepper supplier. For that, she received $12,000 and
$33,000 from a subsidiary.
She was promoted to the hospitals' vice president for community and
external affairs in March. Obama said that his wife, who, like him, is a
Harvard law school graduate, was deserving of the promotion and raise.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/72374,CST-NWS-obama26.article
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
E.J. KESSLER, FORWARD - New York's junior senator, Hillary Rodham
Clinton, is expected to snare the lion's share of the Jewish community's
substantial political donations in the race for the 2008 Democratic
presidential nomination. Democratic activists and operatives said
Clinton will pull in large quantities of cash among Jewish donors not
only because of what they described as her strong positions on Israel
and domestic matters of interest to Jews, but also because of longtime
ties with these activists dating back to her husband's administration.
The haul is important: Strategists say that serious candidates will need
to raise at least $50 million -- and probably more like $100 million --
by the end of the year. They say that money from Jewish donors
constitutes about half the donations given to national Democratic
candidates.
http://www.forward.com/articles/hillary-the-favorite-in-
race-for-jewish-donations/
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
POLITICAL WIRE - On her last vacation before launching her presidential
campaign, The Politico's Ben Smith reports Sen. Hillary Clinton went to
"the island of Anguilla, a tiny British possession a bit off the
Caribbean social circuit. Aides to the Democratic senator from New York
refused even to discuss the reports of what country they were in, and
nothing more of their trip was ever revealed." What was she doing? The
Clintons' spent much of their time with Robert Johnson, the man known as
the "First Black Billionaire.". . . "Far from conceding African-American
support to the most credible candidate ever of African descent, Sen.
Barack Obama (D-IL), the Clintons are pushing aggressively for the help
of their longtime allies in the black business, political and
entertainment elite. Clinton's supporters say she intends to make the
Illinois senator fight for every black endorsement and every black
vote."
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PoliticalWire/~3/80214420/hillarys_obama_strategy.html
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
TWO CONVICTED FOR RIGGING OHIO ELECTION
AP - Two election workers in the state's most populous county were
convicted Wednesday of illegally rigging the 2004 presidential election
recount so they could avoid a more thorough review of the votes. A third
employee who had been charged was acquitted on all counts.
BRAD BLOG - The recount - the one that was rigged by Ohio elections
officials - came by way of the Green and Libertarian Party candidates,
not by way of the Democrats or John Kerry. As well, the money to pay for
the gamed recount was raised by folks on the Internet, not paid for out
of the $15 million or so that Kerry reportedly had left in his campaign
war chest after the "election" in Ohio. . . These convictions occurred
in Cuyahoga County, a Democratic stronghold of some 600,000 voters.
Kerry "lost" the state of Ohio, according to the history books anyway,
by just 118,000 out of some 5.5 million votes cast in the Buckeye State.
In related news, today Kerry decided to quit the 2008 election,
mercifully this time before it instead of afterwards.
http://www.bradblog.com/
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CAMPAIGN NOTES
GLEN FORD, BLACK AGENDA REPORT - Rep. Maxine Waters and other
progressive lawmakers are tired of watching Hillary Clinton and Barack
Obama dance around the issue of Iraq withdrawal. . . Speaking on CNN's
Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Rep. Maxine Waters warned that she and
other leaders of the 75-member Out of Iraq Congressional Caucus will
soon journey to early Democratic primary states to determine "who is
nuancing and tip-toeing" around the issue. Asked directly if she were
referring to frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Waters said
"they both have to prove themselves."
There isn‘t a dime's worth of difference between Senators Obama and
Clinton on the war - both harp on the Bush regime's "mistakes" and
mishandling of the nearly four-year-long carnage, while twisting like
contortionists on the question of when and how the U.S. will leave Iraq.
Both call for "troop caps" to, in Obama's words "bring this war to a
responsible end" - "responsible" being the escape clause that allows him
to fudge the terms of exit. Clinton's "cap" include pressures on Baghdad
to meet certain, amorphous "conditions" or lose undefined amounts of
U.S. financial support. Neither senator threatens the war's author,
Bush, with a cutoff of funds - just a "cap" on a troop escalation that
is already underway.
Barack is trickier than Hillary. In December, Obama told a corporate
foreign policy conference he favors "a phased redeployment of U.S.
troops from Iraq on a timetable that would begin in four to six months.
. . Such a timetable may not need to begin in 2007, but begin it must."
Thus, Obama mouths the words "redeployment" and "timetable" - throwing
in "must" for masculine effect - while leaving in limbo the date for
this fantasy schedule to commence; he doesn't even insist that the four
to six month countdown start sometime this year.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view
POLITICO - The average age of members of the U.S. Senate is older than
it has ever been, according to Senate Historian Richard Baker. For many
senators, advanced age is starting to show, raising questions about
their ability to govern. Until his retirement last month, former
majority leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a noted heart surgeon, was being
consulted for informal medical advice by two dozen of his colleagues --
more than 20 percent of the Senate, according to a former leadership
aide. They went to Frist complaining about a host of illnesses and
chronic maladies, most related to aging. . . The average age of the 100
senators is 62, up from 60 in the last Congress. Among the new
Democratic committee chairmen, it is 69. And, of the five
longest-serving senators, three are there today. Including the
grand-daddy of seniority, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., 89. . . As far
as illnesses, at least 10 senators have fought various cancers or
suffered severe injuries. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., remains hospitalized
here for a brain hemorrhage suffered last month. And others deal with
chronic and debilitating infirmities.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0107/2466.html
MORE POLITICAL NEWS
http://prorev.com/politics.htm
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
BRAD BLOG - Kurt Browning, the new Florida Secretary of State, says
that he's "physically and mentally exhausted from having to defend
touch-screen voting systems." That is, of course, a tremendous victory.
Particularly in Florida. Particularly from a previously "ardent
supporter of touch-screen voting systems" as he admits.
"If voters don't have confidence in their voting systems, what do they
have confidence in?" Browning smartly asks. His statements dovetail
smartly with new Florida Republican Governor Charlie Crist's recently
announced initiative to replace all DRE/touch-screen systems in Florida
with optical-scan, paper-based systems . . .
Now if we could just get the Democrats and some of their knee-jerk
supporters out there to see the same light, perhaps we'd be closer to do
the day when we can finally declare: "Touch-Screen Voting - Game Over!"
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4129
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
OHIO VOTE COUNT BOSS SHREDDED DOCUMENTS BEFORE LEAVING
MARK NIQUETTE, COLUMBUS DISPATCH - The shredding of documents before J.
Kenneth Blackwell left office as secretary of state is one reason his
successor wants a complete audit of the office. The new secretary of
state, Jennifer L. Brunner, hand-delivered a letter to Auditor Mary
Taylor seeking a top-to-bottom review of the office's finances and
operations. Brunner cites five major concerns that prompted her request,
including the revelation that a member of her transition team witnessed
"many shredding machines in operation" while Blackwell was in office -
and those machines are no longer in the office. "We hope that this does
not affect your ability to perform the complete and thorough audit that
we request," Brunner wrote.
She also cites more than $80,000 in bonuses Blackwell paid to departing
employees, a depleted budget and 50,000 unsent letters to businesses
canceling their corporate charters, with a suspicion that Blackwell
destroyed or removed the envelopes. . .
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/
2007/02/06/20070206-D3-02.html
MORE POLITICAL NEWS
http://prorev.com/politics.htm
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
BUSH NOT EVEN A BABY EINSTEIN
NICK GILLESPIE, HIT & RUN - Most nauseating moment for me personally
beyond all the foreign policy stuff: The shout-out at the end to the
creator of the Baby Einstein videos, Julie Aigner-Clark. On a certain
level, the Baby Einstein phenomenon is the perfect embodiment of yuppie
angst about our children and their place in the world--our rug rats
can't get out of diapers without having been dazzled and improved by
endlessly watching expensive, whirling toys to a classical-music
backbeat it seems. Yet the BE stuff is good product, a real cut above a
lot of the other, even more tedious crap that's out there for kids.
However, my objection is the way Bush tries to take credit through
association for the $200 million company she built (what, was he key
grip on Baby da Vinci: From Head to Toe?). Screw that, pal.
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/118268.html
MORE POLITICAL NEWS
http://prorev.com/politics.htm
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CAMPAIGN NOTES
THERE IS an anti-Obama website up - Obama Truth - and the interesting
thing is that it doesn't appear to be a GOP job. The anti-Obama video
has a highly professional voice narrating and the topics seem more like
those that would give the edge to one of his Democratic competitors.
It's going to a rough campaign.
http://www.obamatruth.org/
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
DENNIS CONRAD, CHICAGO SUN TIMES, SEP 2006 - For the Barack Obama
household, 2005 was a very good year. Not only was Obama sworn in as a
freshman U.S. senator, but he reaped big bucks from book deals and his
wife got her own promotion and hefty pay raise. Their total reported
household income surpassed the total from the seven previous years
combined.
Book royalties and advances brought in about $1.2 million for the
senator-author. In late 2004, Obama landed a three-book deal worth $1.9
million. The first book under the contract, The Audacity of Hope:
Reclaiming the American Dream, is scheduled for release in mid-October
and is to focus on his political convictions and how he became the
Senate's only African American.
During 2005, the South Side Democrat's income as a public official
almost tripled to $154,047, after he left the Illinois state Senate for
the nation's capital.
His wife's income as an administrator at the not-for-profit University
of Chicago Hospitals nearly tripled to $316,962, from $121,910.
In 2005, she was also elected to the board of directors of west suburban
Westchester-based Tree House Foods, which calls itself the nation's
largest pickle and pepper supplier. For that, she received $12,000 and
$33,000 from a subsidiary.
She was promoted to the hospitals' vice president for community and
external affairs in March. Obama said that his wife, who, like him, is a
Harvard law school graduate, was deserving of the promotion and raise.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/72374,CST-NWS-obama26.article
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
E.J. KESSLER, FORWARD - New York's junior senator, Hillary Rodham
Clinton, is expected to snare the lion's share of the Jewish community's
substantial political donations in the race for the 2008 Democratic
presidential nomination. Democratic activists and operatives said
Clinton will pull in large quantities of cash among Jewish donors not
only because of what they described as her strong positions on Israel
and domestic matters of interest to Jews, but also because of longtime
ties with these activists dating back to her husband's administration.
The haul is important: Strategists say that serious candidates will need
to raise at least $50 million -- and probably more like $100 million --
by the end of the year. They say that money from Jewish donors
constitutes about half the donations given to national Democratic
candidates.
http://www.forward.com/articles/hillary-the-favorite-in-
race-for-jewish-donations/
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
POLITICAL WIRE - On her last vacation before launching her presidential
campaign, The Politico's Ben Smith reports Sen. Hillary Clinton went to
"the island of Anguilla, a tiny British possession a bit off the
Caribbean social circuit. Aides to the Democratic senator from New York
refused even to discuss the reports of what country they were in, and
nothing more of their trip was ever revealed." What was she doing? The
Clintons' spent much of their time with Robert Johnson, the man known as
the "First Black Billionaire.". . . "Far from conceding African-American
support to the most credible candidate ever of African descent, Sen.
Barack Obama (D-IL), the Clintons are pushing aggressively for the help
of their longtime allies in the black business, political and
entertainment elite. Clinton's supporters say she intends to make the
Illinois senator fight for every black endorsement and every black
vote."
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PoliticalWire/~3/80214420/hillarys_obama_strategy.html
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
TWO CONVICTED FOR RIGGING OHIO ELECTION
AP - Two election workers in the state's most populous county were
convicted Wednesday of illegally rigging the 2004 presidential election
recount so they could avoid a more thorough review of the votes. A third
employee who had been charged was acquitted on all counts.
BRAD BLOG - The recount - the one that was rigged by Ohio elections
officials - came by way of the Green and Libertarian Party candidates,
not by way of the Democrats or John Kerry. As well, the money to pay for
the gamed recount was raised by folks on the Internet, not paid for out
of the $15 million or so that Kerry reportedly had left in his campaign
war chest after the "election" in Ohio. . . These convictions occurred
in Cuyahoga County, a Democratic stronghold of some 600,000 voters.
Kerry "lost" the state of Ohio, according to the history books anyway,
by just 118,000 out of some 5.5 million votes cast in the Buckeye State.
In related news, today Kerry decided to quit the 2008 election,
mercifully this time before it instead of afterwards.
http://www.bradblog.com/
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CAMPAIGN NOTES
GLEN FORD, BLACK AGENDA REPORT - Rep. Maxine Waters and other
progressive lawmakers are tired of watching Hillary Clinton and Barack
Obama dance around the issue of Iraq withdrawal. . . Speaking on CNN's
Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Rep. Maxine Waters warned that she and
other leaders of the 75-member Out of Iraq Congressional Caucus will
soon journey to early Democratic primary states to determine "who is
nuancing and tip-toeing" around the issue. Asked directly if she were
referring to frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Waters said
"they both have to prove themselves."
There isn‘t a dime's worth of difference between Senators Obama and
Clinton on the war - both harp on the Bush regime's "mistakes" and
mishandling of the nearly four-year-long carnage, while twisting like
contortionists on the question of when and how the U.S. will leave Iraq.
Both call for "troop caps" to, in Obama's words "bring this war to a
responsible end" - "responsible" being the escape clause that allows him
to fudge the terms of exit. Clinton's "cap" include pressures on Baghdad
to meet certain, amorphous "conditions" or lose undefined amounts of
U.S. financial support. Neither senator threatens the war's author,
Bush, with a cutoff of funds - just a "cap" on a troop escalation that
is already underway.
Barack is trickier than Hillary. In December, Obama told a corporate
foreign policy conference he favors "a phased redeployment of U.S.
troops from Iraq on a timetable that would begin in four to six months.
. . Such a timetable may not need to begin in 2007, but begin it must."
Thus, Obama mouths the words "redeployment" and "timetable" - throwing
in "must" for masculine effect - while leaving in limbo the date for
this fantasy schedule to commence; he doesn't even insist that the four
to six month countdown start sometime this year.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view
POLITICO - The average age of members of the U.S. Senate is older than
it has ever been, according to Senate Historian Richard Baker. For many
senators, advanced age is starting to show, raising questions about
their ability to govern. Until his retirement last month, former
majority leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a noted heart surgeon, was being
consulted for informal medical advice by two dozen of his colleagues --
more than 20 percent of the Senate, according to a former leadership
aide. They went to Frist complaining about a host of illnesses and
chronic maladies, most related to aging. . . The average age of the 100
senators is 62, up from 60 in the last Congress. Among the new
Democratic committee chairmen, it is 69. And, of the five
longest-serving senators, three are there today. Including the
grand-daddy of seniority, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., 89. . . As far
as illnesses, at least 10 senators have fought various cancers or
suffered severe injuries. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., remains hospitalized
here for a brain hemorrhage suffered last month. And others deal with
chronic and debilitating infirmities.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0107/2466.html
MORE POLITICAL NEWS
http://prorev.com/politics.htm
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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