Cowardly Democrats BETRAY FREE SPEECH RIGHTS of Govt. whistleblowers and corruption-exposers...

The Cowardly Democrats could NOT stand up against either of President Bush's Supreme Court nominations (Roberts or Alito), nor could they even PIN DOWN either nominee to SUPPORT THE RIGHT OF AMERICAN CITIZENS TO EXPOSE potential CORRUPTION from within their government, so, predictably, THE_RIGHT_WING_COURT that STOLE the Presidential Election of 2004 from popular-vote winning Al Gore, has now INSTITUTIONALIZED CORRUPTION for the Bush Government, by CRIMINALIZING WHISTLEBLOWERS.

This is yet another sad, pathetic disgrace FOISTED on America, by a Democratic Party too timid and corrupted (by failing to stand up for the "Equal Time" media provisions, Democrats now find themselves at the mercy of the corporate Major Media and Republican propaganda machine) to offer EVEN TOKEN OPPOSITION to a TOTALITARIAN form of government.



High court trims whistleblower rights
By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer
May 30, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060530/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_free_speech;_ylt=AoIxU4_VCHeQZCMz6pi7djCs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--


WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court scaled back protections for government workers who blow the whistle on official misconduct Tuesday, a 5-4 decision in which new Justice Samuel Alito cast the deciding vote.



In a victory for the Bush administration, justices said the 20 million public employees do not have free-speech protections for what they say as part of their jobs.

Critics predicted the impact would be sweeping, from silencing police officers who fear retribution for reporting department corruption, to subduing federal employees who want to reveal problems with government hurricane preparedness or terrorist-related security.

Supporters said that it will protect governments from lawsuits filed by disgruntled workers pretending to be legitimate whistleblowers.

The ruling was perhaps the clearest sign yet of the Supreme Court's shift with the departure of moderate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and the arrival of Alito.

A year ago, O'Connor authored a 5-4 decision that encouraged whistleblowers to report sex discrimination in schools. The current case was argued in October but not resolved before her retirement in late January.

A new argument session was held in March with Alito on the bench. He joined the court's other conservatives in Tuesday's decision, which split along traditional conservative-liberal lines.

Exposing government misconduct is important, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority. "We reject, however, the notion that the First Amendment shields from discipline the expressions employees make pursuant to their professional duties," Kennedy said.

The ruling overturned an appeals court decision that said Los Angeles County prosecutor Richard Ceballos was constitutionally protected when he wrote a memo questioning whether a county sheriff's deputy had lied in a search warrant affidavit. Ceballos had filed a lawsuit claiming he was demoted and denied a promotion for trying to expose the lie.

Kennedy said if the superiors thought the memo was inflammatory, they had the authority to punish him.

"Official communications have official consequences, creating a need for substantive consistency and clarity. Supervisors must ensure that their employees' official communications are accurate, demonstrate sound judgment, and promote the employer's mission," Kennedy wrote.

Stephen Kohn, chairman of the National Whistleblower Center, said: "The ruling is a victory for every crooked politician in the United States."

Justice David H. Souter's lengthy dissent sounded like it might have been the majority opinion if O'Connor were still on the court. "Private and public interests in addressing official wrongdoing and threats to health and safety can outweigh the government's stake in the efficient implementation of policy," he wrote.

Souter was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Stephen Breyer also supported Ceballos, but on different grounds.

The ruling upheld the position of the Bush administration, which had joined the district attorney's office in opposing absolute free-speech rights for whistleblowers. President Bush's two nominees, Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts, signed onto Kennedy's opinion but did not write separately.

"It's a very frightening signal of dark times ahead," said Tom Devine, legal director for the Government Accountability Project.

Employment attorney Dan Westman said that Kennedy's ruling frees government managers to make necessary personnel actions, like negative performance reviews or demotions, without fear of frivolous lawsuits.

Ceballos said in a telephone interview that "it puts your average government employee in one heck of a predicament ... I think government employees will be more inclined to keep quiet."

Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley said in a statement that the ruling "allows public employers to conduct the people's business without undue disruption and without turning routine personnel decisions into federal cases."

The court's decision immediately prompted calls for Congress to strengthen protections for workers.

Kennedy said that government workers "retain the prospect of constitutional protection for their contributions to the civic discourse." They do not, Kennedy said, have "a right to perform their jobs however they see fit."

The case is Garcetti v. Ceballos, 04-473.

___

On the Net:

Supreme Court decision: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/05slipopinion.html

Cowardly Democrats SILENT, AWOL, re the political family (Bush) that ENABLED Enron CRIMES against American citizens...

At the beginning of the biopic movie "Truman," about Harry S. Truman's rise from (almost) dirt-poor son of a bankrupt farmer through WWI US Army artillery officer, Depression-era businessman, county politician, US Senator, and eventually to US President, President Truman is campaigning for election in his own right (he took office as president shortly after President Roosevelt died at the start of his 4th term in 1945) from the back of a train on a relentless whistlestop tour of US towns and cities. The movie's director captures the well-known (if not infamously) pugnacious nature of President Truman, for as the president is talking to supporters and onlookers from the tail end of the parked train, he is actually railing at them!

"HOW LONG DO YOU PEOPLE HAVE TO BE HIT OVER THE HEAD?!" Truman rails, "BEFORE YOU REALIZE WHO IS HITTING YOU?"!

Fast forward just over 1/2 century, and we could ask the same question all over again, with only one slight modificiation:

"How long will the American public tolerate the Democratic Party laying down and rolling over for the George W. Bush radical-right Republican Party, before we demand that some heads role and Democrats START TO ENJOY their role and position as OPPOSITION Party???

ENRON executives Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling HAVE_JUST_BEEN_CONVICTED of DEFRAUDING and ROBBING FROM the American public. And, as this excellent article by Robert Scheer points out, Enron WAS_ENABLED in its crimes, frauds, corruptions, and thefts from the public treasury, BY_THE_BUSH_FAMILY.

This is ON TOP of the SERIAL CORRUPTION of other elements of the Republican Party- the CONVICTIONS of Rep. "Duke" Cunningham, millions of dollars of bribes taken, and Jack Abramoff, a Republican Party stalwart, a Republican ONLY campaign contributor, and a convicted EXTORTIONIST who mastered the art of demanding monies from client's with barely veiled threats of retribution (by supporting those client's opponnents). Indeed, their is even an aspect of MURDER hanging over the Abramoff cases, as the owner of the South Florida SunCruise Casino line was murdered, and the top suspects are business associates of Jack Abramoff's.

All this to point out that the Democratic Party has ONE response to CRIMINAL CORRUPTION emanating from the Bush-Republican Party: "NO PROBLEM HERE... loot, steal, extort, plunder, and intimidate ALL YOU WANT, we'll LOOK THE OTHER WAY as long as WE get OUR $100 million in campaign funds. As long as we get to run our own little empire for that $100 million or so, WE WILL SIGN OFF on BILLIONS of dollars LOOTED from the US Treasury by Bush cronies, contributors, donor-linked corporations (Fox and GE alone control a huge share of the US TV-cable 'news' market) and "FRIENDS".



============================================

transcript of Texas Gov. George W. Bush's letter to "Enron" Ken Lay, on Lay's 55th birthday in 1997
As posted at Truthdig.com, from TheSmokingGun.com archives, "The Bush-Lay letters"
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0708042lay1.html

Mr. Ken Lay
2121 Kirby Drive
Houston, Texas 77019

Dear Ken:

One of the sad things about old friends is that they seem to be getting older - just like you!

55 years old. Wow! That is really old.

Thank goodness you have such a young, beautiful wife.

Laura and I value our friendship with you. Best wishes to Linda, your family, and friends.

Your younger friend, [signed] George W. Bush

=================================================

Bush Family ENABLED Enron Corruption and Fraud at American Citizen's and Taxpayer's Expense
(titled, "Bush Links Energized Enron" at HuffPost and TruthDig)
Robert Scheer
May 31, 2006
Originally posted at Truthdig.com.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060530_robert_scheer_enron_bush_lay/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/bush-links-energized-enro_b_21916.html


The Bush family consistently acted to put Enron and its longtime CEO, Ken Lay, into a position to rip off investors and taxpayers. Why is the mass media ignoring that fact now that Lay has been convicted in arguably the most egregious example of white-collar fraud in U.S. history?


Until he hooked up with the Bushes, Lay was just another mid-level energy trader complaining endlessly about being hemmed in by onerous government regulations and those terrible consumer lawyers who prevent free market hustlers from doing their thing. But after he and his company became top supporters of the Bushes -- eventually giving $3 million in total to various Bush electoral campaigns and the Republican Party -- doors opened for them in a big way. In particular, once Bush the father got rid of key energy industry regulations, Lay was a made man and Enron's fortunes soared.




This program of corporate welfare led Lay to dub the first President Bush "the energy president" in a column supporting his reelection because "just six months after George Bush became president, he directed ... the development of a new energy strategy," which, in effect, compelled local utility companies to carry Enron electricity on their wires. It was, Lay crowed, "the most ambitious and sweeping energy plan ever proposed."

Another huge gift from the first Bush regime came in the form of a ruling by Wendy Gramm, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, that permitted Enron to trade in energy derivatives, making possible the company's exponential growth. Five weeks after that ruling, Gramm resigned and joined the Enron board of directors, serving on its subsequently much criticized audit committee. Six years later, Gramm's husband, U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), further enabled Enron greed by pushing through additional anti-regulation legislation.

A long list of members of George H.W. Bush's Cabinet and inner circle, including Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher, went to work for Enron after his 1992 defeat. An even greater number of Enron officials returned the favor by joining the George W. Bush administration in 2001 shortly before the Enron scandal exploded.

The close connections between President Bush and Lay began when they both worked on the 1992 Bush père presidential reelection campaign. In fact, a long paper trail of their friendly and collaborative correspondence has been made public through Freedom of Information Act requests. "Dear Ken, one of the sad things about old friends is that they seem to be getting older -- just like you!" wrote then-Texas Gov. Bush in April 1997. "Thank goodness you have such a young beautiful wife." In Lay's typed responses -- some are handwritten -- he sometimes crossed out Bush's formal titles to scrawl a friendly "George," emphasizing their personal history before he urged the governor to, for example, help Enron secure foreign energy contracts with regimes in Romania and Uzbekistan, or called for so-called tort reform designed to protect corporations from lawsuits.

Typical was Bush's role in Enron lobbying of Pennsylvania's governor to permit Enron to enter his state's energy market. As Lay wrote in a letter dated Oct. 7, 1997: "I very much appreciated your call to Gov. Tom Ridge a few days ago. I am certain that will have a positive impact on the way he and others in Pennsylvania view our proposal." After the Enron crash, Bush attempted to distance himself from the "Bush pioneer," who had sent more than $2 million in Enron funds George W.'s way, as well as supplying him with the Enron company jet on at least eight occasions. "I have not met with him personally," Bush said after the scandal broke.

What Bush left out was not only his hundreds of personal encounters with Lay before he assumed the presidency but, more important, Lay's key role in drafting the Bush administration's energy policy. Lay met with energy task force chairman Dick Cheney at least six times. It was Lay who submitted a key memo opposing price caps in response to the energy crisis in California that Enron had helped engineer. Lay was also instrumental in the abrupt dismissal of Curtis Hebert Jr. as Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman. The neutered FERC later conveniently refused California's loud pleas for help.

So far, California has recouped some of the billions in taxpayer and pension funds it lost, and several of Enron's top dogs are looking at hard time. Perhaps, after this November, if the opposition party can retake at least one branch of government, the connections between these corporate criminals and their buddy in the White House can be more fully investigated as well.

WHO is representing the 48% of Americans who, even Repubs aknowledge, VOTED FOR THE OPPOSITION in 2004?? NOT the cowering Democrats! That's for sure!

The on-going FARCE of politics in America just took another seismic-size bump these last two weeks leading up to Memorial Day 2006, and one again THE DEFINING ATRIBUTE of the Democrat Party "leadership" is ABSENT... COWERING in their ratholes AGAIN!

Mr. Bush was "caught" in two more blatant, in-your-face lies, and once again the Democrat Party has ABDICATED its role as OPPOSITION Party. Today' the Democratic Party sees itself as a corporate business, a business who collectes roughly $100 million to $200 million per year (in a big election year... slightly less in an 'off year') and then goes THROUGH THE MOTIONS (only) of PLAYING "opposition party," while actually ROLLING OUT THE RED CARPET for the serial, ongoing, chronic Bush administration lies, frauds, corruptions, incompetencies, and America-thrasing policies that make America, and American families, weaker and more vulnerable by the day.

The first such lie was blatant, was in-your-face, but it wasn't exactly critical: in announcing Press Secretary Scott McClellan's resignation, President Bush declared "Mr. McClellan REQUESTED his resignation..." while everyone in Washington knows that he was forced out by.

The second lie is far more substantial and consequential: President Bush announced "There are NO plans for Secretary of Treasury John Snow to retire... he has not informed me of any, and he is NOT going to do so" EXACTLY TWO DAYS BEFORE Secretary Snow DID retire!

What is important here is, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are SO CONFIDENT of their ability to LIE to the American press and media, that they now do it with IMPUNITY, and in each and every instance, the Cowardly Democrats RUN FOR THEIR RATHOLES rather than STAND UP AND FIGHT for the 48% who voted to OPPOSE the Bush administration's polices... back in November of 2004! The number of Americans who OPPOSE Mr. Bush's policies is FAR GREATER TODAY.. and STILL Mr. Bush wallows in his ability to LIE TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, and STILL the Democrats run for their ratholes at the first sign of bluster from Mr. Bush or his minions!


http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/30/bush-snow-lie/
Bush caught in LIE about the John Snow resignation....

Bush exploits 9-11 AGAIN--- ramping up his NEW WAR against Iran...?????
http://www.attytood.com/archives/003468.html

Mr. Kerry, YOU had TRUTH on your side.. and you ALLOWED the Swift-Boat liars to CLAIM they were in actual combat with you????

As we Americans are learning 5 years into Bush's stolen presidency, politics is about power, and THE LAW is also a political process. In America SLAVERY and the torture, cruelty, inhumanity, and need for war (slave raids) that it demanded WERE LEGAL for over 100 years, because politics and power made it so.
Indeed, in the Constitution's cruelest hypocrisy, slaves were deemed to be 3/5ths OF A MAN for purposes of assigning apportionment (political power in Congress) TO SLAVE OWNERS ONLY; while, hypocritically, the Constitution assigned slaves NO, ZERO, NONE of the "rights" that the Declaration of Independence declared "all MEN are created equal."

Well, today in the Bush era, THE LAW is whatever "a dictatorship would be easier, so long as I was the dictator" Bush and his minions say it is. Supreme Court Injustice Antonin Scalia, after being the RINGLEADER of the STOLEN ELECTION that handed Florida (and thereby the electoral college, and thus the presidency) to Bush in 2000, had the temerity to make a crude gesture to a New York photographer who had tried to get some comments out of Mr. Scalia. Indeed, Mr. Scalia has declared he is not convinced that the Constitution guarantees ANYONE the "right to vote," even though, in language as clear as English can be, the 15th Amendment declares "THE RIGHT TO VOTE SHALL NOT BE ABRIDGED."

Is Mr. Scalia setting HIMSELF, PERSONALLY, over and above the clear and concise wording of an Amendment - a duly ratified and adopted amendment to the US Constitution???

WHY, OF COURSE he is!

This one simple digression into the appalling career and comments of one of America's LIFETIME Supreme Court Injustices reveals that THE LAW is, indeed, A POLITICAL QUANTITY... even when 'engraved in stone" in clear and concise terms in a ratified constitutional amendment, a craven and corrupt judge can IGNORE a clear law, when political power and position allow him to do so.

Thus, if Mr. Kerry is only now awakening to the reality that HIS campaign PROVIDED his opponents AN OPPORTUNITY to launch a political PROPAGANDA SMEAR CAMPAIGN, then Mr. Kerry, well, should really get with the program!

By doing NOTHING TO COUNTER the Swift Boat Liars, Mr. Kerry ALLOWED millions of dollars of Democratic campaign dollars (and hard-earned volunteer time and effort) TO GO SWIRLING DOWN THE DRAIN.

But, truly, better late than never, and we wish Mr. Kerry success in EXPOSING THE LAIRS, publicizing their names, and CALLING THEM ON THEIR LIES. Hell, Mr. Kerry - SUE the bastards for DEFAMATION OF CHARACTER!

Kerry Pressing Swift Boat Case Long After Loss
John Kerry starts by showing the entry in a log he kept from 1969: "Feb 12: 0800 run to Cambodia."
By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: May 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/washington/28kerry.html?ex=1306468800&en=7158a7f024f0ee5a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss


Graphic: Kerry's New Evidence
He moves on to the photographs: his boat leaving the base at Ha Tien, Vietnam; the harbor; the mountains fading frame by frame as the boat heads north; the special operations team the boat was ferrying across the border; the men reading maps and setting off flares.

"They gave me a hat," Mr. Kerry says. "I have the hat to this day," he declares, rising to pull it from his briefcase. "I have the hat."

Three decades after the Vietnam War and nearly two years after Mr. Kerry's failed presidential bid, most Americans have probably forgotten why it ever mattered whether he went to Cambodia or that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth accused him of making it all up, saying he was dishonest and lacked patriotism.

But among those who were on the front lines of the 2004 campaign, the battle over Mr. Kerry's wartime service continues, out of the limelight but in some ways more heatedly — because unlike then, Mr. Kerry has fully engaged in the fight. Only those on Mr. Kerry's side, however, have gathered new evidence to support their case.

The Swift boat group continues to spend money on Washington consultants, according to public records, and last fall it gave $100,000 to a group that promptly sued Mr. Kerry, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, for allegedly interfering with the release of a film that was critical of him.

Some of the principals behind the Swift boat group continue to press their claims. John O'Neill, the co-author of the group's best-selling manifesto, "Unfit for Command," criticizes Mr. Kerry on television talk shows and solicits money for conservative causes and candidates. In a South Carolina newspaper, William Schachte recently reprised his allegation that he was aboard the small skimmer where Mr. Kerry received the injury that led to his first Purple Heart, and that Mr. Kerry actually wounded himself.

Swift boat message boards and anti-Kerry Web sites still boil with accusations that Mr. Kerry fabricated the military reports that led to his military decorations.

Mr. Kerry, accused even by Democrats of failing to respond to the charges during the campaign, is now fighting back hard.

"They lied and lied and lied about everything," Mr. Kerry says in an interview in his Senate office. "How many lies do you get to tell before someone calls you a liar? How many times can you be exposed in America today?"

His supporters are compiling a dossier that they say will expose every one of the Swift boat group's charges as a lie and put to rest any question about Mr. Kerry's valor in combat. While it would be easy to see this as part of Mr. Kerry's exploration of another presidential run, his friends say the Swift boat charges struck at an experience so central to his identity that he would want to correct the record even if he were retiring from public life.

Mr. Kerry portrays himself as a wary participant in his own defense, insisting in the two-hour interview that he does not want to dwell on the accusations or the mistakes of his 2004 campaign. "I'm moving on," he says several times.

But he can also barely resist prosecuting a case against the group that his friends now refer to as "the bad guys." "Bill Schachte was not on that skimmer," Mr. Kerry says firmly. "He was not on that skimmer. It is a lie to suggest that he was out there on that skimmer."

He shows a photograph of the skimmer being towed behind his Swift boat, insisting that it could barely fit three people, himself and two others. "The three guys who in fact were in the boat all say he wasn't there and will tell you he wasn't there," he said. "We know he wasn't there, and we have all kinds of ways of proving it."

Mr. Kerry has signed forms authorizing the Navy to release his record — something he resisted during the campaign — and hired a researcher to comb the naval archives in Washington for records that could pinpoint his whereabouts during dates of the incidents in dispute. Another former crew member has spent days at a time interviewing veterans to reconstruct every incident in question.

In February 2005, Mr. Kerry's supporters formed their own group, the Patriot Project, to defend veterans who take unpopular positions, particularly against the Iraq war. One of their first tasks was to visit newspaper editorial boards in defense of Representative John P. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and veteran whose military record has been attacked by Republicans and conservative blogs since he called for pulling the troops out of Iraq.

The group has sent a letter to Mr. Schachte calling for a meeting with him, Mr. Kerry and two former veterans who maintain — as they did publicly during the campaign — that they were the only other people on the skimmer with Mr. Kerry and that he was wounded in a hail of enemy fire.

Members of the Swift boat group have not seen Mr. Kerry's newly gathered evidence. But they seem unwilling to cede much.

Mr. O'Neill said he "would be thrilled to look at anything he wants to send." Still, he added, "I'm sorry he never apologized for his 1971 speech," referring to Mr. Kerry's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which he told other soldiers' accounts of ravaging Vietnamese villages and citizens. "I think it would have been a very positive thing to do in terms of the many thousands of people who survived Vietnam and felt that was very hurtful."

Mr. Schachte said that he held "no animus," but that "if they crank this thing up again, I'm not going to be quiet." One of the two men who say they were on the boat — he does not recall which — might have been there, Mr. Schachte said, "but I was in that boat with Kerry."

The veterans group, led by Mr. O'Neill, a former Swift boat commander who was recruited by the Nixon administration to debate Mr. Kerry on "The Dick Cavett Show" in 1971, began its campaign in early 2004 by criticizing Mr. Kerry's protests against the Vietnam War. But backed by Republican donors and consultants, they soon shifted to attack his greatest strength — his record as a military hero in a campaign against a president who never went to war.

Naval records and accounts from other sailors contradicted almost every claim they made, and some members of the group who had earlier praised Mr. Kerry's heroism contradicted themselves.

Still, the charges stuck. At a triumphant gathering of veterans in Fort Worth after the election, Mr. O'Neill was introduced as the man who "torpedoed" Mr. Kerry's campaign; the Swift boat group spent more than $130,000 for a "Mission Accomplished" celebration at Disney World. The president's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, sent a letter thanking the "Swifties" for "their willingness to stand up to John Kerry." Even people within the Kerry campaign believed that the attacks had cost their candidate the presidency.

Some of Mr. Kerry's friends and former Swift boat crew members made advertisements during the race to try to shoot down the group's charges. But the campaign declined to air them widely because some strategists said that directly challenging the charges would legitimize them.

They approached Mr. Kerry after the election with the idea of setting the record straight.

So they have returned, for instance, to the question of Cambodia and whether Mr. Kerry was ever ordered to transport Navy Seals across the border, an experience that he said made him view government officials, who had declared that the country was not part of the war, as deceptive.

The Swift boat group insisted that no boats had gone to Cambodia. But Mr. Kerry's researcher, using Vietnam-era military maps and spot reports from the naval archives showing coordinates for his boat, traced his path from Ha Tien toward Cambodia on a mission that records say was to insert Navy Seals.

Mr. Kerry's supporters have also frozen frames from his amateur films of his time in Vietnam and have retrieved letters and military citations for other sailors to support his version of how he won the Silver Star — rebutting the Swift boat group's most explosive charge, that he shot an unarmed teenager who was fleeing his fire.

Another photograph provides evidence for Mr. Kerry's version of how he won the Bronze Star. And original reports pulled from the naval archives contradict the charge that he drafted his own accounts of various incidents — which left room, the Swift boat group had argued, to embellish them.

Mr. Kerry's defenders have received help from unlikely sources, including some who were originally aligned with the Swift boat group but later objected to its accusations against Mr. Kerry. One of them, Steve Hayes, was an early member of the group. A former sailor, he was a longtime friend and employee of William Franke, one of the group's founders, and he supported the push to have Mr. Kerry release his military files. But Mr. Hayes came to believe that the group was twisting Mr. Kerry's record.

"The mantra was just 'We want to set the record straight,' " Mr. Hayes said this month. "It became clear to me that it was morphing from an organization to set the record straight into a highly political vendetta. They knew it was not the truth."

Mr. Hayes broke with the group, ending a 35-year friendship with Mr. Franke, and voted for Mr. Kerry. He has provided a long interview to Mr. Kerry's supporters, backing their version of the incident for which Mr. Kerry received the Bronze Star.

Of course, plenty of disappointed and angry Democrats would like to know why Mr. Kerry did not defend himself so strenuously before the election. He had posted some military documents on his campaign's Web site and had allowed reporters to view his medical records but resisted open access to them as unnecessarily intrusive.

Mr. Kerry and his defenders say that they did not have the extensive archival material, and that it was too complicated to gather in the rapid pace of a campaign. He was caught off guard, he says; he had been prepared to defend his antiwar activism, but he did not believe that anyone would challenge the facts behind his military awards. "We should have put more money behind it," Mr. Kerry says now. "I take responsibility for it; it was my mistake. They spent something like $30 million, and we didn't. That's just a terrible imbalance when somebody's lying about you."

Lieberman a Liar and a Traitor; DLC Dems. mimic BushCo in trying to deny voters A CHOICE re Lieberman's sell-out agenda...

<< Wittmann said that if Lamont and his allies succeed in ousting Lieberman, "it would be devastating to the Democratic Party" by suggesting that centrists are no longer welcome.
"This shows that [MoveOn] is trying to precipitate a civil war within the party," he said. >>


Well, you could hardly ask for a better sign of the corporatized, DLC, "centrist," inside-the-beltway, establishment Dems. APING the BULLYING tactics of Karl Rove and George W. Bush's government than this above quote by Marshall Wittman.

Hell, Wittman's statement just sounds like a slightly more moderate version of Vice President Cheney's infamous 2004 campaign quote; "If America elects democrat John Kerry, we will be attacked by terrorists again."

Mr. Wittman, you (and the DLC) are supporting a candidate who, in 2000, PROMISED Democrat voters that he would FIGHT FOR THEM.... Then, on election day, when hundreds if not thousands of Palm Beach County voters (many of them seniors, and some even WWII death camp survivors) complained that their votes had been DISQUALIFIED because they accidentally pressed the chad for PAT BUCHANAN... Mr. Lieberman was absent, he couldn't even send those voters and their organizers a pep talk. Which, of course, was merely the PRELUDE for Lieberman's far greater BETRAYAL, Senator Lieberman SITTING ON HIS HANDS as the Black Congressional Caucus demanded and BEGGED that a SINGLE SENATOR STAND UP WITH THEM, and sign onto their request that Congress formally investigate the MASSIVE VOTE FRAUD in Florida in that 2000 election.

NEEDLESS TO SAY, Senator Lieberman BETRAYED the Black Congressional Caucus, and all African-American voters who voted for the Gore-Lieberman ticket, by DOING NOTHING.. by NOT fighting for their votes.

Indeed, Mr. Lieberman should be the face of the Democrat party's BETRAYAL of the FIVE-HUNDRED-THOUSAND VOTE MAJORITY on top of MILLIONS of voters who voted for Vice President Gore to be President.

It is well known that the Bush Republican Party thought that they would win the popular vote, and that Al Gore might win the Electoral College. IF that happened, the Republicans were perfectly willing to 'go to the wall' - create a constitutional crisis, demand that Gore bow out, do what it would have required to put Texas Gov. Bush in the White House.

Instead, American voters gave a clear, huge majority to Vice President Gore. And the Bush campaign's one and only claim to "victory" was in Florida, a state run by Bush's brother Jeb Bush, a state RIFE with massive vote fraud and DISENFRANCHISEMENT.

Mr. Lieberman choose to IGNORE the millions of Americans who voted for the Gore-Lieberman ticket.
He choose to BETRAY the Congressional Black Caucus.
He coose to BETRAY those thousands of Florida voters who felt they had been DISENFRANCHISED by the Republican Party in the 2000 election.
And Mr. Lieberman is the very face of the Democrat Party "NO PROBLEM HERE!" re Ohio disenfranchisement, Diebold disenfranchisement, on on-going Republican vote fraud ever since the 2000 election (i.e. in 2004 and this coming November election).

It is NOT MoveOn.Org and supporters of Ted Lamont for the Dem. Senator from Connecticut who are "DEVASTATING TO THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY" and who "threaten to exclude Centrist Dems" - - - it is Joe Lieberman and the DLC who BETRAY Democratic voters, and are trying to IMPOSE a "Bush-lite" agenda on us Democratic voters....

PS: the LAT headline SHOULD read "Thousands of Democratic voters disappointed with Senator Lieberman's pro-Bush agenda," but the LAT, like the DLC, is in the "boost-Bush" business....

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

Strong Signs of Rift Among Democrats
Support for a challenger to longtime Sen. Joe Lieberman indicates tensions over Iraq war.
By Ronald Brownstein, Times Staff Writer
May 27, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-lieberman27may27,0,190053.story?coll=la-home-nation

WASHINGTON — The liberal challenge to Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) escalated Friday when the political arm of MoveOn.org, an influential online advocacy group, endorsed the political newcomer opposing his bid for renomination.

Gaining the support of MoveOn's political action committee was Ned Lamont, a businessman who wants to unseat Lieberman largely because of the veteran lawmaker's staunch support for the war in Iraq.

The group announced its backing after polling MoveOn's members in Connecticut.

MoveOn has emerged as a leading voice for left-leaning activists, and the endorsement marks the first time that its PAC has sought to unseat an incumbent Democratic senator.

"Lamont's message resonated with members who want a senator who will stand up to President Bush on key issues and represent the views of most people in Connecticut," said Eli Pariser, executive director of the MoveOn PAC.

With the endorsement, the group will seek to raise money and generate volunteers for Lamont among MoveOn's 3.2 million members nationwide.

Lamont earlier this week gained an endorsement from Democracy for America, a liberal grass-roots group that Howard Dean established as his campaign for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination foundered. Dean gave up his leadership role when he became chairman of the Democratic National Committee last year, but the group is headed by his brother, Jim Dean.

Lamont's candidacy also has become a priority for many liberal websites, such as Daily Kos — whose founder, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, recently appeared in one of Lamont's television advertisements.

With the involvement of these groups, the face-off between Lieberman and Lamont in Connecticut's Aug. 8 primary has emerged as the focal point of tensions between Democratic liberals and centrists over the party's direction.

"This is a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party," said Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. "It will have repercussions for the 2008 presidential campaign and whether centrists will feel comfortable within the Democratic Party."

Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic vice presidential candidate, long had been considered politically invulnerable in his home state. First elected to his Senate seat in 1988, he remains the favorite to win the primary. But the same polls that show Lieberman leading the race also reveal widespread discontent among Connecticut Democrats over Iraq — the sentiment Lamont hopes will propel him to victory.

Earlier this month, Lamont won support from 33% of the delegates to the state Democratic convention, enough to win him a spot on the primary ballot.

The poll of MoveOn's Connecticut members was conducted during a 24-hour period that concluded Friday morning. Both Lieberman and Lamont were invited to make their case through e-mails, but Lieberman chose not to send one.

Pariser said that of the 5,500 people participating in the poll, 85% of them voted to endorse Lamont.

Lieberman campaign aides dismissed the results as insignificant. "Just as we expected, Joe Lieberman won neither the endorsement of MoveOn.Org nor was chosen the next 'American Idol,' " said Marion Steinfels, a campaign spokesperson.

Some analysts, however, believe the endorsement could strengthen Lamont.

MoveOn's PAC has proved capable of raising substantial sums from its members — it collected about $800,000 last year for Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), a strong critic of the Iraq war, in just a few days.

Lamont's credibility as a candidate also should benefit from MoveOn's stamp of approval, said Scott McLean, chairman of the political science department at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn.

"Getting 33% at the convention is really impressive, but [Friday's endorsement] is even bigger because it shows the grass-roots and money [donors] … that there is something behind Ned Lamont," McLean said. "It's big. It's huge."

Wittmann said that if Lamont and his allies succeed in ousting Lieberman, "it would be devastating to the Democratic Party" by suggesting that centrists are no longer welcome.

"This shows that [MoveOn] is trying to precipitate a civil war within the party," he said.

Pariser dismissed that suggestion. "We think primaries are a healthy part of the democratic process for a reason — so voters can choose who represents them rather than the chattering class of Beltway insiders," he said. "And if supporters of the Iraq war — Republicans and some Democrats — are in electoral trouble, it's probably because a majority of the people in this country think it was a disastrous mistake."

Lieberman has responded to Lamont's challenge by stressing his support for traditional Democratic positions on issues such as the environment and abortion rights.

But McLean said Lieberman has been hurt by having "a tin ear" for the opinions of liberal Connecticut Democrats deeply disaffected with Bush and the Iraq war.

Thursday night may have been a case in point.

While the online poll was being conducted, Lieberman was at a Washington dinner receiving an award from the Committee on the Present Danger, a hawkish foreign policy group whose membership includes prominent conservatives and leading supporters in both parties of the Iraq war.

Its official- Dems COWER, bush always gets what he wants...

It is official: Democrats are cowering, spineless WIMPS, who let Pres. Bush get whatever he wants, even with HUGE numbers of American voters and citizens actively objecting to - if "despising" is too strong a word - Bush's policies.

The DLC/inside-the-beltway Democrats are DENYING those millions of us Americans who oppose Bush A VOICE, much less an active opposition party. Like John Kerry in 2004, and Joe Lieberman in 2000, they TAKE OUR MONEY, PRETEND to provide some opposition to the Bush-GOP, neo-confederate, neo-conservative, right-wing corporate-theocracy agenda, and then, ON_EACH_AND_EVERY major issue, FOLD UP SHOP like a wet piece of rice paper.




Democratic Weakness Confirmed
By Glenn Greenwald, AlterNet. Posted May 24, 2006.
http://www.alternet.org/story/36639/


Gen. Hayden's confirmation process confirms the fear and passivity that governs Senate Democrats.

Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday essentially assured that President Bush's nominee to head the CIA, Gen. Michael Hayden, would not only be confirmed by the full Senate, but confirmed overwhelmingly. That's because a majority of the Democratic Committee members (along with, needless to say, all of the Committee Republicans) voted in favor of confirming Gen. Hayden:

The Senate Intelligence Committee strongly endorsed Gen. Michael V. Hayden on Tuesday to be the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency, with all but three members, all Democrats, voting to send Gen. Hayden's nomination to the Senate floor.
The panel's 12 to 3 vote virtually guarantees that Gen. Hayden will win confirmation by the full Senate, which is likely to vote on his selection before the end of the week.
Four committee Democrats joined all eight Republican members in endorsing the general. Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican from Kansas and the panel's chairman, called Gen. Hayden "a proven leader and a supremely qualified intelligence professional."
The committee's vice chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV, a Democrat from West Virginia, said Gen. Hayden had shown "the necessary independence that is essential to restoring the CIA's credibility and stature."
Given the similarities, it sounds like Pat Roberts and John Rockefeller drafted their statements together, which is nice. Four Democrats -- Feinstein, Rockefeller, Levin and Mikulski -- voted for Hayden and then praised him lavishly. Three Democrats -- Feingold, Wyden and Bayh -- voted against him.

Although it's hardly surprising, this result is still rather extraordinary. Gen. Hayden ought to have been seen as the most defiant and inflammatory person possible for the president to have nominated. He was, after all, the director of the NSA at the time it implemented its illegal warrantless eavesdropping program, as well as its massive data-collection schemes, and he is a True Believer in the theories of presidential power that hold that the president has the right to violate the law. And he wasn't nominated to be the agriculture secretary, but the director of the CIA -- probably the very worst position you would want someone to occupy with that history of surveillance lawbreaking and system of beliefs regarding the rule of law.

But no matter. Thanks to the generous and always-accommodating Senate Democrats, this nomination will be trouble-free for the president. This series of events led John Cole yesterday to make this insightful observation:

While I miss not spending as much time reading blogs, writing as many posts, and commenting on other blogs, stepping back from it all has allowed for some clarity regarding the current political system. When I was immersed in blogs, I felt that the Democrats were having some success blocking the current administration, but when I look back, I was just fooled by the current game. The Hayden nomination is a perfect example.
When he was nominated, a few people had fits, a chorus of echoes emerged and then there appeared to be a popular effort to block his nomination. And then time went by, and now it looks increasingly like he will be confirmed, as everyone has moved on to something else -- "Look, a Rabbit!" -- as everyone gets all worked up about the FBI raiding Rep. Jefferson's office or whatever the issue du jour might be.
And if you look back on things, that is how it has been since the beginning of this administration -- they do what they want, Democrats throw up an opposition that is of varying degrees of tepidness (did I just make that word up?), a few "maverick" Republicans cross lines (briefly), and then the administration gets what they want.
Rinse and Repeat. … In short, while immersed in the blogosphere, you get the feeling that the political climate is changing, but if you step back and look at the big picture, it looks much more like the SSDD.
It is very hard to argue with that. There were already ample grounds for attacking the Hayden nomination when it was announced, and then, right in the middle of it, an all-new, highly controversial, likely illegal NSA program was revealed for which he was responsible. But that was barely a speed bump in the harmonious, smooth sailing of his confirmation.

For all the talk of the weakened and impotent presidency and the split among Republicans, it is still virtually always the case that the president gets what he wants and without much difficulty. The few times he fails -- Harriet Miers, the Dubai Port deal, anti-torture legislation -- is because Republicans, not Democrats, take a stand against the White House.

But by and large, what happened yesterday with Gen. Hayden's nomination is exactly what would have happened in 2002 and 2003. Democrats are afraid to challenge the president due to their fear -- always due to their fear -- that they will be depicted as mean, obstructionist and weak on national security. And so, even with an unbelievably weakened president, and even with regard to the most consequential issues -- and can one doubt that installing Gen. Hayden as CIA director is consequential? -- Democrats back away from fights, take no clear position, divide against each other and stand up for exactly nothing.

It is quite possible that Democrats would not have been able to stop Gen. Hayden's nomination. It is true that they are still in the minority and thus are limited in what they can achieve legislatively. But that's really irrelevant. Gen. Hayden is a symbol and one of the chief instruments and advocates of the administration's lawlessness. He refused to say in his testimony even whether he would even comply with the law. Opposing his nomination is both compelled by a principled belief in the rule of law as well as justified by the important political opportunity to highlight this administration's lawbreaking. Sen. Feingold, as usual, shows how this works:

The Democrats who voted against the nomination were Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Evan Bayh of Indiana. Each cited concerns about Gen. Hayden's role in a controversial domestic surveillance program he ran while head of the National Security Agency.
"I am not convinced that the nominee respects the rule of law and Congress' oversight responsibilities," Mr. Feingold said.
In other words, there are serious questions about whether Gen. Hayden will comply with the law and whether he believes in the rule of law, so perhaps it's not a good idea to install him as CIA director. Is there some reason Democrats were afraid to make that clear, straightforward, critically important point?

Yet again, Senate Democrats show that they have no more concern for the rule of law and for the excesses of this administration than Senate Republicans do. Due to their really pitiful passivity, they are every bit as much to blame for the excesses and abuses of the administration as the compliant Republicans are.

I've written before that, at least to me, the principal if not exclusive benefit of the Democrats taking over one or both of the congressional houses in November is that it will impose some checks and limitations on the behavior of the administration and, specifically, will finally result in meaningful investigations into what has happened in our country and to our government over the last five years. But I have serious doubts about whether that would really happen.

After November 2006, the presidential elections are not far away. The same paralyzing, stagnating, fatally passive Democratic voices who always counsel against standing up to the administration aren't going anywhere. It is not hard to imagine what they will be saying:

President Bush is a lame duck who is out in 2008, and so it doesn't matter what he got away with or what he did. Conducting investigations into these intelligence and "anti-terrorist" scandals will be depicted as obstructionist and weak on national security, and will jeopardize our chances to retake the White House and will cost us House and Senate seats. It is best to look forward, not to the past, and not be seen as conducting vendettas against the lame duck president. What matters is taking the White House in 2008, and so there is no reason to attack the president on these matters of the past.
Is there any doubt that the likes of Sens. Feinstein, Rockefeller, Levin, etc., are going to follow that thinking, as they always do? I don't see how that can be doubted. I think congressional Democrats will be more cautious and passive, not less so, if they take over one of the congressional houses in 2006. People who operate from a place of fear and excess caution become even more timid and fearful when they have something to lose. The Democratic congressional chairs are going to be desperate not to lose that newfound power, and they will be very, very vulnerable to the whiny whispers of the consultant class that they should not spend their time and energy investigating this administration or vigorously opposing them on national security matters.

John Cole is absolutely right that Democrats have managed to change virtually nothing as a result of the collapse of the Bush presidency. That's because they think the same and behave the same as they did when they were getting pushed around by Bush as a highly popular "war president." As a result, there is no reason to believe they will be any better than they are now (and have been for the past four years) if and when they take over one or both congressional houses. One could make a compelling case that they will be even worse.

Glenn Greenwald is a constitutional law attorney and chief blogger at Unclaimed Territory. His forthcoming book, "How Would a Patriot Act: Defending American Values from a President Run Amok" will be released by Working Assets Publishing next month.

"The Disappeared"- Democrats IGNORE Enron FRAUD victims, just as they IGNORE Katrina victims, war victims, spying victims, torture victims...

"The DISAPPEARED" refers, generically, to all victims who have "disappeared" into the murderous arms of any state's totalitarian "state security" mechanism, never to be seen again.

(i.e. victims arrested and murdered by a state's secret police or quasi-military militias)

Secifically, the term "disappeared" is a now a verb that refers to Central- and South Americans who were "disappeared" by American supported right-wing death squads during the Reagan-Bush-Kissinger years. (Kissinger's terms as Secretary of State, of course, preceding the two terms of President Reagan and Vice President Bush's own election in 1988.)

In America in the post-Clinton era, "disappeared" now includes all those VICTIMIZED BY THE BUSH ECONOMY and fiscal policies: not so much those who have lost their lives as in South American death squads, but those who have lost their jobs, life savings, health insurance, and pensions directly as a result of Bush-Cheney-GOP policies. Such as the "hands-off" approach Mr. Bush gave Enron execs leading up to Enron's calamitous stock-market crash, AND to the subsequent extortion of $6.3 billion from CA ratepayers as Enron sought to restock its treasury on the back of American consumers - all with Bush administration complicity, and, just as importantly, DEMOCRAT PARTY SILENCE.

It is this SILENCE, this ENABLING, this INSIDE-the-Beltway COMPLICITY of the "establishment Democrats" that is so insidious and awful about the plight of Americans affected by Bush admin. policies - THERE IS NO ONE FORCEFULLY SPEAKING OUT FOR THEM.

That is why we here at C-dems.blgspt feel that it is no exaggeration to use a term linked to death-squads in South America - "the DISAPPEARED" - to describe Americans VICTIMIZED by BOTH BushCo economic extortion, AND DEMOCRAT PARTY SILENCE.

This trend - Dem. silence and complicity to economic disenfranchisement - is so insidious, that it is every bit as threatenning to world security as death-squads in Latin America in the 1980s were. The cowardly Dems, because of the existence of wmd's and the potential for terror attacks, have effectively ABANDONED fighting for the rights and freedoms that defined non-slave states America....



Ex-Enron Workers Rejoice after Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling Guilty Verdicts
by Christiane Zappone, CNNmoney.com staff writer
25 May 2006
http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/25/news/newsmakers/enron_reaction/

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Reactions from former Enron employees to Thursday's verdict in the Enron criminal trial were swift and unambiguous.

"Fantastic! Fantastic!" said Deborah Perrotta, who worked as an administrative assistant in Enron India's Houston-based office.
"It's a victory to show that corporate America can't get away with misleading the public and employees for their own personal gain," said Perrotta, who lost her job after the company filed for bankruptcy.

Enron founder Kenneth Lay was found guilty on six counts of conspiracy and fraud and former CEO Jeff Skilling was found guilty on 19 counts by a Houston jury in the biggest of the corporate fraud cases.

"Thank God," said Debra Johnson, another former Enron worker, "because the jury saw fit to punish them for what they did."

"The sentence may not be to everyone's liking," said Johnson, who worked as a coordinator in the Enron International office until the company's 2001 bankruptcy. "But the verdict is about being fair to everyday working people."

"Skilling and Lay thought the money, the power was everything," said Johnson. "This will let executives at other corporations know that it can happen to them. This is a milestone. And it's well deserved. We waited long enough. I'm smiling as I talk to you. I wish I'd been able to be there."

In a separate bench trial, Judge Sim Lake ruled Lay was guilty of four counts of fraud and false statements. Both Lay and Skilling could face 20 to 30 years in prison, legal experts say. (Full story).

"We're never going to get our money back," said Perrotta, who now works as a representative for the Texas Federation of Teachers in Dallas. "We're not going to reap from this. It's just the satisfaction. It helps me close the book on the Enron debacle.

"It closes the door. Now I can start a new chapter in my life," she said.

"I'm thrilled about it but disappointed I have to wait till September for sentencing," said former administrative assistant Rita Hennessy. "If it was me or you they'd have taken us off immediately."

Hennessy, who worked under former Enron chief risk officer Rick Buy and lost all of her retirement savings when the company collapsed, said, "Unless they serve time for what they've done, the verdict doesn't matter. You can tell a child they're guilty but it won't mean anything unless you give them punishment. What lesson is learned if you don't?"

Hennessy now works for a pipeline company in Houston.

"Justice has been served," said Roger Boyce, who worked in human resources at Enron's pipeline business. "I'm satisfied with the verdict but I'm happy for all of us employees and retirees that a just verdict has been reached."

Boyce, who retired the year before the company collapsed and was a plaintiff in an employee-stock option civil trial against the company, said he was a little surprised by how quickly the verdict came back. "But they seemed to do a conscientious job. Obviously they examined the evidence carefully, coming back with 19 convictions against Skilling."

He added: "The verdict gives a very strong message that corruption in corporations has got to stop. It sets up a strong precedent that companies can't get by with corporate greed."

The reaction from a Lay supporter was just as straightforward, but less jubilant.

"Lay has been the YMCA's friend and supporter," said Trazanna Moreno, a spokeswoman for the YMCA of Greater Houston, an organization to which Lay had contributed.

"Having said that, we understand, believe in and support our legal system and the juries that have to make the decisions they do," Moreno said.

--------------------------------------
Special Report - full coverage
Lay, Skilling found guilty. Full story.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/25/news/newsmakers/enron_verdict/index.htm
Ex-Enron employees: Give 'em 'hard time.'
http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/18/news/newsmakers/enron_opinions/index.htm
Lay and Skilling's day of reckoning
http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/25/news/newsmakers/enron_verdict/index.htm
Ex-Enron workers rejoice after verdicts
http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/25/news/newsmakers/enron_reaction/index.htm
The luckiest people in Houston
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/04/17/8374281/index.htm
Don't be a company man
http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/24/magazines/moneymag/updegrave_moneymag_0606/index.htm

photo-gallery: Execs behind bars
Koslowski and Waksal are in. Martha and Madden are out. Ebbers and Fastow are waiting. See who's where, and who's headed for hard time.

Cowering Democrats "DO NOTHING" but prepare to be THRASHED in the '06 midterm elections... Cenk Uygur, HuffPost

Cenk Uygur, one of the more outspoken young, 'liberal' writers over at HuffPost (HuffingtonPost.com), joins C-Dems.blgspt in DEMANDING that our Democrat "leaders" MAKE SOME LOUSY LITTLE EFFORT to STAND UP TO REPUBLICANS and DEFINE Repugs as SELLING OUT all that is America; that the Dems who control the party's message EXPOSE the Repub. agenda of barely disquised neo-Confederate plantation-owner oligarch-KLEPTOCRACY, and Banana-Republic foreign policy aggression...

To risk sounding like a broken record, by REFUSING to paint the Bush admin. as the party of Enron Corruption, of ABUSING our troops via the "back-door draft" while giving tax-cuts to multi-millionaires in time of war; by REFUSING to CONFRONT Mr. Bush and his minions on ILLEGAL, UNCONSTITUTIONAL SPYING; by REFUSING to DEMAND an apology from Mr. Bush for the disgrace that was his Katrina/FEMA response.. on these and 100 other issues, the Democrats ARE REPEATING THE FIALED CAMPAIGNS of Al Gore/joe lieberman in 2000; Tom Daschle and joe lieberman in 2002; and John Kerry and John Edwards in 2004. Indeed, in following the 'lead' of Daschle and Lieberman in throwing a WET BLANKET on the Bush-Ken Lay ENRON CONNECTION, the damn democrats are REPEATING **THE SAME DAMN FAILURE AND SELL-OUT** TWO different election seasons! These cowering Democrats take it as their due to SELL JUSTICE and American democracy DOWN THE RIVER, because they are... scared of making a stand???

<< Why did Paul Wellstone keep winning? Why does Russ Feingold keep winning? Why does Bernie Sanders have a 45 point lead in his Senate race? According to the Clinton-Schumer logic, shouldn't they be toast for being among the most liberal members of Congress and speaking their minds loudly?

Bernie Sanders is a socialist. And he has a 45 point lead! Vermont has a Republican governor. The people of Vermont might not necessarily agree with everything Sanders says - but they respect him.

This is apparently a concept lost on the Do Nothing leadership of the Democrats. The next six months is not time to sit on your lead. The next six months is the time for action. To show the American people what you have to offer. It is not a time for jogging in place, it is a time for moving forward. It is a time to show that you have the strength to lead the country.

An excellent start would be blocking the nomination of General Michael Hayden. Unfortunately, I can't even get myself to believe they will do that. At a time when we have the overwhelming majority of the American people so clearly behind us, how can our leaders provide us with such little hope? >>


The Do Nothing Democrats
Cenk Uygur
May 25, 2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/the-do-nothing-democrats_b_21410.html

The president floats between 29% and 31% in the polls. The Republican led Congress is at 18%. Democrats have an enormous 12-17% advantage when people are asked which party they would rather see in control of Congress. And yet the president keeps on winning.

He wants a $70 billion tax cut, he gets it.
He wants to pass a gay marriage amendment through committee, he gets it. He wants to appoint an incompetent law breaker as the head of the CIA, and he is very likely to get it.

General Hayden led the NSA when it bungled 9/11 (he was on before Bush even came into office, so he doesn't have the excuse of a short period of time to figure out the intelligence). He bungled the Iraq intelligence. Everyone loves to blame the Iraq War on bad intelligence - well, then why in the world should we promote a man who was the head of one of our major intelligence gathering agencies at the time?

Not one senator asked him about screwing up the intelligence on Iraq during his nomination hearings. Not one. I watched the whole thing in disbelief.

Many senators (Republicans) asked him how he felt about leaks to the press that uncovered the warrantless spying on Americans. Not one senator asked him how he felt about the leaks that led to the outing of a covert CIA operative. Remember, he is being nominated to be the head of all those operatives. It would be his job to protect them. Not one senator, Democrat or Republican, asked about Valerie Plame.

On the same day, The Baltimore Sun ran a devastating article about how General Hayden picked the wrong tracking program, Trailblazer, for political and bureaucratic reasons over a tracking program, ThinThread, that was far more effective and protected privacy. Hayden acknowledged the article during the hearings and seemed to confirm it in passing. Of course, not one senator asked him why he made such an enormous mistake or inquired into the political reasons behind the decision (Senator Wyden asked about Trailblazer but not in regard to this).

And all of this before we even get to his law breaking. He acknowledges that the NSA had an internal debate as to whether to ignore Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - they decide they would. They also made an active decision that they would not consult Congress or the courts in making this decision. They would unilaterally break this law, and then inform a handful of compliant Congressmen about it later.

When asked why he chose this route, General Hayden said three NSA lawyers he trusted gave him this advice. When asked if these lawyers wrote these legal opinions down (finally a good question) - General Hayden answered no. Wait, take a minute to absorb that. The top lawyers at the NSA gave the most important legal advice of their careers to the Director of the NSA - and they didn't write it down.

This was not a small matter. Even according to General Hayden's testimony, this was a very serious issue to which they gave considerable thought. Remember, they were making the decision to bypass a very clear federal law. And the lawyers who gave that advice didn't write it down?

Come on! This is when I expected the hearings to be over. Look, there are only two possible reasons why they wouldn't write it down: 1. They were so sure that it was illegal, they didn't want to be on the record as advising the director to break the law. 2. Or they never gave that advice in the first place. And General Hayden is lying in public - again. Something he has shown a clear propensity to do many times before.

This is when incredulous senators should have demanded to see the so-called legal advice that Hayden received or told him in no uncertain terms that he would not be confirmed. Instead, the sound of silence.

This guy is going to pass through Congress like a hot knife through butter. He is going to get confirmed in a cakewalk. I want to be fair -- Senators Wyden, Feingold and Levin asked him some actual tough and interesting questions. The rest of them were creampuffs.

Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski's questions were so soft, I wanted to put my head down on them and go to sleep. And the only question that remains is how many of the Do Nothing Democrats will vote for Hayden.

These are the same people who bowed their heads, kept their powder dry and assented to Alberto Gonzales as the Attorney General of the United States. Apparently, having learned no lesson at all from that mistake - as Gonzales has transformed his job into one of perpetual damage control for the White House and aggressive pursuit of the press - promise to make the same mistake again.

Hayden broke a federal law, lied about it repeatedly and now gives no assurances that he won't do the same as the head of the CIA - and in this upside down world we live in, he is going to be easily confirmed. It would be one thing if the Republicans were ascendant and the Democrats were cowering in the face of overwhelming polls against them. It wouldn't be right then either, but at least it would be understandable.

But as things stand, with the Democrats clearly more popular than the nearly universally loathed Republicans (the 18% approval rating for Congress is really astoundingly bad), the fact that they still won't stand up even to a nominee this egregious makes one despair. Some of these Democrats are craven politicians to their core - and bad ones at that.

The Do Nothing Democrats are led by their New York Senators. Chuck Schumer who is in charge of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for the 2006 elections and Hillary Clinton who is supposedly the leading candidate for 2008 (I shudder at the thought). They have sent out the memo - do absolutely nothing until the 2006 election; we have a lead, let's sit on it. Bold, very, very bold.

Every sports fan knows what prevent defense does - it prevents victories. Action matters. It matters that we just added another $70 billion on top of our already grotesquely large deficit. It matters that the head of our CIA will be both incompetent and a wanton law-breaker. We cannot run out the clock to 2006, let alone 2008. These next two and half years matter.

Democrats have to fight back and win. If they don't, there is absolutely no point to their big leads in the polls. The American people aren't behind you because they won't you to do nothing. They're behind you because they want you to bring change.

I know, I know, Chuck Schumer and the like yell, "But we can't do anything until we regain Congress." First of all, that's not true; the minority can definitely block a nominee or even filibuster terrible bills - if they had the guts for it. Did you see how quickly the Republicans filibustered an early version of the immigration bill they didn't like? They did it at the drop of a hat, without any hand-wringing about "procedural maneuvers."

Second, and most important of all, inaction is not necessarily smart politics. That's such a funny statement. We live in a world where we have to convince people that inaction and compliance with a hated political party is not the correct political route.

Have Schumer and Clinton considered just once that perhaps what voters like most of all is strength. The courage of your convictions. In 2004, 17% of voters said they voted based on who they thought would be a "strong leader," and 87% of those voted for Bush. You don't think that makes a difference?

Why did Paul Wellstone keep winning? Why does Russ Feingold keep winning? Why does Bernie Sanders have a 45 point lead in his Senate race? According to the Clinton-Schumer logic, shouldn't they be toast for being among the most liberal members of Congress and speaking their minds loudly?

Bernie Sanders is a socialist. And he has a 45 point lead! Vermont has a Republican governor. The people of Vermont might not necessarily agree with everything Sanders says - but they respect him.

This is apparently a concept lost on the Do Nothing leadership of the Democrats. The next six months is not time to sit on your lead. The next six months is the time for action. To show the American people what you have to offer. It is not a time for jogging in place, it is a time for moving forward. It is a time to show that you have the strength to lead the country.

An excellent start would be blocking the nomination of General Michael Hayden. Unfortunately, I can't even get myself to believe they will do that. At a time when we have the overwhelming majority of the American people so clearly behind us, how can our leaders provide us with such little hope?

Enron Ken Lay, Skilling Convicted. SOME justice done for those defrauded by the Enron Chairman and CEO....

Of course, unlike mere mortals, Lay and Skilling will fall back on a huge and almost unlimited "full court press" appeals process, and after that, an almost certainty that President Bush will sign a pardon releasing the pair from all consequences of their conviction for defrauding American consumers and investors.

What the article does not point out, and what Democrats FAIL to point out, is that ENRON was George W. Bush's NUMBER ONE CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTOR through Bush's two Texas gubanatorial elections; through his 2000 primary election campaign (infamous for smearing John McCain's family in the South Carolina primary using "push polls"); through his 2000 presidential campaign, through the 2000 Florida recount debacle (Enron provided the private jets which ferried Bush Republicans from Washington to Florida and back); and Enron's duo even provided the Bush team with the cash $$ for the Bush inaugueration blow-outs in January of 2001.


Lay, Skilling convicted in Enron collapse

By Kristen Hays, AP Business writer
25 May 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/enron_trial;_ylt=AgYoH3bG8uPL6CCazXFnpdOs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--

HOUSTON - Former Enron Corp. chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted Thursday of conspiracy and securities and wire fraud in one of the biggest business scandals in U.S. history.

The verdict put the blame for the 2001 demise of the high-profile energy trader, once the nation's seventh-largest company, squarely on its top two executives. It came in the sixth day of deliberations following a federal criminal trial that lasted nearly four months.

Lay was also convicted of bank fraud and making false statements to banks in a separate, non-jury trial before U.S. District Judge Sim Lake related to Lay's personal finances.

The conspiracy conviction was a major win for the government, serving almost as a bookend to an era that has seen prosecutors win convictions against executives from WorldCom Inc. to Adelphia Communications Corp. and homemaking maven Martha Stewart. The public outrage over the string of corporate scandals led Congress to pass the Sarbanes-Oxley act, designed to make company executives more accountable.

Enron's collapse alone took with it more than $60 billion in market value, almost $2.1 billion in pension plans and 5,600 jobs.

"The jury's verdicts help to close a notorious chapter in the history of America's publicly traded companies" said Rep. Michael Oxley (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, co-author of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. "Appeals aside, the end of the trial will mark the end of a dark era."

Enron founder Lay was convicted on all six counts against him in the corporate trial and all four in the personal banking trial. Former Chief Executive Skilling was convicted on 19 of the 28 counts in the corporate trial, including one count of insider trading, and acquitted on the remaining nine.

"How Repubs STOLE the 2004 election" Craven, cowering Dems pretend not to notice...

How did we get stuck with an "OPPOSITION" party that is too cowardly and craven to even insist on counting the votes that would bring it the victory in elections that voters want it to have?

Oh yeah.. its all about the money. The bean-counters and billionaires now own all the major-media corporations, a massive institutional obstruction between voters (governed) and elected representatives (government), therefore all that about "government of, by and for the people" no longer applies. It is now government "Of, by and for THE BIG DONORS."

Actually, America has been here before, with the ALIEN and SEDITION Acts under President Adams in 1798, and with the ESPIONAGE and SEDITION ACTS under Dem. President Woodrow Wilson in 1918, which was, ironically, passed only 5 months before the end of the war (WWI) that Wilson deemed made the draconian laws necessary.

But those previous SEDITION Acts were and are far from a HIGH POINT in American history, and hardly excuses the Democrats in 2000-2006 for the enabling of TWO STOLEN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, much as they ENABLED Enron and the Bush Administration to extort $6 billion dollars in fraudulent overcharges from California electric consumers.

_______________________________________________________

How the GOP stole the '04 election
May 23, 2006
http://www.opednews.com
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_dorri_st_060523_how_the_gop_stole_th.htm

Dear Friends,
I have attempted to define how the GOP stole the '04 election in the most simplistic terms and provided links to support the premises:
1. MISALLOCATION OF MACHINES (and less reliable machines) in high Dem Precincts.
2. MANIPULATION OF VOTER REGISTRATIONS and PURGES
3. UNCOUNTED VOTES
4. GOP DIRTY TRICKS
I believe we are heading for a train wreck with the upcoming election, and hope this will help define areas to concentrate our efforts in the future. The use of electronic voting machines will allow more methods for stealing. I am an advocate of Hand-counted paper ballots (with strict procedures) and public witnessed counting at the precinct level.
Dorri Steinhoff

1. MISALLOCATION OF MACHINES (and less reliable machines) in high Dem Precincts:
Fixing America's Broken Elections
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
February 08, 2005
My staff reviewed thousands of pages of primary source materials, including copies of actual ballots, voter registration databases, and poll books. They also met with several individuals having firsthand knowledge of irregularities. What they found indicated problems in multiple areas, from machine tampering and malfunction, to the intimidation and caging of minority voters in urban and rural areas, to the purposeful misallocation of voting machines and the unjustifiable restrictions that were placed on the use of provisional ballots.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/fixing_americas_broken_elections.php

Ohio 2004 election thief grabs Gov nod while (surprise! surprise!) voting machines malfunction
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
May 5, 2006
Ohio's Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell has grabbed the GOP nomination for governor in a vote count riddled with machine breakdowns. In Franklin and Delaware Counties, election officials had to "shut down and recalibrate [machines] throughout the day," according to the Columbus Dispatch. Election officials use recalibration as a code word when machines are malfunctioning including the recording of votes for wrong candidates.
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1953

2. MANIPULATION OF VOTER REGISTRATIONS and PURGES:
Did 308,000 cancelled Ohio voter registrations put Bush back in the White House?
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
February 28, 2006
It turns out, we missed more than a few of the dirty tricks Karl Rove, Ken Blackwell and their GOP used to get themselves four more years. In an election won with death by a thousand cuts, some that are still hidden go very deep. Over the next few weeks we will list them as they are verified.
One of them has just surfaced to the staggering tune of 175,000 purged voters in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), the traditional stronghold of the Ohio Democratic Party. An additional 10,000 that registered to vote there for the 2004 election were lost due to "clerical error."
As we reported more than a year ago, some 133,000 voters were purged from the registration rolls in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) and Lucas County (Toledo) between 2000 and 2004. The 105,000 from Cincinnati and 28,000 from Toledo exceeded Bush's official alleged margin of victory---just under 119,000 votes out of some 5.6 million the Republican Secretary of State. J. Kenneth Blackwell, deemed worth counting.
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1832

“Finally on Voter Registration Mr. Chairman, as the Committee is well aware, there were innumerable political parties and 537’s spending tens of millions of dollars on voter registration drives. In Franklin County alone, we processed more than a quarter of a million voter registration forms between January 1, 2004 and the close of registration in early October. This was twice the registration activity as compared to the same period in 2000.”
Bill Anthony testimony on March 21 2005
http://cha.house.gov/hearings/testimony.aspx?tid=477
Mr Anthony’s testimony stated that in Franklin County alone, more than a quarter million voter registrations forms were processed between Jan. 1 2004 and the close of registration in early October. Yet when the registered voter numbers are compared from 2003 to 2004, we see a change of 120,869.
google: Ohio voter registration historical data
http://elections.ssrc.org/data/voterreg/
Ohio Election Data - Registered Voters before Certification
The Feminist Majority Foundation
Detailed chart of annual changes in Ohio voter registration numbers from 2000 to 2004. The data demonstrates a large voter roll purging in 2002 and relatively high numbers of new registrants from 2002-2004.
voters in 2004 = 845,720
voters in 2003 = 724,851
# Changed from 03-04 = 120,869
http://www.feminist.org/pdfs/oh_election_precert.pdf

-October 4, 2004 was filing deadline for new voter registrations. At that point there were approximately 20,000 unprocessed voter registration applications with less than a month before the election. One mail tray containing 4,500-7,000 (estimates vary) unprocessed “Project Voter” registrations were discovered on or about October 18,2004.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation pg 10
***Of interest here is information obtained from the SOS website entitled ElectionsVoter/results 2003 and 2004 which show the # of registered voters number change from ‘03-’04 was 11,947 in Lucas County: reg voters 2003 in Lucas=288,190 ; registered voter in 2004=300,137.
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/elections/lucas.htm

3. UNCOUNTED VOTES:
Cranks and Kooks: Kerry won in '04
by Greg Palast
May 11, 2006
Answer: The Uncounted.
In Ohio, there were 153,237 ballots simply thrown away, more than the Bush "victory" margin. In New Mexico the uncounted vote was fives times the Bush alleged victory margin of 5,988. In Iowa, Bush's triumph of 13,498 was overwhelmed by 36,811 votes rejected. In all, over three million votes were cast but never counted in the 2004 presidential election. The official number is bad enough-1,855,827 ballots cast not counted, reported to the federal government's Election's Assistance Commission. But the feds are missing data from several cities and entire states too embarrassed to report the votes they failed to count. Correcting for the under-reporting of the undercount, the number of ballots cast but never counted goes to 3,600,380. And there are certainly more we couldn't locate to tote up.
Why doesn't your government tell you this? Hey, they do. It's right there in black-and-white on a U.S. Census Bureau announcement released seven months after the election -- in a footnote to the report on voter turn -- out. The Census tabulation of voters voting "differs," from ballots tallied by the Clerk of the House of Representatives for the 2004 presidential race by 3.4 million votes.
This is the hidden presidential count which, excepting the Census' whispered footnote, has not been reported.
Unfortunately, that's not all. In addition to the 3 million ballots uncounted due to technical "glitches," millions more were lost because the voters were prevented from casting their ballots in the first place. This group of un-votes includes voters illegally denied registration or wrongly purged from the registries.


November 2, 2004 Election
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1961
Iowa New Mexico Ohio
Ballots “spoiled” 18,847 21,084 103,660
Provisional Ballots Uncounted 7,368 6,593 33,998
Absentee Ballots Uncounted 10,596 4,217 15,519
Ghost Votes & blocked votes unknown 2,087 85,950
Total Uncounted* 36,811 33,981 239,127
Bush “Victory” Margin 10,059 5,988 118,599
*Totals here include ghost vote only for New Mexico and machine shortage only for Ohio. Registry purges etc., would increase these totals.
-U.S. Civil Rights Commission reports that ballots of “non-black” voters were rejected: 1.6% (1 in 63 did not count); while black voter ballots were rejected 14.4% or 1 in 7 African American votes went uncounted.
-The rejection of provisional ballots were cast over-whelmingly in Democratic precincts.
-In New Mexico, 9 out of 10 votes uncounted were cast by non-Anglo voters. (90% of this population vote Democratic.
-Nationally, the total numver of voters voting provisionally was 3,107,490 and the rejection rate was 1,090,729.
SOURCE: Greg Palast "Armed Madhouse"
1,597 Provisional Ballots from Franklin Co categorized as Status 200-”Not Registered”, yet voters were registered


Study of Provisionals in Cleveland
http://my.core.com/~rhh/index.htm
Edited on Tue Jan-24-06 01:34 PM by mod mom
From a recent Cleveland study on ‘04:
Almost 1,000 provisional ballots may have been wrongfully rejected because of registration problems alone. At least 944 rejected provisional ballots, mostly classified as “not registered”, were apparently mistakenly purged from the registration lists. Since this error was detected by only one type of search, which did not detect other voters who claimed similar errors, the true number of provisional ballots wrongfully rejected is likely to be higher.
We estimate that 2 out of every 5 provisional ballots that were rejected should have been accepted as legitimate. If we combine incorrectly purged provisional votes, projected votes rejected because of initial registration errors, provisional ballots lost through polling place misinformation and innocent errors filling out the provisional application, it appears that over 41% of rejected provisional ballots (or 14% of all provisional votes) may have been unnecessarily rejected.
We estimate that simply changing residence exposes voters to a 6% chance of being disenfranchised. Youth, the poor, and minorities are disproportionately affected. In fact, with respect to just provisional ballots, we found a two-fold increase in rejection rate in predominantly African-American compared to predominantly Caucasian precincts.
Full text: http://www.clevelandvotes.org/news/reports/summary.html

from Feb 2005-but important, in case you missed it.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; Page A28:
A Defense Department survey on military voting found that 79 percent of military personnel tried to vote in the 2004 presidential election and that 73 percent of those actually voted [news story, Dec. 7].
But the survey obscured an important fact: Disenfranchisement of military and overseas absentee voters remains high. Between 30 and 45 percent of these potential voters failed to receive their absentee ballots or received them too late to matter, according to surveys by the National Defense Committee and the Overseas Vote Foundation.
About 1.4 million active-duty members of the uniformed services and 1 million spouses and family members are eligible for absentee voting. In addition, an estimated 4 million U.S. civilians who live abroad are eligible. Yet most states still conduct absentee voting through U.S. mail via a cumbersome three-step process.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/ar2005121301729.html

4. GOP DIRTY TRICKS:
Busheviks connected to New Hampshire phone-jamming scheme
by The Ostroy Report
April 14, 2006
Every day brings new surprises in the wild and wacky world of the Bush Monarchy. One day its WMD lies, the next day illegal wiretappings, the next day leaks of classified data, and now news that the Busheviks and the GOP may be central figures in the 2002 phone-jamming scheme that kept New Hampshire Democrats from voting in that year's midterm elections, according to court documents.
Phone records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin made dozens of calls to the White House in the immediate days leading up to New Hampshire's election for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Robert C. Smith. Tobin and two others were convicted in December 2005 of hiring Virginia-based GOP Marketplace on behalf of the New Hampshire GOP to jam another phone bank being used by the state Democratic Party and the firefighters' union to get-out-the-vote for then-governor Jeanne Shaheen. John E. Sununu, the Republican candidate, won 51% to 46%. The phone records show that most calls to the White House were from Tobin, who became Bush's presidential campaign chairman for the New England region in 2004.
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1931
GOP SUPPRESSION FLYERS
http://www.solarbus.org/stealyourelection/voter-suppression-flyers.html
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
February 08, 2005
My staff found substantial evidence, admitted by a Triad voting machine company employee—in public, videotaped testimony— that he developed documents and manipulated voting machines for the purposes of allowing county officials to forgo a legally required full hand recount of ballots. Other instances of inappropriate political advocacy by voting machine company officials are well known.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/fixing_americas_broken_elections.php
Free Press uncovers evidence of ballot tampering in Warren County, Ohio
April 19, 2006
After locking out all media observers and declaring a Level 10 Homeland Security Alert, the Republican-dominated Warren County, Ohio reported the vote tally in the wee hours of the morning on November 3, 2004 -- and gave George W. Bush a surprising 14,000 vote boost. Two election workers told the Free Press that the ballots had been diverted to an unauthorized warehouse where they had been possibly stuffed. That is, punched for Bush only. Maps were supplied to the Free Press showing the locations of the warehouse and the Board of Elections.
Warren County officials refused to allow the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism to handle the ballots, but they did allow us to photograph a few. Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D., has analyzed the ballots for the Free Press and concluded that there is evidence of fraud in Warren County. The ballots as photographed with Dr. Phillips' commentary below each ballot are included here for the first time.
The Free Press predicted early on that the ballots would be found punched only for Bush in Warren County. The Moss v. Bush lawsuit pointed to Warren, Butler and Clermont Counties as the three counties that provided more than Bush's entire margin in the Buckeye State: Bush won Ohio by 118,000, and 132,000 votes were supplied in these three southwestern Republican counties.
Now, for the first time, the Free Press is releasing images of the obvious election fraud in Warren County. The Free Press will continue its ongoing investigation in Ohio despite stonewalling by Republican state officials. See the images by clicking on the link below.
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2006/1355
Ohio GOP Challenges 35,000 Voters
Saturday, October 23, 2004; Page A09
The Ohio Republican Party challenged the eligibility of 35,000 newly registered voters yesterday, an action that party officials said was unprecedented but necessary to prevent election fraud in a state where polls show President Bush and John F. Kerry in a statistical tie.
Most of the 35,000 voters live in urban, Democratic areas, party spokesman Jason Mauk said. Local party officials, joined by Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie at a news conference, said the voters were mainly registered by "shadowy" Democratic-leaning groups and were chosen after the GOP sent them mail that was returned as undeliverable.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/a55472-2004oct22.html
Dorri Steinhoff is currently working as Campaign Manager for the Fitrakis/Rios '06 in their bid to defeat Kenneth Blackwell in the Ohio Governors race. She is a board member of The Columbus Free Press, ; and CASE Ohio, caseohio.org> . She can be reached at: dorristeinhoff@columbus.rr.com.

 

"Iran war on fast-track"? Dems busy themselves pretending not to notice...

<< Putin’s plan is similar to that of Iran, which announced that it would open an oil-bourse (oil exchange) on Kish Island in two months. The bourse would allow oil transactions to be made in petro-euros, thus discarding the dollar. The Bush administration’s belligerence has intensified considerably since Iran made its intentions clear. In fact, just yesterday, Secretary of State Condi Rice said that “security guarantees were not on the table” regardless of any Iranian commitment to stop enriching uranium. In other words, Washington will not provide Iran a “non-aggression pact” whether it follows UN Security Council guidelines or not.

SURELY, THIS IS A SIGN THAT Uncle Sam IS ON A FAST-TRACK TO WAR. >>


This is a terrific article coming from OpEdNews.com, yet another example of how the craven and cowering Washington Post and New York Times (LAT, ChiTrib, et al) are DERELICT IN THEIR DUTIES of providing vital information to American citizens and consumers, so to pad their corporate profit margins with infotainment and "MonciaIsComing!" hysterionics. (And, of course, outright corporate deceptions, such as NBC wet-blanketting corporate parent GE's dumping of PCBs into the Hudson river, or all the networks and "mainstream press' outlets IGNORING the Diebold DISENFRANCHISEMENT of America.)

As with so many good articles, this one has at least a triple-whammy of important news, reminding us of #1. America's massive government and foreign exchange DEFICITS (the craven media refuses to comment on the BUSH_DEFICITS, much less put them front-page, top-of-fold headlines where they belong);
#2. that the world oil market is getting tired of America's bayonets-and-nukes 'diplomacy'
#3. that grasping at straws as America's legitimate (business, economic, cultural) influence diminishes daily under the BushCo Confederate slave-states and Banana Republics agenda, BushCo is ON THE FAST TRACK to the IRAN WAR.


The very simple calculus, the political ledger, the Democrat balance sheet, is that the Democrat Party 'establishment' sees itself as co-rulers in THE BELLY OF THE BEAST" - the US government that for so long made treaties and broke treaties with native tribes; the government who sent the Marines to "the shores of Tripoli... to fight for Right and Freedom" at the same time as American slave ships cruised Africa's west coast. Today, while talk of impeachment, war crimes, hearings, and a frustration with administration and government incompetence percolate through all reaches of American society, the Dem. Party 'establishment" might as well be one of the most steadfast SUPPORTERS of BushCo policies.




Vladimir Putin and the rise of the petro-ruble

by Mike Whitney
May 23, 2006
http://www.opednews.com
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_mike_whi_060523_vladimir_putin_and_t.htm


“If one day the world’s largest oil producers demanded euros for their barrels, it would be the financial equivalent of a nuclear strike”. Bill O’ Grady, A.G. Edwards
On May 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin ignited a firestorm that is bound to sweep across the global economy. In his State of the Nation speech to parliament,, he announced that Russia was planning to make the ruble “internationally convertible” so that it could be used in oil and natural gas transactions. Presently, oil is denominated exclusively in dollars and sold through the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMX) or the London Petroleum Exchange (LPE) both owned by American investors. If Russia proceeds with its plan, the ruble will go nose to nose with the dollar on the open market sending several billions of surplus greenbacks back to the United States. This could potentially send the American economy into freefall; triggering a deep recession and an extended period of hyper-inflation.
“The ruble must become a more widespread means of international transactions,” Putin said. “To this end, we need to open a stock exchange in Russia to trade in oil, gas, and other goods to be paid for in rubles."
Currently, the central banks around the world carry large stockpiles of dollars to use in their purchases of oil. This gives the US a virtual monopoly on oil transactions. It also forces reluctant nations to continue using the dollar even though it is currently underwritten by $8.4 trillion national debt.
Putin’s plan is similar to that of Iran, which announced that it would open an oil-bourse (oil exchange) on Kish Island in two months. The bourse would allow oil transactions to be made in petro-euros, thus discarding the dollar. The Bush administration’s belligerence has intensified considerably since Iran made its intentions clear. In fact, just yesterday, Secretary of State Condi Rice said that “security guarantees were not on the table” regardless of any Iranian commitment to stop enriching uranium. In other words, Washington will not provide Iran a “non-aggression pact” whether it follows UN Security Council guidelines or not.
Surely, this is a sign that Uncle Sam is on a fast-track to war.
The United States must protect its dollar-monopoly in the oil trade or it will lose the advantage of being the world’s “reserve currency”. As the reserve currency, the US can maintain its towering $8.4 trillion national debt and $800 billion trade deficit without fear of soaring interest rates or hyper-inflation. Trillions of greenbacks are constantly circulating in oil transactions just as hundreds of billions are stockpiled in foreign banks. In effect, the Federal Reserve is issuing bad checks with every dollar printed on the assumption that they will never reach the bank for collection. So far, they’ve been right, and as the price of oil continues to skyrocket, the Fed just keeps cheerily printing more worthless paper sending it to the 4 corners of the earth. Regrettably, if Russia or Iran goes ahead with their conversion plan, then the bad checks will flood back to their source and precipitate a meltdown.
America’s economic supremacy depends entirely on its ability to compel nations to make their energy acquisitions in greenbacks. If the flaccid dollar is not linked to the world’s most vital resource, then banks will dump it overnight. This extortion-racket is the system we are defending in Iraq, not “democracy”. It is a huckster’s scam designed to perpetuate American debt by forcing worthless currency on the developing world.
In a recent article by Dave Kimble, “Collapse of the petrodollar looming”, the author provides the details of Russia’s importance to the world oil market.
“Russia's oil exports represent 15.2% of the world's export trade in oil, making it a much more significant player than Iran, with 5.8% of export volumes. Russia also produces 25.8% of the world's gas exports, while Iran is still only entering this market as an exporter…. Venezuela has 5.4% of the export market.”
Obviously, it is not in Russia’s interest to trade with its European partners in dollars any more than it would be for the US to trade with Canada in rubles. Putin can strengthen the Russian economy and improve Russia’s prestige in the world as an energy superpower by transitioning to rubles. But, will Washington allow him to succeed?
A growing number of nations are now focusing on the empire’s Achilles’ heel, the dollar. Venezuela, Russia, Norway and Iran are all threatening to move away from the greenback. Is this a spontaneous uprising or is it a new type of asymmetrical warfare?
Whatever it is, Washington is bound to be reeling from the affects. After all, war maybe possible with Iran or Venezuela, but what about Russia? Would Bush be stupid enough to risk nuclear Armageddon to protect the drooping dollar?
The administration is exploring all of its options and is developing a strategy to crush Putin’s rebellion. (This may explain why Newsweek editor and undeclared spokesman for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Fareed Zacharia, asked his guest on this week’s “Foreign Exchange” whether he thought Putin could be “assassinated”?!? Hmmm? I wonder if we’ll hear similar sentiments from Tom Friedman this week?)
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the secretive organization of 4,400 American elites from industry, finance, politics, media and the military (who operate the machinery of state behind the mask of democracy) has already issued a tersely worded attack on Putin (“Russia’ Wrong Direction”; Manila Times) outlining what is expected for Russia to conform to American standards of conduct. The missive says that Russia is headed in “the wrong direction” and that “a strategic partnership no longer seems possible”. The article reiterates the usual canards that Putin is becoming more “authoritarian” and “presiding over the rollback of Russian democracy”. (No mention of flourishing democracy in Saudi Arabia or Uzbekistan?) The CFR cites Putin’s resistance to “US and NATO military access to Central Asian bases” (which are a dagger put to Moscow’s throat) the banishing of Washington’s “regime change” NGOs from operating freely in Russia (“Freedom Support Act funds”) and Russia’s continued support for Iran’s “peaceful” development of nuclear energy.
America has never been a friend to Russia. It took full advantage of the confusion following the fall of the Soviet Union and used it to apply its neoliberal policies which destroyed the ruble, crushed the economy, and transferred the vast resources of the state to a handful of corrupt oligarchs. Putin single-handedly, put Russia back on solid footing; taking back Yukos from the venal Khordukovsky and addressing the pressing issues of unemployment and poverty-reduction. He is a fierce nationalist who enjoys a 72% approval rating and does not need the advice of the Bush administration or the CFR on the best path forward for his country.
The US has purposely strained relations with Russia by putting more military bases in Central Asia, feeding the turmoil in Chechnya, isolating Russia from its European neighbors, and directly intervening in its elections.
When the G-8 summit takes place next week, we should expect a full-throated attack from the corporate media on Putin as the latest incarnation of Adolph Hitler. Watch the fur fly as the forth estate descends on its newest victim like feral hounds to carrion. (Putin’s announcement that Russia would be converting to rubles HAS NOT APPEARED IN ANY WESTERN MEDIA. Like the Downing Street Memo, the firebombing of Falluja, or the “rigged” 2004 elections, the western “free press” scrupulously avoids any topic that may shed light on the real machinations of the US government)
Putin’s challenge to the dollar is the first salvo in a guerilla war that will end with the crash of the greenback and the restoration of parity among the nations of the world. It represents a tacit rejection of a system that requires coercion, torture and endless war to uphold its global dominance. When the dollar begins its inevitable decline, the global-economic paradigm will shift, the American war machine will grind to a halt, and the soldiers will come home. Maybe, then we can rebuild the republic according to the lost values of human rights and the rule of law.
Putin’s plan is set to go into effect on June 8, 2006.

 

Mike is a freelance writer living in Washington state.

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