The corrupt wonders of technology

BlackBox Voting, an election via electronics watchdog, has just posted some disturbing information regarding the Diebold electronic voting machines. No matter who you're voting for, please, for the love of god, don't vote on these things. It is concievable your vote could be hijacked. Insist on an absentee ballot route. It's safer.

Issue: Manipulation technique found in the Diebold central tabulator -- 1,000 of these systems are in place, and they count up to two million votes at a time.

By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks.

Word from the street

Looking for pics of the protest in NYC?

You got it.

Though this one remains my favorite.

Bravery

William Saletan's Slate article succinctly strikes at the heart of my problem with the Republican concept of heroism. Bravery, real bravery, means doing something even when your instinct is to just cut and run, when you're risking something genuine and personal and huge and yet you steam forward to do the very thing you know is inarguably just.

That kind of risk runs the full gamut of possibility and risking your status quo because of a compulsion from within your moral integrity is NEVER an easy thing to do. Never. You always lose something, even if it's chance to do it differently again, when one is forced to make the truly brave choices. But you take that path because deep down in your heart you know, morally, you don't have any other real choice.

Nowhere from Bush's four years thus far have I seen any real risk placed upon the president's shoulders. Not even political risk, when you get down to the brass tax of it (it's hard to carry the banner of 'We faced the onslaught of the opposition and won' when there is no opposition to speak of and you're carrying the parade all by your lonesome party).

Bush has, time and time again, taken the coward's way out. The safe route. The riskless route. From his National Guard service (which I find to be less of a deal than a lot of people) to his crescendo of moral cowardice; waging and standing by a war that even in the dust clearing has been proven a poorly thought-out mistake. No where has George Bush ever felt the real heat of, as Saletan points out, honest sacrifice, of genuine suffering.

Now a lot of Republicans would say that Bush made that hard choice by invading Iraq when the whole world was against him, that that's a clear indicator that Bush is a brave man. But the fact is, having seen that 'Iraq as an imminent danger' was a false assumption, and having seen the bodies that have resulted, both American and Iraqis, from acting upon that false assumption, it would seem to me the bravest thing to do would be to take responsiblity for the consequences of that mistake.

Never have I seen anything of the sort from this administration.

Culpability is for other people. Recognizing mistakes is for other people. Accountability... is for other people.

That, to me, is a thousand light years from real leadership. And that is why I will be voting against George W. Bush come November 2nd. Because this country deserves better in its leadership than this guy.

You spin me right round baby

I'm really fascinated now by Bill O'Reilly, especially since reading this Rolling tone article on the guy.

Just from the article and from this vid of him on Tim Russert's Meet the Press, I notice he has a knack of acting intimidating to the people he's supposed to be having a civil discourse with, getting very close to them physically, raising his voice and appealing to emotion rather than the heart of an issue.

Now I understand how he went from hosting Inside Edition to this. Tabloid journalist to demagogue despot of own his own little empire. Not much of a stretch really when you think about it.

The Return of J. Edgar Hoover

Just stumbled across this at Salon.com's War Room:

Perhaps the Bush administration would have better luck hunting down bin Laden if it didn't have so many FBI agents knocking on the doors of those who might plan to protest at the Republican National Convention. As the New York Times reports, the FBI is currently working to trail, interview, subpoena and -- it's hard not to think -- generally harass potential protestors.

"In the last few weeks, beginning before the Democratic convention, F.B.I. counterterrorism agents and other federal and local officers have sought to interview dozens of people in at least six states, including past protesters and their friends and family members, about possible violence at the two conventions," the Times reports. "In addition, three young men in Missouri said they were trailed by federal agents for several days and subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury last month, forcing them to cancel their trip to Boston to take part in a protest there that same day."

The Times says investigators generally cover the same three questions: "were demonstrators planning violence or other disruptions, did they know anyone who was, and did they realize it was a crime to withhold such information."

According to the Times, FBI officials say the inquiries "are focused solely on possible crimes, not dissent, at major political events." At least some of those contacted by the FBI see things differently. "The message I took from it," said Sarah Bardwell, 21, an intern at a Denver antiwar group who was visited by six investigators a few weeks ago, "was that they were trying to intimidate us into not going to any protests and to let us know that, 'hey, we're watching you.' ''

It's good to know some dirty, conniving thuggery never changes.

Under pressure

Slowly but surely the screws may turning against the Bush White House over this CIA-operative outing fiasco.

From this BBC article that covers the whole skinny on this situation:

A court in Washington has held a reporter in contempt for refusing to testify in an investigation into the exposure of an undercover CIA agent.
The court ruled Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper must testify to the grand jury investigating the leaking of agent Valerie Plame's name.

Ms Plame's husband says her name was leaked in retribution for his article challenging the government over Iraq.

US District Judge Thomas F Hogan ruled that Mr Cooper and Tim Russert, the host of NBC Television's Meet the Press, must testify "regarding alleged conversations they had with a specified executive branch official".

The reporters had tried to avoid the grand jury subpoena on the grounds it violated the First Amendment of the Constitution's guarantee of a free press.

Several leading government officials have already testified to the grand jury or been interviewed by prosecutors - among them Secretary of State Colin Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and former CIA director George Tenet.

President George W Bush himself was interviewed in June at the White House.


I do see and understand Mr. Cooper's fight against being strongarmed to admit his journalistic sources as being swampy incursions on free speech. And the fact he's willing to go to jail for it, as opposed to Tim Russert's cowardly caving in to the grand jury, is admirable.

But the fact is, free speech is one thing. Using free speech as an instrument with which to politically kneecap your adversaries and then counting on it as a shield when you get caught is another thing entirely. I'm glad to see this investigator has taken the kid gloves off. Or so it seems.

I truly cannot believe the White House administration has done so much hemming and hawing over a situation they could very easily have routed out in-house. It's crystal clear that the chain of command outright agreed with these ambush tactics. Bush wouldn't have consulted with a lawyer over this if he didn't have some part in it or knowledge therein of the shenanigans.

Like a friend of mine commented to me last week. This isn't a presidency. It's a ragtag collection of sewing circle hens and dishonorable cowboy wannabes.

Feckless thugs, the whole lot of them.

Fucking brilliant

Y'know, between the war in Iraq, the Plame affair and this, I honestly wonder just what the fuck this administration thinks it's doing when it bloviates on all its 'successes' against the war against terrorism:

Until U.S. officials leaked the arrest of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan to reporters, Pakistan had been using him in a sting operation to track down al Qaeda operatives around the world, the sources said.

In background briefings with journalists last week, unnamed U.S. government officials said it was the capture of Khan that provided the information that led Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to announce a higher terror alert level.

The unnamed U.S. officials leaked Khan's name along with confirmation that most of the surveillance data was three or four years old, arguing that its age was irrelevant because al Qaeda planned attacks so far in advance.

Law enforcement sources said some of the intelligence gleaned from the arrests of Khan and others gave phone numbers and e-mail addresses that the FBI and other agencies were using to try to track down any al Qaeda operatives in the United States.

Then on Friday, after Khan's name was revealed, government sources told CNN that counterterrorism officials had seen a drop in intercepted communications among suspected terrorists.

Officials used Sunday's talk shows to defend last week's heightened alerts, amid widespread claims the White House disclosed Khan's arrest to justify raising its terror alert level.

But some observers have said that Islamabad should not have been compromised by political considerations in Washington.


Why undermine your own September Surprise, boys?

It's a conspiracy. A see-oh-enn...spiracy.

From the Boston Globe today:

Iraq has issued arrest warrants for Ahmed Chalabi, a former Governing Council member, on counterfeiting charges, and for his nephew Salem Chalabi, head of the tribunal trying Saddam Hussein, on murder charges, Iraq's chief investigating judge said yesterday.

The warrant is the latest strike against Ahmed Chalabi in removing him from the centers of power. A longtime Iraqi exile opposition leader, he had been a favorite of many in the Pentagon but fell out with the Americans in the weeks before the handover of Iraqi sovereignty in June.


There's more irony than you can shake a stick at with regards to Ahmed Chalabi's falling star.

Here's a guy who jockeyed within Pentagon circles to take over Iraq after Saddam's ouster, is said to have been the biggest source of the discredited WMD information, and who is alleged to have told Iran that the US had broken their codes and was listening in on their communications.

And we paid him. Millions of our tax dollars went to funding his Iraqi National Congress and his attempts to take over Iraq... and yet this mountebank who embezzled from banks hadn't lived in Iraq since he was a child. The embezzlement and fraud charge (of which he was given 22 years sentence in absentia from Jordan and makes the Pentagon's favorite a convicted felon), was a political conspiracy by Saddam Hussein then. And miraculously this new charge of counterfeiting by the Iraqi justice system is a political conspiracy by Saddam Hussein too.

Funny how the conspiracies keep following you, Mr. Chalabi.

"Yeah. Uh, tribal sovereignty means that. It's sovereign."

I'm so unbelievably late for this party, I don't know where to begin. For years now I've been barraging my friends with political links, day after day after day. Sorry, guys. But now, this blog will set down all those juicy little morsels of info and more.

And so, without further ado, we're starting this party with a whimper, not a bang.

Or rather one seriously pitiful attempt at oration from the king of seriously pitiful attempts. MP3 link and hilarious as hell.

Honest to god, listening to this and his slip? at a bill signing on Thursday ("Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we") it makes me feel kinda sorry for the guy. Clearly this is a man who has no clue what he's doing in the role that's been thrust upon him. No clue.

And yet FOX continues to insist the emperor isn't naked. Who are they trying to kid?