DeLay quits

The first of the really big neocon assholes to fall. Who'll be next? People responsible for so much lying and cheating are always on the run.

I keep saying these people are fucking crooks and will eventually end up in jail. And to think that they are ostensibly public servants. Delay was all about serving the Republicans, not the people and look where it got him.

ABC News story here, interesting piece in the Nation via Yahoo News here.

The Nation piece goes over some of DeLay's antics and history and clearly demonstrates what an evil, cheating man DeLay is. Worth quoting is some of the material surrounding DeLay's role in the election-fraud issue:

But DeLay's crudest dismantling of democracy will be little mentioned today, just as it was barely noted at the time that he brought the hammer down.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, 2000, when the eyes of the nation were fixed on the Stephen P. Clark Government Center in downtown Miami, where a Dade County canvassing board was reviewing 10,750 uncounted ballots in Florida's disputed presidential contest between Democrat
Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush, a riot orchestrated by DeLay's top aides and allies and carried out by Republican operatives flown in from Washington stopped the count. In so doing, DeLay's Izod-clad minions assured that the Bush campaign's Florida co-chair, Katharine Harris, would, in her capacity as secretary of state, be able to certify a 537-vote "win" for the Republican when the recount deadline arrived. It was that certification that allowed Florida Governor
Jeb Bush to sign a Certificate of Ascertainment designating 25 Florida electors pledged to his brother. The paperwork was immediately transferred to the National Archives, where it would eventually be cited by the
U.S. Supreme Court in its decision to award the Florida electoral votes, and with them the presidency, to George W. Bush.

DeLay's role in the recount, though little reported and even now little understood outside the inner circles of the Republican and Democratic parties, was definitional.

Furious that the Florida Supreme Court had on November 21, 2000, ordered a real recount is disputed ballots in the race that would decide the presidency, the House Republican leader had issued a statement that declared: "I hope this misguided ruling will be vigorously challenged."

DeLay was not making an idle threat. He was delivering marching orders to the troops in his war on democracy.

On the following day, a crowd of Republican aides and lobbyists flown in from Washington swarmed into the Goverment Center, chased Democratic observers out of the building and began banging on the doors of the area in which the recount of the key county's ballots had begun. Leading the "rioters" in chants of "Stop the Count" was Tom Pyle, a policy analyst in DeLay's office. This "vigorous challenge" to the count proved successful. The three-judge panel of canvassers -- who after going through only a handful of the disputed ballots had already identified more than 150 additional votes for Gore -- was shaken. After a team of sheriff's deputies restored order, the judges asked for a police escort to return them to the recounting room. There, they voted unanimously to stop the count. The additional votes for Gore that had already been discovered were discarded. Vote totals from Florida's most populous county reverted to pre-recount figures.

David Leahy, the supervisor of elections for the country, admitted that the riot "weighed heavy on our minds" as the decision to stop the recount was made. U.S. Representative Carrie Meeks, D-Miami, was blunter. "The canvassing board bowed under pressure," she said.

That pressure was applied by Tom DeLay, who would say after the U.S. Supreme Court locked in the results for Bush: "This is something I've been working on for 22 years. I mean, we got it."

For once, DeLay was being modest. While Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris and
Antonin Scalia all played their parts, it was Tom DeLay who brought down the hammer that stopped the recount process at its most critical point.

Information War

Bullshit the enemy to death. More terrifying visions of the future summed up nicely by Scottish paper the Sunday Herald. Article is here, entitled "America's war on the web."

Has me thinking somebody somewhere has decided the internet is a big threat to a system of organized lies. Information is a big threat to any lie. Get ready to start printing fliers and stuff like that when they stop your blog from being seen, and when they stop your favorite journalism sites from being seen by you, I guess.

The Sunday Herald article does a nice job of citing evidence and tying it in with Bush Administration's neo-con aims and principles:

This revolution in information warfare is merely an extension of the politics of the “neoconservative” Bush White House. Even before getting into power, key players in Team Bush were planning total military and political domination of the globe. In September 2000, the now notorious document Rebuilding America’s Defences – written by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a think-tank staffed by some of the Bush presidency’s leading lights – said that America needed a “blueprint for maintaining US global pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power-rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests”.

The PNAC was founded by Dick Cheney, the vice-president; Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary; Bush’s younger brother, Jeb; Paul Wolfowitz, once Rumsfeld’s deputy and now head of the World Bank; and Lewis Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff, now indicted for perjury in America.

This point just cannot be stated enough these days.

John Dean on censure

The Arizona Daily Star didn't even mention that hearings are going on right now in the Senate Judiciary Committee on whether to censure President Bush over the domestic spying scandal. The Star's headline just says "Dean tells Senate panel Bush should be censured" (Howard Dean, the popular scapegoat of the right wing cause, or John Dean, the Republican?) then the story just says Dean "told the Senate Judiciary Committee..." i.e. no specific mention of subject of the Judiciary Committee meeting. The story then refers to the censure issue prominently as "Feingold's measure," just isolating the whole issue as some pipedream of a disgruntled democrat, rather than focusing on the substance of the event. The standard "dems want to score political points" crap, which tends to show whenever Democrats make a substantive argument against BushCo, is also inserted.

I'm guessing a few specific things were edited out of the AP copy, as is the practice in Arizona, to soften the impact and avoid the seriousness of the issue. Plainly stating at the beginning of the article that the Sentate is still actively looking at a censure of Bush over domestic spying might undermine Bush's support among the 30% of people in U.S. who still believe he's worth a damn.

I will give the Star credit for admitting that John Dean said impeachment might be appropriate in Bush's case, but once again the Star seems kind of slick.

My theory is that the Star, and a lot of other papers, want to keep readership at the maximum by drawing both conservative and liberal readers. The Star throws out a few key points, for example a major Nixon-era figure talking about censure and impeachment of Bush, so the liberals can feel something is being done about Bush, and the "conservatives" can still whine about the "liberal media bias." At the same time, the Star leaves a lot out of the story, for example the fact that the Senate is presently considering cesure of Bush, to avoid publishing evidence of just how poorly the Bush administration is doing, just how much trouble these people are getting themselves into.

Dean, who worked for Nixon, obviously a Republican and a conservative, made remarks that echo the feelings of many of us "left wing fringe radicals" (this term, in popular debate these days really just means "anyone who opposes Bush and states publically that something should be done to take our country back from BushCo").

Dean's remarks, which I found published here in Rolling Stone, resonate truly with me, and demonstrate that opposition to Bush and Bush policy and corporate cronies like Cheney, is actually not limited to a couple outspoken Democrats, but is in reality widespread and bipartisan. Dean's remarks also echo a growing feeling among the populace that the Bush administration is power-mad, corrupt, and is doing a lot of harm to the values it claims to support.

Excerpts from Rolling Stone:

No presidency that I can find in history has adopted a policy of expanding presidential powers merely for the sake of expanding presidential powers.... It has been the announced policy of the Bush/Cheney presidency, however, from its outset, to expand presidential power for its own sake, and it continually searched for avenues to do just that, while constantly testing to see how far it can push the limits. I must add that never before have I felt the slightest reason to fear our government. Nor do I frighten easily. But I do fear the Bush/Cheney government (and the precedents they are creating) because this administration is caught up in the rectitude of its own self-righteousness, and for all practical purposes this presidency has remained largely unchecked by its constitutional coequals....

Congress is now confronted with executive branch attorneys who take the most aggressive reading possible in all situations that favor executive power.... If this committee does not believe this Administration is hell bent on expanding its powers ... you have been looking the other way for some five years of this presidency.... That is why censure might be the only way for the Senate to avoid acquiescing in what is clearly a blatant violation of the 1978 FISA stature, not to mention the Fourth Amendment.

I implore the Senate to undertake not a partisan action, but a strong institutional action. I recall a morning -- March 21, 1973 -- that I tried to warn a president of the consequences of staying his course. I failed to convince President Nixon that morning, and the rest, as they say, is history. I certainly do not claim to be prescient. Then or now. But actions have consequences, and to ignore them is merely denial. Today, it is very obvious that history is repeating itself.... I hope that the collective wisdom of this committee will prevail, and you will not place the president above the law by inaction.... Hopefully the Senate will not sit by while even more serious abuses unfold before it.

Text of Dean's entire statment, is published at rawstory.com.

Nikki Sudden 1956-2006

Vocalist from the Swell Maps, one of the coolest bands ever, and numerous other cool bands and projects. An archive of one of Sudden's last performances, recorded live a week before his death at WFMU, is available here on Real Audio and here on 128k MP3.

Man what a bummer, Nikki Sudden was great. The Swell Maps were a big influence on many of us.
C7

Half a million in L.A.

You're looking at half a million people in L.A. yesterday 3/5/06 speaking out against immigration and border policy. Half a million. Mirrored by similar events all over the nation.

A huge huge voting block, hispanic people.

This is how it looks when we speak out against the Bush administration.

This is Phoenix Friday 3/24, as thousands protested against Republican senator John Kyl's attempts at border policy. There was a protest in Tucson too, and protests across the nation too, according to this story in the Arizona Daily Star.

What's interesting to me is the massive opposition to Republicans and republican policy in general right now, which this photo demonstrates (pun acknowledged).

I've always hated Kyl, he's been around since the Reagan/Bush the 1st days. Kyl was immediately identified as the kind of Republican that doesn't acknowledge constituents that are not right wing fundamentalist morons. For example, when I argued against cutting overtime pay, since this move pretty much makes slaves out of us- and treating people like slaves should never be tolerated- Kyl's office sent a letter back that was loaded with the most moronic business-speak drivel I've ever seen. Kyl doesn't really serve the rest of us or represent us in Washington- although he supposed to. Kyl serves people like Dick Cheney and represents the kind of idiotic policy that is ruining our country.

Another thing interesting about this story and photo is the contrast with another story published in the Star Friday morning. The headline?

Cheney: Keep Kyl in Senate
Vice president's visit raises $500,000 for re-election bid and Arizona GOP

Great.

Cheney's motorcade came right up the main boulevard in my neighborhood. Riding home from work Thursday there were police positioned up and and down the street- I wondered what that was all about. I figured it was a VIP since they looked so bored.
Anyway the story was basically the Star pissing all over itself giving a pep talk about old Dick. A strong contrast to the massive public opposition to the Bush administration.

To quote Cheney:

"As democracy advances, ideologies that stir anger and hostility lose their appeal," he said.

Exposing Diebold and election fraud

An office temp and out of work actor in the L.A. area exposed Diebold's role in allowing the use of uncertified and defective voting machines in California 2 years ago. Now two years after the fact he's being charged with theft of data, burglary and receiving stolen property.

Because of Stephen Heller's actions in exposing Diebold, California sued Diebold for 2.6 million dollars and temporarily banned Diebold's machines from use in the state. Diebold has been linked to slimey doings wherever it does business in electronic voting machines. Time and time again Diebold's name comes up in connection with innacuracies in vote tallys. Now Diebold is jumping up and down with glee as a whistleblower is prosecuted.

Articles in the Merc are here and in the L.A. Timesand here.

Blog post here in the Obfuscation Report includes a link to a site where contributions to Heller's legal defense fund can be made.