Click here for a London Guardian documentary that aired on the BBC, by Sean Smith, the Guardian's award-winning war photographer, spent nearly six weeks with the 101st Division of the US army in Iraq. Watch his haunting observational film that explodes the myth around the claims that the Iraqis are preparing to take control of their own country.

Just another hoax brought to you by the anti- democratic Rethuglican noise machine to justify anti-democratic legislation and state initiatives that make it more difficult for poor people to vote.

From the USA TODAY

By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — At a time when many states are instituting new requirements for voter registration and identification, a preliminary report to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission has found little evidence of the type of polling- place fraud those measures seek to stop.

USA TODAY obtained the report from the commission four months after it was delivered by two consultants hired to write it. The commission has not distributed it publicly.

At least 11 states have approved new rules for independent voter-registration drives or requirements that voters produce specific forms of photo ID at polling places. Several of those laws have been blocked in court, most recently in Arizona last week. The House of Representatives last month approved a photo- ID law, now pending in the Senate.

The bipartisan report by two consultants to the election commission casts doubt on the problem those laws are intended to address. “There is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling-place fraud, or at least much less than is claimed, including voter impersonation, ‘dead' voters, non-citizen voting and felon voters,” the report says.

. . .

Barry Weinberg, former deputy chief of the voting section in the Justice Department's civil rights division, reviewed their work. “Fraud at the polling place is generally difficult to pull off,” he says. “It takes a lot of planning and a lot of coordination.”

Of course right-wing reactionaries "dispute the research and conclusions." Thor Hearne, counsel to the misnamed American Center for Voting Rights -- that means he is a lawyer-- notes "that the Justice Department has sued Missouri for having ineligible voters registered, while dead people have turned up on the registration rolls in Michigan."

But a funny thing about these two examples? The dead people that showed up on registration rolls were due to newly deceased persons. There was no evidence that persons voted in place of the deceased persons in Michigan. The statement of the Federal lawsuit against Missouri only mentions the existence of the case, not the result of or the actual details of the case.

I did a google and had a hard time finding information about this federal lawsuit against the state of Missouri. Here is the source from an ap news wire line. The story was printed in the St Louis Dispatch. Guess what the law suit was about?

The complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, alleges that the state has failed to meet its legal responsibilities to conduct a general program to maintain its voter registration list for federal elections as required under Section 8 of the NVRA. It alleges that, in some parts of Missouri, voters have been removed from registration lists without notification in direct violation of mandatory NVRA procedural protections,and that,in other areas, ineligible voters have not been removed from registration lists. The complaint further alleges that the state's failure to comply with the voter registration list maintenance provisions of the NVRA has resulted in registration lists that provide inaccurate voting information, including one county where the number of registered voters is over 150% of its voting age population.

Did you get that? Notice the use of the word "alleges". We have no idea how much of this "complaint filed in the US District Court" is politically motivated. In any case, the "complaint" is not about voters actually casting illegal ballots which is, Mr. Hearne, why the study you criticize "found little evidence of the type of polling-place fraud those measures seek to stop."

Lesson number 23 billion in why you must Watch what they do,not what they say.

Also, notice that the various versions of this original USA TODAY story are being grossly sliced and edited.

* Click here *

The original story was 9 paragraphs. The UPI story (which is owned by Fox news mogul Ruppert Murdoch) is only 6 paragraphs. The very important original first 4 paragraphs have been condensed into one sentence : "Claims of widespread voter fraud at U.S. polling booths are exaggerated, an independent report done for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission says." The words "claims" and "exaggerated" are new words that were not in the original USA TODAY story.

And yet, these are the words that are cheap substitutes for

"There is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling-place fraud, or at least much less than is claimed, including voter impersonation, ‘dead' voters, non- citizen voting and felon voters,” the report says

Furthermore, the UPI spinned version ends with the legalese of Thor Hearn. The quote from Barry Weinberg has been omitted.

Yes. That's right, you guessed correctly. The UPI decided it was more important to end the story with a quote from Thor Hearn, a partisan group lawyer, than Barry Weinberg, former deputy chief of the voting section in the Justice Department's civil rights division ? Who has a more substantive opinion : A hired shill, or the deputy chief of the voting section in the Justice Department's civil rights division?

By the way, "Thor Hearn" is actually Mark F. Hearn. What's with the nickname?

This is why you never believe an article that is from the "UPI Staff." What you get is a sliced up spin version of the actual original story.

Who would you believe?
Thor Hearn	Barry Weinberg

And the front page story for the Friday San Francisco Comical : "Critics assail Firefighters effort to rescue mission." Yes, that's our corporate monolith Hearst Corporation for you, getting to the bottom of the really, really important stories that truly affect our democracy.

Blah.

Click here.

Bill Maher rips into the stupid predictions that never came true about the war in Iraq

If you're someone from one of these think tanks that dreamed up the Iraq War and who predicted that we'd be greeted as liberators, and that we wouldn't need a lot of troops, and that Iraqi oil would pay for the war, that the WMD's would be found, that the looting wasn't problematic, that the mission was accomplished, that the insurgency was in its last throes, that things would get better after the people voted, after the government was formed, after we got Saddam, after we got his kids, after we got Zarqawi, and that whole bloody mess wouldn't turn into a civil war ... you have to stop making predictions.

Thanks to CrooksandLiars.com for the footage.

I used to respect John McCain. But now ... I realize he's just another craven politician.

Here is a snippet of his "strained" interview with (of all people) Chris Matthews ( of whom some people refer as Tweety) :

[SOURCE]

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about an area where we‘ve all been involved, you especially, in talking about Iraq and how we can win this war or deal with it. You‘ve called, just in the last couple of days, for 100,000 more troops on top of the 140,000 we have as a compliment there.

When I read that on the clips this morning, I went to General Barry McCaffrey, whom you know so well, and he said we‘ve got only a total of 19 brigades that we could actually put into combat right now. We have 17 committed, two of those brigades to Afghanistan, 15 brigades already in Iraq. He says we simply don‘t have the capability to sustain another 100,000 troops in Iraq. You disagree?

MCCAIN: I said we need 100,000 more ...

MATTHEWS: Right.

MCCAIN: ...members of the Marines and the Army. We need additional troops there, but I think we need to expand the Army and the Marine Corps by 100,000 people.

MATTHEWS: More recruitment.

MCCAIN: I didn‘t say we need 100,000 -- more recruitment. And by the way, I‘m sure that people in this audience know the members—many members of the Iowa National Guard. They have served with courage, with bravery, with sacrifice and enormously wonderful performance. But it‘s a heavy strain on the Guard.

MATTHEWS: Would they please stand up? I know we have some here. Would the people of the National Guard of Iowa please just stand up nonofficially here? Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

MATTHEWS: Thank you. Thank you for your service.

(APPLAUSE)

MCCAIN: Some of these young people have been to Afghanistan or Iraq two or three times already. We have put an enormous strain on them. They have performed magnificently, but we can‘t keep it up. We‘ve got to expand of the Marines. . . .

MATTHEWS: But why isn‘t it working? I mean, so few people here— we‘ve got a couple of thousand of young people here, and a very, very small percentage have expressed a commitment, even by standing here. Doesn‘t that mean we might have to think of the draft again?

MCCAIN: I don‘t think we need to think of the draft again because I don‘t think it makes sense in a whole variety of ways. But I guarantee you, if these young people felt that this nation was in a crisis and we asked them to serve, virtually every one of them would stand up because I have the greatest confidence in the young people of America.

So ... , uh, what the hell is John McCain saying? I think the picture above says everything ?

Whoa baby look at what's happening now/

Baltimore Sun Source

Diebold Election Systems Inc. expressed alarm and state election officials contacted the FBI yesterday after a former legislator received an anonymous package containing what appears to be the computer code that ran Maryland's polls in 2004.

Cheryl C. Kagan, a longtime critic of Maryland's elections chief, says the fact that the computer disks were sent to her - along with an unsigned note criticizing the management of the state elections board - demonstrates that Maryland's voting system faces grave security threats.

. . .

The disclosure comes amid heightened concerns nationwide about the security of the November elections and the ability of the state to keep tight controls on the thousands of machines that will be used next month.

Maryland's September primary - which used voting machines and electronic check- in equipment made by Diebold - suffered a series of mistakes, and the outcomes of some contests were not known for weeks.

A legislator gets an anonymous package which proves that Diebold machines had preconceived intentions of fraud ?

I do hope we are all getting an education. I don't think many people read at all, and so what information they ever get is mostly from the video and audio media.

Imagine a people who have no idea what happened 30-40-50 much less 300 years ago. Much of history is something a whole hell of a lot of people have never even conceived of, except when alluded to by some external media source, or in conversation with other people. I mean if you don't know what happened in 1910 or 1804, what would you think about if you pondered it? What notions would fill the void of the empty receptacle?

This is hard for me to imagine because I have been reading since the age of 3. I was writing and drawing at age 5. I started playing guitar and piano in high school, and now, many years later ... I suppose I'm probably what you might call a child progidy.

But still, I know that other people are different, and frankly I am sometimes catatonic when I think of how little the average person reads in a month. I mean a lot of persons are vulnerable to the spin and propaganda, because they are just too ignorant too know any better. They often have good intentions, but like most human beings will get their hackles up and become quite defensive when challenged.

Now I'm not speaking of the bots and spin merchants who vomit all over the media and blogosphere. Those fools are just hybrid rodents chewing on their fingers.

God Save The Republic.

I thought I'd share this with everyone.

We've been had.

We struck a match across the entire Middle East.

[We] not only failed, we created a civil war.

We did exactly what the British said we were doing, we fixed the facts around the policy because the President wanted to go to war.

They've been cut off at the pass, because they don't understand one thing : people fight for their country. I mean what else are they gonna do, where else are they gonna go.

We are only compounding the problem.

-- quotes from Helen Thomas, the David Bender show, 19 October 2006

I love Helen Thomas, the 80 something veteran journalist. Listen to your grandmother boys.

Bottomless pit of corruption.

This is the average hours of electricity in Baghdad from 2005 to 2006. Baghdad is a modern city of 10 million people. Prior to the invasion, there was an average of 16 to 24 hours of electricity per day.

[SOURCE]

And now ...

Thanks to bartcop.com

I was just blogging about this event, and lo and behold, Paul Krugman mentions it too in his op-ed column today.

The current Congress has shown no inclination to investigate the Bush administration. Last year The Boston Globe offered an illuminating comparison: when Bill Clinton was president, the House took 140 hours of sworn testimony into whether Mr. Clinton had used the White House Christmas list to identify possible Democratic donors. But in 2004 and 2005, a House committee took only 12 hours of testimony on the abuses at Abu Ghraib.