This is Bradley Schlozman

Mr. Schlozman's pursuit of fake Missouri voter fraud cases 2 weeks before the election were so bad that Judge Nannett Laughrey threw it out of court.

On April 14, 2007, a federal judge ruled that a lawsuit pushed by Schlozman against the Missouri Secretary of State showed “no evidence” voter fraud. “It is also telling that the United States has not shown that any Missouri resident was denied his or her right to vote as a result of deficiencies alleged by the United States,” Judge Nanette Laughrey wrote. “Nor has the United States shown that any voter fraud has occurred.”

Read more ...

And how about that recent New York Times story that revealed scant evidence of the "voter fraud" pursued by the politicized Justice Department

WASHINGTON, April 11 — Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.

Here is a reprint of the article at Acorn.org.

That story was published on April 12th of this year. The day before, another story was published (on April 11th). It is an odd story.

WASHINGTON, April 10 — A federal panel responsible for conducting election research played down the findings of experts who concluded last year that there was little voter fraud around the nation, according to a review of the original report obtained by The New York Times.

Instead, the panel, the Election Assistance Commission, issued a report that said the pervasiveness of fraud was open to debate.

...

two weeks ago, the panel faced criticism for refusing to release another report it commissioned concerning voter identification laws. That report, which was released after intense pressure from Congress, found that voter identification laws designed to fight fraud can reduce turnout, particularly among members of minorities. In releasing that report, which was conducted by a different set of scholars, the commission declined to endorse its findings, citing methodological concerns.

A number of election law experts, based on their own research, have concluded that the accusations regarding widespread fraud are unjustified. And in this case, one of the two experts hired to do the report was Job Serebrov, a Republican elections lawyer from Arkansas, who defended his research in an e- mail message obtained by The Times that was sent last October to Margaret Sims, a commission staff member.

“Tova and I worked hard to produce a correct, accurate and truthful report,” Mr. Serebrov wrote, referring to Tova Wang, a voting expert with liberal leanings from the Century Foundation and co-author of the report. “I could care less that the results are not what the more conservative members of my party wanted.”

He added: “Neither one of us was willing to conform results for political expediency.”

For contractual reasons, neither Ms. Wang nor Mr. Serebrov were at liberty to comment on their original report and the discrepancies with the final, edited version.

The original report on fraud cites “evidence of some continued outright intimidation and suppression” of voters by local officials, especially in some American Indian communities, while the final report says only that voter “intimidation is also a topic of some debate because there is little agreement concerning what constitutes actionable voter intimidation.”

The original report said most experts believe that “false registration forms have not resulted in polling place fraud,” but the final report cites “registration drives by nongovernmental groups as a source of fraud.”

Here's the link

What is the April 11th story? It is story about a body of appointed political hacks who are trying to distract the public from the April 12th story. They hold a news conference where they "played down the findings of experts" without offering evidence, and contend that facts are somehow "open to debate" even though they don't offer any of their own to rebute those provided by the "findings of experts" in the soon to be released April 12th report.

Maybe 70 to 120 persons is the sum total of all the 5 years of hard work by the partisan Justice Department's witch hunting. The Republicans illegally removed 90,000 felons from Florida voting registration in 2000 because of loose association with a name from a felon list, despite 3 separate court orders to cease and desist. "Sproul & Associates has received nearly $500,000 from the Republican National Committee" to pose as a fake non-profit registration enterprise that threw away tens of thousands voters who registered Democratic. The Republicans illegally used "caging" tactics to remove tens of thousands of voters off the roles in 2004 and 2006.

All 14 of them.

Click here and here

And here too.

So, if we are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here then are we also building military bases and prison camps over there so we don't have to build them here?

Oh, but we have to build and maintain 14 permanent military bases in Iraq because the world is dangerous, people are trying to kill us, and oceans no longer protect us.

Hmm. When as the world not been dangerous? It was dangerous in 200 B.C. It was dangerous in 1812 when the British invaded America and burned Washington D.C. Oceans didn't protect us in 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. There are people all over the world who want to kill us, but invading and occupying a nation to prevent people from killing us will only increase the numbers of people who want to kill us.

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

From cbs news [Click here ]

the $592 million embassy, expected to be completed in September on a chunk of prime real estate two-thirds the size of Washington's National Mall, will be a spacious and comfortable facility, albeit dangerous.

Identified as the "Baghdad U.S. Embassy Compound Master Plan," the images show palm lined paths and green grass gardens, volleyball and basketball courts outside the Marine post, as well as the swimming pool, all with a view of the river.

"In total, the 104-acre compound will include over twenty buildings, including one classified secure structure and housing for over 380 families," the website boasts.

It says the compound will include the embassy building, housing, a PX, commissary, cinema, retail and shopping areas, restaurants, schools, a fire station, power and water treatment plants as well as telecommunications and wastewater treatment facilities.

A U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee report last year said embassy security will be extraordinary: setbacks and perimeter no-go areas will be especially deep, structures reinforced to 2.5-times the standard, and five high- security entrances, plus an emergency entrance-exit.

sardoodledom (SAR-doo-duhl-duhm) noun

Plays having contrived melodramatic plot, concentrating excessively on the technique to the exclusion of characterization.

One thing that you will hear these days is the so-called inevitability of modern capitalism. When corporations sell their American footprints (factories, warehouses, financial offices, bank accounts) and move overseas, liberterian philosophy says that owners of "capital" have the "right" to move where-ever they think they can get the best deal. The drive for short-term profit is presumed to be no different from long term stability, so when the financial wizards finance these operations to make millions this too is also seen as inevitable, and therefore natural.

But jobs that vanish never come back, and the economy that remains is of a different scale because the wealth creation is gone. Workers get a small percentage of the expenses of the company. When large percentages of company expenses are abroad, the amount of wealth created in the United States is reduced. The percentage of a smaller total is inevitably smaller, but the percentage itself may also shrink. This is the current situation for the modern American middle class.

In order to justify this trend, advertizements and public relations firms claim that "cheaper labor means cheaper prices." Walmart is "cheap" you see, because of the cheap Chinese labor and pressure of Walmart to force their suppliers to lower prices. Meanwhile, Walmart sucks out all the cash to banks external to the community in which the Walmart exists, while the available jobs to the Walmart customers has vastly decreased over the last 30 years.

But cheaper labor does not mean cheaper prices. If the costs of labor increased by $10 per hour, that increase is spread out over the worker's production per hour. If the worker makes four $60 dresses an hour, that is $10 divided by 4, or $2.50 increase per purse.

Note that the worker himself may not be able to sew 4 dresses per hour. But if the group of 20 working together for 8 hours makes 80 dresses a day, what's the difference in dresses per worker.

Consider also that the price of the now $62.50 dress includes an American worker who might purchase the dress. This American worker puts his money in a local bank and spends all of it in the community in which he lives, thereby lending natural support to the small business entrepreneurs that would not thrive without their local customers.

An increase in labor of $20 an hour would be a $65 dress.

An increase in labor of $32 an hour would be a $68 dress.

So for persons who bring up the issues of high land prices and higher external costs per worker than China, touche.

The same is true of Immigrant agricultural laborors in the United States. People say that no one will pick the fruits and vegetables, and that if the price of labor increased, the price of fruits and vegetables would rise, and we'd have to pay "$10 for apples."

Well again let's say a worker picks 20 apples per hour ( and the production is more than 20). Divide an increase of $10 per hour, and that is only 50 cents per apple ( not $10.) Even if the increase is $30 per hour, the added cost per apple is only $30 divided by 20, or $1.50. All this even though the picked apples per hour is more like 40 -- $30 divided by 40 = 75 cents.

As I've said in earlier posts, only the small clique of well-positioned financiers actually benefit from this trend.

So ask yourself, what's really going on?

Lets see if you can figure this out ...

• Rigidly
• Egotistical
• People,
• United
• By
• Lying
• Inconsistencies,
• Carping
• About
• Nothing
• Signifigant

-- followed by are destroying the government and nation with their kow- towing to craven selfishness and corruption.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

"We didn't mean to do it" say these people who have been around since the Nixon administration through the Reagan administration and now the Bush administration.

Uh,um ... y.y... yeah right.

You see, now they want to distract us from the real argument.

This is from the Associated press as posted on yahoo [Click here ]

The prosecutor probing the Valerie Plame spy case saw and copied all of Rove's e-mails from his various accounts after searching Rove's laptop, his home computer, and the handheld computer devices he used for both the White House and Republican National Committee, Luskin said.

The prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, subpoenaed the e-mails from the White House, the RNC and Bush's re-election campaign, he added.

"There's never been any suggestion that Fitzgerald had anything less than a complete record," Luskin said.

Any e-mails Rove deleted were the type of routine deletions people make to keep their inboxes orderly, Luskin said. He said Rove had no idea the e-mails were being deleted from the server, a central computer that managed the e-mail.

Which of course completely misses the point.

The story is that Karl Rove organized an extra-legal communication system purchased by RNC funds through which administration officials communicated the public's business so they could conceal their corrupt activities from public oversight.

Whether the emails were purposely deleted or whether they were deleted for purposes of being "tiddy" does not matter. The communication system itself is illegal and is under the legal oversight of the judicial and congressional branches of government.

It is not only absolutely unbelievable that the administration can't comply with a subpoena by the Justice department, but this statement by Rove's lawyer has nothing to do with the legal matters of the story.

This afternoon press conference (which is what the Associated Press story really is after all) is just another strategic press conference by Rove's lawyer Luskin. It is only a stalling tactic. They want to turn the debate into a debate over why the emails were deleted, rather than the back-channel email operation itself.

Also, as is pointed out by Shawn GBR on an Air America Blog :

From a legal standpoint too (which is also another topic our weak Conservative friends are lacking knowledge), I would like to point you to this page at Cornell University's Law website.

Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States...

[drumroll please]

...shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

Yikes.

I know I haven't blogged in a while. I apologize to the 10 persons who might actually read this regularly ... my mom, my three best friends Chris, Rob, & Barry, and all of my beloved students.

I had about 3 weeks when my wrist was sprained and I couldn't type because I couldn't use my right hand. I stepped out of my car, slipped on a grease spot, and caught my fall awkwardly with my right wrist.

But that doesn't explain the other 3 weeks of inactivity.

It's baseball season you see. What better escape can there be from the insanity of world affairs and the corrupt American government ?

And that's it really. I'm overwhemed and inundated, and it takes everything I have to not just scream or devolve into a nervous wreck.

This week the news is all a buzz about radio talk cowboy Don Imus stupidly referring to the women's college basketball victors as "nappy headed hoes." Meanwhile, the backdoor email channels set up by Karl Rove via RNC (Republican National Committee) paid for computers is getting little exposure. Yesterday, when Patrick Leahy, Democrat Chairman of the Judiciary Committee angrily disbelieves that the Administration lost 5 years of these emails, does the press put this into perspective for the average ill-informed American ?

No. It doesn't.

This email network is being treated with kid gloves by the corporate press, if it is dealt with at all. The administration ILLEGALLY set up a back-channel communication system in 2001-2002 in order to have discussions that no one could drag up as evidence.

The San Fran Chronicle couldn't be bothered with this story all week -- preferring to talk about the Salmon run, a green downtown building, the 60 year anniversary of Jackie Robinson, MUNI bus troubles, the GOP vile comments about Pelosi.

Today, in typical Chronicle style, the pathetic paper republishes a Washington Post piece on page A-3 by Michael Abromowitz. First of all, here is the Post story. And Click here for the "Comical" version.

IT'S NOT THE SAME ARTICLE

The Chronicle cuts up and slices up the original Washington Post article, not even mentioning the last 5 paragraphs at all. There is also no reference to how this story relates to Jack Abramhoff -- which was in a story the Post (a real newspaper) did the day before by Michael Abramowitz and Dan Eggen. [Click here]

In another e-mail exchange revealed during the investigation of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a White House official was described as warning that "it is better to not put this stuff in writing in [the White House] . . . email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc." Abramoff responded in an e-mail that the message in question "was not supposed to go into the WH system."

Hmm. Chronicle readers would have never learned this at all. Is this why the Chronicle editors waited until today to finally publish an edited version of a story on page 3?

Here is what the Chronicle felt it could edit out of the original story without bothering to imform it's readers that did so.

Erasing an e-mail message beyond hope of retrieval is not easy, experts said.

In general, deleting any file on a computer does not make it go away, because the computer normally will erase not the file but rather its own records of it. "The data is not gone until it is overwritten," said John Christopher, senior data-recovery engineer at Novato, Calif.-based DriveSavers. The "deleted" file will remain on the hard drive, where it can still be found and read until other data are saved to the same spot.

The same thing happens with e-mail: Trashing a message only means that the mail program clears its records of where it had filed that e-mail in its own database.

Paul Robichaux, a principal with the Redmond, Wash., technology services firm 3Sharp and the author of three books about Microsoft's e-mail software, compared it to a library that removes the entry for a book from its card catalogue: "The book is still on the shelf."

This is yet another reason why the San Francisco Chronicle is better off wrapping fish than reading.

"Vietnam is on the move, see the transformation"

This is the caption from an advertisement by the World Bank. Words are a funny thing. Of course it helps to understand what the World Bank does to realize just how funny words can be. The World Bank is an aggregation of funds accrued like subscription fees from the industrial nations of the World, but most of the money is from the United States, Britain, and Germany. The bank is meant to offer high risk loans to "developing" "third world" nations, but in reality the bank functions by offering cheap loans to connected businesses that help finance the corporate takeover of the vast jobless poor nations of the world.

Vietnam is one of these poor nations. Remember that was the country where the United States creatively used that good ole American know-how to bomb the small coastal nation into the Stone Age. Could it be that the constant warfare between 1950-1975 hurt the long-term economy?

The Corporations that own the factories and the distribution networks have been doing a lot of moving around over the last 40 years. Corporations have closed up factories and moved to lower wage, lower cost regions of the world where the governments are more easily corrupted so they can save money. This is the real reason for the stock market booms of the 80's and 90's. The large financial players that finance and oversee this movement have been squeezing out the difference, resulting in larger dividends for the investing classes. While the median income of the lower 99.5% of the population (anyone who makes less than $500,000) has remained flat at $35,000 for the last 40 years, the median income of the upper 0.5% (those who have more than $500,000) increased 10 times !!!!

The median, by the way, is not the same statistic as the average. The median is the data item that is exactly in the middle of an ordered stack of data arranged from lowest to highest. Half of the population are below the median; half are above. This is a more meaningful statistic because the average gives you no sense of how the data is spread out or distributed. ( Example: 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 +2 + 24 divided by 8 = 32 divided by 8 = 4, whereas the median is 1.) The median income of an increasing population can also remain the same even while the number of data items increases -- which is what has happened to the lower 99.5% over the last 40 years (the average, on the other hand, will always increase or decrease depending on the sum totals because since you divide by an increased number of data items, the denominator is different. Example: add another 1 to the above data. The median is still one, but the average is now 33 divided by 9 = 3.666666...) Likewise, the median income for the upper 0.5% could have only increased 10 times ( as in 1 million to 10 million) if the upper half experiences a gigantic boost in income.

Example: Think of the number you would now have to add to our data in order to make the average 10 times bigger. This would be 36.666, and we have to solve X + 33 divided by 10 = 36.666. Multiply 10, and this is X + 33 = 366.666. You would have to add 333.66 which is MORE THAN 10 TIMES the next largest data item of 25.

1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 +1 + 2 + 24 + 333.66 is a microcosm of the income distribution of the United States today. Which number do you think the politicians listen to?

The impoverished nations that receive the new factories, offices (telphone clerks from India), and warehouses are said to have "benefited" from this "transformation." Without a doubt, having a steady income is better than being poor, but the way in which the benefit occurs is like giving a dying patient morphine instead of a cure. When a factory leaves and demolishes a community's economy, the new location is a boon to another community, but the net transfer is not an even swap because the financiers are milking the difference in costs instead of turning it over to the new community.

These costs are also said to pass on to the (beloved) customers, but even this has been shown by the economic data to be false. When Nike moved its sneaker factories to Vietnam and reduced it's labor and operational costs by 50%, the price of the sneakers at a shoe store in the United States didn't drop. In fact the price has gone up over the years, even though the labor and operational costs remain flat. Where do you think the money these companies pay for advertising comes from?

The transformation goes something like this analogy, using money in a box to represent the business. Suppose there are 4 persons, each representing the four nations where a corporation has moved over the last 40 years. Call them USA, Mexico, China, and Vietnam.

At first the box has $100 in it. This money represents all of the revenue used by the business, to pay wages and expenses, and to flow through the local economies where the business is located. Now when this box moves to Mexico, the owners take out $30 for themselves and leave only $70 in the box. Then the box moves to China, and the owners take out another $30, leaving only $40 in the box, which just so happens to be enough money to pay the wages and expenses for the business in China. When the box finally moves to Vietnam, the owners take out $10, and there is only $30 in the box.

Where did the $70 go? It went through the filters of the financial system because the prices in the USA did not all drop by 70% by the time the box got to Vietnam. This is what Walmart shoppers need to understand, where the prices are supposed to be "so low" because of the low cost, low wage imports. The reality is however, that if the goods sold at Walmart were all from the United States, the price MIGHT be only a dollar more, because the corporations don't pass the savings on to the customers.

This thing called "free trade" and "globalism" is nothing but a swindle.

But now Vietnam is "on the move." You see, the people used to sit around and do nothing. Now, they are walking around and moving. Glorious days are ahead.

I forgot who that person was
the individual cast against the walls of the skull
the caricature of selfdom
and the opened luggage besides
with unwashed socks piled randomly
upon the tossled blue jeans and flannel shirts
and the scattered papers wherein lie the sketched imprints of the real
that flows endlessly
and yet
is said to cease
at some point called death in the future
rather than a mirror to another domain
that is leaped through like entering the surface of the water
into the world beyond
where time slows way down
and sentences take half an eon to speak
like an evolutionary process
eclipsing the history
we become forgetful.