Dearest Readers, Prissy has been so busy with investigation work, there has been no time to blog this week. Next week will be hectic too! Prissy will keep you updated on the investigation, giving more details when its over. You know its that "ongoing investigation" thing...Board of Elections officials are nervous enough. But why?
Cannot say for sure, but preliminary investigation results show voter signature numbers not matching the machine results...hmm. Golly Gee, how could we have more votes than voter signatures?
Don't be fooled by the so-called "recounts". Example: You are given a register tape of numbers and told to see if you come up with the same results when you add them up. A "recount" is meaningless if the numbers Prissy gives you add, are bogus numbers to begin with...
The dems may have turned Ohio blue, however we are finding there was a possible effort made to steal votes for the republican side...it seems the "mistakes" are always in favor of the republicans- statistically impossible. No question that the touch screen machines are worth less than a dimestore calculator and Ohio should ask ES&S for their money back. 
Search "Hacking Democracy" on this site to see the HBO Special on this subject.
Hot Links
How much lobbying is John Ashcroft doing these days? Find out here- Open Secrets new search for lobbyists Lobbying Database
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WaPo still shilling for Dubya Like the Nation, Military Families Divided on Iraq
Nancy Hecker hasn't read the Iraq Study Group's report. She doesn't need to. She knows her son, Army Maj. William F. Hecker III, died at 37 for a just cause, no matter what the antiwar crowd thinks.
If she "can stand firm in support of our country and the mission, is it too much to ask the rest of the country to do so as well?" she asked.
Command Sgt. Major Jeff Krausse, 51, of the Washington National Guard, said the country never should have invaded Iraq. He spent a year there, ending in 2005. About three weeks after he got home, his daughter, Army 1st Lt. Jaime Campbell, 25, died when the helicopter she was co-piloting crashed in northern Iraq.
Asked about the war, Krausse said: "First of all, I believe that we were lied to." He denounced the "propaganda" about weapons of mass destruction that justified the invasion and described the war now as a "no-win situation" that is "costing the taxpayers billions of dollars."
Nancy wants all military families to feel her pain. Her son died for this illegal war, so we should be willing to sacrifice too. Prissy thinks it is a coping method for those who prefer to shut out the facts. No question Nancy deserves our pity.
However, most military families and the public are NOT divided on this issue-the majority want our soldiers home. As usual, the WP misleads the public. Sane people who do not make their fortunes on this war, are well aware it is a dead-end.
Baker's report on Iraq isn't telling anything new. Nor will Bush follow any suggested change of course. He has said he will not pull out of Iraq while he is "president" even if down-trodden wife Laura and his dog Barney are the only ones left supporting his decision. Just one more reason he is utterly incompetent.
Washington Post have given cause to have the pants sued off of them for their part in our soldiers deaths and injuries. Maybe Iraqis' should sue them too. After all, they lied when they could have printed the truth, well before the war ever began...
Reuters Saddam's nephew escapes prison with guard's help
Ayman al-Sabawi, the son of Saddam's half brother, Sabawi Ibrahim al-Tikriti, escaped from Badoush prison northwest of the northern city of Mosul at 4 p.m. (13:00 GMT), a senior police officer told Reuters.
Brigadier Mohammad al-Waqaa, the head of the Mosul police operation room, said the nightwatch commander had helped Sabawi to escape. It was unclear how they made their getaway.
Sabawi's father was head of the Iraqi secret service in 1991 and head of the General Security Directorate from 1991 to 1996. After Saddam's overthrow in 2003, Washington offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his capture or death.
It is believed that Syria turned over Sabawi's father, who had been in hiding, to the Iraqi authorities in February 2005
Brad Blog EXCLUSIVE: REP. HOLT SAYS HIS ELECTION REFORM LEGISLATION WILL REQUIRE 'VOTER-VERIFIED PAPER BALLOTS'
The other day, Brad commented that money already spent is not an adequate reason to keep unverifiable electronic voting machines in use. Of course, unverifiable systems should not be kept in place simply because they are already bought and paid for. The point of my legislation is not to certify or decertify specific designs of voting systems, but to require that voters use systems that are verifiable, or as I prefer to say, auditable. (In New Jersey, all voting machines will be rendered independently auditable by 2008 in accordance with state law modeled on H.R. 550.) Auditability should be mandated, period. Cost is not the issue.
I am proud of the fact that I have been trying for years to require voter-verified paper ballots, and I will continue to work to make them a federal requirement. The fact that my legislation does not outlaw the use of electronic machines does not mean that I am against paper-ballot-based voting or that I am in favor of touch-screen machines. In fact, my legislation intentionally avoids dictating technology except for requiring a voter-verified paper ballot. If states and localities choose paper-ballot-based voting, and they do so while still protecting accessibility and privacy for disabled voters, then they have my support.
As HR550 is currently being re-written for re-introduction in the new Congress --- and in fact, we've been in touch with Holt's office on a number of occasions to discuss our concerns, the paper "ballot" language being among the most important --- we'd be delighted that Holt's comments, as posted above, seem to be a clear signal that he plans to reintroduce his bill as requiring paper ballots instead of "records" or "trails" in its new iteration.
Until personally witnessing the poll workers, the recount and conducting an audit of voter signature books Prissy would not have fought you to correct the problem machines. But forget those messed up machines; let's stick with paper ballots like 95% of the worlds democracies. The feds know the machines are junk too. See below
Internet News Feds to Toughen E-Voting Standards
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is recommending that the 2007 version of the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) decertify direct record electronic (DRE) machines.
According to an NIST paper to be discussed at a meeting of election regulators at NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., on Dec. 4 and 5, DRE vote totals cannot be audited because the machines are not software independent.
In other words, there is no means of verifying vote tallies other than by relying on the software that tabulated the results to begin with.
The machines currently in use are "more vulnerable to undetected programming errors or malicious code," according to the paper.
Iraq Uncovered: The Whole Truth
The War on Iraq(Film 56 min 8 sec), filmmaker Robert Greenwald chronicles the Bush Administration's determined quest to invade Iraq following the events of September 11, 2001. The film deconstructs the administration's case for war through interviews with U.S intelligence and defense officials, foreign service experts, and U.N. weapons inspectors -- including a former CIA director, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and even President Bush's Secretary of the Army. Their analyses and conclusions are sobering, and often disturbing, regardless of one's political affiliations.
UK Guardian After Baker, what next for the war in Iraq?
Perhaps the most important report Bush will receive will be from a military panel headed by General Peter Pace. That report is likely to suggest a range of options dubbed 'Go Strong, Go Long or Go Home'. It could recommend increasing troop numbers in a short-term 'surge' to bring stability to Baghdad and then settling in for the long haul while trying to bring the Iraqi army up to speed.
That is also the thinking behind the National Security Council's research, headed by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. In a leaked memo Hadley has described bringing additional US combat troops into Baghdad. These reports, unlike the ISG, were commissioned by the White House and are likely to be received more warmly by Bush. 'The Baker report was embraced only by the media. A lot of people on the right see it as defeatist and naive,' Haas said.
Bush's New Way Forward is likely to disappoint many critics, especially in European diplomatic circles. He is most likely to start increasing short-term troop number, not withdrawing them. Just two days before he resigned, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Bush in a memo that he believed US troops should be 'drawn down' to encourage Iraqis to stand up for themselves. The new Pentagon chief, Robert Gates, will in fact pursue the opposite of that policy by ordering an increase in troops in the new year, numbering perhaps 30,000 in order to secure the capital.
Though Baker has warned that the White House should not treat his report 'like a fruit salad' and only choose bits of it, that is exactly what is set to happen. Bush has already shown himself sceptical of its two key suggestions: no US combat brigades in Iraq within 15 months and direct talks with Iran and Syria. The clearest signal of Bush's thinking was provided at his White House press conference with Tony Blair. 'History will look back on our time with unforgiving clarity and demand to know what happened,' he said. 'How come free nations did not act to preserve the peace?'
Not encouraging, as the pretend General Peter Pace is more than willing to lie for his Dubya-the heck with our troops. While Prissy has great respect for our military, alas she has none left for Pace and his kind...
What dirt does the cabal have on General Pace to make him heel?
Brasscheck and Google video War and the News Media
An illustrated talk by Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now!" detailing how the US news media has been turned into a propaganda tool of the Pentagon and the White House.
Financial Times Iraq bribe prosecutors criticised as ‘lazy’
State prosecutors are dragging their feet investigating corruption in the Iraq oil-for-food programme, according to one of the authors of last year’s United Nations report on one of the world’s largest bribery scandals.
Mark Pieth, a Switzerland-based lawyer who wrote the report with Paul Volcker, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, told the Financial Times that prosecutors in many countries were too career-minded, too unwilling to enter new legal terrain “and sometimes simply lazy”.
In spite of high-profile investigations in Australia, France and elsewhere, few cases have led to charges being laid in the 13 months since the report was published. Mr Pieth said he was “astonished” the report’s conclusions had not led to organisational changes in the UN, which was accused of mishandling the oil-for-food programme.
News from Norway Deeply honoured' Peace Prize winner slams war in Iraq
Ole Danbolt Mjøs, leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, made a forceful speech before presenting the award that attempted to explain and justify why the committee awarded the Peace Prize to a banker and a profit-making bank. He claimed that lasting peace can't be created until people find a way to break out of poverty.
Yunus' and Grameen Bank's micro-credit system "is such a way," Mjøs said. His speech was interrupted by applause several times from the roughly 1,000 in attendance at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo's City Hall, not least when he said that Yunus' micro-credit system is an example of the Islamic world teaching something to the western world, and that the system has led to "female empowerment" because fully 97 percent of Grameen Bank's loan customers are women.
Men too often use money they receive on themselves, Mjøs noted, while women tend to use money they receive on their families. Obtaining loans, however small, has nurtured initiative and a sense of responsibility among Grameen Bank's customers, he said.
Helping poor people help themselves can also nurture peace, he claimed, noting that "most wars take place in poor countries," and that a battle against poverty is a battle for peace.
Congressional Quarterly The Root of All Terror
“One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure,” he says. “So I don’t know how you measure attractiveness.” The chatter factor, meanwhile, leaves O’Brien entirely in the dark: “I’m not sure what that means.”
The DHS undersecretary for preparedness, George W. Foresman, offered no specific comment on the calculations beyond saying that he only knows of “chatter” as a term used in the intelligence community. Foresman argues that the larger point of the risk assessment is that “the math informs the knowledge. The math is but one component of a process that involves common sense, gut instinct and quantitative measures.”
O’Brien has other criticisms of Vegas’ downgrade that don’t involve a graphing calculator. DHS reported this year that the Las Vegas region was not home to any military bases, though Nellis Air Force Base hugs the city line. O’Brien also says the 2006 assessment made no mention of Hoover Dam — a critical asset — which is a mere 25 miles from the Vegas strip.
None of this inspires much confidence, O’Brien says, in how DHS arrives at its risk assessment. “Holy smokes. If you’re relying on the soundness of a calculation that involves millions of arithmetical activities, who checked the accuracy to insure that some little tweak over here isn’t throwing the whole thing off?”
Oh my, we are supposed to place our national security with these people?
The Australian Bush Sr breaks as one son's troubles recall another's With defeat in the midterm elections, and the verdict of the Iraq Study Group looming, Papa Bush started showing the strain, Sarah Baxter reports
Then the former president began to sob. As he struggled to continue, he said haltingly, "a true measure of a man is how you handle victory and how you handle defeat", before breaking down in tears again.
And...Dov Zakheim, a former senior official at the Pentagon, has a plan to pull US forces back and station them along the borders of Iraq in an attempt to prevent the war spreading to the region.
US forces would not intervene in sectarian conflicts, but some would remain as trainers for Iraq forces and as a strike force against al-Qa'ida in Iraq.
"The basic premise is that we're not going to be able to stop a civil war. At some point these things exhaust themselves but we're not there yet," Zakheim said. "If our number one priority is regional stability, this would provide us a cordon sanitaire."
Prissy thinks both Georges will cry when the indictments roll in
About Dov Zakheim
Liberty Forum Dov Zakheim and the 9/11 Conspiracy
In a document called "Rebuilding America's Defenses" published by The American Enterprise's "Project for a New American Century"(1), SPC International executive, Dov Zakheim, called for a 'Pearl Harbor' type of incident being necessary to foster the frame of mind needed for the American public to support a war in the Middle East that would politically and culturally reshape the region. A respected and established voice in the intelligence community, his views were eagerly accepted, and Dov went from his position at Systems Planning Corporation to become the Comptroller of the Pentagon in May 2001. (2) Tridata, a subsidiary of Systems Planning Corporation, was in charge of the investigation after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.
Systems Planning Corporation, according to their official website, specializes in many areas of defense technology production and manufacture, including a system developed by their Radar Physics Group called the Flight Termination System, or FTS. (3) This is a system used to destroy target drones (craft that would be fired on by test aircraft or weaponry) in the event of malfunction or "misses". This highly sophisticated war-game technology allows the control of several 'drones' from a remote location, on varying frequencies, and has a range of several hundred miles. This technology can be used on many different types of aircraft, including large passenger jets.
According to the SPC website (4), a recent customer at that time was Eglin AFB, located in Florida. Eglin is very near another Air Force base in Florida-MacDill AFB, where Dov Zakheim contracted to send at least 32 Boeing 767 aircraft, as part of the Boeing /Pentagon tanker lease agreement. (5)
As the events of September 11, 2001 occurred, little was mentioned about these strange connections, and the possible motives and proximity of Dov Zakheim and his group. Since there was little physical evidence remaining after the events, investigators were left only with photographic and anecdotal evidence.
Prissy is uncomfortable with "dual citizens" having top secret clearance.
Mad Cow Morning News Voting Company Official Figure Involved in Election Bribe Scandel
Gary L.Greenhalgh, the election company executive responsible for the touch-screen electronic voting machines in Sarasota County which failed to register fully one of every seven votes cast in last week’s hotly-contested race to replace Rep. Katherine Harris, has a checkered past, the MadCowMorningNews has learned exclusively, including involvement in election bribery scandals.
The most recent rocked voters in North Carolina in 1999, and resulted in the supervisor of elections in North Carolina's Mecklenburg County being sent to federal prison for taking over $130,000 in payoffs from MicroVote, the election company where Greenhalgh was national sales director.
More recently, as vice president of Election Software & Services (ES&S), Greenhalgh was instrumental, first success of an all-out push in 2001 by then newly-elected Sarasota County election supervisor Kathy Dent to persuade Sarasota County to pay more than four million dollars for touch-screen electronic voting machines; and then as the project manager overseeing their installation.
Greenhalgh's Ivotronic machines allegedly failed to register over 18,000 votes in Sarasota County last week; his touch screen machines were almost entirely responsible for the massive 13% undercount of votes which marred the closest Congressional contest in the country, which pitted Republican Vern Buchanan against Democrat Christine Jennings.
Artic Beacon Too Good To Be True: Is Daddy Bush's Illegal Financial NWO Empire Collapsing? by Greg Szymanski
But since all empires fall as did Gotti's, Bush's Satanist stranglehold on America may be in jeopardy if what two insiders say is finally acted upon by an American public fed-up with fascism brought on deceptively by the Bush family ever since the National Archives and the U.S. Congressional Record documented former Sen. Prescott Bush, as being a Nazi traitor while financing Hitler.
Although it is hard to imagine Daddy Bush as broke and penniless after stealing trillions of dollars of off shore money as documented in the Leo Wanta story, Wanta's financial agent said his sources said Bush Sr. was actually reduced to tears Tuesday when he learned much of his stolen financial empire, held in Vatican Bank accounts, has been lost through complicated financial transactions related to the unpaid $4.5 trillion owed Ambassador Wanta as well as the American people.
Cottrell would not elaborate on how Bush lost trillions of illegal dollars he has amassed since the end of the Cold War, but said he was told by credible sources he "cried like a baby" when he learned much of his stolen empire had been wiped-out.
"I can't get into specifics but let me tell you this," said Cottrell from his East Coast home Tuesday late Tuesday evening. "We are going to get the $4.5 trillion but this country is headed for the worst financial nightmare since the depression due to the amount of thievery by Bush and the last three presidential administrations."
Does Greg really have the scoop? We'll find out by Feb...
Speaking of Crooks and Liars...GAO: The status quo is unsustainable
C-Span's Friday Washington Journal had on David Walker, U.S. Comptroller of the GAO on to discuss two recent reports, one on recommendations for 110th Congress Targets for Oversight and Global War on Terror Costs (both .pdf. You can watch archives of the show here.
Walker was fairly scathing in his assessment of how things are going for the country fiscally. The GAO has produced videos with their assessment that you can download here. It's a lot of information to take in. When they start to toss out estimates in the TRILLIONS, my mind started to reel.
From the video on America's Fiscal Future:
…And even if we're able to constrain discretionary spending for the next ten years to the rate of inflation, which we haven't for a long time, we still face large and growing structural deficits in the years ahead. Bottom line? The status quo is unacceptable and unsustainable. We're on an imprudent and unsustainable fiscal path. Tough choices are required. We will not be able to grow our way out of this problem. Anybody who says that suffers from two problems. Number one, they have not studied economic history adequately; and number two; they probably wouldn't do real well at math. Because the numbers just don't add up.
KWTX Man Sues Over Church As Polling Place
A Florida man who had to vote in a Catholic church last month is suing election officials.
Jerry Rabinowitz of Delray Beach argues that casting a ballot amid crucifixes and anti-abortion banners violates the separation of church and state. Rabinowitz is a non-observant Jew.
He says elections officials refused to remove or cover religious items at Emmanuel Catholic Church.
And he says that amounted to government endorsement of religion.
It does seem rather strange to vote in a church. So much for separation of church and state...
Riverbend, blogger in Iraq When All Else Fails
It’s not about the man- presidents come and go, governments come and go. It’s the frustration of feeling like the whole country and every single Iraqi inside and outside of Iraq is at the mercy of American politics. It is the rage of feeling like a mere chess piece to be moved back and forth at will. It is the aggravation of having a government so blind and uncaring about their peoples needs that they don’t even feel like it’s necessary to go through the motions or put up an act. And it's the deaths. The thousands of dead and dying, with Bush sitting there smirking and lying about progress and winning in a country where every single Iraqi outside of the Green Zone is losing.
Once again… The timing of all of this is impeccable- two days before congressional elections. And if you don’t see it, then I’m sorry, you’re stupid. Let’s see how many times Bush milks this as a ‘success’ in his coming speeches.
A final note. I just read somewhere that some of the families of dead American soldiers are visiting the Iraqi north to see ‘what their sons and daughters died for’. If that’s the goal of the visit, then, “Ladies and gentlemen- to your right is the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, to your left is the Dawry refinery… Each of you get this, a gift bag containing a 3 by 3 color poster of Al Sayid Muqtada Al Sadr (Long May He Live And Prosper), an Ayatollah Sistani t-shirt and a map of Iran, to scale, redrawn with the Islamic Republic of South Iraq. Also… Hey you! You- the female in the back- is that a lock of hair I see? Cover it up or stay home.”
And that is what they died for.
Quotes of the Day
"A daily reminder that while Laura can divorce George, we appear stuck with him. People are dying because of his obstinance and stupidity. Like a nasty, doltish ex-husband, you just want him to move on as soon as possible."-- BuzzFlash.com
"Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"I'm also not very analytical. You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things." --George W. Bush, June 4, 2003
If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.--Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915)
Kazimierz, Poland - The Jewish Quarter
