The Dem Diatribe Project

FAFBLOG'S MAN OF THE YEAR 2004 2004 was the year of a head of cabbage! Its bold decisive leadership affected everything from the war in Iraq to the can-do inertia of the presidential election. A head of cabbage always offered us steady leadership in times of change. When we wonder "what's goin on in this crazy world I do not understand" there's a head a cabbage bein a head a cabbage! Its reassuring vegetableness, its green leafiness, the way it looked natural on a farm, spoke to our deep cabbagey values. And it knew how to stick to its guns! When its critics complained that it was a bad cabbage or that it had food poisoning or that it had pointlessly launched the military into a nightmarish, unjustified quagmire, it knew just what to do: keep sittin there bein a cabbage. More ... Very funny! Be sure to read on for a quiz on whether you are an ordinary American or not: Answer the questions, score the points along the side accordingly, add up the ...

Candidates raised more money in 2004 than ever before. But for some reason Ohio Republicans think they need more. So they have called a special session of the Legislature to railroad through a law increasing the maximum contribution per person to a candidate from $2,500 to a whopping $10,000 -- an increase of 400%. This is a bill to give more power to special interests. It's sole purpose is to let politicians addicted to corporate interest money collect that money in bigger chunks. The vast majority of people can't write $2,500 checks to politicians -- $10,000 is even more ridiculous. So as the Ohio Senate considers this legislation, it seems worth asking: Exactly who do the sponsors of this bill want to collect $10,000 checks from? Why not ask them? Here's the contact information of the Republicans behind the Senate version of the bill: Senator Randy Gardner, sponsor of the bill (number SB 1) (614) 466-8060 Fax: (614) 466-7667 ra_gard@mailr.sen.state.oh.us ...

Every day our government moves closer and closer to "Big Brother". Soon the only people who will have privacy are the Bush Administration. EPIC FOIA Request Shows Postal Machines Take, Store Photos. Documents ( pdf 1.9 MB ) obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show that new Postal Service self-service postage machines take portrait-style photographs of customers and retain them for 30 days on a Windows XP platform. Some implications: Rather than improve the security of the mail it is suggested that sender identification will do the following: Undermine the anonymity of the mail. Those who have a deep desire to remain anonymous, such as narcotics smugglers and terrorists will have the resources to communicate regardless, of any countermeasures put in place by the USPS, but valuable assets to the nation, such as whistle blowers and informers may be discouraged. It will also limit an important to...

The ranking Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, plans to ask the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a county prosecutor in Ohio today to explore "inappropriate and likely illegal election tampering" in at least one and perhaps several Ohio counties. The request for an investigation, made in a letter that was also provided to The New York Times, includes accounts from at least two county employees, but is based largely on a sworn affidavit provided by the Hocking County deputy director of elections, Sherole Eaton. Among other things, Ms. Eaton says in her affidavit that a representative of Triad Governmental Systems, the Ohio firm that created and maintains the vote-counting software in dozens of Ohio counties, made several adjustments to the Hocking County tabulator last Friday, in advance of the state's recount, which is taking place this week.

NEW YORK In the aftermath of the Nov. 2 election, the press and various political partisans jumped on exit polls that seemed to suggest "moral values" was the top issue in voters' minds as they re-elected President George W. Bush. Some analysts have questioned that notion, but a new nationwide Gallup Poll, released Tuesday morning, could deal a death blow to the whole idea. Asked what they consider the most important problem facing this country today the issue of values was tied for fourth place with unemployment/jobs, with only one in ten of the Gallup sample choosing it. Far ahead, with 23%, was the war in Iraq (news - web sites), followed by terrorism and the economy in general, both at 12%, only then followed by unemployment and values. The modest vote for values is all the more surprising because it was broadly define to include a wide range of concerns including ethics, moral, religious/family decline, dishonesty, and lack of integrity. This 10% total co...

Electoral problems prevented many thousands of Ohioans from voting on Nov. 2. In Columbus, bipartisan estimates say that 5,000 to 15,000 frustrated voters turned away without casting ballots. "There isn't enough to prove fraud, but there have been very significant problems in running elections in Ohio this year that demand reform," said Edward B. Foley, who is director of the election law program at the Ohio State University law school and a former Ohio state solicitor. "We clearly ended up disenfranchising people, and I don't want to minimize that." Given other evidence uncovered by the Congressional hearings, I'd say that there is STRONG EVIDENCE FOR FRAUD.

David Cobb, the unsuccessful Green Party presidential candidate, aired startling allegations at the Democratic House Judiciary Committee’s Columbus hearings Monday, alleging that a voting company representative tampered with voting equipment in an unspecified county last Friday and attempted to plant false information into the Ohio recount. Cobb says that a witness who had requested anonymity watched a representative of Triad Systems enter a local Board of Elections unannounced and tamper with a vote tabulator which then lost all data. The representative then, Cobb said, tried to convince employees to post false information so that it would appear as if the data was valid and had never been lost. -------- The dems should have been looking for this kind of hanky panky all along.

I am angerd, but not surprised. Warning, reading these excerpts from some of the affidavits for the election challenge will piss you off. I cannot believe that the republicans can get away with this behavior. Of course, they are taking their cues from the republican party leadership. AND THEY BELIEVE they can get away with it. Criminals! Read on: Startling new revelations about Ohio's presidential vote have been uncovered as Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee join Rev. Jesse Jackson in Columbus, the state capital, on Monday, Dec. 13, to hold a rare field hearing into election malfeasance and manipulation in the 2004 vote. Taken together, the revelations show Republicans – in state and county government, and in the Ohio Republican Party – were determined to undermine and suppress Democratic turnout by a wide variety of methods. What follows are excerpts from some of the affidavits for the election challenge.

The battle for Social Security's survival is under way. In a key maneuver recently, N. Gregory Mankiw, George W. Bush's chief economic adviser, explicitly floated the idea of cutting benefits, a necessary but unmentioned part of the White House's privatization plan. More details will be presented to the public in the weeks ahead, but the outlines of the Bush plan are already clear, having been laid out by his 2001 Social Security Commission. As Mankiw suggested, the Bush plan would require a large reduction in the benefits provided by the existing system. A worker who is 20 today would see a cut of approximately one-third in his or her retirement benefit, although workers would theoretically more than recoup this loss by investing a portion of their Social Security taxes in a private account.

While reading elsewhere, I came accross another blog right here on blogger. The author seems quite insightful and indeed, an astute observer of the deterioration of our civil liberties. This is from "Kit's Concatenation's" most recent blog entry: The quietly passed gag rule against hospitals, doctors and clinics is only the tip of the iceberg in Bush's war against women -- or, I should say, the neoCon retrofundamentalist effort to recreate the Third Reich's social policy of kinder, kuche, kirche -- children, kitchen and church. The effects will be small and widespread, almost invisible to the casual observer, unless someone takes the time and effort to collect data on them and analyze it -- but this will be difficult to do, if not impossible, since one of the first rules of Republican money is that no paper trail should be left so that the effects of policies could be seen. Ever since Reagan, whenever funding is cut, the first thing to go is money for ...

In response to the question about Humvee armor by the US Soldier, Rumsfeld told the soldiers: “As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want." He added, "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank, and it can [still] be blown up." It does not matter if a reporter came up with the question. The answer is the same: "Sorry you’re f*#ked. It sucks to be you."

It appears that, not only can Americans not be trusted to make up their own minds about literature that touches on homosexual themes; we cannot be trusted to read materials by authors from countries that the U.S. does not like. Excerpts from The Seattle Times article follow: In an apparent reversal of decades of U.S. practice, recent federal Office of Foreign Assets Control regulations bar American companies from publishing works by dissident writers in countries under sanction unless they first obtain U.S. government approval. The restriction, condemned by critics as a violation of the First Amendment, means that books and other works banned by some totalitarian regimes cannot be published freely in the United States. Violations carry severe reprisals — publishing houses can be fined $1 million and individual violators face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The regulations already have led publishers to scrap plans for volumes on Cuban architecture and bird...

Last week I posted a link to a story about an homophobic Alabama republican who introduced legislation to ban funding to schools and libraries that make available material that portray homosexuality in any light other than hateful. According to this article in The Guardian; For Bush, when it comes to censorship and leading the charge against “the homosexual agenda”, Gerald Allen, Republican, Alabama State Legislature, is just the man for the job. “Earlier this week, Allen got a call from Washington. He will be meeting with President Bush on Monday. I asked him if this was his first invitation to the White House. "Oh no," he laughs. "It's my fifth meeting with Mr. Bush." Bush is interested in Allen's opinions because Allen is an elected Republican representative in the Alabama state legislature. He is Bush's base. Last week, Bush's base introduced a bill that would ban the use of state funds to purchase any books or other materials that ...

Because we, the American public are simply not being told the truth by the Bush administration. This cover-up is absolutely outrageous. We, the American people, are paying for this war. We, the American people, are providing the troops for this war. We, the American people, are engaged in a national debate. We, the American people, will be going to the polls to vote for candidates who take a position on this war. We, the American people, deserve to have the full truth about how many attacks are launched by guerrillas every day in Iraq. We deserve to know how many Iraqis are being killed. We deserve to know what in hell is going on over there. I urge everyone to write your senator and congressional representative asking them to act to ensure that this information is released to the public. There is no security issue here. The guerrillas know very well how many attacks they are launching daily. I am not asking for operational details, just for the basic numbers

The Nation has an interesting (and lengthy) forum on the election results and where Demorcats and Progressives should/could be heading. There are several contributors including Noam Chomsky. Intro: The defeat of John Kerry, combined with the Republican advances in the House and Senate, has unleashed waves of dismay and perplexity within liberal and progressive circles. What happened? Why did so many voters embrace a President whose Iraq policy was paved with lies and deceptions, who has shown contempt for science, the rule of law and many of the principles of the Enlightenment, and whose economic policies favor the rich at the expense of the vast majority of Americans? What lessons do we draw from Kerry's failure to win over the electorate in spite of the Bush Administration's conspicuous failures? Are the Democrats crippled, or merely wounded, and is the party really out of touch with "mainstream" values? Finally, what should the priorities of the progressive mo...

In a sworn affidavit ( pdf file ) Monday, a former programmer for a NASA contractor said that he developed a vote-rigging prototype at the request of a then-Florida state representative who is now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. While working for Yang Enterprises in Florida, the 46-year-old programmer says he was instructed by then-Republican state representative Tom Feeney to “develop a prototype of a voting program that could alter the vote tabulation in the election and be undetectable.” Feeney, a former failed running mate of Gov. Jeb Bush, now represents Florida’s 24th district in the House of Representatives. At the time, he was serving both as general counsel and lobbyist for Yang Enterprises and the Florida state congressman. More from The Blue Lemur ...

The most famous definition of fundamentalism is H. L. Mencken's: a terrible, pervasive fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun. Things some Muslim fundamentalists hate about our culture: They hate liberated women and all that symbolizes them. They hate it when women compete with men in the workplace, when they decide when or whether they will bear children, when they show the independence of getting abortions. They hate changes in laws that previously gave men more power over women. They hate the wide range of sexual orientations and lifestyles that have always characterized human societies. They hate homosexuality. They hate individual freedoms that allow people to stray from the rigid sort of truth they want to constrain all people. They hate individual rights that let others slough off their simple certainties. Things Christian fundamentalists hate about our culture: They hate liberated women who don't follow orders, who get abortions when they want ...

According to a new FCC estimate nearly all indecency complaints in 2003—99.8 percent—were filed by the Parents Television Council, an activist group. This year, the trend has continued, and perhaps intensified. Through early October, 99.9 percent of indecency complaints—aside from those concerning the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” — were brought by the PTC, according to the FCC analysis dated Oct. 1. (The agency last week estimated it had received 1,068,767 complaints about broadcast indecency so far this year; the Super Bowl broadcast accounted for over 540,000, according to commissioners’ statements.) The prominent role played by the PTC has raised concerns among critics of the FCC’s crackdown on indecency. “It means that really a tiny minority with a very focused political agenda is trying to censor American television and radio,” said Jonathan Rintels, president and executive director of the Center for Creative Voices in Media, an artists’ advocacy group. More ...

"The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam," "That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace." -G.W. Bush Someone forwarded me an email this morning spreading more hatred and intolerance against Muslims. On top of that, this email message is just a recirculation of a nasty email that went out in 2002. While the facts are basically correct, they are definitely arguable. This mailing falls under the category “urban legends and folklore”. The mailing goes along the line: REMEMBER all the AMERICAN lives that were lost in those vicious MUSLIM attacks. Now the United States Postal Service REMEMBERS and HONORS the EID MUSLIM holiday season with a commemorative first class holiday postage stamp. I strongly urge you to REMEMBER to adamantly and vocally BOYCOTT this stamp when purchasing your holiday stamps at the post office. To use this stamp would be a slap in the face to all those AMERICANS who died at the hands of those whom this stam...

The Bush Administration spurned warnings by privacy and security experts and foreign governments when pushing new remotely readable biometric passports, according to State Department documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union. Because of the U.S. action, passports issued to Americans in coming years will contain Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips that will broadcast all the personal information on a passport to anyone who comes within range with an RFID reader. "What the documents show is that the U.S. government was repeatedly told that these passports would pose significant threats to our privacy and safety,"said Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program. "Yet the US chose to use all of its power to sweep aside the objections raised by our allies and force through a standard that leaves Americans vulnerable to identity thieves and terrorists." There are ways to make these more secure. I am sure id...

I am about as proud to be from Alabama as the Dixie Chicks are proud that Bush is from Texas. MONTGOMERY - An Alabama lawmaker who sought to ban gay marriages now wants to ban novels with gay characters from public libraries, including university libraries. A bill by Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for "the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle." Allen said he filed the bill to protect children from the "homosexual agenda." Who's going to protect children from the "hate-mongering, right-wing, Nazi, homophobic agenda"? Red neck agenda part one: "Our culture, how we know it today, is under attack from every angle." -Rep. Gerald Allen (bible-thumping Republican, Alabama) Looks like our civil rights, how we know them today, are under attack from every angle. -SlappyCat (NASCAR-watching kitty-cat, Ohio) Red neck ...

You get what you pay (vote) for. All those soldiers who voted for Bush (and those who did not) are no doubt, [sarcasm on] thrilled. [/sarcasm off] An estimated 10,360 soldiers and Marines, some of whom already have had their service in Iraq extended from 10 months to 12 now get to extend their tours of Iraq another two months. To bolster security ahead of January's scheduled elections the US is increasing American forces in Iraq from nearly 140,000 to an all-time high of about 150,000. Seventeen secular, religious and regional groups have called for a delay to the elections, but a spokesman for Ayad Allawi said Saturday the interim Iraqi prime minister is opposed to a postponement. You have got to keep up appearances that this is not an occupation. The US "freed" Iraq so that they could have elections forced upon them. It does not matter whether the US forces the Iraqis to vote tomorrow, January 30, 2005 or January 2010. "Elections" will not give the ...

My money is on the Dem Diatribe BlogShares is a simulated, fantasy stock market for weblogs where players invest fictional money to buy stocks and bonds in an artificial economy where attention is the commodity and weblogs are the companies. Weblogs, or blogs for short, are valued by their incoming links from other known blogs. In effect, links become the business deals in the simulation and players speculate on the fortunes of thousands of blogs by buying and selling shares. A whole host of options exist for advanced play including gifting shares, leveraged buy-outs, stock splits, additional share issues, market and player bonds.

The chair of Bush's reelection team and newly appointed head of the RNC isn't talking about his sexual orientation, but lots of other folks are. In a recent column, the New York Observer's Michelangelo Signorile points out that since Mehlman appears "so confident labeling people based on outward characteristics," the fact that he the 37-year-old "'bachelor' who refuses to answer questions about his sexual orientation is a tip-off to many that he's a pathetic closet case, and a pretty vile one at that, having used antigay hatred (aka 'moral values') to help elect Bush." "The White House may know he's gay and be fine with it -- after all, there are lots of out gays in the highest levels of the Republican Party. They may, however, be lying about his orientation to the religious right leaders, telling them he's straight, or they may be telling them that he is gay but he's a 'good gay' who is happy to sell ...