There are only 3 days to go until the national
referendum on the COMPETENCE, CREDIBILITY and
CHARACTER of the _resident and the VICE
_resident...The botched, bungled, mis-named "war on
terror" is not the strength of the Bush abomination,
it is the SHAME of the Bush abomination...The pre-9/11
negligence and post-9/11 incompetence of the Bush
national insecurity team would be reason enough for
the Electoral Uprising that's coming...but there is so
much more: 1K + US soldiers killed so far in a foolish
military adventure in Iraq, hundreds of billions of
dollars of federal budget deficit because of TWO
foolish, ill-time tax cuts skewed to the wealthiest
among us, four years lost (that we could not afford to
lose) while the Bush abomination pretended that Global
Warming might not even really exist, four years lost
(that we could not afford to lose) in stem cell
research because of the Bush abomination's panderng to
the American Taliban, and the future of the US Supreme
Court hanging in the balamce (the next President will
probably appoint two or three Justices including the
next Chief Justice)...Yes, there is an Electoral
Uprising coming...in spite of the US regimestream news
media's complicity...in spite of a massive nation-wide
vote suppresion operation...NO DEFEAT/NO
SURRENDER...They cannot steal it if enough of us vote...Remember Duval County!
William Rivers Pitt, www.truthout.org: Beyond the
demonstrable fact that Mr. Wanted-Dead-Or-Alive is
still upright and breathing, there is the scathing
mockery bin Laden leveled at Bush, along with a
back-handed thank-you to Bush for giving the 9/11
terrorists the time they needed to complete the
attack. "We never thought that the high commander of
the U.S. armies would leave 50,000 of his citizens in
both towers to face the horrors alone," bin Laden
said. "It appeared to him that a little girl's talk
about her goat and its butting was more important than
the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers. That
gave us three times the required time to carry out the
operations, thank God."
Once again, Bush's comments from March of 2002
rise again with the impact of a gut-punch. "So I don't
know where he is," said Bush of bin Laden at the time.
"Nor - you know, I just don't spend that much time on
him really, to be honest with you. I... I truly am not
that concerned about him." The fellow who orchestrated
the massacre of 3,000 people, the fellow whom Bush
said he wasn't concerned about, thanked Bush for
giving him the time necessary to complete his wretched
act. In the parlance of American youth, Bush got
punked by the top terrorist on national television.
An issue which has already been pressing on this
campaign season now resonates with new urgency. For
the last several days, the Bush administration has
been wrestling with the fact that nearly 400 tons of
high explosives - the same kind of explosives used to
bring down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, the same
kind of explosives used to blow a hole in the USS Cole
- walked away from a storage bunker in Iraq.
Videotape from a Minnesota news station, shot by
embedded reporters during the invasion of Iraq, showed
members of the 101st Airborne cutting the locks on the
place. No troops stayed to guard the well-known
bunker, however, because such duty was not a priority
of Bush administration officials handing out marching
orders to the troops. Bush's own weapons inspector,
David Kay, was appalled at what he saw on the
Minnesota news station's footage of the opening of the
bunker. "When you break into it, you own it," said
Kay. "It's your responsibility to secure it."
New York Daily News: Pollster John Zogby, in a
telephone interview with me yesterday, predicted that
John Kerry will win the election. "It's close," he
said, "but in the last couple of days things have been
trending toward Kerry - nationally and in the swing
states. Between this and history, I think it will be
Kerry."
When Zogby talks, politicians listen. He made his
bones in the Bill Clinton-Bob Dole election of 1996,
when he came within one-tenth of a percentage point of
the final tally.
Bob Fertik, www.freepress.org; The Republican
"November Surprise" to steal the 2004 election is in
full force here in Ohio. With polls showing a dead
heat, the GOP is staging an all-out attack on a fair
vote count in the Buckeye State.
Here are a dozen ways they're doing it:
* Under an archaic Ohio law, both the Republican and
Democratic Parties, or any slate of five candidates,
may embed official election challengers inside polling
places. The New York Times reported on Oct. 23 that
the Republican Party intends to place thousands of
lawyers and other GOP faithfuls inside the polls to
challenge voters. Republican insiders confide here
that the key goal is to jam lines and frustrate new
voters. The GOP apparently figures many voters in key
Democratic precincts won't wait in line more than 15
minutes to vote. This is certain to be a major tactic
in Cleveland's Cuyahoga County and other Democratic
strongholds. The GOP is not planning to challenge
voters in Republican districts.
* The Republican party has sent letters challenging
thousands of Franklin County students who are
registered to vote absentee. Franklin County is home
to Columbus, the state's largest city and its capitol.
Though it is also home to Ohio State University,
thousands of local students go to schools outside the
county or state. The GOP apparently does not want
their votes counted. This unprecedented mass
challenge has prompted the Franklin County Board of
Elections, whose director is a conservative
Republican, to reserve the large Veterans Memorial
Auditorium downtown to process the challenges this
Thursday, as John Kerry comes to town with Bruce
Springsteen. The County has told thousands of
students that if they don't appear in Columbus to
answer the GOP challenges, they may lose their right
to vote.
* The Franklin County Board of Elections has called
or written an undetermined number of voters who
obtained absentee ballots, challenging their
addresses. In at least one case, after a series of
angry phone calls, the Board admitted there was
nothing wrong with the address in question and
re-instated voting rights. The voter in question was
a registered Democrat. His wife, an independent at
the same address, was not challenged. It is unclear
how many others have been wrongly knocked out.
[NOTE: See full article below for the rest of the
list...]
Support Our Troops, Save the US Constitution,
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Restore Fiscal Responsibility in the White House,
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Election,
Save the Environment, Break the Corporatist
Stranglehold on the US Mainstream News Media, Rescue
the US Supreme Court from Right-Wing Radicals, Cleanse
the White House of the Chicken Hawk Coup and Its
War-Profiteering Cronies, Show Up for Democracy in
2004: Defeat the Triad, Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/103004A.shtml
Osama's Election Editorial
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 29 October 2004
So the bastard is still alive.
He isn't dead of kidney failure or rotting in a
cave somewhere in the Hindu Kush. He wasn't smoked out
of his hole, and he in no way appeared to be on the
run. The images broadcast on every American television
station in the last few hours showed a man apparently
in good health, clothed in traditional white and
wrapped in a golden robe. His hands were steady and
his voice was clear. From all appearances, Osama bin
Laden is tanned, rested and ready.
In as much as it is possible for a wanted mass
murderer to have a conversation with the American
public, this is what we are seeing tonight. Osama bin
Laden directed his message not at the Muslim world,
not at the American government, but at the people
gearing up to vote for a President on Tuesday. "You
American people, my speech to you is the best way to
avoid another conflict about the war and its reasons
and results," said bin Laden. A lot of people thought
the capture of bin Laden would be the 'October
Surprise' to affect the vote. Instead, we got, hard as
it is to believe, an election editorial from Osama,
who remains alive and free. As far as October
surprises go, this one is completely off-the-grid
strange.
For the first time, bin Laden openly took
responsibility for the attacks of September 11. "We
fought you because we are free...and want to regain
freedom for our nation. As you undermine our security,
we undermine yours," he said. "To the U.S. people, my
talk is to you about the best way to avoid another
disaster. I tell you: Security is an important element
of human life and free people do not give up their
security."
Bin Laden attempted to explain his reasons for the
9/11 attacks, stating that the Israeli invasion of
Lebanon in 1982 lit his homicidal fuse. "I will tell
you the reasons behind these incidents," he said. "I
will be honest with you on the moment when the
decision was taken. We never thought of hitting the
towers. But after we were so fed up, and we saw the
oppression of the American-Israeli coalition on our
people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind
and the incidents that really touched me directly goes
back to 1982:. When the US permitted the Israelis to
invade Lebanon with the assistance of the 6th fleet.
In these hard moments, it occurred to me so many
meanings I can't explain, but it resulted in a general
feeling of rejecting oppression, and gave me a hard
determination to punish the oppressors. While I was
looking at the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it came to
my mind to punish the oppressor the same way and
destroy towers in the U.S. to get a taste of what they
tasted, and quit killing our children and women."
While candidates Bush and Kerry were careful to
avoid using the video as a club to batter each other,
their surrogates have already taken to the airwaves to
spin this event for one or the other. At first blush,
it is difficult to imagine how bin Laden's entrance
into this voting season helps the election prospects
of Mr. Bush. The videotape was first broadcast by the
al Jazeera network, which is based out of Qatar.
According to CNN, the U.S. Ambassador to Qatar
attempted to stop Al Jazeera from broadcasting the
tape. That, as much as the actual content of the tape,
speaks to how nervous the re-appearance of bin Laden
makes the Bush administration.
Beyond the demonstrable fact that Mr.
Wanted-Dead-Or-Alive is still upright and breathing,
there is the scathing mockery bin Laden leveled at
Bush, along with a back-handed thank-you to Bush for
giving the 9/11 terrorists the time they needed to
complete the attack. "We never thought that the high
commander of the U.S. armies would leave 50,000 of his
citizens in both towers to face the horrors alone,"
bin Laden said. "It appeared to him that a little
girl's talk about her goat and its butting was more
important than the planes and their butting of the
skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required
time to carry out the operations, thank God."
Once again, Bush's comments from March of 2002
rise again with the impact of a gut-punch. "So I don't
know where he is," said Bush of bin Laden at the time.
"Nor - you know, I just don't spend that much time on
him really, to be honest with you. I... I truly am not
that concerned about him." The fellow who orchestrated
the massacre of 3,000 people, the fellow whom Bush
said he wasn't concerned about, thanked Bush for
giving him the time necessary to complete his wretched
act. In the parlance of American youth, Bush got
punked by the top terrorist on national television.
An issue which has already been pressing on this
campaign season now resonates with new urgency. For
the last several days, the Bush administration has
been wrestling with the fact that nearly 400 tons of
high explosives - the same kind of explosives used to
bring down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, the same
kind of explosives used to blow a hole in the USS Cole
- walked away from a storage bunker in Iraq.
Videotape from a Minnesota news station, shot by
embedded reporters during the invasion of Iraq, showed
members of the 101st Airborne cutting the locks on the
place. No troops stayed to guard the well-known
bunker, however, because such duty was not a priority
of Bush administration officials handing out marching
orders to the troops. Bush's own weapons inspector,
David Kay, was appalled at what he saw on the
Minnesota news station's footage of the opening of the
bunker. "When you break into it, you own it," said
Kay. "It's your responsibility to secure it."
Thanks to the disastrous Iraq invasion, and the
continuing debacle that is the occupation, Iraq is now
a place where al Qaeda terrorists may operate freely.
How much of the missing explosives in question have
fallen into the hands of bin Laden loyalists? How much
of the thousands of tons of explosives and weaponry
that went similarly unguarded by American forces all
across Iraq have likewise found their way into al
Qaeda hands? The re-emergence of Osama bin Laden makes
these questions all the more pressing.
How all of this will shake out among the American
electorate remains to be seen. Perhaps the American
people, upon seeing a healthy bin Laden again on their
televisions, will be reminded of Bush's failure to
capture or kill him and punish Bush at the polls.
Perhaps they will be angered that bin Laden dared to
throw his two bloody cents into the political
conversation and side with Bush over Kerry. Perhaps
the only absolute conclusion to draw from all this is
the one that almost certainly occurred to every
American who tuned into the broadcast.
The bastard is still alive.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and
international bestseller of two books - 'War on Iraq:
What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The
Greatest Sedition is Silence.'
-------
Jump to TO Features for Saturday October 30, 2004
Today's TO Features -------------- William Rivers
Pitt | Osama's Election Editorial News Video Is at
Center of Storm over Iraq Explosives Halliburton
Contracts Bypassed Objections Mideast Experts: Hope,
but Don't Expect, Easy Transition Jonathan Chait | For
Bush, Too Late for Honesty A Tie? Expect 'Stark Raving
Mad Chaos' for a Month Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | The
Worst Environmental President in U.S. History Sylvie
Kauffmann | The Battle for Democracy IRS Investigating
NAACP for Criticism of President Robert Scheer | The
Man Behind the Oval Office Curtain Register-Guard |
Bush Refuses to Acknowledge Dire Situation Springsteen
Brings Out 80,000 to Cheer Kerry Ashcroft Seeking
Control of Voting Rights Eyewitness to Looting of al
Qaqaa Explosives Cache Marines Poised to Storm
Fallujah and Ramadi Video Shows U.S. Troops at Iraq
Weapons Cache Marc Ash | African America to the Rescue
FBI Investigates Halliburton's No-Bid Contracts t r u
t h o u t Home
Print This Story E-mail This Story
© : t r u t h o u t 2004
http://nydailynews.com/front/story/247447p-211694c.html
What Zogby tells
me: Kerry wins
Pollster John Zogby, in a telephone interview with me
yesterday, predicted that John Kerry will win the
election. "It's close," he said, "but in the last
couple of days things have been trending toward Kerry
- nationally and in the swing states. Between this and
history, I think it will be Kerry."
When Zogby talks, politicians listen. He made his
bones in the Bill Clinton-Bob Dole election of 1996,
when he came within one-tenth of a percentage point of
the final tally.
Bet me that when the Bushies read what Zogby told me,
not just the rhetoric will rise, but so will the
fever.
Particularly since one of their favorite columnists,
Robert Novak, reported in yesterday's Washington Post
that Zogby called the race for President Bush in a
conversation he had with the pollster on Monday.
Zogby was jocular about the Novak column, although he
has decided not to post a comment on his Web site.
Here's what he told me: "I said Bush was winning, I
didn't say I thought he'd win. On Monday, he was
indeed looking good. But on Tuesday, things changed.
Kerry, in that one day, picked up 5 points."
Well, what about New Jersey? Al Gore took the Garden
State by 16 points, and now the Quinnipiac poll makes
it even. If Kerry loses Jersey, it could be a
landslide for Bush, no, Mr. Zogby?
I could hear Zogby shrug. "New Jersey?" he said. "Take
out your navy blue crayon and color Jersey dark. I
don't even poll New Jersey."
The politicians of both parties appear to agree. If
they believed Jersey was in play, Kerry and Bush would
be in Newark and Jersey City on the spot. But nobody
showed.
Maurice Carroll nodded - I heard that on the phone,
too. Mickey runs the Quinnipiac poll, and being
straight, he said, "It makes me trepidatious about our
numbers."
What?
"I've gotta look it up, too," he laughed. "But of
course when the politicians pay no attention, we have
to wonder if we got it right."
And then he added: "Maybe because our poll had 6%
undecided. Historically, the undecided vote goes big
to the challenger."
Polls, polls, polls. Is that all there is, Alfie?
Let's check the London line. The legal bookies across
the sea have been uncannily right over the years on
our elections. They probably called 1776 for George
Washington.
And on this one, the Republicans have to love it.
The latest line from sunny old England makes Bush, in
their funny lingo, a 4-7 favorite. (Vegas would say it
7-4.) That's almost 2-to-1.
Maybe London looks at it this way because they don't
have the benefit of our pundits, day in, day out. On
the other hand, we don't need polls to tell us that
the Brits hate the Iraq war and consider Dubya to be a
cut under Jack the Ripper.
The one poll that chilled me yesterday went like this:
"If the candidate you're against wins, will you still
support him?"
Sixty-two percent said no.
Maybe not civil war, but certainly something that
great Texan Jim Hightower could explain to us.
"If the gods wanted us to vote," Hightower once
observed, "they'd have given us candidates."
Originally published on October 29, 2004
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/810
Sat Oct 30 2004
Departments
Campaign 2004
Twelve ways Bush is now stealing the Ohio vote
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
October 27, 2004
The Republican "November Surprise" to steal the 2004
election is in full force here in Ohio. With polls
showing a dead heat, the GOP is staging an all-out
attack on a fair vote count in the Buckeye State.
Here are a dozen ways they're doing it:
* Under an archaic Ohio law, both the Republican and
Democratic Parties, or any slate of five candidates,
may embed official election challengers inside polling
places. The New York Times reported on Oct. 23 that
the Republican Party intends to place thousands of
lawyers and other GOP faithfuls inside the polls to
challenge voters. Republican insiders confide here
that the key goal is to jam lines and frustrate new
voters. The GOP apparently figures many voters in key
Democratic precincts won't wait in line more than 15
minutes to vote. This is certain to be a major tactic
in Cleveland's Cuyahoga County and other Democratic
strongholds. The GOP is not planning to challenge
voters in Republican districts.
* The Republican party has sent letters challenging
thousands of Franklin County students who are
registered to vote absentee. Franklin County is home
to Columbus, the state's largest city and its capitol.
Though it is also home to Ohio State University,
thousands of local students go to schools outside the
county or state. The GOP apparently does not want
their votes counted. This unprecedented mass
challenge has prompted the Franklin County Board of
Elections, whose director is a conservative
Republican, to reserve the large Veterans Memorial
Auditorium downtown to process the challenges this
Thursday, as John Kerry comes to town with Bruce
Springsteen. The County has told thousands of
students that if they don't appear in Columbus to
answer the GOP challenges, they may lose their right
to vote.
* The Franklin County Board of Elections has called
or written an undetermined number of voters who
obtained absentee ballots, challenging their
addresses. In at least one case, after a series of
angry phone calls, the Board admitted there was
nothing wrong with the address in question and
re-instated voting rights. The voter in question was
a registered Democrat. His wife, an independent at
the same address, was not challenged. It is unclear
how many others have been wrongly knocked out.
* Even if they are counted, Franklin County's absentee
ballot forms are rigged in ways strikingly reminiscent
of those in Florida 2000. On many absentee forms,
Kerry is listed third on the list of presidential
candidates. But the actual number you punch for Kerry
is "4." If you punch "3" you've just voted for Bush.
Sound familiar?
* Franklin County's right wing Elections Director is
insisting on e-voting machines which have
malfunctioned in at least two Congressional elections,
and which have no paper trail. The November issues of
Popular Science and Popular Mechanics Magazines ran
the following headlines on their covers, respectively:
"E-vote emergency: And you thought dimpled chads were
bad'" and "Could hackers tilt the election?" Vigorous
protests against the paperless machines have been
staged here, but many will be used, rendering a
meaningful recount impossible.
* In four other Ohio counties, the notorious Diebold
company, whose CEO Wally O'Dell has pledged to deliver
Ohio's votes to Bush, will provide the e-voting
machines to count votes without any paper trail while
using proprietary "secret" software. O'Dell lives in
the wealthy Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington and is
a major Bush donor.
* Twenty GOP-dominated Ohio counties have given wrong
information to former felons about their voter
eligibility. In Hamilton County, home of Cincinnati
and the Republican Taft family, officials told
numerous former felons that a judge had to sign off
before they could vote, which is blatantly false.
* Franklin County, which normally cancels 2-300
registered voters a year for felony convictions, has
sent at least 3500 cancellation letters to both
current felons and ex-felons whose convictions date
back to 1998. The list includes numerous citizens who
were charged with felonies but convicted only of
misdemeanors.
* Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell
has reversed a long-standing Ohio practice and is
barring voters from casting provisional ballots within
their county if they are registered to vote but
there's been a mistake about where they are expected
to cast their ballot. In this year's spring primaries,
Blackwell allowed voters to cast provisional ballots
by county, even if they were in the wrong precinct.
But this fall, such voters will have to leave the
wrong precinct and find their way to the right one.
Blackwell hopes to succeed Republican Bob Taft as
governor, and has labored hard to install e-voting
machines with no paper trail, to give the statewide
contract to Diebold, and to take a long series of
steps apparently designed to help hand Ohio to George
W. Bush. Blackwell is being widely compared to the
infamous Katherine Harris, who handed Florida to
George W. Bush in 2000 and was rewarded with a safe
Congressional seat.
* The Columbus Dispatch (which has endorsed Bush) and
WVKO Radio have both documented phone calls from
people impersonating Board of Elections workers and
directing registered voters to different and incorrect
polling sites. One individual was falsely told not to
vote at the polling station across the street from his
house, but at a "new" site, four miles away. Under
Blackwell's new rules, such a vote would not be
counted.
* In Cincinnati, some 150,000 voters were moved from
active to inactive status within the last four years
for not voting in the last two federal elections. This
is not required under Ohio law, but is an option
allowed and exercised by the Republican-dominated
Hamilton County Board of Elections.
* Secretary of State Blackwell ruled that any voter
registration form on other than 80-pound weight bond
paper would not be accepted. This is an old law left
over from pre-scanning days. Many voters who had
registered on lighter paper, had their registration
returned, even though the forms had been officially
sanctioned by local election boards.
No Republican has ever won the presidency without
carrying Ohio. This year the GOP seems determined to
win it, no matter what they have do to the electoral
process.
------------------------
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of
GEORGE W. BUSH VERSUS THE SUPERPOWER OF PEACE and
IMPRISON GEORGE BUSH, from www.freepress.org.