Fear of Fraud

It's election night, and early returns suggest trouble for the incumbent. Then, mysteriously, the vote count stops and observers from the challenger's campaign see employees of a voting-machine company, one wearing a badge that identifies him as a county official, typing instructions at computers with access to the vote-tabulating software.
When the count resumes, the incumbent pulls ahead. The challenger demands an investigation. But there are no ballots to recount, and election officials allied with the incumbent refuse to release data that could shed light on whether there was tampering with the electronic records.
This isn't a paranoid fantasy. It's a true account of a recent election in Riverside County, Calif., reported by Andrew Gumbel of the British newspaper The Independent. Mr. Gumbel's full-length report, printed in Los Angeles City Beat, makes hair-raising reading not just because it reinforces concerns about touch-screen voting, but also because it shows how easily officials can stonewall after a suspect election.
Some states, worried about the potential for abuse with voting machines that leave no paper trail, have banned their use this November. But Florida, which may well decide the presidential race, is not among those states, and last month state officials rejected a request to allow independent audits of the machines' integrity. A spokesman for Gov. Jeb Bush accused those seeking audits of trying to "undermine voters' confidence," and declared, "The governor has every confidence in the Department of State and the Division of Elections...."
After first denying any systematic problem, state officials declared it an innocent mistake. They told Accenture to match a list of registered voters to a list of felons, flagging anyone whose name, date of birth and race was the same on both lists. They didn't realize, they said, that this would automatically miss felons who identified themselves as Hispanic because that category exists on voter rolls but not in state criminal records.
But employees of a company that prepared earlier felon lists say that they repeatedly warned state election officials about that very problem.
Let's not be coy. Jeb Bush says he won't allow an independent examination of voting machines because he has "every confidence" in his handpicked election officials. Yet those officials have a history of slipshod performance on other matters related to voting and somehow their errors always end up favoring Republicans. Why should anyone trust their verdict on the integrity of voting machines, when another convenient mistake could deliver a Republican victory in a high-stakes national election?
This shouldn't be a partisan issue. Think about what a tainted election would do to America's sense of itself, and its role in the world. In the face of official stonewalling, doubters probably wouldn't be able to prove one way or the other whether the vote count was distorted - but if the result looked suspicious, most of the world and many Americans would believe the worst. I'll write soon about what can be done in the few weeks that remain, but here's a first step: if Governor Bush cares at all about the future of the nation, as well as his family's political fortunes, he will allow that independent audit.

Fear of Death Wins Minds and Votes, Study Finds

President Bush may be tapping into solid human psychology when he invokes the Sept. 11 attacks while campaigning for the next election, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
Talking about death can raise people's need for psychological security, the researchers report in studies to be published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science and the September issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin....
For their first study, Solomon, Greenberg and colleagues asked students to think about either their own death or a neutral topic.
They then read the campaign statements of three hypothetical candidates for governor, each with a different leadership style. One was charismatic, said Solomon.
"That was a person who declared our country to be great and the people in it to be special," Solomon, who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview.
The others were task-oriented -- focusing on the job to be done -- or relationship-oriented -- with a "let's get it done together" style, Solomon said.
The students who thought about death were much more likely to choose the charismatic leader, they found. Only four out of about 100 chose that imaginary leader when thinking about exams, but 30 did after thinking about death.
Greenberg, Solomon and colleagues then decided to test the idea further and set up four separate studies at different universities.
"In one we asked half the people to think about the September 11 attacks, or to think about watching TV," Solomon said. "What we found was staggering."
When asked to think about television, the 100 or so volunteers did not approve of Bush or his policies in Iraq. But when asked to think about Sept. 11 first and then asked about their attitudes to Bush, another 100 volunteers had very different reactions.
"They had a very strong approval of President Bush and his policy in Iraq," Solomon said.
Solomon, a social psychologist who specializes in terrorism, said it was very rare for a person's opinions to differ so strongly depending on the situation.
Another study focused directly on Bush and his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.
The volunteers were aged from 18 into their 50s and described themselves as ranging from liberal to deeply conservative. No matter what a person's political conviction, thinking about death made them tend to favor Bush, Solomon said. Otherwise, they preferred Kerry.
"I think this should concern anybody," Solomon said. "If I was speaking lightly, I would say that people in their, quote, right minds, unquote, don't care much for President Bush and his policies in Iraq."

Some Republicans Defect to Kerry's Camp

Ohio resident Bob Stewart says of President Bush: "He's been a world-class polarizer. I don't know if I can stomach four more years with him as president. He misled us into the war in Iraq and has mismanaged everything since."
A raging Democrat? No, Stewart is a Republican, one of an unknown number of such voters who plan to back John Kerry, out of despair over the war in Iraq and disappointment over budget deficits and social policies....
Stewart, 44, an insurance agent from Anderson Township near Cincinnati, voted for Bush in 2000 and is a registered Republican.
"I just have a gut feeling that Kerry can be trusted to make the right courageous decisions and will make a good president. He showed that with his heroism in Vietnam," he says.
Bush is "supposed to be a conservative and yet he's run up the biggest federal deficit in history. One thing that really turned me (away from Bush) as a lifelong Catholic ... was to see Bush go to the Vatican and try to get the pope to come down hard on Kerry for his stand on abortion. That is absolutely appalling."
In Michigan, Dan Martin has run for local office as a Republican. He says his biggest disappointment is that Bush's reputation as a "compassionate, conservative" governor of Texas hasn't proven true in the White House.
"The foreign policy is a mess. The offensive in Iraq is reckless and built on bad decision making. On the domestic front I understand that terrorism has struck and he's occupied but any real progress on a domestic agenda has ground to a halt," added Martin, 32, a customer service manager at a health maintenance organization who lives in Rochester Hills.
In Tennessee, Brian Boland, a young music company manager shopping at a market near Nashville, said: "I've always voted Republican and my folks will just kill me if they find out I'm switching to Kerry this year (should've gone anon. - ed.) ... but I am just frustrated with the way Bush has mishandled everything. All the untruths."
His wife said she too was switching. The Republicans carried Tennessee in 2000, even though it was the home state of Democratic nominee Al Gore.
At the same market Ron King, a black Vietnam Veteran, said: "I always voted Republican before but I'm against Bush ever since I found out that he doesn't love this country. His so-called military record is a sham. And the worst part is that he lies so much. He lied about weapons of mass destruction."
Lloyd Huff, 64, retired director of the Dayton Research Institute in Ohio, says he has "voted for a Republican in every presidential election I can remember" but it will be Kerry this time because "the Bush administration has been the most deceitful, duplicitous, secretive administration this country has ever had."
"Going to war in Iraq was a horrible, horrible mistake," he said. He accused Bush of "an arrogant, swaggering cowboy mentality ... he has done more than anyone to inflame the Muslim world by his words and actions."

I'm starting to feel vaguely hopeful.... Perhaps I won't have to decide whether to flee the country in November.

Bush's jobs policy revealed

A campaign worker for President Bush said on Thursday American workers unhappy with low-quality jobs should find new ones -- or pop a Prozac to make themselves feel better.
"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?" said Susan Sheybani, an assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt.

Well, there you go then. Now I know what to do for the next four years if he's re-(s)elected.

Blurring the line between reality and satire again

Jesus' General may be a rather unreliable source, since he tends to be rather tongue-in-cheek. But I saw mention of this one other place, where it also seemed maybe for real, maybe not: Jerry Falwell may be delivering the Republican National Convention opening prayer. He's got a lovely selection of quotes from pastor there, to truly capture the spirit of the Convention we can look forward to.
I'm not sure how seriously to take this. I don't know the nature of this "AMERICAblog" he links to, and for its part, it claims the ultimate source is Jerry Falwell himself, rather than the GOP. It seems too ridiculous to be true—isn't it?

Wow

OK, I know everyone else is already on the Obama bandwagon now, but just in case anyone out there isn't already aware of him, check out his speech from the Democratic National Convention tonight. I'm collecting links in different formats, for the benefit of those of us who might have the nerve to use something other than Windows.

Barack Obama
Washington Post	RealMedia	some other format?
C-Span	RealMedia
Bill Clinton
C-Span	RealMedia
Jimmy Carter
C-Span	RealMedia
Ron Reagan Jr.
C-Span	RealMedia
Teresa Heinz-Kerry
C-Span	RealMedia
Tammy Baldwin
C-Span	RealMedia	RealMedia interview
C-Span Tuesday
RealMedia 1	RealMedia 2	RealMedia 3

PATRIOT Act in action

Federal charges were filed against Adam McGaughey, creator of the popular SG1Archive.com website - a fan website devoted to the MGM-owned television show Stargate SG-1. The charges allege that the website engaged in Criminal Copyright Infringement and Trafficking in Counterfeit Services. The charges were the culmination of a three-year FBI investigation, set in motion by a complaint from the Motion Picture Association (MPAA) regarding the content of the SG1Archive.com website....
Adam was first tipped off about the investigation when the FBI raided his and his fiancee's apartment in May of 2002 and seized thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment. Adam later received a copy of the affidavit filed in support of the search warrant, and was shocked to discover that this document, prepared by the FBI, contained significant amounts of erroneous and misleading information. For example, two social security numbers were listed for Adam, one of which is not his. References were made to a cease and desist letter sent by the MPAA to an email address that did not exist. His online friendship with other Stargate fans across the globe was portrayed as an international conspiracy against the MPAA. And perhaps most disturbing of all, it was later revealed that the FBI invoked a provision of the USA Patriot Act to obtain financial records from his ISP. The FBI's abuse of its powers did not stop there. When they seized Adam's computer equipment, he was given written documentation stating that it would be returned within 60 days. The equipment that they did return did not arrive until more than 8 months later, and only then after much prodding from his lawyer. Much of it was damaged beyond repair - one laptop had a shattered LCD screen, an empty tape backup drive was ripped apart for no apparent reason, his fiancee's iBook was badly damaged when it was pried apart with a screwdriver. The FBI's computer crimes staff is either incompetent (at least when it comes to Macintosh computer equipment) or else they just don't give a damn.

From comments at the Slashdot article where I picked up on this, it sounds as though the presumed defendant-to-be may not be such a nice & innocent guy as he makes himself out to be. He might have been providing some copyright-infringing downloads, or not. But either way, a terrorist against whom we must invoke the PATRIOT Act? I hardly think so.

Ann Coulter raises my bar

You know how I'm kind of trying (albeit weakly) to go for a "right-wing style"? And I express concern that "it may take me a while to become as extreme in my style as I'm shooting for"? Ann Coulter seems to be trying real hard to raise the bar for that style.

Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston, conservatives are deploying a series of covert signals to identify one another, much like gay men do. My allies are the ones wearing crosses or American flags. The people sporting shirts emblazoned with the "F-word" are my opponents. Also, as always, the pretty girls and cops are on my side, most of them barely able to conceal their eye-rolling....
As for the pretty girls, I can only guess that it's because liberal boys never try to make a move on you without the U.N. Security Council's approval. Plus, it's no fun riding around in those dinky little hybrid cars. My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie-chick pie wagons they call "women" at the Democratic National Convention.

As Dave Barry would say, "I am not making this up."

Angry Bear sums up nicely

Two excellent recent summaries by the Angry Bear:

• Ashcroft's incompetence highlighted in the 9/11 Commission report
• What Bush has really done for the blacks (& everyone else in general, & his flat-out lying about it)

The Further Triumph of Trickle-down Economics

Jerry Bailey is precisely the kind of taxpayer President Bush had hoped to bestow his tax cuts on: an entrepreneur brew-pub owner, a job provider, not overly rich by Washington area standards but well off enough to pay a hefty sum to the federal government each year.
But after three tax cuts in three years, the part-owner of Loudoun County's Old Dominion Brewing Co. is not exactly celebrating his gains. Sure, his federal tax bill was trimmed, by a healthy $5,600, according to a rough calculation by Clint Stretch, director of tax policy at the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche LLP.
But other factors having nothing to do with federal taxes have clouded Bailey's situation. This year, the property tax bill on his Bethesda home will reach $6,725, a $950 increase over his payment four years ago. The annual cost of his 56-mile-a-day commute has jumped more than $300 since 2001, and the long, slow decline of business profits these past four years has left Bailey far behind, no matter what his federal tax payment may be.
"I'm not paying any taxes at all because we're not making any money," Bailey said with a sigh. "I loved paying taxes. It meant we were doing all right...."
But many Americans feel they have lost ground since 2001, and a solid 71 percent are convinced they have received no tax cuts at all. A poll by CBS News and the New York Times in March found that only 22 percent believe the policies of the Bush administration made their taxes go down; 25 percent said their taxes actually went up.

You found your way here somehow, right? Ergo, I probably don't need to spell out the point of this item for you, n'est çe pas?

The Triumph of Trickle-down Economics

States Cut Health Insurance for 145,000 Kids

Some 145,000 poor children were dropped from a U.S. federal-state health insurance plan in the second half of 2003, with more than half the cuts made by Texas, a health-care research foundation said on Friday.
"The drop in (the) State Children's Health Insurance Program is a major setback when millions of uninsured children are eligible but not yet enrolled," said Diane Rowland, executive director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.
Net enrollment in the program, which mainly benefits working families, fell last year for the first time since it was launched in 1998, the Washington, D.C.-based Kaiser Commission said in a report....
A total of 11 states sliced enrollment, with "noteworthy" cuts made in Florida, Colorado and South Carolina, the report said.
The number of needy children who got this health insurance peaked in June 2003 at 3.964 million. Though 37 states added children to the program in the second half of last year, the total number still fell by 37,000 children, the report added.
In some cases, the number of children fell because they were shifted to Medicaid, which provides health care for more impoverished children and adults, the report noted.
Still, that was not the case in some of the states that clipped enrollment, including Texas. That state stopped covering "a broad range of services," including glasses, eye and teeth exams, and services by chiropractors, hospices and skilled nursing centers, the report said.

Is "trickle-down" just a fancy way of talking about what always rolls downhill?

Pentagon Finds Bush's Military Payroll Records

Payroll records related to President Bush's service in the Air National Guard three decades ago that the Pentagon said earlier this month were accidentally destroyed now have been located, defense officials said on Friday.
Bush's whereabouts during his service as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard in the United States during the Vietnam War have become an election-year issue, with some Democrats accusing him of shirking his duty.
Defense Finance and Accounting Service spokesman Bryan Hubbard said the microfilm payroll records were found in Denver, and blamed a clerical error for the Pentagon's previous failure to find the records.

No word yet on what the records show. But I'm sure we should find out soon, assuming there isn't a second oopsie, and that this wasn't all a ploy to give "them" enough time to doctor the records.

Bush Tells Blacks, 'I'm Here to Ask for Your Vote'

President Bush told African-Americans on Friday he wanted their vote and acknowledged his Republican Party had "a lot of work to do" to win the support of blacks, who rejected Bush in 2000 by a margin of more than 9 to 1.
Two weeks after he rebuffed an invitation to speak at a gathering of the nation's oldest civil rights organization, the NAACP, Bush struck a chord with some blacks when he urged them not to allow the Democratic Party to take their support for granted in the November presidential election.
But he appeared to face a tougher sell when he asked members of National Urban League, a group focused on civil rights and economic issues affecting blacks, to consider whether his policies might better serve their interests than those of the Democratic Party.
"I'm here to ask for your vote," he told the attendees, who numbered about 1,200. "I know, I know, I know," he said, when the blunt appeal appeared to catch many off guard.
"The Republican Party's got a lot of work to do. I understand that," Bush said.

But apparently, for some reason, he can't even get some actual, live black people to sit with him for a picture this time.

Just one of the guys, right?

THE PRESIDENT: ...So, anyway, raising taxes. And so let me say something to you, so you hear -- in the campaign, you'll hear, we're going only to tax the rich. That's what you'll hear. Now, this is from a fellow who has promised about $2 trillion of new spending thus far. And only taxing the rich, first of all, creates a huge tax gap, which means buyer beware. You see, if you can't raise enough by taxing the rich, guess who gets to pay next? Yes, the not-rich. (Laughter.) That's all of us.

Yep, he's just one of the regular, bottom-tax-bracket kind of guys, isn't he, the little darling?

[local businessman] MR. BLOOMHALL: Well, we've got 124 employees worldwide. They're the best and the brightest, because as we can save taxes and reinvest it in our business, in capital, in the equipment to automate our manufacturing line, in science -- we hire PhD's, real good-paying jobs -- and we can grow jobs and investment in our country better than the government can by collecting taxes. (Applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: I didn't tell him to say that. (Laughter and applause.) But I couldn't have said it any better myself. John said, investment. One of the things in the tax relief plan that we passed, it says to small businesses, we'll encourage you to invest by allowing you what they call bonus depreciation. These are fancy tax words. I'm trying to simplify it. It says, you invest in planned equipment, you get a tax break for doing so.

So, Mr. Bloomhall, if we were to REALLY slash your taxes, how well do you suppose your business would be faring without roads, without water & sewage, without police protection? How many jobs do you think you'd be creating then, even for "the best and the brightest"? (I beg to differ, I'm not working for him.)
There's more to taxation benefiting job creation than just the people that work directly for the government. Dumbass. Dumbasses.

Are you going to invest, you think, this year?
MR. BLOOMHALL: Yes, we're investing about $1.3 million this year.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. What do you -- when you say, invest, what does that mean? Are you buying things?
MR. BLOOMHALL: Primarily capital investment in our plant and equipment.
THE PRESIDENT: Like what kind of plant and equipment?
MR. BLOOMHALL: Automation equipment so that our employees are not doing the manual jobs, they're doing the thinking jobs. They create greater value to us, we can pay them more, and everybody wins.
THE PRESIDENT: Okay. Now, this is a very interesting lesson here—

Cut his mike! Yes, it is a very interesting lesson. The automation equipment means the employees won't be doing the manual jobs. That means he won't be needing so many workers, to turn out the same amount of product. Invest in the machinery once, and all it needs thereafter is electricity and a little bit of maintenance now and then. More money goes into Mr. Bloomhall's pockets, less into his workers' (though they may be averaging more per capita, once the manual worker 'dead weight' is trimmed'), the rich get richer, the workers get poorer and feel lucky for it because at least they have jobs.

Don't let Iraq have the national credit card, now!

Presidential Determination
No. 2004-40

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE

SUBJECT: Eligibility of Iraq to Receive Defense Articles

and Services Under the Foreign Assistance Act of

1961, as Amended, and the Arms Export Control Act,

as Amended

Pursuant to the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 503(a) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended, and section 3(a)(1) of the Arms Export Control Act, as amended, I hereby find that the furnishing of defense articles and services to Iraq will strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace.

You are authorized and directed to report this finding to the Congress and to publish it in the Federal Register.

GEORGE W. BUSH

In other words, they can go ahead and buy a lot more of our dangerous goodies now.
Added: Reuters caught the story here.

E-Voting machine faults ignored

Florida elections officials knew before they bought the first touch screen voting machine that the devices had a history of problems.
The machines recorded cases in which no vote was cast, known as undervotes, at a higher rate than some other machines.
But election officials bought them anyway, partly because they didn't think undervotes would become a major problem.
Now, undervotes are at the center of the latest controversy surrounding Florida's troubled elections process....
But a leading expert on voting machines says undervotes are nothing to worry about.
"A small but significant number of voters in every election intentionally undervote," said Dan Tokaji, an Ohio State College (Diebold Election Systems is located in Ohio. -ed.) law professor and the author of a recent report to the Election Assistance Commission on touch screen machines. "Why would somebody do that? I'm not sure if anyone has a clear answer to that question."
Still, undervoting seems peculiar in elections with only one issue on a ballot. Why would anyone take the time to go to a polling place, get a ballot and not vote? Yet that's exactly what happened in March. In Pinellas, for example, 211 voters cast blank ballots in the March primary in precincts that had just one race.