Author Archives: Lisa

Update On Ohio Recount

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Ohio in the 2004 election is just like Florida in 2000. The Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, was co-chairman of the Bush Campaign in 2004. (Just like Katherine Harris chaired the Bush campaign while she was Secretary of State of Florida in 2000.)
How is this allowed to take place? How can this be legal?
We must be the laughing stock of the world right now.
I feel like I’m living in a bad made-for-tv movie. One where — “they could never get away with that in real life.”
And yet, here it is.

Nearly a Month Later, Ohio Fight Goes On
By John McCarthy for the Associated Press.

Ohio essentially decided the outcome of the presidential race, with Kerry giving up after unofficial results showed Bush with a 136,000-vote lead in the state.
Since then, there have been demands for a recount and complaints about uncounted punch-card votes, disqualified provisional ballots and a ballot-machine error that gave hundreds of extra votes to Bush.
Jackson said too many questions have been raised to let the vote stand without closer examination.
“We can live with winning and losing. We cannot live with fraud and stealing,” Jackson said Sunday at Mount Hermon Baptist Church.
An attorney for a political advocacy group on Wednesday plans to file a “contest of election.” The request requires a single Supreme Court justice to either let the election stand, declare another winner or throw the whole thing out. The loser can appeal to the full seven-member court, which is dominated by Republicans 5-2…
Other critics have seized on an error in an electronic voting system that gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in a suburban Columbus precinct where only 638 people voted. The extra votes are part of the current unofficial tally, but they will not be included in the official count that will be certified by the secretary of state.
Some groups also have complained about thousands of punch-card ballots that were not counted because officials in the 68 counties that use them could not determine a vote for president. Votes for other offices on the cards were counted.

Jackson said Blackwell, who along with other statewide GOP leaders was a co-chairman of Bush’s re-election campaign in Ohio, should step down from overseeing the election process.
“You can’t be chairman of the Bush campaign and then be the chief umpire in the seventh game of the World Series (news – web sites),” Jackson said.

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Ohio Provisional Ballots Look OK

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This is an article from November 17, 2004. I meant to put it up earlier.

Ohio Provisional Ballots Seem Legitimate
By Mark Williams for the Associated Press.

The vast majority of provisional ballots cast in Ohio were legitimate, say election officials who are poring over thousands of presidential election ballots…
Of the 11 counties that have completed checking provisional ballots, 81 percent of the ballots are valid, according to an Associated Press survey Monday. Counties that have completed partial tallies also said most of the provisional ballots were being counted.
Cuyahoga County, where Cleveland is located, has processed 40 percent, or 9,719 votes, of its 24,788 provisional ballots and rejected a third, according to a board tally. Most are being rejected because the voters were not registered.
In many counties, the smallest portion of rejected ballots were due to votes being cast in the wrong precinct. Before the election, Democrats lost a court appeal seeking to allow people to cast provisional ballots in precincts where they do not live…
Ohio voters cast 155,337 provisional ballots, which are used when voters names are not on the rolls for some reason or their eligibility is otherwise in doubt. Counties have until Dec. 1 to complete their final count. In 2000, about 87 percent of provisional ballots were counted.

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60 Minutes On the 15,000 “Uncounted” Deaths and Casualties Of The Shrub War

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This is from the November 21, 2004 program of 60 Minutes.
This story is about the Shrub Administrations efforts to hide thousands of American deaths and casualties of this war by simply not reporting them, claiming they are “non-combat injuries.” The families of dead soldiers and shell shocked soldiers who have lost limbs/become paralyzed/will never be the same again are pretty upset about it.

The Uncounted
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Mirror

Daily Show Comedy Clips And Interviews From November 11 – 18, 2004

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I hate to do this, but I’m so far behind on everything right now that I figure it’s better than you guys having to wait another week for this stuff. I promise I will post this stuff appropriately this weekend.
Here’s the daily show clip for
November 11, 2004 (just one arafat clip)
Here are all of the clips (with zip files and mirrors!) for November 15-18, 2004:

November 15, 2004

November 15 Mirror

November 16, 2004 Includes Tom Brokaw Interview.

November 16 Mirror

November 17, 2004

November 17 Mirror

November 18, 2004 Includes Woody Harrelson Interview.

November 18 Mirror
Many Thanks to Thilo Schlabach for mirroring my clips! Please use the mirrors guys!

Daily Show Clip On The Football/Desperate Wives Controversy, Porter Goss’ Partisan Leadership at the CIA, and Robert Novak Continuing To Go Unpunished For Being A Traitor

This is from the November 17, 2004 program.
Sorry the next bunch of clips may be a bit out of order.

Daily Show opening bit November 17, 2004
(
Mirror of this clip)
Included in this clip:
Jon makes the insightful observation that, although the families of America were supposedly shocked and offended by the Desperate Wives/NFL cross promotional advertisement where the actresses shows off here naked….back! A bit later in that same broadcast, the same families were apparently unbothered by two women wrestling each other over a bud light. (And presumably scantilly-clad in some fashion – as is the tradition with beer ads – note: hearsay alert! I have not seen this ad)
He then goes on to discuss the first official partisan act of new CIA chief Porter Goss: to tell his ranks to shut up and support everything the Shrub Administration does (and, generally, to not question authority).
Jon ends the segment by reminding us all that Robert Novack still hasn’t been penalized or prosecuted in any way for endangering the life of a CIA agent by leaking her identity in one of his articles.

Our Own National Guard Troops Are Treated Like “Inmates With Weapons”

Hel-lo? Is there anybody out there? Now our government is sending National Guard troops to old WWII Prisoner of War camps and treating them like prisoners themselves before shipping them off to Iraq to become inevitable casualties of War.
They are treated horribly, given poor combat training, and then sent off to perform extremely dangerous tasks for a government that doesn’t care if they live or die.
Many of them are going AWOL. Who can blame them? They are running off to see their families one last time before being sent to their deaths. (Theoretically, many are coming back after Thanksgiving. To these people I say: “Save yourself! Keep going! Don’t ever come back if you want to stay alive!”)
Will somebody please do something to stop this madness? I feel so helpless hearing about this stuff. So powerless to do anything to stop these nut cases in charge of our country.

Guardsmen Say They’re Facing Iraq Ill-Trained
Troops from California describe a prison-like, demoralized camp in New Mexico that’s short on gear and setting them up for high casualties.
By Scott Gold for the LA Times.

Members of a California Army National Guard battalion preparing for deployment to Iraq said this week that they were under strict lockdown and being treated like prisoners rather than soldiers by Army commanders at the remote desert camp where they are training.
More troubling, a number of the soldiers said, is that the training they have received is so poor and equipment shortages so prevalent that they fear their casualty rate will be needlessly high when they arrive in Iraq early next year. “We are going to pay for this in blood,” one soldier said…
“I feel like an inmate with a weapon,” said Cpl. Jajuane Smith, 31, a six-year Guard veteran from Fresno who works for an armored transport company when not on active duty.
Several soldiers have fled Do