"By helping that poor woman hold up her sign, 'No To Obama Osama and Chelsea's Moma', he instantly got my vote.  He's brilliant, charming, and, in his own words, 'Double-Guantanamo!!'  Ha-Ha!

Double-Plus-Good, Cheerio-Peakies, and Snortly Wiffentooties to Boot! 

George Bush is a damn good-lookin' man.   Let's all come out of the closet, and just say it out loud!  Or just rattle the doorknob if'n yer too skeered to comout!

You can can me now, Poop-Maxminius.  I think I'm ready to cross over.

(crunch-crunch — 'Leemee alone!  I'wf busy!'  – crunch-rustle-gulp-gulp-ahhhh)

(Al Gore or John Edwards for President.)

oooooo — Heinlein's kissin' on Hoffman – (stop attracting meeee!!!!!)

(what'd he mean by that?  Damn Chluthuonius!  He won't let me breathe!  Can't breathe! Count…count…ten…nine…   crunchcrunchcrunchLeemelonedammit!  You're so cheesing me off!  I can't tell you how many rules you're breaking right now!  Agghhhhhhh!)"

1. There Is No Spoon

In Violation of Federal Law, Ohio's 2004 Presidential Election Records Are Destroyed or Missing

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet. Posted July 30, 2007.

In 56 of Ohio's 88 counties, ballots and election records from 2004 have been "accidentally" destroyed, despite a federal order to preserve them — it was crucial evidence which would have revealed whether the election was stolen.

Two-thirds of Ohio counties have destroyed or lost their 2004 presidential ballots and related election records, according to letters from county election officials to the Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner.

The lost records violate Ohio law, which states federal election records must be kept for 22 months after Election Day, and a U.S. District Court order issued last September that the 2004 ballots be preserved while the court hears a civil rights lawsuit alleging voter suppression of African-American voters in Columbus.

The destruction of the election records also frustrates efforts by the media and historians to determine the accuracy of Ohio's 2004 vote count, because in county after county the key evidence needed to understand vote count anomalies apparently no longer exists.

"The extent of the destruction of records is consistent with the covering up of the fraud that we believe occurred in the presidential election," said Cliff Arnebeck, a Columbus attorney representing the King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association, which filed voter suppression suit. "We're in the process of addressing where to go from here with the Ohio Attorney General's office."

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Positively shocking!  Shocking, I tell you! 

Open, criminal behavior.  Impressive chutzpah.

I walk out of this little coffee shop in Linda Mar where I catch the bus to BART- the second leg of my bike, bus & train commute. The asian expat proprietor has a rack of silly little stuffed animals and one of them is voice activated to do this thing where it says "I love you" and then breaks into peals of giggling chipmunky laughter. For some reason I always think of my old friend J.G. at this point. I just know he'd have some darkly humorous wisecrack to offer; something along the lines of what he said a couple of decades ago at a Dead concert while surveying the happy swirling hippies enjoying the show. "If we were in Russia these people would be landfill."

Maybe not, though. I'm afraid J.G. doesn't have the sense of humor he had back then. A lot has happened over the years since those crazy days in Boulder in the early eighties when we used to have rambling philosophical discussions over Tooth Sheaf lager. We formed a band, my first, and J.G. taught me to play the bass. A year later it all came tumbling to pieces and I became his enemy along with the lead singer of the band when we found we couldn't work with him any more. He kept threatening to quit and go to law school so we ended up helping him take the plunge.Things didn't go so well for him after that and it seems he never found it in his heart to forgive us for cutting him loose. It's a shame really, because the guy had a huge brain and considerable artistic talent. He was a primary character in the mad assemblage that formed the core of our young adult lives while we struggled to try and make sense of the world and all it had to offer. Another strong memory of J.G. is when he served as my sober guide (yes, really) on the occasion of an astounding mystical experience I had in the Rockies while skiing, a day I honored for years as Cubensis Day. I considered him a good friend, and in some ways I still do.

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be reciprocated. He's been barred from posting here due to a pattern of hostility and abuse of fellow posters. I gave him a few chances to reform, but he kept reverting to form. He also seemed to have a chilling effect on discourse which I found I'd rather do without. I'm not giving him any more chances to join the fun here, but I do still feel bad about it. One reason is that he really hasn't gone away. He seems to never miss a word that's posted here and usually responds with vicious, hate-filled diatribes that get no farther than the moderation queue. I find myself drawn to reading these for some strange reason, though the frequent insults and claims of Stalinist censorship, etc. have little effect on me. I enjoy them as entertainment, though sometimes I feel bad when I realize there's genuine pain there and wish I could do something for him.

I will do one thing, which is to refer readers to J.G.'s blog, Contingencies, where he writes voluminously and often lucidly. The man can obviously think, and he does have a perspective that I sometimes find useful, though I seldom agree with. He also tends to behave himself much better on his own blog, so I may even engage him in conversation there if I ever find it fruitful and if he doesn't return the favor of banning me.

…and it's brilliant. I came across it when I noticed a recommended diary on Daily Kos by a kossack name "David Brin." I thought, is it really him or just a fan? It was him. He links to his own blog in the diary and I've been having fun perusing it ever since. Truthfully, I've read very little Brin, but I think I'd better start changing this situation. I did have the pleasure of meeting him at an SF convention and he was very approachable- even gave me some writing advice which I completely failed to heed (or remember). I remember him as a wiseass to some extent-seemed to love to hear himself talk- but still had a certain endearing charm. All of this comes through on his blog as well. Scrolling down a few posts I came upon one I simply must share, "Perspectives on Climate Change – and Denial."

I'll call out some personal observations later.

 http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/325688_threat31.h…

The president is threatening me

By MARIE MARCHAND
GUEST COLUMNIST

In case I get picked up and taken away under President Bush's Military Commissions Act of October 2006, I want it on record that I am not a terrorist or an enemy combatant, and that the organization I run in Bellingham is not associated with any terrorist cell.

snip//

There's no doubt that the administration preys on our civil liberties, and that the effects of unjust policies filter down to the local level. In 2003, a Quaker Meeting House in Florida was put under surveillance through the Pentagon's domestic spying program and labeled a threat. But Quakerism is a religion of pacifism; naturally, they would be against war. The Department of Defense spying on a group of draft counselors? Come on.

In 2004, the FBI approached the Whatcom County Library in Deming with a grand jury subpoena demanding librarians turn over the names and contact information of every person who checked out "Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America." The library pursued legal action and the FBI eventually withdrew the subpoena. The director of the Whatcom County Library System, Jane Airoldi, received a human rights award for refusing to hand over patrons' private information. "Libraries are a haven where people should be able to seek whatever information they want to pursue without any threat of government intervention," Airoldi said.

When our government no longer equates terrorism with violence, but with the perceived threat of an unsubstantiated rumor of intent to "pose a significant risk of committing an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the government"; or when non-violent pacifism is misconstrued as a tactic that undermines national security, no one is exempt from capture, detention and possible torture.

I perceive Bush's July 17 executive order as a personal threat. When someone makes a threat, their intention is often to scare, isolate and subdue the other person into silence through fear.

I will not be silent.

Like millions of dissenters around the world, I want my name to be included among those who resisted those unjust policies and decrees. The American people must have the courage to resist. Otherwise, our friends and neighbors may begin to disappear, and we may not hear them being carted off in the middle of the night. As a patriotic American who holds steadfast to a belief in justice, I do not accept Bush's threats to my constitutional and human rights passively. If I disappear, I disappear. But I will not go willingly, and I will not go unnamed.

Marie Marchand is executive director of Whatcom Peace & Justice Center in Bellingham.

One of my all-time faves, Kate Bush, is featured on today's Wikipedia home page.

Paul Krugman 

When a child is enrolled in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (Schip), the positive results can be dramatic. For example, after asthmatic children are enrolled in Schip, the frequency of their attacks declines on average by 60 percent, and their likelihood of being hospitalized for the condition declines more than 70 percent.

Regular care, in other words, makes a big difference. That’s why Congressional Democrats, with support from many Republicans, are trying to expand Schip, which already provides essential medical care to millions of children, to cover millions of additional children who would otherwise lack health insurance.

But President Bush says that access to care is no problem — “After all, you just go to an emergency room” — and, with the support of the Republican Congressional leadership, he’s declared that he’ll veto any Schip expansion on “philosophical” grounds.

It must be about philosophy, because it surely isn’t about cost. One of the plans Mr. Bush opposes, the one approved by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the Senate Finance Committee, would cost less over the next five years than we’ll spend in Iraq in the next four months. And it would be fully paid for by an increase in tobacco taxes.

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The Bush Administration is going to block children's access to health care — why?  To avoid 'federalization' of health care.

Please Note:

And the public understands that. According to a recent Georgetown University poll, 9 in 10 Americans — including 83 percent of self-identified Republicans — support an expansion of the children’s health insurance program.

Perhaps we should impeach this president.  In ONEness.

By Nancy Greggs

I am typical of those who get all of their information from the mainstream media, and news networks like CNN and FOX-News.

As a result, I feel that I am well-informed and aware of what is going on in my country, and around the world.

I know that we must stay in Iraq until we win. I have never heard an explanation of exactly what winning is, but I was probably just out of the room the times it’s been explained.

I know that things are going well in Iraq because the president says so, and he’s in a position to know better than anyone.

I know that President Bush is a good Christian, because he has said so many times – and a good Christian would never lie about something like that.

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people wouldn’t be saying it if it wasn’t a fact.

I was recently informed of some nasty comment spam which was directed towards a particular poster. I wasn't surprised to hear of it because I see such things frequently when I manage the moderation queue, but I was under the impression that only I, with my godlike admin permissions, could see these comments. It turns out that unapproved comments were showing up grayed out in the manage comments page for all users. I searched all over the admin management interface for a way to turn off this feature and came up empty. Fortunately there is a way to customize the application in very powerful ways, which is to dive into the voluminous PHP code that the site is written with and hack it to do what I want. It didn't take long to find the page and to modify the condition to only show approved comments.  Now I'm getting itchy to mess around some more. Apologies in advance if the site is inadvertently destroyed.

Sometimes trolls are useful.

SF Gate

State-sanctioned teams of computer hackers were able to break through the security of virtually every model of California's voting machines and change results or take control of some of the systems' electronic functions, according to a University of California study released Friday.

The researchers "were able to bypass physical and software security in every machine they tested,'' said Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who authorized the "top to bottom review" of every voting system certified by the state.

…Bishop, however, said he was surprised by the weakness of the security measures, both physical and electronic, protecting the voting systems. His team of hackers found ways to get into the systems not only through the high-tech equipment in election headquarters but also through the machines in the polling places.

I'm sure right-wing ideologues and devotees of monarchism everywhere will scoff ('The sky is purple!'), but this logically concludes the controversy over election fraud in 2000 and 2004.  Diebold and ES&S purposefully created electronic voting machines that allowed Republicans to electronically steal elections without leaving a trace. 

Debra Bowen is a brilliant and methodical public servant.  I watched her grill McPherson's stooge William Wood in two hearings over this matter;  it was obvious to any onlooker that Wood's hubristic disregard for Bowen's ethical nature evidenced a willingness on the part of California Republicans to ruthlessly destroy democracy in their state.  Now, it is fact, not conjecture.

I want my three million to eight million votes back.  I want hand-counted paper-ballots.  And I want everyone involved in this matter to be charged and imprisoned. 

The Republican Party hates America;  it is also the largest, most successful criminal conspiracy in history. 

Repent.