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Thursday, June 30, 2005
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Wednesday, June 29, 2005
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Critiques of Bush
The Smirking Chimp is full of solid critiques of Bush's floppo Iraq yabbering and his failed policies; Bush is a national embarassment and global catastrophe
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/
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Tuesday, June 28, 2005
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ZNet | Iraq | The Downing Street Memo - Part 1
Excellent analysis of significance of the Downing Street Memo as basis for impeachment and war crimes charges against Bush-Cheney-Rumself et al
ZNet | Iraq | The Downing Street Memo - Part 1: "The Downing Street Memo - Part 1"
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Sunday, June 26, 2005
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Saturday, June 25, 2005
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One year after sovereignty restored, nation is in crisis
Iraq still in crisis, many believe its getting worse
News
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America turns on Bush over Iraq
the US vs Bush
News
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Friday, June 24, 2005
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David Corn: 'Karl Rove: Not just a hypocrite, a thug'
the Thug Rove uses war to attacks Dems and liberals and posture as a tough guy
The Smirking Chimp: "David Corn: 'Karl Rove: Not just a hypocrite, a thug'"
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Thursday, June 23, 2005
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Bob Herbert: 'Cruel and unusual'
Bob Herbert goes after the disgusting Jeb Bush
The Smirking Chimp
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Bungling the vote
Part of what happened in Ohio from Salon:
Bungling the voteAn eye-opening new report reveals what went wrong in Ohio on Election Day.
- - - - - - - - - - - -By Farhad Manjoo
June 23, 2005 About 5 million Ohio citizens went to the polls on Election Day in 2004 and 28 percent of them -- more than a million voters, many of them African-Americans -- experienced some kind of difficulty casting a ballot. This statistic, perhaps not surprising to people who have been poring over irregularities in November's presidential vote, was highlighted in a comprehensive new report on Ohio's election, commissioned by the Democratic National Committee.
The report, the product of a six-month investigation by a team of pollsters, political scientists, computer scientists and other elections experts, paints the most detailed picture so far of all that went wrong in the important swing state on Nov. 2, 2004. It's not a pretty picture.
According to the study, half of the state's African-American voters reported some problems at the polls on Election Day. On average, black voters waited in longer lines than white voters; they were asked to provide identification more often than white voters; they were required to vote on "provisional ballots" more often (and their provisional ballots were counted less often); and they were intimidated at the polls more often than white voters. The DNC found that 16 percent of African-American voters felt intimidated at the polls; some reported hearing that "police would be at the polls to arrest people who had outstanding child support or car payments." Overall, the problems African-Americans saw caused them to question the integrity of the election. While 77 percent of white voters were "very confident" that their votes had been counted, only 19 percent of black voters felt the same way.
"The results show that our election system failed the citizens of Ohio in 2004, and in particular failed African-Americans, new registrants, younger voters and voters in places using touch-screen machines," Howard Dean, the DNC chairman, said at a press conference unveiling the report. Democrats were careful to add that their report did not suggest that John Kerry actually won the race. There was a similarity, the report said, in the pattern of votes cast for Kerry in 2004 and the votes cast for losing Democratic gubernatorial candidate Timothy Hagan in 2002. The pattern, the report declared, provided "strong evidence against the claim that widespread fraud systematically misallocated votes from Kerry to Bush."
Kerry himself said in a statement that he sees the report as a sign that the country needs to reform its voting practices. "We must insist on reform at every level to stop voter suppression, strengthen voting rights and secure funding for election officials to purchase reliable and verifiable voting machines so that the discrepancies the voting rights team found in Ohio do not occur again," Kerry said.
Ohio's elections officials, though, dismissed the report as inaccurate and politically motivated. Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio's Republican secretary of state, criticized several specific findings in the report, and he insisted that many voters, including many African-American voters, voted without any difficulty last year. LoParo suggested that the report's only aim was to embarrass his boss, who is running for governor in 2006. "I think it's a partisan assault on an elected political leader who is the likely 2006 gubernatorial standard bearer in this state," LoParo said of the report.
According to the DNC report, the most pernicious problem Ohioans faced on Election Day was long lines at the polls. Nearly a quarter of the voters in the state waited at least 20 minutes to vote, and 8 percent waited in line for more than an hour. The numbers varied greatly by race. African-Americans waited an average of 52 minutes to vote; the average for white voters was less than 20 minutes.
Many factors contributed to the long lines, including the number of machines available to voters at each precinct, and the specific type of voting technology used in those precincts. Areas that used electronic touch-screen machines -- which have long been criticized because they don't produce an auditable paper trail -- saw the longest wait times. In Franklin County, which includes the city of Columbus and which used touch-screen machines, 74 percent of voters reported waiting more than 20 minutes to vote.
Walter Mebane, a Cornell political scientist who contributed to the report, found that precincts that experienced long lines also saw a reduction in expected voter turnout, as some voters looked at the long lines and decided not to vote. Mebane calculated that the scarcity of machines caused "roughly a 2 to 3 percent reduction" in turnout.
The DNC did not find evidence of a systematic effort to limit the number of voting machines in African-American areas, a charge that many critics of Ohio's procedures have leveled at officials in the state. Mebane said that across the state, the number of machines per registered voter didn't vary greatly by race -- except in one place, Franklin County. There, Mebane explained, "as the proportion of African-Americans in the precinct increased, the expected number of voting machines per registered voter decreased."
When asked about this finding, LoParo of the secretary of state's office pointed out that voting machine distribution plans were drawn up by county elections officials, not by the secretary of state. He noted that the chairman of Franklin County's Board of Elections is an African-American Democrat, William Anthony. Anthony has denied intentionally allocating voting machines in his county in a way that disenfranchised black voters. "I am a black man. Why would I sit there and disenfranchise voters in my own community?" Anthony told the Columbus Dispatch in November. "I've fought my whole life for people's right to vote."
LoParo also disagreed with the DNC's conclusion that procedures in the state reduced voter turnout among African-Americans. He noted that a report by the U.S. Census Bureau released in March found that 67 percent of all blacks eligible to vote in Ohio cast a ballot in 2004, compared with only 55 percent in 2000.
But as the report stressed, many minority voters in the nation's pivotal swing state felt their votes were ignored. And that, Kerry said, amounts to surefire cause for reform. "Our democracy is only as strong as the people's faith that their voice counts and their votes will be counted," he said.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writerFarhad Manjoo is a Salon staff writer
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Wednesday, June 22, 2005
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Tuesday, June 21, 2005
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Monday, June 20, 2005
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Ed Naha: 'Bush: No child left undrugged'
Keep the kids drugged so they won't learn to question authority and read through Bushspeak
The Smirking Chimp
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E-mails show direct White House involvement in Republicanization of PBS
As with Nixon Regime, the Bush-Cheney Gang have a plan to Republicanize PBS or shut it down
The Smirking Chimp
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War crimes: Pre-war bombing raids were illegal, leaked British documents show
prewar bombing of Iraq was illegal, leaked British memos indicate; more War Crimes for Bush and Cheney
The Smirking Chimp
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Coingate allegations arose before '04 election — Democrats say Noe case concealed to assist Bush
Dirty Money and Filthy Politics in Ohio: Let Coingate Unfold....
The Smirking Chimp
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Friday, June 17, 2005
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Thursday, June 16, 2005
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Tuesday, June 14, 2005
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Monday, June 13, 2005
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"Cha Ching" From ¢¢¢ to $$$: How the Bush Crime Syndicate Funneled Foreign Cash Into the U.S. Political System
Bush Crime Family under investigation
Report From Outside the Beltway
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Sunday, June 12, 2005
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Don't Follow the Money - New York Times
Frank Rich goes after cowardly US corporate media who not only are Bush lapdogs but allow Nixon criminals to rehabilitate Tricky Dick (whose regime was a big influence on Bush-Cheney Gang)
Don't Follow the Money - New York Times
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Memo: U.S. Lacked Full Postwar Iraq Plan
more on just leaked Brit memo that complained Bush-Cheney Gang did not have an Iraq plan; will this story, unlike the first Downing St. Memo, have some US media legs or will it too fall into the Black Hole?Memo: U.S. Lacked Full Postwar Iraq Plan
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Saturday, June 11, 2005
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Poll: Bush Job Approval Dips to New Low - Yahoo! News
sour mood as the horror of four more years of Bush-Cheney sinks in; will a terrorism strike or war enable Bush to move forward again?
Poll: Bush Job Approval Dips to New Low - Yahoo! News: "Poll: Bush Job Approval Dips to New Low "
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Friday, June 10, 2005
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Thursday, June 09, 2005
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FALLUJAH, IRAQ: An unnatural disaster
Thanks to Michael Selzer for sending this report:
CPTnet
3 June 2005
FALLUJAH, IRAQ: An unnatural disaster
by Joe Carr
Fallujah is devastating to drive through. There is more destruction and rubble than I've ever seen; even more than in Rafah, Gaza. The U.S. has leveled entire neighborhoods, and about every third building is destroyed or damaged from U.S. in April and November 2004 air ground assaults.
The city looks like it's been hit by a series of tornados. Rubble and bullet holes are everywhere.
We visited a family's home in a neighborhood where every structure is damaged or destroyed. Their home was full of holes and black inside from fire. They said that they'd left during the fighting with their home intact, and returned to find all of their possessions had burned. Three families, more than twenty-five people, now live in this three-room burned-out shell of a home, including four infants.
U.S. checkpoints continue to strangle the city. One shopkeeper said that farmers from around Fallujah can no longer deliver their produce unless they have a U.S.-issued Fallujah ID. The shopkeepers have to go out and pick up the produce. He said the trip takes him around four hours because of the checkpoint delays. "They mistreat us," he said, "they point guns at us and insult us, even the women." Both U.S. and Iraqi troops search through the vegetables roughly, sometimes dumping them on the ground and smashing them.
Iraqis from the rural areas surrounding Fallujah are now dying of treatable illnesses because they can't get through the checkpoints to the Fallujah hospital. One hospital employee said that many patients also die when they try to transfer them to hospitals outside Fallujah.
"It's better to take them in a civilian car than in an ambulance," he said, "because the troops delay and search ambulances more."
A Sunni cleric told us that during the first invasion, several families near his mosque took cover in a home. U.S. troops used megaphones to order all them out into the street and told them to carry a white flag.
They complied, but when they all got out, the soldiers opened fire and killed five. He said one boy had run to his mother who'd been shot, and Americans shot him in the head. A U.S. Commander cried as this happened, "but what good were his tears?" he asked, "He didn't do anything to stop it."
During our meeting with the cleric, a man told us, "The Americans shot and killed my 15-year-old daughter, was she a terrorist?" The U.S.
military denied killing her. "With all respect to you," he said, "I
hate Americans; they killed my family. They shot and killed my sister-in-law while she was washing clothes, and my other brother's hands and feet were blown off." He apologized for interrupting, but said that he had to tell us because he's in so much pain.
Someone once told me, "You can't bomb a resistance out of existence, but you can bomb one into it."
_______________
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Bush Deflates Blair's Africa Plan
Blair's poodling for Bush gets him little support for his African Aid plan and the rest of the world is angry as US greed and stinginess
Bush Deflates Blair's Africa Plan
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Tuesday, June 07, 2005
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Official Played Down Emissions' Links to Global Warming - New York Times
another example of Bush administration falsifying documents and attacking the environment
Official Played Down |
