State of the Union

Kenneth Blackwell: Can he be trusted?

allots prior to the '04 election. The ChairperElected officials should be held accountable for their poor leadership. Kenneth Blackwell, as Ohio Secretary of State was responsible for administering elections in the state of Ohio. His poor leadership caused confusion in voter registrations, and his lack of oversight with county boards of elections resulted in the disenfranchisement of thousands of Ohioans. In Franklin County, many of us witnessed the extremely long lines and confusion, but that was nothing compared to Lucas County (Toledo).

The election was so poorly administered in Lucas County that Mr Blackwell's office was forced to investigate. His report contained the following:

*failure to maintain ballot security
*inability to implement and maintain a trackable system for ballot reconciliation.
*issuance & acceptance of incorrect ballot reconciliation.
*failure to prepare & develop a plan for processing the voluminous amount of voter registration forms received.
*manipulation of the 3% recount process.
*disjointed removal of Nader & Camejo from the ballot.

Responses to State of the Union Address

The Institute for Public Accuracy has a PDF critique of the State of the Union for public distribution at: http://accuracy.org/s2006.pdf.  Please spread the word about this to activists.

We can't make this s--t up

Dear Friends:

After Tom DeLay was forced out as House Majority Leader, three candidates emerged to replace him. They were Roy Blunt (Missouri), John Boehner (Ohio), and John Shadegg (Arizona).

They held the vote today. Blunt had the most votes. But the ballot was disqualified because MORE VOTES WERE CAST THAN ELIGIBLE VOTERS! This is not a joke, folks.

They held a second ballot. Guess who won? Boehner, FROM OHIO! Could Moliere have written a better play than this?

Thought you'd all find it amusing.

Phony UN airplanes to provoke war

The Guardian is reporting that Bush told Blair "that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of 'flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours'. Mr Bush added: 'If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]'."
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/7408

This came out in a memo obtained by Phillipe Sands, QC, for the new edition of his book "Lawless World."  The memo is apparently the minutes of a two-hour meeting between Bush and Blair (and possibly the cast of Monty Python) which took place at the White House on January 31, 2003 – close to two months before the "decision" to go to war. 

Being a national activist

Remarks prepared for California Democratic Party Progressive Caucus meeting in Los Angeles, Jan. 28, 2006

I was asked to speak about "Creating National Action as an Individual," so here are a few thoughts.  Back in May, five of us individuals brought a bunch of groups together as a coalition called "After Downing Street" www.afterdowningstreet.org  We used the internet and radio and lots of activism to force the Downing Street Minutes into the news.  Our success came from tapping into passion among a large section of the public for exposing the war lies and pushing the idea of impeachment. 

We helped organize hearings in Congress and helped promote various bills that created debate but were killed in committee.  We helped move opinion against the war by exposing its fraudulent basis.  We helped make it safe for Congressman Conyers to create an investigation into grounds for impeachment.  It wasn't five people who did this, though, it was hundreds of thousands.  And it wasn't an organization, but a coalition with organizations as members.

What an idiot!

Bush jumpstarts the alternative energy movement with his own hot air demonstration

When Gore Vidal endorsed last night's demonstrations against Bush’s ridiculous I-am-the-state theatrical stunt, he added the pithy comment: "Go back to Crawford. We’ll help raise the money for a library, and you’ll never even ever have to read a book." As always, Vidal has perfectly framed the argument for resistance to this anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-thought, anti-agenda. And while the networks and pundits and media shills gawk and preen and profit off the spectacle of this horrific failure, this loser in the most profound sense of the term, this puppet plutocrat who brings nothing to the table except for his legendary ability to drink everyone under it—an as-yet-unindicted war criminal with more blood on his hands than the tyrants from whom he liberates the world in the name of (and at the direction of) his Lord and Savior—we must make our own noise, in the name of the unnumbered and unidentified dead whose corpses pave the way to Heaven for Bush and his psychopathic band of theocrats.

Enron: The Bush Administration's first scandal

Opening arguments in the long-awaited criminal trial of former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay and company president Jeffrey Skilling is expected to start soon now that a jury has been selected for the case.  

For many people familiar with the high-flying energy company's meteoric rise and sudden downfall four years ago, Enron and the company's crooked "E" logo have come to represent corporate greed, corruption and excess.

But more important, Enron should be symbolic for something else: it was the first in a long list of corporate scandals involving the Bush administration and numerous members of Congress.

Back in August 2001, just two months before Enron imploded in a wave of accounting scandals in which thousands of employees lost their jobs and their pensions, and which wiped out $60 billion in shareholder value, an Enron lobbyist tipped off the Bush administration about the company's impending financial problems.

Smothering the King legacy with kind words

Hours after Coretta Scott King died, President Bush led off the State of the Union address by praising her as “a beloved, graceful, courageous woman who called America to its founding ideals and carried on a noble dream.” For good measure, at the end of his speech, Bush reverently invoked the name of her martyred husband, Martin Luther King Jr.

The president is one of countless politicians who zealously oppose most of what King struggled for -- at the same time that they laud his name with syrupy words. It wouldn’t be shrewd to openly acknowledge the basic disagreements. Instead, Bush and his allies offer up platitudes while pretending that King’s work ended with the fight against racial segregation.

Now that Dr. King’s widow is no longer alive, the smarmy process will be even easier: Just praise him as a beloved civil rights leader, as though the last few years of his life -- filled with struggles for economic justice and peace -- didn’t exist. Ignore King’s profound challenge to the kind of budget priorities and militarism holding sway today.

For the State of the Union on Jan. 31, the president was eager to

Anything but failure

AUSTIN, Texas -- "We're on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory. First, we are helping Iraqis build an inclusive government, so that old resentments will be eased and the insurgency will be marginalized. Second, we're continuing reconstruction efforts and helping the Iraqi government to fight corruption and build a modern economy, so all Iraqis can experience the benefit of freedom. And, third, we're striking terrorist targets while we train Iraqi forces that are increasingly capable of defeating the enemy." -- George W. Bush

"The Iraq war has been a disaster." -- CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour.

-- The number of terrorist attacks per day in Iraq grew from 55 in December 2004 to 77 per day in December 2005.

-- Electricity production in Iraq has not yet recovered to prewar levels, and the electricity in Baghdad is on less today than it was under Saddam Hussein. On the other hand, telephone and Internet use are up.

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