Author: Cho

Hattip to Publius Revolts for the Helena link.

crossposted from ePluribus Media

You all may remember Roxy’s mother’s problems voting in the 2004 Presidential election, as quoted here Voter Fraud and Fired U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton.

My mother … bless her heart … turns 98 years young today.  To the best of my knowledge she has never missed voting in an election.  I grew up with the mantra — “if you don’t vote, don’t bitch.”  She has lived in the same district for the last 82 years, and in the 2004 election she ran afoul of the Montana’s new voter ID law.

Mom has never had a driver’s license — or any state issued photo ID — and when she got to the polls they asked her for ID.  She didn’t have ID, but determined to vote, she made the person that drove her to the polls take her home to get a piece of mail. (The elections folks would accept her social security card, but would not accept her medical insurance ID or her baptismal certificate).  There are only 753 (maybe less now) people in the little town where she lives.  The poll workers all knew her, her name was on the voting register … yet, the “two men in suits” insisted she provide ID to vote.  

Well, apparently, the tactic of conjuring the false specter of Voter Fraud in order to suppress the vote is still “full steam ahead.”

Yesterday’s Helena Independent Record in its article Under federal pressure, secretary of state changes voter verification lets us know that the crew in the Civil Rights Divison, Voting Section are still hard at work keeping us safe from little old ladies who have voted in the same district for 82 years.

For latest from the Independent Record, jump below the fold.

May 23, 2007 HELENA – Facing mounting pressure from the federal government, Secretary of State Brad Johnson ordered county election officials Tuesday to use a new method to verify Social Security numbers provided by a small percentage of voters to prevent fraud.

Johnson took the step after U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division twice since March 2006 threatened to take enforcement against the Montana secretary of state’s office if Johnson didn’t put a system in place to comply with the 2002 federal Help America Vote Act.

“If your state is not prepared to take this action promptly to comply with HAVA in a timely manner, we are prepared to take appropriate enforcement action,” John Tanner, chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department, said in an April 23 letter to Johnson.

Much of this information is familar to ePluribus Media readers — see Resurrecting Jim Crow: The Erratic Resume of the Voting Section Chief | Dismantling Voting Rights Enforcement | Voter Rights: Is Robert Popper the Fox Guarding the Henhouse? | and The Voting Rights Act, Voter Disfranchisement and the Tail Wagging the Dog.

But it’s worth pointing out a little known organization, the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), incorporated as a 501(c)3 non-profit two years ago on March 3rd 2005 in Virgina, is the  engine that pushes the meme of Voter Fraud, through propaganda, legislation, and amicus briefs.

As sentient Americans recognize, voter fraud as  a serious threat to democracy has been debunked by several news organizations, including The New York Times. Even the Department of Justice’s numbers show how miniscule the problem of voter fraud is: according to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division announcement that, after 5 years of intense work through the Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Initiative, a mere 86 individuals have been convicted of ballot fraud offenses, (119 individuals have been charged).

That averages out to a stunning (snark intended) 17 persons (out of, what, maybe 2.3 billion???) a year proven to have committed ballot fraud — and this after an intense “initiative” by the DOJ, complete with annual two-day seminars intended to train DOJ staff to spot and investigate the scalywags!

Yet in these times of fear of the immigrating “brown other,”  the threat of voter fraud provides a perfect cover for dismantling voting rights and manipulating elections.

I just keep thinking about Roxy’s Mom.

Update [2006-2-2 10:28:19 by Cho]: Kfred has another thread investigating the connections among some “lesser known players” in the Enron data dump. These would include the Alexander Strategy group, which was founded by, as source watch tells us:

Ed Buckham, Thomas D. DeLay’s former Chief of Staff, “with a huge initial contract that DeLay secured from Enron. (The group also paid DeLay’s wife a salary for several years).

Kfed’s commentary asking for help with this line of searching is here: ENRON Database mining continues: Buckham

—————————————

Anyone interested in trying to connect the dots among the cronies — Delay, Enron, GOPUSA (Jeff Gannon’s outfit) and that little thing called the California energy crisis?

Grab your shovels and your picks, the ePluribus Media researchers received some very interesting data and  can use help.  On a tip from the Moon of Alabama folks, they’ve got access to a treasure trove of emails among Enron and GOPUSA, “employer” of our old friend Jeff Gannon.   As just one tantalizing tidbit, all the key GOPUSA-ers had Enron email addresses, how convenient is that? Right now some of the ePMedia folk are combing through and collating what they find.

Kfred’s starting pulling together the data that links Abramoff, Reed and Delay here:

ENRON FILES: Abramoff? Reed? Delay?? Yes.  

WanderIndiana’s been tracking the interesting connections between Enron and GOPUSA — more than just the convenient email address “connection” at:

Help Us Dig Through Enron Email: GOPUSA

As kfred noted in her Cheers and Jeers post:

Anyway – Cheers to someone putting all of the Enron emails sucked up by the government onto the web in a searchable form.
Cheers to the fact it was legally obtained, by court order, approved by a judge, unlike some data sucking that has been done by a certain guy who has jaw twitches and stands behind a podium and goes “heh heh”

If you want some brain exercises or just plain fun, check the preliminary results of our playing in this candy store, Join US!

As reported by Huffington Post:

Former U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said yesterday that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq might not have occurred if the United States had known there were no weapons of mass destruction in the country, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Dec. 5).

link: Architect Of Iraq War Wolfowitz: Maybe No War If We Had Known There Were No WMDs…

Guess it’s time to start singing the old Pete Seger song, “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” and the fool says to push on.

Lyrics below the fold.
It was back in nineteen forty-two,
I was part of a good platoon.
We were on manoeuvers in Louisiana,
One night by the light of the moon.
The captain said, “We’ve got to ford the river”,
That’s where it all began.
We were knee deep in the Big Muddy,
And the damn fool kept yelling to push on.

The Sergeant said, “Sir, are you sure,
This is the way back to the base?”
“Sergeant, I once crossed this river
Not a mile above this place.
It’ll be a little soggy but we’ll keep slogging.
We’ll soon be on dry ground.”
We were waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fool kept yelling to push on.

“Captain, sir, with all this gear
No man’ll be able to swim.”
“Sergeant, don’t be a Nervous Nellie,”
The Captain said to him.
“All we need is a little determination;
Follow me, I’ll lead on.”
We were neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fool kept yelling to push on.

All of a sudden, the moon clouded over,
All we heard was a gurgling cry.
A second later, the captain’s helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, “Turn around men!
I’m in charge from now on.”
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the captain dead and gone.

We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn’t know that the water was deeper
Than the place where he’d once been.
For another stream had joined the Muddy
A half mile from where we’d gone.
We were lucky to get out of the Big Muddy
When the damn fool kept yelling to push on.

Well, you might not want to draw conclusions
I’ll leave that to yourself
Maybe you’re still walking, maybe you’re still talking
Maybe you’ve still got your health.
But every time I hear the news
That old feeling comes back on;
We’re waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fools kept yelling to push on.

Knee deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fools keep yelling to push on
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fools keep yelling to push on
Waist deep! Neck deep! we’ll be drowning before too long
We’re neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fools keep yelling to push on

TRO © 1967 Melody Trails, Inc. New York, NY

Last Sunday night (30th) we ran down to the park to join a neighbor who had sent out an impromptu email, “join me for star-gazing — conditions good.  Mars doing its thing.”

So a small party of about 6 neighbors huddled in the Autumn cold, looking through his telescope as well as his 70X binoculars on a tripod.

Photo linked to on the NASA site: Above: a Taurid fireball photographed Oct. 28, 2005, by Hiroyuki Iida of Toyama, Japan.
We did the usual (to some it might be dull and boring, geeky even). We checked out the Andromeda galaxy (2.2 MILLION light years away) and the dustballs in the Hercules constellation.

But with the heavens, there’s always the special effects. As I was busy fiddling with my binoculars — I heard the gathered crew collectively ooooooh and awwwwwwwh.  

An immense meteorite streaked across the sky and then literally “exploded” they said, in a giant fireworks burst.  

 Half an hour later, I too was a witness.

An unbelievable flare, gashed the night sky, clean across the horizontal — a long lazy tail and then a skipping explosion of light at the end. Brighter than the moon, had there been one.

The NASA site reports that fireballs, the Taurid meteorites, have been lighting up the skies around the world. This year seems to be an especially intense one for these unusual meteorites.

Their peak period is from the 4th through the 12th, so if you get a chance to see some dark sky, run out and do so, the fireballs are awesome.

[UDPATE] TO correct that little problem I have with zeros — billions should be millions.

Xposted at ePluribus Media Community

Bored with these guys yet?

The good news then is that we think we have found all but 2 or 3 of the statues.  That means this is the penultima frog marching commentary.  

Quick Background for those who are new to my quest: Tired of waiting for any of the criminals to be “frog marched” out of the White House, we have been following another type of frog march — the march of frog statues honoring the not-yet-famous frog bridge in Willimantic.    We have been in a hunt to find each one.

Okay, okay.  So it’s been a tough week.

Good enough reason for the Better Half to initiate  another search.  And sure enough, the town of Willimantic complied and “hopped” out a September podful of the fiberglass statues.

Reader Frog is stationed outside the library.  Notice the literary frogs painted on his spool.

This guy I named Peace Vigil.  He sits on the corner of Main Street and Jackson, right across from the Frog Bridge.  It’s the corner where the Casey Sheehan vigil was held back in August.  Since then, I have discovered that all Peace Vigils are held on this corner, including the one every Thursday night against the war in Iraq.

I have also learned that the real Frog Bridge frogs have official names: Willy, Manny, Windy and Swift.

 Willimantic spawned the first two names (Willi and Manny). Windy is for Windham county — in which Willimantic is situated, and Swift is a reference to the translation of the Alonquin Willimantic, which means “land of the swift running water.”

Below is another view of the Peace Vigil frog, this time as he looks across to the real guys on the Frog Bridge.

In the photo beneath this paragraph, this little radio guy with the earphones, Wili Frog, is tucked away beside the Wili Radio station headquarters.(The station created the boombox Fourth of July parade.

Over ten years ago, the town was way too poor and was planning to cancel the parade. No live bands to be found willing to march. But Wili radio to the rescue… they played marching band music, everyone brought their boombox, and Voila! we had the “original” boombox parade. Firsties. )

Finally, we found this guy, Fire Chief Frog by the fire station.  Some stations have dalmations, some have frogs.

The fire engines are in the background and a fire hose wrapped around his threadspool base.  He’s not too far from the LilyPad [Look, the town doesn’t have one blasted other thing to its credit (besides Eastern Connecticut University and maybe the Willimantic Brewhouse). Cut them a little slack.] Willimantic also has the Frogview market, the Lilypad, it’s a theme thing.

We are going to have to go back though, for yet another search.  Rove is still at his job in the White House, despite bush’s best posturing. This frog hunt will have to do because so far, there’s been no frog marching of the deeply soul satisfying kind.

(Disclaimer #1:  I have no connection with the Willimantic Frogfest.  Disclaimer #2:  I have made up my own names for the frogs, just to identify them.)  

I started these for Booman, but also cross posted at ePluribus Media Community Discussion site.

Why are the original Jeff Gannon diaries especially relevant after Katrina?

In the seven or eight months since the Gannon Diaries first appeared on Dkos, I have thought a lot about the success of SusanG in those diaries, and how her model has been an inspiration that I see at work everywhere on the internet in these trying days after Katrina.

She asked a question and invited the Kossacks to help her.  “Who is this guy?” she asked. “Any one care to join me in finding out?” she invited.   They did, we did, and we found out – Jeff Gannon was James Guckert.

Over the weekend, I witnessed that same model in play again, adopted wholesale by the denizens of the web.  “What are the FEMA blunders?”, countless diaries by pb, Georgia10, BrinVT and others asked.  “Help me find out.  Post your stories here,” they invited.

Other bloggers focused on the events and chose to document as much as possible what really happened before sites got scrubbed or propaganda spin took hold.  They too put out the call for help constructing timelines or locating documents.

But there is more to the success of Gannon Diaries.   Two other key ingredients.

SusanG was tireless in nurturing the threads.  When people posted a good piece of information, she was right there with a comment, asking questions, thanking them, clarifying a connection.  

And then she summarized, often. Every day or so she would put out another diary summarizing the storyline to date, highlighting the new information, and then restating the Question – but now more focused – such as “What about military experience?” And she reiterated the invitation over and over again to join her.

Finally, what really distinguished this effort from other blogging was the early insistence on fact checking, verifying and never using questionable evidence in her summaries.  Also critical were her continued calls to never ever include personal private information.

There’s no magic here but certainly there is certainly brilliance.

• State the question
• Invite participation
• Nurture the discussion
• Summarize frequently
• Never post personal information
• Fact check and verify

Hope you all don’t mind, as this is a cross post from ePluribus Media Community The Gannon Diaries’ Relevance to Katrina Coverage

I was reading through the FEMA updates this past week, both leading up to Katrina making landfall on the Gulf Coast and after.

Here is the link for that update in case you can’t read the threat level on the screen grab:
August 27, 2005

Many interesting things to be found in those updates, but something jumped out.  Notice the Homeland Security Threat Level: YELLOW (Elevated) — What?  Only elevated?  For a potential Category 4-5 Hurricane??

Out of curiosity, I went looking:

    Sunday August 28, 2005 = Yellow
     Monday August 29, 2005 = Yellow
     (landfall)
    Tuesday August 30, 2005 = Yellow
Wednesday August 31, 2005 = Yellow
      Thursday Sept 2, 2005   = Yellow
             Friday Sept 2, 2005 = Yellow
       Saturday Sept 3, 2005 = Yellow
         Sunday Sept 4, 2005 = Yellow

Some questions below:

• So tell me again, what Federal emergency could be a threat warning higher than this disaster? Orange?   Red??

• So tell me again, how much did it cost to create the color coded warning alert system?

• So tell me again, what was the color of the warning when an airplane accidentally flew into the white house airspace?

• So tell me again, what was the color of the warning when Bush’s poll numbers dropped before the election?  during the Democratic Convention?

Please, I want to know.

Why this disaster is only rated a middling “warning” of possible alerts.

Was the sole purpose of the color coded security threat warning system for propaganda and not to be of use to the American people in understanding the severity of the threats to their safety??

For reference, the Security Threat color coding:
Department of Homeland Security

Hope it’s not rude to have cross posted this from the ePluribus Media Community Security Threat STILL Yellow

This commentary attempts to make of a small offering of art as a brief respite from all the horrific news from the gulf coast.

Quick Background: Tired of waiting for any of the criminals to be “frog marched” out of the White House, we have been following another type of frog march — the march of frog statues honoring the not yet famous frog bridge in Willimantic. The frog statues are part of the 2005 Frog Leap festivities. We have been in a hunt to find each one.

These are the latest finds for anyone who is not bored with our quest.

The earlier frogs are in this commentary Frog Marching. And the first ones are in a diary at Booman Frog Marching for Booman.

This Doctor Frog is stationed inside the lobby of the hospital, and we wouldn’t have found it had it not been for a story in the newspaper. So I can’t really claim to have “discovered” him.

(Disclaimer #1: I have no connection with the frogfest. Disclaimer #2: I have made up my own names for the frogs, just to identify them.) More below.

The Frog Chief and The Patch Work Frog

The frog on the left also has Indian frogs in feathered headdresses painted around the spool base. This statue is stationed across from a strip mall on a grassy meriden.

This Patch Work Frog is stationed at the old Slater Mills on the banks of the Willimantic River Mill Pond. The Slater Mills and American Thread were once economic powers in this New England mill town.

American Thread is long gone, but its memory remains in the thread spools upon which the frogs sit and the renovated mills that now house artist studios, businesses, and other tenants.

Below is the Mill Frog, who is the first one of the frogs who is not painted, but a decoupage of photos of the Slater Mills. Sorry for the bigger photo, but it might be easier to see the detail of the mill parts. This guy is situated in front of the town offices.

Cross Posted at ePluribus Media Community site at Frog Marching Redux.

Over at the ePluribus Media Community site, (not the Journal, where the official stories will be published–that is coming soon), there are some experiments with podcasting. If you would like to come listen, here’s the link:
Voices from ePluribus Media

Hope it isn’t rude to do so; I have included Kay Shepherd’s show notes below.
ePluribus Media News Roundup for August 22, 2005 #002

Shownotes:

This week’s host: Kay Shepherd

• Top story: ePMedia in Crawford, Texas, at the Cindy Sheehan anti-war vigil
  

  Denise Ford talks about Brian Keeler’s series of columns posted from
  Crawford

• The Valerie Plame leak story just keeps going and going — Philip
  Curtis has written an article about Assistant Secretary of Commerce
  Israel Hernandez and his grand jury testimony in July

  Leslie Fleury talks about Hernandez’s history with the Bush family and the stakes for both

• Newest installment in the Candidate Q&A Series — Michael Cote interviews Sheldon Whitehouse, running as a Democrat for U.S. Senate in Rhode Island
  

  Lew Aptifer talks about the Rhode Island race and how a bluest of
  the blue state elected Republican Lincoln Chafee

• The Chesapeake Bay continues to be degraded under an environmental
  threat that should have been abated by interstate legislation

  
  Deborah Reyher talks about her Bay series and how development exemptions and lax enforcement are fouling conservation efforts.

Featured links:
Brian Keeler’s Crawford series
Philip Curtis’ Israel Hernandez story
The Candidate Q&A Series: Michael Cote interviews Sheldon Whitehouse

Deborah Reyher’s Chesapeake Bay series

The frog march that we are really anxious to see — the frog march of Karl Rove out of the White House — may take many more months.

In the meantime, I and the Better Half have been tracking a more local frog march, the “frog march” to Willimantic.

The frogs in this march are obviously not Rove (though someone did point out an odd resemblance, especially in the chin area). These are artists’ renditions of the Not-Yet-Famous Frog Bridge of Willimantic.

Now, Willimantic is about as poor as an old run down mill town in New England can be. But it’s got its frogs.

And until the real thing with Rove happens, we have been making do by tracking down the statues.

Photos compliments of Better Half.

More photos below.

Follow the frog prints

For this frog march, so that one doesn’t get lost on mainstreet (pretty hard as it is barely a mile stretch), the way is marked with frog stencils on the sidewalk. (My photo, difficult to mess up a shot of a sidewalk.)

The Frog Walk

By following the frog prints, one comes to just about every establishment in town, including the local artist cooperative.

The Granny Quilt Frog

I have probably bored everyone with the other three that we found, but for anyone who missed those and might possibly want to see them, they are here in this diary: Frog March for Booman.

We had to go by the real Frog Bridge with the real frog statues on our way home. Here are the two on the North side, sitting on their thread spools.

North end of Not-Yet-Famous Frog Bridge

..and stop once more by the Frog of the Spring, which may be my favorite. Though, come to think of it, I am beginning to see that Karl Rove resemblance about the chin.

Front view of the Frog of the Spring

Update [2005-8-19 10:34:9 by Cho]: Oh…my ePMedia buddies reminded me to say:

Come join us at ePluribus Media Community Discussion site.