I was going to comment at length about Bush's thuggish behavior in Chile, but I've decided to more or less skip it except to say that we should all get used to having this redneck dumbass continue to embarrass us in his global role as our "leader." His gangster like style and idiotic policies will only get worse.
Let's get down to "bidness:"
In a study that will no doubt be dismissed by the Neocons and their willing slaves as "liberal, partisan, and biased," thousands of "surprise" Bush votes surfaced during a recent examination of the Florida election by a team of Berkley graduate students..
Study Finds Florida 'Ghost' E-Votes
Cal trio: Results showing a Bush boost may help stop future snags
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1119-01.htm
In the nation's first academic study of the Florida 2004 vote, University of California, Berkeley graduate students and a professor have found intriguing evidence that electronic-voting counties there could have mistakenly awarded up to 260,000 votes to President Bush.
Something went awry with the voting in Florida.
The discrepancy, reported Thursday, is insufficient by itself to sway the outcome of the presidential race in Florida, but the UC Berkeley team called on Florida elections officials for an investigation.
"This is a no-vote-left-behind kind of project, not a change-the-president project," said UC Berkeley sociology professor Michael Hout, who oversaw the research. "We're as interested in the next election as the one just over."
Broadly speaking, the UC Berkeley team found that Bush received tens of thousands more votes in electronic-voting Democratic counties than past voting patterns would have suggested. No such pattern turned up in counties using optical scanning machines.
The UC Berkeley report has not been peer reviewed, but a reputable MIT political scientist succeeded in replicating the analysis Thursday at the request of the Oakland Tribune and The Associated Press. He said an investigation is warranted.
"There is an interesting pattern here that I hope someone looks into," said MIT arts and social sciences Dean Charles Stewart III, a researcher in the MIT-Caltech Voting Technology Project.
Stewart isn't convinced the problem is electronic voting. It could be absentee voting or some quirk of election administration. But whatever the problem, it didn't show up in counties using optical scanning machines. Rather than offer evidence of fraud or voting problems, the UC Berkeley study infers they exist mathematically.
Frustrated at the lowbrow, data-poor nature of allegations of election fraud flooding the Internet, three Berkeley grad students decided to apply the tools of first-year statistics class.
"We decided, well, you might as well test it properly instead of sitting around speculating," said first-year sociology grad student Laura Mangels. She and two colleagues downloaded voting and demographic data, ran them through statistics software and in the first night had results that produced a collective "Wow" among the students, she said.
CNN takes a "conspiracy theory" approach to dealing with the issue. The Berkley team is portrayed as being unhealthily "FIXATED" on recounting the votes. Not only that, but according to CNN, they apparently speak for the whole of academia! Anyone CRAZY enough like the Berkley students (who of course are just a bunch of dirty liberals ANYWAY...) to study the voting evidence WHEN BUSH SO CLEARLY GOT A MANDATE FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE is obviously a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist...(so sit down and shut up...hippy...)
Academia still fixated on November 2
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- John Kerry conceded defeat more than two weeks ago, and President Bush has already revamped his Cabinet. But as states certify final election returns, an academic debate over their accuracy is heating up.
None of the experts examining the returns has discovered voting anomalies significant enough to have swung the election.
Despite Internet-circulated speculation that Bush's victory was somehow stolen or rigged, the incumbent's clear margin in the popular vote count is much wider than any of the problems reported to date -- be they voting technology failures, problems with provisional ballots or partisan shenanigans.
"We conclude that there is no evidence, based on exit polls, that electronic voting machines were used to steal the election for President Bush," researchers at the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in an influential report based on early unofficial returns in Florida.
Still, many Americans who mistrust e-voting have seized on the exit polls, wondering whether something nefarious might explain what happened on November 2.
Early in the day, exit polling suggested Kerry was heading for a close win in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania; by day's end, Kerry had won Pennsylvania but Bush had comfortable margins in both Florida and Ohio.
While voting machine makers said their equipment had few problems given the millions of ballots cast, watchdog groups received about 2,000 complaints about lost and miscounted votes and machine breakdowns.
Nearly three-dozen Kerry supporters in Florida said they had to repeatedly override the machines to avoid having their votes recorded for Bush.
Internet buzz that perhaps the exit polls were correct and the actual returns might be flawed grew louder this week when sociology graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley went public with an analysis arguing that Florida results in counties using electronic ballots differed from historical voting patterns.
Critics of the Berkeley research say Bush's success may simply be due to a better get-out-the-vote effort, or fears of terrorism driving many Democrats to choose Bush over party loyalty.
"Nationwide it looks like, regardless of the type of voting machines used, Bush was getting a faster mobilization of voters in traditionally Democratic areas than were the Democrats," said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at MIT who specializes in American politics and research methodology.
Stewart said any Florida discrepancies between historic patterns and the November 2 vote may be explained by nationwide trends -- for example, while Republicans easily won many rural and suburban areas they also made impressive gains in urban areas.
Those Berkley students aren't the only people crying "Foul" over the suspicious nature of the 2004 elections. The head of Zogby International, Ralph Nader, and University of Pennsylvania Professor Steven F Freeman (MORE ACADEMICS!!!!) are calling into question the results of "the Armageddon election."
Published on Thursday, November 18, 2004 by Inter Press Service
US Election: Democracy in Question
by Ritt Goldstein
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1118-11.htm
STOCKHOLM - John Zogby, president of the polling firm Zogby International, told IPS he has been calling it "the Armageddon election" for about a year. Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader believes the Republican Party was able to "steal it before election day."
Facts suggest something went very wrong on Nov. 2.
Speculation focuses upon a number of questions -- purposeful miscounts, anomalies surrounding electronic voting (e-voting) machines, particularly the optical scan types; and numerous reports of voting "irregularities" in heavily Democratic areas.
"What they 'do' is minorities," Nader said, highlighting the thrust of Republican efforts, "and make sure that there aren't enough voting machines for the minority areas. They have to wait in line ... for hours, and most of them don't. There are all kinds of ways, and that's why I was quoted as saying, "this election was hijacked from A to Z," Nader told IPS.
Zogby was concerned about the difference between some of the exit polls (surveys of individuals who have just cast ballots) and the official vote counts. "We're talking about the Free World here," he pointedly noted.
On Nov. 10, University of Pennsylvania Professor Steven F Freeman, whose expertise includes "research methods," compiled an analysis entitled 'The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy'. The document was prepared in view of the unusually large differences between what exit polls had predicted and the recorded vote tallies.
His findings suggest Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry should have received far more votes than he did.
In three of the key battleground states -- Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania -- Freeman's analysis states the odds of Kerry receiving the percentage of votes recorded, given the exit poll findings, were less than three in one thousand, per state.
Freeman also determined that the odds of any two of these states simultaneously reaching their stated vote tallies were "on the order of one-in-a-million," and the odds of all three states arriving at the vote counts they did "are 250 million to one."
We should all keep our eyes and ears open for an attempt by the Bush administration to SERIOUSLY try to place controls on free speech on the Internet. Just because Ashcroft has been "retired" doesn't make the waters any safer for freedom. He was just the tip of the Neocon iceberg. If I were a Neocon and I wanted to make the Internet safe for Bushocracy, I would start the process by using the glut of pornography on the web as an excuse to clamp down on Internet use.
This "study" organized by Republican Sen. Sam Brownback sounds like it had it's conclusions drawn well before any research was even undertaken.
Amazingly, (but not surprisingly...) their panel of "experts" (a motley crew of Christian extremist crackpots) claim that pornography is as addictive and harmful as heroin (!?!?!?!?)
Addiction to porn destroying lives, Senate told
- CONNIE CASS, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, November 18, 2004
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/11/18/national1907EST0715.DTL r
Comparing pornography to heroin, researchers on Thursday called on Congress to finance studies on "porn addiction" and launch a public health campaign about the dangers.
"We're so afraid to talk about sex in our society that we really give carte blanche to the people who are producing this kind of material," said James B. Weaver, a Virginia Tech professor who studies the impact of pornography.
Internet pornography is corrupting children and hooking adults into an addiction that threatens their jobs and families, a panel of anti-porn advocates told the hearing organized by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., chairman of the Commerce subcommittee on science.
Brownback, a father of five, said when he was a boy, the typical kid's exposure was limited to occasional peeks at dirty magazines illicitly obtained by a buddy.
Now, he said, pornography seems pervasive. Children run across it while researching homework on the Internet. Vulgar ads arrive unexpectedly by e-mail. Some of his middle-age male friends limit their time alone in hotel rooms to avoid the temptation of graphic pay-per-view movies, Brownback said.
Mary Anne Layden, co-director of a sexual trauma program at the University of Pennsylvania, said pornography's effect on the brain mirrors addiction to heroin or crack cocaine. She told of one patient, a business executive, who arrived at his office at 9 a.m. each day, logged onto Internet porn sites, and didn't log off until 5 p.m.
Layden called for billboards and bus ads warning people to avoid pornography, strip clubs and prostitutes.
The panel discussion ranged from hardcore, violent pornography to audience complaints about a sexually suggestive promo that aired prior to this week's "Monday Night Football" game.
Brownback, an outspoken Christian conservative who has championed efforts to curb indecency on television and the Internet, said the public is beginning to realize "they don't just have to take it."
But he acknowledged the First Amendment right to free speech has limited congressional efforts.
In June, the Supreme Court blocked a law designed to shield Web-surfing children from pornography, ruling that requiring adults to register or use access codes before viewing objectionable material would infringe on their rights.
Brownback said scientific data is needed to help his cause.
Weaver acknowledged that research "directly assessing the impact of pornography addiction on families and communities is rather limited."
But he pointed to studies that show prolonged use of pornography leads to "sexual callousness, the erosion of family values and diminished sexual satisfaction."
Judith Reisman, a vocal critic of the Kinsey Institute and the field of sexology, suggested Congress require police officers to gather evidence of pornography at crime scenes to further research.
Betcha Officer Friendly will have a BLAST gathering that evidence, probably even start working overtime most nights...huh huh... It's a tough job, but SOMEBODY'S got to look at all them dirty pictures to see how bad they are...huh huh...
Buckle up, this doesn't look good. Trying to control the internet is like trying to grab smoke but that doesn't mean that the religious nuts running this country won't be able to make things difficult for a lot of us over the next few years.
For you few liberals who are still in denial that the US has become a Fundamentalist Christian theocracy, here is an article from the Guardian detailing Pat Robertson's deathgrip on Red State America's collective (un)consciousness...
Televangelical tentacles
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1355381,00.html
TV evangelist Pat Robertson is threatening to mobilise millions of his Christian viewers and "de-liberalise" the US judiciary, writes Philip James.
Friday November 19, 2004
There is a defining moment in the life of every news organisation that marks a coming of age. In the case of CNN it was the opening bombardment of the first Gulf war. The upstart cable channel went live to Peter Arnett in Baghdad, while the traditional broadcast networks could only watch from their New York studios in shock and awe.
In the case of the Manchester Guardian, it was the day in 1959 when the paper reached beyond its Mancunian roots to become a national newspaper. And in the case of The 700 Club, Pat Robertson's daily evangelical news broadcast, it was November 3 2004. The day it became clear that George Bush had won a second term.
This day formally marked the transformation of The 700 Club. No longer could it be viewed as an outlet of relevance only to the loony Christian right. Not only did it join the ranks of the mainstream media. In many ways it supplanted them. Suddenly, if you seriously wanted to take the pulse of America, you had to tune your TV to the news division of televangelism.
The 700 Club has been operating under the radar of traditional journalistic scrutiny for over two decades. Anchored by Pat Robertson, he initially created it as a vehicle to promote his personal political ambitions. After his failed presidential bid in 1988, Robertson founded the Christian Coalition and embarked on an ambitious plan to influence the mainstream political agenda from the inside out.
He used The 700 Club as the marketing and political advocacy tool of this plan. The broadcast's focus is instructing viewers on how they could best lobby elected officials to enact the Christian right's agenda.
Robertson's show regularly has more viewers than CNN. And while the rest of the world wasn't watching he has been phenomenally successful in realising a three part blueprint to essentially take over all branches of the US Government.
Goal number one was to take over Congress, and Robertson can honestly take credit for the Republican revolution of 1994. Of the 52 freshman Republican congressman, who ended four decades of Democratic rule that year, 44 owed their election to the Christian coalition which endorsed them on The 700 Club. The coalition's scorecards, ranking candidates on issues from abortion to marriage and family were a regular feature of the broadcast, promoting hand-picked candidates and discrediting unfavourable ones.
Goal number two was the presidency. George Bush made it to the White House and is there today, because of the lockstep support of The 700 Club's faithful, who make up the bedrock of the "values voter".
Goal number three is yet to be achieved: taking over the legislature. From his anchor chair, Robertson is coordinating an intricate strategy to de-liberalise every court from the Supreme Court down to federal judges at the district level.
The key to Robertson's success so far has been his obsessive attention to legislative details, the minute, often picayune rules that together constitute the levers of political change. In his attempt to wrestle control of the last branch of government his approach is the same.
Up to now arcane Senate rules have impeded the appointment of jurists friendly to the Robertson agenda. So Robertson is using his television pulpit to change them. Current Senate regulations allow a minority of Democrats to prevent votes on judges they don't like from ever taking place by employing a technical filibuster. The filibuster can only be overturned by a super-majority of sixty senators - a number Republicans cannot reach.
But Robertson has discovered that the Senate filibuster rules can be amended at the opening of the next Senate session in January at the discretion of the Senate majority leader Bill Frist - a detail insiders say the Tennessee Republican was not even aware of himself.
So for weeks Robertson has been flashing the senator's telephone number on the screen and imploring viewers to jam the congressional switchboard with demands that Frist change the filibuster rules so that it can be overturned by a simple majority of 51 votes - a number Republicans can muster. Frist is now considering doing just that. Come January the procedural block on a raft of reactionary judges may be lifted before the first gavel comes down.
While the admittedly liberal mainstream media are still scratching their heads, wondering how they missed the tectonic shift in favour of the Christian right in this country, they may still be looking in the wrong place for hints at what the future holds.
CNN's promotional tagline may be "watch what happens next", but to really know what's about to unfold in today's America you need to switch on The 700 Club.
Iraq, Iraq, Iraq...
The US military and their Washington enablers still don't seem to be able to comprehend the cause and effect of shitting on a subjected people and their subsequent violent resentment of being shat upon. Until SOMEBODY in the Pentagon or Congress gets a clue, the streets of Iraq will continue to run red with blood and eventually an entire generation could be lost in both Iraq AND the US.
As U.S. Forces Raided a Mosque
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1119-02.htm
BAGHDAD - An eyewitness commentary to IPS through a U.S. raid on a Baghdad mosque Friday gives a vivid picture of what a 'successful raid' can be like.
US and Iraqi soldiers, stormed the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad during Friday prayers opening fire and killing at least three people, according to eyewitnesses. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
U.S. soldiers raided the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad during Friday prayers, killing at least four and wounding up to 20 worshippers.
At 12:30 pm local time, just after Imam Shaikh Muayid al-Adhami concluded his talk, about 50 U.S. soldiers with 20 Iraqi National Guardsmen (ING) entered the mosque, a witness reported.
”Everyone was there for Friday prayers, when five Humvees and several trucks carrying INGs entered,” Abu Talat told IPS on phone from within the mosque while the raid was in progress. ”Everyone starting yelling 'Allahu Akbar' (God is the greatest) because they were frightened. Then the soldiers started shooting the people praying!”
Talat said he was among a crowd of worshippers being held back at gunpoint by U.S. soldiers. Loud chanting of 'Allahu Akbar' could be heard in the background during his call. Women and children were sobbing, he said.
”They have just shot and killed at least four of the people praying,” he said in a panicked voice. ”At least 10 other people are wounded now. We are on our bellies and in a very bad situation.”
Talat gave his account over short phone calls. He said he was witnessing a horrific scene.
”We were here praying and now there are 50 here with their guns on us,” he said. ”They are holding our heads to the ground, and everyone is in chaos. This is the worst situation possible. They cannot see me talking to you. They are roughing up a blind man now.” He evidently could talk no further then.
The soldiers later released women and children along with men who were related to them. Abu Talat was released because a boy told him to pretend to be his father.
Other witnesses gave similar accounts outside the mosque. ”People were praying and the Americans invaded the mosque,” Abdulla Ra'ad Aziz from the al-Adhamiya district of Baghdad told IPS. He had been released along with his wife and children. ”Why are they killing people for praying?” He said that after the forces entered ”they went to the back doors and we heard so many bullets of the guns -- it was a gun bigger than a Kalashnikov. There were wounded and dead, I saw them myself.”
Paramedics help a man injured in a US and Iraqi forces raid on one of the major Sunni Muslim mosques in Baghdad, Abu Hanifa mosque, Friday Nov. 19 2004. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
Some of the people who had been at prayer were ordered by soldiers to carry the dead and wounded out of the mosque, he said.
Ugh...
Cryptome has been posting some excellent one-stop shopping for relevant and truthful information about the situation in Fallujah. They are also publishing many photos of the war that the US media won't touch. Cryptome is providing what the mainstream US media is ignoring or downplaying. All the death, fear and madness of combat is on full display at Cryptome.
Main site:
http://cryptome.org/
These links will get you started:
http://cryptome.org/fallujah-kill.htm
http://cryptome.org/fallujah-kill2.htm
http://cryptome.org/fallujah-kill3.htm
http://cryptome.org/fallujah-kill4.htm
http://cryptome.org/fallujah-kill5.htm
Let's get down to "bidness:"
In a study that will no doubt be dismissed by the Neocons and their willing slaves as "liberal, partisan, and biased," thousands of "surprise" Bush votes surfaced during a recent examination of the Florida election by a team of Berkley graduate students..
Study Finds Florida 'Ghost' E-Votes
Cal trio: Results showing a Bush boost may help stop future snags
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1119-01.htm
In the nation's first academic study of the Florida 2004 vote, University of California, Berkeley graduate students and a professor have found intriguing evidence that electronic-voting counties there could have mistakenly awarded up to 260,000 votes to President Bush.
Something went awry with the voting in Florida.
The discrepancy, reported Thursday, is insufficient by itself to sway the outcome of the presidential race in Florida, but the UC Berkeley team called on Florida elections officials for an investigation.
"This is a no-vote-left-behind kind of project, not a change-the-president project," said UC Berkeley sociology professor Michael Hout, who oversaw the research. "We're as interested in the next election as the one just over."
Broadly speaking, the UC Berkeley team found that Bush received tens of thousands more votes in electronic-voting Democratic counties than past voting patterns would have suggested. No such pattern turned up in counties using optical scanning machines.
The UC Berkeley report has not been peer reviewed, but a reputable MIT political scientist succeeded in replicating the analysis Thursday at the request of the Oakland Tribune and The Associated Press. He said an investigation is warranted.
"There is an interesting pattern here that I hope someone looks into," said MIT arts and social sciences Dean Charles Stewart III, a researcher in the MIT-Caltech Voting Technology Project.
Stewart isn't convinced the problem is electronic voting. It could be absentee voting or some quirk of election administration. But whatever the problem, it didn't show up in counties using optical scanning machines. Rather than offer evidence of fraud or voting problems, the UC Berkeley study infers they exist mathematically.
Frustrated at the lowbrow, data-poor nature of allegations of election fraud flooding the Internet, three Berkeley grad students decided to apply the tools of first-year statistics class.
"We decided, well, you might as well test it properly instead of sitting around speculating," said first-year sociology grad student Laura Mangels. She and two colleagues downloaded voting and demographic data, ran them through statistics software and in the first night had results that produced a collective "Wow" among the students, she said.
CNN takes a "conspiracy theory" approach to dealing with the issue. The Berkley team is portrayed as being unhealthily "FIXATED" on recounting the votes. Not only that, but according to CNN, they apparently speak for the whole of academia! Anyone CRAZY enough like the Berkley students (who of course are just a bunch of dirty liberals ANYWAY...) to study the voting evidence WHEN BUSH SO CLEARLY GOT A MANDATE FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE is obviously a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist...(so sit down and shut up...hippy...)
Academia still fixated on November 2
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- John Kerry conceded defeat more than two weeks ago, and President Bush has already revamped his Cabinet. But as states certify final election returns, an academic debate over their accuracy is heating up.
None of the experts examining the returns has discovered voting anomalies significant enough to have swung the election.
Despite Internet-circulated speculation that Bush's victory was somehow stolen or rigged, the incumbent's clear margin in the popular vote count is much wider than any of the problems reported to date -- be they voting technology failures, problems with provisional ballots or partisan shenanigans.
"We conclude that there is no evidence, based on exit polls, that electronic voting machines were used to steal the election for President Bush," researchers at the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in an influential report based on early unofficial returns in Florida.
Still, many Americans who mistrust e-voting have seized on the exit polls, wondering whether something nefarious might explain what happened on November 2.
Early in the day, exit polling suggested Kerry was heading for a close win in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania; by day's end, Kerry had won Pennsylvania but Bush had comfortable margins in both Florida and Ohio.
While voting machine makers said their equipment had few problems given the millions of ballots cast, watchdog groups received about 2,000 complaints about lost and miscounted votes and machine breakdowns.
Nearly three-dozen Kerry supporters in Florida said they had to repeatedly override the machines to avoid having their votes recorded for Bush.
Internet buzz that perhaps the exit polls were correct and the actual returns might be flawed grew louder this week when sociology graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley went public with an analysis arguing that Florida results in counties using electronic ballots differed from historical voting patterns.
Critics of the Berkeley research say Bush's success may simply be due to a better get-out-the-vote effort, or fears of terrorism driving many Democrats to choose Bush over party loyalty.
"Nationwide it looks like, regardless of the type of voting machines used, Bush was getting a faster mobilization of voters in traditionally Democratic areas than were the Democrats," said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at MIT who specializes in American politics and research methodology.
Stewart said any Florida discrepancies between historic patterns and the November 2 vote may be explained by nationwide trends -- for example, while Republicans easily won many rural and suburban areas they also made impressive gains in urban areas.
Those Berkley students aren't the only people crying "Foul" over the suspicious nature of the 2004 elections. The head of Zogby International, Ralph Nader, and University of Pennsylvania Professor Steven F Freeman (MORE ACADEMICS!!!!) are calling into question the results of "the Armageddon election."
Published on Thursday, November 18, 2004 by Inter Press Service
US Election: Democracy in Question
by Ritt Goldstein
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1118-11.htm
STOCKHOLM - John Zogby, president of the polling firm Zogby International, told IPS he has been calling it "the Armageddon election" for about a year. Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader believes the Republican Party was able to "steal it before election day."
Facts suggest something went very wrong on Nov. 2.
Speculation focuses upon a number of questions -- purposeful miscounts, anomalies surrounding electronic voting (e-voting) machines, particularly the optical scan types; and numerous reports of voting "irregularities" in heavily Democratic areas.
"What they 'do' is minorities," Nader said, highlighting the thrust of Republican efforts, "and make sure that there aren't enough voting machines for the minority areas. They have to wait in line ... for hours, and most of them don't. There are all kinds of ways, and that's why I was quoted as saying, "this election was hijacked from A to Z," Nader told IPS.
Zogby was concerned about the difference between some of the exit polls (surveys of individuals who have just cast ballots) and the official vote counts. "We're talking about the Free World here," he pointedly noted.
On Nov. 10, University of Pennsylvania Professor Steven F Freeman, whose expertise includes "research methods," compiled an analysis entitled 'The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy'. The document was prepared in view of the unusually large differences between what exit polls had predicted and the recorded vote tallies.
His findings suggest Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry should have received far more votes than he did.
In three of the key battleground states -- Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania -- Freeman's analysis states the odds of Kerry receiving the percentage of votes recorded, given the exit poll findings, were less than three in one thousand, per state.
Freeman also determined that the odds of any two of these states simultaneously reaching their stated vote tallies were "on the order of one-in-a-million," and the odds of all three states arriving at the vote counts they did "are 250 million to one."
We should all keep our eyes and ears open for an attempt by the Bush administration to SERIOUSLY try to place controls on free speech on the Internet. Just because Ashcroft has been "retired" doesn't make the waters any safer for freedom. He was just the tip of the Neocon iceberg. If I were a Neocon and I wanted to make the Internet safe for Bushocracy, I would start the process by using the glut of pornography on the web as an excuse to clamp down on Internet use.
This "study" organized by Republican Sen. Sam Brownback sounds like it had it's conclusions drawn well before any research was even undertaken.
Amazingly, (but not surprisingly...) their panel of "experts" (a motley crew of Christian extremist crackpots) claim that pornography is as addictive and harmful as heroin (!?!?!?!?)
Addiction to porn destroying lives, Senate told
- CONNIE CASS, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, November 18, 2004
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/11/18/national1907EST0715.DTL r
Comparing pornography to heroin, researchers on Thursday called on Congress to finance studies on "porn addiction" and launch a public health campaign about the dangers.
"We're so afraid to talk about sex in our society that we really give carte blanche to the people who are producing this kind of material," said James B. Weaver, a Virginia Tech professor who studies the impact of pornography.
Internet pornography is corrupting children and hooking adults into an addiction that threatens their jobs and families, a panel of anti-porn advocates told the hearing organized by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., chairman of the Commerce subcommittee on science.
Brownback, a father of five, said when he was a boy, the typical kid's exposure was limited to occasional peeks at dirty magazines illicitly obtained by a buddy.
Now, he said, pornography seems pervasive. Children run across it while researching homework on the Internet. Vulgar ads arrive unexpectedly by e-mail. Some of his middle-age male friends limit their time alone in hotel rooms to avoid the temptation of graphic pay-per-view movies, Brownback said.
Mary Anne Layden, co-director of a sexual trauma program at the University of Pennsylvania, said pornography's effect on the brain mirrors addiction to heroin or crack cocaine. She told of one patient, a business executive, who arrived at his office at 9 a.m. each day, logged onto Internet porn sites, and didn't log off until 5 p.m.
Layden called for billboards and bus ads warning people to avoid pornography, strip clubs and prostitutes.
The panel discussion ranged from hardcore, violent pornography to audience complaints about a sexually suggestive promo that aired prior to this week's "Monday Night Football" game.
Brownback, an outspoken Christian conservative who has championed efforts to curb indecency on television and the Internet, said the public is beginning to realize "they don't just have to take it."
But he acknowledged the First Amendment right to free speech has limited congressional efforts.
In June, the Supreme Court blocked a law designed to shield Web-surfing children from pornography, ruling that requiring adults to register or use access codes before viewing objectionable material would infringe on their rights.
Brownback said scientific data is needed to help his cause.
Weaver acknowledged that research "directly assessing the impact of pornography addiction on families and communities is rather limited."
But he pointed to studies that show prolonged use of pornography leads to "sexual callousness, the erosion of family values and diminished sexual satisfaction."
Judith Reisman, a vocal critic of the Kinsey Institute and the field of sexology, suggested Congress require police officers to gather evidence of pornography at crime scenes to further research.
Betcha Officer Friendly will have a BLAST gathering that evidence, probably even start working overtime most nights...huh huh... It's a tough job, but SOMEBODY'S got to look at all them dirty pictures to see how bad they are...huh huh...
Buckle up, this doesn't look good. Trying to control the internet is like trying to grab smoke but that doesn't mean that the religious nuts running this country won't be able to make things difficult for a lot of us over the next few years.
For you few liberals who are still in denial that the US has become a Fundamentalist Christian theocracy, here is an article from the Guardian detailing Pat Robertson's deathgrip on Red State America's collective (un)consciousness...
Televangelical tentacles
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1355381,00.html
TV evangelist Pat Robertson is threatening to mobilise millions of his Christian viewers and "de-liberalise" the US judiciary, writes Philip James.
Friday November 19, 2004
There is a defining moment in the life of every news organisation that marks a coming of age. In the case of CNN it was the opening bombardment of the first Gulf war. The upstart cable channel went live to Peter Arnett in Baghdad, while the traditional broadcast networks could only watch from their New York studios in shock and awe.
In the case of the Manchester Guardian, it was the day in 1959 when the paper reached beyond its Mancunian roots to become a national newspaper. And in the case of The 700 Club, Pat Robertson's daily evangelical news broadcast, it was November 3 2004. The day it became clear that George Bush had won a second term.
This day formally marked the transformation of The 700 Club. No longer could it be viewed as an outlet of relevance only to the loony Christian right. Not only did it join the ranks of the mainstream media. In many ways it supplanted them. Suddenly, if you seriously wanted to take the pulse of America, you had to tune your TV to the news division of televangelism.
The 700 Club has been operating under the radar of traditional journalistic scrutiny for over two decades. Anchored by Pat Robertson, he initially created it as a vehicle to promote his personal political ambitions. After his failed presidential bid in 1988, Robertson founded the Christian Coalition and embarked on an ambitious plan to influence the mainstream political agenda from the inside out.
He used The 700 Club as the marketing and political advocacy tool of this plan. The broadcast's focus is instructing viewers on how they could best lobby elected officials to enact the Christian right's agenda.
Robertson's show regularly has more viewers than CNN. And while the rest of the world wasn't watching he has been phenomenally successful in realising a three part blueprint to essentially take over all branches of the US Government.
Goal number one was to take over Congress, and Robertson can honestly take credit for the Republican revolution of 1994. Of the 52 freshman Republican congressman, who ended four decades of Democratic rule that year, 44 owed their election to the Christian coalition which endorsed them on The 700 Club. The coalition's scorecards, ranking candidates on issues from abortion to marriage and family were a regular feature of the broadcast, promoting hand-picked candidates and discrediting unfavourable ones.
Goal number two was the presidency. George Bush made it to the White House and is there today, because of the lockstep support of The 700 Club's faithful, who make up the bedrock of the "values voter".
Goal number three is yet to be achieved: taking over the legislature. From his anchor chair, Robertson is coordinating an intricate strategy to de-liberalise every court from the Supreme Court down to federal judges at the district level.
The key to Robertson's success so far has been his obsessive attention to legislative details, the minute, often picayune rules that together constitute the levers of political change. In his attempt to wrestle control of the last branch of government his approach is the same.
Up to now arcane Senate rules have impeded the appointment of jurists friendly to the Robertson agenda. So Robertson is using his television pulpit to change them. Current Senate regulations allow a minority of Democrats to prevent votes on judges they don't like from ever taking place by employing a technical filibuster. The filibuster can only be overturned by a super-majority of sixty senators - a number Republicans cannot reach.
But Robertson has discovered that the Senate filibuster rules can be amended at the opening of the next Senate session in January at the discretion of the Senate majority leader Bill Frist - a detail insiders say the Tennessee Republican was not even aware of himself.
So for weeks Robertson has been flashing the senator's telephone number on the screen and imploring viewers to jam the congressional switchboard with demands that Frist change the filibuster rules so that it can be overturned by a simple majority of 51 votes - a number Republicans can muster. Frist is now considering doing just that. Come January the procedural block on a raft of reactionary judges may be lifted before the first gavel comes down.
While the admittedly liberal mainstream media are still scratching their heads, wondering how they missed the tectonic shift in favour of the Christian right in this country, they may still be looking in the wrong place for hints at what the future holds.
CNN's promotional tagline may be "watch what happens next", but to really know what's about to unfold in today's America you need to switch on The 700 Club.
Iraq, Iraq, Iraq...
The US military and their Washington enablers still don't seem to be able to comprehend the cause and effect of shitting on a subjected people and their subsequent violent resentment of being shat upon. Until SOMEBODY in the Pentagon or Congress gets a clue, the streets of Iraq will continue to run red with blood and eventually an entire generation could be lost in both Iraq AND the US.
As U.S. Forces Raided a Mosque
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1119-02.htm
BAGHDAD - An eyewitness commentary to IPS through a U.S. raid on a Baghdad mosque Friday gives a vivid picture of what a 'successful raid' can be like.
US and Iraqi soldiers, stormed the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad during Friday prayers opening fire and killing at least three people, according to eyewitnesses. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
U.S. soldiers raided the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad during Friday prayers, killing at least four and wounding up to 20 worshippers.
At 12:30 pm local time, just after Imam Shaikh Muayid al-Adhami concluded his talk, about 50 U.S. soldiers with 20 Iraqi National Guardsmen (ING) entered the mosque, a witness reported.
”Everyone was there for Friday prayers, when five Humvees and several trucks carrying INGs entered,” Abu Talat told IPS on phone from within the mosque while the raid was in progress. ”Everyone starting yelling 'Allahu Akbar' (God is the greatest) because they were frightened. Then the soldiers started shooting the people praying!”
Talat said he was among a crowd of worshippers being held back at gunpoint by U.S. soldiers. Loud chanting of 'Allahu Akbar' could be heard in the background during his call. Women and children were sobbing, he said.
”They have just shot and killed at least four of the people praying,” he said in a panicked voice. ”At least 10 other people are wounded now. We are on our bellies and in a very bad situation.”
Talat gave his account over short phone calls. He said he was witnessing a horrific scene.
”We were here praying and now there are 50 here with their guns on us,” he said. ”They are holding our heads to the ground, and everyone is in chaos. This is the worst situation possible. They cannot see me talking to you. They are roughing up a blind man now.” He evidently could talk no further then.
The soldiers later released women and children along with men who were related to them. Abu Talat was released because a boy told him to pretend to be his father.
Other witnesses gave similar accounts outside the mosque. ”People were praying and the Americans invaded the mosque,” Abdulla Ra'ad Aziz from the al-Adhamiya district of Baghdad told IPS. He had been released along with his wife and children. ”Why are they killing people for praying?” He said that after the forces entered ”they went to the back doors and we heard so many bullets of the guns -- it was a gun bigger than a Kalashnikov. There were wounded and dead, I saw them myself.”
Paramedics help a man injured in a US and Iraqi forces raid on one of the major Sunni Muslim mosques in Baghdad, Abu Hanifa mosque, Friday Nov. 19 2004. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
Some of the people who had been at prayer were ordered by soldiers to carry the dead and wounded out of the mosque, he said.
Ugh...
Cryptome has been posting some excellent one-stop shopping for relevant and truthful information about the situation in Fallujah. They are also publishing many photos of the war that the US media won't touch. Cryptome is providing what the mainstream US media is ignoring or downplaying. All the death, fear and madness of combat is on full display at Cryptome.
Main site:
http://cryptome.org/
These links will get you started:
http://cryptome.org/fallujah-kill.htm
http://cryptome.org/fallujah-kill2.htm
http://cryptome.org/fallujah-kill3.htm
http://cryptome.org/fallujah-kill4.htm
http://cryptome.org/fallujah-kill5.htm
posted by eusephus at 10:14 AM
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