Raw Story has confirmed large sections of Curtis' brief -- in particular, the disturbing Casolaro-esque motel "suicide" of Raymond Camillo Lemme. Lemme, an inspector for the Florida Department of Transportation, had been investigating Curtis' claims of corruption in that agency.
Raw Story also makes a point others have made about Curtis' use of Visual Basic: This is a language commonly used in creating prototypes. Its usage is therefore not a suspicious factor, as Bev Harris and others have claimed.
A reader has attempted to point up flaws in the Curtis story:
Brad Friedman's blog and several others (obviously copies)...refer to Tom Keenan as a Florida Congressman,in 2000 when he was a member of the Florida State Legislature. No member of any State Legislature in any state has the "title" of Congressman.Oh, puh-leeze...! Talk about reaching! We should toss out Curtis' allegations because a writer in California did not know the proper form of address for Floridian legislators?
This same correspondent claims that Curtis wrote a second affidavit at serious variance with the first. Maybe. I've yet to see it.
If you want to hear an interview with Clinton Curtis, go here.
New elections. Ken Renier of the U.N. Observer and International Report has issued a call for a revote:
The internet, Pacifica radio and a small number of independent stations are the only ones with news of what the entire world recognizes as the most fraudulent election in the history of great nations, excluding those of course by Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler...I agree with the sentiment -- but please: That's AdolF, with an F. The "ph" spelling is American.
Raising Kane. An interesting news nugget on potential American manipulation of Ukrainian politics can be found in the latest piece by Daniel Hopsicker. He claims that the former Director of Security at CIA, a man with the Wellesian name of Charles Kane, went to the Ukraine in 1996 with the intention of helping to train unnamed Ukrainian "political parties."
This same Kane played a decidedly controversial role in the 2000 Florida vote. Those of you with long memories may recall the outraged howls that accompanied the revelation that Republican operatives were caught "fixing" Republican registration forms missing the necessary voter identification numbers. (Compare that act of largesse with Blackwell's insistence that Democratic Ohio registrations be tossed into the round file if they were printed on paper of the incorrect weight.) One of the fixers was Charles Kane.
Hopsicker does not link Kane to the 2004 vote in the Ukraine. Still, one would like to know just what role this ex-CIA guy played in the land formerly considered the breadbasket of the Soviet Union.
For a worthwhile non-mainstream look at what is really going on the Ukraine, check out Justin Raimondo's take. For those of you interested in the political phenomenon of "strange bedfellows," note that Haaretz has linked Viktor Yushchenko -- the candidate Bush hopes to get into power -- with anti-Semitic Ukrainian nationalists. For more on these ties, check out this report by the British Helsinki Human Rights Group.
Here we see proof, once again, that the neo-con agenda -- for all its loud support of Likud's bloodthirsty policies -- possesses a not-so-subterranean root system intertwined with the tree of fascism.
Wait for it. A reader informs me that Ohio law stipulates a five-day waiting period between the certification of an election and the start of a recount. This, in order for the parties to arrange for witnesses to the counting. Kerry has already waived the waiting period, but W -- surprise, surprise! -- has not.
Error rates and margins of victory: For those of you interested in the general question of how best to run an election, check out this site put together by academics at the University of Washington.
The problem can be stated simply: Every voting system you've ever heard of has an error rate. For example, hand-counting has a two percent error rate -- out of every hundred ballots, two go uncounted. Touch-screen voting has a 1.7 percent error rate, which makes them more prone to mistake than are either punch cards or optically scanned ballots.
The problem: With the electorate so polarized, the margin of victory in many races will be smaller than the rate of error.
Can we trust the results in such elections? If not, how do we improve the system?
There were a flurry of articles like this in the wake of the 2000 elections, but no-one seems to have solved the problem.
They count -- we don't.The same University of Washington site mentioned above also offers a piece -- dismissive, but not as dismissive as you might suspect -- on the likelihood of conspiracy to rig the vote. Author Tara Hendershott mentions "rumors" linking Diebold chairman Wally Odell to the Republican party. (Yeah, Tara -- and I've also heard "rumors" that the earth revolves around the sun.) Alas, she does not mention the fact that ESS is largely owned by the Ahmanson family, which also funds the ant-democratic Christian Reconstruction movement. She also neglects to note that another voting-machine company, Sequoia Pacific, is run by people accused -- and in one case, convicted -- of bribery of public officials.
But the Sequoia Pacific "Southeast Sales Manager," a man named Pasquale "Rocco" Ricci of Marlton, New Jersey, barely even got a slap on the wrist. For the crime of suborning democracy in the state of Louisiana for over a decade, Mr. Ricci was sentenced to just a year...
The label "conspiracy theorist" hardly describes those of us who insist that our vote-counters ought to be honest people who believe in democracy.
The Wall Street Journal editorial pages -- a hotbed of wild conspiracy tales during the Clinton administration -- now denounces those wacky theorists who assert that our elections are rigged. The matters mentioned in our previous section (i.e., the dubious folk behind Diebold, ESS and Sequoia) donot trouble the good folk of the WSJ. The Journal wants its readers to believe that we hate Ken Blackwell because -- get this! -- he is black.
Wrong. We hate him because he is a "kapo" who has helped to disenfranchise blacks.
Yikes...I don't even have time to talk about the hearings today...or to do much of a spell check...more soon!
3 comments:
Your Emailer who critized me for referring to him as "congressman" may wish to do some fact checking him/herself after referring to the once FL Speaker of the House and the man at the near-center of this scandal as "Tom Keenan".
The U.S. Congressman, and one-time running-mate of Jeb Bush you Emailer may have actually meant to refer to is U.S. Congressman Tom FEENEY.
:-)
Brad
Pomeroo, your most obvious question about the Clinton affair is a stupid one. Clinton lied to save face, the way a million other politicians have a billion other times. Perjury being an impeachable offense is irrelevant, because Clinton didn't commit perjury.
Yes, Clinton's a lawyer, and, thus, he knew that lying under oath about something immaterial to the case at hand isn't perjury. He reasonably assumed that the grand jury would be the end of it. One right-wing witch hunt later, and the world got to hear about the worst dirt that could be found on Clinton (aside from the drug-fueled murder sprees, of course): that he lied about sex while testifying about a land deal. Good Lord! Impeach! Impeach that man this minute!
Clinton lied because extramarital affairs are private matters. Yes, it was shameful. No, it wasn't any of Kenneth Starr's (or your or the media's) business. If he'd told the truth, the story would have come out for sure, and right-wing whacks would have talked for years to come about how it made him a terrible president. If he'd refused to answer the question, it would have been assumed that he had had an affair, and right-wing whacks would have talked for years to come about how it made him a terrible president. So he lied, which probably should have been the end of it. Then there was that witch hunt, and it came out that not only had Clinton had an affair but that he'd also lied about it, and (surprise surprise), right-wing whacks have been saying ever since that it made him a terrible president. But it still isn't perjury.
You want to find a perjurer, take a look at some of the fibs Bush has told Congress in written statements.
Post a Comment