Even in Democratic County, They Rigged To Avoid The Extra Work and Embarrassment that Finding Discrepancies Would Bring

THE BASIC NEWS:

The verdict is in on whether the November 2004 presidential election recount in Ohio was "illegally rigged {by election officials} in what was supposed to be a random sample recount in {order} to avoid a time-consuming hand count of all votes." http://wcpo.com/news/2007/local/01/23/oh_elections.html

Verdict: Two officials found Guilty of felony level negligent misconduct in elections. The lowest level manager of the three officials charged was acquitted on all counts.

The two convicted Election officials face terms of 6 to 18 months in prison. A third assistant manager was acquitted on all counts. http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/news/state/165362...

BROOKLIN, Canada, January 24, 2007 (IPS) - The world is now eating more food than farmers grow, pushing global grain stocks to their lowest level in 30 years.

Rising population, water shortages, climate change, and the growing costs of fossil fuel-based fertilisers point to a calamitous shortfall in the world's grain supplies in the near future, according to Canada's National Farmers Union (NFU).

Thirty years ago, the oceans were teeming with fish, but today more people rely on farmers to produce their food than ever before, says Stewart Wells, NFU's president.

In five of the last six years, global population ate significantly more grains than farmers produced.

And with the world's farmers unable to increase food production, policymakers must address the "massive challenges to the ability of humanity to continue to feed its growing numbers", Wells said in a statement.

There isn't much land left on the planet that can be converted into new food-producing areas, notes Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington-based non-governmental organisation.

The Bush presidency is finished, whether or not he takes us all down with him. A State of the Union address is always a pitiless register of where exactly the White House incumbent stands, in terms of political power. As Bush plodded through a list of doomed political initiatives, the news cameras kept swiveling away from him, like people seeking escape from a bore at a cocktail party.

            They peered over his shoulder at Nancy Pelosi, America's first female Speaker of the House; they swiveled up to the balcony at a haggard-looking Laura Bush; they sought out the Democratic presidential hopefuls, like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

            A first-timer at this annual event might have thought Bush was doing well, as the politicians, judges and generals bobbed up and down with the usual ovations. But the reactions were dutiful and the mood low-key in contrast to such electric evenings as Clinton's State of the Union in 1998 as the Lewinsky affair was bursting over his head, or Nixon's desperate rhetorical lunges in January 1974, flailing for air as the undertow of the Watergate scandal drowned his second term.