Bush beats out Nixon: Least liked President ever

This day has been long coming.  The graphs have shown it would soon be upon us: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/9872  Now, here we are.  With this new Harris poll, available through the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114735765551950179-fy1LPeyuG4da_f... , President Bush claims the titlelong held by Richard Nixon: Least Liked President Ever (or at least since there have been polls).  And this data comes to us from before the USA Today reported on Bush's NSA secretly monitoring our phone records http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/10210

Bush's approval rating is now at 29%, and disapproval at an astonishing 71%.  Well, it's astonishing that it took so long to get there.  But it's also record-setting.  The best Nixon could do was 66%.  Nobody else comes close.  Bush is breaking new ground. 

Worst security flaw ever - 3 states invoke Diebold emergency procedures

Permission to reprint or excerpt granted, with link to http://www.blackboxvoting.org

- The Oakland Tribune scooped other newspapers yesterday on the story.
- Pennsylvania's Michael Shamos sequestered all Diebold touch-screens.
- California is invoking emergency procedures.
- The state of Iowa is trying to figure out a way to scrub Diebold clean.

Harri Hursti has just come out with Hursti Report II, a Black Box Voting project.

Here it is:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVtsxstudy.pdf

A second study with 12 more defects will be released Monday May 15.

WHAT'S DIFFERENT ABOUT THIS?

Back doors were found in three separate levels. They can be used one at a time or combined for a deep attack that can permanently compromise the Diebold touch-screens.

Almost nothing will work to ensure that machines that have already been delivered have not been contaminated -- the very forensic procedures that MIGHT identify tampering also wipe clean any evidence.

Let's raise gas taxes and lower income taxes

Now that the $100 tax rebate proposed by the Senate Republican leadership as a response to rising gasoline prices has been discarded, it is time to get serious. Any effective response to climbing gas prices must recognize a geological reality, namely that the earth’s oil reserves are shrinking.

The amount of oil pumped has exceeded new discoveries since 1980. And the gap is widening. In 2004, for example, the world pumped nearly 31 billion barrels of oil while discovering fewer than 8 billion barrels of new oil.

Instead of encouraging gasoline use with tax rebates or gas tax holidays, we need a way to reduce gasoline use, one that is practical and politically acceptable. We need a higher gas tax, but the only way to get a gas tax rise large enough to wean us from imported oil is to offset the rise with a reduction in the tax on income.

The gas tax boost should be substantial—a rise that will send a strong, clear signal to consumers—and it should be gradually phased in. A gasoline tax hike of 30¢ a gallon per year for the next 10 years would send the right signal. This eventual increase of $3 per gallon would be offset at

Judge orders World Can't Wait activist to jail psyche unit; Carol Fisher remains strong and unapologetic

May 9: Judge Timothy McGinty forcibly incarcerated Carol Fisher in the pyche unit of the Cuyahoga Country Jail in downtown Cleveland, where she now sits for an indefinate period of time.

In a hastily called hearing yesterday, Judge McGinty made a highly unusual and outrageous decision to force Carol to undergo a state pyschological exam as part of her pre-sentencing investigation. From the very start of Carol's case, the judge has openly said that she must have mental problems for resisting an unlawful and brutal encounter with Cleveland Heights police.  He went even further in yesterday's hearing, saying that her opposition to the Bush regime makes her "dillusional."

The small courtroom on the 21st floor of the Justice Center was ringed with 5 armed court baliffs.  McGinty started off the hearing by making Carol stand up and had one of her attorneys read her t-shirt, which said:

"Wanted for Illegally Crossing Borders: The Bush Regime

"If you are going to insist that crossing borders illegally is a crime which cannot be tolerated, how about George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald

Cindy Sheehan's new book: Dear President Bush

Cindy Sheehan's interviews, essays, and speeches get better with each passing month, as her pain continues, her passion and insight grow, and the war that killed her son goes on – as the president who killed her son goes on being president.  Cindy's latest book, "Dear President Bush," is the best of the three books by or about Cindy Sheehan that I've read.

"Not One More Mother's Child" was Cindy's first collection of essays.  It's a longer book, including her writings from November 2004 to September 2005, along with some beautiful photographs and forwards by John Conyers, Thom Hartmann, and Jodie Evans.  "The Vigil: 26 Days in Crawford, Texas" is a collection of newspaper reports on Camp Casey from the Lone Star Iconoclast, with a forward by Sheehan.  These are both excellent books.  One contains much of Cindy's brilliant and moving voice.  The other comes close to setting the scene of what it was like to be in that place in Crawford last summer surrounded by so much emotion and so much hope.

The money pit: Diebold vs. America

Georgia was the first state in the nation to go 100 percent with electronic voting, thanks to Secretary of State Cathy Cox. This was a mantle she carried, and continues to carry, proudly. In fact, she's using it to bolster her run for governor in 2006, and indeed she is currently the Democratic front-runner.

But when you look at the facts Cathy Cox should be ashamed. She has failed the voters of Georgia. She has ensured that our elections are subject to fraud; she has knowingly allowed software that violates certification standards to be used in elections. She has wasted huge amounts of taxpayer funds on an election system that is proven to be ineffective at best, a downright scam at worst. And she has hidden or lied about these problems, not only to the voters of Georgia, but also to the state legislature.

A Trail of Amendments

In May of 2002 the state signed a contract with Diebold to provide DRE (Direct Record Electronic) voting machines for the entire state at a cost of $54 million. In July of the same year the first amendment to that contract was signed. It stated that:

Immigration: Myths and Reality

In the red-hot debate over immigration, myth too often takes the place of truth. It is easier to rouse fears than it is to find common ground. It is time to step back, take a deep breath, and reflect before we react.

The truth is often distorted in ways that feed our divisions. For example, many contrast this generation of immigration with the Europeans who came at the beginning of the last century. That generation, we are told, came legally; whereas this generation of immigrants is coming illegally. That generation learned the language, whereas this one is writing the National Anthem in Spanish. Peggy Noonan, Reagan’s former speechwriter, writes about her Irish family that came over on the boat. “They waited in line. They passed the tests. They had to get permission to come… They had to get through Ellis Island, get questioned and eyeballed by a bureaucrat with a badge.”

Fighting back in the language war and winning elections

The reason Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House and the Supreme Court is because they have won the “language war.”

President Hoover called himself a “true liberal,” and President Eisenhower said that cutting federal spending on education would offend “every liberal — including me.”

“Liberal” has been made into a dirty word by Republican think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and Republican linguist and pollster Frank Luntz.

How did they do it? The first step was to make the sound of the word 'liberal' seem like something undesirable. Notice the tone of voice used by most so-called conservative politicians and so-called conservative radio and television talk show hosts when they say the word: liberal. They make the word liberal sound contemptible. They always say it with a tone of voice of contempt, scorn and condescension.

They don't do this by accident. No doubt, most, if not all, have spend many hours in front of a microphone and video camera practicing and rehearsing their pronunciation of the word: liberal.

Obviously, Karl Rove, Frank Luntz and other special handlers from the

Blocking justice

The U.S. Government has once again invoked the "state secrets" privilege, arguing that a public trial of a lawsuit against a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency for abducting and imprisoning a German citizen would lead to disclosure of information harmful to U.S. national security.

Once rarely used, the "state secrets" privilege has over the past five years become a routine defense used by the U.S. Government to keep cases from being tried.

The current case involves a suit brought by Khalid El-Masri. El-Masri was on     vacation in Macedonia when he was kidnapped and transported to a CIA-run "black site" in Afghanistan. After several months of confinement in squalid conditions, he was abandoned on a hill in Albania with no explanation. He was never charged with a crime.

El-Masri, who is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), is seeking an apology and money damages from the CIA. The first - and perhaps the last -- hearing on the case took place last week before a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.

Will the major media finally cover the electronic election fraud issue?

That the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen has become an article of faith for millions of mainstream Americans. But there has been barely a whiff of coverage in the major media about any problems with the electronic voting machines that made those thefts possible---until now.

A recent OpEdNews/Zogby People's poll (http://tinyurl.com/hgkgl) of Pennsylvania residents, found that “39% said that the 2004 election was stolen. 54% said it was legitimate. But let’s look at the demographics on this question. Of the people who watch Fox news as their primary source of TV news, one half of one percent believe it was stolen and 99% believe it was legitimate. Among people who watched ANY other news source but FOX, more felt the election was stolen than legitimate. The numbers varied dramatically.”

Here, from that poll, are the stations listed as first choice by respondents and the percentage of respondents who thought the election was stolen: CNN 70%; MSNBC 65%; CBS 64%; ABC 56%; Other 56%; NBC 49%; FOX 0.5%.

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