October 15
What do you know, the options backdating scandal does have a direct Republican connection. Before you're too impressed with me, it didn't take much digging. I did a search for "william mcguire, political donations" on Netscape and got this page on Newsmeat. It turns out the most egregious violator in the options backdating scandal consistently gives to Republicans and just Republicans. He's been giving to Sen. Norm Coleman, senate candidate Rep. Mark Kennedy, Reps. John Kline, Jim Ramstad, and Gil Gutknecht. A donation from this year was to Thomas Kean Jr., who is running for senate in New Jersey and charging the Democratic incumbent, Robert Menendez with corruption (it might be true, but it smacks of hypocrisy to be taking money from someone like McGuire). McGuire also donated to the acting president the maximum $2,000 in 2003 and again in 2004. Gee, Bush taking donations from a corporate crook, what a shock. Ken Lay must be rolling over in his grave.
You might say there's nothing wrong with giving to candidates in different districts and different states. You're right, by itself there is nothing wrong with that, and in the interests of full disclosure I'll mention that I've donated to each US House DFL (Democratic Farmer Labor party) candidate running for an open or Republican seat. The differences are these: first, I'm giving $50 at a time, not thousands, and I sure don't expect access and influence for my donation; second, candidates taking money from me aren't taking money from a crook who has robbed shareholders and taken for himself money that could have insured many uninsured people. So will any of these candidates give the money back?
Also notice that McGuire donated almost exclusively to incumbents. He has given to some Democrats --- back when they had the majority. Clearly he's buying access, which is what all the campaign finance reform has been about.
One bit of good news is after a special meeting today, the UnitedHealth board gave McGuire the boot. That's a necessary first step to cleaning out the stink. However, this is the same board that for all those years let McGuire pay himself tens of millions of dollars every year, and who let him backdate the options. That's called aiding and abetting. If McGuire actually gets convicted of anything, they have to explain why they watched illegal activity happen and approved it.
By the way folks, all that influence McGuire and other corporate crooks are buying goes away if the Republicans they donate to are beaten at the polls. Sure, they'll start donating to incumbent Democrats. That just means we have to keep reminding the Democrats that the base hates the corruption and wants them to have nothing to do with corporate lobbyists.
In an column today, Gwynne Dyer made a point that needs to be made about the Johns Hopkins study showing the most likely number of Iraqi dead is 655,000. He said, "What the Johns Hopkins team has done in Iraq is a more rigorous version of the technique used to calculate deaths in southern Sudan and the eastern Congo. To reject it, you must either reject the whole discipline of statistics or question the professional integrity of those doing the survey." I'll add that no one, including delusion neocons (that's a redundancy, isn't it?) casts doubt on the estimates of deaths in Sudan or Congo, just in Iraq where it makes them look bad. They denounce the study, but do they explain what's wrong with it? Not that I've heard. Nor do they have an answer to the peer review process the study went through before publication, or the reputation of the institutions involved in conducting the research or the medical journal that published it.
October 13
It's time to give a Dead Polar Bear Award to Debra Saunders, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. She may not treasure it much because she didn't have to work hard for it. In fact, it comes from an offhand reference in a column claiming the mainstream media are liberal and Fox News provides balance. You know, the usual conservative delusion. The offhand reference comes at the end of a paragraph saying all reporters think alike, therefore can't see their biases, and that's how global warming became a certainty. So the idea of certainty has nothing to do with the science being certain? Saunders' dead bear will need to come with this link to the Science metastudy showing that the scientific media have a consensus that global warming is real and man-made, while the news media keep giving the false impression that there's a doubt. Okay, that doesn't disprove her claim the news media are biased against conservative opinion, but it does show she picked a bad example, that the news media are actually promoting her point of view, and that like most conservatives, she's in denial about the biggest environmental threat.
Something the lobbying and options backdating scandals have in common is the obscure sources that started to unravel them. If you watched the Bill Moyer's program on the lobbying scandal, (you did watch it after I recommended it, didn't you?), you may have noticed that Abramoff's scheme to defraud Indian tribes came out when a couple members of the Coushatta tribal government with financial responsibilities noticed some figures didn't add up, and had the accounts audited. They discovered enormous amounts of money paid to Abramoff. The story got to a local newspaper, got picked up by the Washington Post, and this is what spurred the Senate investigation. The House Republican of course refused to look into it. The Senate Republicans were loyal enough to wait until after the 2004 election to hold hearings, but in November 2004 their hearings revealed details of the scheme and got media and prosecutors digging, from whence has come every revelation and conviction since. Speaking of which, today Rep. Bob Ney pleaded guilty --- yet so far he won't resign.
The options backdating was discovered by a business professor at the University of Iowa, Eric Lie. He published in an academic journal, and the story was picked up by the Wall Street Journal (damn liberal media). The biggest CEO caught so far is William McGuire of health insurance company UnitedHealth, who has cashed in $488 million so far and holds more options worth $1.6 billion. Roughly 40,000,000 Americans, mostly poor, have no insurance. Thanks Bill. The latest caught with their hands in till are the CEOs of McAfee and CNet, George Samenuk and Shelby Bonnie. The executives caught stealing from their shareholders likely have a variety of political affiliations, including Democratic and apolitical, but does anyone really doubt that CEOs tend heavily to the Republican side? That these corporate crooks are the same ones hiring the lobbyists? And where would the acting president have been without the backing from Enron? That's why it's called a culture of corruption.
And another new development just today: the Democratic staff of the Senate Finance Committee has released a report showing that five non-profits have acted like for-profits and taken money from Abramoff to do things like publishing articles promoting Abramoff clients and hiring people close to Tom DeLay. Such activities are illegal for tax-exempt non-profits. This Seattle Times article focuses on a Washington state organization, Toward Tradition, run by talk show host and columnist Rabbi Daniel Lapin. The report also names Americans for Tax Reform, which is run by Grover Norquist, VIP in conservative circles, crony to Abramoff and DeLay, but so far not indicted. Maybe this is it. See more on Norquist in Bill Moyer's report.
October 11
The Lancet has published a survey which estimates that Bush's invasion of Iraq has killed 650,000 Iraqis. This was done by the same researchers who published a similar study in 2004 which found that the most likely number of deaths was 100,000. That figure is what they regard as the most likely number, so more or fewer are possible. This Talk of the Nation segment has the acting president's response and an interview with the lead researcher.
You can read the study and listen to the interview for details. In brief, what they did, and at great risk, was conduct a scientific survey of Iraqi households to estimate the number that had died since the invasion, and compare that with the number of dead that would be expected in normal circumstances, and then figure the difference is the invasion. They compared all deaths, not just those caused by combat or reported in the media. What makes this method different from other counts is that they used a survey instead of using reports from the Baghdad morgue or the numbers in news reports, which is how the most commonly used figures are derived.
There are possible problems with the study, and problems with the other methods. This study has the advantage of not having to assume all deaths have been reported and reported correctly, which is why the commonly used figures of around 50,000 are bound to be low. The obvious problem with this study is the difficulty of carrying out the survey in so dangerous a place. The less obvious problem is that the violence hasn't been even though the whole country, but more concentrated in some areas. If you read the study, you'll see they tried to compensate for this. It should also be added that war supporters, including the acting president, still denounce the study, though given their consistently delusional record so far that actually supports the study's conclusions. Bush said the study had been debunked, though how that might be when it's just coming out and it had to pass peer review to get in to The Lancet, he didn't say.
The prior study held up to scrutiny though succumbed to attempts by the government to ignore it. The mainstream media took their cue from the government as they were wont to do back then and also ignored it. It remains to be seen if they ignore it this one too. The fact Bush was asked about it is an improvement.
We should also think about the meaning and potential misinterpretation of the numbers. 650,000 is all the deaths, and does not imply that all are by violence. Someone who died from a treatable medical condition but couldn't get treatment because of the effects of the invasion, like the exodus of medical workers, would be counted. Nor are all violent deaths attributed to US forces. They include those killed by Iraqi forces, or by common criminals set free when the prisons were emptied upon Saddam's fall. It should also be stated that even if that figure is way too high and only 100,000 have died, that's still 100,000 people, mostly innocent, killed by the invasion of a country that did not attack us. That is still an epic level of war crime, and I'm not sure how much better 100,000 is than 650,000.
October 10
I really don't get gay Republicans. I wouldn't have thought that there is such a thing a gay Republican, but there they are. Okay, they aren't numerous, but that there are any at all makes no sense. Why do you want to belong to party that doesn't think you're a full human being? That would pass laws dictating who can marry, that would oppose laws prohibiting discrimination in jobs or housing, that motives the base by appealing to bigotry against you? That blames the Foley scandal on the toleration of gays, that denounces the Phelps when they protest at soldiers' funerals but had no problems with protests at your funerals? That keeps you from becoming soldiers because somehow you'll screw up the war effort (so how are those gay-free wars going anyway?). For homosexuals to join the Republicans is like Irishmen joining the Know Nothings, like Mexicans joining the Minutemen, like an animal rights activist joining a hunting club. Forget the animal rights activists: given the violence good conservatives sometimes mete out to homosexuals in the righteous rage, maybe it's like a duck joining a hunting club. Can't you figure this out? They hate you! At least on the Democratic side we can figure out that a liking for minors has no connection to the orientation of the creepy guy who likes them. So okay, we won't give you that big tax cut if you happen to get to the wealthiest one percent. Is that hope for a tax cut worth all the other crap?
Add one more to the list of GOP scandals, though at this point that list probably has space only in the margins. George Allen, the incumbent senator from Virginia formerly known for being confused with his football coach dad and now known for introducing us to the word "macaca", has a whole new non-racial scandal. Companies he helped when he was governor added him to their boards and gave him a bunch of stock options which he still had when he entered the senate. He didn't report these options as required by law, but he did help those companies get government contracts. He tried to say the options weren't worth anything since the stock prices were below the option prices, but presumably, if they benefitted enough from government largesse, the options would become valuable again. An option needs some explaining I suspect. It means the right to buy a share of stock for a preset price, even if the stock has moved above that price. The options are supposed to be set at the price of the stock the same day the option takes effect and offer an incentive to get the stock price above the option price. So if a company gives an employee an option at $5, and the price goes up to $7, the holder of the option can buy the stock for $5 and have an immediate $2 profit. Multiply that by the hundreds of thousands of options usually given to directors or executives, and that's often how they make most of their money.
On a side note, that's why the option backdating scandal is a scandal. Option prices are supposed to be the stock price the day the option is issued. By picking a date in the past when the price was lower, the option might be $4 instead of $5, which is an extra dollar per share of profit --- at the expense of the shareholders from whom it's effectively stolen. That's what has William McGuire of United Health joining the roster of corporate crooks. The board let him pretend the options were issued on a different date, and he pocketed tens of millions, at least. Just to be clear, this isn't what Allen appears to have done. He allegedly declined to report options he was required to report by law, and he may have helped companies in which he had a financial interest despite being on the public payroll, which is a conflict of interest and possibly bribery. Still want to keep Republicans in charge of Congress?
October 9
There was a story in today's Star Tribune about the contract killing of Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who had become an advocate for human rights issues. A couple things struck me about the article, beyond the murder of a journalist for reporting what some people don't want known. The article mentions that according to Reporters Without Borders, 56 journalists have killed so far this year. The plurality have been in Iraq. Looking at their web site, the exact number they have accounted for killed in Iraq is 22, and they last one was September 18. At that rate, is if Iraq had the same population as the US, that would be roughly 250 killed. If 250 journalists had been killed in the US, would we admit we had a problem? That just bringing us the news had become incredibly dangerous? The ones I really want to think about it are the conservatives who routinely denounce journalists for not telling the accurate story about Iraq and charging liberal bias or laziness. Look at the risks they take just be being there, as opposed to the VIP tour of army bases for right wing talk show hosts. Given the dangers to journalists who travel outside army convoys, I am amazed by this story by Sabrina Tavernise about how some ordinary Iraqis are affected by the chaos. Think of the risks she must have taken to get that story. It seems journalists deserve better than what they get from the reflexively cynical conservative media and their gullible audience.
Reading deeper into the story on Anna Politkovskaya, you discover that Russia is a very dangerous place for journalists, though nowhere near Iraqi levels. Nothing is, but take note of how since 2000 12 journalists have been murdered and the Putin administration hasn't solved a single killing. Is Putin trying? Remember how Bush said he knew Putin was a good man because he had looked into his heart? Either Bush has dreadful judgement --- big news there --- or he saw a torture-tolerating heart like his own and pronounced it good.
Also in the story, you might have noticed two German journalists were killed in Afghanistan. You remember Afghanistan, right? The war Bush won in a few weeks? Except it's still going. The Taliban appears to have the upper hand. Five years after invasion when it seemed won, we're practically starting over. Could there be any connection to Bush withdrawing resources for invading Iraq before Bin Laden and Mullah Omar were caught or killed and the failure there? Just a question. For a bit of an answer, Frontline recently was about the border areas where the Taliban have rebuilt, and it can be viewed online.
And just to make the connection completely obvious, the Republican Congress is providing no oversight of the acting president, raising no questions about screw up after screw up. That's why, even if you like your own Republican congressman, they need to be voted out.
October 8
The circular firing squad is supposed to be a Republican thing right now, not Democratic. I'm talking to you Rep. Martin Sabo. Sabo is my congressman, the Minnesota 5th district. The circular firing squad has to do with choosing Sabo's replacement since he opted not to run again. You see, I got an odd e-mail recently. I wish I'd hung on to it so I could share the details. It came from the Tammy Lee campaign. She's the Independence Party candidate for this district. It contained an endorsement letter from someone claiming to have been Ember Reichcott Junge's campaign manager. Junge was defeated in the DFL primary by Keith Ellison. For motives I don't know, she chose to endorse not the winning candidate of her primary, but the candidate of a different party. The odd thing is I've never been on an Independence mailing list. I never subscribed to one, donated to or volunteered for an Independence candidate, and I've never even voted for one. So how did I get on the list? My guess, and this is a guess, is that Junge's campaign manager took the mailing list with her and gave it to the campaign of another party. Though I don't know how I got on Junge's list, at least she's DFL. I didn't support her in the primary but I didn't have anything bad to say about her. I do recognize that her campaign manager can endorse who she wants at the risk of her DFL credentials, but I question the ethics of the mailing list going with her.
That's one part of the circular firing squad. I guess there was some bitterness after the primary because to the best of my knowledge, the losing candidates in the primary haven't endorsed Ellison. Primaries aren't all bad, because I saw Ellison develop as a candidate and gain more name recognition than he would have had with clear sailing to the general election. He was very slow to respond when the first character issues were raised, the alleged ties to Nation of Islam. When the obnoxious twit the Republicans chose for a candidate tried starting the character attack over again the day after the primary, Ellison hit back right away. So clearly he learned something important. Nonetheless, I didn't blame Sabo for endorsing Mike Erlandson for the primary since Erlandson was Sabo's chief of staff and there is an obvious personal connection. I can't make the same allowance about Sabo allowing Lee to use a photo of the two of them together on her site. She didn't use the word "endorsement", but it is what it is. I don't understand why Sabo would respond to the defeat of his choice in the primary by endorsing someone from the other party. If he has too big of a problem with Ellison, he should say so, not do the passive/aggressive thing. This is what I mean by the circular firing squad. I'm not going to say that this one act wipes out Sabo's many years of service. He still deserves a great deal of respect, which is why his endorsement means something. If he does nothing else then I have nothing else to say about him. I'll just ask Sabo, Junge's campaign manager, and any other DFLer uncomfortable with Ellison or bitter about the primary: just stop eating your own. Do the Minnesota Nice thing and say nothing when you can't say something nice about your party's candidate. We have an opportunity to take a house of Congress if we stick together and remember who that the GOP is the real opponent. Getting those corrupt bastards out of office has to be the focus.
Though I appeal to Sabo to endorse his own party's candidate, I don't blame Lee for taking the endorsement if she can get it. She's not DFL. However, when I looked at her web site I couldn't tell why. Other than not mentioning single-payer in her section on health care, her positions are liberal right down the line. Maybe somewhere I missed a centrist or conservative position, which would make her like the other candidates of her party: liberals with one or two non-liberal positions. The reason they aren't DFL is ... um ... no one knows. Jessie Ventura was off in a world of his own sometimes, but otherwise Independence candidates rarely take positions Democrats couldn't be comfortable with. The effect is to split the rational vote and let the nutjob right get in power.
Speaking of the nutjob right, the Republican candidate in this district, Alan Fine, has hit a bump in his character based campaign. One would think a candidate would know to get the potential skeletons out of the closet at the start before his opponents do, especially when the campaign is based on personal attacks. Maybe Fine knew this would come out but figured he had no other hope of winning. What came out is the allegation of domestic violence from an arrest on that charge back in the 1990's. That's about the same time Ellison was helping with the Million Man March which Fine tries to use to tie Ellison to Louis Farrakhan. Fine got the charge expunged and claims he was innocent. The linked article makes clear nothing was proven. It appears to be part of a bitter divorce and bad relationship with his ex-wife. Lots of people have had bitter divorces and ongoing disputes with ex-spouses. Absolutely no allegations against him have been proven. He can't prove his innocence either, which he shouldn't have to except he wants to tie Ellison to the Nation of Islam and its racist ideology without any evidence. I'm willing to believe he didn't commit domestic violence since it isn't proven. He's just someone who accuses other people without good grounds but doesn't want it done back to him.
So I'll give Tammy Lee this: she seems to be running a much better campaign than Fine. She hasn't engaged in negative campaigning while Fine seems to have nothing else. Ellison too has also avoided personal attacks, so perhaps he and Lee should ignore Fine and debate their differences. Once they find some. Anyway, though I avoid making predictions because it is so easy to be wrong, and I have no polls to go from, just my own sense of how the campaign is going, I predict Lee gets more votes than Fine. Ellison will still win this liberal district unless something big and new comes up, but Lee gets an upset at second while Fine blames an anti-Republican year for finishing third.
October 4
A bunch of short bits:
I suppose recommending a TV program unseen is as bad as criticizing something unseen, but at the risk of violating that principle, Bill Moyers has a documentary series on PBS called Moyers on America, and this week's program is an in depth (it's two hours long and Bill Moyers, so I feel safe saying that) look at Jack Abramoff and the lobbying scandals. Now that the Foley story has the country back on the culture of corruption, I urge anyone not up on the part that first caused "culture of corruption" to be coined to watch this. I suspect Democrats won't always come off smelling clean either, but when you hear that corporate special interests run Congress, this is how they do it.
When you're done with your viewing, here's some good reading. Actually, two pieces of good reading that were next to each other in today's Star Tribune editorial page. Sen Christopher Dodd, D-CT, wrote about the dreadful torture legalization bill in light of the Nuremberg war crimes trials and his Dad's experience as one of the American prosecutors. Right above Dodd's column was a column by Garrison Keillor, who brought that poetic use of language of his to bear on the shame of this new law, and included a creepy story about speaking at the acting president's megachurch. For some contractual reason Keillor's columns don't get printed in the web edition but if you're reading this on the 4th and hurry and live near enough Minneapolis, you might buy a copy. I'm not a fan of extensively quoting what can be read elsewhere but in this case I'll make an exception.
I got some insight last week into who supports torture when I went down to Dallas to speak at Highland Park Methodist Church. It was spooky. I walked in, was met by two burly security men with walkie-talkies, and within 10 minutes was told by three people that this was the Bushes' church and that it would be better if I didn't talk about politics. I was there on a book tour for "Homegrown Democrats," but they thought it better if I didn't mention it. So I tried to make light of it: I told the audience, "I don't need to talk politics. I have no need even to be interested in politics --- I'm a citizen, I have plenty of money and my grandsons are at least 12 years away from being eligible for military service." And the audience applauded! Those were their sentiments exactly. We've got our, and who cares?The Methodists of Dallas can be fairly sure that none of them will be snatched off the streets, flown to Guantanamo, stripped naked, forced to stand for 48 hours in a freezing room with deafening noise, so why should they worry? It's only the Jews who are in danger, and the homosexuals and the Gypsies. The Christians are doing just fine. If you can't trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?
As long as I'm quoting one editorial in the paper edition, I'll quote Dodd on the Nuremberg trials:
Why not just give in to vengeance? Why not just shoot them, as Winston Churchill wanted to do? Why not just succumb to the law of power politics and impose our will without any regard to principle? Why not just give in to violence, which was certainly within our ability and, many argued, within our right?By the way, back in the 90's recognizing a subject that seems never to cease being topical, I wrote a play about the Nuremberg trials, with the perhaps less than creative title "Nuremberg".Why not? Because the United States has always stood for something more.
So that bit wasn't so short, but this will be. I discovered that the campaign ads I wrote about yesterday are using a song written and recorded Ricky Lee Jones and two members of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, "Have You Had Enough?". She gives away free on her web site and apparently intended it as a campaign song. Someone on You Tube called mmcintee is making the videos.
Following up from the 24th, when I mentioned that the Star Tribune put the NIE story on page 6: I was one of about 10 people who asked the Star Tribune about this choice, according to the reader representative. Kate Parry explained that the story came in late, as did the story that Osama Bin Laden might be dead, and both were unclear as the deadline approached. I see her point and withdraw my criticism. I would have been silly to put the Bin Laden story inside if it had proven true, and the NIE story made the front page the next day, which I recall noticing and wondering if maybe I shouldn't have said anything. I still think though the placement on page 6 weakens the case for seeing a liberal bias.
October 3
I normally hate campaign ads because so many are deliberately deceptive, and I usually figure even those that try to be honest have no choice but to gloss over things in the short time available. I don't understand people who look at the ads as a serious source of information, but I do understand that many people rely on ads and they are the single most important part of campaigns. Therefore I was pleased to hear that one of the DFL candidates for congress, Wendy Wilde, who is running in Minnesota's 3rd district, has the most clever ad I've heard in a long time, maybe the most clever since the Jessie Ventura ads. I heard it on the radio while driving home this afternoon, and I thought it was not only clever but could be used by almost any Democratic candidate and there should be some way to make that happen. Turns out there is, because when I followed the link on Wilde's site to the video version on You Tube, I found a bunch of these ads, identical except for the incumbent Republicans and the Democratic challengers. Good, I'm glad someone thought of it. I like the radio version better but the video works. It's a bit of a throwback with a jazzy big band sort of tune asking, "Have you had enough?" Here's the Wilde ad, and once on You Tube you'll see links to the others.
October 2
Another aspect of the Foley scandal I hadn't thought of yesterday: Rep. Thomas Reynolds, who was refusing to take the fall for covering up Foley's e-mails and said Hastert knew months ago, isn't just one of the House Republican leaders. His specific job is running the NRCC, National Republican Congressional Committee, which is the campaign arm of the House Republican caucus. The NRCC has been running attack ads against Patty Wetterling, the DFL candidate in Minnesota's sixth district. I saw one of the TV ads yesterday where they said she opposes making the Bush tax cuts permanent which isn't true. She just wants to roll back the upper class tax cuts. The ad said she wants to raise income taxes on working families, when in fact she wants to maintain those, that she wants to reinstate the marriage penalty which is made up, and that she wants to extend the estate tax to small business which again is just made up. They have had direct mail advertising along the same lines. The interesting bit is that Wetterling made her name as an advocate for laws regarding missing children and child predators. She is being attacked by the same individuals who may have protected a predator.
October 1
I ask you to take my word for it that I came up with the term "Culture of Corruption" on my own, before I heard any Democratic leaders use it. It might be a good slogan, but it occurred to me because it's an accurate description. It isn't just Republican lobbyists, or Republican congressmen, or the executive branch, or corporate executives, or even members of the conservative media. It's all of them, and what variety. We've had lying about a war, a coverup of the bungling of 911, lies about a hurricane, lobbyists giving bribes,. congressmen and executive branch officials taking bribes, favored contractors stealing massive amounts of money, corporate executives who support the GOP faking the dates on options and faking the accounts to fool the stock market, pundits taking payoffs to tout Republican programs, and I have left off both the oldest of these scandals and the newest. However, once you've read each, I hope you see that the connection is how pervasive the corruption has become.
The new corruption is maybe the only thing missing so far, a sex scandal. And now there's one of those, which I'm sure the better informed among you already guessed is Rep. Mark Foley's resignation over inappropriate e-mails to a 16year old boy working as a page in 2005. Tempting as it might be to mock the Republican who ran on family values, the part I want to point out is today's revelation Speaker Dennis Hastert said this as the first he knew of the e-mails, while another Republican congressman revealed that he raised concerns with Hastert months ago. I guess Rep. Thomas Reynolds wasn't going to take the whole fall for knowing and not doing anything. They could have told Foley this as unacceptable and he needed to find an excuse to resign. They could have asked him to go for the sake of the party. Instead, and here's where the pattern holds, they covered up for him like they tried to cover up for DeLay, like they won't investigate anything touching the acting president, and like they eviscerated the ethics committee. Hastert, by the way, is one of those avoiding ethics committee investigation over his alleged use of his office to route a road in such a way as to increase the price of land he owned and sold for the project. Remember too that the Republicans who aren't personally tied to a scandal chose to make people like Hastert, DeLay, and Bob Ney the leaders of their caucus and chairmen of powerful committees. Reelecting Republicans means keeping the crooks in power.
I'll also add that while no one died in Foley's scandal, and this pales compared to 100,000 dead in Iraq, there are about 35% of Americans who so far have backed Bush and the Republicans regardless of anything. They don't care about the dead, the theft, or the lies, but they do get worked up about sex. We're talking about the same people who wanted Clinton impeached, who obsess over homosexuality, who made Janet Jackson's breast a big issue, so they definitely care about sex. If this Foley scandal is what finally gets them upset enough to think about what conservatism is doing to the country, I'll take it. Why didn't the GOP leadership do something about it, and now that they know Hastert knew, why is he still their leader?
The oldest of these scandals is election fraud. I know some corporate scandals reach back before the first stolen election in 2000, and that the neocons were making their plans to attack Iraq in the late 90's, but it was election fraud that really let these people take power and which has kept them in power. I've written a lot about election fraud, but something that has always been missing is the whistleblower who was willing to say he participated. Robert Kennedy Jr. might have found him. Kennedy interviewed Chris Hood, who was a contractor for Diebold setting up Diebold's machines to run the 2002 election in Georgia. I've mentioned that election before, when the Republican candidates for governor and senator defied the pre-election polls and reversed the expected margins by Democratic incumbents. This was also Georgia's first all-touchscreen election. Kennedy revealed how much authority election officials gave to Diebold in a literally privatized election. How would Democrats react if the Republicans were allowed to count a state's votes with no monitoring or auditing allowed? That's pretty much what happened. What Hood revealed was some details, like at one point right before the election, he and other technicians were given memory cards to insert in the machines to install a patch which they were told was to fix a problem with the internal clocks, except he says the patch didn't fix the clocks and they were told not to tell election officials. I'm just summarizing a lengthy article. I've been wondering why this article hasn't raised a bigger stink, and my best guess is that a four year old election doesn't seem relevant enough even though none of the potential problems have been fixed. Maybe it's been lost among the legalization of torture, the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) revelations, Bill Clinton's Fox News interview, and the new Bob Woodward book. But this should alarm us about how terrible the security is for our votes November 7. Vote anyway, or you guarantee your vote is lost.
