The Progress Report.

What you can do to prevent another stolen election.

What YOU can do to prevent another stolen  election
By Mark Crispin  Miller

There's really only one way to prevent another stolen race,  and that's to focus national attention on the revelations of whistle-blower  Stephen Spoonamore, who's lately been revealing all we need to know about  the Bush regime's conspiracy to rig the vote from 2000 to the present. Spoonamore knows all the principals in this conspiracy, has been dealing with them for some time, and has a trove of emails, etc., to back up what he  says.

There have been several other whistle-blowers on this front,  but none is as compelling as he is--not just because he knows about the  whole plot overall, but also because he is (a) a Republican, (b) an  erstwhile member of the McCain campaign (he quit some months ago, when he  discovered what they have planned) and (c) a prominent and well-respected  expert on computer fraud. Detection of such fraud is, in fact, his  specialty.

Spoonamore has named the man who was Karl Rove's IT guru  from 2000 until sometime last year: Mike Connell, a pro-life zealot who told  Spoonamore that he had helped the Bush regime subvert elections "to save the babies." (The actual nuts and bolts of the election fraud machinery are  largely in the hands of Christianist fanatics, who have done whatever Karl  Rove asked them to.) Connell's fingerprints are thick on every dubious  election of the last eight years--not just the presidential races, but Gov.  Don Siegelman's stolen re-election in Alabama in '02, Sen. Max Cleland's in  Georgia that same year, and many others.

Spoonamore's testimony is  the driving force behind a RICO lawsuit in Ohio. The lawyers handling  it--Cliff Arnebeck and Bob Fitrakis--are terrific, and they have a game plan  that provides us with some hope. They intend to order depositions of Karl  Rove, Connell, Jack Abramoff, Bob Ney and all the other major perpetrators  of Bush/Cheney's (and McPalin's) fraud. Since this is a civil case, those  guys can't weasel out of it (cf. Paula Jones); and in any case a number of  them (including Connell, whom Rove has lately threatened with reprisals if  he doesn't take the rap) want to testify. Also, the judge happens to be  highly principled, which is a godsend.

So the best thing we can do is  help to spread the word about what Spoonamore knows, first of all, and, no  less, to get those depositions out there once they're taken.
What I urge  people to do is to donate whatever they can spare to Velvet Revolution, the  non-profit that is managing the suit. It was VR's Brett Kimberlin who got  Spoonamore to open up, and he also has other sources with a lot to say. In  order to conduct these depositions, and to fight off all of the inevitable  legal challenges thereto, they're going to need as large a war chest as  possible. So if you can donate to that, it would be great. (I've had some  fair success in raising funds for them so far, but they need  more.)

For more, as well as instructions on how to donate, go to  http://www.rovecybergate.com <http://www.rovecybergate.com/> <http://www.rovecybergate.com/> .
Authors Bio: Mark's new book, Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008, a collection 14 essays on Bush/Cheney's  election fraud since (and including) 2000, is just out, from Ig Publishing.  He is also the author of Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform,  which is now out in paperback from Basic Books, with over 100 pages of new  material. He may be reached through his blog at markcrispinmiller.com. A  movie based on his off-Broadway show, A Patriot Act, is available on DCD at  www.patriotnation.com.  <http://www.patriotnation.com <http://www.patriotnation.com/> . />   

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UPDATE: More from Chelsea Green:

Stephen Spoonamore has been working in the technology field for 20 years. In this time he has worked extensively with electronic credit card security, bank security, corporate security, military security, and voting security. Lately, Spoonamore has been working in the political technology field. He is a Republican, a McCain supporter, and a man who cares about a clean vote.

In a recent interview, Spoonamore asserts that not only have elections been stolen in the past (2000 and 2004, duh), but the election will be stolen again in 2008.

Spoonamore’s advice for securing the vote? Paper. 100% paper, 100% hand-counted. “Sometimes the best technology is old technology,” he says.

Pastors politicking and religious hypocrisy.

1)  Piece by Frank Scaeffer, a self-described life-long Republican and former evangelical leader, on Evangelical/Republican Racist Hypocrites for McCain, or Redemption.

Senator Obama won scholarships to America's top academic institutions, was voted by his peers to be editor of the Harvard Law Review, is a family man with an exemplary and obviously loving marriage, has a wife who is a brilliant charismatic woman, two lovely children, is a churchgoing born-again Christian comfortable with his faith, has avoided making the fast buck in the new gilded age of greed when he could have, served his community, is thoughtful, considered in his opinions, slow to anger, proved right in his judgment about the Iraq war, looks at every side of a question before making a decision, and is not given to grandstanding. He would be vastly ahead in the polls, even in polls of Evangelical voters who, after all, are also watching their savings and home values evaporate... unless he happened to be... black.

I speak as someone who was brought up in an Evangelical household by famous and influential Evangelical leaders (Francis and Edith Schaeffer). And this year even I've learned something new about my old Evangelical/Republican tribe! This election has shown the true nature of the Evangelical/Republican establishment as never before.

2)  Orange County pastors test the IRS rule against politicking:

...He urged members to think about their faith when voting and spent much of his 40-minute sermon giving a partisan speech about the presidential candidates and their issues. "According to my Bible and in my opinion, there is no way in the world a Christian can vote for Barack Hussein Obama," Drake said. "Mr. Obama is not standing up for anything that is tradition in America."  [Notice the use of his middle name to scare the flock?]

This is the kind of thing that happened in the last election. People need to see through it, look within themselves, to break away from churches that begin to mix state in. that begin to tell you whom to vote for, how to vote.

What's more, looking back at Schaeffer's piece, when you compare the two candidates at hand, if religious voters can separate from the issue of abortion and look at the two candidates in their lives, in their histories, in what they have done for their communities and in their gleaming from their own churches a desire to help others, to demonstrate the highest possible morality when it comes to raising his children, setting examples for others and giving back to the world -- all things I would hope would be important to true Christians and true believers in other religious faiths -- then to me it is no contest. It is Barack Obama, not John McCain, who reflects these values most clearly.

Reason #248 Why Outsourcing Can Be Bad.

Cadbury pulls melamine-laced chocolate from China 

British candy maker Cadbury said Monday it is recalling 11 types of Chinese-made chocolates found to contain melamine, as police in northern China raided a network accused of adding the banned chemical to milk.

A Cadbury spokesman said it was too early to say how much of the chemical was in the chocolates made at its Beijing plant.

"It's too early to say where the source was or the extent of it," said the spokesman, who declined to be identified because of company policy.

The company said its dairy suppliers are generally cleared by government milk testing.

Meanwhile, police in Hebei province arrested 22 people and seized more than 480 pounds of the chemical, used to make plastics, in the raids, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The report said the melamine was produced in illicit plants and sold to breeding farms and purchasing stations.

That's some high quality chocolate Cadbury's selling us these days. You mean it's not hand-made by a family of English chocolate-makers in rural England? 

Buy your chocolate organic, locally if possible, or from fair-trade chocolate. It's worth it.

Blurt Out Random Crap: McCain Economic Plan

Yes, Bob Cesca is god___n awesome and so is this post:

McCain's Economic Plan: Blurt Out Random Crap

The goal: Get McCain on record saying something no matter how ridiculous. This way, he can hit the stump later and boast that he said something with regards to scary stuff in the news. I said something [that didn't make any sense and was probably a lie] and Senator Obama didn't say anything [also a lie]! My friends! And whenever he's accused of routinely blurting out random crap, Senator McCain trucks out the old punishment theorem: If Senator Obama had only agreed to the town halls, I wouldn't be selling-out the last shreds of my honor or integrity just to get elected. Can't you see? Senator Obama turned me into a hack, dammit!

First thing that pops into his head. Is it truthful? Doesn't matter. Sex education for kindergarteners, for instance. "Palin sold her jet on eBay," for instance. Does it even make sense or is it just a bunch of words strung together to form a sentence? Who cares. "President Putin of Germany," for instance. "Delivering bottled hot water to dehydrated babies," for instance.

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When that failed, Senator McCain rolled out one of his most egregious lies to date, claiming that Senator Obama, of all people, has been directly responsible for the crisis. Why? Because the former CEO of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines, once talked on the phone with someone associated with the Obama campaign. Like 16 months ago. And that somehow makes Raines a close economic advisor. Never mind that Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, was on the Freddie Mac payroll as recently as a couple of weeks ago.

Which leads us to Senator McCain blurting out that no-one on his staff is associated in any way with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

What's next, McCain campaign? A Mogwai ate a sandwich after midnight; morphed into a Gremlin; then caused the economic crisis? Or will it be Marty McFly's sports almanac screwing up the space-time continuum? Or will it be Reverend Wright putting a curse on the banks? Whatever is next is bound to be crazier than what's already been said.

Read the whole goddamned awesome post here.

Must read: Democracy Now! discussion on the proposed bailout.

This is a transcript from the Democracy Now program's discussion on the proposed bailout. Absolute must read.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, Robert Scheer and Dean Baker on the Proposed $700 Billion Bailout of Wall Street, the Largest Government Bailout of Private Industry in US History

Here's an excerpt, with Robert Scheer, veteran journalist, syndicated columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, and editor of the political website, Truthdig. He is the author of several books, most recently, The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America:

Scheer: Yeah, well, the point is, when Bush and McCain and Paulson, who was head of Goldman Sachs before he was head of the Treasury, say they don’t know how this happened, they designed this system. We had a regulatory regime in place ever since the Great Depression to prevent this kind of meltdown, and that said that stockbrokers, insurance companies, banks, investment banks, commercial banks, could not merge. And in 1999, they passed legislation, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Gramm is the guy who McCain supported for president in ’96. He was co-chair of his campaign until he complained about the whiners out there, meaning the public. And that legislation is what caused this. It allowed the swaps and everything else.

And then, in 2000, hours before the Christmas break, Gramm introduced legislation. I’m holding it in my hand. This smoking gun is available on the internet; you can read it. And what it said is that the swaps is defined in the Financial Service Modernization Act, meaning that instead of going into a bank and somebody said, “OK, we’ll give you a loan, and we expect you to pay it over thirty years. We know your house has the equity. We know you have the means to pay it”—that was the traditional way—instead, they allowed these mergers, and as a result, they could buy insurance on it, they could do these swaps, they could do what they call hybrid instruments. And it is legislation that was never discussed, was—never had hearings or anything, says that all of this stuff is exempted from all previous regulation. The SEC cannot regulate it, the Commodity Futures Board cannot regulate it.

So they gave these institutions, of which Goldman Sachs was critical—so was Citigroup, where Robert Rubin, who was Clinton’s Treasury secretary, he had also come from Goldman Sachs. And, by the way, even though this is Republican-led, there were plenty of Democrats, in fact, a majority of Democrats, who voted for this. And Robert Rubin, who unfortunately is advising Barack Obama—I don’t know how this guy can wake up and—you know, and not be embarrassed and how he can appear on television—and Lawrence Summers, these are the two guys in the Clinton administration who teamed up with Phil Gramm to pass that atrocious legislation.

And now, you know, it seems to me, in terms of the bailout, why don’t they do what Hillary Clinton said during the primaries: just put a freeze on foreclosures? Start out with helping the homeowners and say, “OK, we’re not going to foreclose your house for the next year. We’re going to force the banks to work out reasonable payments. We’ll try to help you hold on to it.” That would have stopped the bleeding here much more effectively than throwing $700 billion at these bandits.

Transcript >>

John McCain: Fundamental Deregulator

Video edited by Jed Lewison for The Huffington Post.

McCain Campaign Manager Paid Nearly $2mil for Mortgage Dereg Advocacy.

From the NY Times:

Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.

Mr. McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has recently begun campaigning as a critic of the two companies and the lobbying army that helped them evade greater regulation as they began buying riskier mortgages with implicit federal backing. He and his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, have donors and advisers who are tied to the companies.

But last week the McCain campaign stepped up a running battle of guilt by association when it began broadcasting commercials trying to link Mr. Obama directly to the government bailout of the mortgage giants this month by charging that he takes advice from Fannie Mae’s former chief executive, Franklin Raines, an assertion both Mr. Raines and the Obama campaign dispute.

Financial Bailout = Patriot Act redux?

Another great piece from Pete Cenedella. Let's go in lock and step with something because "we have to." Yeah, this sounds familiar. (Fortunately, it's still possible that they won't move quite so hastily now.)

Financial Bailout = Patriot Act Redux: Under Cover of Crisis, the Republic is Lost

Remember the days after 9/11? It was like a bad dream, but some people in the Beltway were wide awake -- Ashcroft and Cheney in particular. With the stench of burning steel and flesh still redolent in the New York air, I watched with horror as ready-made legislation was rolled out; massive proposals for the curtailment of civil liberties and basic human rights, a package that came to be the Patriot Act. A sweepingly unconstitutional melange of odious infringements on the entire liberal tradition dating back to the Magna Carta -- conjured almost mystically from the ashes of the Twin Towers. The infinitessimal detail, the precision of legal language, and the hundreds and hundreds of pages, presented so hot in the tailwinds of the planes that tore the Towers down, made me wonder: was this stuff just siting in Ashcroft or Cheney's desk, waiting for this day?

Did the opposition party, the Democrats, share my concern? And how did the Fourth Estate play its historic role as official jaundiced eye on all encroachments on the liberty of the people?

Well, the New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media got in line to intone how necessary it all was. And the Dems said that this was a historic moment when partisanship must be cast aside, when the fate of the Republic hung in the balance and we would have to sacrifice some of our basic rights to enact the Patriot Act immediately. Lockstep was the dance craze, ditto was the word on the street, glassy were the eyes and slack the jaws of the republic in our moment of truth.

MORE: "Naomi Klein: Now is the time to resist Wall Street's shock doctrine"

Thank God we didn't listen to him (on Social Security)

Remember GWB's plan to privatize social security? Wherein some of it could be invested in Wall Street?  That was a horrible idea then and it looks even more clearly horrible now, doesn't it?

For old time's sake:

Bush outlines plan for privatizing social security (CNN, May 15, 2000)
Bush's Social Security Plan in Trouble? (Time, 2/27/05)
CNN Poll: Support Wanes for Bush's SS Plan (3/22/05)

Scorecard: Homes and cars.

If you're keeping score at home:

Homes:
John McCain, 7,
Barack Obama 1.

Cars:
John McCain 13
Obama 1.