BartBlog

A new CBS News national poll finds Sen. Hillary Clinton leading the Democratic presidential race with 45%, followed by Obama at 25% and Edwards at 14%.

…yet everyday you hear someone say she can’t win.

“Massive Dem Failure”….

Hey Bart: My comment (below) probably will be censored (not approved) by HuffPost (I think they got some Wingo editors), but AT LEAST, for the first time I can recall in 6 years, someone is actually mentioning – Democratic OPPOSITION RESEARCH, or more specifically, the ENTIRE AWOL LACK THEREOF!

Lj….
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-lewis/cheney-youtube-clip-revea_b_60632.html

BRAVO! Martin Lewis points out something that I have been shouting fruitlessly (into the wind) for 3- 4 years now, if not a dozen: that Dem party “opposition research” has been NEGLIGENT bordering on Derliction of Duty, if not Criminal negligence.

It’s not just the Kerry campaign IGNORING Cheney (and Bush Sr’s) rationals for _not_ invading Iraq in 1991. Kerry stood there like a punching bag as Bush sneered into national TV (during the 3rd debate) “my opponent is a FLIP-FLOPPER.” Kerry too stupid, or too cowed, to respond the obvious: “George Bush pledged to ‘Get Osama bin Laden dead or alive,’ and here it is on the eve of another presidential election, and bin Laden is sending videos to America from his undisclosed location, safe and free from US persecution.”

(more…)

Concerning Election Reform

It’s very exciting to me that with our technology, even the confused little old lady in Florida cannot screw up the voting system. Instead of her being able to carefully hang a chad, or vote for both Gore and Bush, she must now press a frail, uncertain finger against a touch screen that won’t tolerate anything other than a single choice.
But now, as the election reform issue turns to other topics, there is a growing mindset that is willing to sacrifice secrecy for accurate vote count. This bothers me because I don’t want man or machine to know how we vote.
The question, then, is how do we obtain both a very high degree of voting privacy and accuracy?
This is how:

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Salon, August 16, 2007

“Diebold Election Systems” are three words synonymous with the aggressive pursuit of failure. Not only did the company badly implement a dubious concept — unverifiable electronic touch-screen voting machines — but it did so with determined flourish, letting its code and internal communication leak out onto the Web; employing as a chief executive a man who declared he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year”; abusing copyright law in an attempt to quell its critics; and, among many other caught-red-handed indiscretions, deleting criticism of itself from Wikipedia.

No wonder, then, that Diebold Election Systems has decided to steal a page from the playbook of that paragon of corporate responsibility Philip Morris (aka the Altria Group): Diebold will erase its sorry history with a simple name change!

Henceforth, when reaching for an example of mind-boggling incompetence, please say “Premier” rather than “Diebold,” because Diebold Election Systems is now Premier Election Systems.

The name change, the company says in a press release, “signals a new beginning” and a “fresh identity” — though in the same release the firm concedes that it will still be making and pushing the same sorry voting machines (machines that, as Princeton computer scientist Edward Felten and his colleagues showed last year, are actually vulnerable to a virus-based attack).

Read More Here

MediaBistro, August 15, 2007

In a memo to senior producers this afternoon, FNC’s SVP of programming, Bill Shine announced the network “will not continue the Half Hour News Hour beyond its current 15 episode run.” Shine did leave the door open, however: “we are considering ways to retool the show for future scheduling needs.”

The TV news satire show which airs Sunday nights, stars faux anchors Kurt McNally, played by Kurt Long, and Jennifer Lange, played by Jennifer Robertson.

The first airing, February 18 was a hit, with more than 1.4 million viewers. The show averaged 258,000 viewers (25-54 demo) in its last 10 airings, winning its timeslot all but once. FNC will air the final show September 16.

Read More Here

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/08/15/petraeus-white-house-report/

The Los Angeles Times reports that Gen. David Petraeus’ upcoming Sept. 15 report on Iraq will be authored by the White House:

Despite Bush’s repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report’s data.

Sounding like Republicans blaming their woes on that “liberal media,” the leftwing of the Democratic party are creating their own myth to explain why their preferred candidate(s) can’t get any traction in national polls. Using combinations of professional associations and shoddy research, bloggers and discussion forum patrons have determined that every national poll is “rigged” against “progressives” and in favor of Senator Hillary Clinton. (more…)

Subject: 2008 Olympics

President Felipe Calderón of Mexico has announced that Mexico will not
participate in the 2008 Summer Olympics. He said that, “Anyone who can
run, jump, or swim has already left the country.”