Action Point with Cynthia Black 02-24-2008: The Reference Shelf

Today's article and item links:

• POLITICS: NATIONAL: CAMPAIGN 2008: After this past Wednesday's debate and you thought she was giving up (or making nice) comes this:

  "Shame on you," Clinton tells Obama: Hillary Clinton slammed rival Barack Obama on Saturday for campaign leaflets on her health-care plan that she called "blatantly false" and accused him of using Republican tactics in their contest for the Democratic U.S. presidential nomination. In a bitter exchange, Obama defended the leaflet as accurate and campaign spokesman Bill Burton decried Clinton's "negative campaign."

  AND A Hole in McCain’s Defense? A sworn deposition that Sen. John McCain gave in a lawsuit more than five years ago appears to contradict one part of a sweeping denial that his campaign issued this week to rebut a New York Times story about his ties to a Washington lobbyist.

• ENVIRONMENT: Climate of Denial: Recently I was reminded of this older Mother Jones piece describing just how it is that Global Heating deniers have so successfully managed to push us ever-further to the brink of environmental collapse:

  In short, the deniers have done their job, and done it better than the environmentalists have done theirs. They've delayed action for 15 years now, and their power seems to grow with each year. How, even as the science grew ever firmer and the evidence mounted ever higher, did the climate deniers manage to muddy the issue?

• NATIONAL SECURITY (IRAN): From my favorite blog Iran Nuclear Watch:

  What Would it Take to Launch a War With Iran? I believe that media missed some of the more valuable key findings of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, including: Iran is a rational actor that makes decisions regarding its nuclear program on a cost-benefit analysis; and Iran could halt its nuclear program if it was given opportunities perceived as credible by its leaders to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways. Much work must be done to create the conditions where an offer is perceived as credible. First, the U.S. should determine which elements of the offer made by Iran in 2003 to settle outstanding disputes might remain a feasible basis for talks. Dropping preconditions for talks on the nuclear program is absolutely necessary as it would signal to both Iran and European allies that the US is sincere in its repeated expressions of preference for real diplomacy.

John Conyers Takes a Stand

Player of the Week: John Conyers: "Player of the Week: John Conyers

House Democrats left town Thursday for the President's Day recess having fired two controversial salvos at the Bush administration -- approving contempt of Congress citations against White House officials while refusing to renew a terrorism surveillance law. House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) was at the fulcrum of both moves, making him Capitol Briefing's Player of the Week."

Action Point with Cynthia Black 02-17-2008 The Reference Shelf

Today's article and item links:

• PERSONAL SECURITY: Christian Right's Emerging Deadly Worldview: Kill Muslims to Purify the Earth: You know, I was once skeptical of claims that the religious right posed a threat to average Americans. I grew up in the age of “Jesus Freaks” who were more irritating than troublesome. Once online access gave me “eyes-on” access to their thinking, I knew I was wrong. Today's “Jesus Freaks” want to kill, and they have the government to do it. So here is yet another chilling but sad update on how the “least of these” is trying to actually obliterate “the rest of them”:

  Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani are the three stooges of the Christian right. These self-described former Muslim terrorists are regularly trotted out -- a few days ago they were at the Air Force Academy -- to spew racist filth about Islam on behalf of groups such as Focus on the Family. It is a clever tactic. Curly, Larry and Mo, who all say they are born-again Christians, engage in hate speech and assure us it comes from personal experience.

• RESOURCE (FRAMING): Students Are Like Plants, Not Widgets: Rockridge Institute's excellent advice for presenting Democratic policy on education issues.

• POLITICS: NATIONAL: CAMPAIGN 2008: Less Jobs More Wars: is an interesting new video and campaign from Brave New Films that you can use to frame the McCain war rhetoric in the context of it's likely losses-- American economic security.
  

AND Democracy For America has taken on an interesting wrinkle in elections for Democrats this year: super-delegates. As you know by now, super-delegates were designed by the Democratic party to alter the popular vote would it not turn out the candidate the party elite had intended may not get elected, as happened at the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention. DFA has some suggestions with Let The Voters Decide on what to do about that:

Thirty-seven states and U.S. territories have already voted and we don't have a clear nominee. Senators Clinton and Obama are in a delegate race to the nomination. There are a lot of ways that delegates get assigned to a specific candidate, but almost all of the allocated delegates are directly tied and bound by the actual votes in each primary or caucus - all of them that is, except super-delegates.

• DIRTY TRICKS: Americans United Urges IRS To Investigate Two Religious Right Groups For Biased Voter Guides:

  The Internal Revenue Service should investigate two prominent tax-exempt Religious Right groups that produced biased voter guides for the presidential election, according to Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

  In complaints filed today with the IRS, Americans United charged that voter guides produced by the American Family Association and WallBuilders are clearly designed to promote Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.

  The guides, posted on the groups’ Web sites, list the Republican candidates and their alleged stands on a range of issues, such as support for a human life amendment, “traditional marriage,” “business freedom” and “moral education” and opposition to “gay pride.” Only Huckabee is assigned a “yes” stance on all of the issues.

  AND: 3 US workers face investigation over Obama e-mail:

  Three federal employees are being investigated for unlawful political activities after they allegedly sent an e-mail falsely accusing Barack Obama of being a "radical Muslim," the Globe has learned.

• ENVIRONMENT: Does carbon trading really work?: Larry Lohmann, editor of Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, critiques cap-and-trade.

• NATIONAL SECURITY (IRAN): In 2007 I committed to preventing an unnecessary strike on Iran and formed a small ad-hoc group, Strike Prevention Task Force, through which to do my part. This video “The Folly of Attacking Iran” also found on one of my favorite resources, Iran Nuclear Watch, is a must-see!

• SPEAKING OF TORTURE: Lieberman Endorses Waterboarding Since 'It's Not Like Using Hot Coals' on People:

  Yesterday, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) "reluctantly acknowledged" that he doesn't believe waterboarding is torture. According to the Connecticut Post, Lieberman downplayed the severity of the waterboarding because it doesn't inflict permanent physical damage...

• THE ANDREW MYERS FILE (or How I Learned to Stop Caring About Overt Government Insecurity Interfering With My Right to Privacy): Bush orders Clampdown on Flights to US:

  The US administration is pressing the 27 governments of the European Union to sign up for a range of new security measures for transatlantic travel, including allowing armed guards on all flights from Europe to America by US airlines. The demand to put armed air marshals on to the flights is part of a travel clampdown by the Bush regime that officials in Brussels described as "blackmail" and "troublesome", and could see west Europeans and Britons required to have US visas if their governments balk at Washington's requirements. According to a US document being circulated for signature in European capitals, EU states would also need to supply personal data on all air passengers overflying but not landing in the US in order to gain or retain visa-free travel to America, senior EU officials said.

  (Hat-tip -- Citizens For Legitimate Government)

• No Comment: I have a personal commitment to aiding those with environmentally induced toxic responses, sometimes called Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue, et al. This You Tube link came to me from an online resource seeking support via email to British government authorities to help the victim in this case receive protection. Please, do what you can.

Scalia Thinks Torture is Constitutional

There are so many indignations that pass the scrutiny of Americans daily: atrocities in Darfur, the acidification and demise of oceans and the creationist Huckabee's bid for the most important job in the world-- that one more should not surprise me, but this one, from this man, stands out among the others.

Scalia says courts shouldn't prohibit torture: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia rejected the notion that US courts have any control over the actions of American troops at Guantanamo Bay, argued that torture of terror detainees is not banned under the US Constitution and insisted that the high court has no obligation to act as a moral beacon for other nations."

Just remember when you consider petulantly that you will not vote this November, that somewhere a Republican who will dreams of his candidate appointing Scalia clones to the remaining two SCOTU seats.

REPORT VOTING PROBLEMS IN ARIZONA

The ELECTION INTEGRITY community in AZ is WELL aware of election department administration problems requiring provisional ballots in the primary here Tuesday. I am informed by local activists an investigation is already in the works.

AZ residents who have a Super Tuesday primary problem to report should do so:

1-866-OUR VOTE (National and Arizona)

AND

http://www.azadvocacy.org/ (Arizona)

Too-Close-To-Call

Before we all get too crazy about whether Hillary and Barack will battle through the summer (Romney supporter millionaire Rush Limbaugh's wet dream, by the way) and speculate endlessly on how Hillary regained her "groove", take a moment to consider primary results through a different prism, like the arm-long list of election reporter John Gideon's exclusive column featured daily at Brad Friedman's excellent blog:

I said that we seemed to have dodged a bullet. That statement may have been made a little early. Most of the big reports are election administration failures. Administration failures are those failures that cannot be blamed on voting machines or the voters or poll workers. They are those failures that fall directly in the laps of clerks or registrars or boards of elections. Not enough paper ballots at the precinct is an administrative failure. The “decline to state” issues in Los Angeles County and elsewhere in California, is an administrative failure that may cost hundreds of thousands of voters their voice. We are also picking out little pieces in media articles and some first hand reports that machines put in some California precincts for voters with disabilities were not operational and voters with disabilities ended-up losing the privacy of their vote just so they could cast a ballot.

Such an admin failure as a shortage of ballots plagued Arizona's Maricopa County -- leading of course to concerns among the conspiratorially minded; how could the Elections Department ever imagine that this primary turnout might be more robust than those of the past and be under-prepared with ballots? I think it was simple: Department calculation of "criminal" immigrants fleeing the state would result in Democratic turnout vanishing with them! Okay, that's just a partisan jibe but really, where were the ballots?

Beside the under-played media reports of voting problems, in California, LA election watchers report poll workers being so under-prepared that voters were literally wandering around IN TEARS of frustration from being sent precinct to precinct. Were those "Obama" precincts? Is that how Hillary "closed" her margin?

Of course, if you are busted intentionally suppressing votes it IS illegal but as with so many other processes, it is hard to prove one "intentionally miscalculated" printing ballots, or "intentionally under-training" poll workers, yet along with the practice of keeping voter rolls "protected" (wink-wink) by caging, such errors become completely legal "tactics".

I have a friend, with whom I am beginning to agree, on her simple solution for ending all kinds and types of voter intimidation, suppression and election fraud: a Constitutional right to vote.

Possible? Yes. Probable? Too-close-to-call.

Cross-posted on Voice of America.

IRAN Internet Cut-off By Flimsy Optical Cables-- Not Flimsy CIA Operations?

In my never-ending quest to "Just Say No" to the winger equivalent of Britney Spears hysteria (that would be most Conspiracy Theor-mongering) a little insight into just how "usual" it is for undersea optical cables to be broken. Figure in the fact that three alone run through the same channel and I think you have a good reason to get back to focusing on a few of the real crises-- like global heat death-- for example?

Fragile and expendable, finger-thin undersea cables tie the world together: "The lines that tie the globe together by carrying phone calls and Internet traffic are just two-thirds of an inch (1.68 centimeters) thick where they lie on the ocean floor."

Again, just saying...

VOTING FOR JOHN EDWARDS IN 2008 SUPER TUESDAY AND OTHER PRIMARIES

If John Edwards' name is on your state ballot

AND you are planning on voting for Edwards

this Super Tuesday (or beyond)

THERE ARE ADVANTAGES AND RISKS INVOLVED!

IMPORTANT!!!

In ANY congressional district EDWARDS MUST GAIN 15% of the vote

for his delegates to be seated

AT THE CONVENTION.

ADVANTAGES if he DOES WIN 15% IN YOUR CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT:

• Those delegates SEATED AT THE CONVENTION will be FREE to vote for either candidate-- OBAMA OR CLINTON-- especially if Edwards does not endorse either by that time.
  
• You will get to feel like you have struck a blow against Empire, the Old Guard and everything you ever hated about Corporate America! HOO-AH!
  

DISADVANTAGES if he DOES NOT WIN 15% IN YOUR CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT:

• Your vote essentially counts as a vote for the frontrunner IN YOUR CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. In other words:
  

1. If Hillary is ahead in your area, but you would prefer Obama to “win” the primary, your vote for Edwards will act as a vote for Hillary
   
2. Edwards delegates will not be seated at the Democratic convention
   
3. OR VICE VERSA!
   

So, as usual, feeling good comes with some risks!
Use mental protection and Vote wisely!

To ensure delegates will be seated in your state and district

call your local Edwards office or:

THE NATIONAL EDWARDS NUMBER

(919) 636 – 3131

IF YOU'VE ALREADY "EARLY VOTED"
YOU MAY STILL CHANGE YOUR VOTE!!!!

• GO TO YOUR LOCAL POLLING LOCATION ON VOTING DAY

• CAST A PROVISIONAL BALLOT

YOUR BALLOT CAST CLOSEST TO THE ACTUAL VOTING DATE IS THE ONE USED IN THE FINAL COUNT.

PROVISIONALS ARE COUNTED WHEN THE OUTCOME OF THE ELECTION (IN OTHER WORDS, THE MARGIN) IS LESS THAN THE NUMBER OF PROVISIONAL BALLOTS.

This information has been vetted by Arizona for Edwards campaign associate Catherine Miller.

ANN COULTER CAMPAIGNING FOR HILLARY -- HUH?!

Yes, and frankly as much as you may not trust her motives-- Ann seems as committed to supporting Hillary (under certain circumstances) as she would any true-red conservative. Am I the only one who finds this deeply disturbing, for Ann's sake? Is it the recent death of her Dad at work here?

Just asking...

Action Point with Cynthia Black 02-03-2008: The Reference Shelf

Today's article and item links:

• PERSONAL SECURITY: Copy a CD, owe $1.5 million under "gluttonous" PRO-IP Act:

  Not content with the current (and already massive) statutory damages allowed under copyright law, the RIAA is pushing to expand the provision. The issue is compilations, which now are treated as a single work. In the RIAA's perfect world, each copied track would count as a separate act of infringement, meaning that a copying a ten-song CD even one time could end up costing a defendant $1.5 million if done willfully. Sound fair? Proportional? Necessary? Not really, but that doesn't mean it won't become law.

• RESOURCE (ARMS CONTROL): THE CENTER FOR ARMS CONTROL AND NONPROLIFERATION: For those seeking the best up-to-date Iraq/Iran coverage and comment on US government security issues (note: think about subscribing to the newsletter)!

• POLITICS: NATIONAL: CAMPAIGN 2008: Super Tuesday with Brave New Films and the Young Turks: Can't get out to Super Tuesday house party? No sweat. Join Brave New Films and The Young Turks. Send tips, breaking news, and comments and “...make this coverage the best around”!

• DIRTY TRICKS: Americans United Urges IRS To Investigate Two Religious Right Groups For Biased Voter Guides:

  The Internal Revenue Service should investigate two prominent tax-exempt Religious Right groups that produced biased voter guides for the presidential election, according to Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

  In complaints filed today with the IRS, Americans United charged that voter guides produced by the American Family Association and WallBuilders are clearly designed to promote Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.

  The guides, posted on the groups’ Web sites, list the Republican candidates and their alleged stands on a range of issues, such as support for a human life amendment, “traditional marriage,” “business freedom” and “moral education” and opposition to “gay pride.” Only Huckabee is assigned a “yes” stance on all of the issues.

  AND: 3 US workers face investigation over Obama e-mail:

  Three federal employees are being investigated for unlawful political activities after they allegedly sent an e-mail falsely accusing Barack Obama of being a "radical Muslim," the Globe has learned.

• ELECTION PROTECTION: Republican NH Primary Candidate Demands Secretary of State Allow Unvoted Ballots to be Counted in Ongoing Election Contest:

  Albert Howard Hand Delivers Letter to SoS Gardner, Reiterates Demand For Reconciliation of All Uncast Ballots ALSO: Diebold Machine Errors Reported in 21 Towns, Democrat John Conyers Calls Howard, Expresses Support...

  AND Blackwell could be subpoenaed:

  Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has been asked to testify next Friday in Washington, D.C., by the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. The topic: "Voter Suppression," according to this letter sent Tuesday to Blackwell, who now works for the Family Research Council, Buckeye Institute and other conservative policy groups.The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat, is investigating election irregularities, including long lines and challenges to voter registrations. Blackwell, a Republican from Cincinnati, said he received the invitation, "however, my schedule will not permit me to attend the hearings."

  AND: Binomial analysis: Was the New Hampshire Primary Stolen on Behalf of Hillary?

  Many election-integrity activists with good mathematical intuitions looked at the returns and exclaimed, “That just couldn’t have happened by accident.” What they were speaking of, of course, was the fact that Barack Obama led Hillary Clinton by 53.25% to 46.75% in the 35,864 votes cast for one or the other of them on hand-counted paper ballots (HCPBs), whereas he lost to her by 47.27% to 52.73% of the 81,753 computer-counted votes cast for one or the other of them on optical scanners (op-scans).

• ENVIRONMENT: Does carbon trading really work?: Larry Lohmann, editor of Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, critiques cap-and-trade.

• NO COMMENT: Another Election Season, Another Political Prosecution in Alabama:

  So why would a federal prosecutor put such tremendous resources into arresting and prosecuting a retired social studies teacher? Schmitz is an irresistible target. She’s a Democratic member of the state legislature.

• NATIONAL SECURITY: Taliban threaten US/NATO supply lines in Pakistan: Aijaz Ahmad: Musharraf reluctant to fight Pakistani tribes - serious crisis developing.

• MUST READ: Can't Pay Your Mortgage? Trash Your House and Leave:

  "There's been a change in social attitudes toward default," Mr. Lewis told the Journal. "We're seeing people who are current on their credit cards but are defaulting on their mortgages. I'm astonished that people would walk away from their homes." While Lewis may scratch his head in disbelief, employees of the bank Wachovia have an explanation that might work for him: Homeowners have crunched the numbers and decided their houses are worth less than their mortgages. According to a recent conference call, many of Wachovia's current losses in California are originating not from subprime buyers fallen on financial hardship, but from homeowners who can pay their cleverly structured loans but are just choosing a different fate. "They've been from people that have otherwise had the capacity to pay," a Wachovia spokesperson said on the call, "but have basically just decided not to because they feel like they've lost equity, value in their properties.