More on the Andrea Stewart-Cousins case

A lot of the buzz around this story has to do with Nickolai, a Democratic Judge who was to hear the case but did not at the request of the Republicans because he was on the same ballot as Mrs. Stewart-Cousins. Here's the kicker though, and I quote, "Democrats did not dispute the decision." Why is that so important? Let's see, this is a real potential conflict of interest and Democrats want to have every vote that should count, count AND they want no part of this election to be in question. Playing by the rules, that's our game. Related Articles: "Vote count nearing end in Spano, Stewart-Cousins race" November 30 - Journal News "Westchester election officials to miss deadline" November 25 - Journal News "Nicolai off Senate-race case" November 24 - Journal News "Tight Race for a Senate Seat Refuses to Loose" November 22 - NY Times *please note that these articals are currently available online for free, but I beleive that they will expire. and then you may have to pay for them.

This election isn't over yet

I know that this is from a Democratic-oriented source and so I would usually post it but the good folks at Democracy for America think that it is important enough and strong enough to put it up and that's good enough for me. This is close to home for me. Home being Rockland County, just across the river from Westchester county where this story takes place.

On election night, the tally had Andrea running 1674 votes behind Spano (out of over 104,000 cast). But then a strange thing happened. A recanvass of the voting machines revealed enormous errors – and the revised tally had Andrea only 9 votes down from Spano. Now we are in the middle of counting nearly 9,000 absentee and paper ballots from across New York’s 35th Senate District. If the trend holds Andrea will be on her way to Albany to shake up the New York State Senate. Spano and the Republicans are trying to win Palm Beach style – by challenging every possible Democratic absentee and provisional ballot they can for any possible reason. The GOP’s highly paid lawyers are challenging every college student, every senior – any Democrat they can - trying to slow down the process, drive up the cost and win an election through disenfranchisement. We cannot let this happen.

Story from the New York State Democratic Senate Campaign Committee

Update on Bev Harris in Florida

The following was taken from a November 19th artical (link below).

Bev showed up bright and early the morning of Wednesday the 17th - well before the scheduled meeting - and discovered three of the elections officials in the Elections Warehouse standing over a table covered with what looked like poll tapes. When they saw Bev and her friends, Bev told me in a telephone interview less than an hour later, "They immediately shoved us out and slammed the door." In a way, that was a blessing, because it led to the stinking evidence. "On the porch was a garbage bag," Bev said, "and so I looked in it and, and lo and behold, there were public record tapes." Thrown away. Discarded. Waiting to be hauled off.

...

"We were sitting there comparing the real [signed, original] tapes with the [later printout] ones that were given us," Bev said, "and finding things missing and finding things not matching, when one of the elections employees took a bin full of things that looked like garbage - that looked like polling tapes, actually - and passed by and disappeared out the back of the building." This provoked investigator Ellen Brodsky to walk outside and check the garbage of the Elections Office itself. Sure enough - more original, signed poll tapes, freshly trashed.

The story by radio host and journalist Thom Hartmann

New Political Cartoon

Of all the good ideas...

I was watching CNN tonight, Lou Dobbs I think, and they were doing a piece on the seige of Falluja. They showed footage of the troops blowing up a car on the side of the road just in case it was rigged with a car bomb. Hey Iraqis, if you're nice enough to not try to blow us up by setting up IEDs on your car, we'll reward you by blowing it up! Why don't they like us again? After blowing open the door to a house, there were pictures of marines then destroying a cache of weapons inside, completely ruining the structure I'm sure. Annother shot depicted an American tank of APC demolishing a small shed or garage by running through it. Someone said something to the effect of, "whatever is destroyed today can be built again tomorrow." A word about infrastructure, it's expensive and it doesn't pop up over night. If it did Iraqi's would have guaranteed electricity and running water. Our troops are destroying the property of those who were smart enough to leave, I'm sure. It would also be a safe guess that when Ahmed returns and sees his car blown to smitherines or his garage demolished he's not going to be praising us, and he might just be a part of our next wave of enemies. War is messy, but the way that we are fighting this war is no way to win the peace. We aren't doing ourselves any favors.

If nobody's clapping...

...clap louder! I learned that from my martial arts instructor years ago and it's twice as true in the media. KUDOS to Kieth Olberman and MSNBC's "Countdown" who have made a big deal about the recent fuzzy math in the past election. They were the first "mainstream" show to bring it up and today it's all over. AS IT SHOULD BE! There's a lot of reallty interesting things surfacing and if there's any justice in this world then this will not be the last that we hear about them. RELATED LINKS: JACKOLA Comprehensive Listing Bloggerman

No exemptions

When it comes to being even-handed, the current US Administration just isn't. This shouldn't supprise anyone. When it comes to taxes, it's important to realise that there ought to be no exceptions, but there are. From the Washington Post on October 29, 2004:

The Internal Revenue Service has threatened to revoke the NAACP's tax-exempt status because the civil rights group's chairman, Julian Bond, "condemned the administration policies of George W. Bush" during a speech this summer, according to documents the group provided yesterday.

The NAACP, which is based in Baltimore and is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization, is incorporated under a tax-code section that prohibits participation in a political campaign. The group has long had a strained relationship with the Bush administration.

An IRS document dated Oct. 8 said that at the group's annual convention in Philadelphia in July, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People may have violated the restriction on political activity because it "distributed statements in opposition of George W. Bush for the office of presidency."

"Specifically in a speech made by Chairman Julian Bond, Mr. Bond condemned the administration policies of George W. Bush on education, the economy and the war in Iraq," said an IRS "information document request" sent with the letter.

If the NAACP can have their tax-exempt status challenged, where are all the challenges for the churches who came out in support of George Bush. Nothing hurts like a hole inthe pocket book, and what goes around comes around. There is no way around it, I dont care whether it's in the name of Jesus the son or Jesus the migrant farm worker. The rules about tax-exemptions ought to apply to everyone, no exemptions.

The First STTP

I'm proud to announce the very first STTP. STTP stands for Speaking Truth to Power and today Tim Ryan (D - Ohio) is speaking truth to power. MOVIE. We still have representation, and Tim Ryan is part of it. Stand up, Be Proud. Also, on October 04, 2004, in a piece labeled "U.S. FOREIGN POLICY PLAGUED WITH ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER," [Page: H8004 of this Congress] Tim had this to say (a little long, I know):

Mr. Speaker, it has been a very interesting time in the past couple of years. I have come to this floor on many occasions to talk about what is happening in Afghanistan. The truth and the reality I think is becoming more apparent to all of us as American citizens; and as the Presidential debates and the Presidential contest and the election of this year coming up in the next few weeks is coming to a close, this issue is becoming more and more relevant.

I think it is becoming more and more relevant, Mr. Speaker, because it illustrates that the foreign policy of the United States of America has attention deficit disorder.

After 9/11, in which we were attacked by Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, housed by the Taliban in Afghanistan, an international coalition went to Afghanistan and said to the world that we are together in the fight against terrorism. Unfortunately, several months after that, the United States, pretty much by itself, even though the President said the other night, well, we have Poland with us; well, now Poland is withdrawing its troops and its support from the battle in Iraq.

So we shift our focus from the battle in Afghanistan, and the international coalition that we had, to Iraq. The satellites that were focused on Afghanistan trying to find Osama bin Laden, trying to find exactly what was going on with the drug trade and opium production in Afghanistan, the satellites turned and began to face Iraq. Troops that we had in Afghanistan went to Iraq. Interrogators that we had in Afghanistan went to Iraq. Funding that should have gone to Afghanistan went to Iraq.

Now, the President said several weeks ago that the Taliban is gone, that the Taliban does not exist anymore. That is completely and utterly false. The Taliban is still in existence. They are still fomenting problems in Afghanistan. They are still controlling some of the attacks that are going on in Afghanistan. And the quotes in today's paper were saying, a quote from a high-ranking official in the Taliban, the quote was, we are going to kill anyone who goes and tries to vote in Afghanistan elections, anyone who wants to run for office in Afghanistan, and anyone who would otherwise participate in the elections in Afghanistan. Why? Because Karzai is a puppet to the United States of America.

We have 17,000 troops in Afghanistan. We have 130,000 troops in Iraq. We cannot find Osama bin Laden. And today in the newspapers all over the country, stated from Afghanistan officials who are working with the United States, United States officials, that the trail to Osama bin Laden is cold. Cold. We have nowhere to go, we have nowhere to look; we do not know where he is. We dropped the ball, we outsourced the project to people in Afghanistan instead of giving it to the best, most highly trained, highly skilled units in the world, because we have attention deficit disorder, because we had to go to Iraq, we had to drop $200 billion, and everything this administration said to us before the war has proven not to be true.

We are going to be able to use the oil in Iraq for reconstruction: not true. We have spent $200 billion; the taxpayer has spent funding this debacle in Iraq. We were told we were going to be greeted as liberators. Now we are greeted as occupiers. It has gotten so bad in Iraq, the Italians are now paying $1 million to get hostages back. So the Italians are paying $1 million to the insurgents in Iraq to fund the insurgents against us. It is ridiculous. This has been a debacle from the get-go, and it is time we square things around before we have a narco-state in Afghanistan on our hands.

I would like to point out, first and foremost that Rep. Ryan not only is speaking truth to power, but that he is also aware of his role in the larger role of things. He uses the word "we" 39 times in his monologue. After this past election, as we get ready to deal with the next 4 years of our lives, it's important for us to continue to use the phrase "we" when referring to the United States. Just because we did not win this election does not mean that we are not just a part of this country, but also that we ARE this country. Just because ten states voted to ban gay marriage doesn't mean that there aren't still Americans who voted against these measures. Ladies and gentlemen, WE are America and no election will ever take that away.

Grand Opening

This is the Grand Opening of this particular blog. There is nothing grand about this blog. Nobody has read it. Nobody has linked it. Nobody knows about it. It uses a default template, and there is all of one post on it. There is nothing grand about it nor will anything be grand today. For the first time, a record turnout has favored the Republicans. This scares me. The thought that a MAJORITY of people in America vote faith over fact essentially potentially turns a Democracy into a Theocracy, and if you think that's what our forefathers were thinking, then I have news for you. You're wrong. This is the Reality High Blog. It is here because nothing will scare you like the truth. There is nothing grand about this blog. Nobody has read it. Nobody has linked it. Nobody knows about it. Yet. This is a new push, a new start, I am going foreward. I am going foreward because I knnow what the other options are. This is Geoff, and I want my country back.