Showing posts with label Katherine Harris. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Katherine Harris. Show all posts

Friday, May 6, 2016

Election Fraud - Voter Disenfranchisement: Even On The Left

Two nights before leaving Barbados we watched the spellbinding  RT Today TV special  'Redacted Tonight',  hosted by Lee Camp and showing the extent of the election fraud in Chicago and how a subsequent meeting of  "officials" basically swept it under the rug.  See e.g.

http://leecamp.net/election-fraud-special-report/

Camp also covered the results of the primary elections. Exit polls,  which are an indicator of functioning democratic elections,  essentially gave the United States a failing rating. Elections’ boards are desperately struggling to explain themselves as voters' ballots go uncounted and the voting machines don’t seem to be working. Much of this echoed the findings in the documentary about the 2004 election fraud in Ohio, 'As Ohio Goes So Goes the Nation.'

What was most galling is how these malicious voter officials (featured in the video) could simply deny the facts, as in the misuse of exit polling data. Meanwhile, true to form,  the MSM and ardent disinformationists discounted the value of the exit polls, Lee Camp reminded history-challenged folk how exit polling has been used consistently as a valid independent check on the integrity of elections - including by U.S. observers in monitoring foreign elections.

Then the following night, Larry King's 'Politicking'  featured guest Greg Palast, famous for his book 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy' detailing how 90,000 and probably more like 180,000 legal black voters were removed from voter lists in Florida, using the ruse that convicted felons can not vote in that state. Jeb Bush awarded the contract to the firm that submitted the higher bid, Choicepoint.  It then scrubbed from the voter rolls all names that were clearly black (first name Jamail or Kinesha for instance), that bore an arguable resemblance to a felon’s name.

Just use Palast’s low estimate. 90,000 black voters x 30% turnout x 90% propensity to vote Democrat = 24,300 Democrat votes scrubbed – the 2,700 10% that would have voted Republican = 21,600 net Democratic votes. By contrast, the disputed ballots were on the order of 2,000 to the low 3,000s.

It was a tailor made voter disenfranchisement operation conducted by Jeb! and his compadre, Secretary of state Katherine Harris. Both will now live in on infamy for making the election close enough to be determined by the Supreme Court, an insult well documented in Vince Bugliosi's best ever (2001) book, 'The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President'.

As opposed to his meandering, bloated book on the Kennedy assassination, this one was concise, argued rationally (not hysterically using ad hominem) and precise in its target:  the five conservative  justices who felt it their bounden duty to interfere in a presidential election. In essence, gutting the provisions of the Constitution, by rendering tens of millions of voters redundant.

Anyway, on Politicking,  Palast  showed  evidence of how cheating has even erupted in Democratic primaries, as illustrated by himself and Lee Camp (RT correspondent) earlier using exit polls. Palast referenced 4 percent as being the normal deviation from exit polls, and then disclosed no fewer than 12 Dem primaries yielded actual vote counts outside this limit. In the case of New York, where Hillary supposedly enjoyed a "blowout" it was a 16 percent difference.

Palast also wrote at his site about problems with the New York election:
Francesca Rheannon, whom you may know as the host of Writers’ Voice radio, did the civic thing by volunteering to work the polls in a town east of New York City. “I just got off my 17 hour shift as an election official. In my election district, out of 166 Democratic voters, 39 were forced to file affidavit ballots. The last [election] I worked in, exactly ONE voter needed an affidavit ballot.”
That’s nearly one of four voters. Why? Their names had gone missing from the voter rolls.
An affidavit ballot (called a “provisional” ballot in most other states) is a kind of placebo ballot. You get to pretend to vote – but the chance it will actually be counted is …well, good luck. If your name is wrongly removed, kiss your vote – affidavit or not—goodbye.
Rheannon’s experience was hardly unique. In Brooklyn alone, over 125,000 names were quietly scrubbed from the voter rolls in the five months leading up to the primary. 
To put it in prospective, the number of voters purged equals about half of the number who got to vote. Scott Stringer, the New York City Comptroller will now audit the Elections Board–now that the election is over. 
Neal Rosenstein, the lead voting rights attorney for the New York Public Interest Research Group, which plans legal action, notes that part of the problem is that partisan hacks sit on the Elections board in New York—hacks from both parties.
Brooklyn is under the control of the Kings County Democratic Party, one of the last of the big city machines. Would they attack their opponents’ voter registrations? I don’t have to guess: in my wasted younger days, I was in the Brooklyn County elections office with the hacks where we were assigned by the Party to challenge voters’ signatures en masse. (I wouldn’t and nearly lost my state job.)

Lastly, columnist Leonard Pitts in his most recent article wrote about the Sanders' campaign loss in New York:

"Granted, nobody likes to lose. But the loss was fair and square AND THOSE CITIZENS OF Bernie NATION WHO CAN'T DEAL WITH THAT SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES!"

Ah, but if the NY primary was basically stolen, they don't have to be ashamed at all, It is Hillary's contingent that is responsible - as Greg Palast's piece and RT segment points out. He may not be blaming Hillary herself, but he is blaming the Dem operation in NYC and people will take note of that when it comes time for the "unity" calls.

 See also:

http://www.ora.tv/politicking/2016/4/29/greg-palast-discusses-how-party-elites-purge-unwanted-voters-0_1uu312rq2ym6

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Jeb Bush Has Shown He's Not Qualified To Be President


Megyn Kelly: Did us a favor by exposing Jeb Bush for the Neocon extremist he is.

But then, in fairness, none of the other Reepo clown cavalcade are either. But given Jebbie was "leading the clown pack", his faux pas regarding the Iraq War has to make even his staunchest backers sit up and take notice - and maybe reconsider.

For those living under a rock, Jeb was being interviewed  by Megyn Kelly - a sometime FOX gadfly for the truth (like Shepherd Smith). She asked him point blank:

"Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the (Iraq) invasion?"

He responded:

"I would have but so would have Hillary Clinton, to remind everybody."

Which is total codswallop. Since Hillary has already stated in her 2002 memoir:

"I wasn't alone in getting it wrong. But I still got it wrong, plain and simple"

With the clear implication that had she to do it over again she'd never have approved the Iraq War Resolution.

Bear in mind again, Kelly wasn't asking Jeb as a Senator but as a potential President. There is a world of difference, and Jeb essentially admitted he'd have started that ill-conceived invasion and occupation even with the intelligence revision since then.. Given this, it's most incomprehensible that  he never said the Iraq War was a mistake which would have at least mitigated some of the blowback.

The outcry even from his own party was immediate and vehement.  Right wing talk show host Laura Ingraham, for example, ripped Jeb a new one on her 'Laura Ingraham Show':

"We cannot stay in this relitigating the Bush years again. You just can/t do it! You have to have someone who says, 'Look, I'm a Republican, but I'm not an idiot. I'm not stupid. I am a conservative, and I learn from the past, and I improve myself. I also don't bring in people who made the same stupid decisions in the 2000s, to get us into the 21st century."

Ingraham's blistering diatribe must have really stung, especially as it insulted Bush's intelligence and judgment so no surprise he tried to walk it back the next day, actually blurting:

"I interpreted the question wrong, I guess. I was talking about given what people knew then, would you have done it, rather than knowing what we know now."

Which is total unmitigated bollocks and discloses the man to be even more of an idiot, not to mention taking his viewers to be total idiots. Thus, the answer discloses a lack of attention as well as jumbled neural processing - something we can't afford in a president. Besides, why would any interviewer take the reference point back to what we knew then when this guy is alleged to be a presidential candidate now? The only logical context would be what we know now as a basis to guide the decision then.

If Bush's misfire on this Iraq War authorization question was all there is, it would be bad enough. But as Laura Ingraham observed in her tirade, this bought and sold imbecile also wants to bring in the same gang of neocons that engineered it!

Then there is Jeb Bush's  earlier baggage, to remind readers who may have forgotten. As then  Governor of Florida, Jeb - along with State Secretary Katherine Harris – used Choicepoint voter rolls to disenfranchise tens of thousands of African American Florida voters so his brother Dumbya  could win Florida's electoral votes in 2000. For those who want all the documented, sordid details, get hold of Greg Palast’s book, ‘The Best Democracy Money Can Buy', and read Chapter One.

Then there was Bush's iinterference - again as Governor - in the Terry Schaivo case. She had directives for her husband to carry out if ever declared brain dead, and Bush prevented him from doing so. (Ms. Schaivo suffered from bulimia which led to a potassium deficiency that triggered her heart failure -  a lack of oxygen, followed by coma and brain death.)

Bush's unseemly interference finally was halted in October 2002, when Florida's 2nd District Court of Appeal heard a week of testimony from five doctors who examined her, including two picked by husband Michael Schiavo, two by her parents and one picked by the court. Three doctors, including one appointed by the court, testified that Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery.

The two doctors selected by the Schindlers (Terry's parents) testified they thought  she could recover.The appellate court concurred with a lower court decision that Schiavo had no hope of recovery and that her feeding tube could be removed.

This travesty never should have occurred, far less been this prolonged, and Jeb Bush's aggressive government (and personal) intrusion was largely to blame.

This asshole has no business being anywhere near the White House any more than his dimwit brother. Hopefully, money cache or no, he will be weeded out early. Probably via making even more dumb ass comments on interviews - or in the debates.

See also ('Jeb Bush Isn't a Moderate: He's a Neocon Extremist')

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/62202/jeb-bush-isnt-a-moderate-hes-a-neocon-extremist

and:


http://www.salon.com/2015/05/13/jeb_bushs_worst_week_yet_how_his_iraq_debacle_could_doom_his_white_house_hopes/