Year: 2007

Florida Kills Paperless Voting

Jon Ponder

Interesting timing. One month after Jeb Bush leaves office as Florida governor, the state that gave his brother the presidency because of wiggy voting systems announces it is mandating a paper trail for all votes:

Fifteen of Florida’s 67 counties use paperless touch-screen voting machines. The remaining counties use optical scan machines where a voter marks a paper ballot with a pencil and it is electronically scanned.

Gov. Charlie Crist said Thursday he wants to spend about $32 million to convert all voting machines in Florida to produce paper trails.

”What we’re talking about here is Democracy and it is precious,” Crist told a crowd of several hundred people at a gathering of the nonpartisan Voters Coalition of Palm Beach County.

”You should, when you go vote, be able to have a record of it,” Crist said, calling it ”common sense.”

The proposal will be part of Crist’s budget he presents to the Legislature on Friday.

Fifteen of Florida’s 67 counties use paperless touch-screen voting machines. The remaining counties use optical scan machines where a voter marks a paper ballot with a pencil and it is electronically scanned.

Critics of the paperless machines say voters are disenfranchised because there is no record for a manual recount should questions arise about an election.

”We love our country, we love our Democracy, we cherish our freedom, but the bedrock of that freedom is the right to vote and the right to have our votes count,” said U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, who joined Crist for the announcement.

Crist said he hoped to have paper trails for all voting machines by the 2008 election.

Lots of speculation now that Florida’s move will lead to other states making the same decision.

Settled: SF Mayor Gavin Newsome Is Not Gay

Jon Ponder

Hard to say what this will do to the career of one of the California Democratic Party’s few young stars. He certainly had a future in statewide and, probably, national politics ahead of him. Damn:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s re-election campaign manager resigned Wednesday after confronting the mayor about an affair Newsom had with his wife while she worked in the mayor’s office, City Hall sources said.

Alex Tourk, 39, who served as Newsom’s deputy chief of staff before becoming his campaign manager in September, confronted the mayor after his wife, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, told him of the affair as part of a rehabilitation program she had been undergoing for substance abuse, said the sources, who had direct knowledge of Wednesday’s meeting.

Rippey-Tourk, 34, was the mayor’s appointments secretary from the start of his administration in 2004 until last spring. She told her husband that the affair with Newsom was short-lived and happened about a year and a half ago, while the mayor was undergoing a divorce from his then-wife, Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, said the sources, who spoke on condition they not be identified.

Revealed at Libby Trial: Russert Hates Chris Matthews

Jon Ponder

It’s hard to find someone to root for in this behind-the-scenes glimpse into the inner workings of the Gang of 500 in Washington.

Matalin called Joe Wilson a “snake,” which is ironic coming from a GOP operative. Wilson is one of the few true patriots in his drama.

At Scooter Libby’s perjury trial on Tuesday, lawyers argued about whether to admit notes Libby took from a conversation he had with former Vice Pres. Cheney adviser, Mary Matalin, in the week before Bob Novak revealed the secret identity of WMD specialist Valerie Plame. But the juiciest bit from the notes had nothing to do with the trial:

According to the notes, Matalin told Libby that Wilson’s charge was fitting into the “Democratic story on the Hill” and that the “story is not going away.” The notes say, “We need to address the Wilson motivation.” Matalin suggested that Libby call Meet the Press host Tim Russert. “He hates Chris — he needs to know it all,” the notes say, in a reference to Hardball host Chris Matthews, who had been promoting Wilson’s accusations on the air and slamming Libby by name. On the same page, Libby wrote, “Wilson is a snake.”

This is how the nation’s capital works. A scandal erupts, and the spinners go into damage control and try to manipulate the press however they can. In this instance, Matalin apparently believed Cheney’s office could play Russert against Matthews.

Chris Matthews is loathesome, especially when he chews up airtime with his spittle-spewing hatred of all things Clinton. And while this does edge my estimation of Tim Russert up from minus-50 to minus-49.5, now we know that even Vice Pres. Cheney considered him to be an easily manipulated Republican media tool.

The fact that Libby’s notes indicated that Matalin referried to Joe Wilson as a “snake” is particularly telling. Republicans like her are constantly impugning the patriotism of anyone who dares to criticize this administration. Joe Wilson is nearly unique among the players in this drama in that he did the right thing in ratting them out for lying to the American people. His behavior — unlike Matalin’s, Libby’s or their bosses’ — was truly patriotic.

What Really Happened in Najaf? Mistake or Massacre?

Buck Banks

Unfriendly fire: When I first heard about the cult that Iraqi soldiers engaged in a pitched battle outside Najaf last weekend, I must admit it sounded fishy. I mean, why hadn’t we heard of a messianic group that was well-armed and well-funded (given the US $1 million supposedly found by soldiers) and opposed to the Iraqi government?

Well, it seems that, like many explanations we’ve gotten for events in Iraq, that answer might be a lot more gray than black and white. Alexander Cockburn gathered information from a Bagdad newspaper and the Heal Iraq Web site that, if true, means it was an ethnically based massacre of Shiites. But we’ll probably never know for sure.

A picture is beginning to emerge of a clash between an Iraqi Shia tribe on a pilgrimage to Najaf and an Iraqi army checkpoint that led the US to intervene with devastating effect.

There are growing suspicions in Iraq that the official story of the battle outside Najaf between a messianic Iraqi cult and the Iraqi security forces supported by the US, in which 263 people were killed and 210 wounded, is a fabrication. The heavy casualties may be evidence of an unpremeditated massacre.

A picture is beginning to emerge of a clash between an Iraqi Shia tribe on a pilgrimage to Najaf and an Iraqi army checkpoint that led the US to intervene with devastating effect. The involvement of Ahmed al-Hassani (also known as Abu Kamar), who believed himself to be the coming Mahdi, or Messiah, appears to have been accidental.

The story emerging on independent Iraqi websites and in Arabic newspapers is entirely different from the government’s account of the battle with the so-called “Soldiers of Heaven”, planning a raid on Najaf to kill Shia religious leaders.

The cult denied it was involved in the fighting, saying it was a peaceful movement. The incident reportedly began when a procession of 200 pilgrims was on its way, on foot, to celebrate Ashura in Najaf. They came from the Hawatim tribe, which lives between Najaf and Diwaniyah to the south, and arrived in the Zarga area, one mile from Najaf at about 6am on Sunday. Heading the procession was the chief of the tribe, Hajj Sa’ad Sa’ad Nayif al-Hatemi, and his wife driving in their 1982 Super Toyota sedan because they could not walk. When they reached an Iraqi army checkpoint it opened fire, killing Mr Hatemi, his wife and his driver, Jabar Ridha al-Hatemi. The tribe, fully armed because they were travelling at night, then assaulted the checkpoint to avenge their fallen chief.
[…]

’08 Election’s Over — McCain Has as Good as Won

Buck Banks

Mojito mojo: A year before the first primary, and South Florida’s legislative Cuban triumvirate has thrown it’s endorsement like a spoonful of vaca frita behind Arizona Sen. John McCain. State reps. and hermanos Lincoln “Not Abraham” Diaz-Balart and Mario “Not Super” Diaz-Balart joined U.S. Rep. Ileana “Kill Castro Now” Ros-Lehtinen in backing the increasingly testy Republican candidate.

Talk about placing yer bets early. I just hope some of my least favorite local representatives aren’t too disappointed when McCain flames out.

Molly Ivins, Rest in Peace

Jon Ponder

Molly Ivins died today in Texas. She was 62*:

What’s there not to like about a columnist who’d once written, “I’m not anti-gun; I’m pro-knife.” Molly’s point was, typically, half serious, tongue in cheek. If you use a gun, you don’t need to be in shape as you would if you had to kill someone running with a knife. Using knives, she said, actually would promote physical fitness….

A liberal’s liberal, Molly was genuinely home-spun and humble, a genuine product of the Lone Star state. She stood in stark contrast to the faux cowboy currently taking up space and oxygen in the Oval Office, a Connecticut Yankee desperately running away from his Ivy League upbringing and education and, in the process, giving hubris and arrogance an even worse name. Molly not only never ran away from her liberal roots in the one place where liberalism is perhaps the least welcome, she embraced it and let her freak flag fly high and proud.

H/t to JP for the correction on Molly’s age.

ISG Chair James Baker to Senate: ‘Give War a Chance’

Jon Ponder

The Iraq Study Group recommended ramping up diplomacy and putting more responsibility for patrolling the streets on Iraqi forces. It pointedly did not reccomend escalating the war. And yet, here is its co-chairman, the Republican operative and former Sec. of State under Bush’s daddy, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday:

James Baker, the co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, on Tuesday endorsed President Bush’s troop surge in Iraq, urging the Senate to “give it a chance.”

“The president’s plan ought to be given a chance,” Baker told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Just give it a chance.”

At which point all the Republican senators stood up, held hands and started singing the John Lennon song, “All we are saying is give war a chance!”

Barak to Fox: Don’t Mess with Obama

Buck Banks

Cold shoulder: Remember last week when Fox News “reported” a story from the Moonie fishwrapper Washington Times about how Illinois Sen. Barak Obama was brainwashed in an Indonesian Muslim madrassah when he was 7? And remember how all the talking tools on wingnut TV and radio shows picked up the unattributed, unresearched and, as it turned out, untrue story?

Well, Obama has retaliated by cutting Fox reporters off. No comments, no interviews, no thanks, you’re not welcome on my really kool campaign for president.

If a candidate is serious about running for president, he or she is going to need Fox to reach out to voters in red and purple states.

The Fox reporters, typically, are whining:

“I’m still in the freezer,” one Fox journalist said, noting that the people at Fox “suffering the most did nothing wrong.”

My favorite, though, is the unnamed “source” who made the following addle-pated statement:

One source familiar with the dynamic between Fox and Obama, who asked not to be named, said Obama and his staff are in for a rude awakening if they think they can write off Fox News. If a candidate is serious about running for president, he or she is going to need a network like Fox to reach out to all those voters in the red and purple states, the source said.

One, red-staters who watch Fox News are not going to vote for a guy who’s even just half black. Second, Obama is going to get tons of coverage because — he’s Obama! Even voters who only watch Fox News and listen to Rush Limbaugh will still hear about him and his message.

So don’t let Fox off the hook too soon, Barak. Enjoy watching them twist in the breeze for a while.