The New Press Invites You To:

Sasha Abramsky will read from his new book

CONNED: How Millions Went to Prison and Lost the Vote

Bluestockings Books
172 Allen Street, NYC
(between Stanton and Rivington)

-Saturday, April 29, 7pm-

Event is FREE and Open to the Public

Bluestockings Books, Fair Trade CafZ, and Activist Center

CONNED: How Millions Went to Prison, Lost the Vote, and Helped Send George W. Bush to the White House is Published by The New Press. For more information visit www.thenewpress.com and www.connedthebook.com

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A great show from Seattle, from Paul Lehto:

Here’s me on tv, with the republican secretary of state “[dis]information manager” and republican state rep on the panel as well. Also, Clint Curtis hack program demonstrated live by computer expert while these republicans are forced to watch! Holly Jacobson of VoterACtion does a great job, and Debbie Cook a disabled voting consultant also appearing.

http://seattlechannel.org

On streaming video, there are also around 8 broadcast times in the Seattle area. The Republican state rep is good on freedom of information issues.

Paul Lehto

From an anonymous reader:

Left-wingers have been screaming previuosly [sic] that Tony Snow (and evrybody [sic] else at Fox News) was just a shill for President Bush and all conservatives. Now they are playing up his remarks criticizing Bush. Actually, a lot of lefties are trying to say both at the same time. Doesn’t work. Come on, boys and girls. Is Tony Snow a shill and a yes-man, or is he a critic? Actually, Tony Snow is a good man. He’ll do a fine job.

Mark responds:

Yes, Tony Snow has frequently reproved Bush–from the right. Anyone who thinks that such “attacks” amount to serious criticism, or that Bush was even slightly hurt by them, is missing major pieces of his frontal lobe. Whether such dimwits are “left-wingers” or not makes little difference (although I wonder what you think you mean by “lefties”).

Tony Snow is not “a good man” (I also wonder what you mean by that), but a rabid far-right propagandist–perfectly appropriate for “Fox News Channel,” which is essentially a pro-Bush propaganda operation. (That’s why his “criticism” has been harmless.) But for that very reason, Snow WILL no doubt “do a fine job,” which is precisely the problem here.

April 26, 2006

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We MUST have grass-roots exit-polling operations in all 30 districts! “Trust but verify!”
MCM

From Carolyn Kay:

Help put progressives in Congress!
Progressive Campaigns 2006

Several excerpts and some cartoons:

Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

From the conservative InvestorsInsight Publishing
The Mid-Term Elections: More Bad News For The GOP
by Spencer Wright
[T]here is now the possibility that the Democrats could retake the House of Representatives, and maybe even pick up a couple of Senate seats as well. There has been a gigantic shift in the electoral map, perhaps one of the greatest shifts in recent political history. I must tell you going in, that most of the blame for this massive shift lies with President Bush and his administration, The GOP has actually LOST ground on, national security issues where they have (or did have) the voters’ confidence. And the issues they are articulating – flag burning, family values, etc. – are narrowly focused at the far right portion of their base.

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From the conservative Human Events
30 Republican House Seats in Jeopardy
by John Gizzi
Posted Apr 24, 2006
With President Bush’s popularity at an all-time low, hovering in the mid-30s in most national surveys, and the conservative base of the Republican Party increasingly dismayed with the President’s performance on issues such as runaway government spending and immigration “reform,” chances are increasing that the Democrats could eke out a majority in the House of Representatives in the elections this fall. Four months ago, I concluded that there were 20 Republican House seats that were vulnerable to Democratic takeover, now I believe that there are 30. To achieve a majority, the Democrats would need to win a net gain of 15.

Ben Sargent, Universal Press Syndicate

Maybe Tony Snow thinks he can save the Bush presidency.

Think Progress, Center for American Progress
Snow gets demanding. Prospective White House Press Secretary Tony Snow has reportedly “asked for guaranteed access to the president’s ear and to an unusually large degree of latitude to reconfigure the WH press operation. Snow, not content to be a herald, also wants near-complete control over what he says from the podium, be it bromides, platitudes or substance.” April 25, 2006

From Nancy Tobi:

We are VERY interested in learning about similar events that may have/probably DID occur in other states around the country.

Please let me know if you have any information about phone jamming in the 2002 elections in your state. You will probably only know about this through hearsay, as it didn’t get any coverage until NH started kicking ass.

Nancy
Nancy Tobi, Vice-Chair
www.DemocracyForNewHampshire.com

“The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart.” – Gandhi

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE/FACT SHEET

*** FACT SHEET ***

Other 2002 Races Affected By GOP Phone-Jamming Crimes

As links to the RNC, White House, Jack Abramoff, and other national Republican figures bring the 2002 phone-jamming crime back into the public spotlight, we thought it would be helpful to provide a fact sheet about the several of the close NH races (other than the Shaheen-Sununu U.S. Senate race) that were likely affected by the crime.

FIELD OFFICES JAMMED:
Claremont
Manchester (three separate offices jammed)
Nashua
Rochester

FIVE CLOSE RACES IN THOSE AREAS:

State Senate District Eight (Claremont):
Republican Bob Odell won by 676 votes.

State Senate District Eighteen (Manchester):
Republican Andy Martel won by 869 votes.

State Rep. District Hilsborough-54 (Manchester Ward 6):
Republican Rep. Luebkert won by 28 votes, after a recount.

Hillsborough County Attorney (Manchester & Nashua):
Republican John Coughlin won by 122 votes, after a recount.

Strafford County Sheriff (Rochester):
Republican Wayne Estes won by 768 votes.

Hello Dr. Miller,

I am reading your book “Fooled Again” after seeing you on C-SPAN, and it is absolutely terrifying. I think an honest vote is the most important issue that progressives should be working on.

Have you contacted a prominent progressive group like MoveOn.org to recruit volunteers to watch the 2006 elections? I realize that they need regular people to get involved too, but someone with your expertise and ability to document previous election abuses would be of great use in setting up some kind of system to closely monitor the elections this time around.

Such evidence (for example of plans to purge voter rolls or of voter intimidation), especially if publicized before the actual election, would help counter criticism that we are just crazy conspiracy theorists.

How can organizations such as MoveOn.org be used to that effect?

MCM replies:

Of course, it’s crucial that we monitor the races closely on this next Election Day, but there is something even more important to be done, and which we therefore must start planning NOW.

This year there will be no official exit polls conducted. The media consortium that paid for them in previous elections isn’t going to do it any more, ostensibly because such polls have been “exposed” as unreliable; and so we will have no way to determine whether the official vote-counts can be trusted.

What we need, then, is a grass-roots exit-polling operation, preferably conducted nationwide, or at least in all those states where Senate seats are up for grabs, and in those districts where Republicans are looking vulnerable. If we don’t make this effort, we will have no empirical basis for judging the credibility of the
official numbers. If, on the other hand, we DO conduct such crucial polls ourselves (that is, if we, the people, do it), we will have grounds for refusing to acknowledge all the startling “upset victories” that Team Bush surely has in store for us (again).

This is what happened in Ukraine–a grass-roots exit-polling effort that enabled the Ukrainian people to stand firm against the government. We should do likewise; and it should be rigorously non-partisan, using student teams of pollsters, under the close
supervision of professional statisticians.

So far, NO national organization has taken on the growing danger of election fraud. While MoveOn claims to have been heavily involved in this all-important fight, that’s really ALL that they have done (i.e., make that claim); and no other national org–not Common Cause, not People for the American Way, not the League of Women Voters, nor any other national group–has stepped up to the plate.

There are terrific grass-roots groups at work from coast to coast, doing all they can to block the use of DRE machines and otherwise clean up the system: in New York, California, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Arizona, Washington, New Hampshire and elsewhere. In short, the troops are out there, and the spirit’s more than willing, and God knows the need could not be greater; but there isn’t any of the funding necessary to meld such disparate groups together into an effective national movement for reform.

So if you have any ideas as to how to get MoveOn, and/or any other national group, to do what must be done–a stepped-up campaign for election reform; thorough monitoring of races nationwide; grass-roots exit polls–please share them. All I could do was write the book, and all I can do now is talk it up as much as possible. To spark the sort of movement you describe, we all need to push really hard, and push together.

Howard Dean knows who done it

Quick background: On the day of the 2002 midterm elections in New Hampshire, the Democratic get-out-the-vote call center was inexplicably flooded with hangups. Their phones were jammed all day and their operation was stalled during the course of the voting. The Democratic incumbent Senator lost by an eyelash to the Republican.

Well, some people did some very good digging and found out that James Tobin, Bush’s New England campaign chairman was behind the whole phone-jamming operation. In addition to the calls he made to the Democratic headquarters, he also called the RNC offices 75 times to say hi in the months before Election Day.

But the clincher came last week. Turns out Tobin called the White House some two dozen times in three days surrounding the election.

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