Virginia: Soldiers Said They Were Punished for Refusing to Attend Christian Concert
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Dozens of soldiers who refused to attend a Christian band’s concert at Fort Eustis said they were banished to their barracks and told to clean them up, and the Pentagon said Friday that it was investigating the accusation. Pvt. Anthony Smith said he and other soldiers felt pressured to attend the May concert by the Christian rock group BarlowGirl as part of the “Commanding General’s Spiritual Fitness Concerts.” Private Smith said 80 men decided not to attend. “Instead of being released to our personal time,” he said, “we were locked down. It seemed very much like a punishment.” The Military Religious Freedom Foundation said it had been approached by soldiers who said they were punished for not attending the event.

Read more.

The Truth about Pat Tillman’s Death
By Rory O’Connor

Of the many lies George W. Bush told us about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some were larger but none worse than that told about the death of Pat Tillman.

In 2004 – just after Bush’s invasion of Iraq which was justified by those non-existent weapons of mass destruction – Tillman became a military-and media-manufactured symbol of duty, sacrifice, patriotism and heroism.

But the truth about Tillman’s life was much more complex, and his death ultimately far more heroic, than the convenient, self-serving lie served up by the military and then sent out by the ever-gullible U.S. media.

Read more.

This Independent article is far more candid than the one in today’s NYTimes, which plays down both the scale of the disaster (that piece, which appears on p. A13, doesn’t mention the plume’s giant dimensions) and the starkness with which these new findings contradict the US government’s
report of two weeks ago. (Not to put too fine a point on it, the new findings, from Woods Hole, expose the NOAA report as utter bullshit.)

MCM

Plume of oil 650ft high found in Gulf waters
By Steve Connor

Scientists have detected a large underwater “plume” of oil from the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico last April, which spilled almost 5 million barrels of oil into the sea until the leak was successfully capped last month.

The discovery of a 650ft-high plume of hydrocarbon chemicals some 22 miles long by 1.2 miles wide, and 3,000ft below the surface of the Gulf, helps to answer the question of where the oil from the disaster has gone.

Read more.

Lucius Chiaraviglio weighs in on Richard Charnin’s post:

Subject: Re: [ei] Fwd: [MCM] How Internet voting CAN work

Aug 19, 2010 09:00:28 PM, kathy.dopp@gmail.com forwarded From Richard Charnin:
> I disagree with the premise that ALL Internet voting is bad. Actually,
> if the votes are entered at the precinct and uploaded to the Internet
> for tabulation, with PROPER controls (given below) you can have a
> nearly foolproof nationwide system.

Tabulation by programmable devices gives just as much opportunity for
election fraud as voting on programmable devices, except that since
fewer devices are needed for this purpose, the fraud is easier to achieve.

> In Appendix E of my book, I propose a national voting system in which
> votes are entered on a PC by three observers. The votes MUST BE POSTED
> IN FULL PUBLIC VIEW BY USER ID CODE at the precinct. Individual ballot
> data records are uploaded to the Internet periodically.

No matter how honest the observers are, the PC can still lie — it can appear
to the observers to have recorded the vote honestly, and then alter the vote
internally.

> ANY individual or group can download the vote data for any or ALL
> precincts in the state. They and CHECK the aggregated district and
> county totals (calculated by OPEN SOURCE CODE ON THEIR OWN PCs.

How do you know that what you downloaded is what the system really
tabulated and what the voters really entered? No way.

> Triple data redundancy:
> 1- Votes posted at the precinct.

Which could have been altered by the vendor, just like in Ohio in 2004 by
Triad Election Systems.

> 2- Each Voter has a ballot copy

Which is only useful if you hand count ALL of them. In that case, might as
well hand count them all in the first place.

> 3- Votes are recorded on the Internet by precinct code/user ID

No guarantee that this cannot be tampered with.

> 5- Votes are tabulated on the Net by Open Source and by an individual
> using a standard spreadsheet

Open source on your own PC does not guarantee open source on the
machines doing the tabulation. Open source initially on the machines doing
the tabulation does not guarantee open source on these same machine
when election day arrives.

> It is a simple, cost effective, secure and redundant. That’s why it
> has not been and never will be implemented.
>
> Now, if you see a flaw in this VERY INEXPENSIVE SYSTEM, tell me.

It would only give a false sense of security and redundancy. Therefore, it
might actually get implemented after considerable token resistance.

BP oil spill: US scientist retracts assurances over success of cleanup
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 August 2010 21.34 BST

NOAA’s Bill Lehr says three-quarters of the oil that gushed from the Deepwater Horizon rig is still in sea while scientists identify 22-mile plume in ocean depths

White House claims that the worst of the BP oil spill was over were undermined yesterday when a senior government scientist said three-quarters of the oil was still in the Gulf and a research study detected a 22-mile plume of oil in the ocean depths.

Bill Lehr, a senior scientist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) departed from an official report from two weeks ago which suggested the majority of the oil had been captured or broken down.

“I would say most of that is still in the environment,” Lehr, the lead author of the report, told the house energy and commerce committee.

Read more.

From Richard Charnin:

Mark,

I disagree with the premise that ALL Internet voting is bad.
Actually, if the votes are entered at the precinct and uploaded to
the Internet for tabulation, with PROPER controls (given below) you
can have a nearly foolproof nationwide system.

In Appendix E of my book, I propose a national voting system in which
votes are entered on a PC by three observers. The votes MUST BE
POSTED IN FULL PUBLIC VIEW BY USER ID CODE at the precinct.
Individual ballot data records are uploaded to the Internet
periodically.

ANY individual or group can download the vote data for any or ALL
precincts in the state. They and CHECK the aggregated district and
county totals (calculated by OPEN SOURCE CODE ON THEIR OWN PCs.

Triple data redundancy:
1- Votes posted at the precinct.
2- Each Voter has a ballot copy
3- Votes are recorded on the Internet by precinct code/user ID
5- Votes are tabulated on the Net by Open Source and by an individual
using a standard spreadsheet

THE KEY IS DATA REDUNDANCY, OPEN SOURCE AND UNIVERSAL DATA ACCESS
THE VOTER IS IN CONTROL AND CAN CHECK FOR ANY MISCOUNTS. HE HAS HIS
OWN BALLOT COPY AS WELL AS THE POSTED PRECINCT SUMMARY TO CHECK IT
AGAINST.

It is a simple, cost effective, secure and redundant. That’s why it
has not been and never will be implemented.

Now, if you see a flaw in this VERY INEXPENSIVE SYSTEM, tell me.

Richard

Internet Voting
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
By Bo Lipari

In a wired world, it was inevitable that the subject of Internet Voting
become a hot topic sooner rather than later. But more than just a topic
of discussion, this year eighteen states will allow overseas ballots to
be returned via email in November’s elections. Yet according to security
experts, voted ballots sent via Internet simply cannot be made secure,
and make easy and inviting targets for attackers ranging from lone
hackers to foreign governments seeking to undermine US elections.
The Pentagon rejected the idea of returning voted ballots via the
internet as recently as 2004, when the SERVE (Secure Electronic
Registration and Voting Experiment) project was canceled. In a memo,
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said/ “In view of the inability
to ensure legitimacy of votes that would be cast in the SERVE internet
voting project, thereby bringing into doubt the integrity of the
election, I hereby direct you to take immediate steps to ensure that no
voters use the system to register or vote via the internet.”/
There’s no question that voting for military and overseas voters needs
to be improved. Too often absentee ballots are not received in time, if
at all. Returning voted ballots from voters in hard to reach places (for
example remote military outposts) in time to meet state election
deadlines is difficult. These are real problems and 2009 saw efforts to
improve ballot access for overseas voters kick-started by passage of the
Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act, passed as an
amendment to the Defense Authorization bill.

Read more.

With Nevada’s eminently hackable e-voting system, Sharron Angle could well “win” election to the Senate, notwithstanding all her gaffes–and the unpopularity of her extremist views.

MCM

Is Sharron Angle a Christian Reconstructionist?
A unified theory of the Nevada’s Senate candidate’s stranger musings.
By Amanda Marcotte

Sharron Angle, the Republican challenger to Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Nevada Senate seat, has also emerged this election season to challenge Sarah Palin’s throne as the conservative leader most likely to say baffling things in public.

Read more.

> From Paul Craig Roberts:

Mark, I know Alligator Point, having been there many times and in boats out from there. It is the Gulf.

Never heard the surrounding water called St. Andrews Bay. That is in Panama City, 100 miles to the West of Alligator Point.

A better criticism is that Alligator Point is far East of the oil spill.

Paul

‘No Precedent’ For Proposed Cuts To Food Stamp Benefits
Arthur Delaney | HuffPost Reporting

To help prevent a pair of domestic spending bills from adding to the national budget deficit, Democratic leaders in the Senate have proposed cuts to future food stamp funding, saving $14.1 billion over 10 years.

Several Democrats have said they’ll prevent the cuts — which will phase out a stimulus bill provision that increased families’ monthly food stamp payments — from ever taking effect. So are the planned cuts nothing more than an accounting gimmick to win “yes” votes from deficit hawks, or are they a serious threat to families who rely on the money to feed their children?

“I do believe [the Democrats] are sincere in not wanting these cuts to go into effect, but I’m concerned that, when the time comes, they won’t be able to find a way to put the money back,” said Elizabeth Lower-Basch, a senior policy analyst with the Center for Law and Social Policy. “There’s no precedent for this.”

Read more.