I'm flying out of Hononlulu in less than 72 hours and I'm already missing this place. What a sacrifice but so worth it in this case. A lot of you know why I'm leaving but for those of you who don't, I'm giving up my life in paradise after a decade and a half in order to move to California and help Charlie Brown kick John Doolittle's corrupt ass out of Congress.

Speaking of which, my ChipIn fundraiser just to the right of this post is only valid until the end of today. I only raised half of the funds I need and I'm still coming up short. If you need a good cause, this is a great one I'll be posting some more big news about Charlie Brown tonight but I'm literally sitting on my carpet in an empty condo with my monitor on a box and the computer on the floor beside me. Check out this article on RawStory.com. If you miss the ChipIn deadline, you can always use PayPal right above it. How about it? It will sure help me get there so I can make more videos and ads like this one! As well as joining the daily talking circuit and Get-Out-The-Vote drive. C'mon friends... Kick in a couple of bucks so I don't go broke as a result of my decision to uproot my life to help get a great man elected to Congress.

Nate

WAR I$ $ELL is a terrific one-hour documentary by Brian Standing that answers very important questions in this day and age. How do you sell a war? How do the techniques of government propagandists, public relations consultants and commercial advertisers work, and why are they so effective? How did the United States become a master of domestic war propaganda over the course of the twentieth century?

This is a fantastic bit of documnetary movie making that takes the "selling of war" to a gullible public and breaks it down step by step and piece by piece.

With: Amy Goodman, Alexander Cockburn, Robert Fisk, John Stauber, Sheldon Rampton, Nancy Snow, Rahul Mahajan, Mary Carpenter, Neil Whitehead.

War is Hell. War is Sell. Sell a War.

Tags: War, Iraq, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, Rove, Propaganda, Big Lie, Media, War is Sell, War is Hell, Sell a War

One of my heroes has won a solid victory tonight in what has been one of the toughest challenges of his political career. Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI) has defeated Congressman Ed Case's primary challenge.

This was very much a Lamont/Lieberman race in reverse in another major state primary election.

The People's Will has prevailed again. Congressman Case has supported the war in Iraq since it was launched and Senator Akaka was one of only 19 Senators to vote against granting The Decider permission to play craps with the lives of hundreds of thousands of US Service Members and the stability of the entirety of human civilization for that matter.

Tags: Dan Akaka, Ed Case, Hawaii

Ava Lowery is a brilliant light in a world of ever-darkening madness. The purest form of light in fact... Truth! Expression through the eyes of a chrystal clear girl of only fifteen years of age. A wisdom that speaks from the heart and soul to transcend even the bounds of time. Such a young spirit with such an old soul full of so much hope.


Tags: War, Iraq, Bush, Katrina, Peace, Courage

I posted this video two months ago and according to iFilm it has been viewed less than 300 times. This is a 10 minute campaign movie about Ned Lamont. Why hasn't this been sent to every registered voter in CT with an email address?


My question for my favorite big blogs is: Why haven't you put this video in a major post yet? Often your fingers Fly Havoc... and let loose the Dogs of Snark! But it is frequently in the form of long-winded rants against Lieberman and his band of bumbling bafoons. Why hasn't any major Pro-Ned blog I frequent taken the remarkably simple act of copying the embed code from this excellent high resolution, full-length, ten-minute campaign documentary (click 'Menu' on player then copy embed code) and then posting it atop your next and inevitable "Ned" post...? Why not give the good people of Connecticut-and the Nation at large a clear, heartfelt and genuine look at the Good Man that IS Ned Lamont?

We live in a video age and every single family in Connecticut with an internet connection should be encouraged to watch this! Succeeding will mean that this has to be about more than telling the people what an idiot Joe is... We must also SHOW everyone the Good Man and Great Candidate they are hiring to replace his sorry ass! -Nate

P.S. The video world of the Blogosphere is bigger than just YouTube!

Tags: Lamont, Lieberman, Senate, Nedrenaline, Iraq, Bush

Thanks Poetry Man!

I'll be posting more about a band I just got back from jamming with called Buck-O-8. They kicked ass. I'll get you some of their jams up this weekend. Tonight I want to hear a master playing a piece from another master.

The Montana Broadcasting Association has warned TV stations in Montana that a new ad by the DSCC using Senator Conrad Burns' own words against him, is innapropriate for Montana television. Some stations have already pulled it. Here it is:


The article from Congressional Quarterly requires registration but you can find it's link and read many of the highlights at Raw Story.

Perhaps Montana should worry more about their corrupt Senator with the Foul Mouth and complete lack of respect for the heroes of our country. Remember, this is the same Senator who flew first class while making his wife fly coach. "Get to the back of the bus Woman!" is apparently still alive and well in Montana

Tags: Senator, Conrad, Burns, DSCC, Montana, GOP

By: Sgt Majors Myers
Thu Sep 21, 2006 at 02:26:35 PM PDT

During the course of my military career I received training on how to survive being a Prisoner of War (POW). In a very controlled training environment I was subjected to "torture" that included humiliation (being kept nude), physical abuse such as slaps, belly slaps, punching, sleep deprivation, hypothermia, threats of electrocution, and even water-boarding. We, I and my fellow soldiers, were exposed to this in training because it was made clear to us that as soldiers, should we ever become a POW we should be prepared for and expect this kind of treatment from the "bad guys".

This treatment was put upon us in a controlled environment and we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that no matter what we would not be permanently or irreparably harmed in any way and yet it was still a life altering, horrendous and humiliating experience.

The training was particularly poignant to us in that it was conducted in conjunction with our training on the Geneva Conventions. It was made clear that we as American soldiers were expected to conduct ourselves in a morally upright and honorable manner no matter what ours or our comrades in arms treatment was at the hands of an enemy. We were given detailed in depth training on the Geneva Conventions and we were given extensive hands on training in how to treat prisoners of war should we be faced with that situation.

I believe that we all, to a soldier, learned our lessons well because I can say without equivocation that in the ensuing nearly three decades of my military career, which included several combat tours, I never treated a POW, nor did I personally witness a POW being treated in any manner that could ever be construed as inhumane.

As a young soldier that training taught me something much deeper than just how to expect to be treated as a POW or how I should treat a POW. It taught me that America was a nation founded on the rule of law and a nation that still strived to achieve and maintain the moral high ground no matter how the enemy conducted themselves. It taught me that we weren't a nation built on religious fanaticism but one built on human dignity and justice. We didn't gauge how we treated others by how we were treated but how we as human beings expected to be treated.

Read the full diary entry here...

Tags: War, Iraq, Bush, Torture, Geneva, Conventions, McCain, Graham, Powell

I was going to let my previous post stand for a few days but this just has to be seen. Robert Greenwald brings us another powerful documentary called: Iraq for Sale. I posted about it back in June here. Watch this very disturbing trailer below.



I'll get back to making Republican Crook bashing attack ads tomorrow. Tonight watch this trailer and think about what we are becoming. Recall the prophetic words of men like Dwight D. Eisenhower. Men of Iron with patriotic spirits forged in fire.

Tags: War, Iraq, Bush, Blackwater, Halliburton, KBR

As many of you know, I have decided to leave Hawaii and move to California where I'll be volunteering for the Charlie Brown for Congress campaign in order to help him defeat one of the most corrupt members of Congress, John Doolittle. I have captured the audio from a new radio ad about John Doolittle and produced it into my first ever campaign video. John Doolittle Facts!


Please let me know what you think of it in the comments and if you like it, help spread it far and wide. (Especially in California). Then be sure and check out DoolittleFacts.org to learn more. There is a documentary out called "Behind the Labels" which I posted last month that is definitely a Must See video that explains and documents the atrocious human rights crimes being committed on American soil with the full sponsorhip of GOP crooks like John Doolittle.

Lastly, please see the post beneath this one and lend me a hand getting to California so I can help fight to get rid of the morally bankrupt John Doolittle and replace him with a true American Hero, Charlie Brown, Lt. Col. USAF (Ret)

Tags: John Doolittle, Sweatshops, Corruption, Marianas, Abramoff, CA-04th, Congress, Election, Charlie Brown

As some of you may already know, after 15 years here, I'm leaving my island home in paradise to join the fight to put Congress back in the hands of sane people. In particular, I'll be joining the fight to help get Charlie Brown elected to the CA-04th. A seat currently occupied by one of the most corrupt politicians to ever walk the halls of power in D.C. I need your help to do this. I'm scheduled to fly out on Oct 3rd so anything you can do to help is appreciated. I've added this great tool from ChipIn.com to make it easy for you.



This is the "Good Fight" my friends and I'm one hell of a fighter. Please help get me into the ring. The CA-04th is considered the most conservative district in California but the race is a statistical dead heat. Send this veteran to help get another Democratic Veteran elected.

Tags: Congress, Democracy, GOTV

ALERT: Breaking News!
This is MAJOR! Princeton University's Information Technology Policy Department has just put out their press release and built a web page complete with video about their findings. Watch the video and spread this far and wide!


Here is the website with the full report and findings including the downloadable Windows Media Video: Center for Information Technology Policy - Princeton University

Download the video and then upload it to every video hosting service you know. I've already uploaded it to Google Video and to YouTube above.

Other locations it should be uploaded to: LiveDigital.com, DailyMotion.com and any others you can think of. Please do me a favor and "Digg" this story and then send it to as many news outlets as you can think of. When you're done doing that, send it to your representatives in Congress and the Senate.

As you can see, this is just starting to get some news coverage but it is mostly on the technical side and nobody is linking to the video demonstration yet as this story and video are less than 10 hours old. Forbes Article from the AP, Engadget. And here is a related article that makes this all the more upsetting: USA Today - Election Watchers Predict Glitches. And then there is this from my friend Eric who submitted this article about his personal experiences yesterday at a Maryland polling station to Crooks & Liars.

Here is the Executive Summary of their findings:

Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine:
Executive Summary

Ariel J. Feldman, J. Alex Halderman, and Edward W. Felten

The Diebold AccuVote-TS and its newer relative the AccuVote-TSx are together the most widely deployed electronic voting platform in the United States. In the November 2006 general election, these machines are scheduled to be used in 357 counties representing nearly 10% of registered voters. Approximately half these counties — including all of Maryland and Georgia — will employ the AccuVote-TS model. More than 33,000 of the TS machines are in service nationwide.

This paper reports on our study of an AccuVote-TS, which we obtained from a private party. We analyzed the machine's hardware and software, performed experiments on it, and considered whether real election practices would leave it suitably secure. We found that the machine is vulnerable to a number of extremely serious attacks that undermine the accuracy and credibility of the vote counts it produces.

Computer scientists have generally been skeptical of voting systems of this type, Direct Recording Electronic (DRE), which are essentially general-purpose computers running specialized election software. Experience with computer systems of all kinds shows that it is exceedingly difficult to ensure the reliability and security of complex software or to detect and diagnose problems when they do occur. Yet DREs rely fundamentally on the correct and secure operation of complex software programs. Simply put, many computer scientists doubt that paperless DREs can be made reliable and secure, and they expect that any failures of such systems would likely go undetected.

Previous security studies of DREs affirm this skepticism, but to our knowledge ours is the first public study encompassing the hardware and software of a widely used DRE. The famous paper by Kohno, Stubblefield, Rubin, and Wallach studied a leaked version of the source code for parts of the Diebold AccuVote-TS software and found many design errors and vulnerabilities, which are generally confirmed by our study. Our study extends theirs by including the machine's hardware and operational details, by finding and describing several new and serious vulnerabilities, and by building working demonstrations of several security attacks.

Main Findings The main findings of our study are:

1. Malicious software running on a single voting machine can steal votes with little if any risk of detection. The malicious software can modify all of the records, audit logs, and counters kept by the voting machine, so that even careful forensic examination of these records will find nothing amiss. We have constructed demonstration software that carries out this vote-stealing attack.

2. Anyone who has physical access to a voting machine, or to a memory card that will later be inserted into a machine, can install said malicious software using a simple method that takes as little as one minute. In practice, poll workers and others often have unsupervised access to the machines.

3. AccuVote-TS machines are susceptible to voting-machine viruses — computer viruses that can spread malicious software automatically and invisibly from machine to machine during normal pre- and post-election activity. We have constructed a demonstration virus that spreads in this way, installing our demonstration vote-stealing program on every machine it infects.

4. While some of these problems can be eliminated by improving Diebold's software, others cannot be remedied without replacing the machines' hardware. Changes to election procedures would also be required to ensure security.

Here is the
Tags: Diebold, Election, Princeton, Accuvote, Virus, Hack, Vote, Fraud, IT, Accuvote-TS, I.T., Mid-Term

Thank you Keith. Thank you!



A Huge "Thank You" to Crooks & Liars for getting this out so fast.

Tags: War, 911, Bush, Olbermann, MSNBC, Cheney

Make sure to check out The Site!

Tags: War, Iraq, Bush

Some of you might remember I did a post a month or so ago about a former Republican Congressman named Pete McCloskey whom I admire very much. That's why when I learned today that he has openly endorsed Charlie Brown, Lt. Col. (Ret) for Congress in his race against Jack Abramoff's little imp John Doolittle, I just had to come here and tell you about it.

It gladdens me beyond words knowing that honorable men and women with TRUE moral values are crossing party lines, stepping up to the plate and putting their support where their patriotism is. Such brave Americans who put Country before party will save this great nation of ours from the disastrous path upon which this administration and its band of fake conservative enablers have set it.


LINCOLN: Yesterday afternoon, more than 50 Republicans gathered for a rally at the Lincoln Produce Market in Lincoln, joined by former Republican Rep. Pete McCloskey. Their mission, was to publicly announce their support for Lt. Col. Charlie Brown, the Democratic nominee in the fourth Congressional district.

"John Doolittle has 'gone Washington' on us," noted Republicans for Brown Chair Joanne Neft. "And in doing so, he’s abandoned traditional conservative values and made a mockery of the public trust that he swore to uphold."

Citing incumbent Congressman John Doolittle's inaccessibility to constituents in the district, ties to both Congressional bribery scandals, inaction on border security, growing disillusionment with U.S. policy in Iraq, and the largest deficit in American history, the group outlined its reasons for supporting Brown.

"We’re supporting Lt. Col. Brown because he stands for ethical leadership, for accessible and accountable representation, for a strong and smart national defense, and for responsible stewardship of our taxpayer resources," Neft added. "Most importantly, Charlie actually has his feet in Placer County, and won’t tell us to go hire some Washington lobbyist when we need help."

Many rally goers also expressed anger over Doolittle’s actions since he signed the 1994 Republican "Contract with America." "Whatever happened to term limits, balanced budgets, and smaller Congressional staffs," said Neft. "John Doolittle says one thing and does another!"

Brown renewed his pledge to remain actively visible in the 4th CD once elected, and to stay true to the values of hard work, frugality, responsibility and service that he was raised with in Iowa, and practiced for 26 years in the military.

"When I got sent to Vietnam, no one asked me what political party I belonged to," Brown said. My charge then is the same as it is now---to take care of the people I am privileged to serve. The problem is, we have a representative who cares more about the people who write him checks in Washington, Mississippi, and some distant U.S. Territory than the people who elected him in the 4th CD."

"This election is about bringing people together to solve problems, and focusing on the many issues on which we share common ground," Brown said at the rally. "As I've said many times, this election isn’t about right vs. left, it’s about right vs. wrong."

Charlie Brown, Lt. Col. Ret spent 26 years in the U.S. Air Force. He served as a rescue helicopter pilot at the end of the Vietnam War, and has flown reconnaissance missions in support of military operations around the world. He is also a credentialed California teacher, former professional staff-member at the Roseville Police Department, and Democratic Nominee for Congress in California’s 4th District


Tags: Congress, Brown, CA-04, Doolittle, GOP, Election

The blog over at Joe Lieberman's website linked to an internally-funded push poll conducted recently saying Joe's ahead. The delicious irony however is that less than two hours before they did, this article hit the wires:

Polling company owner pleads guilty to Fraud

September 7, 2006, 8:24 AM EDT

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP)_ The owner of a company that had done political and public opinion polls for several candidates has pleaded guilty to fraud for making up survey and poll results.

Tracy Costin, 46, of Madison pleaded guilty Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

I couldn't make this shit up if I tried folks!

Normally this is where I'd say "Go Ned!" but right now Joe's doing a better job of imploding his campaign than his opponent is so today I say, "Go Joe!" LOL

Update: The firm linked to on Lieberman's blog is not the same firm as the one who's CEO just plead guilty to wire fraud. If you read my post again, you'll notice that I never state that it is the same firm. What I found so 'delicously ironic' is the fact that barely an hour after a polling firm that boast Joe Lieberman and George Bush as it's former or current clients, the Lieberman for Lieberman campaign puts up a post bragging about a new poll they commissioned conducted by a notorious right-wing push-polling firm that boast Joe Lieberman and George Bush amongst their clients. However for clarity I'm posting this update. I still think it's hilarious though.

Tags: Lieberman, Lamont, Poll

But DAMN!

GOP secretly channeled millions to Lieberman

The White House funneled millions of dollars through major Republican Party contributors to Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s primary campaign in a failed effort to ensure the support of the former Democrat for the Bush administration.

A senior GOP source said the money was part of Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove's strategy to maintain a Republican majority in the Senate in November. The source said Mr. Rove, together with Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, directed leading pro-Bush contributors to donate millions of dollars to Mr. Lieberman's campaign for re-election in Connecticut in an attempt that he would be a "Republican-leaning" senator...

Full Article

Tags: GOP, Lieberman, Lamont, Rove, Bush

Congress Slashing Funding for Troops Brain Injury Treatment. I'm going to let the article speak for itself and direct you down my site to the graphic on the right hand side titled: "Operation Helmet" Click on it and see how you can say, "Screw our impotent chickenhawk Congress" and then go "Support the Troops" in a meaningful way that doesn't involve buying a Made in China car magnet but genuinely makes a real difference in the lives of unsung heroes.

Tags: War, Iraq, Bush, Veterans

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.

-Mark Twain

Two banner headlines for you this morning...

Bush Says No Civil War In Iraq

and the very next headline down on my international News Feed:

Pentagon Warns of Civil War In Iraq

Denial... It's not just a river in Egypt. My guess is it is only a matter of time until "the troops" start calling these assholes out. In public, on camera and in front of the world would be my recommendation brothers. Just Get In Their Face! and then stay there!

Tags: War, Iraq, Bush, Pentagon, Lies