And Now What?
  from OpEdNews

Meanwhile, let us never forget that the departing Congress has given Bush dictatorial powers, through the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the John Warner Defense Authorization Act which allows the President to order the Armed Forces to quell civil "disturbances" within the US. In addition, he has effectively repealed habeas corpus and at least four of the articles of the Bill of Rights.

THE LATEST ON FAKE NEWS :

FOX NEWS INTERNAL MEMO: “Be On The Lookout For Any Statements From The Iraqi Insurgents…Thrilled At The Prospect Of A Dem Controlled Congress”….

Still Not Necessarily The News
Personally, I think the only outlets qualified to handle fake news are Comedy Central and The Onion , but in case you’re not getting your fill of press releases disguised as TV news, the Center for Media and Democracy and Free Press just released a report showing that local TV news stations are still using corporate-funded PR videos and calling them “reports.” Watching how smoothly fake news slides into so-called “real” local news seems to crack wide open the whole concept of what “real local news” looks like. From the Center for Media and Democracy report: Over six months, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) documented 46 stations in 22 states airing at least one VNR [video news release] in their newscast. Of the 54 total VNR broadcasts described in this report, 48 provided no disclosure of the nature or source of the sponsored video. In the six other cases, disclosure was fleeting and often ambiguous. The last time the Center for Media and Democracy released their report that local TV news was filled with fake PR “reports,” it caused quite an uproar. In August 2006, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched an investigation of the 77 stations named. According to the FCC's April 2005 Public Notice, TV stations airing VNRs "must clearly disclose to members of their audiences the nature, source and sponsorship of the material." So its been nine months and apparently little has changed. The Center even reports that 10 of the same news stations are still guilty of using the videos. So readers in the markets of New York City's NY1 and WPIX-11, WDAF-4 in Kansas City, Mo., and WSYX-6  in Columbus, Ohio, have double reason to complain (And if you want to see if your local news is duping you, here’s the list of the 46 TV stations that used them). But the interesting (or creepy) part of report is the Center’s website which has video footage of 33 video news releases, plus the television news segments that incorporated them. A local news anchor even introduces one segment from a publicist by saying, “Did you ever wonder where the Jack-O’-Lantern came from? Mike Morris explains.” What?! Did none of the local anchors wonder why they never saw this Mike Morris guy around the studio? At the Christmas party? Nope, just he's just your normal corporate shill there to sell Betty Crocker products on Honolulu station KHON. It kind of makes me long for the intergrity of Ron Burgundy.

Remember that all-red map the right wingers foisted on us after 2000 and 2004?  It made me want to say, “Ah, Bush country!  Where men are men and sheep are nervous!”
Princeton University

Click here for more, and larger, maps.

Congratulations Democrats, Now Do Your Job! 

Speaking of the Democrats' election victory, it's more important than ever to keep the pressure on them. A new web site, www.congratulationsdemocratsnowdoyourjob.com, lists 11 critically important initiatives the democrats should immediately push for, including a new investigation into the 9/11 attacks.  

Another critically important element is the call for immediate repeal of the Military Commissions Act. Find out if your Congressperson or Senator voted for this appalling legislation at http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s2006-25 (yes, a number of Dems voted for this heinous bill) and http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2006-491. As specific opportunities to join with others in demanding repeal are identified and coordinated, we will post that information to 911truth.org. 

Other commentators have emphasized the importance of immediately pressuring the Democrats. See, for instance, Bruce Gagnon's article at http://www.counterpunch.org/gagnon11082006.html. 

No Impeachment ~

 says Pelosi and Howard Dean

We have to double our efforts to get

 the 911 truth out ~ Hello In There

9/11 Truth Is Dying Inside the Liberal and Progressive Movements While Exploding World-Wide,

Related: Conyers Toes Party Line: No Impeachment

RELATED: 9/11 Truth Remains The Critical Issue

The empty "victory" of the Democrats' sweep of Congress has injected an anesthetic of apathy into the body politic and slowed the momentum of the move to have those responsible for 9/11 and the ensuing mess in Iraq brought to justice. Many people have swallowed the fraud and the 9/11 truth movement is dying.

The mandate of the 9/11 truth movement is to educate the world on the fact that the official story is a fraud and then use closely scrutinized independent investigations to ascertain precisely the guilty parties so that they may be brought up on charges and such a horrific event, including its freedom crippling aftermath, may never be seen again. 

Listen and read lyrics to this

9-11 Truth song

Every line is hot-linked to a website which

is relevant to the meaning of that line.

http://www.earthnew s.net/articles/ whatwouldyoudo. htm

uncensored version here:

Paris

Song:

What Would you Do?

 from Democracy Now!: radio and TV news

Ralph Nader on Conservative Democrats, Corporate Power and the Middle East


We get analysis on Tuesday's election

and the Democratic victory in the
House with consumer advocate and

former presidential candidate, Ralph
Nader. Nader says, "This election was

basically a mandateless election for the
Democrats, there was really no mandate

 other than against Bush and do
something about Iraq. Domestically there

 was virtually no mandate about
rearranging of power - shifting it from

 corporations to workers,
consumers,taxpayers, to communities."

Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/08/1457249

A monumental victory for the election protection movement
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
November 8, 2006

The real winner in the November 7 election is the grassroots voter protection movement.

That the well-oiled, well-funded Rove/Bush theft machine lost control of the US House with the Senate as close as it is says just one thing: somebody was watching. In 2006, that would be thousands of volunteer grassroots activists who left no stone unturned to expose rigged voting machines, Jim Crow registration roadblocks, trashed provisional ballots, manipulated absentee voting processes, and much more. 

"How they stole the mid-term election"
by Greg Palast, The Guardian ( UK ), Comment
Department: Election Issues

Here's how the 2006 mid-term election was stolen.

Note the past tense. And I'm not kidding.
READ THE ARTICLE

Watch Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman and Pete Peckarsky on CNN's Lou Dobbs: Lou Dobbs

Bob Fitrakis,Peter Peckarsky, Harvey Wasserman on Lou Dobbs 05:37

More on The G.O.P. See this film, ( a long one , but worth a look)

The GOP - The Grand Ol Pedophiles

MRS. BETTY BOWERS
Christian Concern For Ted Haggard's Delicious Disgrace "As an evangelical preacher, he is clearly too used to getting up in front of people who believe anything he says to lie convincingly to those still fettered by thought." Read More!>

The G.O.P. is sick,

They are the Grand Old Pedophile Party.

Vote Democrat today. We the people must

begin to take back our country.

 ~ Hello in there

Haggard and the White House: Both Living in Denial

Let's face it: the Bush administration is sick. The fall of Ted Haggard is just the latest manifestation of the central disease of President Bush and his cohorts: the pathological refusal to accept reality, and the delusion that reality can be changed by rhetoric.

YouTube - Ted Haggard Bashing Gays - from JESUS CAMP the Movie

Haggard confesses to 'lifelong' sexual problem - CNN.com

The sleazy Republican

Christians are at it again.

George Bush has  weekly phone

conferences  with religious leader

Ted Haggard . Haggard in turn gives

his followers Republican marching orders.

These gay bashing, anti gay perverts are

 getting exposed for what they are.

 Lies and deceit and pretending to be the

 party of morality and family values is a thin

mask that they will not be able to hide behind.

The truth will be told, but will it affect the next

stolen election? ~ Hello in there

Mark Foley , and now this. What if this scandal

ever broke?

 The Franklin Cover-up Scandal The Child sex ring that reached Bush/Reagan Whitehouse

The Rev. Ted Haggard, left, who has White House ties, denies allegations by Mike Jones that the pastor paid him for sex.

How long before the truth comes out? Will his flock of sheep continue to follow? ~Hello in there

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (CNN) -- As evangelical Christians absorbed the news of the Rev. Ted Haggard's admission he bought methamphetamine -- but did not take the drug -- his church reeled with shock and heartache.

Haggard has led the 14,000-member New Life Church for 21 years.

"The response in our church is sadness and surprise," said the Rev. Rob Brendle, an associate pastor at New Life.

But, Brendle added, "We believe in him and we stand with him."

In a telephone interview shortly after Haggard acknowledged having contacted Mike Jones for a massage and purchased meth, Brendle said no one at the church sensed Haggard may have been up to surreptitious activities.

"Ted has for 21 years led this church in an exemplary way. He's demonstrated the highest personal character, and his interaction with the staff and the people of this community has been of the most selfless and noble kind."

Jones maintains that he and Haggard, who has strong White House ties, had a sexual affair lasting three years, with the most recent tryst in August.

Jones said he was a gay escort, and Haggard contacted him for sex, using a fake name. Haggard denies these accusations. (Read full story about Haggard)

When Jones came forward this week, Haggard denied knowing him -- until Jones released recordings of voicemails Haggard had left him.

Friday morning Brendle spoke on the phone with Haggard just hours after Haggard resigned as leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, a group which represents 30 million people. Haggard also temporarily stepped down as New Life's senior pastor.

"I asked him about his family, and he assured me that they're doing well," Brendle told CNN.

Haggard has a wife, Gayle, and five children.

"I asked him what we could do to help him while he's going through this, and he said, 'Gayle and I have given our lives to New Life Church and we'll be OK, but please make sure that the church stays strong'," Brendle said.

As for Jones -- who brought his story to the media this week, triggering a national scandal -- Brendle said the church holds no animosity toward him.

"I feel compassion for Mike Jones honestly," said Brendle. "I think that the timing of his disclosure was motivated by politics and I think that it was decent of him to acknowledge that."

Jones says he found out Haggard's identity several months ago and decided to come forward to "expose the hypocrisy" of Haggard's public support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which is on Tuesday's ballot in Colorado.

"I think that he seems to be doing what his conscience dictates and my hope is that people's response to him will be one of love and kindness rather than anger and hatred," said Brendle.

He added that the church has openly gay members.

Brendle said he sees no hypocrisy in Haggard's actions. "To my knowledge, Mike Jones has not alleged that Ted asked him to marry him... No, I do not see this instance as hypocrisy. I do see it as indiscretion, and I am grateful that Ted is repentant and humble."

Brendle, 32, who has been with New Life for a decade, said the congregation supports Haggard and is "hoping he will go through a process that will restore him to health and well being."

Asked whether Haggard is in some way sick, Brendle said no, but that he was referring to "general emotional and spiritual triumph."

If certain allegations are proven true, "those would be evil," he said, citing sexual activity outside of marriage and drug use.

"Doubtless the events of today and yesterday do tarnish Ted's status as a role model," Brendle noted. "And we deeply regret that."

But he added that as a church leader himself and a father of three children, he views the church as a family that can help lift someone who has fallen.

"I want my children to grow up in that environment," he said, adding that it's alright for children to see someone they admire do wrong.

 

 

Urgent message fron editor of

TV News Lies .org

Folks,

I have said time and time again that we are living under a coup; where
invaders who happen to be born in this nation have taken over by
compromising the democratic process known as elections.

There has been enough evidence exposed to reverse the last two
presidential elections and many of the Congressional elections since 2000.
Clint Curtis testified that he was commissioned by his boss, a Republican
Congressman, to write software that will reverse the results of an
election. It has also been documented that all, 100% of the problems related
to electronic voting machines in 2000, 2002 & 2004 erred in favor of
Republicans. Every single reported problem was at the expense of the
Democrats! EVERY ONE!

During the 2004 election I warned people that California was going to
be the next Florida. It looks like I was right only two years early. It
has now been discovered that electronic voting machines have a special
button in the back that allows one registered voter to cast more than
one vote. This is absolutely outrageous!

As each day passes it becomes clearer that we, the citizens of the
United States of America, have been invaded by a group of people who have
hijacked our nation and are in the process of destroying our
Constitution; the one document that defines everything that America stands for.

I am calling on the readers of my website to become active. I am not
saying that you should go to peaceful marches to nowhere or sign
meaningless petitions. I am saying we have to start banding together as
citizens of all political persuasions and start to seriously consider removing
our leaders from office and replacing the propaganda mechanism known as
the U.S. corporate media with an actual journalism institution that
actually keeps the people informed.

Please take the time to inform everyone you know about this latest
discovery related to election fraud. May I suggest an all out effort to
have every single person who is responsible for or involved with creating
this special multi-vote button, arrested and tried for treason! It is
my opinion that all responsible for this outrageous mechanism should be
hanged in public with every single person who holds an elected office
in this nation present as a wittiness!

I will say this confidently to the readers of my newsletter; have never
seen me more outraged and you have never seen a clearer example of the
appropriateness of my anger! If you care about our nation, our freedom,
our democracy or truth & justice you too will share my outrage.

Please take a moment to read and distribute the article linked below.

Urgently,
Jesse - Editor, TvNewsLIES.org

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_4588048

This letter is published on my blog. You may link to it or leave a
comment of your own. Or both!
http://tvnewslies.org/blog/?p=478

It's never been more true that the one thing we Americans can say with
pride
about George W. Bush is that we have never elected him president of the
United States.

Read more:
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/2212

The power of a social movement can beat the GOP double Chickenhawks
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
November 2, 2006

It's never been more true that the one thing we Americans can say with pride about George W. Bush is that we have never elected him president of the United States.

The regime is even more despised than ever, in part because the derogatory term "chickenhawk" now applies in all its worst double meanings.

And while Bush and Karl Rove crow that they're about to "win" again, we think they are about to run into their worst nightmare: a full-blown grassroots social movement.    --br-

The GOP strategy for stealing 2006 is much the same as in the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, and in key Senatorial elections in 2002: mass disenfranchisement of mostly urban Democratic voters, combined with mass inflation of mostly rural Republican votes.

The primary tools for disenfranchisement include the decimation of voter registration lists and outright harassment of would-be Democratic voters. In Ohio alone, there has been the electronic disenfranchisement of some ten percent of the state's registered voters, along with the virtual abolition of the recount process. The attack also includes trashing ballots once cast, combined with fraudulent tabulations and rigged electronic voting machines whose software is kept secret.

The theft is hidden behind the escalating abolition of public reporting mechanisms. In 2006, this will include the virtual elimination of major media support for exit polling. Other staples of public reporting will also be crippled, as is now happening in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), Ohio, and elsewhere around the US. Needless to say, there is much much more.

The GOP cover line is familiar. Bush/Rove now claim published pre-election polls are inaccurate. As they push/pull the vote count they will explain away unlikely Republican margins in rural areas by conjuring up mythological hordes of "evangelical voters." America hosts, to be sure, many millions of right-wing Christian voters. But as we have seen in our preliminary examinations of the 2004 ballots, the decisive numbers attributed to them may well exist only in the minds of the corporate media, in rigged loaves & fishes ballot counts, and in the Holy Ghost memory cards of electronic voting machines that cannot be monitored.

The GOP is desperate to keep control of both the Senate and the House. The realest terrors the Republicans face are public investigations into the astounding sinkhole of military, financial, insider theft, predatory sex, educational, ecological and other catastrophes they have wrought. Rarely in U.S. history has a single scrum of dirty tricksters evoked such widespread, abject hatred, for such good reason.

Part of the public ferocity is now doubly bound in the epithet "chickenhawk."

In the Vietnam era, it referred to war hawks like Bush, Rove, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other dubious draft dodgers who preached patriotism and war while chickening out on their own military service. In the public mind, there is no hotter place in hell than for hypocrites who send others to die in battles they won't fight themselves.

Chickenhawk is also nasty street slang for despicable sex offenders who prey on children. The exposure of Republican Congressman Mark Foley's ghastly pursuit of Congressional pages reveals an astonishing streak of personal and political hypocrisy. Like so many of his fellow sex-obsessed neo-puritan GOP gay-bashers, Foley is gay himself. He is the ultimate poster boy for "moral values" conservatism.

Now we face the question of whether the Democrats will carry one or both houses of Congress. Immoderate, intemperate and incompetent at everything except stealing elections, the GOP has ruled the executive, judicial and legislative branches, as well as the corporate media, with an iron fist. The checks and balances so carefully crafted by the Founders have been obliterated. The consequences have been predictable.

From Iraq to the deficits, from insider theft to pompous theocrats, from the decimation of the environment to the destruction of our educational system, from the dictatorial shredding of our Constitution to the smug arrogance of the sanctimoniously ignorant., the US has never been saddled with a more thoroughly rapacious national regime.

Other US elections have been stolen. But none with such organized thuggery, or such a clear eye to permanent Rovian domination. These were not meant to be one-time thefts. The hacked voting machines, ex-felon disenfranchisement, Jim Crow intimidation, deliberately confusing butterfly ballots and other sinister tricks from Jeb Bush's Florida 2000 have morphed and multiplied. In our on-the-ground studies of Ohio 2004, we have documented scores of distinct tactics used to steal our state's electoral votes. More become obvious every day. Like a cancer, they've spread nationwide.

At bottom, this regime has updated and expanded for use against the people of the United States the covert tactics used by George H.W. Bush and other stealth operatives to overthrow inconvenient elected leaders throughout the Third World. As in countless targets for covert US takeover, the candidate's brother took Florida 2000, with the help of a secretary of state simultaneously serving as his campaign chair.

In Ohio 2004, Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, again the Bush-Cheney campaign co-chair, also ran the election that gave George W. Bush a second term. This year he will count the votes in his own run for governor, and will manipulate the outcome of elections that could tip the balance in both the US Senate and House.

It is, to update an infamous phrase from Malcolm X, the chickenhawks come home to roost.

But the solution is now everywhere to be seen. It is in the birth of a social movement.

There's been a virtual blackout by the major media, plus indifference and even hostility from the Democratic Party about the subversion of our electoral process.

But the reality that two consecutive presidential elections have been stolen has pierced hearts and minds deep inside the American mainstream. Powerful reports from the Conyers Congressional Committee, the Government Accountability Office, the Carter-Baker Commission, the Brennan Center, Princeton University and others have all come to the same conclusion: it can take just a few keystrokes to steal an election.

After mercilessly attacking those of us who broke this story through the internet---as well as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s definitive articles in Rolling Stone---major media outlets such as the New York Times, Lou Dobbs, HBO and others have suddenly discovered that our electoral system is more than just broken. Bobby's father's admonition to "fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it" has finally turned that path into a highway for the saviors of our democracy.

Throughout the US, millions of citizens despair that the GOP will, in fact, steal this election. And well they might.

But the solution is now everywhere to be seen. It is in the birth of a full-fledged social movement, this time for the restoration of American democracy.

In the past half-century, we've seen a social movement for civil rights arise out of a single woman's refusal to get out of her seat on a public bus. The mass movement to stop the war in Vietnam grew out of the early refusal of a very few individuals to submit to the military draft. Two reporters turned a "third rate burglary" into the resignation of a president who'd just carried the electoral votes of 49 states. Scattered "no nukes" protests in conservative rural communities stopped an atomic power industry that promised a thousand reactors in the US by the year 2000, but was able to deliver less than 150.

Today the movement for green power---solar, wind, biofuel and other natural energy sources---once considered marginal and powerless, has birthed a multi-billion-dollar industry destined to deliver a "Solartopia" powered by clean, cheap, reliable and very profitable renewables.

But election protection remains the wellspring from which all future social movements will flow. So far, we have won the preservation of the ballots from both Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004. In New Mexico and Maryland, a Democratic and a Republican governor respectively are calling for a return to paper ballots. In Ohio and throughout the US, citizen lawsuits are forcing concessions on voter ID, ballot access and other issues critical to the restoration of democracy.

On Tuesday, thousands of fiercely committed activists and everyday citizens will go to the polls not just to vote, but to monitor, to double-check, to facilitate, to protect, to inquire, to film, to investigate, to persist, to prevent, and to not give up. They are bound and determined to make sure that another GOP theft either does not happen, or at least does not go unnoticed this time around.

Toward that end, we now urge any election activist who observes any irregularity or problem with Tuesday's voting to write us at: democracy@freepress.org. Your report will be published there for all to see, as part of an on-going national record that needs to be compiled, studied and acted upon.

No social movement succeeds immediately. The campaign to save the American electoral system has hung on by a thin thread. Its concerns are just barely hitting the mainstream. This Tuesday, it's everyone's duty to do more than just vote. And no matter what the outcome, this issue will be with us for years to come….for as long as it takes.

We have taken our democracy for granted for too long. Merely voting is no longer enough.

It won't be easy to restore and update the free election process that is our legacy. But we have seen the consequences of two consecutive un-elected presidencies. We know what we're up against.

And we know there is no alternative to winning, however long it might take.