The latest #thepete #podcast: #Trump as President Week 1

In this episode of #thepetepodcast, I try to get to the most important stuff in the dense-with-insanity first week of the #TrumpRegime, #TrumpAdministration, #TrumpPresidency, whatever you want to call it.

Here is a direct download of the 10 minute mp3 of this week's #thepete #podcast, or you can subscribe to #thepete #podcast! ;)

Got iTunes? Sure, we're all forced to! Subscribe to #thepete #podcast on iTunes!

You can also listen to this podcast on Audioboom!

Let me know what you think of this podcast! Leave a comment here or on Twitter or where ever you found my podcast. THANKS!

Oh, and hey, if you like what I do with this podcast or anything else online, support me on Patreon (even for just a buck-a-month!) or buy my long-form comic, INKSTREME BALLPOINT ADVENTURES, or just buy me a coffee!  Every bit helps!

You can always find more episodes of #thepete #podcast at podcast.thepete.com!

#thepete #podcast 7/5/16: the #newsmedia + #DonaldTrump = #nightmare

This week on #thepetepodcast: I talk about how this is all the #mainstreammedia's fault and how #Trump has always been a #jerkweed.

Here is a direct download of the 10 minute mp3 of this week's #thepete #podcast, or you can subscribe to #thepete #podcast! ;)

Got iTunes? Sure, we're all forced to! Subscribe to #thepete #podcast on iTunes!

You can also listen to this podcast on Audioboom!  In fact, you'll get to listen one day earlier than iTunes and RSS subscribers!

Let me know what you think of this podcast! Leave a comment here or on Twitter or where ever you found my podcast. THANKS!

You can always find the latest episode of #thepete #podcast at podcast.thepete.com!

Like what I do online? Support me on Patreon or by buying my long-form comic, INKSTREME BALLPOINT ADVENTURES!  Or, hey, just buy me a cup of coffee!  Seriously--every bit helps!!  Thanks! Every little bit really does help!

High School Girl Makes Massive Cancer Tech Breakthrough while Media Focuses on Santorum (literally and figuratively)

I spotted this story on Engadget back in December (original here: www.engadget.com/2011/12/08/high-school-senior-kills-canc... ) but have intentionally been sitting on it to see if the mainstream news would run with the story or just continue covering the same old Santorum (I'm not just referring to the Republican). Typically, this amazing breakthrough ("the Swiss Army Knife" of cancer treatments) has not become a major story in the news. Cancer kills more people in the US than terrorism kills around the world. I lost a college friend and a grand father to it, I know three people fighting it now, the current statistics say that one-in-three adults in the western world will get cancer. Yet the USG spends hundreds of billions (even trillions) of dollars fighting terrorism while cancer gets infinitely less and the press does nothing but exploit this focus on war and ignores the more realistic threats to American life (along with it's hopefully treatments). Why are America's priorities so screwed up?

Another Example of How You Shouldn't Trust the Media: Even on the Little Things

From Coalspeaker.com:

More proof that nothing you see in the media is real.. or at least it is questionable.. the White House tipped off the AP of Michelle Obama's Target trip before she went

So, whether it's a story on protesters getting entrapped only to be rewritten 20 minutes later to be a story on protesters getting arrested, or even  the little, unimportant things like the above, the media isn't representing reality.  This whole "paying attention" thing is getting pretty tedious.

Then again, I suppose the idea is to get us to stop caring. >_<

 

 

Nice of Newsweek to skip over invasions, occupations, spying on ourselves, human rights violations, torture, paranoia, executions, and lots and LOTS of dead people.  The only thing worthy of the word “resilience” that I can see is our resilient ability to ignore our moral responsibility to our fellow humans.  This cover disgusts me so much I can’t even describe it.  Way to go Newsweek. You’ve made me more embarrassed and ashamed of American media than I already was. Way to help our very guilty nation feel justified in embracing our absurd fear of toothless tigers who had one lucky day in the American sky nearly ten years ago.

In other news, the yearly ghoul-fest of celebrating 911 has begun.  CAN I WATCH THE FOOTAGE AGAIN, PLEASE?

The need for clear, objective reporting in a world of rising religious fundamentalism, economic interdependence and global ecological problems is probably greater than it has ever been. But we are no longer a national audience receiving news from a handful of trusted gatekeepers; we’re now a million or more clusters of consumers, harvesting information from like-minded providers.

The need for clear, objective reporting in a world of rising religious fundamentalism, economic interdependence and global ecological problems is probably greater than it has ever been. But we are no longer a national audience receiving news from a handful of trusted gatekeepers; we’re now a million or more clusters of consumers, harvesting information from like-minded providers.

Ted Koppel: Olbermann, O’Reilly and the death of real news

It’s nice to see that someone sees the same problem I do.

Apparently, Olbermann said something against this, I think?  I’m so sick of that guy and 99.999% of the media.  They’ve made us rock stupid. They have no right to complain about us because they’re a serious part of why we say/do stupid things.  After all, most Americans just slurp up their crappy content and think nothing worse of it.  I think the MSM needs STFU and stop being so sensitive to criticism. 

It’s not like Ted Koppel has any kind of real influence any more.

Juan Cole/TomDispatch on something I talked about in the last 666cast

No sooner do I post episode 25 of the 666cast which encourages us all to turn off the TV news to avoid it’s stupifying effects, than do I stumble across a post on Frederic Guarino’s tumblr linking to “Tomgram: Juan Cole, The Media as a Security Threat to America” on TomDispatch.com.  In part Juan Cole is quoted in the post as saying:

The great Pakistani deluge did not exist, it seems, because it was not on television, would not have delivered audiences to products, and was not all about us.  As we saw on September 11, 2001, and again in March 2003, however, the failure of our electronic media to inform the public about centrally important global developments is itself a security threat to the republic.

Earlier today, Frederic also reblogged this:

further proof US media is insular to the point of being ridiculous

notnadia:

Wow.

All right, so I guess I should have said turn off ALL mainstream media in the US, instead of just TV. :

Jesus, (if we can’t learn what’s really going on in the world) we’re fucked.

WashingtonPost.com parody viral video that reminds us why we’ll miss what little journalism we had.Found via jesseellison:newsweek:For some reason, this has been sent around the office all day todayNewZweek is gonna be so much better.I can’t believe I missed this when it was first going around… must’ve been when I was shooting that wacky web video instead of writing my novel. ;(Incidentally, if “context” was all that the MSM is supposed to give us, I’m really not going to miss it all that much. :

Guy who pissed off the USG wanted for rape for all of 30 seconds, but we'll never hear the end of it

coalspeaker:

“WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange “no longer wanted” and not a rape suspect, Swedish prosecutor says on website”

— Huh?? .. CNN headline .. Confusing day..

Confusing day? Confusing MORNING. That’s how fast this story broke and unbroke—for me, anyway.

I woke up to this story this morning and since I woke up early, I took a nap and when I woke up, the arrest warrant had been dropped.

This is one of those ridiculous stories that pops up, distracts the crap out of us for days or weeks and then goes away forever. Sure, it’s already obvious the charges had no connection to reality, but will that stop TV’s idiot-pundits and repulsive Republicans from casting aspersions on Assange for the next week or two just to give their True Believers something to be hateful of?

I always wonder about these sorts of “Flash in the Pan” “news” stories.  They always seem so incredibly concocted and contrived that I imagine they were completely planned in order to distract from some other story that someone doesn’t want getting out.  Sure, it’s just my imagination, but these stupid stories come up and even though they’re obviously useless, the Mainstream Media makes sure that they’ll distract us for several days.  What are we missing in the meantime?  Even if this Assange/rape story wasn’t cointelpro by the USG, the time lost to this story will cost other stories face time.  What if one of those other stories was really important?

Thanks to our wonderful newsmedia of shitheads, we may never know.

It’s not like this is the first time a story like this has come along, either.  Remember that time that creepy dude claimed to be the murderer of JonBennet Ramsey?  It was fodder for all the headlines for about a week.  If you believe the MSM, everyone wanted to hear about this transgendered guy in Asia who had suddenly decided to admit his guilt. Then, as quickly as he had appeared on the national scene, he was gone.

While I don’t imagine Assange will disappear as that creepy dude has, I believe these accusations will hang around for a week or two and then disappear—just long enough to serve as another useless distraction.

it’s like a pop-up on my computer asking me some irrelevant question I don’t really care about.

The Absurd Disconnect Continues: noticing greedy employers

If you’re not familiar with what I call “the Absurd Disconnect,” in a nutshell, it’s when people look at the sky and tell you it’s green—or when someone tells you it’s safe to go swimming in a part of the ocean that just had millions of gallons of oil dumped in it—like that.  There’s been a lot of this kind of thing going on lately and it’s continuing.

In this instance, I saw a link on Newsweek’s Tumblr to an article on Newsweek’s main site claiming to be “What the JetBlue Guy Says About the Economy” well, it wasn’t that. I was hoping to literally hear Slater’s take on the job situation, but alas, I got some reporter-guy’s opinion of it. Part of his opinion was based on USG docs.  Yeah, yeah, let’s trust USG docs.  They’ve never been wrong before.  Anyway, so here’s the part of the article that pissed me off the most (italics are mine):

For the past year, the U.S. economy has been whipping roughly the same number of workers to do more, produce more, serve more, with each passing week, without much assistance, and without much of a raise. Over the past four quarters, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, “unit labor costs fell 2.8 percent as output per hour increased faster than hourly compensation.” But when the BLS reported the second-quarter productivity numbers on Tuesday, Aug. 10, the results were a little shocking. For the first time in several years, productivity actually fell—at a 0.9 percent annual rate. Workers put in more hours, but output didn’t keep up. They simply can’t run any faster.

via newsweek.com

OH, REALLY? Just the past year?

Since college, I can’t name a single boss I’ve ever worked for who didn’t hire me for one thing who didn’t then pile on extra responsibilities.  Sometimes those responsibilities were tenuously related to the work I was paid to do (so I dealt with them) but *every* time I didn’t get a raise to make up for the extra work.  I finished college in the early 90s, right when the downsizing trend was kicking into high gear.  Shortly thereafter, it stopped being a trend and became business as usual.

Seems like some folks never noticed that. I remember Paul Krugman, not too long ago, saying something about how he was worried high unemployment would stop getting apologized for and would just be assumed to be part of the system.  He hadn’t noticed that it’s already part of the system. But that’s what he gets for being one of those people that base their reality almost entirely on what they are told by “authorities” and not what they’ve experienced or heard from other “grunts.” 

I worked for a company from 1999 to 2006 and held two positions. In that time, the first position never saw a raise. Not for the 7 years I worked there.  In the other position I only got a 75¢/hr raise after I demanded $1/hr.  This was after they tried to get me to become the receptionist for the entire company, sort the company’s mail AND do my original job of running my department (which was something I did only because my boss, the actual head of the department, wasn’t doing it).

That’s just one example. 

It’s amazing to see the media just now catching on that employers are greedy.  What’s next? Choice words for executives for this “new trend” of owning expensive luxury cars and wearing expensive suits?

Yes, that op-ed will no doubt be written by Sherlock Holmes—for only someone as brilliant as the fictional detective would be able to make such profound observations on humanity today.

>_<

Why is the media so slow to do it’s job?  Why are we so willing to put up with being shit on by our bosses?  The last time I had an office job where my boss tried to dump more duties on me, I put my foot down and they survived without me having to do work I didn’t sign up to do.  The work I was not willing to do was absorbed by other employees whose job it already was.  Later they laid me off when all of my duties got folded into other folks’ jobs (d’oh!).  They offered to hire me elsewhere in the company but couldn’t tell me how much more I’d be making but that I’d be working directly for the top executives at the company.  Bleh—not for me.  So, I turned it down.  Turns out the woman who got the job ended up being forced to work 6 days a week without OT. Yep. She felt compelled to not risk the gig because she was a single mom. 

This was three years ago—before the recession.

Well, it was before the officially recognized recession, anyway.

That’s the other falsehood that the media and other “authority” types haven’t noticed yet.  Thanks to a number of factors, our economy is on a downward trajectory and has been for some time.  It was just easier to ignore before.

Shame we can’t all just face reality and do something about it.

What are those factors?

Outsourcing

Offshoring

a money system not based on anything tangible

lousy regulation

corporations having the “right” to “give” as much as they want to campaigns

These five factors, I believe, are behind every problem facing America, and the western world, really.

SCIENCE GETS IT WRONG AGAIN! Stupid science. This is like that time they lost a WHOLE PLANET.  I think I’ll read the Bible now. It hasn’t changed in two thousand years!!!  THAT’S HOW RIGHT IT IS.

/ sarcasm

Right, so this story popped up in my Tumblr stream and like an addict to crack, I can’t not reblog it since it’s right up Website666.com’s alley!

Found via brentbillock:

Wow. Wow. Wow. This is not only a very well written critique of the way this story has been misinterpreted. It’s also a cogent examination of the way nearly all news is now consumed. The headline IS the story, because no one has the attention span to click through and read what the facts behind the poorly-written headline really are.

Case in point, the Time cover, suggesting abuse of women would be the consequence of our leaving Afghanistan. Even though the abuse pictured took place during our stay there. Even though the story itself does not predict greater or lesser abuse of women based on our presence or absence.

dancomono:me3dia:

successisnotanoption:

Puppies Never Existed!

So this little item made me mad all day yesterday, and continues to do so, so I’m just going to get this out here.

Let’s get this straight. Triceratops existed. It totally did. That’s why we have all those fucking bones. I’ve seen them. They are real. The news is that there is evidence that Triceratops was not a distinct species, but a juvenile form of Torosaurus. As illustrated so convincingly above, bitty, sweet puppies can turn into massive, drooly, jowly dogs. But that doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as puppies.

This is not hard to understand. Nor is it hard to explain. Which brings me to my point.

The way popular media report on science, even simple and relatively trivial stories like this, is entirely fucked.

The headlines to these stories are not borne out in the actual content in any way. In this particularly egregious example from the consistently egregious Daily Mail the ‘Triceratops never existed’ bit is included in the headline to look as if it’s a quote from a source in the story. Of course that quote doesn’t appear in the story, and isn’t attributed to anyone. As far as I can tell, no one connected to the story has made any categorical pronouncements about the non-existence of Triceratops. But that’s the part anyone reading it will retain. “Oh, now these “scientists” say my favorite dinosaur wasn’t even real. What the fuck, science?” It might as well have been written by a Juggalo.

And what’s sad is that a really interesting opportunity to explain how science actually works has gotten trampled by a stupidity stampede. What really happened is that scientists have taken a look at existing evidence and have come up with a hypothesis that may better explain what they are looking at. So now ideas are being adjusted, and other scientists will look at the evidence and see if what’s been hypothesized can be disproved or explained in a more compelling way. And there will be some disagreements, and new facts will come to light, and there will be further hypothesizing and we will eventually end up closer to the truth than we were before.

BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT SCIENCE DOES, BITCHES.

But instead the idiotic report on this has only led to confuse and irritate and, worst, give stupidly false ammunition to science-deniers. Creationist whackaloons are going to be shouting “what about the Triceratops that never existed?” going forward for years now. And they’ll just confuse the issue for the general public who doesn’t have time or inclination to think this shit through and then we have endless “teach the controversy” school board bullshit and the whole world gets stupider again. (And if you don’t believe me, I dare you read even a small sample of the comments on that Daily Mail story.)

In other news, Pluto also still exists.

Sure, sure—Pluto still exists, but Pluto the planet does NOT.

Speaking of which, the brain dead HuffPo headline isn’t inaccurate—it’s just not specific enough.  What they should have said was “Triceratops species never existed.”

But that’s HuffPo for you—pretending to be a real news source just like Drudge and Fox News—only with 90% more celebrity cleavage.

The rest of the reblog is spot-on, though.  The media is a joke.

Why Glenn Beck should shut the fuck up about Tom Paine (hint: he felt all churches existed to enslave.)

contrararian:

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”

—

Thomas Paine, Glenn Beck’s crush (via mohandasgandhi) (via savagemike) (via danielholter)

MainStream Media Love tehPirates NOW, but Where were They Last Year?

MainStream Media Love teh Pirates NOW, but Where were They Last Year?,
originally uploaded by thepetecom.

News.bbc.co.uk reported on this over the weekend and it struck me as very odd. The media seems to be making such a big deal out of these pirates now, but with pirates commiting statistically approaching 1 attack per day last year, where has the MSM been?

That said, I don't think the pirates should be getting that much coverage anyway since they're really not pirates in any real sense. I mean, these are Somalis for crying out loud--it's not like they're plundering ships for gold--what kind of funding do they even have?

The other day on Democracy Now, they had a guy on who said what we call "Somali Pirates" the Somali people call "the Somali Coast Guard". What do you want? They're a 3rd World country!

The Miley Cyrus Pic CNN Mobile left up for 45 Minutes

The Miley Cyrus Pic CNN Mobile left up for 45 Minutes, originally uploaded by thepetecom.

CNN's mobile page for 45 minutes earlier tonight. Can't imagine why!

Economic Armageddon Narrowly Averted According to Dem Rep

I think I found the original version of this clip via a Tweet from theeconomysucks but what it talks about is pretty damn newsworthy and I'm a little surprised that it didn't merit some sort of mention in the American mainstream media when the event occurred. Essentially, Pennsylvania Democrat, House Representative Paul Kanjorski tells C-SPAN, on February 6, 2009, that, last September (2008) he and other reps were told by the Fed that the world was a single day away from a total and complete economic meltdown.

I'm not kidding.

The original video, which I found here: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ca2_1234032281 but can also be found on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NMu1mFao3w , ends up being much longer than I think it needs to be to get the point across, so here is the important 1m37s where Kanjorski explains what happened.

In case there's anything funky with that video player, you can also watch an mp4 version of it or download it here and the original clip, also converted to mp4, is here.

Let me nutshell it. According to Kanjorski:

1) The was an electronic run on money market accounts on the morning of September 18, 2008.

2) The Fed watched as $550 billion was pulled from these accounts.

3) The Treasury "opened up its window" and "pumped $105 billion in the system and quickly realized they could not stem the tide."

(I'm not sure what point 3 literally means, but that's what he said.)

4) They then closed down the accounts, stopping any more money to be removed and then upped the FDIC limit to $250,000. Yeah--this is why they did that. I saw it in the news back then and wondered why that was specifically done.

5) If they hadn't acted as soon as they did, the Fed told the House reps that $5.5 trillion would have been removed from the US economy by 2pm that afternoon. The conclusion the Fed reached at that point was that the US economy would have faced a complete crash and would have taken the world economy with it within a day.

According to Kanjorksi, they felt that if that had happened it would have been "the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it."

Missed it by THAT much!

Oh, I kid the end of the civilized world, but I love it!

Joking aside, it's pretty damn scary that we came this close to economic apocalypse and no one seems to have reported on it in the news. Apparently, it's all over the blogosphere now, but the only thing I found on it that was more than a WTF post (like mine is) was a post at BaltimoreChronicle.com which seems more concerned with corruption than the fact that the economy almost evaporated last year.

There's also a transcript for the February 10, 2009 (yesterday) episode of Countdown that you can read which also talks about this story, but it doesn't go into much depth. It just reassures us and blah-blah-blah. What it completely fails to do is really explain why this "electronic run on the banks" happened, how it could happen to the tune of $5.5 trillion and why the hell this wasn't major goddamn news across the world. It also fails to give us a legitimate reason to trust that it won't happen again.

Let me put it simply: if the US Treasury Department hadn't upped the FDIC limit to $250,000, the economy wouldn't be here today.

The really scary thing is that all the Treasury had to do was SAY something that sounded good to people. It doesn't appear to me that anyone in government or at the Fed is doing anything differently due to the economy almost melting down.

There's something seriously wrong with that.

UPDATE 4:34pm: found a post at fool.com about this from two days ago that calls the date of Kanjorski's comments on C-SPAN to be January 28, 2009. That post is also an interesting read, though doesn't tell us anything new at this point.

Reuters: Everything Good is Bad Again

Spotted this article on Reuters.com this morning called "October consumer prices and home starts plummet" and found it really fascinating.  If you read it, it talks about things like housing prices dropping and deflation as bad things.  Think about that for a moment.

Houses dropping in price means more people can afford houses and fewer new loans will be defaulted on.

Isn't that good for the economy?

It's certainly good for people who want to buy homes.

But the Reuters article insists that the economy is weakening even further than it has.

The article also mentions deflation as another example of an ever-sinking economy.  The thing is, what do we mostly bitch about when it comes to money? 

Inflation.

So, shouldn't deflation be a good thing to us?

I say yes.

While the article also reports on consumer prices dropping and a few other things that generally the economy is weakening, I say prices dropping are part of the system working.  Yep, that's right--this is ThePete saying capitalism and free market economics both work just fine when not abused.  Leaving them be, letting losses and crashes occur means that things were getting to big for the system to support.  Now we can rebuild on more stable footing. 

Prices dropping is a natural function of the law of supply and demand.  We American consumers have stopped spending as much as we used to--THIS IS A GOOD THING.

This fills my heart with hope for humanity that we're not just a bunch of dumb sheep doing what we're told.  This is proof we can react to what is really happening and do the right, logical thing.

So, we stop spending, prices drop to entice us to buy, to a certain degree we do, and slowly but surely, the economy builds back up again.

Color me malfunctioning, but my memory circuits tell me this is how things are supposed to work.

Bailouts now would just delay our economy's recovery.

Tell me I'm wrong--please--and tell me how so I can learn.  Thanks.

One last thing about this article.  Since it puts everything in terms of its level of badness for the economy, despite those things being good for consumers and really the stability of the whole system, doesn't this article end up coming off like an advertisement for the corporate greed mindset?  That we all need to be buying and borrowing at all times to keep the economy moving and growing and dominating (despite it's complete crashing and bleeding out recently)?  It reminds me of how the media isn't liberally biased, it's biased toward money--and the furthering of the belief that "greed is good."

Gordon Gecco is dead.  Let's leave him buried, shall we?

Posted by email from thepete's posterous

Daily Democracy in Danger: MSNBC.com's "10 Choke Points" Disected

In yesterday's DID post, one of the articles I linked to was called "10 Choke Points for Election Day" and it was written by Alan Boyle. Now, color me a bit biased, but I feel like he's MUCH too trusting of technology--especially for being the "Science editor" of MSNBC.com. So trusting that I decided to take his article apart, piece by piece, and point out how he and others in the media downplay the dangers of election irregularities in subtle, but effective ways. As always, the original article is italicized and my comments are smart-assy.

Here we go:

10 choke points for Election Day
What could go wrong? E-voting glitches, legal challenges and more
By Alan Boyle
Science editor
updated 10:32 a.m. ET, Fri., Oct. 31, 2008

So far, so good...

In the year 2000, we suffered through Florida's hanging chads and lingering lawsuits.

Ain't democracy a bitch?

So, we "suffered" through "hanging chads and lingering lawsuits," did we Mr. Boyle? What we quite literally suffered through was a misapplication of the Constitution that ended with the American people not having definite numbers from the 2000 election. Not having definite numbers means not being sure that the guy in the White House is even supposed to be there.

Just think about all the things Bush has screwed the pooch on and now think about the odds of someone else screwing up as badly. Yeah, Boyle, you MIGHT have left a few things out there in your lovely attempt at alliteration there.

In 2004, we agonized over the long lines at polling places, plus Ohio's provisional ballots.

Once again, was that all we agonized over? It wasn't the mysterious terrorism-related evacuation order claiming to be from the DHS that eventually denied having been given? It wasn't the exit polls that literally inverted the results of the election?

What about when a handful of people in Congress tried to get the election investigated but everyone else shrugged them off?

That was agonizing to me--and not just because I voted for Kerry but because I want to know for sure who ever gets into the Oval Office deserves to be there! Isn't that the whole point of democracy?

On Election Day this year, what problems will emerge as the choke points for the voting process?

Oh, Election Day! How many ways can you screw up? Let me count the ways! 1, 2, 3...

Damn, Boyle only came up with 10?

The bad news is that glitches have been popping up for weeks, during an early-voting period that has almost overwhelmed some election officials. The good news? Election officials have now had weeks to see exactly what kinds of problems are popping up, and to take care of them before the big day on Tuesday.

The badder news? Election officials have had YEARS to research, test, implement and FIX these election systems and they're such morons they STILL haven't pulled it off.

I'm just SURE in the remaining THREE DAYS before the election they'll be able to suss out all the problems and make sure every American's vote is counted!

O_O

"If there are problems on Election Day, it will be because of something unexpected, not because of a lack of preparation," said Doug Chapin, director of Electionline.org at the Pew Center on the States.

Well, let's hope the Pew-man is right. Though, logic would dictate that he's not. Scores of experts and regular joes like me have been pointing out the problems with these machines for years--if any of them pop up on Election Day we will not consider them "unexpected."

One problem that's totally expected will be long lines at polling places. "We knew that by midsummer," said Douglas Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Iowa who serves as a researcher and consultant on voting technologies.

Voter registration levels have risen to what appear to be historic proportions. If it weren't for the expanded use of early voting and vote-by-mail schemes, polling places might well have experienced the logistical meltdown that some observers feared.

Give them a chance! Why do you assume that early voting has completely averted the meltdown, sir?

I fully expect that the meltdown has been lessened by the early voting, but not every state has done early voting as far as I know.

Democracy In Danger: Election Irregularity News

This crap is NOT going away. The good thing is that the MSM is sort of hobbling along, trying to at least pay lip-service to the incredibly serious issue of election irregularities.

I mean, it's only our democracy, right?

ANYway, so, amazingly enough, CNN.com actually did report on voting problems--kinda. If you have a look at that screengrab there, you'll see the headline as being worthy of the "Duh Award". Come on, guys--you think something might go wrong when half-the-country votes for president next week?

GOSH YOU'RE SMART, CNN.COM! Geh...

All that said, here are some links and headlines for election irregularity coverage around the web today:

Voting machines could bring Election Day glitches
http://www.cnn.com/…index.html

More than 3,000 registered Coloradans barred from voting
Thousands of Coloradans have been denied the right to vote because of a policy that may violate federal law.

Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman has authorized county clerks to purge newly registered voters under the so-called 20-day rule. Here, county clerks must send non-forwardable letters to newly registered voters. If the mail bounces back to the clerks, then they must remove the voter applicants’ names from the rolls.
http://coloradoindependent.com/…coloradans
This is some scary stuff--it's been going on for years--even back in 2004. It's called "voter caging" and whether it's illegal or not, it's a form of voter suppression and because we humans are imperfect and make mistakes, so does this system and plenty who should be able to vote end up not being able to. (Though voter caging really is an absurd and unfair way to judge whether a person has registered legally or not.)

Listen Up Karen Handel!
http://www.ireport.com/…DOC-129137
This is a video of a voter in Atlanta waiting in line for hours to vote. Isn't that great? HOURS. I've missed one presidential election in my entire adult life and have never spent more then 40 minutes in line.

Lawsuits, Machine Malfunctions and Missing Absentee Ballots Among Voting Rights Issues Facing Jittery Election
Early voters across the country are reporting long lines and problems with electronic voting machines. Republicans, meanwhile, continue to file lawsuits that could stop thousands from voting. We speak to Harvey Wasserman of Free Press and Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog.
http://www.democracynow.org/…g_absentee
Good stuff from yesterday's Democracy Now broadcast. They interview two guys who know a LOT about election irregularities--both having appeared in a documentary I helped with called "Stealing America". Check it out (in full!) at StealingAmericaTheMovie.org.

Court Backs Penn. Voter Rights Suit on Electronic Machines
A federal judge has ordered state election officials to provide emergency paper ballots if half or more electronic voting machines become inoperable at any polling site in the state.
http://www.democracynow.org/…/headlines
Personally, I don't get why we shouldn't all have the right to vote on paper over a machine if we so choose. It seems like it would be unconstitutional to force us to use voting equipment we don't trust. Still this is good news--just a shame that Penn voters need to wait until half of the machines fail to get to vote with something more trustworthy.

Speaking of which, here's another story on this from BradBlog.com:

Federal Judge Rules in Favor of Plaintiff Demand for Emergency Paper Ballots in PA
http://www.bradblog.com/
According to this post, PA law says county clerks can give out paper ballots if just one machine fails. Though this ruling seems to supersede that law. Still, this ruling is better than nothing. Though if it inspires voters to "discover" their machines "break"ing down violently, we know which judge to blame for not going far enough. ;)

Not that I'm endorsing any violent acts, of course.

Election Protection by Amy Goodman
http://www.truthdig.com/…rotection/
This is a blog post from Democracy Now's Amy Goodman and it focuses on all of the issues facing us regarding our ability to vote. Whether you agree with her or not, it's just good people are having this discussion.

Tool Developed to Detect Possible Fraud in Election Tabulating Software
Pima County, AZ Election Integrity Group Creates Software to Analyze Diebold GEMS Databases, Wants to Share Capability With Others...
http://www.bradblog.com/
This is more good news--software has been developed that can scan databases from Diebold-brand voting machines and find errors. For now it's only used in Arizona--why this software hasn't been developed sooner is anyone's guess. However, I'm going to guess that it's because Diebold always claimed their technology was proprietary (aka they could tell us, but then they'd have to charge us a lot of money).

Vote-Flipping Diebold Machine Removed, Quarantined in CO
Karen Long, Adams County Clerk Takes Action After Voter Sees Vote Flip Repeatedly to Republican Candidate in State With Long History of E-Voting Failures
http://www.bradblog.com/
Won't our leaders ever learn? Or maybe they have and like this kind of confusion? While this is good news, it points out serious issues with our leaders' ability to decide what is right for us. If Colorado has had a history of e-voting problems, why are they failing to learn from that history? OH yeah, it's all part of the "All History Left Behind" program spear-headed by the White House. Bush ignored his own father's history in a war with Iraq, so I suppose it's contagious to other government types, too.

In closing this post, I'd like to point out a couple new sites I've come across that are concerned with election irregularities:

http://www.projectvotecount.com/
http://voteraction.org/

Check out both sites if you had trouble voting or if you want to get involved.

WHEW. This stuff is tiring! I hope all of these problems magically go away on November 4th!

:P

For more links to coverage of election irregularities and commentary on the situation, please check out ThePete.Com. I've been working my ass off :)
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Democracy in Danger: USMSM Ignoring, Other Sources Not

The US Mainstream Media (USMSM) is sadly blowing off stories of voting irregularities. I just trolled CNN.com a few minutes ago and saw almost nothing regarding reports of vote-problems. Luckily, loads of online sources seem to be covering this story. Let's hope it continues and let's also hope CNN.com decides to do more than just offer their "voter problem" page (here: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/category/voter-problems/ ). Talk about treating a problem improperly. What they do by putting all the stories about voting problems on one page and nowhere else is, essentially, ghetto-izing news about our democracy failing us.

If you think a few votes here and a few votes there are no big deal, you clearly don't recall how tight the Bush wins were in 2000 and 2004. Also, a handful of reports can often be the tip of the iceberg. Not everyone is going to notice or be sure that they just had a problem voting. This is why it's so important that election irregularities stay on the front page of EVERY news source on the planet (yes, the planet, since the guy running the USA tends to bomb a lot). If you know of election stories that aren't being covered, why not start your own blog and post about it? Or email your favorite news sources and ask them why they aren't covering these stories? It's just our democracy in the balance.

All this said, plenty of stories are reaching the 'net on non-USMSM sites. Here's a nice round up for you:

Phony Flier Gives Va. Dems Wrong Election Date
In Virginia, a phony flier purporting to come from the state election board has circulated to prevent Democrats from voting on Election Day. The flier tells Democrats and independents to vote on November 5th, the day after the election.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/29/headlines#4
How are we not supposed to blame the Republicans for something like this? (Mind you, I'm a registered independent.)

Report: Sequoia Voting Machine Prone to Hacking
a new Princeton University report... ...says a machine made by the California-based Sequoia Voting Systems can be hacked in about seven minutes.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/29/headlines#5
NICE! Sequoia were the blokes said to be behind the "hanging-chads" from 2000.

Your Last Chance to Pull That Big Red Lever
This Tuesday is supposed to be New Yorkers’ last chance to use the old-fashioned voting machines! That is, if everything goes as planned. New York state is already behind in the attempt to switch to newer voting technology in accordance with the Help America Vote Act. According to City Limits, “Using New York state’s old-fashioned lever machines is difficult for people who aren’t able to see the choices or flip the levers.”
http://idealistnyc.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/your-last-chance-to-pull-that-big-red-lever/
I was unaware of this--and I'm a New Yorker now. Sheesh. I should say that I think the argument using disabled voters as the excuse to switch entirely to electronic "ballot marking devices" (or BMDs) is a weak one since disabled voters are a fraction of the people who vote. Also, forcing them to use BMDs isn't fair to them, either. Can't we just create a job where someone is in charge of helping disabled folks vote?

ELECTION DAY TEST LOOMS FOR NEW VOTING DEVICES
Nov. 4 should be the beginning of the end for the city's lever voting machines, as New York continues its belated effort to comply with the Help America Vote Act.
http://www.citylimits.org/content/articles/viewarticle.cfm?article_id=3643
This is a decidedly positive view of the same story from IdealistNYC. These guys seem to really only care about these complying with federal law and not with the possibility that these devices work or are at all trustworthy. It's funny, I'm a total tech-head and I'd never trust technology with my democracy.

More Vote-Flipping in TX by Machines Other Than Those Made by ES&S
Direct Recording Electronic Voting Systems Made by Hart InterCivic and Diebold Also Reportedly Now Flipping Votes From Democratic to Republican in TX...
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6584
Previously, I've blogged about reports that all the vote switching has occurred on just one kind of machine from just one company--the iVotronic from ES&S (blogged here and here). However, according to BradBlog.com the problems are popping up in voting machines from a number of different companies, so no voter using an electronic/computerized voting machine is safe from this kind of "glitch."

National groups laud W.Va.'s response to vote switching
A pair of national voting rights groups say other states should follow West Virginia's lead when it comes to touch-screen voting machines.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and Verified Voting are touting Secretary of State Betty Ireland's decision to urge counties to recalibrate their machines each morning.
http://wvgazette.com/News/200810290417
While this sounds like good news, it really isn't. These machines shouldn't need to be recalibrated EVER. As I blogged last night, my iPhone has a touchscreen, too and I never have to recalibrate it--why is it that American Democracy seems to have a crappier touchscreen than my iPhone?

The Vote Grab: Voting machines are unreliable and inaccurate
As early voting in the US presidential elections gets underway, ES&S iVotronics touch-screen electronic voting machines have been observed in four separate states flipping the votes – mostly from Barack Obama to John McCain but sometimes to third party candidates too. This has already occurred during early voting in the states of West Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri and Texas.
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/openhouse/2008/10/the-vote-grab-1.html
This is somewhat old news, but at least they're covering it. Also, just because it's old news doesn't make it untrue. What's nice about this piece (written by Peter Tatchell) is that it goes into some nice detail into the background of these kinds of problems. This makes it a good primer for anyone who hasn't been following this stuff for years.

So, while it's nice to see some print and foreign news sources covering this stuff, it's still not reaching as many people (or as many Americans) as it needs to. Back in 2004 a bunch of us screamed about it, but were ignored. We all need to scream about this stuff. Regardless of who "wins" on November 4, the win won't mean a thing to anyone who respects the truth and the will of the American People.

I'm one of those people.

For the latest news on vote switching your best bet is to do a Google news search here:
http://news.google.com/news?q=vote%20switching

If you see any weirdness at your polling place please one or all of the following (especially the first two items):

Call 877-GOCNN-08 That's CNN's voter problem hotline

Call 866-MYVOTE1 That's an independent hotline run by the guys behind http://www.infovoter.net/

Go here: http://www.votersunite.org/electionproblems_submit.asp and describe what you experienced.

Comment here at ThePete.Com or at any other blog covering election irregularities

Blog about it yourself

If you brought a camera with you to vote, take pictures or video and upload it to the VideoTheVote.org.

In the end, it's up to every American citizen to not just vote, but to do their part in making sure that vote means something.

CNN.com Asks: Will Obama's Lead Last?

This is kind of disgusting. CNN's own numbers (here: http://thepete.com/…n-cnn-poll ) have Obama with a projected lead so far ahead of McCain that even if Senator John got all of the up-fer-grabs electorals left he wouldn't be able to catch up, let alone pass his opponent.

So, why are they trying to be all alarmist in asking if this quite substantial lead last? Well, they've got to pull drama from somewhere (even if it's out of their asses) but it still bugs me.

I mean, wondering if a lead this big will last another 6 days is almost as absurd as the lead Obama seems to have at this point. Yet, here's CNN.com being lame still.

Ah well, it could be worse--they could be trying to make this race seem close, somehow...

I'm actually a little shocked they're not doing this.

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