The Center for Public Integrity has published a paper claiming that the Bush Administration told 935 lies in the two years leading up the the attack on Iraq in 2003. The lies were told by Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Ari Fleisher. Among other things, they lied about Iraq and Al Qaeda, WMD’s, and yellow cake from Niger.

My question is this: Why are they surprised? I was born in 1950 – during my lfietime there have been wars and attacks in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq (twice), Kosovo, Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador, Afghanistan, along with countless proxy wars, police actions and covert operations. They lied about every one of them. (Well, not the coverts. Those they don’t talk about at all.)

But as a rule, here’s how government works: They lie, they lie, they lie.

There’s a reason for the lies. We, the American people, are kind of a nuisance. We don’t really know anything, and we are fickle. First we like something, then we change our minds. We generally like wars, but they have to be short and not cost us much. We liked the current war at first, predictably, and just as predictably, turned against it when it got long and invisible coffin rumors surfaced.

Why would they consult us about anything? Do parents consult kids about major decisions?

There are people in government whose job is to manage public opinion. When it is time to go to war, their job is to bring us along. They are public relations specialists, or professional liars. They construct campaigns designed to appeal to our hatred and prejudice. Usually they try to scare us. Sometimes they stage events, like the Gulf of Tonkin affair.

In Gulf War I, George H.W. Bush was actually test marketing reasons for the war. He said it was about jobs. No go. He said it was about oil. No go. He said that Saddam Hussein was the next Hitler. That one worked, so they ran with it. It worked so well, in fact, that they dusted if off and used it again in 2003.

I don’t say all of this to be a downer. There are certain aspects of democratic rule that just don’t work, and leaders following mass opinion is one. We should be so lucky as to have leaders who care about our well being, who only attack other countries to benefit us. But we’re not. They attack for a myriad of unstated reasons, and we are not to know anything about any of them.

Anyway, I suppose the Center for Public Integrity has performed a useful public service here, telling us that government lies and all. What next? Are they going to shock us with stories about how the Pentagon wastes taxpayer dollars? Shock and Awe! I can hardly wait.

It looks like it’s gonna be Black Tuesday for the stock market. Foreign markets were roiling yesterday, the “stimulus” package is seen as a bandaid. Where it will go – who knows.

But we can be thankful at this point in time, anyway, that Social Security was not privatized, and that that program is shielded from the gyrations of the stock market. Senior citizens have some insulation.

Sorry – couldn’t think of a better title. Here’s from a primary voter down south:

PS: Exit polls for South Carolina in 2004 had Bush winning by a 7.1% margin. The electronic vote gave Bush a 17.1% margin – a full 10% red shift.

There is debate going on right now over an economic stimulus plan to revitalize our sputtering economy. It makes sense – but they really ought to consider putting some money in the hands of people who will spend it. That would be the WalMart workers, the UPS drivers, the guy who fixes your plumbing and the lady who watches your kids so your spouse can work. Most of these people are double-taxed, once for income, and again for the “payroll tax”, a weird non-name that really means “wage penalty”.

So Senator Charles Schumer, an on-again off-again DLC liberal, has taken a stand for a tax cut for ordinary working people.

If we did the rebate based on the payroll tax, it would hit a lot more people at a lower end of the spectrum. And so to just say income taxes are the only taxes we’re considering that people pay is unfair…”

It’s a good debate to have, and it would be good to raise awareness about who pays taxes and gets no credit – working stiffs. Too bad it has to be Democrats doing our bidding – it’s like trying to stand up atop a tub of Jello, but what are our choices?

Here’s my favorite comment, from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who said Bush “is focused on broad-based tax relief for those who are paying taxes.” You have to decode a bit – you see, the payroll tax is not considered a tax. He’s saying that any tax rebate should go only to those who pay regular income taxes, and not for payroll taxpayers. That’s how they did it in 2001 and 2003. It means 22 million families on the low end won’t see tax relief.

I’m betting here that Paulson is born into money and doesn’t know that his housekeepers and gardeners probably pay tax at a higher rate than he does. Just presuming a bit here, but I’ll bet he thinks the current zero starting tax rate on capital gains and dividends is fair, and that a 39% tax on middle class wage earners is too.

Like Rodney Dangerfield, working folks just can’t get no respect in DC. But Schumer is speaking out. Let’s hope he stands his ground, and that a few more Democrats join with him.

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone reminds us of the essentials of presidential politics, not covered at all by the media:

I feel my joints ache when I read stuff like this, from Rolling Stone Magazine In Brief notes, 1/24/08:

Paul McCartney reportedly underwent heart surgery last September in London. The singer, 65, opted for the “routine” angioplasty after complaining of feeling ill, an unidentified source told the Sun. A spokesman for McCartney declined to comment.

Stephen Stills underwent a successful operation for prostate cancer on January 3rd at a Los Angeles hospital. The singer, who just wrapped up and Australian tour with Crosby, Stills and Nash, is expected to make a completely recovery and is planning to launch a solo tour this spring.

Well, it looks like McCain is back, and I’m going to have to get used to the incessant chest beating about his captivity and torture. Here’s a small sample from a letter in today’s Bozeman Chronicle – I cut to the juicy part:

With Mitt Romney, I smell something rotten. Compare this to another candidate who spent five years tortured in a POW camp, forgave his captors, and dedicated his life to serving his country.

I guess I’ll be part of that gnarly minority who remind us that McCain was part of a bombing campaign directed at North Vietnamese cities and towns and infrastructure, and that the U.S., with McCain’s complicity, was involved in grotesque war crimes. On the day he was shot down, McCain had bombed a light bulb factory. He was rescued from drowning by the North Vietnamese, and treated as a war criminal. Which he was.

Torture is wrong, but so was McCain’s behavior, whether he was just followink orderz or not. No matter where you put the North Vietnamese on the ladder of moral superiority, put John McCain two rungs lower.

My comments follow – I think he’s wide of the mark.

Montana’s Paper Ballot System Ensures Election Day Accuracy
By: Brad Johnson, Montana Secretary of State

The League of Women Voters is to be commended for their dedication to clean, accurate elections. But our election systems have been tested by years of use. Tampering with them on the eve of a presidential election isn’t a good solution.

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That’s a good piece by Johnson, and Montana’s elections to this time have been secure, so far as I can tell. Exit polls of our results have been dead-on, and recounts have tended to reinforce official counts. Furthermore, Montana is an out-of-the-way place – presidential candidates hardly care about our three electoral votes, and our coming federal elections will probably be lopsided. The Gubernatorial race is another matter.

Still, Johnson’s piece is not totally reassuring. The prime faults with our system are three: 1) we have no control over the software that counts the votes; 2) we don’t do random audits of election results to assure accuracy, and 3) exit polls, now done by private concerns, are kept private. (Also of concern, Johnson’s statement that “trained, competent people take care of and supervise the machines and keep them secure.” More about that later.)

The scanning equipment we use to count the votes is a simple operation – the machines read and tally the pencil marks on ballots left by voters. I’m no programmer or computer geek, but I did do some BASIC programming in college, and swear I could devise a program to do such a simple operation. We’re basically looking at 1980’s technology here. The idea that this is complicated, secretive work and that patents are at risk and fortunes are at stake is absurd. The software code ought to be open for public inspection (which, in reality, translates into computer geeks poring over it looking for holes.)

That it is not, that vote-counting software is proprietary, is a gaping hole in our election security system. That Johnson places his faith in the pre-election tests is symptomatic of the credulity of election officials in blindly trusting the companies that make the equipment to behave well. Programmers could easily write code to override the results, to kick in at certain times and then self-eradicate. Such programming, wired into the memory cards that the machines depend on, could easily get past Johnson’s election day pre-tests.

And indeed, in New Hampshire, where a recount is underway, memory cards have mysteriously disappeared.

Second is the idea of audits. OK – that’s my background. I’m an accountant, and accounting, like dentistry, is best taken with a dose of nitrous oxide. But here’s the scoop: Don’t trust. Audit. Do so randomly. When a random audit turns up a problem, turn up the heat. Go in deeper, learn more.

Montana’s precincts all ought to know that there is a chance that their outcome, no matter how lopsided, might be recounted by hand. These “trained, competent people” are, after all, just people, susceptible to error and working low-paid, low-reward jobs. Furthermore, they are not generally sophisticated about how counting machines can be undermined, so their oversight is not necessarily reassuring. And local election supervisors are usually invested in their own work, and usually the last to suspect anything is wrong, the first to vigorously defend the apparent outcome.

Any company of any competence relies on oversight, and random auditing is a critical feature of any control system, The fact that we don’t have it in our elections is absurd.

Exit polling, so reliable until the arrival of the Bush family, is nothing more than an audit tool. It ought to be financed by taxpayers, as we are the ultimate auditors of our own results. Other countries, like Germany, do exit polling publicly and as a matter of course. In our country, it is done privately, the the results are kept secret. We know that the exit polls in New Hampshire don’t support Hillary’s surprise win. Why? Two reporters slipped up and told us so. Exit polling ought to be, like random audits, part of the election verification system. That it isn’t is, again, absurd.

And finally, I ask and don’t know the answer, who are these “trained, competent people” that Johnson talks about? Are they public employees? One would hope so – one of the problems that states like Ohio and Florida and New Hampshire have had is that supervision of elections is done by private companies. Employees of these companies have enjoyed free access to the counting machines right up until the election – they have been free to insert last-minute patches and replace memory cards. It’s a travesty.

A secure election system will rely on paper ballots as the ultimate source of the vote count. Because of sheer volume, we must use scanning equipment to count the votes. The software used on these machines and their memory cards must be open to public inspection, and the machines themselves kept under lock and key with recorded access only by publicly supervised and authorized officials until election day. Pre-election tests should be run by government employees before the public uses the machines. After the elections, the state should conduct random audits of various results as a control check. The state might as well, while they are at it, conduct exit polls – a further audit check on reliability of results.

Montana does some of these things, but not all of these things. Until Montana does all of these things, our elections are not secure. Johnson has done what would be expected of a man in his position – he attempts to assure us of the integrity of the system. He fails.

PS: It ain’t so bad here as in South Carolina, where a primary will be conducted this week and next week. There they have no paper trail to verify results. None. They are entirely dependent on the machines. It is high comedy.

Bev Harris of Black Box Voting is playing a game of cat and mouse with New Hampshire officials in the current recount. Odd things are happening – the sealed boxes that carry the ballots in them have slits in them when they arrive for counting, large enough to add and remove ballots. Stacks of boxes are left sitting out at an unprotected site without guard instead of being put in a vault, and then everyone is told to leave the building overnight – no one is allowed to stand watch. Harris is doing all she can, videotaping everything she can, so officials have told her they won’t allow videotaping for some lame excuse.

Two people are sitting in jail, or have served their eighteen month sentences, for interfering with the Ohio recount after the 2004 debacle. Could New Hampshire officials be next behind the padlocks?

Honestly, the system needs transparency – if it was a clean election, officials should welcome a recount and assure all of us that it is being done according to Hoyle. This would include sealed containers, legal chain of custody, state police standing guard, and full video taping of all the procedures.

Something is rotten. No surprises here. Anyway, see below for one machine that failed in its performance. If one machine failed, then all are suspect. That is reason enough for no confidence in the outcome. The pre-election poll disparity, apparent exit poll disparity, and differences between hand-counted and Diebold-counted results, are all cause to suspect that once again, we’ve been hacked.

Here’s what Senator Russ Feingold has to say about John Edwards:

The one that is the most problematic is (John) Edwards, who voted for the Patriot Act, campaigns against it. Voted for No Child Left Behind, campaigns against it. Voted for the China trade deal, campaigns against it. Voted for the Iraq war … He uses my voting record exactly as his platform, even though he had the opposite voting record.