So why don’t the Obamites take the high road and end the ugly attacks on Hillary. Otherwise it will only take a couple of million Hillary supporters sitting on their hands to end your dream. Think before you say something that could damage party unity. — shamprez

Which seemed pretty reasonable discussion. The  170 responses so far are almost laughably hilarious. I used to be disgusted when I would read what people used to talk about as the bottom of the cesspool, known as wingnut blogs. Groupthink and mean spirited, hateful comments.

Well, at the cheetos factory, you can read all that along with pictures of unicorns. It would be one thing if it was a joke, but it’s real. I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing a good riddance to the modern Democratic Party. (And here I was betting the GOP would implode with all their scandals, failures, and war).

Some comments in order of appearance:

“Hillary herself had taken the high road in the first place, this would not be an issue”

“And for the record, I don’t want to make nice.”

pony pic

pony pic

flying pony pic

pony pic

kitten pic

unicorn pic

“who has she helped out more so far, the Democratic party or John McCain?”

“i question her sincerity about wanting to win the white house in november”

“No - it isn’t our job to kiss ass with the hopes that people won’t help McCain hijack our country for 4 more years.”

Of course there are a few comments that agree with what it will take to win, but there are many, many more comments of pure venom towards other posters.

’Obama’ - 538 Diaries (50 with > 200 comments)
the majority of them positive titles

’Clinton’ - 222 Diaries (26 with > 200 comments)
the majority of them negative and/or containing “Obama”

’Iraq’ - 22 Diaries (2 with > 200 comments)
one of those two was “Chelsea Clinton Gives An Arrogant Response to a Question on Iraq”

’Economy’ - 7 Diaries

’Media’ - 21 Diaries

’Health’ - 13 Diaries

’Rove’ - 2 Diaries (one of those “Hillary Plays a Karl Rove”)

[DHinMI former] well-paid Chief of Staff to the U.S. Congressman from New Hampshire’s 2nd district, Rep. Paul Hodes, who has been an ally of HAVA co-author and e-voting champion, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, since arriving in Congress in 2007.

No wonder he was so defensive about the NH irregularities. They happened to his boss’s constituents and people hate to rock the boat that sailed them to Washington.

Bravo Kos for yet another craptastic Crashing us against the Gates…

[EDIT: put “former” next to DHinMI apparently resigned or some such sometime in the last six months which begs to ask why…]

here is a good rundown on the voting and checking process of the votes. I didn’t realize one cop takes the results and heads back to the cop precinct to enter in the results. Geez, the more you know about voting, the more f-cked we are.

His letter to Bush is a rare moment of Hope (and not the OFB type).

I, for one, do not intend to back down – not to the terrorists and not to anyone, including a President, who wants Americans to cower in fear.

We are a strong nation. We cannot allow ourselves to be scared into suspending the Constitution. If we do that, we might as well call the terrorists and tell them that they have won.

If only the media would just reprint his clear discussion of why we do not need Bush’s warrantless wire-tapping and how the world is not going to end come Saturday.

Seriously, read this thing. We should all be sending him checks not these cowards in the Senate.

Because I care so deeply about protecting our country, I take strong offense to your suggestion in recent days that the country will be vulnerable to terrorist attack unless Congress immediately enacts legislation giving you broader powers to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans’ communications and provides legal immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in the Administration’s warrantless surveillance program.

Today, the National Security Agency (NSA) has authority to conduct surveillance in at least three different ways, all of which provide strong capability to monitor the communications of possible terrorists.

First, NSA can use its authority under Executive Order 12333 to conduct surveillance abroad of any known or suspected terrorist. There is no requirement for a warrant. There is no requirement for probable cause. Most of NSA’s collection occurs under this authority.

Second, NSA can use its authority under the Protect America Act, enacted last August, to conduct surveillance here in the U.S of any foreign target. This authority does not “expire” on Saturday, as you have stated. Under the PAA, orders authorizing surveillance may last for one year – until at least August 2008. These orders may cover every terrorist group without limitation. If a new member of the group is identified, or if a new phone number or email address is identified, the NSA may add it to the existing orders, and surveillance can begin immediately. We will not “go dark.”

Third, in the remote possibility that a new terrorist organization emerges that we have never previously identified, the NSA could use existing authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to monitor those communications. Since its establishment nearly 30 years ago, the FISA Court has approved nearly every application for a warrant from the Department of Justice. In an emergency, NSA or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) may begin surveillance immediately, and a FISA Court order does not have to be obtained for three days. The former head of FISA operations for the Department of Justice has testified publicly that emergency authorization may be granted in a matter of minutes.

As you know, the 1978 FISA law, which has been modernized and updated numerous times since 9/11, was instrumental in disrupting the terrorist plot in Germany last summer. Those who say that FISA is outdated do not understand the strength of this important tool.

A veteran Florida sheriff’s deputy is in hot water after she was caught on video dumping a quadriplegic man out of his wheelchair while he was being booked on Jan. 29

Anyone who treats another human being this way is pretty sick.

Forgetting about the sheriff’s department for a moment, how is this man arrested for “charges of fleeing and attempting to elude a law enforcement officer”? I guess you really should never run from the police (especially if you are in a wheelchair and are quadriplegic). [EDIT: Ok as funny as the news reporting sounded, he is more closer to paraplegic and the charges relate to a driving offense and prior arrest.[/EDIT]

Also, what is really the point of arresting him and taking him to jail, where I doubt they have the skills or facility to deal with his medical needs? Don’t you just give him a summons to appear in court, or is “by the book” require the Nurse Ratchet treatment?

If you are a videographer there will be plenty of documentaries to be made. I know of five good ones that came out of 2004.

How is it that Brunner does this comprehensive test of voting machines, almost as good as CA Bowen’s review, but then fumbles it so badly. In case you haven’t seen any news on it, Cleveland is being ruled by edict and forced by Brunner to turn over their precinct based Diebold touchscreens for optical scan ES&S central count scanners. Brunner also forced through an emergency change to Ohio law to allow “mid-day” pickup of ballots. So not only did we lose precinct counting and reporting of results at the polls, but now we have two trips of ballots being carted around town with little chain of custody.

In the other half of the state, all places with DREs are required (and some counties are suing) to also provide paper ballots. Now this sounds great, until you look a little deeper. The paper ballots are only available upon request with no one telling the voters they can even request them. (Poll workers are told not to advertise this). They have only printed a very small number and if there is record turn out it won’t be nearly enough. They are printing 10% of 2000 or 2004 voted ballots. So, one, record turnouts. Two, population increases and more registered voters. Three, large numbers of people when polled said they would rather vote on paper. Four, almost no one trust touchscreens anymore. Now, the fun part of the story. These 10% paper ballots serve as the provisional ballots. So when they run out from regular voters who want to vote on paper, lots of voters will be disenfranchised. That is 5-20% of some precincts that are forced to vote provisionally. Oh yeah, those paper ballots will not be counted or even inventoried, but instead driven across town by a single poll worker in many cases to be centrally counted.

A few nightmare scenarios:
Internet folks will be crunching the numbers comparing the touchscreen results to the paper ballot results and they won’t match. The only explanations for this will be that somehow pro-evoting people tend to favor one candidate while paper fans tend to go another way. Or there is the age old stuffing the ballot box theory that will make NH results look reasonable. Did I mention that the study found all sorts of problem with touchscreens and yet they haven’t gone away or even addressed any security problems yet?

The lawsuits over the polling places that run out of ballots and also the dual nature of having two voting system will be like catnip to kittens for lawyers.

The only places that have any hope of clean elections are the few counties that currently use precinct based optical scan. But guess what, Brunner wants to try and force all of those places to move to central count for November. It is like taking all the best ideas of election integrity advocates and perverting them to end up with the easiest to cheat elections since [insert controversial election here].

For now, Brunner’s ideas about keeping polls open for 15 days in malls and other unsecured locations has died down. But we shall see what gets pushed out for November.