The recount of the ballots in Cuyahoga County, Ohio (which contains the city of Cleveland) was rigged, a court has concluded.

Leading up to the recount, the election workers were to do a count of a random sample of precincts. If the sample counts had discrepancies between machine and hand tallies, the entire county had to be counted by hand.

The elections officials deliberately selected precincts where they knew no errors in counting had occurred, and they were able to do a machine recount on equipment that is acknowledged to have at least a 2% error rate.

I had a feeling that this was going to be the verdict. They had these people admitting to what they did. It was just a matter of formality.

This is also just the tip of the iceberg of the 2004 Ohio recount. Such shenanigans were documented to have occurred all over the state, pretty much wherever they could get away with it. Laziness? Probably. Politics? Perhaps.

Something has to be done about this broken system that we have. Really, truly, done about it. I have about reached the point of opposing electronic voting in any form, and I've drafted designs for a full line of such systems. You can build all the security you want into a machine, but ultimately you have to give someone administrative power over the county's equipment and ballots. These computerized systems are only as secure as the people you put in charge of them. This verdict and the Florida debacle in 2000 show just how secure that is.

It would be really nice if apathetic election officials across the country would just do us all a favor and step down. There are thousands of activists who care about the movement and would take their job very seriously.

Former Senator John Edwards for the Democratic nomination for President.

I was an early Edwards supporter in 2004 and switched to his running mate largely because of his superior experience. However -- despite my misgivings about making too much mention of Hurricane Katrina -- as a Gulf Coast native, I deeply appreciate the attention that he has called to it, especially in light of the State of the Union address that made NO mention whatsoever of the problems.

Edwards intends to address the horrible class war that is dividing America. He opposes the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign countries for the sake of lower wages and lower (or no) standards.

He is a voice against the Iraq War and plans to bring the troops home.

This endorsement is not a "well I have to go with SOMEONE." Edwards has been my second choice ever since the 2008 campaign kicked off, and now that the one who was my first is not a candidate, Mr. Edwards has become my first.

I offer him my support and my best wishes.

In case you were living under a rock, Hillary Clinton officially announced her candidacy for president on Saturday. Despite the buzz it's generated, I'm going to go out on a limb and posit that her gender is irrelevant. It doesn't matter.

What exactly is it that Hillary brings to the field of 2008 presidential wannabes? Really?

Let's see....

Well, as I am a known partisan, the first thing that comes to my mind is how Hillary Clinton not only failed to defend her colleague and party leader John Kerry against the right-wing Bush smear machine, but she joined in the attack. How about this homemade YouTube video I found through the blogs?



Ouch.

But that pretty much sums it up. There's a pattern to this.

This race -- if it does become a race -- will be a frequent topic of discussion on this blog in the coming months.

Sen. Thad Cochran (R) of Mississippi is up for re-election in 2008. If he runs, he'd win in a landslide. However, word has it that he is considering retirement. If that should happen, the Republicans' likely "anointed successor" is Rep. Charles "Chip" Pickering of the 3rd Congressional District of Mississippi. The son of Judge Charles Pickering.

After the redistricting following the 2000 census, Mississippi lost a congressional seat. The results were that an incumbent Democrat had to run against an incumbent Republican in the new district. Pickering was that Republican, and he won re-election in a fairly tight race in 2002. In 2004 and 2006, he was allowed to cruise to re-election unopposed by a major party candidate.

And he just happens to be my Representative, at least for the time being. So I have a vested interest in seeing him out of office, and I certainly have no desire to ever have to refer to him as "Senator."

Still.... Family name, political fixture in the state, Republican in a conservative state, (possibly) running for an open seat vacated by a Republican... looks good for Chip, right?

Not necessarily.

Also, African Rain Moves Westward?

UPDATED, 1/10/2007:
2006 was the warmest year on record, it was reported today, ahead of the previous title holder, 1998. 1998 was influenced heavily by the El Niño that began in 1997. And, sure enough, scientists have concluded that this year's Niño was, effectively, super-charged by global warming. From the right-leaning Chicago Tribune:

In 1998, record high temperatures were driven by an unusually powerful El Nino current that disrupted weather patterns worldwide. The current El Nino, a periodic warming current that took shape last summer, is far weaker and has had only a moderate effect on global climate, several experts said.

"What we are seeing is much more than El Nino," said climate analyst Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "The overall pattern is consistent with our concepts of global warming."

Click below to read the original blog entry....

I am saddened and enraged by the prospect of a troop surge in Iraq.

America has lost over 3000 men and women in that place, more than the total number who died as a result of the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks. That's not even touching on the KIA of other countries or the truly horrific six-figure toll of Iraqis. It's certainly not including the other casualties. Those who, at age 20, have lost the use of their limbs for the rest of their lives. Those who come back permanently psychologically damaged from the horrible sights. Those who are physically disfigured. And their loved ones, who cannot help but ask "WHY?"

All this pain and death, for what?

I used to think it was about oil. Maybe, in the sick global hegemony fantasies of the Project for a New American Century, it was about oil -- American control of the natural resources of the world. But the members of PNAC were delusional. These were the people who expected (or wrote in their "Manifesto" that they expected) to be welcomed with open arms and flowers strewn in the streets of Baghdad.

The PNAC group, I believe, had seized control of the Republican Party by 1999. They anointed George W. Bush not necessarily because he had long-standing sympathies to the PNAC "cause," but because he was the best tool to manipulate. He would have a personal reason to support a war in Iraq -- revenge on the man who tried to assassinate his daddy. When John McCain's 2000 candidacy posed a threat to Bush, the PNAC'ers attacked him brutally and ruthlessly. The same treatment went to Al Gore and later John Kerry, with the results bloodily apparent.

The war originally was, for Bush, about payback. But later it became about his own political future. That's what it is now. That is what people are suffering and dying for -- Bush's "legacy."

The neocons are absolutely convinced that Vietnam could have been "won" if they'd thrown more bodies at it. They are the leftovers from the Vietnam/Watergate era, and they think they are learning from the "mistakes" of that era. Nixon was called out for his "imperial" executive mentality; Bush has gone farther in that direction and (thus far) mostly gotten away with it. We left Vietnam and Saigon fell; the neocons seem to think that Iraq can be bought with more blood.

The neocons are finished as a force in politics. Except for a persistent 30% of the population, their ideas have lost their last minuscule shred of credibility with the American public. They are in the Denial stage of grief, hoping that a "victory" can be salvaged in order to save face. Bush is fully complicit in their agenda, although for him, it is personal. He doesn't want to go down as a failure. I don't think he cares one bit about the welfare of anyone else, including those who put him in power. Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, and Ken Blackwell are probably (with the exception of the 2000 Supreme Court) the three people who are singly most responsible for his ascent to office, and their political careers are now over.

The PNAC people and Bush are making a gamble that if they throw more troops into Iraq, things will turn around, and they can claim vindication. The problem with this, of course, is that Bush and the neocons are gambling with human lives. Unlike gambling in a casino, you never get back blood and bodies that you've bet. Like vampires, they are feeding on the blood of innocents in the hope of keeping themselves alive.

The 110th Congress is sworn in today, and already some in positions of power have decided to play nice. They speak of "bipartisanship" and "temporary" troop surges.

With Bush and the neocons, there is no such thing, first of all. You'd think that they'd learn that, after being lied to time and time again.

Secondly, once those lives are spent, there's no getting them back. This isn't a video game where you command an army of CGI soldiers. They are real people.

Finally, if they are only capable of thinking in terms of cold political strategy, a troop surge is a bad strategy. This has been Bush's war. If the new Congress goes along with his wishes, it will share in his inevitable dishonor, by rejecting the opportunity to use the power it was granted by the American people last November.

This has gone way past "How do you ask a man to be the last one to die for a mistake."

The question now is "How do you ask a man to be the last one to die for a political game?"

Or, perhaps, "How do you ask any man to die for a political game?"