Many of you know that the area of election fraud and election integrity is a huge one for me.  And while I am not going to link to each of the 20 or so posts I have done over the past 2 years, they are easy to find in the link above.

So with that, thereisnospoon and I am honored to be interviewing noted author and election fraud expert Mark Crispin Miller today at 4PM Eastern on BlogTalkRadio.

It’s long past time to talk about this whole “election integrity/voter fraud/voter ID/election fraud/ballot fraud” matter in a very different way. Consider the following hurdles that have not been overcome when talking about the need for wholesale election reform:

• Talking about the hackability of voting machines doesn’t work because you can’t prove that they were, in fact, hacked in a manner that would show not just beyond-a-reasonable doubt but beyond-any-doubt-whatsoever (not fair, but true);
• Talking about “voter ID”, actually, more like anti-voter laws isn’t working because, well, for starters, the SCOTUS just affirmed this, despite there being no documented case of this type of fraud occurring;
• Talking about stolen elections hasn’t worked because either “it always happens anyway”, or the same “you can’t prove it” rebuttal;
• Talking about the US Attorney firings or the redistricting or the stacking of the DOJ with partisan hacks is too complicated to put on a bumper sticker;
• Talking about the thousands of anecdotes of vote machine flipping went nowhere either; and
• Talking about exit poll discrepancies has led to the amazing argument that exit polls are not reliable, even though they are used pretty much everywhere else in the entire world as a measure of whether elections were fixed and they have never been as far off as they have so consistently been the past 8 years.

In upholding the Indiana voter suppression, er disenfranchisement, er “ID” law, the US Supreme Court’s decision contained the following head smacking passage (hat tip to BooMan and Adam B):

The record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history. Moreover, petitioners argue that provisions of the Indiana Criminal Code punishing such conduct as a felony provide adequate protection against the risk that such conduct will occur in the future. It remains true, however, that flagrant examples of such fraud in other parts of the country have been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and journalists, that occasional examples have surfaced in recent years, and that Indiana’s own experience with fraudulent voting in the 2003 Democratic primary for East Chicago Mayor — though perpetrated using absentee ballots and not in-person fraud — demonstrate that not only is the risk of voter fraud real but that it could affect the outcome of a close election.

This will be a short but important post.  Some of you may know the excellent work that Cliff Schecter has done around the blogosphere, both at The Agonist, at Huffington Post, and other places.  Some of you may have seen him take down and destroy right wing talking heads over the past few years on cable “news” channels.

And some of you know the fantastic work he has done researching and bringing to light the Real McCain.

So, for those who didn’t already know that Cliff’s book The Real McCain, Why Conservatives Don’t Trust Him–and Why Independents Shouldn’t (buy it by clicking this link) is chock full of everything that everyone should know about John W. McSame, you can hear Cliff talk to me and thereisnospoon today at 4PM Eastern on our BlogTalkRadio show.

The link to the show itself is here, and we will be taking calls as well later in the show.  The call in number is 718-508-9410, and we will try to keep the chat room open as well.

This is a great opportunity to hear Cliff talk about the things that everyone should know about John McCain – his voting record, his associates, his temper, his actions throughout the years and who he “really is” – as opposed to the carefully crafted persona that the corporate media keeps trying to ram down this country’s throat.

The book is a must read as well – I plowed through it and highly recommend it to anyone that knows someone that is even remotely considering voting for John McCain – and despite what we all wish, there is probably someone that each of us knows who is planning on possibly voting for this odious and phony candidate.

If you can’t make the live show, it will be available at Heading Left as well as our BlogTalkRadio page, in addition to the new 24/7 BlogTalkRadio “Heading Left” radio channel.

Hope you can make it!!  I assure you that Cliff will not disappoint (can’t vouch for me though….)

Sure, the media is obsessed with trashing Obama or Clinton, depending on the week or sound byte that can be taken out of context and twisted to insinuate that Democrats hate America or love terrorists or whatever other utter horseshit that they can conjure up to distract from the fact that John McCain is dangerous, or contradictory or just a flat out liar.

But the corporate media as well as McSame himself are just two pieces in a larger puzzle – the one to keep “The Base” happy and wealthy. We can hear lie after hyperbole after projection about how the Democrats are weak or that Hamas wants McCain to lose or that Osama secretly cast his ballot in 2004 for Kerry.

We know that is all nonsense – and that thankfully, many more Americans are waking up to that fact as well. And with a growing number of Americans thinking that the 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections were stolen, not to mention the US Attorney purge, the Justice Department’s gaming the system from the inside, illegal redistricting, illegal phone jamming, voter ID laws that serve to suppress likely Democratic voters and FEC Commissioners who have a history of illegal partisan voter suppression, it isn’t like there is ample evidence that republicans steal elections – and that is before you even get to the hanging chads”, questionable SCOTUS decisions and Diebold hacking.

For those of you who aren’t following the “goings on” in Iraq, well, things have been pretty messed up.  The whole “go git al Sadr” thing didn’t work out too well, as over 1,000 of the Iraqi forces just gave up that fight.  The Green Zone is being pelted on a regular basis now, and each week brings more death and destruction than the prior one.

Even with this, one of the major unreported items is that there has been a tremendous increase in air strikes in Iraq over the years, and 2007 saw an increase in air strikes from four per week to around four per day.

Yet, we either hear nothing about this at all, and even less about the massive number of casualties that these attacks cause.  Hell, we barely hear about the IEDs or the suicide bombings that happen in all areas of Iraq on a nearly daily basis, and those kill our troops and Iraqi forces – so why would we hear about bombings that “only” kill Iraqis – let alone innocent Iraqis, including women, children, judges, policemen and the elderly.

United States Constitution, Article 2, Section 2:  The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

Emphasis mine.

Impeachment at this juncture and based on the revelations over , regardless of the arguments against it, is a moral imperative.  Bush will no doubt pardon anyone that has any connection to any wrongdoings, and even though Obama and Clinton talk about investigating the crimes committed in this administration, I think we all probably know how difficult it will be to get anything meaningful done in that respect, although if either of them do, I will be so very pleasantly surprised.

For those who didn’t see dday’s excellent diary about the very unimportant Government Accountability Office report out today, well, it is a doozy.

The title itself should bring back memories of the infamous August 2001 PDB titled “bin Laden determined to strike inside the US”, as this one is titled The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas”.

The first paragraph lays it all out with the following reiteration of what we have known for quite some time already:

GAO found broad agreement, as documented in the National Intelligence Estimate, State and embassy documents, as well as Defense officials in Pakistan, that al Qaeda had regenerated its ability to attack the United States and had succeeded in establishing a safe haven in Pakistan’s FATA.

It all comes down to this point, and it really is that simple.  

Our troops have done better than anyone could have expected, especially given the lack of support by the Bush administration and the republicans in Congress, the lack of a real plan after “Shock-N-Awe™”, the lack of any direction, the ridiculous decision to disband the Iraqi army, the arming and bribing of Sunni insurgents, the lack of rest, armor, equipment and the minor fact that at least 500,000 troops at the outset of the invasion would have been required in order to do what needed to be done.

However, as we have been seeing, the deadly game of “whack-a-mole” has been played out for well over a year now, and there is still absolutely no foresight into how to address the larger issues of Sunni vs. Shiite civil war, Sunni vs, Sunni fighting, local tribes and sheikhs in places like Anbar taking over, Shiite (as in al Sadr’s militia) vs. Shiite (as in Maliki) vs. Shiite (as in parts of the Iraqi army that are sympathetic to the militias) fighting, the lack of desire for a central government by many who see Maliki as an illegitimate puppet of Cheney and Bush.