1,200 Dutch e-voting machines vulnerable to hacking | The Register

Could the USA every wise-up as the Dutch are?

Link:
1,200 Dutch e-voting machines vulnerable to hacking | The Register .

Dutch intelligence service AIVD has ruled 1,200 e-voting computers inadequate for next month's national elections after testing showed the machines could be be easily intercepted from 20 to 30 metres away.

Carville on George Allen

George Allen's team is now starting up with his opponent, Jim Webb... again. This time on books Webb has written.

James Carville says it best.

Link: CNN.com - Transcripts.

James Carville: "And I would hit Allen very legitimately -- very legitimately about his work at a dude ranch, when Jim Webb was winning three Silver Stars and a Navy Cross."

Gallup: Only 1 in 4 Americans Very Confident Votes Will Be Counted Accurately

And, what are the Americans doing about it?

Link: Gallup: Only 1 in 4 Americans Very Confident Votes Will Be Counted Accurately.

Gallup reports today, less than two weeks from the midterm elections, that a new poll finds that only about one in four Americans are "very confident" that votes across the country will be accurately cast and counted and that workers at voting facilities will be capable of resolving any problems. "The public places equal trust in electronic or computerized ballots and paper ballots to correctly record its votes this year," Gallup relates.

"Republicans and Democrats differ in their overall confidence in the country's voting system, with Republicans much more likely than Democrats to express confidence in the accuracy of the vote counts, in the workers at polling facilities, and in the trustworthiness of electronic ballots."

The overall number expressing a high degree of confidence, in the poll taken Oct. 20-22, is 28%, with 4 in 10 Republicans very confident versus only 17% of Democrats. Republicans also express more faith in electronic ballots than Democrats.

The confidence level is about the same as in 2004, Gallup reports. Voters have more confidence in their local polling places than the national picture.

Suddenly, Nevada GOP Candidates Are Reeling

Link: Suddenly, Nevada GOP Candidates Are Reeling.

Some key Republican candidates in Nevada have encountered serious turbulence in recent weeks as they try to land their campaigns on the winning side of the Nov. 7 elections. Their controversies could not only adversely affect their own electoral chances, but could also hurt other GOP campaigns. And with Nevada and other Western states increasingly seen as battlegrounds in presidential elections, there could be long-term implications for the balance of power in the region. Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-Nev.), who just weeks ago looked like he had a lock on the governor’s mansion, is now in a pitched battle with state Sen. Dina Titus (D), thanks to a spate of bad news that won’t help the GOP as it fights to hold on to two Silver State Congressional seats. A Las Vegas cocktail waitress accused him of assault and of coming on to her — and he denies both charges. Then a woman who worked for the Gibbons family as a nanny revealed that she was an illegal immigrant at the time. Gibbons’ wife, former state Assemblywoman Dawn Gibbons (R), who lost her bid to succeed her husband for the 2nd district seat in the August Republican primary, said she believed the woman was in the country legally when she worked for them in the 1980s.

Who Made The Sleaziest Ad? - Couric & Co.

Link: Who Made The Sleaziest Ad? - Couric & Co..

Who Made The Sleaziest Ad? The ad produced by the Republican National Committee against Harold Ford in Tennessee may be the sleaziest of the season. That’s hard to say definitively, because we’ve got more than a week to go and desperate candidates will do desperate things to get elected. But here’s the thing. Negative, attack ads like that used to be produced by “shadowy outside groups” and took days to track down who actually made the ad and who paid for it. Well, it ain’t so hard anymore. We know who did that ad…they told us right at the end of it – The Republican National Committee. That’s right. Despite all the brouhaha over campaign reform—and getting rid of those independent groups that finance so many sleazy ads—the sleazy ads are now financed by a new source: THE POLITICAL PARTIES THEMSELVES. It's an easy way to put on negative ads and give the national parties and the candidates deniability. Here’s how it works. You create an independent expenditure subsidiary of the national party and erect a wall between it and the rest of the committee. And you tell people that the RNC doesn't have any idea what the independent expenditure subsidiary is doing because it is not allowed to know by law. Same applies to the Democrats. And to all official party committees, like the ones that deal specifically with campaigns for the House or the Senate. And it’s all perfectly legal. In fact, the Supreme Court upheld this practice. The ads are funded by the committees. But technically, they don’t have any say or know anything about them or where and when they’re playing. Hmmm. Do you believe that? That’s exactly what Ken Mehlman, Chairman of the Republican National Committee said when confronted about the anti-Ford ad that credited his committee with its content and production. Howard Dean would tell you the same thing if confronted about some of the many ads the DNC produces through its independent expenditure apparatus. The RNC and DNC get away with this because they can. They'll fund all the negative ads and happily so. So, the good news is that you don’t need shadowy groups anymore. The bad news is that now they’re officially part of the system…and apparently untouchable and unaccountable.

The Dixie Chicks Ad NBC Doesn’t Want You To See

Click the link to view the ad that damned liberal media is stopping.

Fucking Liberals.

Link: Think Progress » The Dixie Chicks Ad NBC Doesn’t Want You To See.

NBC is refusing to air an ad for the new Dixie Chicks documentary, “Shut Up & Sing.” Variety reports, “NBC’s commercial clearance department said in writing that it ‘cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush.’” Harvey Weinstein, who is distributing the movie, issued the following statement: It’s a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America. The idea that anyone should be penalized for criticizing the president is profoundly un-American.

For Surprises, Democrats May Go West

We've done our part!!! Have you volunteered time to your favorite cause/politician?

Link: For Surprises, Democrats May Go West.

While Democrats have been fixated all cycle on making House gains in the Northeast and Midwest, they have discovered a new frontier far west of the Mississippi River, where a disproportionate number of competitive races are now emerging. Whether significant Democratic gains in states such as Colorado, Nevada or Arizona could be a harbinger of the Mountain and Western regions’ growing significance beyond this November remains to be seen. But what is certain is that Democrats are set to make inroads in what has been staunchly Republican territory for years. “The West is very bad right now, as compared to what it normally is,” conceded one GOP consultant who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Calling for a pullout is just plain Un-American!

Link: U.K. army head said seeking Iraq pullout - Yahoo! News.

Britain's new army chief called for a withdrawal of British troops from Iraq, warning that the military's presence there only exacerbates security problems, according to an interview published Thursday.

Jeff Gannon "manning up" and going on Air America's Randi Rhodes show today!

Link: The Randi Rhodes Show on Air America Radio.

Jeff Gannon, the former gay male escort/White House Corespondent, is scheduled to be on live with Randi TODAY in the 3rd hour of her show (5:30pm ET, Thursday).

Hear the interview plus the backstory on how it came about through Randi's outrage over gay Republicans rolling over while other conservatives equate
homosexuals with sexual predators.

FACT: 98% of molested males and 99.6% of molested girls are victims of HETEROsexuals.

9/11 Panel Members Weren’t Told of Meeting - New York Times

Link: 9/11 Panel Members Weren’t Told of Meeting - New York Times.

Members of the Sept. 11 commission said today that they were alarmed that they were told nothing about a White House meeting in July 2001 at which George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, is reported to have warned Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, about an imminent Al Qaeda attack and failed to persuade her to take action.

Details of the previously undisclosed meeting on July 10, 2001, two months before the Sept. 11 terror attacks, were first reported last week in a new book by the journalist Bob Woodward.