Below are the 6 most recent journal entries recorded in jacksbileduct's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, October 25th, 2005
6:59 pm	A year of odd wanderings and I find myself returning home to the arms of my faithful feline and assorted insect dependants. What establishment as devoid of reason and compassion has transplanted me back here on the gray stretch of the western coast of North America, where futility and nihilism vacation? The situation gets rough and I start to panic, as the resolution for dissollution works it's ebb and flow into a frothy failure. God damn it, Ben! It's a treat to see you again, you son of a bitch! Here's your fucking cat, fat on the attention of another forgotten friend! Here's your sense of irony, that your storage unit is full and your old address is still vacant! Setting up for the set up, I am home again to my home away from home. I'm back in the saddle with my dusty flintcraw. Tomorrow I will at Sarah Vowell's benefit event, if I can find my human mask in my trunk, and my ticket on my desk. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 14th, 2004
9:38 pm	Senate Scuttles Gay Marriage Amendment July 14, 2004 07:58 PM EDT WASHINGTON - The Senate scuttled a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on Wednesday, handing a defeat to President Bush yet assuring the issue renewed prominence in the fall campaign for the White House and control of Congress. Forty-eight senators voted to advance the measure - 12 short of the 60 needed - and 50 voted to block it. Defeat came at the hands of dozens of Democrats joined by six Republicans. Bush issued a statement saying he was "deeply disappointed" with the vote, but casting it as a temporary setback. "Activist judges and local officials in some parts of the country are not letting up in their efforts to redefine marriage for the rest of America - and neither should defenders of traditional marriage flag in their efforts," he said. Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle said there was no urgent need to amend the Constitution. "In South Dakota, we've never had a single same sex marriage and we won't have any," he said shortly before the vote. "It's prohibited by South Dakota law as it is now in 38 other states. There is no confusion. There is no ambiguity." The amendment provided that marriage within the United States "shall consist only of a man and a woman." It also required that neither the U.S. Constitution nor any state constitution "shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman." The Senate acted as House Republicans began advancing legislation that would bar federal courts from ordering states to recognize same-sex marriages sanctioned in other states. The measure cleared committee on a vote of 21-13 and is expected on the House floor next week. GOP leaders also have discussed granting Bush his wish to have the entire House vote on the proposed constitutional amendment in the fall, even though the Senate's rejection effectively killed any chance it could be submitted to the states for ratification this year. Whatever the legislative endgame, supporters said they expected the issue to play a role in political campaigns. "I think it will be a significant issue in the fall elections as it is further engaged," said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan. "Four million religious conservative voters sat out the last election, so the president's visible stance on protecting marriage is essential to turning out all of those conservative voters who pulled the lever for him in 2000 and getting those other 4 million to come out for him this year," said Keith Appell, a conservative strategist in Washington. "We now know which senators are for traditional marriage and which ones are not, and by November, so will voters in every state," promised Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, which supports the amendment. He said nine states are poised to have state constitutional amendments on their ballots this fall on marriage, adding, "This fight has just begun." Cheryl Jacques, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization, professed a lack of concern. "I think the discussion will continue to play out but I think they played their best hand today and couldn't even get a simple majority," she said. Bush's Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, skipped the vote. He issued a statement expressing renewed opposition to the amendment and accusing Republicans of seeking to alter the Constitution for political gain. "The unfortunate result is that the important work of the American people - funding our homeland security needs, creating new and better jobs, and raising the minimum wage - is not getting done," he said. The issue also has flared in congressional campaigns in recent days as the Senate plunged into debate. Former Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, in a multi-candidate battle for the GOP senatorial nomination in Florida, began running a radio ad last Friday urging the state's two Democratic senators to support the amendment. Daschle, in a tough race for re-election, faces pressure on the issue as well. His opponent, former Rep. John Thune, began airing a radio commercial last week stressing his opposition to the amendment. The issue will play a role in Senate campaigns "to the extent that there are differences" between the Republican and Democratic candidates, predicted Sen. George Allen, R-Va., chairman of the GOP senatorial campaign committee. Polls show that while gay marriage is opposed by a strong majority of Americans, opinion is more evenly divided on the question of amending the Constitution. Republican strategists concede they must be careful in their handling of the issue, lest the GOP appear intolerant and offend moderate voters. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., complained more than once during the Senate's debate that supporters of the amendment had been disparaged as intolerant. "I would argue that the future of our country hangs in the balance because the future of marriage hangs in the balance," he said shortly before the vote. "Isn't that the ultimate homeland security, standing up and defending marriage?" But critics declined to yield ground, calling the amendment an effort to shift attention away from the economy and the war in Iraq. Echoing Kerry, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said, "The issue is not ripe. It is not needed. It's a waste of our time. We should be dealing with other issues." In all, 45 Republicans and three Democrats voted to advance the measure, while 43 Democrats, six Republicans and one independent voted to scuttle it. In part, the GOP defections reflected a concern that the Senate should not pre-empt what has historically been a state's rights issue. (SUBS 5th graf pvs, The amendment ..., to correct to any state, sted any federal, constitution) (Comment on this)
Friday, July 9th, 2004
1:32 pm	Activist: E-Voting to Be a 'Train Wreck' July 8, 2004 12:19 PM EDT SAN JOSE, Calif. - Ambushing registrars and tracking down executives at their homes and offices, a literary publicist has uncovered conflicts of interests and security flaws inside the companies that make electronic ballot machines. Searching the Web and poring over newspaper clippings, Bev Harris has unearthed obscure arrest records, ties to conservative political groups and other embarrassing secrets of senior executives at voting companies. Her conclusion: there will be so many problems with the more than 100,000 paperless voting terminals to be used in the November presidential election that the fiasco will dwarf Florida's hanging chad debacle of 2000. "We have a train wreck that's definitely going to happen," Harris said. "We have conflict of interest, we've taken the checks and balances away, and we know the votes are already being miscounted fairly frequently. This is going to be huge." Harris, 52, didn't set out to become a muckraking voting technology expert. Accustomed to working with manuscripts and authors in suburban Seattle, she preferred doting on her new grandchild to debating politics. She still doesn't vote regularly. But when Harris was idly surfing the Web during a lunch break two years ago, she became obsessed with an issue essential to democracy, quickly becoming the unlikely center of a movement to ensure integrity in the nation's voting systems. Critics say Harris, author of "Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century," is a fear-mongering grandstander and a presumptuous conspiracy theorist. The prime target of one investigation - voting equipment maker Diebold Inc. - says her antics undermine democracy. "We must not frighten voters or inadvertently provide any type of disincentive to voting," Diebold spokesman David Bear wrote in an e-mail when asked to respond to Harris' claims that the company's software is riggable and insecure. "While security is an important issue ... improvements can and will be made." Others question the motives behind her obsessive investigations of politicians and executives at big voting equipment companies such as Diebold, Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. and Election Systems & Services Inc. "She bases her whole theory on a continuous string of untruths," said Lou Ann Linehan, chief of staff for Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel. In the 1990s, Hagel headed voting equipment company American Information Systems Inc., which later became ES&S. Hagel maintains investments between $1 million and $6 million in McCarthy Group Inc., a private bank with a large stake in ES&S. Harris, who dubs Hagel "poster boy for conflict of interest," says the Republican did not disclose the extent of his American Information Systems involvement and questions whether a former executive of a company whose machines count votes in precincts nationwide should run for public office. Hagel's staff insist that his former career doesn't affect his political life. "I don't know if it's sloppy research or she doesn't care," Linehan said. "I don't spend a lot of time worrying about it because it's all so ridiculous." Criticism, as well as legal threats from ES&S, Diebold and other companies, has enervated Harris, whose blond hair turned completely gray last year. But legions of fans - from New Zealand bloggers to respected computer scientists - encourage her. Exploiting the power of the Internet, Harris has created a Web site that documents hundreds of local, county and state elections that have been botched or contested because of flaws with voting software. She details an incestuous web of voting company executives, politicians and election officials - people who are often related or have worked for each other. Her style is brash. She drives her Toyota Corolla and rental cars thousands of miles to ambush registrars in counties where election results didn't match exit polls. Frustrated that few mainstream journalists have publicized her exploits, Harris once left voice mail for Washington Post star Bob Woodward. When he didn't call back, she trashed him in a Web forum called "Media Whores Online." "It took me a while to recognize that despite her over-the-top personal style, she was doing valuable sleuthing," said Douglas Jones, associate professor of computer science at the University of Iowa and a member of Iowa's Board of Examiners for e-voting. "But her style, which tends to be a bit alarmist and tends to appeal to conspiracy theorists, may be necessary to get the attention of the people who need to pay attention." Harris, who in the 1990s freelanced as an investigator for companies that suspected employees of embezzling, dismisses conspiracies. She blames a lack of federal oversight, and human nature for voting problems such as those in the November 2002 election, when Bernalillo County, N.M.'s turnout was 48,000 - but only 36,000 votes were tallied on Sequoia touchscreens. "I never looked at this as a computer problem or even a conspiracy," said Harris. "I always looked at it as an auditing problem, the exact equivalent of taking away canceled checks, invoices and receipts. You take away oversight - someone will steal. I guarantee it." Harris' obsession with e-voting began during a lunch break in autumn 2002. On the Web, she stumbled upon an article called "Elections in America - Assume Crooks are in Control," by freelance journalist Lynn Landes. Harris began wondering how easy it would be to change electronic ballots to rig an election without a trace. By trial and error, she tracked down people who work at voting companies by trolling on online job boards, high school reunion sites and other Internet haunts. She collected e-mail addresses and phone numbers for eight dozen programmers. Some boasted they could easily insert malicious code, alter or delete ballots and "flip" an election. Harris wondered how easily these people could be bribed. "I figured that if a middle-aged woman like me who has never done a `covert op' in her life, working on the Internet, could find the people who program our voting machines, then certainly the bad guys must know who they are," she wrote in her roughly edited book, which reads the way Harris talks - full of enthusiasm, gall and expressions such as "oookay" and "right," dripping with sarcasm. She took a loan from her father to self-publish her book. When critics said she was fear-mongering for money, she posted chapters free online. She says the book has cost her and her second husband, who works at Boeing Co., about $50,000, and they've made almost nothing from it. In January 2003, Harris did a Google search for Vancouver, B.C.-based Global Election Systems Inc., the software company Diebold acquired in 2002. On the search engine's 15th page of hits was a link to proprietary code, which Harris burned on seven CDs and stashed in a safe-deposit box. She didn't sleep for 44 hours while downloading 40,000 files. Blogs began buzzing about secret voting software without password protection. Eventually, computer scientists at Johns Hopkins and Rice universities analyzed the code. Avi Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins, concluded that any clever 15-year-old could rig the system and vote multiple times. Alarmingly, "1111" was Diebold's default password identification number for microchip-embedded "smartcards" that voting administrators used. Diebold issued a 27-page rebuttal, insisting the code was out of date and not used in more than 30,000 machines nationwide. But the study hit a nerve among computer scientists, who lended legitimacy to a ragtag movement. "I worry that sometimes her arguments sound farfetched, and I have been told on more than one occasion that she is hurting the credibility of all of us with her wild theories," Rubin said. "On balance, though, I am grateful for the work that she does. We each have our own style." Harris hopes more secretaries of state reach the conclusion of California's Kevin Shelley, who this year banned some Diebold machines and required counties to have a paper record of ballots. "I would consider this last year a year of crisis," said Harris, who last year struggled to meet mortgage and heat payments. "I didn't want to get involved in this. I just don't understand how anyone could discover this stuff and live with themselves if they didn't say anything about it." --- On the Net: http://www.blackboxvoting.org (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2004
7:19 am	Place your bets. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 16th, 2004
8:28 am	Media's Mourning in America Reagan's Falsified Obituary By NORMAN SOLOMON If journalism is history's first draft, the death of Ronald Reagan has caused a step-up in the mass production of falsified history. It's mourning in America. The main technique is omission. People who suffered from the Reagan presidency have no media standing today. It's not cool to mention victims of his policies in, for example, Central America. President Reagan lauded and subsidized the contra guerrillas -- extolling them as "freedom fighters" while they terrorized the population in Nicaragua, killing thousands of civilians. And he proudly funneled large-scale support to governments aligned with death squads murdering thousands more in Guatemala and El Salvador. With all the media-fueled mourning in America, there's been none left for the victims of Reaganite policies in Angola, either. His tireless support for the guerrilla forces of Unita "freedom fighter" Jonas Savimbi deserves much of the credit for making Angola the artificial limb capital of the world. Reagan saw to it that Uncle Sam walked in the bloody footsteps of colonial Portugal and apartheid South Africa to sustain Savimbi's monstrous warfare. "Every year since the mid-1980s, I have interviewed dozens of displaced peasants who described attacks on their villages by Unita, kidnaping of young men and boys, looting, beatings, and killings, while in hospital beds the rows of mutilated women bore witness to the mining of their fields," journalist Victoria Brittain wrote in the New Statesman magazine a decade ago. "Defectors from Unita told more chilling stories of mass rallies at the headquarters in Jamba where women were burned alive as witches. These were not stories the outside world wanted to hear about Unita, whose leader was regularly received at the White House." Very warmly. By Ronald Reagan. Mainstream news outlets encourage us to mourn his passing but not to grieve a whit for his victims. Reagan lavished big money from the U.S. Treasury on anti-Soviet mujahadeen -- "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan who evolved into groupings like Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Yet his supposed idealism rarely gets a critical look through the obit-omit media lens. Since he passed away, American media outlets have drowned the country in nonstop veneration for Reagan as a symbol of devotion to principle. There's precious little U.S. media space for the kind of reporting that Agence France Presse provided a few days after he died: "Reagan, determined to check arch-foe Iran, opened a back door to Iraq through which flowed U.S. intelligence and hundreds of millions of dollars in loan guarantees even as Washington professed neutrality in Baghdad's war with Tehran. ... Sales of UH-1H helicopters and Hughes MD-500 Defender helicopters were approved by Washington. Though sold as civilian aircraft, nobody objected when they were quickly converted for military use." President Reagan was in the habit of telling whoppers. His tales ranged far and wide: to deny environmental degradation, or blithely pretend that widespread human rights violations by U.S.-backed regimes didn't exist, or denigrate low-income people in the United States. Yet now, more than ever, he's being hailed as the Great Communicator. Promoting huge tax breaks for multimillionaires and large corporations, he presided over an unprecedented transfer of wealth to the already rich at the expense of everyone else. But today's dominant media images present him as a beloved populist hero. That's media mourning in America. He's being hailed as a champion of "small government" -- yet he vastly increased the size of Defense Department budgets and methodically appointed federal judges who enlarged the intrusive powers of government. President Reagan spoke out for labor rights in Poland while spearheading anti-union measures in the United States and avidly supporting regimes on several continents that repressed workers and oversaw systematic murders of labor activists. Now, rewritten media history is touting him as a friend to working people. It's media mourning in America. He was a president so immersed in anti-gay bigotry and so bereft of non-Hallmark-style compassion that from the time the Centers for Disease Control announced the discovery of AIDS in mid-1981, until 1987, he couldn't bring himself to publicly utter the name of the deadly disease -- part of a policy approach that surely cost many thousands of lives. Yet he is being lauded by countless pundits for his sunny disposition. Reagan thumbed his nose at basic civil rights legislation, including efforts to protect voting rights. In words and deeds, he conveyed disinterest in helping to move the country beyond the curse of racism. But his media persona endures as a man with a big smile and an even bigger heart. The mourning in America is overwhelming. But the country is starved for honesty. Norman Solomon is co-author, with foreign correspondent Reese Erlich, of "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You." (Comment on this)
8:25 am	John Kerry, Political Placebo By JOHN CHUCKMAN Given its strutting brownshirt quality, here is a slogan that might well have been coined by America's most articulate political thug, Pat Buchanan. But the slogan, with little waving-flag pictures, is being used for bumper stickers selling John Kerry. Good marketers know that you want an offering for every niche, so here's Kerry for the belly-over-the-belt, beer-belching, walrus-mustache set. Niche marketing also explains goofy pieces about Kerry's military service versus that of Republican chicken hawks (for those unfamiliar, "chicken hawks" is an informal American political term for men who never fought yet advocate sending others off to war, a group largely, but not exclusively, consisting of Republicans). Never mind the moral obtuseness of opposing an armchair-psychopath like Bush with arguments in favor of a man who did his own killing, there's a weird market niche out there to be reached. They sell everything in America. I recall the many patriotic displays of flags, buttons, and sweats in parking lots, supermarkets, and doughnut shops--all for sale, day and night, right after 9/11. Many claimed to be at reduced prices or even offered at two-for-one in especially touching displays of national feeling. I recognize that Kerry needs all the advertising and marketing he can get. Every niche counts for one of the most uninspiring candidates in memory, although competition for the distinction of "most uninspiring" is tight in America. The nation's political system seems capable only of advancing con men, bumblers, and paste-board cutouts anymore, although, occasionally, as in the case of the late Great Communicator, a single man combines all three identities. A network of powerful interests much like rivers and tributaries running together to form one roaring cataract sweeps away any candidate in a major party who might actually stand for something other than the imperial ethos. God knows Kerry has never represented much of substance. Efforts to sell him are likely wasted. Ask any professional marketer whether he or she thinks Bud Lite, even with the best marketing effort, can outsell Bud. If there's a better description of John Kerry than "Bush Lite," it eludes me. Kerry, the boring, monotone moose of American politics, has hung up his set of Senate-fundraising cummerbunds--or at least restricted photographers access to the galas when he still hitches them up--in favor of casual plaid shirts. Well, he isn't completely consistent about the plaid shirts: it's a matter of which group he's addressing whether he wants to suggest being a regular guy or society swell. When he does wear the plaid--always immaculately pressed to make sure no one mistakes him for someone who actually works for a living--there is more than a passing nod to millionaire, perpetual candidate, Lamar Alexander, who made a hobby of running for the Republican nomination sporting custom-made red lumberjack shirts. People in struggling or oppressed lands who dream of being able to vote freely will be distressed to learn that America squanders her national elections on such costumed silliness, but it really cannot be otherwise when candidates have almost nothing to say. Kerry's casual shirts are probably custom-made, too, with enough of them in each of his wardrobes to provide a fresh change three times a day. After all, Kerry is a very wealthy man, coming from a privileged background and having married the fabulously-rich heiress to the Heinz Pickle and Canned Spaghetti fortune (no, she has no connection to the company, now part of a monstrous agglomerate, she just sits on mountains of cash it generated). You can see where Kerry's sympathy and understanding for the little guy might come from. There are precedents. George Washington inherited wealth and also married a very wealthy lady, Martha Custis, probably the richest widow in the colonies. Washington was famous for his warm qualities, too. The icy, piercing stare given to anyone for so much as touching his sleeve unbidden was legendary. His private characterization of early militiamen in Massachusetts, the men who genuinely had risked everything to start the revolt against Britain that he and other aristocrats then took over, was along the lines of filthy rabble. Now, Kerry is not built of quite the same stern stuff as the Father of His Country. Washington would never have worn a plaid shirt, but a lot has changed since his day when maybe the wealthiest one-percent of Americans could vote. Now, most Americans can vote, so you can't be standoffish and you must expose yourself to the mob if you want to become President. The wealthiest one-percent now are limited strictly to determining with their campaign contributions which candidates the rabble sees on its ballots. But Washington did sometimes coyly draw his silk frock coat over his cummerbund for touching moments when he spoke to people who weren't fellow aristocrats: he was skilled at acts like removing his glasses as his eyes went misty addressing the men, whose poor promises for pay he would in some cases later buy up at severe discount. You wouldn't recognize his capacity for empathy with ordinary men, though, from the monstrous bill he submitted to Congress after the Revolution for everything you can imagine including the wagon trains of wine he consumed at table while the rabble often did without a decent meal. It's true that wealthy people sometimes make inspired leaders--F.D.R. comes to mind as does the greatest prince in Europe's history, Elizabeth I--but such people give strong signs of their remarkable talents long before they've reached Kerry's age. You don't hide your light until the near approach of senility. More often than not, you get Bushes or Rockefellers from the likes of Kerry, people with no more motivation for serving than capping their family's list of achievements with the nation's highest office. Kerry rarely speaks of working people or the poor, rather he speaks of "the middle class," feel-good language adopted by contemporary politicians to cover just about everyone in the country down to McDonald's employees with more than one-month's service. You are not supposed to speak of class differences in America. Everyone there is middle-class, unless extremely wealthy like Mr. Kerry or Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney or Mr. Rumsfeld, something not to be mentioned, or so poor as not to be worth mentioning. Economically-marginal Americans like to be called "middle class," just as they like to brag about their kids "going to college," even when the kids are working towards a degree in playground supervision or fast-food management in one of America's countless sleazy, for-profit diploma mills. Mr. Kerry, of course, didn't attend a diploma mill. Only the best for him, the Yale of George and Daddy Bush. Incidentally, Bush's graduating Yale is often advanced as an argument for his actual intelligence being higher than the public's perception. But those old schools just love accepting the sons and daughters of rich patrons, and they manage to graduate them virtually always. You don't build fat institutional endowments by flunking guys like Georgie Bush. Even Oxford and Cambridge in England follow the practice, accepting and graduating some of the most mediocre members of the Royal Family. America's love affair with everyone's being middle class nicely serves the establishment's belligerent foreign policy. It just doesn't count for much when you kill peasants somewhere on the periphery of the empire, it's a bit like stepping on ants while doing your gardening, and Kerry knows, firsthand, about killing peasants. He and his merry band of men buzzed up and down the rivers of Vietnam in a boat shooting people too poor and ignorant to understand the great blessings of liberty being offered them. That experience may equip Kerry to handle the revolt of Iraqi peasants against American occupation. After all, in Vietnam they didn't bother with stripping prisoners naked and smearing excrement on them. That was a war for real men. They took prisoners up in helicopters and threw them out from several thousand feet if they didn't give the right response, and frequently even when they did give the right response. It just made for one less gook (the affectionate nickname American troops bestowed on the locals). When America's good old boys tired of such vicious games, they just napalmed whole villages instead of bothering to find out what should or should not be attacked. That's how you build a "body count" of about three million. Kerry's statements on foreign policy indicate, as they are intended to do, that he is ready and willing to kill and maim for whatever are America's interests of the moment abroad. Of course, he doesn't say just those words, but what he does say carries those implications. Never mind any emphasis on diplomacy, international institutions, or cooperation--that's all sissy stuff. On the issue of Israel's bloody occupation of the Palestinians, a dreary, deadening reality at the heart of much of America's current trouble in the world, Kerry sounds even more fanatical than Bush. Of course, the one comforting thought about an idiotic slogan like "These colors don't run," is that it is so plainly false. The colors ran like a cheap dye in Vietnam and Cambodia, leaving a trail of death, disillusionment, and broken promises. And the colors ran again in Somolia where an arrogant people busied themselves more with trying to shoot-up the bad guys than they did with feeding desperate people. A stark summary of what actually has occurred over the last few years highlights the slogan's goonish nature. The only attack on America was by nineteen fanatics with virtually no weapons who all died. It is positively inspiring that Old Glory, imperial symbol of the world's mightiest country, didn't run on such a challenging field of battle. Old Glory also withstood the heroic assault and occupation of two pathetically-poor countries whose combined capacity for defense was roughly comparable to the state of Missouri. How could you lose with cruise missiles, stealth bombers, high-tech fragmentation bombs, the poison of depleted uranium, plus all the money and means imaginable to bribe officials and reward disloyalty? It was indeed a shining achievement, and if you recall John Kerry's voice standing against any of it, you heard something the world missed. The examples are countless of headstrong people like Americans learning hard lessons only by banging their heads into walls. A second dose of Bush's truly destructive leadership will likely do more for America's ailments than taking a placebo like John Kerry (Comment on this)