This is the first article I’ve seen where the Kurdish leadership and Kurdish officers in the Iraqi army have spoken so openly of rebellion. This is really a disaster for the neo-cons and Bush. Their whole political plan for the next year relies on the ability of the U.S. to reduce troop levels and do that without Iraq collapsing. I don’t see how it’s possible to get both.

Three days ago, I heard a rumor about some nastiness upcoming at Kmart. If it goes down, it’ll be between now and Friday. The rumor is that Kmart plans to fire their full time workforce and bring them all back as part timers. This will completely wipe-out their full time benefits liabilities.

It also means I have one less alternative to wal-mart because I won’t spend money at a place that does that.

I’m gonna be mostly offline for the next week as I have been for the last few days. I hope everyone’s enjoying the holidays.

See ya in ‘06.

I’ve decided to use the miniblog/asides plug in to track layoffs as I come across them in the news. So from this point on out, that little sidebar segment on the main page will have links to news stories about layoffs.

It’s been a hard week to have any hope for the future of this society. Yesterday, I listened to a story on the “liberally biased” NPR about the GM plant closure in Georgia. The whole tone of the piece was that union wages, benefits, and retirement packages were killing GM. Not a word about a the per car costs of executive wages, executive perks, executive retirement packages, executive healthcare, etc., etc. It’s the union’s fault for expecting that their members might get a middle class lifestyle after devoting a lifetime to making the executives and major shareholders of GM rich. That’s apparently an outdated mode of thinking. The real killer in the piece was the repeated quotes from one worker in the plant stating that he and his co-workers were overpaid for what they do. Teasers for tomorrow’s (today’s) installment of the story refer to a “thriving” Toyota plant in Kentucky that has “resisted” unions. ‘Cause, you know, UnionThugs come in, wage war on the poor workers, and then force the bastards to take higher wages and benefits with the sole intent of bankrupting corporations. Bravo, NPR!

Stomach punch number two has been in watching the ways in which New Yorkers have been reacting to the impending (now realized) transit strike. Most of the personal blogs I’ve been watching (over a dozen) are primarily worried about how the strike will effect them. Okay, I get that. That’s a natural first reaction. I’m sure I’d be worried about that, mostly in the context of “are my employers going to be dicks about this?” if I were in their situation. But the vitriol with which some of them have addressed the possibility of a strike is truly stunning to me. Even in the blogs where the reaction has been mild, I’ve seen no concern for the very real issues that these workers are pressing. I’ve seen no comments about how having anyone else hold the line might benefit us all, or at least slow down the speed with which our own medical and retirement benefits are being taken away.

I imagine most of you will or have seen this, but just in case, I’m linking it here too.

This was sent to me by email, but the information is also available at http://www.blackboxvoting.org

Leon County, FL to Dump Diebold After Undetectable Hack Reverses Test Election!
Results Completely Flipped Despite 800 Documented Officials Told by Diebold That It Couldn’t be Done!
Election Supervisor Requests Funds to Replace Diebold in County, Says ‘We will never use Diebold in an election again’

The bad news keeps rolling in for Diebold. But that is hopefully good news for democracy and America! And it doesn’t get any plainer than this stunning report from election watchdogs at BlackBoxVoting.org

Even as the beleaguered American Voting Machine company smarts from yesterday’s filing of a securities fraud class action suit a test election was carried out on Diebold voting machinery in Leon County, Florida. Diebold’s security measures failed miserably and were easily defeated by a hack performed by a computer security professional on a Diebold Touch-Screen Voting Machine and Central Tabulator.

In a post yesterday about the test and its remarkable results, BBV’s Jim March gave this stunning summary of what happened: Due to security design issues and contractual non-performance, Leon County supervisor of elections Ion Sancho told Black Box Voting that he will never use Diebold in an election again. He has requested funds to replace the Diebold system from the county. He will issue a formal announcement to this effect
shortly. Finnish security expert Harri Hursti proved that Diebold lied to Secretaries of State across the nation when Diebold claimed votes could not be changed on the memory card.

A test election was run in Leon County today with a total of eight ballots - six ballots voted “no” on a ballot question as to whether Diebold voting machines can be hacked or not. Two ballots, cast by Dr. Herbert Thomson and by Harri Hursti voted “yes” indicating a belief that the Diebold machines could be hacked.

At the beginning of the test election the memory card programmed by Harri Hursti was inserted into an Optical Scan Diebold voting machine. A “zero report” was run indicating zero votes on the memory card. In fact, however, Hursti had pre-loaded the memory card with plus and minus votes.

The eight ballots were run through the optical scan machine. The standard Diebold-supplied “ender card” was run through as is normal procedure ending the election. A results tape was run from the voting machine.
Correct results should have been: Yes:2 No:6
However the results tape read: Yes:7 No:1

The results were then uploaded from the optical scan voting machine into the GEMS central tabulator. The central tabulator is the “mothership” that pulls in all votes from voting machines. The results in the central tabulator read: Yes:7 No:1

This proves that the votes themselves were changed in a one-step process that would not be detected in any normal canvassing procedure - using only a credit-card sized memory card. Diebold Elections Systems head of research and development Pat Green specifically told the Cuyahoga County [OH] board of elections that votes could not be changed on the memory card.

According to Public Records responses obtained by Black Box Voting in response to our requests shows that Diebold promulgated this misrepresentation to as many as 800 state and local elections officials. March added later, “this was all done without getting any passwords for any system. All we had was the same degree of physical access that any mid-to-high level elections staffer or official would have.”

Case closed? One would think so! But remarkably, states and counties around the country are still entering into contracts with this company to count your votes in upcoming elections! Be sure to let California’s Sec. of State know about this latest knews, as well as your local Elections Board! Otherwise, these machines may well be coming to a hacked election near you!

UPDATE: John Cole points out that Leon County is one of “those” counties from FL 2000!

(Thanks John Gideon for the assist!)

On the “nuclear option” and the filibuster:

“If he ever tries to exercise that, he’s going to see a real filibuster if I’m living and able to stand on my feet or sit in my seat,” Byrd said in a Senate debate with Frist, R-Tenn.

“If the senator wants a fight, let him try it,” said Byrd, the Senate’s senior Democrat. “I’m 88 years old, but I can still fight, and fight I will for freedom of speech. I haven’t been here for 47 years to see that freedom of speech whittled away and undermined. ”

The Supreme Court has decided to look at whether or not the recent redistricting of congressional seats in Texas violated the concept of one person, one vote. The court has given mixed opinions in recent years on whether or not partisan gerrymandering can be so egregious that it violates the notion of one person, one vote. Yet again, I could see this going either way. The conservative wing of the court seems firmly set against the idea that the court can intervene in these cases. That conservative wing is set to grow by a vote with the likely confirmation of Samuel Alito. However much conservatives may try to deny it, the court does have responsibility just beyond what’s written into the law. In addition to the liberal notion that the court must bend to changes standards of decency, notions about human rights, etc, is the notion that the court has some responsibility for ensuring the legitimacy of the whole system. As such, politics are an inevitable part of what they do. One can hope that in the various bits of sleaze and corruption surrounding this redistricting, the court may be swayed by that duty. How can you really let stand the notion that the end game for all political activity will just be squelching the opportunity of your opposition to any real power?

My little experiment here over the last few months has been satisfying enough that I want to start customizing the site a little bit. I’ve put a new theme on and customized it just slightly tonight. I’ve also added some plugins. You may find me toying with the site a bit over the next few weeks. If something really goes wrong with the site, feel free to contact me about it. I may have made some change and not realized that it screwed something up. If you see little things that are just a bit screwy, you may notice that it’s back to normal a few hours later or the next day.