Count the Ways

How crooked and diabolical can these people get?

I can’t remember how many times I’ve asked myself the question. With each new revelation of scandal, crime, and corruption that we discover emanating from the fetid bowels of the Bush Administration, we can only wonder how much more there is. And when will it end? And now most importantly, what can be done about it?

It will be no small task. Not only do we need to hold the thugs, bullies, liars, cheaters, thieves, killers and other assorted crooks from within the administration accountable. We also need to methodically identify and remove the enabling scoundrels from the Democratic Party as well.

Of course, these goals are insurmountable and practically impossible. But, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. We have our reputation to salvage and our consciences to face.

The first thing to be done is to attempt to answer my original question. Information is vital to our cause and we need to share everything we have access to. Thanks to some determined and righteously obsessed individuals, we can at last have a good look at some delineations of the assaults on peace, justice, and truth.

I am happy to have been made aware of a few lists some good people have assembled. I wish I could simply present the collected material here for you. But I can’t, and you’ll see why. However, I can give you three links to go see these lists for yourselves.

So, just how crooked can these people get? Let us count the ways

First up is TPM’s Great List of Scandalized Administration Officials, from the good folks at tpmmuckraker.com.

They kindly break the list into the following categories:

Indicted/Convicted Pled Guilty - 10 Officials

Resigned Due to Investigation, Pending Investigation, or Allegations of Impropriety – 24 Officials

Nomination Failed Due to Scandal – 5 Officials

Under Investigation but Still in office – 3 Officials

For further reading:

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004951.php#more

Next up is Hugh’s List at netrootsmass.net.

This Bush Scandals List is the one I’ve been waiting for. It has all the big ones and many more. We find the War in Iraq, mercenary “contractors”, the CIA covert identity leak, the post- 9/11 warrantless surveillance program, the PRE-9/11 warrantless wiretapping, and, of course, torture. There are far too many more to mention here.

It’s literally enough to fill a book. And this is not fiction. Check out all 293 scandals! I’m not kidding.

http://www.netrootsmass.net/Hugh/Bush_list.html

Last up is Angry Girl’s “20 Amazing Facts About Voting In The USA.”

These facts I can give you now. Some of them are outdated, but were true at the time of the damage done.

Did you know:

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.

11. Diebold is based in Ohio.

12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.

13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of Global Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States.

14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.

15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.

16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it!

17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.

18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.

19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.

20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.

Chilling. These facts point to the dagger in the heart of our democracy. For links to sources and references on this list, go to:

http://nightweed.com/usavotefacts.html

God bless those freedom fighters who hunker down and make these lists for us. We definitely owe it to them to pass along and share this information liberally. And freely.