Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

A few days ago, on a long and very interesting thread, texaslady wrote:

Thank you WP and Brad for sacrificing time and careers to keep those who want to learn informed.

This was a strange and difficult comment for me to read. I was reluctant to accept the obvious truth behind texaslady's kind words. Ever since I started working with Brad, I have known that he walked away from a successful career in order to do what he does now --- investigating, blogging, keeping VR running, and many other things that we don't usually notice.

So I didn't have any trouble with texaslady's comment as it applies to Brad. But I had a lot of trouble with it as it applies to me. Apparently I've been blocking out the fact that my career is gone, too.

We love what we do, we would do it for free, and we often do so. But that's not always enough.

Now Brad and I are both up against the wall, and that's why we are turning to you --- again --- and asking for help.

If you can make a contribution --- large or small --- please do so! Find the blue box near the top of the right sidebar and follow the instructions from there.

We will appreciate it immensely. And even more important, we will use the money to keep the blog running, to keep the truth flowing, and in my case at least, to keep my little guys eating.

We really couldn't do this without you. But that's ok. Because without you, it wouldn't be worth doing!

Blogged by Brad from the road and on the fly!...

Just a quick post to say thanks to all who have been covering for me here, in particular Winter Patriot who has been thawed out and called up for duty to allow me some much needed time away.

I'm traveling across the country, and not getting as much down time as I'd like for the moment, as I'm in touch with folks in re: the Busby/Bilbray election fiasco and their plans for announcing several new initiatives to call for accountability there shortly. As well, working on several related issues via the phones etc.

I've not been online at all since last Thursday night, and only on briefly today. So forgive me if I've not been able to answer your email, or otherwise report on so much of what is going on right now. We'll see more and more Guest Bloggers here in the coming days and weeks to cover much of that in my absense, which I hope you continue to understand. I really need to find some time away, even if I'm unable to get away 100% in the bargain for now.

Thanks also to John Gideon and David Edwards for keeping up the battle here, and I hope you'll welcome some of the new names (like Emily Levy, etc.) that you'll be seeing here over the next several weeks. Please offer them all the support you can!

If you haven't noticed, the disinfo campaign down in San Diego by Registrar Mikel Haas and his compatriots in the media is now in full swing. Haas is lying left and right, and his friends at the Union-Tribune and elsewhere are all too happy to help! Please feel free to let such media outlets know the truth about what's going on where you can in my absence.

This unsigned editorial today in the U-T was simply incredible! According to them, we're "Internet conspiratorialists" again. Someone please let them know that if we are, so is CA Sec. of State Bruce McPherson whose own office confirmed dozens of ways that Diebold voting machines could be hacked, along with NYU's Brennan Center for Justice who detailed more than 120 security threats to E-voting security, and even the Washington Post who declared that a "Single Personal Could Reverse an Election".)

So much disinfo from the liars and scoundrels in San Diego who are entrusted to run the people's elections, so little online time (for me at least) to counter it all. Thanks in advance to those of you who can continue to do so in my absence! And thanks for your understanding over the next several weeks while I continue to be gone!

(Note to Winter Patriot or John Gideon: Feel free to add links to any of the above text as you are able or inclined!)

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Brad has been too busy lately to remind us that his investigations, his blog, and everything else he does nowadays are funded by a few ads and a few donations. Too few donations, if the truth be known.

He's usually too modest to say what this means to him personally, but I'm not.

Brad used to have a career in which he made money. But that is no longer the case.

Clearly, Brad believes the work he does now is even more important than the work he used to do; I agree with him about that, and evidently so do you. It's just a tad inconvenient that his current work does very little to help him pay the rent.

If you appreciate the work Brad does, if you like reading (and maybe even commenting) on his blog, if you would like to see his investigative work continue, if you care about the future of our country, if you care about the truth and want to see more of it ... these are all good reasons to consider making a contribution.

It's easy to do --- see the blue box in the right-hand sidebar. And even if you can't contribute very much, please remember that every little bit helps.

How much does it matter? That's for you to decide. In my opinion, there is nothing at stake here except our future.

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NOTE FROM BRAD: I'm still out on the road, will be for a while, and thus unable to check into the net with much frequency! Not getting all of my email either because of it, so my apologies. Thanks Dave for getting this up! More when I am able to check back in from a location with net access and enough time to get caught up-ish.

Just off the air from the Mike Malloy show. And yes, before I came on he did comment that when touched the screen of the Diebold voting machine he used to vote in today's Georgia primary, it was touching the ass of Satan. If you missed it, his interview with me follows. It was a lively one. We discussed trouble at the Georgia primaries, the Busby/Bilbray sleepover mess, Diebold skullduggery in the California Secretary of State's office, and all manners of democracy crumbling.

He asked me to stay over for an additional segment after the top of the hour, when we had a....skeptic call in from Sacramento who believes I'm "a phony." Which is always fun, of course. Glad to meet the critics. Enjoy...

-- Brad on Mike Malloy Show, 7/18/06 [MP3, appx 40 mins]

Also, I had meant to post this a couple of weeks ago, so will take the opportunity to do so now before I hit the road for the next bunch of weeks and may become scarcer than I'd like (but I really need a break. Big time. So please forgive me) This is audio from the Ed Schultz when NBC/HBO sports anchor Jim Lampley was sitting in for Schultz show a day or two after our Emergency Busby/Bilbray Townhall in San Diego. I'm on with him for just a quick few minutes, but he gave one of the kindest and most generous introductions I've ever received. Lampley is a terrific hero himself, and was kind enough to show up to support us at the San Diego event with his wife Bree Walker (whose new show in Los Angeles, I hope to be doing soon as well. Like Lamps, she's aces!)

-- Brad on Ed Schultz Show, Guest Host Jim Lampley, 6/30/06 [MP3, appx 5 mins]

(NOTE: RAW STORY is now running an article on Howard Dean's comments at DemFest and our Press Conference there, both on Saturday.)

Have finally made it out of San Diego, back to Los Angeles, where hopefully, I'll be leaving again soon to take whatever form of occassionally working, occassionally vacating vacation that I am able to pull off over the next month while all of these things are going on....

It's been a whirlwind past 48 hours or so, and I've hardly been able to catch my breath, much less log onto the net at all for the most part since 7am on Saturday. So I've got a lot of catchup to do. More notably, I've got a lot to catch you up on from news of a late and last-minute press conference on the latest Busby/Bilbray CA50 stuff that we held Saturday evening at DemocracyFest just prior to the big open air concert event (featuring Al Franken, Howard Dean, Marc Maron, Paul Hackett, Maxine Waters and many others) to various bits and pieces that I hope to share from meetings and conversations and such from the last several days of DemFest and beyond.

I'll share some news and comments from Sen. Debra Bowen (with whom I sat on a panel discussion Saturday in the big room at DemFest) and Francine Busby (with whom I was able to have a number of private conversations) and Howard Dean who spoke about the Busby/Bilbray CA50 voting machine "sleepovers" during that big Saturday night event. And probably more.

Need some time to get caught up over the next few hours, and hope to have comments here soon.

The hastily compiled media advisory, sent out in the hectic and heated hours before Saturday's Press Conference is below. Portions of it were, I'm told, carried by San Diego's Channel 9 and 10 --- one of them the local ABC affiliate --- including (I think) some one-on-one comments from yours truly. The local Air America Affiliate, KLSD 1360am also played portions of the conference on Sunday morning. Anyway...pardon my exhaustion, and my inability to communicate much at all until now, and stand by for more when I can get caught up a bit...somehow...

Heading to DemocracyFest! in San Diego! Was supposed to have left hours ago, but as you might guess, lots and lots going on. Which I hope I'll be able to share soon. Even from the road. Nothing like a three hour midnight drive, I guess...

I'll be speaking at the Fest on the Election Integrity panel, Day 2, Saturday, July 15 at 9:30am in the big room (800 seats) along with Debra Bowen, Alan Dechert of Open Voting Consortium and Rob Cohen, co-director, co-producer of the VoterGate documentary. I think I'm also on a panel of bloggers on Sunday and will otherwise be around down there throughout the weekend to say hello to my good friends Howard Dean, Francine Busby, Al Franken (who will be broadcasting live from there, but not speaking with me it seems) along with many others who also can't wait to see me! Seriously, tons of great people will be there. Check out the schedule and folks coming.

If you would like to say hello to me, and are anywhere near, please come on down! Looks like tons of great stuff planned out there for the next three days and nights!

The first of several federal whistleblower qui tam (fraud) suits have now been filed against one of America's major electronic voting machine companies, The BRAD BLOG can now report.

Florida attorney Mike Papantonio who, along with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. hosts Ring of Fire, weekends on Air America Radio, was a guest on Mike Malloy's radio program last night. [Complete audio is available at bottom of this article.] He discussed the upcoming whistleblower suits that he and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are filing against several of the voting machine companies. Pap was loaded for bear.

During the interview, he gave several new details on the federal fraud suits now being filed, which include several whistleblower plaintiffs whose stories were originally reported here at The BRAD BLOG, as mentioned last week in a quick item here, with some fresh details of our own. Pap reported last night that the "dream team of lawyers" they've assembled to take on these evil, irresponsible, anti-American companies includes a bunch of those who took on the tobacco companies in a successful quarter billion dollar suit --- so they're not likely easily intimidated, we'd think.

Papantonio is a senior partner at Levin Papantonio Thomas Mitchell Echsner & Proctor, P.A., a Pensacola lawfirm. (website here) RFK Jr. is also "of counsel" for this firm.

Speaking of the level of fraud to be revealed by the suits, which must be sealed by law for 60 days as the Attorney General decides if they will join the complaint, Papantonio told Malloy: "When you hear the details, when you hear the caliber of the fraud... you... it'll make Americans feel like they're living in a damned banana republic, a third world country. I have never heard such outrageous facts."

"And you know what?" he continued, "We've had our investigators look at it. We verified everything. And when you hear it, you're gonna say, 'Not in America.' ...Bad news is: Yeah, it is in America."

The fraud suits, Papantonio said, are "a way to get at their money, and that's the only thing these people understand."

"At the end of the day, we're gonna shut down some of these companies," Papantonio said. "Some day these hacks are gonna be across the table from me, and they're gonna have to answer the questions that nobody else has been able to ask them."

Pap excoriated the DNC, "the indolent Democrats and the lazy media," for not participating in any of this, and decried the fact that he and RFK Jr. were essentially forced to take action on their own, given the Dems' failure to do anything.

He also spoke of the voting machine "sleepovers" about which we've been reporting here in detail of late. As well, he had several kind words for this website and several other election integrity groups. "Unless you had these organizations out there like Black Box Voting or BRAD BLOG, people like that, paying attention to this, this wouldn't even be on the radar screen," he said.

You can listen to the entire segment in full right here:

-- Mike Papantonio on the Mike Malloy Show, 7/12/06 [MP3]

(Thanks to Ring of Fire producer Scott Millican for the heads-up and for the smartly edited, commercial-free audio file!)

UPDATE: AP finally notices the spate of lawsuits being filed against these e-voting companies and their shitty wares across the country. AP is still way behind us here at The BRAD BLOG, of course, and haven't noticed the RFK Jr. suits, but hey, they don't have the access to the huge resources and manpower that we are able to leverage here, with our enormous staff and boundless funding, so we'll cut AP some slack. They're just a little blog or something, right? I'm sure they're doing their best. Thanks to Pam of The Democratic Daily for the heads up!

Wow...CourtTV's Catherine Crier on Crier Live just covered virtually everything we've ever discussed on this blog in one fell swoop! Had I known it was possible, I would have used five and a half minutes to tell all these stories, instead of the past two years!

As well, she included several incredibly kind words about both The BRAD BLOG and yours truly (and a picture of me to boot, sorry about that!) generously urging folks to visit this site:

She covered loads of stories that we've been secretly reporting here where the rest of the MSM could never ever notice... From the recent Busby/Bilbray Diebold voting machine "sleepover" fiasco to the Hand Count Fee scam that's followed, to the video-taped testimony of vote-rigging whistleblower Clint Curtis naming Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) as the rigger, to Bush-appointed former EAC commissioner DeForest Soaries' exposure of the cruel federal hoax, to now-disgraced Monterey County, CA Registrar of Voters Tony "Trust Me" Anchundo who faces 43 criminal counts and much more!

I was contacted recently by the show and they informed me they have been BRAD BLOG readers for quite a while. Their report this evening demonstrates that quite clearly. They managed to show, very smartly and in a single report, how all of these items we've been reporting on --- for what seems like forever --- actually all tie together. (What, no Ann Coulter Voter Fraud to boot? Maybe next week...)

I'd pull out some quotes, but it won't do her report justice. See the full video (courtesy of David Edwards, natch) or text transcript which are both available below.

I've been asked to appear on the show next week, and we're trying to work out the dates to see if it's possible, since --- theoretically --- I'm supposed to be hitting the road for a long-planned and much-needed vacation for several weeks after appearing at this weekend's DemocracyFest! in San Diego. But hopefully we'll work something out...

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Below is the text transcript as forwarded by the good Crier Live folks [and edited slightly for legibility]...

From today's Salon...

More available at the Salon link above.

Not certain which video of Curtis was shown (haven't been able to follow the Mexico Election crisis too closely, as we've been waylaid by the current fight for electoral integrity in this country of late), but it may have been the video of Curtis testifying under oath to a panel of U.S. House Judiciary Committee members in late 2004 or one of several available online in which I interviewed him (here's one, here's another with text transcript) during a late 2005 Election Reform summit in Portland, OR.

Sacramento Bee columnist Peter Schrag runs a decent article on Busby/Bilbray election mess in today's paper.

I recommend you read it in full, as it's mostly balanced (in the honest way, not the Fox "News" way) and gets most of the elements of the story close enough for government work. In other words, it's a legitimate article, even with a few quibbles I have. But the legit effort is certainly appreciated in contrast with the lazy piece of disinformation disguised as a news article which ran last week in San Diego Union-Tribune on this matter.

Schrag's focus throughout is largely on the uber-matter in question; The looming threat we face to the legitimacy of American elections across the board. The article starts this way...

Schrag then goes on to slightly misrepresent my comments to him last week when he called, when he writes:

The misrepresentation, accidental as I'll presume it to be, is that yes, I've said we currently have no specific evidence that "the machines were fiddled with," as he put it. But we simply cannot know whether they were "fiddled with" or not, given Regisrar Mikel Haas' complete disregard for the new state and federal security mitigation requirements which were invalidated when the voting machines in question were sent home with poll workers for days and weeks prior to the election. In doing so, they were all rendered decertified, and thus illegal for use in the election.

Where I will take exception to Schrag's article is when he avers that "Bilbray almost certainly won the election."

Of course, Schrag has absolutely zero evidence with which to back up that assertion, so I really don't know where he gets it, other than by general knee-jerk habit that the media have of simply trusting elections officials and whatever they report to be the "results" of any election. (See Ohio 2004, et al.)

His closing sentence then, repeats again his earlier unsupported assertion, but closes on the right note:

Please read the article in full yourself so you can make up your own mind. He makes several good points worth reading in any case.

Oh...and one last point. Schrag writes:

The last part is true enough --- doubts about election results this November will plague this country no matter who wins or loses (see this earlier article today on that) --- but I'm not sure where he gets the idea that the "doubters" won't get that hand "recount" (of course he means hand count, not recount, since the ballots have not actually been counted) if they want it.

Those "doubters," however, will likely have to pay for it themselves, unless a judge orders otherwise. And, we're learning that, apparently, the registrar himself gets to determine just about any number he wants to charge for that manual hand count.

You can contribute to help defray legal costs to fight this battle over at VelvetRevolution.us for the time being. More on all of that tomorrow....

Guest Blogged by David Edwards

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Brad appeared on this evening's edition of CNN Lou Dobbs Tonight. He explained some of the dangers of having wireless connections built-in to e-voting machines.

UPDATE FROM BRAD: Thanks for getting this up quickly, David! Was a quick piece tonight (made it back from a frantic trip back from San Diego just two minutes after my appointed time), but I'm pleased to be in the good company of Avi Rubin and Rep. Rush Holt in the Lou Dobbs report. I'm told they'll be using more of me tomorrow. We'll see. Ironically, I live about 3 blocks from the CNN building in Los Angeles and they've never called me in before...until I was several hours away in San Diego. No rest for the weary.

Full text transcript follows...

Blogged from San Diego...

...But about to rush back to Los Angeles to get to the CNN building for an interview with the Lou Dobbs folks. If I can get there in time!

I should be on tonight's Lou Dobbs Tonight tonight at 6pm ET (3pm PT) and perhaps tomorrow night's show as well. Or so I'm told.

Had hoped to catch up a bit here about the Busby/Bilbray events last night and Tuesday, but it looks like that's going to have to wait again in order for me to race back up north to get to the interview on time...yeesh...

Will also be on Mike Malloy's national Air America program tonight as Guest Hosted by Laura Flanders. We were last on air with Laura when she came down to Crawford, TX to simulcast with us on The BRAD SHOW from Camp Casey last summer.

Apologies to those of you waiting for email responses and other interesting blog items here. Looks like I'll have to be off the grid again for a bunch of hours in a row...So Open Thread here as ya like!

UPDATE: Tonight's Dobbs clip, with a brief, yet starkly vital, cameo from yours truly, now posted here courtesy of the mighty David Edwards.

A glitch (yes, a software glitch) found in WordPress this morning, the new software now in place for use here at The BRAD BLOG, kicked in and took us down for much of the morning. We're back up (as you can see) and still working through a host of other issues concerning comment problems and other matters. For now, we recommend you copy your comment to the clipboard before hitting "submit" just in case it doesn't post as it is supposed to on first try!

Please use this item to report any problems you may come across. We'll also keep our eye on the previous item asking for input on these issues.

Otherwise, please scroll down below this item for the latest actual news (on the questionable results of the Busby/Bilbray election and other matters) that I'm also trying to deal with at the same time...

*** IMPORTANT NOTE! *** Since we're still having a bug in the comments posting, PLEASE remember to copy your note (CTRL-C) before submitting it in case it doesn't post. If it doesn't, use paste (CTRL-V) to try again. The problem seems to take care of itself on second post attempt! We're working on it...

Okay, not really Diebold programmers. Some of the best actually! My old friend Ronny Brodin has worked his magic and I think the new software here --- that will allow us some really exciting new things soon -- is working pretty well so far.

Nonetheless, there's a bunch of stuff that will need tweaking and I thank you for your patience as we work out the kinks.

As mentioned, this is likely the worst possible time for this, but we've had no choice other than to expedite this long-planned move since the hack/spam attacks have gotten so bad, bringing the whole site down several times a day.

You'll notice some new stuff already. Amongst them, a new "PRINT THIS" option which will also be handy for those who have trouble reading our yellow-on-green color scheme since it's straight black-on-white instead!

More soon on the new features we'll be able to put in place before long! But as it's 4:45am and I've only slept about 3 or 4 hours over each of the last 4 or 5 days, I'm gonna knock off and hope all is well when I wake up to begin tweaking some more of the still-existing "glitches"...Leave comments here if you spot any problems, please, and I'll try to handle them in the morning!

Thanks for all of your support, patience, and understanding... Brad

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For those stopping by for our coverage of the questionable Francine Busby/Brian Bilbray U.S. House special run-off election to replace the disgraced "Duke" Cunningham last Tuesday, here's the key articles so far: