Fold/Spindle/Mutilate 2.1

Jan. 6, 2004 | In the summer of 2000, a group of frustrated Episcopalians from the board of the American Anglican Council gathered at a sun-soaked Bahamanian resort to blow off some steam and hatch a plot. They were fed up with the Episcopal Church and what they perceived as a liberal hierarchy that had led it astray from centuries of so-called orthodox Christian teaching. The only option, they believed, was to lead a schism.

But this would take money. After the meeting, Anglican Council vice president Bruce Chapman sent a private memo to the group’s board detailing a plan to involve Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., a Southern California millionaire, and his wife, Roberta Green Ahmanson, in the plan. “Fundraising is a critical topic,” Chapman wrote. “But that topic itself is going to be affected directly by whether we have a clear, compelling forward strategy. I know that the Ahmansons are only going to be available to us if we have such a strategy and I think it would be wise to involve them directly in settling on it as the options clarify.” It was a logical pitch: As a key financier of the Christian right with a penchant for anti-gay campaigns, Ahmanson clearly shared the Anglican Council’s interest in subverting the left-leaning church. Moreover, Ahmanson and his wife were close friends and prayer partners of David Anderson, the Anglican Council’s chief executive, while Chapman and his political team were already enjoying hefty annual grants from Ahmanson to Chapman’s think tank, the Discovery Institute.

Columbus – The Ohio presidential recount was officially terminated Tuesday, December 28.

But the end comes amidst bitter dispute over official certification of impossible voter turnout numbers, over the refusal of Ohio’s Republican Supreme Court Chief Justice to recuse himself from crucial court challenges involving his own re-election campaign, over the Republican Secretary of State’s refusal to testify under subpoena, over apparent tampering with tabulation machines, over more than 100,000 provisional and machine-rejected ballots left uncounted, over major discrepancies in certified vote counts and turnout ratios, and over a wide range of unresolved disputes that continue to leave the true outcome of Ohio’s presidential vote in serious doubt.

Officially, Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell has confirmed substantial errors in the vote count, with a shift of some 1,200 votes based on statewide recounts of about 3% of the vote. But additional new evidence of massive vote-counting fraud across the state continues to be unearthed, calling into question George W. Bush

What the military would have done in Vietnam without civilian interference remains unclear; they never offered the government a coherent alternative plan to the one provided by Robert McNamara, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. This was undoubtedly because there wasn’t one – the war was unwinnable, short of the Dresden option (an option retested in November at Falluja in Iraq).

With the Vietnam defeat, the years of the “hollow army” began, with an angry and alienated military leadership, unsympathetic politicians and an amnesiac public.

A non-conscript professional army was built up. The result of professionalization was to create an officer corps politically on the right. This concerned academic observers and civilians sympathetic to the military, as well as thoughtful officers themselves, aware of the importance of defending the American tradition of an apolitical military.

The professional military’s alienation from its civilian leadership increased with the Clinton administration’s arrival – a draft-dodger president, with a feminist first lady and a liberal agenda. As one military historian has written, first there was the disastrous don’t-ask, don’t-tell clash over homosexuals in the service (where, as anyone who has been in the military knows, there has always been an underground homosexual culture, for self-evident reasons – where else can you meet so many guys?).

Brands closely identified with the U.S., such as Marlboro cigarettes, America Online (AOL), McDonald’s, American Airlines, and Exxon-Mobil are particularly at risk. GMI, an independent market research company, conducted the survey in eight countries December 10-12 with consumers over the internet.

One third of all consumers in Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom said that U.S. foreign policy, particularly the “war on terror” and the occupation of Iraq (news – web sites), constituted their strongest impression of the United States.

From’s group is funded by huge contributions from multinationals like Philip Morris, Texaco, Enron and Merck, which have all, at one point or another, slathered the DLC with cash. Those resources have been used to push a nakedly corporate agenda under the guise of “centrism” while allowing the DLC to parrot GOP criticism of populist Democrats as far-left extremists. Worse, the mainstream media follow suit, characterizing progressive positions on everything from trade to healthcare to taxes as ultra-liberal. As the AP recently claimed, “party liberals argue that the party must energize its base by moving to the left” while “the DLC and other centrist groups argue that the party must court moderates and find a way to compete in the Midwest and South.”

But at least he maintained his record as the most disingenuous president since Richard Nixon.

When other world leaders rushed to respond to the crisis caused by last Sunday’s tsunamis in southern Asia, George Bush decamped to his ranch in Texas for another vacation. For three days after the disaster, the only formal response from the White House was issued by a deputy press secretary. Finally, after a United Nations official made comments that seemed to highlight the disengaged nature of the official U.S. reaction to one of the worst catastrophes in human history, the president appeared at a hastily-scheduled press conference to grumble about how critics of his embarrassing performance were “misguided and ill-informed.”

Bush bragged about the U.S. commitment of $35 million to help respond to a tragedy that has cost more than 100,000 lives and displaced millions of people in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Somalia and other countries.

It’s liberals’ worst nightmare, and it goes something like this. Not only does George W. Bush win reelection, but Republicans seize control of congressional seats, governorships and school boards from sea to shining sea. Eleven states pass legislation banning same-sex marriage. Vacancies loom on the U.S. Supreme Court, with Bush’s favorite right-wing nominees lurking in the wings. American sons and daughters keep dying overseas, while the vast majority of the homeland has somehow gone code red — forget about soccer moms and NASCAR dads; practically all 50 states have been overrun with legions of born-again, gun-slinging, homophobic anti-abortionists. Or some combination thereof.

The State News Agency in Malaysia, Bernama, quotes Indonesia’s ambassador to Malaysia as saying today that three large communities in the Acheh province appear to have been totally destroyed? but are, as yet, inaccessible. “Aerial surveillance found the town of Meulaboh completely destroyed with only one building standing,” said Ambassador Drs H. Rusdihardjo.

Until Sunday morning, Meulaboh had 150,000 residents.

The Ambassador also says there were “no signs of life” in Pulau Simeuleu. It had a population of 76,000. Access to these areas? if only to see if anybody is still alive there? has been cut off due to the destruction of roads, and rapidly depleting fuel supplies. Aerial views of the area show not just devastation, but obliteration. Some communities are recognizable only because a few building foundations remain intact, like the chalk lines around a dead body. Others look like images from the 1889 flood in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, or the 1900 hurricane that destroyed much of Galveston, Texas.

Ambassador Rusdihardjo concluding that the death toll in Acheh Province, could exceed 400,000.

Not only has Bush continued to purge his second-term administration of even the most soft-spoken skeptics, but his disdain for criticism has emboldened his supporters to routinely refer to public dissenters as “traitors.”

Take, for instance, this letter from a Bush supporter who was infuriated when USA Today’s founder Al Neuharth suggested in an opinion column that U.S. troops should be brought home from Iraq “sooner rather than later.”

Both ES&S and Diebold have been caught installing uncertified software in their machines. Although there is no known certification process that will protect against vote rigging or technical failure, it is a requirement of most, if not all, states.

And, according to author Bev Harris in her book, Black Box Voting, “…one of the founders of the original ES&S (software) system, Bob Urosevich, also oversaw development of the original software now used by Diebold Election Systems.”

Talk about putting all our eggs in one very bogus, but brotherly basket.

At the same time the vice president, Dick Cheney, has imposed his authority over secretary of state designate Condoleezza Rice, in order to blackball Arnold Kanter, former under secretary of state to James Baker and partner in the Scowcroft Group, as a candidate for deputy secretary of state.

“Words like ‘incoherent’ come to mind,” one top state department official told me about Rice’s effort to organize her office. She is unable to assert herself against Cheney, her wobbliness a sign that the state department will mostly be sidelined as a power center for the next four years.

Rice may have wanted to appoint as a deputy her old friend Robert Blackwill, whom she had put in charge of Iraq at the NSC. But Blackwill, a mercurial personality, allegedly assaulted a female U.S. foreign service officer in Kuwait, and was forced to resign in November. Secretary of state Colin Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, presented the evidence against Blackwill to Rice. “Condi only dismissed him after Powell and Armitage threatened to go public,” a state department source said.

Jesse Jackson on why he thinks John Kerry really won the election.

Ohio officials concluded their recount of the presidential vote last Tuesday-reaffirming President George W. Bush’s victory. But the state’s election woes aren’t over yet. As bloggers continue to spin conspiracy theories about a victory stolen from Democratic candidate John Kerry, the Rev. Jesse Jackson plans to lead a Monday rally in Columbus to protest alleged voting irregularities. He warmed up with Newsweek’s Susannah Meadows.

The Democratic candidate and Jackson at Sunday services before the November vote. (Photo: Gerald Herbert / AP)

Newsweek: What’s the matter with Ohio?

: In Columbus, Cincinnati, Akron, Youngstown, Cleveland, where I was, you had blacks standing in line for six hours in the rain. That’s a form of voter suppression.

Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell says that machines were allotted based on turnout in past years, and that he didn’t realize they’d need more machines until it was too late.

He had to know it because registration was up. Blackwell may have had to deliver for Bush and [Vice President Dick] Cheney and he got a lighter rap than [former Florida Secretary of State Katherine] Harris got. But Ohio may have been more stacked than Florida was.

So you think Blackwell stole the election for Bush?

It was under his domain to have enough machines; the machine calibration, tabulation issue. You could rig the machines. We have reason to believe it was rigged.

What is your evidence?

Abu Ghraib, the endless trials of Kobe Bryant and Scott Peterson, war in Iraq looking worse every day, Howard Dean eliminated over a whoop and a presidential race so devoid of joy that the high point was when the president claimed God speaks through him — leaving us to contemplate the news that God doesn’t know how to pronounce nuclear and has yet to master subject-verb agreement. “Performance enhancing drugs” in baseball. Ray Charles died. Karl Rove is Man of the Year. We’re all overweight. Swift Boat Liars win the presidential race for Bush. Then just to round things off nicely, a terrible natural disaster. What a bummer.

But, look at it this way… the Boston Red Sox won the championship. Eliot Spitzer is scaring the spit out of the insurance industry (check out those year-end bonuses on Wall Street, El). The Greek Olympics went well. Maybe we could end the payola by just having them in Greece every time. Lance Armstrong won a record sixth Tour de France, a symbolic victory for cancer patients everywhere.

“Less than two weeks from today I will take the oath of office as your next governor of the great state of Washington,” an ebullient Gregoire told supporters at a Capitol news conference.

The Republican candidate, Dino Rossi, said he was exploring whether to contest the election in the courts or in the Legislature.

Rossi and the state GOP said they have discovered a discrepancy of more than 3,500 votes in strongly Democratic King County, the state’s largest, possibly pointing to fraud or mistakes that could have swung the ultra-close election.