The National Day of Mourning

On Thanksgiving Day, many Native Americans and their supporters gather at the top of Coles Hill,
overlooking Plymouth Rock, for the “National Day of Mourning.”

The first National Day of Mourning was held in 1970.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts invited Wampanoag leader Frank James to deliver a speech.
When the text of Mr. James’ speech, a powerful statement of anger at the history of oppression of the Native people of America,
became known before the event, the Commonwealth “disinvited” him.
That silencing of a strong and honest Native voice led to the convening of the National Day of Mourning.

The historical event we know today as the “First Thanksgiving” was a harvest festival
held in 1621 by the Pilgrims and their Native American neighbors and allies. It has acquired significance beyond the bare historical facts.
Thanksgiving has become a much broader symbol of the entirety of the American experience. Many find this a cause for rejoicing.
The dissenting view of Native Americans,
who have suffered the theft of their lands…
and the destruction of their traditional way of life at the hands of the American nation, is equally valid.

To some, the “First Thanksgiving” presents a distorted picture
of the history of relations between the European colonists and their descendants and the Native People.
The total emphasis is placed on the respect that existed between the Wampanoags led by the sachem Massasoit
and the first generation of Pilgrims in Plymouth,
while the long history of subsequent violence and discrimination suffered by Native People across America is nowhere represented.

To others, the event shines forth as an example of the respect that was possible once, if only for the brief span of a single generation in a single place,
between two different cultures and as a vision of what may again be possible someday among people of goodwill.

History is not a set of “truths” to be memorized, history is an ongoing process of interpretation and learning.
The true richness and depth of history come from multiplicity and complexity, from debate and disagreement and dialogue.
There is room for more than one history; there is room for many voices.

-citizen x..Iroquois Nation

by CHARLES T. MAXWELL

THE ENERGY CRISIS WE ARE IN today is entirely different from the temporary problems we experienced in 1973-74, 1979-86, 1990-91 and 2000. Then, there were political issues: Some nations were willing and able to produce oil for our use and some were not. There was always sufficient worldwide geological capacity to produce additional barrels of crude oil to meet the world’s needs.

No longer. In the next major energy crisis, that capacity will likely be eroded. So the crisis should have a severe impact, be global in scope, and be difficult to solve. Plainly, it will be unprecedented. What may emerge could well be a restructured world, as well as a restructured oil industry.

Over the next 25 years, a new world energy economy will arrive in three waves. We are near the top of the first and smallest one, a warning wave. A second more powerful wave likely will hit in the 2009-2010 period when the non-OPEC world may reach its all-time highest output of crude oil, subsequently declining to become ever more dependent on OPEC for incremental barrels of production. The final wave should break around 2020, or earlier, as even OPEC’s vast reserves are tapped at a maximum rate of production. After that, oil volume should head down and keep falling, never to revive.

Then the world’s energy companies and governments finally may begin to address new sources of energy to replace oil, and this issue should become the principal economic and political preoccupation for the rest of the century.

An international economic disturbance of this magnitude will create potential conflicts between nations and civil competition within societies. These could be a trial for us and for our children, made worse in the early years by our lack of preparation and our failure to understand what is already happening to us. There could be a good deal of time wasted in recrimination while we seek to pin responsibility on culprits and conspirators and demons: The oil companies, government regulators, Wall Street, the automobile companies, OPEC, the Arabs, gas-guzzling U.S. consumers and so on.

Eventually, we will have to get down to addressing the real issues. They are geological — the limits on supply — and they are human — the tendencies toward greater consumption.

There will be many who claim that the root of the problem is that we are “running out of oil.” This is not an accurate way to describe the situation. We are running out of the ability to produce 2% more barrels each year to meet world demand that increases about 2% annually. The potential loss of the incremental barrels of output in the non-OPEC world as early as 2009-2010 would put the availability of additional barrels — and power over the price at which the world’s consumers might purchase them — in the hands of five OPEC nations: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Iran. (Under some circumstances, Venezuela might be an additional member of the club.)

Depending on their perception of their own political and economic strength, these countries might decide to lift crude prices much faster than the rate of dollar inflation, thus initiating economic and social changes in energy use on a global basis.

For the period 1987 to 2003, the historical range of oil prices was approximately $10 to $40 per barrel, with an average of $20. For 2004 to 2010, the price range could be $30 to $60, with an average of $40. For 2011 to 2020, the range could be $50 to $100, with an average price of $70 per barrel.

Such prices would unleash both destruction and creativity throughout industry and finance. As occurred in the 1970s, the design of cars, trucks, ships, planes and trains would change, commercial buildings and homes would be modified; chemical and industrial processing and most machinery would be redesigned to emphasize fuel economy or substitute fuels; tax systems would be thoroughly overhauled, with changed incentives and penalties. Urban planning and residential patterns would change. Living standards might slip a bit and they would recover in different shape: Cooler rooms in winter and warmer rooms in summer, changing clothes instead of thermostats, taking quicker showers and buying fewer hot tubs, using less lighting, indoors and out, accepting smaller and lighter cars, walking and bicycling more, and using public transportation; these are the obvious changes to come. Europeans, who long ago forced themselves to accept this lifestyle by imposing high energy taxes, might at last receive an economic return on their investment, while the U.S. struggles to change.

Could all this really result from the lack of a few extra barrels of oil in the non-OPEC world, and only five or six years out? Actually, a crisis could develop even earlier if one or two of the main OPEC producers were closed down for an extended period by a political or military emergency.

Close to 40% of global energy consumption is based on petroleum. Currently, we are utilizing about 98% of our world crude oil-producing capacity. The system should be considered stressed at a 95% utilization rate. We are no longer investing enough to lift capacity additions above the level of future demand growth on a consistent basis.

Greater use of natural gas would help, if adequate supplies were available at reasonable cost. However, in North America, the problems of obtaining gas are similar to those of obtaining oil. The U.S.’s natural-gas output appears already to have peaked. Canada can produce a bit more, but not enough to meet its own needs, along with ours, for the next decade. Europe might have an easier situation switching some oil demand over to gas, but new gas supplies would have to be transported long distances by pipeline from Russia, Turkmenistan, Iran, Algeria, and four or five countries of the Arab Middle East or by liquid-natural-gas tanker from Nigeria, Trinidad, or the Gulf. These incremental gas volumes would not come cheaply, quickly or without political risk. Some major gas-production developments are starting up in China and Southeast Asia, but the infrastructure to transport this gas and distribute it to local markets is not yet ready for use, and may require many years before it is. Most critically, gas cannot easily or cheaply take over the role of oil as the major transportation fuel. So, in the next decade, natural gas can only stand in for some oil consumption.

Our ability to substitute more coal for oil is also circumscribed since the technology to burn coal cleanly is still under development, and our vast coal supplies cannot yet be utilized without changing public opinion on the environmental consequences or changing the technology to avoid pollutants. That goes double for nuclear power. Using a lot more of these two fuels in the near term cannot be done in any case, since it would take many years to bring new plants and equipment on line.

If substitution is not immediately available, what about increasing production beyond conventional estimates? Surely, if prices rose a bit, a substantial new supply could be made available to the market? In many commodities, this would be correct. But, not in crude oil. The great Shell Oil geophysicist, M. King Hubbert (1903-1989), outlined the reasons for this in the mid-1950s when he predicted that the peak of U.S. oil production would occur in the early 1970s (and, despite considerable skepticism about his prediction, he was right on target). His case was that oil explorers, entering a new geological basin searching for petroleum, would always choose the largest and most accessible fields to drill first, because that would maximize their early returns. This selection would delay until later the harder work, at higher unit costs, of finding midsize and smaller fields in the mature years of basin production.

In addition, he observed, as oil reservoirs approached the halfway point of the production levels they were eventually going to yield, daily output would peak and subsequently start down.

Hubbert’s two principles do work in practical terms in oil fields. The depletion of recoverable reserves in oil fields whose production levels have gone beyond their halfway point is causing a decline today in the output in certain mature oil-producing areas of the U.S., Canada, the North Sea, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela and Indonesia, among the major producers. Each year now, some 4% to 5% of world crude production is depleted, and an equivalent amount must be found, developed and brought onstream to maintain the original production volume. A further 2% must be found, developed and made available to the market to cover global growth needs.

Few people outside the oil industry understand that 6% to 7% more oil must be found and made available to the market each year in order to meet 2% growth in world consumption. It’s a huge job; and it is getting harder to do, as the potential reserve size of prospects we are drilling today is smaller, and the large, prolific fields found in the past are advancing along their decline curves. Currently, some 70% of the oil that is consumed comes from fields discovered 25 or more years ago.

Most of the likely oil-bearing basins of the world have now been prospected, and the odds of vast new reserves suddenly making an appearance are low. Of course, relatively large individual discoveries will occasionally turn up in the years ahead, but not in size and number to suggest these finds can equal the substantially greater amount of supplies that are being burned up. Today, the world is consuming some 30 billion barrels a year, and we are finding less than one-third that amount. This is a far cry from the mid-1960s, when the world discovery rate peaked at an annual figure of over 45 billion barrels, and we were using something less than 15 billion barrels each year.

Perhaps new technology can produce more? New equipment and methods do allow us to produce more from present fields, and to exploit some smaller fields at lower cost. However, the last decade brought the greatest application of oil-field technology ever seen, and the angle of the downtrend in the number of barrels discovered each year has hardly changed. Furthermore, no devices are known to be under development now in the oil industry’s labs that would dramatically change the basic trend. Technology doesn’t seem to be moving fast enough to save us.

Our country’s leaders have three main choices: Taking over someone else’s oil fields; carrying on until the lights go out and Americans are freezing in the dark; or changing our life style by deep conservation while heavily investing in alternative energy sources at higher costs.

The first two choices can be only temporary palliatives. Taking over foreign energy fields would be against this country’s principles, and, like most violations of principle, it wouldn’t work. This strategy wouldn’t protect us from war, terrorism and the exhaustion of our military and moral resources. Carrying on as we are until we crash looks more like “surrender” than “adjustment.”

By elimination, if not by wisdom, we will eventually turn to a massive national and international conservation effort. It should be launched with further development of coal and nuclear energy, along with imported liquid natural gas, tight-sands gas, coal-bed methane, gas-to-liquids conversion, tar sands and wind power. (Solar and biomass are not yet sufficiently developed to play a leading role.)

Whenever we decide to confront this reality, the resulting program surely will require many years of investing vast amounts of capital. It could, therefore, pre-empt some other lines of investment in economies already strapped for adequate returns to support the promises they have made to their aging societies. Without discipline, mental and physical preparedness and an intelligent selection of priorities conceived early enough to keep us from wavering, we will not pass the oncoming test.

citizen x isnt the only one stirring (after a week off.. letting the world catch up)
NO!
With 1.2 billion people, the People’s Republic of China is the world’s most populous country
and third largest oil consumer, behind the U.S. and Japan.
In recent years, China has been undergoing a process of industrialization and is one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
With real gross domestic product growing at a rate of 7% a year,
China requires increasing amounts of oil to sustain its economic development.

Its oil consumption grows by 7.5% per year, seven times faster than the U.S.’
Growth in Chinese oil consumption has accelerated mainly because of
a large-scale transition away from bicycles and mass transit toward private automobiles,
more affordable since China’s admission to the World Trade Organization.
Consequently, by year 2010 China is expected to have 90 times more cars than in 1990.
With automobile numbers growing at 19% a year, projections show that China could surpass the total number of cars in the U.S. by 2030.
Another contributor to the sharp increase in automobile sales is the very low price of gasoline in China.
Chinese gasoline prices now rank among the lowest in the world for oil-importing countries,
and are a third of retail prices in Europe and Japan, where steep taxes are imposed to discourage gasoline use.

Where will China get its oil?
Though during the 1970s and 80s China was a net oil exporter,
it became a net oil importer in 1993 and is growingly dependent on foreign oil.
China currently imports 32% of its oil and
is expected to double its need for imported oil between now and 2010 and become the second largest world oil consumer.
A report by the International Energy Agency predicted that by 2030, Chinese oil imports will equal imports by the U.S. today.

China’s expectation of growing future dependence on oil imports
has brought it to acquire interests in exploration and production in places like Kazakhstan, Russia, Venezuela, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Peru, and Azerbaijan.
But despite its efforts to diversify its sources, China has become increasingly dependent on Middle East oil.
Today, 58% of China’s oil imports come from the region. By 2015, the share of Middle East oil will stand on 70%.
Though historically China has had no long-standing strategic interests in the Middle East,
its relationship with the region from where most of its oil comes is becoming increasingly important.

Implications for U.S.-China relations
U.S.-China relations are influenced by a wide array of issues from Taiwan to trade relations and human rights.
But undoubtedly access to Middle East oil will become a key issue in the relations between the two powers.
Clearly, in the short term,
China recognizes that its energy security is increasingly dependent on cooperation with the U.S., rather than competition with it.
China would like to maintain good relations with the U.S. and enjoy the economic benefits derived from such cooperation.
But this inclination is balanced by the feeling among many Chinese leaders
that the U.S. seeks to dominate the Persian Gulf in order to exercise control over its energy resources
and that it tries to contain China’s aspirations in the region.
The U.S. is therefore considered a major threat to China’s long-term energy security.
Although China is banking on oil development projects outside the Middle East,
Beijing most likely will insist on nurturing its relations with the main oil-producing states in that region as an insurance policy.
But its attempts to gain a foothold in the Middle East
and build up a long-term strategic links with countries hostile to the U.S. could also bear heavily on U.S.-China relations.
Especially troubling are China’s arms sales to the region, its support of state sponsors of terrorism and its proliferation of dual use technology.
A report by the U.S.-China Security Review Commission, a group created by Congress, warned
that China’s increasing need for imported energy has given it an incentive to become closer to countries supporting terrorism like Iran, Iraq and Sudan:
“A key driver in China’s relations with terrorist-sponsoring governments is its dependence on foreign oil to fuel its economic development.
This dependency is expected to increase over the coming decade.”
China’s relations with state sponsors of terrorism has provided these countries a great deal of money,
allowing them to continue to harbor terrorist organizations and to maintain a policy of oppression and exploitation of their people.
China’s cooperation with terrorist-sponsoring states has also helped create
a group of nations with the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction and the ballistic missiles to deliver them.
China is known to be a provider of such technologies to rouge states including North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Sudan.
China is Iran’s number one supplier of unconventional arms.
It negotiated deals to supply Iran with equipment and technology useful for making nuclear, chemical and biological weapons,
despite having signed international agreements prohibiting the proliferation of such technologies.
This arms trafficking presents an increasing threat to U.S. global security interests, particularly in the Middle East and Asia.

China also provides conventional weapons that could threaten U.S. military forces securing the Persian Gulf.
Of particular concern are China’s sales to Iran of anti-ship cruise missiles,
which pose a threat to oil tanker traffic and American naval vessels operating there.
It also provided Iraq its anti-aircraft radar system as well as fiber optic communication system,
both of which could make America’s war with Iraq more difficult.

A key component of China’s strategy to guarantee access to Persian Gulf oil is the special relations it has cultivated with Saudi Arabia.
The ties with Riyadh go back to the mid-1980s when China sold Saudi Arabia intermediate range ballistic missiles.
Since then, the relations have grown closer.
High-level visits of Chinese leaders to Saudi Arabia culminated in 1999
with President Jiang Zemin’s state visit in which he pronounced a “strategic oil partnership” between the two countries.
China has offered to sell the Saudis intercontinental ballistic missiles with a range of up to 5,500 km.
The Saudis have so far preferred to turn down many of the proposals
and limit their procurement from China in order to maintain their special relations with the U.S.
But continuous deterioration in Saudi-American relations or, in the longer run, a regime change in the oil kingdom,
could drive the Saudis to end their reliance on the U.S. as the sole guarantor of their regime’s security and offer China an expanded role.

Kerry Won.
Here are the Facts.
Friday, November 5, 2004

by Greg Palast

I know you don’t want to hear it.
You can’t face one more hung chad.  But I don’t have a choice.
As a journalist examining that messy sausage called American democracy,
it’s my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states.
Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.

Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry.
At 1:05 a.m. Wednesday morning, CNN’s exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. 
The exit polls were later combined with—and therefore contaminated by—the tabulated results,
ultimately becoming a mirror of the apparent actual vote. 
Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio’s male voters 51 percent to 49 percent.
Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.

So what’s going on here?
Answer: the exit polls are accurate.
Pollsters ask, “Who did you vote for?”
Unfortunately, they don’t ask the crucial, question, “Was your vote counted?”
The voters don’t know.

Here’s why.
Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards for Kerry-Edwards,
thousands of these votes were simply not recorded.
This was predictable and it was predicted. [See TomPaine.com, ”An Election Spoiled Rotten,”  November 1.]

Once again, at the heart of the Ohio uncounted vote game are, I’m sorry to report,
hanging chads and pregnant chads, plus some other ballot tricks old and new.

The election in Ohio was not decided by the voters but by something called “spoilage.”
Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of the vote is voided, just thrown away, not recorded.
When the bobble-head boobs on the tube tell you Ohio or any state was won by 51 percent to 49 percent,
don’t you believe it … it has never happened in the United States,
because the total never reaches a neat 100 percent. The television totals simply subtract out the spoiled vote.

Whose Votes Are Discarded?

And not all votes spoil equally. Most of those votes, say every official report,
come from African-American and minority precincts. (To learn more, click here.)

We saw this in Florida in 2000. Exit polls showed Gore with a plurality of at least 50,000, but it didn’t match the official count.
That’s because the official, Secretary of State Katherine Harris, excluded 179,855 spoiled votes. 
In Florida, as in Ohio, most of these votes lost were cast on punch cards where the hole wasn’t punched through completely
—leaving a ‘hanging chad,’—or was punched extra times. 
Whose cards were discarded?
Expert statisticians investigating spoilage for the government calculated…
that 54 percent of the ballots thrown in the dumpster were cast by black folks.
(To read the report from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, click here .)

And here’s the key: Florida is terribly typical.
The majority of ballots thrown out (there will be nearly 2 million tossed out from Tuesday’s election)
will have been cast by African American and other minority citizens.

So here we go again. Or, here we don’t go again.
Because unlike last time, Democrats aren’t even asking Ohio to count these cards with the not-quite-punched holes
(called “undervotes” in the voting biz).
Nor are they demanding we look at the “overvotes” where voter intent may be discerned.

Ohio is one of the last states in America to still use the vote-spoiling punch-card machines.
And the Secretary of State of Ohio, J. Kenneth Blackwell, wrote before the election,
“the possibility of a close election with punch cards as the state’s primary voting device invites a Florida-like calamity.”

But this week, Blackwell, a rabidly partisan Republican,
has warmed up to the result of sticking with machines that have a habit of eating Democratic votes.
When asked if he feared being this year’s Katherine Harris,
Blackwell noted that Ms. Fix-it’s efforts landed her a seat in Congress.

Exactly how many votes were lost to spoilage this time?
Blackwell’s office, notably, won’t say, though the law requires it be reported.
Hmm. But we know that last time, the total of Ohio votes discarded reached a democracy-damaging 1.96 percent.
The machines produced their typical loss—that’s 110,000 votes—overwhelmingly Democratic.

The Impact Of Challenges

First and foremost, Kerry was had by chads. But the Democrat wasn’t punched out by punch cards alone.
There were also the ‘challenges.’
That’s a polite word for the Republican Party of Ohio’s use of an old Ku Klux Klan technique:
the attempt to block thousands of voters of color at the polls.
In Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida, the GOP laid plans for poll workers to ambush citizens under arcane laws
—almost never used—allowing party-designated poll watchers to finger individual voters and demand they be denied a ballot.
The Ohio courts were horrified and federal law prohibits targeting of voters where race is a factor in the challenge.
But our Supreme Court was prepared to let Republicans stand in the voting booth door.

In the end, the challenges were not overwhelming, but they were there.
Many apparently resulted in voters getting these funky “provisional” ballots—a kind of voting placebo—which may or may not be counted.
Blackwell estimates there were 175,000; Democrats say 250,000. Pick your number.
But as challenges were aimed at minorities, no one doubts these are, again, overwhelmingly Democratic.
Count them up, add in the spoiled punch cards (easy to tally with the human eye in a recount),
and the totals begin to match the exit polls; and, golly, you’ve got yourself a new president.
Remember, Bush won by 136,483 votes in Ohio.

Enchanted State’s Enchanted Vote

Now, on to New Mexico, where a Kerry plurality—if all votes are counted—is more obvious still.
Before the election, in TomPaine.com, I wrote,
“John Kerry is down by several thousand votes in New Mexico, though not one ballot has yet been counted.”

How did that happen? It’s the spoilage, stupid; and the provisional ballots.

CNN said George Bush took New Mexico by 11,620 votes.
Again, the network total added up to that miraculous, and non-existent, ‘100 percent’ of ballots cast.

New Mexico reported in the last race a spoilage rate of 2.68 percent,
votes lost almost entirely in Hispanic, Native American and poor precincts—Democratic turf.
From Tuesday’s vote, assuming the same ballot-loss rate, we can expect to see 18,000 ballots in the spoilage bin.

Spoilage has a very Democratic look in New Mexico.
Hispanic voters in the Enchanted State, who voted more than two to one for Kerry,
are five times as likely to have their vote spoil as a white voter.
Counting these uncounted votes would easily overtake the Bush ‘plurality.’

Already, the election-bending effects of spoilage are popping up in the election stats,
exactly where we’d expect them: in heavily Hispanic areas controlled by Republican elections officials.
Chaves County, in the “Little Texas” area of New Mexico, has a 44 percent Hispanic population,
plus African Americans and Native Americans, yet George Bush “won” there 68 percent to 31 percent.

I spoke with Chaves’ Republican county clerk before the election,
and he told me that this huge spoilage rate among Hispanics simply indicated that such people
simply can’t make up their minds on the choice of candidate for president.
Oddly, these brown people drive across the desert to register their indecision in a voting booth.

Now, let’s add in the effect on the New Mexico tally of provisional ballots.

“They were handing them out like candy,” Albuquerque journalist Renee Blake reported of provisional ballots.
About 20,000 were given out. Who got them?

Santiago Juarez who ran the “Faithful Citizenship” program for the Catholic Archdiocese in New Mexico, told me
that “his” voters, poor Hispanics, whom he identified as solid Kerry supporters, were handed the iffy provisional ballots.
Hispanics were given provbisional ballots, rather than the countable kind “almost religiously,” he said,
at polling stations when there was the least question about a voter’s identification.
Some voters, Santiago said, were simply turned away.

Your Kerry Victory Party

So we can call Ohio and New Mexico for John Kerry—if we count all the votes.

But that won’t happen.
Despite the Democratic Party’s pledge, the leadership this time gave in to racial disenfranchisement once again.
Why?
No doubt, the Democrats know darn well that counting all the spoiled and provisional ballots will require the cooperation of Ohio’s Secretary of State, Blackwell.
He will ultimately decide which spoiled and provisional ballots get tallied.
Blackwell, hankering to step into Kate Harris’ political pumps, is unlikely to permit anything close to a full count.
Also, Democratic leadership knows darn well the media would punish the party for demanding a full count.

What now? Kerry won, so hold your victory party. But make sure the shades are down: it may be become illegal to demand a full vote count under PATRIOT Act III.

I used to write a column for the Guardian papers in London. Several friends have asked me if I will again leave the country. In light of the failure—a second time—to count all the votes, that won’t be necessary. My country has left me.

“It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing…
The people who count the votes decide everything.”

-Joseph Stalin

Gunpowder,Treason and Plot…..
citizen x sees no reason…
that REPUBLICAN treason..
should ever be forgot.”

Guy Fawkes and the boys “discussing” Politics

Americans take note:
“Lincoln is dead”
historical analogy is the last refuge of those who CANNOT grasp the current situation.

citizen x here
poll watching in Mecca,CA.
local police removed Jesus Gonzalves from the parking lot..
because the self-proclaimed “crazy mexican”

(who was holding a near empty bottle of Herradura)
was shouting that John Kerry was the winner of the election.
he cited the fact that “everyone here voted for Kerry!”

SO..thats all i needed to hear..looks like it’s all over folks!
EVERYTHING IS O.K. NOW!

NEW ORLEANS:
There have been over 80 complaints of voting problems in New Orleans so far (9 AM).
There have been machine malfunctions with no backup ballots available.
Election Protection says that New Orleans is one of the top sites of voting irregularities nationwide.

NEW YORK CITY:
Disgruntled Voter writes: “I went to vote today in Manhattan and poll workers were not properly trained on writing-in candidates, disadvantaging candidates like David Cobb. The head poll worker in my precint tried to make me fill out a provisional ballot used for unregistered voters if i wanted to write in a candidate. On top of this, the 1-800-VOTE-NYC number tells you no one is available and hangs up on you. Shame on the Board of Elections.”

ST. PETERSBURG:
A voter registered in St. Petersburg in Pinellas County, FL reported to the League of Pissed Off Voters that he had been told he was not registered to vote (10:45AM). He registered in and received voting information from Pinellas County, and then moved to Hillsborough. When he went to vote this morning at the Robinson Recreation Center at 1248 50th St. in Precinct 166 of Pinellas, he was told that he was not registered to vote there and was directed instead to the Hillsborough County Center at 601 East Kennedy St. In Hillsborough he was told that he was not registered there either and that a provisional ballot would not count.

TOLEDO:
Polls opened one half-hour late today at Glenwood Elementary in Toledo, OH, because the ballot boxes were locked in the principal’s office and no one had the key. During the wait from 6:30 to 7AM, people left the polls without having voted. An hour and a half after the polling site opened, they ran out of pencils, bringing voting to a halt. Voting could not continue until 11AM, by which time 50 to 100 more people had walked away.

COLUMBUS:
The polling site at Sathwick-Good Funeral Home, 3100 North High St. in Precinct 19H in Columbus, OH has announced that a funeral is happening from 10AM to 1PM. During these hours, they said, no groups may distribute literature or talk to voters outside.

BELOIT:
This morning in Beloit, WI a lawyer for the Republicans was challenging Beloit college students saying that they could not register same day with their Beloit student ID’s. In response, the Beloit college president came down to the polls with a notorized list of the students and lawyers to fight for the students’ right to vote. Now students are witnessing registrations, the lines are out the door as they have been since 8 am this morning, and the majority of those in line are college students.

MILWAUKEE:
In wards 72, 314, and 297 in Milwaukee, voting machines are broken. All three wards are predominantly African-American. Luckily, in some of the target wards in Milwuakee, voting turnout has already reached 50% of registered voters at 1PM.

LOS ANGELES:
citizen x went to the local polling place..spirits were high..smiles all around..very helpful officials
and then.. as i stood in the already long line..i overheard the senior poll official tell a young volunteer
that the ballot jackets would be summarily removed before the ballots were processed out..
citing “they are only for privacy”..at this point the x chimed in..”are’nt write-ins marked on the sleeve?”
smiles disappeared and questioning glances shot around the room..the tension was physical..
the uncomfortable official then announced that “they would NOT remove the ballot jackets”
and that he was calling the Board of Elections to “clarify proceedures”..disturbing..very disturbing.
REPORT IRREGULARITIES..SPEAK UP IF YOU ARE SUSPICIOUS!

REMEMBER THE DEAD
in Gaza..
in New York City..
in Afghanistan..
in Tel Aviv..
in Landaff, NH..
in Darfur..
in Samarra..
in every town scarred by war and its makers…
REMEMBER.
and VOTE!

William Rehnquist, chief justice of the US Supreme Court,
did not return to the bench today after revealing that he has thyroid cancer.

His failure to return to work, just over a week after undergoing a tracheotomy,
apparently connected with his illness, has generated speculation
not only about his long-term future on the court,
but also about his more immediate role,
should the justices end up getting involved again in resolving a disputed presidential election.

Colleagues and friends all stress Mr Rehnquist’s toughness and determination.

Justice Clarence Thomas told University of Kansas law students last week…
he expected the chief justice back at the court “as unforgiving as ever.”

But what if his health deteriorates?
What would happen if Mr Rehnquist were soon to retire, be incapacitated or die in office?

The prospect of a departure from the narrowly divided court is worrying enough in normal times,
legal experts say, because it raises the possibility that the justices will often split 4:4,
a result that automatically affirms the lower court’s ruling without clarifying the law.

But if the chief justice were to leave the court at a time when the presidential election was in dispute,
such a split would be especially problematic.

If the chief justice’s seat were to become vacant before the next presidential term begins on January 20,
President George W. Bush would have the power to appoint a temporary successor for him,
by so-called “recess appointment.”

But that could cause “a serious constitutional crisis,”
says Mark Moller of the libertarian Cato Institute.

He explores the scenario in which…
“President Bush appoints the Rehnquist replacement who casts the vote that decides the election”
-and calls it a “horror story.”

Mr Bush has attracted controversy by using recess appointments to name federal appeals court judges, legal experts say.

But appointing a justice who could deliver him an election victory…
is an entirely different matter and would cause a storm on Capitol Hill.

“Lawmakers could impeach Bush if they decided the tie-breaking appointment was an abuse of power,”
writes Mr Moller.

Hopefully, none of this will come to pass..
The chief justice participated from his hospital bed last week in at least two decisions of the court.

It seems likely he will try his hardest to continue to do so
– especially if the justices should become involved again in electoral poli-TRICKS..