Dubya Bush: "We'll Win The Senate And We'll Win The House" - How Can He Be So Sure? I Will Tell You Why - SEX, LIES & EVMs! - RI10

Dubya Bush: “We’ll

Win The Senate 

And We’ll Win

The House”

– How Can He

Be So Sure?

I Will Tell You

Why -

SEX, LIES & EVMs! 

- RI10

 Completion of Article Today, November 6, 2006:
Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia & ChoicePoint: Electronic Voting Machines Manufactured & Owned By Right-Wing Evangelical Bush Supporters – RI10
http://tabacco.blog-city.com/diebold_ess_sequoia__choicepoint_electronic_voting_machines_.htm

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about the issue of voter suppression, voter confusion, of problems in early voting, of who will be counted, and the hidden history of voter disenfranchisement in this country, our guest is Adam Cohen. He is editorial writer for the New York Times, talking about the issue of whose votes get counted. Before we move on, on San Diego, the letter, was it ever traced who put out this letter telling Latinos they can't vote?

ADAM COHEN: Well, there was an investigation, and it’s believed to have been done by the candidate, the Republican candidate running against Loretta Sanchez, the congresswoman in that area. And there’s some question about how directly involved he was.

AMY GOODMAN: And Baltimore, the ad saying that Dr. Martin Luther King was a Republican?

ADAM COHEN: I’m not sure where those have come from. But, you know, often on Election Day, you see all kinds of fliers and things that come out that never get traced to anyone, saying the election has been postponed, various other things like that. People just, you know, they never find out who did that kind of stuff.

AMY GOODMAN: Voter identification.

ADAM COHEN: Yeah, actually even before voter ID, there is this issue of voter registration, where what we’ve been seeing now is states cracking down on perfectly legitimate voter registration drives. And we saw this in 2004, when, you may recall, Kenneth Blackwell, who’s the Secretary of State of Ohio, began rejecting perfectly valid voter registration forms. At one point he came up with a rule that said if it wasn't on thick enough paper, 80-pound thick paper, it would be rejected, which was, you know, a crazy rule that, under pressure, he withdrew. We're not seeing that this year, but we did see Florida adopted very, very strict rules for voter registration drives, so strict that the League of Women Voters of Florida, for the first time in, I think, 70 years, stopped registering people to vote, because they were afraid of the criminal and civil penalties associated with that, so we’re seeing that.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain criminal penalties.

ADAM COHEN: Well, Florida’s legislature, which is not so receptive to voter registration drives, came up with rules that said if there was a certain number of inaccuracies, if you didn't hand in the forms on time, lots of technical requirements, but, you know, when you do a registration drive, you do the best you can. But the League of Women Voters didn’t want to do a drive, if it meant if they didn't get the form that they collected from a perspective voter into an elections office within x number of days, they would be fined. I don't know that there were criminal penalties, but the civil penalties, they calculated, could easily eat up their entire budget for the organization, so they stopped registering people.

AMY GOODMAN: Voter ID.

ADAM COHEN: Voter ID. We’ve seen a number attempts around the country to try to stop people from voting through overly onerous voter ID rules. Now, everyone agrees that there can be some reasonable request that you present ID when you vote, but what we’ve seen is incredibly strict rules.

So, Georgia started this out with a rule you had to actually, if you didn't have a driver's license, you had to buy a voter ID card. So that meant that poor people in Georgia, you know, were essentially subject to a poll tax. The court struck that down. But it was very clear that Georgia was trying to stop people from voting, including the fact that when that law went into effect, there was no office in the entire city of Atlanta where you could buy that card. And they actually -- they had a bus that they had traveling around the state, and if you were able to find that bus, you could buy your card there. But the Atlanta Journal-Constitution actually followed the bus and found that it kept breaking down. It was like a 15-year-old bus. And I think it ended up issuing like 500 cards in a month, and there were 300,000 people who needed the card. So, that has been struck down, Georgia’s rule.

But there are other states, like Indiana and Arizona, that have very strict voter ID laws that are in effect for this election. And as Bob Herbert, my colleague, writes in his column today, Julia Carson, a congresswoman from Indiana, tried to vote with her congressional ID, and that was initially deemed not to be acceptable ID. So you can imagine, they're really trying to discourage --

AMY GOODMAN: In Indiana?

ADAM COHEN: In Indiana. Discourage people from --

AMY GOODMAN: She showed her congressional ID?

ADAM COHEN: And the initial ruling was that it was not acceptable, because it didn’t have an expiration date on it. I think that was eventually appealed. But you get the idea: if they're not letting a famous congresswoman in Indiana vote with her congressional ID, they're not really trying to make every vote count.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the issue of voter roll purges?

ADAM COHEN: Yes, this is something we remember from 2000, when Katherine Harris did that very bad felon voter purge that ended up disenfranchising many people who weren’t felons at all. This goes on all the time, because we don't really have a lot of access to how board of elections keep their voter rolls. So they can purge names without a lot of notice, and we’ve seen already once this year in Kentucky, they did a purge. They announced a purge that was improper. It had a high error rate, and a court actually ordered them not to do that purge.

Here in New York State, we have a state senator who is running in an incredibly close race. He won his seat two years ago by a very small margin. Last week, he -- or Republicans in his district presented the names of 5,000 people they said were on the rolls improperly. Well, if you do that a few days before the election, it’s hard to know what the Board of Elections can do, but there’s a lot of concern in that district that these people may be eligible to vote, but may be stopped from voting.

AMY GOODMAN: On the issue of purges, it’s something we know well from Florida from 2000. Let's talk a little about the issue, the history of voter disenfranchisement. Just can you go back in time, put 2006 in context? You can go back to the beginning of people voting in the United States.

ADAM COHEN: Sure. People sort of think that 2000 was the beginning of problems with voting, because that was when we saw it in Bush versus Gore. But, in fact, if you look back at the history of voting in the United States, there has always been an attempt to use rules of various kinds to stop certain people from voting. It’s always been a partisan thing. One party realizes if it stops a particular ethnic group or racial group from voting, it may win, and they adopt rules that appear to be neutral, but actually aren’t neutral at all.

So, for example, in New York State, the first voter registration laws were passed in 1840. They applied only to New York City, and everyone understood that it was Republicans in the state who were trying to disenfranchise Irish Catholics in New York City through these voter registration rules. In 1921, there was a constitutional amendment that was passed in New York State, adopting a literacy test for the first time. Everyone knows that was done to stop Yiddish-speaking voters in New York City from being able to vote.

And around the country, we have seen many other rules of this kind. New Jersey, for a while, they adopted what were called “sunset” laws, which required the polls to close at sunset, and everyone knows that the reason was that workers were still working in the factories, and the plan was that by the time they were off of their shifts, the polls would be closed.

AMY GOODMAN: And you take that through to now. I mean, immigrants in also, and you’ve written about this with Abraham Lincoln talking about the issue.

ADAM COHEN: Absolutely. They tried to -- various -- in Massachusetts, for example, Republicans tried to extend the period of time after an immigrant was naturalized, that they had to wait in order to vote. And Abraham Lincoln, who was a Republican, and it was his own party who was promoting that rule, said, “This really isn't right. You know, America is about letting people vote,” and he actually did not support that rule. But we’ve seen in many other places, of course, you know, we don't even need to talk about all the rules in the South, through Jim Crow and after, that were designed to stop blacks from voting, particularly in places where blacks were in the majority.

AMY GOODMAN: And we should comment that Julia Carson of Indianapolis, first woman and first African American to be elected by Indianapolis to Congress.

ADAM COHEN: Right, and apparently her congressional ID was not sufficient proof of her eligibility to vote.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, today -- or I should say tomorrow, what are you looking for as the most serious violations that we might see tomorrow?

ADAM COHEN: Well, we're going to see a lot of things. First of all, we'll see who’s actually allowed to vote. We'll see if there are improper challenges at the polls. The Washington Post reported that in Maryland, where there's going to be some very close races, that the Republicans have issued guides for their poll workers that advised them to threaten the election judges with arrest if they don't stop various people from voting. So, it could get very intense. So, we’ll see that. We may see fights over who gets to vote. We’ll see voter ID laws perhaps wrongly applied.

We’re also seeing dirty tricks. We’re seeing this already with -- the blogosphere is speaking a lot right now about, apparently there is a Republican “robocall” dirty trick campaign going on nationwide that’s designed to suppress the Democratic vote. And what the blogosphere says -- I don’t know this first hand, but -- is that in about 50 races around the country, Republicans are doing robocalls that appear to be from Democrats, that are coming early in the morning, late at night. They call back seven or eight times, and it’s designed to make voters think that the Democratic candidate is harassing them. And in some cases, voters are calling up the Democratic campaign headquarters and saying, “I’m not voting for you. You keep on calling me.” But, in fact, supposedly, it’s actually a Republican robocall. So, we’re hearing about --

AMY GOODMAN: By “robocall,” you mean?

ADAM COHEN: This is a nonhuman voice. It’s an electronic -- you know, it’s an automated phone call, and they can make hundreds of thousands of these very cheaply, because it’s just a machine calling. But, as I say, it’s designed apparently to be done in a deceptive way.

AMY GOODMAN: Does it explain at any point who is responsible for the call?

ADAM COHEN: Well, the description I’ve seen online, they start by saying, here is some important information about the Democrat running for office, and it goes on for a while. People generally hang up and are angry at the Democrat. If you stay on the line long enough, eventually it says, but actually, you know, “This is the Republican Party calling, and we're warning you about this bad Democrat.” But either people hang up at the beginning and they think a Democrat is harassing them, or if they listen to the end, they get the Republican message. But mainly people are hanging up and reportedly being called again and again and again right afterwards, which, no one would design their own robocalls to do that. That’s designed to apparently leave a bad taste in voters’ mouths.

AMY GOODMAN: There’s a piece in the New York Times today, “A new telemarketing ploy steers voters on Republican path,” meaning this piece.

ADAM COHEN: Yeah, although that’s focusing more on the sort of intelligent use of robocalls to -- these are calls that they say, “Do you care about abortion? Are you opposed to abortion?” And if you hit yes, it will then take you to a message about why the Republican is the right person to vote for. So that’s sort of the more benign kind of robocall, although still very sophisticated. And some people are calling it a form of push polling, because they do say negative things about the opponent. But that’s at least within the realm still, I would say, of not being a dirty trick. This other one of pretending to be from the other side and harassing people is worse.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Adam Cohen, editorial writer for the New York Times. The very close races that could determine the balance of the Senate, where they stand today? For example, Tennessee.

ADAM COHEN: Yes, I think people right now are saying that control of the Senate probably rests on Missouri, Tennessee, and Virginia; Tennessee, incredibly close. Harold Ford, the first African American who has a real shot in modern times of representing the state. We’ve seen, you know, a very spirited campaign. Allegations of the Republicans have been using racially charged advertising against him. I don't think anyone knows how that is going to turn out. I mean, there have been polls both ways, showing Ford up a little. Lately Corker seems to have closed the gap, or the Republican, or moved ahead, but I think it’s all going to come down to turnout in Tennessee.

AMY GOODMAN: And Virginia?

ADAM COHEN: Virginia, there, too, a fascinating, very high-profile race. We all know about Senator Allen and his problems. Jim Webb is the Democrat. They’ve been seesawing back and forth. Some polls say that Webb is up by one or two points. Again, turnout will be very important. Virginia is a state that has been Republican for a long time, but they’ve elected two Democratic governors lately, and Democrats in the state, I think, are cautiously optimistic that Webb may win that one.

AMY GOODMAN: And in Missouri?

ADAM COHEN: Missouri may well be the closest race in the country. It seems to be dead even, 47-47, 49-49, depending on the poll, between Jim Talent, the Republican incumbent, and Claire McCaskill. Missouri has some of the closest races in the country. I think people feel that could come down to literally just a few thousand votes in the end.

AMY GOODMAN: Arizona seems to be in play in a way that no one talked about before.

ADAM COHEN: Yeah, no one was really focusing on Arizona, but in the last few days, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has been pumping more money into it, because Kyl, the Republican incumbent, does seem to be vulnerable. He’s really not been above 50% in the polls for a while, and that’s a vulnerable place for an incumbent to be. Pederson, the Democrat, has a lot of money on his own, and I think they are two people just, I think, it will come down to who actually turns out to vote on Tuesday.

AMY GOODMAN: And then you’ve got the House. You had the New York Times headline yesterday, "GOP Glum as It Struggles to Hold Congress." Some of the closest races there.

ADAM COHEN: Yeah, I think people are looking particularly to the Northeast there. Connecticut has three very closely contested races, where some of the moderate Republicans are in trouble, people like Chris Shays, Nancy Johnson. And the Philadelphia suburbs, three more close races, where again moderate Republicans are in danger. Upstate New York has some other races where Republican seats could go Democratic. Those states alone could make up most of the seats that the Democrats would need to make up the 15 seats they need to take the majority.

AMY GOODMAN: And the language that’s being used now, because of course in every one of these local races, where the Democratic Party, where the Republican Party pours resources in, they're going larger than that particular race. I mean, for example, Nancy Johnson, big pharmaceutical support, insurance support, but when they pour money into the race, they're talking to the electorate about what the complexion of the country will look like, what the composition of Congress will be.

ADAM COHEN: Right, we’re really seeing a battle here, where the Democrats are trying to nationalize these races. The Republicans are trying to keep them local. So, you see the Democrats saying, “Nancy Johnson is one more vote for the Republican majority. President Bush really wants Nancy Johnson reelected.” Nancy Johnson talks about things like, “Look at all the bacon I’ve brought home for the district. Here is a parkland that I turned into federal park.” You know, local, local, local. And you’re seeing that repeated again and again and again, where the Republicans want to say, you know, “This isn’t a referendum on Iraq or on President Bush. This is about all the things I’ve done, you know, for the community.”

AMY GOODMAN: In New Mexico, a very close race with the incumbent Heather Wilson.

ADAM COHEN: Yes, Heather Wilson appears to be in trouble. Patricia Madrid, the Attorney General, has been running very strong. And that’s part of this trend in the West: a lot of states that had been Republican are now trending Democratic. We’re seeing that in New Mexico, Arizona. Colorado is another state like that, where, you know, they're purple states now, but they seem to be moving in a blue direction.

AMY GOODMAN: Any other major issues, major races that you're right now looking at?

ADAM COHEN: Well, there are a couple of races that the Republicans hope they'll be able to take a few Senate seats away from the Democrats, which would really block their chance of taking over. So, they talk about New Jersey; they talk about maybe knocking off Menendez. I don't think that’s realistic. New Jersey is a very blue state. Menendez seems to have pulled ahead. Maryland, the Republicans are looking to possibly win that with Michael Steele against Ben Cardin, but I think Cardin will win that, as well. Rhode Island should be interesting. It looks for sure that Chafee was going to lose, the Republican incumbent, a week or two ago. Now the polls have tightened, but I still think the Democrat there is likely to unseat him.

AMY GOODMAN: Very unusual case also, because Chafee is not exactly in the past embraced by the Republican Party.

ADAM COHEN: No, he went out of his way to say that he personally didn’t vote for President Bush, and what may be helping him close the gap is, he’s done a commercial where he says, “Hey, you know, I voted against this war.” He’s almost trying sound like a Democrat, and that may be helping him in the end.

AMY GOODMAN: And there’s also an interesting ballot initiative in Rhode Island around the issue of felon disenfranchisement.

ADAM COHEN: Yes, Rhode Islanders have a chance to vote for a constitutional amendment that would make it -- that would extend the vote to some felons right now, people who are on parole and probation who need to wait right now in Rhode Island ’til those end. So people can be out of jail in Rhode Island and for 10, 20, 30 years still not be able to vote. And I think that would be a good thing if that passed.

AMY GOODMAN: How typical is that?

ADAM COHEN: These laws vary by state, but usually that’s not uncommon. I think 37 or more states have rules like that. What is uncommon is having a referendum and having the voters have their say. And there’s a decent chance that will pass.

AMY GOODMAN: Adam Cohen, thank you very much for being with us. Adam Cohen is editorial writer for the New York Times.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/06/1450228

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Poll: Dems Hold Enough Leads

for Senate Control - (Remember this

on 11/8!)

 
Reverend Ted Haggard

Evangelical Leader Says He Bought Drugs!

- NO?!

The Rev. Ted Haggard said Friday he bought methamphetamine and received a massage from a male prostitute. But the influential Christian evangelist insisted he threw the drugs away and never had sex with the man.

Haggard, who as president of the National Association of Evangelicals wielded influence on Capitol Hill and condemned both gay marriage and homosexuality, resigned on Thursday after a Denver man named Mike Jones claimed that he had many drug-fueled trysts with Haggard.

On Friday, Haggard said that he received a massage from Jones after being referred to him by a Denver hotel, and that he bought meth for himself from the man.

But Haggard said he never had sex with Jones. And as for the drugs, "I was tempted, but I never used it," the 50-year-old Haggard told reporters from his vehicle while leaving his home with his wife and three of his five children.

Jones, 49, denied selling meth to Haggard. "Never," he told MSNBC. Haggard "met someone else that I had hooked him up with to buy it."

Jones also scoffed at the idea that a hotel would have sent Haggard to him.

"No concierge in Denver would have referred me," he said. He said he had advertised himself as an escort only in gay publications or on gay Web sites.

Jones did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press on Friday.

In addition to resigning his post at the NAE, which claims 30 million members, Haggard stepped aside as leader of his 14,000-member New Life Church pending a church investigation. In a TV interview this week, he said: "Never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I'm steady with my wife, I'm faithful to my wife."

In Denver, where Jones said his encounters with Haggard took place, police said in a news release they planned to contact the people involved for information on whether a crime was committed. The statement did not say whether an investigation was under way, and police spokeswoman Virginia Quinones declined to elaborate.

Lynn Kimbrough, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, said that a public admission isn't enough by itself to bring a case, but that charges will be filed if criminal conduct can be proved.

Jones claims Haggard paid him for sex nearly every month for three years until August. He said Haggard identified himself as "Art." Jones said that he learned who Haggard really was when he saw the evangelical leader on television.

Jones said he went public with the allegations because Haggard has supported a measure on Tuesday's ballot that would amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage. Jones said he was also angry that Haggard in public condemned gay sex.

Haggard, who had been president of the NAE since 2003, has participated in conservative Christian leaders' conference calls with White House staffers and lobbied members of Congress last year on U.S. Supreme Court nominees.

The NAE's executive committee issued a statement Friday praising Haggard's service but saying, "it is especially serious when a pastor and prominent Christian leader deliberately violates God's standards of conduct."

The statement did not mention the allegations against Haggard beyond noting he had admitted to "some indiscretions."

"Due to the seriousness of Rev. Haggard's misconduct while in the leadership roles he held, we anticipate that an extended period of recovery will be appropriate," the statement said.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto said Friday that Haggard had visited the White House once or twice and participated in some of the conference calls. He declined to comment further, calling the matter a personal issue for Haggard.

Corwin Smidt, a political scientist at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., and director of the Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics there, said that Haggard's role with the association gave him some political clout, but that the group's focus is more on religion than political activism.

"It isn't necessarily that all evangelicals are paying close attention to what he's saying and doing, but he is an important leader," Smidt said.

James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, an influential conservative Christian ministry based in Colorado Springs, said he was "heartsick" over the allegations. He described Haggard as his close friend and colleague.

Aaron Stern, another pastor at New Life, told Associated Press Television News on Friday that Haggard is a man of integrity and that church members don't know whether to believe the allegations.

Stern said he has been telling church members seeking his advice: "People do things we don't expect them to do, but in the midst of all of that our God is faithful, our God is strong."

Jones took a lie-detector test Friday, and his answers to questions about whether he had sexual contact with Haggard "indicated deception," said John Kresnick, who administered the test free at the request of a Denver radio station.

Jones told reporters afterward: "I am confused why I failed that, other than the fact that I'm totally exhausted."

___
 
Associated Press writers Robert Weller and Dan Elliott in Denver contributed to this report.
http://www.optonline.net/News/Article/Feeds?CID=type%3Dxml%26channel%3D32%26article%3D20065341

Tabacco: Why isn’t the Media asking Ted these questions?

You are 50 years old. “But the influential Christian evangelist insisted he threw the drugs away and never had sex with the man.” – If that is true, then why would you resign?

“But Haggard said he never had sex with Jones.” – Have you ever had sex with other males? If so, enumerate!

“And as for the drugs, "I was tempted, but I never used it," the 50-year-old Haggard told reporters from his vehicle while leaving his home with his wife and three of his five children.” – Again, you are 50.  At 50, how could you possibly have been tempted if you never used drugs previously?  Have you ever used drugs? If so, illuminate!

“Jones also scoffed at the idea that a hotel would have sent Haggard to him.” –To Haggard: Which Denver hotel and when did you first meet Jones? And why did you continue to see Jones afterward the initial encounter?

“"Never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I'm steady with my wife, I'm faithful to my wife." – Does your wife believe you?

Tabacco would not normally dig in dung this deep.  But because of the hypocrisy of Ted Haggard and his oppression of other homosexuals, I do it.  If Haggard were not a HYPOCRITE, I would not even care!  

Lest any of my Readers doubt Ted Haggard is homosexual because he has children or that he abuses drugs because he said he didn’t, look up “Walter Jenkins+Lyndon Johnson+YMCA” in your Browser window; then remember that Bill Clinton lied about heterosexual relations; finally recall that George W. Bush would not deny his drug abuse, but refused to discuss it.  Is there any group in America more hypocritical, cherrypicking and disingenuous than Evangelical Christians? Even Catholic clergy do not surpass them.

To the MSM: Why have none of you asked even one of these questions?  If Bill Clinton had been accused of homosexuality and drugs, you couldn’t even find the Sports pages in our biggest or smallest newspapers today.  I repeat the question, “Why have none of you asked even one of these questions?”

If Tabacco were allowed to question the Reverend Ted Haggard instead of the MSM, I could positively demonstrate that Haggard is a closeted homosexual, a drug abuser, a liar and a hypocrite. And this was the guy, who headed a Christian Evangelical 30,000,000 member organization?

Nov. 6, 2006, ADD ON! GUESS Who has finally confessed?  OK, just barely – RESIGNATION was the only confession Tabacco needed!  I bet you can’t guess!



Christian Evangelical Leader Ted Haggard Admits Sexually Immoral Conduct
And the Christian evangelical leader Ted Haggard admitted on Sunday to being a deceiver and liar who had committed sexually immoral conduct. Up until last week Haggard was the president of the National Association of Evangelicals. But the minister was forced to resign after a male prostitute in Denver revealed that Haggard had regularly visited his apartment for the past three years for sex and drugs. Haggard at first denied the allegations. He wrote a letter to his congregation admitting that he had sinned. His letter was read by the Rev. Larry Stockstill, from the pulpit on Sunday. The letter read, "The fact is, I am guilty of sexually immoral conduct. I am a deceiver and a liar. There is a side of me so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it most of my adult life."
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/06/1450216

Tabacco didn’t buy into the hypocritical LIES for 1-second! So Ted Haggard confessed what we already knew –

Sorry, I was too ill to publish this Article before he confessed!

Meanwhile back on the Secrecy Front:

GOP Rep. Pays $500,000 to Ex-Lover Who Claimed Abuse
The Associated Press is reporting new details in the domestic abuse case of Republican Congressmember Don Sherwood. Last year, it was revealed Sherwood had an extra-marital affair with a woman who accused him of beating her. A source close to the case now says Sherwood has reached a $500,000 dollar settlement that would pay his ex-lover more than half the total until after the mid-term elections. The woman – Cynthia Ore – would be forced to forfeit some of the money if she speaks publicly about the case. Sherwood is known as a “family values conservative” and is currently locked in a tight race for re-election.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/03/1431222

Tabacco: Contrary to popular opinion, when it comes to sex and perversion, Republicans not only play but they are imaginative and equal opportunity employers.  The following is a story about another closet homosexual in the Anti-Gay Bush White House, who dumps on other homosexuals.  Karl Rove has earned the title of

Rove obviously does not hate gays.  Au contraire, mon frere!  He didn’t hate White House Resident Hustler, Jeff Gannon, nor did Scotty MCClellan. But that homosexual trinity in the Bush White House is a story for another day.  Today we focus on Rove’s gay stepfather, whose name he bears, and his relationship to the man he truly loved.  I never claimed homosexuality was not complex!




Karl’s Rove Secret: Bush’s “Architect” Launched Anti-Gay Marriage Campaign After Burying Gay Father

Thursday, November 2nd, 2006
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/02/1451226

The Washington Post recently reported that there is widespread panic amid the Republican establishment about next week’s midterm elections. But the paper found that there are two people whose confidence about Republicans prospects strikes even their closest allies as almost inexplicably upbeat -- President Bush and his top political adviser, Karl Rove. Does Rove know something the rest of the country doesn’t? James Moore, co-author of the new book “The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power”, helps us answer the question, and also talks about Rove’s secret: in July 2004, Karl Rove launched the national Republican campaign against gay marriage within days of burying his gay father. [includes rush transcript]

The Washington Post recently reported that there is widespread panic amid the Republican establishment about next week’s midterm elections. But the paper found that there are two people whose confidence about Republicans prospects strikes even their closest allies as almost inexplicably upbeat.

They are President Bush and his top political adviser, Karl Rove. Last week Rove told National Public Radio’s Robert Siegel about why he remains so optimistic.

      Karl Rove: "Unlike the general public, I'm allowed to see the polls on the individual races and after all, this does come to individual contests between individual candidates... I'm looking at all these, Robert, and adding them up, and I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math, I'm entitled to the math."

Karl Rove’s comments have led many to ask whether he knows something that the rest of the country doesn’t? To help answer that question we are joined by journalist James Moore in Austin Texas. He is co-author of the new book “The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power.” He is also co-author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential.”

    * James Moore. Co-author of the new book “The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power.”

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

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AMY GOODMAN: Last week, Rove told National Public Radio’s Robert Siegel about why he remains so optimistic.

      KARL ROVE: Unlike the general public, I'm allowed to see the polls on the individual races, and, after all, this does come to individual contests between individual candidates... I'm looking at all these, Robert, and adding them up, and I add up to a Republican Senate and a Republican House. You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math, I'm entitled to the math.

AMY GOODMAN: Karl Rove’s comments have led many to ask whether he knows something the rest of the country doesn’t. To help answer that question, we’re joined by journalist James Moore in Austin, Texas, co-author of the new book, The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power. He is also co-author of Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential. James Moore, welcome to Democracy Now! What do you think Karl Rove is talking about?

JAMES MOORE: Well, there’s no doubt, Amy, and this has happened historically, and Karl knows it better than probably most of us, that within a national race like this, you can get into local districts and you can have a dynamic in a local election in a congressional district that drives an election and is completely disconnected from what’s going on nationally.

Now, the problem is that when Karl Rove says these kinds of things, it immediately spawns conspiracy theories and a number of other things related to electronic voting and voter suppression and any number of other things, that he has the confidence that they can turn an election and keep it, quote/unquote, “close enough to steal.” Whether Karl Rove knows bad things that the rest of us don't know is what’s causing a lot of people concern right now.

AMY GOODMAN: You talk about how Karl Rove was integral to the creating the pretext for war, for the invasion. Can you talk about what he did around the issue of information, propaganda, misinformation?

JAMES MOORE: Well, what happened with Karl when the 9/11 attack occurred, Karl was in on the planning very early on, from before the President was elected. There was talk about Iraq and what must be done about Iraq, about the oil resources. Karl was in on that from the beginning, Amy. And when 9/11 happened, not just Karl Rove and the President and Donald Rumsfeld and the Vice President, Dick Cheney, they all saw an opportunity to take that event and frame it in a way that gave them the chance and the resources and the political and public support to do something that they had intended to do anyway, which was to somehow find a way and a reason to project United States military power and U.S. influence into the Middle East and to put us on the ground in the Middle East, where all of those critical oil resources are.

The President's belief was and continue to be that, regardless of whether there were WMD or not, that there was a madman standing on top of what may be the world’s largest supply, the largest reserves of oil. It was Karl's job to take a failed domestic presidency after 9/11 and create messages that would turn this president into a wartime president and would get the public to rally behind him. And that is what has sustained George W. Bush up until this point, until his presidency has shown signs of falling apart.

AMY GOODMAN: We were just talking about evangelicals with Chip Berlet, and a very strong voting bloc in the past. Now, you write in your book about how Karl Rove led the whole anti-gay marriage movement while protecting a family secret. What is that, James Moore?

JAMES MOORE: Well, his family secret is that Karl's parents’ marriage fell apart his senior year in high school. Karl’s father had been a geologist throughout the Intermountain West and was gone a lot, and there’s some indication that Karl resented that fact. He was not a child of Louis Rove. His biological father and his mother had divorced, but the only father Karl had known was Louis Rove, and he had raised Karl from the time he was very young, and his brother Eric, and then Louis Rove had three daughters with Reba Rove.

But Karl’s senior year in high school, his father landed a big job with Getty Oil in Los Angeles, and he was to come home on Christmas Eve and tell the family about the big plans to move down to Los Angeles, and happily ever after, moving from Salt Lake City. But there was an argument that ensued behind closed doors, and Louis Rove left, and he was not there for Christmas Day, which also happens to be Karl's birthday. And it turned out many years later that Louis -- not many years later. Many years later I found out about it. But Louis Rove went to Los Angeles and decided to live openly as a gay man. He had been gay all of his life, but had repressed it and had tried to live as a heterosexual, but he decided to live the second half of his life openly as a gay man.

He retired to Palm Springs, California. And when he passed away, there was no -- his friends, many retired gay men there who were close friends with Louis Rove, were unaware of any memorial service. Karl has taken exception with what my book says, that there was no public memorial service. Karl indicates I’m trying to claim that there was no service at all whatsoever. That's not the case. However, it seems as though Karl was trying to suppress and continues to suppress the notion that and the fact that the man who raised him, a man who he has said he had a loving, open, honest relationship with, was, in fact, a gay man.

Karl buried his father Louie Rove in July of 2004. There was no public notice in the newspaper. And then he got on the campaign plane, and he went to eleven key swing states to help facilitate the anti-gay marriage amendment around this country, which drove turnout in the last election.

AMY GOODMAN: You have written a book about Karl Rove before: Bush’s Brain. And now, you have written this book a few years later. First of all, is that new information that you just revealed? And what else has -- I mean, you have been investigating Karl Rove for years. What else have you uncovered in between the first and second book?

JAMES MOORE: Well, what I just spoke to you about, yes, it is indeed new information. And there are any number of things that have been revealed in the course of working on writing and reporting on Karl Rove. I first met him in 1978, and I recall after a television interview, coming out and telling my cameraman at the time -- this was the first time I had met Karl then -- I told the cameraman, I said, “Look, if this guy ever gets any real power, we’re all in trouble.” And I think that that particular truth has been born out.

But there are a number of things that are quite disturbing. For instance, you were just talking briefly about religion, which is obviously an issue in every election, but since the Republicans have taken charge under George W. Bush, it’s been a hugely significant issue. And it turns out that Karl Rove, the man who is the architect behind evangelical voters and their turnout and a voter delivery system of the Christian right, is agnostic. He doesn’t have any deeply held faith.

What people do not realize about this man is that everything about him is political utility. When he looked at what was going on with the megachurches, and when he did the polling and he saw how gay marriage was animating the Christian right, Karl decided he was going to take these gigantic churches on the Christian right and to turn them into a gigantic vote delivery system. And that’s precisely what he has done. This is not a man who has deeply held religious faith. It’s a man who believes that faith can be used to drive voters to the polls. In fact, his own president, in an interview with -- or an offhand-unguarded moment aboard the press plane with my co-author, Wayne Slater, had referred to the Christian right and the fundamentalists north of Austin as “whackos.” They hold these people in more disdain than these individuals are aware of.

AMY GOODMAN: Wait, explain exactly what happened on the plane.

JAMES MOORE: Well, we were on the press plane, and we were traveling. And this was early in the campaign. And Wayne Slater was standing next to the future president of the United States, and Wayne was talking about some of the issues in the first campaign and what Wayne perceived to be the issues and what Wayne’s personal beliefs might be at that particular moment and how he arrived at those beliefs and what his analysis was. And Governor Bush just turned to him, and he said, “Well, you know why you think that way? That’s because you live up in Williamson County, north of Austin. You live up there around all those whackos.” And that’s not the first time we had heard that reference privately.

AMY GOODMAN: James Moore, can you talk about Karl Rove's relationship with Jack Abramoff and the latest casualty, Susan Ralston, the top Rove aide who had to resign?

JAMES MOORE: Well, the thing that people have to understand about Karl, Amy, is that he has been building the Republican Party from a voter and donor list that he started creating on IBM electronic tape back in 1978. And anytime he found people with money, he got their address, their phone number, and he put them on a log. And the tapes for -- the donation lists for the Republican Party that are used by the RNC today grew from the germ that Karl created many, many years ago. People with money, he’s drawn to. He knows them. He knows their value and what they can do for him and the Republican Party.

So, the whole notion that a Jack Abramoff would come to Washington and be able to function and to move around that town and spread his money and his influence around without Karl Rove getting in front of him and saying, “Hey, wait a minute, pal. Here’s what you need to do, and here’s where your money needs to go,” is nonsensical. I mean, nobody has been involved in the Republican Party with that money, who hasn't taken their traffic directions from Karl Rove. He had an ongoing working relationship with Jack Abramoff. It's outlined -- a couple of incidents, in our book, are outlined, in the way that they worked together. For instance, it’s obvious to anybody who has watched Karl and the President for years that they had an uncomfortable relationship with Tom DeLay, the former House Majority Leader, and they would use Abramoff to keep DeLay in line, and they would use Abramoff to make sure that the millions of dollars he had to donate were donated to the right candidates and the right places.

And Susan Ralston had worked for Jack Abramoff. She was his office manager and business manager and did just about everything he needed to be done. And the next thing we know, she’s in the White House working for Karl Rove. And there was so much scrutiny on this relationship, Karl was aware that some day somebody might look, so they conducted a lot of street corner meetings. They conducted a lot of meetings in restaurants or walking across the Capitol Lawn. I mean, this is the kind of thing that Karl did not want to be publicly known and to be on the White House visitor records, but it’s clear that there are many of them that were there, and I would suggest that for all of those that are on the White House logs, there’s probably four, five or six times more that occurred elsewhere that are not recorded.

AMY GOODMAN: You have been following Karl Rove for a long time. He knows you and Wayne Slater. What is his response to this book?

JAMES MOORE: Well, he’s angry about this book, as he was angry about Bush's Brain. When Bush’s Brain first came out, he sent a ten-page single-spaced fax claiming that virtually everything in it was untrue. Unfortunately for Karl, the book has stood the test of time, and that’s a pleasing thing to anyone who is a reporter or a writer.

Now, the second book, he doesn't call me, but he does call Wayne. And in the second book, he called, and originally he did what Karl always does: he will send word through a political operative in Texas, who is a friend of his, who will then approach Wayne and will make his complaint to Wayne. And then, Karl will eventually call Wayne and delineate what he believes are wrong, incorrect matters in the book.

And always, everything that he points out is -- we don't write things that we don’t have corroborated, that we don't have more than one source. And originally, he called and said, when he heard that we were writing about his relationship with his father Louis Rove, who was gay, his response was not to attack the facts of the matter, his response was to do what Karl Rove always does and attack one of the primary on-the-record sources. And he took an individual who was one of his father's oldest and best friends of about twenty years, a man who described them as being closer than brothers and a man who was a vice president of a major corporation, and he began to try to humiliate that man's background and suggest that he was nothing more than his housekeeper, when in fact he was a very successful man. This is the way Karl works, Amy. He attacks the messenger, rather than the message, to try to repudiate and discredit. And he has tried to dismiss this book as being a similar sort of thing, but --

AMY GOODMAN: The New York Daily News said that he wanted sections excised, taken out?

JAMES MOORE: There’s no question. He made these kinds of demands to Wayne. He asked that the publisher, Random House Crown, have its attorneys call his attorney and begin to get things straightened out. But there’s nothing to straighten out. And my response was, if Karl wants to take on the book, have his attorney call the publisher and challenge it. But he didn't do that, because he knows that would draw more attention to the book.

AMY GOODMAN: James Moore, in this last minute we have, this is your second book on Karl Rove. What have you learned at this point? What do you think is most significant before this mid-term election?

JAMES MOORE: I think, Amy, the thing that people need to know, as we go into next Tuesday, about Mr. Rove and the people that he leads in the Republican Party is that there is virtually nothing he will not do to continue to retain power and to win an election. Now, am I accusing Karl of being willing to do something illegal, unethical or immoral? He has done all of those things in the past. It would not be anything new. In my heart, I hope that -- I want to believe that even Karl Rove, if he got to the point where he was doing something that was to violate the sanctity of our electoral process, he would back away from it, but I think everyone should be very, very concerned, and there should be attorneys in every one of the congressional districts in this country ready to file appeals, because I believe we’re going to see a very ugly Election Day with lost data discs, voter suppression, people turned away from the polls who shouldn’t be, and it’s going to be an ugly day, I’m afraid.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the leaking of names, of stories that made him such a target of investigators. We have 30 seconds.

JAMES MOORE: Well, I think that this is the kind of thing that Karl does and the kind of thing that is used for political purpose over and over and over, and nobody does it better than he does, and will continue to do it in ways that will help him and the Republican Party.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us, James Moore, co-author of The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/02/1451226


Tabacco: How the rich and powerful in USA stifle dissenting voices.  Read on:

Memo: Advertisers Forbid Ads on Air America Affiliates
In other news, a media watchdog group has revealed nearly one hundred advertisers have forbid their ads from running on Air America radio programs. The order is made in an internal memo from ABC Radio Networks released by Media Matters for America. In a message to Air America affiliates, the memo lists dozens of companies that insist that: "NONE of their commercials air during AIR AMERICA programming." The advertisers include Bank of America, Exxon Mobil, Federal Express, General Electric, McDonald's, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and the U.S. Navy.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/01/1456220

Tabacco: I consider myself both a funnel and a filter. I funnel information, not readily available on the Mass Media, which is ignored and/or suppressed. I filter out the irrelevancies and trivialities to save both the time and effort of my Readers and bring consternation to the enemies of Truth & Fairness!

In 1981's 'Body Heat', Kathleen Turner said, "Knowledge is power".

 

T.A.B.A.C.C.O.  (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization)

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