Check Out The Newest Wide Hive Release: Dissent’s Swap Meet Seers

Hey sorry I haven’t been posting much this week. You can get the Daily Show from November 10th here in the mean time, but I’ve been busy with our latest Wide Hive release, Dissent‘s
Swap Meet Seers.
There are 3 different songs available in their entirety
on the website.
Check it out! I’d love to know what you think.
I’ll be back getting more stuff up tomorrow, or the weekend.

More Tales Of Ohio Voter Troubles — This Time Expressed At A Public Hearing In Columbus


Ohio voters tell of Election Day troubles at hearing
By Reginald Fields for The Plain Dealer.

Tales of waiting more than five hours to vote, voter intimidation, under-trained polling-station workers and too few or broken voting machines largely in urban or heavily minority areas were retold Saturday at a public hearing organized by voter-rights groups.
For three hours, burdened voters, one after another, offered sworn testimony about Election Day voter suppression and irregularities that they believe are threatening democracy.
The hearing, sponsored by the Election Protection Coalition, was to collect testimony of voting troubles that might be used to seek legislative changes to Ohio’s election process.
The organizers chose Ohio because it was a swing state in the presidential election as well as the site of numerous claims of election fraud and voter disenfranchisement.
“I think a lot of us had a sense that something had deeply went wrong on Nov. 2 and it had to do with the election process and procedures in place that were unacceptable,” said Amy Kaplan, one of the hearing’s coordinators.

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Newsday Editorial On The Shrub’s Judicial Strategy To Overturn Roe v. Wade


ROE V. WADE AT CROSSROADS: Abortion foes are just one Supreme Court justice away from victory
In Newsweek.

Anyone who thinks abortion rights aren’t in serious jeopardy should consider the plight of Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
Specter has been a Republican for 40 years. He’s in line to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in January. He has voted to confirm every single one of President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees. Despite that record, angry conservatives are determined to block his rise to chairman. Why?
Because Specter supports abortion rights. And because he had the temerity to state the obvious: That Bush would have trouble winning Senate confirmation of any Supreme Court nominee who is notoriously anti-abortion rights. That’s a simple mathematical fact.
It takes only 51 of 100 Senate votes to confirm a judicial nominee. But it takes 60 votes to cut off debate and move to a confirmation vote. Come January, there will be 55 Republicans in the Senate. Do the math. That’s not enough to derail a determined Democratic filibuster. Specter said he was alluding to that numerical reality when he made the remark that has haunted him all week.
But conservative foes of abortion rights have been emboldened by the perception that they provided Bush’s margin of victory Nov. 2. They aren’t of a mind to tolerate even the barest hint of resistance to their agenda, which is reversal of Roe v. Wade. That would be a tragedy. It would strip women of the right to control their bodies and turn the clock back to the grisly days of back-alley abortions.
Bush has a choice to make. Option 1: He could opt for polarizing political warfare by nominating anti-abortion absolutists for the top court. He could push for a change in Senate filibuster rules to deprive Democrats of that time-honored tactic and rely on raw political power to beat back all opposition. Option 2: Do what he promised during the campaign – impose no abortion litmus test for judicial candidates, while nominating people who will strictly interpret the Constitution rather than legislating from the bench. That’s the better course…
Replacing Rehnquist, a solid vote against abortion rights, isn’t likely to alter the court balance. But that balance could tip decisively should any one of the abortion-rights supporters leave the bench. That includes Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, as well as swing voters David Souter, Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy, whose positions on abortion are less black and white.
The nation may be approaching a legal sea change that could end or sharply curtail a woman’s right to abortion. But change that profound should be approached through reasoned debate, not a political beat-down.

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Daily Show Interview With Billionaire Richard Branson – He Agrees To Put Up A Prize For The Person Who Can Get Us Off Of Oil

This is from the November 9, 2004 program.

Daily Show Interview With Richard Branson (14 MB)
This interview gets really interesting when Jon asks Branson to sponsor a contest to invent something to “get us off the internal combustion engine.”
BTW: Branson said he would do it! He also seemed rather preoccupied with the prospect for the rest of the interview. Let’s try to hold him to it!
Here’s a partial transcript:

Stewart: “What about this: putting up a prize for somebody to invent something to get us off the internal combustion engine? What do you think of that? Get uh, like an X prize type of thing like they did with space travel.”
Branson: “Hmmm.”
Stewart: “What do you think of that?”
Branson: “That makes a lot of sense.”
Stewart: “It does?”
Branson laughs.
Stewart: “How ’bout giving me some seed money?”
Branson: (leans back…) “Um. Okay.”
Stewart: “What do you think of that? You could set this thing up, and people could..it’d be like a private industry thing. There’s gotta be a way. I mean, we can fake diamonds.”
Branson: “Um hmmm.”
Stewart: “There’s gotta be a way we can make fake oil or something. You know what I’m saying? It’s just carbon for god’s sakes.”
Branson: “Water.”
Stewart: “Water? An engine that runs on water? Set up a prize!”
Branson: “Well I’ve just given you the answer. So I want the money.”
Stewart: “Or you’re gonna do it?”
Branson: “No..WATER?”
Stewart: “Cars run on water?”
Branson: “Yeah. They could do.”
Stewart: “What on hydroelectric cells or something?”
Branson: “Something like that. I don’t know. I’m trying to get my money back.”
Stewart: “I’m telling you something. This could be a great thing.”
Branson: “Okay.”
Stewart: “Seed money.”
Branson: “Alright. Would everybody chip in here?”
Stewart: “YOUR the billionaire!”
Branson: “Alright.”

Link to zip file of all November 9, 2004 clips. (39 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

Michael Moore’s Video Crew’s Documentary Of Disenfranchised Voters In Cleveland, Ohio

And there are A LOT of them.
In a nutshell, a lot of voters in the poorer and minority areas were turned away for a variety of unfair reasons. The film documents these cases of disenfranchisement.

This was produced by Michael Moore’s “Video The Vote” crew in Cleveland.

Video The Vote (59 MB)
Here’s a link to Xeni’s
Boing Boing Post and a bunch of Mirrors
The producers of this (and the editor, Dave Pentecost) wanted me to mention the following:
1)
People for the American Way and
Election Protection
2) Their apologies to The Jayhawks for not clearing the music first. (They are still waiting to hear back, their rights person is in transit) but they felt that it is really a free music video for the group!
3) This was shot by a dedicated group of 20 volunteer filmmakers, but any mistakes in the editing or focus of this video are Dave Pentecost’s fault.
(Aww Dave, I didn’t see any errors 🙂
4) The organizers of the trip will release a longer selection of statements by voters who had problems voting. (Probably on Monday, November 15, 2004)
This goes with this earlier post.
I’ve had this since November 5, 2004, so I guess that’s the publishing date. You’ve probably seen it around already, but I promised I would host it here so…better late than never 🙂

One In Six U.S. Soldiers Coming Back From Iraq Have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

The usual anti-depressant drugs aren’t working for these guys. Remember that most of these Vets will have to get lawyers to get the medical benefits coming to them anyway — so all of this is combining to form a big stinking mess — that our boys/girls returning from this war are going to have to clean up for themselves.

These Unseen Wounds Cut Deep
A mental health crisis is emerging, with one in six returning soldiers afflicted, experts say.
By Esther Schrader for The LA Times.

A study by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research found that 15.6% of Marines and 17.1% of soldiers surveyed after they returned from Iraq suffered major depression, generalized anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder