"Everything's PERFECT With New Hampshire Primary Vote Recount" - Unless You Bother to Read The Numbers

The stench wafting across the border is riper than Cabot Creamery's special blue cheese. Cough.

Bradblog is all over some of the irregularities already found with New Hampshire Democratic Primary votes recount (Republican recount to come after the Dems); I visited Brad AFTER I saw this happy horseshit on WMUR (a New Hampshire TV station's Web site). From WMUR (for MURky fact-gathering, perhaps?):

The continuing Democratic primary recount in New Hampshire has not found any voting problems.

As of yesterday, even TINY counties were noting that optical electronic scanners had reported HUNDREDS of ballots were blank (thus not counted) when they were indeed marked for a candidate.

Something really doesn't meet the stink test here. And Diebold may have changed its (bleeping) name, but it sure hasn't changed its rigged machinery.

Was New Hampshire's Primary Vote Count ACCURATE? We Need To Know: Here's Why

Last week, I noted that Ohio Congressman - and still Democratic presidential hopeful - Dennis Kucinich (along with a Republican few know) demanded a recount in New Hampshire to carefully recount the votes cast there last Tuesday. But what's gone under the radar is the WHY: that in the Democratic primary alone, whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama won, on the surface, depends on how the votes were counted. Specifically, the hand-counted votes seemed to go to Obama; the electronic machine counted ones seemed to favor Hillary.

I very much applaud Kucinich for making the demand; we NEED to know if there is a problem and, if there is, whether it's willful or a deliberate cheat. While our (already, if not always so fairly or appropriately) elected leaders have already kissed away true voting reform until 2012 at the same time that those in the know indicate that, even if verified voting reform were enacted TODAY, we can't even be sure the 2012 vote will be who we actually elected.

As you might imagine, there is HUGE doubt as to this November's validity of vote. And if you aren't paying attention to this, you may deserve what YOU get, but I don't think the rest of us do.

New Hampshire Republicans (And Others): Watch Bush and Iran Today

With the events in the Straits of Hormuz today, with Bush rattling his sabers ever louder for an action from Iranian boats that, since we declared the War on of Terror, American forces commit EVERY DAY in the waters of other lands where we often have no right or permission to threaten, I advise you to rethink carefully your primary vote today.

McCain isn't all that far from Bush, while Huckabee, Giuliani, Romney, et al, are determined to continue Bush policies that have bankrupted this land and made us far more, rather than less, hated in the world. And if you think Iraq is a mess, imagine what a war with Iran will bring us.

We won't ever "control" 1.5 (and growing) billion Muslims. But we can influence them BADLY against us. And the Bush-Republican way is to do that.

I happened to hear on WGN today a speech given by a Holocaust survivor today at a Chicago area school. This man, who lost so much, talked so passionately about how wars are always started for so-called noble purposes, but that with it, so many (and usually, so many of them innocents) die, and that the way forward is to STOP the wars.

I second him. We don't need a holocaust for Muslims, and we don't want to bring one down (through our own actions) on Christians (or at least, leaders who CALL themselves Christian).

A Vermonter To Her Neighbors In New Hampshire About To Vote In Tuesday's Primary

Dear New Hampshire Primary Voters:

I write to you as the yin to your yang (VT and NH look like two halves of a whole though so few realize how very different philosophically, politically, and even geologically we are from one another).

Dems: vote your very best; don't vote for the "it" candidate if you truly want another one

GOPs: I'm really so very sorry for you; your candidates are so damned bad anyway but hey, I'd vote Ron Paul myself (especially after his people chased and scared the hell out of Sean Hannity of Fox News this past weekend)

Indies: Hey, do you really want more of the Republican trash in YOUR White House? Take out the garbage so we can start fresh.

And to ALL of you: Do NOT LET ANYONE talk you into playing dirty tricks with anyone's vote, including your own

A Different Type of Tax Dodge: New Hampshire Millionaires Hold Out From Feds In Mansion, Claiming Feds Are Fiction

Here's part of the story, but it's so strange, it almost seems like something one of George Bush's friends - like Grover Norquist - would devise:

A couple convicted of tax evasion for concealing $1.9 million in income was sentenced to prison Tuesday, but they refused to attend the hearing and have vowed not to leave their fortress-like mansion.

Ed and Elaine Brown insist tax laws do not exist and have holed up in their hilltop home in Plainfield, which has a watchtower, concrete walls and the ability to run on wind and solar power. Ed Brown, 64, said he has stockpiled food and supplies.

"The world belongs to the creator. It doesn't belong to man," he said Tuesday. "It doesn't belong to the United States government.

"The Browns were convicted in January of scheming to hide $1.9 million of income between 1996 and 2003. They were also convicted of using $215,890 in postal money orders to pay for their residence and for Elaine Brown's dental practice. The money orders were broken into increments just below the tax-reporting threshold.

U.S. District Judge Steven McAuliffe sentenced them each to 5-1/4 years in prison. They skipped the sentencing hearings, and in a telephone interview, Ed Brown said they will not surrender to federal authorities.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Morse said the former exterminator and his dentist wife have acted as though they are above the law.U.S. marshals have been ordered to arrest the couple but said they are not planning to storm the home, blockade the roads or cut off supplies.

"We're not going to engage in that kind of game with them," U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier said. But, he added, "law enforcement is not going away and neither are the warrants."

In telephone interviews, Ed Brown said the couple will stay in their home despite convictions and warrants.

"I could care less what he does," Brown said of McAuliffe. "I can't talk to a fiction. You're a fiction, too."

Have any doubt that if these people weren't so well-heeled, they wouldn't be allowed to just sit at home?

Maureen Dowd: "Running With Scissors"

MoDo offers much in this Saturday (April 21st) OpEd column in The Times:

Whether or not the country is ready to elect a woman president or a black president, it’s definitely not ready for a metrosexual in chief.

In presidential politics, it’s all but impossible to put the man into manicure. Be sensitive, but not soft. Effete is never effective. Not much has changed since George H. W. Bush drove his New Hampshire campaign off the road by requesting “a splash” more coffee at a truck stop.

John Kerry sank himself by windsurfing in spandex and ordering a cheese steak in Philly with Swiss instead of Cheez Whiz.

We haven’t reached the point where we can handle a green-tea-soy-latte-drinking, self-tanning-sea-salt-mango-body-wrapping, Norah-Jones-listening, yoga-toning chief executive.

Bill Clinton sometimes flirted with metrosexuality, with Zegna ties, Christophe haircuts, Donna Karan suits and keen anima, but the heterosexual beat out the metrosexual.

Americans have revered such homely leaders as Abe Lincoln. They seem open to balding pates like Rudy’s and flattops like Jon Tester’s. They don’t want self-confidence to look like self-love.

John Edwards has reminded us that even — or especially — in the age of appearances, you must not appear to care too much about appearances.

When you spend more on a couple of haircuts than Burundi’s per capita G.D.P. , it looks so vain it makes Paul Wolfowitz’s ablutions spitting on his comb look like rugged individualism.

Following his star turn primping his hair for two minutes on a YouTube video to the tune of “I Feel Pretty,” Mr. Edwards this week had to pay back the $800 charged to his campaign for two shearings at Torrenueva Hair Designs in Beverly Hills. He seems intent on proving that he is a Breck Girl — and a Material Boy.

He did not pony up for the pricey bills from Designworks Salon in Dubuque, Iowa, or the Pink Sapphire spa in Manchester, which offers services for men that include the “Touch of Youth” facial, as well as trips “into the intriguing world of makeup.” The Edwards campaign calls makeup a legitimate expense.

Get the rest at Rozius.