• "Brunch with Bernie" with Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont.
• "Anything Goes" Friday.
• The best and the worst of the years' audio clips.
• Benazir Bhutto's assassination and elections.

Topics, guests, upcoming events, quotes, links to articles, audio clips, books & bumper music.

Friday 28 December '07 National show

• Article: As Primaries Begin, the FEC Will Shut Down: No Quorum on Election Board As Nominees Stall in Congress....
• Article: U.S. Ruling Backs Benefit Cut at 65 in Retiree Plans.
• "Brunch with Bernie" with Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont. Happy new year. Benazir Bhutto's assassination was a tragedy, sympathy to Pakistan. We should work to win hearts and minds. Al Qaeda is stronger, a testament to Bush's failed approach. The Democratic leadership deserves some credit for progress - they got through a minimum wage increase, increased VA spending, some progress on environment in spite of Bush. Higher education. Middle class is shrinking, inequality widening, Iraq continues to cost $12 billion a month. It takes 60 votes to win in the Senate. The Republicans now have 62 filibusters in 1 year, a record. The Democrats should make them actually filibuster.

  Trade policies, corporations. The line item veto has been illegal since Clinton, but Bush said in his signing statement for the budget that he might cut some items. The kid who died of an infected tooth. Medicare for all bill? There are not enough dentists in the country. The health care system is disintegrating. We have 47 million uninsured, even more underinsured. While he is in general supportive of Medicare for All, he can;t see it happening under the current administration; Bush even vetoed the SCHIP expansion to ore children. He prefers a single payer system administered at state wide level. They are also working on expanding federally qualified health care centers.

  Credit card companies are acting criminally. They are sending out billions of pieces of mail. We have to have usury standards. False advertising. Bankruptcy bill. Impeachment unusable now, use war crimes? How well Democrats will do in the next election. Without election reform, how can we be sure our vote will count? Don't get paranoid - Democrats won some close races - but be very vigilant, don't fall for voter suppression like voter ID. Republicans are bragging about caging. Caging in Kansas. The FEC shutting down, and the consequences. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission saying that employers can reduce or eliminate health benefits for retirees when they turn 65 and become eligible for Medicare.

• Happy New Year.
• Article: "...the man who killed Osama bin Ladin" - Bhutto statement Nov 02 to David Frost.
  "Yes, well one of them is a very key figure in security. He's a former military officer. He's someone who's had dealings... and he also had dealings with Omar Sheikh (Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh), the man who murdered Osama bin Laden."
• Article: The Man That Murdered Osama Bin Laden **Daniel Pearl's Murderer** Omar Sheikh .
• Article: If bin Laden was dead, Would the U.S. admit it?. Funeral announcement.
• Zia hanged Benazir Bhutto's father. Musharraf is apparently going to be elected. Imagine if, in 2004, 2 weeks before the election, Kerry and Edwards (i.e. the whole ticket) had been assassinated. Bush would correspond to Musharraf, the guy in power. Would it be apppropriate to delay elections? Kleptocracy in Pakistan including the Bhuttos. There is 50% illiteracy in Pakistan. Most people want a secular government. Poverty is widespread. Benazir Bhutto was after publicity before she returned there. December 26 2001 Egyptian newspaper article announcing bin Laden's funeral. Benazir Bhutto talking to David Frost of the man who murdered him, Musharraf turning a blind eye.
• Thom played a selection of the best and worst audios of the year.
• Clip:
  "You've got to kill the terrorists before the killing stops and I am for the President — chase them all over the world, if it takes ten years, blow them all away in the name of the Lord."
  Jerry Falwell, CNN Late Edition, 24 October 2004.
• Clip:
  "It's a bloodthirsty religion that's practiced over there by a bunch of throwbacks, and we're to kill 'em." Michael Savage.
• Clip:
  "So, all those clowns at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they're undermining everything and they don't care." Bill O'Reilly, June 20 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly.
• Video/article: Siegelman speaks! Ex-gov calls '02 election "stolen" by the White House! Mark Crispin Miller. Video from Sept. 13, 2004.

  "I do know that during my term as Governor I never saw Bill Pryor, the Republican Attorney General, do anything outside of Alabama Law, except to allow the early certification of the results that swung the election from me to my Republican opponent...

  What was disappointing was after the polls had closed, after midnight when the poll workers - the Democratic poll workers and the Republican poll workers - and representatives of the media had gone home, the election officials, all of whom are Republicans, got together and recounted the votes. In that process I lost some 6,700 votes - enough to swing the election from me to my Republican opponent. Poll workers should have been present during that process. And secondly, the results should not have been certified the next day...

  After we had made an official request for a hand count of the ballots in Baldwin County, and after the Attorney General, and the Republican District Attorney had said they would put anyone in jail who attempted a hand recount, the votes were suddenly rushed to Montgomery, certified by the Republican Secretary of State, which put us at a disadvantage: under Alabama law, anyone who wants to challenge the election must show that there were enough legal votes not counted, or illegal votes cast to make a difference in the outcome. Well, the person challenging the election should have been my Republican opponent because the votes that should have been certified on 12 noon on Friday following the election should have been that first vote which was publicly counted in front of poll watchers...

  When this election was stolen, there's no other real kind or sugar-coated way to say it, I was faced with a difficult choice, because it was a close election, we had won by what we thought was around 3,000 votes, and we ended up losing by, I think, 1,500 votes. It would have been difficult for me to have challenged the outcome of that election. One, because they were denying me a hand recount. Secondly, even if we were to have ultimately gotten a recount from a Republican Federal Judge, very doubtful, from a Republican Circuit Judge, very doubtful, from a Republican-dominated State Supreme Court, uh, we have one Democrat on the court, very doubtful, after what the United States Supreme Court had just done to Al Gore, I looked at the possibility of winning a legal challenge, and thought, even if I were to win by any stretch of the imagination, if I could have won, then I was afraid that people would have looked at me and said, "Ah, you know, Siegelman stole the election", because it was so close. So I decided to walk away from that, thinking that, you know, it's best to come back and fight another day...

  I think some of my Republican friends here thought, 'Well, if he's coming back here to fight another day, let's see if we can't make that fight a little more difficult for him'...

  The Chronology really is this: on Tuesday night the election officials throughout the State had made their tabulations and had announced their results publicly, that Don Siegelman had won the election. After midnight in one county 6,700 votes were switched. By the way, when they changed the vote, when they recounted the votes, in Baldwin county, it was odd that the only person who lost votes was me. It didn't affect a single other race; not one vote changed that night from the original count to the final count, based on the recount that was done after midnight after the polling officials had gone.

  Now, one would expect that if there was some kind of computer glitch or some kind of computer programming error, that it might have affected more than one race, but it further raised suspicions about vote stealing when the votes came back and were certified, and the only person who lost votes was Don Siegelman, the Democrat, and the only person who gained votes was Bob Riley, the Republican...

  The next day we woke up. Well, let me say this, I went to sleep thinking I'd won. I woke, was awoken by my staff about 4:30 in the morning and saying, 'there's been a second count of the votes since we went to bed, the second count shows you losing the election by 1,500 votes'. The next morning we scrambled, demanded a hand recount. Later that day, on Wednesday, the Republicans, contrary to State Law, certified the results. Bob Riley, oddly enough, the Republican Candidate was the one who made the "official" announcement of the certification of the results from Baldwin County at a Press Conference on Wednesday morning at about 11 O'clock...

  Bob Riley, my Republican opponent, the evening of the election, after the official results were announced that showed that I was the winner in Baldwin County, and before anybody knew that there was anything wrong with the votes in Baldwin County, made the statement publicly over State television that something was wrong with the votes in Baldwin County and they were going to get to the bottom of it. That alerted our campaign team that we should be watching Baldwin County, because we knew that the Republicans were doing something there. But we didn't have access to the Courthouse; they had locked the doors, they had thrown everybody out, everybody had gone home. So who actually from Bob Riley's camp directed people to get in there and to do another recount, whether he made the phone call or one of his staffers made the phone call, but what we do know is that someone in the Sheriff's Office ran the ballots, ran the new tabulation...

  From our understanding of how electronic voting machines work and how computers work, that it would be virtually impossible to produce two different results using the same data; that some human being had to come in and do something to manipulate those returns...

  There should not have been a recount. That was an unofficial recount. The official results, the way Alabama law works is that the precincts report to the county. There are poll watchers there, representing each party and the news media, the election officials of the county: the sheriff, the probate judge and circuit clerk, who in this case were all Republicans, they, that night, they announced the official results for Baldwin County. Those results should have been the results that were certified some time after noon on Friday following the election."

• Impeachment of any Supreme Court judge is not going to happen. Any Democrat is better than any Republican in the election, because the next president is likely to appoint 2 judges.
• Article: Bush Rejects Defense Bill by Pocket Veto.
• Ellen Ratner of Talk Radio News. The White House just announced in a press conference call that Bush will veto the Defense bill that he wanted because of Lautenburg's amendment about lawsuits, Iraqi assets. She asked which cases. How much Iraqi money is in the US? When were Pelosi and Reid notified? The White House was caught by surprise, although they said not?
• Clip of Tom McCabe pretending to be directing a homicide scene of the crime when a telemarketer calls for the "murder victim". recording / transcript.
• Article: Press Conference by the President, May 24, 2007.
  "They are a threat to your children, David... It's a danger to your children, Jim."
• Article: Wilson: My Wife Wept When She Heard The Verdict.
• Clip:
  Bruce Fein: "More worrisome than Clinton's-- because he is seeking more institutionally to cripple checks and balances and the authority of Congress and the judiciary to superintend his assertions of power. He has claimed the authority to tell Congress they don't have any right to know what he's doing with relation to spying on American citizens, using that information in any way that he wants in contradiction to a federal statute called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He's claimed authority to say he can kidnap people, throw them into dungeons abroad, dump them out into Siberia without any political or legal accountability. These are standards that are totally anathema to a democratic society devoted to the rule of law."
  Bill Moyers talks with Bruce Fein and John Nichols, July 13, 2007.
• Home grown terrorism bill. 1955/1959.
• Voting integrity, electronic ballot printing.
• Corporate media will not point out when the Bush administration commits crimes. Impeachability, prosecutability.
• Charter schools. The Hunter School, which Thom and Louise founded, is not a charter school. The effort to privatize education. New Orleans. They are ghettoizing the public schools. A caller said the kids run charter schools because they can threaten to leave, taking their fees with them.
• Clip:
  "And I read this one part on global warming about how they got -- what was the first thing they did to get people to exterminate the Jews. Now, I'm not saying that anybody's going to -- you know Al Gore's not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. The goal is globalization. The goal is global carbon tax. The goal is the United Nations running the world. That is the goal. Back in the 1930s, the goal was get rid of all of the Jews and have one global government.

  You got to have an enemy to fight. And when you have an enemy to fight, then you can unite the entire world behind you, and you seize power. That was Hitler's plan. His enemy: the Jew. Al Gore's enemy, the U.N.'s enemy: global warming.

  "
  Beck said Gore using "same tactic" in fight against global warming as Hitler did against Jews.
• Clip:
  Michael Moore: "First of all, Wolf, yeah, well -- yeah, I'd like about 10 minutes to respond to what was said."

  Wolf Blitzer: "Give us a couple of headlines, what you'd like to say."

  Michael Moore: "I don't talk in sound bites. So -- that report was so biased. I can't imagine what pharmaceutical company ad's coming up right after our break here.

  But why don't you tell the truth to the American people? I mean, I wish that CNN and the other mainstream media would just for once tell the truth about what's going on in this country, whether it's with healthcare -- I don't care what it is. I mean, you guys have such a poor track record.

  And for me to come on here and have to listen to that kind of crap. I mean, seriously, I haven't been on your show now for three years. The last time I was on, you ran a similar piece about "Fahrenheit 9/11" saying, 'Oh, this can't be true what he's saying about the war, how it's going to be a quagmire, the weapons of mass destruction' You know, and -- why don't you start off actually with my first appearance back here on your show in three years and maybe apologize to me for saying that three years ago, because it turned out everything I said in "Fahrenheit" was true. Everything has come to happen Everything I said. I mean, I was -- I took you in that film to Walter Reed Hospital and it took three years before you or any of the rest of the mainstream media would go to Walter Reed Hospital and see what was happening to our troops. So for me to have to sit here and listen again to more crap about socialized medicine or how the Canadians have it worse than us and all this, all the statistics show that we have far worse healthcare than these other industrialized countries.

  We're the only ones that don't have it free and universal. And, you know, there's a -- there's a -- you said that Germany was the only one that was better than us in terms of wait times. The Commonwealth Fund last year showed of the top six countries, we were second to last, next to Canada. It showed that Britain, for instance, 71 percent of the British public, when they call to see a doctor, get to see the doctor that day or the next day. It's 69 percent in Germany. It's 66% in Australia. And you're the ones who are fudging the facts. You fudged the facts to the American people now for I don't know how long about this issue, about the war. And I'm just curious when are you going to just stand there and apologize to the American people for not bringing the truth to them that isn't sponsored by some major corporation? I mean, I'll sit here for as long as it takes, if you can do that for me."

  Wolf Blitzer: "Just in fairness, we had a lot of commercials for "Sicko" that we've been running on CNN as well. So we have commercials. This is a business, obviously. But let's talk a little bit about ..."

  Michael Moore: "You have a nightly medical report. You have something called "The Daily Dose." I watch CNN. You have it every day. "The Daily Dose" sponsored by -- fill in the blank. And you are funded by these people day in and day out. Don't even compare that to my movie being out for a couple of weeks and a couple of rinky-dink ads for 15 seconds. Come on. Come on, Wolf!"

  Wolf Blitzer: "No, no -- I don't know if you're familiar with Dr. Sanjay Gupta's record, but I would stack up his record on medical issues with virtually anyone in the business."

  Michael Moore: "All right. So when I -- when I now put on my Web site, as I will do tonight, how his facts were wrong about the $7,000 that we spend, it's actually -- I've read one report now, it's even more than $7,000 that we spend per person each year in this country. I'm going to put the real facts up there on my Web site so people can see what he said was absolutely wrong."

  Wolf Blitzer: "Well, if we get that confirmed, obviously, we'll correct the record. Sanjay - but I'm just saying ... " Michael Moore: "Oh, you will? You'll be getting it."

  Wolf Blitzer: "Obviously, Sanjay Gupta is not only a doctor and neurosurgeon, but he's also an excellent, excellent journalist. Look, I saw the film, and it's a powerful, powerful ..."

  Michael Moore: "I saw Dr. Sanjay Gupta over there embedded with the troops at the beginning of the war. He and the others of you in the mainstream media refused to ask our leaders the hard questions and demand the honest answers. And that's why we're in this war -- we're in the fifth year of this war because you and CNN, Dr. Gupta, you didn't do your jobs back then and now here we are in this mess."
  Michael Moore on The Situation Room (transcript), reacting to Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s "Sicko Reality Check".

• Boycotts vs. buycotts. It's far more important to make positive than negative statements.
• Bumper Music: What a Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong. Thanks.
• Clip:
  "Bad boy, Bill Clinton. You're a naughty boy. The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy, a naughty boy. I'm going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy."
  Larry Craig, NBC's "Meet the Press", January 24, 1999.
• Clip:
  

  NH: "Just because it's printed in the media, people jump to believe it."

  AC: "Is it true?" Colmes asked.

  NH: "Hey, Alan, if you want to accuse me of having sex when I was a fool, I did everything that crossed my mind that looked like I..."

  AC: "You had sex with animals?"

  NH: "Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule."

  AC: "I'm not so sure that that is so."

  NH: "You didn't grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?"

  AC: "Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?"

  NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality... Welcome to domestic life on the farm..."

  Colmes said he thought there were a lot of people in the audience who grew up on farms, are living on farms now, raising kids on farms and "and I don't think they are dating Elsie right now. You know what I'm saying?"

  Horsley said, "You experiment with anything that moves when you are growing up sexually. You're naive. You know better than that... If it's warm and it's damp and it vibrates you might in fact have sex with it."

  Bizarre Sex Habits of The Extreme Right-Wing.

• Bumper Music: Anything Goes, Harpers Bizarre.
• The bumper music was mostly instrumentals and "Auld Lang Syne".