They are who we thought they were!

SEIU and Change To Win Named in Illinois Governor Scandal

by Steve Diamond on December 10, 2008 at 9:33 PM in Current Affairs

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich met with an unnamed official of the Service Employees International Union to discuss a possible pay off of the Governor in return for his appointment of an unnamed individual to fill out the remaining two years of President-elect Obama’s now vacant U.S. Senate seat, according to a criminal complaint filed this week in an Illinois federal court. The SEIU Official is identified as an “emissary” of the potential Senate appointee in the complaint.

Politico.com’s Ben Smith reported today that the unnamed SEIU official was Andy Stern, the head of SEIU. It is widely believed that the unnamed individual is Valerie Jarrett, a close senior advisor of Obama....

Other conversations detailed in the criminal complaint indicate that Blagojevich explored the possibility of becoming head of Change to Win, a union alliance that includes SEIU. The current head of Change to Win, Anna Burger, was an active supporter of the Obama campaign....

Stern is a powerful but controversial labor leader. SEIU has been on the defensive recently because of charges related to violations of internal union democracy of union members. In addition, Stern is part of a controversial effort to establish ties between the American labor movement and the Chinese communist government’s labor body, the All China Federation of Trade Unions.  SEIU raised $1.7 million to support the political campaigns of Blagojevich.

The U.S. labor movement as a whole, including the AFL-CIO, a competing labor federation, spent hundreds of millions of dollars during the recent election and was seen as a key source of support for Obama…
NO QUARTER.com

What the Justice Department is Hiding

by Scott Horton

When a former Alabama governor was convicted for selling public offices, it set off an investigation into improper conduct at the Justice Department that leads directly to the White House.

Before his prosecution and conviction on federal charges, Siegelman was the most successful Democrat on Alabama’s political stage in the era after George C. Wallace. He was convicted more than two years ago on political corruption charges after a jury deliberated nine days and was initially deadlocked. Siegelman is now set to argue his appeal in Atlanta on December 9.

But even before the appeal is argued, the prosecution’s key evidence has been broadly attacked as unreliable and false and the prosecution itself has become the target of a Congressional probe and is the subject of demands for disciplinary action. Remarkably, however, the Bush Justice Department has reacted by covering-up the prosecutorial misconduct, which has connections that lead straight to the Bush White House.

Siegelman accepted a campaign donation from Richard Scrushy, a health care executive he appointed to a state oversight board. The U.S. Attorney, Leura Canary, argued this was tantamount to sale of a public office and brought charges. (By comparison, the Bush Justice Department never examined any of the 146 donors of $100,000 or more to the Bush-Cheney campaign who were later appointed by President Bush to federal sinecures—taking the view that this was “politics as usual.”)

Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national security affairs for Harper’s Magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-14/will-the-tables-be-turned-on-the-siegelman-prosecutors/full/

Karl Rove’s IT guru’ Mike Connell dies in plane crashRAW STORY
Published: Saturday December 20, 2008

UPDATE AT THIS LINK: GOP consultant killed in plane crash was warned of sabotage

A top level Republican IT consultant who was set to testify in a case alleging GOP election tampering in Ohio died in a plane crash late Friday night.

Michael Connell—founder of Ohio-based New Media Communications, which created campaign Web sites for George W. Bush and John McCain—died instantly after his single-prop, private aircraft smashed into a vacant home in suburban Lake Township, Ohio.

“The plane was attempting to land around 6 p.m. Friday at Akron-Canton Airport when it crashed about three miles short of the runway,” reports the Akron Beacon Journal.

Connell’s exploits as a top GOP IT ‘guru’ have been well documented by RAW STORY’s investigative team.

The interest in Mike Connell stems from his association with a firm called GovTech, which he had spun off from his own New Media Communications under his wife Heather Connell’s name. GovTech was hired by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to set up an official election website at election.sos.state.oh.us to presented the 2004 presidential returns as they came in.

Connell is a long-time GOP operative, whose New Media Communications provided web services for the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Republican National Committee and many Republican candidates. This in itself might have raised questions about his involvement in creating Ohio’s official state election website.

However, the alternative media group ePlubibus Media further discovered in November 2006 that election.sos.state.oh.us was hosted on the servers of a company in Chattanooga, TN called SmarTech, which also provided hosting for a long list of Republican Internet domains.

“Since early this decade, top Internet ‘gurus’ in Ohio have been coordinating web services with their GOP counterparts in Chattanooga, wiring up a major hub that in 2004, first served as a conduit for Ohio’s live election night results,” researchers at ePluribus Media wrote.

A few months after this revelation, when a scandal erupted surrounding the firing of US Attorneys for reasons of White House policy, other researchers found that the gwb43 domain used by members of the White House staff to evade freedom of information laws by sending emails outside of official White House channels was hosted on those same SmarTech servers.

Given that the Bush White House used SmarTech servers to send and receive email, the use of one of those servers in tabulating Ohio’s election returns has raised eyebrows. Ohio gave Bush the decisive margin in the Electoral College to secure his reelection in 2004.

IT expert Stephen Spoonamore says the SmartTech server could have functioned as a routing point for malicious activity and remains a weakness in electronic voting tabulation.

“...I have reason to believe that the alternate accounts were used to communicate with US Attorneys involved in political prosecutions, like that of Don Siegelman,” said RAW STORY’s Investigative News Editor, Larisa Alexandrovna, on her personal blog Saturday morning. “This is what I have been working on to prove for over a year. In fact, it was through following the Siegelman-Rove trail that I found evidence leading to Connell. That is how I became aware of him. Mike was getting ready to talk. He was frightened.

“He has flown his private plane for years without incident. I know he was going to DC last night, but I don’t know why. He apparently ran out of gas, something I find hard to believe. I am not saying that this was a hit nor am I resigned to this being simply an accident either. I am no expert on aviation and cannot provide an opinion on the matter. What I am saying, however, is that given the context, this event needs to be examined carefully.”

“Mr. Connell has confided that he was being threatened, something that his attorneys also told the judge in the Ohio election fraud case,” concluded Alexandrovna.

An FAA investigation into the causes of Connell’s plane crash is underway, but no results are expected for several weeks~~~~Raw Story via INN

McCain Withheld Controversial Abramoff Email… McCain and the Senate Indian Affairs Committee sat on the controversial ... And one week later, Siegelman was convicted without the Abramoff email ever ...
citizensforethics.net/node/31127/print - 8k - Cached - Similar pages

Connell, Rove and the GOP Boys, Positioned for McCain?In the current cycle, Karl Rove joined John McCain’s campaign in March 2008 ..... claimed by FHLS / FLS-DCI in July 2001 applies equally to DCI-New Media. ...
thejournal.epluribusmedia.net/index.php/features/1-latest-news/137-connell?q=connell - 46k - Cached - Similar pages~~~~~~~~NOTE: Written in August,2008,this article is DEFINITIVE about Connell’s background and ties to Rove,GOP, and FLS-DCI.The Rosetta stone!

DCI Group, Chaired by Tom Synhorst, Ran Progress for America’s Fundraising, Ad Buying. In 2006, The New York Sun reported, “Progress for America’s fund-raising and ad buying is run by employees of a Republican political consulting firm, DCI Group, which also helped run another anti-Kerry organization, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. DCI’s chairman, Thomas Synhorst, worked as a political aide to a former Senate majority leader, Bob Dole, and is credited with Mr. Dole’s upset win in the Republican presidential caucuses in Iowa in 1988.” [New York Sun, 10/12/06]

Progress for America Raised $45 Million to Help Bush Attack Kerry. According to the Boston Globe, “On the Republican side, strategists say that the offspring of Progress for America, whatever form it takes, will probably be a major player. In 2004, the group raised $45 million to help Bush and attack Kerry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign finance activity. It ran a powerful TV ad called ‘Ashley’s Story,’ which showed Bush embracing Ashley Faulkner, the teenage daughter of a woman killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, at an event in OHIO.” [Boston Globe, 4/6/08]

2004: DCI Helped Run Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In October 2006, the New York Sun reported, “Progress for America’s fund-raising and ad buying is run by employees of a Republican political consulting firm, DCI Group, which also helped run another anti-Kerry organization, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.” [New York Sun, 10/12/06]~~~~~~~~NOTE:  WalMart is listed as a client of FLS-DCI.In 2004, Alice Walton donated $2,6 million dollars to DCI’s group, Progress for America, that ran the Swift Boat ads and robocalls against Kerry.[If you type in FLSDCI into the search engine here, there are many entries relating to DCI,FLS-DCI and their activities,The thread entitled “WalMart PACS may change Montana Campaigning Finance Law” is especially informative and extensive.]

Still hapring on John McCain, my dear?

Seriously, you must try really hard and get a life!

GOP Computer Guru Controls Key Congressional Websites

By Robert Fitrakis, Free Press. Posted July 30, 2008.

Bush loyalist Mike Connell controls Congressional secrets as his firm serves Karl Rove.

In 2001, Michael L. Connell of GovTech Solutions, L.L.C., a notoriously partisan GOP operative and Bush family confidant, was selected to re-organize the Capitol Hill IT network.

Under the guise of selecting a female-owned IT company (Connell’s wife Heather is listed as the owner), former Ohio Republican Congressman and convicted felon Bob Ney reportedly arranged for Connell to be the man behind the firewall for the U.S. House of Representatives. Connell’s role and activities need to be investigated by putting Connell under oath and examining how arguably one of the country’s most zealously partisan IT specialists managed to land the contract and be allowed access to this electronic communication system.

Initially, Connell’s forays into partisan politics had very public ups and downs. Connell got his big break in 1987 as a staff member for former CIA Director and Vice President George H.W. Bush’s successful campaign for president. He programmed and developed an advanced delegate tracking system for Republican National Convention in 1988. With no presidential campaign in 1990, Connell emerged in partisan politics, this time in a well-publicized scandal. On November 11, 1990, Senator Dan Coats, R-Ind., fired Connell for his role in a “push polling” scheme that Coats denounced as “clearly unethical.” Next, Connell resurfaced as a congressional staffer and mouthpiece as U.S. Rep. Martin R. Hoke’s, R-Ohio, Communication Director in 1993-94.

In 1996 election year, Connell resumed his partisan campaign IT activity. His newly formed New Media Communications began providing design makeovers and software for Republican candidates and organizations in Ohio and Illinois. Public records reflect that he specifically worked on implementing databases and web services for John Bohner’s, R-Ohio, Freedom Project PAC, John Kasich’s, R-Ohio, Pioneer PAC, and Dick Arney’s, R-Texas, Majority Leaders Fund. Also during this period he did computer work for right-wing ideologue David Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture and the website FrontPageMag.com.

Tom Brazatis of the Cleveland Plain Dealer described Connell as “an Internet consultant in 1998 for the winning campaigns of Republican Governors Bob Taft in Ohio and Jeb Bush in Florida.” The article stated that Connell told the Plain Dealer that he had been hired to do “special internet projects” for George W. Bush. “Connell declined to be more specific,” noted the Plain Dealer’s 2000 article.

After Jeb Bush won the governor’s office, Connell received various Florida IT contracts from the governor’s office, Florida Department of Education and Community Affairs, and did computer work for the Florida Republican Party. A few months after Bush’s 1998 Florida victory, New Media Communications merged with GOP lobbyist and operative Thomas J. Synhorst and formed DCI/New Media L.L.C. in Richfield, Ohio. Synhorst is listed as a co-founder of GovTech. Connell designed Jeb.org, JebWear.com, and GOPWear.com during that election cycle.

“I’m loyal to my friends and I’m loyal to the Bush family·” read a Connell quote in Inside Business magazine, November 2, 1999.

Crain’s Cleveland Business reported when Connell created GovTech Solutions in 2001 he told them he had “decided to roll out a separate company for its political work because government and corporations are Œtwo animals different enough to have it make sense.’” Connell told Crain’s that his “GovTech Solutions is the only private-sector company to gain permission from HIR [House Information Resources] to place its servers behind the firewall"[cont.]

bbrd,

“Still hapring on John McCain, my dear?”

Looking at her last post, ‘Google Girl’ is still harping about what happened to John Kerry as well!!  Pretty soon, she will be tying Wal-Mart to the Kennedy assasination and Sam Walton as the man on the grassy knoll!!

One has to wonder about the implications of the premier partisan campaign IT man, steadfastly loyal to the country’s most well-known security-industrial complex and CIA family, serving as the man behind the U.S. Congress’ firewall.

According to the Federal Election Commission, Connell’s company New Media Communications received more than $800,000 from the Bush-Cheney Re-Election Campaign between January 2003 and October 2004. During the same period New Media Communications brought in $1.2 million in contracts from Republican congressional candidates, political parties, and the National Rifle Association, according to the Akron Beacon Journal on November 24, 2004.

The Man Behind The House’s IT Firewall

SourceWatch notes that Connell developed the websites for the House Intelligence, Judiciary, Financial Services, Ways and Means, and Administration Committees. According to SourceWatch, Connell teamed up with R. Rebecca Donatelli, Chair of the D.C.-based Campaign Solutions, to form Connell Donatelli Inc. (CD Inc.) as a specialized online advertising agency in July 2004. One of CD, Inc.’s first activities was to become the registrant, administrator and tech organizer for the anti-Kerry group Swiftboat Veterans for Truth’s website swiftboatvetsfortruth.org.

Connell also handled the IT system work for the Bush-Cheney Re-election Campaign and worked for Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell in designing the system that allowed the real time outsourcing of Ohio’s presidential vote count to a Chattanooga, Tennessee server site. The blog ePluribus Media deserves great credit for breaking this key story. The Tennessee servers at the old Pioneer Bank building was a massive repository of Republican and conservative websites.

An article about Connell’s partisan IT activities in George W. Bush’s hometown newspaper, the Crawford, Texas Lone Star Iconoclast, invokes the specter of the Watergate scandal. It notes that “There’s Ohio in 2004 when his [Connell’s] company (SmartTech) ran election results through his computers before releasing them to Ken Blackwell’s Secretary of State office.”

The Iconoclast pointed out in that December 18, 2007 article entitled “Plumbers 2.0” that top Bush operatives, including Karl Rove, emailed plans for dismissing eight U.S. attorneys using the accounts set up by Connell gwb43.com and georgebush.com. As ePluribus Media put it, “In the virtual worlds of computer security, networking and email, the lines separating the inner workings of the current government in Washington D.C. and the outer world of partisan politics exist only in theory.”

The IT cyberstructures created by Connell remain in place for the 2008 election. On February 22, 2008, the Akron Beacon Journal reported Connell’s team helped develop the John McCain for President website, just as it helped create the website for the last two Bush presidential campaigns.

While the Republicans tell us to pay no attention to the man behind the congressional firewall, that he’s just another government contractor, Connell is thinking long-term. When asked by Campaign and Elections magazine in June 2004 what he wished to be doing in ten years, he replied that his goal was to be in a “senior position” in the campaign to elect Rick Santorum president of the United States. He also cited among his political heroes, Saint Paul because he “ ... leveraged Roman citizenship to fuel the expansion of the early church” and he cited George W. Bush because he had “the courage to publicly share his faith.”

NOTE:

Robert Fitrakis has a Ph.D. in political science and was an election observer in the Ohio 2004 general election and Ohio’s 2008 primary. He has co-authored three books on the last presidential election, including “What Happened In Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election.”

Merry Christmas All!
Here’s a good read…
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/world/asia/26addiction.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

I see the WalMart worship and propaganda slobs are still trying to distance themselves from the John McCain loss and the Republican party.

The Waltons- We never heard of George W. Bush.

well i lost you honey - sometimes i think i lost my guts too.

“my knee was bad = they took my brother -

they wouldn’t take me.

“born - in the usa.”.

I was.

What more is needed -

sir -

as you have soo much ....

is one more piece of your’ soul;

for surely i know it is there.

.

here’s your’ song.

Choose your’ key.

.

At long last;

comes to pass;

youth and strength;

rich and poor.

hopes and dreams;

parents lost.

i sing for you;

forever souls.

(refrain);

I sing for you;

for time is short;

I sing for souls;

Forever lost.
.............

Finish it for me.

ddrb. 

Are you still here?

Quoting books of phd’s published.

Here’s my new book.

It’s unpublished.

..............

“What the Fuck Happened?.”

“Lonesome Dove.”;

Start to finish.

.