TV News LIES

Voters were forced to wait in line for up to an hour while technicians struggled to figure out how to correct the failure. Many voters simply gave up, walking away and becoming disenfranchised in the bargain when they couldn't hang around to wait that long to vote on a work day. As usual, the wide-spread failure (county-wide, in this case) was marginalized by the media as little more than a "glitch". Of course, had the county used paper ballots, nobody would have been disenfranchised, or had to wait on line for an hour to cast their vote. Voters across the entire state are now forced to vote on the Diebold touch-screen systems on Election Day.

In a symbolic show of opposition, resurgent House Republicans are eyeing an early up-or-down vote to repeal the Obama administration's health care overhaul, though a successful overturn of the controversial measure is well beyond their reach.

Even if a proposal passes the soon-to-be GOP-controlled House of Representatives, it's unlikely to go any further, considering the Democrats' control of the Senate and President Barack Obama's power to veto legislation.

An unprecedented vote to remove three Iowa Supreme Court justices who were part of the unanimous decision that legalized same-sex marriage in the state was celebrated by conservatives as a popular rebuke of judicial overreach, even as it alarmed proponents of an independent judiciary.

The outcome of the election was heralded both as a statewide repudiation of same-sex marriage and as a national demonstration that conservatives who have long complained about “legislators in robes” are able to effectively target and remove judges who issue unpopular decisions.

Sometimes, it takes years to see the impact of a Supreme Court decision on American life, and sometimes a ruling lands with an explosion. The Roberts Court's game-changing decisions on campaign finance reform have been both.

Almost from the moment Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the bench five years ago, the court's conservatives have acted systematically on their deep skepticism of campaign spending restrictions. They have repeatedly questioned the ability of Congress to regulate the role of wealth and special interest involvement in elections without offending the First Amendment guarantee of unfettered political speech.

Actually, with sophisticated programming, it would not be possible for any official to know if there were a program imbedded in a computer to slightly alter the votes--and it can be done without any detection unless a parallel paper trail is produced that is independent of any computer. Many states, including Nevada have electronic voting machines that have a paper printout that you review before you finish, but only guarantees that the computer correctly inputted what you desired. It is no guarantee that the numbers processed later on will not be altered. Officials always take the word of the company who provides the machines, that there are no backdoor scripts to change the results. Can the companies be trusted? That is doubtful given that every major voting machine company like Diebold has connections with high government officials.

The Tea Party movement is remarkable in two respects. It is one of the biggest exercises in false consciousness the world has seen – and the biggest Astroturf operation in history. These accomplishments are closely related.

An Astroturf campaign is a fake grassroots movement: it purports to be a spontaneous uprising of concerned citizens, but in reality it is founded and funded by elite interests. Some Astroturf campaigns have no grassroots component at all. Others catalyse and direct real mobilisations. The Tea Party belongs in the second category.