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Evidence Suggests GOP Hacked, Stole 2004 Election

02 Tuesday Aug 2011

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Three generations from now, when our great-grandchildren are sitting barefoot in their shanties and wondering how in the hell America turned from the high-point of civilization to a third-world banana republic, they will shake their fists and mutter one name: George Effin’ Bush.

Ironically, it won’t be for any of the things that liberals have been harping on the Bush Administration, either during or after his term in office. Sure, misguided tax cuts that destroyed the surplus, and lax regulations that doomed the economy, and two amazingly awful wars in deserts half a world away are all terrible, empire-sapping events. But they pale in comparison to what it appears the Republican Party did to get President Bush re-elected in 2004.

“A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio’s 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush,” according to Bob Fitrakis, columnist at http://www.freepress.org and co-counsel in the litigation and investigation.

If you recall, Ohio was the battleground state that provided George Bush with the electoral votes needed to win re-election. Had Senator John Kerry won Ohio’s electoral votes, he would have been elected instead.

Evidence from the filing suggests that Republican operatives — including the private computer firms hired to manage the electronic voting data — were compromised.

Fitrakis isn’t the only attorney involved in pursuing the truth in this matter. Cliff Arnebeck, the lead attorney in the King Lincoln case, exchanged emails with IT security expert Stephen Spoonamore. He asked Spoonamore whether or not SmarTech had the capability to “input data” and thus alter the results of Ohio’s 2004 election. His response sent a chill up my spine.

“Yes. They would have had data input capacities. The system might have been set up to log which source generated the data but probably did not,” Spoonamore said. In case that seems a bit too technical and “big deal” for you, consider what he was saying. SmarTech, a private company, had the ability in the 2004 election to add or subtract votes without anyone knowing they did so.

The filing today shows how, detailing the computer network system’s design structure, including a map of how the data moved from one unit to the next. Right smack in the middle of that structure? Inexplicably, it was SmarTech.

Spoonamore (keep in mind, he is the IT expert here) concluded from the architectural maps of the Ohio 2004 election reporting system that, “SmarTech was a man in the middle. In my opinion they were not designed as a mirror, they were designed specifically to be a man in the middle.”

A “man in the middle” is not just an accidental happenstance of computing. It is a deliberate computer hacking setup, one where the hacker sits, literally, in the middle of the communication stream, intercepting and (when desired, as in this case) altering the data. It’s how hackers swipe your credit card number or other banking information. This is bad.

A mirror site, which SmarTech was allegedly supposed to be, is simply a backup site on the chance that the main configuration crashes. Mirrors are a good thing.

Until now, the architectural maps and contracts from the Ohio 2004 election were never made public, which may indicate that the entire system was designed for fraud. In a previous sworn affidavit to the court, Spoonamore declared: “The SmarTech system was set up precisely as a King Pin computer used in criminal acts against banking or credit card processes and had the needed level of access to both county tabulators and Secretary of State computers to allow whoever was running SmarTech computers to decide the output of the county tabulators under its control.”

Spoonamore also swore that “…the architecture further confirms how this election was stolen. The computer system and SmarTech had the correct placement, connectivity, and computer experts necessary to change the election in any manner desired by the controllers of the SmarTech computers.”

SmarTech was part of three computer companies brought in to manage the elections process for Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a Republican. The other two were Triad and GovTech Solutions. All three companies have extensive ties to the Republican party and Republican causes.

In fact, GovTech was run by Mike Connell, who was a fiercely religious conservative who got involved in politics to push a right-wing social agenda. He was Karl Rove’s IT go-to guy, and was alleged to be the IT brains behind the series of stolen elections between 2000 and 2004.

Connell was outed as the one who stole the 2004 election by Spoonamore, who, despite being a conservative Republican himself, came forward to blow the whistle on the stolen election scandal. Connell gave a deposition on the matter, but stonewalled. After the deposition, and fearing perjury/obstruction charges for withholding information, Connell expressed an interest in testifying further as to the extent of the scandal.

“He made it known to the lawyers, he made it known to reporter Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story, that he wanted to talk. He was scared. He wanted to talk. And I say that he had pretty good reason to be scared,” said Mark Crispin Miller, who wrote a book on the scandal.

Connell was so scared for his security that he asked for protection from the attorney general, then Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Connell told close friends that he was expecting to get thrown under the bus by the Rove team, because Connell had evidence linking the GOP operative to the scandal and the stolen election, including knowledge of where Rove’s missing emails disappeared to.

Before he could testify, Connell died in a plane crash.

Read more: http://www.benzinga.com/news/11/07/1789905/forget-anonymous-evidence-suggests-gop-hacked-stole-2004-election

Harald Haas: Wireless data from every light bulb

02 Tuesday Aug 2011

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What if every light bulb in the world could also transmit data? At TEDGlobal, Harald Haas demonstrates, for the first time, a device that could do exactly that. By flickering the light from a single LED, a change too quick for the human eye to detect, he can transmit far more data than a cellular tower — and do it in a way that’s more efficient, secure and widespread.

Furniture protected by mushrooms

02 Tuesday Aug 2011

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Made from cotton-seed hulls and mycelium, or mushroom roots, new protective packaging for Steelcase’s Currency line of ready-to-assemble office furniture has earned packaging supplier Ecovative the Innovator of the Year award in the Non FDA-Regulated Products category of the 2011 Greener Package Awards.

In June, Ecovative was also named as a DuPont Award winner. Says awards judge Frank Perkowski, of Business Development Advisory, “This is truly an innovative packaging solution that has obvious environmental benefits relative to existing technologies.” As Sam Harrington, environmental director and packaging engineer for Ecovative, recalls, Steelcase approached Ecovative in 2009 with the desire to replace the expanded polypropylene foam used as protective packaging for its products shipped globally.

“They researched and sought out other packaging solutions,” he recalls, “but couldnt find anything that would come close to the cushioning properties of the EPP and EPS [expanded polystyrene] parts they currently used-until they found Ecovative. They ultimately wanted the same or better protection, and far less environmental impact for about the same cost.”

Ecovatives EcoCradle is a low embodied-energy, compostable, protective packaging material that is literally grown into any custom shape. The company uses mycelium to bind together locally sourced agricultural byproducts, in a mold of any desired shape. Says the companys Greener Package Awards entry form, “The materials weve developed over the last three years at Ecovative represent the first time humans have capitalized on the amazing structural properties of another kingdom of biology: fungi.”

EcoCradle packaging can be grown within five to seven days, in a dark indoor environment, using one-tenth the energy used to manufacture traditional synthetic material. Currently Ecovatives upstate New York pilot plant has the capacity to produce 10,000 packaging parts per month. The company is also in the process of building a much larger facility with 10-times the capacity, relates Harrington.

For Steelcases 300-lb ready-to-assemble furniture line, Ecovative “grew” corner blocks and flat slabs measuring 5 x 5 x 5 in. and 4 x 12 x 1 in., respectively. The parts were the culmination of a year-long development process in which Ecovative experimented with part molds, byproduct mixes, and other processes to ensure the packaging would meet Steelcases performance standards. Oat hulls were selected as a byproduct because they are local to Ecovatives Green Island, NY, plant, thus minimizing transportation costs. Being 100% biologic-based, EcoCradle also offers a nontoxic and convenient end-of-life option. The material is certified for home and industrial composting via ASTM D5210, 5338, and 6400 for both aerobic and anaerobic compostability, and can be “used as mulch or put in with yard waste,” explains Harrington.

Launch of the protective packaging was well received: “The Steelcase dealer network has been enthralled by EcoCradle,” says Harrington. “They often cite it as a shining example of Steelcases environmentally progressive designs and policies.”Interestingly, the furniture maker is now taking a look at how else they might be able to leverage this unique, natural material, Harrington says. “Their designers have asked, How can this be more than just furniture packaging? How can this be furniture?” As a result, Ecovative is currently in discussions with Steelcase about applications in the furniture industry.

http://soyouknowbetter.com/2011/08/02/furniture-protected-by-mushrooms/

Manipulating light at will

02 Tuesday Aug 2011

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The researchers say the results of their latest proof-of-concept experiments could lead to the replacement of electrical components with those based on optical technologies. Light-based devices would enable faster and more efficient transmission of information, much in the same way that replacing wires with optical fibers revolutionized the .

The breakthrough revolves around a novel man-made structure known as a metamaterial. These exotic  are not so much a single substance, but an entire structure that can be engineered to exhibit properties not readily found in nature. The structure used in these experiments resembles a miniature set of tan Venetian blinds.

When light passes through a material, even though it may be reflected, refracted or weakened along the way, it is still the same light coming out. This is known as linearity.

“For highly intense light, however, certain ‘nonlinear’ materials violate this rule of thumb, converting the incoming energy into a brand new  at twice the original frequency, called the second-harmonic,” said Alec Rose, graduate student in the laboratory of David R. Smith, William Bevan Professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering.

As an example, he cited the crystal in some , which transforms the normal  into another beam of a different color, which would be the second-harmonic. Though they contain nonlinear properties, designing such devices requires a great deal of time and effort to be able to control the direction of the second harmonic, and natural nonlinear materials are quite weak, Rose said.

“Normally, this frequency-doubling process occurs over a distance of many wavelengths, and the direction in which the second-harmonic travels is strictly determined by whatever nonlinear material is used,” Rose said. “Using the novel metamaterials at microwave frequencies, we were able to fabricate a nonlinear device capable of ‘steering’ this second-harmonic. The device simultaneously doubled and reflected incoming waves in the direction we wanted.”

The research results were published online in the journal Physical Review Letters. It was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Smith’s team was the first to demonstrate that similar metamaterials could act as a cloaking device in 2006 and a next generation lens in 2009.

“This magnitude of control over light is unique to nonlinear metamaterials, and can have important consequences in all-optical communications, where the ability to manipulate light is crucial,” Rose said.

The device, which measures six inches by eight inches and about an inch high, is made of individual pieces of the same fiberglass material used in circuit boards arranged in parallel rows. Each piece is etched with copper circles. Each copper circle has a tiny gap that is spanned by a diode, which when excited by light passing through it, breaks its natural symmetry, creating non-linearity.

“The trend in telecommunications is definitely optical,” Rose said. “To be able to control light in the same manner that electronics control currents will be an important step in transforming telecommunications technologies.”

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-manipulating-light-at-will.html

The Debt Ceiling Deal: ‘A Sugar-Coated Satan Sandwich’

02 Tuesday Aug 2011

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“This deal is a sugar-coated satan sandwich,” Democratic congressman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver tweeted this morning. “If you lift the bun, you will not like what you see.” I’m not so sure about “sugar-coated”; he deal looks pretty awful even this side of the bun: to oversimplify, the agreement reached on Sunday by the White House and congressional leaders – and headed for a vote in Congress – heads off economy-crashing default by raising the debt ceiling in two steps while making $1 trillion in cuts now and $1.5 trillion later. It contains new revenues – that is, no tax hikes, not even on corporate jets. Which is to say, it shrinks government. Republicans got much of what they wanted; Democrats got … well, they successfully fended off cuts to Medicare and Social Security, for now.

Here, some early reactions:

The deal is a “disaster … that will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status,” says Paul Krugman in his Times column today. The worst thing about it: by cutting government spending – extensions to unemployment insurance and the payroll tax credit were among the chips the White House bargained away –  it deprives the weak economy of a key booster (consumers and businesses aren’t spending), making slow growth more likely and the long-run deficit problem worse, not better.

The spending cuts, even if they reduce some waste, will undermine vital government services, notes TNR’s Jonathan Cohn, inflicting “pain” on middle-class Americans. And just to be clear, “Pain means more people eating tainted food, more people breathing polluted air, more people pulling their kids out of college, and more people losing their homes — in other words, the hardships people suffer when government can’t do an adequate job of looking out for their interests.”

The deal is a good thing, writes former Obama administration economist Jared Bernstein, “in the same way that ceasing to bang yourself on the head with a hammer would be a good thing.” But he points out that talk of reductions to “discretionary spending” mask the reality that “these cuts will hurt our ability to pursue … most positive aspects of the President’s economic agenda—investment in infrastructure, clean energy, research, education.  They will pinch programs that are already budget constrained…programs that help low income people with child care, housing, and community services.”

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones says the agreement is “a shit sandwich no matter how you look at it,” and in two specific ways: “(1) It means we’ll continue to live in a fantasyland that says we don’t need any tax increases even though our population is aging and we’re plainly going to need higher revenues to support this demographic reality. (2) We’ll continue to live in a fantasyland that says our problems are primarily caused by discretionary spending. This is, of course, exactly the opposite of reality, which means we’re going to screw the poor and do nothing serious about the long-term deficit. Nice work, adults.”

Democrats in congress should turn this deal down, says John Judis at TNR: “They should demand that any deal include compensatory increases in spending (or tax cuts) aimed at creating jobs and that any future spending cuts be contingent upon the economy achieving a specific lower unemployment rate—say, below 7 percent. … It’s time the president feels some pressure from people who want to create jobs rather than destroy them.”

Make no mistake about it, writes Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast, entitlements – especially Medicare and Medicaid –  are next on the GOP’s list. “Now, entitlements need reform and savings, no doubt about that. If Republicans were interested in a good-faith way in shoring up the programs for the long-term even if it meant, say, that Medicare wouldn’t kick in until age 67 for people now in their 40s, that would be one thing. But in fact, they want to destroy it. And Medicaid’s position is even more precarious. We spend too little on it as it is – the barest minimums for poor people’s health costs, which inevitably result in higher-cost treatments down the road. This December, liberals will be counting on Barack Obama to defend those programs. What a disgrace that that is now a frightening proposition.”

Democrats have lost — but they can win later, writes the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein: “Democrats will have their turn. On Dec. 31, 2012, three weeks before the end of President Barack Obama’s current term in office, the Bush tax cuts expire. Income tax rates will return to their Clinton-era levels. That amounts to a $3.6 trillion tax increase over 10 years, three or four times the $800 billion to $1.2 trillion in revenue increases that Obama and Speaker John Boehner were kicking around. And all Democrats need to do to secure that deal is…nothing. … Republicans will still be able to refuse to raise taxes. But if they do, it won’t matter. The only way they can succeed in keeping taxes from rising is if the Obama administration and the Democrats stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them to extend the Bush tax cuts.”

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/the-debt-ceiling-deal-a-sugar-coated-satan-sandwich-20110801

WiFi 802.22 can cover 12,000 square miles

02 Tuesday Aug 2011

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IEEE has just announced a new Wireless standard 802.22 that can cover up to 12,000 square miles. The standard is actually for Wireless Regional Area Networks or WRAN which uses the white spaces left in the TV frequency spectrum.

This new wireless standard is expected to bring internet connectivity to large areas which are less densely populated that did not have coverage previously. The WRAN will be able to deliver up to 22 Mbps without interfering with existing TV broadcast stations.

The network will function with a series of base stations like current wireless networks, the customer will only need a small box installed in their house for internet access. It’s now only a matter of time that you will be able to pick up the same wireless network at work and at home. Check out the press release for full details.

http://www.tekgoblin.com/2011/08/01/wifi-802-22-can-cover-12000-square-miles/