A child diagnosed with autism every 20 minutes? I have to wonder at what point and for what reasons doctors started giving so many vaccines at once anyway. How would they be able to determine which of the vaccines caused a negative reaction if there was a problem? And parents – are adults so cowed by physician authority that that would so easily allow so many shots at one visit? I refused that plan for psychological reasons. One, two – that’s fine. But three, four, five, six? That’s too much for a baby or little child. Ben never had more than two vaccines in a single visit. It’s just too much. I always suspected that so many vaccines at once might have created immune-system overload, too – just too much information at once. The question of preservatives (possibly with mercury?) raised the bar – all the more reason not to create a toxic load.

Here’s an interesting interview about one of my pet peeves. Doesn’t it just make sense that our diet ought not to rely so heavily upon foods that never rot? What about moderation in all things? I favor a varied diet. I tend to use olive oil or butter, not margarine or sprays. I prefer whole milk, and I use real unbleached sugar. I’m not an earthy-crunchy fanatic – I also eat some junk food and some fake food. But don’t offer me any of that non-dairy cream or no-calorie candy. I’ll drink a Coke – but not a diet Coke. I eat what I want – in moderation. I have deep suspicions about what some of the chemicals do to our bodies.

So, President Bush is going to veto the anti-torture bill that has passed both the Senate and the House? I don’t know how Republicans maintain this mythology about how they are the patriotic party…

Job Loss for February Much Higher than the 63,000: The actual employment report suggests “a comprehensive job loss of 113,000 and in terms of dollars earned, a whole lot more.” They’ve been misrepresenting these numbers for a while now. If you lose a professional job and take a part-time position at Walmart or Home Depot, you don’t affect the job numbers at all as far as I can see…

Defense contractor United Technologies has made a sudden buyout offer for the Diebold company, at 66% more than the current stock value. In the face of Diebold’s refusal, United is insisting that the deal will go through in 60 days. “Hmmm. Defense contractor attempts a takeover of the major manufacturer of hackable voting machines with the stated plan of closing the deal before the November national elections. What could their intention possibly be?”

On December 20, 2007, President Bush signed routine postal legislation. In a “Signing Statement”, the President claims Executive Power to search the mail of U.S. citizens inside the United States without a warrant, in direct contradiction of the bill he had just signed. As a people, we seem beyond twitching an eyelash over items like these. Sigh.

Some people are starting to do more than twitch, however. The military recruiting station in Times Square was bombed. The news reports say that the bomber was on a blue 10-speed bike, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and dark pants. I’ve read a lot of theories, but personally I’ve been wondering about whether it might have been an Iraq veteran – no-one else would have more reason, or more skill. The target was pretty specific, with only property damage; in other words, it was a statement, not an attack. There are some efforts to tie the event with Canada border crossing incident in which a backpack containing a picture of Times Square was left behind. I think that’s pushing it… I would be very surprised if it wasn’t an American, but we’ll see how the investigation goes. Meanwhile, start rolling your eyes now. On Fox News (where else?) the infamous Oliver North was given a forum for his opinion on the matter. It’s all Pelosi’s fault. Uh-huh…

Right-wing misogyny is raising its head evident in the latest attempt to control the sexuality of the American female. Amanda Marcotte’s post on The Great Texas Dildo Wars is a must-read. “So this is completely, 100 percent about babies. No misogyny, control issues or wariness of female sexuality has any part to play in this.”

Don’t miss Colbert video on the AT&Treason immunity deal. It’s deliciously fun.

Last, there is the latest Iraq cost sheet:

U.S. military killed in Iraq: 3,973
Number of U.S. troops wounded in combat since the war began: 29,203
Iraqi Security Force deaths: 7,924
Iraqi civilians killed: Estimates range from 81,632-1,120,000

Internally displaced refugees in Iraq: 3.4 million
Iraqi refugees living abroad: 2.2-2.4 million
Iraqi refugees admitted to the U.S.: 3,222

Number of U.S. soldiers in Iraq: 155,000
Number of “Coalition of the Willing” soldiers in Iraq:
February 2008: 9,895
September 2006: 18,000
November 2004: 25,595

Army soldiers in Iraq who have served two or more tours: 74%
Number of Private Military Contractors in Iraq: 180,000
Number of Private Military Contractors criminally prosecuted by the U.S. government for violence or abuse in Iraq: 1
Number of contract workers killed: 917

What the Iraq war has created, according to the U.S. National Intelligence Council: “A training and recruitment ground (for terrorists), and an opportunity for terrorists to enhance their technical skills.”

Effect on al Qaeda of the Iraq War, according to International Institute for Strategic Studies: “Accelerated recruitment”

The bill so far: $526 billion
Cost per day: $275 million
Cost per household: $4,100
The estimated long-term bill: $3 trillion

What $526 billion could have paid for in the U.S. in one year:
Children with health care: 223 million or
Scholarships for university students: 86 million or
Head Start places for children: 72 million

Cost of 22 days in Iraq could safeguard our nation’s ports from attack for ten years.
Cost of 18 hours in Iraq could secure U.S. chemical plants for five years.

Iraqi Unemployment level: 25-40%
*U.S. unemployment during the Great Depression: 25%
70% of the Iraqi population is without access to clean water.
80% is without sanitation.
90% of Iraq’s 180 hospitals lack basic medical and surgical supplies.

79% of Iraqis oppose the presence of Coalition Forces.
78% of Iraqis believe things are going badly in Iraq overall.
64% of Americans oppose the war in Iraq.

Virgil Griffith has created a Wikipedia propaganda-tracking tool – the WikiScanner (tip o the hat to Alternet for the story).

People change Wikipedia entries all the time. While the identities of individual editors are sometimes opaque, the networks and IP addresses are not. This tool shows where certain kinds of edits come from (see the FAQ). He has matched up organizational IPs to edits made.

Changes made by people with close ties to an issue are not supposed to be allowed to contribute to entries on it. Tools like this will make attempts more transparent (and documented, and correctable).

When the change is made by someone with access to the organization’s network, you have to shake your head at the level or incompetence.

I mean, if you or I were doing information sabotage and cleansing work, I would hope that we would have the basic sense to go off-site, or at least off-network!

Generally speaking, this is the kind of information vandalism that Griffith has found:

1. Wholesale removal of entire paragraphs of critical information. (common for both political figures and corporations)

2. White-washing — replacing negative/neutral adjectives with positive adjectives that mean something similar. (common for political figures)

3. Adding negative information to a competitor’s page. (common for corporations)

The Department of Defense has been busy on really quite a lot of topics – I am really kind of shocked at the kinds of things that interest them these days!

From Griffith’s list, you can follow all the edits by organizational name and IP addresses. Griffith directs the reader to a juicy list of edits posted at the Wired site, and encourages everyone to submit “salacious edits.” Here’s a couple:

The School of the Americas (now called WHISC) at Fort Benning has a long history of training Latin American officers, who are later found to be commanding death squads, involved in killing Catholic nuns and archbishops in Latin America and so forth. This is an edit whitewashing the mention of human rights abuses at WHISC – the IP address coming from Fort Benning (doim1-358.benning.army.mil)

Someone at the Republican Party HQ changed the entry on the history of Iraq’s Baath Party from “US-led occupying forces” to “US-led liberating forces.”

Diebold removing all criticism and contreversy (sic) about them. Many edits : http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=28623375
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=28623410
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=28623443

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=28623637

Nobojo has collected some interesting Bob Jones University edits that seem to indicate a high degree of manipulation of the “Bob Jones University” Wikipedia article.

Have fun. If you discover anything, pass it on! Be sure to list the IP, the organization, and the nature of the change. If you found it at Virgil’s site, give him credit, too!

Princeton researchers have produced a video to demonstrate security flaws in a Diebold electronic voting machine. These flaws allow electronic voting machines to be rigged to steal votes. (Thanks for sending, Corinne!)

That’s what can be done from the outside.

But what it’s already programmed on the inside? The video reminded me of an interview I heard a few years ago with a programmer who claimed he had written vote fraud software for the Republicans. A little digging, and I found the general bits of the story.

Programmer Clint Curtis claims Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) asked for creation of e-vote fraud software at an October 2000 meeting

Curtis says that Feeney “was very specific in the design and specifications required for this program.”

“He detailed, in his own words, that; (a) the program needed to be touch-screen capable (b) the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment (c) the programming to accomplish this needed to stay hidden even if the source code was inspected.”

At Just a Fly on the Wall, he notes:

What I did not anticipate was that this country would allow the placement of voting machines where the source code was not provided. The programs were pre-compiled (you have no idea what is in them or what hidden triggers exist), and where no paper trail would be required to check their accuracy. Any moron could build a voting program that could flip the vote under those circumstances and no amount of testing could discover the deception.

• Interview at The Anteater Interviews
• The Code

Video of Clint Curtis’ sworn testimony before the US House Judiciary Members in Ohio

He passed a lie detector test on all of this, but it doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere.

Wow! I see that Clint Curtis ran – and won by a landslide! – in the Democratic Florida Congressional Primary. He’s running against Tom Feeney! Good for him!

By the way, Feeney isn’t just a regular Republican interested in the workings of machines. He is one of those who played golf in Scotland on Jack Abramoff’s money (remember? DeLay? Ney?). He was been named the third most corrupt member of Congress by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Connect the dots, please.

Mark Taylor beat out Cathy “Automaton” Cox to become the Democratic candidate for Governor in November. I think he’s got an excellent chance to get Sonny Purdue out of the Governor’s office in November.

And – YES! – Ralph “Damien” Reed is out of the race for Lt. Gov.

Even voting on Diebold machines, we put things on a better track yesterday.

So proud of you, Georgia! Let’s get a little more balance in our representation!

Excellent news.

Now, about those Senators of ours…

It’s a Wiki, so anyone can edit the site, but there are rules. You must post factual claims (no op-eds), with links to credible supporting material. No spouting off.

Take a look. It’s interesting reading.

Main Page – WikiThePresidency