highlites of what just came at the top of the DU board:

MEDICAL experts have confirmed that Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s opposition leader, was poisoned in an attempt on his life during election campaigning, the doctor who supervised his treatment at an Austrian clinic said yesterday.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1393172,00.html

At approximately 3:30pm today, Ron Paul's press secretary Jeff Deist called Alex Jones to warn him that the legislation that encompasses the national ID card and Patriot Act 2 provisions was on the verge of passing the House tonight.

Deist stated that the bill and what it means for America could be described in a word as 'tyranny'.

Deist's tone was the most frantic that Alex had ever known in his years of communication with Ron Paul's office. Alex made it clear how upset Desit was and that the situation reminded him of a 'war room atmosphere'. Deist and Ron Paul are desperate to mobilize the alternative media before the bill reaches the Senate tomorrow.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2004/071204nationalid.htm



Bush Seeks to Boost Troop Morale for Iraq Fight
By Adam Entous

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (Reuters) - President Bush sought on Tuesday to boost the morale of U.S. troops facing extended deployments in Iraq by promising to train Iraqi forces to replace them but acknowledged only mixed results so far.

As deadly insurgent attacks continued, claiming another American life in Baghdad and taking the U.S. combat death toll to 1,000 since last year's invasion, Bush made clear he expects a tough road ahead and stopped short of offering timetables.

While a recent offensive in Falluja "dealt the enemy a severe blow," Bush said the insurgents who used the city as their stronghold will "keep on fighting," and offered a more cautious assessment of Iraqi troops than he has in the past.

"Some Iraqi units have performed better than others," Bush told thousands of camouflage-clad Marines. "Some Iraqis have been intimidated enough by the insurgents to leave the service to their country."

But Bush said "a great many are standing firm," and the United States would continue training Iraqi security forces "so the Iraqi people can eventually take responsibility for their own security." He touted a new NATO training program and said efforts were underway to "develop a core of well-trained senior and mid-level Iraqi officers" to lead the new forces.

(more)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/2004...



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economic outlook dimmed on Tuesday after reports said business productivity grew more slowly in the third quarter than first estimated, labor costs rose and other indicators signaled softening activity.

Chain store sales fell in the crucial shopping period after Thanksgiving, planned job cuts climbed during November and a survey of consumer confidence waned in possible pointers that the economy tempered its pace in the final months of the year.

Outstanding U.S. consumer credit swelled to $2.093 trillion in October, the Federal Reserve (news - web sites) said.

The Labor Department (news - web sites) said nonfarm business productivity, or worker output per hour, grew at a 1.8 percent annual rate in the July-to-September period -- the slowest clip since the fourth quarter of 2002. It also nudged up growth in unit labor costs to a 1.8 percent pace in a potential boost to inflation.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=580&e=1&u=/nm/20041207/bs_nm/economy_usa_dc



The bitter battle over the stolen November 2 election in Ohio has turned into a rapidly escalating all-out multi-front war with the outcome of the real presidential vote count increasingly in doubt.

In Columbus, major demonstrations on Saturday, December 4, have been followed by an angry confrontation between demonstrators and state police at the office of Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, the Bush-Cheney state chairman who is also officially in charge of certifying the election, at least for now. Civil Rights leader Jesse Jackson has called on Blackwell to recuse himself from dealings with the election, saying his role as Bush-Cheney chairman has compromised his objectivity in delivering fair election results.

New revelations about voting machine allocations in Franklin County emerged on Tuesday, December 7. William Anthony, Chair of the Franklin County Board of Elections, told WVKO radio listeners that the Board begins “stationing voting machines four weeks out” before Election Day. Security questions were raised after a machine in Gahanna Ward 1B at the New Life Church recorded 4258 votes for Bush where only 638 voters cast ballots.

Cornell McCleary, former minority director of the Republican Party of Ohio, argues that it would easy for computer hackers to hack directly into the machines: “The two points of vulnerability are setting up a computer and hacking directly into the machine, or the line that goes directly down to the Board of Elections.” He dismissed the Gahanna incident as a “prank.” Prank or not, Kerry’s decision to concede early on November 3 was based in part on these imaginary votes that were either a prank, a computer glitch, or a deliberate effort to boost Bush’s total in Ohio.

Anthony also conceded that some voters in Franklin County waited up to “five or six hours’ in order to vote. He admitted that the Board of Elections usually holds back “a truckload of voting machines"--- 75---in case there’s a truck accident." He blamed this on the lack of machines and the fact that 77 voting machines malfunctioned on Election Day. Two affidavits from voters obtained by the Free Press report that voting machine maintenance people came out to fix machines and their technique seemed to be to continually plug and unplug, or reboot, the electronic machines until the machines functioned again.

Anthony also confirmed that the Board only delivered 2741 of its 2866 machines at the opening of polls on Election Day. He said Board of Elections workers later placed an additional 44. This would put the total number in use at the “close of polls” at 2785, leaving 81 machines sitting unused. Anthony further said Election Day problems were the result of utilizing essentially 4800 volunteers with minimal training, paid a small stipend. Some poll workers have testified they repeatedly called the Board of Elections for additional machines as lines stacked up at their inner city precincts but got no response.
In addition, new evidence has continued to surface of widespread voter fraud throughout the state. Among other things, a letter from Shelby County election officials dated December 2 confirmed that the county discarded "tabulator test deck reports" from the November 2 vote count "to reduce paperwork and confusion with official results." As this county's response is the first of 88 to come from Freedom of Information Act filings, it seems likely other controversial practices could surface.
Moreover, new computer tabulation errors – first reported locally after Election Day – have resurfaced, and are of a magnitude suggesting Bush’s margin over Kerry---now 118,775 votes or 2 percent of the total votes cast in the state, according to Blackwell---could easily have been manipulated.

One precinct in Youngstown, Ohio, recorded a negative 25 million votes (that's not a typo) on an ES&S Votronic voting machine, which was discarded from official results, according to a Nov. 3 report in Youngstown’s Vindicator newspaper http://www.vindy.com/basic/news/281829446390855.php. Machine malfunctions combined with human error to create the massive negative vote count. “That led to some races showing votes of negative 25 million, Munroe said,” quoting Mark Monroe, the Mahoning County election chief. "The numbers were nonsensical so we knew there were problems." The website www.VotersUnite.org lists dozens of voting machine errors, voter intimidation reports and other problems – from the very large to very small – that were reported in the Ohio press. At the very least these errors, many of which are detailed below, add up to a scathing indictment of a statewide election. On December 6 White House Spokesman Scott McClellan called the election “free and fair.”

But even the www.VotersUnite.org list does not contain some of the biggest errors that will be cited in an election challenge filed Tuesday, December 7 by the Ohio Honest Elections Campaign in Ohio Supreme Court. It does not cite two non-partisan Election Day exit polls, by CNN and Zogby, which found Kerry leading by mid-afternoon. The Ohio Honest Election Campaign filing also describes abnormal patterns in the votes for statewide Democratic candidates – with Kerry receiving fewer votes than obscure candidates – could point to computer vote shifting. The Honest Election Campaign is seeking to investigate these abnormalities.

On Wednesday, Dec. 8, Rev. Jesse Jackson and many people associated with recounting the Ohio vote and challenging the election returns, will brief Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee in Washington.

Rev. Jackson has repeatedly traveled to Ohio, demanding at packed, angry rallies that the Ohio Supreme Court consider setting aside Bush's victory in Ohio and that Congress should investigate how Ohioans voted. Among other things, the call for a re-vote as in Ukraine has become a consistent theme among disgruntled Ohio voters.

Jackson’s involvement comes as other national public-interest groups are pursuing their own litigation. For example, People for the American Way is trying to stop the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in Cleveland from rejecting 8,099 of the 24,472 provisional ballots cast there. The ballots were thrown out because voters did not properly complete them or cast them at polling places that were not their own.

(EDITOR’s NOTE: What follows is an excerpted list http://www.votersunite.org/electionproblems.asp of voting errors in Ohio compiles by VotersUnite.org. They are placed in the following categories: malfeasance, canvass anomalies, machine malfunction, vote suppression, provisional ballots, fraud, absentee ballot errors, and others. The link to the original news report follows.)

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/975