Contributed by Todd Johnston and Luaptifer

Who is Michael L. Connell? Part II: Behind the firewall explores why in 2001 Michael L. Connell, the Republican Party "Internet guru" once fired for unethical campaign tactics, was allowed to install proprietary hardware behind the firewall at the U.S. House of Representatives.

Part II also provides a detailed time line of how Connell's web services company called GovTech Solutions -- formed in Ohio with fellow GOP operative Thomas J. Synhorst of the DCI Group -- was chosen to re-design the databases and web sites for the most sensitive committees on Capitol Hill, like Intelligence, Judiciary, Financial services and Ways and Means: sites GovTech still administers today.

Check out Who is Michael L. Connell? Part II: Behind the firewall @ePluribusMedia

in collaboration with Todd Johnston

Crossposted at ePluribus Media

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 recent discovery that top strategists emailed plans for dismissing 8 U.S. Attorneys using  accounts on the gwb43.com and georgewbush.com domains, hosted and paid for by the RNC, is just one indication of a much bigger disregard for the necessary separation of government and private industry.

Not only are the lines now blurred, but they became so years ago. Indeed, at the very inception of the Bush Administration, there was an effort to leverage partisan loyalty on the outside to preferred vending inside of dot gov.

A reader's observations prompted this followup. Was Blackwell forced to jettison the routing of Election Night returns through TN-based servers by the exposure of our earlier report?
Cross-posted from ePluribusMedia

On Election Day, November 7, 2006, ePluribus Media reported that technology
developed for live reporting of election results by the Secretary of State of
Ohio was programmed, hosted, and operated by companies that are related
to the Republican National Committee.

Recent reports suggest that organizations operating in battleground states under the "Common Sense" banner are behind push-polls playing out with increasing frequency as Americans approach midterm election decisions coming in November.  (Such "polls," of course, push an agenda through the wording and the questions asked.)

Yesterday's Nashville Post peeled back one layer of "Common Sense Tennessee" to find "CommonSenseOhio.com" under leadership of Procter & Gamble executive Nathan Estruth.  

That connection triggered our digging a little more deeply to answer these questions:

Does Common Sense have anything to do with Community Values?  What links Kenneth Blackwell to the Republican Party of Texas?  And how is any of this related to pornography and Procter & Gamble?  

Curious also?  Look at what we found below the fold.

Cross posted at ePluribus Media

Ah, love is in the air.

While springtime is normally the time for lovers, the approach of the 2006 November elections amid the current political turmoil in the world has already made for some strange bedfellows.  Politicians primp and preen, cutting deals and kissing babies -- and sometimes each other -- as they form new alliances and adopt new (old) strategies for staying afloat on the ever-changing seas of Fortune.  

Now, perhaps, is a good time to pause for a moment and examine in detail one of the most ubiquitous symbols found throughout our culture -- the kiss -- particularly with regard to the various meanings it often conveys to the public in both physical and written expression.  When taken in context of modern day politics, like the recently-failed primary bid of Joe Lieberman, such an examination can result in very enlightening -- and potentially sinister -- associations.

Future Headline: American People Convicted of Negligent Genocide. International Driver-license Revoked.

I have some failing hope that we'll turn the Titanic at the last second but my dark-moment fears are resurgent.  

We Americans fell for the greatest conjob of modern history just three years ago.  I felt that had to be the 2x4-magnitude blow to the head that can wake the comatose.  

I should have known better.

We should know better (but jump anyhow)

For the Record: Jack Abramoff contributed no campaign money to Democrats

To clarify discussion of Jack Abramoff's campaign contributions, our report wants to answer the still-debated but simple question,

'did Jack Abramoff act as a partisan with his own personal campaign contributions or did he make payments in a bipartisan way?

Get your answer here.

Venture Capitalist Has a Plan to Take Lobbying Shops Public
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum

Monday, December 12, 2005; D01

Kenneth P. Ducey Jr. is the mystery man of K Street.

Downtown D.C. has been buzzing for weeks about a venture capitalist who's been secretly trying to buy a bunch of lobbying shops, tie them together and take them public. Well, the gossip is true...
But investors have been digging deep lately in the belief that so much money can be won in Washington that lobbying companies are no-lose propositions.

"They're excellent businesses," the gregarious Ducey effused in a telephone interview. "At least the lobbying firms I've been talking to have been growing substantially over the past five to 10 years, are earning money and have a very loyal clientele."

In other words, manipulating government has developed into a reliably high-margin -- and thus high-rate-of-success -- enterprise.

In a Halloween article, the Toledo Blade writers identify two Republican lobbyists who hand out donations to influence polices, and in return, seemingly net 6 million in federal contracts for their clients.

What isn't included in the Blade's article is that one of those lobbyists, Tom Whatman, has his hands in the GOP attack against the Reform Ohio Now's effort to clean up Ohio elections after the rumored voter disenfranchisement and vote stealing that occurred in the 2004 election.

I just had a most bizarre experience that I find illustrative of one of my favorite themes so I wanted to share it.  

I've become fervent in belief that as a nation of consumers, we must understand the power that the at-every-instant unsought reconditioning of the perceptual commons holds for the direction of our country.  

I'm an introspective kinda guy, who realized that one way to be an unhappy camper is how I did it as a kid, by thinking too much.  Why's that important to Saturday's Paradox?  

Well, I just understood this thing as, moments ago, I found myself responding to the NPR snippet that I encounter sometime during the blessed holyday of the weekend, every Saturday.  It's that revisited moment when the turmoil of my gut bursts out the wrong end in the form,

I hate that lying piece of shit, I HATE Saturdays!

Perceptual commons...thinking too much, WTF?!

...jump

Certainly, however, part of the post-911 emergency management process has evolved to attempt coordination of disaster reponse among agencies from local to federal levels via congressionally ratified Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC.)  The wording of the EMAC compact partly explains the seeming illogic of aid denial:

Update [2005-9-23 19:20:30 by luaptifer]: gring0242 has posted Landstar No-bid Contracts on another win by Landstar at 5x the cost his company bid for a Coast Guard job!!
more below

-Fake Levee Repairs for Bu$h Photo-op
-Fake Food Distribution Centers for Bu$h Photo-op
-Grounding of Helicopter Food Delivery for Bu$h Photo-op
-Disable Sole Cajundome Comm Ctr 4 Laura Bu$h Photo-op
you know how much is already missing from the growing list...

I dug this up, a list of friends of NoDeathTax.org which is a project of American Family Business Institute that's based at Grover-We hope to get the federal government small enough so we can strangle it in the bathtub-Norquist's suite of offices (with many others) including a few on the list (below the fold).

American Family Business Institute
1920 L Street, NW Suite 200
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 969-2444
(202) 969-2445 fax
NoDeathTax.org

Google for other occupants @ 1920 L Street, NW Suite 200

Oh, really?

Well, let's take a closer look at the connections for just one of the identified groups, Project 21.

...below the fold...

The larger picture, that progressives must exercise Message Discipline vibrates strongly in my credosphere and, not coincidentally, dovetails perfectly with

It's very simple: We are a storytelling species. Tell some goddamned gripping stories that illustrate our world view.

The Neglected Political Power of Story

Dude! we're late to the show.  

At various times and places, I've made clear my sense that progressives just don't get it, that we still think we're playing gentleman's sport: in fact, we're using an antiquated rulebook to play in endgame territory (Law of NATURE: LEFTISM Must DIE!...).

Stark? Yup! Paranoid?! Maybe. But recent history (reality) and the explicit Program of leading conservatives at Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation should serve as a two-by-four upside our collective head.

below for more.

What happened last year?!  The fucking CONs controlled our emotions by controlling public perception by controlling events by their mastery of propaganda, particularly as delivered by broadcast media.

So what the fuck does that have to do with who gets eaten?  WHY must leftism DIE?!

answer below

We all know the cinch is drawn tight round the collective scrota (and ovaries) of PBS but it's still only NPR's radio frequency voice that i can get AND bear on a nationwide basis.  

despite the already-evident squeeze, it's only going to worsen as the CONs prepare to yank the garrot and finish the job.  Please deny them.  Call, email, sign petitions, tell those with still a functional brain that it's time to MOVE YOUR ASS!

more below...