Rove's Attack On Hillary's Health Was A Political Blunder

Karl Rove was once hailed as a brilliant political strategist by his fellow Republicans. That was because he successfully engineered the election of George Bush in 2000 (by getting a majority of electoral college votes in spite of the fact that Bush lost the popular vote). But since Bush left office, Rove political expertise has come into question.

In the 2012 election, the super-PAC headed by Rove spent multiple millions of donor dollars to defeat President Obama. It failed miserably, and Rove looked like a whiner when he objected on nationwide TV to the networks calling Ohio for President Obama (even though they were later proved to be right). Now it looks like Rove may have made an even bigger political blunder.

A couple of weeks ago, Rove questioned the health of Hillary Clinton -- referring back to a fall she had in 2012, and insinuating that she may have suffered "traumatic brain injury". And considering her age, he thought this would be an issue in the 2016 presidential election if Hillary chose to run. Rove was trying to chip away at the popularity of Hillary Clinton to give the GOP nominee in 2016 a chance to be elected -- but it looks like his nefarious accusation has backfired on him. He may have helped Hillary instead of hurting her.

It turns out that two-thirds of the public disapproved of Rove's scurrilous attack on Hillary. That's what a new Washington Post / ABC News Poll found. The survey was done between May 21st and 25th of a random national sample of 1,017 adults (and has a margin of error of 3.5 points).

The chart above shows the result of that poll. Note that 66% of the general public (and 67% of registered voters) disapproved of Rove's remarks. And that feeling was much the same across all demographic groups -- regardless of age, education, income, race, gender, or region. Even a plurality of Republicans disapproved (with 46% disapproving and 45% approving).

Are Karl Rove's 15 minutes of fame as a political strategist over? Could be. He certainly can't afford to make another blunder of this magnitude.

Theft Of Election Foiled By Anonymous ?

On October 27th, I posted about alleged election rigging that has possibly been going on for several elections (that would flip 10% of votes from one candidate to his opponent -- enough to swing a close election). Supposedly, this was even done in the Republican primary to help Romney win, and it was done only in very large counties with lots of votes (because the manipulation of votes would be less obvious in a large county).

Evidently some people believed this was happening, or at least could be happening -- the hacker group known as Anonymous. On November 1st, I wrote that Anonymous had published a public letter warning Karl Rove not to try and steal the election through any kind of digital manipulation. They told him they would be watching, and he would be caught if he tried anything nefarious.

Did Rove try to steal the election? Possibly. The letter above is purportedly from Anonymous (and was sent to the website Wonkette). We know the Republicans had a computer system called ORCA, which they claimed was to help them get out the vote (and which failed miserably on election day). The letter claims that ORCA had a dark side, which would allow it to tap into computers in at least three states to change votes -- and that Anonymous blocked the computer portals to those states by hacking in to the GOP computer system and erecting a firewall to prevent access on election day, insuring an honest election.

Did this really happen? Did Rove and his minions set up a system to steal votes, only to have it blocked by Anonymous? I honestly don't know (being barely computer literate myself). But I believe it is possible, and if it did happen, I hope they go ahead and release the information to the world. Here is an interesting take on the situation by Nathaniel Downes over at Addicting Info:

While some might consider this a random letter, or a jump to claim responsibility, if you step back and study the letter carefully a very clear message comes out.

They cite specific numbers. They state precisely how many tunnels are there. They cite how many passwords were attempted. But, there are key words which look innocent but, to a computer engineer, are very much a trigger.

These phrases are (our emphasis):

We noticed these tunnels were strategically placed to allow for tunnel rats to race to the sewer servers from three different states.

Now, to a normal person a rat is just that: a furry animal or a slang term for a scoundrel. But to a computer person, a rat is something radically different, a r.a.t. hack. The Remote Administration Tool hack is a method of remotely accessing a machine as if it were local. Using such a hack, you would have full access to the machine, at a level someone physically at the machine may not have. A “sewer server” is a term used to denote a hack over a secured tunnel, known as a Secured SHell (SSH), using a form of encryption designed to make it appear to be innocent background traffic.

This is not some general discussion, making claims in order to claim. They have released clear and specific details on what exactly was done, information which the people behind Orca can verify. Even more telling, however, is the name the group used for their denial of service attack:

The Great Oz

“Oz” refers to the land in the classic movie, The Wizard of Oz; more currently, it refers to the television show Oz,which is about a prison. And the actions the group took was to attempt to hack the election into jail, locking it away. It broke, absolutely. We reported on the failures of Orca and its public face earlier. What Anonymous is claiming is that Orca’s public face was a farce, a lie. It was not to coordinate poll challengers so much as to steal the election.

The little cherry on top, however, is the hint that Anonymous not only blocked the operation, but kept copies of the code and data from Orca and are planning on leaking it to wikilinks. If and when this happens, you know AI will be there.

Anonymous Warns GOP Not To Cheat

A few days ago I posted about a study that showed it is possible, even likely that the Republicans have been stealing votes for several years (through the use of electronic voting machines). It looks like the hacker group known as Anonymous has heard about that also, because they have issued a warning to Karl Rove and his Republican cohorts that they will not sit still for anyone stealing the upcoming election.

My friend and fellow blogger, Shaun at A Sane Break From The Insanity, has written an excellent post about this. Here is what he had to say:

I saw this today and knew that I just had to write about it.  On October 22nd, the legendary internet group "Anonymous" has put out a video claiming that the Republicans, specifically Karl Rove and his cronies, are going to try to rig the 2012 election. Here's the transcript:

"Karl Rove.  American Crossroads.  We are Anonymous.  We are watching you.  We know that you will attempt to rig the election of Mitt Romney to your favor.  We will watch as your merry band of conspirators try to achieve this overthrow of the United States government.  

"We see that you have taken steps to ensure that this election race is a close race, so you can step in and rig the numbers to elect your candidate, and then claim because it was a tight race, that your candidate was able to narrowly squeak ahead and win.  

"We want you to know that we are watching you, waiting for you to make the mistake of thinking you can rig this election to your favor.  We want you to know that if we catch you, we will turn over all of this data to the appropriate officials in the hopes that you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.  We are watching and monitoring all of your servers.  We are watching traffic on each of them for anything suspicious.  You will not get away with any fraud without consequences.  

"We are Anonymous.  We are Legion.  We do not forgive.  We do not forget.  Expect us."

Here's a little bit of information about Anonymous for those of you that aren't familiar, courtesy of Nathaniel Downes, a fellow writer at Addicting Info:

Anonymous members, well-known for their dismantling of pedophile rings, botnets and other illegal activities, operate as electronic vigilantes. They can and do break into systems and whisk away key evidence which has put criminals behind bars. And now, the antics of the GOP party bosses, such as Karl Rove and his American Crossroads organization, are in their sights.

Something people do not grasp about Anonymous is that it is not an organization in the traditional sense. In fact, it is not organized at all. Instead it is a case of applied anarchy, a conglomerate of similarly focused ideologies which cooperate when they have conforming interest. By the time a video like this appears, there is already a large pool of people with a common interest with their focus aligned.

There is no head, there are no leaders, there is no organization to dismantle. You cannot reason with them, bribe them, manipulate them, or threaten them. They are legion, their numbers incalculable. 

Many people are even part of Anonymous without ever realizing it, helping out a friend at the office with a tricky piece of code or an online friend who wants to know how to plug a hole in their firewall. This non-existence makes it impossible to address in a traditional manner.

They are, quite literally, anonymous.

Let me shoot some of your thoughts down right now.  If you're thinking that Anonymous can't possibly know that Karl Rove plans to rig the election, you're wrong.  It is possible that they are lying, yes. But it's also very likely that they have this information.

If you're thinking that there is no way to rig the elections then, again, you are wrong.  Very wrong.  Read this article about how retired NSA analyst Michael Duniho discovered actual proof of GOP election rigging thanks to what can be called an "electronic fingerprint."

And if you are thinking that GOP is going to get away with this, well, you're wrong there too.  Here's what you can do.  Spread awareness of this rigging, either by sharing this article (or finding others like it) on Facebook and Twitter (again, I make no money from this site so there's nothing in it for me).

You can also share the Anonymous video.

Aside from raising awareness, you can beat the GOP rigging machine by getting out to vote six days from now, on November 6th.  This is extremely important.  Do not let the Republican Party take our right to vote - our right to be heard! - away.  We have a voice, and we cannot let it be silenced.

Rove/Romney Flaunt Campaign Law

When the Supreme Court made it's ridiculous Citizens United decision, we were all assured that it would not affect campaign laws. That's because the law says the super-PACs, that can spend unlimited amounts of secret money, could not coordinate their spending with the campaign of any particular candidate. In other words, a super-PAC supporting a candidate could not meet with that candidate (or his advisors) and plan how to spend the super-PAC money for that candidate's benefit.

Now it looks like even that one small consolation has been thrown out the window. Karl Rove (aka Turd Blossom) and Willard Mitt Romney (aka Wall Street Willie) are now thumbing their noses at the campaign law.

Karl Rove is the head of the super-PACs American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, which plan to spend around $300 million to support Romney in the coming election. The law says he cannot coordinate that spending with the Romney campaign. But guess who is an invited guest at a "Leadership Retreat" being held this weekend by Romney and his staff -- a retreat being advertised as an opportunity for "strategizing and fraternizing". That's right, Karl Rove has been invited to the meeting to "strategize" with the Romney campaign.

Maybe I'm just a suspicious person, but this seems like a clear violation of the law. And it shows that there are no rules when politics and big money are allowed to mix. This makes it clear that the Citizens United nonsense must be overturned -- even if a constitutional amendment is required to do it. We cannot allow the rich to flaunt the few campaign laws left intact, and buy whatever election they wish to.

Time For Charges Against Rove

Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee released 6,000 pages of documents and testimony regarding its investigation into the White House involvement in the political firings of several United States Attorneys. The documents show that Karl Rove was involved in the mess as early as 2005.

There are at least two e-mails from Rove's aide demanding the dismissal of New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias. Even Harriet Miers, White House counsel, sent an e-mail saying a decision had been made (from inside the White House) to fire Iglesias. Miers also testified before the committee that Karl Rove had called her from New Mexico saying Iglesias was "a serious problem and he wanted something done about it."

If this is not a smoking gun, it is one that reeks of gunpowder. Because Iglesias was not fired for a poor job performance. He had nothing by top job review rankings from his superiors in the Justice Department. No, he was fired because he brought his cases, especially voting rights cases, according to law instead of according to political reasons, as the White House wanted.

There is no doubt that Karl Rove broke the law by ordering the firing of Iglesias and others in the Justice Department. Harriet Miers and others in the White House are also guilty (and most probably Bush too).

Charges should be brought against Karl Rove and the others. The Bush administration broke the law. If they are not brought to justice for it, then all future presidents (of both parties) will be able to do the same. We must make the past right to keep the future right.

Rove Will Testify before Judiciary Comm.

For the last two years, the House Judiciary Committee has been trying to get Karl Rove and Harriet Miers to testify about White House involvement in the politically-motivated firing of nine U.S. Attorneys by the Justice Department. Until this year, both were protected by George Bush who claimed "executive privilege". But their protector is now gone, and it looks like they will now have to testify.

Rove and Miers saved a little face by claiming they have negotiated a "compromise", but the only thing that compromise gives them is to let them testify in a closed door session -- and even then the committee reserves the right to call them back in an open-door session. Other than that, the Judiciary Committee pretty much got everything it wanted.

The testimony will be under oath and subject to the penalties of perjury. The testimony will be transcribed in full, and after the testimony has been finished, those transcriptions will be released to the public.

Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) said of the agreement, "This is a victory for the separation of powers and congressional oversight. It is also a vindication of the search for truth. I am determined to have it known whether U.S. attorneys in the Department of Justice were fired for political reasons, and if so, by whom."

Good work Rep. Conyers! Now go after these two and get the truth out of them. It is important that the crimes of the Bush administration be exposed to prevent a repeat performance by a future administration.

Karl Rove Is Subpoenaed

I have to love Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan). Too many Democrats have wussed out, and don't want to hold the Bush administration responsible for their many crimes. They really seem to think they can rule in a bipartisan way with the Republicans, and don't want to rock the boat. They don't seem to realize that talking bipartisanship is just a ploy for right-wing Republicans.

Conyers doesn't play that game. He realizes that unless the Bush administration is held responsible for the crimes it committed, another administration in the future will do the same things because a precedent has been set. Conyers knows that in a democracy, no one can be above the law.

Conyers is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and he is investigating the politically-based firing of several U.S. Attorneys and the unlawful prosecution of Governor Siegelman of Georgia. He tried to subpoena Karl Rove while Bush was still president, but Bush claimed immunity for his aides and wouldn't let him testify.

But things have changed now. As Conyers says, "That 'absolute immunity' position ... has been rejected by U.S. District Judge John Bates and President Obama has previously dismissed the claim as 'completely misguided'." Conyers went on to say, "I have said many times that I will carry this investigation forward to its conclusion, whether in Congress or in court, and today's action is an important step along the way."

So Conyers has once again subpoenaed Karl Rove, and he's determined to get to the truth. I wish we had a lot more Democrats with the courage and thirst for justice of John Conyers. We need men like this to uphold and re-establish the rule of law.

Thank you, Rep. Conyers!