SourceWatch says:

According to Washington Business Forward, PSB’s “reputation is largely as a Democratic political polling firm, closely associated with both President Bill Clinton’s administration as well as the Senate campaign of his wife Hillary. But the firm also worked for Republican Michael Bloomberg in his mayoral bid in New York City, generating huge fees from the multi-millionaire self-financed candidate that caught some press attention during the campaign. … Major corporate clients over the years have included AT&T, Coca-Cola, American Express, BP, Novartis and Microsoft.”[5][6]

PSB’s Mark Penn and Peter Brodnitz have registered as working for the Central American Bank for Economic Integration through contract with Holland & Knight, LLP.[7]

PSB and the 2004 Venezuelan recall election

PSB received negative attention for polling it did during the August 2004 Venezuelan recall election of President Hugo Chavez:[8]

“Exit Poll Results Show Major Defeat for Chavez” the survey, conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, asserted even as Sunday’s voting was still on. But in fact, the opposite was true – Chavez ended up trouncing his enemies and capturing 59 percent of the vote.

PSB’s Venezuela poll raised eyebrows for several reasons: the opposition to Hugo Chavez seized upon it as proof that “the results from the vote itself were fraudulent”; the poll results “were sent out by fax and e-mail to media outlets and opposition offices more than four hours before polls closed,” in violation of Venezuelan law; “members of Sumate, a Venezuelan group that helped organize the recall initiative, [did] the fieldwork for the poll”; and remarks to media went beyond poll results and analysis to election commentary – Mark Penn told Associated Press that Doug Schoen “believes there were more problems with the voting than with the exit poll.”[9]

PSB and the Serbian elections in 2000

Interestingly, PSB was involved in similar charges of “American political interference in Serbia, locus of a $77 million U.S. effort to do with ballots what NATO bombs could not–get rid of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. In the run-up to national elections on Sept. 24, U.S. aid officials and contractors are working to strengthen Serbia’s famously fractured democratic opposition. They have helped train its organizers, equipped their offices with computers and fax machines and provided opposition parties with sophisticated voter surveys compiled by the same New York firm that conducts polls for President Clinton” — PSB.[10]

Jonathan Mowat has a more incisive appraisal of PSB as follows:

Penn, Schoen and Berland (PSB) has played a pioneering role in the use of polling operations, especially “exit polls,” in facilitating coups. Its primary mission is to shape the perception that the group installed into power in a targeted country has broad popular support. The group began work in Serbia during the period that its principle, Mark Penn, was President Clinton’s top political advisor.[11]

“Its primary mission is to shape the perception that the group installed into power in a targeted country has broad popular support.”

Well, of course, they’d never dream of doing that here, right?

There’s more, but that’s why God invented links

Loo Hoo. @ 113

Tweety called out Gillespie on the continued comparison of Iraq with Germany and Korea. He said the troops were stationed in those countried when the war was over. He asked if Gillespie thought Americans might feel differently about a continued presence in Iraq if the war were over.

The war is already over. We lost.

So, who did we lose to? You can’t lose (as a nation) without having someone to surrender to. Who do we surrender to?

Our losses were financial and in the lives of soldiers.

Still, I think the beginning of the end of the Bush admin began about 3 weeks ago and as time passes it becomes more and more clear. Already the real future course of our involvement and gradual withdrawal from Iraq is being discussed and considered. Bush isn’t part of the discussion, except for when & how he leaves.

I think Tweety’s question is right on target for this moment in time. It puts Gillespie in the awkward position of having to answer in support of the Bush position when it’s already obvious that it’s only a dream; the real answer would have to be “Yes, Americans could put up with less involvement as long as the deaths stop. But, even better would be a complete withdrawal.”

Edwards position right now is super because it really pokes the Repubs and DLC Dems in the eye. He says, no more money, no timelines and no excuses. They say, he’s right, but they won’t do it … yet. They all follow his leadership and look at the polls and then do as their advisors tell them.

John Edwards for President — Leadership, plain and simple

burnspbesq @ 80

Polling data like these raise obvious questions about the validity of the questions.

But don’t you also have to ask, “what fucking morons are they polling?”

I find myself asking, “What kind of fucking morons enable an incredibly unpopular president of the *opposite* party?” Anyone intimidated by a president with a 25-30% approval rating has less spine than a jellyfish.

At least jellyfish can sting.

The DLCers are triangulating with the Conservatives in America (whether Republicans or just conserv Dems) and they’re leading us to an extended tour in Iraq and to a continuation of a lot of non-answer policies like “I don’t recall.” while occasionally serving their corporate funders.

We Progressives can try to take Congress by a larger margin and we can try to elect someone like Edwards, but we can’t force good things to happen through DLCers.

That’s why it’s slow-going and we’re pushing Repubs to reconsider their undying allegiance to the back-stabbing Bushies.

Without more leverage it’s hard to get much done.

With some leverage we might be able to oust Cheney and put some sanity back in the WH as we’ve accomplished (probably more by luck than anything) at DoD and through Oversight at DoJ. We’ve exposed GSA head “Cookies” Doan, but can’t force Bush to fire her.

We’ve achieved a lot, but there is still a lot to do. We need, at times, patience and at other times gutsy aggressiveness. Now is a time for steady aggression in DC and selective go-for-it aggression in up-coming campaigns for House races around the country.

This is perhaps the most complicated and difficult time since I’ve been reading blogs and watching the process. Republicans are sort of up against the wall, but they’re not collapsing just yet. House races seem to favor us, but there are a lot and our resources are finite. The Senate races favor us and might not require so much BlueAmerica money to get the best results we can hope for.

So, full steam ahead, but be patient for the results.

you should come around here more often.

the realization is dawning that the (D)’s do not have the answers, indeed are part of the problem.

the first step is admitting there’s a problem…and the denial is finally breaking a bit, with blogs like this one explicating in detail all the capitulations and failures.

Rather than harp on the withdrawal, the Democrats should continue to strike a bipartisan tone and refocus the debate to other international and domestic issues. This will help them carry the day in November 2008.

Yes, let’s do what we did in 2006 and change the subject so that the party’s war hawks who slipped through then can repeat the performance on the next go. Let’s for god’s sake not ask them to defend their positions regarding the most salient aspects of the government’s foreign policy.

“[t]here is only one party in the United States, the Property Party…and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt—until recently… and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.“

Now, there may be some differences, but it really seems to be only in the speed of our decline into Fascism/Corporatism and the rate in which our Constitution and the founding ideas of this country are pushed onto the trash bin of history!! The Democratic Party just seems to help the owners to stabilize the temperature, whispering its okay to the boiling frogs, lest we jump out of the pot. Then, another round of criminal republicans to turn up the heat ever higher!

Richmond @ 119

Arlen Specter’s honesty and integrity on display in 1964:

A bullet that changes direction by 180 degrees after stopping in mid-flight after hitting one target so that it can hit a second target.

James, please stop pimping this lie. There are enough reasons to dislike Specter without propagating a Camelot Conspiracy American Exceptionalism myth whose subtext is that you will be saved or damned by the presence or absence of some “hero.” Screw heroes. They’re all the same.

Ball-bearings? This would be using them in a way similar to a caltrop which the Romans called tribulus.

Caltrops…gracious me.

There’s a blast from the (Palatine-hilled) past.

EarthFirst! had rejected their use before I ever came on the scene….but seems they were believed to have stopped big trucks quite nicely.

Of course, use of such devices would cause such problems for a local campaign that caltrops were not used in US forest defense.

They have been said to have been used by citizens in other nations to prevent motorized (cycles, cars, vans, trucks) law enforcement/military from carrying out martial law activities.

Apparently, these cheap and easily constructed devices substantially degraded law enforcement/military capacity.

In cities with fragile streets – say cities built with cisterns under the streets (like those used in San Francisco) – tracked or treaded vehicles could be so large or heavy as to be effectively denied access to some streets and neighborhoods.

Caltops and similar devices – in these foreign lands – are reported to have further denied access and hence reduced the violence of those illegally imposing martial law.

For historical purposes, here’s a citation from Ecodefense about these tools of far-off lands.

Why the Democrats haven’t used the Webb Amendment to better effect escapes me.

The answer to this is quite simple. The rest of the ‘real kool kids’ in the Senate do NOT want some populist/progressive newby showing their corrupt wrinkly asses UP!

So they sit on his legislation. Remember this is a group of fools who still let Joey the LiarMan caucus with them. A sadder group of moral cowards it would be hard to assemble.