Take a look at 3 card poker as a possibility.

Bill Bennett might be able to explain.

Ed Rendell, Democratic governor of PA has "reluctantly" determined that he supports Alito's confirmation.

Ed Rendell is DLC Democrat.

I suggest that all the goddamned DLC Democrats, including Hillary, Kerry, Nelson, Bayh, Lieberman, and all the rest of those goddamned Republican wannabes just friggin' leave and go third party?

As long as they are the driving force behind the Dmeocratic Party, Republicans will continue to gain seats in the Hosue and the Senate - and mark my words - that will include the 2006 elections.

What a bunch of useless, spineless, unprincipled losers. They are a worse threat to freedom and and equality and opportunity in this country than are the Republicans.

Odds

About the same odds that Hilary bought $12,000 worth of cattle futures with only $1000 and turned it into $100,000?

Let's not become intolerant of other views or we will always be relegated to be a minority party. If some non-senate Democrats choose to support Alito, then so be it... The key is the Senate.

In any case, a tolerant party is a majority party. I guarantee you we agree on many things with the DLC...

I like the tolerance advice. I think both parties could benefit by implementing tolerance. I am on your side.

Supreme Court nominations, unlike a lot of other things in politics, are really determined by personal interpretation; what you expect from the nominee and what you get out of them. I know for me, I didn't mind the nomination of John Roberts. He's not my type of guy politically, but I felt like wasn't as bad as it could have been, and given the manner in which he danced around the issues, I thought he was a decent guy. I think that is why he got 80 votes like he did.

Alito is not going to come close to 80, and probably will get a 56-44 vote. This is because he not only has more of a record than Roberts, but he has more of a troubling record than Roberts.

I don't know which Nelson you are referring to, but Bill Nelson of Florida sent out an e-mail last night where he detailed why he would vote against Alito.

Vigla -

Look for some other posts by Dems_keep_it_up on other threads, decide for yourself where he/she is politically, and then come back to reconsider your position. He/she agrees with you. That should speak volumes.

As for Ed Rendell, he is considered by some to be a potential candidate for president in 2006. Even though he does not get to vote on the Alito nomination, his opinion matters and has political significance, if for no other reason than that he states it before an open mike. He thus adds another voice to the chorus of Democratic compromisers and capitulators which are systematically undermining the progressive agenda for which the Democratic Party used to stand. It means something, on many levels.

As for your theory on parties of "tolerance" being majority parties, it is hard for me to reconcile it with the reality of the majority the Republicans have held the past decade. If you see "inclusiveness" and "tolerance" in their political calculus, please send me an ounce of what you're using.

KDJ - you need to do a recount of Senators named Nelson. Get back to me after you've done your homework.

The Soon-to-be-Indicted Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio's Connection To Electoral Fraud

The Dots Connect Between Abramoff, Ohio 2004 Election Smokescreen and Ney's Former Staffer Revealed to be on Diebold's Payroll While Working for White House Law Firm

All the While as HAVA -- America's 'Election Reform' Bill -- is Used for Political Payoff in the Bargain...

There's been a great deal of speculation over the last several days, particularly in the light of Jack Abramoff's recent guilty pleas, concerning the connection of Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH...

There's been a great deal of speculation over the last several days, particularly in the light of Jack Abramoff's recent guilty pleas, concerning the connection of Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH) to Election Fraud in Ohio, and indeed, vis a vis his stewardship and authoring of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) back in 2001 and 2002. The heavy-handed tactics he has taken since then in order to keep the flawed act from being changed in any way over the years, along with the great lengths he's gone to in order to keep the nation's eyes off of massive electile dysfunction in Ohio and elsewhere since 2004 may finally soon get the attention it all properly deserves.

Both Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon have directly informed prosecutors of Ney's alleged wrong doing in regard to money and gifts given to Ney in apparent exchange for support on various legislation and even personal business deals. Ney, who chairs the important U.S. House Administration Committee, has been fingered, and now subpoenaed, in regard to accepting illegal trips, gratuities and other apparent quid pro quo deals with Abramoff's former firms, partners, friends and groups who had paid both him and Scanlon as lobbyists.

His direct connection to the HAVA Election Reform bill passed in the wake of the 2000 Florida Election Debacle and his various extraordinary efforts to specifically block amendments to the bill and to smokescreen attempted investigations into his home state's conduct during the 2004 Election Debacle, has been less widely reported. Until now.

While Common Cause quietly reported in December of 2004 that Diebold -- the much-beleagured-of-late American Voting Machine company -- paid as much as $275,000 to Abramoff's firm, Greenberg Traurig for lobbying work, The BRAD BLOG has now found additional details that begin to shed new light on Ney's personal connections to Diebold lobbyists.

Such personal connections include those with Ney's former chief of staff turned lobbyist, David DiStefano who has been working on behalf of Diebold, Inc. and at least one other Voting Machine Company, as a registered lobbyist in the House going back to at least 2001. One of DiStefano's online bios crows about his having "an insider’s edge to hard-to-reach political officials." That "insider's edge" has proven to have been a very worthwhile investment for the Voting Machine Companies who'd purchased access into Ney's political office.

Congressional lobbying records reveal that Diebold, Inc. has paid at least $180,000 to DiStefano and eventually his partner, Roy C. Coffee, to lobby for the "Help America Vote Act" and other "Election Reform Issues" in Congress since 2003. Another Electronic Voting Machine Company, AccuPoll, Inc., also paid DiStefano some $70,000 to lobby for HAVA on their behalf in 2002, though that relationship was apparently terminated once the legislation was passed by Congress.

In turn, Ney's former employee DiStefano and Coffee themselves have given nearly $20,000 to Bob Ney's campaigns dating back to 2002.

The connections of DiStefano and Coffee don't stop at Congress, however. Both lobbyists now work out of the new Washington office of the Texas-based law firm of Lock, Liddell & Sapp LLP -- the firm of George W. Bush's White House Counsel Harriet Miers. And Coffee, himself, had previously worked as a senior aide to the then-Governor Bush back in Texas.

In addition to lobbying in favor of Electronic Voting, DiStefano and Coffee were also paid thousands to lobby Ney on behalf of an obscure firm by the name of FN Aviation which later became known as FAZ Aviation. FN/FAZ Aviation, the Columbus Dispatch reported last December, paid for Ney's 2003 trip to England. On that trip, Ney met at a casino with FN Aviation's director, Nigel Winfield, a three-time convicted felon, and Fouad al-Zayat, the Syrian-born head of FN Aviation. Zayat, as reported by NBC News, is known as "one of London's biggest gamblers."

As has also been reported by NBC and others, the apparently once-very lucky Ney reported winning some $34,000 a few months later at that same London casino after an initial $100 bet "on two hands of a three-card game of chance," according to his spokesperson Brian Walsh. Ney, who coincidentally carried at least $30,000 in credit card debt in 2002, was fortunate to be able to report that the debt was paid off in full by the end of 2003.

The dots begin converging, however, in regard to both large campaign contributions and lobbying done by Ney's former chief of staff, DiStefano along with Coffee on behalf of both FN/FAZ Aviation and Diebold, Inc.

Ney was one of the original authors and lead co-sponsors of HAVA and a fierce defender of both the act, and the effort to keep further legislation from moving forward in Congress that would mandate Voter Verified Paper Ballots for electronic voting machines made by Diebold and other e-voting vendors.

In 2004, prior to the Presidential Election, Ney went so far as to send a "Dear Colleague" letter signed along with the other HAVA co-sponsors to members of congress, urging them not to amend the original legislation. He argued at the time, that paper records on such machines would somehow disenfranchise disabled voters who had been cleverly afforded a special provision in bill which mandated at least one disabled-accessable device in every voting precinct in the country. That device, of course, would be a paperless touch-screen electronic voting machine, like the ones made by Diebold, which, legislators, vendors and lobbyists would later proffer, were required to meet provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Ney had also peronsally gone out of his way in order to keep Rep. Rush Holt's (D-NJ) "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act" (HR 550), which would mandate paper records for all votes cast, from ever seeing the light of day in the House Administration Committee. That, despite Holt's bill having now nearly 160 bi-partisan co-sponsors. Ney has succeeded brilliantly at squashing Holt's bill, first proposed as HR 2239 back in 2003, as it continues to both gain co-sponsors and gather dust as the powerful Republican committee chair still refuses to allow it even to be brought up for hearings.

The American Prospect's Art Levine broke a superb exposé last May concerning Ney's alleged payoffs from a number of the Indian tribes that now-disgraced, once-uber-lobbyist Abramoff was representing in exchange for promises to support their hope for new gambling legislation back in 2002.

"Just met with Ney!!! We're f'ing gold!!!! He's going to do Tigua," wrote Abramoff to Scanlon in an Email after Ney reportedly promised to add the Tribe's hoped-for legislation to HAVA while the bill was still pending.

Ney then told the tribes -- who had been instructed by Abramoff and Scanlon to give tens of thousands of dollars to his campaign and to pay for a $100,000 trip to play golf at St. Andrews in Scotland -- that he was working with the Democratic Senator from Connecticut, Chris Dodd, to add gambling language in HAVA that would be favorable to the tribes.

In reality, Dodd had rejected the idea early on in no uncertain terms, as Levine reports, but that didn't keep Ney from spinning tales to the tribal groups. He told them on several occassions, at least once personally, that things were moving smartly forward as he kept accepting more cash and gifts from them along the way.

Finally, when the HAVA legislation was passed, and the promised language was nowhere to be found, Ney informed the tribes that Dodd had reneged on the deal at the last minute.

That was, of course, not true, since Dodd had rejected the plan months earlier.

But as the spotlight of corruption has finally begun to shine bright and clear in the Mainstream Media onto Ney, renewed interest in his support and authorship of HAVA itself -- along with the connections between that legislation, chicanery in Ohio's Election, Abramoff and several other GOP operative and lobbying firms' merry band of pay-for-players -- are helping to bubble up towards the surface a few previously overlooked, but very important, details that may finally now receive the attention they always deserved from the Mainstream Media...

The BRAD BLOG has been reporting since early 2005 about Ney's role in authoring and co-sponsoring HAVA along with his various attempts to keep it from being amended to require Voter Verified Paper Ballots with every vote cast. More so, we've been reporting on his very specific efforts to smoke-screen the mountain of evidence suggesting massive fraud in Ohio's 2004 Presidential Election by -- amongst other things -- holding hearings in his House Administration Committee meant quite clearly to deflect the focus from the rampant Electoral Fraud in the Buckeye State in 2004 towards the trumped-up imaginery epidemic of Voter Fraud in that state and elsewhere around the country.

Ney's hearings, ostensibly publicized as "investigations" into the many Election Irregularities in Ohio, even went so far as to hear testimony from a self-described "voting rights" group calling themselves the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR). The tax-exempt 501(c)3, self-proclaimed "non-partisan" group was the only such "voting rights" group to give testimony to the committee. However, as The BRAD BLOG discovered at the time, the brand-new organization was little more than a phony GOP front group. It had been co-founded by two top-level Bush/Cheney/RNC operatives, Mark F. "Thor" Hearne and Jim Dyke.

As we reported back then, the phony ACVR had been formed just days prior to their giving testimony to Ney's congressional committee. The hearings -- held in Columbus, OH -- were on March 21, 2005. Yet the first known record of ACVR's emergence in the world was on its Internet domain registration (AC4VR.com) which was created on March 17, 2005 -- just two business days prior to the hearings!

Hearne -- who had been National General Counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. -- identified himself in his testimony at the hearings only as "a longtime advocate of voting rights and an attorney experienced in election law." He then was allowed to go on to testify about unsubstantiated, and later completely discredited charges of voter fraud while others testified misleadingly about long voting lines in all of Ohio's counties, instead of just those precincts which leaned heavily Democratic. Many of those mainly Left-leaning precincts turned out to have had, in several cases, fewer voting machines deployed in the November general election than they reportedly had in the primary races just several months earlier.

For his part, Hearne's partner Dyke had been the RNC's Communication Director up to that point. Dyke now works in the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney and apparently continues his affiliation with the "non-partisan" ACVR in the bargain.

The HAVA legislation, while it does not explicitly require states or counties to upgrade their voting equipment to electronic touch-screen systems made by Ohio's Diebold, Inc. and others (even while the opportunistic Voting Machine Vendors and the lazy Mainstream Media have otherwise perpetuated that myth for several years), it does mandate that every precinct have at least one voting device that is accessable to disabled voters so that they may be able to cast their ballots secretly and without assistance.

Hence, Ney and the other original authors and lead co-sponsors of HAVA -- Dodd (D-CT) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in the Senate and Steny Hoyer (D-MD) in the House -- have been playing up the "Disabled Voters Need Electronic Voting Machines!" card since its inception by hauling out various spokespeople from disabilities groups such as the National Federation for the Blind (NFB) and the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD). Representatives from those groups have testified at hearings and elsewhere to help make the case that their members simply must have computerized voting machines -- with no paper ballots -- or their civil rights will be denied.

What is rarely reported when folks such as the AAPD's Jim Dickson inevitably shows up at these hearings to testify is that the NFB received a contribution of one million dollars from Diebold and Dickson's AAPD has received at least $26,000 from them as well, as reported by the NY Times and others.

(NOTE: Those spokespeople from disabilities groups not on the Diebold payroll, who don't buy into the tortured notion that they must have paperless touch-screen voting machines in order to protect their civil-rights -- folks like David Dixon of Florida's Handicapped Adults of Volusia County (HAVOC) -- are rarely called to testify at such hearings as those trumped-up by Bob Ney and friends.)

In addition to the "Dear Colleague" letter that Ney wrote (signed by him and his co-sponsors of the HAVA legislation) in 2004, asking members of congress not to amend the act to require paper trails, Ney has made every effort to ensure that the myriad reports of massive voter disenfranchisment and electoral irregularities that occurred in Ohio remain little more than "conspiracy theory" as far as both the Mainstream Media and the majority of the American electorate perceive the matters. He, and others who have lobbied hard on behalf of Diebold have continued to misleadingly forward the idea that what occurred in 2004, and subsequently in 2005, where some 44 out of 88 counties in Ohio went electronic for the first time, is nothing to be alarmed about. It's all little more than the imaginery ruminations of Democratic-party John Kerry supporters, according to such folks. That, despite the fact that it has been the Green and Liberterian parties who have, by-and-large, waged the most aggressive attempt to have votes in Ohio counted, along with the extraordinarily well-documented reports of chicanery exposed nationally throughout various local media. More information in that regard will likely surface via the still-pending lawsuit on all of this brought by the League of Women Voters in Ohio.

Add that to the "staggeringly impossible" results of the 2005 Election results there which were stunning, to say the least, and the shamefully under-reported story of the non-partisan Governmental Accountability Office's (GAO) damning report on HAVA and its gross failures released last September. All told, it would seem that Ney and the Voting Machine Companyies like Diebold have had every reason to squash whatever reporting they could on these matters, and so far, they've gotten the job largely done. At least in the mainstream outlets.

And finally then, it has recently been revealed that Diebold itself was also paying Abramoff's firm Greenberg Traurig directly for work in June of 2004 which has yet to be fully detailed or explained in any way.

A payment stub [PDF] and pre-check-register [PDF] revealing a $12,500 payment for the month, made from Diebold to Greenberg Traurig was discovered in a dumpster at Diebold's McKinney, TX facility in July of that year by electronic voting watchdog group BlackBoxVoting.org.

Perhaps that payment was part of the $275,000 we mentioned previously, as reportedly paid to Diebold. Though we've yet to find a reference to the work by Abramoff's old lobbying firm on behalf of Diebold listed in the Congressional lobbying database. So exactly what those payments were meant for, and where they ultimately ended up, remains unclear, at least to us, at this time.

It seems that the Tigua Indian tribe, which paid $32,000 to Ney and his political action committee on Abramoff and Scanlon's directive, and the two other tribes who paid $100,000 to send them all golfing in St. Andrews ultimately received little if anything for their investment.

Diebold, Inc. on the other hand, seems to have received quite a bit in return for their investment. At least in light of the continued lack of media scrutiny and congressional oversight their electronic touch-screen voting machines -- now proven on several occassions to be fully hackable and wholly unsecure -- have received from legislators like Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio. The same Bob Ney who has worked so hard on their behalf -- not the voters' -- to ensure that all of those poor disabled folks would have at least one voting machine of the type manufactured by Diebold Inc., in every single precinct, in every single county, in every single state in the country in 2006. It's mandated by law, after all, by Bob Ney's Help America Vote Act of 2002. In this case, it seems, they got what they paid for.

Fake voting rights activists and groups linked to White House
By Bob Fitrakis Online Journal Guest Writer
Dec 31, 2005, 00:34

Top level Republican operatives with ties to the White House, Senate Majority Leader William Frist and the Republican National Committee (RNC) not only engaged in the suppression of poor and minority voters in the 2004 Ohio presidential election, but they spun the election irregularities into a story linking blacks to cocaine and voter fraud. Bush allies in Ohio are now using this myth of voter fraud to pass a repressive "election reform" bill.

In the month prior to and immediately after the 2004 presidential election, the Republican Party engaged in an orchestrated campaign to divert the mainstream media focus away from election fraud and irregularities in Ohio and manufactured the myth of "voter fraud."

According to a former Columbus Dispatch reporter, Ohio Senator Mike DeWine sent his spokesperson, Mike Dawson, to meet with the editorial board of the Dispatch and other Ohio newspapers. The primary talking point for the GOP was that there was no evidence of irregularities in Ohio.

The Republican state legislature used the "voter fraud" spin to introduce the draconian Ohio House Bill 3. The "election reform" bill has passed both Republican-dominated houses and is awaiting a conference committee at the start of the new year.

HB 3's most publicized provision will require voters to show their ID before casting a ballot. But it also opens voter registration activists to criminal prosecution, exempts electronic voting machines from public scrutiny, quintuples the cost of citizen-requested statewide recounts and makes it illegal to challenge a presidential vote count or, indeed, any federal election result in Ohio. HB 3 will also reduce voter rolls by ordering county boards of elections to send cards to registered voters every two years. If a card comes back as undelivered, the voter must rely on a provisional ballot.

As the League of Women Voters put it in a letter to Republican legislative leaders, "Its [HB 3's] purported purpose of preventing voting fraud is based on the fallacy that there was widespread fraud perpetrated by voters in Ohio. In fact, the fraud was committed against Ohio voters by inadequate preparation that suppressed the votes of those whose registrations were not recorded correctly, those who could not wait for hours to vote, or those whose votes were not counted because of misdirection or mishandling."

The Senate sponsor of HB 3, Kevin Coughlin, could only cite the names of a few cartoon characters and celebrities on voting registration forms, which were easily weeded out by county election boards, as the reason for his repressive legislation.

Fake Voting Rights Groups Tied to the White House

In March 2005, Congressman Bob Ney held a U.S. House Administrative hearing at the Ohio Statehouse where a general counsel for the brand new voting rights group, the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), told the congressional committee that the voting problems in Ohio were the result of the NAACP paying people with crack in order to entice them to register to vote. ACVR's general counsel, Mark F. "Thor" Hearne, turned out to be the former national general counsel for Bush-Cheney '04, Inc., with no history of working in a voting rights organization. Hearne relied on a lawsuit filed against the NAACP in Wood County, Ohio, "alleging fraudulent voter registration under the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act."

Hearne wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice in March 2005 claiming there was "substantial evidence to suggest potential criminal wrongdoing by organizations such as Americans Coming Together ("ACT"), ACORN and the NAACP -- Project Vote."

"We understand that local Ohio law enforcement authorities are pursuing criminal prosecution against some of the individuals involved in this activity, which activities include paying crack cocaine for fraudulent voter registration forms," Hearne wrote.

Cliff Arnebeck, the attorney representing the NAACP, denounces this as a deliberate racist disinformation campaign to divert attention from Ohio's election theft. "Crack cocaine, the NAACP -- Hearne and the Republicans are using racist code words," Arnebeck said. The Wood County case was withdrawn in June 2005, but not before it was revealed that the plaintiff, Mark Rubick, had been "indemnified" and held "harmless" by an obscure group, the Free Enterprise Coalition, with ties to the Republican Party. Signing as the "Authorized representative" for the coalition was one Alex Vogel.

Who Is Alex Vogel?

This is the same Alex Vogel who is now identified as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's attorney. Vogel was busy in December explaining why Frist's so-called AIDS charity, World of Hope, Inc., paid nearly a half million dollars in consulting fees to his "political inner circle," according to the Washington Times.

While Vogel fights to keep secret the amount of money that Frist's 96 World of Hope donors gave to the "charity," his top-level political connections are emerging in the media. Vogel co-founded a lobbying firm with Bruce Mehlman, the brother of Republican National Committee Chair Ken Mehlman. Vogel and Mehlman's lobbying firm has close ties with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Arnebeck recently won a ruling against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which he claims gave $14 million secretly to Ohio Republican candidates in the 2002 and 2004 election cycle, allowing the GOP to dominate Ohio's Supreme Court.

Vogel also served as a member of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and as parliamentarian at the 2004 Republican Party platform hearings.

Other Players Tied to Bush-Cheney

While Vogel helped create the voter fraud myth and Hearne acted as the group's general counsel, a man named Jim Dyke acted as spokesperson for the dubious ACVR. Dyke served for many years as Republican National Committee Communications Director. In October, Dyke emerged as a White House spokesperson on National Public Radio pushing the ill-fated nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court.

Dyke and Hearne incorporated their "nonpartisan" tax-exempt voting rights organization in Dallas, Texas, only three business days prior to the Ney hearings in Ohio's capital. Despite its lack of history, the ACVR was the only "voting rights group" called to testify on election irregularities in Ohio. With a few exceptions, like Raw Story and Bradblog, news organizations have ignored these obvious political connections.

Other interesting individuals involved in so-called "election reform" activities in Ohio are William E. Franke of Gannon Technologies Group and Steve Hertzberg of the Election Science Institute.

Franke, a close friend of former Attorney General John Ashcroft, installed a computer operating system for Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. The Gannon Technologies website bragged that the Ohio Secretary of State joins the FBI and a host of other government agencies as clients of "an innovative system that compiles records in different formats via an imaging program with 100 percent accuracy." One worker who helped install the technology warned the Free Press that there were possible back doors into the system and it may have "points of vulnerability."

Franke came to national attention during the 2004 election as the man heading the operations of the Swift Boat Veterans and Vietnam POWs for Truth. Their nasty attack ads against John Kerry became legendary.

Hertzberg, the project director of Election Science Institute (ESI), received a contract in 2005 from the Franklin County commissioners to monitor and certify new voting machines. Hertzberg's website is dedicated to disputing any scientific claims of election fraud in Ohio. Oddly, Hertzberg's biography posted at the ESI website shows he has no advanced degrees in political science, only a bachelor of science in aerospace engineering from Purdue University. As Hertzberg explains it, he "spent the first several years of his career as a civilian within the U.S. Department of Defense" also " . . . serving as a Project Manager and Test Director for highly visible military development programs. . . ."

Hertzberg launched an organization called Vote Watch in 2002 before renaming it Election Science Institute in 2005. Recent ESI publications seek to discredit real social scientists with Ph.D.s who claim there was election fraud.

The ability of the Bush-Cheney White House to both blatantly repress poor and minority voters in the 2004 election and divert attention from these activities to spin this political operation into a bogus election reform bill bodes well for their ability to win the 2006 mid-term elections, despite a majority of the voters disapproving of the president's performance.

Bob Fitrakis is the co-editor of "Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election?" with Harvey Wasserman (www.freepress.org) and co-counsel with Cliff Arnebeck in the Alliance for Democracy suit against the Hocking County Board of Elections.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/printer_376.shtml

Posted by Power_of_Equality on January 26, 2006 at 07:10 AM

That was a very informative post...I summed it up years ago about HAVA & good ole' Bob....in 3 sentences or less.

I don't know where you're from, but I've been living HAVA since 2001 and have had Ney as my "representative #1" since 1995. I think 6 terms has been too long. He has disgraced our district.

As for HAVA, it is to be in full compliance the first federal election in 2006. The May Primary here. I urge everyone to vote by absentee. The legislators in OH passed law that absentees don't get counted until the official count. Oh joy! Now the bloggers can moan that election officials are with holding results...because we are complying with the law!

Diebold received almost a half of million dollars from my county alone. (federal tax dollars. are your pockets feeling empty?)

I'm working for change...change for the better. We're tired of the culture of corruption, we want to restore our Appalachian OH culture with core American values. We need to have diginty & honor brought back to these beautiful rolling hills.

I urge everyone to get involved in a campaign that you believe in.

Posted by BaronScarpia on January 26, 2006 at 07:01 AM

Baron and Vigla,
I have not hidden that I am a conservative. I have been on this site many times and disclosed this fact.

I find odd Baron's advice to Vigla to reconsider her/his opinion solely on the concept of a conservative's agreement with that opinion. That advice carries many assumptions including the inability of Vigla to formulate an opinion. Rather, Vigla should poll to determine the opinion of the 'enemy' and go in the opposite direction. In the spirit of this revelation, let me declare my support for Hillary in 2008; increase the control of the central government over the social aspects of citizens; increase the number of contraceptive abortions and the accept athesim as the official religion of the US.

Actually, I believe Vigla came to this decision through compassionate and logical thought. As a visitor to this site, I have seen much compassion on various threads. Obviously, many contributors have become familiar and care for each other. I have seen these same people use logic to explain their beliefs.

Why do I agree with Vigla? Because these same compassionate and logical people have demonstrated intolerance toward the 'enemy'. There have been descriptions of physical acts against 'Pugs'. These acts are frightening. I selected Dems_Keep_It_Up to remind these indiviuals that moderates will not accept this level of hatred. We all need the moderates to win elections.

Thanks Bleujae and I agree completely. So how does it feel to see this?
After reading the thread...those very informative articles by Power of Equality...I not only am left in a state of amazement, but one of dismay and sadness. Yes, a great sadness for all Americans and great concern. There is nothing remotely close to any feeling of anger and hatred here for any of The People or members of congress etc., we are all citizens of this country we have inherited, and so many like myself from birth.

When we were young in college, we critiqued constructively with concern that things should be safer or better for our family and friends, looking for and creating new methods, discovering new answers, cures and solutions to keep us a leap ahead...or to find a way to get us quickly out of mistakes and problems that caused danger and suffering to our fellows, or to warn or prevent future problems from developing.
We watched amazing things happen in our towns, states and on the national level...we watched debate, investigations, scandals, crime, assassinations and wars in concern for our well being and the well being of our country. Our motive was our success at coming to an answer, a conclusion to cure the problem and set a new precedent to correct our mistakes so that they would never be able to hurt us in the future, so that we could attain a higher level of sophistication into the new age. We aspired to do good for our country. This was our identity.
We, as born native citizens all our lives, knew we had one thing special here that, like a fine old clock, worked as a mechanism of the three tiered system of government created by our forefathers with checks and balances as we were taught by our teachers in jr. and senior high school and we knew we would always have those rights, especially the right to vote - an informed vote was our responsibility and our choice to exercise as adults - this was an inalienable right of every citizen.
But tonight I shake my head in wonder and sadness that other native citizens could be so crazy in their ambition and greed to actually trespass on my (all of our) native rights as a citizen as to steal or invalidate, or change/switch my singular vote at my secret ballot place. And for me, what is especially shocking is that it was taken away by fellows it also had been bestowed to as a birthright equally.
But beyond the personal dread I am feeling is the magnitude as it ripples out to millions of fellows nationwide whether it be birthright or last week's promise. Do they not understand that they are taking away my birthright as a citizen, my singular little piece of this American puzzle that constantly shifts and changes, that someday the parties will change, that this crime goes so far beyond any party lines, that this is a violation against the one American right that is so basic in creating a real democracy, that this can invalidate the entire credibility of this country and show her to the rest of this world as a sham and place her in danger for All at every level in hypocracy and skepticism? This system we have had for the last 200 years has always worked, we have seen it work over and over. Voting is a ritual that should be done the old fashioned way, not just because it is a custom, but because for the first time this year, I did not get a number or a receipt. There was no control as to the validity of my vote. When I placed the card the lady gave me into the machine it did not work. She simply took it and gave me another one, so whose was this, where was the number of my ballot? How could my ballot be traced or verified? Is this what invalidation feels like, or identity theft? My receipt was my way of knowing my vote counted and the curtain was my way of knowing my vote was secret and private for my protection. Validity and accuracy must be assured.

It seems to me that if votes are not counted honestly or correctly, they do not count, so then, what does count? Me, You, and YOu and YOU? If this is true, this info above is shocking and must be dealt with as a priority and all individuals involved be tried and brought to justice right away in order to renew the TRUST of the American Voters asap. Bogus laws must be repealed as invalid also. This is serious stuff!
Ohio must be awakened as to this travesty and something must be done...their very votes tampered with, that is like a rape, a stripping away of every bit of personhood one has ever known. It is so very Un American. It can truly be damaging to all of any party at any time.
If this is really the case, it is time to get over to www.zackspace.org if you are in the 18th district, Ohio!