Electronic Writer

The Bible belt called, and Lord answered. He performed a miracle right here in the USA! To be more specific, there is this little article . . . .

Palm Beach County Logs 88,000 More Votes Than Voters

November 5, 2004, in the Washington Dispatch

http://www.washingtondispatch.com/spectrum/archives/000715.html

What a touching story . . . .

November 7, 2004

George, John, and Warren (by Keith Olbermann)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240

Keith Olbermann for MSNBC reported yesterday that the telephone call made by John Kerry to concede the election does not represent anything binding or legal. He also recognized the Warren County, OH instance where they cited Homeland Security concerns and counted the votes behind locked doors.

I hope that this hits the mainstream and someone puts it to rest, or validates this.

There is an a letter that was sent and posted on www.bushflash.com/ supposedly from a DC Lawyer. She said that Kerry can un-concede the election as long as it is before the final counting of the votes in Ohio. She also asked that if you have any evidence of someone intimidating you, or having to wait more that 4 hours to vote, or anything else (there were allegations that in some neighborhoods populated mostly with African-Americans, that there were as few as 2 voting machines for an entire district, and that some voters were told to return on Wednesday to vote–that the deadline had been extended that long), that you should send an e-mail to a specific lawyer.

Please read it for yourself–it is on the homepage of www.bushflash.com (including the e-mail address). The writer behind BushFlash is verifying the validity of that e-mail.

In case you were wondering what the UK thinks of the Election, here is an editorial from a legitimate news source in the UK.

GOD HELP AMERICA

Published on November 5th in Mirror.Co.Uk

Warning: This editorial is not for the squeamish-of-heart . . . .

I feel bad for the conservatives that I know. They are (in general, there are exceptions, of course) inflicted with a terrible disease. I call it apathy. Often times, they call it the “if-it-ain’t-broke, don’t fix it” way. Like that mantra is a life choice, or a biological pre-disposition that characterizes your mental space, or perhaps a path that one chooses and cannot return.

But, I want to properly name that dragon. Apathy is too abstract. There is not enough research and fact checking going on within the conservative circles. There is not enough independent verification. And, it is apathetic on the part of the conservatives. At least the conservatives that I know.

There used to be a time when the population could have a great deal of faith in what was being given to us by the Media, our leaders, and public figures. The Ethos that a person had just for being on Television or on the radio was great enough to allow us to believe it as a credible source. No more! As special interest money has understood the value of that implied legitimacy, they have appropriated that as a medium for distributing deceitful messages disguised as truth. And, the partisan news sources that use the medium to influence the opinions of apathetic Americans has nearly reached epic proportions.

Jon Stewart attempted to make that very point in his appearance on Crossfire, and in his book I presume (It is on my reading list–I haven’t got there, yet.). He appeared on the show for an opportunity to promote his book, and because he was a comedian (and Jon Stewart), he was by himself. His intentions for appearing on Crossfire were clear seconds after the opening statements. He attacked the hosts for providing biased information disguised as non-partisan debate. He went on to appeal to their sense of moral responsibility as journalists–that it is their ethical obligation to shift the values of their show to be more consistent with the truth than with their particular partisan politics–OR, (he gave them another option) correctly identify your show as theatre and not news.

This is just one example of the former credibility–the Ethos–that has evaporated from American politics. The closer the politics aligns itself with politics, the more that ethos is going to evaporate. When politics is related to the bottom-line of a corporation, deceptive practices will be used. Ever met a used car salesman?

My point is that the people (and news sources) vying for the conservative support are manipulating the conservatives. And, everyone that I know in that conservative boat still have a blanket faith in the credibility of the person and/or news source. It’s like Captain Ahab telling the crew that we are not looking for the white whale, and thinking, “Well, he’s the Captain–he must be telling the truth.”

There are a couple of terrible reports showing up on the radar. I do not know if they are true, or not. I hope the mainstream media does their job and researches and either dispels this myth, or affirms the truth. Each of these articles has serious implications:

1.) Published on Saturday, November 6, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked by Thom Hartmann

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm

This Common Dreams article has a couple of important elements in it that raised warning signals for me. The first is that on television, the founder of BlackBoxVoting.Org had Howard Dean hack the result of a Diebold Machine in less than 90 seconds–without any traces. She provides the “How” for the conspiracy theory (or one of them). In addition, they uncover some common voting irregularities in Florida.

2.) Glitch gave Bush extra votes in Ohio

Friday, November 5, 2004 Posted: 4:15 PM EST (2115 GMT)

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/05/voting.problems.ap/index.html

In this CNN article, a mainstream news organization actually provides an example of problems. Isn’t anyone else investigating this?

3.) Board awaits state followup

By ERIN MILLER

http://www.theeveningleader.com/articles/2004/11/06/news/news.01.txt

This is a smaller news source, but in The Evening Leader of St. Marys, OH, they reported that a former employee of ES&S (the company that programmed the voting machines) was working on the machines. I guess his presence on the system was prohibited by the election guidelines/policies. They are awating information about an investigation, but have not heard anything from Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell’s office.

This is another example of tampering. You cannot make a generalization from a specific example–it is a logical fallacy. As the evidence continues to stream in, however, perhaps the amount of evidence warrants an invesigation by the FBI?

4.) Black Box Voting

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

On the homepage of BlackBoxVoting.Org, they interviewed the independent company that tested the software on the voting machines. According to the report, the cosultants did not review the security or potential vulnerabilities within the systems. After the NASED (National Association of State Election Directors) received the report, they certified the machines anyway.

I wish that the group were a little more serious. The article has pictures of young adults (presumably the Web designers) embedded within their article asking silly spin-off questions. I guess they did not want to seem legitimate (one of the comments is a spin-off of the National Enquirer’s former advertisement). If the content of their article is potentially true, the implications are pretty bad.

5.) KERRY WON. HERE ARE THE FACTS. TomPaine.com

Friday Nov 5, 2004 by Greg Palast

http://www.gregpalast.com/



This article is pretty disturbing. Remember Katherine Harris? She was the famous Florida election supervisor that eliminated 179,855 votes erroneously from Florida in the 2004 elections. I guess they are called “spoiled” votes, and they are discarded for various reasons. Kenneth Blackwell’s office spoiled 1.96% (110,000) of Ohio’s votes. Greg Palast calls it a “Democracy-damaging” number. In addition, there were somewhere between 175,000 – 250,000 uncounted provisional ballots. The spoilage in New Mexico was 18,000 votes, and Bush won by 11,620. Most of the “spoiled” voters cast Democratic ballots.

6.) New Florida vote scandal feared

By Greg Palast Reporting for Newsnight

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/3956129.stm

Here is another article by Greg Palast published at BBC.com. This was before the election. There were some e-mails that were intercepted with a list of names, and it was possible that it would be used as a target list to intimidate voters.

The interesting thing in this article is the rebuttle and the subsequent rebuttle. Also, someone anonymously hired a private investigator to film the voters in certain areas with a high concentration of African-Americans.

We now know that voter intimidation was a factor with the Republican Party resurrecting the Ku Klux Klan laws that were passed years ago to place party-designated challengers within the polling place.

If there is anyone with the power to investigate these allegations, please do so–and confirm or deny the rumors going around. I wish transparency would return to our society.

Health Textbooks in Texas to Change Wording About Marriage

Published: November 6, 2004 (NYTimes Online)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/national/06texts.html?th

There is a door in Texas, and it has been slightly ajar. There has traditionally been the tiniest space for free thinking–even in Texas. The reddest of the red states. But, that door has been slammed shut, and locked from the outside.

The language in the textbooks of Middle and High Schools have had to use something to describe marriages. And, now, thanks to the close-minded adults running that state (and spineless book editors), two major book publishers have replaced the open-ended language with closed terms. Specifically, the text books must replace any slippery language with specific terms like “man and a a woman,” and “marriage.” It is as if the lawmakers believe that they have the right to control how we think–whether they understand it that way or not.

My real issue here returns to language. We think within the constructs of our language. So, right now there is this construct called “civil unions.” Just the very concept of civil unions allow some discussion of same-sex marriages in the classroom, or an internal dialogue about difference. But, that construct is being eradicated from the minds of Texan children. I thought that the institution had banned the same-sex relationships–not give law-makers the authority to ban the right to talk about same sex marriages, or acknowledge that 39 states (at last count) recognize or might possibly recognize the institution, or that there is an entire segment of the American population that wants to be in a civil union.

In their defense, the editors that made the decision to alter their textbooks did not lose their contracts with the State of Texas.

Texas has been a sore spot for this country for quite some time–a bastion of self-determnation, racism, and close-minded-ness. There is a photo from the early 1900’s that shows a Texas ranger sitting proudly on a horse posing before a whole slew of dead Mexicans. It was part of the Texas Ranger’s infamous purging of Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, and newly naturalized Americans that was the agreement in the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. It is a sickening photograph that rekindles my own memories of the pics as a kid where I would hold up a stringer of fish after a long day in the boat. The problem is that these are PEOPLE! And, an even bigger problem is that this was on ONE such photograph.

Then, we have the lovely tale of the three Texans who tied the African-American man up to the bumper of their truck and drug him down the road to his death. All of the people who sat on their front porch and watched a HUMAN-BEING tied to the bumper of a truck and drug down the street to his death should be held accountable for crimes against civilization. How do you keep sipping your lemonade and rocking in your chair after you witness something like that?

But, perhaps I have answered my own problem. How is that people can continue a terrible string of abuse, not value even basic freedoms, and openly practice racism? The answer very well could lie in language. By controlling the langauge of young thinkers, you can shape or control the very ideas of the future generations. You can control how the next wave of thinkers will behave. Hitler used a lot of language control, and his youth organization was extremely pro-active. In one swoop, the lawmakers that “encouraged” this to happen, and the spineless editors (who earned their Christmas bonuses for saving the contract) have allowed future generations of Texan children to go on believing that civil unions may actually be “crimes against nature,” “unnatural,” or “just, plain wrong”– three very appropriate terms for controlling the language and the thoughts of children.

In a fervor, I knew NOT what I was doing. I lashed and whipped at the red swatch of color down the center of my country, and I said some un-savory things. Well, perhaps they were unsavory, but a better word would be “unfair,” or “derogatory.” My first post was, in short, problematic.

To those grandmas and farmers, I apologize for my overgeneralizations. Perhaps, it is fair to overgeneralize in the face of overgeneralizations. You know, the sort of “eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth” kinda thinking that spurned the Beowulf poet to bemoan the loss of generations of people.

Perhaps, I was tired of getting poked in the eye as “spending too much time worrying about things.” Well, SOMEONE has to keep their brain engaged about daily life. And, I am sorry, but connecting the dots has been easy for me. It is just in my nature.

Well, whatever the reason, I am sorry. I should not have overgeneralized and been hasty about my thoughts and words. Instead, I am going to try listening for awhile. It makes for a terrible blog–a blog about listening almost seems narcisistic. So, I will track what I hear on the blog. But, I am going to try listening to the conservatives for awhile. There are too many Liberals struggling with post-election blues. We had the leader, and heard the promises, and finally mobilized. We heard “We’re gonna win,” and “We cannot fail,” from our leader, and from the inner circle of my political world, and in a couple hours, we heard a different ending.

I concede.

It just feels kinda hollow after all that work.

This is a really nice article. I love the Chicken-Killing Dog analogy at the beginning . . . .

Molly Ivins: The Vioxx model of a corporate soul

By Molly Ivins

Published 11:24 am PST Friday, November 5, 2004

http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/national/ivins/story/11326181p-12240892c.html

A friend just sent me this link. I guess we are not alone with our thoughts.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2004/11/05/notes110504.DTL

Great writing, too!