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Full Transparency

So Diebold gets blasted on the front page of the Metro section of the Columbus Dispatch on Wednesday. Maybe the legendary blind men feeling up an elephant at the Big D’s editorial board are close to grasping the obvious: private, partisan, nontransparent e-voting machines with proprietary software are unreliable and undermine democracy.

The Diebold machines in Cuyahoga County, according to the recent Election Science Institute (ESI) study fail to perform in any acceptable way. ESI found that nearly 10% of Cuyahoga County’s voters’ ballots during the May 2 primary were “destroyed, blank, illegible, missing, taped together or otherwise compromised,” according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s coverage. 

Let’s see. Ten percent in Cleveland, the state’s key Democratic stronghold, another ten percent here, ten percent there. Pretty soon Blackwell’s 27% support among voters becomes a majority after he and his buddies at Diebold systematically disenfranchise urban voters. 

Of the course the idea for these machines not only came from Blackwell, but the epically corrupt Congressman Bob Ney, who brought us the HAVA bill and the rigged e-voting machines after the Bush boys stole Florida with punch cards in the 2000 election. 

My demand as a gubernatorial candidate is to hold the November vote on the only technology that is transparent: pencil and paper. Let us raise the demand and the slogan: No Voting Machines in November! Hand Counted Paper Ballots Only. 

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Pragmatism Is Another Word For Cowardice

In the middle of an illegal war in Iraq, which has branded him a war criminal in the eyes of the vast majority of people on earth, George W. Bush has made another attempt to turn America into an authoritarian nation. The Republican Congress wants to give the Fuhrer Bush control of the state National Guard forces. But luckily, as James Madison intended in that famous phrase “Ambition must be made to check ambition,” the governors have stood up as one for the principles of federalism.

At last weeks National Governor’ Association, the governors reminded Bush that “This provision was drafted without consultation or input from governors and represents an unprecedented shift in authority from governors as commander and chief of the guard, to the federal government.”

Help me stand up to George W. Bush. As governor of Ohio I will issue an executive order as commander in chief of the Ohio National Guard to prohibit the further deployment of Ohioans to Iraq. I’ve been criticized on the web by so-called pragmatic Democrats. A better word for them is unprincipled. The Democratic Party, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton are equally responsible for the illegal war and the deaths of 100,000 citizens in Iraq. If Democrats would be more principled, and less pragmatic, 100,000 innocent Iraqis would be alive and the United States would not be hated throughout the Middle East.

Pragmatism is another word for cowardice.

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Ohio’s New Jim Crow Brought To You By Blackwell And The GOP

The front page of Friday’s Columbus Dispatch screams out “500 New Voters Might Not Exist” referring to ACORN’s paid voter registration gatherers falsifying registrations. What it fails to point out is that 500,000 voters may not get to vote in November because of the state’s new voter ID law. A few days ago, the Dispatch editorial writers wrote about how the new “poll tax” in the form of a driver’s license is not that bad.

In the third line of Friday’s article, the Dispatch revealed that the alleged voter registration fraud was caught when: “Election workers verifying new-voter forms discovered signatures with the same handwriting, addresses that were for vacant lots, and incorrect information for voters who already were registered.” Note, they caught the fraud not by picture IDs, but by old-fashioned signature comparison. As part of the repressive House Bill 3 to require voter ID, the bill also included a positive provision: to make voter registration gatherers sign their name on the new registration cards.

The oddest part about the voter ID law is that while you can bring in a utility bill, bank statement or government check stub, the official voter ID issued by the Board of Elections does not count.

Voting should be made as easy as possible to promote participation by all people. The state of Ohio should be issuing free voter identification cards. The state’s failure to take such action reflects the lack of commitment to democracy by the Ohio Republican Party. In this case, repressive elements of HB 3, like the voter ID, are ignored by the Dispatch and minor improvements in the law, like requiring the signature gatherer to include his/her name on the new registration cards, are touted.

But the bottom line is the statement by Matt Damschroder where he points out that this was not about voting nonexistent people, but about a few paid voter registration gatherers trying to make a quick buck. What should be on the front page of the Dispatch is “Ohio’s New Jim Crow Brought to You By Blackwell and the GOP: 500,000 voters might not vote.”

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Big Lies Blackwell Loses Appeal Reichwing Bizarro World Mantra Continues

Deb Riechmann of the Associated Press has issued the single biggest lie of any mainstream corporate media outlet since Kenneth Blackwell orchestrated the theft of the 2004 presidential election. She refers to Ken Blackwell as the “honorary co-hair” of the Bush-Cheney Re-election Campaign in Ohio. Blackwell was a very active and involved co-chair of the Ohio Bush-Cheney Re-election Campaign. This is like referring to Hitler as the honorary Fuhrer of the Third Reich. And, he prided himself in being a very partisan activists, bragging that it was his idea to put the gay-bashing Issue One on the November 2004 ballot claiming that led to Bush’s victory. To now pretend that he held some honorary inactive role is false and disingenuous.

The Dispatch reported today that “…Blackwell has lost his appeal of a court decision, ordering him to pay $64,613 dollars in attorney’s fees related to a lawsuit filed during the 2004 presidential election.” Voting rights groups sued Blackwell, in part, for waiting too long to issue a directive on provisional voting in Ohio. Blackwell ruled late that votes in Ohio would not be counted if people were registered in the right county but at the wrong precinct, which sometimes means the wrong table at the same polling place. This disenfranchised thousands of urban Ohio Kerry voters. Meanwhile, rural Republican counties like Miami admit they refused to enforce Blackwell’s directive and even used the term “merged” voter to allow voters registered in other counties, but now residing in Miami County, to vote.

As part of Blackwell’s “Big Lie” campaign, he was a mere “honorary co-chair” for Bush and the lackey he’s training to replace him, Greg Hartmann, has a similar ludicrous talking point. Hartmann told the Cincinnati Enquirer today that Ohio’s election system is “the best in the country.” What Blackwell and Hartmann understand is that if you’re the laughing stock of the democratic world, you simply repeat the same mantra to the corporate media asserting the opposite. If you’re the most biased repressive state in the Union when it comes to voting rights and your elections are the most notoriously corrupt, you simply claim you’re number one. Then raise millions of dollars from rich Republican donors to run propaganda ads selling the Big Lie.

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Ohio Mass Transit = EPA Approved Ohio Bound NY Trash Trains On Time

The Ohio Republican Party’s plan to stimulate economic growth in Ohio through their lackeys at the Ohio EPA – Every Polluter’s Friend – is to import more garbage from New York state. While Ohio lags behind the developed world in passenger train and mass transit rolling stock, the EPA is more than willing to keep the trains running on time with New York trash.

Since, by some measurements, we are already the most polluted state in the country, the Republicans see it as a growth industry – particularly for their political action committees. The fact that certain elements of the waste management field has long ties to organized crime doesn’t seem to bother the Ohio EPA. But, as Tony Soprano said in the last episode of the Sopranos, hey, there’s enough garbage to go around.

Of course instead of importing garbage, we could become a green, self-sustaining state cleaning up our water and air and promoting tourism in our Appalachian hills. We might start by doing what Michigan did back in the 70s, passing a bottle bill and this should include cans and plastic bottles as well. It works right now Maine, California and Hawaii.

So, instead of letting the Republicans make Ohio the armpit of the nation, why not take pride and go Green?

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Drive Lankford And The Hatemongers From The Temple

So the Rethuglicans have descended once again into the worst form of gutter politics. Expect more. When your party is morally bankrupt, reprehensible and relies on Christo-fascists as their base – name-calling, stereotyping, smearing and dehumanizing your opponents are your only tactics. At the core of their recent “Smear the Queer” attack on Congressman Strickland is the same type of tactic used by Mussolini, Hitler and other rightwing authoritarians.

A GOP operative, Gary Lankford, emailed out unsubstantiated allegations concerning Strickland’s personal life to targeted rightwing constituents claiming that Strickland was, among other things, “soft on those who sexually assault children.” I guess when you are 20 points behind in the race and desperate, you’ve got to shamelessly create works of fiction in order to arouse your base. You remember Karl Rove started that street rumor that John McCain was mentally ill and had an illegitimate black child with a hooker. This is standard fare for the Rove-Blackwell wing of the Republican Party.

Gary Lankford, the Republican Party’s social conservative “coordinator,” was just doing the despicable job the GOP paid him for. It should come as no surprise that Lankford is headmaster at a Christian home school and was also listed until recently as the state director of the Ohio Restoration Project. The Restoration Project is busy trying to round up thousands of so-called “patriot pastors” who would have you believe that Jesus is the greatest hater in history and that real pastors have to have mansions, Lear jets and Rolex watches.

Strickland needs to, like Jesus, metaphorically get out the whip and drive these hypocritical hatemongers out of God’s temple. Or, at least out of the people’s temple, known as the statehouse. Expect between now and Election Day that J. Kenneth Blackwell and his rightwing jackbooted thugs to tell every lie they can while praising Jesus and passing the cash to so-called patriot pastors in order to distort the truth and the Gospel to bring victory to the GOP.

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Trickster Rove Pawing His Hand In Columbus

Talk about the great ironies of history. Ohio’s leading kleptocrat, J. Kenneth Blackwell, recently compared being homosexual to being an “arsonist” or a “kleptomaniac.” Here’s the quote, in answer to the question by the Dispatch, can homosexuals change:

“And I think you make good choices and bad choices in terms of lifestyle. Our expectation is that one’s genetic makeup might make one more inclined to be an arsonist or might make one more inclined to be a kleptomaniac. Do I think that they can change? Yes.”

Blackwell, who has a propensity towards opportunism, clearly learned and nurtured by shameless ambition – not genetically implanted – believes in kleptocracy. That is, rule by thieves. He’s the leading shill for what can only be described as the Bush crime family.

The crime family run by the former CIA director is most well-known for bizarre speech patterns which makes them unable to complete complex sentences. See The Bush Dislexicon, by Mark Crispin Miller. The only reason the cognitively impaired George W. Bush is president, is because of two unprincipled kleptomaniacs – J. Kenneth Blackwell and Karl Rove.

Rove was in Columbus, Ohio today assuring Republicans that they shouldn’t worry about Blackwell being 20 points behind Ted Strickland. Why would he say this? Because Blackwell and Rove, with the help of Congressman Ney and corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff have implanted partisan Republican electronic voting machines into the Buckeye State and throughout the nation. Rove, a despicable dirty tricks expert, whose roots go back to Watergate, simply plans to steal another election in Ohio. The for-profit corporate media bows down and serves the kleptocracy. After all, business is business.

The people of Ohio should be outraged that Blackwell would be equating violent criminal and compulsive thieves with homosexuality. But this is the usual form that fascism takes. Blatant corruption and scapegoating of gays and other minorities.

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Bush-Blackwell-Brewer Continue African American Suppression

The Other Paper, Columbus’ faux “alternative” paper driven by the junior high hijinks of editor Danny Russell and the cynical search for “political relevance” by Dan Williamson, may have reached a new low. In the article “Blackwell and the black vote,” Williamson, who knows better, leads with the most absurd quote in modern Ohio gubernatorial history. East Cleveland Mayor Eric Brewer, making a bid to be in Uncle Ken’s cabinet, likens blacks who are opposed to Ken Blackwell to the slave Jim in Gone With the Wind. As Williamson describes it, “To Brewer, black Democrats trying to defeat Republican Ken Blackwell for governor are like Jim the slave.” Jim fought with the Southerners against the Yankees. Brewer goes on to say that the African American community doesn’t know “his record,” his being Blackwell’s.

Now let’s look at the facts. Ken Blackwell appeared earlier this year before the super secret far- right Council on National Policy which harbors many known white supremacists. They are based in Texas, a southern Confederate state. The Bush family also has a sordid history of an anti-black and anti-Semitic nature, and these are Blackwell’s political backers. Prescott Bush laundered money to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, it’s a known fact. George H.W. Bush, the former CIA director who suppressed people around the world and rigged elections, won as a Congressional candidate in Texas in 1966 opposing Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement.

There’s a reason that W lives in Texas and Jeb lives in Florida. These are former Confederate Jim Crow states. Jeb and W conspired in the 2000 with their key elections expert Ken Blackwell to suppress the vote of more than 92,000 Florida citizens who were eligible to vote but were denied the right to vote because their name was the same or similar to a felon or their birthdate was the same as a felon. A disproportionate number of these people were African Americans. Bush also targeted black and Latino soldiers during the 2004 election who were serving in Iraq challenging their right to vote in their home precincts.

Blackwell is Jim. No, he’s worse than Jim. Jim was a browbeaten, brainwashed, uneducated black man who may not have known better. Blackwell is an opportunistic, ass-kisser to a low-IQ’ed cracker named George W. Bush. Anytime Blackwell and Brewer start to talk about Blackwell doing things for blacks, all you have to remember is J. Kenneth is the key apologist in the Buckeye State for W Bush who left blacks to die in the rooftops in New Orleans. When Blackwell calls a black man brother, he should respond with the name Katrina

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We Must Reject Faith Based Voting

Those private vote-switching, election-stealing electronic voting machines are at it again. Early in the day, Cynthia McKinney supporters began registering complaints that when they tried to register their vote for McKinney in Georgia’s primary election today, it registered a vote for her opponent. Just like in the Ohio election, the vote hopping with Diebold machines always goes for the conservative candidate: push for Kerry – votes hops to Bush.

Or, if you voted for McKinney it hopped to Hank Johnson or John Coyne. Thankfully McKinney had her team of lawyers on the spot taking affidavits from voters who swore the machines switched their votes to one of her opponents. With a majority of counties in Ohio using Diebold electronic machines, other problems present in Georgia’a primary today are bound to plague the Buckeye State in the fall.

For example, complaints were lodged against Diebold’s electronic pollbooks. Election staff were not properly trained to access the voter registration database. Also, complaints came in about machines breaking down in the middle of the voting process and machines malfunctioning.

As I prepare to sign off, McKinney is barely ahead of Hank Johnson by a little over 500 votes with 53% of the precincts reporting. Our democracy must be transparent. We must reject this bizarre, faith-based voting. Let’s pray for McKinney’s victory, and equally important, for a real democratic system based on hand counted paper ballots.

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We Do Not Concede To The Bush Election Team In Mexico Or Here In Ohio

More than a million people were in the streets in Mexico City in perhaps the largest demonstration in the history of the western hemisphere. What’s the difference between Columbus, Ohio and Mexico City? Both had a stolen election by the same people. When I saw, a week or so before the election, that the Bush team was headed down to Mexico, you could tell that the son of a CIA director was about to steal again. Bush, Rove and Blackwell are chronic kleptomaniacs. They steal because they think they can get away with it – but that only works in Ohio. In Mexico, the difference is that people believe in democracy and they are not brainwashed by a propagandistic corporate media into ignoring the obvious.

We didn’t have a million, but I want to acknowledge the hard core voting rights activists who did hit the streets after the 2004 election and continue to fight for a fair election in Ohio to this day. My campaign is the direct result of that movement – we will not concede.

We should do everything we can to support the nonviolent civil disobedience and massive demonstrations that are rocking Mexico. I’ve enclosed two recent articles Harvey Wasserman and I have written on the elections in Mexico. Let me know what you think.

The Democrats must now say “We Do Not Concede” in the U.S. as it’s being said in Mexico

An open letter from Ohio to the people of Mexico

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