I was at the RNC in New York in 2004 and do your know the NYC police, at the behest of the Secret Service and the laughably titled Dept. of Homeland Security, had the exact same set up down on the docks. Chain link w/barbed wire. Yet one more thing the Obamanation has copied from their patrons the Republican Party.
I may need more popcorn.
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Posted by A.Citizen
Following is a some timely information I received from Jerry Berkman, a local voting rights activist friend of mine. Please read below how and where you have the opportunity to “interact” with John Tanner from the Department of Justice on the afternoon of Thursday, October 18th at UC Berkeley. (Jerry’s website is Election-Reform.org, check it out.)
John K. Tanner is the Chief of the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, Voting Rights Section. He has recently made outrageous statements about race and voting. He will be speaking at UC Berkeley, 109 Moses Hall, Thursday, Oct. 18, 3:30-5:00 pm with a reception to follow. Hopefully you will attend and ask him some hard questions, or notify others who could do that.
The event is described at:
http://blogs.lib.berkeley.edu/whats-new.php/2007/10/11/election_administration_and_voting_rightSome background:
TPMMuckraker.com has an article:
"DoJ Vote Chief Argues Voter ID Laws Discriminate against Whites", which says:
Tanner explained that "primarily elderly persons" are the ones affected by [voter ID] laws, but "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first." So anything that "disproportionately impacts the elderly, has the opposite impact on minorities," he added.
[and]
Tanner told the [Georgia NAACP] that minorities were actually "slightly more likely" than non-minorities to have a photo ID.Also, BradBlog.com has video of Tanner's recent speech:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5145
Leave a Comment » | Alameda County, Berkeley, California, Clean Elections, Election Fraud, Get Local, Voting Rights | Permalink
Posted by malcontent
Others have been working on this for days but now the crunch is on. The corporatists of BushCo have nominated an individual to be on the Federal Election Commission the folks who ‘oversee’ the voting process at the Federal Level. They picked a certain Hans von Spakovsky. A typical Bush nominee as you can read here.
Senators Feingold and Obama have just released a statement giving their opinion as to how they view this nominee:
“While at the Department of Justice, Hans von Spakovsky was directly involved in efforts to politicize the Department and use the Voting Rights Section to disenfranchise voters, rather than enforce our nation’s civil rights laws. As a recess appointee to the FEC he has been a committed, ideological opponent of the campaign finance laws he is supposed to enforce. Putting him at the head of the FEC is just another example of this administration putting the fox in charge of the hen house. We oppose his nomination, and any effort to tie his nomination to the other pending nominations to the FEC.”
Oooooooh! Does not seem like the Senators think much of this choice. FireDogLake has been coordinating a call-in campaign to spike this nomination here…………….. Clik thru and do check out the linked dKos Diary about this.
Then get active, on the phone or otherwise, to pressure Miss Nancy and Conyers to do their jobs. We cannot afford to have corrupt Republican officials overseeing our voting process if we expect to drive them from the seat of power.
And….
It’s now time for Pelosi to start being a Democrat. Not ‘acting’ like one, not triangulating, not posing….
Being one.
Watch for my direct action to highlight her failures in a very public way coming here soon.
Leave a Comment » | 'Take out the Trash', Action, Action Blogs, Active Blogswarms, Civil Rights, Clean Elections, Community, Debra Bowen, Democratic Majority, Election Fraud, Fascism, George W. Bush, Impeach Bush, Madame Speaker Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi, Oversight, Progressive Movement, Republican Criminals, Republican Lies, Smoking Gun, Speaking Truth to Power, Spineless Dems, The People Party, Voting Rights | Permalink
Posted by A.Citizen
Just back from a rousing meeting of D/L Oakland. The hardcore were there in force and they were pissed. You know why. The Democrats Caved as I explored in my last post. But…
Enough about me. What do the people say? From Congress.org we have this from an irate citizen in Florida:
You are an embarrassment
To:
Sen. Harry Reid
May 23, 2007
I am embarrassed to have supported you, Sir. You and other Democrats have rolled over and allowed George Bush to get exactly what he wanted: all the cash for the War-Based-on-Lies with no accountability at all.
What are you afraid of? Is this wimp of a president that much of a bully to you? He folded his arms and had a tantrum like a petulant child in a supermarket, and you gave in. Shame on you.
Perhaps you don’t remember why the Democrats won the last election: TO END THE WAR.
Would a Republican congress have caved in to a Democratic president the way you did? Of course not.
You should have continued sending the SAME BILL back to Bush over and over. If he chose to veto it, it would have been HE who stopped funds to the troops.
You should have forced him to accept it.
Here’s what you should have said:
"This war has been a huge disaster. We are not going to allow this disaster of a war to continue endlessly. We’ve approved funds to the troops for now, but we’re going to make sure this disaster ends soon. TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT MR PRESIDENT."
You may want to write that down and rehearse it for August when this discussion begins again.
The American people want us OUT. The Iraqi people want us OUT. You were elected with one simple directive: Get us OUT. You have failed.
Cutting funds to end a war has been done many times. It should have been done by now.
Davie , FL
From a rather irritated voter, I assume anyway, in San Francisco:
Shame on You!
To:
Rep. Nancy Pelosi
May 22, 2007
Shame on you for enabling Bush to continue his insane war! Your spin that this is the beginning of the end to the war is bogus. Bush and Cheney are laughing their asses off tonight at what you wimpy Dems have done! The message from Nov. 06′ was ‘end this war’ ,not play political football with American lives. 100+ deaths per month continue because you SOLD OUT!!
San Francisco , CA
Ah, hell who cares what those Dirty Fu#$in’ Hippies in SF think anyway. Right?
Wait, wait, wait a minute…Here is a letter from someone in OH to Mitch ‘I like Bush’ O’Connell Senate Minority Leader. Read this and see what Republicans are saying, some of ’em anyway…..
TIME OUT! Congress Should Determine the Outcome in Iraq…BIG LET DOWN!!!
To:
Sen. Mitch McConnell
May 22, 2007
Democratic leaders have decided to drop their insistence on a timeline for withdrawing US forces from Iraq;
I just KNEW this was going to happen. What a waste! Thanks for nothing.
Don’t worry. We won’t forget.
RON PAUL IN 2008!!!
Garrettsville , OH
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. dat Ron Paul dude struck a nerve…and a populist one too. Who’d a’ thunk it? And from the ReThug House Minority Leader John Boehner we get….
George W. Bush, you are being paid millions of dollars to support this war.
To:
Rep. John Boehner
May 20, 2007
President Bush,
This war should not be.
Iraq posed no threat to us.
No weapons of mass destruction.
No yellow cake uranium from Niger.
No ties to Al Qaeda.
No ties to 9/11.
All LIES that you fabricated in order to convince the American people to support a war designed to make hundreds of Billions of dollars for the oil companies and defense contractors that funded your election campaigns and millions of dollars in kickbacks for you (for making all those hundreds of Billions possible).
3,422 of our brave soldiers have returned home from Iraq in boxes…
packed in ice…
cold and blue…
Why?
So that a bunch of greedy oil executives, greedy defense contractors, and greedy politicians like you could become multi-millionaires.
You are not fighting terrorism in Iraq. You are creating more of it according to the National Intelligence Estimate released by your administration in April 2006.
How did the British defeat the IRA?
Did they launch a full-scale military invasion of Ireland with tanks, aircraft carriers, bombers, artillery, battalions of troops??
No.
They poured all of their resources into Intelligence and SWAT teams.
They found out where the terrorists were training, busted down their doors, and put them in chains.
As a very wise man named OSHO once said, in reference to fighting terrorism, "Sometimes where a needle is useful, a sword may not be of any use."
A needle means a precision strike on a terrorist training camp, based upon valid intelligence and with the use of a SWAT team or a Tomahawk cruise missile.
NO DEAD CIVILIANS.
(Especially not hundreds of thousands of them, George.)
The sword (full-scale military invasion) is of no use against terrorists.
However, the sword has proven very useful for one thing… making hundreds of Billions of dollars for your campaign contributors and millions of dollars in kickbacks for you George (for making all those hundreds of Billions possible).
If I had the power to do so, I would exhume every last one of the 3,422 soldiers that you have so carelessly cast into Eternity, and I would carry their corpses in my arms one by one to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and I would pile all of your murder victims on the south lawn and I would force you to stare at that mountain of skeletons in order to make you aware of the crimes you have committed.
West Chester , OH
Holy jumpin’ crawdads malcontent this ‘ignorant’, ‘low-information’ voter knows about military Keynesianism and what it implies for him. Damn, maybe that ‘low-information’ thing is getting tired.
Now if only the assholes running for President on the ‘Democrat’ ticket wher half as fuking smart, huh?
Sadly, they are not.
So, regular_guy, malcontent, tekstone, SAS, I am thowin’ down the gauntlet. If this quick and dirty sample of opinion shows that the citizenry, across the political spectrum gets what the ‘Demcrat’ Party caving is really about….
Can we get it together and make some noise, apply some pressure to….
Push Back!
2 Comments | 'Take out the Trash', Action, Active Blogswarms, Barack Obama, California, Candidates for President, Class Warfare, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democrats, Draft Al Gore, Drinking Liberally, Election Day Holiday, End the War in Iraq, Framing, George W. Bush, Happy Holidays, Impeach Bush, John Edwards, Jon Stewart, Local Blogs, Madame Speaker Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi, New World Order, Newt Gingrich, Oversight, Ralph Nader, Religious fanaticism, Smoking Gun, Voting Rights | Permalink
Posted by A.Citizen
Okay, I know that CNN is the ‘good cop’ to the Fox Network’s ‘bad cop’ – it may seem better, but they are on the same team. But I can’t help getting pissed off when they do something so blatantly stupid and biased as they did yesterday.
I was watching AC 360 briefly as I was eating lunch or breakfast or whatever, and saw that substitute host John Roberts had John Bolton on as his ONE and ONLY guest. Way to go to get several sides of an issue and present a “fair and balanced” story… NOT!
This is only days after John Bolton appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart (can parents STOP naming their kids John or Jon for a couple decades please??) and the very next day, Jon did what right wingers must consider similar to a splash of holy water in the face of a vampire: the dreaded “Fact Check”!
Here is the Daily Shows fact check that proves that John Bolton has NO IDEA what the fuck he is talking about. Further, it shows how Bolton will state facts with great authority and seeming gravitas as if he knows without any doubt that what he is saying is fact… despite the fact that he is totally full of shit.
So CNN has this retarded armchair politico on to get his important opinion on the handling of the British hostages in Iran. Roberts asks Bolton questions such as “does that prove that quiet diplomacy is the correct way to approach Iran?” “If you were Britain, how would you have approached this crisis?” then repeats the same question again to “propel the propaganda” in the words of the worst president ever.
Here is the sickening transcript. Bolton goes on to refute Roberts’ claim that “no one has yet proven that they [Iran] are actually trying to acquire nuclear weapons” by saying, “I don’t think there really can be any doubt what Iran’s intentions are.”
I think Jon Stewart proved that John Bolton spits lies like a … well, like a … like a Republican. Makes sense I suppose, because that is what he is: a LYING piece of shit Republican.
1 Comment | Blogroll, Borat, CNN, Iran, John Bolton, Jon Stewart, Neocons, Republican Lies, Say No to Pombo, Voter Guide, Voting Rights | Permalink
Posted by tekstone
I found this on the internet somewhere, and wanted to reprint it as originally written:
“do you really think the “powers to be” are going to let the people in this country elect anyone who will have the courage to disband the Federal Reserve, truly investigate the perpetrators of 9/11 and insure that each vote cast is counted as it was cast.
the system is so corrupt that the only possible meaningful change would be to vote out of office all incumbents. Then to institute term limits and public funding of all federal elections.”
I think this guy’s on to something…
1 Comment | 9/11, Clean Elections, Confederate Flag, Donate, Election Fraud, Federal Reserve Bank, Laura Bush, Noteworthy Blogs, Rumsfeld, Voting Rights | Permalink
Posted by tekstone
Photo c/o OC Register
I recently received information about an special house party in the East Bay, which would certainly interest supporters of Debra Bowen, the Democratic nominee for CA Secretary of State. If you have not yet researched the ramifications of this office or the contrast in the two candidates, you can check out prior posts on the subject both here on the Bear Republic Action Group blog [link #1] & [link #2] and our sister blog, Drinking Liberally Oakland [link #1], [link #2] & [link #3]. Following is the information provided by my buddy Jerry Berkman of the Voting Rights Task Force:
Help elect Debra Bowen as California’s Secretary of State! She is running to prevent California from becoming the next Ohio or Florida.
Debra Bowen will make sure our voting systems are free from corruption. She is a strong, no-nonsense person who will stand up to local election officials who don’t want to worry about this. She wants to revamp the testing of the machines, eliminate proprietary secret software, and reduce barriers to registering and voting.
The current Secretary of State, Bruce McPherson, trusts the e-voting machines, and especially the e-voting vendors, even though the machines have proven to be hackable.
She is supported by EMILY’s list, Sierra Club, Calif. Nurses Assoc., League of Conservation Voters, National Women’s Political Caucus, etc.
Please tell everyone you know to vote for Debra Bowen for Secretary of State!
We will have a house party next Wed., Nov. 1, from 6:00-9:00, to play some DVDs on election integrity, talk about the election, and enjoy ourselves. (One will be Avi Rubin’s Johns Hopkins talk on “Security Issues in Electronic Voting”; this is not generally available.) You can RSVP here (not required).
Jerry Berkman, Carolyn Koestel
3136 Eton Avenue, Berkeley
(510) 547-0985
For more information about Debra Bowen, see:
Debra Bowen has a slight lead in the polls, but McPherson has three times as much money! ($1 million vs. $365 thousand, as of Sept. 30). You can donate via the RSVP website (donation not required).
P.S. Look for the new HBO special, “Hacking Democracy” — premieres Nov. 2 at 9 PM, and repeated often.
Leave a Comment » | Action, California, Campaign Sites, Clean Elections, Community, Contribute to campaigns, Debra Bowen, Local Blogs, Speaking Truth to Power, Voting Rights | Permalink
Posted by malcontent
thank you for your response, Sen. Feinstein. i am disappointed, however, that you would consider a bill proposed by a Rethuglican. you wrote:
“I am currently reviewing a number of
proposed bills to ensure accurate and reliable voting
systems. One such bill, the “Voting Integrity and
Verification Act of 2005” (S. 330), was introduced by
Senator John Ensign (R-NV)”
most disappointing indeed! perhaps you are not aware that this neoconservative, fascist, theocratic Rethug Party is the MOST CORRUPT incarnation of a political party in the history of the US. they want to steal elections and redistribute the wealth of this country UP to the richest few.
i understand that you cosponsored the bill in question. that is not enough from my representative.
we need TRUE PROGRESSIVE legislation that will first of all ensure that we have clean and fair elections. second of all, we must root out those responsible for the crimes here at home and abroad and hold them accountable.
i and thousands like me will continue to fight for these goals. you can decide to support us or fall by the wayside as we gain more and more momentum. the choice is yours.
sincerely,
Tekstone
one of many… progressive bloggers.
On 10/23/06, senator@feinstein.senate.gov <senator@feinstein.senate.gov> wrote:
October 23, 2006
Tekstone
Oakland, California
Dear Tekstone:
Thank you for your letter concerning the use of
paper ballots in the November 7, 2006, elections. I
appreciate hearing from you and welcome the
opportunity to respond.
I understand your concerns with regards to
electronic voting machines and the state of elections in
this country. Like you, I believe that election integrity is
essential for public confidence in our democracy and
system of government. Unfortunately, experiences in
recent elections have demonstrated that voting machines
can be vulnerable to inaccuracies that compromise the
integrity of our electoral process.
As you may know, on September 26, 2006,
Senator Barbara Boxer introduced the “Confidence in
Voting Act of 2006” (S. 3943), to encourage election
polling locations to offer voters the option of casting
paper ballots, should they wish to do so. This bill was
referred to the Senate Committee on Rules and
Administration, but did not come to a full Senate vote
before the end of session on September 29, 2006.
Meanwhile, I am currently reviewing a number of
proposed bills to ensure accurate and reliable voting
systems. One such bill, the “Voting Integrity and
Verification Act of 2005” (S. 330), was introduced by
Senator John Ensign (R-NV) on February 9, 2005. I am
an original cosponsor of S. 330, which would require
electronic voting machines to produce individual, voter
verifiable permanent paper records for every vote cast, so
that voters can check the accuracy of their ballots and
officials can conduct a manual audit or recount, should
one be necessary. Currently, this legislation is under
review in the Senate Committee on Rules and
Administration, of which I am a member. Please be
assured that I will keep your concerns in mind should S.
330 or similar bills come before the United States Senate.
Once again, thank you for writing to me. I hope
you will continue to keep me informed on issues of
importance to you. Should you have any additional
questions or comments, please feel free to call my
Washington, D.C. staff at (202) 224-3841.
Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator
http://feinstein.senate.gov
Further information about my position on issues of concern to California and the Nation are available at my website http://feinstein.senate.gov. You can also receive electronic e-mail updates by subscribing to my e-mail list at
http://feinstein.senate.gov/issue.html.
1 Comment | California, Class Warfare, Clean Elections, Democrats, Election Fraud, Meta Post, Progressive Movement, Voting Rights | Permalink
Posted by tekstone
This Friday night (and for the rest of this month), PBS’s acclaimed national news magazine NOW will air a special on California’s Proposition 89 and the national movement for clean elections. PBS bills the show as “A special hour-long investigation into the ‘Clean Elections’ movement, a fight to keep American elections free and fair across the country.” Be sure to watch the show and let others know about it.
Here is the local Oakland listing of dates and times.
In announcing the upcoming show, titled “Can Clean Elections Save Our Democracy?” PBS notes that: “The run-up to this year’s midterm election smells of scandal and corruption. From the $90,000 found in Rep. Jefferson’s freezer to the scandal-tied resignation and indictment of Rep. Tom Delay, a question emerges: Can anyone stop the influence of Big Money on political campaigns?” “Votes for Sale?” will spotlight the so-called Clean Elections movement. It may not only help clean up politics, but also open the door for more average Americans to run for office and win.
watch a preview:
Working group meetings of volunteers are coming up in San Francisco, Oakland, Irvine, Palo Alto, Corte Madera, and Rohnert park in the next few days to plan local activities for Prop 89. Check the 89now events page for more details.
Phone banking is happening Sunday through Thursday in Los Angeles, Glendale, San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Clara, Sacramento, and San Diego. Check the 89now phone bank page for times and places.
Leave a Comment » | Clean Elections, Current Posts, Progressive Movement, Video posts, Voting Rights | Permalink
Posted by tekstone
Help stop the rightwingnuts from further disenfranchising voters by signing this petition:
http://www.releasethereport.com
Leave a Comment » | Action, Clean Elections, Election Fraud, Meta Post, The Bear Says, Voting Rights | Permalink
Posted by tekstone
You are currently browsing the archives for the Voting Rights category.
Bear Republic Action Group 