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Hi Free Press:

Thank you so much for continuing to fight for fair elections.  

I have one suggestion to make.  I have been a computer programmer for 30 years.  Believe me - voting machines are a much simpler application than ATMs.  

So, if companies like Diebold who make both types of machines say that it is too difficult to produce paper receipts and an audit log we should be able to easily debunk this nonsense. That is, we should do is keep reminding the public that ATMs produce these audit trails and that Diebold and others' claims are nonsense.  

People can easily understand this when using the ATM analogy.

Helen W Slater

I just cannot see for the life of me how the majority of citizens here in Ohio, and America are buying into the deceitful antics of the Republican Party, including the ones who are so hard right on their American views and standards. Look at what's going on, gas prices are higher than ever before. The president is talking about "adjusting" the socialk security system by privatizing it. Our schools and libraries are losing their funding. And we're still losing jobs. Worse yet, religion-oriented people care more about abortion, national security, and stem-cell than they are about the future of our children, the poor, the underemployed, the unemployed, the underprivileged, and the uninsured. What is this country coming to? As I recall, in a political campaign ad put on by the Bush Administration and conservatives like "best-selling journalism author" Ann Coulter and 300-lb Southern GOP-supporting "shock jock" Ben Ferguson (who wrote a book tiled "It's My America Too", Republicans were blaming John Kerry and his "liberals in Congress" for the cause of job loss, underfunded education, and outrageous gas price inflation. Wrong, I don't think so!! I think the GOP
AUSTIN, Texas -- I must confess, I have sadly underestimated the Bush administration's sense of humor. Appointing John Bolton ambassador to the United Nations: boffo! What a laff riot! Hilarious comedy, a delicious romp, great setup for a sit-com.

Bolton is known for being arrogant, humorless, self-righteous and confrontational, and he hates the United Nations. In other words, the perfect diplomat.

Speaking of setups, would the joke be half as good if President Bush hadn't just returned from a tour of Europe during which he assured our allies he was anxious to improve international cooperation? There, he was promising Europeans old and new that we'd turned a new page, we want nothing more than consultation, cooperation, being buddy-buddy. And then he names Bolton ambassador (oh, ha ha) to the United Nations (ha, ha, ha). Bolton keeps a bronzed grenade in his office to show how proud he is of being called a bomb-thrower.

Without his make-up, Dan looked like hell warmed over: old, defeated, yet angry. And he told our television audience something that just blew me away. Dan Rather said that American reporters may not ask tough questions about George Bush or his wars.

"It's an obscene comparison," Rather said, "but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around peoples' necks if they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be neck-laced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck."

Talking to another reporter, Dan told it straight about the careerism that keeps US journalists in line. "It's that fear that keeps [American] journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions and to continue to bore-in on the tough questions so often."

Imagine for a minute that we are back in the Clinton era.  Someone breaks the story that a former male prostitute using an alias and working for a phony news organization has been allowed into the White House every day without a full security background check.  This “reporter” got his start in the prestigious White House press corps despite having no prior journalistic experience and despite being denied press credentials by the journalist-run Congressional press office.

This “reporter” is known by his phony first name to the president and partisan White House press officials.  He also is known to legitimate reporters covering the White House for mainstream news organizations, for two reasons.  First, he always seems to ask questions that are supportive of the president and disparaging of the other party.  Second, and more importantly, he seems to have inside information before anyone else, including major newspapers and television networks, on key stories such as when the Iraq War is starting and whether Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA operative.  The leaking of Ms. Plame’s name, which is a serious crime,
Back in the early 1990s, the right-wing taste of the year was Newt Gingrich. He led the Republican sweep into Congress in the 1994 mid-term elections. His "Contract With America" loomed in every headline. Liberals wailed that Gingrichism was invincible.

The counterattack began right in Gingrich's front yard, in Georgia. The Atlanta Central Labor Council and Jobs with Justice staged a noisy sit-in in Gingrich's local Congressional office and seized the headlines with stinging descriptions of the Contract as a cruel assault on the poor and the working class. For months, groups of union workers dogged the congressman at his every stop across the country. This noisy guerrilla warfare rallied the faint-hearted and threw Gingrich, then speaker of the house, off balance. By 1995, a rattled Gingrich had lost his touch, faltering badly in the famous budget face-off with Clinton.

The Bush family and friends stole both the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections. The covert operations long associated with George Herbert Walker Bush, former President and CIA director, are now overtly practiced in key battleground states.

The mainstream media is much like medieval theologians, who refused to accept the obvious, that the Earth revolved around the sun. Instead, they plotted bizarre planet rotations to prove the Earth was the center of the universe.

“Yes, son there is a Santa Claus.” “Yes, Son and Daughter, George W. Bush did win the Presidency fair and square.” Yes, Son and Daughter Bloggers are condemned to extension.” ”Yes, son and daughter, Iraq did have Weapons of Mass Destruction.” “Yes, son and daughter, Social Security is in crisis and must be privatized!!”  Now I ask you, which one of these statements are true??  The answer is that NONE of these statements are true!!! Everyone knows this but in the media only a Blogger will tell you the stark shock and awe truth.

Presently the popular term “Blogging” denotes the existence and growth of the many People with a Personal Computer, Who use them to report facts, figures, and events as they see them. This reporting, by Bloggers has become a problem for the Military and the Administration, which presently are using the “Traditional Media” for a propaganda vehicle for the undeclared “War On Terrorism.” Blogging has made it difficult for propaganda to maximize its impact on public opinion.

President Bush and members of Congress are on a relentless crusade to rid this country of junk lawsuits.

“We’re making progress toward a better legal system,” said President Bush after signing legislation limiting awards for medical malpractice cases. “There’s more to do…We have a responsibility to confront frivolous lawsuits head-on.”

To find lawsuits most frivolous of all, lawmakers need look no further than free trade deals. Yet, when it comes to free trade, the Bush Administration turns a blind-eye on legal reform.

Public Citizen recently published a report, NAFTA Chapter 11 Investor-State Cases: Lessons for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which documents lawsuits filed by transnational corporations challenging local, state, and federal laws of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. These challenges usually mean cash payments to these corporations, which comes out of taxpayers’ pockets.

Here are a few examples:

A spokesman for the Green Party's 2004 presidential campaign, which initiated the Ohio recount, today blasted the suggestion by Ohio's Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell that he would need to take depositions from John Kerry and John Edwards as part of the Ohio recount litigation.

"Mr. Blackwell's contention that he needs to depose Senators Kerry and Edwards is a laughable and blatantly political move. Mr. Blackwell has refused to be deposed himself about the Ohio election, has refused to appear before Congress and has refused to answer questions from members of the House Judiciary Committee who have been investigating allegations of election fraud. To suggest that Kerry and Edwards should be deposed to address a legal technicality while Mr. Blackwell continues to avoid any public scrutiny of his own misconduct in the Ohio election is the height of hypocrisy," said Blair Bobier, Media Director for the 2004 Cobb-LaMarche campaign.

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