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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (56110)	1/25/2006 10:29:13 AM
From: Crimson Ghost	Respond to of 362293

buzzflash.com January 25, 2006 A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL John Kerry would have made a good and decent President, but he was a lousy candidate: he listened to the greedy Democratic consultants who always confuse losing and wimpiness with some vague concept of "being moderate." What the Dems have failed to understand in recent years -- and are once again evidencing by their failure to filibuster Alito -- is that you win by winning. It's that simple. Americans respect winners. Winning changes perceptions in and of itself. You can't be perceived as strong on national security, when you don't have the guts to defend yourself from attacks that you don't have any guts. That's what happened to John Kerry when he let the Barbary Pirate hit men of the Bush Campaign, the treacherous "Swift Boat Liars," define him as a liar and a coward -- when they were supporting a ticket composed of two chickenhawks who worked mighty damn hard to successfully evade service in Vietnam. The list of courageous veterans that the Bush character assassination squad has attacked is long, including Max Cleland, Al Gore, John McCain, John Kerry and John Murtha -- their latest victim. It took James Webb, a Republican war hero and Secretary of the Navy under Reagan, to recently pen a scathing attack on the permanent Bush campaign against war heroes who oppose any of their policies. Webb was filled with outrage over such a cowardly tactic. Many of us in the progressive journalism field came to the defense of John Kerry for the rightful recognition he deserved for his valiant service in Vietnam. We defended him at a time when he barely defended himself. He didn't fight back against the Bush slander early enough or hard enough. But we were there for him. Now, John Kerry is contemplating a second run for the Presidency. He has strategically criticized the Bush Administration and worked on building up a list of supporters and contributors, employing, among other tools, an aggressive Internet strategy. Most recently, he posted a "petition" that asked people to support him in getting other senators to oppose Alito. The petition concludes, "I am honored to join John Kerry by putting my name in the Congressional Record against Judge Alito. I call on you to do the same with your vote." So here's the Kerry trade-off, you give him your name and e-mail address and it is added to his list of potential campaign contributors and supporters. In return, Kerry votes "No" against Alito (as if a Democratic Senator from Massachusetts could get away with voting "Yes"), knowing that it doesn't matter because there are 55 Republicans and they will all vote for Alito, unless there is a defector or two. The petition is meaningless, except as a way for Kerry to grow his campaign list. He knows that; we know that. By now, it shouldn't be James Webb, a Bush Administration official, who should be expressing the outrage we all feel. It should be Kerry. He was vilified, slandered, and filleted by the Bush campaign thugs, and he is still pretending it is of value to lose, as long as you get a high vote count. Meanwhile, the Busheviks are laughing all the way to the coronation. They rightfully disdain and deride "symbolic votes." They only are interested in victories. And they will get Sam Alito on the Supreme Court, because the Dems don't have the guts to filibuster him. After awhile, people stop voting for Democrats for national office because they simply don't fight hard enough. And people don't define leadership by empty rhetoric that's not backed up by action and victories. It's amazing that we've come so far that Sandra Day O'Connor, who was the pivotal vote in stealing the election from Al Gore in 2000, is considered the gold standard of moderation. It's amazing that the John Kerrys of the world are pretending to lead, when all they are doing is collecting donor prospects for a run at the White House. What good is your name in the Congressional Record when you have a Supreme Court that supports an incompetent, law-breaking Caesar with unaccountable power in the White House? John Kerry should stop with his meaningless petitions and do what he won't do because he doesn't have the passion to stand up for democracy. He should chuck his campaign list ruse, rise to the Senate floor and begin a filibuster. He should stand up for democracy and the Constitution and stop his low-risk posturing. We stood behind John Kerry even when he wouldn't stand up for himself. The least he could do is rise from his Senate chair and begin the fight to restore our Constitutional system of checks and balances, beginning with the words: "This attack on our Constitution will not stand. Ladies and gentleman, I am not going to stop speaking until we get a Supreme Court nominee from the White House who will uphold our Constitution, our checks and balances, and apply the law to every citizen of America, even the President of the United States." All you have to do is stand up to take a stand, John Kerry. We don't need any ineffective petitions. We need to see the man who fought courageously in Vietnam, and then came back home to risk everything to ask, "who will be the last man to die for a mistake?" Now we ask you this, John Kerry: Who will be the leader that stands up for the Constitution and leads 40 more senators to sustain a filibuster until we stop the betrayal of the American Revolution? A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (56110)	1/25/2006 4:47:51 PM
From: Ron	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 362293

ALASKA STANDOFF: Democrats want 2004 base election data; Diebold is playing coy. By LISA DEMER Anchorage Daily News The state Division of Elections has refused to turn over its electronic voting files to the Democrats, arguing that the data format belongs to a private company and can't be made public. The Alaska Democratic Party says the information is a public record essential for verifying the accuracy of the 2004 general election and must be provided. The official vote results from the last general election are riddled with discrepancies and impossible for the public to make sense of, the Democrats said Monday. A detailed analysis of the underlying data could answer lingering questions about an election many thought was over more than a year ago, they say. "Basically what they say is they want to give us a printout from the (electronic) file. They don't want to give us the file itself. It doesn't enable us to get to the bottom of what we need to know," said Kay Brown, spokeswoman for the party. At this point, it's impossible to say whether the correct candidates were declared the winner in all Alaska races from 2004, Brown said. The private contractor hired to provide Alaska's electronic voting machines is Diebold Election Systems. It has told Alaska officials it owns the "structure of the database" though the data itself is public. State officials say the Democrats have it wrong. "The issue is not about whether public information can be released, because the Division of Elections has already offered to provide the information requested by the (Alaska Democratic Party)," elections director Whitney Brewster said in a written statement. "The issue is that the (Democratic Party) is asking for a file format the state of Alaska uses but does not own." Diebold told the state it owns the format, which can't be released because it's a company secret. Diebold maintains its voting systems produce accurate results, as proven through recounts in numerous close races, said Mark Radke, Diebold director of marketing. Questions still hound the company. Some elections officials in other states are questioning whether its electronic machines are secure. Investors have sued the Ohio-based parent company, Diebold Inc., over whether it concealed problems with its voting machines, among other issues. Its chief executive, who once vowed to deliver Ohio electoral votes to President Bush, recently stepped down. The latest controversy concerns the database holding the results of Alaska's 2004 general election. Democrats say it's important for them to see the database in its original structure ---- the format in which the data was created and now is stored and reported. That's how they hope to figure out if the votes were registered and reported accurately. But under the state's contract with Diebold, that cannot be released, Brewster said. Documents provided by the Democrats show that Brewster contacted Diebold and was told the public data can be released only after being transferred to a common format such as Microsoft Excel. In a Jan. 6 e-mail, Diebold's lawyer, Charles R. Owen, told Brewster that "the structure of the database file ... is proprietary information." Perhaps, but it's not secret. Anyone can examine Diebold's format on a Web site set up by activists who have been raising questions about the company, the Alaska Democrats said. "Copies of these kinds of files have been sitting on the Internet for over two years, with Diebold's knowledge," said Jim March, an investigator with Black Box Voting, a private organization that calls itself a national consumer protection group for voters. Diebold has blocked the group's efforts to get election files in California, Colorado and Washington state, March said. But the data format has been released in a Florida county and in Memphis, Tenn., during a challenge of a mayoral election, he said. What the state has offered leaves out "the forensic traces we need to figure out what really happened," March said. The Black Box group is helping the Alaska Democratic Party. "The results from the 2004 election in Alaska just plain look squirrelly," March said. For instance, district-by-district vote totals add up to 292,267 votes for President Bush, but his official total was only 190,889. Election officials have an explanation. Early votes for statewide candidates were not recorded by House district but rather were tallied for each of the state's four election regions. Those regional totals then were reported for every House district, essentially inflating the vote total many times over. The results should be reported differently next time, officials have said. Democrats also contend more than 2,000 Alaskans cast valid absentee ballots that weren't counted in official totals. Unless they get the entire file, they won't be able to understand what caused the "bizarre and inaccurate reports" from Alaska's 2004 election, they say. "These votes belong to us," Brown said. "These are all public record. It's wrong that a contractor like Diebold can keep us from seeing the record." adn.com