http://www.democracyforamerica.com/highl...

Debra Bowen, California Secretary of State

Debra was elected to office in 2006, as an A-List candidate supported by DFA members across the country. In August of 2007, she took a brave and controversial action to deauthorize all election voting machines in the state of California. Californian DFA members were proud that she defended voting rights and made hundreds of calls to County Clerks across the state in support of her action. http://debrabowen.com/

Our Secretary of State just got paper ballot machines purchased for all Iowans for November.

has New York recounted the Harlem precincts yet where no recorded vote was made for Obama?

Howard Dean is first.

they never did record those 75,000 votes for Obama taken away for the need to double mark those California ballots by independents switching over to vote did they?

3.

Phil Specht
Sun, 03/23/08

Yes we did! http://www.couragecampaign.org/

3.

Phil Specht
Sun, 03/23/08

Yes we did! http://www.couragecampaign.org/

4000

Thank you Susan for your positively positive thread.

"BREAKING NEWS: Prosecutor announces perjury, other charges against Detroit mayor and ex-aide"

No link yet... this is why the Detroit Media has not been paying any attention to the possible primary do-over. They've all been focused on the above story. The mayor is to turn himself in no later than tomorrow morning at 7:00 am... stayed tuned!

11.

Bob (NJ for Democracy)
Mon, 03/24/08

...So yes, Israeli actions are sometimes over the top (as happens everywhere). But considering that they're surrounded and outnumbered 36 to 1 by people who have been screaming for their blood since long before the 1967 war, it can be hard not to overreact.
----------------

Bob, your arguments (especially photo you’ve posted) may sound and look quite convincing, however there are some other arguments too that belongs to very same Jewish people as well.
They are in small number so far which IS getting larger and larger every day (much in the same way as the number of Americans who opposes the Iraq war today).

You may want to take a look at views and stances of these Jews as well to realize that almost diametrical to yours, the opposite ones do exist and it is viable.

You, of course, can disregard, denounce, reject those people and their positions, call them traitors, etc. however it will not make them and their stances to disappear.

You are welcome, it is here: http://www.nkusa.org/

Congrats to Debra Bowen.

8.

roger rankin
Mon, 03/24/08

Reply to this
4000
------
Heartbreaking as hell.

A hearty and well-deserved congratulations to Debra Bowen!

******
Just passing through and of course, I am never able to stay on topic. True to form, I will share the following link sent from one of my sisters in MT. It's a belated post from the NYT (which I barely even skim anymore and thus miss the occasional gem).

It's belated in that the piece was published before St. Pat's and St. Pat's was almost a week ago.

But it's still worth a read for any of my fellow BFAers who are *Irish,* either in spirit or in blood.

Butte (pronounced "be-yoot" by most, except that some locals still refer to it fondly as "butt-ie"), MT was a thriving MT metropolis in the days when the powerful Anaconda Co. and copper were *kings* in the state. It probably had the most polyglot US population anywhere between Chicago and Seattle and had such a reputation for street-brawling even in the '50s that any us out-of-town high-schoolers who happened to be there in support of our particular football or basketball team were cautioned strictly always to remain in groups, lest we be accosted.

I realize now that much of that was *urban* legend, counting several Butte-ites as former colleagues and current friends, but it truly was a colorful place in its heyday. If you went to the *loo* there, your *throne* was likely to be in a former mine shaft. Quite an experience.

And it is one reminder of how rich we in the US are in our diversity.

Now off again.

======================
March 12, 2008
Timothy Egan
True Irish

For a time, Gaelic was the common language in the mining warrens beneath Butte, Mont., and by the dawn of the 20th century the city had a higher percentage of Irish than any other in America – including Boston.

Butte was a hard-edged, dirty, dangerous town on the crest of the Continental Divide, and if a single man lived to his 30th birthday he was considered lucky. Yet entire parishes left the emerald desperation of County Cork for the copper mines of Butte, fleeing a land where British occupiers had once refused to let mothers educate their children, and where famine had killed a million people in seven years’ time.

[...]
It is a city looking for a tomorrow, with too many poor and old, a city of memories, once the biggest between Minneapolis and Seattle. In Butte, you find people on St. Patrick’s Day who remind you that “Danny Boy� was written by an Englishman who most likely never set foot in Ireland. And more than once you will hear this Irish saying: “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at who he gives it to.�

[...]
But the glamour Gaelics, much as we love to talk about them, are not what resonates deep in the Irish-American soul. For that, you have to go to the famine — or the Great Hunger, as it was called. A wet summer allowed a potato blight to spread, killing the crop on which so many poor Irish subsisted. Between 1845 and 1851, a million people died, and another million left — a human rights tragedy on a scale of Darfur today. In some counties, one in four people starved to death.

[...]
Butte, Montana, was built on the backs of the famine Irish and their children. In another half-century, I fear, Butte may end up a ghost town. But as long as there are Irish who remember where they came from, this city will always be a part of the Irish-American character.

http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/12...

Off Subject.

Wanted to share this view from space of Northern Lights over AK from space.

Astronauts provide perspective on Aurora

In a view form the International Space Station facing north, the green glow of aurora borealis stretches over the Gulf of Alaska. The photograph was taken by a crew member of space shuttle Endeavour, which was scheduled to leave the station this morning. The circular cloud pattern below the lights indicates a low pressure area.

Beautiful isn't it.

http://www.adn.com/

environmentally blue

thank you for coming back today and joining in the give and take at a very open free speech zone

DFA is a PAC and as such those who contribute through this portal leave their Name and occupation with the FEC if they contribute over $200, so your name is public record unless you give less

many also use this site to form local action groups and of course you would need to be known by name to be involved with that

and many are active in the Democratic Party and if you are a candidate or party official or delegate you are known and elected by name there as well

we have been getting a number of pro-Hillary screeds from a number of "members"  who appeared to have joined for just that purpose, and are not seeming to be interested in actually participating but if you are you should feel welcome

Got caught up on the last few topics. I feel sorry for envblue. It is not Hillary's sex that is the issue but here own character flaws. I do admit that having Bubba hanging around is a big negative. But even without the "Great Unzipped One", Hillary is not qualified for the job.
The logic that it is Bush's war and those who voted for it do not have any responsibility for it is one of the most idiotic remarks ever mentioned.
The Senate clearly ignored its constitutional mandate that only it can declare war by allowing Bush to declare war in the future. This is clearly dereliction of duty for the Senate. Hillary goes for the instant reply by repeating her mistake on Kyl-Lieberman.
As far as the fifty state campaign is concerned, Hillary agreed with the DNC about the delegate seats not counting then has flip-flopped over to wanting the seats to count. Her decision to fabricate support for NAFTA, her Bosnia sniper story, her numerous gates, even her constant name changing show a deeply insecure person who is not ready for prime time. Hillary finds it easy to be mean but is finding it hard to be thoughtful. If Hillary wins the nomination then the 50 state strategy will be sunk and the Dem party will recede back into the woodwork contesting fewer and fewer elections.

What's occurred to me recently is that perhaps electronic vote tallying machines are unreliable because of problems inherent in the machines themselves, stemming not from malfeasance or negligence, but from the fact that electronics don't hold up well when they're not in constant use--i.e. periodicity may be the problem.  You know how batteries simply corrode over time and plastic cracks and contacts are corroded by moisture in the atmosphere?

I remembered how our traffic signals never stayed synchronized in Florida because lightning storms kept disrupting them.  And you all know what a power surge does to your computer.  As long as we have lightning and humidity and great fluctuations in temperature, electronics stuff isn't going to be reliable.

Maybe we should look at the vote tallying machines like the canaries in the mines.

How many billions have we already spent on IT systems that don't work? 

Dr. Death isw running for office...only in Michigan
http://www.woodtv.com/global/story.asp?s...

4000 

And at the end of McBush's hundred year war?

Dr. Death isw running for office...only in Michigan

I'd vote for him. Only in backward countires like America can animals be relieved of terminal misery, but not humans who can understand the decision. 

74.

Bob (NJ for Democracy)
Mon, 03/24/08

...prime democracies, like Britain, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, et al, have some measure of official religion. So labeling Israel as non-democratic because they have certain religious requirements isn't fair. So if that's the measure of what it is to be a democracy, then you can count the world's democracies on one hand.

11.

Bob (NJ for Democracy)
Mon, 03/24/08

FRED from Ashland:

I don't want this discussion to drag on forever, so I'll try to make my comments brief.

Regarding Arabs in the Israeli Knesset: I believe there are currently 10 Arab MKs,...

As for non-Jewish immgration: as of May 2006, Israel had 306,000 immigrants (approx. 4% of the population) who were not classified as Jewish.

...Arabs were killing Jewish civilians. And not just in Palestine/Israel. Yasir Arafat's cousin, the infamous Mufti (religious leader) Haj Amin el-Husseini was personally responsible for deporting 10,000 Jewish civilians to Auschwitz....

So yes, Israeli actions are sometimes over the top (as happens everywhere). But considering that they're surrounded and outnumbered 36 to 1 by people who have been screaming for their blood since long before the 1967 war, it can be hard not to overreact.

=======================

Well Bob, sorry you don't enjoy the discussion. I wish you would provide some trackable references for your remarkable facts, of which I have heard differently or never heard before.

Your attempt to play down the ethnic purity of Israel and attempts to maintain it, by comparing it to modern European countries, is absurd. I cannot say much more except that it devalues the validity and makes questionable, many of your other remarkable claims. And there are more than a handful of countries more Democratic than Israel. South African being one of them.

I have found tons of propaganda in my research on the subject of Israel and her history, and the name "Hitler" always seems to come up. Hitler even had deals with Rabbis they tell me. You must understand that if Israel had committed many atrocities against Arabs, it would not be in the grade school history book. There is an extreme amount of one-sided propaganda fed to the Jewish child in Israel, as there is to the tourist that visits, as there is in the media here. It is a real study to cut through it.

You should read "The Iron Wall" which is probably the first unbiased history of Zionism and Israel. It took a court hearing to make it legal in Israel. It is all footnoted and referenced properly.

There was a decision in the 1920s to build an "Iron Wall" because there was an assumption that the Arabs would never willingly give them a State of Israel, from that point on they decided to take the land by force. Before that there was relative harmony in Palestine.

Your assumption that Jews were being killed from the day they started going into Israel is false. There have always been Jews in Palestine, and there was peaceful immigration until the Jews and the British decided they had the God-given right to take land from Arabs, without paying for it, and give it to the Jewish immigrants.

As far as Arafat and Hitler. I did not read anything about that in Shlaim's "Iron Wall" so I doubt the validity of it. However, after the Japanese and German atrocities, and Stalin's atrocities, we leave the past in the past, and move on

what happened to linda in nm? she used to one of the constant posters.

When HIllary drops out will she campaign for Barack? I hope so. She is a  great person.

There was a great back and forth on the "view" this a.m. But that blond beeotch said she could not be friends with someone that doesn't share her views. She had the right wing talking points about barack and his white grandmother. Yes a white grandmother with a biracial grandson. She was treated very badly by some.

I don't know why they don't just send hasselback and her 3rd string quarterback husband over to faux new.

Wow Congrats to Debra, a true Dean person. Followed through on what she said she would do. How unique.

Campaigns of ideas have been replaced by "gotcha" politics: endless loops of Obama in a turban, his pastor rousing Sunday congregants with wacky rhetoric, talk-radio-heads slowly enunciating Barack Hussein Obama, and Hillary Clinton's studied hesitancy on 60 Minutes about whether Obama is a Muslim. We have the "race card," "the indignation card," "the religious card," and the "gender card." Kennedy and Reagan must be rolling over in their graves - they thought enough about Americans to talk about ideas.

For decades, the politics of identity, indignation and inertia has substituted theatrics and machination for deliberation and decision, and the younger you are, the more you will be burdened with bills not paid and decisions deferred. Yet, no American under 50 has ever entered a presidential voting booth without a Bush or Clinton as a presidential or vice presidential choice. I shudder at the thought of extending that to 36 years.

Abraham Lincoln served two years in Congress more than a decade before his inauguration. Most of his political career was as an Illinois legislator. In two tries for the Senate, he withdrew once, lost the second time. Yet he became our greatest president by rallying the country around foundation principles while deftly managing fractious politics.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/16947761.html

74.

Bob (NJ for Democracy)
Mon, 03/24/08

======================

I stand corrected, Bob, there is not only one Arab member of the knesset, but neither 17, as you claim, there are currently 12.

I need to try to figure out what I was thinking of when I said that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Knesse...

KNESSET - Party Seats

Kadima 29
Labour-Meimad 19
Likud 12
Shas 12
Yisrael Beiteinu 11
National Union*-National Religious Party 9
Gil (Pensioners) 7
United Torah Judaism** 6
Meretz-Yachad 5
United Arab List-Ta'al 4
Hadash 3
Balad 3

Total 120

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knesset

----------------------

Current ARAB (Palestinian) Members of Knesset (12 total)

Name Party(s) Knesset(s) Comments

Mohammad Barakeh Hadash 15th, 16th, 17th Formerly Deputy Knesset speaker

Taleb el-Sana Arab Democratic Party, United Arab List 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th

Nadia Hilou Labour 17th

Raleb Majadele Labour 16th, 17th First Muslim Arab Minister (currently Minister of Science, Culture & Sport)

Said Nafa Balad 17th

Ibrahim Sarsur United Arab List 17th

Hana Sweid Hadash 17th

Wasil Taha Balad 16th, 17th

Ahmad Tibi Ta'al (as part of various alliances) 15th, 16th, 17th

Majalli Wahabi Likud, Kadima 16th, 17th Currently Deputy
Knesset speaker, briefly acting President

Jamal Zahalka Balad 16th, 17th

Abbas Zakour United Arab List 17th

On the subject of Israel, Bruce Dixon of BAR sums it up nicely:

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=562&Itemid=1

And of course our "stalwart ally", as Barack called Israel, in fact a murderous apartheid regime in which Arab "citizens" are forbidden from owning land in much of the country, where their marriages are not recognized by the state, where Arabs are issued different license plates so their cars can be profiled from a distance, and many other indignities.  And those are Arabs with Israeli citizenship.  Palestinians, the owners of the land only two generation ago, are still experiencing wholesale confiscation of their remaining land and assets, penned up into Gaza and the West Bank, humiliated, starved and murdered at will by Israeli armed forces and death squads.  Obama knows these to be facts, and at earlier points in his political career would show up at Palestinian events in Chicago.  But the political game he has chosen to play, and the allies he has chose to play it with require a selective memory.

1:15pm

12.

former
Mon, 03/24/08

Reply to this

11.

Bob (NJ for Democracy)

Bob, your arguments (especially photo you?ve posted) may sound and look quite convincing, however there are some other arguments too that belongs to very same Jewish people as well.
=========================

It is discouraging that any criticism of Israel is met with the presumption of "anti-semitism." This disposition has to be manufactured.

It is very upsetting to someone like myself who's parents had Jewsish friends, and acquaitances, like the Jewish dry cleaner who sat my kitchen and had morning coffee with me and my mother. My mother worked for years in a hairdressing shop owned by Jews in a Jewish neighborhood in Newark, NJ and got along fine.

Although I must say, my Jewish brother-in-law thinks he's a comedian, but always makes babies cry, which makes us laugh our asses off. :)

Just found this on daily kos. how cool

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Celebrate The Democralypse!

When Stephen Colbert ran for president, supporters donated $66,000 to South Carolina classrooms in his honor. Do Senators Clinton and Obama have the keystones to do for the Keystone State what the Colbert Nation did for the Palmetto State? Let's find out.

Click one of the challenges below to support a Pennsylvania classroom in honor of your favorite candidate. (Questions?)

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Thank you, Phil - for wecoming environmentally blue to this wonderful Dean-inspired discussion group.

I want to add - in an attempt to ease up on my own strong-willed statements - that I would much prefer Senator Clinton to Senator McCain. I hope that all of us here would think about politics in gradients - rather than in the black-and-white way ( seriously - no pun intended ) which the media seems intent on portraying the various campaigns - in order to get a row out of people.

Shame on the media for instigating these dog-and-cat fights. The best way we can respond is to not buy into these battles.

And, as always . . . . . . .

And, apologies for the loaded question about you and "Trixie". Many of my fellow Dean Democrats know the inside scoop on that matter.

Monica thank you for the update on the film. I know Phil Donahue was at the TBA conf showing it.

I want to see it. I hate what this nation has become.

Have you watched John Adams? It will shake you.

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/15983/original.jpg

In remembrance of the 4,000 brave men and women who sacrificed everything for us -- and the two men who would continue this great tragedy, despite the cost to our soldiers, our military, and our nation.

just wanted to say, I miss jc's voice here.  her birthday would have been last Thursday - the first day of spring this year.  I'm sorry I let it slip by me.

~*~*~*~* HAPPY BIRTHDAY, jc, WHEREVER YOU ARE *~*~*~*~

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE GOOD CONVERSATIONS AND YOUR ENDLESS WIT!  YOUR INCREDIBLE GRAPHICS AND WONDERFUL RECIPES.  YOU WILL ALWAYS BE THOUGHT OF WITH LOVE AND LAUGHTER.

and tomorrow's Oscar's birthday - I miss his links to the political 'toons....

Perhaps there are many Hillary supporters reading this blog who would vote for BO if he's the nominee - but maybe not, since HC supporters are not welcome here at all.

It don't think it wise to make feel unwelcome people who just might support your guy later on.  It's really a turn off to notice how you treated environmental blue; as well as Linda NM. 

You guys are supporting a man who talks about coming together and being nice and calm and listening to all points of view...yet some of you don't reflect that at all.

Trashing HC supporters now and then expecting them to vote for BO later is a bit presumptious, doncha think?  And then if BO loses to McC, you'll blame the HC supporters.  Is that how it goes?

Just asking.  Phil was he only one who made environmental blue feel welcome; and I too welcome her/him.

Anybody know where sam went?  I loved his posts. 

Hi sea. I didn't get the sense that the folks here were trashing environmentally blue - if it seemed that way to you, I know we can always try harder to be inclusive. Thanks for the reflection on what was certainly a contentious thread.

When our words are not accompanied by our actual tone of voice and our facial expression, it is easy to misconstrue the intent. That is the major downside of internet communications - and our english language is intrinsically lacking in savoir faire. I know from experience that I have had some good relations go bad - partially because one side or the other felt like the other was being sarcastic or even nasty.

Tant pis.

And, as always . . . . . .

I have an acquaintance who is a Clinton supporter - while being supportive orf a potential Obama candidacy. Her enthusiasm for Clinton is to be admired, I believe - and I don't intend to burn any bridges between now and November - strong underlying disagreements or not.

   California Secy of State Debra Bowen deserved this award. Three cheers Debra, for you! She is a leader in trying to bring attention to the flaws and unreliability of these e-voting machines. It's interesting to note that when votes are flipped or improperly counted, 90% of the time the mistake benefited the Republican candidate? It defies the law of averages!

J.M. in  N.Y.-  DeJaVu57

congrats, debra!!!  you make dfa and california progressives proud!

how about running for governor in the future?