A BONE OF CONTENTION

A BONE OF CONTENTION by Rosemary R. Brasch I heard it. I knew I would. John Kerry said it. George W. Bush said it. And myriad others will join the chorus. They told us it's now a time of healing. But, I don't want to heal, and I don't intend to be healed. "Healing" is merely code for shutting up and allowing the President to do whatever it is he plans to do. But we did that for four years. Four years we waited for the President to stop rending this nation apart and be a uniter not a divider, as he promised. Four years we gave him the benefit of the doubt as to his truthfulness. Four years the subservient press went along with whatever he and his minions said; there was almost no investigating, no insisting on substantive answers to important questions, no in-depth reporting on the effect the Bush administration was having on the country. And we kept watching. Now we should "heal"? I think not. It's ludicrous to even use that word given the state of our country's health care, with 45 million Americans unable to afford medical insurance. Possibly, I've mistaken the spelling of "heal." Perhaps what the politicians want from us is not to "heal," but to "heel." Like subservient pets, we're supposed to be quiet, walk behind them, and continue to obey their commands without question. I don't want to obey. I don't want to agree with this President's immoral war. I don't want to quietly accept the unnecessary deaths and maiming of our good young men and women and innocent Iraqi children. I don't want to be forced to stand in a "Free-speech zone" to disagree-about anything. I want to protest wherever and however I can. It used to be a right under the First Amendment in the pre-Bush and Ashcroft era. I want to dissent even more fiercely and disagree more loudly than before. My voice still isn't being be heard in Washington. I want my civil rights-I want your civil rights-returned. I don't want to accept that my liberalism is worse than leprosy. I don't want to accept that my Christian, Baptist, background is boiled down to immoral heathenism because I don't agree with many of the President's followers and their views of religion. And, as a registered Republican, I don't want my political views to ever be equated with those who think they have a God-given mandate to crusade against all who see things differently. George Bush again says he'll reach out to Democrats. How about reaching out to all good Americans-regardless of their beliefs-who disagree with his first four year reign of terrorism? The last time he reached out to all of America, he patted us with a tax refund with one hand and with the other hand swatted away our civil liberties by shredding our Constitution with the PATRIOT Act. A second term, with a conservative House and Senate, will give him the opportunity to add to the PATRIOT Act with even more restrictions in the name of "freedom." No second term "honeymoon." Four years was long enough. And, while we wait for the next election, the war against Iraq rages, destroying lives of Americans and Iraqis while al-Qaeda flourishes and grows. Our environment continues to reek with Presidential destruction. Our health care system continues to deteriorate. The President, more of a "tax and spend" fanatic than any liberal ever was, will continue to weaken our economy by adding to the national debt he created. And, most of all, our rights and liberties will continue to wither under the guise that the "war on terrorism" means we have to sacrifice our country's principles, while the upper classes become even richer through tax cuts and no-bid contracts. I want the world's people (I think God may have even created them-hard to believe he made such a huge mistake with everyone but us) to see massive demonstrations throughout our country against an unjust and inhumane war and against a president who lied to get us into it-while deceiving us about how well it's going. It's not going well-and the rest of the world knows it-while we Americans get the purified propaganda spoon fed at "briefings" and "press conferences" about the wonders of a new democratic Iraq by a scared-to-be-called-liberal press. Read the opinions of the rest of the world about Bush-not America, but Bush. We need to protest and demonstrate loudly and constantly until the Administration, the House, and the Senate-ever fearful of not being reelected-are moved to act. I want once again to be a proud American. So heal/heel if you want to-but it behooves those millions of Americans who disagreed before to do so even more vociferously now. Patriotic citizens need to be the nation's watchdogs-we've allowed ourselves to be lapdogs too long. [Rosemary R. Brasch is a national disaster family services specialist for the Red Cross and a former union grievance officer. You may contact Brasch at espyrose@hotmail.com] ~~~~~~~ Walter M. Brasch, Ph.D. professor of journalism Bloomsburg University Bloomsburg, Pa. 17815 570-389-4565 http://www.walterbrasch.com ~~~~~~~

Evidence Mounts That The Vote Was Hacked

Evidence Mounts That The Vote Was Hacked: " Published on Saturday, November 6, 2004 by CommonDreams.org Evidence Mounts That The Vote Was Hacked by Thom Hartmann When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat. 'It was practice for a national effort,' Fisher told me. And some believe evidence is accumulating that the national effort happened on November 2, 2004. The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available at http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and noticed something startling." Continued...... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And it will continue until he's in handcuffs Mycos

Mercy and Murder at Issue in Iraq Death

Mercy and Murder at Issue in Iraq Death THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ Mercy and Murder at Issue in Iraq Death * Two U.S. soldiers face charges after taking life of injured youth. They say he was already gone. By Edmund Sanders, Times Staff Writer BAGHDAD — As a U.S. Army patrol rolled into Sadr City one night in August, soldiers received a tip that militants in dump trucks were planting roadside bombs. American troops had been clashing regularly with Al Mahdi militiamen in the restive Baghdad slum. So when Staff Sgt. Cardenas Alban of Carson saw an object fall from a garbage truck in the distance, his company took positions around the vehicle and unleashed a barrage of fire from rifles and a 25-millimeter cannon atop a Bradley fighting vehicle. The truck exploded in flames. As soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, approached the burning vehicle, they did not find insurgents. The victims were mainly teenagers, hired to work the late shift picking up trash for about $5 a night, witnesses said. Medics scrambled to treat the half-dozen people strewn around the scene. A dispute broke out among a handful of soldiers standing over one severely wounded young man who was moaning in pain. An uninjured Iraqi claiming to be a relative pleaded in broken English for soldiers to help the victim. But to the horror of bystanders, Alban, 29, a boyish-faced sergeant who joined the Army in 1997, retrieved an M-231 assault rifle and fired at the wounded man. Seconds later, another soldier, Staff Sgt. Johnny Horne Jr., 30, of Winston-Salem, N.C., grabbed an M-16 rifle and also shot the victim. continued...... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Bring 'em home ? This incident raises the question, "Do we really want to be teaching our youth how to kill in cold blood?" Yes, sometimes war is neccesary to protect our borders. Like Vietnam, Iraq wasn't one of them. The more soldiers we train then send off, only to return to our streets with wounded, often angry, tortured souls, is not going to make our country any safer. Mycos

TomPaine.com - Kerry Won. . .

TomPaine.com - Kerry Won. . . Bush won Ohio by 136,483 votes. In the United States, about 3 percent of votes cast are voided—known as “spoilage” in election jargon—because the ballots cast are inconclusive. Drawing on what happened in Florida and studies of elections past, Palast argues that if Ohio’s discarded ballots were counted, Kerry would have won the state. Today, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports there are a total of 247,672 votes not counted in Ohio, if you add the 92,672 discarded votes plus the 155,000 provisional ballots. So far there's no indication that Palast's hypothesis will be tested because only the provisional ballots are being counted. Greg Palast, contributing editor to Harper's magazine, investigated the manipulation of the vote for BBC Television's Newsnight. The documentary, "Bush Family Fortunes," based on his New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, has been released this month on DVD . Kerry won. Here are the facts.

One Last Job .../ 18-29 year olds 2-1 for Kerry

- From: Michael Moore Subject: One Last Job for Us to Do Today, Election Day, to Honor a Soldier from Flint November 2, 2004 -- Election Day Friends, In addition to your local MoveOn/ACT/Dem Party HQ still needing help at this hour, to make calls and go door to door (call them now or just leave the house and go down to their office and volunteer!), each of us can do something at this very moment that could tip the election -- and we don't even have to leave our chairs. Pull out your cell phone as you are reading this and go to your cell address book on your phone. Now just go down the list of your family and friends, one by one, hit the green "OK/Send" button and call each of them up. Ask them if they've already voted and, if not, gently remind them that you need them to vote today. It's just a quick call to say "hi" and "PLEASE get to the polls as soon as possible." Ask them if they need any help with a ride or watching the kids or whatever. Offer to take them yourselves. Take them to lunch or dinner afterward. If they don’t know where to go to vote, they (or you) can find out by calling 1-866-OUR-VOTE or going to http://www.michaelmoore.com/takeaction/vote/wheretovote.php. We are hours away from what we hope will be the good news about President-elect Kerry. But it won't happen unless each of us puts everything we can into every minute we have left. I'm in Tallahassee this morning, and Cleveland this afternoon. I won't stop ‘till the last polls have closed. I promised Lila Lipscomb, the mother from Flint who lost her son in Iraq, that I would do whatever I could to honor her son's last wish in his last letter home to her from the battlefield in Iraq: "What in the world is wrong with George 'TRYING TO BE LIKE HIS DAD' Bush? He got us out here for nothing whatsoever. I am so furious right now mama. I really hope they do not-elect that fool honestly." Please join me, wherever you are in this great country, and make Sgt. Michael Pedersen's last request to us, the American people, become a reality. We owe it to him and to the rest of the world. Yours, Michael Moore www.michaelmoore.com MMFlint@aol.com P.S. To the millions of 18 to 29-year-olds I've met or seen on this tour, I truly believe YOU are the ones who are going to make the difference today. You are going to vote in record numbers and you are going to be the ones responsible for removing George W. Bush from the White House. You were taken for granted by the pollsters and the pundits for the past year and now you are about to show them just what kind of power the 40 million of you hold in your hands. Sweet! See ya at the victory party! Cf: Pollster John Zogby: "Razor thin margin here, if there is one at all. The President still does not get above 48%. The real news here is that 18-29 year olds favor Kerry 64% to 35%, with 1% for Nader €”and 0% undecided. When I see a low undecided number it means that group is going to vote. I am factoring this group to be 12% of the total vote -- but it could be higher. Each point it goes higher translates into two-thirds of a percent for Kerry -- if these numbers hold up." Zogby International conducted interviews of 1208 likely voters chosen at random nationwide. All calls were made from Zogby International headquarters in Utica, N.Y., from October 29 through October 31, 2004. The margin of error is +/- 2.9 percentage points. Slight weights were added to region, party, age, race, religion, gender, to more accurately reflect the voting population. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups. In 1996, John Zogby came within one-tenth of 1 percent of the presidential result, and was one of the first pollsters to accurately foresee Vice President Al Gore'€™s popular-vote victory in 2000 http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews922.html Oil traders tip Kerry win, driving prices lower Speculation that Senator John Kerry will win the United States presidential election has helped oil prices to fall sharply, as analysts said he could ease the geopolitical friction that helped fuel this year's record-breaking rally. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200411/s1232648.htm