2006 Ohio Gubernatorial Race - Information and Predictions

Since I live in Ohio and have a vested interest in who governs this state, I feel compelled to orate on the current state of affairs concerning the Governorship. Kenneth Blackwell, currently Secretary of State, is campaigning to be the Republican candidate for Governor of Ohio.

First, let's get a little background on Blackwell, as his past plays an important role in our future, as well as my predictions for this election. As reported by Brad Blog, even as the Ohio votes were being recounted and verified in the 2004 presidential election, he sent out this letter, which violates two laws on fundraising and use of the official seal of the United States.

Second, Blackwell is responsible for having Ohio-based, Diebold, electronic voting machines installed in 41 new counties in 2005, and I believe 58 of 88 Ohio counties overall. Walden O'Dell is the former CEO of Diebold. O’Dell is on record stating that he is “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President,” in a letter to Republicans before the 2004 elections. Blackwell happened to be the co-chair of the Bush/Cheney 2004 Ohio campaign during that time, it's worth noting.

Interestingly, Diebold builds and operates mainly ATM machines. All of these machines provide paper receipts for every transaction. These receipts are offered to the user of the ATM as a record of the transaction. Why then, do their voting machines not have this paper receipt? Do cash dispensers warrant more oversight than the votes of the American people? [update - Ohio has passed a law requiring paper receipts for all electronic voting machines in the future, though I don't know if it applies to existing machines. I assume it does.]

So now for the connection between Blackwell and Diebold...Blackwell was instrumental in bringing his Republican-friendly electronic voting buddies to our state. Despite obvious and dubious results in recent Ohio special issues and elected offices, Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who personally negotiated the deal for the Diebold machines that he called the "best in the nation," insisted through his spokesperson Carlo LaParo that "The new touch-screen systems went well." Also of note is this information, posted on Brad Blog, "Diebold, along with Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) are the two largest Voting Machine Companies in America. Between them, they account for equipment which tallies more than 80% of America's votes."

From Lynn Landes
Online Journal Contributing Writer - An Online Journal article
"Bob Urosevich is currently president of Diebold. Todd is vice president of ES&S. In 1999, American Information Systems (AIS), purchased Business Records Corporation (BRC) to become ES&S. AIS (1980) was formerly Data Mark (1979). Both AIS and Data Mark were founded by the brothers Urosevich. In 2002, Diebold acquired Global Election Systems. Global was founded in 1991, which itself acquired the AccuVote system the same year. Bob Urosevich is a past president of Global."

The following is an excerpt from an excellent web site documenting huge voter fraud in the 2004 presidential election and highlight why Diebold could be the downfall of our modern Democracy...

The conflicts of interest in the American election system are stunning, if not outrageous (Research by internet activist Alicia):

1) Republican Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) was chairman and still owns a stake in Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the largest U.S. voting manufacturer counting 60% of U.S. votes--but also counted 80% of the votes in both of Hagel's landslide senate wins; and Hagel was caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

2) The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

3) Canton, Ohio's Diebold and ES&S together count 80% of all votes cast in America.

4) There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

5) While Diebold's new touch screen machines have no paper trail to verify data for a recount, the electronic voting machine corporation makes ATMs, checkout scanners and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate paper trails.

6) Diebold employed five convicted felons as senior managers and developers to help write the central tabulator computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.

7) Jeff Dean, Diebold's Senior Vice-President and senior programmer on its central vote compiling tabulator code, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree.

8) None of the international election observers were allowed into the polls in Ohio.

9) California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, BlackBoxVoting activists Beverly Harris and Andy Stephenson taught and filmed a chimpanzee hacking Diebold software.

10) 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail for a recount.

11) Virtually all--not some--but all voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.

12) The governor of Florida is George Bush's brother Jeb Bush; and serious voting anomalies in Florida--again always favoring Bush--have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.

PREDICTIONS ::

So, what does this all mean for us in Ohio in 2006? No matter who runs, no matter how popular they seem to be ahead of the election, no matter what historically accurate pre-vote polling says and no matter what exit polling indicates, Kenneth Blackwell will become our next Governor. It makes me sick, it's going to be a further blow to Democracy and it will happen whether we like it or not. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Also, it's worth noting Mr. Blackwell's character in general. He has already run attack ads on fellow Republican candidate Jim Petro. Rather than focus on the issues that he stands for, Blackwell is slinging mud. What a callous, short-sighted, mean-spirited tactic. When is this country going to demand that politicians stop running negative ads? Politicians are coming increasingly from the rich, entitled upper class. They have personal wealth to supplement their endless fundraising. Is this the kind of system we want? Do we want the rich 2% governing the other 98% of us? And these are our elected representatives? It's sickening.

To be fair, in the case of Blackwell, The Beacon Journal reported that Petro has $2.02 million in the bank for his campaign, while Blackwell has about $1.52 million. Democrat Ted Strickland has $2.12 million. Blackwell certainly has a fund-raising machine in place though and I wouldn't be surprised if he out-gains all by the time it's said and done this year.

So brace yourselves Ohio. We're in for more fraud and disgrace this year. Our state has become a political necessity for national Republican rule, and at the same time, their biggest inside joke. I'm tired of being the butt of a joke when it concerns nothing less than the true, free Democracy for us all. Republicans seem to think that it's the funniest thing they've ever heard.

Bush's culture of life - and other oxymorons

About Bush's so-called culture of life...he's for state-sponsored murders of prisoners, yet he's against using embryos for stem-cell research, he's for massive and often-times terribly executed bombings and assassinations that have lead to hundreds of unnecessary civilian deaths, yet he's for ultimately completely outlawing abortion. This leader of ours is all about double-standards and fancy political rhetoric. Here's an excellent article on just one of these contradictions.

President Bush's 'culture of life.' Can you smell the irony...it's a lot like napalm and burnt flesh. Can you see the significance? I think the last paragraph in the article sums it up best. He's speaking about the U.S. bombings and assassination attempts that lead to civilian casualties overseas...

"A culture that allows - and even endorses - such tactics is not one that is genuinely committed to encouraging respect for life. We can be quite sure US forces would not have acted in the same way if the civilians nearby had been other Americans."

Bush is all about political double-speak. He speaks of oil-independence and exploring alternative fuels that will create a new American Utopia...meanwhile he's cut funding for research into these alternative fuels. He speaks of education reforms and enhancing our ability to compete with the world in technological areas...meanwhile he's cut the federal student loan program and still underfunds his No Child Left Behind farce.

He speaks of a culture of life, yet he shows a cavalier attitude towards life overseas, and he speaks of supporting our troops and how important they are, yet his Republican party has cut off Veteran's Affairs groups from testifying or speaking before the committee that determines their benefits and how they're treated within the federal system.

He claims that he had no idea that the levees would fail in New Orleans, yet federal studies had shown for years that it was almost a guarantee that it would happen with a major hurricane. Also Republican led committee reports show that Bush and his staff were informed of the damage and flooding, yet did nothing at the time. Days later Bush was feigning concern on his over-flight of the demolished city. It's funny how fast he rushed back to Washington to help push an unconstitutional law to help keep Terri Schiavo alive...but end his vacation and politicing early for a city full of poor black people? Hell no! He'll fly over it later and pretend that he knew nothing of the possibilities of flooding.

Then toss into the ring the recent flagrant abuse of power and breaking of established law with his domestic spying, and you've got an almost laughable situation. Recently he and his stool pigeons have been offering up pathetically weak legal defenses for his brazen lack of respect for the law. Oh, and his renaming of the spying to the 'Terrorist surveillance program'...what the fuck?! Is that supposed to make it ok? If he was just spying on terrorists, why not go through FISA to do it legally? This smacks of Nixonian abuse of power. If a president can be impeached over lying about a blowjob, then he has sure as fucking hell could, and should, be impeached for breaking the law, misleading us into an illegal war, advocating torture, then lying about it, and having his administration leak classified information to the press for political revenge.

When is enough going to be enough? Does he personally have to sacrafice a baby on an alter to enrage the public? How far are we going to let this man go? When he invades Syria? When he launches missiles and bombing runs against Iran? After he sells control of six American ports to the United Arab Emirates? When he strips the federal budget of important programs to help the underprivileged? When he further widens the gap between the rich and the poor by making permanent his tax cuts? By pushing for Democracy in the Middle East, then when it turns out against his master plans like in Palestine, work to dismantle and marginalize that elected government?

When is it going to be enough? When is congress going to stand up to this bullshit? They are supposed to be the checks and balances against these kinds of things. Why in the hell do we elect them if they're going to stand on the sidelines and let this horror go by unimpeded? And why is that everyime someone does stand up and say something about it, they are immediately subjected to character assassination and personal attacks, their patriotism questioned, their personal lives scrutinized? Since when has it become unpatriotic to care enough to question our full-steam-ahead plunge to a defacto Monarchy?

What's my philosophy?

You scored as Hedonism. Your life is guided by the principles of Hedonism: You believe that pleasure is a great, or the greatest, good; and you try to enjoy life�s pleasures as much as you can.



"Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!"



More info at Arocoun's Wikipedia User Page...

Hedonism		95%
Existentialism		90%
Justice (Fairness)		65%
Utilitarianism		55%
Kantianism		40%
Strong Egoism		35%
Nihilism		15%
Divine Command		5%
Apathy		5%

What philosophy do you follow? (v1.03)
created with QuizFarm.com


Well there you go. I am a hedonist! A Bacchanist! A true lover of life's pleasures. Thanks to Sphinx for pointing out this cool quiz.

Latest Goings-On

It seems all I've written about lately is art. My recent rush of creativity has slowed a bit and my mind is back to other things. It was fun while it lasted, but it's nice to take a break from basically either working or painting all day. The relapse might also stem from the fact that I am doing a huge cabinet refinishing project at Melissa's place.

I will be doing a series on refinishing cabinets soon. Our first section of doors and drawers is almost done and I am just about to get started on the faces/bases. I will be posting pictures, step-by-step instructions, glaze mixtures, the products we used and all the pertinent details. I think it will be useful and interesting to see how much money we saved by doing this ourselves. Plus this way we're getting exactly the finish we want.

Also in the news, I have been losing weight again. Soccer season is starting sometime in the Spring and I set a goal to be under 200 pounds by then. In 2005 my highest weight was 245. That is six-kinds of ridiculous, but my legs are really thick and no one that knew me would guess that I weighed that much anyway. When I weighed myself this morning I was 213. My means to success thus far...cutting almost all sugar out of my diet and exercising more.

For me fat and some carbohydrates are ok. I've found that by eliminating processed sugars, and foods that break down into mostly sugar, I lose weight evenly and slowly. This is the best way to do it. I've tried Weight Watchers before and I lost a lot quickly, but then as soon as I stopped the rigorous points plan, I gained it all back. With this low-sugar diet I can eat almost everything I used to, but my weight keeps dropping.

Foods like potatoes, french fries, potato chips, hash browns...basically everything made from potatoes, are the single worst regular food you can eat when trying to limit sugar intake. A potato will instantly turn to sugar in your stomach. Then the body produces insulin to deal with the excess sugars. Insulin is a fat-storage hormone, so your body is filled with all this insulin and then it grabs onto fat and stores it away for another day.

Other foods that are bad in terms of sugar are white rice, anything made from white flour and yellow cheeses. Fruits and vegetables are generally good for a low-sugar diet, but corn and carrots are bad, and bananas and pineapple contain a lot of sugar as well. I can get by reducing my sugar intake and still enjoy the little pleasures like some Taco Bell once in a while or a few slices of pizza and a beer. Actually I've cut down on my beer consumption a lot recently. One because it isn't in my budget anymore, two because they are relatively high in sugary carbohydrates and three because I am trying to give my system a break while my medication goes to work.

As far as exercise goes, I have been walking/running on the treadmill and lifting weights again. Doing the treadmill thing has been good because not only is it helping my heart and lungs build up strength, it also is getting my legs ready for the demands of a 90 minute soccer game. The weight lifting is of course building up my muscles and also helping to convert excess energy and fat into healthier tissues.

This stuff isn't so much a resolution for the year as it is just a solid, common-sense change in my life style that has been a long time coming. I feel better overall and even my attitude has been better. Nothing like stimulating the body to stimulate the mind. Cheers!