Dear Mitt,

Well, son, this is the last letter that I will pen to you, seeing as how you are about to retire from public life and return to your corporate raider day job on November 6^th. Not that you really entered my world to begin with, since I am a card carrying member of the 47% that you've dismissed out of hand.

I've gotta be real honest with you, in the 41 years that I've been voting in elections, I've never, ever seen anything like this campaign that you've mounted. Never. Even before I could vote I watched conventions and election returns on the television for almost as long as I've been alive. The first convention that sticks in my head is the one where Eisenhower was nominated. I was five.

Not one of the campaigns, Republican, Democrat, Independent, hell, even Communist Party, nothing has come close to the amount of total disregard for the facts, arrogance, cluelessness and outright viciousness toward a sitting president or the citizens of this country, has ever occurred in my memory.

I was born during Jim Crow, so I know what it is like being hated and dismissed as a human being, solely because I exist. However times had changed, I thought. You masters of the universe had gotten better at hiding your hatred, until you made your 47% speech to your rich supporters. I guess the feelings have always been there, just hidden. Silly me.

Your assumption that we wouldn't understand your plans for the country is totally insulting, not because it is a difficult plan, but because you think I'm too stupid to understand the words coming out of your mouth.

Well, let me give you a for instance....you keep accusing the President of “redistributing the wealth.” You stirred up your base to make them believe that Obama is taking “their money” and “their country” away from them and giving them to the reprobates on welfare, which is your code for Black people.

What you're talking about is a progressive tax, aren't cha?

Progressive tax is by its very nature, a redistribution of money from one section to another. The difference is that you prefer to “redistribute the wealth” to your rich friends rather than help out those who really and truly need it. So the truth of the matter is, you with your 20% across the board tax cut, are the one who will take their money away from them, right?

Sir, you may be a Mormon, but you're certainly no Christian. I would even venture to say that you are not religious in any sense of the word, unless you count lucre as your god.

It doesn't help matters that your sincerity is as plastic as the credit cards in your pocket. You have proven to be bankrupt as an empathetic, feeling human being. I used to joke by calling you Max Headroom. Maybe you remember that virtual reality clown who lived in a TV set. Max was just a disembodied head floating around in a box.

For what it's worth, your head is on a body like normal...it just doesn't function any better than good ole Max.

So to make it official, I'm not voting for you Mitt/Max.

Our one night stand is over. You weren't even a satisfying roll in the hay. Not enough staying power to get me off. So enjoy your life. I know you will.

And, by the way....If I were you, I'd cast my vote for President Obama, come election day, because if one thing is certain, rich people like you made out like bandits these past four years. He has really, really been a good president for wealthy people such as yourself.

Guess you could say, no matter what happens, you're still in the win-win situation in this life. Enjoy Mittens!

Vote responsibly in November.

Voter Suppression Shuffle in Cincinnati

Let’s dance!

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters has jumped into the alleged voter registration fraud campaign being conducted nationwide against newly registered voters. Deters has convened a grand jury and has subpoenaed the records for about 40% of the new voters, in order to check them out. But he says it’s not political. He is just doing his job as the lawyer of record for the Hamilton County Board of Elections.

Deters has long had a habit of using the power of his office to intimidate anyone who disagrees with his version of what should be the status quo. What is his status quo? Republicans in charge, poor people invisible and black people in jail.

Republicans across the nation have been going after ACORN, a grassroots organization that has reportedly registered more than one million new voters, with most of them leaning toward Barack Obama.

Here in Ohio, the GOP first attacked early voting...then the window that allows folks to register and vote all on the same day. The Republicans filed suit in state, and federal courts. The sixth circuit court of appeals tried to force the State of Ohio to make up an entirely new system for checking voter registration. The new system duplicates one already in place and functioning. Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner filed a motion with the United States Supreme Court, the highest court in the land. SUPCO backed Brunner and the State of Ohio.

Yet the GOP and Joe Deters are not content to let the matter rest.

Elections officials have said throughout this farce that many of the questionable registrations were initially flagged by ACORN itself. Officials also say that many of the troubles on the new registrations are the result of erroneous entry by elections officials who key in the info to the computer. In other words, a faulty registration is not a concrete indication of fraud. It’s not even fraud until or unless “Mickey Mouse” shows up to vote. Casting the vote or attempting to cast the vote, is fraud. What we have now, is a scenario that means elections officials simply have to be left alone to do what they are paid to do.

Yet, Deters, and other Sheriffs and County prosecutors around Ohio are wasting taxpayer money chasing ghosts in an attempt to once again steal an election for their chosen candidate. And make no mistake about it, Deters colors are fully visible. He is chairman of the southwest Ohio campaign for McCain/Palin.

If he were really doing his job, he would have stepped aside and allowed the appointment of an independent counsel or prosecutor of some kind to handle the situation, if he deemed it so reprehensible that it needs immediate attention from law enforcement.

One note, national voting statistics do track voter fraud. Records show that from 2000-2005 there was exactly one case of voter fraud, nationally. Just one..Today there is another one, a guy hired by the republican party in California to register voters. He has been arrested for allegedly tricking people into changing their party affiliation by telling them that the papers they were signing was a petition to get tougher on child molesters.

The Hamilton County Board of Elections is holding a special meeting today. I hope common sense rules and someone is able to tell Joe Deters to go back to his office, close the door, sit down and shut up for a change.

The Politics of Mendacity

Lies- “The refuse of fools and cowards.” -Lord Chesterfield

An apt description of the current events in this political campaign for president. I’m tired of this “he said/she said bullshit...” The circus has become maddeningly dangerous in its trivialization of probably the most important election of our lifetime.

There were actually a bunch of Lord Chesterfields. The Earldom was created for the Stanhope family back in 1628. The Lord who is so oft quoted by writers and scholars appears to be Phillip, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield. He was a man of letters, that’s a writer in today’s parlance, and very popular with the royals.

Judging from his background, Stanhope would not have hesitated to call a pig in a poke..a pig in a poke. Euphemisms were not his style. So in keeping with his spirit, writers, journalists, bloggers, columnists and others, should just say what they mean.

John McCain is lying, period.....with the release of every political ad, he gets dirtier, nastier and more dishonorable. I personally have bottomed out with this latest on sex education.

To paraphrase Fannie Lou Hamer....I’m sick and tired of being nice and respectful...

How much shit can one person throw and expect to remain untouched or clean? The GOP has long practiced the fine art of prevarication...repeating the lie over and over...making it seem like fact...because if one hears it over and over...maybe it’s true.....more often than not...it’s not...

How many good men and women have to be debased by the crap hurled by this bigoted, racialistic, elitist group whose arrogance and collective ego astounds me. Just when I think I’ve seen and heard it all, they top themselves, again and again.

It’s time to call John McCain, what he is......a lying adulterer...who voted against the MLK holiday...who, in 2000, supported the flying of confederate flags above state houses...He later apologized for both of these deeds.....But it’s obvious from his actions...he didn’t mean it and he didn’t learn..

Now he has embraced the practices of Karl Rove, hiring his acolytes, in a blatant attempt to steal another election for the republican party.

Make no mistake about it, Sarah Palin is a pawn, a smoke screen...someone trotted out simply to divert attention away from the man himself. He can’t compete on the issues, on stature, in thought and creativity. He is not smart enough to be president. The line from his first wife to Sarah Palin is a clear indication of how he feels about women...use ‘em and lose ‘em...and on to the next beauty queen.

The road to the future is not a loop back through the jungles of a prisoner war camp. The days of General Eisenhower and Captain John F Kennedy died in the swift boat attacks on John Kerry in 2004. War heroes are celebrated, but no longer considered the ultimate leaders in times of peace.

Vision and creativity are needed to get our collective asses out of the bonfire that George II threw us into eight years ago. It’s got to start now...

We may not get another chance..

Day of the Negro

I know everyone was waiting with baited breath for Sarah Palin’s coming out speech. But while I was waiting for that, I counted heads....black heads inside the convention, who weren’t obviously reporters, photographers, or producers for the news media. Found a few, very few, very far and in between the sea of white people. I was hoping to trip over some Hispanics, too. But other than the guy who spoke last night, there weren’t too many of them present, either. The current governing party has absolutely no resemblance to America.

Well, the stats show there were 36 black delegates to this year’s grand old party. That’s down from a whopping 167 back in 2004. Gee, wonder what happened to all that 2004 happy talk about the GOP taking 25% of the African American vote by 2020? Looks like the party is sliding backward.

Not that there is much to slide back from...

The two Negroes who showed themselves were Michael Steele...this era’s Clarence Thomas and some Texas state bureaucrat named Michael Williams. They followed the party script of gleefully attacking Obama, personally, while staying away from the issues.

John McCain has already publicly dismissed the black vote, conceding it to Obama. McCain feels if he can grab everyone else, the black vote won’t matter, once again. That’s old school GOP strategy..nothing new...business as usual....no politics of change here...

Other than stating that her husband was half-something other than white, Palin paid no attention or lip service to the diverse nature of the USA either.

I’ve found much of what I’ve seen out of the GOP to be offensive, starting with those “prosperity” signs the delegates were waving at every opportunity...Whose prosperity...certainly not mine...or people like me. The GOP continues to operate as if the election is a conversation among white people...the rest of us should just shut up, listen and wait for the crumbs to trickle down...

Palin’s speech was good on delivery and presentation, but very short on facts. It was vicious, condescending and very, very mean spirited. She fell in line with the clueless Mitt and the useless Giuliani in ridiculing Obama, never bothering to address the issues. Even Huckabuck was nasty, not in keeping with a so called preacher...politics before religion, I guess.

I am bothered by all the reporters who are going out of their way to apologize for doing their jobs..They should not be apologizing for asking questions. Disneyland is an amusement park...OZ is a fairytale....Politics is real, not a myth....politicians and their stories should be questioned...and rewarded if they speak truth....but slapped down if they constantly spin lies to garner power.

There was no high road taken, last night.

Sarah Palin reminded me of one of my favorite literary characters....Madame DeFarge from the Dickens novel...A Tale of Two Cities...Madame DeFarge would quietly knit while sitting at the guillotine watching the aristocracy get their heads cut off. Madame DeFarge looked like this kindly old woman, but housed a vicious streak, a mile long.

I would recommend that Palin read the book except for the fact that she is reportedly in favor of banning books, and reportedly tried to do so in her home town, when she was mayor. I’m sure Dickerns is on her list of stuff that should be relegated to the bonfire.

The stuff that she didn’t talk about last night bothers me more than the attacks....like her relationship to the Alaska Independence Party. Both Palin and Todd, the first Dude wore Alaska lapel pins instead of American flag pins....I thought the flag pin was the ultimate testament to patriotism....Conservatives have been stinking up the place for months about those damn flag pins...and the newly anointed GOP savior of American womanhood steps to the podium in her finest hour without one on her lapel?

So who comes first?..............Country....or Alaska....

The AIP, for those of you don’t know...wants Alaska to secede from the union and become it’s own country.....We, as a country went through this once before....back in the 1860's....it was called the Civil War...

I’d like to see somebody question her form of Pentecostal Christianity. From what I’ve read it’s just as bad as what Reverend Wright is alleged to have preached, according to pseudo Christian conservatives.

And there is still Troopergate or the alleged abuse of gubernatorial power against her ex brother in law....still under investigation...Palin has hired an attorney..which means there will probably be a delay in reporting the findings of the investigation until after the November election...

Who’s hiding?...she behind her attorney.....McCain behind her...

Wake up America...We can screw it up...worse then it is already!

It’s Begun

Less than 24 hours away from the election and the s*** has hit the fan in Ohio, Cuyahoga County to be specific.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer is reporting trouble with the elections scanning/counting machines.

The Diebold machines can’t seem to scan the ballots correctly. This problem occurred last year in May during the primaries causing elections officials to count by hand, took days to get the official results.

In the run up to this election, officials have been testing the machines with the help of Diebold technicians and while the machines work with blank paper...they can’t accurately scan folded test ballots...

That’s a problem because elections officials all around the state got the go ahead to begin scanning absentee ballots so that they can be counted after the polls close tomorrow.

Since most absentee ballots come into the board of elections via mail...they are all folded...and the machine can’t handle the folds.

Word has it that some 100,000 absentee ballots have been received and must be scanned by tomorrow. The last time this happened only 17,000 absentee ballots were at issue and the resultant hand count took a week.

Secretary of State and wannabe governor Ken Blackwell went to court to keep counties from scanning the ballots before election day stating that would be counting votes. But elections officials successfully argued before a judge that scanning absentee ballots was only adding data to the computers that will do the actual counting on election day. So the scanning of the ballots actually began this past weekend.

The scanning has been proceeding smoothly in Hamilton county which is an overwhelmingly republican area located in southwest Ohio on the Ohio River and has Cincinnati as its major city.

Cuyahoga County is in northwest Ohio on Lake Erie and has Cleveland as its major tenant. It is overwhelmingly democratic.

Usually Hamilton and Cuyahoga cancel each other out. It’s been like that since I’ve been able to vote...that’s going back nearly four decades.

If Diebold can get the scan/vote right in predominantly white and republican counties...why doesn’t it work in less than white and democratic counties?

Same company...same machines...aren’t they?

Other counties are bracing for trouble too such as what happened in a Columbus suburb named Minerva Park in 2004. The once prosperous neighborhood is now very poor, jobless and 80% black.

The lines were long....nobody budged...they held places for those who had to leave and take care of business....they chatted and waited to cast their ballots....The area was heavily anti-Bush and anti-republican and very vocal about it.

But somehow....some way.....despite the people and the way they were talking that day....Minerva Park went heavily for Bush over Kerry in 2004 to the surprise of the everyone in Ohio.

There is a quiet investigation still going on in Ohio....a recount of 2004, ballot by ballot.

Although he was within his legal rights to do so, Ken Blackwell was prevented from destroying the 2004 ballots by the courts. An independent watch group is slowly sifting through those ballots as we speak.

As I’ve been saying...... Democrats and minorities; don’t count your chickens just yet....the fix is in Ohio and has been for a long time.

It’s just waiting to jump up and bite us in the ass again.

Enquirer, Blackwell joined at the hip

If there was any doubt in anyone’s mind that the Cincinnati Enquirer was nothing more than a Republican Party Newsletter, that doubt was erased this morning with its endorsement of Ken Blackwell for Governor of Ohio.

The Enquirer admitted that Blackwell is a slease ball...that he has no integrity...that the more honorable candidate is Ted Strickland...yet they endorse Blackwell over Strickland.

Every other newspaper is this state has endorsed Strickland. One newspaper actually endorsed Blackwell and took it back because of his underhanded, vile and vicious tactics used against his opponent. The entire nation has been appalled by what has been coming out of Blackwell's mouth. Even Dubya called him a "nut."

But the mighty Enquirer rails against injustice...it rails against the detractors of Cincinnati, saying the city has changed...it is not racist...it is a good place to live for all people, it says.

Then it turns around and endorses the status quo. Cincinnati has long been the considered the laughing stock of this nation. I guarantee you, that will not change with this endorsement.

So what is this? Does endorsing a black man make the Enquirer look like it’s doing the right thing? That it is looking past color to make a just and correct decision?

This is the same newspaper that just last week took poet Nikki Giovanni to task for calling Blackwell a “political whore.” They slammed her last week, and slammed Blackwell today. But then endorsed him one paragraph later. Go figure.

Tell me who’s the whore now?

I have lived in Cincinnati nearly all my life and it has always, always gone with the republican candidate, no matter what.

The Enquirer has never been a voice of the people. It has proven today that it never will be. The people have spoken.

But it is once again obvious that the Enquirer is not listening.

My Granddad was Republican

The issue of my grandfather’s political affiliation came up when one of my uncles got into politics by running for city council. My uncle ran as a democrat. My grandfather always voted. He could barely read and write due to his rural Kentucky upbringing. But he was a very smart man. He just never went to school. He read the newspapers everyday and was the greatest story teller I have ever known. He never said he was a republican, but all my older relatives said he was.

I suspect they were also republicans in that time and place. At that time, the republican party was not referred to as the GOP. It was, really the party of Abraham Lincoln. And it would make sense back in the day for Blacks to be republican rather than democrat.

By the time I was born and grew to adulthood, it did not make sense for Blacks to be republican. When I came of age, the Dixiecrats, southern racists, die hard segregationists, angry at the move to integrate this country, abandoned the democratic party and hijacked the republican party to make it what it is today. The Grand Old Party, home of the Christian conservative right wing.

I bring all this up because a black group of conservative republicans is running radio ads stating that Martin Luther King was a republican. The ads have outraged black liberals, democrats and those who marched with the slain civil rights leader. From an historical standpoint that may have been true. But Martin’s party affiliation was not what was important.

What was important was the color of his skin, period.

The good ole boys who ran rampant in the south in the later part of the 20th century didn’t walk up to a Black person and ask them what political party they were affiliated with, before they turned the dogs loose, or shot them, or beat them or hung them from the nearest tree.

Skin color was it, nothing else counted.

Hell, we weren’t considered smart enough to know the difference between political parties in the first place. Anyone who did was considered “uppity.” You know the term, “uppity nigger.”

Party affiliation only mattered for white people because they have the luxury of telling you what party they belong to. They are camouflaged at birth by their skin color.

Doesn’t matter with us. No matter what you did, doctor, lawyer, merchant, thief....you were still a nigger, first and foremost.

That’s what got you killed, not being a republican or democrat.

A message for my black right wing Christian conservative brothers and sisters....you have to know history, before you can use it to justify your perverted stance against your people.