Need feedback on this rush antiBlackwell site & hopefully some copy help

[roseBudd]

They gave me almost nothing to work with. It really needs some intro copy

And I need dialup feedback because it has some really large Flash at the bottom:

http://bushcheated04.com/blackwell/blacksagainstblackwell.html

[liam_laddie]

1. Rb57- love the music, first page seems fine!

What more do you need...content for another page?
I'm viewing at friend's in Windows XP w/DSL. Not sure
I can find someone who still uses dial-up. My ex uses
Bell/Duke(?)"current" - house wiring, not sure of speed.
PM me with questions, clarifications. Liamladdie...

Murtha kiked butt Saturday!

[EFerrari]

2. fwiw, check out the order of these items and check

for terms that are a little too abstract -- e.g., "improved opportunities". (Like, what kind of ops?)


Honesty; Business Development; Improved Opportunities; Accessible Education; Affordable Colleges, Increased Job Creation and Affordable Health Care for all Ohioans.


* * *

Also, under "vote Democratic" why not give the ticket, the list of NAMES?

Nice job!

[roseBudd]

3. I just changed it, I got that stuff off teir PDF, I am currently going

with a scrollpane with:

Blackwell not a friend to blacks
Thursday, May 11, 2006
By Sam Fulwood III
Plain Dealer Columnist

"He appeals to blacks by being black." George Will, columnist Feb. 19, 2006

Now that Ken Blackwell has become the latest in a long line of Great Black Hopes for the GOP, I expect to hear and read plenty of ignorant comments like the one above.

It's the wishful thinking that accompanied previous Republican darlings in dark skins.

Remember the presidential chatter surrounding J.C. Watts, former Oklahoma football star-turned-conservative congressman? Nobody does any more.

Or how about Alan Keyes, the firebrand orator who attracted superstar status with the religious right? He ran for president with little notice or embrace from black voters.

Another of the Republican hopefuls was former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was never as conservative as the GOP likes its black folks to be.

Still, Powell rose higher than almost any black Republican by making the party faithful comfortable with his non-threatening and non-demanding presence on racial issues. Powell flamed out after his ego no longer allowed him to be an unquestioning spearchucker in Mr. Bush's war.

So, now it's Blackwell's run.

He won the party's nomination for Ohio governor last week, which puts him at the head of the short list of nationally known black Republicans.

Tongues like George Will's wag about how Blackwell can, if all the stars align perfectly, become a vice presidential candidate in 2008 or the first black president in some fantasy future.

Yet black people across Ohio haven't climbed aboard his wobbly bandwagon. After he spoke at a recent meeting of black ministers in Cleveland, many left saying they wanted to know more about him.

That's revealing, because Blackwell has been involved in state politics for decades, as mayor of Cincinnati and Ohio treasurer and secretary of state.

Cleveland's black ministers aren't going to push this Trojan horse candidate on their congregations. Nor should they.

Quite frankly, Blackwell frightens me and, as I'm told, many other black people who have paid attention to what he represents.

His entire political career has been inside the cozy club of conservatives who stand in opposition to what rank-and-file black voters say they value most.

Sure, many black voters are overwhelmingly conservative on social issues like abortion and gay rights.

But pressing those buttons won't make most black voters overlook that Blackwell and his right-wing cronies want to cut taxes without regard to the violence that would do to public education, health-care and social-service programs.

Few black voters will forgive Blackwell for trying to suppress the black turnout in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. As Ohio's Secretary of State, he served as the Republican National Committee's leading storm trooper in the state, paving the way for George Bush to seize control of the White House.

In an ironic twist, Blackwell is now asking those black voters to help him make history by becoming Ohio's first black governor.

Such a naked appeal won't hide his real character.

Black voters would be wise to recall the late Justice Thurgood Marshall Jr., who warned of Negroes who suck up to the enemies of their people.

"There's no difference between a black snake and a white snake," Marshall said. "They both bite."

To reach this Plain Dealer columnist:
[e-mail], 216-999-5250

[roseBudd]

4. and since I am using a scrollpane I could also use this...

The Ohio "Vote"
Ken Blackwell Has Some Explaining to Do
By HUGH URBAN

Ohio was the ground zero of the election; Franklin county was the ground zero of Ohio. Ken Blackwell, who is both the Ohio Secretary of State and the co-Chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio, appears to have screwed us royally.

In the 2000 election, there were 681,949 registered in Franklin county, for which we had 2,780 voting machines available. In 2004, when we all knew there would be a huge turn-out, there were 845,720 registered voters. If Blackwell had used the same ratio of machines per voter as there were in 2000 (roughly 245 votes per machine), there should have been 3452 machines in Franklin county -- an increase of 672 machines. Instead, Blackwell only gave us a pathetic 13 new machines. That is in itself is outrageous.

But it gets worse, much, much worse. If you look at the two maps attached to this message, you will see that the first map shows that the inner city (= predominantly African-American and young voters) voted heavily democratic, while the outer suburbs (= predominantly white) voted Republicans. Then compare this with the second map. This shows where there were more and fewer machines in 2004 than in 2000. There is a very strong correlation here. The machines were systematically moved out of the inner city, African American and young neighborhoods toward the largely white Republican suburbs.

Then you take into consideration that we had numerous reports of machines in African-American neighborhoods breaking down, not working, stopping in mid-vote... It just gets worse and worse. This is why you had long lines of black people and students waiting 4-9 hours, while white guys in the suburbs sailed through in 20 minutes.

And this is why Blackwell demanded that we all vote in our registered precinct.... i.e., so he could systematically suppress the vote, especially the black and youth vote, which were overwhelmingly democratic.

Franklin county is only the beginning, however. There are severe irregularities in several other counties, such as Cuyahoga, where 29 precincts had vote tallies that exceeded the number of registered voters, leading to an excess of over 93,000 votes, and Warren county where a false "terror alert" was issued and the media were not allowed access to the building where the votes were counted.

Conclusion: Ken Blackwell has a lot of 'splainin to do.

Hugh Urban teaches in the Department of Comparative Studies at Ohio State Universion. He is the author of Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics and Power. Urban can be reached at: [e-mail]

[roseBudd]

5. and this

BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week: Ken Blackwell, Ohio's Secretary of State and the man in charge of insuring the voting in his state is transparent, tamper-proof and corruption-free. Blackwell was the Bush Cartel's male version of Florida's Katherine "Cruella Deville" Harris. So, when Rove strategized how to suppress (and perhaps also steal) the vote, Blackwell, a Clarence Thomas wannabe, said, "Yes, Sir, Mr. Karl, I want to be your token black right winger, just like Clarence. How can I help you suppress black and Democratic voters? Then will you make sure I get elected the next Governor of Ohio? Please, Mr. Karl, please."

So an office holder who is supposed to help Americans vote, spent his time over the last two years implementing road blocks to voters, particularly new registrants.

Most people know their Secretary of State because he's the guy or woman whose name appears on their driver's license. But most Ohioans got to know Ken Blackwell because he was the one doing everything possible to stop everyone but Republicans from voting. The guy even tried to refuse any voter registration card that wasn't printed on 80 pound weight paper, that is, until Internet-savvy Democrats publicized it enough to make him retract his ridiculous requirement.

And then Blackwell even got involved with advocating for the passage of the Draconian anti-gay referendum in Ohio, speaking out at churches about the scourge of gay relationships. He saw nothing wrong with the Secretary of State involving himself with a ballot issue over which he was responsible for counting the results.

Stalin would be proud of Ken Blackwell.

So, did the Bushes steal the election again? You don't need specific proof. All you need to know is that they -- through the Bush Cartel Secretary of States in Florida and Ohio -- counted the votes.

Those who count the votes decide everything, the voters be damned.

Ken Blackwell, mission accomplished, you did everything you could do to disenfranchise voters while pretending to represent them. You are the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

Just remember our motto at BuzzFlash.com: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time.

Catch up with you soon.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

[roseBudd]

6. And maybe this from the Beacon Journal

Blackwell touring partner criticized
Leftist group says man has racist, militia ties
By Lisa A. Abraham
Beacon Journal staff writer
The Democratic-leaning ProgressOhio Web site is blasting Republican gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell, claiming his companion on a southern Ohio bus trip this weekend has ties to racist and militia organizations.

Blackwell is to embark today on a three-day tour with Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America.

Brian Rothenberg, former spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party and now executive editor of ProgressOhio, said Blackwell should be ashamed to associate with Pratt, whom he described as an extremist.

Blackwell spokesman Carlo LoParo said Blackwell has no concerns about appearing with Pratt and doesn't believe the allegations about him are credible.

If Pratt were a racist, why would he appear with Blackwell, an African-American, LoParo asked.

``Larry Pratt is an elder in the Presbyterian Church and has been a friend of Ken Blackwell's for quite some time,'' LoParo said. ``I don't think that Mr. Pratt is anti-Semitic nor are Gun Owners of America an organization that should be shunned.''

Rothenberg noted that Pratt is on a list of ``false patriots,'' on the Web site of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based group that fights racism and tracks hate groups.

The law center's Web site describes Pratt in this way: ``Larry Pratt, a gun-rights absolutist whose Gun Owners of America (GOA) has been described as `eight lanes to the right' of the National Rifle Association, may well be the person who brought the concept of citizen militias to the radical right...

``Pratt, whose GOA has grown since its 1975 founding to some 150,000 members today, hit the headlines in a big way when his associations with (white supremacist minister Pete) Peters and other professional racists were revealed, convincing arch-conservative Pat Buchanan to eject him as a national co-chair of Buchanan's 1996 presidential campaign.

``That same year it emerged that Pratt was a contributing editor to a periodical of the anti-Semitic United Sovereigns of America, and that his GOA had donated money to a white supremacist attorney's group.''

LoParo said GOA is a ``well-respected Second Amendment advocacy group with a very large membership in Ohio and the Blackwell campaign is proud to have their endorsement.''

Erich Pratt, Pratt's son and spokesman for the GOA, based in Springfield, Va., denies his father has ties to racist, anti-Semitic or militant organizations. ``Larry is the complete opposite of a racist or a bigot. He leads Bible studies for Latin American immigrants,'' he said, noting that Pratt's wife is a Central American native.

Erich Pratt said the claims about his father's ties to white supremacy date to the early 1990s, when he appeared on a panel with Pete Peters after the 1992 federal siege on Ruby Ridge, Idaho. He said his father attended to speak about Second Amendment rights.

Erich Pratt said Morris Dees, one of the center's founders, formerly headed a gun-control organization and is at odds with his father's pro-gun beliefs.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lisa A. Abraham can be reached at 330-996-3737 or [e-mail].

[EFerrari]

7. This one has a lot of negatively framed terms for Democrats

Is there way you could use snips so you don't promote the notion that only "leftists" hold these opinions? You know how people feel about "leftists". :)

[roseBudd]

10. I know what you mean I try to quote MSM whenever possible

and not provide links to our so called "moon bat" sites ;)

[roseBudd]

8. and from Fritakis

The new face of apartheid: J. Kenneth Hackwell
March 30, 2006

The most unprincipled and opportunistic man in the history of Ohio, Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, stands poised to claim the Republican primary for governor. Blackwell and his far-right theocratic “rapture-ready” Christian dominionists will doom the Buckeye State to further despair.

It should come as no surprise that the Free Press is the only newspaper in Ohio willing to out Blackwell for appearing before white supremacists in the secretive Council on National Policy. Blackwell understands power; he understands that there’s plenty of money in putting a black face on the new politics of high-tech Jim Crow. Blackwell also understands that in order for his strategy to succeed, he must convince a significant number of black ministers to join him in his open bigotry against gays and lesbians.

This is simply the old apartheid politics of divide and conquer. Blackwell wants to rule the new Buckeye State Bantustan.

Blackwell’s recent trip to Cleveland to appear before members of the United Pastors Mission at the Antioch Baptist Church seemed to be scripted by Karl Rove. Blackwell – the notorious co-chair of the Bush-Cheney Re-election Committee, who was shameless and blatant in his partisan suppression of minority and poor voters while mugging for the camera and claiming he was just like “Gandhi and King” – told the big lie. He blamed the suppression on black voters in Columbus on the likeable but lame William Anthony, Chair of the Franklin County Democratic Party and the County Board of Elections.

So distressed was Anthony that the Franklin County Dems actually issued a stinging rebuke entitled, “Blackwell Breaks the Ten Commandments.” Anthony understated the obvious when he called Blackwell’s outrageous lie a “deceitful misdirection.”

“Franklin County and many other counties throughout the state did not have nearly enough voting machines because Ken Blackwell mismanaged the HAVA-implementation process from the start. The only HAVA funds spent in Franklin County during 2004 was Gene Pierce’s no-bid contract. No HAVA money was spent on voting machines,” the Franklin County Democratic Party charged.

In a separate letter, Anthony, who has been more reluctant to criticize Ken Blackwell than Franklin County Board of Elections Director, Republican Matt Damschroder, wrote: “I will be the first to concede that Franklin County had a woefully inadequate amount of voting machines for the type of voter turnout we experienced in 2004…Boards of Elections throughout Ohio were at your mercy while waiting for your office to create and implement a coherent strategy to approve HAVA-compliant vendors and then allocate funding to counties to purchase new voting machines.”

Anthony accused Blackwell of invoking the race card: “I find it particularly odious and offensive that you insist on singling me out because I am a black man. You have used my race to publicly attack me before (on a nationally broadcast program), but now I am demanding that you cease and desist.”

"I refuse to allow you to use me as a stalking horse to deflect criticism away from your actions as Secretary of State, especially as you attempt to court African American voters in your gubernatorial race,” Anthony wrote.

Republican Damschroder recently confirmed to the Free Press that it was Blackwell who directed that the votes of 356 people who were at the right precinct, but were wrongly given a provisional ballot by pollworkers, were not counted in the 2004 election. Two-thirds of these were in the inner city among poor and minority voters.

Hamilton County Board of Election documents obtained by the Free Press and analyzed by Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips, as part of an ongoing Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism (CICJ) investigation of the 2004 presidential election, indicate that 95.12% of the 3,342 rejected provisional ballots in that county came from the city of Cincinnati. Only 34% of Hamilton County voters, and virtually all African American voters, were from the city, where Kerry received 68% of the vote. The white suburbs constituting 66% of all the county voters, and where Bush received 64% of the vote, only had 5% of provisional ballots rejected. Blackwell’s directive for counting provisional ballots had a disparate impact on African American voters, when he ordered all Boards of Elections for the first time in Ohio history to only count votes that were in the right precinct, even if the voter was at the right polling site.

In Lucas County, newly obtained data indicates the massive racist nature of the voter challenges in the city of Toledo. There were 930 challenged voters in Lucas County, 810 of them were from Toledo. While only 62% of all the voters were from Toledo, where Kerry received 68% of the vote, 87% of the challenged voters came from the city. The greatest number of challenged voters in Toledo came from four predominantly African American wards, where Kerry received 86% of the vote. While these four wards constituted only 7.8% of all Toledo voters, fully 40% of all the challenges were in these wards. Blackwell’s record of presiding over one of the most racist elections in U.S. history has helped propel him into a reported 11 point lead in the Republican primary for governor in a recent Dispatch poll.

Even with that lead, Blackwell’s not taking any chances. In another frightening and blatantly partisan move, Blackwell, who personally negotiated the deal with Diebold for new machines in 47 of Ohio’s 88 counties, has ordered that all the access cards to the notoriously hackable e-voting machines be centralized in his office. With the May 2 primary looming, Blackwell issued a directive ordering all computer access cards to be sent to him before the primary “so the security codes can be changed,” according to the Columbus Dispatch. Even Republicans are critical of this undemocratic power grab. Linda S. Stutz, a Republican and Director of the Van Wert County Board of Elections, told the Dispatch, “I just feel very strongly there’s a problem here.”

Let’s see. A well-known criminal with no respect for democracy seizing all the access cards just prior to the primary? No wonder the Secretary of State is known as J. Kenneth Hackwell in the voting rights community.

--
Bob Fitrakis is the co-editor of Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election? with Harvey Wasserman (www.freepress.org) and co-counsel with Cliff Arnebeck in the Alliance for Democracy suit against the Hocking County Board of Elections.

[EFerrari]

9. Nikki Giovanni weighs in on Blackwell

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2397517