I went to hear Murtha speak at Meek's Town Hall Meeting

I received an email last week from my Congressman Kendrick Meek. He has invited Jack Murtha to speak at a town hall meeting. I had to go. I rearranged my schedule so I could attend.

Meek Town Hall Meeting on Iraq with Rep. John Murtha Congressman Kendrick Meek
Invites You to a Town Hall Meeting on
The War in Iraq

Join Congressman Kendrick Meek for a Town Hall Meeting to Discuss the Road Ahead with Special Guest, Congressman John Murtha

Saturday, June 24, 2006
3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Florida International University
Biscayne Bay Campus
Wolfe University Center, Mary Ann Wolfe Theatre
3000 N.E. 151 Street, North Miami, Florida

Congressman Jack Murtha turned the debate over Iraq on its head in December 2005 when this decorated Vietnam Veteran and one of the most respected pro-military members of Congress issued his call for a redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq. Come hear his reasons for that groundbreaking decisions in person on June 24th in North Miami at a Town Hall Meeting on Iraq hosted by Congressman Kendrick Meek.

For more information, please call Congressman Meek's Miami Gardens office at (305) 690-5905.

I called Meek's office to find out if we needed tickets to attend. I was told it was first come first served. I wanted to get there early. One thing I have noticed being involved in the politics/rallies/marches here in SoFlo. There are always the same people who attend. The small group of people - where ever I go are always there trying to make change. A hand full out of how many millions of people who live here in South Florida? I am amazed how few people get involved, how few people vote. I'm amazed how people go about their business and don't know what is going on in their name, in their country or maybe they know and are afraid to get involved. What ever it is - people need to get involved in this process. It is how they have been able to destroy so much about us - because people don't do anything. When people get involved, we will get our country back from the people killing and taking away our freedoms - Jobs, Healthcare, Votes.

The town hall meeting went very well. I do like Murtha. He has all my respect for what he is doing at his age. We need to stand behind him. We need to support this man. He only has our good as a nation at heart unlike what John H. Fund says in this article. People will say anything to tear down the person trying to do good. I really felt like he was honest in his words.

We were allowed to write down our questions. I asked 3 and they picked one. My first question was - When did Congressman Meek get on board with Murtha's plan? I tried to have a meeting with him back in December along with other members of MoveOn.org and at that time he didn't agree with the plan. #2 Has he (Murtha) met with Cindy Sheehan and does he support her? and the question they asked of mine - How come the UN doesn't get involved? They can do what we can not. We are the cause of the problem not the solution. His answer was the UN knows their limits. They know they are unable to help. He also noted how we disrespected the UN in the past, they have no desire to help us...and can't help if they wanted to help. We need the national community to get invloved. This is a worls problem. They need to step up to the plate and let us pull our troops out. We are the cause of the problem. The national community is the solution.

The meeting lasted about an hour and half. I want to Thank Kendrick Meek for putting on the town hall meeting. He needs to have them more often. I also want to thank Jack Murtha for taking his time to come speak to the almost full room here in SoFlo.

GET INVOLVED PEOPLE!

May peace be inside all of us,
Cindy

Scare You Into Giving Up Your Freedom - The Miami 7

                                         
Being from SoFlo and knowing the area of Liberty City where they have arrested 7 people - who they say were going to blow up the sears tower in Chicago and other places. First let me say something about people who live in Liberty City. They are very poor uneducated people. They have been poor and uneducated for many generations. There is a lot of crime there. It's a place I wouldn't feel safe if I was there alone. I do not believe these 7 people could do what our government are accusing them of doing.

The local news had interviewed neighbors who lived next to the warehouse. All these people were laughing saying how the people they arrested tried to get the kids in the neighborhood to join the karate classes. The neighbors said the people from the warehouse would practice their moves, were very spiritual and wore ninja style clothing (face covered).

I had the same thoughts as Jesse today. (I love getting Jesse's email's - see below) Our government will do anything to scare you into giving up your rights. They will say how they need to spy on us to stop people like this. Let me tell you, people who live in Liberty City wouldn't or couldn't carry off what they are saying. They are using these stupid people who did stupid things to blow a story up to their advantage.

May peace be inside all of us,
Cindy

TVNL Editor's Comments: Why All the Surveillance? To Prevent a Revolution!

Do you want to know why we are being scared with ridicules stories about terror plots? It is so the American people will tolerate the increased Big Brother style loss of privacy. Do you want to know why this loss of privacy is an issue? It is because by the time the American people realize what is happening to their nation there will be so much surveillance in place that we will not be able to organize a revolt!

Let’s face it, this is no longer America. We are in HUGE trouble as it relates to the survival of our so called free nation. But the people who are in control are making sure that we can not gather any steam when it comes to stopping them. Anyone who realizes that the people at the highest levels of government and the people in the shadow government comprised of the three letter agencies, think tanks, etc., are the enemy of the people, knows that any efforts to counter their control will be deemed a threat to national security.

Well, we better do something fast because our ability to defeat our enemies who have hijacked our nation will diminish with every new effort to “secure our nation!” Think about it! – Jesse, Editor, TvNewsLIES.org

NEW 7 accused of al-Qaida plot aimed at Sears Tower, Miami FBI office BULLETIN: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Friday that seven young men arrested in Miami were part of a group of ``homegrown terrorists'' who sought to work with al-Qaida but ended up consorting instead with a law enforcement informant. ``They were persons who for whatever reason came to view their home country as the enemy,'' Gonzales said in Washington. AUDIO: U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the arrests of 7 in alleged Miami-based terror plot AUDIO: Deputy FBI Director John Pistole describes alleged terror cell in Miami

War and peace in one family

War and peace in one family

Soldier and wife take different viewpoints

Stacy Bannerman, a leading peace advocate with Military Families Speak Out, travels the country for anti-war events. She recently published a book about being a soldier's anti-war wife, 'When the War Came Home.'
Washington Post Photo by Nikki Kahn

David Montgomery, The Washington Post

One minute Stacy Bannerman is stuffing envelopes to promote an upcoming peace workshop. The next her husband, Lorin, unexpectedly appears in her office.

"I got the call," he says.

"What call?" she replies.

Does she have to ask? Don't they both know their life is poised to turn completely strange at any moment? Possibly even tragic?

"I'm going to Iraq."

His eyes watch her closely.

"No. No. No."

Yes, yes, yes: Lorin's National Guard unit just got called up. And in a deep part of him that he doesn't reveal to his wife, a professional peace and justice activist, he's kind of looking forward to it.

It's the fall of 2003, seven months after the war began, outside Seattle where they live. They are the warrior and the anti-warrior, and their years of living dangerously are about to begin.

She watches him drive away in his new white Kia Sorento. The planet-hugger in her never approved of his buying that SUV. Now, as her man prepares for mobilization to the land of oil and blood, she sees the manufacturer's name and thinks: "Killed in action."

The Bannermans are like nobody else and everybody else with this country at war. Stacy, 40, and Lorin, 45, dramatize an extreme version of the conversations, tensions, compromises and leaps of faith taking place across America. As the death count rises, public support for the war plummets, two black lines on a neat, precise graph.

Beneath Stacy and Lorin's apparent polarization, they share a messy truth of nuances and grays. She is convinced this war was built on lies, yet her admiration for those who choose to wear the uniform has only increased, even though she knows some soldiers -- including, she would learn in anguished phone calls from Iraq, her husband -- have been connected to the deaths of Iraqi civilians.

Overshadowed by the controversial wattage of Cindy Sheehan, Stacy is nevertheless a featured speaker in the peace movement's marches, rallies and caravans, a leading advocate with the group Military Families Speak Out, which claims about 3,000 members. She recently published a book about being a soldier's antiwar wife, "When the War Came Home."

Lorin felt the almost boyish appeal of the military when he signed up for the Guard while in college. During his yearlong deployment in Iraq, he harbored increasing doubts over the reasons for the invasion but never wavered in his devotion to his mission. He is, he says, "glad" to have fought in Iraq, where he was a sergeant first class leading 34 soldiers in a mortar platoon. His mission -- to beat back the insurgents lobbing rockets and mortar shells in his sector -- was accomplished, and he earned a Bronze Star for, in the words of the citation, "incredible speed and deadly accurate response" in "taking the fight to the enemy."

"What matters is that Lorin is the love of my life," Stacy says. "What matters is that I remain true to myself. What matters is I'm big enough to let him do the same."

Common values

They met seven years ago in Spokane at a fundraiser to fight hunger. He was helping manage food service that night and spied her looking at him.

She had never married; he had been married once before. She was executive director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Family Outreach Center in Spokane, a position she would eventually leave amid controversy. (She filed a complaint with the Washington State Human Rights Commission alleging she suffered discrimination on the job because she was white; the matter was settled in 2002 for undisclosed terms.)

They discovered they had many values in common -- a belief in diversity and a commitment to fairness and equal treatment based on the content of one's character.

Stacy did not fall in love with a man in uniform. Lorin had quit the Guard after about 15 years of service. Once they were engaged, he decided to re-enlist so he could reach 20 years and qualify for retirement benefits. Stacy was surprised. But this was before Sept. 11, 2001. She rationalized the Guard was a conventional outlet for a man like Lorin to peacefully serve his country.

After he got the call to go to Iraq, she did not always make his life easy. Sometimes, she said exactly the wrong thing.

It would happen in moments when life within the paradox seemed unbearable, forces both political and personal wrenching their relationship. In one of their long pre-deployment conversations, he said, "There may come a time when I've got someone at gunpoint, and I'll have to make a decision. ... I can't be thinking of the enemy as human."

"If that day comes," she replied, "and you're standing there, looking into that person's face, I want you to imagine that it's me."

As soon as she said it, she regretted it. The pacifist found herself wondering, she later wrote, if she had planted the seed of doubt that would lead to a moment of hesitation, resulting in her husband's death. Is a pacifist supposed to have such regrets?

Stacy still cringes, and Lorin hasn't forgotten either.

"It's not what I need to be thinking about. I don't need to have that moment of doubt," he says.

But, he adds, "there were times when she probably didn't say the right thing, but she said what was on her mind. That's something that you need to accept. This is where she's at, this is what she's going through."

Paths diverge

Lorin admits he couldn't help detaching himself emotionally from her. "I did notice a wall was coming up," he says. "I was focused on what I was getting ready to do, getting ready to be asked to do. Put my life on the line. And I had responsibilities for other people's lives."

The thing that shocked her most was when he confessed that a part of him was looking forward to the war. At last, the real thing.

"This is what I've trained for, this is now actually going to happen," he says. "There was a little bit of that in there, excitement, if you want to put it that way. Here I get to go do something I've been training for for the last 16 or 17 years."

Stacy recalls her reaction: "Please tell me I'm not hearing this. ... I can't believe he's talking about going to war like it's some great opportunity he doesn't want to miss."

One thing she could understand: By the fall of 2003 when Lorin was called up, it was becoming apparent Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction, and Lorin was having some misgivings about the logic behind the war. But he had a duty, and he felt a deep loyalty and responsibility to his fellow soldiers. That was why he was going to war, and that was reasoning his activist wife accepted, even admired.

While he was away, she kept the window blinds drawn. That way, she would not be able to see a government car pull up to announce another casualty. Therefore, in the superstitious logic of the home front, no car would ever appear.

And she found common ground with the group Military Families Speak Out.

Shaken by deaths

READ MORE  ABOUT STACY HERE

Voting Mistakes (stolen) in 2004 , What are you going to do about it?

I always said the exit polls didn't lie. He who counts the votes wins. Here are 2 very good articles. We ALL need to work in our own home towns to make sure we get the president we all want, the one we vote into office.

Peace inside all of us,
Cindy

Was the 2004 Election Stolen? Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House. BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush -- and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush's victory as nut cases in ''tinfoil hats,'' while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as ''conspiracy theories,''(1) and The New York Times declared that ''there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale.''(2)

But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote(4) -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8) malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast.(10)

Read more of How Kerry Won the Election here

*******************************************

How They Stole Ohio
And the GOP 4-step Recipe to 'Blackwell' the USA in 2008
Abracadabra: Three million votes vanish

A Buzzflash Exclusive

June 1, 2006

By Greg Palast

This is a fact: On November 2, 2004, in the State of Ohio, 239,127 votes for President of the United States were dumped, rejected, blocked, lost and left to rot uncounted.

And not just anyone's vote. Dive into the electoral dumpster and these "spoiled" votes have a very dark color indeed.

In another life, I taught statistics. And these statistics stank: the raw data tells us that if you are a Black voter, the chance of you losing your vote to technical errors in voting machinery is 900% higher than if you were a white voter.

Any guesses as to whom those African-Americans chose for president on those junked ballots? Check Ohio's racial demographics, do the numbers, and there it is: Kerry won Ohio. And that, too, is a fact. A fact that could not get reported in the USA.

But the shoplifting of those votes in Ohio was just the tip of the theft-berg. November 2, 2004 was a national ballot-box bonfire. In total, over three million votes (3,600,380 to be exact) were cast -- marked, punched, pulled -- YET NEVER COUNTED. I'm not talking about the Ukraine or Uganda. I'm talking about the United States of America "with liberty and justice for all."

Well, not "all." The nine-to-one Black-to-White ballot spoilage rate is a national statistic -- not just an Ohio trick. Last year, I flew to New Mexico to investigate the 33,981 cast but not counted ballots of that state in the 2004 race. George Bush "won" New Mexico by 5,988 votes. Or did he? I calculated that, of the all the ballots rejected and "spoiled," 89% were cast by voters of color. Who won New Mexico? Kerry won -- or he would have, if they had counted the ballots.

But they didn't count them. And that was deliberate. It's in the plan. It's the program. And the program for 2008 is simple. Two million ballots were cast but not counted in the 2000 race. (Over half, 54%, were cast by African-American.) In 2004, the GOP kicked it up to THREE million. Get ready, these guys aim high: "four in '06" and "five in '08" looks to be their game plan.

How will they pile up five million un-voters in 2008? Let's start with the three million "disappeared" of 2004:

Step 1: "Spoiling" ballots -- 1,389,231 of them. In the vote-count game, these are called "undervotes" and "overvotes." You can recognize these lost ballots by their hanging chads, punch cards without punches (an Ohio specialty), paper ballots eaten by scanners, and touch screens that didn't know you touched them.

Step 2: Rejecting "provisional ballots"-- 1,090,729 in this pile. Voters finding themselves at the "wrong" precinct, or wrongly "scrubbed" from voter rolls get these back-of-the-bus ballots first inaugurated in 2002. In '04, provisional ballots were passed out like candy to voters in the poorest precincts. They handed them out -- then threw them away -- one million dumped in all. In Ohio, Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell changed state rules, allowing him to toss out the ballots of legal voters who cast ballots in the wrong precinct although these citizens were told their vote would count after confirming their registration.

Step 3: Not counting absentee ballots -- 526,420 of them. At least, that's what we figure from official stats. But it's anyone's guess how many mailed-in votes were dumped. (However, in one case, in Palm Beach, Florida, Jeb Bush's candidate for Elections Supervisor, Theresa LaPore, counted more absentee votes than absentee ballots mailed in. Not the brightest bulb in the vote-fix biz, that Theresa.)

Step 4: Scrub'm, Purge'm, Block'm. These are the voters who never got to vote at all. This group includes those who found their registrations were never entered on the voter rolls. In Ohio, about one-fourth of those registered by Jesse Jackson's 2004 voter drive, found their registrations delayed beyond the election date or lost.

Add to this un-voter group, those who were wrongly "scrubbed" from registries as "felons." For example, there was Bernice Kines, purged in Florida in 2004 because she was convicted of a felony on July 31, 2009. I repeat: 2009. There was something especially odd about the Ohio felon purge: ex-cons are ALLOWED to vote in that state, Mr. Blackwell.

How many lost their chance to vote by scrubbing, purging and blocking? That's anyone's guess, but one million would not be an unfair estimate -- and that's not included in the 3.6 million tally of ballots uncounted.

Was it deliberate? Oh my God, yes. I'd like you to take a look at the "caging" lists the Republican National Committee concocted to challenge voters with "suspect" addresses. It included page after page of African-American soldiers, like one Randall Prausa, shipped overseas. Mission accomplished, Mr. President?

And there's some new tricks for these old dogs. For the 2006 and 2008, the GOP is pushing new Voter ID requirements. Your signature won't be good enough anymore.

What's wrong with the new ID laws? This: in the 2004 election, 300,000 voters were turned away from the polls for "wrong" ID. For example, in the "Little Texas" counties in New Mexico, if your voter registration included a middle initial but your driver's license had none, you were kicked out of the polling station. Funny, but they only seemed to ask Hispanic voters. We should see the number of voters rejected for ID to quintuple by 2008 based on the new "voting reform" laws recently passed in several states.

Also, coming to a polling station near you: more caging lists, scrub lists, ID challenge lists and more. Exactly why do you think they are compiling those "War on Terror" and War on Immigration databases? Behind the 2000 felon purge lists and behind the 2004 caging lists were databases from the same companies that now have those homeland security contracts. Are they saving us from Osama -- or from Democrats?

I wish I could give you a book on a page, because information is our weapon: Turn on the lights and the cockroaches scatter. That's why I'm asking you to read RFK's article on the Theft of Ohio -- and GET ANGRY. Then read, "Armed Madhouse: … The Scheme to Steal '08' -- AND GET READY.