SOSs Jennifer Brunner & Debra Bowen Win the Prestigious John F Kennedy Profile in Courage Award!

[mod mom]

Ohio Coverage:

Tuesday, March 18, 2008


Courageous or 'reckless'?

Depending on your knowledge about, comfort level or point of view on touch-screen voting machines, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner (not unlike her predecessor Ken Blackwell of Cincinnati) has become a magnet for praise -- as well as scorn -- as the state's top election officer.

The latest example is today's announcement that Brunner has been selected for the prestigious John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in Boston on May 12.

The Ohio Republican Party quickly responded with its own take on Brunner's award. GOP spokesman John McClelland sent out a news statement titled: "Brunner's Special Brand of Courage: 'Fostering a culture of intimidation regardless of the consequences'" (See full text below.)

Brunner, a Democrat, will get the award along with California Secretary of State Debra Bowen for challenging the reliability of touch-screen voting systems. In December, Brunner recommended that 57 Ohio counties -- including Adams, Butler and Highland -- replace their touch-screen voting machines purchased after the 2004 presidential election with optical scan machines which use paper ballots. Brunner released a study that found touch-screen machines susceptible to hacking, memory card problems and other technical failures. Her critics object to the disruption and cost of replacement -- estimated as high as $64 million -- and questioned the necessity of Brunner’s proposals.

This year's award winners were announced earlier today by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. Brunner and Bowen will be presented the award for "political courage" by Caroline Kennedy and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy at a ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. (You may recall Robert F. Kennedy Jr. authored a 2006 article titled: "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" for Rolling Stone magazine here.)

-snip

http://frontier.cincinnati.com/blogs/gov/default.asp

[femrap]

1. Let me be the first to K and R

Brunner and Bowen ROCK!

This is just fabulous...I was so happy to vote on a paper ballot this month!!!!

[mod mom]

3. Please consider posting an anonymous comment at the link in the OP-the OH GOP

is out for Brunner's blood as of late.

:hi:

[femrap]

4. Yes...and I have been meaning to write a

LTTE to The Dispatch about what a great job she has done. She could be next Governor!!!

OK...I will. Thx.

[mod mom]

8. Please do I did but I have an unusual name and they know me-none of mine get

published anymore. At least they know what I think :hi:

[femrap]

14. I have an unusual name as well....but

I call the Editor of the OP-ED and complain about their one-sidedness...so he published a couple of my letters.

It's been a while...so I can probably try again. I only get the Dispatch on Sunday...I hate giving the Wolf (sp?) people money. They're pretty fucked up....didn't a son die of AIDS and the father had nothing to do with him? There's a daughter that lives out in the country...and I don't think has much contact with the family.

[IndyOp]

2. .

:wow:

I am stunned. RFK Jr must've been working on them for a while. Damn. Good work, Bobby!

[proud patriot]

5. We love Debra Bowen here in California

:hi:

[mod mom]

6. Here is the Ohio GOP comments of this: (A RADICAL AGENDA)

"John McClelland's Republican Party statement read: "Jennifer Brunner has indeed shown a willingness to act regardless of the consequences, recklessly promoting a radical agenda and consistently hewing to her own personal version of the truth. It takes courage to pursue a colossal waste of tax dollars for a new voting system based entirely on personal whims and hypothetical evidence. It takes courage to punish your critics and threaten dissenters while presenting yourself as nonpartisan. It takes courage to surround yourself with advisors from the tin foil hat wing of the Democrat Party, yet claim to approach election reform with an open mind."


:rofl: FAIR, TRANSPARENT & VERIFIABLE ELECTIONS ARE A RADICAL AGENDA!

[mod mom]

7. JFK LIBRARY PRESS RELEASE:

News Release
California and Ohio Secretaries of State Named 2008 JFK Profile in Courage Award Recipients - Former Mississippi Governor Honored for Lifetime Achievement


Profile in Courage Award Lantern


Profiles in Courage Book Cover
For Immediate Release: March 18, 2008
Further information: Brent R. Carney [phone], [e-mail]


Boston MA – Two public officials who challenged the reliability of electronic voting systems in a bid to ensure the integrity of the vote in their states have been named this year’s recipients of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award™, it was announced today by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. Debra Bowen, Secretary of State of California, and Jennifer Brunner, Secretary of State of Ohio, will be presented the prestigious award for political courage by Caroline Kennedy and Senator Edward M. Kennedy at a ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston on Monday, May 12.

A special Profile in Courage Award for Lifetime Achievement will be presented to former Mississippi Governor William Winter for his leadership in championing racial equality and educational opportunity in Mississippi.

“As we prepare to cast our ballots for the next President of the United States, our confidence in the integrity and reliability of the voting process has never been more important,” said Caroline Kennedy, President of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. “Secretaries of State Debra Bowen and Jennifer Brunner have each demonstrated exceptional leadership in working to ensure that voting systems provide a full and accurate count of the vote. Our democracy depends on voter trust. Debra Bowen and Jennifer Brunner’s efforts to earn that trust have made them true profiles in courage.

“Governor William Winter gives testimony to President Kennedy’s belief that politics can truly be a noble profession,” Kennedy continued. “His lifetime of public service, both to his country and his beloved state of Mississippi, has been distinguished by its devotion to equality and justice. We are proud to honor him with a Profile in Courage Award for lifetime achievement.”

The John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award is presented annually to public servants who have made courageous decisions of conscience without regard for the personal or professional consequences. The award is named for President Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Profiles in Courage, which recounts the stories of eight U.S. senators who risked their careers, incurring the wrath of constituents or powerful interest groups, by taking principled stands for unpopular positions. The
John F. Kennedy Library Foundation created the Profile in Courage Award™ in 1989 to honor President Kennedy’s commitment and contribution to public service. It is presented in May in celebration of President Kennedy’s May 29th birthday. The Profile in Courage Award is represented by a sterling-silver lantern symbolizing a beacon of hope. The lantern was designed by Edwin Schlossberg and crafted by Tiffany & Co.
Debra Bowen
Secretary of State, California
After a $450 million investment by California counties in electronic voting systems aimed at modernizing elections, newly elected Secretary of State Debra Bowen ordered an independent review of the new voting technologies to ensure they adequately protected the integrity of the vote. When the study revealed troubling flaws in the systems, Bowen strictly limited the use of direct-recording electronic voting machines, and imposed significant security and auditing requirements on systems to be used in California’s February 5 presidential primary election. Bowen’s decision was met with resistance by voting system vendors and many county elections officials.

Jennifer Brunner
Secretary of State, Ohio
A series of voting irregularities in several major Ohio counties that use electronic voting systems led newly elected Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to order that paper ballots be provided to any voter who requested one during the state’s March 2008 presidential primary. Furthermore, Brunner called for the replacement of all of the state’s electronic voting systems – used in 53 of Ohio’s 88 counties – with paper ballots and optical scan technology before the November 2008 presidential election. Critics have objected to the cost and questioned the necessity of Brunner’s proposals.

William Winter
Former Governor, Mississippi
As Governor of Mississippi in the early 1980’s, Winter called the state legislature into special session to pass a landmark education reform proposal aimed at bringing uniform quality and racial tolerance to public education in Mississippi. Winter's Education Reform Act of 1982 was among the most radical pieces of legislation of its kind ever passed. In 1984, Winter ran unsuccessfully for Senate. He served on President Clinton’s Advisory Board on Race from 1997 to 1998; more recently, he has been active in Gulf Coast recovery efforts following the coastal devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

Past recipients of the Profile in Courage Award include former President Gerald Ford; U.S. Representative John Murtha; former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora; the Peacemakers of Northern Ireland who negotiated the historic Good Friday Peace Agreement; Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko; U.S. Senators John McCain and Russell Feingold; Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin; former Governors Roy Barnes (GA) and David Beasley (SC); and former U.S. Congressman Carl Elliott, Sr. of Alabama. Click here for more information about the Profile in Courage Award and all the past recipients.

Bowen, Brunner and Winter were chosen as the recipients of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation’s prestigious award for political courage by a distinguished bipartisan committee of national, political, and community leaders. Al Hunt, Washington managing editor of Bloomberg News, chairs the 14-member Profile in Courage Award Committee. Committee members are Michael Beschloss, author and presidential historian; David Burke, former president of CBS News; U.S. Senator Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi); Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund; Antonia Hernandez, president and chief executive officer of the California Community Foundation; Elaine Jones, former director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; Caroline Kennedy, president of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation; U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts); Paul G. Kirk, Jr., chairman of the board of directors of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation; Shari Redstone, President, National Amusements, Inc; John Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University; U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine); and Patricia M. Wald, former judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. John Shattuck, chief executive officer of the Kennedy Library Foundation, staffs the Committee. Mr. Shattuck is a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and a former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic.

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is a presidential library administered by the National Archives and Records Administration and supported, in part, by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, a non-profit organization. The Kennedy Presidential Library and the Kennedy Library Foundation seek to promote, through educational and community programs, a greater appreciation and understanding of American politics, history, and culture, the process of governing and the importance of public service.

[Octafish]

9. Well deserved recognition.

Integrity.

[mod mom]

11. Funny how integrity to us is a "radical agenda" to the GOP:

"John McClelland's Republican Party statement read: "Jennifer Brunner has indeed shown a willingness to act regardless of the consequences, recklessly promoting a radical agenda and consistently hewing to her own personal version of the truth. It takes courage to pursue a colossal waste of tax dollars for a new voting system based entirely on personal whims and hypothetical evidence. It takes courage to punish your critics and threaten dissenters while presenting yourself as nonpartisan. It takes courage to surround yourself with advisors from the tin foil hat wing of the Democrat Party, yet claim to approach election reform with an open mind."

unbelievable how they attempt to spin it!

[Octafish]

16. The Fascists are trained or conditioned to react that way, since November 22, 1963.

CIA Instructions to Media Assets

Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report

CIA Document #1035-960

RE: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report

CIA Document #1035-960, marked "PSYCH" for presumably Psychological Warfare Operations, in the division "CS", the Clandestine Services, sometimes known as the "dirty tricks" department.

RE: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report

1. Our Concern. From the day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report, (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved. Presumably as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission's report, a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of those polled thought that the Commission had left some questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse results.

2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization. The members of the Warren Commission were naturally chosen for their integrity, experience and prominence. They represented both major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination. Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.

3. Action. We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active addresses are requested:

a. To discuss the publicity problem with (?)and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.

b. To employ propaganda assets to and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passing to assets. Our ploy should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (II) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Epstein's theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher article and Spectator piece for background. (Although Mark Lane's book is much less convincing that Epstein's and comes off badly where confronted by knowledgeable critics, it is also much more difficult to answer as a whole, as one becomes lost in a morass of unrelated details.)
4. In private to media discussions not directed at any particular writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments should be useful:


a. No significant new evidence has emerged which the Commission did not consider. The assassination is sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten and Bertrand Russell) with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the attack on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits have been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics. (A better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire of 1933, which some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, AJ.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt) now believe was set by Vander Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for either Nazis or Communists; the Nazis tried to pin the blame on the Communists, but the latter have been more successful in convincing the world that the Nazis were to blame.)

b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others. They tend to place more emphasis on the recollections of individual witnesses (which are less reliable and more divergent--and hence offer more hand-holds for criticism) and less on ballistics, autopsy, and photographic evidence. A close examination of the Commission's records will usually show that the conflicting eyewitness accounts are quoted out of context, or were discarded by the Commission for good and sufficient reason.

c. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy, Attorney General at the time and John F. Kennedy's brother, would be the last man to overlook or conceal any conspiracy. And as one reviewer pointed out, Congressman Gerald R. Ford would hardly have held his tongue for the sake of the Democratic administration, and Senator Russell would have had every political interest in exposing any misdeeds on the part of Chief Justice Warren. A conspirator moreover would hardly choose a location for a shooting where so much depended on conditions beyond his control: the route, the speed of the cars, the moving target, the risk that the assassin would be discovered. A group of wealthy conspirators could have arranged much more secure conditions.

d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it; they also scoff at the Commission because it did not always answer every question with a flat decision one way or the other. Actually, the make-up of the Commission and its staff was an excellent safeguard against over-commitment to any one theory, or against the illicit transformation of probabilities into certainties.

e. Oswald would not have been any sensible person's choice for a co-conspirator. He was a "loner," mixed up, of questionable reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service. (Archivist's note: This claim is demonstrably untrue with the latest file releases. The CIA had an operational interest in Oswald less than a month before the assassination. Source: Oswald and the CIA, John Newman and newly released files from the National Archives.)

f. As to charges that the Commission's report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was largely due to the pressure of irresponsible speculation already appearing, in some cases coming from the same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting out new criticisms.

g. Such vague accusations as that "more than ten people have died mysteriously" can always be explained in some natural way e.g.: the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses (the FBI interviewed far more people, conduction 25,000 interviews and re interviews), and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected. (When Penn Jones, one of the originators of the "ten mysterious deaths" line, appeared on television, it emerged that two of the deaths on his list were from heart attacks, one from cancer, one was from a head-on collision on a bridge, and one occurred when a driver drifted into a bridge abutment.)


5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging reference to the Commission's Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should still be impressed by the care, thoroughness, objectivity and speed with which the Commission worked. Reviewers of other books might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with the report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics.

http://www.jfklancer.com/CIA.html

Bush and his cronies couldn't win a single election fair and square. If they can't cheat, they'll kill to get their warmongering way.

[mod mom]

17. Thanks, as always for furthering knowledge. JFK or FDR? The same circle of folks

involved in the coup against FDR (funny I must have been absent when we learned this in school ;):

1934: The Plot Against America
DEPARTMENTNo CommentBYScott HortonPUBLISHEDJuly 28, 2007
I’m back from the land of heather and thistles, not to mention wee drams and lukewarm ale, but on my way out a friend at the BBC alerted me to this, a not-to-miss program on the BBC this morning, accessible over the next several days by internet. It’s the story of the Plot Against America. I don’t mean the Philip Roth novel, nor even the Sinclair Lewis book, It Can’t Happen Here, but rather the historical events upon which these two works of fiction were based.

In November 1934, federal investigators uncovered an amazing plot involving some two dozen senior businessmen, a good many of them Wall Street financiers, to topple the government of the United States and install a fascist dictatorship. Roth’s novel is developed from several strands of this factual account; he assumed the plot is actually carried out, whereas in fact an alert FDR shut it down but stopped short of retaliatory measures against the plotters. A key element of the plot involved a retired prominent general who was to have raised a private army of 500,000 men from unemployed veterans and who blew the whistle when he learned more of what the plot entailed. The plot was heavily funded and well developed and had strong links with fascist forces abroad. A story in the New York Times and several other newspapers reported on it, and a special Congressional committee was created to conduct an investigation. The records of this committee were scrubbed and sealed away in the National Archives, where they have only recently been made available.

The Congressional committee kept the names of many of the participants under wraps and no criminal action was ever brought against them. But a few names have leaked out. And one is Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the incumbent president. Prescott Bush was of course deep into the business of the Hamburg-America Lines, and had tight relations throughout this period with the new Government that had come to power in Germany a year earlier under Chancellor Aldoph Hitler. It appears that Bush was to have formed a key liaison for the group with the new German government.

Prescott Bush, of course, went on to service as a U.S. Senator from Connecticut, and his son, George H.W. Bush emerged from World War II as a hero.

-snip

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/07/hbc-90000651




BBC:



The Whitehouse Coup
Monday 23 July 2007



The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy.




http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml

[Octafish]

18. Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, USMC (ret.)

Gen. Smedley Butler twice was awarded the Medal of Honor. There are none braver.

The guy was wise, too.

As you so kindly noted above, Mod Mom, Gen. Butler turned in the traitors trying to overthrow President Roosevelt because they would tax their NAZI backsides to help pay for the New Deal.

Gen. Butler wrote about the same crowd in War Is a Racket. He saw that the Wall Street boys of his day used the military as private thugs, the muscle needed to rip off the loot of other nations.

Hey, America! The direct descendants of these treasonous turds are the warmongers running the nation into the ground today. And in the process, they've looted America.

[Berry Cool]

10. Good for them. K&R.

[quiet.american]

12. Excellent news. K&R. nt

[bluesmail]

13. Righteously right on and K&R

[lonestarnot]

15. Yeah!

:applause: