Amazing LTTE in rural East Texas

[Horse with no Name]

http://theparisnews.com/story.lasso?wcd=22674

To the Editor:

Government by wishful thinking is not very effective. Even running a household by wishful thinking isn’t very effective; if it were, I would have won the lottery years ago. Just saying “Mission Accomplished” or “We’re doing a heck of a job” does not make it so. No matter how loudly or often you say it. The job is “hard.” It takes planning. It takes foresight. It takes gathering a group of extremely smart, well-informed people around you to help you make the “hard” decisions.

It has become obvious that the current president has definite objectives and priorities, and he’s passionate about achieving them. One of them was to finish the job he felt his father had left undone. Conquer Iraq. So the facts were fixed around the objective in order to engage in a war to conquest. That was really disgusting. If any of you have not done so, please read the British Prime Minister’s briefing now referred to as “The Downing Street Memo.” If any of you are still under the mistaken impression that Iraq had anything to do with the disaster of Sept. 11, 2001, please be disabused at this time.

Another was to further enrich the wealthiest among us. The president once referred to them as his “base, the rich and the richer.” That was truly disgusting. The arrogance, the hubris of that statement was staggering. But he’s been diligent about achieving this goal as well.

A third was his belief that evangelical Christianity should be promoted in this country. Toward that end he has gone a long way towards stifling legitimate scientific process in this land. To take one example, there has been a lot of talk about the “debate” between proponents of the “theory of evolution” and the “theory of intelligent design.” Make no mistake: this isn’t a debate. We are talking apples and oranges. Evolution is science. Intelligent design is philosophy or religion. I have no problem with them each being taught in our schools. Teach evolution in a science class and teach intelligent design in a religion class. But please be aware that if you are teaching one religion in our public school, you should teach the other religions there as well, at least the major ones.

No matter how much wishful thinking you employ in your life, it does not change the facts. Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11. If the rich continue to become richer and the poor, poorer we will soon be a third-world nation. A theocracy won’t work any better in the United States of America than it does in Iran.

Emily Austin

Honey Grove

[Mikimouse]

1. I would love to see such a letter in the Nac. Daily Sentinel...

I can dream, can't I?

[babylonsister]

2. Emily, I don't know you, but as a resident of TX, I LOVE you!

And this was printed?! :woohoo:

[Horse with no Name]

4. It certainly was

I was astounded as well.
Honey Grove is very rural. :)

[babylonsister]

6. Honey Grove may be rural, but this proves there are smart,

aware people out there. Double the fun! :thumbsup:

[SeattleGirl]

3. Excellent letter by Ms. Austin.

She makes very good points, and calls it as it is. Bravo to her.

[Glorfindel]

5. I love the letter, but must quibble with the last sentence...

theocracy is working very well indeed in Iran, and it will work extremely well in the USA if we let the monsters take over completely. They're almost there already. All it will take is a few more "compromises" by compliant, "moderate" Democrats, eager to go along and get along, and we're all doomed.

[Mythsaje]

14. No it's not...

The democratic movement there is very strong, though it is rather silent right now.

Wouldn't work well here at all. They're just not aware of how bloody it could get.

[movonne]

7. Good

[ninkasi]

8. As a 5th generation Texan

For those of you not born, or living here, this was a letter of enormous courage. I applaud the author, and pray that she remains safe and unharmed. Rural East Texas is fundie paradise. This is a woman I would be proud to meet. For someone living where she lives, this is an amazing letter.

[biscotti]

9. Wow I love it!

Thanks for posting.

[Zen Democrat]

10. FYI: Honey Grove is 15 miles east of Bonham, home of Sam Rayburn.

Fannin County, Texas, has long been a Democratic stronghold. Mr. Sam's country. This is very north Texas.

When I think of East Texas, I'm thinking Lufkin, Nacogdoches, Timpson, Center, Henderson -- and I wonder how these Republicans are enjoying Bush now?

[Horse with no Name]

13. I drive through it often

Actually to be technical, it is Northeast Texas.
I hope you aren't speaking of a Democratic stronghold that voted 66% for Bush in the 2004 election.
If that is the case, then we certainly don't need more strongholds such as this.

Fannin (20 of 20 Precincts Reporting)
Party Candidate Votes V%
R George BUSH 7,892 66%
D John KERRY 4,000 34%
LB Michael BADNARIK 39 0%

http://election.cbsnews.com/election2004/county/president_tx0.shtml

[Stevepol]

18. These percentages are absolutely meaningless since the DREs.

There's absolutely no way to know who voted for whom, especialy ni areas where the Repub machine would allow for the machine technicians to "fix" the machines.

What's almost certain is that Kerry won the election in 04 by about 5M votes, and I'd suspect he came very close to winning TX as well. TX is a voting machine haven, McKinney being the home of Diebold and the machines being strongly embedded everywhere. It's as bad as GA or OH in TX and there's ho hope now of a Dem having any chance whatsoever unless there's a paper ballot and audits required for every election.

[Horse with no Name]

20. Most of the areas out here are paper ballots

I live out here...I know that many of these people who normally vote Democratic voted for Bush because of his faux Christian appeal and the effective Rovian/Swiftboating of Kerry.
I am not saying that election fraud didn't occur on a massive scale elsewhere, but I can almost certainly say it didn't occur in Fannin County.

[kestrel91316]

11. Somebody give this woman a medal for courage, and then

RUN HER FOR PUBLIC OFFICE.

[immoderate]

12. Smart and well written. It gets an A.

--IMM

[lebkuchen]

15. I'd love to see that letter in my paper

Stars and Stripes

[e-mail]

[Peace Patriot]

16. Thank you, Emily Austin! It is great letter--and it is people like you

who think for themselves and think clearly and rationally who are going to save our country and our democracy. I firmly believe that there are many more like you out there, and that most Americans agree with the thoughts you express in this letter.

But what most Americans don't know--haven't yet figured out, because the information has been so blacked out of the corporate news--is that our election system has been taken over by two rightwing Bushite electronic voting companies, Diebold and ES&S, as the result of a bill pushed through Congress by some of the biggest Bushite crooks in Washington DC--Tom Delay and Bob Ney.

This bill (the so-called "Help America Vote Act") created a $4 billion electronic voting boondoggle for electronic voting companies, that permitted the use of 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code to tabulate all our votes--code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it--with no paper trail requirement, virtually no audit/recount controls, no control on partisan vendors, no control on lavish lobbing of election officials and "revolving door" employment, no control on secret industry 'testing' of these machines, and underfunded regulators.

The plague of these extremely hackable and insecure, Bushite-controlled SECRET voting machines has spread throughout the country--with the enticements of control of big dollars, lavish lobbying junkets and other corruption, and has made our election system--how our votes are counted--completely NON-TRANSPARENT. These two companies, Diebold and ES&S, with close ties to Bush and to very extreme rightwing causes, 'counted' 80% of the nation's votes in 2004 behind a veil of secrecy.

The war profiteering corporate news monopolies--run by five fatcat CEOs--then confirmed the results of Diebold's and ES&S's secret formula by FALSIFYING their own exit polls, on everybody's TV screens on election night 2004, forcing their exit polls (which Kerry won) to FIT the non-transparent, secretly derived "official result" (that Bush won).

Non-transparent elections are not elections. They are tyranny.

And THAT is why, when most Americans agree with your views and are disgusted with Bush's war and all Bush policy, and have been for a long time--since well before the election--we still have this man and his cabal of callous thieves, murderers, torturers and traitors in the White House.

We have got to change this--and put pressure on election officials in every state and county jurisdiction in the country, DEMANDING TRANSPARENT ELECTIONS!

-----------------------

Some resources:

www.votersunite.org (MythBreakers - easy primer on electronic voting--one of the myths is that HAVA requires electronic voting; it does not.)
www.verfiedvoting.org (great activist site)
www.UScountvotes.org (monitoring of '06 and '08 elections)
www.solarbus.org/election/index.shtml (fab compendium of all election info)
www.freepress.org (devoted to election reform)
www.TruthIsAll.net (analysis of the 2004 election)
Sign the petition (Russ Holt, HR 550, great bill-has 169 sponsors). http://www.rushholt.com/petition.html
www.debrabowen.com (Calif Senator running for Sec of State to reform election system)
www.votepa.us (well-organized local group of citizen activists in Pennsylvania, where important legal issues are at stake, including state's rights over election systems)

Also of interest:

Bob Koehler (-- four recent election reform initiatives in Ohio, predicted to win by 60/40 votes, flipped over, on election day, into 60/40 LOSSES!--the biggest flipover we've seen yet; the election theft machines and their masters are now dictating election policy!)
www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?file=20051124ctnbk-a.txt&catid=1824&code=ctnbk

Amaryllis (Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia lavish lobbying of election officials - Beverly Hilton, Aug. '05)
www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x380340

----------------------

Throw Diebold, ES&S and all election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

:think: :patriot: :woohoo: :patriot: :think:

[OneBlueSky]

17. Bush's "belief" in evangelical Christianity is nothing more than . . .

a convenient political contrivance . . . he's about as Christian as Madeline O'Hare Murray . . .

[cassiepriam]

19. Wisdom and courage. nt

[mousie]

21. that is excellent!!! n/t