There's a lot of negativity on the blogosphere over the Brown Hackett Senate race. Maybe I'm a part of the problem. It's not enough to just be mad at things, you've got to be for something.

I support Paul Hackett over Sherrod Brown for Senate. Here's why:

Well, I've gotten work from my hosting provider that my site http://blog.oh02.com has gotten so much traffic today that it will be moved to another server. That means that I am down until the DNS issues are resolved.

Looks like Schmidt's latest slime against Hackett was the final straw resulting in a net backlash that fried my server.

This has been a great run.

Editor
http://blog.oh02.com/

The Hackett for Congress campaign has stated that these ads will start running tomorrow.

A Call to Service [mp4]

You will need QuickTime to view these videos.

You can see the the video at http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?section=/politics&wm=10
Click on "Special Election Focuses on Iraqi War"

One thing that's interesting about the piece is Vice-President Cheney complaining about monday morning quarterbacks. When it comes to Iraq, Paul Hackett actually is a quarterback since he just got back from serving there.

I would love to see Hackett's team work together with the initiatives of Joe Biden and Wes Clark. There's a lot of good work going on that could cause some very positive change.

(reposted from oh02.com)

Affiliates and instructions to hear the show online of via satellite radio are available on their website. Information of volunteering or donating to the campaign are available @ hackettforcongress.com.

These are my notes of the candidates debate for the Ohio 2nd Congressional District Democratic primary that was held on Wednesday. (I'm sorry if they come off a bit scattered. They were written at 3 o'clock this morning.)

The format for the debate was for each candidate to give a two minute opening and closing statement with six questions for all of the candidates in the middle.

Terri Schiavo has sparked an epiphany for me.

How do you counter the nonsense of the religious right? They are supposed to be the value people, yet all they seem to do is attack. What is the value that unites progressives? What is it that defines what we represent?

DIGNITY

Life with dignity. Being able to put food on your families table. Being able to protect your kids. Being able to drink clean water. Being able to make the hard decisions about your life. Being able to give your last breath safe in the knowledge that your wishes will be respected. When your boss asks you to commit a crime being able to look him in the eyes and say no.

Then the Schiavo case came along and the beltway right overplayed its hand.

Americans do not want Congress controlling their bodies. Americans do not want people screaming on a street corner dictating how they can die or who they can have sex with. American's do not want their families bankrupted as their spouses are forced to live as mindless vegetables based upon the beliefs of a fanatical few.

The recount issue in Ohio lays the groundwork for Greens to draw away frustrated Ohio Democratic voters. For a small investment in time and money they have a ready made issue the next go around. While the Democrats fiddle in Florida, the hungry parties store nuts for the winter.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Locked-Down Ohio Poll Records Left in Unlocked Building

DAYTON Saturday  December 11, 2004

Greene County election records that were the subject of Secretary of State Blackwell's personal lockdown order on Friday December 10 were left vulnerable in an unattended, unlocked Board of Elections office. According to Joan Quinn and Eve Roberson, two election observers researching voting records, revisited the office the next  morning to find the building unlocked and unoccupied.

The crowd wasn't as large as I'd hoped it would be, but about as much as I'd expect to be given the nature of things in the media. I did have the pleasure of meeting a lot of people who are working hard on voting integrity. Representatives from Common Cause were there... representatives from the NAAPC were there... representatives from Code Pink were there... many of the third Parties were there. People from Hawaii, and Chicago, and New York and Baltimore and all over Ohio. All across the Capitol-building Square people were wearing orange ribbons in solidarity with the people of the Ukraine. A few people wore John Kerry buttons. Not many.

As I surveyed the crowd I asked myself, where are the Democrats?

Why allow Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) to say "All this silliness about, oh, we're shut out. That's ridiculous. The Omnibus appropriations bill that we just passed on Sunday passed overwhelmingly with Democrat input and with Democrat votes on a bipartisan basis."

You aren't going to get people to vote for your party unless you offer a positive alternative to what they are doing.

If we don't fight now, when?

Democracy in America is a national chain that we all own stock in. Every precinct is an outlet. Each voter is your customer. Their votes are money. Each voter spends on average let's say about $1000. You are not allowed to keep track of how your customers spend their money. (For you voting nerds out there) Each election official is an employee in your company responsible for collecting the votes that are the lifeblood of your company and then reporting them to the head office. Employee theft is, as always, your number one threat. How to you run your chain?

This is amazing stuff to listen to.

Tales such as a woman whose husband died while waiting four hours in line to vote and of poll books without signatures and threats of arrest on a curious investigator.