Hi Everyone,

As some of you know here, I am a mother of two ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) children. The New York Times issued an editorial the other day dismissing the autism-vaccination link. They say it is time to move on. Frankly, I do get irritated with the mercury moms that claim the mercury preservative drug, thimersol, caused their child's autism. Thimersol has been removed from most of teh vaccinations and the CDC has reported that the numbers of children diagnosed with autism has remained steady over the last several years. However, I am not ready to move on.

Something has gone awry with our male population. Did you know that many colleges reject more qualified female applicants over their male counterparts just so that the colleges can retain a 50/50 male - female ratio?

I wrote a diary on Dkos last week regarding voting provisional. It all started with a diary titled ACTION ALERT: Blackwell purged Ohio Voter Rolls Oct 1st.- Vote Early which was later debunked here. While the Dkos community was busy slapping themselves on the back for investigating and debunking this diary, I realized that there may be a little bit of truth to this story.  

Please follow me below the fold:

The Democratic Party has a GREAT Candidate for the OH-02 Special Election that will be held on August 2nd. I know many of you are focused on 2006 but this is a race that is happening RIGHT NOW!!!!

The democratic candidate is a good looking Iraq Vet and the republican candidate is corrupt and under investigation for ethics violations.  It's the Ohio 2nd Congressional District which is rural and rather conservative but the republican candidate said in the debate that she was supportative of Mega-Farms (OOOOPPPPS). It drew a gasp from the conservative farmers in the audience. They may not like gay marriage but they hate Megafarms even more. Please support this troop and announce this race on the air and let other fellow Ohioans know about this race.

If you want to learn more about Paul Hackett, here is his website.

Please read on for other ways you can help.

I am stealing this Daily Kos diary from redstatewoes and posting it here. It's called Some surprises at the OH-02 debate tonight.

This diary is regarding the debate between Republican Jean Schmidt and the Democrat challenger Paul Hackett. You can read more about the debate here.

Thank you Newsie8200 for your GREAT comment that led me to all of the links.  

Here is how you can help!

There has been some "housecleaning" done at the Franklin County Ohio Board of Elections recently. As many as 114,000 people have been purged from the registration rolls in Franklin County OH which leaves 733,023 registered voters on the registration rolls. I strongly urge any American to call or email their local election official to make sure that you are still registered. This is happening all across Ohio but it may very will be happening in other states as well.  

I understand that it is necessary for local election officials to clean up their registration rolls because many people move and some die but 114,000 people out of 845,000 is a lot of moving and dying.

Whether you believe that John Kerry actually won Ohio or not, the voting irregularities that took place in the 2004 election will be worse, not better in 2006 and 2008 and here is why I think that.

I have been very busy with my voting project but I had some minutes to spare and noticed that Jerome has posted some terrific diaries at European Tribune and I noticed only 1 or 2 comments on them.  

I spoke to a very good friend of mine from Holland today and mentioned the European Tribune to her. She had never heard of it and told me she would pay a visit. If you have any European friends, please let them know about it.  If you have any ideas how we can get the word out to our friends in Europe, please post your ideas here.

If you can spare 15 minutes, why don't you visit Jerome at European Tribune and read his great diaries.

Especially this one: Countdown to 100$ oil (3) - industry is beginning to suffer. Not one comment has been posted yet.

The grassroots of the Democratic Party fought hard to get Howard Dean elected as Chairman of the Democratic National Party despite the efforts of the DLC to keep the status quo. We won that battle. Over the last week, another battle has been raged. Some democrats in the DLC criticized and marginalized our DNC Chair, Howard Dean. Three Top Dem Fundraisers Resigned because Howard Dean did not spend enough time with them in New York and DC pandering to their needs. Instead, Dean has held fast and is continuing his 50 State Campaign Strategy to put democrats in office in all 50 states. But he still needs you. Please read on to see why and how we can help.

I just wanted to let everybody know that the "We've Got Dean's Back Campaign" is alive and kicking. I setup a donations page called We've got Dean's back last Wednesday there have been 134 contributors and $3,457.01 collected so far.  As you may also know, glynis has set up a Dean speaks for me petition.  Special thanks goes to sgilman for posting the diary here on Booman Tribune.

I just want to inform you that there are also other donation pages set up. ACTBLUE has a donations page that was setup last February by Kos to show our support for Howard Dean as the DNC party chairman.  In the last several days, they have had 12 contributors donate $321.07.  Atrios also has a donations page setup right here.

If you are tapped for money, please sign on the petition lised above. If not, please send a small contribution on payday to one of the above links.

I am working with ACTBLUE to get a donations page setup with a bat.  I would like to get something more sophisticated setup like a "Dunk a Dope" page where we can choose an idiot of our choice and have Howard Dean hit a dunking machine target and have the idiot fall into the water.  It would be fun and non-violent and the money would go to a great cause.

UPDATE 125 donors, $3,196.96 and one donor wrote me and told me she heard the Dean Scream on msnbc yesterday. - That costs $30.01 folks! As many of you know, Susan Hu posted a diary called Three Top Dem Fundraisers Resign over Dean yesterday.

Democratic fundraisers say that there is growing concern over what they call Dean’s lack of attention to major donors and that donors are much less likely to give money if they don’t have sufficient opportunity to meet with the party’s leadership. “When you don’t have the chairman to fundraise with, or any principals of the leadership, you can’t get major donors to help you,” a veteran Democratic fundraiser said. “You want the leaders of the party to sit down with them so they can discuss their plan.” “It’s frustrating to be the staff person in charge of that group,” the fundraiser said. “No one wants to stay in a job in which they’re not successful.” The fundraiser added that New York is a competitive place to raise money and that donors often demand detailed explanations of how the money will be spent.

I made this comment:

Do they want to spend more time with Dean? Then I suggest they join him in canvassing the whole country and getting more people involved in the democratic process. I think this is a scam to get Dean out of the DNC chair. I think the rich fat cats in DC should hungry for a while (a long while). This is why independents and people on the fence do not vote for the democratic candidates nor any candidates for that matter. They see right through their bullshit.

I also read another diary on Daily Kos by Bob Johnson on the same topic titled Beltway Dem insiders whine, 'Dean stole our Golden Goose!' I don't know about you but I was furious.  I watched Wolf Blitzer in horror on Sunday night and I wanted to smack Wolf and his guests upside the head when they were treating Dean with such contempt.  For me, it was personal, I felt that they were treating me with contempt.  I want them to take notice and know that we are real people and that is whom Dean represents.

I was getting ready to head for the fridge to try to forget my anger after I read SusanHu's diary but decided to do something different. With a little help from my fellow Kossacks, I was able to set up a webpage on the DNC called We've got Dean's back. Within minutes, SusanHu contacted Howie Martin of http://howieinseattle.blogspot.com/ and http://www.seattlefordean.com/ and Howie helped cross-post the link on these and other blogs.

I am so grateful to SusanHu and Howie Martin for helping me with this campaign.  In less than 24 hours, the  "We've got Dean's back" DNC website received $660.16.  Not bad, but we need to do more.  Here is my suggestion:

1.    We need to choose a day of the week where we all make contributions to the website.  I was thinking Friday because that is usually a day when most people receive their paycheck.  I think it's symbolic because most people live off of their paycheck and have to work for it.    

2.    Make a contribution on that Friday if Dean get's attacked by the media, Republicans or people that are democratic in name only (eg. Joe Lieberman, Joe Biden, etc.).  I can write up a summary diary every Friday on Booman Tribune and cross-post it to the Daily Kos of the attacks that were made.

3.     Have everybody contribute a small dollar amount with a penny.  I suggested 5.01 or 10.01 but found out that the DNC only accepts a minimum contribution of 10.00.  I also found out that they don't have paypal but I have already written the DNC and requested that they set up a paypal account.

4.    If any station airs the Dean Scream, we can do one or two things: a. either make an immediate contribution of 10.01 or make a contribution of 30.01 on Friday.

5.    Please send me an email and let me know what you sacrificed for your contribution.  Did you give up your Friday night Pizza?  Did you give up your weekend 12 pack?   Let me know.  

I really don't want to break all of your backs on this but I think if we hit hard, the media and the republicans will take notice and hold back on their Dean attacks.  I would like to consider this a working diary.  Please feel free to offer suggestions on how to make this campaign successful.  I will update and revise this diary as they come in. Please support We've got Dean's back.

Many of us have been very disturbed at the lack of corporate media attention being paid to the Downing Street Minutes. Many point out that the minutes are from a meeting after 9/11 and that even though the war was cooked up, it was probably because Bush and Blair were being extremely cautious post 9/11. The problem is, the Iraq War was planned before 9/11 and it had NOTHING to do with terrorism. The only thing that 9/11 did change was a delay into invading Iraq. From the number of troops that the US committed to Afghanistan and how they waged that war, it is more than obvious that the real war on terror was nothing but a distraction from their pre-9/11 agenda. Here is what I have gathered to show the march to war before 9/11.  As a matter of fact these statements were made before and during the first month of Bush's Presidency.  

I am so sick and tired of hearing this from religious wingnuts.   I was reading my hometown newspaper and came across this letter to the editor Centers can't defend films that use evolution