I am a veteran of the Cold War Era and got out of the Army just before the war in Vietnam. After Nixon lost the war Vietnam veterans were treated like crap when they came back. I remember the "Hell no I won't go" demonstrations. Veterans returning from Vietnam really took a lot of heat which was really unfair.

When I got out in 1962 I was given a fast track to a Federal Job at a higher starting grade than the average engineer. In 1969 I used my GI Loan and my GI Bill to go back for a master's degree in Engineering. When I retired from the Federal Government I was able to count my three years in the Army against my years adding 3 years to my Federal Retirement.

I have often wondered if veterans are still treated as I was or did Saint Raygun screw the pooch like he did all Federal workers when he was unfortunately "elected" president despite his Iran/Contra treason. I know that Saint Raygun cut the hell out of our U.S. Forest Service budget as he did other agencies.

After our experience in Ohio, all voting machines should be banned. The DOJ must confiscate these machines and check them out. I'll bet they are all "fixed", Why else would that Koch sucker walker win twice, once in the recall election and now in the last election. We should also question why asshole scott won. The people of Florida hate his f'ing guts if comments on Facebook are true. If they find that fraud was committed then we must act and arrest the governors, attorney general and whoever else was involved in the fraud. If fraud was involved, we need to cancel the last election and disbar all republicans from Congress and hold another election.

Tom, I know what you mean about the treatment of veterans. Asshole hannity today was fawning over veterans saying they must be given jobs, He went on and on about this. There seems to be a disconnect here somewhere. hannity kisses the ass of the right wing hypocrites whining and lying daily about President Obama and laughing that we "lost" the election. I am so sick of his bullshit that I could chew nails an spit horseshoes. He must be corraled and removed from OUR airwaves along with his host Faux Not News. What the hell is wrong with the FCC. Are they left over from the cheney administration? They must act to prevent him from calling our president stupid every damn second word out of his vile mouth. Let's get him off the air. Savage is just as bad. He is also a vile POS like hannity.

It you can't afford the vet; then don't have the war!! T/Y.

I have felt torn between these two responses for years... I have had T-shirts printed that I give away occasionally; "Starve the Beast, DON'T ENLIST!!"

Off topic here, but it took me a week to find the article I wanted to reference. I could no longer track a link to the source on line, but saved the text when it first was published after Scott Walker's recall "victory". I am re-posting below. It is long and the links detailed, but worth reading to understand how pervasive electronic electiion fraud has indeed become. I live across the street from one of the biggest voter precincts in Mason Co. KY. Allison L. Grimes' Grandmother still lives in my town. Her local campaign headquarters were just down the street. The Lexington Herald Leader endorsed her. She was forecast to take Mason Co. easily. For the first time since voting here 3 years ago, I had to wait for a paper ballot. (though they are scanned and disgarded). African American turn out was very heavy. Urban areas had very heavy turn out all over the state and they weren't voting for McTurtle! After the election, I was told by a friend of mine that the Leader reported she lost Mason Co. nearly 2-1!

Meet Command Central, the People in Charge of Wisconsin Voting Machines
By Barbara With, Marianne M. Moonhouse and John Washburn

Command Central is one of Wisconsin’s leading vendors of voting machines and election supplies. They are distributors for Dominion Voting Systems, a privately-owned electronic voting equipment company. Founded in Canada in 2002, Dominion is now based in Denver, CO, since their acquisitions of Premier Election Solutions, from Election Systems & Software (ES&S), and Sequoia Voting Systems.

Command Central deals directly with Wisconsin county and municipal clerks and is closely involved in their selection of voting machines, ballots, and other election supplies. Command Central does all the maintenance on the voting machines and provides tech support throughout the year, with a special “hot line” should clerks need help with glitches, etc., on election day.

In June 2011, the Wisconsin County Clerks Association held their annual summer conference in Ladysmith. Seventy-five county clerks from across the state came together to, among other things, “assist the legislators in developing sound legislation that affects county clerks and county government by providing accurate and useful information.” WCCA Legislation Committee chair at the time was Kathy Nickolaus.

Last summer’s meeting featured a break-out session entitled, “Mastering Tough Questions from News Media, Directors and Other Audiences”:

Whether it’s a news event, a hostile public hearing or a difficult internal meeting, the knowledge and skills gained in this class will increase our ability and confidence to succeed as mastering the tough questions everyone fears. By understanding the anatomy of ‘tough questions’ you will gain power of them. Learn response techniques and model answers that you can apply to any situation.

Al Guyant, president of Guyant and Associates, a training firm specializing in human communications, conducted the session. Guyant has prepared clients for 60 Minutes, Dateline and other “tough question” formats. When asked why county clerks would need this kind of training, he said, “The obvious public scrutiny of elections has increased so much that the clerks need to be able to convey the essence of their statement in the 10 to 15 seconds because of the short attention span of America, and relative space and time in the media.”

Another break-out session was scheduled specifically to spend time with the election vendors: Command Central and Dominion. Command Central was represented by Vice President Aaron Storbeck. On display at his booth was an Edge DRE touch screen machine much like the kind that have been documented flipping votes on Election Day.
Many of our clerks have undoubtedly met Aaron Storbeck, who travels to conventions and sets up wares to show county clerks how easy these machines are to use. In a follow-up email interview Storbeck denied his machines could be corrupted:

BW: So as far as you know, you don’t know how anyone could create corruptible programming that would not show up until Election Day.

CC: Hasn’t happened and we have 46 counties as customers in Wisconsin and 3,000 pieces of equipment out there.

I asked if these machines force a straight party ticket. But unless a voter knows how to back out and re-enter the choices to force a split ticket as he explains below, how would they know?:

BW: Voters have to vote straight ticket. There is a way to overwrite having to vote straight ticket by selecting the first choice, then unselecting it, and then selecting the second choice. Even if voting Republican and the second choice is a Democrat, it will register a split ticket.

CC: Yes It check-marks the office in a straight party, however you can go in and deselect names if you wanted to change your vote(s).

But perhaps the most disturbing answer Storbeck gave was to the question of who programs the computer pacs that tabulate the votes.
CC: My step-mother is Sue Wahl and she does the programming.

Who is Command Central? Listed only as a P.O. box number on Storbeck’s card, on further investigation, Command Central’ s office can be found in Marketplace strip mall, 110 2nd Street South, Suite 300, in Waite Park, a suburb of St. Cloud, MN. They also are listed as doing business from suite 219 at this address. Coincidentally, Michelle Bachman’s campaign office is also located at this address, right down the hall in Suite 232.

Command Central's offices are located in this strip mall west of St. Cloud, MN. Michelle Bachman's campaign office is across the hall.

And who is Sue Wahl-Storbeck and should we trust her with our voting machines?
In 2007, Sue Wahl-Storbeck filed suit against a former employer and the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development for disqualifying her from receiving unemployment benefits because she had been fired. The company, ACS Enterprise Solutions, claims that in 2005, Wahl-Storbeck refused to take the annual ethics exam that was required for employment with ACS. She claimed the organization was so dysfunctional that it was “hypocritical” to take the test. She lost both her original case and the appeal. “Because each refusal to take the ethics exam was intentional conduct that displayed clearly Storbeck’s refusal to comply with ACS’s reasonable request, her actions do not constitute a single incident under Minn. Stat. § 268.095, subd. 6(a). Accordingly, the ULJ properly determined that Storbeck is disqualified from receiving unemployment benefits because she was discharged for employment misconduct.”

This is the woman who has control over the programming of 3,000 voting machines in 46 districts in the State of Wisconsin.

Sue Wahl-Storbeck programs the software for 3,000 voting machines in Wisconsin.
Regardless of her achievements, whenever anyone is given the sole responsibility to program our voting machines, we are placing the vitality of our entire democracy in their hands.

Forty-six Wisconsin counties and 3,000 voting machines are being controlled by a two-person company operating out of a strip mall in Minnesota.

By law, voting machines must be publicly tested prior to every election. A Programmable Read Only Memory (P.R.O.M.) pack or cartridge is used to reprogram the machines with the details of the current election. Clerks receive two PROM packs from Command Central: A PRE-LAT, which is used a week or so before the election for the public test, and an “Official” pack used on Election Day. Whoever programs the PROM packs has the ability to inject all the machines with a virus that will flip votes only on Election Day. With two different PROM packs in play, it’s easy to see how public tests could be flawless and the machines could still flip votes Election Day.

In his report of his experience with the November 2010 gubernatorial election for Scott Walker, John Washburn, an election integrity investigator and professional software tester for almost 20 years, states, “I have been to dozens of voting system test sessions and have never seen any of this faux ‘testing’ actually test the voting system software correctly. This is the professional opinion of a software tester testing software since 1994.”

Washburn also filed an open records request with Command Central to examine the PROM packs from the July 15, 2011 recall election in wards 1-4 in Fox Point. When they responded that it would cost him $450, Washburn filed a complaint alleging that Command Central LLC wasn’t cooperative in responding to the open records request.

Command Central Makes Its Move—A Shady Deal With WI County Clerks Last September, Election Integrity investigators discovered that unbeknownst to average citizens of Wisconsin, Command Central sent those 46 districts an offer: trade out your old Optech Insight Scanner for two DRE Touch Screen models, at no charge. The Optech machine is the one that paper ballots are fed through to read and register the votes.

While these machines are also susceptible to hacking in the case of a recount, it is possible to physically monitor the paper ballots as they are fed through the machine to see if they match the machine totals.

With DRE Touch Screens, however, one’s vote could be flipped and one would never know because there is no receipt or paper trail voters receive to confirm their vote was counted as voted. All that is left is a paper tape that shows votes and vote totals. If the machine is hacked, those totals have no other verifiable trail to confirm the results.

And yet according to John Washburn, this swap-out two-for-one offer violates the statutes issued by the GAB for State approved system as described on the Government Accountability Board’s website that requires the inclusion of an Optech Insight Scanner.
On January 13, 2012, Washburn emailed the GAB about this situation. When he did not receive an answer, he submitted an Open Records request to the GAB, with no reply. On May 2, he submitted another, again to no response. On May 4, he turned the case over to Dane County Attorney, and on May 14 he kicked it up to the Department of Justice.
Why is Command Central offering free machines? Why does the GAB not respond? Will the Department of Justice respond in time to help protect our June 5th recall elections?
Sadly, No.

Thank or apologize? I find it interesting that in ASL, the signs for "please" and "sorry" are very similar. They both involve rubbing your hand over your heart or chest, but one uses an open hand with fingers spread (5 hand) and the other a fist (A hand).

Happy anniversary, Thom & Louise.

To all the veterans, I say, "Sorry you had to go. Glad you could come back."

This is fantasy. How may I ask can a third party be successful in the face of big money challenges? Some dramatic changes in election law will have to happen first. I don't see it happening ESPECIALLY after seeing the results of this last election. Democrats don't like the current crop of Democrats running for office. They are spineless! Don't tout their accomplishments nor stand behind their President.

Granted President Obama is not operating the way most of us would like BUT, those are minor points when considering what we are dealing with as the whole of american politics is viewed. We have a rigged system that enables the wealthy and disregards the majority of the population. Current media is out of control (Ebola has vanished from the front page since the election as one example). We are inundated with irrelivant opinion based news with facts taking the sideline or ignored completely. There are no rules governing free speech over the air waves. The list goes on.

May I suggest this. The success of a third party in this country is wishfull thinking. What should be happening in the face of this disappointing election is to fix the Democratic party. The public will not vote, let alone vote FOR weak leadership. When 1/3 of eligible voters show up to vote something is very wrong.

DAnne my freind. Yes the fed collects taxes but not for our health care. Health care is funded and paid for by each provinces by there own taxes. Canada has a vast amount of resources that are state owned and the royalties collected pay most of the bills. Obama care uses Fed money to subsadise states doesn't it.

What Thom (we) are upset about is SCOTUS changing, or adding to existing laws, like they did in the Citizen's United Decision by declaring that corporations are people instead of ruling on the case presented

Interesting that you bring this up, along with the Civil War. That happens to be the unit I am teaching at the moment. Two weeks ago, in the lead-up to this unit, we did a case study on the Dred Scott decision. That study brought up the fact that the Supreme Court did a similar overreach then - declared Dred Scott as still property of his master, but then went on to say, esentially, it was better for Scott and all blacks, even freed men, to be enslaved, for their own good. So I can see your point about going beyond the case at hand. It's been happening for a long time. I wonder how many other cases, both big and small, positive and negative this would apply to.

Have you heard about the teachers in California who are suing the union for supporting Democratic candidates? I read it was ten teachers, and this case might make it to the Supreme Court. They are basically arguing for a right to work without paying the union. Teachers there and here don't have to actually join the union, but they have to pay the dues on the assumption that all teachers want the benefits the union brings. This could be the case that finally does in public-sector unions. I wonder if Thom's talked about it yet.

ChicagoMatt ~ I fail to see what overruling DOMA has to do with overstepping the bounds of SCOTUS. Overruling unconstitutional BS laws is exactly what SCOTUS was created to do in their charter. What Thom (we) are upset about is SCOTUS changing, or adding to existing laws, like they did in the Citizen's United Decision by declaring that corporations are people instead of ruling on the case presented; which, by the way, is all they are supposed to do under the power given to them through the Constitution. Therefore, there actions are, by definition, unconstitutional; and, when the only group appointed to determine the constitutionality of laws can't even act within the Constitution, the Constitution becomes meaningless and that group becomes an unelected oligarchical dictatorship that we are stuck with for life. That is what we are upset about.

Not allowing the Internet to blossom to it's full potential is holding our country back and is out of character with our spirit.