Fly by night (1000+ posts) Tue Jun-23-09 06:52 PM
Original message
A visit from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to my humble home (just now) ....
Preface: I have been working for the past four years to do away with non-verifiable voting machines in Tennessee and to move to paper ballots (counted by optical scan machines, with mandatory random manual audits to verify the accuracy of the opscans). It has been a tough fight, but last Thursday, with strong support by Senate Democrats and a lone honorable Republican, we have beaten back (for now) an effort by our Rethugligan Secretary of State to delay implementing the TN Voter Confidence Act and to gut its audit procedures.
Here's a link to the tribute I wrote for Senator Tim Burchett, the lone Republican who voted last Thursday to save our democracy:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
The fight is not over, as my visit by two TBI agents this afternoon illustrates. So read how my afternoon has gone (so far). I just sent out this email to the Governor, six state Senators, six state Representatives, everyone I know in the Tennessee media and about 100 election integrity activists around the state and nation.
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To all:
Well, things are getting interesting. I was just visited by two officers of the TBI, investigating a complaint they had received from the Secretary of State's office (complainant unnamed), saying that I had recently sent an email directly to the Tennessee Secretary of State's office, threatening violence against that office by invoking the memory of the Battle of Athens (TN). They were here to investigate my "terrorist threat against a government official".
Well, I've never sent any emails to this SoS's office on any subject, now or at any other time. However, I told the TBI agents that I have several times invoked the Battle of Athens (TN) in my writings as the only alternative available to the citizenry if the sanctity of the ballot box cannot be assured. (If you don't know about the Battle of Athens, read this link:
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/19...
The agents said they had to Google it before they came out, and that it was a pretty impressive story.)
We had a good conversation on my front porch and I explained the nature of the people who might have made this complaint against me. I also mentioned that one of them had issued a not-so-veiled threat against one of our other election integrity activists two weeks ago at Legislative Plaza. Before they left, I printed out my last letter to the state Senators that I sent the day they voted to protect the Voter Confidence Act, as well as a copy of my recent effusive tribute of Senator Tim Burchett. (See the DU thread above.)
I also asked the two TBI agents to deliver a message from me to whoever had caused them to have to drive to my farm today. Before they left, the lead agent repeated my message verbatim to make sure he had it right:
"Mr. Ellis would like whoever issued the complaint against him to grow a pair of balls, 'man up' (the agent's words) and call him at any time to discuss any concerns they may have with him or with anything Mr. Ellis has ever said."
The agent looked to me like he is going to be happy to deliver that message personally.
BTW, the lead agent said he called my sheriff and several others before coming out and was told that I was a reasonable man who could sit down and talk to anyone at any time about anything. Wouldn't it be nice if we had government officials in our Secretary of State's office who could do the same thing? Maybe one day, when we start counting ballots the way they're cast.
So, how is your day going today? Not as interesting as mine, I hope.
If we never stop fighting, we will not lose.
We are the ones we've been waiting for.
hobbit709 (1000+ posts) Tue Jun-23-09 06:55 PM
Response to Original message
1. I'd pay money to see that clown's face when the message gets delivered.
DU AdBot (1000+ posts) Tue Jun 23rd 2009, 07:05 PM
Response to Original messageKingston, TN Foreclosures
View Free Listings And Information For
Kingston, TN Foreclosures
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The House has voted to delay implementation of a Tennessee law requiring a paper trail from voting machines until 2012.
The chamber on Wednesday voted 73-20 to pass the bill sponsored by Republican Rep. Curry Todd of Collierville.
Under the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act passed last year, new optical-scan machines are required to create a paper trail in case there are voting irregularities. Every county in the state was supposed to have the machines ready in time for the gubernatorial election in 2010.
But proponents cite cost and technical concerns for delaying the law from going into effect until 2012.
The companion bill is awaiting a full Senate vote.
Read HB614 at: http://www.capitol.tn.gov
I see the little fly man couldn't wait to go to the DUmp and impress all of his friends with his tales of visits from the law. By the time they left, they were all buddies even!
Bernie is quite proud of himself, isn't he?I guess so. It all just seems kind of pathetic.
He does realize that by involking the Battle of Athens, if I am correct in which one that is, he is pretty much saying we should run the Dems out of office with the force of arms?
Bernie needs to learn how to "Get to the frikkin point" and quit following the Wee Willy style of writing....
It was pretty damned verbose and wandering, wasn't it?If ya can't get my attention in the first 3 sentences....you're wastin my time
Well enough of this. Time to return to a forum where dissent is not uncommon, trolls are ubiquitous (sorry Ree), and where attention spans are longer than 30 seconds. It's time for a DU thread entitled "DU's reich-wing Bizarro World doppelganger: www.conservativecave.com" Hide and watch.
-snip-
Well enough of this. Time to return to a forum where dissent is not uncommon, trolls are ubiquitous (sorry Ree), and where attention spans are longer than 30 seconds. It's time for a DU thread entitled "DU's reich-wing Bizarro World doppelganger: www.conservativecave.com" Hide and watch.
Well enough of this. Time to return to a forum where dissent is not uncommon, trolls are ubiquitous (sorry Ree), and where attention spans are longer than 30 seconds.
BTW, I, the person that started this site
Fly by night Donating Member (1000+ posts) Sun Jul-12-09 12:33 AM
Original message
DU's reich-wing Bizarro World doppelganger: www.conservativecave.com
Edited on Sun Jul-12-09 12:35 AM by Fly by night
I'm up later than usual on a Saturday night, but for those of you who enjoy a good freak show, here's a particularly revealing one.
We have been Googling regularly to see how much attention our increasingly unhinged TN Secretary of State is receiving for his increasingly desperate efforts to block the implementation of the Voter Confidence Act, the law that will ban Rethug-friendly DREs for paper ballots read by opscan and then hand-counted in randomly selected precincts to verify the accuracy of the opscans. This battle has really heated up in the last 24 hours as the TN Democratic Party is now calling for Tre to be fired for turning the Secretary of State's office into an ongoing criminal enterprise.
In any event, as I was doing my assigned Google chores last night, I came across a reference to a web-site I had never heard about before -- www.conservativecave.com . If you ever wonder where DU trolls come from and where they return to lick their own (and each other's) wounds, this seems to be the place. It's hard to tell how long they've been in operation and it appears they may only have about 40 active members. But they do seem to share one thing in common: a frenetic fascination with Democratic Underground.
What I found there was that their most active forum involves regular dissections of DU threads, and DU posters. It seems that many of us here have our "admirers" in Bizarro World, because they seem quite facile in discussing us by name (real names and DU handles). In fact, they seem to take enormous pride in changing our DU handles to something else.
Here, I am "Fly by night"; there I am "fly on the wall". At least I was until I signed on myself to go spelunking (wearing my helmet to avoid any bat-shit craziness) as "Flyamongus" and began speaking about myself in the third person (and making fun of myself for doing so.) I must admit -- being a troll is no fun, but I can see the type of cave-dweller who comes naturally to it. They breathe and breed on www.conservativecave.com .
So for a little extra Saturday night fun, visit www.conservativecave.com and see what the knuckle-draggers have to say about us. Heck, become a troll yourself -- you know you want to. It will be quite the education in the netherworld environs that foster Newts, knuckle-draggers and no-nothing Homelanders. Extra credit if you can find your own DU handle or threads among their discussion topics, though don't expect much erudition in their critiques. Cave-person comments would make a Twitter message look like a magnum opus.
One last enticement: In that particular corner of reich-wing Bizarro World, DUers are referred to as "primitives". So I guess it is only fair play to label these conservative cave-dwellers as "pod-people".
Good night, all y'all. And for any cave-dwellers who stumble out into the night, be careful. The ghosts of the Battle of Athens are everywhere. And they're not going away anytime soon.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6045624
YOU started this site? For some reason I thought it was franksolich. Hhmmm
Lets see how long this lasts...
BlueCaliDem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Sun Jul-12-09 12:58 AM
Response to Original message
6. Not an original post to be seen. Just a bunch of socks
needing DU to make their pathetic little lives interesting.
Sad.
Look at the memberlist and the dates of registration.
Actually, Chris, the effort to re-establish Tennessee's medical marijuana program is proceeding pretty well, now that we have six legislators in both houses (Dem and Repub) on board as supporters and several state agenices involved in the planning. If we succeed, it will eliminate anyone else having to face what Bernie faced by giving cannabis away free to four terminally ill neighbors, a crime for which he was never arrested, though it did get him two years federal probation with no fine. But, of course, you probably know that already. For those who don't, here's the link: www.saveberniesfarm.comHere's a hint asshole..GET TO THE ****IN POINT!!!....I know what every frikkin word ya type means(I have the IQ ya DUmmies only wish ya'll had)...I just have no time to dick around with assholes who can't say what they mean, and mean what they say succinctly....
As for Ree, sorry for so many big words, or for so many words at all. Sometimes short-term memory problems are more a function of innate intellectual capacity than to any pharmaceutical enhancement. Of course, even conservatives sometimes imbide, but a few sad and sour ones who do too often seem to end up not with "illegal smiles" but "illegal scowls".
Well enough of this. Time to return to a forum where dissent is not uncommon, trolls are ubiquitous (sorry Ree), and where attention spans are longer than 30 seconds. It's time for a DU thread entitled "DU's reich-wing Bizarro World doppelganger: www.conservativecave.com" Hide and watch.
Fly by nightIt wasn't difficult to find since you posted the same little story at multiple websites word for word.
Sun Jul-12-09 12:51 AM
Response to Reply #2
5. It was just a shock to see at least one entire threaad of mine posted there and to see the respondents calling me by my real name (which wasn't in the thread they posted.)
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Here's a hint asshole..GET TO THE ****IN POINT!!!....I know what every frikkin word ya type means(I have the IQ ya DUmmies only wish ya'll had)...I just have no time to dick around with assholes who can't say what they mean, and mean what they say succinctly....Or, he could start small and just try to have a point.
Let me give ya little hint....you mean less then nothin to me....I could blow your head off, garrote ya or stab ya in the gut(watch ya bleed out) and calmly go host a dinner party(BTW..I DO know which forks for where)
So My Dear...if I were you...I'd think twice about running your mouth on the net(you're not real smart, you've done told everybody where ya live)
YOU started this site? For some reason I thought it was franksolich. Hhmmm
Nope, nope, nope.
In fact, franksolich was one of the last to leave our old home, and this site was already zipping along by the time I came here.
You must not be from middle Tennessee. The TBI went to great pains to tell a number of reporters (who had been told by "No Balls" Hargett's mouth-piece that they could not comment on Hargett's bogus complaint because there was an ongoing TBI investigation and that the TBI had instructed them to remain silent) that there was no investigation, that there was not now and never had been a case, that there was no "there" there, that Hargett should not have been pissing his pants because of a literary reference to a pround moment in Tennessee history and that Tre's compaint was "unwarranted" (the TBI's words).
At least four law enforcement officers (and one judge) contacted Bernie to say that the TBI decision to be so vocal in criticizing Tre's false charges was to keep them from being turned into the KGB when Republicans nominate another TBI director -- something they are all fearful of. This story is far from over, since Tre committed (at least three) felonies with his action. When those charges are filed, hide and watch how the TBI reacts to that "case".
BTW, the lead TBI agent in the case was sent a copy of Eleanor Roosevelt's 1946 column "Athens A Warning", afterward. His comment: her column was quite relevant in today's contemporary world.
Thanks for playing. Care to play again?
Actually, Chris, the effort to re-establish Tennessee's medical marijuana program is proceeding pretty well, now that we have six legislators in both houses (Dem and Repub) on board as supporters and several state agenices involved in the planning. If we succeed, it will eliminate anyone else having to face what Bernie faced by giving cannabis away free to four terminally ill neighbors, a crime for which he was never arrested, though it did get him two years federal probation with no fine. But, of course, you probably know that already. For those who don't, here's the link: www.saveberniesfarm.com
Well enough of this. Time to return to a forum where dissent is not uncommon, trolls are ubiquitous (sorry Ree), and where attention spans are longer than 30 seconds. It's time for a DU thread entitled "DU's reich-wing Bizarro World doppelganger: www.conservativecave.com" Hide and watch.
That Bernie Ellis character must be having so much fun. He gets behind issues with such broad-based political appeal as .... saving our democracy...