I have not seen this diaried yet, but if it's already on the site, I'll delete.

Dann was one of the new Democrats elected to Ohio AGs office. He promised to clean things up and take an aggressive stance on consumer matters in this state.

He has been under fire for several weeks due to allegations of sexual harrassment of some of his employees as well as his admission to an affair with a staffer.

this is a non-political entry.  Papa John's issued a Tee Shirt which called LeBron James a CryBaby with his number 23. This was in response to a Wizard's player DeShawn Stevenson calling Lebron a cry baby for complaints about being fouled. Papa John's decided  to issue an apology today to all Cleveland area residents: you can go to any area Papa John's and get a large one topping pizza for 23 cents.

There's only one catch....

I have received a few emails recently from an acquaintance who was pro-Obama. Her support, since the whole Wright thing came out has been wavering and she is sending me anti-Obama propaganda  (from what I can tell) and asking me about it, I assume to either convert me to someone else or to try to convince her not to pay attention to it.

I would like to share one important email I just received last night, because if looks so well-researched and well-documented...the entry itself is quite long, but I have included the whole thing, including the supposed authors and their claimed beliefs. My first reaction was, this smacks of McCarthyism, guilt by association.

It also recycles both the Wright and Farrakan links.
More on the flip...

There is a little known (unless you've had first hand experience) eligibility requirement for Medicare. If you are considered disabled as defined by SSI, then you are eligible to sign up for Medicare benefits. However, there is a 24 month waiting period before you can get those benefits.

So, who qualifies as disabled? That, of course, is determined by SSI. Originally, to be disabled, you had to be unable to work at your regular occupation. Under Reagan, that definition changed, so that you had to be unable to do any work.

This made getting SSI benefits more difficult and many people have to reapply in order to qualify. So, this adds time to the process as well. In the best of circumstances, you wait 5 months.  Added to the 24 months, that can be as little as 29 months.

So, my husband and I came home last night from taking our two arthritic dogs to the vet and we found a smallish raccoon lying underneath a bench in our backyard. It was not moving and appeared to be dead. We called the city, police and animal control and everyone said that they wouldn’t do anything about it. My neighbor’s son and I went out to put in a garbage bag, when we noticed that it was still breathing.

Ok, so, my first thoughts are: raccoons, rabies, dogs, kids...We forget putting it in a bag...we came back in, called the police, again, called animal control, again, called several wildlife rescue groups, we even called the CDC. Everyone said the same thing "the police are supposed to take care of that".  Except the police. They said "we don’t do that anymore because of budget cuts".  

Now these police have come out to our house on numerous occasions because of our dogs. Complaints about them barking, or fears about them being loose (we have an invisible fence, so people don’t realize that they are really fenced in).  But to not respond to what might actually be a public health emergency??

I have been reading the comments of Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro and they reminded me of some of the contentious times in the 1960s.  During that time, black power and feminism were on the rise. As now, they had some contentious, but not necessarily inherent contradictions.

Folks in this country have been striving for it to live up to its noble ideals for centuries. While first eliminating the restriction on blacks voting, then women, we had started to actually live these goals.

More on the flip...

I wandered over to RawStory and saw that "The Joker" was putting out an ad for Hillary. I thought it was a joke. I clicked on the link and there it was!! An ad for Hillary by Jack Nicholson. I am not sure if this will get air time, there was no "I am HRC and I approve this message". Looks more like something Nicholson did on his own. But it is amusing.

I want to try to inject some peace on this site. I have been coming here since 2004 in the lead up to the Presidential election. We voted for and supported Kerry, not because he was the best candidate, but because he was the DEMOCRATIC candidate. We were enthusiastic when he took Edwards as his running mate, because, IMHO, Edwards was (and is) inspirational. After the 2004 election, when it first appeared that Kerry had won....then didn't, a lot of us felt extremely let down and, frankly depressed. I was.

We are now in the middle of a democratic "fight" between the forces of inspiration and the forces of, what originally appeared to be electability.  I was an Edwards supporter before he dropped out. In all honesty, I am an Obama supporter now.

I want to try to inject some peace on this site. I have been coming here since 2004 in the lead up to the Presidential election. We voted for and supported Kerry, not because he was the best candidate, but because he was the DEMOCRATIC candidate. We were enthusiastic when he took Edwards as his running mate, because, IMHO, Edwards was (and is) inspirational. After the 2004 election, when it first appeared that Kerry had won....then didn't, a lot of us felt extremely let down and, frankly depressed. I was.

We are now in the middle of a democratic "fight" between the forces of inspiration and the forces of, what originally appeared to be electability.  I was an Edwards supporter before he dropped out. In all honesty, I am an Obama supporter now.

Dear Friends and Patriots

Since you are receiving this email, you may very well be aware of the latest developments with regards to domestic spying. The federal government wants to take away the power of the courts to determine if AT&T and other Telecoms broke the law, instead seizing the power to overide the courts. It is bad enough the congress has given those in the government amnesty, it now wants to give amnesty to companies that have good enough lawyers to have known what they were doing was breaking the law. These cases important because they would determine for sure if the law was broken (and so far AT&T is losing).

Today, my cousin, who is probably my best friend sent me the following:

We need to show more sympathy for these people.They travel miles in the
heat, they risk their lives crossing a border, they don't get paid
enough
wages, they do jobs that others won't do or are afraid to do, they live
in
crowed conditions among a people who speak a different language, they
rarely
see their families, and they face adversity all day every day.

I'm not talking about illegal Mexicans, I'm talking about our troops.

Doesn't it seem strange that the Democrats are willing to lavish all
kinds
of social benefits on illegals, but don't support our troops and are
now
threatening to defund them?

I just sent off an angry but retrained reply. I would like it if anyone has any ideas about specific rebuttals to this argument. Ideas?

More below the fold...

I was at work, and tried to check the main diaries at dailykos and my web browser blocked the site as: politic, extreme, blogs.  Hmmmm, I work at the VA and checked the site just yesterday, so I decided to look at a few other sites that I look at regularly too. Mydd, no problem, Digby, no problem, boomantribune, no problem. Liberaloasis, no problem.

So, Kos, what did you do to piss these people off???

Anyone else have any problems accessing this site recently when they could access is before?

I suspect that this is actually a good thing....you are making waves!!

Apparently, Cuyahoga County, Ohio (Cleveland) is considering scrapping the whole electronic voting system and replacing it with optical scanners. In light of the possibility of "decertifying" these machines, this may or may not be a big story. The fact that they have spent so much money on them and have to spend more to get a working system is outrageous. When do these guys have to pay back all of the money that they made to make things right???

More on the flip...

I saw the post about Blackwell purging the voting roles, but more recent headlines on rawstory show an even more aggressive campaign of dirty tricks. First, Blackwell has challenged the residency of Ted Strickland. Not whether he lives in Ohio, but which of two houses is his primary residency. This NY Times article does a nice summary of the situation.

http://www.nytimes.com/...

More below the fold....

Common Cause is hosting house parties for Reform Ohio Now. Go to their web site:

http://www.partyhostcenter.com/commoncause/

If you live near any of these parties and if any are  open (some are closed to only invitees) then feel free to attend. I am hosting one and would love to have some new people show up.

I was reading a thread on one of the diaries and it appears as though people are not aware of charities other than the Red Cross. Since this recovery may take years, I'd like to remind people that there are many other charities which are helping the people of Mississippi and Louisiana. (heavily cribbed from Billmon). There are probably even more, but this is a start.  Please add any others that you are aware of.

I was reading through all of the very moving entries on this diary and many, many people discussed AA as a recovery group. AA is certainly the granddaddy of self-help groups. It has helped millions since its inception. However, there are other recovery groups that take very different philosophical approaches, I thought I would post a few here. I am not necessarily advocating these groups, I tried to find ones in my area to participate in, but there were none in NE Ohio where I live.

I have posted quite a few comments, but never a diary, so bear with me. I looked at my Sunday newspaper this morning and front page headline news is an article about Government secrecy. It is apparently part of a week-long series on the subeject.  I am including the link:

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1110720634310350.xml

This particular article discusses a lawsuit brought by a couple in rural Ohio who sued the city alleging that it paid $2 million for property that had been appraised at $763,000. That lawsuit ended in a lien being put on the building, the city directed to pay their attorneys fees and the mayor being recalled. More below the fold... Perhaps, things are finally starting to turn around. Slowly, but surely....