BartBlog

Author’s note:
I am not a big fan of Libertarianism. As Mike Malloy says, it would work – on an island of about 50 people. I do, however, despise any sort of voter suppression or disenfranchisement, which the GOP seems to have nearly perfected. What the GOP did to Ron Paul supporters was despicable and if that was the primary cause of their election losses, then they deserved it. Well, they deserved it regardless, but you get my point. Now we can laugh for the next four years as the Libertarians and neoconservatives fight a civil war within the GOP.

After being shunned by the RNC, Ron Paul held his own rally in Tampa on the eve of the GOP convention. People cheer as they listen to speakers while waiting for the former Republican presidential candidate. Credits: Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

Excerpt:
A full three days after the GOP took a shellacking in the general election, as many as 19 reasons have been put forth by both parties, pundits and the corporate media as they grope for explanations for President Obama’s win. The woman’s vote, the Hispanic vote, media bias, a poor campaign message, Tea Party extremism, Romney too moderate, hurricane Sandy, New Jersey governor Christie, even voter suppression – the list goes on and on.

While all of these factors did come into play, the truth may be that the single most significant factor is what the Republican establishment did to one of its own candidates, Dr. Ron Paul, and his many ardent supporters. By disenfranchising Ron Paul supporters, Romney won the primary, but because of that he may have lost the election. For that, the GOP has no one to blame but itself and very few in either party or the media seem to want to mention the Ron Paul factor.

In the Republican primary, Ron Paul’s delegates and supporters were systematically shut out of the process, yet Karl Rove has the nerve to say on Fox news that President Obama won by “suppressing the vote.” Take a closer look at your own party, Karl.

Ron Paul brought the youngest delegation in the history of the Republican Party to the convention (RNC) in Tampa in August. They were not political hacks, millionaires, CEOs or attorneys – they were ordinary young adults from all walks of life who thought they could make a difference. They were welcomed by GOP hacks by having their signs confiscated and torn up before their eyes.

The Maine delegation, apparently having too many Ron Paul supporters, was unseated and then walked off the floor at the RNC, chanting, “As goes Maine, so goes the nation.” It is befitting that Maine’s electoral votes went for President Obama.

Ron Paul delegates even sustained injuries as they were arrested in Louisiana after it became clear to GOP leaders that they were in the majority at the state convention. After Ron Paul supporters booed Romney’s son Josh at the state convention in Arizona, the air conditioning and lights were turned off by GOP operatives in order to prevent Ron Paul delegates from being elected to a party position. Romney campaign officials were caught distributing fake delegate slates in Maine and Nevada. In Missouri, police were called to shut down the St. Charles caucus when a Ron Paul victory appeared imminent.

While young people are encouraged to follow their dreams and ambitions, to get involved and make a difference in many aspects of their lives, that is apparently not allowed in Republican Party politics. And the pundits wonder why President Obama secured a majority among voters under 30.

Here is another reason why the GOP lost badly. It is called simple math. The following statistics were put together by Hamdan Azhar, writing for policymic.com. It reveals that, “in no less than five states, Romney’s margin of loss to President Obama in the general election was less than the number of votes received by Ron Paul in that state’s primary.” Although not all of the votes have been counted and recorded yet, the trend is obvious.

Florida
Obama votes: 4,141,618
Romney votes: 4,094,952
Romney loss margin: 46,666
Paul primary votes: 117,461
Electoral votes: 29

New Hampshire
Obama votes: 366,089
Romney votes: 325,668
Romney loss margin: 40,421
Paul primary votes: 56,872
Electoral votes: 4

Ohio
Obama votes: 2,691,861
Romney votes: 2,584,620
Romney loss margin: 107,241
Paul primary votes: 113,256
Electoral votes: 18

Virginia
Obama votes: 1,868,191
Romney votes: 1,767,692
Romney loss margin: 100,499
Paul primary votes: 107,451
Electoral votes: 13

These four states alone account for 64 electoral votes and if you were to take 64 away from Obama and give them to any GOP candidate that is the difference right there. Of course, it is not safe to assume that everyone who voted for Paul in the primary would have turned out and voted GOP if another candidate was on the ballot. Nor it is safe to assume that Ron Paul would have won a general election against President Obama or that the Libertarian ideology would sell to the majority of Americans.

But that is not the point. The point is that neither party should suppress voters, intimidate delegates and force Americans to vote for establishment candidates picked by party bosses, billionaires and the corporate media. That strategy usually leads to the incumbent party winning, like in 2004, but also leads to lack of new ideas and the potential for real change. The American people should be allowed to make their own choices.

Perhaps GOP leaders should take a closer look at disenfranchising their own voters instead of blaming Mother Nature, the changing demographics in America or candidates that are not conservative enough. Very few Americans seem to care for disenfranchisement, voter suppression and intimidation.

Republicans now have fours years to think about that while they argue among themselves and while President Obama continues to try to fix the mess that their last “winner” left for America.

Read more, get links, a video and see the comment section here: Madison Independent Examiner – The Ron Paul factor in the GOP’s defeat

“Because if you don’t hit back the Reich Wing bullies will ALWAYS get your goat.” (more…)

Author’s note: My intuition tells me that this is case of local authorities headbutting with the feds and defying them. It is also an instance of Wells Fargo trying to recoup losses from buying mortgages packaged into derivatives before the housing crash.

Niko Black is consoled by friends and neighbors after being illegally evicted from her home at gunpoint while in a wheelchair. Photo credit: Facebook - On Attack 4 Niko Black

Excerpt:
Thanks to the friendly people at Wells Fargo and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD), a 37-year-old woman in a wheelchair who suffers from a rare, malignant and metastatic form of breast cancer was illegally evicted from her home at gunpoint.

Niko Black, a Native American Mescalero Apache, told the OC Weekly:

I’m in my bed and I see them storming my property, [so] I crawl to my wheelchair. They break down my door. I’m sitting there in my wheel chair. I’m about 100 pounds of shriveled-up cancer and a threat to no one. Sergeant Bob Sima puts a gun to my face, finger on the trigger, no safety and walks around me. There’s no reason, except for to threaten my life, for an intimidation factor, to put a gun to my head.

Niko had legally declared bankruptcy and had been fighting Wells Fargo in a civil suit against eviction. She had owned her home for almost 20 years and had lived there since she was a child. She never even had a mortgage with Wells Fargo, and has entered into a civil suit around the fraud they have perpetrated against her, fraud that goes back many years.

After she filed bankruptcy, the court sided with Niko and put a stay on Wells Fargo’s eviction. Despite this, officers from the OCSD along with Wells Fargo employees harassed her on several occasions.

“Wells Fargo filed a motion about an inch thick all the reasons why they should be allowed to evict me,” Black said about the court order. “The federal judge denied them and stated very clearly they are not to. The bank illegally acquired an unlawful detainer, an eviction, without due process. They did it with fraudulent paperwork.”

Niko says that paperwork was signed by forgery with obvious misspellings of her name and filed a civil lawsuit. That is consistent with the claims of a $43 trillion class action lawsuit against Wells Fargo and 1807 other defendants. Her intransigence, she believes, is the reason why she’s been subjected to this entire ordeal.

So Niko refused to open her door for police on October 10, on which was taped a copy of a court order (see slideshow) obtained from Federal Bankruptcy Judge Theodore C. Albert in late August that she firmly believes should have prevented the OCSD from carrying out the eviction. The deputies acted anyway on behalf of the county council and Wells Fargo. Finally, officers broke into her home and forcibly evicted her at gunpoint.

With neighbors lining up outside watching, Black’s health began to worsen. “I needed my medication, I couldn’t breathe and I was having a seizure,” she told the OC Weekly. Niko said that deputies were unresponsive to concerns about her condition and one officer even remarked that she “looked good” to him. An ambulance finally arrived at her friend’s behest and took her to a hospital.

Following the events of October 10, Judge Albert has ordered Wells Fargo and county officials to appear in court on November 13 to explain why they should not be held in contempt for violating the stay and be made to pay punitive damages. The governor’s office has now gotten involved to investigate how something like this can happen in the state of California.

While law enforcement agencies, city officials and Wells Fargo will have to explain their actions in court, Niko’s health is deteriorating.

“Because I have a very aggressive form of cancer, every appointment, every day is crucial,” she says. “I’m a person with a lower immune system. That’s why all my nursing care, my physical therapy, my medical equipment, everything is set up for home care. This violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

A social worker as well as the head of the hospital that she was taken to have both written in support of Niko being immediately returned to her home for medical care. Attorney Stephen R. Golden has agreed to represent Niko pro bono. According to David Cruz at KTLK AM 1150, the lawyers from the Stephen Golden Law Firm were able to get Wells Fargo to let Niko back into her home to retrieve her belongings and the medical devices needed for her treatment.

“All I want to do is go home,” Black says. “All I want to do is save my life.”

One of Niko’s best friends, Linda Rife of Tustin, CA, has started on online petition in support of her plight. The petition, directed at John Stumpf, the CEO of Wells Fargo, reads: “Wells Fargo: Don’t break the law – leave cancer patients alone.” You can sign it here. Updates are posted on a Facebook page created for Niko.

Niko Black is a singer/songwriter and you can listen to some of her music here.

Read more, get more links, a video and slideshow here: Madison Independent Examiner – Cancer patient illegally evicted from home at gunpoint

Author’s note:
This election is looking like a repeat of 2004. Ohio is once again the key swing state and Romney and his cronies have put together all of the necessary mechanisms to steal the vote in the state.

Excerpt:
No Republican presidential candidate has ever won an election without carrying the state of Ohio. So, it is probably no coincidence that Hart Intercivic, a company with strong ties to the Romney campaign, will be counting (or not counting) the votes in Ohio and in other swing states such as Colorado.

In all 234 counties of Texas, the entire states of Hawaii and Oklahoma, half of Washington and Colorado, and certain counties in swing state Ohio, votes will be cast on eSlate and ePollbook machines made by Hart Intercivic, even though a 2007 study commissioned by the state of Ohio has labeled its voting system a “failure” when it comes to protecting the integrity of elections.

Hart Intercivic, a manufacturer of paperless voting machines, has a key investor known as HIG Capital, seven of whose directors were former employees of Bain & Co., a consulting company of which Mitt Romney was once CEO. HIG Capital announced its investment in Hart on July 6, 2011, just one month after Romney formally announced the launch of his presidential campaign.

According to OpenSecrets.org, HIG Capital has contributed $338,000 to the Romney campaign this year. According to Craig Unger writing for Salon.com, four of the HIG directors, Tony Tamer, John Bolduc, Douglas Berman and Brian D. Schwartz, are Romney bundlers along with former Bain and HIG manager Brian Shortsleeve.

A report in The Nation tied HIG Capital to the Romney family via Solamere, a private equity firm that has invested in HIG and is run by Tagg Romney, the candidate’s son. Tagg is managing partner of Solamere Capital, which is a subsidiary of financial firms owned by Allen Stanford, a guy doing 110 years behind bars for an $8 billion Ponzi scheme. “Solamere, a firm predicated on its founders’ relationship with Romney, presents a channel for powerful investors to influence the White House if he wins.”

In this presidential election, Ohio is one of the eight closely contested states that could go either way. By most accounts, the others are Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, Iowa and New Hampshire. In order to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to become president, Republican Mitt Romney probably would have to win the other seven if he loses Ohio.

Ohio typically votes for the eventual presidential winner. It has done so in 25 of the past 27 elections since 1904, missing only in 1944 when it went for Republican Thomas Dewey over Franklin Roosevelt and in 1960 when it went for Republican Richard Nixon over John Kennedy.

Vote flipping through electronic voting is very difficult to prove, since the totals remain the same for each precinct and there is no paper trail. It may have occurred here in Wisconsin this year in the GOP primary. If you look at slide one in the slideshow here, you can see Romney’s percent of the vote takes off and those of the others drop after about 7% of the votes are counted from the smallest to the largest precincts. Romney’s percentage of precinct votes goes up (the upward slope of the green line) while those of the three other candidates decline.

The steady increase in Romney’s percent of the vote and steady decline in Santorum’s represents a statistical anomaly. In this case, the anomaly is amazing according to the researchers. The probability of this happening by chance alone is so small it exceeds the capability of statistical packages to handle. Their software says Romney’s share of the vote, increasing with precinct size has zero probability of occurring by chance alone.

All five companies that provide paperless voting machines in the U.S. have very strong GOP fundraising ties, yet their executives (including the candidate’s son Tagg Romney) insist there is no conflict between massively supporting one party financially while they are controlling the machines that record and count the votes.

President Obama won by such a huge margin in 2008 that even with this anomaly built into the system, there was no way to steal the election without creating serious doubts about the entire system. This year the election is much closer. More than 100 million Americans will cast their ballots thinking their vote will be fairly counted as they should be, but there are legitimate concerns that all of them will be counted or cast on the correct ballot.

President Obama won by such a huge margin in 2008 that even with this anomaly built into the system, there was no way to steal the election without creating serious doubts about the entire system. This year the election is much closer. More than 100 million Americans will cast their ballots thinking their vote will be fairly counted as they should be, but there are legitimate concerns that all of them will be counted or cast on the correct ballot.

U.S. elections, however, have gotten to the point where U.N. officials have been asked by the ACLU and NAACP to send international monitors to oversee this election and look for fraud and officials in Texas have threatened to arrest them. Yet the real crooks know they can safely flip up to 10% of votes without consequence. Anything more than that is statistically suspect.

To sum it up, the vulture capitalist Republican son of the vulture capitalist Republican running for president is part-owner of voting machines in a state that is a must-win for any Republican seeking the presidency.

Read more, get links, see a slideshow and video here: Madison Independent Examiner – Real voter fraud set occur in Ohio

Author’s note:
Is anyone seeing a pattern here? This started under the Bush administration, yet it continues.

Excerpt:
Last Wednesday, a 21-year-old Bangladeshi national, Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, was arrested and accused of traveling to the U.S. to establish an al Qaeda cell and bomb the Federal Reserve Bank in Lower Manhattan.

Buried beneath the headlines and opening paragraphs of the major news outlet reports, however, is the fact that Nafis would have been unable to execute his plot without substantial assistance from the F.B.I.. Authorities assured several news agencies that “the public was never in danger.”

This case is yet another instance, among hundreds, of federal agencies creating terrorist plots so they can take credit for stopping them, instill fear in Americans and justify the billions of taxpayer dollars spent on wars and “homeland security.” This practice earned the number four rank on the list of the 2012 Project Censored most underreported stories in the U.S. media.

Last year, Trevor Aronson, with the aid of the Investigative Reporting Program at University of California-Berkley, completed a yearlong investigation of every case of terrorism that the Department of Justice (D.O.J.) prosecuted since 9/11 that was published in Mother Jones monthly. Out of 508 defendants at the time, 248 were targeted via an informant, 158 were nabbed via a sting operation, and 49 were lured via an informant who led the plot. Only three cases did not involve an informant and/or a F.B.I. sting operation. In 53 percent of the cases, the charges the defendants were convicted of did not involve terrorism.

According to the New York Times, “both F.B.I. leaders and federal prosecutors have defended the approach as valuable in finding and stopping people predisposed to commit terrorism.” There are doubts, however, as to whether these individuals would have had the will or capability to act on their own without being led along by F.B.I. informants.

While this practice is legal under legislation passed since 9/11, its legitimacy is questionable. In many cases it is borderline entrapment under the strict legal definition, but defense attorneys have had difficulty making that argument because important meetings between informants and the unknowing participants are left purposely unrecorded in order to avoid any entrapment charges that could cause the case to be dismissed.

At issue is the word “entrapment”, which has two definitions. There is the common usage, where a citizen might see F.B.I. operations as deliberate traps manipulating unwary people who otherwise were unlikely to become terrorists. Then there is the legal definition of entrapment, where the prosecution merely has to show a subject was predisposed to carry out the actions they later are accused of.

His case reveals several issues. Firstly, Nafis was never in contact with any real terrorists. If terrorists are scattered all about the country in cells, why was he unable to contact a single one of them? Secondly, he was never able to procure any real explosives. Thirdly, if he came in contact with F.B.I. agents, that means he was blindly recruiting anyone for his “terrorist cell.” He even asked a contact over Facebook, an F.B.I. informant, if it was permissible to blow up a country that granted him a student visa. What real terrorist would be naïve enough to do that?

This case makes Nafis sound more like a loner with wild ideas that was led along by the F.B.I. rather than a real terrorist. It also sounds like hundreds of other cases. In fact, some of the most highly publicized “terrorist plots” since 9/11 were “thwarted” under similar circumstances.

If you read my entire article, you will see that I cover just five of the more high profile cases out of hundreds of others in which a seemingly dangerous terrorist plot is thwarted, only to have the facts later reveal that the “terrorists” could not terrorize a fly without the tutelage and material aid of federal law enforcement agencies and informants.

These cases make it clear that the U.S. government is creating terrorism in order to be perceived as thwarting it and scaring the American people into believing there are real terrorists in our country. The motive behind that may be to justify legislation that infringes on civil liberties, huge expenditures on homeland security such as the Transportation Security Administration, surveillance conducted by fusion centers and wars that generate profit for the military-industrial complex. Of course, the most recent case will enable the Federal Reserve to claim it is a terrorist target and request additional security.

Federal law enforcement agencies seem to take an affirmative role in staging the crimes at mosques or, as in the case of the Cleveland bridge bombers, at an occupy protest. When the D.O.J. prosecutes cases like these, it leaves more clear-and-present dangers, such as criminals like the Foot Hood shooter, the Arizona shooter who shot a congresswoman, the Colorado movie theatre shooter or the Sikh temple shooter in Wisconsin, relatively unbothered and discovered only after people are killed.

Perhaps the government is singling out ideological enemies, not real terrorism or crime. The American people simply have no legitimate reason to believe anything that the corporate media or government claims, especially when it has to do with terrorism which has historically been used to further restrict the freedoms of everyday Americans nationwide.

Read more, get links, video and a slideshow here: Madison Independent Examiner – FBI creating terrorism plots to thwart, instilling fear in Americans

I am remiss at failing to notice the post about Rick until today. His graphics were a great contribution to our little community of BartBloggers here and he will be sorely missed. Rick and I have corresponded in the past and he always had nice things to say about my work. I loved the vintage feel of his work. He never let on to the fact that he was battling cancer, which is a testimony to his strength, courage and positive attitude.

Here is an excerpt from Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University. As you may know, Jobs also recently passed away due to cancer. Ironically, I mentioned both Rick’s graphics and Jobs’ speech to a client of mine today, whom I introduced to bartcop.com.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

RIP Rick, all of us will miss you. A shot of Chinaco Anejo in your honor!

Author’s note:
Yet another remnant of the Bush administration that destroys our civil liberties at the expense of the taxpayers. Perhaps Thurston and Eddie Munster should talk about cutting this instead of social security or Medicare.

Excerpt:
The U.S. government has spent up to $1.4 billion of taxpayer money since 2003 to create “threat fusion centers” under the guise of fighting terrorism. Yet a two-year bipartisan report recently released by the U. S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has found that these “fusion centers,” operating under the control of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in efforts to engage national, state and local intelligence, have not yielded any useful information to support federal counterterrorism intelligence efforts.

Most people who rely on print and TV news probably have never heard of fusion centers. There are as many as 72 of these facilities. 50 state-based and 22 urban centers were set up during the Bush presidency in cooperation between the DHS and the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Fusion centers contain large data warehouses that collect information from all 16 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA, FBI, NSA, the military, state and local police agencies, as well as privately owned corporations and organizations. That information includes the cell phone data and emails of every American citizen. There is one of these facilities in Madison near the Dane county regional airport, at 2445 Darwin Road. (See slideshow here).

According to Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the DHS described its fusion centers as “one of the centerpieces of [its] counterterrorism strategy” and its database was supposed to be a central repository of known or “appropriately suspected” terrorists. In theory, local law enforcement officers, in conjunction with DHS officials, conduct surveillance and write up a report known as a Homeland Intelligence Report (HIR) for the DHS to review. If credible, the DHS would then spread the information to the larger intelligence community.

The Senate report, however, found that the fusion centers failed to uncover a single terrorist threat and only gathered information that is used for ordinary criminal investigations that local law enforcement agencies are well-capable of doing. Even DHS officials told the panel the fusion centers produce “predominantly useless information” and “a bunch of crap.”

Five centers the Senate studied spent their federal terrorism grant money on “hidden ‘shirt button’ cameras,” cell phone tracking systems and other surveillance tools. They also spent taxpayer money on things like “dozens of flat-screen TVs” and SUVs, sometimes claiming that Chevrolet Tahoes were intended to help “respond to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) incidents.”

Here a few more details of what the Senate report reveals:

• A DHS intelligence officer filed a draft report about a U.S. citizen who appeared at a Muslim organization to deliver a day-long motivational talk and a lecture on positive parenting.

• An intelligence officer decided to report on two men who were fishing at the US-Mexican border. A reviewer commented, “I…think that this should never have been nominated for production, nor passed through three reviews.”

• A report was submitted on a motorcycle group for passing out leaflets informing members of their legal rights. A reviewer commented, “The advice given to the groups’ members is protected by the First Amendment.”

And more from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) which filed a lawsuit against the FBI, DOJ and NSA regarding fusion centers:

• A DHS analyst at a Wisconsin fusion center prepared a report about protesters on both sides of the abortion debate, despite the fact that no violence was expected.

• A Texas fusion center released an intelligence bulletin that described a purported conspiracy between Muslim civil rights organizations, lobbying groups, the anti-war movement, a former U.S. Congresswoman, the U.S. Treasury Department and hip hop bands to spread Sharia law in the U.S.

• The same month, but on the other side of the political spectrum, a Missouri Fusion Center released a report on “the modern militia movement” that claimed militia members are “usually supporters” of third-party presidential candidates like Ron Paul and Bob Barr.

• In March 2008 the Virginia Fusion Center issued a terrorism threat assessment that described the state’s universities and colleges as “nodes for radicalization” and characterized the “diversity” surrounding a Virginia military base and the state’s “historically black” colleges as possible threats.

Like so many post-9/11 surveillance laws passed under the vague guise of “national security,” these fusion centers violate the civil liberties of ordinary Americans that should be guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and other laws. An entire section of the Senate report is dedicated to Privacy Act violations and the collection of information completely unrelated to any criminal or terrorist activity in the HIRs.

The Senate report and the activity of fusion centers makes it clear that these facilities are designed to spy on American citizens, invading their privacy while doing nothing to stop terrorism. With all the talk in the Presidential campaigns about frivolous spending, perhaps these worthless facilities should be addressed, instead of Medicare or Social Security.

This may sound like a conspiracy theory, but it is reality. In fact, the one episode of “Conspiracy Theory” done by former navy SEAL and Governor Jesse Ventura that dealt with these fusion centers was refused to be aired by TruTV. In that episode he interviews a young woman from Missouri who was put on the terrorism watch list by her local fusion center for supporting Ron Paul in the Republican primary election. (See “banned” video here).

This is yet more evidence that America is turning from a democracy or constitutional republic into a corporate fascist state. Just look at the 14 defining characteristics of fascism and decide for yourself.

Read more, get links, video and slideshow here: Madison Independent Examiner – Fusion centers: Invading your privacy at your expense

YOS has been busy, and admittedly not thinking about Bart Blog when it came to this sad news. THIS was a major miss on his part, and he apologies. RS was a frequent contributor here, and once a friend of Scribe. For those who missed the news…

Written by DJ Allyn, as posted at Our End of the Net

Many people here will remember RS Janes and will even come across a lot of his work from when he was an intricate part of the several previous websites that this one eventually morphed into.

From the original Political Pulpit, to the Political Puzzle, to Liberaltopia, and LT Saloon, Rick was a regular fixture on these sites and continued to be so on several others.  The author of the Tattlesnake entries here as well as many cartoons, he always found a way to entertain while giving us a message.

Rick passed away the other day from cancer.  His wife Val, says that then end was quick and fairly pain-free.  She posts a memorial on Rick’s personal blog, Fishink.us.

He will be missed by all who have known him.