Reply #84: Here's my letter to Kerry I sent today, not just a link to it.

[Fly by night]

Just got back from a Nashville celebration of the 85th anniversary of Tennessee being the deciding state to approve women's suffrage. Great networking opportunity for our group. We handed out over 100 "Who did your voting machine vote for?" buttons, and had people tracking us down at the end of the evening asking for them.

Though I posted a link to this letter earlier, I thought I would just post it here to make it easier to read. I've heard from about a dozen other Tennesseans and friends as far away as Seattle who also wrote Kerry and Dean today. Hope you have (or will) too. Peace out.
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Dear Senator Kerry,

During the 2004 campaign, I worked hard to get you elected and -- in so doing -- to help America awaken from the fascist nightmare that has captured our country and our psyche for the past six years. I believe that, for the second time in as many Presidential elections, the American people selected an intelligent, sensitive and seasoned Democrat to lead us and to represent our values to the rest of the world. And for the second time, the will of the American people was simply ignored.

In your case, I do not believe that it was even close. Once the American people saw what an empty and ignorant sock-puppet George W. Bush really was, they voted to oust him in no uncertain terms from the highest office in our land. But today, there you sit quietly in your Senatorial office as Bush takes another paid holiday and arrogantly refuses to speak with Cindy Sheehan, the mother of one more American youngster who did not have to die for oil, much less for his country, in the chaos that we helped create in Iraq. Why? Because the foundation of our American governmental system -- the legitimacy that is passed to our national and local leaders in the voting booth through the majority consent of the governed -- has been taken hostage in Ohio, where Lady Liberty lays still, locked in chains and stained with the disrespect and disdain heaped on her by the lawless elements of the Republican Party.

Ohio certainly isn't the only place where our government institutions are held hostage today by people who have no concept of (or respect for) our democratic foundations, the bedrock that first made this country unique and then helped us ascend to a leadership model for all peoples of the world as the bastion of personal freedom and popular control of government. Similar treasonous plots were implemented in too many other 2004 battleground states and they are still moving forward, recklessly and relentlessly, in all states (including Tennessee) today. Through the illegal manipulation of our election process, we have fallen under the control of immoral and unpatriotic traitors to the American ideal. We must not -- you must not -- allow this to stand.

Nine months ago, two small but brave and fundamentally American political parties -- the Greens and the Libertarians -- undertook their own mission in Ohio to rescue Lady Liberty. They did so because they understood what had happened in Ohio and they also understood that to sit silent in the face of the kidnapping of our votes was to be complicit in the crime. To your credit (and with the prayerful thanks of millions of your supporters), you and John Edwards joined in that rescue attempt by entering as partners in the Cobb v. Blackwell lawsuit to demand -- once and for all -- that the votes in Ohio be counted as they were cast.

Now nine months later, I awoke this morning to read that you are considering withdrawing from this lawsuit and abandoning the Greens and Libertarians up river, low on ammunition and within sight of the prison camp where Lady Liberty remains, almost breathless yet still clinging to the hope that help must be on the way. Senator Kerry, say that it isn't so. Remind us all that your wounds in Vietnam came while facing the enemy, not while running from them. Refresh our memories of a warrior who would not leave any soldier behind, for any reason. Do not withdraw from the Ohio battlefield at this critical hour when the battle -- when the future of our country -- still remains in the balance.

Today, Iraq is not our Vietnam -- Ohio is. As a country, we have more to lose if you abandon our fight for free, fair and verifiable elections in the Buckeye State than we could ever lose in the sands of the Middle East. Because if you abandon the Greens and the Libertarians on the battlefields of Ohio, if you leave Lady Liberty there to die -- alone and abandoned -- in chains in Kenneth Blackwell's basement, then you will demonstrate for all time that in America, every vote is no longer sacred and American democracy in the 21st century really is a sham.

I don't believe that. You don't believe that. The majority of Americans who supported you and John Edwards (and Al Gore before you) also don't believe that. Don't abandon the Ohio battlefield at this eleventh hour. More Americans now believe that the 2004 election was stolen (40%, in recent surveys) than believed that in late November, 2004 (about 19% back then). We are on the verge of lancing the festering wound that is the Republi-Nazi wing of the opposition party, and freeing our country from their influence and control. Now, more than ever, the Greens and Libertarians need your continuing support in Ohio. And so does Lady Liberty.

I am proud to have registered 909 Tennesseans to vote for you as our rightful President. Prove to all of us that you remain the best choice we ever made. Stay the course, keep fighting beside the Greens and Libertarians, free Lady Liberty from her Ohio chains. The future of our country depends on it. Thank you. (Fly by night)