Randi giving it to Bev.

Anyone else listening to this? Randi sounds seriously pissed... along the lines of "we raised all this money for you, and now we can't get a hold of you and find out WTF is going on!"

Bev sounds tired.

why is the whole thing up to this woman?

Sadly, I think we hitched a good bit of our train to the wrong engine.

leading us down a river of pain instead of confronting this issue, as it should.

She posted those five things we could do on here, and I kind-of signed up to help out but asked what would we be doing, and never heard back nor heard anything on the website nor here from her. This was after the weekend of money raising.

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and welcome to DU, halfagirl!

:bounce: :toast: :bounce:

PS which half???

can't follow through on the detail....

Probably some interaction with a module I am debugging to cut commercials when the local insert tone is heard.

I wonder if she'll ask Randi for a retraction and threaten to sue for libel.

maybe he could throw us a bone if Bev is in meltdown.

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LSD in her water or something. :tinfoilhat:

I still think Bev did great work in the past, but she just doesn't seem to be all there lately. I don't think she's a BFEE plant, although she might be a victim in their dirty game. They can't kill her, because it would be too obvious.

Per the small print in this notice: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/dcforum/DCForumID4410/71.html

The six-member Board of Directors of Black Box Voting has unanimously voted to terminate the employment of Associate Director Andy Stephenson, for:
- Repeatedly lying to various members of the board of directors
- Misrepresenting results of investigations
- Mishandling telephone communications and withholding information
- Temper tantrums and hanging up on members of the organization
- Outburst at the Florida Supervisor of Elections meeting, offending public officials
- Failing to assist, show up, or even call while Kathleen Wynne and Bev Harris repeatedly requested assistance when they were accosted by Volusia County police

this line in the so-called "letter from the Board":

"We, the people, have a right to oversight of our elections. When we get that oversight, it will be because of people who dared show current reality. Bev Harris is one of the people America will owe a debt of gratitude."

My friend who is a psychiatrist and who lurks here on the DU and follows what is going on said she has Borderline Personality Disorder and is a Narcissist....

I have been a donor and supporter of Bev previously...her actions HERS ALONE are what have changed my opinion of this woman....

Anyone listening to her on Randi's show today knows what I'm talking about if they pull emotion out of it and just "listen"....

I also sometimes think she's a little possessive about information.

Yelled at her for not testifying on E-voting issues at the Conyers hearing.

Ugly.

Get it together Bev... alot of people will take over if it's getting to be too much.

We want her investigating Florida.

But you can't tell anyone - they gotta finally get it all by themselves.

ON EDIT: Randi came back from break and said 'If you're making a movie with our money, Bev, we'll find out...'

Yep. the light just went on.

-as

No one is above accountability No one, especially when what amounts to charitable contributions are concerned.

Now, let me make myself clear, I am not advocating for a "Let's all dogpile Bev!" funfest. That sucks as well. But she should expect and welcome accountability and have all her ducks in a row.

Bless them for their efforts but keep their feet to the fire.Blind belief accomplishes nothing except creating blindness.

Randi takes no crap from anyone and seems to be exposing BH and her lies. Holy smokes. I couldn't believe it. Randi did it right on the air, and how typical of BH to call on air--but she met her match, It hink.

maybe Randi was threatedned to be sued by BH too. She did mention she needed a lawyer a few days ago.

No pity for BH. :nopity:

In my opinion, she has been exposed, fully for those extravaganza's that brought in so much money, for NO results. She did not even answer the calls from RAndi, three times, when Randi initially promoted BH and her BBV, which we now see was lifted from the work of others.

I am waiting for someone to come along and expose, yea, even demand, BH's accounting of all the money she has collected from those who, in their passion to have something, --anything--no matter how bizarre,to prove voter fraud, and contributed to this superficial, vaudeville, grandstanding, like BH push to get money from you all. Yup--all you desperate people, who believe in grandstanding and bizarre acts are fine, even if they hurt the cause.

And where was it all spent?

does anyone know.?

BH apparently contacted every state with a FOI. Does that mean she gets to travel all over the US on your money, while avoiding reporting any real results and refusing to answer the calls of people such as RR and Olberman? She has done this to herself and is no longer a major player.

This operation needs to be taken down with the truth and with an appropriate amount of brutal truth.

I sent money three seperate times, twice via the internet and once via snail mail--right after Nov. 2nd in the heat of passion and hoping to get a voice quickly--- and now I feel like I was smoothly ripped-off, perhaps not...We'll see, but we have no time to waste, waiting!!!

we are all, after all, only human beings.

I still think it's a good cause -- she's suing people, making a lot of noise (not all good, but, well... noise).

I **really** don't think Bev is about to take the cash and buy a house in Cabo San Lucas or spend it on crack.

Are you against other investigative writers travelling, or just her?

but do not do so blindly. You are entitled to a complete accounting, in every parameter, of her activities, including travel.

from BBV. Plus BBV pays all of her travel and expenses. Her board lists some people with the same last name - apparently family - so who knows if they are getting paid too.

and $65K doesn't sound out of line to me for Bev's salary -- she did this for a long, long time with NO salary. And yes, her travel and expenses ought to be funded as well. I have no problem with any of that. There's enough and plenty to criticize her for without being picky.

The accountability, for one thing, and the highly questionable and terribly unprofessional firing of her single staff person. And perhaps a few other things that needn't be named here just now (old business).

...and $65K, for this particular area, is not a king's ransom, especially for a white-collar research job. Living expenses are really inflated here.

Not that I haven't had my suspicions about BBV, but FYI.

and what is his political affiliation?

hard to get a word in edgewise w/Randi, but...
from what I know of the history, it seems like, as is often the case w/highly
productive people, they are only able to be such w/a support network, which
unfortunately Bev seems to have burned. No man is an island - goes
for women, too. I wish she would crack open a Webster's and look up "collaborate."

n/t

But I'm starting to question (oh, Randi just mentioned DU and the DU/Bev split...) my support of her.

-but-

I feel sorry for Bev. She was someone, one of us really, who had enough and decided to do something about it (giving her the benefit of the doubt, here). Me, personally, I wouldn't have the strength to do what she does and has done. She's not a professional election fraud investigator, just like I'm not. If I were in her position I would probably be overwhelmed and burned out, too. I just hope she makes it out of this situation alive and sane.

I don't regret giving her money. She has sacrificed much much more than whatever cash I threw her way...

She reminds me of a manic/depressive going into a down cycle. I know this pattern very well. She took on loads and was pumped full of energy, then she can't keep up with herself. I know a depressed person is way more likely to say that they never got a message than that they were too tired to answer.

Is it?

I'm sincerely glad you feel your donation to Bev, whatever it was---was well spent, cheers to you---However, we are now wondering and speaking of (at least), the tens of thousands of dollars asked for and given--- as well as the asking for more donations nationally on Randi Rhodes' show!!!

I can only speak for myself when I say that I gave BBV money with no real expectations or strings attached. I didn't send the cash with a note attached that said "get me results, or else..." Bev's organization was one of several to which I donated-- I guess as a way to hedge my bets. i.e. I wasn't betting that all my money would be used effectively, but I WAS betting that SOME of if would.

If Randi is pissed that she went out on a limb for BBV, or you're pissed that Bev has squandered the thousands of dollars, that's too bad. Buyer (or benefactor) beware, IMO.

And, hey, I never said my "$10 or 15" donation was the issue.

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...I wish Bev would have just said, I'm exhausted, I'm overwhelmed, I got disorganized, I need help getting back on track.

That interview did not go well at all.

obvious cause of the problem is that the Repukes have been screwing with Bev's phone. Screwing with electronics is their speciality. If they are low enough to steal an election, they are low enough to screw with Bev's phone. Don't let them divide us!

this is too important.

It's not about Bev

or Randi

It's about exposing the fraud by any means necessary.

Republicans win cause we NEVER hear about them eating their own.

Let's move on!

further explanation! LOL... I can just see it. I think that both Randi and Bev feel as if the fate of democracy rested on their shoulders.. That is a heavy bursen and both of them are somewhat battle fatigued. Let's send them are love.. They are both very courageous women. They are up against powerful and dangerous forces. I don't think that I could have handled the pressure as well as either one of them.

get the phone password, listen to the messages, delete the important ones. misinform, aggrivate friends, isolate = control. straight textbook abuser. i wouldn't be surprised at all.

k, I nominated Must_B_Free and ParanoidPat already to provide weekly Bev reports on friday and spam it to all left wing forums/blogs/radio stations. reason? they already have regular communication with Bev and haven't had a problem. so now they will be lynchpins in providing a 'safety network' to make sure Bev isn't isolated and then attacked. this way everyone succeeds and we can all work peacefully on the real issues.

so, got that? anyone who has regular comm. with Bev try to work with Must_B_Free and ParanoidPat in getting regular calls to/from Bev and provide regular weekly friday reports. for our confidence and her safety, it must be done like this.

But the great thing about Randi is that she will admit it if she was wrong.

Bev seemed disoriented to me. Maybe she bit off more than she can chew. If she was shouldering this alone, it would burn anybody out.

if she's really working it'll be found out.
and if she's been blowing smoke she'll definitely be found out.

either way, staying in contact is the only thing that can and should be done now.

so weekly friday Bev Harris reports by people who are close and care about her are mandatory. there's no other option to this issue.

a good portion of the site.

It is not unusual for a person to push themselves until they crack. I will wait and see what is going on with her.

This bit from her site seems to show her fatigue. I have no argument with what she says.
She cannot do it alone.

"Doves, sparrows, and other low-flying birds gather together, but eagles soar alone and must be gathered one at a time."

You, as an individual citizen, are America's best hope to clean up elections, which must be done starting at the local level. Using your own common sense, get started on your own local elections. Take an action, and let us know what you've done. Black Box Voting investigators will be traveling to meet with citizens who show that they take initiative on their own.

That is something that always bothered me. What does "hacked" mean? Why not look at the server logs and see what is happening? Or have your admin figure it out - you do have an admin, don't you?

Why not secure the site? Get a new server? Get a new administrator? There is no excuse to keep claiming to be "hacked" and never follow up on that. How were you hacked? What did you do about it? We never hear any of that. Whenever Bev is in trouble on some other front, we hear once again that her site got hacked and people respond with shock and sympathy and alarm as if on cue. "Yep, they're after her!"

Not that I don't think "they" are after her, which is all the more reason to secure things. In no case would I publicize that I had been hacked.

That always struck me as something that the ill-informed would buy but that was just a plea for sympathy and attention.

I have seen "Bev's site got hacked again!" so many times, and I finally decided to comment on it. It never made any sense to me.

is not solely the fault of the attacker, but poor administration. I understand that. she mentioned it because the problem was preventing access to important files.

I don't think it was a plea for sympathy, but information for the people who use the site.

Apparently you missed their exchange today.

I feel bad for everybody here.

What I found interesting was the remark RR made about 'ol Eddie (Schultz). I just KNEW he was way too cozy with the Senators (Democrat Senators). He seems more like a buddy to them than a mere radio host......not that that's a bad thing really.

...Randi a "slut" once.

did ya see that dress she wore at the prom???


:eyes:

dp

Randi was pretty hard on old Bev, who offered up lame excuses.

Get a land line! said Randi lol

Randi should call her off the air and offer an olive branch. One thing that we learned this election cycle is there are plenty of willing hands on the side of goodness and light. Bev Harris does not have to do this project alone, there are plenty who want to help.

I think her intentions are good. She took on a tough state, maybe the toughest one. Perhaps all of the pressure in trying to obtain critical data has thrown her off-balance. It does happen to the best of us. She sure has done 200 times more than what I have done.

and help take some of this workload off her plate.

Isn't this the cherry on the sundae that has been this election year.

I didn't contribute to BBV so I don't have that axe to grind in this.

But I understand what it is like to take a lot on your shoulders and feel overwhelmed. Suggesting she ask for help sounds like the common sense thing to do, but often those pleas are met with good-intentioned promises that never materialize.

Everyone wants someone else to take the lead, to do the work, to put their heart and soul on the line. But no one seems to have the time to do what it really takes to carry out the kind of operation she started.

How could Bev not had known that Olbermann and Randi were both trying to reach her?

I did love how Randi kept saying, "They're wondering over at DU, too!"

I sent money to Bev, but my hopes are down about her. I don't know what happened. She used to be a personal hero to me.

:wtf:

The wars did not interest me.

But I have to say Bev did not sound even remotely competent.
"They had hearings, where were you?" and all Bev could come
up with were some lame-o excuses.

That's too bad.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=108750

And there are many, many links off this thread to be followed. If ya want the whole story, it's all in the archives. Read for yourself.

Another well thought of DUer once said to me that she didn't trust her. All I can say is that Bev's work got these voting problems the publicity they needed. Other than that we wouldn't have any concrete facts about this that hit the mainstream media.

Now, Randi put her ass on the line to get these donations to Bev and she has a right to ask where the money went to. I wondered myself why things went quiet when they should have really been heating up. Many of us who donated even a small amount sacrificed a little to do it.

All in all, I feel rather dismayed about this, because it's another bunch of infighting that seems to be destroying our party. Karl Rove is sitting back laughing.

On the other hand if the mainstream media picks up on these fights and reports them, then maybe all is not lost.

I have given more money than that to candidates who didn't have a shot in h**l at being elected. Why wouldn't I give money to someone who has been doing a lot of work, lots more than I have, about our voting systems? I gave it glady, hoping it would help.

Our voting systems are a mess and two years ago nothing was being said about it. She has led a charge and put together a lot of good information and raised the visibility of the whole issue. Other people may have contributed to large parts of the work or they may have overestimated the value of what they did. I don't know.

I do know that I support Bev's work and admire her tenacity. She's doing the entire country a service and I thank her.

Maybe she's not perfect but neither am I. Strong talented people can find it hard to work together. I see it all the time in my work and we always find it helpful if someone in the group can help us see the good and the talent in each other instead of the bad and the flaws. She's got a lot of the good and a lot of talent. So do others who have helped her. 'Nuff said about that. Let's just not shoot each other.

I am in Volusia County, Florida, so I followed the Bev Harris swoop-in and her subsequent reporting of it on DU. I have to say that the whole thing just sounded so not ready for prime time, like three little kids having a blast screwing with the straights. She seems to surface merely to titillate the people who are so desparate for ANY information and then be unavailable again. My underlying unease was, oh, my God, she's running around with the same two people she talks about on her site... is that it? Are the three of them the whole enchilada? I knew right then that there was something wrong.

My best guess is that she was sincerely pursuing BBV prior to the election as a warning to all of us of what COULD happen, but when it appeared that it really had happened, she felt thrust into the position of being responsible for DOING SOMETHING about it, but didn't really have enough personnel or a clear enough plan to follow. Consequently, she did a lot of busy work, asked for a lot of information from elections officers, and then just didn't follow through. I was really let down when they failed to follow through here in Volusia County when she found such clear evidence of wrongdoing. When nothing happened, I felt for the first time that she just wasn't going to be the savior that many people were hoping she would be.

I agree that there's no excuse for her absence from these hearings that Conyers is conducting. Right now he and his fellow Congressmen are really out there on a limb by themselves and they could certainly use concrete information from a person who had at least some national name recognition.

That should have been turned over to someone ASAP, film or no.

She would have put all her resources into Ohio, where it counted, instead of going to Florida and really accomplishing nothing except make a documentary on how election officials were scared of you.

.

. . . a PR person--jumping up press on someone or something.

Her forte' may be in hype, but not follow-through.

JMHO.

This is the United States of America, the richest country in the world, a country where we spend billions and billions of dollars on all kinds of wasteful shit .....

Yet when it comes to our elections, when it comes to knowing whether or not our votes count in this whole corporate e-voting thing, there's this ONE WOMAN, privately funded, trying to figure it out?

And we're actually depending on her because we can't depend on our own goddamn GOVERNMENT to figure it out for us?

Man, what a shameful disgrace for this country.

We can send a man to the moon but we can't make voting machines that work.

And people get pissed because Bev Harris can't kick the US Government's ass, singlehandedly, with a few thousand dollars... :shrug:

ok, correction-- people get pissed because *they thought* Bev Harris could kick the US Government's ass, singlehandedly, with a few thousand dollars.

Whatever anyone thinks of her, Bev Harris has done a thousand percent more about this than probably anyone else on this board.

And everybody's pissed off at her?

Egad.

I'll say it again: We should all be screaming for a full-scale, national, fully-funded investigation into voting in the United States. Bring in Hans Blix, somebody from outside the country who's neither Dem or Repub, I don't care, SOMEBODY needs to do something at an official level and have it done right.

It's just silly the United States of America is depending on Bev Harris!

That is what is so unfortunate. People were encouraged by Bev, right here, to think that she was going to "crack the case" and she had hundreds and hundreds of volunteers that she could have called upon if she was undermanned or overworked. She seemed determined to hold her cards close to her vest, and she put a lot of effort into getting people excited and raising their expectations.

Every time she posted here, many people asked "what can we do to help?" What was her response to those offers?

I am not going to dig around for exact quotes, but I am sure that Bev could have had all the help in the world and that she was the prime mover behind people's high expectations.

She did generate a lot of excitement. And no, in hindsight she doesn't seem like the ideal candidate to do this work. But I still don't regret giving her some money. I think she at least deserved a shot.

I can definitely see how others might be upset with Bev's lack of communication. I choose not to rag on her because she still has done so much more than I could ever do.

Mostly I am saddened and disappointed.

"There must be a block on my phone!"

"My voicemail must be broken!"

Its one thing to be an inspired citizen exposing some fraud, and
quite another to be joan d'arc leading a revolution against the
most evil and powerful regime on the planet today. The pressure of
the media exposure, and the overexposure of american media, really is
soo too much for most folks who are not prepared.

Look at what happens to most film actors/actresses who hit the
limelight.... often the fame hits them hard on to the rocks after
their initial success, and only when they get a second wind do they
learn to fly by wire.

Methinks we should look rather to that in ourselves that has
absconded responsibility, in favour of some hero somewhere who's
supposed to fix it all for us for our 20 bux. As well, all of us
who made any effort in this election are a bit burned at losing, as
we are the enemy, who's de'cloaqued in front of the borg, and even
though we may have the enterprise as our ship, the borg have us in
their sights, and every person who stood up against them will surely
get personal revenge from them.

God bless Bev. Wish her well.

To let her know she could stay at my house and that I would help in anyway possible, she sent me one e-mail, and I never heard from her again.
I'm starting to believe she may of had a 3 week vacation in Florida, at the expense of us.
I'm sorry if this may offend people, but it was pretty nice here in Florida when she was here.
I just listened to bev and Randi, and she didn't sound credible to me. sorry folks.

Somebody inside the electronic voting scam KNEW Harris' personality issues and started feeding her just enough information to get the ball rolling so that ultimately the issue would be about Harris and not the machines.

Now I have to worry about what information they are "feeding" me too?

I have been very reluctant to bump any of these threads, but I have been reading them.

If there is anything to be learned from election 2004, it's that the electronic voting machines are merely one symptom of a much deeper pathology. It's not the melanoma on the surface that kills you, it's the melanoma inside.

It's been very clear to me for many months now that these electronic voting machines were created to automate more traditional forms of election fraud. Many election officials do not even know they are supervising fraudulant elections; they honestly don't know what they are doing.

There is a lot of work to be done, and it's not going to get done by just a few people, or a few small groups, or even acts of Congress.

and said it better than me.:toast:

--and we're not going back no matter what happens with Bev.

does NOT contain the last hour (both on the "illegal archives" and White Rose Society. Is something up (a lawsuit threat, etc.) that's preventing this segment from being recorded and posted?

fits the pattern to date.