C. Hedges on Kucinich. "One True Voice on the Trail."

[cyclezealot]

Couple weeks ago Kucinich's principals had us all enthralled. Now , here many at DU seem to be in the lesser evils mode. No thanks. Real convictions is what America needs.
$$.
One True Voice on the Trail
by Chris Hedges.

I am tired of living in a country where 16-year-old girls die because insurance company profits are more important than human life.

I am tired of a government that runs offshore penal colonies where the detained are tortured and denied the basic protections of the Geneva Convention.

I am tired of living in a state that makes war against countries that do not threaten us.

I am tired of watching basic constitutional rights, such as the right to privacy, taken away from citizens.

Most of all, I am tired of being told every four years that I must vote for candidates who do nothing to stop the brutal and callous assault by corporations on the American working class, sending their jobs overseas and stripping workers of benefits and human dignity
***
And so - to be sure that this year my vote goes to someone who does more than pay lip service to the moral and physical deterioration of the nation - I will pull the lever for Dennis Kucinich.

I can hear the collective groan. He won’t win. He has no real following. It is a wasted vote.

But this is the groan of the comfortable, those who have health insurance and a decent job. This is the groan of those who can send their kids to expensive colleges and probably went to one. The groans of the poor in this country, including the increasingly impoverished working class, are no longer audible to most of us. Their lives have been rendered invisible, of little interest to the advertisers who sell us products on television or take out full-page color ads in the newspapers and glossy magazines. And when the corporations write you off in America, everyone else does, too.

Any vote is wasted that does not address the terrible injustices being done to tens of millions of people who have lost the opportunity to earn a living wage. Any vote is wasted that does not, even if it ends up being a protest vote, attempt to halt our transformation into an oligarchic state where a tiny, privileged elite controls our money and our politics.
***
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080107_one_true_voice_on_the_trail/

[MuseRider]

1. Thanks. n/t

[cyclezealot]

2. Hedges has always been a favorite.

he contributes routinely to Truthdig.

[Peace Patriot]

3. I agree with your sentiment, but what makes you think your vote will be counted?

This is my problem with people declaring who they will or won't vote for. The far rightwing Bushite corporations who are now 'counting' all our votes with TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, and virtually no audit/recount controls, don't give a fuck who you or I want for president. They will choose--both 'our' candidate, and the president.

Yes, the issues are important, and it is important to discuss them, and to evaluate candidates. And I can't rule out the possibility of the voters blowing the rigged voting machines away with an overwhelming turnout and vote, possibly even including a presidential vote. It can happen. To remain in control of our election system, the election theft corporations--Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia--have to be somewhat careful about how blatant the theft is, and they possibly royally goofed by keeping Bush/Cheney in office in 2004--big risk of citizen awareness and backlash re the rigged system. But, as of now, the rigged system is STILL IN PLACE. It (s)elected this recent, so-called 'Democratic' Congress, which keeps voting billions and billions of war dollars to Bush/Cheney.

I respect your choice of Kucinich among the given candidates, and your reasons for it--and I may make the same choice myself. In fact, I am so infuriated by the other Democratic candidates' failure to insist that Kucinich be included in the debates that that alone may determine my vote in the primary. But I have to ask: Will my vote be counted? Will the vote be manipulated--for instance, will votes for Edwards (the next best alternative to Kucinich) be 'distributed' by Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia, to Kucinich or others, to stop the only other anti-corporate candidate (Edwards) from winning the primary?

Since we cannot answer these questions--will our votes be counted? will the vote be manipulated?--then these questions must be the first priority, not who we will vote for. It likely will not matter who we 'vote' for, in this highly non-transparent, insecure and insider riggable system.

-----------------------

NOTE: Even in an all-mail-in (paper ballot) system like Oregon's, or widespread voter choice of absentee ballot (paper ballot) as in California, the paper ballots are not hand-counted, they are SCANNED INTO a highly riggable electronic system. The ONLY guarantee of a proper vote count is a SUBSTANTIAL hand-count check against machine fraud, such as they do in Venezuela--a 55% handcount, and that's with an OPEN SOURCE code system (in Venezuela, anyone may review the code by which the votes are tabulated). In our closed source--TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY code!--system, with the code owned and controlled by RIGHTWING BUSHITE corporations, many states do ZERO hand-counting, and the very best of states do a very inadequate 1% check. Is it any wonder that, in the U.S., neither the president nor congress represents the will of the people? It seems like a no-brainer to me. There are a lot of things wrong with our election system, but this one means that change CANNOT occur. It is utterly blockaded. We will have war...or war. Take your pick.

-----

NOTE 2: Just want to acknowledge that the poster (Cyclezealot) is not the writer of the OP (Chris Hedges). It is Hedges who declares for Kucinich. I don't know Cyclezealot's presidential preference. When I say "you," above, I mean Hedges.

[cyclezealot]

4. thanks for clarifying Patriot.

I refereed to Hedges in the introductory paragraph. Hope that was sufficient. ?

[robbedvoter]

7. And who promised last "every vote will be counted" then dropped it? kept mum

about last theft and allowed the voters to think they lost? One of them wants your vote AGAIN - and some of you are oblivious to that.

[Peace Patriot]

10. I am well aware of it, Robbedvoter. And I've thought a lot about it.

Here is my conclusion: Edwards was overruled by the party leaders who threw that election. He wanted to fight it, but he was just the V-P candidate, and didn't have the power to buck that awful Terry McAuliffe establishment. Also, he has since made statements about the riggable machines. In fact, I think that's one of the reasons he is now getting the blackball treatment from the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. Being a progressive means allowing for people--even politicians--to change. I saw it happen with Bobby Kennedy. I think something similar has occurred with Edwards.

I am someone who has seen horrible betrayals of the people by Democratic politicians, from my very first vote for president, in 1964. I voted for LBJ, the "peace" candidate--and got 2 million people slaughtered in Southeast Asia, for that vote for "peace." I am not easily fooled. In fact, I didn't vote for Bobby back in 1968, in the Calif primary that he won--the night he was assassinated. His turn against the Vietnam War was just too recent, and Eugene McCarthy (who had knocked LBJ out of the race) was on the ballot. I wanted to place an unambiguous vote against the Vietnam War. But I knew Bobby would win, and was headed for the White House, and I was, oh, 90% on his genuineness about stopping the war. I wanted to "send him a message," as they say, about keeping his promise to the voters.

I know who John Edwards is, and what he has and hasn't voted for, and what he has and hasn't done. But I sense genuine change in him--and I think maybe the rigged vote in '04 was the catalyst, or one of them. I will probably vote for Kucinich (CA primary), because he most consistently represents my views, but if the race turns very tight (which it is now), I may vote for Edwards against Clinton/Obama--for what my vote is worth. And I don't think it's worth much. Even though we have a much better Sec of State now in Calif, the system is still easily riggable. Calif voters are voting about 50% by absentee ballot--a clear voter revolt, people trying to get around the rigged machines--but they just scan AB votes right into the rigged electronics, and I don't think our new Sec of State has had time to really understand HOW they are stealing elections (with their "trade secret" programming), nor to reform the system as much as she would like to.

I sent those bloody bastards in the DNC $100 that I could not afford, on election night, 11/2/04, when they sent out the appeal for money so they could "count every vote." I later wrote to McAuliffe and asked for it back. He never replied. But I don't blame Edwards for that betrayal. I really don't. And I think it opened his eyes to what had gone down.

[truedelphi]

8. Thanks, Peace Patriot.

My husband came running the other day and said, The New York Times is carrying a front page story about the election thefts.

About a moment later he simmered down.

"Do you think they are covering the story now so that if a Dem wins, they can say it was election fraud brought on by the machinery?" That is now his theory, and i am not going to argue against it.

And there is, said to say, a whole big part of me that doesn't care. Whether it is because of the tangle of emotions I felt on Election Night 2004, or because a close friend died shortly thereafter, or because it seems that no matter what we do the corporations with their Big Media always win, I don't know.

Then I try to tell myself it is a bad attitude that will let the corportations win.

[maxanne]

5. I'm lucky

my vote will count.

I will be voting tomorrow in the NH primary on a paper ballot that will be counted by hand, by a members of my community. In fact, I'll be one of the counters.

I don't say this to grind anyone's nose in how lucky I am. I say it because this is what every one of us should have. NH passed a law last year stipulating paper
ballots for every election. We don't have any touch screen machines in our state, though the cities use optical scan machines.

Other countries seem to manage to use machines without problems. Until we can, I believe that paper ballots, marked with pencils, and counted by hand is the way to go.

I'll also be standing up for my values, when I grab that pencil tomorrow. I want single payer health care. I want a change in our federal spending priorities. I want the
Pentagon to have to pass an audit - and account for the $2.6 trillion currently unaccounted for. I want us out of NAFTA and the WTO. I want the US to become respected
in the world again. I want an end to endless war. I don't want to live in a country that builds walls.

[Peace Patriot]

11. Maxanne, I saw at VotersUnite that NH has "optiscan, precinct-based."

Does this mean that the BALLOTS are counted, by hand, at the precinct level, and results posted at the precinct level, BEFORE the ballots are scanned into the highly riggable electronics? I've been trying to find out.

Some interesting sources on NH voting system:

(NH discussion) http://www.democracyfornewhampshire.com/node/view/5296
(NH map) http://www.verifiedvoting.org/verifier/map.php?topic_string=5std&year=2006&topicText=&state=new+hampshire&stateText=
(similar systems) http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0505/S00381.htm

[maxanne]

12. it depends on where you live

I live in a village - pop. 835. We hand count.
Like everything else in NH, there is no uniform system. Live free or die, and all.

In the cities and larger towns the optiscan machines are used.
There has not been any evidence of rigging - and there is always the hand count back up in the event of questions being raised.

[robbedvoter]

6. K&R

[Breeze54]

9. Tnaks cyclezealot ! - A very well timed post!

:kick: & Recommended

[NorthCarolina]

13. Great Post

I couldn't agree with you more. Thanks.

[Skittles]

14. THANK YOU

shame on all DUers who won't vote for Dennis because others won't vote for him - that is one HELL of a fucked up reason

[cyclezealot]

15. following the herd instinct

And they say humans are different from other animals. Wanting a leader with a brain . I always knew I followed the road less well traveled.

[Skittles]

16. man, I have always DESPISED the herd

it's why I work night shift :)