Nothing has heartened me more than all the grass roots activists who analyzed the election, the experts (and the few journalists) who have risked their careers to tell the truth, and the passion and focus of all those fighting at the national, state and local levels to restore our right to vote. And, of course, John Conyers and Barbara Boxer in their Ohio challenge and other activism.
That is the fundamental problem. That is the problem we MUST solve. Rightwing Bushite corporations--Diebold and ES&S--have gained control of the tabulation of our votes with "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code. Nothing else matters--it is all "a sound and fury, signifying nothing"--if we do not have transparent elections, that is, the basic mechanism of power that we need to change our country's course.
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Opinion polls in Feb. '03, showing that 58% of the American people opposed the Iraq war before the invasion. That particular fact is not recent, but it has stuck in my mind as a beacon of hope, and has been confirmed time and again. The American people never supported this war--never! And, added to that, 63% of the American people oppose torture "under any circumstances." (May '04.) The American people continue to amaze me. Their sense of ethics and lawfulness and fairness--and, not unimportantly, their resistance to relentless propaganda and fear-mongering--are in tact.
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More recent polls--Bush's numbers, never strong (except briefly, after 9/11) sinking like the Titanic now. Their propaganda is NOT SUCCEEDING.
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The internet, DU and other such web sites. An on-going and heartening event.
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Air America.
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Cindy Sheehan.
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Other activists. Antiwar. Anti-global corporate predators.
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My review of the issue polls, which show that the great majority of Americans disapprove of every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic, way up in the 60% to 70% range, and have for some time. You name it. The Iraq war. Torture. The deficit. Social Security. Women's rights. There is a great progressive majority in this country, which has been marginalized by the Big Trumpet given to the rightwing minority by war profiteering corporate news monopolies. The great American experiment--our historical leadership in the mind-bogglingly beautiful development of democracy itself, and of a multi-cultural democracy, civil rights, human rights, and equality in the 20th Century--is still alive, bubbling beneath the radar of our failed Fourth Estate and the fascist junta that is dictating to it.
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The Lone Star Iconoclast (Crawford, TX), and Knight-Ridder--two bright lights in our Iron Curtained country.
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TruthIsAll, and his on-going analysis of the exit polls--both because of the brilliance of that analysis, and because it reveals the heart of the problem of the 2004 election: That the corporate news monopolies, acting in concert, ALTERED their exit poll data (Kerry won) to FIT the results of Diebold's and ES&S's "secret formula" vote tabulation, thus depriving the American people of major evidence of election fraud. It's not just what the real exit polls show--that Kerry won, and, when compared to Diebold's and ES&S's "results," where and at what time the major fraud occurred (east coast time zone)--it's that the real results of the exit polls were HIDDEN from the American people--were CHANGED, were DOCTORED.
That explains to me WHY there was no general revolt--because people simply couldn't believe that the TV networks and other news monopolies would tell that big a lie, would change the numbers, and would be directly complicit in installing an illegitimate government. That journalistic act of treason is what prevented widespread protests and calls for investigation.
Steven Freeman, and UScountvotes.org, and their on-going work on exposing this fraudulent election SYSTEM and the fraudulent news we were given about it, has also been very heartening to me.
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Patrick Fitzgerald. Never underestimate the power of honesty and truth.
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As a matter of fact, I'm having a hard time LIMITING the list of things that have heartened me, and that make me feel optimistic about getting our country back.
So let me mention one thing that has been very DIS-heartening to me, and that is the Democratic Party leadership's silence about the Bushite electronic voting companies and their secret, proprietary programming code, and the bipartisan corruption of local election officials by the $4 billion Congressional (HAVA) boondoggle and the lavish lobbying of said companies. It has been a great sorrow to me to perceive the venal corruption by which even Democrats have sold away our right to vote.
That corruption is, in my view, the chief obstacle to restoring our democracy.
I was also appalled at the DNC's (Donna Brazille) report on the 2004 election--its shabbiness, and its lies, and its omissions. It might as well have come from the desk of Karl Rove. That Dean didn't prevent this dishonest report is unsettling.
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Election reform activist tools:
http://www.UScountvotes.orghttp://www.votersunite.org (See "Myth Breakers")
http://www.TruthIsAll.net 
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