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very important. Diebold and ES&S were not "just in case." They WERE the coup.
Yes, I agree that Americans are far better informed than anyone gives them credit for. The issue and opinion polls over the last few years establish this overwhelmingly. For instance, 56% of the American people opposed the Iraq war way back in Feb. '03, before the invasion. The majority didn't believe or trust Bush, or Colin Powell, way back then. Opposition to Bush and his war is up to 70% today. 63% oppose torture "under any circumstances" (May '04), despite 24/7 fearmongering and propaganda. A whopping 84% (in a recent poll) oppose any U.S. participation in a widened Mideast war.
So, what's the problem here--indifference? I don't believe it--not as a general characterization of the majority. I think they are bewildered at Bush's re-(s)election in 2004. There has been such an "Iron Curtain" over the election fraud story--AND the election SYSTEM story--that people, although they may suspect a stolen election, don't know the details of HOW they have been disenfranchised, and are left in a state of vague discontent or anger, ignorant of what the problem is--that it is a very specific thing that was done--and clueless as to fixing it.
Tom Delay and Bob Ney--the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress--went about DELIBERATELY eliminating transparency in our election system, with the so-called "Help America Vote Act" ('02), which provided a nearly $4 billion boondoggle to fast-track Diebold and ES&S-controlled electronic voting, run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls--all over the country.
DIEBOLD: Until recently, headed by Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser (a Bush "Pioneer," right up there with Ken Lay), who promised in writing to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush-Cheney in 2004"; and
ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things). Diebold and ES&S have an incestuous relationship; they are run by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich.
These are the people who "counted" 80% of the nation's votes in 2004, under a veil of corporate secrecy.
One third of the country voted on new electronic voting machines (touchscreens) with no paper trail AT ALL (unrecountable, unauditable!). The rest voted on a variety of machines that had some sort of paper trail, but with no audit at all required, or very inadequate auditing (and recounts extremely rare), and almost all run on TRADE SECRET programming code, or centrally tabulated with TRADE SECRET code. With the optiscans, the voter filled out a ballot which was dumped into a box and never seen again. The "vote" was turned into electrons, and separated from the evidence of the vote (the ballot). The electrons--a highly manipulable entity--were then "sent" to the central tabulators, for Diebold and ES&S to do their magic: change, switch, or disappear the "vote," or add phantom "votes", all to Bush's benefit. There is overwhelming inferential evidence that this is what they did. It can't be proven definitively because THAT WAS THE PLAN--to REMOVE proof, to make the vote counting NON-TRANSPARENT, impossible to SEE, and to make the tracks of the vote stealing impossible to follow. One insider hacker, a couple of minutes, leaving no trace--that's all you need to change thousands of votes in these EXTREMELY insecure electronic systems.
And there was no bigger secret in America than this--a huge scandal, the scandal of the century, totally black-holed by the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, who actually DOCTORED their own exit polls, late on election day, Nov. 2, 2004, to FORCE them to FIT the results of Diebold's and ES&S's SECRET vote tabulation formulas. Kerry won the exit polls. They FALSIFIED the exit polls--in absurd ways--to CONFIRM the NON-TRANSPARENT "results" produced by Bush-friendly corporations. (See www.TruthIsAll.net.)
Add to this the MIND-BOGGLING SILENCE of the Democratic Party leadership as Bushite corporations took over our election system with SECRET vote "counting," and the "Iron Curtain" that THEY enforced on any talk of this coup, before or after, the (s)election, and you have a populace with almost NO CHANCE of knowing the truth, except by intense investigation, in the face of a new culture of secrecy in our election system--investigation that most people cannot do. Further, both ordinary people AND most election officials did not have the knowledge or technical expertise to UNDERSTAND the electronics that were introduced. No access to the code. No expertise even to KNOW that these machines are WIDE OPEN to INSIDER HACKING. It has taken panels of independent experts to figure that out. A few whistleblowers were onto it. They could not be heard (--and in the one case in which they WERE heard, by CA Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, he immediately sued Diebold for their lies about the security of their machines, de-certified the worst of their machines--the touchscreens--prior to the 2004 election, and demanded to see their source code; he was then "swiftboated' out of office, in early 2005, on entirely bogus corruption charges--with the collusion of the CA Democratic Party legislative leaders and highly corrupt county election officials. The message to election officials around the country was that honesty WILL BE punished--look out!)
I have a very intelligent, liberal friend, to whom I explained some of the facts of our election system (who Diebold and ES&S were, etc.), and this was her response: "But the Democrats wouldn't let that happen, would they?"
But it's not a matter of what the Democratic leadership WOULD do. It's a matter of what they DID do.
And I think we have to face this, as the members--the rank and file--of the Democratic Party. Many of our party leaders are warmongers, corporatists and even fascists. Delay and Ney did not engineer this election system coup alone. They had major assistance from Bilderberg 'Democrat' Christopher Dodd. All BUT TWO Senate Democrats voted FOR this unbelievably bad bill, HAVA. It is crap on its face. Tom Delay PREVENTED a paper trail requirement from getting out of committee. Electronic voting, by Bushite corporations, using TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY CODE, with not even a paper trail, let alone a real paper ballot backup required. No recounts or audits ARE EVEN POSSIBLE in one third of the country. It's fraudulent on its face! Yet they all voted for it. Some may have been ignorant, or stupid, or fearful--or inhaled too much anthrax. But most knew EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE DOING--just as they knew exactly what they were doing in voting for Bush's war.
And their behavior SINCE THEN--the absolute taboo that our party leaders placed on this subject, which continues to this day (with only small cracks of daylight recently--as the result of livid rank and file members who have gotten onto it)--tells you yet more about the corruption of our leaders.
If you're going to have a war with the majority of the people opposed, in a democracy, there is one thing you must do. Rig the elections. That's what they did. And our Democratic Party leaders, most of whom voted FOR the war, and continue to FUND the war with vote after vote, went right along with ALTERING our election system so that voting counting was no longer visible, recountable or auditable, and in which ordinary people no longer have any part to play. Private corporations now entirely control the counting of our votes, the servicing, maintenance and upgrading of the machines that do it, and the SECRET FORMULAE that are used in the tabulations.
Yeah, you could blame the people for all this. We have been less than vigilant. We have trusted our leaders. We really should have dismantled our huge war machine after Vietnam. And we should have demanded Reagan's head for the Iran-Contra war on Nicaragua, as well as for the Reagan tax code re-write, the S&L scandals and a number of other early signs of the fascism to come, including Clinton's signing of NAFTA. We should have held Clinton's feet to the fire over his campaign promise NOT to sign that global piracy agreement without labor and environmental protections. And 50,000 of us tried to, in Seattle, in 1999. But the fascist cabal distracted everybody with Monica. That's what Ken Starr was all about--distraction from NAFTA and the WTO and a number of diabolical plots, including the "Project for a New American Century."
If we can get our country back--STARTING with RESTORING our right to vote--we must never lose vigilance again. But we have also been the TARGET of an unbelievable amount of manipulation and ill intent. And the Corporate Rulers who have targeted us did so for a REASON. We, the people of the United States, are at the vortex of the Dark Powers who are destroying the planet and killing masses of people out of pure greed. And we hold the theoretical power, as a sovereign people, to DISMANTLE these global corporations that are causing so much grief in the world. They saw our power as a people in 1999--the most amazing protest I have ever witnessed (and the most universally slandered by the corporate news monopolies!). They acted to STOP us from apprising the country of the great peril we are all in from out-of-control, U.S.-based global corporations. Stolen Election I was not far in the future (2000). Thence to 9/11, in which the illegitimate Bush regime was passively involved, at the least. Thence to illegal, unjust war, based on lies and deceit. Thence to the ultimate control mechanism--SECRET corporate vote "counting"--and Stolen Election II.
We don't see Nazi boots in America. The control is invisible. Very subtle. The war profiteering corporate news monopolies also play a part, not to convince anyone that unjust war and massive looting by the rich are good for us--they can't do that, and they HAVEN'T SUCCEEDED in doing that--but rather to convince us of our powerlessness, by painting the tiny rightwing minority as the "mainstream," and giving it a Big Trumpet way out of proportion to its numbers. Thus, many members of the great progressive MAJORITY believe that they are in the minority, and that OTHER Americans have gone nuts. The majority has been demoralized, disempowered, and DISENFRANCHISED.
It is very, very important to analyze our situation CORRECTLY, and to think STRATEGICALLY. I am convinced that we MUST address the secret vote counting FIRST. Voting is the chief mechanism by which we exercise our sovereignty as a people. We MUST restore the power of our vote. We have NO POWER even to influence war policy, let alone to reform our government, with Bushite corporations "counting" the votes in secret!
Restoring transparent elections is still doable--at the state/local level, where decisions about election systems are still made, and where ordinary people still have some influence. HAVA did NOT require electronic voting. It merely FUNDED it, big time, and permitted extensive, unregulated, lavish lobbying of election officials and legislators. We can RETURN to paper ballots, hand-counted at the precinct level (with results posted prior to any use of electronics). This is the best system. Canada does it it one day. But speed should not even be a consideration--only accuracy and verifiability.
My suggestion: MASSIVE Absentee Ballot voting this fall. FLOOD election officials with MOUNTAINS of paper AB votes, create panic and crisis in the election theft industry, and FORCE these corrupt or stupid state/local election officials to the table NOW.
AB votes are NOT "safe"--and will NOT produce accurate vote counts--but if enough people vote AB (and many are--it's up to 50% in Los Angeles), we DO have the power to scare the bejeebers out of them, and FORCE reform. And we might thereby be able to salvage the '08 primaries and general election. (By salvage, I mean the nomination and election of a real reformer as president--not another War/Corporatist Democrat--with a real Congress to back him/her up.)
The fascist cabal may be smart enough to throw us some bones this November. They will not permit an anti-war, anti-Bush majority in Congress, however. We may get a few more "voices crying in the wildernerss." We will most certainly NOT gain the votes in Congress to do what really needs to be done (and we all know what that is--impeachment). Too many Democrats are collusive. They, too, owe their power to Diebold and ES&S, and not to us.
Step #1: Bust the Machines--Vote Absentee!
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