Reply #14: Look, HAVA was pushed through by the two biggest crooks in Congress, [View All]

Tom Delay and Bob Ney--a $4 billion electronic voting boondoggle that permitted two rightwing Bushite corporations--Diebold and ES&S--to gain control of the nation's vote tabulation with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code and virtually no audit/recount controls. Any Democratic leader who doesn't know that, and doesn't object to it strenuously, and doesn't mention it AT ALL--let alone as the number one priority--in discussing election reform is in collusion with the enemy and cannot be trusted.

Diebold was headed until recently by Wally O'Dell, a Bush/Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser, who promised in writing to "deliver" Ohio to Bush/Cheney in 2004. ES&S is a spinoff of Diebold, initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation, which promotes the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things. Diebold and ES&S have an incestuous relationship--they are run by two brothers, Tod and Bob Urosevich.

These are the people who 'counted' all our votes behind a veil of secrecy--and were permitted to do so by both the Republican and Democratic Parties.

I will not mince words about this any more. What Pelosi says above is crap. It could have been written by Karl Rove. A disgusting, evasive, deceitful, hypocritical statement.

People may do whatever they need to--and I think that it is perfectly understandable in the midst of a fascist coup--to deal with someone like Pelosi in whatever manner they must, to get whatever scraps from the table that they can get from this contemptible and ILLEGITIMATE Congress. Myself--I intend to support Hillary Clinton, after she is shoved down our throats as "our" Democratic candidate for president by her fascist friends at Diebold and ES&S, in '08, in the hope that she will not be able to oppose transparent elections once they put her in the White House (for their own purposes), and that we will be able to get a quick easy nationwide solution to "trade secret" programming and other election crime. Maybe I'm dreaming, but it's worth a shot--since the alternative is a long, difficult struggle through every state/local jurisdiction in the country. I will trade my support for a candidate whose positions I loathe, in exchange for that long-shot chance at quick restoration of our democracy. There is nothing else of importance, in my opinion. If we can't restore our right to vote, our democracy is over.

There are MANY PERILS in a national election reform bill overseen by Clinton, or written/amended by other illegitimate office-holders. I have no illusions about that. But I think it's worth the chance, because of the enormous long term benefit to be gained from a bill like Russ Holt's HR 550.

This is not to say that I won't be protesting the war, and fighting for a true populist, antiwar candidate in the primaries. I certainly will be. I am talking about after the primaries, when all the peoples' candidates have been "defeated"--by Diebold and ES&S or by the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. Hillary will need SOME support in order to get into position to be Diebolded in office. They can't just manufacture an election out of whole cloth (although I'm sure they're working on it). She will need grass roots leftist support--just as Kerry did. We have to get smart, and very strategic, about what is being done to our country by these people. We are, in my opinion, being set up for the installation of a real Hitler in 2012, after they've blamed all of Bush's financial and foreign policy disasters on "the Democrats" and the "liberals," and when the country is in chaos and on its knees. Much as I dislike what Hillary is doing--going for the main chance in this way--I hope SHE realizes that SHE is being set up, and that nothing she does to please her new masters--not even invading Iran (which she is showing every sign of intending to do)--will prevent them from destroying her, and installing someone far worse than Bush.

I strongly believe that we WILL restore our democracy--just as they are doing in South America. And we have never known grief such as THEY have known at the hands of US-supported dictators. Ask Michele Batchelet, who was herself tortured by the US-supported dictator Pinochet--and was just elected the first woman president of Chile, and the first socialist since the US assassinated Salvador Allende, in 1973. A peaceful, democratic, leftist revolution is sweeping South America, and has moved north into Mexico as well. Brazil, Argentine, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia. Next Peru. And then Mexico. All with leftist governments, all of whom have had it with US death squads and dictators and filthy unjust wars, and domination by the IMF/World Bank and US-based global corporate predators. The South Americans have worked long and hard for this--one of keys being difficult grass roots work to achieve TRANSPARENT elections. And if the South Americans can do it, so can we!

WE have the potential power to DO something about these corporate predators and warmongers--to pull their corporate charters, and seize their assets, and DISMANTLE them. That is our right as a sovereign people, in theory anyway. And that is WHY they have taken away our right to vote--we, the people of the United States, pose the greatest of dangers to the thieving, warmongering corporate rulers who are destroying the planet and oppressing people everywhere.

We need to strategize on the basis of truth and reality. We need to OPEN OUR EYES. We need to be heartened and have courage, no matter how difficult it gets. And we need to deal with the Nancy Pelosi's and Hillary Clinton's of this broken democracy with candor among ourselves about who they really are. What we above all want to prevent is more delusion. That is the master work of the corporate news monopolies: delusion. We need to help our fellow citizens, and ourselves, awaken from the many delusions they have been spun around us--almost like "The Matrix"--including the delusion that we, the members of the great progressive majority in this country, are in the minority. It is not true.

This great progressive American majority that we are part of has almost no representation in Washington DC. Half the Democrats in Congress routinely vote with the Bushites--out of corruption or fear--and not one of them--NOT ONE!--has raised the issue of BUSHITE corporations counting our votes with "TRADE SECRET" formulas. We are virtually without representation. That is what we must change. Restoring election transparency is the essential first step one toward that goal.