It`s the oligarchy, stupid!

[democrank]

Sit down and be quiet. We`re here to pay the tab for the rose-colored window panes in George Bush`s ivory tower. Might as well cancel your BUSH ROTS tee shirt order and start celebrating. Dick Cheney, Junior Bush, Karen Hughes and General Petraus somehow turned the disastrous Iraq invasion into a winner, just like some folks do with their Megabucks tickets. Apparently it happened some night this week and now everyone that is someone is talking milestones....eight of them. The surge worked, Iraq is on the brink of success and the liberals are folding up their white flags of shame. God bless the USA.

"Too many cooks spoil the broth." That`s why power needs to be in the hands of few, especially when it comes to creating great war plans and a corresponding bustling economy. The framers of our Constitution didn`t know jack about extremists. That`s why someone in the Bush administration had to come up with naked pyramids and testicle electrodes. Thank goodness they did because it enabled us to capture all eighteen of al Qaeda`s number 2s. Most of them were in Iraq. Probably in Saddam`s best palace.

Great ideas come from great men....like the FEMA guy in charge of ice cubes after Hurricane Katrina.
When he discovered, several months after the hurricane hit, that taxpayers were still paying for ice trucks parked several states away, did he cut and run? N-O. He kept the trucks in position so he`d have a head start on the next year`s hurricane. That`s leadership. Always thinking. When George Bush discovered he had ruined 3 countries and presided over the deaths of hundreds of thousands, did he throw in the towel? Of course not. Rome wasn`t built in a day and the George W. Bush Democratic Utopia of Iraq won`t be either. Have some patience, for crying out loud. Give Bush`s peace a chance.

[Norrin Radd]

1. k+r

[Peace Patriot]

2. Nope, I have to disagree. It's the voting machines, stupid!

Without the conversion to non-transparent vote counting, in extremely insecure and insider hackable voting machines, run on 'trade secret,' proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations--a new vote counting system worthy of Stalin, that was fast tracked across the country during the 2002 to 2004 period, with $3.9 billion in boondoggle funding--the Bushigarchy would have been ousted, and Congress would now be representative of the American people and would be busily seeing to our interests.

1. You can't perpetrate an egregiously unjust war in a democracy--especially one with the Vietnam War in living memory--without fixing the elections. That's what they did. It's a no brainer. It's right under our noses. LOOK at this fraudulent vote counting SYSTEM, and ask, what is that FOR? (Note: 56% of the American people opposed the Iraq War from the beginning--Feb. '03--a significant majority now grown to an overwhelming majority--70%. They knew this would happen. They planned for it. How do you shove another unjust war down the throats of this peace-minded, justice-minded American majority, if they're NOT BUYING the relentless, 24/7 fascist propaganda and warmongering, all channels, all the time? Answer: "trade secret" vote counting.)

2. Vote counting with "trade secret" code has many other uses.

The puzzling thing, the difficult thing, the tragic thing, is the mind-boggling silence of our Democratic Party leadership, as our right to vote was stolen out from under us. The party of the working class, of the poor, of the majority, let this rightwing oiligarchy privatize our election system. Not one peep out of them. And they still support it.

So if you wonder how a Congress that was elected to end the war instead ESCALATED the war, and larded $100 billion MORE dollars into the pockets of these war profiteers, thieves and murderers, look to the fraudulent vote counting SYSTEM, by which virtually all of them were (s)elected. Vote counting with secret code is not the only thing wrong with our election system. But it's the democracy-killer. It makes change impossible.

There are many things wrong with our country--and many fascist cliffs we have already been pushed over. But this is the one thing that we MUST find the way to change, or our democracy is at an end. We MUST restore transparent vote counting--vote counting that everyone can see and understand. I think the most hopeful venue for it is state/local, and it's going to be a long hard struggle, but it's something we MUST do.

It's not the oligarchy. It's how the oligarchy achieves and retains power over the majority, in this case with DIRECT control over election outcomes. They own our public airwaves. They are stealing us blind. They are writing their own laws. They are slaughtering people, and torturing people, and spying on us, with impunity. Now they own the voting system. And, unless we peel that coup back, we cannot begin to correct all these other wrongs.

It's the voting machines, stupid!

Throw Diebold, ES&S and all election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!