...which 'tabulates' some 70% of the elections in this country, with NO AUDIT AT ALL in half the states, and a miserably inadequate 1% audit in the other half--to put rightwing nutballs in office.
They may trust Faux News, too, to be giving them an accurate picture of the political landscape (Gawd!), but it wouldn't have worked this long, as a form of fascist hypnosis, if it was not reinforced by rightwing nutballs filling Congress and statehouses and so forth, by means of election fraud.
The 'TRADE SECRET' vote tabulation works in concert with the Faux News propaganda, and, of course, with the filthy money that drenches our political system. The plague of privately-controlled electronic vote tabulation was the coup de grace to our system--the final blow, on top of these other disasters (false news, filthy money).
ES&S, which bought out Diebold a couple of years ago, was initially funded by rightwing 'christian' nutball Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the rightwing 'christian' nutball Chalcedon foundation, which openly advocates the execution of all homosexuals. THAT is who is 'counting' most of our votes (or not counting them, as the case may be).
Since Chuck Hagel (recently Sec of Defense) was also involved in founding ES&S (he founded its predecessor, which 'counted' his first 'election' to the Senate WITH NO AUDIT), I suspect that ES&S/Diebold is now a broader project than it was initially--that is, I think that it is now controlled by smart--or should I say, shrewd--people within the "military-industrial complex" (CIA comes to mind, but I don't know) who are clever enough not to pull stunts like reversing Max Cleland's 10+ pt. lead in Georgia's Senate election in 2002--or not to pull them often enough to raise general suspicion. Whoever this group is, I think they now pick our presidents--indeed, I think they groom acceptable candidates, then pick them, if the chosen one meets their criteria and succeeds at certain things--as well as picking other allegedly elected officials, or maybe they auction the seats off among the various 0.01%-er players.
NEVER will I advise anyone not to vote. At bottom, we need to remember how to do it, and what our rights are as a sovereign people. But I really don't think it's up to us any more who holds public power. That is to some extent the fault of Faux News but they couldn't have carried it this far without 'confirmation' from fraudulent vote tabulation, that is putting rightwing nutballs in office.
About Obama: I think he was groomed, but I also think that he was, in fact, elected--and by a bigger margin than we know (about 10% bigger). It was a vote for radical change from the Bush Junta, by a people who were not given any other option. I also think that he was permitted to be elected--and that is the problem. We have lost control of our vote counting. (His margin was slashed to curtail any reformist tendencies.)
What I think happened was a war within the "military-industrial complex", basically between the CIA and some of the military brass, on the one hand, and Cheney/Rumsfeld and the nutball neo-cons, on the other, circa 2003-2006, that was possibly resolved by Bush Sr and his "Iraq Study Group" (early 2006) of which Leon Panetta was a member (later to serve, first, a stint at the CIA, then a stint at the Pentagon, trying to end the internal war that Cheney-Rumsfeld had started). I think the CIA was on the point of throwing Jr to the wolves and indicting Cheney-Rumsfeld for outing its WMD counter-proliferation project (the Fitzgerald investigation), but the even more dangerous issue was Cheney-Rumsfeld's intention to nuke Iran. I think that the CIA, most of the military brass and Bush Sr. strongly disagreed with nuking Iran, and the only solution was to purge the neo-cons from the White House and the military. That is why the Democrats were temporarily allowed to gain control of Congress ('06); it is why Rumsfeld suddenly resigned (didn't leave cuz the people had rejected his war--that's laughable; he was forced out), and then Obama was brought in--actually, one might say, Panetta was brought in--to get everybody back on the same page as to expanding U.S. corporate domination of the world, using methods that are not so off-putting as murdering 100,000 innocent people with "shock and awe" bombing, or instigating nuclear armageddon in the Middle East.
There you have my "theory of everything." It has some interesting side roads, that I won't go into now. I just wanted to make the point that, even given Obama's election, the election system is highly riggable, and has, in fact, been rigged. Various contending interests are involved in the rigging, but the very biggest interest of all--those who are profiting from our highly lucrative Forever War--is the interest that is being served best, and probably the one that has the most control of vote tabulation. It is in this group's interest to keep people stupid, and to skew the political dialogue way over the right, so that the things that we REALLY need to do, as a people, are never discussed:
1) To throw these election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' (so to speak) and have ourselves a REAL 'Boston Tea Party'';
2) To THEN purge our political system of MONEY;
3) To THEN dismantle all large media corporations and restore competition to the news media;
4) To THEN dismantle every large corporation that is chartered on our shores and seize their assets for the common good;
5) To THEN end all trade agreements that kill jobs and destroy communities here, and that enslave workers elsewhere, and that do yet greater harm to the environment;
6) And to THEN do all the other things that need doing--single-payer health care, emptying the jails of non-violent offenders and starting true rehab for the others; ending police fascism and corruption; restoring our once-great educational system; saving Planet Earth--you name it, we can do it all, providing that democracy is working as it should. And that starts with counting our votes IN THE PUBLIC VENUE!
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