Does election fraud/reform make you squirrelly?

Is it just me? Or have you become markedly weird since the election?

Do you find it a challenge to focus on anything else?

Is it surreal to be surrounded by people who don't get it? Do you find yourself pushing people away because you fear you're going to bring up "that subject" again and worry you'll be labeled a freak?

Do you find it nearly impossible to partake in idle chit chat? Are you envious of people who appear to manage or mask their dismay while going through the motions of life?

Is everything happening in this country cast in a fraudulent glow?

Do you emit a primal scream every time Jerry Springer discusses the right wing's low approval ratings and how we must hold our leaders accountable on election day?

My personality has altered since Nov. 2, 2004. Friends and family tell me I'm in another place. I can't let go. I'm incapable of finding peace these days. Sure, I can find quick fixes...walks in the fresh air...enjoying my children...watching a movie. But ALWAYS, I return to my addiction to restore justice and democracy.

Activism is certainly a positive release for my rage. I thought I put all my heart, soul, energy and time in another Democratic initiative this past decade. I was wrong.

I have never experienced anything like this in my life.

My God, everything you mentioned resonates deep within me. My latest obstacle is dealing with the rage of fighting for people who should be fighting for themselves. I am so limited by their denial and could accomplish so much if and only if they became aware and involved. It is a simple numbers game but so many do not want to get involved. It is a daily grind of anger, outrage, grasp of hope, strain to wake up people, fight against the labels that are put upon me, real or imagined.
I am so tired of the danger and no one yelling outrage with me. But the belief in truth and the dream continues to push me ahead. Win or lose, I cannot stop fighting and this above all else is the gift of this madness. I respect the person I have become, who has been molded by this firestorm and continues on. I am defined by the struggle and that definition is one that I am proud of. Because of these times have discovered courage and creed. I am closer to the ideals of Democracy more than ever before. I love this Dream and will not stop the struggle. It is too dear, the price paid to establish it too high, the returns of it's success too great.

It was handmade, on cardboard, and simply said:

"YOU ARE NOT ALONE"

Keep your options open. And try reading this post.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=371968&mesg_id=371968&page=

Yes there was funny stuff. I just have not seen proof about the machines. Keep your options open..because there are still many, many ways it could have happened. And they don't all have to include Diebold do they?

Evidence of 9/11 LIHOP (at least)


Break-in to Congressional Dem's Computer System


The Outing of Valerie Plame and her entire network of WMD hunters


The Memo

...owned and controlled as secret, proprietary information by major Bush donors. The election was unverifiable and invalid, on its face. AND there is a mountain of evidence of a wrong outcome. (--which you never address, in your lazy, naysaying posts.)

If the Bush regime had wanted a verifiable election, why didn't we have one? Why did they block a paper trail in Congress? Why did they flood the states with money to purchase insecure, hackable electronic voting systems, and underfund the watchdog commission (the EAC)? Curious how all those billions in HAVA money ended up in the pockets of major Bush donors.

You "haven't seen proof." Why don't you ask Wally O'Dell for some "proof"?

Prove Bush won, applegrove. Show me the hard evidence of THAT!

encouraged Dems to stay home. Many dems don't have cars to get to the polling stations or the money to pay for a babysitter so the vote became less important when it seemed Kerry had already won. Bush got the Reagan democrats. He got the majority of the white men vote and more white women than last time (the women have now returned to the Dems). People voted on security and that fact that a volunteer, soldier and hero named Kerry - was apparently someone who shot himself to get out of war. Tax cuts to the rich artificially kept the stock market going. The Catholic church put the screws onto their flock and Kerry was refused communion (which affected the Latino vote). In Ohio, the black vote for Bush went up by 6% due to the religious vote. There was redistricting. There was intimidation at the polls for anyone who may not have had their IDs in order. Fundies stayed home in 2000 in numbers because of Bush DUI arrest. Line ups were too long at some 'less well healed' voting stations. Notice how OPEC had not increased Oil until after the election. They made Kerry Gay. Bush pandered to the racists by saying he wanted to stop Affirmative Action. People (freepers) were taught that greed is good. Rich people got huge tax cuts. Bush did not start with the huge government cutbacks till after the election. Kerry was to intimidated to call Bush to task on a wire attached to his back during the debate. Kerry should have cleaned the floor with Bush during the debate but the GOP made expectations so low for Bush that he could do nothing but be more impressive than was expected. Rove tricked Kerry into making that video clip where he was a flip-flopper. African Americans saw themselves really reflected (visually)in the Administration. They kept Powell on at least until after the vote. Jeb Bush delivered Florida by pandering to certain groups for 20 years. Karl Rove flipped Texas by flipping a few key democratic leaders there in the past. Bush doesn't implement a policy that solves the problems they need to keep as open wounds (first president ever to purposely not solve obvious problems). Bush has never come out against confederates or minutemen or any crimes committed by them. 4 Million new voters didn't vote.

They work in small increments. They have been doing their homework for 30 years. That is how they won. And they will do anything to get elected..as long as it leaves no footprints. Machines leave footprints.

And now they divide the Democratic Party successfully by not allowing paper trails. They smash us to pieces. And people who have no proof but believe a theory scare away others.

Stop living in the world of denial and realize you will never win, until you begin to accept the truth that yes the fundies committed fraud and yes they did steal the election.

And nothing changes that, whereas the irrefutable numbers will continually scream it -period.

http://www.votersunite.org

all the rest of the work we have to do is the only way to take back the WH (including electoral reform to make sleazy games harder to play). But if you have a special way of getting rid of GOP.. go ahead and try it. If it makes you happy.

"Cassandra accepted Apollo as a teacher, but not as a lover. Naturally, the god was insulted by this refusal. So he punished Cassandra. Apollo caused the gift that he gave Cassandra to be twisted, making everyone who heard her true and accurate foretellings of future events believe that they were instead hearing lies. In other words, the wondrous blessing bestowed upon a mortal became instead a terrible curse."

Your post plus this sounds about right. ...but it's a privilege to be in a position of knowing the truth and being able to do something about it. DU Elections is out there paving the way for the rest of the country.

We shall prevail.

:hi:

PS. Look for MelissaB's spirituality thread for Elections. It's helpful.

didn't know she had, and I'd like to see it.

:blush:

read it again and then I felt better.

I'm going to start calling Bush: Apollo 18.

Works on so many levels. Bush's GOP & elites are so mad that they didn't get to toy with consumers, workers, etc over the last half of the 20th Century that they rob us of the truth. And ridicule us for being 'reality based'. Also Bush doesn't know where the **** he is having hit lift-off. He likes space - that's for sure.

Bush

Here is and article by J. Raimondo on the Bushites and the Casandra Complex

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j092101.html

:hi:

torn away bit by bit. We all need to fight the good fight - but not forget to take care of ourselves and learn how to step back.

This will be a long battle. And Rove & the GOP will try to exhaust us. So anyone who is having a hard time of it can step away for a bit, find a way to renew attachment to community and plant a garden. Because the fight will be there as soon as we are ready to be involved - up to our ears - again.


Pace yourself.

"everything happening in this country is cast in a fraudulent glow."

Accepting that even our sacred voting rights have been sabotaged gives you a different perspective. Not everybody has the nerve to face the profoundly disturbing implications of massive vote stealing. We might have to clean up a LOT of things in our society if the full impact of this is felt. Sweeping changes. I have found it to be a defining issue in my life since the last election also...but I don't feel alone really --since I believe there are many more people who KNOW it happened than are willing to admit it. This is a shameful national disgrace, one of many skeletons that keeps getting shoved back in the closet. Those who are psychologically unable to shove this particular ghoul back this time are the leaders in this struggle. I relate to your comments AtLiberty. They illustrate well the complex emotions associated with life-altering epiphanies. The old illusions are bumping up against the new Reality.

We are definitely not in Kansas anymore.

Yes. You've described my life since Nov 2. Hell, you've described my life since I realized we wouldn't get rid of the evote machines in time for the "elections".

started therapy this week. seriously.

Who and what made the point in Karl Rove's amazing declaration of election prosthetics, would have full reason and seek to gain universal praise for committing vote fraud.

Why commit election fraud?

What is there to gain, who pays for election fraud?

In hindsight, what is the truthful prize for those who engage election fraud?

Does it make a difference if election fraud is done on a city, state, or national level?


To address these questions, I refer back to a commonly used proverb.

"Those who count the votes, decide everything."

It is the ultimate power grab. It is the way to defy absolute law, and in its place instill absolute rule. It is the kind of thinking and tactics, which turns a loser, into a perceived winner in the eyes of those who follow a cult-like belief system.

Psychologically, you have to see things from both sides of the discussion to understand the motivations of those who commit fraud.

Put your eyes inside the eyes of someone who has felt persecuted all their lives. The eyes of someone like a radical neo-conservative, who feels he/she has gained nothing of value out of life.

The persecution complex against neo-conservatives is a severe, and undeniable issue. They blame the liberals in the government and world abroad for all their problems, they hate those who stand for the New Deal with an unbridaled passion.

They have never had representation that is adequete or proper in their view, the belief held by all of them is that the world is against them. It is also including the idea that armageddon will come, and be on us all.

For all time they have held the belief, that the entire media hates them and is liberal and "evil". If you in every respect saw the liberals and other societies as your enemy, and wanted to save the world by bringing god back, you would agree with this one singulur phrase....

"The ends justify the means."

If you as a fundamentalist, living in a group of dominionists and regularly meeting James Dobson, George Bush, Ralph Reed and other anti-seculurs in the end all your belief would fixate on one thing.

You must take back what is rightfully yours, you must take back the world from those quasi-hating, anti jesus, disgusting liberals and all their foolish anti-abortion friends!

In truth, you, as a neo-conservative or fundamentalist believe in absolute rule. That is a dangerous viewpoint which has led to the downfalls of many countries, including Rome...

Now, picture yourself as a fundamental dominionist follower praising George Bush and his friends at every chance you get. Picture yourself getting on the phone with Karl Rove at every chance you get. You no longer see the world as a place that's fair, so the psychology is, one has to be unfair in order to have themselves be heard.

Now, in that subtext can you now picture yourself calling for the removal of all liberal government? Can you see yourself frothing at the mouth in hate over John Kerry....And then in sequence, telling your friends at the voting company to help Karl Rove steal the election. Go into the church, and change each vote as wanted and select your next president, governor, senator, and associated politicians into office. Not only that, Rove is your ultimate savior. He speaks truth to the evil liberal power. You know the world will change, and once election fraud is committed, you will too get everything you want and the world of morality will listen to you!

Everything depends on that one viewpoint, one such as this would never fear reprisal for the co-ordinated deletion of democracy. One such as this, is a dangerously twisted person. If you stay in a fundamentalist mindset, you find yourself confused and angry at everything around you.

Have you ever noticed that these extreme persons, protest american freedom? They believe in christians of their viewpoint being allowed to vote, and anyone else does not deserve this. They believe america must destroy islam and bring about authoritarian rule as professed in the bible. Have you ever noticed that these extreme persons, tell conservatives 24/7 that they are being persecuted? These persons tell the conservatives they are being groomed for satan's destruction, and liberals have raped them spiritually?

I attended such a conference. I no longer believe a person such as this would have the interest in blowing the whistle on election-fraud. They have all the power in the world at their fingertips, you can not have a conscience when the only thing you answer to is your god and his will.

"They audited and verified, one by one, the 895 votes in the precinct and found: 12 innocent and unsuspecting voters who had their names duplicated on the roster and their votes for Bush counted twice. Twenty-two "undervotes" where the machine had failed to register a preference for president, and these had been dutifully and meticulously converted to 22 votes for Bush.

The "Republican" and "Democratic" co-directors of the polling place were a local fundamentalist preacher and his wife. Thirty-nine of their parishioners from another precinct had cast provisional ballots, which were (illegally) converted to regular ballots and passed through, all 39 for Bush.

I met Richard Hayes Phillips, a geologist from New Hampshire who was invited to Ohio to study the integrity of the vote, and realized that a complete inventory of lost and miscounted votes was needed. To date, Phillips has analyzed 15 of Ohio's 88 counties, and by his most conservative estimate has found 101,000 uncounted Kerry votes - 136,000 is the margin by which Bush officially defeated Kerry.

I heard Clint Curtis talk about working in 2001 as a programmer for Yang Enterprises in Florida. He was assigned to a meeting with State Senate Speaker Tom Feeney, who asked to have a program written into the software that controls voting machines so that the totals could be manipulated without leaving a trace. Curtis, the whistleblower, is now unemployed. Feeney, the politician, is now the U.S. representative from Florida's 24th Congressional district.

I was inspired to hear the travails of Ohio lawyer Cliff Arnebeck. After the Green Party raised $200,000 and obtained authorization for a recount in Ohio, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell staged a charade in which every state rule about the conduct of the recount was thrown out, and two hand-picked precinct captains emerged from behind locked doors to report that yes, indeed the numbers were exactly right and all was hunky dory."
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/11489971.htm

before Nov 2...my husband now really cringes at the topics of election refornm, fraWd or voting machines coming up ...
Shiny tinfoil hat with flower ready to go...:tinfoilhat:

it's everything they're doing. they are dismantling our democracy piece by piece. it all stems from the election theft, but it's just so depressing to see it all unfolding. what's worse for me is knowing that most people just don't "get it." Democratic politicians seem to be uninterested in even trying to do anything about it, almost as if everything is going on "as usual." Why did a foreigner Galloway have to come and speak the truth? Why can't someone in our country stand up and make that speech? And even worse yet, the democratic folks who voted for kerry don't "get it" either. they still are glued to network news. they don't like what's happeneing but they have no idea how bad it is. They just think it's "another republican admininstration." they believe the network news and they think blogs and alternative news outlets are dangerous because they don't check their facts.
the truth is this is something the likes of we've never seen before in our country. and very few people even realize it. I feel like i'm in a bad movie. it's hard to be hopeful but I can't give up hope. I wonder if anything is ever going to "break" or if we're at the beginning of a long bad road. All I can do is try and hope.

It's like living in a parrallel universe. Those who get it and those who don't.

"How has your life changed since you found out about e-voting fraud?"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=323883

It is a great shock to discover that the fundamental pillar of our democracy--our voting system--has come crashing down. Even with all that I knew about electronic voting, and all that I suspected of the Bush Cartel's evil deeds, I still had a bit of a Pollyanna view that our political system could right itself and vote them out.

It could not, and we could not. This is a very serious shock. You are in shock, AtLiberty. Not addicted. In shock--a physical and psychological phenomenon in which your adrenalin has been pumping through your veins in large quantities, spurring you to action to face an emergency, then leaving you at times exhausted and in dismay, and a concurrent psychological process of wielding yourself into action--including intense rounds of intellectual activity and discussion--and then falling into anxiety and depression (something of a panic response, repeated panic attacks).

These are all HEALTHY REACTIONS to an emergency. The trouble is that we are not physically and psychologically suited to remaining in this condition over a long period of time. (Another description of it is battle fatigue--what happens to soldiers under fire for long periods, and the ONLY solution is being removed from the battlefield--R&R.)

What I suggest is that you take measures to calm yourself down. Now that it has become obvious that we cannot dislodge this fascist coup by normal democratic means, and that it isn't going to happen soon or easily, we need to be tough, steady, resilient people. We need to be in it for the long haul. We need a thorough, deep, long term reconstruction of our democracy--starting with getting the election system back into the public venue (most doable at the state/local level).

Also, think of other people who have been in similar situations--living with intolerable conditions and seeking change against overwhelming odds. The slaves during slavery. Gandhi's India. Martin Luther King's segregated south. And, oh God, Nelson Mandela's South Africa (jailed for 30 years!--emerges triumphant to become it's first black president). The women's voting rights movement. The first American Revolution itself.

Steady, steady.

Of those around you, who are living within the news monopolies' ILLUSION of democracy, pity them, and show compassion for them. If they are able to see what you see, at all--the very obvious theft of the 2004 election--they may feel deeply helpless. Think of them as your fellow and sister slaves during slavery. (How can I possibly fight it? How can I possibly rebel? Denial is easier.) Those who can't or won't see it at all (what is so obvious to us--to those who know the facts) may just have a deeper level of denial, or even worse feelings of helplessness, so that they cannot absorb facts, and prefer to live within the TV illusion; or they may have become cynical (Yeah, well, of course it's all manipulated to keep the fatcats in power--so what?).

This fascist coup has similarities to other, historical fascist coups, but it also has important differences--one of the big ones being the role of the news monopolies in luring large numbers of people into a zombified state, a state of powerlessness, in which highly sophisticated brainwashing is combined with consumer desires and with the need of everyone in the country to feel that they are part of "the nation" (brought to you by CNN, NBC, CBS, Fox and 24/7 "news" on TV and radio). Intelligent people may even know that they are being lied to, by these news monopolies (on Iraq WMDs, for instance), but still they keep going back and plugging into it, as if it were an umbilical cord to "the nation."

2004 election fraud does not exist within this illusion. And they have a hard time weighing what you say--little ol' you, a mere citizen or friend--against what the brainwashing illusion is telling them (or not telling them). (How can you and a few others be right, and the all of the news media oblivious to it?)

Compassion is the key--to dealing with them, and to calming yourself down. Have compassion for yourself as well. You cannot solve this huge problem alone. We can only do it together, as a people. And if "the people" are uninformed and brainwashed, then those of us who aren't must work on THAT problem, by gently un-brainwashing them. It can't be done by just bombarding them with facts--remember, and keep this always in mind, they feel profoundly HELPLESS and POWERLESS. How do we encourage their inherent capacity for independent thought and their potential power as citizens of a democracy?

Remember also, that these same people WERE ABLE to see through all the B.S. and voted the Bush Cartel out. They are now unable to absorb the shock about why it didn't work, and why their views--clearly the majority view in the country (as all opinion polls show--all very much against Bush)--are not being listened to now.

You are a hero, AtLiberty, for maintaining your free mind in this brainwashed country, and for being able to absorb that shock of the stolen election and think clearly about what it means.

You are Paul Revere. You are Gandhi. You are Martin Luther King. You are Nelson Mandela. You are Albert Einstein (did you know that he suffered physical shock--trembling, nausea--when he discovered relativity?)--and other courageous pioneers. As we all are, collectively, here at DU and in other groups working on this matter.

The alarm bells. The leaders. The enlightened. The pioneers. It has ever been an extremely difficult role to play in human progress.

Be calm. Be steady. Be well.

Sometimes I do envy the blissfully unaware. *sigh*

One beyond general political activism, family, work, etc.

I am one up on many folks, because I have been flogging the Electoral horse since long before 11/2/04, and was prepared for the outcome.

That being said, I felt the same way AtLiberty feels, back when I first found out about the tubby little ratfucker behind the curtain.

At least it has given the movement a powerful voice. AtLiberty, I am sorry for you but glad for the country, because we need you and everyone else of like mind, anger, and direction.

Its also about the kids--the legacy we leave behind:


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x372210

:D

A real trooper-Professor Bunson R. Honeydew about obliterated him once per week, but Beaker just kept on showing up and doing his part. Inspiring.

And yeah, he's goofy. :7

I keep telling myself to not let this obsess me, but nothing helps. Once you know, there is no turning back. I'm just hoping to make it through this week at work, and I'll be off for the summer. I miss you guys. :) Even though I haven't been starting the daily thread, I can't help but come here any spare moment I have. You seem to be in good company here...

Peace