Why do we keep getting 60/40 pro-Bush votes in Congress when the country

is 60/40 anti-Bush--in poll after poll after poll--in all the issue polls over the last several years (you name it--the Iraq war, torture, Social Security, the deficit, women's rights--60/40 or MORE anti-Bush), in all the approval polls 60/40 or MORE anti-Bush over the last year, with his numbers being weak all along (so weak before the election that Zogby said he could not win), confirmed also by other stats, such as a 60/40 blowout success for the Dems in new voter registration in 2004?????

60/40 or BETTER anti-Bush American majority. 60/40 or WORSE pro-Bush votes in Congress.

Why?????

The Congress is the mirror reversal of the country.

What all the polls and stats tell us is that we have a HUGE (something like 60%) progressive American MAJORITY that is neither reflected in Congress nor in the war profiteering corporate news monopoly coverage of news and opinion.

This, to me, is the biggest puzzle about the Alito fight. It should have been a no-brainer for Democrats. And, in view of the egregious behavior of their President--announcing his intention to CONTINUE committing felonies, with illegal spying, and his absolutely miserable and unshakable 38% approval rating, it should have inspired more Republican opposition as well (at least on the tyrannical executive issue, if not on the women's rights issue).

Nothing. Nada. And not just nada, our side--the side of the great American majority--suffered SET-BACKS, for instance being unable to rally Constitutionalist Robert Byrd, whose speeches on Gonzales and Rice were so eloquent.

SOMETHING is going on here. We have SCAB Democrats--Democrats "crossing the picket line" and abandoning their fellows in a big fight--a fight over CRUCIAL Constitutional issues. Not just any old fight. THE fight. Vichy Democrats. Fascist ass-kissers.

I do think it's related to wingnut-connected Bushite corporations--Diebold and ES&S--now counting all our votes with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, and virtually no audit/recount controls. (Talk about a no-brainer for Democrats! HOW could they be SILENT about THAT? HOW??!!). (ES&S initially funded by Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the 5th century-minded Chalcedon Foundation--a real scary group. ES&S a spinoff of Diebold--same computer architecture--which had a Bush/Cheney campaign chair as CEO, until recently. These are the people counting our votes in secret! I mean, come on.)

It also may be related to the war profiteering corporate news monopolies' FALSIFICATION of their exit polls late on election day 2004, on everybody's TV screens. The exit polls said Kerry won, then there was a phony hour long "crash" of the reporting system, in which they DOCTORED their exit polls to force them to 'FIT' the results of Diebold's and ES&S's secret formulae (Bush won). They flipped the exit polls to match the flipped vote. They thus deprived the American people of their ONLY verification tool in a non-transparent election--honest exit polls;deprived them of major evidence of election fraud, and helped to squelch protests and calls for investigation--and have been black-holing this all important story ever since. Because the war profiteering corporate news monopolies were actively COMPLICIT in Stolen Election II.

With that kind of collusion and corruption at work, maybe some Democrats are just scared pissless. Paralyzed. White-faced. Then there's Bush's pervasive spying. Is he spying on Democrats, and blackmailing people--extorting votes?

SOLUTION #1: Well, throw Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor,' for starters.

My suspicion is that these machines are not just "selecting" Republicans. I also sense a lot of corruption among both Dem and Repub election officials at the state/local level, which may be affecting state elected officials/legislators--I've seen evidence of it--if not Congresspeople as well. I think that was Tom Delay's and Bob Ney's purpose with their $4 billion HAVA boondoggle--with its lack of controls on secret programming and lack of audit/recount controls, AND lack of controls on lavish lobbying, and "revolving door" employment (election officials buying these machines for the state/county, then going to work for the company), not to mention lack of controls on partisanship by the voting machine companies. In short, there is more going on here than just tweaked, fraudulent elections (but that's the heart of it, the power).

We really can't do much on other policy issues when our right to vote--the mechanism of our very sovereignty as a people--has basically been taken away. We can't even clean up the filthy corporate (campaign contributions) and corporate news monopoly (campaign ads/news coverage) control of our elections, let alone get public financing of campaigns (the best solution), without the right to vote. We can TRY to address it, but we won't get anywhere.

So election reform is priority #1.

SOLUTION #2: Targeting the Scab Democrats, supporting the Real Democrats, and finding and running more Real Democrats. Diebold and ES&S cannot just manufacture elections, not yet anyway. There has to be SOME support. So the Democrats still need us--the great unwashed, the grass roots, the rank and file, the great progressive American MAJORITY, the people that half the Democratic Party leadership doesn't give a crap about. They all need our money and our votes--to even get into a position to be Diebolded in or out of office.

I'm for targeting each of the Scab Democrats (who didn't vote for cloture) for un-election. Run candidates against them, and if they don't shape up, sit on our hands, vote Green, stay out of the campaign, give no support. As things are now, the Bushite 'pod people' in Congress might as well have a few more votes (the risk of this strategy). What difference would it make? It is a FRAUDULENT Congress--as fraudulent and illegitimate as the Bush junta is. In fact, the Bush junta and Congress are one and the same. And the 25 or 30 Real Democrats in the Senate (with comparable numbers in the House) have NO chance of stopping even the worst actions of this junta. Our rights, our liberty, our welfare are all in extreme jeopardy. And a few votes going the wrong way will make no difference. Better to clean house, and forge a REAL Democratic Party--one we can count on to represent the 90% of the Party, and the 60% of the American people, who are now unrepresented in Washington DC, in anything like a proper proportion to their majority numbers.

This strategy, of course, must be combined with the first--an all-out effort to get as much transparency in our elections as we can, as soon as possible, and continued work toward complete transparency and restoration of our right to vote (--likely, of necessity, a messy fight in every state/local jurisdiction). (Movements are underway--and have had some successes--much more effort needs to be made.)

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Some resources:

www.votersunite.org (MythBreakers - easy primer on electronic voting)
www.verfiedvoting.org (great activist site)
www.UScountvotes.org (monitoring of '06 and '08 elections)
www.freepress.org
www.TruthIsAll.net
www.solarbus.org/election/index.shtml (fab compendium of all election info)

Also of interest: (Bob Koehler--really bad machines in Ohio, recent; a 60/40 flipover of the vote, on election reform initiatives!)
www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?file=20051124ctnbk-a.txt&catid=1824&code=ctnbk

Amaryllis (Diebold, ES&S lavish lobbying of election officials - Beverly Hilton, Aug. '05)
www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x380340

Sign the petition (Russ Holt, HR 550, great bill-has 169 sponsors). http://www.rushholt.com/petition.html

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SOLUTION #3: ???

SOLUTION #4: ???

Ideas?

election fraud, and a helpless/sleeping majority of Americans who don't know about it, or at least don't know what to do about it :(

I believe that the Fundies and the Right Wingers and the Pundit Nut Jobs all want a moral
majority on the Supreme Court so they can overturn Roe v Wade. They have been trying to do
this for 25 years which is why they have been propping up the pretzel, as soon as they
get Alito, Bush will become a Lame Duck faster than you can say Louie, Dewie and Hughie. The Corporate Masters of the Main Stream Media also want this (i.e. Scaife) so even though
they secretly loathe Bush and Bush really would have no power except they believe that
if they didn't play this out, it would blow their chance because all the nasty stuff is
going to come out. (Like why Karl Rove has not been indicted yet-Libby was indicted in
October, do you think it a coincidence that nothing has been heard about Karl Rove being
indicted???) As soon as Alito is the annointed one (Plame will heat up/what a surprise).
Abramoff is singing like a canary, where are the indictments??????) I predict that the
Abramoff investigation will also start to pick up after Alito is Justice Alito.

The majority of the country is pro-choice in varying degress, and want to keep Roe vs. Wade, but out of those who actually FOLLOW the issue, the right has been doing a better job in getting their message out, even if they are in the minority. I fear that we will need a "judicial Pearl Harbor" that involves taking away rights, before the sleeping majority rises and overthrows the pro-life cabal.

proves even more that we are not living in a representative Democracy. And the election problems are a large part of the reason why.

One, that something possibly coud be done about, is that while the Republicans hold together and vote as a bloc regardless of their differences with one another, the Democrats do not do this. There is no Party discipline, and it is a fatal flaw.

Two, in the Senate, owing to the configuration of the several states, the smaller number of Democratic Senators present represent a far greater number of people than do the Republicans in that chamber. The Repubican Senators really do not represent more than about forty-five percent of the voting public, though they are in a decided majority.

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"

Republicans have to lie, cheat and steal to get a majority on ANYTHING. America is basically a liberal country.

do all the Republicans who trail in polls win 52-48% or 51-49%?

Easy -- just enough to avoid a recount, but not so much as to be obviously fraudulent. Except in Ohio in 2005, where the results were so ridiculous as to be laughable, if I wasn't puking.