Maybe something on the “Grow a Spine” theme.

I also like the spine theme. How about handing out spine replica’s to all the democratic members of congress? I’ll kick in a few bucks for that.

There’s an approach to this that is well known in geekdom, but will require that the Dems get loose and hairy, kind of the way Michael Moore did to Wolf/Sanjay/CNN (I stood up an applauded as I watched it).

I call this approach “the open source society”: you take the debate out of the institutions and put it straight into the community. Ever notice how in geekdom, security flaws are almost always discovered by professionals in a community setting, before the bad guys can exploit them? It’s a decentralized process: there’s no institution telling these security geeks when and how to find vulnerabilities in operating systems and browsers; they just find them and let the world know, pell-mell. What if DHS worked this way, rather than relying on Mike Chertoff’s “gut feelings”?

Here’s the point: decentralization. If you go on relying on a few leaders, no matter how good or lucid they are (and Leahy’s among the best), you’re going down the same path to apathy and silence as we’ve traveled with the post-9/11 Bushies. The debate can’t be confined to Congress or the 2008 candidates, and god knows certainly not to the MSM. What’s required is more noise, more mayhem, less command and control–this translates to greater creativity. Look at what they do in Europe when a government starts getting secret and insular: the people take to the streets and raise hell. Bill-O can call it revolt and Broder can quake in his pundit’s throne and declare anarchy: let them have their fear, it’s what has fed them all along.

For the rest of us, the time for fear is over, because the worst that can happen has already begun. The human race is looking down a toxic tunnel at the end of which extinction is already clearly visible: where does the fear in Mike Chertoff’s slack gut stand next to that?

This is no time for marched order; this is a “starfish” moment (explained here), at which centralization fades before urgency and forced order withers before creativity. Returning to the geek metaphor, this is a time where the wiki is written by millions, right in the streets of Washington.

I like your idea a lot. It’s the kind of creative thinking that is needed. But I have two “howevers”…

1. It seems to rather destroy the idea of decentralized action (and thinking) to centralize this energy in Washington DC, where it is least likely to change anything and will not move our “bought and paid for,” Diebold-(s)elected politicians. They will just bring out the Dark Vader cops and gas everyone, and then continue to do what they damn please. If such an action were to be successful, it must persist–it must put a million people in the streets of DC who will not be moved–a very big, very difficult, very centralized project, requiring discipline and lots of coordination.

2. If it is to be true to the decentralized notion, and if it is to be effective, it needs a decentralized but focused strategic objective. My candidate for the goal: restore transparent vote counting. Venues: all local/state voter registrars and election officials.

See my post (at the end here) about activists’ failure to pinpoint the problem–Bushite controlled voting systems run on ‘trade secret,’ proprietary programming code, with zero auditing, recount controls in many states, and entirely inadequate ones in others.

It seems so obvious to me that that WAS the fascist coup. Lots and lots of evidence for it, besides just the plain Stalinist facts of non-transparent vote counting.

And a lot of people know this, and have tried to get around the rigged machines, for instance, with Absentee Ballot voting, and clearly the voters tried to outvote the machines in the last elections (but got fooled by the “D” next to some candidates’ names, as well as by the 5% to 10% “thumb on the scales” against their choices). (–many real antiwar candidates were culled in the primaries, or by money power, leaving that species of traitorous turd, the “Blue Dog” Democrat, as the only alternative).

I have been mind-boggled by the fact that, while there are many, many efforts in local venues (and a fruitless effort in Congress) to restore transparent vote counting, there has been no general “call to action” by the leftist (majorityist) political community, on this priority #1 requirement of democracy. Primaries are five months away, and all will be “counted” by rightwing Bushite corporations under a veil of corporate secrecy. We can have no confidence in those results. None!

The fight to restore transparent vote counting–and get our country back–is likely going to be a long term battle. We may have to endure more fascist policy and more war, before we win it. Or, it could reach critical mass in months, if the leftist activist community would pull together on it. It is a made-to-order goal for creative, decentralized action all over the country.

We need some- several have been mentioned earlier. I like “credit card conservatives” and I want a bumper sticker that says- their “values” vs your freedoms- your vote decides”.

She should be….

It is cruel to constantly urge people to march, to sit-in, to write letters and call congress people, to yell, to scream, to deliver articles of impeachment in person, etc., etc., without mentioning or analyzing the election system that put most congress members and George Bush and Dick Cheney in power. Let me remind everyone what the Anthrax Congress did to us:

By action of the Anthrax Congress, during the 2002 to 2004 period, a completely non-transparent vote counting system was fast-tracked across the country with $3.9 billion in boondoggle funding. This vote counting system features machines run on ‘TRADE SECRET,’ PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls. The machines have furthermore been proven to be extremely insecure and insider hackable.

We have been rendered absolutely helpless in the face of “trade secret” vote counting–with code that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review–and that fascist/corporate judges have already started approving in the face of candidate and voter challenges of election results where egregious anomalies have occurred–such as FL-13, in 2006, in which 18,000 votes for Congress in Democratic areas were ‘disappeared’ by ES&S voting machines, in an election that the Repig ‘won’ (naturally!) by only 300 or so votes. ES&S argued that their sacred private property right to the secret code trumps the voters’ right to know how their votes were counted. And the judge agreed!

Until we find the way to restore transparent vote counting, no amount of protests, letters, public pressure, public opinion, marches, sit-ins or any action by the public whatsoever is going to cause our government to give up the foothold in the Middle East that Bush/Cheney have established, prevent an attack on Iran and/or Syria (not to mention Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador), prevent continued, egregious lawbreaking by this fascist coup, or stop the massive looting of our treasury by war profiteers and the super-rich, nor is public opinion going to move Congress to do anything about any of these outrages.

Bush, Cheney and virtually all members of Congress were (s)elected by Bush/Cheney campaign chairs and rightwing nutjobs at Diebold and ES&S, the two Bushite corporations that now control almost all election outcomes.

We can continue this uphill battle against secret corporate vote counting–and we must continue it, certainly–by “getting out the vote” to try to outvote the machines, sending money and volunteering, but we will see no serious change in any government policy, which is now fully shaped to the purposes of our Corporate Rulers, with backup Nazi powers of the suspension of habeas corpus, detention without trial, torture and massive illegal government spying, in case we rebel.

None of these political activities will result an any accountability or in the serious reform that is needed until we restore vote counting that everyone can see and understand–the fundamental basis of our sovereignty as a people and our power over government officials.

This is how and why Congress can ignore 70 % opposition to the Iraq war by the American people. This is what the non-transparent, unauditable, unrecountable, privatized electronic voting system was FOR. It was authorized by Congress in the same month as the Iraq War resolution (October 2002), and is closely related to it. Non-transparent vote counting is the means by which an unjust, heinous war–and a whole lot of other fascist policies–could be shoved down the throats of the American people, no matter how much we oppose it–and the majority opposed to the Iraq War was substantial, at 56%, in Feb. ‘03, just before the invasion, and has grown dramatically ever since.

It was in anticipation of that great, progressive, peace-minded, justice-minded American majority that Bushite corporate-controlled SECRET vote counting was devised.

Bush/Cheney are a wrecking crew, destroying all government agencies, and even the U.S. military–which is being supplanted by highly paid mercenaries at our expense–destroying our legal system, our election system, the rule of law, all “checks and balances,” our “commons” (what we collectively own and do), and everything we old dear and that makes us a great nation–on behalf of global corporate predators–with the complicity, and in some cases, the wholehearted support, of our Democratic leadership.

PLEASE STOP BEATING YOUR HEADS AGAINST THIS BRICK WALL. The rigging of our elections is blatantly obvious. Non-transparent vote counting by Bushite corporations is unreasonable in the extreme. It is Stalinist. It is intolerable. And yet too many people have accepted it as NORMAL. This WAS the fascist coup. This is why we are getting nowhere, even with the 70 % majority against the war.

What we should be strategizing about–and what should be a chief campaign and goal–is restoring our right to vote, with the votes counted in PUBLIC. This can best be accomplished, in my opinion, at the state/local level, where ordinary people still have some influence. I personally feel that Congress and Washington DC are a foreign land now. All Repukes and most Democrats there don’t give a fuck what we think. They are not trying to represent us. They are trying to OUTMANEUVER us.

It’s way past the time for our elected Democratic leaders, both in the Senate and House to fight back and fight back hard. Last night on the Jim Lehrer News Hour Sen. Hutchinson made Sen Durbin look foolish. She kept hitting with “cut and run” and Al Qaida over and over again. He let it go. Enough of the nice guy stuff. Fine Americans are dying and they won’t call them on it. Let me on there I’ll get right up in their faces!

I saw that too and Durbin looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Democrats are so affraid of coming off too strong so they come off looking like weak. He should have jumped down her throat when she tossed out Republican talking points. God the Democrats are exasparating!

I am a first time poster, long time reader. My anger over the Democrats inability to act and their CYA attitude has me wanting to say forget it and start fresh with a new party. My suggestion is that whenever you get those phone calls, that I get, asking for more donations to help the DNC tell them NO, not until we see real action by the democratics who are supposedly in control of the congress. No money honey might get them going.

I lurk a lot too, but I wholeheartedly agree here. The last time I got a survey/donation solicitation from the DNC I wrote in the donation box that my family has been screwed so well by the current criminals in office that we couldn’t afford to budget a donation into our responce.