Harry Reid got it right.  "Congress is going to have to earn its raise by putting American workers first:  A raise for workers before a raise for Congress," or so he said yesterday.  We can only hope that our election machinery is in good repair for the 2006 midterm elections.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06/27/c ongress.wage.reut/

It all boils down to who controls the money and how it is prioritized. We the people are not a top priority in Republican-owned Washington these days.  

The (public) servants have taken over the house so the owners, we the people, are no longer served. Our public servants know on which side their bread is buttered. It's not the paltry $165K we pay them that is their top concern--it's the millions the big corporations pay in advertising dollars and other campaign contributions.  (And since when do the servants decide their own exorbitant salaries?)  We the people still have a few recourses: we can stop feeding the corporations that buy the politicians, we can make the ads the politicians buy with corporate dollars irrelevant, or we can fire the public servants.

The first option requires that a critical mass of consumers only Buy Blue, union-made, sustainable products. We need to change our life-styles, one person at a time. Do you really need those Microsoft, Target, and Shell products? Apple technology is superior to Microsoft, and Apple is not trying to make itself a monopoly that requires everyone to support its software and products exclusively at its prices. Costco sells at competitive prices and pays their workers a good wage with benefits. Biodiesel stations are popping up all over the place, and you don't need to retrofit your new diesel vehicle to run it on biodiesel.  Let's not support oil companies whose CEOs are paid millions by minimum wage earners at the pump.

There are rumors of a Hillary run for 2008.  Some say she has that magic "electability" thing.  

Wake up.  The Republicans want Hillary Clinton to run; that's why Bush said she would be a "formidable" opponent.  They know they can beat her.  And she won't make too much of a fuss when they spin the propaganda against her and rig the election machinery to bring her down.  She plays by their rules.  

It's time the Democrats stop letting the Republicans choose their candidates for them.  "Electability"?  That's just the scale a spineless Democrat uses to measure a candidate's willingness to bow under the pressure of the Republican talking points.  The Republicans will talk.  It seems the more they fear a candidate, the more they pull out the stops to smear that candidate, so I suggest a new scale to use in choosing the Democratic candidate--the smear scale.  If the Republicans put most of their efforts into bad-mouthing a candidate, then that's our guy.  They tend to go after truth-tellers, like Al Gore and Howard Dean.  Republicans don't like too many facts obscuring their agenda; that's why they got rid of the Fairness Doctrine.  

Big money is doing the talking.  Big money owns the media and the Republican Party; the Republican party is the party of rule by the corporations for the corporations.  Big money uses the flag and Jesus--"God bless America"--as its official logos to legitimize itself.  Democrats used to stand for rule by the people for the people, but, with Washington awash in money, they too have leaned to the other side, the fascist, big money side.  

As in fascism, the big corporations now have a strangle hold on our government, and they know how to use all the tools at their disposal to control the people.  They are good at using propaganda to instill fear (of terrorists and a punishing god) and hate (of gays, Muslims, Frenchmen, Democrats, etc.)  Big money's front men, Bush, Cheney, et al, use that propaganda to rouse the rabble into angry, flag-waving, cross-bearing, attacks on gays, Muslims, Frenchman, Democrats, etc.  As Bush said, they have to keep repeating things in order to "catapult the propaganda."  Sometimes the truth does slip out.

Liberals need to choose their candidates and vote based on integrity.  Who is it that is best at truth-telling?  Gore and Dean are truth-tellers.  They are the candidates chosen by the people for the people.  Gore won the popular vote--and the election--in 2001; Dean had huge popular support and would have done well in 2004, but the DNC joined the Republicans in smearing him for fear that he did not have "electability."  The DNC thought Kerry had "electability."

After Dean was taken down by our own side, Dean's popular support joined into a wider push against Bush.  But we were no match against Republican chicanery; the election was too thoroughly rigged.  Kerry won.  But Kerry was held by the money machine in Washington; he didn't even put up a fight for the little guy, even with the overwhelming evidence of fraud and voter intimidation in Ohio.  But Kerry had "electability."

Since the Republicans have big money, big media propaganda, and big corporation, rigged election machinery on their side, it doesn't make sense to play according to their "electability" rules.  We liberals need to keep coming at them with plain-spoken facts.  Facts to Republicans are like water to the Wicked Witch of the West in Oz.  "I'm melting, I'm melting."  

We need a truth-teller, like Gore or Dean, for 2008.  Ignore that noise in your ear telling you to look for "electability."  It's just Republicans "catapulting" their propaganda.

On CSPAN today someone in her San Francisco audience asked Nancy Pelosi, aren't all the crimes committed by George Bush sufficient grounds for impeachment?  Perlosi's answer was to focus instead on the 2006 elections.  Is there no tipping point for Pelosi and our Congressmen beyond which they say, Stop, enough murder, corruption, and government crime!    

Al Gore said in his speech today, "if the pattern of practice begun by this Administration is not challenged, it may well become a permanent part of the American system."  The unprovoked invasion of Iraq and murder of its citizens, the illegal wiretapping, the imprisonment of Americans without trial, and the rendition and torture of prisoners practiced by the Bush administration could be precedents upon which future administrations base their actions.  

Pelosi said we should wait until the 2006 elections.  The 2004 election was fraught with irregularities; this was documented by John Conyers and others.  The 2001 and 2004 elections were stolen.  What is to prevent the same voter intimidation, incorrect voting machine counts, and voter purges from changing the outcomes of 2006 elections?

Pelosi is in Congress at the behest of the American people; we have employed her to protect our rights that are guaranteed in our Constitution.  She is supposed to be our voice in Congress; a Zogby poll last week verified that a majority of Americans favor impeaching George Bush for his criminal actions.  But more and more our elected officials do not stand up and speak for us in Congress.

Pelosi says, wait for the 2006 elections.  We have already elected her to do the job today.  

Following is my response to an editorial by Michael Kinsley in the June 12 edition of the LA Times (I am sharing it here because I know it will fall into the black hole of the LA Times correspondence desk, never to surface):
     In America we have the wonderful idea that a
person should be presumed innocent when he is accused of a crime.  Of course, this doesn't apply in
Guantanamo, but our "president" would certainly be
awarded this presumption of innocence.  However, there is usually a next step when a person is accused of a crime--the facts and evidence are investigated before a judgment can be made.  
     You have labeled eighty legislators and almost
five hundred thousand citizens as "extremists" who are "[d]eveloping a paranoid theory"  because we are
calling for an investigation into the Downing Street
Minutes and the pre-Iraq war planning by the Bush
Administration.  In defense of your position, you say,
"C offered no specifics" in the Downing Street
Minutes.  Pardon my mistake--I thought investigating
and uncovering facts and "specifics" was your job as a
journalist.  
     You say you "don't buy the fuss"; after all why
should we get upset about one hundred thousand
innocent Iraqis and over sixteen hundred young
Americans who might have died because, as the Downing Street Minutes says,
     "Bush had made up his mind to take military
action. . . But the case was thin. Saddam was not
threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. . . .
The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime
change was not a legal base for military action. . . .
If the political context were right, people would
support regime change."
     And why shouldn't we believe Bush's protestations
of innocence?  Hasn't he been perfectly honest and
forthcoming in the past?  Why should we believe that
he would try to manipulate the American people?  He
wasn't really trying to manipulate the vote by casting
the Florida Secretary of State in 2000 and the Ohio
Secretary of State in 2004 in dual roles as heads of
the Bush campaign and supervisors of the presidential
elections in their respective states.
     If you truly believe Bush is innocent of the
charge that he manipulated the American people into
supporting a disastrous and illegal war, then what is
the harm in investigating the facts to determine his
innocence?  And isn't that investigation the job of
the "fourth estate", especially when all three
branches of the government are dominated by the
Republican party?  (The recent "nuclear option" threat
has assured us of a Republican judiciary.)
     Shame on you and your fellow so-called
journalists, Michael Kinsley; you have let the
American people down.  Instead of covering the stories with historical weight, such as the Downing Street Minutes and the suppression and perhaps outright theft of the American vote in Ohio, you have chosen to cover the stories with voyeuristic weight; those of us who care to follow the tabloid reporting in the LA Times and other "news"papers know in intimate detail every nuance of the Michael Jackson trial.  Shame!

Lately I feel like I am running into a burning building yelling, "Fire!", while all the inhabitants continue discussing redecorating.  Last week I went to a meeting in Los Angeles led by one of the organizers of the ACT Las Vegas "Get Out the Vote" effort.  About one hundred of us met to discuss our direction after the November second election; two Los Angeles politicians presented strategies that can be summed up as--we progressives need to frame our message better, and we need to work harder to get out the vote.  Those are two worthwhile goals, but, from the evidence found in mounting voting irregularities, this is probably not the fix we need.  

I was in Las Vegas canvassing on election day.  One member of our canvassing team had a relative who worked for one of the major news networks; she leaked early exit poll results to us.  We were ecstatic; Kerry was taking most of the swing states and was winning by a landslide.  I had felt the energy building on the ground for weeks; I knew it in my bones that our hard work had paid off.  We won.

If you want to frame something, frame this--we won.  The November election was fraught with deception, voter intimidation, and irregularities.  Votes mysteriously disappeared and appeared electronically, and, strangely, all the errors seem to swing the vote in Bush's favor.  Imagine that!

If you want to frame something--frame this election as fraudulent.  We need to wake up and smell the smoke; our democracy is going up in flames.  If we don't loudly and strongly stand up to the neocons, they will take our silence as acceptance of their latest framing of our elections as smooth and problem-free.  We may never have proof of who won the election, but, if we don't point out the irregularities, it is certain that Republicans will continue to own and control the voting and vote tabulating machines, and our elections will never have verifiable paper trails.

There is another problem with framing--we don't have the soapbox.  It is difficult to be heard, no matter how well we frame things in progressive terms, when Republicans own Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting, conservative talk radio networks, and the major television news networks.  We all saw how much air time the Swift Boat lies got in comparison with the time John Kerry got to raise his positive agenda.  Most people didn't realize Kerry had any agenda until the networks were forced to give him equal time during the debates.  We progressives need to establish our own television news networks, and build on the work of Air America and other progressive radio networks.  Campaign and election reform must include truth in political advertising; truth would have a better chance on a progressive television network.

It is possible that there are more voters out there that might vote with a progressive agenda, if we can reach them and frame our message to them.  But what about voter confidence?  Will voters accept our well-framed agenda, if we passively accept a second fraudulent election cycle?  Many voters already believe that their vote doesn't count or won't be counted.  Why should they believe anything different after our passive acceptance of the 2004 election irregularities?  

We need to call our representatives in congress, write letters to our local newspapers, and spread the word to everyone we know.  We cannot accept even a single instance of fraud, voter intimidation, too few voting machines, machines that register the wrong vote, voting tapes being destroyed, and all the other irregularities witnessed in the 2004 election.  This is not about overturning a single election; it's about securing our democracy by making sure that every election is free, fair and transparent.

Note:  see this website for some of the latest irregularities
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/944

note--I attempted to post this as a reply to Paul Rosenberg's post, but it wouldn't post.  
     Perhaps the mistakes were made because people assumed at first that this election campaign would be run in the usual way--with at least the pretense of honesty and integrity.  I was astounded daily at the new lows in dishonesty and manipulation in the 2004 Bush campaign.  
     It is easy to see in hindsight that we should have come out with all barrels blasting as an offensive move, and we can learn from this election for future elections.  But I don't think it's helpful to blame Kerry.  Do you see the neocons trying to remake Bush?  Although, God knows, Bush could use some remaking.  No, the Repulicans are smarter than that; they know that it's not about the candidate; it's not even about the issues.  It's about controlling the media through any means possible.  This is why they got rid of the Fairness Doctrine.  This is why they bought out the television networks.  This is why they frame the election in terms of sound bites and wedge issues.
     Yes, there is room for improvement in the Democratic party; they could take a principled stand on issues more often.  But they do have their moments of pure truth to power.  Think of Senator Byrd's stand against the war, Senator Ryan's recent rail against the Republican lies about the draft, and John Kerry's indictment of Vietnam war crimes.  No, they are not consistently right and brave.  Are you?  
     This is a new age of participatory democracy, thanks to the internet.  It has made grassroots politics possible on a level never seen before.  We hold the responsibility for speaking truth to power as much as anyone in Washington now.  When the masses of us speak, they will listen; we just have to persist to be heard.  Progressives must figure out a way to retake the soapbox; we need television and radio networks with a progressive voice.  Air America is a good start, and they should be given our support.  We need to speak with our money power and boycott all those sponsors of the Bush regime's power grab.  
     The big Republican donors are the ones who lobby for the Bush agenda in Washington:  weakened consumer protections, unregulated environmental laws, lower taxes for the CEOs of the big corporations, and a foreign oil grab that is not concerned with the loss of thousands of innocent lives.
     We need to see the big picture.  It's not about how we, or our representatives in Washington, could have fought this or that battle a little more bravely.  We have to study the enemy and create strategies to undercut their money power base.  We must create a media network of our own to counter their massive campaign of disinformation.  
     This is not the time to spend too much effort in self-reflection and fault finding within our group.  It is more important for us to maintain our unity as progressives.  We know what we stand for; our issues may not fit into simple-minded sound bites, but we feel the truth of them in our bones--and so do all the other Americans who voted for John Kerry in this election.  That is why we won, depite what the Republicans say about the dubious vote tally.

     A lot of people are feeling a lot of anger and are looking for someone to blame.  I'm not so sure it's time to rush to judgement on Kerry yet.
     Others believe that John Kerry is just fighting smarter.  Using guerrilla war tactics might be the better way to fight the Bush cartel's push to deliver and lock up the election for Dubya.  Check the following links if you are willing to reserve judgement for a little while:

http://www.moderateindependent.com/v2i21election.htm

http://www.moderateindependent.com/v2i21update.htm

     I tend to believe that Kerry has a lot of integrity.  He is still the guy that put his life on the line for his fellow soldiers and then had the guts to come back and oppose the war.  This election was not about the candidate; it was about the right wing agenda and their willingness to do anything to achieve their goal of world domination.  Lie, cheat, steal--it's their modus operandi.  Why should we expect any different for this election vote and count?  Remember, "Fool me once; shame on you.  Fool me twice. . . ."  You can't fool us again, Dubya.
     If you think it's about the candidate, look at theirs.  There slinks a "man" who could never win an election fairly; they had to cheat.

     I've been hearing a lot of Dems wringing their hands and tearing out their hair trying to figure out why we "lost" the election.  Is it values?  Is it culture?  Do we need to pray more or listen to country music?
     My question to you is--does this election pass the smell test?  I was listening to NPR today and the commentator was relating how a certain forensics specialist discovered that a supposed gunshot suicide was really a murder.  He noticed that the victim's tongue had two bullet holes in it, as if she had been pushing her tongue against the barrel of the gun to resist being shot.  
     I believe that the Democrats did not commit political suicide by failing to embrace good old time religion, rather, our vote was violently taken from us by George W. Bush through voter disenfranchisement and intimidation, and the use of paperless voting machines to supply dubious votes.  The clues are all there.  We just need to ask the questions.  Why did Florida Republicans rule against the ACLU's request for a paper trail from voting machines?  Why did Ohio Republican officials try to prevent exit polling?  Why did Republican operatives go to college campuses before the election and trick students into changing their party affiliation?  Why are most of the vote errors adding votes for Bush?  
     Dr. Steven Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania has published a research paper in which he says that the odds of the discrepancies between exit polls and votes occurring by chance in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania are 250 million to one.  I'd bet on those odds.
     Does this election pass the smell test?  Something's rotten here, and it's not the Democrats' lack of moral values.  We need to fight for free, fair, transparent elections, as well as, honest campaigns.  Remember the Fairness Doctrine?  This might be a good time to bring it back.