New "Dean scream" needed on election fraud 2004.

[European Socialist]

Howard if you know anything-say it. If not-just say it smells. Its been four months and public interest is fading fast.

[European Socialist]

1. sorry-I forgot lawyers were Quietly working in the background.....

and it's worked so well...Bush won fair and square? Excuse my post.

[Peace Patriot]

2. "Its been four months and public interest is fading fast."

I don't agree that public interest is fading. The interest in this is much like the interest in the WTO prior to Seattle '99 (50,000 people in the streets; successful shutdown of the WTO; entirely peaceful--lapdog media and even some from left media absolutely wrong about the "Seattle riots," totally a police riot). Who wudda thunk?

You certainly couldn't tell from the corporate monopoly news that anybody was interested in the WTO. (And THOSE protests led to Cancun and the success of the poor countries in resisting rich country bullying.)

And 50,000 people just suddenly show up, and do that.

So...election fraud and election reform is an underground movement, of vast numbers of people, which is similarly going to burst into the delusional consciousness of the nation (created by the lapdog media) at some point, and it's going to be BIG.

And I think it's going to be even bigger and much more pervasive than the anti-WTO movement.

You should read the accounts of the two Teach-In's in Calif., on DU Election threads today--and get informed about what's happening among activists and with grass roots information and reform groups. There is going to be a summit in Tennessee in early April.

See

http://www.democraticrenewal.us

and

http://www.citizensact.org/pages/2/index.htm

for further info. (and for posts of video/audio from the Teach-In's).

Howard Dean is a good man, and I certainly think he should SCREAM AGAIN. He is right now working quietly, supporting local election reform efforts. That's where it's happening, and has to happen. (Congress ain't gonna do squat.) But local people can do it. Big, messy, all over the map struggle. But real and doable.

I think you underestimate "we the people."

Convincing people of election fraud is not the same as convincing them of the need for election reform--although the two things are related. (I certainly have election reform as my no. 1 priority BECAUSE of election fraud--which I don't need any more proof of--it's overwhelming, in my opinion.)

Some people resist the idea of election fraud--despite the overwhelming evidence--precisely because it leaves them helpless. They don't know what to DO about Bush.

Well, give them election reform bills in the state legislature to support, or point them to other helpful actions, and that will change.

Most Kerry voters suspect the election was stolen (including Repubs, by the way, many of whom voted for Kerry, and many of whom hate the BushCons). But they don't have the facts, and almost fear the facts (very disturbing, in the sense that they call upon you as an individual to DO something--to disrupt your life).

And some are still too attached to the lapdog media--despite endless lies told to them, that they know about. It's a psychological thing, I think--TV news is some kind of umbilical cord to the national community; very false, but embedded in their minds as a connection to "reality"--of all things. They are brainwashed--but not stupid. They rose up out of that delusion to vote the Bush Cartel out. But it took about a year, especially on the Iraq war. Underground information movement.

Anyway, it's all boiling beneath the surface. People are VERY UNHAPPY with how things are. And they just need to be plugged in to what to DO about it: election reform.

And there are a whole lot of activists with the information, and the skills, and the fire in their bellies, anxious to inform and mobilize people. And more people are getting activated every day.

Do not despair! And do not expect the solution to come from the top! (Dean can help. He cannot do it by himself.)

The whole truth about the 2004 election--and about a lot of other things--is simply not going to be generally exposed, and is not going to be fully addressed, UNTIL we get back our right to vote, and start electing more people who represent the MAJORITY. We have to do that FIRST. AND keep working on alternative news methods.

[rigel99]

3. I'm with PEACE PATRIOT 100%

I think you underestimate "We The People", that was the choice line and the other was "Howard Dean is a Good Man", that too an understatement.. he's going to save American Democracy

and "Do Not Despair" that personally lead me to smile.. thanks PeacePatriot...

[European Socialist]

4. I agree with you except...

If you were to speak in a large auditorium wouldn't you use a microphone. Well Dean, Kerry etc. are our microphone and they are not turned on. I've heard all kinds of reasons why there is silence, but with the known evidence of fraud-what is the risk. I say turn on a hundred microphones and let the chips fall where they may. Let the GOP prove there wasn't fraud.

[helderheid]

5. the internet has been an excellent microphone

though I agree - I emailed Mimi Kennedy and told her we needed those whose voices carry further than ours to talk about the election fraud. She was aware of the problems.

[Peace Patriot]

6. Absolutely, I would like to see a NATIONWIDE MEGAPHONE blasting...

...away, with every voice possible, the louder the better, SCREAMING LIKE HELL. I would also like to see this country come to a screeching halt until this is fixed.

I'm not saying I wouldn't want that. But we don't HAVE it, at least not yet. And it may be that the changes needed are going to come about in a less dramatic way--in this messy, all over the map, local/state, grass roots struggle that IS happening.

And I think Howard Dean is onto the latter thing. Statements he's made tell me that he really knows what's what. And because of that, I have to respect how he's working on it.

You may have noticed, the other day, big splash in the news with Hillary Clinton election reform bill. Well, yeah, but are the BushCons going to let any significant reform get through their fascist blockade? Not likely. It's okay for jawboning, educating people. But it's very unlikely that Congress will do anything, and they may do more harm.

What we have is an illegitimately elected, pro-Bush Congress, full of Bush Pod People--I heard them in the Rice and Gonzales debates, these are people who don't think for themselves--who are NOT INTERESTED in democracy, and who owe their power to Diebold and ES&S and the Bush Cartel. The Holt, Clinton and other bills face the same problem that KERRY and BOXER faced with regard to challenging the election. The BushCons DON'T CARE. Justice is not possible with them in power.*

So...what do we do with that? What CAN we do? We obviously need a big change, and it obviously has to come from below.

And we've also got to figure that Dean is somewhat hedged round in what he can do. It's probable that the people who have been in control of the Dem Party--people who are pro-war and who permitted a blatantly fraudulent election system to be put into place with not a breath of protest, and who controlled Kerry's campaign--permitted Dean to become DNC chair with the cynical purpose of keeping the Left and the grass roots on board, but with no intention of any significant change occurring, especially on Dem party war policy and money issues (like HAVA money, or military funding, or corporate campaign donations, and other corruption). In fact, I think that is likely. (I was surprised at the ease with which Dean became DNC chair.) So, THAT may be why Dean is not SCREAMING. Maybe he knows they threw the election. Maybe they put a lid on him about it--made a deal. ("Don't expose our nefarious doings, and we will let you quietly work on election reform.")

Dean is not a man who could be easily bought. But he IS a realist.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that the big glitzy things--big press conferences, the Clinton bill, even movie star ads or whatever--are NOT going to get the job done. They can be useful, for spreading the word, but they CANNOT move Congress. (I repeat, the BushCons DON'T CARE. They are not embarrassable. They can manufacture votes with their "Wizard of Oz" electronic machines, and they want to keep it that way, and they couldn't care less what ANYBODY thinks about it.)

WE have to get the job done. That's what's clear.

------

*Re: justice and the challenge of the election. People get sidetracked and confused by thinking that there had to be "absolute proof" of election fraud--proof that would hold up in a just court of law (if we had any). But that is NOT true. The election was INVALID--blatantly so--which is quite a different thing than "absolute proof" of fraud. And elections, and especially the matter of Congress' power over how elections get certified and who becomes president (they have vast powers, really) is a POLITICAL PROCESS, not a LEGAL process. And if there had been any justice whatsoever possible in Congress, this election would have been deemed INVALID, and re-votes required in a number of states, even as many as 20 states.

By two weeks after the election, it was clear that, 1) Ohio, Florida, and New Mexico, at least, were blatantly invalid elections, and 2) there was strong evidence (the exit polls) that Kerry won both the Electoral vote and the popular vote. There was PROOF ENOUGH that something was very wrong and that Congress needed to do something about it. But it came down to a matter of sheer power--BushCon fascist power over the media and over Congress. It was never a matter of truth or justice.

And IF the Democrats had cried foul on the fraudulent election SYSTEM--rather than having COLLUDED in it--they could have at least SAID SO--that the election was crap! But they have been complicit, and could not even ASK for justice, let alone get it.

Let me put this another way: If things had been reversed--if Democratic partisans had gotten control of the election machinery, if big Dem donors and campaign chairs had owned the secret source code by which all our voters were counted, if the Exit Polls had then shown a Bush win with the "official tally" showing a Kerry win, and if Democratic party officials had massively suppressed Republican voters, etc.--what do you think the BushCons in Congress and the BushCon media would have done with THAT?!

Cried foul, is what they would have done. Screamed bloody murder. Even if they didn't have the votes to do anything about it.

And that's what the Democrats DIDN'T DO. And we need to understand why.

It's not fully clear yet, but it needs to be explored. For Kerry personally, I think it was that he didn't have the votes in Congress--it was a hopeless cause, in that respect. And it may be that the DNC abandoned him--very likely, I think--and he couldn't do the job of exposing it alone. And he himself had been silent on the fraudulent election SYSTEM. With other Dem leaders, I think there are varying degrees of corruption, of various kinds. And hanging over all, the black cloud of Bush Cartel power, power to blackmail, power to destroy people, power to anthrax people and have their planes fall out of the air. FEAR was a factor in it all.

Anyway, people who say "we didn't have proof," and people who defend or revile Kerry for conceding, are all missing this bigger picture that we MUST see, and understand.

We have TWO corrupt political parties. One of them has gone mad and out of control. And the other one is severely handicapped by its own corruption in what it can or will do about it.

Instant runoff elections would help--as would a number of other fundamental changes. But we can't even get to that, if we don't have the right to vote--if we can't trust the election system. And that's where we're at.

[European Socialist]

7. All I know is that if I spent a year of my life running for president....

exhausting and dangerous as it must be-then someone stole the election. You wouldn't be able to shut me up. Same for the rest of the Dems. The 2004 election was a catastrophe for the people, and we get barely a whimper from our progressive democratic leaders.