November 24, 2012

However, if circumstances had been different, and the election came down to whoever won Ohio's

electoral votes won the election, the story would be different. A repeat of the 2004 election theft would have been circumvented.

No one (except maybe Nate Silver) really knew that the election was not going to be decided in Ohio. While the (ok, alleged, if you like) actions of Anonymous in this case were not responsible for Obama's victory, they very well could have won the election for us if the election had come down to who won Ohio's votes.

No one, that I am aware of, is saying that Anonymous was responsible for Obama winning the election.


What we are saying is that they made an (alleged) effort to stop an instance of electronic voting fraud in Ohio, and that, if Ohio's 18 electoral votes had been the deciding factor in the cumulative national electoral count, then the (alleged) actions of Anonymous would have been responsible for Obama winning the election. It's not that Anonymous saved the election for us, it's that they (allegedly) located an anomaly in the Ohio electronic voting system and corrected it in order to ensure that the vote count would be accurate. They (allegedly) did a good deed, and made a non-partisan effort to make sure Ohio's electoral votes went to the candidate who won them fair and square.

Anyway, it really doesn't matter one whit who believes whatever about the (alleged) actions of Anonymous here, because the bottom line here is this ~

[font color="blue" size="10" face="face"]We need to eliminate electronic voting from our electoral process because

"An open and honest examination of the flaws in electronic voting will lead us to only one possible conclusion: electronic voting machines are dangerous to democracy because there is no way of ensuring their accuracy."[/font]
~~Rep. Dennis Kucinich

End of story.

November 22, 2012

+1 "Especially observing WHO is the most upset. Same old players.

And the goal is to influence people's thinking."

Exactly. Thank you for clearly illustrating the obvious once again, sabrina1.

A realistic, logical examination of their actions here, and the possible rewards and motivations for these repeated behaviors, can only lead us to the distressing conclusion that there are motivations behind their actions that are contrary to the interests of the overwhelming majority of people on this planet.

Their constant, illogical, ludicrous, disingenuous, sometimes even hysterical, doublespeak arguments defending the status quo, and often, arguments defending tangible corrupt practices of the status quo, are very disturbing.

They appear to be a group of of internet "Gatekeepers", people whose function it is to use any and all manner of propaganda to counter the arguments and information put forth by those of us who support democracy, democratic action, and the well being of human beings, over serving desires specific to wealthy private interests.

It appears that their goal here is to influence the most gullible, conservative thinkers among us, in order to persuade them to blindly trust and support the corporatist status quo.

They have many concerns, and their current, apparently overwhelming concern, is that we supporters of transparent democracy are advocating against and wish to see the use of electronic voting systems made illegal nationwide. These systems are proprietary, and are easily and eminently manipulable by the wealthy private interests that own and control them.

Their intention here in the current discussion is clear:

They wish to influence folks to believe that a collective with democratic intentions, to wit: Anonymous, cannot, would not, and did not, locate, identify, and hack into, electronic voting systems that have been deliberately compromised by wealthy private interests, in order to correct these aforementioned compromisations, and ensure that the machines function as accurate reflectors of ballots cast and ballots counted.

They don't want people to know that any individual, or collection of individuals, with the specific knowledge required to do so, can manipulate these machines in order to alter the results of elections, at will, under certain conditions. They fear that if enough people truly understand this, public pressure to eliminate electronic voting systems would result in their actual elimination, negating the great deal of time and effort undertaken by the wealthy private interests that forced these untrustworthy systems on us during the Bush era. Forced.

We gave no consent to this abomination.

Electronic voting systems are a travesty of democracy that wealthy private interests have forced upon us, so that they may manipulate these systems in order to help ensure that they can circumvent electoral democracy whenever they deem that it is in their interests to do so.

So, the question arises ~ Why in the world would any genuinely democracy supporting person who wishes to have transparent accurate, fair vote counts defend the use of electronic voting systems so adamantly and illogically, and even go as far as to derisively label anyone questioning the possible malicious electronic manipulation of vote counts as a conspiracy theorist?

Answer: They absolutely would not, unless, of course, they were, um, extremely limited in perception and/or powers of deduction. Because no reasonable person would advocate for, nor defend, the usage of these machines. The simple fact is that there is no way to ensure the security and accuracy of these machines to any degree even remotely acceptable to sincere, reasonable persons desirous of a genuinely democratic electoral process.

Those of us who advocate for transparent processes clearly have no ulterior intentions or motives, particularly and specifically, no profit motives, behind our advocacy for a clear and clean democratic process.

Those who advocate for electronic voting systems that can easily be manipulated by wealthy private interests, on the other hand, can make no such claim. So what reward are they getting out of defending the use of, and continued use of, electronic voting systems? This reward can take form in the tangible, or satisfy ideological concerns, or both.

So do the math. Either way, the answer to the equation adds up to "Why the fuck are they constantly feeding this anti-democratic corporatist bullshit to us on a progressive website?".

It totally stinks.

Houston...we have a problem...

November 15, 2012

Wonderful letter! Here is a pictorial tribute to honor our conservative soon to be former citiizens

As a hard core liberal/progressive, I believe that we should demonstrate the utmost tolerance toward our fellow citizens who desire to separate from our democratic nation.

I very sincerely have no wish to assert any type of proprietary control over the lives and fortunes of these (oh, please, make it so) soon to be non-citizens, who are so deeply distressed over the recent majority expression of the people's will.

May their exit from our nation be smooth and rapid.

With all sincerity, I say, godspeed to you, conservatives! Best wishes to the success of your fledgling Regressive Plutarchal Idiocracy!





__________________________________________________________________________________

Oh, those wacky conservatives! ~ a fond short (because there's soooo much more, and worse) pictorial remembrance of our departing (hopefully soon to be former) upstanding conservative fellow citizens, to remind us of all the wonderful things that conservatives have done for to our beloved democratic nation ~

Two short biblical passages, in the words of Jesus of Nazareth, that are so appropriate with regard to the approaching joyous conservative exodus from our great Union ~

"If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away."

"You will know them by their fruits..." ~

Picking up the pieces: Post Conservative America

Hope and Change: New Beginnings

November 7, 2012

We're safe.

There will be no dark, gray, awful years, like those unspeakably horrible days we lived through during the Bush era.

It feels sooooo good. It's gonna get better. I feel happy, and safe.

The SCOTUS, Health Care, Social Security, Marriage, Women's rights, the environment, labor, the list goes on and on.

We're safe, and our future is bright, and hopeful.

Thank you, all of you, for helping to make this possible.

November 2, 2012

Smells like teen spirit ~

Some apparently still can't, or refuse to, understand how slurs used by bullies to demean children in minorities or marginalized communities contributes to the perpetuation of hate and bigotry against these groups, causing a great deal of suffering and even death. Schoolyard bullies learn hateful, bigoted attitudes and language a from adults. Babies are not born with these concepts already in their minds.

It's not that we are trying to persuade people to stop using innocuous words like shit, or fuck, or doo-doo. We are only trying to get them to stop using slurs against minorities and marginalized groups, slurs that have helped institutionalize hate and bigotry into the collective consciousness of western society.

And it seems they can't, or refuse to, see the correlation. Just like back in the day, just like the people who could not see anything wrong with using slurs like the "n" word toward black people. These folks still think calling a straight man a "pansy", with the express intention of demeaning that person by implying that they are gay, or feminine, is harmless, and doesn't hurt anyone.

But it really does hurt someone. They need to look at at long hard look at the photo of this beautiful boy, who took his life, yeh, HE'S DEAD, and part of the reason he is dead is because childish hateful bullies repeatedly and mercilessly taunted him with all sorts of nasty names like "pansy" and "fruitcake" and "pussy" and *f***ot* and other nasty words over the entire course of his short lifetime.





So if there are some here who wonder why some of us, especially some of us who are members of LGBT, feminist, or minority communities, and many members of the dominant majority, etc. as well, seem overly adamant about eradicating hate language, just keep this image of this now dead child in your mind, and remember why he died whenever you have trouble understanding the reasons why those you consider the "PC liberal/progressive word police bullies" are so insistent on eradicating slurs from common language. And please remember that every marginalized child still living suffers more damage every single time s/he gets bullied.

This is as real as it gets. Those of us who are intent on eradicating bigoted slurs are not control freaks, as some here continually insist.

We are only trying to do everything we can to end the bullying of our children, and a part of this effort is eradicating the slurs that are frequently used to bully them.

November 2, 2012

It may be some time before they recognize this ~ it will be when

the last tree has been cut down, after the last river has been poisoned, and after the last fish has been caught.

Only then will they finally understand that money cannot be eaten.



We're going to stop them from destroying the planet before it gets to that point

October 18, 2012

John? Please, consider that you are a man, making repeated, assertive, absolute statements to a

group comprised mostly of feminists, most likely primarily women.

A man, telling us that you have some type of absolute knowledge, and are some type of conduit that is channeling absolute truths, and that we should listen to what you say because (you appear to believe) that you know so much more than we do.

The thing is, a whole lot of men, whole fucking violently insane patriarchal societies full of them, all over this planet, have been telling us all the shit that we poor helpless women must understand, and believe, forever, because, it is, of course, the absolute truth ~ the indisputable natural order of things, that men are superior to women, and, therefore, intrinsically know so much more than we poor biologically inferior beings are capable of.

And much (most) of the time, they've been terribly, tragically wrong, probably because they are so convinced of their innate superiority, and the total complete accuracy of their perceptions and judgments, that they fail to consider that their perceptual abilities and knowledge bases are fragmented and overwhelmingly ego-subjective, and therefore, their absolute judgments are derived from incomplete relative information.

Absolute woo.

Men have been telling women about their absolute truths, maybe since the dawn of humankind. I don't know; despite all this remarkable absolute truth, people are still killing each other, babies are still going hungry, kids are still being bullied to suicide, women are still being raped, etc.

Personally, I've had more than enough of this absolute truth in my lifetime as dictated to me by the gatekeepers of the patriarchal collective consciousness, and I pretty much couldn't care less about these marvelous truths these days. My intuition and experiences tell me these truths are not so absolute at all. Does biology determine identity? Maybe, more or less, relative to each individual. Does identity determine culture? Maybe, more or less, relative to each culture.

Maybe....maybe. I don't know.

Consider the possibility that change is constant. Consider the possibility that the processes of the universe, forces of natural selection, evolution, or whatever, have already led to the development of rapidly evolving beings on this planet who naturally transcend what were previously believed to be the biological boundaries of any life forms, including the biological limits that you appear to place on "identity".

Who knows?

All I know is what appears to be real for me, and I'm not sure about that, either ~ because that's constantly changing ~ but one of the primary aspects of my reality is actively working on several fronts to eliminate this widespread hatred that drives bullies to inflict pain and suffering on others, and causes children to take their own lives.

And it appears to me that the overwhelming majority of this hatred, and subsequent oppression, of women, and LGBT folk at the very least, is being perpetuated and manifested primarily by many of those who are 100% positive that they know the absolute truth.

IMO, things change, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and things are not always what they appear to be.

Thank you for your kind, tentative invitation to participate in your thread, but I don't believe I'll be able to make it.

Best wishes.

October 14, 2012

Yep. I've often wondered the same thing myself. And you know what's even worse?

It's where they put those jackalope crossings. I know that jackalopes prefer the flat desert areas of the west, but why do they have to put jackalope crossings smack dab in the middle of an 80 mile an hour zone straightaway on the interstates? It's, like, totally stupid. For one thing, they are a protected species; why can't they just make the crossing go under the highway? Like, duh. We have a crossing not too far from where I live, and one of my neighbors nearly went off the road when a jackalope ran out in front of her Jeep a few weeks back.

Here's a photo from the jackalope crossing nearby, out on Interstate 17.

October 13, 2012

(pic heavy) We do, but generally, only those who question authority,

or who are in control of the police state, recognize it as such.

Some determine what the status quo that serves them should be...



...some are the police, who will blindly follow orders given by the authority of those who determine the status quo...



....some are content to live in captivity, so long as they believe that they are safe, have comfy pajamas and a TV, and usually get three square meals a day...



Some are much too busy to care...



And then, there are the rest of us...





[div style="display:inline; background-color:#FFFF66;"][font color="black" size="12" face="face"]SUBMISSION. SAFETY. SECURITY. It’s the LAW![/font]

[font color="red" size="12" face="face"]Obey. Be Normal! Do Not Question. Work Will Make You Free.[/font]

October 3, 2012

Where, exactly, does Assange say that all government is evil?

IMO, it is best to communicate sincerely, and accurately, when trying to make a point. If you pull things that have no basis in reality out of the air, and then state these fabrications as fact, then how could you expect anyone to take what you say seriously?

If you don't believe that it is necessary to question authority, or to objectively point out obvious wrongdoing by those in authority because of certain predetermined prejudices, that's fine, that's totally your right.

But many of us feel that questioning authority, and questioning the actions of those in authority, are totally necessary for any type of basic honest government. And if those in authority do something that we consider to be wrong, we will call them on it directly. We desire to know the truth, and have our leaders represent us with standards and actions that are transparent and ethical. If you do not feel this way, that is also your right.

While I have long supported Julian and Wikileaks, I do not not love them beyond question, and if I see that they've fucked up, I point it out directly and honestly, instead of blindly and passionately defending them when they are wrong. I do not recognize, or admire, any authority as so great that it is beyond question reproach. That kind of crap is dangerous to all life.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1457875

In their blind loyalty, devotion, and obedience, many people loved and adored Adolf Hitler so much that they accepted everything he said and did without question. "Good Germans", they have been called. Those who do not question authority make model citizens in monarchies, dictatorships, and plutarchies, but they add up to less than zero in a democracy.

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."
Thomas Jefferson

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
Martin Luther King, Jr.