Motive... Why might so many conspire against democracy?

[WhoWantsToBeOccupied]

We have worked hard to figure out WHAT happened and HOW it might have happened. I think we would benefit from more discussion about WHY. Covering up a vast conspiracy is not simple.

To spark this discussion, I'm re-posting a link to an article I found shocking and disturbing. If even half true, it might explain WHY so many election officials, vote-"counting" programmers, judges, journalists, law enforcers, legislators, etc. might have conspired against democracy: The Despoiling of America.

I am absolutely *not* suggesting that MOST election officials, vote-"counting" programmers, judges, journalists, law enforcers, legislators, etc. are this way. Most are guilty of sins of omission, not sins of commission. But what motives might explain the alleged actions of the small core who, many of us suspect, worked actively to tip this election?

(Credit to DU member "JunkYardDogg" who posted this link in another thread.)

[PATRICK]

1. Getting ahead, getting along

And they dopn't have to dirty their hands too too much.

[KurtNYC]

2. Isn't the simple answer: Because they would lose otherwise?

'If you can't win in a fair election - don't have a fair one' seems to be the thinking.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

3. Why?

Unadulterated personal Greed - for power, for $ - and no sense of honor or respect for fellow Americans. That's why.

[Chili]

4. motives were numerous, I think

...I don't think there was a 'vast conspiracy' to steal the election. Not one explicitly planned in minute detail. I believe that there were people who were strategically placed who took it upon themselves to do whatever they could to get Bush elected, and did so out of ambition or extreme partisanship. That doesn't mean that Bush should be immune, it doesn't mean he was ignorant of it, but I don't believe there was a memo, so to speak. They'd be way too careful for that.

For instance:

Diebold and ES&S: who knows what contracts or monetary gains or tax relief they'll gain from another 4 years of Bush. That goes without saying. The CEO of Diebold stupidly showed his hand when he declared his determination to give Ohio to Bush. Or maybe it wasn't so stupid: he got away with it, didn't he? Even though there are no Diebold touchscreens in Ohio, there don't have be: some of the counting machines in Ohio are made by Diebold.

Jeb Bush. Well, that goes without saying. Anyone in Florida would do his bidding for partisan reasons, and to get crumbs from him.

Blackwell: for personal gain. He wants to be governor. His help in taking Ohio will guarantee him complete 100% support from the White House when he declares his candidacy - in a Republican state like Ohio, that almost ensures that he'll win (it might seem that way to him)

Election Board members in Ohio who went along with Blackwell's every hostile act to screw the Democrats: again, personal gain. Anyone who he appointed to those boards in the counties could gain advancement when he becomes governor (God forbid).

The assholes who sent out the flyers threatening arrest to African-Americans who had outstanding parking tickets or had defaulted on child support payments, or made the phone calls telling them their voting precincts had changed, or who told people they were supposed to vote on November 3rd or 4th because of high voter turnout: over-zealous malicious Young Republicans. THAT group may very well have coordinated - this crap happened in multiple states. In fact, I'll bet they knew of each others activities, and I'll bet somebody in the party did too.

So while all of these groups are connected in their goal, they didn't necessarily have to be connected by one "leader" or person calling the shots. Knowledge of it all, however... that's a different thing. Knowledge is complicity. either way, if it all comes out, if by some miracle someone steps forward to tell-all, you can bet Bush will be shielded by plausible deniability.

Anyway, that's my take on it.

[MarkusQ]

12. Maybe

That doesn't mean that Bush should be immune, it doesn't mean he was ignorant of it, but I don't believe there was a memo, so to speak. They'd be way too careful for that.

Maybe. But considering their history, I wouldn't be surprised to find they got their legal team to write up an analysis of the legalities of vote rigging. I mean, we know they already did that for 1) preemptive invasion, 2) ignoring the Geneva Convention, 3) holding people without trial, and 4) torture. So who knows?

--MarkusQ

[KaliTracy]

5. Project for New American Century

This has been around for awhile. Take a look at who belongs -- and what they stand for.

I first found out about this 2 years ago, when talking to someone about High Stakes Testing and organizing how to re-fresh her dead website. When I sent it out to friends/family -- they didn't see the "evil" I saw....

How now brown cow?

I was reminded of it when I viewed the Highjacked on-line video a couple of weeks ago that was posted here (sorry, I don't have that link, feel free to post it), and this group was mentioned one or two times...

http://www.newamericancentury.org/

[understandinglife]

6. Apart from their monomanical focus on transforming our...

....franchise of democracy into a theocratic, imperialist, totatlitarian state; and, the power/$$$$/greed thing; their primal, core, root reason is that they don't want to spend the remainder of their lives in court rooms and prison or worse (since they are undermining our Constitution at the same time that we are engaged in (an unjust, illegal) war on another soverign nation that they declared).

That's what I'd call MOTIVATION to win, no matter what it took.

Peace.

"When Did Bush Know?"

[loupe-garou]

7. Thanks for posting this---I think everybody should read this article

Then our eyes would be open about who it is we are dealing with...REally scary, but I have non throuble believing it's true. It's especially scary when you put it in the context of what happenend on 9/11......Was that a necessary evil to achieve their goals?

[WhoWantsToBeOccupied]

11. Another "must read": Ron Suskind's New York Times article

Without a Doubt (New York Times, 17 October 2004)

If you're registered, the article is available on the nytimes.com website.

[dzika]

8. In their twisted way of thinking...

...they might have actually believed that they were doing it for Democracy. The "Your hurting the troops" argument seemed to work well for B* in the election. It might be easy to convince loyal party member to do "the right thing for the sake of our Democracy."

There has always been some amount of fraud in elections. The difference now is that corruption seems to be coordinated state-wide and maybe nation-wide by members of the GOP. Just look at the M.O. of voter suppression using caging lists, poll monitors and other tricks. These suppression strategies seems to be occurring in specific areas throughout states (IE Voting Machine distribution in Ohio) and some strategies occurred in multiple states (IE 'Caging Lists' and Poll monitors). The most common theme being the systematic suppression of the African-American vote throughout urban areas in swing states.

That makes this crime much different that some fanatic stuffing the ballot box in a single precinct. This type of election fraud is caused by a small group of loyal people acting in very similar ways that shows collusion (and possibly conspiracy) to undermine the votes of certain profiled groups.

I would guess that any R* that participated in these activities thought that they were being patriotic by supporting the President in a time of war. I know it is twisted but I could easily see someone thinking this way.

[sportndandy]

9. follow the money grasshopper

[havocmom]

10. Greed & Power are prime motivators for the real players

As for getting a big chunk of the population to stand idly by or even argue that everything is OK and even if there was some fraud, it's OK so long as 'our kind of people' are doing it.

Just as before the Civil Rights advances for voting and participating in all aspects of American life, there is a portion of the population that simply does not want everyone involved in our democracy.

In any population, there is a percentage of people who will mouth the platitudes, be they love thy neighbor or the more nationalistic liberty and justice for ALL while keeping their fingers crossed. They do not want everyone equal. They do not want everyone having a voice in governance. They do not want everyone having equal rights. They feel they can only stand up if they stand on someone else. They see it all as win/lose and cannot fathom win/win solutions to problems.

There is always a percentage of any population that simply fears others having any sort of power. There is always a percentage who likes to have authority over others for their own infantile reasons. There is always a certain percentage of any population that has undefined anger and needs a target/scapegoat for it all, lest they be forced to engage in some introspection.

The neocons know this and have played to those percentages for several decades. They play to the deep seated fears, hatred, distrust, and bigotry of the worst of us. They make code-word promises to those who hate for no reason. They pretend to be the same as the ones who fear for no reason. They sooth the worries of those who don't trust with nodding agreement and validation. They encourage paranoid xenophobia to extract pleas that 'something be done about...* (*insert scapegoat group here). They pretend to go along all the while, using the fear, hate, distrust and bigotry to distract that portion of the population from the fact that they are destroying their world too.

They create jobs for control-freaks which satisfy the hunger to be in authority. There is a reason so many women are reporting abuse a airports; people who like to abuse authority are drawn to jobs where they have pseudo-authority, some sort of power over others. (Not saying all security people are bad, but there are a lot of people in those jobs who do seem to love to push others around. Probably a lot who washed out of traditional police work due to failing psych profile tests. There are plenty of other areas where that pseudo-authority is granted too; activities like selective service boards, school boards, asking utility workers to 'keep your eyes open and report anything suspicious', and so on, all appeal to control-freaks.)

The neocons understand the dark phantoms in many minds and they play to those. They validate some of the worst character flaws people can have, thereby making those people feel accepted, even loved. People will accept and defend the actions of those they think love them. They will attack, without real thought, anyone who infers their devotion might be misplaced. (This is why words mean more than actions and real records to so many. This is why there are some we just won't reach with reason and well thought policy.)

The neocons appeal to the lowest common denominators and hoodwink that certain percentage of the population the just isn't secure enough to really want liberty and justice granted for ALL. They appease the more base motives to keep their voter base malleable. They are con-men (and women) preying upon some of the weaker elements of society. Neocons pat the backs of those whose pockets they pick. They appeal to vanity with ruffles and flourishes while they rob the people of liberty and resources.

The neocons wink and smile at certain segments of the population and those people will accept that fraud and disenfranchisement is really OK since it is those others they are keeping out of power. They do not really crave democracy. They crave winning and will follow whoever pretends to be on their team.

Many neocon operatives are just higher ranking/more savvy members of the population that clamors for validation, authority and love. They get a slightly different version of the con game, but it is still the same con.

As for the puppet masters, it's the power and the $$. They have no other agenda but their own vile hungers. They do not consider other humans to be worthy of consideration. They are the very worst of the parasites which prey on human beings.

[librechik]

13. "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds"

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/104-5316525-3783924
(editorial review)
"Amazon.com
Why do otherwise intelligent individuals form seething masses of idiocy when they engage in collective action? Why do financially sensible people jump lemming-like into hare-brained speculative frenzies--only to jump broker-like out of windows when their fantasies dissolve? We may think that the Great Crash of 1929, junk bonds of the '80s, and over-valued high-tech stocks of the '90s are peculiarly 20th century aberrations, but Mackay's classic--first published in 1841--shows that the madness and confusion of crowds knows no limits, and has no temporal bounds. These are extraordinarily illuminating,and, unfortunately, entertaining tales of chicanery, greed and naivete. Essential reading for any student of human nature or the transmission of ideas.

In fact, cases such as Tulipomania in 1624--when Tulip bulbs traded at a higher price than gold--suggest the existence of what I would dub "Mackay's Law of Mass Action:" when it comes to the effect of social behavior on the intelligence of individuals, 1+1 is often less than 2, and sometimes considerably less than 0.

Product Description:
A complete repackaging of the classic work about grand-scale madness, major schemes, and bamboozlement--and the universal human susceptibility to all three. This informative, funny collection encompasses a broad range of manias and deceptions, from witch burnings to the Great Crusades to the prophecies of Nostradamus.""

[Roger_Otip]

14. For the good of the country

At least that's how they see it. The whole PNAC thing is about the survival of America - they're not going to call it quits after 4 years. They're only just getting started, and this is something they've been planning for 10 years or more. America will thank them in the end.

[lonestarnot]

15. Money and mo money!

repulsive at work told me without coming right out and saying it, that the tax plan made him money because he makes money.

[Razorback_Democrat]

16. Here's the catch that the rank and file Republican doesn't know

"There’s one other little trap for the unwary Dominionist; when a government is seen to be the enforcer of the Deuteronomic laws, it’s easy to take the next step and say that it is the duty of the “Christian” Dominionist government to subdue the wicked of the world, especially the vast American middle class, because its collective licentious life style is bringing the nation down as a whole; therefore the government must “minister the wrath of God” against the citizens of America as punishment for “rebelliousness.” That the entire scheme is an unending circular argument, escapes the notice of the rank and file sitting in the pews."

And that my friends is why I fight!

Because America isn't just for the wealthy and this "Dominionist" philosophy is rubbish.

Twisted biblical truths to create a fascistland for the wealthy.

I couldn't help but watch Rummy yesterday answering questions and thinking that he's thinking "come on guys, I could be making money"

War profiteers all of the "elite" that this Dominionist philosophy creates

[nashville_brook]

17. in addition to explaining motive

i think this is a great point and i'm just going to riff for a minute...

in 1982 i moved from a very secular area in florida to the mountains of east tennessee. the culture shock was felt on many levels, but the intertwining of church and state was most palpable. i had no idea that Creationism was a subject for high school biology. i had no idea that if you lookied different from other people, that would inspire them to pray for you. i mention this culture shock just to remind people that there was a time and a place when this was unthinkable. now it's in the news everyday.

in 1991 i helped start an alternative newspaper in upper east tennessee. we plugged along for a couple of years until a year into the clinton administration, the local Chrisitan Coalition effectively put us out of business by harassing our advertisers. when i asked the businesses who had supported us from our founding why they would drop their support, they said (almost to a person) that they loved our work, we put out a great product, but they just couldn't have the christians calling them all day long.

fine -- time to grow up and get a real job anyway.

in 1995 we move to nashville (to get real jobs). one of the real jobs i have worked while here was art director for CCM magazine -- which is Christian Contemporary Music. this publication is owned by Salem Communications (as in cigarettes). Salem owns a lions share of christian radio stations and they wanted the magazine to promote their broadcast offereings.

the young writers and editors at CCM were mostly very intelligent and really good at their craft. when the owners started planting stories with political overtones, they would grumble, "They are dominionists -- this isn't what *we* think." I had never heard of Dominionism before, so i started educated myself and asking questions. this is fascinating, i thought, adults who actually think theocracy is a good idea. the funny thing was, this Dominionism didn't scare the pants off the young (indoctrinated) christians who knew about it. they thought of dominionists as silly old people. then the silly dominionists purged the staff who "caused trouble." and the young indoctrinated christians STILL didn't get it.

i can tell you that this is not a silly conspiracy theory. i can tell you that these men pray and retreat and make deals based on the potential to run the country for the "lord." making money is deeply intwined with dominionism. they believe that the righteous are rewarded with cold hard cash. they believe that the temple must be re-built in israel. they believe that the rapture is upon us. they think the Left Behind novels are the word of god.

the worst thing to me is that they use the label of Christian in the "Passion of the Christ" sense that all christians are victims of secular culture and if you try to call them out on their weird cultish behavior, you will be castigated for persecution. people who desire to live in a pluralistic society are already one step behind -- we think everyone has the right to their belief and that it is wrong to use someone's religion as a wedge.

but that's not what they think -- they are out to destroy everything that is secular about this country. they believe that armageddon MUST happen or else god will be unhappy. they see anyone who gets in their way as irrelevant -- pitiful -- someone in need of a prayer circle.

[WhoWantsToBeOccupied]

21. Thank you for sharing

Excellent, informative post, nashville_brook!

Don't know whether this is meaningless coincidence, disturbing irony, or horrible premonition of our future, but when you said "Salem," I immediately thought "...Witch Trials."

:-(

[nashville_brook]

26. i thought that the whole time i worked there!

without these experiences, i wouldn't believe these people exist. it's too bizarre. the really frightening thing for me now is that, it feels normal.

[trudyco]

18. wow. How much have they taken over of the government?

I think Bush is playing the Dominionists. All he is interested in is being King. But I'm not sure. If he gets to elect a supreme court judge, will he pick a dominionist? Will he feel like he is still in control of the Fundie wave?

Where are the moderate Rublicans? Even the rich ones should be worried if too much money and power gets into these hands. Is Arnold one of them? Do you think Bill Gates has a clue?

Who owns the media right now? are they part of this group?

DU scares me! I feel like I swallowed a pill from the Matrix and I want to go back to being ignorant LOL.

trudyco

[nashville_brook]

28. the pill! great metaphor!

these guys see bush as a demi-god. they are hardwired for "serving" so i don't think he'd have any compunction about losing power. thbat's not in his vocabulary.

[genieroze]

19. Because they are dirtbags. eom

[JunkYardDogg]

20. Dominionism & NeoCons

NeoCon is a FeelGood Happy Face Euphemism for Dominionism
That is why we should not refer to them as NeoCons- but we should call them Dominionists- this raisses the consciousness of their
movement
The term "Neocon" connotes a Political Philosophy , when in Reality
it is Religious Extremist based
This is incredibly frightening
What they did at that magazine in Tenn they are doing to Secular America
The Bush Regime is Running a true Shadow Government

thanks for the props WhoWantsToBeOccupied

[berni_mccoy]

22. I don't think this is as wide-spread as you believe

The reason is because with electronic voting, you don't need a huge number of people to fix a vote.

e-Voting without a paper trail is parallel to sharing music through Napster. You may think WTF does music have to do with e-Voting? It's a matter of scalability. That is before Napster, in order for someone to reproduce a tape/album/song and give it to millions of people, it would require a huge amount of labor or manufacturing facility. Similary before e-Voting, election fraud to actually affect the outcome of a NATIONAL election would require massive amounts of people. With eVoting it is very easy for even a SINGLE person to change the outcome.

Therefore, to answer your original question, I think the motive lies in this administration's desire to dominate the middle east. They had plans to do so before they even took office. It really is about greed and oil. They see other nations rapid industrialization a threat to their wealth and the easiest way to control the industrialization of the rest of the world is to control the oil. There was no way this was going to happen under Gore, and they only needed to fix a single state. The first term of the Bush admin hasn't been successful in accomplishing those goals, so they need another term. However, politically it wasn't going to be possible and they actually needed three things: OH, FL *and* an overwhelming win on the popular vote.

If I had to come up with motive, that's it, and it doesn't require as many people as one would think to accomplish the task.

[JunkYardDogg]

30. The Whole Bush Regime is Dominionist Based

1. You CANNOT say anything Until you Read the Yurica Report:
http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm
2. Know your Enemy-to fully understand the Bush Regime- YOU MUST READ this Study!!! After you read this- EVERY SINGLE thing the Bush
Regime does makes 100% sense
3. Bush is the Meat Puppet FrontMan for this movement- they inflate his shit filled head and have him convinced that he is God's annoited Warrior
4. 30 years ago the Dominionists declared War on Secular Humanist American Society, Politics, and every part of American Structure
5. They established their own Madrassa System to carry out their
plans and brainwash and train the BORG- They are The Borg in the truest definition
6. There was an interview some months ago of a former Bush Administration official who said that every morning in the White House, Bush holds a mandatory Group Prayer, includes Cabinet Heads,
quite often Falwell led the Prayers. Falwell has access to the President and admission to the White House on a daily basis.
7. The Dominionist Plan is what permits everything else-monetary greed, military global domination, religious domination, control of the voting equipment, substitution of American Education with Religious Brainwashing, decimation of the Constitution, Subjugation
of sex and personnal choice in everything and anything to the dictates and control of the Religious Edicts, establishment of Theoracy as the rule of America, replacing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights with Dominionist Based Stricture , in other words, and complete and total Religious Extremist takeover of America
8. The E-Voting Companies are owned, controlled, and have been started by Dominionist Persons. E S & S was started with seed money from Howard Ahmanson, lucky sperm type inherited mega millions,
was at one time on the Board of the Chalcedon Foundation, an extremist Christian Reconstructionist Group-
As per the Yurica Report, on Nov. 3, 1986, Pat Robertson, on the 700 Club ran a piece on the use of computers in counting votes. Robertson ended his Perspective by saying there should be some kind of control on computer voting to assure an honest count. Maybe that should be an honest count as per Religious Extremist values idea of honesty.

[WhoWantsToBeOccupied]

35. Yet another Bush admin irony

Remember the fraternity brother in "Animal House" who indignantly yells, "You can't do that to our pledges! Only *WE* can do that to our pledges!"

America's fundamentalists correctly condemn madrassas (for teaching hatred to impressionable young people) but fail to see the logs in their own eyes (to use a Biblican concept they may be able to relate to).

"Which forms of intolerance would Jesus support?"

The question answers itself.

[Lisabtrucking]

23. The same guys that tried to impeach Clinton, is responsible for the crime.

I have no doubt that this election was fixed, and it's the same guys that tried to destroy Clinton. They have a huge conspiracy, and we have not been able to catch them. Who is going to give up their millions of dollars, to tell the truth. America is corrupt. Just look at what is going on. Elections with no paper trail! Unheard of, only in America. This election turned out to be too much of a coincidence for this (party, group. These people are destroying America. We are the new idiots of the world, and the ignorance and the arrogant of this administration is putting all of us in danger. When are we going to stop this group.

[nashville_brook]

29. this is what does it for me...

since the 80s the political game has been about the undecided voter. one little inch too left or too right is political suicide.

so, with bush's missteps, his arrogance, his malfeaseance, his stupidity -- there is no way he won the undecideds. he turned off republicans for chrstsakes -- there's no way he won this election thru the vote -- he stole it b/c that's the only way to win.

geez -- talk about a content-free post -- this is my "duh" moment.

more coffee!

[Trillo]

24. Welcome to the New World Order. Report for Duty....

This is not the root of your question, I believe others have adequately addressed that: ego satisfaction achieved through control and manipulation of others through money and the power it brings them ("power" and "money" may be interchanged).

I don't have enough time to thoroughly read this right now, but my quick scan caused me to ponder moving forward in my mind through this time period to a future where the fruits of these deeds have been realized as well as matured. This is about redefining citizenship from a physical, where citizenship is granted based upon birth location, to virtual, where the new citizenship, a.k.a. Dominionist, is granted based upon criteria met.



In this future, "Dominionists" will be a society that has parallels to the educated or business elite, essentially, a class of individuals who have raised themselves above the concerns of the common, average human. If you're born in the United States, or anywhere else, you will have to work diligently and methodically, towing the party line, in order to gain the new elevated "citizenship", Dominionist class.

The bar for this achievement will be high enough that most people will not succeed. Their lives will not come with the same rights: survival for them will be hard and difficult, with no real help from those who are ascended to Dominion.

The average human, the exploited and compliant class will only exist because they are useful in someway to the Dominionists, who implicit purpose is to prey on them, to provide the necessities to insure more than just Dominionists survival, but comfort as well as riches. There will be education centers much different from today's public schools, these centers will be more like hybrid torture-chambers/mental-institutions/labor-camps, whose stated intent will be re-education and modification of anti-social behavior traits, but whose real purpose is much darker.

Reduction of the human population to levels the earth can support naturally is among them: this will be accomplished with physical force, not education and voluntary birth control. War will be used to achieve this, but only in part. Due to the dire nature of protecting the earth from the imbalance of humans, even forced sterility of the masses will not be sufficient, that would take to long toward the Dominionists' goals: the right to life itself will be outlawed without "proper" achievement.

Some will make it out of these re-education centers with their lives, provided these humans demonstrate compliance. The bar for this class of compliables will be lower than that of the ruling Dominionist class, but much higher and different than today's collegiate class.

Moving forward another handful of decades. . . .

[WhoWantsToBeOccupied]

25. Is their ignorance of science (demography) why...

...they believe the Earth's population must be culled?

(You wrote, "Reduction of the human population to levels the earth can support naturally... will be accomplished with physical force, not education and voluntary birth control. War will be used to achieve this")

Most reputable population projections show Earth's population stabilizing within several decades. In most industialized nations, population is already flat or declining (ignoring immigration).

Resources certainly are scarce, but science is allowing us to do more with finite resources. Nanotech, for example, has revolutionary potential. And this Administration has shown zero interest in dampening consumerism. Quite the opposite. * told us to shop till we dropped or else Osama would "win," and we still have tax breaks to buy monster trucks. (Though their consumption tax idea might slow things down!)

It's amazing how easily a handful of people can f--k things up if they: 1) have little knowledge of or concern for other nations/cultures; and, 2) let their intuition override facts and science.

[Trillo]

31. Without oil.

Energy for synthetic fertilizer for food production. I don't have a link handy, but scientists have reported that there's about 10 times too many humans right now. Perhaps that is a pessimistic report, or a report from biased sources. It was posted in LBN months ago. It directly contricts what you just wrote. Perhaps the scientists can't agree, nothing new there. Here's a similar report suggesting there's 1000 times too many humans:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20031124/humans.html

Too many people demand too much in return from those who seek to corner wealth and power. People demand a say in their governance. With respect toward the Dominionists' ego gratification, "having it all", is having more than others. Pleasure is the suffering of others, for thereby, one's own suffering seems less.

True democracy is a threat to the continued concentration of money and power the Dominionists demand.

[WhoWantsToBeOccupied]

32. Haven't you watched "Wall Street"? Michael Douglas told us "Greed is good"

Isn't it scandalous how many believe $$$ = Happiness? Study after study has proven otherwise, yet many will do anything for that next dollar.

(Extreme poverty is the only exception to the zero correlation between wealth and satisfaction, whether measured across societies or within a single society.)

Of course, not everyone is simply greedy. For the Machiavellian string-pullers, $$$ = Power. For such people, there is almost certainly a correlation between (their) Power and (their) Happiness... and a negative correlation between their power and our happiness.

[Alizaryn]

27. The international trade union, corporate tax benefits, outsourcing

being rewarded and (last but not least) the EVIL LIBERALS must be prevented by all means from winning for the sake of the nation and God's commandments.
Combine all that..money and religion(false though it may be) and we can see what we are up against. Liars that can justify their behavior as being for the good of all, plain old delusion and manipulation.

[VTGold]

33. Did you ever shoplift at the candy store when you were a wee one....

...multiply that by infinity

[neek]

34. I'm new to DU

and first want to thank all of you for being here for me to listen to and share my opinions with.

In regard to this post-
We're talking about the MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD.
Remember all the villains we've seen in every movie or cartoon or book....they would do just about ANYTHING to be the MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD.

(I do believe in this case it's not dubya- although he knows about it. It's the scary people he hangs out with)

THEY DO IT BECAUSE THEY CAN.

WE CAN"T LET THEM DO THIS ANYMORE.
THEY OUGHT TO BE PUT IN JAIL. IT'S ILLEGAL WHAT THEY ARE DOING.

Can you tell I'm mad? :)

[Razorback_Democrat]

36. kick n/t