Be sure to avoid the alien mind control rays.

[TheWraith]

I was originally going to post this as a response in another thread, but it sort of developed into a screed directed at a small but particularly vocal fraction of DUers. It was in response to someone talking about the supposed "media inevitability campaign" for Hillary Clinton, and saying that they don't want our 2008 nominee "chosen by diebold."

-------------------------------------------------------

I admit you don't deserve all of this, but I'm frustrated with the level of paranoia displayed on DU. After three years of people waving Diebold around as the physical manifestation of some kind of Cassandra complex, predicting imminent doom, we've won in a freaking landslide, clearly invalidating the theory of Diebold-as-Republican-election-machine.

Now it's back, despite all logic, being once again trotted out as the magic wand of the paranoid media/Republican/DLC/Illuminati/Alien conspiracy theory: the idea that Diebold will conveniently select some evil figure suitable to the needs of the conspiracy, pushed by the media, apparently now in control of every element of the political process including primaries.

Never mind the fact that most states don't have Diebold, and only about a quarter have any electronic voting at all. Never mind the fact that you can't "Diebold" caucus voting like in Iowa, or that New Hampshire uses paper ballots.

Perhaps, now and then, we should try out a little common sense: the simplest answer is most often the correct one. Perhaps the media likes to talk about 2008 because it fills airtime and gets political junkies like us to stay tuned. Perhaps the machines are bad simply because they're unreliable and insecure. Perhaps the "frontrunners" have that status simply because they have the biggest names right now. Perhaps not everything is a plot or strategem designed to attack us. Perhaps, in fact, things are looking up.

No no, can't have that. Instead we get infighting and paranoia, along with near cultish devotion to established losers: Gore, Kerry, and Dean. Don't get me wrong, I like these guys. But I doubt that any of them have a chance in hell of winning another presidential bid, least of all Gore. The reality is that people here love to latch onto certain politicos for purely emotional reasons, and blast others for the same reason, irregardless of the reality about who holds what positions.

Witness the Murtha/Hoyer thing--people here love Murtha for the anti-war stuff, and for that reason throw all sorts of hate at Hoyer, who is significantly more liberal. First a bunch of DUers spend a week after the elections spinning that there are no moderate Democrats within 100 miles of Baghdad, then they scream and moan when the Congress elects a liberal Dem as Majority Leader instead of a moderate Dem. Murtha is pro-life, and is adored, yet if a DUer came out as pro-life they would be garotted. It's a completely emotional response to politics.

DU has a large and annoying population of suicide doves, people who would rather be the ideologically pure, perpetual loser underdog than win. Politics is the art of compromise, but sometimes I swear that even if they didn't have to compromise, they would still find a way to lose, just so they didn't have to think that maybe the world isn't conspiring against them. Sorry, but I won't play that game. I'd rather get something done than wallow in self pity. If you fight, you may not win, but if you don't, you sure as hell lose.

[lvx35]

1. I disagree about Diebold...

I am a computer scientist, those machines are quite riggable, it needs to be fixed..I would say that the relatively low amount of fraud this election owes a great deal to the massive attention it got on CNN and HBO, who are not conspiracy theorists either.

Now I think I do agree about "suicide doves" though, or at least think it would be a cool name for a band! ;)

[Big Sky Boy]

12. Besides.... We don't know they didn't cheat

We don't know that the people who stuffed the ballot box in 2004 were not so disgusted with Dubya this time that they didn't slip a few in for our side this time...

I don't believe there is a magic black box a Diebold or anywhere else that transmits the desired election results after the polls close. What we learned from Ohio in 2004 is that democracy died the death of a thousand tiny cuts. A few votes deleted in this precinct, a few more added in that... A whole lot of unscrupulous people playing dirty tricks all over the place and it added up to the wrong answer.

The only way to ensure an accurate count is with an auditable system.

[valerief]

2. What happens when all votes are tabulated by Diebold etal?

Shouldn't the threat be stopped before it gets worse?

[sui generis]

3. "suicide doves"? amateur name calling, and not productive

Well when you have something that impacts your family to be worried about in a candidate, get back to me.

I'm not a suicide dove. That's a dumb characterization. I'm a "talk to me" voter, or else live without my vote.

"Suicide Dove"? What kind of rhetoric is that? Do you really believe that a protest non-vote is suicidal? Most people that make that difficult choice do so on deeply held principle; the kind that amateurish browbeating does nothing to sway.

This annoying suicide dove gets it. If we don't blindly go along we're inferior self-destructive irritants in YOUR RIGHTEOUS LIVES.

I have one thing to say to you:


What. A. Prima donna you are.

:rofl:

[Generator]

4. Another post telling du'ers how to think and act!

People can think and write whatever they want. I enjoy all points of view from extreme (what if they are right someday-then your goose is cooked) to the moderate to the conservative. They all get me thinking. What are you afraid of?

And the swipe at Gore, Dean and Kerry is unfair and mean, but I think we get that you must be a Clinton (either one!) fan. It takes all types.

[Nostradammit]

5. This post is almost not worth commenting on

but not quite.

So you are saying that since my home has not been broken into yet, I should get rid of my locks?

Is that what you are saying?

So you like established losers?

Is that what you are saying?


DU has a large and annoying population of paid disruptors.

[sui generis]

17. let's go take our small but vocal selves

back to our myopic little worlds since we're obviously not "real" democrats. The big glorious self-appointed thought leaders around here will tell us what to think and who to vote for, and call us pithy names if we don't, and psst don't you worry your pretty little head about counting votes. If you do, you're all gloomy and hopeless and suicidal. Ack.

There, don't you want to support those guys now? I sure don't. Threads like this entirely devalue their opinions on other topics. I'm still a dem, still a progressive, still a liberal, and still myself. And I didn't need anyone's permission here to be all of the above.

[Skip Intro]

6. to paraphrase a line from Kurt Cobain -

just because we're paraniod, don't mean they're not after us

If electronic voting machines can be hacked, and vote totals manipulated, eventually, they will be (if it hasn't already happened). Its inevitable.

[WilliamPitt]

7. A little harsh, but far from completely wrong

...and "suicide doves" is fucking brilliant.

And yes, this comes from the guy who wrote this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3544461

So...

[sui generis]

9. amateur browbeating

but we'll just have to let the messianic hawks play this round.

[WilliamPitt]

11. Thank God

[BlackVelvet04]

23. I read your linked post

and sorry to say I agree with your statement: "The things we can do for the good of this country and the world positively boggle the mind.
But I hate liberals, because they won't let that happen. They make me absolutely crazy."

But the most important thing you said I want to address is:

"Example number two happened when I went out to have a smoke."

Don't you CARE about our environment? Don't you KNOW you are killing people with secondhand smoke? What the hell is wrong with you? ;-)

(I smoke, too.)

I'm weary of the arguments and hysteria coming from liberals.

[MADem]

8. Suicide Doves, indeed. And naive ones, too, who don't get how the game is played.

They get angry when you point out the obvious, they run away when you provide them links to back up plain facts, and they petulantly threaten to go Green when they don't get any traction with their far out viewpoints.

It's not pro wrestling. It's politics. It's not a team sport, it's the future of the country.

I, too, am tired of the pity party assholes and threatening "my way or the highway" jihadists. They need to get with the program, understand that this is not The Far Left Democratic Underground, it's the DU for ALL DEMOCRATS, from far left to way right, and all the pragmatists and moderates and progressive-practical types who fall in between those two wings. The only thing that they need to enter the club is to support candidates with a (D) after their name.

Smart people understand that compromise isn't an option. Compromise is how you move your agenda forward. You give a little, you get a little. That's how it works.

[sui generis]

10. that's convincing. Hope you come up with something

a little less self-congratulatory and gloating that isn't preaching to the choir though, because that argument and bullshit pissant name calling like "suicide doves" is what we've come to expect browbeating from the assholes on the other side to sound like.

If you're serious about getting "suicide doves" to vote for you, try not calling them suicide doves.

[MADem]

13. Hey, I didn't coin the fucking term. I am simply agreeing that there is too much

whining and not enough working. Way too many people have a "glass half empty" approach. I consider that unhelpful, frankly. People don't want to vote for people whose philosophy is "Gloom and Doom, the Sky is Falling." They vote for things like Hope and Progress.

Where you get "self congratulatory" and "gloating" I have NO idea. Get over yourself.

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

18. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

19. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[nashville_brook]

15. Dean's a LOSER?

did i miss this memo?

[baby_mouse]

16. "small but particularly vocal"

Yes, there are more than few "small but particularly vocal" issue cliques in this site. It's disruptive, certainly, but dificult to see what you can do about it.

I agree with you about Diebold, I was very surprised at the extent of the Dem win. I had to tear up a few theories after that.

[Emit]

20. I'm usually not this petty, but, I feel compelled to point this out

Irregardless is a nonstandard word.



Also, re:

Never mind the fact that most states don't have Diebold, and only about a quarter have any electronic voting at all.

Where did you get your statistics on e-voting machines? I do not think they are accurate. Do you have links to this "fact"?

[BeFree]

21. So, we are losers, eh? BS

Posters like you allege Al Gore and John Kerry are LOSERS. That the Dem party as a whole are LOSERS. That the American people really elected these Assholes to power.

When you ask such a person for proof of their allegations all they can say is that's how the votes were counted. That's all they got... bushco's word.

Meanwhile contrary evidence - not always proof, mind you - but real evidence is presented time and again. Evidence which can't help but lead an inquiring mind to conclude: something is terribly wrong with allowing Diebold to count votes in secret.

Either one thinks Dems are losers or one thinks Dems are winners. This election was not stolen outright only because people knew this time to not trust Diebold. We've always won: this time it wasn't stolen.

[Matariki]

22. speaking of paranoid

this Reuters article disagrees with you about Hoyer being significantly more liberal than Murtha. I don't disagree - but I wonder why they're spinning it this way...

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-11-16T173937Z_01_N15425334_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-CONGRESS-LEADERS.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsHome-C1-topNews-3

[WilliamPitt]

25. Where does it say that?

I see one word: "moderate"

Am I missing something?

[Matariki]

26. It was inferred in the context

"Democrats in the House defied incoming speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday and bypassed a vocal Iraq war critic to elevate her moderate deputy to majority leader."

i.e. "vocal Iraq war critic" being contrasted to "moderate deputy" & also linking Pelosi's "liberal" with Murtha in this paragraph:

"It marked an embarrassing first defeat for Pelosi, a California liberal who had endorsed Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania" followed by: "Democrats embraced Hoyer, a Maryland moderate who has been Pelosi's deputy"

[zreosumgame]

24. Well, only concerning the Diebold stuff

Personally I lean towards the idea that the intense observation and exposure of the ability of reprogramming the machines via the MSM, the same MSM who had done their best for the last 6-10 years to avoid the subject, changed the dynamic. More people demanded paper ballots that many places ran out. More people turned out and more were in no mood to accept the typical BS.

In other words being observed changed the object of observation. IMHO anyway. Is Hiesenberg spinning in his grave?

[sui generis]

27. DU has a large and annoying population of messianic hawks

guess we're going to have to figure out a better way to live together here than the absent conversations in this thread would indicate. It would appear that all annoying parties are here for the duration, as much as the OP and cohorts would decry.

I agree that "purists" who left to vote Green in 2000 did us damage. Nader did us damage. I would also state that we failed to bring them to our side, that we gave Nader an opening. That they left was half our responsibility, and 100% our failure to address with anything but acrimony and name calling, which continues today.

The OP's assertions and characterizations are immature. It's ironic that the very people who stand behind divisive rhetoric are the same people who are the first to go on about name calling. That's not hawkish, it's just sad.

Well, I have to take my hobbyless irrelevant name calling chickenshit self off to cook dinner for the kids and do some family stuff to make sure they turn out to be neither suicidal nor messianic. He said with his tongue firmly in cheek.

Good night to all.

[RedCloud]

28. And let's keep the Pentagon, FBI, CIA ultraconservative...

NOT! You just cannot trust those bastardos. Eventually they will use things against our causes.

Time to put progressive minds in change of those neo-con groups so we can "right" our course that has been way too far to the right.

I agree with a lot of what you say, but if you don't think that there is corruption when it comes to voting, well where we you in 2000? We are not talking about a few hundred votes lost in Florida. We are talking about a few hundred thousand people who lost their right to vote that day in that state alone. And a few million across the USA that day. It didn't happen by accident. It happened because good intentioned people were victimized by evil manipulators. You cannot simply trust the repugs to behave ethically. And those above organizations have been altering election results for decades,

[AntiFascist]

29. There are also those who believe "Bush is an ok guy" vs. those...

who believe he is alarmingly wrong on just about everything. Which are you?