You were warned about Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11. And you didn't listen. You were warned about the levees in New Orleans prior to Katrina. And you didn't listen.
You are now being warned about what both the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security has already warned you about and what someone who knows has called "one of the greatest threats our democracy has ever known."
Will you listen this time before it's too late? Please?
Here's the warning the Dept. of Homeland Security gave you in August of 2004. Before the election. Read it.
Here's the warning that "someone who knows" gave you last Thursday. Read it.
When I say "you", you may be surprised to learn that I'm referring to you Democrats and I'm referring to you folks in the Mainstream Media. Yes, you. You who all had largely the same warnings that George W. Bush had about the threat that was Al-Qaeda and the quagmire of lies that was Iraq and the disaster-in-waiting that was New Orleans. You who hold George W. Bush responsible now for not having paid attention then.
But -- as you know -- you didn't pay much attention then either. You didn't yell and scream and take to the streets and do what needed to be done to save the lives of thousands of Americans. You didn't insist that what had to be done was to be done before it was too late to avoid those national tragedies.
You failed to follow Wendell Phillips' warning about your freedoms and your democracy: That "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." You didn't give a damn back then. Not until after it was too late.
Well here's the good news: You've got another chance. A chance to pay attention. This time before it's too late. That is, if it isn't already.
Elections in 2006 and 2008 are just around the corner and you Democrats are making big plans. Good for you. You probably think you're in a terrific place to regain your majority in Congress and perhaps even re-take the White House. You probably are. Or at least you might have been...
Because here's the bad news: Unless you follow Phillips' advice and pay attention now to what has happened to your Electoral System in America -- to what is happening even as you read this every single day in every single Board of Elections in every single county in every single state in America -- you will be in for an even bigger surprise in '06 and '08 than you found yourselves waking up to on the morning of November 3rd, 2004.
Because here's the deal: Your Electoral System in America -- theoretically the world's greatest democracy -- has been sold to the Corporate Interests of the very good friends of the Neo-Republican Party in America. It's gone. It's been sold. Your Republican and Democratic elected leaders watched it happen. Gave their approval. And you let them do it. And now...your democracy is no longer in your hands. That is, unless you do something now about it.
So as you fight your fruitless fight to save a Supreme Court from falling over a Righwing cliff, I hope you realize by now that your store is being well-looted from right under your well-meaning noses. Your Supreme Court fight is already lost. You lost that one long ago. You lost it last November 3rd when you bought into the impossible notion that an incredibly unpopular Republican "President", in the most contentious National Election ever, with the largest turn-out in the history of America, during an incredibly unpopular war, suddenly and magically -- after being behind in the standings the entire day -- suddenly and still-without-explanation-or-accountability "won" by the time the "results" were in. You lost your Supreme Court battle and so many others when you failed to stand up that day and ask questions. When you failed to demand answers. When you failed to fight for the Right to Vote in America and to have that vote actually counted. When you failed to hold anybody accountable for your once-great democracy. When you failed to be vigilant.
You (Democrats) bought those "results" in 2004 and you (Mainstream Media folks) didn't bother to question them. You were both, apparently, under Dubya's post-9/11 spell when you believed in a greater America than the one that we actually have: An America were nobody would ever cynically or criminally game a National Election to retain their stranglehold on power. Such a notion was as impossible to believe or forsee as a President of the United States lying an entire nation into a war...or somone flying a commercial airplane into a building...or the levees breaching in New Orleans.
Who could have ever forseen such things happening in America?
Now you can shrug off this blog item, or anything else I've ever written, as a "wild conspiracy theory." That's up to you. You are still allowed that much freedom in America. You can buy into your Rightwing "ditto-head" talking points about folks like me wearing "tin-foil hats" to bed. You can say that folks like me have nothing but "sour grapes" because John Kerry didn't win. (I didn't vote for him -- just so you know.) You can go get on with your day and your life just as you did when you heard those warnings -- and you know you did -- about Osama wanting to destroy America or there being no WMD in Iraq or a Hurricane that might someday destroy the Big Easy. You can continue to believe in the ultimate sense of goodness and fairplay of Americans in America. There is a great number of people and a great deal of money riding on you believing all of those things after all.
Or you can pay attention -- this time to the FACTS and to the warnings -- before it's too late.
For the first time an insider from Diebold, Inc. is speaking directly to you. Diebold: The company who tabulates -- with zero accountability and zero transparency -- the majority of America's votes. Diebold: The company who gives millions and millions of dollars to Republican politicians and virtually every Board of Election in every county in every state in America. Diebold: The company -- based in Ohio and Texas, by the way -- whose CEO promised in a Republican fundraising letter in 2003 to deliver the state of Ohio to George W. Bush in 2004.
And what is this insider -- who we'll call DIEB-THROAT if it helps get your attention -- telling you, America? Only what you already should have known. What even the U.S. Department of Homeland Security already acknowledged in full prior to Election 2004: That your Electoral System, now wholly privatized and run by the "Halliburton of the Voting World" -- is, and has been, open and vulnerable to be rigged by one -- just one -- malicious person. Not "a conspiracy of many." Just One.
DIEB-THROAT -- someone who knows and works with them -- tells us, in a BRAD BLOG exclusive that I recommend you actually read, that the Diebold system is "one of the greatest threats our democracy has ever known."
DIEB-THROAT tells us -- and the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security agrees -- that "one malicious person can change the outcome of any Diebold election."
DIEB-THROAT is warning you. The U.S. DHS is warning you. I am warning you. The FACTS are warning you. So what will be your excuse next time?
I am speaking to you...Democrats...and you...Mainstream Media. Because, you know, the neo-Republican Party is perfectly content to watch your democracy fade away. Just as much as they were willing to watch the truth collapse in a pile of unread memos about 9/11, explode in a volley of shock-and-awe over Baghdad, or drown in the streets of New Orleans.
I've said countless times, to countless Americans who would listen: This is not a matter of Right and Left...It's a matter of Right and Wrong. So what will you do about it?
It is, after all, only your democracy at stake.