@enhydra lutris
so what's that saying to you?

thanks to your critique/rant, I don't think I really need to. MOSS - more of the same shit. The ultimate in victim blaming, blaming the public for the Democratic Party's refusal to run a viable candidate on a platform of serving the public and its needs, with some "Russia, Russia, Russia" thrown in for good measure.

Part of the big lie tactic is repetition, but I think that endless, incessant, hourly repetition may dull the senses and the message to the point that it doesn't work. The US is the testing ground for this, like it or not.

@Wink
something. Since neither major party will run a "change" candidate, bringing about change requires that the preponderance of today's non-voters not only vote, but all join in with the left to vote for a specific third-party change candidate. This is complicated by an electoral system that keeps third-party candidates off of the ballot in as many places as it can.

Get enough on The Left to vote, and/or get enough voters to Vote Left, and this $h!t comes to a screeching halt.
When only some 46% vote....
The Red Team votes in higher percentages than the Blue Team.
The Red Team rank & file are scared to death that commie pinko Libruls will take over if they don't vote, so they vote. And win. Becuz "we" don't bother to vote.
Now, one could argue, well, it doesn't matter, the elections are rigged.
And they are.
But if enough vote it doesn't matter that they're rigged.
The sheer number of votes override any rigging around the edges.
So, yeah...
Vote.
Our problem isn't "voting doesn't matter."
That's what most people think - and what TPTB want people to think.
Our problem is not nearly enough of us vote.
Tack on another 20% to that piddling 46% and things change. In a hurry.

@Wink

You've probably seen this, but:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkFOavHEcbk

Here’s How To End Nancy Pelosi’s Reign w/ Shahid Buttar
Redacted Tonight

Published on 22 May 2018

To learn more about Shahid Buttar's campaign, go to https://www.ShahidForChange.us

This is the first time in American history that there's been a concerted, organized effort to replace the corrupt corporate representatives within a US political party with real, human people having an informed interest in serving the public interest instead, under a leader who - imperfect as all humans are but decidedly non-psychopathic and having a life-long record (unlike any other politician holding office) of consistently and persistently fighting for the most vulnerable citizens and the general public good - has the capacity to unite enough of the country to win (again) on votes. If people vote in their own best interests, for Prog only.

If Congress and the Senate are majority Prog, will they and a Prog President really have trouble passing legislation for the public good?

Thing is, the people have to work toward their own good, en masse: refuse to accept voter suppression and suspicious electoral results they've been letting slide for freaking ever; refuse to accept that private groups can determine who they're permitted to vote for, for public office, and private interests select who gets to win said public office, which US voters have been letting slide for freaking ever; refuse to accept the results of electoral cheating 'as a done deal' just because TPTB got away with it again and the cheated-in winners and those who cheated them in will endlessly promise to 'fix it for the next time', which US voters have been letting slide for freaking ever.

Change within US policy has to come from the people, by The People forming their own government for the people, with equal rights, treatment and opportunity for all finally enforced in all States of the Union.

Criminals will be criminals, as long as they're allowed to continue being criminals without consequence.

And political Parties by any name will be corrupt while filled with corruption.

The people have to get right in there to clean out those gutters themselves, before their house rots away and the roof completely caves in; nobody else can or will do that for them.

Like anything else, a political party is only as good as are those forming it.

But why have so many Progs been 'allowed' to win of late? Could it be because they begin to feel that people are expecting cheating in all areas around elections and that repercussions might be possible if they do so too blatantly and too often right now, providing yet more evidence of their changing people's votes by altering/discarding ballots and the like, as has been done in too many publicized Dem Party nominations/inner-party-structure votes?

These next two elections might be the first and last opportunity for the American people to take back a political party from the corporate/military sector by filling it with themselves and by voting for themselves and democracy by voting Prog only. Even if as only one action out of many.

If this chance is missed, I expect that TPTB will not allow another - the PTB's pathetic pretense of 'US democracy' has been shredded almost entirely away by the fascist gloves already showing the length of the long-honed claws within.

And as multiple invaded countries have shown, the people, united, can never be defeated - although TPTB have been working on it, in part by automating psychopathy within unkillable killer machines nobody can face head-on without working out some way of jamming or otherwise disabling them. Something especially tricky for citizen protesters...

https://www.rt.com/news/427313-india-develops-lethal-robots/?ref=hvper.com/

India eyes developing autonomous killer robots for military
Published time: 21 May, 2018 13:16
Edited time: 22 May, 2018 10:15

India is assessing whether it needs to develop AI-based weapon systems for the military, capable of identifying and attacking targets without human input. The tech can't be reasoned with and won’t feel pity, remorse or fear.

The 17-member AI task force, which includes officials from the Indian military, defense ministry, arms contractors and research organizations, was formed in February. New Delhi sees AI technologies as potentially reshaping national security and defense and wants to keep up with leaders in the field.

Among the goals which the group works on is “developing intelligent, autonomous robotic systems,” Ajay Kumar, the secretary of the Defense Production Department in the Indian Defense Ministry, told The Times of India.

“The world is moving towards AI-driven warfare. India is also taking necessary steps to prepare our armed forces because AI has the potential to have a transformative impact on national security. The government has set up the AI task force to prepare the roadmap for it,” he said.

The government is expected to start placing initial tenders for AI capabilities with defense application within two years, Kumar added.

AI technologies, or more precisely algorithms using machine learning for better performance, have seen rapid development in the past few years. If adopted by the military, they can be used for automatic target acquisition, automated analysis of intelligence data, improvement of logistics and other tasks. ...

This death-style of the rich and pathologically greedy has to stop now.

Get enough on The Left to vote, and/or get enough voters to Vote Left, and this $h!t comes to a screeching halt.
When only some 46% vote....
The Red Team votes in higher percentages than the Blue Team.
The Red Team rank & file are scared to death that commie pinko Libruls will take over if they don't vote, so they vote. And win. Becuz "we" don't bother to vote.
Now, one could argue, well, it doesn't matter, the elections are rigged.
And they are.
But if enough vote it doesn't matter that they're rigged.
The sheer number of votes override any rigging around the edges.
So, yeah...
Vote.
Our problem isn't "voting doesn't matter."
That's what most people think - and what TPTB want people to think.
Our problem is not nearly enough of us vote.
Tack on another 20% to that piddling 46% and things change. In a hurry.

matter who we
@Big Al
send to Washington, eventually they all cave to the Oligarchy.
Agree. With the ones there now.
And many whom we will send this year.
What it takes to change the status quo is a backbone, and the willingness to risk all, including ones life. Not many are willing to risk all. Including Bernie. Whom apparently will run again in 2020 as a Dim, risking nothing. Again.
Becuz this is going to take risk. The kind of risk Seth Rich took.
If we want it - change - it's going to take bloodshed.
The Oligarchy will not go quietly and they won't go peacefully.
Big Al right. We keep sending the same ol' lame ol' Dims and Repubs we're gonna keep getting what we got.
The other thing it takes is a free press. That's not going to happen soon, but it is happening. Witness Tucker Carlson (of all people). Taking a yuuuge risk.
The risk is yuuuge. Most not willing to take the risk. It comes down to how bad we want it.
Otherwise there's no sense playing (voting), we might better start working on our communes. 'cuz we're going to need them. One Republicon said out loud recently that we should euthanize the poor and disabled. A drag on the Economy.™ So, it's not like they're not thinking about this stuff. Out loud. Whom we send to Washington will determine our future in more direct ways than ever. I hope they don't cave.

In 2007/8 at the end of the terrible Bush regime and when Obama gained steam the thought was we had to get the republicans out of there. Of course the only way to do that is by replacing them with the democrats and Obama at that time made it sound like a reasonable option.

Then look what Obama did, look what Clinton did, look what the democrats did. The two parties have always served the oligarchy but now it's completely obvious and total. We've had scientific studies come out and prove Congress serves the 1%, we've had a former president come out and say we live in an oligarchy.

You're right, we did vote, it did no good and at most this time it might slow down the bleeding but that's not good enough, because we'll still be bleeding.

We can't keep bouncing from one party having power to the other and back and forth, it's fucking sick and only serves to keep the oligarchy in power.

of the vote. Tops.
@detroitmechworks
Closer to 1%.
So, yes, more votes nullifies that 1% to 2%.
Now maybe "They" get more bold and increase that margin to 3%, 4%.
But then it becomes visible.
Maybe at this point it doesn't matter that their "rigging" becomes noticeable.
"yes, we rigged it, what are you going to do about it?"
Good question.
Becuz if nothing is done at that point there's no sense voting.
Game over.
But we ain't there yet.

If a person believes that all of the voting "Irregularities" will be solved by increasing the sample size, I believe they are being incredibly optimistic.

Power concedes NOTHING without a threat.

big step but, as
@apenultimate
you say, it's also going to take public pressure, if not an uprising.
I find it amazing that I'm witnessing this madness that no Boomer would ever have imagined in the late '60s, early '70s of the war protests. I just wish I was 20 years younger to take on this fight, maybe see the outcome. If nuthin' else these are indeed "interesting times." Never a dull moment in my retirement days. The sad thing, most are sleeping thru it.

True, and not true.

People voted for FDR back in the 1930s and it got them change against the powers that be (TPTB). So, not every single time. Yes, that was a very long time ago, but if enough people come out to vote, even with vote manipulation, voting could work.

The difficulties today are much, much harder than back in FDR's days, though:

--The media is almost completely controlled by TPTB, and this makes it very hard for a progressive or populist message to get through. Bernie rallies during the last election drew tens of thousands of people, yet the media displayed none of that, and most of those rallies were being formed via alternative internet sources and word of mouth.

--The inteligence and law-enforcement agencies are much more widespread in scale and are being actively used to influence elections than they were in FDR's days. For example, the FBI dropping legitimate investigations, helping to fan the Russia flames, law enforcement arresting people at the conventions, etc.

--Direct voter manipulation. Denying people voter IDs, gerrymandering, losing ballots, and almost certainly direct manipulation of electronic voting machines.

--Threats. I have zero doubt that whoever gets elected receives word essentially saying--"Nice family you've got there. It'd be a shame if anything happened to them if you don't support the military/intelligence/etc."

It'll take a huge public uprising for things to change. But, voting en masse might be one of the elements of the change. Unfortunately, I think it'll have to be more than just that.

likes to say, keeping
@k9disc
an eye on all those spinning plates spinning, so they don't fall, is a great way for "Them" to keep us distracted from what's behind the curtain.

Of course you're not supposed to pin Democrats in there, and the "Vote" call at the end was super lame; but the piece of the closing quote,"Fascists always vote." is quite interesting, and alludes to rolling the Democratic Leadership over into the Fascist pile.

The lack of "knowing" and a lack of any kind of accepted truth is a new piece to the fascist puzzle, and I don't think many people understand it well. Hedges is on it with the Inverted Totalitarianism, and Eli Pariser has hit on it plainly with the filter bubble, but the actual movement to push people into becoming unable to believe their lying eyes is starting to become visible to me.

The blue and white dress thing a couple years ago, laurel vs yanny, or whatever the fuck that shit is on the FB.

I think the MO of the corporate media changed in 2006 or so. They realized that it was impossible to misinform, and even disinforming was becoming a tough political maneuver; sowing confusion became the MO.

This is paying off bigly, IMO, and is a main tap-root of fascism in America. gulp...

"how do we do that?"
@Big Al
For which there is no answer.
I personally don't see that happening in a million years.
Stuck with the duopoly, we are, for the next 20 years or more.
Meantime, the next Dimocratic president needs to speak before Congress and say, "Homeland Security is an Agency that no longer exists on and after Apr. 1, 2021. If you work for DHS start sending out your resumes, becuz your job no longer exists as of Apr. 1, 2021. We are shutting that down. Next... just getting warmed up, hold your applause... next, we rolling back the operation of the Federal Gov't to Sept. 10, 2001. All the bull$h!t that G. Dubya and O'bummer enacted is history. Citizens United? United, my ass. Done! Dubya's War on Terra? Over. Instead, we're going to spend the $Billions generally designated for Lockheed and the war machine into expanding Social Security and the Safety Net. Remember that? Didn't think so. A good place to send your resumes though if you work for the MIC. Thank you, and good night everybody! And good luck!"

Voting and citizen participation is essential in a democracy. Problem is, we don't live in a democracy, not at the national level or state level. What I'm against, and I'm sure many others as well, is voting for the duopoly in this political system. I've tried voting third party and as we all know, the game is so rigged as to make it next to impossible for a third party to make progress. Could it be done? Possibly, but probably not without some significant changes in the system.
Which is what I'm calling for, significant changes in the system if not outright replacement of this political system. I think that's what should be focused on instead of this constant two year bullshit between the democrats and republicans.

@ggersh "Divine right of kings", it so fits today also.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/05/19/how-democracy-ended.html

So: America is a dictatorship by the billionaires. And this means that it operates by fooling the public. France is similar, though it achieves this via a different way. And, in both countries, deceit is essential, in order to achieve its dictatorship. Fooling the public is now what it’s all about, in either case. Democracy can never be won by fooling the public; because fooling the public means removing the public’s ability to control the government. So, calling such a nation a ‘democracy’, is, itself, deceiving the public — it’s part of the dictatorship, or else support of the dictatorship.

In former times, this system was rationalized as ‘the divine right of kings’. Now it’s rationalized as ‘the divine right of capital’. But it’s also become covered-over by yet another lie: ‘democracy’. This is a ‘democratic’ aristocracy; it is an ‘equal opportunity’ aristocracy. In it, each citizen has ‘equal rights’ as every other citizen, no matter how wealthy. It’s just a castle of lies. And its doors are actually open only to the few richest-and-well-connected.