Deep in the heart of [fill in the blank]

October 18th, 2006

Texas? Delusion? Spin and Swiftboating? Computer hacking?

This is an election post — it comes on a day when even the Texans have recognized that the Pub’s are all hat and no cattle … when Uncle Dick’s credibility has gone from dark and creepy to drooling and senile by declaring the situation in Iraq as going “remarkably well” … when Rick Santorum is defending his lock-step on regime change by telling us that the clash in Iraq is akin to “Lord of the Rings” [see -- I TOLD ya Dubby had the ring!] And the stock market has topped out today … which only means, to the Average Joe Six-Pack, that the rich are getting richer as the middle-class continues to spiral down.

Meanwhile, Pappy Bush’s Sec of State James Baker says that Iraq’s a “helluva a mess” — he’s leading a “bipartisan” review of the situation; and one we need to embrace very carefully, as Jim is the Bush family “fixer” … rather like the “cleaner” the Mafia calls in to take care of the bodies and remove all traces of murder.

I’ve played with the notion that the Dem’s would have to win in a landslide to get past the fixed Diebold machines … pull off a win so blatant that even with the lack of paper trail in some areas, it would create a public uproar. That may well happen. Even in Texas, where the gerrymandered map has created such a stonewall to party change that it looked unbreachable … it’s beginning to get that Alamo feel to it.

There’s still the October Surprise theory buzzing around — that Dubby will strike Iran, that Osama will be trotted out, that another attack on US soil will take place — whatever will take attention off their failures and bring us back to fear issues. But it’s interesting that the Pubs are as worried about October Surprise as are Dems … they evidently think the Dems are poised to give them grief of some sort. Full circle paranoia, sounds like, right out of their own playbook … and, I’ll add, the kind of thing Dems have neither the skill nor talent to produce well.

I don’t know what will happen next, but here’s what I think — whoever doesn’t win will challenge the vote. I think it will take a long time to actually get a final answer on who won what this year. And again — if you have any concerns about your vote being counted — you probably still have time to vote absentee … contact your state registrar for the details.

Here’s a big collection of articles about what’s happening today and the “what if’s” that may or may not put snippy little Nancy Pelosi in the Oval to duke it out with an irked and petulant George W. Bush.

It’s in our best interests, after playing these reign-deer games for three elections, to expect anything. And thats pragmatic advice on the day that Karl tells us that he’ll “deploy” one hundred MILLION bucks in the ‘06 War on Rationality — best to brace for some down and dirty campaigning full of lies and inuendo.

Jude

Discontent with GOP finds way into Texas
SUZANNE GAMBOA, AP
Tue Oct 17
http://tinyurl.com/y6qr3y

DRIPPING SPRINGS, Texas - The economy is strong and Rickye Lennon’s excavation business is thriving. Yet his son may soon go to war, government scandals are in the news, and Lennon, a Republican deep in the heart of Bush country, doesn’t think his party should remain in charge of Congress.

“I think we need a wake-up call,” said Lennon, 50, of Dripping Springs. “They need to be paying attention to the issues the people are concerned about and I think we need to become more moderate in our views.”

Three weeks to the midterm elections, GOP discontent is seeping into the home state of President Bush, where every statewide elected official is a Republican.

The state’s Republican House members were supposed to be protected from such voter mood swings by the 2003 redrawing of the state’s congressional districts, orchestrated by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

But largely because of DeLay, who resigned in June embroiled in scandal, Texas this year unexpectedly is one of the states that could help Democrats wrest control of the House from the GOP this November. Races for three of the state’s 32 congressional seats are considered competitive.

No Republican is listed on the ballot in the race for the seat once held by DeLay. That’s left Democrat Nick Lampson the favorite against write-in Republican candidate Shelley Sekula-Gibbs.

Democrats hope the congressional page scandal will help push Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla (news, bio, voting record) into a runoff against one of his seven challengers for a district stretching from near El Paso to Laredo.

And voter unease also may thwart Republican efforts to seize the Central Texas district that is home to Bush’s ranch, a congressional seat now held by Democratic Rep. Chet Edwards.

There is disquiet in the state’s gubernatorial race, too, in which incumbent GOP Gov. Rick Perry is polling only in the high 30s against three challengers.

Walter Dean Burnham, a professor emeritus in the University of Texas at Austin government department, said that while “there certainly is some sign of discontent” in the state, he expected its impact in congressional races to be limited.

“I don’t see any good reason the love affair with the Republican Party has weakened all that much,” he said.

News that Republican Rep. Mark Foley sent illicit electronic messages to congressional pages was unfolding when Lennon stopped at the Dripping Springs post office recently. A cap embroidered with “Legends of Texas Swing Music Festival” shielded his eyes as he slapped dust from his jeans.

To Lennon, the handling of the Foley scandal and ethical problems involving other congressmen are examples of Republican hypocrisy.

“It’s cronyism,” he said. “There are a lot of people out there that will do anything they can to protect their party. That’s wrong. We have to do what’s right. We have laws that everyone has to follow and they are not above that law.”

He expects to vote for his Democratic congressman, Lloyd Doggett of Austin.

Others are ready to give the GOP another chance.

Sokhom Chum, who lives in the Dallas suburb of Carrollton, said there’s plenty he doesn’t like about Congress. The finger-pointing is wearing on him and he’d like to see more compromise on immigration.

But Chum, 46, said he is willing to give Republicans another year to resolve the Iraq war and do a better job of governing. “I’m a patient man. The economy seems to be doing fine,” he said.

Two years ago, Republicans took charge of the Texas congressional delegation, winning 22 of 32 House seats. The DeLay-led redistricting ensured few competitive races. Democrats produced some competition when they sued to keep Republicans from replacing DeLay on the ballot.

And while Republicans pledged to spend as much as a $4 million on the race, the money hasn’t materialized. Such spending has become less likely as the Foley scandal puts at risk more Republican seats around the country.

In Edwards’ district, Republican challenger Van Taylor has waged a blistering campaign that accuses the Democratic incumbent of being soft on illegal immigration.

But voters were more likely to mention Edwards’ work to keep open the local veterans hospital and snare a homeland security contract for one of the district’s largest employers.

“I generally vote Republican, but in Chet’s case … he is looking out for the people and his district,” said John Henry, 66, of Waco.

On Tuesday, Edwards’ campaign gleefully trumpeted reports that the national Republican committee had abandoned plans to spend $1.5 million on the race. Taylor’s campaign would not confirm the reports, but spokesman Mike Spellings said, “We were prepared from the very beginning to win this campaign on our own and Van has shown that he is adept at raising money.”

Bonilla found himself in an unexpected fight after the Supreme Court ruled that Hispanic voting strength had been diluted in his district and ordered it redrawn. Now that the district is more Hispanic, his Democratic challengers are hoping for a runoff, although Bonilla still is favored to win.

Bonilla acknowledged his party faces challenges, listing DeLay’s resignation and the Foley page scandal among others, but says the Democratic uproar is an “act of the devil” to distract voters.

“It’s like a family member, when somebody goes bad,” Bonilla said. “It makes it harder for the whole family to function.”

Alarm Bells for G.O.P. in Poll Results in Ohio
JOHN M. BRODER and MEGAN C. THEE
October 17, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/18/us/politics/18poll.html

The bellwether state of Ohio appears to have become hostile terrain for Republicans this year, with voters there overwhelmingly saying Democrats are more likely to help create jobs and concluding by a wide margin that Republicans in the state are more prone to political corruption than are Democrats, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Ohio is home this year to closely watched races for governor, the United States Senate and a growing roster of competitive House seats, and the state has become one of the most contested battlegrounds of 2006 and one in which voters at this point are strongly favoring Democrats on many issues.

The Democratic candidates for governor and Senate hold commanding, double-digit leads over their Republican opponents in the poll and respondents said they intended to vote for the Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives in their district by a 50 to 32 percent margin.

The results raise alarm bells for President Bush and his party across the nation three weeks from Election Day.

The poll found a striking slippage in the president’s standing among white evangelical Christians, a constituency that has provided a strong vote cushion for Republican candidates in recent elections. In November 2004, 76 percent of white evangelical Christians in Ohio voted for Mr. Bush. When asked in this poll whether they approve or disapprove of the job Mr. Bush is doing as president, 49 percent approved while 45 percent disapproved.

Ohio is a Republican-leaning but heavily contested state that twice voted to elect Mr. Bush and gave him his Electoral College margin of victory in 2004. But it is not a perfect microcosm of the country, and in particular it has higher levels of economic anxiety, the poll found.

Sixty-five percent of those surveyed rated the state’s economy as bad; only 34 percent said it was good. In Ohio, 49 percent of respondents described the nation’s economy as good and 50 percent said it was bad. In a national Times/CBS News poll conducted earlier this month, 60 percent said the economy was good and only 39 percent said it was bad.

A plurality, 46 percent of Ohio voters, said the economy and jobs were the most important issues facing the state, while 17 percent cited health care, 15 percent said terrorism and 12 percent said the war in Iraq. Seventy percent said both Ohio and the nation are on the wrong track, a number that often spells doom for the party in power.

More than three-quarters of Ohioans in the poll said they strongly favored a ballot measure to increase the state minimum wage to $6.85 an hour from $5.15 an hour.

The ballot measure is backed by labor unions and other Democratic interests and is aimed in part at drawing Democratic voters to the polls on Election Day, just as measures to outlaw gay marriage propelled Republicans to vote in several states two years ago.

Only a third of Ohio voters approve of the job Mr. Bush is doing as president or the way he is handling the economy, and they seem poised to take it out on Republican candidates up and down the ballot. Republican officials at the national level said this week they had all but written off the Ohio Senate and governor’s races and were diverting resources to other states where they believed they had a better chance of winning.

“In Ohio we’ve seen nothing but our manufacturing jobs cease to exist,” said one poll respondent, David Stuck, 59, of Miami Township, Ohio, who said he voted twice for Mr. Bush. He blamed inaction at the federal level for the evaporation of jobs in Ohio and said he planned for vote for the Democratic candidate for United States Senate, Sherrod Brown, over the incumbent, Senator Mike DeWine, a Republican.

“Call it a protest,” Mr. Stuck, a Republican, said in a follow-up interview. “I haven’t seen anything done in the last six years. To be honest, I’m truly thinking about voting Democratic across the board because I’m tired of Bush.”

The statewide telephone poll was conducted Wednesday through Sunday with 1,164 adults, including 1,020 registered voters. The margin of sampling error for the entire group is plus or minus 3 percentage points, and it is the same for the registered voters.

More than half of the poll’s respondents said they believed corruption was widespread in Ohio and said, by a 3-to-1 margin, that the Republican Party had more corrupt politicians than the Democrats. Gov. Bob Taft, a Republican, pleaded no contest last year to ethics charges arising from dealings with a crooked investment manager.

Representative Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican, pleaded guilty to corruption charges last week arising from his association with Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist at the center of an influence-selling scandal in Washington.

Doris Stucky, a 79-year-old retired nurse from New Philadelphia, Ohio, said she thought all politicians were corrupt. “I think they’re out to line their pocketbooks and get votes and they don’t care what they do or say to get them,” said Mrs. Stucky, a Republican, in a telephone interview after she participated in the poll.

“They came down on Bob Ney and I don’t think he’s any more guilty than the rest of them,” she said. “It’s the same in Ohio. I think politicians are all the same. I wish we could find some good honest Christian politicians but I don’t think there are any.” Mrs. Stucky said she was undecided about whom she will vote for.

By large margins, Ohio voters said they trusted Democrats over Republicans to handle government spending and create new jobs.

The sour mood in Ohio about the economy and the performance of incumbent politicians at all levels appears to be a motivating factor for voters who identify themselves as Democrats. Fifty-five percent of Democrats said they were more enthusiastic about voting than in previous elections for Congress, while only 30 percent of Republicans said they were.

The tide of dissatisfaction appears ready to wash out Mr. DeWine, who is trailing Mr. Brown by 34 percent to 48 percent, the poll found. The Democratic candidate for governor, Representative Ted Strickland, is leading the Republican nominee, J. Kenneth Blackwell, the Ohio secretary of state, by 53 percent to 29 percent.

The omens in the poll were almost uniformly grim for the president and his party. Six out of 10 respondents disapprove of the way Mr. Bush is handling the economy and Iraq, and a plurality of Ohioans (by 40 percent to 36 percent) disapprove of the way he is managing the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula. The approval rating for the Republican-led Congress is a paltry 22 percent. Among adults nationwide, 27 percent approve of the way Congress is doing its job.

One bright spot for the president and Republicans was that while about 60 percent said they had made up their minds about this year’s elections, four in 10 said it was too early to say how they would vote.

Many Democrats in Ohio still harbor resentment about the 2004 contest between Mr. Bush and Senator John Kerry, which Mr. Bush officially won by about 120,000 votes out of 5.6 million cast in Ohio. Only 30 percent of Democratic poll respondents said they believed the 2004 vote count was fair and accurate, while 64 percent said it was not. (Many conspiracy-minded Democratic activists blamed Mr. Blackwell, who serves as statewide supervisor of elections, for manipulating voting technology to help Mr. Bush win.) Republicans, by 89 percent to 8 percent, said the voting was fair and balanced.

Twenty-eight percent of those polled said an adult in their household has been out of work and looking for a job in the past 12 months, and 44 percent of them said they were worried that someone in their family would be out of work in the coming year.

James Reed, 50, a self-described independent voter from Ashtabula, Ohio, said in a follow-up interview that Mr. Taft, who is not running for re-election, “has sold us down the road as far as jobs are concerned.” Mr. Reed, a disabled chemical plant worker, said trade restrictions were needed to prevent American jobs from being shipped overseas, a view shared by 69 percent of Ohioans surveyed.

Marjorie Connelly and Marina Stefan contributed reporting for this article.

GOP sources say party losing hope of victory
Brian Beutler, Raw Story
Tuesday October 17, 2006
http://tinyurl.com/yg9deb

Republican sources in high-ranking Congressional offices are quietly acknowledging that the party has largely lost hope of retaining control of the House this November, RAW STORY has learned.

Aides currently in the employ of two different House committee chairmen have expressed to RAW STORY that they believe their party will become the minority after next month’s elections.

“I’ll probably be working for the ranking member this winter,” noted one staffer. “It just doesn’t look like there’s anything that’s going to prevent it.”

One sign of an impending shift, said another, is that staff members for Democratic congressmen have assumed an unusually confident posture. “[Democratic staffers] don’t even joke about it with us anymore. They just know.”

One pointed to rumors on the Hill that there is the possibility of a Democratic October surprise. “[Former Congressman Mark] Foley wasn’t their surprise. That just kinda happened, but people are saying they do have one of their own.”

The Foley scandal has been the dominant political story—and perhaps the prime mover—this election season, fueling conflict within the Republican party, evoking strong criticism from Democrats, and even prompting some right-wing critics to lay the blame at the feet of liberal bogeymen. But that tactic doesn’t seem to have resonated in opinion polls.

Earlier in the month, conservative websites began posting stories pointing to an assurance from Karl Rove that a Republican October surprise would rescue their party, but so far none has manifested. One Republican staffer even doubted whether any political maneuver by Rove would be enough to allow the GOP to retain the House, saying “I’m not even sure that’d work at this point.”

October has always been a kinetic month in the election cycle, for observers and participants alike. But this October—marked by Republicans playing to their perceived advantage on national security and, perhaps more notably, by the page scandal and its extraordinary momentum—finds even veteran analysts exhausted by the twists and hesitant to make predictions. The election has at times even overwhelmed news coverage of important but unrelated events, including the war in Iraq and the apparent detonation of a nuclear weapon by North Korea.

Democrats, however, are playing down the perceived advantage. One veteran Democratic aide, responding to the Republican comments and encouraging polling, said, “When I see Republicans looking for jobs, then I’ll start believing the polls.”

Republican misdeeds have given us a clear choice
MARTIN SCHRAM
October 18, 2006
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/content/2006/10/republican_misd.html

For once, voters have it easy on Election Day.

Usually, citizens must wade through the bombast and braunschweiger of political TV ads hoping to discover how a candidate might vote on all the big issues.
So many votes, so much braunschweiger, so little time.

But this year citizens only need to focus on the one key vote: The first vote each representative and senator casts in the new Congress will be by far the most important. It is the vote that determines who will be House speaker or Senate majority leader _ in short, who will be controlling Congress.

Luckily for voters, the party now in power in the House has made this year a no brainer for voters. Republicans, who have controlled the House with an iron fist, have made themselves into poster pols for greed and corruption. Now it is clear that conscientious voters of all ideologies must vote the no-longer Grand Old Party out of power. It is the only way House Republicans will clean up their act and regain their once enviable moral compass.

Idealistic conservatives in Washington who are not officeholders recognize this and have said so publicly. Opportunistic Democrats who are in office dream and scheme to make it happen, but haven’t demonstrated the vision that should be evident in advance of power. Still, Democrats have made a virtue out of powerlessness. They haven’t been caught splashing, Gene Kelly-like, in the gutters of corruption that line Pennsylvania Avenue and K Street. Maybe in this town that’s all the virtue we can expect.

For years, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay mastered the art of amassing money to gain and perpetuate power. DeLay made Dennis Hastert the House speaker; a grateful Hastert sought to protect DeLay, looking away as the House Ethics Committee withered. DeLay became the ignoble enabler of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who for years was Washington’s only kosher deli proprietor whose specialty was pork.

The owner of Stacks deli spread corruption like cream cheese, smearing it up and down congressional corridors of power and K Street; and tried mightily to do the same inside the Bush administration’s agencies.

For months, the Bush White House conned the media into conveying the impression that Abramoff had just a few contacts with White House aides; they pretended to be reluctant as they released a White House photo showing Bush with a native American and Abramoff as a distant flyspeck in the crowd. Now it turns out that Abramoff’s records and e-mails show a bit more than four or five contacts - 485 contacts between Abramoff’s firm and the White House, including key adviser Karl Rove.

In one, Rove OK’d an endorsement for Abramoff’s client in an obscure election in the Mariana Islands. Rove’s top assistant, Susan Ralston, e-mailed Abramoff: “You win.” (Did I mention that her previous job was as Abramoff’s assistant?) Now DeLay is gone. So is Rep. Robert Ney, R-Ohio, who admitted taking money for doing favors for Abramoff, and a number of tainted GOP aides. And so is Rep Randy Cunningham, R-Calif., who pleaded guilty to charges stemming from receiving $2.4 million in bribes.

Hastert and his Republican leaders retired the cup for hypocrisy. They courted voters who cherish family and Christian values. But faced with proof that a Florida Republican congressman was making improper overtures to boys who were House pages, they took no action that might jeopardize a safe GOP seat - just bowed their heads as Rep. Mark Foley preyed.

While House Republicans leaders have betrayed their public trust, over in the Senate, what is right is far less clear. Some senior Senate conservatives grasp the difference between wielding a gavel and a hammer, understanding that power and principle need not be mutually exclusive. Most recently, Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., had the guts to call for a new course in Iraq, even as his House counterparts did little more than act as a Bush-Cheney-Rummy rubber stamp. But the Senate’s nominally top Democrat, Harry Reid of Nevada, casts no shadow as a newsmaker, except for a hugely profitable land deal, tarnished by slipshod documentation and maybe worse.

But voters face a clear call to duty when it comes to their House races. If your representative is a Republican who is one of the bad ones or a blind-to-morality follower, give your rep the hook. If your representative is solid and a hard worker but still determined to vote again to keep Hastert and his failed leaders in power, respectfully give your rep a gold watch that says it is time to retire.

Those House Republicans, by their own misdeeds, have relinquished the right to reign.

At The Edge Of Meltdown
Isaiah J. Poole
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/10/17/at_the_edge_of_meltdown.php

Democrats are poised for a sweep of Congress that has not been seen since the 1994 political tsunami that swept Republicans into the majority in the House, according to the latest series of surveys. But “poised” is the operative word.

Two items—a poll and a survey of congressional races by Congressional Quarterly —are particularly noteworthy. The Democracy Corps/Greenberg Quinlan Rosner survey of voters in Republican swing districts found Democrats leading in those districts by 4 percentage points. “The Democratic vote, stuck at 49 percent for months, suddenly jumped to 53 percent in the last two weeks,” pollsters Stan Greenberg and Ana Iparraguirre wrote in their report, called “Meltdown.”

“We do not often get to write such a report—changes so large over such a short period that they certainly portend a whole new playing field for the November election,” they wrote.

Their findings were echoed by the latest CQPolitics.com handicapping of the likely House and Senate lineup. (Disclosure: I used to write for Congressional Quarterly .)

Their painstakingly cautious assessment today has House Republicans getting 209 seats and Democrats 208, with 18 rated as “no clear favorite.” Either party needs 218 seats for control of the House. In the Senate, CQPollitics.com is giving 49 seats to the Republicans, 46 to the Democrats, with five in the “no clear favorite” category.

CQ also compares the potential “donkey stampede” to the “elephants storming up the steps of the Capitol” in 1994. “The momentum continues to clearly be on the Democrats’ side: The job approval ratings for President Bush’s Republican administration and the Republican-controlled Congress have plummeted deep into the danger zone,” CQPolitics editor Bob Benenson writes.

The Democracy Corps survey says that voters in the Republic swing districts rank the war in Iraq as the issue that concerns them most, followed closely by “jobs and the economy” and “terrorism and national security.” Medicare, health care and taxes also rank relatively high. And on every one of these issues except national security, the surveyed voters say Democrats will do a better job.

Still, Republicans have three weeks to catch up with millions of dollars poured strategically into districts to pay for take-no-prisoners campaign tactics. No doubt the saber-rattling in North Korea and even the continued unraveling of Iraq will be used by the Bush administration and the Republican political machine to sow doubt in the minds of wavering voters.

The other problem facing Democrats is that voters don’t like Congress, period: 67 percent of voters either somewhat or strongly disapprove of the job Congress is doing. Republicans get a a large share of the blame because they are in control. But, as a Washington Post story on the Connecticut Senate race shows, incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman is successfully playing to voter perceptions that extreme partisanship on both sides is the reason Congress is ineffective. That has put Democrat Ned Lamont behind despite his boost from progressive Democrats.

There is no dispute that voters are hungry for change and are ready to make a change. Greenberg calls it “an immense opportunity for Democrats to move strategically to consolidate gains at an unimagined level.” The only question remains is whether Democrats will seize it with bold ideas on getting out of Iraq and making our economy work for everyone.

Bush’s Foley
Will the Democrats Blow It?
SAUL LANDAU
October 18, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/landau10182006.html

Less than one month before the November congressional elections, the Great Scriptwriter in the Sky directed Republicans to stage a disruptive sex scandal–for the benefit of the Democrats.

Mark Foley, a Florida Republican stalwart sent lurid emails to underage pages. House Speaker Dennis Hastert apparently ignored warnings given to him in 2003 by Kirk Fordham, a senior aide. Fordham said he alerted Hastert’s office about “worrisome conduct by Rep. Mark Foley toward teenage pages long before officials have acknowledged becoming aware of the issue.” (AP Oct 4) Subsequently, Hastert got other warnings from House Republicans. This information conflicts with the Speaker’s “shocked” response when ABC first published evidence of Foley’s “classical” form of older man-young boy relationship.

As scandal news spread, Democrats called on Hastert to resign. A desperate Hastert turned to his trusted constituency. He made appearances on the Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other right wing talk shows. The former wrestling coach, however, gave bad radio: one-word answers and unconvincing denials.

The Enquirer will feature salacious headline. Millions of supermarket customers will read them while waiting to have their groceries checked. Add to pedophilia on the internet, the less sexy bribery convictions of Republican Congressmen Randy “Duke” Cunningham ( of California) and Robert Ney (of Ohio). Spice the mix with Jack Abramoff’s offering dirty money to buy from Republicans sleazy favors for sleazy clients (ranging from gamblers to sweat shop owners). Hey, the Democrats have a good chance to win back the House!

Candidates in really close races could even refer to the Iraq War and Bush’s supposed war on terrorism as well. Bush has protected known terrorists like Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch who co-authored the sabotage of a Cuban airliner blown up over Barbados in October 1976. Seventy-three passengers and crew members died. Bosch continues to plot terrorism in Cuba as he recently told a reporter–in between visits to his proctologist and gerontologist.

Posada, who also conspired to bomb Cuban tourists sites in the 1990s, one of which resulted in the killing of an Italian tourist, remains in a U.S. jail for “illegal entry”– not terrorism. The Justice Department has thus far not filed serous charges against him and has refused Venezuela’s extradition request.

In five years, Bush’s much trumpeted war on terrorism — can you picture terrorism surrendering? — has yet to result in the conviction of a Guantanamo inmate. Bush has, nevertheless, demanded and gotten congressional authorization to abandon Constitutional guarantees, including some that date back to the Magna Carta.

Congress also gave him permission to torture as well. None of this has helped him with his terrorist war, but he does label the Democrats who opposed these fascist measures “weak.”

Will congressional candidates also highlight Bush-Cheney lies and distortions about reasons for going to war and “staying the course?” Bob Woodward’s new book State of Denial presents a portrait of the White House top staff in a state of doubt and despair while the President paints himself publicly as steadfast and certain.

Democrats might point out similarities that Bush shares with Foley, whose House job was to protect children. The now ex Congressman who just admitted to being gay, reverted to ancient Greek forms of child “protection”–known as pederasty, Bush adapts a less ancient French practice called chicanery.

As the daily carnage in Iraq escalates–between October 1-4, 22 U.S. soldiers died and dozens more were wounded–Bush behaves as if he had a coherent victory strategy. Insurgent attacks have grown to some 800 a week, according to Woodward, but the increasingly huffy Bush, who ran away from even National Guard service, had the chutzpah to accuse his rivals of “cutting and running” instead of staying his disastrous course. (September 30 radio address)

Aspirant for an Illinois House seat Tammy Duckworth answered Bush’s “cut and run” speech on the Democrats’ radio response. The former helicopter pilot and army captain lost her legs in Iraq.

“I did not cut and run,” she replied to Bush. “Like so many others, I proudly fought and sacrificed.” Duckworth criticized Republicans in Congress for failing to hold the Bush administration accountable for his Iraq policy. “We need a Congress that will ask the tough questions, and work together for solutions, rather than attacking the patriotism of those who disagree,” she added.

After 9/11, Bush has repeatedly referred to himself as a war time president. He extolled sacrifice–for others. Bush should make the Guinness Record book for most vacationing president in history. In response to White House charges of their being weak, Democrats could show photos of Bush on holiday at his Crawford ranch for five days while bodies floated through the flooded streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina struck. Then cut to shots of Bush leisurely reading “My Pet Goat” for seven minutes to Florida second graders after an aide had informed him a hijacked jet hit the World Trade Center.

The Democrats have yet to rub Bush’s and Cheney’s faces in the panoply of public evidence of their deception; nor have they forced Republican candidates to confront the Party’s role in Jack Abramoff’s bribery schemes. Indeed, the President has set his theme — his reputed strength versus Democratic weakness — for the November congressional elections. Despite his low poll numbers, Bush confidently states that he and his Party stand for toughness against terrorism while his opponents are possibly traitors. He even had the cheek to try to sell the public on the idea that his critics are “buying into enemy propaganda.”

“You do not create terrorism by fighting terrorism,” Bush lectured the Reserve Officers Association in Washington. “If that ever becomes the mindset of the policymakers in Washington, it means we will go back to the old days of waiting to be attacked and then respond.” (Douglas Stanglin, USA Today, 9/29/06)

Bush, whose then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice had ample warning about the 9/11 attack and did nothing to avert it, picked a military audience to deliver his severe warning. Don’t believe the critics, Bush demanded. He didn’t quite know how to explain a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) from his own Administration that concluded that fighting the war in Iraq has made America less safe. Someone leaked the NIE to the New York Times. Following that, Bush declassified portions of the report.

The idea that the Iraq War had served as a base for jihadists to recruit ever more members, he insisted, came from a misreading of the classified NIE on the war against terrorism. Pretending he had actually read the document, Bush claimed that “some of them selectively quoted from the document to make the case that by fighting terrorists, by fighting them in Iraq, we are making people less secure here at home.

This argument buys into the enemy’s propaganda that the terrorists attack us because we’re provoking them.”

“Their war against us,” Bush averred, “is because they hate the very thing that America stands for,” he said. “And we stand for freedom.” He repeats the word, but each “fighting terrorism” act strips away traditional freedoms. Bush can now order the indefinite detention of any U.S. citizen, resident alien or foreign national in a military prison either in the U.S. soil or abroad. Arrested persons have no recourse to the courts or lawyers. Torturers can descend on them as well, just because Bush or his underlings decided to arrest him. On this issue, the Democrats did not stand tall and filibuster in the Senate or demand extensive hearings. This is the real test of what Bush called the “ideological struggle of the 21st century.”

What does Bush mean by freedom, if it doesn’t include the most traditional rights? He has seriously reduced civil liberties at home and made hideous messes abroad. Bush claims it’s worth the blood and destruction because Iraq and Afghanistan have democracy now. In reality, other than thus far meaningless elections and a U.S.-guarded stock market, Iraq and Afghanistan have little to show for their freedom other than body counts, unemployment and non functional infrastructures.

Five years after the October 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban or rowdy war lords have recaptured much of the country. Newsweek labeled “Jihadistan,” the sanctuary that has emerged across thousands of miles of Afghan-Pakistan border land. This “autonomous quasi state of religious radicals, mostly belongs to Pashtun tribes who don’t recognize the Afghan-Pakistan frontier. [They] openly recruit young men to fight in Afghanistan, and they hold Islamic kangaroo courts that sometimes stage public executions.” (Newsweek, October 2, 2006)

Bush has no funds to invest for his promised Afghan reconstruction. He delivered “$67 a year per Afghan.” (Beth DeGrasse U.S. Institute of Peace)

Bush has given U.S. government wealth in the form of tax cuts to the already super wealthy. He refers to a nation sacrificing for war, while those who benefited from the war support his fiscal largesse. They make no sacrifices.

Bush the “uniter not divider” runs a nation more divided than at any time since the Civil War. Foley at least tried to unite his generation with the current crop of teens. But that’s not in the Democrats’ victory script, nor should it be.

In this “Whom do you believe” November congressional election campaign, the public must decide between the man God told to invade Iraq and the lying documents produced by his intelligence experts.

It’s Even Worse, and Better, Than We Thought: An Address to Democrats Abroad
Bernard Weiner
Oct 18 2006
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/1928

Author’s Note: The Democratic Party sponsors chapters around the world for ex-pat citizens working and living abroad; representatives of these Democrats Abroad chapters are entitled to attend the party’s conventions and help shape the platform.

Two years ago, I was invited to speak to the largest chapter in Germany, in Munich, and last week once again visited that lively group, which in large part echoes the progressive positions of its stateside Democratic activist base. Below are my introductory comments, summing up what the American political situation looks like on the ground; after the talk, we spent another hour on ramifications of U.S. policy toward Iraq, Iran, North Korea, the badly mangled Constitution, torture, the sluggish U.S. economy, etc. These folks are sharp.

Two years ago, six months after the November 2004 election, Democrats Abroad still had no official confirmation that their absentee-ballot votes had been received and accurately registered. I was appalled to learn from DA-Munich chair Shari Temple and Germany DA chair Mitch Wolfson, along with other members, that two years later, the situation, though a bit better, still remains unclear. The chain of custody of those ballots, and of those coming from troops serving abroad, has not improved in all electoral districts and the U.S. voting procedures appeared to be as dangerously manipulatable as in stateside America as well. Disgraceful!

Here is that address to Democrats Abroad (Munich), delivered 11 October, 2006:

Two years ago, when we last met in this same building shortly after the debacle of the 2004 election, the situation in the U.S. was really bad, but not yet desperate. The question then was “how bad would it get under CheneyBush?” The short answer to that question now is “Very VERY bad.” Consider:

* Today, things are so bad in the States for liberals, progressives, Democrats of all stripes that a kind of permanent political depression is the operative mode for so many of us laboring in the anti-Bush, pro-democracy fields.

* So bad that many of my friends and colleagues, depending on what happens November 7, are seriously thinking about getting out while the getting is good, like those who emigrated in fear from late-’30s Germany.

* So bad that one almost doesn’t want to open the newspaper in the morning or listen to the news at night, for the latest Bush&Co. atrocity or policy-disasters — and for how the mainstream, corporate media ignores them or takes the White House spin as its marching orders.

* So bad that, at least on the fringes — from the far Right and the far Left — there is starting to be talk about the possible need for some kind of revolution, even if undefined.

* So bad, that some liberals — yes, liberals! — are starting to float speculation about a military coup to overthrow the Bush Administration.

That’s how far we’ve come in two years.

ON THE OTHER HAND…
The short answer also is: Things are better than they were two years ago. Mainly because the extremism, incompetence and recklessness of the Bush Administration have finally led huge numbers of Americans, especially traditional Republican conservatives, to back away in revulsion from the greedy crooks and arrogant, war-mongering ideologues who rule the GOP these days.

This movement is most significant within the military and intelligence establishments, appalled at what they are being tasked to do; many of these true conservatives are making their views known, sometime openly as retired generals and colonels and CIA agents but also by currently employed operatives and military officers covertly leaking damaging plans and information to civilian spokesmen like Congressman Jack Murtha and reporters like Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker and to leading reporters for the New York Times and Washington Post.

In short, as the polls have been showing for some time, Bush, for the most part, is locked into firm support from only one sector of the populace: his fundamentalist base. His approval numbers have been fluctuating within a fairly narrow range for many months now — roughly mid/low 30s to low-40s.

On the Iraq War, the numbers are even worse; it’s clear that about 2/3 of the American people have come to a collective judgement that the war is a terrible mistake — started from the wrong premises, botched in execution, trapped in an unwinnable stalemate — and that it’s time to figure a way out.

As you can see, the bad news and good news create a kind of emotional roller-coaster ride for those of us politically active types in the States. What it’s like for you up to 6000 miles away, I have no idea, but I’d guess the roller-coaster analogy resonates with you as well. The Democrats cave on Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court and down you go, but Abramoff and Mark Folely explode into the headlines on another day and your mood shifts upwards.

VICTORY FOR DEMS, WITH A BIG “IF”
So, if you ask me what will happen on November 7, I’d have to give you answers from both camps.

My gut tells me that IF the election is an honest one, the Democrats have a good shot at taking back the House, and now they even have a possible shot at the Senate. (Today on the internet, I saw a story that indicated that Republican officials themselves are anticipating a loss in the House of between seven and 30; the Dems need 15 to retake that body.)

The desire for change is so wide-sweeping in the country (aside from that one-third base, who would stick with the Republicans even if photos surfaced of Bush servicing a sheep in the Oval Office), and the Democratic base so fired up, that a sea-change sweep could happen in the House, with a lot of votes coming from disenchanted Republicans across the country. A House victory would mean that starting in January, real investigations could begin, with the Democratic majority in charge of subpoenas, putting witnesses under oath and so on. Even an impeachment resolution is not outside the realm of possibility, though probably not likely, at least not immediately.

That’s my gut. My more realistic side reminds me that I thought much the same in November 2004, and even headed for dinner that evening convinced we’d done it, only to cotton to the theft of that election later that night. (And I, for one, will NEVER forgive Kerry for capitulating so quickly, especially after he promised that he’d fight to the end for a full and fair vote count.)

SLIME, SLEAZE & SUPPRESSION
I am cognizant that there are still several weeks to go before Election Day, and Karl Rove and his minions are out in full force trying, by hook or by crook (emphasis on that latter word), to organize vote totals that, at the least, will minimize the Dem victory to manageable proportions, and, at most, eke out slim victories in enough key districts to retain control of the House.

Democratic candidates are being slimed by Rove’s dirty-tricks folks and the 527 Swiftboat-like PACs. Poll taxes (under the guise of photo IDs) will be keeping many poor, minority and rural voters away from the election polls in many, mostly Southern states. Suppression of minority voting in urban inner-cities moves ahead, right on schedule. A massive get-out-the-vote campaign is being mounted by GOP-supporting churches. Etc. Etc.

And I haven’t even included discussion of possible October “suprises,” such as bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities because of some claimed “imminent” danger to U.S. interests, or announcing the death or capture of Osama bin Laden, or claiming to have averted a major terrorist attack inside the U.S. (None of those possibilities, of course, have to be true; merely asserting them, true or not, gets the job done for Rove&Co. prior to the election.)

MANIPULATING THE NUMBERS
Then there is computer-voting. We know, because it’s been demonstrated in public many times, how easy it is — taking less than a minute — to alter the software programs in computer-voting machines, and in vote-tabulating computers, producing just enough of a secret, undetectable tweak to ensure a 1 or 2% majority for enough Republican candidates to continue controlling the House. Sure it would look downright suspicious and prima facia proof of vote theft. But the key question for the Republicans would be: So what? What would Americans do about yet another election that clearly seems to have been stolen from the people? We know what the Ukranians did, and the Philippinos did, and so on, but Democrats tend to concede early, and tamp down the flames of angry protest.

Per usual, Democrats are a day late and a dollar short on the electoral-integrity issue. Since they didn’t put up much of a fight after 2000, 2002 in Georgia and elsewhere, and in 2004, their trying to play catch-up in the final weeks before the 2006 election could turn out to be a disaster. Only in the last days before Congress’ pre-election adjournment, for example, did a few Democratic senators try to get a national bill guaranteeing verified paper ballots as emergency back-ups for precincts that were having demonstrable problems with their machines. Late again.

If this stolen-election scenario were to play out, with Bush&Co. still in control of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government, along with the Fourth Estate, the mass media, what would America look like for the next two years of Bush’s term?

Short answer: Not good. Domestically, the slide to a native American fascism has been solidified with the recent vote by Congress authorizing torture as state policy, electronic eavesdropping as state policy, military tribunals for those suspected of being terrorists, arrest and detention of American citizens with no access to the courts as state policy, a controlled press under the thumb of the administration, the Judiciary warned into staying out of the Executive’s way, etc. (Heretofore, one could accuse the CheneyBush Administration of skirting the law and Constitution; now that authoritarian approach has been ratified by Congress, supposedly representing the population as a whole. That’s the real depressing aspect of these votes.)

Abroad, CheneyBushRumsfeld would feel emboldened by their electoral “mandate” to ratchet up their war machine, with Iran in their bombsights and perhaps Syria and even Venezuela and North Korea in the on-deck circle. More and more troops would have their rotations delayed or postponed, more and more Guard and Reserve soldiers would head for the Middle East, more mercenaries (”contractors”) would be put into that region. Only as a last-resort would a military draft be re-instated — because Bush&Co. saw what happened during the Vietnam War with such a draft in terms of helping build a huge antiwar movement.

So, what can possibly stop this development toward fascism and imperial conquest?

Short answer: Not much. We’ve just about played all our legal cards.

THE HOPE IN AVALANCHES
The one remaining card is a massive, landslide defeat of GOP candidates in the House and/or the Senate. If the Democrats were to take over one or both of those chambers, they could throw a giant monkey wrench into the policy momentum of the CheneyBush juggernaut, begin to initiate honest investigations of corrupt and dangerous CheneyBush policies and programs, subpoena witnesses, require them to testify under oath, indict them for possible perjury, etc. etc.

At the very least, a Democratic victory in November would offer some hope that the dire situation could be addressed and steps taken to turn this country around and back to political sanity. The courts likewise would read the election returns and begin to act more circumspectly. Similarly, the mass media would feel more empowered to dig deeper into Administration crimes and misdemeanors.

At the very most, Cheney and Bush and Rove and Rumsfeld and Rice would see the handwriting on the wall and moderate their views. Not bloody likely, of course, as these guys will be driven from power only when a political stake is driven through their shriveled hearts.

Alternative point of view: Even if the Democrats were to win big, the Bush bunker crew might well try to ram all their policies through, by executive fiat if necessary, while they still control the military apparatus, the Justice Department, FEMA, etc. — and dare anybody to stop them. That’s been their M.O. to date, so why would they want to, or feel the need to, change?

If the GOP can be decisively defeated on Nov. 7, there won’t be an immediate turnaround, of course, but there will be hope for major changes down the road. If the GOP, through dirty tricks or otherwise, sqeaks through the midterm election not too badly hurt, all those extreme reactions I mentioned at the start of my talk will begin to look more and more necessary to many in order to save our country.

As Tiny Tim might have said: “God help us, everyone.”

What the Dems Will Do If They Take Over
Matt Taibbi
Oct 18 2006
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/1930

Late last week, toward the tail end of my research for the “Worst Congress Ever” story in the current Rolling Stone, New York congressman Charlie Rangel told me an interesting story.

Rangel recounted an incident in the House in which he went over to say hello to Florida Republican Clay Shaw, who had been ill. Although the two men had been longtime political antagonists, and had frequently ripped each other in public during hearings of the Ways and Means committee (Shaw is the committee’s second-ranking Republican, while Rangel is the ranking minority member), they had always maintained a friendly personal relationship. So when Rangel saw that Shaw was back at work, he went over to pay his respects.

“But then a funny thing happened,” said Rangel. “When I got back to my seat, a young Democrat [congressman] leaned over to me, and he said, ‘What was that all about?’ Like there was something wrong with saying hello.” Rangel sighed. “Even in our party, for the younger generation of congressmen, this is all they know. That’s how bad things are between the two parties.”

Rangel was one of a number of people I talked to in congress who spoke wistfully of an age long gone, when congressmen could cross party lines to socialize. But starting in the mid-to-late nineties, things began to change. Among other things, the famed freshman class of 1994 was comprised to a large degree of young congressmen who ran against the institution of congress in their campaigns, promising to shun “Washington politics” and spend more time in their home districts. A new strategy of ironclad party discipline ushered in by Newt Gingrich furthermore decreased opportunities for crossing the aisle on votes; the old days of horse-trading and committee compromises brokered over the weekend on the links of northern Virginia were replaced by party line votes and the three-day work week. A decade later, congress was setting the record for fewest working days ever, and House freshmen don’t even shake hands with the guys on the other side of the floor.

“We used to travel the world together,” sighed Rangel. “Now we don’t even come to Washington long enough to get to know each other.”

There is no question that congress has plunged to historic lows in the last six years, rolling up an impressively ugly record of corruption, failing to get much of anything accomplished in the way of major legislation, racking up an $8 trillion debt and provided the ultimate in matador-defense oversight for the most dangerously incompetent president in recent memory. But there’s a big question about exactly how much of that is the fault of the Republican party alone.

While the fall from grace happened on the Republicans’ watch, the institution in general has seen a massive influx of campaign money and a radical change in the way its members do business since the beginning of the Gingrich years, with lobbyists actually writing the legislation in some cases and members of both parties routinely cramming bills chock full of earmarks and other favors. On the ‘04 election cycle, the Republican party and its politicians collected an obscene $782 million in hard money contributions, but the Democrats weren’t far behind, at $679 million. Those numbers dwarf the amounts seen the last time the Democrats controlled congress - the ‘93-’94 totals were $244 million and $133 million, respectively.

While congressional Democrats have undoubtedly indulged mightily in the earmark revolution, it’s hard to find their fingerprints on the worst abuses of the past decade for the simple reason that the Republicans have done such an incredible job of dominating the legislative process. They have not been targets of corruption because Tom Delay and co. have literally left them with nothing to sell.

“Seriously, one of the reasons you’re not seeing Democrats getting indicted in corruption scandals is that we’ve been out of the loop,” says Rangel, laughing but not joking.

What no one in congress knows — and a lot of staffers I spoke to worried aloud about this — is if Democrats will be any different in that respect than the Republicans if they win this November. The corruption issue is only part of it. More than anything, a lot of Democratic staffers are worried that ten years or so of having the light shut out on them by the majority, being frozen out of conference committees, having cops called to rouse them out of the library, and being denied the chance to offer even the most harmless amendments — that all of this will lead to a long, ugly period of payback time.

“I hope we don’t do the same stuff,” says Jim Berard, a Democratic staffer on the Transportation and Infrastructure.

The upcoming congressional elections are going to important for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being the dramatic change in Congress’s oversight profile should the Democrats win one or both houses. But I don’t see any reason to expect that there will be a dramatic increase in civility or a sudden challenge to corporate influence on the Hill if the Democrats take the House. And as for political partisanship — who knows, it might just be that politics are different now. There are plenty of people out there who think that a lack of cross-party primary voting (leading to fewer centrist candidates) and the increasing sophistication of party fundraising mechanisms (which allow party leaders to exercise greater discipline of its members) are just contributing generally to a more polarized congress, divided up into two homogenous bodies of legislators utterly hostile to each other. The young Democrat sitting next to Rangel who looks at a Republican like a Crip lining up a Blood might be the future of politics generally.

“If Feingold or whoever is president in ‘08,” says defense analyst and former Senate staffer Winslow Wheeler, “don’t expect a sudden flowering of oversight.”

Which is not to say the two parties won’t work together. They will - -just not on anything constructive. What most people fail to understand about congress is that there have been some highly consistent areas of consensus even in these incredibly contentious past ten years. In the areas in which both parties typically agree, like military spending and giveaways to the more generous donor industries, Democrats and Republicans have worked swimmingly even in the most publicly antagonistic periods of the Bush and Clinton years. They helped each other sign off on the Iraq war and stroke the credit industry with the bankruptcy bill. They cooperated to pass a spate of free-trade agreements, the WTO, the MAI, GATT, and a host of other legislative monstrosities.

Where they couldn’t cooperate was in the area of upholding their constitutional responsibilities, and practicing bureaucratic self-defense. The social divide between Republicans and Democrats had to be a big part of the reason congress lacked the institutional stones to really stand up to the president on the torture issue, to fight back when the Vice President ignores a subpoena of the GAO, to demand someone’s head when the defense department openly refuses to audit itself. The Republicans in congress have been so busy in the last ten years figuring out ways to shut Democrats out of the process that they forgot how to stop the Executive Branch from giving it to them up the ass. The result is a congress that is not only grossly corrupt and completely beholden to financial interests, but totally castrated in the national political arena, a tawdry little sideshow that drones on idiotically on CSPAN while the White House rules the country more or less absolutely (an additional insult; not only is the congress a disgrace to two millennia of democratic tradition, it’s the worst show on television).

Think about it; if there’s ever been anything sadder than John McCain “taking a stand” against Bush on the torture bill a few weeks back, have you seen it? I sure haven’t. McCain bent over faster than a college student on his first night in Attica. But I wouldn’t expect anything better out of the Democrats — at least not until they show they can act like adults, and not like the hired clowns of their party’s financial backers. Until that happens, we can expect more of the same: vicious partisan bitching while the cameras are on, obscene handouts behind closed doors.

“You can either govern or you can get even,” says Rangel. “But you can’t do both. I hope we make the right choice.”

A loaves & fishes/Holy Ghost victory for the GOP in November?
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
Oct 18 2006
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/1913

The polls all point to a Democratic sweep in November. The news pours in about pedophile Republicans and Team Bush contempt for their fundamentalist bedmates. Iraq implodes. Deficits soar. Katrina lingers. Scandal is everywhere.

On the other hand, there are rumors of an “October Surprise.” An attack on Iran. A new terror incident. Osama finally captured.

Gas prices are down, the stock market up.

None of it dampens the Democrats’ euphoria. They think they are about to win. In conventional terms, they should.

But think again. Please.

It will take just two Biblical fixes for the GOP to keep the Congress, and thus solidify their power in this country, possibly forever: a loaves and fishes vote count, a Holy Ghost turnout.

We coined the phrase “loaves and fishes vote count” to describe the tally in Gahanna, Ohio, 2004. This infamous precinct in suburban Columbus registered 4258 votes for George W. Bush where just 638 people voted. The blessed event occurred at a fundamentalist church run by a close ally of the Reverend Jerry Falwell.

These numbers were later “corrected.” But they reflect a much larger reality: the 2004 election was stolen with scores of dirty tricks for whose second coming the Democrats have yet to fully prepare.

In the two years since the fraudulent defeat of John Kerry, we’ve unearthed an unholy arsenal by which that election was stolen. They include: outright intimidation, wrongful elimination of registered voters, theft, selective deployment of (often faulty) voting machines, absentee ballots without Kerry’s name on them, absentee ballots pre-punched for Bush, absentee ballots never mailed, touch screens that lit up for Bush when Kerry was chosen, lines for black voters five hours long while white voters a mile away voted in fifteen minutes, tens of thousands of provisional ballots pitched summarily in the trash, alleged ex-felons illegally told they could not vote, Hispanic precincts with no Spanish-speaking poll workers, deliberate misinformation on official web sites…and that’s not even the tip of an iceberg whose bottom we may never see.

Thanks to a federal lawsuit, we have finally been able to look at some of the actual ballots from Ohio 2004. Just for starters, researchers Stuart Wright and Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips have found a precinct in Delaware County where 359 consecutive voters allegedly cast ballots for Bush. Dr. Ron Baiman found another precinct in Clermont County where a random inspection found 36 straight replacement ballots, a phenomenon that can be accomplished only by divine intervention or outright fraud.

These initial snippets have been unearthed with no cooperation or participation from the Democratic Party. The official Democratic spin is that they have “looked into the matter.” But public records indicate that they have yet to visit the actual ballot storage facilities to examine the public records from the 2004 election.

In sum, we see no indication that the Democrats are prepared for the inevitable…that Karl Rove will steal again, and more, in 2006.

In Ohio alone, four election boards have already eliminated some 500,000 voters since the 2000 election—ten percent of the state’s electorate—from the registration rolls in four Democratic counties. No similar purges have occurred in rural Republican counties. The Democrats have said or done very little about it.

To date there is no logical explanation from John Kerry as to why he conceded with 250,000 votes still uncounted while Bush’s alleged margin was just half that. Nor have we heard about Democrat plans to monitor the ever-larger numbers of electronic voting machines deployed throughout the United States with no paper trail and no transparency for programming codes and memory cards that are privately owned, with no public inspection allowed.

Which is brings us to the Holy Ghost turnout. As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has reported in Rolling Stone Magazine, in Georgia 2002, U.S. Senate incumbent Max Cleland went into Election Day with a very substantial lead in the polls. He proceeded to allegedly lose by a substantial margin. Church-state operatives like Ralph Reed attributed this astonishing turn-around to an alleged last-minute mass turnout of evangelical voters.

Similar things were said about Florida and Ohio 2004.

But it never happened. There are no visual reports or other reliable indicators of extraordinary lines or massive late-in-the-day crowds at the polls. Throughout all those election days, it was every bit as quick and easy to vote in rural precincts that gave Bush his miraculous victory as it was impossible to do so in your average black neighborhood. But there was no extraordinary turnout of last-minute Bush voters.

What happened instead hearkens to the Holy Ghost, made manifest in electronic voting machines that cannot and will not be monitored. The miraculous pro-Bush margins give new meaning to the phrase “ghost in the machine.” While the Democratic vote count was slashed and trashed in urban precincts, the rural voting stations, through the miracle of untrackable electronics, materialized just the right number of GOP votes to keep the Men of God in the White House (where it’s recently reported they dare to mock those earthly evangelicals who allegedly gave them their margin of victory).

There’s absolutely nothing to prevent this from happening again in 2006. Major studies from the Conyers Committee, the Government Accountability Office, Princeton University, the Brennan Center, the Carter-Baker Commission, and esteemed others, have all come to the same conclusion: it takes just one individual with inside access—or even just a wi-fi machine—to change the outcome of any election anywhere.

Electronic voting machines can be pre-programmed, re-programmed, re-calibrated, electronically adjusted, hacked, jimmied, jammed or otherwise blessed with a few well-placed electrons and—LO AND BEHOLD!—a Democratic landslide can be born again to a Republican deliverance.

We already see the signs. The corporate bloviators predict a last-minute surge for Bush. The Fox/Rove media machine has planted suggestive stories at the New York Times and elsewhere about the alleged hidden powers of the GOP juggernaut. They will, they say, once again turn out those invisible legions of evangelical voters when and where necessary.

Every two years, Rove leaks some story that is implausible and easily refuted: four million new evangelical voters are identified nationwide; or, a late surge of homophobic Old Order Amish rush to the polls in Ohio; or shy and reluctant right-wing Republican women flood the polls at closing and slip out unseen without speaking to exit pollsters (but, they are only shy in the early evening in Republican counties).

And the Democrats? They say they are also turning out voters. But what happens when their names are miraculously gone from the new electronic registration rolls? When there aren’t enough machines in their precincts on which to vote? When they press a Democratic name on their touch-screen and an anointed Republican’s lights up? Or when techno-gods from private partisan vendors barge in unchallenged to “adjust” the e-machines in the middle of the voting process.

So far, the Democrats have heaped abuse on those who dare to warn of all this.

But as it is written, so it shall be: unless there are armies of trained, dedicated citizens prepared to monitor this upcoming election, electronic and otherwise, the Holy Ghosts will vote, the loaves & fishes will multiply and be counted, and the GOP will once again emerge with total control of the checks and the balances—this time, perhaps, for all Eternity.

What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

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