Storm clouds on the horizon
We Americans are desensitized to the friendly fascism in our nation, I know. The carefully, ruthlessly, unscrupulously stolen 2000 presidential election. The war (profiteering) in Iraq that was launched from a mountain of lies. The electronic voting machines that leave no paper trail (and the Republicans want it that way). "No Child Left Behind" actually means millions of children left behind, and the "Clear Skies Initiative" actually means more air pollution. The Orwellian-named USA PATRIOT Act, whose very name clearly suggests that if you have any problems with it, you're an unpatriotic, terrorist-sympathizing traitor. Abu Ghraib.
But we need to wake the fuck up, because the Republicans look like they're gearing up to steal yet another presidential election.
Reports Reuters today (salient portions in bold):
WASHINGTON -- A senior House Democratic lawmaker was skeptical [today] of a Bush administration idea to obtain the authority to delay the November presidential election in case of an attack by al-Qaeda.
U.S. counterterrorism officials are looking at an emergency proposal on the legal steps needed to postpone the presidential election in case of such an attack, Newsweek reported [today].
"I think it's excessive based on what we know," said Rep. Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, in a interview on CNN's "Late Edition."
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned last week that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network want to attack within the United States to try to disrupt the election.
Harman said Ridge's threat warning "was a bust" because it was based on old information.
Newsweek cited unnamed sources who told it that the Department of Homeland Security asked the Justice Department last week to review what legal steps would be needed to delay the vote if an attack occurred on the day before or on Election Day.
The department was asked to review a letter from DeForest Soaries, chairman of the new U.S. Election Assistance Commission, in which he asked Ridge to ask Congress for the power to put off the election in the event of an attack, Newsweek reported in its issue out on Monday.
The commission was created in 2002 to provide funds to states to replace punch card voting systems and provide other assistance in conducting federal elections.
In his letter, Soaries wrote that while New York's Board of Elections suspended primary elections in New York on the day of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, "the federal government has no agency that has the statutory authority to cancel and reschedule a federal election."
Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Rochrkasse told the magazine the agency is reviewing the matter "to determine what steps need to be taken to secure the election."
Republican Rep. Christopher Cox of California, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, told CNN that the idea of legislation allowing the election to be postponed was similar to what had already been looked at in terms of how to respond to an attack on Congress.
"These are doomsday scenarios. Nobody expects that they're going to happen," he said. "But we're preparing for all these contingencies now."
Certainly the Bush regime should have no authority whatsofuckingever to cancel or reschedule a presidential election.
The idea of the creation of a federal "agency that has the statutory authority to cancel and reschedule a federal election" is chilling. The creation of the Homeland Security Department was a step toward Orwellian totalitarianism that was and remains chilling enough. What might a federal agency with the power to determine whether or not and when a presidential election will still take place come up with? No election until and unless Bush's approval ratings are up? Certainly that's what the Bush regime would decide if it had the power to cancel or reschedule a presidential election -- power the Bush regime appears to want.
It was bad enough that the Republicans stole the 2000 presidential election. The Republicans got away with it, so now they're trying to see if they can do away with elections altogether -- or at least to postpone them until political circumstances are more in their favor.
If the Bush regime were trustworthy, I would trust that an election would not be postponed unless a terrorist attack happened on election day or the day before election day, as the Reuters story indicates. That would be reasonable. But the Bush regime promised us that it would exhaust every last diplomatic effort before it would invade Iraq. The United Nations Security Council said "no," the Bush regime said "Fuck you" to the Security Council, and the Bush regime invaded Iraq anyway in March 2003. The Bush regime lied. The Bush regime cannot be trusted.
Nor should the Bush regime have any say over the postponement of a presidential election anyway, as its conflict of interest in the matter is fucking obvious.
As usual, what the Bush regime says it wants -- contingency plans in case of a terrorist attack on or around Election Day on Nov. 2 -- is a lot more noble than what it really wants -- to sway another presidential election if it has the chance. And what the Bush regime says it will do -- leave no child behind, provide clear skies, reduce the chances of terrorist strikes -- is the opposite of what it actually will do. (Do you think for two seconds that if terrorists struck the United States a week before Election Day the Bush regime would not try to postpone the election?)
This is fucking bullshit.
The Republicans got away with engineering one election. If they try to engineer another, there will be civil disobedience like this nation has never seen, and I will be part of it.
As "President" Bush said in Nashville, Tenn., in September 2002: "There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably [also] in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."
The Bush regime has milked 9/11 for all it has been worth. It got its war in Iraq even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and even though no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has been discovered. The Bush regime has shit and pissed on the the environment, on the economy, on healthcare, on labor, on the federal budget, on the United States' global reputation -- on just about everything on which it can shit and piss, the Bush regime has -- all in the name of 9/11 and the neocons' "war on terror."
Enough is fucking enough. The 9/11 gravy train is over.
We want our country back, and if the Bush regime uses 9/11 to subvert yet another presidential election, there will be another civil war -- and the blue states will win again.
10:21:18 PM 
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