Four
More Years
Uncle
Bill Warner
There
used to be a story going around back in the days after President
"I am not a crook" Nixon resigned about a young reporter
interviewing him. "I am thinking about running again",
said Nixon. "Honestly?" queried the reporter. " No,
same way as last time." Well, I am just paranoid enough after
the stolen election of 2000 to suspect some pretty outrageous tricks
in this election year when the economy, the war, and the Constitution
are all going down the toilet thanks to the efforts of the present
administration. If Bush and Co. are going to retain control of Washington
so they can continue to continue their campaign to transfer wealth
from the poor to the rich and to maximize profits for all of their
big campaign contributors, they had better start (I'm sure they
already have) considering ways to steal the election. Let's see...what
might be the best way?
The first thing
that pops to mind in my conspiratorially-oriented thinking is that
they might discover those WMD's that were the reason for going to
war and somehow could never be found. Couldn't something be planted
and then discovered? Well....that might work, but if the subterfuge
were to be discovered, it would do more damage than just ignoring
the affair. Probably won't happen.
The next scenario
involved suddenly "finding" Bin Laden right before the
election. Prisoner "Triple X", who has been hidden from
the Red Cross at Abu Ghraib could just be him... But would even
finding this scapegoat for all of our ills be enough to raise Bush's
sinking ship? Dunno. It might.
The huge war
chest raised from all those super-rich contributors could be used
to wreak a lot of mischief in the form of smear campaigns against
Kerry...which is not as hard as you think when you consider who
owns the media, and repeating lies often enough sets them as truth
in the minds of people whose only source of news analysis comes
from people like Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh. This seems likely
to happen. "Unofficial" Bush support and Kerry smear ads
and mailings (personalized by computer) will inundate the voting
public.
Ralph Nader
is probably the most important man in America at the moment. If
he runs as an independent and wins votes away from Kerry, Bush could
win. This fact has not been lost on Republicans, who have created
support groups to funnel money to the Nader Campaign. He can feel
pretty safe, because his chances of dying in a light plane crash
are near zero. My own take on why Nader is even in the race is to
get media exposure for his ideas, and also to move Kerry a bit to
the left. I think Kerry will make a couple of promises to Ralph,
and Nader will throw his support to Kerry in return.
Perhaps the
scariest scenario is the rigged election. The 2000 Florida election
was a classic , ranging from the illegal disqualification of approximately
ninety thousand eligible voters to blocking access to the
polls. And then there were the famous "chads." And the
fact that the governor of the state was Bush's brother, and the
person that counted the votes and certified the results (and spent
$4,000,000 of the taxpayers money to have a private group remove
people from the roles if they had names that even resembled those
of ineligible felons) was a leading Bush operative. And then there
was the Republican Supreme Court who chose Bush as the winner. If
you have any doubt that the Florida election could set the tone
for the next election, why not surf up "Florida, rigged election"
on Google or read Greg Palast's book ,"The Best Democracy Money
Can Buy."
Another Republican
strategy has always been to carefully cultivate the idea among potential
voters that "there is no difference between the parties."
Well...if there is no difference between parties, why bother to
vote? It is pretty well documented that most of the people that
don't vote are those who would vote Democrat if they did. The Republicans
know what they are voting for, and turn out. Then also there is
the fact that the Republicans are pouring a LOT of money into registering
more Republicans, mainly young people who don't have many political
"smarts." Hey, even I got suckered into voting for Nixon
by a paid canvasser when I was in college. What did I know about
him other than he had someone going from door to door. Luckily,
Kennedy won without my vote. In some countries, there is a fine
for not voting. Here, it is almost something people brag about.
I have even heard the stupidest statement of all, "Why vote
for anyone? It will just encourage them." And people in Third
World stand in line for hours and risk death to vote...
The scariest
scenario involves rigging voting machines. The machine that is Tulare
County's choice is made by Diebold. You have doubtless used one
of their ATM's. ATM's are pretty reliable, and I am sure their voting
machines are too. The problem is not reliability, as I see it, but
with the process of counting the votes. Walden O'Dell, CEO of Diebold
is a committed Bush supporter, and last August did a fund-raising
letter in which he said he was " committed to helping Ohio
deliver its electoral votes to the President..." Now, Ohio
being one of the key states, that scares the hell out of me. Having
private companies so involved in the voting and counting is bad
enough, but to have them manned by people with an interest in the
outcome of the election is mind-blowing. Using machines that leave
a paper trail would help, but cheating would still a possibility.
Changing votes would not be on a huge, blatant scale, but just a
few here and there...just enough to make a difference in the end,
like in Florida. Even if this scam was exposed after the election,
it would be too late...the election would stand, as it did on 2000.
Well, your
guess is as good as mine as to what will happen. As it is evident
by now, the guiding principle of our present administration is "The
ends justify the means", whether it has to do with authorizing
torture or taking away out constitutional rights in the name of
"National interest. " Let's see what " means"
we are going to see used between now and election day to guarantee
four more years.
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