rigorousintuition.ca

Posted: **Tue Nov 07, 2006 12:10 pm**

UK), Comment is Free Monday November 6, 2006 Here’s how the 2006 mid-term election was stolen. Note the past tense. And I’m not kidding. And shoot me for saying this, but it won’t be stolen by jerking with the touch-screen machines (though they’ll do their nasty part). While progressives panic over the viral spread of suspect computer black boxes, the Karl Rove-bots have been tunneling into the vote vaults through entirely different means. For six years now, our investigations team, at first on assignment for BBC TV and the Guardian, has been digging into the nitty-gritty of the gaming of US elections. We’ve found that November 7, 2006 is a day that will live in infamy. Four and a half million votes have been shoplifted. Here’s how they’ll do it, in three easy steps: Theft #1: Registrations gone with the wind On January 1, 2006, while America slept off New Year’s Eve hangovers, a new federal law crept out of the swamps that has devoured 1.9 million votes, overwhelmingly those of African-Americans and Hispanics. The vote-snatching statute is a cankerous codicil slipped into the 2002 Help America Vote Act — strategically timed to go into effect in this mid-term year. It requires every state to reject new would-be voters whose identity can’t be verified against a state verification database. Sounds arcane and not too threatening. But look at the numbers and you won’t feel so fine. About 24.3 million Americans attempt to register or re-register each year. The New York University Law School’s Brennan Center told me that, under the new law, Republican Secretaries of State began the year by blocking about one in three new voters. How? To begin with, Mr. Bush’s Social Security Administration has failed to verify 47% of registrants. After appeals and new attempts to register, US Elections Assistance Agency statistics indicate 1.9 million would-be voters will still find themselves barred from the ballot on Tuesday. But don’t worry: those holding passports from their ski vacations to Switzerland are doing just fine. And that’s the point. It’s not the number of voters rejected, it’s their color. For example, California’s Republican Secretary of State Bruce McPherson figured out how to block 40% of registrants, mostly Hispanics. In a rare counter-move, Los Angeles, with a Hispanic mayor, contacted these citizens, “verified” them and got almost every single one back on the rolls. But throughout the rest of the West, new Hispanics remain victims of the “Jose Crow” treatment. In hotly contested Ohio, Kenneth Blackwell, Secretary of State and the Republican’s candidate for Governor, remains voter-rejection champ — partly by keeping the rejection criteria a complete secret. Theft #2: Turned Away - the ID game A legion of pimple-faced Republicans with Blackberries loaded with lists of new voters is assigned to challenge citizens in heavily Black and Hispanic (i.e. Democratic) precincts to demand photo ID that perfectly matches registration data. Sounds benign, but it’s not. The federal HAVA law and complex new ID requirements in states like New Mexico will easily allow the GOP squads to triple the number of voters turned away. Rather than deny using these voter suppression tactics, Republican spokesmen are claiming they are “protecting the integrity of the vote.” I’ve heard that before. In 2004, we got our hands on fifty confidential internal memos from the files of the Republican National Committee. Attached to these were some pretty strange spreadsheets. They called them “caging lists” — and it wasn’t about zoo feeding times. They were lists (70,000 for Florida alone) of new Black and Jewish voters — a very Democratic demographic — to challenge on Election Day. The GOP did so with a vengeance: In 2004, for the first time in half a century, more than 3.5 million voters were challenged on Election Day. Worse, nearly half lost their vote: 300,000 were turned away for wrong ID; 1.1 million were allowed a “provisional” ballot — which was then simply tossed out. Tomorrow, new federal ID requirements and a dozen new state show-me-your-ID laws will permit the GOP challenge campaign to triple their 300,000 record to nearly one million voters blocked. Theft #3: Votes Spoiled Rotten The nasty little secret of US elections is that three million ballots are cast in national elections but not counted — 3,600,380 not counted in 2004 according to US Election Commission stats. These are votes lost because a punch card didn’t punch (its chad got “hung”), a stray mark voided a paper ballot and other machinery glitches. Officials call it “spoilage.” I call it, “inaugurating Republicans.” Why? According to statisticians working with the US Civil Rights Commission, the chance your vote will “spoil” this way is 900% higher for Black folk and 500% higher for Hispanics than for white voters. When we do the arithmetic, we find that well over half of all votes spoiled or “blank” are cast by voters of color. On balance, this spoilage game produces a million-vote edge for the GOP. That’s where the Black Boxes come into play. Forget about Karl Rove messing with the software to change your vote. Rather, the big losses occur when computers crash, fail to start or simply don’t respond to your touch. They are the new spoilage machines of choice with, statistically, the same racial bias as the old vote-snatching lever machines. (Funny, but paper ballots with in-precinct scanners don’t go rotten on Black voters. Maybe that’s why Republican Secretaries of State have installed so few of them.) So Let’s Add it Up Two million legitimate voters will be turned away because of wrongly rejected or purged registrations. Add another one million voters challenged and turned away for “improper ID.” Then add yet another million for Democratic votes “spoiled” by busted black boxes and by bad ballots. And let’s not forget to include the one million “provisional” ballots which will never get counted. Based on the experience of 2004, we know that, overwhelmingly, minority voters are the ones shunted to these baloney ballots. And there’s one more group of votes that won’t be counted: absentee ballots challenged and discarded. Elections Assistance Agency data tell us a half million of these absentee votes will go down the drain. Driving this massive suppression of the vote are sophisticated challenge operations. And here I must note that the Democrats have no national challenge campaign. That’s morally laudable; electorally suicidal. Add it all up — all those Democratic-leaning votes rejected, barred and spoiled — and the Republican Party begins Election Day with a 4.5 million-vote thumb on the vote-tally scale. So, what are you going to do about it? May I suggest you… steal back your vote. It’s true you can’t win with 51% of the vote anymore. So just get over it. The regime’s sneak attack via vote suppression will only net them 4.5 million votes, about 5% of the total. You should be able to beat that blindfolded. If you can’t get 55%, then you’re just a bunch of crybaby pussycats who don’t deserve to win back America. ******** Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, “ARMED MADHOUSE.”

Posted: **Tue Nov 07, 2006 4:11 pm**

GIVE US THE WORD By Sheila Samples 11/07/2006 09:13:05 AM EST Never in its 230-year history has America been in such peril. It is up to us to keep George Bush from further ransacking of this great nation. We must not wake up the day after the elections and realize -- too late -- that we failed to vote when "Democracy" was the single most important issue on the ballot. By Sheila Samples Under the Bush bridge Lying, dueling-banjo words Need a Fix. The Word.* When I awoke on December 13, 2000, my first thought was -- this is the first day of the worst years of my life. I lay there, attempting in vain to come up with just one redeeming quality possessed by the foolish little brute illegally foisted upon this republic by five black-robed fascists -- just one sliver of hope for the American people to escape the impending disaster of corporate pillage and rape. There was none. What a dirty, rotten way to start the day. Each day has been nastier than the one before. Despair spiraling into dread before exploding into a cacophony of lies, deceit, filthy corruption, and nauseating perversion. And that's just the media. No entity is as ruthless nor works with more relentless fervor to protect the criminals in this administration -- and cover up their crimes -- than the US mainstream media. And few are better at it than MSNBC's Chris Matthews who, after weeks of smearing Democratic candidates and praising their Republican opponents, finally gave up Saturday and declared if Tuesday's election "breaks bad for the president," the "world press, which is anti-American already, will jump on this and say Bush has lost his control over his own government. It'll look bad for the president and world diplomacy." As a last resort before the elections, Matthews played the patriotism card that has been so successful since 9-11 -- if the Democrats win, Bush will look weak in a time of war. A vote for a Democrat is a vote for the terrorists. And the day before, ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked Cheney the Veep if the recent violence in Iraq that resulted in 105 American soldiers and marines being blown to bits in October was an insurgent "strategy" to influence the midterm elections. "Does that mean," Stephanopoulos prompted Cheney innocently, "that a Democratic victory is a victory for the insurgents?" Bush tossed this particular talking point to the media during an Oct. 30 campaign speech at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro -- "However they put it, the Democrat (sic) approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses," Bush said with a smirk and a wink. "That's what's at stake in this election. The Democrat (sic) goal is to get out of Iraq. The Republican goal is to win in Iraq." Bullhorn politics. Flaming world, smoke spewing souls. Prosecute. The Word. With few exceptions, the media is a "bully" bullhorn for the lies and deceit spewed from this administration, no matter how many innocent lives it costs. WMD in Iraq? You betcha. Osama Bin Laden is Saddam Hussein's bitch? Sure thing. Don't ask questions about what really happened on 9-11 -- No way. Forget Abu Ghraib -- the six or seven bad apples were brought to justice -- No problem. Don't humanize anybody getting slaughtered in Iraq; 655,000 or 30,000 -- what's the difference? They're dying because they want to be free, just like we are. If you gotta call 'em something, call them "insurgents" and call us"troops." And don't show any ugly pictures. Sir, Yes Sir! They are desperate. The John Kerry fiasco last week is a shining example of just how down and dirty they're willing to go. In a botched one-liner, Kerry told a group of students -- "...if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." Although they all knew at the outset that Kerry was taking a jab at Bush for getting "us" stuck in Iraq, which is what his prepared comments said, the networks, cables, right-wing radio, Internet websites, and even some Democrats, hopped on Kerry like chickens on a June Bug. "Kerry insulted the troops!" they shrieked, "leaving out that word broke the morale of 158,000 troops! The troops are doomed -- and all because of John Kerry!" Perhaps to avoid insulting the troops, Kerry should have said -- "As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time." Or maybe he should have sneered at the 11 million Americans drafted during Vietnam as "draftees who added no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services over any sustained period of time, because the churning that took place, it took enormous amount of effort in terms of training, and then they were gone." Is it not an insult to the "troops" for the media to hide the return of the wounded, maimed -- the slain? Dead or alive, all are heroes. Where are the grateful masses who should be giving each one a hero's welcome? Having worked for the Army for 30 years, each day both a challenge and a delight, I can assure you the greatest insult to the "troops" is to have Commander-in-Chief Bush hide them from view, refuse to attend a single funeral of those he sent to theiir deaths on the basis of filthy lies, and then stomp around on the hallowed ground of Arlington National Cemetery for 15 minutes a year while telling a pre-selected partisan crowd how he "grieves 'n mourns" for those who "died for a noble cause." Screw him. And his little lapdog media, too. A media which was out to lunch on Oct. 10 when insurgents fired mortars and rockets into Forward Base Falcon where huge stores of ammunition, fuel, weapons, tanks and other vehicles were stored. The base erupted with immense explosions and huge fires that raged throughout the night, and could be seen for miles. Other than being used briefly as a backdrop during the initial report of the "incident," the fires and coverage of the deadliest Iraq disaster thus far disappeared from our view. This is a huge story, reported by foreign media and throughout the Internet; yet, no US media dared touch it. No media dared report less than a month before the elections that more than 300 Americans were killed and 165 wounded, or that the bulk of US ammunition, equipment and supplies had been destroyed in one fell swoop. Photos of a convoy of large planes with Red Cross markings taking the dead and wounded to the U.S. military hospital at al-Habaniyah was more than American voters could take, and would give the terrorists a win... Lost. Wide-eyed. Silent. Crouching in the far corner Waiting for The Word. October was a bitch, the fourth deadliest month of the war, with the official count of slain "troops" at 109. Even pro-war New York Senator Hillary Clinton was relieved that it was finally over. Before launching into the politics of the war, Clinton remarked on Nov. l -- "In human terms, this has been a horrible month." November is also off to a grisly start, if you consider it in human terms, with 18 US deaths recorded in the first six days. Some Americans turn off the media at the end of the day and drift off to sleep, secure in the knowledge that things are boffo in Iraq -- getting better day by day. The rest of us jerk the cords from our computers and pace the floor in anguished frustration, bruised by the knowledge that America's sons and daughters are being blown to bits, felled by snipers' bullets at that very moment. Perhaps that is because the only sane way to look at a war is in human terms... We are awake now, and we must never forget what George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Michael Ledeen, Michael Chertoff, John Negroponte, and so many other players and pundits, with the help of the corporate media and the entire Republican congress, have done, all of which is miniscule compared to what they plan to do if left unchecked. Never in our 230-year history has this nation been in such peril. We know America was founded with a foreordained mission to protect personal liberty and freedom and basic inalienable rights of its citizens. We know that the unelected George Bush despises the US Constitution, has called it just a "G--damn piece of paper," and has granted himself the power to take away our freedoms protected by that piece of paper. Bush is the Decider -- the Commander in Chief -- and he can do whatever he damn well pleases to whomever he damn well pleases, whenever he damn well pleases.. And he can do this -- because we let him. Lips fixed to ear. Yo. Is anybody in there? I need The Word. Damn. We know we are all that stand between George Bush and the ransacking of this great nation -- affordable medicines and health care for senior citizens, the future of Social Security and Medicare, the environment, corporate reforms, a spiriling deficit, jobs... We are the only ones who can prevent further deregulation of business, who can prevent our domestic policies being manipulated in favor of corporations and the wealthy. We must not wake up the day after the elections and realize -- too late -- that we failed to vote when "Democracy" was the single most important issue on the ballot. We must not allow our glorious Flag to become our funeral shroud by cynically refusing to vote. We must not give the jackals in the White House carte blanche to establish martial "order" or to destroy our our freedoms -- our way of life. Sure, we're going to have problems at the polls. The Republicans learned a trick in Florida in 2000; it worked for them in 2002 and again in 2004, and they're determined to repeat it in 2006 and 2008 in every state across this country. Because the only way they can win is to convince Democrats that their vote is useless. They know they cannot fix enough e-voting machines to counter a massive wave of Democratic voters. According to investigative reporter, Greg Palast, that's what it's going to take. Palast's investigation reveals that Republican operatives will succeed in suppressing or tossing out about 4.5-million votes, or 5 percent of those cast for Democratic candidates. Palast says, "get over it," and go for a winning 55 percent rather than the 51 percent it should take to legally win an election. We have awakened to 2,125 days of hopelessness and despair. It's time to put a stop to this madness. We have reached the "end of the day." When we open our eyes on November 8, our first thought will be -- this is the first day of the best years of our lives. Because the word we have sought for so long is -- Victory. Finally -- the feast. Munching, crunching, savoring. The Word. VICTORY! *Note: A series of my heartfelt haiku pleadings with SF Chronicle's peerless Mark Morford to reinstate his "Daily Word" wherein he gave definitions of words as well as a "usage example," which featured the frighteningly fantastic foibles of Lynne Cheney. An example... "THE DAILY WORD" It's almost like learning something conenose'kon-'noz\ noun (ca. 1891) Any of various large blood-sucking bugs and esp. some assassin bugs (genus Triatoma) including some capable of inflicting painful bites Usage example: Like a drunken swarm of teething screeching winged conenose did the GOP swoop into power as their hordes of bored, rich, old white men ripped off their shirts and smeared war paint on their boil-crusted chests and proceeded to dance on the hopes and dreams and peace-craving souls of millions of misguided citizens, as Lynne Cheney twitched and giggled in horrific ecstacy." Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at rsamples@sirinet.net KEYWORDS: George Bush, lapdog media, Victory

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how they stole the mid-term election

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