| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Michelle Malkin" |
| Date: |
30 Jul 2007 06:38:26 PM |
| Object: |
What Will You Do When the GOP Cancels the 2008 Election? |
Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis: What Will YOU Do When the GOP Cancels the
2008 Election?
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Mon, 07/30/2007 - 3:16pm.
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis
It is time to think about the "unthinkable." The Bush Administration has
both the inclination and the power to cancel the 2008 election. The GOP
strategy for another electoral theft in 2008 has taken clear shape, though
we must assume there is much more we don't know.
But we must also assume that if it appears to Team Bush/Cheney/Rove that the
GOP will lose the 2008 election anyway (as it lost in Ohio 2006), we cannot
ignore the possibility that they would simply cancel the election. Those who
think this crew will quietly walk away from power are simply not paying
attention. The real question is not how or when they might do it. It's how,
realistically, we can stop them.
In Florida 2000, Team Bush had a game plan involving a handful of tactics.
With Jeb Bush in the governor's mansion, the GOP used a combination of
disenfranchisement, intimidation, faulty ballots, electronic voting fraud, a
rigged vote count, and an aborted recount, courtesy of the U.S. Supreme
Court. A compliant Democrat (Al Gore) allowed the coup to be completed.
In Ohio 2004, the arsenal of dirty tricks exploded. Based in Columbus, we
have documented more than a hundred different tactics used to steal the 20
electoral votes that gave Bush a second term. More are still surfacing. As a
result of the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal lawsuit (in which we are
plaintiff and attorney), we have now been informed that 56 of the 88
counties in Ohio violated federal law by destroying election records, thus
preventing a definitive historical recount. As in 2000, a compliant Democrat
(John Kerry) allowed the coup to proceed.
For 2008 we expect the list of vote theft maneuvers to escalate yet again.
We are already witnessing a coordinated nationwide drive to destroy voter
registration organizations and to disenfranchise millions of minority, poor
and young voters.
This carefully choreographed campaign is complemented by the widespread use
of electronic voting machines. As reported by the Government Accountability
Office, Princeton University, the Brennan Center, the Carter-Baker
Commission, U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and others, these machines can be
easily used to flip an election. They were integral to stealing both the
2000 and 2004 elections. Efforts to make their source codes transparent, or
to require a usable paper trail on a federal level, have thus far failed. A
discriminatory Voter ID requirement may also serve as the gateway to a
national identification card.
Overall, the GOP will have at its command even more weapons of election
theft in 2008 than it did in Ohio 2004, which jumped exponentially from
Florida 2000. The Rovian GOP is nothing if not tightly organized to do this
with ruthless efficiency. Expect everything that was used these past two
presidential elections to surface again in 2008 in far more states, with far
more efficiency, and many new dirty tricks added in.
But in Ohio 2006, the GOP learned a hard lesson. Its candidate for governor
was J. Kenneth Blackwell: the Secretary of State who was the essential
on-the-ground operative in the theft of Ohio 2004.
When he announced for governor, many Ohioans joked that "Ken Blackwell will
never lose an election where he counts the votes."
But lose he did.... along with the GOP candidates for Secretary of State,
Attorney General, and U.S. Senate.
By our calculations, despite massive grassroots scrutiny, the Republicans
stole in excess of 6% of the Ohio vote in 2006. But they still lost.
Why? Because they were so massively unpopular that even a 6% bump couldn't
save them. Outgoing Governor Bob Taft, who pled guilty to four misdemeanors
while in office, left town with a 7% approval rating (that's not a typo).
Blackwell entered the last week of the campaign down 30% in some polls.
So while the GOP still had control of the electoral machinery here in 2006,
the public tide against them was simply too great to hold back, even through
the advanced art and science of modern Rovian election theft.
In traditional electoral terms, that may also be the case in 2008. Should
things proceed as they are now, it's hard to imagine any Republican
candidate going into the election within striking distance. The potential
variations are many, but the graffiti on the wall is clear.
What's also clear is that this Administration has a deep, profound and
uncompromised contempt for democracy, for the rule of law, and for the U.S.
Constitution. When George W. Bush went on the record (twice) as saying he
has nothing against dictatorship, as long as he can be dictator, it was a
clear and present policy statement.
Who really believes this crew will walk quietly away from power? They have
the motivation, the money, and the method for doing away with the electoral
process altogether. So why wouldn't they?
The groundwork for dismissal of both the legislative and judicial branch has
been carefully laid. The litany is well-known, but worth a very partial
listing:
The continuation of the drug war, and the Patriot Act, Homeland Security
Act, and other dictatorial laws prompted by the 9/11/2001 terror attacks
have decimated the Bill of Rights, and shredded the traditional American
right to due process of law, freedom from official surveillance, arbitrary
violence, and far more.
The current Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, has not backed away from his
announcement to Congress that the Constitution does not guarantee habeas
corpus. The administration continues to act on the assumption that it can
arrest anyone at any time and hold them without notification or trial for as
long as it wants.
The establishment of the Homeland Security Agency has given it additional
hardware to decimate the basic human rights of our citizenry. Under the
guise of dealing with the "immigration problem," large concentration camps
are under construction around the U.S.
The administration has endorsed and is exercising its "right" to employ
torture, contrary to the Eighth Amendment and to a wide range of
international treaties, which Gonzales has labeled "quaint."
With more than 200 "signing statements," the administration acts on its
belief that the "unitary executive" trumps the power of the legislative
branch in any instance it chooses. This belief has been further enforced
with the administration's use of a wide range of precedent-setting arguments
to keep its functionaries from testifying before Congress.
There is much more. In all instances, the 109th Congress -- and the
public -- have rolled over without significant resistance.
Most crucial now are Presidential Directive #51, Executive Orders #13303,
#13315, #13350, #13364, #13422, #13438, and more, by which Bush has granted
himself an immense arsenal of powers for which the term "dictatorial" is a
modest understatement.
The Founders established our government with checks and balances. But
executive orders have accumulated important precedent. The Emancipation
Proclamation by which Lincoln declared an end to slavery in the South, was
issued under the "military necessity" of adding blacks to the Union Army, a
step without which the North might not have won the Civil War. Franklin
Roosevelt's Executive Order #8802 established the Fair Employment Practices
Commission. Harry Truman's Executive Order #9981 desegregated the military.
Most to the point, FDR's Executive Order #9066 ordered the forcible
internment of 100,000 people of Japanese descent into the now infamous
concentration camps of World War II.
There is also precedent for a president overriding the Supreme Court. In the
1830s, Chief Justice John Marshall enshrined the right of the Cherokee
Nation to sovereignty over its ancestral land in the Appalachian Mountains.
Andrew Jackson scorned the decision. Some 14,000 native Americans were moved
at gunpoint to Oklahoma. More than 3,000 died along the way.
All this will be relevant should Team Bush envision a defeat in the 2008
election and decide to call it off. It's well established that Richard
Nixon -- mentor to Karl Rove and ***** Cheney -- commissioned the Huston
Plan, which detailed how to cancel the 1972 election.
Today we must ask: who would stop this administration from taking
dictatorial power in the instance of a "national emergency" such as a terror
attack at a nuclear power plant or something similar?
Nothing in the behavior of this Congress indicates that it is capable of
significant resistance. Impeachment seems beyond it. Nor does it seem
Congress would actually remove Bush if it did put him on trial.
Short of that, Bush clearly does not view anything Congress might do as a
meaningful impediment. After all, how many divisions does the Congress
command?
The Supreme Court, as currently constituted, would almost certainly rubber
stamp a Bush coup. If not, like Jackson, he could ignore it as easily as he
would ignore Congress.
What does that leave? There is much idle speculation now about what the
armed forces would do. We also hear loose talk about "90 million gun
owners."
From the public side, the only conceivable counterforce might be a national
strike or an effective long-term campaign of general non-cooperation.
But we can certainly assume the mainstream media will give lock-step support
to whatever the regime says and does. It's also a given that those like to
lead the resistance will immediately land in those new prisons being built
by Halliburton et al.
So how do we cope with the harsh realities of such a Bush/Cheney/Rove
dictatorial coup?
We may have about a year to prepare. Every possible scenario needs to be
discussed in excruciating detail.
For only one thing is certain: denial will do nothing.
Harvey Wasserman's History of the United States is at
http://www.solartopia.org/, along with Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth,
A.D. 2030. The Fitrakis Files are at http://www.freepress.org/ (where this
piece was originally published) along with How The GOP Stole America's 2004
Election & Is Rigging 2008, which Bob and Harvey co-wrote.
.
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| User: "Sanitys Little Helper" |
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| Title: Re: What Will You Do When the GOP Cancels the 2008 Election? |
31 Jul 2007 04:18:15 AM |
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"Michelle Malkin" <hypatiab7@comcast.net> wrote in
news:gs-dnZIE0Yz56zPbnZ2dnUVZ_rGrnZ2d@comcast.com to alt.atheism:
The question is: What will SHE do?
http://www.britishembassy.se/gallery/full/lqueen_elizabeth_II.jpg
Oh, say, can one see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly one hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Not bleedin' likely!
Meet the new commander of one's armed forces.
--
David Silverman F.L.A.H.N.
aa #2208
"If you are informed by God, you can be misinformed by nobody" - Osama Bin
Laden
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| User: "johac" |
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| Title: Re: What Will You Do When the GOP Cancels the 2008 Election? |
31 Jul 2007 06:45:11 PM |
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In article <gs-dnZIE0Yz56zPbnZ2dnUVZ_rGrnZ2d@comcast.com>,
"Michelle Malkin" <hypatiab7@comcast.net> wrote:
Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis: What Will YOU Do When the GOP Cancels the
2008 Election?
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Mon, 07/30/2007 - 3:16pm.
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis
It is time to think about the "unthinkable." The Bush Administration has
both the inclination and the power to cancel the 2008 election. The GOP
strategy for another electoral theft in 2008 has taken clear shape, though
we must assume there is much more we don't know.
But we must also assume that if it appears to Team Bush/Cheney/Rove that the
GOP will lose the 2008 election anyway (as it lost in Ohio 2006), we cannot
ignore the possibility that they would simply cancel the election. Those who
think this crew will quietly walk away from power are simply not paying
attention. The real question is not how or when they might do it. It's how,
realistically, we can stop them.
It's times like this, I'm glad that I live only 25 minutes from the
Mexican border.
--
John #1782
"We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be
white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."
- Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) Founder of the Jesuit Order.
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| User: "Hatter" |
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| Title: Re: What Will You Do When the GOP Cancels the 2008 Election? |
02 Aug 2007 08:38:32 AM |
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On Jul 30, 7:38 pm, "Michelle Malkin" <hypati...@comcast.net> wrote:
Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis: What Will YOU Do When the GOP Cancels the
2008 Election?
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Mon, 07/30/2007 - 3:16pm.
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis
It is time to think about the "unthinkable." The Bush Administration has
both the inclination and the power to cancel the 2008 election. The GOP
strategy for another electoral theft in 2008 has taken clear shape, though
we must assume there is much more we don't know.
I know there will be an election. We have a good republican, Abe
Lincoln, to thank for that. His precedent of holding elections during
the civil war mean BushCo has no leg to stand on. Furthermore it would
be very bad for business, that is even a stronger reason why it will
not happen. Lying, stealing, sabotage, character assasination, ballot
stuffing, result tinkering, and road blocks/other discouragements for
key regions, and even murder I expect. A suspension of the election
will not happen. It is a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist dream.
Hatter
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| User: "Al Klein" |
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| Title: Re: What Will You Do When the GOP Cancels the 2008 Election? |
04 Aug 2007 12:14:02 AM |
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On Thu, 02 Aug 2007 06:38:32 -0700, Hatter <Hatter23@gmail.com> wrote:
key regions, and even murder I expect. A suspension of the election
will not happen. It is a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist dream.
Closing the stock market because of a few plane crashes was also
unthinkable at one time. Do you know how many options traders were
totally ruined shortly after 911?
A massive attack on American soil early on the morning of Election Day
would *require* suspension of the election until some later date.
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| User: "duke" |
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| Title: Re: What Will You Do When the GOP Cancels the 2008 Election? |
01 Aug 2007 05:08:53 PM |
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On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:38:26 -0400, "Michelle Malkin" <hypatiab7@comcast.net>
wrote:
Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis: What Will YOU Do When the GOP Cancels the
2008 Election?
It's been moved to December 7, 2008. Get your ticket on the bus.
duke, American-American
*****
"The Mass is the most perfect form of Prayer."
Pope Paul VI
*****
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| User: "Cary Kittrell" |
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| Title: Re: What Will You Do When the GOP Cancels the 2008 Election? |
01 Aug 2007 06:05:50 PM |
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In article <5212b31e85cvgva34k47b2spbp8o0ofetl@4ax.com> duke <duckgumbo32@cox.net> writes:
On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:38:26 -0400, "Michelle Malkin" <hypatiab7@comcast.net>
wrote:
Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis: What Will YOU Do When the GOP Cancels the
2008 Election?
It's been moved to December 7, 2008. Get your ticket on the bus.
December 7th?
Man, the GOP must be expecting a disaster of historic proportions.
- cary
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| User: "Al Klein" |
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| Title: Re: What Will You Do When the GOP Cancels the 2008 Election? |
01 Aug 2007 09:22:25 PM |
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On Wed, 1 Aug 2007 23:05:50 +0000 (UTC),
(Cary Kittrell) wrote:
In article <5212b31e85cvgva34k47b2spbp8o0ofetl@4ax.com> duke <duckgumbo32@cox.net> writes:
On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:38:26 -0400, "Michelle Malkin" <hypatiab7@comcast.net>
wrote:
Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis: What Will YOU Do When the GOP Cancels the
2008 Election?
It's been moved to December 7, 2008. Get your ticket on the bus.
December 7th?
Man, the GOP must be expecting a disaster of historic proportions.
"Expecting"?
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| User: "The Chief Instigator" |
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| Title: Re: What Will You Do When the GOP Cancels the 2008 Election? |
01 Aug 2007 09:28:58 PM |
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Al Klein <rukbat@pern.invalid> writes:
On Wed, 1 Aug 2007 23:05:50 +0000 (UTC),
(Cary Kittrell) wrote:
In article <5212b31e85cvgva34k47b2spbp8o0ofetl@4ax.com> duke <duckgumbo32@cox.net> writes:
On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:38:26 -0400, "Michelle Malkin" <hypatiab7@comcast.net>
wrote:
Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis: What Will YOU Do When the GOP Cancels the
2008 Election?
It's been moved to December 7, 2008. Get your ticket on the bus.
December 7th?
Man, the GOP must be expecting a disaster of historic proportions.
"Expecting"?
More like planning.
--
Patrick "The Chief Instigator" Humphrey (patrick@io.com) Houston, Texas
chiefinstigator.us.tt/aeros.php (TCI's 2006-07 Houston Aeros) AA#2273
LAST GAME: San Antonio 4, Houston 2 (April 15)
NEXT GAME: October 2007, date/place/opponent TBA
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| User: "Al Klein" |
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| Title: Re: What Will You Do When the GOP Cancels the 2008 Election? |
02 Aug 2007 07:49:29 AM |
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On Wed, 01 Aug 2007 21:28:58 -0500, The Chief Instigator
<patrick@io.com> wrote:
Al Klein <rukbat@pern.invalid> writes:
On Wed, 1 Aug 2007 23:05:50 +0000 (UTC),
(Cary Kittrell) wrote:
In article <5212b31e85cvgva34k47b2spbp8o0ofetl@4ax.com> duke <duckgumbo32@cox.net> writes:
On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:38:26 -0400, "Michelle Malkin" <hypatiab7@comcast.net>
wrote:
Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis: What Will YOU Do When the GOP Cancels the
2008 Election?
It's been moved to December 7, 2008. Get your ticket on the bus.
December 7th?
Man, the GOP must be expecting a disaster of historic proportions.
"Expecting"?
More like planning.
That sounds more like the administration we all know.
.
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