| The Election Mess
Just whom do we have to blame for putting the dumbest SOB available in the White House? A veritable cast of miscreants. |
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First, a quick look at the 2004 election. Then a review of the 2000 recount. Then who to blame for the 2000 mess.
You can also follow this link to the Right-Wing Scumbag Index.
2004: Same sleazy tactics, different
year
Bush apologists like to say that
no presidential candidate ever got so many votes as Bush did in 2004. But
don't forget who got the second most in history: John Kerry. All this means
is, more people voted this time.
LET'S LOOK AT SOME OF THE PLAYERS....
The International Brotherhood of Police Officers,
the union that backed Bush in 2000, backed Kerry in 2004. "After
three and a half years of disappointing leadership under George Bush, we
need to change course in November and elect a president with a real record
of supporting police officers and a lifetime of standing with law enforcement,"
IBPO President David Holway said. Maybe the problem is Bush's desire
to make police officers' jobs a lot more dangerous by not backing the assault
weapon ban renewal, which Bush originally supported but has since backed
off on, because the NRA gives him lots of money. The NRA, naturally, led
by the very evil Wayne LaPierre, poured tons of money into GOP efforts
with their usual smear tactics.
The entire state of Ohio ...... especially the
secretary of state. He's been accused, even by judges and members of his
own party, of perpetrating a worse crime against the voters than happened
in Florida in 2000. Disenfranchising voters, failing to process registrations,
allowing GOP volunteers to hang out with boxes of ballots, on and on. Ohio
should have easily gone for Kerry. But hundreds of thousands of votes,
mostly Democratic, got scotched in Ohio.
SWIFT BOAT VETERANS FOR TRUTH:This group is misnamed for two reasons. First, a bunch of GOP backers started and named it, and found a couple of Viet vets to slam Kerry. So it wasn't a vets' group, it's a GOP attack group. Second, there was no truth to anything they said.
Now that they don't need some lying old vets to front for them any longer, this sleazy organization now leads the charge against the AARP, which is seen as the enemy in Bush's fight to destroy Social Security. It's now called USA Next, and it's president, a GOP nutcase named Charles Jarvis ( deputy secretary for the interior in the Reagan and first Bush administrations) explained his attacks on old folks this way:
They [AARP] are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts. We will be the dynamite that removes them.
He says he wants to "dynamite" an old folks' group.
These are the kinds of people that the far right uses to do their dirty
work. And note well that he said "personal savings accounts" and not "Social
Security reform." Because to Bush, reform is nothing without personal accounts.
Why? Because big business wants those personal accounts. This is yet another
giveaway to business by an administration that cares nothing for taxpayers
or the middle class. Check out the truth behind their sleaze at http://aarp.typepad.com/socialsecurity/2005/02/attacking_aarp.html.
SINCLAIR MEDIA:
This highly biased, right-wing leaning corporation goes out of its way to push its agenda on its viewers, and abuses its position as a so-called news outlet accordingly.
This media conglomerate tried to force its stations to pre-empt their programming, just days before the presidential election, in order to show Stolen Honor, and anti–John Kerry documentary. Sinclair also refused to broadcast a Nightline episode, “The Fallen,” in which Ted Koppel read the names of American soldiers killed in Iraq as their pictures were shown. They dishonored those fallen soldiers because it didn't go well with their political leanings.
Tens of thousands of complaints nailed Sinclair on the issue of Stolen Honor.
According to insiders, in April 2001, a Sinclair
affiliate sent a helicopter and crew to a sight 160 miles from their base,
where the locals were out of range of that affiliate's broadcast, to cover
cleanup efforts of a stretch of the Potomac. Why? Because an exec from
Sinclair and his mother both own property on that piece of the river, and
they want it cleaned up. Further according to insiders, Sinclair execs
regularly use news coverage to help themselves personally, financially,
or politically. An insider said, “They
don’t care about news. They care about moving their agenda, whether it’s
clearing up their property in western Maryland or moving their political
candidates to the forefront.”
One place to keep an eye on these sleazy folks is at http://www.sinclairwatch.net/
The 2000 Recount Debacle
Quick note: In 2000, Bush said Gore would “grow the federal government in the largest increase since Lyndon Baines Johnson.”
In 2005, the Cato Institute reports that “Bush
has presided over the largest overall increase in inflation-adjusted federal
spending since Lyndon Baines Johnson.”: And by the way, that would still
be true even WITHOUT the Iraq war.
November 29th 2000: The GOP whined about needing to wrap up the counting, but then they blatantly called for additional recounts. WHY? To drag the process out until Dec. 12th, when the electors were to be chosen, an obvious attempt to use the rules to dodge the truth. Sort of like when Bush himself appealed to the debate moderator to move along to the next question because he didn't understand what the hell Affirmative Action was.
December 16th 2000: We found out that Katherine Harris, the obviously partisan-out-the-ass, so-called public servant, and makeup queen of the southeast, called Bush headquarters the night of the election. What the hell is the Florida secretary of state, in charge of the election process there, doing calling a candidate? She delayed the whole mess until recounts were impossible. She and Jeb Bush STOLE Florida for Dubya. IN MAY 2004, we find out that she didn't even vote !!!!!!!!
Before the election, Bush's aides were considering their legal options in the event Bush got the popular vote and Gore got the electoral victory. Once it came out the other way around, they got all sanctimonious about the "will of the people."
As an editor of Vanity Fair put it on MSNBC, Bush already failed his first presidential test. When the Democrats challenged the results, Bush appeared "peevish, petty, and irritable." And he's right. Bush was a major jackass in the days after the election.
James Baker, among others, whined about the Democrats sending lawyers down to Florida to "steal the election." He also whined about them trying to "win the White House in court." But the Republicans were the first ones to actually go to court. And WHY? To get an injunction, trying to stop the Democrats from pursuing a perfectly legal recourse, namely a vote recount.
Bush Jr. said that the election process must be "fair" and "accurate." Well, the chick in charge of vote-counting was a Republican, and did everything she could to push her guy and screw the other side. And Dubya also said hand-counting is less accurate, "as Americans have seen clearly." Hmmmm. Have we really seen that? It seems quite clear that machine-counting has all sorts of problems. Dubya also said that handcounts inject politics into the process. Um ....... the sleazy GOP Florida secretary of state has utterly injected politics into the process. Besides that, Bush himself, as Texas gov, signed into Texas law a bill preferring handcounts to electronic counts.
After Democrats cleared out, GOP staffers moving
into the White House offices claimed that departing Clinton staffers had
vandalized office furniture, and had removed all the W's from the computer
keyboards. After several months, it was revealed that this story
was completely MADE UP. The ex-Clinton folk asked W for an apology.
The White House issued a statement saying that no apology was necessary.
So the lying got off to an early start in the Bush administration.
Why the Florida recounts weren't a bad thing
1. Sure, James Baker got on every talk show he could (reminiscent of Monica Lewinsky's old lawyer), whining about stopping this "recount nonsense." Every time they counted, they found more votes for Gore. Did the Democrats manufacture new votes? No, they found existing votes. Nothing wrong with that.
2. Just a couple years back, George W. himself signed into Texas law a bill giving preference for handcounts over electronic counts. But in the 2000 election, it's a bad thing?
3. Ain't nothin' illegal about recounting. The Democrats are simply following a legal recourse.
4. It's LEGIT, and here's why : before they started recounting, Bush's lead was just under two thousand. Then it was under three hundred. That right there is a good reason to recount.
5. Don't listen to that GOP crap about the recounts
"thwarting the will of the people." If there are votes out there
legitimizing the choice of Gore over Bush, and they haven't been properly
counted, that thwarts the will of the people.
Who's
To Blame for the Bush presidency
REMEMBER, Bush lost the popular vote in 2000.
A very concentrated campaign of sleaze and lawyers conspired to make him
the president anyway. He lost the popular vote. More people preferred
the other guy. Never forget that.
July 2001: A long study by the New York Times
finds that Florida was stolen by the GOP. The end.
| Katherine Harris, Florida's
Sec. of State. Can you spell Conflict of Interest ????
She's apparently too stupid to realize that she wouldn't easily get away
with using her position to further her partisan agenda, being that she
was on national TV every single day for weeks. Did it hurt to recount?
According to
her it did. According to James Baker it did.
But on 11/13, the GOP argued in court that voters would be hurt by a continued
recount. The judge asked, HOW would voters be hurt? And the
GOP had no answer. And Harris now had no answer. Her
family's wealth is old agricultural money, she's a big Bush contributor,
and she's used her state's public facilities to push the GOP. She
spends more money than any other cabinet member in Florida's state cabinet,
including the governor himself. Lotsa travel, lotsa expensive hotel
rooms. She was implicated in a scandal, and managed to weasel out of it.
And she keeps forgetting that she's supposed to serve the citizenry, not
just a particular party.
Harris told the counties who wanted to recount that they needed to provide written explanations for their intent to recount, received those explanations, then rejected them. A judge even told her not to prejudge the situation, and she did just that. This is no legit public official, this is a party suckup. Her makeup is so loud, you can hear it, it's like Kabuki theater. April 2001 : Harris is now persona non
grata even within her own party. She's been disinvited from two major
party gatherings. She's too hot to touch. She's associated
with a corrupt system, and will not be offered any other kind of position
when her office is discontinued after her current term. She's a potential
albatross in Jeb Bush's re-election efforts. She says she may run
for Congress, but Democrats are eager to punish her, and the GOP doesn't
want to know her any more. Narf, narf.
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Makeup by
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December 2005: Randy "Duke" Cunningham, GOP rep. from California, tearfully admitted to taking millions in bribes from defense contractors. GOP politicians and candidates lined up to give back money they'd gotten from Cunningham's PAC. Two GOPers did not. Harris was one of those two. Surprise!
July 2006: The Florida GOP has told Harris
it won't support her Senate run, urged her to drop out, and says it won't
support her.
The electoral college.
Okay, let's assume we need this anachronistic piece of shit so as not to
disenfranchise the smaller states. If we dump the college altogether,
the candidates will ignore the Dakotas (like the rest of us do anyway)
and concentrate on Illinois, New York, California, and a few others.
But should it be all or nothing within a state? Bush wins Florida
by a couple hundred votes, so he gets all the electoral votes there?
Makes no sense, and this is why we can have one guy win the popular vote
while another guy gets the big cookie. Ridiculous. Split up
the electoral votes within a state.
Republicans.
With all sorts of qualified people to choose from, they foisted upon us
a candidate so eminently unqualified as to be unfit for dogcatcher.
They couldn't come up with a smarter, less phony, less checkered-past guy
than George W. ? Are they that shy of decent folk? Was Bush
Jr. the ABSOLUTE BEST THEY COULD COME UP WITH? This guy couldn't
debate his way out of a paper bag, his little giggling fits make me puke,
and his constant cries of "fuzzy math, fuzzy math" came off like a kid
who'd just found a new toy and couldn't wait to show it off, over and over.
He managed to get through the debates without tripping on his shoelaces
by virtue of tons of cramming with coaches. You think he'll be that
smooth during press outings and photo ops, and (gasp) during meetings with
foreign dignitaries?
Uneducated voters. Da wife
and I watched a truly horrifying interview with a young woman on CNN.
She admitted she never watched the news or read a newspaper. She
said she wouldn't decide who to vote for until she got in the booth.
Okay now, you vacuous young bag of phlegm, HOW ARE YOU GOING TO DECIDE?
How the hell did you pick between grapefruit and Fruit Loops this morning?
If you haven't looked into the issues, if you don't have any kind of intellectual
basis for deciding, then stay the goddamn hell HOME. We don't need
illiterate buffoons voting at random.
And another thing ..... if you looked at the debates (as did I .... every
minute of all three, masochist that I am), and thought Bush did well, then
you probably struck out in tee ball all the time and still got an ice cream
cone after each practice. Bush barely got through those damn things,
even with all the massive coaching and last minute cramming ("Quick, Dubya,
who's the Secretary-General of the U.N.?" "I dunno, but
I swears I never did coke with her.").
Clinton. His ratings were
sky-high, and overall he did a pretty boffo job. On a consistent
basis, his ratings were better than Reagan's. Several analysts have said
that if not for the Lewinsky thing, he'd have been rated as one of the
best presidnets ever. But he GOT CAUGHT, the damn doofus. He
did not help his guy at all. Some people associated Gore with Clinton's
foibles. Of course, if you expected the VP to come right out and
utterly denounce his president, you're an idiot.
Gun Nuts :
Two western states still managed to easily pass referendums for background
checks at gun shows. Western states, that's right. So much
for Wayne LaPierre and his cut-throat crew representing the masses.
But these assholes still poured money into making the 2000 campaign into
a single issue election for their moronic constituents. In Michigan,
they waged a massive campaign against Bart Stupak, a representative who
typically voted with the NRA, and then finally parted with them about background
checks. They pronounced him The Enemy, and turned on him like rabid
dogs. Because their fool Bush Jr. pushed Texas legislation on concealed
weapons, they love him. To hell with the economy, to hell with Social
Security, to hell with the fact that Bush probably can't remember most
of 1978. He'll let us poor persecuted Bubbas have our bang-bang toys.
Anti-abortion zealots. If
abortion is your single issue, you're a dolt. Conservative courts
have already had their shot at Roe vs. Wade, and did nothing. The
GOP even allowed it into their platform at the convention, recognizing
that many of their ranks are pro-choice. Bush won't take away abortion
rights. He can't. He won't. If you voted Bush for this
one issue, you blew it. There are other issues.
Military voters. They believed Bush when he said that the Clinton administration had wrecked the military. Totally inaccurate. Clinton had in fact put forth more increases, most of them aimed at the rank and file, than Bush has even recommended in his first several months in office. Bush used them to get elected, then screwed them.
Ralph Nader and his tree-hugging doofus
followers: Ross Perot, who represented
nothing except a change, and had not nearly the stated agenda of Nader
or the Greens, managed 8 million votes in '96, and 20 million in '92.
John
Anderson got 5.7 million votes in '80. George Wallace got almost
10 million votes in '68. What did Nader get? A measly 2.6 million.
He didn't even get the five percent he needed to guarantee his loser party
matching funds in the next election. So for the sake of a moral
victory he didn't even get, he and his band of jackasses
helped elect a Republican whose agenda is a million miles from their own.
If they don't like Gore, they hate
Bush and his oil-swilling
minions. Nader himself, once at least seemingly admirable (if you
ignore his blatant anti-Semitism), has turned into a foul little man with
only his ego to serve. He chalks it all up to, "can't spoil a system
that's already rotten." Yeah, yeah, yeah. Didn't get matching
funds, didn't get much attention, didn't get taken seriously, so they got
NOTHING out of the 2000 election, except the satisfaction of electing a
Republican, their worst nightmare, to the White House. WAY TO GO,
you tofu-eating bunch of melonheads.
Bush not only rolled back every environmentally-friendly measure that Clinton ever signed, he lets domestic policy be dictated by his friends in Industry. And his choice for Secretary of the Interior immediately announced she wanted to drill for oil in Alaska. These Nader Nitwits, these Green Party Goof-Ups, helped put in office somebody who will wreck the very nature reserves they revere.
Everything Nader stands for was undone by the election of George Bush, and Nader helped put him there. He says he doesn't see the difference between Democrats and Republicans, but it serves his own egotistical purposes to say that.
At least, with
his negative vibes and his own conflicts of interest, he wasn't much of
a factor in 2004, but he did all the damage in the world in 2000.