Common Dreams: Something Rotten in Ohio

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http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0609-21.htm

by Gore Vidal

Outside the oil and gas junta that controls two and a half branches of our government (the half soon to be whole is the judiciary), there was a good deal of envy at the late British election among those Americans who are serious about politics. Little money was spent by the three parties and none for TV advertising. Results were achieved swiftly and cheaply. Best of all, the three party leaders were quizzed sharply and intelligently by ordinary citizens known quaintly as subjects, thanks to the ubiquitous phantom crown so unlike our nuclear-taloned predatory eagle. Although news of foreign countries seldom appears in our tightly censored media (and good news, never), those of us who are addicted to C-SPAN and find it the one truly, if unconsciously, subversive media outlet in these United States are able to observe British politics in full cry.

I say “subversive” not only because C-SPAN is apt to take interesting books seriously but also because of its live coverage of the Senate and the House of Representatives, the only look we are ever allowed at the mouthpieces of our masters up close and, at times, most reflective of a government more and more remote from us, unaccountable and repressive. To watch the righteous old prophet Byrd of West Virginia, the sunny hypocrisy of Biden of Delaware—as I write these hallowed names, I summon up their faces, hear their voices, and I am covered with C-SPAN goose bumps.

At any rate, wondrous C-SPAN has another string to its bow. While some executive was nodding, C-SPAN started showing us Britain’s House of Commons during Question Time. This is the only glimpse that most Americans will ever get of how democracy is supposed to work.

These party leaders are pitted against one another in often savage debate on subjects of war and peace, health and education. Then some 600 Members of Parliament are allowed to ask questions of their great chieftains. Years ago the incomparable Dwight Macdonald wrote that any letter to the London Times (the Brits are inveterate letter writers on substantive issues) is better written than any editorial in the New York Times.

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http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0609-21.htm
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Damn I love Gore Vidal. Well worth reading.

[Goldeneye]

1. It's nice to have people like him on our side.

It makes me feel not quite so crazy and alone. If he gets it, many others must too. And if they get it, then their families and friends get it. Hopefully someday it will be common knowledge that * was never elected by the American people.

[Vitruvius]

2. Vidal includes a link to get Rep. Conyer's report on Rethug cheating in OH

The link is to Conyers' homepage: http://www.house.gov/conyers/ ; once there, there's a very prominent link to download the .pdf of Conyers' excellent report.

The relevant excerpt from the Vidal article:
"Asked to predict who would win in ’04, I said that, again, Bush would lose, but I was confident that in the four years between 2000 and 2004 creative propaganda and the fixing of election officials might very well be so perfected as to insure an official victory for Mr. Bush. As Representative Conyers’s report, Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio (www.house.gov/conyers), shows in great detail, the swing state of Ohio was carefully set up to deliver an apparent victory for Bush even though Kerry appears to have been the popular winner as well as the valedictorian-that-never-was of the Electoral College.

I urge would-be reformers of our politics as well as of such anachronisms as the Electoral College to read Conyers’s valuable guide on how to steal an election once you have in place the supervisor of the state’s electoral process: In this case, Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who orchestrated a famous victory for those who hate democracy (a permanent but passionate minority). The Conyers Report states categorically, “With regard to our factual findings, in brief, we find that there were massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio. In many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State Kenneth J. Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio.” In other words, the Florida 2000 scenario redux, when the chair for Bush/Cheney was also the Secretary of State. Lesson? Always plan ahead for at least four more years.

It is well-known in the United States of Amnesia that not only did Ohio have a considerable number of first-time voters but that Blackwell and his gang, through “the misallocation of voting machines, led to unprecedented long lines that disenfranchised scores, if not hundreds of thousands, of predominantly minority and Democratic voters.”

For the past few years many of us have been warning about the electronic voting machines, first publicized on the Internet by investigator Bev Harris, for which she was much reviled by the officers of such companies as Diebold, Sequoia, Es & S, Triad; this last voting computer company “has essentially admitted that it engaged in a course of behavior during the recount in numerous counties to provide ‘cheat sheets’ to those counting the ballots. The cheat sheets informed election officials how many votes they should find for each candidate, and how many over and under votes they should calculate to match the machine count. In that way, they could avoid doing a full county-wide hand count mandated by state law.”

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The Conyers report is a longish download (3.13MB), but well worth it.

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3. Ohio was "the" perfect fraud for the g.o.p. Much time and money was

spent to position the right people at the right place to achieve the desired result. Kerry DID win Ohio. No doubt about it. And once again, I do not understand why middle America is not screaming bloody murder. If it can happen to us, it can happen to them. Even if you don't like who wins, you should be able to sleep at night knowing the election was fair and represented the will of the people.

And since good Dr. Dean brought up Christianity, I got a question for the white, republican Christians: How can you condone the lying and cheating to get bush* into office? Did Jesus say it was OK to lie, cheat and steal if it was for a good cause? And who gets to define it's a good cause? Please explain it to me. Tell me how it fits into this "morals and values" thing.

And while you're at it, tell me how you rationalize the MURDER taking place every day in Iraq. Yes, murder. No WMDs, no Al-Queda, no terrorists. So we attacked a sovereign country for no good reason other than to make a show to intimidate the rest of the world. We've slaughtered--MURDERED--a 100,000 innocent human beings, and for what? Please, tell me how Jesus feels about that. Even better, tell me how you rationalize the entire ugly situation? Please, clue me in.