Conspiracy Kill
If you want to kill an idea, call it conspiracy theory. This is exactly what is happening to perfectly legitimate concerns about the 2004 Presidential election. If you suggest, based on any number of facts, that Bush – gasp! – stole the election (again), you are a conspiracy theorist of the worst sort; you are one of those people; you are a quack.
But what if the quacks are right to question the results?
Ohio, whose 20 electoral votes put Bush over the 270 mark, gave its electronic voting machine contract to Diebold Election Systems, whose President, Walden O’Dell, told Republicans in the summer of 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." (Cleveland Plain Dealer) Diebold, based in Ohio, provided computer voting machines for sixteen counties (somewhere around 800,000 voters).
A grand total of three companies manufacture ‘black box’ computer voting machines. All three, it turns out, were committed to re-electing Bush.
Black box voting machines leave no paper trail. And no paper trail means no recounts. What the computer says goes, even if it has no basis in reality. So when vote totals seem unbelievable, perhaps they shouldn’t be believed. If exit polls show Kerry leading Bush and the black box tells the opposite story, we have every right to wonder what in tarnation is going on!
Is it so incredible to think that Bush, who “won” Florida’s 27 electoral votes in 2000 because large numbers of ballots were thrown away, and who was installed in the White House by a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, would win by nefarious means? If we didn’t have a fair election then, why would we be so naïve as to think this one would be any better? What was good for Republicans in 2000 is no less good for them in 2004, except now they had the added benefit of the magical black box voting machine, able to ‘disappear’ votes and add others, all on the QT.
When leaders in western-backed dictatorships want to hold power while keeping at least a patina of democracy, they hold elections. They don’t fear defeat because they control the outcome. Nothing here is any different. Bush and his henchmen have hijacked American policy to serve their own ends. In its first four years the administration did nothing if not obfuscate, manipulate, lie, cheat, and steal. It ignored law, it ignored morality, and it certainly ignored democracy.
This ain’t no democracy. In any other country on Earth this would be called dictatorship.
But why are people so reluctant to admit the obvious? Perhaps it’s easier to persist in our delusions; it’s just more comfortable that way. But nothing will ever change until people in this country wake up and realize their country has been taken away from them. With one hand patting us all on the head, the Bush administration was robbing us with the other.
Nothing is sacred, everything is for sale, even our votes. Unless they can be manipulated to serve the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld agenda, our opinions do not matter. Bush himself put it best, commenting on the massive worldwide antiwar protests of February 15, 2003: "Democracy is a beautiful thing. People are allowed to express their opinion, and I welcome people's right to say what they believe." (NY Times)
What a guy!
Democracy is nothing more than an artifact. It’s quaint, really, how people express their opinions and expect to be listened to – poor fools.
Enough is enough. It’s time to stop comforting ourselves with the motions of citizenship and to start assessing the situation we’re in. We have lost control of our country, and we can no longer afford to sit by and watch as America is flown into the heart of disaster, like a jet into a skyscraper. Now is the time to ask questions. Now is the time to resist.
But what if the quacks are right to question the results?
Ohio, whose 20 electoral votes put Bush over the 270 mark, gave its electronic voting machine contract to Diebold Election Systems, whose President, Walden O’Dell, told Republicans in the summer of 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." (Cleveland Plain Dealer) Diebold, based in Ohio, provided computer voting machines for sixteen counties (somewhere around 800,000 voters).
A grand total of three companies manufacture ‘black box’ computer voting machines. All three, it turns out, were committed to re-electing Bush.
Black box voting machines leave no paper trail. And no paper trail means no recounts. What the computer says goes, even if it has no basis in reality. So when vote totals seem unbelievable, perhaps they shouldn’t be believed. If exit polls show Kerry leading Bush and the black box tells the opposite story, we have every right to wonder what in tarnation is going on!
Is it so incredible to think that Bush, who “won” Florida’s 27 electoral votes in 2000 because large numbers of ballots were thrown away, and who was installed in the White House by a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, would win by nefarious means? If we didn’t have a fair election then, why would we be so naïve as to think this one would be any better? What was good for Republicans in 2000 is no less good for them in 2004, except now they had the added benefit of the magical black box voting machine, able to ‘disappear’ votes and add others, all on the QT.
When leaders in western-backed dictatorships want to hold power while keeping at least a patina of democracy, they hold elections. They don’t fear defeat because they control the outcome. Nothing here is any different. Bush and his henchmen have hijacked American policy to serve their own ends. In its first four years the administration did nothing if not obfuscate, manipulate, lie, cheat, and steal. It ignored law, it ignored morality, and it certainly ignored democracy.
This ain’t no democracy. In any other country on Earth this would be called dictatorship.
But why are people so reluctant to admit the obvious? Perhaps it’s easier to persist in our delusions; it’s just more comfortable that way. But nothing will ever change until people in this country wake up and realize their country has been taken away from them. With one hand patting us all on the head, the Bush administration was robbing us with the other.
Nothing is sacred, everything is for sale, even our votes. Unless they can be manipulated to serve the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld agenda, our opinions do not matter. Bush himself put it best, commenting on the massive worldwide antiwar protests of February 15, 2003: "Democracy is a beautiful thing. People are allowed to express their opinion, and I welcome people's right to say what they believe." (NY Times)
What a guy!
Democracy is nothing more than an artifact. It’s quaint, really, how people express their opinions and expect to be listened to – poor fools.
Enough is enough. It’s time to stop comforting ourselves with the motions of citizenship and to start assessing the situation we’re in. We have lost control of our country, and we can no longer afford to sit by and watch as America is flown into the heart of disaster, like a jet into a skyscraper. Now is the time to ask questions. Now is the time to resist.
