Means, motive, opportunity - Scenario: 2006 mid-term election

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Fri, 15 Apr 2005 07:44:45 -0500

Means, motive, opportunity - Scenario: 2006 mid-term election

 

 

 

 

 

 

Means, motive, opportunity

Scenario: 2006 mid-term election

 

By Ernest Partridge

Online Journal Guest Writer

 

 

 

April 15, 2005 (crisispapers.org)—By late summer 2006, the United

States is in a desperate condition. Following the collapse of the

dollar in international currency markets, there has been a cascade of

business failures and mortgage foreclosures, and a precipitous rise in

unemployment, as the US economy slides inexorably into a depression.

 

Meanwhile, the June 2005 American attack on Iran and the continuing

war in Iraq has made the United States an international pariah state;

thus the community of nations shows no inclination whatever to rescue

the United States from its economic collapse.

 

In the run-up to the 2006 election, the mainstream media have once

again fallen in line behind the Republicans, blaming the depression on

the Clinton administration, al Qaeda, and/or betrayal by " the Old

Europe. " The crimes and outrages of the Bush/GOP syndicate have been

unreported by the media, as Democratic war veterans running for office

against GOP draft dodgers have once again been castigated as

" unpatriotic. "

 

For their part, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and the religious right

have proclaimed that these economic and diplomatic catastrophes

manifest God's judgment on the American people for their toleration of

gays, abortion, the ACLU, the teaching of evolution, and independent

judges.

 

This time, the public is unconvinced by the GOP propaganda, as massive

protest demonstrations erupt throughout the country. Finally fed up

with the lies and greed of the GOP, and finally aware of just how much

their livelihood and their future have been plundered by Bushenomics,

more than two-thirds of the voters are about to go to the polls

determined to throw out the Republican Congress.

 

While a few honest polls forecast a landslide victory for the

Democrats, most of these polls have not been published.

 

The Republican-owned and Republican-coded " black-box " voting machines

once again perform as intended, and the Republicans retain control of

Congress.

 

The astonished and disappointed public is once again told to " get over

it. "

 

Beyond that, my crystal ball becomes cloudy.

 

The implied question in this scenario is clear: If GOP partisans own

the voting machines, count the votes, refuse to allow independent

validation of the tallies, and if the Republicans choose to take

advantage of this opportunity for fraud, is there any way—any way at

all—that the Democrats could win the 2006 election and regain control

of Congress?

 

If not, then why do the Democrats persist in looking hopefully to

2006— " the next time. " After all, 2002 and 2004 were " the next time, "

and there is abundant evidence that in both cases, the people's will

was reversed by the Diebold and ES & S black boxes.

 

Clearly, the Democratic Party and its allies look forward to " victory "

in 2006 because they are in denial: they simply cannot bring

themselves to face the compelling evidence that in the United States

today, the electoral process is rigged, thus the will of the people is

irrelevant to the governance of the nation, and thus the United States

has ceased to be a democracy.

 

Neither the 2004 Democratic Party presidential candidate, John Kerry,

nor the party's chairman, Howard Dean, will publicly entertain the

very notion that " the fix is in. " The issue of electoral fraud is

simply not on the agenda of the Democratic National Committee.

Prominent progressives such as Vermont's Bernie Sanders, Al Franken,

Paul Begala, and Arianna Huffington insist that Bush won the election,

" fair and square, " and that the " anomalies " in Florida and Ohio were

not sufficient to have determined the outcome. As for the media, actor

and activist Peter Coyote reports that there is a " lock-down " order

throughout the mainstream media that the issue of electoral integrity

is simply not to be mentioned. Violation of the order can be a

career-ender. And, in fact, with the exception of Keith Olbermanm, one

is hard-pressed to identify anyone in the corporate media who has

mentioned the issue.

 

And so today, political discourse is captivated by the assumption that

in 2004 George W. Bush won a majority of both the popular and the

electoral votes, and, thus, unlike 2000, is now the indisputably

legitimate president of the United States. In addition, it is assumed

without debate that the Republicans have legitimate control of the

Congress. The " success " of the Republicans and the " failure " of the

Democrats is now the " frame " within which all political discussion

resides.

 

Suppose instead that in 2002 and 2004 every intended vote had been

correctly counted, and as a result John Kerry was now the president,

and the Democrats controlled the Senate and quite possibly the House

as well. The pundits would now be writing about the resurgence of

liberalism and the Democratic Party, and, at the same time,

speculating as to the causes of the " failure " of The Right, and the

public's rejection of George W. Bush.

 

The evidence of massive election fraud in 2004 is compelling, and

continues to accumulate, despite the media " lockdown. " Just last week,

a group of university statisticians released a report which calculates

at a million to one the probability that the discrepancy between the

exit polls (indicating a Kerry victory) and the final results was due

to random error. Because I have discussed at length the evidence for

fraud in the 2004 election, I will not repeat it here. But for those

who wish to have yet another look at the evidence, see The Crisis

Papers page, & #65427;Was Election 2004 a Fraud? & #65428;. Suffice to say that as

the

evidence accumulates, the media remain mute and the public remains

unconcerned.

 

Clear, contrary evidence that the election returns were accurate and

the outcome legitimate is simply nonexistent. This is so, because the

election procedure was designed not to provide validation. The

software source codes were secret, there was no paper record, and

there was no parallel validation procedure for the centralized

compilation of voting totals. To the repeated plea for validation, all

that the voting machine technicians could say is " trust us " — " us " being

partisan Republicans who built, coded, and operated the " black box "

voting machines.

 

Aside from the now-familiar GOP retorts of " get over it! " and " don't

be paranoid, " the crux of the case of electoral legitimacy is " they

wouldn't dare rig the election, " or alternatively, " the Republicans

have too much respect for our democracy to do such a thing. "

 

With much less provocation than this, the citizens of Ukraine and the

Republic of Georgia demanded, and got, new elections, which reversed

the outcomes of the corrupted elections.

 

As most " CSI " and " Law and Order " viewers are well aware, in their

search for suspects, detectives look first of all for " means, motive

and opportunity. "

 

The " means " for election fraud are so obvious and indisputable that

even the Republicans will not dispute them. The " means, " of course,

are the machines and secret software of the Diebold and ES & S

corporations that recorded more than 30 percent of the votes cast, and

80 percent of the votes centrally compiled, in the 2004 presidential

election.

 

The lack of an independent paper record or any other mode of

verification, the minuscule chance of discovery, and the accommodating

silence of the media provides the " opportunity. "

 

There remains the question of motive.

 

Remember, first of all, that 2004 was not an ordinary presidential

election contest whereby the incumbent, should he lose, graciously

concedes to the winner and then retires to play golf, give speeches at

one-hundred grand a pop, or even do sufficient good deeds to

eventually win a Nobel Peace Prize.

 

In this election, the stakes were much higher. The Republicans

gathered and invested a half billion dollars in order to win, and they

did so for good reason. In Bush's first term, billions of dollars were

transferred from the poor, the middle class, the federal treasury, and

future generations, to the super-wealthy, with many billions more to

come in a second Bush term. Many of Bush's friends and benefactors,

possibly including his vice president, have engaged in massive graft

and bribery—for example, hundreds of millions of dollars of Iraq

reconstruction funds " lost " by Halliburton, and billions of dollars of

California utility bills swindled by Enron. Still more crimes: Condi

Rice's perjury before the 9/11 commission, the " outing " of CIA agent

Valerie Plame, Tom DeLay's attempted bribery of Congressman Nick

Smith, and the worst crime of all, the theft of the national elections

of 2000, 2002, and now 2004. God only knows what else a Democratic

attorney general and Democratic congressional investigations might

uncover.

 

The Bush syndicate did not simply wish to stay in office. They had an

even greater motive to stay out of the federal slammer.

 

So it comes down to this: In the 2004 election, the Bush team and the

Republican Party had a treasure trove of means and opportunity dropped

in their laps. They could, if they chose, " key in " any election result

they wanted; for example, they could " swing " a Senate race by nine

points or a governor's race by 15 points (as it appears they did in

Georgia in 2002). And, if the 2004 early exit polls were in fact

accurate, in the presidential race it now appears that they could drop

the Democrat's percentage by five points, and boost the Republican's

total by the same amount. Thanks to the secret codes and " back-door

access " to the voting machines, and thanks in addition to the

cooperation of the corporate media, they could do all this without

fear of detection.

 

Mindful of the record of this administration during the past four

years, the enormous personal and financial consequences, as above

noted, of an election defeat, and the likelihood of that defeat as

indicated by the polls, can we really expect them to have said, in

effect, " yes, we could steal this election without consequence, but it

wouldn't be right, so we choose to be honest " ?

 

If you believe this, then I have a stack of Enron stock that I'd like

to sell you.

 

Clearly, the Bush syndicate had abundant means, motive and opportunity

to commit a crime against the state, in a word treason, and there is

compelling evidence that they have done just that. Neither the

enforced silence of the media nor the cowardly inaction of the

Democrats mitigate this evidence by one iota.

 

The overarching question, then, is " when will the public wake up to

this silent coup d'etat? "

 

For the issue before us is no longer the protection of American

democracy. It's too late for that. The issue instead is the

restoration of American democracy.

 

And at the moment, that issue is very much in doubt.

 

2005 Ernest Partridge

 

Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field

of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He publishes the website,

The Online Gadfly and co-edits the progressive website, The Crisis

Papers. Send comments to: crisispapers.

 

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