22 January 2006 (# 48)
Yesterday, I wrote you regarding William River Pitt’s proposal for all Democratic Senators and Congresspersons to exit the “people’s house” when Mr. Bush begins his State of the Union address. Mr. Pitt has expanded his proposal into a memorandum to Congressional Democrats and published it at
TruthOut. He concludes the memorandum with the following:
What I am talking about is political theater on a grand scale. No opposition party in American history has ever turned their backs on a President and walked out of a State of the Union address. No opposition party has faced the degree of potential extermination the Democrats face today. The stakes have never been higher.
You are dealing with a President who wants to make his Executive powers absolute, and with a Republican party that has been usurped from soup to nuts by extremists that would be cartoonish if they were not so very real.Abramoff won't help you. The fear factor will subsume you. You can sit there and take it, clapping politely as the ram rolls towards you, or you can stand up and make yourselves relevant again. To walk out of the speech would be a huge statement, bold and potentially dangerous. But if you don't do something bold, something grand and unprecedented, something to take back the initiative, you will join the Whigs in the dustbin of history.
Stand up. Walk out. You have a week to get this organized.
Link: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012206A.shtmlI agree with Mr. Pitt.
If something bold, grand and unprecedented is not done by the Congressional Democrats the Nation and the world will know that the Bush neoconster regime has crushed the Constitution and unchecked lawless imperialism is what America now represents.
What I think should motivate the Congressional Democrats to act is something even more fundamental that Mr. Bush’s violations of FISA, the National Security Act, the 4th Amendment of the Constitution of the USA, the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg and other international restrictions on war of aggression. The core, fundamental reason the Congressional Democrats should exit the “people’s house” as Mr. Bush enters is because his claim to be President is illegitimate.
Apart from the now well documented fact that he won neither the popular or electoral vote in 2000; apart from the now well documented fact that Scalia’s stopping the vote on 9 December, 2000, will become widely recognized among the most grievous violations of the Republic; apart from the fact that SCOTUS harmed the Republic in
Bush v. Gore; is the reality of the stolen election of 2004.
Paul Craig Roberts, the John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury has this to say about what happened in the National Election of 2004:
The Florida panhandle is thorough-going Republican. Even Democrats run as Republicans. Nevertheless, the newspaper’s editor, Ron Kelley, believes that American political life is measured by something larger than party affiliation. In his editorial,
"The shepherds and the sheep," Kelley reports that two Florida counties have banned any further use of Diebold voting machines after witnessing a professional demonstration that the machines, contrary to Diebold’s claim, are easily hacked to record votes differently from the way in which they are cast by voters.
The pre-election statement by Diebold’s CEO that he would work to deliver the election to Bush was apparently no idle boast. In five states where the new "foolproof" electronic voting machines were used, the vote tallies differed substantially from the exit polls. Such a disparity is unusual. The chances of exit polls in five states being wrong are no more than one in one million.
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Miller describes considerably more election fraud than voting machines programmed to count a proportion of Kerry votes as Bush votes. Voters were disenfranchised in a number of ways. Miller reports incidences of intimidation of, and reduced voting opportunities for, poorer voters who tend to vote Democrat. Some of Miller’s evidence is circumstantial. However, he documents widespread Republican dirty tricks and foul play. The media’s indifference to a stolen election burns Miller as much as the stolen election itself.
Link: http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts140.htmlMr. Roberts then details the fact that Mark Crispin Miller’s accounting of election fraud is bolstered by the recent US Government Accountability Office (GAO) response to Congress concerning irregularities in the 2004 National Election.
Here are some of the problems noted in the GAO’s September 2005 report:
• Some voting machines did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected.
• It was possible to alter the machines so that a ballot cast for one candidate would be recorded for another.
• Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level.
• Access was easily compromised and did not require a widespread conspiracy. A small handful of people is sufficient to steal an election.
Link: http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts140.htmlAnd, Mr. Roberts also provides an insight regarding the non-response of the traditional US media to the GAO report, an insight that serves as an indicator of why Congressional Democrats need to take the bold action Mr. Pitt urges:
Curiously, the media has shown no interest in the GAO report. In my opinion, a free press has proven to be inconsistent with the recently permitted highly concentrated corporate ownership of the US media.
Link: http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts140.html Mr. Roberts was motivated to write those observations upon reading Mark Crispin Miller’s
“Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They’ll Steal the Next One, Too.” He notes the coincidence that Dr. Miller’s book arrived the same day as the
Defuniak Springs Herald, a Florida panhandle news report that contained the above mentioned editorial. Mr. Roberts gets it, Dr. Miller gets it, the GAO gets it, and the hardcore folk in the Florida panhandle get it – Wally O’Dell meant what he said.
On 12 December 2005, I wrote you a letter entitled
“Let’s take Wally O’Dell at his word,” in which I included the following:
In
August, 2003, Wally O’Dell, wrote an interesting letter, as CBS News reported. In a letter from Odell, who was moonlighting as a Republican fundraiser, he wrote,
"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president."Link:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtmlThe title of that
CBS News report was
"E-Voting: Is The Fix In?" and it was published two months before we all learned the answer in the wee hours of November 3, 2004.
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Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman write today (i.e., December 12, 2005) in
"The End of Democracy in Ohio?":… electronic machines will also be exempted from recounts by random sampling, even in close, disputed elections like those of 2000 and 2004. In 2004, scores of Ohio voters reported, under oath, that they had
pressed John Kerry's name on touchscreen machines, only to see George W. Bush's name light up. A board of elections technician in Mahoning County (Youngstown) has admitted that at least 18 machines there suffered such problems.
Sworn testimony in Columbus indicates that votes for Kerry faded off the screen on touchscreen machines there. Other charges of mis-programming, re-programming, recalibrating, mishandling and manipulation of electronic voting software, hardware and memory cards have since arisen throughout Ohio 2004.
For the 2005 election,
some 41 additional Ohio counties (of 88) were switched to Diebold touchscreen machines. Despite polls showing overwhelming voter approval, two electoral reform issues went down improbable defeat.
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The federal General Accountability Office (GAO) has recently issued a major report confirming that tampering with and manipulating such machines can be easily done by a very small number of people. Charges are widespread that this is precisely what gave George W. Bush Ohio's electoral votes, and thus the presidency, in 2004, not to mention the suspicious referenda outcomes in 2005.
Link: http://www.alternet.org/rights/29292
Link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x404707Let’s focus on what Mark Crispin Miller had to say to Bob Cesca in a December, 2005, interview:
BC: Why is the rigging of the 2004 election seen as a "fringe" issue? If it was acceptable to question the veracity of the Swift Boat group or Dan Rather, then why can't the veracity of
Diebold, ES&S, Triad, and the rest of the chief suspects be equally questioned by the mainstream press?
If it's perfectly reasonable to believe that card-counters have successfully defrauded casinos, and that internet criminals can steal your credit card number *and* your identity -- why are accusations of election theft seen as so loony?MCM: I'd take your argument still further. By now we've generally conceded -- that is, the mainstream media concedes -- that Bush/Cheney lied us into a disastrous war, or else deceived themselves and all the rest of us to get us there. And we concede that Bush & Co. conspired to out a CIA agent who was working to prevent another terrorist attack on US soil. And we concede that this regime responded to Katrina, then to Rita, with (at best) depraved indifference, even though they knew exactly what was coming. And we concede that, prior to 9/11, they had lots of solid evidence of an impending terrorist attack right here at home, and yet did nothing to prevent it. (And, moreover, we concede that they've done nothing to improve security on our railways, on our highways, on our borders, in our ports or even in the air.)
And rational observers also will agree that Bush & Co. swept into Haiti and threw out that nation's first democratically elected government; that Bush & Co.'s Iraq is no democracy, since Jay Bremer drafted all its laws, its government was not elected, and Iraqis have no writ of habeas corpus and no freedom of the press; that Bush bends over for the oligarchy running China (he says he likes the way they treat their journalists); and that his regime whole-heartedly supports the tyrannies all over Central Asia and the Arab world (Iran and Syria excepted). Bush and his men have praised the leaders of "New Europe" for defying their electorates, and have assailed the leaders of "Old Europe" for trying to do what their electorates prefer.
Meanwhile, here at home, the Bush regime has thrown out habeas corpus, junked the Bill of Rights (we now have special "First Amendment zones" for dissidents), used public revenues to subsidize right-wing religious proselytizers (while giving nothing to religious groups that don't back the regime), handed the entire economy to its own corporate cronies, and veiled the workings of the federal government behind an iron curtain of illegal secrecy.
We grant they've done all this - and yet it seems outrageous to suggest that they committed rampant fraud in the election? After they used Bush v. Gore, and other means, to steal the race four years before? That's a loony argument.
Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/a-conversation-with-mark-_b_12134.html Let’s help all our fellow citizens realize that no one is “loony” for recognizing that Mr. Bush is an illegitimate President. The Congressional Democrats can begin that education process on the steps of the US Capitol as they explain the first-order reason why they vacated Mr. Bush’s pretense to have the authority to speak of the State of the Union – he was not elected in 2000, and he was not elected in 2004.
The Congressional Democrats can vow to ensure that every voter in future US elections will have easy access to cast their vote and comprehensive verification that their vote was tallied as they intended. With that bedrock of democracy assured, Congressional Democrats can begin addressing the corrupt and destabilizing actions of Bush and his neoconster regime, and they will likely find that the vast majority of Americans will stand with them because they will have proven their ability to lead at a time of grave danger to the Republic and to all humanity.
They can also make it clear on January 31, 2006, that the only statements from Mr. Bush that will matter are those given, under oath, at his various trials, civil and criminal, as he is required to respond to questions detailing his vast efforts to undermine the Constitution, violate Federal and international statutes, and commit irreparable harm to all those who have suffered and died because of his and his neoconster regime’s atrocities.
Thank you for your continued leadership,
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