How I Can Tell Karl Rove Is Sweating...

1. On Saturday the administration announced Hugo Chavez is Gonna Hack the Vote!. Think about it. Up until now, the official GOP Party line has been that E-Vote fraud is a Democratic conspiracy theory, a tinfoil hat illusion. Republicans all know that it is real. They count on it to win them elections when they are behind (It is the Holy Grail of elections, after all). But they never acknowledge it out loud. If they did, they might have to take seriously bills like the one Congressional Democrats introduced this fall that would have required that ever voter be offered a paper ballot, the way that every voter in California is being offered a paper ballot (Hey, as goes California, so goes the country. That was why Gov. Arnold was instructed to veto the health care bill by the insurance lobby).

Why, with one week to go before the election, would Karl Rove suddenly scare the hell out his own base by throwing the reliability of all the Sequoia Voting Machines into doubt? A scared base is not an energized base. It cant be just to set up a post election court challenge. E-vote fraud challenges are very tough to prove in court. Simply saying "The owner lives in Venezuela" will not impress a judge. It will impress a bunch of angry Freepers, though. With that rumor, Karl Rove just bought himself some plausible deniability. If the elections goes really badly, he can tell the troops "Don't blame me. Chavez hacked the vote."

2. On Sunday, administration mouthpiece George Will asked the question "Why aren't we voting on paper ballots?" Apparently he was either hibernating or in a drunken stupor when the Congressional Democrats tried to introduce their bill that would have given us paper ballots, because I do not remember him speaking up then. He predicted the End of Times on election day thanks to E-Voting. This is quite a change of heart coming from an official voice of the Republicans. He also predicted a lot of court challenges. Court challenges are one strategy to steal an election. Drag them out long enough and Hasturt can seat anyone he wants. Right? Maybe not. The press is no longer friendly. GOP election theft by court challenge in 2000 caused us lots of trouble. The public might not be amused if it happened again. In the present situation, court challenges are more likely to prove useful to Rove by clouding the Democrats' wins in the minds of the hard core Freeper base. Plausible deniability again. The Dems stole the election and they had better lawyers.

3. On Wednesday In a fit of childish temper, W. announced that Cheney and Rummie are staying, and no one tried to stop him. . If there was a snowball's chance in Hell that the GOP was still going to pull this off in the straight vote, W. would still be performing like a pet monkey."It's never been about stay the course, I'm gonna alter the course. No, wait. I'm gonna neuter the course. Then I'm gonna ask James Baker III. But the goal won't change. Nope. I don't like change. Is this how you do that Doublespeak, Karl?" Rove has given up courting the Independent voters. He has given up asking W. to do anything. It isn't going to make a bit of difference.

4. If he was wasn't sweating already, he should be after seeing "Hacking Democracy" tonight on HBO. How on earth did they take six years of heartache, sweat, anguish, disillusionment and all the rest and come up with such a fascinating, energizing rallying cry for people to get out there and get involved? It was the way they told the story. Forget the personal attacks on people like Bev Harris and Shelley and Ion Sanchez. The movie was David vs. Goliath or rather We, the Geeks vs. the Idiot Thieving Politicians & Their Corporate Allies. If you haven't seen it, you must. It is the opposite of a downer. It will make you want to vote and then go issue a Freedom of Information Act filing to see how all 3000 elections in the country were handled the way Bev did in 2004. You will fantasize about digging through election garbage and finding important clues. Don't we all want to participate in our own democracy?

people in jail...

to supervise the elections.:rofl:

A few days into the noise about Hugo Chavez, which had me thinking "why this? why now?" I asked myself my old question: "Who does it serve?"

I hope I am totally wrong, but I think the only reason Chavez has been dragged into this discussion is because he is anti-Bush, unlike Diebold. If the Democrats manage to win, close races can then have doubt cast upon them by the Republicans, who control media access/propaganda.

I am trying very hard not to count any electoral chickens before they are hatched.

Hekate

since early 2005. Michael Powell dropped a bomshell when he revealed that Rove was lying when he promised that Bush was going to deliver media monopolies for all. Think of it as Colin Powell's "screw you" gift. All the MSM lies of the 2000, 2002, 2004 election cycles got the MSM nothing but heaps of scorn, and Hell Hath No Fury as they say.

http://www.grandtheftelectionohio.com/060112.htm

Karl Rove has several weaknesses. One is his tendency to repeat himself. The other is that he think in the short term. Both are traits of sociopaths and conmen, not true creative genius.

They discredited the Florida recount process---otherwise, trying to halt it would be seen as illegitimate by too many people.

I suppose one could use the Chavez/Sequoia meme to cast doubt on elections, but I'm not sure how effective that would be. I guess in the House races, you could try to have the House pick the winner the way they picked Bilbray, but Bilbray had the vote count on his side when that happened. This seems highly unlikely to me, considering how many races they'd have to steal, in broad daylight, in order to retain control of the House. If the House leadership tries to stay in power by stepping in and overturning Dem victories, there is going to be a major outcry. I don't think they could get away with it; the mask will have come completely off at that point.

It could be used to contest a close Senate Race or two in a last ditch effort to hang on to the Senate, but it still seems like not much of weapon. After all, it works the other way, too. They've now legitimized the idea of vote hacking, which only increases the chances for close Repub victories to be challenged. Although, obviously Chavez would be hacking for Dems, eh? So, maybe there is some value to getting the idea out there. Cast doubt on the process so that enough people accept it when they try to decide elections at the Federal level as in 2000.

Another explanation would be that the Chavez scare is psyops aimed at Chavez. That is, they are trying to discredit Chavez by making people in Venezuela think that he is rigging elections. I'm sure that by making this announcement they've created a news item that has been run on T.V., and in Newspapers in Venezuela, especially when one considers that their allies in Venezuela own Newspapers and T.V. stations. The Bush admin has manufactured a propaganda "club" that can be used by their right wing pals in Venezuela to batter Chavez.

Repukes are going down...

If the polls support a tidal wave by the Dems, then there is no need for them to fix the election in the first place. So if the outcome reflects the polls precisely, then what basis is there for blaming the Dems?

It makes absolutely No Sense! The repubs are the ones with the most to lose, and they are the ones who will do whatever FIXING is necessary to cover their own ASSES. The repubs have the most influence with the voting machine manufacturers, and NOT the Dems.

But perhaps they're counting on the STUPIDITY of the American people, which is a fair enough bet.

that Diebold is running scared, that all the attention finally being paid to e-fraud is making them afraid to cheat too much this time. They may have decided that they want to stay in business and that gross cheating may well put them out of business, so they've put out the word to KKKarl that they're not going to go over the top any more like they did with that reform proposition in Ohio. But given an all-but-certain drubbing in the election, true to form, KKKarl tries to turn it into a strength by setting up conditions to challenge all legitimate elections in court and throw everything into chaos.

Oink!