...If Bush really needed or wanted a brain, he could simply borrow Vice President Cheney's brain, which works so hard that it frequently has to be taken to an undisclosed location to be iced down.

In my never-ending quest to glean information from many parts of the world, I was reading the Web site of the Sydney Morning Herald when I happened upon the story announcing the resignation of President Bush's longtime friend and political guru, Karl Rove. ``Bush's Brain' Steps Down," the headline said...

...The reason that Rove has not been Bush's brain is that the president does not need a brain. Under the Constitution, he is the commander in chief, not the cerebrum in chief. He has been able to get by without one...

...But is Rove an evil genius for recognizing the young George W. Bush as potential presidential timber when the thought of this sapling character being in the White House would have inspired hysterics in any normal person? Genius, yes, but ``evil" is such a theological term that it should be avoided. Just because a political witch doctor gives off a strong smell of sulfur, and every issue he touches is left with the telltale mark of a pitchfork, we can hardly call such a fellow evil. As for me, I respect Rove and wish him well as he makes ready to return to private life and embrace his family with his cloven hooves.

To say less is to invite allegations of partisan sour grapes -- that dislike of Rove is rooted in disappointment that he made his life's work the destruction of Democrats. But I am not a Democrat and the truth is that the Democrats are the passenger pigeons of politics, easily snared as they fly hopelessly about. For me, it was the types of snares he laid that were the problem -- sweet words laced with poison, DDT tactics that will live on in the political environment to the detriment of everyone.

Why, aren't we all glad that in the last presidential election, in the midst of a war on terror, Rove and Co. sought to decide the race on the issue of gay marriage? I don't know about you, but I felt safer for being treated like a moron.

Rove was not Bush's brain. It was worse than that. For too many Americans, he was their brain, which he expertly stimulated with base impulses for political gain. As Pogo might have said: We have met the enemy's brain and it was ours.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2007/08/160_8553.html

No, bush* senior sought out Rove to make his sociopathic, drug-addicted failure of a son into something suitable for public consumption. Between Karen "wetnurse to the beast" Hughes, Condi "my husband" Rice, Pickles and KKKarl, they remade Jr. into a commodity that could be sold to the American people. It's been said the Jebbie was to be the donor sibling as the Machine's candidate. He was the "smart one," and was supposedly being groomed for the role. Son number one was considered unstable and such an abject failure that he was not considered up to snuff. One wonders exactly what type of skeletons reside in Jebbie's closet to warrant calling in the second string.

Wake up America!:kick:

P.R. bullshit copy for pre-ordained events. Rove did NOT, "in the midst of a war on terror," seek to "decide the race on the issue of gay marriage." What he sought was to write a PLAUSIBLE NARRATIVE of how the slaughterers of half a million people in an unjust war, the torturers of prisoners, and the thieves of trillions of dollars from the U.S. treasury, HAD WON; now they flipped a 3% loss (the exit polls; and, all told, probably a 5% to 7% loss) into a 2.5% 'win' as reported by the rightwing Bushite electronic voting corporations and their "trade secret," proprietary programming code, in the new and extremely insecure and insider hackable voting machines.

Thus, all the silly Homeland security "alerts" piled up just before the (s)election (that people were laughing about), and the anti-gay marriage initiatives on the fiddled, so-called "ballots" (electrons whirling around in cyberspace). Oh, and Rove's "invisible" get out the vote campaign "in the churches." In truth, grass roots Democratic activists blew the Bushites away in new voter registration, nearly 60/40, in 2004. You wouldn't know that, though, from the quotes in the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, who don't bother with numbers, and prefer soft, unprovable assertions--like those made by Bush, Cheney, Rove and others--about "why they 'won.'" The "soccer moms." The gay haters. Those invisible new votes from "the churches." And all those actual new Democratic votes somehow...just vanishing, or maybe they were all flocking to the Democratic Party to vote for...Bush/Cheney??

You see what I mean. Rove writes the narrative. It is plausible enough for the lapdogs in the corporate media. He is not intending to convince anyone of anything; he's just inventing things for them to say--to keep the porous story of the legitimacy of the U.S. government patched together.

We have got to remember that 56% of the American people opposed the Iraq War, way back at the beginning (Feb. '03). 56% is a significant majority. It would be a landslide in a presidential election (and believe me, it was). This anti-Iraq War majority has now grown to a staggering 70%. And stats on other issues are similarly compelling--for instance, 63% opposed to torture "under any circumstances" (May '04). What they tell us is that there is huge disagreement between the Bush Junta and the American people on virtually every major issue, and there has been for some time--importantly, from well before the 2004 election.

It was to defeat this great progressive American majority that "trade secret" vote counting--controlled by Bushites, with virtually no audit/recount controls--was devised, and was fast-tracked into place with a $3.9 billion e-voting boondoggle passed by the Anthrax Congress in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution (October 2002), and closely related to it. The IWR guaranteed unjust war. The "Help America Vote Act" (e-voting) provided the means by which to shove it down the throats of the American people. It's a no brainer. And here I WOULD fault the intelligence--or at least the alertness--of the American people--although, really, there is no subject that has been more "black-holed" by the corporate news monopolies and by the entire political establishment, including the Democratic Party leaders, than election fraud and our new, fraudulent election SYSTEM.

It has nothing to do with gay marriage. It has nothing to do with "terrorism," or any of the Rove "talking points." It has to do with sheer naked power to directly steal the election with "trade secret" vote counting. THEN you churn out the "explanations" for "why we won," that you wrote six months before.

The only thing that this system of election thievery and Rovian corporate news monopoly disinformation could convince anyone of is that OTHER Americans had gone nuts, in great numbers, had bought into this crap and had voted for Bush/Cheney AGAIN. In that, Rove succeeded. He got not just the corporate news monopolies, but ALSO most of the Leftist press, talking about "why they won." Elaborate dissections of the "swift-boating" campaign and Kerry's weak response, and Kerry's failure to hammer Bush on the war, on torture and other crimes, and the failures of the campaign and of the DNC, and on and on. All the "Bush lite" discussion.

But what everybody missed, in these dissections, was that the American people would have deliriously happy for MERE SANITY and intelligence and a bit of liberalism in the White House. And what everybody also missed--and, granted, it was damned hard to lift the "Iron Curtain" over the subject--was an election system that had been made wholly non-transparent, and wide open to fraud, in a very short time.

The rigged machines and the disinformation didn't convince ANYBODY on the war, on torture, on gay marriage or anything else. In fact, the opposite has occurred. Opinion against the war has skyrocketed. And Bush's approval ratings sank like the Titanic, after that rigged election, and are now permanently stuck at about 25%.

They accomplished demoralization and disempowerment and, above all, disenfranchisement. But they did not change minds. The opposite occurred--in such a big way that it is one of the inferential evidences of election fraud.

This fraudulent vote counting system is still with us, and is still doing its work of keeping the war going, despite the overwhelming will of the people that it be stopped. And it is doing other work as well--for the corporate predators who foisted it upon us. 'Democrats' voting for more war, more billions in war funding, and more spying, and failing to impeach the criminals in the White House. There is hardly a member of Congress who can prove that he or she was actually elected. And I think it's clear that many of them were not. They were (S)elected by Diebold/ES&S.

The American people have shown an amazing resistance to Rove's propaganda. And I will not see them slandered as having bought into it. They did not. They have not. And it is neither accurate nor good strategy (for restoring our democracy) to keep SAYING that the American people are stupid sheep. They are disempowered and disenfranchised, and are struggling mightily to figure out what has gone wrong, and many thousands of them have been working non-stop, since 11/2/04, to RESTORE transparent vote counting, to educate the public about it, and to challenge corrupt election officials. They have been incredibly effective, despite the immense difficulty of the task, and things are starting to snowball in favor of transparency and against the rigged machines. THIS is the true America--an innovative, creative, "can-do" people, who have been struggling under an "Iron Curtain" of lies and illusions and manipulation, designed just for them, to figure out what's wrong and fix it.