Terror alerts? Postpone the election!

Election Watch

Well, a member of Bush's Federal Election Commission has come right out and said what tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists have been saying all along: that we need a "contingency plan" in order to postpone the presidential elections in case there is a terrorist attack. Yeah, that's what we need. I try to downplay conspiracy theories whenever possible: simple human greed and incompetence usually explains 98% of everything that goes on. But this guy has decided we'd better start talking about how terrorist attacks could effect the election. Like we've said before, Osama now is Bush's last best hope to pull out a win. Surely the Bushies will work very hard to protect the country from an attack, even if they could use that attack as an excuse to mess with an election they will richly deserve to lose? Surely.

The gaming of Florida's election will continue unabated, as there has been no punishment for the perpetrators of last cycles felonies. In fact, most of them have been richly rewarded. And so it is no surprise that a lawsuit asking for paper printouts for blackbox voting machines in FL has been struck down in their judiciary.

And this article, "All the President's Votes?", published in the UK this fall, summarizes the very suspicious outcomes swirling around electronic voting.

Now, weird things like this do occasionally occur in elections, and the figures, on their own, are not proof of anything except statistical anomalies worthy of further study. But in Georgia there was an extra reason to be suspicious. Last November, the state became the first in the country to conduct an election entirely with touchscreen voting machines, after lavishing $54m (£33m) on a new system that promised to deliver the securest, most up-to-date, most voter-friendly election in the history of the republic. The machines, however, turned out to be anything but reliable. With academic studies showing the Georgia touchscreens to be poorly programmed, full of security holes and prone to tampering, and with thousands of similar machines from different companies being introduced at high speed across the country, computer voting may, in fact, be US democracy's own 21st-century nightmare.

Bush Watch

Here are several lists of Bush facts to keep handy. Some examples:

• #1 Has assembled the wealthiest Cabinet in U.S. history.
• $10.9 million Average wealth of the members of Bush's original 16-person Cabinet.
• 75 Percentage of Americans unaffected by Bush's 2003 cuts in the capital-gains and dividend taxes.
• $42,000 Average savings members of Bush's Cabinet are expected to receive this year as a result of cuts in capital-gains and dividends taxes.
• $42,228 Median household income in the U.S. in 2001.
• $116,000 Amount Vice President Dick Cheney is expected to save each year in taxes.
• 9 Number of members of Bush's Defense Policy Board who also sit on the corporate board of, or advise, at least one defense contractor.

The Onion Watch

Once again, the Onion ironically proves to be one of the best sources of information. Witness this article, entitled "I should not be allowed to say the following things about America":

This also is not the time to ask whether diplomacy was ever given a chance. Or why, for the last 10 years, Iraq has been our sworn archenemy, when during the 15 years preceding it we traded freely in armaments and military aircraft with the evil and despotic Saddam Hussein. This is the kind of question that, while utterly valid, should not be posed right now.

And I certainly will not point out our rapid loss of interest in the establishment of democracy in Afghanistan once our fighting in that country was over. We sure got out of that place in a hurry once it became clear that the problems were too complex to solve with cruise missiles.

That sort of remark will simply have to wait until our boys are safely back home.