“I do believe in fairies! I do believe in fairies!” *
I’ve been offline since a week before the holiday, due to a confluence of No 2 son, partner and I all at home, and only one pc. So since tuesday i’ve been catching up and it’s enabled me to see thw odd from the trees a little.
You know those US mid-term elections? The ones that the US left hopes will sweep the Dems back into power in Congress, automagically ( albeit justifiably) impeach the President, induce a fatal heart attack in Cheney and make all America sparkly and nice and clean again? Wouldn’t that be nice?
Right, and fairy Hogwash has just gone to make me a cup of PG Tips.
Whenever you think they’ve played their last get-out-of-jail-free card, and surely, surely this will be the time they’re down for good, you realise Bushco has many more such cards hidden up their sleeves.
Between illegal spying on citizens ( and journalists, it seems – thought you were special, did you?) , abrogating the absolute powers of divine right to himself, and, allegedly drinking like the unreformed alcoholic he is – it seems Bush and his minions have been giving some thought to the inevitable vote-tampering suspicion that’s bound to ensue given their proven form in gerrymandering and election-rigging.
Although under constant pressure of indictment, WH strategists are planning ahead. Even if the Diebold voting machine hack is foiled, even if the fundie troops won’t come out in droves this time, even if the lower courts actually do enforce voting rights, even if, horror of horrors, the crony-stuffed Civil Rights section of the Justice department goes against them, they still have plenty of failsafe switches.
The latest whizzo WH wheeze is to improperly use the power to make recess appointments to further stack the Federal Elections Commission in their favour:
Office of the Press Secretary
January 4, 2006
Personnel Announcement
President George W. Bush today recess appointed the following
individuals:[…]
Robert D. Lenhard, of Maryland, to be a Member of the Federal Election
Commission.Steven T. Walther, of Nevada, to be a Member of the Federal Election
Commission.Hans Von Spakovsky, of Georgia, to be a Member of the Federal Election
Commission.[…]
Other than that around 99.999 recurring % of appointments by Bush are partisan, what makes me think these people are there to purposefully cover the administration’s collective ass when, as they will, congressional election results showing Republicans increasing their majority are thought dodgy?
FEC appointee Lenhard is the husband of Viveca Novak — the Time Magazine journalist whose loose lips may end up saving Karl Rove from joining Scooter Libby on Indictment Row. But n-o-o-o, they never discuss anything about it, that Bush appointee and the ‘independent’ journamalist. That would be a breach of ethics, wouldn’t it? And that would be bad.
The invaluable Sourcewatch provides the following info on Spakovsky ( ‘Von’? Where’s his Schloss then? He’s an American, dammit – what’s he got to be ‘Von’ of, and why’s he using an outmoded aristocratic title? Is King George ennobling his courtiers already? )
In 1997, von Spakovsky wrote an article for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, a conservative research group, that called for an aggressive campaign to ‘purge’ the election rolls of felons. Within months of that article?s publication, the V.I.P. helped put von Spakovsky?s idea into action. Phillips met with the company that designed the process for the removal of alleged felons from the voting rolls in Florida, a process that led, notoriously, to the mistaken disenfranchisement of thousands of voters, most of them Democratic, before the 2000 election,” Toobin wrote. “During the thirty-six-day recount in Florida, von Spakovsky worked there as a volunteer for the Bush campaign. After the Inauguration, he was hired as an attorney in the Voting Section and was soon promoted to be counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, in what is known as the ‘front office’ of the Civil Rights Division” (My emphasis)
Didn’t he do well? It’s amazing how many people do when they go with the program.
But what if the electoral egregiousness of Bush’s GOP is just too much even for his own creatures on the FEC?
Hey, man, no problemo.
Brrring! Messrs Alito and Roberts to the white courtesy phone please…
Democrats and their supporters seem not to be able to quite get their heads round the evidence of their own eyes. Although Bushco has decimated the federal government, demolished any semblance of checks and balances to unfettered exceutive power, stacked the judiciary and government departments with his creatures, corrupted the electoral apparatus and elected legislature beyond repair – all while the Democratic party sits on its powerless hands.
Jeez, Louise, what’s a wannabe dictator got to do? Declare martial law and round up everyone not white, Baptist and over-21 into re-educamacation camps?
The US system of government is rotting away and the only thing that can rescue it from this petty tyrant and his corrupting touch is direct citizen action according to consitutional principles. Fairies won’t cut it, neither will unicorns, or auras, or Reikian therapy or the Democrats or talking it out like responsible adults. These people are emphatically not responsible adults.
Liberty has to be fought for – wishing don’t make it so.
