Don’t know why I haven’t been able to get to blogger today, it’s deeply annoying when there’s so much news happening. Anyhow I can now, so let’s ease into it with the comment of the day:
You know whats sad?
When Brittny fuckin spears divorces you because YOUR music sucks.
tames | 11.09.06 – 1:25 am | #
From Tbogg – who has yet to blogroll us despite getting inordinately high mentions in Comment of the Day, hint, hint.
Read more: Comment of the day
The Democrats are still teetering on the brink of controlling the Senate, and it may well come down to who wins in Virginia, Republican Senate wannabe George ‘Macaca’ Allen or Democratic decorated Vietnam vet, former Secretary of The Navy and popular novelist James Webb. There’s less than 1% margin in it reportedly.
It looks like Allen, who’s losing narrowly, plans to take it to a recount, as is his absolute right.
But we’ve seen how Republicans use challenges and recounts to suppress the vote before and I hope the Democrats are ready for how nasty this may get and that they learned well from the Bush/Gore ratfuckery and have sharpened up their legal expertise.
Take just this one small race for a judgeship in Alabama for instance, in which Karl Rove used the recount process to change the election result:
Rove had other plans, and immediately moved for a recount. “Karl called the next morning,” says a former Rove staffer. “He said, ‘We came real close. You guys did a great job. But now we really need to rally around Perry Hooper. We’ve got a real good shot at this, but we need to win over the people of Alabama.'” Rove explained how this was to be done. “Our role was to try to keep people motivated about Perry Hooper’s election,” the staffer continued, “and then to undermine the other side’s support by casting them as liars, cheaters, stealers, immoral?all of that.” (Rove did not respond to requests for an interview for this article.)
The campaign quickly obtained a restraining order to preserve the ballots. Then the tactical battle began. Rather than focus on a handful of Republican counties that might yield extra votes, Rove dispatched campaign staffers and hired investigators to every county to observe the counting and turn up evidence of fraud. In one county a probate judge was discovered to have erroneously excluded 100 votes for Hooper. Voting machines in two others had failed to count all the returns. Mindful of public opinion, according to staffers, the campaign spread tales of poll watchers threatened with arrest; probate judges locking themselves in their offices and refusing to admit campaign workers; votes being cast in absentia for comatose nursing-home patients; and Democrats caught in a cemetery writing down the names of the dead in order to put them on absentee ballots.
I wonder if anyone was ever charged at all, or indeed if any of those reports proved true on investigation? Doesn’t really matter I suppose, the smear was probably enough.
As the recount progressed, the margin continued to narrow. Three days after the election Hooper held a press conference to drive home the idea that the election was being stolen. He declared, “We have endured lies in this campaign, but I’ll be damned if I will accept outright thievery.” The recount stretched on, and Hooper’s campaign continued to chip away at Hornsby’s lead. By November 21 one tally had it at nine votes.
The race came down to a dispute over absentee ballots. Hornsby’s campaign fought to include approximately 2,000 late-arriving ballots that had been excluded because they weren’t notarized or witnessed, as required by law. Also mindful of public relations, the Hornsby campaign brought forward a man who claimed that the absentee ballot of his son, overseas in the military, was in danger of being disallowed. The matter wound up in court. “The last marching order we had from Karl,” says a former employee, “was ‘Make sure you continue to talk this up. The only way we’re going to be successful is if the Alabama public continues to care about it.'”
Initially, things looked grim for Hooper. A circuit-court judge ruled that the absentee ballots should be counted, reasoning that voters’ intent was the issue, and that by merely signing them, those who had cast them had “substantially complied” with the law. Hooper’s lawyers appealed to a federal court. By Thanksgiving his campaign believed he was ahead?but also believed that the disputed absentee ballots, from heavily Democratic counties, would cost him the election. The campaign went so far as to sue every probate judge, circuit clerk, and sheriff in the state, alleging discrimination. Hooper continued to hold rallies throughout it all. On his behalf the business community bought ads in newspapers across the state that said, “They steal elections they don’t like.” Public opinion began tilting toward him.
The recount stretched into the following year. On Inauguration Day both candidates appeared for the ceremonies. By March the all-Democratic Alabama Supreme Court had ordered that the absentee ballots be counted. By April the matter was before the Eleventh Federal Circuit Court. The byzantine legal maneuvering continued for months. In mid-October a federal appeals-court judge finally ruled that the ballots could not be counted, and ordered the secretary of state to certify Hooper as the winner?only to have Hornsby’s legal team appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which temporarily stayed the case. By now the recount had dragged on for almost a year.
That would suit Rove and Bush just fine and dandy, who has control of the Senate tied up in court for a year or more, especially with their aces in the hole on the Supreme Court.
Montana is still in play too as I type, but I’ve a feeling it’s going to come down to Virginia. But things are somewhat different now : Bush has taken a palpable hit which I’m not at all sure he’s mentally equipped to deal with, Rove has been showing his hissyfittery lately – have they even got the balls left to try a Florida 2000 again, or will desperation be the spur?
Read more: Congressional elections, Virginia recount
Well, it’s a new political landscape in the US and the Democrats have made more or less a clean sweep: the House is won, and the Senate’s teetering their way, awaiting the final Virginia result. I’ve never been so pleased to have my pessimism about another election theft proved wrong. Though the Rethugs’ve been having damned good try at stealing it, grassroots organising defeated their nefarious plans. For once the electorate spoke loud and clear.
One of the more interesting results is the win of John Hall, formerly of rock group Orleans, who beat the Republican incumbent in his upstate NY congressional race running on a radical antiwar and environmental platform. Yay for hippies!
Less gratifying results are that Joe Leiberman kept his seat and the racist campaign in Tennessee worked against Harold Ford, who lost.
I’m not madly keen on Nancy Pelosi, never have been (she’s just another vaguely liberal, reformist, rich white woman, IMO) but it is progress for the US to have its first female Speaker of the House.
The big question now is impeachment. This isn’t the end of the process of bringing this government to account, it’s just the beginning. Last night was a great victory for the US voter, but it remains to be seen if those they elected will be any more responsive to the wishes of the electorate than the last lot were. People want to see the Chimperor and his minions brought to justice and although last night was a humilation for them it wasn’t even part of the justice that’s due.
The burning question now is will Dems impeach or won’t they? If they don’t, the newly elevated Pelosi et al may find today’s post- electoral euphoria wearing off pretty damned quickly.
If they do, there’s still the question of Bush’s self-anointment with dictatorial powers, and Cheney’s overt refusal to answer any potential future congressional subpoenas. Any attempt at impeachment’ll lead to a nasty, drag-out, knock-down scrap.
It can’t come to soon for me.
Read more: US congressionals elections, Democratic victory, Impeachment
Take a load off your feet, get a cup of tea, forget the cares of the world and revel in the unalloyed joy of Catprin.
Read more: Cats In Hats
Would Bush declare martial law rather than face potential impeachment? Sounds mad on the face of it, doesn’t it? But….
Peace, Earth and Justice News:
Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
Frank Morales
Toward Freedom
Oct. 28, 2006Public Law 109-364, or the “John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007” (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a “public emergency” and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to “suppress public disorder.”
President Bush seized this unprecedented power on the very same day that he signed the equally odious Military Commissions Act of 2006. In a sense, the two laws complement one another. One allows for torture and detention abroad, while the other seeks to enforce acquiescence at home, preparing to order the military onto the streets of America. Remember, the term for putting an area under military law enforcement control is precise; the term is “martial law.”
Section 1076 of the massive Authorization Act, which grants the Pentagon another $500-plus-billion for its ill-advised adventures, is entitled, “Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies.” Section 333, “Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law” states that “the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of (“refuse” or “fail” in) maintaining public order, “in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.” [My emphasis]
For the current President, “enforcement of the laws to restore public order” means to commandeer guardsmen from any state, over the objections of local governmental, military and local police entities; ship them off to another state; conscript them in a law enforcement mode; and set them loose against “disorderly” citizenry – protesters, possibly, or those who object to forced vaccinations and quarantines in the event of a bio-terror event.
The law also facilitates militarized police round-ups and detention of protesters, so called “illegal aliens,” “potential terrorists” and other “undesirables” for detention in facilities already contracted for and under construction by Halliburton. That’s right. Under the cover of a trumped-up “immigration emergency” and the frenzied militarization of the southern border, detention camps are being constructed right under our noses, camps designed for anyone who resists the foreign and domestic agenda of the Bush administration.
An article on “recent contract awards” in a recent issue of the slick, insider “Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International” reported that “global engineering and technical services powerhouse KBR [Kellog, Brown & Root] announced in January 2006 that its Government and Infrastructure division was awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in the event of an emergency.” “With a maximum total value of $385 million over a five year term,” the report notes, “the contract is to be executed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,” “for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) – in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.”
The report points out that “KBR is the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton.” (3) So, in addition to authorizing another $532.8 billion for the Pentagon, including a $70-billion “supplemental provision” which covers the cost of the ongoing, mad military maneuvers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places, the new law, signed by the president in a private White House ceremony, further collapses the historic divide between the police and the military: a tell-tale sign of a rapidly consolidating police state in America, all accomplished amidst ongoing U.S. imperial pretensions of global domination, sold to an “emergency managed” and seemingly willfully gullible public as a “global war on terrorism.” [My emphasis]
The Pentagon, as one might expect, plays an even more direct role in martial law operations. Title XIV of the new law, entitled, “Homeland Defense Technology Transfer Legislative Provisions,” authorizes “the Secretary of Defense to create a Homeland Defense Technology Transfer Consortium to improve the effectiveness of the Department of Defense (DOD) processes for identifying and deploying relevant DOD technology to federal, State, and local first responders.”
In other words, the law facilitates the “transfer” of the newest in so-called “crowd control” technology and other weaponry designed to suppress dissent from the Pentagon to local militarized police units. The new law builds on and further codifies earlier “technology transfer” agreements, specifically the 1995 DOD-Justice Department memorandum of agreement achieved back during the Clinton-Reno regime.(4)
It has become clear in recent months that a critical mass of the American people have seen through the lies of the Bush administration; with the president’s polls at an historic low, growing resistance to the war Iraq, and the Democrats likely to take back the Congress in mid-term elections, the Bush administration is on the ropes. And so it is particularly worrying that President Bush has seen fit, at this juncture to, in effect, declare himself dictator.
Steve Gilliard had a go at me in comments on his blog the other day for being pessimistic and paranoid about this very subject. Pessimistic? I don’t think so. Realistic, more like. Paranoid? Nope, just sensible of the very real danger anyone even slightly to the left of Ghenghis Khan is potentially in at the moment.
Jesus wept, no-one thought the Bush administration’d torture people, but they do. No-one thought they’d deliberately break the army, but they did. No-one thought they’d do even half the things they have done. They will literally stop at nothing, how many times does it have to be said? Take their network of worldwide secret prison for example:
We may never know how many secret prisons exist (or, for a time, existed) in the shape-shifting American mini-gulag, but according to the Washington Post, some locations for these black sites include itinerant CIA detention centers “on ships at sea,” a site in Thailand, and another on “Britain’s Diego Garcia island in the Indian Ocean.” Uzbekistan has been reported as one possible location, Algeria another. Denials were issued about ghost jails being located in Russia and Bulgaria. The British Guardian named “a US airbase in the Gulf state of Qatar” as another suspected site. And while proposed prisons on “virtually unvisited islands in Lake Kariba in Zambia” were evidently nixed, various black sites located in “several democracies in Eastern Europe” apparently did come into being.
No-one thought they’d do that either, but they did and they do. The internal US detention camps are also ready and waiting should the elections go the wrong way for Bush & Cheney, (despite their best efforts with Diebold and the dirty election tricks campaign) and Bush then decides his only recourse is to exercise those dictatorial powers he’s abrogated to himself. After all, why bother signing the order if you’re never going to use it?
The programmes that this order allows Bush to implement on his personal say-so, Operations Rex 84, Garden Plot and Cable Splicer, have been in place for some time now, having originally been ordered by Ronald Reagan.
There over 800 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States and all it would take is a presidential signature on a proclamation and the attorney general’s signature on a warrant to which a list of names is attached. Ask yourself if you really want to be on Ashcroft’s list. The Rex 84 Program was established on the reasoning that if a “mass exodus” of illegal aliens crossed the Mexican/US border, they would be quickly rounded up and detained in detention centers by FEMA. Rex 84 allowed many military bases to be closed down and to be turned into prisons.
Operation Cable Splicer and Garden Plot are the two sub programs which will be implemented once the Rex 84 program is initiated for its proper purpose. Garden Plot is the program to control the population. Cable Splicer is the program for an orderly takeover of the state and local governments by the federal government. FEMA is the executive arm of the coming police state and thus will head up all operations. The Presidential Executive Orders already listed on the Federal Register also are part of the legal framework for this operation.
It’s easy to condemn all this as a paranoid pessimistic fantasy while sitting oblivious to the pending danger, snug behind a kb in one of the world’s richest cities and surrounded by all the comforting paraphernalia of a secure consumer society.
Pah. All the Powermacs and Ipods in the world are no defence to a government bent on internal repression. The election, the media, blogging, whatever – it’s all bread and bloody circuses for the proles so they don’t actually look at what’s really happening under the radar in the country that’s touted as the very epitome of democratic freedom.
The Bush administration itself certainly isn’t treating these programmes as imaginary.
I suggest that in light of these developments it might be wise for all those who consider themselves political leftists to make their own quiet plans in advance. You may never have to use such a plan, but it might be a good idea.
Time, perhaps, to read Solzhenitsyn again too:
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling in terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst; the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!”
– The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Don’t come running to us Yurpeens for succour either, USAnians -The UK has its very own counterpart to all this in the Civil Contingencies Act.
Read more: Congressional elections, Homeland Security, War on terror, FEMA camps, Martial law