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GOP Terrified of American Voters
John McCain's statement in the debate that ACORN and the liberals are "on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history ... maybe destroying the fabric of democracy" is probably the most overwrought, ridiculous statement by a major-party nominee in living memory.
If you make a charge that serious, you better have something to back it up. McCain has nothing. Nada zero zilch.
There is no evidence of any attempt to rig or steal this election. Just think about the scale of the effort it would take to do what McCain describes.
On a statewide level, you would need an army of thousands of co-conspirators willing and able to vote repeatedly and illegally just to have any hope whatsoever of altering the outcome, and according to the GOP fantasy, those thousands consist of homeless drunks and drunk addicts.
Yet out of this alleged conspiracy of thousands in which lowlife drunks and dopers play a large part, the GOP and its allies in the Justice Department and other governnment agencies can't find a single participant willing to admit to the conspiracy and cough up the truth?
To rational people, that would suggest that no such conspiracy exists. But rationality has nothing to do with it.
There's something in the psyche of the GOP base that needs to believe they are victims of some ill-defined but clearly treacherous group plotting against them and the country. How else can they explain the fact that they're losing? It can't be because they have proved themselves incompetent at governance, or that they have lost touch with the reality of life in 21st century America. There has to be some other reason, and if there isn't they'll invent one.
In the 2006 cycle, that need was fulfilled by Moveon. org. The rightwing blogs and punditocracy couldn't utter a paragraph without weaving Moveon into their narrative somehow. It was never quite clear how Moveon could possibly do all the nefarious things it was alleged to be doing, but that uncertainty made the right-wing fantasy all the more alluring.
This year, Moveon still exists - it's still doing what it was doing before, yet the group is rarely if even mentioned. That's because ACORN has now been cast to replace it in the role of designated villain.
On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Ohio Republicans in their effort to try to challenge 200,000 voters. Two hundred thousand!! Republican officials fear the verdict of the American people. They fear the wrath of those Americans drawn into political participation by anger at the direction that the GOP has tried to take their country. And they are trying desperately, frantically, to try to prevent that verdict from being delivered.
Seventeen days to election day.
98 Comments so far
Show AllDangerous stuff. Fear and irrationality are an explosive mix.
Conservatives know their days are waning and will fight back however they can. Nothing will surprise me.
"It is not true that it's one damn thing after another - it's one damn thing over and over." Edna St. Vincent Millay
The whole GOP is grasping for straws.
. . . anger at the direction that the GOP has tried to take their country.
Tried? They did it!
The Republicans wrecked America. Payback is a bitch.........
Yeah. Right. Here we go. More tit-fo-tat. More dividing people. More shoving it in their faces. More provocation.
I said it once and I'll say it again, Obama & Company aren't MLK's, aren't JFK's or RFK's.
I have a sickening feeling that if you liked Waco, you're gonna love Obama & the Democrat's show this time around.
I sure hope I'm wrong.
Vote Nader. Vote for real democracy, not fascism.
Nader would be great!
Can you convince enough people to get him elected? I know I couldn't, even if I had a couple of years and millions to spend.
So, we have two villains to choose from. It's absolutely certain that one of them will be the next president, assuming cheneybush doesn't declare martial law before Jan 20. Which one will at least give us a little breathing space? Which one might at least give us a little time to figure out a way to get out of the country before the borders are sealed? I'd say that would be Obama.
He's been anointed by the corporatocracy anyway. It's their way of spreading oil on troubled waters. cheneybush got a bit out of control and have actually stirred up the sleeping masses a little. They're starting to mumble in their sleep. So, the mellow, calm and level headed Obama will lull us all back into our deep trance until the masters are ready to herd us into the labor camps.
That could possibly give some of us as much as eight years, depending on circumstances, to get our ducks in a row as they say.
I don't think a few of us voting for Nader matters much. There are still some ignorant people who believe that Nader cost Gore the election in 2000. Ridiculous. So, Nader running won't really affect the outcome anyway.
I guess there's no harm in voting your conscience.
There is no way to Peace. Peace is the Way.
Rumpled Ralph will never be elected POTUS. And don't worry so much, Nader-nuts, Change is coming. Maybe not as fast as you like, but you will be very glad that Obama is elected, and very sad if McSame is. Didn't you learn anything from George Bush being selected when 90,000 people, who should have know better, voted for Nader in 2000 in Florida?
I wish you well, Obama voters. I honestly do. Its better than McCain, at least on the surface anyway, although America's murder machine will continue onward. Makes no difference.
Again, you're only doing what you think you should. I don't blame you--at all. I say good for you.
As for me, I know Ralph Nader will only garner a few votes, but he represents my beliefs, and I have to show my resistance. Being a pacifist, I can no longer vote for a violent government that under your party, will continue--without change.
So, you will settle for less violence, and I, for none.
War and violence is part of your plan, part of your nature, part of your soul. Not mine.
damnliberal sez: "Didn't you learn anything from George Bush being selected when 90,000 people, who should have know better, voted for Nader in 2000 in Florida?"
***
Not so much.
I was very enlightened, however, to learn that 300,000 registered Democrats, who should have known better, voted for Bush in 2000.
Sioux Rose
Ever notice that when someone is guilty of something they project it onto others, or presume others are hiding the same type of behavior? Since the Republicans STOLE the last 2 elections through a variety of fraudulent mechanisms, the masters of cheating are upset that they can't rig this game. These creeps have such a religious-oriented pseudo-sense of privilege that they really think the nation is theirs to divide and conquer. Reflecting neither accountability nor principles, they are enemies of democracy, but call everyone else the traitor, fallen patriot, or terrorist. Their conventions should be filled with mirrors... and someone should read Hesse novels over the loud speakers.
Sioux Rose
exactly, good point.
their fears are merely reflections of their own behavior reversed, from the perspective of the victim. one has to wonder how their guilt will play out in their personal lives, when they're out of office and the totality of all of their deeds surfaces in their consciousness, when the faces of hundreds of tortured innocents and 100,000's killed start visiting them in their dreams.
...peace...
total projection. and a sense of entitlement that the ones with the most should rule the most.
Sioux Rose, you are always so right on target. How do you know so much? I think you are holding out. Keep commenting. As for the Republicans twisted logic. I wonder what their reaction would be after being openly proven to be blatantly wrong. Living in a state of perpetual denial must be like hell.
EXACTLY! Thanks, Souix Rose.
Maybe the American voters have finally realized they should be terrified of the GOP? At least the neocon branch that is running it right now.
The GOP has already taken the country over the precipice, and they're determined to leave it gasping and bleeding to death on the rocks of ignorance and sheer madness below. They're doing what they always do--projecting their own crimes (election theft, in this instance) onto their opponents. Once Obama is elected they'll be blaming him for all the chaos, murder and destruction Bush Co. has levelled on Iraq for 6 years, and every other crime these bastards have committed. They can't learn anything, obviously, or they wouldn't still be Republicans. In circles specializing in this kind of syndrome, they exhibit a species of retardation. Bush and McCain are their standard bearers.
EXACTLY what i was going to say..PROJECTION..15 yard penalty...everyone should know this trick by now..or at least i hope they do
Nixon talked about those Republican voters, un-poor, un-black, un-young, and un-student. Like Nixon and Reagan and Bush I and Bush II, McCain and the GOP assumes that they are also un-thinking. Granted, the American people behave foolishly at times, but they're not imbiciles.
Are you sure? "The Decider" was elected twice (with a little help) and that
doesn't speak well of the American voters. I believe the Daily Mirror (British
paper) said it best: "How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb?"
Maybe thats why there were no signs at the GOP convention saying "The Republican Party"? They are ashamed even in their own house.
DUH!
that was the first thing in my mind when I spotted the title.
OF COURSE the republicons are afraid of trhe voters.
why did they stop the count in 2000 and committed fraude in 2004 in the first place?
the people running the neocon show AND a significant part of the democraticons aren't interested or motivated by voters at all. they're interested in wealth and power: both of them in significant amounts.
that is the bottom line.
everybody knows this; the voters, the senators and other politicians, the media.
the voters are still desperately trying to put their heads in the sand of the illusion that the US is still a democracy where every vote counts, while the rest of the world that doesn't suffer from memory lapse now knows for over 7 years that what really matters is who counts (or stops the counting of) the votes, not who's votes count.
the politicians are shills. no more, no less. handpuppets of corporate masters (Pelosi, Obama, mcCain etc) or corporate masters themselves (Cheney) or moved by something entirely different than the wellfare of the American voter. they might be moved by solification of power (PNAC), huge wads of dollars, a glorified Armageddon (Palin) or forgein interests (AIPAC), what they are not is interested one tiny bit in voters.
sure they're afraid of them. on the surface that is.
below that they're just spinning the wheels and laughing their asses off.
the media which has become extremely good at ignoring what matters and creating illusions for the sheeple masses with what doesn't matter at all.
and still loads of people think that this is because people in the media are somehow not good at what they should do ea their job.
yeah right.
insert rolleyes smiley
the American left should after seven years be capable of getting their collective heads out of their collective behinds and realise by now that to get out of this continuing system of a political circus run by the clowns of the industrial military complex one needs at least a civil war or even worse a revolution in the oldest tradition: one where the blood runs in the gutters and the corpses are piled high
nothing short of that will stop them. nothing.
it's just a new boss, same as the old boss
and, yes, you will get fooled again.
The fix is already in, the election already stolen. See Bobby Kennedy and Greg Palast's piece in:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/23638322/block_the_vote
Rainborowe
THEY are not afraid of the voters. THEY have been TESTING us for the past few years, in case you forgot. When have we ever given them reason to be AFRAID??? Revoke Posse-Com...Enter North-Com. FEAR THIS sheep!
Since the Republicans STOLE the last 2 elections through a variety of fraudulent mechanisms, the masters of cheating are upset that they can't rig this game.
Obama hasn't won yet. Suppose every poll on Monday, November 3rd, shows him leading by 10 - 15 points and the next night McCain wins in yet another rigged election. What will then happen in this country? Will Obama concede, or tell McCain and the Republicans to eat it raw? What will ordinary people do when they suddenly realize The Big Fix is now a permanent aspect of American presidential politics? What if this coincides with a complete crash of our economy? How much more shit will Americans eat before they start taking matters into their own hands?
What will happen in this country?
NOTHING most likely.
Obama will rush to the microphone in John Kerry style and immediately concede and praise McCain and say how we need to have a healing (they always have to drag out the "healing" card which is in the same category as "I'm leaving to spend time with my family" bull) and he will say how the nation must heal and we must come together and rally behind McCain/Palin and that he (Obama) will return to the senate and "reach across the aisle" (translation: Bush/McCain enabler) as he has been doing since he sat down in the senate and that this is a good time for this nation and McCain will make a fine president [sic]. Oh, and then he will end with the perfunctory "god bless america" bull shit.
That's what Walk On Water Obama will likely say. Most people will respond by saying "I'm whatever...get over it" as they have been saying since 2000.
As for this comment you made:
"the masters of cheating are upset that they can't rig this game."
It's ALREADY being rigged.
More W.Va. voters say machines are switching votes
In six cases, Democratic votes flipped to GOP
http://www.sundaygazettemail.com/News/200810180251
If that would happen, Obama, just like Gore and the spineless Kerry, would pack it up and go home--happy to go back to raking in the cash and the good life, as proprietors of the Default Party.
You, the average democratic voter, would piss and moan, cry and stamp your feet, blog a g-zillion words......and do nothing.
But, that's not gonna happen. The natives are restless and have to be kept in line on the home front. Obama will be elected your next president. Powell will handle the army within the homeland.
REPUBLICANS are like that unruly kid sitting at the back of the class that suddenly "rips a loud and smelly FART."
Then, when the teacher asks, "Who did that!"
He immediately "points the finger" at the kid sitting next to him and exclaims, "HE DID IT!...HONEST!!"
Acorn should continue voter registrations permanently and refine their process. The areas targeted should be openly selected based on the number of unregistered votes in an area and leave all concern for poor and minority neighborhoods behind them. There is nobody trying to suppress rich white voters so it will work out the same anyway.
Voting should be declared a fundamental right and anybody who wrongfully denies your right to vote should be jailed. Then you couldn't afford to challenge people close to the election because if you are wrong on one you get to do some jail time. Anybody who actually votes twice should be jailed as well. Same 10 years either way per count no exceptions. Won't happen but should.
Sioux Rose
IOWABLACKBIRD: In answer to your quite possibly rhetorical question, 2 answers: A. Law of karma B. The outcome depicted through the character portrayed by Gene Hackman in "The Conversation."
Who among us was not fond of the deeply thoughtful anti-war films that emerged in the 70's?, Titles like Joe, Easy Rider, Z... at that time when Vietnam proved all that was wrong with a war of senseless imperialistic exploitation, I never thought the nation would fall to the same inane rhetoric ever again. Having made it a life study to understand the repetitive cycles our inanimate yet cognizant time capsules (also known as planets) replay, it becomes clear WHY cycles of aggression and repression recur. (I will eventually complete a book on this topic, although it will utilize the astro-logos for its basis.) Humanity can only rise above its bestial inclinations by understanding them within the larger sphere of intentions to which flesh has been made heir.
MARS: Thank you for the vote of confidence. I truly appreciate it. (Using that moniker I wonder if you identify with that planet? At its best, it is THE zodiac's quintessential lover, favored consort to Aphrodite... but he is also the universal signature of war and aggression.)
Don't count the republicans out just yet. Their big ace in the hole is white racist voters. Their ace up their sleeve is disenfranchisement of black voters, much like Florida in 2000. They can't win a fair fight but they can certainly win a fight.
-- EKATON --
Wait and see, there aren't nearly as many white racist voters as they try to lead you to believe. Lets see what election day will bring.
Obama will win by a narrow margin. There will be dancing in the streets. The Dems will win in the Senate and have a majority. They will push thru many minor changes that don't mean squat, blow them up in the media so everyone thinks something good is being done, and basically leave us with nothing.
I don't know what area of the country you live in, but I think you're wrong
about the number of white racist voters. I hear them every day here in Texas.
I doubt that it's any different in Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama,
just to name a few. And they certainly don't all live in the South. Watching
rallies in parts of Ohio, PA, & WV have made that pretty clear.
I don't disagree with you. I live in Texas too. But its so far different that 20 years ago its mind boggling. There is probably more black racim per capita now than white. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
Actually I've seen a lot more racism up North than here recently.
But we will soon find out if I'm right!
I've always known by the tricky and manipulative rhetoric used by republicans that they had contempt for average American voters, but I seriously doubt that they have ever feared them.
Incredibly, after Republicans and some conservative Democrats have left the country in ruins , McCain is closing in on Obama in the polls, 45 to 48. Nader is still polling 2%.
What really terrifies the GOP (God’s Only Producers) is when people won’t buy their crap. When we don’t waste our hard earned money or hard borrowed money on worthless fad products designed to pacify us for a few weeks or days. That’s what scares the shit out of them masters of war and commerce.
Hoa binh
ah, so that's what 'gop' stands for.............
The newly emerging Sara Palin Wing of the GOP is really the Old Eddie Haskell Wing in drag.
I have heard it since the Goldwater meltdown.
The First Law of the Right is: always have everything both ways.
They may have caused the Wall Street Meltdown, and are using the US Government to bail themselves out, but it really was the Democrats fault.
We are in a deep hole and McCain will dig it deeper, but that's OK. Oh, I have the great bridge in Alaska; you might want to look at.
Nietzsche
Republicans have stopped trying to pretend they are anything other than a criminal enterprise greedy for power for power's sake regardless of the means by which that power is acquired, legal or illegal, obvious or subtle, fair or foul.
Everybody knows this. What everybody does not know is that all thought is 98% unconscious and that anybody (and everybody) can be manipulated to act contrary to their own best interest, indeed against their own conscious will.
I would bet you that big business has loaned their best and brightest behavioral scientists to their toady Republican party. If this seems to be failing, rest assured that another 9/11 type terrorist attack will occur and martial law will be declared before January.
If you think the stock market is unstable, look at democracy in the USA.
"McCain casts himself as middle-class guardian" -AP
Egad, this is like 'Candygram for Mongo!' or any 'Spam Hook' in your in-box.
Maybe the Republicans will start calling 'Land Shark' to get people's vote.
In places where they treasure democracy, there's a strategy for dealing with election fraud. If the results of the election run counter to exit polls, they don't just sit and watch TV. They get up, get out their survival packs, and travel to the central square of the nearest large city. They stand there -- with banners, megaphones, or maybe in silence -- until justice is done. A day, three days, a week, a month. Whatever it takes. And yes, it's messy, scary, chaotic, and dangerous.
What will we do, if it happens here?
If 100,000 people descended on the federal building of the city nearest me, and stayed for even a few days, it would tie up the entire state very quickly.
I'm so tired of the whining. Why do we allow them to control our desires?
Expect resistance.
petr
I'll be there!
petr
Good on you!
Pass it on -- time to start getting ready is now. Basic supplies, signs, change of clothing.
If it happens, no more business as usual.
You'll do nothing.
Obama will say its the "democratic process at work" --and go home.
If Obama can survive the final machinations of the GOP and win, I predict that, in a year or two, the mess that is America will still be there!
Americans have been gobbling at the capitalist trough for too long. They are too used to getting easy money via stock markets, driving SUVs, etc. They have embraced greed and materialism and the easy life.
And Obama comes out of the entrenched political establishment, remember? His zeal to be different will be short-lived. He is a Messiah who wears a suit!
I hope I'm wrong but the signs are not good!
www.dangerouscreation.com
We'll still be in a mess; but if Obama wins, it will be a mess in which the citizenry have been persuaded to work together from top to bottom to get out of it; but if McCain wins, it will be a mess in which American fascism has fully metastisized and has license to assault & destroy all its internal enemies, all those people not living in the "pro-America" parts of the country.
"There's something in the psyche of the GOP base that needs to believe they are victims of some ill-defined but clearly treacherous group plotting against them and the country."
Meanwhile the GOP IS the "treacherous group" scheming against US and the country's best interests.
The projection dynamic includes an identifiable practice of claiming 'cause' to be 'effect' thus also claiming the right to define the terms. Demonization of policy/polity other than itself - socialism is bad if is equitable but good if it bails out the power to continue twisting the terms of the 'dialogue'.
The dynamic fetishizes conflict, division, violence, possession, - makes it 'hot'- this is the role of Sarah Palin. The cute confusion gives way to the 'heels are on and the gloves are off' is to provide an undefined mirror for the percentage of the population still reeling from outsourcing, the war on terror (like a drug), an occupation/illegal war fetish that has been going on for a long time with 'spin' doctoring. It is the dynamic of narcissistic addiction.
The article today about Seymour Hersch notes that psychoanalysis and journalism share the quality of keeping things in focus. When the focus is accurate, one cools down and is able to think, feel, respond and nurture.
The rest of the world (Iraqis and many others) is cooling down to the dynamic of the fetishized overheating of the spin doctors/ad agency, the inane claims of monoculture and irresponsibility of so many transnational corporations that poison the environment of sovereign peoples, cause mass displacement of peoples, and marginalization to sustain the profit margin of what is not of the neoliberal model(people). That marginalization of millions is the flip side sucking sound of the transnational dynamic.
We are conditioned to seek security in sameness rather than differences in the monoculture model and in this way are primed like a pump in the marginalization process - ourselves psychicly marginalized. Multi billion dollar industry to eliminate a sector of nature known as insects that serve very specific purposes within nature beyond the monoculture model, etc., 'small is beautiful' has innumerable meanings. Nature has for millions of years thrived with the intricate network of diversity. That diversity in the social sense is all who are 'marginalized' and represent some the most creative and restorative dynamics on earth. The financialization of life is in short a form of insanity best battled with standing firm and staying focused. The structures between individuals and society have fallen with fear/greed and how they are restored to functional dignity is our challenge. That will only happen from the ground up. The elections are only a point of departure from which to discover the joyous work that needs to be done for generations to come.
"...on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history ... maybe destroying the fabric of democracy"
I would be very careful, considering the GOP habit of blaming the opposition for things that THEY THEMSELVES are actively doing...
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats