Something else was left out of this article. After appointing the idiot bastard son and his Wormtongue assistant Cheney, the SCOTUS made the unprecedented statement that the decision they had just made would and could NOT be used as a precedent in other cases. They KNEW that what they were doing was bullshit, but they did it anyway, just YOU can't next time (in case it's they who are on the other side).

The whole freaking decade stunk, and I sincerely hope that there is an afterlife, where W gets to watch for the rest of eternity as he and his time as king are cursed and damned by those who have to pay for it. What a shit head.

Wow, began and ended the same way.

truly a sad day when america became just another banana republic. the worst voting machines, just like the worst schools and the worst air, existed in the poorer florida communities. so, those old machines could not count the gore votes. in the areas where the folks with felony records lived, there was much confusion, for many eligible voters had the same name as convicted felons. they were turned away from the polls. but, in pleasant valley sunday, where the rows of houses are all the same and no one seems to care, modern machines had no trouble calculating the bush votes, and no one who stepped into the bush precincts could be mistaken for a felon, for goodness sake. then, the governor said that if you don't take miss harris' word for the count, he'd send the contest over to the state legislature, where his friends would surely elect his brother president. could the ortega brothers pull that stunt in nicaraugua without facing a full blown coup d'etat the next morning? i doubt it. then daddy's appointees on the supreme court weighed in; they would not let florida finish counting votes, as its state supreme court had ordered. 5 justices decide in advance that the recount could not be done fairly. they made a preemptive strike against democracy, with antonio scalia ordering the canvassers to go home, opining that any further counting of the votes would compromise the legitimacy of the eventual winner. i forgot to mention the hundreds of cubans, directed by republican operatives in trailers, who stormed the offices of the election commission in fort lauderdale to demand an end to the recount. sometimes violent, they got their way. americans sat by and let it all happen; in any other western country where elections really matter and there exist sharp differences between the parties, there would have been strikes and protests for weeks. the iranians have protested their elections; with great risks to themselves, tens of thousand have marched in the streets to demand a new vote. what would have to happen here before americans became agitated enough to do something? november 2000 was the first time that i began to see that we were on the verge of becoming just another third world country. the huge scandals of war and money since have pretty well confirmed my hunch.

Sorry to tell you but the decade is NOT yet over!

What in the world is wrong with people? From NPR to the Internet, everywhere I go people are talking about today being the end of the decade!!!

A decade runs for 10 years. This one started on January 1, 2001 and will end on December 31, 2010. This decade has another year to go!!!!!!

We haven't actually changed the rules to prevent the theft of the Presidency or of any Senate seats. We got nothing in writing. Too bad.

Best wishes to all for a better New Year and a better decade to come.

Since the great unmentionable (race) has been danced around by John Nichols and most of the previous posted comments, permit me to suggest we all thank Michael Moore and his film Farenheit 911 for preserving for all time the historical flavor and real significance of the 2000 presidential election theft which foisted the Bush/Cheney regime upon the American citizenry and upon the rest of the world.

As quickstepper noted, not a single member of the United States Senate stood up for the systematically disenfranchised African American voters of Florida, even when the House of Representatives begged for the challenge to be raised. Not one single Caucasian - Republican, Democrat, or independent - rose to trigger the mechanism written into the US Constitution to resolve close, disputed presidential elections such as that of the Gore/Bush contest in the fall of the year 2000.

Just as the braintrust of the Gore campaign ran away scared from the omnipresent race issue as the vote recounting litigation worked its way up to the Supreme Court, all hundred white folks in elected positions of power in the US Senate sat silently on their hands at that decisive moment in our nation's history. Neither would the Kerry/Edwards campaign raise the shocking, shameful, systematic disenfranchisement of minority voters in Ohio as an issue when Bush stole his way to reelection in broad daylight four years later. The ultimate irony, of course, is that the 5-Justice Supreme Court majority opinion in Bush versus Gore couched its decision as supposedly providing equal protection of the laws.

As institutions, in the first decade of the 21st Century both major American politcal parties displayed a remarkable track record of genuine bipartisan cooperation when it came to the matter of not stirring up the black folks - even when elementary notions of equal protection, and the very keys to the Oval Office, were hanging in the balance.

How disgusting. How tragic for all concerned.

Bill from Saginaw

"Hey, Someone stole our President, and left us this useless Toastmaster in his place."

I have met precious few Americans who can identify the USSC decision of 12.12.00. Most Americans do not know what was decided, who decided or why that decision placed GWB in the White House. Even some self-identified policy/history wonks have less than perfect recall of that decision. My neighbor Mel knocked on my back door that day with a sketch of a "Democracy is Dead" label that he wanted to make into a pin for distribution. Nichols' important article reminds me of what led me to writing...
Democracy Is Dead: Requiescat in Pace, R.I.P.

http://www.bushwatch.com/sara.htm

January 1, 2001 I began to publicly wear a tombstone button depicting the demise of democracy in America: Requiescat in pace, Rest in Peace. It stated: Born July 4, 1776, Died December 12, 2000, Lynched by: Rehnquist, O'Conner, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas. It named the five Supreme Court Justices who stopped the vote count in Florida; thereby awarding the 43rd presidency of the United States to George W. Bush.

This betrayal of America undermined the constitution. As a country we will never be the same. Vincent Bugliosi wrote that "none dare call it treason." But treason it was, and it was treason, unpunished (Bugliosi, 2001).

The button attracted attention. Some asked where to buy one and I handed them a button and silently moved on. There were others though who were troubled by the message and sneeringly negated it. A third group asked, "Who are Rehnquist, O'Conner, Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas?" That was when I fully realized that the tombstone button was a symbol for an era that had ended. The America that I knew, like Tara, was Gone with the Wind.

How could any American adult not know the names of the five Supreme Court justices who stopped the vote count in Florida in a close presidential race? How could Americans not understand the significance of that decision? ...

Gore was Vice President for Eight years while Slick Willie Clinton was outsourcing our industrial base to China, a country that is snubbing us today. Gore should have won by a landslide,
but he never raised an issue, wanted to be a yes man to Corporate America and he got what he deserved and also destroyed the base of the Democratic Party, the Working classes. Time to bury Gore and Obomba.

jeez, it's been 10 years. get over it. talk about birthers being annoying.

happy new year everyone.

The theft of an election? Really? Our "democracy" has been a sham for years. Which brand of toothpaste would you like to be president next? It hardly matters. The real power is on Wall Street and Madison Ave. The boys in charge are in the Pentagon. 30 years of the Reagan Administration and still moaning how much better we'd have been had Gore stuck to his guns and actually fought to win the job he had already won.

Yeah, right. We'd still be at war, because that is what was required. We'd still be fighting some one for their oil. Maybe Halliburton wouldn't be as large, but the fix is in.

Yemen and Pakistan are next. I can hardly wait. Bombs away!

As I said in a previous post I have observed that the fundamental role of any government is to act in a manner that is contrary to the best interests of its citizens. We see it all around the world - in China, South American countries, Canada, UK, and the list goes on. We see it in the central Asian countries we are trying to "democratise" and now that we see the US government so unabashedly operating against Americans - New Orleans being he most obvious case - we act surprised that it's happening.

Our government has been operating against the American people for decades, now it's just out in the open.We want public health care - too bad; we want the wars to end - too bad; we want a good education system - too bad. It will be interesting to see how the public will react when police start mowing down protesting citizens in the streets, or maybe they already have and we just don't know it.

Nichols' article is pleasing to the Demoks, and thereby pleasing to the entire elite establishment. The Demoks are like the baby bird with its mouth wide open, hungry for the worm, that the people will feed it when they interpret Nichols' over-arching point as "the lesser evil is our best choice".

In fact, Ralph Nader was the people's best choice in 2000, and in 2004, and in 2008. Nader is the only candidate who stood for the people's principles.

If Nichols' article pleases the Demoks, then by extension it pleases the entire elite establishment, because the Demoks are one of the two tangles of camouflage behind which the elites perpetrate their elitevil against the people.

To help crush the elite establishment, which is the source of 90% of oppression/destruction upon people and planet, we each can individually reject everything supported, offered and demanded by elitevil, by shifting our exchange/association away from the power centers and toward our local communities. Are we all ready to help put the boot to the elite neck and take back our power?

Yeah, this miserable decade started with the SCOTUS appointing Bush/Cheney to the highest political offices in the land. These two, along with a host of other fascist criminals, started a reign of terror that was continued by Barry and Rahm. The decade's highlights include a trashing of Constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties, massive corporate welfare that solidified corporations' stranglehold on the nation and escalation of wars in two major theaters.

The final insult to We the People in the final days of this decade was the dismissing of all charges against the murderous mercenaries from Blackwater after they killed 17 civilians in Iraq.

How rapidly the once mighty US has fallen during the past ten years.

Americans need to be reminded of the fact of the 2000 election theft over and over and over. Most, of course, are uninformed and uninterested, but even many who are informed and consider themselves liberal or progressive persist in blaming Ralph Nader for Bush's supposed election. Bush was never elected and Nader had nothing to do with it.

This article also brings back memories of the "He's not my president" demonstrations immediately after the vote theft of November, 2000. I went with a group of friends to our state capital building and joined a large, diverse group of people who were furious at the stolen election. The people in my group were almost all anarchists, Greens, socialists, and Marxists, but even as diverse and anti-establishment a group as ours was outraged by the naked appointment of a president against the popular will; we all recognized the injustice of it, regardless of our political ideology.

What was also disgusting about that day was the smaller but still discouragingly large group of right-wing counter-protestors, mostly young frat boys from local universities, shouting things like "Get over it! You lost!" etc, etc. The cops were arrayed around them as though we were going to be violent toward them. Believe me, I wouldn't have been opposed to attacking them, but it didn't even come close to happening.

Mr. Nichols,

What makes you think this decade will be better? Obomba is just as bad as Bush. Don't expect anything to change. We still live in an bloodthirsty Empire juiced on war steroids. For example, look at Shitwater - seven of their guards murdered 17 Iraqi civilians, and were exonerated. Get used to it: front is back, up is down, forward is backwards. It won't be long before the Shitwater mercenaries do the same to American civilians and get away with it.

And don't forget, Obama stole the nomination from Hillary. He has no more business being in the White House than did George W. Bush.

We have not had an elected President in this century. The last elected American President was Bill Clinton.

Obama's Brain:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r9mr29aLgA

What a silly article. Nichols lives in a Never-Never Land of liberal denial. So what that the election was "stolen." Elections in The Homeland have always been exercises for the ruling class. You get minor squabbles from ruling class factions that lead to manufactured debates and pretend differences. To believe otherwise is to continue living the lies that is America and will perpetuate the insanity that is the US election spectacle. Better to put the lie down John rather than dream about some tooth fairy idea that "if only the elections were clean" or (fill in the blank with facile denial)...

To believe that Bush-Cheney are to blame for America's ills is to suggest that if it weren't for these criminals we might be okay. Is Nichols serious here? Where has he been for the past 3 decades? This might make Nichols feel better to believe in such childish reveries but the truth of the matter is that the entire political apparatus is churning away mercilessly no matter which individuals are signing off on the program. The front men vary only slightly from year to year and only in style and rhetoric.

Again, this article is just completely silly and devoid of anything close to a meaningful discussion of the enormity of what we are facing. And it's we radicals, socialists, anarchists et al who are always considered "unrealistic?" I'd say this piece of "liberal journalism" is another example of who does not reside in the real world.

Here's some advice from a friend:

"It all has to come down

Everything has to be overturned. There aren't any half-measures that are going to accomplish anything. Those are being thrown out there by people so they can avoid the truth and distract others from the truth. There is not going to be any health care reform, global warming is not going to be stopped, jobs are not coming back, wages are not going to improve. There is no way to reform the system, there is no way to make it work, there is no way to fix things.

The degree to which critical commentary on any issue leads people to see that it all must come down, it is constructive and powerful to that degree. The degree to which it leads people to think that we are or could be "doing something" to "solve" that particular problem in isolation, without challenging the entire system, is the degree to which it is destructive and reactionary.

There are not some good things about the system that we need to worry about saving, with some bad things that need to be "regulated" or overcome through "doing something" or making personal changes. The self-censorship (or denial) that so many are indulging in, supposedly in order to persuade people without "offending" them, to avoid "alienating potential friends and allies," and the whole idiotic "winning friends and influencing people" approach must end.

It all has to come down, and there is no reason to hesitate or be cautious in our critical commentary, no reason to entertain the "on the other hand" stuff that people put out there to mitigate our criticism - actually to oppose our critical view in a covert and deceptive way. Attack every aspect of it everyday everywhere with everyone. Capitalism has distorted, corrupted, and perverted all of our social relations and arrangements, everywhere. Nothing is free from its clutch. Nothing positive can exist within it. It all has to come down, it all must be overturned.

All of the "OK I see what you are saying, and agree with you, but what is your plan?" responses are also covert opposition and are reactionary. Here is the plan - it all must come down. Would we tell people to not treat pneumonia until and unless they have a plan for the rest of their lives, or a guarantee that the disease will be eliminated once and for all by their plan and that everything will then be perfect? The society is ill, the disease is Capitalism, and it has spread to all parts and is destroying everything.

"But can't we just keep a few slaves, and ban whipping and shackles?" No. It all must come down."