Pat Shannan's MUSINGS
And Oh! What a Vote Scam It Was!
We ended the October Musings column with a reference to the quote from Soviet Dictator Josef Stalin. If ever there was one that needed repeating, this is it:
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."
On Nov. 8-10, the entire world watched as Al Gore and the Democratic Party deliberated an American coup d'etat. As the attempted heist dragged on, talk show hosts Limbaugh, Liddy, Reagan et al. aired the calls of even the many Democrats alarmed by Gore's indication that a Florida vote recount is not enough and that he would be satisfied with nothing less than the presidency at any price. They expressed shame, and some vowed never to vote Democratic again.
WHO COUNTS THE AMERICAN VOTE?
(This next paragraph is from Victoria Collier's website, www.votescam.com. It should help explain how the various news networks are able to give winning margins even before some of the polls are closed.)
Despite the wide-spread, and perfectly reasonable belief that the government counts the national vote on election night, the reality is entirely different: The vote is counted by a little-known private corporation named Voter News Services (VNS) located in New York City. VNS is a major media conglomerate comprised of all the major networks, including Fox and CNN, and also the wire services, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. All of the vote results tabulated in each county, mainly by computer, are transferred to VNS where they are tabulated in secret and disseminated to the public, who accepts them without question. The computer tabulated votes at the county level leave no paper trail. Only the corporations who program the software to count votes in each state know for sure if the results are fair, or if fraud has indeed been committed. There are no checks and balances. The software is not open to public scrutiny. Neither is VNS. [end]
In an attempt to pull off the heist of the 20th century (it just ended in December, not a year ago, contrary to popular belief), the Democratic putsch began with the mote in Florida's eye of 3,000 disputed votes which soon grew to 19,000. William Daley, son of the infamous "Hizzoner" - the longtime iron-fisted czar of Chicago who helped elect JFK in 1960 with the use of dead voters - raced to the airport to grab a flight to Florida, totally disregarding the "beam in his own eye" of some 120,000 votes which were thrown out in his own Cook County. Jesse Jackson closely followed him to Florida, in an obvious move to stir up the black people with his inciting rhetoric and demagoguery.
The Ghost of Elian
Dorio Mareno, a political science professor at Florida International University in Miami, believes that the negative effects of the government's militaristic kidnapping of little Elian Gonzales in April became a backlash. He estimates that 5 to 10 percent of the Cuban-American group was motivated by a desire to punish Al Gore for the way the Clinton administration handled the case.
Joe Garcia, Executive Director of the Cuban American National Foundation, agrees, saying, "If Gore had received the votes Clinton received in 1996, he would have won the state by 40 to 50,000 votes."
Perhaps, but that is to assume this was an honest election. Many who are aware of the ongoing "Votescam," first uncovered by the Collier brothers in (you guessed it!) south Florida three decades ago, believe the plot goes much deeper than publicized even yet. This writer included. We find it a great strain on our credulity to imagine that more than 49 million deluded Americans actually cast a vote for Al Gore and have to suspect that the computer fraud was rampant in many other states as well. (See Oct. 2000 Musings)
Some Details You May Have Missed
There were never any formal charges of Fraud brought against anyone, not even the man caught with the ballot box and sample ballots in the trunk of his car. The national press, apparently pursuing a non-story, failed to report (until much later) that this was not a Republican attempt at fraud but rather a box that was used to store crayons and coloring books utilized by restless children while their parents waited to vote.
So far Republicans have done nothing about the Democratic Judge in St. Louis who illegally kept the polls open for several hours in a heavily populated Democratic district. Suspicious critics believe this was instrumental in the election a dead man, thus depriving a Republican U.S. senator of his seat. Senator John Ashcroft has vowed not to make an issue of the fraud and challenge it.
In the panhandle of Florida, there are reported cases of Bush supporters failing to receive requested absentee ballots. The ballots were said to have been voted by someone with forged signatures. In San Antonio, Texas, attorneys for disenfranchised military personnel planned to ask a judge to either let them vote late or allow them to refuse to pay taxes for the next four years. (No taxation without representation.) Large numbers of military personnel around the world have complained that they did not receive absentee ballots in time to vote, and now they wish to take action in court.
Not one Republican voter went on record with a complaint about inadvertently voting for Buchanan or anyone else. Are Republicans smarter, just more adept at manual dexterity, or 100% immune from dyslexia?
The 2000 presidential election here is shockingly similar to that in Albania in 1996. There, the former Communist party pulled out of the elections just before the polls closed claiming massive vote fraud - despite the fact that there had been little evidence of fraud. The move was calculated to throw the entire process into chaos so as to buy time. Ultimately it did not matter that the anti-communists won. The elections were claimed illegitimate and therefore the government that took power was illegitimate. It was hobbled by the claims, fraudulent though they were, and soon overthrown.
In a November of 1999 issue of Newsweek, Al Gore was quoted as saying, "I'm not like George Bush. If he wins or loses, life goes on. I'll do anything to win."
A fishy example of this attitude came down in Gadsden County, Florida, according to the Weekly Standard. The canvassing board met privately, in violation of state law, and examined more than 2,000 ballots that had been rejected by voting machines because they each were marked for more than one presidential candidate. Gadsden, one canvassing board member admits, then "reconstructed" certain ballots-again, in violation of state law-and accorded 170 of them to Gore.
At the other end of the country in California, more fish were beginning to stink. An 18-year-old Guatemalan immigrant received a campaign letter from the Democratic Party, signed by President Clinton, urging her to vote for Democrats. But the young woman was an unregistered voter, as the senders apparently knew. Enclosed was a voter registration card with instructions to bring it with her to the polling place - to ". . . help your voting go more smoothly." The flip side was printed in Spanish.
"Only the U. S. Government could know her age and pending residency status, and, obviously her Latino background," says investigative reporter Joseph Farah. "How did this information wind up in the partisan political hands of the California Democratic Party? And what kind of impact will a mailing like this - obviously utilizing a government database for political purposes - have on the California legislative races? How widespread is this fraud?"
When one seal is broken the entire election process is compromised! A Florida poll watcher reports that ballots are routinely dumped onto tables, counted, stuffed into smaller boxes, resealed, and transported via private automobile to a central location where it is presumed to be the breaking of the seals for a first-time count.
Hmmm. Has anyone explained why the counting room floor was covered with "chads?" Shouldn't these have been found in the voting box or on the floors of the voting booths? And just how many were eaten? One reporter facetiously accused the vote counters of having chads for Thanksgiving dinner.
Quote of the Day:
"Do you mean to tell me that those Palm Beach Blue Hairs can play a half dozen Bingo cards simultaneously while holding a hand of bridge but can't punch an election ballot properly?"
A Worthy Mission
Long before the terrorist Democratic lawyers began their vote challenge, Hollywood stars Barbra Streisand, Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon, Whoopie Goldberg, Alec Baldwin and others swore to leave the country if George W. Bush was elected President.
"And this is where YOU can help," says a spokesman for a tongue-in-cheek organization allegedly planning to give aid.
"We need volunteers to help pack and load moving vans. We also need volunteers to provide airfare for these irreplaceable national treasures so they can relocate before they change their minds. For the cost of a small SUV you can sponsor one of these celebrities for relocation. You will know that your efforts are helping when you receive postcards, letters, and pictures from your chosen "refugee," as they all learn to become useful citizens in the third world country of their choice. You will help, won't you? It costs so little, but it means so much (to the rest of us). Call 1-800-Deport-a-Lib. Operators are standing by. Major Credit cards are accepted."
Whose Will? Which People?
Sticking with the Electoral College, say William Daley, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton, "rejects the will of the people." The self-appointed Queen of America also stated that her first action as the new senator from New York would be to work to abolish the electoral college. Say what?!
The Electoral College was defined by Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution for the united States. The procedure was amended by Amendment 12 to the Constitution. Basically, the Electoral College provides for the election of the President and Vice President by Electors from each state. The number of Electors that a state has is equal to the number of Senators and Representatives from each state. The states determine who the electors are. These Electors cannot be any persons holding an office of trust in the
United States. These Electors are chosen in whatever manner the legislature of each state may direct.
"The will of the people" has been at odds with the will of the founders for more than 200 years. Occasionally it has succeeded and always with great chicanery from a hierarchical few. A central bank distributing fiat money, a direct tax on the people, and taking from the rich/giving to the poor were certainly not the intentions of the founders. Another surreptitious move by the power brokers during that dark year of 1913 resulted in the popular election of the United States senators. This "will of the people" vote stripped the state legislatures of the right to decide who would be their spokesmen in the federal senate, thereby creating an unforeseen switch of allegiance by those senators from the states to the federales. The 17th Amendment soon proved to be a mistake and was a giant step away from our constitutional republic toward democracy.
The establishment of the Electoral College is another reflection of the wisdom of our nation's founders, and it is far more important today that it was then. Long before Nevada, Kansas, Montana, and Wyoming came into the union, the idea was introduced to protect the will of the people in the states with fewer voters. To throw it out would be tantamount to restricting the future national elections to the will of those people in California, Illinois, Michigan, and the heavily populated East Coast states.
Indicative of this is the fact that while Al Gore apparently carried the popular vote nationwide, George Bush carried more than four times as much territory; thereby proving the worthiness of the law and the foresight of the founders.
How ironic that Al Gore, hell-bent on swearing later this month (as he did 4 and 8 years ago) to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," first has tried to come up with one devious way after another to get around it. Make no mistake, what we have witnessed since Election Day is not his belief in the American political system, but rather his crybaby refusal to accept that system's rejection of him. But such are the actions of he who "will do anything to win."