Newsclipping of the Day :: The Lessons of 2004 are STILL Not Understood

THIS BIG WHOPPER is another restatement of the train wreck of criminal Republican control of the Ohio vote in 2004--control that the public at large has yet to give a rat's ass about. Some choice bytes:

*on Election Night 2004 , Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website—which gave the world the presidential election results—was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites.

*In Clyde, Ohio, a Republican haven, Bush won big after 131 percent voter turnout.

*In Republican Perry County, two precincts came in at 124 percent and 120 percent respectively.

*In Gahanna Ward 1, precinct B, Bush received 4,258 votes despite the fact that only 638 people voted for president.

*In Concord Southwest in Miami County, the certified election results proudly proclaimed at 679 out of 689 registered voters cast ballots, a 98.55 percent turnout. FreePress.org later found that only 547 voters had signed in.

There is so much more fishy bullshit to report, if only Katie Couric knew how to do that. John Conyers was SO on top of this in December and January of 2005, but no one listened and no one gave a damn.

If voter will doesn't even matter in elections anymore, we've entered a new fascist phase of our history friends. Everything about our government is so dirty, tainted, and corrupt. Who knows what it will take to clean it all up?

I would love to see some real effort to do many things, not limited to these thoughts off the top of my mad head:

* a complete and thorough clean up of our election system. This means no electronic voting, no proprietary software, no outsourcing to any private pols, public funding of candidates, abolition of all money--soft or hard--from lobbies and interest groups. If we only make office available to the richest--and most corrupt--among us, we can expect more corruption, collusion, criminal deeds, and outright fascism. Casting and counting and tabulation of votes must always be open and transparent and performed by citizens. Not suits in service to idealogues with suitcases of cash.

* a first, realistic and sweeping legislative effort to codify the limits of Executive power, overseen by the people and reviewed by the Supreme Court. Bush has gotten away with so much by basically declaring the entire Executive branch one big grey area. No more grey. I expect our legislature to make laws that make limits on Executive power and privilege crystal clear, and that force future executives to abide by clear laws. This Congress needs to declare war on this goddamned reckless administration and fight back now.

* a real effort to limit the extent of control ANY party in power has to put pols in positions of power within our government infrastructure. I'm sorry, it is just not acceptable to have right wing nut jobs in charge of the CDC or the EPA. It is beyond the power of any executive to sabotage our government and our collective systems for caring for one another to the extent that Bush has. It is treason, and it should be treated as such. Every agency of our federal government should be run like any company, with professionals being hired, fired, and advanced according only to merit and professional accomplishment. I'm sorry, but kissing right wing ass is no qualification for heading the entire Federal Emergency Management Agency, and I don't need a Yale MBA to tell me that. It's dispicable how much loss and sheer attrition we've seen happen in the last few years in our government. The Bush Administration has deliberately broken it, and they must pay.