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Will Bush Cancel The 2008 Election?

US Politics & Gov't  (tags: corruption, bush, bushadministration, dishonesty, government, lies )

Kim
- 110 days ago - youtube.com
The GOP strategy for another electoral theft in 2008 has taken clear shape, though we must assume there is much more we don't know.
Comments

Kim Moore (66)
Friday June 27, 2008, 5:46 am
Published on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
It is time to think about the "unthinkable."
The Bush Administration has both the inclination and the power to cancel the 2008 election.

The GOP strategy for another electoral theft in 2008 has taken clear shape, though we must assume there is much more we don't know.

But we must also assume that if it appears to Team Bush/Cheney/Rove that the GOP will lose the 2008 election anyway (as it lost in Ohio 2006) we cannot ignore the possibility that they would simply cancel the election. Those who think this crew will quietly walk away from power are simply not paying attention.

The real question is not how or when they might do it. It's how, realistically, we can stop them.

In Florida 2000, Team Bush had a game plan involving a handful of tactics. With Jeb Bush in the governor's mansion, the GOP used a combination of disenfranchisement, intimidation, faulty ballots, electronic voting fraud, a rigged vote count and an aborted recount, courtesy of the US Supreme Court.

A compliant Democrat (Al Gore) allowed the coup to be completed.

In Ohio 2004, the arsenal of dirty tricks exploded. Based in Columbus, we have documented more than a hundred different tactics used to steal the 20 electoral votes that gave Bush a second term. More are still surfacing. As a result of the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal lawsuit (in which we are plaintiff and attorney) we have now been informed that 56 of the 88 counties in Ohio violated federal law by destroying election records, thus preventing a definitive historical recount.

As in 2000, a compliant Democrat (John Kerry) allowed the coup to proceed.

For 2008 we expect the list of vote theft maneuvers to escalate yet again. We are already witnessing a coordinated nationwide drive to destroy voter registration organizations and to disenfranchise millions of minority, poor and young voters.

This carefully choreographed campaign is complemented by the widespread use of electronic voting machines. As reported by the Government Accountability Office, Princeton University, the Brennan Center, the Carter-Baker Commission, US Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and others, these machines can be easily used to flip an election. They were integral to stealing both the 2000 and 2004 elections. Efforts to make their source codes transparent, or to require a usable paper trail on a federal level, have thus far failed. A discriminatory Voter ID requirement may also serve as the gateway to a national identification card.

Overall, the GOP will have at its command even more weapons of election theft in 2008 than it did in Ohio 2004, which jumped exponentially from Florida 2000. The Rovian GOP is nothing if not tightly organized to do this with ruthless efficiency. Expect everything that was used these past two presidential elections to surface again in 2008 in far more states, with far more efficiency, and many new dirty tricks added in.

But in Ohio 2006, the GOP learned a hard lesson. Its candidate for governor was J. Kenneth Blackwell. The Secretary of State was the essential on-the-ground operative in the theft of Ohio 2004.

When he announced for governor, many Ohioans joked that "Ken Blackwell will never lose an election where he counts the votes."

But lose he did....along with the GOP candidates for Secretary of State, Attorney-General and US Senate.

By our calculations, despite massive grassroots scrutiny, the Republicans stole in excess of 6% of the Ohio vote in 2006. But they still lost.

Why? Because they were so massively unpopular that even a 6% bump couldn't save them. Outgoing Governor Bob Taft, who pled guilty to four misdemeanors while in office, left town with a 7% approval rating (that's not a typo). Blackwell entered the last week of the campaign down 30% in some polls.

So while the GOP still had control of the electoral machinery here in 2006, the public tide against them was simply too great to hold back, even through the advanced art and science of modern Rovian election theft.

In traditional electoral terms, that may also be the case in 2008. Should things proceed as they are now, it's hard to imagine any Republican candidate going into the election within striking distance. The potential variations are many, but the graffiti on the wall is clear.

What's also clear is that this administration has a deep, profound and uncompromised contempt for democracy, for the rule of law, and for the US Constitution. When George W. Bush went on the record (twice) as saying he has nothing against dictatorship, as long as he can be dictator, it was a clear and present policy statement.

Who really believes this crew will walk quietly away from power? They have the motivation, the money and the method for doing away with the electoral process altogether. So why wouldn't they?

The groundwork for dismissal of both the legislative and judicial branch has been carefully laid. The litany is well-known, but worth a very partial listing:

The continuation of the drug war, and the Patriot Act, Homeland Security Act and other dictatorial laws prompted by the 9/11/2001 terror attacks, have decimated the Bill of Rights, and shredded the traditional American right to due process of law, freedom from official surveillance, arbitrary violence, and far more.

The current Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzales, has not backed away from his announcement to Congress that the Constitution does not guarantee habeas corpus. The administration continues to act on the assumption that it can arrest anyone at any time and hold them without notification or trial for as long as it wants.

The establishment of the Homeland Security Agency has given it additional hardware to decimate the basic human rights of our citizenry. Under the guise of dealing with the "immigration problem," large concentration camps are under construction around the US.

The administration has endorsed and is exercising its "right" to employ torture, contrary to the Eighth Amendment and to a wide range of international treaties, which Gonzales has labeled "quaint."

With more than 200 "signing statements" the administration acts on its belief that the "unitary executive" trumps the power of the legislative branch in any instance it chooses. This belief has been further enforced with the administration's use of a wide range of precedent-setting arguments to keep its functionaries from testifying before Congress.

There is much more. In all instances, the 109th Congress—and the public—have rolled over without significant resistance.

Most crucial now are Presidential Directive #51, Executive Orders #13303, #13315, #13350, #13364, #13422, #13438, and more, by which Bush has granted himself an immense arsenal of powers for which the term "dictatorial" is a modest understatement.

The Founders established our government with checks and balances. But executive orders have accumulated important precedent. The Emancipation Proclamation by which Lincoln declared an end to slavery in the South, was issued under the "military necessity" of adding blacks to the Union Army, a step without which the North might not have won the Civil War. Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order #8802 established the Fair Employment Practices Commission. Harry Truman's Executive Order #9981 desegregated the military.

Most to the point, FDR's Executive Order #9066 ordered the forcible internment of 100,000 people of Japanese descent into the now infamous concentration camps of World War II.

There is also precedent for a president overriding the Supreme Court. In the 1830s Chief Justice John Marshall enshrined the right of the Cherokee Nation to sovereignty over its ancestral land in the Appalachian Mountains. But President Andrew Jackson scorned the decision. Some 14,000 native Americans were moved at gunpoint to Oklahoma. More than 3,000 died along the way.

All this will be relevant should Team Bush envision a defeat in the 2008 election and decide to call it off. It's well established that Richard Nixon—mentor to Karl Rove and Dick Cheney—commissioned the Huston Plan, which detailed how to cancel the 1972 election.

Today we must ask: who would stop this administration from taking dictatorial power in the instance of a "national emergency" such as a terror attack at a nuclear power plant or something similar?

Nothing in the behavior of this Congress indicates that it is capable of significant resistance. Impeachment seems beyond it. Nor does it seem Congress would actually remove Bush if it did put him on trial.

Short of that, Bush clearly does not view anything Congress might do as a meaningful impediment. After all, how many divisions does the Congress command?

The Supreme Court, as currently constituted, would almost certainly rubber stamp a Bush coup. If not, like Jackson, he could ignore it as easily as he would ignore Congress.

What does that leave? There is much idle speculation now about what the armed forces would do. We also hear loose talk about "90 million gun owners."

From the public side, the only conceivable counter-force might be a national strike or an effective long-term campaign of general non-cooperation.

But we can certainly assume the mainstream media will give lock-step support to whatever the regime says and does. It's also a given that those likely to lead the resistance will immediately land in those new prisons being built by Halliburton et. al.

So how do we cope with the harsh realities of such a Bush/Cheney/Rove dictatorial coup?

We may have about a year to prepare. Every possible scenario needs to be discussed in excruciating detail.

For only one thing is certain: denial will do nothing.

HARVEY WASSERMAN'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is at www.solartopia.org, along with SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030. The FITRAKIS FILES are at www.freepress.org (where this article was originally published), along with HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, which Bob and Harvey co-wrote.
 

Past Member (0)
Friday June 27, 2008, 6:33 am
THANK YOU KIM YOU ALWAYS GET THE DIRT
 

Hans L. (1009)
Friday June 27, 2008, 7:11 am
Just watching a docu about SICKO! GWB realy is a SICKO! He will completely ruin this country! Or has allready done so!
 

Stephanie Colson (247)
Friday June 27, 2008, 7:26 am
You know I dont think he would even think this for look at what would happen??? Riots, he definalty would be targeted it would be total anarchy would it not??? Hans too funny but agree...

Big gOrilly Hugs
 

Jacquie S. (23)
Friday June 27, 2008, 7:39 am
Unbeleivable!
 

Hanna U. (53)
Friday June 27, 2008, 8:23 am
Believe it. We may be unable to fathom it, but he has the power to do exactly this AND SOOOO MUCH MORE!!! Doesn't it just irk you to no end that we allowed him the power?! He mentions terror and we jump. Sad really, since it was an inside job and it has been a costly one at that - both monitarily and in human life.

On the other hand, let me explain why riots and anarchy would be a good thing for Bush and company... He could instate Marshal Law (the plan all along no doubt) and take all those who's names are on that list of people who are a threat to the nation's security - whether they are or not - you know, average joe smoe with an email account and a voice - and take them to the CAMPS that they have built all over the country.

Seen the transport trains at a base recently - really scarey sh*t. Oh and forget about your rights - you don't have those anymore remember?! You don't have a right to a fair trial - just like the detainees in Getmo you can be held/tortured/even killed without anyone ever knowing. So, yes, this scenerio would be right up his alley. Even a race war would suit his purposes. He did lose a minor battle the other day regarding gun rights. But that's not going to stop him. Anyone resisting will be shot on sight. It will be a bloody mess and it's all our fault. Isn't life grand?! Especially since OUR troops; the ones here to protect and serve US are halfway around the world and forein troops have already been prepared and trained for the final play - Marshall Law - where nobody has a name and everyone has a chip/id number.

Frankly, it's like a really bad movie plus more gore and death. He's just itching to get his hands around our necks anyway he can. You see, a man like him, he won't let anything come between him and power. As long as everybody, including Obama, Clinton, McCain, etc plays the game and promises whatever and postures just right - the election will go on. But if there's even a hint that they'll/we'll disrail the train, then Marshal Law will be invoked and then it's all down hill from there. They are preparing us for this outcome. They've set up drills/training in cities as a way of training us - not the troops. Propaganda's flying about Iran/war. It's truely amazing how far we've come in excepting anything they 'feed' us.

So, yes, it could happen here and we all better be prepaired when/if it does.

BTW, I would like to pass along an observation. With the DOW plunging - meaning the dollar is worth less and less - it could very well be that they - the elite - are planning another false flag attempt. Just like 9/11 where the DOW had been dropping - then 'terror' hit and they closed the stock market for several days - this saved their precious money and it could very well happen again.

Just think about it.
 

Hanna U. (53)
Friday June 27, 2008, 8:23 am
oops! Thanks Kim and noted! :0)
 

Tim Redfern (474)
Friday June 27, 2008, 9:28 am
To echo Hanna's statements:
I, personally, will be shocked if the 2008
elections go ahead as planned. Of COURSE
they're going to be fixed (duh!), but between
now and November, I would fully expect another
9/11 (can you say "October Surprise?....I thought
you could!) and the elections will be cancelled,
and we WILL be under Martial Law, just as Hanna
said. Bush will install himself as President for
Life, and at that point, we might as well all start
calling him "Generalissimo" or "El Jefe".
One dirty little secret about a Martial Law declaration:
Under the "Emergency Powers" that Bush granted himself
following 9/11, he can declare Martial Law at any time,
for any reason, and once the troops have taken to the
streets, Congress is, by law, forbidden to review the
declaration of Martial Law for a minimum of six months.
The way most of the sheeple are in this country, with
their abysmally short attention spans, after 6 months
of Martial Law, they won't even remember how it USED to
be, and if Congress were to revoke Martial Law, most of
the sheeple would BEG them not to, because by then, they
will have become so used to having troops in the streets,
they won't want to go back to civilian rule.
May the God & Goddess forgive us and save us all.

Kim, my friend, thank you kindly for a GREAT post!
noted.
 

Barry Seth (90)
Friday June 27, 2008, 9:57 am
Thanks Kim. One target as always!
 

Barry Seth (90)
Friday June 27, 2008, 9:59 am
Brian to finger synax not working today!!

Thanks Kim. On target as always!
 

Barry Seth (90)
Friday June 27, 2008, 10:00 am
I can't stand it
 

Black T. (226)
Friday June 27, 2008, 12:49 pm
Weird how the Politics follow almost to the letter plot lines from the movies. OMG are they really using movie story lines to run the world. Science fiction is alive and well on Planet Earth. When are the "Elitists" going to realize that at the end of the story the good guys win! Talk about bloated egos!!
 

Eric G. (341)
Friday June 27, 2008, 1:03 pm
This is tinfoil-hat conspiracy thinking...Obama's going to win...!
 

Sara S. (70)
Friday June 27, 2008, 1:11 pm
Step one. Withdraw your mandate from this government. At present we have a petition to 'Put the NO back in November'. I would like to see more. I would like to see a register of screened and qualified voters who 'deposit' their votes with the registry on election day 2008. This would become the registry of the legal mandate of the Citizens of the USA. Enough votes and we can quote chapter and verse law and legal opinion as to why the citizens of the USA are now entitled to redesign their political system and their govmt having found a legitimate and peaceful way to express the power on which legitimate government depends. And we can take *that* to the generals and the ordinary serving military and demand that they acknowledge the USA as being that which they serve, and being vested in all of its people and not an elite few who have been rejected by the majority. And this can go to the UN and all the international agencies. AND no one can say that they have a legitimate mandate for their criminal regime from the people AND no one will throw away their vote by doing it.

But we need a starting basis which NO in November provides.From there the 'power registry' can grow. That's OUR power we will be banking, in our own 'power bank'. If we have the will to make it happen. We don't have much time.
 

Sara S. (70)
Friday June 27, 2008, 1:25 pm
Yaaay, Eric. Obama's going to win. Ra,ra ra!!! How can we all *stand* the wait??? And then he's going to keep his promises and continue constructing the US concentration camps and bringing in private mercenaries (NOT conspiracy- already happening) and bring the troops home but keep Blackwater in Iraq (as he's promised) to make sure the Bush plan is fulfilled. And he'll flip flop for a bit longer on NAFTA and let the private Federal Reserve bankers continue making billions through a totally illegal fraud on the American people and let Bush's constitutional treasons go unpunished (thus undermining the Constitution and the even more important rule of law) like he's promised. And Obama himself will go on being backed and paid for by people like... well, well, well. People like Halliburton. So these politicians really are just one big happy family. How sweet.

The only problem with getting people to understand all this, Eric, is that it sounds like nutty conspiracy theory. Of course, nice, normal, sane people don't need to do any actual research or self education to check it all out. They just have to listen to their nice, normal democratic news stations who never talk about this stuff - so it can't be real. And they never risk becoming 'crazies' themselves by actually looking into it. When Obama wins and does what he has promised - and you feel all hurt and disillusioned please make sure you post your sense of betrayal and horror where I can read it. It won't do any good but it might make me feel a bit better to know that those who wilfully blinded themselves are suffering at least some of what they deserve to suffer.
 

Joy Bergstrom (286)
Friday June 27, 2008, 2:11 pm
No in November but I will not be surpissed if they don't stage another terror attack to not have and election. For sneaken oh yes!!! by golley they are so we need to be on our toes for I put nothing past them him and his cronies!!! I will not vote for any stinken president for its all rigged and every body knows it, I don't care who gets in there its going to be rigged, so why say go Obama if we are suppose to be saying NO IN NOVEMBER!!! beats me. they can all the cronies that are running Bite me for I won't be helping put not one of them in there. LOL!! Hans too funny Thanks Kim N
 

Joy Bergstrom (286)
Friday June 27, 2008, 2:12 pm
ooooopppppsss Kim M sorry
 

Jim Phillips (1432)
Friday June 27, 2008, 2:26 pm
Presidential Directive #51: I was at my favorite coffee shop when I first read and heard about this "Directive 51" that I almost choked on the coffee I was sippin'... I exclaimed, "What... what"... this puke now has the power to suspend the 2008 election and declare martial law on some "pretext"... to remain in power...

he will do it and if he does do it, there will be an uprising in this country as never seen before is why concentration camps are being built... Gasp, the entire C2 network may be "arrested" and sent to their new accommodations...

A positive outlook is this: If we are "arrested"... we all will be able to meet each other face-to-face for the first time...

As for Obama winning the 2008 Election - he may win the popular votes but he will lose the electoral votes... the pukes have been hard at work for a long time now to erase certain voters from the voter rolls among other trickeries up their sleeves...

TY, Kim.

 

Past Member (0)
Friday June 27, 2008, 2:27 pm

Mugabe didn't cancel his "elections" even though he killed so many people that his opponent was forced to drop out. Dictatorships (think of Stalin) need to have "elections" so that they can pretend that they aren't dictatorships and that they have the consent of the people.

NO dictator, not Mugabe, not Bush, not Stalin, nor any other, would ever cancel an election.

Thanks for injecting some common sense into this propaganda piece, Sara.

The political parties alway use the boogeyman to try to frighten people into voting. If you don't vote the boogeyman will win. And children always fall for it. It worked extremely well in 2000 and 2004 when people were so terrified of the boogeyman (Bush) that unprecedented numbers went out and voted for Gore and Kerry, who both promptly conceded to the boogeyman, of course. Grownups know that is is just a way for the powers that be to frighten people into compliance and subjugation. The people warning about the boogeyman ARE the boogeyman. They're the danger we have to fear, trying to frighten us into voting for them by holding up the specter of a worse danger.

If you don't vote, a war criminal will win? If you DO vote a war criminal will win. When the military-industrial complex and the big multinationals hold an election, they only allow war criminals to win. How else could they pretend to have the consent of the people to continue their war crimes?

The danger isn't that there won't be an election, the danger is that there will be an election and enough unthinking people will vote in it to give a criminal regime the appearance of legitimacy.

People who care will educate their friends and neighbors to understand the problem. We will not give our mandate to war criminals. No in November!

And yes, Sara, when they get what they voted for, the unthinking will post their complaints all over Care2 and everywhere else they can find. "We were betrayed," they'll whine. As they always do. They're the ones betraying themselves, since they know that whoever is elected will betray them. Which would be fine if they weren't also betraying those of us who DO understand the problem and who DO care.

Those who are tired of tyranny and want democracy, will not vote in rigged elections no matter what campaign lies their war criminal candidates excrete. Those who, as one person put it, 'live, eat, and breathe' fascism, are quite comfortable with facism, have never experienced anything other than fascism, can't imagine anything different from fascism, fully support fascism, and don't want to change the system, will vote.

Our only comfort is that there are more of us than there are of them, which is why they spend millions of dollars urging us to vote, so we have a good chance of success. Even a slightly lower voter turnout in November will astonish the world, since presidential elections ALWAYS get a higher turnout than primaries, and will indicate clearly that not all Americans are fascists, not all Americans support torture and crimes against humanity, and that we do not consent and will not authorize war criminals to carry out crimes against humanity in our name.

It is the first step towards restoring America's reputation and establishing a democracy.

 

Past Member (0)
Friday June 27, 2008, 2:37 pm

Will Bush cancel the 2008 election?

Do bears come out of the woods when they need to poop so that they can use pay toilets in shopping malls?

Bush gained power through a stolen election. He stayed in power through another stolen election. Rigged and stolen elections are the way that dictators gain and stay in power these days.

Why would somebody cancel something that brought them and their cronies trillions of dollars in war profits and enabled them to trash the Constitution? Bush canceling an election is as likely as Rockefeller, Kissinger, and Bill Gates taking a vow of poverty, giving all their money to anti-corporate activists, and going to live in a cave.

This has got to be the funniest story ever posted to Care2. Can we suggest that management start a rating system so it can be rewarded for inanity?
 

ELGIN LEE B. (47)
Friday June 27, 2008, 2:38 pm
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO IF HE DOES STOP THE ELECTIONS WHAT Y'ALL gonna do .....
 

Past Member (0)
Friday June 27, 2008, 3:09 pm

Good one, Elgin. But we both know what they'll do, right?

They'll write their "representatives" and complain. ROFL
 

Tim Redfern (474)
Friday June 27, 2008, 3:19 pm
Mark, I must disagree with you, sir.
Isn't it all about power for people
like Bush/Cheney?
If Bush believed he could cancel the
elections through a "national emergency",
and install himself as President For Life,
don't you think he'd do it?
I'm sure we can all agree that both Bush and
Cheney are megalomaniacs, and of course we know
they're both likely billionaires, so what would
MORE money matter to them?
These guys are power-junkies, and I really believe
that if they thought they could stay in power for
life, they'd find a way to do it.
Your thoughts on this scenario, Mark?

btw, Eric?
Be careful who you're calling
"tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorists".
That's the kind of sh*t people were
saying about those of us who immediately
believed 9/11 was an inside-job, and we
got the last (bitter) laugh on them.
Oh, and since "Obama's gonna win", I guess
there's no point in holding the elections at
all, now is there?
 

Past Member (0)
Friday June 27, 2008, 3:46 pm

Tim, my friend, George Bush is "Poppy" Bush's son. Cheney worked for "Poppy" Bush. "Poppy" even when heading the CIA or as a sitting President, acted in the best interests of Rockefeller. It is all about Rockefeller and the other wealthy corporate elites retaining power, but they don't do it by installing themselves as dictators-for-life because then everyone could see that they have no legitimacy and that they're the problem. They install their hand-picked boards of directors and managers and Presidents and Congresscritters so that they themselves can stay out of the limelight.

You know that and you don't need me to remind you, but since you asked... ROFL

 

Deidre Williams (1)
Friday June 27, 2008, 3:56 pm
Is this just another desperate attempt to stay in the White House!!
 

Just Carole (352)
Friday June 27, 2008, 3:58 pm

Frankly, unless things change, it doesn't make any difference who is elected as "lead actor." As we've seen, any candidate who posed a possible threat was eliminated by being ignored by the media. The people were effectively disallowed even exercising their true choice of potential president. It's already happened.

In fact, even presentment of the Articles of Impeachment was virtually blacked out and is still seldom discussed in the government-owned media. I've heard more about Brittney Spears' visitation rights with her children!