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Cartel, they get this sticky green slime all over them, that won't wash off, and after a while it really starts to smell.
It's not Hillary's fault, exactly. Bushes and stolen elections just seem to go together.
But I'll tell you something interesting. When the $1.3 billion e-voting boondoggle was before the Anthrax Congress, in Oct 02 (same month as the IWR) (heh, heh), there were ONLY TWO votes against it in the U.S. Senate. Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer.
Now, I've thought a lot of about this. Why would pro-corporate Hillary have any problem with rightwing Bushite corporations "counting" all our votes in machines run on 'TRADE SECRET, 'PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls? None of the other Democrats in the Senate cared a goddamn. Why should she?
At first, I thought it was so as not offend NY voters, who are very attached to their old, reliable and virtually unriggable lever voting machines. The thing (fascist coup) was going to pass. It didn't need the NY Senators' votes. They could safely vote against it (even if they were for it). And perhaps it meant that they had at least that much regard for public opinion and democracy--to respect NY voters' wishes. And it gave me a twinge of hope that, if Hillary gets Diebolded into the White House, once she is in power, she won't object to us restoring transparent vote counting in the rest of the country for future elections.
But then I began to think that the purpose of her and Schumer--and her and Schumer alone--voting against this egregiously non-transparent election system for the rest of the country, was to put the matter off the radar of NY voters, who live at the center of media/PR power in the country, and might cry foul, say, to the NY Times, and bring pressure for some coverage of the subject, some warning to the rest of us, if THEIR voting system were fucked over the way the rest of ours has been. I favor this explanation today. The Bushite federal election commission also went easy on NY at first, and let them get away with non-compliance (until recently--now they're suing NY). Clinton and Schumer are as collusive with fascist/corporate power as the rest of the Democratic Party establishment, if not more so. It's easy to believe that they colluded on getting this last corporate control over our democracy in place, and on keeping NY voters away from the issue, while it got entrenched all over the country. And now they'll do NY and the coup will be complete.
But take your pick of explanations, or think up your own. It IS weird fact. Of all the Democrats in the Anthrax Congress, ONLY THESE TWO voted against the "Help America Vote Act." Maybe, to you, it means they still believe in democracy. And maybe it means that Hillary will be the first to object if there was a mess-up in her favor in New Hampshire. (Well, not the first--Kucinich was the first--but you know what I mean.) It will give all her detractors the lie. And I'm not being 100% sarcastic. Who knows, these days, what's really going on--with all the media delusion and distraction? It's hard to get a real read on any politician, in this putrid atmosphere. Maybe the rightwing vileness toward her is truly meaningful, and she will slay dragons for us. Maybe she will come out and blast private, secret, corporate vote counting, and disavow any false win, and say she only wants to win on the basis of transparent, honest, aboveboard counting of every vote.
I won't rule it out. I can't. And we really can't make political judgements on the smell of green slime, can we? On nebulous feelings? On media-spun illusions? On electrons whirling around in "black boxes" and coming out with a "winner"? We need to be more hard-headed and not quite so prone to feelings of hysteria induced by deliberately-created, Rumsfeldian-type uncertainties and chaos and disorder. So, let's see what NH election officials actually do. Let's see if they do a real recount with no shenanigans. And let's see how Hillary behaves in this circumstance.
The election is just under a year away. That's a lot of time. Maybe something real will happen, to shed some light on our political system and our future. And, being a progressive, I believe that people can change. I really do. Maybe not Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and that lot. (Let's be realistic.) But most others can change. Can learn. Can grow. I think John Edwards has. I think Bobby Kennedy did. And JFK did. Maybe Hillary can, too.
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