"A lot of Europeans wonder: Why are Americans so crazy, they keep reelecting this guy?" Well the answer is, we don't! They keep stealing these elections! And they stole it in 2000, they stole it in 2004,and they’re all set up to steal it again!" - Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on BBC Television Newsnight.
Jumping Jack Kerr-rist! The Republicans are at it again. Greg Palast, who uncovered the first electoral theft of the White House in Florida, 2000, applies his forensic journo skills to the tactics being used this time around in the 2008 election.
The poorest are again being purged from the voter rolls with those under threat of foreclosure missing off the lists. Entire swathes of America devastated and turned into what look like battle-zones with one in five denied a vote. Who's doing the purging? Mortgage companies supporting McCain and the Republicans, that's who.
So the Bush government wrecks your life and then makes sure you have no say at the ballot. Neat, huh?
And guess what? The black electorate is being hit hardest — 100,000 black voters eliminated in the swing state of Indiana alone. C'mon Obama, up for the challenge?
As Palast concludes, "The next man in [the White House] won't be chosen by counting the votes, but by blocking the voters."
And don't think the Democrats have entirely clean hands, either.
Greg Palast's Newsnight report (in two parts):
Greg Palast on the 2008 theft, Part 1
Greg Palast on the 2008 theft, Part 2
6 comments:
I don't blame people in other parts of the world for thinking us utter morons. I know I would if I were them. And while I know it's judgemental, I think those who voted for Bush and those who will vote for Cheney as brainless nitwits who truely want to see this country go up in flames while patriotically waving their flag and thinking "supporting the troops" means having them continue to fight in a bonkers war.
Especially as all the money spent on the war is being sucked out of their economy, Mrs M. Makes one understand the phenomenon of "false consciousness" even better.
Anna,
The good news is that it isn't going to work this time. Right now, McCain needs to not only sweep all the remaining toss-up States, but win at least four States where Obama has a solid lead. He doesn't have the time, the money, or the message.
From New York, where they still won't let me vote, even though I pay my taxes.
Love, Kim
I hope you're right, Kim. Unfortunately, I just got this in from Palast and it's alarming. Maybe the article will help galvanise the electorate into action on the day. Or make us all want to slit our wrists. Where's that razor blade?!!
ROLLING STONE: IT'S ALREADY STOLEN
Investigation by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast released today
http://www.GregPalast.com
Don’t worry about Mickey Mouse or ACORN stealing the election. According to an investigative report out today in Rolling Stone magazine, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast, after a year-long investigation, reveal a systematic program of "GOP vote tampering" on a massive scale.
- Republican Secretaries of State of swing-state Colorado have quietly purged one in six names from their voter rolls.
Over several months, the GOP politicos in Colorado stonewalled every attempt by Rolling Stone to get an answer to the massive purge - ten times the average state's rate of removal.
- While Obama dreams of riding to the White House on a wave of new voters, more then 2.7 million have had their registrations REJECTED under new procedures signed into law by George Bush.
Kennedy, a voting rights lawyer, charges this is a resurgence of 'Jim Crow' tactics to wrongly block Black and Hispanic voters.
- A fired US prosecutor levels new charges - accusing leaders of his own party, Republicans, with criminal acts in an attempt to block legal voters as "fraudulent."
- Digging through government records, the Kennedy-Palast team discovered that, in 2004, a GOP scheme called "caging” ultimately took away the rights of 1.1 million voters. The Rolling Stone duo predict that, this November 4, it will be far worse.
There's more:
- Since the last presidential race, "States used dubious 'list management' rules to scrub at least 10 million voters from their rolls."
Among those was Paul Maez of Las Vegas, New Mexico - a victim of an unreported but devastating purge of voters in that state that left as many as one in nine Democrats without a vote. For Maez, the state's purging his registration was particularly shocking - he's the county elections supervisor.
The Kennedy-Palast revelations go far beyond the sum of questionably purged voters recently reported by the New York Times.
"Republican operatives - the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics," report Kennedy and Palast, under the cover of fighting fraudulent voting, are "systematically disenfranchis[ing] Democrats."
The investigators level a deadly serious charge:
"If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat McCain at the polls - they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering."
"Maybe the article will help galvanise the electorate into action on the day. Or make us all want to slit our wrists. Where's that razor blade?!!"
It is such a scary beyond belief prospect of having McCain/Paling in the White House. And it is no surprise that they are purging the poor from the voter rolls. It is just a way of disenfranchised and silencing people. Democracy? Shamocracy!
Cheers for posting this. I have been running it by my Republican buddies and they are deathly silent on the issue so far- which is a bad sign isn't it. I'm not so much in fear myself. I suppose I don't expect Obama to be any better if elected and also I see signs that McCain isn't Bush. It could be a whole lot worse than either and I still cant think of any concrete ideas to interest real people into making it better.
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