Another Election Behind Us ~ Dirty Trix In Politix Not

Demon Princess, like all y'all, is resting up & keeping an eye out for what are likely to be the most interesting developments post-house-cleaning. Most telling so far are Ken Mehlman's decision not to continue as Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Karl Rove's disgrace & de-facto resignation due to irrelevance--for now, anyway. (Bush is reported to have ribbed him about "reading too much" when he should have been doing his wicked best & using his direct connections to Satan to get Republicons re-elected.)

I never thought I'd feel sorry for Karl Rove, of all people, but seems to me it's just like George to lash out & reveal himself to be the spoiled, ungrateful, overprivileged brat I always thought he was by publicly cannibalizing his own beloved "turdblossom" the minute said turd ceases to be able to con an entire nation into believing George & the "party of moral purity" are anything but a bunch of con-men & thugs. Ah well--I won't waste a lot of time on it, but it seems to me it was nothing short of a minor miracle & inspired propaganda that Rove was able to cover up & paper over the truth of the Neocons' stinking rotten corrupt soulessness as long as he did. I give him that.

But before we all go on, get busy with other things, & forget, there were some familiar "irregularities" in these elections--& your Demon dares opine that it is a reliable measure of the extent our collective displeasure & fed-up-ness with GOP election dirty trix that we were able to make our disgust known despite them this time. We sent an overwhelming message, but it took how long? These trix & their persistence surely must be bubbling up from the deepest sulfurous pits of hell & would seem to have the architects' typical M.O.'s, if not their actual fingerprints, all over them:

1. Exploiting & bussing homeless people from outside of an electoral district to hand out flyers so as to lend "cred" to Republican candidates gunning for re-election--one black & one white. (Title bar). It's beyond ironic--it's pathetic.

The go-go Robber-Baron capitalism that, by Republicon economic policies--together with a calculated policy of ripping the rug out from under social welfare programs of any stripe (meaning that the uber-rich don't need them & aren't interested)-- has had the effect of engineering a new servant class ripe for exploitation. It's nowhere as chillingly evident as here, & downright disgusting.

There must be a special place in hell for the GOP persons up for re-election who apparently think so little of resident blacks' intelligence that they thought they could sneak a deceptive sample ballot claiming they were Democrats who'd been endorsed by leading lights of the black community past them: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/07/AR2006110700740.html

2. Targeting & robo-calling of Hispanic voters threatening them with arrest if they dare show up to vote.

3. In Virginia, the FBI is investigating the hotly contested Allen-Webb campaign. Seems someone called voters there claiming to have knowledge of out-of-state registrations & threatened them with criminal charges if they dared vote in Virginia. Listen to the call (captured on an answering machine) here, & read a roundup of other alleged dirty trix from Alternet, here: http://www.alternet.org/story/44007/

4. Voting machines continue to malfunction. Insist on an audit trail. I personally do not trust my vote to one of these error-ridden monsters. It's not that I'm a Luddite, by any means. But until their manufacturers can guarantee that my vote will not be lost, automatically transferred to the other column, or easily tinkered with by poll workers, I vote by mail, on paper.

Clearly democracy (like the marketplace) can't function properly where fraud interferes, & even if it means recounts & more votes counted for the GOP (perish the thought), this state of affairs needs fixin.'