Just a game of FOOLEYS!!!
I only want Obama because the Zionist press is being so hard on him in promoting St. Hitlery!
"A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE ELECTION"
"A funny thing happened on the way to the Obama campaign …
It got short-circuited.
It got swift-boated by fellow Democrats.
It got hijacked by the D.L.C.—that same Democratic Leadership Council that Bill Clinton, Inc. masterminded in ’92 and ’96 to ensure his own victories, and now wields from behind the curtains to ensure his wife’s.
None of this should surprise anyone. The narrative of a steadily mounting “people’s power” movement for Obama was always too good to be true. The idea that Obama would ride the momentum of that “people’s power” into the White House, where, buttressed by the full-hearted, full-throated support of the multitudes, he would take on the special interests in the military-industrial-media-academic complex (while simultaneously delivering manna from the heavens) was always, upon a little inspection, shall we say, unlikely in extremis!
But, folks got to believe! Folks got to sing and dance! Far more Americans believe in miracles than have ever attempted to read our Constitution and figure out the machinations of our electoral system. Waking somnambulists can be dangerous, we’re told. Or, is it better to let them stumble off the fifth-story balcony?
Now the narrative may continue as planned: Hillary, battle-scarred, tested, chastened—without a hair out of maxi-hold place—comes back swinging. And as for Barack—big hints already here, wink-wink!–if he’s a good “boy”—oops, sorry!—if he knows his “place”—somebody stop me!—there may even be a spot for him in the “not-worth-a-bucket-of-spit” Vice Presidency! Of course, owing to Barack Hussein’s lack of “experience,” he is not likely to do a particle of harm in that office—which quite contrasts him to the present incumbent—which calls our attention back to—
Our glorious Repugs (and away from those persnickety Dims). So, what is the latest argument in the Dims’ arsenal? Why, it’s that old one—if we don’t choose a Dim, we’re going to get 3 or 4 fire-breathing judges on the Supreme Soviet—oops, sorry, make that—well, you know. (Of course, the notion that that body of clergically cloaked judges should have nothing to do with actually legislating; and that, if they do, some tumor is infecting our body politic and needs to be surgically—or not so surgically!—removed—that notion need not deter the panicked masses from their obstinate belief in their own poor powers to add or detract.)
So, congratulations, Hillary! Congrats to you, Barack! Congrats Mass Hypnosis Media!—you have kept the fictions alive and well. Barely a mention of 120 slaughtered in Palestine this past week! Hardly a nod to surging wheat prices, rice prices, gas prices. Let’s forget about the foreclosures for now, another blood-lake in Afghanistan or Iraq. The Empire is alive and well, and we just shot down a satellite, proving to those uppity Chinamen we can match’em and exceed’em. We’re tough, scruffy, democratically dumb, and as mean as we’ve gotta be in this bad-assed world. Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutant!""The Election That Might Not Happen"
"CommonDreams.org
Published on Thursday, March 6, 2008
by Betsy Hartmann
It’s springtime in American politics. It’s only early March, but there’s a giddy, hopeful feeling to this election season, a sense that new leadership is blossoming. We could have a Democrat in the White House next year. But winter isn’t over yet and we need to balance our hope with a little fear. In 2000 Bush and Cheney stole the election in Florida. In 2004 they played dirty tricks in Ohio. In 2008 could they go one step further — and suspend the election altogether?
The necessary architecture may already be in place. On May 4 last year, the White House issued the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, key parts of which remain classified and hence shrouded from public view. The directive outlines procedures to respond to a “catastrophic emergency,” defined broadly as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.” Of course previous administrations also had emergency plans. But the Bush directive transfers power from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to the White House, where the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism is assigned the job of “National Continuity Coordinator”.
The unclassified part of the directive reveals little about who would have the authority to invoke emergency powers during a catastrophe. Nor does it refer to existing laws, such as the National Emergencies Act, that establish congressional checks on the executive’s power to impose martial law or other extraordinary measures. Its wording is ambiguous - the directive shall be implemented “consistent with applicable law,” without making clear which laws are “applicable”. “The Bush legal team has pushed a controversial theory that the Constitution gives the president an unwritten power to disobey laws at his own discretion to protect national security,” writes Charlie Savage in the Boston Globe. He quotes legal specialists who describe the vagueness of the new directive as “troubling”.
Also troubling is the Department of Homeland Security’s $385 million contract awarded to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root in January 2006 to build temporary detention facilities. According to a Halliburton press release, the contract provides for augmenting existing immigration detention facilities in the event of “an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.” It also includes the development of a plan “to react to a national emergency, such as a national disaster.” Construction would commence only after an “emergency” is declared. While immigrants appear to be the main target, one cannot rule out the possibility that the detention centers could be used as holding pens for dissidents during a proclaimed emergency. Recent crackdowns on illegal immigrants have included military-style night raids on homes and factories. Are we getting softened up for the expansion of police state tactics?
But perhaps the most important card the Bush administration holds in its deck is a stacked conservative majority on the Supreme Court. In 2000 the Court turned a blind eye to the theft of Al Gore’s electoral victory in Florida. Should we expect better today? Just last month the Court refused to review the ACLU’s legal challenge to the Bush administration’s warrantless electronic surveillance program. Can we depend on the Court to challenge emergency rule and a suspension of elections?
Even with this architecture in place, the Bush administration would need a trigger to declare a state of emergency. One can imagine several possible scenarios:
War with Iran - unfortunately, not so far-fetched. The National Intelligence Estimate released in December concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program back in 2003. But when have Bush and Cheney ever based their foreign policy decisions on evidence? Moreover, the most important reason they want to attack Iran is to control the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf, nukes or no nukes.
The assassination of a presidential candidate. Obama evokes memories of JFK and Martin Luther King. The bullet could come from a lone racist, a terrorist, or an agent of a state. The threat is real. The Secret Service knows it and so should we.
A terrorist strike, on the scale of 9/11 or worse. Again, not so far-fetched. Bush and Cheney have been Osama bin Laden’s greatest recruiters, making the U.S. appear to be the enemy of millions across the world. Al Qaeda may consider that regime change in the U.S. is not in their interest.
With the right spin, any of these events might be construed as a “catastrophic emergency.”
These worst-case scenarios probably will not come to pass. We’ll probably all be able to sleep peacefully in our beds in the early hours of November 5, after watching the election results on TV. The value of worst-case scenarios lies not in their accurate prediction of events, but rather in what they tell us about the risks we face. We shouldn’t let hope make us naïve. We need to be alert, our vision razor-sharp. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. It could be the price of elections, too. Let’s not count our spring flowers before they bloom.
Betsy Hartmann’s latest book is the political thriller Deadly Election. A longstanding activist in the international women’s health movement, she lives in Amherst, MA where she teaches and directs the Population and Development Program at Hampshire College. Her other books include Reproductive Rights and Wrongs and the novel The Truth About Fire about neo-Nazis in the American heartland."
Read the comments section for more reaction, readers, as they capture my own feelings pretty well.
