We all know that the GOP will not stop short of anything when it comes
to power mongering!!

Rig My Election, Please
Just how far will desperate Republicans go to trick America into
another BushCo victory?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, July 21, 2004


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Semi-clever, ultra-wealthy Bush supporters suddenly donating piles of
money to the Nader campaign in an obvious attempt to steal votes from
John Kerry? Pshaw. Ptouey. Child's play. Tip of the iceberg. A mere
distraction.
We ain't seen nuthin' yet.

This is the time of desperation and anxiety. This is the time of
hysterical Orange Alerts and imminent al Quada attacks coming from
outta nowhere at any minute and violating our children and kicking our
puppies and badly denting our Honda Accords. And yes, this is the time
of election-year political tactics coming from the increasingly
anxious Right that will make Sun Tzu's "Art of War" look like a
cupcake cookbook.

Do you feel it? Can you smell it in the air? The sensation that the
Republican party, though various tentacles, will stop at absolutely
nothing to maintain power in the White House? It's true. It's the
feeling that, during the next few months, it's all about to get very
shrill, and very surreal, indeed.

How about another, "imminent" terrorist threat? Pretty much a given,
really. Followed, of course, by another. And then another. And then
another and another until every other day the newscast features a
thick-necked, panicky Tom Ridge saying yes, oh my God yes, we now have
definitive proof that terrorists are more or less sort of maybe
planning to strike the U.S. maybe very soon and disrupt our shopping
and screw with our TV reception and blot out the sun. We just don't
know, you know, where, or when, or how, or what the hell to do about
it. P.S.; Vote Republican.

Look, times have changed. Of course politics has always been a truly
ugly business, and each party's strategy to gain or regain power as
election time rolls around has always become increasingly low-down and
nasty and mudslinging and soul-cringing and borderline illegal.

But this time it all feels, somehow, different. Uglier. More sadistic.

There is a sense of lawlessness, of desperation, among the Republican
party right now. It is no longer a question of simply which party will
run the show or which platform will have the most influence on policy.
Rather, it's about a radically polarized worldview: are we going to be
an aggressive macho globally disrespected isolationist nation who has
burned all bridges and molested all foreign relationships and mocked
all global sympathy, or are we, as the GOP wants you to believe, going
to become some liberal namby-pamby country where gays can marry each
other and sexually deviant women can have abortions every day and
everybody speaks French?

Because there is no middle ground. This is the GOP message. You are
either with us, or you are a terrorist. You are either on the side of
the "patriotic," pro-war party of WMD lies and homophobia and violence
toward the global community, or you're a liberal hippie 'Nam protester
like that jerknose Kerry.

What else could they do to guarantee a November win? What are they
capable of, in the wake of 2000's stolen election and the rigging of
the Florida recounts and a sneering, despoiled Supreme Court? Just
about anything, really.

How about a nice "October Surprise" of suddenly finding Osama
somewhere in a remote Afghani cave, as the news media receives an
"anonymous" delivery of a big glossy photo of Dubya himself standing
outside said cave in a manly flight suit and lookin' all tough in his
cowboy boots and confused smirk as he waves an American flag in one
hand holds Osama by a chain in the other? What, too obvious?

Well, then, maybe something a bit more devious? How about the
thousands of electronic, touch-screen voting machines now installed in
the nation's polling places, most every one manufactured by
corporations run by staunch Bush-supporting Republicans, many of which
don't allow for recounts or paper trails or any means of
double-checking their completely programmable results. An obvious
recipe for election-rigging? Is that Katherine Harris, giggling
through her Botox?

Look. This much is clear. It's not merely going to be dirty politics
as usual. It's not going to be mudslinging and name-calling and
finger-pointing and policy-wonking, childish little claims of "fuzzy
math" and aww-shucks dumb-guy cowboy shtick to appeal to the lower
intellects.

It is not going to merely be BushCo spending millions of its enormous
war chest, as he already has, to launch incredibly vicious attack ads
against Kerry and Edwards that dare to question the veracity and
validity of Kerry's many Vietnam war medals or of Edwards' political
experience, as Bush himself is the least-qualified president in U.S.
history, one who ducked military service and went AWOL and makes all
military service people wince in embarrassment.

No, it's going to be far worse. And more nauseating. Who, for example,
isn't sighing in appalled disgust as the Pentagon suddenly discovers
that, oh my goodness, Bush's own military service records were
"accidentally" destroyed? How amazing! And would you believe it, but
the records in question just so happened to be the exact months of
just those exact years that Bush was supposedly to have "served." What
a crazy coincidence! Now we can never really know if he even bothered
to show up for duty at all! Gosh, what a shame.

Another possibility: ditching nasty, wan little Dick Cheney entirely.
Rumor has it the Angry Puppeteer could be dumped from the ticket very
soon, swapped for a less slimy and more human candidate. Maybe a nice,
crusty war hero like John McCain? Or a strange, lonely, friendless
woman like Condi Rice? A bitter, emasculated Colin Powell? Anything to
galvanize the ticket, make it, you know, less ugly and old and
warmongering, more palatable and sassy and Edwards-like. This is the
new rule: If it might force a victory, the GOP will consider it.

And finally, if all else fails, well, why not just postpone the whole
damn election itself?

That's right, simply invent some (non-specific, unsubstantiated)
terrorist threat of sufficient hysteria so that BushCo simply has no
choice but to delay the vote. The result? Give you gullible, timid
voters more time to reconsider your choices and maybe vote based on
your fear instead of, you know, your heart, or your soul, or your
ethics, or your brain, or your general sense of universal humanitarian
progress.

Could it happen? Well, no. Most experts say such a delay is
impossible, ridiculous, flagrantly anti-democratic. Doesn't matter.
What matters is the galling fact that the GOP even floated the idea in
the first place.

So then, let this be a warning. Get ready. Expect the unexpected.
Watch the skies, scrutinize the headlines, dust off your stash of duct
tape. Because Karl Rove and the cutthroat BushCo war hawks and
corporate cronies who run the show aren't about to go down without a
screaming, sickening, fiery fight.

And if BushCo has proven anything in the past four violent,
budget-gutting, honor-molesting, nearly unbearable years, it's that
there ain't no international law that can't be broken, no fear synapse
that can't be hammered to death, no fraudulent power tactic that can't
be abused. Anything is possible. You have been warned. God bless
America.

If it's OT, then don't post it.

"basskisser" wrote in message
om...
We all know that the GOP will not stop short of anything when it comes
to power mongering!!

Rig My Election, Please
Just how far will desperate Republicans go to trick America into
another BushCo victory?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, July 21, 2004


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------



Semi-clever, ultra-wealthy Bush supporters suddenly donating piles of
money to the Nader campaign in an obvious attempt to steal votes from
John Kerry? Pshaw. Ptouey. Child's play. Tip of the iceberg. A mere
distraction.
We ain't seen nuthin' yet.

This is the time of desperation and anxiety. This is the time of
hysterical Orange Alerts and imminent al Quada attacks coming from
outta nowhere at any minute and violating our children and kicking our
puppies and badly denting our Honda Accords. And yes, this is the time
of election-year political tactics coming from the increasingly
anxious Right that will make Sun Tzu's "Art of War" look like a
cupcake cookbook.

Do you feel it? Can you smell it in the air? The sensation that the
Republican party, though various tentacles, will stop at absolutely
nothing to maintain power in the White House? It's true. It's the
feeling that, during the next few months, it's all about to get very
shrill, and very surreal, indeed.

How about another, "imminent" terrorist threat? Pretty much a given,
really. Followed, of course, by another. And then another. And then
another and another until every other day the newscast features a
thick-necked, panicky Tom Ridge saying yes, oh my God yes, we now have
definitive proof that terrorists are more or less sort of maybe
planning to strike the U.S. maybe very soon and disrupt our shopping
and screw with our TV reception and blot out the sun. We just don't
know, you know, where, or when, or how, or what the hell to do about
it. P.S.; Vote Republican.

Look, times have changed. Of course politics has always been a truly
ugly business, and each party's strategy to gain or regain power as
election time rolls around has always become increasingly low-down and
nasty and mudslinging and soul-cringing and borderline illegal.

But this time it all feels, somehow, different. Uglier. More sadistic.

There is a sense of lawlessness, of desperation, among the Republican
party right now. It is no longer a question of simply which party will
run the show or which platform will have the most influence on policy.
Rather, it's about a radically polarized worldview: are we going to be
an aggressive macho globally disrespected isolationist nation who has
burned all bridges and molested all foreign relationships and mocked
all global sympathy, or are we, as the GOP wants you to believe, going
to become some liberal namby-pamby country where gays can marry each
other and sexually deviant women can have abortions every day and
everybody speaks French?

Because there is no middle ground. This is the GOP message. You are
either with us, or you are a terrorist. You are either on the side of
the "patriotic," pro-war party of WMD lies and homophobia and violence
toward the global community, or you're a liberal hippie 'Nam protester
like that jerknose Kerry.

What else could they do to guarantee a November win? What are they
capable of, in the wake of 2000's stolen election and the rigging of
the Florida recounts and a sneering, despoiled Supreme Court? Just
about anything, really.

How about a nice "October Surprise" of suddenly finding Osama
somewhere in a remote Afghani cave, as the news media receives an
"anonymous" delivery of a big glossy photo of Dubya himself standing
outside said cave in a manly flight suit and lookin' all tough in his
cowboy boots and confused smirk as he waves an American flag in one
hand holds Osama by a chain in the other? What, too obvious?

Well, then, maybe something a bit more devious? How about the
thousands of electronic, touch-screen voting machines now installed in
the nation's polling places, most every one manufactured by
corporations run by staunch Bush-supporting Republicans, many of which
don't allow for recounts or paper trails or any means of
double-checking their completely programmable results. An obvious
recipe for election-rigging? Is that Katherine Harris, giggling
through her Botox?

Look. This much is clear. It's not merely going to be dirty politics
as usual. It's not going to be mudslinging and name-calling and
finger-pointing and policy-wonking, childish little claims of "fuzzy
math" and aww-shucks dumb-guy cowboy shtick to appeal to the lower
intellects.

It is not going to merely be BushCo spending millions of its enormous
war chest, as he already has, to launch incredibly vicious attack ads
against Kerry and Edwards that dare to question the veracity and
validity of Kerry's many Vietnam war medals or of Edwards' political
experience, as Bush himself is the least-qualified president in U.S.
history, one who ducked military service and went AWOL and makes all
military service people wince in embarrassment.

No, it's going to be far worse. And more nauseating. Who, for example,
isn't sighing in appalled disgust as the Pentagon suddenly discovers
that, oh my goodness, Bush's own military service records were
"accidentally" destroyed? How amazing! And would you believe it, but
the records in question just so happened to be the exact months of
just those exact years that Bush was supposedly to have "served." What
a crazy coincidence! Now we can never really know if he even bothered
to show up for duty at all! Gosh, what a shame.

Another possibility: ditching nasty, wan little Dick Cheney entirely.
Rumor has it the Angry Puppeteer could be dumped from the ticket very
soon, swapped for a less slimy and more human candidate. Maybe a nice,
crusty war hero like John McCain? Or a strange, lonely, friendless
woman like Condi Rice? A bitter, emasculated Colin Powell? Anything to
galvanize the ticket, make it, you know, less ugly and old and
warmongering, more palatable and sassy and Edwards-like. This is the
new rule: If it might force a victory, the GOP will consider it.

And finally, if all else fails, well, why not just postpone the whole
damn election itself?

That's right, simply invent some (non-specific, unsubstantiated)
terrorist threat of sufficient hysteria so that BushCo simply has no
choice but to delay the vote. The result? Give you gullible, timid
voters more time to reconsider your choices and maybe vote based on
your fear instead of, you know, your heart, or your soul, or your
ethics, or your brain, or your general sense of universal humanitarian
progress.

Could it happen? Well, no. Most experts say such a delay is
impossible, ridiculous, flagrantly anti-democratic. Doesn't matter.
What matters is the galling fact that the GOP even floated the idea in
the first place.

So then, let this be a warning. Get ready. Expect the unexpected.
Watch the skies, scrutinize the headlines, dust off your stash of duct
tape. Because Karl Rove and the cutthroat BushCo war hawks and
corporate cronies who run the show aren't about to go down without a
screaming, sickening, fiery fight.

And if BushCo has proven anything in the past four violent,
budget-gutting, honor-molesting, nearly unbearable years, it's that
there ain't no international law that can't be broken, no fear synapse
that can't be hammered to death, no fraudulent power tactic that can't
be abused. Anything is possible. You have been warned. God bless
America.

I notice that you are still stealing copyright material. And no local
Atlanta papers that support you agenda?

"basskisser" wrote in message
om...
We all know that the GOP will not stop short of anything when it comes
to power mongering!!

Rig My Election, Please
Just how far will desperate Republicans go to trick America into
another BushCo victory?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Calif Bill wrote:

I notice that you are still stealing copyright material. And no local
Atlanta papers that support you agenda?

Here yoo go, **** for brains...an editorial from today's AJC:

Rooting out terrorists tough in dictatorships

By MANSOUR O. EL-KIKHIA
Published on: 07/21/04

It is fascinating how politically interdependent the world has become.

I am not a fan of conspiracy theory, but I do think the Bush
administration is fighting and defending the wrong war.
Mansour El-Kikhia, a native of Libya, is an associate professor of
political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where his
specialty is Middle Eastern politics and international relations.

Billions of dollars are pumped into a brand new security industry that
has sprouted since Sept. 11. Now that its roots are down, it will not go
away without a fight. Indeed, nothing pleases this new industry more
than the perpetuation of an atmosphere of fear to provide its existence
with a reason to be.

Fiddling with the alert color codes, setting up commissions to postpone
America's presidential elections, keeping Americans constantly on edge
with unsubstantiated warnings of potential terrorist attacks all serve
that purpose.

It is easy to blame Islam and Muslims for all the ills in the world
because injured people need quick answers on the causes of their injury.
But Islam is not the reason for terrorism, even though those who
committed that awful act declared themselves to be Muslims.

I would venture that political interdependence among non-compatible
countries is the source of the new global instability. The world is
rapidly converging economically and politically, and, while it did
develop a common economic dictionary, it has no such political lexicon.

Islamic fundamentalism, like Christian fundamentalism, has been with us
for hundreds of years and will be for hundreds more. All one has to do
to find religion is to look at the Republican Party's platform or at the
platforms of Christian parties in Europe, or for that matter at the
Likud Party in Israel.

There is no such party in any of the Arab countries. That role has been
usurped by dictatorial regimes.

The first Muslim political movement to emerge in the modern age was the
Islamic Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928. However, Gamal Abdel-Nasser's
dictatorship quickly eradicated it, like all other political movements
in Egypt, and sent it underground, where its splinters became
radicalized and re-emerged with a vengeance during the '70s.

In spite of the constant repression the mainstream Islamic movements
face in Egypt today, they continue to be the most trusted by the average
Egyptian. They are the providers of social services, charities, medical
facilities and all the other social and economic concerns the Egyptian
government should be handling.

The Egyptian government is not unique in its disrespect for its people.
I am constantly amazed by the lack of respect all Arab regimes display
toward their citizens. They do little to alleviate their political,
economic and social pain.

Unemployment in North Africa is more than 20 percent, resulting in huge
numbers crossing the Mediterranean to reside and work in Europe.

Saudi Arabia has close to a million Egyptian workers and millions more
from the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, yet unemployment there
exceeds 15 percent.

These dictatorships instill policies of the status quo; in other words,
policies that keep them in power indefinitely. In my lifetime, only two
Arab rulers have left the seat of power walking. The rest vacated their
seats being carried.

What makes matters worse is that these dictators are trying to ensure
their seats for their children after they leave. Hafez Assad of Syria
did it and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Moammar Gadhafi of Libya are
following suit.

Saddam Hussein would have done it. I certainly can't imagine an Iraq
under the psychopath Odai. There are no institutions to hold the
dictators accountable and no opposition willing to confront them, except
Islamic organizations.

America continues supporting these regimes with aid and arms, as well as
turning a blind eye to the atrocities they commit against their people.
If this administration is serious about confronting terrorism, it needs
to change the focus of its war and, when it does, it may find
enlightened Muslims are its best allies.


--------------------------------------



A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush;
A vote for Bush is a vote for Apocalypse.

"Calif Bill" wrote in message
link.net...
I notice that you are still stealing copyright material. And no local
Atlanta papers that support you agenda?

Even the atlanta fishwrap is smarter than asslicker.


"basskisser" wrote in message
om...
We all know that the GOP will not stop short of anything when it comes
to power mongering!!

Rig My Election, Please
Just how far will desperate Republicans go to trick America into
another BushCo victory?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, July 21, 2004

To easy to show how democrat liebrals are guilty of the very thing they
accuse conservative of.

"Calif Bill" wrote in message
link.net...
I notice that you are still stealing copyright material. And no local
Atlanta papers that support you agenda?

"basskisser" wrote in message
om...
We all know that the GOP will not stop short of anything when it comes
to power mongering!!

Rig My Election, Please
Just how far will desperate Republicans go to trick America into
another BushCo victory?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, July 21, 2004



We all know that the DNC will not stop short of anything when it comes
to power mongering!!

Rig My Election, Please
Just how far will desperate Democratss go to trick America into
a Kerry victory?



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----



Semi-clever, ultra-wealthy Keery supporters suddenly donating piles of
money to the Moveon.com in an obvious attempt to evade caipaign finance
laws? Pshaw. Ptouey. Child's play. Tip of the iceberg. A mere
distraction.
We ain't seen nuthin' yet.

This is the time of desperation and anxiety. This is the time of
hysterical "throwing seniors out on the street' and imminent 'health care
crisis'coming from
outta nowhere at any minute and violating our children and kicking our
puppies and badly denting our Honda Accords. And yes, this is the time
of election-year political tactics coming from the increasingly
anxious Left that will make Hillary Clinton's "It takes a Village"" look
like a
cupcake cookbook.

Do you feel it? Can you smell it in the air? The sensation that the
Democratic party, though various tentacles, will stop at absolutely
nothing to attain power in the White House? It's true. It's the
feeling that, during the next few months, it's all about to get very
shrill, and very surreal, indeed.

How about another,'no' terrorist threat? Pretty much a given,
really. Followed, of course, by another. And then another. And then
another and another until every other day the newscast features a
thick-necked, panicky Tom Daschle saying yes, oh my God yes, we now have
no definitive proof that terrorists are more or less sort of maybe
planning to strike the U.S. never. We just that it will never happen
or what the hell to do about
it. P.S.; Vote Democrat.

Look, times have changed. Of course politics has always been a truly
ugly business, and each party's strategy to gain or regain power as
election time rolls around has always become increasingly low-down and
nasty and mudslinging and soul-cringing and borderline illegal.

But this time it all feels, somehow, different. Uglier. More sadistic.

There is a sense of lawlessness, of desperation, among the Democratic
party right now. It is no longer a question of simply which party will
run the show or which platform will have the most influence on policy.
Rather, it's about going
to become some liberal namby-pamby country where gays can marry each
other and sexually deviant women can have abortions every day and
everybody speaks French?, or are we, as the DNC wants you to believe, a
radically polarized worldview: are we going to bean aggressive macho
globally disrespected isolationist nation who has
burned all bridges and molested all foreign relationships and mocked
all global sympathygoing
Because there is no middle ground. This is the DNC message. You are
either with us, or you are a idiot. You are either on the side of
the tradional american values or you're a liberal hippie 'Nam protester
like that jerknose Kerry.

What else could they do to guarantee a November win? What are they
capable of, in the wake of 2000's attempt at a stealing of and election and
the rigging of
the Florida recounts and a sneering, despoiled Florida Supreme Court? Just
about anything, really.

How about a nice "October Surprise" of suddenly finding another conspiracy
theory, as the news media receives an"anonymous" delivery of a big glossy
photo of Kerry himself standing
outside waving the paper work, shrill schreeching we mus t get to the bottom
of this.
Well, then, maybe something a bit more devious? How about the
thousands of electronic, touch-screen voting machines now installed in
the nation's polling places,run by staunch Kerry-supporting democrats, many
of which
don't allow for recounts or paper trails or any means of
double-checking their completely programmable results. An obvious
recipe for election-rigging? Is that John Edwards, giggling
through his Botox?

Look. This much is clear. It's not merely going to be dirty politics
as usual. It's not going to be mudslinging and name-calling and
finger-pointing and policy-wonking, childish little claims of "fuzzy
math" and aww-shucks I'm for the little guy despite being worth almost a
billion and you are not fit to wipe my shoes shtick to appeal to the
lowerintellects.

It is not going to merely be Kerry spending millions of its enormous
war chest, as he already has, to launch incredibly vicious attack ads
against Bush and Cheney that dare to question the veracity and
validity of Bush's National Guard service or of Cheney's' political
experience, as Kerry himself is the least-qualified president in U.S.
history, one who backstabbed his comrades military service and threw his ill
gotten medals over the fence and makes all military service people wince in
embarrassment.

No, it's going to be far worse. And more nauseating. Who, for example,
isn't sighing in appalled disgust as the Media's fawning over Kerry's
lackluster military record
How amazing! And would you believe it, but
the records in question just so happened to be the exact months of
just those exact years that Bush was supposedly to have "served." What
a crazy coincidence! Now we can never really know if he even bothered
to show up for duty at all! Gosh, what a shame.

Another possibility: ditching nasty, wan little John Kerry entirely.
Rumor has it the Lurchcould be dumped from the ticket very
soon, swapped for a less slimy and more human candidate. Maybe a nice,
Dick Gephart? Or a strange, lonely, friendless
woman like Hillary Clinton? A bitter, emasculated Wesley Clark? Anything to
galvanize the ticket, make it, you know, less ugly and old and
warmongering, more palatable and sassy and Bush-like. This is the
new rule: If it might force a victory, the DNC will consider it.

And finally, if all else fails, well, why not just postpone the whole
damn election itself?

That's right, simply invent some (non-specific, unsubstantiated)
election fraud accusation of sufficient hysteria so that trial lawyers
simply has no
choice but to delay the results. The result? Give you illegal, union thug
poll workers
more time to falsify ballots and create votes devoid
ethics,

Could it happen? Well, no. Most experts say such a delay is
impossible, ridiculous, flagrantly anti-democratic. Doesn't matter.
What matters is the galling fact that the DNC has already annouced it is
mobilizing lawyers
So then, let this be a warning. Get ready. Expect the unexpected.
Watch the skies, scrutinize the headlines, dust off your stash of duct
tape. Because Al Gore and the cutthroat Democrat whiners and
socilaists who run the show aren't about to go down without a
screaming, sickening, fiery fight.

And if Kerry has proven anything in the past four ,
name calling , honor-molesting, nearly unbearable monthds, it's that
there ain't no ethic or moral law that can't be broken, no fear synapse
that can't be hammered to death, no fraudulent power tactic that can't
be abused. Anything is possible. You have been warned. God bless
America.

P.Fritz wrote:

To easy to show how democrat liebrals are guilty of the very thing they
accuse conservative of.


I'll bet you are as uneducated and ignorant as your use of language, eh,
Bushboy?



--
A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush;
A vote for Bush is a vote for Apocalypse.

Well, I don't know about that. Sun Tzu's Art of War is a very serious
book. You can learn and read it at www.sonshi.com


And yes, this is the time
of election-year political tactics coming from the increasingly
anxious Right that will make Sun Tzu's "Art of War" look like a
cupcake cookbook.

Do you feel it? Can you smell it in the air? The sensation that the
Republican party, though various tentacles, will stop at absolutely
nothing to maintain power in the White House? It's true. It's the
feeling that, during the next few months, it's all about to get very
shrill, and very surreal, indeed.

How about another, "imminent" terrorist threat? Pretty much a given,
really. Followed, of course, by another. And then another. And then
another and another until every other day the newscast features a
thick-necked, panicky Tom Ridge saying yes, oh my God yes, we now have
definitive proof that terrorists are more or less sort of maybe
planning to strike the U.S. maybe very soon and disrupt our shopping
and screw with our TV reception and blot out the sun. We just don't
know, you know, where, or when, or how, or what the hell to do about
it. P.S.; Vote Republican.

Look, times have changed. Of course politics has always been a truly
ugly business, and each party's strategy to gain or regain power as
election time rolls around has always become increasingly low-down and
nasty and mudslinging and soul-cringing and borderline illegal.

But this time it all feels, somehow, different. Uglier. More sadistic.

There is a sense of lawlessness, of desperation, among the Republican
party right now. It is no longer a question of simply which party will
run the show or which platform will have the most influence on policy.
Rather, it's about a radically polarized worldview: are we going to be
an aggressive macho globally disrespected isolationist nation who has
burned all bridges and molested all foreign relationships and mocked
all global sympathy, or are we, as the GOP wants you to believe, going
to become some liberal namby-pamby country where gays can marry each
other and sexually deviant women can have abortions every day and
everybody speaks French?

Because there is no middle ground. This is the GOP message. You are
either with us, or you are a terrorist. You are either on the side of
the "patriotic," pro-war party of WMD lies and homophobia and violence
toward the global community, or you're a liberal hippie 'Nam protester
like that jerknose Kerry.

What else could they do to guarantee a November win? What are they
capable of, in the wake of 2000's stolen election and the rigging of
the Florida recounts and a sneering, despoiled Supreme Court? Just
about anything, really.

How about a nice "October Surprise" of suddenly finding Osama
somewhere in a remote Afghani cave, as the news media receives an
"anonymous" delivery of a big glossy photo of Dubya himself standing
outside said cave in a manly flight suit and lookin' all tough in his
cowboy boots and confused smirk as he waves an American flag in one
hand holds Osama by a chain in the other? What, too obvious?

Well, then, maybe something a bit more devious? How about the
thousands of electronic, touch-screen voting machines now installed in
the nation's polling places, most every one manufactured by
corporations run by staunch Bush-supporting Republicans, many of which
don't allow for recounts or paper trails or any means of
double-checking their completely programmable results. An obvious
recipe for election-rigging? Is that Katherine Harris, giggling
through her Botox?

Look. This much is clear. It's not merely going to be dirty politics
as usual. It's not going to be mudslinging and name-calling and
finger-pointing and policy-wonking, childish little claims of "fuzzy
math" and aww-shucks dumb-guy cowboy shtick to appeal to the lower
intellects.

It is not going to merely be BushCo spending millions of its enormous
war chest, as he already has, to launch incredibly vicious attack ads
against Kerry and Edwards that dare to question the veracity and
validity of Kerry's many Vietnam war medals or of Edwards' political
experience, as Bush himself is the least-qualified president in U.S.
history, one who ducked military service and went AWOL and makes all
military service people wince in embarrassment.

No, it's going to be far worse. And more nauseating. Who, for example,
isn't sighing in appalled disgust as the Pentagon suddenly discovers
that, oh my goodness, Bush's own military service records were
"accidentally" destroyed? How amazing! And would you believe it, but
the records in question just so happened to be the exact months of
just those exact years that Bush was supposedly to have "served." What
a crazy coincidence! Now we can never really know if he even bothered
to show up for duty at all! Gosh, what a shame.

Another possibility: ditching nasty, wan little Dick Cheney entirely.
Rumor has it the Angry Puppeteer could be dumped from the ticket very
soon, swapped for a less slimy and more human candidate. Maybe a nice,
crusty war hero like John McCain? Or a strange, lonely, friendless
woman like Condi Rice? A bitter, emasculated Colin Powell? Anything to
galvanize the ticket, make it, you know, less ugly and old and
warmongering, more palatable and sassy and Edwards-like. This is the
new rule: If it might force a victory, the GOP will consider it.

And finally, if all else fails, well, why not just postpone the whole
damn election itself?

That's right, simply invent some (non-specific, unsubstantiated)
terrorist threat of sufficient hysteria so that BushCo simply has no
choice but to delay the vote. The result? Give you gullible, timid
voters more time to reconsider your choices and maybe vote based on
your fear instead of, you know, your heart, or your soul, or your
ethics, or your brain, or your general sense of universal humanitarian
progress.

Could it happen? Well, no. Most experts say such a delay is
impossible, ridiculous, flagrantly anti-democratic. Doesn't matter.
What matters is the galling fact that the GOP even floated the idea in
the first place.

So then, let this be a warning. Get ready. Expect the unexpected.
Watch the skies, scrutinize the headlines, dust off your stash of duct
tape. Because Karl Rove and the cutthroat BushCo war hawks and
corporate cronies who run the show aren't about to go down without a
screaming, sickening, fiery fight.

And if BushCo has proven anything in the past four violent,
budget-gutting, honor-molesting, nearly unbearable years, it's that
there ain't no international law that can't be broken, no fear synapse
that can't be hammered to death, no fraudulent power tactic that can't
be abused. Anything is possible. You have been warned. God bless
America.

"basskisser" wrote in message

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, July 21, 2004

If you insist on cutting and pasting Mark Morford, you ought to take your
posts to alt.politics.comedy.fiction.

"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
Calif Bill wrote:

I notice that you are still stealing copyright material. And no local
Atlanta papers that support you agenda?

Here yoo go, **** for brains...an editorial from today's AJC:

Rooting out terrorists tough in dictatorships

By MANSOUR O. EL-KIKHIA
Published on: 07/21/04

I notice you do not believe in copyrights either.