Fraud's Legs

While it's a curse to live in Interesting Times, you must admit, at least they are interesting. Who can take their eyes off the multiple trainwreck of America's descent into fascism? It's probably going to kill us all, but no one will be able to say they were bored to death.

If the election fraud story gains traction - and it is beginning to bubble over from the blogosphere into the mainstream - oh boy, will things ever get interesting.

The next four weeks will tell the story, as the Electoral College is scheduled to meet December 13. If it ratifies the vote, then Bush's second theft will become an issue as academic as his first, and Bush's America doesn't cotton much to academics.

In the event that a critical mass of evidence is collected, and suggestive of a concerted and widespread fraud that was sufficient to subvert a sure Kerry victory, just imagine how tortured the emotional landscape of America will become. Should John Kerry unconcede all hell will break lose, but America may need to go through hell to avoid being damned by an unbound Bush administration. I would say it could precipitate a second civil war, except the war was started years ago by the far right. It simply is yet to be joined by the left, let alone the centre.

Unlikely though it is that the election will be overturned, it still isn't over. Six Congressmen have written the General Accounting Office, asking for an official inquiry into the election. And from a recent email from lawyer Cam Kerry, the candidate's brother, authenticated and forwarded here, there's this:

I am grateful to the many people who have contacted me to express their deep concern about questions of miscounting, fraud, vote suppression, and other problems on election day, especially in Florida and Ohio. Their concern reflects how much people care about the outcome of this election.

I want to you to know we are not ignoring it. Election protection lawyers are still on the job in Ohio and Florida and in DC making sure all the votes are counted accurately. I have been conferring with lawyers involved and have made them aware of the information and concerns people have given me. Even if the facts don't provide a basis to change the outcome, the information will inform the continuing effort to protect the integrity of our elections.

If you have specific factual information about voting problems that could be helpful to the lawyers doing their job, please send it to vri@dnc.org rather than to me.

I think it extremely unlikely that at this late stage John Kerry, "flip flopper" though he be, will flip back after the flop of his concession speech. Some are speculating that Kerry was threatened to throw it in early. I remember Ross Perot claimed, after his abrupt bailing in 1992, that he'd received threats from the Bush camp on the life of his daughter. (At the time, I thought Perot must be a crackpot. Sorry about that, Ross. I've since learned enough about the Bush cartel to unreservedly believe you were telling the truth.) I don't see a similar scenario having been played out this time. I don't think Kerry needed threatening. After all, this is the same man who told Floridians last year to "stop crying in your tea cups" over the theft of 2000. Kerry is not a street fighter; he's a beltway insider who - even with votes uncounted and mounting evidence of irregularities - would rather forestall a certain bloody fight, even a just fight, so that "healing" might begin. This flight response is mirrored in mainstream editorializing such as today's headline, "For good of the nation, it's time to move on." I don't even think the Skull & Bones card needed playing, because this has been the pattern of American public life for decades: reasonably decent individuals get suckered into perpetuating a cover-up because the exposure of certain high crimes, let alone their prosecution, could "shatter" America. Whatever that means, now.

So Bush will likely be sworn in, shielded by several phalynx of praetorian guard, and then we're off, spiralling down to ever more interesting times.

A few new links of interest in the meantime:

Click right and save here for video of Keith Olbermann making the case for fraud last night on MSNBC's Countdown.

Mark Robinowitz of Oil Empire has assembled an impressive page here on the stolen election.

An excellent resource from Scoop. (Note, for instance, these graphs depicting the variable accuracy of exit polls between states with paper ballots and those without.)

An article by Michael Keefer on the riddle of the exit polls.

A clear presentation of the evidence for optical scan fraud in Florida.

More here, here and here.