-Caveat Lector- visit my web site at http://www.voicenet.com/~wbacon My ICQ# is 79071904 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 21:25:48 -0000 From: Robert Sterling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Konformist: VoteScam 12-16-2000 -------------------------- eGroups Sponsor -------------------------~-~> eGroups eLerts It's Easy. It's Fun. Best of All, it's Free! http://click.egroups.com/1/9698/0/_/1406/_/977001985/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> Please send as far and wide as possible. Thanks, Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com "What's so great about the two-party system? It's just one more party than they had in Russia." Jesse Ventura, Football Commentator ***** Fri, 15 Dec 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hi all, There seems to be a lot of MISSING THE FREAKIN POINT going on now. This last election was stolen IN THE FIRST PLACE, before we EVER WENT TO THE POLLS. So, all that yelling out of the way, let me continue for a moment. We were offered the most stomach churning pair of duopoly candidates we've had to pick from in a long itme. The other candidates were not invited or allowed to take part in the debates, there were absolutely no real issues at hands in any of the debates. For crying out loud, Nader wasn't allowed to sit in the audience, or even be on the grounds of the debates between Gore and Bush. All the upset people over Bush stealing the election seem to be forgetting that our choices were seriously limited to begin with, that the "democratic" process was shot full of holes long before November 7th, or the decision by the Supreme Court. But at least, as Michael Moore so eloquently noted, now evil doesn't wear a mask, and all the Democrats who let Clinton get away with murder and the drug war for 8 years can now feel good about fighting the Republican verison of the same monster in the White House, without the "oh, but he's a democrat, and therefore less evil when he did nothing to end the War on Some Drugs, continued his support of the death penalty, continued his support of god knows how many dictators and drug trafficking governments around the world" feelings getting in the way of their outrage and outspoken disgust. Hmmm. Peace, Preston ***** Chuck Kerschner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> BREAKING NEWS: GOD OVERRULES SUPREME COURT VERDICT Bush to be smitten later today In a stunning development this morning, God invoked the "one nation, under God" clause of the Pledge of Allegiance to overrule last night's Supreme Court decision that handed the White House to George Bush. "I'm not sure where the Supreme Court gets off," God said this morning on a rare Today Show appearance, "but I'm sure as hell not going to lie back and let Bush get away with this bullshit." "I've watched analysts argue for weeks now that the exact vote count in Florida 'will never be known.' Well, I'm God and I DO know exactly who voted for whom. Let's cut to the chase: Gore won Florida by exactly 20,219 votes." Shocking political analysts and pundits, God's unexpected verdict overrules the official Electoral College tally and awards Florida to Al Gore, giving him a 292-246 victory. The Bush campaign is analyzing God's Word for possible grounds for appeal. "God's ruling is a classic over-reach," argued Bush campaign strategist Jim Baker. "Clearly, a divine intervention in a U.S. Presidential Election is unprecedented, unjust, and goes against the constitution of the state of Florida." "Jim Baker's a jackass," God responded. "He's got some surprises ahead of him, let me tell you. HOT ones, if you know what I mean." God, who provided the exact vote counts for every Florida precinct, explained that bad balloting machinery and voter confusion were no grounds to give the White House to "a friggin' idiot." "Look, only 612 people in Palm Beach County voted for Buchanan. Get real! The rest meant to vote for Gore. Don't believe me? I'll name them: Anderson, Pete; Anderson, Sam, Jr.; Arthur, James; Barnhardt, Ron..." Our Lord then went on to note that he was displeased with George W. Bush's prideful ways and announced that he would officially smite him today. In an act of wrath unlike any reported since the Book of Job, God has taken all of Bush's goats and livestock, stripped him of his wealth and possessions, sold his family into slavery, forced the former presidential candidate into hard labor in a salt mine, and afflicted him with deep boils. Dick Cheney will reportedly receive leprosy. ***** ++++++++++++ Election Bumper Stickers: "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin Don't Blame Me - I voted for Gore... I Think UNPRESIDENTED! My parents retired to Florida and all I got was this lousy President Disney gave us Mickey, Florida gave us Dumbo DON'T THROW AWAY YOUR VOTE... LET KATHERINE HARRIS DO IT FOR YOU Bush trusts the people, but not if it involves counting. IT AIN'T OVER 'TIL YOUR BROTHER COUNTS THE VOTES The election can't be broken. We just fixed it. George W. Bush: The President Quayle We Never Had The last time somebody listened to a Bush, folks wandered in the desert for 40 years Campaign spending: $184,000,000. Having your little brother rig the election for you: Priceless If God Meant Us to Vote, He Would Have Given Us Candidates ++++++++++ Paul Harvey commented that Argus Hamilton says he can understand why Al Gore is feeling so confused and disoriented that he thinks he won the presidential election. After all, this is a strange year. The number one rap music star is white while the number one golfer is black. And Bill Clinton just finished a tour in Vietnam." ***** Dan Quayle redux As we prepare for a second President Bush, the d�j� vu isn't caused by memories of the father. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Lawrence Weschler Dec. 16, 2000 | At the time of his sudden ascension to prominence, back in 1988, when the entire world seemed to be stammering, as if in one voice, "Him? Why him?" Dan Quayle, we were assured, had struck a resonant chord in the patrician sponsor who had selected him to serve as his vice presidential running mate. George Bush saw something in the boyish young (though actually not that young) man� indeed we were told, he recognized in him something of a son. Little did we know. There were countless other fresh young politicians from whom to choose that strange summer morn, some of them quite competent, but Bush p�re chose that one. Just as this time around, bent on revenge for their defeat four years later, the Bush clan could have rallied behind the competent son but instead chose to marshal its forces around (behind, in front of, above, beneath) its hapless dauphin. People have been speaking of George W. as a latter-day liter version of his father, and there is indeed a strong sense of d�j� vu in all of this, but the comparison to Bush the elder misses the essential point: This is not so much a case of d�j� vu as of repetition compulsion, a bizarre family psychodrama writ large. With George W. (the pervading vacuousness, the deer-in-the-headlights stare, the cavalcade of late-night TV jokes, the burgeoning compilations of tortured syntax and uproarious gaffes, the nervous edgy glances of the surrounding adult handlers, the defiantly clueless Alfred E. Newman gaze, the utter lack of curiosity regarding the cluefulness of the world), what we are witnessing isn't so much the return of George the elder as the triumphant apotheosis of Dan Quayle! Remember how we used to cringe through the better part of Daddy Bush's term in office, mortified that something might befall him and we'd all get stuck with Quayle? Well, guess what? I'm reminded, in turn, of the joke that was going around in March 1969, about the accident victim who'd spent the entirety of the previous decade in a coma. Coming to, his first frantic query had concerned the health of President Eisenhower. Informed that Ike had in fact died just a few days earlier, the poor fellow wailed, "My God, that means Nixon must be president!" salon.com - - - - - - - - - - - - About the writer Lawrence Weschler is a staff writer at the New Yorker and author most recently of Boggs: A Comedy of Values. ***** World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- WSWS : News & Analysis : North America : US Elections Gore concession speech: Democrats capitulate to right-wing attack on voting rights By Patrick Martin 15 December 2000 The concession speech delivered by Vice President Al Gore Wednesday night was an unvarnished capitulation to the right-wing forces responsible for stealing the 2000 presidential election and installing George W. Bush in the White House. Gore was incapable either of articulating the nature of the political crisis or of drawing any lessons from the bitter struggle of the previous 36 days. Instead, he delivered a clich�-ridden address, combining mawkish sentimentality with the inevitable invocations of religion, while bowing before the Supreme Court decision that halted the vote-counting in Florida. >From a political standpoint, the most revealing aspect of Gore's speech, coming as it did at the apex of a crisis that has seen an unprecedented challenge to democratic rights, was its unseriousness. The Democratic candidate's attorneys, in a brief to the Supreme Court December 10, decried the Bush campaign's demand for a halt in the counting of legal ballots in Florida, calling it "contrary to established law, the US Constitution, and basic principles of democracy." Three days later, after the Supreme Court decision brought the vote-counting to a permanent end, Gore went on national television to tell the American people, in effect, that nothing of great or lasting import had occurred. It is no doubt the case that, within the framework of American bourgeois politics, Gore had few options for continuing the struggle for the White House. But more profound issues were at stake than whether Bush or Gore would become the next president of the United States. Gore never addressed these issues, or sought to warn the American people of the growing threat posed by the right-wing assault on their basic rights. The United States was brought to the brink of a full-blown constitutional crisis by the successful drive of the Republican Party to falsify the results of the November 7 election through the suppression of thousands of votes in Florida. Bush, who campaigned as the man who "trusts the people, not government," lost the popular vote, but is being elevated to the presidency by an unelected agency of that government. The Supreme Court's decision was a display of ruthlessness and political reaction. Even media commentators were staggered by the cynicism of the five-member majority, who abandoned their professed conservative legal principles�states' rights, judicial restraint�to seize jurisdiction over a case involving state election laws, overturn the state supreme court's decision, and impose conditions which effectively declared Bush the winner of Florida's electoral votes. The political and constitutional essence of the Supreme Court's action was spelled out in the majority's decision, which explicitly attacked the principle of popular sovereignty, declaring that "The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States." Yet beyond stating that "I strongly disagree with the Court's decision," Gore said nothing about the implications of the high court's ruling for American democracy. Instead, he uttered patriotic platitudes aimed at fostering illusions that the bitter conflict of the past five weeks was merely a case of "partisan rancor"�nothing more than a conflict between Democratic and Republican politicians over political office. Gore's exhibition of political cowardice reflected more than the personal traits of one individual. His speech exemplified the prostration of American liberalism before the right wing. He hailed "the honored institutions of our democracy," under conditions where the most powerful sections of the ruling class are moving to overturn these institutions and establish new, authoritarian forms of rule. Gore's appeals to unite behind "President-elect Bush," which have been echoed by Bill Clinton and a host of other leading Democrats, have a deep class significance. Gore spoke as a defender of the capitalist system and the machinery of the capitalist state. He went out of his way to deny that the "unusual nature of this election" should call into question Bush's legitimacy or effectiveness. The Vice President specifically warned "our fellow members of the world community"�i.e., countries that are potential adversaries of American imperialism in economic, political and ultimately military conflict�that they should not "see this contest as a sign of American weakness." Above all, Gore sought to deny that the election conflict had opened up any serious rift within American society, declaring, "Now is the time to recognize that that which unites us is greater than that which divides us." These are political code words, a reassurance to the ruling class that the Democrats are abandoning their opposition to the establishment of a Bush administration in the interests of maintaining the stability of the US political system. To continue the conflict would require an appeal to broader social forces, among the working class and oppressed, who are systematically excluded from political influence in America. There is nothing surprising in Gore's conduct, which was prefigured by his silence throughout the election campaign on the impeachment conspiracy against the Clinton White House, carried out by Republican lawyers, judges and congressmen, working with Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, and using the bogus Paula Jones lawsuit that was sanctioned by the US Supreme Court. The same forces that sought to overturn the results of two presidential elections through a quasi-constitutional political coup have now manufactured the results of a third presidential election. Gore's silence on the attack on democratic rights today reproduces the refusal of Clinton to publicly expose the right wing, even when his presidency was at stake. Predictably, the corporate-controlled media fawned over Gore's remarks, hailing them as "gracious", "poignant", "magnificent", even "incredible." The same media outlets were largely hostile to the Democratic candidate throughout the election campaign and during the protracted struggle in Florida. Now, when Gore does his duty as a loyal servant of big business, his masters administer a pat on the head. But the surrender of Al Gore and the Democratic Party to the anti- democratic machinations of the extreme right does not signify the acquiescence of the broad masses of the American people. As the social agenda of the incoming Bush administration and the Republican- controlled Congress becomes more evident, it will meet with growing opposition from working people. Gore claimed, "Now the political struggle is over." On the contrary, the conditions are being created for a colossal shift in American politics and the emergence of an independent political movement based on the working class. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Copyright 1998-2000 World Socialist Web Site All rights reserved ***** DEMOCRATS ITCHING FOR A FIGHT IN 2002, '04 By Naftali Bendavid Washington Bureau December 16, 2000 WASHINGTON -- George W. Bush became president-elect just a few days ago, and already some Democrats are plotting to turn what they hope will be a weakened, troubled presidency into an effort to retake Congress in two years and the White House in four. Democratic wounds are raw from a bitter campaign and an election dispute that many Democrats believe they won. Despite lofty rhetoric from the party's elected officials about the need for bipartisanship, the operatives who fight the battles at ground level are eager to take on Bush and the Republicans in the next round. Paul Begala, a former aide to President Clinton, said Bush will make an "enormously tempting" target in 2004. "Presidents are successful if they are feared, more than loved, more than respected," Begala said. "We Democrats didn't love or respect President Reagan, but we feared him because we knew he could trounce us. And the Republicans, I know, were terrified of Clinton. They didn't like or respect him but were scared to death of him." He added, "Nobody in either party fears Bush." This may be a way to ease the sting of Republican control of the White House, Senate and House for the first time in 48 years. But some Democrats insist they are better off with Bush in the Oval Office than they would have been with Vice President Al Gore. Bush, the thinking goes, lost the popular vote, creating a cloud over his administration. Democratic loyalists, upset over the outcome, could be energized for races in 2002 and 2004. And the incoming president faces an unruly, divided Congress that could make it hard to govern. Republicans dismissed such predictions, saying Bush can overcome the challenges. "He will be a very strong leader," said Mark Pfeifle, spokesman for the Republican National Committee. "He has proved in the state of Texas that he can work with Democrats. He was only the second Republican governor of Texas. He had a Democrat-dominated legislature, and he came out with significant victories and accomplishments." Pfeifle characterized the Democrats' comments as partisan jabs. "These are hired warriors, or another term might be political hacks--which I consider a term of endearment; I am one--who live and die for the battle," Pfeifle said. Since Gore's concession Wednesday night, prominent Democrats have been quick to say they wish Bush well for the sake of the nation. Gore himself said, "What remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this county." But there is little question that some Democrats hope Bush fails. The president-elect will be torn between competing forces. He campaigned as a moderate and will need Democratic help to get much accomplished. But conservatives who have long waited for an all- Republican regime are likely to insist on key elements of their agenda. Bush will have a hard time pleasing both constituencies. One sign of trouble came this week when House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) warned against trying to push through a $1.3 trillion tax cut, the prized, oft-promised centerpiece of Bush's campaign platform. All this has left some Democrats almost salivating for the midterm elections. "I just think Bush has got a really tough job ahead of him, given how tight the House and Senate are," said Democratic consultant Joe Trippi. "The immediate focus is on the midterm elections. Everybody is gearing up for that, and we've barely finished this election." Some have begun describing the 2000 election as a mirror image of 1992. That year, another centrist president who failed to win a popular majority--Bill Clinton--had to work with a restless congressional majority of his own party whose ideologically purist wing caused him trouble. Two years later, Republicans swept to power in Congress, and they have not relinquished that majority. Democrats hope they can pull off a similar victory in 2002. But Rep. Rod Blagojevich (D-Ill.) said Democrats would make a mistake by trying to block Bush's initiatives to score political points. "I'm not one of those who feels that we should become obstructionist," Blagojevich said. "The ultimate success of the Democratic Party in the next election will depend on how we handle our responsibility as the party of the loyal opposition. If we are willing to work with the new president in areas like education, where there may be common ground, voters will see that and reward us." Names have already begun to circulate of possible Democratic presidential contenders for 2004, including Sens. John Kerry (D- Mass.), John Edwards (D-N.C.), Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Joseph Biden (D- Del.). House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) has also been mentioned, though if Democrats retake the House and make him speaker, he would be unlikely to seek the presidency. Some think Jesse Jackson might run. Many African-Americans who believe their votes were undercounted were angry, and that could fuel a Jackson candidacy. Now that First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton has won a Senate seat, some tout her for the presidency, raising the prospect of Bush- Clinton-Bush-Clinton administrations. But perhaps unavoidably, most of the talk has revolved around the prospects of Gore running again. It is rare for a candidate who loses a presidential election to be renominated. Many Democrats believe Gore lost their party the White House, despite inheriting overwhelming advantages from a popular administration in a time of peace and prosperity. Others say Gore redeemed himself during the recount, handling it with grace and steadiness. Gore did win the popular vote, they note, despite carrying the baggage from Clinton controversies. A politician with Gore's competitive zeal might find the temptation to run again irresistible, those who know him say. "If you are committed to public policy and you got this close, the lure may be there," said Chicago political consultant David Axelrod, a Democrat. "This would be the boxing equivalent of losing the title on a disputed split decision, and programs and beer cups are in the ring, and you're leaving the ring and there's booing. It leaves a sour taste in your mouth." If Gore does run again, he is certain to face a tougher challenge in his own party. The vice president would have to start rebuilding his image and his connections relatively quickly, political hands said. "It's a decision he's got to make sooner rather than later," said Leon Panetta, Clinton's former chief of staff who served with Gore in the House. "I think it isn't something that will be handed to him. There are other Democrats that are going to be out there. He will have to put on another tough race to be able to get the nomination. That's not to say he can't, and he is in good position to do it, but it's got to start sooner rather than later." Many see Gore's running mate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), as a leading contender in 2004. He reinvigorated the Gore campaign with an easygoing style, and many believe he is the reason Gore was competitive in Florida. But even some Democrats warn that the party should not be licking its lips prematurely. "I think the Democrats underestimate Bush," said Democratic consultant Victor Fingerhut. "They thought they would wipe him out in Texas, and he wiped them out. He has a Reagan-like quality, and unless he is a total imbecile, he will do very well." If you are interested in a free subscription to The Konformist Newswire, please visit http://www.eGroups.com/list/konformist/ and sign up. Or, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject: "I NEED 2 KONFORM!!!" (Okay, you can use something else, but it's a kool catch phrase.) Visit the Klub Konformist at Yahoo!: http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/klubkonformist <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! 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