Getting Sidetracted

It has been a very busy summer. Hospital work, increased counseling load and even a short vacation in Mazatlan have kept my mind focused elsewhere. I've thought of things I would like to write, but then something else would sidetrack me.

One of the activities that has sidetracted me has been involvement in the elections. I reluctantly accepted John Edwards dropping out of the primaries. And wasn't that a blessing. How would we have dealt with his revelations if he had become the Democratic candidate. With McCain turning from his "straight-shooter" image and becoming a liar of major skill, it would have been a terrible burden for John Edwards to be discovered to be a philanderer. I am never too surprised when a politician is a liar or a philanderer but Edwards fooled me.

McCain did not fool me. I've come to expect lying, cheating, theivery, deception from the Republican party faithful. It was not always so. Dwight Eisenhower was a Republican and an honorable man. Mark Hatfield (The former Senator from Oregon) was another. Barry Goldwater was very mistaken in his proposed policies, but overall he too was honorable. However, since the advent of Nixon, and even more of Reagan, the liars and cheats have take over the Republican party. They have been warmly embraced by the wealthy elites and major corporate business entities whose only concern is to protect their own interests even at the expense of the nation, but surely at the expense of the middle-class. In this they have joined forces with the religious right who believe that God has spoken to them and that they alone, knowing the mind of God, have not only the right but the duty to impose their will upon the rest of America.

In pursuit of this endeavor, these Republican allies have employed a most effective tool, the political operatives like Karl Rove, and Rove's horde of disciples. The have been engaging in a variety of dirty tricks to limit the Democratic vote. There is a list of about 12 states in which large numbers of voters are being purged from the roles by scurrilous means. Thousands of voter registrations are rejected in Ohio, Florida and other states because they come from Democratic strongholds.

It is bad enough where county Registrars of voters are Republican. It gets even worse in states in which the Secretary of State is also Republican.

In Colorado the Republican Secretary of State dumped one fifth of all registrations, almost all from areas and neighborhoods with primarily African-American populations. In Florida, another swing-state, they are refusing to accept 85,000 new registrations from voter drives in overwhelminglay Black voter areas. In New Mexico, half of the Democrats of the county of Mora, a very poor and overwhelmingly Hispanic county, discovered that their registrations had disappeared. The disappearance at the hands of a Republican contractor.

Tens of thousands of voters in Ohio and Nevada who have lost their homes to foreclosure have also lost their right to vote due to a federal regulation under this administration.

In Georgia, the Secretary of State Cathy Cox purged 80,000 voters as convicted felons. Among these was Bernice Kines, convicted in 2009 (That's right) of an unknown future crime.

These were not real felons--real felons wouldn't risk more jail time by illegal voter registration.They just had the same name as some real felon somewhere in the US. Sec. of State Cox didn't arrest any of these 80,000 even though registering constitutes another felony, suggesting that she knew better.

Ohio is becoming a battle ground for voter registrations. Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is going to battle against the state legislature over a law that was passed in 2006 that allows counties to remove voters from the rolls if election notices sent by the counties to the voters are returned for any reason. This is a violation of state law and federal law and the US Constitution according to her lawyers. Any voter removed from the rolls must be given due process.

Under the Republican Bush administration the Veteran's Administration has prevented non-partison groups from registering veterans who are in the VA hospitals. It is only this month on September 9 that pressure from veterans groups, state officials, and even the Justice department finally forced the Department of Veteran's Affairs to allow these veterans to be registered. This pushes the envelope for registration deadlines in most states.

And we haven't even gotten to voting machines that flip votes or lose results. Machines that can't pass muster are made by Sequoia and Diebold. (Diebold, reeling from bad publicity has changed its name to Premier.) For more information on this subject see Black Box Voting .

Back to my original premise. Sidetracking. All the fuss about Sarah Palin takes our eyes away from the real skullduggery by Rovian operatives and tricksters who are stealing the election. (Or doing the worst they know how and it is very bad.) Sure, we have to point out that Palin is a right-wing religious zealout with the morals of a mouse and a propensity for murdering wolves; someone who shills for the oil industry, takes the "bridge to nowhere" money and builds a road to nowhere, but claims to be opposed to earmarks--Yes, and a lot more. She is almost as much of a liar as partner John McCain.

But we must not let Rove and his people steal the election while misdirecting our attention.

For still more on this subject see Newsweek