Special Graphic Post:
Nightfall of the Vanquished
This graphic may be reposted with attribute.
The Dark Wraith sees a very scary Hallowe'en ahead for the Grand Old Party.
Published 10/07/2006 03:14:00 PM
<< 20 Comments Total
good afternoon Dark Wraith:
posting today from the California/Mexico border...wonderful graphic indeed, I will be downloading it when I get back home I don't know however, how it will play out. I am gaining a new appreciation for how dead and feeble the democrats can really be. Maybe it's time for us to start playing whig music for them. If they are handed stuff like the NIE, the Woodward book, nearly 30 deaths in Iraq last week, the economy fluttering like a butterfly on meth fumes, and the Foley mess as a cherry on top, it still doesn't look like they will do much gaining. It reminds me of a kid who is given a room full of presents on his birthday and breaks into tears because he can't decide which one to open first....
The last time I saw Jim Pederson (senatorial candidate running against John Kyl) I told him "for me this election is about Johnny Gomez." He looked at me funny and I told him that Johnny Gomez was a 23 year old army seargeant from my town in Arizona. Killed in action in Mosul on Monday. I'm tired of burying kids I know. I'd rather play electric guitars at goat BBQ's than harp at their funerals.
Good afternoon, Minstrel Boy.
And the latest is that the Republicans in the House of Representatives are fighting back, on Friday making a very public spectacle aimed at Nancy Pelosi, demanding to know what she knew and when she knew it. We now have a direct accusation that the Democrats are culpable because of their withholding of prior knowledge of Foley's online boy-bothering beat-off breaks. Rep. Shimkus (R-Buttville), the head of the House Page Committee, said in a radio interview, "People, like Sen. Durbin and Nancy Pelosi, who are using this for partisan gain, they ought to be ashamed of themselves."
Thank God, Pelosi lashed back right away: "Republicans just don't get it; every mother in America is asking how Republicans could choose partisan politics over protecting kids, and the Republicans are still asking who could have blown their cover-up."
However, I simply must ask, Is this what it took to help a few Democrats find their spines?
You know what, Minstrel Boy? You and I both know what's going on over in Iraq. So do a whole lot of other people. We're watching American soldiers getting butchered in a war we are not going to win. We are not going to win because there isn't any "win" scenario anywhere within a thousand light-years of the reality on the ground.
And here we finally get Democrats roaring in righteous indignation because they're accused of being part of a Republican cover-up about a pervert.
GOD!
Okay, okay. I feel that pain shooting down my left arm again.
I shouldn't be so harsh. There have been Democratic politicians, and even some of other stripes, yelling bloody murder all along about this Iraq debacle and about the massive, systemic attack on our own Constitution, and it's been the mainstream, flag-waving, phony media crawling to the power-masters du jour in Washington that have ignored them. I have to remember that.
I need to sit down and drink some more high-caffeine coffee.
The Dark Wraith might also take a nice aspirin just to stave off the heart attack for another day or two.
Good afternoon, Dark Wraith.
I really like your graphic. It put me in mind of Picasso's "Don Quixote", for some reason.
I, for one, am hoping that the Grand Ole Party get no treats for Halloween! They've been busy scaring the people for these many years, it's time the tables were turned.. they deserve scares, fears, and to be booted out!
Good afternoon, Old White Lady.
Although the Republicans will get no free treats for Hallowe'en, it appears that, at least in the case of Mr. Foley, there was quite an effort to get some free tricks.
The Dark Wraith thinks the Republican leadership should long ago have taken away Rep. Foley's candy bag.
And if anyone's interested in the second phase that might explode in the Foley scandal, keep your eyes and ears open for the name "Jeff Trandahl."
Facts:
◊ House Clerk for six years.
◊ Quietly removed last year.
◊ Legendary among pages for being mean as dirt to them.
◊ Buddy of Foley.
◊ Openly gay (and always known as such to the House Republicans who live on their craven, public anti-gay rhetoric).
◊ Now alleged to have been in charge of telling Foley several times long ago to knock it off with the instant messages.
◊ Now, he's on a growing list of Hastert's Worst Nightmares, possibly unwillingly.
More fun:
◊ Fed law enforcement sees a radioactive mess. It might have to say it can't prosecute.
◊ If it does say that, watch all Hell break loose.
◊ Hastert's top administrative assistant, the über-powerful Scott Palmer, is now contradicted by a second staffer who says he (and therefore Hastert) knew about Foley a long time ago.
◊ Watch for another staffer to come forward in the next few days contradicting Hastert.
◊ Watch the fireworks with Bush's weekly radio address: if he addresses the Foley matter, he'll bungle it, and the Democratic response will eat him alive; if he doesn't address it, the Democratic response will eat him alive.
It just gets sweeter and sweeter.
The Dark Wraith watches the ring of fire deepen.
Wraith, this is another great graphic.
Oh, my memory must be slipping. Isn't this the same GOP crowd (R-Pompous) that spent a lot of time and ton of money investigating a BJ? While some of the biggest decriers (R-Hypocrite) were having little affairs of their own?
And some members of this party (R-Asshat) now have the gall to be upset for getting caught with their own pants down? Pfft! They've hung themselves.
*
Yes, there are those who do pay attention to this administration's lack of concern for our troops, and it really ticks *some* of us off. The MSM, with mostly Republican ownership, is as responsible for the lack of real news reporting as others are who still support this mis-administration's wrong-mindedness and disconnect with reality. It's been kind of hard for the Dems to not be allowed much of a voice in "the news" and worse, in Congress.
The lying liars have created their own can of worms. Let's go fishing and see what else we can catch. It's time. Now.
Minstrel Boy, I am sorry. I'm sad with you. It hurts my heart that our troops die, are injured and put in harm's way because of lies.
Wraith, take care of yourself. Too much caffeine isn't so good. (Race ya to the coffee pot.)
DW, you above all people are cognizant of the extent to which those electronic voting machines now in place all over the country are vulnerable to systematic hacking.
Given such, why are you optimistic about this election, when all it takes is the right people deploying themselves in the right way with the right hacking technology, and this election is another Republican victory - regardless of how the people actually voted (and none it can be tracked because the hacking programs can be created so they erase themselves without a trace after their work is done)?
- oddjob
What oddjoy said! As my dear ol' pappy used to say, "Don't count your chickens until the eggs hatch, little missy."
(OT) Darkest One are you getting any of the smoke signals I'm sending you or am I on some sort of a list.
MoMu rides off to the Pony Express depot to check her mail.
Good morning, Missouri Mule.
I have received no messages from you since October 2. I have just checked the filters at the server, and there I found nothing.
Look over in the sidebar in the section "Blog Marginalia"; there you'll see a link called "Forum Feedback." That's a form e-mail that you and everyone else can use to send me messages of any length. The form resides on my server, so it does not go through the usual Internet process of being passed around all over Hell's half acre on its way to me. It is a very secure and assured way of communicating with me.
The internal messaging system at Big Brass Blog is similar, although I still need to do a final, thorough check in the backroom to ensure that it doesn't have an unintended trap door of some kind (I don't think it does, but I can't be sure until I really look at the code one more time and think about what I'm seeing).
Send me your messages again, Missouri Mule, with the message form.
The Dark Wraith is now, once again, worrying about just how many e-mail messages that have been sent to him have never arrived.
[And what a toad he looks like to those who never heard a word back from him.]
Good morning, OddJob. (And I swear to you that I shall say nothing about Missouri Mule's typographical error in her first line above where she referred to you as 'Oddjoy'... I promise.)
You are correct: I know more than enough to be sure that the November election is going to be manipulated by Diebold and other voting machine manufacturers. You recall that I recounted in some detail, in fact, how I have even had my whiz-kid students in computer science classes design software manipulation schemes to alter elections using the same Access base Diebold uses.
I would dearly love to broaden the discussion to explain that this entire "electronic voting" craze that swept through the country over the past decade was a classic example of legislators who had no business whatsoever imposing upon something as critical as the democratic process a technology about which they hadn't the first clue.
People use the word "computer" just like they use the computer, itself: they see it, they can accomplish tasks on it, and they thereby believe that they have a sufficient grasp of it to make rational decisions beyond themselves about its broader purposes and the necessity of integrating "it" into every nook and cranny of culture. That's actually beneficial at the level of the individual, the business enterprise, and even possibly (in limited ways) at the primary and secondary schooling levels. But the broader the imposition--the more the imposition reaches to the core of a fundamental substrate of how a society puts itself together to function--the more dangerous that "everything should be computerized" mentality gets.
You know what, OddJob? I am a dumbass when it comes to computers. As much as I know, as many gee-whiz-how'd-you-do-that things I create, as many years of intensive work I've done in coding, in building and maintenance, and in teaching, I am a dumbass about computers.
And the reason is because "computer" is such a ridiculous oversimplification of what the Age of Machines is about as to render the discussion irrelevant at the get-go, semantic level.
"Oh, but we can rely on experts to inform us," is the indignant howl from the bowels of everything from business management to legislative management and oversight.
No, you can't: the "experts" do not have a single mind, and more importantly, they do not have a single set of incentives. And the truth of the matter is that the legislators who wave their hands and say, "We must computerize the elections," don't have a single set of incentives, either.
Right now, OddJob, we are seeing how far an entire political party--from its leadership right down through its ranks--would go to keep just one miserable seat in Congress. What in God's name makes people think that this is a party that would not, if it grasped that it had the opportunity, do everything it could to ensure that a technological implementation on the very democratic process itself would not ensure that congressional seats would be secured to that same party?
Here's the kicker, though, OddJob: overrun. Many of the elections will come out anomalously in favor of Republican candidates, but the software manipulations will not be sufficient to thwart landslides, not unless the ways it looks like the elections were being manipulated before are changed, and I don't think they're going to be able to re-do at least some of the machines out there.
That does not mean other methods will not be in place. Ken Blackwell's systematic manipulation of the Ohio election in 2004 had a very simple but effective component: he simply ensured that lots of people who would have voted Democratic didn't get the chance to do so. No doubt, from the detailed look I've had at what happened at the machine level, there was stunning vote manipulation; but he also manipulated the outcome by old-fashioned, nasty disenfranchisement.
And he, as the Secretary of State of Ohio, is in charge of the oversight of this election, even though he, himself, is running for governor.
I cannot here get into the extent to which the judiciary has failed the republic in being disinterested in and wholly incapable of dealing with what is happening across the broad spectrum of vote integrity issues.
But I will tell you this, OddJob: mark my word, I am seeing what is possibly one of the biggest tides of public backlash building against a party in decades. The Foley sex scandal is nothing but an excuse people are using to explain the desire for disruptive change they could otherwise not be able to express.
Look, people who voted for Bush in particular and the Republicans overall are now in the position of having to face the fact that their decisions were not just bad, but that they, themselves, were the ones who made those bad decisions. I don't see a snowball's chance in Hell of the average American voter standing up and saying, "My entire mentality of how best to run this country was really, really messed up." That's not going to happen. Not right now, anyway.
But you give those same former Republican supporters a sex scandal--something where they can stand on a self-righteous pedestal and say, "Well, I'd never put up with that"--and you've just given them the Golden Excuse Key to deal with the mess their votes created in the first place.
What's going to happen when this election is hacked? I honestly see a small but real probability of all Hell breaking loose. But that can happen only if we set aside (no, drag out and shoot) the Gore-Kerry martyr mentality that "the system" is the only recourse the people of a democracy have. That means it is incumbent upon those who really care about what happens this November to be ready, willing, and able to do more than just scream bloody murder if outcomes aren't as expected.
This is a moment, OddJob: call it a "teachable, winnable" moment when we can effect change, both through the election process, itself, and through the aftermath when the American people are finally willing to see through the lies.
That moment won't come again. If the Republicans retain control of Congress, they'll bleat themselves into rehabilitation about "reform" and rectitude and some crap about a "new direction" that they simply cannot deliver but will pretend to put into place in such a way as to ensure that the United States of America will become the Republican United States of America. Permanently.
If the Republicans want to manipulate this election, let them go ahead and give it their best shot. We'll see if they're ready for the aftermath.
The Dark Wraith has spoken.
Good morning Dark Wraith:
i too, see a small, faint, yet nevertheless real possiblity for a groundswell opposition to a shamelessly hacked election. i also see no effort on the part of the republicans to steal something that would not be shameless.
don't worry about the sounds from the barn this week. the plowshare's been converted already. i will be busy turning the pruning hook back into a spear. i won't miss farming a bit.
Good afternoon, Minstrel Boy.
Yes, as I recall, farming was quite exhausting and not nearly as exhilerating as hunting.
And speaking of shameless, I must ask forgiveness for pointing to the advertisements in the sidebar for another part of the "perfect storm" that's brewing. David Kuo, formerly the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, is setting loose a rip into the Bush Administration: his book, Tempting Faith, will be on the shelves October 16.
It would appear that the faithful Christians who have been the backbone of the Bush Administration's support have abandoned prayerful perseverence and are now heading for the life rafts.
Those life rafts, by the way, are located at the end of the hallway marked "FTS"*.
*(FTS=F*ck This Ship.)
The Dark Wraith is going to Hell.
The Dark Wraith is going to Hell.
No, we are there already.
- oddjob
Good Evening Dark Wraith:
Watching the Republicans climb over each other as they race to put distance between themselves and the trouble raining down reminds me of my favorite nautical proverb, which I first heard from Master Chief Boatswain's Mate Norr as I was manning the pumps:
When the water passes your knees lad, follow the rats
...and follow the first one*.
*(He's leaving first, so he's the smartest.)
Good morning, Mr. Wraith. As usual, Excellent graphic. In response to your quotation about circular jerk repubs: mum's the word! And the "Foley efforts to get tricks" was my first laugh out loud this morning.
Once again, Oddjob has nailed it as to my worst fear this election season. I do realize that rigging a vote machine cannot be as easy a task as some believe. The major factor, I think, is that 'loose lips sink ships'. Someone in on the scam may say something to the wrong person, who blabs...although I don't recall any factual fingerpointing from 04. If shananigans were discovered(close contests would be I would look) it may be a godsend toward real voting reform.
Tricks ARE treats...ahahahahahaha!
(Close contests are WHERE I would look). Sorry, too much time spent reading Asia Times comments section, maybe?
Try reading American college students' essay question answers for a couple of hours and maintain some semblance of grammatical integrity.
Brilliant!
Good Afternoon Dark Wraith,
That means it is incumbent upon those who really care about what happens this November to be ready, willing, and able to do more than just scream bloody murder if outcomes aren't as expected.
Everywhere I go, when I see this sentiment, I ask: OK, what are we gonna do? 'Cause if we don't have plans in place beforehand, we won't have time to formulate one before the Supremes make another non-precident setting decision about who gets to represent us. Do you think they have those concentration camps ready for dissidents yet? Do they have the balls to use them? Do you think they have the balls to use the new and spiffy anti personel non-leathal weapons they've been working on?
I'm ready to march on DC, but I'd really like to live to dissent once again...