Friday, December 31, 2004
Wonkette: So Not Worth It!
I never thought much of the Wonkette, since way back even before she made an ass of herself taking up space at the D.N.C. in Boston this past July (most bloggers blogged about the convention, the Wonkette blogged primarily about alcohol consumption and anatomical size estimations). But I've visited her site once or twice the past couple of weeks ever since Watching the Watchers began linking to headlines from selected representatives of the blogosphere (including little-old-me).
The other day Wonkette published a post entitled Ohio Recount: So Worth It which compelled me to take a peek through the peephole. I don't want to suggest that I felt more than a touch of disappointment after reading her words, since I don't see how anyone aside from, say, people on the same wavelength as Nick and Jessica could consider anything that she ever-ever-ever wrote (or probably will write) as something to be taken even half-serously. But this was a new low for the Wonkette. What a moron. What a galoot. What a waste of bandwidth and time (not that it takes all that much time to read the majority of her short, vapid posts). Is she really for real or what?
In just a few snarky sentences, the Wonkette belittles all the effort and work and money contributed these last eight weeks by the thousands of people in this country who have every reason in the U.S. Constitution to question the non-Ukrainian-exit-poll-defying 2004 presidential election results. People like Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rep. John Conyers (the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee), Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, BBC Journalist Greg Palast, Air America goddess-of-the-mike Randi Rhodes, and everyone else who is committed to the fundamental Democratic principle that every single, stinkin' vote should be counted, no matter the costs.
After snarking that the Ohio "recount" only managed to add an additional 300-or-so votes to Senator Kerry's total, Wonkette snarls, "We lost, everybody. L-O-S-T. Just concentrate on your Canadian visa applications; if you screw that up, you can't blame [sic] Deibold."
Sorry, Wonkette, but I - for one - am not going to give up or get out. I'm not going to stop screaming about this re-run of 2000. Nor am I going to stop working on my project - "50 States Mislead Their Voters."
Thank you very much for your understanding, Wonkette, but I'm going to continue to concentrate on enacting significant election reform in the United States of America. I'm also going to continue to concentrate on defending myself (and other wackadoos like me) from the mob of "liberal" and "progressive" voices in the Media, government and blogosphere who have turned out, so far, to be our greatest enemy in the battle to ensure that our elections accurately and openly reflect the will of the people.
Voices that belong to the likes of the Wonkette are either sadly misinformed, pathetically misinformed or intentionally misleading (for whatever reasons). The same voices that would rather blame this excrutiating loss on frames or fundies or abortions or homosexuals or Michael Moore or P. Diddy (each day it's something else; it seems like Mr. Rove is sending out his daily talking point memos to both parties these days) instead of the 2000 defending champions of fraud and duplicity. The same sounding voices that derided the purpose of the recounts in the Washington gubernatorial race which did end up being "so worth it" to the election day "loser."
Here are some facts about the half-ass Ohio recount: It only applied to 3% of the ballots. Those ballots were supposed to be randomly selected by the counties, but numerous reports have indicated that the chosen ballots may have been predetermined and, possibly, pre-slanted. Plus, over 90,000 "spoiled" ballots (undervotes, overvotes and who-knows-how-many completely legitimate, luckless machine rejects) were excluded from the "recount" by Ohio's Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell (one of the head Bushmen for Ohio who was once quoted as saying that "[t]he only thing worse than running for secretary of state would be being secretary of state," although he probably didn't intend to be speaking for the rest of Ohio's African-American voters), when those ballots should have been the first batch to be recounted. (Did I say recounted? I gotta watch that. Those particular ballots have been anything but counted.)
Sorry to bum you out, Wonkette, but it still ain't over yet.
The big news of the day concerning the future (past and present, too) of our democracy appeared at Truthout.org in an article written by William Rivers Pitt, a frequently bylined New York Times contributor: "Conyers to Object to Ohio Electors, Requests Senate Allies." In a letter which was mailed out to every United States Senator, Rep. Conyers wrote, "As you know, on January 6, 2005, at 1:00 P.M, the electoral votes for the election of the president are to be opened and counted in a joint session of Congress. I and a number of House Members are planning to object to the counting of the Ohio votes, due to numerous unexplained irregularities in the Ohio presidential vote, many of which appear to violate both federal and state law."
Many of the "unexplained irregularities" were listed in a letter sent by the House Minority Office to S.o.S. Blackwell on December 2nd (Link to the letter), which asked for answers to 34 legitimate questions that Wonkette evidently doesn't care about. Questions that require answers, explanations and justifications.
The way I see it, January 6th portends to be the day of judgment for the Democratic Party. Either one of our Senators stands up and does his best to preserve our democracy (even if a Senator co-signs the objection, there is probably not much of a chance of anything changing but at least our movement will gain some legitimacy for a moment and be discussed by the entire Senate for a few hours) or the Democratic Party might have to get used to losing a shitload of elections in future years. And you better believe that those elections won't be lost solely due to the machinations of Republican-leaning companies such as [sic] Deibold, Sinclair or Fox News Corp. Nor will it be because all of the lefties will be moving up north to a more progressive country with universal health care. Many strong Democrats and politically active liberals such as myself will be paying more attention (and, probably, monetary contributions) to the third parties that are doing so much to fight this battle.
In his article, Mr. Pitt sets his sights on Senators Biden, Bingaman, Boxer, Byrd, Clinton, Conrad, Corzine, Dodd, Dorgan, Durbin, Feingold, Harkin, Inyoue, Jeffords, Kennedy, Kerry, Lautenberg, Leahy, Levin, Lieberman, Mikulski, Nelson (FL), Jack Reed, Harry Reid, Rockefeller, Sarbanes, Stabenow, Wyden and Obama as possible conscientious objectors. I don't see how anyone could think that "Democrats" like Lieberman or Reid would be candidates for liberal sainthood but I'm going to suggest someone probably even more unlikely. The Senator I'm thinking might have enough backbone (and power) to say, "Hey, wait just a cotton-picking minute, let's give our House mates some consideration and spend at least two measly hours debating this," isn't a Democrat and has never renounced his party affiliation no matter how much its sickened him (or been sicked on him). Of course, you know who I'm alluding to, M - C - and-I-don't-mean-Hammer. He might not do it for the right reason. There might be a "right" reason for it. But I can see it happening next week quite easily.
If not him, then I'd guess that Byrd or Kennedy or one of the two Johns are our only real hopes. Let's hope at least one Senator steps up. Remember the disgraceful scene from "Fahrenheit 9/11" in which the pleas of the mostly black congresspersons were ignored by the Senate? I'd prefer that "Fahrenheit 1/6" be a sequel and not a remake. I'd also prefer it to be a sequel like Rocky 2, you know, the one where the underdog wins at the end and the audience goes home cheering.
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