The day before the election I heard people expressing delight that it would be over soon. They were tired of the campaigning, and this was in New York State, which was ignored by the presidential candidates. The day after the election these same people were holding animated conversations about the election, the electoral college, various types of ballots, various degree of stupidity among Florida voters, and which of the two candidates was the least slimy. For the next week nearly every conversation turned to the election. It was great seeing people who usually didn't care about politics taking an active interest in it.

Now, more than two weeks later, the election is still undecided, and people are once again sick of the whole thing. Gore is doing everything he can to swindle, fold and mutilate his way into the White House, counting again and again and again, handling the ballots as often as possible and inching his way toward the theft of the presidency. Everyone is disgusted with both sides, and they should be.

There have been plenty of despicable actions on both sides, but the most despicable was trying to screw service men and women out of their votes. Mark Herron, a Democrat lawyer, sent a five page memo to Democratic vote counters, explaining in detail everything that could be done to invalidate an absentee ballot. Most of these ballots came from the military, people who are literally putting their lives on the line to keep our gas prices low or play wag the dog to when the president needs a distraction from his latest bimbo eruption. Because military people are far more likely to vote for Bush, the Democrats went out of their way to screw them out of their votes. Could anything be more vile?

Bush has blown it too. He should have sat back and let the democrats try to steal the election. If they succeeded, then he could have hauled out his lawyers. If they failed, which is likely, he would have looked like a statesman and a hero. He soiled himself by calling out his bottom feeders early, and now the smell will never come out.

I almost agree with the people who think Gore getting it would be the best thing to happen to the Republicans in decades. The thinking goes: He'll be so hampered by the stigma of having stolen the election he won't be able to get anything done, leaving the White House ripe for a Republican president in 2004. There's only one problem with that scenario – Gore doesn't need the cooperation of congress to carry out his agenda. He knows how to use litigation to subvert the balance of powers and the constitution. He knows this from experience, having done it several times already.

It started well before he was in the White House. Gore's wife, upset that some music contained naughty words, swaggered up to the distributors and said, "This is a real nice record company you've got here. Sure would be a shame if anything happened to it." Under the threat of government intervention (First amendment? What first amendment?) the record companies acquiesced. Al, of course, encouraged this arm-twisting, and is quite proud of what Tipper did, and how she did it.

The Clinton administration has done the same thing. They forced the tobacco industry into an "agreement" that stands as the largest theft in the history of mankind. Then they moved on to the gun manufacturers. Unable to subvert the second amendment through congress or the courts, they're using litigation, and they're just getting started. One of their team players is Elliot Spitzer, the mangy little attorney general of New York State. He has come right out and threatened that he will bankrupt the gun companies with legal fees unless they knuckle under to his unconstitutional demands.

If Al played by the rules, we could let him have the presidency, confident that he wouldn't be able to do much with it. But as we've seen in Florida and in his administration's history, the rules don't mean anything to him. If he succeeds in turning the US from a republic to a theftocracy, he'll use intimidation and litigation to do whatever he damn well pleases, and resistance from the congress or the courts or the constitution won't even slow him down.

Other Links

Watch a Florida ballot counter twist and fondle a ballot. There's a version for dial-up connections and one for broadband. (Requires Realplayer.)

Dimples aren't always cute.

Is it likely that 19,000 people were that stupid, or is it massive fraud?

November, 2000

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© 2000 Dave Hitt