The Cranky Webmaster

Between Pelosi and Election Commission - Is There a Democrat in the House?

By admin | August 16, 2008

Can we get a little oversight here, please?

The agency that oversees voting in federal elections is the Election Assistance Commission. You might have heard of them. They are the folks who are supposed to ensure our voting machines work properly. Their job is to certify the machines prior to elections. Well, here we are in August, 2008 with a presidential election coming up in November and The New York Times reports the EAC now claims they can’t possibly certify any machines before the election. You see, they just don’t have the time to spend on such trivialities as, well, their jobs.

“We simply are not going to sacrifice the integrity of the certification process for expediency,” said Rosemary E. Rodriguez, the chairwoman of the commission.

Instead, they are eager to sacrifice the integrity of the election to appease their superiors. As panderers to the Republican party apparatus, these political operatives are standing firmly in the way of holding open and fair elections in the United States. They claim their testing labs are so backlogged (thanks in large part to the commission’s insane regulations designed to impede the certification process) they can’t possibly certify the machines, period. They give no timetable for when accurate voting machines (ones not rigged to deliver votes for Republican candidates who otherwise would lose their seats in government) might be certified.

“We need the federal oversight to create consistent standards and to hold the manufacturers to a certain level of quality, but we also have to be able to get the equipment when we need it,” Ms. [Ohio secretary of state, Jennifer L.] Brunner said. “Right now, that equipment is not coming, and we’re left making contingency plans.”

All of which should come as a big surprise the Bush machine. Surprise! Specialists in rigged elections, one cannot imagine how the federal agency they direct could possibly fail to find the time to certify machines criminally modified or designed to elect Republicans. Heck, if they did that, they might lose their commission membership when Democrats took power. We can’t have that, now, can we? Instead, they smartly called for complete re-testing of the equipment, including all hardware, for any software change. That guarantees an extremely lengthy testing phase, ensuring accurate machines will never be used in this country so long as Republicans remain in power, thanks to rigged voting machines their cronies manufactured which are still in use. Of course, the ones they won’t certify are repaired.

Let the double-speak set in. The erroneous ones are going to be used. They are not being re-certified. We know they don’t work correctly. The ones that do work correctly must be certified by a commission which stalls the certification process. So, the bad ones will continue to be used to illegally place Republicans in office, and the good ones are shelved.

There’s no crime here. Nothing to see. Just move along, people. Republicans will be crying for ethics in government in 3, 2, 1…

Meanwhile, everyone’s favorite Republican, Joe Lieberman - oops - I mean, favorite Republican, Nancy Pelosi, has slapped California and other states who oppose offshore drilling across the face with her reversal to allow offshore oil drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf. According to the Associated Press as reported by Yahoo! News,

In her party’s weekly radio address, Pelosi said opening portions of the Outer Continental Shelf for drilling would be a part of energy legislation that House Democrats intend to put forward in the coming weeks to address oil dependence and high gasoline prices.

This nation is largely directed by oil companies. The President is an oil man. The Vice President is an oil man. The Secretary of State has an oil tanker bearing her name. Oil and gas profits have never been higher. Why shouldn’t the insanely rich oil profiteers dictating our lives drill for more oil at a time when they are raping us with obscenely high, fabricated prices? This is not the result of a shortage. Americans are actually cutting back on their petroleum use. And with China ready to buy at inflated prices, where do you suspect any oil recovered offshore will be sold? Here, to lower prices and profits, or in China, to increase prices and profits? Oil profiteers manipulated the price to insane heights, so why shouldn’t they be allowed to hoard more and more wealth for themselves?

And now, crybaby Republicans in the House are howling for more - they claim this is all a ruse on Pelosi’s part. Waah! They want no regulation whatsoever, as if there were no government or the governed, only oil men as far as the eye can see…

She “is deliberately misrepresenting the facts about our plan in order to shift attention away from the Democrats’ shameful record,” said House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio. “Her new effort appears to be just another flawed plan that will do little to lower gas prices.” Boehner and more than 100 House Republicans refused to depart for the summer recess in protest of Democrats’ refusal to have a vote on their proposals.

Well, John, how could any non-Republican plan lower oil prices when the Republican party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Big Oil determined to keep prices high? Republicans manufactured the crisis causing the rise in price (taking Iraq’s oil off of the world market, creating instability in the Middle East, etc.), and they are manipulating public opinion to continue their carnage. Non-oily Democrats hardly stand a chance against this well-financed and powerful behemoth.

Like the price of gas under the Republican president and his minions? Imagine what Republicans will do with their free time once President Obama is inaugurated.

But why would Pelosi cave on such an important issue? Why, oh, why?

Polls have shown that voters have grown more supportive of more domestic oil production as fuel prices have climbed.

In other words, millions of American morons are buying the lie that artificially high prices will drop if we just drill all over America. Not true. Prices are artificially inflated. The world’s primary buyer of oil supplies is the People’s Republic of China, which subsidizes its price (unlike here in America, where we are being treated to some of the highest prices on the planet, despite having massive domestic refinery capacity - which may remind you of another giant industry raping Americans with high prices - I need an aspirin). China is gobbling up oil to produce toxic trinkets for stupid Americans who prefer trash from Wal-Mart to American made products (which are in extremely short supply, thanks to Republican policies supporting foreign, not domestic, production). So long as there is a sucker willing to buy at these prices, why change them? Prices will drop when the oil cartels, speculators and the giant oil companies decide it will, and not one second sooner. If they calculate you’ll all believe their lies, prices will remain high until they get their way on drilling everywhere they please, without oversight.

This Catch-22 we are in is identical to the situation the nation was in at the end of the Nixon administration, when oil companies last played the same hand they have today. Then, an educated public reacted to unbiased journalism to pressure the government to do something about the crisis. Now, with right-wing ownership of the media, only the corporate side of the story gets sufficient coverage. The public listens to the packaged lies and disinformation, believing much of it because they have not yet learned to distrust corporate media, despite its dismal failure to present the truth about the lead-up to the war in Iraq or the 9/11 whitewash which preceded it.

You cannot give Republicans an inch. They are a criminal operation. They cannot be bargained with. They don’t listen to reason. They are professional liars operating for personal profit, not for the good of the nation. Impeach, indict, convict and punish them all. They must be stood up to, not placated.

Is there a Democrat in the House?

…Cranky.