Wisconsin recount futile in Koch Brother’s Dismal Dairyland of GOP corruption

On November 8^th, Donald Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Wisconsin in nearly 30 years.  Due to the massive anomalies in the Wisconsin election process since the GOP takeover of 2010, Green Party candidate Jill Stein has requested a recount of the votes cast in the state.  According to the Washington Post a recount of the votes in Wisconsin will take place.

Excerpt:

Election recount will take place in Wisconsin, after Stein files petition

An election recount will take place soon in Wisconsin, after former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein filed a petition Friday with the state’s Election Commission, the first of three states where she has promised to contest the election result…

Trump scored upset victories in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and seems on the path to declare a victory in Michigan as well, though the result of the election in that state will not be certified officially until Monday. Had Clinton won those three states, previously seen as part of the Democrats’ “firewall,” she would have secured enough electoral votes to win the election…

While the group had no specific proof of hacking, they noted anomalies suggesting Clinton routinely did more poorly in Wisconsin counties that used voting machines, as opposed to those that relied on paper ballots.

Election fraud committed at the highest levels in Wisconsin’s government has been rampant since 2010 when the GOP took control of Wisconsin’s government.  In 2011 after the GOP takeover of Wisconsin’s government, the right-wing extremist and former Republican Speaker of the Assembly, Justice David Prosser was running for reelection to the Wisconsin Supreme Court where he has been a Justice since 1998.  Prosser whose violent outbursts had made the high court a national laughing stock, lost his reelection to Joanne Kloppenburg.  But shortly after the announcement, Waukesha county clerk Kathy Nicklaus, who had been an aide to Scott Walker proclaimed Prosser the winner.  From Forbes:

Excerpt:

Something Smells In Waukesha County, Wisconsin-- And It's Not The Cheese

Suspicious evidence is beginning to emerge calling into question last week’s controversial state Supreme Court election between incumbent Justice David Prosser and challenger, JoAnne Kloppenburg.

Kloppenburg, the Democrat, had initially been thought to be the winner by the narrowest of margins – approximately 200 votes – in the election that was viewed as a referendum on Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-collective bargaining policies.

However, hours after the challenger declared victory, the Waukesha County Clerk, Kathy Nickolaus, announced that the votes of an entire city within her county had been accidentally omitted in her counts. When those votes were added into her totals, Justice Prosser emerged with a victory margin of roughly 7,500 votes –almost precisely the number needed to deny Ms. Kloppenburg an automatic, government-funded recount…

It turns out that there was a similar error in Waukesha County in 2006 during a Republican primary for State Assembly. Candidate Christine Lufter had been leading in the election until an alleged computer error discovered by Nickolaus was found to be placing votes in the wrong candidate’s column.

My, isn’t it interesting that every “mistake” uncovered by Kathy Nickolaus favors candidates backed by the Koch Brothers.  How is it that Nickolaus was able to control the election results in Waukesha County during her ex-boss’ recall election?  From Mother Jones:

Excerpt:

Will Scandal-Plagued Election Clerk Supervise Walker Recall in Key County?

Republican Kathy Nickolaus may be the only county clerk known by name across Wisconsin—and not for a good reason.  Last year, Nickolaus, the top election official in Waukesha County, a solidly Republican suburb outside of Milwaukee, blamed "human error" for the late discovery of more than 14,000 missing votes in a bruising state Supreme Court race.  Those votes erased liberal favorite JoAnne Kloppenburg's lead in the race, handed victory to conservative incumbent David Prosser… 

This April, Nickolaus resorted to posting election results on strips of grocery-receipt-like paper after the county's reporting system failed on election night.  After the April controversy, Nickolaus pledged to step down from handling the county's election operations. But ahead of Gov. Scott Walker's recall election on June 5… recent evidence suggests Nickolaus still has control over the county's vote-counting... WTMJ news station reported that Nickolaus "appeared to be very much in charge of the count…"

Kelly Steele, a spokesman for the labor-backed We Are Wisconsin group, says it would be "criminal" to allow Nickolaus to have any role in the county's June 5 election. "After Kathy Nickolaus earned her reputation as the most incompetent or corrupt election clerk in America, Waukesha County assured the world she would no longer administer elections…"

All evidence from the May primary suggests she's fully in charge and reporting out results to the world."  The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board has also demanded Nickolaus' resignation…   But although Nickolaus has said she won't run for reelection, she remains in her job—and, if the May 8 primary is any indication, she's still supervising elections.

Yep, in Wisconsin there’s no getting rid of the corrupt Republicans, they control every branch of government.  What’s particularly egregious has been the takeover of the Wisconsin Supreme Court whose GOP majority was funded by the outside groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Wisconsin Club for Growth.  The Club for Growth’s funding of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s recall campaign was the subject of a John Doe investigation. 

Members of Wisconsin’s Supreme Court whose campaigns were funded by CFG refused to recuse themselves when the high court ordered the investigation be quashed.  The corruption on the Wisconsin Supreme Court has not gone unnoticed nationally.  From Newsweek:

Excerpt:

CAN YOU BUY JUSTICE? IN WISCONSIN, IT APPEARS YOU CAN

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is facing harsh criticism for a blatant conflict of interest in a July 16 ruling to shut down a campaign finance investigation of Gov. Scott Walker’s 2012 re-election campaign.  One headline referred to the court as a “crony court.” A Wisconsin columnist called the justices “self-serving” and concluded, “Justice bought is justice denied.”

Why? The justices in the majority have benefited from $10 million in spending by the same special interest groups that were suspected of conspiring with Walker.  The Wisconsin high court has become THE MOST CORRUPT COURT IN THE NATION SINCE THE GOP MEMBERS TOOK CONTROL.  

Yes, indeed another milestone for Republicans, according to Newsweek “the Wisconsin high court has become the most corrupt court in the nation since the GOP members took control.”  And what does Wisconsin look like under GOP control?  Let’s start with the GOP’s 2010 “redistricting” scam.  From Riverwest Currents:

Excerpt:

It took Republican legislative leaders only 12 days to go from unveiling their redistricting plans to passing them into law. The consequences of the redistricting legislation, however, may affect politics in Wisconsin for the next decade.  After presenting redistricting maps on July 8, the Senate passed the redistricting legislation on July 19, and the assembly on July 20 along predictable partisan lines…   

When asked why the redistricting legislation was being rushed to a vote, a representative of Sen. Scott Fitzgerald’s (R-Juneau) office said the rush was necessary to proactively counter a lawsuit against the Government Accountability Board (GAB), pending in US District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. The lawsuit requested that a three-judge panel be appointed to redraw the district lines…

Every ten years, after new census data is released, the districts need to be equalized based upon the most current population data.  Under the new legislation, the chief responsibility for redistricting falls upon the state legislature rather than local official.   The prior law required local officials and state legislatures to perform these duties… and taxpayers incurred no special charges for this work.

Michael Best & Friedrich and Troupis Law Office were hired by the state at taxpayer expense to redraw the various districts. So far the law firms have charged the state about $350,000. The redistricting process was conducted secretly.   On July 21, the 15 residents who filed the lawsuit against the GAB in federal court amended their original complaint to argue that the new maps violate the US Constitution and the Voting Rights Act by carving up cities and splitting minority communities.

So the GOP hired a special interest group to redistrict costing taxpayers $350,000 and the process was done in secret.  Isn’t that interesting, minorities were forced to pay a private law firm to redistrict their communities to dilute their vote. My, my, my.  And diluting their votes wasn’t enough for the GOP, they wanted to make sure any Democratic leaning voter would be unable to vote at all.  And voila, the GOP “voter ID law” was born in the bowels of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Koch Brothers modern day version of the Ku Klux Klan.

And years later what does Wisconsin look like after Walker and the GOP redistricted the state and instituted their Jim Crow voter ID law?  From Salon:

Excerpt:

The quiet, vicious racism of Scott Walker’s Wisconsin

With a voter-ID law passed by the GOP-controlled legislature and signed by Walker and threatening to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of mostly minority voters in this election, the last thing the Koch brothers’ favorite governor wants is people who are going to say the quiet parts out loud…

The New Republic took a deep dive into Walker’s world two years ago. What the magazine found was a city and its suburbs even more segregated than most, where the chairman of one county’s Republican Party could still refer to one mostly African-American neighborhood in Milwaukee, in 2014, as “the colored section.”

Where white flight between 1960 and 2010 was so high it tripled the population of three formerly rural counties around Milwaukee, while the percentage of African-American residents in those three counties is under 2 percent. Where the black poverty rate within the city is the second-highest in the country.  This is the world that has coddled Walker as he traveled up through the ranks of the Republican Party.

As a member of the state Assembly, the executive of Milwaukee County, and now governor, he has spent his entire career deeply slicing budgets for programs that benefit inner-city African-Americans, such as public transportation. He has also pushed for private-school vouchers that decimate public education and advocated for privatizing prisons, all while cutting taxes to ensure that funding levels for these civic outlays are unlikely to be restored anytime soon, if ever… 

That this is all happening during the first election in which Wisconsin’s new voter-ID law is in effect only increases the irony. The law is part of the broader effort by Republicans both in Wisconsin and other states to limit the voting power of traditional Democratic constituencies. The Wisconsin law could disenfranchise as many as 300,000 mostly minority and student voters who want to cast votes today…

That’s right, in Wisconsin if you are a minority or a student why even bother to try to vote?  Republicans in Wisconsin control the elections and if you are lucky enough to overcome the onerous hurdles laid out by the GOP and actually cast a ballot, your vote won’t be counted anyway.  Election after election, as the GOP increases their control through election fraud, the Democrats just stand down and capitulate to the GOP. 

If the Democrats refuse to fight for your right to have your vote counted, why should you?  That is what happened in Wisconsin in the 2016 presidential election.  The voters were abandoned by the Democratic Party.  From the New York Times:

Excerpt:

Many in Milwaukee Neighborhood Didn’t Vote — and Don’t Regret It

MILWAUKEE — Four barbers and a firefighter were pondering their future under a Trump presidency at the Upper Cutz barbershop last week...  They admitted that they could not complain too much: Only two of them had voted. But there were no regrets.

“I don’t feel bad,” Mr. Fleming said, trimming a mustache. “Milwaukee is tired. Both of them were terrible. They never do anything for us anyway.”

As Democrats pick through the wreckage of the campaign, one lesson is clear: The election was notable as much for the people who did not show up, as for those who did. Nationally, about half of eligible voters did not cast ballots.

Wisconsin, a state that Hillary Clinton had assumed she would win, historically boasts one of the nation’s highest rates of voter participation; this year’s 68.3 percent turnout was the fifth best among the 50 states. But by local standards, it was a disappointment, the lowest turnout in 16 years. And those no-shows were important. Mr. Trump won the state by just 27,000 voters.

Milwaukee’s lowest-income neighborhoods offer one explanation for the turnout figures. Of the city’s 15 council districts, the decline in turnout from 2012 to 2016 in the five poorest was consistently much greater than the drop seen in more prosperous areas — accounting for half of the overall decline in turnout citywide.

The biggest drop was here in District 15, a stretch of fading wooden homes, sandwich shops and fast-food restaurants that is 84 percent black.  In this district, voter turnout declined by 19.5 percent from 2012 figures…   It is home to some of Milwaukee’s poorest residents and, according to a 2016 documentary, “Milwaukee 53206,” has one of the nation’s highest per-capita incarceration rates.

So what do you think a recount in Wisconsin will show?  Why even bother, the only votes to be recounted are the ones that the GOP allowed to be counted in the first place.  I for one believe that Donald Trump won the vote in Wisconsin.  Donald Trump came to Wisconsin several times, even while he was dissed by Paul Ryan and the Republicans.  Hillary Clinton didn’t even bother to visit Wisconsin even once during the campaign. 

Donald Trump earned the votes he received in Wisconsin.  If you really want to see the kind of corruption happening in Wisconsin, bring in the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the voter suppression laws and the constitutional violations that are taking place along with the re-segregation of Milwaukee.  A recount of the votes will show what the GOP wants it to show, there’s nothing to see here folks.  Everything is hunky dory.

By Patricia Baeten

Deliver us from evil: Obama and DNC’s betrayal of the American people elected Trump

The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat,

~Harry Truman, May 17th, 1952

The DNC never learns.  The DNC under Howard Dean’s leadership abandoned Hillary Clinton and the Democratic base of white working people in favor of a “new kind of Democrat” called the Obama coalition.  Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden headed up the new Democratic coalition that consisted of courting millennials and black Americans while labeling Hillary and Bill Clinton and their supporters “racists.”

During the 2008 primary, the Democratic Party was hijacked and white working people were banished and left by the wayside.  Candidate Barack Obama, the Illinois Senator who was famous for avoiding any votes in the State legislature by voting “present” and having an unremarkable half term in the U.S. Senate was chosen by the Democratic elite as their candidate.  During Obama’s first interview he took the opportunity to slam President Clinton as an ineffective president, while lavishing effusive praise on his hero, President Ronald Reagan. 

In 2008 Obama marveled at how Reagan had changed the trajectory of the nation and alluded to an Obama Administration that would continue on the trajectory set by Reagan.  Oh, and how Reagan changed the trajectory of America.  From Dr. Mercola:

Excerpt:

In 1970, following a series of environmental calamities, 20 million Americans — 10 percent of the U.S. population — took to the streets on Earth Day, demanding an end to environmental pollution. It was the largest public demonstration in American history. And it worked.  The sheer enormity of the outrage forced President Nixon to address the problem head-on.

As a result, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act, which later became the Clean Water Act, was enacted to empower the EPA to go after major polluters.  The Act included strict pollution limits and penalties for those who violated them, and called for waterways to be fishable and swimmable again by July 1, 1983. The EPA initially made significant headway, suing several major polluters and banning DDT, for example.

Unfortunately, a decade later, the Reagan administration’s deregulation agenda gutted the EPA, effectively stopping it in its tracks…   Today, it seems both public and political will to take strong, affirmative action to protect the environment has been lost, and the pollution flowing from industrial agriculture and elsewhere is essentially and largely unregulated.

So let’s take a look at the accomplishments of the Republican-lite DNC’s President Barack Obama.  From Counter Punch: 

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama’s Crappy Legacy by DAVE LINDORFF

Barack Obama came into the White House on a wave of passionate new voters, many of them black or young and white, becoming the nation’s first black president and promising a new era of “hope and change.”  Eight years later, as he is preparing to exit the White House, he leaves behind considerable wreckage, disappointment and a legacy of death and destruction, plenty of it physical, but also much of it in the legislative and political arena.

He did give us, over the last eight years, a lot of change, but not much hope, and most of the change has been negative.  Let’s just run through at least some of the list:

* One of candidate Obama’s big selling points in 2008 was that he promised to end the Bush/Cheney administration’s disastrous war in Iraq, to close the horrific torture site and prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba …  Eight years later …  US forces being added even as our Nobel Peace Laureate president prepares to leave office. Guantanamo remains open and stocked with prisoners many of them known to have been wrongly accused of terrorism, as the president has proved too gutless to do the right thing and just shut the place down, or order the captives released…  

Meanwhile, torture continues, the president has expanded and formalized a system of state-sanctioned and directed murder, even of US citizens abroad, and surveillance of Americans has reached appalling levels not even imagined by science fiction writers like George Orwell a generation or more ago...

* Race relations in the US, and the economic condition of people of color in America, have only deteriorated during President Obama’s two terms… racial profiling and the killing of unarmed blacks, including children, by mostly white police officers has become epidemic… along with a general militarization of police (encouraged by his administration’s offer of free military surplus war armaments) to the point that it’s hard to distinguish them from an army of occupation across the land…

* The prison system has continued to expand, with perhaps some of the worst conditions of all in Supermax prisons run by the federal government (under the direct control of the president), where all inmates are held in conditions of solitary confinement that the civilized world considers to be a form of torture…

* A once-in-a-generation opportunity to finally scuttle this country’s outrageous and uniquely expensive and class-based for-profit health care system in favor of some kind of government run “single-payer” national system such as, again, the rest of the civilized nations of the world have adopted at much lower cost and with far better access and outcomes, was squandered by this president…

* Climate disaster, which candidate Obama warned was the biggest crisis facing America and the world, has been allowed to worsen almost unimpeded. The president refused to make it his number one issue… instead pursued his wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia and elsewhere and his drone killing campaigns elsewhere in places like Pakistan and Yemen, and as he promoted a gratuitously confrontational foreign policy towards both Russia and China as advocated by the neo-con advisors he appointed to key positions in his administration, including as Secretary of Defense.

* Particularly where it comes to energy, the president not only did nothing significant to reduce carbon emissions in the US…  He continues to back the construction of pipelines that only encourage more exploitation of heavy carbon-producing “dirty” oil from places like North Dakota and Canada’s tar sands.

And now on his way out of office Obama is now betraying the Native American water protectors and plans to approve the Dakota Access Pipeline.

* Nuclear war, which the president as candidate promised to make less likely, has become more likely… than any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. This is in large part because this president has pushed an aggressive program… of undermining the elected government of Ukraine only to replace it with a coup government run by anti-Russian fascists…

* The president campaigned with tremendous labor movement support…    American workers have continued to have to battle to survive during the president’s two terms under a National Labor Relations Act that is stacked against them.

* Beginning in 2010, the president…   ran conservative Democratic candidates against … more radical and progressive candidates seeking office in Democratic Party primaries. The result of this backstabbing of progressive candidates… leading to Republican takeover of both House and Senate — a grim situation that will now be difficult to undo.

* In the area of education, the president has actively encouraged… privatization of public school systems at the expense of public schools…      shifted public tax money from poor schools to selective privately run schools, where much of it ends up being siphoned off to high-salaried executives and the shareholders of for-profit management companies running the charters…  At the level of higher education, the president had the government take over as lender to students… although such loans do not even allow default, they continue to be offered at extortionate interest rates, leaving graduates as essentially indentured servants for life.

* In the area of open and law-abiding government, candidate Obama promised a new era of open government. That was probably his biggest whopper. By all accounts, his has been the most secretive government in history, with the most prosecutions of whistleblowers… his hounding of such courageous exposers of government wrongdoing as Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, NSA critic Edward Snowden, and war-crimes exposer Chelsea Manning, and his G W Bush-like fondness for executive orders.

* Finally, Obama failed abysmally on the economy, in large part because just as with the criminals of the Bush/Cheney administration whom he declined to prosecute for their clearly illegal and unconstitutional crimes of torture, aggressive war-making and illegal surveillance on Americans, he decided to bar the Justice Department from prosecuting the criminal bankers...  That decision was a disaster that still haunts the USA today, where some 20 percent of the workforce remains unemployed or unwillingly working less than full-time, often at a fraction of the wages they were earning before 2008.

In spite of the horrendously disastrous record of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton decided to abandon the white working Americans who stood by her in 2008 in order to attract the “Obama coalition.”  That was a big mistake, her fate was sealed when she decided to defend the indefensible record of Obama.  Is it any wonder that the Democratic base fled the party and joined the ranks of Donald Trump and his “make America great again” campaign? 

Trump’s message of fighting for all Americans, extracting us from these wars for profit and dumping the class based, Wall Street profit driven healthcare system resonated with the people.  The Democratic Party is dead, the Republican Party is on notice, support the Trump agenda or you are fired.

Harry Truman faced the same phony Democratic Party in the 1950’s and he was absolutely right when he said “The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat.”  Trump is a Teddy Roosevelt Republican and that is a good thing.  The world is ready for a new day, and it is here, Donald Trump will make America great again.

By Patricia Baeten

Election 2016: the CIA and FBI vs. the American people

James Comey’s politicization of the FBI has had detrimental effects on the agency that will tarnish the august institution for generations to come.  Comey, who had no law enforcement background, was nominated to head up America’s domestic intelligence agency by Barack Obama, whose presidential campaign was funded by Wall Street Banks.  During Obama’s presidential campaign, three-quarters of a billion dollars was funneled into the coffers of Obama in the biggest quid pro quo in America’s history.

After the election of Obama as president, the nations’ agencies were stacked with Wall Street Banker’s most loyal of agents in order to protect the banks from prosecution for crashing the global economy in favor of pure, unadulterated greed.  Obama’s first Attorney General, Wall Street’s own Eric Holder, ensured there would be no investigations nor prosecutions.  Nay, not only would the taxpayers bail out Wall Street but those at the top would collect hundreds of millions in bonuses.  From Rolling Stone:

Top spy agencies stacked against American people

Excerpt:

Eric Holder, Wall Street Double Agent, Comes in From the Cold

Barack Obama's former top cop cashes in after six years of letting banks run wild

Holder will reassume his lucrative partnership (he made $2.5 million the last year he worked there) and take his seat in an office that reportedly – this is no joke – was kept empty for him in his absence.

The office thing might have been improper, but at this point, who cares? More at issue is the extraordinary run Holder just completed as one of history's great double agents. For six years, while brilliantly disguised as the attorney general of the United States, he was actually working deep undercover…

Holder denied there was anything weird about returning to one of Wall Street's favorite defense firms after six years of letting one banker after another skate on monstrous cases of fraud, tax evasion, market manipulation, money laundering, bribery and other offenses…

Here's a man who just spent six years handing out soft-touch settlements to practically every Too Big to Fail bank in the world. Now he returns to a firm that represents many of those same companies: Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup, to name a few…  after he handed out these deals, his service was certainly worth many billions of dollars to Wall Street.

Now he will presumably collect assloads of money from those very same bankers. It's one of THE BIGGEST QUID PRO QUO DEALS in the history of government service…

Yes, Eric Holder let the big banks off the hook to the tune of billions of dollars extracted from American taxpayers to bail out American and European banksters, one of which was HSBC the British based bank that laundered money for Mexican drug cartels through US satellite banking offices.

Anyone who even tries to claim that none of the banks actually did anything illegal should be directed to the HSBC settlement of December 2012. In this deferred prosecution agreement, Europe's largest bank paid $1.92 billion to settle their responsibility for violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and other laws.

This is from a description of HSBC's crimes by Holder's Justice Department:

"As a result of HSBC Bank USA's AML failures, at least $881 million in drug trafficking proceeds – including proceeds of drug trafficking by the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico…were laundered through HSBC Bank USA."

You might remember the Sinaloa cartel for their ISIS-style, unforgettably upsetting torture videos. HSBC washed their cash. They even created special teller windows to make their deposits easier. This is admitted, not alleged.

But Holder went out of his way to let them keep their U.S. charter. HE GAVE THEIR EXECUTIVES A GRAND TOTAL OF ZERO DAYS IN JAIL, ZERO DOLLARS IN INDIVIDUAL FINES…

Holder contributed countless subtle inventions to soften punishments.  The most revolting in my view was allowing banks like Chase the courtesy of calling their settlements "remedial payments" instead of fines for wrongdoing.

This seemingly insignificant semantic tweak allowed the bank to call $7 billion of their settlement a business expense, which meant they could claim it as a tax deduction, which in turn meant that taxpayers like you and me paid a whopping $2.45 billion of Chase's penalty.

And guess who one of those Executives that received a “grand total of zero days in jail and zero dollars in individual fines” was?  None other than James Comey.  That’s right, James Comey one of the executives at HSBC Bank was involved with money laundering and drug money trafficking in the US through a British owned bank that cost American tax payers $881 million in “drug trafficking proceeds.”

Obama is Bush’s Third Term

In 2009 Mother Jones wrote an article called “Bush's Third Term?  You're living it.”  In the article they outline what George W. Bush would have done if he had a third term.  

Excerpt:

If Bush were in his third term, we would already have seen him propose, yet again, the largest military budget in the history of the world…  And of course, he would have held onto his Secretary of Defense from his second term, Robert Gates, to run the Pentagon, keep our ongoing wars rolling along, and oversee the better part of our public budget…

He'd probably also be escalating the campaign he launched late in his second term to use drone aircraft to illegally and repeatedly strike into Pakistan's tribal borderlands with Afghanistan….  If Bush were still "the decider" he'd be employing mercenaries like Blackwater and propagandists like the Rendon Group and he might even be expanding the number of private security contractors in Afghanistan.

In fact, the whole executive branch would be packed with disreputable corporate executive types. You'd have somebody like John ("May I torture this one some more, please?") Rizzo still serving, at least for a while, as general counsel at the CIA. The White House and Justice Department would be crawling with corporate cronies, people like John Brennan, Greg Craig, James Jones, and ERIC HOLDER.

In addition, the bank bailouts Bush and his economic team initiated in his second term would still be rolling along…  Ben Bernanke, for instance, would certainly have been reappointed to run the Fed…

If the Democrats in Congress attempted to pass any set of needed reforms like, to take an example, new healthcare legislation, Bush, the third termer, would have held secret meetings in the White House with insurance and drug company executives to devise a means to turn such proposals to their advantage.

This dark fantasy of a third Bush term is… an accurate portrait of Obama's first term to date.

Yes, in 2008 Americans were desperate for change, they were promised by Obama and Biden, they would get universal healthcare.  Medicare for all. Instead what was passed was the GOP’s Wall Street profit driven health insurance plan written by the right-wing Heritage Foundation.  Once the plan was repackaged in black face under the cover of a “Democratic” administration, any opposition was quickly extinguished as being racist. 

And Obamacare was just the start, the Bush Administration’s lawless attacks on civil and human rights were placed on steroids by Obama and Biden.  Each terror attack, no matter where it took place, demanded further erosion of constitutionally guaranteed rights.  From, The Free Thought Project:

America a lunatic asylum run by FBI and CIA

Excerpt:

Former CIA Officer: “Every Single Terrorist Attack In US Was A False Flag Attack”

Washington, D.C. — While it is a commonly known fact that the CIA utilizes foreign terror groups to destabilize governments targeted by the United States, a much lesser known fact is that numerous whistleblowers have come forward to claim that U.S. intelligence services not only use terrorism to achieve foreign policy goals, but to actually create domestic terror incidents to “blind the masses.”

The most recent intelligence whistleblower is David Steele, a 20-year Marine Corps intelligence officer, and the second-highest-ranking civilian in the U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence.  Steele, a former CIA clandestine services case officer, had this to say:

“Most terrorists are false flag terrorists, or are created by our own security services. In the United States, every single terrorist incident we have had has been a false flag, or has been an informant pushed on by the FBI. In fact, we now have citizens taking out restraining orders against FBI informants that are trying to incite terrorism. We’ve become a lunatic asylum...”

Many people believe the attacks of 9/11 to be a false flag event, perhaps orchestrated by U.S. intelligence services or an entity that operates above the level of government entities (commonly referred to as the deep state/military industrial complex.)

The alleged purpose of this false flag attack was to justify the invasion of other countries, and usher in a heightened state of “national security,” precipitating the curtailing of civil liberties in the name of “safety.”

How effective has the 911 false flag been in persuading the American people to accept the CIA’s overthrow of elected governments who refuse to succumb to America’s imperial ambitions?  Just ask Brazil and Argentina two of the most powerful and rich countries in South America, who have both seen their elected governments overthrown by the CIA and their resources and treasuries thrown open to Wall Street hedge fund vultures.  From GlobalResearch.

Excerpt:

Wall Street and the Pentagon greeted the onset of 2016 as a ‘banner year’, a glorious turning point in the quest for malleable regimes willing to sell-off the most lucrative economic resources, to sign off on onerous new debt to Wall Street and to grant use of their strategic military bases to the Pentagon.

Brazil and Argentina, the most powerful and richest countries in South America and the Philippines, Washington’s most strategic military platform in Southeast Asia, were the objects of intense US political operations in the run-up to 2016.

In each instance, Wall Street and the Pentagon secured smashing successes leading to premature ejaculations over the ‘new golden era’ of financial pillage and unfettered military adventures…

Argentina and Brazil:  Grandiose Schemes and Crapulous Outcomes

The international financial press was ecstatic over the election of President Mauricio Macri in Argentina and the appointment of former Wall Street bankers to his cabinet.  They celebrated the ouster of the ‘evil populists’, accusing them of inflating economic results, reneging on debt obligations and discouraging foreign lenders and investors.  Under the Macri regime all market obstacles were to be removed and all the bankers trembled with anticipation at the ‘good times’ to come.

After taking office in December 2015, President Macri unleashed the ‘animal instincts’ of the market and the carrion birds flocked in.  US ‘vulture funds’ scooped up and demanded payment for on old Argentine debt ‘valued’ at $3.5 billion – constituting a 1,000% return on their initial investment.  A devaluation of the peso of 50% tripled inflation and drove down wages by 20%.

Firing over 200,000 public sector employees, slapping 400% price increases on utilities and transport, driving small and medium size firms into bankruptcy and enraged consumers into the streets ended the honeymoon with the Argentine electorate quite abruptly.  This initial massive dose of free enterprise ‘medicine’ was prescribed by the local and Wall Street bankers and investors who had promised a new golden era for capitalism!  …

Brazil:  Wall Street’s Three Month ‘Whirl-Wind’ Honeymoon

Most of the current elected members of the Brazilian Congress, Senate and the recently-installed (rather than elected) President, as well as his cabinet, are in trouble:  The hero, Michael Temer and his argonauts, chosen by Wall Street to privatize the Brazilian economy and usher in another ‘golden dawn’ for finance capital, now all face criminal changes, arrest and long prison sentences for money laundering, bribery, fraud, tax evasion and corruption.

In less than four months, the entire political edifice constructed to impeach the elected President Dilma Rousseff and then de-nationalize key sectors of the economy, is shaking.   So much for the financial press’s proclamation of a new era of “business friendly” policies in Brazilia.

Ha ha, the best laid plans of “rats and spooks” in Latin America is a big failure.  Now the 2016 election is upon us and the CIA and FBI are pulling out all the stops to upend the two major candidates, neither of whom they want to ascend to power and rein in the unfettered power of the US shadow government.  The agencies are irate that the American people rejected their candidates in the primaries.  So, what is the latest “false flag” being spoon fed to the American people?  The Russian Government is interfering with the American election.  Bullsh*t.  From Alex Jones:

Excerpt:

CONFIRMED: US INTEL OPERATIVES LEAKED CLINTON CAMPAIGN EMAILS, NOT RUSSIA

It’s now clear from numerous sources that the Podesta hack, which led to Wikileaks releasing tens of thousands of Clinton campaign emails, as well as other hacks targeting the Democratic Party, were the work of U.S. intelligence operatives…  Sources who have spoken privately to Alex Jones but don’t want to be named have confirmed that government and intelligence operatives worked in tandem to provide Julian Assange’s organization with the Podesta emails.

This is backed up by former British ambassador Craig Murray, who was told by security insiders that the email leak “comes from within official circles in Washington DC.”  William Binney, NSA whistleblower and former technical head of the NSA, also told Infowars back in August that the email leaks which have negatively impacted the Democratic Party were carried out by individuals within the U.S. intelligence community who were angry at Hillary exposing classified information and sought to take revenge.

Yes, and while the intelligence community is throwing everything in their massive covert goody bag at Hillary Clinton before Tuesday’s election, the Republican establishment is coalescing around Paul Ryan to keep Trump from winning the electoral vote.  It is too late, Trump has already won.  Trump is truly the candidate of change. 

Not only has Trump stood by the people of the United States, he has stood by the people of the world especially in the UK, Russia and Syria.  Now the people will stand by Trump and Trump will be the leader of the free world.  Under a President Trump, America will be great again, because America will be good again.  Under President Trump the world will be a better place.  On Tuesday America’s sixteen year nightmare will be over, thank God.

By Patricia Baeten

Oligarchs cheer Comey's “hail Mary pass” to defeat Clinton & Trump on November 8th

On Friday, October 28^th just eleven days before the presidential election, the oligarchs threw a “hail Mary” pass, not to Donald Trump but to Paul Ryan, the oligarch’s speaker of the house.  The oligarch controlled congress has been teed up to decide the election should neither candidate garner the 270 electoral votes required to become president.  Republican James Comey, Director of the FBI and oligarch’s handmaiden delivered a blow to the frontrunner in the presidential race, Hillary Clinton when he sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee stating the FBI was “reopening an investigation” into the e-mails of Hillary Clinton.  From Newsweek:

Excerpt:

The disclosure by the Federal Bureau of Investigation late on Friday, October 28 that it had discovered potential new evidence in its inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s handling of her personal email when she was Secretary of State has virtually nothing to do with any actions taken by the Democratic nominee, according to government records and an official with knowledge of the investigation, who spoke to Newsweek on condition of anonymity.

The revelation that the FBI has discovered additional emails convulsed the political world, and led to widespread (and erroneous) claims and speculation…  The truth is much less explosive. There is no indication the emails in question were withheld by Clinton during the investigation, the law enforcement official told Newsweek, nor does the discovery suggest she did anything illegal.

Also, none of the emails were to or from Clinton, the official said. Moreover, despite the widespread claims in the media that this development had prompted the FBI to “reopen” of the case, IT DID NOT; such investigations are never actually closed, and it is common for law enforcement to discover new information that needs to be examined.

My, my why would Republican James Comey drop this bombshell now?  We keep hearing that Comey is an honorable man, above reproach but is he?  From The Common Sense Show:

Excerpt:

Comey Oversaw Drug Cartel Money Laundering Operations As a Top Executive At HSBC Bank

Before becoming the director of the FBI, Director Comey, worked at the criminal bank of HSBC which laundered drug cartel and terrorist drug money in the worst banking scandal in US history.

My best insider source states that FBI Director James Comey has absolutely no law enforcement background, and is not qualified to run the FBI. To add insult to injury, the FBI Director held an executive position at HSBC Bank, while extreme money laundering operations where (sic) being carried out by the Mexican Drug Cartel and their terrorist allies with the direct assistance of HSBC banking officials. I asked my source if Comey would have known, and he replied “he would have to have been drunk 24/7 to not know what was going on”.

Comey did not just work at HSBC bank as his resume indicates (see below). He was on the Executive Board at the very time the HSBC scandal was breaking. There is no way he did not know as he looked the other way. And when he was vetted for his job as FBI Director, they knew then, he was in a key position of an organization that was caught laundering Mexican drug cartel money for the Sinoloas, the Los Zetas and their terrorist allies. Yet, despite this information which is publicly available, he was made the FBI Director with no law enforcement background!

Oh, dear and this is the man that dropped the bombshell that Hillary Clinton is being investigated for e-mails sent from Anthony Weiner’s personal computer.  E-mails that according to Newsweek had, “virtually nothing to do with any actions taken by the Democratic nominee.”  Whose interests are being served by Republican James Comey?  Maybe this article by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts can shed some light on Comey’s conflict of interest.

Excerpt:

The Failure of Democracy -- How The Oligarchs Plan To Steal The Election

I am now convinced that the Oligarchy that rules America intends to steal the presidential election. In the past, the oligarchs have not cared which candidate won as the oligarchs owned both. But they do not own Trump…

Who are the oligarchs?

--Wall Street and the mega-banks too big to fail and their agent the Federal Reserve, a federal agency that put five banks ahead of millions of troubled American homeowners who the Federal Reserve allowed to be flushed down the toilet. In order to save the mega-banks' balance sheets from their irresponsible behavior, the Fed has denied retirees any interest income on their savings for eight years, forcing the elderly to draw down their savings, leaving their heirs, who have been displaced from employment by corporate jobs offshoring, penniless.

--The military/security complex which has spent trillions of our taxpayer dollars on 15 years of gratuitous wars based entirely on lies in order to enrich themselves and their power.

--The neoconservatives whose crazed ideology of US world hegemony thrusts the American people into military conflict with Russia and China…

Hmmm, Wall Street mega-banks, the military/security complex and crazed neoconservatives hell bent on World War III stand to gain if Comey’s FBI can destroy the two front runners in the presidential election.  Gee, no conflict of interest there.  Paul Ryan and the GOP controlled congress are lapping up Comey’s latest witch hunt Pablum.  But if anyone believes this revelation by Comey is designed to benefit Donald Trump they are “dead wrong.”

What convinces me that the Oligarchy intends to steal the election is the vast difference between the presstitutes' reporting and the facts on the ground.  According to the presstitutes, Hillary is so far ahead that there is no point in Trump supporters bothering to vote…  I am yet to see one Hillary yard sign, but Trump signs are everywhere. Reports I receive are that Hillary's public appearances are unattended but Trump's are so heavily attended that people have to be turned away. This is a report from a woman in Florida:

"Trump has pulled huge numbers all over FL while campaigning here this week. I only see Trump signs and stickers in my wide travels. I dined at a Mexican restaurant last night. Two women my age sitting behind me were talking about how they had tried to see Trump when he came to Tallahassee. They left work early, arriving at the venue at 4:00 for a 6:00 rally. The place was already over capacity so they were turned away. It turned out that there were so many people there by 2:00 that the doors had to be opened to them. The women said that the crowds present were a mix of races and ages."

Interesting, in order for the oligarchs to succeed with a coup d'état this election is to create their own reality.  In other words they must convince the people that the two front runners are so unpopular that they cannot amass the 270 electoral votes to become president.  It’s the old “who are you going to believe me or your own lyin’ eyes.”   A free and honest press is vital to Democracy and we do not have a free or honest press.  Now AT&T is planning on merging with Time Warner to form the largest media monopoly in history, but Donald Trump has stated unequivocally his administration will block this unholy marriage.  From Bloomberg:

Excerpt:

Trump Would Block AT&T-Time Warner Deal in Media Crackdown

Donald Trump said he would block the AT&T Inc.-Time Warner Inc. tie-up if he becomes president, arguing that such media combinations leave too much power concentrated among too few companies, including ones he says are hostile to his presidential bid and rigging the election for Hillary Clinton.

The Republican commented during a speech on Saturday in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, billed as an unveiling of Trump’s “contract with the voter” and prospective actions for his first 100 days…  Trump also suggested he would favor a breakup of NBC and Comcast Corp., a merger completed in 2013.

Such deals, he said, are “poison” to democracy and result in companies “telling the voters what to think and what to do.” Trump, who has called the U.S. election rigged multiple times this month, didn’t discuss mergers among non-media companies.

Well, well is Trump right?  Are such deals as the NBC/Comcast and AT&T/Time Warner poison to democracy?  From Silicon Beat:

Excerpt:

AT&T built system for spying on own customers, selling info to law enforcement for millions: report

News that Yahoo reportedly gave in to a court order without a fight and spied on users on behalf of the FBI generated massive public outrage. Now it appears that AT&T has been spying on its customers on behalf of various law enforcement agencies, and that it’s been raking in millions of dollars in exchange for information about users, including their locations.

The telecommunications giant, whose planned $85 billion purchase of Time-Warner faces heavy scrutiny by regulators, created the “Hemisphere” program and used it to make millions of dollars a year peddling users’ personal information to police and other agencies, according to The Daily Beast…

AT&T developed Hemisphere in 2007, and it’s now used in 28 Drug Enforcement Agency intelligence centers, according to the article. Employees of the telecom reportedly analyze AT&T’s data on users to give information to the DEA.

Gee, that seems in violation of the constitution of America.  Sounds like a case for the US Supreme Court, our highest authority on the constitution.  An august body above reproach for their “non-partisan” interpretation of the constitution.  Not.  From Slate:

Excerpt:

No More Bush v. Gore

For many years after the Supreme Court ruled 5–4, along partisan lines, to resolve the 2000 election in a way that ensured George W. Bush would win the presidency, Justice Antonin Scalia would unerringly answer questions about Bush v. Gore and a potentially stolen election with a tart admonition to “get over it.”

The late justice’s words drove liberals nuts—it was about as dismissive as he could be without resorting to his middle finger. But as we fret about the toxic—and possibly even violent—outcome of a presidential election seen by a great swath of the electorate as illegitimate, and as we worry about the impossibility of post-election repair, Justice Scalia’s seemingly snotty answer reveals just what has been lost between 2000 and 2016.

Despite the rank injustice of how the 2000 election was decided, and the staggering silliness of the majority opinion in Bush v. Gore, Americans tolerated the judicial decree that the election was over…  Senate Republicans have now clearly signaled that any nominee seated by a Democratic president will not be “their” justice and a court dominated by Democratic appointees is no longer a real court.

So the oligarch controlled GOP has drawn a line in the sand, if the GOP loses the election they will not confirm any Supreme Court Justice nominated by a Democrat, effectively initiating a judicial coup.  Only a SCOTUS approved by the oligarchs is “legitimate.”  So will the 2016 election be stolen by the oligarchs?  In order to do so there must be massive, behind-the-scenes fraud.  From Insider Fox News:

Excerpt:

Officials in 2 States Say Early Voters Want to Change Their Ballots

Voters in Minnesota and Wisconsin have the option of changing their vote if they cast their ballots early or as absentees.  Rich Edson reported on "America's Election HQ" today that officials in the two states have confirmed that some voters are indeed changing their minds and their ballots.  Edson reported that the Minnesota Secretary of State's Office says that voters can ask to cancel their ballot until the close of business one week before Election Day.  "Wisconsin officials say voters can cancel their absentee ballots up to three times," Edson noted.

Ha, ha.  Who do you think those “some voters” are?  And what about those previous two votes cast, will they be counted as legitimate votes?  Are some voters allowed to cast three votes in Wisconsin?  You betcha.  Do you think elections in “Koch Brothers’ Korrupt Wisconsin are legitimate? 

He said that these rules are particularly significant in this election, with all the late-breaking sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump and WikiLeaks dumps of Hillary Clinton campaign emails.

"Now, thousands of voters in those states can resubmit their ballots if revelations about the candidates change their mind."

Yes, while some voters in Scott Walker’s Wisconsin can cast three ballots, students at UW-GB will have a difficult time even casting one vote, thanks to the GOP. From The Nation:

Excerpt:

A City Clerk Opposed an Early-Voting Site at UW–Green Bay Because ‘Students Lean More Toward the Democrats’

Carly Stumpner, a junior biology major at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, had an hour between classes to vote during Wisconsin’s April 5 presidential primary. But when she arrived at her polling place on campus, the line stretched for two hours across the student union...   When polls closed at 8 pm, there were still 150 students waiting to vote. “Some people described it as chaos,” reported Ellery McCardle of the local ABC affiliate. “People were standing shoulder to shoulder, there was absolutely no room to move around in here.”

After the primary, leaders of eight different student groups—including the Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian parties and the Black Student Union—asked the city to put an early-voting location on campus to alleviate long lines. But city officials ignored the request and opened only one early-voting site on September 26 for the entire city—the third-largest in Wisconsin—at the clerk’s office, a 15-minute drive from campus, which is open only during business hours. City Clerk Kris Teske, an appointee of Republican Mayor Jim Schmitt, a close ally of Governor Scott Walker, said the city didn’t have the money, time, or security to open an early-voting location on campus or anywhere else…

But privately Teske gave a different reason for opposing an early-voting site at UW–Green Bay…   “I have heard it said that students lean more toward the democrats…  In 2014, Wisconsin’s Republican legislature eliminated early-voting hours on nights and weekends and restricted early-voting sites to one location per city.

GOP State Senator Glenn Grothman, who’s now a member of Congress, cited extended early-voting hours in heavily Democratic cities like Madison and Milwaukee and said, “I want to nip this in the bud before too many other cities get on board.”

Even Barack Obama and John McCain are now admitting the election is rigged.  From Veterans Today:

Did McCain and Obama BOTH admit 2016 election is rigged?

In a stunning bipartisan admission, President Barrack Obama and Sen. John McCain reportedly have revealed that the outcome of the upcoming presidential election has been essentially decided in advance, and that the pre-ordained winner – barring an act of God – will be Hillary Clinton.  McCain’s reported remarks echoed Obama’s statement in August that Trump will be declared the loser, and will not even be allowed to raise questions, unless he is at least 10 or 15 points ahead:

“If Mr. Trump is up 10 or 15 points on Election Day and ends up losing, then maybe he can raise some questions,” President Obama stated on August 4th according to Reuters… The official admission that Trump will not be allowed to even “raise questions,” much less claim victory, unless he is “up 10 or 15 points” speaks volumes about American elections…

The official admission that Trump will not be allowed to even “raise questions,” much less claim victory, unless he is “up 10 or 15 points” speaks volumes about American elections. If you win by less than 10 or 15 percent, they will steal the election from you – as Bush/Cheney did when Kerry won by roughly 54% – 46% in 2004, but had the result nullified by rigged voting machines. The cyber expert who rigged the machines, Mike Connell, was killed in an engineered plane crash shortly before he was scheduled to testify in court against Karl Rove.

That’s right, unless Donald Trump wins with a “fraud-proof margin” he cannot even question the preordained results.   So just eleven days before the presidential election, the oligarchs have thrown a “hail Mary” pass to Paul Ryan and the oligarch controlled congress.  It doesn’t matter that there’s no there, there.  The media will run with the “bombshell” October Surprise provided by the oligarch’s handmaiden James Comey. 

After the election Comey will receive another cushy job for his service to the oligarchs, maybe at the World Bank this time.  The results are in, the election is rigged, and Americans have a choice in front of them, they can either rise up and fight against the oligarchs or take Antonin Scalia’s advice and “get over it.” I for one will fight.

By Patricia Baeten

The consequences of “accepting the outcome” of a fraudulent election

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.   Abraham Lincoln

On Friday I stopped at a local pizza parlor to grab a quick, late lunch and as I waited I saw a full-page newspaper story on the 2000 election.  In the article it said that “Al Gore accepted the outcome of the election and stepped aside for the good of the Nation.”  The first thought that came to my mind was, is this an episode of “Fractured Fairy Tales?”  “Fractured Fairy Tales” was a segment on the cartoon show “Rocky and Bullwinkle” where well-known fairy tales were re-written in order to change the moral of the story.  It occurred to me that the 2000 election is being rewritten to change the actual sequence of events and the real consequences of “accepting the outcome” of a rigged election.

Accepting the outcome

The Florida coup d’état was well-planned by Governor Jeb Bush, the brother of the GOP candidate, his secretary of State Katherine Harris and Theresa LaPore.  First there were bogus felon lists that contained a list of names of individuals that were convicted of felonies in Florida as well as neighboring states.  Any person with a similar name was listed as a felon and denied the right to vote, especially minorities with similar surnames such as Jackson.  It is estimated that 173,000 names were purged from the Florida voter registry by the office of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris.  Florida was the only state that payed a private company that promised to “cleanse” voter rolls.

Then there was the butterfly ballot.  In America by legal statute the Republican candidate is listed first on the ballot and the Democrat is listed second.  On the butterfly ballot, on the left side where the presidential candidates were listed, first was Bush and second was Gore.  However if you punched the second hole you were voting for Patrick Buchanan since the butterfly ballot placed Buchanan on the right side of the ballot which made a punch in the second hole a Buchanan vote.  According to the Green Party:

Excerpt:

Butterfly ballots are the most prone to voter confusion as it is not clear which hole goes with which candidate. Palm Beach County, the one county in Florida that used this system, is a predominantly Democratic-leaning county yet extreme conservative candidate Pat Buchanan had a phenomenal showing there…

Pat Buchanan himself has admitted that most of his votes in Palm Beach County were meant for Al Gore, saying he "did not campaign and bought no advertising there."  He added, "I would say 95 to 98 percent of [the votes] were for Gore.”

An investigation by the Civil Rights Commission also found that Governor Bush had a multi-pronged voter purge on November 7^th, 2000.  

Excerpt:

TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Jeb Bush told a panel hearing complaints of voting irregularities in Florida that he had no plans to order his own investigation into the Nov. 7 election although he has the authority to do so.

Bush answered questions from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission looking at allegations of voting problems, including complaints that registered voters were turned away from the polls, election equipment in poor precincts was outdated, state police put up roadblocks near polling sites and non-English speaking voters weren't helped to cast their votes…

By day's end, commission members appeared frustrated by state officials -- including Bush -- claiming that local authorities have control over Florida elections…

Peaceful transition of power?

Even with all the election tampering on the part of the Jeb Bush Administration and the GOP, Al Gore still won Florida.  In spite of a media collectively claiming that Bush had won along with Gore’s DNC hand-picked war hawk Vice Presidential candidate, Joe Lieberman calling for Gore to concede the election, the allegations of widespread corruption in Florida reached Al Gore who requested a recount of the votes.

The Florida Supreme Court, who had sole jurisdiction over the election ordered a recount of the votes in Florida.  As the recount began the GOP organized what was called the “Brooks Brothers Riot” that would violently attack the people counting the votes, threatening their lives, shutting down the recount operation.”

Excerpt:

After the Miami “Brooks Brothers Riot” – named after the protesters’ preppie clothing – no government action was taken beyond the police rescuing several Democrats who were surrounded and roughed up by the rioters. While no legal charges were filed against the Republicans, newly released documents show that at least a half dozen of the publicly identified rioters were paid by Bush’s recount committee.

The payments to the Republican activists are documented in hundreds of pages of Bush committee records – released grudgingly to the Internal Revenue Service last month, 19 months after the 36-day recount battle ended. Overall, the records provide a road map of how the Bush recount team brought its operatives across state lines to stop then-Vice President Al Gore’s recount efforts.  The records show that the Bush committee spent a total of $13.8 million to frustrate the recount of Florida’s votes and secure the state's crucial electoral votes for Bush.

In addition, as the “Brooks Brothers Riot” was taking place, paid goons were bussed into Washington to surround Vice President Gore’s residence at the Naval Observatory and scream “get out of Cheney’s House.”  Due to the escalating violence, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in, even though they had no statutory authority to do so, and five Republican justices overturned the will of the voters and installed George W. Bush as POTUS.

Al Gore steps aside for the “good of the nation.”

Al Gore is credited with stepping aside and allowing the loser of the election to assume the office of the presidency.  But was it for “the good of the nation?”  Hardly, within nine months of assuming office the 911 attacks took place.  Could the attacks have been avoided under a President Gore?  Yes.  The first action of the Bush Administration was to throw out the recommendations of the Gore Commission on aviation safety and the Hart-Rudman Commission’s recommendations to protect the country from terror attacks.  Bush appointed Vice President Cheney to conduct his own study.  Sadly after the 911 attacks Jake Tapper wrote about the deep remorse felt by the Hart-Rudman Commission co-chairs:

Excerpt:

Sept. 12, 2001 | WASHINGTON -- They went to great pains not to sound as though they were telling the president "We told you so."

But on Wednesday, two former senators, the bipartisan co-chairs of a Defense Department-chartered commission on national security, spoke with something between frustration and regret about how White House officials failed to embrace any of the recommendations to prevent acts of domestic terrorism delivered earlier this year.

Bush administration officials told former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo., and Warren Rudman, R-N.H., that they preferred instead to put aside the recommendations issued in the January report by the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century. Instead, the White House announced in May that it would have Vice President Dick Cheney study the potential problem of domestic terrorism -- which the bipartisan group had already spent two and a half years studying -- while assigning responsibility for dealing with the issue to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, headed by former Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh.

Before the White House decided to go in its own direction, Congress seemed to be taking the commission's suggestions seriously, according to Hart and Rudman. "Frankly, the White House shut it down," Hart says…  "We predicted it," Hart says of Tuesday's horrific events. "We said Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers -- that's a quote (from the commission's Phase One Report) from the fall of 1999."

On Tuesday, Hart says, as he sat watching TV coverage of the attacks, he experienced not just feelings of shock and horror, but also frustration. "I sat tearing my hair out," says the former two-term senator. "And still am."  Hart says he spent 90 minutes with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and an hour with Secretary of State Colin Powell lobbying for the White House to devote more attention to the imminent dangers of terrorism and their specific, detailed recommendations for a major change in the way the federal government approaches terrorism. He and Rudman briefed National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on the commission's findings… 

Back to the Future

Once again we have a candidate that is a threat to the military industrial complex.  Presidential candidate Donald Trump is being pilloried by the press for refusing to accept the outcome of the 2016 election before it has even occurred.  Trump has called the election “rigged” and refuses to accept the preordained conclusion of the vote count.  In 2000 Al Gore stepped aside when he couldn’t garner the support of his party.  Should Donald Trump for “the good of the nation” pledge to accept the corrupt election results that are in before the first vote is cast? 

We, as Americans can only look back at history and decide, what will be the consequences if we decide to accept the outcome of another fraudulent election?  Will another Fractured Fairy Tale be written in four or eight years to explain why America went to war with Russia?  Only we hold the answers.

By Patricia Baeten