Morally Superior? My Heiney!

How many news reports were there of election frauds attempts this year? Here's an abbreviated list that I managed to compile in about thirty minutes of Googling:

• NRCC-sponsored robo-dialed phone calls designed to tick off Democrat voters and mislead them to believing that the Democrat candidate was responsible for the call
• Radio conservative Laura Ingraham tells listeners to jam a voter-fraud alert line in order to prevent legitimate claims from being reported. By the way, to do what she requested has a 2002 precedent of jail-time when Charles McGee was convicted in New Hampshire of a similar crime. I believe requesting over the radio for people to commit a crime carries a charge of Conspiracy; I hope you like prison, "Dr." Laura.
• Electronic software tampering using every Republican's favorite corrupt electronic company: Diebold
• Switching a voter's party affiliation without their knowledge or consent
• Threatening to arrest immigrant voters if they come to the polls

The only Democrat-based accusation of fraud that I was able to come across was this humorous editorial in which the author complains that "[g]etting people to vote for moderates, to put extremists in power, may be the newest and biggest voter fraud." In other words, the only fraud perpetrated in his scenario was to campaign for yourself, so long as you're a liberal.

Maybe the Shell-Shock is Real

For the first time, I think I actually believe President Bush on something: He truly didn't expect to take a "thumpin" on Election Day. I've mentioned in earlier posts how there seemed to be a lack of a Plan B of any kind, and I've had trouble believing that such consummate professional politicians would be that careless. I mean, anyone who's ever heard of the phrase "Gallup Poll" would have known that Democrats were leading in the double-digits across most races. Only an ostrich-esk force of will to shove your head underground would have prevented the somewhat obvious possibility of loss to enter one's mind. I think I've come up with a viable hypothesis as to why exactly this occurred: Plans to rig the election failed.

Think about it: What were some of the first stories you heard Tuesday morning? There were stories and stories of electronic voting machines not coming online and poll-workers were having to resort to using paper ballots. Let's assume that you're a crooked politician that has gone through lots of trouble to fix an election using tampered electronic voting machines. How well would you fare if those machines were bypassed altogether?

And yes, I think that some tampering was present. In this CNN article, poll workers are quoted as saying "The company that made the machines said the PIN numbers were wrong on the cards needed to activate the machines," and while I don't know these machines specifically, I imagine that swapping out a memory card might affect the associated PIN value.

Heckuva Job, part 2

This turned out to be longer than I anticipated, so rather than posting as a comment, I'm making another entry for today. Here I list relevant portions of the Q&A session President Bush had today with reporters about letting Rumsfeld go.

Reporter: Last week you told us that Secretary Rumsfeld would be staying on. Why is the timing right now for [accepting the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld]? And how much does it have to do with the election results?

President Bush: Right.

No, you and [wire service reporters Terence] Hunt and Kyle came in the Oval Office and you asked — Hunt asked me the question one week before the campaign, and basically it was: You going to do something about Rumsfeld and the vice president? And my answer was, you know, they're going to stay on.

And the reason why is I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign.

And so the only way to answer that question and to get you onto another question was to give you that answer. [emphasis is mine]

The truth of the matter is, as well -- I mean, that's one reason I gave the answer. But the other reason why is I hadn't had a chance to visit with Bob Gates yet, and I hadn't had my final conversation with Don Rumsfeld yet, at that point.

[Backpeddling at realization of admission to lies]

Later in the Q&A session, the President decides to add more onto his earlier response, and adds the following:

President Bush: And secondly, I hadn't visited with Bob Gates. I told you, I visited with him last Sunday in Crawford. You can't replace somebody until you know you've got somebody to replace him with. And, finally, I hadn't had my last conversation with Secretary Rumsfeld, which I had yesterday.

So, it seems that President Bush was eager to replace Secretary Rumsfeld, he just needed to find the right person for the job, right? If that's true, here's a question for you: Since Republican leaders were urging the President to remove Secretary Rumsfeld from his position, and he was planning to do just this, why not tell everyone in a press release as this would surely help his party in the election yesterday. My hypothesis: President Bush only decided to replace Secretary Rumsfeld after the election results were clear, contrary to what he stated today.

Kerry's Botched Joke

I'm actually quite surprised that the Republicans went crazy with this one considering that they've had six years experience with someone that routinely mangles sentences.

• ...fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.
• Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?
• We ought to make the pie higher.
• I will have a foreign-handed foreign policy.
• Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.
• If I'm the president, we're going to have emergency-room care, we're going to have gag orders.

I'm sure you all recognize the speaker of these quotations. Unless President Bush intends to leviate fruit-filled pastries, I believe there's a precedent for allowing a little leeway with foot-in-mouth disease when non-comedians try too hard to deliver a punchline.

Rummy, You're Doing a Heckuva Job

Now get out

President Bush just concluded his press conference in which he announced that he'd be accepting the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. During the question and answer session, he let something rather interesting slip. When asked about comments made during an interview with some reporters within the Oval Office, he admitted to lying to them, just to get them to change the subject. I can't post exact quotes yet, as no one has posted the transcripts so soon after the press conference, but I will attach them to this post as a comment when they become available.

To paraphrase, he was asked about comments made earlier about whether he'd keep Rumsfeld on staff, and the President replied not only in the affirmative, but that Rumsfeld would retain his Office for as long as President Bush did. Elsewhere in the Q&A, Bush claimed that he was planning, at that same time, to interview Bob Gates for Rummy's position. Seems to me that that was a good place for a "No comment" or Bush's trademark shrug-off of the question, not to lie (and in hyperbole, no less).

My opinion is that Bush never planned to talk to Bob Gates, and in fact hadn't talked to Bob Gates, until today, the 8th, after the election result were clear. Another admission of President Bush was that he did no anticipate any midterm losses for his party, so it stands to reason that he never anticipated letting Rummy leave until it became apparent that they did lose seats. Many seats.

Rumsfeld himself had made comments last week that he would stay in his appointment (one assumes he also meant as long as it pleases the President) even if the Democrats swept Congress during the midterms. Then why did he resign before the results were even confirmed? Were his statements merely an attempt to persuade liberal voters to stay home, to make them think that even a historic turnout wouldn't persuade the Administration to change their course? Or was it simply arrogance on his part, and his firm (yet incorrect) belief that the Republicans would continue to control Congress, as they done for the last twelve years.

In my opinion, all of this smacks of not only arrogance, but a complete lack of an ability to formulate a "Plan B". A wise politician (truthfully, any wise person) should plan ahead for the unfortunate. I think what we see here is that there were no plans for if they lost the election, just as there were no plans for if civil war erupted in Iraq, or if a massive hurricane slammed New Orleans, or any of the dozens of Administration failures over the last six years.

The RNCC Communications Director doesn't know her demographic?

So, it's Election Day and I'm reading this article in the Philadelphia Daily News that talks about RNCC-sponsored crank-calling campaign-calling with illegally formatted messages. (I say "illegally formatted" as political calls such as this are required to first state the candidate on whose behalf the call is made; these are stating the opponent first, typically just as the receiver is hanging up.)

At any rate, I called the RNCC, as the article above so very nicely provided the phone number, and asked if they are sponsoring robocalls. The young lady who answered the phone confirmed that they are. I asked who their targeted demographic was, whether they were calling Republicans or Democrats. She immediately transferred me to their Communications Director. When she picked up, I asked her the same question: Who is their demographic for these calls, Republicans, Democrats, or both? Her response: "I don't know." You don't know? "I don't know." You're paying thousands of dollars to advertise to a group of people and you can't even loosely describe their composition? You didn't give some sort of guidelines to the marketing firm that you hired to perform this function? Doubtful. Why do people continue to argue that the Republican party has some sort of monopoly on the moral high ground? I'm up here, and frankly, I don't even see their footprints.

Plan for Iraq

President Bush is once again bashing Democrats claiming that they have no plan for handling Iraq. I'm surprised he continues to say this considering that he himself doesn't want to discuss his plan, if he has one, other than "Stay the Course." That's apparently not working very well what with almost as many troops dead now as people killed in the WTC attack (not that the two are related, but he likes to imply they are).

I think to myself, I wish the Democrats would just announce their Iraq plan, but then I realize that that would be a very stupid thing to do. Does a football coach announce his game plan prior to the game; what plays he's going to utilize? Why announce your plans to the world and allow the intended targets to nullify them? Isn't this the same rationale Dubya uses for not describing whatever the heck he thinks he's doing?

But let's for a moment give the President the benefit of the doubt (which is quite difficult with so many proven lies in his past). What reason might exist that would prevent the Democrats from developing a war plan? They do have more war veterans in their party than Republicans, so it's not lack of experience. Perhaps it's that the White House has classified most war-related information so high that the bulk of Congress does not have access to them. Is this necessary, or just a methodology to prevent political opponents from creating informed plans?