Operation Iron Claw - repulsican manipulation continues

Part 1 - Operation Iron Claw , as distinct from open hand.

Who would have guessed, more republican electoral shenanigans. Do you think they do this because they can't win fair? Have you trimmed the voting rolls in our county?( in your county?) Have you gotten the memo from Karl on who to disqualify? Anyone with "certain kind of names?" Try any spelling! - are you folks going to try that one again?

Have you accepted the premise that any unfair electoral sleight of hand is OK as long as you win office. Let me tell you if you haven't gotten THIS MEMO - Democrats will be watching for MORE REPUBLICAN ELECTION DECEIT. We're fed up.

It's hardly news, the REPUBLICANS HAVE ANOTHER DUBIOUS STRATEGY to thwart a fair and legitimate electoral process. But, they'll say - its all perfectly legal, and they certainly don't have to worry about FAIR - After all they've got the legislature in a stranglehold.

Remember the last mantra? "TAX REDUCTION WON"T IMPACT FUNDING" education won't be touched, or health and safety - remember the promises. They don't worry about electoral niceties - ANYTHING GOES WITH THEM - They're republicans, they need to tamper with voting rolls to win, and they need Supreme Court Justices to stop the vote counting. Oh, and did I forget, they prefer the election equipment have no paper trail ... I wonder why?

IRONCLAW... sounds like open handed government in t he SUNSHINE to me?

Part 2 -Tin-Tentacle gang

I have never met a democrat who ran as a republican or as an independent, and I have been a democratic activist all my 1/2 century. I have however seen and heard republicans who have claimed to be NON-PARTISAN, being uniters not dividers while they winnowed the polls and pulled every trick in the book to rig what they couldn't win.

How anyone could praise someone running for office with a stealth (no announced plan, no public agenda). Is that what you call leadership? Is that what you offer to contribute to the future of this part of FLORIDA, no public plan, no public "open" agenda.

The Iron Claw, what a joke - You've seen too many James Bond movies, too many propaganda films. This county, this state needs open meetings, and leaders who can openly discuss the problems and challenges, not subtle political tactics to further insult the voters. Insulted voters are wary and apathetic. Just like the gutting of public education, these things happen for a reason.

People who run for office, should listen and present their plans and policies, not hide behind voter apathy so that a tiny minority create a powerful plurality. Stealth agenda indeed. Citizens who care about the world their great grandchildren will live in, who aren't blinded by "cute pseudo robusto" clubby names, and can see exactly what the tin-tentacle is reaching for... with its non-campaign campaign.

RW Spisak
janhuss@bellsouth.net

Thoughts on watching, reliving " RECOUNT" on HBO

It just seems that letting them get away with tilting the playing field, isn't non-partisan, it's not sour grapes to call it what it was. It would be protecting the integrity of the democratic voting system? Does democracy mean nothing?

I thought Warren Christopher's mistake was misunderstanding the damage inherent in the database driven disenfranchisement. That wasn't a mistake or an oversight, it was a coup. It was like misunderstanding Kristallnacht as the excesses of a few hooligans, or a "third rate burglary." Gutting the voting rolls isn't insignificant or merely partisan or even, just racist. It can only be understood as a crime against the nation. Or should I say, to be contemporary... the vaterland.

They are oligarchic barbarians not mere overzealous partisans. There is a difference, the problem was that the Gore team misjudged their opponents. and woe is the electorate.

Leaving the field because it would be troublesome and tendentious? Christopher's position was to leave the field to those bloody in tooth and claw. Above the fray, doesn't mean you can't stand up to the bullies. This was a "streetfight"; and using Marquis of Queensbury rules in that situation is like trying to debate with a cannibal, wrong language, a true failure to communicate.

Woe to Gore and Kerry and us, to have such Generals with such barbarians at the gates. Confronting them and calling out these enemies of democracy for what they are, but the Gore team had no stomach to protect democracy.

There opponents didn't play fair? So you ignore them, and refuse to soil your gloves? These poll tampering plutocrats, who imported rioters from the staff of republicans in congress and flew thugs to disrupt the count... This wasn't a competing party this was a thugocracy - to ignore this difference wasn't discretion it was capitulation.

This wasn't a competing political ideology or economic theory - but a well funded corporate backed [ENRON JET Fueled] organized gang who took a page from Nixxon's playbook, laying on Reagan & Ollie North (and Elliot Abrahm's) stand alone, off the shelf, war engine - sure they didn't need a draft, to pursue their "ALL WAR ALL THE TIME PLAN!" [your either with us, or your against us] foreign policy, they just purchased an "off-the-shelf" mercenary force.

Starve the government until it could be drowned in a tub, only applied to health, and welfare - the police and war state were positively catapulted - as in " You have to catapult the propaganda!" [GW Bush] - No money for levees in New Orleans or Education scholarships - but UNCOUNTED MILLIONS by the palette, for KBR & Haliburton

No, even blaming.. Gore and Kerry isn't adequate (albeit accurate) enough - can we confront them before Nov of 2008? Or will the dems just whimper and maybe scribble on their concentration camp walls - we was robbed and as they stare at their navels, and heaving a smug circumspect harumph, reminisce that it was we on watch, when they stole the last few historic artifacts of representative democracy?

Vote NO on TWO

Last night I listened as two young men, explained the onerous, and loathsome political calculus of the proponents of Amendment Two. I understood, when they explained that the important story to tell about NO ON TWO was that SENIORS would find that their last ditch economic survival strategy, where in many SENIORS cannot afford to marry, because they would then fall completely through the meager safety net that prevents them from smashing into the cold darwinian concrete. Losing tiny but helpful benefits due them... from survival benefits or widowhood.

VOTE NO ON TWO

They also explained that the largest group that would be affected unless FLORIDIANS VOTE NO ON TWO, would be hetero-couples who for a variety of reasons, have chosen to eschew not only a religious service, but also the sacred civic vows that warm the heart of many a paper pushing bureaucrat.
Hetero-Sexuals who live beyond the holy vows of a civil marriage. These fine yet sacrilegious folk would be faced with the economic and civic equivalent of an I.E.D. (Incivil Equality Disaster) when they tried to get insurance coverage for children born beyond the sacred pale of the bureaucrats stamp.

VOTE NO ON TWO

Or should they find themselves in need of say an emergency room, and then against all odds, survive long enough to inherit a bed, they might want to have a visit from their partner, or their beloved children. BUT NO, the MORALLY CRIPPLED among us, (THESE PROPONENTS of Amendment TWO) have a simple answer to a visit from a loved one, or health care by their company insurance. They JUST SAY NO!

VOTE NO ON TWO

They would turn to this patient, with their own hideous mocking rendition of high MORAL UMBRAGE and say, NO YOU cannot have the succor of your beloved yet unsanctioned family. Or worse, turn to the sick child and say, this child, like so many in FLORIDA, cannot enjoy even the modest protection of an insurance policy. All because, the TALIBAN have followed us home from the sacred soils of the middle east?

VOTE NO ON TWO!

NO because Americas' home grown, religious police, would, under the guise of a PUBLIC MORALITY CHECK damage our frayed public safety net further, to protect the American Family.

VOTE NO ON TWO.

These young men turned to the audience and asked rhetorically, I'm sure, what's next?
I said, helpfully, public stonings? the Stocks? Flogging? [Titters from the audience.] (Can he say that? Ed.)

They smiled (VOTE NO ON TWO) They said the next wedge issue these moral dwarves propose is to revamp the (presumedly promiscuous) NO FAULT DIVORCE. Because, after all, wheres the fun in that. After all if we can stir up a little more outrage among the intellectually stunted under-educated we might be able to place more SCALIAs and ALITOs and Thomases on Courts across the land. Watch your rights erode then!

VOTE NO ON TWO.

Memo to "W" the Taliban never did follow us home from their beloved and desolate hill-country. Very few donkeys can swim trans oceanically. The Taliban have been with us, since before Cotton Mather, and his vigilante buddies, burned bush-healers, women wise in herbs and folk medicine. Since before the Scopes Trial, (VOTE NO ON TWO) watch out Florida, there may be "Scopes" RERUNS in your future.

VOTE NO ON TWO!

They explained we don't want to raise the Human Rights issue of Gay Marriage... it's off the table... we have to fight this battle as a defense of seniors, and the poor unbeknighted heteros who dare to live exiled from the munificent blessings of the clerks stamp.

VOTE NO ON TWO.

I can only sigh and say, wasn't this whole revolution thing, about the Pursuit of Happiness? Or is that off the table too?

Four Scenes from Scenic Florida

scene 1: The ocean is vast. The ocean is dangerous. What's a litttle fish to do? Swim in a school. The Republicans, despite 13 million years of evolution, swear that is a conspiracy. They deny it's true.

They deny it from their country clubs and gated communities. They deny it from their mutually interlocking boards of directors. They complain about it at their fraternities and college prep schools. They denounce it from their business clubs and alumni associations. They complain about it at their exclusive members only private clubs. They pay their lobbyists to deny it. And they denounce it as a conspiracy of little fish, who have the temerity to refuse to swim alone, and just be LUNCH.

scene 2: A business association in Stuart, Florida, a group of business men and women listen as Florida Republican Legislator Gale Harrell explains that the draconian budget cuts that will stem from the Republican Legislature's sleight of hand property tax cuts will have no impact on services. There will be no impact on education. It will simply result in greater fiscal responsibility and local control. Since Florida is largely dependent on property taxes for most governmental resources how can cutting these funds not have a dramatic impact on local governmental services.

It's very simple she explains, with the burden of funding governmental services shifting from statewide government to local government think what fiscal responsibility we'll be cultivating. I asked, " Won't poor communities suffer, and affluent communities both be dependent on a smaller resource base?" But despite logic she continued; It won't impact schools, or police and fire or any important services since local government is inherently more responsible than state officials. Marco Rubio Republican Speaker of the Florida Legislature said, the tax changes will result merely in a shifting of budgetary burden from the state level to local government.

scene 3:
The legislature has completed it's 2008 legislative session. The state budget has fallen based on propoerty taxes, which in turn are dramtically impacted by the on the falling value of homes. The state budget shrinks and schools will experience reductions in staffing and per pupil spending. Police and fire funding will be greatly reduced. And while per pupil funding falls and tuition gets steeper. And promised scholarship money and student loans dry up. Money for prisons has been found. No corporate tax loophole have been closed. Remember they all assured us, there will be no impact from the tax reductions.


scene 4:
Do not swim together little fish, its better if you swim alone. Despite the wisdom of all life. Despite the wisdom, of solidarity.