189. DIEBOLD (OR AT LEAST TRIP FORCEFULLY INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT)

... preferably on top of an electronic voting machine that you permanently disable.

From the Archives

(January 2006) I’ve been pondering what to plant in my yard this spring because, yes, as a matter of fact I do have spring fever already.

Blame it on what writer John Rosenthal refers to as January Spring—that five-week period down south when temperatures suddenly soar into the seventies and the sky turns an unblemished blue that is all the more vibrant because we’ve seen nothing but foggy gray for so long.

We Southerners spy that blue and go into a fit—pull out T-shirts and shorts and freeze our tits off as we stand outside oohing and aaahing over the foolish pink tulip poplars and purple hyacinths that have bloomed way too early again and we silently agree to pretend that we don’t know that it will freeze again before winter is officially over.

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So it’s 31 January 2006. Thomas Merton’s birthday and the 141st anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment—which I suppose makes it a particularly appropriate day for Coretta Scott King to die.

Then again, maybe she just couldn’t bear the reality of a 58–43 split vote confirming a Supreme Court neocon who is so opposed to affirmative action.

(And then there were none....)

I guess we should all look forward to the boy king bragging about his latest victory in his fifth State of The (Dis)Union Address tonight, huh?

Not that I’ll bother to listen. I know branding and doublespeak when I hear it and would rather read the summary and assessments tomorrow.

And speaking of Bush&Co’s reign of error, Tomdispatch.com points out that four Januaries have already passed since our wanna-be emperor used his address to “brand Iran, Iraq, and North Korea—the first two then bitter enemies, the third completely unrelated to either of them and on the other side of the planet—as a World-War-II-style ‘axis of evil.’”

And it’s already been three Januaries since W said, with a straight face, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Progressives are calling for people to “make a joyful noise and figuratively drown out” the Address tonight. This is part one of a two-part Bush Step Down rally that culminates Saturday in front of the White House, where they plan to demand that W step down and take his program with him.

Now I’m all for rallies that might accomplish something—or at least draw attention to an issue that can be addressed—but this is the pure-T definition of pipe dream.

I do hope that more independent news outlets will notice the statistics cited in Mark Crispin Miller’s Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They’ll Steam the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them) and pressure politicians to investigate yet another potential crime committed by this administration though.

Miller says

for GOP voters, the 2004 presidential election was little short of miraculous: Behind in the Electoral College even on the afternoon of the vote, the Bush-Cheney ticket staged a stunning comeback. Usually reliable exit polls turned out to be wrong by an unprecedented 5 percent in swing states. Conservatives argued, and the media agreed, that ‘moral values’ had made the difference.

(Can you say branding?) Miller says theft, not moral values, swung the election. And he uses statistics to back up his claim.

In reference to the 2002 congressional elections, he outlines how, in Colorado, Georgia, Minnesota, and

a couple of other states—there was what we might call "Diebold magic" everywhere. In all these states, you had far-right-wing politicians predicted to lose by pre-election newspaper polls and by exit polls,

yet all of them won.

During the presidential elections, electronic touchscreen machines flipped Kerry votes into Bush votes in at least 11 states and evidence of wrongdoing in Ohio is copious.

Bush allegedly won that state by 118,000 votes, but the various stratagems, tricks and tactics used to prevent people from registering, to prevent them from voting, to throw away provisional ballots [see John Conyers’ report to the House Judiciary Committee]—all ... add up to a number far greater than 118,000.

Ohio practices were applied in other key states as well, most notably Florida, Oregon, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, New York and New Mexico, where

we're told that Bush won by some 7,000 votes. We know of over 17,000 Democratic voters who were unable to cast a vote for president [though] because the touchscreen machines in their districts refused to record a vote for president.

These 17,000-plus New Mexicans turned out to vote in Democratic areas, and they didn't record a vote for president. Seventeen thousand is 10,000 more than 7,000. That glitch alone can account for the ostensible victory margin of Bush over Kerry in New Mexico. Greg Palast's new book will have a whole chapter on New Mexico. It's hair-raising stuff, and we haven't heard a word about it. The same kind of thing happened in Iowa, where Bush supposedly won by under 10,000 votes.

The press kept telling us after the election that a huge outpouring of religious voters account for Bush's miraculous victory.

Well that's nothing more than a talking point that the religious right itself put out after the election. There is no statistical evidence whatsoever that there was any increase in the number of religious voters. ... Exit polls were most inaccurate—by a big margin—in those areas that used electronic voting machines with no paper trail ... (and particularly noticeable in 5 swing states).

Miller advises people to check out the Election Incident Reporting System website, where you can type in the name of your state or county and see a transcript of all the complaints that were lodged that day by people who called 1-866-MY-VOTE.

And on that note, I am going to change into my gym clothes and go break some things in kung fu class.

180. STRATEGIC DISTRACTIONS, OR, WHEN IN DOUBT, ADD MORE CHEESE!

From the Archives

(January 2006) The latter part of my title (“When in doubt, add more cheese”) is the final line of a New York Times food article written by a child of the seventies who grew up eating falafel and stir-fry and only recently discovered the pleasures of well-prepared macaroni and cheese.

This foodie would appreciate the graffiti scrawled on the bathroom door of a major live music venue here: Random Cheese Fact No. 4: Cheese is the best ingredient in any dish in which it is a part.

I don’t have any clue why someone would pay good money to see Sun Ra or the Connells or Two Dollar Pistols, then head to the bathroom to scrawl cheese facts on the door, but there you have it.

(And ueah I’ve been ranting about our government so much lately that I figured I’d talk about food today before I slip into a familiar rant.)

So, yeah. In the deep south where I was raised (twitch twitch), macaroni and cheese is a staple. A field guide to the region would define its natural habitat as Baptist meals on the grounds, funeral wakes, Sunday afternoon family gatherings, your Grandmother’s Thanksgiving table, hot food bars, and little plastic children’s bowls everywhere.

My paternal grandmother always arrived at our house for Thanksgiving carrying a glass baking dish of the creamy stuff fitted into a matching wicker basket (and, incidentally, made THE BEST macaroni and cheese in the world).

The gourmands who insist that Whole Food’s free-range chickens taste divine tend to incorporate a horrid white sauce, but even this newly macaronied author recognizes that this sauce is wrong for the dish.

(And, come to think of it, my ex Mud once took this mistake a step further and added onions to her bechemel sauce.)

Any southerner worth her weight in grits would tell you that you should not get too adventurous with time-honored culinary traditions that are all about nostalgia and comfort though (although parmesan-topped collard greens ain’t half bad).

Meanwhile, the White House now has three leak investigations underway.

(No, not corruption investigations, leak investigations.)

The most secretive administration since Nixon—one that condones torture and suspects Mexicans crossing the border of terrorist acts—isn’t concerned with it’s corruption; they just wantsto know who dared challenge the dictator’s wishes.

(Wonder if the neocons handpicked their investigators to ensure that they only ask questions that monkeyboys can answer?)

So here, let me coin a phrase. Our administration is plaming the messenger. (You heard it here first.)

There's no so-called liberal bias behind my failure to understand how a thinking citizen can fail to notice that punishing whistleblowers thwarts democracy. Plamegate (or Nixon, Revisited) may catch up with the Administration eventually, but I bet attention will remain focused on who informed the public about the (illegal) eavesdropping.

(Speaking of which, wonder what Bunnatine Greenhouse is up to these days?)

I worry that Americans have been rendered so logic-impaired by the Tim Russerts and Rush Limbaughs and Pat Robertsons and yammering hate-radio soundbiters of our age that they’l kowtow to whatever the administration tells them to believe.

Or maybe we’re just decorative citizens now who spend our time focused on consumer questions such as what to wear and where to live and what ringtone to use on our flip-top mobile phonesas our civil rights vanish?

And why not? I mean, come on. Consumer culture tells us that we are defined by our material possessions and our very-own FEMA director wrote, in the midst of a hurricane that was drowning thousands of people, “I am a fashion god.”

Or, worst of all, do you think people actually believe that it’s fine for our unapologetic president to confer dictatorial authority on himself and to stalk anyone who dares question his authority?

(Yep. What a strategy: Plame the messenger and maybe no one will notice that a military coup is taking place in their homeland.)

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Meanwhile, I guess we’ll have to get ourselves geared up for the Alito hearings, which begin on Monday.

(That information alone has no doubt sent many a tofu-eating liberal in search of some good old mac and cheese.)

But we can at least remind ourselves that the GOP is mired in corruption and plaming the messenger will only cover that fact up for so long.

Alito is the scariest nominee since Bork. A loyal friend to big business who opposes to the Establishment Clause (which prohibits public prayer/religious displays) and is “especially proud” of his work opposing abortion and affirmative action.

He protects homophobic speech. And, at a time when corporations rape the environment even as our polar ice caps are melting, the judge favors limiting our ability to sue against toxic omissions under the Clean Air Act (which he probably also opposes).

Alito favors capital punishment for children and opposed admitting women to his alma mater. And he was deputy assistant attorney general to Ed Meese.

(Remember those “Meese Is A Pig” protests? I've still got my pig nose from them .)

He disagrees with the Miranda decision and struck down an anti-harassment policy that interfered with Christian groups’ right to speak out against queers (because, you know, it's just a life-style choice really. People can choose to whom we are attracted.).

Alito also has a history of being sole dissenter in cases involving sex or race discrimination.

(Thank you Daniel Pollitt for sharing this information with the world.)

...but enough about Alito because maybe you’d prefer to know which men are the nation’s most eligible bachelors.

That’s what Yahoo! is headlining today.

I feel trapped in a rock-paper-scissors world where convenience and stress and obligations and static from the talking heads are trumping my civil rights. And I don’t like it one bit.

SANG IN SHOWER: “Rock the boat, don’t rock the boat baby. Rock the boat. Don’t tip the boat over.” Who sang that? I want to say Hues Corporation but am too lazy to Google it.

READING: The Nation