But let’s have a word from someone who doesn’t do the old One-Two Goosestep March.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if just once, on some issue, the Bush administration came up with a plan that didn’t involve weakened environmental protection, financial breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations and reduced public oversight?”

— Paul Krugman

A good site to read today might be George orWell Bush.

Is it possible that we’ll see another Republican President tread the path previously hewn out of the political jungle by Richard Nixon and his Watergate plumbers?

Many people don’t believe it. Others think it’s impossible even if the Administration wanted to do it.

The Blue Lemur website provides a partial transcript of testimony before the Ohio Judiciary Committee investigating this issue. In it, a programmer testifies under oath that he was hired by a Florida Republican legislator (now congressman) for what he thought was a job detailing what to look for if the Democrats tried to rig voting machines to win the Florida election. Instead, he was told,

You don’t understand, we need to hide the fraud in the source. In the source code…. — site admin, Programmer that alleged vote-rigging prototype testifies to Democratic House Judiciary hearing in Ohio (December 14, 2004) The Blur Lemur.

After learning his job was to create vote-rigging software, he left the company and does not know if vote-rigging software was ever implemented. He did note that the exit polls should have tracked the vote, saying that the fact that they didn’t indicates either the exit polls or the vote were tampered with.

A lot of people don’t realize that exit polling isn’t a guessing game. It’s pretty solid science. In fact, exit polls are routinely utilized in foreign countries to detect election fraud. As Republican consultant and Fox “News” regular has said,

Exit polls are almost never wrong…. So reliable are the surveys that actually tap voters as they leave the polling places that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries. When I worked on Vicente Fox’s campaign in Mexico, for example, I was so fearful that the governing PRI would steal the election that I had the campaign commission two U.S. firms to conduct exit polls to be released immediately after the polls closed to foreclose the possibility of finagling the returns. Dick Morris, Those faulty exit polls were sabotage (November 4, 2004) The Political Life

Yet, Morris unabashedly goes on to state that this year, in the United States, “they got all the Bush states wrong.”

Steven F. Freeman, Ph.D., from the University of Pennsylvania, in his paper, “The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy,” also notes that exit polls are almost never wrong. (A PDF version is also available.) His paper documents instance after instance in nation after nation in which exit polls have been accurate to within a tenth of a percentage point. In fact, one reason exit polling was delayed by the “news” organizations this year is because the polls have historically been so accurate in the United States that reporting about them was felt to discourage voters from turning out. (It’s ironic that they did that this year, since in the last two elections, the results — being so close — would more likely inspire people to make sure they placed their vote!)

Even students learning about exit polls have these high degrees of accuracy: “Students at [Brigham Young University] have been conducting Utah exit polls since 1982.” Their tabulations? In the 2003 Salt Lake City mayoral race, they missed it by 0.2% — that’s right: two-tenths of a percentage point. And their tabulations in the 2004 Presidential Election predicted Kerry at 26.5% and Bush at 70.8%. The actual figures were Kerry, 26.4%; Bush, 71.1%. (Freeman, supra.)

So how did professionals get it wrong in states critical to Bush? How did Bush go from losing Iowa with only 48.4% (predicted) to winning by 50.1% (tallied)? How did he shift from a loss at 47.9% in Nevada to a win at 50.5%? A New Mexico loss at 47.5% to a New Mexico win at 50.0%? An Ohio loss of 47.9% to an Ohio win at 51.0%? How did the differences between exit polls and final vote counts in eleven battleground states range from 0% difference (only in Wisconsin) to as far off as 9.5%? How did George Bush go from losing the 2004 President election by 289 to 249 electoral votes in favor of Kerry to winning the election by 286 electoral votes to 252 in favor of Bush?

Chances are, the exit polls didn’t get it wrong. Given the track record of exit polls, it’s more likely the election was stolen by re-tabulating electronic votes in Republican-owned Diebold’s voting machines.

Were it not for this fraud, Kerry, not Bush, would be preparing for his inauguration. Kerry, not Bush, would be appointing the next several Supreme Court Justices. Kerry, not Bush, would be President. (And we wouldn’t be seeing international anti-U.S. sentiment in European countries starting to spill over towards the American people — historically, any distaste for America has typically been directed at our government, while American people were generally appreciated.)

If this had happened in, oh, say the Ukraine, no one would doubt that the election was fraudulent. They might even decide to hold the election over again!

So why is there not nightly discussion of this on Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN or any other “news” stations? Why are there no demands or outrage from American voters?

Probably because about half the nation — including nearly all the richest Americans and Corporations, which includes those who own the “news” stations — don’t care how Bush won the election. They’re happy with the result.

And in America anymore, it’s now how you play the game — it’s whether you win or lose.

The fact that people out there think that it doesn’t matter, but that their vote still counted for something just because they happen to agree with the people who did decide who would be President.

What happens when they disagree with you folks?

The Bush presidency has had a unifying effect on Europe: he’s a hate-figure to rally around. With ten new countries in the Union, and the new European Constitution just agreed, but not yet ratified, we’re going to need all the unity we can get in the next few years. Martin Sutherland, “The Coming of Winter” (November 3, 2004) Sunpig.com

Martin is not an American. His wife Abi, however, is. The two of them live in the UK.

Abi’s blog article trying to explain the election outcome to friends and neighbors in Great Britain provides a more balanced point of view than I could, insisting, as it does, that those who voted for Bush cannot be seen as “stupid.” She makes a good case for it, too.

Without further editorial (for the moment) on my part, I recommend these other points of view to those of you who aren’t too tightly locked into the Fox show. That should include just about anyone who read what I just wrote!

It’s disturbing. It’s worse than last time.

Last time, I had the reassurance that more Americans had cast their votes for Al Gore. As the consortium report proved beyond any shadow of a doubt, more Floridians cast votes for Al Gore that election day, as well. It was a stolen election. That was bad.

This, if the vote tallies are accurate, is even worse. It is depressing and disturbing to think that most American voters would want four more years of:

1. The birth tax that is saddling our children and grandchildren, even the “unborn” that the right wing supposedly cares so much about, with record-high mountains of debt. Clinton was paying down the national debt. Bush has added to it with record speed. It amounts to about $470,000 per family now. That more than most people who read this owe on their house. But the “leaders” we have in Washington are no longer paying down this debt. They are adding to it. And they are sending the bill to future generations. I think that’s cowardly and immoral.
2. Huge, intrusive government that infringes on our privacy and tramples on our rights. Civilian federal employment dropped by half a million under Clinton. It is skyrocketing under Bush, and will continue to do so.
3. Having a chief executive who refuses to go after those who attacked us on September 11, while pushing American men and women into harm’s way in Iraq, a country that was never a threat to the United States.
4. Having a chief executive who apparently wants a theocracy based on his personal relationship with someone he calls “Jesus.” Bush’s friend “Jesus” is not the same “Jesus” I was taught about when I was a child. Not even close. Who Would Jesus Bomb? He’s not even the same “Jesus” that talks to evangelist Pat Robertson. You may remember a few weeks back, Robertson said he had told Bush before going into Iraq that Jesus told him it was doing to be a huge mess with a lot of American casualties. Obviously, that’s not the same “Jesus” that Bush knows. But the “Jesus” that spoke to Robertson (presuming that happened) at least told the truth about Iraq.

I am particularly concerned about my son’s future. He is 23. Anyone who doesn’t think we’re going to need a draft to sustain this quagmire in Iraq, much less the other empire-building adventures Bush’s team no doubt has planned, must still believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. If my son were sent off to get Osama bin Laden, I would be worried but proud of what he was doing. If my son is drafted to go into this war that we are losing in Iraq (Halliburton is the only entity I know of that’s winning anything over there), I would be outraged. Are any Bush supporters surprised that he’s not sending his daughters to Iraq? They are the right age. I suppose like Viet Nam, Iraq a fine place to send other people’s children, but not anyone from the Bush family.

Yes, I’m still in shock. When the shock wears off, I imagine anger will start to set in.

Now, the real damage begins. And it’s up to us to try to limit it.

Kerry is set to concede the election. Let’s hope that he and his supporters are not set to concede the nation. After all, I’ve already heard (in the background, as I just turned on the TV) that Bush “has a mandate.” Since when did convincing just over 50% of voters count as a mandate? First of all, even many who voted for Bush — from what I’ve heard — didn’t say, “We want George Bush to do whatever George Bush wants to do!” I think they just said, “We prefer George Bush as President to John Kerry as President.” That’s not exactly “a mandate” even if it were larger than a bare majority of voters.

Frankly, I expected Bush to win. And I’m not even convinced that we can rightly blame voters. When my wife asked what I thought, I told her it was a foregone conclusion. I expected he would win by about 3 to 5 percentage points. (I haven’t yet looked to see exactly how much he won by; thanks to a bout of flu and my belief that the election was literally “in the bag,” I went to bed early last night and just got up just a few minutes ago.) Republicans have been winning by about 7% throughout the counties that have implemented Diebold voting machines, so taking into account that some places still use non-electronic forms of voting, I smoothed it down to 3% to 5% overall and accepted that that would be the spread.

The fact is that the United States, as it was laid out by the Founders, ceased to exist long ago. Today, in its place, sits an Administrative State. The primary reason for that is that we, as a nation, do not understand the form of government we were given by our forefathers. In that nation, government had a limited function and corporations that tried to dominate politics were exercising their power ultra vires. Today even many lawyers don’t know what that phrase means.

To make matters worse,

One of the Republican Party’s major successes over the last few decades has been to persuade many of the working poor to vote for tax breaks for billionaires. Nicholas D. Kristof, “Living Poor, Voting Rich” (November 3, 2004) The New York Times.

Expect to see more of that. Expect to see the economy sputter along for another few years, flirting with recession the whole way, before President Schwarzeneggar tries his hand at a more moderate form of Republicanism. (Yes, there will be a constitutional amendment before 2008 that allows foreign-born citizens to run for President. My guess is that there will be at least two more constitutional amendments. One of those will be the Federal Marriage Act, or some similarly-named amendment to ban gay marriage. The other — as yet unwritten — will deal directly with the ptolemaic difficulties engendered by the pretense of honoring the Bill of Rights in an Administrative State.) If you’re looking to make some money, defense bonds will be where you want to go. They’ll be about the only places to make any money, as more jobs are outsourced and the only American jobs will be in upper management, which is closed off to the majority of Americans.

But even that’s just the start.

The truly scary stuff doesn’t begin until after the second or third year of a Bush-appointed Supreme Court. I predict he will seat at least four justices throughout his term, probably in the first year — certainly in the first two. After that, we’ll see the damage activist judges can really do. (You thought only “liberals” had activist judges? You really have been sleeping, haven’t you?)

I’m not sure if Roe will be the first to go, but go it eventually will. The new Supreme Court will probably not blatantly approve laws outlawing all abortion. I have a feeling even the new Republican America would not swallow that — although they could. More likely, you’ll see states passing laws requiring a certain amount of counseling (with pro-life or faith-based groups vetting the therapists) and/or putting up other barriers to abortion. Those barriers will be upheld as a valid exercise of state police powers. (For those who don’t know, that’s not an accusation that we’re going to be living in “police states”; that’s the term used in law when discussing the power of the state to act in relation to the health and welfare of its citizens.)

I also expect a circumscribing of the anachronistic and troublesome Due Process clause of the Constitution. There will likely also be “reinterpretations” that chisel away at the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. I’d argue that we’ll officially extirpate the Ninth Amendment, but there’s no need for that; it’s never followed anymore anyway.

The real questions for me are: How far does the pendulum swing before Americans (who heretofore have sat like frogs in slowly-heated water) rebel? Will the moaners and the criers give up? (I mean, it’s okay to be pissed, but “Maybe this country doesn’t deserve us anymore”? “Take it and run”? Maybe some of these folk should consider heading off to another country.)

The thing to do is start to educate people about what the Constitution really stood for, what the Founders really hoped for us, what our country really could be.

Rather than moaning and crying, we need to ask ourselves how we can ever re-implement the original Constitution of the United States. What do we need to do for that to happen?

And let’s get on with it.

In this article, I’m going to argue that electing the lesser of the two evils facing us in this election is electing the right man for the job.

The reason for this is that the real job — or perhaps I should say the real work — of fixing America cannot be done by the President. It must be done by the People (for those who have forgotten, that’s us; it includes most readers of this blog). And we cannot do our job effectively if George Bush is re-elected.

The purpose of this article is to explain why neither George Bush nor John Kerry are right for the Presidency, but I hope to convince you that we must, for our own sakes, elect John Kerry; and not, by the way, because Kerry deserves your vote.

Gist of the Argument

As I said, I’ve written much about the original intent of the Constitution. In the course of that writing, I’ve frequently lambasted conservatives for ignoring the constitutional intent to protect our “unalienable rights.” (Among which are “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”; see the Declaration of Independence of the United States.) This is not because only conservatives misunderstand, ignore, or abuse the Constitution. Liberals do so as well. It is even arguable that liberals do it more often and with express intent, whereas the conservatives are just stupid.

Be that as it may, the conservative approach to the interpretation of the Constitution is the more dangerous. This is true not only because of the damage it wreaks on our nation, but because it makes the work of fixing things that much harder for those with whom the responsibility really lies: the People, the citizens of the United States of America.

It is for this reason that I say we must not re-elect George Bush. For our own benefit and to maintain the ability to fix things after we elect “the lesser of two evils,” we must elect John Kerry.

That is the gist of my argument. I hope you’ll read the explanation below. Because if you don’t, I can only hope you’ll trust me when I say that George Bush is more dangerous to us than John Kerry. And I don’t expect you to trust me on that, so I’ve given a detailed explanation below.

The Devil Is In The Details

The Constitution of the United States of America was a deliberate attempt to create the institutions that would govern — that is, those that would make up the government — of the United States of America. And what type of government was that?

According to the authors of the Federalist Papers, it was to be “a limited government.” For this reason, the Constitution of the United States specifically spells out “the enumerated powers” of the various branches of government. And, in particular, the Congress of the United States starts off by saying,

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. U.S. Const. art. I, section 1 (emphasis added).

Anyone who knows how to read can see that the Constitution expressly states that Congress only has those powers which have been “herein granted.” “Herein” — for those speakers of English who do not know the word, means,

in this: a : in this place <herein were many vaulted … walks hewn out of the rock — John Ray> <enclosed herein you will find my check> b : in this passage, book, or document <all legislative powers herein granted — U.S.Constitution> c : in this fact or particular <herein you war against your reputation — Shakespeare> “herein.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (1 Nov. 2004).

In other words, within the document called the “Constitution of the United States” the People of the United States “granted” the government certain powers. And it’s worth noting that these powers were granted, or given, to the government because, unlike the People, the government has no unalienable rights. Governments are artificial creations. People create governments. But the People themselves are born with these rights.

To make this point even clearer, Article I, section 8, the Constitution spells out exactly what powers are “herein granted.” The laundry list of powers delineated there is not exactly short, but it is finite.

Whatever powers we did not specifically give to Congress were not intended to be available to Congress. It may surprise you to know that, long ago, in spite of the Constitution, the Congress of the United States exceeded these powers. And they did so with the help of the Supreme Court, driven by liberal justices.

Denial and Disparagement

The Constitution of the United States was written after lengthy arguments, disputation and compromises were hashed out during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. It did not become law until 1789, when it was finally ratified by enough of the original colonies, after the people who lived in those colonies approved it by a vote.

During the battle — and it was a battle — to get the Constitution of the United States approved after it was written and submitted to the People in 1787, two groups (essentially) formed. One was against approving the Constitution; the other was for it.

And the group that was against it offered one significant argument against it: There was no Bill of Rights. They feared that if the Constitution did not include a Bill of Rights, the government would — if not immediately, then eventually — overpower the People and obliterate their heretofore unalienable rights.

The other side, sometimes called “Federalists,” argued against a Bill of Rights. They pointed out that the Constitution limited the government’s powers. They gave arguments similar to the one I outlined above — the Constitution specifically spells out what Powers Congress has and they have no more than that. Their fear was that if we created a Bill of Rights, the government — if not immediately, then eventually — would take that to imply that the People had only those rights that were spelled out in the Constitution. Their fear was that this would virtually turn the Constitution upside-down. Instead of a limited government, we would end up with a limited citizenry. When it became clear that the Constitution would not be approved without a Bill of Rights, the Federalist-minded group tried to protect against the danger that government would misinterpret the Constitution and limit the rights of citizen by including the Ninth Amendment.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain
rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by
the people. U.S. Const. amend. IX.

In spite of these words, Republicans — and particularly the Bush Administration — have consistently eroded the rights of the People. They have done this directly, when they develop unconstitutional laws such as the USA PATRIOT Act; they have done this indirectly when they elevate the rights of artificial persons (corporations) above the rights of real persons (individual human beings).

Of course, they could do neither of these things without the assistance of the courts — and that is not limited to the Supreme Court. Whereas the original intent of the Constitution, spelled out in Article III, was that courts would interpret the law according to the Constitution, “the rule of law is now largely the rule of politics.” Roger Pilon, Symposium on Ideology in Judicial Selection: How Constitutional Corruption has Led to Ideological Litmus Tests for Judicial Nominees (2002/2003) 15 Regent U.L. Rev 41. (A version of this is available here.)

Roger Pilon believes that in the attempt by liberals to use the courts to push a “welfare state” during the New Deal Era, they cowed the Supreme Court and conscripted it to the work of social activism. In reaction against this, the conservatives failed to point out the error of the meta-theory of constitutional interpretation that allowed this. Instead, they did the same thing, but used this new meta-theory to constrain heretofore unalienable rights.

(This goes a long way towards explaining the bugaboos that plague Constitutional Law students: low-level, mid-level and high-level scrutiny; rational basis, strict scrutiny, minimal scrutiny, heightened scrutiny and so on. As Pilon puts it,

Does anyone know what any of that means? One is reminded of nothing so much as medieval geocentric Ptolemaics drawing epicycle upon epicycle to ward off the onslaught of the heliocentric Copernicans. Pilon, supra, at p. 55.

Eventually, this scheme, too, will have to collapse.)

As Pilon notes,

Both sides in [the battle over the interpretation of the Constitution] are wrong. Liberals are wrong to have unleashed the political branches originally, right to turn to the courts for protection from the ensuing majoritarian tyranny, but wrong to ask them to consult anything but law, anything but the theory of rights that informs the Constitution. Liberals are wrong, that is, to ask the courts to ignore rights plainly in the Constitution, yet find rights [for the government] nowhere to be found, even among the enumerated rights. But conservatives too are wrong for buying into the New Deal Court’s machinations, right to criticize the Court for its subsequent rights activism, but wrong to limit constitutional rights to those fairly clearly in the document. Conservatives, after all, can hardly ignore or disparage the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments, as many do, and still call themselves “originalists.” As for legislatures creating rights against majoritarian tyranny, neither history nor the theory of the Founders supports that belief. It falls to the judiciary, as Madison said, to be “an imprenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive.” Pilon, supra, at pp. 60-61. (Underline mine; italics in original.)

Don’t think, therefore, that in all this, “activist judges” are only found in the camp of the Democrats.

How Republicans Are Bankrupting America

Prior to the year 2000, there was only one easily-recognizable reason for believing the Republican Party was dangerous. Today, the reasons are two-fold. (This, by the way, doesn’t even count the theocratic drive of Republicans. I consider that danger to actually be just a matter of the method used to achieve their goals, rather than one of the goals itself.)

Prior to 2000, Republicans were already responsible for placing conservative Justices on the Supreme Court who — equally as “activist” as liberal Justices — repeatedly interpret the Constitution as providing limited rights to the People. Whereas our Nation was founded on the idea that some few, specific, “enumerated” rights were given to the government we, the People created and that all other rights were retained by the People, conservatives have repeatedly interpreted the Constitution as providing unlimited power to government and placing limitations on the rights of the People. They have flipped the Constitution on its head.

The Democrats did not challenge the underlying concepts that allowed for misinterpreting the Constitution — after all, they invented the mistake. Instead, they used those same concepts to expand social programs. Consequently, they were for years rightly known as the “tax and spend” party.

After 2000 — particularly after September 11, 2001 — that moniker rightly belongs to the Republican Party. By engaging “the war on terrorism,” they have, in actuality, initiated a war on our pocket books. Throwing people in jail for the rest of their lives, maintaining unlimited detention camps in Guantanamo Bay and fighting endless wars against people who never will give up — do you really think that Muslim extremists will cease to exist or ever cease to attack the nation they feel wants to destroy them? — is expensive. As with all bills, sooner or later this one will have to be paid.

And by simultaneously reducing taxes on the richest one-percent of our population, the government has virtually ensured that the rest of us — the other 99% — will suffer for it. After all, someone is going to have to pay for it.

Why Vote For Kerry?

If both sides are wrong, if both sides abuse the Constitution in this fashion, then what makes the Bush Administration more to be feared? Why is Kerry the lesser of two evils?

Simply put, it’s this. The Democrats pervert the Constitution to the goal of expanding social programs. Rather than working through the political process defined by the Constitution and getting people, via state governments, to support social programs, they have conscripted the Courts. But (so far) Democrats seldom utilize the courts to expressly suppress the rights of the People delineated in the Bill of Rights. So the actions of the Democrats may unjustifiably pick our pockets, but our freedom to protest that theft is left unchecked.

The Republican Party, on the other hand, is not against a welfare state. Their programs just have different beneficiaries, such as Enron, Halliburton, Bechtel, Worldcom and so on.

And the danger of the Republican Party is that because they aim to benefit artificial persons (corporations) over real persons (human citizens), there is more resistance on the part of the People. Or at least some of them.

Consequently, to effect their reverse-robin-hood goal of picking the pockets of the poor (or, more correctly, the middle class) to give to the rich, they must stop the exercise of those rights. They must silence dissent. They must prevent citizens from finding out who sits on the Energy Task Force. They must refuse hearings for “enemy combatants” because we might find either find out that they aren’t really enemy combatants or we might learn why they are enemy combatants. And if Americans got the whole story about why there are enemy combatants — if we understood the real reasons we are hated by so much of the rest of the world, both Muslim and non-Muslim countries alike — we might vote the bastards out of office. We would put a stop to their shenanigans.

And we can’t have that. How nice then that their primary goal of benefiting artificial persons (and thus enriching the owners of those artificial persons) dovetails so well with silencing opposition and, simultaneously, any possibility of people being informed about what’s happening: The government simply changes the laws so that one or three Republicans can own all the television stations.

This is why we must elect Kerry. This is why we must not re-elect George Bush.

Because if we re-elect him, we move that much closer to the days of the old line of King Georges and their corporate sponsors against whom we originally rebeled in the mid-1770s. And the American Revolution — at least the one that lead to our independence and freedom in 1776 — is probably not a repeatable event.

But if we elect John Kerry, our freedoms remain intact.

And we can use those freedoms to do the real work of our nation, which is re-adopting the true intent of the Constitution: establishing a limited government which does only so much as is required to allow us “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” U.S. Const. para. 1.

Bush — and his family — have proven time and again that they don’t care how they get power in our country, so long as they get it. This has been true at least since the generations of Bushes that dealt directly with the Nazis to profit from World War II. It’s been true through succeeding generations that dealt with and protected the Saudis — whence nearly all the terrorists who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center emanated. It was true for the current Bush whose brother no doubt helped secure the vote by blocking large numbers of Democrats from voting, who pocketed the illicit vote of the most conservative of the Supreme Court Justices who ensured that election, who maintains the support of the duck-hunting Supreme Court “Justice” who helped the Administration operate in silence, who gave false information to the United States and the World to get us into Iraq and who, no doubt, will add Diebold to his list of supporters to capture the current election, even if Democrats actually win. (How can you prove the voting machines either correctly count, or correctly report results, of the votes in this election? Diebold is owned by Republicans and they’ve contributed significantly to the Bush campaign while giving not a dime to Democrats — an oddity because corporations in America usually bet on both parties. Like those who play the other crap tables, they put some money on this number and some money on that number to ensure at least a partial win no matter which number comes up.)

And, being as neither of them (Bush or bin Forgotten) are stupid, and given bin Forgotten’s sense of timing in the past, it makes sense that he would pop up now with his message. He knows the majority of Americans are too stupid (e.g., they’re Republicans) to recognize that he is manipulating them into voting for Bush.

What? Huh?

Yep. He needs Bush and now, Bush needs him. If bin Forgotten is to continue to recruit terrorists in any significant way, he needs an enemy who can energize the hatred of the Muslim and Arab world. And nobody does that better than Bush — who also manages to energize the hatred of our allies enough that they won’t join in the war on terrorism, which makes Bush doubly good for bin Forgotten.

If his ploy works, history will remember the brilliant strategy of bin Forgotten in delivering the election to his mortal enemy, George W. Bush.