Is It Over Already?

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Overseas observers say we were sunk before we started: longtime political snipers at Moscow's eXile predict Republicans going two for two not so much because of fraud but because America gets the government it deserves, or deserves the government it gets, or both. Says editor Mark Ames:

What makes us so confident? Dr. Johnson once wrote that "a second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience." The same is true when you watch a fourth election in which observers believe that the American public is finally going to come around and make rational choices, rather than the same proto-primate choices they've been making over and over again. Hope says that Americans will finally wake up; experience proves that the American public sides whichever brute picks up the biggest stick and bashes it hardest on the ground. And that brute has been, is, and will be the Republican Party.

Read the rest here and make sure your caveputer has spellcheck on when you bang out your cranky rebuttals-to-the-editor; eXile responds extremely gently to reasoned criticism, especially from girls. In related exile news: muckraker-at-large Greg Palast rides in with a piece from the Guardian on how the election was--past-tense at 4 PM PST--stolen. Which is the grand old-fashioned way: legal vote-suppression and street-level obfuscation.

Two million legitimate voters will be turned away because of wrongly rejected or purged registrations. Add another one million voters challenged and turned away for "improper ID." Then add yet another million for Democratic votes "spoiled" by busted black boxes and by bad ballots. And let's not forget to include the one million "provisional" ballots which will never get counted. Based on the experience of 2004, we know that, overwhelmingly, minority voters are the ones shunted to these baloney ballots. And there's one more group of votes that won't be counted: absentee ballots challenged and discarded. Elections Assistance Agency data tell us a half million of these absentee votes will go down the drain.

Further autopsy results here. If I can get a copy of the Arthur article on why we should acknowledge that democracy is obsolete--and has been for a while--I'll put it up here, if I'm allowed. If not, lemme just drag up the point I made on July 4: America--fun while it lasted.

Oh, and from the No Fun Dept.: real-time collection of vote-suppression/fraud/incompetency online at VotersUnite. Like a guy once said to me: you can see America disappear right before your eyes.