These times have become all the more interesting because, as I write this, the CheneyBush Administration has attacked yet another country: It sent four helicopters, two of them full of special forces commandoes -- that is to say, U.S. troops on the ground -- to shoot up a construction sight in Syria a few miles from the Iraq border, killing eight. The action is less surprising than the timing, a week before a presidential election.
I think one has to interpret the action in light of that timing as possibly a way to change the headlines and focus as McCain's chances grow slimmer, a way to highlight the "national security" issue that supposedly helps McCain, a way to make sure a President Obama would be locked into even more foreign-policy messes. Maybe all three at once. No doubt, more will be revealed in the coming days. These guys are desperate and will try anything.#
**Hundreds of thousands, maybe several million, Democratic-leaning voters have been and are being purged from voting rolls; Bush has ordered the DoJ to start a "voter-fraud" investigation in Ohio, even in the face of a Supreme Court ruling ordering regular voting protocols (rather than provisional ballots) to proceed for the 200,000 citizens involved; there are numerous cases of "vote-flipping" in various states on touch-screen voting machines; there are all kinds of voter-intimidation tactics being rolled out in various states, including attempts to keep college students from voting; and one can anticipate what happened in 2004, when just a few days before the voting, the Rove forces launched a massive "robocall" operation around the country supposedly coming from Dem campaigns, re-calling again and again at all hours of the day and night, in order to annoy and anger voters enough that they might decide not to vote Democratic. "Grand Theft Robo."#
<i>Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for two decades, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). To comment: crisispapers@comcast.net .</i>
First published by The Crisis Papers and Democratic Underground 10/28/08.
www.crisispapers.org/essays8w/transform.htm
Copyright 2008 by Bernard Weiner.
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