I am cursing myself now for (only somewhat) buying in to the election nonsense.
There once was (and it is still running old strips) a cartoon strip called Peanuts, featuring Charlie Brown, a hopeless loser with a good heart. Each year his pal Lucy would offer to hold a football for him to kick. She had to talk him into it, as in every year prior at the last moment she would pull the football, as seen above. That’s me, thinking that while we nominally have two major political parties, we really have but one. The purpose of the “other” party, no matter your alignment, is to prevent the rise of a true second party.
Steve Kelly, our friend and writer here, is running as a Green in Montana, and I support him in that effort. It might seem a quixotic mission, but he is not a man who embraces despair. The Green Party once challenged the major presidential candidates (2000), and at a presidential debate featuring only blah and blah blah (Bush and Gore), Green candidate Ralph Nader was arrested in the parking lot trying to break in. But Steve is a man who enjoys being a thorn in the foot of the powerful. I support him for that reason.
Was the Nader arrest staged? Most likely. Was Nader a willing participant? Most likely.
Another play was on the horizon, the Dade County fiasco that led to the Supreme Court intervening, stopping all recounts, and declaring George W. Bush the winner.
Did SCOTUS intervene knowing the recount would elect Gore? Most likely. But given that Al Gore is a tool, and George Bush apparently a useful idiot, what would be the purpose of choosing one over the other? I suspect, as a matter of principle, it was to signal the end of paper ballot voting. Bush v Gore showed me that the United States Supreme Court is as corrupt as any branch of government.
Dade County, most likely staged, was used to lure the public into supporting a bill most likely written well in advance of 2000, called “HAVA”, or the Help America Vote Act. By means of that act, precincts nationwide were given funds to use electronic voting machines to count votes. The machines were quickly shown to be easily tampered, so that vote counting quickly became a black box affair.
No matter. The midterm elections of 2002 and presidential election of 2004 (where Bush defeated John Kerry (meh) were shown by exit polls to have been stolen, Democrats the victim of the theft. When I saw that Democrats did not care that their wins became losses, I finally came to my senses. Both parties wanted electronic voting, neither cared that it was merely a means of election theft. So, after 2004, exit polling was ended.
At the end of this post I am going to once again run a “news” story by Nevada AP reporter Gabe Stern. No need to read it, only skim and note that 1) he is complaining that counting paper ballots is so slow as to be foolish, and that he misstates the number of registered voters in Nye County, NV, as “33,000” when the actual number, easily found, was 40,419. Stern is going on about two tasks, one to reemphasize that paper ballots are antiquated and tedious, and two (by invoking the ’33’ signal) that no true recount will ever be allowed. Vote counting is so quaint, so over.
I do not mean to say that prior to HAVA that we had meaningful elections. I don’t know that, cannot even imagine that we had a functioning republic prior to that time. But look at the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections. The fair-haired boy who was handed those elections, each time with less than 50% of the vote, was Bill Clinton (meh).
How did they manage that? It took real effort – they used Ross Perot to suck off Republican votes. Perot behaved like an indecisive fool, dropping out, backing in again, as if he could not make up his mind. His American Independent Party was polling well, but would not under any circumstances be allowed to win. Perot’s job was to suck off Republican votes from Bob Dole (meh) to anoint Clinton (meh). He came in and out as the polls dictated he must.
Well, who cares if the two parties are but mirror images of one another? I don’t. My point is this: They had to use Perot to defeat Dole because votes were being counted. For real. I know, elections were stolen at high levels, maybe at the local level too. But the point is that it took complicated machinations to get the job done.
With the advent of Black Box Voting, stealing elections became a much easier task. Now all it takes is the flip of a switch. That was the true purpose of HAVA, and the Dade County 2000 debacle.
This is why I am kicking myself, imagining that there would be allowed a red tide, and that annoying and corrupt Democrats would be turned out, to be replaced by less annoying but equally corrupt Republicans. My bad.
Piece of Mindful 
perfect allegory 🙂
LikeLike
We have three parties, but only ever hear of two, which is actually one.
LikeLike
Also, all of Trump’s ridiculous noise about stolen elections helps keep the left-of-center mainstream happily complacent about our election system. It really doesn’t matter how flagrantly fraudulent it is. If the PTB need mainstream America to believe in something, anything, no matter how absurd, all they really have to do is wind their Trump doll up and make him say he doesn’t believe in it. I won’t be at all surprised if they reboot his White House reality show.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Agreed that this is the perfect metaphor for the two party system. Wouldn’t be surprised to see the ’24 election swing the other way so people believe the system is working for them. Absolutely insane the polarity of people right now.
LikeLike
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/11/us-will-keep-covid-public-health-emergency-in-place-until-at-least-mid-january.html
October surprise — the 90-day public health emergency extension — came and went without much fanfare. It will be extended again, so “stakeholders” can bilk fools who are lining up for more injectible poison.
Not on the ballot, nor was it a subject of polling, or voting, apparently. We love martial law; who needs elections?
LikeLike
I do not know how they know I even exist, but Colorado now has twice notified me via my mobile phone that I am due for a flu shot. I have never had a flu shot, have never had flu, whatever the hell it is. I was offered the option to STOP receiving notifications (how did they start?), and replied “Thank you, and yes, STOP, and do not contact me again, ever.”
LikeLike
How “they know?” Here’s one possible explanation. If data is “the new oil,” then data, even yours and mine is being sold to anyone with money to spend. https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-analytics-tracking-even-when-off-app-store-1849757558
Re: Flu shots are back. Higher prices for shots and insurance premiums down the road is how the system works — every time. Some states are suing. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/why-our-free-flu-shots-actually-cost-us-down-the-road/2019/11/22/8c445d80-0aec-11ea-97ac-a7ccc8dd1ebc_story.html
LikeLike
The latest text message included an opt out, to merely respond STOP, I did respond, “Thanks. And STOP. Do not contact me again, ever.” [I know, it’s a bot. But still satisfying.]
LikeLike
The public health emergency declaration does not enable martial law. It only allows unapproved medical products to be mass distributed and paid for with federal funds. Sure that’s no good, but there’s nothing in it, for example, that enables any entity to require proof of vaccination. Whoever does that is doing it against a vast body of civil rights laws still in effect under this “emergency.”
LikeLike
I am open to a new interpretation of martial law that fits within a generally accepted understanting of the role and scope of “full spectrum dominance.” A military policy/program: yes or no? Medical mandates ie. medical martial law (thanks Mark, for this insight) is part of a radical, new form of military control, IMO. You certainly have every chance and right to disagree, but the old ways of grasping the military’s powers may have become obsolete.
LikeLike
I agree unilateral decrees to make large swaths of the populace take a certain drug, “approved” or not, in the name of fighting off a supposed virus attack can qualify as martial law, and this has happened all across the country and that the existence of a “public health emergency” was pointed to by the authorities as the reason why they had to do this.
All I am saying is that the public health emergency declaration didn’t even purport to make any of that legal. It made it possible, yes, by making the vaccines and tests available at all under “emergency use authorization” but there were no “emergency powers” unlocked. Perhaps this a distinction without a difference. People who think it is legal now will continue to think it is legal after all the “emergency” vaccines are duly approved and the emergency expires.
LikeLike
There was an exercise in the spring of 2020 where they modeled how to steal the Pres election. One team realized that WHO won didn’t matter as much as making the public feel that elections were rigged. Right now most people who identify as Republican are there. Democrats were leaning that way with the Gore/Bush election, but now they claim its all good because their team won. I expect we will see a steal in the other direction soon. Either way, TPTB are in the process of tearing down our current system to replace it with one that is not in our best interest. And now they are all meeting in Egypt to scheme how to get everyone (except themselves) to get off of fossil fuels and change economies to carbon based credits. The soon to be rolled out CBDC will enable this to happen. God help us.
LikeLike
So it does not matter that votes are not counted, but rather which side feels it was robbed. Nice insight.
LikeLike
A man hears what he wants to hear…and disregards the rest, PAUL SIMON.
LikeLike
I voted and noticed on my ballot that there were many “no candidate” names apperain under one or two other names. We didn’t have much to choose from. I’m wondering why more people don’t participate. I guess city councel positions don’t pay much?
LikeLike
My wife was on city council in our town for a couple of years. It was a non-paying and thankless job.
LikeLike