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Hail to
the Thief !
On this dark, dark day in American
history, I prefer to see the next White House as half-full instead of
half-empty! That's just the kind of kooky optimist I am. Instead of
brooding over the antics of our Supreme Court Jesters, I'd rather focus
on what makes this country great. Such as all that hooey our 7th grade
civics teacher told us about how ANYONE can become President of the
United States. She was right! It's true! ANYONE just became president.
Let this be a lesson to my younger readers -- listen to your teachers!
You know, I always like it when life
is a win-win situation. Gore won the "popular" vote, so I guess that
means George W. won the unpopular vote! Everyone goes home with something.
OK, put away that Gillette double-edged razor and flush those sleeping
pills down the toilet -- tonight is a night for celebration! It's time
to count our blessings, to thank the Lord for what we have been given,
to reach out and touch someone, to....
To make a list! A list of all the
silver linings in this cloud on its way from Austin to D.C. Yes, there
are a number good things that will come out of all this madness.
Consider these silver linings:
Silver Lining #1: Ralph Nader QUADRUPLED
the Number of Votes He Got in '96!
Continue to ignore his supporters,
continue to trash him, and the Democrats will lose AGAIN in 2004. If
there is one lesson that had better be learned after all the acrimony
dies down it's that the Democratic Party can no longer elect a President
without the millions of disgruntled voters who demand an end to the
death penalty, a law that provides free health coverage for all, prison
time for corporate crooks, a doubling of the minimum wage, a cut in
Pentagon spending, and a host of other issues. You don't have to agree
with all these positions, but if you choose to ignore them, you do so
at your own peril. These last five weeks have done more to turn off
millions of Americans to BOTH the Republican and Democratic parties
than a hundred Nader super rallies on C-Span could ever hope to do.
Trust me, Nader will quadruple his vote again in 2004. That's 12 million
voters next time. Count on it.
Come home, Democratic Party, come
home.
Silver Lining #2: Someone Is Going
to Count Those Votes In Florida.
That's right. Thanks to one of the
best Freedom of Information Act laws in the country, any citizen or
media outlet in Florida may demand to have the ballots hand-counted.
The Miami Herald has already filed their request. If they don't do it,
I will. Within the next month or so, this one truth will be proven and
revealed: Gore got more votes than Bush in Florida. Gore won. Which
will lead us to our next silver lining...
Silver Lining #3: The Bush Presidency
Will Be Crippled.
The nation will know Baby Bush only
as an illegitimate president. He will be nothing more than an illegal
squatter in the Oval Office. Not only will he have no mandate, he will
have no business being there. He will get little or nothing done. Put
a fork in his administration. It's cooked before they even have the
parade.
Silver Lining #4: George W. Bush
Likes Naps, Video Games and Taking the Day Off To Go Fishing.
Just in case the hubris of Silver
Lining #3 is slightly off, we can be sure that Bush is just lazy enough
and just dumb enough so that he won't find the time to do too much damage
to the country or the world. The people to keep an eye on will be the
cabal he brings to Washington with him. They will require the rest of
us to give up napping or going fishing. The video games we keep.
Silver Lining #5: Strom Thurmond
Is Not Long for This World.
I say this with absolutely no animosity
or disrespect. I hope he lives an even longer life. But I think even
Strom would agree -- if you make it to 98, you get the brass ring, and
you also know that your days are numbered. Whether forced to retire
due to ill health or having to leave the Senate because of a higher
calling, when Thurmond goes, the Democratic governor of South Carolina
is going to appoint a Democratic senator and that will give the Democrats
a 51-49 majority. When that happens, more chaos for Bush, more roadblocks,
more trouble for his agenda (though not THAT much trouble, considering
that the same rich guys who fund Bush also fund most of these Democrats).
Silver Lining #6: Thank You, United
States Supreme Court!
By being so blatantly partisan, you
can bet that a post-Thurmond Democratically-controlled Senate is sufficiently
ticked off to stop any Bush nominee who is too extreme.
And, thanks to this week's 5-to-4
blunder, you have been tricked into doing something none of us ever
thought we would get you to do. You have taken a stand against "states'
rights!" Yes, that evil concept that the founding fathers agreed to
in order to keep the slave states happy has just been dealt a death
blow -- by you! We expect to hold you to this new standard. You also
made clear your strong support for the equal protection clause in the
Constitution. Great! You can prove your new allegiance to equality for
all by ordering an investigation as to why one in three black voters
in some Florida precincts were not allowed to vote.
Silver Lining #7: We Will Now Have
a Nationwide Uniform Ballot.
No more chads, no more Karnack. No
more the rich getting the foolproof high-tech vote scanners, and the
poor getting antiquated machines that don't work. May I make a radical
suggestion? A piece of paper and a Number 2 pencil that one uses to
mark an "X" in a square, and then a cardboard box with slit on top that
you put the piece of paper into! That's the Canadian way. Last month,
they hand-counted thirteen million paper ballots in under 4 hours! We
look like idiots. This has to be the first bill passed by the new Congress.
Silver Lining #8: Everyone Finally
Knows the Awful Truth: "One Person, One Vote" Is a Lie.
Good. Now we can do something about
it. We need a system of proportional representation. That would guarantee
that everyone's voice is heard. Remember that other civics lesson --
"majority rule, minority rights"? Proportional representation means
if your party got 10% of the vote, you get 10% of the seats. A number
of local governments in the U.S. have switched to this much fairer and
representative system. In the meantime, we have our best chance now
to dump the Electoral College (or, at the very least, reform it so that
every states' electors are proportioned to the percentage each candidate
got).
Silver Lining #9: We Will Never
Have To Look at James Baker or Warren Christopher Again.
'Nuff said.
Silver Lining #10: With Bush In
the White House, Evil Has No Mask.
From now on, unlike during the Clinton/Gore
years, when the poor are forced into greater hardships, when the innocent
are executed, when our First Amendment rights are stripped from us,
when our family's jobs are shipped to sweatshops overseas, when a record
number of personal bankruptcies continues to rise, when abortion remains
unavailable in 86% of the counties in the country, the liberals and
Democrats will not sit silently by. It's hard for them to organize any
real opposition to a Democrat in the White House -- "I mean, he's one
of US! At least he's not a REPUBLICAN! We MUST support him against those
EVIL REPUBLICANS!" And then he does nearly everything
a Republican would do -- and gets away with it.
Bush won't get away with it. Liberals
and Democrats will be forced to finally take a stand. All will be well
until the next election.
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