By James Heddle

As the Bush Machine rolls on -- through Orwellian "Patriot" Acts, Intelligence "Reforms" and "Clear Skies" Initiatives, adding treason to treason, felony to felony, unconstitutional domestic acts to violations of international law, "crimes against all humankind" to crimes against the biosphere; as it authorizes torture, domestic surveillance, and terms the Geneva Convention "quaint" -- progressive pundits waffle on with exhortations to hopefulness, ideological mea culpas, adjurations to linguistic reframing, advocating emulations of the right, and statistical analyses based on flawed polling and fraudulent vote counts, I find myself wondering: How long are these people going to keep on playing in a rigged game?

The grassroots democratic drama of the 21st century is unfolding in Ohio (not to mention New Mexico, Nevada, and oh yes, the Ukraine), blacked out by the same pusillanimous establishment media that went along with alleged Iraqi WMDs and al qaeda links; blacked out the CIA's role in bringing crack cocaine to the country's ghettos (and apparently drove rare honest journalist Gary Webb to an alleged "two-shot suicide"); and ignored by the flaccid, complicit and supine DNC, Kerry/Edwards camp and Congress. They're all acting exactly like the collusive wife in an abusive relationship.

The progressive strategists and operatives prattle on about the "White Elephant" of the "race factor" in the 2004 election (duh!), but no one seems to notice the gaggle of 500-pound gorillas sitting in the corner of the national living room. Please, look at the data, citizens. The election was stolen -- just like in 2000, 2002 and so many more before. The system is rigged. Don't get over it; get with it! You can't win in a rigged game. Stop playing. Change the game.

As that great American political sage, W. C. Fields put it, "There comes a time when we must seize the bull firmly by the tail and stare the situation squarely in the face." There's not enough space here to do more than summarize the growing mountain of evidence that supports the rigged game conclusion. The historic Conyers Committee is piling it up as we speak. It's easy to find. If you haven't already, google "vote fraud," citizen. Read it and weep. The incriminating facts are readily available all over the internet and the "alternative media."

Please, don't be like my friend, a staunch Kerry volunteer, who hasn't looked at the Ohio story because he reads the New York Times, watches the News Hour and dismisses all contrary data a priroi as the delusions of the "chattering class," "paranoid conspiracy theorists" and "whining losers." The fact is, he doesn't want to know. His whole political paradigm would fall apart like it did when he found out there's no Santa Claus.

But, to grasp the bull - even timorously - by the tail: the Voting Integrity Project ( www.usvip.org ) points to ten factors that must lead any fair person to question the "official" tally and insist upon an objective recount:


1. Systematic, Widespread Voting Machine Irregularities
2. Highly Irregular Intervention by Federal Authorities
3. Impossible Vote Totals ( Some with a 1-in-250,000[,000] chance of being accurate, according to expert statisticians! )
4. Openly Partisan Election Officials
5. Openly Partisan and Untrustworthy Vendors of Election Machinery
6. Unexplained Exit Poll Disparities ( Exit polls were correct where there was a paper trail and incorrect (+5% for Bush) where there was no paper trail. )
7. Unreliable and Inadequate Numbers of Voting Equipment in Poor and Working Class (non-Republican) Areas
8. Anomalous and Atypical Voting Pattern Changes from 2000 to 2004
9. Uncounted Ballots, Double Un-matching Sets of Tally Tapes and Uncooperative Officials in Many Areas
10. Widespread Illegal Voter Suppression Activities

Susan Truitt, of the Citizens Alliance for Secure Election ( www.caseohio.org ), one of the plaintiffs in one of the several suits being brought in Ohio to challenge the tally, has stated that, with just the verified irregularities and violations her organization has documented, the election plainly goes to Kerry. The 20 Ohio Electors who voted for Bush did so with zero legitimacy and a second Bush term based on their vote will be equally illegitimate. Think about that for a minute. If this is not a constitutional crisis, I don't know what is.

All power to Badnarik and Cobb and Arnebeck and Truitt and Fitrakis and Bonifaz and Conyers and Waters and Jackson and Curtis and Harris and all those brave citizens contesting the highly dubious tally in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere. With a judiciary stacked against them all the way to the same Supreme Court that perpetrated the first Bush coup in 2000, their chances of successfully litigating and reversing the outcome, having it recognized by the judiciary, the Congress, the corporate media - not to mention the Bush regime itself - will be a political accomplishment of miraculous proportions and will no doubt require a Ukraine-scale turnout of the citizenry to make it stick. May it be so!

However, failing a successful judicial, political, congressional and popular revolt, we are dealing, for the indefinite future, with a fascist, theocratic police state - and I use the terms precisely, not rhetorically. ("Fascism should more properly be called "corporatism,' since it is the marriage of government and corporate power," said Mussolini, who ought to know.) Making Howard Dean head of the DNC and commissioning George Lakoff to "reframe" the party's "message" and PR material would be a necessary, but hardly sufficient response.

A political system more crooked than a Las Vegas casino cannot qualify as a "democracy," much less as the "leader of the free world." And those who continue to play in it look to me like conscious or unconscious colluders, or just plain chumps. Until you accurately diagnose and acknowledge the disease, you cannot even begin to cure it.

And the disease we're dealing with - as originally diagnosed by that astute political physician Swami Beyondananda - is "Electile Dysfunction" complicated by advancing "Truth Decay."

The beginning of the cure, (necessary, but not sufficient), as prescribed by political healers, like the ladies of Code Pink and other groups, is enactment of a Voters' Bill of Rights: to wit:


1. Provide a Voter Verified Paper Trail for Touch-Screen Voting Machines
2. Create Independent, Non-Partisan and Transparent Oversight
3. Celebrate Our Democracy: Election Day as a National Holiday!
4. Maximize Voter Access
5. Count Every Vote!
6. Re-enfranchise Ex-Felons
7. Implement Instant Runoff Voting (IRV)
8. Provide Public Financing for Elections and Equal Air-Time
9. Ensure Third Party Candidates Easier Access to the Ballot and Debates
10. Abolish the Electoral College
( Sign on at:
www.codepinkalert.org/National_Actions_Voter_Bill_of_Rights.shtml )

My simple point is this - until a majority of progressive activists and intellectual opinion-makers drop the delusions and cop to the fact that we are playing in a game intentionally and adroitly rigged against us, we will not win, we will not govern, we will not be prepared to govern, because we will not deserve to govern. Good losers -- like John "Quick Concession" Kerry and the "professional losers" of the DNC -- will predictably go on losing. Just like the chain-smoking, gin-sipping, polyester-clad grandma pumping endless quarters into the slot machine.

"I don't have that much time here in Washington," Bush told a White House "economic summit" the other day. If this really is a nation of laws, he should have a lot less time than he thinks. ( Yes, citizens. We must dare to think such thoughts, if we are to be worthy of Jefferson, Franklin and Paine. )

There's a "Block Bush Constitutional Insurrection" rally and demo being organized by RedefeatBush.com from 10am - 4pm, January 6, at Upper Senate Park, Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. when the electoral college vote is delivered to Congress. The Ohio recount will be done by then. We should have learned enough from the lawsuits and investigations to know the truth. Got democracy? See you there.
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( For more info on the Block Bush, a Constitutional Insurrection on January 6, 2005: redefeatbush.com/modules.php
=ShowEvent&month=1&day =6&year=2005&eventid=228 Not to be confused with the events being organized by www.answercoalition.org and www.VoterMarch.org/j20hq/index.html on January 20th. Methinks Coronation Day is too late to protest.) James Heddle is a documentary filmmaker: eon3-AT-earthlink.net