LOCAL News :: Elections & Legislation
Bush - Fraternity President and Beyond
President Bush was a Fraternity President......do you know what that means?
I joined a fraternity in my first year of college, and it was
one heck of a lot of fun, week after week......keg parties....
purple passion parties.....TGIFs.....and much more. Another
rather remarkable thing about frat life was a file cabinet
they each had which contained the mid-term and final exams
for almost every course in the schools curriculum. I used the
stolen exams once and received an A+, but it didn't feel right
and I never used them again. (By the way, other notable
fraternity presidents who graduated at the top of their classes are
Kenneth Lay and Andrew Fastow.)
Our fraternity President (along with all the other fraternity Presidents)
made a run for election to the Student Body President, and we
frat brothers had specific, tried and true strategies to "sway" the
campus election. We had tricks to stuff the ballot boxes and it was
all great fun - and a needed diversion from drinking all that beer. But
quite frankly, it was nothing like the dirty tricks that have been exposed
in our past two National Elections.
These frat boys are a lot of fun, but not actually the noblest, most
moral or ethical citizens we have in our society. In fact, I would
have to say that it's incredibly appalling that this type of "frat
brother ethos" has forced upon the American people this Bush
Administration.
When news reports started appearing in 2000 of the voter fraud
that took place in Florida, I knew immediately where it came from-
his brother Jeb being the Florida Governor and Katherine Harris
being the Co-Chair of the Republican Party in Florida. You need
to realize, though, that in 2000 they had no idea that it would
come down to one state. When all the cameras and reporters
turned towards Florida, these "fraternity-like" voter fraud pranks
began emerging. It was so obvious to me that I sort of laughed it
off at the time. But these people in Florida were expecting to
get away with it un-noticed. Their pants were pulled down in 2000,
but remarkably, that hasn't stopped them - indeed the fraud has
escalated in 2004 since there was nothing done about 2000.
In 2000, Harris took 57,700 democrats off the voting rolls (and
by the way, those people were not allowed to vote in
2004 either). In Ohio, Kenneth Blackwell (Republican Chairman
of Ohio) almost tripled that number - 155,000 Ohioans had to
vote provisional ballots for a host of conjured up reasons.... plus
there looks to be massive irregularities in the electronic voting
systems.....and they had to wait in line in the rain sometimes six
hours or more.
The American people grumbled a bit in 2000, then sat back and
waited patiently for the 2004 election to vote this Administration
out of office, who seem to work on the theory that "Hey, Clinton
lied to the people....and a grand jury....and you let him get away
with it! Well, darlin, we'll show you some lyin....Texas style".
It is for the American people to decide whether they will allow a
severely adolescent phenomenon like "fraternity brotherhood" to
illegally place a President of the United States into office for a
second time, one who has taken this great nation to a status it has
never been before.
One can't help but wonder if the Supreme Court Judges have a
different opinion now of who they should have chosen in 2000.
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I must submit this anonymously because the ritual of the fraternity
into active membership was basically KKK style intimidation to
keep our mouths shut.