ELECTION EVE - November 5, 2012. What’s next?

-->
ELECTION EVE - November 5, 2012.  What’s next?

Tomorrow night I’m ordering not one, but two, large, double cheese deep dish, stuffed crust vegi Pizza Hut pan pizzas and an eight pack of diet soda since I’m watching my weight.  ;-)  It’s going to be a long night, but for many, it is also going to be a celebration watching the election results come in that show a clear victory for President Obama.

I am personally going to savor watching the dreams of Sheldon Adelson shattered as the investigation into his corrupt criminal enterprise intensifies with no hope of staving off the DOJ, and not even the glimmer of a chance of a presidential pardon, as he had hoped to purchase with his $100 million contribution to Mitt Romney.

Yes, for those who are unaware, one of the largest contributors to the Romney campaign is Sheldon Adelson who will likely be charged, tried and convicted on a variety of money laundering, racketeering, corrupt and criminal activities.  Adelson did not donate one hundred million dollars to Romney out of benevolence or love of country.  He made that investment because he is scared to death of spending the rest of his life in prison, which is quite likely what he will face under a continued Obama Justice Department that is dedicated to the pursuit of justice.  -- Behind every great fortune there is a crime - BALZAC - This quote appears in the first pages of Book 1 of The Godfather.

Tomorrow night will restore our faith that our elections cannot be bought even with the hundreds of millions poured into our political campaigns by Adelson, Bill and David Koch, and all of the Grover Norquist and Karl Rove cronies who expect to profit from their enormous financial contributions.  Indeed, it will be good for the country, in fact the world, to see Norquist and Rove lose credibility even within their perverted circles of influence.

This has been an exhausting election cycle for those people who have remained genuinely informed, through sources other than the Rupert Murdoch tools that regurgitate his propaganda so he can pander to his supporters.  Murdoch has been key to taking a phenomenally tortured ideology and repackaging it to look like the Republican Party.  This is not the Republican Party of leaders such as Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, Colin Powell, Bob Dole and Nelson Rockefeller.

What we see being masqueraded as the Republican Party simply is not.  This Imposter Party is basically the very wealthy and greedy who have hijacked the Republican Party, and then recruited a variety of social agenda misfits to scare the electorate to the polls.

The cast of characters include the right-wing Christian extremists, the likes of Mike Huckabee and Tony Perkins to help corral the flock and promote the platform through a campaign of fantasy based fear, which is fundamentally designed to ingrain the doctrine that thou shalt believe everything we say, and thou shalt question nothing, or thou will be cast into the eternal pit of fire and brimstone where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The architects of this Imposter Party then appeals to the uninformed and ignorant demographic by adding a dash of bigotry, racism and hate into the mix courtesy of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, exacerbated with the celebrity endorsements of none other then Ted Nugent and Meat Loaf, which really has to make a statement to anyone who has any cognitive ability.  Top it all off with awarding the bid to be the Imposter Party’s publicist to Rupert Murdoch, and they have all of the fundamental ingredients to manipulate the easily frightened low information voter.

In an attempt to provide some kind of credibility for the few followers who have some semblance of a mind, there are a few celebrity individuals who are perceptively credible, because at one time they were.   A cursory examination of some of these endorsements would reveal that the only real difference between Jack Welch and Donald Trump is that one of them is a billiard ball with fur.  Beyond that, both of these characters strain credibility to the point that rational people simply dismiss them as senile, angry, racist, bigoted grumpy old white men.

With regard to the religious influences, many people argue that the tax-exempt status for all religious organizations that in any way violate the policies regarding political participation should be expelled retroactive.  I am among those who believe the IRS regulations should be strenuously enforced.

The accelerated wealth-building agenda we have witnessed is very recent, and was phenomenally exacerbated during the Bush 43 administration.  As a small example, the mega-super yachts that are being built and bought today did not even exist pre-Bush 43 because there was no market that could afford them.  The primary goal of the hijacked Republican Party is simple - increase profits from the military, drug war, and prison industrial complexes, privatize profits and socialize loses.  Success was achieved during September 2008.

Grover Norquist made it crystal clear that his wealthy contributors do not want a real president.

"All we have to do is replace Obama. ...  We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. ... We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate. [...]

Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared." - Grover Norquist

See the video here:  http://youtu.be/6wYYX0mZsQA

What calls itself the Republican Party today would be happy electing a potted plant to the office of President.  The Party clearly found their hollow and plastic malleable man in Mitt Romney.

The Party that is masquerading as the Republican Party is the epitome of hypocrisy.  Let’s examine the policies that this alleged party purports to advance, like promoting democracy and nation building.

Iraq held its first free election, which had a fair representation of all groups on January 30, 2005.  The Iraq elections were as politically iconic for George W. Bush as was the "Mission Accomplished" speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was second only to the President's arrival on the carrier in full military flight gear.

The photo-op of Iraq’s elections were substantially important to Bush in support of the administrations' nation building and spreading democracy agendas, which were a second term opening promise of Bush (circa, January 2005).  More importantly, Iraq’s elections purportedly confirmed Bush’s successful implementation of a democracy, and therefore his newest justification for the war in Iraq.  This was George W’s third tortured attempt at arriving at a rationalization for invading a sovereign nation, and many believe it strained the administration’s credibility even further.

We all remember the iconic photos of the Iraqi people with purple dye on their fingers, and what appeared to be a well-organized and efficient process of voting.

Following the elections, President Bush was quoted: "resounding success" and "the world is hearing the voice of freedom" [from the Middle East.]  "By participating in free elections, the Iraqi people have firmly rejected the anti- democratic ideology of the terrorists…"

If we would have seen the kind of voter suppression in Iraq that we are currently seeing nationwide, and particularly in The States of Ohio and Florida, George W. and all of his republican NeoCon’s would have blown a gasket, and there is a good likelihood that we would have witnessed a “Shock and Awe” that would have made the invasion of Iraq look like a couple of kids playing with firecrackers and sparklers.

It appears that we need to do some nation building here at home, and we clearly need to take a hard look at promoting democracy in the United States of America.

So what’s next?

An Obama victory is obvious on this election eve.  Is the Democratic Party perfect?  Hardly!  Reform is necessary if our derailed democracy is to be preserved.  We will never see real change with a tea party or independent party platform that simply promotes another self-serving agenda by violating some provisions of the Constitution to support a tortured interpretation of other provisions.  Running these independent candidates that garner a few percent of the vote is clearly an exercise in futility.  It might make us feel good to cast a protest vote, but it achieves absolutely no solutions.

Clearly, if a person wants to travel from point A to point B, they must first identify where point A is, and how they arrived at point A.

How did our nation arrive at a point where money and corruption has permeated our political process to its very core?

We are a nation of laws, which are fundamentally based upon a magical document called the United States Constitution.  These laws are made by our legislature, but checked for constitutionality by our judiciary.

Our executive and legislative branches of government have fallen under great criticism.  However, our judicial branch seems to feel that it is immune to public scrutiny.  It isn’t immune because the constitution gives the people the power of impeachment and removal from office.

State Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court Justices can hold their offices during “good behavior.”  If the barometer to measure good behavior is the same for seated justices as it is for all United States citizens, then we can make a determination as to whether the current Supreme Court Justices have exercised good behavior.  This would clearly be a reasonable comparative since our nation supports the doctrine that no one is above the law.

The influence of corporate money is pretty blatant with regard to  state Supreme Court races.  It takes a little more investigative prowess to find how the U.S. Supreme Court justices have been influenced by the very wealthy.  Nevertheless, it is occurring, and the evidence does exist.

In the case of Citizens United v. The Federal Election Commission, counsel for Citizens United argued in relevant part that corporations should be able to contribute unlimited amounts of money to the political process because corporations are people and have equal rights under the First Amendment.  The rational is that media organizations, which are corporations, have the First Amendment protected ability to give unlimited opinion and have unlimited influence during the political process.  Some would suggest that this argument is a red herring.  If a corporation wanted to compete with a media organization and its influence, it could start or buy a media organization, as have individuals like Oprah Winfrey, Ted Turner, William Randolph Hearst and Rupert Murdoch.  It would cost less than what has been spent in a single election cycle.

Why was Citizens United decided along straight party lines, as was the Bush v. Gore case during the 2000 election?

Anyone who is paying attention must wonder how many different constitutions are used by the U.S. Supreme Court Justices.  It is interesting that some justices can constitutionally make an agonized interpretation of the First Amendment to award rights to corporations that are the same as the First Amendment rights for people, yet on the other hand, these same Justices do not believe that real people of differing orientation have the same rights under the Fourteenth Amendment as those people who fall within these Justices personal and political theology and ideology.

Once again, it’s along straight party lines.

A Reform Party is clearly necessary if we are to preserve our democracy.  Every branch of government has been corrupted with money, and the judicial branch is simply acting as a facilitator for the politics of the legislative and executive branches, both on the national and state levels.

If point B is a rehabilitated political system resulting in a government of the people, by the people and for the people, we must first recognize that point A is a corrupted judiciary.  Revolutionary changes here will repair a wounded nation.