The 800 Pound Gorrilla We Face... I Say SPANK THAT MONKEY!!!!

Anthony Wade: 'The gorilla in the room must be dealt with: Lack of election reform threatens to make all progress irrelevant'
Posted on Sunday, August 07
By Anthony Wade, Link Here

The good fight has been fought for some years now. Progress has indeed been made. There are rumblings of indictments from the Valerie Plame incident, that may exceed Karl Rove. With each passing death in Iraq a nation begins to realize that this is just not worth it, despite the bravado of Bush, a man who knows nothing about sacrifice. The Downing Street Memos are still out there, waiting to take down this corrupt administration. This however, is not the time for resting upon false hope. There is still an 800 pound gorilla in the room that only a handful seem to be talking about.

The unbridled arrogance of this cabal seems to know no end. When faced with the realities that the country was catching on that John Bolton may be involved with Treasongate, Bush appoints him to the UN, in defiance of Congress. In defiance of the American people. The judicial branch of government orders the release of the hidden Abu Ghraib photos, and Bush snubs his nose at them as if they have no right to check, or balance him. Nearly everyone agrees that torture is unacceptable, but Bush and Cheney make it known that any attempt to stem the tide of the United States from practicing torture will be vetoed. Halliburton has been caught over-billing the American people millions of dollars, has posted a 284% profit increase, and still they are awarded bonuses and incentives, as well as new monies, your money. This is all done with a nod and a wink, in clear view of the public because it is fairly apparent that Bush does not think he is accountable to the people, and has lost any pretense of working for us. How else can you explain his leaving for the longest Presidential vacation in decades, as our kids are dying?

Why the certainty? Why the cockiness? Well, there is that gorilla. That gorilla is election reform, or the lack thereof.

Just today, the resident election reform experts, Fitrakis and Wasserman, warn us that the recent special election in Ohio, may also have been stolen. I say also because any objective review of the 2004 election reveals that it was indeed stolen. How else do you explain a man who cannot break a 49% approval rating, earning 11 million more votes than the previous election? Fraud. I have heard all the right wing blather in reaction to this. I do not object to the word conspiracy, because by definition, that is what this is. It is the word theory I take exception to. Theory implies some uncertainty, where in this case there is none. I offer the fact that no GOP government officials will agree to allow paper trails as my proof.

Whatever progress we think we have made in the past few years is completely irrelevant if the elections are not guaranteed to be fair. There are so many crimes out there being committed by this administration you can bet that they will do whatever they can to not lose control of either house in 2006. They correctly recognize that if that were to happen, then REAL investigations would ensue, complete with subpoena power. It is obvious that the tide has shifted and public opinion is rapidly drawing away from the party that has led us down this path of destruction. The majority of people in this country now correctly believe that Bush has lied to us about going to war and his personal ratings are plummeting. There is no question in my mind that if the elections were fair and honest, that the GOP would lose control in 2006 but the question remains, will they be fair?

I will be honest; I do not know the first thing about how we go about fixing this gorilla of a problem. I would just as soon leave that up to the experts, such as Fitrakis and Wasserman. The bottom line is 2006 is not as far off as you think. The system is too vast and detailed to think we can try and fix this next year. If we do, we will get more obstruction from GOP officials and promises of fixing the system, after the elections. Heed this warning, if unchecked, we will wake up in late 2006, and the GOP will have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. As unlikely as that sounds, it is no more unlikely than George Bush picking up an extra 175,000 votes from south Florida, but that is exactly what they sold us in the 2004 election.

There is no end to the arrogance of this administration or the death they are willing to deal in. There is no end to their confidence in the system they have fixed in this country. If we do not figure this out soon, the Downing Street Memos will go the way of the Gannongate and Voterfraud2004 scandals, mere footnotes in the bloody history of the reign of King George. It is time to kill the gorilla.

Anthony Wade, a contributing writer to opednews.com, is dedicated to educating the populace to the lies and abuses of the government. He is a 37-year-old independent writer from New York with political commentary articles seen on multiple websites. A Christian progressive and professional Rehabilitation Counselor working with the poor and disabled, Mr. Wade believes that you can have faith and hold elected officials accountable for lies and excess.

--BEAT THAT MONKEY!!! Slap 'em AGAIN!---