US Attorneys replaced to control 2008 election?

There are a lot of people who believe that the last presidential election was rigged by Shrub and Company. Ohio gets mentioned a lot — generally in strained screams, or, depending on the company present, in hushed tones.

But although some of these folks may give off the kind of vibe that indicates they prefer the feel of aluminum foil wallpaper, I haven't been convinced they're on the wrong track.

And it's becoming painfully obvious that Alberto Gonzales — most likely with the blessing or even direction of the White House — orchestrated the firings of all those U.S. Attorneys for political reasons.

Then along comes this, from an article by Greg Gordon, Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor of McClatchy Newspapers:

... Last April, while the Justice Department and the White House were planning the firings, Rove gave a speech in Washington to the Republican National Lawyers Association. He ticked off 11 states that he said could be pivotal in the 2008 elections. Bush has appointed new U.S. attorneys in nine of them since 2005: Florida, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico. U.S. attorneys in the latter four were among those fired.

Rove thanked the audience for "all that you are doing in those hot spots around the country to ensure that the integrity of the ballot is protected." He added, "A lot in American politics is up for grabs."

The department's civil rights division, for example, supported a Georgia voter identification law that a court later said discriminated against poor, minority voters. It also declined to oppose an unusual Texas redistricting plan that helped expand the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. That plan was partially reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Frank DiMarino, a former federal prosecutor who served six U.S. attorneys in Florida and Georgia during an 18-year Justice Department career, said that too much emphasis on voter fraud investigations "smacks of trying to use prosecutorial power to investigate and potentially indict political enemies."

Several former voting rights lawyers, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of antagonizing the administration, said the division's political appointees reversed the recommendations of career lawyers in key cases and transferred or drove out most of the unit's veteran attorneys. ...

The full article: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16962753.htm

Karl Rove isn't just a lightning rod for the administration. He's an amateur scientist, constantly firing little rockets with wires on them into the clouds, trying his best to generate bolts of retribution aimed at anyone who would oppose the reign of the Neocons. Unfortunately, it's the Constitution of the United States that keeps getting singed.

If Alberto Gonzales needs to go, Rove needs to go just as badly.

And if Rove needs to go, why would we want to keep the president who trusts and encourages him — if not directly ordering him to rig these elections?

It's said that Bush is just a puppet of the Neocon operators within the administration. He's supposedly some kind of kidnap victim. If that's the case, I'd say the kidnap victim has full-blown Stockholm Syndrome.

Or is The Shrub so oblivious to reality that he can't see the massive machine that surrounds him?

To Wiki, or Not to Wiki...

I just came from Wikipedia. There's an article about me there that keeps gathering erroneous information. Like a wad of gaffer's tape that keeps picking up lint.

Ya see, I've never been to Malaysia. What's really interesting is that the entry was updated at some point to add "where he stayed from 2004-2005." So, either there's another erroneous source out there, or the same Wikipedian keeps going back to add bogus stuff.

So I thought I'd correct the errors.

Man... Talk about a rabbit hole.

I ended up spending a couple of hours editing and expanding my article, adding in stuff I've done since retiring as the voice of Barney the Dinosaur.

And then I ran across Wikipedia's guidelines on autobiography. Hmmm.

Well, I think I can be objective. I mean, I thought the concept of the Fair Witness in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land was a beautiful thing... that objectivity is an ideal to be striven toward with great vigor and the wearing of really impressive robes. Heck, I nearly said that once while being voir dired for jury duty.

So, I'm perfectly willing to admit... uh, I mean, report that some people have thought Barney was the most annoying thing ever to be created for television. And then I would say that most of those people are either teenage boys or childless adults. Which is true. In my experience.

But then I read the part about personal experience being a bad thing for an article.

So, maybe I'll just leave in the list-like paragraphs of my work experience, like the movies and TV shows I've done graphic design for.

But then I read that everything in an article has to be verifiable through a published source.

Hmmm... So I guess I need to get off my duff and update my IMDb entry to include all the shows I've worked on. So that would be a verifiable source.

But then I read that using primary sources is discouraged. And I guess I'd be my own primary source for the IMDb listing. Or not. I dunno.

So... After writing a lengthy bio and adding in my saxophone-playing, chemical-analyzing, Rosie the Riveter family, and being a diligent editor and using Wikipedia's markup tags to create links to other articles, and after trying to be as objective as a Fair Witness watching Valentine Michael Smith turn a box 90 degrees from everything else in the universe... I cut all of my new stuff and just deleted the Malaysia thing. And I removed the totally-wrong birth date and replaced it with the correct year. Oh, and I killed the line that said that I did the voice of Kuma for Tekken. I didn't.

But I did save the expanded article in a text file. For later. Just in case.

I mean, they said I'm a stub. And that I need to be expanded.

So I'll just keep that article in case I want to expand myself later. Because, as they say, you never know when the moment will be right.

My chaotic self-reproducing inflationary universe

Welcome.

I've started a few blogs, but work would suddenly explode and I'd abandon the bloggage after just a few posts. But then, eventually, work would cyclically shrink back down to the size of a pinhead... or I'd have something to get off my chest, or both, and I'd start to write again. Except the previous blog didn't seem to have the right focus. So I'd start a brand new one.

It's like theoretical cosmologist Andrei Linde's theory of a chaotic self-reproducing inflationary universe. Explosively rapid expansion, followed by gradual shrinkage. But even if this universe buys the farm, there's always another bubble in the multiverse that'll kick in.

So now, work shrinkage is apparently setting in after this bubble been explosively, expansively insane over the last few months -- and no, I don't mean "shrinkage" in a Seinfeld kinda way.

But that's for another post...

For now, suffice it to say that while I'm waiting for this verse-bubble to pop so I can hop on the next one, I'll be posting blog entries.

But the Vegas odds makers would be laughing their collective buttocks off if you put money on me to finish more than two posts.

C'mon. I dare ya. Lay yer money down.

And get ready for the next big bang.