DEM CONGRESSMEN REQUEST FED INVESTIGATION OF PRO-BUSH VIOLENCE..."Five Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives called on Friday for a federal investigation into Miami-Dade County's abrupt decision two days ago to halt its manual recount of votes, saying Republican George W. Bush's campaign may have orchestrated a ``climate of fear'' to intimidate the board. The five urged Attorney General Janet Reno to ask the Justice Department to launch an investigation into the decision to halt the manual recount in Miami-Dade...The decision by the Miami election panel on Wednesday was taken after Republican protests inside the county building over plans to continue the recount. Gore's campaign unsuccessfully asked the Florida Supreme Court to get the Miami recount started again, and has said it will contest the Miami-Dade result.``According to many published reports, unruly and violent protesters managed to create a climate of fear and intimidation, with the intent of preventing the canvassing board from completing its task,'' the letter to Reno said.
``In addition, published reports strongly suggest these actions were orchestrated by the Bush campaign,'' it said. The letter from the Democratic politicians said that if the actions occurred as reported, ``they could amount to voter intimidation in violation of federal law. ... By preventing the canvassing board from completing its recount, these actions undermined the right to vote.''It was signed by Democratic Reps. Peter Deutsch and Carrie Meek of Florida, Sheila Jackson-Lee and Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas and William Jefferson of Louisiana. It was also signed by Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting delegate from Washington, D.C." --AP, 11/24/00

MORE EXAMPLES OF WHAT THE DEMS ARE TALKING ABOUT... "Mindful that such small gains [for Gore in the hand count] could end up tipping the balance Gore's way, Republican supporters [outside the Broward County building] were angry. One man with a bullhorn repeatedly yelled ``you can't steal this election,'' as Florida Democratic Congressman Peter Deutsch was interviewed by a television channel. A small group of pro-Gore protesters played counterpoint. One of their placards said, ``something smells in the Bushes.'' Unknown persons threw a brick through a window at the Democratic Party's Broward County headquarters late on Thursday or early on Friday when the office was closed, police said. Scrawled on the brick was the message ``We would not tolerate an illegal government.'' Plantation police were investigating the incident.
"By mid-afternoon outside [Palm Beach] County's emergency operations center where the recount was taking place, about 100 noisy Bush supporters yelled slogans such as ``no more Gore.'' At one point there was a minor confrontation between police and a crowd of about 200 Bush supporters when 20 motorcycle riders showed up to support Bush and drove too close to the building. The group, calling themselves ``'Nam Knights'' and riding Harley Davidson motorcycles, said they were there to make sure Gore did not quash the military vote. The pro-Bush protesters rushed onto the property, surrounding and cheering the bikers. Police ordered everybody off the property and moved them all back onto the main road. Many of the crowd outside the Palm Beach counting center were longtime Republican volunteers who have come to Florida in the last week from around the country. ``We're concerned about what is going on here, and we came down to help in any way we can; this is history,'' said Sheila Moloney of Virginia. sporting two U.S. flags in her hair. The Republicans were handing out free T-shirts and sodas to people joining the crowd. Democrat Ron Klein of the Florida Senate called the crowd ''mercenaries'' and said that the Democrats were ``not using campaign staff to stage fake rallies to deceive the American people.'' --AP,11/24/00

In a move that legal observers call "stunning," the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Bush request that all hand counts in Florida be stopped because the Florida Supreme Court's decision to allow them to continue contradicts citizens' rights expressed in the U.S. Constitution. Oral arguments will be heard on Dec. 1. One would assume if the present Florida hand count ends Sunday with Bush ahead, the U.S. Supreme Court hearing would only go forward if Gore contests the Florida results. If Gore does contest the results or if he wins the vote outright, the court would have to provide a decision prior to the meeting of the electoral college on Dec. 18. --Politex, 11/24/00

"ABCNEWS has learned [that the GOP protest] wasn’t spontaneous, nor was it local. It was an organized Republican Party protest, run by 75 party operatives out of a headquarters in a motor home in Miami. Now the operatives and their motor home are in Broward County, where a manual recount is still going on. “There are paid political operatives from out of state who have come down to South Florida” and helped stop the recount in Miami, said Congressman Peter Deutsch, D-Fla. “I think we need to immediately have a federal investigation of this attempt to stop a fair and accurate count.”" According to Dems interviewed by CNN, bringing in paid protesters from out of state and attempting to stop the election process constitutes offenses against federal voting law protections. --Politex, 11/24/00

"One of the issues the Gore team raised in its failed attempt to keep Miami-Dade counting was the contentious atmosphere around the local canvassing board as it tried to do its work. ABCNEWS has learned that a strenuous, seemingly spontaneous public demonstration against the recount Wednesday in Miami-Dade — which contributed to one canvassing board member’s vote in the 3-0 decision to quit recounting — was actually organized by the Republican Party, which bused supporters in from out of town. The Republicans had argued that Democratic officials were trying to take ballots behind closed doors. On World News Tonight Thursday, ABCNEWS reporter Bill Redeker found a motor home where Republican operatives were conducting a “media operation” that turned out to be direct involvement in the protest. That mobile home has now moved up to Broward County, he said on Good Morning America today. “If citizens of the United States are voluntarily objecting to the process where the rules change, and where Democratic officials take these ballots behind closed doors where they can’t be observers, I think American citizens are entitled to do that sort of thing,” [Bush lawyer Theodore] Olson said." --ABC

Two Bush Watchers Report That ABC Has Confirmed Our Previous Reports..."On ABC World News Tonight on Thursday, Nov. 23, there was a story about the Miami-Dade protest [prior to the Miami-Dade decision to stop counting altogether, losing Al Gore an estimated bulge of 2,000 votes over Bush.] It was not so spontaneous, but maybe the planned work of a Bush group, whose operations were centered in a nearby motorhome. Bush Raiders or something like that. They appeared from out of town so when a reporter asked one of them where they were from another person told them to not say. They were ostensibly there to "help the media". Anyway when the protest was over and the near riot panicked the canvassing board into quitting, the group drove away."..... "That RightWing Dittohead riot down in Miami was PLANNED ! It was a GOOPER Dirty Tricksters operation. The majority of those people banging on the doors and walls were from outside of Florida. They also uncovered a mobile HQ for the operation, a motorhome parked out in the parking lot filled with tons of electronic equipment and Bushie brownshirts." 11/24/00

MIAMI-DADE STOPPED COUNTING BECAUSE OF ACTUAL PHYSICAL VIOLENCE"The subsequent demonstrations turned violent on Wednesday after the canvassers had decided to close the recount to the public [because of fears of physical violence.] Joe Geller, chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, was escorted to safety by the police after a crowd chased him down and accused him of stealing a ballot. Upstairs in the Clark center, several people were trampled, punched or kicked when protesters tried to rush the doors outside the office of the Miami-Dade supervisor of elections. Sheriff's deputies restored order. When the ruckus was over, the protesters had what they had wanted: a unanimous vote by the board to call off the hand counting." --NYT, 11/24/00

GORE VOWS TO KEEP FIGHTING... "Lawyers for Democrat Al Gore said Thursday the vice president will contest the close presidential election results in at least one Florida county, and that he will not concede the election, even after the final state vote tally is certified on Sunday." --ABC

Barbara Ehrenreich has a wonderful essay about how she will always remember where she was and what she was doing the day she realized, fully and finally, that then-President Reagan was, um, not fully tethered to reality at key points. You know how these things go: the political spinning and sloganeering stops being meaningless background noise and begins to sound vaguely sinister; you begin to notice a few dark suspicions voiced by a few of the more iconoclastic pundits; suddenly you're reading the papers or watching TV or surfing the web and you encounter some small detail that hits you with the full force of revelation: "Holy Smoke, that man is a danger to society."

I, of course, remember exactly where I was and what I was doing the day I realized that George W. Bush never did, in any meaningful moral, intellectual, or practical sense, leave the third grade. I was comfortably ensconced at my desk on a dark March afternoon in Iowa, sipping a cup of strong black coffee generously laced with Jameson's--it was, after all, St. Patrick's Day--reading an interview with Bush in the New York Times. The Shrub had just emerged from South Carolina as the Republican nominee-apparent, and was busy trying to scrape the redolent remains of his tactics against McCain off the soles of his shoes. The interviewer mildly observed that having McCain in the race had certainly improved voter turnout, surely in itself an admirable thing. "Then how come he didn't win?" retorted Bush.

Having spent a fair amount of time around small children in this lifetime--having been, actually, a small child myself once--it wasn't particularly hard for me to understand what Bush was saying here: "Finders keepers, losers weepers. So what's your so-called point, dude?" It was simply, I realize now, that I had not yet really accepted what should have been obvious by then, what might have been obvious if some small part of my Midwestern English Teacher's soul hadn't refused, simply, to believe it: that a major-party candidate for President of the United States was incapable of understanding the suggestion that how one wins is as important as whether one wins, and its corollary thought, that how one loses often renders insignificant the fact that one lost at all. To Dubya, the permanent third-grader, winning erases the past. Winning a Monopoly game by knocking your little sister's pieces off the board works just as well as winning the grown-up way. Losing because you refuse to engage in the same creepy tactics as your opponent is still losing, a matter for simple contempt. Larger issues like voter cynicism and turnout and fair process are, like "insurance," just "Washington terms." The whole point is winning.

It has not, therefore, surprised me in the slightest to see Bush, The Man Who Trusts The People, arguing that we really ought to trust the machines instead. Or that Bush, The Man Who Believes in Tort Reform, has run to court at the first opportunity. Or that Bush, The Uniter Not a Divider, is accusing the other side of, among other things, being "unpatriotic" and anti-military by challenging some unpostmarked ballots. Or that Bush, The Man Who Is Running On His Texas Record, is distorting the facts of a vote-counting law he signed in order to make the process sound sinister. Or that Bush, The Man Who Would Bring Honor and Integrity to Washington, sees no conflict of interest in having his cousin call the election for him on a major TV network, or having his tireless campaigner certify the election for him without bothering with such niceties as finishing the counting of votes. As Bush undoubtedly sees it, all those campaign slogans were things he promised to do if he won. He hasn't won quite yet, so we can't hold him to rules that don't apply until afterwards. If we want Honor in the White House, we first have to let him win by any ugly means necessary.

This is the man who, by all credible accounts, drank, drove, partied, snorted, chased "pussy" and went AWOL until he was forty, at which point he piously gave up alcohol and expected the past to therefore disappear. He is now prepared to sue, stonewall, demonize, delay, mud-sling and cheat his way to a technical victory--moral victories being for weenies--in the expectation that once he wins, he will hear "Hail to the Chief" sung with a straight face by a grateful citizenry, the method of the victory conveniently forgotten. Like every other schoolyard bully, Bush always believes that everything will be fine once he gets his way. Like his moral and political soul-mates, the House Impeachment Managers, Bush cannot comprehend the possibility that the public turns queasy when an election looks to be overturned on a technicality. Most Americans didn't really care that Clinton lied about having an affair, and they don't care that some arbitrary deadline has passed in the state of Florida. Democrat or Republican or Other, most Americans actually see a bigger picture than that, at least the ones who have firmly and permanently left third grade behind. The only picture Bush sees is his own, and that fact has been obvious at least since St. Patrick's Day. If the mainstream media is still trying to figure it out on Christmas, we will have to wonder what grade they're stuck in.

Holy Smoke, the man is a danger to society. The last President we had with this carefree an attitude toward "ratfucking" an election thought that bugging offices and wiretapping phones was just normal political behavior, justified by the necessity of winning. I remember where I was when he was forced to resign. Of course, Bush probably doesn't--1974 would have fallen in the midst of his "I was too drunk to remember" years. -- Doris in DC, 11/23

WASHINGTON, JANUARY 28, 2001 (Rooters)-- While President George W. Bush has only been in office for a few weeks, his administration is faced with its first crisis, deciding if the United States should take a role in dealing with the situation in Praga. While most democratic countries in the free world have gone on record as condeming what has gone on in Praga during the last few months, the government-controlled Pragan media may be masking even greater crimes against human rights and the normal rule of law perpetrated by Pragan President sDub ya Poppyvich. Poppyvich, who is as new to the Pragan presidency as Mr. Bush is to ours, is being called "illegitimate" and "corrupt" by the majority of voters in Praga, having supposedly achieved the presidency by questionable means.

Mr. Poppyvich is the son of the past head of the Pragan secret police who became president a few decades ago. At the close of his recent campaign he declared himself the winner of the Pragan election in spite of receiving fewer votes than his opponent. He based his declaration upon the contested results of, in the words of a student of that country's history, "the Pragma, which is a system of presidential electors based on an old colonial method of selecting the president from the nation's pre-democracy past." In order to gain a majority of Pragma votes, Poppyvich had to carry the Pragan province of Florid, governed by the new president's brother. What is troubling democratic observers in the free world is that there have been allegations of voting impropriety in Florid, but Poppyvich initiated a public relations campaign through his Phant political party to stifle those allegations, insisting that the nation couldn't afford the instability that would occur if the announcement of the winner would be temporarily halted because of an investigation.

Poppyvich managed to avoid that roadblock on his way to office, but opponents in Praga have appealed to the international community for redress. In one Florid district, they claim, a district that favored Mr. Poppyvich's opponent, a poorly designed ballot led thousands to vote for the wrong candidate. Some of the ballots even lacked a hole to punch out to indicate the choice of Mr. Poppyvich's opponent. In Florid districts containing a high population of caste members who found Poppyvich's candidacy the least appealing, districts that voted 80% and 90% in favor of the opposition candidate, there were statistically significant errors in the handling of ballots, tens of thousands of them being rejected for various reasons. In one district in Northern Florid, caste members were subjected to state police interceptions, operating under the control of Mr. Poppyvich's brother, near their polling place. Supposedly, Florid law had been quite specific about such interceptions, since there have been allegations that this method was used in past Florid elections as a means of intimidation that would favor Phant party candidates.

Although six million citizens voted in the Florid presidential elections, Mr. Poppyvich declared himself the winner of that state with less than a one thousand vote plurality, and fought any attempts to allow the caste districts to hand count their votes as a means of correcting the much higher ballot error problems experienced in those districts. At the time of the election, Poppyvich governed a state neighboring Florid, Tekas. During Mr. Poppyvich's governance of Tekas, that state had the worst human rights record in Praga and also led Praga and most of the world in executions. One of Poppyvich's campaign promises was to elect like-minded officials to lifetime high court positions in Praga.

While the Democrats are pressuring President Bush to join the countries of the free world in condemnation of Poppyvich's poor human rights record as well as his "illegitimate" rise to power, Bush is reluctant to intervene, reminding House minority leader Gephardt in a letter yesterday that defending the people of Praga is not in our military or economic national interest. Besides, Mr. Bush told reporters yesterday, "As long as Mr. Poppyvich follows the rule of law as it is understood in his country, I see no cause to contravene...er...intervene. On a more personal note, from what I know of his campaign, I think he can take pride in riding the high road and following the will of the people." --Politex, 11/18/00

by Jerry Politex

I drove my silver Audi down Mesa Drive, the spine of Cat Mountain, hung a left at the cat's tail, drove quickly up the hilly, winding 2222 in low gear, took a right onto Balcones Drive, and came to a stop in the rear parking lot of Che Zee.

Another sunny, warm early spring day in Northwest Austin, Texas. The lunch crowd was pretty much thinned out by now, so I had choices of parking spaces. I got out of the car, the turbines winding down, and stood by the rear entrance to the restaurant, a pretty-good place for not very expensive Southwestern food. I didn't have long to wait.

He came into the parking lot in an old, rattletrap Nissan pickup. Paint worn off in places, rusty, dusty, squeaky. I recognized him from the description the moment he got out. Looked to be in his fifties. Grizzled. Kind of rusty, dusty, and squeaky. A stringbean of a guy with pale white skin, reddish hair, which was short but unkempt. He was wearing a black polo shirt with the tail out. Denim shorts that had shrunk to a tight fit over his bony hips, short enough for the front pockets to stick out of the frayed cuffs. A pair of old, once-white but now gray, paint-spattered tennis sneakers. Austin casual for a yuppie restaurant, ten minutes from the glass buildings of the city's burgeoning silicon gulch , a world of high tech hopes in buildings springing up like overnight mushrooms.

"Name's Wayne," he said with a crooked, good-natured smile, coming across the parking lot with his arm outstreatched like a spear, eager to shake my hand. "Recognized you right away, Politex. Good description."

***

It began with an e-mail...

From: Wayne
To: Politex
Subject: Question

I'm a humble writer. Who are you?

I answered back...

I'm a humble writer, too. What's up?

He then replied...

You ever get hungry around lunch? Got a propostion for you.

To which...

Sure. Where? What proposition?

And he...

How about Chez Zee? It's near my house. Any day at, say, 2 p.m. Proposition about Bush Watch.

So I...

Fine, let's do it tomorrow at Chez Zee at 2 p.m. unless I hear otherwise from you. I'll see you at the back parking lot entrance. I'll be wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Medium height. Black hair.

Finally he...

You got a deal. I'm just a skinny old guy with kids in college and a big mortgage. That's what I look like.

***

Wayne squeezed my elbow and placed a long limp fish of a hand in mine.

We went down a darkened hall past the rest rooms into the light of a modern restaurant. Blond wood tables with circular green shaded lamps hanging from the ceiling, waiters and waitresses in black slacks and white dress shirts. We sat ourselves in the front corner of the restaurant near a bank of windows that ran down the front of the building. We were on Balcones Road, an upscale strip center across the street. Our dinining companions on one side were a circular table of dressed for success laughing women finishing their desert. On the other side were two business men having coffee and somberly sharing numbers and writing them down in small notebooks.

"So, Wayne, you have kids in college and a big mortgage?"

"I know what you're thinking, Politex. Politex, what is that Russian? What?"

"Just a name I made up for Bush Watch. You know, Texas politics. I'm a private person and would just as soon keep Bush Watch separate from the rest of my life. You can call me Jerry if you want. That's my real first name."

"Well, Jerry, lemmy tell you, I kinda like Politex, so I'll call you that. Anyway, yeh. Seeing me dressed like an Austin hippy, the first thing that comes to mind is not a guy with a mortgage and kids in college. Maybe an old geezer selling dope'd be more like it. This is my day off and I just live a couple of minutes from here, so I came as I was. This ain't Dallas. Yet."

"So, what do you do, Wayne?"

Wayne leaned in across the table towards me, under the green lamp over the table, elbows on the place setting.

"Marge and I just got back from UCLA. Youngest kid wants to be a doctor. He's a junior and his grades are pretty good. Little trouble with chemistry, so I don't know. Maybe a pharmacist. Hell, if he decides to be a vet he could go to Aggieland over in Bryant. UCLA's paying tuition and some of the fees and books, so it could be worse. Living in L.A.'s expensive though. Fun to visit. Marge and I like to stay out in Pasadena in a hotel near the Rose Bowl. Very calming there, long as you stay off the freeways." Other boy, we got two, just started law school at UT. and decided to get married. That took up a lot of our time, getting ready for that, not to mention money. It's been a busy spring. So what do you do?"

Wayne leaned back in his chair, a guileless smile on his face, as if to say the ball was in my court, now. A waiter came and took our order. Wayne wanted a hamburger with everything and iced tea. I went for the chicken enchaladas verde with black beans and lime-cilantro rice.

I drank some water.

"I guess you could say I'm between jobs, Wayne. Looking for a second career, maybe. I was lucky enough to sell some software that people wanted, so now I have some time off to look around. So, you're a writer?"

to be continued next Wednesday...

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