This edition of Inspection was supposed to be about gerrymandering, but recent news events: barely reported, put that on the back burner, hopefully for next week. I am also stepping off my previous, less than partisan, stand… for obvious reasons.
While the Republican noise machine attempts to pull scandal out of defeat by claiming Obama damn near personally ordered the attacks on Benghazi, it’s interesting on how fast news moves. My last column was an attempt at an honest analysis regarding the election. To be fair to myself, I did include electronic elections in my ruminations, but what I didn’t know is the old “siphon the votes off to Tennessee” trick might have been attempted once again during this past election.
Mr. Rove was beside himself when the election wasn’t going the way he thought it was supposed to. Why all the angst? Maybe the reason was he knew something we didn’t? Late that night the servers that did the tabulation in three Dem strongholds in Ohio crashed and, if we are to believe Anonymous, an attempt was made, once again, to flip the vote in Ohio by scrubbing the votes digitally: flipping what must be flipped to win.
As Rove insisted we needed to wait for better results from Ohio, more “complete” results: something, by the way, I would normally support, servers crashed. Just like they crashed in 2004. Right when he was insisting everyone should wait. Ironically: almost at the same time they crashed at night in 04: only one minute difference. But, if this is true, what happened this time the attempt was made to funnel votes off to be scrubbed, unlike 2004, the door was digitally closed.
If there’s any truth whatsoever to this, and Mr. Rove’s involvement, one thing is obvious: Karl Rove is a traitor.
So much noise about Benghazi. So many claims, conspiracy theories. Let’s compare what the Right would insist is a “conspiracy theory” vs the Left’s concerns, shall we?
Attacks do happen, and the how, and the why, they happened can get confusing. They certainly deserve investigating, though not the Frankenstein-like torch bearing, burn the castle down with accusations, kind of “investigating” promoted by the Right. And certainly not making accusations of terrorism public before we find out the truth: not simply tossing them into an already angry crowd.
The idea that Barack Obama knew in advance and did nothing just so people could die is nonsensical at best, but an investigation exploring all possibilities is important, as long as it is bipartisan: not some 1990s-like “we hate the president so we will find something, anything, to beat him with” witch hunt. Like any terrorist attack, finding out first is more important than politically motivated accusations, or actions.
We might want to remember that post Oklahoma City the Right started immediately screaming it was obviously some plot hatched by Saddam. Wiser minds decided a true investigation was the better way to go, since then we have gone further down that blame first rabbit hole. What we have had recently is more “investigation” by accusation, something we were all too familiar with when it came to Bill Clinton and the Republicans in the 90s.
It’s certainly not far fetched to think that every election we have since we supposedly “helped America vote” has been royally screwed up, maybe… almost… this one. And the repeated incidence of switched votes, machines and servers breaking down, votes being shuffled off to Tennessee and coming back a bit different: all this and more, certainly call for more than has been done investigation-wise.
And just like Benghazi, investigation is necessary. Not some Republican/Neo Con noise machine-like driven hate fest where any accusation is fair game, where it was claimed even letters to Socks the Cat letters would show all the conspiracies Clinton was involved in. Yes, that was how stupid the Republicans got under Gingrich, for the specific purpose of finding anything to beat Bill with. Doesn’t matter, left or right, that’s not “investigation.” And, like the Benghazi noise now, that kind of “investigation” was used before an election in an attempt to win, and after in an attempt to beat down on who won the election.
“Investigation” by Gingrich/McCain/Star/FOX accusation is no “investigation” at all. It’s dipping witches for political gain.
I demand we dip no witches for political gain. In fact I perfectly well understand that pursuing Mr. Rove is a briarpatch, but sometimes we must decide if it’s better to burn a briarpatch down. If an investigation proves this is one of those times, then burn we must… if we are ever to trust our elections again, or at least have elections more worthy of trust than those held by some of the worst dictators in human history.
Do we need an investigation, actually “investigationS?” Sure. But, no, not some noise machine driven hate fest, like all the drivel tossed about now about Benghazi, or Whitewater before, or mail to Socks the Cat, or… We need the kind of bipartisan investigations we had where: if it must be, even Jim and Bill Buckley knew it was Nixon time to go, if the worst must happen. The kind of investigation where both sides decided it was time for Joe McCarthy to hang his head in shame. And that should be true of any investigation we do.
However, if the DOJ doesn’t investigate yet another attempt to flip votes, they might as well not call themselves, “The Department of Justice.” And if found guilty, Mr. Rove must be frog marched off to prison, as several suggested, oh, so long ago.
Look, what do we have left of what our forefathers fought and died for if we have no real representation? If Karl Rove, or any one person, gets to decide the vote? Even if Benghazi is all the Right claims, we have a true diplomatic nightmare where people who could have lived, died. Kind of like a mini, very small, infinitesimally tiny version of the massive amount of missing WMD in Iraq where thousands, actually millions, ended up butchered over mostly false accusations, all over ignored intel that led to 9/11 and had nothing to do with Iraq. Nothing.
Agree with that statement, or challenge that statement, we still have a country after Benghazi, even after Iraq: as damaged as that country may be.
But what if we can no longer trust the vote, due in part to one person who has decided he gets to decide who our leader will be, not us? That’s no different than letting Saddam, or Stalin, or Hitler, or al Qaeda decide our elections.
Try to steal a presidential election through fraud and corruption, again, Karl? Gee, Karl, why don’t you just sell crucial secrets to the Chinese, it might do less damage to the very foundation of our nation. At least Benedict Arnold had years of being denied credit and recognition for his previous brave and patriotic acts by some of the leaders of the Revolution before his traitorous actions damn near short circuited the founding of our country.
Karl would obviously have had one purpose: to win at all cost. That’s the same “purpose” every dictator has who wants to make sure any “election” winds up validating their tyrannic, despotic, rule.
My guess? The Left and Mr. Obama will, once again, let this slide. After all, why look partisan? In a party where trying to be “fair” and less partisan have too damn often been more important than bringing criminals on the other side of the aisle to justice, one wonders why bother having even just two parties? Let’s just let Karl decide.
Meanwhile, the trial by accusation will continue , and the supposedly “Left” mainstream media will support it, promote it, hang on every word. The Rove story will, once again, slip into obscurity, down Orwell’s 1984 memory hole.
An argument has been put forth, “Doesn’t matter, because even if he flipped the vote in Ohio Barack would have won.”
Are you kidding? How can outright election theft “not matter?” You can be damn sure if we did it to them it would “matter.”
Want to bet if anything comes of this the Repub noise machine will insist the issue is Anonymous closing that door to election theft, not Rove trying to steal an election? However, my guess is, what will come of this is mostly silence. Silence that favors the “Obama approved the attack in Benghazi by signing a secret order with a candle-shtick in the Oval office” crowd. Because, these days, one sided, purely partisan, investigations are all the rage since Kenny Star and company made them so popular.
Like stories of three headed aliens shaking hands with Lindsay Lohan, such things do sell lots of papers, and attract a lot of clicks, but are the opposite of journalism, and the opposite of our representatives doing their damn jobs.
As a word of warning, I do think all the noise over Benghazi, and the rapid tossing out of unproven accusations, indicates the Republicans future response to having lost an election. Since they couldn’t win the vote, for whatever reason, we will probably have partisan investigation after partisan investigation now. Since they couldn’t win the popular vote they won’t take their ball and go home, nor would I insist they do. But, like the bullies they are, they will beat us with it, and some Dems will let them. A few, DINOS, will help them.
I’ll be damned if I’d ever support that. Fine, this is a great opportunity to counter their nonsense. I fear the only way to get out of this cycle, like with any bully, is to beat back harder than they beat you.
In reality, there is no difference between what Karl Rove did, if he “did,” than what any traitor does. Karl Rove, if guilty, is a national security risk, and has betrayed the very foundation our form of government was founded on: representation.
In my opinion, if found guilty, public execution would be far too kind.
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Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
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