Why Your Vote Will Not Matter This November

Presidential debates between Obama and Romney will begin next week, beckoning Americans to focus on the candidates and who they should support.

It is time to ask ourselves if either of  the present presidential campaigns or any debate between the two candidates matters.

Eight years ago, on Sept. 28, 2004, an editorial  published by The Lone Star Iconoclast, the hometown newspaper of George Bush in Crawford, Texas, outlined the issues that were being overlooked by the mainstream media. The newspaper endured threats and boycotts after endorsing  John Kerry for President. Kerry had been struggling in the wake of an off-point swift-boat campaign launched by covert manipulations orchestrated by the Rove White House. We suggest you read the editorial again, in full.

 The editorial, which began with “Few Americans would have voted for George W. Bush four years ago if he had promised that, as President, he would…” sent shock waves through the electorate and around the world. The Iconoclast site went down, overpowered by the force of 10,000,000 hits in one day as real, substantial issues came into sharp relief.

Instead of irrelevancies, the ensuing 2004 presidential debates refocused attention on the shocking developments in America and around the world, driven by war, irresponsible spending, the emptying of the Social Security Trust as benefits were slashed, the outsourcing of jobs, granting of cost plus contracts to friends of the administration, and the conversion of a budget surplus to the largest deficit in history.

The editorial concluded that Bush was a liar and cited “elements of a hidden agenda that surfaced only after he took office.”

The Kerry Campaign experienced a surge of support, which most Americans believed would carry him into the White House. The issues have not changed, despite attempts by both candidates to distract you. But we are farther down the path on a trajectory to absolute disaster.

Today the truth about Bush has become obvious, despite constant attempts to make him look good in comparison to Obama, who after a short, giddy period of fervent relief, stunned supporters by continuing the Bush presidency. Most Americans cannot discern a difference between the two administrations.

2004 provided a lesson we need to learn.

Beginning in the summer 2003 flyers were being circulated in the extended Cleveland, Ohio area reading, “Get Rid of Bush.” This was before the primary process had identified the opposing candidate.

Rebecca Anne, then living in the area, remembers the flyers, which urged people to register to vote for the explicit purpose of removing Bush from office. No one, Rebecca Anne said, cared very much who replaced Bush. Anyone would do. The people she knew included a broad range of political affiliations.

The editorial board of The Cleveland Plain Dealer, which has been criticized by liberal columnists for the generally conservative positions on its editorial page, despite the Democratic readership, withheld any endorsement. Then-publisher Alex Machaskee wanted to endorse Bush, over the objections and vote of the editorial board. He was instead persuaded by editorial page editor Brent Larkin to withhold any endorsement.

In the immediate aftermath of the election an article appeared in The Free Press by columnist Bob Fitrakis, entitled “How the Ohio election was rigged for Bush,” on Nov. 22, 2004.

The article cited four community public meetings about “election irregularities and voter suppression – two in the capitol, Columbus, and one each in Cincinnati and Cleveland – a clear pattern and practice of voter disenfranchisement is emerging.”

The 2004 election raised intensity on the troubling issue of electoral integrity. Millions of Americans had waited in long lines across the country to vote on Nov. 2 and went to sleep in the belief John Kerry had been elected President. They woke up the next morning to the news Kerry had conceded in the small hours of the night, refusing to contest the highly questionable outcome of counts in several states.

Today, a growing number of Americans from all parties accept that Kerry was actually elected. The election had been stolen by use of a back door in the voting machines, designed and sold to Americans by wealthy Bush friends. As this realization sunk in questions about the 2000 election also dawned.

Stolen elections require both the means of carrying it out with voting machines that can be remotely programmed and providing probable deniability. But the same people are used for this, over and over again.

The publication of another book, Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk, by Rove confidant John Fund, formerly of The Wall Street Journal, with Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Hans von Spakovsky, serves to illustrate how the Bush strategy for covering up their serial election thefts works. Building on their mainstream credentials operatives such as Fund provide cover which dampens protests by muddying the waters with false facts and rhetoric.

Fund’s first book, “Stealing Elections,” published in 2004, and his presence as a spokesman, has been invaluable as well.

Today, the whole electoral process appears to be a distraction for the public, providing shreds of false hope as the next round of take-downs are put in place, carried out with the callousness of the slaughter house.

Since the moment Bush was inaugurated in 2001 Americans have been subjected to a continuous onslaught of falsehoods, from the infamous weapons of mass destruction used to justify the war in Iraq, and moves by Congress which changed the economic rule book, immunizing the financial sector from wrong doing. Since then, Americans have suffered through a series of shocks which can each be traced back to the income stream of a small number of interests.

Wealth is being transferred from those who earned it to those who use government to fill their own pockets. Changes in statute, rubber stamped by Congress, and the erosion of the rights of Americans, through conversion of our courts, have transformed America.

What began as a trickle into the pockets of special interests has become a hemorrhage, with the 2008 real estate crisis only one of many.

As Americans vote this November, if they bother, the next round of planned takings will begin. The target will, again, be the homes of Americans. This will happen no matter who is elected to fill the office of President and a growing number of Americans realize this.

Today, there are more ‘Obama in 2008’ stickers weathering on cars than new 2012 stickers. Romney signs are still outnumbered by those for Ron Paul.