Lack of Truth and Consequences

Via Avedon:

America's Point of No Return
By Robert Parry
November 2, 2006
...In many ways, Election 2006 not only marks the last chance to exact some accountability from those responsible for the disastrous Iraq War and other failures, but it also represents a point of no return for a nation hurtling toward a future of endless warfare abroad and a new-age totalitarianism at home.

Indeed, one could argue that the trivialization of this important U.S. election – with major U.S. news outlets devoting two days of breathless coverage to Senator Kerry’s clunky joke – is confirmation of America’s rapid descent into a dark fantasy world incapable of separating meaningful fact from silly irrelevancies.

More than 2,800 American soldiers are dead along with possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in what is likely just a small down-payment in blood for President Bush’s Iraq War – yet the U.S. press corps is obsessed with Kerry’s supposed affront to the troops, though the joke seemed actually to be aimed at Bush and the former Democratic presidential nominee isn’t even on the ballot.

All that’s left now is for the Washington pundits – many of the same people who climbed aboard the Iraq War bandwagon in 2002-03 – to explain to the nation on Election Night how Bush and his political team brilliantly engineered a dramatic come-from-behind win or how the Kerry gaffe and the overconfident Democrats blew it.

But the recent goofiness aside, the stakes for the Nov. 7 congressional elections remain extremely high and are likely to get even higher.

The elections have become a referendum on whether the United States will wage a virtually endless “World War III” against Muslim radicals – a kind of global version of Iraq – and whether the U.S. Constitution will be effectively repealed, replaced by a new system without “unalienable rights” for citizens and with an all-powerful President.

If Bush follows the pattern of 2002 and 2004, he will interpret a Republican victory on Nov. 7 as a mandate for pursuing and expanding his policies...

Certainly. And let's not get mired in technicalities like elections. If there isn't a Republican majority in Congress after the dust settles, look for a search to invalidate the electoral results.

Venezuelan voting machines. Terra'ists stealing the elections. Dogs and cats, living together in unChristian bliss. Iranian attacks on the institution of marriage. Already, they're lawyering up.

If they can't win it at the ballot box, or simply Diebold it, they'll try to figure a way to send it to the $upreme Court.

When that doesn't work? Billmon points to Crawford's List:



Some Democrats get bought at bargain prices compared to the going rate for a Republican Congressperson.