American Prospect Offers Solid Argument for Voting

Lately I've been reading The American Prospect online. This morning I read a column illustrating the need for Democrats and independents disgusted by GOP corruption and criminality to vote.

Hold, Hamper, Hinder, by columnist Robert Kuttner, contains in its closing paragraph a message all disenfranchised voters should heed:

The real fraud is the theft of our democracy, by deliberate suppression of the right to vote and to have one's vote counted. The popular revulsion against the Bush administration is so powerful that even with these abuses, Democrats are likely to take back the House. Then the recovery of American democracy can begin.

One week from tomorrow, the future of our nation will be decided. This is no exaggeration; whether the Bush regime continues to abuse the power it has stolen with impunity, or is stopped cold in its tracks, will be determined by which party controls Congress after November. Democrats are favored in the polls by a significant margin, according to news reports.

It is therefore imperative, in this age of Republican corruption so pervasive as to be unprecedented in the history of the United States, for voters against the regime and its enablers in the GOP to turn out in such numbers that no amount of electoral fraud on the part of Republicans will be enough to steal another election.

With the death toll for American troops in Iraq reaching 100 this October, with yet another day and a half left in the month, we owe it to those men and women stuck in the midst of a civil war of the Bush regime's making, to ensure a Democratic victory next week.

MWAHAHAHAHA!!!

I've now joined the ranks of people coming down sick with colds and other respiratory illnesses this Autumn. I was feeling really miserable despite my homemade cold remedy that contains tea, honey, lemon juice and a bit of blackberry wine (elderberry wine is best, but I was out and blackberry works about as well).

Then, something happened that improved my spirits. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the GOP has pulled its ads for incumbent U.S. senator Mike DeWine.

The Republican Party has canceled its plans to run ads supporting Mike DeWine in the crucial final week of his tough re-election race, the party confirmed Thursday night.

The Republican National Committee notified television stations in Ohio that it will not use time it reserved from next Tuesday until the Nov. 7 election.

Rumor had it that the RNC had threatened to pull DeWine's funding unless he got really nasty in the last month of the campaign. The creepy, lying little troll complied, putting out an ad lying about Democratic challenger Sherrod Brown's unemployment taxes.

Apparently, there was some error on the part of the IRS involving his unemployment taxes. Brown was not informed for eight months. But when he learned of this, he paid the back taxes in full. DeWine's ad nevertheless flat out lied, saying Brown hadn't paid his taxes for twelve years. The state of Ohio, however, backed up the truth: that Brown had in fact paid the money he owed back in 1994. DeWine lied, again, and it blew up in his face.

But this isn't surprising; earlier this year the incumbent had used doctored images of 9/11 in an ad lying about Brown's record on the issue of security. The ad received immediate criticism, enough that it was soon pulled.

DeWine is a lying creep, and nothing more than a rubber stamp for the policies of George W. Bush. For the GOP, that's qualification enough. But he is incompetent when it comes to waging a dirty campaign. The RNC knew that earlier this month, when it allegedly threatened to pull his funding with polls showing him lagging behind by a significant margin. But they wasted the money on him anyway, and it backfired.

So now, with less than two weeks to go before the midterm elections, the GOP has finally given up on DeWine in order to focus its monetary power where it thinks it'll do more to help other embattled Republicans who have better electoral chances.

While the incumbent has outspent Brown, according to the Plain Dealer article many of the Democratic challenger's ads have already been paid for and fundraising this month has been strong. If this is the situation, DeWine must divide his money trying to salvage his floundering campaign while Brown may choose his expenditures with a fair amount of confidence.

If the Senate does manage to remain under Republican control, it'll be worth it to see Sherrod Brown in place of the lying, creepy little troll that is Mike DeWine.