The Velvet Banana, Part One: The Coup d'etat of 2000 (Democratic Underground Still Obsessing)

Democratic Underground ^ | November 21, 2001 | Jack Rabbit

[PJ-Comix]

This is America, not a banana republic.

In banana republics, dictators often come to power through a coup d'etat in which the previous government is deposed. This usually involves the army sending tanks into the streets of the capital and aiming their barrels either at the presidential palace or the legislative house and declaring the strongman of the junta to be the new president. Afterwards, the new president calls elections in which he is a candidate; assuming that there is a strong opposition candidate who has not been assassinated or fled into exile, this election is quite likely to be rigged. Thus does the president stay in power.

Once in a great while, there is a coup - not necessarily in a banana republic - that is executed successfully without violence or threat or violence, for example the fall of the Communist government in Czechoslovakia in 1989. This phenomenon is called a velvet coup.

The US presidential election of 2000 came down to one state: Florida. On election night, the networks on the basis of exit polling first called the state a narrow win for Gore, then called it for Bush, then said it was too close to call. The election was not settled for 36 days and was settled for Bush in a manner that has left a bad taste in the mouths of many who voted for Gore.

Some would say that this election has not yet been settled.

When the US Supreme Court halted the recount process on December 12 in a ruling that gave the White House to Bush, a consortium of news organizations hired the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) to conduct a thorough recount of all disputed ballots in the state of Florida to determine under several different scenarios and criteria of counting the ballot who would have won had such a recount taken place. Last week, the results were released and the winner is: well, in some scenarios Bush won and in others Gore won.

About two weeks before the release of the NORC recount, New York-based investigative journalist Greg Palast, who did extensive research into the Florida election, predicted that the recount would "seem conflicting and useless." It appears that Mr. Palast is right.

However, there is more wrong with the election of 2000 conducted in Florida than the NORC recount could reveal. NORC shows that Gore would have won a statewide recount by a only few dozen votes out of six million cast, but that Bush would have won by two to five hundred votes had the four-county recount sought by Gore proceeded. However, even if NORC had showed that Bush would have held on to his tainted three-digit victory in all scenarios, the truth remains that the election was stolen. Had the election been free and fair, Al Gore would today be the President of the United States and his margin of victory would most likely have been sufficient to preclude the need for a recount.

The election drama in Florida can be divided into pre-election and post-election parts. Both parts of the drama show that the Republicans planned and executed a banana republic-style election theft with such agility that one would think that Florida has been a third-world dictatorship under their rule for decades. The post-election drama is the one that gets the most attention, but the nefarious pre-election activities of the Florida election officials are what made all the difference.

Nevertheless, it is helpful to give a broad overview of the facts of the post-election fiasco in which Gore nearly upset the Republicans' plans in spite of all their craft and care.

Those dedicated to the principles of democratic government are rightly offended by the Republicans' post-election strategy. With the final tally within the statistical margin of error, Gore asked for a recount. However, Florida election laws being what they were last year (they have been revised this year), Gore chose to ask for a recount in just four counties, all of which had documented problems on election day and all of which have a history of voting more heavily Democratic than the state as a whole.

The Republicans screamed foul and said it was unfair that Gore should be able to pick and choose what counties should be recounted. Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the chief elections officer for the state of Florida, imposed a strict November 14 deadline to the counties to complete the votes. She claimed the law gave her no choice, but the law in fact gave her discretion that she chose not to exercise. That she chose not to exercise discretion and give the counties a more reasonable amount of time to complete a recount - and of course we have her solemn word for this - had nothing to do with the fact she is a Republican or the fact that she was the state co-chair of the Bush campaign. After all, she is just a professional doing the job that she was elected to do and this is America, not a banana republic.

The Gore campaign went to court and got the deadline extended to November 26. The GOP mobilized its troops by getting their spinmasters to denounce the recount as "inventing votes" and actually accused the Gore campaign of attempting to steal the election. The Republican argument was truly Orwellian: counting votes is stealing an election.

Meanwhile, the office of the registrar of voters in Miami-Dade County had some visitors on November 22 while counting disputed ballots. This was a group of clean-cut white men wearing white shirts and neckties demanding to be let in to the area where the votes were being counted. One official was kicked and beaten in the elevator by the mob after he placed his sample ballot in his pocket. That this was part of the procedure and that the official was called a thief and beaten showed that the mob either did not understand the procedures of the recount or did not care. The registrar determined that the vote recount could not go forward under such conditions and canceled the recount. It is also known that a Republican member of Congress, John Sweeney of New York, was outside the registrar's office at the time and gave orders over a cellular phone to someone inside to "shut it down."

On November 27, the Washington Post reported some interesting facts about the mob ("Fla Recounts Prompts an Outpouring of GOP Activism", p. A9). Many were from out-of-state and told reporters that the Republican National Committee had paid for their travel, room and board. Furthermore, the Post identified two members of the Miami mob as Congressional staffers: Tom Pyle, an aide to House Republican whip Tom DeLay; and Doug Heye, a spokesman for California GOP Congressman Richard Pombo. Could it be that there was mob violence organized to interfere with and intimidate election officials doing their duty? This is America, not a banana republic.

The deadline came without the four counties able to complete their recounts. They turned their partial results in to Secretary of State Harris, who then certified these incomplete results as complete and accurate. Al Gore had no choice but to go to court to force a recount.

The court battle was on. The Republicans asserted that the election was over the minute Katherine Harris certified results she knew to be incomplete and inaccurate to be complete and accurate and awarded Florida's twenty-five electoral votes to Bush. Gore offered to have the entire state recounted, but the Republicans continued to claim that the election was over.

For the next several days and weeks, the Bush and Gore campaigns fought not for the hearts and minds of voters, but judges. The operative date looming was December 17, when the Florida state legislature would meet in special session to officially name the electors. The Bush camp felt that if they could delay matters until then, the state legislature, dominated by GOP majorities, would simply award the electors to Bush regardless of whether they knew the results of the election or, if they did know, without regard to what it was.

When the Florida State Supreme Court ordered the recount to proceed, Bush spokesman James Baker angrily denounced the order and suggested that the legislature should simply step in and give the electors to Bush. If that didn't work, the Republicans had one more trick up their sleeves: if the voters of Florida were to award a set of electors to Gore and the legislature a set to Bush, then, under the complicated provisions of the Twelfth Amendment, the House of Representatives in Washington would resolve the dispute.

Under the Constitutional rules and given the make up of the House, Republicans would be able to award the Florida vote to Bush. House Republican Whip Tom DeLay chortled at the possibility. In none of this did any Republican express any concern about the completeness or accuracy of the incomplete and inaccurate count that Ms. Harris had certified as complete and accurate.

All this was brought to a halt on December 12, when the United States Supreme Court, by a 5-4 decision supported by an intellectually dishonest opinion written per curium, stopped the recount process. Bush was certified the winner of the Florida election by 537 votes. The velvet coup was complete and successful.

However, this coup did not start on election night, but long before. It was a calculated crime, not a mere crime of opportunity. Greg Palast, who, as mentioned earlier, has done a great deal of work researching the Florida election, has paid special attention to the pre-election part of the drama. His work on the election may be found on his website.

Palast tells how Ms. Harris and Florida's Republican Governor, Jeb Bush, brother of the candidate, sought to purge the rolls of potential Democrats voters. Although Florida is one of several states that prohibit convicted felons from voting; however, Florida's state courts have ruled that those convicted of felonies in other states and served their sentences cannot be prevented from voting in Florida.

Nevertheless, Palast shows, Ms. Harris and Governor Bush ordered state and county agencies to deny registration to such voters. Next, Ms. Harris hired Database Technologies, a firm with ties to the Republican Party, to find such voters already registered and purge them. However, it didn't stop there. DBT also provided a list of names to Harris of voters who may have been convicted of felonies in other states.

Although DBT claimed to have cautioned Harris about the potential accuracy of the list, Harris sent the list on to the counties to purge their rolls. One county registrar threw out the list when she found her own name on it. Other counties used the list to purge voters. We now know that many people on the list were never convicted of felonies in any state.

Palast estimates that in this way the state of Florida illegally purged tens of thousands of voters. Since the list at least partly ties to arrest records to the voter rolls, one might well guess that a high percentage of the names on the list were of Afro-American voters. As anyone who knows anything at all about voting profiles knows, nine black voters out of ten vote Democratic.

Thus, the list was a deliberate attempt to purge potential Democratic votes from the rolls. How many votes would Al Gore have netted from these wrongly purged voters? Probably a lot more than 537. Purging voter rolls? This is America, not a banana republic. Or maybe it has become a banana republic after all. The election was stolen.

What can be done to prevent this from happening again?

First of all, we see that the post-election Republican strategy was based on the Byzantine Constitutional process for electing the President. That can be remedied very easily. Write your Congressman and tell him or her that you want a Constitutional amendment submitted to the states calling for the direct election of the President and Vice President by popular vote. There will be no more electoral college, no state legislatures having any role in selecting the President and the House of Representatives is no longer part of the process, either. Just the people.

Second, this Constitutional Amendment should also guarantee all American citizens the right to vote. The Supreme Court decision Bush v. Gore painfully reminded us that this is not a right. Furthermore, if it were, Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush would not have had any reason to attempt to purge the voter rolls. Those people would simply have had the right to vote.

As long as the beneficiary of the rigged election is in the White House, it is unlikely that Katherine Harris or Jeb Bush will face whatever criminal proceedings, if any, that could be brought against them. However, Katherine Harris has announced her intention to run for Congress in a safe Republican district in Florida next year.

Article I, section 5 of the Constitution gives members of Congress the right to judge the qualifications of its members. Congressional Democrats might want to put Ms. Harris on notice that they might take up the issue of whether or not a former state chief elections officer who abused her power in order to purge the rolls of legal voters and thereby rig a Presidential election is qualified to sit in the House.

[nicmarlo]

I think it is important to monitor that site because as kooky as their ideas might seem, many of them will probably be adopted by Demmycrat officials.

It's called letting the right side know what the left side (or in this case, the commie side) is doing. Always good to do surveillance work, know what the enemy is up to, what they're thinking, planning, saying. Thanks for the post.

[Brasky]

Lets try to take all of the "talking points" on (I dont have the time or the energy to refute all of it, but here goes).

The US presidential election of 2000 came down to one state..

This is just tripe. Had Gore won his home state and the state of his presidental running mate. Floriduh wouldnt have mattered.

However, there is more wrong with the election of 2000 conducted in Florida than the NORC recount could reveal. NORC shows that Gore would have won a statewide recount by a only few dozen votes out of six million cast,

Problem is NO ONE asked for a statewide recount. Only after the fact did someone concoct this scenario. It also left out the fact that hundreds of military vote were indeed tossed out after democraps lobbied canvassing boards to do so. -Net gain 0.

Both parts of the drama show that the Republicans planned and executed a banana republic-style election theft with such agility that one would think that Florida has been a third-world dictatorship under their rule for decades.

Mayor Daleys brother and Warren Christopher's band of laywers swooped in on Fla. faster than the Bush team. Cook county style election fraud in Fla. was the order of the day. Once again no facts to back up the statement

With the final tally within the statistical margin of error, Gore asked for a recount.

Once again confusing fact and fantasy. State law (before the election)mandated a statewide recount if the difference is less that one percent.

Harris, the chief elections officer for the state of Florida, imposed a strict November 14 deadline to the counties to complete the votes. She claimed the law gave her no choice, but the law in fact gave her discretion that she chose not to exercise.

The law says what it says-discretion or not, she followed the law like it or not.

On November 27, the Washington Post reported some interesting facts about the mob ("Fla Recounts Prompts an Outpouring of GOP Activism", p. A9). Many were from out-of-state and told reporters that the Republican National Committee had paid for their travel, room and board. Furthermore, the Post identified two members of the Miami mob as Congressional staffers: Tom Pyle, an aide to House Republican whip Tom DeLay; and Doug Heye, a spokesman for California GOP Congressman Richard Pombo. Could it be that there was mob violence organized to interfere with and intimidate election officials doing their duty? This is America, not a banana republic.

This is just pure bull$hit. I vividly remember Jesse Jackson being down there and he from Illinios, Gerlad "the hut" Nadler a congressman from New York also opined that there was a "whiff of facism" in the air. Naw Gerald thats just food. I wonder who paid for these guys to come down a stir up trouble? Oops thats fact and fantasy again.

Palast tells how Ms. Harris and Florida's Republican Governor, Jeb Bush, brother of the candidate, sought to purge the rolls of potential Democrats voters. Although Florida is one of several states that prohibit convicted felons from voting.

Dag nabit!! There they are again following the law! How dare they?!

First of all, we see that the post-election Republican strategy was based on the Byzantine Constitutional process for electing the President. That can be remedied very easily. Write your Congressman and tell him or her that you want a Constitutional amendment submitted to the states calling for the direct election of the President and Vice President by popular vote. There will be no more electoral college, no state legislatures having any role in selecting the President and the House of Representatives is no longer part of the process, either. Just the people

Oh I get it-change the law because the results didnt go the way you wanted. Been there, done that. can you say un-constitutional? I knew you could.

[Number_Cruncher]

Al Gore himself said the election is over and settled. End of story.

[PJ-Comix]

Always good to do surveillance work, know what the enemy is up to, what they're thinking, planning, saying. Thanks for the post.

And yet there are still Freepers who complain that I am somehow polluting the FR with the DU posts. What do they want to do? Read only "happy" news while being blindsided by the Left? I say watch the Left and learn what tactics they are planning.

BTW, I am all for the DUmmies being allowed lots of air time on radio and TV. Their founder was once on C-SPAN passing the DU off as just some sort of mildly "progressive" website. I say put them on the airwaves and question them about their OWN articles. One of the biggest wackjobs on the DU is a critter who calls himself "Indiana Green" who once proposed "Revolutionary Justice" (executions) for conservatives if the Left ever takes over. Guess what? That very same Indiana Green is now a DU moderator in their forum section.

[Quilla]

Well, I for one appreciate your posting of DU articles and thoughts (as well as a comic or two). As nicmarlo mentioned, it is important for the right to know what he left is thinking. Just like the recent article about Carville's plan for the democrats - we need to know so we can effectively combat their tactics. I know that in business, it is equally important to understand what your competitors are doing - there's nothing wrong with doing our homework. Post on!

[nicmarlo]

One of the biggest wackjobs on the DU is a critter who calls himself "Indiana Green" who once proposed "Revolutionary Justice" (executions) for conservatives if the Left ever takes over.

I also heard Michael Savage say (and I don't believe everything he says, I store it in my memory banks until I hear it again from another source) that had Algore taken over, the radio talk shows would basically have been shut down through some kind of FCC regulation. Rush repeated something to this effect last week. He said that "moderators" were either being put in conversative talk shows to cut off statements or counter statements made. I'm not stating it exactly right, but that was the gist of it. Pretty frightening.

[Number_Cruncher]

"Indiana Green" who once proposed "Revolutionary Justice" (executions) for conservatives if the Left ever takes over.

There are lots of people on the Left who think this way.

[Tijeras_Slim]

NORC shows that Gore would have won a statewide recount by a only few dozen votes out of six million cast

Furthermore, if Longstreet had flanked Meade at Gettysburg, no Republican would ever have been elected in Florida. < /sarcasm>

Keep posting this stuff PJ, it's the Mein Kampf of the democratic party, the whole game plan if they get the power they want.

[PJ-Comix]

Well, I for one appreciate your posting of DU articles and thoughts...

And here is yet another gem that I found on one of their forums:

"Bush is creaming Gore in the polls now, the Northern Alliance won the war for Dubya, and retail sales are up 7.1%, which Bush will take credit for. This is morally wrong."

And if the Taliban won the war, retail sales were down, and Gore was creaming Bush in the polls, this would be morally right? Right now, GOOD NEWS appears to be "morally wrong" for the DUmmies.

[infowarrior]

Indiana Green, who once proposed "Revolutionary Justice" (executions) for conservatives if the Left took power...

There are many on the Left who think this way...

Given that Yomama Bin Flattened, and the whole creepy and crazy "Radical Islamist Jihaddist" are finding out that the concept of "jihad" works two ways, perhaps the simpletons may wish to reconsider...

the infowarrior

[okiedust]

As unpleasant as it is to read some of that stuff, I no longer dismiss it (I thought NO one would vote for Clinton, since he was such a patent phoney) Seems the weirder it is, the likelier it is to be tried. Keep posting, this stuff needs to be archived and brought out when they try to go mainstream with it. We particularly need to remember the Indiana Green quote and use it to discredit them.

regards

[PJ-Comix]

We particularly need to remember the Indiana Green quote and use it to discredit them.

I posted it here on the FR but I can't find it right now since the archives seem to not be working currently.

[section9]

"Indiana Green" who once proposed "Revolutionary Justice" (executions) for conservatives if the Left ever takes over.

There are lots of people on the Left who think this way.

One of the things that most people don't get is the innate fascism that is on the rise amongst the left activists in the Democratic Party. People like our friend, "Indiana Green", are far more numerous than is generally believed by those in the media. Remember, as with the "Days of Rage" generation, today's left activists who are in thier twenties will be tomorrow's left liberal gun-grabbing congressmen. One of them might become President someday, should the American voters take leave of their senses (as happened in 1992 with the election of that power-hungry, narcissistic couple).

At bottom, all too many of the folks on Democratic Underground see the State as their salvation with no understanding of the terrible consequences of overweening State power. They conveniently forget that it was during the terrible Twentieth Century that the dangers of State Power were displayed for all to see:

Armenia, 1915

The Forced Collectivization of the Ukraine and the Great Terror, the Soviet Union, 1926-1938

National Socialist Germany, 1933-1945

The Great Leap Forward, China, 1956-1958

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, China, 1966-1972

The "Angka", Cambodia, 1975-1979

The rule of the Pathet Lao, Laos, 1975-present day

The Iraqi dictatorship, Iraq, 1978-present day

Each of these examples include states that practiced mass murder on "class" or "racial" enemies. Nearly 100 million people perished as a result of State action in the Twentieth Century. This does not include acts of war, such as the German invasion of Russia in 1941. This number only includes the actions of states against their own peoples.

It is for the above reason that the fascist vermin who populate the Democratic Underground are to be watched. Their liberties should not be threatened. That is not our way. We are Conservatives. We believe in the supremacy of the Constitution and recognize that when one's speech is protected, then everyone's speech is protected. But over at Democratic Underground, they have a far different interpretation of what "freedom" and "justice" means....

At bottom, that is all that the Left has to offer as its animating ideology: "Strength Through Joy". It is for the Conservatives to guard the Constitution against this fascism. The Framers understood the threat to liberty from potential tyrants such as our friends over at DU.

For they not only made sure that the 1st Amendment was first among equals, they gave us the 2nd Amendment so that we might safeguard our liberties against the likes of "Indiana Green".

Hold fast to your M-1 Garand rifles, gentlemen. Your liberties may depend on their safekeeping.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[PJ-Comix]

Um....I wonder who designed that Nazi poster? Whoever it was seems to have been a bit light in the loafers if you know what I mean.

[travmcgee]

I could not agree with you more. It is always prudent to know what the dim bulbs are up to. How they plan to distort, contort and lie to acheive their ultimate goal; a socialist America.

[section9]

A lot of Nazi-era agitprop screams of homoerotic subtextual content. Now we find that the Adolf himself was a bit of a closet queen back in his Vienna days and during the Twenties.

Poor Eva Braun. It was all for show.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[lowbridge]

[lowbridge]

Let's see, what party was giving cigarettes for votes? Oh, Dems.; who was bragging that they voted multiple times? Oh, Dems.; who was bussing people in from out of Florida to vote? Oh, Dems.; who were "helping" people too frail to vote? Oh, Dems.;

Several days after presidential votes were tallied in what has become the hotbed of Florida's post election confusion, police in Palm Beach County confiscated a ballot-box mechanism from the car of a well-known local Democrat. According to a plice report filed at the Palm Beach County sheriff's office and obtained by ABCNEWS, Irving Slosberg, 53, pulled the mechanism from his car and handed it over to police on Nov. 11 after denying to a county government employee that he had it. When told of the incident, Palm Beach County's supervisor of elections, Theresa Lefore, declined to press charges, according to the report.

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a13513e4c71.htm

The state investigation was prompted by a complaint from Todd Vinson, a law clerk in Miami who is a registered Pensacola voter.

Vinson, state investigators and others involved outline this series of events:

On Oct. 10, Vinson requested the Escambia County Supervisor of Elections to mail an absentee ballot to his Miami apartment. After it failed to arrive, he requested a second ballot on Oct. 24.

It, too, disappeared.

Vinson, 28, said he complained to his father, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, last Thursday. That morning, the elder Vinson called Jones.

Jones' office reviewed all the absentee ballots and discovered a ballot with Todd Vinson's name on it. When Jones compared the signature on the ballot to the signature on Vinson's voter registration card, the two did not match.

Jones faxed a copy of the signature to Todd Vinson.

``It was clearly forged,'' he said. ``Somebody definitely got hold of it and sent it back in. The question is where did they get it, and my speculation was that it happened somewhere in the post office. It made it down here to Miami, but it never made it to me.''

Jones sent a third ballot to Vinson via next-day mail that arrived in time for Vinson to cast a ballot for Bush. Jones then contacted the State Attorney's Office, U.S. Attorney Mike Patterson and the Florida Division of Elections.

Edgar said the signed witness required for all absentee ballots listed a fictitious address.

State Attorney Curtis Golden said that if the Postal Service was involved, his office might turn the investigation over to federal law enforcement officials.

Patterson declined on Wednesday to say whether his office is participating in the investigation. He did indicate his office is interested in the matter.

``In general, that kind of voter fraud or fraudulent activity surrounding a federal election is something we would be interested in,'' he said.

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a0b5bee08fd.htm

[cardinal4]

Insert Nelson Muntz laugh here.

[cardinal4]

Or in Wisconsin,where hmless people were given 20.00 and cigarettes for a Gore vote.