Q: Why is the Friday Blog 4 Days Early?
As many of you know by now, every Friday, I post a light-hearted, non-investment topic related blog, just to give my blog a little more texture and substance. With the upcoming mid-term elections in the United States taking place tomorrow, I’m posting the blog entry I usually reserve for Friday three days early.
Here is a sobering thought. What if your vote doesn’t even count?
John Kerrey allegedly privately confided to his closest colleagues that he believed Bush stole the 2004 Presidential election. He confided that the differences in certain voting districts between exit polls and “official” results in which electronic voting machines were employed appeared to involve fraud.
Russian dictator Jospeh Stalin once stated, “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.” While it is generally accepted by people worldwide that this has happened numerous times in the electoral process of countries dominated by corrupt politicians and dictators, what if this has also happened in the U.S.? I’m not saying that it has, or even that I think it has, but what if? And this isn’t a partisan issue, but if you’ve read my blogs about Canada’s PM Harper and Hungarian’s PM Gyurcseny, you’ll understand that this is a political corruption issue. Of course, if you actually believe the questions I raise in this blog entry, you probably won’t take this entry to be the “light-hearted” entry it is intended to be. In any event, I’m posting this merely as food for thought.
If it seems ludicrous that this may have already happened in the United States, consider this fact. Clinton Eugene Curtis, a computer programmer, testified under oath before the U.S. House Judiciary Members in Ohio in 2004 after the U.S. Presidential elections that he had developed a software program capable of rigging election results for Congressman Tom Feeney (who was a former running mate of George Bushs’s brother Jeb and the Speaker of the House of Florida at that time). He further testified under oath, that the only way anyone could know that election results had been rigged was to view the source code. To this date, the source code of electronic voting machines used in voting districts with voting result anomalies during the 2004 Presidential elections has not yet been released (to my knowledge). Watch the video here.
Clinton Eugene Curtis testified, still under oath, that it was his belief, given the anomalies of the voting poll election results in Ohio, that fraud had been perpetrated during the 2004 U.S. Presidential elections. Furthermore, the General Accounting Office stated that it was impossible to verify the integrity of the 2004 U.S. Presidential election results.
So has the erosion of democracy already progressed to such a point, that like Joseph Stalin stated, voting doesn’t even matter because those that count the votes decide who wins? And do those that win determine the foreign policy direction of a country no matter the desires of the people? If there is any uncertainty at all regarding the answer to this question, the following steps are necessary to ensure the integrity of democratic processes:
(1) abolish all electronic voting machines; and
(2) have all voting ballots audited by an independent company with no political party affiliations.
And in light of the upcoming elections, here is another point to consider.
If people were upset with John Kerrey’s public snafu regarding the military last week, consider a comment from Henry Kissinger, a former U.S. National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, and now a close confidante of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and frequent advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush. Kissinger, post- Vietnam War, was quoted in the book “Kiss the Boys Goodbye” as stating that :
“Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in
foreign policy.”
More recently, in 1991, Kissinger stated:
“Today, America would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the world government.”
9/11 ensued, U.S. Congress passed the Patriot Act, and in 2005, President Bush, Canadian PM Stephen Harper, and Mexico President Vicente Fox signed the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, thus transforming Kissinger into a prophet or perhaps validating his role as a puppet master (depending upon your point of view).
Again, in light of the upcoming November 7th elections, maybe, just maybe to ensure that your vote counts, if you are a member of the voting populace, maybe you should cast a paper ballot.
