Please read this.  I know it's the LIBERAL MEDIA, but just read the article.

The Pentagon's Troubling Role

I am not above saying that I think the Republicans are trying to rig this election.  I'm not.  All pretense is off.  You've got the president of Diebold saying, publically, mind you, that they're going to "come through" in Ohio.  Few of the Florida problems have been remedied.  I think the Republicans rigged the elections in Georgia and Minnesota last time with voting machines.  Look at the swing in the actual vote count and polling done days before the election.  Notice that exit polling data system....just happened to not work during the 2002 election.  What, you're going to tell me they *wouldn't* do that?  The science of electronic voting is in dispute to the point that many scientists in the field are outraged that electronic voting is going to be such a wide part of this election.  Republican-donor companies DESIGN AND MANUFACTURE THE VOTING MACHINES.  And it goes on and on.  The son of the House's fourth ranking Republican just happens to count the votes in Missouri, one of the most key swing states, and he just so happens to be running for governor.  Do you realize what sort of shit-fit the Republican machine would stir in the public consciousness if the scenario were reversed?  Are we a damn banana republic or are we the Show-Me State?  SHOW ME THE CERTIFIED PAPER BALLOTS, MATT!

I'm sick of trying to be impartial.  I'm sick of trying to be "fair."  These people are corrupt to the core.  They will do anything for power, anything to win, and that's why they do.  I feel like the Manchurian Candidate.  But you know what?  McCarthy *was* a corrupt messiah, and I think these people are too.  And they can get away with it because there's no public outrage.  And whatever "outrage" there is, is simply passed off as "liberal elitist anger" or whatever.  I've tried to hold in check because I think that moveon.org and their manipulation of facts and quotes are part of the problem, not the solution.  It's still not, and I don't like listening to whining either.  But I've had enough of this.  It was wrong when Democratic machines rigged elections in Chicago and Kansas City, and it's wrong now that the Republicans are doing it.

I am outraged.  I'm outraged to the point I'm about ready to type right through my keyboard.  I'm convinced that this election is about far more than whether John Kerry or George W. Bush is more qualified to lead a war on terror.  Allowing the Republicans to win this time will threaten the Democracy.  Don't tell me that's too melodramatic.  Will you just look at what has happened in just the four years since these guys took control?  I can't even start or I won't stop.  Democracy is not about winning; it's about seeking justice and truth.  They don't want to be fair and let the best man win.  They want to gerrymander all but the most Kucinichian Democrats out of office and create a Republican caliphate.  Yes, I know, Democrats are guilty too.  But weigh Democratic crimes in this regard in the last decade, and then compare that to Tom Delay carving five honestly elected Democrats out of office in Texas.  My fear is that Missouri may become the next Texas. 

These guys are classic literary figures, drunk on their own power, messianic in their conviction beyond all reason.  At this point, it's beyond the mechanics of health care policy, education policy, foreign policy, and any other kind of policy you can think of.  It's hard for me to think of living in a world dominated by George W. Bush for another four years.  They have to lose this time.  Just one time, they have to lose, for the good of the country.  He hangs in my mind like a fog, where you read that that it's obvious they're trying to rig the election, and yet, you look out the window at the American people and the sun is still shining.  To borrow from Pope, as seems the custom these days, it's the eternal sunshine of spotless minds.

----shimes