No pictures today -- just suspicion...

Many, many condolences to my California friends who lost their state last week to "the gubernator" and the republican demagogues who engineered the whole recall charade. I have no doubt that this happened so that the energy barons who terrorized and robbed the state a few years back during the electricity "crisis" they engineered could get off the $9-billion hook Davis had them on. So the economic crisis continues, and California taxpayers will never see the money they were robbed of at, essentially, gunpoint.

I remember that "crisis" well -- pleas for citizens to turn off their Christmas lights, do fewer loads of laundry and at night, save save save, and I also remember the occasional chaos of blinking traffic lights at busy intersections duing the "rolling blackouts" that hit when available supplies ran low because the barons were keeping crucial generating plants offline for bogus reasons, so they could run up prices. I remember my electric bill doubling in one month. I remember thinking something was definitely UP if this was happening in the winter -- the barons were priming us for a big fat kill come the sultry summer months when demand would be even greater.

I remember this shit, and so I'm appalled but not surprised that the right wing engineered a way to oust the man who was trying his best (such as it was, I know) to reveal the truth and get the barons to pay reparations. I wouldn't be in the least surprised if the rumors floating around that the election itself was rigged (since the republicans have had plenty of practice by now) turned out to be true. One source (scroll down the page to bottom entry) suggests that Diebold voting machines used in certain Calif. counties were rigged to siphon votes from top candidates to low-ranked, no-chance-of-winning candidates, which would be a less obvious way of making sure the targeted candidates lose but the desired winner doesn't win by too noticeable a margin.

I've been trying to comfort myself by saying how glad I am we don't live in Calif. anymore, but that's bogus -- what happens there, or in any part of our "democracy" for that matter, happens to all of us. And whether we choose to remain blindfolded and blissfully ignorant or let the truth hit us raw in the brain, we lose a bit more of our voices and our rights and our freedoms every time this shit happens. How many times have I read of elections in other, "less civilized" nations being declared invalid (in name or just spirit) because of rampant irregularities? Some despot gets himself and his cronies elected because he has the power to make it so regardless of the will of the people he pretends to "govern." How backwards and unfortunate those poor people are.

That could never happen here.