I'M VOTING FOR THE POTATOE - THAT IS AN "R" AFTER IT'S PLACE ON THE BALLOT?













What more do you need to know. Its a Special Election. The candidates are, at least from appearances Major Jack Armstrong and someone who seems to have been the cutting room floor inspiration behind the Blair Witch. Its the JAG against the Hag. Its got all the trappings of one of those reality shows a real battle of the sexes. Oh wait, that's a woman? Okay, Lost is getting kind of shallow about this but doggone it, its happened again in Ohio. Yes, a State named seemingly named for the Pawnee word for coma. Ohio, for all you blog fans out there who don't pay attention - both of you I mean - became the Deadwood of American politics last November. This was due in large measure to the confluence of corruption, the Axis of Electoral Evil known as J. Kenneth Blackwell, Walden O'Dell, and John O'Neil. The first guy, Ohio's secretary of State, was trying to out-Katherine-Harris Katherine Harris in erecting ticky tack barriers to voting by Ohio's demographically Democratic populations, first by insisting on registration applications only on certain minimum weights of paper, then by caging voter lists, and finally more insidiously by under cutting key Democratic precincts by giving them fewer voting machines, even when it meant that voting machines went unused in some counties and precincts. Speaking of Machines, Walden O'Dell is the CEO of Diebold, a company that made its fortune in ATM machines. ATMs, the machines that let you access your accounts for a fee and which always kick out a piece of paper telling you EXACTLY what you just did to your account? Well, O'Dell, who issued a GOP fundraising letter in 03 which stated that he was "committed to delivering Ohio's electoral votes to the President" in 2004, presided over the creation of a voting machine which, unlike their more famous ATMs, created no paper trail or receipt of any kind. Dozens of reports throughout the State reflected people who used these touch screen machines and noticed them register the wrong choice on screen. Finallly, John O'Neil is a bloated, misanthropically miserable old hack lawyer/lobbyist who had a bug in his gumpstump over John Kerry's Naval years. O'Neil captained the group of veracity-challenged guys called the Swift Boat Veterans, who assassinated John Kerry's character as a war hero.


Why all the background? Well, those three creeps helped engineer the fair and foul delivery of Ohio into the Chimp's column 9 months ago, and today it's apparently happened again. The crazy looking crone, who suddenly, conveniently and unconvincingly "forgot" about her ties to Ohio GOP Coingate scandal guy Tom Noe, beat out an Iraq War Veteran, a Marine with a family and a good, plain spoken message, in a Congressional District in Ohio's Southern end. Where does it end?
Somebody, please, take out electoral papers in 'O6 in this same District, under the name Braun Russet, a Republican. We'll have him attend candidate forums. He won't say much. His eyes will be open but he'll see nothing. Because he'll be a real Potato. Watch how many votes he gets in this District. Russet for Congress in '06!!!!!!

Oh, how I wish I was wrong.