Block the Vote

I stated in the October 2004 issue of Daykeeper that we could expect fraud and confusion at the polls this Election Day, based in part on Mercury’s position on a very active Galactic T-Square comprising Quasar, Maser and Black Hole, and Neptune’s exact conjunction with a Black Hole. Both contacts could indicate massive voter fraud, manipulation, confusion and suppression.

But why wait for Election Day for the good stuff?

More and more reports are coming in from across the country of Republican dirty tricks and efforts to suppress both registration and voting by minorities and young people, two overwhelmingly Democratic constituents. Most of the "irregularities" are occurring in important swing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Oregon.

In particular a voter registration group calling itself Voter Outreach of America has been working some especially nasty mojo on potential voters. Run by Nathan Sproul, of Sproul & Associates, Voter Outreach of America has been accused by former employees of shredding literally thousands of Democratic registration forms in Nevada and Oregon, misleading voters and only registering Republicans in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, and paying for signatures to get Ralph Nader on the ballot in Arizona.

Sproul, a former head of the Arizona Republican Party and the Arizona Christian Coalition, was paid $125,000 this year by the Republican National Committee for registering voters, and an additional $500,000 for "political consulting."

In Oregon, canvassers were instructed to collect only Republican registrations, a tactic repeated in Pennsylvania. Michele Tharp of Meadville, PA was canvassing door-to-door and was told to inquire first the potential voter’s presidential preference. If she was told "George W. Bush," she was to register the person; if they said "John Kerry," she was to thank them and walk away. In Nevada, members of both parties were allowed to fill out forms, but canvassers were only paid for Republican registrations, and former employee Eric Russell has charged that he caught his boss "ripping up the registrations of Democrats, ripped them up right in front of us. They were thrown away in the trash. I grabbed them out." Russell went to the FBI with his evidence, which has now launched an official investigation.

In Florida and other swing states, college voters have been surreptitiously registered twice, or re-registered as Republican. The scam there goes something like this. Students are approached by canvassers with petitions endorsing everything from medical marijuana to increased penalties for child molesters. Unbeknownst to those signing, the requests were actually for changing party affiliation, causing confusion and in some cases, multiple registrations, and major headaches for over-worked and under-staffed voter services. It is alleged that in the case of second registrations, absentee ballots could be requested which could be forged.

Voter suppression techniques on Wisconsin and Ohio have been more subtle.

In Wisconsin, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in the state, has refused a request from the city of Milwaukee for a quarter million more ballots, to cover the increase in registrations there. The 679,000 already printed falls short of the amount used in 2000 and even the off-year elections of 2002. Milwaukee’s predominantly black, predominantly Democratic voters stand a good chance of showing up to the polls without enough ballots to record their votes.

In Ohio, Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell has instructed his offices to strictly enforce an obscure regulation which requires registration forms to be printed on 80-pound stock paper. This move has invalidated the registrations of perhaps thousands of predominantly black voters who have inundated the registrar’s office with forms printed in Cleveland’s Plain Dealer newspaper. When the office receives the forms on newsprint, they attempt to notify the voter by mailing new registration forms printed on the proper weight paper, but the office is backlogged and time has now run out on registration in the state.

Republicans in Ohio are also attempting to subvert the process by mailing unsolicited absentee ballot forms to state expatriates it identifies as Republican or Independent voters. Three and one-half million former Ohioans who have moved to other states have received the packets, which include several pieces of Bush/Cheney campaign literature, and are urged to send in the enclosed absentee ballot applications. This could result in one voter casting two votes for Bush— one at his current state of residence, and one as an absentee in Ohio.

Georgia Republicans are violating state law by including Bush/Cheney campaign literature in requests for absentee ballots, despite a ban on candidate endorsement with such ballots, passed in 2001. Georgia Democrats have filed suit with the Elections Board and have asked that the maximum fine of $5000 be applied to each piece of the mass mailing.

In New Mexico, the GOP is distributing fraudulent campaign literature asserting that Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez criticized John Kerry for a water-release policy which "threatens the city’s future by taking water from the mouths of our children."

Just one problem; Chavez never mentioned Kerry in his original remarks, made last year. Chavez was referring to a court ruling that regulated Rio Grande water levels to preserve the habitat of the silver minnow, and had nothing to do with Kerry. Bush spokesman Danny Diaz said that didn’t matter. The reasoning? Several years before Chavez’ remarks, Kerry voted against an appropriations bill in which a fraction of one percent of the allocated money would have gone for habitat restoration programs that did not require the release of additional water into the river. Diaz said that means voters can infer that Kerry would have agreed with the court ruling which Chavez condemned.

Chavez asked the Bush campaign to retract his statement and apologize, but his request was refused.

Florida, of course, has pioneered voting irregularities, and still leads the nation in deceptive and intimidating tactics intended to suppress minority votes. In addition to the problems with the new electronic voting machines, already chronicled in the August Daykeeper, and the fact that over 40,000 voters who were erroneously removed from the rolls in 2000 have still not had their rights restored, the newly appointed Secretary of State Glenda Hood has devised some new tricks that would make her predecessor, Katherine Harris, proud indeed. No, this Glenda is not a good witch.

Democratic registrations are up considerably in the state, which is still smarting from 2000's aborted recount, but there may be some technical glitches which allow Hood to disqualify many of them. The issue is "uncompleted" registration forms. Many voters swore by their signature that they were US citizens, but failed to check the appropriate box on the form which states the same thing. Hood’s office decreed that the forms would not be accepted, as they were incomplete. Overworked elections supervisors sought to have third-party groups correct the mistakes, but Hood’s office ruled that as the forms were "public records" they could not be released to third parties, leaving swamped elections officials to try to rectify the "errors" themselves.

Stay tuned—the fun is just beginning!

It's Debatable

Well, the debates are behind us, and John Kerry did very well against all three of his opponents, Scowling George, Furious George, and Shiite-Eating Grin George. More Americans thought Kerry beat Bush in each debate by a comfortable margin, particularly in the first and third, and Kerry’s standing in the polls has mirrored this, with the Massachusetts Senator pulling even, and in some polls slightly ahead, for the first time since the Swift Boat ads hit in August. Polls in those all-important battleground states are up for Kerry as well; he now has the momentum in two of the big three, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and is neck--and-neck with Bush in Florida, with polls shifting daily giving slight leads, sometimes of less than a full percentage point, to both candidates in turn. As we expected in last month’s prediction for the election, it will be Kerry by a nose, unless the Bush junta manages to steal another one.

Bush’s uneven performance was in stark contrast to Kerry’s consistency; as one New York Tomes columnist put it, the cartoon character Kerry which the Bush campaign has been mocking for months simply failed to show up, and Dubya was unprepared to deal with the real thing.

The third debate was particularly interesting from an astrological standpoint, occurring as it did within minutes of a solar eclipse at 21 Libra, in Kerry’s Tenth House of Career, and conjunct Bush’s Nadir. Surely better symbolism could not be asked for, as Kerry maintained the presidential air he had evinced in all three debates, while Dubya did indeed look like an individual at the bottom of Fortune’s Wheel.

Something about Mary

Although some might have thought that Bush’s incredible gaffe on the very first question of the final debate might have been the big news coming out of the gate, the "liberal" media found a non-story to exploit for their conservative corporate masters.

We’re speaking, of course, of Dubya’s blindingly stupid comment when Kerry accused him of stating he was no longer concerned with Osama bin Laden, responding that that was "one of those exag-ger-a-tions <snort>." Of course, it was perfectly true, and the Kerry campaign was able to trot out footage from March 2003 showing Bush stating exactly that.

But that story quickly faded; what stuck was Kerry’s mention of Mary Cheney in response to a question about whether he thought homosexual orientation was innate or acquired, the old nature vs. nurture argument. Kerry simply stated that he thought "if you asked Dick Cheney’s daughter, who is lesbian, she would tell you she’s being who she was created as. I think any homosexual would tell you that it’s not a choice, they’re being who they were born as."

Within minutes of the debate’s close, Republican spinmeisters were bemoaning the callousness of Kerry in "outing" dirty Dick’s lesbian daughter, and the next day on the stump Lynne Cheney repeatedly stated that John Kerry was "not a good man" to have pulled this "cheap, tawdry political trick," while hubby Dick averred that this shows Kerry is a man "willing to say anything to get elected." He then proceeded to state that if Kerry won we could expect nuclear and chemical weapons to destroy several American cities, obviously the mark of a true statesman who puts himself above partisan attacks.

The hypocrisy of the Cheneys is tangible in this instance. Mary Cheney is 35, an out-and-proud public figure who has worked as Coors Beer’s liaison with the gay and lesbian community, does outreach work in the gay community for the Bush campaign, and attends rallies with her partner. In no sense was Kerry "outing" her.

Dick Cheney himself has been using his daughter’s sexuality on the stump since at least August, and responded by thanking his debate opponent John Edwards in the vice presidential debate when Edwards answered a similar question in a similar way. Lynne Cheney has written an Old West romance novel, "Sisters," which includes pointedly lesbian references, but is less willing to discuss her daughter’s sexuality than Dick.

Part of the difference may have been caused by asteroid Sappho’s changing position in the heavens, and in the charts of the Cheneys themselves.

When Dick first mentioned Mary on the stump, August 23, 2004, in reference to the Constitutional ban on gay marriage (which Cheney opposes personally, though he supports the Administration position officially), Sappho was at 1 Gemini, in a comfortable, supportive trine to the Black Hole at 1 Libra, and closely conjunct Cheney’s Midheaven at 2 Gemini, an appropriate time for him to show support (trine) for his daughter’s lifestyle, expressed so publicly (Midheaven). Transit Sappho was also making a temporary Yod configuration with Cheney’s natal Sappho at 2 Capricorn (itself conjunct a Black Hole) and his natal Pluto at 3 Leo (also Black Hole conjoined), so perhaps it was fated that this issue should emerge into prominence at this time.

By the time of the Vice Presidential debate on October 5, Sappho had moved to 11 Gemini, opposed the Black Hole at 10 Sagittarius, but Cheney thanked Edwards for his supportive comments; Sappho was still at 11 Gemini when he balked at Kerry’s similar comments on October 13, but it had now turned retrograde.

Lynne has a harder time with Sappho, and thus, by inference, her daughter’s lifestyle. Her natal Sappho at 27 Aquarius retrograde is conjunct a Black Hole and tightly squared her Maser-conjoined Saturn at 27 Taurus. She isn’t as open about the subject as Dick, her literary works aside, and tends to repress the subject. (She refused point blank to discuss the issue with ABC’s Cokie Roberts during the 2000 campaign, and still betrays some embarrassment or discomfiture whenever the topic is raised.)

It’s an issue that is unlikely to sway undecided voters one way or the other, but the repeated references to Mary Cheney could possibly antagonize and alienate the more fundamentalist Bush supporters by reminding them that Dick has a gay daughter whom he hasn’t ostracized. Will that hurt more than the base’s righteous indignation is roused by painting Kerry as an callous opportunist for using the daughter against the father? Hard to tell with these nut jobs.

The Battle of Bush's Bulge

Looks like "W" is for "wired," folks. This is a great example of the weird and wonderful things Black Hole Mercury people can get themselves into. Dubya’s 9 Leo Mercury is exactly conjunct Black Hole Cernunnos, indicating issues with communication and data processing in general, among other things. The close conjunction of Mercury with Pluto at 10 Leo also implies secretive communications, perhaps "spy" technologies or at the least, attempts to subvert others via communication or communication devices.

In the debate formats, one of the things the Bush administration insisted upon was that their candidate never be shot from the back. Fortunately for us, that instruction went by the wayside, along with the dictum that no cut-away shots be used (or we’d have missed all of Dubya’s scowling). In several shots from both the first and the third debates, there is clearly some foreign object about to protrude from between Dubya’s shoulder blades. In the first debate, it appears rectangular, or possibly T-shaped; in the third, it has a more rounded top end. To some, it looks suspiciously like the receiver unit for a transmitter. The receiver is supplemented by an earpiece, which is also just barely visible in close-ups of Kerry whispering into Bush’s ear at the end of the first debate.



Speculation is, Bush is wired, with someone off stage feeding him lines, stats, and snappy comebacks. It’s obvious that in speeches, Dubya doesn’t look at the teleprompter; reports that Bush may be dyslexic would account for that, as reading is not a strong suit for those folks, and thus the need for an audio feed to keep the Commander in Chief up to speed, so to speak.



There was also a particularly jarring incident in France last June, with President Jacques Chirac for celebrations of the 60th anniversary of D-Day, where Bush’s "feed" became distinctly audible, even to overseas audiences hearing the live broadcast (the later replays were "scrubbed," but the original is still available online). In the original live broadcast, there is another, fainter voice, very definitely a different voice, saying the words that are about to come from Bush’s mouth. He varies a word or two here and there, but it’s a very distinct "pre-echo" that cannot be denied.

Except, of course, by the White House.

When speculation first emerged on the Internet about the ‘bulge’ on Bush’s back, the White House refused even to comment, but as foreign news services began to pick up on the story, denials were issued. They eventually drug out Bush’s French (!) tailor to enlighten us—the bulge was a pucker in the suit.

Yes, obviously - a perfectly square pucker in a $2000 suit.

Lending credence to the theory that Dubya is always "online," is his rather odd presentation style: the odd drift of the eyes into nowhere land, as if listening for the voices (‘course, that could just be God), the tendency to interrupt himself while speaking, the cavernous pauses punctuated by staccato utterances. Speaking while listening is a very difficult skill, much like simultaneous translation; reporters have to train extensively to enable them to "read" their scripts via inner ear transmission.

Take into consideration also, what was possibly the oddest moment of that very odd first debate performance, when Dubya, in mid-speech and without any interruption whatsoever, suddenly burst out, "Now let me finish!"

‘Scuse me? Just WHO was Dubya addressing? His time wasn’t up; the flashing light system that warns when time is winding down had not even begun its countdown, and neither Kerry nor moderator Jim Lehrer had cracked a peep.

Could be that Karl Rove or Karen Hughes was prompting Bush to continue with their scripted remarks, via their secret audio tuition, but he had some genuinely original comments of his own he wanted to interpose.

Interestingly, a recent Finnish scientific study has determined that heavy use of mobile phones can cause changes in human brain cells that could affect the brain. If Dubya is wired constantly, with that radiation leaking in one side of his head and out the other, it would go a long way to explaining his increasingly erratic behavior, which some attribute to anti-depressant medication, and others to a return to that family favorite, Jack Daniels.

By the time the third debate was history, speculation about Bush’s bulge had advanced to the highest levels of American journalism; OK, just to Tim Russert, but you get the idea. Appearing on the October 17th edition of "Meet The Press," Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman tried to laughingly brush off Russert’s query about the "pucker" by stating: "The president, in fact, was receiving signals from aliens in outer space."

To which Kerry spokesman Bob Shrum responded, "You mean you sent Rove into space."

Couldn’t have said it better, Bob...