Blog-IT-o ergo sum

	9/29/2004

A Bulgarian coming soon to a polling booth near you...

As US Senate Candidate Tom Bailey has pointed out - government is a great cure for paranoia.

My brother the friendly Walgreen's pharmacist just sent me the latest prescription to stabilize my mental state regarding teofusiawki (the end of US independence as we know it.) I added the emphasis.

"European Group Expects Bumpy U.S. Election.
Group Overseeing American Elections Sees Problems With Voting Machines"

The Reuters spin calls this plan for UN sanctioned monitors to oversee our elections "unprecedented."

When in an e-mail I called the OSCE monitors effectively the same thing as UN monitors, Mike Fenley of WSJS responded that, "The OSCE is not a UN organization."

I followed up by noting that after the US joined the OSCE in 1991 under Bush I the OSCE in 1992 then "declared itself" a regional arrangement under Chapter VIII of the UN Charter. If you go to Chapter VIII of the UN charter you learn this means that the OSCE has placed itself under the suzerainty of the UN's Security Council. No response yet from Mr. Fenley on these additional factual statements.

Bottom-line: What is the real objective of having "former" communists from places like Bulgaria, led by an impeached federal judge now serving as a US Congressman from Florida, looking over our shoulders as we vote? I for one do not believe it is to imput a higher level of credibility to the process.

This is "unprecedented" and it is not a good precedent to set. The election of the president of the United States should not be certified, sanctioned or in anyway have to be legitimized by the presence of foreign agents in our polling places. (When the on-line version is posted in a few days you can read my soap-box article on this topic in this week's Rhino Times - Charlotte.)

I am hopeful that at least Republicans will figure out three key points here:

1) Not withstanding the four days of UN bashing recently completed at the GOP convention in NYC, these UN sanctioned OSCE monitors coming to police* our elections are upon the arrangement of the GOP controlled State Department. Or as the OSCE spokewoman put it more accurately, "The U.S. is obliged to invite us, as all OSCE countries should. It's not legally binding, but it's a political commitment. They signed a document 10 years ago to ask OSCE to observe elections."

2) The European monitors are definitely coming to at least south Florida where their impeached leader Alcee Hastings is determined not to allow a repeat of the 2000 election which was stolen from the Democrats.

3) The Election is not even here yet and this team of monitors is already predicting trouble. Stay tune for challenges regardless of the initial outcome.

I'm glad I'm not paranoid anymore.

* "Monitor" is to police as "observe" is to watch. "Judge" is not being mentioned yet.)

11:42:41 PM

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