March 9, 2005
THE ONLY REASON TO REGRET THE PRESIDENT’S RE-ELECTION
Hackers may have won Bush office: Kerry's wife (Sydney Morning Herald, March 10th, 2005)
The US presidential election could have been computer hacked, the wife of Democrat candidate John Kerry has claimed.Teresa Heinz Kerry is openly sceptical about George Bush's victory some four months after the election, questioning the legitimacy of the optical scanners used in some states to record votes.
"Two brothers own 80 per cent of the machines used in the United States," she said during a fund raising event in Seattle.
They are "hard-right" Republicans, she claimed, arguing that it was "very easy to hack into the mother machines".
Heinz Kerry urged Democrats to push for accountability and transparency, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
"We in the United States are not a banana republic," she said. "I fear for 2006. I don't trust it the way it is right now," she added, referring to mid-term elections.
Heinz Kerry also expressed her outrage at the attacks of some Catholic bishops on her husband's support for abortion rights.
"You cannot have bishops in the pulpit - long before or the Sunday before the election - as they did in Catholic churches, saying it was a mortal sin to vote for John Kerry," she said.
Admit it. It would have been fun.
Put away your copy of the 'Better Angels' and go
to sleep.
We are a serious nation and we live in serious times. Such frivolous lunacy may be tolerable in a senator's wife or a widow who has become too merry from nipping the port, but not here and not now.
Posted by: Bart at March 9, 2005 8:47 PMOdds are by now, if Kerry had been elected, Teresa would have been named roving special advisor to UNICEF or executive branch tsunami releif observer and been shipped overseas on taxpayer dollars in order to keep her as far away from the Washington gossip columnists as possible.
Posted by: John at March 9, 2005 9:00 PMits odd how many political wives seem to be one percodan too many away from the loony bin. i don't know who to feel sorrier for, th or jk, they both seem so sad. it says a lot about kerry that he would put such an obviously unstable individual through the rigors of a campaign. nice how the media act like a mob about to gang rape an imbecile, regarding th.
Posted by: cjm at March 9, 2005 10:20 PMAh yes, because hackers are such a notoriously pro-authority, pro-republican group. Why didn't we see it before? Thank goodness mrs T. is around to educate us.
Posted by: BC Monkey at March 9, 2005 10:28 PMThis is her way of 'fessing up that she didn't spend enough to win.
And Bart, if you think she would have been placated, forget it. She would have been into everything, from 'inspecting' the diplomatic corps to changing the cafeteria menus at HHS to re-designing the interior of Air Force One.
It would have been fun, but the cost was just too high.
Posted by: jim hamlen at March 9, 2005 10:36 PMKarl Rove supervised the "hacking" from the comfort of his home. Everyone knows that.
Posted by: Dave W. at March 9, 2005 10:38 PMI tend to disagree, jim. I think she would have been the opposite. I think she would have dropped the 1st Lady gig like a hot potato. I doubt she would have lived full time at the White House even. I don't think the old bag has any interests at all in anything political, and I think in time she would have simply refused.
Posted by: Tom Wall at March 9, 2005 11:48 PMBart: IIRC it was raisins saoked in gin.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at March 10, 2005 12:09 AMnarciso:
Love the 'Better Angels' reference.
John and Jim:
I agree with your speculations, though contradictory.
Thank goodness we were spared her First Ladyship.
Posted by: Fred Jacobsen (San Fran) at March 10, 2005 1:09 AMThe above comments, which I agree with, make me seriously question whether Kerry will run again in '08.
Posted by: AWW at March 10, 2005 9:00 AMHere's a nice topic for debate: are we a serious nation. Certainly, we are compared to the other nations in the world, with the possible exception of Israel, but on an absolute scale, are we all that serious?
Frankly, life's so easy and all threats so small that I don't think we're particularly serious, 'cause we don't really have to be. Here is an appropriately frivolous example: on "Alias" last night, dinner party conversation touched on "the energy crisis." The character played by Victor Garber hit all the right (left, actually) talking points: Oil production's about to peak before it crashes, growth in China will lap up the world's supply, continuing turbulence in the middle east, etc. The solution: hybrids.
On Mama T, parsing her is a fool's errand, but if the voting machines are controlled by two hard-right brothers, why do we need hackers?
Posted by: David Cohen at March 10, 2005 9:24 AMIt was a mortal sin to vote for Kerry.
Posted by: pchuck at March 10, 2005 9:36 AM