A Quick Brick Upside the Head to an Election Conspiracy Theory.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky hates hates HATES Conspiracy Theories. So when he heard the new one about those yahoo glory-hound hackers at Anonymous having saved the election by counter-hacking Karl Rove’s election-night hacking, he got ticked off. And later, he laughed. A lot.

Firstly: yes, it is possible to hack a vote tabulation device. And yes, it has happened. But the only way to do it in the timeframe required is to work for the company that owns the hardware and software that is being used. Exhibit A: the new software that was illegally installed on Ohio’s tabulation devices several days before the election, by the vendor, with the blessing of our SOS John Husted. That could well have been an attempt at a hack. But since it’s a black  box system, we’ll never know.

But there isn’t any way for an outside hacker group to get in there and deliver a counter-hack after the vendor put in his patch, for a variety of reasons. The only outside group that can beat a hack is the voting public. If the turnout exceeds the forecast amount by a sufficient margin, the hack either fails or is so obvious that the would-be-election-thieves don’t dare do it.

You want to thank somebody for the way the election came out? Thank your fellow voters. They deserve it.

Mr B & C

Ohio’s Secretary Of State: Everything and Everybody Everywhere is Exactly the Same at All Times

Stand in a cornfield. Now stand in downtown Columbus, OH, at Broad and High. Mr. Blunt and Cranky bets you can see a difference. But John Husted does not.

Drive a new Mercedes around I-270. Now sit in a COTA bus on the Near East Side, say along Parsons Avenue. See a difference? Yep. But John Husted does not.

Be a retired individual with loads of free time and enough money. Now be someone who has to work two or three jobs to get by. See a difference? Of course you do. But John Husted does not.

You see, Husted the Hustler has decreed that each and every location in Ohio shall be limited to a certain set of days and hours on which voters may cast ballots before the election, regardless of local factors. So if you are in, say,  Henry County, there aren’t all that many voters, and many of them are retired or live in small towns and  farms close to polling locations, so the limitations aren’t going to cause much of a problem.

But if you are in Cuyahoga County, there are gazillions of voters, many of whom are poor, work crazy hours (if at all), have limited transportation options and may not be anywhere near a polling location. There will be lines, hassles, and the limitations will cause huge problems, and likely suppress the votes of many citizens. Husted sees no difference between 100,000 people trying to get into a building, and 100 people trying to get into a building. Guess he’s never been to an Ohio State game, eh?

Note that Henry County has lots of Republicans, and Cuyahoga has lots of Democrats. Note further that this pattern of limitation by party is consistent across the state. The Secretary of the State of Ohio is using the false premise “consistency” to rig the vote in favor of his party, which is (no surprise) Repubs.

As pointed out by the League of Women Voters, consistency of hours does not translate into equality of access. As pointed out by von Clausewitz, the map is not the terrain. Mr. Husted most assuredly understands both points, and  knows full well that his real motivations (partisan skullduggery) do not match his stated ones (high-minded consistency); so he is fighting hard to keep his slimy strategy alive until, say, November 7^th or so. Thus far, the Republican Legislature and Courts are doing their best to help him steal yet another election. The motherf***ers.

At one time, Mr. Blunt and Cranky must confess, he had hopes for Mr. John Husted: compared with  the blatantly partisan and corrupt Ken Blackwell, it seemed that professionalism might become a trend once again in the SOS’s office. And certainly, ol’ Johnny said a lot of good things and did some non-partisan things when first he took office.

Note to blogging self: stop with this silly hoping for an ethical Ohio Republican crap. It’s even dumber than hoping for the Tribe to win the Series, or the Browns to win the Super Bowl. None of the three will ever occur, and much heartbreak can be avoided by simply accepting that reality. Mr. Husted has shown himself to be just as much of a corrupt, partisan, election-stealing scumbucket as Blackwell, but far smoother and less overtly offensive.

Ohio, once again, our state can become a laughing stock (as it did in 2004); or we can kick some nuts and take some names. It’s up to us, the voters, to get out of our easy chairs and put on our steel-tipped cowboy boots.

Mr. B & C

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul (Ryan)

So, ol’ Willie has done picked himself a Veep-To-Be, and it is that famous Deficit Hawk Paul Ryan.  Teabaggers are happier than clams, and pundits of all stripes are having themselves lots of fun yammering away. Mister Blunt and Cranky, being a big pay-as-you-go fan (AKA a hater o’ deficits), might be happy as well, but he knows a bit too much about the real Paul Ryan, the one who acts like a deficit hawk  but in fact picks our pockets like the two-faced master thief that he is.

(Feel free to Googlify all these claims if you don’t believe The Cranky One, of course): Ryan voted for all of Bush The Dumber’s deficit-creating budgets that wiped out a previous surplus; he voted for TARP, which added to the Bush deficit, and voted for the auto bailout, which bloated the Bush deficit even further.  Ryan a deficit hawk? Feh.

Adding insult to injury, Ryan is also a classic D.C thief: stealing money from our pockets to line his own. How can this be said? Easily, it turns out: look at 2011 and the budget he pushed:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/06/17/paul-ryan-s-shrewd-budget-payday-congressman-could-benefit-from-tax-breaks-he-proposes.html

Short version for the link-averse: Paul Ryan pushed a budget that would give tens of billions of dollars in handouts to the Oil Bidness. Such is business as usual in D.C., the Fossil Boys spend thousands buying politicians so they can get those billions. What makes this case different is that Ryan’s budget also paid off for his own family, who own land that is being drilled by the beneficiaries of the budget Ryan wrote.

Just to make this crystal–clear: Ryan wrote a budget that would take money from our pockets and transfers it to his bank account, and to those of his family. He is robbing all us “Peters” to pay, well, Paul (himself). In 2009, he and his wife pocketed $ 117,000.00 from his Big Oil Buddies, and another $60,000.00 in 2010.

Get the picture? This “deficit hawk” is nothing more than a typical Washington crook with a great bulls*** story. He wants to take away the benefits that we pay for with our tax dollars, steal the money saved, and put it in his pockets and those of his cronies. Oh, and he’ll further bloat the deficit he claims to want to cut. It’s just another con-artist politico, shoveling fertilizer at us and calling it caviar. A vote for Romney is a vote for Ryan, and a vote for Ryan gives him permission to steal your money and keep it for himself.

Mr. B & C.