Pen-Elayne on the Web

Ssh! We Know We're Crooked, And So Do You

I know I'm behind in blog-reading (that's tomorrow's goal, in the hopest that I can maybe do my Blogway Blabby round-up after all on Sunday), but tucked away at the end of Paul Krugman's latest brilliant column (click here to bypass NYT registration) about "the triumph of the trivial" was this:

The St. Petersburg Times says the Republican Party of Florida has sent out a flier urging supporters to use absentee ballots because the machines lack a paper trail and cannot "verify your vote."

Of course, the president's brother's spokesweenies insist he had no foreknowledge of such a campaign, but please, he is the Republican Party of Florida, nothing they do gets by without his dirty fingerprints on it. Again, they can't get away with denying it - "Republican Party spokesman Joseph Agostini initially denied that the brochure was the work of the GOP. But after he was shown the flier, he backtracked. He confirmed it was a GOP flier mailed in response to an Artiles flier that used the president's face without permission." - so instead they pretty much regard their sin as having been caught doing it. And the obfuscations to try to wriggle out of being busted! It's like Randi Rhodes (Goddess bless her she absolutely makes my afternoon commute!) said (paraphrasing), "it's very easy to tell the truth, it's much harder to lie." For these folks, truth seems to be a foreign commodity, so they've made it as difficult to do as lying, which means they'll never, ever be above suspicion. Their only hope to hang onto power is to try to drag others to their level. Don't let them do it.