you'll cry and cry and try to sleep
but sleep won't come the whole night through
your cheating heart will tell on you

Investor's Business Daily has an editorial piece blasting the US State Department for asking an outside group to monitor US elections.

According to IBD the State Department has asked the Organization for Security and Cooperation, a European group, to monitor the 2004 US Presidential elections in November.

Predictably, IBD is livid. Apparently the fact that the previous Presidential election came across as a complete joke to many Americans is lost on these characters. Not to mention their intense whining:

The invitation was extended by -- of course -- the State Department, which for years has been a weak defender of U.S. interests.

Excuse me? A "weak defender of US interests"? So it's bad to want to use diplomacy to solve problems before going in and bombing the living crap out of innocents? It's wrong to want to be absolutely certain that we have correct intelligence before we decide to invade a country that NEVER attacked us? So which government entity is a strong defender of US interests? The Department of Defense? The neocons? Right.

But of course IBD isn't quite finished:

It's clearly an effort to smear the Bush administration and all Republicans as cheaters who stole the election. But it was the Democrats -- with their army of lawyers swooping into Florida, their attempts to recount and recount again in selected Democratic counties until they got the result they wanted, their absurd challenges to legal votes and their attempts to divine voters' intentions from hanging chads -- who tried to rob George W. Bush of a legitimate victory.

Legitimate victory my ass. The Orlando Sentinel, Palm Beach Post and the Chicago Tribune conducted statewide recounts after the election was completed. Their recounts show Gore winning Florida by 1080 votes. And that's after the Republicans in Florida expunged thousands of people off the voting roles that they claimed were "felons". And then of course there were the road blocks. And don't forget about the wealthy areas of Florida having nice, well run computers to do their voting...why the poorer areas had paper roles that weren't always up to date.

They also disregard that the government never found a single person in the state who was intentionally disenfranchised. Or that two media recounts determined that, yes, Bush did win Florida.

"The government"? Would it be "the government" in Florida run by Jeb Bush or the "federal government" run by the GOP and George W Bush that just couldn't find anyone who was intentionally disenfranchised? And what about those "unintentionally disenfranchised"? "Oh gee...I really didn't mean to keep Mr Smith from being able to vote...but we just couldn't let him past the road block." Uh-huh.

And the cherry on the IBD cake:

We're simply saying that the U.S. can handle its own affairs. It's not a banana republic where the outcome of every sham election is known well in advance. It's not a dictatorship that rigs the vote to re-elect a tyrant.


We are the model for representative government and civil conduct in selecting our leaders. Hauling in a squad of international busybodies is needless, if not demeaning.

Tell ya what IBD...you guys quit trying to steal the election by expunging voter roles, rigging voting machines, setting up road blocks and various other stunts. And then outside groups monitoring elections won't be needed. You feel demeaned? Tough. A little humility is nothing in the face of massive fraud and the people of the US having confidence and faith that our elections are above board.

Update: According to this post at MyDD, the OSCE might not exactly have much teeth. The post speculates that OSCE is politically motivated.

Perhaps State jumped at this to keep another, more unbiased organization from doing it?

Thanks to cwkraus4clark over at Kos for the head's up.