I hope that by the time you read this that Barack Obama is the president of the United States. On the other hand, if McCain-Palin and the neocons find a way to steal their fourth major US election in eight years, don�t say you were not warned.

The fact is, Republicans still own and control all of the voting machines. Not a thing has been done to break this monopoly, despite years of reporting, independent investigations, and tireless coverage by www.bradblog.com, www.blackboxvoting.org, and others. Not a thing has been done, in any reasonable fashion, by the Democratic Party for eight years. (Why not?)

Nor has a thing been done about the election malfeasance being carried out by on-the-ground Republican operatives. It�s happening as I write this, in states across the country, from Ohio to Florida. Obama votes are flipping to McCain (never the other way around). Voter rolls are being purged. People are turning out in large numbers, and being �discouraged� from casting their votes, and when their votes are cast on Diebold and ES&S electronic voting machines, the Republicans can still -- still -- invent any vote count they wish. Legal challenges? Bush-Cheney has stacked the judicial system with Republicans. The last stop, the Supreme Court, is Bush-Cheney country, top to bottom.

Nothing has changed, and what has changed has gotten worse.

As for you hopelessly naive Democratic Party and Obama-Biden supporters who want to insist that the 2006 Dem landslide somehow proved that mass turnout and campaign enthusiasm alone can overcome total Republican control of the election apparatus, please relieve yourselves of your delusions.

The only reason McCain-Palin lose today is because forces at the core of the Anglo-American empire have decided that eight years of neocon rule has been too damaging and counterproductive. So much so, that the empire itself wants a break from itself, if only for a moment. That a couple of years of elite corporate neoliberal management under a President Obama retrieves the �squandered� opportunity that the empire fumbled after 9/11. They want to get the �war on terror� conquest back on course, complete with the subtleties, �international cooperation,� and public appearances. They want -- need -- a more palatable face in the White House, so that the looting and plunder begun by Paulson, Bernanke, and Wall Street can �succeed,� in a way that minimizes public outrage, even as trillions continue to be stolen.

But maybe not. Maybe the too-far-gone collapse of the empire goes into another four years of even greater, even more unimaginable violence and upheaval, and all hope -- even the tiniest bit---must be crushed, even more than it already been flattened. Maybe President Palin takes over for cancer-ridden President McCain, and the hell of hells begins. What then? What then?

McCain and Palin, and their legions of thugs, are behaving as confidently as the Bush family did on November 4, 2000, with the same smugness. They are proclaiming an upset triumph. You had better hope that they are merely posturing.

I hope that I am wrong.

I hope that you can toss this editorial into the bin, along with the rest of your Obama election victory party confetti.

I hope that the nightmare scenario will not unfold.