November 13, 2004
Questions from the Latino Quarter -- According to People's Weekly World Newspaper, "Latino leaders are disputing election exit polls that indicate a more than 10 percent increase in support for George W. Bush in 2004 compared to 2000. They point to an exit poll designed to reflect Latino demographics indicating that the Latino vote stayed at 2-to-1 for the Democratic ticket." No Questions Allowed -- Robert Parry: "You might think that the major media that got suckered by George W. Bush’s Iraqi weapons-of-mass-destruction claims just last year would show some humility about its own fallibility. But, no, the elite U.S. news media is now criticizing common citizens who have raised questions about voter fraud in the Nov. 2 election. The New York Times has joined the Washington Post and other major news outlets in scouring the Internet to find and discredit Americans who have expressed suspicions that Bush’s victory might not have been entirely legitimate." Consortium News Attempt to Recount Ohio Vote -- "Efforts to launch an official statewide recount of the Ohio presidential vote are underway. While it's unclear if a recount will result in a Kerry victory, it's likely to highlight many flaws in Ohio elections that may have tilted results toward Republicans and against Democrats. Common Cause of Ohio and the Alliance for Democracy, a progressive coalition, Thursday announced they were launching a recount campaign for Ohio." Alternet Elephant in the Voting Booth -- Maureen Farrell on Buzzflash examines the possibility of another rigged election, complete with many good links and references. In Defiance of Statistical Law -- According to a research paper by Dr. Steven F. Freeman, "As much as we can say in social science that something is impossible, it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote counts in the three critical battleground states [Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania] of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error." The odds of those exit poll statistical anomalies occurring by chance are, according to Freeman, "250,000,000 to one." Buzzflash Friends in High Places -- Amy Goodman of Democracy Now poses the question: "Did Homeland Security and the FBI interfere With the Vote Count?" Warren County, Ohio, was suddenly put under a number 10 terror alert and the building where the votes were being counted was locked down so no one could observe the vote count. Who's security was being protected? Why was this one county in Ohio suddenly in danger of terrorism? Why do the American people allow such blatant shenanigans? Get ready for a big attack. No joke. CIA in Turmoil Under New Director -- The deputy director of the CIA resigned after clashes with Bush's new appointee to head the organization. Washington Post Michael Moore Plans Fahrenheit Sequel -- Reuters The Costs of War -- "By Wednesday, 1,250 American soldiers had died in Iraq and Afghanistan (40 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan so far in 2004). Among American forces there's been 26,000 combat wounded and 7,000 amputees. Most of their medical costs, which will accrue over the years, aren't included in the tallies. The human costs to Iraq dwarf America's." News Journal
November 14, 2004
I Smell a Rat -- See the Zogby site for an intriguing and informed analysis of the possibilities of vote fraud as indicated by the official results. "Polling is an imprecise science. Yet its very imprecision is itself quantifiable and follows regular patterns. Differences between actual results and those expected from polling data must be explainable by identifiable factors if the polling sample is robust enough. With almost 3.000 respondents in Florida alone, the CNN poll sample was pretty robust... According to the official statistics for Cuyahoga county, a number of precincts had voter turnout well above the national average: in fact, turnout was well over 100% of registered voters, and in several cases well above the total number of people who have lived in the precinct in the last century or so." Do yourself a favor and read this piece, and especially its conclusion. Restoring Integrity to the White House (joke) -- Bush Crony Flow Chart Attack on Fallujah can't be justified -- Helen Thomas November 15, 2004
Ah, the freedom of not having to face elections! With no inhibitions of that nature, the hands are freed to take more drastic steps, like the big Fallujah offensive. According to ABC, 38 Americans have died there in the last week. Hundreds have been wounded, God knows how many Iraqis have been slaughtered. Now with Bush saying the "will of the people" is at his back, there will be less restraint even than before. Green Party Forces Recount in Ohio -- Now, ironically, the Green Party becomes a significant force in a national election. Truthout Errors that would be unacceptable in any other realm of American life -- According to Cynthia Butler: "The percentage volume of 'error' or 'glitches' or 'miscalibration' of electronic voting machines reported nationally in the 2004 Election, if transposed to the FAA air traffic computers, would crash flights every fifteen minutes in the sky. If that statistical percentage of error were transposed to NASA computers, all flights to space would dissolve in the Ozone. If that 'error' rate were transposed to your ATM machine, you would be hiding your cash under your mattress. If the 'error' percentage experienced nationally in voting machines was transposed to the electronics in your car, you would be taking the bus to work at least three days a week. Yet, somehow, we want to say that--while we expect our ATMs to give us paper receipts and work every time, and our air traffic computers to give perfectly accurate results, and the NASA systems to be on go, and the electronics in our car to get us to our jobs and back without a breakdown-- electronic voting machines can 'miscalibrate' to register the OPPOSITE of millions of decisions, and do so by enormous margins. These computer programs were tested for two years. If you think we don't have the technology to make them perfectly functional and functionally perfect think again. These election results are not credible. Period." There is Truth, and Then There is Power -- "Following a series of cable news network programs (Countdown with Keith Olbermann, AndersonCooper360) attempting to discredit those raising the specter that the WTC complex buildings may have be brought down by something other than fire, an Underwriters Laboratories (UL) Executive has written a stunning email challenging the thus far largely accepted theory. This on the eve of a brewing controversy over whether portions of the next NIST hearing on November 22nd in Gaithersberg, Maryland will be closed to the public or not. 'If steel from those buildings did soften or melt, I'm sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers.'" 911citizenswatch.org AP Photographer Reports on Fallujah Slaughter -- ABC
November 16, 2004
UN to Bush: No Justification for Torture -- Common Dreams Powell Jumps -- Already a war criminal for lying to the UN, aiding and abetting the unjustified slaughter of 100,000 Iraqis, as well as torture of many more, Powell moves to cut his losses. Canada.com Chomsky says draft unlikely -- democracynow.org Falluja is Devastated -- "... after a week of intense fighting that has left at least 1200 Iraqis dead. Witnesses describe bloated and decomposing bodies in the streets, smashed homes, ruined mosques and severed power and telephone lines." democracynow.org
ROAD NOTES
November 17, 2004
I spent a few days in Toronto. It's always nice to get a taste of Canadian culture, but I was mostly around Americans and they were mostly Republicans, so that was a little depressing.I heard a Canadian public radio broadcast while I was there that was intriguing. I am afraid I didn't take note of who it was, but the entire time I was listening, for about an hour till the show ended, it was carrying on an aggressive assault on Amy Goodman, the creator of Democracy Now, which I think is the single best news program in broadcast media.
It was a Canadian network, and it was certainly not a right-wing point of view. The main personality on the show mentioned that Amy Goodman was on the Tucker Carlson TV "news" show, and he mentioned that Carlson is "despicable." So it wasn't coming from the right wing doctrinaire point of view that dominates U.S. broadcasting.
I'm sure Amy Goodman is not a perfectly virtuous human being. As a person who has attained some power and influence in the world, it is not unlikely that she is guilty of some infringement, some human failing like greed, selfishness, rudeness, etc., as we all are. But for the hour or so that I listened, I couldn't quite make out anything clearly damning.
From what I could make out from a casual listening, it was primarily about George Soros, the billionaire, who may or may not have indirectly given money to Democracy Now, through a charity he supports. This was the first element of the story.
The second element of the story was that George Soros is a "war profiteer," who made money from the war in Kosovo. Now at this point, I cannot pretend to know the specific facts of what the show host was referring to. I am only going on the logic of what he put forward. If I got it right, he was saying that Soros influenced Bill Clinton to avoid bombing a certain part of Kosovo because it was something that Soros was invested in and made money for him. I can't remember if it was a mine or what, but it's not of central importance to the argument.
The point was that if Soros prevented or helped to prevent the bombing of a particular part of Kosovo while Clinton was bombing other parts, then that establishes him as a war profiteer. Then having established that, supposedly, he then uses it to go after Goodman for not revealing her financial ties to Soros because Soros gave money to a foundation that gave a grant to Democracy Now.
It was never compellingly clear to me that that incident established Soros as a war profiteer. And if it did, then one would still have to evaluate separately whether the oblique financial connection he speculates between them is something really damning.
So if there is an impropriety, then let the wheels of justice, or even of public opinion turn. But nothing I heard there causes me a great deal of concern immediately. Considering the quality of the program Democracy Now, and its utter uniqueness in a market full of garbage that is so dumbed down by now as to be absolutely toxic, I am not particularly worried about the infractions alluded to, considering the extremely egregious infringements of many powerful men whom the corporate media doesn't tell on, while Democracy Now does.
So I found the show a little baffling in the short time I heard it. I could see how they felt they found their own little scoop no one else had, and they pride themselves in being as unsparing to Amy Goodman as they may be to Tucker Carlson. But I feel they are missing the real urgency of the issues that are really endangering both the U.S. and Canada. Even if there is some validity in the small point that was intended to be made, the overall significance isn't much when that house is burning down.
Still, it was very refreshing considering that the U.S. counterpart, NPR, is licking George W.'s pinky finger and wouldn't dare launch a really damaging criticism of any Bush policy or ever say Tucker Carlson is "despicable".
Rice in -- I saw headlines in Canada, and predictions before, and about 20 Internet news cycles of stories about Rice becoming the new Secretary of State. Defying impossibility, Bush is actually downsizing the stature of his motley administration. Rice was the one who spent her entire time in front of the 9/11 commission making the argument that they knew nothing in advance and how could they possibly be expected to know anything, it was just a lot of indecipherable "chatter" and no one ever spelled it out for her so what was she supposed to do? Great, that's really reassuring to have her assume a higher position in the cabinet. The fact that she's a pretty black lady seems to be the only datum the mass media have absorbed in regard to Rice. Our Zany FBI -- According to CNN, "An FBI informant who set himself on fire in a suicide attempt Monday has been upgraded to serious condition at Washington Hospital Center, a spokesman said. He tried to ignite himself in front of the White House. The FBI refused to discuss the matter." Recent election comments by Chomsky are, as always, refreshing, striking and valuable, coming from a unique point of view. As usual they are extremely provocative and there is at least one thing I would disagree with strenuously, and that is his statement: "As to fraud, etc. I don’t think it is a major issue, even if true. The election had about the significance of tossing a coin to pick a king." Of course it has an inherent logic, but a bit inverted in my view. The very fact that the election had the significance of tossing a coin to pick a king is why it is so important that election fraud be dealt with in no uncertain terms. If the latter is true, then the former cannot be true if one cares about democracy, as Chomsky does. So that statement confuses me. Hard to figure where he is coming from with that.
November 18, 2004
Giant Still Sleeping -- The voting irregularities have not ceased coming to light from many quarters at once. The concern about them has not died away in spite of the establishment media's inexplicable failure to see them as an issue worthy of putting up there with gushy stories about Condi Rice or the latest murder scandal. Perhaps Americans will yet prove their mettle, show that they are indeed worthy of the great democratic tradition they have been handed, but seem unwilling to protect. Perhaps rigging the vote, flagrantly and massively, is still too much an outrage even for somnolent Americans of the 21st century. We shall see if this arouses them. Now the danger signals are coming out of universities, technology centers, all of which are probably suspect to the rigid Christian right of the Bushies, but very respectable from a more mainstream point of view. Reports are flooding in. How long can the corporate media keep suppressing them? Over and over again we see the same thing. The discrepancies between the districts that use electronic machines and more traditional methods are consistent, and the errors always break in the direction of Bush, something that could not happen by random processes alone.
Smoke Alarm -- "Today the University of California's Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Team released a statistical study - the sole method available to monitor the accuracy of e- voting - reporting irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000-260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in Florida in the 2004 presidential election. The study shows an unexplained discrepancy between votes for President Bush in counties where electronic voting machines were used versus counties using traditional voting methods - what the team says can be deemed a 'smoke alarm.' Discrepancies this large or larger rarely arise by chance - the probability is less than 0.1 percent. The research team formally disclosed results of the study at a press conference today at the UC Berkeley Survey Research Center, where they called on Florida voting officials to investigate." yubanet.com/ No Chance in Hell -- See ucdata.berkeley for the "Working Paper: The Effect of Electronic Voting Machines on Change in Support for Bush in the 2004 Florida Elections" and click on "Summary of Findings". Ohio Democrats File Suit Over Provisional Ballots -- "Seeming to brush aside John Kerry's concession speech, the Ohio Democratic Party has launched a federal court fight over nearly 155,000 provisional ballots by contending a proper accounting of those votes might decide who really won. In Ohio, Bush now holds a lead of about 136,000 votes over Kerry." Cleveland Plain Dealer Dahr Jamail Reporting from Iraq -- "Journalists are increasingly being detained and threatened by the U.S.-installed interim government in Iraq. Media have been stopped particularly from covering recent horrific events in Fallujah." Breakthrough? The Boston Globe is reporting "Media accused of ignoring election irregularities". Could this issue boil over? Could it? Could Americans wake up before their democracy is down the drain? It's only democracy, hell, we had it a couple of centuries. What do you want? Can't have everything. Hey! It was good while it lasted. We laughed, we cried, you know. But now it's over. Time to move on. Like Antonin Scalia said, "Get over it." AOL For Dummies -- AOL today is showing Arnold Schwarzenegger and speculating whether he could be "another Reagan", i.e. an actor from California who becomes president. Of course it would take a Constitutional amendment to make it legal for an Austrian to become president of the U.S. But that should be easy. What's the problem with a Constitutional amendment, as long as you can get the Terminator in the White House? How cool would that be? The big media's manipulation of the news to make it propaganda in service of a wicked agenda is sordid, but sometimes it seems the most offensive part of it is the way it dumbs everything down. By long years of suppressing the unspeakable truths, which allow the perpetrators more freedom so the atrocities get worse, eventually there is so much bad news to suppress, and so few realities you can talk about without leading to some forbidden territory, the content becomes absurdly dumbed down. That's the media we have today. Unbearably dumbed down. They treat us all like idiots. It's so insulting. Big Brother's Long Reach -- U.S. authorities closed down a Norwegian website and are now considering whether to charge its operators with threatening the president. journalism.co.uk Math, Not Conspiracy Theory -- "What jumped out at a lot of people on the night of the election was how the 'errors' in the exit polls consistently occured in the same direction. The thing about genuine errors, extremes, and anomalies in results... is that they're random. The chance that a flipped coin will land 'heads' four times in a row is only 1 in 16 -- but you're just as likely to see it land 'tails' four times in a row. And if it's an honest coin, flipped fairly, over time, you will. Very basic math will tell you exactly how likely a given outcome is. But even without the math, we have a sense of this in our daily lives. If you were betting another guy a dollar a flip, and the coin came up tails ten times in a row (about a 1 in 1000 chance) common sense would tell you the coin was weighted." Bob Harris
WEEKEND LINKS
November 20-21, 2004
Alternate Reality -- If Kerry had been a real leader of the people who could rise to the call of history to lead the country from the brink of catastrophe, here is the speech he might have made. The (Un)Concession Speech That Could Have Been by Megan Tady. "Fellow Americans, the Bush Administration is saying theyve won Ohio, and that therefore theyve won the election. Republicans across the country are beginning victory parties. The media is running headlines that say Bush has been elected as your president for a second term. Dont believe them. This is, in fact, all bullshit. At this time, it is still unclear who won the election. What is clear, however, is the evidence of voter fraud and disenfranchisement all across the country. Exit polls do not match election results. Thousands of provisional ballots havent been counted. Punch cards ballots, with hanging chads, are once again being pushed into a closet and swept under the rug. Absentee ballots from our soldiers overseas are still coming in. Polls were closed with people still waiting in line. Computers spat out results that did not correlate with voters intentions. Registered voters were turned away from the polls on, and before, Election Day. The list goes on. I repeat, do not believe the hype." Where Are the 9/11 Airport Videos? Airports have video cameras at ticket counters, checkpoints and boarding gates. The FBI confiscated the relevant videos of September 11, 2001. Where are they? What do they show? Why haven't they been shown publicly? Liberty Forum What Happened to the 757? Check out this amazing film about the Pentagon Strike. The Great Media Breakdown -- by Todd Gitlin on Mother Jones Why Did CNN Adjust Its Exit Poll Numbers? Democratic Underground, Orlando Weekly County-by-county voting results in Florida -- "EXPECTED votes would normally vary from the ACTUAL votes due to increased voter turnout by one party, Independents voting REP or DEM or other factors. What seems very odd in these numbers is that the increase in ACTUAL votes from EXPECTED votes has a striking pattern of being so much higher for REPs than that for DEMs in counties using optical scan voting machines, even when smaller counties are excluded from the analysis." uscountvotes.org Felonious Voting Machine Manufacturers -- "An investigation into the surprisingly-sordid history of America’s “election services industry” has revealed that executives and owners of the two largest companies, E S & S and Sequoia Pacific, have been convicted of bribery and suborning public officials in more than a dozen states. And while a felony conviction may be enough to prevent you from voting in Florida, convicted felons can take heart in the fact that the “blemish” on their record in no way disqualifies them from owning companies counting the votes." Mad Cow Productions
November 21, 2004
Expatriate In My Mind -- Gray Sunday morning arrives, gloomy late November, one day before the anniversary of the JFK assassination, three weeks into the fantasy world beyond the non-election, the America whose fate is decided on a corrupt slot machine that rattles around and then displays three skulls, a jackpot for the war industry. Where is the escape hatch to the Twilight Zone?The New York Times arrives like a pile of fog, layers of concentrated confusion, distortion, misrepresentation, deception, self-deception. The paper that apologized for its shabby parroting of the Bush administration's lies to justify the invasion of Iraq is now doing the same with Iran, repeating the administration's line and spin uncritically. This is what liberal media means. No guts.
"Bush says Iran speeds output of A-bomb fuel," the paper dutifully reports, getting in line with the rest of the media to begin what will surely be a nonstop blitz about the big problem of Iran, the current problem to take the place of the big problem of Iraq that was created by Bush and pounded into the American people for two years in preparation for an invasion based on lies. The Times did its part to help arrange that atrocity and will no doubt do the same with whatever target Bush chooses next.
On page 32 the Times whispers that "the federal government" will cut back student loans, as many as 100,000 students will lose their grants. The Times just refers vaguely to "the government", too polite to point the finger at the actual culprits. But we know who it is. It's the Bush administration, that of "the education president", in actuality the leader of the war party, the war industry. Why support education? We need those kids in the army. Our "volunteer army" is hungry for children with no prospects, no economic support. It's chewing them up and spitting them out at an increasing rate these days. Its greedy masters are ever more voracious for plunder.
How could Americans support these life-destroying policies and their perpetrators? They didn't. I don't believe a majority of voters supported these deadly policies. They are being dictated to and inexplicably putting their fate in the hands of mysterious black boxes owned and operated by right wing Republican fanatics.
Where did America go so wrong?
November 22, 2004
Wow! Look At This! You never know what you might miss when you are out of town, or in a suicidal funk. I notice tonight a message from October 26 when I was far from the woes of America, and -- wow! There's so much catastrophic news these days that very little of it can be assimilated by anyone. Plenty a major disasters go virtually unnoticed. And some anti-disaster events as well. According to 911truth.org, "An alliance of 100 prominent Americans and 40 family members of those killed on 9/11 today announced the release of the 911 Truth Statement, a call for immediate inquiry into evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur. The Statement supports an August 31st Zogby poll that found nearly 50% of New Yorkers believe the government had foreknowledge and 'consciously failed to act,' with 66% wanting a new 9/11 investigation." Strong words. Conspiracy fringe lunacy. But hang on. This list of signatories includes: Ed Asner; presidential candidates Ralph Nader, Michael Badnarik and David Cobb; Bush I alumnus Catherine Austin Fitts; Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, singers Michelle Shocked and Michael Franti; Daniel Ellsberg and retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern; Paul Hawken; Howard Zinn... The letter lists 12 questions from the most general, "Why were standard operating procedures for dealing with hijacked airliners not followed that day?" to more specific "Why was Philip Zelikow chosen to be the Executive Director of the ostensibly independent 911 Commission although he had co-authored a book with Condoleezza Rice?" Obviously, a great many Americans do not want entertain such a horrifying possibility and will continue to attribute the idea to pure lunacy. This, then, could be America's biggest challenge ever. If one suspends one's comfortable pre-conceptions for a moment and entertains the possibility: what if in fact some government officials were guilty of such an act? It certainly has historic precedents, a great abundance of them in fact. If it were true, would it be better to face it, or to pretend that it could never happen? If it would be better to face it, wouldn't it be a good idea to just ask the questions, without jumping to conclusions, but just inquiring? When Hitler rose, his practices were so outrageous few wanted to conceive of the possibility that what was happening was actually happening. Hence Churchill's "wilderness years." Chamberlain was the figure who represented an unwillingness to believe the Nazis could be as bad as they were.
Chilly Reception -- US media is making Bush's involvement in a scuffle between Chilean security guards and a US Secret Service officers into a great act of heroism and bravery, not just lowlife behavior of the most lowlife president in history. The Washington Post headlined the story "Bush rescues agent..." The whole row grew up out of turf wars between the Secret Service, who insist that "that they control the president's space, even when he was on sovereign turf," and Chilean officials, on whose turf they were. If Bush didn't require so much security because he is so universally loathed, such things would never happen. Any country he goes to it costs a fortune just to maintain security. The White House of course makes outrageous demands. He continues to build international loathing of the US, but American TV watchers surely like him better than ever. International reporting takes a different view. It's all about the arrogance of Bush. According to "Bush scuffles with Chilean guards" in the Telegraph, "The Americans insisted that the nearly 300 guests, including the president of the Chilean senate, the head of the Chilean supreme court, the top commanders of each branch of the Chilean military and their wives, should pass through metal detector arches before they be permitted to dine near Mr Bush at the presidential palace in Santiago." This is in Chile's presidential palace! Bush wants the head of the supreme court to go through a metal detector for the privilege of dining near his highness the Bush. One of the only consolations for the extremely grim situation America is in now, is that these fools are about to burst with arrogance. And they will, inevitably, destroy themselves. How can they not with this kind of behavior? They've already committed enough crimes to put them away for life if there were any real justice big enough to take them on. They think they are invulnerable. They have already caused untold misery and insult to countless people. It may yet catch up to them.
THANKSGIVING
November 25, 2004
(sigh) In the Ukraine, they still care about fair elections -- After street demonstrations and a call for a strike to protest elections that are widely alleged to have been fraudulent, the Ukraine supreme court has blocked the supposed winner from taking power. Reuters Glassy-eyed Bush twins turn 23 on Thanksgiving -- CNN Voting fraud questions continue to boil over into a media system reluctant to acknowledge them -- According to The Columbus Dispatch, "In Warren County, which reported a 33 percent increase in voter turnout from the 2000 elections, election officials had banned observers at the polls for 'homeland security' concerns." The head of Ohio's Republican party doesn't want to see any more examination of the voting in his state, regardless of the strange, in many cases impossible math. "I call on the leadership of the Ohio Democratic Party to immediately concede that this worthless recount request is an insult to the integrity of Ohio’s election system," he said. Zogby calls for investigation into voting. According to Keith Olbermann, Zogby said, "20 percent don’t think the president is legitimate. And worse yet, if you take the other half, those that didn’t vote for him, about half of the other side doesn’t think the president is legitimate. That just hasn’t existed for a long, long time in our system. We need to restore, I think, some semblance of legitimacy and honor to the system.” MSNBC Is Bush's fly down? Yahoo
November 26, 2004
Is This the Breaking of the Case? Wayne Madsen, writing in Online Journal, has what is the story of the century if it turns out to be accurate: "According to informed sources in Washington and Houston, the Bush campaign spent some $29 million to pay polling place operatives around the country to rig the election for Bush. The operatives were posing as Homeland Security and FBI agents but were actually technicians familiar with Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S, Triad, Unilect, and Danaher Controls voting machines. These technicians reportedly hacked the systems to skew the results in favor of Bush. The leak about the money and the rigged election apparently came from technicians who were promised to be paid a certain amount for their work but the Bush campaign interlocutors reneged and some of the technicians are revealing the nature of the vote rigging program." Voting Machine Company Sequoia Has a Long Criminal History -- "A New York Times editorial demanded a 'Fair Vote Count.' But the editorial writers were referencing—not embattled citizens in the states of Ohio and Florida—but those of the Ukraine. The Times said, 'International observers alleged systemic voting abuses.' What the Times and almost all of the major media refuse to address is the fact that there has, to date, been no credible counter-argument put forward to counter the loud and vociferous assertions of numerous computer experts who insist that electronic voting machines can be rigged. And that if they can be rigged, they are… because if you leave the bank vault open, sooner or later someone is going to rob it." And more: "In essence, the U.C. researchers said that Bush got more votes than could have expected, and attributed the discrepancy to 'irregularities' associated with electronic voting machines. 'The data show with 99.0 percent certainty that a county's use of electronic voting is associated with a disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush,' the study said. 'Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 (election) and 2004... The association between electronic voting and increased support for President Bush (in the three Florida counties) is impossible to overlook,' the U.C. Berkeley researchers stated. What makes their conclusions difficult to dismiss as 'anomalous evidence' is the nature and history of the election companies themselves... Visible in the public record of Sequoia Pacific, a company counting one in three American votes, is clear and convincing evidence that the company has been run, perhaps for decades, as a Continuing Criminal Enterprise specializing in blatant and widespread bribery of public officials, with numerous felony convictions, Mob ties, and a history replete with stories of threats, coercion, and even murder." Mad Cow Productions Check here for anti-vote fraud demonstrations -- stolenelection2004.com Der Fuhrer Bush billboard in Orlando -- Clear Channel at it again. Blue Lemur The Shifting Tide on the Iraq War --According to a Gallup poll, "Forty-seven percent of Americans now say it was a mistake to send troops to Iraq in the first place, with 51% saying it was not," reports Editor & Publisher. "As recently as June the gap in favor of sending troops was much wider, at 58% to 41%. Asked how they feel about the war in general, 48% said they favor it, while 46% oppose it. By 49% to 46%, Americans do not believe the United States will be 'able to establish a stable democratic government in Iraq.' If elections are indeed held in January, 52% predict that most Iraqis will not accept the outcome as legitimate." Moral Hypocrisy -- The Texas prosecutor who is leading an investigation into possible campaign spending violations by Tom Delay, criticized the House of Representatives for changing its rules that formerly required a committee chairmen or party leaders under felony indictments to step down. "Politicians in Congress are responsible for the leaders they choose. Their choices reflect their moral values," prosecutor Ronnie Earle wrote in an opinion piece in Tuesday's New York Times. "The cynical destruction of moral values at the top makes it hard for law enforcement to do its job." Associated Press Kill 'em Jesus! According to Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, "The 'Left Behind' series, the best-selling novels for adults in the U.S., enthusiastically depict Jesus returning to slaughter everyone who is not a born-again Christian. The world's Hindus, Muslims, Jews and agnostics, along with many Catholics and Unitarians, are heaved into everlasting fire: 'Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and . . . they tumbled in, howling and screeching.'" What hath God wrought? Strange #s A closer look at voting totals in Cleveland. Democrats.com Statistical Impossibilities and Absurd Arguments -- Although Steven Freeman, a professor of statistical analysis at the University of Pennsylvania with a doctorate from MIT, says the possibility of the three states of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania having the kinds of shifts towards Bush in official results versus exit polls as 250,000 to 1, Simon Jackman, president of the Society for Political Methodology, says the problems are probably with the exit polls. Freeman's study took that into consideration, however, because the discrepancies with the exit polls consistently took place only with electronic voting machines and did not occur in districts with more traditional voting methods. The Detroit Metro Times, however, discounts election fraud. Why? Because "You don’t need a statistician to calculate the probability that organized fraud so massive could be pulled off without some evidence of the conspiracy leaking out." This is one of those tautological arguments that negates the evidence of widespread voter fraud by saying it couldn't happen without someone seeing evidence of it. The Metro also quotes John Allen Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple University, saying “Fraud is hard to believe for many reasons, one being the widespread nature, extending over different states and regions, of the shift to Bush. The difficulty of concealing a conspiracy grows rapidly with the number of conspirators.” The evidence we are seeing of voter irregularities cannot really indicate voter irregularities, because that would be a broad conspiracy, and that couldn't be concealed, he says. But the point is, it's not concealed. We are looking at the evidence. It's in front of our faces. It fits a pattern of far-reaching voting irregularities as we saw in Florida in 2000, orchestrated through machine politics on the street level, as well as through official channels like Jeb Bush's office, which wiped thousands off the roles illegitimately. We have seen that touch-screen tallies can be manipulated from central computers, which would not require such a widespread conspiracy at all. Browser Beware: Bogus 9/11 Websites? -- According to Oilempire.us, bogus theories promoted on some sites are specifically designed to muddy the waters and make all questions about the official stories look like crackpot theories. Saving Your Right to Vote -- William Rivers Pitt.
November 27, 2004
America Gone Mad
Once again, America's media fail miserably to come to terms with the current crisis. The New York Times absurdly goes on its soapbox to call for a fair vote count -- but in the Ukraine, not the U.S. Meanwhile, while reports of blatant voter irregularities consistently favoring Bush mount, most of the establishment media, refuse to even mention the crisis in voting rights and voter confidence in America?Susan Lenfestey, writing in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (sent out in Truthout's Thanksgiving Message), is typical, dismissing concern with the accuracy of the vote count as "conspiracy theories", as if such a thing could not happen in the U.S., even as University Studies are saying the chance that it didn't are 250,000 to 1. (See ucdata.berkeley for the "Working Paper: The Effect of Electronic Voting Machines on Change in Support for Bush in the 2004 Florida Elections" and click on "Summary of Findings".)
It seems America has truly lost its collective mind. Even those who are not part of the theocratic wave that urges the death penalty to gays and doctors who perform abortion and long for the day when Jesus will come down and burn to death all who are not born again Christians, are so blinded and bludgeoned by corporate media propaganda as to be unable to see evidence of fraud when it is staring them in the face.
Susan Lenfestey talks of "comfort" ... "even for a liberal", but liberals who can't focus their eyes on the threats we are really facing may be too liberal for their own chances of survival. She talks of "despair" over "creating a democracy while humiliating a culture". Creating a democracy? Who is kidding whom? She is so liberal, she accepts the lies and doublespeak slogans of the neocons at face value and even takes the Bush vocabulary as her own, ensuring the impossibility of ever thinking clearly about the threats of the Bush administration.
Creating a democracy? Where? Iraq? As they create a totalitarian state in America? If it makes her feel better to think the bloodshed and destruction in Iraq is "creating a democracy", I hope she has pleasant dreams in her state of waking sleep, but it ain't happening. Not in this century. I suggest those who think like she does wake up while they still have any chances. Without your mind, without clear vision unfogged by neocon rhetoric, it's going to be very difficult to get through the next few years.
The Ascendance of Theocracy -- Meanwhile the Bushies favorite thug/supreme court justice, Antonin Scalia, has come out openly rejecting the separation of church and state. According to Newsday, Scalia said that "a religion-neutral government does not fit with an America that reflects belief in God in everything from its money to its military." Economic Crisis When not If -- Princeton economics professor and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman told Reuters that "The economic policies of President Bush have set the country on a dangerous course that will likely end in crisis." TV Is Our Enemy -- Bob Fertik, Democrats.com
November 28, 2004
Voting Machines Count Backwards in Oklahoma -- Oklahoma Independent Media Center. More Oil Problems -- A 30,000-gallon oil spill on the Delaware River near Philadelphia. It is high time the U.S. moved away from its absurd dependence on oil. George W. Bush says, We won't sign onto the Kyoto agreement because it will hurt our economy. He means it will hurt the fortunes of his friends the oil oligopoly. A real leader would create incentives to encourage innovation in finding alternative energy sources, and that would create an economic boom and new industries. CNN Coming Out -- The voting fraud suspicions are gradually surfacing in mainstream media. See "Kerry clutches to hopes of recount victory" at North Country News U.S. ELECTION: Democracy in Question -- Inter Press Services US Using Poison Gas? -- According to Inter Press Services, "The U.S. military has used poison gas and other non-conventional weapons against civilians in Fallujah, eyewitnesses report..." Commondreams A Floodtide of Evidence of Voter Fraud in Ohio -- cannonfire Bush's scuffle didn't play so well in Chile -- New York Times Bellaciao's Vote Fraud Links. Brad Friedman: More Vote Fraud Links -- Bradblog.com
November 30, 2004
From an AOL message board: You may have seen the associated press story about the precinct in Cuyahoga county that had less than 1,000 voters, and gave Bush almost 4,000 extra votes. But that turns out to be only the tip of a very ugly iceberg. The evidence discovered by some remarkably careful sleuthing would convince any reasonable court to invalidate the entire Ohio election.
In last Tuesday's election, 29 precincts in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, reported votes cast IN EXCESS of the number of registered voters - at least 93,136 extra votes total. And the numbers are right there on the official Cuyahoga County Board of Elections website:
Bay Village - 13,710 registered voters / 18,663 ballots cast
Beachwood - 9,943 registered voters / 13,939 ballots cast
Bedford - 9,942 registered voters / 14,465 ballots cast
Bedford Heights - 8,142 registered voters / 13,512 ballots cast
Brooklyn - 8,016 registered voters / 12,303 ballots cast
Brooklyn Heights - 1,144 registered voters / 1,869 ballots cast
Chagrin Falls Village - 3,557 registered voters / 4,860 ballots cast
Cuyahoga Heights - 570 registered voters / 1,382 ballots cast
Fairview Park - 13,342 registered voters / 18,472 ballots cast
Highland Hills Village - 760 registered voters / 8,822 ballots cast
Independence - 5,735 registered voters / 6,226 ballots cast
Mayfield Village - 2,764 registered voters / 3,145 ballots cast
Middleburg Heights - 12,173 registered voters / 14,854 ballots cast
Moreland Hills Village - 2,990 registered voters / 4,616 ballots cast
North Olmstead - 25,794 registered voters / 25,887 ballots cast
Olmstead Falls - 6,538 registered voters / 7,328 ballots cast
Pepper Pike - 5,131 registered voters / 6,479 ballots cast
Rocky River - 16,600 registered voters / 20,070 ballots cast
Solon (WD6) - 2,292 registered voters / 4,300 ballots cast
South Euclid - 16,902 registered voters / 16,917 ballots cast
Strongsville (WD3) - 7,806 registered voters / 12,108 ballots cast
University Heights - 10,072 registered voters / 11,982 ballots cast
Valley View Village - 1,787 registered voters / 3,409 ballots cast
Warrensville Heights - 10,562 registered voters / 15,039 ballots cast
Woodmere Village - 558 registered voters / 8,854 ballots cast
Bedford (CSD) - 22,777 registered voters / 27,856 ballots cast
Independence (LSD) - 5,735 registered voters / 6,226 ballots cast
Orange (CSD) - 11,640 registered voters / 22,931 ballots cast
Warrensville (CSD) - 12,218 registered voters / 15,822 ballots cast
The Republicans are so BUSTED.
cuyahogacounty.us/BOE/results is the official website of the Cuyahoga county election board, providing irrefutable evidence that the vote was off by at least 93,000.Kerry lost Ohio by approximately 130,000, so this is not an insignificant figure that can be ignored, particularly when there are numerous other indications of voter fraud in Ohio and elsewhere. I think the only possible alternative is to invalidate the entire Ohio election, if not the entire national election. I'd say the game's up, America, it looks pretty much like you've been had.
Sincerely,
TR Philosophy Dept., Sonoma State University
