Was Ohio stolen, you ignorant slut?
Salon has a point/counterpoint on election fraud in Ohio featuring the name-callin’, contempt-drippin’ Greg Palast saying Ohio belongs to Kerry and Farhad Manjoo defending his article saying that Kerry really did lose. If it’s not obvious, I think Farhad comes out ahead on this one.
On Thursday Night, I heard Farhad lay out the issues at the beginning of an NPR talk show. He was excellent. then Heather Gerken and Steve Ansolabehere, from Harvard and MIT respectively, were interviewed. They were good, too, but I was quite surprised to here Ansolabehere say that he was “100%” confident that Bush won Ohio. Gerken responded similarly. When do researchers and academics ever say they are 100% certain? Is it literally beyond all imaginings that the e-voting machines were hacked? I mean, I’m 98% certain they weren’t, but how could I ever get to 100% on such a topic? Maybe I’m over-reacting — and I was listening in the car and not taking notes, so I may not have gotten the exchange right — but I feel like the media are on a mission to reassure the public. And that is not the media’s role. That’s why we have politicians and soma.
Tom Hartmann was also on the show also, and while I am not as alarmed as he is, it was good to hear a skeptic.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
OMG that headline made me laugh so hard.
Take that “100%” as a rounding, to three significant digits. The true number might be “99.9314159265358%”, but such a detail might be forgiven in a nontechnical program.
I expect there was significant shinnanigans in Ohio beyond lines that were at least daunting. And I think Florida weather played a role in this election. When it gets right down to it, its only an election. The country will still be here tomorrow and many good things (directly and indirectly) will come of giving the bushy’s another four years. They stole this election.
We have to stand up to electoral abuse. Its about time that you people realized that you are dealing Machiavellian Capitalist. They will let you “eat cake” as long as you can take it and make it yours. Freedom may or may not come out the end of a gun. One thing is certain, there will be bodies strewn all along the way.
I’m hoping that overstatements of the case don’t keep the obvious and unquestionable flaws in the election process from being ignored, but I figure that’s where we’re headed.
Too bad. It’d be nice to do something about everyday vote suppression.
Was the election stolen? No. But what we need is a non-partisan investigation (or “examination” if “investigation” freaks people out too much) into how the new machines worked simply because it is irresponsible to deploy a major new technology and not evaluate it after its first big trial. No one is served by blanket reassurances that everything is “fine.”
Would WalMart accept that answer after rolling out a new POS system? Not a chance. They’d audit the registers and double (and triple) check everything to make sure that the system was performing as promised. Voting should not be held to a lower standard.
Thanks for the nod re my NPR performance — I’m glad I was at least coherent (you never can tell with radio, no instant feedback like the Web.)
Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. But I agree with my namesake adamsj, what possible harm could come from an investigation if the bad guys have nothing to hide and the good guys have nothing to win?
The exit-polling discrepencies alone are enough to warrant an investigation.
http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/ale04090.html