November 16, 2004
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.