🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <435B692E.295D1294@exchangenet.net>,
cor  <cor@exchangenet.net> wrote:

The continuing cor awesomeness ...

>
>
>-------- Original Message --------
>Subject: Why Can't the Left Face the Stolen Elections of 2004 & 2008?
>Date: 22 Oct 2005 07:59:30 -0500
>From: "Mark Graffis" <mgraf
>
>Why Can't the Left Face the Stolen Elections of 2004 & 2008?
>http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1018-22.htm
>
>      Published on Tuesday, October 18, 2005 by the Free Press (Columbus,
>Ohio)
>      Why Can't the Left Face the Stolen Elections of 2004 & 2008?
>      by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
>
>      If some of its key publications are any indicator, much of the American
>left seems unable to face the reality that the election of 2004 was stolen. So
>in all likelihood, unless something radical is done, 2008 will be too.
>
>      Misguided and misinformed articles in both TomPaine.com and Mother Jones
>Magazine indicate a dangerous inability to face the reality that these stolen
>elections mean nothing less than the death of what's left of American
>democracy, and the permanent enthronement of the Rovian GOP.
>
>      As investigative reporters based in Columbus, Ohio, we witnessed
>first-hand, up close and personal, exactly how the 2004 election was stolen,
>and how it will most likely be done in 2008. In the precinct in which Harvey
>Wasserman grew up, and in the one where Bob Fitrakis now lives, we saw the
>well-funded, profoundly cynical and deadly effective mechanisms by which the
>Bush-Cheney-Rove-Blackwell GOP machine switched a victory for John Kerry to an
>easily-repeatable defeat for democracy.
>
>      That Kerry and the spineless Ohio and national Democratic Parties have
>been complicit is a crucial part of the problem much of the left also seems
>unwilling to face. But if you live in Franklin County, Ohio, and watch the
>Republican and Democratic Parties run joint pickets against progressive
>candidate, and cut backroom deals allowing incumbents of either party run
>unopposed, you may miss the full scope of the disaster.
>
>      And until the left faces the rot that defines the Democratic Party,
>there is no hope for a fair election in this country. In other words: those
>who think the White House can be retaken in 2008, but refuse to face the theft
>of the vote in 2004, should prepare to be ruled by the likes of Jeb Bush, now
>and forever.
>
>      Before we go into the sordid details, we have to ask: exactly what is it
>about Team Bush that makes people think they could not or would not steal an
>American election? Do they lack funds? Do they lack expertise? Is there
>something in the Machiavellian/mobster moral code of Karl Rove and the Bush
>Family that would prevent them from doing here what they've been doing
>throughout the Third World for so long?
>
>      CIA meister Poppy Bush long ago perfected the art and science of
>stealing elections. US manipulators have interfered with and tipped elections
>for decades. Why should Ohio be any different? Especially when all the world
>knew control of the most powerful office on earth would be decided right here.
>
>      Lets do the bookends: before the voting, Ohio's infamous Republican
>Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell clearly and vehemently denied poll
>access to teams of international observers from the United Nations and other
>international election observers.
>
>      Since the election, he has effectively stonewalled and sabotaged all
>recount attempts, to the point that no credible accounting of the Ohio
>election has ever been done. To this day, at least 100,000 votes remain
>uncounted, electronic voting machines remain unaudited, key hardware and data
>files have been trashed, paper ballots have sat unguarded for anyone to pilfer
>and tallies in dozens of key counties remain filled with statistical
>impossibilities.
>
>      In our How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008, we
>list more than 180 bullet points on how this theft was perpetrated. It was a
>brilliant, cynical and masterfully executed campaign of death by a thousand
>cuts.
>
>      In Florida 2000, the means of the crime were limited to a few instances
>of intimidation, butterfly ballots, computer manipulation and a corrupt
>Supreme Court. But four years after, in Ohio, dozens of sometimes subtle,
>sometimes blatant tricks were designed to steal a few thousand votes here, a
>few thousand more there, until victory was in GOP hands. Unless they are
>exposed and blocked, every one of these scams can and will be duplicated
>throughout the United States in 2006 and 2008. The question is: will the left
>follow mainstream Democrats with sheep-like acceptance as every election goes
>the same way from here on? And if so, why bother even staging more votes in
>this country at all?
>
>      Starting with Russ Baker at TomPaine.com, the indicators are grim. Last
>January, Baker penned an absurd, ill-reported piece of nonsense called "What
>Didn't Happen in Ohio." Baker traipsed into Columbus for a few days,
>interviewed the usual faux Democrats, and left with a Big Story: "The Election
>Was Fair."
>
>      If Baker had done any meaningful research he might have seen the dozens
>of other instances of intimidation, irregularities and fraud that went
>unmentioned in his glib paragraphs. Instead he relied on Bill Anthony, chair
>of the Franklin County Democrats and Board of Elections.
>
>      Bill is a pleasant, affable African-American with no commitment or fight
>for democracy or even the Democrats. He has appeared on Bob's local radio show
>and with Harvey on others. On one of them, Bill admitted that the Franklin
>County BOE knew there would be problems with voting machines, and asked
>Blackwell for paper ballots well before the 2004 election. Blackwell, Anthony
>said, turned them down. The result was the now infamous chaos at the polls,
>with inner city voters stuck in the rain for hours. Just what Blackwell
>wanted.
>
>      But did Bill Anthony fight Blackwell's absurd ruling? Did he make it a
>public issue prior to the election?
>
>      Not a chance.
>
>      For a quickie reporting job, Anthony is a dream. He's well-spoken,
>charming and convincing. As an African-American with union connections, he
>would seem the perfect liberal source.
>
>      In 2003, Anthony endorsed the Republican mayor's former press secretary
>for the Columbus School Board. He then supported two Republican candidates on
>a "Reform Slate" aimed at ousting the Board's only progressive Democrat, an
>African-American.
>
>      Bill Anthony is just one of a legion of what are known throughout the
>state as DINOs---Democrats in Name Only. The Ohio Democratic Party is a
>national embarrassment. Its chair, Denny White, was not long ago a Republican,
>and will soon be one again, once the party is fully disemboweled, a job very
>close to done. Throughout Ohio, DINOs piously cover this piece of fraud and
>that piece of theft with glib "I hate Bush" rhetoric. The pity is,
>out-of-state reporters actually take them seriously.
>
>      Mark Hertsgaard is a well respected author and reporter and a long-time
>friend of Harvey Wasserman, and of election critic Mark Crispen Miller. He has
>contributed some very valuable work over the years. But he's done
>himself---and the voting public---very wrong on "Recounting Ohio" in the new
>Mother Jones.
>
>      Mark is smart and thorough enough to leave open the possibility that
>Ohio's election was, indeed, stolen. But he also falls prey to the DINO trap,
>failing to cover far too much of what happened here while taking seriously
>centrist Democrats who are known locally to have no credibility.
>
>      So Mother Jones questions the significance of the firing of a Democratic
>election official who blew the whistle on computer manipulations by Triad, an
>obscure Republican voting machine company. But Triad was involved in counting
>the votes in nearly half of Ohio's 88 counties. Questions are still being
>raised about Triad, including: "How did they get all these contracts in the
>first place?"
>
>      Mother Jones correctly points out that seven times the number of votes
>by which Bush took Ohio were cast on Republican-controlled machines. But the
>magazine fails to follow up with mention that those votes have been tabulated
>on proprietary non-transparent software---a fact we pointed out in our own
>article in Motherjones.com many months prior to the election.
>
>      Mother Jones also discounts the fact that a phony Homeland Security
>alert in Warren County landed the vote count in an unauthorized warehouse
>rather than the official secure location, and that reporters were barred from
>the vote count. That count, which went hugely and suspiciously and very
>importantly for Bush, was observed by nominal Democrats. But so were other
>highly dubious vote counts around the state, as they had been in Florida 2000,
>which Mother Jones argues adamantly was indeed stolen.
>
>      The irony of this is that the same issue of Mother Jones leads off with
>a dead-on story about Ohio and national Democrats who are sabotaging the
>campaign of the aggressively electable Paul Hackett for a key US Senate seat.
>And another MoJo piece bemoans the fact that national Democrats seem adept
>only at losing.
>
>      Yet here the back of the book is a story discounting evidence compiled
>by a legion of independent, grassroots election rights advocates, while
>favoring phone interviews with the very Democrats being denounced in the front
>of the book.
>
>      Above all, the core of evidence that the election was stolen in Ohio
>2004 comes from some 500 sworn statements and signed affidavits taken by
>people of all political parties, including two Republican hearings officers,
>in the weeks after the election. Anyone truly committed to finding out what
>happened here needs to start with that huge body of evidence.
>
>      As MoJo points out, none of this has been made easier by the "abandon
>ship" of the biggest DINO of all, John Kerry. Kerry had $7 million in the bank
>earmarked to "count every vote" and was apparently losing by just 136,000 Ohio
>votes with more than 250,000 still uncounted when he turned tail and conceded.
>Even Blackwell's corrupt, virtually meaningless first fake recount dropped
>Bush's official tally by 18,000 votes.
>
>      The Democrats have since attacked the election protection movement here
>through a lawyer named Daniel Hoffheimer who comes from none other than the
>stalwart Cincinnati Republican law firm of Taft, Stettinius et. al. MoJo
>quotes another Kerry/DINO lawyer Michael O'Grady, counsel to the state
>Democratic Party, who argues that for Ohio to have been stolen, the entire GOP
>would have had to be "conspiratorial," while the Democrats were "dumb as
>rocks."
>
>      In fact, that's an assessment many activists in Ohio heartily endorse,
>though you might add the word "inert" to the description of the Democrats.
>
>      O'Grady claims, for example, that an impossible vote count in three
>southern Ohio counties that gave Bush his entire margin of victory can be
>explained by a feminist outpouring for an African-American court candidate who
>ran zero campaign in those counties. But the presumption is that those same
>feminists somehow didn't bother to vote for Kerry over George W. Bush. No
>local student of that election could begin to take such an assessment
>seriously.
>
>      Or how about the quote from Chris Rakocy, a "tech specialist" about
>those notorious touchscreens in Mahoning County where voters who chose Kerry
>saw Bush light up. Rakocy says that problem was "only" on 18 of 1,148
>machines, and that it was corrected early.
>
>      But Rakocy stands alone against dozens of sworn statements and
>affidavits confirming that the problem went on all day, and was never fixed,
>and may have involved far more machines than 18, and not only in Mahoning
>County but also in Franklin. Even at that, in heavily Democratic Youngstown
>(not to mention Columbus), just 18 machines could have accounted for switching
>thousands of votes. And, in fact, Kerry's margins in both Youngstown and
>Columbus were suspiciously light.
>
>      And what would Mother Jones herself do to machines that disenfranchised
>even one voter, no matter what the apparent impact on the ultimate vote count?
>Why is the magazine named for her discounting the
>you-couldn't-make-this-one-up reality of voters pushing one candidate's name
>on a touchscreen and seeing another's name light up, time after time after
>time? Or are we taking this---and her---all too seriously?
>
>      Then there's the song and dance from Warren Mitofsky. The father of exit
>polls saw his work used to overturn a stolen election in Ukraine just prior to
>the American vote. But when his poll-taking here showed John Kerry with a
>nationwide margin of 1.5 million votes, somehow Mitofsky jumped ship on his
>own decades of professionalism.
>
>      Exit polls funded by six major news organizations showed Kerry carrying
>Ohio, Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada as late as 12:20 am on Wednesday morning,
>well after balloting stopped even in Alaska and Hawaii. These four "purple
>states" gave the election to the "blue" Democrats, then miraculously switched
>to "red" for Bush, giving him the White House once again.
>
>      Given all that's known about exit polls---and it's a lot---the odds on
>one state switching like that are about one in one hundred. For four, it's a
>virtual statistical impossibility. Add the fact that not one, not four, but
>TEN of eleven swing states showed drastic shifts from Kerry to Bush and you
>enter the realm of, well, a stolen election.
>
>      Add huge, unexplained shifts from pre-election polls to post-election
>vote counts in crucial 2002 Senatorial races in Georgia, Minnesota and
>Colorado, then remember what happened in Florida 2000, and examine the basic
>Bush attitude toward democracy itself, and you've got a pattern to say the
>least. And an obvious prescription for one-party rule as far as the eye can
>see.
>
>      Except when you are dealing with America's Democratic Party in 2004 and
>with reportage that relies on a few phone calls and a disheartening lack of
>grassroots perspective. If all politics is local, as Tip O'Neill well knew,
>then so are all vote counts.
>
>      Our first article predicting what would happen in Ohio 2004 was
>published many months before the election in, of all places, MotherJones.com.
>We warned that electronic voting machines deployed by the likes of Diebold
>could give Ohio and thus the nation to George W. Bush. Wally O'Dell, Diebold's
>infamous CEO, pledged to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush in 2004, and
>all evidence points to the fact that he at least helped.
>
>      What we missed in addition was the myriad clever tricks the GOP would
>bring to bear in pulling this off. Ohio has a long history as a test market.
>New products like white bread and spam are brought here first, to see how
>they'll fly with America at large.
>
>      In Ohio 2004, scores of tools for stealing an American election were
>tried and proven out. Outside reporters have come here again and again to pull
>at this one and tear at that one. Almost always, they get even that wrong. And
>almost always, they fail to see the bigger picture.
>
>      If we have a "know it all" attitude, as is sometimes charged, it's
>because we were (and are) here, we saw it happen, we witnessed the seven-hour
>waits and the denials of the absentee ballots, and we took the testimony of
>the hundreds who later went under oath.
>
>      And we see more unravel every day. Conspiracy theories happen sometimes
>when actual conspiracies occur. The stakes involved, the players on both sides
>and the events that are out there plain as day are all of a piece that's
>simply too obvious for anyone on the ground here to miss.
>
>      Hertsgaard has the good sense to mention indictments that have recently
>come down on election thieves in Cuyahoga County. We know that to be the tip
>of the iceberg.
>
>      What matters now is whether the GOP will be allowed to repeat nationwide
>in 2006 and 2008 what they saw they could get away with in Ohio 2004.
>
>      Election theft skeptics tend to conclude their put-downs by urging we
>forget about the vote-count stuff and concentrate on coming up with candidates
>so good that "the election won't be close enough to steal."
>
>      Having seen what we saw here, knowing what Mother Jones is reporting
>about the Democratic attacks on Paul Hackett, and about the loser instinct
>ingrained in the Dems' DLC/DNA, we must charitably describe such a conclusion
>as being profoundly wishful thinking.
>
>      Someday we may indeed have candidates far worthier than Al Gore and John
>Kerry. But they both won the presidency of the United States, however
>corruptible their margins of victory.
>
>      We need to guarantee that if someone worthwhile and willing to fight
>ever does come along, we will have a left that's prepared to make sure the
>votes are fairly counted.
>
>      As Rev. Jesse Jackson put it while speaking to election protection
>activists here, "We can afford to lose an election. We can't afford to lose
>our democracy."
>
>      Who would agree more strongly than Tom Paine and Mother Jones?
>
>      Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of How the GOP Stole
>America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008, available at Freepress.org and
>harveywasserman.com. Their upcoming What Happened in Ohio, with Steve
>Rosenfeld, will be published by The New Press in spring, 2006.
>
>      ###

The Democrats are 1/2 Republicans, for starters. 



In article <11lmoao97rujtd3@corp.supernews.com>,
Rick Hohensee <humbubba@smart.net> wrote:
>In article <435B692E.295D1294@exchangenet.net>,
>cor  <cor@exchangenet.net> wrote:
>
>The continuing cor awesomeness ...
>
>>
>>
>>-------- Original Message --------
>>Subject: Why Can't the Left Face the Stolen Elections of 2004 & 2008?
>>Date: 22 Oct 2005 07:59:30 -0500
>>From: "Mark Graffis" <mgraf
>>
>>Why Can't the Left Face the Stolen Elections of 2004 & 2008?
>>http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1018-22.htm
>>
>>      Published on Tuesday, October 18, 2005 by the Free Press (Columbus,
>>Ohio)
>>      Why Can't the Left Face the Stolen Elections of 2004 & 2008?
>>      by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
>>
>>      If some of its key publications are any indicator, much of the American
>>left seems unable to face the reality that the election of 2004 was stolen. So
>>in all likelihood, unless something radical is done, 2008 will be too.
>>
>>      Misguided and misinformed articles in both TomPaine.com and Mother Jones
>>Magazine indicate a dangerous inability to face the reality that these stolen
>>elections mean nothing less than the death of what's left of American
>>democracy, and the permanent enthronement of the Rovian GOP.
>>
>>      As investigative reporters based in Columbus, Ohio, we witnessed
>>first-hand, up close and personal, exactly how the 2004 election was stolen,
>>and how it will most likely be done in 2008. In the precinct in which Harvey
>>Wasserman grew up, and in the one where Bob Fitrakis now lives, we saw the
>>well-funded, profoundly cynical and deadly effective mechanisms by which the
>>Bush-Cheney-Rove-Blackwell GOP machine switched a victory for John Kerry to an
>>easily-repeatable defeat for democracy.
>>
>>      That Kerry and the spineless Ohio and national Democratic Parties have
>>been complicit is a crucial part of the problem much of the left also seems
>>unwilling to face. But if you live in Franklin County, Ohio, and watch the
>>Republican and Democratic Parties run joint pickets against progressive
>>candidate, and cut backroom deals allowing incumbents of either party run
>>unopposed, you may miss the full scope of the disaster.
>>
>>      And until the left faces the rot that defines the Democratic Party,
>>there is no hope for a fair election in this country. In other words: those
>>who think the White House can be retaken in 2008, but refuse to face the theft
>>of the vote in 2004, should prepare to be ruled by the likes of Jeb Bush, now
>>and forever.
>>
>>      Before we go into the sordid details, we have to ask: exactly what is it
>>about Team Bush that makes people think they could not or would not steal an
>>American election? Do they lack funds? Do they lack expertise? Is there
>>something in the Machiavellian/mobster moral code of Karl Rove and the Bush
>>Family that would prevent them from doing here what they've been doing
>>throughout the Third World for so long?
>>
>>      CIA meister Poppy Bush long ago perfected the art and science of
>>stealing elections. US manipulators have interfered with and tipped elections
>>for decades. Why should Ohio be any different? Especially when all the world
>>knew control of the most powerful office on earth would be decided right here.
>>
>>      Lets do the bookends: before the voting, Ohio's infamous Republican
>>Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell clearly and vehemently denied poll
>>access to teams of international observers from the United Nations and other
>>international election observers.
>>
>>      Since the election, he has effectively stonewalled and sabotaged all
>>recount attempts, to the point that no credible accounting of the Ohio
>>election has ever been done. To this day, at least 100,000 votes remain
>>uncounted, electronic voting machines remain unaudited, key hardware and data
>>files have been trashed, paper ballots have sat unguarded for anyone to pilfer
>>and tallies in dozens of key counties remain filled with statistical
>>impossibilities.
>>
>>      In our How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008, we
>>list more than 180 bullet points on how this theft was perpetrated. It was a
>>brilliant, cynical and masterfully executed campaign of death by a thousand
>>cuts.
>>
>>      In Florida 2000, the means of the crime were limited to a few instances
>>of intimidation, butterfly ballots, computer manipulation and a corrupt
>>Supreme Court. But four years after, in Ohio, dozens of sometimes subtle,
>>sometimes blatant tricks were designed to steal a few thousand votes here, a
>>few thousand more there, until victory was in GOP hands. Unless they are
>>exposed and blocked, every one of these scams can and will be duplicated
>>throughout the United States in 2006 and 2008. The question is: will the left
>>follow mainstream Democrats with sheep-like acceptance as every election goes
>>the same way from here on? And if so, why bother even staging more votes in
>>this country at all?
>>
>>      Starting with Russ Baker at TomPaine.com, the indicators are grim. Last
>>January, Baker penned an absurd, ill-reported piece of nonsense called "What
>>Didn't Happen in Ohio." Baker traipsed into Columbus for a few days,
>>interviewed the usual faux Democrats, and left with a Big Story: "The Election
>>Was Fair."
>>
>>      If Baker had done any meaningful research he might have seen the dozens
>>of other instances of intimidation, irregularities and fraud that went
>>unmentioned in his glib paragraphs. Instead he relied on Bill Anthony, chair
>>of the Franklin County Democrats and Board of Elections.
>>
>>      Bill is a pleasant, affable African-American with no commitment or fight
>>for democracy or even the Democrats. He has appeared on Bob's local radio show
>>and with Harvey on others. On one of them, Bill admitted that the Franklin
>>County BOE knew there would be problems with voting machines, and asked
>>Blackwell for paper ballots well before the 2004 election. Blackwell, Anthony
>>said, turned them down. The result was the now infamous chaos at the polls,
>>with inner city voters stuck in the rain for hours. Just what Blackwell
>>wanted.
>>
>>      But did Bill Anthony fight Blackwell's absurd ruling? Did he make it a
>>public issue prior to the election?
>>
>>      Not a chance.
>>
>>      For a quickie reporting job, Anthony is a dream. He's well-spoken,
>>charming and convincing. As an African-American with union connections, he
>>would seem the perfect liberal source.
>>
>>      In 2003, Anthony endorsed the Republican mayor's former press secretary
>>for the Columbus School Board. He then supported two Republican candidates on
>>a "Reform Slate" aimed at ousting the Board's only progressive Democrat, an
>>African-American.
>>
>>      Bill Anthony is just one of a legion of what are known throughout the
>>state as DINOs---Democrats in Name Only. The Ohio Democratic Party is a
>>national embarrassment. Its chair, Denny White, was not long ago a Republican,
>>and will soon be one again, once the party is fully disemboweled, a job very
>>close to done. Throughout Ohio, DINOs piously cover this piece of fraud and
>>that piece of theft with glib "I hate Bush" rhetoric. The pity is,
>>out-of-state reporters actually take them seriously.
>>
>>      Mark Hertsgaard is a well respected author and reporter and a long-time
>>friend of Harvey Wasserman, and of election critic Mark Crispen Miller. He has
>>contributed some very valuable work over the years. But he's done
>>himself---and the voting public---very wrong on "Recounting Ohio" in the new
>>Mother Jones.
>>
>>      Mark is smart and thorough enough to leave open the possibility that
>>Ohio's election was, indeed, stolen. But he also falls prey to the DINO trap,
>>failing to cover far too much of what happened here while taking seriously
>>centrist Democrats who are known locally to have no credibility.
>>
>>      So Mother Jones questions the significance of the firing of a Democratic
>>election official who blew the whistle on computer manipulations by Triad, an
>>obscure Republican voting machine company. But Triad was involved in counting
>>the votes in nearly half of Ohio's 88 counties. Questions are still being
>>raised about Triad, including: "How did they get all these contracts in the
>>first place?"
>>
>>      Mother Jones correctly points out that seven times the number of votes
>>by which Bush took Ohio were cast on Republican-controlled machines. But the
>>magazine fails to follow up with mention that those votes have been tabulated
>>on proprietary non-transparent software---a fact we pointed out in our own
>>article in Motherjones.com many months prior to the election.
>>
>>      Mother Jones also discounts the fact that a phony Homeland Security
>>alert in Warren County landed the vote count in an unauthorized warehouse
>>rather than the official secure location, and that reporters were barred from
>>the vote count. That count, which went hugely and suspiciously and very
>>importantly for Bush, was observed by nominal Democrats. But so were other
>>highly dubious vote counts around the state, as they had been in Florida 2000,
>>which Mother Jones argues adamantly was indeed stolen.
>>
>>      The irony of this is that the same issue of Mother Jones leads off with
>>a dead-on story about Ohio and national Democrats who are sabotaging the
>>campaign of the aggressively electable Paul Hackett for a key US Senate seat.
>>And another MoJo piece bemoans the fact that national Democrats seem adept
>>only at losing.
>>
>>      Yet here the back of the book is a story discounting evidence compiled
>>by a legion of independent, grassroots election rights advocates, while
>>favoring phone interviews with the very Democrats being denounced in the front
>>of the book.
>>
>>      Above all, the core of evidence that the election was stolen in Ohio
>>2004 comes from some 500 sworn statements and signed affidavits taken by
>>people of all political parties, including two Republican hearings officers,
>>in the weeks after the election. Anyone truly committed to finding out what
>>happened here needs to start with that huge body of evidence.
>>
>>      As MoJo points out, none of this has been made easier by the "abandon
>>ship" of the biggest DINO of all, John Kerry. Kerry had $7 million in the bank
>>earmarked to "count every vote" and was apparently losing by just 136,000 Ohio
>>votes with more than 250,000 still uncounted when he turned tail and conceded.
>>Even Blackwell's corrupt, virtually meaningless first fake recount dropped
>>Bush's official tally by 18,000 votes.
>>
>>      The Democrats have since attacked the election protection movement here
>>through a lawyer named Daniel Hoffheimer who comes from none other than the
>>stalwart Cincinnati Republican law firm of Taft, Stettinius et. al. MoJo
>>quotes another Kerry/DINO lawyer Michael O'Grady, counsel to the state
>>Democratic Party, who argues that for Ohio to have been stolen, the entire GOP
>>would have had to be "conspiratorial," while the Democrats were "dumb as
>>rocks."
>>
>>      In fact, that's an assessment many activists in Ohio heartily endorse,
>>though you might add the word "inert" to the description of the Democrats.
>>
>>      O'Grady claims, for example, that an impossible vote count in three
>>southern Ohio counties that gave Bush his entire margin of victory can be
>>explained by a feminist outpouring for an African-American court candidate who
>>ran zero campaign in those counties. But the presumption is that those same
>>feminists somehow didn't bother to vote for Kerry over George W. Bush. No
>>local student of that election could begin to take such an assessment
>>seriously.
>>
>>      Or how about the quote from Chris Rakocy, a "tech specialist" about
>>those notorious touchscreens in Mahoning County where voters who chose Kerry
>>saw Bush light up. Rakocy says that problem was "only" on 18 of 1,148
>>machines, and that it was corrected early.
>>
>>      But Rakocy stands alone against dozens of sworn statements and
>>affidavits confirming that the problem went on all day, and was never fixed,
>>and may have involved far more machines than 18, and not only in Mahoning
>>County but also in Franklin. Even at that, in heavily Democratic Youngstown
>>(not to mention Columbus), just 18 machines could have accounted for switching
>>thousands of votes. And, in fact, Kerry's margins in both Youngstown and
>>Columbus were suspiciously light.
>>
>>      And what would Mother Jones herself do to machines that disenfranchised
>>even one voter, no matter what the apparent impact on the ultimate vote count?
>>Why is the magazine named for her discounting the
>>you-couldn't-make-this-one-up reality of voters pushing one candidate's name
>>on a touchscreen and seeing another's name light up, time after time after
>>time? Or are we taking this---and her---all too seriously?
>>
>>      Then there's the song and dance from Warren Mitofsky. The father of exit
>>polls saw his work used to overturn a stolen election in Ukraine just prior to
>>the American vote. But when his poll-taking here showed John Kerry with a
>>nationwide margin of 1.5 million votes, somehow Mitofsky jumped ship on his
>>own decades of professionalism.
>>
>>      Exit polls funded by six major news organizations showed Kerry carrying
>>Ohio, Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada as late as 12:20 am on Wednesday morning,
>>well after balloting stopped even in Alaska and Hawaii. These four "purple
>>states" gave the election to the "blue" Democrats, then miraculously switched
>>to "red" for Bush, giving him the White House once again.
>>
>>      Given all that's known about exit polls---and it's a lot---the odds on
>>one state switching like that are about one in one hundred. For four, it's a
>>virtual statistical impossibility. Add the fact that not one, not four, but
>>TEN of eleven swing states showed drastic shifts from Kerry to Bush and you
>>enter the realm of, well, a stolen election.
>>
>>      Add huge, unexplained shifts from pre-election polls to post-election
>>vote counts in crucial 2002 Senatorial races in Georgia, Minnesota and
>>Colorado, then remember what happened in Florida 2000, and examine the basic
>>Bush attitude toward democracy itself, and you've got a pattern to say the
>>least. And an obvious prescription for one-party rule as far as the eye can
>>see.
>>
>>      Except when you are dealing with America's Democratic Party in 2004 and
>>with reportage that relies on a few phone calls and a disheartening lack of
>>grassroots perspective. If all politics is local, as Tip O'Neill well knew,
>>then so are all vote counts.
>>
>>      Our first article predicting what would happen in Ohio 2004 was
>>published many months before the election in, of all places, MotherJones.com.
>>We warned that electronic voting machines deployed by the likes of Diebold
>>could give Ohio and thus the nation to George W. Bush. Wally O'Dell, Diebold's
>>infamous CEO, pledged to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush in 2004, and
>>all evidence points to the fact that he at least helped.
>>
>>      What we missed in addition was the myriad clever tricks the GOP would
>>bring to bear in pulling this off. Ohio has a long history as a test market.
>>New products like white bread and spam are brought here first, to see how
>>they'll fly with America at large.
>>
>>      In Ohio 2004, scores of tools for stealing an American election were
>>tried and proven out. Outside reporters have come here again and again to pull
>>at this one and tear at that one. Almost always, they get even that wrong. And
>>almost always, they fail to see the bigger picture.
>>
>>      If we have a "know it all" attitude, as is sometimes charged, it's
>>because we were (and are) here, we saw it happen, we witnessed the seven-hour
>>waits and the denials of the absentee ballots, and we took the testimony of
>>the hundreds who later went under oath.
>>
>>      And we see more unravel every day. Conspiracy theories happen sometimes
>>when actual conspiracies occur. The stakes involved, the players on both sides
>>and the events that are out there plain as day are all of a piece that's
>>simply too obvious for anyone on the ground here to miss.
>>
>>      Hertsgaard has the good sense to mention indictments that have recently
>>come down on election thieves in Cuyahoga County. We know that to be the tip
>>of the iceberg.
>>
>>      What matters now is whether the GOP will be allowed to repeat nationwide
>>in 2006 and 2008 what they saw they could get away with in Ohio 2004.
>>
>>      Election theft skeptics tend to conclude their put-downs by urging we
>>forget about the vote-count stuff and concentrate on coming up with candidates
>>so good that "the election won't be close enough to steal."
>>
>>      Having seen what we saw here, knowing what Mother Jones is reporting
>>about the Democratic attacks on Paul Hackett, and about the loser instinct
>>ingrained in the Dems' DLC/DNA, we must charitably describe such a conclusion
>>as being profoundly wishful thinking.
>>
>>      Someday we may indeed have candidates far worthier than Al Gore and John
>>Kerry. But they both won the presidency of the United States, however
>>corruptible their margins of victory.
>>
>>      We need to guarantee that if someone worthwhile and willing to fight
>>ever does come along, we will have a left that's prepared to make sure the
>>votes are fairly counted.
>>
>>      As Rev. Jesse Jackson put it while speaking to election protection
>>activists here, "We can afford to lose an election. We can't afford to lose
>>our democracy."
>>
>>      Who would agree more strongly than Tom Paine and Mother Jones?
>>
>>      Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of How the GOP Stole
>>America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008, available at Freepress.org and
>>harveywasserman.com. Their upcoming What Happened in Ohio, with Steve
>>Rosenfeld, will be published by The New Press in spring, 2006.
>>
>>      ###
>
>

BULLSHIT
LIE
<PLONK>




cor wrote:

>-------- Original Message --------
>Subject: Why Can't the Left Face the Stolen Elections of 2004 & 2008?
>Date: 22 Oct 2005 07:59:30 -0500
>From: "Mark Graffis" <mgraf
>
>Why Can't the Left Face the Stolen Elections of 2004 & 2008?
>http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1018-22.htm
>
>      Published on Tuesday, October 18, 2005 by the Free Press (Columbus,
>Ohio)
>      Why Can't the Left Face the Stolen Elections of 2004 & 2008?
>      by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
>
>      If some of its key publications are any indicator, much of the American
>left seems unable to face the reality that the election of 2004 was stolen. So
>in all likelihood, unless something radical is done, 2008 will be too.
>
>      Misguided and misinformed articles in both TomPaine.com and Mother Jones
>Magazine indicate a dangerous inability to face the reality that these stolen
>elections mean nothing less than the death of what's left of American
>democracy, and the permanent enthronement of the Rovian GOP.
>
>      As investigative reporters based in Columbus, Ohio, we witnessed
>first-hand, up close and personal, exactly how the 2004 election was stolen,
>and how it will most likely be done in 2008. In the precinct in which Harvey
>Wasserman grew up, and in the one where Bob Fitrakis now lives, we saw the
>well-funded, profoundly cynical and deadly effective mechanisms by which the
>Bush-Cheney-Rove-Blackwell GOP machine switched a victory for John Kerry to an
>easily-repeatable defeat for democracy.
>
>      That Kerry and the spineless Ohio and national Democratic Parties have
>been complicit is a crucial part of the problem much of the left also seems
>unwilling to face. But if you live in Franklin County, Ohio, and watch the
>Republican and Democratic Parties run joint pickets against progressive
>candidate, and cut backroom deals allowing incumbents of either party run
>unopposed, you may miss the full scope of the disaster.
>
>      And until the left faces the rot that defines the Democratic Party,
>there is no hope for a fair election in this country. In other words: those
>who think the White House can be retaken in 2008, but refuse to face the theft
>of the vote in 2004, should prepare to be ruled by the likes of Jeb Bush, now
>and forever.
>
>      Before we go into the sordid details, we have to ask: exactly what is it
>about Team Bush that makes people think they could not or would not steal an
>American election? Do they lack funds? Do they lack expertise? Is there
>something in the Machiavellian/mobster moral code of Karl Rove and the Bush
>Family that would prevent them from doing here what they've been doing
>throughout the Third World for so long?
>
>      CIA meister Poppy Bush long ago perfected the art and science of
>stealing elections. US manipulators have interfered with and tipped elections
>for decades. Why should Ohio be any different? Especially when all the world
>knew control of the most powerful office on earth would be decided right here.
>
>      Lets do the bookends: before the voting, Ohio's infamous Republican
>Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell clearly and vehemently denied poll
>access to teams of international observers from the United Nations and other
>international election observers.
>
>      Since the election, he has effectively stonewalled and sabotaged all
>recount attempts, to the point that no credible accounting of the Ohio
>election has ever been done. To this day, at least 100,000 votes remain
>uncounted, electronic voting machines remain unaudited, key hardware and data
>files have been trashed, paper ballots have sat unguarded for anyone to pilfer
>and tallies in dozens of key counties remain filled with statistical
>impossibilities.
>
>      In our How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008, we
>list more than 180 bullet points on how this theft was perpetrated. It was a
>brilliant, cynical and masterfully executed campaign of death by a thousand
>cuts.
>
>      In Florida 2000, the means of the crime were limited to a few instances
>of intimidation, butterfly ballots, computer manipulation and a corrupt
>Supreme Court. But four years after, in Ohio, dozens of sometimes subtle,
>sometimes blatant tricks were designed to steal a few thousand votes here, a
>few thousand more there, until victory was in GOP hands. Unless they are
>exposed and blocked, every one of these scams can and will be duplicated
>throughout the United States in 2006 and 2008. The question is: will the left
>follow mainstream Democrats with sheep-like acceptance as every election goes
>the same way from here on? And if so, why bother even staging more votes in
>this country at all?
>
>      Starting with Russ Baker at TomPaine.com, the indicators are grim. Last
>January, Baker penned an absurd, ill-reported piece of nonsense called "What
>Didn't Happen in Ohio." Baker traipsed into Columbus for a few days,
>interviewed the usual faux Democrats, and left with a Big Story: "The Election
>Was Fair."
>
>      If Baker had done any meaningful research he might have seen the dozens
>of other instances of intimidation, irregularities and fraud that went
>unmentioned in his glib paragraphs. Instead he relied on Bill Anthony, chair
>of the Franklin County Democrats and Board of Elections.
>
>      Bill is a pleasant, affable African-American with no commitment or fight
>for democracy or even the Democrats. He has appeared on Bob's local radio show
>and with Harvey on others. On one of them, Bill admitted that the Franklin
>County BOE knew there would be problems with voting machines, and asked
>Blackwell for paper ballots well before the 2004 election. Blackwell, Anthony
>said, turned them down. The result was the now infamous chaos at the polls,
>with inner city voters stuck in the rain for hours. Just what Blackwell
>wanted.
>
>      But did Bill Anthony fight Blackwell's absurd ruling? Did he make it a
>public issue prior to the election?
>
>      Not a chance.
>
>      For a quickie reporting job, Anthony is a dream. He's well-spoken,
>charming and convincing. As an African-American with union connections, he
>would seem the perfect liberal source.
>
>      In 2003, Anthony endorsed the Republican mayor's former press secretary
>for the Columbus School Board. He then supported two Republican candidates on
>a "Reform Slate" aimed at ousting the Board's only progressive Democrat, an
>African-American.
>
>      Bill Anthony is just one of a legion of what are known throughout the
>state as DINOs---Democrats in Name Only. The Ohio Democratic Party is a
>national embarrassment. Its chair, Denny White, was not long ago a Republican,
>and will soon be one again, once the party is fully disemboweled, a job very
>close to done. Throughout Ohio, DINOs piously cover this piece of fraud and
>that piece of theft with glib "I hate Bush" rhetoric. The pity is,
>out-of-state reporters actually take them seriously.
>
>      Mark Hertsgaard is a well respected author and reporter and a long-time
>friend of Harvey Wasserman, and of election critic Mark Crispen Miller. He has
>contributed some very valuable work over the years. But he's done
>himself---and the voting public---very wrong on "Recounting Ohio" in the new
>Mother Jones.
>
>      Mark is smart and thorough enough to leave open the possibility that
>Ohio's election was, indeed, stolen. But he also falls prey to the DINO trap,
>failing to cover far too much of what happened here while taking seriously
>centrist Democrats who are known locally to have no credibility.
>
>      So Mother Jones questions the significance of the firing of a Democratic
>election official who blew the whistle on computer manipulations by Triad, an
>obscure Republican voting machine company. But Triad was involved in counting
>the votes in nearly half of Ohio's 88 counties. Questions are still being
>raised about Triad, including: "How did they get all these contracts in the
>first place?"
>
>      Mother Jones correctly points out that seven times the number of votes
>by which Bush took Ohio were cast on Republican-controlled machines. But the
>magazine fails to follow up with mention that those votes have been tabulated
>on proprietary non-transparent software---a fact we pointed out in our own
>article in Motherjones.com many months prior to the election.
>
>      Mother Jones also discounts the fact that a phony Homeland Security
>alert in Warren County landed the vote count in an unauthorized warehouse
>rather than the official secure location, and that reporters were barred from
>the vote count. That count, which went hugely and suspiciously and very
>importantly for Bush, was observed by nominal Democrats. But so were other
>highly dubious vote counts around the state, as they had been in Florida 2000,
>which Mother Jones argues adamantly was indeed stolen.
>
>      The irony of this is that the same issue of Mother Jones leads off with
>a dead-on story about Ohio and national Democrats who are sabotaging the
>campaign of the aggressively electable Paul Hackett for a key US Senate seat.
>And another MoJo piece bemoans the fact that national Democrats seem adept
>only at losing.
>
>      Yet here the back of the book is a story discounting evidence compiled
>by a legion of independent, grassroots election rights advocates, while
>favoring phone interviews with the very Democrats being denounced in the front
>of the book.
>
>      Above all, the core of evidence that the election was stolen in Ohio
>2004 comes from some 500 sworn statements and signed affidavits taken by
>people of all political parties, including two Republican hearings officers,
>in the weeks after the election. Anyone truly committed to finding out what
>happened here needs to start with that huge body of evidence.
>
>      As MoJo points out, none of this has been made easier by the "abandon
>ship" of the biggest DINO of all, John Kerry. Kerry had $7 million in the bank
>earmarked to "count every vote" and was apparently losing by just 136,000 Ohio
>votes with more than 250,000 still uncounted when he turned tail and conceded.
>Even Blackwell's corrupt, virtually meaningless first fake recount dropped
>Bush's official tally by 18,000 votes.
>
>      The Democrats have since attacked the election protection movement here
>through a lawyer named Daniel Hoffheimer who comes from none other than the
>stalwart Cincinnati Republican law firm of Taft, Stettinius et. al. MoJo
>quotes another Kerry/DINO lawyer Michael O'Grady, counsel to the state
>Democratic Party, who argues that for Ohio to have been stolen, the entire GOP
>would have had to be "conspiratorial," while the Democrats were "dumb as
>rocks."
>
>      In fact, that's an assessment many activists in Ohio heartily endorse,
>though you might add the word "inert" to the description of the Democrats.
>
>      O'Grady claims, for example, that an impossible vote count in three
>southern Ohio counties that gave Bush his entire margin of victory can be
>explained by a feminist outpouring for an African-American court candidate who
>ran zero campaign in those counties. But the presumption is that those same
>feminists somehow didn't bother to vote for Kerry over George W. Bush. No
>local student of that election could begin to take such an assessment
>seriously.
>
>      Or how about the quote from Chris Rakocy, a "tech specialist" about
>those notorious touchscreens in Mahoning County where voters who chose Kerry
>saw Bush light up. Rakocy says that problem was "only" on 18 of 1,148
>machines, and that it was corrected early.
>
>      But Rakocy stands alone against dozens of sworn statements and
>affidavits confirming that the problem went on all day, and was never fixed,
>and may have involved far more machines than 18, and not only in Mahoning
>County but also in Franklin. Even at that, in heavily Democratic Youngstown
>(not to mention Columbus), just 18 machines could have accounted for switching
>thousands of votes. And, in fact, Kerry's margins in both Youngstown and
>Columbus were suspiciously light.
>
>      And what would Mother Jones herself do to machines that disenfranchised
>even one voter, no matter what the apparent impact on the ultimate vote count?
>Why is the magazine named for her discounting the
>you-couldn't-make-this-one-up reality of voters pushing one candidate's name
>on a touchscreen and seeing another's name light up, time after time after
>time? Or are we taking this---and her---all too seriously?
>
>      Then there's the song and dance from Warren Mitofsky. The father of exit
>polls saw his work used to overturn a stolen election in Ukraine just prior to
>the American vote. But when his poll-taking here showed John Kerry with a
>nationwide margin of 1.5 million votes, somehow Mitofsky jumped ship on his
>own decades of professionalism.
>
>      Exit polls funded by six major news organizations showed Kerry carrying
>Ohio, Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada as late as 12:20 am on Wednesday morning,
>well after balloting stopped even in Alaska and Hawaii. These four "purple
>states" gave the election to the "blue" Democrats, then miraculously switched
>to "red" for Bush, giving him the White House once again.
>
>      Given all that's known about exit polls---and it's a lot---the odds on
>one state switching like that are about one in one hundred. For four, it's a
>virtual statistical impossibility. Add the fact that not one, not four, but
>TEN of eleven swing states showed drastic shifts from Kerry to Bush and you
>enter the realm of, well, a stolen election.
>
>      Add huge, unexplained shifts from pre-election polls to post-election
>vote counts in crucial 2002 Senatorial races in Georgia, Minnesota and
>Colorado, then remember what happened in Florida 2000, and examine the basic
>Bush attitude toward democracy itself, and you've got a pattern to say the
>least. And an obvious prescription for one-party rule as far as the eye can
>see.
>
>      Except when you are dealing with America's Democratic Party in 2004 and
>with reportage that relies on a few phone calls and a disheartening lack of
>grassroots perspective. If all politics is local, as Tip O'Neill well knew,
>then so are all vote counts.
>
>      Our first article predicting what would happen in Ohio 2004 was
>published many months before the election in, of all places, MotherJones.com.
>We warned that electronic voting machines deployed by the likes of Diebold
>could give Ohio and thus the nation to George W. Bush. Wally O'Dell, Diebold's
>infamous CEO, pledged to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush in 2004, and
>all evidence points to the fact that he at least helped.
>
>      What we missed in addition was the myriad clever tricks the GOP would
>bring to bear in pulling this off. Ohio has a long history as a test market.
>New products like white bread and spam are brought here first, to see how
>they'll fly with America at large.
>
>      In Ohio 2004, scores of tools for stealing an American election were
>tried and proven out. Outside reporters have come here again and again to pull
>at this one and tear at that one. Almost always, they get even that wrong. And
>almost always, they fail to see the bigger picture.
>
>      If we have a "know it all" attitude, as is sometimes charged, it's
>because we were (and are) here, we saw it happen, we witnessed the seven-hour
>waits and the denials of the absentee ballots, and we took the testimony of
>the hundreds who later went under oath.
>
>      And we see more unravel every day. Conspiracy theories happen sometimes
>when actual conspiracies occur. The stakes involved, the players on both sides
>and the events that are out there plain as day are all of a piece that's
>simply too obvious for anyone on the ground here to miss.
>
>      Hertsgaard has the good sense to mention indictments that have recently
>come down on election thieves in Cuyahoga County. We know that to be the tip
>of the iceberg.
>
>      What matters now is whether the GOP will be allowed to repeat nationwide
>in 2006 and 2008 what they saw they could get away with in Ohio 2004.
>
>      Election theft skeptics tend to conclude their put-downs by urging we
>forget about the vote-count stuff and concentrate on coming up with candidates
>so good that "the election won't be close enough to steal."
>
>      Having seen what we saw here, knowing what Mother Jones is reporting
>about the Democratic attacks on Paul Hackett, and about the loser instinct
>ingrained in the Dems' DLC/DNA, we must charitably describe such a conclusion
>as being profoundly wishful thinking.
>
>      Someday we may indeed have candidates far worthier than Al Gore and John
>Kerry. But they both won the presidency of the United States, however
>corruptible their margins of victory.
>
>      We need to guarantee that if someone worthwhile and willing to fight
>ever does come along, we will have a left that's prepared to make sure the
>votes are fairly counted.
>
>      As Rev. Jesse Jackson put it while speaking to election protection
>activists here, "We can afford to lose an election. We can't afford to lose
>our democracy."
>
>      Who would agree more strongly than Tom Paine and Mother Jones?
>
>      Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of How the GOP Stole
>America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008, available at Freepress.org and
>harveywasserman.com. Their upcoming What Happened in Ohio, with Steve
>Rosenfeld, will be published by The New Press in spring, 2006.
>
>      ###
>  
>

"NotPoliticallyCorrect" <thatsthedeal@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:vOJ6f.1846$NJ.736@bignews7.bellsouth.net...
> BULLSHIT
> LIE
> <PLONK>
>
>
>
>
> cor wrote:

Didn't you plonk Cor last week too?

In article <435B692E.295D1294@exchangenet.net>,
 cor <cor@exchangenet.net> wrote:

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Why Can't the Left Face the Stolen Elections of 2004 & 2008?


Because they're complete idiots?

Because as long as they believe the elections were stolen they won't fix 
their internal problems that allowed a loser like Bush to win?

Because they keep nominating even bigger losers than Bush to run against 
him thereby assuring that a loser like Bush will win?

All of the above?