Salon Joins the Vast RW Conspiracy

I'm not on Karl Rove's payroll -- and there's still no evidence that George W. Bush stole Election 2004.

Salon received dozens of letters in response to my article debunking the idea that Republicans stole the election, and many readers were interested in only one thing: How much did Karl Rove pay me to print such garbage? According to these people, I clearly hadn't examined the overwhelming evidence that Bush won through dirty tricks. From the exit polls pointing to a Kerry win, to the tales of voting machines switching selections for Kerry into votes for Bush, to the odd results in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and those weird stats in Florida's rural counties -- there's just so much evidence that something fishy went on last Tuesday, these people said, that the only way I could argue that everything was OK was if I was being paid by Turd blossom himself.

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/11/12/hysteria/index_np.html

Right guys?

99.99% probability that we lost and we should move on toward the future and look at 2006.

One of the letter writers said:

"Farhad Manjoo claims there's no evidence this election was fraudulent. However, in an earlier article he says that the current technology would be easy to hack, and no one would ever know."

when it was on. I was expecting the writer to be a lib and was shocked.

Unless someone has incontravertible proof that Bush won through dirty tricks, then we need to let this die. We lost. Period. I think we should count the votes, and double-check, but holding out hope for a overturn is silly and unproductive.

GOTV? We did that. None of it's worth anything unless we insure the integrity of the vote.

And that we must NEVER give up on.

So you move on now. Bye bye.

Get a hold of yourself. All I said was that the chances of overturning this thing are slim, and that we should move on. What are you planning?

Sorry, I'm not a conspirator and I'm not planning a thing. I'm simply demanding that every voting irregularity be cleared and explained. And, above all, I want those exit polls dealt with and NOT by banning exit polls.

You can rebuild every inch of the party and it won't do you a damn bit of good if the vote can be stolen at will.

The thing is, you don't believe it was. Or that it will be again. So I find what you plan to be hopeless and pointless if the central problem isn't dealt with.

But you go ahead and believe CNN about how the Dems failed and isn't it a shame the Dems have so many problems.

Our only problem is that we do not fight for what is OURS.

I'm not saying nothing went wrong. I'm just saying that the chances of winning this are pretty darn slim if we can't prove they stole it. Besides, no matter how you look at it, we lost.Not by the margins the right-wingers keep telling us, but we lost. Of course the voter irregularities need to be fixed. I know there was corruption at work, but I'm just saying that people hoping for a turnover of this election are dreaming. Perhpas that wasn't what you were suggesting, so I'm sorry.

And, well...it's not a very popular viewpoint. Made worse by my low post count. But anyway, I think it's just stupid to think we can still win this. It really makes us look like election-driven political animals, rather than True Patriots.

but I think it is important that we investigate the fraud and irregularities even if it doesn't lead to a change in the overall election results. I do not expect the results of the election to change, but we have to start making a lot of noise right now about these machines if we want them changed by 2006 or even 2008.

I agree that regardless of whether or not we can change the outcome of this election, we have got to investigate all instances of voting irregularities in this election in order to ensure fair elections in the future. If we are going to continue to elect Presidents with close margins in the electoral vote count, we deserve to feel sure the voting process was fair. Why in the world we couldn't get this to happen for 2004 is maddening, absolutely maddening to me.

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beleive the system can be trusted.

Now you care to tell me what this means? Oh yes 47% don't, oh the Gallup poll cited by Oberman said 39%... that means we have what five or six who are undecided...

Par for the course

Now here is another question for you... you DO know how Watergate started, don't you? Two city beat reporters at the arraingment of a one John Liddy, for breaking and Entering... at the Watergate Hotel... nothing much really....

in two years, four years....
Duh. We need to do something NOW. People like you are what makes this party weak , constantly bending over for the Republicans. What will it take for some of you?

They've pulled this on us in 2000 and 2002! We had the same outraged response! And then they did it again and again! How is *this time's* outrage going to change everything when the last two times didn't?

We need to do something, yes. We need to take the fight to the Republicans, yes. But we need to pick our battles. We need to concentrate on taking back the public debate. And we should never forget this. But we have no solid proof and even the LW media doesn't believe us. This is no longer a battle we can realistically win.

On the other hand, we *can* win the culture war the regressives have pushed upon us. We can potentially make the "Solid South" competitive. We can certainly bring the Midwest and mountain regions back into the fold. But we need a strong, positive message, and we need to smear the hell out of the regressives. And I don't mean smear them with facts or figures--we've tried that for 20 years, and it's never worked. I mean smear them the same way they've smeared us--frame the debate so it works against them. Make people call them regressive and make them think regressive is a curse, the same way so many Americans do with 'liberal.' We have to become the Good Guys in American eyes again. And we're certainly not going to do that whining about an election that only we believe was stolen. We'll just reenforce the "whining liberal" meme. Don't fall into the traps they've set for you.

Look, in 2000 we had proof. Actual proof. Here we have 1000 coincidences. They can explain away each one. And nobody wants to touch this story. If I were Karl Rove, you know what I would do? I'd even plant information on DU. Inflammatory information to whip up the Dem base. "Proof" of fraud that, upon actual investigation, would be benign. Why?

1. It keeps the Dems from admitting their weaknesses and fighting back intelligently.
2. It makes them focus on a tinfoil hat theory that nobody will believe.
3. It keeps us fixated on the last election, and fixated on The Evil Bush.

One of the reasons we lost was that we didn't have a coherent positive message to bring to the American people. We had a great negative message, but very little to go on other than "Bush Sucks!" It's why Kerry voters were 2-1 "anti-Bush votes." We run election to election, and focus on the Other Guys, not the Other Message. We have to fight the message to win.

It is vile. We all know there's been blatant disenfranchisement.

At least 30,000 documented hotline complaints ranging from intimidation to tampering have been documented.

Thousands of votes have already been admittedly miscounted and corrected. Yet we are told not to worry THAT THESE WERE THE ONLY MISTAKES AND THANK GOD WE CAUGHT THEM. HA!

After the 2000 debacle, why can't Salon and the NYT just have a heart, indulge all of us and support "counting the votes" without snide hyperbole and put downs? Because they are fake bastions of everymainsm. They know but don't care that counting the votes is good for all of us.

It makes perfect sense that evidence of fraud may not be immediately present at this early stage with things still being analyzed. And as far as the NYT goes, after they just admitted they soft-pedaled all the Iraqi war stories... Shame on them. How soon they forget. Disgusting. Typical. Corporate.

BUT, that doesn't preclude the possibility of hacking on the e-machines. They have been proven to be vulnerable and still have no verifiable, auditable paper trail. Until that's addressed, the suspicions will continue and they will have merit.

We have a lot of work to do. Living in a fantasy world won't help. Time to move beyond the denial...

It's not about overturning the election. It's about making sure our elections in the future are secure.

I seriously doubt there was enough chicanery to change the outcome of this election, but there is enough evidence of widespread systematic chicanery, and the machines are vulnerable enough that it merits investigation.

Only a few of us actually think that this might somehow result in Kerry's inauguration next January.

Without people making a lot of ruckus, we will be stuck with the paper-trail-free e-machines, and the integrity of elections will be nonexistent forever.

I know freepertypes would prefer democracy be dead, but some of us kinda think it's a cool idea, and want to keep it around for a while longer.

Too bad not everybody feels that way.

It's possible for there to be Democrats who thought we lost because we weren't fighting smart enough, you know. It's not just "Bush is the Messiah through whom all wonders flow" vs. "Bush is the Great Satan through whom all misfortunes flow."

Unity. Party unity. It's what we're lacking. And there's no reason to bash other dems who think there are better paths we could follow. Just explain why you disagree.

I see you, and a couple of others admonishing those who have gotten into the election fraud issue, most not in hopes to overturn oit, but to ensure credible elections in the future, yet you still think that they're living in a fantasy world of overturning 2004. No matter how much it's explained, you seenm to forget that part.

Instead you admonish everybody else, that we should be working on the messages, framing debates, being a united party, getting our voices in media, and a litany of other vices you have come up with, all with pleanty of scolding verbiage, but with one GLARING OMISSION...

What the Hell are you're ideas for any of this? How will we frame the debate? How will we unify? How will we simplify our messages? What specifics are you bringing us now? I've seen NONE! You are no diferent than the other blame Democrats first complainers. Plenty of criticism, but very little solutions, and even less specifics for us to start on.

These people are passionate about finding the truth behind the discrepencies...eventually we may be satisfied with the results of their findings, maybe they will reveal problems for us to work on fixing, maybe they'll find out everything is legit, and computer errors were to blame. It matters not, at least they're working on something, which is more than you are doing by offering nothing but criticisms and platitudes without any specifics.

We're a big party. We can do many things at once. Tell us what you think we should do on, say... progressive taxition, and successfully rebutting the "class warfare" dismissals and how to frame it, then we can start to hash out a coherent message for the future. Once we're busy with that, then we can leave these people alone to work on the e-voting problems without any more interference.

I think my orignial post was misunderstood by some.

isn't looked into now, Democrats do not have a chance in 2006. We must never give up!

:hippie:

is what they said in 2000

and I still haven't gotten over that one.