Bart:
About the election... I have run the gamut from self-recrimination to black
despair
and back again. But, those troublesome facts started creeping onto
the scene.
I tried something different and got an interesting result. I have
not used the news clipper
feature in Yahoo! much, but it is a valuable tool. I entered a query
to retrieve articles
containing the words "election" and "glitch". I got 51 returns for
this week, just from
Associated Press/Reuters' sources.
Holy moley. The irregularities with the voting machines were pervasive.
ALL of the "glitches" favored Republicans. Statistically, that just
cannot be.
Faun Otter has provided some valuable information regarding this over on
the forum.
Click Here and Click Here
I am going to keep working on this. Kind hearted people gently tell
me to keep my chin up;
that the Dems should take a cue about their message and about turnout.
More and more,
I am believing that we were not confounded by either of those issues.
I could be wrong.
I am going to keep digging though. I will pull as much publicly available
data as possible
about purchases/demos of voting machines, by state and county to confirm
this notion,
because the truth matters.
If it doesn't look right, it probably is NOT right.
See: Occam's Razor "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily."
(hahaha! Like Republican votes!!?)
Isaac Newton re-stated the rule: "We are to admit no more causes of natural
things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances."
The most useful statement of the principle for scientists is, "when you
have two competing
theories which make exactly the same predictions, the one that is simpler
is the better."
I believe these are sound assumptions
Given:
The Democrat base is still ticked off about 2000 and has been awaiting
the chance to vote in 2002
There were record turnouts at the polls
There were numerous "glitches" reported at the polls
All glitches favored Republicans
Voting machines are manufactured and programmed by companies owned and
managed by Republicans
The Republicans have a well-deserved reputation for criminal behavior
The economy is in the toilet, and the people are feeling it
Democrats had the issues on their side
The current administration is itching to plunge us into WWIII; there
has been a strong global and national resistance to the notion
We can either believe that:
The massive, angry Democrat base simply turned tail at the last minute,
forgot 2 years of anger, the crummy economy, their devastated 401Ks,
the threat of Armageddon and a psychotic judiciary, and decided to vote
Republican AND the glitches were inconsequential and amounted to little
or nothing; or
The Republicans rigged the voting machines.
Occam's Razor: the simplest answer is usually the correct one.
Bart, the right wing is dying for us to start beating ourselves up.
Self-flaggelation is a unique Democrat talent. Let's don't give them
the satisfaction.
Even if I am not correct in my suspicions that the election was rigged,
I don't care anymore.
This is my spin and I am sticking with it. It's no less dishonorable
than any of the bilge the
NeoCons have pushed off on the public for the past 10 years.
Besides, I don't HONESTLY think I am wrong.
Carol
Carol, I don't think you are wrong, either.
I think this whole mess, from the stolen 2000 election to September 11th,
to the loss of liberties and increased government control over us all boils
down to
the theft of trillions of dollars using terrorism and "liberal appeasement,"
as excuses.
The way they've set this up - even if/when they are exposed, they can say
they did it
for the good of the counrty, just like Iran-Contra and breaking the Boland
Amendment.
Besides, The Puppet can always pardon everyone who gets caught, like
last time,
so they don't even have a good incentive to cloak their crimes.
While a whore press and scared-silly Democrats let them get away with it.