Category: General

One of Many Pieces of Evidence of Vote Fraud Disputed

Wired News: Florida E-Vote Study Debunked — A lot of braindead sites like MetaFilter are trumpeting the fact that somebody disagreed with this analysis as some kind of “case closed” nail in the coffin.

In fact, this study was not the only reason to suspect fraud in the elections; well known mathematician John Allen Paulos (author of “Innumeracy”) points to another paper which suggests something is up, and the folks at verifiedvoting.org and blackboxvoting.org will be happy to point you to many other reasons to worry about whether we in fact still have a democracy.

And let’s not forget Keith Olbermann‘s work at MSNBC.

Incidentally, Olbermann and BlackBoxVoting agree that the “I was paid to fix the vote” whistleblower piece that’s making the rounds is just plain silly, to the point that it makes you wonder if it’s a Karl Rove style dirty trick to co-opt the outrage over actual evidence of vote fraud into a debunkable hoax about vote fraud and thereby destroy it.

Hey, it worked on Dan Rather….

Olbermann & Harris

Something weird is going on between Keith Olbermann, who is the only network journalist who is seriously covering the vote fraud situation, and Bev Harris, the most thorough and dedicated investigator of such fraud.

Harris has always struck me as completely with it, straightforward, sane. Olbermann (on the basis of what his staff has said about Harris) is writing her off as a freak.

Olbermann’s summary of the situation.

Harris’s summary of the situation.

Make of it what you will. I’m glad Olbermann is on the case, and I’m glad Harris is on the case, and I hope that they can help each other somehow.

BTW, check out Harris’s reaction to some people’s demands for voting reforms, and see if this squares with the idea of a screaming psycho activist:

  1. We’re not done yet.

  2. This is not the only election.

  3. The 2004 election was never audited. No one really knows whether it was accurate or not. No one really knows whether:

a. There was no fraud
b. There was a little fraud but it didn’t change the outcome
c. There was a lot of fraud and the wrong people were put in office

  1. It’s still about auditing.

a. To do an audit, you start with spot checks.
b. To do spot checks, you start with documents. Those are what Black Box Voting requested on Nov. 2, from 3,000 election jurisdictions. They are coming in now. Some locations are more cooperative than others.
c. If we do not audit, we will be asking the same questions over and over

  1. It’s time to get some answers. That’s what we are doing aT Black Box Voting.

  2. It is premature to recommend specific legislation. Though several voting integrity groups and so-called “experts” are trying to do that right now, no one really knows what the problems are yet. Before reinventing the wheel (again) we should finish some of the audits and investigations that need to be done.

She’s a lot more measured in her rhetoric than a lot of bloggers out there [blush]. She’s just all about getting the facts, as far as I can tell. I wonder what the heck really happened between her and Olbermann’s staff and why it turned out the way it did.

US admits the war for `hearts and minds’ in Iraq is now lost – [Sunday Herald]

US admits the war for `hearts and minds’ in Iraq is now lost – [Sunday Herald]

THE Pentagon has admitted that the war on terror and the invasion and occupation of Iraq have increased support for al-Qaeda, made ordinary Muslims hate the US and caused a global backlash against America because of the “self-serving hypocrisy� of George W Bush’s administration over the Middle East.

The mea culpa is contained in a shockingly frank “strategic communications� report, written this autumn by the Defence Science Board for Pentagon supremo Donald Rumsfeld.

On “the war of ideas or the struggle for hearts and minds�, the report says, “American efforts have not only failed, they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended�.

“American direct intervention in the Muslim world has paradoxically elevated the stature of, and support for, radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single digits in some Arab societies.�

Referring to the repeated mantra from the White House that those who oppose the US in the Middle East “hate our freedomsâ€?, the report says: “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedoms’, but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favour of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the long-standing, even increasing support, for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states.

It’s kind of comforting that they realize this, I guess.

Boston.com / News / Nation / Aid cuts threatened by US over tribunal

Boston.com / News / Nation / Aid cuts threatened by US over tribunal

UNITED NATIONS — The US government is quietly threatening to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign aid aimed at combating terrorism, resolving conflicts, and building democracy unless countries agree to shield Americans from prosecution at the UN permanent war crimes tribunal.

An amendment to the 3,000-page budget bill before the House of Representatives would punish countries, even close allies in the war on terrorism, that have joined the International Criminal Court and have declined to promise they would not send American citizens to the court without US permission.

This is kind of like if the Federal Government withheld funding for local education unless the school board agreed never to press charges for child molestation against any employee of the Federal Government.

Since they have already committed a sizable number of war crimes, seeking immunity from prosecution for more is outrageous.