QUOTE(periwinkle @ Dec 22 2004, 07:18 AM)
We better get ready to accept the fact they've pulled off the perfect crime. And it was so easy to do the Democrats are probably the butt of jokes around the Triad water cooler. I swear we should go back to putting the "x" in the box and waiting for a day or two until every vote is hand counted. It drives me crazy that in the Ukraine the exit polls are given enough weight so the election is immediately thrown out, but in this country the exit polls were wrong, despite odds that would drive a bookie crazy.
I don't like the term "perfect crime," but it appears so, with the help of the media. I've come to expect bad reporting, but the worst was a report I heard yesterday on National Public Radio (NPR), which, in the past, gave info about bias in news about the former Yugoslavia. I was surprised that they said that Ohio Chief Justice Moyer (Republican) was allowed to rule, by himself, on the fairness of the election, so all the information brought by Cliff Arnebeck would be probably thrown out, and furthermore, even the Democrats were saying that they didn't find anything wrong, so there must not be any vote fraud. I know that NPR gets its news from various sources, and they are probably afraid of a cut in funding, but after that I have no urge whatsoever to send them any money. Maybe NPR did us a favor; now we know which side they stand on, and we must continue to take a stand on the other side. (When listening to Click and Clack or the Priarie Home Companion, remember that these shows were brought to you by the same lock-stop lock-down media that brings you three conservative commentators for every "liberal." I am tempted to ask Click and Clack how to fix the vote fraud; they know something about car computers.)
A friend sent an e-mail along from Tom Hartman quoting some things from Germany before WWII, saying that people wondered why more people hadn't spoken out. Little by little things got worse, so that there was not one great shock that compelled people to protest, and instead of acting to stop the wrongdoing, people were more and more confused. Also, one crime would distract people from others. For example, today, although this forum is focusing on vote fraud, there are many other areas, each so urgent that they distract and confuse people from doing anything about any of them: vote fraud, environmental disasters, torture and end of due process laws, no real investigation into what happened, including negligence, regarding 9/11/01, corporate misdeeds and no-bid contracts, world trade fiascos, water usage, plagues and the handling of healthcare around the world, etc. Is there confusion and an inability to act because of all of these issues together? Yes. And, we hardly notice that they plan to change Social Security.
I haven't been posting much. I'm still doing small Christmas gifts, but I've cut back; I just don't want to give a gift to the retail stores this year. Perhaps this is a perfect crime, against not only the country but against what religion is supposed to be about. Private health insurance and life insurance can exclude people for having pre-existing conditions, but churches who voted for Bush support his push to cut out public assistance and public healthcare. In 2004 I heard a conservative brag that he recruited people for his insurance and investment company from his church, and brag that he now lives in a large house with servants, but I never had the impression that he would have lifted a finger to help a person whose health-care problems excluded them from his insurance plans. Greed ignores others' needs, and it is greed more than anything else that seems to drive these conservatives, no matter what morals they pretend to have. I have written to church denominations about what they have to say about vote fraud; if they do not understand computer hacking, at least they might understand the difficulty and pain of waiting nine hours in the rain. I do not seek to hurt any churches in any way, but I seek to learn what they, as responsibile religious people, will say about the discrimination against minorities and poor, especially in the season when they supposedly remember that there was no room at the inn. I am looking at these holidays with mixed feelings; of sadness more than joy.