BBV- A NYT Landmark Editorial: the Establishment has concluded * must go!

[TruthIsAll]

This editorial brings everything together. I am now convinced, by virtue of this editorial alone, that Bush is truly toast.

This unbelievable editorial is over a year late, but better now than never. It will start a flood of TV programming on BBV. You can bet that 60 Minutes is preparing for THE BIG STORY, which will be incomplete without a full expose of past election fraud - and the dangers ahead in November. I can hear Andy Rooney's speech right now.

The Times covers all the bases. There is more to this editorial than meets the eye. By acknowledging that millions of felons, mostly black, have been disenfranchised, the NYT has also finally agreed that Gore won big.
They have just made it offcial; they have transformed the subject from the realm of "conspiracy theory" to one of conventional wisdom.

It is what we at DU have been saying from Day One: BushCo's stolen election, ratified by judicial coup, was a treasonous dismantling of democracy. This cannot stand. The NYT won't let it.

America's establishment icon has formally declared open war on BushCo. This is about much more than voter-verified paper trails.


THIS, MY FRIENDS, IS ONLY THE BIGGEST POLITICAL SCANDAL OF ALL TIME. IT IS NOW ON THE CUSP OF MAINSTREAM. WE HAVE PASSED THE TIPPING POINT.

[frank frankly]

1. truthisall

please be correct in this!

i like the way you think!

[TruthIsAll]

14. The basic points...

...troubling new questions about the reliability of electronic voting machines.

..this is no way to run a democracy.

Voting Technology
... electronic voting machines with serious reliability problems of their own.

... efforts of a hacker on the outside or a malicious programmer on the inside, or through purely technical errors, these machines could misreport the votes cast.

... a fast-growing list of elections in which electronic machines have demonstrably failed, or produced dubious but uncheckable results.

... the machines produce no paper record, there was no way to check.

... Fortune magazine named paperless voting its "worst technology" of 2003.

... electronic voting machines should produce a paper trail — hard-copy receipts that voters can check to ensure that their vote was accurately reported, and that can later be used in a recount.

... a bill introduced by Representative Rush Holt would do the same nationally.

...Congress should make every effort to put paper trails in place by this fall.

...compounding the technology issues are the political entanglements of voting machine companies.

...Walden O'Dell, the head of Diebold Inc., has raised large sums for President Bush, and pledged in a fund-raising letter that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president" in 2004.

...Diebold is hardly alone among major voting machine manufacturers in contributing to elected officials, who represent virtually their only market.

...the public has a right to expect that voting machine companies that run elections will not also seek to influence them.

...Internet voting raises all of the security concerns of electronic voting and more.. it's questionable whether any Internet voting can be made completely secure.

Voter Participation

...In Florida in 2000, Katherine Harris, then the secretary of state, hired a private company to purge the voting rolls of felons, but ended up purging many nonfelons as well.

.. Help America Vote Act, passed after the 2000 debacle, includes new requirements for voter identification that could be used in some states to turn away voters.

...we need a national commitment to increasing registration and turnout.

..Voting by mail,

..making Election Day a holiday

...And there is a movement to roll back laws denying the vote to nearly five million people with felony convictions, 36 percent of them black males.

Competitive Elections

...the rise of partisan gerrymandering, redistricting to favor the party in control of the process, competitive House elections are becoming virtually obsolete.

...he court could, and should, use it to establish constitutional limits on redistricting for partisan advantage.

... states can adopt on their own — although parties in control of state government will have little incentive to — is appointing nonpartisan commissions to draw district lines that will produce competitive races.

[mhr]

2. Link ?

eom

[frank frankly]

3. heres a damn good link!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1029378

[mhr]

5. Thanks!

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/opinion/18SUN1.html

eom

[barbaraann]

4. Hmmm.... PRECISELY when Shrubbie's approval rating is a low.

Now they'll have to find another puppet.

[cthrumatrix]

31. right now....let's focus on the corruption..time will demand "transparency

there can be no other way...we can't trust ..and they have not earned our trust.

I am hopeful that this will be the beginning.

[nofurylike]

6. Thank you, TruthIsAll! thank you thank you thank you!! n/t

[hedgetrimmer]

7. and in these regards... anybody can beat bush... vote your heart

and consider what the big players want, don't vote for that want... vote for your own want... and really screw them... you are not by the balls here the bone head is going down, we have THE power! rise up and take whats yours, rise up and take your share...

[fabius]

8. This is awesome...

and much credit must go to Bev Harris and the BBV gang for revealing the Diebold issue.

The Resistance Lives!!!!!!!!!!!!

:yourock:

[nofurylike]

11. Yes!! profound gratitude to Bev and those who stood with her!!

you all have CHANGED THE WORLD!!

AMAZING!!!

Thank You thank you thank you!!!!

Peace!!

[ParanoidPat]

34. You got that right!

:kick:

[Kelvin Mace]

9. This is a very DAMNING editorial

Yet, I am still amused that they can't bring themselves to credit Bev for doing their job. <g>

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
http://www.plan9.org

[nostamj]

25. David................

where's the book? B&N and Amazon don't have it yet. still waiting for the pre-ordered copies............. ???

I thought it was shipping more than a week ago. :shrug:

[Wapsie B]

10. This is beyond good news.

For the life of me I can't see how the korporate establishment put up with chimpy this long. It's almost like they were conducting some great social experiment to see how dumb a guy could be and still pull off the role of being prez.

What amazes me is that the korporate masters have waited this long. The true economy is in the shi**er. Jobs are being lost left and right. Trickle down has failed once again.

[Jeebo]

12. Bush/Gore overvotes are the "smoking gun"...

Y'know, one thing that I think keeps getting overlooked in the Florida 2000 controversy is the Bush/Gore overvote. How does somebody accidentally vote for both Bush AND Gore? But here's what's REALLY weird about this: Washington Post reporter Dan Keating noticed during the media recount of the Florida overvotes and undervotes that ALL of the Bush/Gore overvote ballots WERE IN PUNCH-CARD COUNTIES. And there was an anomalous number of them in those counties. Think about this for a moment. THERE IS NO POSSIBLE EXPLANATION that I can think of for this phenomenon other than DELIBERATE, WILLFUL BALLOT TAMPERING. And Sharman Braff noted in her piece on the 2000 Florida election theft, posted somewhere on Democrats.com, that this makes sense in light of the fact that if you wanted to mass-tamper with the ballots, it would have to be the punch-card ballots; fixing the opti-scan ballots would require doing them one at a time, while you could stack up punch-card ballots and punch them through two or three dozen at a time. THIS IS WHAT I BELIEVE HAPPENED late on election night in Florida; this is what I believe was Jeb's and Katherine's "Plan B" to fix the election for George if that's what it took for him to "carry" Florida. And I would love to see this introduced as evidence in a court of law, because I believe it is powerful evidence that George W. won because of election fraud.

Ron

[Unforgiven]

33. Yes

and I believe it was in Seminole county and along counties in the I-4 corridor where some of this occurred by republican operatives handling cast punch cards and deliberately over voting these cards at the supervisor of elections office. A lot of people need to see some jail time for this. But how do we prove it?

[Eric J in MN]

13. It's a great editorial. It address the three big voting issues of

It's a great editorial. It address the three big voting issues of black-box voting, voter-purges, and gerrymandering.

[Andy_Stephenson]

15. Tipping hat to Truth Is All!

You have been the start of many things good. With you you the Truth really is All!

:toast:

[frank frankly]

16. Question: Wasn't it illegal to exempt felons anyway?

I remember reading that in the Greg Palast book, Best Democracy Money Can Buy

[Art_from_Ark]

19. Depends on the state

In 1998, fourteen states prohibited ex-felons from voting.

http://www.hrw.org/press98/oct/vote1022.htm

However, many states have since reconsidered their laws:

http://www.demos-usa.org/demos/votingrights/educational.html

And a court in Florida has reversed the dismissal of a case against Governor Bu$h involving voter disenfranchisement:

http://www.votelaw.com/blog/archives/001572.html

[Art_from_Ark]

17. Not to be picky, but

You said "By acknowledging that millions of felons, mostly black, have been disenfranchised..."

Most states bar current felons from voting. Unfortunately, a state also has a legal right to exclude ex-felons from voter rolls, if that is the law on the books at the time of the election. What's important here is that tens of thousands of people, maybe more, who had never been convicted of a felony were summarily stripped of their right to vote, without recourse, merely because they had the same or similar name or even birthdate of a convicted felon.

[RainDog]

18. I would love for your earlier prediction to come true

you made that one before this editorial, so I'll be happy to kowtow if you are right!

I was also thrilled to see that editorial.

...and I also thought, as I was reading it, that Bev and crew should get an award for her investigative work, since she and her crew have been the ones who kept this most important issue too public to ignore.

thank you, again.

...and I also thought that it's about time that the NYTimes admitted that Greg Palast had the Bush junta pegged from the first...WHAT TOOK the "big guns" SO LONG????

Bush will no doubt play as dirty as he can to maintain power. I hope the forces against him are so strong that everything he does or says only makes the truth more widely known.

[dusty64]

20. Its about time!

:kick:

[morgan2]

21. link?

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

22. "from conspiracy theory to conventional wisdom"

Would this have ever happened without BevHarris and the DU BBV threads? I doubt it.

[RandomKoolzip]

23. How I wish it were true.....

However, the RW talking heads and loudmouths on hate radio and in print have already demonized the NYT as a "left wing" newspaper. Ask the average Rush listener if he trusts the NYT and he'll say they're biased.

So one Rush listener hears Rush on his show excoriating the NYT for being liberal or he reads Ann Coulter do the same thing, and he tells his friends and his family, and soon the "NYT is liberal" meme (yep, I hate that word, too) gets spread via radio, word of mouth, etc. Unfortunately, lots of people don't trust the NYT, for this reason, so anything (esp. an editorial) that gets printed in there is suspect to a very large base of voters.....

Look, it sucks. I'm not trying to doom and gloom everybody, but if I had a dollar for every time I've been reading the New York Times, and some asshat Liddy listener comes over to me and says, "whatchoo readin' that damn liberal newspaper for?!" I'd be able to pay rent this month. It's a sad truth that especially in the South, the NYT is not the voice of authority that it is in the rest of the country. Sorry, but it's true. A lot of people ignore or actively HATE the NYT, and yet consider themselves politically active.

I'm glad this story is getting press, FINALLY. I've been following it from the beginning, and this ROCKS that the NYT is doing an editorial. Sweet! Now, if we can get editorials or TV stories about BBV in Atlanta, Charleston, Nashville, Birmingham, Tampa, New Orleans, etc. we might get some traction....since this is a problem that effects republicans as much as it effects disenfranchised blacks and Dems.

Still, BBV is a HUGE problem, and every bit of info in the public realm helps. THis is indeed great....I just wouldn't start calling Bush a lame duck just yet because of a NYT editorial. We're gonna have to do a lot more pushing to get the rest of the country to listen.

[starroute]

26. The real issue is whether the Establishment has turned on Bush

It doesn't matter whether wingnuts think the Times is a liberal rag. The real significance of the New York Times is that it is the voice of the Establishment -- the old, northeast, financial establishment.

That Establishment is still the greatest power source in this country. It does whatever seems necessary to protect its own interests, and it isn't joined at the hip to the Republican Party. Though it supports Republicans much of the time, it is perfectly willing to ditch those who become a liability, like Herbert Hoover or Richard Nixon.

Bush has become that sort of liability. He's a wrecker, not a builder. He and his coterie are more interested in looting the resources of the United States than in maintaining the wealth-producing capacities of the country. What's more, although Poppy had ties to both the northeast Establishment and the Texas/oil/extractive industries interests, little Georgie's ties are only with Texas. He's an outsider.

The old Establishment has never had any love for Bush -- but they apparently found him useful for a time. Now he's overstayed his welcome. I think the chess board could get reconfigured very quickly.

[RandomKoolzip]

28. Okay.....that's true, but....

The southern xian conservative base of voters will stil turn out in droves for * because he's God's Man on Earth. Those people (there's a lot of 'em) do not know about the division beteeen the Kennebunkport EStablishment and the Texas Oil Dynasty...(Didn't Jonathan Vankin write about this somewhere?) anyways, they get their info from Liddy, Rush, Coulter, Hannity, etc. Those assholes will never tell the base NOT to vote for Bush, and the NYT will not sway them either. In fact, they're all so occluded in RW dogma by this point that God himself telling them not to support * wouldn't even trigger doubt. Don't underestimate the RW media's influence here.


Good for the Establishment for dumping the chimp, though.

[Cocoa]

24. NYT editorial page is afraid of democracy

They showed their hand once and for all when they congratulated the coup in Venezuela, a little too soon as it turned out.

Today they have an editorial that is disparaging of the Iowa process. If you watch the campaign events on C-span, and see the huge crowds of people turning out for every candidate in this crowded field, you can't help but feel good about the state of our democracy. But the NYT manages to find the bad.

I don't think the timing on this editorial on election problems is accidental. The length of the article, and the huge number of problems covered at the same time, without a corresponding number of solutions, suggests to me that their goal isn't to solve the problems, but to use them to bum people out.


edit: link to DU discussion on "Hugo Chavez Departs"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=2937&forum=DCForumID38&archive=yes

[RedEagle]

27. Always a Dark Cloud for Some People

Meanwhile,

Make sure ALL of your state legislators see that article.

Point out to the Republicans that the potential shenanigans of a few are going to take them all down.

We have very concerned and intelligent Republicans at the state level who are none too happy about the whole thing.

Understand that you can use election fraud INSIDE the parties too, Democrat as well as Republican.

It hurts the honest people of both parties.

The board tips one way right now, but never, ever bet that the some from the other side aren't allowed to benefit.

Get on board for AMERICA. This is an AMERICAN issue.

[ParanoidPat]

29. Wow Cocoa, Right on cue!

Voter Verified Paper Ballots are the only logical solution. Didn't they mention them? :evilgrin:

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. :)

:kick:

[mike1963]

30. Kick and everybody send the link to everyone you can!

:kick:
(forgot to copy the link, it's in some of the posts)
:D

[ParanoidPat]

32. Thanks Mike1963!

The link is right here. (requires free registration) :evilgrin:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/opinion/18SUN1.html

:kick:

[priller]

35. That's a terrific editorial

Jeez, I almost forgot what reasonable discourse sounded like. That was perfect, and I'm sending it to all my family and friends. Many, many kudos to Bev and the gang for bringing this issue to the fore.

[RBHam]

36. There's still a problem...

If the "establishment" truly has turned on Bushco, you'll see the 9-11 cover up start to get attention. Those widows demanding answers live right there, for chrissakes, and the NYT still acts as if they don't even exist. If that happens, then Bushco will do either 1 of 2 things: orchestrate another act of terror big enough to institute martial law or pull a Bush 41 and pardon all indicted cronies (Ken Lay anyone?), destroy or alter records, and appease those Dems who want heads on pikes with the "we don't want to tarnish the office of the presidency" canard. The Hydra will then go underground and bide its time, while continuing to undermine American Democracy with through media infiltration, black ops and political demagoguery.

You'll have to pardon me if I don't congratulate the Times for finally publishing the truth. They have been a big part of the problem, and they'd better be prepared to work their asses off to gain back my respect.

They could start by turfing that Republican sock puppet columnist who goes by the name of Safire. Anybody who uses Karl Rove as a source has to be "in the game". Fire his bought-and-paid-for whore ass!

[mrdmk]

37. This was not reported anywhere and I have been watching

closely

<snip>
Internet voting will be allowed in the Michigan caucuses next month and, for the first time, in the general election in a Pentagon-operated pilot program for overseas voters. Internet voting raises all of the security concerns of electronic voting and more. Given that major corporations regularly find their Web sites and databases hacked, and "Trojan horses" can take over home computers, it's questionable whether any Internet voting can be made completely secure. The Pentagon's program was adopted with disturbingly little publicity or debate. The public is entitled to know more about how it will work, and how it will be protected.
<snip>

Talk about under the radar. I know computers and I know the Internet. There was no debate what so ever about people being able to vote over the Internet. This is a scam waiting to happen. Talk about fixing the election. I do not care if it is the military as a matter of fact since when does the Pentagon tell society what and how to do its business. Voting over the Internet, we might as well call ourselves the U.S.S.R., nobody else is using it.

The DRE machines are the crying shame of this country with the +/- 10% accuracy. Just think people, if Palm Pilots were +/- 10% accurate, would you buy one. These units cost over $3,000.00 a piece and you do not even get a printer, more or less security. Anyone today can buy a computer for under $500.00 with a printer and have double precision accuracy. These units are junk and totally outdated.


edit: typo