Does Bush think we're morons?

[bunglehead]

Like PJ O'Rourke said:

"Politics is Hollywood for the ugly."

[mattp]

I am not 100% convinced he actually DID win the last election but that is another matter.

 

Oh man..

 

"American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. In using the expression “paranoid style” I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes. I have neither the competence nor the desire to classify any figures of the past or present as certifiable lunatics., In fact, the idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant."

 

Richard Hofstadter in "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," 1965. Recommended reading for 9/10th of this board.

 

Thanks, Jay. You are absolutely right: they wouldn't THINK of manipulating an election. How could I harbor even the slightest doubt?

[JayB]

Thinking and doing are two different things. No?

 

All I'm trying to say is that it's not what you believe, it's why you believe it. If you have conclusive evidence that the administration somehow manipulated the results in its favor by tampering with voting machines, whisking away cases of ballots from heavily democratic districts, or the like - information that has somehow escaped the notice of the press, the DNC, etc, etc, etc - then your views are reasonable and are not emblematic of the viewpoint described above. Is it really reasonable to conclude that your man Bill could not score a hummer in the Whitehouse and get away with it, and that Nixon could not so much as pull of a theft from an apartment building without the press and the public noticing, but the administration could pull off a fraud of this magnitude and get away with no outcry whatsoever, despite the fact that a private citizen in Seattle had no trouble obtaining proof that such a crime had actually taken place?

 

However, if you are grounding your belief that this occurred on a conglomeration of personal ideology and vague murmurings on the internet, then Hofstadter's description is probably quite apt in this case.

 

This sort of stuff is the Left-wing equivalent of the Z.O.G., the black-hellicopters, creationism, and "the rapture" IMO and it's just sort of disheartening to see a fine fellow like yourself embrace it.

[Ireneo_Funes]

So Jay, you don't think what happened in Florida in 2000 could be accurately characterized as "manipulating an election"?

[mattp]

Maybe you forgot, Jay, but in fact it WAS widely noted that there were substantial impediments to voting in the counties that could be expected to vote for Kerry in Ohio during the 2004 elections, the vote records showed that in at least one or two counties Diebold counted more votes than there were registered voters, and somehow it was only the Diebold states where exit polls did not match the vote outcome. In fact the Democrats DID notice, and they tried to undertake some challenges but they just didn't take it very far. Was the election stolen? I don't know. Am I sure it wasn't? No.

 

(By the way, you wouldn't be jumping on this issue to avoid noting that Bush told a lie fit for an 8-year-old in this morning's news conference, would you?

[Peter_Puget]

Check out the recent "corrections" in the NYT relative to the stolen election of 2000.

 

[mec]

i see we are still arguing over who won the elections in 2000 and 2004, any theory now that says bush did not win in my opinion is just a conspiracy theory. Yes some of them have substance, but give it up already. and No I do not support bush, and I did not support him in the elections, or Kerry or Gore. They were all full of shit.

 

Can we find a way to improve the election process, to make it more clear cut and fair. The only way I see is to have someone to vote for that the a large majority of the population votes for. That way all of the little arguments over 500 votes here and there do not matter... otherwise, we will always be arguing over who really won in these close elections.

[cj001f]

Is it really reasonable to conclude that your man Bill could not score a hummer in the Whitehouse and get away with it, and that Nixon could not so much as pull of a theft from an apartment building without the press and the public noticing, but the administration could pull off a fraud of this magnitude and get away with no outcry whatsoever, despite the fact that a private citizen in Seattle had no trouble obtaining proof that such a crime had actually taken place?

It's relevant to note that proof of both of those crimes appeared well after they were commited, 2+ years in the Lewinsky scandal. As the 2004 election occured less than a year ago it's a piece of disengenous sophistry to lump someone suspicious of those in power with the rightwing rapture loons. I'm sad to see you sink to that level Jay.

[mattp]

That't be good, MEC, but the fact is some folks don't seem to want that.

 

For starters, we could have voting machines that produce a record that can be verified. It is absolute B.S. for the company that makes bank machines to say they can't make a voting machine that produces a receipt.

[Alpinfox]

I do not believe that there was a conspiracy from the highest levels of government to rig the last election, but I think it possible, and even likely, that one or a few local election officials with strong republican ideology manipulated the results/rigged machines/falsified records/etc.

 

Isn't it true that the inventor/owner of the Diebold voting machine company is a multiply-convicted fraudster and rabid republican fanatic?

 

The BIG conspiracy theory is just too big. I don't think a secret that big involving (presumably) lots of people, could be kept secret.

[cj001f]

Check out the recent "corrections" in the NYT relative to the stolen election of 2000.

In other news, the owner of the Washington Times wants us to build a bridge between Alaska and Asia

[dkemp]

So do ya think Bush & Co. thinks Americans are morons?

[mattp]

They certainly think they can tell whatever lies they want and nobody will notice!

[dkemp]

I bet George thinks we're just all good simple folk that can be manipulated, but Karl thinks we're morons.

[JoshK]

I bet George thinks we're just all good simple folk that can be manipulated, but Karl thinks we're morons.

 

Ironic because he is the definition of a simple person who can be manipulated.

 

What a sorry ass puppet Bush is.

[JayB]

Maybe you forgot, Jay, but in fact it WAS widely noted that there were substantial impediments to voting in the counties that could be expected to vote for Kerry in Ohio during the 2004 elections, the vote records showed that in at least one or two counties Diebold counted more votes than there were registered voters, and somehow it was only the Diebold states where exit polls did not match the vote outcome. In fact the Democrats DID notice, and they tried to undertake some challenges but they just didn't take it very far. Was the election stolen? I don't know. Am I sure it wasn't? No.

 

(By the way, you wouldn't be jumping on this issue to avoid noting that Bush told a lie fit for an 8-year-old in this morning's news conference, would you?

 

But Matt - why, if they had conclusive evidence of fraud, or had good reason to believe that such evidence existed, would the Democrats decline to take the matter very far when they had every incentive in the world to pursue the matter down to the very last vote? Ditto for all of the gazillion NGO's like moveon.org, who had both the resources and the zeal necessary to pursue the task if the Democrats, for some reason, declined to pursue a story that would most likely lead to the downfall of the administration?

 

If there were disparities between the exit polling and the actual vote count in selected districts, it does not necessarily follow that they have their origin in a criminal conspiracy to committ massive voter fraud. It's possible, but without additional evidence to back up such a claim it seems more reasonable to believe that it had something to do with the exit polling methodology employed in those precincts. My hunch is that such discrepancies occur all the time, all over the country, but that they go unnoticed unless there's a particularly close or contentious election that hinges upon the results in a particular election district.

 

Don't you think that in general, attempting to prove something by absence of evidence to the contrary is problematic at best?

[mattp]

Jay - Aren't you attempting to "prove" any even small amount of skepticism about the 2004 election result is groundless by pointing to what you claim to be an absence of evidence to the contrary - that is you say there is no real evidence of vote fraud?

 

All I said was that I was not 100% sure. Are you?

[JayB]

Is it really reasonable to conclude that your man Bill could not score a hummer in the Whitehouse and get away with it, and that Nixon could not so much as pull of a theft from an apartment building without the press and the public noticing, but the administration could pull off a fraud of this magnitude and get away with no outcry whatsoever, despite the fact that a private citizen in Seattle had no trouble obtaining proof that such a crime had actually taken place?

It's relevant to note that proof of both of those crimes appeared well after they were commited, 2+ years in the Lewinsky scandal. As the 2004 election occured less than a year ago it's a piece of disengenous sophistry to lump someone suspicious of those in power with the rightwing rapture loons. I'm sad to see you sink to that level Jay.

 

But the said events were relatively trivial and involved a fraction of the people necessary to pull off a conspiracy of the order being discussed at present, and the other difference is that in the case of the instances I cited, no one knew about the incidents until long after they occured, at which point the stories emerged and received ever-increasing coverage until all of the facts emerged.

 

In this case, the "story" emerged within hours of the election, so the comparison to watergate and hummergate is inapt. It's been quite a while since the election occured, and the matter has presumably been poured over by every zealot in the country - and no evidence to suggest any such conspiracy has emerged.

 

With respect to the Diebold angle, if we are talking about a conspiracy sophisticated enough to pull off a fraud of this magnitude, it seems unlikely that they would elect to rely upon a person and company who were subject to heavy partisan scrutiny before the election even began to carry it out - at least to me.

[JayB]

Jay - Aren't you attempting to "prove" any even small amount of skepticism about the 2004 election result is groundless by pointing to what you claim to be an absence of evidence to the contrary - that is you say there is no real evidence of vote fraud?

 

All I said was that I was not 100% sure. Are you?

 

I guess it depends upon what you consider reasonable grounds. In every single contested election all candidates and their parties have a motive to manipulate the results, and I suspect that a great many would do so if they were absolutely certain that they could get away with it - but even if you concede that point I don't think it follows that one should presume that every election is fraudulent unless one can prove with 100% certainty that it wasn't. Moreover, proving such a thing would be impossible in that you are essentially engaging in an exercise that is much like trying to achieve 100% certainty by inductive means.

 

As far as skepticism is concerned, I'm glad that there are skeptical people analyzing the results of every significant election, but there's a difference between healthy and unhealthy skepticism. IMO healthy skepticism has as its end the discovery of the truth rather than the validation of a preconception, and requires a commitment to base one's conclusions upon the best available evidence, rather than the most ideologically satisfying conjectures.

 

Once the evidence has been subject to a certain amount of scrutiny, and nothing has materialized to validate a given claim - it's time to put the claim to rest lest one veer off in to "fake moon landing" territory.

 

 

[mattp]

All I said was that I am not 100% sure. Are you?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

All I said was that I am not 100% sure. Are you?

 

yes.

 

UNLIKE the WA state gubernatorial election.

[JayB]

I wouldn't say that I'm 100% sure about much of anything, so no - but 100% certainty does not seem like a reasonable standard by which to evaluate the results of a process involving hundreds of thousands of people, nor does it seem reasonable to maintain that the election was fraudulent in the absence of any real evidence to support such a claim.

[catbirdseat]

Without a paper trail, no one can be sure whether fraud was committed or not. This is the reason that scientists still keep paper notebooks in the age of computers. Part of my daily routine is pasting and initialing printouts into my notebook and then getting the pages countersigned. If something is really important, like proving a drug is safe and effective, or perhaps an election, then there should be a paper trail. You can still have electronic vote counting, but you must be able to go back to the hard copy if there is any question of propriety or lack there of.

[mattp]

So what's your point here, Jay?

 

If I cannot PROVE there was election fraud and that it actually changed the outcome I should not be so irresponsible as to note that I remain even a wee bit skeptical?

 

Whether you think anything was proved or not, the election had some problems.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

I wouldn't say that I'm 100% sure about much of anything, so no - but 100% certainty does not seem like a reasonable standard by which to evaluate the results of a process involving hundreds of thousands of people, nor does it seem reasonable to maintain that the election was fraudulent in the absence of any real evidence to support such a claim.

 

People who say the 2004 election was "fixed" just can't handle the truth - that a majority of Americans don't share their unmitigated hatred of Bush, and didn't buy the Demo-Liberal platform. Time to pull their heads out and deal with the truth - they lost, pure and simple.