BuzzFlash Reader Contribution

November 3, 2004

CONTRIBUTOR ARCHIVES  

Why Do We Stand For It?

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Matt Carmody

I woke this morning to the depressing news that as I slept, this country was confirmed as a banana republic.

Going to bed last night, I felt confident there would be challenges to the election results, but I felt they would be republican challenges to a Kerry win. Now, I don't know what to think.

Having read Bev Harris's book, "Black Box Voting" I know the ways that vote tallies can be changed on electronic machines. I think any computer nerd (and I mean that in a nice way) can tell us how easy it is to program changes into a machines code so that vote tallies are changed. But there are no changes that can be made to exit polls and last night the exit polls were saying Kerry. Were the people polled just saying that they voted for Kerry because they didn't want their neighbors to know that they are morons? No, I sincerely believe that the exit polls were correct and people were voting for Kerry in large
numbers, sufficiently large enough to cause the people at FOX to appear numbed.

And that's the point: Were they just appearing that way or were the numbers actually that bad? What caused the sudden turnaround?

Remember back to the 1994 midterm election, the election that brought us the Contract with America. I remember listening to Rush Limbaugh citing John Zogby's numbers every time a new poll came out. It was almost as though Zogby was the GOP pollster. It was back then that I started to discount Zogby as a partisan numbers man, someone who could and would skew the numbers in favor of the GOP.

Last night, having resisted the urge all day to look at anything political, I turned on my laptop and saw that Zogby was projecting a Kerry win with numbers that seemed to good to be true: Kerry-311, Bush-213 electoral votes. This was at 6 p.m. Eastern time. At that time there were still long lines at polling locations throughout the country. Was Zogby's poll put out there so early as a distraction? Did the early calling of the electoral tally in favor of Kerry by such a large margin convince some young people standing on interminably long lines to chuck it all because it appeared that Kerry had already won?

I guess what I'm asking in plain English is this: Was this election manipulated by the early release of John Zogby's numbers, a prediction which had no basis, at that time or any other time last night, in fact as the numbers were tallied? Was Zogby a stealth tool in the GOP toolbox unleashed just early enough to convince voters in states that still had hours of voting time left, that the election was already a done deal? And how about that White House non-event with the video of the Bush crime family in the residence? What was the purpose of that? It was a little surreal, almost like those old film clips of the Soviet leadership that were released to let the outside world get a glimpse of a leader who evereyone had written off as dead. Very weird.

One thing that I realized last night is this - Terry Moran should look for new work. As a White House correspondent I believe his days are numbered. His honesty and his willingness to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Bush move last night were very refreshing, but I don't for a minute believe that Disney will want that boy reporting the news from Washington any longer. Thanks for a few moments of truth there last night, Terry. It was refreshing.

As for the rest of us, where do I start? Should I finally move to Paris? Or St. Petersburg? Or Bucharest? Should I just shut up and wait to see how long it takes for this cabal to throw caution to the wind and implement every megalomanical bit of its agenda while the people who voted it in, and I still do not concede that this is an honest, fair, election, stand back and allow this country to sink further into illegitimcay in the eyes of the world?

Bush said that if he was elected this time he would bring the country together. I think the way he plans on doing that is by pointing to the phony numbers that are being trumpeted by the subservient media and sasying, "Hey, look at the numbers. This country that appeared so divided has begun to heal. More peopled are coming around to our way of thinking and are accepting that my vision of the future is the right vision." It will be touted as a great coming together, a major accomplishment, even as more and more families lose their loved ones in Iraq and the new adventures this group has planned for our military.

Thank you, Buzzflash, for being a beacon and a sounding board to the millions of people who come here for solace and the sense of camaraderie that is missing in many other places. I know that I speak for many readers when I say that this site has been a source of inspiration and a store of knowledge this past four years. Knowing that it will continue to provide such services is a comfort, that is until the site gets shut down or more amendments to the constitution become moribund and this venue is a thing of the past.

Sorry I sound so gloomy, but this is not a good day for our country.

Matt Carmody
Washingtonville, NY

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION