November 15, 2004

The BuzzFlash Mailbag

The opinions expressed in the Mailbag are not necessarily those of BuzzFlash. Read the BuzzFlash FAQ for info on submitting to the Mailbag.

Subject: I just did some math

While looking at this article, 47 State Exit Poll Analysis Confirms Swing Anomaly (Scoop.com), linked to on BuzzFlash, I did some simple math. The data shows an Ohio exit poll at 7:32 PM with 47.9% Bush and 52.1% Kerry. Assuming that "#Resp" is short for "number of respondents" that means 940 had voted for Bush and 1023 for Kerry. Then there is the 1:41 AM entry with Bush 50.9% and Kerry 48.6% of 2020 respondents which works out to 1028 for Bush and 981 for Kerry. 42 FEWER THAN THE PREVIOUS NUMBER!! Someone should explain this.

Cheers!

"This is but a dream we dreamed one afternoon long ago."
Box of Rain
Music by Phil Lesh, Lyrics by Robert Hunter

Jerry

Subject: Fw: Mr. Exit Poll

Hi Buzz,

I just sent this letter to Tom Brokaw at nightly@nbc.com, and Tim Russert at mtp@nbc.com:

Tim and Tom,

Next time you collude with Bush to HACK the Vote----remember to let Exit in on it, you know that great truth teller Mr. Exit Poll. He almost's always tells the truth. The whole truth and nothing but! He didn't get a billion dollar war profiteering, no bid contract from Bush/Cheney. http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/45/deadline-finke.php

"Besides all those lucrative U.S. defense contracts, .... GE has snagged $450 million of orders in Iraq alone in 2003, and an apparent $3 billion more over the next few years."

Every time an Arab baby gets blown to spitereens with Napalm, is that another 1000 dollars in your bank account? Must really suck to be you guys. You know, the whole sleeping at night thing! Million dollar bank accounts, but can't sleep at night--uh.

I think I would rather sleep at night.

I'll make it short. Wouldn't want to interfere with you guys' trip to the bank, as I understand a few more Arab babies got totally incinerated with Napalm today. So chi-ch$ng, chi-ch$ng.

Esther

Subject: What ELSE is "quaint" and "obsolete"?

Maybe I'm obsessed, but I woke up thinking about Alberto Gonzales. (Must have been having one HELL of a nightmare!) But I wonder: if Gonzales considers the Geneva Convention rules "quaint" and "obsolete," doesn't believe he should have included mitigating circumstances in his briefs to then-governor Bush on clemency recommendations for death row inmates, bestows power on the President to define anyone -- including you and me -- as outside the protection of our legal system, and concocts his own extremist definition of torture ("death, organ failure," etc.), what will he do as Attorney General? What else will he declare "quaint" and "obsolete"??

My best guess: the Bill of Rights. I see Rove's brain at work again: (1) Bush's concession speech sounded (falsely) inclusive (though it was soon modified to include only "those who share our goals" -- but who was listening to the qualification? Certainly not red America) AND his very (suspiciously) quick pick of Gonzales suggests a plan to ram this nomination through the Senate. Dissenters will be accused of being anti-Hispanic. Bullshit. (Or "Bushit.")

I hope our Democratic Senators see through this ruse and have the guts to oppose this nomination while the filibuster option still exists. If we think (and I'm sure most of us do) the Patriot (sic) Act was bad, wait till you see the contortions a much brighter, more verbally adept AG than Ashcroft can work on our Constitution.

Barb in Athens, GA

Subject: message from a "red" state

After reading many BuzzFlash articles and links that are taking a delight in trashing the "red" states that voted for Bush, I certainly appreciate the humor, but there's a lot of angry Democrats out there that are forgetting one fact: a majority of the "red" states' election results were actually quite close.

I'm from Arkansas, a "red" state. I do not...

a) own a gun or hunt

b) listen to country music (I hate it)

c) watch or have any interest whatsoever in NASCAR, chewing tobacco or any other Southern stereotyped activity

I am a Democrat, have always voted Democrat and I hate George W. Bush, his cronies and what they've done to our nation. Furthermore, I think the election was rigged months ago. We didn't have a chance with a President and pals as corrupt and evil as the ones we now have in charge.

I ask you "blue" state people to please bear in mind that the election was close and there are millions of "blue" voters in "Jesusland."

To issue stereotypical condemnations of the states that went to Bush is lowering ourselves to the same mentality as the far right itself herding its flocks out to "protect marriage." Funny how the states that hollered "marriage" the most have the highest divorce rates, but that's another story.

We must figure out a way to convince people that their jobs and any hopes for peace are the real issues. We failed to connect, short and simple and we must find a candidate who can get out and relate to all people in the tradition of F.D.R. and Clinton if we hope to ever get the White House back. And you'll need us Democrats that live out here in
"Jesusland" to get the job done, so be careful when you slam somebody.

Scott
Fayetteville, AR

Subject: Gonzales has committed a felony

Molly Ivins said in a column a few years ago that when George Bush, as governor, was called to serve on a jury, he was 'excused' by telling the judge that he may have to pardon the defendant someday. Since this is actually an argument that belongs exclusively to the discussions within the Texas legislature when it decided to allow the governor to serve, it wasn't OK for this to be a good excuse. It was not legal for the judge to, in effect, dispose of a Texas state law.

However what Mr. Gonzales and Governor Bush actually did was plan, and then carry out the concealing from the judge of a very relevant and material fact in the case at hand, a drunk driving case: Bush had a drunk driving conviction. He used the irrelevant excuse to hide it from the public. It is definitely not legal to hide something like this from the judge.

If the law that applies to everyone else, that you must state in open court any connections you may have to cases like the one, such as a conviction, then Bush and Gonzales committed conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor, which is a very much alive felony.

Why doesn't anyone care about this? If it happened to Clinton, Gore, or Kerry, they would be horsewhipped in the public square.

David J.

Subject: Registration Documents

Dear Buzz

just a little question from the UK .... why do you need to put your political affiliation on any registration documents?

Surely no unbiased system would require such an obvious vehicle of record to be able to manipulate votes one way or another.

Further, if votes made by electronic methods are open to abuse using a closed source code why is it not realised that postal votes overseen by all parties would give the more accurate and least challenged method of casting each vote?

I know which one I would choose if there was an option on which system you were allowed to use.

Just a thought

Best wishes

JR

Subject: NYT Article

The exit polls and the vote count yield a different winner. Clearly, one of them is inaccurate. So, is it so wrong to try to figure out which? The media and right-wing attack on the efficacy of the historically accurate exit polls is a good indicator that something is amiss.

"It becomes a snowball of hearsay," said Matthew Damschroder, the director of elections in Columbus, Ohio, where an electronic voting machine malfunctioned in one precinct and allotted some 4,000 votes to President Bush, kicking off its own flurry of Web speculation. That particular problem was unusual and remains unexplained, but it was caught and corrected, Mr. Damschroder said.

Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried (NY Times, 11/12/04)

What’s unusual is that it was caught and corrected!

"The 'facts' that are being circulated on the Internet," the study concluded, "appear to be selectively chosen to make the point."

You mean like the “facts” about Iraq and WMD????

Is the media biased? How many times did they show the “Dean Scream” and how many times did they show that GWB misspoke (lied) during the debates about having said previously that he was not that concerned about OBL? These people lie with impunity and are never held to account for their malfeasance.

Turk Meister

Subject: Rov's Hideous Hispanic Hoax: The Bush surge

There was no Latino Bush surge in any poll. It's an invention contained within the fetid mind of Karl Rove and is being treated as gospel by the Bush League Media: Here's A Zogby Poll of Latinos. See a surge? The exit pollsters saw no surge, until they adjusted their numbers to bow down to Gang Bush.

Results show most Latino voters favor Kerry (Knight Ridder/Zogby)

Brad F.

Subject: Very Dirty work at Philly polls (Online Journal)

This is a must read.

The GOP actually paid alcoholic and drug addict blacks in Philly to essentially rat out and screw their own people by contesting voters.

In at least one case, one of the guys the Republicans came up with to serve as voter challengers was on crack while attempting to do this dirty work.

There is something truly repulsive and dishonorable about preying on the lowest of the low, and the weakest of the weak, to get them to betray their own race and their communities, in exchange for a lousy quick $100 to cage their next fix, or shot of Johnny Walker (or Night Train, as the case may be).

Ken

Subject: Did Bush Win Cleanly?

There is a lot of evidence of massive voter fraud in the last election. But people seem to think that Bush won by a margin bigger than the amount of fraud that he might have committed.

To me - if someone has to cheat to win, and then they win - they can't come back at the end and claim they won fairly because they would have won anyway if they hadn't cheated. To me the cheating always taints the results and undermines the legitimacy of the cheater. But that's my moral values - and other people have different moral values than I do.

Marc Perkel
San Francisco, CA.
http://marc.perkel.com

Subject: Liberal TV

Dear Fellow BuzzFlashers,

I often read the mailbag, but have only e-mailed once before. I've noticed a lot of mail recently has been about the lack of a liberal tv channel, I have found one on direct tv-it's called Link TV on channel 375. While it is mostly documentaries, it does carry Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! and various news reporting from the middle east on its Mosaic program. Perhaps with more viewers and financial help, it could become the voice we're searching for. Anyway, check it out-it is a good starting point.

Avid BuzzFlash reader
Marianne

Subject: The real scoop on exit polling

I have done exit polling for ABC NEWS in three other elections, but not this one. The methodology used in past elections, I must assume still the same, precludes any of the excuse scenarios promoted by media. The chattiness, the fear of telling pollsters for whom they voted...BUNK! There was a sampling pattern...perhaps every 15th voter that exited the polls for a time period. Maybe between 9 and 10 am, then between 12 and 2 PM, etc. Each person was given a clipboard and was asked to take part in the exit poll and then to place their completed exit poll into a ballot box. They took the survey privately and placed the "ballot" INTO A BOX SO WE DID NOT KNOW WHO VOTED FOR WHOM!

It was very rare when someone wouldn't participate. Actually, more people wanted to take part than were eligible. I had to turn people down who wanted to vote in exit poll by saying that it was only the "15th person exiting the polls who was eligible"...not just anyone. At a designated time we were to leave polling place and tabulate the votes and then call the results into a central tabulation number. I would read off the number of ballots, the number of votes per candidate, the reasons people voted for whom and the demographics of each voter as they had specified. In almost all cases every category was filled out. Most people liked the attention and were happy to do survey. This procedure was repeated throughout the day and I called in the numbers about three times in that day.

I can't believe that the exit polls could have been that wrong......Sounds way too suspicious if you ask me.

BuzzFlash addict

Subject: The Limbaugh Anti-Truth Meter on electronic balloting fraud

By accident, and I do mean accident, I stumbled across Rush Limbaugh’s screed on the radio today, and, wonders behold, he had a woman on who was debunking the idea that votes could be reprogrammed or changed in electronic ballot machines. The phraseology they were using sounded like they were reading verbatim off stories on the BuzzFlash homepage.

From my limited experience of listening to Limbaugh I am always sure that the truth is the categorical opposite of whatever his “expert-shill du jour” vociferously proclaims. I think it is telling that he feels compelled to justify these “Democratic sour grapes election theft delusions” with a rebuttal.

As always, thank you for your defense of what is left of our democracy,

James Richards
Tustin, CA

Subject: mailbag...and etc....lost elections...lies

To those of you who think we are blaming the victim...I am not. I am disappointed in
the men who ran for the democratic ticket because, for sure they have more reason
and more money than I do...I can scream my head off...but, no one will hear me...I know
this, from the past four years.

To Joann D...discussing the loss of health care in Tennessee....the home of none other
than Bill Frist..of the Columbia Medical Centers (Frists)...the entire family owns practically
all of Nashville, even though they were caught with their hands in the Medicare till, and even though Nashville, for all intents and purposes is a democratic town (The Frist family
got a slap on the hand and a stiff fine...and went on their merry way).

Now, this is very important to me...for any of you who remember the Iranian Hostage
situation 25 years ago...when Carter was president?

One of the hostages was from the St. Louis Area...he was on a local talk show today and was very open about the fact that this country passed up the opportunity to stop terrorism then. He confirmed the rumor that we have always heard...when after 444 days, they finally were freed with Carter's negotiations.....They took off...Rocky Seickman (the man, who is now in his forties, married Jill Ditch, the little girl who met him at the plane and lives in So. County with their three children) admitted, that after they were airborne they breathed a sigh of relief and immediately sunk!....They were taken back to the tarmac...and the Algerian pilot told them they would be sitting on the tarmac for another 25 minutes...until the inauguration of Ronald Reagan took place. After that, they were taken out...so Carter would not get credit!!!

Over the years I have heard this rumor...but, if you tell anyone...they look at you like
you are nuts. This idiocy has been going on for at least 25 years...and it is not going to stop. Rocky thinks that we lost our ability to stem terrorism right at that moment. It is
so disgusting to me to even find this out...I have been gracious enough to give Reagan
a pass, just because he wasn't as blood thirsty as Bush...but, now, believe absolutely
nothing...not a damned thing. They do whatever they want...and with our tax dollars, right in front of our noses!!!

Shirley...........St. Louis

PS: The only thing that will stop the politicians now is if we all either retire, stop
working, or go on a permanent tax holiday...if they do not get money from us...they
will have nothing...Course, Bush...will still use the credit card!!!!!!!!!!!

Subject: we need a blue media

Hi! Thanks for your articles of encouragement! I really needed the lift. One of the things I learned from this election is that a majority of talk radio and all of cable news is red media. By that I mean they cover stories in a way that the red state people will approve and they parrot their values and opinions. They also act as attack dogs against any ideas or
candidates of the blue state people.

We need Blue Media--and something more than AIR America Radio. We need a Blue version of FOX News, CNN, and MSNBC. Kerry was always answering a negative that the Red media would repeat over and over and over. The Swift Boat idiots got lots of free air time on these networks while the Bush National Guard Story got minimal play. If we could pool our resources and start a Blue Media Network in New York or New Jersey that covers the stories from our viewpoint I think that would be a beginning. The Red Media would be forced to cover or answer the news that any Blue Network covered because it would be out there.

Does this sound like a good idea to you? Do you think someone like George Soros would be
willing to start such a news network? I hope you can pass this idea on to others like
yourself who might be interested in starting such a network. Perhaps moveon.org can help raise money for this. I'm poor but I would be willing to contribute a small amount. I gave 150 dollars to the Kerry campaign.

That's not much but if you get a million of us to contribute it will add up.

Thanks for all you have done and I will keep the faith!

Lynn Browne