January 19, 2008
Tweaking Your Vote
Once again we have to hear it from the European press
The mainstream Italian media are reporting both the rigging of the New Hampshire primary for Senator Hillary Clinton and the official demands for a swift, accurate and impartial recount. In an article written by Marcello Foa, one of Europe's most respected journalists, it appears that vote tallies for all Democratic candidates as well as Republicans were reduced by Diebold vote-counting machines.....According to the report, Ron Paul should have finished third in the Republican primary rather than fifth. Thus, it would appear that both Barack Obama and Ron Paul were the primary targets of vote-rigging operations in New Hampshire.
Diebold?!? Diebold?!? Why is there a single Diebold machine in any precinct in America, after what happened in 2006?
Brad Friedman has more chilling details about Diebold in New Hampshire.
And while we're on the subject of controlling our votes, all of us here at Dakota are getting a little sick of the media prescreening worthy candidates for us to view. For example, "Senior Clark County District Court Judge Charles Thompson vowed to issue an injunction halting the nationally televised debate if MSNBC failed to " include Dennis Kucinich. Astonishingly, Judge Thompson was overruled by the Nevada Supreme Court, and Kuchinich did not appear. [Addendum: Dennis himself on "on the Media"]
Why are the media so adamantly keeping Kuchinich, Paul and yes, even or especially, Edwards out of the public eye? According to some, John Edwards is the only democratic candidate that will be able beat a republican in a national election. Edwards is the candidate who stubbornly refuses to be purchased by corporate interests. Since corporations now own the media, they can nip his campaign in the bud, and thus prevent odious government regulations from resurfacing. It can be argued that deregulation has brought us global warming, the subprime mortgage crisis, coal mine disasters and Fox News to name but a few horrible consequences.
Perhaps you think us paranoid? Well, here it is directly from the Elephant's Lips. Alternet interviewed Allen Raymond, a former Republican National Committee operative, about his new book "How to Rig An Election, Confessions of a Republican Operative" and excerpt:
ALTERNET: The title of your book is How to Rig an Election. Can elections be rigged?RAYMOND:: Sure. We're not talking about what people often think about, like ballot box stuffing. Certainly, that stuff goes on here and there. What we are really talking about in the book is how messages are created and delivered to the voting public, in a way that orchestrates and manipulates response. It's all about feeling an emotion; it's not about raw issues and logic.
In the book I give a lot of examples of rigging elections by, put it this way, guys like me -- I used to be a campaign manager. Once you are all said and done and deliver a message, two plus two equals whatever I want it to equal. The facts and sometimes even contorting the facts to lead voters to conclusions that may not necessarily, if you step back, make any sense -- but, in context, make all the sense in the world.
There's that aspect of it. Then there's just the more raw aspect of it, which leads up to the culmination of the book, which is the 2002 New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal.
Photo note: A sidewalk shot of the House of Terror in Budapest, a monument to the horrors of repressive sregimes, lest we forget, or think we are immune. From Wikipedia:
The museum has had its share of criticism, mostly from activists associated with the Alliance of Free Democrats, the Hungarian liberal party, but also from of activists from Hungarian Socialist Party.[citation needed] Some have argued that the museum portrays Hungary too much as the victim of foreign occupiers and does not recognise enough the contribution that Hungarians themselves made to the regimes in question as well.[1]Posted by Dakota at January 19, 2008 08:29 AM