The Silent Scream of Numbers (April 14, 2005)

[kster]

Thursday, April 14, 2005 by CommonWonders.com
The Silent Scream of Numbers
The 2004 election was stolen — will someone please tell the media?

by Robert C. Koehler

As they slowly hack democracy to death, we’re as alone — we citizens — as we’ve ever been, protected only by the dust-covered clichés of the nation’s founding: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
It’s time to blow off the dust and start paying the price.

The media are not on our side. The politicians are not on our side. It’s just us, connecting the dots, fitting the fragments together, crunching the numbers, wanting to know why there were so many irregularities in the last election and why these glitches and dirty tricks and wacko numbers had not just an anti-Kerry but a racist tinge. This is not about partisan politics. It’s more like: “Oh no, this can’t be true.”

I just got back from what was officially called the National Election Reform Conference, in Nashville, Tenn., an extraordinary pulling together of disparate voting-rights activists — 30 states were represented, 15 red and 15 blue — sponsored by a Nashville group called Gathering To Save Our Democracy. It had the feel of 1775: citizen patriots taking matters into their own hands to reclaim the republic. This was the level of its urgency.

Was the election of 2004 stolen? Thus is the question framed by those who don’t want to know the answer. Anyone who says yes is immediately a conspiracy nut, and the listener’s eyeballs roll. So let’s not ask that question.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0414-28.htm

[OnTheOtherHand]

1. I always wondered if Koehler wrote the subhead

The text says, "let's not ask" if the 2004 election was stolen. The subhead says that it was. Put those together, you've got something that makes reality-based skeptics very unhappy.

Koehler asked some good questions here. He also promoted the unholy union of election integrity and exit poll pseudoscience. I wish he had been able to distinguish. Of course, the people who offered up the pseudoscience are more to blame than those who trusted them.

[Kurovski]

2. This forum's main concern is your happiness.

We so often fail you and other obsessive-compulsives, or whatever other title that may be applied to those exhibiting such behavior.

This is the context of the statement you strive to sow your doubt with:

"Was the election of 2004 stolen? Thus is the question framed by those who don’t want to know the answer. Anyone who says yes is immediately a conspiracy nut, and the listener’s eyeballs roll. So let’s not ask that question."

K&R.

[OnTheOtherHand]

3. no, here's the problem

I think that gratuituously alienating potential allies by earning a reputation for misinformation and hyperbole is a bad idea. Maybe I'm wrong -- I hope so. Just like I hope for a happy ending in Iraq, somehow. But either way, it isn't really about me.

[Kurovski]

4. I'm my own problem.

After watching you in action here for the past few years, I can't seem to muster any trust in you.

Have you ever posted in any threads at DU expressing your hopes regarding Iraq?

[OnTheOtherHand]

5. well, back at you

Facts don't seem to interest you; common sense doesn't seem to interest you; flame wars, maybe. Do you really take the premise that election integrity should be reality-based as a personal affront, and if so, why?

[Kurovski]

6. You don't own any of the things you mention.

You are not the arbiter.

You lost my trust long ago. Speaking of Iraq, we can recall how the administration took facts and reality and manipulated them in their own favor.

You appear to work to sow doubt about election theft more than you do to present facts. That is always the sub-text. This is of course only my opinion. I have not made a conclusive study of the matter.

I may be alone in this. So no need to worry about what one citizen/idiot thinks he's observed over the years.

[OnTheOtherHand]

7. right, the damage Jonathan Simon has done doesn't depend on me

But as long as you persist in obsessing about me, you will never figure that out. Yes, I regret that. Perhaps foolishly.