Baltimore Chronicle Book Review of Millers' Fooled Again(on election theft

[papau]

http://baltimorechronicle.com/2005/122105Betz.shtml
The Baltimore Chronicle
BOOK COMMENTARY:
A Government Hijacked
Reviewed by William E. Betz
Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them)
by Mark Crispin Miller
364 pages; New York, Basic Books, 2005; $24.95 hardback

The basic premise of this book is extremely painful to admit in spite of the overwhelming proof: Our government has been hijacked by undemocratic forces that manipulated election results to reinstall the Bush administration.

There is no joy in this book. It documents in excruciating detail overwhelming evidence of the broad-ranging election fraud that took place in the United States in connection with the 2004 national election. Unfortunately, the reaction of the typical naïve American to the fact that the election was stolen by the right-wing Republicans who are currently in power in this country has been an insistent disbelief. The indisputable facts have been either roundly disputed or assiduously ignored by the mainstream print and broadcast media, and the proponents of this ugliest of truths have been relegated to the status of tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists.

The subject of this book is self-marginalizing. It utterly destroys the reflexive "It can't happen here" response of those of us who refuse to believe that it HAS happened here. I say "those of us" because acknowledgement of the basic premise of the book is the most revolutionary of thoughts for anyone who has learned to believe in the sanctity of our electoral system, and the basic premise is extremely painful to admit in spite of the overwhelming proof: Our government has been hijacked by undemocratic forces that manipulated election results to reinstall the Bush administration, an illegitimate administration initially installed by a Supreme Court decision that invalidated the results of the 2000 election, an administration dedicated to world domination and the destruction of American democracy, the U.S. Constitution and the individual rights that made this country the envy of striving people throughout the world.<snip>

Why do we refuse to believe that it can happen here and, indeed, that it has happened here? The reason is that the inevitable conclusion that American democracy has been fatally compromised can lead to only one reaction: and that reaction is action. "And what if it's true?" people ask. "What can we do?" Indeed, what can we do? Can we go on as before? Certainly not. Can we ignore it? No. (Only the press can ignore it.) We as citizens have several options: vote the bastards out, have them removed by impeachment, or take up arms against them. Yet if elections, with the help of Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S and the other private machine proprietors and counters of votes, are permanently fixed, the first option is eliminated. In that case, we are truly doomed.<snip>

<snip>The American spirit is optimistic. We believe in the goodness of our government and its people. We believe that people who vote differently from us still play by the same rules. We are willing to endorse the results of elections that result in the election of candidates we did not support. This is the essence of democracy. This is also the fundamental weakness in our ability to acknowledge exactly what went on in 2004. The inescapable and terrifying fact is that the right-wing NeoCon branch of the Republican party, which includes religious and corporate interests that are motivated by something other than democracy, does not play by the rules. This was obvious in Florida in 2000, when Republican functionaries and activists and Bush campaign workers and PNAC suporters converged on state offices to force a halt to the vote recount. To them it was a game. It was the same game Segretti and Rove & Co. developed while they were in college, pretending to pursue an education they never received. And the only rule in this game is that there are no rules, that the ends always justify the means. If the preferred candidate is elected or installed by any means, then it doesn't matter how he gets there.

...if the Busheviks are inclined to steal elections or manipulate the vote counts, or suppress the vote, or engage in any kind of election mischief, their justification is that they are only doing what their opponents do--or would do, if they could get away with it. This is the essential justification in the minds of the people who are coldbloodedly destroying this country--to save it.

Miller hits the nail on the head in describing how Bush supporters, in this instance, and right-wing activists in general, are able to perpetuate their "dirty tricks" and how they are able to justify their activities in their own minds. The key is projection. Like lawless psychotics throughout history, the Busheviks and Republican evil-doers are able to persuade themselves that they are only doing what their opponents always do, are planning to do this time, and will or would do in the future if they, the defenders of liberty, let down their guard. They are right and their opponents are wrong. They are, they truly believe, motivated by higher values, and their opponents, conversely, are motivated by selfish interests. The Bushevik true believers "project" onto anyone who disagrees with them the same qualities and motivations that they themselves possess. Therefore, if the Busheviks are inclined to steal elections or manipulate the vote counts, or suppress the vote, or engage in any kind of election mischief, their justification is that they are only doing what their opponents do--or would do, if they could get away with it. This is the essential justification in the minds of the people who are coldbloodedly destroying this country--to save it.

We can't believe the election was stolen because it is too painful to admit. The co-opted press has dutifully fallen in line because it has been taught that to challenge this administration is to invite retaliation. Besides, it is now part of the corporate elite, and has other interests. A primary interest is going along to get along, not to upset its own comfort level. It is still "embedded," in every sense of the word, and promises to remain embedded. There are facts that exist, however, and facts will continue to be promulgated on the Internet and elsewhere. But the truth-tellers who actually care about facts and the truth will, by the same token, continue to be marginalized. Why? Simple: they do not control the debate.<snip>

[JanusAscending]

1. I think I'll buy this one, and PASS IT AROUND!!!

rscommended for greatest page.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

2. Yeah, man. Right on.

right on

[OffWithTheirHeads]

3. K&R

[BadGimp]

4. this is encouraging

I liked the review so much I wrote a thank you email to the author.

This War on our Freedoms will require a fight unlkie any this nation has ever seen. The real challenge is "they" have the reigns of power and the media control required to keep thisunder wraps for this long and longer.

I was struck while reading the review and reflecting on Mark Crispin Miller's book that we have no choice but to take bold and decisive action, and take it now. To not act is looking more and more like an unacceptable option.

[librechik]

5. please let the media in your town know they should review this book

Mark says the press is avoiding it like the plague--

Send copies if you can afford it! NYT, are you there?

[Stand and Fight]

6. Excellent Review... n/t K&R

[druidity33]

7. excellent review...

anyone catch that the auhtor (Betz) was on the Marianas Islands until 2000? Wonder if he has any thoughts on Abramoff, Delay, et al...
K & R


...little bathroom magnets...

[cyberpj]

8. Could DU make this happen? DE has only 3, so I'm willing to do DE....

From the review:

"This book belongs on the desk of every Congressman in this country, for every one of whom it should be required reading. But comfort, unfortunately, has also become a principal value of our elected national representatives. So they will not read it. They will not learn the painful truths that the author exposes, proves and insists be recognized. But there is, thankfully, the occasional John Conyers, and the occasional hero who will see and acknowledge the truth when it bites him in the nose. Let's hope one or two get bitten so we can reverse the disastrous course this country has taken without further delay."

[Zan_of_Texas]

9. MCM was on The Monitor last night. Listen online.

He was good.

Runs from about the 20 minute mark to 45 minute mark. If you have Real One, you can listen online. Or, you can download.

The Monitor
KPFT
Houston

Archive: http://archive.kpft.org
Monitor Jan. 1

Mark Crispin Miller was followed by Dave Berman of Eureka, CA re grass roots organizing on election reform.

[blm]

10. Press is avoiding it like the plague.....or anthrax?

We will never have a REAL election in this country until we have a REAL NEWSMEDIA.

[lfairban]

11. There's more:

Salon Review

Basic Book Review

Mother Jones Discussion of this topic

More at Google

[nicknameless]

12. Salon, Mother Jones & Basic Book ALL went reich-wing on the issue.

Link to DU discussion of Farhad Manjoo's screed:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=401618

The evidence of election fraud in 2004 was overwhelming, even according to the GAO report.

[papau]

13. MCM's letter to Salon on the Manjoo fake book review - a good read

A reply from Mark Crispin Miller

It should come as no surprise that I was not much pleased by Farhad Manjoo's attack on Fooled Again. Manjoo charges that my book presents "no proof" that Bush & Co. committed vast election fraud last year. In fact, the evidence in Fooled Again is both abundant and precise; whereas Manjoo's review itself presents no evidence to back its central accusation. "Miller's many suggestions of fraud dissolve under close scrutiny," writes Manjoo--who then comes up with just one trivial and dubious example: my passing reference to a certain fishy bloc of pro-Bush ballots cast (or not) in Ohio's Miami County on Election Day. Manjoo treats this mere aside as if it were the basis of my argument, devoting two whole paragraphs to a laborious rebuttal. Meanwhile, he cites none of the extensive evidence that Fooled Again includes.

Indeed, Manjoo himself admits the comprehensiveness of my research: "To make his case, Miller cites hundreds of news accounts, online reports and videos, and postings from sites like Democratic Underground." And yet your readers could not know that Fooled Again includes, along with such a careful overview, much new information on Bush/Cheney's global frauds, from the computerized purge of Democratic voters from the rolls in Summit and Stark Counties in Ohio, to the pre-election break-ins at Democratic offices in Akron and Toledo (the thieves stole only those computers that contained election data), to the myriad statewide drives to disenfranchise black, Hispanic and Native American voters, to the stealthy criminal shenanigans of Sproul and Associates, which deftly disenfranchised countless would-be Kerry voters in at least half a dozen states across the country (a ploy that cost the RNC over 8 million dollars), to Bush/Cheney's grand subversion of the huge vote cast, or intended, by Americans abroad (a stroke that likely disappeared at least two million Kerry votes). The evidence of all such perfidy, and plenty more, is solid, copious and easily available, despite Manjoo's bizarre insistence that there's nothing there. (Indeed, I found some of that evidence in his own pre-election writings, which is why I thank him warmly on p. 349 of Fooled Again.)

Manjoo tries to build his case by lauding Mark Hertsgaard's attempt, in the latest issue of Mother Jones, to cast doubt on the "theory" that Bush/Cheney stole the election in Ohio. (Manjoo repeats Hertsgaard's canard that Fooled Again deals mainly with the fraud committed in that state.) I take no pleasure in reporting it, as Hertsgaard is an old friend of mine, but that piece too is full of holes. Those points of his that Manjoo finds especially compelling are in fact untenable.

First, Hertsgaard avers that Sherole Eaton, a Democratic whistle-blower in Ohio's Hocking County, told him that she really "{doesn't} know if there was fraud" committed there--a claim that Eaton has indignantly denied. (Her words were taken out of context, she complained to Mother Jones: "I suggest that you assign someone else to write an article on the same subject without any slant.") Manjoo also seconds Hertsgaard's argument that there was certainly no fraud in Warren County--where a sudden "terrorist alert" allowed officials to eject reporters from the premises before the votes were counted. (Warren was among the last Ohio counties to report their tallies on Election Night.) Hertsgaard bases his contention on the say-so of "a Democrat" who told him that that "terrorist alert" was not suspicious. But Hertsgaard fails to note the FBI's denial, on Nov. 3, that there had really been a terrorist alert, nor does he tell us that the plan to sound that false alarm had been in place for some nine days. (Both stories were reported in the Cincinatti Enquirer.) Hertsgaard also fails to mention two eyewitnesses who claim that, after the "alert," ballots were improperly diverted to an unofficial storage site managed by a GOP operative. (Hertsgaard was told about those witnesses by attorney Bob Fitrakis, but evidently did not try to reach them.)

Both Manjoo and Hertsgaard have dismissed my book as an extended exercise in wishful thinking by a diehard partisan, portraying themselves as skeptical, hard-headed journalists, devoted only to "the facts." But it is they who are the partisans; for in their staunch refusal to perceive the glaring evidence of fraud, they are merely echoing the tense accommodationism of the over-cautious Democratic Party. In other words, they claim to see "no story" in last year's race because the Democrats (with all too few exceptions) claim there isn't one--a sort of faith-based journalism every bit as dangerous as the kind that has us fighting in Iraq. Surely we must base our civic conduct on reality itself, and not on what the stars of either party claim "reality" to be.

This brings me, finally, to John Kerry's role in the far right's ongoing struggle for dominion. Manjoo begins his rant with a sarcastic take on the brief controversy over my exchange with Kerry, in Manhattan on Oct. 28, on the theft of the 2004 election. Manjoo hints that I was lying about Kerry's claim that he believes the race was stolen, as Kerry's office had denied we ever had that conversation (and, of course, whatever Kerry says is true). If Manjoo were a less partisan reporter, he would have noted Robert Parry's article, posted on Consortiumnews.com on Oct. 29, revealing that Jonathan Winer, a longtime adviser to the senator, confirms that Kerry has suspected all along that last year's race was stolen, but never said so, fearing general ridicule. "'The powers in place would have smashed him,' Winer said."

But this is not about John Kerry's image, any more than it's about the sales of Fooled Again, or about Salon's political position, or Farhad Manjoo's or Mark Hertsgaard's career. It's about the mammoth threat confronting this republic, which will not last if we continue to ignore the scandal of last year's election. If anyone should be attacked, it's those extremists who conspire against American democracy, and not those citizens who try to talk about it.

-Mark Crispin Miller

[nicknameless]

14. Thank you for posting MCM's response.

I had gone looking for it on Salon's website but hadn't been able to locate it.

[ginnyinWI]

15. please read the whole MoJo article, then decide

I did and thought it was a fair treatment of the subject. Here are the last three paragraphs (boldface is mine):

Why Was It Even Close?

In the end, reasonable people may differ about the strength of the skeptics' case. Personally I came away persuaded there was indeed something rotten in the state of Ohio in 2004. Whether by intent or negligence, authorities took actions that prevented many thousands of citizens from casting votes and having them counted. The irregularities were sufficiently widespread to call into question Bush's margin of victory. This was not a fair election, and it deserves the scrutiny skeptics have brought to it. They shouldered a task that mainstream media and the government should have assumed—and still should take on, especially since some key questions can only be settled by invoking subpoena power.

Yet it remains far from clear that Bush stole the election, and I say that as someone who has written that Bush did steal Florida and the White House in 2000 (and who—full disclosure—is friendly with skeptics Miller and Wasserman). First, some of the most far-reaching acts of potential disenfranchisement, such as the purging of voter rolls, were legal—which is why one lesson of Ohio 2004 is that voting systems throughout the nation need fundamental reform. Second, even if Kerry had won Ohio, the national vote went to Bush by 3 million votes. Ohio would have given Kerry the presidency by the same unholy route that Bush traveled in 2000 and that led so many Democrats to urge, rightly, the abolishment of the Electoral College. Third, the skeptics' position is weakened by the one-sidedness of their arguments and their know-it-all tone. They have a plausible case to make, but they act like it's a slam dunk and imply that anyone who doesn't agree with them is either stupid, bought, or on the other side—not the best way to win people over.

Meanwhile, the focus on vote rigging distracts from other explanations for the 2004 outcome and, more importantly, from what Democrats need to do differently in the future. Paul Hackett, the Iraq combat veteran whose congressional bid is covered elsewhere in this issue, suggests an answer. Hackett, who made no bones about his disdain for Bush and the war, nearly won a district that in 2004 chose Bush over Kerry 64 to 36 percent. Lesson: Democrats can do well, even in staunchly Republican areas, if they give people a reason to vote for them—an unapologetic alternative. Do that in 2008, and the election won't be close enough to steal.

[nicknameless]

16. No. The evidence of election theft in 2004 is OVERWHELMING.

The level of fraud was far beyond that in 2000. Those who think that a nod to the truth about 2000 is a way to duck the truth of 2004 are sadly mistaken.

Saying that the case of those, who are convinced that the theft occurred, is weakened by their assuredness is to say that truth and overwhelming evidence weakens one’s case.

To buy this crap, you’d have to believe the reich-wing numbers. This idiot even says that * won the popular vote. Just looking at Alaska, over 100,000 more votes were tallied than the number of actual voters registered.

Further deconstruction of Hertsgaard repuglican hooey can be found at: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5129040

There is no point in attempting to “win over” people who persist in denying the truth, for whatever their agenda might be.

The truth is overwhelming and can be presented on its own merits to those who are interested in preserving our republic and what’s left of our democracy.

[ginnyinWI]

17. but it matters a lot how you present the evidence

As that last part that I boldfaced said, you have to present facts in such a way that they can not be dismissed as mere partisan rhetoric. You have to be extremely clear, and your sources have to be beyond refute.

MoJo is not saying that MCM's points aren't valid, but is questioning the way they are presented. You can't include any assumptions or leaps of the imagination. As with a good criminal prosecution, every scrap of evidence must be true and verifiable, and at this point we just don't have enough of a body of evidence to go forward in that manner.

[TayTay]

18. That's why this will go nowhere

There is no point in attempting to “win over” people who persist in denying the truth, for whatever their agenda might be.


A real campaign tht aims to make actual change in how things are done is one that will repeat and justify the point over and over and over again, thousands and thousands of times until the point sinks in with those who don't start out believing in the cause. To divide people into those who are pure enough to believe and those who don't means that you will never have enough people to put together a movement that will actually make change. This type of arrogant and elitist attitude that divides the world into those 'in the know' and those who are 'stupid and should listen to their betters' is wrong.

Exactly who needs to be 'converted' to this cause in order to make change? Why haven't their minds been changed yet? How do you propose to talk about this with Mr. & Mrs. America if you can't even civilly talk about it on a left-leaning board?

[Mark_Crispin_Miller]

19. "Mr. and Mrs. America" get it

It isn't they whose minds are sealed tight on this issue. The book has done extremely well
at the grass-roots level, and not just among Democrats. It is, rather, the political establishment
that won't even discuss, much less investigate, what happened in 2004; and that establishment
includes the press, from the networks and the New York Times and CNN to Mother Jones,
The Nation and Salon. On this issue, all of them keep echoing the Fox News and National Review.

Hertsgaard charged that Fooled Again is somehow rancorously partisan—too hot for average folks
(like "Mr. and Mrs. America"). That's simply false, and itself a nugget of elitist horseshit.

[nicknameless]

20. It’s great to see your comments here, Mark.

I just downloaded an interview of yours from CanOFun. Excellent, as usual.
Thank you for all you do. It is so very much appreciated!

Sad to see any kind of uphill battle on a Dem message board. It shouldn't be that way. You’re fighting for everyone’s vote to be counted, yet end up taking heat from some of those who would benefit the most. ... How confounding.

[nicknameless]

21. The truth of election fraud is abundant and available to everyone.

By your own demanding and unreasonable standards, you must be considered an elitist because you’re not over on Free Republic right now, conducting an endless presentation of evidence that dubya is guilty of wrongdoing. You apparently think that the unconvinced are owed that. (Talk about "uncivil".)

People are responsible for themselves and for what they choose to believe, regardless of your demands otherwise.