The always unpopular reality check...

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

---SNIP---

All this optimism is built upon a foundation of demonstrably false assumptions, revealed in the rhetoric of the campaign -- assumptions of which Democratic Party officials and Democratic voters might be readily disabused if they bothered to soberly reflect upon the most recent presidential elections and upon evidence that is plainly before them.

However, because these Democrats and progressives apparently prefer their blissful ignorance, they will likely be smiling all the way to a crushing disappointment in November.

These are the fatal assumptions:

* Those who wish to vote for the Democratic candidate will be able to do so.

* The votes cast for the Democratic candidate will all be counted, and counted correctly.

* Media coverage of the campaigns will be transparent and unbiased.

* When informed of the issues, the people will vote according to their convictions and interests.

* The Republicans will play by the rules and will gracefully accept the people’s decision.

These assumptions were false in 2000 and 2004, and demonstrably so. And they are false today. Yet the Democrats and their supporters by and large conduct their campaigns in the unsupported belief that this time the contest will be open and fair.

Even though the falsehood of these assumptions has been obvious and unequivocal, the failure to face and deal with them cost the Democrats the past two presidential elections. Unless the party wakes up and acts decisively, it might well cost the Democrats the next election. For, as Dr. Phil correctly instructs us, “you can not change what you do not acknowledge.”...


Source: http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2950.shtml

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

1. A bit off topic, but Dr. Partridge got some interesting replies...

...to his essay on Mormonism from last month for anyone who's interested. This is an excellent blog:

http://www.crisispapers.org/features/ep-blogs.htm

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

2. Here's a good piece ...

...on the continuing election fraud problem in the U.S.:

---SNIP---

The facts are as follows:

In 2004 Bush far exceeded the 85% of registered Florida Republican votes that he got in 2000, receiving more than 100% of the registered Republican votes in 47 out of 67 Florida counties, 200% of registered Republicans in 15 counties, and over 300% of registered Republicans in 4 counties. Bush managed these remarkable outcomes despite the fact that his share of the crossover votes by registered Democrats in Florida did not increase over 2000, and he lost ground among registered Independents, dropping 15 points. We also know that Bush "won" Ohio by 51-48%, but statewide results were not matched by the court-supervised hand count of the 147,400 absentee and provisional ballots in which Kerry received 54.46% of the vote. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio the number of recorded votes was more than 93,000 greater than the number of registered voters.

More importantly national exit polls showed Kerry winning in 2004. However, It was only in precincts where there were no paper trails on the voting machines that the exit polls ended up being different from the final count. According to Dr. Steve Freeman, a statistician at the University of Pennsylvania, the odds are 250 million to one that the exit polls were wrong by chance. In fact, where the exit polls disagreed with the computerized outcomes the results always favored Bush - another statistical impossibility. .

Dennis Loo writes, "A team at the University of California at Berkeley, headed by sociology professor Michael Hout, found a highly suspicious pattern in which Bush received 260,000 more votes in those Florida precincts that used electronic voting machines than past voting patterns would indicate compared to those precincts that used optical scan read votes where past voting patterns held."

There is now strong statistical evidence of widespread voting machine manipulation occurring in US elections since 2000. Coverage of the fraud has been reported in independent media and various websites. The information is not secret. But it certainly seems to be a taboo subject for the US corporate media. . . .


Source: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0813-29.htm


We need to somehow get this problem "front burner" attention if it's ever going to be solved -- it certainly won't go away by ignoring it.