The Resounding Silence Continues. How Much is Enough for the Media to Cover Votergate 2004?
http://www.opednews.com/wade_111904_silence.htm By Anthony Wade
Silence. That is all we continue to hear from our media. There was a time in America when the media would actually practice journalism. They would investigate. They would corroborate. They would scrutinize. In modern day America , this must be proving to be too daunting for our faux media. It seems to be easier to create news, based on what is fed to them. It must be far simpler to just accept what the administration says, instead of actually digging a little to find out if the facts coincide. The problem is that the American people deserve better. They deserve the truth, not parroting of created news stories. Votergate 2004 continues to swell all around us, yet the silence remains deafening. It is beyond silent, it is insulting.
When the cries first rang out from the Internet following the election there was just a sense that things did not seem quite right. Exit polls had clearly shown a Kerry landslide was imminent, yet in swing state after swing state, Bush tallies kept coming up on top. The truly bizarre thing was that in both Ohio and Florida , it was the heavy democratic counties that had not reported at the end and when they did come in, Bush actually gained votes in both states. These concerns fueled the heart of the American people to not just walk away this time. It led to ordinary people gathering data, creating spreadsheets, and analyzing results. Suddenly the cause grew, and more people got on board simply wanting to know what happened. The truth did not seem to be so much to ask. We looked to our media, and the response was silence. Stories about lockdowns in Ohio vote counting, Freedom of Information Act requests, and Congressmen finally asking for an investigation started to bring the story to the surface as Keith Olbermann addressed the growing controversy in prime time.
In response to this, we see the mainstream media still ignoring the largest story out there, the potential theft of a presidential election. We can see segment after segment about Scott Peterson, but no coverage for a stolen democracy. How much will it take for the media to wake up and serve our interests again? Every day there are more and more stories about obvious fraud and statistical impossibilities. Just today a research team at UC Berkeley reported that irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 - 260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in Florida in the 2004 presidential election. This study, conducted under the guidance of a PhD sociology professor, found a net gain of 81,000 votes for Bush in Broward County alone. Broward was one of the aforementioned democratic counties that came in late and yet swung for Bush. This is a scientific study using a multiple regression analysis accounting for multiple variables. This is not “tinfoil hat” theory, as the media would have you believe. The actual data and report can be found at,
http://ucdata.berkeley.edu /. Professor Hout stated today at the press conference, “The disparity in favor of the incumbent President Bush cannot be explained away by other factors. The study shows that counties that used electronic voting resulted in disproportionate increases of votes for the President. For the sake of all future elections involving electronic voting, someone needs to explain the statistical anomalies that we found in Florida . We’re calling on officials in Florida to take up this task and to take action now.”
Left unchallenged, does anyone really believe that President Bush’s brother, the current Governor of Florida will do anything at all? No, the only way is to exert enough pressure where he has to act. That pressure can certainly come from the citizenry, but it needs to also come from the media. This press conference occurred today, yet went unreported in prime time. It is insulting to the American people that the media chooses to ignore such a vital story.
The truly shocking thing is that this is not the only story about Votergate 2004 to arise recently and be ignored. Yesterday, Bev Harris of Blackboxvoting.org went to Florida to collect the information she requested through the Freedom of Information Act. Surprise, surprise, the officials were less than cooperative. First they tried to give Ms. Harris unsigned versions of the polling place tapes, instead of the real signed tapes, or even copies of the signed tapes. When pressed, they were told they could not have the real ones, or copies. Ms. Harris arranged to come back the following morning (today) to review the real tapes. When Ms. Harris and her crew showed up as arranged, they were dismissed from the premises and the warehouse was locked down. It was then that Ms. Harris noted that in the trash, were polling tapes! After having the police called on them, for representing democracy, they were able to compare the fake tapes with the signed polling tapes and guess what? They did not match and hundreds of votes from African American communities were off, always in favor of Bush and the republicans. This story can be found here,
http://blackboxvoting.org / but please scroll down until you get to the “ Volusia County on lockdown”.
Not enough yet? How about some testimony from real Ohioans about the rampant disenfranchisement they suffered at the hands of Bush whore Ken Blackwell? People made to wait for up to ten hours to vote. Minority communities provided with too few voting machines, while over 60 sat unused. See the following article about this:
http://nov2truth.org/article.php?story=2004111722175459... .
To see some quotes from real Americans who suffered these conditions, please see,
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/88... .
How about another analysis conducted by yet another PhD, Steven Freeman from the University of Pennsylvania ? Dr. Freeman did an analysis of the still unexplained exit poll discrepancy. The violent swings toward Bush in crucial states were analyzed and Dr. Freeman was able to determine that the probability of just the three swings in Pennsylvania , Florida , and Ohio occurring in the same election was 250 million to one. This analysis can be found here,
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/exit-poll-discrepancy... . Haven’t saw this on your evening news either?
What about these collections of fraud, which grow every day:
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=4300 http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/2004votefraud.html http://vote2004.eriposte.com /
http://www.votersunite.org/electionproblems.asp http://www.opednews.com/keefer_111504_readings.htm These are all recent developments. The Votergate 2004 story not going away, it is gaining momentum. Every day brings new revelations. Right now there are going to be recounts in New Hampshire and Ohio , yet there is no coverage from the media. There are additional stories daily about machine problems, voter fraud and statistics that defy logic, yet the media turns their collective heads and then sticks them in the sand. How much is it going to take for the pundits and talking heads to admit there is a story? Pretending that doctorate level citizens are wild-eyed conspiracy theorists is only proving that the media has little credibility left.
Even if the media truly believed the stories are not accurate, the fair thing to do would be investigate and prove such. There is nothing newsworthy of covering what the government wants you to and ignore what they do not want you to cover. In the run up to the Iraq War, we saw a media basically serve as a tool of the government. They trumpeted the Bush policies beat the war drums, instilled patriotic fever and bought into the WMD lies without so much as asking a question. In the aftermath, some mainstream media actually apologized for their non-journalistic zeal. They admitted they had lost their way, and as such, some of their credibility. They promised to return to serving the interests of the people again. Apparently, they have forgotten the lessons they claimed to have learned. Honesty and transparency from the media is what distances itself from government sponsored propaganda. That distance is closing rapidly. The resounding silence must be broken if we are to ever have faith in our media again.
Anthony Wade is co-administrator of www.ibtp.org, a website devoted to educating the populace to the ongoing lies of President George W. Bush and seeking his removal from office. He is a 37-year-old independent writer from New York with political commentary articles seen on multiple websites. A Christian progressive and professional Rehabilitation Counselor working with the poor and disabled, Mr. Wade believes that you can have faith and hold elected officials accountable for lies and excess.
Email Anthony: takebacktheus@yahoo.com
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