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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
dwg
Published Letters: 1311 Editor's Choice: 18
Dear Sirs:
I'm ashamed to read, in Salon, Mr. Manjoo's smug rebuttal to Robert Kennedy's articulate and
timely Rolling Stones piece about vote theft. This is a subject that has had virtually no MSM coverage, and yet Mr. Manjoo writes as if it is not just common knowledge but commonly and decisively pre-debunked.
Anyone who followed Senator Conyers brave investigation into the sinkhole that was Ohio voting in 2004 will expect a better analysis of Mr. Kennedy's many, many unanswered assertions. Just the illegal and squirrelly manipulation of the Ohio recount alone is enough to raise the hairs on the back of your head and get you interested all over again in the biggest little "debunked" story of our era.
I know when writing smells slick and perfunctory, as Mr. Manjoo's does here, and when there's a story that isn't getting its fair due, by far.
And it's not just in Ohio: I've seen tallies of the 2004 Florida vote counts that have some profoundly weird vote-flipping going on with optical scan machines, every last one of them to the benefit of our fair and balanced leadership.
I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Kennedy's opinion that, "nothing less is at stake here than the entire idea of a government by the people." I wonder if Salon might find it in its heart to be a little more attentive to the possibility that this too, not just Mr. Manjoo's patience, is in danger.
DWG
Manjoo writes:
"One has to wonder what, after all of this, Kennedy might have brought to the debate. There could have been an earnest exploration of the issues in order to finally shed some light on the problems we face in elections, and a call to urgently begin repairing our electoral machinery. Voting reforms are forever on the backburner in Congress; even the 2000 election did little to prompt improvements. If only someone with Kennedy's stature would outline this need."
Subsitute Manjoo for Kennedy and it sounds about right, don't you think?
The deluge of letters on Manjoo's pat dismissal shows the very real consternation out here, unreported, unexamined by any MSM, and now Salon too.
That's quality disservice.
If the dwindling minority of the country who support Bush and the Republican stranglehold on our government - including back-burning voting reforms - manage to sweep Congress again and beat another of the "sorry" Democratic presidential candidates, we'll just have to chalk it up to faith-based miracles, won't we? Because we will have strolled right past the moutain of small smoking guns, and consigned ourselves to the hall of mirrors that is, rightly or wrongly, the blogosphere.
It's the candidate's fault. It's the polls' fault. It's our fault for not trying harder. We'll get it right next time, or the next, or the next. No one can control the voting machines. Can't happen here. Just the Ukraine.
Nice job, Salon, if only.
Thanks for delivering a choice tidbit to the right-wing dream machine. And if you cynically think the article is a success because it's generated so much response - mission accomplished.
The source of the outpouring of sentiment against Manjoo's article is not sour grapes. It's the massive frustration, felt by so many, that an enormous crime, both unproven and unanswered, might occur again and again. Ill-assigned ballot boxes are thuggery, debatably; practiced large-scale electronic fraud is light years beyond. All over this country voting machines are being readied that, by design, have absolutely no accountability beyond their handlers' and manufacturers' integrity. That integrity is bona fide shit.
"Unproven claims of theft" don't undermine Democrats' credibility, petulance and dithering do. The Republican Congress didn't impeach Clinton because they thought he might have lied; they did it because they could. Re-read the litany of things done to curtail and shift votes - proven and not - and tell us again you'll get to the bottom of it. Then please, please do.
There's no "divide...on the left" other than the willingness to create one for point-counterpoint purposes. Whipped up debate is tiring, not the search for the truth. We can look for the answers to Ohio and Florida, but they won't come from Manjoo.
Who knows - we may already be a winner.
Wonderful article, astounding. I wrote in criticizing the recent Manjoo article on the 2004 vote and must say: this is more like it. Blumenthal's fresh and frank writing is one of the reasons why Salon really matters, and I thank him and Salon for it.
I recall a clear feeling during W's second inauguration that there was an Oedipal moment being writ hugely on the world - manifest destiny II as couched by a grotesquely triumphant teen. Icky.
Sydney Blumenthal is a national treasure. He connects the personal and the political to illuminate the petty means to a tragic end. Bravo.
anyone electing Cheney to run our foreign policy, much less our country, or electing Abrams, Perle, Feith, Wurmser and Gingrich to do anything at all, especially fan the flames of war. Animals, all of them.
Thanks to Sydney Blumenthal for another piece of astonishment. At least as we see the nation hurtling over the cliff, we can confirm who's driving.
Impeach Cheney, put the cabal out to pasture and turn off Bush's audio feed.
"Bombs over Beirut" (which is not in Iran or in a movie) is the subject at hand, and "the killing of civilians" the burning issue. Citizens, like sovereign nations, have a right to exist, and any human has a right to stand up for life and damn war. "Israel's indiscriminate bombing" is counterproductive, but moreso - just plain wrong. It's not an anti-semitic thing, it's merely appalling. While our own neocon creeps fan the flames (which is truly scary and criminal), many people wake up, indeed, to unnecessary bloodshed and want it stopped. Stop, Hezbollah - but stop, Israel, dammit too.
It's certain that there is much grotesque animosity toward Israel in the Mideast, and plenty vice versa. What's not obvious is whether Israel will ever understand that a portion of the ugliness might come from its own actions.
"Bullshit" is right.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
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