You people who blame Gore and Kerry for the losses in 2000 and 2004 are conservative "journalists" wet dreams. You fell for the shit they fed you.

You see, the conservative movement is much more organized than we are. They are on the same page. They feed people the same shit over and over and over again until even the liberals believe their candidates are dumber than George Bush. I can see many of you fell for it.

On the other hand, the liberal movement to get candidates elected can be summed up by the discussions amongst liberals that we have here. We bring knives to gun fights. Then we hand the knife over to the enemy so they have a knife and a gun. Then we are left with our dicks in our hand.

But we're fair and objective damnit!

You're wrong. Kennedy links throughout his article.

Mark Crispin Miller says the election was stolen, and seems to document it; Manjoo says Nuh Uh.

Kennedy says the election was stolen, and seems to document it; Manjoo says Nuh Uh.

Surely you have another voice we can hear from? I tend to skip Manjoo's writings as not much different from what I can find in the mainstream. Can you not find another viewpoint than this apparently reflexive naysayer?

And will someone please tell me why there has never been documentation of votes for Bush being turned into votes for Kerry? Gee, I thought so. Crooks! Voting is a joke these days. If you want your voice heard in Washington, become a CEO.

It's easy to describe my attitude toward Farhad Manjoo's response to RFK Jr.'s Rolling Stone opening-of-the-public-debate on election protection: "I disagree with what you say, but I defend your right to say it." That should be part of the response of any freedom-loving person, for without the freedom to be wrong there's no freedom at all. Totalitarians highly value their intense commitment to "truth" and commitment to stamping out "falsity." Sadly, we are hugely behind in this public education area, and the consequences are apparent all over the place.

Manjoo continues in the tradition of one "school's" de facto rule regarding election protection: If there's any plausible reason for it, ignore the arguments, facts or inferences that it's fraud. (or even that it's just an inaccurate result, though no one wanted it to be inaccurate specifically).

The enormous problem with this is that if someone IS going to attack the election process (and there's enormous motive and stakes to do so) then they are highly likely to choose a method for which there's a plausible innocent explanation. They would do this of course in order to avoid getting caught and make the election seem legitimate.

An election rigger or hacker wants, probably more than anybody, to create an impression that the false is the true. Given that lies must appear as truth, riggers or hackers MUST cover their tracks with plausibility and secrecy or some combination thereof. They are going to steal votes in ways that appear, to Manjoo and election officials in this particular school of thinking, to be innocent "glitches" or random glitches were both sides got hit about "equally" or, in any event, they would rationalize that "there's not enough evidence to change the result."

Under the Manjoo school of government-thinking, there's a sort of enforced naivete centered around denying that anybody would want to control a county or even the world's sole military superpower and wealthiest country simply by moving some voting machine electrons around.

This naivete is like having a gorgeous wife and denying that anyone would ever cheat "regarding" that wife. It suggests that this enforced naivete is strong enough to overcome both good sense and knowledge of human nature. One could suggest, although I in reality do not with regard to Mr. Manjoo, be more aggressive and question Manjoo's love for his country, just as one might question the love for one's spouse if one was indifferent about the threat of the spouse cheating AS WELL AS NAIVE about the signs of an affair, all of which are readily denied and rationalized as being innocent. (oh honey, just some smeared lipstick, hot weather today...)

Given all of world history and its sagas and hijinks bids for control, the only rational response is to call for a full investigation, and not just by the government, but by a funded group of outside activists, academics and attorneys. The government, in administering elections, has a profound conflict of interest in presiding over the determination of ITS OWN legitimacy, and to then, on top of that, have the goverment INVESTIGATE the bona fides of its own legitimacy via election is just too much insanity to bear, once one is clear about the precise context here.

The key is that all of the plausible explanations Manjoo offers don't add up to anything, because the (most likely) multiple fraud attempts will almost surely attempt to pass themselves off as legit. Used car dealers don't rip you off by trying to sell you something that looks and feels like a bad car! it looks good and there's EVIDENCE that it's just fine!

So, throughout this article, Manjoo establishes a profound misunderstanding of elections when he repeatedly cites what he thinks are plausible explanations for various election irregularity, and then MOVES ON, as if the plausibility of the explanation proves that the event is not fraud. It most decidedly proves nothing of the sort.

Since Manjoo cited Democratic Underground and linked to it, here's a more specific inside link to a discussion regarding this article that I started:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=431251&mesg_id=431251

gene says:

"No one has mentioned the fact that Manjoo amply lays out all his sources with connecting links (he even warns you when the file is huge) so that you can verify his sources, and at the same time Kennedy does no such thing."

Yet when I read the RS article, I found every page thoroughly footnoted, over 200 notes in all. Did gene read the article, or just hop on the first cart going in the direction he liked?