Letters to the Editor
-
Looking backward
"So Walsh, Manjoo and their supporters here think the best thing to do is move on and focus on how to fix our electoral system and win future elections. Because we'll never be able to prove outright fraud in 2004, because we don't know for certain that it existed and because there may have been no criminal acts involved anyway, there's no profit in looking backward and risking alienating moderate voters by appearing petty or dishonest, especially when the Kerry campaign should have done a much better job in the first place."
If THAT were the case, I'd completely disagree with Walsh and Manjoo.
My position - and I think theirs - is that we should look back. Walsh points out a number of examples where Salon has been a leader in exposing election problems and voter suppression, each of which looked back.
However, their position is to put the truth ahead of the politics - to look for errors in claims.
What the heck is wrong with that? Do you want an error-filled case to go to the general public where it'll actually, for once, get attacked with accuracy by its opponents, and turn the issue of election wrongs into a 'boy who cried wolf' one which gives the republicans even MORE license to get away with the wrongs, because they know the public won't again listen any time soon to reports of wrongdoing?
I am disappointed by the many letters which criticize Farhad for being so completely wrong without any evidence.
We should put the truth first. If Farhad gets it wrong, then say how and expect him to correct it. I've seen many posts of people attacking him as having his mind made up that the election was not stolen, when it seems to me he's the one looking at the evidence to form his opinion, rather than just assuming the conclusion first and 'fitting the facts' around it - something that we so often criticize the right for doing.
I expect Salon to look back at 2004 and continue to investigate and report on the many problems.
They have done a lot of that, and more is needed.
-
Get a Shovel 'Cause We're Knee Deep in Dung Here
What the left hates most about the right and the right hates most about the left is the self-righteous posturing regarding their beliefs. Before Reagan galvanized the religious right, the left was far more self-righteous. Now it's just about a deadheat.
Letter writers, playing on that tired theme of liberals are beyond reproach, forget the notorious voter fraud committed by Democrats over the years by Richard J. Daley in Chicago, LBJ in Texas, and JFK in West Virginia. All told, there have probably been more votes by dead people for Democrats than Republicans. That doesn't make Ohio '04 or Florida '00 right, but it ain't the first-of-its-kind, end-of-the-world phenomenon most writers here are pretending it is. Where was all this concern after '00 was stolen? Did you curl back up in your sheltered worlds and go about seeking your own piece of the dream? Why not invest the passion your showing for a Rolling Stone article - whether right or wrong - that's a day late and a dollar short in actually doing more than complaining about a Salon response? Or is venting alone sufficient? If you're right, that article shouldn't make that much difference. Why pretend it does?
And all you knowledgeable http address prescribers who seem to know so much about what really happened, Where have you been for the past 2 years? Saving all that wisdom to prove a Salon writer wrong? Maybe you're worse than what you're criticizing. McBarton62 you're closer than the rest, but that doesn't get Walsh or the Salon readership off the hook.
The best thing about this site, unfortunately is the art direction. It's the best looking, and easiest Internet magazine available. The content, which consists of a few able columnists, could mostly be patched together from someone's garage. The rest of the Dear-Abbyesque, celebrity worship, what's my favorite stupid TV show content, and the huge volume of letter writers responding to such drivel is exactly why we're in the mess we're in.
Democrats aren't in a state of crisis because an election was stolen, if that's the case, they're in trouble because they've been running on empty for years. What's their agenda now? The traditional hawk Murtha has a better plan than 3/4 of the rest of the party. How sad is that? Most of them gave Bush the power to rule with unitary power. That wasn't caused by Ohio or Diebold. What if Kerry did win on appeal. Then what? He was for the war before he was against it before he decided to stay the course and seek an honorable peace, which means continuing it.
And those stupid book review excerpts about Christian Nazis and pieces like Laura Miller's Why the NY Times Top 100 Literary List Sucks are more about drama than substance. For a while there, inspired by a Salon author, letter writers were hauling out the MSM acronym, as if this site hasn't become a mainstream outlet. Don't kid yourself kiddies, the main area of focus of this site is thoroughly mainstream if you subtract Blumenthal and Coles, and one or two pieces now and then by other writers. And when an issue like this appears, it's obvious, much of the reader base is willing to scapegoat others to bolster their own standing. How about coming up with better ideas? It's just what the Democrats need now, not a flock of crybabies.
-
When the Republicans steal the 2008 election, too...
... will Joan Walsh once more assign Farhad Manjoo to tell us it didn't happen again?
I get that addressing the truth would be nothing short of apocalyptic, but what choice is there? Post-democracy America sucks.
-
Election Reform in 3 simple steps
1. Eliminate the electoral college - don't need it anymore. That goes away, this entire problem goes away. So does Red state vs. Blue state. All of our votes need to count equally, which they currently do not.
2. Establish a national Voter ID and election board for federal level elections. If the local yokels want to run their little election-manipulation parties, at least restrict it to the state and local levels, so they're crapping in their own kitchen. One local party-loyal pissant should not be able to throw an entire national election (as Blackwell did - if you don't understand this, its back to statistics class for you).
3. Establish a national voting-rights standard, allowing for vote-by-mail (with return postage included) and an online method. This idea raises hackles with every idiot with a mouth, until they realize the IRS has been doing this successfully for years, with time-sensitive processes.
Let's cut the partisan hackery out of the system completely, at least at the national level. We have no business 'monitoring' any other country's election system until we repair our own broken system. The ultimate result of making these changes will be the realization of a wonderous new concept: Democracy.