"as dirty an election as America has ever seen"

[thomryng]

As the last polling stations closed on the West Coast, exit polls showed Kerry ahead in ten of eleven battleground states -- including commanding leads in Ohio and Florida -- and winning by a million and a half votes nationally. The exit polls even showed Kerry breathing down Bush's neck in supposed GOP strongholds Virginia and North Carolina. Against these numbers, the statistical likelihood of Bush winning was less than one in 450,000. ''Either the exit polls, by and large, are completely wrong,'' a Fox News analyst declared, ''or George Bush loses.''

But as the evening progressed, official tallies began to show implausible disparities -- as much as 9.5 percent -- with the exit polls. In ten of the eleven battleground states, the tallied margins departed from what the polls had predicted. In every case, the shift favored Bush.

Source: Rolling Stone, article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Extensively footnoted and absolutely terrifying.

The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. (Josef Stalin)

Discuss.

Comments

[black-felt-hat.livejournal.com]

yeah baby. That's the way this game has been played, hence the need for ballots that cannot be tampered with and are counted in public. They stole the motherfu$$er.

[gislebertus.livejournal.com]

You know, this is the first time that I've actually entertained credence to that theory, which I'd always dismissed as sour grapes. This article was extremely compelling. I may end up putting it in my own journal.

[crosstherubicon.livejournal.com]

I listened to RFK, Jr's live show the other morning and heard the same spirit of concern and passion his father had. He's quite an amazing chap in his own right, having taken on a cause which was far from popular only 20 years ago - the environment. His show is called 'Ring of Fire'.

With the Bushs it's quite simple really. When Prescot Bush was doing business with the Nazis he knew damned well he was contributing to the deaths of his own countrymen. Even a Congressional investigation which vetoed his actions didn't stop him from rebuilding his public image and becoming pals with Nixon. When George Bush senior was appointed CIA director he lied about his past and later refused to answer questions about a rather shocking document linking him to an act of gross negligence in the assassination of JFK (google it). Then along comes Satan's Little Helper with all of the money, deviousness and downright moral corruption of his forebearers and you have the perfect recipe for deception, murder and arrogance.

This really is a 'Crime Family'. No different from the Giancanas or the Bonanos of this world. Their prime concern is the securing of their own stake in perpetuity.

All that grinning and rolling up of sleeves for the cameras doesn't change for a moment what G W Bush is - a mass murderer who frankly doesn't give, in your parlance, a rat's ass about anything outside of his own little clique of friends and family.

I will never tire of reminding people that in an interview regarding the execution of Karla Faye Tucker Bush lost his politician's brain for a moment and mocked the woman he had killed. He actually grinned at the thought of a woman begging for her life - he does a charming little impression of her begging for her life until he realises his interviewer is absolutely horrified. (Interview by Tucker Carlson).

His brother Jeb is no less a scourge.

The sooner American public life is rid of this mentally deficient, morally redundant family of thieves, murderers and megalomaniacs the better. God forbid the world entire should have to tolerate another Bush in the Oval Office. It would be a disaster for the US.

I mourn the day America did not get John Kerry.

[spasmsproject.livejournal.com]

As much as I like this article and detest Bush and the election, I have a problem with RFK Jr's article: he's previously presented another extensively footnoted article to RS, in which he posited that David Kirby's book Evidence of Harm was correct and that autism is caused by a conspiracy of pharmaceutical companies intent on keeping thimerosol in chidhood vaccines. Kirby relies on unreliable data, which has been proved wrong time and again, and RFK simply repeated the footnotes.

Footnotes are nice, but they're not worth a damn unless they cite true and reliable sources. So till I get a chance to do some more homework on this -- and as much as I want to believe it -- I can't put a lot of stock into it.

[zator.livejournal.com]

What? Corruption in politics? You must be joking.

As for "as dirty an election as America has ever seen", if you aren't thinking that worse things will happen in elections to come, you are kidding yourself.

I will also assert that all elections have this sort of intrigue about them, that there are people that are bought and sold to influence decisions. Your quote from Stalin also makes this assertion. The difference in this case is that it was so close, the pay offs actually made an impact, and that the information about these goings-on is so rampant in our day and age. Not to mention the person that you didn't want in office got in there anyway.

The more cynical side of me wonders if Kerry had gotten into office, and a similar article had been written, what your reaction would have been. Would you be just as angry, or would you have dismissed it as rhetoric?

[abadman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's number 2. We haven't had a legitimate presidential election in over a decade now. I wonder how many more it will take for folks to wake up.