Recount 'em all!

Doesn't the name Richard Daley ring a bell with anybody in the media?

John Kennedy became president because Hizzonner da mayor stole votes for him in Cook County.  Richard Nixon knew that Daley stole those votes.  The only reason he didn't holler bloody murder is that he knew that his people had stolen votes for him in other states.

Stealing votes is a time-honored American tradition.  It used to be the Democrats who were very good at it.  But then we got religion.

Now stealing elections is primarily a Republican art. 

Here and there news of voting machine screw ups and other oddities in the counts keeps bubbling up.  (Via John Aravosis and Kevin Drum.)  And so far the news has two recurring points.

The screw ups benefited Bush.

A lot of the screw ups were in Florida and Ohio, the two states that throughout the whole campaign were expected by everyone to decide the election.

But we're assured by the New Pravda that the Washington Press Corps has made of itself that this doesn't mean Bush stole those votes.  And we're admonished that even to consider the possibility is to enter the territory of Roswell, the Grassy Knoll, and the CIA beaming radio signals into our fillings.

A typical bit of this condescension appeared under the byline of Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post recently.  I put it that way because so much of what comes out of DC lately is really a group project, written by committee at the tables of the finer restaurants in the nation's capital and it doesn't matter whose name or picture appears with it when it's published or broadcast.  Call it the Committee to Decide, Disseminate, and Enforce the Conventional Wisdom.  I realize there's not a funny acronym to made of that but I'm not as smart or quick-witted as Michael Berube.

Under Applebaum's byline the Committee blithely dismissed as paranoia any suggestions that the Bush Leaguers could have stolen any votes.  Why, gosh, said Applebaum for the Committee, how can you possibly doubt the electronic voting machines?  Do you doubt the reliability of your ATM machine?  Proving that her name should be Applesandorangesbaum.  John Aravosis at AMERICAblog cuts to the chase:

The big media told us that it was impossible that there was any problem with counting votes this election. I believe the word they used on ABC News, for example, was "conspiracy theories." And Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post today makes it very clear that there were NO voting irregularities because if they can count our money at the ATMs, then this proves they can count our votes (yes Anne, it proves they CAN, it doesn't prove they DO - I know I know, "nuance," that's so blue state of me).

As it happens, I do doubt my ATM's reliabilty.  It's a machine!  It's a computerized machine!  Machines and computers have a long and distinguished history of screwing up. That's why we check our bank statements!  That's why there are bank statements!

Bob Somerby was rocked back on his heels by Applebaum's stunning nitwittedness.

"There’s almost no way to be this daft," he says, "Unless you’re a Washington journalist!"

As Somerby points out, it's practically un-American to trust that the people in power have our best interest at heart, un-American to suppose that politicians and bureaucrats have honor, scruples, or any integrity when it comes time to defend their jobs.

The best reason, though, to suspect the Bush Leaguers stole votes isn't the news of miscounted votes.  Nor is it the discrepencies between the exit polls and the final results.  And it isn't any anomolies in the vote counts in Ohio and certain precincts in Florida.

Those are reasons, all right, but the best reason to suspect they stole votes is that they were quite openly preparing to do it before the election.

That's what all those lawyers were for.  That's what all the poll monitors were sent out to do or if not to steal votes than chase as many Kerry votes aways as possible, which amounts to the same thing.  That's why they talked so loud and so often about their concerns that Democrats were planning to steal votes.  It's called sleight of hand.  "Hey, look over there at that guy!  Is he stealing a vote?  Nevemind what I'm doing.  Don't watch my hand.  Look at him!"

In fact, we know they did steal votes in Nevada and in Florida.  All those new Democrats whose registrations those Republican hacks threw away?  And the voters in Florida Jeb Bush purged from the voter rolls?  What do you call it when you take away someone's right to vote?  You don't have to walk into the booth and snatch the ballott out of a person's hand to steal their vote.

It is strange to hear the supposedly very well educated gasbags of the media go on as if they'd never learned about Richard Daley and Mark Hanna and Tammany Hall in history class.

It is weird to hear people who by profession are supposed to be cynics pooh pooh any talk of Bush family connections to Saudi oil driving the foreign policy of either George Bush's administrations.

It was bizarre to hear them, both this time and when we went to war to save Kuwait's oil from Saddam in '91, dismiss out of hand the idea that the United States would go to war for something other than the most noble of reasons.  We've sent soliders to die to save banana plantations, for God's sake!

It was almost funny, except that it was maddening, to hear them scoff at anti-war colleagues' arguments that the most constitutionally mendacious man to occupy the White House since Richard Nixon was lying about the Weapons of Mass Destruction.

And it's spooky to hear them wave off any concerns that the election might not have been on the up and up, as if the driving political mind of this administration belongs to the ghost of Bob LaFollette and not Karl Rove.

They routinely refer to Rove as Bush's brain.  But then they proceed to "analyze" what Bush is up to as if it was Rove and not Karen Hughes who went home to Texas to spend more quality time with the family three years ago.

My feeling is that the election wasn't stolen.  Doesn't mean that votes weren't stolen somewhere along the line.  I just don't think enough were to tip the election.

I think this because apparently during the afternoon on Election Day the Bush Leaguers really thought they'd lost, and I figure they must have known how many votes they stole or were capable of stealing.

And because Kerry's people haven't been screaming about it.  The Kerry campaign knew the Republicans were prepared to steal the election if they couldn't win it fair and square.  That's why the Democrats had all their lawyers out on election day.

But it's just my feeling.  I don't really know.  No one in the media knows either.  Mainly because there isn't a good paper trail, thanks to Diebold and a whole lot of corrupt or stupid election officials of both parties.  (There is a paper trail, however, in those anomolous Florida precincts.  They used optiscan ballotts and some Democrats down there better be pushing to look at the paper.)  It is not tin foil hat time to think that maybe people who stole one election---and they did steal it in 2000, although more by making sure the votes weren't counted instead of stealing ballots.  Still, a whole lot of votes went missing in Broward County.  They probably would have stolen even more votes if they'd known it was going to be so close.  But Jeb Bush's minions had done a pretty good job of erasing Democrats from the voting rolls and they probably thought they had it in the bag.---it is not paranoid to think that such a crowd would have tried it again.

It is foolish to talk as if Karl Rove does not have a job.  It's foolish to talk as if the Republican Party is in the hands of the likes of Christopher Shays and the old, un-co-opted John McCain and not Tom DeLay.  It is foolish to talk as if there is no historical precedent.  The only reason to talk so foolishly is that you are a fool or you are announcing as openly as you dare that you are in the bag for the Bush administration.

So let's recount the votes.

It doesn't cost much.  It doesn't take much time.  It'll put everyone's minds at ease.

There is only one good reason to oppose re-counting the votes.

You know something the rest of us don't and you're afraid the outcome will go against your guy.

Comments

[brian stouder]

You should click on Kieth Olberman's blog at msnbc.com ("bloggerman"); he is keeping the 'we wuz robbed' faith over there (regarding the Kerry-Edwards '04 defeat), and on his "Countdown" show.

'Course, to paraphrase Ned in True Grit; Olberman questioning how they count in Florida and Ohio is mighty big talk for a four-eyed hack like him -

his Countdown show is based on the premise that they will present the 5 most interesting stories of the day...and as the show unfolds - on any one show you will see a progression of graphics such as "#5 - Scott Peterson's haircut" and then a commericial, and then "#5 - sports brawls", and then "#5 - Monday Night Football Hussies" etc etc....it's a fraud!! They will have numerous #5's, and numerous #4's, and so on.

We'll even grant them the short takes and funny news videos as not counting against the "5 most interesting stories" - but they seem to have show more about the 12 or 13 stories they found most interesting, and then they score them as being level-5 or level-4 stories.

This is picking nits, yes....but Olberman always annoyed me when I tuned past him at ESPN, and now he has me tuning away from my beloved msnbc - except when he's away on vacation!