As if there weren't enough reasons to not vote for him.

[theweaselking]

John McCain: Enthusiastic supporter of spam.

I guess my standard "all spammers must die" position is going to have to be revisited, before I get visited by the RCMP, hmm?

Comments

[zibacco.livejournal.com]

Its just too bad he'll win. The Republicans don't lose, not because they don't lose, but because they rig the system. They won't surrender power this time either.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

Rigging elections doesn't work in a modern society unless the election is nearly tied anyway. In which case it probably doesn't matter all that much - if it is that tied, it might just as well be decided by the weather.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The 2004 one was cheated by almost 10%. Worse, they use FPTP, meaning it only takes a relatively small amount of cheating in a relatively small area to swing the entire election.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

I can see how there would be suspicions of rigging since certain election locales were off-limits for election observers even from allied countries (my native Norway being one such who saw official observers being politely but firmly evicted from a couple locations, something unique so far in the western world). Still, I wonder who has arrived at the scale of the supposed cheating and how. If this was acknowledged outside small political sects, I would expect things to get very hairy both nationally and internationally. Like, "heads will roll" hairy.

Agreement on the current election system being vulnerable - even tempting - to cheaters. But at least there is a wide range of voting methods, from old-fashioned ballots to electronic voting machines from at least two competing brands, last I heard.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

#1: They arrived at the final number by comparing results in areas to exit polls. In places where there was a *paper* voting trail, exit polls matched voting results perfectly. In places where there was *no* paper voting trail, exit polls did not match voting results - being off by between 5 and 15%, in favour of the Republicans, *every single time*.

#2: "Competing brands"? All American voting machines are all made by either ES&S or Diebold.

ES&S and Diebold are *run by brothers*.

Both of whom have gone on the record as being partisan Republicans.

One of whom promised that his machines would give Ohio to Bush in 2004 if Kenneth Black (who oversaw the Ohio election AND who ran Bush's campaign in Ohio) would give them the contract to provide voting machines.

#3: "Like, "heads will roll" hairy."
You wish. First, *because there is no paper trail*, it's impossible to prove through anything but statistical analysis, and while the statistical analysis is unambiguous and unimpeachable, it's also *math* and this is *the US public* they need to convince. Three hundred million rabidly antiintellectual bigots, and you want to show them *math*?

Besides, the Democrats are cowards without a shred of spine, which means they'd never consider challenging the Republican version of the story and promulgated by Faux News. They won't even touch the torture thing!

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately the whole theory depends on two assumptions: a) The Republicans are incredibly arrogant, and b) the Americans are incredibly stupid. The second is a precondition for the first, as people tend to get very upset when they discover that arrogant people are, in fact, arrogant.

Now I know that mocking the States is Canadians' second to favorite pastime (after striking at each other with long, vaguely L-shaped clubs) but a quick look at, say, a list of the world's most educated countries will pull the rug out under the idea of "three hundred million rabidly antiintellectual bigots".

Once you shift to this more realistic background, the whole picture changes. If the two manufacturers of voting machines are indeed run by brothers, they may be more likely to be like Cain and Abel, given that they work in the same niche and still don't merge their businesses, saving costs and (not least) the number of potentially blabbermouthed underlings.

And the infamous promise from the boss of Diebold would be more likely to express confidence in the Republican candidate rather than the opposite. After all, a statement of confidence is naturally expressed publicly, while a promise to tamper with votes in a democracy would be given only in the most extreme secrecy and would never reach any of our ears.

Given the uproar over the 2000 election, and given that most mass media except the infamous Fox News and the financial papers are aligned with the Dems, would it really be that hard to drum up popular support for a federally mandated audit trail? With a landslide majority in congress and broad popuylar support, it would be hard for the states to argue against it without coming out in favor of rigged elections.

Of course, Americans COULD be dumb despite (or even because of) their extended education. That would certainly explain a lot. But I am loath to assume it at the outset.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

If the two manufacturers of voting machines are indeed run by brothers, they may be more likely to be like Cain and Abel, given that they work in the same niche and still don't merge their businesses, saving costs and (not least) the number of potentially blabbermouthed underlings.

Except that by remaining separate companies, they can "compete" with each other while maintaining a lawsuit-proof monopoly.

After all, a statement of confidence is naturally expressed publicly, while a promise to tamper with votes in a democracy would be given only in the most extreme secrecy and would never reach any of our ears.

...you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, do you.

This was a *private email* that got *leaked* to someone with a conscience, who made it public *despite the wishes of the guy who said it*.

given that most mass media except the infamous Fox News and the financial papers are aligned with the Dems

You're really, truly, absolutely delusional.

Fox News is directly associated with the Republican Party. They are a wholly owned subsidiary.

Every other major news organ is *a large privately owned corporation*, and any *actual* examination of bias consistently shows that while they're not nearly as bad as Fox, they're also not exactly friendly to the Democrats.

Look, start here, in 2002. (http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2177)

Then keep going.

There is no "liberal media bias". It, like the hordes of illegal immigrants collecting social security, the inefficiency and rationing of socialised medicine, and ZOG, are a boogeyman. A fake problem. A lie, created by conservatives, to scare people, and repeated only by the malicious and the shamefully ignorant.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

I think I was just called delusional by someone who earnestly believes there is massive - like, third world style - vote falsifying in the cornerstone of the alliance of democratic nations. AND, the planet's third most (or better) educated populace either don't notice or just plain don't care that their vote is discarded in favor of their boss. Uhm. No. That is outside consensus reality, meaning people won't believe it *even if you prove it*.

How about we test the predictive power of this - not how it explains the past but how it predicts the future. Nothing like a little scientific method! As the presidential election looms, there will be frequent opinion polls. At the time of the election, there will be exit polls. After the election, there will be official numbers. If the exit polls are roughly similar to the pre-election polls, but the official vote is decisively different in favor of the Republican, I will concede that massive tampering has probably taken place. If however the exit polls favor the Democrats with a last-minute boost while the official vote does not, then we will consider that the exit polls may have been tampered with instead. Does that sound fair and balanced?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Well, when you consider that:
A) the voting machines are trivially hackable
B) the voting machines have backdoors that were known about by the manufacturers and DELIBERATELY NOT PATCHED, according to the manufacturers' own internal documentation
and
C) the exit polls are public, their methodology is clear, they are not vulnerable to this kind of hacking, and there are many completely independent polls that are handled by wholly different groups?

Either:

the trivially hackable voting machines were trivially hacked, in the places where there is no backup to prevent this kind of thing.

Or:

Every single poll by every single group was deliberately tampered with, to the same degree, in the same way, for an *ineffective* purpose since the exit polls don't change the votes, and only in places where the hackable voting machines were used.


Oh, and: If the exit polls are roughly similar to the pre-election polls, but the official vote is decisively different in favor of the Republican, I will concede that massive tampering has probably taken place.

WHY HELLO THAR 2004!

This.

Has.

Already.

Happened.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

The 2004 election will convince me if we had this discussion in 2003. Remind me, I am an old man and my memory is not what it was.

Otherwise, I would recommend predictive power to be applied to the future whenever possible.

I'm trying to be gracious here. Honestly, the idea that "American elections have been rigged for a decade and people don't care" is right up there with "aliens ordered the execution of John F Kennedy" and "the lunar landings never happened".

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Explaining the past is ordinary proof. Predicting the future is extraordinary. If your theory has better predictive power than the voices in my head, I'll adopt it. Much good it does the poor Americans.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"Because it happened in the past, I'll completely disregard it. Happening before is not evidence of happening!"

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

Actually, that is the point I contest. Did "it" really happen, or something that is indistinguishable from it, when seen from a certain angle?

If it is not obvious, I treat you guys like you would treat a member of a faith healing sect. They will all assure you that they prayed for this guy who was half dead from cancer and now he is healthy as a hare! The guy is definitely there, and every account agrees that he was severely ill. But is the highly unlikely explanation really the only one? Or is it a rare constellation of unlikely but possible events that just LOOK like the real thing to those who already believe?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Magnus,

"Every news organisation independently faked every single independent test, but only where there were no paper backups *and* hackable voting machines, and always to the same degree in any given location across multiple tests" *is* the highly unlikely explanation.

And what you're looking for is, in statistics, not just a simple problem but a solved problem: an analysis of events to determine if the results you got really were random or not.

And they did that one, too.

There are two possible explanations:

#1: a series of random events caused a series of coincidences so unlikely that they're on the order of "all the molecules of air in a room simultaneously flow into one tiny corner of it", all of which favoured the Republicans and all of which happened on Diebold and ES&S machines with no paper trail. As in, not a single case of this on a paper ballot, and not a single case of it with a Diebold or ES&S machine that *had* a paper trail or a paper ballot backup.

#2: Hackable voting machines, which were deliberately made hackable by the maker, who was a staunch Republican, who promised that his machines would ensure Republican victory, were altered in favour of the Republicans in every case where a lack of paper trail made proving it more difficult.


Your argument appears to be "but Americans are so NICE! They'd riot in the streets if something BAD looked like it was happening" - and to that, I say you're an idiot, because not only do they not do so, they've repeatedly not done so, over and over again, in the face of offense after offense after offense.

American soldiers *take photos of themselves* torturing, raping, and murdering *civilians*. What happens? Two soldiers, who were featured in *only the photos widely disseminated by the press*, get dishonourable discharges. Torture, rape, and murder continue unabated.

And the American people *do nothing*.

You're deliberately ignorant of the facts. You're in denial about the nature of the media and the public in the USA, and you're telling me that "oh, it can't POSSIBLY be" because you're not interested in the numbers and not really capable of understanding them in the first place.

Which puts *YOU* in exactly the same position as the Americans I mentioned at the start: The evidence is all in the math. The evidence is clear, unambiguous, and unimpeachable. The evidence is freely available and the analysis can be done by anyone with a basic education in statistics.

And, because it's math, and math is "hard", you won't even consider it.

Just.

Like.

Them.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

Those bloodthirsty monsters are the reason you and I don't write Russian, or perhaps German - except we'd at best do so with typewriters. This nice world in which we are allowed to be rich and healthy and liberal and hate America is a world brought to us by the sacrifice of those bloodthirsty monsters, and they've been at it since my dad was just a boy. Oh, not all alone and singlehandedly - but mostly and decisively. Without the American soldier, pretty much all that we cherish would be trampled under the heels of men whose evil is far beyong your petty imagination. Ideologies so onedimensionally evil that you would throw away a novel about them for lack of realism. And it will still happen, if America ceases to protect the free world, because there sure is no one else willing to do it.

You can bet your pinky I wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of those guys, not even by accident. But it's because we're on their good side that we have elections at all, and that western civilization as we know it still exists.

But you don't believe that, do you? The containment and fall of Nazi Germany and its allies, the containment and dissolution of the Soviet empire - these things just happened without anyone needing to risk their humanity, their very soul (which you don't believe in anyway) to protect people like you and me.

This is why I find it hard to take anything you say at face value - we don't live in the same world. Your black is my white - or rather, I see a big white wall where you see a black dot. Why are so many Americans so quick to forgive Abu Ghraib, why do they look away from Guantanamo? Because they see the big white wall that shields them from a world of horror. It's dirty, it's bloodstained, but it is all that stands between them and the end of all they hold dear.

Or perhaps they're just intellectually and ethically lazy just like me. Who knows?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Ah, right, the "without America to show the way there would totally have never been anything good and everyone else would have just rolled over and died because only Americans were evil enough in the name of good to save us all lol" argument. Because what a bunch of fundamentally good people did *three generations ago* just totally excuses a whole lot of *evil* people right now, just because they came from the same country - and naturally, there's absolutely no way to *stop* fascists without becoming them. There's no way to *stop* rapists without being one. There's no way to *stop* genocide without committing it. Why? For no reason other than because you need to say so, in order to justify being a fanboy for monstrous people who do all the things you'd like to but are too cowardly to admit to.

What's next, the "You can't handle the truth!" speech?

The invasion of Iraq *created terrorists*.
Abu Ghraib *creates terrorists*.
Guantanamo Bay *creates terrorists*.

If it weren't for the so-called "protectors", there wouldn't be nearly so many people to need protection *from*.

You *are* intellectually lazy. You're a coward and an apologist. You're a cheerleader for the kind of torturer and rapist you wish you could be. You ignore the real world, real history, and real evidence whenever's it's convenient to support your worldview. You're a bigot who's never had a thought on ethics that wasn't filtered through a bronze-age cult first.

Take your OH JOHN RINGO NO sentiments and shove them up your ass. Until you're interested in talking about *real things* in the *real world* with *real facts*, and not simply dismissing the world out of hand because it doesn't match what you wish it was, you're wasting both of our times.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

See, there's another difference between us, luckily. I assume that you are a decent guy (actually I'm pretty sure of it from other things you do) who just happen to have been ingesting socialist propaganda, of which there is entirely too much floating around. You, in contrast, seem sure that those who disagree with you are rotten to the core, evil from the roots up, mentally deformed and powered by the worst available motivations.

If I truly filtered everything through my bronze-age (actually iron-age) worldview, I'd say you were possessed. But I prefer a more rational approach, namely that you've been drinking deeply from left-wing web sites like Dailykos and Huffingtonpost (there are probably many others I have not checked out). Looking at those snakepits of howling rage make me sick to my soul. But if you don't know you have a soul, I guess you would be able to enjoy that kind of maelstrom of condensed hate. Lately, you sound disturbingly like them. Nothing good can come from that.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

PS: "hate America"? Fuck you. Hate American *policy*, hate a lot of individual Americans, feel a grand contempt for the kind of attitude that lets the fraudulent elections, criminally negligent justice system, and people dying for lack of trivial medical treatment in levels unfound outside the third world pass almost without comment, sure.

But that's not "America".

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

Way to change the subject!

That's always a nice technique when you don't actually have an answer for the issues at hand.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

Also, thanks for the link. I'll need some time to see whether it fits with my previus life experience. There is also the small point that "conservative" here is "socialist" in the States, "freedom of speech" here is "blasphemy and pornography" there, and "sexual equality" here is "feminazism" there. I suspect something similar applies to you, which would color our perceptions somewhat.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

> Now I know that mocking the States is Canadians' second to favorite pastime
> (after striking at each other with long, vaguely L-shaped clubs)

Favourite pastime? Ghad, dude, staying busy enough that we can ignore the culture of fear, pitiful education, pathetic abortion of any kind of care for a society's members, rampant jingoism, kinder kuche kirshe devaluation of half the population, and crashing socioeconomic panic?

Mocking you? Jesus Christ, do you know how much easier it'd be to take pleasure in all my pasttimes (of which mocking the Stares is not one) if I could indulge in the kind of intellectual blinders you put on and freaking ignore them? And you think paying more attention to them or to your bullshit is a fun thing? What kind of fucked-up view do you have of people, that you think looking down on people grinding each other into the dirt is something people find fun?

Although, really, you've kind of answered that with everything you said...

[matgb]

a modern society

What in any way gave you the impression the US is a modern society? Its politics certainly isn't, there hasn't been a significant change in the method they use to elect people since the country was set up. Norway uses lists and has a proportional parliamentary system, including independent auditing of all counts.

The US counts by county, allots results by State and the auditing is done by elected state officials. There's significant evidence that Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 were partially rigged, and it's the closest swing states that matter.

Of course if the turnout is as big as some suspect it will be, all this is irrelevent as previous swing states should be solidly Democrat. Won't stop the republicans from trying methinks.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

Oh, the election system may be older than Mt Rushmore, but the US is a modern society in their level of technology and education. Meaning that people are likely to smell a rat. The old banana republic tricks with missing ballots and dead men voting won't work anymore. Not in the age of critical journalism. And if you have enough henchment to manipulate voting in several states, one of them will blabber while drunk, and someone will record it on their cell phone. (And aren't most techies liberals anyway?)

Again, I agree that the insane practice of allotting whole states to one party or another is a relic of a tragic past. I just don't think it is enough to fool most of the people most of the time.

[matgb]

Your optimism is cheering, but...

the age of critical journalism

You have looked at some of the US media outlets, right? Many many Americans believe Fox News genuinely is 'fair and balanced', and many more belive that if there's any rigging going on, its in favour of the filthy liberals.

aren't most techies liberals anyway

It's likely that a majority are, but most certainly not all of them—look at the Ron Paul supporters network for an example of many that aren't.

There is genuine evidence that Ohio was rigged using technology—I think the first proper research on it was by Kennedy in Rolling Stone, but my memory may be faulty and I'm off out.

Seriously, optimism is good, but the evidence is against you.

Many many people smelled a rat last time around, but that didn't actually make a difference—those with influence didn't care or wanted it to happen, and the media likes advertising revenue too much.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

I don't think my optimism is entirely misguided. We're talking about the nation that ensured that there are still reasonably fair and free elections on this planet, after all. I don't think such a thing comes down to a fluke, but a fundamental character of the populace.

Americans may be greedy egocentric hypocrites, by and large, but they would rather die than allow democracy to fade.

[gothpanda.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, if you wait a week he'll flip-flop like he has on every other issue.

[utmoonbog.livejournal.com]

Gotta love political catch-phrases.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I like that the (inaccurate) Republican catchphrase of yesterday is now the (accurate) catchphrase applied to Republicans today.

[utmoonbog.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately it isn't just applied to Republicans when they deserve it... it's applied to every major political candidate of any party at some point or another. And it tends to be so inaccurate most of the time that I stop listening to whatever someone is saying when they use it.