Was George Bush ever elected president?

It’s about time to remind you of what happened two years ago. The fact is that Diebold machines have been used for awhile now and they are not the only machines that can be hacked. Thom Hartmann presents evidence that George Bush was not elected president in 2004. The exit polls do not agree with the machine results. If it were true that the exit polls were very inaccurate, they would not be so skewed in one direction.

While all of this may or may not be evidence of vote tampering, it again brings the nation back to the question of why several states using electronic voting machines or scanners programmed by private, for-profit corporations and often connected to modems produced votes inconsistent with exit poll numbers.

Those exit poll results have been a problem for reporters ever since Election Day.

Election night, I’d been doing live election coverage for WDEV, one of the radio stations that carries my syndicated show, and, just after midnight, during the 12:20 a.m. Associated Press Radio News feed, I was startled to hear the reporter detail how Karen Hughes had earlier sat George W. Bush down to inform him that he’d lost the election. The exit polls were clear: Kerry was winning in a landslide. “Bush took the news stoically,” noted the AP report.

But then the computers reported something different. In several pivotal states.

Conservatives see a conspiracy here: They think the exit polls were rigged.

That was the talking point, anyhow. It wasn’t ordinary people like you and me who were saying this, unless they were repeating it out of ignorance. It was well-connected insiders who spread this story, people like Rush Limbaugh, who act as the administration’s disinformation ministers. People who are known to turn things around 180 degrees. People who fabricate and dissemble. People who will do anything to win. People who have no respect for America.

I can’t even imagine how people can know that they are being lied to constantly, and still trust those same people.

How to hack an election

BRAD BLOG has the story. You can also read this dKos diary entry or watch this video from FOX News, of all places:

And here is a security demonstration:

Slashdot right now…

Has Slashdot been hacked?

Politics: Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

Journal written by jZnat (793348) and posted by kdawson
on Sunday September 17, @05:40PM
from the disenfranchising-ohio dept.

jZnat writes, “In June Rolling Stone ran an article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delving into the statistical improbability that Bush won the 2004 election based on massive amounts of evidence that support a Republican-sponsored election fraud across the country, particularly in Ohio. The GOP used a number of tactics in its fraudulent campaign including ballot-stuffing, denying newly registered voters (particularly in urban and minority precincts) their voting privileges via illegal mailings known as caging lists, inane voter registration requirements, preventing thousands of voters from receiving provisional ballots, under-providing Democrat-majority precincts with voting machines thus creating enormous queues of voters, faulty machines (particularly from Diebold) that skewed results in the GOP’s favor, mostly unnoticed ballot-stuffing and fraud in rural areas, and a fixed recount that was paid for by the Green and Libertarian parties that essentially supported the initial fraudulent numbers.” From the article: “‘Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen,’ Lou Harris, the father of modern political polling, told me.”

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Sunday thoughts

FoM, of Cannabis News, explains some of the ways that ending cannabis hemp prohibition will create jobs and make money for people who are motivated by financial considerations:

I will type just a few job ideas. Bedding for horses. Grain probably for cattle. Durable clothing. Even a seasoning for food. Fuel for vehicles. Hemp is helpful in cleaning up a toxic area. Hemp oil for health. Hemp ice cream for fun. Hemp bread for food. Farm land that is idle could be developed and maybe we could cut our need for foreign oil in time with hemp and other plants. People would be needed to work on the farms and that makes jobs.

Many farmers and workers in America are struggling today, and in addition to all the benefits that accrue to society from the use of cannabis and cannabis hemp for medicine, food, fiber, fuel and yes, recreation, there is a huge economic jobs aspect. Not to mention the elimination of massive costs currently spent on a failed prohibition policy, and the imprisonment of large numbers of otherwise productive workers and providers. We could have full employment for anyone who wants to work, and the ability to support yourself on even a small garden if you are so inclined.

UN makes case to end cannabis prohibition

John Hickman writes in the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel that the office of the United Nations tasked with maintaining drug prohibition released a 420 page report that includes a section on cannabis.

Had a single member of the world press read the ironically entitled “Cannabis: Why We Should Care” section in the middle of the 2006 World Drug Report, they might have scooped their colleagues with the discovery that the report’s authors had inadvertently laid out a convincing case for ending prohibition. After offering a plaintive appeal to treat cannabis cultivation and consumption as serious problems, this section of the report systematically undermines the logic of doing so.

After stipulating that cannabis is a relatively harmless and inexpensive intoxicant, the report presents statistics that the drug is grown and consumed everywhere and in very impressive quantities. Based on public polling data from 134 countries, the report explains that an estimated 4% of humanity enjoys the planet’s most popular illicit drug. There are good reasons to think that figure is an undercount. The authors admit that their estimates of quantities consumed make the 4% figure too low. What is more, given the entirely understandable reluctance of respondents in many societies to answer pollsters’ questions about their illicit drug use, the survey’s findings are probably too conservative. For example, only 3.5% of the respondents in a 2003 poll in Cambodia and only 1.1% of the respondents in a 2002 poll in Mexico said they used cannabis. Something about those numbers smells funny.

Still, 4% of humanity is 162 million people. To see that in perspective, note that if cannabis users comprised a single nation, it would have the sixth largest national population on the planet.

Hat-tip to freewillks.