The Curse Of Bush II : The Devastion Will Be Extreme...
Mood:  quizzical
Topic: Politics
The Curse of Bush II
By Dennis Jett
Salon.com

Monday 08 November 2004

Yes, the devastation will be extreme.

The good news?

He'll sow his own destruction.


At some point in the next four years there will be a great scandal that will make Watergate look like a fraternity prank.

All the elements are already in place.

During its first term, the Bush administration took the approach that its policies were divinely inspired and above reproach even though George W. Bush had lost the popular vote in 2000 by over half a million votes.

During the current election administration officials began to crow about Bush's having received more votes than any other president in history before the polls had closed.

The fact that his opponent got the second highest number of votes of any candidate ever won't slow the incumbent down for a moment.

President Bush waves during a victory rally Wednesday in Washington.

(Photo: Ron Edmonds / AP Photo)


In his acceptance speech, Bush spoke of his "duty to serve all Americans."

Vice President Cheney, however, noted that Bush ran on a clear agenda and the nation responded by giving him a mandate.

Therefore Bush's statement that "a new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation" will last as long as the echo of those words did in the auditorium where he gave his victory speech.

At one of his rare press conferences, a day later, Bush said:

"I've earned capital in this election, and I'm going to spend it."

It's clear Bush and Cheney see this mandate and their moral certainty as all they need to justify anything they do.

That mandate will be used to return to business as usual:

using the resources of government to serve the core Republican constituencies and to enrich those in power politically and economically.

More money will be funneled to the religious right and favored defense contractors.

Forty percent of the Pentagon's budget already goes to Halliburton and other companies in no-bid contracts, and that percentage will increase as social programs are cut to spend more on the military.

Bush stressed in his speech that reforming the tax code and Social Security are his priorities for the next term for a reason.

Shifting even more of the tax burden to the middle class is a way to reward the wealthy for their support.

And better yet, it comes with no political cost, since Bush's moral masses apparently worry more about the sanctity of life in a petri dish than their economic self-interest.

Privatizing Social Security will generate billions in commissions for the financial services industry.

And a portion of those profits will be faithfully recycled as campaign contributions to those who made the windfall possible.

Subjecting people's retirement income to the vagaries of the marketplace will pale in comparison to subjecting people's freedoms to the vagaries of the government's security apparatus.

Six months ago the Justice Department was arguing that Yaser Hamdi, who was born an American citizen, was so dangerous that he should be denied every one of his most basic civil liberties.

When the Supreme Court said even Hamdi deserved his day in court, Justice shipped him back to Saudi Arabia and gave him his freedom rather than go before a judge to argue that someone who at best was a Taliban foot soldier was a grave threat to the republic.

But any abuse is permissible if the administration decrees someone an enemy of the state because we are at war - and we will be at war until Bush decrees otherwise.

According to the White House's lawyers, the Geneva Conventions and other laws of war do not apply.

Any obligation, be it law or international treaty, can be ignored if it is inconvenient.

Torture can be outsourced and, even when done by Americans, is permissible as long as the intent is not to murder.

Since the intent of torture is to extract information, murder is never the goal, and so the circular logic winds up back where it wanted to be.

The ends justify any means and the ends can be defined to be whatever is most convenient for the government.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the coming scandal, whether financial or merely moral, is that it may well go undetected and unreported.

With solid majorities in both houses, a partisan Republican Congress will cease to provide a check or balance on the power of the executive branch.

To call the Republicans in Congress the lap dogs of the White House is to insult Chihuahuas everywhere - they at least bark on occasion.

It is no surprise that Bush has been the first president since the earliest days of the republic not to use his veto power.

With ethically challenged Majority Leader Tom DeLay having an even larger majority in the House, there will be no challenge to the administration from that quarter.

Normally the judiciary could be counted upon to play its constitutional role and provide some brake on abuse of power by the White House.

We are, however, only a couple of nominees away from an Antonin Scalia-Clarence Thomas majority that believes in the unchecked power of the executive branch.

Given that the administration is so assured of its own virtue and correctness, it sees no need to share what it is doing with the American public.

As a report by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., recently pointed out, the administration has waged an unprecedented assault on the public's right to know.

By restricting access to information and vastly expanding what is being classified, the administration has choked off public oversight of what the government is up to.

Some might think that whistleblowers will come forward and provide the information the public needs to know.

They will only if they have a particularly strong desire to commit career suicide.

FBI whistleblowers have been sent off to bureaucratic Siberias.

And for those who can't be assaulted directly, there are other tactics, like attacking the person's family.

When retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson pointed out that Bush was using a report, known to be false, that Iraq had sought to acquire uranium from Niger, the administration attempted to discredit him.

When that didn't work it thought nothing of damaging national security by revealing that his wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA employee.

Meanwhile, the FBI has spent months investing Halliburton's contracts and years looking into the alleged leaking by Larry Franklin, a midlevel Pentagon intelligence analyst, of classified information to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying firm tied to Israel's far right.

Another Pentagon leak that has not been clarified is how its erstwhile favorite Iraqi exile, Ahmed Chalabi, learned the United States had broken Iran's diplomatic codes.

He is said to have passed this information on to Iran in order to ingratiate himself to another patron.

Even when a leaker is identified, the damage done might never be made clear.

A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani who helped his country develop nuclear weapons, admitted on television that he provided nuclear-related information to other countries.

Bush claimed to have brought him to heel as an accomplishment of his war on terror.

But Khan was pardoned immediately by Pakistani President Musharraf; he has been under house arrest and kept away from the press ever since.

The White House knows the press will drop most stories after a couple of news cycles with nothing new and that stalling can stave off any lasting embarrassment.

At most a couple of small fish wind up taking the fall - as has happened in the case of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.

Apparently staff sergeants are the highest-ranking responsible officials in our armed forces.

Can the Washington press corps be depended upon to uncover any further administration wrongdoing?

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein used the Watergate scandal to vault from obscure reporters to media stars.

Today's media, however, are largely either compromised or cowed. Corporate interests dictate what Fox News portrays as fair and balanced, which is why its viewers are far less well informed than those of competing networks.

But it would be as much a mistake to think that people use the media to inform themselves as it would be to think that the media only seek to present the truth.

The bottom line drives the latter effort. And many readers, viewers and listeners would rather have their worldview validated than be presented with conflicting information.

What's more, never tiring of screaming about the liberal bias of the press, the right has successfully beaten much of it into submission.

And the right sees no inconsistency in using its domination of talk radio, cable television and pathetically predictable print outlets like the Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdock's tabloids and the Washington Times to do it.

The press is now so timid that investigative reporting takes a back seat to providing an echo chamber for administration spokesmen in the name of balance.

And while its foreign policy has been a failure of monumental magnitude, the administration has been relentlessly successful at filling the airwaves with its alternative version of reality.

When the New York Times reported that 380 tons of specialized high explosives, one pound of which was used to bring down Pan Am 103, had been left to be looted in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, the reaction by the administration's surrogates in the press was to attack.

They said it was a liberal media October surprise and that Saddam Hussein or maybe the Russians had moved the explosives before the war.

The Pentagon trotted out a couple of middle-grade officers to fill the air with smoke and claim they had not seen the explosives or had detonated several tons of them.

That neither officer knew anything about the disposition of the 380 tons in question was irrelevant, as the press felt obliged in the interests of balance to aid in the obfuscation.

By the time a Minnesota television station came up with videotape showing that the explosives were still under International Atomic Energy Agency seals after American troops had arrived, that incontrovertible proof was lost in the haze.

So don't look to the press to provide clarity or truth about the coming scandals.

If there is any silver lining, it is that zealots without constraints will eventually hang themselves on their own excesses.

While you can fool most of the people twice, you can't do it forever.

This administration loves to talk about Saddam's mass graves even though the most recent ones date from the mid-1990s.

They never mention the estimated 100,000 Iraqis, half of them women and children, who have been killed while being liberated.

But parallel realties can be constructed and maintained for only so long.

Eventually more people will realize that the Republican morality has no more depth than Bush's intellectual curiosity.

Then new ayatollahs will spring up and try to claim the mantle of the demolished majority, but they will also fail.

Eventually the people will figure out that taxes are the price we pay for a safe and just society and that morality, like democracy, has to spring from within rather than be imposed from above.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dennis Jett is a 28-year veteran of the U.S. State Department who served as ambassador to Peru and Mozambique. The author of "Why Peacekeeping Fails," Jett is now the dean of the University of Florida International Center.

Worst Voter Error Is Apathy toward Irregularities
Mood:  incredulous
Now Playing: Firestarter - The Prodigy
Topic: Voting
Worst Voter Error Is Apathy toward Irregularities
By Donna Britt
The Washington Post

Friday 12 November 2004

Is anyone surprised that accusations of voter disenfranchisement and irregularities abound after the most passionately contested presidential campaign in memory?

Is anybody stunned that the mainstream media appear largely unconcerned?

To many people's thinking, too few citizens were discouraged from voting to matter.

Those people would suggest that not nearly enough votes for John Kerry were missed or siphoned away to overturn President Bush's win.

To which I'd respond:

Excuse me -- I thought this was America.

Informed that I was writing about voter disenfranchisement, a Democratic friend admitted,

"I'm trying not to care about that."

I understand.

Less than two weeks after a bruising election in a nation in which it's unfashionable to overtly care about anything, it's annoying of me even to notice.

But citizens who insist, election after election, that each vote is sacred and then shrug at hundreds of credible reports that honest-to-God votes were suppressed and discouraged aren't just being hypocritical.

They're telling the millions who never vote because "it doesn't matter anyway" that they're the smart ones.

Come on.

If Republicans had lost the election, this column would be unnecessary because Karl Rove and company would be contesting every vote.

I keep hearing from those who wonder whether Democrats are "too nice," and from others who wonder whether efforts by the mainstream media to be "fair and balanced" sometimes render them "neutered and less effective."

Perhaps.

But the much-publicized voting-machine error that gave Bush 4,258 votes in an Ohio precinct where only 638 people cast ballots preceded a flood of disturbing reports, ranging from the Florida voting machine that counted backward to the North Carolina computer that eliminated votes.

In Ohio's Warren County, election officials citing "homeland security" concerns locked the doors to the county building where votes were being counted, refusing to allow members of the media and bipartisan observers to watch.

Bush won the county overwhelmingly.

Much of the media dismisses anxiety over such irregularities as grousing by poor-loser Democrats, rabid conspiracy theorists and pouters frustrated by Kerry's lightning-quick concession.

Some of it surely is.

But more people's concerns are elementary-school basic -- which isn't coincidental since that's where many of us learned about democracy.

We feel that Americans mustn't concede the noble intentions upon which our nation was founded to the cynical or the indifferent.

We believe in our nation's sacred assurance that every citizen's voice be heard through his or her vote.

The point isn't just which candidate won or lost.

It's that we all lose when we ignore that thousands of Americans might have been discouraged or prevented from voting, or not had their votes count.

If it were us, we'd be screaming bloody murder.

Yesterday, Lafayette Square was the scene of a lively rally at which dozens of upbeat, mostly older-than-25 protesters organized by ReDefeatBush.com heard democracy-praising singers, rappers and speakers.

Protester Susan Ribe, 33, a Wheaton tax researcher, said that though she's "open-minded" to the possibility that election results might be correct, she believes that reports of irregularities suggest "there's the need for a serious investigation."

Election Protection, the nonpartisan coalition of civil rights organizations that sent 25,000 poll monitors across the nation to ensure that registered voters could cast their ballots, received hundreds of reports of Election Day abuses.

Some were from voters who said they repeatedly pressed the "Kerry" button on their electronic voting screens, only to have "Bush" keep lighting up.

Others said that though they pushed "Kerry," they were asked to confirm their "Bush" vote.

There were calls about a Broward County, Fla., roadblock that denied voters access to precincts in predominantly black districts, and reports from hundreds who said they'd registered weeks before Florida's October deadline yet weren't on the rolls.

Why aren't more Americans exercised about this issue?

Maybe the problem is who's being disenfranchised -- usually poor and minority voters.

In a recent poll of black and white adults by Harvard University professor Michael Dawson, 37 percent of white respondents said that widely publicized reports of attempts to prevent blacks from voting in the 2000 election were a Democratic "fabrication."

More disturbingly, nearly one-quarter of whites surveyed said that if such attempts were made, they either were "not a problem" (9 percent) or "not so big a problem" (13 percent).

Excuse me?

Electronic, paper-trail-free voting is a danger to democracy that the United States can, and I believe will, address.

But not giving a damn about fellow citizens' votes?

Election Protection volunteer Bernestine Singley, a Texas-based writer-lawyer I know, was torn between elation and outrage on Nov. 2 as she monitored polls in three Florida precincts.

Inspiring to Singley were hundreds of volunteers, most of them white, who'd traveled hundreds of miles to ensure the inclusion of minority voters.

She felt stirred by scores of young, black voters whose attitude, she says, was, "I don't care how long I have to stand in line before I do what I came here to do."

Singley's outrage was sparked by clearly hostile white poll workers, and the police officer who stood -- illegally -- by a polling place door, hand on his revolver.

Did I mention the guy who shoved her?

After watching Singley assist voters for hours, a scowling, white-haired 70-something poll worker patronizingly suggested that she was not a poll monitor.

When she replied that he knew exactly what she was doing, he rammed his chest into hers, shoving her backward.

Pushing right back, Singley told the man, "You better get off me."

He did.

Minutes later, Singley says the man told another poll worker within her hearing:

"I don't know why she thinks I know who she is. They all look alike to me."

Excuse me -- is this 2004 or 1954?

Ironically, if all Americans did look alike -- if "black" and "white" and "poor" and "well-to-do" didn't exist -- outrages such as those would happen much less often.

When they did, many more Americans would fight to ensure they never happened again.

Informed Rebuttal From The New American Revolution
Mood:  hug me
Now Playing: Lindsay Lohan - Rumors
Topic: Down With King Dubya
Informed is right. Fuck this dude. I just can't believe that people actually believe anything coming out of his mouth. I saw a picture on SorryEverybody.com - A man from Germany accepted Kerry supporters' apologies and said, don't feel bad, we made the same mistake 50 years ago.

He was referring to Hitler.

I am sick and tired of hearing Bushniks claim that they are informed of the issues...

I have spent at least two hours A DAY researching the issues, confirming information spouted from various sources, and making sure that I read the other side of the story.

Bush's claims have more holes in them than a block of Swiss cheese.

But then again, I'm sure that they would like to burn the Emancipation Proclamation as well. We agreed that the South has just as much right to fly the Confederate flag still. Big mistake. But who are we to take away their freedom to do as they will???

The American Civil War was the last time that this country was so divided (thanks Bush and your religious WINGNUTS - YOU ARE JUST AS BAD AS THE TERRORISTS WHO TOOK THEIR RELIGION TOO FAR AND JUDGED OUR WAY OF LIFE AND TOOK IT UPON THEMSELVES TO FORCE THEIR IDEALS TO ROCK OUR WAY OF LIFE).

But us "Left Wing Liberal Dipshits" (whathave you) and "Idiot Democrats" are a little above that action. For now. We will work hard and long and try to correct the wrong done by the other 51% of our country. We will volunteer to help those unfortunates who are affected to such a degree that they lose their homes, they lose their limbs, whathaveyou.

We will not abandon the ideals brought to us by those who died during the American Revolution - people like Thomas Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence - but I doubt that any of the Bushniks were paying attention to that during school... from Jr. High through College when they taught those values and the reasoning behind that. Here's a refresher course:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among those are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying it's foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness

Hugs and Kisses to King Dubya and the Bushniks from the New American Revolution.

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: OMP's MJK AudioVisuals
Date: Nov 12, 2004 06:03 AM

Read my profile then tell me about video editing again...

Here... READ THIS:

RE: The Draft The Draft The Draft The Draft The Draft The Draft

Body: ok thanks for posting this all i have to saw is... if bush wants this war he can go fight it him self... he skipped out on the one he was supposed to fight in... do people realize that the guy thats sending them/their kids/family/friends/neighbors/etc... to war to die for their country wouldnt even go to war himself... he starts the war and sit safely at home and goes on his vacations while people die for his lost cause... considering he cant remember who or why we are fighting. and the war against terriorisum wouold have been with a bunch of AMERICANS... the guys that flew the planes were AMERICAN citizens... thats one of the reasons he kept it quite for so long... i'm sorry i staying in america just to see how fucked up its gonna be and if worse comes to worse i'll blow myself up, like the suicide bombers did... and u know what at least i'd be away from here... (sorry these are all facts i saw on tv or read in a newspaper, etc. so it could be a little wrong but her i'm 17 and at least i pay attention enough to know whats going on...)

She's fucking 17 and knows more than YOU do!

Give it up... I read ALL the articles coming thru those sites and MORE...

What the fuck do YOU read?

I haven't even SEEN F911 you dipshit... you know why?

Because I KNEW all about everything in it before it even CAME OUT you dumb ass republican SHEEP ROBOT.

So don't tell me how uninformed I am because you're so full of shit it's not only coming out of your ears, nostrils and mouth....

It's even coming out of your eye sockets and pours!

Piss off.. you're another BUSHBOT... Another midwestern DUMBASS who doesn't think for himself but "joins the gang" Yay! Like Special Ed !! Yay!

You like Spageddi ?? yay! Just piss off.. go get laid and kill babies.... Have a good time! Live it up! Cause you are FUCKED in the afterlife for your support of a fucking anti Christ, you demon freak! Ahahahaa

Otherwise... all the best!

Michael J

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: OMP's MJK AudioVisuals
Date: Nov 11, 2004 01:13 PM

Go to this link IF you want to know everything there is to know about "The Return Of The Draft"......

http://www.google.com/custom?q=%22the+draft%22&sa=Search+TO+Archives&cof=S%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthout.org%3BGL%3A0%3BAH%3Acenter%3BLH%3A45%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.truthout.org%2Fimgs.site_01%2F1.LGO.search_1.gif%3BLW%3A455%3BAWFID%3A5a9b1b83678b74b7%3B&domains=www.truthout.org&sitesearch=www.truthout.org

Or go to www.truthout.org and google search: "The Draft" for the same results...

Happy Reading! Thanks ASSHOLE republicans! Enjoy sending your children TO DIE for us! I for one have NO SYMPATHY for you if you voted for BUSH... You're fucking DUMB and DERSERVE to lose your children! Good on ya!

Michael J



----------------- Original Message -----------------
From:
Date: Nov 12, 2004 05:27 AM

see this is where you are wrong, this has nothing to do with me trying to fight a battle for her, and you are entirely entitled to your own opinion, which you've clearly made prominent, but at the same time, if you feel as though your points are entirely valid, which "truthout.org" and "howardstern.com" aren't exactly valid sources for that sort of information, then you wouldn't mind discussing it with someone else. and i'm not trying to do research about Bush now, he's the one i wanted to be president, so i'm completely satisfied. you're the only completely oblivious to the fact that you are just like everyone else who claims to know so much about something, when reality is that you don't, you're only furthering the ideas of something other moron who didn't have a clue either. when michael moore is your forefront for a cause, you definitely are striving for tiny threads of reality, his entire movie took every scene out of context, you may not know this, but movies use this little concept of editing. but the point is, you make yourself seem completely retarded since every point you try to make is followed by hysterical laughter, unbased insults, aka "mis-spelling" words, its misspell, and calling people "imbuciles," its imbicile; anyways, you may what to do a little research yourself if you truly want to claim to know so much.

Religious Right's Hostile Take Over Of Our Freedom
Mood:  incredulous
Now Playing: Kelly Clarkson - Breakaway
Topic: Disturbing Information
Dr. Abele: A Turn to the (Religious) Right
By Dr. Robert Abele
Yubanet

Monday 13 September 2004

If John Kerry has anything going for him that separates him from George W. Bush, it is the fact that he is not involved in the so-called "religious right" of America.

This is the name given by the media to a well-organized band of fanatic biblical fundamentalists who are hell-bent on turning our democracy over to (their concept of) God.

In the highest leadership circles of this movement, there is open talk of the goal of obtaining a theocracy in the U.S. Part of their method in achieving this goal is to attempt to convince Americans,

as they have convinced Mr. Bush,

that the United States was founded to be a Christian nation.

The frightening fact about this movement is not that it is being pushed by an extremist wing of "religious" America,

but that they have in fact to a large degree taken over the Republican Party,

making it and its policies extremist.

When their candidates become our elected officials,

as in fact the current situation stands today,

they have halfway achieved their goal.

An equally frightening and perplexing fact about this movement is that they call themselves "Christian" but will stop at nothing to get their dogmatic ideology adopted as the universal law.

The most bothersome thing about this movement it is that their theocratic end justifies any means necessary to its achievement, including lying and cheating, as we will see below.

This writing aims to make a first contribution to challenging this movement, first by rejecting the revisionist history advocated by this vocal minority to have their form of religious government accepted as the only one allegedly intended by the Founders of this great country.

The focus of the first part of this article, then, will be the attempts of these Christian zealots to have people believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation.

Second, the main figures of this movement who serve in Congress,

their positions and their proposed legislative agendas will be highlighted.

The preference of ideology to the pursuit of truth of the people who would make theocratic claims concerning the founding of our constitutional democracy is demonstrated in the method that is their favored one:

find "proof quotes" from the Founders to demonstrate their preconceived position.

This method, however, demonstrates the logically fallacious and intellectually dishonest process of violently ripping quotations out of the context of their use.

For example, let us take two quotations often used in this process.

The first one is from George Washington, the second from Thomas Jefferson.

The Washington quotation frequently used to demonstrate the "religious right" point is this:

"It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."

This quotation is frequently found on fundamentalist Christian web sites, without provision of citation.

I searched forty-eight such sites before I found one that stated that the line allegedly uttered by Washington was from a speech he gave to the Dutch Reformed Synod in 1789.

After extensive research, I was finally able to obtain a copy of this speech.

I found three things in this research:

first, it is not a speech; it is a letter Washington wrote.

Second, it is an obscure letter, not easily found, and not certainly in the usual collections of his works.

Third, it is only three paragraphs in length, and in it Washington never once utters such a line.

In fact, there is nothing even close to this line in his speech, nor in any of the other speeches, letters, or writings of Washington I have read to date.

This is not to argue, of course, that Washington never said such a thing.

It is to argue that it is intellectually dishonest to throw such quotations around when one cannot site the source of it.

Or worse, as in the Christian web site in which I found this speech, to forge the footnote!

The quotation from Jefferson is even more easily dispensed with when one puts it in its context.

The quotation used by fundamentalist Christians is this:

"I am a real Christian."

While Jefferson certainly did pen those words, he was explicitly making reference in that very sentence to the ethics of Jesus, not the overtly religious overtones of the gospel.

Just two sentences earlier in that same letter, he makes a direct reference to his own "version" of the New Testament, in which he cut the ethical sayings of Jesus out of a Bible and placed them on blank pages of a book.

Jefferson saw Jesus as a great ethical philosopher, but certainly did not understand him as in any way divine or even claiming divinity.

On most Christian accounts, this excludes him from the "chosen elect" of "true believers." Thus, Jefferson was claiming that he was "a real Christian," that is, one who follows the ethical teachings of Jesus, rather than those "false Christians" who used their profession of faith in the divinity of Jesus to gain, increase, and consolidate their religious and/or political power.

It takes an incredible twisting and turning of Jefferson's words, as use of this quotation does, to argue for the alleged "Christianity" of this Founder of the country.

At best, this method, then, is superficial; at worst, it is downright dishonest.

Second, this fundamentalist dogma that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation" fails to delineate clearly two important issues:

the activity or goal of founding a democratic form of government, and the fact that many of the Founders were believers in a deity.

The textual evidence nowhere indicates that the purpose of their founding such a government was exclusively or even predominantly religious in nature.

Nowhere is the division between these categories more clear than in Thomas Jefferson's intellectual hero, John Locke.

Locke explicitly states in his Two Treatises of Government - and it is clearly echoed in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence - that the founding of a democratic commonwealth was for the purpose of ensuring our "lives, liberties, and properties."

Nowhere does Locke say that the purpose of a democratic form of government was religious in nature.

In fact, Locke states quite precisely in his "Letter Concerning Toleration [of religion]" that "the whole jurisdiction of the magistrate reaches only to...civil concernments," and that the state "neither can nor ought in any manner to be extended to the salvation of souls."

Moreover, the fact that Jefferson and other Founders appealed to God in their writings does not mean that we are a theocracy!

All one need do is read Article VI, Section 3 of the Constitution to make this point abundantly clear.

This Article reads in part as follows:

"no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

When fundamentalists attempt to make the Founders out to be Christian and therefore founders of either a religious or a Christian democracy,

they do terrible damage to the fundamental aim of democracies of the eighteenth century:

freedom of the individual.

Even if this happened to be informed by their faith, it is only that:

to be informed is not to be determined by or subservient to their faith.

Their primary concern was with the "natural law" of human reason and individual liberties.

Divine revelation had nothing to do with their political aims.

On the contrary, to a man they clearly believed that rationality was to be the guiding light of democracy, not appeals to the divine.

Let us examine a statement from Thomas Jefferson in this regard:

"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage to reason, than that of blindfolded fear..." (Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr)

Third, and more to the point, although some of the Founders were Christian, many more were Deists.

There is a fundamental difference between what Deists believe and the doctrines of mainstream Christianity.

Deists maintain that a Divine Creator of the universe exists, but deny that he is personally interested in human history.

Accepting no revelations, no persons as "God incarnate," the Deists reject the divinity of Jesus as well.

Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were indubitably Deists;

they admitted to such many times in their writings.

For just one of many examples, I will quote the "real" Thomas Jefferson, far more accurately referred to as a Deist than a Christian.

This should demonstrate the misleading nature of any attribution of Christianity to him:

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding..."

There are numerous such passages in the writings of Jefferson, if fundamentalist Christians would but just look before attempting to write their revisionist histories.

Furthermore, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the former the author of the Declaration of Independence, the latter the author of the Constitution and the First Amendment to our Constitution protecting religious freedom, were both very alarmed at the possibility that some parties would attempt to foist their single-minded Christian religious beliefs on the majority.

Both of them wrote and lobbied extensively for laws prohibiting this kind of interference from Christians in politics.

For instance, Jefferson wrote in his "Act for Establishing Religious Freedom" in Virginia that "no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever."

Madison, for his part, maintains in his "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments," his opposition to a Virginia bill to tax people to pay those who taught the doctrines of Christianity, that "the Bill implies either that the Civil Magistrate is a competent Judge of Religious Truth; or that he may employ Religion as an engine of Civil policy.

The first is an arrogant pretension falsified by the contradictory opinions of Rulers in all ages, and throughout the world; the second an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation."

Even more to the point, says Madison, "A just Government needs [religious clergy] not."

Fifth, the position as stated by those who subscribe to the "Christian nation" dogma fails to make another critical distinction: that between religious belief and Christianity.

There is no doubt that the Founders partook in the former practice; there is considerable doubt that this is the same practice as the latter.

One will read precious few references to Jesus or Christ in most of the writings of the "big name" Founders.

Even where one does find these references, it is not at all in reference to the forming of the new democratic government.

This indicates clearly that the Founders had something else in mind than creating a government based on or imbued with, religion, least of all the Christian version.

Furthermore, assuming that the alleged Christianity of the Founders could be established with certitude, it does nothing at all to "prove" that they therefore wanted to establish a Christian nation.

To reach this conclusion would require a quantum leap in logic.

When all of these issues are considered, one is only left to conclude that the fundamentalist position on this issue is not fundamentally rooted in reason or in history, but rather in a vain desire to proselytize for a distinctively Christian revisionist history.

When any group uses the banner of a political party in order to engage in dogmatic ideological assertions of an allegedly religious nature, that group in effect hijacks the political process only for the purpose of achieving their own narrow ends.

When that happens, it must be challenged by the majority of citizens.

In this case, it is important to challenge the people who espouse such positions, in the name of intellectual honesty, to do more reading and thinking, beyond what their Bible allegedly tells them.

However, we cannot stop our analysis of the "religious right" here, because we must come back to today and examine their current activities.

The "Christian nation" movement that is gaining a very strong foothold in American politics today is not simply the run of the mill version of biblical fundamentalism.

Rather, it is a movement designed specifically to attack the Constitution and the broad view of freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights (see the writings of religious right writers such as Gary North, R.J. Rushdoony, Greg Bahnsen, Gary DeMar, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, and others for first-hand statements to this effect).

Their goal, at its most extreme, is a biblical theocracy.

Theocracy in their case means that the principles of one single religion, in this case, Christianity and its notion of divinely ordained rule, are to be the governmentally recognized and supported interpretation of jurisprudential decisions and legislative proposals.

The movement that is gaining strength in the right-wing of the Republican Party and thus in the U.S. Senate and House or Representatives, is every bit as ideologically entrenched, and every bit as dangerous to democracy, as fundamentalist Muslims who argue for a Mid-East Islamic theocracy.

Consider the main players who belong to this movement, and who have the ear, as well as the support and confidence of, President Bush:

Karl Rove, John Ashcroft, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, Mitch McConnell, Rick Santorum, Bob Bennet, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Jon Kyle, George Allen, Antonin Scalia, and others, mentioned below.

These politicians, and one Supreme Court Justice, are all supported by the movement for theocracy, if not financially, at least ideologically.

The connection of all of these people to the radical Christian right has been documented by investigative journalists such as Rob Boston, Kimberly Blaker, and Frederick Clarkson, among others.

Consider further that the Texas Republican Party Platform now reads:

"The Republican Party of Texas affirms that the United States is a Christian nation."

The movement is generally referred to in the media as "the religious right," but their main movers and organizers specifically include Pat Robertson's "700 Club," the Rutherford Institute, and The National Reform Association, among others.

These headliner organizations state their missions forthrightly:

"Jesus Christ is Lord in all aspects of life, including civil government."

Or, as John Ashcroft has stated it on his swearing in as Attorney General:

"We have no king but Jesus."

The main movers behind this movement include Paul Weyrich, Gary North, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and others.

More specifically, this group of radical right Christians, through their well-funded representatives and senators, has sponsored "The Constitutional Restoration Act of 2004."

It was introduced into both Houses of Congress this past February, and includes "the acknowledgement of God as the sovereign source of law by an official in his capacity of executing his office."

The sponsors of the bill: Rep. Robert Aderholt (Alabama), Rep. Michael Pence (Indiana), Sen. Richard Shelby (Alabama), Sen. Zell Miller (Georgia), Sen. Sam Brownback (Kansas), and Sen. Lindsey Graham (South Carolina).

Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Alabama) is in the process of garnering support for a bill he hopes to sponsor next year, entitled "The Ten Commandments Defense Act."

He states that the intent of the bill is to acknowledge that "The Supreme Court does not always have the final authority over the interpretation of the Constitution."

Rather, the Bible is to be viewed as the last line of interpretation of the Constitution.

Judge Scalia, in an address to the Chicago Divinity School in 2002, said "government...derives its moral authority from God.

It is the minister of God with powers to 'avenge' to 'execute wrath' including even wrath by the sword."

In an article in the magazine First Things, Scalia wrote:

"Indeed, it seems to me that the more Christian a country is, the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral."

These developments are alarming for many and obvious reasons, but I will limit myself to two of them here.

First of all, the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence indicates quite clearly that these ideas are not included in the structure of the government the Founders established.

Second, whenever one party attempts to have their rigid ideology adopted as the exclusive position of a nation, the freedom of citizens so central to democracy dies.

It is important to conclude with a key qualifier here.

Not all people who consider themselves fundamentalist or evangelical Christians are consciously or by necessity supporting the movement toward theocracy.

I am acquainted with many well-meaning fundamentalist Christians who would not have any part of this movement.

However, they need to know what cause they are supporting when they vote for candidates who espouse "religious right" causes such as those we have seen above.

There are many perils to our democracy today, many of them coming from within it:

paperless voting machines,

invasion of countries without pretext,

and single-minded ideologies posing as monolithic truth,

with the supporters galvanized around the notion that no truth exists apart from theirs, and who will go to any length to force that putative truth through the political process.

Eternal vigilance against their eternal hostility is the responsibility of all who truly respect the democratic process.

Such is the case with the "Christian nation" hypothesis:

it does not stand against the weight of history or reason, and must be rejected by all who can think critically.

(For more information on this subject, including the specifics concerning legislative actions mentioned above, there are two journalists who write extensively on it: Frederick Clarkson and Rob Boston. They each have a number of books and articles tracking the "religious right." For more, see the following sources: Frederick Clarkson, Eternal Hostility; Clarkson, What is Christian Reconstructionism?; Kimberly Blaker, ed., The Fundamentals of Extremism; Katherine Yurica, The Yurica Report; Tom Paine.com; Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution; Leo Pfeffer, Church, State, and Freedom; Rob Boston, Pat Robertson, the Most Dangerous Man in America?; and the web sites for "Americans United for Separation of Church and State" and "People for the American Way.")

(For information written by the main organizers of the religious right today, see: Henry A. Wallace, Democracy Reborn; Christian Gallery.com; Chuck Baldwin, Renew America; R.J. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law; Gary North, Christianity and Civilization; and James Kennedy, Character and Destiny: A Nation in Search of its Soul.)



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Robert Abele is a professor of philosophy at Illinois Valley Community College, located near Chicago. He has written articles on political philosophy and also on ethics and warfare, and is now in the process of completing a book on ethics and the invasion of Iraq. He also has a new book entitled A User's Guide to the USA PATRIOT Act, published by University Press of America, due out in November. He can be reached by email.

Rolled up papers at fifty places (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Voting
SECAUCUS? You know it's bad when the two sides start throwing professors at one another.

Two conflicting scholarly studies on the variance between the national exit polling and the presidential election results, are flying across the Internet, eating up your e-mail storage capacity.

One, from the University of Pennsylvania, reminds us that exit polls are used as 'audits' on the elections in places like Germany and Mexico, and suggests the actual statistical odds that the exit polling was that wrong in the battleground states were 250,000,000 to one.

The other, from a voting project managed by CalTech and MIT, says that while the incorrectness of national exit polling can't be explained by the proverbial 'margin of error,' on a state-by-state basis, it actually was within that margin.

Craig Crawford joins us tonight to try to make political sense of the theory-laden scholarly research.

KOlbermann@MSNBC.com

Recounts and Retractions (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Voting
NEW YORK? John Kerry or no John Kerry, there could still be recounts in Ohio and New Hampshire? courtesy of the two candidates who got far more grief than votes during the presidential campaign.

David Cobb of the Green Party told a California radio station late yesterday afternoon that he is ?quite likely to be demanding a recount in Ohio,? with a final decision to be reached and announced during the day

The New Hampshire Assistant Attorney General, meanwhile, told us at Countdown that negotiations are ongoing with Ralph Nader, who at a news conference yesterday not only demanded a recount in a minimum of four districts, but also added another bizarre touch to the proceedings by launching into a brief but surprisingly high-quality Richard Nixon impression.

The central issue in both potential recounts appears to be money. Cobb, whose presence on the ballot in all 50 states is probably coming to your attention only as you read this, said in an interview with the Pacifica station in Los Angeles, KPFK, that a recount would cost the Greens around $110,000, on a basis of approximately $10 per precinct. As you?d probably guess, Mr. Cobb?s doesn?t have the money lying around? but as a presidential candidate, he does have the right. Whether or not he can raise the cash is the operative question.

In New Hampshire, Assistant Attorney General Bud Fitch indicated that reports that Nader forfeited his right to request a recount there because he didn?t get a $2,000 filing fee to them before last Friday?s deadline were erroneous. However, Fitch did raise the bar on Nader, saying that he would have to provide a written guarantee that he would cover all costs relating to a recount, and that the state would probably demand a deposit, or the establishment of an escrow account. Complicating matters still further is Fitch?s admission that New Hampshire really can?t give a good estimate on the final costs.

It?s been twenty years since they?ve had a recount there and Fitch said costs in today?s dollars could be $30,000, $50,000, or even $80,000? although he guesses that the middle figure is the ?top end? of what they?re looking at. New Hampshire is a recount-friendly state. Candidates are permitted to base a recount on the results of a particular community, and if they find their doubts resolved, they?re afforded the opportunity to cancel the rest of any statewide investigation.

That Cobb and Nader between them could lead to a resolution of both Democrats? doubts about the legitimacy of the election, and Republicans? resentment that there are doubts, contains a delicious irony. To call them ?fringe? candidates is to demean their efforts, but they?re hardly favorites at any spot on the political spectrum. Nader, in particular, was trashed on a daily basis by the Democrats who feared he could negatively impact Kerry?s vote totals in swing states, as he clearly did to Al Gore in Florida in 2000. For the rancor, Nader has nobody to blame but himself. Not until late in the campaign did he successfully articulate his reasons for ?running anyway?? namely, his conviction that breaking the two-party duopoly at lower echelons of government (particularly in the House) will take decades, and had to start at the top and work down.

In any event, if Nader and Cobb are at the edges, questions about Ohio moved back into the mainstream yesterday with another cogent article in The Cincinnati Enquirer. The rationale for the bizarre ?lockdown? of the vote-counting venue in Warren County on election night suddenly broke down when it was contradicted by spokespersons from the FBI and Ohio?s primary homeland security official.

County Emergency Services Director Frank Young said last week that in a face-to-face meeting with an FBI agent, he was warned that Warren County, outside Cincinnati, faced a ?terrorist threat.? County Commissioners President Pat South amplified, insisting to us at Countdown that her jurisdiction had received a series of memos from Homeland Security about the threat. ?These memos were sent out statewide, not just to Warren County, and they included a lot of planning tools and resources to use for election day security.

?In a face to face meeting between the FBI and our director of Emergency Services,? Ms. South continued, ?we were informed that on a scale from 1 to 10, the tri-state area of Southwest Ohio was ranked at a high 8 to a low 9 in terms of security risk. Warren County in particular, was rated at 10.?

But the Bureau says it issued no such warning.

?The FBI did not notify anyone in Warren County of any specific terrorist threat to Warren County before Election Day,? FBI spokesman Michael Brooks told Enquirer reporters Erica Solvig and Dan Horn.

Through a spokeswoman, Ohio Public Safety Director Ken Morckel told the newspaper that his office knew of no heightened terror warning for election night for Warren County or any other community in Greater Cincinnati.

Despite the contradiction from both security services, Ms. South again amplified, telling the Enquirer ?It wasn?t international terrorism that we were in fear of; it was more domestic terrorism.?

So the media was kept two floors away from the vote counting at the Warren County Administration on election night on the basis of a ?10? FBI terror threat that the FBI says was never issued.

Appearing with us on Countdown last night, Newsweek Senior Editor and columnist Jonathan Alter said the Warren ?terror? story was likely to grab the interest of the mainstream media: ?I think you?ll see in the next few days, other reporters start to get their act together? you?ll hear more about this story in the days and weeks to come.?

It has all even come to the attention of the blithe agitator of the far right, Ann Coulter, who yesterday not only wrote of the election irregularities but, I?m proud to say, slimed and misquoted me. ?In a major report on ?Countdown with Keith Olbermann? last Monday,? my fellow Cornell alum writes, ?Olbermann revealed that Bush?s win in Florida? and thus the election?was ?attributable largely to largely Democratic districts suddenly switching sides and all voting for Mr. Bush at the same time?!?

It made for fascinating reading, because it made me think for a moment that I had been on television while in a coma. I couldn?t recall making such a broadly ridiculous remark? and it turns out I didn?t. Ms. Coulter, living up to her usual standards which many of us in the Alumni Association nightly pray she didn?t learn at the university, took

a quote from a transcript of the November 8th show
completely out of context, and entirely twisted its meaning.

The actual quote follows, with the key portion discarded by Ms. Coulter indicated in bold face:

?There (Florida), county totals in Tuesday?s election might be attributable largely to largely Democratic districts suddenly switching sides and all voting for Mr. Bush.?

Thus, a comment indicating how President Bush might have legitimately achieved majorities in some Florida counties, is transformed into a contention that the entire election turned on those county margins.

It?s a neat trick? the journalistic equivalent of the dog who learns to balance the biscuit on her nose and then flip it into her mouth on voice command.

Never tried it myself.

What do you think? Email me at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

A bunch of cats across the parking lot (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  lyrical
Topic: Voting
NEW YORK - The election vote mess is like one of those inflatable clown dolls. You knock it down with your hardest punch, it goes supine, and then bounces back up, in the meantime having moved an inch or two laterally.

The punch, of course, is the explanation that the 29 more-votes-than-voters precincts in greater Cleveland appear to have been caused by the addition of Absentee Ballots. The total difference between registered voters and votes (93,000) might be explained by that process, but it does little for one?s confidence in the whole result from Ohio.

The problem is, the rubber clown immediately bounces back with the report that officials in Youngstown managed to catch a slight glitch in their voting there: a total drawn from all the precincts that initially showed negative 25,000,000 million votes cast. It evokes a Monty Python sketch (?Mr. Kevin Phillips Bong - Sensible Party - 14,352. Mr. Harquin Fim Tim Lim Bim Bus Stop Fatang Fatang Ole Biscuit Barrel - Silly Party -- minus 25,000,0000).

No reason to worry about the integrity of the outcome in Ohio, is there?

The most pleasing thing of the last three days of blogs and newscasts is the reassurance from political professionals that all of you (all of us) who have wondered about what went on a week ago yesterday are not necessarily nuts. We might not necessarily be right, but there are some very stodgy, very by-the-book folks who think we?re damned right to be asking.

?Ohio was rife with allegations,? Jonathan Turley said on last night?s show. He?s not merely a superior expert on the Constitution, teaching it at George Washington University?s law school, but back during my first incarnation at MSNBC, as host of The Big Show and The White House In Crisis, Jonathan was a regular guest who regularly said that the investigation and impeachment of President Clinton was largely being done within the framework of the Constitution, and as bad as much of it looked, it was well within the margin of error.

Professor Turley is no partisan.

?There was litigation over pockets of voters,? he continued, on the subject of Ohio. ?There was far more litigation than was indicated in the news programming.? He should know - he was on the clock and on the set working for CBS News throughout the campaign, and straight through to 6 AM in the hours after the vote. ?So when you look at provisionals and absentees and then those pockets of votes, yeah, there probably is enough of a margin if things broke for Kerry that he could turn the state. Is it likely? No. But it is not impossible.?

Turley noted that a complaint now, without John Kerry?s sponsorship, is also a longshot: ?Without the candidate, judges don?t work as hard? when it comes to overturning a set of returns, or a county?s report, or a state?s. But, he added, ?remember that over 70% of Ohio?s votes were done with punch cards and we know that when you do a challenge to those, they tend to turn over.?

Paging Mr. Gore! Mr. Albert Gore, please report to the blog?

On the show last night there was also confirmation of something I speculated about here 24 hours ago. Craig Crawford, one of our MSNBC political contributors and also a columnist for Congressional Quarterly, admitted that the concession did trigger a kind of ?we can all go home now!? exultation in the media. ?Since John Kerry conceded,? Craig said, ?there wasn?t that great desire to run out to Columbus and try to figure this out. And the concession is the key because we?re often wimps in the media and we wait for other people to make charges, one political party or the other, and then we investigate.?

Bless Craig Crawford for saying that. If you haven?t seen him a lot on the tube you may be misled by his Aw-Shucks delivery and willingness to laugh at the subject matter. The political insight, shorn of the political pomposity that so many of the pros evince, is as refreshing as his laugh. Next to that admission that the Starting Line mentality pervades so much of political journalism, came the message about investigating, prodding, pushing, yelling, shouting, and blogging: ?This is the time to do this. There?s still time before the results are certified. It doesn?t mean it?ll change the outcome - but it?s good.?

Craig also connected a few unpleasant dots. Kerry, he says, is ?definitely interested in running in 2008,? and the image of Gore?s political death after the 2000 re-count may have played as much of a part in his hurried concession as any realistic appraisal of his chances in reversing the election by reversing Ohio.

He didn?t, however, endorse any conspiracy theories. ?My experience with Election Supervisors is that they?re very independent, often real characters, hard people to actually organize into a conspiracy. I think it?d be easier to herd a bunch of cats across a parking lot.?

But ? as I pointed out to him after he crafted that colorful bit of imagery - when one voting machine can add 4,000 votes for one presidential candidate in a 650-vote precinct, and another one in the same state can turn a day?s balloting into a net result of negative 25 million, it may also be true that altering those machines may be easy enough that it could be pulled off not only by conspiratorial Election Supervisors, but also, just by a bunch of cats from across the parking lot.

Thoughts? Email me at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

Do Over [NC] (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: Voting
NEW YORK? With news this morning that the computerized balloting in North Carolina is so thoroughly messed up that all state-wide voting may be thrown out and a second election day scheduled, the story continues.

Tonight on 'Countdown,' we'll examine the N.C. mess (which would not include a second presidential vote), new fuzzy math in Nevada, allegations against the Democrats in Pennsylvania, Ralph Nader's news conference, and the other voting developments as they occur. A Stanford computer expert will address the vulnerability of the Optical Scanning system (and answer the question: which is easier to hack, electronic voting or exit polls?), and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter will join me to report on the reporting.

Electronic voting angst (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Voting
Electronic voting angst (Keith Olbermann)

NEW YORK ? Bev Harris, the Blackbox lady, was apparently quoted in a number of venues during the day Monday as having written ?I was tipped off by a person very high up in TV that the news has been locked down tight, and there will be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2? My source said they?ve also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time.?

I didn?t get the memo.

We were able to put together a reasonably solid 15 minutes or so on the voting irregularities in Florida and Ohio on Monday?s Countdown. There was some You-Are-There insight from the Cincinnati Enquirer reporter who had personally encountered the ?lockdown? during the vote count in Warren County, Ohio, a week ago, and a good deal of fairly contained comment from Representative John Conyers of Michigan, who now leads a small but growing group of Democratic congressmen who?ve written the General Accountability Office demanding an investigation of what we should gently call the Electronic Voting Angst. Conyers insisted he wasn?t trying to re-cast the election, but seemed mystified that in the 21st Century we could have advanced to a technological state in which voting? fine, flawed, or felonious? should leave no paper trail.

But the show should not have been confused with Edward R. Murrow flattening Joe McCarthy. I mean that both in terms of editorial content and controversy. I swear, and I have never been known to cover-up for any management anywhere, that I got nothing but support from MSNBC both for the Web-work and the television time. We were asked if perhaps we shouldn?t begin the program with the Fallujah offensive and do the voting story later, but nobody flinched when we argued that the Countdown format pretty much allows us to start wherever we please.

It may be different elsewhere, but there was no struggle to get this story on the air, and evidently I should be washing the feet of my bosses this morning in thanks. Because your reaction was a little different than mine. By actual rough count, between the 8 p.m. ET start of the program and 10:30 p.m. ET last night, we received 1,570 e-mails (none of them duplicates or forms, as near as I can tell). 1,508 were positive, 62 negative.

Well the volume is startling to begin with. I know some of the overtly liberal sites encouraged readers to write, but that?s still a hunk of mail, and a decisive margin (hell, 150 to 62 is considered a decisive margin). Writing this, I know I?m inviting negative comment, but so be it. I read a large number of the missives, skimmed all others, appreciate all? and all since? deeply.

Even the negative ones, because in between the repeated ?you lost? nonsense and one baffling reference to my toupee (seriously, if I wore a rug, wouldn?t I get one that was all the same color?), there was a solid point raised about some of the incongruous voting noted on the website of Florida?s Secretary of State.

There, 52 counties tallied their votes using paper ballots that were then optically scanned by machines produced by Diebold, Sequoia, or Election Systems and Software. 29 of those Florida counties had large Democratic majorities among registered voters (as high a ratio as Liberty County? Bristol, Florida and environs? where it?s 88 percent Democrats, 8 percent Republicans) but produced landslides for President Bush. On Countdown, we cited the five biggest surprises (Liberty ended Bush: 1,927; Kerry: 1,070), but did not mention the other 24.

Those protesting e-mailers pointed out that four of the five counties we mentioned also went for Bush in 2000, and were in Florida?s panhandle or near the Georgia border. Many of them have long ?Dixiecrat? histories and the swing to Bush, while remarkably large, isn?t of itself suggestive of voting fraud.

That the other 24 counties were scattered across the state, and that they had nothing in common except the optical scanning method, I didn?t mention. My bad. I used the most eye-popping numbers, and should have used a better regional mix instead.

Interestingly, none of the complaining emailers took issue with the remarkable results out of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. In 29 precincts there, the County?s Website shows, we had the most unexpected results in years: more votes than voters.

I?ll repeat that: more votes than voters. 93,000 more votes than voters.

Oops.

Talk about successful get-out-the-vote campaigns! What a triumph for democracy in Fairview Park, twelve miles west of downtown Cleveland. Only 13,342 registered voters there, but they cast 18,472 votes.

Vote early! Vote often!

And in the continuing saga of the secret vote count in Warren County, Ohio (outside Cincinnati), no protestor offered an explanation or even a reference, excepting one sympathetic writer who noted that there was a ?beautiful Mosque? in or near Warren County, and that a warning from Homeland Security might have been predicated on that fact.

To her credit, Pat South, President of the Warren County Commissioners who chose to keep the media from watching the actual vote count, was willing to come on the program? but only by phone. Instead, we asked her to compose a statement about the bizarre events at her County Administration building a week ago, which I can quote at greater length here than I did on the air.

?About three weeks prior to elections,? Ms. South stated, ?our emergency services department had been receiving quite a few pieces of correspondence from the office of Homeland Security on the upcoming elections. These memos were sent out statewide, not just to Warren County and they included a lot of planning tools and resources to use for election day security.

?In a face to face meeting between the FBI and our director of Emergency Services, we were informed that on a scale from 1 to 10, the tri-state area of Southwest Ohio was ranked at a high 8 to a low 9 in terms of security risk. Warren County in particular, was rated at 10 (with 10 being the highest risk). Pursuant to the Ohio revised code, we followed the law to the letter that basically says that no one is allowed within a hundred feet of a polling place except for voters and that after the polls close the only people allowed in the board of elections area where votes are being counted are the board of election members, judges, clerks, poll challengers, police, and that no one other than those people can be there while tabulation is taking place.?

Ms. South said she admitted the media to the building?s lobby, and that they were provided with updates on the ballot-counting every half hour. Of course, the ballot-counting was being conducted on the third floor, and the idea that it would have probably looked better if Warren had done what Ohio?s other 87 counties did? at least let reporters look through windows as the tabulations proceeded? apparently didn?t occur to anybody.

Back to those emails, especially the 1,508 positive ones. Apart from the supportive words (my favorites: ?Although I did not vote for Kerry, as a former government teacher, I am encouraged by your ?covering? the voting issue which is the basis of our government. Thank you.?), the main topics were questions about why ours was apparently the first television or mainstream print coverage of any of the issues in Florida or Ohio. I have a couple of theories.

Firstly, John Kerry conceded. As I pointed out here Sunday, no candidate?s statement is legally binding? what matters is the state election commissions? reports, and the Electoral College vote next month. But in terms of reportorial momentum, the concession took the wind out of a lot of journalists? aggressiveness towards the entire issue. Many were prepared for Election Night premature jocularity, and a post-vote stampede to the courts? especially after John Edwards? late night proclamation from Boston. When Kerry brought that to a halt, a lot of the media saw something of which they had not dared dream: a long weekend off.

Don?t discount this. This has been our longest presidential campaign ever, to say nothing of the one in which the truth was most artfully hidden or manufactured. To consider this mess over was enough to get 54 percent of the respondents to an Associated Press poll released yesterday to say that the ?conclusiveness? of last week?s vote had given them renewed confidence in our electoral system (of course, 39 percent said it had given them less confidence). Up for the battle for truth or not, a lot of fulltime political reporters were ready for a rest. Not me? I get to do ?Oddball? and ?Newsmakers? every night and they always serve to refresh my spirit, and my conviction that man is the silliest of the creator?s creations.

There?s a third element to the reluctance to address all this, I think. It comes from the mainstream?s love-hate relationship with this very thing you?re reading now: The Blog. This medium is so new that print, radio, and television don?t know what to do with it, especially given that a system of internet checks and balances has yet to develop. A good reporter may encounter a tip, or two, or five, in a day?s time. He has to check them all out before publishing or reporting.

What happens when you get 1,000 tips, all at once?

I?m sounding like an apologist for the silence of television and I don?t mean to. Just remember that when radio news arose in the '30s, the response of newspapers and the wire services was to boycott it, then try to limit it to specific hours. There?s a measure of competitiveness, a measure of confusion, and the undeniable fact that in searching for clear, non-partisan truth in this most partisan of times, the I?m-Surprised-This-Name-Never-Caught-On ?Information Super Highway? becomes a road with direction signs listing 1,000 destinations each.

Having said all that? for crying out loud, all the data we used tonight on Countdown was on official government websites in Cleveland and Florida. We confirmed all of it? moved it right out of the Reynolds Wrap Hat zone in about ten minutes.

Which offers one way bloggers can help guide the mainstream at times like this: source your stuff like crazy, and the stuffier the source the better.

Enough from the soapbox. We have heard the message on the Voting Angst and will continue to cover it with all prudent speed.

Thanks for your support.

Keep them coming... Email me at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

Naked Promotional Announcement (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  hungry
Topic: Voting
SECAUCUS -- A quick and haplessly generic answer now to the 6,000 emails and the hundreds of phone calls.

Firstly, thank you.

Secondly, we will indeed be resuming our coverage of the voting irregularities in Ohio and Florida -- and elsewhere -- on this evening's edition of Countdown {8:00 p.m. ET}. The two scheduled guests are Jonathan Turley, an excellent professor of law at George Washington University, and MSNBC analyst and Congressional Quarterly senior columnist Craig Crawford.

For Jonathan, the questions are obvious: the process and implications of voting reviews, especially after a candidate has conceded, even after a President has been re-elected. For Craig, the questions are equally obvious: did John Kerry's concession indeed neuter mainstream media attention to the questions about voting and especially electronic voting, and what is the political state of play on the investigations and the protests.

Phase Two, in which Doris gets her oats...

Keep them coming. Email me at KOlbermann@msnbc.com