Stolen Elections and Other Propaganda

While not enough to definitively say the 2004 election was stolen, a Government Accounting Office study of electronic voting is enough to give pause. The link to the GAO study is here:

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05956.pdf

No where in the study does it definitively say the election was stolen; however, it calls to attention several areas in which voting machines could have been manipulated. The key is without a paper trail, we will never know. There's no proof of voting manipulation and that's just the way the winners of the election want to keep it. In politics, laws are made by winners of elections and winners of elections are those who got the most votes under the then-existant system. Ergo, the winners of an election have no incentive to change the rules under which they were elected. Makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it.

Lyn Davis Lear summarizes the findings in the report in a Huffington Post article here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20051201/cm_huffpost/011483

Despite the whiff of conspiracy theory, it's worthwhile reading, much more entertaining than 107 pages of Governmentese.

The military is now trying to justify its propaganda campaign in Iraq by saying the Iraqis simply forgot to print the "Paid Advertising" label on the stories. Everyone up the chain of command is plausibly denying involvement (as if those of us who served believe the higher-ups don't know what the field units are doing, especially a field unit with a $300,000,000 budget). The campaign is further evidence of the culture of corruption that is Republican Washington. Following the Republican effort to put propaganda in U. S. news media by disguising its real source, it's not hard to believe we'd pay to put propaganda in Iraqi papers.

Further evidence of a culture of corruption: Congressional researchers find that Environmental Protection Agency skews the results of its studies to back up Bush's pollution plans. That's no surprise to any of us who thought about his "a little mercury won't hurt anyone" plan to sell the right to emit the potent neurotoxin on the open market. What "Clear Skies" has meant all along is that the energy industry has clearance to pollute. The agency overestimated the costs of new equipment to scrub mercury out of smokestack emissions, cutting into the public health to the profit of shareholders in utility companies. So, Republicans, what is the cost-benefit analysis of a few handicapped children against the share price of Xcel Energy?

Or polar bears against CAFE standards?