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The Resounding Silence Continues. How
Much is Enough for the Media to Cover Votergate 2004?
By Anthony Wade
Silence. That is all we continue to hear from our media. There was a
time in
America
when the media would actually practice journalism. They would investigate.
They would corroborate. They would scrutinize. In modern day
America, this must be proving to be too daunting for our faux
media. It seems to be easier to create news, based on what is fed to them.
It must be far simpler to just accept what the administration says,
instead of actually digging a little to find out if the facts coincide.
The problem is that the American people deserve better. They deserve the
truth, not parroting of created news stories. Votergate 2004 continues to
swell all around us, yet the silence remains deafening. It is beyond
silent, it is insulting.
When the cries first rang out from the Internet following the
election, there was just a sense that things did not seem quite right.
Exit polls had clearly shown a Kerry landslide was imminent, yet in swing
state after swing state, Bush tallies kept coming up on top. The truly
bizarre thing was that in both Ohio
and Florida, it was the heavy democratic counties that had not reported at
the end and when they did come in, Bush actually gained votes in both
states. These concerns fueled the heart of the American people to not just
walk away this time. It led to ordinary people gathering data, creating
spreadsheets, and analyzing results. Suddenly the cause grew, and more
people got on board simply wanting to know what happened. The truth did
not seem to be so much to ask. We looked to our media, and the response
was silence. Stories about lockdowns in Ohio
vote counting, Freedom of Information Act requests, and Congressmen
finally asking for an investigation started to bring the story to the
surface as Keith Olbermann addressed the growing controversy in prime
time.
In response to this, we see the mainstream media
still ignoring the largest story out there, the potential theft of a
presidential election. We can see segment after segment about Scott
Peterson, but no coverage for a stolen democracy. How much will it take
for the media to wake up and serve our interests again? Every day there
are more and more stories about obvious fraud and statistical
impossibilities. Just today a research team at UC Berkeley reported that
irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded
130,000 - 260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in
Florida
in the 2004 presidential election. This study, conducted under the
guidance of a PhD sociology professor, found a net gain of 81,000 votes
for Bush in Broward
County
alone. Broward was one of the aforementioned democratic counties that came
in late and yet swung for Bush. This is a scientific study using a
multiple regression analysis accounting for multiple variables. This is
not “tinfoil hat” conspiracy theory, as the media would have you
believe. The actual data and report can be found at, http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/.
Professor Hout stated today at the press conference, “The disparity in
favor of the incumbent President Bush cannot be explained away by other
factors. The study shows that counties that used electronic voting
resulted in disproportionate increases of votes for the President. For the
sake of all future elections involving electronic voting, someone needs to
explain the statistical anomalies that we found in Florida. We’re
calling on officials in Florida
to take up this task and to take action now.”
Left unchallenged, does anyone really believe that
President Bush’s brother, the current Governor of Florida will do
anything at all? No, the only way is to exert so much pressure that he has
to act. That pressure can certainly come from the citizenry, but it needs
to also come from the media. This press conference occurred today, yet
went unreported in prime time. It is insulting to the American people that
the media chooses to ignore such a vital story.
The
truly shocking thing is that this is not the only story about Votergate
2004 to arise recently and be ignored. Yesterday, Bev Harris of
Blackboxvoting.org went to
Florida
to collect the information she requested through the Freedom of
Information Act. Surprise, surprise, the officials were less than
cooperative. First they tried to give Ms. Harris unsigned versions of the
polling place tapes, instead of the real signed tapes, or even copies of
the signed tapes. When pressed, they were told they could not have the
real ones, or copies. Ms. Harris arranged to come back the following
morning to review the real tapes. When Ms. Harris and her crew showed up
as arranged, they were dismissed from the premises and the warehouse was
locked down. It was then that Ms. Harris noted that in the trash, were
polling tapes! After having the police called on them, for representing
democracy, they were able to compare the fake tapes with the signed
polling tapes and guess what? They did not match and hundreds of votes
from African American communities were off, always in favor of Bush and
the republicans. This story can be found here, http://blackboxvoting.org/
but please scroll down until you get to the “
Volusia
County
on lockdown”.
Not
enough yet? How about some testimony from real Ohioans about the rampant
disenfranchisement they suffered at the hands of Bush whore Ken Blackwell?
People were made to wait for up to ten hours to vote. Minority communities
were provided with too few voting machines, while over 60 sat unused. See
the following article about this:
To
see some quotes from real Americans who suffered these conditions, please
see,
How
about another analysis conducted by yet another PhD, Steven Freeman from
the
University
of
Pennsylvania? Dr. Freeman did an analysis of the still
unexplained exit poll discrepancy. The violent swings toward Bush in
crucial states were analyzed and Dr. Freeman was able to determine that
the probability of just the three swings in
Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio
occurring in the same election was 250 million to one. This analysis can
be found here, http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/exit-poll-discrepancy-1110.pdf.
Haven’t seen this on your evening news either?
What
about these collections of fraud, which grow every day:
These
are all recent developments. The Votergate 2004 story is not going away.
It is gaining momentum. Every day brings new revelations. Right now there
are going to be recounts in New Hampshire
and Ohio, yet there is no coverage from the media. There are additional
stories daily about machine problems, voter fraud and statistics that defy
logic, yet the media turns their collective heads and then sticks them in
the sand. How much is it going to take for the pundits and talking heads
to admit there is a story? Pretending that doctorate level citizens are
wild-eyed conspiracy theorists is only proving that the media has little
credibility left.
Even
if the media truly believed the stories are not accurate, the fair thing
to do would be investigate and prove such. There is little journalistic
integrity in covering what the government wants you to and ignoring what
they do not want you to cover. In the run up to the Iraq War, we saw the
media basically serve as a tool of the government. They trumpeted the Bush
policies, beat the war drums, instilled patriotic fever and bought into
the WMD lies without so much as asking a question. In the aftermath, some
mainstream media actually apologized for their un-journalistic zeal. They
admitted they had lost their way, and as such, some of their credibility.
They promised to return to serving the interests of the people again.
Apparently, they have forgotten the lessons they claimed to have learned.
Honesty and transparency from the media is what distances itself from
government sponsored propaganda. That distance is closing rapidly. The
resounding silence must be broken if we are to ever have faith in our
media again.
Anthony Wade is
co-administrator of a
website devoted to educating the populace to the ongoing lies of President
George W. Bush and seeking his removal from office. He is a 37-year-old
independent writer from
New York
with political commentary articles seen on multiple websites.
A Christian progressive and professional Rehabilitation Counselor
working with the poor and disabled, Mr. Wade believes that you can have
faith and hold elected officials accountable for lies and excess.
Anthony Wade’s
Archive: http://www.opednews.com/archiveswadeanthony.htm
Email Anthony:
takebacktheus@gmail.com
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