flip-flops: whatever happened to being able to change your mind or elaborate on an idea?

[netmouse]

novapsyche has been keeping me updated on the Cindy Sheehan story, about a woman who is leading a demonstration against Bush and the war. Having lost her son in Iraq, Sheehan wants to meet with Bush and ask him what the "Good cause" is that these soldiers are dying for.

Today's update is How a Drudge Report attempting to discredit Sheehan quickly got picked up by conservative blogs and made it into Fox News.

What really gets to me is that the news people appear to be saying "earlier when her family met with the president, sheehan said things that {taken out of context and made to seem about a topic that they weren't about) made it look like she was comforted by the president's earlier visit. Now she says she's not happy. Obviously she can't claim to not be happy now if she thought at all well of him then."

I understand they think that maybe all this woman is doing is trying to get publicity to ask questions that might lead to getting the rest of our soldiers out of harms way and possibly (heh) impeaching the president. And they seem to think that would be a bad thing.

Remember kids, Bush says questioning your government is bad. Now repeat after me: Baaad.



In the meantime, the republican party is paying the lawyers bills of a man implicated in an investigation of illegal activities designed to prevent a "get out the vote" effort (those often involve things like calling voters and seeing if they need a ride to the polls) by swamping the phone lines of the organization doing it. Seems two people already charged have both stated the man was in the thick of making it happen.

The next election could be very, very scary. We really need to think about how we're going to prepare for it and how we're going to respond to it.

or something.

Comments

[delosd.livejournal.com]

Netmouse said:

"Because as far as I can tell most of the challenges to the last election are so hushed up in the media and downplayed by our own representatives -lawmakers - and the courts -law enforcers - that it speaks of systematic failure to police such things."

One thing that I can say from my own experience; I have read a number of in-depth, post-investigation reports about some of the things referred to as "irregularities" in the last [Presidential] election. In *every* case that I have read, the allegations turned out to either be inaccurate, unsubstantiatable, or a single incident presented as a "pattern" or "systematic effort". This includes some very lengthy reports on both the 2004 election events in Ohio and the 2000 election events in Florida.

Frankly, I *don't* think that the Republicans are any worse than the Democrats in this area. In fact, I might make the argument that they are actually *worse*. Specific, well-documented, and verified examples of what I'm referring to include bypassing election law in the New Jersey senatorial election of Frank Lautenberg and the senatorial election of Meg Carnahan in Missouri, the highly questionable vote handling in Mary Landrieux's senatorial election in Louisiana, and most particularly, the 2004 governor's race in Washington State, where the known and verified count of invalid or illegal ballots was greater than the margin of victory - and that margin of victory only came about on the third count of ballots, after hundreds of previously "uncounted" ballots had somehow materialized.

My point is not to defend current election practices, but instead to argue against the point that the Republican party is obviously and markedly culpable in the majority of cases, or in the more significant cases. I don't wish to spend the time going into the details of the examples I've mentioned above, I'm certainly not a professional journalist , and would only be cut and pasting what's easily available on-line.

Thanks for the temporary soapbox!

[(Anonymous)]

sweeitie, I didn't mean to get into a debate about who's worse, the Democrats or the Republicans. I'll repeat my assertion that either way our next election is in grave jeopardy.

[(Anonymous)]

PS I'd appreciate links to these reports you've read.

[delosd.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I read so much of this stuff (and so rarely engage in a political argument), that I don't keep citations or links. However, all of the examples that I mentioned were major media stories, some Googling on the names, states, years, and some keywords should turn up references in most any major newspaper's website. As I mentioned, the Washington state race was the 2004 election, the Missouri election was in 2000 (and was with Mel Carnahan, not Meg Carnahan - sorry, my bad ), the Landrieu election in Louisiana was in 1996, and the Lautenberg election was in 2002. Hope this helps!