excerpts from Harpers and a few action items
for the 6 or 7 squad
By Winter Patriot on 8/15/2005, 11:24am PT  

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Some of us have read the newest Harpers, notable for its excerpt from Mark Crispin Miller's None Dare Call It Stolen. And many of us have been waiting for it to hit the net.

from None Dare Call It Stolen, by Mark Crispin Miller:

Whichever candidate you voted for (or think you voted for), or even if you did not vote (or could not vote), you must admit that last year's presidential race was—if nothing else—pretty interesting. True, the press has dropped the subject, and the Democrats, with very few exceptions, have “moved on.” Yet this contest may have been the most unusual in U.S. history; it was certainly among those with the strangest outcomes. You may remember being surprised yourself.

... or not ... you may have been expecting it ... once burnt, twice shy, as they say ...

At least fifty-nine daily newspapers that backed Bush in the previous election endorsed Kerry (or no one) in this election. The national turnout in 2004 was the highest since 1968, when another unpopular war had swept the ruling party from the White House. And on Election Day, twenty-six state exit polls incorrectly predicted wins for Kerry, a statistical failure so colossal and unprecedented that the odds against its happening, according to a report last May by the National Election Data Archive Project, were 16.5 million to 1.

Other analysts have pegged the number differently, of course, but nobody has ever argued that the odds against it happening by chance were anything like small.

The press has had little to say about most of the strange details of the election—except, that is, to ridicule all efforts to discuss them. This animus appeared soon after November 2, in a spate of caustic articles dismissing any critical discussion of the outcome as crazed speculation: “Election paranoia surfaces: Conspiracy theorists call results rigged,” chuckled the Baltimore Sun on November 5. “Internet Buzz on Vote Fraud Is Dismissed,” proclaimed the Boston Globe on November 10. “Latest Conspiracy Theory—Kerry Won—Hits the Ether,” the Washington Post chortled on November 11. The New York Times weighed in with “Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried”—making mock not only of the “post-election theorizing” but of cyberspace itself

Yes, I do seem to remember something about that...

Read the article for yourself; it's well worth the effort. {Thanks to jIM cIRILE for the link!} And then ...

ACTION ITEMS: Here are some great action ideas for the 6 or 7 squad {and thanks to Shannon Wilford for talking about this earlier}:

[1] Buy as many copies of the August Harpers as you can find/afford. Keep one for yourself and give the rest away. Everybody needs to read this article, to see it in print, to hold it in their hands. This is not some internet hoax. This is Harpers. And the glossy paper itself has a weight that no blog can match.

[2] Subscribe to Harpers if you can afford to do so. Then write a letter to the editor. Explain that you subscribed because Harpers has shown it is willing to tell the truth about the "election". And make it very clear that you expect more of the same.

Thanks, as always, to all 6 or 7 of you. We've been rockin' the boat ... and it's making a difference ... so please let's keep that boat a-rockin'!

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