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DENIAL_2004

                                             January 17, 2011


Chalmers Johnson, "Nemesis" (2006):
                                                               CHALMERS_JOHNSON
  "In November 2004, regardless of claims
  about voter fraud, Bush won the popular
  vote by over 3.5. million ballots,
  making his wars ours."

  He repeats this point again:

  "Until the 2004 presidential election, ordinary
  citizens of the United States could at least
  claim that our policy, including the invasion
  of Iraq, was the work of George Bush's
  administration and that we had not put him in
  office.  After all, in 2000, Bush lost the
  popular vote and was appointed president
  thanks to the intervention of the Supreme
  Court in a 5-4 decision.  But in November
  2004, regardless of claims about voter fraud,
  Bush actually won the popular vote by over 3.5
  million ballots, making his regime and his
  wars ours." -- "Dismantling the Empire" (2010)



         As far as some sort of moral
         endorsement is concerned, the
         American People are hardly
         off the hook for either 2000
         or 2004.  Both times, about
         half of the people voted for
         Bush.  Whether a tiny                Further, all of the
         percentage pushed that over          Bush regimes actions
         the line to a technical "more        had rubber stamp
         than half" matters only in           approval by Congress.
         this rather strange
         winner-takes-all "democracy"
         of ours.                         Thought experiment: what if all
                                          presidential elections required a
                                          2/3rds majority for ratification?
                                          We might have to get by without an
                                          emperor for awhile.


   In any case, it's entirely possible that
   Bush lost the popular vote in 2004 as              LAST_EXIT_FOR_DEMOCRACY
   well.



The interesting thing is this point:
"regardless of claims about voter fraud"

If the claims are correct it calls into
question the evidence for the stated point...


What's really going on is Chalmers Johnson
has simply disregarded these "claims".

He couldn't wrap his brain around the
reality of the situation?  Maybe he
has trouble holding multiple
scenarios in mind?




Mark Hertsgaard published an article in
Mother Jones, Nov 1, 2005, literally        http://www.motherjones.com/media/2005/11/recounting-ohio
sneering at Wasserman and Fitzrakis         http://www.motherjones.com/print/10416
of the Ohio Free Press, but ignoring
completely Freeman and Bleifuss...

     And now Hertsgaard is off on the Global
     Warming beat, another very technical
     subject.  Why would you trust him on
     that?


         I see MoJo's readers didn't think
         much of that Hertsgaard article, either:

           http://www.motherjones.com/toc/2005/11/readers-respond-mostly-critically-mark-hertsgaards-article-2004-ohio-vote





Kos over at the dailykos had a similar
problem it think...


  Note: none of these people have
  any trouble believing bad things
  about Republicans.




  Try the thesis: they're innumerate, and
  uncomfortable with any sort of statistical
  argument.


  Note experience with alt.gothic: they
  hadn't bothered to understand the argument,
  because they were convinced it must be
  nonsense in advance of examining it: they
  latched on a simple, cartoon version ("why
  not just forget about elections and go with
  the polling predictions?").  It isn't just
  one discrepancy, it's a pattern of
  discrepancies correlating with the use of
  electronic voting machines.

                             (July 20, 2011)

There's a serious "it can't happen here" response
that kicks in when discussing voter fraud in the
United States.  If we were talking about a Latin
American country, no one would doubt what had
happened in 2004.



An over-developed bullshit detector?

They feel the need to run from
"conspiracy theories", and don't
bother to see how good the theory is?



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