Lemon juice in a paper cut, all day long

I started to assemble a similar list of links, but the entity known as troutfishing, on MetaFilter, posted the following, which is a knockout, and which I reproduce here in its entirety: ************************* NOVEMBER 5TH, 2004 A bizzare pattern of impossible anomalies This has long been known : the welter of financial ties of Diebold and ES&S to the radical religious right (with stakeholders currently, it seems, on the secretive CNP) and Bob Fitrakis notes : "Wherever Diebold and ES&S go, irregularities and historic Republican upsets follow." Howard Ahmanson was the original funder for Bob and Todd Urosevich's Data Mark,which became ES&S, Bob later left to head Diebold ,maker of HAVA Act mandated touch screen voting machines used in Ohio and Florida and elsewhere....Ahmanson is a Christian Reconstructionist (a form of Dominionism ) who has talked of imposing Biblical law on the US - including the death penalty for gays and drunkards - and is also a main funder of the Chalcedon Foundation. However, the most bizzare patterns of anomalies in Florida came not from touch-screen but optical scan machines. Florida's central vote tabulator also is Diebold made, raising questions on the a bizzare pattern of anomalies in which a large number of counties in Florida had increases in Republicans votes over expected levels - by an overall average of 50% to 100% and - in one county, as high as 700%. Meanhwhile, here are graphs of variance between exit poll results for battleground states.
posted by troutfishing at 1:13 PM PST
******************** And it's worth browsing the entire thread, for other relevant links.

Yes, you knew it was coming

From Greg Palast's piece, Kerry Won:

The election in Ohio was not decided by the voters but by something called "spoilage." Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of the vote is voided, just thrown away, not recorded. When the bobble-head boobs on the tube tell you Ohio or any state was won by 51 percent to 49 percent, don't you believe it ... it has never happened in the United States, because the total never reaches a neat 100 percent. The television totals simply subtract out the spoiled vote. And not all vote spoil equally. Most of those votes, say every official report, come from African American and minority precincts. [...] Spoilage has a very Democratic look in New Mexico. Hispanic voters in the Enchanted State, who voted more than two to one for Kerry, are five times as likely to have their vote spoil as a white voter. Counting these uncounted votes would easily overtake the Bush 'plurality.' [...] Despite the Democratic Party's pledge, the leadership this time gave in to racial disenfranchisement once again. Why? No doubt, the Democrats know darn well that counting all the spoiled and provisional ballots will require the cooperation of Ohio's Secretary of State, Blackwell. He will ultimately decide which spoiled and provisional ballots get tallied. Blackwell, hankering to step into Kate Harris' political pumps, is unlikely to permit anything close to a full count. Also, Democratic leadership knows darn well the media would punish the party for demanding a full count.

Were you under the impression that it did?

Exit polls suggest that people were voting based on "values", that somehow the undefinable "morality" of the candidate was more important to them than the fact that they were participating in a pivotal policy-making decision. These polls suggest that, to many voters, the church that the candidate attends is more important to them than the candidate's political qualifications. To these voters, it appears that the Iraq military action either does not count when evaluating the candidate's values -- as if it is a wholly separate event, external to the person being evaluated and exempt from critique -- or, even stranger, that it was a moral action. There is a fundamental disconnect in the mind of the American voter, or at least in the minds of that large block of evangelicals who turned out to vote yesterday, and ensured George W. Bush a popular vote victory. (The electoral vote is technical and binding, but the popular vote is more interesting.) I registered with Voter Call and called ten people in Ohio on Monday night. I mostly left messages with answering machines, but I did talk to a few people. Voter Call is a non-partisan get-out-the-vote thing, so I was just encouraging registered voters to actually go vote. It was fascinating to set aside my crippling cynicism for an hour and be an advocate for the thing I have absolutely no faith in: representative democracy. One woman said she wasn't planning on voting and when I asked her why, she said, "Well, cause I'm undecided." Undecided. The day before the election, and she's undecided. She registered to vote, but she's undecided. What possible good could it do for this woman to go vote? If she did, she would most likely enter the voting booth undecided, which would mean that, when it came time to vote for president, she would most likely flip a coin, albeit perhaps not a literal one. Her franchise would be executed based not on reason and value and a thorough weighing of the issues at hand, but on a coin flip. This is why democracy doesn't work. The choice between a decent, basically honest, clear-headed, thoughtful man who has proven his conviction and proven his ability to think through issues and arrive at rational conclusions, and a borderline fascist demagogue of demonstrable unqualification is too much for a lot of people. And so, with my dead horse sufficiently beaten, I cross-reference the Louis Menand article, and I'm done.

Walmart = Hitler?

Two days ago I went down to Borders and bought two books: America: The Book by John Stewart and The Daily Show, and When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? by George Carlin. I chose the Carlin book because of this line in the inside of the book's sleeve: "You know what kind of guy you never see any more? A fop." Cross-reference this site for more information about why I find this line particularly amusing. As it turns out, both of these titles recently joined the banned list at Walmart! That's all right, I guess. A Walmart spokesman said " the book would not 'appeal to the majority' of the store's customers." I guess that must be true. I, for one, think Walmart = Massive Shit Hole, and I hate shopping there. I suppose the "majority of the store's customers" must feel differently. Good for them. So, like, when is the conservative hoard going to round up us non-Walmart shoppers, and force us to live on our own island? That doesn't sound half bad.

Must read to the end...

From the Detroit Free Press:

A Taylor police dispatcher took the call at precisely 12:44 p.m. on Oct. 18. A 49-year-old man said he'd just blasted a man with a revolver and a shotgun because the man said he didn't believe in God. The dispatcher said the alleged shooter told him he'd just shot "the devil himself" and was still armed and standing over the body of the 62-year-old victim "in case he moved." "I want to make sure he's gone," the alleged shooter told the dispatcher. The dispatcher asked the suspect how many times he shot the victim. "Hopefully enough," was the suspect's chilling reply, according to the dispatcher. When police arrived in the 15600 block of McGuire, they could see the victim seated on a living room couch with major trauma to his head, officers said. They said they were certain he was dead. He was. Lying on a hallway floor was a black 12-gauge shotgun. Two spent shotgun shells lay on the floor nearby. Later, police found a revolver with five spent cartridge casings. On the way to the police station, the suspect told police "he did not want to deal with anyone that did not believe in God," according to the report. The report also indicated that the suspect and the victim knew each other, although their relationship was unclear. The suspect said he was an Eagle Scout, the report said. The suspect said the victim had told him there was nothing he could say that would convince the 62-year-old to believe in God. Following this discussion, the suspect said, he went into another room and removed his shirt. Then he shaved his face. He tried once more to convince the victim to believe in God, but this time, he had the shotgun. "How long would it take you to believe in God?" the suspect said he asked the victim. "Not until I hear Gabriel blow his horn," the victim allegedly replied, while tipping his hat. That's when the suspect shot him. "I did it because he is evil; he was not a believer," the suspect told police. The suspect said the victim "has been locked up most of his life." Michigan Department of Corrections records indicate the victim was on probation for a drug conviction. At the police station, the suspect commented that he believed there is a God. Then, looking at the floor, he seemed to have second thoughts: "Maybe there's not," he said. . Contact JOEL THURTELL at 248-351-3296 or thurtell@freepress.com