Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Project Censored

Project Censored's report on the twenty-five most important, yet under/un-covered stories of 2004-2005, has some doozies.

I imagine my friends in the Great White North will be just a wee bit flamed when they read Number 16. Number 25 is undeniably true; first responders know the highest public risk is from our our sadly insecure chemical infratructure, easily used against us. And, no, Abdul, I don't feel like telling you how.

The societal risk from Number 18 was exquisitely explained by Robert Frezza (Major, USA, Ret.) in his superb FIRE IN A FARAWAY PLACE for, like Dean Ing, Jerry Pournelle and the Admiral, Frezza doesn't need Western Union to send a message.

But, Numbers 4 and 11 will lead us someplace I don't care to go; Oceana, or Epsilons, perhaps, but nowhere the Founding Fathers would recognize, or desire, I fear.

And how will we get there? Just review this bon mot from Number Three about our peculiar and most recent election:
The Edison and Mitofsky report dismisses the possibility that the official vote count was wrong, stating that precincts with electronic voting systems had the same error rates as precincts with punch-card systems. This is true. However, it merely points to the unreliability of punch-card and electronic systems, both of which are slated for termination under the Helping America Vote Act of 2002. According to the report, only in precincts that used old-fashioned, hand-counted paper ballots did the official count and the exit poll data fall within the normal margin of error.

Also, the report shows, the discrepancy between the exit polls and the official count was considerably greater in the critical swing states. And while this fact is consistent with allegations of fraud, Mitofsky and Edison suggest, without providing any data or theory to back up their claim, that this discrepancy is somehow related to media coverage.

In other words, the vote was skewed where it needed to be skewed, and only hand-counted paper ballots were immune to distortion.

Enough hard thinking. The Manchurian Candidate's on.

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