We had been talking a lot about computerized voting machines in the Leftopshere in the leadup to the 2004 election. Over at Daily Kos I even made the front page when Meteor Blades promoted my diary urging people to get serious about it.
Then, all of the sudden, just weeks before the election, “people” started popping up everywhere attacking anyone who questioned allowing private contractors to count our votes in secret. And when things didn’t quite add up after the election, things really got nasty.
I spent about a week trying to trace some of the sockpuppets who showed up every time anyone posted on election fraud or the perils of computerized voting. The results of that investigation were inconclusive. The internet can be quite anonymous if you know how and all I discovered was that there was an entire ring of these sockpuppets. I traced one account to Ohio. Who knows.
I also spent days backtracking to find any place where Bev Harris actually discredited herself by making false claims or any other impeachable offense. I COULDN”T FIND IT. What I found instead were just more sockpuppets making unsubstantiated claims, spreading lies and innuendo, and never, even backing any of it up with hard evidence even when that was demanded of them.
Harris did make a mistake which I remember in real time. She announced that she had a big bombshell down in Florida and then, as far as I could tell, never really dropped it. Maybe I missed it. Regardless, this led many to think she made it up. It certainly led me to question her credibility.
It was only when the HBO documentary, Hacking Democracy, came out that I saw that she had in fact caught a big story. Was it wise to wait for a documentary deal to air it? I won’t say. But her story had been big: she caught red handed a bunch of election officials manipulating votes and destroying evidence.
Finally watching that documentary on HBO, and seeing for the first time the evidence that Harris had talked about back in those crazy days following Kerry’s defeat, and thousand and thousands of blog posts claimed didn’t exist, I felt Harris had been utterly vindicated. Imperfect for sure, but here was a person who actually walked the walk. She got off of her ass, left her computer for a while, and went out to fight for our democracy and our country. I still think she’s an American hero.
And then I thought of all the little sleazebags who made sport of attacking her. I mean that kind of hate was usually reserved for Rush Limbaugh. And every time I asked for specific evidence against her, all I got was, “Everybody knows” she’s this or that. Everybody knows. That’s actually what the Daily Kos frontpager “brownsox” said. And I won’ t even mention what kind of vitriol spewed from the lips of rabid dog DHinMI. Turns out no one even needed evidence once “Bev is bad” had become a meme.
And the hate wasn’t reserved for Bev Harris. Before long, anyone who laid claim to the issue of voting integrity became enemy number one at Daily Kos and other Democratic blogs. And after a while, a lot of people just gave up on the issue. I know I did. There is really no issue that gets me more upset. So I had to back off to prevent a coronary. Seriously.
So it is not surprising that I hadn’t seen this video. Maybe some of you missed it as well. If so, watch for a reminder of why your government and your president’s attempts to put the criminal Bush presidency behind us are simply unacceptable.
The entire corrupt Washington establishment is now trying to pretend that the previous eight years was just a difference of opinion. A different philosophy. They want to ignore the treason and war crimes and out and out unconstitutionality of that “presidency” so they can repeat it when necessary. The next time they want a war, or other illegal act, they now have a template to follow. They must protect the template.
And Barack Obama is at best an accomplice after the fact. At worst, he’s just Act II in a game of good cop, bad cop. Either way, it doesn’t matter. He’s guilty.
Now watch Dan Rather’s most important report of his life that, if you’ve been seeing too much orange, you probably missed.
PART 1
PART 2
UPDATE: Oh Yeah. Here’s Hacking Democracy.