The Goods on Goodling and the Keys to the Kingdom Greg Palast — This is worth reading in its entirety.
Our BBC team broke the story at the top of the nightly news everywhere on the planet – except the USA – only because America’s news networks simply refused to cover this evidence of the electoral coup d’etat that chose our President in 2004.
Here’s how caging worked, and along with Griffin’s thoughtful emails themselves you’ll understand it all in no time.
The Bush-Cheney operatives sent hundreds of thousands of letters marked “Do not forward” to voters’ homes. Letters returned (”caged”) were used as evidence to block these voters’ right to cast a ballot on grounds they were registered at phony addresses. Who were the evil fakers? Homeless men, students on vacation and — you got to love this — American soldiers. Oh yeah: most of them are Black voters.
Why weren’t these African-American voters home when the Republican letters arrived? The homeless men were on park benches, the students were on vacation — and the soldiers were overseas. Go to Baghdad, lose your vote. Mission Accomplished.
How do I know? I have the caging lists…
found by Cat Yronwode via Marc Perkel
okey-dokey. I am ready to believe in electoral chicanery but a few small items:
(1) someone sends a ‘do not forward’ letter to my house, it only bounces back if someone writes “not at this address” on it and puts it back in the mailbox. you don’t have to be waiting at the door when the mailman comes.
(2) soldiers serving overseas can cast ballots through the mail. (remember how the Gore campaign fought some of those in FLA 2000 until they were overwhelmed by the bad PR?)
finally,
(3) some electoral fraud does not mean the election was stolen. there has probably never been an entirely clean election in US history. this is not to excuse it, but rather to respond to the “electoral coup” hyperbole. being hysterical about it does not do anyone any good.
[Double Post – ed.]
To truly appreciate voter fraud you must discover the Philadelphia, Pa Democrat machine. Ben Franklin still votes at every election, along with many other deceased. Bush/Cheney are mere rookies.
The American MSM
A. Generally prefers bad news to good news,
B. Generally like to bash whoever is in office,
C. Is generally in a race to get the story on before the competition,
and yet, none of them went with this story.
Karl Rove and his merry band of stormtroopers must really be good.
The “Bush stole the election” meme is a truthier creation with surprising depth of belief.
It doesn’t serve democracy one bit.
As for the military vote it matters not whether they are black or white the military votes republican. Even if that weren’t the case as previously mentioned they vote by mail when they are over seas.
“Shop and compare deals on karl rove at MonsterNarketPlace”?
Hilarious!!
Who let these creeps in here?
LBJ was the master at getting dead people to vote. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if ‘caging’ was practiced by all parties, but maybe I’m just cynical.
The word is FELONY.
It makes no difference if Ben Franklin still votes in Philadelphia & other thoughts.
Monica Goodling, under immunity, in her testamony before the House Judiciary Committee, cites Tim Griffin, now a Federal Prosecutor, participating in 2004 in ‘caging.’
The Committee missed it, but it is still in the testimony.
http://www.yorkdispatch.com/nationworld/ci_5970805
“Caging” is a FELONY.
Send this guy & his accomplices to the “slammer.”
It’s fun watching Americans trying to weasel out of every single administration after they elect them.
IT’S YOUR OWN FAULT. GET OVER IT.
Whoever said politicians were honest?
F-E-L-O-N-Y
Every comment waltzes around this issue.
Monica Goodling testified that Tim Griffin participated in 2004 in ‘caging.’
“Caging” is a FELONY.
Instead of being in the ‘slammer’ for “Caging,” Griffin is the replacement for a “fired” Federal Prosecutor investigating voting irregularities.
Caging, in and of itself is not *illegal*. It only becomes a crime if it is done to obstruct voters because of race of ethnicity.
Both parties have used it, but the media seems to favor bringing it up(when they bother at all) when it’s Republicans. Read this, it is iffy…but gives you the idea:
http://tinyurl.com/esb3f
Palast keeps banging on about having 500 emails that proves voter fraud by Rove and others. Well, Rove may have committed voter fraud, but the emails Palast has put forth so far don’t show it.
Originally, Palast claimed these emails were the ones Rove claimed were missing during the Plame investigation, now they are just emails showing voter suppression by race (supposedly). Lets face it, if the networks thought for 1 minute this was a solid story, they would be all over it.
My first question is, why bother trying to suppress 1800 votes in a city that is 60% black and heavily Democratic.
But the important thing here is that when the names of the challenged voters in Florida were made public, it turned out the vast majority shouldn’t have been allowed to vote, for various reasons.(felons, moved, sometimes years before, invalid registration)
When you make up a list of possible voter challenges in many places, most of those voters are going to be black (ie: Florida, Maryland, Chicago, Cleveland, and St Louis), if you do it in others they will be Asian (Orange county, San Diego, San Fransisco), and others Hispanic (Texas, Arizona, New Mexico), it’s the nature of the beast.
Palast makes a lot of charges, but has so far refused to make any proof available. As I said when this stuff was posted last week, if he has the proof, then show it, show it to Judges, lawyers (prosecutors), somebody, but get it out in the public and lets put the crooks behind bars. If he is just making news for a story, then put him behind bars.
#3 — Actually I’m with you on this one. But the Republicans seem to have beaten the Dems at their own game and it must be driving some people crazy.
God I wish someone would kill all the Xtians. This has to be their fault somehow.
…what?? This is the Dvorak blog, right??
#13, you’re at it again. Throwing out your bullcrap.
But the important thing here is that when the names of the challenged voters in Florida were made public, it turned out the vast majority shouldn’t have been allowed to vote, for various reasons.(felons, moved, sometimes years before, invalid registration)
I suppose that over 50,000 people incorrectly removed from the registration list found they were all “properly” removed? Would you care to post your source for that information? Oh, right, if you say it, it must be correct.
Hey, loved that link to Wikipedia you did post. Why? Only you know.
#14 – Yes, it has been a joke in Phillie for 60 years, I think the ultimate solution will be the purple-finger voter with bar-scanned photo-id. No mail-in. No absentees. No exceptions.
#13, #16 – I’ve asked Joshua before for credible sources and never seen one in response. First time was when he maintained Gore lost the Florida recounts done by media after Bush got appointed by the Supremes in the only “this is not a precedent” decision of theirs I’ve ever heard about. Now this assertion that the disenfranchised voters deserved to be disenfranchised. Joshua, you usually make me think when you post, but really – cite a source, please!
Incidnetally, in that Wikipedia article it reports that the RNC signed a consent decree in 1986 to stop the practice of caging. But I guess they didn’t violate the consent decree if the 2004 caging came directly from Rove and his cronies, not the RNC.
Interesting that the Wikipedia article doesn’t cite one example of alleged caging by the Democratic Party.
Cat Yronwode???? The same who used to write all those letters to Marvel Comics back in the 1970’s? She was everywhere. I’m having flashbacks…
5: Rove’s people managed to cage about
three
million
votes
of black, indian, and hispanic voters only. This is not a belief, this isn’t a speculation. Those are the disenfranchised from the 2006 election, challenged by the Republicans in the biggest election con in American history. Most of those removed will never know what happened to their vote. And Conyers and Palast have the emails with the lists on Excel spreadsheets. What is truly worrying is that the Justice Department has been loaded up with Bushies who are full tilt removing “fraudulent voters” in the upcoming 2008 election — that is the entire point of the US Attorney purge. They kicked out the people who wouldn’t file false charges. This isn’t a little dustup, this is the biggest coup d’etat in our history, and no one but the 60 minutes crew showed up to listen to the BBC reporter.
There are two universes now. The one that listens to FOX News! and rightwing radio (just about all the radio in the country now), and in the other, everyone else in the world. This is the problem. Deregulation of media ownership and the death of the Fairness Doctrine has created a parallel universe that unfortunately is extremely militarized. As Norman Mailer said, eventually you realize you are trying to argue with a bag of rocks.
Democrats, Please. Do all of us conservatives a favor and win an election for a change. I’d prefer to be the accuser rather than the accused…
#19. Thank you for reminding me where I had seen ‘Cat Yronwode’ before. It has been bugging me all day.
#20. Yes, reporters for every major news outlet turn their collective noses up at a political corruption story that would make Watergate look like expense account padding.
sure. Presumably because they love Rove, Dubya and the GOP so very much.
And the Justice Department CANT remove fraudulent voters from the rolls. The rolls are maintained by State governments (remember Catherine Harris? Secretary of State for FLA?). If people are going to be removed from the voter rolls, it has to be done by State officials.
Just in case any of you Americans want to know how to run an election properly.
http://tinyurl.com/2fdzqo
Oh and check out this cute little firefox add on:
http://tinyurl.com/2pb7f8
Yes, removing voters from the rolls has to be done by state officials, Doug. But, threatening federal lawsuits can definitely create an atmosphere in which voter registration and voting is subdued.
I happen to have firsthand knowledge of how one effort to prevent citizens voting was carried out. The Washington GOP made up lists of voters who had supposedly registered from business addresses. They then sent letters to thousands of voters telling them they could not vote. When the media investigated, it was learned that most of the ‘business’ addresses were apartments or condos. (Disclosure: I used to live in one of the condo complexes involved.) Apparently, the Washington GOP thought that minorities and the poor were more likely to live in multifamily housing and targeted those places under the pretext that they were businesses. Unfortunately for them, many of the people who received ‘do not vote’ letters were white and middle-class. They raised a big stink. Not so incidentally, Washington was one of the states where the federal prosecutor was replaced for not investigating ‘voter fraud.’
Frankly, with as much as the liberals and the media hate Bush and with as little coverage as it has received I have serious doubts about the validity of this issue. Either it is the case that there is nothing substantial to this case or (and more likely) it is the case that both sides are implicated and no one wants to go digging in the graveyard.
#24, Milo, thanks !!
Read the WHOLE book, Armed Madhouse, and you will find out even more about these ‘elections,’ the fact that oil companies rule the world, and how people were screwed in N’Orleans.
Rove even said, after reading this book, that if more people read this book, he, and his lackeys would be in the slammer!
24 – That FireFox add-on is terrific. I hope all the blog readers get it!
voter fraud is inherent in any election, to believe otherwise is stupidly naive — george w. bush won the election because about a gazillion democrats were too freakin lazy to get out and exercise their right to vote