Today, all over America, there is an Electoral
Uprising taking place...The Bush abomination in ending
in a national referendum on the CHARACTER, CREDIBILITY
and COMPETENCE of the _resident, the VICE _resident
and the US regimestream news media, which has fronted
for them for over four years...Yes, this Electoral
Uprising is not just a REPUDIATION of the Bush
abomination but of the whole Triad of shared special
interests (e.g, energy, weapons, media,
pharmaceuticals, chemicals and tobacco, etc.) i.e.,
the Bush cabal, its
Wholly-owned-subsidiary-formerly-known-as-the-Republican-Party
AND their sponsors in the US regimestream news
media)...NO DEFEAT/NO SURRENDER...If enough of us vote
they cannot steal it...Remember Duval County!
Nedra Pickler, Associated Press: "When I turned my
boat in Vietnam into an ambush and I went straight
into the ambush and overran it, I didn't see George
Bush or Dick Cheney at my side," Kerry said. "So I'm
not going to take a second seat to anybody in my
willingness to be tough to defend the United States of
America. I did it when it mattered, and as president I
will defend the United States of America with
everything I have."
Greg Palast, www.tompaine.com: John Kerry is down by
several thousand votes in New Mexico, though not one
ballot has yet been counted. He's also losing big time
in Colorado and Ohio; and he's way down in Florida,
though the votes won't be totaled until Tuesday night.
Through a combination of sophisticated vote
rustling—ethnic cleansing of voter rolls, absentee
ballots gone AWOL, machines that "spoil" votes—John
Kerry begins with a nationwide deficit that could
easily exceed one million votes.
Buzzflash interviews Gore Vidal: Gore Vidal: John
Kerry will win it. Oh, but put the question the other
way around, because Americans never vote for anybody
-- whom will they vote against? They will vote against
Bush, which means Kerry will be elected by the popular
vote. The problem is that Kerry may never be allowed
to be president. All of the plots that were in line
during the 2000 election are still there, from the
purge list of supposed felons to computer touch screen
voting and so on. There could be a series of lawsuits
going on for 10 years after this election, during
which time they will probably declare martial law and
we’ll just all try to get along together, and we’ll
keep everybody in office the way they are.
Jimmy Breslin, Newsday: And I leave today as the only
one in America who from the start was sure John Kerry
would win by a wide margin. Let me tell you why.
This began when I noted that it was obvious, but
overlooked that George Bush had lost the last election
by 500,000 votes. He was close enough in Florida for
it to be stolen in court.
The reason he was close was that Ralph Nader had
125,000 votes in Florida, most of whom would have
voted for Gore.
Anybody who had voted for Gore four years ago would
never vote for Bush.
So Bush started this campaign behind 500,000 votes.
Nor is there Nader. He has reduced himself to being
the village idiot.
When I figured in the people shocked by the dead
bodies of young Americans in Iraq, and brutalized here
by unemployment, there was no way to make the election
seem close. I said this in this newspaper several
times.
Each time as I was typing, the words of the late great
Harry (Champ) Segal kept shouting in my ear:
"Go naked on this one!"
When published reports showed a million new voter
registrations in Florida and about 800,000 in Ohio, I
made the election a lock. They were not rushing out
for George Bush. And these poll takers were ignoring
them. Any part of a million votes in Florida, most of
them of color, would sweep the state.
Support Our Troops, Save the US Constitution,
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Restore Fiscal Responsibility in the White House,
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Election,
Save the Environment, Break the Corporatist
Stranglehold on the US Mainstream News Media, Rescue
the US Supreme Court from Right-Wing Radicals, Cleanse
the White House of the Chicken Hawk Coup and Its
War-Profiteering Cronies, Show Up for Democracy in
2004: Defeat the Triad, Defeat Bush (again!)
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KERRY?SITE=RIPRJ&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Kerry: Election Will Resonate Worldwide
By NEDRA PICKLER
Associated Press Writer
DETROIT (AP) -- Democrat John Kerry said the choice in
the presidential race will resonate around the world
as he made an election-eve appeal to swing voters in
Florida and the Midwest.
"We want independents, moderate Republicans, thinking
people to help change the direction of our country,"
Kerry said at a rally in Joe Louis Arena, home of the
Detroit Red Wings. Earlier, he told a rain-soaked
crowd in Milwaukee that "the hopes of the whole world
are on the line tomorrow."
"This president rushed to war without a plan to win
the peace, and we need a commander in chief who knows
how to get the job done," Kerry said.
Kerry's closing argument was that President Bush was
responsible for lost jobs, a new deficit and a failed
policy in Iraq. He said Bush had taken away the hope
of the diseased and dying by limiting embryonic stem
cell research and had done nothing to help uninsured
people get health care.
"This is a solemn and unique moment when the American
people get to decide," Kerry said. "Take away the
clutter. Take away all the labels - Democrat,
Republican, independent. ... This is your chance to
hold George Bush accountable for the last four years."
Kerry added star power to his last-minute push for
votes, with singers Jon Bon Jovi, Stevie Wonder and
Bruce Springsteen serving as opening acts for rallies
in Milwaukee, Detroit and Cleveland, respectively.
The Massachusetts senator displayed confidence and a
burst of energy as he campaigned to the finish. In
Milwaukee, he cracked jokes and bounded off the stage
to high-five a boy pressed at the front of the crowd
under a cold, steady rain.
"A little rain like this is nothing compared to what
old George Bush has been doing for the last four
years, so we can do it," Kerry said. Then he led the
crowd in a chant. "One more day! One more day!"
Gone was the drawn, seemingly tired Kerry who has been
campaigning across the country nonstop for five weeks,
sometimes silencing his initially rowdy supporters
with lengthy speeches full of facts and figures. But
Kerry said Monday was not a day for a long speech.
"You all know why you are here, and you know the job
we have to get done in the next hours," Kerry told
supporters gathered at the Orlando airport to see his
plane off from his final campaign stop in Florida.
"This is the moment of accountability for America,"
Kerry said. "All of the hopes and dreams of our
country are on the line today. The choice is clear."
In an interview broadcast Monday on CBS' "The Early
Show," Kerry said voters should reject Republican
charges that he's not tough enough to take charge, and
he recalled his own Vietnam experience.
"When I turned my boat in Vietnam into an ambush and I
went straight into the ambush and overran it, I didn't
see George Bush or Dick Cheney at my side," Kerry
said. "So I'm not going to take a second seat to
anybody in my willingness to be tough to defend the
United States of America. I did it when it mattered,
and as president I will defend the United States of
America with everything I have."
In Milwaukee, Kerry thanked Wisconsin for the Green
Bay Packers' win Sunday over the Washington Redskins.
The crowd cheered, many aware that a Redskins loss in
the team's last home game before the election has
predicted an incumbent loss for nearly 70 years.
Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl, a Democrat who owns the
Milwaukee Bucks, stood at Kerry's side.
"He was telling me that when it comes to the Milwaukee
Bucks, he always goes for the taller player," said
Kerry, who is five inches taller than Bush. "And he
said the same thing holds for being president of the
United States, a taller player."
Kerry planned to spend the night in La Crosse, Wis.,
and to appear there Tuesday before returning to Boston
for his Election Day tradition - lunch at the Union
Oyster House. He planned a series of satellite
interviews to battleground states and a celebration
outside at Copley Square.
---
On the Net:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/an_election_spoiled_rotten.php
An Election Spoiled Rotten
Greg Palast
November 01, 2004
It's not even Election Day yet, and the Kerry-Edwards
campaign is already down by a almost a million votes.
That's because, in important states like Ohio, Florida
and New Mexico, voter names have been systematically
removed from the rolls and absentee ballots have been
overlooked—overwhelmingly in minority areas, like Rio
Arriba County, New Mexico, where Hispanic voters have
a 500 percent greater chance of their vote being
"spoiled." Investigative journalist Greg Palast
reports on the trashing of the election.
Greg Palast, contributing editor to Harper's magazine,
investigated the manipulation of the vote for BBC
Television's Newsnight. The documentary, "Bush Family
Fortunes," based on his New York Times bestseller, The
Best Democracy Money Can Buy, has been released this
month on DVD .
John Kerry is down by several thousand votes in New
Mexico, though not one ballot has yet been counted.
He's also losing big time in Colorado and Ohio; and
he's way down in Florida, though the votes won't be
totaled until Tuesday night.
Through a combination of sophisticated vote
rustling—ethnic cleansing of voter rolls, absentee
ballots gone AWOL, machines that "spoil" votes—John
Kerry begins with a nationwide deficit that could
easily exceed one million votes.
The Urge To Purge
Colorado Secretary of State Donetta Davidson just
weeks ago removed several thousand voters from the
state's voter rolls. She tagged felons as barred from
voting. What makes this particularly noteworthy is
that, unlike like Florida and a handful of other Deep
South states, Colorado does not bar ex-cons from
voting. Only those actually serving their sentence
lose their rights.
There's no known, verified case of a Colorado convict
voting illegally from the big house. Because previous
purges have wiped away the rights of innocents,
federal law now bars purges within 90 days of a
presidential election to allow a voter to challenge
their loss of civil rights.
To exempt her action from the federal rule, Secretary
Davidson declared an "emergency." However, the only
"emergency" in Colorado seems to be President Bush's
running dead, even with John Kerry in the polls.
Why the sudden urge to purge? Davidson's chief of
voting law enforcement is Drew Durham, who previously
worked for the attorney general of Texas. This is what
the Lone Star State's current attorney general says of
Mr. Durham: He is, "unfit for public office... a man
with a history of racism and ideological zealotry."
Sounds just right for a purge that affects, in the
majority, non-white voters.
From my own and government investigations of such
purge lists, it is unlikely that this one contains
many, if any, illegal voters.
But it does contain Democrats. The Dems may not like
to shout about this, but studies indicate that 90-some
percent of people who have served time for felonies
will, after prison, vote Democratic. One suspects
Colorado's Republican secretary of state knows that.
Ethnic Cleansing Of The Voter Rolls
We can't leave the topic of ethnically cleansing the
voter rolls without a stop in Ohio, where a Republican
secretary of state appears to be running to replace
Katherine Harris.
In Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), some citizens have
been caught Registering While Black. A statistical
analysis of would-be voters in Southern states by the
watchdog group Democracy South indicates that black
voters are three times as likely as white voters to
have their registration requests "returned" (i.e.,
subject to rejection).
And to give a boost to this whitening of the voter
rolls, for the first time since the days of Jim Crow,
the Republicans are planning mass challenges of voters
on Election Day. The GOP's announced plan to block
35,000 voters in Ohio ran up against the wrath of
federal judges; so, in Florida, what appear to be
similar plans had been kept under wraps until the
discovery of documents called "caging" lists. The
voters on the “caging” lists, disclosed last week by
BBC Television London, are, almost exclusively,
residents of African-American neighborhoods.
Such racial profiling as part of a plan to block
voters is, under the Voting Rights Act, illegal.
Nevertheless, neither the Act nor federal judges have
persuaded the party of Lincoln to join the Democratic
Party in pledging not to distribute blacklists to
block voters on Tuesday.
Absentee Ballots Go AWOL
It's 10pm: Do you know where your absentee ballot is?
Voters wary about computer balloting are going postal:
in some states, mail-in ballot requests are up 500
percent. The probability that all those votes—up to 15
million—will be counted is zip.
Those who mail in ballots are very trusting souls.
Here's how your trust is used. In the August 31
primaries in Florida, Palm Beach Elections Supervisor
Theresa LePore (a.k.a. Madame Butterfly Ballot)
counted 37,839 absentee votes. But days before, her
office told me only 29,000 ballots had been received.
When this loaves-and-fishes miracle was disclosed, she
was forced to recount, cutting the tally to 31,138.
Had she worked it the other way, disappearing a few
thousand votes instead of adding additional ones,
there would be almost no way to figure out the fix (or
was it a mistake?). Mail-in voter registration forms
are protected by federal law. Local government must
acknowledge receiving your registration and must let
you know if there's a problem (say, with signature or
address) that invalidates your registration. But your
mail-in vote is an unprotected crapshoot. How do you
know if your ballot was received? Was it tossed behind
a file cabinet—or tossed out because you did not
include your middle initial? In many counties, you
won't know.
And not every official is happy to have your vote. It
is well-reported that Broward County, Fla., failed to
send out nearly 60,000 absentee ballots. What has not
been nationally reported is that Broward's elections
supervisor is a Jeb Bush appointee who took the post
only after the governor took the unprecedented step of
removing the prior elected supervisor who happened be
a Democrat.
A Million Votes In The Electoral Trash Can
"If the vote is stolen here, it will be stolen in Rio
Arriba County," a New Mexico politician told me.
That's a reasoned surmise: in 2000, one in 10 votes
simply weren't counted—chucked out, erased, discarded.
In the voting biz, the technical term for these
vanishing votes is "spoilage." Citizens cast ballots,
but the machines don't notice. In one Rio Arriba
precinct in the last go-'round, not one single vote
was cast for president—or, at least, none showed up on
the machines.
Not everyone's vote spoils equally. Rio Arriba is 73
percent Hispanic. I asked nationally recognized vote
statistician Dr. Philip Klinkner of Hamilton College
to run a "regression" analysis of the Hispanic ballot
spoilage in the Enchanted State. He calculated that a
brown voter is 500 percent more likely to have their
vote spoiled than a white voter. And It's worse for
Native Americans. Vote spoilage is epidemic near
Indian reservations.
Votes don't spoil because they're left out of the
fridge. It comes down to the machines. Just as poor
people get the crap schools and crap hospitals, they
get the crap voting machines.
It's bad for Hispanics; but for African Americans,
it's a ballot-box holocaust. An embarrassing little
fact of American democracy is that, typically, two
million votes are spoiled in national elections,
registering no vote or invalidated. Based on studies
by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and the Harvard
Law School Civil Rights project, about 54 percent of
those ballots are cast by African Americans. One
million black votes vanished—phffft!
There's a lot of politicians in both parties that like
it that way; suppression of the minority is the way
they get elected. Whoever is to blame, on Tuesday, the
Kerry-Edwards ticket will take the hit. In Rio Arriba,
Democrats have an eight-to-one registration edge over
Republicans. Among African American voters...well, you
can do the arithmetic yourself.
The total number of votes siphoned out of America's
voting booths is so large, you won't find the issue
reported in our self-glorifying news media. The one
million missing black, brown and red votes spoiled,
plus the hundreds of thousands flushed from voter
registries, is our nation's dark secret: an apartheid
democracy in which wealthy white votes almost always
count, but minorities are often purged or challenged
or simply not recorded. In effect, Kerry is down by a
million votes before one lever is pulled, card punched
or touch-screen touched.
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/11/int04057.html
November 1, 2004
SEND THIS PAGE TO A FRIEND
INTERVIEW ARCHIVES
FIGHT IGNORANCE: READ BUZZFLASH
Gore Vidal: Novelist, Essayist, Playwright, and
Provocateur
[W]e’re up against despotism. And whatever rhetoric
they want to use and say, oh, we’re not despots, we’re
good Americans -- well, everybody says that. But
they’re not. They are the enemy. And they have
targeted the American people.
-- Gore Vidal, speaking of the Bush Cartel
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
On the eve of the presidential election, we are
honored to bring you a BuzzFlash interview with the
man some regard as the ranking literary political and
social critic from the left, Gore Vidal.
Since we’re all enmeshed reading about the GOP’s
massive dirty tricks campaign to steal the presidency
– again – we’ll get right to the interview and direct
you to the PBS program American Masters to read his
fascinating and in-depth biography at your leisure.
We spoke with Gore Vidal on why he thinks George W.
Bush will lose this election, the historical figure he
would most like to speak with to gain insight into our
current politics, and why the "American story" is so
far removed from our true history.
Vidal's most recent book is "Imperial America :
Reflections on the United States of Amnesia,"
Published by Nation Books.
* * *
BuzzFlash: In the closing days of the presidential
election, I can’t think of another individual whom I
would rather interview about the state of our country
and what the future holds, so thank you for your time.
Gore Vidal: Well, if you want a cheery optimist,
you’ve got it.
BuzzFlash: Off the bat, whom do you think is going to
win the election on November 2nd – John Kerry or
George Bush?
Gore Vidal: John Kerry will win it. Oh, but put the
question the other way around, because Americans never
vote for anybody -- whom will they vote against? They
will vote against Bush, which means Kerry will be
elected by the popular vote. The problem is that Kerry
may never be allowed to be president. All of the plots
that were in line during the 2000 election are still
there, from the purge list of supposed felons to
computer touch screen voting and so on. There could be
a series of lawsuits going on for 10 years after this
election, during which time they will probably declare
martial law and we’ll just all try to get along
together, and we’ll keep everybody in office the way
they are.
BuzzFlash: You’ve seen many presidents come and go
through the decades as a writer and as a social and
political critic. Although only a fool or a liar would
foretell the future, but when you look at John Kerry
are there certain qualities that you think he
possesses that could make him a strong president?
Gore Vidal: Well, don’t over-personalize the
presidency. It’s not wise. Then you fall into the trap
of "if only we had a nice man or woman as president,
everything would be all right." Some bastards have
been great presidents. I wouldn’t judge anything by
that. If it means that he is far more intelligent than
the average American and has read many, many, many
more books than the average American professor, much
less citizen, and that the other one is as close to a
cretin as has ever served in that office, then of
course, there’s no choice between them. Obviously it’s
Kerry. He is intelligent. And at least once in his
life he really did something of great importance when
he turned on the Vietnam War. That was a splendid
statement that he made to the Senate committee: "Whom
can you ask to be the last person to die for a
mistake?" That’s immortal. Let’s hope he does as well
yet again.
BuzzFlash: At BuzzFlash we certainly want Kerry to
win, but at the same time you have to ask -- who would
want to be president right now and inherit the
quagmire in Iraq? Do you think that the damage done by
the Bush administration is something that any
president, much less John Kerry or the Democrats,
could ever repair?
Gore Vidal: Well, yes. Dean was on the right track,
and he set up what I think is going to be a big Kerry
victory. Dean knew that the American people are
anti-war. We had to be dragged into World War I. We
had to be dragged into World War II and told a lot of
lies. We are not particularly war-like people, and
we’re more interested in business, which is the
business of America, as President Coolidge so wisely
said.
And the entire Midwest -- the whole election is
swinging on Ohio and Pennsylvania, Iowa and Missouri.
That section of the country is indeed the heartland.
That is not just sentimentality. The heartland of the
country has always been isolationist. And isolationist
is a good word to describe America. We do not need to
go into foreign wars in order to be aggressive and to
seize oil that is not ours. Maybe we do now, since oil
is getting very tight. But by and large, we have never
needed to be thieves, unlike the British Empire, which
was based on grabbing stuff.
We are now no longer a virtuous country because we’re
a country in need. And we’re a country that is the
most indebted on earth, and nobody’s buying our
treasury bonds. And we’re going to have trouble
servicing those treasury bonds. Money is in short
supply, not only for the government but for the wars,
and for whoever’s the next president, so I don’t envy
him.
I’d feel safer with Kerry. I would never feel safe
with Bush. Bush has wrecked everything. But with any
of the others on offer, Kerry’s the one with the most
connections with the money people of Wall Street. I
never thought I’d hear myself say that -- but that, at
this moment, is necessary to repair the markets and
try and do something about the debt, so that we don’t
just go under.
BuzzFlash: Hypothetically, if Bush gets a second term
either through legitimate or illegitimate means, what,
if any, lessons from our history can we draw from to
get through Bush’s reign? Although it certainly won’t
stop Bush from invading another country or looting the
country, what perspective do you think people should
have? Because although it may seem like it, the sky
isn’t going to fall on November 3rd, even if our
Republic does.
Gore Vidal: Yes, even if Bush loses, he’s going to try
to stay in office. I think the first thing he’ll be
faced with will be the revolt of the generals. They
don’t like seeing the troops thrown away, and they
certainly don’t want to be thrown away. And they’ve
been ignored by this fool Rumsfeld, and they’ve
allowed a little group to misdirect American foreign
policy and have us invade innocent countries, and make
ourselves hated by the world. I think the military
will be the first to blow the whistle.
BuzzFlash: Would you say that George Bush’s presidency
is the embodiment of everything that the Founding
Fathers feared when they drafted the new Constitution?
Gore Vidal: I have never myself put it so baldly, but
I accept your definition. They are turning in their
graves.
BuzzFlash: Who is the person or historical figure you
wish you could interview to gain some kind of a
perspective on our nation today? Who would Gore Vidal
think would have the most intriguing and perceptive
things to say about our current political situation?
Gore Vidal: John Quincy Adams.
BuzzFlash: Why?
Gore Vidal: John Quincy Adams, on the 4th of July -- I
think it was 1824 -– he’d gone back to Congress,
having served one term not very well as president, and
a great term earlier as secretary of state. He was the
one who wrote the Monroe Doctrine, which kept the
world pretty safe for a long time. And he was asked:
Was he in favor of the United States joining with a
bunch of European nations to free the Greeks, the
source of our civilization and classical culture, from
the Turks? And on the 4th of July –- and I have to
paraphrase it since I have a bad memory -– he said the
United States is not the sort of nation that goes
forth to slay dragons on foreign shores. Nor does the
United States enlist under any banner other than her
own, or serve in the interests other than her own. She
might indeed embark upon, most generously, on liberty
for the Greeks. But in this process of fighting over
or under other banners, she could become dictatress of
the world and lose her soul.
BuzzFlash: On some level, every presidential election
is symbolic. Many people hated Clinton because he was
viewed as the embodiment of the sixties generation and
the worst aspects of liberalism, despite the reality
of Clinton’s very centrist policies.
Gore Vidal: He was no liberal.
BuzzFlash: Right. But symbolically, Clinton
represented a changing of the old guard. He
represented an acceptance of a multi-cultural and
diverse society, equal partnership in marriage, and
that a person can succeed through their intellect and
determination. Teddy Roosevelt obviously symbolized
the emerging American dominance.
Gore Vidal: A lot of that is later decoration that is
put on these figures.
BuzzFlash: Well, true. I sometimes joke that this
election is a referendum on whether the republic as we
know it will endure. I believe that our nation is
actually at a crossroads between the fantasists versus
the realists –- that there’s a struggle between faith
and reason. What do you think, if any, is the symbolic
significance of the election?
Gore Vidal: I think it’s more bedrock than that, such
as who gets to appoint judges. If [under Bush], the
litmus test for a judge is Roe v. Wade and they ought
to be anti-black -- you see the NAACP has been under
questioning from the Department of Justice, wondering
about contributions to it and so on -- I mean, look,
we’re up against despotism. And whatever rhetoric they
want to use and say, oh, we’re not despots, we’re good
Americans -- well, everybody says that. But they’re
not. They are the enemy. And they have targeted the
American people. They don’t like them. They don’t care
anything about them. They’re interested in corporate
America. They’re interested in Halliburton and their
companies. They’re interested in making money. And
they hate the people who stand for the old republic.
They just don’t like them. And that’s the division
here. And I think that’s why Bush will fall in the
long run, but how long a run it’s going to be, I do
not predict.
BuzzFlash: The best example of the Republican "target"
on America is their own admission that the Republicans
want to suppress the vote, especially among African
Americans in certain states and districts.
Gore Vidal: Oh, they’re not just suppressing African
American voters. The old Jewish ladies in Miami,
Florida, have been made to stand for four hours in the
sun, having a heatstroke, while they’re being given
their ballots or their registration papers, or
whatever it is. No, no –- this is a war on all the
people, all the time. I mean, if we had a responsible
media, we’d know something about it, but we don’t.
BuzzFlash: Let me ask you just one more question, and
somewhat abstract, if you’ll bear with me. It seems
that more than anything else, Americans believe in the
American story. And the story says that the past is
irrelevant and that our country is boldly marching
toward progress through a better world and helping
people along the way. But there’s always been a great
divide between the story and our true history. And
this story is all powerful because it essentially
abandons the past -- it only looks forward. And this
goes beyond the media. I think it’s embedded in our
national character. So my question to you is: Why is
the American story so far removed from our history or
reality itself? And secondly, as someone who’s been a
dissenting voice throughout your life and have told a
very different history of our country, how do we
change or adapt the story?
Gore Vidal: Well, I don’t change the story. I try to
go back to what it seems to me that the story was. And
we don’t have many very bold historians, and we
certainly don’t have many thoughtful ones. But we’ve
got some good solid meat-and-potato historians hidden
away in the universities, terrified of their own
shadows, because they want tenure. And they know that
if they are critical of certain things, they’re not
going to get it. So I think it starts with an
educational system that explicitly lies about our
stories.
If you ask young people you’ll find they just don’t
know a lot of things. But they certainly get the fact
that we’re being conned and they’re being conned in
the classes. So they hate American history. I always
follow these polls every year where they ask high
school seniors what courses do you like best, and
history comes in last. Well, our history is
fascinating, and I spent my life writing about it. And
I’ve gotten quite a few readers together. In fact, in
a sense, a great deal of what a few people know about
American history is what I’ve done. But I shouldn’t be
the teacher. Our schools should be responsible for
this. But they’re not because too many interests do
not want us know our past.
Secondly, when you have a media as totally corrupt as
ours, which will cover up for every presidential
mistake, then you’re not going to get the truth about
anything. How on earth can the people be supposed to
look at their past and draw a lesson? Whom do they go
to? Or expect a newspaper, The New York Times, to give
you the context to why Osama bin Laden did what he
did? No, you’re told he’s an awful man. He hates us
because we’re so fat and cute. That’s why he hates us.
He wants to kill us. And the American people nod, as
though that’s a reason. There are lots of reasons that
he has done what he’s done, and he’s written them all
down, and they’ve all been published. It’s perfectly
clear why he doesn’t like us.
BuzzFlash: Mr. Vidal, thank you for speaking with us.
Gore Vidal: Thank you.
* * *
Resources:
Biography of Gore Vidal from PBS program American
Masters
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/print/vidal_g.html
LA Weekly interview with Gore Vidal
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/printme.php?eid=48666
BACK TO TOP
Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash.com
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/columnists/nyc-breslin1101,0,538572,print.column?coll=ny-ny-columnists
Why Kerry will beat Bush
Jimmy Breslin
November 2, 2004
One day last May, I assigned the election to John
Kerry. I said it early, and often. As I looked more, I
saw that it shouldn't even be close. I said that in
this space more than once. Now I am so sure that I am
not even going to bother to watch the results tonight.
I am going to bed early, for I must rise in the
darkness and pursue immediately an exciting, overdue
project.
Besides, if I was up, so many people, upon seeing
every word I said of this election coming true on
television in front of them, would be kissing my hands
and embarrassing me with outlandish praise. So I go to
bed with total confidence. I will get up and stroll to
other meadows. I invented this column form. I now
leave, but will return here for cameo appearances. And
I leave today as the only one in America who from the
start was sure John Kerry would win by a wide margin.
Let me tell you why.
This began when I noted that it was obvious, but
overlooked that George Bush had lost the last election
by 500,000 votes. He was close enough in Florida for
it to be stolen in court.
The reason he was close was that Ralph Nader had
125,000 votes in Florida, most of whom would have
voted for Gore.
Anybody who had voted for Gore four years ago would
never vote for Bush.
So Bush started this campaign behind 500,000 votes.
Nor is there Nader. He has reduced himself to being
the village idiot.
When I figured in the people shocked by the dead
bodies of young Americans in Iraq, and brutalized here
by unemployment, there was no way to make the election
seem close. I said this in this newspaper several
times.
Each time as I was typing, the words of the late great
Harry (Champ) Segal kept shouting in my ear:
"Go naked on this one!"
When published reports showed a million new voter
registrations in Florida and about 800,000 in Ohio, I
made the election a lock. They were not rushing out
for George Bush. And these poll takers were ignoring
them. Any part of a million votes in Florida, most of
them of color, would sweep the state.
The reporters said the nation was divided. They were
afraid to say anything that might upset this view.
You've been had by the news industry. Not once, even
after the first debate when Kerry scored a technical
knockout, did they take a step and call it as it
happened. "War of Words" was the closest they could
come.
Finally, one thing kept clawing at you. Cell phones.
Long I have wondered how many there were. Everybody I
know, smart people, politicians, news directors,
thought that there were, oh, 40 million or so. I call
the cell phone institute in Washington last Sept. 12.
They told me that there were 165 million cell phones
in use in the United States, That is 165,000,000. One
month later, I asked again. It was up to 170 million
-- 170,000,000. Yes, a great number also had land
lines. But of this 170 million cell phone users there
were 40 million between the ages of 18 and 29, and
these people usually have no other phones.
That had to be Kerry.
Not one cell phone in the United States had been
reached by a political poll. These old-line poll
takers don't know who cell phone users were or where
they lived.
So you were getting CBS/New York Times polls
proclaimed as most important and real. One hundred
seventy million cell phones and you don't poll one of
them. The polls they are pushing at you in the news
magazines, on the networks, in the big papers, are
such cheap, meaningless blatant lies, that some of
these television stations should have their licenses
challenged.
They have a poll number for every one of the
"battleground states." I'm awaiting the casualty list
from Gettysburg.
Then a night or so ago, somebody finally tried a poll
of cell phone users between the ages of 18 and 29.
John Zogby conducted the survey in conjunction with
Rock the Vote and the results showed Kerry at 55
percent and Bush at 40.
Then the Kerry people ran their own poll, which took a
lot of work. It was the first time they had reached
any cell phone users. The result was Kerry 59 and Bush
39.
Then I saw on television yesterday, and I hate to
single him out, but he singled himself out, this
fellow Bill Schneider on CNN and he is their election
expert and he said that cell phones didn't mean
anything. He's right. They didn't mean anything in
1950.
Oh, but these young people never vote, the tales read.
They will this time, and because of a one-word issue.
Draft.
Every time Bush, or one of these generals he has,
stands up and says there will be no military draft,
everybody young figures this means there probably will
be one by January, which will put them in the real
battlegrounds. They rush to register, and then today
they go to the polls to vote.
Thanks for the use of the hall.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.