Op-Ed

1. Exit Polls Did Not Match Actual Vote in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida

The gulf between the exit polls and counted votes was glaring. The Zogby Poll and the media consortium poll (including CNN and AP) had Kerry winning an electoral landslide with 53% and 51% respectively in Ohio. Why did exit polls match the actual vote in the nation – EXCEPT for Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania?

Exit polls are considered the most accurate measurement of the vote. Exit polls were responsible for calling for a revote in the Ukraine. The odds of the exit polls being outside the margin of error in these three battleground states are about 155 million to one. The exit poll data has never been released. There must be an investigation of the exit poll disparities.

2. Voting machines owned by private, partisan companies subject to manipulation

Voting machine tampering occurred throughout the state. In Mahoning County, votes “hopped” from Kerry to Bush. In Franklin County, votes for Kerry “faded” away. In Lucas County, Diebold machines froze up and rejected ballots in pro-Kerry precincts.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Oh boy! Starting the year off briskly, lending it such tone already, such cachet, such je ne sais quoi -- those Republicans are so special, aren't they? Their first move, first rat out of the trap, top priority: lower ethics standards. Yessiree, this 2005 is going to be quite a year, some pip.

Let's put that to a vote. Many problems before us -- Iraq, a Social Security "crisis," a real health care crisis, world terrorism, our international reputation possibly at its lowest ever ... who is in favor of lowering ethics standards first? Who thinks ethics standards in Washington are too high?

House "Republican leaders" -- that would be your Tom DeLay, Dennis Hastert and other moral heroes of our time -- want to repeal the rule that makes it possible for the House to censure members for bringing "discredit" on the House, even if their behavior does not fall under a specific rule.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Oh 2004, 2004, bird thou never wert. Was it really that horrible a year, or does it only seem that way?

Abu Ghraib, the endless trials anent Kobe Bryant and Scott Peterson, war in Iraq looking worse every day, Howard Dean eliminated over a whoop and a presidential race so devoid of joy that the high point was when the president claimed God speaks through him -- leaving us to contemplate the news that God doesn't know how to pronounce nuclear and has yet to master subject-verb agreement. "Performance enhancing drugs" in baseball. Ray Charles died. Karl Rove is Man of the Year. We're all overweight. Swift Boat Liars win the presidential race for Bush. Then just to round things off nicely, a terrible natural disaster. What a bummer.

But, look at it this way ... the Boston Red Sox won the championship. Eliot Spitzer is scaring the spit out of the insurance industry (check out those year-end bonuses on Wall Street, El). The Greek Olympics went well. Maybe we could end the payola by just having them in Greece every time. Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France for a record sixth time, a symbolic victory for cancer patients everywhere.

Well into its third century, the American experiment in democracy remains unfulfilled. Far from ready for export, American democracy is still a work in progress, inclusive and resilient in many respects, yet divisive and uncaring in others. The framers of our Constitution, having established a set of legal rights admired and modeled throughout the world since, neglected to also establish the economic rights essential towards securing a decent life for every member of our society.

At the beginning of a new millenium, American citizens find their security under threat. Islamic fundamentalism and rogue nations with nuclear ambitions are the obvious and external threats, but there are growing threats to our economic security as well. The threats of hunger, poverty, inadequate housing, inadequate health care, inadequate child care, inadequate education, and inadequate retirement security loom larger for an increasing number of Americans.

AUSTIN, Texas -- And a Merry Christmas to all, including people who have white Christmas trees decorated entirely with purple balls. Merry Christmas to the Red states and the Blue states, to the R's and D's, and to all the troops stationed in Afghanistan, including the French troops there -- Mais oui, Chwistmas, y'all.

            Merry Christmas to all the people who had to eat bugs on reality shows this year and to all the professional athletes who have not gotten into duke-outs (lumps of coal to the rest of you jocks). Merry Christmas to the homeless and the people in the shelters, and especially to those who are feeding the people in the shelters. Season's Best to all the cops who collected for Blue Santa this year, and a Tiny Tim Salute to all the prisoners, including Martha Stewart. Her cell-wing lost the prison's Christmas decorating contest this year -- when it rains ...

AUSTIN, Texas -- Now is the time for all good men -- and women -- to race to the aid of their country. Liberals and libertarians unite! The Sinclair Broadcasting Group has moved this election into the realm of creeping fascism, state propaganda, Big Brother and brainwashing. What me, hyperbole?

This is SO simple -- how would you conservatives feel if NBC, CBS or ABC decided to pre-empt primetime programming a week before the election to air Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11"? And then announced, "But we've offered President Bush a chance to reply"?

Sinclair has also offered President George W. Bush the inestimable service of diverting attention from his record and is using OUR publicly owned airwaves to do it.

For Sinclair's lobbyist and on-air editorialist Mark Hyman to claim this long attack ad is "news" is ludicrous -- almost as strained as his claim, somewhere between infelicitous and crackers, that those who disagree are like "Holocaust deniers."

AUSTIN, Texas -- "The aide (a senior adviser to President Bush) said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." -- Ron Suskind, New York Times Magazine, Oct. 17, 2004.

             This is the quote that now has some noted bloggers identifying themselves as, "Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community."

Dear Virginia:

In your letter, you asked me if there really was a Democratic Party. You said that all of your friends have told you it’s a big fat lie, a story that grownups tell little kids so they won’t worry about mean old Republicans who eat children like you. You wrote me also that you have a tough time believing there could ever be a political party that cares about the difference between right and wrong, and wants you to have clean air to breath and pure, fresh water to drink in the middle of the night when you wake up thirsty. And you told me that after listening to President Bush on the TV, you think all that stuff about Democrats who think it is wrong to kill people in countries that haven’t done anything to hurt us is all make-believe, too. After all, you never see those Democrat guys talking back to the President, and telling him he’s bad.

The usual notion of big news is the unusual. Journalists are taught to look for "man bites dog" stories -- the events that raise eyebrows and make us think, "Wow!"

News of the ordinary also makes the cut in media outlets, of course, but it's not what sizzles, and it's not apt to get onto front pages or prime-time broadcasts.

A simple rejoinder to the media status quo is that what we really need are more "dog bites man" and "dog bites woman" stories. For every spectacular event, there are many others -- just as terrible or just as wonderful -- that barely register on the media Richter scale because they're happening all the time. What's earthshaking in people's lives is often barely visible to the hype-hungry media eye.

But journalism has the challenge of simultaneously tracking what's usual and unusual. One complication is that important ongoing realities may occasionally receive a lot of attention as a result of media whim. A certain social ill might suddenly get a burst of national publicity because editors at the New York Times decided to make it a page-one news feature.

AUSTIN -- It is both peculiar and chilling to find oneself discussing the problem of American torture. I have considered support of basic human rights and dignity so much a part of our national identity that this feels as strange as though I'd suddenly become Chinese or found Fidel Castro in the refrigerator.

One's first response to the report by the International Red Cross about torture at our prison at Guantanamo is denial. "I don't want to think about it; I don't want to hear about it; we're the good guys, they're the bad guys; shut up. And besides, they attacked us first."

But our country has opposed torture since its founding. One of our founding principles is that cruel and unusual punishment is both illegal and wrong. Every year, our State Department issues a report grading other countries on their support for or violations of human rights.