Laura's Listeners
Re: Reading Laura Bush's Lips by Bill Berkowitz
I've been known to tell jokes with the best of them. But I don't care how anyone slices it. This was no joke! And it denigrates the presidency at absolutely the worst of times in history. Does one need to count the body bags? Helen Thomas was, and is right: This is the worst president ever; and Laura Bush' horsy sense of humor is not what the world wants to hear at this moment. I don't think so. These guys and gals have lost all sense of decorum. Thank you so much, Mr. & Mrs. Bush for the presidential material (pardon the pun).
Leo Thibodeau
Mrs. Bush did her "routine" well, but as I viewed it, my only thought was, "How cynical and sure of themselves they (the Republicans) are."
Jeri Schatz
Laura's stand-up routine just confirms that the real battle is not the Culture War, but what turns out to be a war against all the programs that have built the American middle class—Social Security, Medicare (the Trojan Horse bill), even civil service. The real battle is for dominance of American life by the corporate elite.
Sue Pastin
I am not a right-winger, but I believe in the sanctity of marriage or any vows I might take, such as not to perjure myself in court. I think to laugh at and make a fool of one's marriage partner is distasteful and mocks those vows. Hillary Clinton would not have done it.
Rose Stern
Disabling The Mute Button
Re: Muting The Conversation Of Democracy by Bill Moyers
Thank God there is still a journalist like Bill Moyers who is willing to tell the truth about what is happening to 'news' coverage in America and speak out. How long he'll be able to continue to do so is, frankly, a good question. Many of us know what is actually happening in this country with the power gained by the current administration, but feel helpless to counter the destruction of everything we hold dear: honesty, integrity, America as a land of hope and opportunity and symbol that once stood as a shining example to the rest of the world. I'm getting old...I'm 68. I despair for my children and grandchildren who will carry the burden of the shame being wrought by the policies being foisted on us by those currently in power be they political, industrial, corporate, or 'religious'. Shame on us all for allowing our country to sink so far.
Sherry Franke
For many weeks now, I have been wondering what could possibly have happened to my favorite journalist of many years and his excellent program, "NOW" on PBS. And now I know the sad and very frightening truth of the matter. I was devastated when I found he was gone and now I feel even worse, knowing what happened. I wonder what it will take to wake the American populace from its stupor and its seeming ignorance of the evils being perpetrated by those in control under the guise of patriotism. That 1984 is here is nothing new to me; I have seen it creeping up on us for many years now. And Mr. Moyers was one person upon whom I relied to always get the truth out to the people. How many more will they silence and how long will the American people put up with this skullduggery?.
E. C. Roy
To Bill Moyers: Thank you for standing up for me. Just a regular person trying to live a normal life—but more and more I'm realizing that this government is blatantly pulling the wool over our eyes, and no one is putting up a fight. Except a few brave journalists like you. Thank God. I shudder to think what it will take for the rest of my countrymen to realize that our hard-won democracy is slipping away from us. Please continue to speak up for us. Thank you.
Irene Stemler
Bill Moyers' "Muting The Conversation of Democracy" may become known as the most comprehensive and 'crystalline' summation of what the current administration (I use the term loosely) is doing to this once-great Republic. I still cannot believe my eyes and ears each day as Bush-Cheney and Co. systematically lie, deceive, cheat and tear down everything that this country once represented. A wonderful article—very poignant and reflective and I shall always keep a copy.
Dennis Angeloni
Playing Fair
Re: Tearing Up The Rule Book by Marcia D. Greenberger and Judith C. Appelbaum
I think it's very important to point out that the filibuster has served both sides of the aisle well. When the Republicans were the minority, they used the filibuster to good measure, and not once did the Democrats think of changing the established protocols.
Will someone please point out that bullies are by definition weak and spineless personalities? Is this not the key to their dissolution? How will they stand up to hundreds of millions of people who decide to peacefully, but forcefully say "enough!"?
It's bad enough the Bushites have torn the New Deal to shreds and peeled back the many socially and morally responsible advances we have made in our society in the past 60 years. Now they want to destroy the very substance of the Constitution and send us back to merry ol' England to the world of kings, lords and ladies and everybody else who has to live in the slop.
Is the "nuclear option" the last line in the sand? Is it going to have to come down to Boston Tea Party Re-enactment Soldiers with fire sticks and stones? Will the slumbering half of America even care?
Jerell Lambert
Unfortunately, all Frist sees is the prize at the end, the chance to be the president of the United States. He has sold his soul to the religious right for the big prize.
Bruce Gray
The baseball analogy is appropriate except improperly explained. Imagine the sore loser team (Dems) deciding that unless the majority of players vote yes, the other team (Republicans) will not be allowed to send their batters to the batters box, given the opportunity to strike out or hit a home run. That is what is happening in the U.S. Senate.
The checkered history of the filibuster should be an act of shame for the Dems—remember it was the Dems who stopped civil-rights legislation from coming to a vote by using the filibuster—who believe they should be able to win even when they lose the elections, even when they are acting against the proper will of the American people.
The filibuster is a tradition of the Senate, it is not found in the Constitution. What is found there is the charge of the Senate to give its "Advice and Consent" to the presidents nominees. We pay senators to talk— regardless of how foolish their ideas—and then to vote, not to dishonor their oath and the Constitution.
The statements made by Dems such as Reid and Schumer are hateful. If such things were said about Ruth Ginsburg by Republicans they would be properly called hate mongers. The Dems' silence when their leaders spew hate defines the degeneration of their political party and raises questions regarding the decency of those who justify such awful behavior.
Tomas Howel
Exiting The Polls
Re: What Didn't Happen In Ohio by Russ Baker
Let me say in advance that I do not have a dog in this fight. One of the assumptions implicit in Professor Steven Freeman's analysis of the exit polls is that the polls were competently designed and honestly reported. When I read the Edison/Mitofsky report and tried to coax his organization into facilitating access to data, it became evident that there was no basis to assume that. This is not to detract from Freeman's analysis, which is probably right, but merely to say that I would want to scrutinize Mitofsky's data and methodology much more closely before drawing conclusions from it.
The journalistic deficiencies in Baker's article are capsulized in one simple observation regarding his methods of reasoning. Mr. Baker assures us that the academics who believe the exit polls indicate a Kerry win are insufficiently trained in the science of poll interpretation.
So, who are the paladins he trots out to defeat their arguments? Warren Mitofsky, whose company and future stand or fall on the work under discussion. A psychology graduate student who has written a children's book. A bachelor's level graduate with some graduate coursework in polling (and many years working as an employee of polling firms). And someone with no relevant credentials (but plenty of chutzpah), Rick Brady (resume ). Brady's work actually contradicts Baker's implied characterization of it, saying "Dr. Freeman is right in concluding that statistical explanations of the discrepancy of the discrepancy to date are inadequate."
Junior people can, of course, be right when senior people are wrong. Mr. Baker's trump cards, however, deliver an underruff.
As for Liddle's work , let us stipulate that it is an original, interesting, and positive contribution that deserves to be recognized in any debate of exit polling. However, as she concedes in a footnote, her work does not refute the possibility that the vote was miscounted. It only provides an alternate explanation.
It is in the body of the work that her lack of experience shows. She makes a great deal out of the fact that "Whole Precinct Error" (WPE) is not perfectly independent of precinct partisanship. A secret that one learns only outside of the classroom is that real-life data are not usually as obliging as those in textbooks. Confounding of the variables is not unusual, a fact that Liddle might have learned from her recent experience on the Florida vote , but evidently has not. Rather, contrary to the available evidence (combined response rates in strong Kerry precincts were actually lower than in strong Bush precincts), she accepts as plausible the notion that Bush voters were less likely to respond to pollsters. Since the quality of the data is uncertain, her model is not automatically disqualified, but she needed to do a good job of explaining the point, and didn't.
She also failed to do checks of her model that an experienced researcher would have done. One (extremely obvious) check is looking at more than one state. For the limited data she analyzed, as Josh Mitteldorf of Temple University pointed out to me, her model predicts that WPE will go to zero at both extremes of partisanship. In the real data, this does not appear to be the case in strong Bush precincts. In those strong Bush precincts, the median is much higher than the mean. In layman's terms, this means that there are a few precincts with very high WPE, and some with very low WPE. Low WPE precincts would not contradict Liddle's hypothesis, but the high WPE precincts suggest a question.
I think that the vice president of USCountVotes, Bruce Odell may have answered the question Liddle should have asked on WPE by noting that any model should explain not only the WPE, but also the response rate and any differences between mean vs. median. Out of courtesy to Odell, I will leave it to him to present his results at the opportune time. But neither Liddle nor Odell is the point of this letter. Apparently, Russ Baker lacked the courtesy to talk to USCV and he can't plead a lack of journalistic experience. In his case, it comes across as a lapse of journalistic integrity.
The sense that Baker is going outside the ethic of normal journalism is amplified by a number of other troublesome aspects of his article. He said he did "spot checks on a few popular fraud anecdotes" to conclude that there was no serious problem with the election. Evidently, he missed the Conyers report , which questioned whether Ohio's electors were lawfully chosen. Baker's main thesis, the notion that those of us who question the election should shut up, is based on an appeal to anonymous authority ("many Democratic officials, election reform advocates, and analysts"). Appeals to authority are always questionable, but appeals to anonymous authorities are laughable. Using writers of limited credentials to disparage or belittle writers of greater credentials is an ugly tactic, one employed by proponents of so-called "intelligent design" and opponents of the theory of global warming in their war on science. Misrepresentation of Rick Brady's actual conclusions was egregious, and should have been caught by an editor.
The interpretation of the exit polls will be argued out over time. As is common in these situations, more than one model may fit the data. Reaching a fair evaluation may require looking outside the limited set of data Warren Mitofsky has made feely available. Russ Baker and TomPaine, however, have taken a pre-emptive strike against the truth by rushing into print with a weakly founded and poorly researched article. In this, they have politicized what should be a scientific issue and done much harm... especially to their own reputations.
Oliver Dawshed
Oliver Dawshed acts as an informal advisor to USCountVotes.org, the organization whose work on the 2004 exit polls was attacked in Baker's piece. This letter is strictly his own.
Russ Baker replies:
Mr. Dawshed criticizes me for citing "many Democratic officials, election reform advocates and analysts" who aren’t convinced from the evidence that a large-scale “theft” occurred in Ohio—as opposed to individual acts of incompetency, obstructionism, etc. “Appeals to authority are always questionable, but anonymous ones are laughable,” he declares.
Well, that’s a good one. Because “Oliver Dawshed” is not this person’s real name. For whatever reason, the person behind the fictional “Dawshed” employs a pseudonym. So much for laughable anonymous appeals.
On to other matters. In a widely circulated e-mail, Mr. “Dawshed” accused TomPaine of not publishing his original letter. Yet TomPaine never received that letter. The very fact that Mr. Dawshed would rush to an incorrect conclusion about TomPaine’s desire to censor debate—and distribute that allegation without even checking first—tells you something about him and his methodology.
What about bias? Dawshed says he does “not have a dog in this fight.” Read on to his bio following the letter, where casually mentions that “acts as an informal advisor to USCountVotes.org” No dog in the fight? It’s a Doberman.
Dawshed criticizes me for not calling the USCV folks for comment. This perplexes me. USCV has already published their material and circulated it widely. In my writing in TomPaine, which is principally a journal of opinion and not a daily newspaper, I remark upon USCV’s work. There’s no obligation in that format to call for comment, and, given the extensive USCV argumentation on display, no apparent point. Finally, I’d just note this hypocrisy—neither “Dawshed” nor his cohorts who write about me have ever called me to ask any questions either.
Dawshed says that the work by Brady, whom I cite, is actually at odds with my own point. Hardly. Brady says only that USCV’s Freeman “is right in concluding that statistical explanations” offered thus far about the discrepancy are inadequate. By this, he doesn’t mean to agree with Freeman on anything of substance, just that he feels Mitofsky’s people need to more extensively document their claims.
Regarding Warren Mitofsky: They suggest that he is part of a deliberate cover-up. Here’s their proof: He blames the gap between exit polls and the final tabulated result on screw-ups with his own product rather than “fraud.” Rationally speaking, if Mitofsky’s future really depends on the outcome here, as Dawshed says, then he should be arguing for the accuracy and quality of his work, which he is not doing. Perhaps Mitofsky is actually an honest man. Now that’s a shocking notion.
Since the editors at TomPaine asked that I be brief, I won’t go point by point over all of the aspersions Mr. “Dawshed” casts on me and on those whom I believe offer credible critiques of the conspiracy theory. As for his contention that I misrepresent aspects of their analysis, I’ll just note that none of them has contacted me to say so.
Finally, let me urge open-minded readers to focus on the bottom line: Those who attack me because I say I don’t see evidence of a conspiracy to steal the election through either computers or some other means are not interested in a fair and open inquiry. They are angry, and no one—even a friendly skeptic—can be spared.
