Here's the link: Pushing to be Counted. And here's my letter to the Post's ombudsman who, in my estimation, has been fairly balanced in the past.
Dear Mr. Getler,I'm a Republican, so you may dismiss my anger over this article. I hope you will continue reading.
This article could be summarized in one sentence : "GOP officials in Florida are racists and are preventing blacks from voting". The reporters couldn't wait to work in a reference to "closed school house doors"...it's in paragraph 3. Later there's a quote invoking George Wallace. They even managed to work in Ax Handle Saturday, a 44-year-old disgraceful event. Certainly those were shameful times, but resurrecting them so prominently in this context is paramount to pouring gasoline on a fire.
Here is just one example of the sloppy and inflammatory language in the article:
On page 1:Summary: the new black voter registration rate, likely Democratic, was 3-1/2 times higher than new white voters (21% vs. 6%).
From the 2000 election to August 2004, nearly 200,000 black voters were added to the rolls in Florida, a 21 percent increase in large part because of registration drives by groups including America Coming Together. Registration by white voters increased almost 6 percent. Black people overwhelmingly vote Democratic...Five paragraphs later:3-1/2 times more registrations (likely Democrat), 3 times more flagged forms. No disparity, right? No information is offered that would attribute this to anything other than the law of averages. But, just in case the reader missed the reporters' point, the last sentence leads one to conclude that blacks are being disenranchised at a disproportionate rate.
A Washington Post analysis found nearly three times the number of flagged Democratic registrations as Republican. Broken down by race, no group had more flagged registrations than blacks.Early voting sites---not enough and not open on Sunday. Purging felons---the reporters make it clear they believe such laws are discriminatory, but they offer no proof. "Carlberg's office purges an average of 140 felons a month." The only example: a felon, legally purged from the rolls. In example after example, the reporters say the registration offices are following the law, but they do so in a way that implies they are manipulating the law. The reporters' treatment of the local election official was smug and dismissive, despite his having been sandbagged in a media-driven event.
Lastly, I read this article in the context of a highly-charged election. There have been dozens of recent articles throughout the country about problems with sloppy and fraudulent voter registration practices. Most involved "voter registration drives" like the one in this article. But that is not noted in this article, nor has the Post given prominent coverage to those incidents. I'm really curious to know why there are such widespread problems with the forms turned in by those groups. What is so hard about filling out the forms, especially if one considers that the people filling them out were hired for that specific task and are said to have been trained on how to do it? I read most national newspapers every day on-line and, as of this writing, no major investigative pieces have been written about this widespread phenomenon. It seems to me this is likely to be a major story after the election, given the Democratic Party's evident intent to cry foul over any problems at the polling place. Wouldn't it be wise to investigate it now, before we are in the heat of any post-election disputes? Is there more here than simple sloppiness? We don't know because, to date, no national newspaper has done an investigaton.
I am so disappointed in the Post's treatment of this story. I've always held your paper in very high esteem. But this article and it's prominent placement lead me to conclude that your editors still believe Southern whites (and perhaps Republicans in general) are closet racists practicing clever new forms of Jim Crow. That really hurts. I now feel it necessary to assure you that I would be as outraged as anyone else if anyone, black or white, was being wrongfully denied the right to vote. There are many grounds upon which to disagree politically, but the racist Republican stereotype is so beneficial to the Democrats, and harmful to Republicans, that your editors should have been much more careful not to let it creep into the Post's front page.
Your and our anger are completely justified. As a matter of fact if you lived in Florida you'd probably explode from the daily bullbleep we're treated to. Remember recently the hysterical screeching from Corrine Brown on the House floor?
Her words were stricken from the record but luckily we have a TV clip! Click here!
It will be a mess on Nov. 3, 2004, wonder if my doctor will prescribe some Valium or something...
Speaking of slogging, I watched that PBS Frontline show, 'The Choice 2004' and came away with one interesting tid bit about Kerry. He thought we rushed to war in the first Gulf War!
Frontline tracks the lives of GWB and Effin' (although much of Effin's life before VietNam wasn't included), so there were plenty of Kerry speeches to revisit. As I watched, it seemed that including Operation Enduring Freedom there were a total of three wars he said we rushed into. But my memory fades and can't remember if the third one was Kosovo or VietNam.
My mouth fell open when I heard his speech on the first Gulf War saying we rushed into it, didn't have enough allies and so forth. Here's a quote from MSNBC on the subject:
He joined most Senate Democrats in voting against use of U.S. military forces in 1991 after Saddam Hussein’s army invaded Kuwait. Kerry preferred relying on an economic embargo against Iraq to put pressure on Saddam to pull his troops out of Kuwait.
“We think we can get it over with an acceptable level of casualties,” Kerry said during the 1991 Senate debate. “We seem willing to act ... with more bravado than patience.”
Kerry called it a “war for pride, not for vital interests” and said that “our impatience with (economic) sanctions and diplomacy does not yet warrant that horror." He also complained that "there is a rush to war here."link
In that story it says he supported Kosovo so we must of "rushed into VietNam", I'll look it up when the transcript becomes available.
This from a New Yorker piece tends to make me think it was VietNam he also considered a "rush to war":
Being attacked as a hawk from the left while being dismissed as a dove from the right has helped Kerry to position himself as a centrist on both domestic and foreign policy. But questions about how and when he would use force abroad have vexed him throughout his Presidential bid, not least because he voted against the original Gulf War. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was an act of naked aggression, Kuwait was an ally, and vigorous American diplomacy had mustered a broad-based international coalition, including troops from five Arab nations, to join in the fighting under a U.N. mandate. During the early primaries, Howard Dean upheld the first Gulf War as being every bit as legitimate as the current one was unjustified, and he questioned Kerry’s judgment as a potential Commander-in-Chief. [Yikes, I agree with Howard on something. But all is forgotten now, Howard's bucking for that coveted Surgeon General position. *snicker*]
Kerry defends his stand on both wars on the same ground: that the action was needlessly rushed, when a little bit more time could have been used to build a lot more support—in 1990 among an almost evenly divided American public, and last year among potential allies. In fact, in his Senate speech against the Gulf War resolution in 1991, Kerry repeatedly invoked the failures and agonies of Vietnam, arguing that the country was not ready to sacrifice another generation to the horrors of combat. He maintained that diplomacy could get Saddam out of Kuwait, and although he insisted that he was not a pacifist, he sure sounded like one when he read to his colleagues from the classic antiwar novel “Johnny Got His Gun.” Link
And from Joe Klein writing for the New Yorker we get a taste of a Kerry college Class Oration:
The speech was notable for its central thesis: "The United States must . . . bring itself to understand that the policy of intervention"—against Communism—"that was right for Western Europe does not and cannot find the same application to the rest of the world."
Kerry went on:
In most emerging nations, the spectre of imperialist capitalism stirs as much fear and hatred as that of communism. To compound the problem, we continue to push forward our will only as we see it and in a fashion that only leads to more mistakes and deeper commitment. Where we should have instructed, it seems we did not; where we should have been patient, it seems we were not; where we should have stayed clear, it seems we would not. . . . Never in the last twenty years has the government of the United States been as isolated as it is today. Link
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Hmmmmmm, sounds familiar doesn't it? And this poop has the nerve to opine that GWB is stubborn in his thinking and won't admit mistakes or correct what Poopin' thinks are mistakes. sheesh!!
Poopin' exhibits the height of arrogance by holding on to old, out dated and proven to be defective foriegn policies. Thank the good Lord he wasn't able to talk during WWII.