hey i missed this one on tv. thanks for sharing norm. if there were more people like carlin the world would be a better place

i've never seen keith's show on the actual tv machine, so will someone please explain the "first 35 minutes" part to me? is the show an hour, and something crappy happens in the last 25 minutes? i don't get it.

explain the "first 35 minutes" part to me

The serious news is in the first 35 minutes. Then odd ball stuff and entertainment news in the last 15-20 minutes.

I thought Blogs 4 Brownback was fake...?

Carlin channeled me by praising the show to high heaven, and then pointedly limiting the applicability of his compliments to the first 35 minutes.

However, I think he was 5 minutes too generous... unless you credit that surplus 5 minutes to the end of the show when Keith sometimes delivers his extraordinary "Special Comments".

I know Keith has said that his producers make him do those stupid celebrity reports, but Matthews certainly isn't so hampered.

Carlin is God. Or, would be if there was one.

Bah, that got boring real fast.

I do NOT like this crap about how the shrub stole the last couple of elections -- he didn't. So shut the fuck up about it. The second election was a close call, but no closer than any previous presidential election was. It wasn't the first election to have been settled by the supreme court. It wasn't the first election where the popular vote differed from the electorate's. So FUCK OFF WITH THAT SHIT ALREADY!

If Bush stole the election, d'ya think Gore would have just went on his way? If you do, then you must be puzzled by the fact that all of O. J. Simpson's efforts to catch his wife's killer didn't pan out.

Dzwonka,

While you are right about 2004, I've read Chapter one of Palast's book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, and I find his case for stealing of the 2000 election to be quite convincing. As for the question,"d'ya think Gore would have just went on his way?" - yes, I think he would have. I've watched opponents of Bush roll over and play dead for 7 fucking years and capitulation to Bush seems to be a favorite Democrat pastime - even when he has an approval rating in the high 20's. If you think capitulation to Bush is something Gore would never do, then you may be puzzled about why 12 Democrats in the Senate and 32 Democrats in the House voted for the Military Commissions Act - even after Amendments that would have outlawed waterboarding and preserved habeas corpus were defeated.

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Democracy-Money-Can-Buy/dp/0452285674

This article convinced me about 2004: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/wasthe2004electionstolen

2004 election exit polls had Kerry 51% v Bush 28%

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22188-2005Jan19.html http://www.exitpollz.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004UnitedStatespresidentialelectioncontroversy%2Cexit_polls

It doesn't really matter if Bush technically cheated in the election(s). It's obvious that the various players have their thumbs stuck pretty far into the pie, Democrats included. Of course, as usual, the Rethuglicans seemed to have veered quite a bit further over the line in 2000, but arguing how far over the line Bush was doesn't really matter when the line itself has been blurred by both sides in their zealous attempts over the years to tilt the scales in their favor.

The issue of whether the election was "stolen" is in itself merely a question of technicalities; the real problem is in the broader context, concerning the blatantly unscrupulous behaviour of the politicians and the people's reactions... or lack thereof.

Anyways, the US elections process - and a great many other things - is broken, and not enough people seem interested in fixing it... probably because they're too busy playing with the gadgets they bought from Communist China.

The real question is this: what sort of voting machines will be used in 08?

Say what you will about Florida voters, but at least they had the good sense to recently outlaw electronic voting machines without paper audits.

Get involved at the local level. Make sure your vote counts. '00 and '04 were both tragedies, and stolen or not, the far bigger issue is the potential abuse of these machines.

Don't let it happen (again).

Was the 2004 election stolen?

Repubs want to split up california's electoral votes only to remove democratic control of cali

Ohio voting registrations threw out because printed on wrong paper thickness

How Diebold could have stolen the 2004 election on their own, and probably did.

Naomi Wolf interviewed by Viet Dihn, former Assistant Attorney General who helped author the Patriot act, and why the above links matter.

And one more thing.. when people talk about "bush" stealing the 2000 election, it's not like he was the criminal mastermind that set up the election to win. The republican party, Kathrine Harris and all the way up did it for him because he was "their guy", and a network of people wanted their guy to win and would do anything to get him in.

right on zaphod! fortunately, my ballot is always paper. unfortunately, my vote comes from overseas, so it's generally never really counted -usually someone's won by that time...

The 2000 election was a joke - we were the laughing stock of the world. Anyone who thought the process went well and there's no question about who won is an IDIOT.

We need voter reform and a nationwide standard, so that this doesn't happen again.

Maybe we can ask Nader for some help on this...

It hardly matters who sits in the white house. Would Gore have been any different? Perhaps his mantra wouldn't have been "what's good for Halliburton is good for America" but he certainly would be doing the bidding of corporate America. And looking ahead, the 2008 narrative will be the first woman president. And already she has shifted her positions -- her health care plan will be a boon to insurance companies and the health industry, corporate donations are shifting from the Republicans to the Democrats, and even defense contractors see her as a safe bet. Hillary will make the world safe for business as usual. I often wonder if any of the Republican candidates would be more likely to end the occupation of Iraq and reign in defense spending.

"I, doNUT, like this crap about how the shrub stole the last couple of elections -- he did(n't)."

Between you and "I"(sic), Dzwonka is off his ronka*. He's got a hole in his Soul. The 2000 election WAS stolen. Stolen. And with the help of our wonderful local/loco Day family, late-comers, '41, dudes. Dupes. Shame on America for not taking to the streets. All events since are footnotes, ancillary sparks in the Santa Ana(heimliche) winds of a political coup/Reichstag burning.

Actually, Mikey, if Americans had taken to the streets, it needn't have stopped with Gore. When Gorbachev was Bush v. Gored, Russians DID take to the streets, Crass-nigh-a Plowshare, and they didn't just restore Gorby, they paved the way for a Whole New Deal. We might have reconstituted ourselves too, who knows? But instead, we are truly a Nation of Sheep. Blacks and Whites,... et al. We should worry...

about scrapie, baa baa...

"I, doNUT, like this scrapie... ..."

"I, doNUT, like this," arrogant, ignorant sheep!

"I, doNUT, like this scrapie... ..."

.

*Tonka?

Best news show on TV? I'll take DemocracyNow over Olbermann's program any day of the week.

What spooks me about the 2004 election is that many of the discrepancies between exit polling and the final result are explainable through a simple SQL query on the diebold database. This could have been accomplished by one or two people, only one of which needed root access. The truly suspicious part is that the system was built in such a way as to allow this with no way to trace it.

Norm, your readers might like to know, if they don't already, that Diebold has changed its name to "Premier Election Solutions".

Between you and "I"(sic), Dzwonka is off his ronka*. He's got a hole in his Soul. The 2000 election WAS stolen. Stolen. And with the help of our wonderful local/loco Day family, late-comers, '41, dudes. Dupes. Shame on America for not taking to the streets. All events since are footnotes, ancillary sparks in the Santa Ana(heimliche) winds of a political coup/Reichstag burning.

Dude, you're not well. You're not well at all. I know the phrase "you need medication" is used as an insult, but in this case, it's not. You need medical attention, guy.