THE MEDIA COVER-UP OF THE GORE VICTORY
By David Podvin

According to a source whose previous information has proven to be accurate, the Consortium of news organizations that recounted the presidential votes in the 2000 Florida election was shocked to find that former Vice President Al Gore decisively won the state, and it is now concealing the news of Gore’s victory from the American people
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Originally, the Consortium believed that there were three potential outcomes of the recount, any of which would have been acceptable to the participating news conglomerates. The first was a Bush win, which would have resolved the issue. The second was a dead heat/inconclusive result, which would have maintained the status quo. The third was a narrow Gore victory, which would have given die hard Democrats a debate point, but would have simply been another photo finish recount that most Americans would have disregarded as being currently irrelevant.

The Consortium was stunned to discover that the recount revealed Gore won a clear victory. Even after casting aside the controversial butterfly ballots and discarding ballots that were “iffy”, Gore decisively won the recount. While the precise numbers are still unavailable, a New York Times journalist who was involved in the project told one of his former companions that Gore won by a sufficient margin to create “major trouble for the Bush presidency if this ever gets out”.

Gore’s victory was large enough that it became apparent he would win prior to the Consortium recount being fully completed. And contrary to a recent claim by the New York Times, the terrorism of September 11 was not the crucial factor that determined whether to release the results to the American people. Prior to that time, the de facto majority shareholders in the publicly traded New York Times Company reportedly intervened on the side of quashing the recount results and convinced the other participants to shelve the story. The executive claims that the most important decisions at the Times are made by the influential money center banks that exercise actual voting control of a majority of stock. These banks are extremely pro-Bush. In addition to their control of the Times, they have substantial financial clout with the Washington Post Company, Dow Jones and Company, and the Tribune Company. As a result, the banks exert tremendous influence on a majority of the Consortium.
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The huge disparity between the original recount and the Consortium recount stems from the G.O.P. tactics in Florida. Their strategy was to aggressively contest every pro-Gore ballot, even the obviously valid ones. The Republicans then accused the vote counters of being biased because most of the challenges were resolved in favor of Gore. By using this approach, the Bush partisans successfully intimidated the counters into bending over backwards to show “fairness”, resulting in thousands of legitimate Gore votes being disqualified or relegated to a pile of disputed ballots.

“It was the old baseball manager’s trick of crying about every call in order to pressure the umpire to give you more than your fair share,” said the executive. “And it worked in Florida. However, in the relative calm of the Consortium recount - absent the pressure tactics - the Bush total remained basically consistent with the original count, while the Gore total shot way up.”
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When the New York Times announced that they wouldn't be releasing the results I just sort of went "Huh?" and didn't think a lot about it - there being many other things to think about. Now that I stop to think about this, it makes sense. Would the consortium not release the results if Bush had won? They would have been falling all over themselves to get the numbers out if that was the case. What originally crossed my mind is that maybe there was a miniscule Gore victory that would not prove much. The accusations here are something else all together.

If these accusations are true then something has been done to this country that is far worse than the acts on 9-11. If these accusations are true then we have watched a right wing coup happen right before our eyes and we did nothing. If these accusations are true then the last vestiges of democracy in this country have been destroyed. And those guilty of this are guilty of treason. From the Supreme Court to the thugs that kept the counting from happening.

It's also sad to see how far our newspapers have sunk. It was the New York Times and the Washington Post that published the Pentagon Papers. It was the Washington Post that let Woodard and Bernstein report the truth of Watergate. Now they hide the truth of a Presidential election from the American public. They have truly become the whores of the rich.

It is imperative that the results be published. If they show a close race, so be it. But if these accusations are true there will be hell to pay.

And, to top it all off, here is Ethel's Quote of the Week.

"Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg Trials

both thanks to Ethel the Blog via wood s lot