NP - Did Putin Swing the Election to Trump? Of Course He Did.

[Mark Thibodeau]

Actually, that's the whole thing.

Sorry about that. I got carried away. It's just that it is among the
things that I've written that I am most proud of. I think I knocked it
out of the park, so to speak.

Anybody who feels differently, be sure to let me know! :-)

Oh, and I forgot the re-run link, too...

Here it is: Requiem for a Self-Loathing Liberal
http://dailydirtdiaspora.blogspot.ca/2013/05/requiem-for-self-loathing-liberal-daily.html

On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 5:31 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
> Getting back to the OP, it reminds me in tone and structure of
> something similar that I wrote a while back in response to Richard
> Cohen's WaPo savaging of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, for all the
> wrong reasons. I called it "Requiem for a Self-Loathing Liberal" and
> it began:
>
> What follows is a methodical deconstruction and rebuttal of a recent
> column by Washington Post scribe Richard Cohen.
>
>>>I brought a notebook with me when I went to see Michael Moore's
>>>Fahrenheit 9/11 and in the dark made notes before I gave up,
>>>defeated by the utter stupidity of the movie.
>
> Ooh! The utter stupidity! Strong words. Let's see if Cohen can cash that check.
>
>>>One of my notes says 'John Ellis', who is a cousin of George W.
>>>Bush and the fellow who called the election for Fox News that dark
>>>and infamous night when the presidency -- or so the myth goes --
>>>was stolen from Al Gore, delivering the nation to Halliburton, the
>>>Carlyle Group and Saudi Arabia, and plunging it into war. A better
>>>synopsis of the movie you're not likely to read.
>
> Someone should send Cohen a dictionary, because unless the mountains
> of evidence that point towards election fraud (and worse) in Florida
> (and elsewhere) during the 2000 elections have all been fabricated, he
> seems to have mistaken history for myth.
>
> Furthermore, Cohen must be some kind of super-genius, because how any
> self-respecting human being could pooh-pooh the flagrant orgy of
> profiteering in Iraq -- by special interests with
> so-close-they-might-as-well-be-having-sex ties to the Bush
> administration -- is far beyond my capacity to comprehend.
>
> That these bitter pills have yet to be fully digested - thanks in
> large part to the efforts of America's cowed journalistic
> establishment - is no excuse. Cohen has to know better.
>
>>>Ellis appears early in the film, which is not only appropriate
>>>but inevitable. He is the personification of the Moore method,
>>>which combines guilt by association with the stunning
>>>revelation of a stunning fact that has already been revealed
>>>countless times before. If, for instance, you did a Lexis-Nexis
>>>database search for 'John Ellis' and 'election,' you would be
>>>told: 'This search has been interrupted because it will return
>>>more than 1,000 documents.' The Ellis story is no secret.
>
> Cohen commits a cardinal sin of journalism, here. Like most in his
> profession, he gets paid to winnow through the info-sphere in search
> of typing fodder, yet he assumes everybody knows everything he knows.
> His contempt for the underinformed is radiant. "You didn't know Bush's
> cousin over at Fox News was the one who called the election for him?!
> Like, what rock have YOU been living under, maaaan?!"
>
> According to recent studies, fewer than half of adult Americans read
> newspapers anymore, much less every story on every page of every
> newspaper, magazine and trade journal in the world. Most Americans
> rely exclusively on television and (dear Lord) talk radio for their
> news. Cohen should try to keep his hipster condescension in check.
>
> I can't help but wonder if you'd asked a hundred random people, prior
> to the release of F9/11, how many would have known that the first
> person in America to call Florida for Bush was a) a Fox News executive
> who b) also happened to be the President's first cousin? After
> attending Moore's film, I noticed that Ellis's involvement was one of
> the main things people were talking about in the lobby.
>
> Rightly or wrongly, many people were shocked by what was, for them, a
> revelation. So the mere fact that the story has been told is no proof
> that the issue has been resolved. That over 1,000 documents including
> the words 'John Ellis' and 'election' can be found in the vast
> Lexis-Nexis archive tells us less than nothing. Although perhaps if
> he'd added the words 'cousin' and 'helped to steal' to his search,
> Cohen might have learned a thing or two.
>
>>>But more than that, what does it mean?
>>>Ellis is a Bush cousin, Moore tells us. A
>>>close cousin? We are not told. A cousin
>>>from the side of the family that did not get
>>>invited to Aunt Rivka's wedding? Could be.
>>>A cousin who has not forgiven his relative for
>>>a slight at a family gathering -- the cheap gift,
>>>the tardy entrance, the seat next to a deaf
>>>uncle? No info.
>
> Suddenly, Cohen the impatient know-it-all is Cohen the clueless naif,
> begging for more information. Ellis is, in fact, the President's first
> cousin.
>
>>>And even if Ellis loved Bush truly and passionately,
>>>as a cousin should, how did he manage to change
>>>the election results? To quote the King of Siam, is a puzzlement.
>
> Forgive me if I'm boring you with things you already know. I'll try to be brief.
>
> According to Ellis himself, as detailed in the New Yorker, he was in
> constant contact with his cousins George and Jeb throughout the night
> of the election. Around 6 PM, Voter News Service sent data to all
> major news outlets indicating Gore had won a slim but decisive victory
> in Florida. Sometime after 7:52 PM, when all major networks (including
> Fox) called Florida for Gore, Ellis received another call from cousin
> Jeb.
>
> The exact nature of the information Ellis shared with Bush during that
> phone call is unclear. Before it was hastily and unceremoniously
> dispatched on the day of the 2002 mid-term elections - and I'm sure
> Cohen sees no valid reasons for suspicion in that case, either - VNS
> provided detailed, district-by-district voter information to their
> media clients. John Ellis was one such client.
>
> Is it "stupid" to consider the possibility that Ellis might have
> shared information about the breakdown of the Florida vote with Jeb,
> the Republican governor of that state, who also happened to be the
> Republican candidate's brother, and whose Secretary of State was
> Katherine Harris, who a) was in charge of Florida's elections, b) was
> co-chairwoman of the Florida "Bush for President" committee, c) was a
> Bush delegate during the Republican National Convention, and d)
> imperiously halted a legal recount that was slowly-but-surely eating
> away at Bush's bullshit, razor-thin lead?
>
> All things considered, is it "stupid" to speculate whether there
> exists a possibility that Jeb might have been able to somehow use the
> information he got from Ellis - in combination with his substantial
> power as Florida's chief executive - to alter the outcome of the
> election?
>
> Perhaps it's just me. Perhaps I'm paranoid.
>
> Perhaps there was nothing strange about Team Bush taking the
> historically unprecedented step of holding a living room press
> conference in the midst of the election - not too long after that
> phone call to Ellis, come to think of it - to assure Americans that,
> despite the now-defunct Voter News Service's previously impeccable
> track record in these matters, Florida was still in play.
>
> Perhaps the subsequent, near-immediate and highly atypical surge in
> Bush's favor - forcing VNS and the news media to retract their call
> for Gore and label Florida "too close to call" - was coincidence.
>
> Perhaps there was nothing untoward about Ellis's 2 AM conversation
> with Jeb and George Bush, of which he later boasted: "It was just the
> three of us guys handing the phone back and forth - me with the
> numbers, one of them a governor, the other the president-elect. Now
> that was cool."
>
> Perhaps there is nothing suspicious in the fact that Ellis shortly
> thereafter got Fox to call Florida for Bush, at a time when his lead
> over Gore was rapidly evaporating. Perhaps the other networks followed
> Fox's lead because it was late, they were tired, and they'd had enough
> already. Perhaps General Electric CEO Jack Welch had nothing to do
> with it.
>
> Perhaps everybody should follow Cohen's lead and not care a fig about
> any of this, lest we be labeled "stupid", "silly" or "loony", like
> Michael Moore. But enough of my wild-eyed, incoherent ranting. Let's
> get back to the task at hand.
>
>>>I go on about Moore and Ellis because the stunning
>>>box-office success of Fahrenheit 9/11 is not, as proclaimed,
>>>a sure sign that Bush is on his way out but is instead a
>>>warning to the Democrats to keep the loony left at a safe distance.
>
> Bush's plummeting approval ratings in the days since the film's
> release must surely stand as affirmation of Cohen's thesis.
>
>>>Speaking just for myself, not only was I dismayed by
>>>how prosaic and boring the movie was -- nothing new
>>>and utterly predictable -- but I recoiled from Moore's
>>>methodology, if it can be called that. For a time, I hated
>>>his approach more than I opposed the cartoonishly
>>>portrayed Bush. The case against Bush is too hard
>>>and too serious to turn into some sort of joke, as Moore has done.
>
> That Cohen could be "dismayed" to the point of "recoiling" with "hate"
> over a film that he immediately thereafter characterizes as "a joke"
> seems odd to me. Then again, I have a strong suspicion that Bush stole
> the election, so what do I know?
>
>>>The danger of that is twofold: It can send fence-sitters
>>>moving, either out of revulsion or sympathy, the other way,
>>>and it leads to an easy and facile dismissal of arguments
>>>critical of Bush. During the Vietnam War, it seemed to me
>>>that some people supported Richard Nixon not because
>>>they thought he was right but because they loathed the
>>>war protesters. Beware history repeating itself.
>
> The hand-wringing, self-loathing blather of marshmallow liberals like
> Cohen - who helps counter the lies and propaganda of the conservative
> movement's 24/7 noise machine by penning absurdly over-the-top
> denunciations of an independently-produced film that has yet to be
> refuted on a single point of fact - is far more helpful to Bush than
> any film Michael Moore could ever produce. That he could accuse Moore
> of indulging in "easy and facile dismissal of arguments" after filing
> his own easy and facile dismissal of Moore's arguments tells me that
> Cohen, as we used to say back home, is deaf to the sounds of his own
> flatulence.
>
>>>Moore's depiction of why Bush went to war is so silly
>>>and so incomprehensible that it is easily dismissed. As
>>>far as I can tell, it is a farrago of conspiracy theories. But
>>>nothing is said about multiple U.N. resolutions violated
>>>by Iraq or the depredations of Saddam Hussein.
>
> I must be certifiably insane for even suggesting this, but perhaps
> Moore felt that bringing up Iraq's past non-compliance with various
> United Nation resolutions was unnecessary. And perhaps he felt it was
> unnecessary because a) Saddam was granting U.N. weapons inspectors
> access to every square inch of Iraq, b) the Bush administration's
> "evidence" that Saddam was in breech of anti-WMD resolutions turned
> out to be a tissue of lies, and c) the United Nations tried
> desperately to prevent Bush from launching his illegal, disastrous and
> pathetically bungled businessman's war of first resort.
>
> Would it be "prosaic" of me to suggest that the Bush administration
> became increasingly belligerent and insistent as the organization
> whose resolutions he had taken it upon himself to enforce (against its
> will) was systematically dismantling their case for war?
>
>>>In fact, prewar Iraq is depicted as some sort of Arab folk
>>>festival -- lots of happy, smiling, indigenous people. Was
>>>there no footage of a Kurdish village that had been gassed?
>>>This is obscenity by omission.
>
> Fahrenheit 9/11 is not about Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It's about Bush's
> America. Cohen seems to fault Moore for failing to create an
> impartial, academic, encyclopedically authoritative dissertation on
> the preceding two decades of American foreign policy. He might as well
> fault Moore for failing to point out that "Clinton thought Saddam was
> a bad guy, too."
>
> Furthermore, I suspect that if Moore had chosen to show images of
> Saddam's infamous and oft-referenced 1988 gas attack on Halabja -
> explaining the context of the Iraqi Kurds' treasonous alliance with
> Iran, against whom Iraq was waging a savage and protracted war of
> attrition with America's blessing and weapons - Cohen would have
> accused him of obscenity by inclusion.
>
>>>The case against Bush need not and should not rest
>>>on guilt by association or half-baked conspiracy
>>>theories, which collapse at the first double take but
>>>reinforce the fervor of those already convinced.
>
> It was at this point in his screed that I began to suspect Cohen had
> actually not seen Fahrenheit 9/11 at all, having perhaps wandered into
> a matinee showing of Disney's Around the World in 80 Days by mistake.
> I honestly have no idea which "half-baked conspiracy theories" he
> could possibly mean.
>
> Surely he can't be dismissing the well-established and unprecedentedly
> cozy economic ties between the Bush dynasty, Big Oil, the Saudi royals
> and the Bin Laden clan? These "conspiracies" have been confirmed
> beyond a shadow of a doubt.
>
> Surely Cohen can't be arguing that it be forbidden to investigate,
> with hindsight, whether these relationships might have resulted in an
> administration-wide blind-spot with devastating results?
>
> Surely Cohen has heard of John O'Neill? Surely he's read Kevin
> Phillips's damning and authoritative Bush family chronicle, American
> Dynasty?
>
>>>The success of Moore's movie, though, suggests
>>>this is happening -- a dialogue in which anti-Bush
>>>forces talk to themselves and do so in a way that
>>>puts off others.
>
> Yes, because stealing moves from the conservative playbook would
> surely result in an electoral disaster of epic proportions. Just look
> how low the Republicans have sunk by talking to themselves in a way
> that puts off others! Conservatives must be stupid to spend so much
> time and effort rallying their base with dynamic appeals to the heart,
> soul and guts. All their divisive rhetoric has managed to give them is
> control of the Congress, the Senate, the Supreme Court and the White
> House. We wouldn't want the people Cohen ominously labels "the
> anti-Bush forces" to emulate this kind of unmitigated failure.
>
>>>I found that happening to me in the run-up to the war,
>>>when I spent more time and energy arguing with those
>>>who said the war was about oil (no!) or Israel (no!) or
>>>something just as silly than I did questioning the stated
>>>reasons for invading Iraq -- weapons of mass destruction
>>>and Hussein's links to Osama bin Laden. This was stupid
>>>of me, but human nature nonetheless.
>
> At long last, Cohen boils his own argument down to its fetid essence,
> the literary equivalent of a frustrated two-year-old's foot-stomping
> tantrum.
>
> Apparently, only crazed fanatics could be upset by the obscene crush
> of war pigs lining up to jam their snouts into the no-bid contract
> trough, brimming with greenback salad smothered in a sweet crude
> balsamic.
>
> Only Hitler-worshiping lunatics would dare to suggest that the
> neoconservatives who provided the intellectually and morally bankrupt
> rationalizations for Bush's war have anything but a perfectly fair and
> even-handed grasp of the Middle East situation.
>
> And the less said about the sinister and psychopathic Armageddonism in
> which Preznit Dubya and many of his partisans indulge, the better.
>
>>>Some of that old feeling returned while watching
>>>Moore's assault on the documentary form. It is so
>>>juvenile in its approach, so awful in its journalism,
>>>such an inside joke for people who already hate
>>>Bush, that I found myself feeling a bit sorry for a
>>>president who is depicted mostly as a befuddled
>>>dope. I fear how it will play to the undecided.
>
> Cohen's fear is plain to see. It verges on the kind of wild-eyed,
> hysterical paranoia he falsely accuses Moore of inciting with his
> film. It's as though Cohen is afraid that if liberals and moderates
> were to become as forceful in defense of their beliefs as
> conservatives are, it would result in a Civil War and thus, perhaps, a
> decline in his standard of living.
>
>>>For them, I recommend Spider-Man 2.
>
> For the Washington Post's Richard Cohen, I recommend a swift, hard
> kick in the ass.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 5:13 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>> As a courageous investigative journalist, do you think Greenwald's now
>> become a mouthpiece for Putin merely because Russia cagily gave his past
>> source Snowden asylum? Is that really all it takes to buy his collusion? Or
>> is there some other reason for his alleged bias that you're speaking of.
>> Which statements of his on the clip do you specifically disagree with?
>>
>> LK
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: David Morris
>> Sent: Jan 9, 2017 5:07 PM
>> To: "kelber at mindspring.com"
>> Cc: P-list
>> Subject: Re: NP - Did Putin Swing the Election to Trump? Of Course He Did.
>>
>> Nice try to paint your stance as beleaguered minority one. But the point is
>> that Greenwald is not unbiased when it comes to Russia.
>>
>> David Morris
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 4:04 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Is there any way to dissent from orthodoxy without being called a lunatic,
>>> a dupe or an axe-grinder?
>>>
>>> Laura
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: David Morris
>>> Sent: Jan 9, 2017 5:00 PM
>>> To: "kelber at mindspring.com"
>>> Cc: P-list
>>> Subject: Re: NP - Did Putin Swing the Election to Trump? Of Course He Did.
>>>
>>> Greenwald is NOT a reliable source in this case.  His axe grinding is as
>>> obvious as hell.
>>>
>>> David Morris
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 3:55 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> As a Pynchon reader, I can simultaneously hold two ideas in my brain, one
>>>> of which is supported and one of which is not supported by the liberal
>>>> establishment: 1. Trump is a horror; and 2. Putin wasn't responsible for his
>>>> election.
>>>>
>>>> http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/08/us/greenwald-intel-report-reliable-cnntv/
>>>>
>>>> Laura
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: David Morris
>>>> Sent: Jan 9, 2017 4:35 PM
>>>> To: P-list
>>>> Subject: NP - Did Putin Swing the Election to Trump? Of Course He Did.
>>>>
>>>> Thomas Eckhardt was oh so concerned about the Ukraine.  Not that it was
>>>> being annexed by Russia, but that some of those wanting freedom from Russia
>>>> were nazis.  Now the US is being annexed by nazis with the help of Russia.
>>>> Where is his concern now?
>>>>
>>>> David Morris
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/01/did-putin-swing-election-trump-course-he-did
>>>>
>>>> Given how close the election was, there's a pretty good chance that
>>>> Putin's campaign of cyber-chaos had enough oomph to swing things all by
>>>> itself.
>>>>
>>>> I'm a little surprised this hasn't produced more panic. In the United
>>>> States I understand why it hasn't: Democrats don't want to sound like sore
>>>> losers and Republicans don't care as long as their guy won. But what about
>>>> the rest of the world?
>>>
>>>
>>
>> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l