Mark Crispin Miller's C-span interview (re. elections) --VIDEO link

[marions ghost]

Here's the 42-minute video of NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller's interview on Washington Journal today, re. fraud in the 2004 election: I thought he did a good job and made some excellent points very clearly. Any comments?

http://www.c-span.org/videoarchives.asp?CatCodePairs=,&ArchiveDays=100

Mark's new book "Fooled Again" is at
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465045790/002-2252484-6928035?v=glance&n=283155&s=books&v=glance

Mark's website:
http://www.markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/

[Al-CIAda]

1. Rec'd. n/t

[EFerrari]

2. Thank you, MG. Here's a third vote.

:kick:

[marions ghost]

5. thanks

I know it's a long video clip, but I hope people here take the time to watch. Miller covers a lot of ground. Rob's questions are good too.

[European Socialist]

3. Bush Regime--Thought it was good he used this term and he defended..

it by saying that Bush wasn't elected fairly and didn't govern in the democratic American tradition.

[EFerrari]

4. Yes, and how he didn't let the Thuggery ruffle him for even a second.

:)

[IndyOp]

6. I think it is very enlightening to hear the responses of the callers --

Several sounded like Rethug operatives -- the guy who 'had been a Dem' all his life and voted many times in each election but finally could not take it anymore and became a Republican; the guy who recited the talking points from the Republican 'election fraud' report.

At least one - the woman from Wisconsin - her response to him was enlightening. She sounded so defensive - that somehow his talking about election fraud meant she had been allowing something to be stolen from her and how *dare* he imply that could be true.

The name-calling was amazing - callers told Miller he was 'pathetic' and nuts and stupid... Just hearing the defensiveness helps me understand more about the difficulty we are facing in revealing election fraud and doing something about it.

:kick:

[marions ghost]

7. Mark seemed to be able to handle

these personal attacks ie. "you're a fraud and a phony," "you and your book are twisted" (the caller hadn't read the book).

Mark speculates why these people find it so necessary to attack him.

"The implications of what went down last year (the election of 2004) are extremely frightening--it means we're not really living in a functioning democracy...one party is in control of the government and is not really accountable to the electorate..." He makes the point that even legislators, "people inside the system" are in denial, because they are "materially and emotionally invested in the status quo...they don't want to go where this will have to take them...this is very human, but irresponsible."

Yes, it's an uphill battle.

[IndyOp]

8. Agreed - Mark handled it well.

It helps me to try and understand why different groups of people are resistant - so I can better frame my 'points' when talking and writing about election fraud.

Some people are resistant to believing simply because the election is long over and stories about all forms of fraud were not repeatedly in the media - and if it isn't in the corporate media it isn't real.

I think some people are resistant to believing because they don't understand the technology and therefore don't understand how few people it would take to rig/steal an election (and/or don't understand that an election could have been stolen even if the margin between winner & loser is large).

I think some people are resistent to believing because they find evidenece of low-tech fraud so compelling and disturbing - like voter intimidation, destruction of registration forms, providing too few machines for precincts that are unlikely to vote right and so forth.

Many Repubs are resistant because their personal definition of being Republican is that they are the party of 'morality' - so they could not possibly being doing anything immoral.

Many Repubs have 'business psyche' -- e.g. the rules of business and politics are 'different' other realms of life. Business ethics: Do anything you can get away with. Political ethics: Do anything you can get away with and reassure yourself that it is really for the 'masses' own good (they just don't understand that you are doing it for their own good).

Many Dems don't want to believe that they could've been fooled - that it was stolen out from beneath them and they did not know.

We all want to believe the world is fair -- in social psychology this is called the 'just world bias.' We hold onto this bias so that we feel safe in the world. The world is fair, bad things happen to bad people. If I am good then bad things won't happen to me.

There are more reasons I am sure - but these are reasons I think are quite common.

[glitch]

10. I think that's an excellent list - I would add one more: people with a

vested interest in politics, people who have been working very hard in or even around politics, whether they are progressive or conservative or moderate, democrat or republican or green or libertarian, would have to face a reality that everything political that they have invested in, their time or money or even professional lives, is being made, indeed may already be, irrelevant.

No matter how brilliant they are, no matter hard they work, someone like Bush will win the office, because his backers own the count.

Nothing that they do or say or pay politically will ever matter if the votes aren't counted. Everybody who has made a career trying to get Democrats to be more Progressive can kiss off all their life's work. This is a painful thing to do, so they would rather embrace an illusion that their work still has meaning.

And all the people who work so hard to get out the vote have to face the probability that their efforts, the time they didn't have but volunteered anyway, and I am among them so I can tell you this does hurt, is for nothing. These people fight very hard against the idea that the elections are stolen, because they see their job of getting out the vote even harder if no one trusts the system. To which I answer: the only solution is to fix the system and prove that it is fixed, denying it is broken will not bring back the trust.

This reality is catastrophic to them, so they won't face it. And the sad thing is, it would take a lot less effort to fix the system than it does to build and maintain the wall of denial that it's broken.

[IndyOp]

11. Damn Straight. Well Said. (nt)

[femrap]

14. Denial is an extremely powerful mechanism....I hope

that 'Fooled Again' will open some people's eyes! A GREAT HOLIDAY GIFT, don't you think?

People hate to think that we have become just like the old Soviet Union....but we have.

[Doctor_J]

27. I don't think cons consider themselves irrelevant

They're in charge and will be until the voting system is corrected.

[glitch]

28. Not real conservatives. Real conservatives will have their votes stolen

by this extremist rightwing cabal just like ours are.

I still distinguish between real conservatives and those (can we call them fascists yet?) in charge.

[EFerrari]

31. Yeah. We can. My counter inaugural T's said:

Thanks for Electing Bush
ENJOY YOUR FASCIST REGIME!

[Stephanie]

26. Excellent point about "business psyche"

Greed is good. The only way to fight that is to legislate so they can't get away with it. You won't make unethical people voluntarily do what's right.

[shance]

9. What an amazing job he did. Looking forward to reading his book.

Thanks for the links.

[MelissaB]

12. The video isn't working for me. Anybody else?

[marions ghost]

15. when you go to the link

are you going down to the third red arrow in the list? A Realplayer window should pop up when you click on that. You can download Realplayer if you don't have it. (They don't seem to give you an option to use Windows Media player).

[MelissaB]

16. Yes, and I have Realplayer and Windows Media player.

It still isn't working for me. :cry:

[marions ghost]

17. uh oh

...the only other thing I can think of is to turn off your Pop-up Blocker. You ARE getting to the C-span website through the link here, aren't you? It's just that the media player won't open?

That is the extent of my low-level tech support. Maybe somebody else has a further suggestion.

[MelissaB]

18. I get "This page cannot be displayed".

I'll have to try another computer, but I watch clips on this one all the time. :shrug:

[marions ghost]

19. do you get this message

when you click on the above link here? -- OR AFTER you get to the C-span website?

[MelissaB]

20. after

I can't pull up any video from CSPAN. Thanks for trying to help. I don't know what is wrong.

[marions ghost]

21. no prob

:argh: :banghead: my sympathies-- but ya gotta see it somehow MelissaB;)

[MelissaB]

24. I finally got it!

I'm watching now. It must have been my computer because this one plays fine.

:kick:

[never cry wolf]

13. kick, so i can watch later....n/t

[freedomfries]

22. check the Mark Crispin Miller Audio on Commonwealthclub

MARK CRISPIN MILLER

The audio of the program is available in RealAudio format.

Mark Crispin Miller <11-09-05>

Complete <1:04:29>

Great Interview!

[marions ghost]

23. thanks

do you have a link?

[tiptoe]

33. Commonwealth Club address by Mark Crispin Miller (Link to audio)

Mark Crispin Miller (Audio) -- Initial Broadcast Date: Nov 25, 2005 on KQED (Nov 9, 2005 Address to The Commonwealth Club of California)

                                                                           (Commonwealth Club Speaker Archive)

And thanks for the links you added, below!!

[marions ghost]

34. I finally got a chance

to listen to this hour-long presentation to the Commonwealth Club of California. Whatever you may think of his thesis, this is well worth listening to. Miller is an excellent speaker. He is also quite witty. (It's hard to be witty about the dry topic of elections but he manages it).

After explaining in detail his reasons for believing the election was stolen Miller outlines his 3 main practical solutions for the problems:
--paper ballots (get rid of computerized voting entirely)
--no private vendors of voting equipment
--establish a federal election system with uniform standards and a strictly non-partisan bureaucracy

He also suggests that we need to deal with the problem that in our consumer culture there is little sense of 'civic virtue.' Politics is a spectator sport. The People will need to get involved in order to take back the vote. Miller speaks in no uncertain terms:

"If we don't have a movement for election reform asap, this great republican experiment is finished. It will have ended in failure. This is about revisiting what it means to be an American...it is about revisiting the whole purpose of this enterprize and what this system was supposed to be all about. There has to be a kind of civic renewal."

I particulary like the way that MCM does not shy away from talking about the psychological and social reasons for why getting attention to these problems is especially difficult, particularly the "It Can't Happen Here" denial.

-------
Thanks for the link, tiptoe

[marions ghost]

25. HERE's ANOTHER good interview with Mark :::::::::

Courtesy of Chimo on another thread about MCM. It's long, but well worth listening to --

---------------
Media Matters with Bob McChesney

Our guest this week is Mark Crispin Miller, professor at New York University, discussing his latest book "Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them)".

http://www.will.uiuc.edu/am/mediamatters /

RealAudio
http://rms01.cites.uiuc.edu/ramgen/will/archives/mediam...

MP3
http://www.will.uiuc.edu/willmp3/mediamatters051120.mp3

[BuelahWitch]

29. I'm getting "rtsp not a registered protocol"

WTF? :wtf:

[BuelahWitch]

30. Ok, CSPAN tells me how to configure my Realplayer

If anyone else wants it:

http://www.c-span.org/watch/help.asp

[marions ghost]

32. thanks for the tip

seems like Realplayer needs frequent updating

[Al-CIAda]

35. .

[EstimatedProphet]

36. Kick

this was a good video and I want to look at others listed here later

[marions ghost]

37. thanx you guys

for the kicks

I hope that anyone who feels that our election problems must be addressed NOW--will watch the video and also listen to one or the other of the radio broadcasts. Skeptics might also find food for thought. Mark really does speak well on the issues.

[tiptoe]

38. kick!