We don't agree on much here at dailykos, thank god, but perhaps we can give a collective nod to the notion that, in a cultural climate with no surfeit of truth and no lack of hysteria - a virtual media "hyperbolic" chamber, we suffer no lasting harm from the occasional overstatement in search of a larger truth. Especially when it is delivered with such intelligence and erudition by the inimitable Gore Vidal:
"If you get eight of those states, you don't get much of a popular vote, but you can get the Electoral College--a device that our founders made to make sure we never had a democratic government. In other words, I don't blame the public. He's [Bush] not popular. I've just been reading a report on Conyers's trip to Ohio with his subcommittee's experts. Ohio was stolen. The Republican Congress will never have a hearing on it. But I think attempts are being made to publish the details of what was done there, and elsewhere too in America.
In other words, I put the case that Bush was never elected--not in 2000, and not in 2004. This is a new game in the world. Through the magic of electronic voting, particularly through Mr. Diebold and friends, you can take a non-president and make him president. But how to keep the people, including the opposition who should know better, so silent, this introduces us to a vast landscape of corruption which I dare not enter."
the rest here -
The Undoing of America
Gore Vidal on war for oil, politics-free elections, and the late, great U.S. Constitution
http://citypages.com/databank/26/1268/article13085.asp