DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Republicans continue the narrative that the election was fraudulent.

No matter which side of politics they are on, I think the vast majority, hundreds of millions of Americans can agree on one thing.

A hatred for impending death at the hands of an evil dictator and it's minions.

Which is what is so alarming that the democrats hold any offices on earth.

My wife's vote was confirmed to be stolen she was very upset because her opinions didn't matter. We saw the signature card and they spell her name completely wrong.

The OH AG told her that they would still count the illegal vote.

They did say that if the vote was close, her "second or whatever they called it" vote would at least eliminate the illegal vote.

They also indicated that this is not surprising/common among people who missed a previous presidential election or are recently deceased.

A state-issued photo id would stop this with issue date verification/cross-referencing.

Politicians do not seem to want to stop this.

Here I have to show photo ID before signing the voter register in order to get my ballot to vote. I have never voted absentee, so I couldn't say what requirements are attached to that process, but I am sure it is more than picking up a ballot down at the fleamarket.

They won't address this. It doesn't fit their narrative.

When I move I can use two bills mailed to me to establish my new address which will prove my residence. That will get me a drivers license. Yet they claim it's not good enough to vote.

Student ID can be used to gain a new drivers license. Yet they claim it's not good enough to vote. A veterans ID is good enough to prove your ID almost everywhere. But it's not good enough to vote. All of these forms of ID are rejected in these new voter ID laws in states such as Texas.

And that's good enough for them. Even after you show them the actual law in Ohio they'll still tell you you're wrong. It's like I've been saying. The truth no longer matters.

1. You appear to be looking at the issue from a politically -charged perspective. I'm looking at it more from a philosophical perspective. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," so the maxim goes. You present your argument as if there can be no doubt. A seemingly wilful abnegation of doubt with anything related to current US politics appears to me to be a large component of how our democracy ended up in such sad straits. Politics have taken on religious tones where party members seem to be expected to take things on faith or risk ostracism. For Republicans, it's there was voter fraud because we said there was voter fraud. For Democrats, it's there was no voter fraud because we said there was no voter fraud. A "follower" is expected to take that on belief (or the absence of evidence fallacy.) There was some voter fraud, Not as much as the Republicans make out, most likely, but also not as little (especially where people claim there was none) as Democrats make out. Absolutism/extremism is not good for society.

2. Again an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Also, whether or not you include "mass" with your fraud makes a difference.

3. I suppose my bringing up righteousness has to do with what appears to be to me the cultish fervor that seems to exist in modern political discourse. So, perhaps in a sense it is a me thing. I'm not trying to "obstruficate," or obfuscate, but rather I'm trying (admittedly not always succeeding) to take an objective view outside the zero-sum/absolutist narratives.

The total lack of evidence of mass voter fraud is evidence.

There is nothing objective about painting a different narrative.

If that's the case you may very well be an alien being from a far away galaxy. I mean, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.", correct?

As long as you leave it "may very well be," you're on the right track. Ahhhh, progress! My work here is done.

I would say my work is done. According to your work anyone can make any accusation about anything with zero substance, proof or evidence and it could be taken seriously. That's why as of now over 70% of Republicans believe the election was stolen. Because proof and evidence no longer matter.

You democrats are more obsessed about this topic than republicans.

Hilarious...

Update!!

Biden received 3 1/2 total votes.

Which is why I said our politics operate more like religion now. People take a lot of things on "Faith" and confuse that with facts and evidence. Plus, their prevailing paradigms filter out anything that doesn't fit with those beliefs.

I'm not so much saying we should take "Trump's" claims seriously as I'm saying we shouldn't dismiss them out of hand and neither should we make inaccurate declarative/absolute statements to oppose them as that just fans the flames.

We didn't, though. I was saying the same thing as you are right now, but Trump got his day in court x70 or whatever the trial count got up to, and they produced zilch.

So no, you don't dismiss out of hand, but the burden of proof is on the accuser. Since they failed miserably mounting anything resembling an evidenced-based argument for their own accusations, then that's when their claims were (officially) dismissed.

This is it in a nut shell. Along with P{it's observation that the alternate is to make outrageous claims that are impossible to disprove and then claim they have merit.... or they "may have merit".

I'm not looking at this from a politicized position. I'm looking at this from a "they keep making outrageous lies and proven time and again to be lying and wholly without merit and the 'plausible deniability' ambiguity that some want to embrace is misplaced, enabling, dangerous and part of the problem. Trying to be middle of the road when one side of this one issue is black and white is insane. If you don't like Biden, think he's a puppet, think he has Alzheimer's, think he's a pawn of Putins or AOC's or whatever .... I can disagree with you but there isn't a book of reference to clearly disprove any of it. After making these election claims (lies), having no proof, being slapped down endlessly in the courts with not even a debatable smidgin of anything that even remotely comes close to "evidence" .... to try to claim we need to not be absolute about the lies is beyond me.

The only problem with this argument is that the cases weren't generally dismissed due to lack of evidence. They've primarily been dismissed due to lack of standing, barred by laches (i,e. the complaints should have been made before the election,) or have been dismissed because discounting votes would disenfranchise citizens about the electoral system. Link

Honestly, it kind of feels like the courts are more worried about not upsetting the political gravy train than the merits of the cases.

And again, I'm not saying there was mass voter fraud. I don't think there was. However, I still think that asserting that there was no fraud unequivocally is disingenuous, and, to me, appears politically motivated. And I'm really not saying that the cases had merit. However, it worries me that it looks like the courts didn't want the merits to be looked at in open court.

Faith in the system that ended up in Biden as President, and also resulted in Trump before him, doesn't strike me as a particularly good thing. It's time to re-think the system, or at a minimum look at the background apparatus that feeds choices into the system.

I think you are wrong. It certainly seems like you want to perpetuate the myth that their might have been mass voter fraud and a stolen election.

As for the states and the action taken AFTER the election regarding extraordinary measures that were inacted because of Covid. Damn right any action needed to be lodged BEFORE the election and before LOSING. Good grief - not only are you seemingly enabling the Big Lie - you seem to support the idea the Republicans get to see the result of the election under one set of rules and if they don't like the result they go to court to challenge rules that were in play before the election. Yeah... seems totally realistic. Seems more and more you are the one with the political agenda.

that's ridiculous.... so they knew her vote was stolen/fraudulent....and counted it?!?!?

Unbelievable....

Definitely did not happen. First, the SoS and BoE would rule on this matter, not the AG.

Secondly, Ohio revised code 3505.181 explains the rule of law in submitting a provisional ballot.

https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-3505.181

If this actually happened (It didn't) surely a written record would have been submitted and required by the disenfranchised voter and a record of such by the AG to keep on record.

A FOIA request should be able to produce this documentation.

Yes. Entirely.

https://www.newsweek.com/idaho-rejects-m...-points-1634122

So here's an example of details and what the Big Lie is all about.

""Once we had the document in hand, we immediately believed there was something amiss," Chief Deputy Secretary Chad Houck said. "This document alleged electronic manipulation in all 44 counties. At least 7 Idaho counties have no electronic steps in their vote counting processes... That was a huge red flag, and one we knew we could either prove or disprove fairly directly.""

Facts don't matter - it's optics and a dog whistle to the base. Shame people choose not recognize it and stand up and call this sort of utter BS out.

You appear to be so caught up in your paradigm that you're not reading what I'm actually writing. You seem to be filtering it through your agenda into a way that doesn't make you question anything. You're so certain/believe that you are right that you seem to be twisting everything I say into a form that is obviously wrong so as to not shake your faith.

You keep thinking of me as the enemy, and it is rather frustrating. My argument is not about letting the Republicans change the rules to change the outcome. It's about looking at the "rules"/systems in order to, hopefully, have better outcomes in the future.

You don't clean dirty laundry by burying them. Hanging them out in the light works better. You can say the Republicans cases are bad and dismiss them, but that is really just balling up dirt laundry and tossing them in a corner. They're just going to fester there. Actually looking at them in depth and airing them out would seem to better release the poison, in my opinion. Yes, some ugly, inconvenient truths could come out, but they are best dealt with in the open. Blanket denial is not a healthy approach.

Nope.

I am looking at facts and 9 months of claims that have continued to offer no evidence. No proof.

I am looking at a poster carefully construct what appears to be a stance that enables the repetition of the lies that have no substance to back them up.

I am looking at posts that refuse to call a spade a spade and prefer to pander to a fantastically improbable claim that there was mass voter fraud that changed the result of the last election - but no-one can prove it.

Either through wanting to appear "high brow" and above the fray - or through deliberate shading with with the intent to continue a narrative that is designed to undermine the result of the last election.

Last question from me --

In your previous post you mentioned how states were being denied the ability to challenge laws that were in place before the election. Your implication was that somehow this was nefarious. . . . do you believe that States that did not challenge new rules that were implemented because of Covid befre the election ... should be permitted to wait for the result and lost the election and THEN lodge legal action to protest the changes? Because I mentioned the ridiculousness of that scenario and you failed to address. Thanks

I believe that the laws should have been challenged sooner if they were believed to have been wrong. However, if they are wrong, the timing shouldn't be a reason to invalidate their ability to be challenged. The issue should be the merits of the challenge. Wrong is wrong. Maybe the Republicans thought the wrongness would benefit them and thus didn't challenge it earlier. It sucks that it was the Republicans that challenged it because it's now tied up in this moralistic/political/pseudo-religious morass where no one wants to actually look at it.

What you are actually looking at isn't "pure" facts, but rather information filtered through your paradigm. You're constantly falling back on yes, buts. You have admitted that there was some fraud, but keep then going on to declaring there has been no proof of mass fraud. I've never said there has been mass fraud, you keep making that same straw man argument.

I'm done with the last election. I'm not trying to undermine the results. For better or worse, Biden is the President. I'm worried about future elections. I'd prefer to avoid both future Trumps and future Bidens.

You seem overly focused on being right with regards to the past. I'm much more concerned with being better in the future.

Seriously Bull,, where did you get your info.. There is no proof of massive voter fraud. Trump said it. That's it..

Now, if you wanna tell me that there is voter fraud out there, I bet there is, but not to the extent it would change the outcome of the election.

I'll reiterate something I said before.

Nobody said that our election systems/processes are perfect. There are weaknesses that need to be continually improved upon, in many ways (security, convenience to voter, etc). IMO, they have been as transparent as I can expect them to be about something as mundane is improving the inner workings of elections at the local level. I see nothing wrong here.

What Trump-Republicans are alleging (and continue to allege) is that there was a mass, systemic fraud that changed the outcome of the election. This is NOT the same thing as saying our election systems can always benefit from improvement.

IMO, the first step is to understand the difference between wanting better election infrastructure/processes, and what Trump-Republicans are screaming about, and which is being discussed where.

In terms of the latter (mass fraud in 2020), the due diligence has been done. There's nothing more to discuss. Per your example, the laundry was brought out, held up high in the air so everyone could see, and no dirt was found. This was repeated ~70 times plus whatever else they did on top of the lawsuits (audits and such), and no dirt was found. Trump sounded the alarm, and had more than a fair allotment of time to put forth a compelling argument and failed miserably.
I'll repeat something else. It's the responsibility of everyone to handle serious allegations accordingly (investigate, hear evidence, and make decisions as the evidence directs), but it's the responsibility of the accusers (in this case, Trump), to back up their claims with evidence. In this election fraud issue, one side held up their end of the bargain, and one didn't.

Find one place where I've said there was "mass voter fraud." There isn't one. It's a straw man argument that keeps being made.

Your second line is pretty much exactly what I've been saying.

Except certain people keep saying there was "no fraud" in place of no proof of mass voter fraud. The use of no fraud, in a sense, implies perfection.



Exactly. I'm saying our election system can always benefit from improvement. That's getting somehow twisted into I'm supporting this mass fraud scheme.



I agree. It'd be great if people could realize I'm discussing the former and not doing the latter.



Except in many cases, they weren't really aired. They were dismissed on "technicalities." "Watching" the Republicans get slaughtered in court/transcripts would, I believe, do a much better job of putting the issue to bed than telling the public that those questions/issues can't be asked in court. In the media all that seems to get published is largely one sided accounts. It seems to me that actually seeing both sides of the argument in something like court cases would give more complete perspective to the issues.

At no point anywhere to did anyone claim there was no fraud. There are countless individual cases - many Republican - where people attempted to cast fraudulent votes. Context and the discussion at large is a "thing" and is in play here.

The issue is - was - always will be the Big Lie that there was fraudulent voting that enabled the election to be "stolen" ... that is what the Big Lie is. The Big Lie isn't that there was some fraud - the same as (probably) every other election in history - the Big Lie is specifically that there was a MASSIVE fraud that changed the outcome of the election from a W for Trump to a landslide loss.



But you do you. Try to play semantics. Try to argue what the definition of 'is' is ...

Well, the title of the thread is what it is, and that same corner of Republican party is perpetuating the lie.

We might be arguing semantics here, but arguing 'no fraud' is NOT implying perfection. I highly doubt people here have any of the time, knowledge, and inclination to dig into the nitty-gritty details of election processes and infrastructure to argue against the continual improvement of those. We've solely been talking about Trump's allegation of 'stolen election'.
I think the possibility that Trump was 'done dirty' by the courts in his lawsuits might be better if the same results was repeated so consistently so many times. The vast majority of the lawsuits didn't go forward because his lawyers didn't even present any sort of evidence. The lawsuits that did present at least a shred of evidence didn't hold up to any sort of scrutiny. I think with how many times that sequence played out the same way and with so many different judges, it's about as significant proof of a negative as you're going to get.

I watched a couple of those replayed video-conference-hearings between Trump's lawyers and local/state judges. Granted, it was only a couple, not all and not even a majority of the lawsuits that were brought. What I saw (and one really stood out) confirmed what everyone was hearing reported in the news (and the results of those lawsuits), that Trump's allegation were baseless due to a comical lack of evidence. Honestly, it was uncomfortable, at times, to watch these lawyers try to present/defend claims that have little to no direct evidence.

j/c:

Texas secretary of state auditing 2020 election to ensure 'confidence' in results

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/pol...ott/5913085001/

I get your point that the merits were not heard in many cases, but they were heard in some legal court cases, and that is in addition to the other surrounding circumstances, like the Arizona audit and Bill Barr mentioning outright that the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the election.

Side note: nice use of the term "laches." I don't think I've heard that since I got my JD back in 2009. Brought back a lot of memories there.

Back to the point, here are some quotes that we saw during the court process:

Link

On Nov 27, 2020 a federal appeals court rejected a Trump campaign proposal to block Biden from being declared the winner of Pennsylvania. ( here ). At the time, Stephanos Bibas, on behalf of the three-judge panel wrote: “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so." It added: “Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here."

From a Washington Post article embedded in the Reuters link above:

But in the lawsuits themselves, even Trump’s campaign and allies do not allege widespread fraud or an election-changing conspiracy.

Instead, GOP groups for the most part have focused on smaller-bore complaints in an effort to delay the counting of ballots or claims that would affect a small fraction of votes, at best.

And, even then, they have largely lost in court.

The reason: Judges have said the Republicans did not provide evidence to back up their assertions — just speculation, rumors or hearsay. Or in one case, hearsay written on a sticky note.

Here's more:

Republican observers were there, after all. Trump had “a nonzero number of people in the room,” one of his attorneys conceded in federal court Thursday evening.

“I’m sorry, then what’s your problem?” asked U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond, who denied the request to halt the count.

The Trump campaign repeated this claim Monday in another federal lawsuit, adding that standards for verifying mail ballots were applied unevenly across the state in a way that disadvantaged Republicans. The suit seeks to block certification of election results in the state on an emergency basis.

More:


Politics
Fact Checker
Biden administration
The 202s
Polling
How redistricting works
Debt ceiling
Politics
Here are the GOP and Trump campaign’s allegations of election irregularities. So far, none has been proved.
Trump's election legal blitz, explained
The Post's Amy Gardner analyzes President Trump's multifarious legal challenges across swing states questioning the integrity of the 2020 election. (The Washington Post)
By
David A. Fahrenthold
,
Elise Viebeck
,
Emma Brown
and
Rosalind S. Helderman

November 10, 2020 at 6:08 p.m. EST


3006
Please note: The Washington Post is providing this important election information free to all readers. Get election results and other major news delivered to your inbox by signing up for breaking news email alerts.

Republicans have made claims of election irregularities in six states where President-elect Joe Biden leads in the vote count, alleging in lawsuits and public statements that election officials did not follow proper procedures while counting ballots in Tuesday’s election.

So far, they have gone 0 for 6.

Since Election Day, President Trump has repeatedly claimed that a broad conspiracy of misdeeds — apparently committed in both Republican and Democratic states — had cost him the election.

“WATCH FOR MASSIVE BALLOT COUNTING ABUSE,” Trump tweeted Tuesday, the latest in a series of missives in which he has made misleading claims about the vote. Trump’s campaign has encouraged donors to contribute to a legal-defense fund so he can fight the cases in court.

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But in the lawsuits themselves, even Trump’s campaign and allies do not allege widespread fraud or an election-changing conspiracy.

Instead, GOP groups for the most part have focused on smaller-bore complaints in an effort to delay the counting of ballots or claims that would affect a small fraction of votes, at best.

And, even then, they have largely lost in court.

The reason: Judges have said the Republicans did not provide evidence to back up their assertions — just speculation, rumors or hearsay. Or in one case, hearsay written on a sticky note.

The result has been a flurry of filings that Trump has cited as a reason to avoid conceding defeat — but, so far, have done nothing to prevent the defeat itself.


Protesters rally outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, where election votes were being counted on Thursday. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
Pennsylvania
As absentee ballots helped Biden overtake Trump in Pennsylvania last week, Republicans sought to stop Philadelphia officials from counting them. Their argument: GOP observers had been barred from the rooms where the votes were being counted.

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The problem: That wasn’t true.

Republican observers were there, after all. Trump had “a nonzero number of people in the room,” one of his attorneys conceded in federal court Thursday evening.

“I’m sorry, then what’s your problem?” asked U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond, who denied the request to halt the count.

The Trump campaign repeated this claim Monday in another federal lawsuit, adding that standards for verifying mail ballots were applied unevenly across the state in a way that disadvantaged Republicans. The suit seeks to block certification of election results in the state on an emergency basis.

Trump’s team saw a few small victories in the state, though none seems likely to come close to affecting the race’s outcome. The campaign won an order to move observers closer to the counting machines in Philadelphia.

And it succeeded in getting Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to issue an order that election officials must separate ballots that arrived after Election Day but before Friday evening — a step that counties have already taken. Under an earlier ruling by the state Supreme Court, election officials may tally those ballots, which are a tiny fraction of the overall vote, but state officials have ordered them to be kept segregated in case of further legal challenges.


Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks during a rally held by Trump supporters outside the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta on Saturday. (Kevin D. Liles for The Washington Post)
Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, Republicans sued to stop local election officials from releasing the names of voters whose absentee ballots had been rejected for errors such as a lack of signature. Local counties release the names so voters can fix the flaws in their ballots.

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These suits have not succeeded, either.

In Northampton County, Pa., for instance, a judge wrote that the local GOP needed to prove why it would be injured if voters had a chance to correct their ballots. “As a result, its request for an injunction must fail,” wrote Judge Michael J. Koury Jr.

On Saturday, Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani said that the campaign was preparing to file another lawsuit Monday, alleging wrongdoing on a grand scale in Pennsylvania. “Many cases are going to be filed — some big, some small. This is going to be eventually a big case,” Giuliani said.


Trump supporters protest the election results at the Michigan Capitol in Lansing on Saturday. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
Michigan
In Michigan, Biden trailed on election night — but then, as in other Midwestern states, surged back to overtake Trump as thousands of absentee ballots were counted. In three lawsuits, Republicans have alleged that there was impropriety in those ballot counts.

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They lost, both times. And for the same reason: Republicans could not provide evidence of wrongdoing.

In one case, Republicans said GOP election observers in Detroit were being excluded when city officials fixed, or “cured,” ballots that their machines couldn’t read. In these cases — which might be caused by a stray mark or a coffee stain — officials can make a duplicate ballot, with the same votes, and run that one instead.

Republicans said they had “information and belief” that this curing process had been done repeatedly without a GOP official there to observe it. They asked a judge to delay certifying Detroit’s results. The judge said no. He said the GOP’s evidence of misconduct was “mere speculation.”

“The City of Detroit should not be harmed when there is no evidence to support accusations of voter fraud,” Judge Timothy M. Kenny wrote.

-------------------

I understand that you are making the claim that people are viewing this through a paradigm...but that's literally how every single person everywhere views things. Everyone. The best you can do is to try and set it aside as best you can to maintain objectivity, but achieving that at a perfect level is near impossible.

As far as this goes, yes, there were many that were dismissed on a procedural or a standing ground. There were also some that were dismissed because of lack of evidence. Combine that with the words of the attorney general and all the post-election audits, and I think we get to the point where the proverbial laundry has been aired to a sufficient level. Perhaps not every sock and shirt was checked, but all the clothes we did air out appeared clean. Combine that with the fact the people who said the laundry was dirty in the first place haven't found any dirt.

We could take an evasive approach and say "we'll never know because we weren't thorough enough and not everything was uncovered" but at some point reasonable preponderance has to come into play.

It's not about anything but how many times mass voter fraud has came up empty with any evidence of credibility. Something that used to matter in this country but you claim that somehow it doesn't.

It's fine to question anything. Where the problem comes in is when proven over and over again you have nothing to bring to the table, you keep believing it anyway.

You seem to advocate that believing something based on no evidence is a credible conclusion. It's not.

Maybe they'll find out Biden won Texas after all!



These idiots are doing an audit in a state Trump won and their tax payers get to foot the bill. It's hilarious!

are the Cyber Ninjas gonna run the texas audit?

You, and others, keep trying to make it about mass voter fraud. I'm not claiming mass voter fraud. I'm annoyed how everything gets lumped into mass voter fraud, and people pretend that it's the only issue that exists (or doesn't in this instance.)

There have always been isolated cases of voter fraud. But that wasn't the context of anything being discussed. It happened before 2020 and will happen afterwords. Nothing will stop people who have a mind set to cheat. Just like door locks. They only keep honest people honest. They don't stop people determined to break in from breaking in.

The more open right to vote in 2020 didn't change any of that in any way.

The entire point to all of this is to say there wasn't mass voter fraud. You actually tried to site that court cases weren't even heard to promote the idea. So if that wasn't to promote the very topic of possible mass voter fraud, what was it?

This is from your opening post in the thread:


You may have meant mass voter fraud, but that's not what you actually wrote.

Feel free to keep trying to cram everything into your no mass voter fraud straw man. I'm kind of over the echo chamber.

It was made very clear to you throughout this thread that was intended to mean mass voter fraud. But carry on as if you still didn't get the message.

Except it was the context of what I was discussing in some instances. I'm sorry I didn't stick to the Script of bash the Republicans. Discussions evolve. If everyone just repeated what the first person said, what's the stinking point?




Again you're making it about mass voter fraud. Which "all this" are you talking about? The thread? It seems more like the purpose of the thread was to bash Republicans. If the point was to say there wasn't mass voter fraud, the thread could easily have been titled "There's no evidence of mass voter fraud." Instead, someone decided to make it about Republicans and reinforce the BS political party false dichotomy.

If by "all this" you were talking about your post in response to mine, mass voter fraud wasn't under debate in the context of my post, so why do you insist on constantly changing the subject to it?

The court cases weren't entirely about "mass voter fraud." Some of them were about the legitimacy of systems/methods. I think examining and potentially improving the methods would be good for our democracy. Saying we can't look at them because that might disenfranchise people about our system is some ass-backwards circular thinking. If the fact that Trump can get elected didn't disenfranchise people in the system, how the heck is a court case going to do it? I'm of the opinion people should be disenfranchised in the system. Not the idea of it, but the messed up implementation of it that we've come to now.

So your idea is that showing the frivolity of the mass voter fraud, which you yourself claim not to promote, is bashing Republicans? Pointing out that it is based on zero actual facts or evidence is bashing Republicans?

It seems you love a good misdirection move when facts don't align with what you want them to be and your only actual comeback is to divert attention away from it.

It's odd how many readers of this thread have arrived at the same conclusion yet somehow it's the fault of everyone but you.