tecoyah

Just a place to vent....and I suppose discuss, the misdirection our leaders feed us. My favorite, still...."Iraqs WMD program"

__________________
Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

redravin40

This just seems like trolling waiting to happen.
I'll let it go for now but if the usual personal attacks start it will be shut down.

madp

Considering that this assertion has been repeated by the highest leadership in BOTH major parties for at least 5 years, and right up to the Iraq invasion, do you think it is more likely that it was an intelligence failure or mistake rather than a "lie"? Do we hold the Dems and Republicans equally culpable for proliferating erroneous intelligence?

__________________
why are you wearing that stupid man suit?

Strange Famous

The fact that Bush calls himself "President" is a bit of a whopper.

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

Rekna

Not a Bush lies but we shouldn't restrict.

France, Germany, and Russia were interested in the Iraqi's best intrest and not their oil/weapons contracts.

It is America's fault that we are poor and opressed.

The US is soley responsible for arming Saddam.

The US did the majority of the arming of Saddam.

Saddam was in complete complainance with the UN for the last 12 years.

A majority of the Iraqis wanted Saddam to stay in power and now that he is in power they want him put back into power.

There is a good start.

madp

France is an "ally."

The UN is a fair and representative body.

Hillary Clinton cares about our troops.

The Bush tax cut was a tax cut for the rich, and it did not help the middle class.

__________________
why are you wearing that stupid man suit?

Mojo_PeiPei

Why because he won the American election legally and constitutionally? Or the WMD's that we declared, then known to be missing, that never got declared. Or you have the Kay document having material proof that Saddam and his WMD were in material breach of 1441. Plus Saddam has never proven otherwise that he didn't have the weapons which was his responsibility.

__________________
To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

james t kirk

Bush lies, hmmmm.....

How bout "Combat is over" in so many words.

Endymon32

MAjor combat is over, Or do you still see warships firing rockets?

Sparhawk

"Mission Accomplished"

__________________
"In Iraq, no doubt about it, it's tough. It's hard work. It's incredibly hard. It's - and it's hard work. I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty reports every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it is. But it's necessary work. We're making progress. It is hard work."

Strange Famous

Al Gore won the election.

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

Endymon32

That is one of my favorite lies too. Thanks for bringing it up.

Strange Famous

It is not a lie, insofar as, Al Gore won more electoral votes, legally, and the Supreme Court ordered that the result, which they knew was false and incorrect, stand in Florida. Gore won Florida legally, but it was given to Bush by a crooked kangeroo court.

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

madp

Sorry, but you are mistaken. The recount continued in Florida even after the election was decided, and it was determined that Bush won Florida, and thus the electoral votes.

What you are referring to is the "popular vote," which Gore did win.

And since when is the US Supreme Court a "crooked kangeroo court"????

__________________
why are you wearing that stupid man suit?

Endymon32

LoL You slay me.

Gore won more popular votes, but as anyone can tell you, the electoral votes are what give you the state.
The votes were close, and after numerous recounts, that had BUsh winning in EVERY ONE, the supreme court said "enough counts, lets move on?"

Again you show your ignorance on this, and every topic, and your profound biased.

Strange Famous

Gore had more votes in Florida. This is a clear, undisputable, fact.

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

seretogis

Literacy is a good thing.

__________________
seretogis - sieg heil
perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most, forgot how it feels well almost
no one to blame always the same, open my eyes wake up in flames

Rekna

Please find me the final poll numbers from a reputable news source to back this up.

I voted for gore and I wanted gore to win. I think the electoral college is an old archaic institution that needs to be gotten rid of but that doesn't change the fact that Bush won the electoral vote. Your argument that Bush won Florida without any evidance is very weak. You would be better off arguing that Gore should have won since he had the popular vote.

Strange Famous

Would it make you happy if I said "indisputable"?

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

Lebell

Source, please.

__________________
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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Strange Famous

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/fe...flor-f05.shtml

Two newly published studies of the ballots cast in the US presidential election confirm that Democrat Al Gore was the choice of more Florida voters than Republican George W. Bush, who was installed as president after an unprecedented and anti-democratic intervention by the US Supreme Court.

One study was conducted by the Washington Post, the other by Tribune Co., which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, and the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. The Post endorsed Gore editorially in the November election, while the Tribune endorsed Bush.

The Post reviewed computerized records of 2.7 million votes in eight of Florida's largest counties to examine the pattern of the so-called overvotes, those ballots on which computer scanners or other vote-counting machines detected votes for more than one presidential candidate and discarded the ballots as invalid. The newspaper did not recount individual ballots, but relied on reports from county officials based on machine tabulation of the invalid ballots.

The analysis found that of the more than 60,000 ballots in the eight counties showing overvotes—the bulk of the statewide total—Gore's name was marked on 46,000, while Bush was marked on only 17,000. This includes several thousand ballots in which both Gore and Bush were marked.

The 3-1 Democratic to Republican ratio among the overvotes was confirmed in the analysis of other votes cast by those voters further down the ballot. Three quarters of those who improperly cast a presidential overvote marked their ballots correctly for US senator. Of these, 70 percent voted for Democrat Bill Nelson, only 24 percent for Republican Bill McCollum, while 6 percent voted for third-party candidates.

The nearly 30,000-vote margin for Gore among the overvotes dwarfs the 537 votes which was Bush's official margin of victory in Florida. On the basis of that minuscule and highly dubious number, the Republican-controlled state government, headed by his brother, Governor Jeb Bush, awarded him the state's 25 electoral votes and a four-vote margin in the Electoral College nationally.

The eight counties examined by the Post included Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Broward (Fort Lauderdale), Pinellas (St. Petersburg), Hillsborough (Tampa), Marion (Ocala), Highlands and Pasco. Four of these counties went for Gore and four for Bush. The pattern of more overvotes for Gore prevailed in all the counties, however, regardless of who won the county overall.

The notorious “butterfly ballot” in Palm Beach County accounted for 8,000 of the Gore overvotes, most of them double votes for Gore and far-right Reform Party candidate Patrick Buchanan, who was listed across from Gore on the ballot, with his punch-hole close to the names of Gore and Lieberman. Gore-Buchanan voters in Palm Beach County voted 10-1 Democratic in the US Senate race.

In the other seven counties, the largest group of overvotes were for Gore and the candidate who followed immediately after him on the ballot, Libertarian Harry Browne. Such a combination is incomprehensible as a protest vote, especially one supposedly chosen by 6,800 voters. It more likely reflects confusion among voters who thought they had to cast votes for president and vice-president.

Confirming the notion that the overvotes were largely intended for Gore is the fact that most of the third-party candidates on the ballot for president received more votes paired with Gore as overvotes than they did in their own right. In the eight counties, Socialist Workers Party candidate James Harris received a total of 300 votes, but his name was punched 12,600 times on ballots with Gore, Bush or another presidential candidate—42 inadvertent votes for each intentional vote.

The Republican head of the Florida Division of Elections, Clay Roberts, dismissed the Post analysis with an argument of stupefying cynicism, claiming that overvotes were intentional political choices. “People who are engaged in politics can't understand why people would overvote,” he said. “But there are valid reasons for undervotes and overvotes. For some voters, that undervote or overvote is their decision.”

The Post also found more than 15,000 voters in the eight counties who cast no recorded votes for any office or referendum. This suggests widespread difficulty with voting equipment, or major errors in the computerized count, or both, since it is impossible to believe that so many people turned out at the polls, many of them waiting hours in line, only to cast a blank ballot.

The Tribune Co. study examined ballots in 15 smaller counties—not including any of the eight in the Post study—that used paper ballots that were marked in pencil and then read by optical scanners.

While much public attention has been given to the punch card ballots that proved so defective in major urban counties, the rate of invalid votes was actually higher in these 15 counties, ten of which are predominately white and rural areas in north Florida. The reason is that these counties lacked the financial resources to have an optical reader in each precinct.

In the 26 counties that did have scanners available in each precinct, voters were instructed to put the ballot in the scanner themselves. In the event of an improper vote, the scanner rejects the ballot and the voter corrects the mistake and resubmits it. In the poorer counties, the ballots from each precinct are delivered to a central counting location. Voters who mark their ballots improperly have no chance to correct an error, since the mistakes are not detected until the ballots are fed into the scanner at the county seat. Their votes are simply discarded.

Counties with optical scanners in each precinct had a vote error rate of less than 1 percent. By comparison, punch-card counties had an error rate of 3.9 percent, and counties with optical scanners only in a central location had an error rate of 5.7 percent. In Gadsden County, the only black majority county in Florida, which used optical scanners at a central location, the error rate was 12.4 percent, and in some precincts as many as one vote in four was ruled invalid.

The poorest and least educated voters were obviously those most likely to make a mistake in casting their ballots. These voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party. As a result, the Tribune Co.'s recount of the 15,596 invalid ballots showed a gain for Gore of 366 votes, even though Bush carried 14 of the 15 counties.

A key factor in overvoting errors was the design of the ballot, almost as confusing as Palm Beach's butterfly ballot. In 13 of the 15 counties, the candidates for president were divided into two pages. Eight were listed on the first page and two, Monica Moorehead of the Workers World Party and Howard Phillips of the Constitutional Party, on the second.

Some 4,252 voters cast ballots for Gore or Bush on the first page, and then for Moorehead or Phillips on the second page. If those votes had been counted for Gore and Bush, Gore would have gained 564 votes, more than Bush's statewide margin.

It is a curious fact that the designer of the two-page ballot, Hart InterCivic, is a consulting firm based in Austin, Texas, headquarters of the Bush presidential campaign. The company said it followed a format sent out by the Florida secretary of state, Katherine Harris, Florida co-chairman of the Bush campaign and a member of the cabinet of Governor Jeb Bush.

There were other anomalies. Officials in Lake County, who are Republican loyalists, ruled that a presidential ballot with two marks on it—one by the name, the other a write-in for the same candidate—was invalid, although state law allows them to be counted. The result was that 628 legal votes were discarded, votes which went disproportionately to Gore. Including these votes would have cut Bush's lead by 122 votes. Gore would have gained another 72 votes from similar double votes discarded in several smaller counties.

Lake County also printed the name of Joe Lieberman in small type directly above the word Libertarian in the party label on the line below. As a result, nearly 300 voters in Lake County cast ballots for Gore and Libertarian Harry Browne, which were ruled invalid.

The Post and Tribune studies have gone virtually unmentioned in the America media, except for the newspapers that commissioned them. Not a single prominent Democratic Party politician has taken note of their findings.

Speaking on a television interview program January 28, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt repeated what has become the standard Democratic refrain. He said that in his opinion, Gore had won the most votes nationally and the most votes in Florida. But, he added, his opinion no longer mattered, and he accepted the legitimacy of Bush as president, following the Supreme Court decision of last December 12.

Such comments, and the ongoing silence over the evidence trickling in from Florida, demonstrates how far the Democratic Party is from any principled defense of democratic rights. Prostrate before the right wing, this big business party is incapable of defending its own immediate electoral interests, let alone the social and political interests of working

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

Endymon32

Lebel, has stange Famous ever given any proof?

Rekna

I haven't read the article yet but the first rule of valid sources is never count a website that ends in .org as a valid website. Why? Because they have agendas, and agendas cause bias.

Endymon32

Umm we asked for CREDIBLE sources...

Can you back it up without refering to a socialist webpage?

Lebell

HAHAHAHA!

You get your news from the WORLD SOCIALIST WEBSITE?????


They didn't even bother to link to the "articles" so readers can research the issue on their own.


Next.

__________________
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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Rekna

That article sure has a lot of speculation and assumptions. And then it has more speculation and assumptions based on previous assumptions and speculation.

seretogis

Also, the logic is simply incorrect. Bush won the majority of correctly marked ballots, which are all that can be fairly counted. Any ballot which has more than one vote is automatically discounted and thrown away -- as it should be. You cannot suggest that Gore won, simply because incorrectly marked ballots happened to have votes for him more often.

This brings up another interesting point. There was a 3:1 ratio of incorrectly marked ballots for Gore than Bush. Does this mean that those Democrats were just too stupid to understand how to fill out a simple ballot, or maybe the ballot itself was racist?

__________________
seretogis - sieg heil
perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most, forgot how it feels well almost
no one to blame always the same, open my eyes wake up in flames

Strange Famous

The people of Florida wanted Gore, that is clear. The votes, when impartially counted, showed that they wanted Gore. However, they were counted in the first instance by a corrupt Florida state (ran by GWB's brother) who had already decided to throw the state to Bush.

When the impartial forces came in to the count the votes, the Supreme Court stopped them before they could prove Gore won. All of these are clear and obvious facts.

Bush won the election by cheating the people of Florida - this was done by his brother's corruption, and the criminal actions of the Supreme Court, which acted deliberately to deby the people of Florida their democratic right, because they wanted to put their man in power.

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

Endymon32

And again do you have any proof to back that up?

Strange Famous

The article I already posted explains several aspects of the fraud.

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

Rekna

The credibility of your article is questionable at best. You can't believe everything you read. Especially when it comes from someone with an agenda.

To give an example, what are you going to trust more a consumer report on GM vehicles, or a review on GM vehicles found on GMs website?

madp

"The World Socialist Network"!

HA!

Not in the real world.

__________________
why are you wearing that stupid man suit?

rogue49

I wouldn't give that source credit any more than if I got it from the ultra-right media or a tabloid.

I prefer to get my sources from those that are a bit less extreme,
more balanced and don't have an agenda.

The election is over, the president is not going to change,
even if you thought it was wrong, prevent it from happening again,
and if you're a U.S. citizen vote in the coming election this year.

BTW...while I don't appreciate many of the Bush Administrations policies or tactics,
I also DO realize that ALL adminstrations have their biases, spins & agendas.

Personally, I think if Bush was smart enough to fire Ashcroft,
he'd have a "sure-thing" this next election.
The War has become a moot issue, it's done, we're in there, we have to deal with it.
Protesting it is not going to change the past or our current responsiblity.

Mr. Mojo

<a target=new href="http://www.nytimes.com/pages/politics/recount/"><b>NY TIMES: Exploring the Florida Recount</b></a>

<a target=new href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics/12VOTE.html">LINK - Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote</a>
George W. Bush would have won even if the Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount that the Florida court had ordered to go forward.


<a target=new href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics/recount/12ASSE.html">LINK - Who Won Florida? The Answer Emerges, but Surely Not the Final Word</a>
The comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots solidifies George W. Bush's legal claim on the White House


<a target=new href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics/recount/12NUMB.html">LINK -Ballots Cast by Blacks and Older Voters Were Tossed in Far Greater Numbers</a>
Black precincts had more than three times as many rejected ballots as white precincts in last fall's presidential race in Florida.


<a target=new href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/15/politics/15BALL.html">LINK - How Bush Took Florida: Mining the Overseas Absentee Vote</a>
The winning margin included hundreds of flawed ballots.




<a target=new href="http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/florida.ballots/stories/main.html">LINK - CNN: Florida recount study: Bush still wins </a>

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A comprehensive study of the 2000 presidential election in Florida suggests that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a statewide vote recount to proceed, Republican candidate George W. Bush would still have been elected president.

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago conducted the six-month study for a consortium of eight news media companies, including CNN.

NORC dispatched an army of trained investigators to examine closely every rejected ballot in all 67 Florida counties, including handwritten and punch-card ballots. The NORC team of coders were able to examine about 99 percent of them, but county officials were unable to deliver as many as 2,200 problem ballots to NORC investigators. In addition, the uncertainties of human judgment, combined with some counties' inability to produce the same undervotes and overvotes that they saw last year, create a margin of error that makes the study instructive but not definitive in its findings.

As well as attempting to discern voter intent in ballots that might have been re-examined had the recount gone forward, the study also looked at the possible effect of poor ballot design, voter error and malfunctioning machines. That secondary analysis suggests that more Florida voters may have gone to the polls intending to vote for Democrat Al Gore but failed to cast a valid vote.

In releasing the report, the consortium said it is in no way trying to rewrite history or challenge the official result -- that Bush won Florida by 537 votes. Rather it is simply trying to bring some additional clarity to one of the most confusing chapters in U.S. politics.

__________________
When I jerk off I feel good for about twenty seconds and then WHAM it's right back into suicidal depression

madp

Yahtzee!

Thank you for taking the time to link those sources.

I wonder if some of the debaters will have the intellectual honesty to concede this point.

__________________
why are you wearing that stupid man suit?

filtherton

Here's a few lies...
As we all know, bush is looking into the leak of info about cia agent valerie plame. I'm sure he'll get to the bottom of it.

madp

Lol. Touche'.

__________________
why are you wearing that stupid man suit?

Endymon32

Plame is the only scandle the democrates have left. Everything else seemed to fade.

Seaver

... I'm sorry... I know its old now... but I'm STILL laughing.

This guy posts a socialist page as credible.... go ahead and post Baghdad Bob while you're at it.

http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com/

misinformation for teh win

Ustwo

Its the only potential scandal they have left. If it turns out some low level nothing did the leak, they will have to invent a new one.

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