idrankwhat

Unfortunately that's the level to which our political discourse has been lowered. It basically got Bush elected, that's his entire schtick (sp) and it also gets good ratings on the telly. So is it the politician's fault or do we blame it on the consumer?

Great, just point me to the right thread then. Don't ask for that. You'll be disappointed. There's no logic to be found in that argument until they admit the imperialist aspect of it.

You can't use logic or rational thought here Bill. What in the world are you thinking? This is a straw man bash fest that has no interest in accuracy but is fun for the people who are desperate to keep anybody with an (R) in control, even though practically everyone with an (R) after their name has betrayed them. It's kinda sad in a frustrating sort of way. But I'll admit, I have mixed emotions about all of this. It is just a little satisfying to see this panning out the way it has. Conservative talk radio, Republicans who are afraid of losing next week, and the White House are all deliberately ignoring Kerry's explanation, in some cases not even recognizing it, and carrying on with the practice of deliberately and methodically mis-informing the public. And the mainstream media does what it typically does which is to simply repeat the claims being made with little to no analysis. So basically, while this is indeed frustrating, it's great to see that I've not been wrong in the least about my accusations of the right wing media, the administration and their combined efforts to dumb down the electorate. Hmmmm.....which emoticon is appropriate?

"In "The Dark Side," FRONTLINE tells the story of the vice president's role as the chief architect of the war on terror, and his battle with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet for control of the "dark side." Drawing on more than 40 interviews and thousands of documents, the film provides a step-by-step examination of what happened inside the councils of war." http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/view/

More like The Decider's evolving "tactics".

No more rhymes, now, I mean it! Anybody want a peanut?

Ha Haaa, you fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is: "Never get involved in a land war in Asia." Sorry, Bill started it

Yea, that big a swing would probably raise more than a few eyebrows. More like a few gallows!

Inconceivable!

I'm not sure which law what would be but Ken Blackwell, who is in charge of State election laws and changed a couple of them prior to the election, is at the center of much of the election irregularity finger pointing. Unfortunately I can't follow this up today. But just to add a jab at him, I think he's still in charge of elections yet he's also a candidate. Something wrong with their laws over there.

Have you noticed how few of them are using the term "Republican" in their ads? The preferred term this year is "independant". Talk about an identity crisis!

A number of the claims of that damning "cut and paste" are non-issues.

Dude, he spent the rest of the speech insulting Bush. What's so difficult about the notion that this statement was another intended jab? He basically dropped one word. Has he got some elitist in him? I'm sure he does, as do all of our corporately owned politicians. But at least he isn't so far out of touch that he thinks that things "worked out pretty well" for the Katrina victims. If it's elitism that pisses you off there are better examples than Kerry's comment. But if you're just playing politics then have at it. Tis the season.

I checked out both of these stories and couldn't find where either claimed "all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates" It's true. I didn't check out all of the links. I got this through a site that's usually pretty good about their documentation. "All favored......" is admittedly a pretty bold statement. But looking at the links and doing some additional searches so far allows me to only state that "most favored...." because I can't verify "all". But I also haven't run across any that showed a swing towards Kerry. From what I've read it appears that there's a pretty substantial amount of evidence to support that the electronic voting irregularities favored Bush. Still looking.........

Yes you can. "I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq."

I think this is more of an example of Kerry's liberal elitism than it is a knock on the troops. I don't believe he said it with the intended consequences. He's just showing us that he's the rich Northeastern Liberal we always claimed he was. The timing on his statements is what I find odd. He has cancelled all of his appointments today, so I guess he got that tongue lashing from Pelosi. - I was referring more to the repeated attempts to down play Kerry's service. But regarding his recent comment that started this whole thing, I'm sure that the right will try to make it out to be what it wasn't. They're a little nervous right now and will take every shot that they can. I think it's lousy politics but I understand. However I think Kerry explained it pretty well. He screwed up his attempt to insult Bush. He could alpologize for the mis-statement but the press would only report that he said he was sorry for the insult (which was intended for someone else).

I'm still not sure what the beef is here. He did volunteer for the Navy. He did go to Vietnam and was in combat. Those doing most of the criticizing didn't. If we want to nit pick over the finer points of our leaders' service then I should probably ask, if it's more than 30 days isn't it actually considered desertion, not awol?

Did you know.... 1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S. http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold 2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry. http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html 3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers. http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html 4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886 5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines. http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitrakis/031004fitrakis.html 6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee. http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=26 http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php 7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates. http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel27.html 8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes. http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html 9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates/pfindex.html 10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm 11. Diebold is based in Ohio. http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm 12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as senior managers and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states. http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml 13. Jeff Dean, Diebold's Senior Vice-President and senior programmer on Diebold's central compiler code, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree. http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf 14. Diebold Senior Vice-President Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years. http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf 15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio. http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/26/loc_elexoh.html 16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it. (See the movie here.) http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190 17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml 18. All - not some - but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates. http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm http://www.rise4news.net/extravotes.html http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=950 http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm 19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother. http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/local/7628725.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10544-2004Oct29.html 20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida - again always favoring Bush - have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation. http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/tens_of_thousands.html http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.html http://uscountvotes.org/

Well there you go! Maybe I AM qualified to be president!!!

Actually yes, lots of good, specific examples of how the leadership has abdicated their responsibilities and used their positions to make themselves wealthy and screw the taxpayer. Call me a nut job but I think it's kind of important, considering that you and I are literally paying for it....unless of course you make more than $500,000/yr. I think that we should get together and talk about it over a beer at that Hooters that we bought in Lousiana.

Tounge fumble? A reference to the abundance of Bushisms. I made that one up. I thought it was fitting for this time of the year. Foung Tumble was the original idea but I didn't want to completely confuse everyone

He was supposed to say this: "I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq." But you know what amazes me? Bush criticizing him because Kerry botched a sentence. If anyone knows how to tounge fumble a statement it's Bush. You'd think he'd show a little compassionate conservatism

Well for me, what it comes down to is this: Clinton was scrutinized and critized at taxpayer expense for his entire term. They kept the pressure on (through those 1000 Republican subpeonas referenced in another thread). Most of the scrutiny was over things of absolutely no real consequence and actually more resembled harassment. His actual crimes and supposed crimes were of no real consequence to anyone. To the contrary, Bush's actions, which have proven to be deadly and very expensive in more ways than one...have met with no legal scrutiny. In a nutshell, the Republican view is that "Clinton's personal habits which have no national consequence are deplorable yet Bush's actions which result in dead US troops, more enemies and a further bankrupt Treasury are somehow examples of acceptable...no.....admirable leadership. The double standard is so blatant that it's mind boggling. But then again, that's how "the big lie" works. Shove it in their faces and they'll think "no one would be so brazen as to be so blatantly deceptive". Me? I'm praying that my sons have access to accurate reference sources while they're growing up so that they can ask me "what in hell was the matter with you people back then?"

I find myself agreeing and disagreeing with you on many of your finer points. Sometimes within the same point. However you nailed this one squarely.

I prefer to quote scientific conclusions that run the peer review gauntlet, not those which simply get approval from the marketing team. Call me kooky that way.