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SaltandPepper98 said:
Wow, you guys seem to give up when you get to a point where your own opinions are overcome by evidence.
The bottom line is that Gore won the national popular vote by over 500,000 votes in 2000. There is absolutely no disputing that.
The debate then comes down to the electoral system in which the popular vote has come into question.
The Florida recount is without a doubt up for debate. Katherine Harris played a central role in that she represented a major conflict of interest due to her personal views and the previous positions she held in the Bush administration. She should have never been allowed to be in charge of the vote certification. She certified the votes much too quickly, literally leaving hundreds of thousands of votes uncounted. The official count had Bush "winning" by 327 votes with 4.2 million votes having been cast. There is no excuse why a more thorough recount wasn't done.
Taking it further, there is ample evidence that upwards of several thousand black, democratic voters votes were simply eliminated by Choicepoint computer voting systems.
The only way to ignore that the 2000 election was stolen by Bush is to simply allow personal ideology to outweigh the evidence.
Keep in mind I personally voted for Bush in 2000.
Since you are all so fond of Wiki as a source of info, here are some pertinent articles dealing with these issues:
Katherine Harris - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Florida election recount - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Florida Central Voter File - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In particular, the final link deals with the "purge list" that Greg Palast broke the story on. Check it out.
Elizabeth T said:
I am sorry for your loss due to the hurricane and I respect your husband's willingness to change and work hard to get an income/accrue wealth.
That said, your statements about people being lazy and sitting under trees an then conflating them as all being drug-users is a massive generalization that simply ignores the real issue.
The bottom line is that most corporations hire illegal immigrants and/or foreign workers using H1-B visas in order to cash in on cheaper (not better) labor.
If you doubt that the quality level of the work in this country has gone down, buy a product made in China sometime (you won't have to look hard) and find out how long it lasts. Try calling a support line for one of those products and see how easy it is to understand the tech support employee. Try to return a defective product for a warranty replacement.
Quality workmanship and customer service is non-existent in Corporate America. We don't actually make anything anymore. This is really the major problem with the economy. We have very few companies which willingly employ American workers at a wage they can support their families at.
This cannot be explained by a lack of skill or employees who like to do drugs. That's just silly.
Will & Eve said:
Oh yeah I'm aware of the left-leaning nature of Salon for sure. ;-) Hell, some of the stuff on there makes me laugh at lefties in the same way that Fox news makes me laugh at the right. ;-)
But, I didn't mention salon as a definitive source. Rather, I mentioned it only because for one reason or another they were the first US based rag (online or off) who was willing to pick up the Palast story about the voting machine problems in Florida.
What makes the story fly isn't Salon by itself but, rather, the fact that the story was originally published in the Guardian in the UK which is known to be quite legitimate. Then Salon picked it up. Then the Washington Post picked the story up, which does legitimize it a great deal. Then, CBS issued a retraction about their earlier story that Ted Koppel had done as well. By the time Salon had issued "Part Two" of their article (months too late), several other blurbs in various rags around the country had published coverage on the story, usually buried somewhere around page 5. ;-) But at least they finally started picking up on it.
In other words, although Salon is definitely far too biased one direction they were the catalyst that picked up the story first in the US (after the Guardian allowed Palast to do the dirty work) and then other US news organizations picked up on it later, which does lend a strong degree of legitimacy to Greg Palast's original stance. Anyone who closely followed this situation should have some strong suspicion about how black votes were counted (or, more accurately, not counted) in the 2000 Florida election.
I mean, on the flip-side, I'm sure that despite Fox's quite obvious stature as the "Republican News Channel" that they do, occasionally, field a good story from time to time which is not driven by corporate/editorial bias. Although hard-pressed to find any evidence of this, I know it's out there.
Anyway, the main point I was trying to get at was twofold: 1) That I think it's an interesting situation when true investigative journalists have to publish articles in another country's newspapers in order to eventually get coverage here and 2) That eventually US rags did pick up on the story, albeit a bit too late to make a difference.
Will & Eve said:
Let's say that's true for argument's sake, but even if that were true this by itself doesn't automatically eliminate the legitimacy of articles it publishes any more than thinking everything Fox News airs is automatic bullshit. I love to laugh at Fox...but it occasionally airs something worth listening to.
Here's a good quote about the Guardian:
"Editorial articles in The Guardian are generally to the left of the political spectrum. This is reflected in the paper's readership: a MORI poll taken between April and June 2000 showed that 80% of Guardian readers were Labour Party voters;[4] according to another MORI poll taken in 2004, 44% of Guardian readers were Labour voters and 37% Liberal Democrat voters.[5]
Founded by textile traders and merchants, The Guardian had a reputation as "an organ of the middle class",[6] or in the words of C.P. Scott's son Ted "a paper that will remain bourgeois to the last".[7] "I write for the Guardian," said Sir Max Hastings in 2005,[8] "because it is read by the new establishment", reflecting the paper's growing influence."
I'm not sure that describes a rag that is "flaming liberal". Anything that represents the "middle class" doesn't sound so bad to me. ;-)
At any rate, check out my new post on this issue regarding the Rolling Stone article published this week entitled "Blocking the Vote". It's an interesting read and I think you'll find it worth the time.
Of course, I suppose you'll tell me Rolling Stone is shit too. ;-)
My response, in essence, is that while you might be right about the liberal leanings of any one source, the truth is that facts have been building in this "voter purge" scandal for about 8 years now...and its looking fairly air-tight the more reading one does.
I am not someone who automatically jumps to conclusions. I read...a LOT...and take my time before I form opinions. There is in my estimation not much doubt that the GOP has engaged in some fairly nefarious voting fraud using a variety of tactics in the last 2 Presidential elections.
Does this mean the Democrats are innocent of any such shenanigans? Not at all. But there is nothing out there of any sort which I can find which points out anything similar that the Dems might be guilty of. By comparison the Acorn thing is a joke and not truly a real concern for any reason aside from some individuals who stand to gain a little bit of scratch for providing voter names to the registration department. Bottom line is that registered names do not equal votes. Period. That's why Acorn has been a non-event despite the Repubs best efforts. They've tried to portray this as something people should be worried about but the fact is most people have thankfully shown themselves to be too smart to take the bait.
In regards to the GOP "voter purge" issue, however, it's starting to look like there is something legitimately fraudulant going on.
Don't do it Will. You're getting sucked in like I did. You can't have a simple discussion of personal views and opinions with these people. You have to spend 20 hour days doing research, wading through liberal crap. Getting reams of back up for every word you say. And it still won't do you any good. It is ideological and you won't budge them. Get out while you still can. You're a better man than this.
Norm
Norm
Will & Eve said:
REPUBLICAN pundits are in general being vicious towards Palin.
Joe Scarborough has ripped the choice a new one numerous times even as he "defends" her as a "nice, intelligent woman who is a good mom".
Chris Buckley (William F. Buckley's kid) ripped her a new one.
George Will ripped her a new one.
Multiple conservative rags endorsed Obama because of McCain's choice of Palin.
Katie Couric was more of a therapist than a hard-nosed reporter in that interview, and Palin still wilted under "pressure". How is she going to deal with Putin if she can't handle Couric?
Shall I go on?
You can blame the Dems all you want for being "vicious", but the bottom line is that in my book if someone is obviously as unqualified a choice as she is then you have to be hard-nosed about it and use it against your opponent in a way that questions his judgement, both in terms of campaign strategy and the potential he might contract melanoma for the 5th time, die in office, and leave her in charge [shudder].
As for being "vicious", I'd say trying to conflate Obama with "paling around with terrorists" is far more vicious and underhanded of a tactic than is simply saying someone is obviously unqualified to take over as President.
Will & Eve said:
I linked the Rolling Stone article in the other thread, apologies for not including the link here...thought it would be redundant...but here it is again...
Block the Vote : Rolling Stone
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SaltandPepper98 said:
LOL Calling me ideological is rich considering that between the two of us I'm the only one that has bothered to actually provide real sources to back up my suppositions. ;-)
By contrast you seem to practice the "George W Bush" method of "research", which is to basically decide upon an ideology and stick to it without ever having to look at evidence on a day-to-day basis which might change and, therefore, need your opinions to change along with the information at hand. Dismiss what I've said all you want, but all I've seen or heard from you is demogoguery and ideology which, frankly, amounts to little more than you supporting your own built in belief system. You have not shown one opinion that gives credit to an opposing viewpoint. You may see me as liberal, but I can assure you I am not. I think it's funny you want people who disagree with you to apologize for educating themselves. Reading is a GOOD thing salt. ;-)
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janna said:
lol Acorn is a non-event. As noted a thousand times before, if you'd like to you could go down tomorrow and register 101 "people" using variations of your own name. No one could really stop you from doing that. But you will still only being to actually VOTE once.
The GOP knows this. They have spent MILLIONS of tax-payer dollars trying to dig up evidence of voter fraud against the Dems and have not been able to find one instance of any coordinated effort in the past 8 years.
Acorn is a smoke screen to cover up GOP voter purges.
Oh, and if Obama is a "socialist", then so it McCain...he voted against Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy and spoke out against these ideas on more than one occasion calling it "irresponsible". But I guess it's easy to forget that, eh? ;-)
Will & Eve said:
Will, the idea of debate is to share opposing viewpoints and opinions, often backed up by facts. That is what I have done. I have pointed out sources to back up various opinions.
For example, when you said that the left is being "vicious" towards Palin, I said that in actuality it is not just the left who is being hard on her and listed off a few examples of right wing pundits who have come out vehemently against her as a bad choice for the VP pick. This is fact. All you have to do is look.
Me telling you that George Will and Joe Scarborough et al have been just as, if not moreso, "viscious" towards Palin than anyone on the left is not an indication of me being "partisan". This is a fair form of argumentation in which I am trying to point out that your premise is flawed. Contrary to what you said, it is not only the "liberal left" who is "guilty" of being tough on the Palin VP pick...there are many, many traditionally conservative/right wing leaders and pundits who have not made a secret out of the fact they do not think she is qualified.
This is a fair form of debate. If you don't wish to engage in debate that's fine, but please don't dismiss my statements as ideology when that is simply not true.
Will & Eve said:
LOL Oh come on now. You'd have been interested to hear Christopher Hitchens' and Scott McClellan's opinions about Palin on Larry King Live tonight. Neither of them could have been more harsh. In case you need to be reminded who I'm talking about, McClellan is W's former Press Secretary and considered to be one of the "insiders" in the W Presidency. He ripped Palin a new one and heartily endorsed Obama. Hitchens who is as famously right wing and conservative as he is brilliant went so far as to call voting for Palin "not an option for anyone who considers themselves even the slightest bit interested in the welfare of this country and that voting for her is a vote againts national security".
These two guys are not exactly left wingers Will.
I realize at this point that you are going to stick to your original point no matter how much evidence I present to you to the contrary, but again I'll state the obvious: Palin is woefully unprepared and under-qualified to be VP or, God forbid, President. Liberals AND Conservatives alike are ripping her to shreds. There is a reason the VAST majority of even CONSERVATIVE pundits and newspaper editorials are endorsing Obama. It is not because they are suddenly liberal. It is because Palin is not only unqualified for the job but she is potentially DANGEROUS in that office.
This is not being "viscious"...it is merely stating facts, facts which lots and lots of very smart people on both sides of the political aisle are increasingly supporting.
Cutting taxes would probably stimulate the economy to expand after the share market settles down, and therefore the total tax grab might increase much more than expected.
There would not be any point in Hillary Clinton's followers voting against Obama, because if McCain gets in, Sarah Palin might work herself up to two terms as President. She is younger and sexier than Hillary, and if the public get to know Sarah, then she will become a formidable opponent in the future. Not everyone likes Hillary's abrasive style of knocking opponents.
There would not be any point in Hillary Clinton's followers voting against Obama, because if McCain gets in, Sarah Palin might work herself up to two terms as President. She is younger and sexier than Hillary, and if the public get to know Sarah, then she will become a formidable opponent in the future. Not everyone likes Hillary's abrasive style of knocking opponents.
sexycouple2011 said:
Its always a "non event" when it benefits democrats just like its no big deal if a democrat kills someone with an automobile but a republican does it and goes to jail (where he belongs) or when a dem has an affair but when a republican does it we force them to resign or when a dem takes dirty money but if a republican is even questionable we hang them out to dry
Democrats= the party of its ok as long as we are doing it
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