The Bush campaign is giving cynicism a bad name!!!

Attention AOL users. When you first arive here right click on some blank area of this page and select "refresh". It seems aol has my number and stores all streetdogs pages on their own site for faster loading. Unfortunately they don't update  on a continuing basis so those less traversed pages are not always current.

 

"Come the millennium, month 12,

In the home of greatest power,

The village idiot will come forth

To be acclaimed the leader."

Nostradamus, 1561

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

               

Lost in the noise my ass!

 

 

 

 

 

Republicans announced today that they are changing their emblem from an elephant to a condom because it more clearly reflects their party's political stance. A condom stands up to inflation, halts production, discourages cooperation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives a person a sense of security while he's being screwed.

 

Corporate Democracy; Civic Disrespect

by John K. Galbraith

With the events of late in the year 2000, the United States left  behind constitutional republicanism, and turned to a different form of  government. It is not, however, a new form. It is, rather, a transplant,  highly familiar from a different arena of advanced capitalism. This is corporate democracy. It is a system whereby a Board of  Directors -- read Supreme Court -- selects the Chief Executive Officer.  The CEO in turn appoints new members of the Board. The shareholders, owners in title only, are invited to cast their votes in periodic referenda. But their franchise is only symbolic, for management holds a majority of the proxies. On no important issue do the CEO and the Board  ever permit themselves to lose.

The Supreme Court clarified this in a way that the Florida courts  could not have.  The media have accepted it, for it is the form of government  to which they are already professionally accustomed. And the shameless  attitude of the George W. Bush high command merely illustrates, in unusually visible fashion, the prevalent ethical system of corporate life.
Al Gore's concession speech was justly praised for grace and humor.  It paid due deference to the triumph of corporate political ethics, but did not embrace them. It thus preserved Gore for another political day -- the obvious intention. But Gore also sent an unmistakable message to American democrats: Do not forget.  It was an important warning, for almost immediately forgetting became the media order of the day. Overnight, it became almost un-American not to accept the diktat of the Court. Or to be precise, Gore's own distinction became holy writ: One might disagree with the Court, but not with the legitimacy of its decision. Press references from that moment  forward were to President-elect Bush, an unofficial title and something that the Governor from Texas President-select? President-designate?) manifestly is not.

The key to dealing with the Bush people, however, is precisely not to accept them. Like most Americans, I have nothing personal against Bush, Dick Cheney, nor against Colin Powell and the others now surfacing as members of the new administration. But I will not reconcile myself to them. They lost the election.  Then they arranged to obstruct the count of the vote. They don't deserve to be there, and that changes everything.  They have earned our civic disrespect, and that is what we, the people, should accord them. In social terms, civic disrespect means that the illegitimacy of this administration must not be allowed to fade from view. The conventions of politics remain:  Bush will be president; Congress must work with him. But those of us outside that process are not bound by those conventions, and to the extent that we have a voice, we should use it.

In political practice, civic disrespect means drawing lines around the freedom of maneuver of the incoming administration. In many areas, including foreign policy, there will be few major changes; in others such as annual budgets and appropriations, compromises will have to be reached. But Bush should be opposed on actions whose reach will extend beyond his actual term.

First, the new president should be allowed lifetime appointments only by consensus. The public should oppose -- and 50 Senate Democrats should freely block -- judicial nominations whenever they carry even the slightest ideological taint. That may mean most of them, but no matter. And as for the Supreme Court especially, vacancies need not be filled.

Second, the Democrats should advise Bush not to introduce any legislation to cut or privatize any part of Social Security or Medicare. Third, Democrats should furiously oppose elimination of the estate tax, a social incentive for recycling wealth to the non-profit sector, to foundations and universities, that has had a uniquely powerful effect on the form of American society. Once gone, this ingenious device will never be reenacted.

Fourth, the people must unite to oppose the global dangers of National Missile Defense -- a strategic ightmare on which Bush campaigned -- that threatens for all time the security of us all.

Fifth, Congress should enact a New Voting Rights Act, targeted precisely at the Florida abuses. This should stipulate: mandatory adoption of best-practice technology in all federal elections; a 24-hour voting day; a ban on private contractors to aid in purging voter rolls; and mandatory immediate hand count of all under-votes in federal elections.


With those steps taken, Democrats must also recognize and adapt to the new political landscape that emerged from this election. Outside of Florida, Democrats are finished in the South.  But they have excellent prospects of consolidating a narrow majority of the Electoral College -- so long as, in the next election, there is no Ralph Nader defection.  What can prevent such a thing? Only a move away from the main Clinton compromises that so infuriated the progressive left. Nader's voters were motivated passionately by issues like the drug war, the death penalty, consumer protection and national missile defense -- issues where New Democrats took Republican positions in their effort to woo the South.  Clinton the Southerner succeeded at this -- but against Republicans who were only weakly "Southern" at best. Gore, on the other hand, was principally a Northern candidate, strongly backed by the core Democrats, who ran against, and defeated so far as ballots were concerned, a wholly Southern Republican.  Future Republicans almost surely also will be "Southern," for that is where the base of the party now lies. And future Democrats, if they are Northern candidates too, can beat them -- all the more so if they bring the Greens back into the Democratic fold.

In short, Al Gore's campaign proved that there is an electoral majority in the United States for a government that is truly a progressive coalition, and not merely an assemblage of sympathetic lawyers, professors and investment bankers. Rather, Americans will elect a government that firmly includes and effectively represents labor, women, minorities -- and Greens. This is the government we must seek to elect -- if we get another chance.  And for that, the first task is to assure that the information ministries of our new corporate republic do not successfully cast a fog of forgetting over the crime that we have all just witnessed, with our own eyes.

submitted by Adamich

 

 

here's one for your site  --- Gretta

Supreme Court Decision Explained

By Mark H. Levine, Attorney at Law

Q: I'm not a lawyer and I don't understand the recent Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore. Can you explain it to me?

A: Sure. I'm a lawyer. I read it. It says Bush wins, even if Gore got the most votes.

Q: But wait a second. The US Supreme Court has to give a reason, right?

A: Right.

Q: So Bush wins because hand-counts are illegal?

A: Oh no. Six of the justices (two-thirds majority) believed the hand-counts were legal and should be done.

Q: Oh. So the justices did not believe that the hand-counts would find any legal ballots?

A. Nope. The five conservative justices clearly held (and all nine justices agreed) "that punch card balloting machines can produce an unfortunate number of ballots which are not punched in a clean, complete wayby the voter." So there are legal votes that should be counted but can't be.

Q: Oh. Does this have something to do with states' rights? Don't conservatives love that?

A: Generally yes. These five justices have held that the federal government has no business telling a sovereign state university it can't steal trade secrets just because such stealing is prohibited by law. Nor does the federal government have any business telling a state that it should bar guns in schools. Nor can the federal government use the equal protection clause to force states to take measures to stop violence against women.

Q: Is there an exception in this case?

A: Yes, the Gore exception. States have no rights to have their own state elections when it can result in Gore being elected President. This decision is limited to only this situation.

Q: C'mon. The Supremes didn't really say that. You're exaggerating.

A: Nope. They held "Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, or the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities."

Q: What complexities?

A: They don't say.

Q: I'll bet I know the reason. I heard Jim Baker say this. The votes can't be counted because the Florida Supreme Court "changed the rules of the election after it was held." Right?

A. Dead wrong. The US Supreme Court made clear that the Florida Supreme Court did not change the rules of the election. But the US Supreme Court  found the failure of the Florida Court to change the rules was wrong.

Q: Huh?

A: The Legislature declared that the only legal standard for counting vote is "clear intent of the voter." The Florida Court was condemned for not adopting a clearer standard.

Q: I thought the Florida Court was not allowed to change the Legislature's law after the election.

A: Right.

Q: So what's the problem?

A: They should have. The US Supreme Court said the Florida Supreme Court should have "adopted adequate statewide standards for determining what is a legal vote"

Q: I thought only the Legislature could "adopt" new law.

A: Right.

Q: So if the Court had adopted new standards, I thought it would have been overturned.

A: Right. You're catching on.

Q: If the Court had adopted new standards, it would have been overturned for changing the rules. And if it didn't, it's overturned for not changing the rules. That means that no matter what the Florida Supreme Court did, legal votes could never be counted.

A: Right. Next question.

Q: Wait, wait. I thought the problem was "equal protection," that some counties counted votes differently from others. Isn't that a problem?

A: It sure is. Across the nation, we vote in a hodgepodge of systems. Some, like the optical-scanners in largely Republican-leaning counties record 99.7% of the votes. Some, like the punchcard systems in largely Democratic-leaning counties record only 97% of the votes. So approximately 3% of Democratic votes are thrown in the trash can.

Q: Aha! That's a severe equal-protection problem!!!

A: No it's not. The Supreme Court wasn't worried about the 3% of Democratic ballots thrown in the trashcan in Florida. That "complexity" was not a problem.

Q: Was it the butterfly ballots that violated Florida law and tricked more than 20,000 Democrats to vote for Buchanan or Gore and Buchanan.

A: Nope. The Supreme Court has no problem believing that Buchanan got his highest, best support in a precinct consisting of a Jewish old age home with Holocaust survivors, who apparently have changed their mind about Hitler.

Q: Yikes. So what was the serious equal protection problem?

A: The problem was neither the butterfly ballot nor the 3% of Democrats (largely African-American) disenfranchised. The problem is that somewhat less than .005% of the ballots may have been determined under slightly different standards because judges sworn to uphold the law and doing their best to accomplish the legislative mandate of "clear intent of the voter" may have a slight opinion about the voter's intent.

Q: Hmmm. OK, so if those votes are thrown out, you can still count the votes where everyone agrees the voter's intent is clear?

A: Nope.

Q: Why not?

A: No time.

Q: No time to count legal votes where everyone, even Republicans, agree the intent is clear? Why not?

A: Because December 12 was yesterday.

Q: Is December 12 a deadline for counting votes?

A: No. January 6 is the deadline. In 1960, Hawaii's votes weren't counted until January 4.

Q: So why is December 12 important?

A: December 12 is a deadline by which Congress can't challenge the results.

Q: What does the Congressional role have to do with the Supreme Court?

A: Nothing.

Q: But I thought ---

A: The Florida Supreme Court had earlier held it would like to complete its work by December 12 to make things easier for Congress. The United States Supreme Court is trying to help the Florida Supreme Court out by forcing the Florida court to abide by a deadline that everyone agrees is not binding.

Q: But I thought the Florida Court was going to just barely have the votes counted by December 12.

A: They would have made it, but the five conservative justices stopped the recount last Saturday.

Q: Why?

A: Justice Scalia said some of the counts may not be legal.

Q: So why not separate the votes into piles, indentations for Gore, hanging chads for Bush, votes that everyone agrees went to one candidate or the other so that we know exactly how Florida voted before determining who won? Then, if some ballots (say, indentations) have to be thrown out, the American people will know right away who won Florida.

A. Great idea! The US Supreme Court rejected it. They held that such counts would likely to produce election results showing Gore won and Gore's winning would cause "public acceptance" and that would "cast a cloud" over Bush's "legitimacy" that would harm "democratic stability."

Q: In other words, if America knows the truth that Gore won, they won't accept the US Supreme Court overturning Gore's victory?

A: Yes.

Q: Is that a legal reason to stop recounts? or a political one?

A: Let's just say in all of American history and all of American law, this reason has no basis in law. But that doesn't stop the five conservatives from creating new law out of thin air.

Q: Aren't these conservative justices against judicial activism?

A: Yes, when liberal judges are perceived to have done it.

Q: Well, if the December 12 deadline is not binding, why not count the votes?

A: The US Supreme Court, after admitting the December 12 deadline is not binding, set December 12 as a binding deadline at 10 p.m. on December 12.

Q: Didn't the US Supreme Court condemn the Florida Supreme Court for arbitrarily setting a deadline?

A: Yes.

Q: But, but-

A: Not to worry. The US Supreme Court does not have to follow laws it sets for other courts.

Q: So who caused Florida to miss the December 12 deadline?

A: The Bush lawyers who first went to court to stop the recount, the rent-a-mob in Miami that got paid Florida vacations for intimidating officials, and the US Supreme Court for stopping the recount

Q: So who is punished for this behavior?

A: Gore, of course.

Q: Tell me this Florida's laws are unconstitutional?

A: Yes

Q: And the laws of 50 states that allow votes to be cast or counted differently are unconstitutional?

A: Yes. And 33 states have the "clear intent of the voter" standard that the US Supreme Court found was illegal in Florida

Q: Then why aren't the results of 33 states thrown out?

A: Um. Because...um.....the Supreme Court doesn't say...

Q: But if Florida's certification includes counts expressly declared by the US Supreme Court to be unconstitutional, we don't know who really won the election there, right?

A: Right. Though a careful analysis by the Miami Herald shows Gore won Florida by about 20,000 votes (excluding the butterfly ballot errors)

Q: So, what do we do, have a re-vote? throw out the entire state? count under a single uniform standard?

A: No. We just don't count the votes that favor Gore.

Q: That's completely bizarre! That sounds like rank political favoritism! Did the justices have any financial interest in the case?

A: Scalia's two sons are both lawyers working for Bush. Thomas's wife is collecting applications for people who want to work in the Bush administration.

Q: Why didn't they recuse themselves?

A: If either had recused himself, the vote would be 4-4, and the Florida Supreme Court decision allowing recounts would have been affirmed.

Q: I can't believe the justices acted in such a blatantly political way.

A: Read the opinions for yourself:

(December 9 stay stopping the recount)

(December 12 opinion)

Q: So what are the consequences of this?

A: The guy who got the most votes in the US and in Florida and under our Constitution (Al Gore) will lose to America's second choice who won the all important 5-4 Supreme Court vote.

Q: I thought in a democracy, the guy with the most votes wins.

A: True, in a democracy. But America is not a democracy. In America in 2000, the guy with the most US Supreme Court votes wins.

Q: So what will happen to the Supreme Court when Bush becomes President.

A: He will appoint more justices in the mode of Thomas and Scalia to ensure that the will of the people is less and less respected. Soon lawless justices may constitute 6-3 or even 7-2 on the court.

Q: Is there any way to stop this?

A: YES. No federal judge can be confirmed without a vote in the Senate. It takes 60 votes to break a filibuster. If only 41 of the 50 Democratic Senators stand up to Bush and his Supremes and say that they will not approve a single judge appointed by him until a President can be democratically elected in 2004, the judicial reign of terror can end....and one day we can hope to return to the rule of law.

Q: What do I do now?

A: Email this to everyone you know, and write or call your senator, reminding him that Gore beat Bush by several hundred thousand votes (three times Kennedy's margin over Nixon) and that you believe that VOTERS rather than JUDGES should determine who wins an election by counting every vote. And to protect our judiciary from overturning the will of the people, you want them to confirm NO NEW JUDGES until 2004 when a president is finally chosen by most of the American people.

Mark H. Levine

 

 BREAKING NEWS:

GOD OVERRULES SUPREME COURT VERDICT

 Bush to be smited later today 

 

In a stunning development this morning, God invoked the "one nation,  under God" clause of the Pledge of Allegiance to overrule this week's  Supreme Court decision that handed the White House to George Bush. "I'm  not sure where the Supreme Court gets off," God said this morning on a  rare "Today" show appearance, "but I'm sure as hell not going to lay back and let Bush get away with this bullshit."

"I've watched analysts argue for weeks now that the exact vote count in  Florida 'will never be known.' Well, I'm God and I DO know exactly who  voted for whom. Let's cut to the chase: Gore won Florida by exactly  20,219 votes."

 Shocking political analysts and pundits, God's unexpected verdict  overrules the official Electoral College tally and awards Florida to Al  Gore, giving him a 289-246 victory. The Bush campaign is analyzing  God's Word for possible grounds for appeal.

 "God's ruling is a classic over-reach," argued Bush campaign strategist  Jim Baker. "Clearly, a divine intervention in a U.S. Presidential  Election is unprecedented, unjust, and goes against the constitution of  the state of Florida."

 "Jim Baker's a jackass," God responded. "He's got some surprises ahead of him, let me tell you. HOT ones, if you know what I mean."

 God, who provided the exact vote counts for every Florida precinct,  explained that bad balloting machinery and voter confusion were no  grounds to give the White House to "a friggin' idiot." "Look, only 612  people in Palm Beach County voted for Buchanan. Get real! The rest  meant to vote for Gore. Don't believe me? I'll name them: Anderson,  Pete; Anderson, Sam, Jr.; Arthur, James; Barnhardt, Ron..."

 Our Lord then went on to note that he was displeased with George W.  Bush's prideful ways and announced that he would officially smite him  today. In an act of wrath unlike any reported since the Book of Job,  God has taken all of Bush's goats and livestock, stripped him of his  wealth and possessions, sold his family into slavery, forced the former dential candidate into hard labor in a salt mine, and afflicted him  with deep boils.

 Dick Cheney will reportedly receive leprosy.

 Betty Belanus wrote:  (sigh) St. Chad was obviously NOT listening to most of our prayers!

 

Unsafe Harbor

by The Editors of The New Republic

Post date 12.14.00 | Issue date 12.25.00

Healing? Sure. American culture requires it, and so do the careers of American politicians. But healing is also a part of the strategy of the Republican larcenists, in and out of robes, who arranged to suppress the truth about the vote in Florida and thereby to make off with the election of 2000. Having satisfied their lower impulses, they are counting on us to act on our higher impulses, and to come together.

Well, we cannot come together, at least not yet, because we have just been driven apart. The rupture is real, and it demands to be analyzed. After what happened at the Supreme Court on December 12, anger is a mark of analysis.

The casuistry of William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Sandra Day O'Connor, and Anthony Kennedy -- this was a 5-4 decision, not a 7-2 decision, as some Republican spinners would have us believe, on the utterly false assumption that every justice who acknowledged the chaos in the standards of counting concurred in shutting the counting down -- will be exposed by scholars of the law. We will leave it to them to demonstrate, for example, that the "safe harbor" provision in Florida law has no constitutional stature, that an extension of the deadline for a fair and methodologically consistent tally of all the votes of Florida would not have violated Article 2 of the Constitution. We insist instead that the election of the president of the United States by the Supreme Court of the United States needs to be regarded not only legally, but also morally and historically. And morally and historically speaking, we have witnessed an outrage.

The Orwellian character of the majority opinion in Bush v. Gore is plain from even a cursory reading. The justices cite precedents affirming "the one man, one vote basis of our representative government," and then they proceed to nullify the votes of thousands of men and women. They castigate the contest provision of the Florida Supreme Court for failing to "sustain the confidence that all citizens must have in the outcome of elections," and then they proceed to shatter the confidence that all citizens must have in the outcome of elections. They protest that "none are more conscious of the vital limits on judicial authority than are the members of this Court," and then they proceed to extend judicial authority into the very heart of American politics -- an extension so vast and so unprecedented that it can only be described as un-American. Are the justices, then, hypocrites? Alas, they are not. They are -- sub sėlentio, as they might say -- Republicans. This ruling was designed to bring about a political outcome, and it is an insult to the intelligence of the American people to suggest otherwise. There was a basis for the suspicion about the politicization of the Supreme Court already on December 9, in the startling decision to grant the stay that George W. Bush desperately needed. That decision was 5-4; and those who clung to the fine conviction that politics stopped at this chamber's door were hoping that the partisan split would not reproduce itself in Bush v. Gore, when the integrity of the American system of government hung in the balance. But it did. Not even O'Connor and Kennedy, the most illustrious open minds in America, opened their minds.

Dissolve to Philadelphia on July 25, 1787. On that Wednesday morning the Constitutional Convention took up the question of how the executive in the American republic was to be elected. In his notes on the debates, James Madison recorded his own opinion of the matter. "The election must be made either by some existing authority under the National or State constitutions -- or by some special authority derived from the people -- or by the people themselves. The two existing authorities under the National Constitution would be the Legislative & Judiciary. The latter he presumed was out of the question." It now appears that he should have made no such presumption. And so it will be that George W. Bush's presidency will forever be haunted by James Madison's ghost.

Constitutionally speaking, this presidency is ill-gotten. It is the prize of a judicial putsch. Needless to say, James Madison will not keep George W. Bush awake at night. But there is something else that should trouble the vacant and victorious man's sleep. There are all those sealed metal boxes in the Sunshine State, the ones upon which the Supreme Court does not want the sun to shine, the ones that hold the dimpled and undimpled instruments of the people's will. It is very likely that those ballot boxes contain an arithmetical secret that could cast doubt upon the legitimacy of his electoral success. After all, everything that Bush and his minders have said and done since November 7 has been premised on a terror of the contents of those boxes, a frantic fear of what they might reveal, which is that George W. Bush won the election but Al Gore won the vote. And the Supreme Court of the United States has made itself a party to this dread of the democratic truth.

We disrespectfully dissent

 

 

 "The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country." ....George W. Bush, Jr.

Subject: Important News Release

 The Supreme Court has ruled that there cannot be a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. this Christmas. This isn't for any religious reason. They simply have not been able to find three wise men and a virgin in the Nation's capitol. There was no problem however, finding enough asses to fill the stable.

 

Hi again,

Mr. Friedman also does a good job of reviewing the actions of our high

court. He's a little more coherent than Mr. Rosen who's young and tends to be overdramatic (something like my daughter). After this I promise to stop.

Best wishes to you all,   Bob.

Medal of Honor

By Thomas L. Friedman

 

When Al Gore was in Vietnam he never saw much combat. Throughout his presidential campaign, though, he insisted he wanted to "fight" for every American. Well, Wednesday night, in his concession speech, Mr. Gore took a bullet for the country. The shot was fired at the heart of the nation by the five conservative justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, with their politically inspired ruling that installed George W. Bush as president. The five justices essentially said that it was more important that Florida meet its self-imposed deadline of Dec. 12 for choosing a slate of electors than for the Florida Supreme Court to try to come up with a fair and uniform way to ensure that every possible vote in Florida was counted -- and still meet the real federal deadline, for the nationwide Electoral College vote on Dec. 18. The five conservative justices essentially ruled that the sanctity of dates, even meaningless ones, mattered more than the sanctity of votes, even meaningful ones. The Rehnquist court now has its legacy: "In calendars we trust."

You don’t need an inside source to realize that the five conservative justices were acting as the last in a team of Republican Party elders who helped drag Governor Bush across the finish line. You just needed to read the withering dissents of Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens, who told the country exactly what their five colleagues were up to -- acting without legal principle or logic and thereby inflicting a wound, said Justice Breyer, "that may harm not just the court, but the nation."

Or, as the Harvard moral philosopher Michael Sandel put it: "Not only did the court fail to produce any compelling argument of principle to justify its ruling. But, on top of that, the conservative majority contradicted its long-held insistence on protecting states’ rights against federal interference. That’s why this ruling looks more like partisanship than principle. And that’s why many will conclude that the five conservative justices voted twice for president -- once in November and once in December."

Which brings us back to Mr. Gore and his concession speech. It was the equivalent of taking a bullet for the country, because the rule of law is most reinforced when -- even though it may have been imposed wrongly or with bias -- the recipient of the judgment accepts it, and the system behind it, as final and legitimate. Only in that way -- only when we reaffirm our fidelity to the legal system, even though it rules against us -- can the system endure, improve and learn from its mistakes. And that was exactly what Mr. Gore understood, bowing out with grace because, as he put it, "This is America, and we put country before party."

If Chinese or Russian spies are looking for the most valuable secret they can steal in Washington, here’s a free tip: Steal Al Gore’s speech. For in a few brief pages it contains the real secret to America’s sauce. That secret is not Wall Street and it’s not Silicon Valley, it’s not the Air Force and it’s not the Navy, it’s not the free press and it’s not the free market -- it is the enduring rule of law and institutions that underlie them all, and that allows each to flourish no matter who is in power. One can only hope that Mr. Bush also understands that the ultimate strength of America and the impact it has on the world does not come from all the military systems he plans to expand (though they too are important), or from Intel’s latest microchip. It comes from this remarkable system of laws and institutions we have inherited -- a system, they say, that was designed by geniuses so it could be run by idiots.

Mr. Bush will soon discover that preserving this system is critical not only for America, it is critical for the world. America today is the Michael Jordan of geopolitics. Many envy the institutions and economy that ensure our dominance; others deeply resent us for the same. But all are watching our example -- and all understand, at some level, that the stability of the world today rests on the ability of our system and economy to endure.

Al Gore reinforced that system by his graceful concession; Mr. Bush will have to reinforce it by his presidency. Now that the campaign is over, and the system has determined the winner, no one should root for his failure. Because, as Al Gore would say, "This is America," and it’s the only one we’ve got.

 

 

Hello friends and family,

I assume most of us are pretty tired of the election story. I'm certainly glad to put it in the past. However, if you are at all uncertain about the "correctness" of the Supreme Court's ruling, these essays from The New Republic may help. I wish all of you well during this holiday season. Bob.

What the Supremes Don’t Know About Florida

by Jonathan Chait

You generally assume that people who have spent decades specializing in a topic know far more about it than you do. On questions of medicine you grant a doctor the benefit of the doubt, and on questions of law you grant a lawyer the same benefit. This is especially true when the lawyers wear robes, work in a large marble building, and write in detail about constitutional statutes of which you were not previously aware. What can you think, though, when the U.S. Supreme Court hands down a ruling so transparently incoherent that one does not even need any special understanding of law to grasp its vacuity? The central rationale underlying the Court’s decision to forbid Florida from counting ballots by hand is "equal protection." Counting different ballots according to different standards, the majority argues, unfairly dilutes the power of some citizens. Forget the legality of this finding -- which every lawyer not affiliated with either George W. Bush’s legal team or the Supreme Court seems to consider absurd. As a purely analytical matter, the Court’s logic holds together only if you know virtually nothing about how the Florida vote was conducted. If your chronological understanding of the Florida election begins the day the hand count commenced, then the Court’s equal protection argument makes sense. Why should some counties have lots of ballots counted and others fewer? But the hand count didn’t introduce a new, unequal distortion into a pristine system; the Florida vote up to that point was a teeming mass of inequality. The initial machine recount, for instance, was supposed to be conducted uniformly. But while most counties ran their ballots through the tabulating machines a second time, as they were supposed to do, others merely rechecked their arithmetic. Standards for accepting absentee ballots varied wildly from county to county -- some accepting ballots lacking signatures, others accepting ballots without postmarks, one county even allowing a pair of ballots that had been faxed in. The Florida election, in other words, violated the Court’s equal protection standard before hand recounts ever began. The starkest violation, of course, lay in the different kinds of voting equipment used across the state. As anybody who has read the newspaper accounts now knows, voters in counties that used optical-scan ballots were far less likely to have their votes go unrecorded than voters who reside in counties using punch cards. In Florida, three out of every 1,000 optically scanned ballots recorded no presidential vote (that is, they were "undervoted"), compared to 15 of every 1,000 punch-card ballots. A small portion of this differential could be explained by demographics -- voters in punch-card counties may be less experienced, or have less physical strength, or face more chaotic voting stations -- but statistical analysis shows that it’s overwhelmingly the fault of the machines.

This discrepancy more than accounted for Bush’s margin of victory. If you imagine that the punch-card counties had the same rate of undervoting as the optical-scan counties and that the extra punch-card votes broke down along the lines of each county as a whole, then Gore would win Florida by some 1,500 votes. (This, incidentally, belies the cliche that "we’ll never know who won" since the vote differential "fell within the margin of error." It’s not true, because the margin of error -- namely, bad machines -- disproportionately disadvantaged one candidate.) Here’s where the hand count came in. By taking ballots that the machines did not read and turning them into actual votes, it cut down the disparity between punch-card and optical-scan counties. In a statewide hand count, all counties would gain votes, but the counties with the most undervotes would, rightly, gain the most. The leveling effect was slight. Palm Beach had more than 10,000 undervotes -- 2.2 percent of its total. The manual recount turned only about 800 of them into votes, reducing the county’s undervote rate to just under 2.1 percent. Even Broward County, which used the loosest standard for reading ballots, identified only one-quarter of its undervotes. After its permissive manual recount, then, Broward still had almost three times as many undervotes as a typical optical-scan county. Broward voters might have ended up with more voting power than Palm Beach voters, but they still had far less than, say, Seminole County voters. Was it fair that some counties gained more than others? Of course not. The question is what to do about it. If you were to apply the equal protection standard, you would probably want to make every county use the permissive Broward County standard -- which would best alleviate the discrepancy in voting power between voters of different counties. Or maybe, reaching a bit, you would decide that dimpled chads don’t have a sufficiently clear precedent in Florida law -- or don’t indicate a sufficiently clear preference -- so you would instead impose the strict Palm Beach standard statewide. But the Court did neither. Instead, it intervened with the least equitable solution possible. The majority -- with unfathomable moral obtuseness -- applied the equal protection standard not to the underlying inequality but to the remedy for the inequality. Some of the orphans are receiving more porridge than others: Let’s cut them all off! Of course, as a matter of constitutional stability, you have to respect the legitimacy of a Supreme Court ruling you disagree with. But you’d like to think that when the justices rule, even tendentiously and wrongly, they have based their decision on a coherent theory. That didn’t happen this time. Maybe the justices in the conservative majority simply groped about for any plausible rationale for handing the election to their preferred candidate. Or maybe they didn’t closely follow the media reports of the Florida recount and the abbreviated testimony never imparted to them a decent understanding of the facts of the case. The first possibility is frightening; the second, merely depressing. I’ll try to believe number two.

The New Republic

Post date 12.14.00, Issue date 12.25.00

Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at TNR.

SUPREME COURT COMMITS SUICIDE

Disgrace

by Jeffrey Rosen

On Monday, when the Supreme Court heard arguments in Bush v. Gore, there was a sense in the courtroom that far more than the election was at stake. I ran into two of the most astute and fair-minded writers about the Court, who have spent years defending the institution against cynics who insist the justices are motivated by partisanship rather than reason. Both were visibly shaken by the Court’s emergency stay of the manual recount in Florida; they felt naive and betrayed by what appeared to be a naked act of political will. Surely, we agreed, the five conservatives would step back from the abyss. They didn’t. Instead, they played us all for dupes once more. And, by not even bothering to cloak their willfulness in legal arguments intelligible to people of good faith who do not share their views, these four vain men and one vain woman have not only cast a cloud over the presidency of George W. Bush. They have, far more importantly, made it impossible for citizens of the United States to sustain any kind of faith in the rule of law as something larger than the self-interested political preferences of William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy, and Sandra Day O’Connor. This faith in law as something more than politics has had powerful opponents throughout the twentieth century. For everyone from legal realists and critical race theorists to contemporary pragmatists, it has long been fashionable to insist that the reasons judges give are mere fig leaves for their ideological commitments. Nevertheless, since its founding, The New Republic has resisted this cynical claim. From Learned Hand and Felix Frankfurter to Alexander Bickel, the editors of this magazine have insisted that, precisely because legal arguments are so malleable, judges must exercise radical self-restraint. They should refuse to second-guess the decisions of political actors, except in cases where constitutional arguments for judicial intervention are so powerful that people of different political persuasions can readily accept them. This magazine has long argued that the legitimacy of the judiciary is imperiled whenever judges plunge recklessly into the political thicket. And this has led editors of different political persuasions to oppose the judicial invalidation of laws we disagreed with as well as those we supported -- from Progressive-era labor laws to the New Deal administrative state to laws restricting abortion and permitting affirmative action. In all these cases, we argued that judges should stay their hand. Our views about judicial abstinence have been those of Oliver Wendell Holmes: "If my fellow citizens want to go to hell, I will help them," he said. "It’s my job." But in Bush v. Gore, as in Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade, the justices perceived their job differently. They foolishly tried to save the country from what they perceived to be a crisis of legitimacy. And they sent themselves to hell in the process.

The unsigned per curiam opinion in Bush v. Gore is a shabby piece of work. Although the justices who handed the election to Bush -- O’Connor and Kennedy -- were afraid to sign their names, the opinion unmasks them more nakedly than any TV camera ever could. To understand the weakness of the conservatives’ constitutional argument, you need only restate it: Its various strands collapse on themselves. And, because their argument is tailor-made for this occasion, the conservatives can point to no cases that directly support it. As Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer wrote in their joint dissent, this "can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land." What, precisely, is the conservatives’ theory? "Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the State may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person’s vote over that of another," they declare. The citation is Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, the case that invalidated the poll tax in 1966 on the grounds that it invidiously discriminated against the poor. But there is no claim here that Florida’s recount law, shared by 32 other states, discriminates against the poor. Indeed, Florida argued that its scheme is necessary to avoid discrimination against the poor, because a uniform system of recounting that treated the punch-card ballots used in poor neighborhoods the same as the optically scanned ballots used in rich ones would systematically undercount the votes of poorer voters.

By preventing states from correcting the counting errors that result from different voting technologies, the conservatives have precipitated a violation of equal treatment far larger than the one they claim to avoid. "The fact finder confronts a thing, not a person," write the conservatives in a clumsy and perverse inversion of the famous line from Reynolds v. Sims, the great malapportionment case, which noted that "legislators represent people, not trees." But things do not have constitutional rights; people have constitutional rights. It is absurd to claim that the "right" of each ballot to be examined in precisely the same manner as every other ballot defeats the right of each individual to have his or her vote counted as accurately as possible. Were this theory taken seriously, many elections over the past 200 years would have violated the equal protection clause, because they were conducted using hand counts with different standards. The effect of the majority’s whimsical theory is to fan the suspicion, which now looks like a probability, that the loser of both the popular vote and the electoral vote has just become president of the United States. At least the ballots can sleep peacefully. The conservatives can rustle up only two cases that purportedly support their theory that Florida’s recount scheme gave "arbitrary and disparate treatment to voters in its different counties." (Both were written in the 1960s by liberal activist Justice William Douglas, which must have given the conservatives a private chuckle.) The first case, Gray v. Sanders, held that Georgia’s county-based scheme of assigning votes in the Democratic U.S. senatorial primary discriminated against voters in urban counties, whose votes were worth less than those in rural counties. The same logic, applied to this case, would hold that the Florida legislature could not adopt a county-based scheme for assigning votes in presidential elections. But this conclusion is completely inconsistent with the conservatives’ earlier argument, the one that emboldened them to stop the manual recount in the first place: that Article 2 of the Constitution allows the Florida legislature to structure its presidential electing system however it chooses. The second case, Moore v. Ogilvie, held that applying "a rigid, arbitrary formula to sparsely settled counties and populous counties alike ... discriminate[d] against the residents of the populous counties of the State in favor of rural sections." That case, in other words, does not support the conservatives’ claim that ballots in rural and urban counties must be counted and recounted in precisely the same manner. It suggests the opposite.

The reason the conservatives can find not a single precedent to support their equal protection theory is because the theory is made up for this case only. But the damage is not so easily limited. The Supreme Court has called into question not only the manual-recount procedure adopted by the legislature of Florida but our entire decentralized system of voting -- in which different counties use different technologies to count different ballots designed differently and cast at different hours of the day. In addition to throwing the presidential election and destroying the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, Bush v. Gore will spawn an explosion of federal lawsuits after every close election, lawsuits arguing that different counties used different ballot designs and voting systems and counted the ballots in different ways. In this way, Bush v. Gore is a ludicrous expansion of cases like Shaw v. Reno, in which the same five-member conservative majority, led by the addled and uncertain Sandra Day O’Connor, held that federal courts must second-guess each legislative exercise in state and federal redistricting to decide whether or not race was the "predominant purpose" in drawing district lines. The idea that this usurpation of our democratic electoral system by the federal judiciary has been precipitated by a group of conservatives who once posed as advocates of judicial restraint and champions of state legislatures can only be met with what the legal scholar Charles Black called the sovereign prerogative of philosophers: laughter. But the majority asks us not to worry about the implications of its new constitutional violation. "Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities," the justices write. It certainly does. But a mobilized nation is now far less likely to tug its collective forelock and wait for the preening O’Connor and Kennedy to sort out the confusion on our behalf. We’ve had quite enough of judicial saviors. In a poignant attempt to split the difference between the two camps, Justices Breyer and David Souter tried to prevent the Court from destroying itself. They agreed that applying different counting standards to identical ballots in the same county might violate the equal protection clause, and they proposed sending the ballots back to Florida and letting its courts apply a uniform counting standard. But their attempt at statesmanship was crudely rejected by O’Connor and Kennedy, which left Breyer and Souter with their hands extended, played for dupes like everyone else who naively believed the conservatives were operating in good faith. "Because the Florida Supreme Court has said that the Florida Legislature intended to obtain the safe-harbor benefits of 3 U.S.C. Sec. 5," O’Connor and Kennedy wrote in the tortuous punch line of their opinion, "Justice Breyer’s proposed remedy -- remanding to the Florida Supreme Court for its ordering of a constitutionally proper contest until December 18 -- contemplates action in violation of the Florida election code." With this feint at deference to the state court at precisely the moment there was nothing left to defer to, the jig was up. O’Connor and Kennedy had converted the Florida court’s passing reference to the federal law telling Congress which electoral slate to count in the event that a controversy was resolved before December 12 into a barrier, now mysteriously embedded in state law, that prevented the Florida Supreme Court from completing manual recounts after December 12. And for the Court to announce this rule at ten o’clock at night on December 12, after having stopped the count two precious days earlier only added to the gallows humor.

It will be impossible to look at O’Connor, Kennedy, Scalia, Rehnquist, and Thomas in the same light again, much as it was impossible to look at President Clinton in the same light after seeing him exposed in the Starr Report. But this time the self-exposure is also a little bracing. Conservatives have lectured us for more than 30 years about the activism of the Warren and Burger Courts. Those tinny and hypocritical lectures are now, thankfully, over. By its action on December 12, the Supreme Court has changed the terms of constitutional discourse for years to come. Just as Roe v. Wade galvanized conservatives a generation ago to rise up against judicial activism, so Bush v. Gore will now galvanize liberals and moderates for the next generation. But, unlike the conservative opponnts of Roe, liberals must not descend to the partisanship of the current justices; they must transcend it. The appropriate response to Bush v. Gore is not to appoint lawless liberal judges who will use the courts as recklessly as the conservatives did to impose their sectarian preferences on an unwilling nation. The appropriate response, instead, is to appoint genuinely restrained judges, in the model of Ginsburg and Breyer, who will use their power cautiously, if at all, and will dismantle the federal judiciary’s imperious usurpation of American democracy. Those of us who have consistently, if perhaps naively, opposed liberal and conservative judicial activism throughout the years can now point to Roe and Bush as two sides of the same coin. (How fitting that Bush is now a dubious president and a dubious precedent.) In his dissent in Casey v. Planned Parenthood, the abortion case that reaffirmed Roe in 1992, Scalia recalled the portrait of Chief Justice Taney that hangs in the Harvard Law School library. Taney had led a bitterly divided Supreme Court to strike down the Missouri Compromise; but, instead of saving the nation from its partisan divisions, his reckless intervention precipitated the Civil War:

"There seems to be on his face, and in his deep-set eyes, an expression of profound sadness and disillusionment. Perhaps he always looked that way, even when dwelling upon the happiest of thoughts. But those of us who know how the luster of his great Chief Justiceship came to be eclipsed by Dred Scott cannot help believing that he had that case -- its already apparent consequences for the Court and its soon-to-be-played-out consequences for the Nation -- burning on his mind. I expect that two years earlier he, too, had thought himself ‘call[ing] the contending sides of national controversy to end their national division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution.’ It is no more realistic for us in this litigation, than it was for him in that, to think that an issue of the sort they both involved ... can be ‘speedily and finally settled’ by the Supreme Court.... Quite to the contrary, by foreclosing all democratic outlet for the deep passions this issue arouses, by banishing the issue from the political forum that gives all participants, even the losers, the satisfaction of a fair hearing and an honest fight, by continuing the imposition of a rigid national rule instead of allowing for regional differences, the Court merely prolongs and intensifies the anguish."

Who would have dreamed that in describing Taney’s portrait Scalia imagined his own?

The New Republic

Post date 12.14.00, Issue date 12.25.00

Jeffrey Rosen is legal affairs editor of TNR.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is another article hope you can hold out . I won't send anymore until the next election. However I think this stuff needs to be read and what you do with it is up to you.

Right now, a solid and consistent pattern of accusations is painting the ugly picture of a statewide Florida effort by police and precinct poll-workers to put up an electoral obstacle course that successfully turned away thousands of African Americans attempting to cast their legitimate ballots. In other words, these charges--if true--reveal the primary tactic of how Florida Gov. Jeb Bush skewed the state's crucial vote count for his big brother, George W. Stories about balloting violations began appearing within 24 hours after Election Day--in media as respectable as Reuters, the Miami Herald, Los Angeles Times, CBS News, New York Times, Associated Press, CNN, etc. etc.  (You can examine these original sources yourself at www.moveon.org/myths/html) But only now is the full specter of Florida's statewide "racial profiling" of voters beginning to emerge. For example, the lead story in the current issue of New York's Village Voice focuses on Jacksonville's Duval County, where 27,000 ballots--largely from first-time black voters ----were thrown out. The NAACP held a convincingly detailed 5-hour public hearing that was telecast by C-Span on Nov 11. (At press-time, it can still be viewed in streaming video. just visit www.c-span.org.) Former congressman Kweisi Mfume, now the NAACP president, chaired the hearing, which featured panels of credible eyewitnesses-rejected voters, poll workers, journalists, police, NAACP vote drive volunteers. At press time, the NAACP is preparing to file federal lawsuits charging widespread civil rights violations during the Florida balloting. Among the eyewitnesses at the hearing was a news reporter for a major Florida radio station, a white former policewoman. She testified to accompanying a black voter sent to SIX polling places that all turned her down because she was supposedly not on the rolls---despite having a valid registration card and photo ID. The radio reporter also testified that at one polling place in Healdsburg County, numerous police cars were stopping African Americans--both before and after voting--and demanding ID.

Two poll workers from different counties testified that they had received instructions to apply qualification procedures very strictly and deny any ballot if there was even the slightest doubt. ( Similar charges have been widely reported elsewhere in the press) A police lieutenant and a minister both testified, that they still had sealed boxes full of ballots that were never picked up by county election commissions Here are some of the other specific accusations testified to by eyewitnesses at the hearing---and/or confirmed in the major new media sources listed above. African American voters (but not whites) were refused ballots unless they provided both a photo ID and a current voter registration card, which is illegal. Poll workers refused to give written affidavits to rejected voters as required by law.

State troopers set up an unauthorized Election Day roadblock one mile from a Woodville church used as a polling place in a one-third black precinct. Poll workers refused to give provisional "challenge ballots" to rejected voters, as required by law. Thousands of absentee ballots were disqualified because the voters were supposedly felons, and no notification was given to rejected voters-many of whom were NOT felons. Thousands of other voters were "mistakenly" identified as felons by the states database contractor and found themselves dropped from their precinct voting lists. IN Miami, there were no Creole- language ballots for the first time. Haitian immigrant voters, The president of Haitian Women of Miami and other Creole translators were threatened with arrest if they entered the voting booth to help non-English readers--although this is specifically allowed by Florida Law.

According to NBC News, voting cards in Osceola County didn't fit the machines correctly, causing many mistaken or disqualified ballots. In Pineallas-County and elsewhere voters in black-populated precincts were faced with hour-long waits at the polls. May couldn't wait. Other polling places were reported to have shut down early; ordered voters to leave if they were waiting in line at closing time; moved away from long-time locations without leaving posted directions to the new site; or simply never opened at all. In county after county, poll workers tried to phone their local election commission to resolve the complaints of disqualified voters. These calls were rarely answered.

DOES ANY OF THIS SEEM SUSPICIOUS?

If these accusations are proven. Florida could possibly be facing a total state re-vote and some of the state's top officials would be looking at criminal charges for election fraud and civil rights violations.

As of tonight Dec 13 we all know who are next president will be . We also know that he did not win the election that he is one of our APPOINTED presidents by the courts not the people. I guess voting has nothing much to do with who gets the job since the whole thing appears to be a total sham. Its who you know. And they have been complaining about Clinton?????

Cheers Uncle BEBOP

 

 

This was in our local Redwood City Independent Newspaper. I found it very interesting.

Cheers Uncle BEBOP

I'm one of those who say that Al Gore should remain in the hunt until he has exhausted every legal remedy available to man and woman. I wouldn't say this if I didn't feel that some dirty tricks, a la Richard Nixon, were played on him in Florida. Forget Richard Daley and Chicago in 1960, this is 2000 and hopefully we've progressed a little since those days. Not in Florida we haven't. So if Jeb Bush and his gang want to play the game of "lets act like a Banana Republic," then Al Gore should play the game of using every tool at his disposal to overturn what we all know is an election he won. So why do I say that?

The Miami Herald commissioned an analysis that showed if all the state's contested ballots had been counted, according to voting patterns, Al Gore would have won Florida by 25,000. That should come as no surprise to anyone including the Bush camp. And the Miami Herald is a Knight-Ridder newspaper whose CEO Tony Ridder is not a flaming liberal, but rather a conservative Republican. That's why, from the very first day, the Bush camp has protested the recounts in every way that it can. It has disputed the State Supreme Court decision, gotten its minions to slow down the hand count, asked the Supreme Court and the Appellate Court to close down the hand count and disputed hand counts as an accurate measurement of election returns.

Then Republicans turned around and in the most hypocritical fashion imaginable, asked a district court in the state on New Mexico to authorize a hand recount, saying it is the only way to guarantee an accurate tally in that state. But wait a minute, Wasn't it James Baker who insisted night after night on television that hand counts were not as reliable as machine counts in Florida?

Why in the world would the GOP change its tune in New Mexico? I'll tell you why. Are you ready for this? The folks who count the ballots in the state of Florida are bought and paid for by the state Republican Party. It's Jeb Bush's election machine that controls the votes, not the people of Florida. That's why Jeb knew on election night, despite what the exit polls showed, that his brother would win the state. In Martin and Seminole counties, only the Republican absentee ballots were given ID numbers by GOP workers using the offices of the so-called impartial election boards. There had to be 10,000 Democratic ballots thrown out and 15,000 or more GOP ballots validated. That's a Banana Republic a la Jeb Bush. Then there's Mayor Pena of Miami, a Democrat who controlled the Miami-Dade County Election Board. He campaigned for Al Gore and was going to raise a ruckus to make certain that a recount was taken in the county. But days before the decision , Pena met with two powerful Republican legislators at lunch and closed down his support for a Gore recount. And by the way, Pena has let it be known that he wants to run for congress.

The Republican Legislature controls redistricting in Florida for the next election. The word has leaked that Pena made a deal to give up the recount in exchange for a safe district. So what happened in Miami-Dade County? While the Election Board was counting , a white-collar mob raided the offices and rioted in the hallways. The Election Board retreated to another office to expedite the counting, but returned when the mob got out of hand accusing the officials of vote rigging. When they returned to the office, the mob rioted and the officials decided not to recount the ballots. Who was in the mob? Staff members from the offices of Congressman Tom DeLay and Sen Trent Lott. They led the rioters in a well-orchestrated campaign to shut the vote counting down. And they succeeded. George Bush Sr. knows how to control votes. He once served as director for the Central Intelligence Agency. He knows his stuff and has taught his children well. It has rubbed of on his best friend James Baker, who could say one day the hand counting is unreliable and in the next breath ask for a hand recount in New Mexico.

Whatever the courts decide, this fact is so powerful it cannot be washed away. Al Gore won the popular vote by 330,000. Al Gore leads in the Electoral College by 21 votes, 267 to 246. IF BUSH WINS FLORIDA HIS ELECTORAL VOTE WILL BE 271, ONLY 1 MORE THAN NEEDED. HE WILL GOVERN, NOT ONLY BY VIRTUE OF A THREAD, BUT BY VIRTUE OF FRAUD.

For all the talk of hundreds of military absentee ballots being tossed out because they were not stamped on the day of the election , little is said about the thousands of African American voters turned back at the polls. Little is said of punch hole ballots that exist in the Democratic district, as opposed to the modern machine ballots in affluent Republican districts. Little is said of the second and third ballots given in affluent districts when ballots were in error and the refusal in urban areas to replace ballots even though the Florida law calls for as many as two substitute ballots. I wonder how many of these people would be accused of lying under Oath? It sort of depends on which side your on as to who appears guilty doesn't it. And here all this time when I went to vote I thought it really counted but apparently not. I remember reading about this sort of stuff when I was a little boy. How naive of me to think that elections in this day and age were honest. Isn't it nice to live in a country where every official seems to do nothing but cheat ? No matter which side.

In my opinion,

 Bush and Gore stole the election from Nader!

--Mike D

 

How the Grinch Stayed Christmas

 
It's Christmas time now, and I MUST tell a story.
A sad one, it's true ? one that's morally gory.
You surely remember the Grinch and the Whos ?
Well, I've got an update that's NOT happy news.
 
On Christmas Eve, as our tale sadly begins,
The Grinch was conspiring to add to his sins.
He needed a way to stop Christmas from coming,
To STOP little Who kids from skipping and  running.
 
The Grinch found himself in a terrible pinch.
But he didn't flinch ?  He just said,  "It's a CINCH!
It's really quite simple! There's no need to probe!
I'll simply appear in my BLACK FLOWING ROBE!
 
The Whos all will tremble, they'll call me 'Your Honor,'
They'll EASILY let me make Santa a goner!" 
The Grinch donned his robe, and he sat on his bench,
And shouted out,  "GOD SAVE THIS HON'RABLE GRINCH!"
 
He banged his big gavel and cleared his hoarse throat.
The Whos all fell silent and took careful notes.
The Whos all respected the black flowing robe ?
A symbol of justice all over the globe.
 
They KNEW that the robe would transform any wearer
The Grinch ? though a Grinch ? would just HAVE to be fairer.
The Grinch called for order!  The Whos sat up straight.
"Now LISTEN UP, Whos, I've got something to state!
 
Please DON'T get confused now about the next day
Tomorrow's not Christmas, I've entered a STAY!"
The Whos were confused.  "What's this mean?"  "What's a stay?"
One WISE Who explained that a "stay" means "delay."
 
So needless to say, every Who was quite MIFFED
That Christmas would NOT come on the twenty-FIFTH.
The NEXT day the Whos began minding their business
Accepting the fact that it STILL wasn't Christmas.
 
The day had passed calmly, the sun had gone down,
When suddenly GRINCH made his way back to town.
Still wearing his robe, old Grinch hopped on his bench.
Again he yelled,  "God save this hon'rable Grinch!"
 
The Whos clapped and cheered:  "What a WONDERFUL day!
The Grinch has returned to ABOLISH the stay!"
 "This issue is tough," said the Grinch with a frown.
"For there's a big problem that troubles this town.
 
This Christmas you treasure ? it's plagued by a snare.
 It SEEMS that your Christmas is TRULY UNFAIR.
 There's simply no standard for Santa to use!
 Just HOW does he do it? Just HOW does he choose?
 
Who GETS each new present? Who GETS each new toy?
Who's been a good GIRL? And who's been a good BOY?
Who KNOWS what it means to be 'naughty' or 'nice'?
His LIST won't suffice, though he's checking it twice.
 
We MUST ensure Christmas is simply perfection,
Thus ANY small flaw denies EQUAL PROTECTION!" 
Some Whos were astounded to hear that last phrase.
"Did Grinch really say that?"  "Sure did!"  "I'm amazed!"
 
"Since WHEN does Grinch CHERISH this equal protection?
He RARELY invokes it to deal with complexion." 
"Or when a Who-WOMAN sues any Who-MAN."
"Or when our friend Stewart had wished to wed Stan."
 
"Or when a Who kid gets a poor education
That's MUCH worse than elsewhere across this great nation."
"He FRIES random Whos in electrical chairs.
This equal protection ? SINCE WHEN DOES HE CARE?"
The Grinch had assumed that he'd hear such dissension
About his new equal protection pretensions.
Said Grinch with a wink,  "Yes, I hear what you say.
 But Christmas is special in SO many ways.
 
In fact, it's a right that is QUITE FUNDAMENTAL!
No problems allowed, even if accidental!" 
The Whos scratched their heads ? could this REALLY make sense?
Would logic like THAT stand up twenty years hence?
 
But Whos have been blessed with the patience of Job.
They saw that the Grinch was still wearing a robe.
"His black flowing robe means that he must be fair!
So maybe we shouldn't be easily scared.
 
What Grinch said was SURELY not just ipse dixit
If Christmas has problems, WE TRUST HIM TO FIX  IT!" 
The Whos were relieved ? for they THOUGHT that they knew
That GRINCH would return Christmas BACK to the Whos.
 
He'd give SANTA instructions, right down to the letter,
About HOW to make Christmas both FAIRER and BETTER.
The Whos hugged and kissed ? one Who broke out some RUM!
They figured the BEST CHRISTMAS YET was to come.
 
But WHAT was that SOUND?  The old Grinch banged his gavel
And said,  "It APPEARS that it is beyond cavil
That a SERIOUS problem just cannot be fixed:
The law MENTIONS NO CHRISTMAS on the twenty-SIXTH!
 
Just READ the Who Statutes ? don't take it from me.
See SIX-eight-three POINT oh-one, SUBPART ONE-T!" 
"None are more conscious of Christmas than me,"
 Continued the Grinch with a devilish glee.
 
"But LOOK at the HOUR ? the clock has struck TEN!
No TIME to plan Christmas all over again!
I'm really so SAD, but you Whos set a date.
Thus Christmas can't come now, IT'S SIMPLY TOO LATE!"
 
The Whos were astonished: "Where's equal protection?"
They simply just COULDN'T make any connection.
"The Grinch had said Christmas was 'quite fundamental' ?
So very important, perhaps transcendental!
 
But NOW, because Christmas just CANNOT be perfect,
He says that our children no longer deserve it!
And yet ALL of us Whos think the Yule should still come,
'Cause a Christmas with flaws is still BETTER THAN NONE!"
 
Yet Christmas delayed now was Christmas denied,
And all the Who children just broke down and cried.
The Grinch had stayed Christmas ?  Yes, that much was true.
But NOW he had STOLEN the precious day too!
 
Now PLEASE be aware, all you good girls and Boies
This story was NOT just about gifts and toys.
This ISN'T just something that happens to Whos ?
I'm sad to report, it could happen to YOU!
 
Thus the MORAL is clear ? When it NEXT is proposed
That a GRINCH should be given a black flowing robe,
You MUST tell your friends You must SHOUT from the rooftops
And LACE UP your sneakers, wear sweatpants and tube socks,
 
And RUN to tell everyone, "Come lend a hand!
We can't let a GRINCH make the laws of the land!" 
For a Grinch won't prevail if we PUT UP A FIGHT!
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

submitted by mom

 

 

 

 

 "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure." ....George W. Bush, Jr.

 

 

As Bill Joy, chief scientist at Sun Microsystems Inc., put it in a recent television interview, "If your life depended on the measurement of a single ballot, would you prefer it be read by a machine, or examined carefully by three different human beings?"


 "Welcome to Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts." ....Governor George W. Bush, Jr.

dec 7, 2000 - Well-I was trying to prepare myself psychologically for Bush being prez but maybe I was premature. Maybe the fatlady will sing a song for Gore? Something has changed. Will the Seminole case and that other one produce results? How will the state supreme court rule? The Florida legislature calling a special session, if they do and pick Bush, it will be challenged. Maybe this will end up in Congress? Just thinking out loud.  -  Mojo the philosopher and eternal optimist.

 

 "Mars is essentially in the same orbit...Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe,and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe." ....Governor George W. Bush, Jr., 8/11/94

 

 

Forward from Adamich

An election perspective from a politician in Zimbabwe ...

1.  Imagine that we read of an election occurring anywhere in the third world in which the self-declared winner was the son of the former prime minister and that former prime  minister was himself the former head of that nation's secret police (CIA).

2.  Imagine that the self-declared winner lost the popular vote but won based on some old colonial holdover (electoral college) from the nation's pre-democracy past.

3.  Imagine that the self-declared winner's 'victory' turned on disputed votes cast in a province governed by his brother!

4.  Imagine that the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a district heavily favoring the self-declared winner's opponent, led thousands of voters to vote for the wrong candidate.

5.  Imagine that members of that nation's most despised caste, fearing for their lives/livelihoods, turned out in record numbers to vote in near-universal opposition to the self-declared winner's candidacy.

6.  Imagine that hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were intercepted on their way to the polls by state police operating under the authority of the self-declared winner's brother.

7.  Imagine that six million people voted in the disputed province and that the self-declared winner's 'lead' was only 327 votes. Fewer, certainly, than the vote counting machines' margin of error.

8.  Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party opposed a more careful by-hand inspection and re- counting of the ballots in the disputed province or in its most hotly disputed district.

9.  Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a major province, had the worst human rights record of any province in his nation and actually led the nation in executions.

10. Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner was to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime positions on the high court of that nation. 

None of us would deem such an election to be representative of anything other than the self-declared winner's will-to-power.  All of us, I imagine, would wearily turn the page thinking that it was another sad tale of pitiful pre- or anti-democracy peoples in some strange elsewhere.

      XXOO





 "The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century." ....Governor George W. Bush, Jr., 9/15/95




and finally, more BUMPER STICKERS submitted by RC Adamich

Bush is for eating...not for President

This Election is experiencing technical difficulties, we'll return you to your sanity in 4 years

Palm Beach 2004 - Ballots so big you could use 'em as a boogie board

We Count On Your Vote - Again and Again and . . .

Jews for Buchanan

When bad Presidents happen to good voters

12 Steps To The White House

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin

I hoped both candidates would lose...and they did, unfortunately it can't last forever.

Don't blame me, I voted for Gore AND Liebermann, yep, punched that ballot twice!

I'm from Flori-duh

If God Meant Us to Vote, He Would Have Given Us Candidates

The Undecideds Won the Election

Don't Blame Me...My Votes Didn't Count

What? Me govern?

Don't blame me...I don't know who I voted for

Mi brudder sed I were elected. Im going too DizzyWerld

 

 

 "I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change." ....Governor George W. Bush, Jr., 5/22/98

 

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Hi Dan,

Okay, you want my opinion? I'm writing while waiting for the Florida Supreme Court to rule on Gore's contest. But reflecting back on the last three weeks, it’s clear that the Florida Supremes blew it in their first decision. The result has been to hand the election to Bush.

In fact, the Florida Supreme Court was correct to intervene. Their clear intention was to address the statutory conflict between a rigid deadline and providing enough time to complete a manual recount. However, they made a bad error in specifying a new deadline. As a result, their remedy was not a remedy at all because it did not resolve the conflict. Instead they created a new deadline that could not be met. And, just as important, they did not establish unequivocally that the manual recounting should proceed, which gave the Miami-Dade canvassing board cover to bow to the political pressure mounted by the Republicans.

I think the court should have simply directed the Secretary of State to set a new deadline that would allow enough time for manual recounts to be completed. Essentially they should have ruled that manual recounts properly requested, must take precedence over the unreasonably short one-week deadline, and that discretion as to timing and counting standards should remain with the Secretary of State and the canvassing boards.

Had they done that, they would have avoided any significant jeopardy in arguments before the US Supreme Court, job security would not be an issue, and most important, by now we would have had all the votes counted. The contest of the election would center only on legal questions, and not also the virtually insurmountable problem of fact finding (counting votes). And the legal issues could have been dispensed with fairly quickly, certainly by December 12th.

So now they have a lot of ground to cover just to undo the damage they’ve done, and it seems unlikely that Gore will prevail. Still, there may a surprise or two left in this fascinating and revelatory post-election fiasco.

Bye for now,

Brother Bob.

 "One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'."....Governor George W. Bush, Jr., 12/6/93

 

Since it's my brother, I must recuse myself from rendering an opinion, even if he is right. However, I will go one further in saying I think the supremes should have sequestered all ballots statewide and counted the votes themselves.  The handwriting was on the wall, everybody's sayin' neither candidate took the high road by asking for a statewide hand count on day one, so the court should have cut the crap and counted the ballots. Despite all these procedural rules etc., (correct me if I'm wrong Nancy but) I understand the courts to have a fundamental duty to seek the truth and broad, near open-ended powers to accomplish this as long as they stick to that purpose.

 

 "Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things." ....Governor George W. Bush, Jr., 11/30/96

 

Adamich writes                Saturday, March 31, 2007

Hooray!!! for the Supreme Court of Florida. That is what I have been waiting to hear. At last somebody got it right !!!!! How will we ever know who won if they don't count the friggin ballots? That sure made my day!!!!!!

Cheers Uncle BEBOP

 

 "I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future." ....Governor George W. Bush, Jr.

 

----- Forwarded by Adamich ---
PLEASE RESPOND TO: anon-

SUBJECT: Help Wanted Ad

WANTED: Fat Lady

JOB LOCATION: Tallahassee, Florida

PAY SCALE: Name Your Own Price

JOB DESCRIPTION: Sing

 "The future will be better tomorrow." ....Governor George W. Bush, Jr.

 

 

Hi Dan.

I checked into your website "politics" and enjoyed reading the comments of the street Dogs. However, I did find that the large type set was annoying and hard to read, unless you read word by word. Today the Florida Judge made his ruling and I was appalled. Nancy said he was conservative and she was right. How he could say that the Gore team didn't prove that the outcome would have been changed if there was a hand recount boggles my mind. On the other hand maybe Boies should have had more witnesses, what seems obvious to him might have been over Judge Sauls head. You will have to admit that the Bush team outfoxed the Gore team from the beginning, but maybe it is easier to stall than to actually do something. I never expected that there would not be a hand recount. It happens over and over again in elections and is a usual procedure, but Bush managed to stall and stop the count. Your brother Dave turned me on to http://www.bushwatch.com/ and I am hooked. They have gathered together lots of information. I especially like to check into their news articles. The New York Times has done a great job covering the post election.

Much love,

Mom

 

 

 

I've repaired the font problem on the site. thanks. I forget that the majority of screens are still set to TV resolutions.

 

 

 

 

New Slogans For Florida -Adamich
FLORIDA: If you think we can't vote, wait till you see us drive.
FLORIDA: Home of electile dysfunction.
FLORIDA: We count more than you do.
FLORIDA: If you don't like the way we count then take I-95 and visit one of the other 56 states.
FLORIDA: We've been Gored by the bull of politics and we're Bushed.
FLORIDA: Relax, Retire, ReVote.
FLORIDA: Viagra voters do it again!
FLORIDA: What comes after 17,311?
FLORIDA: Where your vote counts and counts and counts.
FLORIDA: This is what you get for taking Elian away from us.
FLORIDA: We don't just cheat in football.
FLORIDA: We're number one! Wait! Recount!
Palm Beach County: So nice, we let you vote twice.
Sign on I-95 : Florida this way, no that way,5 miles, wait 10 miles
Palm Beach County: We put the "duh" in Florida.




 

Why did the Japanese send us 10,000 cases of Viagra?

They heard we were having problems with our erections (sic)!

 










 

 

From Adamich:

The same Bush lawyers and spinners who argue that Gore should forget about his fundamental rights to due process so we can get the election over with say that when it comes to counting ballots: No, hold on, slow this thing down, let's take a lot of time; let's take so much time that no American ever sees those contested ballots. Get the country so bored and frustrated that we all give up and let Bush become the president.

 

From Keislar:

Bob,

Sorry, but you are thinking statistics and physics. Election has to do with politics, not physics and statistics, and we are already well within the realm of the signal to noise ratio. Like it or not, Bush has already won in this less than perfect count of an extremely close noise level. We are talking 537 votes out of 5.96 million votes. That is less than one part in 10,000. Sorry, but there is no clear mandate for Gore or Bush, and Gore did not come out on top. Sorry.

Bob K.

 

Bob Bob Bob,

You've got apples on your orange tree. In Florida, Gore probably won by a good 20,000 votes, not 500 and sumptin which is entirely consistent with the 350,000  votes by which he won the country's popular vote. Maybe not a "clear mandate" but clearly a majority. Perhaps I am completely daft but was it not you who sent a quite eloquent piece just a few days back   .  .  .  oh,  .  .  .  HEY a bit of it just popped into my clipboard (God I love these intelligent computers):

 

Analyze This:

A Physicist on Applied Politics

By LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS

There is one glaring anomaly, however, and one does not have to be an expert in statistics to spot it. In Palm Beach County, this correlation is violated by over 2,500 votes! It is so large that we can argue with great numerical confidence that such a violation would occur at random less than one time in 100,000 measurements. And the level of the effect is eight times as large as the difference in claimed vote totals between the Democratic and Republican candidates in the entire state. If a physics experiment produced such a result, it would be clear that something of significance, warranting further investigation, was at work here.

 

 

 

Well, Mr. Keislar puts me back in the doghouse where I belong for goin off half cocked and not reading the details thereby not discerning his original intent. Trying to confuse us with the facts is how Sean and Bob make perfect straight men for this page. I think now it's clear that the rest of us can continue blasting in a reckless manner, for these two will  (I hope) continue to correct the occasional factoid anomalies.

 

 

 "Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child." ....Governor George W. Bush, Jr.

 

 

 

Hey Dan,

That was great, Dog-Dude. Thanks for all the work assembling and sending.

I want to correct one possible misinterpretation of the interesting article I sent. Unfortunately, as you point out, and as the author of the article points out, neither politics nor the legal process stop for physics and statistics. The argument about the statistical correlation *proving* (i.e., to better than 99.99% confidence level) that about 2,500 people voted for Buchanan instead of Gore in Palm Beach County doesn't mean squat in a legal sense because Gore would have had to contest the butterfly ballots before the election to bring a case on this issue.

The figure derived from straight-forward and very sound statistical arguments is that 2500 voters made the Buchanan-vice-Gore mistake. When we subtract the approximate 500-vote "noise" level in the Bush-Buchanan correlation for Florida counties, we obtain a 2000 vote deficit in the Gore total due to this unfortunate mistake (2500 votes minus the noise level). That margin alone would give Gore Florida, and the national election. QED.

In this easily repeatable analysis, we do not see a "noisy" signal. In fact, the signal of "Flori-duh" voters (or just elderly, vision-impaired, dyslexic, inattentive, etc. voters) in Palm Beach County is 5 times above the noise (2500 mis-votes compared to 500 noise level).

So the misinterpretation I want to clear up is that with 99.99% confidence (and any other recounts set aside), we can conclude that Gore would have won the national election if there had not been butterfly ballots in Palm Beach County. As for your interpretation, Dan, the analogy of the signal to noise ratio applies to the whole process, not to this clear cut statistical analysis. And with this overall signal-to-noise ratio analogy, America is now forced to look at bad voting practices (butterfly ballots, incompletely punched chads, irregular absentee voter registration processes, etc.) that otherwise do not see the light of day in a normal election year where the signal exceeds these "noisy" practices by a comfortable margin. The net result will be a positive one, to reduce the noise in future elections.

Too bad this may be Al Gore's contribution to the political process in 2001. Gore clearly has more experience, knowledge, and political acumen than Bush. Despite Gore's penchant for exaggeration, which unfortunately is more evident in the environmental sciences (my field) than Gore's "inventing the internet" misstatement (taken out of context by Rush's Right), he was clearly a better choice in my practical opinion.

Like Reagan, Bush may win (Dubya would say "won!") on ideology. Last time that happened, we quadrupled the national debt in 12 years, and Dubya's father presided over the final third of that 300% increase. Republicans blame the Democratic congress, true. But as Clinton bravely showed when he shut down the government by refusing to sign the Republican congresses' budget in Fall 1995, the president is far from impotent in the budgetary process. Reagan tried to project that image of presidential impotence in his famous "Pres can't spend a dime without approval of congress" speech. That half-truth was a great disservice to the American people. To my knowledge, Clinton's worst half-truth was "I did not have sexual relations with that women, Monica Lewinsky!" Technically speaking, sex is intercourse to procreate.

We have a very divided country at the voting booth. Unlike Reagan, Bush can never declare "will of the people" or heaven forbid "mandate"!

Bob K.

 

Interesting factoids the Republicans like to pass along follow:
  •  Population of counties won by Gore: 127 million*
  •  Population of counties won by Bush: 143 million*
  •  Square miles of country won by Gore: 580,000*
  •  Square miles of country won by Bush: 2,427,000*
  •  States won by Gore: 19*
  •  States won by Bush: 29*

*Only because of winner-take-all rules. If each state split it's electors by vote ratio, Gore would have cleaned up.

I've thought from the start that if Florida's legislature stepped in the way their constitution or state law intended, they would solve their little dilemma most equitably by dividing their electors 50:50 for each candidate (whoops, I guess Buchanan would get one too), thereby assuring that every Floridian had equal voice without losing the states representation at the electoral college.

  • Average murders per 100,000 residents in counties won by Gore: 13.2
  • Average murders per 100,000 residents in counties won by Bush: 2.1**

Received from an unnamed source, by "nth" party forwarded email. Not verified by me or anyone I know. Fits the demographics though . . .

**AH-HAH!!  - all very well and good but what about Texas' murder rate - see below:

From the: U.S. Department of Justice
              Bureau of Justice Statistics

The southern regions historically have had higher homicide rates than other regions

To view data, click on the chart.

Homicide trends by region

NEWSFLASH  -   -   -  Texas just surpassed their own record on number of inmates executed in one year!!   .  .  ..  .  .  .  ..  .and yet  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  their murder rate continues to soar at rates 50% greater per capita than the rest of the nation.  Georgy Georgy (or is it Georgey?). Look up that part in the bible about livin and dying by the sword   .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

Note: The solid blue area represents the trend for the entire United States while the red lines are the trends for each region

States in the regions listed above:


Region

States

New England Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont
Middle Atlantic New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania
East North Central Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin
West North Central Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota
South Atlantic Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia
East South Central Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee
West South Central Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas
Mountain Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming
Pacific Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington
 

Spreadsheets with State data from the Uniform Crime Reports and the Supplementary Homicide Reports are available from the Crime & Justice Electronic Data Abstracts.

Source: FBI, Supplementary Homicide Reports, 1976-98
Additional information about the data used in Homicide trends in the U.S.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BUMPER STICKERS forwarded by RC Adamich
W - The Best President Money Can Buy
BUSHIT!
Death means never having to say you're disenfranchised -- The Daley Machine
2001: A White House Odyssey ... Hal says: "I'm sorry, Dave, I just can't accept your manual recount."
"If it's pregnant, doesn't that mean there was penetration?"
Who's this Chad guy and why is he pregnant?
The election can't be broken. We just fixed it.
"It's 2001 - Do you know who your President is?"
AT LEAST IT'S DELAYED THE START OF THE 2004 CAMPAIGN.
"Who do I have to execute to become President around here?"
WARNING: I STOP FOR CHADS

 

 

 

 

 

From the filosofer:

Uncle Bobo-

I'm bummed Gore hasn't been able to get a recount, because I thought if all the votes were counted, he would have won Florida. But, I think time is running and rather than piss all the electorate off, it may be good for him to admit we've been bushwhacked and move on. Believe me, if there was any other way I would go for it.

However, in the long run this may work out for the democrats. In two years we may have the majority in congress because of this fiasco. Also, it pulls the blinders off so we can see what our country is really about and perhaps this will spur people to action for the better. Truth is painful and good. It shows us that with freedom comes responsibility so we can go out to meet destiny-isn't that what our forefathers did? Freedom is an awesome thing, and you can quote me on that.

In this instance, the winner could be the loser (and by my way of thinking it is - Bob Brinker put out that idea, it's not original).  Let's accept the short term pain and work for a better future-what do you say?

 Mojo, the philosopher and eternal optimist

 

 

 

 

As for Mojo,

while i would ultimately assume the same posture once the conclusion is truly forgone, the concept of time running out on something as simple as a ballot count for something as important as a presidential election only paints a gloomy picture of what  remains of our forefathers legacy in terms of our integrity and willingness to persevere in order to uphold the basic tenants of this democracy. Worse, it seems glaringly obvious that Americans no longer even understand the nature or importance of our country's sacred principles as spelled out by the authors of the constitution.

In one sense they got it right. It is preposterous in this day and age that something as vital as our democratic imperative is administered through antiquated mechanical equipment since we would have less cost, greater turnout, deadly accurate results, and unquestioned finality within minutes of poll closing by simply adopting e-voting.

Probably the republican's greatest talent is their ability to tell Americans how they feel, even if they didn't know they felt that way. I hardly think the electorate was "pissed off" or would have perceived any crisis being created by waiting for a vote count without this "get on with it" hyperbole so thoughtfully spoon-fed to us by Bush's cronies. 150 years ago, the election's outcome would not yet be known and people considered this period of collation and tabulation to be part of the natural order of things.

Unfortunately this isn't a ball game lost due to a bad umpire call but a complete and total frontal assault on that "awesome freedom" you hold so dear. The entire goddamn country could have been hand counted by now! Why it isn't blatantly obvious to the public that Bush doesn't want to count the ballots because he knows he lost the election is made even more mysterious when we see the buswhackers demanding a hand recount in New Mexico where THEY lost by 500 votes. This emperor with no clothes thinks if he keeps saying he won that it will be so; fergetabout the facts!

Sooner or later the truth will come out, the ballots will be counted, and quite likely Jeb, George, dub-yah, and yes even Barbara will be indicted (richie's prophecy) for old -fashioned election fraud, once again putting this country through a spasm of violated faith that will cause republicans (who do not wear embarrassment well) to engage in  even more bizarre leaps of imbecilic logic than even we dogs dreamed possible. However, not before they have once again ransacked the treasury, passed out national-debt credit cards to the obscenely wealthy and appointed yet another 2 or 3 zealots to the supreme court.

 

 

 

STILLL MORE BUMPER STICKERS submitted by RC Adamich
Quick! Announce the results while someone still cares!
To you I'm a drunk driver; to my friends, I'm presidential material!
One person, one vote (may not apply in certain states)
Heads = Bush, Tails = Gore, Edge = Nader
IT AIN'T OVER 'TIL YOUR BROTHER COUNTS THE VOTES
We Misunderestimated Him
Bush: Sober Since    1976 .  .  .  . 1986 .  .  .  .  .  .  1992   .  ..  ..  Last Night
Bush: Holding America Hostile
D Dubya I: A Youthful Indiscretion



I agree with many of your points, however, I have a more moderate and possibly more pragmatic perspective and therefore perhaps come to some....shall we say... less intense conclusions.

What will change with Bush in the white house? Worst case is he may appoint some judges. Probably won't have enough majority to implement many bills. We still have our loved ones, we can still help those less fortunate than ourselves, we can still act and work for the better, living out meaningful lives.

What can we do right now? Work to regain congress. This is an ebb and flow thing. The battle may be lost, but the war is far from over. I say patience. Believe me when I say that good does overcome evil and love conquers all. This is the foundation of my faith and in every experience in my life I know it to be true. By the way, I did read the Miami-Herald article (12/4) today about the statistician/study that said Gore won by 20,000 votes-I do keep up to date.

Keep the faith baby!

 Mojo the philosopher and eternal optimist.

 

 

Yes, Like I said at the outset, I will take your position if and when Gore concedes, however, I believe even your God provides that good conquers evil only if the good fight (or continue to work) for their cause, even in the face of (SEEMING) hopelessness.

P.S. Bush was actually my Governor in Texas for a year and I watched him handily defeat the demos in their own biggest stronghold of El Paso. From the outset, like Reagan before him, reasonable people all said "no way will this moron win", but I saw it in California when Reagan won two terms for gov and then encored in D.C. and I expect that the CIA's Director's son could well go for two as Pres. I think we need to gain control of congress immediately and build on that majority for the 6 years to come. The other thing we must do is wrestle this naive young president's attention away from the Baker/Cheney gang and appeal to whatever ties he has with our own generation (the part of him he hides from daddy Bush). This is where he could be similar to Clinton. Trouble is, Clinton wasn't dumb AND naive. If he listens to his current handlers we are doomed, if he lives up to his reputation for consensus building, we could live with him IF we take and maintain a democratic congress in two years. I still expect we'll see indictments (actually Richie's prediction) that will paralyze everything however. I only hope Cheney is named also.

PPS HOWEVER, it ain't over till the FAT LADY (and the fat dudes on the Florida supreme court) sings.

 

 

 

MORE BUMPER STICKERS submitted by RC Adamich
My grandma voted in Florida and I all got was this lousy president
 
Don't Blame Me - I voted for Gore...I Think
George W. Bush: The President Quayle We Never Had
Banana Republicans
Damn! Al's brother wasn't governor of Tennessee
Don't Blame Me. My Chad Got Stuck
The Katherine Harris Story: How the Grinch Stole Election Day
Katherine Harris: Ambassador to Chad
An election without cheating is like an election without the Sunshine State
"NO MORE YEARS!"

 

 

 

 

 

why does it matter to me??
Unfortunately those that would legislate morality, while the first to claim it's nothing personal, always make the whole thing very personal.

Did you know that George double you Bushwacker has never uttered the word "AIDS". That was a remarkable factoid when it applied to Ronald Reagan for the entirety of his two terms in the 80's. Applied to someone from our own generation, in the year 2000,   .  .  . well  .  .  it boggles MY mind. But I'll go one up on that. The man cannot even say the word "gay".

80% of successful teenage suicides in this country are committed by gay males. What key components always appear in the newspaper stories that follow?

"Friend's were shocked as one after another related how popular he was, a star athlete and a great student, participated in drama and student government and a guy who loved to do things with his family who was well-adjusted, had a girl friend, and was active in church."
The parents and the "girlfriend" are rarely quoted. In other words, this is a guy who did everything humanly possible to fit in but could not reconcile his complete non-existence as promulgated by the very ones who pronounce freedom and justice for ALL.

These suicides are REALLY personal. I would imagine being dragged behind a pickup truck until your head fell off might also seem kind of personal too, but in Bush's Texas it's murder as usual. Fact is, there is more of this senseless death in direct proportion to the number of government positions held by republicans.

Surely your buddy Bob Brinker's prophesies, though not unique, are correct - the new president will be perceived as of questionable legitimacy and with so many domestic business loans going belly-up this spring the economy will likely take a huge dive. But it is worth having a PRESIDENT Gore to sacrifice to the lions of public opinion if it can stop the vicious culling of our gay populations and prevent any more appointments of the pious to the courts.

with luck, the people will see the virtue of integrity over self-delusion

 

PEACE
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