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Post by Roughneck on Jul 14, 2004 22:07:32 GMT -5
Hey, they tried the "Keep Rudy" movement back then, do you really think it's beyond these guys to try cancelling the election on a pretense that it's too dangerous to switch leaders in times of such danger?
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snizz
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I'm sure I'd be more upset if I weren't quite so heavily sedated
Posts: 322
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Post by snizz on Jul 14, 2004 22:38:13 GMT -5
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Post by LS on Jul 15, 2004 22:08:27 GMT -5
Madrid Bombing Didn't Derail Voting By Marie Cocco
July 15, 2004
It really has nothing to do with Madrid.
All this chatter about postponing the Nov. 2 presidential election in the event of a terrorist attack-a noise stifled, for the moment, by official denials and congressional objection-is supposed to have something to do with Madrid.
"Credible reporting now indicates that al-Qaida is moving forward with its plans to carry out a large-scale attack in the United States in an effort to disrupt our democratic process," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has told the nation. "Now, based on the attack in Madrid...we know they have the capability to succeed, and they also hold the mistaken belief that their attacks will have an impact on America's resolve."
Note the construction. A planned attack is meant to "disrupt our democratic process." The credibility given to such a plot is "based on the attack in Madrid." Madrid train bombings. Election. Disrupt.
The linkage is a deception. In truth, the March 11 terrorist bombings of Madrid commuter trains did not "disrupt" the Spanish election in any way.
Quite the opposite. The balloting took place as scheduled three days after the carnage. Spaniards cast their votes freely. Turnout exceeded expectations. Young voters surged to the polls. Nothing went wrong.
Except that when the votes were counted, the ruling center-right party of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar-who'd supported the war in Iraq and sent Spanish forces despite overwhelming public opposition-was defeated by Socialists led by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who'd pledged to bring the troops home.
In the surreal spin machine of the American media, the Spanish election results became a victory for terrorists. The bloody attack had supposedly cowed Spanish voters into ousting the noble Aznar's party which was, it was said, looking like a winner before the attack.
Lost were the results of the last poll published before the bombing and the election: Four points separated Aznar's Popular Party from the Socialists, no margin of comfort.
Spanish voters said they were furious at Aznar's initial insistence that Basque separatists, not Islamic fundamentalists, were responsible. The anger grew with attempts to staunch coverage of anti-government protests. Rage at official duplicity had as much to do with the results as the bombings.
This is worth remembering, now that we're told a Madrid-style attack could "disrupt" our own democracy. The risk is said to be so great that Ridge's department discussed with others in the Bush administration the possibility of having a procedure in place to put off the balloting, if necessary.
I do not fault these officials for their caution. We must imagine the unimaginable. Sept. 11, 2001 was a primary election day in New York City. Local officials properly postponed the vote.
The matter would be more complicated nationwide and the thought of it shocks the psyche. Congress-not the president, nor the attorney general-would have to set rules. It seems disinclined to do so. Republicans and Democrats say that if Civil War and two world wars did not keep Americans from voting, then terrorists shall not, either.
"We cannot have free government without elections," Abraham Lincoln said after the election of 1864. "And if the rebellion could force us to forgo, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us."
This sentiment is alive among lawmakers, who are on the ballots themselves this fall. They seem determined to protect and defend the Constitution along with their overwhelmingly safe seats.
Still, the underside of this episode is well exposed. It is false to raise the specter of Madrid as evidence that terrorists can thwart the will of a democratic people. They didn't.
Spanish voters made a judgment that brought results the American administration did not like. That our leaders would equate this with disrupting democracy is nearly as terrifying as the terrorists themselves.
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Roland
Full Member
Robert Johnson King of the Delta Blues
Posts: 235
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Post by Roland on Jul 17, 2004 19:32:40 GMT -5
Add all of this to Florida's new touch screen voting system that so far has already proven to be inaccurate and for which they also have no back up system in place, along with their new state law that bans any recounts and this whole issue does become very unsettling. We do need a failsafe in place but the hard part is coming up with one we can protect from being manipulated and misused.
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Roland
Full Member
Robert Johnson King of the Delta Blues
Posts: 235
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Post by Roland on Jul 26, 2004 23:18:51 GMT -5
Yes well, it appears the "accidentally" destroyed military records weren't accidently destroyed afterall, although they still answer no questions. The prospective new buyers of the Aladdin have announced Ms. Ronstadt is welcome to come back anytime and one Mr. Timmins will probably be out of a job and on a plane back to England. The 9/11 Report, while noting many were to blame, holds no one accountable for any of the failures and in the end, changes nothing. All is right with the world.
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Post by LS on Jul 27, 2004 21:14:00 GMT -5
Hey, they tried the "Keep Rudy" movement back then, do you really think it's beyond these guys to try cancelling the election on a pretense that it's too dangerous to switch leaders in times of such danger? Nah- that's one thing 'they' didn't try. That one was a small bi-partisan grassroots movement started among NYC citizens- not politicians or any political party. But think about it...we were at the height of mass chaos here at that point- and still the vast majority of the people totally rejected the idea...as did Rudy himself- who stated the attacks could not be allowed to change our political process and the notion quickly died. But the Bushies and their sheeple following...yeah totally different ballgame and I don't doubt they'd try something like that...
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Post by Roughneck on Jul 27, 2004 21:21:22 GMT -5
Yes well, it appears the "accidentally" destroyed military records weren't accidently destroyed afterall, although they still answer no questions. What, think they figured that too many people were laughing their asses off at the explanation excuse? What's the deal here? Did you really expect anything different?
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Post by LS on Jul 27, 2004 21:39:19 GMT -5
Add all of this to Florida's new touch screen voting system that so far has already proven to be inaccurate and for which they also have no back up system in place, along with their new state law that bans any recounts and this whole issue does become very unsettling. We do need a failsafe in place but the hard part is coming up with one we can protect from being manipulated and misused. Yep...my jaw hit the floor when I read about the no recount law they passed. After the whole 2000 debacle I'd have figured they knew they were on the hot seat and would want to deflect any more accusations of underhanded practices and bad PR...and it shouldn't come as any surprise I guess- but looks like brother Jeb simply took out an 'insurance policy' for this go round And didn't I read that the manufacturer of those voting machines has some kind of Bush ties?? Ah yes and the mystical, magical, disappearing, reappearing, accidentally destroyed and accidentally not destroyed 'military' records... !!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Post by Roughneck on Jul 27, 2004 21:48:51 GMT -5
Yup. The CEO of a major manufacturer of voting machines has come out strongly in favor of Bush and has pledged to do everything in his power to see Bush reelected. I think these folks have gotten away with so much that they think that no one can successfully challenge them. Or they think that they'll steal the election first and worry about covering their asses later, because if they don't win then they lose no matter what.
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Post by Roughneck on Jul 27, 2004 22:04:51 GMT -5
OP-ED COLUMNIST Fear of Fraud By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 27, 2004
It's election night, and early returns suggest trouble for the incumbent. Then, mysteriously, the vote count stops and observers from the challenger's campaign see employees of a voting-machine company, one wearing a badge that identifies him as a county official, typing instructions at computers with access to the vote-tabulating software.
Advertisement When the count resumes, the incumbent pulls ahead. The challenger demands an investigation. But there are no ballots to recount, and election officials allied with the incumbent refuse to release data that could shed light on whether there was tampering with the electronic records.
This isn't a paranoid fantasy. It's a true account of a recent election in Riverside County, Calif., reported by Andrew Gumbel of the British newspaper The Independent. Mr. Gumbel's full-length report, printed in Los Angeles City Beat, makes hair-raising reading not just because it reinforces concerns about touch-screen voting, but also because it shows how easily officials can stonewall after a suspect election.
Some states, worried about the potential for abuse with voting machines that leave no paper trail, have banned their use this November. But Florida, which may well decide the presidential race, is not among those states, and last month state officials rejected a request to allow independent audits of the machines' integrity. A spokesman for Gov. Jeb Bush accused those seeking audits of trying to "undermine voters' confidence," and declared, "The governor has every confidence in the Department of State and the Division of Elections."
Should the public share that confidence? Consider the felon list.
Florida law denies the vote to convicted felons. In 2000 the state hired a firm to purge supposed felons from the list of registered voters; these voters were turned away from the polls. After the election, determined by 537 votes, it became clear that thousands of people had been wrongly disenfranchised. Since those misidentified as felons were disproportionately Democratic-leaning African-Americans, these errors may have put George W. Bush in the White House.
This year, Florida again hired a private company - Accenture, which recently got a homeland security contract worth up to $10 billion - to prepare a felon list. Remembering 2000, journalists sought copies. State officials stonewalled, but a judge eventually ordered the list released.
The Miami Herald quickly discovered that 2,100 citizens who had been granted clemency, restoring their voting rights, were nonetheless on the banned-voter list. Then The Sarasota Herald-Tribune discovered that only 61 of more than 47,000 supposed felons were Hispanic. So the list would have wrongly disenfranchised many legitimate African-American voters, while wrongly enfranchising many Hispanic felons. It escaped nobody's attention that in Florida, Hispanic voters tend to support Republicans.
After first denying any systematic problem, state officials declared it an innocent mistake. They told Accenture to match a list of registered voters to a list of felons, flagging anyone whose name, date of birth and race was the same on both lists. They didn't realize, they said, that this would automatically miss felons who identified themselves as Hispanic because that category exists on voter rolls but not in state criminal records.
But employees of a company that prepared earlier felon lists say that they repeatedly warned state election officials about that very problem.
Let's not be coy. Jeb Bush says he won't allow an independent examination of voting machines because he has "every confidence" in his handpicked election officials. Yet those officials have a history of slipshod performance on other matters related to voting and somehow their errors always end up favoring Republicans. Why should anyone trust their verdict on the integrity of voting machines, when another convenient mistake could deliver a Republican victory in a high-stakes national election?
This shouldn't be a partisan issue. Think about what a tainted election would do to America's sense of itself, and its role in the world. In the face of official stonewalling, doubters probably wouldn't be able to prove one way or the other whether the vote count was distorted - but if the result looked suspicious, most of the world and many Americans would believe the worst. I'll write soon about what can be done in the few weeks that remain, but here's a first step: if Governor Bush cares at all about the future of the nation, as well as his family's political fortunes, he will allow that independent audit.
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Post by LS on Jul 27, 2004 22:21:40 GMT -5
What, think they figured that too many people were laughing their asses off at the explanation excuse? And people ain't laughing even harder now?? ;D Ms. Linda did a show there last week and for her encore she dedicated Desperado to Michael Moore...supposedly 'a number' of people booed and stormed out. Timmins (a Brit) is the current President of the Aladdin and had her physically 'escorted' (thrown) off premises and told her never to come back...Turns out the Aladdin's up for sale and the 'prospective' new owners were NOT happy with what occurred- they said it was a gross violation of the 1st amendment and would not tolerate it...and made clear after they take ownership Ms. Linda is more than welcome to return...and odds are- the good Mr. Timmins won't be. ;D When things very first started...I did have some slight level of hope. Kean didn't seem like he'd let himself get jerked around. Unfortunately though...he IS a politician and once a politician- always a politician. I lost all hope of anything meaningful coming of it after the commission came to NY- that's when it became totally clear it was a lost cause... That said though...they made their 'observations' and made their 'recommendations'...and as Roland said- it's just another volume of pages to bookend with the farsical Warren Report...BUT I followed and watched most of the hearings- and enough information came out that allows me to make my own observations and come to my own conclusions- especially pertaining to the imcompetancy and inaction to the bright red flags waving during the month of August of '01...Very seriously- Tom Clancy should be required reading for every government official.
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Post by Roughneck on Jul 28, 2004 13:14:11 GMT -5
Taken from the US News and World Report Washington Whispers newsletter:
White House insiders are still fretting over Vice President Dick Cheney's recent F-bomb attack on a Democratic senator. Seems conservatives are mad he swore and, worse, may punish the Bush-Cheney team by not voting. Bushies say the same thing happened at the end of the 2000 campaign when W fessed up that he was charged with drunken driving when he was a kid in Maine. Bushies think that cost him millions of votes.
While I doubt the drunkeness cost him "millions" of votes, it probably cost him a few, and if this costs him some this year, so much the better! ;D
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Roland
Full Member
Robert Johnson King of the Delta Blues
Posts: 235
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Post by Roland on Jul 29, 2004 21:51:18 GMT -5
When things very first started...I did have some slight level of hope. Kean didn't seem like he'd let himself get jerked around. Unfortunately though...he IS a politician and once a politician- always a politician. I lost all hope of anything meaningful coming of it after the commission came to NY- that's when it became totally clear it was a lost cause... That said though...they made their 'observations' and made their 'recommendations'...and as Roland said- it's just another volume of pages to bookend with the farsical Warren Report...BUT I followed and watched most of the hearings- and enough information came out that allows me to make my own observations and come to my own conclusions- especially pertaining to the imcompetancy and inaction to the bright red flags waving during the month of August of '01...Very seriously- Tom Clancy should be required reading for every government official. Yes Tom Clancy. Here's a man who writes fiction. But his fiction is based on his own background and extensive research into his subject matter so that the plots of his novels revolve around the real life workings, protocol and procedures of the agencies he writes about, not fictional ones. So why is it this author of fiction can envision what's going on in the world around him, but our politicians in government and military brass can't? Yes the commission was able to bring forth some information that had been kept from the general public until now, like the particularly damning August briefing that nothing was done about. It glossed over too many points for my liking. They questioned Bush 2 and Clinton, but why didn't they question Bush 1? That's when bin Laden and his al-Queda first surfaced as a very real threat to this country, although they started cropping up during Reagan's reign. Anyone remember Ollie North's statements about bin Laden during the Iran-Contra hearings? The '93 bombing of the Trade Center happened barely 3 weeks into Clinton's first term, and during the trials it came out it had been in the planning for 3 years prior. They'd already attacked on American soil once and I find it hard to believe the commision concluded that no one in this government took the threat seriously. It contradicts the facts about the 3 other attacks the al-Queda planned directly against this country in the 8 years between '93 and '01 that were thwarted during Clinton's administration. Just as Bush's reasons for his pre-emptive war against Hussein and Iraq never added up, a lot of the 9/11 Report doesn't quite add up either.
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Post by LS on Aug 11, 2004 23:43:43 GMT -5
Wish to see Bush? You Make The Call by Helen Kennedy August 11, 2004 Want a ticket to see President Bush campaign in Oregon on Friday? You'll have to put in a few hours working on the campaign phone bank first.
Callers to the Republican Party in Portland were told yesterday that the only way to get tickets was to volunteer to come in and make calls touting Bush to swing voters.
Bush campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt later said "someone misspoke" and that was not the campaign's policy.
"Of course, we give anyone who is interested the opportunity to join our extensive grass-roots network of volunteers," she said.
The campaign goes to great lengths to ensure events are open only to the most loyal fans.
On Vice President Cheney's recent trip to New Mexico, residents were allowed in to hear his Albuquerque speech only if they signed a loyalty oath swearing they "endorse George W. Bush for reelection of the United States.[sic]"
In West Virginia, two protesters were dragged away from a July 4 event in cuffs for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts.
Meanwhile, GOP protesters dog Sen. John Kerry, trying to drown him out by slapping flip-flop sandals together in unison.
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Roland
Full Member
Robert Johnson King of the Delta Blues
Posts: 235
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Post by Roland on Aug 16, 2004 22:50:36 GMT -5
I just read an article in the paper today about the town hall meetings he's been holding that described essentially the same scene. The people allowed in were carefully screened so that the "audience" was made up entirely of Bush supporters only and that all the questions and answers were prescripted. This is not campaigning, this is hiding! It proves to me that this man is nothing but a phoney, hardly the strong and decisive leader he claims to be. If he doesn't even have the guts to publically face the equal number of American people who oppose him, we're supposed to believe that he has the guts to face our real enemies? I've noticed he's having trouble finding a campaign slogan that works and it keeps flip-flopping from week to week. To borrow from Monty Python, I suggest this very fitting one. "Run away! Run Away!"
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