Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

Second, despite detailed investigations, not ONE black person was found who was legally registered to vote in FL who was denied that right. NOT ONE.

Empty, unsupportable rhetoric.

0 Replies

snood, According to this link, you're probably right.

http://members.aol.com/digasa/stats45.htm

The Washington Post is not a fly-by-night newspaper that reports on untruths. There's too much to lose by lying on an issue as sensitive and unpopular such as this. c.i.

0 Replies

Hey, trespassers - one man's rhetoric is another's....what?

Today we have people regurgitating the myth that THOUSANDS were systematically denied the right to vote, and there is absolutely ZERO evidence that any such thing occurred. If it had, surely it would be an easy thing to show. Surely those who were denied their right to vote would have come forward in droves. The record would be replete with their stories.

0 Replies

c.i., from your linked article:

Quote:

It turns out that one reason for the high rate of invalidated votes this election was the NAACP's massive get-out-the- vote effort in Florida, which brought many inexperienced or first-time voters to the polls. Black turnout in Florida set records--893,000 African Americans cast ballots on Nov. 7, a 65 percent jump over 1996.

At times--especially when polling places were crowded and voters felt rushed to mark their votes--it appears large numbers of these new or infrequent voters were confounded by technical problems in the ballot.

I submit that The NAACP and by extension The Democratic Party were the proximate cause of the debacle. In their concentration to turn out voters, they neglected to see to it that their recruits were trained and equipped for the battle. The Republicans had nothing to do with it. While The Democrats were conducting Registration Drives, The Republicans were playing golf or otherwise engaged in pursuits that had nothing to do with educating newly registered Democratic voters in the details of the voting process. The problem did not stem from spoiled ballots, it failed because a disproportionate subset of the electorate experienced disproportionate difficulties with the process of voting. I think The Democrats blame The Republicans unfairly for the matter. Fielding a team isn't much good if a bunch of the players don't know how to play.
That's the real issue, the way I see it. All the rest strikes me as spin.

timber

0 Replies

mamaj said--

Replacing George Bush has difficulties. He is a carefully constructed figure whose every movement is choreographed and whose every word is rehearsed

Now, I have never come in here, because I didn't want to be a spoiler in the fun of overthrowing Bush in '04, but I have to take exception to this.

If Bush's every word is so rehearsed, he couldn't possible garble it so badly...

0 Replies

Lash, I'd bet you could be specially caustic if rinsed with alcohol and a little indignation. I respect folks with high pH levels Twisted Evil

timber

0 Replies

snood wrote:

Second, despite detailed investigations, not ONE black person was found who was legally registered to vote in FL who was denied that right. NOT ONE.
Empty, unsupportable rhetoric.

The only empty, unsupportable rhetoric is your off-handed dismissal of my statement without any effort to show that I am wrong. Once again; where's the beef, Snood?

cicerone imposter wrote:

snood, According to this link, you're probably right.
http://members.aol.com/digasa/stats45.htm

The Washington Post is not a fly-by-night newspaper that reports on untruths. There's too much to lose by lying on an issue as sensitive and unpopular such as this. c.i.

c.i. The fact that poorer counties may have had substandard equipment that resulted in more invalidated votes is unfortunate, but it does not in any way go to my statement. This article does not claim that anyone was prevented from casting a vote, it claims that blacks from poorer counties were more likely to not have their vote counted. If that is true, it stinks, but it does not prove an attempt by Republicans to thwart the efforts of blacks to cast their votes.

0 Replies

Okay - Lash - you can have half a point. As any director knows, you can rehearse and rehearse an actor, but it doesn't guarantee perfect results. One of the things here - and this does not originate with me - is the peculiar spacing and phrasing of words, paragraphs. It is quite similar to directions given for looking into a mirror as one speaks, to pay careful attention to the breaks in thought here, to wait for the laugh there. The garbling, the stumbling, the stares into space can still indicate a rehearsed speech. And can also indicate an inept actor or, heaven forbid, someone mouthing lines he not only doesn't believe in, but doesn't understand

Bush is not in the public eye very often, nor does he answer questions.

Timber - I thought ph levels were something we measured in the pool? Shocked

0 Replies

GREG PALAST / Journalist who investigated the 2000 electoral fraud in the USA.
El Mundo
Tuesday, November 5, 2002

ISAAC HERNANDEZ. Special for EL MUNDO

LOS ANGELES.- The last presidential election, Greg Palast, journalist for the BBC and the newspaper The Guardian, investigated a voters purge list in the Florida electoral list. According to his investigation, up to 57,000 persons, the majority of them African American and Democrats, had their voting rights removed. The story is repeated in today´s election. In his book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Palast tells how the State of Florida hired a company named DBT for four million dollars to remove felons from the electoral list to keep them from voting. Palast demonstrates how Jeb Bush´s office asked DBT to grow the list to the max, including voters with similar names and born on the same date as the felons.
Just one of the many stories that can be found on the web related to the black vote in the 2000 election. Evil or Very Mad

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=182&row=

0 Replies

au - I'll give you that this occurred and that it sounds like blacks may have been disproportionately injured by the error.

That written, your citation of the Greg Palast/Hernandez "story" on this is a bit hard to swallow. He claims that of a list of 94,000 supposed felons and deceased individuals, "91,000 were innocent". Are we really to believe that a state the size of FL only had 3,000 deceased or felons to remove from voter polls?

Contrast that number with this information from the Miami Herald:

Quote:

A controversial database that led to the wrongful removal of voters from county rolls two years ago will be reprocessed in search of names that should be reinstated, under a settlement announced Tuesday in a federal voting rights lawsuit.

It would be the first time since the contentious 2000 presidential election that the central voter files would be corrected for errors.

The agreement with ChoicePoint could also restore hundreds of names to Florida's voter rolls, say attorneys for the NAACP and other civil rights groups, which filed the suit last year in Miami. The deal must be approved by U.S. District Judge Alan Gold.

Voting files' errors targeted

According to the NAACP and other civil rights groups, we're talking about HUNDREDS of names statewide. (Do you suppose they mean 910 "hundreds"? :wink: I don't.)

If you read the Miami Herald piece, you will also notice this little bit of information:

Quote:

Using the DBT database, lists of some 58,000 names of potential felons or deceased persons were sent to all 67 county elections supervisors. They were responsible for deciding whether to purge names from the voter rolls.

Election officials in several counties -- including Broward, Palm Beach, Duval, Leon and Volusia -- chose to ignore the lists because they were wary of their accuracy. Others, including Miami-Dade's David Leahy, used the information to purge the rolls.

''We probably removed about 4,000 people based on information provided by the state,'' Leahy said Tuesday. "If they now tell us a person was erroneously put on the list, we would by law reinstate that individual.''

I also find it very telling that Hernandez "story", writing in November of 2002, refers repeatedly to DBT, seemingly referring to recent interactions, as in this statement: "Originally we thought it was 57,000 people that were purged. Now I got the info from DBT that...". As the Miami Herald article points out, DBT no longer exists, having been acquired by ChoicePoint in February of 2000. The Herald article refers to ChoicePoint throughout, yet Hernandez seems unaware of this fairly significant fact.

So it appears that a legitimate, reasonable reading of the facts in this issue show us that some Florida voters, probably numbering in the hundreds, and including people from all ethnic backgrounds, were denied the right to vote, and that whether or not this occurred depended in part on the decision of the election officials in each county, whether Republican or Democrat.

I can only assume that whether or not you think this "proves" someone intended to keep blacks from voting depends on your personal bias. The available facts neither prove nor lend themselves to that conclusion.

I do consider it suspicious that state officials dictated the use of less specific criteria in creating the lists and am cynical enough to suspect that they may have intended to purge likely Democrat voters from the polls. If so, this was clearly a contemptible act.

au - Thanks for bringing this issue up. I had forgotten it, but you challenged me to educate myself a bit better on the facts. While I don't think there was any intent to bar blacks specifically from voting, it does seem possible that an effort was made to bar some Democrats from voting who were legally entitled to do so.

0 Replies

tres, I don't think anybody is going to change your mind about the black vote in Florida. After having read the Washington Post and other articles, I'm leaning towards disenfranchisement, but will hold my opinion until I am satisfied with these anecdotal evidence of fraud, because I understand that statistics can show any side of an argument. c.i.

0 Replies

What is your point, trespassers? It didn't happen? It didn't happen to many? You say "Not one name". If I produce a name, how will this alter what you are saying?

The crux of the matter - the two sides of the argument - I say republicans have, and did at Florida, practice nasty tricks to prevent blacks' votes from being counted. You say that's not true, a ridiculous assertion, unsupportable?

0 Replies

snood, TW's last sentence in his most recent reply:

TW wrote:

it does seem possible that an effort was made to bar some Democrats from voting who were legally entitled to do so.

would indicate to me that your assessment of what TW seems to be saying is at odds with what he seems to be saying.

timber

0 Replies

Now that we have re-settled that:

Could it be that the Democrats are forming their own policy of "pre-emptive strikes"? First we have Nancy Pelosi introducing a Democratic stimulus package the day before Bush unveiled his own, stealing a bit of his thunder and giving the Democrats nearly an entire week of media coverage of their priorities.

Now we have Daschle and Pelosi coming out and broadsiding Bush the day before his SOTU speech.

The 2000-2002 Democrats would have waited for Bush to say something and then responded to it. By speaking first, they begin to put the administration on the defensive and influence the ground rules by which his speech will be analyzed tomorrow night.

"Taking the fight to them." What a concept.

0 Replies

It would be "Good Strategy" for The Opposition to attempt to assume a position intended to co-opt The Administration's coming declaration of status and agenda. Nothing odd about trying to steal the other guy's thunder. The Opposition hopes The Electorate's receptivity to The Administration's Declaration may be influenced thereby to Opposition advantage. Such approach will of course have adherents and detractors. I am disinclined to believe The Opposition's success in The Endeavor will be great.

timber

0 Replies

My point, snood, is that the truth is not served by propagating a lie.

As I wrote in my reply to au, it seems possible that some efforts were made to purge valid Democrat voters from the rolls. I'm cynical enough to believe that Jeb or those under him might have tried such a thing. It may also be true that blacks, who vote almost exclusively Democrat, were more likely to be disenfranchised by such an effort than were whites. It is also completely reasonable for the NAACP and other groups to work to correct this and prevent it from happening again.

BUT, the notion that blacks were targeted because of their race makes no sense to me. If blacks voted predominantly Republican, would you be claiming that conservatives tried to keep them from voting? No. So, it seems to me that IF any effort was made to exclude votes, it was based on party affiliation, not on race. That doesn't make it right, nor does it lessen the impact on those effected IF such an effort were made, but it does call into question the claims of so many that thousands of blacks were intentionally kept from voting in FL because they were black.

au showed where some blacks were prevented from voting, though we're talking about some unknown number of blacks among people of many races and backgrounds. Still, I challenged people to show me one person, and he did so. I think it illogical to assume race was the reason, and I am unsure that intent was involved, but--overlooking the inaccuracies and absurdities of his source--he showed a case where some blacks were unable to cast a ballot who should legally have been allowed to do so. Fair enough. I don't buy for a second that this proves a massive Republican campaign to prevent blacks from voting, but I know those who do believe that will never be convinced otherwise.

I'd still like to see someone consult the Berry (Barry?) report and show me where they interviewed someone who claimed he or she was prevented from voting, and contrast that void with the official "findings" of the report, but I won't hold my breath. I understand what I'm up against here. I really do. Smile

0 Replies

PDid, I'm surprised at you for not understanding the politics of politics. Anything is game, and what the democrats did can also be used by the GOP whenever the democrats have the white house. Wink

c.i.

0 Replies

You're indulging in hair-splitting, TW. Clever argument, but hair-splitting nonetheless...

0 Replies

D'artagnan wrote:

You're indulging in hair-splitting, TW. Clever argument, but hair-splitting nonetheless...

Perhaps I'm splitting hairs, but if so, they are hairs that need splitting.

It's one thing to argue that too many votes went uncounted or uncast in Florida and that you feel blacks were disproportionately screwed in the process. IT IS A VERY DIFFERENT THING to claim that people specifically set out to prevent blacks from voting because of the color of their skin.

0 Replies

(sighs heavily as he attempts to re-rail the topic:)

Memo To: Glenn Hubbard, chairman, President's Council of Economic Advisors
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: War

You know I am in complete agreement that President Bush's plan to end double taxing of dividends would be great for the stock market and terrific for the economy. But it would not stand a chance if President Bush decides to pull the trigger on Iraq next month, which seems to be the message coming out of the White House with more ferociousness every passing day. I've advised my clients that if Mr. Bush were to really do so without the support of the United Nations and the U.S. Senate, the Dow Jones Industrials would now be a few thousand points lower. And that the Bush tax plan would be deader than a doornail as the costs of the war would drive budget deficits through the roof, at all levels of government, here and around the world. I'm actually more optimistic, believing the White House is doing what it can to scare Saddam's inner circle into a palace coup and that when that fails, Mr.Bush will be back on the diplomatic track.

Jude Wanniski's Polyconomics

Mr. Wanniski also went on to profess hopes for increased earnings from the tooth fairy and more chocolate eggs from the Easter bunny. :wink:

0 Replies

Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know