Letters to the Editor
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don't blame the jews
OT I know, but I'm sick of this. Just because Joe Lieberman and other conservative (politically) Jews backed (some of) Bush's plays doesn't change the fact that American Jews voted against him 60-40. What next? Blame a political shift among blacks for his election, and point to Condi Rice as evidence?
It's because of infighting among progressives that we can't have nice things.
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Do we really care?
Nice article, but do Americans really care? Bush's popularity is low, but the fact remains HE IS STILL OUR PRESIDENT.
That speaks volumes about the complacency of most Americans, who are by and large illiterate, stupid, and greedy.
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way over the top
I can only laugh at the over-the-top moonbatting in these letters. Do you people realize how utterly insane and stupid you sound!? How utterly paranoid!?
does anyone really think that Bush has read Camus this summer? Yet we are supposed to swallow hook, line and sinker the idea that this naturally incurious person has the intellectual chops to read and understand serious literature.
And let's stop relying on stupid urban legends. Bush had higher SAT scores than Kerry, had a higher GPA at Yale, and holds an earned MBA from Harvard. That is not a stupid person. Do not mistake dysphraxia (a neurological condition similar to dyslexia) for stupidity. He was smart enough to recognize the enemy who attacked us on 9/11, whereas Clinton just thought they were discrete criminal acts and treated them as such, and the utterly pathetic Jimmy Carter let the Iranians yank his chain for 444 days while he helpless wringed his hands.
Worst prez? Carter by far, because if he had done something decisive in 1979, we would not be dealing with radical Islam today.
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Don't drink the rightwing "Bush really did win in 2000" koolaid
"A larger consortium of news organizations, including the USA Today, the Miami Herald, Knight Ridder, the Tampa Tribune, and five other newspapers next conducted a full recount of all ballots, including both undervotes and overvotes. According to their results, under stricter standards for vote counting, Bush won, and under looser standards, Gore won. [12] However, a Gore win was impossible without a recount of overvotes, which he did not request."
Wikipedia articles are periodically hijacked by nutballs, both left and right. That aside about overvotes is the key to the whole election; there were a huge number of overvotes, most of which were absolutely clear in their preference for Gore; most often, the oval for Gore filled in in addition to "Gore" written in in the space confusingly marked "Write-in candidate's name here". So many so that if all the "dimpled chads" etc. were counted for Bush Gore would still have won. Yet, those were thrown out because to the machine, they were "overvotes", marked twice. As for the actual story reported by the Miami Herald, etc., in direct contrast to the above,
"But a Herald-commissioned analysis of voting patterns in each of the state's 5,885 precincts suggests that Florida likely would have gone to Al Gore -- by a slim 23,000 votes -- rather than George W. Bush, the officially certified victor by the wispy margin of 537. It's a hypothetical result derived from something that clearly doesn't exist in Florida or anywhere else in the nation -- an election where every ballot is fully filled out and every one of those ballots gets counted, an elusive ideal going these days by the buzzword ''the will of the people.'' It is also as close as anyone is likely to get to the statewide manual recount that some people say is the only way to fairly assess who
should be awarded Florida's 25 Electoral College votes.
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''What you're providing evidence for, however speculative, is that more people showed up on election day for Al Gore,'' [Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Governmental Studies] said. ''But I'd also state that in our system, woulda, shoulda, coulda doesn't matter. Only legal votes matter.''"
-Miami Herald, Dec. 3, 2000
"But if the recount had been held under new vote-counting rules that Florida and other states now are adopting--rules aimed at recording the intentions of as many voters as possible--Democratic candidate Al Gore probably would have won, although by an even thinner margin, the study found. The study provides evidence that more Florida voters attempted to vote for Gore than for Bush--but so many Gore voters marked their ballots improperly that Bush received more valid votes."
-LA Times, Nov. 12, 2001
"Ultimately, the lesson is the system we had in [Florida] caused so many people to misvote that the real result of the election isn't known. But it does seem likely that more people intended to vote for
Gore than for Bush."
- Doug Pardue of USA Today, Associated Press, 11 May 2001
"...we know that more Floridians intended to vote for Al Gore than George Bush on November 7, 2000."
-Vincent Bugliosi
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Somebody please explain to me...
Given all that we now know to be true about this administration, and taking into consideration all that we think we know, but have yet to prove, why are they still permitted to govern?? I know that apathetic Americans have something to do with that, but we can't ALL be sheep, can we?
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Whither the Democrats?
I share the ire some LWs have directed at the Democrats. What exactly have they done in response to the current state of affairs, aside from Howard Dean going on the 700 Club to denounce gay marriage? It's as if every time there's a screw-up on the GOP side, the Dems think to themselves, "Wow, that provides us with a huge opening, what can we do to lower ourselves further just to make sure this doesn't translate into electoral victory for us? I know, let's alienate our own base and pander to people who have no intention of ever voting for us."
What is the root of the problem with the Dems? Is it that they are ultimately owned by the same parties that own the GOP, and so can't ever really stray too far from the GOP party line?
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re: Don't drink the rightwing "Bush really did win in 2000" koolaid
I'm not drinking anything, I'm suggesting that the final out come is debatable and that Bush is the president, and looking back nearly 7 years is a big waste of time...
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Bush isn't Southern
Great points all.
But Bush isn't Southern, and isn't from Texas.
Furthermore, there are many who doubt Texas's "Southernness," even if the Connecticut native were from Texas.