His Toolness, Sir Paul

[Bizarro]

I was not aware that it was within their control.

I  admit that since I was a kid I have hoped that D.B. Cooper escaped.

Me too! They keep "solving" the case every few years, then realizing their theory doesn't hold up.

[Moetown]

I wrote a story ain't got no moral.
Let the bad guy win every once in a whle.

[Tripp]

chelsea has decide to play politics ( or she's being made to) so she blew an opportunity to answer that question.

Actually maybe that was the plan. Now people are asking the question to themselves "how DID Hillary handle it.." then she'll go on Oprah and talk about it.  If nothing else it elicits sympathy somewhere on the subject.

And I may be remembering the question wrong (actually) but he asked something like 'what did you think of the way your mom handled it?'. To say 'none of your business' could imply that the answer's not so great.

I DON'T REALLY CARE but I'm jes talkin'. as a human being, yes, she's within her rights to say what she said.

[Bizarro]

M______'s dad died. We're flying to Romania tomorrow to help her mom out and arrange the funeral. If we can work it out, Mama will be coming back to live with us for a while. Thanks for all of your kind words and PMAs during his sickness. We'll be home soon.

[matthew]

 

Be well in the world, Jeff and loved ones.

[Poop Fresh-Herbed Pickles]

Deepest condolences to you guys, Jeff.

[full blown possession]

Fuck it, let's just share the entire album. Again, live GbV taken from the April 28th, 2000 show at the Be Here Now Club in Asheville. I've included the three bonus tracks from the 7" at the end.

THANKS AGAIN FOR THE GBV AND THINKING OF YOU AND YOUR FAMILY

[matthew]

chelsea has decide to play politics ( or she's being made to) so she blew an opportunity to answer that question.

Actually maybe that was the plan. Now people are asking the question to themselves "how DID Hillary handle it.." then she'll go on Oprah and talk about it.  If nothing else it elicits sympathy somewhere on the subject.

And I may be remembering the question wrong (actually) but he asked something like 'what did you think of the way your mom handled it?'. To say 'none of your business' could imply that the answer's not so great.

I DON'T REALLY CARE but I'm jes talkin'. as a human being, yes, she's within her rights to say what she said.

I know, I know...and I agree.

I am also as skeptical of every last thing that occurs in politics.

I meant to tell you...I never paid much attention to the election frauds of 2000 and 2004 before, mostly because the static to signal ratio was such that I simply could not be bothered. I knew nothing would be done, and was skeptical of most websites who were dedicated to following the unfolding details, largely because they were partisan beyond reason.

I accepted it as fact and moved on, not bothering with details or following the coverage. For the 2000 election you need not look as far as the mass disenfranchisement of voters, but only to the James Baker/Supreme Court fix to see it was not kosher. 2004 I was never absolutely convinced because I did not really want to look.

Then a couple of weeks ago I was reading an essay by Michael Parenti and I was fully convinced. Most of the details were familiar, and it was not a statistic or a graph or a quote from some GOP henchman, but one turn of phrase by Parenti that brought it all into focus.

To have achieved his remarkable 2004 tally, Bush would needed to have kept all his 50.4 million from 2000, plus a majority of the new voters, plus a large share of the very liberal Nader defectors. Nothing in the campaign and in the opinion polls suggest such a mass crossover. The numbers simply do not add up.

He is correct - it doesn't make a lick of sense. Knee-deep in an unpopular and disastrous war, close to 17,000,000 new and lapsed (did not vote in 2000) voters do not mass to retain the unpopular leader. To expand on his point, I refer to worsening voter apathy trend in the U.S. The downward trend has been broken only once previously, and in that instance it was a recession-fueled surge in opposition to the incumbent Bush Sr.

People are simply not motivated to change by a desire for more-of-the-same (i.e. people who were not voting would not register just because they were so happy with the guy they had previously not even bothered to vote for). It can be assumed that, as unattractive a candidate as he was, Kerry would have:

* retained 100% of the decidedly partisan Democrats that went to the even more unappealing Al Gore
* absorbed about 100% of Green defectors (most of whom were Dems who were appalled by the nomination of Gore) - I doubt that many, if any, would vote for Bush
* taken the vast majority of new voters
and, to touch on a point rarely made
* taken a good number of people who HAD voted for Bush in 2000 and were horrified by Iraq/The War on Terror (as well as Bush's general performance) - I do not doubt that this number was likely in the millions and it probably eclipsed the number of Dems who voted for Nader in 2000

But the clincher for me is the massive surge of new voters - there is no evidence to suggest that previously apathetic voters were ecstatic with Bush's performance.

[Doctor Rock]

Just to play devil's advocate: I think you're forgetting the mass of bigots that voted for Dumbya because of the whole gay marriage thing.   Remember those referenda on the ballots at the time of the election, put there to ensure that bigots would go out and vote?  That, plus the whole swiftboat thing, made sure that a lot of people where not really voting for the shrub, but voting against Kerry.   The Rove machine was very good at appealing to peoples baser instincts. 

Maybe there was fraud, I really don't know... I think those statistical arguments are not a very good foundation to prove fraud.  I'm not defending the repugs, by the way: in my book, perverting democracy with demagoguery is a worst sin than fraud. 

[Tripp]

the gay marriage thing was a ruse so they could point to it and say 'wow. people really turned out to vote against gay marriage'.  Really very few people gave a shit but they had to say it was about something so people wouldn't notice the election was TOTALLY RIGGED.

[matthew]

Whose demagoguery?

Personally, I do not give a good goddamn who stole the election better or worse (I have spoken before of the likelihood that the Democrats committed voter fraud as well, just not as well, and that this might explain their conceding), but the fact that it was stolen.

Your suggestion that the ballot initiatives swung the vote don't wash. Who was affected, Ohio?

Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah had gay marriage on their ballot. Most of them are, none too surprisingly, Republican strongholds.

In the past four elections those States went to:
Arkansas - ---- (went Dem for their former Gov. Clinton)
Georgia - 3/4 to R
Kentucky - ---- (went Dem for Clinton, but mostly Repub.)
Michigan - 4/4 to D
Mississippi - 4/4 to R
Montana - 3/4 to R
ND - 4/4 to R
Ohio - ---- (split registration between D&R)
Oklahoma - 4/4 to R
Oregon - 4/4 to D
Utah - 4/4 to R

I have seen no indication that the Swiftboating mobilized millions of non-voters to get off their asses, nor would that motivation have swung any of the largely deeply conservative states in any meaningful way. At most the Switboating may have prevented a mass exodus from the Republican party. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 when Democrat apathy was palpable. By 2004 the Dems were out-registering the Repubs by a 2 to 1 ratio, plus they re-absorbed a good two and a half million votes they lost to Nader in 2000.

By the end of 2004 was Bush not only more popular than he was unpopular(ly elected/appointed) in 2000, but also managed to take in the vast majority of the surge of new voters? This is a valid question and the exit polls (which are generally accurate within a hairsbreadth) said no.

The statistical arguments are superior to what you have advanced here as counterarguments. The Rovian exercises spoke to a precious few who had the power to swing the vote and there was a major push (Anyone But Bush) against Bush because of the unfolding disaster in Iraq.

[Tripp]

My co-worker, who graduated from the Memphis College of Art, voted for Bush because he didn't want Kerry who, according to him, burned down villages and murdered babies in Vietnam.  This was an aspect of the swift-boating I had never even heard before.
He's from Mississippi and I think he was getting his info from his parents.  So...

The swift-boating had some effect. And there were people who genuinely voted to block gay marriage.



I don't think it'll work this time because black voters are gonna turn out in droves this time.  But I've been wrong before.

[bebopbalogna]

My co-worker, who graduated from the Memphis College of Art, voted for Bush because he didn't want Kerry who, according to him, burned down villages and murdered babies in Vietnam. 

dude needed to do a little more research.  kerry was called a traitor and accused of treason because he told congress about those kinds of actions, which he disapproved of.  he was the WHISTLEBLOWER.

[matthew]

That story is very interesting, but I don't believe it explains ~17 million new & lapsed voters coming out. There is no question that the GOP did manage to mobilize new voters, but DNC took most of them. Even if you called the new voters 50/50, the Dems still take it. Factor in staunch conservatives dismayed by the MASSIVE government that Bush spun out of control that jumped ship as well as the returning Nader votes, and the win becomes even more difficult. Take into account Bush has lost the first election, it begins to appear impossible.

Bush had just snatched the election by the margin of 537 Florida votes. It was no landslide in electoral votes, either - he had one more than he needed (and was only five away from Gore). His popularity may have soared to 90% following 9/11, but this dropped off quickly.

In the year following the invasion of Iraq he dropped a full 10% in approval; by the end of 2004/the election he was below 50% approval rating. This does not promote the necessary conclusion that people came out in droves to retain his services. Nor does it encourage the idea that he was somehow MORE popular the second time, when he lost the popular vote the first time.

The essay in question: http://www.michaelparenti.org/stolenelections.html

Parenti loathes the DNC as much as I do (this isn't DailyKos or MoveOn), but I do believe that the theft represents one more facet of the undermining of so-called Democracy.

 

[Doctor Rock]

You guys seem to be forgetting that the majority of USians and most (if not all) of the mainstream media in the US were generally favourable to the Iraq adventure up to 2005.  There was relatively little criticism of it during the election. 

I have ample proof that people can be stupid enough to vote against their interests, whereas I have no concrete proof that Dumbya and his croonies stole the election. 

For now, in the absence of concrete evidence, I'm appealing to Hanlon's razor i.e. never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.