Bush

[LotharBraunBrownBryant]

GrandKenyon said:

it's time to move on.

Maybe it's time for the left to move on from the "Bush stole the 2000 election" line...

[samjack]

LotharBot said:

Maybe it's time for the left to move on from the "Bush stole the 2000 election" line...

Don't even try and pretend that if the roles were reversed in 2000, the right wouldn't be doing the EXACT SAME THING.

[samjack]

BTW, there is a man named Wally O'Dell. He is the CEO of a company called Diebold and a Bush supporter. Some time ago, in a fund raising letter, he promised to do whatever he can to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush.

Diebold just happens to be a company that produces electronic voting machines.

www.blackboxvoting.org

Before anyone, of either end of the political spectrum, responds to this information, just take the time to consider what your response would be if O'Dell's promise had been about Kerry...

[GrandKenyon]

I want to cry. Why couldn't there have just been a blowout in either direction. I hate this country.

[samjack]

GrandKenyon said:

I want to cry. Why couldn't there have just been a blowout in either direction. I hate this country.

Come on, get a hold of yourself. How do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you say you hate your country?

[GrandKenyon]

Well, I hate how it works sometimes. I love the fact that I live here. I'm just afraid now. The whole first term, I carried myself fine...but that's because I was assuming it'd be over. Now that he's here again, what's going to happen to us? I hope Osama gets his lists straight, although I guess it would be kind of hard to kill republicans and democrats seperately.

[GrandKenyon]

I just love how Bush and his army of talking heads is guaranteeing another attack, and that's what should make people rally behind him, because we got through 9/11 together. Why not focus on trying to prevent a new attack, rather than just taking it up the ass and slobbering at the potential PR gain.

Oh well, It's Kerry's fault for biting on the game. Bush wanted to talk about the War on Terror, nothing else. Kerry should have focused on the problems here at home.

I just hope the war comes to Bush's doorstep, but who knows what kind of sick connection he has with the terrorists behind the scenes. I want to fast forward 4 years.

[LotharBraunBrownBryant]

GrandKenyon said:

I want to cry. Why couldn't there have just been a blowout in either direction.

news.yahoo.com/electionresults

Nationwide

Bush: 58,815,615 votes (51%)
Kerry: 55,254,812 votes (48%)
Margin: +3,560,803 votes

Ohio

Bush: 2,794,609 (51%)
Kerry: 2,658,461 (49%)
Margin: +136,148 votes

Electoral count

Bush: 274 right now, 286 with IA and NM (he's leading in both)
Kerry: 252
Margin: +34 electoral votes

Furthermore, aside from IA, NM, and OH (which I've already mentioned), none of the states Bush carried were close (Florida was the closest at 52-47 with a margin of almost 400,000 votes.) Kerry had a few states that were close, though -- if even one of those swung the other way it would've been a Bush blowout.

It's not an overwhelming blowout... but it's also not a close election. It's a pretty solid victory.

if the roles were reversed in 2000...

Yes, yes, I know, both sides would've done everything possible. But I don't think the right would still be talking about it now. Yesterday afternoon, when they called Florida for Bush, a bunch of my loony left friends went back to whining about 2000. The thing is, every time politics came up over the time I've lived in Seattle (2.5 years) it's always gone to whining about 2000 -- as if Gore was the 100% clear true winner and Bush was a total thief.

For all practical purposes, the 2000 election was a tie. The margin for victory for either candidate under any recount scheme was significantly less than the amount of voter fraud on either side.

The mistake the left (especially Al Gore) made, that I don't think the right would have, is focusing on the end result for the next four years. People complain the country is divided -- and the same people telling me Bush is a divider are still whining about the 2000 election. It's not as though Gore had a huge lead and Bush stole the election out from under him -- it was essentially a tie and Bush had the razor-thin margin in the recounts. No matter who ended up winning, the other guy could've said "he stole the election" like Al Gore, or he could've graciously conceded and pledged to work together like Senator Kerry.

... Diebold ...

"Imagine what the reaction would be"? I saw the reaction from the left. Do you know how many campaign tables I passed on campus *every day* that said something about Diebold? Do you know how often I had some leftist friend come up to me and rant about how the electronic voting machines were going to steal the election?

If they'd said the same about Kerry instead of Bush, I doubt the reaction would've been any different -- it just would've been coming from different people.

Now, when you consider the margins for victory in the aforementioned states, I don't think there's any question that Bush had it regardless of who made the voting machines.

what's going to happen to us? I hope Osama gets his lists straight...

Before Spain's elections, they got their trains bombed.
Before Australia's elections, they got their embassy bombed in Jakarta.
Before our elections, we got a friggin' VIDEO TAPE.

Osama can't hit us as long as the pressure is on him. The fact is, he wouldn't be making tapes if he was busy bombing us. He only has time to make tapes because he can't manage to do anything else.

Bush and his army of talking heads is guaranteeing another attack...

There will *always* be other attacks, no matter how many terrorists you take out. But what Bush and his homies have guaranteed is that, in the event of an attack, they're going to respond by shutting down that whole organization -- rather than lobbing a random cruise missile, or arresting a few of the grunts involved.

Why not focus on trying to prevent a new attack...

We've spent $200 billion on preventing new attacks.

In case you don't recognize that number... that's what we've spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, shutting down governments that support terrorism (whether or not Saddam specifically supported AQ, he *did* support terrorism) and shutting down terrorist camps and arresting or killing terrorist leaders.

I think it was Cheney who said in a speech that you can prevent 99% of the attacks, or you can try harder and prevent 99.99% of the attacks. But on occasion, one will get through, and you need to respond in the right way when it does. I don't see how anybody could reasonably disagree.

Kerry should have focused on the problems here at home.

Kerry's problem is that people didn't trust him on the WoT. He tried too much to focus on the problems here at home -- but the *people* wanted to know, how will you handle Iraq? How will you handle Afghanistan? How will you handle Iran? And Kerry kept saying "I have a plan, I have a plan, I have a plan" but never really said what the plan was.

I guarantee, if Kerry actually had a good plan, he'd be calling up Bush and saying "hey, here's the plan I had. I wanted to be the guy to do it, but since you're still president, here's my plan." The thing is, he didn't really have a viable plan -- and that's why he lost. Given the choice between a guy who'll screw up the economy but destroy the terrorists, or a guy who'll do a great job with the economy but give the terrorists room to plan, I'll take the screwed up economy, thanks very much...

I just hope the war comes to Bush's doorstep

You're just plain sick.

But the war *did* come to Bush's doorstep.
www.zombietime.com/wtc_9-13-2001/

but who knows what kind of sick connection he has with the terrorists behind the scenes.

Conspiracy theories don't help your credibility.

[samjack]

Sorry LotharBot, you have an extremely biased perspective, and it seems to me that you lack an ability to judge yourself and the right with clarity. The right is still whining about the Clinton years, so they'd have no problem whining about 2000. They try and pin 9/11 on Clinton even though there's about 20 examples of intelligence and defense failures that occured during the Bush administration that would have prevented 9/11 from going down the way it did. (and yes, some of them can be traced back to the Clinton administration, but not all, and not the most significant ones-- I'll get in to them later if you'd like). The suggestion that the right wouldn't still be b***hing and moaning about things like the popular vote and the recount being halted is downright laughable. I understand you want to view yourself and the people who think like you in a pristine light, it's a pretty natural inclination. But it's a flawed one regardless.

With regards to Diebold, there are so many issues with those machines that there’s no way you can dismiss the possibility of tampering just because Bush won by some 100,000+ votes. That’s the problem with electronic machines. Making up or subtracting that many votes would be just as easy as making up or subtracting 10 votes. The old ways, when there is a paper trail for every voter, you’d have to have a large number of people involved in the conspiracy to pull it off. Not with the electronic machines though. You’d really only need one person to pull it off. Diebold’s machines actually had the function to add NEGATIVE VOTES. Please try explaining that one to me. Plus, it is well documented that the machines could be tampered with by an experienced hacker. I’m not saying that this actually happened in Ohio, but I’m suspicious. You’d have to be awfully naïve to believe that there isn’t a motivation for ballot tampering among people seeking political power. Then you add the fact that many of these machines have the capacity to be tampered with, and are produced by a company whose CEO has an established interest in getting one party elected… you have to have a personal interest in believing there is nothing to it in order to just brush it off. Our Democracy is too important to have this kind of smoke surrounding it.

[LotharBraunBrownBryant]

Hoïchi said:

it seems to me that you lack an ability to judge yourself and the right with clarity.

Perhaps that's an indication of your own bias, rather than mine. While my judgement of myself isn't perfect, I do spend a lot more time in introspection than you spend thinking about me, so I think I'm a much better judge of myself than you are.

You *think* I lack clarity, because my judgement of myself doesn't match your judgement of me. But your judgement comes from a lack of evidence.

The right is still whining about the Clinton years...

The critical difference here is the scope and magnitude of the whining.

There are a few outlying people on the right who whine about the Clinton years. These people are correctly regarded as "nutjobs" by the right and left alike. But the vast majority of the right doesn't particularly care about Clinton, and hasn't for a long time. (Sure, we may make a "Monica" joke every once in a while, but most of us don't obsess.) I didn't know anyone -- even during the Clinton years -- who stayed up at night wondering about Monica, or who threatened violence over something Clinton did, or whatever.

On the other hand, a very large percentage of those on the left seem *absolutely obsessed* with the 2000 elections. I've had people yell at me, cuss me out, threaten to vandalize my stuff, etc. just because they know I voted for Bush and "BUSH STOLE THE ELECTION!!!!!" Four years later, I had people tell me I'm a f***ing idiot for voting for Bush in 2000. And it's not just the nutjobs -- it's the rank and file of the Democratic party.

That's the thing... the nutjobs on the right obsessed over Clinton, but the MAJORITY of the left obsessed over the 2000 elections.

They try and pin 9/11 on Clinton even though there's about 20 examples of intelligence and defense failures that occured during the Bush administration that would have prevented 9/11 from going down the way it did. (and yes, some of them can be traced back to the Clinton administration, but not all, and not the most significant ones-- I'll get in to them later if you'd like).

I've seen the lists. There were intelligence failures during both administrations. It seems the most significant was the Clinton-era "don't share information between departments" policy, which led to a number of the failures we saw over the past several years. But you might see others you think are "more significant", and you can feel free to discuss those if you wish.

The suggestion that the right wouldn't still be b***hing and moaning about things like the popular vote and the recount being halted is downright laughable.

It really depends on how the losing candidate handled himself. We know for a fact that Gore handled things wrong -- conceding, then pulling back, then launching lawsuits, and never really giving up and saying "we need to support Bush now that he's president." That set us up for 4 years of "he's not my president" -- because Gore never had the grace to say what Kerry said in his speech this morning.

I don't think Bush would have made the same mistake as Gore did. I think, when the recounts were all done, Bush would've given a speech saying that Gore had won, and he'd have put it behind him.

Yeah, the nutjobs would still complain. But the mainstream Republicans would have let it go, because our candidate would've let it go. The mainstream Democrats still haven't let go, because their candidate never really did.

I understand you want to view yourself and the people who think like you in a pristine light, it's a pretty natural inclination. But it's a flawed one regardless.

This is such a patronizing load of crap.

I don't want to view myself and those like me in a pristine light. I want to view whatever is wrong with me so that I can improve and change. That's why I participate in this sort of discussion -- if you can tell me something I don't know, or something I've misjudged, I can improve.

The thing that's frustrated me about this thread is that nobody seems even slightly interested. Nobody wants to discuss any issue or tell me anything I haven't considered that maybe I should. Nobody is willing to engage my positions. People are plenty willing to talk smack about my family, or manufacture fake positions they think I should hold and then insult those... but nobody has given me any reason for introspection.

With regards to Diebold, there are so many issues with those machines that there’s no way you can dismiss the possibility of tampering just because Bush won by some 100,000+ votes.

No, I can't 100% dismiss the possibility of tampering. But I can say that it's highly unlikely tampering would've produced a margin of that size. That would be a very, very gutsy move by someone.

Making up or subtracting that many votes would be just as easy as making up or subtracting 10 votes.

Not really -- because you can't add 100,000 votes to a single machine. Everyone would see this one precinct that had 100,082 votes for Bush and 84 for Kerry and think maybe something was wrong.

If you want to manufacture that many votes, you still have to do it in such a way that it looks like they came in from all over the state.

Do you happen to know how the totalling is done on the machines? Does each machine give a total at the end of the night, and then someone adds them all up? I know there isn't a printout of every single ballot -- but isn't there a record of the count from each individual voting machine?

when there is a paper trail for every voter, you’d have to have a large number of people involved in the conspiracy to pull it off.

Not really -- you'd just need the people counting to miscount, or you'd need someone to insert a bunch of extra ballots into the counting stacks. Electronic machines don't make it particularly easier, except that you don't actually have to fill in 100,000 "Bush" circles.

Diebold’s machines actually had the function to add NEGATIVE VOTES. Please try explaining that one to me.

Maybe that's how they reset the machine for the next election. Why don't you ask them?

it is well documented that the machines could be tampered with by an experienced hacker.

Yes -- but it would have to be an experienced hacker who could physically hook their laptop to the machine.

I’m not saying that this actually happened in Ohio, but I’m suspicious.

Maybe you should read fewer "loony" sites You'll notice the mainstream -- including John Kerry -- isn't pursuing this line of reasoning. If there was something to it, they would be.

You’d have to be awfully naïve to believe that there isn’t a motivation for ballot tampering among people seeking political power.

I never said there was no motivation. I simply said I don't think it happened -- and certainly not on the order of 140,000 votes.

you have to have a personal interest in believing there is nothing to it in order to just brush it off.

So why isn't John Kerry pursuing it? He has a personal interest in pursuing it, and he's not.

The simple fact is... it's hard to manufacture 140,000 votes, no matter what sort of machines you're using. If someone wanted to hack that many votes into the system, they'd have to do it in such a way that no individual precinct was like "hey, that vote total is way way off for us."

Let me go one step further, though, and say this: pursuing this matter is a defense mechanism in order to avoid looking at your party's own failings.

Why does Bush lead by 3 and a half million votes nationwide? Why did Republicans pick up 4 seats in the Senate, and 3 in the house? Why did Bush pick up 10% of the Democratic vote while Kerry only picked up 7% of the Republican vote? Why does the Democratic party continue to lose ground? Why do so many Democrats have trouble even asking civil questions of Republicans and listening to their answers?

It's time to exercise some of that "clarity in judgement" you accuse me of lacking. Do some introspection, and hope the rest of the Democratic party does the same. Otherwise, the Democratic party is doomed to continue to lose ground.

[samjack]

Okay look, I probably shouldn’t have mentioned your judgment of yourself personally, and I’ll apologize for that. But the main point I was trying to make was about your judgment of the right and left, which you brought up yourself, many times in many posts. Your posts are all the evidence I need, and I feel perfectly comfortable questioning your judgment on that issue. You have repeatedly asserted that there is a marked difference in how the left and right handle all things political. Here’s my take… you find the left expressing themselves annoying because you don’t agree with them, so you are more likely to classify them with such wise, observant terms as “loony” and “nut job”. Meanwhile, you agree with the people on the right. You don’t find them expressing their views annoying. So they are more reasonable. Again, this comes straight from your posts. Have you noticed that I haven’t argued that the left is more reasonable or dignified than the right? Or did you already assume that I believed that?

That's the thing... the nutjobs on the right obsessed over Clinton, but the MAJORITY of the left obsessed over the 2000 elections.

Everything above: Complete, utter BS. You notice the nut jobs on the left more. I notice all the nut jobs. They are plentiful on the right. If there is a difference between the left and the right, it’s that the right nut jobs have more access to talk radio.

I've seen the lists. There were intelligence failures during both administrations. It seems the most significant was the Clinton-era "don't share information between departments" policy, which led to a number of the failures we saw over the past several years. But you might see others you think are "more significant", and you can feel free to discuss those if you wish.

Again, I’m not denying that problems date back to Clinton, but that doesn’t explain why FBI whistle blower Colleen Rowley’s investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui was blocked, or why Army Sgt. Donald Kerrick account that the focus on Bin Laden and the NSC became non existent after Bush took office. Or how about the late John O’Neill, who resigned from his post as FBI Deputy Director in August of 2001 over the Bureau’s failure to properly investigate Bin Laden and Al Queda. It didn’t take him long to find a new job, the security chief at the World Trade Center. His first day at the job was September 11th.

The biggest thing that no one is talking about is why NORAD failed to intercept the planes. When the passengers of the plane Payne Stewart died on lost consciousness and the plane went off course, the plane was intercepted by U.S. Air Force jets, which accompanied the plane until it ran out of fuel and crashed. Standard procedure. Long before 9/11, intercepting an off course plane, especially one that had been confirmed to be hijacked, was standard procedure. But that was not reported to have happened with ANY of the four planes on 9/11. Why not? The Bush Administration flat out LIED when they said no one had thought of the possibility of hijacked planes being used that way. Tom Clancy wrote about it, and he got the idea from an intelligence intercept about a plan to crash a plane into CIA headquarters. Someone crashed a small plane into Clinton’s White House. If they had never thought of it, shame on them, but this possibility was well known before 9/11. It’s why intercepting hijacked planes is standard procedure. After the first tower was hit, the second plane was heading towards the NYC skyline for a good 15 minutes, and they had known the plane was hijacked for over an hour. This was barely touched by the 9/11 commission.

There were FBI agents on the trail of the hijackers, and they could have found them and stopped them if their investigation wasn’t squashed. And even if they couldn’t stop them, the first plane had been a confirmed hijacking long before it hit the first tower. If standard procedures were followed, it would have been shot down. I have no idea why it didn’t happen, and I’m not saying the Bush Administration is directly responsible, but this was an immediate and improbable defense failure that can no way be traced back to the Clinton Administration. What bothers me is that there is no investigation into these matters taking place. And the fact is, this all could have been accomplished under the scope of our current Constitution. Instead this administration gave us the Constitution busting Patriot Act, feeding us BS that it is the only way to make us safe. I better stop myself right here, you don't want to get me started on the Patriot Act...

[samjack]

I don't think Bush would have made the same mistake as Gore did. I think, when the recounts were all done, Bush would've given a speech saying that Gore had won, and he'd have put it behind him.

Again, you believe that Bush would do it differently because you support him. I happened to have noticed the mad power lust of the party (yes, the Dems have it too). The Republicans would have done almost anything to win in 2000, including taking the recount to the courts. It’s funny, before the last election there was talk that Bush might win the popular vote and lose the electoral votes, and some Republicans started contemplating what actions they could take to challenge the validity of the electoral votes. But as soon as it went the other way around, you couldn’t stop Republicans from espousing the virtues of the Electoral College.

This is such a patronizing load of crap.

Not unlike you freely associating the adjective “loony” with the anyone on the left? If you dish it out, you gotta take it too…<br>

The thing that's frustrated me about this thread is that nobody seems even slightly interested. Nobody wants to discuss any issue or tell me anything I haven't considered that maybe I should. Nobody is willing to engage my positions. People are plenty willing to talk smack about my family, or manufacture fake positions they think I should hold and then insult those... but nobody has given me any reason for introspection.

I’ve said nothing about your family. It’s about your biased, ultra partisan perspective on the right and left that I maintain lacks clarity. How personally you want to take that I can't help, but it's your postition and I am engaging you on that postition.

Not really -- because you can't add 100,000 votes to a single machine. Everyone would see this one precinct that had 100,082 votes for Bush and 84 for Kerry and think maybe something was wrong.

This is inaccurate. The machines were designed to transmit the vote counts by modem to a central computer, so the central computer could be manipulated.

Do you happen to know how the totalling is done on the machines? Does each machine give a total at the end of the night, and then someone adds them all up? I know there isn't a printout of every single ballot -- but isn't there a record of the count from each individual voting machine?

Yes, if a recount was done the results would be recalculated. But that would basically give the same result as before. There is no paper trail of every vote. If there was an investigation, there may be a way to discover a discrepancy caused by tampering, but there would need to be an investigation first.

Maybe that's how they reset the machine for the next election. Why don't you ask them?

They’ve been asked… they said it was a glitch. But considering they lied and tried to cover up all the other flaws in their voting machines, why should anyone believe them?

Yes -- but it would have to be an experienced hacker who could physically hook their laptop to the machine.

Maybe, I can’t profess to know all the details, but I know the vote counts are supposed to be transmitted via a modem so I assume the central computer can be accessed by a hacker, and perhaps even the individual machine could be accessed as well.

Maybe you should read fewer "loony" sites You'll notice the mainstream -- including John Kerry -- isn't pursuing this line of reasoning. If there was something to it, they would be.

You may have heard about Diebold from the “loonies” on your campus, but did you ever hear about it on the news? Has CNN, ABC, anyone, mentioned O’Dell’s promise? Perhaps, but I know it hasn’t been a hot button issue. The media doesn’t want to touch every story. Why? Because it will be regarded as “loony” by certain folks with certain ideals. And they need to sell ad space. And if the media doesn’t want to touch it, why would Kerry touch it, when he is in the middle of running for the most powerful office on this planet Earth? He’s a career politician, and I hope I don’t need to explain to you how they think about things. Would raising conspiracy theories about Diebold help him get votes? You don’t really think that every important issue is covered by the mainstream press and career politicians, do you?

Let me go one step further, though, and say this: pursuing this matter is a defense mechanism in order to avoid looking at your party's own failings.

Aha! You just proved my point. Who said I had a party? Certainly not me. I have none, and I never will. I don’t trust any career politician, including Democrats. But yeah, I like Republicans a whole lot less, I’ll give you that.

Look, I’m not even trying to argue that something happened with the boxes, but there’s a lot of smoke and I think it’s pretty fishy. It’s not about proving that Bush wasn’t really elected. I only brought it up because it is a perfectly reasonable thing for a person concerned about the health of our democracy to bring up. It was a response to your ridicule about the complaints what happened in Florida in 2000, another thing that is a perfectly reasonable concern for any American who cares about the sanctity of our democratic ideals (hint… “democracy”, not “democrat”).

You might think I’m guilty of the same bias that I’m accusing you of, and I can’t say I’m completely removed from it, but I consider myself an independent thinker. While I am liberal on a lot of issues, like race relations, foreign policy, freedom of religion and expression, the death penalty, g** rights, etc., I also support the 2nd Amendment and I am against abortion. I share a distrust of big government with libertarians… the real ones not the phony ones who vote Republican. When Clinton was in office, I was always criticizing him. I screamed wag the dog when he ordered an attack on Afghanistan right after the Lewinsky thing broke, though now I think I was wrong about that. Never the less, I’m not coming at this from the typical Democrat party line like you assumed, and it wasn’t a surprise to me at all that you just assumed that. It fits right in with my assessment of your perception of the right and left. No clarity.

[LotharBraunBrownBryant]

Hoïchi said:

you find the left expressing themselves annoying because you don’t agree with them, so you are more likely to classify them with such wise, observant terms as “loony” and “nut job”.

I typically use "loony" to refer to people on the left, and "nutjob" to refer to people on the right. While I don't hold to that 100%, if you re-read what I wrote earlier in the thread and in a few others, you'll see that I've referred to nutjobs on the right a number of times.

And no, I don't find the sane mainstream left expressing themselves "annoying". I have a number of friends on the left who are very interesting to talk to. What I find "annoying" are the real weirdos.

Meanwhile, you agree with the people on the right. You don’t find them expressing their views annoying.

I refer you to descentbb.net and a poster named "woodchip". I regularly call him a right-wing nutjob, to his face, because he is. Him expressing himself *is* annoying. I even agree with him a lot of the time -- but he's a nutjob.

I bet you didn't even notice my use of the term "nutjob" to refer to the insane people on the right in this thread. Your own preconceived bias about me prevented you from noticing how I actually used the term, and instead, you assumed I was saying it only about people on the left.

Also, it should be noted I lean moderately to heavily left on about a third of the major issues I care about. What I've argued here has all been on the right side simply because the people arguing with me have been arguing from the left about issues I tend to be on the right on -- but I guarantee, if we picked a different set of issues to talk about, you'd mistake me for a liberal.

So I feel comfortable saying that you f***ed up your analysis of my judgement of the right and left.

I haven’t argued that the left is more reasonable or dignified than the right?

I never said you did. If anything, you've said both sides are equally apt to unreasonability and undignifiedness.

the nutjobs on the right obsessed over Clinton, but the MAJORITY of the left obsessed over the 2000 elections.

Everything above: Complete, utter BS. You notice the nut jobs on the left more. I notice all the nut jobs.

I notice plenty of nutjobs from both sides. In my estimation, at the very least, the most vocal nutjobs are on the left.

Now, granted, we may have different criteria for what makes a "nutjob", and that will lead us to different estimations. For example, someone who thinks anyone who mentions the Bible is a nutjob (like our friend GK) is apt to think there are a LOT of nutjobs on the right. On the other hand, someone who thinks people with "no blood for oil" signs is a nutjob (like me) is apt to think there are a LOT of nutjobs on the left.

If there is a difference between the left and the right, it’s that the right nut jobs have more access to talk radio

I neither listen to talk radio, nor watch TV. When I'm talking about nutjobs, I'm talking about people I have direct interaction with, either online or in person. I know a few right wing nutjobs (the "kill all the gays" or "nuke Iraq" types), but I know dozens and dozens of left wing loonies (the "I hope Osama comes after you" or "Bush is so stupid, you deserve to die for voting for him" or "Michael Moore told the absolute truth" types.) The simple fact is, Michael Moore is considered "mainstream" by a lot of the left. That itself should give you pause.

Now, of course, this doesn't mean everyone on the left is a nutjob. But the nutjobs get places of official prominence (Michael Moore at the convention, for example.) Yeah, sure, right wing nutjobs have radio shows -- but left wing nutjobs get to sit next to former president Carter at the Democratic convention.

The main part of my point, though, is that the nutjob voices seem to have had a lot of power over the left through this election. There were days where I literally couldn't go to a single class on campus without hearing someone talking about how F911 was the "best movie ever", or putting forth some sort of "the Iraq war was really in order to prevent Saddam from switching to Euros" theory, or complaining about the 2000 election. There was never a time I remember when I kept hearing people on the right put forth really batty theories like that, and certainly never a time when I was regularly hearing threats of violence like I have been for the last 4 years.

I’m not denying that problems date back to Clinton, but that doesn’t explain why FBI whistle blower Colleen Rowley’s investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui was blocked, or why Army Sgt. Donald Kerrick account that the focus on Bin Laden and the NSC became non existent after Bush took office. Or how about the late John O’Neill, who resigned from his post as FBI Deputy Director in August of 2001 over the Bureau’s failure to properly investigate Bin Laden and Al Queda. It didn’t take him long to find a new job, the security chief at the World Trade Center. His first day at the job was September 11th.

Links? Data? Information?

The biggest thing that no one is talking about is why NORAD failed to intercept the planes.

How many minutes were the planes in the air, from the time they went off course and shut off their transponders? How does this compare to the plane you mentioned?

This seems to be a glaring omission in your analysis. I've pointed things like this out a few other times (for example, with respect to the "most NY residents are voting for Kerry" line, it's a glaring omission not to mention the change from 2000.)

[intercepting] was not reported to have happened with ANY of the four planes on 9/11.

From everything I've heard and every timeline I've read, there were planes TRYING to intercept -- but it would've taken them 2-3 minutes longer than they had. This is why my question about the timeline (above) is important -- how many minutes were the planes in the air, from the time they were lost / hijacked to the time they were intercepted?

The Bush Administration flat out LIED when they said no one had thought of the possibility of hijacked planes being used that way. Tom Clancy wrote about it...

Hadn't heard that before.

If standard procedures were followed, it would have been shot down. I have no idea why it didn’t happen...

blogs.salon.com/0001337/stories/2002/09/03/911Timeline.html

8:38 NORAD is informed AA11 has been hijacked
8:44 fighters scrambled
8:46 AA11 hits the tower

I'm seeing lots of 10-15 minute gaps between "NORAD knows the plane was hijacked" and "plane hits destination". It took 14 minutes for planes to get from Langley to DC. The plane heading toward NYC for "a good 15 minutes" still doesn't give us a whole lot of time to work with.

In many timelines I've read, there have been statements to the effect of "plane X hits tower. Nearest F-15 is still 4 minutes away" or something like that.

This was barely touched by the 9/11 commission.

Perhaps that's because of some conspiracy, like you propose.
Or, perhaps it's because there's no substance to the idea. That is, perhaps there simply wasn't any way those planes could've been shot down, because there wasn't enough time to get enough fighters in the air in the right areas.

Seriously... I can't read your post without thinking "man, where the f*** did this guy get these wackjob ideas?" At the start of your post, you said you can spot the nutjobs on both sides -- but this does not reflect well on your judgement. All it takes is like 30 seconds and google to find a good 9/11 timeline, and it only takes about 5 minutes of looking to start realizing that it actually takes a few minutes for fighters to take off and fly to a city, so the fact that some commercial airliners made it 15 whole minutes without being shot down really isn't that impressive.

What bothers me is that there is no investigation into these matters taking place.

There's also nobody *credible* calling for such an investigation. Take that into consideration.

[with respect to concession speeches] you believe that Bush would do it differently because you support him.

Look at the rest of the paragraph you wrote here. It was all about challenging the vote. But I wasn't saying Bush wouldn't challenge the vote. What I was saying was that, IN THE END when it was clear Bush had lost, he would've conceded.

The reason is because Bush knows what concession speeches are all about (see www.chicagoboyz.net/archives/002566.html for a great explanation.) Bush knows that you have to give a concession speech and get your party focused on the future instead of on the past. As far as I know, Gore is the only US politician in history to f*** that up. Instead of being classy like Kerry and (eventually) giving a concession speech that put his party's focus back on the future, he kept fighting and never really let go, and that meant his party kept fighting for the next 4 years.

Not unlike you freely associating the adjective “loony” with the anyone on the left?

See above. I'm not calling all people on the left "loony" -- I'm sure I had to have mentioned my sane friends on the left at some point in this thread. ANd I call people on the right "nutjobs" sometimes too. You just aren't reading it.

[LotharBraunBrownBryant]

(continued... hit the 10000 character limit.)

I’ve said nothing about your family.

I was mostly referring to GrandKenyon through that section of my post, since he'd been the main guy arguing with me through this thread. Lots and lots of "here's something nasty I have to say about your family" and very, very little to say about any issues. As far as I can tell, he never even addressed an issue once I gave a decent explanation of my position.

It’s about your biased, ultra partisan perspective on the right and left that I maintain lacks clarity.

Your interpretation of my perspective lacks clarity. Just look at what you've said about my use of the words "loony" and "nutjob", and compare it to my actual use of the words "loony" and "nutjob".

You've tried to tell me what my perspective is -- but you don't understand it clearly enough to even begin to evaluate it.

The machines were designed to transmit the vote counts by modem to a central computer, so the central computer could be manipulated.

Thank you. This is one of the questions I was asking.

Now, I have two more questions:
1) how does this differ from the traditional method, where some individual or group totals up the counts? Why couldn't those people add the same 100,000 votes to a count, and why would that tampering be easier to detect than this? That is -- do the machines themselves *actually* add any new tampering possibilities we should be concerned about?
2) If there's a reasonable chance of such tampering, why isn't Kerry pursuing it?

[ regarding negative votes ]They’ve been asked… they said it was a glitch.

Is it a glitch that has been fixed?

I know the vote counts are supposed to be transmitted via a modem so I assume the central computer can be accessed by a hacker, and perhaps even the individual machine could be accessed as well.

Again, how does this differ from any other voting system? It seems like the same ability to tamper exists in every other system, just not necessarily by modem.

You may have heard about Diebold from the “loonies” on your campus, but did you ever hear about it on the news?

I have.

What I'm asking is, why isn't JOHN KERRY making an issue of it, right now? There were plenty of questions about Diebold machines before the elections. But if the questions / suspicions / paranoia was even remotely justified, I'd expect John Kerry to be challenging the election.

I'm not asking why he didn't touch it mid-election. I'm asking, why didn't he touch it last night?

Perhaps the reason it seems paranoid is because it is.

I’m not even trying to argue that something happened with the boxes, but there’s a lot of smoke and I think it’s pretty fishy.

I think the reason it "seems fishy" is because there's been so much smoke generated by so many paranoid people. The fact is, there were NO election-day accusations of tampering by anyone credible -- not John Kerry, not any higher-up in the DNC, nobody. You just said at the start of an earlier post that you think both parties would do anything possible to get elected -- so what would hold them back from raising accusations about the Diebold machines? I think the only thing that holds them back is the fact that there's ZERO substance to the accusation.

Who said I had a party?

You have me there -- though I should ask you, when did I say I have a party, and when did I say I'm solidly party-line? (I may have mentioned that I do have a party, but I know I didn't say anything about agreeing with it on the majority of issues.)

I only brought it up because it is a perfectly reasonable thing for a person concerned about the health of our democracy to bring up.

if it was a close election, and there was some evidence of possible tampering, it wouldn't be paranoid. But to even bring it up in the context of a 140K vote win in Ohio, a 3.5 million vote win nationwide, and a concession by Kerry? It's not a "reasonable" thing to be bringing up in this case. It simply doesn't make sense to be spending energy on it.

It was a response to your ridicule about the complaints what happened in Florida in 2000, another thing that is a perfectly reasonable concern for any American who cares about the sanctity of our democratic ideals

It *was* perfectly reasonable for people to be concerned about the 2000 election results. I have never said otherwise.

What's unreasonable is the fact that people continued to harp on it for 4 years, continued to whine that "Bush stole the election" for 4 years, etc.

There were plenty of people on both sides who were legitimately concerned about preventing another Florida 2000. I was one of them. It's perfectly reasonable for those people to be saying "we should make sure the system can handle a close election." And it's perfectly reasonable for those people to have said before this election "the Diebold machines are cause for concern".

What's unreasonable is for people to be saying, after the election, that the Diebold machines are somehow still a cause for concern for this election. And what's really NUTS is for people to still be complaining, as of last night, that Bush "stole the election in 2000".

I consider myself an independent thinker.

Me too, for the most part. I'm a Christian who's working on a PhD in mathematical biology, studying cutting-edge evolutionary theory (adaptive dynamics / adaptive speciation, for the moment). If that doesn't make you stop and go "whoa, this guy really cares about getting stuff right" nothing will. I've got views all over the political spectrum. You just haven't heard most of them because I've mostly been responding to GrandKenyon's constant repetition of DNC talking points.

I’m not coming at this from the typical Democrat party line like you assumed

Then I apologize for making a mistaken assumption.

it wasn’t a surprise to me at all that you just assumed that. It fits right in with my assessment of your perception of the right and left. No clarity.

It does fit right in with that assessment -- but it ALSO fits right in with my assessment: I have a great deal of clarity when it comes to my perception of the right and left. But you didn't give me a lot to work from to judge where you were coming from -- you gave me your initial posts at the top of page 5 (to which I responded, essentially, that Bush would've at least gracefully conceded in the end, and that I don't think the reactions to Diebold would've been any different if the parties were swapped) and then you gave me a whole paragraph about the right trying to pin intelligence failures on Clinton (to which I responded, it's mostly the nutjobs) and another paragraph about Diebold tampering, which, frankly, is nonsense to be talking about in the context of this election. So yeah, when you kept pursuing the Diebold matter as if it was significant in the context of this election, I assumed you were something of a nutjob trying to make excuses. I see now that you're (at least mostly) sane and are just playing devil's advocate. So my assessment shouldn't surprise you -- based on what you gave me, even someone with fairly good clarity would've concluded you were coming from the left and trying to avoid actually conceding the election.

Anyway... I don't think anyone could *be* more clearly in touch with both the intelligent voters on both sides and the loons on both sides. Just looking at the political discussion on descentbb.net would show you that. I follow politics on a lot of forums, and I track a lot of issues from multiple sides.

What I've seen over the last 4 years is that the intelligent Republicans and intelligent Democrats have both given a lot of good ideas and a fair number of bad ones. But the right has mostly done a good job of actually getting their ideas out into the public, while the intelligent voices on the left have been overwhelmed by guys like Michael Moore.

Let me ask you to do something, if you would.

Tell me what things I've actually said in this thread that you interpreted as being my assessment of the right or my assessment of the left, and how they show a lack of clarity. I think the main set of assessments of the left are what I gave midway through page 3, in particular, the "anybody but Bush" sentiment and the "embracing Michael Moore" and the "having Osama use their talking points". Also "they're still harping about 2000." My main assessment of the right has been that they wouldn't still be harping about 2000 because Bush would've eventually given a "I concede. Everyone move forward and focus on the future" speech like Kerry gave. I think those assessments are fairly accurate. Can you explain to me why you think otherwise?

[LotharBraunBrownBryant]

it should be noted:

A lot of what I say about the Democratic party is what I'm hearing from friends who are Democrats who voted for Bush this year (according to the exit polls I saw, 9-10% of Democrats who voted went for Bush.) I also heard a lot from Dems who voted Kerry or Nader, but felt somewhat alienated from their party.

The most common sentiment I heard was that the party was too much "Michael Moore" and not enough "Joe Lieberman". That is, there were simply too many voices -- especially voices of prominence -- that didn't take national security seriously, or that thought there was a vast right-wing conspiracy in play.

See, for example:
www.leanwrite.com/POLITICS/041103howthedemsblewit.html
(also www.leanwrite.com/whyimdoing.html )

[samjack]

We’re just going to have to agree to disagree on a few things:

So you’ve encountered wacky people on the left who’ve threatened you with violence… they are the loudest and most obnoxious people and the most easily noticeable. Yet you ascribe the characteristics of the most obnoxious to the majority of the left, even if you do acknowledge that there are some “sane” people on the left. This is not scientific; it’s just your judgment. That is what I am questioning, your assertion that the “majority” of the left is insane (you keep using the words loony, whacko, sane… you’re stepping right into this criticism). And sorry, I still question your judgment. Doesn’t matter how many political forums you log into, your bias is obvious. Political forums aren’t an accurate barometer of what the majority of the left may think, unless you think the majority of the left logs onto political forums.

I think people on the left made a mistake by embracing Michael Moore, personally, but the right has embraced media personalities like Limbaugh, Coulter and O’Reilly. Maybe you put them in a higher class than Moore, but I don’t. And don’t tell me they aren’t mainstream. Maybe the reason the left embraced Michael Moore as they did is because the saw him as an answer to these people who have so much influence over the radio and television waves. The extremists on the left may yell and scream silly things, but I’ve never heard them say that if you don’t share a certain political belief, you are “un-American”, a common assertion by some on the right. I thought in America, you are free to believe what ever you want. I’ve heard dozens of right wingers say those who don’t support the war in Iraq are “giving aid and comfort to our enemies”. These are the mainstream media personalities I listed and more. Hell, even our own president suggested that if you don’t support his policies in handling the war on terror, you’re with the terrorists. I find these beliefs repulsive. I don’t agree with the war in Iraq, I think the president has done an awful job handling the war on terror, I’m as American as it gets, and I hate terrorists as much as anyone. Trying to tie a political dogma with being “American”, as the mainstream right likes to do, is, ironically enough, contrary to some basic American principles. The ridiculous rhetoric goes both ways LotharBot, by mainstream people of all political persuasions. You don’t agree, we can just leave it at that.

With regards to Diebold and NORAD, you are again using the words like loony and whacko too liberally (no offense ). With all due respect, your obsession with these terms, with regards to debate, is totally bush league (no pun intended ;D ). It’s an intellectual cheat. I’m just asking questions based on facts, and you are calling me whacko. I’m not theorizing at all, I just want to know why faulty voting machines are being used all around the country, and why standard operating procedures for just such an event did not prevent any of the planes from hitting their targets on 9/11. I believe making wild, baseless theories based on no evidence is whacko, you believe asking questions is whacko. We’ll agree to disagree.

A tidbit on the Diebold voting system: A hacker who successfully dials into the central computer which tabulates the votes can get FULL authority over the computer. They can do this from any where in the world, even a different country. These machines should never have been used, but they were. They were the most widely used electronic based systems used in this past election. And as far as I know, nothing has been fixed with the machines, because no one ever forced them to fix anything.

On NORAD… your theory that the fighters didn’t have enough response time doesn’t work. I’ll give you the first plane, but there should have already been fighters in the air to intercept the second, third and fourth planes. Again, all I am asking is, why weren’t defense procedures for this exact scenario carried out? If you think asking that simple question makes me whacko, I think that reflects more on you than me.

On the Bush Administrations lie about not knowing planes could be used the way they were, it was Condoleeza Rice who said something to the affect of “We NEVER imagined that hijacked planes could be used this way”.

The links you wanted:

John O’Neill
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/
www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020114fa_FACT1

Colleen Rowley
www.time.com/time/covers/1101020603/memo.html

Donald Kerrick
www.johnmccrory.com/wrote.asp?this=267

[samjack]

Another thing we disagree on: You have an unwavering faith in the ability of the mainstream press and career politicians to deal with and address every relevant issue that might face Americans. The fact that the above issues weren’t brought up by the press and by friggin John Kerry, to you, discredits them. Would it really be in Kerry’s and the Democrats best interests to call the Diebold machines into question NOW, AFTER the election? Think about it. Think about the assumptions you’ve made about me since I brought the issue up. Just because the election is over, doesn’t mean they stopped being politicians. They will do just about anything to get into positions of power, except things that would hurt their ability to get into positions of power. I believe that the mainstream press has an issue with selling ad space… it’s a commercial venture. Politicians must not step on the toes of campaign contributors and potential voters. These issues I am raising are extremely disturbing. Most people want to be comforted, not disturbed. I believe there are many, many issues underneath the surface that are very important, and most people are oblivious to them. You can go on with your faith that the mainstream press and career politicians will bring every relevant issue to the surface, and we’ll just agree to disagree.

With regards to the 2000 election… Gore is the first to contest an election, yes, but he’s also the first to deal with such a unique circumstance. The election was decided by about 200 votes, and there were serious questions about the count. The only other losing candidate that was in a position to contest the election was Nixon in 1960, but this is a different era. I still stand by my assertion that the Republicans would have done the exact same thing, and taken it just as far.