Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Poll: Which US presidential candidate do you like best?

I also sympathize with both Israelis and Palestinians. The problems are numerous, starting with the creation of the Jewish state. What the UN should have done was to create two states side-by-side, a Palestine and an Israel. Sometimes the argument gets a little muddled as many think that Israel was carved out of the country of Palestine when at the time it was British territory. There hadn't been a Palestine or an Israel in thousands of years.

But that's beside the point since it did end up displacing many Palestinians from their homes, regardless of its geographic identity. For quite a long time they had lived dispersed among the various Arab countries like Egypt, Jordan, and Syria for instance. Jordan, in particular, is heavily populated with Palestinians (if memory serves, about half) which is why you hear a number of proposals that any Palestinian homeland could be coupled to Jordan. It wasn't until much later that many of the Palestinians gathered together into what is now the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel eventually annexed as a result of an Arab invasion to use as a buffer zone, Israel being only 10 miles wide at its thinnest point. Yassir Arafat, for instance, spent most of his life in Egypt.

Here's where much of the injustice comes in from the Palestinians' own brothers. The people were encouraged to stay away from building towns and cities as much as they could, creating camps instead, to prevent the people from settling in, always guaranteeing that eventually Israelis would be driven into the sea and that the people could go home. It's tough to live in a refugee camp for generations. The Arab countries, themselves, flush with oil revenue could have easily taken care of them keeping them in fairly comfortable conditions, but a combination of graft and outright theft kept much of the money away from the actual people. Then there's the politics. The Arab countries in a way deliberately kept the Palestinian people in squalor for the reason of fanning the flames of hatred towards Israel. With the monarchies in the Middle East, you have a lot of very unpopular governments. They had to deflect anger away from themselves, so the Jewish state was a natural target for that anger. Decades of madrassas taught people to hate the Jews and to hate America, blaming them for every problem, despite the fact that America and Israel are some of the Palestinian's greatest benefactors, supplying them with hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

The situation now could be the closest we've come to an actual settlement between Israel and Palestine since 1948. The Palestinians have a government of their own, though it is a very divided government with a Fatah president and a Hamas Prime Minister. Part of that was Fatah's own problem. In the elections where pluralities ruled, Fatah often ran two or three candidates on the same ballot while Hamas wisely ran one. The divided vote ended up handing the legislature to Hamas even though Fatah actually won more votes. The problems between the two groups is nothing like what we think of when we think of political parties. Here, their disagreements are decided with firefights, not debates. Not surprising, I suppose, since both started life as resistance groups, not political parties. So in part, the divided government has kept the Palestinians from speaking with one voice, making an agreement with Israel much harder. Also the fact that Hamas refuses to recognize Israel and still actively advocates the destruction of the Jewish state has caused more headaches whereas Fatah was willing to recognize Israel to get its own country.

I feel, perhaps naively, that when the Palestinians can settle their own internal disputes, then perhaps the way could be open to an agreement. That would go a long way towards defusing the entire Middle East, though the hatred will still likely go beyond any of our lifetimes. The important thing, there, is to give the Palestinians their own homeland so that they can concentrate more on bettering their own lives than ending the lives of Israelis.

After reading all the posts and thinking twice before deciding to comment I finally had the courage to post. Before I begin, though, I have to say: Paul and Ann I agree with everything you said so far I won’t be so eloquent as you guys but I’ll try

Paul, I couldn't agree with you more!

Yep, you're totally right on this, Paul. US didn't go to war until they were attacked but some people tend to forget that part since US is doing so many great things to erase the evil from the world

Ann, you're right! Even a big and powerful country like US can’t live without the rest of the world, especially because it depends and relies on product importation but that’s another matter that I don’t want to go into. US needs the world as much as the world needs US.

US is the country that gave me my dear husband and the country where I'm living in and where I intend to raise my children (US is in my heart and I will become a citizen next year ) but just like I don't close my eyes to the wrong things about Brazil, I don't close my eyes to the wrong things I see here. I support the troops, but I don't support the war although there are a lot of people out there who think these two things can't co-exist. Right now I think the Bush administration used people's fear to stay in power. If it wasn't for 9/11 Bush wouldn't have been reelected. He lied to his own people to justify the war. It’s incredible how his lies didn’t take the same proportions as Clinton’s lie did. Maybe I can’t see it because where I’m from we could care less if our president lied about whom he has been sleeping with as long as he was a good president We just think it’s his wife’s problem not ours

Ann, once and again I agree with you. It wasn’t until I moved to US that I realized how the government here tries to inflict more fear in the population and how it has been working so far. Yes, 9/11 was a horrible event. I won’t ever forget that day and how I cried and tried to call everyone that I knew to see if they were okay (my mom has a cousin who lived in NY City for 30 years but moved after 9/11) but you can’t become paranoid and think all Muslim nations must be attacked or they will take down your country. You can’t just go to war without thinking about the consequences. You just generate more hate towards you and that’s never good. Maybe I’m just a pacifist and believe in Utopia but I always try to think rationally and talk rather than going straight to fight.

As for the media Carol said: “They reduce everything to high school drama, celebrity-style coverage, and sound bytes that inevitably take quotes out of context. The term 'investigative journalism' is now an oxymoron unless you want the searing truth about who propositioned whom in a public washroom.” I will just agree with Carol on this and say that I much rather get my news through foreign press than through our US one. I end up knowing more about what’s happening here this way than if I only watched US news .

In conclusion, I try not to be bias when I talk because I have seen things from the outside when I was still in Brazil and I have seen them from the inside since I’ve been here for the past 2 years and 4 months. Even when I was in Brazil I would voice everything that I found wrong there. Loving one country doesn’t mean you need to agree with what your president does all the time. It doesn’t matter from which party he is. It doesn’t mean you have to be blind. I certainly don’t agree with Brazil’s current president and his socialist/communist thinking and his friendship with Fidel and Hugo Chavez. I actually fear him. I know I might not have the rights to voice my opinion about US, at least not yet since I can’t vote but I will someday (right now I would vote for Obama, there I said it ) But there’s one thing I love about free countries, though: freedom of speech

There’s a song from the musical Wicked that always makes me say: “That’s sooo true!” So I’m leaving this topic with a part of the lyrics for you to think about:

WIZARD:
(spoken) See - I never had a family of my own. So, I
guess I just - wanted to give the citizens of Oz everything.

ELPHABA(spoken): So you lied to them.

WIZARD:
(spoken) Elphaba, where I'm from, we believe all sorts of
things that aren't true. We call it - "history."

(sung) A man's called a traitor - or liberator?
A rich man's a thief - or philanthropist?
Is one a crusader - or ruthless invader?
It's all in which label
Is able to persist.

Raquel (who probably said more than she should have and apologizes in advance )

Raquel, welcome to the party! The more the merrier.

I will, of course, take some issues with some of your comments but you expected that, right?

You wondered why people don't take Bush's "lies" as seriously as Bill Clinton's. That's because it's never been proven that Bush has lied. As Pam eloquently put it, people have completely redefined the definition of lying when it comes to President Bush. Lies are intentional mistruths. We'll take Colin Powell as an example. Nobody questions his integrity. He was in on most of the discussions as Secretary of State and saw all the intelligence the services had provided. He's stated that for the most part, we were mistaken that we believed Iraq had an ongoing weapons program in place. Since he was in charge of presenting the evidence to the UN, he apologized for being wrong. He did not apologize for lying to people. Even after he left the State Department, he never once intimated that the president lied about anything.

The only reason there are some people who believe he "lied" is because of Democrats trying to cover their rear ends with their virulently anti-war constituents. It's impossible for them to be at fault for their votes on Iraq because obviously somebody had to have lied to them. And you know the press in the US. Whatever a Democrat says is axiomatic. Whatever a Republican says is looked at with suspicion or just plain ignored. Hence the fairy tale was spun that Bush lied, people died. Paul accuses the president of cherry picking. Well, how does he know that? Because some Democrats, fearing for their re-election said so? Oooh. I prefer to listen to House Intelligence Vice Chairwoman Jane Harman and Senate Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller, Democrats both, who also saw the intelligence and believed them. Because Harman preferred to tell the truth as she saw it rather than tow the Democratic Party line of Bush lied, people died, Harman was overlooked as Chair of the Intelligence Committee when Nancy Pelosi took over the Speaker's chair. The job went to an inexperienced Congressman named Silvestre Reyes, a guy who couldn't answer the question of whether al Qaeda was made up of Sunnis or Shiite. His answer was laughingly both. The real answer is that al Qaeda considers the Shia to be heretics and would like nothing better than to wipe them off the face of the earth.

So any accusation is just that, an accusation. It has never been proven that the president said anything he believed to be false. If you are liberal, then you are inclined to believe Bush deliberately lied. That's fine, but it's not fact. Now with Bill Clinton, that was fact. He lost his law license and was disbarred from the Arkansas Bar and from the Supreme Court. He's a proven liar. Whereas Democrats HOPE Bush lied. They don't like thinking that intelligence might have been wrong, despite the overwhelming evidence from every major intelligence service in the world.

As for the statement that Bush would have lost re-election in 2004 if 9/11 hadn't happened is strange. How would you know that? The entire dynamic of the 2004 election was the War in Iraq. And Bush was re-elected despite that drag on his popularity. Without 9/11, there would never have been a War in Iraq. The 2004 elections would have definitely been about something else, most likely a good or bad economy or some other issue like Social Security. It would have been a run-of-the-mill election without national security as a major issue, likely. I don't know that for sure because I can't see into an alternate universe where al Qaeda didn't attack us. The world was drastically altered on that day. To project 9/11 as the only reason Bush would be re-elected is a far stretch. We don't know if he would have been. It would all depend on what the issue of the day was. It most likely wouldn't have been terrorism or war.

President Bush campaigned in 2000 on a platform of fixing things at home. He would be a domestic president instead of an international president. He barely mentioned foreign affairs in his campaigning, partly because he was inexperienced. In a debate he had trouble coming up with the name of the president of Pakistan. Without 9/11, this would have been a very different seven years. For all you know, you might have ended up being a big Bush supporter, though agreeing with everything Ann and Paul say probably means that you'd be a Democrat in which case you'd probably hate Bush anyway. We'll never know, though.

I've heard in some quarters Democrats accusing him of lying because he had campaigned on being a domestic president, yet he focused his entire administration on the War on Terror. Some people will go to any lengths to denigrate the opposition.

Thanks, Roger And I really appreciate your posts because you've been truth to what you believe in and you're not insensitive to other people's opinions and feelings We can always agree to disagree and respect different views and that's what I like about your posts, Ann's and Paul's. You guys rock!

I'm not liberal or conservative, I fall in the middle and that's why I will register as an independent when the time comes. I believe he lied for the same reasons Ann gave you (the press not reporting anything about it, not even foreign press, etc. After all, you would think that it would be such a big deal to the press if they really had found those weapons of massive destruction ) Besides I find it hard to believe that the security agencies wouldn't know better unless they were trying to make President Bush look bad. Believe me I know some things about NSA, for example, and I can assure you that NSA have all the means to know better

Because he wasn't that popular before 9/11 But then I'm not sure if Kerry would have won either since he was kind of weak so I guess we will never know. All I know is that 9/11 helped President Bush a lot and his popularity improved afterwards.

Again, like I said before I'm not liberal or conservative. I don't like President Bush not because of what party he is in (I could care less since I would probably vote for Rudolph Giuliani if he was a candidate. I really like his views regarding illegal immigration, for example and of course other things as well). I don't like him because he has put this country in a worse situation internationally (if you’re American now and travels anywhere in the world you’re probably in a bigger danger than you were before). Not to mention that you don’t have many allies. He has spent too much money in an unjustified war. Our economy is worse than it was in the past. People can’t buy as much as they could before

It seems like he didn’t fix anything at home, quite the opposite, actually. Where is our progress? Besides a good president in my book is one that can balance national and international matters because just a very naïve person could believe that we can ignore the rest of the world nowadays. And we know that his election in 2000 was strange to say the least.

Raquel (who is a pacifist and doesn’t want to upset anyone and thinks we should just agree to disagree and move on )

P.S.: Roger, I love your signature because I love Enchanted and because the scene with the song “That’s How You Know” is one of my favorites! See, we can find something to agree on

I have to take exception with pretty much every word of that.

You don't know what went on behind closed doors any more than I do.

Yes, I believe he lied. I believe he and his administration deliberately perpetuated falsehoods, using rumors and implications and cherry-picked reports. An adviser comes in, says the intelligence doesn't support the WMD claims. He's badgered about it throughout the meeting until finally he says, "What do you want me to say? It's a slam dunk? Fine." And what happens the next day? They spread the news across the country that their adviser says it's "a slam dunk." I only have his word for it, but I'm inclined to believe him. Now, is that technically a lie? He did say those words. But it completely misrepresents his position.

I'm sure I could come up with better examples.

The point is that you choose not to believe that. But you can't prove that Bush hasn't lied. You weren't there. You haven't read every report. I hear about reports which contradict what you're saying. But I don't remember the specifics well enough to quote them back to you. So you choose to believe that Bush is telling the truth and the people who claim otherwise are the liars. But you can't prove it.

No, I can't prove that he lied. If I were better informed, if I had a better, more reliable memory, maybe I could. It's what I believe, based on what I've heard and seen. I believe there's been gross mismanagement, huge coverups, unbelievable attacks on civil liberties and the very foundations of this country's government... But you, on the other side of the political situation, don't. So you pick which things to believe in to support your views and I pick mine. And with the flood of information and non-information available, there's plenty to support both sides. And we get nowhere.

As for the media... Maybe there's a liberal bias, maybe there isn't. As a liberal, I'm biased, so it's hard to tell. As a conservative, you're biased, too. I've certainly heard enough reports about conservatives trying to claim that reporting objective facts was biased. (When the truth is biased against you, you know there's something wrong.) But you're just going to come back and say that the problem is which facts they reported and which ones they didn't. (For the record, IIRC, The Daily Show did cover the WMD discovery... and Fox's ever so "fair and balanced" slant on things.)

But a blanket statement that the media says Dems are always right and Reps are always suspect? I expected better of you, Roger.

Fair enough. I wasn't in the room when everything was discussed. But I do have a number of commissions like the Robb-Silberman Commission that have been appointed to look at everything from President Daily Briefs to interviews with analysts in anonymity by those commissions. Democrats have investigated till the cows come home. Nobody has ever uncovered a shred of proof any analyst was ever pressured to manufacture a result. The Daily Briefs essentially matched the information given to the Intelligence committees. I've got several Democrats who say he didn't lie. And not a single Republican who said he did. I'd say the preponderance of the evidence show that no, he didn't. But you're right. I can't prove it in a court of law.

Here's an interesting article about liberal lies about the president and his team. Factcheck.org, run by the Annenberg Institute is famously known for its impartiality in critiquing both sides. Here's an examination of an ad a liberal anti-war group published called "They Lied." It covers quite a bit of some of the "lies" Bush and his team have been accused of. Annenberg shoots down most of the assertions and confirms none of them and shows how some of the facts were twisted by the left to fit their world view of "Bush Lied," primarily through the use of quotes out of context.

Anti-War Ad

You might find it interesting.

Here's the last line from the article:

Here's another FactCheck.org analysis of those 16 fateful words in the president's State of the Union Address regarding Niger and how the left tried to use it to label Bush a liar:

16 Words

What this shows is a concerted effort by the left to destroy the president by falsely accusing him of lying when not a shred of proof existed to support their assertions.

Those two FactCheck.org articles go to the core of the arguments made by the left to say that the president lied. An impartial examination shows that the left, in some cases, distorted and lied to try to prove their case.

Roger, you said:
In early 2003, my best friend's sister, Carina, who is married to an American, was in Sweden for a visit. We were talking politics because of the upcoming Iraq war. I was comparing George W. Bush to Bill Clinton. And Carina said:

"I really wonder what historians will say about Bill Clinton a hundred years from now. I'm sure they will say that he was the most disgusting American President ever."

"Why?" I asked, totally shocked. "Come on... the United States was doing splendid economically under Clinton, the dollar was sky-high... don't I remember... and you had a great budget surplus, and all of us in Europe were so thankful to you for coming to us and helping us sort out our Balkan mess! And I'm sure that the U.S. was quite well-liked in most other parts of the world, too. And you were not at war. Why would Clinton have been so disgusting? You mean because of the Monica Lewinsky thing?"

"He lied to us!!!" Carina replied, her eyes blazing. "He lied to the American people!!!!"

Carina is married to a conservative American, and she has adopted his views. She might have thought that Bill Clinton was the most disgusting American President of all time even if the American media had been Clinton-supporters. But there is no way that so many Americans would have disliked Clinton so much when America was doing so well at home and abroad, if the liberal media had ruled back then.

Only eight years after George Herbert Walker Bush, America's forty-first President, was defeated by Bill Clinton, his son George Walker Bush ran for President. I thought that this was quite noteworthy, but the American media didn't comment on it much at all. It was mentioned, but not discussed. In fact, I didn't read any comments on it at all, although I realize that there may have been many articles on it that I can easily have missed. Anyway, when I mentioned it to my brother, who I regard as well-informed, he protested. Was George W. Bush the former President Bush's son? Oh no, he wasn't! Surely the U.S. presidency can't pass from father to son like that. No, obviously George W. Bush had to be the elder George Bush's nephew!

This year there has been so much talk about how strange it would be if Hillary Clinton sort of "succeeded" her husband as the U.S. President. In 2000, George W. Bush's very close relationship with George H.W. Bush was seen as no problem at all, hardly worth mentioning. I don't see this as evidence that liberal media rules in the United States.

In the election of the year 2000, George W. Bush ran against Al Gore. Gore won the popular vote, that is, there were more Americans who voted for Gore than there were Americans who voted for Bush. But because of the American voting system, winning the popular vote doesn't guarantee that you win the Presidency. The election would be decided in Florida. There was an enormous amount of criticism against the sheer technicalities of the voting in Florida. I remember, for example, that the ballots were oddly designed. I saw a picture of a Florida ballot. There were many different names on it. It was easy and obvious to see where to punch a hole if you wanted to vote for Bush, because his name was placed in the upper left corner. There was no mistaking the proper spot to punch if you wanted to give your vote to him. Gore's name, however, was more oddly placed, and there was a real possibility that you might vote for another candidate altogether, Pat Buchanan, when you tried to vote for Gore. If one Gore-supporter out of a thousand accidentally voted for another candidate, that might make a difference.



Also, it was necessary to punch a hole clear through the ticket, or else your vote might be considered invalid. Lots of ballot tickets were reportedly deemed invalid because they were just "pregnant", they were just "bulging", instead of having a hole punched clear through them. It was up to those who counted the votes to decide for themselves if a ballot had a sufficently good hole in it to be valid.

The man who was responsible for the whole voting process in Florida was the Governor of Florida, John Ellis "Jeb" Bush, who is George W. Bush's own brother. Is it reasonable to assume that Jeb Bush was wholly neutral in his approach to the voting process? Would he have been just as happy to see Al Gore win as he was to see his own brother win? Is it at all possible to imagine that he might have done a little something, in his position as the Governor of Florida, to help his big brother win in Florida? Such as okaying the design of the Florida ballots?

Bush won a very narrow victory in Florida. If I remember correctly, he got a couple of hundred votes more than Gore. But given all the controversy over the "pregnant" ballots, somebody - I don't remember who - asked that the ballots in Florida should be counted and scrutinized again. The renewed counting of the ballots started. But before it was finished, the Supreme Court stepped in and ordered the renewed counting to be stopped. The Supreme Court thereby declared that George W. Bush was the winner, and the new President of the United States.

Guess what? Most of the jurors on the Supreme Court had been appointed by Republican Presidents. They had been picked partly because of their conservative views. Is it likely that these jurors were wholly neutral, when it came to making a decision which might have an enormous bearing on whether the United States would have a Republican or a Democratic President? Is it possible to assume that most jurors of the Supreme Court, who had been appointed by Republican Presidents, would prefer that George W. Bush won over Al Gore?

We can't know what the jurors were thinking, but by stopping the renewed counting of the ballots in Florida, they made sure that Al Gore couldn't win.

Let me summarize. In 1992, George Herbert Walker Bush is defeated by Bill Clinton. America is doing very well under Clinton, both at home and abroad. The media in America portray Clinton in such a way that at the end of his second term, Clinton is widely and strongly disliked.

George Herbert Walker Bush's eldest son, George Walker Bush, runs for the Presidency in the year 2000. George Herbert Walker Bush's younger son, John Ellis "Jeb" Bush, is Governor of Florida. George Walker Bush loses the popular vote to Al Gore, but the election will be decided in Florida. Because of the design of the Florida ballot, it is likely that hundreds of Gore voters accidentally vote for Pat Buchanan instead. It is also hard to say which ballots are valid or not, so those who count the ballots may be free to discard or accept ballots at their own discretion. When the Florida votes are counted again, the Republican-appointed Supreme Court steps in and stops the re-counting, thus handing the Presidency to George W. Bush.

Can you imagine what this looked like to a foreigner? During that election, the United States didn't look like a country with a fair voting process to me. It didn't really look like a democracy to me.

And it seems to me that if the liberal media had ruled the United States at this time, there would have been such an outcry that the Constitution would still be in the process of having new amendments attached to it, to make sure that the scandals of the election of 2000 could never happen again.

Then in the election of 2004... George W. Bush ran against John Kerry. Kerry was a decorated Vietnam War veteran. George W. Bush never went to Vietnam. You'd think that the respective Vietnam War records of the two candidates would speak very strongly in favor of John Kerry. But the "Swift Boat Campaign" succeeded in making John Kerry's medal of honour look like a stigma of deceit and cowardice instead. How could this possibly happen? Not because the liberal media were ruling the United States.

Yes, I agree that the mood in America has shifted. People are getting tired of Bush. They don't believe in him like they used to. And the liberal media are getting back at him.

He had it coming to him, if you ask me.

Ann

Ah, wonderful can of worms you opened up there, Ann.

I could wax on quite a bit about this, but .... ok, you convinced me.

That famous butterfly ballot was designed by... a Democrat, Theresa Lapore, the Supervisor of Elections for Palm Beach County. If people were confused, it was her fault. Florida law stated that each county was responsible for creating its own ballots. In this case, heavily Democratic Palm Beach had its ballot designed by a Democrat. Jeb Bush had nothing to do with it. In fact he recused himself and stayed far away from the counting process.

You also failed to mention the fact that a number of television networks declared that Florida had been won by Al Gore... one hour before the balloting closed in the western part of the state. The western panhandle of the state votes heavily Republican with a rural and heavily military population. Independent analysis of the election on the effect of that early call showed Bush to have lost roughly anywhere from 6,000-15,000 votes because of disgusted Republicans who went home rather than voting since the state had already been lost. The reason why the state had two closing times was because the western part of the state is in the Central Time Zone while the eastern part is in the Eastern Time Zone.

Many complained later that at 5:30AM Eastern Time (I remember because I was up at 2:30 Pacific Time watching election returns), Fox News declared Bush to be the winner of Florida, followed by several other networks. This obviously caused Gore to lose votes. But wait. Polls had been closed for over ten hours, unlike the situation in which the networks had called the state for Gore an hour before the panhandle closed. All networks retracted their call hours later.

Al Gore, in challenging the election in Florida, did not challenge the state election by asking for a fair recount. He challenged it in only four counties, all of them heavily Democratic. He demanded a recount of all the chads and dents, using counting techniques never before used by any county in the country. He did not ask for recounts in any of the Republican counties. Ask yourself if that is fair. Among the votes he wanted to have counted for himself was a hole punched for another candidate but only a pregnant chad in his slot. He also wanted double votes counted for himself. The only way you can have those count is if you were somehow clairvoyant and could read the intent of the voter because of a small dent on a piece of paper or two holes.

Some complained that Pat Buchanan got an unusual number of votes in Palm Beach, so obviously all of those votes were Gores. Not so fast. Pat Buchanan actually had quite a following in Palm Beach County, and had campaigned there numerous times. It was one of the counties where he had done much of his fund raising. So maybe that unusual count wasn't so unusual after all.

Ah, but what about Kathryn Harris? Clearly she stole the election from Gore. Well, Harris took unusual steps to appear non-partisan, not that it helped since she was demonized from day one. She hired a Democratic law firm with her lead attorney being a prominent Democrat, Joe Klock. And in each case, she followed the letter of the law, though in each case she was overruled by the Florida Supreme Court which made up law as it went along, basically ignoring the state's statutes. It was so bad that the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, Democrat Charles Wells appointed by Democratic governor Lawton Chiles, chastised his associates for their rulings in a blistering dissent, believing the rulings would create a constitutional crisis.

Dissent of Chief Justice Charles Wells

Fast forward to the US Supreme Court at the time. Of the nine, seven had indeed been appointed by Republican presidents. Of the seven, only three of them were conservatives: the late William Rehnquist (Nixon), Clarence Thomas (Bush, the elder), and Antonin Scalia (Reagan). The most liberal member of the court was John Paul Stevens, appointed by a Republican, Gerald Ford. David Souter, a George H.W. Bush appointee, was also incredibly liberal. He was recommended to President Bush by John Sununu, the president's Chief of Staff, since Souter came from Sununu's home state of New Hampshire. Bush appointed him on that recommendation alone and had done insufficient checking of his record. Bush claimed that Souter was the biggest regret of his presidency. Two others were mavericks, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, both Reagan appointees, neither of whom vote consistently liberal or conservatively. The other members of the court were Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (both Clinton appointees), and Clarence Thomas, a George H.W. Bush appointee.

The Supreme Court made two decisions that day. One was whether the vote was constitutional. The second was whether to conduct a full recount. The decision on whether the vote was constitutional was 7-2 against as a violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution with the liberal Stephen Breyer and David Souter voting with the majority. Only Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens, the Ford appointee, voted in favor of Gore. On the question of the recount and whether a full state recount would take place, the vote was closer, 5-4 against where Breyer and Souter voted for a recount along with Ginsburg and Stevens. The press completely ignored the more salient 7-2 decision, which basically said that Gore was using unconstitutional methods to win the election and focused solely on the 5-4 decision.

The reasoning behind the 5-4 vote was that they deemed insufficient time remained to conduct the recount according to Florida state law without risking the disenfranchisement of all Florida electors with the safe harbor day already passed (electors met on Dec. 18, 2000 while the Supreme Court's decision was on December 12), and set the final vote count as a George W. Bush win at 537 votes. As a note, in 2004, Bush won Florida by 10% (55-45), or 500,000 votes.

Let's fast forward even more. Following Gore's concession, many news agencies went to Florida to conduct their own recounts and there were very many. The newspapers and networks used several counting methods to see what the results would be, including using Gore's own counting methods. Every nick or indentation was counted if it was in the same zip code as Gore's name. In every single case but one, Bush won the recount. The only recount that Gore won was when double votes were counted for him, exclusively. And then he won by a grand total of two votes, IIRC. As a note, there isn't a county in the entire country that allows double votes to count. They are always thrown out.

The correct decision was made and the proper winner became president. Even the newspapers conceded that after conducting their own recounts.

You can argue about whether it's fair for the popular vote winner to lose the electoral college, but those were the rules of the game going in that had been in place for two hundred years. Ask President Samuel Tildon how it felt to win the popular vote as he watched Rutherford B. Hayes take the oath of office. It has happened four times in our nation's history.

John Quincy Adams became the sixth president despite losing the popular vote to Andrew Jackson. Jackson became the seventh. Neither had a majority of electoral votes, so the presidency was decided in the House of Representatives. Ironically, Adams' father, John Adams, was the second president of the United States.

Samuel Tildon won the popular vote but lost the presidency when the vote went to the House. In a back room deal, Republicans got their president in Rutherford B. Hayes (nineteenth president) at the price of withdrawing all Union troops from the southern states, thus ending Reconstruction following the Civil War.

Grover Cleveland failed to win re-election, losing to Benjamin Harrison despite having the popular vote. Cleveland won four years later to become the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms (22nd and 24th president). Harrison had a majority of the electoral votes so this was decided by the electoral college. Benjamin Harrison's grandfather was the ninth president, William Henry Harrison, who set a record of shortest presidential term when he died in office 31 days into his term of pneumonia.

George W. Bush (43rd president) became president after losing the popular vote to Al Gore. He won Florida by 537 votes.

Oh, let's not forget the typical Democratic October surprise. Three days before the election, a story broke about George W. Bush having been arrested when he was younger for a DWI (driving while intoxicated) after a reporter had been tipped off by some Gore operatives. That story cost Bush a lot of votes from religious conservatives, most likely costing him the popular vote, despite the fact that he had not had a drink in over ten years and was an admitted recovering alcoholic.

I'll bet much to the surprise of many of the liberals on this board, guess who it was who broke the story of the DWI arrest? None other than Carl Cameron of Fox News. Fair and Balanced.

interesting stuff.

Roger your story about GW's drinking gives me the op to rant about the media again.
What was the NY Times thinking with its recent story alleging an affair that one of the current candidates had. And Swift Boat!!

What are they doing???? Would Perry White be publishing this stuff?

Anyone ever see "All the President's Men'? Notice the Washington Post editor's ruthless insistence on reliable sources plus more than one of those. His insistence on evidence? To-day, at a time when we need reprorters and journalists who model themselves on invesitgative reporters, what we get are guys who model themselves on paparazzi.

Btw on the subject of Bush lying - my interpretation is yes he did, but he it was not his *intent* to lie. I think he believed what he was saying. The trouble, imo was that he was influenced by Cheney, Rumsfield and Rove.

When I watched the Gore/Bush debates (I told you: born a political junkie ) I was struck by how little Bush knew about the world. His background knowledge was sketchy and he had no meaningful intellectual framework to handle the questions. Instead he kept repeating the same few cliches. I think that's likely why he bought what R & C presented to him later. He lacked the knowledge, the intellectual skills, and the experience to evaluate and assess what he was given. In other words, no cherry-picking.

But as the media said at the time, Bush was the more likeable and personable candidate - people wanted to have a drink with him. They were comfortable with him (This was before Gore morphed into EnviroMan) Plus Bush presented himself well on stage - he was more at home there than Gore was (and later, Kerry). I think, too, many Americans found Bush's religious faith comforting. (nothing wrong with this - as I've said before, I envy those who are able to find comfort in their faith)

Who knows how much influence a trash story has or a leaked document?
Right now opposition Canadian federal politicians, cheered on by our media, are hysterical about a leaked note reporting a comment made by an Obama staffer to a Canadian diplomat.

The accusation by the Oppostion and our news media: The Canadian government is trying to .... gasp.. influence the American election! The Americans will be hostile now! And of course, the Democrats, if elected, will retaliate against Canada! To which I think... get a grip, people.

My bet is that 99.5% of Americans don't know about this leaked note, and if they did it would not have any influence on them. For example, I'm betting no one on these boards even knows what I'm talking about here

Nevertheless, our PM has already apologised to Americans for this. I am not making this up.

love ranting first thing in the morning.

c.

Ann, I have stayed quiet, watching this debate. I don't like to get into political arguments, because nobody ever wins them -- but one thing you can take to the bank. Roger's facts are correct. I watched this whole scenario play out, tearing out my hair and wondering if our political system was going to survive all the games in Florida and elsewhere. I'm still wondering.

Nan

PS. Oh, and Carol, <g> it's beginning to look like there's a good chance that Enviro-man may have to buy himself a dunce cap. Have you seen anything about the International Climate Conference held in New York this last week? If absolutely nothing else, all the distinguished scientists that showed up to dispute the Global Warming dogma gives the lie to the "consensus" argument. The argument isn't settled at all -- except in Al Gore's mind.

http://icecap.us/index.php

I'll be writing in Ron Paul. I can't in good conscience vote for any of the "recognized" candidates and Ron Paul agrees with me that the government has way overstepped our founding father's original intent. I'd like to continue farming the land that has been in my family for over 100 years and the current administration and all recognized candidates support the over-regulating of farming to point that only large, factory farms (Monsanto, Cargill, Tyson) will be able to survive. Can you say, "Welcome to McDonalds, would you like genetically modified french fries with your cloned hamburger?"

I have mixed feelings on Iraq. I grew up in the military so my first instinct is to always support military action. But I still want to know why we haven't caught Osama bin Laden and if the Iraqis want a democracy why are American soldiers doing the work? There will never be peace in the middle east, so do we keep sending soldiers over there to fight the never ending war or do we call it quits at some point? If so, what point?

I should bring up one additional aside on the whole Florida mess. Under federal law, the safe harbor day is the date by which all recounts must be complete in order to allow electors to participate when the electors choose the president and vice president. The law stated safe harbor was six days before the electors were to meet. Since the electors were scheduled to meet on Dec. 18, the safe harbor day was Dec. 12. The recount would have already had to have been completed by the time the Supreme Court ruled, one day after arguments.

Following a hand recount, which would take several days, Florida state law requires that each interested party must have the opportunity to legally challenge the vote totals and any individual vote that may have been counted. Given that only five days would have remained before the electors met and no recount had yet begun, the strong likelihood was that the Florida electors would not have been certified and therefore could not vote when the electors met on Dec. 18. That would have the effect of disenfranchising six million voters. The Supreme Court determined that was unacceptable.

So there actually was a reason why the recount was stopped. It was not an arbitrary decision so that they could crown George W. Bush the president. It was mainly made to prevent the disenfranchisement of Florida voters.

If such a scenario were to happen and Florida could not vote, the final tally would have been Gore 268-246. Gore lost the vote of one Democratic elector in Maryland so he didn't get the full 269. Since Gore would have failed to reach 270 votes required to win election, the decision would have moved to the Congress. Under the Constitution, the House decides who becomes president while the Senate decides who becomes vice president.

In the House, the rules are such that it is not an individual vote. Votes are tallied by state delegations where each state gets one vote. So if a state has three Republicans and two Democrats, for instance, the Republican candidate would win the vote of that state. In the House at the time, Republicans controlled 28 state delegations, so the final vote would have been George W. Bush 28-12 with Texas, ironically, voting for Gore since at the time, Democrats controlled the delegation 17-15. States with tied delegations did not get a vote.

In the Senate, Cheney would not have necessarily won the vote. Jan. 3 is the date that a new Congress is seated and when a vote would take place for president and vice president in case the vote is required. On Jan. 2, the makeup of the Senate was 55-45 GOP. On Jan. 3, the makeup was 50-50 with Al Gore casting the deciding vote as President of the Senate in case of a tie. And among the 50 Democratic votes would have been Joe Lieberman voting for himself. Assuming Lieberman voted for himself, that would have made it 50-50 with Al Gore casting the final vote for Lieberman. If Lieberman were to recuse himself, the vote would have been 50-49 in favor of Dick Cheney. So there was a possibility of having a Republican president and a Democratic vice president. The House vote would have remained the same at 28-12 before or after Jan. 3.

It was kind of interesting that between Jan. 3 and Jan. 20, when the new president and vice president are inaugurated, Tom Daschle (D-SD) was Majority Leader of the Senate. On and after Jan. 20, Trent Lott (R-MS) became Majority Leader.

Any way you look at it, Al Gore had no chance of winning. The Florida vote was against him and the makeup of the House at the time was against him as well.

Interesting how the Constitutional process works, huh?

I watched the Hurricanes v. Wild last night. One of the Wild players hit a Hurricane from behind, smashing him into the wall and down onto the ice, and other Hurricanes players immediately began, ahem, a spirited effort of retaliation. And the sports-casters thought that was a really positive thing. Team spirit, male bonding, defend your buddies, etc. Really.

Is this the flap about the Obama staffer telling some Canadian official not to pay attention to Obama's public villifying of NAFTA, 'cause he didn't really mean it?

PJ

On a more serious note, about the Palestinian problem...

There's some video footage of the reaction in Gaza, when news came in that eight teenagers had been shot dead and many more injured in the library of a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem. It's taken from Palestinian TV.

Fuller story (with pictures) is here .

Has anybody seen anything about this in the major media?

PJ

Pam wrote:
Yes, that's what I think, but I didn't want to say all that - so much to write But you're right to call me on my use of "lie" in that context: it's not the right word.

Glad to see you got my point about hockey. It's hugely violent, thuggish - allows fans to subliminate all their inner violent tendencies and hostilities. It's all out there on the ice - and then they go home and do no harm. Think the same thing probably holds true for soccer, football etc.

But I can only guess about what is going with the fans of beach volleyball.

Yes. There's a flap? - had no idea.

c.

I'll go with American football. I don't really enjoy watching hockey.

Interesting, Pam. Because it is my impression too, that George W. Bush isn't exactly a liar, or at least that this word - "liar" - does a poor job of characterizing him.

What amazes me about George Bush is the way he seems so completely untroubled and untouched by any criticism, and the way he seems so unconcerned when the world around him fails to behave as he had predicted that it would. (Or maybe it was his aides that had predicted that the world would behave in a certain way, which didn't come true at all.)

Anyway, I find Bush's self-confidence remarkable. When the Iraq war didn't go as he or his aides had predicted - although things are better there now, certainly - or when his popularity figures are down to thirty per cent, or when the budget deficit keeps growing and the dollar keeps falling and a recession seems to be looming on the horizon - then Bush seems unshakably confident and at peace. I once heard an interview with Bush when he was asked if he had ever made a bad choice as a President and done something that was bad for his country. "I'm sure I must have," Bush replied. "Can you give us an example of when you made a bad choice?" the reporter asked. "No," Bush answered. "I can't remember that I have ever done something wrong or made a bad choice while I have been the President."

Well, I could bring up something that most economists would probably describe as wrong or really unwise. Waging a war is costly. The cost of the war has to be paid for by the central government. In order to pay for the war, the government needs tax revenues. Therefore the tax revenues that are at the government's disposal need to increase during war times. Most economists would probably say that it is a very good idea for a government to raise taxes if it plans to start a war.

Bush didn't raise taxes. He lowered the taxes instead. At a time when his administration needed more tax revenues, he made sure that it got less tax revenues instead.

As a result, America's budget deficit rose sharply. As a result, the dollar started falling. As a result, the price of oil, which is set in dollar, has reached new record heights. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that President Bush had called for OPEC to increase the supply of oil to reduce prices. OPEC rebuffed Bush, saying that the world is well supplied with oil, and the high price of it is caused by America's mismanageement of its own economy.

And let's not even mention the subprime loan bubble and the housing crisis and the recession which is waiting to happen. Bush's response to that was - surprise - more tax cuts. More tax cuts, as the war in Iraq is going on and racking up more costs all the time.

I think that most economists would agree that lowering taxes while you are at war is a bad move. I think most of them would say that the present economic difficulties in the United States are at least partly caused by President Bush's economic politics. And yet I have read again and again that people who meet Bush in private describe him as calm, serene, happy, and in good spirits. Untroubled. How can he be so untroubled when many things appear to be going wrong around him, and when he may be thought of as responsible for them?

I don't think Bush is primarily a liar. I can't see a liar being so self-confident, so serene and so, almost humble at the same time. Is he stupid, then? Many people have accused him of that. But I think that the charge of stupidity, too, is a too simple answer. Bush has gone to many schools and graduated from them, and you just can't do that if you are too slow-witted.

No, I don't think that Bush is primarily a liar or that he is primarily stupid. Those words do not explain what he is. I think that Bush, much like my own relatives, is primarily a believer.

My grandfather was a smart, intelligent man. He had had little formal schooling, but that didn't prevent him from becoming a self-taught engineer. He understood many important principles of science. He invented, designed and constructed new machinery for the mill he was working for. He wasn't stupid! And it wouldn't surprise me too much if he never told a lie in his life, at least after he had become an adult.

But my grandfather was a believer. He was locked inside his own bubble reality of Pentecostalism. Nothing that contradicted his belief ever penetrated his bubble. For example, he was a strong believer in miracles. All his adult life he subscribed to a religious weekly, and every week it told him new amazing stories of totally improbably miracles that had happened in distant corners of the world - Bali, Borneo, New Guinea... A boy was born without eyes, but God gave him his eyesight anyway so that he could look at the world with his empty eye-sockets. A woman was chock-full of cancer and dying of it, but a Pentecostalist pastor prayed for her and the next morning she woke up as healthy and as perfect as she had ever been before she fell ill.

So of course, when my grandmother got cancer at the age of 84, then grandfather knew that God would cure her. He knew it. For the next two years, my grandmother was slowly wasting away. But every time she seemed to show the slightest little improvement, my grandfather was jubilant. Now God was going to cure her! The next day she was worse, and grandfather was devastated again. But two weeks later she seemed a tiny bit better, and grandfather was over the moon. Soon he was despondent again. Things went on like that for two years. My grandfather was on an emotional rollercoaster as he kept believing, right up to the very end, that God would cure his wife. So what if she had become emaciated and tiny like a child? God would cure her. He would cure her because he would. Because that is what had to happen.

I think that President Bush is a man whose faith is as strong as my grandfather's. I don't necessarily mean that President Bush is as fervent a Christian as my grandfather was. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. But I think that Bush had an almost religious belief that it was right and necessary to attack Iraq and take down Saddam. And because it was necessary and right that he should do it, it was necessary and right that that he did it. So what if Iraq proved to be a much bigger mess than he had predicted? It is going to turn out right in the end. Anything else is impossible. Because when you do the right thing, it will turn out right in the end. Because it must.

Similarly, President Bush probably believes that taxes are intrinsically evil. Therefore it was up to him to liberate America from as much of its tax burden as he was able to. What if that created an imbalance in the American economy? It is going to turn out right in the end. So what if there seems to be a recession looming? It won't happen. But even if it will, it will turn out all right in the end. Because it must. Because it can't end any other way.

Nothing could penetrate my grandfather's reality bubble. Nothing can penetrate President Bush's reality bubble.

I once heard someone say that when George W. Bush was new as a President, he didn't really know what to do with his Presidency. He spent much of his time on his farm, relaxing and having a good time. To him, 9/11 was more than a wake-up call. It was a totally soul-changing experience like Saint Paul's conversion on his way to Damascus. Paul's experience changed him utterly for the rest of his life. His glimpse of the majestic Christ of Heaven sent him travelling around the Roman Empire, as he worked tirelessly for the conversion of the heathens. So what did 9/11 do to Bush?

I have heard it said that Bush regarded 9/11 as an event through which Destiny, or Fate, or the Universe, or God, shone its searchlights on Bush and made him its knight and envoy. Bush was singled out, chosen. He was given a sacred mission - to set right the time, which was out of joint. In particular, he had to set right or fulfill what his father had not managed to do. His father had declared war on Iraq, but he had retreated from Iraq before he had captured Saddam, and before he had remade that country. Also, his father had promised not to raise taxes, but he had done so anyway. Now Bush Jr. would do what his father had not been able to. He would take down Saddam, remake Iraq, and lower taxes in America. Because Destiny, Fate, the Universe or God had given him that sacred mission.

Do I know that Bush regards himself as the envoy and knight of Destiny or God? Of course not! Of course I can't know such a thing! Does his behaviour make sense to me if I regard him in that light? Yes. It also explains to me why Bush is so serene and happy now that things look rather bad in many quarters. Because Bush did carry out his sacred mission. He did take down Saddam. He did remake Iraq - well, sort of. And he did lower taxes. He did what Destiny or God told him to do. Now it is up to Destiny or God to keep its part of the bargain, and give everything a splendidly happy ending. And that will happen. Because it must.

Of course, if you don't share George Bush's beliefs, it will seem to you as if he is driving America towards the edge of a cliff, oblivious to all the cries around him imploring him to stop. Would you rather have a President who lies to you about his private life like Bill Clinton did, or would you rather have a President who is locked inside his own reality bubble and who keeps driving his country towards a cliff?

Well. Thankfully the Constitution makes sure that George W. Bush can't be reelected in 2008. If indeed America is on its way towards the edge of a cliff, it will be up to another President to try to steer his or her country away from it.

Ann

You know, the thought occurred to me that Obama and Bush are more alike as political campaigners than are G W Bush (W) and Clinton or W and McCain.

Now bear with me, and erase the post 9/11 W personna from your mind.

Both W & O are personality campaigners, both stress the insignificance of experience (recall that Gore had more and 'weightier' political experience than W). Both ran as populists, using the rhetoric of faith. In W's case it was religious faith, in Obama's it's secular; but, nevertheless it's an appeal to the irrational rather than the rational. (I'm not knocking the irrational here - it's a part of all our minds) Their use simple sentences laced with abstract value terms that are vague enough that the listener can interpret them however.

They appeal to 'the Folk'.

In that sense, they were both the benefactors of that old Coke add. "I'd like to buy the world a Coke and sing in Perfect Harmony... it's the Real Thing...." That add conditioned us for that type of leader.

Both men are comfortable on stage - in 'their own skins' as people say. Gore certainly wasn't, nor do I think Hillary is. McCain, yeah, he is I think, but not in the same way.

Am now expecting to get shot down by both sides (all sides?) but seriously, don't I have a bit of a point here?

c. (staring at all the snow.... another foot again)

edited to reflect Pam's correction

Carol, I must take issue with you. Don't call him B for Bush, it's confusing. Call him W. Everybody else does

PJ