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Mr. Freeman:
I concur, the end of democracy indeed, good riddance! This “democracy” was cursed from the beginning having been born the beneficiary of the most inhuman form of slavery in history and requiring the annihilation of several native nations and the landscape. “Americans are largely unaware or resistant to any suggestions of problems with the vote.” is bullshit. Americans are aware that the Bush administration are crooks, as are most local and state governments. Good riddance America, you’ve created a world in which you can’t farewell.
Posted by theloneous on Jan 20, 2005 at 7:47 AM
It was astounding then, as it is now, that the Bush Administration managed to procure a second term after such a horrendous first.
Democracy has failed us. The system allowed people to cheat the system and steal an election. This is something that should never have happened. Yet the mainstream press does nothing. For shame.
The Bush Administration was able to steal another election out from under the people that should have learned better. We knew they were capable of it, they had done it once before. But it was allowed to happen a second time.
Democracy has failed.
Posted by washingtonirving19 on Jan 20, 2005 at 11:21 AM
theloneous - yes the US is the worst country on the planet! Except for all the rest. . . <giggle!>
Posted by howFunny! on Jan 20, 2005 at 12:03 PM
washingtonirving19 - it appears that we have a great deal of sore losers on the left. Not to worry, the tables will turn, they always do. Take heart and be brave in the meantime!
Posted by duh on Jan 20, 2005 at 12:04 PM
Ugh, I can’t even read anymore of this whining repetitive garbage. Everyone just go out and do something about it? How about new ideas as to how to deal with the current political situation? How many articles do you really need stating that the election was not fair? No more…
Posted by Ryan Conover on Jan 20, 2005 at 2:19 PM
duh - thanks…hopefully it will change. We just need some better planning. Hopefully the leadership in Washington will start to realize that they are doing things backwards.
Ryan Conover -
A) Don’t read it…
B) It wasn’t fair, and we need as many articles as it takes for things to change.
Posted by washingtonirving19 on Jan 20, 2005 at 2:48 PM
Yea Washingtonirving19, maybe if we bitch a little more in a liberal magazine the conservatives in Washington will have a change of heart. Whining and bitching to a brick wall often gets results for me!
Posted by Ryan Conover on Jan 20, 2005 at 3:01 PM
Ryan - Yet here we are, you bitching about the liberals bitching in a liberal magazine….oh the webs we weave.
Posted by washingtonirving19 on Jan 20, 2005 at 3:23 PM
” We just need some better planning. Hopefully the leadership in Washington will start to realize that they are doing things backwards.” How motivational… sounds like a hollow and pointless statement to me. Did you really have to waste two sentences to say nothing specific or insightful?
Posted by Ryan Conover on Jan 20, 2005 at 3:59 PM
“Oh the webs we weave.” This is exactly the reason that conservatives are smearing the election results in our faces. Rather than really say anything, most liberals would rather make some wide-eyed comment and end it with a sarcastic and “witty” remark. The only purpose that serves is to let the person you’re talking to know for sure that you look down on them and don’t respect their opinions… very commendable.
Posted by Ryan Conover on Jan 20, 2005 at 4:03 PM
Some concrete actions that would prepare for 2008 (since we’re stuck with W until then) include: pressuring elections commissions to abandon electronic ballots in favor of verifiable paper ones, loudly confronting the gratuitous citing of “terror threats” as a reason to exclude observers to vote-count observers (it’s absurd to constantly duck our heads at the word “terrorism”, it’s become a conditioned response!), and compiling and disseminating information on the real outcomes of Bush’s policies to a variety of mass media outlets (e.g. under-equipped forces in Iraq). Some news purveyors will refuse to air that data, but if they’re worn down over time or their competitors do air it, the information will at least have some chance to get into the public ear, and then people will have to choose how they’ll respond. It will require a lot of persistence, but these are at least suggestions of active response and not just rhetoric. For what it’s worth…
Posted by Kuya on Jan 20, 2005 at 4:51 PM
Ayyyy, “observers to vote-count observers”, sorry… :-s
Posted by Kuya on Jan 20, 2005 at 4:53 PM
help keep America free for EVERYBODY vote a liberal out of office>
Posted by reddog on Jan 20, 2005 at 6:06 PM
Mr. Freeman is right. Democracy is dead, at least until the mainstream, mostly Republican-owned and controlled media begin to wake up and live up to the “beacon of truth” claim which most of us came to trust in the past. Now, economics and subtle, but strict censorship mostly dictate what will be said and reported.
Even embedded journalists with the US military who initially were sent to Iraq to be cheerleaders for Bush’s “shock and awe” display of US military might became disillusioned once they were fingered by the military hierarchy as not reporting sufficiently the “good things” we were doing in Iraq.
Many became so disgusted with the daily press briefings in the million-dollar public relations room set up specially for reporters when incidents that reflected negatively on US bombings of innocent citizens were summarily dismissed as being uninformed or simply anecdotal.
On one occasion after about five minutes of stonewalling and obfuscation by an Army general, an exasperated reporter stood up and asked, “Why are we even here?” That question brought a round of applause from the attendant press and media reporters. In the following days as the war droned on, field reporters began relying more heavily on the British military public relations officers for substantive information on the progress of the war and verification of the casualty counts, both military and civilian.
As to preserving democracy at home, Ohio was but one of about three key states which Bush operatives zeroed in on. They were wildly successful in Florida where they manipulated and quite probably hacked into computers, shifting votes from heavily Democratic registered counties where John Kerry was favored, to G. W. Bush. Exit polls taken early on indicated John Kerry would win Florida by a comfortable margin.
Here are just a few samples of those votes in Florida counties which go far beyond mere speculation that the fix was in:
Bradford and Baker Counties October 4, 2004, updated registered voters:
Bradford:
4,168 Registered Republicans
9,039 Registered Democrats
Baker:
3,126 Registered Republicans
8,926 Registered Democrats
Election Day
Bush total votes in Bradford County November 2, 2004 = 7,553
Kerry total votes in Bradford County November 2, 2004 = 3,244
Bush total votes in Baker County November 2, 2004 = 7,738
Kerry total votes in Baker County November 2, 2004 = 2,180
Bush got over 3,000 more votes than registered Republicans in Bradford County and over 4,500 more votes than registered Republicans in Baker County. In order for this to happen you would have to believe 1.) every registered Republican voter actually voted, all of them for G. W. Bush and 2.) thousands of registered Democrats switched from John Kerry and voted for Bush and 3.) most of those who favored Kerry simply didn’t show up at the polls.
However, when you look at the other minor parties like Nader’s and Badnarik, there were no such anomalous shifts in votes.
A gradual metamorphosis over the years in both economics and job stability may be the resson why today’s journalists succumb to threats and intimidation by their editors. With downsizing, outsourcing and mega mergers new reporters are more apt to be intimidated and, unless they toe the line and become cheerleaders for the Bush oligarchs, they will soon find themselves out on the street
The mainstream media, even those mostly identified as being liberal such as The Washington Post and the New York Times only a few days following the November 2 election quickly dismissed complaints by the Democrats that the election was anything other than legitimate.
Washington Post writers Manuel Roig-Franzia and Dan Keating stated that Bush’s huge surge in Florida’s Democrats shifting to Bush is based on the fabrication that these people were all Dixiecrats who would vote Republican anyway.
New York Times columnist Tom Zeller Jr. also dismissed Democrats’ claims of voter machine manipulation in his article titled “Evidence of election fraud just doesn’t fly.”
Once the mainstream media abrogate their responsibility to the American people to uphold their claim as the “beacon of truth” sadly, Steven F. Freeman’s article stating that democracy is dead is all too true.
Posted by Richard on Jan 20, 2005 at 6:43 PM
Canada, a nation of 32.5 million, with about 25 million voters, uses paper ballots, counted by hand. There is a reason computerized voting is sweeping our nation, and it isn’t to strenthen democracy. The software is in private hands, read: Republican hands, the chief state election officials double as Bush state election chairs, the votes of the poor, the minorities, the inner cities, are always disproportionally “spolied”, their machines are fewer, and less reliable, their lines longer, their registrations lost, their polling places switched, now with the infamous “felon lists” which have been shown to be intentionally inaccurate, they’ve added a new hurdle. It’s amazing that these difficulties are never seen in the suburbs, or the rural areas, or the red states in general!
But take heart, the republicans are sewing the seeds of their (our) own destruction. We are a nation that condones lying to start a war, torture and murder of prisoners, bombing and firing on civilians, and death squads to eliminate civilian support for our opponents. Our military is nearing a breaking point and our president wants to invade another country on the “axis of evil” hit list. Our jobs are going to China and India, and their products are coming here. The borders are open and the impoverished of the world are flocking in, as well as the odd terrorist or two. A two decades long assault on public education has acheived it’s aim, a population ill-informed and in-curious. We are in decline, and deservedly so. Only when the suffering has spread to the middle and (Please God!)upper classes will a change of priorities be demanded and hopefully a rebirth of the democratic and enlightened ideals this nation started with. OK, just kidding with that last part.
Posted by Kenneth D. Brown on Jan 20, 2005 at 11:00 PM
:(
Posted by sUrge on Jan 20, 2005 at 11:04 PM
However the nation started, I could sure use a dose of enlightened democracy here and now, God knows when I’ll get a fix! Sure doesn’t seem more “free for everybody” in America after 4 years of arch-conservatism in the Oval Office… I guess I’m free to keep a few dollars back from the IRS or to pollute more, but those aren’t my idea of high aspirations.
I wonder if I’ll be “free” to keep my son and daughter out of an ill-conceived war when they graduate in a few years… I’m certainly not free of suspicion about election results, and when I hear my 15-year-old expressing complete cynicism about the entire process, it’s damned sickening I’ll tell you.
Posted by Kuya on Jan 20, 2005 at 11:27 PM
It boils down to this : the people we’ve been depending upon to run our government, the political class, have failed us. The people we’ve relied upon to expose their failures, the media class, have failed us.
We will have to fix things ourselves.
I think that the problem is money. We’ve allowed the people who should be our advocates to be bought by the interests they were hired to keep in check.
See http://www.28amen.org for a fuller discussion of this part of the proposed solution.
The problem is money and the fact that some of the monied folks have now supplied us with an election process which, simply stated, makes the results of an election unknowable.
The more fully stated proposal for a solution to our problems is for an Independent Party of non-partisans, that is a party that tries to ensure that the mechanics of the process are in order :
- that “campaign contributions” are limited to those from constituents of the office in question and to an amount that any constituent can afford.
- that vote tallying apparatus produces and records results in a form capable of reproducing the election’s outcome independent of the original tallying apparatus itself, and is capable of handling voters’ secondary preferences and instant runoffs as well. This is a task for the “opensource” software community.
There is no reason why Greens and Libertarians, Conservatives and Liberals, Republicans and Democrats cannot run in the Independent primary and stand in the general election on the Independent line as well as on “their own”. We do not need to replace any of the existing parties, but to augment the existing process transparently, with a layer of honesty and fair play.
The line will be drawn between those who represent the people’s interests and those who represent the monied interests.
It is the influence of the monied interests’ thumbs on the scales that can be traced as the root of ALL of our problems, from the environment, to the cooked accounting laws that led to Enron, to the Likud’s present use of us Americans as cannon fodder to fight its battles on the Eastern front of its war in the Middle East.
Retaining the rule of the people in a democracy requires that a certain minimum of attention be paid to politics. And we have not been paying that minimal attention.
In 2006 we must turn off the televisions and talk to our neighbors, identify the people running for the people, and monitor the Independent candidates’ compliance with their pledges.
Some of us of course are going to have register the Independent Party with the Secretaries of State in each of our states, and see to petitions and ballot lines as well.
It will get easier after 2006. With the passage of the 28th Amendment and laws specifying the real requirements of election vote tallying and allowing for instant runoffs we will be able to again reduce the attention paid to politics to a minimum.
But not any less.
Posted by John Francis Lee on Jan 21, 2005 at 12:44 AM
I’d like to know when this was a democracy. After propertyless white males were enfranchised? When black males, or women were enfranchised? Maybe it was during the Indian wars, the red scare, or the Jim crow period. Perhaps the U.S was a democracy during the McCarthy era, the Vietnam war, the Reagan era. When was there a democracy whose demise we now deplore?
THe idea that in a society divided along class lines the “people” can rule, is infantile. COrzine and I are not equal. A senate composed of 50 millionaires is not representative. THey rule, we just vote.
Posted by rojito on Jan 21, 2005 at 1:06 AM
A lot of good points in the posts and in the article. I believe, however, the real point is the one made above stating that an educational system that dumbs down is more responsible for the demise of democracy as we knew it than voter fraud. But even that is just a symptom. The root causes go far back. Some might say—and it is hard to disagree—that the USA is in fact stolen property and from ill-gotten gains no good can come… Indeed, you don’t want to think too much in such a country. Whenever these rough times come, I revert to a quick read of Richard Hofstadter’s seminal article in Harpers (1964) called the Paranoid Style in American Politics. I have mentioned it before. Hofstadter, who was quite a middle-of-the-road guy, also wrote a great book called Anti-Intellectualism in America (or something along those lines…. my copy was lent and never returned….sigh).
I do have some faith, however, in the sanguinity of the American public, it’s willingness to embrace trends that seem appealing, and once this Bushcrap blows over and a critical mass of people realize they have been barbecued by a bunch of carpetbaggers, including some self-proclaimed, millionaire and billionaire religious leaders (yes, Mr. Robertson, I mean you as well), they will turn around and perform rapture on these frauds.
Meanwhile, let me suggest abandoning the term liberal, and coining the neo-Patriots as a way to recoup our democratic heritage? After all, those who fought the Brits in the 1770s were called Patriots. And the situation does have certain similarities.
Posted by Talleyrand on Jan 21, 2005 at 3:22 AM
Folks,
for the first time in history, the nominal leader of the free world cannot prove he did not steal the last election. The absence of a voter verified audit trail makes a mockery of any notion of a meaningful recount.
The implications are horrific. For example, what happens when (say) whistleblowers prove a past or future election stolen?
whispers of civil war?
You guys gotta nip this one in the bud. Listen to experts like Bev Harris, Rebecca Mercuri, David Dill, the IEEE . . . .
Take the best of what the U.S. and the rest of the world have to offer, and make your electoral system watertight again.
e.g. http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,61045,00.html
“America can take humanity to the moon, but it can’t .....”
why is that, do you think?
Good bloody luck,
M@Q
Posted by Matt Quinn on Jan 22, 2005 at 4:05 PM
Democracy has failed only if you are unwilling to fight for it and by that I mean put down the bong for five minutes, run for office or actively petition your public servants. Read your true histories of the honest struggle for democracy. It takes time and people willing to commit…ten years between the 1954 Brown Vs. Board ruling and the voting rights act of ‘65.
The time for tears has past.
Posted by Richard Ray Harris on Jan 23, 2005 at 1:33 PM
I lived through those 10 years between 54 and 65, and while there was no shortage of reactionary right wing wackos, they did not control an entire political party, all 3 branches of government and most of the federal judiciary, most state legislatures and governorships. The national press was not in the hands of 4 or 5 giant corporations, and not afraid to hold up a mirror so that we could see ourselves. And while elections could be, and sometimes were, stolen, it was an abberation, the exception, rather than the rule. Three suspicious assasinations and 53,000 deaths in another war of choice woke a lot of people up to the lengths some would go to in order to preserve their power, and this brief affair called democracy has been slowly dying ever since. Fighting for it is exactly what we should be doing but it’s probably well past the time that an electoral solution is possible, given the control of elections by private companies beholden to the conservatives. Rather, massive civil unrest will probably be needed to change course and that won’t come until the pain is widespread and severe.
Posted by Kenneth D. Brown on Jan 23, 2005 at 6:41 PM
Again, I totally agree with the above post by Kenneth Brown, especially his statement “Rather, massive civil unrest will probably be needed to change course and that won’t come until the pain is widespread and severe.”
That of course won’t happen because too many people are so ignorant and manipulated by the Bush “media minders” that they believe taking Cialis or Viagra will cure their conspicuous absence of “cojones.”
As someone once wrote about a family dinner conversation while watching the TV evening news film footage showing the dead and wounded being taken out on medivac helicopters during the Viet Nam War, “Can you please pass the biscuits.”
Posted by Richard on Jan 23, 2005 at 7:53 PM
Richard wrote: “As someone once wrote about a family dinner conversation while watching the TV evening news film footage showing the dead and wounded being taken out on medivac helicopters during the Viet Nam War, “Can you please pass the biscuits.””
While this story (urban legend?) highlights some peoples indifference to other peoples suffering, it also makes another point of even more value. While the insensitivity may be true or mythical, the ubiquitous tv has intruded into the lives of us all (in the US anyway). Family discussions, from the mundane to the erudite, are much MUCH preferable.
The problems with the US and the world are largely due to *us* as individuals, not due to big bad government or business. Of course, blaming anyone/everyone else except ourselves makes the problems so much easier to deal with. Protest this or that, criticize this leader or that one. Just don’t blame “me”.
Posted by aFather on Jan 24, 2005 at 7:14 AM
don’t fret people 4 more years of bush will put the blue party back on top. Look how long it took for people to realize the vietnam war was a bad idea. My parents were for vietnam now they say it was all bs, but you could not tell them that at the time. Look at all the religions that back up slavery a 150 years ago especially in the south. It just takes the masses 30-150 years to figure out they are wrong.
Posted by brian on Jan 26, 2005 at 11:29 AM
The master plan will be complete in 2008 when, thanks to an amended constitution and plenty more skullduggery, Arnold Schwarzenegger will be president of the United States. The truly sad part about this is that I’m not even joking.
Posted by qizba on Jan 26, 2005 at 1:54 PM
Yeah, and i bet Bush will declare martial law before the 2004 election (remember that tired old prediction?). And find bin Laden as well, just in time for the election (another foolish prediction).
Best to see F 9-11. It is full of really well thought out, um, propaganda!
Posted by notReally on Jan 26, 2005 at 2:10 PM
what part of f-911 is untrue? If the movie did not have any truth to it, bush would have sued Mr. moore. Look what bush people did to dan rather and that was just one story. Mr. moore had a whole movie. The bush people could not find one thing to sue Mr. moore over, that’s proof right there how true the documentory was. 90% of the people who put down this movie never saw it.
Posted by brian on Jan 26, 2005 at 5:08 PM
reddog, well it’s obvious that just like your beloved leader you are not exactly the sharpest tool in the box. Almost half of the electorate of this country voted for a liberal, well over fifty four million people.
And what have we all been freed from? Every child in America getting medical insurance? Does it make you feel like a man to know that you’ve stopped this from happening?
Morons of America unite, oops, they already have.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Jan 27, 2005 at 4:08 AM
Any detractors of Michael Moore’s need only visit his web site and check out the factual back up to Farenheit 911. Or does the truth hurt too much?
For all you cowardly conservatives who get their ‘facts’ only from Fox News, try doing some real research.
Posted by Dead Soldier on Jan 27, 2005 at 4:22 AM
While Moores movie was entertaining, it was full of both incorrect information (lying about the Dec. 19th, 2001, edition of The Pantagraph headline was a minor example of this) and information presented in such a slanted way as to be effectively false (was Iraq really a paradise before the US began to indiscriminately bomb it to the stone age, apparently for no good reason?).
For those who wish to check on the movie, the Internet is full of critical reviews that point out the falsehoods. One link to consider visiting is: (Unavailable!!!)
(in google type Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11 and you can get a website that is blacklisted here - that is, i CANNOT post the link due to censorship of ITT. Strange. . .)
For those who believe the movie is accurate, well, i guess different strokes for different folks. But even for them, can they believe it is a “documentary”? The word used to imply a unbiased piece of work, as opposed to something meant to savage the subject of the work.
Note that suing is not an option (although Moore has threatened to sue those who dissect his film, but obviously will not actually sue) for a public figure. Rather was not sued even though his story was (or should have been) known to be based on a forgery from the very beginning. . .
Posted by surelyYouKnow on Jan 27, 2005 at 8:32 AM
I’d like to respond to < notreally >. You use the word propaganda. I recall that Bush stated the reason for invading Iraq was to destroy Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. There’s a steaming mound of propaganda if I’ve ever seen/smelled one. I don’t mean to come across as sounding holier than though, but it’s hard to understand the way some defend Bush. I’m convinced he will go down in history as the worst president ever. To give him credit, he’s merely the marionette who awkwardly articulates the half-baked policies of the puppetmasters around him. You mention martial law (I did not), but you cannot deny that there are myriads of voting irregularities surrounding his 2004 victory. Democracy is indeed done like dinner in the US. I still stand by my assertion that Schwarzenegger will be the next president, and he has many powerful, connected friends who would like to see it happen, Senator Orrin Hatch amongst them. I’m not making any of this up, though I suspect you’d prefer to believe that I am.
Posted by qizba on Jan 27, 2005 at 11:53 AM
gizba, you wrote “I still stand by my assertion that Schwarzenegger will be the next president, and he has many powerful, connected friends who would like to see it happen..”
Rest assured, that won’t happen. True, Schwarzenegger got the spotlight at the Republican convention in New York City but he will not be the Republican nominee for president—ever.
The reasons why are many, but the main reasons are that he supports gay rights, abortion rights, gun control and stem cell research, all issues inimical to the Republican Right wing and the evangelicals who are going to need a messianic replacement for G. W. Bush in 2008. Arnold Schwarzenegger is not that replacement.
Of course, if G. W. Bush has his way over the next four years the Armageddon crowd may have their prayed-for dream of the Rapture and End of Days come true.
Bush, bolstered by his Iraq ratification policies which he claimed shortly after November 2, may wreak nuclear holocaust on the world and make it uninhabitable for all but those living in underground cubbyholes and bunkers for decades.
As for the next president, look for a gradual brightening of the halo around Senator Bill Frist’s head as he steadily moves towards fulfilling the “moral values,” tolerance-for-none Republican majority wish list. After all, Jesus had his disciples, why not G. W. Bush?
Posted by Richard on Jan 27, 2005 at 12:15 PM
you want propaganda. Look at the swift boat people that put kerry down. Where were they 35 years ago standing next to kerry recieving their medals, not one of them wrote a complaint, or had a bad thing to say about kerry, but give them 4 or 5 million dollars from carl rove and the bush people, now kerry is the biggest bastard that ever lived. If it were not for protesters like kerry and public support against vietnam we would still be fighting that war today. The same thing is happening again today, more americans are against the iraq war than for it. Bush will be at the tail end of his policies again like no child left behind,homeland security, imigration reform, all are under funded. Social security reform which his own party is having a hard time supporting because they might get voted out in 06. The iraq war has cost as much as half of ww1,or half as much as vietnam right now, and the bush people say we have 2-5 years left in iraq. It is a matter of time bush will go down in flames. He did not get voted back in because people liked him but that they hated kerry more. Bush got back in by the lowest margin ever for a president, even nixon had 2% more and he was the lowest till bush came along. Don’t get me wrong kerry was not a very good choice either, it was like twiddle dee and twiddle dumb. It is sad that a country this great can’t come up with any better people than these two for president.
Posted by brian on Jan 28, 2005 at 9:14 AM
surelyYouKnow, yes we do know, but you don’t. Minor holes can be picked in anything. A twelve year old boy in England recently found five inaccuracies in the Encyclodedia Britanica, which has a reputation for being flawless.
Several small inaccuracies do not add up to one big one though. If you want to look at some really big lies, how about ‘Saddam has weapons of mass distruction’, or ’ Iraq has strong ties to Al Qaeda’.
Iraq war apologists would rather pick holes in a film maker who basically got it right, then examining their own reasons for supporting a government that lies almost daily.
As for Moore’s depiction of pre war Iraq, it hardly looked like a paradise. To me it just looked like a handful of ordinary people getting on with their lives. Compared to Fox News’ vision of the hell like conditions the Iraqs were suppose to be suffering I suppose it would seem like a paradise. Moores film was true to the spirit of the the truth, among other things. If they had it so completely bad under Saddam why are they fighting back now?
And don’t give me that ‘they’re all foreign terrorist who have come into the country to kill Americans’. It has been widely estimated that foreign (non Iraqi) insurgents make up between as little as five to ten percent of the total number of fighters. These people did not want to be invaded, no matter how much they despised Saddam.
And what has Bin Ladan, the real criminal, done that George W. Bush now hasn’t? Bush is directly responsible for a confirmed seventeen thousand civilian deaths now. That’s more than five world trade centers! Can you even begin to imagine that? Probably not.
Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 911. The hijackers were almost all Saudi Arabian. What will happen do you think if Saudi Arabia decides to attack us again? Surely you Know! We’d be pretty screwed wouldn’t we?
You Bush supporters frighten me, the depth of your stupidity is astounding. Either that or you are all cold hearted supporters of death and murder.
Posted by Dead Soldier on Jan 29, 2005 at 4:20 AM
hey matilda- sorry about kerry losing- he must have got too much slime on him from ted kemmedy to win. I am the sharpest knife in this drawer at least I voted for the winner and not some snot nosed Boston liberal witha bitchy- foul mouthed wife.
Oh and tell me did the democrats after 40 years of stranglehold on this country in congress give kids insurance? No they took all the tax money they stole from us and freedoms they took from us and used it to destroy America (almost).
So don’t you lecture me you delusional little liberal. Your party lost & lost big so get over it .
Posted by reddog on Jan 31, 2005 at 5:25 AM
You fool reddog, have it your way. This is not a football game, peoples lives are at stake. Medicare and social security must have destroyed millions of American’s freedoms. FDR was a real bastard, wasn’t he, completely neglecting the already rich? And Clinton? God damn those democrats actually balancing the budget and creating a surplus. Your type make me sick. The dellusions are yours. Your ‘president’ caused the deaths of 16997 more people than Charles Manson. Proud?
You are not the sharpest tool in this box, just the most evil one. People like you will cause the death of all civilisation unless stopped. War is an answer to nothing. Violence is the ultimate slippery slope. You are a supporter of death.
Perhaps the corpses of dead Iraqi children should be mailed to registered republican voters at random.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Feb 1, 2005 at 3:32 AM
Where do you get this stuff Matilda- really? Charles Manson- end of civilization?? The evil one?? I imagine the postage would be real high on mailing corpses- and what kind of nutjob would even suggest such a thing.
Matilda here’s your crown - here is your throne- now take your rightful place among the royalty of the looney left. It sounds like you took LSD and watched too many Michael Moore movies.
Clinton taxed us thru the roof and fought kicking and screaming to balance the budget. He also had the benefit of the tech boom to steal all the tax money to balance the books.
While I abhor war myself and I know this is tough thing for folks like matilda to grasp sometimes you have to fight - and yes it gets bloody. If we never fought we would still be british subjects or living under Hitler or Japanese rule. I take it as a compliment to be put down and badmouthed by the likes of you matilda- I could go on for hours about the ruminations and delusions of your wacko idelogy- but why bother- you seem happy having somebody to hate…have a nice day and be sure to take your medication!
Posted by reddog on Feb 1, 2005 at 7:29 AM
Reddog, I think your support of Bush can quite moderately be descibed as evil. And there are seventeen thousand people who would agree with me, if they were not dead (please dispute the figures). Not to mention all the political prisoners held and tortured without trial.
Your beloved leader is a mass murderer, because Iraq was in no concievable way a threat to us. The invasion of Iraq was not an act of self defence, it was an act of outright agression.
I’ll stick to the LSD and the Michael Moore movies (and to facts, figures and reasoning), you stick to the presidential press releases.
If you really want to draw comparisons, America did to Iraq what Germany did to Poland sixty years ago, no more no less.
Here’s a quote that your one remaining brain cell may find informative.
“This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed … were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards…”-
-Rudolf Hoess, SS Commandant at Auschwitz, Executed 1946
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Feb 2, 2005 at 1:09 AM
Also, reddog, you will be ‘bad mouthed’ by the likes of me your whole life. The looney right burns bright, and so the good side of planet earth will have to remain forever vigilant.
Plus the thing with the dead Iraqi children, whilst complete fantasy, is something I would do if I could, because it would shock you all into realising what you’ve done. Aren’t conservatives suppose to be big on personal responsiblity? Not it seems when it comes to killing foreigners.
What sort of nutjob would suggest invading a nation that posed no direct or indirect threat to us and killing seventeen thousand innocent civilians?
America was the subject of a British military occupation, Germany declared war on us, and Japan attacked us.
What did Iraq do? Before you start spouting Fox News inspired gibberish, I’ll tell you, nothing!
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Feb 2, 2005 at 2:00 AM
And I matida gatsby have been assailed with you looney liberals . So has the rest of this country and I am glad the liberal reign of terror is over.
What Bush did was nothing short of sheer brilliance- he took the fight to them . Iraq was an enemy and the day Hussein got nukes he would have used them against us .
As for torture well if it saved one of our soldiers live -just even one it was 110 % worth it. Where is your sense of outrage over those barbarians cutting off peoples heads and using kids for suicide bombers your poor misguided hypocrite?
You are Michael Moore’s mother aren’t you you sound delusional enough to have spawned the oversized piece of furry whale excrement( and traitor) that he is.
just get over the fact that you liberals no longer have a stranglehold on this government and the news media anymore. Your time has past fueled by common sense and what is right..
Posted by reddog on Feb 2, 2005 at 6:11 AM
I have to wonder at anybody who can quote nazis verbatim like you. What’s YOUR idea for conservatives Tilda put us all in concentration camps until we can be brainwashed to your progressive ideals. Well we already have that here it’s called public (government) schools.
Just I have suspected all along you lefties are really nazis with nice names like rainbow and flower and such. Tolerance only means obediance to your dogma right?
I am so glad since 1994 that you libs have been slowly voted out of power.
seig heil matilda
Posted by reddog on Feb 2, 2005 at 6:18 AM
liberalism is a mental disorder and you Matildo have a terminal case
Posted by reddog on Feb 3, 2005 at 2:46 PM
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Reader Comments
Mr. Freeman:
I concur, the end of democracy indeed, good riddance! This “democracy” was cursed from the beginning having been born the beneficiary of the most inhuman form of slavery in history and requiring the annihilation of several native nations and the landscape. “Americans are largely unaware or resistant to any suggestions of problems with the vote.” is bullshit. Americans are aware that the Bush administration are crooks, as are most local and state governments. Good riddance America, you’ve created a world in which you can’t farewell.
It was astounding then, as it is now, that the Bush Administration managed to procure a second term after such a horrendous first.
Democracy has failed us. The system allowed people to cheat the system and steal an election. This is something that should never have happened. Yet the mainstream press does nothing. For shame.
The Bush Administration was able to steal another election out from under the people that should have learned better. We knew they were capable of it, they had done it once before. But it was allowed to happen a second time.
Democracy has failed.
theloneous - yes the US is the worst country on the planet! Except for all the rest. . . <giggle!>
washingtonirving19 - it appears that we have a great deal of sore losers on the left. Not to worry, the tables will turn, they always do. Take heart and be brave in the meantime!
Ugh, I can’t even read anymore of this whining repetitive garbage. Everyone just go out and do something about it? How about new ideas as to how to deal with the current political situation? How many articles do you really need stating that the election was not fair? No more…
duh - thanks…hopefully it will change. We just need some better planning. Hopefully the leadership in Washington will start to realize that they are doing things backwards.
Ryan Conover -
A) Don’t read it…
B) It wasn’t fair, and we need as many articles as it takes for things to change.
Yea Washingtonirving19, maybe if we bitch a little more in a liberal magazine the conservatives in Washington will have a change of heart. Whining and bitching to a brick wall often gets results for me!
Ryan - Yet here we are, you bitching about the liberals bitching in a liberal magazine….oh the webs we weave.
” We just need some better planning. Hopefully the leadership in Washington will start to realize that they are doing things backwards.” How motivational… sounds like a hollow and pointless statement to me. Did you really have to waste two sentences to say nothing specific or insightful?
“Oh the webs we weave.” This is exactly the reason that conservatives are smearing the election results in our faces. Rather than really say anything, most liberals would rather make some wide-eyed comment and end it with a sarcastic and “witty” remark. The only purpose that serves is to let the person you’re talking to know for sure that you look down on them and don’t respect their opinions… very commendable.
Some concrete actions that would prepare for 2008 (since we’re stuck with W until then) include: pressuring elections commissions to abandon electronic ballots in favor of verifiable paper ones, loudly confronting the gratuitous citing of “terror threats” as a reason to exclude observers to vote-count observers (it’s absurd to constantly duck our heads at the word “terrorism”, it’s become a conditioned response!), and compiling and disseminating information on the real outcomes of Bush’s policies to a variety of mass media outlets (e.g. under-equipped forces in Iraq). Some news purveyors will refuse to air that data, but if they’re worn down over time or their competitors do air it, the information will at least have some chance to get into the public ear, and then people will have to choose how they’ll respond. It will require a lot of persistence, but these are at least suggestions of active response and not just rhetoric. For what it’s worth…
Ayyyy, “observers to vote-count observers”, sorry… :-s
help keep America free for EVERYBODY vote a liberal out of office>
Mr. Freeman is right. Democracy is dead, at least until the mainstream, mostly Republican-owned and controlled media begin to wake up and live up to the “beacon of truth” claim which most of us came to trust in the past. Now, economics and subtle, but strict censorship mostly dictate what will be said and reported.
Even embedded journalists with the US military who initially were sent to Iraq to be cheerleaders for Bush’s “shock and awe” display of US military might became disillusioned once they were fingered by the military hierarchy as not reporting sufficiently the “good things” we were doing in Iraq.
Many became so disgusted with the daily press briefings in the million-dollar public relations room set up specially for reporters when incidents that reflected negatively on US bombings of innocent citizens were summarily dismissed as being uninformed or simply anecdotal.
On one occasion after about five minutes of stonewalling and obfuscation by an Army general, an exasperated reporter stood up and asked, “Why are we even here?” That question brought a round of applause from the attendant press and media reporters. In the following days as the war droned on, field reporters began relying more heavily on the British military public relations officers for substantive information on the progress of the war and verification of the casualty counts, both military and civilian.
As to preserving democracy at home, Ohio was but one of about three key states which Bush operatives zeroed in on. They were wildly successful in Florida where they manipulated and quite probably hacked into computers, shifting votes from heavily Democratic registered counties where John Kerry was favored, to G. W. Bush. Exit polls taken early on indicated John Kerry would win Florida by a comfortable margin.
Here are just a few samples of those votes in Florida counties which go far beyond mere speculation that the fix was in:
Bradford and Baker Counties October 4, 2004, updated registered voters:
Bradford:
4,168 Registered Republicans
9,039 Registered Democrats
Baker:
3,126 Registered Republicans
8,926 Registered Democrats
Election Day
Bush total votes in Bradford County November 2, 2004 = 7,553
Kerry total votes in Bradford County November 2, 2004 = 3,244
Bush total votes in Baker County November 2, 2004 = 7,738
Kerry total votes in Baker County November 2, 2004 = 2,180
Bush got over 3,000 more votes than registered Republicans in Bradford County and over 4,500 more votes than registered Republicans in Baker County. In order for this to happen you would have to believe 1.) every registered Republican voter actually voted, all of them for G. W. Bush and 2.) thousands of registered Democrats switched from John Kerry and voted for Bush and 3.) most of those who favored Kerry simply didn’t show up at the polls.
However, when you look at the other minor parties like Nader’s and Badnarik, there were no such anomalous shifts in votes.
A gradual metamorphosis over the years in both economics and job stability may be the resson why today’s journalists succumb to threats and intimidation by their editors. With downsizing, outsourcing and mega mergers new reporters are more apt to be intimidated and, unless they toe the line and become cheerleaders for the Bush oligarchs, they will soon find themselves out on the street
The mainstream media, even those mostly identified as being liberal such as The Washington Post and the New York Times only a few days following the November 2 election quickly dismissed complaints by the Democrats that the election was anything other than legitimate.
Washington Post writers Manuel Roig-Franzia and Dan Keating stated that Bush’s huge surge in Florida’s Democrats shifting to Bush is based on the fabrication that these people were all Dixiecrats who would vote Republican anyway.
New York Times columnist Tom Zeller Jr. also dismissed Democrats’ claims of voter machine manipulation in his article titled “Evidence of election fraud just doesn’t fly.”
Once the mainstream media abrogate their responsibility to the American people to uphold their claim as the “beacon of truth” sadly, Steven F. Freeman’s article stating that democracy is dead is all too true.
Canada, a nation of 32.5 million, with about 25 million voters, uses paper ballots, counted by hand. There is a reason computerized voting is sweeping our nation, and it isn’t to strenthen democracy. The software is in private hands, read: Republican hands, the chief state election officials double as Bush state election chairs, the votes of the poor, the minorities, the inner cities, are always disproportionally “spolied”, their machines are fewer, and less reliable, their lines longer, their registrations lost, their polling places switched, now with the infamous “felon lists” which have been shown to be intentionally inaccurate, they’ve added a new hurdle. It’s amazing that these difficulties are never seen in the suburbs, or the rural areas, or the red states in general!
But take heart, the republicans are sewing the seeds of their (our) own destruction. We are a nation that condones lying to start a war, torture and murder of prisoners, bombing and firing on civilians, and death squads to eliminate civilian support for our opponents. Our military is nearing a breaking point and our president wants to invade another country on the “axis of evil” hit list. Our jobs are going to China and India, and their products are coming here. The borders are open and the impoverished of the world are flocking in, as well as the odd terrorist or two. A two decades long assault on public education has acheived it’s aim, a population ill-informed and in-curious. We are in decline, and deservedly so. Only when the suffering has spread to the middle and (Please God!)upper classes will a change of priorities be demanded and hopefully a rebirth of the democratic and enlightened ideals this nation started with. OK, just kidding with that last part.
:(
However the nation started, I could sure use a dose of enlightened democracy here and now, God knows when I’ll get a fix! Sure doesn’t seem more “free for everybody” in America after 4 years of arch-conservatism in the Oval Office… I guess I’m free to keep a few dollars back from the IRS or to pollute more, but those aren’t my idea of high aspirations.
I wonder if I’ll be “free” to keep my son and daughter out of an ill-conceived war when they graduate in a few years… I’m certainly not free of suspicion about election results, and when I hear my 15-year-old expressing complete cynicism about the entire process, it’s damned sickening I’ll tell you.
It boils down to this : the people we’ve been depending upon to run our government, the political class, have failed us. The people we’ve relied upon to expose their failures, the media class, have failed us.
We will have to fix things ourselves.
I think that the problem is money. We’ve allowed the people who should be our advocates to be bought by the interests they were hired to keep in check.
See http://www.28amen.org for a fuller discussion of this part of the proposed solution.
The problem is money and the fact that some of the monied folks have now supplied us with an election process which, simply stated, makes the results of an election unknowable.
The more fully stated proposal for a solution to our problems is for an Independent Party of non-partisans, that is a party that tries to ensure that the mechanics of the process are in order :
- that “campaign contributions” are limited to those from constituents of the office in question and to an amount that any constituent can afford.
- that vote tallying apparatus produces and records results in a form capable of reproducing the election’s outcome independent of the original tallying apparatus itself, and is capable of handling voters’ secondary preferences and instant runoffs as well. This is a task for the “opensource” software community.
There is no reason why Greens and Libertarians, Conservatives and Liberals, Republicans and Democrats cannot run in the Independent primary and stand in the general election on the Independent line as well as on “their own”. We do not need to replace any of the existing parties, but to augment the existing process transparently, with a layer of honesty and fair play.
The line will be drawn between those who represent the people’s interests and those who represent the monied interests.
It is the influence of the monied interests’ thumbs on the scales that can be traced as the root of ALL of our problems, from the environment, to the cooked accounting laws that led to Enron, to the Likud’s present use of us Americans as cannon fodder to fight its battles on the Eastern front of its war in the Middle East.
Retaining the rule of the people in a democracy requires that a certain minimum of attention be paid to politics. And we have not been paying that minimal attention.
In 2006 we must turn off the televisions and talk to our neighbors, identify the people running for the people, and monitor the Independent candidates’ compliance with their pledges.
Some of us of course are going to have register the Independent Party with the Secretaries of State in each of our states, and see to petitions and ballot lines as well.
It will get easier after 2006. With the passage of the 28th Amendment and laws specifying the real requirements of election vote tallying and allowing for instant runoffs we will be able to again reduce the attention paid to politics to a minimum.
But not any less.
I’d like to know when this was a democracy. After propertyless white males were enfranchised? When black males, or women were enfranchised? Maybe it was during the Indian wars, the red scare, or the Jim crow period. Perhaps the U.S was a democracy during the McCarthy era, the Vietnam war, the Reagan era. When was there a democracy whose demise we now deplore?
THe idea that in a society divided along class lines the “people” can rule, is infantile. COrzine and I are not equal. A senate composed of 50 millionaires is not representative. THey rule, we just vote.
A lot of good points in the posts and in the article. I believe, however, the real point is the one made above stating that an educational system that dumbs down is more responsible for the demise of democracy as we knew it than voter fraud. But even that is just a symptom. The root causes go far back. Some might say—and it is hard to disagree—that the USA is in fact stolen property and from ill-gotten gains no good can come… Indeed, you don’t want to think too much in such a country. Whenever these rough times come, I revert to a quick read of Richard Hofstadter’s seminal article in Harpers (1964) called the Paranoid Style in American Politics. I have mentioned it before. Hofstadter, who was quite a middle-of-the-road guy, also wrote a great book called Anti-Intellectualism in America (or something along those lines…. my copy was lent and never returned….sigh).
I do have some faith, however, in the sanguinity of the American public, it’s willingness to embrace trends that seem appealing, and once this Bushcrap blows over and a critical mass of people realize they have been barbecued by a bunch of carpetbaggers, including some self-proclaimed, millionaire and billionaire religious leaders (yes, Mr. Robertson, I mean you as well), they will turn around and perform rapture on these frauds.
Meanwhile, let me suggest abandoning the term liberal, and coining the neo-Patriots as a way to recoup our democratic heritage? After all, those who fought the Brits in the 1770s were called Patriots. And the situation does have certain similarities.
Folks,
for the first time in history, the nominal leader of the free world cannot prove he did not steal the last election. The absence of a voter verified audit trail makes a mockery of any notion of a meaningful recount.
The implications are horrific. For example, what happens when (say) whistleblowers prove a past or future election stolen?
whispers of civil war?
You guys gotta nip this one in the bud. Listen to experts like Bev Harris, Rebecca Mercuri, David Dill, the IEEE . . . .
Take the best of what the U.S. and the rest of the world have to offer, and make your electoral system watertight again.
e.g. http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,61045,00.html
“America can take humanity to the moon, but it can’t .....”
why is that, do you think?
Good bloody luck,
M@Q
Democracy has failed only if you are unwilling to fight for it and by that I mean put down the bong for five minutes, run for office or actively petition your public servants. Read your true histories of the honest struggle for democracy. It takes time and people willing to commit…ten years between the 1954 Brown Vs. Board ruling and the voting rights act of ‘65.
The time for tears has past.
I lived through those 10 years between 54 and 65, and while there was no shortage of reactionary right wing wackos, they did not control an entire political party, all 3 branches of government and most of the federal judiciary, most state legislatures and governorships. The national press was not in the hands of 4 or 5 giant corporations, and not afraid to hold up a mirror so that we could see ourselves. And while elections could be, and sometimes were, stolen, it was an abberation, the exception, rather than the rule. Three suspicious assasinations and 53,000 deaths in another war of choice woke a lot of people up to the lengths some would go to in order to preserve their power, and this brief affair called democracy has been slowly dying ever since. Fighting for it is exactly what we should be doing but it’s probably well past the time that an electoral solution is possible, given the control of elections by private companies beholden to the conservatives. Rather, massive civil unrest will probably be needed to change course and that won’t come until the pain is widespread and severe.
Again, I totally agree with the above post by Kenneth Brown, especially his statement “Rather, massive civil unrest will probably be needed to change course and that won’t come until the pain is widespread and severe.”
That of course won’t happen because too many people are so ignorant and manipulated by the Bush “media minders” that they believe taking Cialis or Viagra will cure their conspicuous absence of “cojones.”
As someone once wrote about a family dinner conversation while watching the TV evening news film footage showing the dead and wounded being taken out on medivac helicopters during the Viet Nam War, “Can you please pass the biscuits.”
Richard wrote: “As someone once wrote about a family dinner conversation while watching the TV evening news film footage showing the dead and wounded being taken out on medivac helicopters during the Viet Nam War, “Can you please pass the biscuits.””
While this story (urban legend?) highlights some peoples indifference to other peoples suffering, it also makes another point of even more value. While the insensitivity may be true or mythical, the ubiquitous tv has intruded into the lives of us all (in the US anyway). Family discussions, from the mundane to the erudite, are much MUCH preferable.
The problems with the US and the world are largely due to *us* as individuals, not due to big bad government or business. Of course, blaming anyone/everyone else except ourselves makes the problems so much easier to deal with. Protest this or that, criticize this leader or that one. Just don’t blame “me”.
don’t fret people 4 more years of bush will put the blue party back on top. Look how long it took for people to realize the vietnam war was a bad idea. My parents were for vietnam now they say it was all bs, but you could not tell them that at the time. Look at all the religions that back up slavery a 150 years ago especially in the south. It just takes the masses 30-150 years to figure out they are wrong.
The master plan will be complete in 2008 when, thanks to an amended constitution and plenty more skullduggery, Arnold Schwarzenegger will be president of the United States. The truly sad part about this is that I’m not even joking.
Yeah, and i bet Bush will declare martial law before the 2004 election (remember that tired old prediction?). And find bin Laden as well, just in time for the election (another foolish prediction).
Best to see F 9-11. It is full of really well thought out, um, propaganda!
what part of f-911 is untrue? If the movie did not have any truth to it, bush would have sued Mr. moore. Look what bush people did to dan rather and that was just one story. Mr. moore had a whole movie. The bush people could not find one thing to sue Mr. moore over, that’s proof right there how true the documentory was. 90% of the people who put down this movie never saw it.
reddog, well it’s obvious that just like your beloved leader you are not exactly the sharpest tool in the box. Almost half of the electorate of this country voted for a liberal, well over fifty four million people.
And what have we all been freed from? Every child in America getting medical insurance? Does it make you feel like a man to know that you’ve stopped this from happening?
Morons of America unite, oops, they already have.
Any detractors of Michael Moore’s need only visit his web site and check out the factual back up to Farenheit 911. Or does the truth hurt too much?
For all you cowardly conservatives who get their ‘facts’ only from Fox News, try doing some real research.
While Moores movie was entertaining, it was full of both incorrect information (lying about the Dec. 19th, 2001, edition of The Pantagraph headline was a minor example of this) and information presented in such a slanted way as to be effectively false (was Iraq really a paradise before the US began to indiscriminately bomb it to the stone age, apparently for no good reason?).
For those who wish to check on the movie, the Internet is full of critical reviews that point out the falsehoods. One link to consider visiting is: (Unavailable!!!)
(in google type Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11 and you can get a website that is blacklisted here - that is, i CANNOT post the link due to censorship of ITT. Strange. . .)
For those who believe the movie is accurate, well, i guess different strokes for different folks. But even for them, can they believe it is a “documentary”? The word used to imply a unbiased piece of work, as opposed to something meant to savage the subject of the work.
Note that suing is not an option (although Moore has threatened to sue those who dissect his film, but obviously will not actually sue) for a public figure. Rather was not sued even though his story was (or should have been) known to be based on a forgery from the very beginning. . .
I’d like to respond to < notreally >. You use the word propaganda. I recall that Bush stated the reason for invading Iraq was to destroy Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. There’s a steaming mound of propaganda if I’ve ever seen/smelled one. I don’t mean to come across as sounding holier than though, but it’s hard to understand the way some defend Bush. I’m convinced he will go down in history as the worst president ever. To give him credit, he’s merely the marionette who awkwardly articulates the half-baked policies of the puppetmasters around him. You mention martial law (I did not), but you cannot deny that there are myriads of voting irregularities surrounding his 2004 victory. Democracy is indeed done like dinner in the US. I still stand by my assertion that Schwarzenegger will be the next president, and he has many powerful, connected friends who would like to see it happen, Senator Orrin Hatch amongst them. I’m not making any of this up, though I suspect you’d prefer to believe that I am.
gizba, you wrote “I still stand by my assertion that Schwarzenegger will be the next president, and he has many powerful, connected friends who would like to see it happen..”
Rest assured, that won’t happen. True, Schwarzenegger got the spotlight at the Republican convention in New York City but he will not be the Republican nominee for president—ever.
The reasons why are many, but the main reasons are that he supports gay rights, abortion rights, gun control and stem cell research, all issues inimical to the Republican Right wing and the evangelicals who are going to need a messianic replacement for G. W. Bush in 2008. Arnold Schwarzenegger is not that replacement.
Of course, if G. W. Bush has his way over the next four years the Armageddon crowd may have their prayed-for dream of the Rapture and End of Days come true.
Bush, bolstered by his Iraq ratification policies which he claimed shortly after November 2, may wreak nuclear holocaust on the world and make it uninhabitable for all but those living in underground cubbyholes and bunkers for decades.
As for the next president, look for a gradual brightening of the halo around Senator Bill Frist’s head as he steadily moves towards fulfilling the “moral values,” tolerance-for-none Republican majority wish list. After all, Jesus had his disciples, why not G. W. Bush?
you want propaganda. Look at the swift boat people that put kerry down. Where were they 35 years ago standing next to kerry recieving their medals, not one of them wrote a complaint, or had a bad thing to say about kerry, but give them 4 or 5 million dollars from carl rove and the bush people, now kerry is the biggest bastard that ever lived. If it were not for protesters like kerry and public support against vietnam we would still be fighting that war today. The same thing is happening again today, more americans are against the iraq war than for it. Bush will be at the tail end of his policies again like no child left behind,homeland security, imigration reform, all are under funded. Social security reform which his own party is having a hard time supporting because they might get voted out in 06. The iraq war has cost as much as half of ww1,or half as much as vietnam right now, and the bush people say we have 2-5 years left in iraq. It is a matter of time bush will go down in flames. He did not get voted back in because people liked him but that they hated kerry more. Bush got back in by the lowest margin ever for a president, even nixon had 2% more and he was the lowest till bush came along. Don’t get me wrong kerry was not a very good choice either, it was like twiddle dee and twiddle dumb. It is sad that a country this great can’t come up with any better people than these two for president.
surelyYouKnow, yes we do know, but you don’t. Minor holes can be picked in anything. A twelve year old boy in England recently found five inaccuracies in the Encyclodedia Britanica, which has a reputation for being flawless.
Several small inaccuracies do not add up to one big one though. If you want to look at some really big lies, how about ‘Saddam has weapons of mass distruction’, or ’ Iraq has strong ties to Al Qaeda’.
Iraq war apologists would rather pick holes in a film maker who basically got it right, then examining their own reasons for supporting a government that lies almost daily.
As for Moore’s depiction of pre war Iraq, it hardly looked like a paradise. To me it just looked like a handful of ordinary people getting on with their lives. Compared to Fox News’ vision of the hell like conditions the Iraqs were suppose to be suffering I suppose it would seem like a paradise. Moores film was true to the spirit of the the truth, among other things. If they had it so completely bad under Saddam why are they fighting back now?
And don’t give me that ‘they’re all foreign terrorist who have come into the country to kill Americans’. It has been widely estimated that foreign (non Iraqi) insurgents make up between as little as five to ten percent of the total number of fighters. These people did not want to be invaded, no matter how much they despised Saddam.
And what has Bin Ladan, the real criminal, done that George W. Bush now hasn’t? Bush is directly responsible for a confirmed seventeen thousand civilian deaths now. That’s more than five world trade centers! Can you even begin to imagine that? Probably not.
Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 911. The hijackers were almost all Saudi Arabian. What will happen do you think if Saudi Arabia decides to attack us again? Surely you Know! We’d be pretty screwed wouldn’t we?
You Bush supporters frighten me, the depth of your stupidity is astounding. Either that or you are all cold hearted supporters of death and murder.
hey matilda- sorry about kerry losing- he must have got too much slime on him from ted kemmedy to win. I am the sharpest knife in this drawer at least I voted for the winner and not some snot nosed Boston liberal witha bitchy- foul mouthed wife.
Oh and tell me did the democrats after 40 years of stranglehold on this country in congress give kids insurance? No they took all the tax money they stole from us and freedoms they took from us and used it to destroy America (almost).
So don’t you lecture me you delusional little liberal. Your party lost & lost big so get over it .
You fool reddog, have it your way. This is not a football game, peoples lives are at stake. Medicare and social security must have destroyed millions of American’s freedoms. FDR was a real bastard, wasn’t he, completely neglecting the already rich? And Clinton? God damn those democrats actually balancing the budget and creating a surplus. Your type make me sick. The dellusions are yours. Your ‘president’ caused the deaths of 16997 more people than Charles Manson. Proud?
You are not the sharpest tool in this box, just the most evil one. People like you will cause the death of all civilisation unless stopped. War is an answer to nothing. Violence is the ultimate slippery slope. You are a supporter of death.
Perhaps the corpses of dead Iraqi children should be mailed to registered republican voters at random.
Where do you get this stuff Matilda- really? Charles Manson- end of civilization?? The evil one?? I imagine the postage would be real high on mailing corpses- and what kind of nutjob would even suggest such a thing.
Matilda here’s your crown - here is your throne- now take your rightful place among the royalty of the looney left. It sounds like you took LSD and watched too many Michael Moore movies.
Clinton taxed us thru the roof and fought kicking and screaming to balance the budget. He also had the benefit of the tech boom to steal all the tax money to balance the books.
While I abhor war myself and I know this is tough thing for folks like matilda to grasp sometimes you have to fight - and yes it gets bloody. If we never fought we would still be british subjects or living under Hitler or Japanese rule. I take it as a compliment to be put down and badmouthed by the likes of you matilda- I could go on for hours about the ruminations and delusions of your wacko idelogy- but why bother- you seem happy having somebody to hate…have a nice day and be sure to take your medication!
Reddog, I think your support of Bush can quite moderately be descibed as evil. And there are seventeen thousand people who would agree with me, if they were not dead (please dispute the figures). Not to mention all the political prisoners held and tortured without trial.
Your beloved leader is a mass murderer, because Iraq was in no concievable way a threat to us. The invasion of Iraq was not an act of self defence, it was an act of outright agression.
I’ll stick to the LSD and the Michael Moore movies (and to facts, figures and reasoning), you stick to the presidential press releases.
If you really want to draw comparisons, America did to Iraq what Germany did to Poland sixty years ago, no more no less.
Here’s a quote that your one remaining brain cell may find informative.
“This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed … were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards…”-
-Rudolf Hoess, SS Commandant at Auschwitz, Executed 1946
Also, reddog, you will be ‘bad mouthed’ by the likes of me your whole life. The looney right burns bright, and so the good side of planet earth will have to remain forever vigilant.
Plus the thing with the dead Iraqi children, whilst complete fantasy, is something I would do if I could, because it would shock you all into realising what you’ve done. Aren’t conservatives suppose to be big on personal responsiblity? Not it seems when it comes to killing foreigners.
What sort of nutjob would suggest invading a nation that posed no direct or indirect threat to us and killing seventeen thousand innocent civilians?
America was the subject of a British military occupation, Germany declared war on us, and Japan attacked us.
What did Iraq do? Before you start spouting Fox News inspired gibberish, I’ll tell you, nothing!
And I matida gatsby have been assailed with you looney liberals . So has the rest of this country and I am glad the liberal reign of terror is over.
What Bush did was nothing short of sheer brilliance- he took the fight to them . Iraq was an enemy and the day Hussein got nukes he would have used them against us .
As for torture well if it saved one of our soldiers live -just even one it was 110 % worth it. Where is your sense of outrage over those barbarians cutting off peoples heads and using kids for suicide bombers your poor misguided hypocrite?
You are Michael Moore’s mother aren’t you you sound delusional enough to have spawned the oversized piece of furry whale excrement( and traitor) that he is.
just get over the fact that you liberals no longer have a stranglehold on this government and the news media anymore. Your time has past fueled by common sense and what is right..
I have to wonder at anybody who can quote nazis verbatim like you. What’s YOUR idea for conservatives Tilda put us all in concentration camps until we can be brainwashed to your progressive ideals. Well we already have that here it’s called public (government) schools.
Just I have suspected all along you lefties are really nazis with nice names like rainbow and flower and such. Tolerance only means obediance to your dogma right?
I am so glad since 1994 that you libs have been slowly voted out of power.
seig heil matilda
liberalism is a mental disorder and you Matildo have a terminal case
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