Posts Made By: Joe Lentz

This is a good article explaining why FL might well be another exercise in BS for our system in the 2004 election. It seems that little has been done to improve things since 2000. :S No thanks to Jeb Bush...

Why is Florida's voting system so corrupt?
By Ann Louise Bardach
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2004, at 12:45 PM PT

http://www.slate.com/id/2105524/

About the only thing that could restore confidence in Florida electoral procedures would be Hood's immediate resignation; her successor should then be chosen by a bipartisan commission. And as Gov. Bush cannot possibly be an impartial observer in his brother's quest for another term, he should recuse himself from every aspect involving the vote count in Florida. He also needs to flex his power with his famously compliant Legislature to repeal the new laws eliminating manual recounts and witnessed absentee ballots. In addition, all felons who have repaid their debt to society, following completion of their sentences, should have their voting rights restored.
If these changes are not made, Florida cannot conduct a credible election come November.

I believe Rumsfeld should resign. It would show the rest of the world how seriously we take the prison abuses. It would be a step toward restoring a portion of our national integrity. It would show the world that the US isn't becoming a country with the power of a gaint and the morals of a banana republic. Do I expect this to happen? Not likely. This administration has always been reluctant to take responsibility for it's actions, preferring instead to rationalize, deny, or change the subject. November can't come soon enough for me...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/26/opinion/26thurs1.html

For anyone with the time to wade through 400-plus pages and the resources to decode them, the two reports issued this week on the Abu Ghraib prison are an indictment of the way the Bush administration set the stage for Iraqi prisoners to be brutalized by American prison guards, military intelligence officers and private contractors.

Here's an alternative, nonpartisan POV on the 527 ads, someone who sees a silver lining in them. 8O

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/editorial/9467397.htm

Joseph, all that blind trust among fans of the Bushies makes ANY light shed on the shady doings of their party seem like conspiracy. Apparently the left knows more about the goings on of the right than the right does. So what did you say was pathetic again?

Sorry bout the cut and paste, I try not to do this very often. I thought this article cut to the chase though. Forget for a moment about the squabbling over definitions of lies and all the little technicalities people try to use to justify huge issues. Just think in terms using the most basic common sense; are we a better country for having had Bush run it for the last three and a half years?

The Real Issue: Bush is Incompetent
By Richard Reeves
International Herald Tribune

Saturday 28 August 2004

Not up to the job.

NEW YORK President George W. Bush is coming to town. You better watch out, you better not shout - unless you're a certified delegate inside Madison Square Garden. With protesters somewhere out of sight, the Republican National Convention will be a celebration of the ideology, values and interests served by this second Bush presidency.

Whether you agree or disagree with the words pouring from the podium over Americans who see reflections of themselves in George W. Bush, the real issue of this election will not be mentioned. The core issue is this: America's president is incompetent. He is not a good president.

Let me count the ways:

1. He has divided the country; we Americans are all part of a vicious little hissing match. We were united and humbled on Sept. 12, 2001. We are divided and humiliated now, telling lies about each other.

2. He has divided the world."We are all Americans now" headlined Le Monde on that Sept. 12. Now there are days when it seems as if they are all anti-Americans.

3. He is leaving no child or grandchild without debt. He has taken the government from surplus into deficit in the name of national security and increased private investment. We can pay the debt in two ways: with more government revenues (taxation) or by borrowing - against the sweat and income of new generations. The president has chosen to borrow.

4. He campaigns as a champion of smaller government but is greatly increasing the size and role of government. Ideological conservatism, it turns out, costs just as much, or more, than ideological liberalism. Conservative and liberal politicians are both for increasing the reach and power of government. The difference between them is which parts and functions of the state are to be empowered and financed. The choice is between military measures and order, or more redistribution of income. Money is power.

5. He is diminishing the military of which he is so proud now as commander in chief. The invasion and occupation of Iraq have obviously not worked out the way he imagined - naked torture was not the goal. But the far greater problem for the future is that America's proud commander has revealed the hollowness behind unilateral superpower. From the top down, we have not been able to win Iraq, much less the world. And going into Iraq has compromised or crippled the war on terror he declared himself.

6. He is diminishing scientific progress, the great engine of the 20th century. Only the truly ignorant can believe that the proper role of government is to hinder medical research and environmental study in the name of God.

7. He is diminishing the Constitution of the United States. Cheesy tricks like amending the great text of freedom to attack homosexuality can be dismissed as wedge politics. But it is worse to preach against an activist judiciary while appointing more activist judges who happen to hold different beliefs, particularly the idea that civil liberties are the enemies of patriotism, security and freedom itself.

8. He has surrounded himself with other incompetents. The secretary of state is presiding over the rape of diplomacy and its alliances. The secretary of defense has sent our young men and women into situations that were never meant or trained to handle, and now they are being ordered into battle by an appointed sheik in a far land. The national security adviser does not seem to know that her job description includes coordinating defense and diplomacy. And then there was our $340,000 a month local hire, Ahmad Chalabi, sitting in the gallery of our House .

9. He has been unable or unwilling to deal with declining employment and the rising medical costs of becoming an older nation.

10. He is, as if by design, destroying the credibility of America as a force for peace in the world - an honest broker - particularly in the Middle East.

The list is longer, miscalculation after miscalculation. President Bush has not been able to function effectively at this pay grade. He may mean well, but this has been a difficult time, and he is in over his head. We and our kids will pay the price for his blundering, blunderbuss adventure in Washington. He has been tested in a difficult time - and, unhappily for all of us and the world, he has not been up to the job.

You can thank the current administration for these disturbing changes to our way of life. These are threats to democrats and republicans alike.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/083104A.shtml

I don't understand why this isn't a nonpartisan issue, since it potentially effects everyone.

Jim, Giuliani was comparing Bush to Winston Churchill for chrisakes!! Kind of sets the tone for the whole masquerade don't you think?

Just because I like you guys so much!

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/090104A.shtml

>>>>Someone forgot to get Rudy Giuliani the memo about the Terror War now being unwinnable. "We'll see an end to global terrorism,'' he said from the convention podium on Monday night. "It may seem very difficult and a long way off. It may even seem idealistic to say that. But it may not be as far away and as idealistic as it seems.''

Never mind Rudy’s assertion that Bush “can see through time” in the same speech. Between Bush’s temporal abilities and his armchair-to-armchair relationship with the Almighty, one might have assumed that he’d have stumbled to this wisdom many moons ago. Of course a war against terror cannot be won. Terrorism is a weapon. How do you wage war against a weapon? Shall we next have a war against bazookas and slingshots?

One defeats terrorism by undermining the conditions which breed terrorists. Economic inequality, crushing poverty, shattered educational infrastructures, rampant violence and a total lack of hope are the soil in which suicide bombers germinate. Until you get rid of those, you will always have terrorism. Period.<<<<

OK, my work is done here for tonight. Time to catch some zzzzzzzz's.........

Jim, your definition of a socialist program is one you don't agree with. Trust me, your taxes are being appropriated for worse and more expensive stuff then this.

Yes, there is a theme...


A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.
- Henry de Jouvenel


In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.
- J. William Fulbright


A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a "Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
- Mahatma Gandhi


When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
- Plato


Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
- Thomas Jefferson


Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you don't think.
- Unknown


Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.
- Alan Coren


Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.
- Aldous Huxley


Freedom is when the people can speak, democracy is when the government listens.
- Alastair Farrugia


It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
- Tom Stoppard


And my personal favorite:

A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.
- Walter Bagehot