The Difference between Canada and the United States.

[Matra et Alpine]

FLeet, why the hell are you posting clearly text taken from dodgy e-mails or forums ?

If you're posting fiction then at leat cite the authors

PS: I LOVED the "just ignore the facts" comment to another poster wow a leap to 5000% self-ownage

[Fleet 500]

PS: I LOVED the "just ignore the facts" comment to another poster wow a leap to 5000% self-ownage

Well, wasn't he? It is a fact that 7 of 9 U.S. Supreme Court justices said they had a problem with the way the votes were being counted.

The Flordia law I posted is a fact, too (about hand recoutings).

The reason for the electoral college is yet another fact I posted.

(I do realize you have a problem accepting facts, like most liberals or whatever you call yourself).

[Fleet 500]

FLeet, why the hell are you posting clearly text taken from dodgy e-mails or forums ?

Can you prove them to be invalid or inaccurate?

[Matra et Alpine]

Wrong. Every vote which was cast properly was not only counted the first time, but in the one after another hand recounts. Where did you get the idea that legal votes were being discarded? Or are you talking about the overseas military votes which the Gore camp tried to discard?

hanging chad FLeet.
Come on stop being so obtuse

[Matra et Alpine]

Can you prove them to be invalid or inaccurate?

wow proving YET AGAIN you have no concept of the accepted standard of evidence and proof.

YOU posted it m8, it's up to YOU to prove their validity.

WE can see the smiley stuck in the middle. So know that we are NOT seeing soemthign from a respected or published treatise.

you just enjoy this owning yourself dont' you

[Matra et Alpine]

Well, wasn't he? It is a fact that 7 of 9 U.S. Supreme Court justices said they had a problem with the way the votes were being counted.

The Flordia law I posted is a fact, too (about hand recoutings).

The reason for the electoral college is yet another fact I posted.

(I do realize you have a problem accepting facts, like most liberals or whatever you call yourself).

WAHt a lod of BS, FLeet.

I dont' have a problema nd yoet you have AGAIN avoided the comments about UK and AUS hand couintign methods.

You've been unable to follow the reasoning again and are making yourself look a bigger idiot than even I can construct for you

Stop before they come and put you in remedial class !!!!

[Bob]

Yes, I agree. I am a conservative Republican and think the Bush administration is spending way too much (see Matra, I don't blindly follow my party as you claim).
And you, too, Bob. If I did "fanatically" support Bush (which I don't), I would not be typing the list below:
My disagreements with Bush...
- Not securing the border.
- Spending too much.
- Giving tax money to people who didn't pay it.
- Not keeping the public updated about Iraq often enough.

So for what reason DO you support Bush? Why do I say 'blindly'? Because I don't understand how you can support this man knowing his history.
1. He justified the war in Iraq based on the assertion that they had WMDs and the will to use them. Whether you choose to accept this or not, it is a fact, proven several times over on these forums. The WMDs were not there. He invaded a country, spent billions, and killed thousands, while decieving the American people as to why he was doing it.
2. He has a record of past failure. While managing his oil company in Texas, he failed to produce anything profitable three separate time.
3. He has said that he does not understand government at the state level (as president, fairly recently). This man was governor of Texas, yet he doesn't understand how a state government works?
4. The 'coalition' which was supposed to attack Iraq was not a coalition, as he promised Americans it would be. It was, and is, american soldiers, paid for with american money, while he and haliburton are getting richer from oil.
5. So when were the troops supposed to come home? YEARS AGO. George Bush is responsible for every one of those lives lost in Iraq.


I like how you completely dodged my question last time, so here it is again "Why do you support Bush?"

I know how you disagree with him on a few matters. What is it in this stupid, corrupt, failure-prone puppet of a president that gets your loyalty?

[nota]

(Sorry I can't link to this AU newspaper story - but worth C&P imo)

The big boss of the world
November 3 2004

George Bush, the regular guy happy to feed a live fish to his dog, is up against a man with the hair to be president and an air of unconquerable aloofness. Bill Bryson untangles the contenders.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the mysterious bulge in George Bush's jacket. The idea that Bush might have been wired for assistance has a kind of endearing charm. With the best will in the world - and of course I am not offering anything as generous as that here - you have to concede that a radio transmitter would explain a great deal, not least Bush's interesting tendency to order himself to pipe down at odd moments in the debates.

Days before any thought of wireless nefariousness entered my head, I remember being struck that Bush referred to the Italian Prime Minister as "Sylvia Burrus", and then a minute or two later, when the name was no longer conspicuously germane, blurted out "Silvio Berlusconi" as if it had just miraculously come to him. Which, as we now know, it may well have.

What is interesting in this is not how swiftly the story faded from the nation's attention - news is really just a series of nano-events these days - but how little effect it had in its brief spell of lively consideration.

Bush, I'm told, could have walked up to the lectern with television rabbit ears strapped to his head and it would have made little difference to how most Americans perceive him. Those who dislike and distrust him do so maximally already, while those who adore him are equally unwavering in their devotions.

For those of us who are not on the adoring end of the equation, the question that naturally springs to mind is: what would it take to get people not to want to vote for him? One quality that doesn't seem to matter as it once did - and I am sorry to bring it up because it is an awfully touchy subject - is the matter of presidential intelligence.

Consider an interesting historical parallel. In 1976, while wooing Mexican-American voters, President Gerald Ford was presented with a large, freshly made tamale to pose with. The tamale was wrapped, in the traditional manner, in a corn husk to keep it warm.

Unfortunately for his reputation, Ford proceeded to try to eat the whole thing, fibrous husk and all. This was roughly equivalent to sitting down to lunch in a diner and trying to eat the place mat. He looked so foolish that millions of people decided not to vote for him, and instead we got four years of Jimmy Carter and his very odd family, which was a national sacrifice, to be sure.

Now cast your mind forward 28 years to August 2004. Sensing a photo opportunity while campaigning in Iowa, Bush stopped his motorcade and bounded over to a vegetable stand, bought an ear of corn and, as cameras excitedly clicked, proceeded to try to eat it raw, discovering in the process what all other grown people know already - that eating raw corn is like eating raw wheat or raw rice, which is to say not remotely satisfactory.

In the same week, while fishing, Bush tossed his dog a live fish to torment to death on the lawn. I hesitate to show disrespect for the President because, as the radio talk show people constantly remind us, criticising the President (or any of his actions or the actions of anyone who has a gun or wears an American flag on his lapel, or such a person's mother) gives comfort to the enemy, so I'll just say very quietly that both of these incidents made him look just a little bit not-too-smart.

Yet neither action, as far as can be told, affected Bush's standing with the electorate even a trifle.

Just as Bush seemed constitutionally unable to dismay his supporters, so Senator John Kerry seemed throughout the campaign constitutionally unable to galvanise his.

The only thing rarer than someone who feelingly supports John Kerry is, it has to be said, someone who understands what his policies are. It is hardly a novel observation to note that roughly half the electorate has voted not for Kerry, but against Bush.

On the face of it, Bush would seem to have the lead in accumulated negatives. The economy is not looking terribly rosy. The budget surplus of $US200 billion ($268 billion) that he inherited four years ago has become a projected deficit this year of $US422 billion and is heading for aggregated arrears of $US2.3 trillion by the end of the decade.

More than a million jobs have been lost in the same period. The rebuilding of Iraq is such a mess that even many conservative commentators - notably George Will and Tucker Carlson - have become outspoken in their criticism of the Administration's foreign policy.

America has achieved, under Bush's command, the extraordinary distinction of not only failing to find the weapons it sought, but then losing 340 tonnes of those it did find.

The President's approval rating is stuck below 50 per cent, which is hardly a ringing endorsement. He can't even be said to be a hard worker. Extraordinarily, considering all that was going on, Bush spent 98 days at his ranch last year.

This compares with the 19 days of annual vacation that President Bill Clinton averaged in his two terms (though comparisons are perhaps unfair as we now know that Clinton took much of his relaxation in the Oval Office) or the 41 days a year that President Ronald Reagan averaged - which, it should be noted, includes his recovery time after being shot. Bush, in short, would seem to have an abundance of vulnerabilities.

Yet it was Kerry who spent most of the campaign on the defensive. The consensus view seems to be that he has excellent hair and a good presidential manner - and these things count for more than we might comfortably suppose - but that these are offset by the more mixed signals that emanate from his patrician bearing and slight air of unconquerable aloofness.

Specifically, Kerry is smart but not endearingly self-deprecating. He doesn't seem wholly at ease with strangers. He is proficient in French - a language spoken, notoriously, by men who sometimes kiss each other on the cheeks and make faithless allies.

He's married to a woman of independent wealth and mind who looks as if she would have to ask a servant where the brooms in her house are kept. When he puts on a hunting jacket or fishing gear, it always looks as if it has come straight out of the packaging. You kind of suspect he doesn't own a single old hat.

Bush is unquestionably the winner in the regular guy department. Like all successful presidents, he is effortlessly comfortable with ordinary people and wholly unashamed to be folksy, and there is no question that he inspires trust among millions. His wife is adored universally.

It's really only his daughters (who look, as one observer acutely noted, like the sort of young women you would expect to see jumping out of a cake at a bachelor party) who seem a little sketchy, as I believe the younger people say, but they have been kept mostly in the background during the campaign.

On the basis of trust alone, I think Bush has probably got the edge.

Still, this being America, anything is possible. This is a country, never forget, where 11 per cent of young adults can't locate the Pacific Ocean on a map, where nearly half of all adults and a quarter of university graduates believe that the Earth was created in seven days, by God, sometime in the past 10,000 years, and where 20 per cent of adults evidently believe that Saddam Hussein not only had weapons of mass destruction but used them on us.

It is often remarked how worrying it is that half the people don't vote. I think I should find it rather more worrying if they did.

In any case, however accurately pollsters track voter preferences, the critical factors are how many people turn out on election day and where the turning out is done. The US presidential election is not really a popularity contest at all. It's about winning the right states and collecting the requisite number of electoral votes.

Al Gore, as I am sure you will have been reminded many times already this week, received more votes in 2000 than any other candidate in history except Ronald Reagan, and still didn't become president.

The most unnerving fact of all is that about 5 per cent of voters make their minds up on election day. They just see how they feel when they get out of bed in the morning. It is these decisive souls who will determine who leads the free world for the next four years.

[Fleet 500]

hanging chad FLeet.
Come on stop being so obtuse

The voter is supposed to remove any chips or chads.
I don't know if it said it on the Florida ballot, but it does on the one in California. It says, "Remove any chips (chads) before you turn in the ballot."
It is the responsibility of the voter to make sure the vote counts by marking it correctly and removing chads.

[Fleet 500]

So for what reason DO you support Bush? Why do I say 'blindly'? Because I don't understand how you can support this man knowing his history.
1. He justified the war in Iraq based on the assertion that they had WMDs and the will to use them. Whether you choose to accept this or not, it is a fact, proven several times over on these forums. The WMDs were not there. He invaded a country, spent billions, and killed thousands, while decieving the American people as to why he was doing it.
2. He has a record of past failure. While managing his oil company in Texas, he failed to produce anything profitable three separate time.
3. He has said that he does not understand government at the state level (as president, fairly recently). This man was governor of Texas, yet he doesn't understand how a state government works?
4. The 'coalition' which was supposed to attack Iraq was not a coalition, as he promised Americans it would be. It was, and is, american soldiers, paid for with american money, while he and haliburton are getting richer from oil.
5. So when were the troops supposed to come home? YEARS AGO. George Bush is responsible for every one of those lives lost in Iraq.


I like how you completely dodged my question last time, so here it is again "Why do you support Bush?"

I know how you disagree with him on a few matters. What is it in this stupid, corrupt, failure-prone puppet of a president that gets your loyalty?

Okay, I'll tell you why I support Bush on some (not all) things.
1. He had removed a known murderous dictator (and his two evil sons), he liberated 52 million people (Afghanistan and Iraq). He is attempting to create a democracy in Iraq (and Afghanistan).

2. He not only ended a recession he inherited, but through his tax cuts, the economy had a huge 8.3% increase in GDP a few years ago... the biggest gain since the 9.7% increase in 1984 under another Republican President. The current GDP level is at least the same as the average under Clinton.

3. I haven't heard the governor quote you posted.

4. It was a coalition... there were other nations with the U.S. helping in the invasion of Iraq. Haliburton made no difference in the invasion of Iraq because it was decided to remove Saddam before Bush was elected President.

5. Bush never said the troops were supposed to come home "years ago." Where did you get that from? He said they will come home when the time is right (the Iraqis can defend themselves). Maybe that's why reenlistment in the military is near an all-time high.

Explain why (you think) Bush is corrupt. If you really want to read up on a corrupt President, read up on Clinton... the most corrupt President in the history of the United States.
What is in this Bush-bashing for everything (even things out of his control)?
See, no dodging questions here.

[Fleet 500]

WAHt a lod of BS, FLeet.

I dont' have a problema nd yoet you have AGAIN avoided the comments about UK and AUS hand couintign methods.

You've been unable to follow the reasoning again and are making yourself look a bigger idiot than even I can construct for you

Stop before they come and put you in remedial class !!!!

Lol. You call it BS, but don't challenge the facts I posted!
I sure hope nobody here at UCP takes you seriously!

[SlickHolden]

perfect example of not bothering to READ the procedure in the UK or Aus in another post.

I already told you it was more about speed and cost.

With multiple stage and repeat counting adn cross-checks and balances then I hate to tell you but PEOPLE are more accurate than machines. You just have to pay enough to do the job properly !!! WHY are people more accurate ? Because people can apply judgement and identify the desire nad intent of a voter and do NOT jsut look for a specific shape/hoel in a specific place. Computers are always GI-GO ! Thankfully people aren't.

Can you cite evidence on accuracy please ?

I think people counting since it takes more then 1 person to count them and then they get the double check and the once over again in the end is faster with more accuracy i agree. I'm sure just like the UK votes when they start on the day by 8-10PM that night we have a winner i'm sure it's the best way to go still. And then there is postal votes must be done by hand. I would hate to see the day Machines take over from us all Machines still need human help but Humans dont need machines help
What would make life easy would be if we all voted in the partys colors then they wouldnt even come close to messing it up.

So for what reason DO you support Bush? Why do I say 'blindly'? Because I don't understand how you can support this man knowing his history.
1. He justified the war in Iraq based on the assertion that they had WMDs and the will to use them. Whether you choose to accept this or not, it is a fact, proven several times over on these forums. The WMDs were not there. He invaded a country, spent billions, and killed thousands, while decieving the American people as to why he was doing it.
2. He has a record of past failure. While managing his oil company in Texas, he failed to produce anything profitable three separate time.
3. He has said that he does not understand government at the state level (as president, fairly recently). This man was governor of Texas, yet he doesn't understand how a state government works?

4. The 'coalition' which was supposed to attack Iraq was not a coalition, as he promised Americans it would be. It was, and is, american soldiers, paid for with american money, while he and haliburton are getting richer from oil.

5. So when were the troops supposed to come home? YEARS AGO. George Bush is responsible for every one of those lives lost in Iraq.


I like how you completely dodged my question last time, so here it is again "Why do you support Bush?"

I know how you disagree with him on a few matters. What is it in this stupid, corrupt, failure-prone puppet of a president that gets your loyalty?

The Above Quote i'm sure the UK would disagree there with you

[Matra et Alpine]

The voter is supposed to remove any chips or chads.
I don't know if it said it on the Florida ballot, but it does on the one in California. It says, "Remove any chips (chads) before you turn in the ballot."
It is the responsibility of the voter to make sure the vote counts by marking it correctly and removing chads.

wow !!

We disagree, Fleet

It is the responsibility of the voting system to include ALL votes cast by any voter whether they have a disabiliyt or mechanical ineptitidye or difficulty reading and obeying instruction.

It's call free vote.

What YOU have described is a skewed view, one which assists the well educated and capable !!!!!

[Matra et Alpine]

Lol. You call it BS, but don't challenge the facts I posted!
I sure hope nobody here at UCP takes you seriously!

You're running of at the mouth (fingers!) again with out engaging brain.

The comment was about the UK and Aus system which aclearly demosntrate that hadn counting works fine if a little expensive and doesnt' have issues like chad etc introduced by MACHINES.

YOU avoided those points.
It's OK most folsk know why, you're running from enything you're not brainwashed to compute

[Bob]

The Above Quote i'm sure the UK would disagree there with you

And Fleet too:

Yes, it was an international effort- but an overwhelming number of the troops there are Americans, and most of the money spent on the war is ours. The efforts by other governments has been almost nothing compared to that of America.