Re: 50 Easy Questions to Ask Any Republican

reality wrote:
The Weasel wrote:
reality wrote:
The Weasel wrote:
reality wrote:
wordkyle wrote:
Okay, I'll take the Pepsi challenge. I'll take it slowly for you.

"7 Best Accomplishments of the Bush Presidency -- so far"

1. Kept Al Gore from inhabiting the White House.

Translation: Lost the popular vote and then stole the election in
Florida by having his campaign manager certify the vote,

Lost in the translation was the fact that Bush was certified under the
order of EVERY DEMOCRAT on the Florida Supreme Court. It was the suit
by 4 Democrat majority counties and Al Gore to base this election of a
recount of 4 Democrat majority counties. Gore lost that recount, and
Bush was certified as ordered by the DEMOCRAT controlled court..

and then
ultimately having to resort to being appointed (p)resident by the
activist judges on the USSC.

You need a new translator. When the DEMOCRATS on the Florida Supreme
Court allowed Bush to be certified, no court in the land could remove
that certification (you forget about that pesky document called the US
Constitution). Only Congress had the power to change the outcome of the
election, not the courts.

I don't know where you get your revisionist history, but this is what I
found:

Clearly, you do not understand the events that took place in the
Florida 2000 election. More below.

Clearly your Bush spin doesn't hold water. No matter how you slice it,
Harris in the face of irregularities, certified Dumbya which set off
the entire chain of events. Then afterwards as Bush's campaign
manager, she did her level underhanded best, as the fox in the
henhouse, to deliver Florida to Dumbya.

There is no spin. I cited the case, and the media reports, that show
Bush was certified as per the order every Democrat on the Florida
Supreme Court.

http://members.surfbest.net/mikehammer/harris.htm

This article is full of legal errors, but it does make the same point
that I made. I suggest next time you give a cite, be sure that you read
it. Thank you for making my point with this link.

Did you check the dates in your article? Of course not. You are making
a claim about actions that took place BEFORE the Democrats on the
Florida Supreme Court took over the certification process. If you had
paid attention to what your own cite, you would have known that the
author was discussing the case that I cited.

From your cite:

"The Florida Supreme Court should have removed Harris for cause- an
outrageous conflict of interest, ordered hand counts in all FL
counties to be completed in 10-14 days, and defined a countable vote.
That could have led to a fair settlement. When they issued the
impossible 5 day extension over the 2nd biggest holiday of the year,
they condemned the process to incremental escalating partisan legal
struggles, where neither side could reach an honest victory and justice
was forever denied."

As I pointed out, certification was granted by the Democrats on the
Florida Supreme Court. It was the court's remedy to accept Gore's
request for a recount of 4 Democrat counties. Your link says it was
WRONG of the COURT to craft this remedy.

Well NO KIDDING. It was the Democrats who allowed certification to be
granted on a partial recount of the state, with what YOU CITE says was
an "impossible 5 day extension over the 2nd biggest holiday of the
year." The Democrats on the court gave Bush the advantage, NOT Harris.

From Palm Beach v. Harris "........Accordingly, in order to allow
maximum time for contests pursuant to section 102.168, amended
certifications must be filed with the Elections Canvassing Commission
by 5 p.m. on Sunday, November 26, 2000 and the Secretary of State and
the Elections Canvassing Commission shall accept any such amended
certifications received by 5 p.m. on Sunday, November 26, 2000,
provided that the office of the Secretary of State, Division of
Elections is open in order to allow receipt thereof....."

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/election/sc00-2346.pdf

Now go back an re-read what your cite says....The DEMOCRATS on the
Florida Supreme Court should have......."ordered hand counts in all FL
counties to be completed in 10-14 days, and defined a countable vote.
That could have led to a fair settlement. When they issued the
impossible 5 day extension over the 2nd biggest holiday of the year,
they condemned the process to incremental escalating partisan legal
struggles, where neither side could reach an honest victory and justice
was forever denied."

The author is correct, if they are going to order a recount, they
should have crafted one that would have "led to a fair settlement".
This action here made it an uphil battle for Gore in the state of
Florida. After Bush was certified, unless Gore fights for a recounts as
your author describes, he does not have the votes he needed in Congress
to defeat this Florida Certificaton. That is the point of the Villiage
Voice article (you do know that the V V is a left wing site?).

"The continued standoff between the judicial, legislative, and
administrative branches threatens to tumble into Congress, where both
the House and the Senate would have to decide which of two slates of
electors is valid. If the chambers vote along current party lines, the
House would pick the slate supporting Shrub; in the Senate, the
tie-breaking vote would be cast by Gore himself and result in a
decision for a Democratic slate.

If the chambers do in fact disagree, then the Electoral Count Act
specifies that the electors chosen by the governor-Jeb Bush-shall be
accpetd."

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0049,elect5,20581,6.html

Who gave "Shrub" the electors from Gov "Shrub"? It was the
short-sighted Democrats on the Florida Supreme Court.

"At 4:00 p.m. EST on December 8, the Florida Supreme Court, by a 4 to 3
vote, ordered a manual recount, under the supervision of the Leon
County Circuit Court, of disputed ballots in all Florida counties and
the portion of Miami-Dade county in which such a recount was not
already complete. That decision was announced on live world-wide
television by the Florida Supreme Court's spokesman Craig Waters, the
Court's public information officer. The Court further ordered that only
undervotes be considered. The results of this tally were to be added to
the November 14 tally. This count was in progress on December 9, when
the United States Supreme Court unanimously granted Bush's emergency
plea for a stay of the Florida Supreme Court recount ruling, stopping
the incomplete recount.

Early in the afternoon of December 12, the Republican-dominated Florida
House of Representatives voted nearly on party lines to certify the
state's electors for Bush. Later that afternoon, the Florida Supreme
Court upheld lower court rulings authorizing recounts in several south
Florida counties.

About 10 p.m. EST on December 12, the United States Supreme Court
handed down its ruling in favor of Bush by a 5-4 vote, effectively
ending the legal review of the vote count with Bush in the lead. Seven
of the nine justices cited differing vote-counting standards from
county to county and the lack of a single judicial officer to oversee
the recount, both of which, they ruled, violated the Equal Protection
Clause of the United States Constitution."

Hold on, you said "having his campaign manager certify the vote", but
now you post events that discuss the court battle to get a slate of
electors certified by the Florida courts.

The only slate of electors certified by Harris was the slate sent as a
result of the remedy crafted by the Democrat majority of the Florida
Supreme Court. The court case was Palm Beach County Canvassing Board v.
Harris.

The event you have point out above are the case of Gore v. Harris,
which on appeal became Bush v. Gore. These cases were NOT about the
electors certified by Harris, this was about a second slate of Florida
Electors in the name of Al Gore.

From the order of the Democrat controlled Florida Supreme Court (6
Dems, 1 Ind):

"Accordingly, in order to allow maximum time for contests pursuant to
section 102.168, amended certifications must be filed with the
Elections Canvassing Commission by 5 p.m. on Sunday, November 26, 2000
and the Secretary of State and the Elections Canvassing Commission
shall accept any such amended certifications received by 5 p.m. on
Sunday, November 26, 2000, provided that the office of the Secretary of
State, Division of Elections is open in order to allow receipt
thereof....."

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/election/sc00-2346.pdf

"Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announced the certified
totals Sunday night, after a deadline for counties to submit amended
returns from hand recounts passed at 5 p.m. The final tally, according
to Harris, was 2,912,790 votes for Bush; 2,912,253 for Gore.

"Accordingly, on behalf of the state Election Canvassing Commission and
in accordance with the laws of the state of Florida, I hereby declare
Governor George W. Bush the winner of Florida's 25 electoral votes for
the president of the United States," Harris said.

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/11/26/presidential.election/

"On November 26, Jeb Bush signed the certificate naming a roster of 25
electors pledged to support his brother George W.

The certification is on file at the National Archives, along with
certifications from the other states. If the Florida legislature
decides to name its own slate of George W. Bush electors, that would
only add emphasis to Jeb Bush's earlier action, but wouldn't settle the
question of how Florida's vote should be decided.

The continued standoff between the judicial, legislative, and
administrative branches threatens to tumble into Congress, where both
the House and the Senate would have to decide which of two slates of
electors is valid. If the chambers vote along current party lines, the
House would pick the slate supporting Shrub; in the Senate, the
tie-breaking vote would be cast by Gore himself and result in a
decision for a Democratic slate.

If the chambers do in fact disagree, then the Electoral Count Act
specifies that the electors chosen by the governor-Jeb Bush-shall be
accpetd."

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0049,elect5,20581,6.html

2. Kept John Kerry from inhabiting the White House.

Translation: Stole the election in corrupt republican Ohio.

Yet the arrest have come about because the actions of the Democrats.
Why didn't the Democrats want Cleveland recounted?


Ohio republicans either convicted, indicted or under investigation:

Why are you running away from your point?? You said "stole the
election". What does your cite have to do with the election???

Yawn. It doesn't matter with a bushbot like you.

Clearly I know more about the facts you do. I know what I am talking
about, and I can back my argument. As for you, so far, I have proven
that you are a "De-bot". You only know what myth you have been told to
believe.

You would argue
against water being wet if Bush told you that it wasn't. I know this
is a waste of time, but here you go....

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1318

"Citing "Ohio's Odd Numbers," investigative reporter Christopher
Hitchens, a Bush supporter, says in Vanity Fair: "Given what happened
in that key state on Election Day 2004, both democracy and common sense
cry out for a court-ordered inspection of its new voting machines."

Most machines were not new, see below.

Hundreds of Ohio African-American voters give sworn testimony that they
were harassed, intimidated, deprived of voting machines, given faulty
ballots, confronted with malfunctioning machines and hit with a
staggering range of other problems that deprived them of votes that
were destined for John Kerry, votes that might have tipped the Ohio
outcome.

You do know that elections are held on the local level? You do know
that no Ohio county had a Republican majority on it's election board?
You have to ask yourself where were the Democrats? Have ever noticed
that these Democrats on the election boards have not supported these
allegations?

"But William Anthony, a Democrat who is chairman of the Franklin County
Democratic Party in Ohio's capital of Columbus, rejects any suggestion
of voter suppression. "Most of the precincts that stayed open late
because of long lines were in the suburbs," he told the Columbus
Dispatch last November. Mr. Anthony, who is also chair of the Franklin
County elections board, acknowledged that the high turnout and a ballot
that involved more than 100 choices for some voters did create lines,
but added that he was offended by allegations from "a band of
conspiracy theorists" that voter suppression had occurred. "I am a
black man. Why would I sit there and disenfranchise voters in my own
community?" That, in turn, raises the question: Why do Democrats like
Mr. Dean persist in inciting racial tensions with wildly exaggerated
claims that black voters are being disenfranchised?"

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110006874#Myth%20Ohio

A team of high-powered researchers discover results in three southern
Ohio counties where an obscure African-American candidate for the state
Supreme Court somehow outpolls John Kerry, a virtually impossible
outcome indicating massive vote fraud costing Kerry thousands of
votes."

The premise is flawed on two levels. First, it assumes that voter are
more willing to vote straight ticket. That is guess. Secord, even if
you accept the premise, State Supreme Court Judge's party are not
marked on the ballots, thus the voters didn't know who this "obscure
African-American candidate" (Ellen Connally) was a Democrat. If they
don't know she is a Democrat, argument goes right out the window.

From the left-wing Salon.com:

"Contrary to Kucinich's assertion, down-ticket candidates do indeed
sometimes win more votes than presidential candidates of their own
party in some places -- sometimes a lot more. In 2000, Democratic state
Supreme Court candidate Alice Resnick won more votes than Al Gore in
dozens of counties -- in 81 counties, which makes the 12 counties where
Supreme Court candidate Connally outperformed Kerry in 2004 look not
very suspicious at all. (I arrived at these numbers using Excel and
Ohio's 2000 county-by-county results, available here.) If Kennedy
considered Connally's 19,000 vote margin over Kerry in 12 counties a
"thumping," I wonder what he'd think of Resnick's margin over Gore --
she won 126,000 more votes throughout the state than did the incumbent
vice president (she won her race against her opponent, too). Tim Black,
another Democratic Supreme Court candidate, lost his race, but he too
managed to outperform Gore in 40 counties."

"Lindeman points out that the numbers work out this way for a very
specific reason -- ballots in Ohio don't list party affiliations for
Supreme Court races. Kennedy finds it unlikely that someone in a rural
Ohio county would have cast a ballot both for Bush and for a liberal
justice like Connally. But if you consider that those voters might
never have heard of Connally and had no idea she was a Democrat,
there's no surprise why they might have chosen her. Therefore,
Kennedy's assertion that 162,000 Kerry votes were switched to Bush
falls apart."

(my note, remeber your cite confirms that the was an "obscure
African-American candidate")

"It's worth noting, too, that a team of political scientists hired by
the Democratic Party to investigate what happened in Ohio also used
statistical analysis to search for any pattern of obvious shifts from
Bush to Gore in the vote count. That group saw no evidence of fraud
(PDF). "The tendency to vote for Kerry in 2004 was the same as the
tendency to vote for the Democratic candidate for governor in 2002,"
their report noted. "That the pattern of voting for Kerry is so similar
to the pattern of voting for the Democratic candidate for governor in
2002 is, in the opinion of the team's political science experts, strong
evidence against the claim that widespread fraud systematically
misallocated votes from Kerry to Bush."

They added: "Kerry's support across precincts also increased with the
support for Eric Fingerhut, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, and
decreased with the support for Issue 1 (ballot initiative opposing
same-sex marriage) and increased with the proportion of African
American votes. Again this is the pattern that would be expected and is
not consistent with claims of widespread fraud that misallocated votes
from Kerry to Bush."

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/03/kennedy/index_np.html

Walden O'Dell, Chairman & CEO of Diebold, Bush-Cheney major campaign
contributor promised to "deliver" Ohio to Bush in 2004

First, if you going to give cites, please give correct cites. O'Dell
made the claim in 2003, not 2004. Second, it is not enough to make a
blanket statement, you must back it up with fact.

Because of security problems, in July 2004, Blackwell decertified every
Diebold electronic voting machine in the state.

"......and 88 Ohio counties that had contracted to buy electronic
machines from Diebold Election Systems Inc. of North Canton, Ohio, now
are scrambling to find money for alternatives now that the Diebold
machines have been decertified there."

http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/1_1/daily_news/24072-1.html

"When Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell halted the purchase of
new electronic voting machines on July 16 after two investigations
identified 57 potential software and hardware security threats, North
Canton, Ohio's Diebold Electronic Systems' dream of a $100 million
contract with the state disappeared."

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0909-12.htm

Time for you to prove your claim. Without these electronic machines,
how did O'Dell pull off this "theft"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._presidential_election_controversy_and_irregularities

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen

"But in the battle for Ohio, Republicans had a distinct advantage: The
man in charge of the counting was Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of
President Bush's re-election committee."

As per Ohio Law, Blackwell is not in charge of counting the vote. Each
county election board is charged with that duty.

Sounds familiar.

Gov. Bob Taft

Thomas Noe, Bush-Cheney 04 campaign chair, NW Ohio; Turnpike
Commissioner; University Regent

Terrence Gasper, former Chief Financial Officer, Ohio Bureau of
Workers' Compensation

Bernadette Noe, Thomas Noe's wife; chair Lucas County GOP; chair
Lucas Co. Board of Elections

Brian Hicks, Taft chief of staff, member Ohio University Board of
Trustees

Cherie Carroll, Taft Chief of Staff Executive Secretary

US Rep. Bob Ney

US Rep. Jean Schmidt

US Rep. Ralph Regula

Douglas Moormann, Gov. Taft's Executive Assistant for Business and
Industry

Walden O'Dell, Chairman & CEO of Diebold, Bush-Cheney major campaign
contributor who promised to "deliver" Ohio to Bush in 2004

Neil Volz, former chief of staff to Ohio Rep. Bob Ney.

US Rep. Steve Chabot

US Rep. Steve LaTourette

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/gopscorecard.htm

3. Rebuilt the military after eight years of Clinton's depletion and
abandonment

Then pissed a trillion dollars of it into the sand in Iraq.

4. Dealt with Iraq and Saddam Hussein after eight years of blithe
disregard during the Clinton administration

Translation: Lied about WMDs and Iraq's nuclear ambitions to
rationalize a unilateral attack on a soverign nation that has turned
into an occupation of a country on the verge of a full blown civil war.

5. With the tax cuts and pro-business policies, turned the Clinton-Gore
recession into a recovery, despite the most devastating attack on
American soil ever

Translation: Borrowed incredible sums of money on America's Visa card
to prop up a faltering economy, and to pay for the tax cuts for
millionaires while maintaining military occupations of two separate
countries.

In the last 36 years, in which the Democrats had control of one or both
houses of Congress for 26 of those years, not a single balanced budget.
The only balanced budgets have come from the Republican controlled
Congress.

The topic is Bush spending money like a madman holding a Black American
Express card. You're saying there were balanced budgets under Bush?
Are you stoned? Please give me a cite to back up your claim that there
has been even one balanced budget under Bush.

I never said under Bush, I CLEARLY said "Republican controlled
Congress."

You were changing the topic.

No, I already said this Congress spends too much. I guess your bias
allowed you to ignore my statement.

So the budget was balanced under Bill
Clinton. Got it.

It wasn't because of anything Clinton did, he was lucky enough to have
a Republican Congress.

Bush is not up for election in 2006. This election will include every
member of the US House, and a 1/3 of the US Senate. While I will agree
that spending needs to be cut, I will not be one who will be supporting
a Democrat.

Of course you won't. You are a bushbot. We won't need you anyway.

ROFLMOA. First, you have mistaken my corrections of your errors as
proof that I am a Republican. Sorry, but I am not registered with any
party. Second, your Democrats will NOT win the Senate race in my state.
The Republicans don't need my vote, they have it in the bag.

They have a track record of ZERO balanced budgets in the
last 3 1/2 decades.

Except that it was Bill Clinton that oversaw the surplus. IIRC he is a
democrat.

Clinton submitted a deficit budget, but was overruled by the Republican
Congess. Again, he was lucky enough to have a Repulbican Congress. The
first in 40 years.

Under Bush, all your repug leaders want to do is spend like
drunken sailors on shore leave.

I have already pointed that out.

6. Forcing other countries to apply international pressure on North
Korea and its nuclear weapons program, repairing damage done by the
Clinton/Allbright deal

And all that pressure has led to North Korea currently having
approximately 10 nuclear warheads, all built during the Bush
administration, and having recently conducted multiple long range
missile tests.

Why did Carter/Clinton decide to give them the materials?

Never happened. Russia built their first reactor, and they got their
enriched uranium prossessing technology from Pakistan. Otherwise give
me a real cite and not some link to a bogus neocon mumbo jumbo opinion
rag.

Clinton didn't sign an agreement to give North Korea two light water
reactors?

That were never delivered. Reactors that are never built cannot
produce plutonium.

That doesn't change the fact that at one time, Clinton had agreed to
give them the materials.

"These new developments brought the United States to the brink of war
with North Korea. Before shots, or rockets in this case, could be fired
an agreement known as the Agreed Framework was signed on October 21,
1994. Among other things in this treaty, North Korea agreed to shutdown
their old reactor and submit to inspections by the IAEA. In return the
United States would help fund the building of two so-called light water
reactors, which do not produce as much plutonium as the older reactors
that the DPRK had. Also the Unites States would ship oil to North Korea
until the new reactors were completed in order to compensate for the
loss of power after shutting down the old reactor (previous paragraph
came from Henriksen,29-38)."

http://www.people.umass.edu/mray/essays/northkorea.html

"Why are light water reactors important? Because they, like all other
reactors, make plutonium that can be used in atomic bombs. That is why
the International Atomic Energy Agency inspects light water reactors in
countries around the world, and why the United States has opposed their
sale to Iran. The two reactors going to North Korea can make twice as
much bomb-grade plutonium as the graphite reactors North Korea has now,
including the ones under construction. The two giant light water
reactors could turn out at least 70 bombs' worth of weapon-grade
plutonium per year. North Korea's existing graphite reactors are only
one eighth as big, and could make only 25-30 bombs' worth per year. The
State Department does not dispute these numbers."

http://www.wisconsinproject.org/pubs/testimonies/1995/1-26.html

7. He has irritated Liberals into taking idiotic, indefensible
positions in order to oppose him.

And has brainwashed the ignorant with his fake religious snake oil into
believing every word of his bull***.

You have done a great job of describing yourself.

That's all you've got? LMAO. IOW I'm right and you fit the above
perfectly, bushbot.

I have already proven you to be wrong. You can't even give cites that
are on topic.

See above, bushbot.

I see your defeat points above, Dembot.

Cleaning up the messes left by the Clinton administration has taken an
inordinate amount of energy and time.

Yep, under your hero we are now in debt until your great great great
great grandchild is 100 years old. Takes a lot of time and energy to
bankrupt a country like the U.S.

Where were your balanced budgets enacted by a Democrat controlled
Congress in the last 3 decades?

The topic is Bush has created the biggest government in U.S. history
through massive defecit spending and you have nothing to refute that
fact.

You think the Democrats would be any better?? Really?? Would you like
to buy a bridge??

It is highly unlikely we would be operating "Occupation: Iraq Quagmire"
if a democrat had been in charge over the past 6 years. And guess what
the only difference would have been? We would only have a trillion or
so extra dollars in our coffers that would not have been pissed into
the sand in Iraq. Saddam would still be in a box and about as
dangerous as a newborn kitten. Just like before our stupid foray into
Iraq.

No, he wasn't dangerous.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/rls/18714.htm

Bush is borrowing like a smack addict that needs a fix to pay for all
of his overseas misadventures and at the same time to make the rich
keep on getting richer.

.