You know, I’m getting pretty sick of hearing this. As a registered unaffiliated voter (though admitedlly a strong Kerry supporter), I have to say that I’ve seen a lot more left-bashing from the right than I’ve seen right-bashing from the left. This board may lean slightly left but I refuse to believe that amongst the general population “[this] kind of arrogance[…]is killing the Democratic party.” That’s pure partisan bullshit.
Interesting. So if we humor these paranoid delusions now, we will have less trouble with them next time?
I expect exactly the opposite - if we encourage this kind of thing by taking it seriously (in the absence of any kind of credible evidence), we are signalling to Democrats that we will pander to their fantasies.
I didn’t take the accusations seriously before the elections, because they sounded like partisan bullshit to me. So far, there has been no evidence that they were anything else.
Would it bother me if there were evidence that the election was rigged? Sure.
Would it bother me if there was a lot of dark accusations by those who specialize in bullshit? No, not at all.
Sorry.
Regards,
Shodan
And, you think the Right has been perfect little angels? The GOP has never lied or stolen documents or gone on a witch hunt to find the fabricated Communists in this land of the free? (FYI: I personally know people whose lives were ruined by these falsified charges, and no form of apology or retribution can ever give them back what the emotional abuse and remaining scars took away.) Like, you never heard about Nixon’s checkered past even before he became Pres? Like, Carter’s brief case of debate notes didn’t magically appear in the Reagan camp?
Like, the Right is right? C’mon. How naive are you? :rolleyes:
If they stand by their pristine record, we’re sure to find those WMDs…
So, what makes you so sure Right is always right?
- Jinx
I bet your view of politics will come into line with reality if you stop fetishing on what happened several decades ago, and focus on today. (McCarthy? Sheesh…:rolleyes: )
Is the Right right? Certainly more so than the Left. And guess what-the electorate agrees with me.
I’ve heard the crack comment a couple times now but seem to have missed the story. Where did it come from and is it credible?
For my part, I would like to agree with those folks who say it is impossible to manage a large conspiracy to rig the elections but I’m not really sure how many people would need to be involved. If it is only a few dozen true believers then I would think it possible. If it is hundreds, then not so much. Since we are confessing our political affiliations here I voted for David Cobb.
You mean you disagree with Ann Coulter, Brutus?? 
IMO, as a moderate Leftie, Mr. Bush did get endorsement to carry out his program – but from a paper-thin majority. That fact really ought to be taken into consideration by the Administration’s policy wonks. Mr. Reagan, with substantially more public support, moved decisively but cautiously, and built a legacy that has continued. Mr. Bush’s supporters seem to feel that the 2000 election, and even more this one, constitutes a widespread, consensus endorsement of everything Mr. Bush and his advisors might choose to do. That way lies disaster and continued divisiveness.
IMO, any President needs a little leeway to implement his policies and demonstrate how they work – along with criticism from politicians and columnists from the opposing side, as a sort of checkpoint for him on how the public feels. If Molly McGrory and George Will should agree that something is right, or something is wrong, with the way he (the generic President) is operating, then he needs to react accordingly. If they are, as usual, opposed, he’s got a message there too – he’s got some public support and some public dissent, and he may want to address how to deal with this.
For me, egregious violation of the laws (e.g., Teapot Dome, Watergate, Iran-Contra) is grounds for firm public rebuke – including of the President if necessary. In general, that should never rise to the point of impeachment – and Watergate may be the sole exception to that rule which I can think of. On the other hand, something like a President refusing to spend an appropriation which funds a program of which he disapproves strongly, is within his ambit as Chief Executive.
Comment?
- The Electorate system helps possible fraud since you only need to fake a few thousand votes and therefore don’t require big conspiracies
- This election is so tight and so heated that to dismiss fraud as totally impossible is dangerous
- There is no paper trail in many places
Other side of the issue
- Bush got some good margins in many places. That would warrant beleiving he got many more votes than would normally be the case. So Ohio and Florida aren’t exceptional.
- Either you double, triple check the results… or your leaving a festering wound. Better destroy conspiracy theories by actually investigating… instead of just “you lost, accept it”.
Of course, what you don’t bother to mention is that something like 70% of those in the electorate that agree with you also believe things that are manifestly untrue, like that it has been concluded that Saddam had either WMDs or major WMD programs immediately prior to the Iraq War.
So, I guess a major goal of the Republican Party is to try to keep the population as ignorant as possible…And, I’d say they’ve been remarkably successful. I’d hardly be proud of that fact if I were you though.
But the ignorance of the populace isn’t the fault of the Right! Clearly, its the fault of the liberal media, who failed in their reponsibility to keep the public informed. If they had paid more attention to Hannity and His Bitch or Ann of Green Goebbels Coulter, they would have gotten the facts of the matter and made an informed decision.
Why, just look at the SwiftBoat Vets! How they were ignored by the liberalmedia, getting little more than a couple hundred hours of prime time exposure, and how they were back stabbed the the traitorous radical/liberals at the Navy Dept., who cobbled together all those phony “records” and “citations”.
For real non-partisan dignity and honor, you have to look to our own SDMB tighty righty contingent, who examined the record of falsehoods and lies, and sternly refused to support such a mendacious candidate, all partisan considerations set aside for the greater good of the Republic.
Allow me a moment to express my heartfelt admiration and gratitude. OK, thats enough.
I’m not sure which question in that survey you are refering to, but question 13 clearly shows that
So, depending on where you draw the line between unlikely, untrue and manifestly untrue, we see Bush supporters beliving weird things at a 47 to 73 to perhaps even 98 percentile range. However, we also see some other things which I might point out in more derisive language if I were more partisan. More people, for instance, moved from the position that Saddam had actual weapons of mass destruction to the positiion that he did not between August and October. However, only Kerry supporters increased their belief (not small to begin with) that Saddam had no WMD activities whatsoever in the same time period. Which party is increasing ignorance? Modesty prohibits me from answering. Perhaps friend jshore will do so? 
On review, I’m not sure this thread is really about fighting ignorance. Allow me to withdraw.
Am I really the first to note how extremely biased and misleading the bar charts on the website linked in the OP are?
Several show disparities of what seems to be a huge margin, when, in fact, if you look at the label, it’s only a percentage point or two (to be fair, several are outside this margin as well). What is a typical sampling error/confidence level of exit polls?
The Ohio and Wisconsin examples are particularly egregious, showing what seems to be a rather wide margin for Kerry in the exit polls, when in reality (i.e. when you look at the numbers on the side of the graph), the difference was less than 5%, which was the margin of error in a lot of the polls that were taken before the election.
It’s like showing:
51% |
| ____
| | |
| ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
50.5| | | ____ | |
| | K | | | | |
| | E | ____ _ _ _ _ _| |_ _ _ _ | |
| | R | | | | K | | |
| | R | | B | | E | | B |
| | Y | | U | | R | | U |
| | | | S | | R | | S |
50% | | | | H | | Y | | H |
What a huge increase for President Bush!
Oh, wait.
What discrepancies in exit polling?
The numbers leaked to a blog were bogus. Period. If you believe that Bush was losing PA by 20 points, I have a bridge to sell you. There was no Kerry lead in Ohio, Florida, etc. The differences were miniscule.
Ohio exit polling: Bush with a slight lead http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/OH/P/00/epolls.0.html
PA exit polling: Bush behind by about 3%
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/PA/P/00/epolls.0.html
And so on… the polls were only about 1-2 points off the final results.
The bad exit polls are one of the greatest urban myths of the election.
Got a cite for that? And which blog are you talking about?
Well, we can always count on you, pervert, to try to put the best partisan spin on things. I guess if you want to be truly shocked and dismayed by the fact that the number of Kerry supporters who believe that just before the Iraq war, Iraq “did not have any activities related to weapons of mass destruction” shot up a huge 4% points from 18% to 22%, then be my guest.
But, don’t be surprised if the rest of us are more shocked by the fact that 72% of Bush supporters still believed that Iraq either “had actual weapons of mass destruction” (47%!!!) or “had no weapons of mass destruction but had a major program for developing them” (25%).
Your attempts to spin the data provide us all with much amusement and entertainment though!
Another way to look at it is this: In the latest poll, 51% of Kerry supporters got the right answer and of the remaining, they were split fairly evenly between those who thought Saddam had more than he really had (26%) and those who thought he had less (22%).
However, only 25% of Bush supporters got the right answer and of those who didn’t, they far-and-away believed that Saddam had more than he really had (72%) vs. less than he really had (2%).
So not only were Kerry supporters twice as likely to be “exactly right”, those who had misapprehensions were found about evenly straddling both sides of the truth, whereas the Bush supporters were nearly all misguided in the same direction!
The more I look at this, the scarier it is!
My only input into this thread is to ask a simple question: Just how many threads do we need on this subject? I mean, there is nothing new to report, still zero real evidence…and yet we’ve got, what? 4 threads on this subject in GD alone? 5? Gods know how many in the Pit and IMHO.
I’m just curious…perhaps we need a few more threads with nothing new to say except a chance to vent and beat your chest about Kerry losing to Bush?
-XT
A single 155 mm shell. Wow! So that was the “vast stockpiles”! And that dead grasshopper under the porch? That’s a “plague of locusts”.
That’s pretty sad, Brutus. Check the story further, see if it aligns with my memory of it, which is that the shell was copped for its explosive power, and may have been emptied long, long ago. Emptied, but not scoured out, because nobody wanted to fuck with it, for good reason. And the amount of sarin, if sarin is even what it was, was so minimal they couldn’t even be sure it was sarin.
You should probably go back to jumping up and down screaming “Landslide! Landslide!!”
Sounds like your memory is once again playing tricks on you. Whether or not the noble freedom-fighting insurgents knew it was a Sarin shell or not is irrelevant.