Good point. Although I must admit that Montgomery County (where I grew up, by the way) is a bit of an anomaly. I am not sure why; I think it has to do with the makeup of the occupations and employers (often the federal government) of the people in the county. Also, while it is wealthy, I think this is because it has a lot of upper middle class folks, not so much because it has so much extreme wealth.
Because I grew up in Montgomery County, I think I did have the impression that fairly well-off (at least upper middle class) people tended to be more Democratic, even while also knowing that Republican policies favored the wealthy (even) more than Democratic policies. Once I moved to the wealthy suburbs of Philadelphia for college, I got a taste of what a more typical wealthy area’s political bent is (i.e., Republican). And, in the U.S. as a whole, there is a correlation between higher income and voting Republican vs. Democrat, and I didn’t mean to imply that there wasn’t in my post. Rather, I meant to point out that both parties are necessarily skewed toward the interests of the wealthy because those are the ones who have the strongest say in a democratic system such as ours, particularly one with the sort of non-public financing system for elections that we have.
Well, I’m a Republican and it sounds pretty much like a bunch of oversimplified bullshit to me.
I imagine it 'prolly sounds a little bit worse than that to Democrats/liberals.
I hate this kind of crap when it’s directed at Republicans/Conservatives, and complain about its prejudicial nature and lack of good faith.
It sucks worse when it’s guys on my side acting making such stupid generalizations, because it makes me look bad by extension.
Henry Lee Lucas (i.e. Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer)
The bizarre thing about it is that, as I said, Bush rubberstamped the executions of a hell of a lot of people, including cases that were pretty clearly inappropriate. (Such as one of the sleeping lawyer cases.)
But for Lucas, Bush admits that Lucas is a serial killer, but lets him off on a technicality?
Well, I am not sure that I’d classify “overwhelming evidence” that he was a thousand miles away from the location when the crime in question occurred as “a technicality”! And, Bush can’t very easily say, “Well, since he killed other people in other states, we’ll let this sentence for a crime he didn’t commit stand.”
I agree though that there were other questionable cases in there.
The technicality in question is that Lucas is the worst serial killer in history, but Bush lets him off the hook for the one murder that he didn’t commit- so he isn’t executed for all the ones he did commit.
Considering that Bush quite literally feels that your lawyer is providing adequate counsel in a capital case if he sleeps during the trial, then yeah, by Bush standards that’s a technicality.
I do see how it might have been difficult, in this one case, for Bush not to have commuted the sentence, though.
One of the essays in Russ Kick’s * You Are Being Lied To * posits the interesting theory that there was a subtle behind-the-scenes deal with Lucas.
According to the article, Lucas confessed cheerfully to any case he was asked about. In later interviews, the semi-retarded Lucas said that the more he confessed, the better he was treated. He said he started feeling like a “big shot.” The article states that the good treatment extended to letting Lucas have free run of the jail and fancy meals. The implication is that Lucas, like a child, was reacting to positive re-inforcement by confessing.
The author of the article believes that the deal made with Lucas would save him from the Death Penalty, and would “solve” a bunch of old cold-cases.
However, the author claims, a lot of Lucas’ confessions can be tossed with a minor amount of investigation. In one, he was proven to be elsewhere at the time of the murder. In another, he incorrectly described the method of the murder.
I haven’t read anything else in-depth about the Lucas case, so I don’t know if the author’s claims are bunk, but if true, they’re certainly enough to make you wonder.
What do your parents say? I feel for you-I also, like your husband, went to a Catholic grade school (as well as a Catholic college-us Mary-Worshippers are pretty big on education).
Ugh. It’s a long story, but the gist of it is that they were told by the school principal that the educational standards were the highest and that all of their graduates were * sought * after by colleges. My parents knew I wasn’t too keen about going there in the first place, so they dismissed my complaints about the “education” I was getting as exaggerated, especially since the principal always stepped in to reassure them.
Turns out, only one graduate had ever gone to college, and that was a local “Bibe College” which also was not accredited. (That person is now shift manager at McDonalds.) They were the only college beating down my door after I graduated.
Sad to say, but a lot of the parents who sent their kids to that school were fully aware that this was not recognized by the state. They did not want their kids to get a “secular” education. In this school, they could be confident that there would be no mention of evolution, except to ridicule it, Disney-style sanitized history, no literature other than books like “In His Steps,” and just enough mathematics to be able to calculate that weeks’ tithe.
Were I not a voracious reader, I would be a complete ignoramus.
Interesting that you blame Jeb Bush. Florida election officials are locally elected, consequently if a district was predominantly Democrat the local officials are also predominantly Democrat. As to the “tons of eligible voters were turned away”, cite please? Preferably one with numbers and hard facts behind it.
This is another amazing example of the supposedly “liberal media” being debated in another thread…Do you mean to tell me that you are completely unaware of the issue of the list of ineligible voters to be stricken from the registration roles that the State of Florida had a private company compile for them? A list that was woefully inaccurate and was not checked in the ways that it was supposed to be (despite the fact that the company was paid an incredibly large sum of money, by standards in the industry, for doing this work). A link to this story is provided by Ben in the 4th post of this thread. The name most associated with this is Greg Palast, the investigative reporter who has pursued it most doggedly.
Well, I suppose I can’t blame you for not knowing about this since this story has gotten close to zero play in the major media outlets.
Like I said, it is amazing that for all the huffin and puffin of Greg Palast, and as big a blowhard as he is that’s a lot of huffin and puffin, there have been zero lawsuits, zero indictments, zero convictions from this so called “travesty of justice”. So once again, if you or anyone has a link to a site with hard numbers please post it. And Greg Palast’s website is not the kind of link I’m looking for.
Have you even read Palast’s report? I mean, he has smoking-gun documents, a video of an official fleeing an interview, etc.
And as for the absence of indictments, remember that Katherine Harris pulled off the scam, and she’s the only person in Florida empowered to bring indictments for voter fraud.
Ultimately, the fact of the matter is that Palast presents evidence. So maybe no one has been sent to jail over this- but maybe there are other reasons for that. The fact is, the evidence is still there, and you haven’t addressed it.
My, my, we are behind the times and uninformed, aren’t we? Katherine Harris has not been the Secretary of State in Florida since before last November’s elections, and the SoS does not bring charges on behalf of the state, the Attorney General does. During the 2000 election, and until 2002 it was Bob Butterworth, who not only is a Democrat, he was the head of AL Gore’s Florida campaign.
In other words, the one person who, if any of the charges Palast blabs about are true, was empowered to bring charges from the 2000 election was not only a Democrat, he was the one Democrat in the state with the most to gain from pursuing any charges.
For the record, Butterworth is not the AG now, Charlie Crist was elected in 2002.
As for evidence, Palast’s blabbing is not evidence, it is allegations. If the allegations are proven, by any reasonable standard, not necessarily through legal action, then they become evidence, until then they’re just hit air.
Like I said before, if you have any links to evidence I’d be most appreciative.
While we’re remembering the 2000 election, this and this should be mentioned.
It must be wonderfully simple to adopt a partisan outlook wholly apart from reality or basis in fact. Bush bad, steal election. Democrats innocent victims. Right.
Here is CBS’s coverage of the story (kind of limited but at least they had something…which may well make them better than most since you down there in Florida itself didn’t even seem to know about it).
This, of course, only repeats my original post in which I told MikeRochenelle :
As both of you may note, neither the lawsuit nor the article cited specific numbers or even individual voters who were wrongly turned away, nor did it name Jeb Bush. You see that’s the advantage of being down here in Florida, we get to hear every part of this debacle, not just the partisan excerpts that seem to make it to the rest of the country or world.
You mean, the advantage is you get so many reports on the issue you get to pick and choose those you like? Heck, I was in Texas at the time (you know, the State where many Floridians had been charged with a misdemeanor only to be listed as felons back home) and the snafus made quite some headlines there.
Do you also want to deny that the phone lines to elections officials were totally clogged, resulting to cases of doubt and protests not being submitted to them in time? (cf. eg. for the reverse, namely bad votes by ineligible voters in http://www.sptimes.com/News/121400/Election2000/Checks_reveal_thousan.shtml )
Say Oliver, did you read that linked article? To quote:
Or did you miss the whole point of my postings on this thread? Which was, not that Florida’s 2000 election did not have problems, but that to blame Jeb Bush, rather than the local and locally elected election supervisors, is just bullshit.
