A falsehood that refuses to die on the SDMB (and elsewhere). Had the SC not intervened, had the recount that Gore requested proceeded as designed and permitted by the Florida SC, Bush would still have won Florida. That is the only “alternate” outcome possible, according to the consortium of newspapers that conducted a count of the ballots after the election closed.
The SC was ultimately irrelevant in determining the election. You can disagree with their ruling, but it did not decide the election, if by that you mean a different ruling would have produced a different outcome.
It doesn’t follow that being against gay marriage is being against gays. Marriage is, after all, more a cultural than legal. The problem comes from all the legal rights that come with marriage that are denied to gays as a result of gays being denied the ability to marry. I think it’s perfectly acceptable for a person to believe that marriage as a cultural institution should be limited to heterosexual couples, while, at the same time, favoring equal rights for all folk.
Full Disclosure: I’m both for gay marriage and for gays.
And, yet, if the recount had continued and gone with the criteria that the Bush team requested, Gore would have carried Florida and the presidency. That came from the same consortium you cited.
And that’s not counting the thousands of traditionally liberal voters who were disenfranchised in places like Palm Beach county by having their names of the felon lists and having faulty machines that would double-punch their ballots.
They’ve already smoked up with Ashton Kutcher, at least according to Ashton Kutcher.
And the Yalie at least certainly isn’t waiting around for marriage, unless she enjoys pube-shaving just for the hell of it.
I think the Bush girls kick fucking ass. They’re way cooler than the Hilton harpies or the Olsen clones. I hope they change their dad’s mind about harmless drugs and good college fun.
There were also the votes wrongly attributed to Pat Buchanan as well as something like twenty thousand “over votes” which had Gore’s name punched on the ballot and written in on the write-in section. There was apparently some kind of erroneous instruction that told people that they had to write a name in the write-in slot.
Thec reason that Gore was initially declared the winner in Florida was that the exit polls were right. More people leaving the polls thought they had voted for Gore than for Bush. Luckily for Shrub, his sleazy brother Jeb was the governor there and strings got pulled. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were still a few truckloads of ballots in the Everglades somewhere. The GOP cheated in that election. No one will ever convince me otherwise.
In reality, there is no difference. Do you understand why they are proposing a Constitutional amendment? If any state is allowed to legalize gay marriage, then every state will be forced to recognize gay marriage.
Although I’m not that old, and I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I am amazed like Eve at how fast gay rights have progressed in recent years. I am more optimistic and expect to see gay marriage (or something indistinguishable from it) within my lifetime. The fundies will always fight it, but I think the rest of the public is finally getting a realistic perception of gay people and will eventually support giving them equal rights.
Nope. That’s precisely the point of the DOA law and why it’s different from the Amendment. The DOA says “no recognition unless the state says so” while the Amendment says “no way, for anybody, even if you want it.”
I was once a witness in a minor legal trial. Being an agnostic, I did not take an oath upon taking the stand, I instead “affirmed” that I would tell the truth. Legally there’s no difference between an oath and an affirmation of truth, but for some of us the semantic distinction is important enough to insist on not doing the former.
I am not a lawyer, but doesn’t the “Defense of Marriage” act leave a huge loophole of this sort? It seems to me to be defining a word–albeit a very powerful word that conjures deeply held emotional connotations–but does it really restrict or define the concept itself?
Could states define a second type of civil union, calling it, say, a civil union, and granting the partners involved the same rights and privileges as in a marriage, but just using a different word for that particular form of legal binding of two domestic partners?
I think a big part of the hullaballo is actually semantic in nature–for many people it isn’t the concept of a gay couple being legally sanctioned by the state so much as the use of the word to describe such a union.
For the record, I really don’t understand how my marriage would in any way be undermined by the same word being applied to gay couples who wished to be legally joined.
I presume that’s DOMA you’re speaking of, Apos, not DOA. Other than that, you have it right, and chula seems to be skipping a step. Once a state legalizes gay marriage, the DOMA will be able to be challenged as violating the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution. Until such time as the first state gay marriage legalization occurs, the DOMA is functionally moot (as far as I uncerstand the issue).
But aren’t we about to see an actual gay marriage legalization occur in some European country? What happens the first time that country sends over a gay or lesbian ambassador with his/her family?
The Netherlands and Belgium have gay marriage, and now Canada has it (sort of, I’m not sure of all the legal details).
If it would keep the fundies at bay, call it something other than “marriage”. “Skoobage”, maybe. So het couples get married and gay couples get skoobaged. Marriage and skoobage have equal privelages and responsibilities and are in all ways indistinguisable except in name. So when the fundies start screaming you can whine “but it’s not marriage it’s skoobage”
And in two generations kids will be talking on the school playground:
“Marriage? What’s marriage?”
“It’s skoobage for hetro religious nuts”
You can tell what someone looks like after they post? Ha.
Monty, you are justifying your derogatory comments while condeming someone else.
Telling someone that their behavior makes them look like an ass is, in my opinion, derogatory. And that is fine, it’s all in fun, as far as I am concerned anyway. I just wanted to point out this bit of irony. Drop it. I give. I do not wish to rile you up or defend “derogatory” comments about President Bush. I respect the man and the office. At times, I like to make jokes at his expense. At times, I enjoy the rhetoric. I find it amusing. I realize this can be offensive to others. Oops.
What election were you observing? The Bush team requested a particular recount? They did everything in their power to prevent any kind of recount.
Your hypothetical has no practical bearing on the argument. The only recount scenario on the table was Gore’s, the very one that the Florida Supreme Court permitted and that the US Supreme Court halted. Had the SC not halted the recount, Bush would still have been elected. I am not arguing that there is no possible scenario that would have produced a Gore victory. There were simply none that would have occurred. The SC did not ultimately determine the election, not if by that you mean that a different opinion on their part would have produced a different outcome.
Any Palm Beach discrepancies simply have nothing to do with an opinion that the SC determined the outcome of this election. They are not relevant to the question of the SC’s influence on the outcome of the election, or else I’m missing the connection.
Apparently not, not if you support your opinion with unverifiable conjecture. Your opinion nothwithstanding, the SC did not determine the outcome of the election, is my only point here.
True enough. The Florida Leg had already signaled that regardless of any count, re-count, or development they would vote to send a Bush slate of electors. Hence, the Pubbies, without hesitation, publicly confirmed thier willingness to undermine the process and ignore the will of the people under any circumstances whatsoever.
Perhaps this means something other to you than an utterly cynical grasp for power by any means necessary. The awesome power of cognitive dissonance never fails to astound me.
Oh, you mean the system where an extraordinary one-off last-minute decision by a partisan Supreme Court determines who the President will be? THAT well-known system?
It is indeed an awesome spectacle, particularly instances where a statement regarding the effect the Supreme Court had on the election’s outcome leads someone to conclude that I have attributed in this thread any sort of motive or behavior, virtuous or vile, to the Republicans who ran Bush’s election campaign.
Yes, cognitive dissonance is fascinating to behold.
We’ve been around this block too many times before to repeat it in detail, Bob Cos, so here is a quick post-game wrapup.
The reason why so many overseas absentee ballots were coming into Florida without postmarks is because they were fraudulently sent after the polls closed and it became apparent exactly how close the election was. In the case of one county (Hillsborough), duplicate absentee ballots were “accidentally” sent to some overseas voters, and in at least one case both were returned. There are plenty of eyewitness accounts for these incidents.
The Gore side wanted those unpostmarked ballots tossed. The Bush side immediately took up the cry of “count every vote” in six heavily Republican-leaning counties, including Hillsborough. The ballots were contested in the Florida federal district court and it was decided that the Supremacy clause overrode Florida’s own election laws against counting absentee ballots without postmarks. Over six hundred ballots which were in violation of Florida’s own election law were knowingly counted. Bush won by 537.
So yes, Bush won, but the Bush victory is solidly based on fraud just by examining that small part of the fiasco alone.
The Florida legislature then ensured that any close election would go in favor of apathetic, willingly fraudulent overseas voters by re-writing their election laws so that ballots from overseas will be counted as valid regardless of post-election postmarks or no postmark at all.
The Florida fiasco of 2000 won’t happen again, because the Republicans have ensured that next time it gets close they’ll be able to steal the election–again–fair and square.
Pure conjecture. With tens of thousands of votes left to be counted and a margin of less than 200, anything could have happened. After the decision of the SCOTUS, we’ll never know.
