# You can bring a horse to water... **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 10, 2000, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-bring-a-horse-to-water/44887 "2000-12-10T14:43:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2000, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-bring-a-horse-to-water/44887/21 "2000-12-13T00:59:02Z")
elucidator: They payed them in cigarettes. It **was** all over the news. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2000, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-bring-a-horse-to-water/44887/22 "2000-12-13T01:28:41Z")
Then you will have **no** problem providing me with simply oodles of cites! C’mon Scylla, get real! People who’s **job** it is finding homeless people for Outreach programs don’t know where to find them. Half of them don’t know where they are **themselves!** You’re gonna round them up, bus them to a polling place, **get them registered to vote when they have _no_ adress** on the assumption that they will have it together enough to vote for the right guy? How many votes you think you gonna get out of this? Thirty? You’d do better going through the phone book starting with Aaron Aardvaark and work your way through! Balderdash, Sir! Tommyrot! Hell, if you believe that you’ll believe…hmmmmmm. Get back to you later. Got some real estate opportunities for ya… ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2000, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-bring-a-horse-to-water/44887/23 "2000-12-13T02:09:04Z")
If you’re not cognizant enough of world events to have heard about this then perhaps you shouldn’t be debating me. Read this as: _I couldn’t find a link and didn’t feel like looking all day so c’mon and gimme a break_ ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2000, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-bring-a-horse-to-water/44887/24 "2000-12-13T02:09:04Z")
If you’re not cognizant enough of world events to have heard about this then perhaps you shouldn’t be debating me. Read this as: _I couldn’t find a link and didn’t feel like looking all day so c’mon and gimme a break_ ---
**Author:** ![Fletch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/919ad9/32.png) [@Fletch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fletch)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2000, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-bring-a-horse-to-water/44887/25 "2000-12-13T02:42:18Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Scylla \* > \*\*If you’re not cognizant enough of world events to have heard about this then perhaps you shouldn’t be debating me. > > Read this as: > _I couldn’t find a link and didn’t feel like looking all day so c’mon and gimme a break_ \*\* Come on now Scylla, I have seen you debate much better than this. You can’t claim persons are not cognizant of world events and thusly ignorant if they request you provide cites and documentation to back up your statements. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2000, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-bring-a-horse-to-water/44887/26 "2000-12-13T02:47:23Z")
Your _ad hominem_ attacks merely serve to show the paucity of your rheotical skills, and the utter vacuity of your argument! Read this as: _Yeah, sure, no sweat. Just don’t let Stoidela find out I cut you slack, she’s already thinking of throwing me over for DSYoungesq, and love slaves are hard to find when one is a sarcastic asshole. Well, you understand._ ---
**Author:** ![divemaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/divemaster/32/78_2.png) [@divemaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/divemaster)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2000, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-bring-a-horse-to-water/44887/27 "2000-12-13T02:59:05Z")
I have the feeling that **elucidator** is feigning ignorance on the free cigarettes story; unless he was asleep for a week or so. Anyway, This is from Reuters (11/7), snagged off of Yahoo. > [@](#): > > Monday November 6 7:21 PM ET > Wisconsin Democrat Lures Homeless with Cigarettes > > WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican George W. Bush’s campaign pounced on reports on Monday that a prominent Democrat had lured homeless people to the polls in Wisconsin with offers of free cigarettes. > > ``Handing cigarettes to homeless people in an effort to entice them to vote is as wrong as wrong can be,’’ Ari Fleischer, a spokesman for Republican presidential nominee Bush, said in a conference call with reporters. > > The campaign of Democrat Al Gore acknowledged the activities, but stressed they were conducted without the vice president’s approval, as the two maintained a neck-and-neck race in Wisconsin, a crucial battleground state. > Citing a report that was broadcast on Saturday on WISN-TV in Milwaukee, Fleischer said a group of people supporting Gore had been offering cigarettes to local homeless people as part of an effort to get them to vote for the vice president. > > Exploiting same-day registration, the Democrats were transporting the homeless to city hall last week, acquiring absentee ballots to be used to vote for Gore. Here’s a reference to the Miami Herald’s investigation that hundreds of felons were allowed to vote. The Herald charges to look at stuff older than a week, so this report came from the Washington Times. > [@](#): > > In a survey of nearly half-a-million ballots, reporters from the Miami Herald discovered that “445 Florida felons voted illegally on Nov. 7,” including, “62 robbers, 56 drug dealers, 45 killers, 16 rapists and seven kidnappers.” Herald reporters also found that, “At least two who voted are pictured on the state’s online registry of sexual offenders.” Nearly 75 percent of the felons were registered Democrats. > “We took a very laid-back approach,” Dick Carlberg, the Duval County assistant supervisor of elections told Herald investigators, **"We just asked them (probable felons) if they were felons and if they were ever convicted of a felony. If they said no, we took their word for it and changed them back to legal voters."** > [A]ccording to felon William Herman, "There are a ton of us out there. It shouldn’t be that way, but **when they give you a voter registration card, hey, what are you supposed to do?"** (emphasis mine) And, since I’m at it, here’s some more stuff I found. This came from [http://207.238.36.125/archive/200012044.shtml](http://207.238.36.125/archive/200012044.shtml) which is a website for Insight Magazine. > [@](#): > > For instance, as reported by WorldNetDaily on Nov. 6, President Clinton signed a pre-election mailer, paid for and distributed by the California Democratic Party, urging Hispanics there to get out and vote. The mailer read: “Here is your personal Voter Identification Card. Sign your name, then detach your card. Bring your card with you to your polling place on Election Day. It will help your voting go more smoothly.” > On the surface the detachable card seemed harmless and might even be helpful to inexperienced voters. **The problem is that some who were sent these mailers are not U.S. citizens and, therefore, not eligible to vote.** … > > Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), says the president’s mailer is just more of the same. Stein says, “It should be alarming to people who care about the process that the Democrats are encouraging this kind of behavior. What’s clear is that the Democrats don’t seem to have a problem with vote fraud. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2000, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-bring-a-horse-to-water/44887/28 "2000-12-13T03:05:54Z")
divemaster: Thanks for the assist. I really didn’t feel like going to that effort, and I appreciate your doing so. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2000, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-bring-a-horse-to-water/44887/29 "2000-12-13T04:44:47Z")
Insight Magazine, hmmmm. Well, lets have a look. Ahh, yes, under Yahoo, magazine, political opinion, conservative. Well, kinda figured that. Big ol’ picture of JC Watts. Mmmm, yes. Koffi Annan, Millenium Menace. Uh-huh. Can’t spell Communist without UN! Well, that certainly sounds like an impartial source! Just the place to go to for the straight, unvarnished, non-partisan facts! And FAIR. Well, that sounds promising! I mean, they are FAIR, aren’t they. Well, lets have a look. Looks like the All-American version of PEN, the rabid French anti-immigration party. Yep. That’s it all right. Guess they saw something unsavory in Bill Clinton’s reaching to recent immigrants. And the funniest part is, you guys are **serious**! To paraphrase Lincoln, guys, I’m ugly, not stupid. ---
**Author:** ![divemaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/divemaster/32/78_2.png) [@divemaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/divemaster)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2000, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-bring-a-horse-to-water/44887/30 "2000-12-13T05:22:55Z")
**elucidator** , What, Reuters isn’t good enough for you? The Miami Herald isn’t good enough for you? Yahoo is just a search engine, so I’m not sure what the problem is there. I’m also not sure what Koffi Annan, the UN, and the French have to do with Democratic voter fraud. (Well, I’m up for blaming the French for just about anything, so I’ll give you that one.) The Insight link was an aside that I thought provided an interesting perspective. As in opinion. No one really asked for that link, _like you specifically did for the cigarette giveaway_. It was just a little something extra to stimulate the debate. Your response was less than stimulating. (OK, now we know you don’t like JC Watts; I’ll make a note of it.) At least you got the link you requested, right? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2000, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-bring-a-horse-to-water/44887/31 "2000-12-13T06:10:18Z")
Asked for a cite, the impartial source. Rueters report what Insight said. They impartially reported that they said so. That is mile short of saying so themselves. Dont dislike JC Watts, especially. Dislike Newt Gingrich intensly, but he’s toast. Just went to your sources and found them considerably less than impartial reporters of the news. If Rueters reports _Pravda_ says “Capitalism stinks”, does that mean Rueters reports “capitalism stinks”? ---
**Author:** ![divemaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/divemaster/32/78_2.png) [@divemaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/divemaster)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2000, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-bring-a-horse-to-water/44887/32 "2000-12-13T13:48:05Z")
**elucidator** , are you being deliberately obtuse? Is this some sort of new kind of troll? Reuters is a wire agency, like the AP or Scripps-Howard. They report news events so that they can be picked up by outlets such as newspapers, radio, etc… I’m not sure where you get the idea the Reuters “reported what insight said.” Show me where that is the case. Oh, wait, You can’t. **It is a patently false statement.** The report came from a television station that recorded the incidents on camera. Did you even read the report I quoted? Even the Gore campaign admits that it happened. They don’t condone it, but it’s hard to deny that it happened. It’s on tape for crying out loud! Is your contention that it never happened? If so, I say the burden of proof is on you to show how a television news crew and a national wire service have made this up. Wire agencies do not pick through partisan commentary to find “news.” They find news based on the best factual evidence available. If partisans spin it, they spin it. But if you actually considered my news sources, including the Miami Herald (and if the Miami Herald is “considerably less than [an] impartial reporter of the news,” I challenge you to prove that as well. Even if their editorial slant is partisan [if so, it certainly isn’t on the side that would favor the Republicans], their news reporting is considered top-notch). I’ve come to the conclusion that you didn’t really want a cite in the first place. You just want to try to score points with your drive-by ignorance disguised as sarcasm. I’ve given you factual evidence, redirected your focus away from your misconception of how it was reported, and _still_ you claim that Reuters is quoting some sort of Pravda-like propaganda. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-bring-a-horse-to-water/44887.md?page=1)