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Grex > Agora35 > #18: The 2000 presidential campaign item | |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 406 responses total. |
ric
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response 157 of 406:
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Oct 3 12:39 UTC 2000 |
Thank god the WB doesn't show the debates - I'd hate for "Angel" to be
pre-empted.
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jerryr
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response 158 of 406:
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Oct 3 13:46 UTC 2000 |
i believe Jim Lehrer is on record as never having voted in a presidential
election. he's not a registered anything.
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brighn
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response 159 of 406:
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Oct 3 14:17 UTC 2000 |
Nader appears to be a fine man. He has no obvious skills at running a country.
At least Perot could claim that much.
And if the two parties didn't get the message from Perot's significant showing
(and does anybody remember Anderson?), they won't get the message from a
poorer showing by Nader.
A vote for Nader is totally wasted. You might as well not bother showing up.
I'd say that even if I thought Nader were competent to run the country.
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tod
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response 160 of 406:
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Oct 3 15:10 UTC 2000 |
Jim Lehrer works for the CIA.
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polygon
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response 161 of 406:
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Oct 3 19:09 UTC 2000 |
Re 155. Michael Moore is a fun guy, but the stuff about nonvoters is
pretty meaningless. Contrary to what is often claimed, people who don't
vote have pretty similar opinions (within a few percentage points) to
people who do vote.
Re your comments to Richard. Maybe it's because I'm a politico, but I
don't see any logical problem here.
If George Bush wins, that means that practically every policymaking
position in the federal Executive Branch will be staffed with Republicans.
If Al Gore wins, that means that those same jobs will be held by
Democrats. The results, on every issue that I care about, will be
dramatically different depending on the election outcome. That's why the
intricate details of Candidate A's gaffe or Candidate B's wacky opinion on
Issue 327j are so irrelevant from a practical standpoint.
Yes, judges are in a bit of a separate catagory; Earl Warren was appointed
by Eisenhower, Harry Blackmun was appointed by Nixon, and David Souter was
appointed by Bush. But these are very wild exceptions to the general rule
that judges usually behave very much as the president who appointed them
expected and wanted them to.
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brighn
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response 162 of 406:
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Oct 3 20:36 UTC 2000 |
And that's DESPITE the fact that SC Justices are appointed "for life" to
minimize the affect of political obligation to the appointing President.
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krj
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response 163 of 406:
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Oct 3 23:28 UTC 2000 |
Sara/swa wrote:
> #155 of 162: by Sara Watson Arthurs (swa) on Tue, Oct 3, 2000 (02:11):
> Am I the only one a bit bewildered and frustrated at the way politics has
> gotten mixed up with government in the first place?
This reminds me of arguments I used to have with senna, and I am left
with the conclusion that people aren't learning basic political science
and civics lessons.
At the most fundamental level, "politics" is how we settle differences
and ration out goodies in society. Yeah, there's another way to do it,
but it involves guns and lots of killing. See Yugoslavia, Somalia,
or maybe even the last few days in Israel for what happens when
"politics" breaks down.
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rcurl
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response 164 of 406:
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Oct 3 23:40 UTC 2000 |
I consider politics to be the practice of developing policy, which is
a necessity in any society. It only becomes unsavory if people infuse
the practice with dishonesty, personal attacks, fraud, etc.
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senna
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response 165 of 406:
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Oct 4 03:34 UTC 2000 |
Which both the major parties practice on a regular basis. :) What, we stopped
having those arguments, ken?
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scott
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response 166 of 406:
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Oct 4 11:16 UTC 2000 |
Very short summary of last night's debate:
Moderator: Mr. Candidate, you've called your opponent a scum-sucking pervert.
Could you comment on how this makes him any different from you?
Candidate: Thanks for asking about my oil policy. As I've said several times
already during this debate...
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jep
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response 167 of 406:
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Oct 4 13:00 UTC 2000 |
Heh.
I only caught the last half or so of the debate. It did kind of
resemble #166.
They were asked how character affects the race; Bush happily slammed
Gore, and Gore claimed he was taking the high road and wasn't going to
get into that. It seemed like Gore was wishing the question hadn't been
asked.
They were asked about fiscal policy; Gore claimed Bush's tax cuts would
mainly benefit the top 1% of taxpayers, and Bush said the rich would be
paying a higher percentage of the nation's taxes. It seemed to me like
Bush was dodging this one more than Gore was.
Overall, I thought Gore looked stiff and wooden. He threw around a
lot of numbers, but since you can't follow anything about what he
means, other than that he has numbers to spout, that didn't impress me
a lot. He made faces often when Bush was speaking, which didn't seem
very presidential.
I thought Bush sounded rushed and nervous; he had to go back a few times
to add words of explanation to points he was making. He over-used the
phrase "That's what governors do", and somewhat overused the term "fuzzy
math". It seemed his "fuzzy math" was to cover for himself in not
having numbers to spout like Gore.
There was no big winner in this debate. Gore looked intelligent, and
Bush looked personable. Those things are the essence of who the
candidates are; either of them would have to work really hard to cover
up those traits. Bush didn't commit the gaffe that Gore was hoping for
and banking on. The candidates get a couple more tries, though.
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jerryr
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response 168 of 406:
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Oct 4 13:32 UTC 2000 |
morning polls (tracking and independant voters) show gore winning the debate
by ten points.
gore also leads bush in voting polls by 6 points - more than the margin of
error in the polls.
one reviewer said bush sometimes looked liked a deer caught in the headlights.
i perceived him to be hestitant - prolly because he needed time to recall what
his handlers had advised him to answer.
bush did not, however, shoot himself in the foot. and i'm sure his backers
are happy about that.
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mary
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response 169 of 406:
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Oct 4 13:40 UTC 2000 |
I was disappointed in both of them and sad that this
is the best our system can do.
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brighn
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response 170 of 406:
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Oct 4 14:37 UTC 2000 |
Jim Lehrer won the debate.
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flem
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response 171 of 406:
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Oct 4 14:39 UTC 2000 |
I have to say that, relative to my expectations, Bush was impressive. He
managed not to dodge all of the questions, he had one or two not completely
idiotic things to say, and he didn't seem overmatched.
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tod
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response 172 of 406:
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Oct 4 15:02 UTC 2000 |
Gore has the experience. He should be a Republican based on all
the committees he's served regarding military, intelligence, and defense.
It would be silly to have GW even compared to Gore's experience.
Granted, Gore acted like a foot-stomping sissy by huffing and ripping
sheets of paper during GW's rebuttals, but GW was no better
with his Alfred E. Neumann smirks to Lehrer during Gore rebuttals.
I enjoyed the comment about Al inventing the calculator.
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jp2
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response 173 of 406:
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Oct 4 15:06 UTC 2000 |
This response has been erased.
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tod
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response 174 of 406:
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Oct 4 15:39 UTC 2000 |
Gore was spewing Reaganomics and GW said "You know..he not only
invented the Internet, but he invented the calculator"
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brighn
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response 175 of 406:
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Oct 4 17:06 UTC 2000 |
The complete transcript is available at:
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/elections/debatetext100300.htm
The relevant line, quoted from that site:
BUSH: Look, this is the man who's got great numbers. He talks about numbers.
I'm beginning to think, not only did he invent the Internet, but he invented
the calculator.
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rcurl
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response 176 of 406:
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Oct 4 17:09 UTC 2000 |
I had the impression that Bush had instructions for several "witty"
retorts, which he was supposed to try to fit in somewhere. They didn't all
fit.
I rather agree with jep's characterization of the debate in #167.
One aspect of this debate (and I expect of the coming ones) is the
emphasis on "my plan". It seems to be a debate between plans, rather than
between leaders. But plans should be developed upon the circumstances
being addressed. Neither can promise their specific plans will be adopted,
and indeed they can't even promise that they will still want the specifics
of their current plans adopted, if they are elected.
While I support Gore over Bush, primarily on matters of individual
freedoms (separation of church and state, "choice", rights of gays, etc)
and the environment (energy policies, protection of special places, etc),
I hated it that Gore was shaking his head and smirking while Bush was
speaking.
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jerryr
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response 177 of 406:
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Oct 4 17:22 UTC 2000 |
msnbc is reporting that gore's "positives" went up after the debate, the
shrub's didn't (positives in the leadership sense)
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brighn
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response 178 of 406:
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Oct 4 18:46 UTC 2000 |
#176> I read the transcript rather than seeing the televised debate, and even
in the transcript, both of them come off as bratty kids trying to out-scream
the other about how wrong they are. At one point late on, Gore
non-sequitorially comments on not responding to Bush's character attacks, for
instance, having already so commented when it was relevant to do so. And
Lehrer kept having to shut them both up.
It boggled me, reading the transcript, that if they both came off THAT
juvenile in print, they must have come off that much more so in action.
I will continue to say it: Lehrer won the debate.
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bru
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response 179 of 406:
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Oct 4 21:54 UTC 2000 |
Apparently, Gore is continuing to lie.
He made a comment about a poor teeenage girl who has to stand in her poor,
overcrowded classroom because there is no room to put another desk.
Truth. The school is in a rather well to do neighborhood, she didn't have
a desk the first day, and the reason it was so crowded in the picture: There
was $100,000 dollars worth of lab equipment in the classroom waiting to be
installed. Perhaps not a deliberate lie, but a major failure to research the
facts.
There were a couple of other untruths in there as well.
Mostly, Gore acted like a 2 year old. Huffing and puffing at Bush's answers.
And he was totally wrong in one salient point; When Bush suggested using the
Russians to ease the crisis in Serbia, Gore said something about the Russians
supporting Milosovic.
In fact, the Clinton administration was in the process of asking the Rusians
to do just that, and the russians had agreed in principal to turning Milosovic
over to a war crimes court. Now, because of Gore's rejection of them, they
may be having second thoughts.
Also, Lehrer, the moderator, failed in his job. He did not keep Gore under
control, and Gore kept stealing time to do rebuttal after rebuttal even though
it wasn't supposed to run that way. I thought Bush did rather well.
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brighn
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response 180 of 406:
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Oct 4 22:24 UTC 2000 |
Lehrer did say this much:
LEHRER: One quick thing, gentlemen. These are your rules. I'm doing my best.
We're way over the three-and-a-half. I have no problems with it, but we
wanted--do you want to have a quick response, and we'll move on. We're already
almost five minutes on this, alright?
Of course, that was in response to BUSH interrupting him, but apparently only
Gore was goind the interrupting.
And speaking of unintentionally lying by not doing one's research, Gore didn't
say that at all. He said that the Russians have not recognized Kostunica
(Milosevic's opponent, and the putative winner of the election):
Now, I understand what the governor has said about asking the Russians to be
involved. And under some circumstances, that might be a good idea. But being
as they have not yet been willing to recognize Kostunica as the lawful winner
of the election, I'm not sure that it's right for us to invite the president
of Russia to mediate this dispute there, because we might not like the result
that comes out of that.
(both of these clips are from the same Washington Post transcript I posted
the link for earlier)
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brighn
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response 181 of 406:
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Oct 4 22:25 UTC 2000 |
going => doing
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