response 40 of 96:

Dec 14 02:32 UTC 2000

re #38: Read what I said. Then watch SNL or Leno.

        If you don't like the fact that they depict Bush as a drug
        using, heavy drinking idiot, you had better start jotting off
        complaint letters.

response 42 of 96:

Dec 14 04:35 UTC 2000

Re #27: why so rude, klg? What are you ashamed of? 

response 44 of 96:

Dec 14 08:27 UTC 2000

A friend of my parents knew GW Bush at Yale, and says he never saw him sober.

response 46 of 96:

Dec 14 13:48 UTC 2000

how did reagan?

response 48 of 96:

Dec 14 15:00 UTC 2000

You know, after a few months of grumbling, once the new year gets under 
way and things settle down, I think Shrub will actually come out of this 
looking pretty good.

If he can adapt the tactics he has employed in Texas government, and 
avoid letting the GOP strongarm him in DC, we may not have much actual 
controversy in the next four years and we may actually make some progress 
on some issues we'd all like to see addressed.

Since everyone in Congress will be wary of the next election cycle and 
the shift in partisan balance of power it could effect, at least the next 
two years ought to be pretty quiet...

response 50 of 96:

Dec 14 17:44 UTC 2000

Obviously the race was close, but it seems equally obvious that more
people went to the polls intending to vote for Gore than for Bush, both
nationwide and in Florida.

Gore got all the bad breaks.

 - Nader.  OK, this one doesn't count, but if Nader hadn't run, Gore
   would almost certainly have won Florida.  But heck, any of the third
   party candidates took enough votes to change Florida, and third party
   candidates aren't against the rules.

 - Butterfly Ballots.  Because of bad ballot design, Gore loses enough
   votes to Buchanan to throw the Florida election to Bush.  This is
   the most unquestionable of screw-ups that went against Gore.  There
   was really no chance to fix it, short of a revote.

 - Punch-card undervotes.  Punched cards register a lot more undervotes
   than other systems, and are more heavily used in the urban areas
   where Gore has the strongest support.  Manually retabulating all
   these probably would have put Gore in the lead (why else the fierce
   resistance from the Republicans?).  The Republicans managed to stall
   it till it was too late.

 - Un-postmarked absentee ballots.  If these had been disqualified, as
   technically perhaps they should have been, Gore would likely have
   won.  They were counted, and I'm glad they were.

 - Altered ballot applications.  The republicans "fixed up" republican
   absentee ballot applications, but didn't allow democrats the same
   access.  Seriously sleazy, but I'm again glad those votes were
   counted.

 - Felon vote.  The list of felons generated for the state was so
   inaccurate that the state discarded it, probably allowing some felons
   not legally qualified to vote to do so.  This is the only break that
   went Gore's way.

There were also some complaints about blacks and hispanics being
discriminated against at the polling places in some areas, but I haven't
been able to figure out what the merits of that might be.  It'd be
another one that went against Gore.

So a lot of calls were made on technicalities.  Some of them, like not
recounting undervotes, seemed to me to be rather bad calls made wholely
on partisan grounds.

The "Bush won - stop whining" argument only makes sense if you accept
that Bush won.  Duh.  A more accurate statement would be "The voters may
not have picked Bush, but Jeb Bush, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Florida
Legislature and random noise did, so stop whining."

The "you have to play by the rules" argument, that raises the importance
of technicalities above the importance of discerning the will of the
people is also bogus.  If you really believe that, then all those
unpostmarked military absentee ballots and altered ballot applications
should have been throw out, because although they represented the real
will of real voters, they were technically invalid.  Then Gore would
have won.

response 52 of 96:

Dec 14 21:26 UTC 2000

I'm game.

response 54 of 96:

Dec 14 23:09 UTC 2000

Re 50.  That inaccurate felon list was discarded only in a few counties,
maybe it was only in ONE county.  In all the other counties, thousands of
people, some number of whom were not felons, were struck from the rolls
and not allowed to vote.  The majority of these were African-American, and
hence, likely Gore voters.  (Not surprising because I'm sure the majority
of convicted felons in Florida are also African-American, and people who
were mistaken for convicted felons probably have similar names and live at
similar addresses.) 

The company that compiled the inaccurate list had close ties to the
Republican party.

So, this was a break for Bush, not for Gore.

response 56 of 96:

Dec 15 01:30 UTC 2000

See also my new item 207.

response 58 of 96:

Dec 15 06:28 UTC 2000

Won, not one.  silly me.  it's late.

response 60 of 96:

Dec 15 06:50 UTC 2000

I apologise, Steve.  I don't know why I decided "senna" was (also) a Richard;
I *do* know better.

response 62 of 96:

Dec 15 14:21 UTC 2000

I saw a pre-view for Saturday Night live where they were saying "and featuring
president-elect george dubya bush" and it showed Will Farrel I think, playing
Dubya who was playing with a ball of string like a kitten.

Oh, the comedy of the next 4 years is going to be SO easy...

response 64 of 96:

Dec 16 03:44 UTC 2000

re 50: "Gore got all the bad breaks."  You mean like having the
networks call him the winner in FL while polls in much of the
state were still open?