Does Loose Cannon Have Debating Skills?

[zefrendylia]

Based solely on his participation so far does Loose Cannon have mad debating skills or does he suck goose shit?

Well you know how I vote and I base it on his wreckless throwing out of allegations and his refusal to supprt any of them with any fact such as the "Gore won Florida" vomit projectile.

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/politics/recount/

"In the 2000 case, The New York Times, on November 12, 2001, published a story summarizing the work of the newspaper consortium that spent nearly a year counting all the ballots in the 2000 Florida election. They found that a statewide recount - the process the Florida Supreme Court had mandated and which had begun when George W. Bush sued before the US Supreme Court to stop the recount - "could have produced enough votes to tilt the election his [Gore's] way, no matter what standard was chosen to judge voter intent."

The Times analysis further showed that had "spoiled" ballots - ballots normally punched but "spoiled" because the voter also wrote onto the ballot the name of the candidate - been counted, the results were even more spectacular. While 35,176 voters wrote in Bush's name after punching the hole for him, 80,775 wrote in Gore's name while punching the hole for Gore. Katherine Harris decided that these were "spoiled" ballots, and ordered that none of them should be counted. Many were from African American districts, where older and often broken machines were distributed, causing voters to write onto their ballots so their intent would be unambiguous. As the Times added in a sidebar article with a self-explanatory title by Ford Fessenden, in the 2000 election in Florida: "Ballots Cast by Blacks and Older Voters Were Tossed in Far Greater Numbers."

The November, 2001, New York Times article went on to document how, in a statewide recount, there was no possible doubt that Al Gore won Florida in 2000:

"If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards [all the ones that were used by either party], and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won, by a very narrow margin. For example, using the most permissive ''dimpled chad'' standard, nearly 25,000 additional votes would have been reaped, yielding 644 net new votes for Mr. Gore and giving him a 107-vote victory margin. ...
"Using the most restrictive standard -- the fully punched ballot card -- 5,252 new votes would have been added to the Florida total, producing a net gain of 652 votes for Mr. Gore, and a 115-vote victory margin.

"All the other combinations likewise produced additional votes for Mr. Gore, giving him a slight margin over Mr. Bush, when at least two of the three coders agreed."

And yet all of this information was buried well after the 17th paragraph of the story, which carried the baffling headline "Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote."

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pointed out to me in an interview on my radio program on June 2, the reason the Times chose to bury the lede of their story and instead imply in the headline and first few paragraphs that Bush had legitimately won the 2000 election was because just a month earlier the US had been struck on 9/11 and The Times' publisher didn't want to undermine the president's legitimacy in a time of national crisis."

--from flamin' liberal Thom Hartmann


Damn, that liberal media! They are sooo nutless...

[glockmail]

Thinking of changing it to a pic of a soldier doing a good job.....Lindsey England with that camel jockey on a leash.

Get's my vote.

[Baron Von Esslingen]

3 topics, Loose and Baron ran from all 3.

Is ad hom all you guys got?

Skeered? Say you're skeered!

As much as you falsely claim I ran the proof is available on this board, shall I repost them?

Libs only tool is the ad hom. This thread proves it, both are scared to debate me.

What we got is a former mod that thought he could out-insult everybody, out-debate everybody and, when he got called on his dodge, claims victory. You ARE the Face of Debate Policy.

And then a newbie comes in and OWNS your stupid ass. Props to Zefrendylia.

[OCA]

What is it about the word "spoiled" that you guys don't understand?

You guys fucked up in Florida, you guys ran those precincts, its not our fault that you can't punch a chad.

[Hobbit]

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/politics/recount/

"In the 2000 case, The New York Times, on November 12, 2001, published a story summarizing the work of the newspaper consortium that spent nearly a year counting all the ballots in the 2000 Florida election. They found that a statewide recount - the process the Florida Supreme Court had mandated and which had begun when George W. Bush sued before the US Supreme Court to stop the recount - "could have produced enough votes to tilt the election his [Gore's] way, no matter what standard was chosen to judge voter intent."

The Times analysis further showed that had "spoiled" ballots - ballots normally punched but "spoiled" because the voter also wrote onto the ballot the name of the candidate - been counted, the results were even more spectacular. While 35,176 voters wrote in Bush's name after punching the hole for him, 80,775 wrote in Gore's name while punching the hole for Gore. Katherine Harris decided that these were "spoiled" ballots, and ordered that none of them should be counted. Many were from African American districts, where older and often broken machines were distributed, causing voters to write onto their ballots so their intent would be unambiguous. As the Times added in a sidebar article with a self-explanatory title by Ford Fessenden, in the 2000 election in Florida: "Ballots Cast by Blacks and Older Voters Were Tossed in Far Greater Numbers."

The November, 2001, New York Times article went on to document how, in a statewide recount, there was no possible doubt that Al Gore won Florida in 2000:

"If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards [all the ones that were used by either party], and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won, by a very narrow margin. For example, using the most permissive ''dimpled chad'' standard, nearly 25,000 additional votes would have been reaped, yielding 644 net new votes for Mr. Gore and giving him a 107-vote victory margin. ...
"Using the most restrictive standard -- the fully punched ballot card -- 5,252 new votes would have been added to the Florida total, producing a net gain of 652 votes for Mr. Gore, and a 115-vote victory margin.

"All the other combinations likewise produced additional votes for Mr. Gore, giving him a slight margin over Mr. Bush, when at least two of the three coders agreed."

And yet all of this information was buried well after the 17th paragraph of the story, which carried the baffling headline "Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote."

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pointed out to me in an interview on my radio program on June 2, the reason the Times chose to bury the lede of their story and instead imply in the headline and first few paragraphs that Bush had legitimately won the 2000 election was because just a month earlier the US had been struck on 9/11 and The Times' publisher didn't want to undermine the president's legitimacy in a time of national crisis."

--from flamin' liberal Thom Hartmann


Damn, that liberal media! They are sooo nutless...

This article fails to account for uncounted absentee ballots, which were overwhelmingly in favor of Bush. I also uses words like 'could have' and 'possibly' a lot. Recounting was quite unlikely to change the results of the election, and was a waste of taxpayer money. Get over it.

What could have (but fortunately didn't) change the election was when the news agencies announced that the Florida polls were closed and started counting, despite the fact that the polls in the panhandle, which is both in the central time zone and predominantly conservative, were still open. This led to many people there who inteded to vote to stay home, thinking the polls were already closed.

In any case, it's a moot point. Bush is president, and there's no amount of whining that will change that. Get over and figure out what's best for the country.

[Birdzeye]

What is it about the word "spoiled" that you guys don't understand?

Oh, we understand it all right. It's an adjective that perfectly describes the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

[zefrendylia]

This article fails to account for uncounted absentee ballots, which were overwhelmingly in favor of Bush. I also uses words like 'could have' and 'possibly' a lot. Recounting was quite unlikely to change the results of the election, and was a waste of taxpayer money. Get over it.

What could have (but fortunately didn't) change the election was when the news agencies announced that the Florida polls were closed and started counting, despite the fact that the polls in the panhandle, which is both in the central time zone and predominantly conservative, were still open. This led to many people there who inteded to vote to stay home, thinking the polls were already closed.

In any case, it's a moot point. Bush is president, and there's no amount of whining that will change that. Get over and figure out what's best for the country.

"November 18: After absentee ballots are counted, uncertified results show Republican George W. Bush leads Democrat Al Gore by 930 votes."

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLI...ere/index.html

I don't think this qualifies as "overwhelming." But the point is not that I'm complaining who eventually became president. I was simply addressing the comment that nobody wanted to engage the issue of "Gore won Florida" simply because it had no merit. Though you may not agree, this debate has merit.

Also don't exaggerate. The article says "could have" once. And this "could have" is different from the definition you are insinuating. It means "could have" in a sense that someone other than GWB could be president right now--remember the article is 12 Nov. 2001. This "could have" is not meant to mean the results are not definitive. If you read on, the excerpt article (which is a lot larger in full), is much more definitive. You forget that thousands of black votes were thrown out and thousands turned away from the polls. And what about the Palm Beach butterfly ballots that gave a ridiculously number of votes to Pat Buchanan?

To say that the news agencies under VNS, told voters in the Western panhandle that the polls were closed is simply untrue. They did call the election for Gore before the polls closed but Fox News also shares in that blame especially when the man running the election reporting was John Prescott Ellis, full cousin of the president and in direct contact with Jeb Bush.

What's best for the country? Nothing is better for our country than assuring the intregrity of the voting process. The larger issue here is voter irregularities in the 2000 and 2004 presidential races and the integrity of the American voting system--one of the primary bastions of a true democracy. The voting irregularities of the 2004 election including widespread problems with electronic voting machines were not reported widely by the mainstream media nor pressed by Democrats for the obvious reason you have conveyed, "don't cry over spilled milk" and "don't be a sore loser."

As an unfortunate result, these issues cast a shadow over the entire voting process. Now for most Republicans this may seem acceptable because of the Rovian doctrine, "by any means necessary, winner takes all." This should be an outrage to all American's of any stripe because if Democrats or Independents were accused of being behind voter discrimination, fraud, and e-machine failure (and there was merit)--I would be calling for full investigations.

The bottom-line is Bush won. I get it. But under such dubious circumstances (a Supreme Court decision along partisan lines) and as close as it was, you would think the Executive Office would have tried to be as bi-partisan, centrist and conciliatory as possible. Instead, the "victory" was seen as a new mandate to radically change laws, social norms, and governmental integrity.

If anyone wants to discuss the merits of voting irregularities in the 2000 and 2004 election I'd be happy to reply. Remember, nothing is more important for Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and others than an inclusive and transparent vote.