I'm really not much in the mood to debate tonight, but how is
a matter of "opinion", pastafarian?
Bush, of all people, who stole the election?
a matter of "opinion", pastafarian?
Bush, of all people, who stole the election?
sanch said:The topic here I believe is related to the US distancing itself from Canada. Thobani post 9/11 was the most recognized voice of anti-Americanism in the US, primarily because Matt Drudge brought it up. There was also the issue of the hate crime statute explored in relation to Thobani's comments. I believe Hedy Fry and other politcians who were there also later distanced themsleves from the remarks and so it was not only right wingers who thought she had gone over the line. You do have to remember that tax payer money funded this conference and paid for Thobani's expenses. Here is the text of the speech.
http://www.yorku.ca/cwsaacef/cwsaacef/memb/cwsa_publications/exclusive_pub_m.html
I'm really not much in the mood to debate tonight, but how is
Quote:
Bush, of all people, who stole the election?
a matter of "opinion", pastafarian?
she caused a great deal of hurt and animosity
pastafarian said:I agree, the evidence of Republican electoral fraud in Florida in 2000 is pretty well overwhelming, but until people want to get to the bottom of it enough to allow a reasoned debate on the matter-- which will of course be "never"-- it remains a matter of opinion.
There is no overwhelming "evidence" of fraud, neither in 2000 nor 2004
Until those who were "hurt" grow up and learn a little history, tough beans!
I think not said:You won't be wasting your time, I seek the truth, not to satisfy my ego. I'll wait for this evidence tomorrow. And do me a favor and don't presume your stereotypical perceptions of Americans apply to everyone. Thank you.
pastafarian said:Good, ITN. I assumed the worst because of your statement that there is no evidence (in quotes) of foul play, which I took to indicate that you KNEW there was no evidence. I don't expect to convince you that Bush did steal the election, only that there is ample evidence that at least his first-term legitimacy is not so obvious.
At first, Florida specified only exact matches on names, birthdates and genders to identify voters as felons. However, state records reveal a memo dated March 1999 from Emmett "Bucky" Mitchell, a lawyer for the state elections office who was supervising the felon purge, asking DBT to loosen its criteria for acceptable matches. When DBT representatives warned Mitchell that this would yield a large proportion of false positives (mismatches), Mitchell's reply was that it would be up to each county elections supervisor to deal with the problem.
In February 2000, in a phone conversation with the BBC's London studios, ChoicePoint vice-president James Lee said that the state "wanted there to be more names than were actually verified as being a convicted felon".
According to the Palm Beach Post, blacks accounted for 88% of those removed from the rolls, though they make up only about 11% of Florida's voters. [2]
Voter demographics authority David Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, DC, reviewed The Nation's findings and concluded that the purge-and-block program was "a patently obvious technique to discriminate against black voters".
Mark Hull, the former senior programmer for CDB Infotek, a ChoicePoint company, said the state and ChoicePoint could have chosen criteria that would have brought down the number of false positives to less than a fragment of 1%. George W. Bush's officially received fewer than 600 more votes in Florida than Al Gore (2000 Election), and thus the purging of thousands of elgibile African-American voters, who had a 90% Democractic vote rate (www.gregpalast.com, THE GREAT FLORIDA EX-CON GAME, How the 'felon' voter-purge was itself felonious, Harper's Magazine, March 1, 2002) was quite significant for the outcome of the election.
The only reliable measure of accuracy of the felon list comes from Leon County (Tallahassee), whose in-house experts checked each name in their county one by one. Out of the 694 named felons in Tallahassee, they could verify only 34 of them, or 5%. Statistically, this sample tells us that there is a more than 99% chance that at least 90.2% of those listed as felons in the 2000 Florida Central Voter File were, in fact, eligible voters.