Politics: Where we struggle to kneel in the muck.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
I'm resolving to scroll whenever there are nasty, Bush/Kerry sucks kind of exchanges that don't either (i) focus on a substantive policy question or (ii) discuss a strategic polical point. My assumption for the next three weeks is that votes will be honestly cast and counted and that each candidate is a reasonably decent fellow without enormous character flaws, though on the later point I reserve the right to speak up if someone shows themselves otherwise.

As to posters here, we'll see what kind of character we all display.

46. Hi-Fi Gilligan


Gilligan's mouth becomes a radio after he is accidentally hit on the head. When their regular radio is broken, Gilligan becomes their sole source of information on the approaching typhoon.


b: 25-Nov-1965 w: Mary C. McCall, Jr. d: Jack Arnold


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
Kentucky's largest newspaper is now calling on Sen. Bunning to answer questions about his mental health. Bunning's campaign responds that the Senator is as fit as when he pitched a perfect game in 1964 for the Philadelphia Phillies. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...dc_3&printer=1

(Okay, now it's raining, so we're not driving the bikes to Duluth, so I'm back . . . )

The guy's like 72. I read that article, and my first thought was, he's completely stressed out by the campaign. I can't imagine how any of these people can have complete mental health by election day.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by sgtclub
What's his deal anyway? Is he doing this out of principle, or is he an ego maniac? Or both?

Both. I am voting for him anyway. I figure casting a vote for GWB here in the People's Republic of California is as useful as, well, posting on an anonymous politics board. So I will vote for Nader to make it look like he as more support than he actually does. I think we need to encourage more third parties in this country and if Nader doesn't get more support, that won't help to encourage more third parties.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
The GOP recently fired some campaign workers in South Dakota who were violating election laws in registering voters and who lied about it to the press. A strong message against vote fraud? Not so much, since the GOP turned around and gave the workers jobs with the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio. Not exactly a zero-tolerance policy.

And you say the GOP isn't good at creating jobs for Americans.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me
And you say the GOP isn't good at creating jobs for Americans.

Notwithstanding your wonderful talk about the jobs recently created for these people, we're still talking about no net job gains over the full period at issue.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Notwithstanding your wonderful talk about the jobs recently created for these people, we're still talking about no net job gains over the full period at issue.

Did they take a $9k pay slash, though?

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Notwithstanding your wonderful talk about the jobs recently created for these people, we're still talking about no net job gains over the full period at issue.

Well, as I learned from dtb today, you can make numbers say anything.

[Not Me]

http://nativetimes.com/index.asp?act...rticle_id=5316

• The American Indian activist that ran as Ralph Nader’s running mate in the last presidential election has endorsed John Kerry.
  
  Winona LaDuke, an Anishinabe from the Makwa Dodaem of the Mississippi Band of the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, says Kerry earned her vote through his stand on issues important to Native Americans. A Harvard gradate, LaDuke first appeared in the public eye when she filed a lawsuit to recover lands originally held by the Anishinabe people and taken by the federal government. After exhausting the legal system, she founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project in order to raise funds to purchase original White Earth land holdings.
  
  “I am voting for John Kerry this November. I love this land, and I know that we need to make drastic changes in Washington if we are going to protect our land and our communities,” La Duke said in a statement. “I'm voting my conscience on Nov. 2; I'm voting for John Kerry. He wants to move federal policies to support Native communities, whether Native farmers, businesspeople or tribal governments. We are on his radar; this is a beginning. Kerry offers other reasons for hope. He opposes converting Yucca Mountain into a nuclear waste dump. By Nov. 2, 2004, John Kerry will have earned my vote."
  
  She does not mention the fact that many Democrat believe the reason that Bush is in office in the first place is because of Nader’s failed bid to win the presidency last time around, siphoning crucial votes in key battleground states like Florida where Nader won 1.6 per cent of the vote. Sounds like small potatoes, but that accounted for 97,488 votes, and Bush beat Gore there by just 537 votes. In 2000, Mr Nader won 2.7 per cent of the vote nationally. Pollsters say that this year his national support has dwindled from a peak of five per cent in May to about 1.5 per cent now, but in some states it is higher.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Jonathan Chait, in the LA Times, on the bogus 98 votes to raise taxes:

• George Bush, Tax Hiker
  Kerry raised taxes 98 times over 20 years? That's nothing. Bush is about to do the same 63 times in a single day.
  
  He voted 98 times to raise taxes. I mean, these aren't make-up figures. — George W. Bush
  
  If there's a single piece of data President Bush wants to bring to your attention, it's that John Kerry, during his 20 years in the Senate, voted to raise taxes 98 times. Bush repeats this often, usually in a tone of incredulity. But Kerry is a piker. When Bush signs the big corporate tax bill passed this week by the Republican Congress, he will be approving 63 different tax increases with a single stroke of the pen.
  
  Revenue provision B 8, for example — "Disallowance of certain partnership loss transfers with partner loss limits for transfer of interest in electing investment partnerships" — might not be great fodder for a Kerry campaign commercial, but a tax increase it most definitely is.
  
  You may be thinking, "Wait. I thought that bill was a huge giveaway of tax cuts to special interests." And you're right — it is. The point is that any tax bill, even a big giveaway, is going to be a rococo combination of tax increases and decreases. That's one reason Bush's "98 tax increases" jab at Kerry is so dishonest.
  
  Just last spring, Bush was claiming Kerry had voted for higher taxes 350 times. That number has now been scaled back to 98. In fact, depending on how you define it, you can come up with almost any number you want.
  
  The 350 included different tax increases in the same bill. Today's 98 figure avoids that trick, but still counts each of the many procedural votes on any bill as a separate hike.
  
  What precisely is the import of Kerry's 98 tax increases supposed to be?
  
  Scanning through newspaper articles and television transcripts, I have yet to find a member of the Bush campaign explain the meaning of this number they keep repeating. The closest thing I could find was a line from Bush himself. I will reprint here his argument in toto, with all relevant context included: "He's voted in the United States Senate to increase taxes 98 times. That's a lot." So there you have it.
  
  The Bush campaign gleefully sends out an annotated list of all 98 votes. You know, just in case you forgot his "1993 Vote To Raise Taxes By $790 Million By Taxing Diesel Fuel Used By Barges." Or his "1987 Vote To Increase Taxes by $300 Million on Poultry Industry and Cattle Feeding Companies." Or the fact that "In 1985, Kerry Voted To Limit Amount of Farm Losses That Could Be Deducted From Non-Farm Income." I doubt diesel barge owners, the poultry industry or extremely unprofitable part-time farmers need reminding.
  
  One of the tricks of the methodology is that it not only counts even tiny or undeniably beneficent tax hikes, it counts any vote that could conceivably lead to higher taxes. That includes the procedural votes — cloture votes, motions to proceed and other arcane hurdles — often required to pass a single tax hike. Kerry's support for Bill Clinton's 1993 tax hike alone accounted for 16 of the 98 votes. Another 43 were merely Kerry approving a broad goal to reduce the deficit to a given level. Three more of Kerry's votes came from his opposition to imposing a requirement that tax hikes receive a three-fifths supermajority.
  
  If Republicans really believe in the strategy of saddling their opponents with huge numbers of anti-tax-cut votes, they could start holding votes on tax cuts, or tax cut-related procedural motions, multiple times a day, every day. (George P. Bush, in 2044: "My opponent voted to increase your taxes 3 million times! That's a lot.")
  
  But let us take the 98 votes at face value. Does this prove Bush's contention that Kerry sits far outside the mainstream? You can't answer that without some basis of comparison. In 1992, George H.W. Bush painted Bill Clinton as a hopeless liberal, the primary evidence for this claim being the fact that Clinton allegedly raised taxes 128 times as governor of Arkansas. So that would make Kerry, with his 98 tax hikes, some … let's see, 23% less liberal than Clinton, who is viewed (outside conservative circles) as a moderate.
  
  Meanwhile, Kerry's campaign has a detailed list of 642 Kerry votes to reduce taxes. (Maybe Bush should be painting Kerry as a crazed tax-cutting zealot totally unconcerned about fiscal responsibility.)
  
  Meanwhile, Dick Cheney as a member of Congress from Wyoming voted to raise taxes 144 times. If 98 tax-hike votes make Kerry a far-out liberal, than Cheney would have to be placed somewhere in the ideological vicinity of Che Guevara.
  
  If Bush had merely said that Kerry was more likely to raise your taxes, at least the accusation would be meaningful and plausible. After all, Kerry did vote for the last two major tax increases, in 1990 and 1993, and he openly plans to restore the top tax bracket to where it stood under Clinton.
  
  But the Bush philosophy seems to be: Why level an honest accusation when a dishonest one is nearer to hand?

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
98 tax hikes]

Let's put aside the issue of the specific number. Is your point that Bush is distorting the record or that Kerry is not a liberal on tax matters (i.e., that he is not more likely than most to support tax raises)?

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Let's put aside the issue of the specific number. Is your point that Bush is distorting the record or that Kerry is not a liberal on tax matters (i.e., that he is not more likely than most to support tax raises)?

Bush lied!

[mmm3587]

Originally posted by sgtclub
What's his deal anyway? Is he doing this out of principle, or is he an ego maniac? Or both?

I don't know about the first, but I don't think that anyone has y question about whether Nader is a collossal egomaniac or not. Even the people close to him and who work for him, I have heard, admit that he is.

[Shape Shifter]

Rove testifies before a federal grand jury investigating the Plame leak.

No big surprise. I just enjoyed this paragraph:

"Rove spent more than two hours testifying before the panel, according to an administration official who spoke only on condition of anonymity because such proceedings are secret."

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
Bush lied!

See this is what I need you doing to balance me. If you want to be thoughtful or profound, resurrrect your Purse junkie sock and go, but keep SS pure, for me.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
See this is what I need you doing to balance me. If you want to be thoughtful or profound, resurrrect your Purse junkie sock and go, but keep SS pure, for me.

199. Ma Always Liked You Best
gs: Paul Willson (Paul Krapence) Frances Sternhagen (Esther Clavin) Rocky La Porte (Jeff) John Posey (Lars) Peter Schreiner (Pete) Ken Foree (Policeman #1) James F. Dean (Policeman #2)

Cliff gets very hurt and upset when his mother decides that Woody is the son she never had, and Norm gets caught in a window.



b: 18-Oct-1990 pc: 199 w: Dan O'Shannon & Tom Anderson d: Andy Ackerman