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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: brian1501 who wrote (176486)	10/12/2003 10:26:26 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1576000

Funny how you can have a totally reversed version of the 2000 election. Gore is the one who conceded, then took it back, then wanted selected recounts, then ran to the courts etc. It was obvious to me election night, when Daly walked out on the stage where Gore was to have conceded, and stated, "The Campaign Continues", that there would be an attempt on the part of the Democrats to steal the election. Obvious. When I heard it, I woke my wife up and said, "they going to try & steal it". It would have been un-Democrat like for them to allow a close election to pass with trying to steal it. Sad, really. I'm sometimes amazed at the way Clinton was able to single-handedly destroy the Democrat party. But it is really difficult for me to look at a Democrat today and not see a liar or a scoundrel.

To: brian1501 who wrote (176486)	10/13/2003 12:30:37 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1576000

I also used to think that I was an independent but no longer. That's no longer true. I can't imagine you ever being an independent. You're pretty far left Ted ;) Seriously, only by comparison to the people on this thread. I have lived in MN, CA and WA state, and I went to school in NY state. In all four places, I am considered fairly close to center. Maybe I was a political neophyte but the 2000 election was a wakeup call for me. It made me realize how badly conservatives want to win. It made me realize that their vision of this country is not what I was taught growing up. Funny how you can have a totally reversed version of the 2000 election. Gore is the one who conceded, then took it back, then wanted selected recounts, then ran to the courts etc. His reversal was prompted by the many voting irregularities that were found to be fairly rampant throughout the FLA voting system and the closeness of the FLA vote. He would have been a fool to not reverse his postion particularly since he had won the popular vote. Here's a timeline. Note that several of the counties involved were controlled by democrats, so you can see why they sue. usnews.com You will find that Gore's campaign joins the first lawsuit. The Bush side doesn't do anything legal until far down the page. The sec state (Harris) was totally within her job description to declare when the recounts had to be in (by law). The Dems ran to court to get her job description changed. Good thing they had those activist judges. It's funny how all these "disenfranchised" voters are only disenfranchised as long as their side needs help. Someone took Jessie Jackson to task on that during the Cali recall. He was whining about all the problems and "irregulararities" etc. and the reporter asked him what he was going to do about it if Davis won. He did his usual "ahh...ahh...ahh", then said "nothing". Figures. While there was irregularities on both sides, I counted those irregularities by county and found the larger number of irregularities were in FLA counties that went for Bush. This was a presidential election where Gore won the popular vote. Between the vote count irregularities, the problems surrounding the handing chauds and the closeness of the FLA vote, there should have been a revote with FLA Marshalls watching every voting precinct to insure no further ballot stuffing and other BS occurred. However, the GOP was afraid to do a revote for fear they would lose FLA. So they started their campaign of fear........the country would not have a leader......the country was in free fall........the economy could go into recession. It was a joke.........our Constitution had us adequately protected. However, most Americans didn't know that and panicked. And that's how we ended up with a shrub in the White House. ;~) You understand that this is the stuff of feuds. ted

To: brian1501 who wrote (176486)	10/13/2003 1:25:55 AM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1576000

<font color=green> This is just one of several discussions on how the division between people in this country has been heightened. There are many incidents reflecting this division. I have friends in San Diego who wanted to show their small children that they were loyal Americans but at the same time hoped for peace in the world. So what they did was put up on their flag pole the American flag and underneath it the flag for peace. The next AM they found the back window of their car smashed out with an unpleasant note. Another friend put the peace sign up in his cubicle. The next day he found ink spilled all over all his papers on his desk. These are just two incidents that can be multiplied many times throughout this country. For the first time, my friends are talking about politics, about ideologies, about the war etc. I hear people talking at the gym and in other public places. There will be a backlash and it won't be pretty. Conservatives are not the majority.......at best, there is a split down the middle. However, they act as if they own the place. <font color=black> ted ************************************************** Published on Sunday, October 12, 2003 by the Minneapolis Star Tribune The Wrong Side of 'Us vs. Them' by Coleen Rowley I didn't attend Attorney General John Ashcroft's speech last month in Minneapolis, but newspapers have quoted him as saying that Americans are "freer today than at any time in the history of human freedom." Well, this American disagrees! And I would venture to say that many others feel the same way -- those who have been put on the "them" side of the "us vs. them" equation in the context of the administration's "you're either with us or against us" mentality. It didn't matter whether you were a career FBI agent, a decorated war veteran, a duly elected congressman or senator, a military general or even a former president, you were labeled a traitor for voicing any criticism of administration policies. You were accused of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, called a friend of Osama bin Laden and thrown to the wolves (or more accurately, the FOXes). The intimidation in this country that's been whipped up by this official fear and warmongering has been far more effective than any Patriot Act in whittling away our civil liberties. Interestingly enough, Ashcroft himself is not above using this technique to lump those who disagree with him in with the terrorists to thereby discourage debate. Recall his statement, three months after Sept. 11: "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists -- for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies." It's also no secret that this administration has used its considerable power to fight giving any real legal protection to government whistle-blowers and even attempted to water down the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's protections recently enacted for corporate whistle-blowers. Of course, no "whistle-blower protection" exists for public disclosures or articles such as this one. But even without it, the First Amendment should suffice and is what I rely on. However, the official warnings along these lines that I've repeatedly received in the course of my attempts to speak on issues of public importance seem little more than veiled threats; or are they perhaps a warning that the First Amendment is not as robust as it used to be? There's another large segment of our citizenry who have found themselves cast as "thems" by this "war" mentality. Complaints of discrimination against Muslim workers and reports of hate crimes against people believed to be of Middle Eastern descent have at least doubled. Social psychologists say that the attacks of Sept. 11 and their aftermath have created a real-world experiment which unfortunately indicates that the more positively one feels about the United States, the more likely one is to be anti-Arab. Although it must be recognized that the origin of this problem was in the horror of the violent attacks themselves and that certain government leaders, such as FBI Director Robert Mueller, have undertaken efforts to reach out to affected Arab groups, the social scientists point to other government actions following 9/11 (including the government's roundup and detention of illegal immigrants, the special registration requirements that single out students and visitors from Muslim nations, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) as sending "social signals" that are worsening these biases. A specialist in the issues of prejudice and stereotyping has noted that people who perceive themselves under threat naturally tend to think of "who's with me" and "who's against me." In any event, I doubt that many in the Arab-American segment of the populace feel "freer today," as Ashcroft's generality suggests. I could go on in a more general, abstract way about how "free" any of us truly is living with the ongoing terrorist threat to our safety that will be with us for a long time. For, distilled to their essences, security and liberty are very intertwined, if not the same thing. In that sense, how many people in yellow/orange-alert America feel "freer" today than they did prior to 9/11? Ashcroft may be correct on other matters, including that the letter of the law contained in the Patriot Act is, for the most part, not the problem, but he is certainly either in denial, out of touch or painting far too rosy a picture by saying that Americans are "freer today than at any time in the history of human freedom." For our civil liberties can be and are in jeopardy in other ways. For starters, we must do more to break down the "us vs. them" mind-set and the accompanying intimidation that ultimately threaten us all. We must recognize that we are all in this together.** Coleen Rowley works for the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a special agent with the Minneapolis office. (The views expressed are her own and are not to be construed as the official views of the FBI.) © Copyright 2003 Star Tribune ###