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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (17828)	5/18/2005 2:36:42 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361059

<<...One-third of the professors at an evangelical Christian college in Grand Rapids, Mich., are taking out a large ad in a local newspaper Saturday to protest President Bush's commencement speech...>> College ad to protest Bush visit By Julia Duin THE WASHINGTON TIMES washingtontimes.com One-third of the professors at an evangelical Christian college in Grand Rapids, Mich., are taking out a large ad in a local newspaper Saturday to protest President Bush's commencement speech. "As Christians, we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate war only as a last resort," the ad will say. "We believe your administration has launched an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq." The 130 signatories, which include 20 staff members, work at Calvin College. Founded in 1876 as a school for pastors of the Christian Reformed Church, it now is one of the nation's flagship schools for a Christian liberal-arts education. "No single political position should be identified with God's will," says the ad, which also chastises the president for "actions that favor the wealthy of our society and burden the poor." Christians are to be characterized by love and gentleness, it adds, but "we believe that your administration has fostered intolerance and divisiveness and has often failed to listen to those with whom it disagrees." Moreover, says the letter, set to run in the Grand Rapids Press, the Bush administration's environmental policies "have harmed creation," and it asks the president "to re-examine your policies in light of our God-given duty to pursue justice with mercy." Although Calvin College President Gaylen Byker called the Bush visit "an extraordinary opportunity," the Chimes, the college newspaper, urged the 900 graduates to wear armbands protesting the visit. The publication pointed out that the president had been looking for a speech venue in Michigan, a state he failed to carry in 2000 and 2004. After U.S. Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers, a Republican whose district includes Grand Rapids, got an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove, the college sidelined its previously scheduled commencement speaker, Yale University professor Nick Wolterstorff, in favor of the chief executive. "Some think we should be honored to have the president here," religion professor David Crump said. "We're excited by the opportunity to show people that evangelical Christianity is represented by a much broader spectrum of opinion than is depicted by the religious right and the media." In a 2001 poll, 25 percent of Calvin's faculty described themselves as politically liberal, according to the college. Forty-five percent considered themselves centrist, and 28 percent said they were political conservatives. In 2003, the evangelical weekly World ran an expose on Calvin, scolding it for having "drifted away from Scripture" on "theology-rooted issues such as origins, feminist theology and homosexuality." Calvin officials contested the characterization, saying the college is trying to set an example for its 4,186 students. "We are a serious theological and intellectual school, and we try to have our students informed by thoughtful reflection about the concerns," said history professor Randall Jelks, who is rounding up signatures for the ad. "We are not Lynchburg," he said, referring to the more conservative Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell. "We are not right wing; we're not left wing. We think our faith trumps political ideology."

To: American Spirit who wrote (17828)	5/18/2005 2:47:35 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 361059

Re: Coleman should crawl under a rock and hide. gg You can believe that Coleman's sphincter was puckering when he was the victim of this awesome blast of the truth: George Galloway Video: 4 minutes of must-see TV! crooksandliars.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (17828)	5/18/2005 10:17:12 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361059

US Count Votes: Keep the Pressure on Mitofsky regarding bogus exit poll results -- (From Email) Hello Everyone, Significant revisions have been made to US Count Vote's newest analysis of the exit polls which contribute substantially to the science of exit poll analysis, and more strongly rebut the reluctant Bush responder hypothesis. In particular, the derivation of the formula for exit poll discrepancy, WPE, caused by vote shift, and more accurate charts of the exit poll discrepancy patterns caused by vote shift were added today. Now it can be stated that the exit poll pattern in the Edison/Mitofsky exit poll data is clearly more consistent with vote shift of 6% from Kerry to Bush + an exit poll response bias that is considered very normal (i.e. Kerry voters responding slightly more in Kerry strongholds, and Bush voters responding more in Bush strongholds) than it is with the reluctant Bush responder hypothesis of Edison/Mitofsky. If you have done what we must all do to ensure that the correctly elected candidates are sworn into office in January 07, by forwarding a copy of our newest paper to your elected representatives to educate them, you may want to re-forward the revised copy, or plan on forwarding it as soon as it is finalized in a few weeks. uscountvotes.org Below is an excerpt from Steve Freeman's email today to Mitofsky, the exit pollster: ------------------------------------------ The fact that the original authors of the USCountVotes papers, myself included, did not sign the current release does NOT imply that we no longer believe the arguments, just that we lack time and resources to uphold our end of a fruitless non-debate. The recent fuss over WPE and alternative analyses is about whether the E/M model proposed to account for unprecedented differences between their exit polls and the recorded vote is impossibly implausible or just highly implausible. The bottom line remains that there is no evidence - or even theory - of differential response. There has never been any. The E/M data itself fails to substantiate the claim, and may, in fact, undermine the claim entirely. Without access to the data, it's difficult to know. The unexplained questions about the exit poll and the election have certainly NOT been answered in Miami or anywhere else. In a system where campaign managers serve as election supervisors, where voting machines provide no assurance that votes are counted as cast, where a wide array of other "irregularities" (a.k.a. vote manipulation and mistabulation) were documented, and where counts and "recounts" are conducted in secret, the exit poll results stand out as conspiciously suspicious. The exit poll data, for all its limitations, is one of the only means to gain both national and specific insights into whether, in fact, the official reported results of the presidential election were even in the ballpark. That this relevant data has not been made available for independent analysis is an outrage for members of an organization that considers itself part of the scientific community. It's an outrage for people that consider themselves patriotic citizens of a democratic nation. Indeed of all the multitude of unexplained questions, perhaps the most puzzling is how highly intelligent, apparently decent men can take the stand that the data must not be independently analyzed. ----------------------- Best, Kathy Dopp electionarchive.org