Truer words were never spoken

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-27-2004
Truer words were never spoken
48
Tue, 07-27-2004 - 3:55pm
“These challenges we now confront are not Democratic or Republican challenges; they are American challenges -- that we all must overcome together.

It is in that spirit, that I sincerely ask those...who supported President Bush four years ago: Did you really get what you expected from the candidate you voted for?

Is our country more united today?

Or more divided?

Has the promise of compassionate conservatism been fulfilled?

Or do those words now ring hollow?

For that matter, are the economic policies really conservative at all?

Did you expect, for example, the largest deficits in history? One after another? And the loss of more than a million jobs?

And while it's true that new jobs are being created, they're just not as good as the jobs people have lost...

And the real solutions require us to transcend partisanship.

So that's one reason why, even though we Democrats, we believe this is a time to reach beyond our party lines to Republicans as well.

I also ask...for the help of those who supported a third party candidate in 2000. I urge you to ask yourselves this question: Do you still believe that there was no difference between the candidates?

Are you troubled by the erosion of some of America's most basic civil liberties?

Are you worried that our environmental laws are being weakened and dismantled to allow vast increases in pollution that are contributing to a global climate crisis?

No matter how you voted in the last election, these are profound problems that all voters must take into account this November 2.

And of course, no challenge is more critical than the situation we confront in Iraq. Regardless of your opinion at the beginning of this war, isn't it now obvious that the way the war has been managed by the administration has gotten us into very serious trouble?

Wouldn't we be better off with a new president who hasn't burned his bridges to our allies, and who could rebuild respect for America in the world?

Isn't cooperation with other nations crucial to solving our dilemma in Iraq? Isn't it also critical to defeating the terrorists?

We have to be crystal clear about the threat we face from terrorism. It is deadly. It is real. It is imminent.

But in order to protect our people, shouldn't we focus on the real source of this threat: the group that attacked us and is trying to attack us again -- al Qaeda, headed by Osama Bin Laden?

Wouldn't we be safer with a President who didn't insist on confusing al Qaeda with Iraq? Doesn't that divert too much of our attention away from the principal danger?”

– Former Vice President Al Gore, Democratic National Convention, Boston, MA 7/26/04

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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Tue, 07-27-2004 - 4:01pm
I would personally like to thank the doctor who gave Mr. Gore his sedatives before the speech.

As a Kerry supporter, I was quite worried about Gore mirroring one of his recent anti-bush speeches.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-03-2003
Tue, 07-27-2004 - 5:35pm
He has been somewhat vocal (some would say rabid) in his criticism of Bush lately, hasn't he? I suppose not actually having anything at stake in an election has a liberating effect on speech in the run-up to it.

~mark~

Avatar for moon627
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 07-27-2004 - 5:41pm
Although I agree with his words of wisdom, I'm just glad when he kissed Tipper this time it didnt turn into another slobber-fest ;) IMHO: He never should have conceded the vote to Bush - it was all in the name of political correctness to politely go along with the Florida fiasco so as not to appear a country divided by discord but as we all know it turned out that way anyhow by allowing Bush & Co. to steal the vote. I am positive that this country would be in a better place now if Gore had been in office the past 4 years...
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-03-2003
Tue, 07-27-2004 - 5:47pm
Still fixated on 2000? Don't you think it's time to move on, acknowledge the facts of the matter? Nobody stole the election... the valid, legal ballots showed Bush the winner. And Gore was just about out of time whether he conceded or not since the Constitutionally mandated deadlines for presidential elections were at immediately at hand anyway.

Holding onto misconceptions and mistaken beliefs isn't doing you or your choice of candidate any good whatsoever.

~mark~

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Tue, 07-27-2004 - 7:00pm

He has been somewhat vocal (some would say rabid) in his criticism of Bush lately, hasn't he? I suppose not actually having anything at stake in an election has a liberating effect on speech in the run-up to it.


Well, I'd say that Bush has definitely given him a lot more ammunition to use.


iVillage Member
Registered: 04-03-2003
Tue, 07-27-2004 - 7:11pm
True enough. And I suppose Gore's making up for lost time and opportunities.

~mark~

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Tue, 07-27-2004 - 7:24pm
<>

I think we have done well to accept GWB. What you seem to be missing is the thousands of voters that were turned away from the polls because the Gov had deemed them fellons. This is the fiasco that most of us object to. And to forget it would be just plain stupid because it could happen again. I personally wouldn't want to be associated with an administration that would do anything to win.

Fear of Fraud

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: July 27, 2004

It's election night, and early returns suggest trouble for the incumbent. Then, mysteriously, the vote count stops and observers from the challenger's campaign see employees of a voting-machine company, one wearing a badge that identifies him as a county official, typing instructions at computers with access to the vote-tabulating software.



When the count resumes, the incumbent pulls ahead. The challenger demands an investigation. But there are no ballots to recount, and election officials allied with the incumbent refuse to release data that could shed light on whether there was tampering with the electronic records.

This isn't a paranoid fantasy. It's a true account of a recent election in Riverside County, Calif., reported by Andrew Gumbel of the British newspaper The Independent. Mr. Gumbel's full-length report, printed in Los Angeles City Beat, makes hair-raising reading not just because it reinforces concerns about touch-screen voting, but also because it shows how easily officials can stonewall after a suspect election.

Some states, worried about the potential for abuse with voting machines that leave no paper trail, have banned their use this November. But Florida, which may well decide the presidential race, is not among those states, and last month state officials rejected a request to allow independent audits of the machines' integrity. A spokesman for Gov. Jeb Bush accused those seeking audits of trying to "undermine voters' confidence," and declared, "The governor has every confidence in the Department of State and the Division of Elections."

Should the public share that confidence? Consider the felon list.

Florida law denies the vote to convicted felons. In 2000 the state hired a firm to purge supposed felons from the list of registered voters; these voters were turned away from the polls. After the election, determined by 537 votes, it became clear that thousands of people had been wrongly disenfranchised. Since those misidentified as felons were disproportionately Democratic-leaning African-Americans, these errors may have put George W. Bush in the White House.

This year, Florida again hired a private company - Accenture, which recently got a homeland security contract worth up to $10 billion - to prepare a felon list. Remembering 2000, journalists sought copies. State officials stonewalled, but a judge eventually ordered the list released.

The Miami Herald quickly discovered that 2,100 citizens who had been granted clemency, restoring their voting rights, were nonetheless on the banned-voter list. Then The Sarasota Herald-Tribune discovered that only 61 of more than 47,000 supposed felons were Hispanic. So the list would have wrongly disenfranchised many legitimate African-American voters, while wrongly enfranchising many Hispanic felons. It escaped nobody's attention that in Florida, Hispanic voters tend to support Republicans.

After first denying any systematic problem, state officials declared it an innocent mistake. They told Accenture to match a list of registered voters to a list of felons, flagging anyone whose name, date of birth and race was the same on both lists. They didn't realize, they said, that this would automatically miss felons who identified themselves as Hispanic because that category exists on voter rolls but not in state criminal records.

But employees of a company that prepared earlier felon lists say that they repeatedly warned state election officials about that very problem.

Let's not be coy. Jeb Bush says he won't allow an independent examination of voting machines because he has "every confidence" in his handpicked election officials. Yet those officials have a history of slipshod performance on other matters related to voting and somehow their errors always end up favoring Republicans. Why should anyone trust their verdict on the integrity of voting machines, when another convenient mistake could deliver a Republican victory in a high-stakes national election?

This shouldn't be a partisan issue. Think about what a tainted election would do to America's sense of itself, and its role in the world. In the face of official stonewalling, doubters probably wouldn't be able to prove one way or the other whether the vote count was distorted - but if the result looked suspicious, most of the world and many Americans would believe the worst. I'll write soon about what can be done in the few weeks that remain, but here's a first step: if Governor Bush cares at all about the future of the nation, as well as his family's political fortunes, he will allow that independent audit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/opinion/27krug.html?hp

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-03-2003
Tue, 07-27-2004 - 7:31pm
I'm not saying that there weren't problems, issues which should be addressed and actions taken to prevent them from occuring again. There quite clearly were, and I would never argue otherwise. But this persistent harping about the election being "stolen", about the USSC "giving" the presidency to Bush or "selecting" him is fatuous, tired, and simply wrong. Even worse, it detracts attention from the legitimate issues such as the one you raised.

~mark~

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 07-27-2004 - 9:19pm

<<<legal ballots showed Bush the winner. >>>


Seems to me that you are hanging on to the 2000 voe as well or you wouldn't have jumped in there to refute what was said.

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"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- B

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 07-27-2004 - 9:26pm

My question is, why wouldn't BOTH camps as well as an independent auditing company that has NO business with the government, be required to certify election equipment and tabulating software BEFORE it is used, and then again AFTERWARD, in order to authenticate the vote?


Seems to me that would stop folks from calling the Bush brothers crooks - and the fact that Jeb flatly refuses to have the equipment or the software audited sure smells BAD and only adds to the cynicism and paranoia regarding Dubya's election in 2000, and the upcoming one as well!

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"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- Bob Day, Marriage Equality Rally, Rochester NY

Help in the fight against a constitutional amendment!


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"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- B

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