Fahrenheit 9/11 Boils Box Office and Conservatives

they're at it again:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/30/bush.nader/index.html

Sterling, if your character is more important than your "cause", then can you explain to me how you manage to support the character(s) of this administration? VP Cheney, who, while campaigning said he wanted to "restore a tone of civility and decency to the debate in Washington"--this guy uses the f-word on the Senate floor. The same people who consider a boob during a half-time show the epitome of indecency. How about the character of conservative judges on the Supreme Court who appointed George Bush by abandoning jurisprudence in favor of partisanship? How about the character of Rush Limbaugh, who has recommended about drug addicts "if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up", this guy has admitted to abusing powerful opiates and is decrying attempts to send him up. That's character? Not to mention the character of a President and VP who both have, let's say, creative reasons for having avoided service in Vietnam. Yeah, the character of conservatives. Just ask Jack Ryan, who they reluctantly abandoned when it came out that he'd pressured his wife into accompanying him to sex clubs (and then tried to persuade her to have sex with him in front of others). The response, from a fellow conservative who'd actually lost to Ryan in the primary: "Racy bars in three different cities, that's it?" asked Rauschenberger [an IL state senator}. "I just think he would have been better off coming out with this information earlier. But I don't think it's a big deal." NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL CHARACTER...

What are you talking about?!?! The "initial" list was never reduced to only 1000 people. It wasnt a small hurdle for those on it. These people were not reinstated until after the NAACP sued, well after the election. You are the one who is clearly distorting facts, and therefore have lost all credibility. I neither lied nor relied on fiction, I quoted facts from the journalists who investigated the scam, you are the one who is ignoring the truth or simply dismissing it because you dont like it. You are demonstrating first hand how conservatives debate: you lie, circumvent fatcs presented to you, try to rationalize behavior that is both immoral and illegal, all while trying to insult and belittle you opponent. Good job!

As for you silly comparison of left and right wing activism, it's so dumb I dont know whether to laugh or cry. The right doesnt believe in anything but creating hegemony for the few, and maintaining that power by any means necessary. The right wing only believes in power and money, and when democracy gets in the way, well, you know the drill.

Yes, SP, I don't doubt that in the initial draft of 60,000 people, there were numerous errors. However, sometime between that draft and the actual removal, the number of people to be removed was cut dramatically - to the point where about 1000 were improperly removed. Not the 54,000 you claimed. But even those 1000 were not barred from voting, they just had an extra hurdle thrown up in that they had to write out an appeal slip indicating that they had the right to vote. Look, SP, when you get caught repeatedly fabricating or misrepresenting information in an argument, do you know what that means? It means you lose. It means that the other party to the argument no longer takes you seriously as a good-faith opponent. You have an idea in your head - that Bush stole the election - and you cling to any piece of information that supports that, regardless of whether it's true or not. Which would be fine, if you didn't fancy yourself an evangelist for your message. As an evangelist you are a profound flop, because you cannot make an argument without relying on fictions.

John - Recounts are conducted when necessary, not every time the loser wants to hold on to some shred of hope for victory. In addition to being expensive to conduct, they are rife with the opportunity for mischief and must be closely watched. And incidentally, it was a 7-2 vote in the US Supreme Court declaring the Florida SC's actions unconstitutional, not 5-4. The 5-4 vote was to uphold the midnight deadline (and which effectively ended the recount). Everyone focuses on the 5-4 vote because it makes it look as if the conservative justices fixed the election for Bush, but it was the 7-2 vote that ended the Florida Supreme Court's attempt to re-write the election rules in Gore's favor, and thus torpedoed Gore's strategy.

And by the way - the situation could not be "reversed". The reason Bush's supporters stuck with him in Florida is because he won. If he had lost the initial count and the Florida-law mandated recount (as Gore did - both), we would have expected him to concede. (The fact that Gore did concede and then retracted it struck us as amazing.) As should be evident to anyone who watched the fall of Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, John Rowland or even Trent Lott, conservatives tend not to support their politicians when they are in the wrong. This is because we see our "cause" as subordinate to our character. The Left, on the other hand, sees its cause as a great struggle and subordinates everything (including truth, as SP has demonstrated) to that struggle. There is no conservative equivalent to Saul Alinsky. Few leftists understand this - but it's the reason why there are hundreds of times as many leftist "activists" in this country as conservative ones.

I quote Greg Palast, who in addition to having his own office writes for The Nation, hardly considered a left wing loony publication by the main stream (who knows what rabid right wing sickos think):

"Five months before the election, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris ordered the removal of 57,700 names from Florida’s voter rolls on grounds that they were felons."

"My office carefully went through the scrub list and discovered that at minimum, 90.2 percent of the people were completely innocent of any crime"

"There were 8,000 Floridians who had committed misdemeanors, but were counted as felons."

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=217&row=2

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20010205&s=palast

Sterling, you really don't get it, do you? I quoted (didn't paraphrase, have a look:http://www.chicagomediawatch.o...

something you disagree with--*I* didn't make it up. Maybe someone else "made it up", but that really depends on how you interpret the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.

And Sterling, if gross irregularities in the ballots and tallying shouldn't provoke a statewide, if not nationwide, recount, then what should? I mean, your guy got the most votes, right? What's the harm in recounting them, then, especially if there are concerns in more than one state (Wisconsin, right?). The fact that the Supreme Court stopped the recount under the auspices of equal protection based on votes from Supreme Court Justices whose records for equal protection voting showed they were skeptical of it, AT BEST, should've been enough to set off even your creatively-tuned bullshit detector. I'm QUOTING below:

The majority's decision in Bush v. Gore that the recount process ordered by the Florida Supreme Court violated the Equal Protection Clause was a highly activist, but plausible interpretation of the Constitution. What was disheartening to me was not the constitutional principle embraced by the majority, but the votes cast by Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas in support of that decision, votes that were dispositive of the case, and of the presidency of the United States.

No one familiar with the jurisprudence of Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas could possibly have imagined that they would vote to invalidate the Florida recount process on the basis of their own well-developed and oft-invoked approach to the Equal Protection Clause.

In the decade leading up to Bush v. Gore, Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas cast approximately 65 votes in non-unanimous Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Equal Protection Clause. Nineteen of those votes were cast in cases involving affirmative action, and I will return to them in a moment. Of the 46 votes that these Justices cast in cases that did not involve affirmative action, Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas collectively cast only two votes to uphold a claimed violation of the Equal Protection Clause. Thus, these three Justices found a violation of Equal Protection in only 4 percent of these cases.

For the sake of comparison, over this same period, and in these very same cases, the colleagues of Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas collectively voted 74 percent of the time to uphold the Equal Protection Clause claim. 74 percent versus 4 percent.

Against this background, one must wonder why Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas suddenly discovered power and beauty in the Equal Protection Clause in Bush v. Gore. Indeed, as a group they cast more votes (three, to be exact) to uphold the Equal Protection Clause claim in Bush v. Gore than they had previously cast in all of the non-affirmative action Equal Protection Clause cases that they had considered in the previous decade.

Of course, those other cases were different, for they involved laws that disadvantaged blacks, women, gays, the disabled and the poor--groups that are surely less deserving of concern under the Equal Protection Clause than the beneficiary of the Court's decision in Bush.

But this is not a fair characterization. After all, I have excluded from the above analysis the votes of Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas in affirmative action cases. In those cases, these three Justices have consistently demonstrated the same spirit of bold and innovative interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause that they manifested in Bush v. Gore. Indeed, over the past decade, these three Justices have collectively cast 19 votes to hold unconstitutional various forms of affirmative action. This represents 100 percent of their votes in these cases--a perfect record. (Their colleagues, by contrast, have voted only 33 percent of the time to invalidate such programs.)

What does this tell us? It tells us that Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas have a rather distinctive view of the United States Constitution. Apparently the Equal Protection Clause, which was enacted after the Civil War primarily to protect the rights of newlyfreed slaves, is to be used for two and only two purposes--to invalidate affirmative action and to invalidate the recount process in the 2000 presidential election.

As Professor Robert Post of the Berkeley Law School has observed, "I do not know a single person who believes that if the parties were reversed, if Gore were challenging a recount ordered by a Republican Florida Supreme Court," that Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas "would have reached for a startling and innovative principle of constitutional law to hand Gore the victory."

http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777122240/

Wait, let me guess: that's left-wing loonyism?

Funny, thing, SP - you say "And of the 60,000 purged voters, less than 10% were actually convicted felons eligible for legal exclusion from the election."

But I found a site, "Democrats.com", which says this: "Shortly after the 2000 Election, Greg Palast reported on the Florida Voter Purge. Nearly 60,000 names were on the original lists, and more than a thousand predominantly minority and Democratic voters were wrongly removed from the rolls."

While it's true that 54,000 is "more than 1,000" somehow I think that if the number of people improperly excluded was 54,000+, as you suggest, the the Democrats.com people would have said "more than 54,000", not "more than 1,000".

So it looks like I caught you lying again, unless the writers at Democrats.com, like the mostly-black Gadsden County government, are also involved in the sinister Republican conspiracy to deprive the black man of the vote in Florida.

Here's the link: http://www.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=10362

OK, I will go into just a few reasons why the CEO of Diebold, for instance, would not and could not arrange for voting machines to be manufactured that could be easily manipulated.

Right off the bat, do any of you remember an accounting firm called Arthur Anderson? Do you remember what happened to it? It was involved - in just a few cases - of abetting corporate fraud in reporting results to the SEC and shareholders. Within the course of a few weeks, Arthur Anderson, a multi-billion dollar company, effectively ceased to exist. It's owners/partners were left severely in the lurch. That is the penalty for the sort of thing you are suggesting. And let it be noted that Arthur Anderson accountants committed these crimes for MONEY.

OK, that's just to put things in context. Now, one of the errors people on both the left and the right make is to project their own motivations on the other side. In the case of the left, this means that it often ascribes activist motives to Republicans. In this case, the idea that the CEO of a major corporation would risk everything to see his political agenda enacted. According to the FEC, Walden O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold, has contributed about $10,000 to political campaigns over the last seven years. $6000 to the RNC, and $4500 to Senator Voinovichs' campaign (R-OH). His salary according to SEC filings, just last year, was $3 million dollars. So this diabolical manipulator of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has spent an amount equal to 1/300th of last year's salary over the last seven years to support the Republican cause. Oh yeah, he's a sinister fucker.

Now let's go into some technical reasons why this is impossible. First off - these are standalone terminals. No one can access them over a network. Secondly - they are audited periodically and tested - if secret communications gear was hidden in their innards, it would be found. Thirdly, HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE ARE INVOLVED IN THE DESIGN AND MANUFACTURE OF THESE MACHINES. The conspiracy could not be kept secret. I could go deeper, but this seems like enough. They are simple tallying machines, SP, which have safeguards in place to allow candidates to be added, and to deliver results when the polls close. Yes, they can malfunction - just like every other vote-collecting technology.

Typical conservative response: when you dont like what you hear, you say that the critique is (multiple choice):

loony, un-american, laughable etc etc.

Since you only consider major media outlets as legitimate:

http://www.local10.com/news/1237092/detail.html

http://www.aclufl.org/legislature_courts/legal_department/briefs_complaints/naacp_v__harris.cfm

And of the 60,000 purged voters, less than 10% were actually convicted felons eligible for legal exclusion from the election.

Well, SP, you're contradicting yourself. It seems as if 60,000 people were removed because the State of Florida thought they were felons, not for "no reason". I've only ever been a registered voter in Virginia and New Jersey, but I know that in both of those states, if you show up to vote but are not on the rolls, you're given a slip of paper to vote on, and are able to appeal your ineligibility. Your vote and appeal are then sealed until after the results are tallied. If the number of people voting in such a fashion is more than the margin of victory in the election, then the appeals and votes are unsealed and each is considered on the merits.

By the way, what percentage of those 60,000 were not actually convicted felons? 60,000 represents about 0.6% of the total number of registered voters in Florida, and seems like a reasonable amount to clear in an election year. Obviously there are going to be errors in a process like this, but that doesn't necessarily indicate malice. Further, since Jeb Bush probably didn't do the data entry himself, the process of flushing out the felons from the list would have been watched over by career civil servants, not political appointees.

As for the voting machines themselves being in on the conspiracy, that's absurd. There are so many reasons for this being absurd that I am emotionally overwhelmed at the prospect of listing them. None of the links you provide suggest any kind of non-wacky rationale for how the machines might have been able to steal Gore votes - they are ALL loony left sites.

I don't link to loony right sites, you shouldn't link to loony left sites. I'm sorry, SP, but you are definitely crazy. You should seek professional help and medication - I mean that, it's not just a rhetorical device. Sorry.

Whats worse, giving a handfull of homeless people cigarettes or eliminating 60,000 people from voter rolls for no reason? Thats not a conspiracy theory, it happened and you still havent responded to it with anything more than a fascist statement that you think it was legitimate law enforcement. The NAACP sued Harris over this and won.

There is no question that ever since democratic elections have been held, parties on all sides have tried, in some ways more devious and illegal than others, to increase their chances of winning. In this case it was more than just getting homeless people to go vote when they might not have otherwise in exchange for a small bribe like you allege the democrats did. Florida was a testing ground for the Republican effort to gain control of elections at the source. Not only are they illegally removing voters from the rolls, they are also in control of the voting machines, with the compliity of their buddies at Diebold, they can make the numbers come out in the favor every time.

The American vote-count is controlled by three major corporate players - Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia - with a fourth, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), coming on strong. These companies - all of them hardwired into the Bushist Party power grid - have been given billions of dollars by the Bush Regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines nationwide by the 2004 election. These glitch-riddled systems - many using "touch-screen" technology that leaves no paper trail at all (not that it matters, they can print one thing and "record" another) - are almost laughably open to manipulation, according to corporate whistleblowers and computer scientists at Stanford, John Hopkins and other universities.

If you want to read about how Al Gore lost 16,000 votes in a county that was using Diebold machines read here:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0310/S00211.htm

http://www.bartcop.com/diebold.htm

http://disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Diebold_Election_Systems

http://healthandenergy.com/election_fraud.htm

Want to read more about how black voters were denied their constitutional rights:

http://www.gregpalast.com/

SP - I'm sorry but I think you're a loony conspiracy theorist. I mean, you cite this conspiracy against blacks as being particularly sinister in Gadsden County. You say that 1 in 8 ballots in the county was voided by the state. THAT IS A LIE, isn't it, SP? They were voided by the Gadsden County Board of Elections. Gadsden County, according to the US Census, is 57% black, and I would expect the local elected officials and board of elections to reflect that racial preponderance.

What really happened is that to save money, Gadsden County decided to use central counting, which means that all the ballots are tabulated at one location after the polls have closed. In other counties in Florida, for instance Leon County, tabulating machines were installed at most precincts, and voters were able to insert the ballot themselves. If the machine could not read the ballot, the voter was given a clean ballot to try again. That's not possible when, as in Gadsden County, the tabulating is done afterwards. So there's no conspiracy here, SP, there's just a county government that decided to save money by skimping on voting equipment. Isn't that right? Come on, admit it: you lied.

John - Just because you are paraphrasing from another source does not mean you are immune from responsibility for error. There was no constitutionally required recount. NONE. You made it up. Further, any argument that a recount must be "complete" or violates the equal protection clause is absurd, as elections are managed on a local basis (see above). Further still, my recollection is that Florida law did not provide for the recounting of ballots, but rather the retallying of precinct results. The various Democrat-controlled elections boards took it upon themselves, extra-legally, to start manually recounting ballots. So to find that a county board acting without legal authority creates a constitutional obligation for every other board (statewide? nationally?) to do the same thing is absurd.

I also note with some dismay that neither of you seem particularly concerned with vote fraud in Wisconsin, committed by your fellow New York Democrats.

"Republicans are so aggressive about removing ineligible voters from urban districts, it's because Democrats have a long and sordid history of vote fraud in those same districts. So if it's a Republican conspiracy, it's a conspiracy to prevent Democrats from breaking the law. This is referred to, by most people, as "law enforcement"."

So you're saying its ok for a state government to deny the right to vote to 60,000 people simply because they are black (because that IS what happened) on the ASSUMPTION that Democrats may somehow have a way of manipulating, coercing or somehow defrauding those people of their right to vote? This is a legal "law-enforcemnt" method?

This quote sadly says it best:

"Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."

-- George Bernard Shaw

Sterling, as I just said, it was a quoted assertion, from here (not an assertion of mine):

http://www.chicagomediawatch.org/01_4_gore.shtml

The argument is that the equal protection guaranteed under the 14th Amendment was violated when the recount was only partially completed, that some votes were counted and others were discounted. Both sides were arguing equal protection from different directions. Once triggered, the recount had to be completed or else it violated the equal protection clause in the amendment, as discussed here:

http://slate.msn.com/id/95203/

John - Again. You wrote this: "Gore never needed to "pursue and gain" a statewide recount: all he needed was for the US Supreme Court to allow the constitutionally required recount to proceed."

Please indicate and quote for me the article in the Florida or United States Constitution to which you refer, that specifies the procedures for the recounting of ballots.

Here's the link to Article VI of the Constitution of the State of Florida, which is titled "Suffrage and Elections": http://www.beachbrowser.com/Archives/News-and-Human-Interest/August-99/THE-FLORIDA-STATE-CONSTITUTION.htm#A06

And here's a link to a copy of the US Constitution: http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html

Feel free to take your time. Let me know when you're ready to provide backing for your assertions.

Sterling, I didn't write what you said I did. It came from one of the links I'd cited above, as I noted. Anyways, I'm not "making shit up". If you want to read about the equal protection argument, here you go:

http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777122240/

Some more minutiae in there for you, the voting histories of Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas when it comes to equal protection. There's a funny disparity you might notice...

John writes: "Gore never needed to "pursue and gain" a statewide recount: all he needed was for the US Supreme Court to allow the constitutionally required recount to proceed."

Which "constitutionally required" recount is that, John? There's no such thing. There was a legislative recount requirement, and it said SEVEN DAYS. When seven days were up, Harris sought to certify the election, AS REQUIRED BY LAW. Gore's lawsuits were aimed at disrupting that process. Don't make shit up.

SP wrote: "When questioned about the high percentage of African Americans on the scrub list, they responded, 'Well, you know how many black people commit crimes.'"

Is that what they said, SP? Why do I not believe that any elected or appointed Florida official said anything even remotely resembling that? As I said to John, don't make shit up.

Look, if you want to deal in minutiae, it's not all on your side. Florida spans two time zones - Eastern and Central - the Central part is in the panhandle, which is overwhelmingly conservative. As a result, voting districts in much of the Florida pandhandle open and close an hour LATER than in the main bulk of the Florida penninsula. Several of our nation's left-leaning TV news departments - CBS, CNN and ABC - called Florida for Gore before the panhandle polls had closed. It is believed that this depressed Bush turnout in the panhandle by as much as 12,000 votes. A lot of Republicans have trouble believing that was an accident.

And SP, if you're wondering why Republicans are so aggressive about removing ineligible voters from urban districts, it's because Democrats have a long and sordid history of vote fraud in those same districts. So if it's a Republican conspiracy, it's a conspiracy to prevent Democrats from breaking the law. This is referred to, by most people, as "law enforcement".

One example among many: New York Gore/Lieberman Campaign workers - PART OF THE OFFICIAL GORE/LIEBERMAN CAMPAIGN - traveled to battleground state Wisconsin to BRIBE HOMELESS PEOPLE to vote for Gore with cartons of cigarettes. Major New York Democrat fundraiser Connie Milstein (who personally donated about $402,000 to Democrat campaigns during the 2000 election cycle) actually admitted to a Milwaukee TV news reporter on camera that she was there to "get out the vote", after she'd unknowingly been captured on camera bribing homeless people. The Gore campaign won Wisconsin by less than 6000 votes out of about 2.5 million cast, yet Republicans didn't make a stink despite overwhelming VIDEO EVIDENCE of a Democrat vote fraud conspiracy. Here's the link:

http://html.themilwaukeechannel.com/sh/election2000/stories/election2000-20001105-143203.html

I thought Ashcroft's performance of his original song, "Let the Eagle Soar" was truly one of the film's highlights.

John:

1) An "undervote" - where one candidate's name may be marked in a fashion too subtle for a machine to read - is arguably an uncounted vote. But an "overvote" - someone marking more than one candidate's name or punching more than one box - is prima facie evidence that the voter did not understand the ballot. Now, you can place the blame on the (Democrat-controlled) Palm Beach County Board of Elections for that if you like, but if the voter didn't understand how to vote, then it is impossible to go back and accurately reconstruct what it is that he or she meant to do.

2) The Guardian story, as an example, says this: "In 1,367 cases, voters punched every hole except that for Mr Bush." And suggests that those 1,367 ballots were intended as votes for Gore. I'm not at all sure that's the case - those little punch ballot "chads" had X's printed on them - if you punched out all the chads on the ballot, then the only candidate with an X or dark circle next to his name would be Bush. Blacking out a box or marking an X on a ballot traditionally means "I am voting for this person." (See what I mean about interpreting the intentions of people who don't bother to read the instructions?)

3) Gore's campaign wisely stayed away from the overvote issue, recognizing that interpretation of such ballots is so arbitrary that it probably would have backfired.

As I said before, because the count of properly marked ballots was so close, all we have to fall back on are the rules. And under the rules, Bush won. Thanks for taking the time to do your research this time, John, fruitless though it was.

If you want the details of the Bush-Saudi quid-pro-quo relationship, please read Craig Unger's "House of Bush, House of Saud" (he's featured in F9/11). The book has all the footnotes that the film is lacking.

Sterling, you forget to mention the "overvotes"--ballots that were contained more than one vote. These overwhelmingly favored Gore (by many thousands), and were due in large part to the confusing lay-out of the ballot. Here's something for you:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/US_election_race/Story/0,2763,430306,00.html

http://slate.msn.com/id/2058603/

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?011224ta_talk_hertzberg

http://www.chicagomediawatch.org/01_4_gore.shtml

These are all from a few minutes on Google, and mention what you left out, which is that if ALL the votes had been counted, not just "undervotes", Gore would have been the winner. I'm not sure why you felt the need to add a personal note, but I'm flattered. I guess you Republicans ARE all as rude and vindictive as O'Reilly, Rush and Ann Coulter. I'm surprised you didn't tell me to go fuck myself, that seems to be a popular one all of a sudden...

Aren't I, though? And yet I do the best I can to share my wisdom with you poor benighted lefties.

you are so smart sterling.

Actually, John, the Washington Post front page story on its recount findings (November 12, 2001) had the headline: "Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush" although the subhead was "But Study Finds Gore Might Have Won Statewide Tally of All Uncounted Ballots". Now, the "uncounted" ballots in this story were the "undervotes" - i.e. ballots on which counting machines detected no vote, but on which human beings might be able to discern one. Obviously the idea of the "undervotes" was highly controversial because the counties in which "undervoting" was claimed were all - SURPRISE! - Democrat controlled with Democrat election boards. Those democrats would have performed an "interpretation" of these ballots that were never intended to be counted by people, and in a way not specified by the Florida legislature.

So, counting properly marked ballots, the Washington Post agreed that Bush won Florida.

You also err in describing the Washington Post and Tribune Company recounts as being separate, when in fact they were both part of a single consortium (along with six other news organizations) that recounted ballots, and in its report declared that Bush won. You may be thinking of the Miami Herald's separate recount effort, which also found, heh, that Bush won. Here's a report from that famous right-wing organ, the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1190222.stm

Let's be philosophical about this for a moment, shall we? The state of Florida cast about six million votes for president in 2000. The difference in the number of votes for Bush and Gore was less than the statistical margin of error for tallying such a large quantity. So the truth is that it is impossible to know which candidate received the greater number of votes. It is not knowable. But Florida has a system that requires a winner. So what we are left with, then, are the rules - the laws that govern elections. These are drafted ahead of time, and are crafted to deal with problems such as the one that befell us in Florida in 2000. We follow these rules because the alternative is bedlam and corruption.

The Florida election laws allowed one week for counties to recount their tallies and report the revised results. Democrats and Republicans alike voted for those laws. Under those rules, Bush would clearly be declared the winner - that was apparent within a day or two of election day. The Gore campaign - which understood the mathematical unknowability of the results - to its shame made a decision at some point that it would work to subvert those laws in the courts. The goal was probably not to win Florida so much as to prevent it from participating in the Electoral College, or causing it to send multiple slates of electors to the Electoral College, and cause a Constitutional crisis. And what happens during a Constitutional crisis is anybody's guess - the last one resulted in 600,000 dead Americans and four years of civil war.

Under the rules, Bush won. And that's what both the Washington Post and the Tribune Company found.

On a personal note, John - I do my best to provide a counterpoint to a vastly larger number of lefties here, and if you're going to challenge me on facts you ought to at least spend five minutes on Google making certain that you're correct. Otherwise don't waste my time, you fucking idiot.

My brother is against this war. the pathetic, sad truth is that the vast majority of our "volunteer" armed forces are guys who couldn't find any other way to pay for college or to make a living, take care of their family. Unless you have walked in their shoes, you can't judge their choices. My brother joined up in 1999. A democrat was president. Al Gore seemed like a shoe-in for president. Their policy choices weren't great, but their use of the military was nothing like Bush's has been. My brother believes Bush's war on Iraq is morally and strategically wrong. I don't know how he is going to deal with being sent over there. I know he's told me that he doesn't want to kill someother country's george washington, some other country's freedom fighter who is not a threat to us back home. You might say he should have thought of this before he signed up 5 years ago, but the world seemed alot different for all us Americans back then.

I guess it comes down to what "support" means. i take it to mean love, care and concern for someone's welfare. I understand it could mean something else entirely to you.

He has, actually, scroll up...

Funny to see that prick Sterling has not chimed in on this.

We actually ended Saddam's war against a majority of his and not-so-his people. Tyrants don't stay in power by being nice. Before our latest bout of liberation, I carefully read the accounts of exiled Iraqis. I vividly remember an interview the German Public Radio (DLF) broadcast. The tales, again and again, are terrible. Dictatorship usually is a horror without end.

Likewise, I took a weekend's time to burrow into the UN's documents on Saddam's protracted, well devised and utterly deceitful programs to acquire decidedly nasty weapons. Intent and criminal energy were there. Why trust imperfect oversight?



The question is why we didn't do the job right ten years ago. Many people were sacrificed to Saddam for this error. And yet, but for the current administration, that man would still wield absolute power over the lives of millions in the heart of the not quite enlightened Arab world.

Many commentaries I have read here impart a strong urge to vote Not-Kerry. I'll have to withstand that impulse.

Tim

I believe we agree on the major things. And don't get me wrong, I thought the film was excellent, but I thought it could have been a bit better, thus my comment.

Honey,

"i don't want him to kill anyone and i do not want him to be killed."

"my brother is an active duty marine. his unit was just told they will be going to Iraq in a few weeks"

Is a complete non-sequitur. I don't want to seem insensitive, but what exactly do you think war is, if not killing people? Although the situation is a BIT different now (as more of the forces are for peace keeping), war is all about killing and getting killed. Period. Look it up in the dictionary and you'll see 'armed conflict', etc. If I were in your shoes, I would do EVERYTHING in my power to stop him. If he still goes, he's an accessory.

Here's a hypothetical situation. What if the US Army decided they wanted to invade Canada and install a puppet government, would you still support your brother? What if the US Army decided they wanted to exterminate all the Jews? Still support your brother? Nuremberg proved that the 'just following orders' doesn't work anymore (not that many American soldiers will have to face anything like that), but the moral issues remain.

Our veterans who served in WWII, Korea, Desert Storm, are heroes in my eyes, because they fought a just war. I have the utmost respect for veterans who served and died in those wars. However, in my book, the war in Iraq is largely criminal.

"Sterling"...Sorry to tell you, but your Dear Leader is going down in November. Straight back to Crawford..the brush is a calling...

Actually Sterling, the two biggest independent recounts, by the Washington Post and The Tribune Company (which endorsed Bush) both found that Gore won.

The thing that moved me the most in the movie was the mother reading her son's last letter and the way he castigated Bush. That was heartbreaking.

What infuriated me the most was when the mother's loss of her son was trivialized by that cunt when she went to Washington D.C. If I could find who that cunt was....

Craig - No, OJ is guilty as sin.

SP - I cited facts. Everything between "Bush won Florida" in the second paragraph and "...Bush won." in the third paragraph is a fact. You, however, posted lies or irrelevant facts - for instance I doubt that the absence of Creole language voting aids in (Democrat controlled) Miami-Dade that you cite was the result of a Republican conspiracy.

Sterling, thats just the same old party propaganda youre spewing, and thats all you can do, because the facts are the facts. They stole it, with a little help from all their friends.

I really enjoyed the movie, but not for the typical reasons. The experience of seeing this film with so many people who normally aren't informed and don't read the paper was really moving for me. It felt like we were coming together as a community. I felt connected. I put a big post about it on my site, so you can check it out if you're interested.

doshin:

please stop with the lie that one cannot support the troops unless you support the war on Iraq. Um, my brother is an active duty marine. his unit was just told they will be going to Iraq in a few weeks. i love him, i care about him. i don't want him to kill anyone and i do not want him to be killed. I don't know how I will sleep at night if he goes there.

I want the us out of iraq. My mother, sister, most of our extended family and in-laws feel the same way. We are smart, thinking, working-class chicanos and whites with a LONG history of family service in the military in war zones-WWII, Vietnam, Korea, Desert Storm.

My coworker's 19 year-old son just got back from serving in Iraq. She loves and cares for her son. She has marched against the war on iraq and continues to be active in events calling for the US to get out of Iraq.

We support the troops we do not support Bush's war on Iraq. Our loved ones, who ARE the troops can understand that, even if people like you cannot get it.

Sterling: And OJ was innocent right?

SP - you're attributing actions of Democrat-controlled elections boards as evidence of how Bush "stole" the 2000 election? Haha. Please.

Bush won Florida. It was incredibly close, but the legislatively-defined counting procedures were all followed, and Bush won. The Florida Supreme Court - comprised entirely of Democrat appointees - attempted to rig the election for Gore, by keeping Florida mired in turmoil so that it could send no delegates to the Electoral College. The US Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the Florida court's action were unconstitutional, and by 5-4 held that the legislatively required midnight deadline was in force, ending the election.

Subsequent recounts by independent entities - press and otherwise - have all concluded that Bush won. Get over it, and get ready to chew your lip for another four years when he wins again in November.

Ahh, nothing like the hate-spewed liberals talking it up. Geez that hate worked so well for Dean. Keep up the good work...

We agree on the fundamental principle here, doshin... Bush lied to us. He shouldn't have started a war in Iraq. He shouldn't be our president anymore. I just think nothing is to be gained by blaming the general public for thinking their leader was genuinely looking out for their best interests.

Of course skepticism is good for America. I wish there was more of it. But the way to promote that is by educating the American public, not by pointing your finger at them and blaming them for not being inquisitive enough in the first place. We went through a terrible time as a country and the people in power took advantage of that situation by pushing their agenda onto a crowd that was looking for leadership. You may think the general public is more to blame for letting that happen, but I reserve more of the blame for the elected officials. They abused their power and started a war under false pretenses. And short of hopping in a time machine, there's nothing we can do about it except vote the bastards out in November.

And now that SP has spammed this thread with a 2,000 word essay, I guess this discussion is dead. (Seriously dude, people are trying to talk here. I'm glad you're doing your part, but there's a time and place.)

Well, other than that Mrs Lincoln, how was the rest of the play?

I have to agree with Chris and I question the knee jerk labeling of this movie as just "propaganda": there are many FACTS that cannot be ignored: the FACT that they lied about the intelligence concerning WMD, the FACT that the administration was planning an invasion of Iraq since Day 1 of the administration (actually many years before that), the subsequent FACT that they tried to link 9/11 to Iraq to justify the war, which had lost all of its justification after the attacks.

And to Nola, if you think that this movie has no educational value, realize that most Americans believed until very recently that Saddam and Osama collaborated on 9/11, and also believed that bio / chem weapons were used during the invasion. In fact, of all developed nations, the US is the most uneducated and therefore easily manipulated by those is control of the media. Who controls the media: large right wing corporations with buddies in the whitehouse, who get tax breaks in exchange for self censorship (Clear Channel, News Corps, Disney, Viacom)

This is why movies like this are important, because the public is both ignorant and illiterate, and fed a stream of lies by the media conglomerates that control information at both a national and local level. Lies like those propagated in the NY Post and Fox News.

We need to have a strong, loud and powerful voice in opposition. because there is no truth and can be no democracy without opposition. The right uses many disgustingly evil tactics to squash dissent, they label you anti-american when you have any critique of their policy when they are in power. Good for Michael Moore, more power to him.

"It's our fault Bush mislead us?"

It IS our fault we LET him misled us. Again, I don't mean all of 'us' as in people on Gothamist (or most in NYC for that matter), I am sure there were plenty here who were against the war, against the Administration from day one, like I was.

But...

It is our fault we elected him.

It is our fault the polls his approval rating was so high and that most Americans supported action in Iraq.

It is our fault we go to Iraq. It's our fault we told our brothers, sisters, friends that it's okay to go to Iraq. I'm sick of this be against the war, but support the troops bullshit. If you are against the war, guess what, you're against the troops, as they are implementing what you oppose.

Don't get me wrong, I blame Bush for misleading us, etc. But it requires support and troops to go to Iraq. The American public didn't have to give it to him. That's what I mean about personal responsibility.

I'm trying to think of a reason why conservatives would want to go see "White Chicks, " and I can't think of any. That had to be a joke :)

I haven't seen Fahrenheit yet, but definitely want to. Although not a fan of radicals on either side of the political spectrum, it's always interesting to hear their take on things.

If Michael Moore wasn't in the movie, I'd see it. He's so f-ing nasty!

I think the big question is whether or not the movie is released to cable before the election. I think most people who are paying to see the film are decided Kerry supporters, but when people who are undecided get to see the movie for free, i think it could effectively swing some voters.

I saw it this weekend and really enjoyed it. It was PURE PROPAGANDA but for the left, so in a good way. Let '"them" have their thousands of hours of talk radio propaganda, we'll be satisified with our two hour movie.

Well, Moore's next film project is to take a look at PM Blair's role in this Mess-O-Potamia. I'm now down in Illadelphia and went to see the 11.15 show at the Ritz East and it was packed. It started off as being a little rowdy with so many active Liberals out en masse, but quickly calmed down with the blacking out of the screen and the overpowering audio from the 9/11 attacks.

The essence of the movie itself is that Rich White Guys use fear to dupe Americans into having them support their money related interests [...] more blame should have been put on the American public for being duped (not me, of course) about Iraq.

It's our fault Bush mislead us? I wish the American public had been more skeptical about the war in Iraq, but I think people can only make a reasoned decision when they have all the evidence. For the past three years we've had the administration's take. Opposing viewpoints were shrugged off as crazy, or even worse, treasonous. Now we have this movie--a movie that's getting a lot of attention--that attempts to show the other side. It basically says, "We elected a president to do a certain job. He's doing that job poorly. Let's not get fooled again."

Michael Moore has done something amazing: he's made a two hour film damning the current administration--a subject that might be dry and boring in different hands--and made it funny, entertaining, thought-provoking, and the number one movie in the country. It highlights all of the questionable areas. It points out how badly things have been managed over there. If it takes a few shots of the president playing golf to bring the average moviegoer into the theaters, so be it.

The movie is far from perfect, but I think dismissing it as simple fat-cat bashing is wrong.

Err, that should say golf course.

"making an effort to learn what's going on over there and exercising your right to vote to show your support or disapproval."

Did we watch the same movie? While the motive of the movie is to get people to vote and show disapproval. The essence of the movie itself is that Rich White Guys use fear to dupe Americans into having them support their money related interests. Didn't it cross your mind that the title of the movie might be significant?

By personal responsibility, I mean that more blame should have been put on the American public for being duped (not me, of course) about Iraq. But of course, that's not popular, so let's just show Bush on a gold course (don't get me wrong, that was funny too).

I saw it on Saturday, and the lines were crazy. No Michael Moore in our theater, but there was raucous applause at the end. And even if there is a deliberate slant, most of the facts presented are documented elsewhere. I don't think Moore is the same as Rush, et al, who are lying to their listeners (the latest example being that Rush got on the airwaves and said that the 9/11 commission found evidence of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda, even though the report very clearly states the opposite). Maybe it's a fine line (perhaps not the whole truth vs. straight up lies), but I don't think that's a legit comparison. Just my two cents.

michael moore is a crappy filmmaker, biased, and a schmuck, but you can't argue with the dialogue he creates. I cringe to watch him, but he does return the volley that conservatives throw out with fox news, rush & the rest. Someone has to fight back - they are already pushing the country back to the right...

He doesn't say anything about personal responsibility.

I'm not sure what the average citizen's personal responsibility is regarding the war in Iraq, other than making an effort to learn what's going on over there and exercising your right to vote to show your support or disapproval. And that message is the essence of the movie. So I'm not sure I get your criticism.

Not sure what personal responsibility has to do with the administration's response to September 11 and the invasion of Iraq.

I think my friend said it best when he said that this movie is like 'that Christ movie for liberals'.

It's basically just the same thing as the spin that comes out of the Administration, except in the other direction. The problem is that some will take it for absolute truth (as some do with what the Administration says). It's not going to do a whole lot for critical thinking in America.

Generally, I thought the movie was very good. There is no debating the humor and the emotion that the film evokes. But, like with Moore's other films, putting all the blame on rich white Republican guys is simply too easy. He doesn't say anything about personal responsibility. Which is another thing sorely lacking in America these days.

(And just for the record, I'm not a rich white Republican guy.)

It seems to me that much of Moore's credibility was lost with his shameless "creative" editing for "Bowling for Columbine", in which he used composite footage of Heston from several speaches and presented them all as words spoken in Denver at the NRA convention. There were several more questionable editing/storytelling devices used. The real shame here is that there is a story to tell, and it's possible to tell it without going as over the top as Moore seems to go.

IMO, Moore is the left's answer to Rush, much as the Village Voice or Air America is the answer to Fox News.

I don't know why anyone would be upset about a lack of "objectivity" in a political documentary. Most of what Moore protrays in the film IS "objective" footage and fact. The only truly debatable aspect of the film is - what are the underlying motivations of Bush and the administration in taking these actions, and did they actually have the people's best interests at heart (or are they just protecting their own profits and their family connections).

Someone here mentioned that leaving out Britain from the coalition was sloppy and would allow Fox to rail against the film. First, it wasn't sloppy, the point of the segment was to demonstrate the fact that we have little true international support, a claim no one would dismiss as untrue. We are all aware that a few countries have donated a couple thousand troops to the effort, it doesn't affect the overall message though. Second, Fox and the NY Post are going to rail against the film no matter what.

In general, Moore does a great job of intertwining several plot lines and a whole lot of seemingly disparite information into a very cogent case questioning Bush's motivations in going into Iraq. Moore was smart to leave himself out of the film for the most part, instead showing "objective" footage shot by others about 90% of the time and only commenting over it. One of the best sequences may be Bush smirking and then putting on a "game face" right before his White House announcement of the Iraq invasion, you can see that he just thinks it's all a big joke.

Go see the film, it's a winner.

Of all the lame arguments in favor of this movie, Jen's "it will get people thinking..." is just about the lamest. First of all, anyone who cares about these issues has been thinking about them for a long time. Second, the use of hyperbole and lies (which Moore does in all of his movies, like him or not) do not promote serious thought or discussion. Finally, has this site ever promoted Rush Limbaugh because he will get you thinking? I doubt it. Defend this movie on its merits, if you can, but don't try and pass off shallow propaganda as some kind of educational experience.

I was able to see it on 6/23/04. I bought tickets at 3pm for a 10;05 pm show. All the others were sold out. Needless to say the theater was packed. The audience hissed at Condoleeza and cheered when they showed footage of the Bush's motorcade being pelted with eggs during his inauguration.

The most affecting scene was how they portrayed the terrorist attacks on 9/11. I blogged about it too...

btw, I tried to track back to this post but it didn't work right, am I doing something wrong?

No standing O or visiting auteurs at my screening. But it was incredibly affecting, and made me feel generally betrayed and helpless. I blogged about it, of course, just like everyone else did...

You know, like him or his message or not, i know a bunch of people who work at the local theater, and they said this is the only movie in a looonnnngg time that they remember the crowd really applauding and cheering at when it was over...

Yeah, why didn't he mention Britain? C'mon Mike, don't be so sloppy! But the scenes in Iraq, the mother who lost her son--I was bawling. It was so moving to sit in a packed theater with so many excited and involved people...the crowds were crazy waiting to see it. Everyone cheered a lot and there were some amazingly funny bits in there. I will have to see it again.

As far as Republican criticism; they can pick it apart all they want, there's no denying the way our soldiers have been mistreated and casually put in harm's way. If there were no other reason to depose this President, that would be enough. Those poor kids, and their families.

i saw it saturday night with my husband and my parents. it was not sold-out, but it was pretty damn close. although i knew what i was going to be watching on the screen (i've read his books & closely follow independent media sources for my news...ala whatreallyhappened.com), i was still so shocked and was rendered speechless. it was crazy!! i didn't know the story about bush's natl guard buddy. and the iraqi woman that was outside her uncle's demolished house, crying and screaming to god...that just did it for me right there. i lost it.

at any rate; the film did receive the obligatory standing ovation & thunderous applause at the end with tons of cackling & cheering & laughing during the film. great great film. i do recommend everyone to see it.

SD: I know what you mean about the scene in the Senate -- I actually remembered watching that, back in 2001 (I still had hopes that Gore might get the presidency, deus ex machina style), and it was so disheartening to watch Congressperson after Congressperson futilely protest.

I did see it this weekend. I thought it was moving (especially the parts about the mother from Flint) but not as mind-boggling as the commercials made it out to be. I'm not convinced that the Bushes are necessarily in the Saudi's pocket - there is the possibility that they actually follow thier ethical obligation to keep that part of their lives seperate. As for the rest of it, if you read the news you already know all the crap that's going down in and around Iraq. I do wish Michael Moore would be a little teansy bit more objective - it is so easy for Fox News to rail against him when he lists the members of the coalition of the willing and doesn't include Britain. He never lies but he certainly doesn't provide all the info.

Also, the scene in the senate really really got to me. I never saw it before. I almost forgot how awful that election was.

man, things are certainly looking bad for bush. even if 99% of the people that see the movie are decided kerry supporters, 1% of the movie audience in swing states could seriously impact an election.