Political Change

[Busdrvr]

[blockquote]
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On 11/7/2002 111 PM JI Guy wrote:

As for the 1% group, gee, my heart goes out to their like with such a burden...never has stopped them from buying these $20,000 ice sculptures for their little parties or $6000 shower doors...

Which is morally inferior to paying $50 to go see the latest pro rasslin match? Or the thousands spent converting the truck to a 52 inch lift so that you can look cool driving around town? Guess we should tax poor stupid people more since they are obviously wasting money...

The greed of these folks is astounding and I have no qualms whatsoever about gearing any cuts toward the middle class...the ones who need the most HELP - thats what its about...With your vantage point, Sean, why dont we just do a straight percentage for the income tax...Or, better yet, eliminate it completely and rely on a sales tax..Yeah, that'll work..



Since you're big on the typical democratic tax the rich' BS, I'll give you a few facts. In 1979 the marginal tax rate (Carter-Mondale) was 70% for income above 200k. Reagan came in and promptly lowered that rate to 28%. Given that Reagan reduced the taxes on the rich, who paid a higher percentage of taxes in 1989? The top 5%, 10%, 25%, and even 50% paid a higher percentage of the feds income tax in 1989 than in 1979, and the bottom 50% paid more in 1979 (underthe friend of the poor Carter) than in 1989.
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[ITRADE]

[P]
[BLOCKQUOTE][BR]----------------[BR]On 11/7/2002 8:23:05 PM MrMarky wrote:
[P][BR]----------------[/P][/BLOCKQUOTE]
[P]That was a very feeble attempt at cutting and pasting. The simple fact of the matter is that your conjecture was unsupported by the facts and your attempt of spinning the facts to support your conjecture failed miserably. [BR][BR]Do yourself a failure and try not to pour additional egg on your face.[/P]

 

[JI Guy]

Sean, any chads that became dislodged were already on their way out...Where do you get your three recounts? Please explain...

 

[Sean]

[BR][BR]
[BLOCKQUOTE][BR]----------------[BR]On 11/8/2002 11:33:50 AM JI Guy wrote: [BR][BR]Sean, any chads that became dislodged were already on their way out...Where do you get your three recounts? Please explain...----------------[/BLOCKQUOTE][FONT size=2][BR][BR]JI guy,[BR][BR]I did not mention chads or re-counts in any of my posts. I think that may have been someone else and I can’t speak for them. You may want to re-read. Those chads are not very difficult to dislodge. Especially with all the handling of them during those re-counts. [BR][BR]As to the re-counts, I can not remember positively that there were three. It does seem to be that way. I do remember there was a mandatory machine re-count and then a hand re-count after that. Bush won both of those. [BR][BR]I am not a lawyer so I can not quote Florida law for you. I believe that the ruling of the US Supreme Court was that the lower court did not have the authority to order the Sec. of State to do anything beyond what she had already done. It was her job to oversee the balloting, voting, counting, mandatory re-counting, and then to certify the results. That’s what she did. The Gore team wanted continuous re-counts until they got the result they wanted and the Florida Supreme Court went along with that overstepping their authority. It is kind of sad that people have held on to this for so long. I think there was vote fraud in St. Louis that cost Talent the Governer's office and Ashcroft to not be re-elected. But I'm over it. You have to move on at some point. [/FONT]

 

[ITRADE]

See, that's just the thing. Many Dems can't get over it for some reason. They went so far as to make it their #1 goal to dislodge Jeb Bush from the governor's mansion in Tallahassee. [BR][BR]And, we all know how successful that effort was.

 

[JI Guy]

Ok, KC Flyer and your issue is with that photo? If the law says a recount should take into account the intent of the voter on questionable ballots, so is this not a way to determine such in a recount?...The guy is looking to see how many corners of the chad are detached in an EFFORT to determine the INTENT OF THE VOTER....KC, how else would you suggest that criteria be addressed?

 

[JI Guy]

Sorry, Sean, my previous post you were confused about was directed toward the ITRADE...By the way, your boy Talent is now US Senator elect from Missouri..so sometimes things have a way of working out! Congratulations from a Democrat on that (but one that usually splits ballots 50-50)...Example 2000, voted for Gore in NJ, but voted for GOP Senate candidate Franks over Corzine and voted for the local GOP Congressman, James Saxton...

 

[JI Guy]

I believe in the consortium recount that Bush actually picked up more of the hanging chad vote, believe it or not....but Gore picked up more on the optical scan votes..where a vote was say Xed rather than filled in...or where the vote marked Gore or Bush and wrote in VP Lieberman or VP Cheney in the other line underneath presidential voting..The optical scan will invalidate that as it detects a second vote for a presidential race...And KC, if the chad had two or three corners detached, why should that vote be discarded. In one of the most Perry Mason moments in recent TV trial history, a Bush expert witness was giving testimony about how previous voter chad wouldnt clog a machine and prevent someone from fully disengaging the chad, when a young attorney for the Democrats raced in and gave her investigative handiwork to the lead Democratic attorney to begin questioning the expert. The information she found on the internet? An application for a patent from this very same expert witness on a chad clearing mechanism because (quoting from the patent application) chads have a tendency to build up and prevent the stylis (the pricker) from effectively completely detaching the chad in various instances OUCH! So, this widely hooted scenario of using magnifying glasses and deriding idiot voters who didnt detach a chad 100% was really a attempt by the Republicans in ridiculing the process where they felt the election was being stolen...There were NEVER three recounts...The counts Baker was referring to (done once in most counties but twice or three times for surety in others) was the separation of the regular ballots from the overvote or undervote ballots thru the counting machine...The overvote and undervote ballots were the ones subject to the lawsuit but except in Broward the actual hand tally of these overvote/undervote was never completed due to the US Supreme Court halting the counting...Baker wanted to project the image of these ballots going thru the machine and being counted..What was counted was the undisputed ballots..Bakers claims that everything was counted wasnt the case and not knowing what the actual circumstances were led people to parrot what they heard on TV. Like I said back in 2000, I would be completely accepting IF the recount was completed by a uniform standard in every county of both over & undervotes and Bush won...I never had issue with the mistake votes in Palm Beach, tragic composition of the ballot but no way to rectify...and the 20,000 votes lost in Duval County for Gore when the NAACP put out erroneous instructions to black voters to make sure to vote EVERY page, not realizing there were TWO pages of presidential candidates, so the 20,000 votes were lost..Im pissed that the instructions were incorrect, but those votes shouldnt and cannot be reclaimed...But, in all, it is my contention that more people went to the Florida polls that day intending to voter Gore...However, I will not stand for a short circuiting of a legitimate recount effort done under Florida law and adhering to Florida legal standards, putting aside my equal protection issues which could have been addressed by a remand to Florida Supreme Court by the US Supreme with a mandate to address that 14th Amendment criteria.

 

[KCFlyer]

[P]
[BLOCKQUOTE][BR]----------------[BR]On 11/11/2002 11:38:27 AM JI Guy wrote:
[P]Ok, KC Flyer and your issue is with that photo? If the law says a recount should take into account the intent of the voter on questionable ballots, so is this not a way to determine such in a recount?...The guy is looking to see how many corners of the chad are detached in an EFFORT to determine the INTENT OF THE VOTER....KC, how else would you suggest that criteria be addressed? [/P]----------------[/BLOCKQUOTE]
[P]I would suppose the intent of the voter was none of the above if they aren't able to punch a card with enough force to dislodge a chad enough to be seen with the naked eye. If it takes a magnifying glass and squinting to determine voter intent, then my best option would be to discard the ballot. Fair? no... maybe not. But I don't think that they were looking for the intent as hard on the Bush chads as they were on the Gore chads. And lest you think that I am a right wing gun toting militia nut, I actually voted for Gore. But in my state, any vote for a democrat is usually considered a protest vote - which, in fact, it was. [/P]

 

[KCFlyer]

Interesting thing about Talent....the Carnahan campaign was one of the most mud slinginest fests to hit town in years. All of her ads were Talent this and Talent that. The word Carnahan was only displayed in the very fine print on the bottom of the screen. Anyone with the sound turned down only saw the word Talent and they didn't know if they were fer him or agin' him. Just saw his name...never hers. For those viewers who make their decisions based on the name they see the most, Carnahan did more to get Talent elected than Talent's own election committee. None of her advertisements ever said anything about what she stood for or what she would do. [BR][BR]Thank heavens I live in Kansas, a land where any vote for a democrat is considered a protest vote. Oddly enough, we elected a democrat to the Governor job and a Congressional slot. I believe flags were flown at half mast.

 

[JI Guy]

Boy, Kathleen Sebelius must have garnered a ton of protest votes! A woman Democrat governor in Kansas! Oh my Toto I dont think were in Kansas anymore...But then again KC I cant see you going for Shallenburger!

 

[KCFlyer]

[P]
[BLOCKQUOTE][BR]----------------[BR]On 11/13/2002 10:06:20 AM JI Guy wrote:
[P]Boy, Kathleen Sebelius must have garnered a ton of protest votes! A woman Democrat governor in Kansas! Oh my Toto I dont think were in Kansas anymore...But then again KC I cant see you going for Shallenburger![/P]----------------[/BLOCKQUOTE]
[P][/P]Indeed she did. As I told my buddy, NHBB, I feel like I should be called a Republicrat...I base my vote on the issue and who I feel will do the better job. Usually it's the Republican candidate. In this case, it was the democrats. But there are a lot of Kansans who would vote for Bin Laden if he were running on the GOP ticket.

 

[JI Guy]

Dean Barkley remains Independent..control will not shift until Talent is sworn in later this month from Missouri...What really would have been interesting is if the control shifted for a month to see what would have been rushed thru in the interim before going back to a 51-49 circumstance in favor of Democrats

 

[JI Guy]

Poor NHBB..he lost a woman governor, Jeanne Shaheen (interestingly, she started her political career as a NH volunteer in one Jimmy Carter's presidential run in 1976! Hey Chris Matthews do you happen to need a partner?) who was term limited and lost in a close Senate race to John Sununu (son of Bush I's chief of staff) and also got a new GOP governor, Craig Benson...Sununu even won the City of Manchester...NHBB, the only way I could see that happening is if he represented that area as a Congressman before this run for Senate...True?? BOB GRAHAM PRESIDENT 2004!!

 

[xsqueezeme]

correction: Bush did not go to an Ivy League school. Contrary to popular belief that Dubya went to Yale, known for his play on the English language, he was misquoted by the media when he said he attended Yale. Actual words were I graduated from Y'all University....

As for the eternal question, Who's dumber Republicans or Democrats?
Democrats know that the rich won't vote for them, except for confused movie stars. Republicans know the poor won't vote for them, except for one guy in Cleveland who hasn't figured it out yet.
So both parties work the Middle.
The Republicans try to convince the MIDDLE that unless they have Republicans in office, the Democrats will turn them into poor people; while the Democrats try to convince the MIDDLE that no one will turn them into rich people, ever.
Therefore, the only intelligent politicians--Democrat or Republican--are the ones who lose the election. Once they're out of office, they'll leave you alone, and that's about as intelligent a result as we can ask for.