Thank you Bush

[Straybow]

Note: He wasn't "crowned," he was elected by people who trusted him and now feel betrayed. Also Obama did not defeat him directly in an election so the Reagan and Eisenhower comparisons are inapt.

Ignoring the fact that his vote total went up after 4 years, unlike Eisenhower.

And ignoring that every recount commissioned by the media afterwards to "set the record straight" failed to generate a majority for Gore (except one that recounted only two or three heavily Dem counties).

[Jon Miller]

the problem isn't what he believes about religion and god. It's about what he believes about other people, along with his blatant lies, bigotry, and his inability to comprehend anything outside his own myopic view of the world.

jm

[Straybow]

[Q=duke o' york]I'd suggest FDR had a potentially worse situation, especially when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour, which is the closest that the US has come to an invasion since the War of Independence. I'd also suggest that he did better than Bush has done.[/Q] So FDR did better by herding the West Coast Japanese into concentration camps? GWB should have expanded Gitmo and rendition programs to include US terrorist suspects culled by racial and religious profiling?

(And in the War of 1812 Washington, DC was not sacked, Detroit was not captured, the Lake Champlain forts never fell into British hands, and the Brits never assaulted New Orleans?)

[Naked Gents Rut]

Thank you George W. Bush for your 8 years of faithful service to the greatest nation on earth. I know I'm not an American, but I am going to miss you when you are gone.

[fed1943]

Does the faithful service include the secret weapons of Irak?

Best regards,

[chequita guevara]

And ignoring that every recount commissioned by the media afterwards to "set the record straight" failed to generate a majority for Gore (except one that recounted only two or three heavily Dem counties).

Actually, you have that backwards. Every recount that included the whole state had a Gore victory. The recount that Gore's team wanted, of the four heavily Democratic counties, produced a Bush victory. When over votes were counted, i.e., someone marked Gore and then also wrote his name in on the write-in line, the victory was quite extensive. Had SCOTUS not stuck its nose in, Gore would have ended up winning the GOP controlled state, in spite of the manipulations of Kate Harris.

[DinoDoc]

Actually, you have that backwards. Every recount that included the whole state had a Gore victory. The recount that Gore's team wanted, of the four heavily Democratic counties, produced a Bush victory. When over votes were counted, i.e., someone marked Gore and then also wrote his name in on the write-in line, the victory was quite extensive. Had SCOTUS not stuck its nose in, Gore would have ended up winning the GOP controlled state, in spite of the manipulations of Kate Harris.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2001-05-10-recountmain.htm

PS Gore didn't want a state wide recount.

PPS Is it Bush's fault Florida voters are stupid?

[SlowwHand]

Just make up facts. Why not? No way of knowing if a change in outcome would have occurred. Don't blame dumbass voters. Blame Bush.

[Ming]

Actually, you have that backwards. Every recount that included the whole state had a Gore victory. The recount that Gore's team wanted, of the four heavily Democratic counties, produced a Bush victory. When over votes were counted, i.e., someone marked Gore and then also wrote his name in on the write-in line, the victory was quite extensive. Had SCOTUS not stuck its nose in, Gore would have ended up winning the GOP controlled state, in spite of the manipulations of Kate Harris.

You seem so certain... In almost everything I read, it still could have gone either way, and most of the experts agree. One of the better pieces from FackCheck.org

Q: When the votes were recounted in Florida, who won the 2000 presidential election?


A: Nobody can say for sure who might have won. A full, official recount of all votes statewide could have gone either way, but one was never conducted.
According to a massive months-long study commissioned by eight news organizations in 2001, George W. Bush probably still would have won even if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a limited statewide recount to go forward as ordered by Florida's highest court.

Bush also probably would have won had the state conducted the limited recount of only four heavily Democratic counties that Al Gore asked for, the study found.

On the other hand, the study also found that Gore probably would have won, by a range of 42 to 171 votes out of 6 million cast, had there been a broad recount of all disputed ballots statewide. However, Gore never asked for such a recount. The Florida Supreme Court ordered only a recount of so-called "undervotes," about 62,000 ballots where voting machines didn't detect any vote for a presidential candidate.

None of these findings are certain. County officials were unable to deliver as many as 2,200 problem ballots to the investigators that news organizations hired to conduct the recount. There were also small but measurable differences in the way that the "neutral" investigators counted certain types of ballots, an indication that different counters might have come up with slightly different numbers. So it is possible that either candidate might have emerged the winner of an official recount, and nobody can say with exact certainty what the "true" Florida vote really was.

The study cost nearly $1 million and was the most thorough and comprehensive news-media review of the Florida balloting. It was sponsored by the Associated Press, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, St. Petersburg Times, Palm Beach Post, Washington Post and the Tribune Co., which owns papers including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel and Baltimore Sun. The news organizations hired the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago to look at each untallied ballot. Trained investigators examined 175,010 ballots provided by local election officials. The media consortium then analyzed the raw data produced by NORC and drew conclusions. The result, released Nov. 11, 2001, was something of a muddle.

The Associated Press reported the findings this way:

AP: A vote-by-vote review of untallied ballots in the 2000 Florida presidential election indicates George W. Bush would have narrowly prevailed in the partial recounts sought by Al Gore, but Gore might have reversed the outcome – by the barest of margins – had he pursued and gained a complete statewide recount.

The Palm Beach Post put it more dramatically:

Palm Beach Post: Al Gore was doomed.

He couldn't have caught George W. Bush even if his two best chances for an official recount had played out.

Similar Conclusions, Uncertain Results


An earlier study by a different media consortium reached similar conclusions. That study was conducted by a group that included the Miami Herald, USA Today and Knight Ridder newspapers. As USA Today said of the findings on May 11, 2001:

USA Today: George W. Bush would have won a hand recount of all disputed ballots in Florida's presidential election if the most widely accepted standard for judging votes had been applied.

The newspaper said that Gore might have won narrowly if lenient standards were used that counted every mark on a ballot. "But," it said, "Gore could not have won without a hand count of overvote ballots, something that he did not request."

Although their conclusions were similar, the Miami Herald study and the later and larger study came up with different numbers, evidence of the uncertainties involved. An official recount might well have come up with yet a third set of numbers. The uncertain nature of the later study's findings, which could well apply to both, was aptly and poetically expressed by Palm Beach Post columnist Frank Cerabino:
Cerabino: Like sorting grains of sand on a windy day, getting a definitive recount of Florida's votes in last year's presidential election has turned out to be an exercise in frustration.

In a statewide election decided by hundreds, maybe only dozens, of votes, the limitations of the voting machinery – compounded with sometimes sloppy custody of the ballots and the slight but measurable biases of allegedly neutral human tabulators – make getting precise vote totals virtually impossible.

-Brooks Jackson

Looking at the facts, it is IMPOSSIBLE to say who actually won the state.

[GePap]

Just make up facts. Why not? No way of knowing if a change in outcome would have occurred. Don't blame dumbass voters. Blame Bush.

Well, dumbass voters did put Bush in power, twice! So you are right, we should blame dumbass voters

[Naked Gents Rut]

And now dumbass voters have put Obama in power. Will the American people ever learn? One would hope they'll eventually vote for a leader and not some inexperienced former cocaine abuser with a good political staff...

[Darius871]

Looking at the facts, it is IMPOSSIBLE to say who actually won the state.

No it's not impossible; it's just dependent on your definition of what "actually won" means. Your own sources are unanimous that overvotes would have pushed Gore over the top, which is what Che said. Granted the "had the SCOTUS not stuck its nose in" part is not supported by the evidence since neither Gore's position nor the Florida Supreme Court's decision included overvotes, but if you personally consider manifestation of intent the definition of "actually won," then it's possible to say definitively that Gore won.

[Ramo]

How so? Since condoms have been in use, more pregnancies are unwanted then ever before. Do you sincerely believe that before say 1940, that there were as many unwanted pregnancies as they are now.

Christ, dude. Through what conceivable metric could you possibly say that "unwanted pregnancies" are up from several decades ago? Do you honestly believe that we lived in some cliched '50's sitcom, crashed only by the liberalization of sex?

Hint: look at how the live birth rate divided by one minus the miscarriage rate changed over this period.

[Ming]

No it's not impossible; it's just dependent on your definition of what "actually won" means. Your own sources are unanimous that overvotes would have pushed Gore over the top, which is what Che said. Granted the "had the SCOTUS not stuck its nose in" part is not supported by the evidence since neither Gore's position nor the Florida Supreme Court's decision included overvotes, but if you personally consider manifestation of intent the definition of "actually won," then it's possible to say definitively that Gore won.

Definitively????

In a statewide election decided by hundreds, maybe only dozens, of votes, the limitations of the voting machinery – compounded with sometimes sloppy custody of the ballots and the slight but measurable biases of allegedly neutral human tabulators – make getting precise vote totals virtually impossible.

Yes, those experts agree... and say that Gore MIGHT have won...

Again... NO ONE can say for sure who actually won Florida based on actual votes. Two different tallies came up with different results. So for somebody to say "THEY KNOW FOR SURE" is just BS.
NOBODY knows for sure, and they never will.

[Ben Kenobi]

Christ, dude. Through what conceivable metric could you possibly say that "unwanted pregnancies" are up from several decades ago?

I didn't say 'several decades', I said 40 years.

Do you honestly believe that we lived in some cliched '50's sitcom, crashed only by the liberalization of sex?

Yes, I honestly believe there were fewer 'unwanted children', because more people wanted children. It's just that simple.

Hint: look at how the live birth rate divided by one minus the miscarriage rate changed over this period.

Doesn't tell us a thing about /wanted /unwanted.