Lindaland
  Global Unity
  So the election is tommorrow...

Post New Topic  Post A Reply
profile | register | preferences | faq | search

UBBFriend: Email This Page to Someone! next newest topic | next oldest topic
Author Topic:   So the election is tommorrow...
QueenofSheeba
unregistered
posted November 01, 2004 06:24 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
...and I must ask everyone to please vote for John Kerry. Some of you may vote for Bush; I will quote the case against him below. Some of you may want to vote for Nader or another third party candidate. Unfortunately, throwing away votes is a luxury we should not have right now.

Why Bush Should Not Be Reelected:
"On Tuesday, November 7, 2000, more than five million Americans went to the polls and, by a small but undisputable plurality, voted to make Al Gore the president of the United States. Because of the way the votes were distributed, however, the outcome in the electoral college turned on the vote in Florida. In that state, George W. Bush held a lead of some five hundred votes, one one-thousand of Gore's national margin; irregularities, and there were many, had the effect of taking votes away from Gore; and the state's electoral machinery was in the hands of Bush's brother, who was the governor, and one of Bush's state campaign co-chairs, who was the Florida secretary of state. Bush sued to stop any recounting of the votes, and, on Tuesday, December 12th, the United States Supreme Court gave him what he wanted. Bush vs. Gore was so shoddily reasoned and transparently partisan that the five justices who endorsed the decision declined to put their names on it, while the four dissenters did not bother to conceal their disgust. By ignoring them- cutting off the process and installing Bush by fiat- the Court made a mockery not only of popular democracy but also of constitutional republicanism.

"In January, 2001, just after Bush's inauguration, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office published its budget outlook for the coming decade. It showed a cumulative surplus of more than five trillion dollars. At the time, there was a lot of talk about what to do with the anticipated bounty, a discussion that now seems antique. Last year's federal deficit was three hundred and seventy-five billion dollars; this years will top four billion. According to the C.B.O., which came out with its latest projection in September, the period from 2005 to 2014 will see a cumulative shortfall of $2.3 trillion. Even this seven-trillion-dollar turnaround underestimates the looming fiscal disaster. In doing its calculations, the C.B.O. assumed that most of the Bush tax cuts would expire in 2011, as specified in the legislation that enacted them. However, nobody in Washington expects them to go away on schedule; they were designed as temporary only to make their ultimate results look less scary. If Congress extends the expiration deadlines- a near-certainty if Bush wins and the Republicans retain control of Congress- then, according to the C.B.O., the cumulative deficit between 2005 and 2014 will nearly double, to $4.5 trillion.

"'Most of the tax cuts went to middle- and lower-class Americans,' Bush said during his final debate with John Kerry. This is false- a lie, actually- though it at least suggests some dim awareness that the reverse Robin Hood approach to tax cuts is politically and morally repugnant. Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington research group whose findings have proved highly dependable, notes that, this year, a typical person in the lowest fifth of the income distribution will get a tax cut of ninety-one dollars, a typical person in the middle fifth will pocket eight hundred and sixty-three dollars, and a typical person in the top one percent will collect a windfall of fifty-nine thousand two hundred and ninety-two dollars. This Administration's most unshakable commitment has been to shifting the burden of taxation away from the sort of income that rewards wealth and onto the sort that rewards work. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, another Washington research group, estimates that the average federal tax rate on income generated by dividends and capital gains is now about ten percent. On wages and salaries it's about twenty-three percent... this is widening the gap between the richest and the rest.

"Bush signalled his approach to the environment a few weeks into his term, when he reneged on a campaign pledge to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions, the primary cause of global warming. His record since then has been dictated, sometimes literally, by the industries affected. In 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed rescinding a key provision of the Clean Air Act, known as a "new source review", which requires power-plant operators to install modern pollution controls when upgrading older facilities. The change, it turned out, had been recommended by some of the nation's largest polluters, in e-mails to the Energy Task Force, which was chaired by Vice-President Dick Cheney. More recently, the Administration proposed new rules that would significantly weaken controls on mercury emissions from power plants. The E.P.A.'s regulation drafters had copied, in some instances verbatim, memos sent to it by a law firm representing the utility industry.

"The most important Presidential responsibility of the next four years, as of the past three, is the "war on terror"- more precisely, the struggle against a brand of Islamic fundamentalist totalitarianism that uses particularly ruthless forms of terrorism as it main weapon. Bush's immediate reaction to the events of September 11, 2001, was an almost palpable bewilderment and anxiety. Within a few days, to the relief of his fellow-citizens, he seemed to find his focus. His decision to use American military power to topple the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, who had turned their country into the principal base operations for the perpetrators of the attacks, earned the near-unanimous support of the American people and of America's allies. Troops from Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Norway, and Spain are still serving alongside Americans in Afghanistan to this day. The determination of Afghans to vote in last month's presidential election, for which the votes are still being counted, is clearly a positive sign. Yet the job in Afghanistan has been left undone, despite fervent promises at the outset that the chaos that was allowed to develop after the defeat of the Soviet occupation in the nineteen-eighties would not be repeated. The Taliban has regrouped in the eastern and southern regions. Bin Laden's organizatin continues to enjoy sanctuary and support from Afghans as well as Pakistanis on both sides of their common border. Warlords control much of Afghanistan outside the capital of Kabul, which is the extent of the territorial writ of the decent but beleaguered President Hamid Karzai. Opium production has increased fortyfold.

"The White House's real priorities had been elsewhere from the start. The bottom line, as Bushs' former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said, was that the Bush-Cheney team had been planning to carry out regime change in Baghdad well before September 11th- one way or another, come what may. As a variety of memos and journals have made plain, Bush seldom entertains contrary opinion. He boasts that he listens to no outside advisors, and inside advisors who dare express unwelcome views are met with anger or disdain. He lives and works within a self-created bubble of faith-based affirmation. Nowhere has his so-called lipsism been more damaging than in the case of Iraq. The arguments and warnings of analysts in the State Department, in the Central Intelligence Agency, in the uniformed military service, and in the chanceries of sympathetic foreign governments had no more effect than the chants of millions of marchers.

"The decision to invade and occupy Iraq was made on the basis of four assumptions: first, that Saddam's regime was on the verge of acquiring nuclear explosives and had already amassed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons; second, that the regime had meaningful links with Al Qaeda and (as was repeatedly suggested by the Vice-President and others) might have had something to do with 9/11; third, that within Iraq the regime's fall would be followed by prolonged celebrations and rapid and peaceful democratization; and, fourth, that a similar democratic transformation would be precipitated elsewhere in the region, accompanied by a new eagerness among Arab governments and publics to make peace between Israel and a presumptive Palestinian state. The first two of these assumptions have been shown to be entirely baseless. As for the second two, if the wishes behind them come true, it may not be clear that the invasion of Iraq was a help rather than a hindrance.

"The United States has become mired in a low-intensity guerilla war that has taken more lives since the mission was declared accomplished than before. American military deaths have mounted to more than a thousand, a number that underplays the real level of suffering: among eight thousand wounded are many who have been left seriously maimed. The toll of Iraqi dead and wounded is of an order of magnitude greater than the American. Al Qaeda, previously an insignificant presence in Iraq, is an important one now. Before this war, we had persuaded ourselves that our military was effectively infinite. Now it is overstretched, a reality obvious to all. And, if the exposure of American weakness encourages our enemies, surely the blame lies with those who created the reality, not with those who, like Senator Kerry, acknowledged it as a necessary step toward changing it.

Why John Kerry Should Be Elected Instead:
"In every crucial area of concern to Americans (the economy, health care, the environment, Social Security, the judiciary, national security, foreign policy, the war in Iraq, the fight against terrorism), Kerry offers a clear, corrective alternative to Bush's curious blend of smugness, radicalism, and demagoguery. Pollsters like to ask voters which candidate they'd most like to have a beer with, and on that metric Bush always wins. We prefer to ask which candidate is better suited to the governance of our nation.

"Throughout his long career in public office, Kerry has demonstrated steadiness and sturdiness of character. The physical courage he showed in combat in Vietnam was matched by moral courage when he raised his voice against the war, a choice that carried political costs from his first run for Congress, lost in 1972 to a campaign of character assassination from a local newspaper that could not forgive his antiwar stand, right through this year's Swift Boat ads. As a Senator, Kerry helped expose the mischief of the Bank of Commerce and Credit International, a money-laundering operation that favored terrorists and criminal cartels; when his investigations forced him to confront corruption among fellow-Democrats, he rejected the cronyism of colleagues and brought down the power brokers of his own party with the same dedication that she showed in going after Oliver North in the Iran-Contra scandal. His leadership, with John McCain, of of the bipartisan effort to put to rest the toxic debate over Vietnam-era P.O.W.s and M.I.A.s and to lay the diplomatic groundwork for Washington's normalization of relations with Hanoi, in the mid-nineties, was the signal accomplishment of his twenty years on Capitol Hill. Kerry has made mistakes, but- in contrast to the President, who touts his imperviousness to changing realities as a virtue- he has learned from them.

"Kerry's performance on the stump has been uneven, and his public groping for a firm explanation of his position on Iraq was discouraging to behold. He can be cautious to a fault, overeager to acknowledge every angle of an issue; and his reluctance to expose the Administration's appalling record bluntly and relentlessly until very late in the race was a missed opportunity. But when his foes sought to destroy him rather than debate him they found no scandals and no evidence of bad faith in his past. In the face on infuriating and scurrilous calumnies, he kept the sort of cool that the thin-skinned and painfull insecure imcumbent cannot even feign during the unprogrammed give-and-take of an electoral debate. Kerry's mettle has been tested under fire- the fire of real bullets and the political fire that will surely not abate, but, rather, intensify if he is elected- and he has shown himself to be tough, resilient, and possessed of a properly Presidential does of dignified authority. While Bush has pandered relentlessly to the narrowest urges of his base, Kerry has sought to appeal broadly to the American center. In a time of primitive partisanship, he has exhibited a fundamentally undogmatic temperament. In campaigning for America's mainstream restoration, Kerry has insisted that the election ought to be decided on the urgent issues of our moment, the issues that will define American life for the coming half-century. That insistence is a measure of his character. We hope for his victory."
-the editors of The New Yorker

So please, please vote for John Kerry. Thank you.
-Sheeba

------------------
Hello everybody! I used to be QueenofSheeba and then I was Apollo and now I am QueenofSheeba again (and I'm a guy in case you didn't know)!

IP: Logged

LibraSparkle
unregistered
posted November 01, 2004 06:31 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
***tosses QoS a flame-retardant blanket***

IP: Logged

Everlong
unregistered
posted November 01, 2004 07:46 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote

------------------
"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination." - John Lennon

IP: Logged

26taurus
unregistered
posted November 01, 2004 08:13 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I know a lot of people disagree with this but I'll say it anyway. I think Bush has already one the election. Whatever way people vote, he'll win. I dont want him to win, but think he will. I dont want Kerry to win either. We all know now that I dont vote. Don't want to hear what an evil person I am for that, and how I dont deserve to live in this country either. Heard it all before.

This world is f-ed. George Carlin put it best when he said;

"When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show.
When you're born in America, you get a front row seat."

God help us.

"Don't vote, it only encourages them."

IP: Logged

proxieme
unregistered
posted November 01, 2004 11:16 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
26t - Don't feel bad that you're not going to vote.
I cast my absentee ballot a while ago, but my husband's not sending his in.
His reasoning: I don't know where either of the candidates really stand and I haven't made it enough of a priority.

If a soldier has the right not to vote, so do you. Our right not to vote is a rare gift of extreme freedom, and not to be discounted (just lookit the countries that fine you for refraining).

BTW, his opinion of the of the two:
Bush - He's a decent, honest guy, he just gets swamped by things and gets like a kid in the principle's office ("WMDs? No, nooo, it was to free the Iraqi people...")
And I absolutely do not think that wildlife preserves should be opened up for drilling - those are set aside to be there for our future.
Kerry - He's not going to take a firm stand on terrorism; he'll let it fizzle out for a year and then bring the troops home - I'm not necessarily against it, but it might not be the right thing.

So, it's okay to be one of those dreaded "undecideds" when you can see negatives looming at you from both sides, even when you're one of those deemed most affected.

IP: Logged

Rainbow~
unregistered
posted November 01, 2004 11:28 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Queen of Sheba.....

I cast my vote Friday and it was indeed for Kerry/Edwards....

If Nader had stood a chance in hell, he would have gotten my vote....but a person's gotta do...what a person's gotta do....

Love,
Rainbow

IP: Logged

QueenofSheeba
unregistered
posted November 02, 2004 02:37 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Dear prox- I think the course of action you're talking about is dangerously indecisive- and being a Libra, I think I know all about indecision. Sometimes it's better to make a choice, come down on one side or the other, instead of being stuck in the middle.

Thank you, Rainbow. I hope you're not having doubts about you're decision.

------------------
Hello everybody! I used to be QueenofSheeba and then I was Apollo and now I am QueenofSheeba again (and I'm a guy in case you didn't know)!

IP: Logged

Rainbow~
unregistered
posted November 02, 2004 02:57 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Thank you, Rainbow. I hope you're not having doubts about you're decision

No doubts, at all!

Love,
Rainbow

IP: Logged

proxieme
unregistered
posted November 02, 2004 08:19 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Dear prox- I think the course of action you're talking about is dangerously indecisive- and being a Libra, I think I know all about indecision.

I agree - I voted.
But not voting is also our right as Americans.

IP: Logged

Rainbow~
unregistered
posted November 02, 2004 12:16 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote

Has a nice ring to it...don'tcha think?

Love,
Rainbow

IP: Logged

KarenSD
unregistered
posted November 02, 2004 12:20 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Great thread and posts, friends!

This card-carryin' Green Party member is off to the polls to cast her vote for John Kerry.

Karen SD

IP: Logged

miss_apples
unregistered
posted November 02, 2004 12:38 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I didnt vote either...and Im not undecided. I have firmly decided that I personally dont feel that either Bush or Kerry are fit for the presidential seat. As Nader said, if there are only two teachers to teach your child, and you think one is bad and the other is horrible...do you settle for the lesser of the two to teach your child? No...you try and find a different choice all together. If Nader had a chance...i wouldve have voted for him. I actually think voting for the independants should be encouraged. I think its unbalanced that we only have two main parties, one representing the left and one representing the right. No other parties will ever break the barrier into being the third major party because people are too afraid to vote for other parties because they are constantly told they are throwing away their vote. Maybe I'll go vote afterall....

IP: Logged

BloodRedMoon
unregistered
posted November 02, 2004 02:16 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I voted for Nader this morning. I don't feel like I threw away my vote so if someone else does that's really not my problem.

------------------

Follow the moon - Follow the sun
Let's make a deal this time to stay with the plan
All that is needed is one leap of faith
Everything else will fall into place
Your life is a canvas -The colors are you

IP: Logged

proxieme
unregistered
posted November 02, 2004 02:49 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
A quote from someone standing in a polling line:

"It's our job," Amanda Karel, 25, an Ohio State University graduate student, said as she waited to vote at a banquet hall in Columbus. "It's what we're supposed to do." She added: "It's the only way to make the ads stop."

IP: Logged

Yin
Knowflake

Posts: 1951
From:
Registered: Apr 2009

posted November 02, 2004 02:53 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Yin     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Exercise your rights and vote. You live in a democracy! Some countries can only dream for a privilege like this!

IP: Logged

Gia
unregistered
posted November 02, 2004 04:17 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I wish the world could vote in this election because it does involve the whole world. I wonder who the people in Iraq would vote for?

Gia

IP: Logged

Randall
Webmaster

Posts: 4782
From: The Goober Galaxy
Registered: Apr 2009

posted November 02, 2004 06:11 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Randall     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I wonder who Osama would vote for...

------------------
"Never mentally imagine for another that which you would not want to experience for yourself, since the mental image you send out inevitably comes back to you." Rebecca Clark

IP: Logged

proxieme
unregistered
posted November 02, 2004 07:11 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Peroutka.

IP: Logged

miss_apples
unregistered
posted November 03, 2004 12:52 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Quote by bloodredmoon:
I voted for Nader this morning. I don't feel like I threw away my vote so if someone else does that's really not my problem.

Thats great...good for you! I went and voted for Nader too. The only vote thrown away is the vote you waste voting for someone you dont really believe in. Even though Nader had no chance of winning, and Bush won, I will never regret my vote

IP: Logged

TINK
unregistered
posted November 03, 2004 01:02 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
The day the Iraqis and French are allowed to vote for my President is the day I pack up and move to Canada.

"Don't vote. It only encourages them." I really like that.

IP: Logged

All times are Eastern Standard Time

next newest topic | next oldest topic

Administrative Options: Close Topic | Archive/Move | Delete Topic
Post New Topic  Post A Reply
Hop to:

Contact Us | Linda-Goodman.com

Copyright © 2011

Powered by Infopop www.infopop.com © 2000
Ultimate Bulletin Board 5.46a