I don't make decisions about the future of my nation based on people's weight.

I'm not saying it was rigged. But it's a good indication that democracy still exists if people can raise the question.

well hard to fight when the person you are fighting for says dont fight

Well, since the definition of political mandate is "a command or authorization given by political electorate to it's representative" I'd imagine that the pragmatic sense of it would be that it would give you the ability to push your legislation through your opposition, as they, wanting re-election, would be worried about alienating their own voters.

It creates a sense of 'political capital' (to quote Bush). Democrats who might oppose certain things more strongly on the part of the administration may think twice, as they may be worried that their base will vote them out the next time.

That's why Rove jumped on it so hard with his spin machine. There is no mandate, based on the numbers - but they definately want to create the sense of one. It's all about spin. I mean, look at the exit polls - Rove says they were wrong about the vote, but right about moral values?

They want Democrats running scared on the moral values issue, to say 'The public has spoken'. When factually, this is observable statistical propoganda. Nearly half the voters, apparently, don't agree.

Sure I believe Michael Moore..

After paying off the army of lawyers watching..the nasty republicans paid off Senator Kerry to just concede.That's exactly how it happened!

Moore didn't state it. He linked to it.

The real point though, is not whether the election was or was not rigged, for now. It's that blind nationalism without inspection is the death of Democracy.

A democracy that doesn't thoroughly investigate ANY allegation of voter fraud, is a democracy on it's way out.

The entire point of the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) - and it's been proven by things the FOIA has uncovered - is that an uninspected government simply can't be trusted.

If you think the point of a Democracy is to GIVE power to elected officials, you misunderstand the concept at it's core. Functionally, it's there to LIMIT the power of elected officials.

THIS JUST IN

Incumbent President GW Bush has just confirmed that they cannot lie, re-write the law, or trick the people into believing that they can fiddle with the Nov 2, 2008 election. Regretfully we must inform you that Jeb Bush will be starting his Presidency in January 2009.

it probably happened but Kerry had no balls.

will anything happen?

doubt it.

Well nearly all the counties that have large bases of registered democrats that they're talking about in this article have actually voted Republican for quite some time (at least they did in 2000).

Michael Moore says the vote was hacked. now he tells us.

50 lost votes.

Even if good evidence starts stacking up that there was any kind of fraud or tampering, labels of "Conspiracy Theorist" will be thrown around and whomever is trying to prove anything will risk being made a fool of. Too many wack jobs from the fringes have tainted current thought to the point that any kind of investigative activity is automatically perceived to be wearing a tinfoil hat.

this is why it doesnt matter to try and prove shit to these people online.

half the idiots screaming for Bush voted against him and just say they voted for him to piss people off.

Thats all it is until you actually get some solid evidence.

Moore did not discover any of this. He just took existing info from other websites and put it on his.

Repeat: More has not reported ANY new info.

This stuff is NOT from Michael Moore's head. He's just jumping on the conspiracy theory bandwagon early in an attempt to take credit if this ends up going somewhere big.

I agree to a point... but I'd submit that this is a chicken or the egg problem. Which came first - the label or the wacko? There was a time when anyone who said the goverment tested LSD on American soldiers was called a 'tin foil hatter'. FOIA later proved it to be true.

You should read up some time on Woodward and Bernstein, and some of the names they were called when they were 'nixon hunting.'

The solution is to ignore the need to get broad public acceptance for an idea, and simply pursue the evidence. If it bears out, it does. If it doesn't, it doesn't.

ahahahaha, sure kids.
we stole another election from you superior liberals.:1orglaugh
as long as you keep putting the blame on us, you'll continue to lose.
Thinking that the "religious right" controls the republicans will continue to cost you elections, thinking michael moore tells the truth and doesn't drive normal Americans away from your party will continue to cost you the election
:1orglaugh

very good post.

You could very well be right.

But a Democracy that doesn't thoroughly investigate any allegation of voter fraud, however slight or suspect the source, runs the risk of some day not being a Democracy. Being right 1 out of a 100 times, when it comes to investigating voter fraud, makes the process of checking it out acceptable to me, and I don't think it's something to ridicule. I would hope that Bush and Rove would agree, and I would imagine they do.

In so far as driving 'normal Americans' (whatever that means) away from the party - statistics don't back this up. 1% less than half of those who voted, voted against Bush. Close to half the nation apparently doesn't agree with your definition of 'normal american.'

Then they drive the people even further away by constantly referring to them as ignorant religious rednecks

Apparently, certain factions of Republicans drive half of America away by referring to them as 'unpatriotic liberals with no moral values.'

Commies, un-American, choose your label.

Don't buy that America is 'united behind a Republican agenda.' This is pure spin. The nation is split down the middle in a culture war. Welcome back to the end of the 60's. Apparently,neither side learned the lesson from that time period.

what will 12clicks say to Hannity?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200411020012

Hannity is claiming democrats used voter fraud.

soo umm, which is it ?

http://www.eastbayri.com/story/288322905494096.php

oh wait, arresting people for voter fraud?

cznt be happening.

michael moore is making this up too!!

there is voter fraud every election on a grand scale in philadelphia but it goes unpunished because the liberals have philly locked up.
There was a riot in 2000 in front of the democratic mayor's office because the people they promised money to for their vote hadn't yet been paid.
As long as liberals want to point ONLY to things that don't quite add up and call them fraud and then look the other way at blatant fraud on their own side, they will continue to be mocked.

wrong.
the liberals went out and signed up plenty of new voters. the republicans did not match anywhere near what the dems did.
come election day, manny manny more people turned out to vote and voted for the president. you can imagine what you'd like but "normal Americans" (sad you either pretend or really don't know what they are) went out and voted.
Their number easily overcame all of the liberal kiddies who registered to vote.

I am sure fucked up shit happens on both sides

Processing 100 million votes as quickly as possible isn't going to be a perfect procedure

Which makes it so much easier to build conspiracies.

It works both ways. The same can be done with Kerry if he won

well, you know all those 200k a yr plus business people who voted for Bush wear cowboy boots and drink malt liquor on the weekends. :1orglaugh

Good example of Democracy in action.

I'm all for investigation of voter fraud, whoever does it. EG - I can't stand Bush as a president. But if Kerry had gotten elected, and it turned out that fraud was behind it, I'd want him out, even if it meant Bush was in.

I'm not joining the 12clicks hate club,btw. I obviously disagree with most of what he posts, but he was always very courteous to Mona. I can't hate a Republican simply for being a Republican... no matter how misguided they are. :winkwink:

he is an idiot, here comes another movie.

hmmmmm, it looks like one party's platform gained about 3 million votes this year and the other didn't.

its all a song and dance, democracy is not real in america. its a fantasy, an opiate to keep you subdued while plutocrats do what they want.

- Seth

I'm simply saying that 49% of the people didn't vote for your candidate. We can bend statistics and debate how that 49% was gotten to the polls, and how that 51% was gotten to the polls, but in the end, it's the raw vote that counts.

The raw vote gave Bush the win, I concede that. And I'm NOT alleging voter fraud, btw. But I don't agree, based on that, that you have overwhelming proof that America resoundingly backs the conservative agenda.

If you want to call 56 million people 'not normal', that's your right - but it doesn't make you right.

http://www.funnyjunk.com/movies/47/B...nger%21/stream

Our fearless leader

the raw vote gave Bush a majority which is something clinton never got. Also, the house and senate picked up republicans. The sitting minority leader was thrown out on his ass.
you can pretend this isn't a clear indication of what people want, but it wouldn't make you right.:winkwink:

"Well nearly all the counties that have large bases of registered democrats that they're talking about in this article have actually voted Republican for quite some time (at least they did in 2000)."

Bad example, since we know the 2000 election was jacked. All you're saying is that it took people a while to notice the irregularity. But again, none of this was pointed out by Michael Moore. All he did was re-publish an article from someone else.

I found all of this interesting, but like others I wanted to see it validated in some way by the mainstream media. Well, it apepars that's going to happen:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/

The bottom line is that this is a story that's going to pick up steam. So far, nobody has been able to explain why the exit polls were so far off and nobody has been able to explain the skewed voting numbers if certain counties... other than that the election was jacked again. I'm not sure why some people have such a hard time thinking that people in government would be cooked for the sake of holding onto power.

My gut tells me that this WILL develop into a big story, but that at the end of the day it won't matter. Conservatives will just start screaming "voter fraud too" and muddy up the issue. They'll concoct lame stories that half the population will believe. The press won't have its heart in it, and there will be pressure from media execs to de-fang stories before they are published. Spin machines will go into full force. At the end of the day, nobody will know what to think of what should be damning evidence of fraud. Bush will be here for four more years. Jeb will follow shortly after.

I'll go you one better, just to prove I'm not TOTALLY blind and biased.

If you compare the 2000 election to this one Republicans picked up a gross total of about 9 million votes, while Democrats picked up a gross total of about 5 Million votes (50 mill Repubs in 2000 to 59 million this year, 51 million dems in 2000 to 56 mill this year).

Definate expansion for the Republicans this year, no doubt about it. But it still doesn't create an overwhelming 'mandate', as Rove claims. I mean, in 1984, Regan got 54 million votes. Things swing back and forth, depending more on the candidate and the issues than the party. I think gay rights and the war got Bush re-elected, not that 'everyone in America has seen the conservative light.' I mean, Nixon got 47 million, look how that turned out. :)

Come on, Man. When Rove himself comes out and says that the administration is going to use this 'mandate' to pursue a religious right agenda (constitutional ban of gay marriage), as one of his first primary statements, can you really blame us 'liberals' for thinking the religious right has itself firmly attached to the Republican Party?

liberals have no self awareness and this is a glaring example of the problem.

the 2000 election was NOT jacked. when you base your argument on a lie, no one listens.

Rove still trying to get bush in a picture with Pope? oh wait he was denied because even the Pope can see Bush is only trying to use religion

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/31/news-dubose.php

even the Pope is against bush

To understand President Bush?s recent visit to the Vatican, you have to go back to the moment when George Bush and Karl Rove came to Jesus. Not in a religious, born-again sense. That happened to Bush shortly after his 40th birthday, when he and his Midland oil-field buddy Donnie Evans joined a men?s Bible-study group. Bush and his lifetime political adviser Rove found the political Jesus eight years later in Fort Worth. Until that moment, Rove was a secular, social Christian, openly contemptuous of the right-wing evangelical fanatics taking over the Republican Party. At the 1994 Republican State Convention in Fort Worth, Rove began to understand how useful the Christians could be. He was transformed into a secular, social Christian, quietly contemptuous of the right-wing evangelical fanatics taking over the Republican Party. He had no choice. As he was launching Bush?s political career, calculating that the road to Washington ran through Austin, the Christian right seized control of the Texas Republican Party.



:1orglaugh

Yes the margin by which Bush won was being closed every hour that the recount went on even with the thousands of votes being thrown out because the chad was hanging off the paper. So why was the recount stopped when they were almost done? Makes a lot of damn sense to you I guess.

Welcome to the problem on both sides. 'All' liberals have no self awareness, and 'All' Republicans are toothless born agains.

Let the healing begin! :winkwink:

looks like they simply reversed the vote!