Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

[rmnunez]

I think ., is right, Bush's detractors lost "because moral values defined this election, and those values are not true universal values that Democrats can promote", whether those ideals are best described as "right-wing evangelist" is another matter. The Democrats are now discussing adopting some of these "traditional values" so highly appreciated in the Midwest.

[castille]

Losers have many excuses for losing.

The Germans had a million for losing the war, Britain had millions for losing the independence war, France still makes excuses for losing in 1940. And in America, they make excuses for losing the elections.

Bush won because he won. Simple as that. I may not agree with his views or his "commoner" attitude, but unless there is absolute proof he rigged the elections by performing illegal acts, then I cant see any rigged elections.

Hell, in Taiwan, they're still calling election fraud when the anti-Chinese candidate won the election. While I disagree with his views, I can't see how he rigged the election.

[Scribbler1]

That's why I keep saying, thouroughly investigate the election and the voting system itself. If there is nothing there, put in new safeguards to reflect the new technology and to keep it from happening, shut up about it and go home, secure in the knowledge it is a safe system and your guy just lost.

[gr8fuldaniel]

Originally posted by rmnunez, I think ., is right, Bush's detractors lost "because moral values defined this election, and those values are not true universal values that Democrats can promote",

Moral values like Bombing civilian targets like weddings and hospitals. Torture is good because Jesus was tortured. Cheating the blacks out of a vote is ok because, you know, theyre black and they wont vote for Bush. Values like shifting the national treasure into the pockets of the elite minority. The moral high ground of declaring war on innocent civilians who were no threat to anyone. Massacres are good for patriotism. Murder is good because Jesus was murdered and that is a good thing, right?
The religous right is perverting Jesuis Christ. What have Republicans actually done about Abortion in the last 30 years? If that is so important, that is a primary platform. No, they only use it to suck people in to their camp and leave them dry.

Morals my ass. Pseudo Christians, and hypocrites, and Part-time christians all go to the same place as thieves and murderers

[OberonDOtherseid]

Easy on the Christians, Daniel, you're out of line.

[Osborn F Enready]

Right Oberon,how much hypocrisy could possibly be involved when you can commit any number of crimes over your life, and then repent before your death and all is well.

Christians are the farthest away on understanding the need for a LACK of hypocrisy.

[Scribbler1]

Originally posted by OberonDOtherseid, Easy on the Christians, Daniel, you're out of line.

He said "psuedo" Christians, etc. I believe he was aiming at the hypocrites who assume the mantle of a religion for their own purposes and blatantly disregard the tenets of that religion while trading on their selective piety.

[OberonDOtherseid]

Yup, you're right, take another look at what he posted after that. That was a comment about all christians.

[OberonDOtherseid]

Originally posted by Osborn F Enready, Right Oberon,how much hypocrisy could possibly be involved when you can commit any number of crimes over your life, and then repent before your death and all is well. Christians are the farthest away on understanding the need for a LACK of hypocrisy.

Care to explain how you come to that conclusion?

[Osborn F Enready]

Oberon, Is it not the Christian religions who practice repent, and confession? Does this not absolve sins in the eyes of the Lord, as you are asking his forgiveness?

The majority of Christians I have known, are some of the biggest "sinners" I have seen. They blow it all to the side with a comment like " I attend church every Sunday" and this makes it all ok to them. Christians hold all types of fund raisers, based on gambling. Being a window cleaner, I washed windows for several of the churches, and pastors in the area. Every pastors home I have seen (provided for by the church) has had both a full bar of alchohol, a plush enviroment more fit to a business executive than a preacher, and every modern amenity you could possibly have. I am not trying to generalize here, or stereotype, as I know all people are different. I am only conveying what I have seen, and what I base my opinion on.

So far, out of all the religions I have investigated, Christianity seems the most infiltrated with people who espouse one thing, while doing another, the most corrupt in spending of donation money, the most varied from church to church, and the most severe in judging others based on THEIR beliefs.

This to me, does not evoke loving thy fellow man, respecting the wishes of your "god", nor does it resemble living modestly, sacrifice, or turning the other cheek. Almost all the divorcees I know are Christian faith based, as well as the number of alchoholics I know. Do I even have to mention the number of priests and pastors accused of molesting young boys? That was a nationwide scandal.

The most honorable person I ever met, as well as her family, was a Mormon. She caused me to look hard at my beliefs, and truly analyze many of the religious questions. She lived by the book, and practiced what she preached, and for that, I respected her to the utmost. She never shyed away from a question, and always could answer them head on when they dealt with her religion. She did not attempt to convert people, but when approached, she would share her views and explain her position. She didn't smoke, didn't drink alchohol, caffeine or any other drug. She was truly a pinnacle of wonderment for me, and all of this at the age of eighteen. (her age) She was completely normal outside what I considered a rather radical position on life for an eighteen year old. (depriving herself of many things that the typical eighteen year old would drown themselves in, like junk food, cola, coffee, frivilous spending) She did this of free will, not due to parental forcing, but because of her concious decision to follow that path.
She almosted converted me to the Mormon religion, based on her will, her belief, and her strong commitment to faith, but mostly because of her ability to respect others for what they believed. She understood the meaning of "ACCEPTANCE".

A few lessons I think A LOT OF Christians could adopt, if they wish to be respected for what they claim they believe and practice.

[bullshitdetector]

Tell me what religion you are or are not so I can slag you.

[Osborn F Enready]

I am a follower of none, acceptant of all, as long as they too accept my ability to be a non-believer, and still be a moral citizen.

I have no hate held for religion, other than the blindness that pervades many religious followers to see past THEIR FAITH, and accept that their choice, is not necessarily the ONLY CHOICE for all people.

Their is a difference between faith, and blindness to reality.

[bullshitdetector]

I agree with that, and there is also the concept of accepting that all christians are not what you ascribe they are because you ran across a few bad apples in your path along life.

That is tantamount to saying you think mexicans are such and such because every single mexican you ran across was like this and that. It is isn't right to make generalizations painting with a wide brush a coat of disdain and bigoted slander.

George W. Bush is not the Christ child and no christian you find would say he is.

Edited to correct spelling

[gr8fuldaniel]

A real Christian (Christ-like) is divorced from all forms of hate. Has unconditional love. Can

Originally posted by bible,+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (bible,)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>discern the spirits, whether they be of God[/b]

. A real christian doesnt need the law to OK school prayer, because they are commanded to <!--QuoteBegin-bible,
pray without ceasing[/quote] and it doesnt matter a damn bit whether the person next to you is praying or not (and to whom), because you cant even control your own body, let alone the kid next to you.
A real Christian realizes God has given away alittle bit of His own Omnipotence so you can have free will. This is sacred, dont f*ck it up.
God knows what I am made of and is not shocked when I say fuck. God is more sensitive to my heart than how I express it.
A real Christian is a giver and a taker, but should try to give more. A real Christian doesnt take by force. Acceptance is a huge part of walking hand in hand with the Spirit of the Universe. The Great Spirit be with us all.

I Love Jesus, I wish I were more like him. Not just because of all his cool party tricks, But, because he is close to God. Because he is the Way,the Truth, and the Life. The greatest of these is Truth, IMHO.
Yet its not my job to force feed my vision of truth on anyone.
Peace is not war.

[Osborn F Enready]

Gr8ful, I respect and admire your convictions and beliefs. It seems as though you practice what you preach, which is the essential thing I was talking about in the last post I made.

BSD said: That is tantamount to saying you think mexicans are such and such because every single mexican you ran across was like this and that. It is isn't right to make generalizations painting with a wide brush a coat of disdain and bigoted slander.

I say: Well, you must not have read the whole post then, as I clearly stated this:

I am not trying to generalize here, or stereotype, as I know all people are different. I am only conveying what I have seen, and what I base my opinion on.

Did you take this as something other than what I said, or did you not understand the meaning of the words?

To quote our forefather Patrick Henry:

"But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve."

"I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience."

[bullshitdetector]

Yup, you are only stating what you see and you see things through tinted glass where every christian is beneath you and that you have a bigoted closed minded stance on christians as a class of people. Nice job. Have any other particular groups of people you would like to slag while you're on a roll?

[gr8fuldaniel]

Originally posted by Osborn F Enready, Gr8ful, I respect and admire your convictions and beliefs. It seems as though you practice what you preach, which is the essential thing I was talking about in the last post I made.

Thank you, but, Well thats the problem, you said: It seems as though you practice what you preach
Thats why I dont claim to be a Christian, I Cant do it.
I gave it my best shot years ago and failed. The Bible says:

Be ye perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect

I need to be honest with myself and, IMO, Christianity makes unrealistic demands on its followers. So I have many other teachers on the Path. God, my creator did not give a monopoly to any one religion. I have serious doubts about the religion of those who justify heinous crimes as everyday events. I have serious doubts about politicians who talk religion out of their necks while writing policy for stealing and killing and robbing from the poor to give to the rich. When I say stealing, that includes election fraud, and lying about it. Nothing goes unrewarded, be aware. And dont support wolves in sheeps clothing.

[PatrickHenry]

An opinion, an editorial by William Rivers Pitt, one of my favorite authors. With many allegations of FACT. I have not attempted to verify these allegations independently, but have read them from other sources. They are all likely to be true.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/112304Z.shtml
His opinions are not always congruent with my own but I value his forthright stance on election accuracy and the need for vigilant oversight. All Americans should stand together on this issue.

You Republicans: Your candidate won this time. How will you handle a possible future election where the tables are turned and the opposition wins but the election is flawed? Will you not desire an accurate vote count then? If accuracy is not pursued now, how wiil future elections be honestly democratic?

Nationally, there were more than 1,100 incidents of electronic voting machine malfunctions. In Broward County, Florida, election workers were shocked to discover that their shiny new machines were counting backwards. "Tallies should go up as more votes are counted," according to the news story. "That's simple math. But in some races, the numbers had gone down. Officials found the software used in Broward can handle only 32,000 votes per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward." In Franklin County, Ohio, voting machines gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in one precinct alone. "Franklin County's unofficial results gave Bush 4,258 votes to Democratic challenger John Kerry's 260 votes in Precinct 1B," according to the news story. "Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, said Bush received 365 votes there. The other 13 voters who cast ballots either voted for other candidates or did not vote for president." In Craven County, North Carolina, a software error on the electronic voting machines awarded Bush 11,283 extra votes. "The Elections Systems and Software equipment," according to the news story, "had downloaded voting information from nine of the county's 26 precincts and as the absentee ballots were added, the precinct totals were added a second time. An override, like those occurring when one attempts to save a computer file that already exists, is supposed to prevent double counting, but did not function correctly." In Carteret County, North Carolina, "More than 4,500 votes may be lost," according to the news story, "because officials believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. Local officials said UniLect Corp., the maker of the county's electronic voting system, told them that each storage unit could handle 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes. Officials said 3,005 early votes were stored, but 4,530 were lost." In LaPorte County, Indiana, a Democratic stronghold, the electronic voting machines decided that each precinct only had 300 voters. "At about 7 p.m. Tuesday," according to the news story, "it was noticed that the first two or three printouts from individual precinct reports all listed an identical number of voters. Each precinct was listed as having 300 registered voters. That means the total number of voters for the county would be 22,200, although there are actually more than 79,000 registered voters." In Sarpy County, Nebraska, the electronic touch screen machines got generous. "As many as 10,000 extra votes," according to the news story, "have been tallied and candidates are still waiting for corrected totals. Johnny Boykin lost his bid to be on the Papillion City Council. The difference between victory and defeat in the race was 127 votes. Boykin says, 'When I went in to work the next day and saw that 3,342 people had shown up to vote in our ward, I thought something's not right.' He's right. There are not even 3,000 people registered to vote in his ward. For some reason, some votes were counted twice." Stories like this have been popping up in many of the states that put these touch-screen voting machines to use. Beyond these reports are the folks who attempted to vote for one candidate and saw the machine give their vote to the other candidate. Sometimes, the flawed machines were taken off-line, and sometimes they were not. As for the reports I just described, the mistakes were caught and corrected. How many mistakes made by these machines were not caught, were not corrected, and have now become part of the record? The flaws within these machines are well documented. Professors and researchers from Johns Hopkins University performed a detailed analysis of these electronic voting machines in May of 2004. In their results, the Johns Hopkins researchers stated, "This voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts. We identify several problems including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. We show that voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal software." "Furthermore," they continued, "we show that even the most serious of our outsider attacks could have been discovered and executed without access to the source code. In the face of such attacks, the usual worries about insider threats are not the only concerns; outsiders can do the damage. That said, we demonstrate that the insider threat is also quite considerable, showing that not only can an insider, such as a poll worker, modify the votes, but that insiders can also violate voter privacy and match votes with the voters who cast them. We conclude that this voting system is unsuitable for use in a general election." Many of these machines do not provide the voter with a paper ballot that verifies their vote. So if an error - or purposefully inserted malicious code - in the untested machine causes their vote to go for the other guy, they have no way to verify that it happened. The lack of a paper ballot also means the end of recounts as we have known them; now, on these new machines, a recount amounts to pushing a button on the machine and getting a number in return, but without those paper ballots to do a comparison, there is no way to verify the validity of that count. The paper ballot aspect isn't nearly the worst part. The paper ballots are only useful in a recount situation. If the margin of victory or defeat described by these machines is large enough, there won't be a recount in most states. The worst part is the fact that all the votes collected by these machines are sent via modem to a central tabulating computer which counts the votes on Windows software. This means, essentially, that any gomer with access to the central tabulation machine who knows how to work a spreadsheet program and can fiddle around in Explorer can go into this central computer and make wholesale changes to election totals without anyone being the wiser.

[Rainbow]

Originally posted by PatrickHenry, You Republicans: Your candidate won this time. How will you handle a possible future election where the tables are turned and the opposition wins but the election is flawed? Will you not desire an accurate vote count then? If accuracy is not pursued now, how wiil future elections be honestly democratic?

I do not care a political party ideology, status, platform, ect. as long as it serves U.S.. What is the difference who rules, if that serves U.S. well ?
Should we care political parties' shades, or U.S. prosperity ?
What is more important : a political party or a state ?

[Osborn F Enready]

Great post Pat, and thanks for pointing it out. I have been keeping an eye on Truthout for some time now, and they seem to be a pretty respectable news source.

BSD said: Yup, you are only stating what you see and you see things through tinted glass where every christian is beneath you and that you have a bigoted closed minded stance on christians as a class of people. Nice job. Have any other particular groups of people you would like to slag while you're on a roll?

I say: No, I would just like to see you decipher the english language, and the alphabet as every other American, and reread my post. I clearly labeled NOBODY except those who perceive themselves to be exactly what I am talking about in the post itself. Is that you? Do you feel guilty? I didn't label all Christians, any more than you label all humans when you speak of a particular race or religion in casual mention. I simply stated almost all the CHRISTIANS I KNOW PERSONALLY, or HAVE SEEN PERSONALLY acted in the manner I described.

Would you please grow up now, so we can debate. If you take every word that I type personally, you are going to have a rough time here for no reason other than your ability to comprehend what you read.

All Christians are beneath me.... please, that is almost priceless how you could derive that from what was typed..... LOL