What I learned from the debates

[Rosslyn]

yep, that wasn't my point although I agree with it.

Bolldar, as we've discussed you know that I really enoy having these discussions and despite our (sometimes huge) differences of opinion I particularly like debating you because you're not easily swayed (hehe, there I go being polite again).  In this case, however, I'm about to play the "you may not be qualifed on this topic" card.  I think some of your suppositions and maybe some of your information may just be plain incorrect.  I'm not referring to "opinion" pieces like Bush this or Bush that, but on a more basic level I'm referring to a lack of understanding of how our government is structured and how it functions within that structure.  I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing since you're not a U.S. citizen, and I'm certainly not as familiar with the inner workings of other countries as I am with my own, but it is a fact.  A couple of your most recent statements seem to highlight these gaps, and some of the more recent statements by others do a good job of pointing a few of them out.

"I dont agree with your contention that the party which is in power controlling the executive branch is a bad thing, not that we have anything called that though i take your point. Im no admirer of the American system of separating the executive and elected branchs of government. Your system means that you can get a team like the one you presently have which for the most part pretty damn incompetent and for which no one voted at all. You cant get much more undemocratic than that. Having the president have the power of veto makes no sense either since it once again takes power away from the people who were elected. In fact, given that all states send the same number of senators, and the only really proportianal representation comes from the house of reps (the weakest house in the US the strongest in Australia) the people dont get much say at all do they."

To me this quote not only illustrates that point, it also appears to be self-contradicting.  Early on you mention that you don't think it's a bad thing that the party in power controls the executive branch (which I assume refers to members of your Parliament choosing the Prime Minister and/or the Governor General), yet you then conclude that statement by railing against the U.S. government for having a presidential veto (because of your mistaken assertion that the President isn't elected) and for having the Senate being more powerful than the House of Representatives (another fallacy, as neither one can effectively do anything without the approval and agreement of the other).  

If I wanted to play devil's advocate and argue your side of this debate for a moment, I think the best I could do with regard to the whole "representative governement" issue would be to cast them in nearly the same light, and I think even then the U.S. would end up being slightly more representative.  You could effectively argue that the system "people=>electoral college=>president" is the same as "people=>parliament=>prime minister" from the standpoint of directly electing executive leaders.  In neither case does the general populace directly select their leaders, but the U.S. population at least votes on it.  Does Australia, for instance, have an election where the general citizenry chooses a prime minister?  Do the even have a referendum where they recommend a nominee for Senate/House approval?

I'm sure I've addressed this point before, but it seems it's necessary to do it again.  You have consistently criticized the part of the U.S. system whereby the Senate is composed of two members elected from each State.  Your criticism, if I'm reading it correctly, seems to indicate that you feel this isn't truly representative since some states with low populations will then have the same representation in this house as those with high populations.  If this is the case, I completely agree with your assessment of the level of representation, and I totally disagree with your conclusion that it's less representative this way.  Our House of Representatives is the half of the Legislative branch that is broken down by a population formula (congressional districts with approximately equal amounts of citizens in each one), and the people in each corresponding district vote for their own voice in Congress.  However, since our government is actually a Union of sovereign States (hence the name of our country), it is extremely important that on some level each State also has equal representation in the government.  This is why the Senate has its makeup the way it is, to ensure that California or Texas don't just have their way with the country because they have more people.  If this were not the case, there would have been many states that would have opted to NOT join the union, and there would probably have been more instances of secession than we've had.  Essentially the Senate displays the co-op nature of our governmental structure (and let's not forget, each Senator is directly elected by his/her constituents, so they do reflect a proportional representation in that the people of each State are represented equally by their Senators).  To label that structure as non-representative is at worst a deliberate twisting of the facts to support a weak point, and at best a simple case of naivete or being uninformed on this particular point.  

I think at this point I'll try to withhold comment on these types of issues until and unless everyone involved is speaking about facts.  If we're going to discuss how we'd LIKE things to work or how we IMAGINE them to work elsewhere, we won't really get anywhere.

[Bolldar Bloodaxe]

Ill run through your points in order Ross and I do enjoy it not least because while i still dissagree with a lot of what you say I am learning the odd thing. Though I think one basic difference in our systems is we do not think of ourselves as states but as a country and always have since very early on, so many of the provisions of your system are for things we would never want or desire.

(a) While Im sure Im not as familiar with the workings of the US system of government as some here, I have a fairly good grasp of how it works and I would say a lot better concept of it and your history than a lot of your citizens do. Im still learning new things but have always been a student of the Revolution, war of 1812 and civil war not to mention many of the other misadventures which the US has embarked on. At no point have I for instance said that the US president is not elected. I dont think much of the way he is elected but Ive always known he was, I may have said that Bush got in without being validly elected at some point and I still believe that to be the case.

(b)

To me this quote not only illustrates that point, it also appears to be self-contradicting.  Early on you mention that you don't think it's a bad thing that the party in power controls the executive branch (which I assume refers to members of your Parliament choosing the Prime Minister and/or the Governor General), yet you then conclude that statement by railing against the U.S. government for having a presidential veto (because of your mistaken assertion that the President isn't elected) and for having the Senate being more powerful than the House of Representatives (another fallacy, as neither one can effectively do anything without the approval and agreement of the other).

As I mentioned I have never believed the president to not be elected. Much of what I have said has been about the inadequacies of the presidential election process and the dubious outcome of that race in Florida. I even illustrated the point of preferential voting with the 3 candidates so im not sure how you came to that conclusion.  As regards the importance of the senate, my statement was referring to the fact that the media portrays the senate as the most important decision making body in the US, my query was why is this when the house of representatives which draws up legislation could not be less important in the decision making process yet rarely ever rates a mention in the media. I still think the presidential veto is a stupid idea, if it can pass the two houses of your government why should one man or woman (go Hillary) be able to veto it?? You tell me that the house of representatives and senate are representative of the people, (I still dont agree with you on the senate but understand your point about the states, though I would have thought the US would have grown out of that states rights rubbish by now and suspect amonst the people it largely has) then why should one person whom you all have stated isnt necessarily representative of the people be able to stop them??(refere here to what several of you have said about presidents who didnt not have a majority of the population vote for them)  Power of the people for the people, or is it just some of the people.

In Australian elections the prime minister is the leader of the party which gains power, so yes you vote for his party or not knowing that if they get into power he will be the PM.

(c) In Australia we dont vote for the leader but we know when we cast a vote for a party which leader will be PM if that party succeeds. So in essence if I had voted Liberal in the last election which I didnt I knew i would be voting for John Howard to be Prime Minister. I voted for labour in essence, though by dint of preferences, so hence knew i was voting for Mark Latham to be PM. An American who votes for a person to vote (electoral college) for him doesnt even really know what if that vote will be cast as he or she was told it would be. I know it happens only rarely but electoral college members have reversed their votes in the past. I dont see voting for someone else to vote your president in is particulary democratic nor reliable when their is nothing to mandate them to make the choice they had originally made.

No referendums take place to choose anyone, a referendum is a ballot of the whole country to decide a matter of national importance. Zutroy your right I would have liked to see a Bill of rights and was dissapointed to see it defeated. A lot of Australians saw no need for it since we suffer no abuses from the government and have a good consistent rule of law with trail by jury and all the other trappings which go with a bill of rights.  Also referendums rarely pass if they arent supported by both sides and in this case the Government of the day lead by John Howard opposed it and also the second question of becoming a republic (that has been defeated twice now)

(d) I know you are a union of states, so is Australia, but we are a country first, states are largely irrelvent except for choosing sides in cricket and football to the average Australian. This fact is evident from the fact that an American when asked where they come from will tell  you his state (which for your average foreigner either smacks of a certain degree of arrogance as they are expected to know where that is or of a belief that they are a Virginian for instance before being an American) While a person from just about anywhere else will tell you their country. At the time of the civil war that kind of ideal certainly held sway. And I undestand that soverignity fo the states was an issue then, but how many Americans truly believe they are a member of their state before their country now?? Im sure some do but it seems a rather outdated and useless concept.

To label that structure as non-representative is at worst a deliberate twisting of the facts to support a weak point, and at best a simple case of naivete or being uninformed on this particular point.

No twisting of the facts at all, that a state like California sends two senators and one like Arizone 2 is in no way representative of their people. Thats not twisting facts that is the simple truth. While I understand that your senate may give the states fair represenation it certainally doesnt give the people fair and equal representation. Quite the opposite in fact, we have population discrepencies between states here too but since we are a country all states are looked after equally by the Federal government and we enjoy a far more representative form of government as a result.

My point that the executive team was not voted into office is referring to the fact that the people get no say in it and im aware of the much lamented fact that the democratics barely raised a whisper when that lot were voted in.

With regard to Axes comment,

(a) I dont think informing congress takes away from the power since once committed your committed whether it was right or wrong. You cant attack someone then say oh sorry it was a mistake.

(b) Im well aware of what the second amendment is about and still think it an archaic and stupid concept. Hehe i could not begin to tell you how stupid I think that is, right up there with MAD but you guys have live there with all the murders etc so im just glad we dont have it here though I do wish your stupid NRA would stay over there and keep out of my country. Plenty of countries regularly revolt without the right to bear arms.
 
(c) on the veto well its your country, your system. If your happy with it good

On Zutroys points:

(a) No one ever gets thrown in jail.

(b) If they dont want to exercise their right to select a candidate they simply draw a sqiggle and hand in a donkey vote. Its a good law

(c) Ill concede your point on numbers, though not entirely since we occupy the same area, our whole population votes, I was surprised that just over 50% of your does I had believed it to be less so a cheer for all the voters. Also we never have had problems like those that happened in New Orleans or had a court decide an election for us. Also pro rata our resouces for running it are less.

(d) No I dont naively believe anything, their is a wealth of reliable incontestable evidence of Bush's wrong doing. I really think your are blinded by your biases here. And to be truthful even if you only believed a quarter of the information about him it would be enough to make you not want to vote for him. I see a lot of Americans who seem to think the office of president is sancrosact, the truth is he is just a politician and in this case a not very bright or honest one. (yes opinion I know )

I didnt know  you had an independant commision against corruption since I never hear of them doing anything much despite a wealth of cases they could take on. I would like to see the one here do more too though probably like yours political pressure can be brought to bear if they act up too much.

(e) For us having a senate which generally is not the same as the house of reps does the same thing. In that respect I would think the balance between your reps and senates would be similar. While I dont like paying high taxes I dont mind paying reasonable taxes for social services.

(f) Actually though they were voted on they did pretty much get a free ride through, which was the fault of the democrats no one else. As for them being incompetent, well your right its my opinion but there is once again a lot of evidence that their decision making has been extremely poor. That is almost always the case with radicals. I see little distinction between Osama thumping a Koran on one side and blowing up Americans and Bush thumping a bible on the other and blowing up innocent Iraquies. Throw in some radical Jews blowing up Palestinians and vice a versa and we would be better off without the lot of them and install some moderates.

(g) No one represents states in Australia except the state premiers. Senators are elected Australia wide and are the most representative of the different views held by people around the country. Everyones vote is equal there. The house of representative is made up of people from set electorates of approximately equal numbers. Its your system of senate which represents states and not people equitably. This is a fundamental difference between our countries. States rights and states fighting with each other just isnt part of our agenda like it is with you. The idea of killing the phenomal number of people your country did over states rights is alien to us here. Like I said before I would have thought America would have grown out of that by now and become first and foremost a country. I suspect for many Americans it has but i could be wrong lol since im surprised to hear those concepts still being brought up.

(h) ah i see where you got the idea I thought the president wasnt elected despite all the preceding evidence that I knew he was. The people I was referring to where the house of reps and the senate and I never contended the president wasnt elected.

(i) We have nothing like your USAPATRIOT ACT 1 and 2, these effectively give your government some scary and draconian powers. Believe me when i say that your civil rights have been battered badly by this legislation. I wont detail it though i have read it before. This has become a book already or i would but its on the web somewhere.

(j) You got me with regard to the bill or rights, I would like to have one and did vote for it. For the most part I think your bill of rights is a fine document. Not always followed but a great concept.

(j) Ok ill give you an example. Im a college teacher, to go for a promotion I would have to submit a written application showing how I met the minimum qualifications (degrees, industrial experience, teaching experience etc) and demonstrated a understanding of various overnment policies like EEO (Equal Employment Opportuntiy) OH&S, anti discrimination laws etc. Referees would have to be provided and questioned on how i met those criteria.

If I was deemed to meet all those criteria then I would be invited to a interview with a panel. That panel would be made up of one person from a senior position in my school ie the Head of Studies, one senior person from another college and an unrelated teaching discipline and one independant person from the industry my school services ie the aircraft industry. They would ask a set of standard questions to all candidates and then score them on all facets of the process offering the job to the first person on the list. Any on the list who did not get the position but whom were deemed to  be eligable would be able to act in the position to gain further experience when the permanent holder was on holidays etc. Its long winded but the results are better than electing somebody who has no qualifications and whom people just happen to like. I know that probably doesnt happen that much but I also know it does happen in the south at least

This is like a book so if i missed anything my apologies.

Oh i missed the point on compulsory voting. Despite your assertions that being compelled to vote is undemocratic this is simply not true by any measure. Being compelled to vote means that all people will exercise their opinion on who will rule. Democracy is rule by the majority (as defined in the dictionary) and if the majority dont vote you dont really have it.

Certainly making voting compulsory takes away a freedom to not attend the ballot but it has nothing to do with making it any less democratic. However removal of a freedom is not removal of democracy.

I think i now beat Sodom for the longest ever post, not that I will be repeating it lol

(Edited by Bolldar Bloodaxe at 6:55 am on Oct. 11, 2004)

(Edited by Bolldar Bloodaxe at 7:15 am on Oct. 11, 2004)

(Edited by Bolldar Bloodaxe at 7:17 am on Oct. 11, 2004)

[Zutroy]

The goverment does have the power to throw you in jail if you don't vote. It's on the books, you can look it up.

" didnt know  you had an independant commision against corruption since I never hear of them doing anything much despite a wealth of cases they could take on."

There was just a case last week where they found a leading republican in the house of representatives guilty of misconduct of some sort. I don't remember the exact details of it.

" I see little distinction between Osama thumping a Koran on one side and blowing up Americans and Bush thumping a bible on the other and blowing up innocent Iraquies."

I really have no response to this, I figured I'd just quote it in case someone missed it in your long post.

"The people I was referring to where the house of reps and the senate and I never contended the president wasnt elected. "

Your last post stated that the presidential veto takes power away from people that were elected and that would lead one to assume you don't believe the president himself is elected. I guess it was just worded poorly, but I think I get the point you were trying to make.

"Im still learning new things but have always been a student of the Revolution, war of 1812 and civil war not to mention many of the other misadventures which the US has embarked on"

The revolution is why the US doesn't have a Governer General. If you understand american history well enough to be a "student" of these conflicts, then I'm suprised you aren't more aware of the importance that statehood has in the governing of this country. I hate to bring up numbers again, but the entire population of australia is only the size of texas. To try to govern the whole thing as one giant country without state goverments would be extremely difficult and inefficient.

Look at it this way, when Australia becomes the 51st state in a few years, you'll get 32 electoral votes.

Finally, let me copy and paste this from my previous thread because you obviously didn't read it:

In regards to Florida, the supreme court didn't technically rule on the case, they just remanded it back to the lower court beyond the December deadline for the recounts to be certified. Show me one article that says (in any type of independent recount) that Gore won Florida.

[Zutroy]

If you wanna kill some time today, take the Global Foreign Policy Test:

http://transterrestrial.com/scripts/globaltest/

Be sure to pick french on the first question.

[Bolldar Bloodaxe]

I had to laugh at what it said about the French, sounds more like the US to me.

And this has got to be Bush!
Disarm megalomaniacal dictator with WMD (will need to submit authenticated proof--CIA or MI6 documents will not be acceptable) (100 points)
I mean Saddam had none and we all know Bush has more than anyone else

Zutroy we have state governments, just not the plethora of them you have And I understand how they were historically important, just dont see the relevance today from a states rights point of view and think the emphasis on it is kind of stupid. In terms of administering them, it could possibly be argued that it offers some advantages but that had nothing to do with what i was talking about and really they could be adminstered with far fewer than you have. . Yeah I know Texas is small, and as regards Gore winning Florida there are plenty of publications that say that and ill check my references with regard to the Supreme court because if memory servers me correctly they prevented a re count. I think the only source you would trust would have to come from the republican party

With regard to Australia becoming a state of America, Hell will freeze over first

[Rosslyn]

"At no point have I for instance said that the US president is not elected."

Okay, here's where this came from (10/10, 12:51am timestamp):

"Im no admirer of the American system of separating the executive and elected branchs of government. Your system means that you can get a team like the one you presently have which for the most part pretty damn incompetent and for which no one voted at all. You cant get much more undemocratic than that."

Maybe I misinterpreted what you wrote, but I considered "for which no one voted at all" to be a fairly iron-clad statement.

There were a couple more statements made that I think reflect a true difference in viewpoint, and I'll try to explain why I think that having Senators based on individual states is a good thing (not to mention the governmental efficiency that is possible by having relatively strong state governments to administer some things, that's a separate discussion).

"we have population discrepencies between states here too but since we are a country all states are looked after equally by the Federal government"

"Senators are elected Australia wide and are the most representative of the different views held by people around the country. Everyones vote is equal there. The house of representative is made up of people from set electorates of approximately equal numbers. Its your system of senate which represents states and not people equitably. This is a fundamental difference between our countries. States rights and states fighting with each other just isnt part of our agenda like it is with you."

Okay, if you take the populations of two of the Australian states (New South Wales and Victoria), you end up with two states which contain more than half of the country's entire population.  In fact, Sydney (which is in NSW) by itself has nearly as many people as the third most populous state (and may have exceeded it by now, I'm sure I'm not using real-time data for this).  

The point I'm trying to make with this is that the population of these two states has the ability to easily out-vote all of the other states combined, and can in effect elect a Senate comprised of people they prefer.  You may not think it's the case, but human nature (and the NIMBY principle*) say that most of the Federal projects that nobody wants probably end up in the Northern Territory, while almost none of them end up in NSW.  In my opinion, because the residents of a state like Tasmania have such a diluted voice in both the House and the Senate, they have almost no hope of a favorable resolution when it comes to legislation that has a strong bearing on their particular area.  In the U.S., this can be anything from avoiding toxic waste disposal sites to getting more federal installations (and thus more jobs and federal tax $ being spent there), and the various Senators are accountable to their constituency.  Who fights for the Tasmanians?  Senators elected mostly by the residents of Sydney and Melbourne?  You may think so, but I think that puts too much faith in the charity of those people when it's the well-being of another state and its residents on the line.

Also, with regard to the thing about Americans using states to identify themselves, this is in my experience somewhat true when you meet other Americans (especially when you're in the U.S. at the time), although it usually is expressed in terms of a city (i.e. I usually tell people I live near Detroit, as opposed to saying I'm from Michigan).  In other countries, however, I respond to similar questions by simply stating that I'm from the U.S.  If, as has often been the case, the person asks which part of the country I'm from, I'll provide more detail.  I really don't think this is different from many countries, at least those with which I have experience.  India, for example, seems to be very similar, if not more divided among state lines than we are.  Granted, Indians who live overseas tend to interact as "Indians" and present themselves that way, but beneath that surface they highly identify with their home regions, and often speak entirely different languages than Indians from other parts of that country.  In fact, many of the Indians I've met and worked with joke that, while they're friends and compatriots here, they would probably have to dislike each other when they go home because of historical differences between their home regions.  Germans, while not to the level of Indians, can be this way as well, and in the UK... well, don't let a typical Scot think that you've called him "English", hehe.  Heck, even in Canada (I'm practically Canadian here, I grew up being able to see Canada across the lake) there's a pronounced difference between the French-Canadians that dominate Quebec and "everyone else".    I think if you look more closely that the majority of the countries out there have distinct regions within them and the people in those regions identify primarily with those regions, especially when dealing with people from other parts of their country.  Another analogy would be Arab history, where they've historically been constantly at each other's throats, but as soon as an external threat is discovered they become a united Arab Nation.  Anyone with brothers or sisters probably knows this feeling, hehe.  You know, on a daily basis you probably gave and received the worst beatings to/from your sibling and probably screamed some pretty bad stuff at them, but the first kid down the street that hits your brother had better watch out, because that kid now has to deal w/ both of you.  

(edit)  One last comment about the state governments for Bolldar:  One important thing to remember is that the state governments predate the state's existence as a "state" in the union.  Whether they were territorial governments, colonial governments, or in some cases even sovereign nations, there was a pre-existing government before they came under the Federal government.  It just doesn't make sense that these would be disbanded (I know you haven't suggested this), and it makes complete sense that these incoming entities would want some sort of guarantee that they'd be able to exercise some level of independence and have their voice heard in the halls of government.  

(Edited by Rosslyn at 1:01 pm on Oct. 11, 2004)

[Caohmin]

Quote: from Zutroy on 6:48 am on Oct. 11, 2004

" I see little distinction between Osama thumping a Koran on one side and blowing up Americans and Bush thumping a bible on the other and blowing up innocent Iraquies."

I really have no response to this, I figured I'd just quote it in case someone missed it in your long post.

I saw this as well. The difference between innocents dying in a war and victims of terrorist violence is tremendous, imo. Sometimes it takes the death of thousands, all at once, before you realize it.

[Zutroy]

"and as regards Gore winning Florida there are plenty of publications that say that and ill check my references with regard to the Supreme court because if memory servers me correctly they prevented a re count."

Please post one, I'm eager to read it if you can find a factual recount (not an editorial article or some "expert's" projections) that put Gore ahead. There was an automatic recount (as provided by Florida law) and Bush still came out ahead. Afterwards, Gore wanted to hand recount the ballets in 2 (or was it 3?) heavily democratic counties using no uniform standard. This meant things like pin-pricks or stray marks could be counted as votes for Gore if the person recounting wanted them to be. Bush filed a lawsuit against this and the hand-recounts were put on hold. There were a series of rulings that split both ways and each one got appealed to a higher court. Finally, the supreme court was next in line to decide the case, but remanded it (ie, sent it back) to the lower court. However, the deadline the supreme court set was after the deadline to certify the vote tally, essentially deciding against Gore without actually issuing a direct ruling.

Irregardless, several independent press groups conducted their own recounts after the fact and never were able to come up with a vote tally in Gore's favor - even using the standards that Gore wanted.

I'm not naive enough to believe that had it happened in reverse, Bush wouldn't have done the exact same thing as Gore. I'm only defending Bush in this instance because I'm sick of hearing this arguement by people who didn't even follow the election in 2000 and are just parroting what they hear from others.

(Edited by Zutroy at 8:37 pm on Oct. 11, 2004)

[Lifesbane]

Quote: from Caohmin on 8:28 pm on Oct. 11, 2004

I saw this as well. The difference between innocents dying in a war and victims of terrorist violence is tremendous, imo. Sometimes it takes the death of thousands, all at once, before you realize it.

i am actually of the same oppinion as bolldar on this. 9/11 effected me as much as most, i saw all the news video, i talked to my sister who watched it happen from her dorm on staten island. i saw a very close friend of mine cry because her father flew out of logan that morning, and later find out her father was on one of the planes that went into the trade center.

i dont see any differance between what happened to us, and to what happened to innocent iraqies. sure, what happened to us was sudon and unexpected, it was a shock to us all...but im sure as hell not gunna be the one to say to some iraqie's family that what we went through was worse, that our innocent victims were somehow more innocent then theirs. i'd like to know where someone draws that line, because i cant.

[Caohmin]

Innocent people have died in every war known to man. It sucks, it happens and is a reality of war. Terrorists deliberately target innocent people. Innocent Iraqis are not deliberately targetted by coalition forces. That is the difference.

[Bolldar Bloodaxe]

Actually thats not true. While ill grant you that in general the US tries to avoid civilian casualties they dont do that good a job of it some of the time, nor do they always try and do it because there are a hell of a lot of innocent civilians including women and children dead and wounded.

Some examples:
US marines shot at everyone they met in their drive on Bagdad including families and passers bye. This is not some vague rumour I have seen several interviews with serving marines who bore witness to this.

Add to that the use of AOE bombs with sub munition bomblets dropped in towns.

And the targetting of buildings containing large numbers of innocent people because the US suspected one potential target might be there.

The helicopter incident with the Bradley was another good example with a US apache helicopter (and i dont care if you didnt see the helicopter in the videio since the US army admitted they fired it) firing into an unarmed crowd of civilians.

Throw in kidnapping, torture of prisoners, and a host of other violations of the Geneva convention including travesties of justice such as Qantonimo Bay and the US is far from being able to claim moral superiority in a war against a country which never did anything to them.

As to the argument that a 2,500 people dieing on one day has more impact than 35,000 plus over a longer period I think thats pretty ridiculous. By this argument the holocaust would not have been the significant event that it was. Dead is dead and if you try to tell me that a family in America who lost a member in 9/11 is more impacted  than an Iraqui who had his whole family wiped out as has often been the case by America bombs then I think your seriously twisting the facts.

I dont think any of these people deserved to die, but the fact is that the US had targetted Osama Bin Ladin well before 9/11 and if you go back far enough had even helped him in the days when they were creating the Taliban. As a American middle east expert stated it wasnt so much a surpise that they struck back but that they took so long to do it. American foreign policy and meddling in other countries affairs is largely responsble for what happened. And im not saying anyone had a right to blow up the twin towers but by the same token I dont believe America had a right to do the things they did in the middle east dating back to the end of the second world war.

As to Florida, you should look at this http://www.ericblumrich.com/gta.html

With regard to showing you a recount that is obviously difficult since one didnt in fact happen. However:

The most significant of these requirements are:

• A nonpartisan electoral commission or a trusted and nonpartisan official who will be responsible for organizing and conducting the electoral process before, during and after the actual voting takes place. Although rarely perfect in their objectivity, such top administrators are at least subject to public scrutiny and responsible for the integrity of their decisions. Florida voting officials have proved to be highly partisan, brazenly violating a basic need for an unbiased and universally trusted authority to manage all elements of the electoral process.

• Uniformity in voting procedures, so that all citizens, regardless of their social or financial status, have equal assurance that their votes are cast in the same way and will be tabulated with equal accuracy. Modern technology is already in use that makes electronic voting possible, with accurate and almost immediate tabulation and with paper ballot printouts so all voters can have confidence in the integrity of the process. There is no reason these proven techniques, used overseas and in some U.S. states, could not be used in Florida.

It was obvious that in 2000 these basic standards were not met in Florida, and there are disturbing signs that once again, as we prepare for a presidential election, some of the state's leading officials hold strong political biases that prevent necessary reforms.

Four years ago, the top election official, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, was also the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney state campaign committee. The same strong bias has become evident in her successor, Glenda Hood, who was a highly partisan elector for George W. Bush in 2000. Several thousand ballots of African Americans were thrown out on technicalities in 2000, and a fumbling attempt has been made recently to disqualify 22,000 African Americans (likely Democrats), but only 61 Hispanics (likely Republicans), as alleged felons.

The top election official has also played a leading role in qualifying Ralph Nader as a candidate, knowing that two-thirds of his votes in the previous election came at the expense of Al Gore. She ordered Nader's name be included on absentee ballots even before the state Supreme Court ruled on the controversial issue.

Florida's governor, Jeb Bush, naturally a strong supporter of his brother, has taken no steps to correct these departures from principles of fair and equal treatment or to prevent them in the future.

It is unconscionable to perpetuate fraudulent or biased electoral practices in any nation. It is especially objectionable among us Americans, who have prided ourselves on setting a global example for pure democracy. With reforms unlikely at this late stage of the election, perhaps the only recourse will be to focus maximum public scrutiny on the suspicious process in Florida.

Former president Carter is chairman of the Carter Center in Atlanta.

Taken from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52800-2004Sep26.html

and

Something rotten in the state of Florida
Pregnant chads, vanishing voters... the election fiasco of 2000 made the Sunshine State a laughing stock. More importantly, it put George Bush in the White House. You'd think they'd want to get it right this time. But no, as Andrew Gumbel discovers, the democratic process is more flawed than ever
29 September 2004

Of the many weird and unsettling developments in Florida since the presidential election meltdown four years ago, none is so startling as the fact that Theresa LePore, the calamitously incompetent elections supervisor of Palm Beach County, still has her job. It was LePore who chose the notorious "butterfly ballot" - a format so confusing that it led thousands of Democrats, many of them elderly, retired Jewish people, to punch the wrong hole, giving their vote not to Al Gore, as they had intended, but to the right-wing, explicitly anti-Jewish fringe candidate Pat Buchanan.

and from CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A comprehensive study of the 2000 presidential election in Florida suggests that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a statewide vote recount to proceed, Republican candidate George W. Bush would still have been elected president.

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago conducted the six-month study for a consortium of eight news media companies, including CNN.

NORC dispatched an army of trained investigators to examine closely every rejected ballot in all 67 Florida counties, including handwritten and punch-card ballots. The NORC team of coders were able to examine about 99 percent of them, but county officials were unable to deliver as many as 2,200 problem ballots to NORC investigators. In addition, the uncertainties of human judgment, combined with some counties' inability to produce the same undervotes and overvotes that they saw last year, create a margin of error that makes the study instructive but not definitive in its findings.

As well as attempting to discern voter intent in ballots that might have been re-examined had the recount gone forward, the study also looked at the possible effect of poor ballot design, voter error and malfunctioning machines. That secondary analysis suggests that more Florida voters may have gone to the polls intending to vote for Democrat Al Gore but failed to cast a valid vote.

In releasing the report, the consortium said it is in no way trying to rewrite history or challenge the official result -- that Bush won Florida by 537 votes. Rather it is simply trying to bring some additional clarity to one of the most confusing chapters in U.S. politics.

Florida Supreme Court recount ruling

On December 12, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Florida Supreme Court ruling ordering a full statewide hand recount of all undervotes not yet tallied. The U.S. Supreme Court action effectively ratified Florida election officials' determination that Bush won by a few hundred votes out of more than 6 million cast. (Think this clearly shows the supreme court actually decided the election by preventing the re count which the Florida Supreme Court had ordered, this despite an earlier ruling in the stay motion brought by Bush that the FLorida Supreme court had juridisction in this case and that the Supreme court of America should not interfere, read this in the Supreme court ruling)

Using the NORC data, the media consortium examined what might have happened if the U.S. Supreme Court had not intervened. The Florida high court had ordered a recount of all undervotes that had not been counted by hand to that point. If that recount had proceeded under the standard that most local election officials said they would have used, the study found that Bush would have emerged with 493 more votes than Gore.

Gore's four-county strategy

Suppose that Gore got what he originally wanted -- a hand recount in heavily Democratic Broward, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Volusia counties. The study indicates that Gore would have picked up some additional support but still would have lost the election -- by a 225-vote margin statewide.

The news media consortium then tested a number of other hypothetical scenarios.

Use of Palm Beach County standard

Out of Palm Beach County emerged one of the least restrictive standards for determining a valid punch-card ballot. The county elections board determined that a chad hanging by up to two corners was valid and that a dimple or a chad detached in only one corner could also count if there were similar marks in other races on the same ballot. If that standard had been adopted statewide, the study shows a slim, 42-vote margin for Gore.

Inclusion of overvotes

In addition to undervotes, thousands of ballots in the Florida presidential election were invalidated because they had too many marks. This happened, for example, when a voter correctly marked a candidate and also wrote in that candidate's name. The consortium looked at what might have happened if a statewide recount had included these overvotes as well and found that Gore would have had a margin of fewer than 200 votes.

 
A county worker displays an optical scan ballot through a viewing window.    
The butterfly and caterpillar ballots

One of the most controversial aspects of the Florida election was the so-called butterfly ballot used in heavily Democratic Palm Beach County. Many voters came out of the polls saying they were confused by the ballot design.

According to the study, 5,277 voters made a clean punch for Gore and a clean punch for Reform Party nominee Pat Buchanan, candidates whose political philosophies are poles apart. An additional 1,650 voters made clean punches for Bush and Buchanan. If many of the Buchanan votes were in error brought on by a badly designed ballot, a CNN analysis found that Gore could have netted thousands of additional votes as compared with Bush.

Eighteen other counties used another confusing ballot design known as the "caterpillar" or "broken" ballot, where six or seven presidential candidates are listed in one column and the names of the remaining minor party candidates appeared at the top of a second one. According to the study, more than 15,000 people who voted for either Gore or Bush also selected one candidate in the second column, apparently thinking the second column represented a new race.

Had many of these voters not marked a minor candidate in the second column, Gore would have netted thousands of additional votes as compared with Bush.

However, the double votes on both butterfly and caterpillar ballots were clearly invalid under any interpretation of the law.
(my note here but according to your Supreme court any vote cast which clearly indicates whom the voter intended to vote for is valid, the double marks here include where a voter wrote the name they wanted as well as indicating via the normal means due to the confusing ballot papers used)

Limits of the study

The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago study was commissioned by eight media companies -- The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, the St. Petersburg Times, The Palm Beach Post, The Washington Post and the Tribune Co., which includes the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel and Baltimore Sun, as well as other papers.

 
A county worker displays a punch-card ballot to a NORC coder.    
NORC used experienced staff researchers to supervise and train a larger pool of investigators, who then fanned out across Florida and personally examined 175,010 ballots provided by local election officials. The investigators recorded exactly what they saw on each ballot but made no attempt to determine whether the vote should have been counted.

From there, the media consortium took over, analyzing the raw data produced by NORC and drawing conclusions for various hypothetical scenarios.

As with any large-scale study, the NORC data is subject to some important limitations.

ported serious problems with record keeping at many local election offices. NORC relied on these offices to produce the rejected ballots, but county officials were unable to deliver as many as 2,200 problem ballots to NORC investigators.

Although trained to produce accurate, impartial reports, the NORC investigators are human and prone to human judgment and error. In particular, NORC discovered that male investigators were more likely to record marks on ballots than women. NORC also found a slight but statistically significant relationship between candidate marks and the investigators' party affiliation.

Most importantly, there is no guarantee that the judgments of the NORC investigators would have matched those of local election boards had the recount been permitted to proceed under any scenario.

This was also interesting:
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/election/electionfaq.htm#allow

There is actually a lot of of sites which indicate the fact that the Florida election was badly run and full of inconsistencies and it appears as though it will be just as badly run this year and the courts are preparing to test the limits of the Supreme court decision which may mean that the ballot system has to be uniform accross the state. Which would probably be a good thing.

(Edited by Bolldar Bloodaxe at 11:47 am on Oct. 13, 2004)

(Edited by Bolldar Bloodaxe at 11:50 am on Oct. 13, 2004)

[Rosslyn]

"The helicopter incident with the Bradley was another good example with a US apache helicopter (and i dont care if you didnt see the helicopter in the videio since the US army admitted they fired it) firing into an unarmed crowd of civilians."

Are these the unarmed civilians who were "looting" (as you described it, which to a helicopter could certainly appear to be "attacking", not to mention that there was the probability of US soldiers and/or US bodies in that vehicle still) the Bradley?  Just to be perfectly clear, your definition of "innocent civilians" includes those who decide to join a mob and strip a burning armed military vehicle that has just been attacked while an armed airship from the same military is flying overhead?  It sounds to me that the people whose actions should be questioned are the ones that put themselves into that situation.  Neither the US army nor George Bush herded those people into the area immediately surrounding the burning vehicle.  Nor did they set the vehicle on fire to attract "innocent civilians" just so they could kill them.  The fact that this is continually brought up here as an example of US aggression  "in the middle east dating back to the end of the second world war" (even though the US was largely a footnote in the middle east in that period of history, you can thank your friends the British and the French for setting middle-eastern policy in the 1930's and 1940's) makes me think that you're probably one of those people who would prosecute a homeowner for beating someone who breaks into his house.  Is beating someone generally bad?  Of course.  Did the robber put himself in that situation?  You bet.  

One thing to keep in mind as you assemble more "facts" for this ongoing diatribe about the 2000 election, specifically as it relates to Florida, is that the election officials in the "heavily Democratic Broward, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Volusia counties" are/were... you guessed it... Democrats!  Here in the US, local governments operate and supervise elections.  Elections that include state and federal candidates certainly are subject to more regulation than strictly local elections, but all the same they're still run by local governments.  These governments are also responsible for choosing and procuring their own election equipment.  If you, the Democrats, or anyone else wants to complain about what did or didn't happen in those four counties on November of 2000, you should focus your ire on the Democrat elected officials who were responsible for the election (not to mention voter education).  If you're going to send the Register-to-Vote-Mobile through the traditionally Democratic-leaning poor parts of town, you should probably show those folks how to fill out your arcane ballots while you're at it.  

"a host of other violations of the Geneva convention"

A point of discussion here (and another can of worms to open, hehe) is that the Geneva Convention only applies to prisoners of war.  If you want to recite various points of the Convention, go back and read the parts that specify the types of weapons and ammuntion that you're allowed to use (this is where the term "full metal jacket" comes from, as you don't want the person you're shooting to die of lead poisoning), the fact that you must be wearing a military uniform (or else you can be given a non-POW status, such as "spy" or the now-famous "enemy combatant" ) etc. etc. etc.  You don't see Iraqi army regulars imprisoned in Cuba.  Saddam isn't in Cuba.  Who's in Cuba then?  Maybe it's the people who dressed up like women, children, or others "including families and passers bye" and then shot at the soldiers when they thought they posed no threat.  Of course, we don't hear that part in these "interviews with serving marines"  that are cited.  These are the same people who think it's a neat strategy to fire from inside of a mosque, expecting that the resulting outcry over the US denegration of the Muslim religion and culture will keep these same Marines from firing back or going in and rooting them out.  This same concept holds true for neighborhoods.  If you're going to let "insurgents" hide in your house, store weapons/ammunition in your house, and fire on troops from your house, you may not want to actually STAY in your house much longer.  As has been stated, places like mosques, schools, and private homes tend to lose their protected status when the enemy is using them as bases for attack.  This seems reasonable to me.

(Edited by Rosslyn at 4:07 pm on Oct. 13, 2004)

(Edited by Rosslyn at 4:07 pm on Oct. 13, 2004)

[Zutroy]

That Flash movie didn't make any sense. All I got out of it was that Katherine Harris is evil. And what's this stuff about invalidating convicted felon's votes? They're not allowed to vote anyway.

"The Florida high court had ordered a recount of all undervotes that had not been counted by hand to that point. If that recount had proceeded under the standard that most local election officials said they would have used, the study found that Bush would have emerged with 493 more votes than Gore. "

Yeah, so Bush would have won anyway - that was the point I was making.

[Bolldar Bloodaxe]

Read it again Zutroy, it gives numorous instance where Gore would have won, the Bush would have won statement was based on a recount under the same circumstances that took place originally with 2000 of the questionable votes unable to be found, it also cites the fact that a large number of votes were missing. I think even for a died in the wool republican like you to intimate that the Florida election was anything but farcical is a big stretch. I dont think anything will ever convince you however.

The Katherine Harris video shows she was dishonest and disenfranchised voters legitamate voters, its mainly about the fact that most of the people she disenfranchised were not felons at all but innocent. I had a feeling you would miss that though lol.

The helicopter incident, actually there were no wounded, dead or alive Americans in the vehicle according to the US army. The vehicle was on fire and the crowd by my observation appeared to be mainly just watching it burn. Standing in close proximity to a burning vehicle may not be sensible but its not a crime either. I never said the vehicle was being looted just that that was the excuse the US army used for firing on it. Further I didnt bring this up as an example of US agression in the middle east. I brought it up as a deliberate attack on unarmed civilians which it most certainly was.

My statements with regard to US involvement in the middle east are true though they have not necessarily been of a overt military nature. CIA plots to install puppets or destabilise regimes and to support insurgents against governments abound. As do US moves to use economic muscle to stifle nationalisation of of the Oil industry in Iran for instance.

The people who set the rules for the election were Republicans and still are and since it is a republican controlled state there isnt a lot the democrats can do about it.

Enemy combatants is a BS term made up by the US government but more on that later no time at present. And many of those in Qantonimo bay did nothing more than upset someone who decided to collect a hefty fine for stating they belonged to Al Qeada.

[Zutroy]

"I think even for a died in the wool republican like you to intimate that the Florida election was anything but farcical is a big stretch."

A) I never claimed to be a Republican. As I stated in my previous post, I'm just tired of hearing all the ranting about Bush stealing the election when Gore wouldn't have won the recounts anyway.

B) It's DYED in the wool.

and,

C) What I find a big stretch is that you can somehow conclude that the majority of the "missing" votes were for Gore.  Moreso, it seems you completely ignored most of the article and only highlighted a couple of "what if?" projections that would never have been considered valid votes under any lawful circumstance. Counting Buchanan votes for Gore or double votes for Gore might get you a enough to put Gore ahead, but so would stuffing the ballot box with 500 fake votes.

"since it is a republican controlled state there isnt a lot the democrats can do about it"

Ross addressed this already: "local governments operate and supervise elections."

"Enemy combatants is a BS term made up by the US government but more on that later no time at present."

Please continue, I'd love to hear your reasoning behind this.