No wonder the lefties are distrusted.

Yep, it's a cliche but no less true for that. Vehement homophobes are repressed gays.

Yep, it's a cliche but no less true for that. Vehement anti Thatcherites are repressed true blues

Bollocks.You must get some better christmas crackers.

quote:

By the company we keep, indeed.

Indeed. If this is Kevin's only sensible friend I shudder to imagine his other mates.

Cheers

Don

mick, just for the record, w was NOT elected by a majority in either election, and was indeed installed by the republican-controlled supreme court after a number of bogus events which i won't go into here. this is a sore subject w/ me, so i refuse to get on that bus either, as w should be clearing the brush at his texas ranch fulltime, in my view. good luck and godspeed.

quote:

Originally posted by Mick Parry:

You may not like GWB but he was democratically elected and I go with the people who voted him in. In other words just normal decent people.

Whoah, whoah, whoah, wait just a cotton-pickin' minute here ... say WHAT?

First of all, President Junior was NOT "democratically elected," not in any sense. Aside from the oddity of the American electoral process that allows someone to become president despite the fact that more people voted for the other guy (the popular vote, as opposed to the electoral vote), the only way that one can accept that Junior was "democratically elected" is if you can accept that over 10,000 elderly Jews in Florida intentionally voted for the likes of Pat Buchanan (which would be kind of like Gays For Falwell), and not even Pat Buchanan himself believes that. The democratic process was subverted, and the investigation into its subversion was illegally and prematurely halted by a Supreme Court stacked with Republicans appointed by Junior's father and Junior's father's boss, Reagan. And the Buchanan mess is only one of several well-documented anomalies.

On top of that, Mick, are you saying that those who didn't vote for Shrub aren't "normal decent people"?! Them's fighting words, buddy.

All best,
Fred

What Fred said.

Bush was selected by the Supreme Court, in a breathtakingly tragic maneuver in 2000. They didn't let the votes be counted in the big urban counties during the last re-count: this would have surely given Gore the election. And don't even get me started on the blatant vote suppression of Democrats in Ohio in 2004...

And it's very probable that the Iraq disaster would've been averted. The West is going to pay for that colossal miscalculation for decades - didn't anyone (in the Bush admin) read the history of the post-WW I British colonial experience there in the 1920's? Ahh...no. We don't read history in America anymore. We watch American Idol.

imigod it's all so true, the w disaster has been on a grand scale, seven more amrerican boys blown up today, and untold other suffering, for the apparent purpose of getting the u.s. more deadly enemies by the minute. i don't care if the electorate watches bad tv, but it woulda been nice if someone in d.c. read history. how about wolfie?? - one of the moron architects of this disaster. i guess it was such a miracle he landed a girlfriend at all, he went gaga. couldn't even hold onto his political job w threw him. what a pack of stupid wanks.

Some say the election mayhem is payback for the Democratic follies back in JFK days...
History will judge all this harshly, I'm sure. In the mean time, most Americans want government out of their shorts and to make a decent life for themselves.
The USA democracy in action is this: Those that disagreed with the results can work for changes to keep it from happening again. And most got up the next morning, went to work, paid their taxes and loved their families realizing that even with GWB (or Clinton or whom ever they didn't want for president) in "charge" we are better off than most of the rest of the world and that the president has to leave office when their term expires or they're voted out of office. No riots, work stoppages, cars burning, etc. because our system is constantly checking and balancing itself.
I know only one person that was so disgusted with all this election crap that they and their family immigrated. To NZ, no less! And some of the most outspoken celebs such as Alec Baldwin are still here. Goes to show you...
I think 9/11 would have happened no matter who was elected. Their potential response to it is the subject of endless speculation.
David
edited

quote:

First of all, President Junior was NOT "democratically elected," not in any sense. Aside from the oddity of the American electoral process that allows someone to become president despite the fact that more people voted for the other guy

Same in the Uk, so nothing new there.

Most democratically elected governments/Presidents get less than 50% of the electorate votes and many get fewer votes than the main opposition party. In the UK we have an electoral boundary commission to try to keep the votes per seat even, but even then one party can take (say) 51 seats with each seat won on (theoretically) 51% of the votes for those seats, whilst another party can take 50 seats (and thus loose the election) with each seat won on (theoretically) 99% of the votes for those seats. Overall the loosing party has three times the votes of the winning party. ISTR that your voting pattern wasn't anything like as bad as this.

And proportional representation doesn't always deliver anything better - a hung parliament would probably be the outcome in the UK.

If your President can be chosen on the basis of a (relatively) few "spoiled" ballot papers or a (relatively) few rigged votes in one or two states, then it strikes me that it was a very close-call and a fair number of voters were with the President. Looks like if your side had won, it wouldn't have had any greater mandate.

Better luck next time. At least in a democracy such as yours there will be a next time.

Cheers

Don

quote:

Originally posted by bhazen:
And don't even get me started on the blatant vote suppression of Democrats in Ohio in 2004...

I seem to remember one particular feature of the 2000 election was the appearance of a phalanx of police officers actually blocking a main road preventing access to the polling station for a whole group of (mainly black) Democrat voters. Was that in Ohio?

quote:

Ahh...no. We don't read history in America anymore. We watch American Idol.

Or as Ryan Seacrest says...

"Uh - MER - ican Idol"

quote:

Originally posted by Mick Parry
Vehement anti Thatcherites are repressed true blues

Hmm, you may have a point there. Personally, however, I have never felt the need to destroy communities, lead the country into a senseless war to bolster my own credibility and satisfy my vanity, been described as a psychotic meglomaniac (not even by my closest friends), given birth to two despicable offspring, or wantec to sh** Dennis.

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:

quote:

By the company we keep, indeed.

Indeed. If this is Kevin's only sensible friend I shudder to imagine his other mates.

Cheers

Don

Watch it!

Littlejohn is certainly no friend of mine. I've only met him a couple of times, and then only in a professional capacity. For some reason he is the UK's highest-paid "journalist" (around a million a year), writing a weekly column for The Daily Mail and other right-wing rags.

Basically he is a brasher, more bigoted Mick Parry, a similarly self-styled "voice of common sense and the man in the street"; one of those retards who still thinks it's amusing to say the French stink of garlic or that all women who want to work are lezzas. You know the type. But unlike Parry, he has a wider audience than just bemused folk on hi-fi fora.

To give you an idea of just how rubbishly right wing this idiot is, he was once upbraided on live national TV for being obnoxious to a group of lesbians by... NONE OTHER THAN MICHAEL WINNER!

I think you should learn to read a little more carefully in future, Don.

Pip pip!

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:
If your President can be chosen on the basis of a (relatively) few "spoiled" ballot papers or a (relatively) few rigged votes in one or two states, then it strikes me that it was a very close-call and a fair number of voters were with the President. Looks like if your side had won, it wouldn't have had any greater mandate.

The point you're missing is that, in the US, the people vote, then a group known as the electoral college votes. The former are exercising a constitutional right; the latter elect the president.

There is no legal mandate that the electoral college vote should imitate that of the people. It simply works out that way much of the time. In GWB's case, it was indeed a "(relatively) few "spoiled" ballot papers" that gave him the appearance of carrying the popular vote. Had nothing to do with his being put in office, though - legally, it could just as easily have been that a large majority of the population voted against him, and had the electoral college still wanted him in office, he'd have been there.

BTW Don, I've noticed that you're the only person here who seems to regard Littlejohn as "sensible" - in fact, you've said so multiple times now. Have you noticed that?

**

Kevin-W

You are more foul than the stench oozing from a camels rectum, you have as much decency as a Soho spiv and you are basically a moron devoid of all moral worth.

You quote my name and yet I have never made any comments about lesbians or the French.

You are a typical leftie who has to resort to inventing things to win his argument and hence the title of this thread that lefties are distrusted sums you up.

quote:

Originally posted by Mick Parry:

I have never made any comments about lesbians or the French.

Err, isn't your premise for this whole thread a comment about the French (the ones who happen to be "lefties" (i.e., the smelly, ignorant baddies) as well as the ones who you believe think like you (i.e., the righteous, wholesome goodniks)?

Jay

It is dishonorable to invent things that have never been said and he has invented them.

He has sunk to the gutter.

Regards

Mick

quote:

Originally posted by Kevin-W:

Basically he is a brasher, more bigoted Mick Parry, a similarly self-styled "voice of common sense and the man in the street"; one of those retards who still thinks it's amusing to say the French stink of garlic or that all women who want to work are lezzas. You know the type. But unlike Parry, he has a wider audience than just bemused folk on hi-fi fora.

And so with a snide press of a few keys, you accuse Mick of being brash, a bigot and a retard.

Very poor, and almost certainly a breach of the following forum AUP.

"You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use this BB to post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise violative of any law. "


My opinion of you has just plummeted.

Mick
if you understood English punctuation you would see that he has not attributed such comments to you, but to Littlejohn. All he has said about you is that you and he share a degree of brashness and bigotry.

Bob

What he said was, that Like Littlejohn, I would say such things and I would not dream of doing so.

He has transgressed the lines of decent behaviour and is unfit to be a member of this forum.

Regards

Mick

I would have to say in that in all fairness, whilst Mick clearly and unashamedly nails his colours towards the right of the political spectrum, I do not believe him capable of saying anything that remotely resembles the disgusting views of the the vile Littlejohn.

quote:

Indeed. If this is Kevin's only sensible friend I shudder to imagine his other mates.

Jayd,

I now understand what they mean when they say Americans don't do irony.

So, just to help you understand, I don't think Littlejohn is sensible, but compared to Kevin's other mates, it seems he might be able to pull it off!!!!

The above quote was the second time I'd refered to Kevin's friend.

So far as I can tell, and I know you will correct me if I am wrong, I have only refered to this particular friend twice. So now I'm begining to wonder if counting is also a problem in America - two hardly constitues "multiple times"

Cheers

Don

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:
So far as I can tell, and I know you will correct me if I am wrong, I have only refered to this particular friend twice. So now I'm begining to wonder if counting is also a problem in America - two hardly constitues "multiple times"

Crazy! Talk about two peoples divided by a common language - over here, "multiple" is defined as "more than one".

PS- I recognize irony when it's present. But I'm impressed by your vision (imagination?), seeing irony in your statements where others might simply see error. Great stuff.

PPS- I'm sure that by saying two is not the same as multiple, you were just being ironic. Weren't you?

quote:

The point you're missing is that, in the US, the people vote, then a group known as the electoral college votes. The former are exercising a constitutional right; the latter elect the president.

There is no legal mandate that the electoral college vote should imitate that of the people. It simply works out that way much of the time. In GWB's case, it was indeed a "(relatively) few "spoiled" ballot papers" that gave him the appearance of carrying the popular vote. Had nothing to do with his being put in office, though - legally, it could just as easily have been that a large majority of the population voted against him, and had the electoral college still wanted him in office, he'd have been there.

Thanks for the briefing, Jayd. I wasn't missing anything significant, just cutting corners in a post.

Looks like the message, either way, is that Bush had a fair number of people rooting for him - which I think was the gist of the argument being put forward by Mick, myself and one or two others.

Of course, my comparison with the UK electoral system, likewise cut obvious corners. We don't actually vote for a prime Minister. We vote for individual candidates, most of whom represent one of two major parties (ok, three if you count the Lib-Dems). The party leader normally offers to form a government with him/her as Prime Minister. So, in practice, we kind of know who to expect as Prime Minister depending on which party wins. Last time Tony Blair said he would serve a full term as Prime Minister if Labour won, which it did. He only served 2 years (out of a possible 5). We are now stuck with Gordon Brown, probably until his time runs out.

The selection of Party Leader is carried differently by the various political parties, but the general electorate are not involved.

Cheers

Don