I Hate These Republicans

Anthony Lewis | January 6, 2005
I'm sitting here watching the debate on Ohio Election Irregularities, and I'm listening to these Republicans talk about how the Democrats have "sour grapes". How the Democrats wish to get their guy in office. What total out and out bullshit!

They say it's fantasy. They say it's conspiracy. Who in the fuck are these people?!

The notion that a person can go to the voting booth and not be assured that their vote will count, is shameful. And for these Republicans to say that Democrats are trying to take away from a "fair election system" (HA!), makes them as shameful as this episode.

Fuck them! And if you agree with the Republicans, then fuck you too!

Mike Eberhart | January 6, 2005
How nice.....

Anthony Lewis | January 6, 2005
I don't give a flying fart what anyone thinks anymore. Tired of being nice about this issue. When your ancestors and relatives were beaten, knocked upside the head and had the dogs sicced on them over this issue...and many others...

Yeah, I'm tired of being nice. So my comments won't be nice. If ya don't like it...TOO DAMN BAD!!! TOO GD BAD!!!

John E Gunter | January 6, 2005
How about if your ancestors had small pox given to them in blankets or were sent to reservations after having their land taken from them and had to deal with all these people who came or were brought over here?

John

Anthony Lewis | January 6, 2005
John. Much respect. The Native American has it worse than anyone else in this country. This is not a knock on a people. This is a knock on a political party.

It's not a White thing, or a Black thing or a Native American thing.

This is about making sure that every registered voter has the assurance that their vote will be valid...whether voting for the winner or a loser. And I don't appreciate this particular party....the Republican Party treating this like it's some thing out of the X-Files (like DeLay just tried to allude). It's pure BS. What, their vote counts because their guy won...so mine doesn't? It's not right. It's VERY WRONG!

Jackie Mason | January 6, 2005
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Anthony Lewis | January 6, 2005
Jackie, I'm not even proud of most of the Democratic senators...especially that pussy John Kerry. Only ONE Senator signed the complaint? My party's senators have been almost as disgusting. I'm honestly ready to go Independent, because I'm almost ashamed to have that (D) beside my name.

Mike Eberhart | January 6, 2005
I didn't respond to you with a long drawn out answer because it's not worth it. Also, I don't really want to be part of a thread with a title as such as the one you gave it. Totally unnecessary. Also, the path that you seem to be trying to take this thread is unnecessary.

Anna Gregoline | January 6, 2005
Anthony, I too, am ashamed of the Democratic party, but not as much as the Republican party. At least we still stand for human rights, unfortunately, no one wants to try and stand up for voting rights though.

Anthony Lewis | January 6, 2005
Mike I don't care if you respond or not. I didn't ASK you to respond. I don't care if you took what I said personally. I don't care what you think. I don't care if you think "the path" I'm trying to take this thread is unneccessary. I don't care if you think the title I gave this thread is unneccessary. I didn't post this thread to tick you off. And if it did, then so what.

Do you get the underlying theme? I DON'T CARE!!!

If you think that these are just the ravings of a lunatic, then so freakin' be it. You can say whatever you want. You can sit in the background. You call me whatever you want. Doesn't mean a hill of beans to me.

I'm tired of these Republicans. I hate 'em.

Kris Weberg | January 7, 2005
I don't hate all Republicans, just certain elements of the party that seem to be running the show these days.

Likewise, I believe that Bush clearly and cleanly won the election, and that the current Ohio challenge won't change that.

However, I think that everyone, Democrat, Republican, or whatever, should be worried about the serious voting problems of the last 8 years. It's easy to dismiss thse things as "a Democratic Party issue" or as "people too dumb to vote," but any process that generates this kind of uncertainty about something as fundamental as voting is a concern in a democratic republic like the one we have.

Of soemthing like 180 industrialized nations, the U.S. is the only one that has no centralized standards for voting -- we're the only place that lets states decide the criteria for federal election voting. That simply doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The result is that we have no good, easy resort in dealing with accusations of voting irregularities or questionable ballot-counting practices We have 50 different methods, not all of which are good ones.

Anna Gregoline | January 7, 2005
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Denise Sawicki | January 7, 2005
People I've been around have been making me a bit uncomfortable by talking about "crybaby Democrats" and so forth. I didn't speak up, naturally, because I can't do that kind of thing. But I was trying to find some of that evidence saying there were more votes than registered voters in certain counties in Florida, and so forth, and I happened upon this: (link) , which basically says that there were 3500 more votes than registered voters in the governor's race in Washington, causing the Democratic candidate to win... So I guess these kinds of discrepancies occasionally go both ways.

(I'm a liberal! I just found this interesting. Without extensive research I certainly wouldn't be able to verify which claims are accurate and which not. Um, I don't exactly watch the news, so I apologize if I am bringing up things that everybody already knows the answers to.)

Anyhow if there was this kind of unexplained phenomenon in my computer programming work, I know that people wouldn't rest until they had an explanation for every last detail. Why are our national and/or state elections not held to the same standards as my programming work? I don't think it would be considered acceptable to call our clients crybabies if they complained about any errors in our programs, no matter how minor.

Basically, Kris and the others who've said so previously are right, we need centralized standards for voting.

Amy Austin | January 7, 2005
Denise, that's the most rational comment on the topic yet.

Mike Eberhart | January 7, 2005
Yes, it was all too rational. There wasn't anything to do with Race in there... ;) I have no problems with people wanting to fix problems with voting. If there are issues, they should be fixed. I do believe that there weren't nearly as many problems as there was in 2000, no matter what anyone says. 2000 was just a cluster. All I have to say is 118,000+ votes... Even when they do an investigation, Kerry still won't overcome that deficit.

Jackie Mason | January 7, 2005
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Denise Sawicki | January 7, 2005
To further the analogy (because I'm wired and bizarrely talkative today, not because I'm picking on anyone) let's imagine a hypothetical conversation.

Client: "Your software put too many bolts on the shipping list for my building."

Tech support person: "So what, the building didn't fall down. That's not important enough for us to fix. Don't be a whiner, just deal with it!"

Basically, the point isn't that the election could be reversed (or that the building could fall down), the point is that if the system isn't working now it could in the future cause a catastrophic error, so it's best to try to fix the system as soon as possible.

Mike, not arguing with you or anyone else, you're being quite rational yourself.

Further disclaimer: the above mentioned conversation does not correspond to any actual conversation involving any company either real or imagined... My point is that no business does or would deal with customers that way, or they would go out of business. It is meant as an example of how not to respond to problems in daily life...

Amy Austin | January 7, 2005
Exactly... well-made point.

Jackie Mason | January 10, 2005
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