Category: Elections 2004

I’ve intentionally (even desperately) avoided watching any of the convention coverage, but, as with SotU addresses, I find the disconnect between partisan viewers on both sides to be astonishing. A speech that one person describes as snarky, arrogant, hateful, stupid, clumsy, and/or utterly representative of every horrific cliché about the speaker’s party is described by another as thoughtful, profound, uplifting, classic, engaging, inspirational, and/or utterly representative of what’s best about the speaker’s party. And that was as true for the DNC as the RNC coverage.

It’s both amusing and disturbing.

An interesting look at how folks associate commercial brands with the presidential candidates.

The study reveals Bush supporters associate the brand called Bush with brands that evoke attributes such as … “reliable, humble, heritage, and solid.” Kerry supporters associate the brand called Kerry with brands that convey attributes of “high-quality, high-performance, hip, and young.” Undecided voters associate more trendy and upscale brands with Kerry and attach more common and mainstay brands with Bush.

As an example, everybody associates Bush with IBM, but while both Bush supporters and Undecideds link Kerry to Apple, Kerry’s supporters see him as more of a Dell sort of guy.

Conversely, while Bush supporters see his coffee attribution as Folgers, Kerry supporters and Undecideds think he’s more of a Dunkin’ Donuts sort of fellow — and they all agree that Kerry is Starbucks.

Hmmm. What if you prefer IBM and Starbucks?

(via J-Walk)

The Lord has a way of revealing those of us who really know him, and those that don’t!
Think about it!
Kerry gave a big speech last week about how his faith is so “important” to him. In this attempt to convince the American people that we should consider him for president, he announced that his favorite Bible verse is John 16:3.
Of course the speech writer meant John 3:16, but nobody in the Kerry camp was familiar enough with scripture to catch the error. And do you know what John 16:3 says? John 16:3 says; “They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me.” The Spirit works in strange ways.

Except, of course, the same e-mail was earlier circulated about George W. Bush.

And, before that, about Al Gore.

Though there’s at least one person who claims to know the real culprit.

I love the Snopes site. You can see all their new urban legends listed here, which includes an XML feed and an e-mail update subscription link.

Whatever one thinks of John Kerry, he’s certainly contributed (on the Daily Show) the most interesting bit of insight into life on the campaign trail:

“You’d be amazed at the number of people who want to introduce themselves to you in the men’s room,” he said. “It’s the most bizarre part of this entire thing.”

Coloradoans will vote in November not only on their next President, but in how the state’s electors will vote for him. To wit, a proposition will be on the ballot that, instead of the most-common winner-take-all electoral vote, would make Colorado the only state in the nation to allocate out its electoral votes by the proportion of the ballot.

(Maine and Nebraska are not winner-take-all, but winner-take-each Representative district, with the two Senatorial electoral votes going to the majority.)

Volokh cites some interesting arguments as to which way this might go, which parties are rooting for it, and what the electoral effect might be. In the long run, it appears to weaken Colorado’s influence, but from a “every electoral vote counts” perspective, it could have some support in a close race.

Of course, expect that if the change were adopted, and it did actually affect the election, a slew of legsal challenges would be made.

My own opinion on the matter is far from decided. But it should make for an interesting diversion (especially if it’s possible to divorce it from the impact on this election) from presidential politics in the coming months.

For each the following, identify who said it — John Kerry, or John Ashcroft:

1. “If we are to stand as the world’s role model for freedom, we need to remain vigilant about our own civil liberties.”
2. “The technology is already available to monitor all electronic money transfers. We need the will to make sure it is put in place.”
3. “To date, we have heard a great deal about the needs of law enforcement and not enough about the privacy needs of the rest of us. […] Now, more than ever, we must protect citizens’ privacy from the excesses of an arrogant, overly powerful government.”
4. “[O]ne would be hard-pressed to find a single grieving relative of those killed in […] the World Trade Center in New York or the federal building in Oklahoma City who would not have gladly sacrificed a measure of personal privacy if it could have saved a loved one.”
5. “We absolutely must push for asset forfeiture laws all over the planet. In the words of one plainspoken lawman, ‘Get their ass and get their assets.'”
6. “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberties, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists ? for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve.”
7. “If the standards by which banks accept money were lived up to with the same diligence as that by which most banks lend money, the ‘know your customer’ maxim would have teeth. But too many bankers pretend they are doing all they can to know what money crosses their threshold and pretend they are not as key as they are to law-enforcement efforts.”
8. “The real problem with the Patriot Act is not the law, but the abuse of the law.”

Continue reading “Quotables Johns”

A group of British genealogists claim that the US presidential candidate with the best ties to royalty wins the election. On that basis, they’re calling it for John Kerry.

After months of research into Kerry’s ancestry, Burke’s Peerage, experts on British aristocracy, reported on Monday that the Vietnam War veteran is related to all the royal houses of Europe and can claim kinship with Russian czar Ivan the Terrible, a previous emperor of Byzantium and the shahs of Persia.

Well, that certainly makes up my mind.

Kerry is a descendant of bygone kings of England, Henry III and Henry II, and is distantly related to Richard the Lionheart, who led the third Crusade in 1189, according to Burke’s.

No doubt that will establish his foreign relations creds with the Europeans and Muslim world.

Kerry also has relations back to France, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, not to mention to the first governor of Massachusetts, John Winthrop.

Bush, on the other hand, though impressive enough in his blue blood to beat Al Gore, just can’t muster the royalty to win against Kerry.

Similar research carried out on Bush ahead of the 2000 presidential race showed that he beat Al Gore in the royal stakes, claiming kinship with Britain’s Queen Elizabeth as well as with Kings Henry III and Charles II of England.

I hope that makes this November’s decision easier for everyone …

(via Hit&Run)

I haven’t decided that I agree with the candidate conclusions of “Republicans for Kerry” in this race, but if I saw a candidate whom I actually thought was firmly dedicated to the principles outlined here (with which I agree about 95%), they would indeed have my financial, rhetorical, and electoral support for this November.

No, I don’t want to talk about it.

(via Stan)

I’ve really tried to avoid presidential politics for some weeks now. I’m not commenting on the DNC convention, and won’t be on the RNC one, either.

But I found this article, by a writer who clearly dislikes Bush (and recommended by another), to be thought-provoking.

(via Mark Evanier)

Paul Musgrave provides a graphic example of how political incivility wasn’t invented in the last few years.

Certainly not. Has it gotten worse? Has it moved from beyond attack dog functionaries to the candidates themselves? Or all we all pining for a golden age which never existed.

No idea. But I’m not only tired of it this cycle, I’m tired of the conventions suddenly becoming open season to fight the tired battles from the previous administrations. Feh.

I don’t know which I’m finding more irksome, the “For the love of all that’s holy, [CANDIDATE X] must be stopped, by any means necessary, lest the entire planet spin out of control and fall into the sun!” folk, or the “Jeez, [CANDIDATE X] sure is a clueless dolt, compared to smug little ol’ me and the candidate of my choosing” sorts.

Because, really, it’s getting old from both sides.

Which is not to say that one candidate or the other (or both) isn’t a potential cosmic peril to the planet (or at least our nation upon it), or that one or the other (or both) isn’t a dolt. But the shrillness/smugness is way past its sell-by date, and by the time November rolls around, I’m liable to start getting really nasty about it.

Just a Friday afternoon thought.

Go to the website Boston04.com, and you’ll get to the official Democratic National Convention website.

Go to Boston2004.com (or .org), and you’ll get the web page for Noreascon, the 62nd Worldcon (World Science Fiction Convention), also being held in Boston this summer.

Hilarity ensues.

So, courtesy of the Worldcon folks, here’s some Reasons Why Noreascon Four is Not the DNC:

• We’re not $10 million over budget. We don’t even have a $10 million budget.
• Our promises for the future are supposed to be fiction.
• The folks wandering around with walkie-talkies are likely to be helpful and friendly.
• The slogans on our buttons are actually funny, and many of them are about cats.
• When someone tries to sell you something, it’s because they are a dealer in the dealers’ room.
• In a word-association test, we respond to “Fahrenheit” with “451.”
• We are allowed to accept donations from non-resident aliens…but our aliens may have tentacles and extra feet.
• Some of our attendees have written books about ghosts. Some of theirs have had books written by ghosts.
• There’s much conversation about “character” at both conventions, but we’ve got a lot more to say about “plot” and “setting”, too.

Heh.

(via BoingBoing)

I’m not sure why so many fringe folk, Left and Right, are spending time right now on the dire question, “Will Dick Cheney be the veep contender this year?” But, heck, why should I be any different?

Why Dick Cheney won’t be the veep on the 2004 GOP ticket:

1. He’s made his zillions of dollars in hidden deals, for himself and his friends, so it’s time to skip town before he gets nailed for it. Maybe the Bahamas, to work on his tan.
2. Because by the time November rolls around, he’ll be a fugitive, fleeing from international justice. “But — the war was started by a one-armed man!”
3. Because Cheney is so identified with the nassssty policies of the Bush Administration that he’s a political liability. By getting rid of Cheney, everyone will trust the GOP again.
4. Because compared to John Edwards, Cheney looks like he’s rehearsing for the lead roll in A Christmas Carol revival. Or perhaps a Grinch stage show.
5. Because his heart is held together with bailing wire and duct tape (sold to the government under a no-bid multi-trillion dollar contract with You-Know-Who), and he’s liable to pitch over dead at any time.
6. Because he just fired his doctor, you know, and that’s just laying the groundwork for finding another doctor who will give him cover to quit.
7. Because he’s in charge of the CIA director selection team, which is setting him up to be CIA directory, where he can still be the Power Behind the Throne, but Bush can choose some more human-seeming for his running mate.

Why Dick Cheney will be the veep on the 2004 GOP ticket:

1. Because he had his brain transferred into a robotic body long ago (what, you really believed in those “away recovering from a heart attack” stories?), and now he’s “more machine than man, twisted and evil.”
2. Because he’s a member of the living dead, and thus not only will continue to live for all eternity, but still needs to set up the reign of his fellows, ensuring that he can take baths in virgins’ blood fortnightly.
3. Because the various obvious GOP alternatives — Powell, Rice, McCain, Quayle — wouldn’t take the position on a bet.
4. Because he’s a power-mad fool, the Grey Eminence, and who’d give up being Emperor of the World by Proxy?
5. Because Bush has a reputation for loyalty (to a fault), and would never ask him to step down, even if it turned out that he really was bathing in the blood of virgins under the full moon each month, and the virgins were being supplied by a trillion-dollar no-bid contract by You-Know-Who.
6. Because to choose someone else, even with the flimsy cover of “health reasons” (what, you believe those “heart attack” stories?), would be to admit that the past four years have been an unmitigated disaster. Only by pretending that nothing is wrong will the electorate ever be properly duped.

Take your pick. No, I’m not serious. Mostly.

“This Land Was Made for You and Me,” Bush/Kerry style. Heh.

(via Jackie (!!))

Florida is scrapping its much-condemned “These May Be Felons So Consider Not Letting Them Vote List” — though not because of its inaccuracies, but because it left off Hispanic felons.

The decision to scrap the list was made after it was reported that the list contained few people identified as Hispanic; of the nearly 48,000 people on the list created by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, only 61 were classified as Hispanics.
That was because when voters register in Florida, they can identify themselves as Hispanic. But the potential felons database has no Hispanic category, which excludes many people from the list if they put that as their race.

The list was coming under harsh criticism already, due to numerous errors. Florida is one of several states that blocks convicted felons (even from other states) from voting without applying to the state for clemency.

The purge of felons from voter rolls has been a thorny issue since the 2000 presidential election. A private company hired to identify ineligible voters before the election produced a list with scores of errors, and elections supervisors used it to remove voters without verifying its accuracy. A federal lawsuit led to an agreement to restore rights to thousands of voters.
The new list was released July 1, with officials saying Gov. Bush’s administration was simply complying with federal election law. Problems with the list were quickly detected.
State officials have said there are people on the list who are not felons, and elections workers have flagged more than 300 people listed who might have received clemency.
Another problem was that about 2,700 people who had received clemency were still on the list. That was because they had registered to vote before they received clemency. The state initially required them to register again, but later backed off.

A twist most folks don’t know about is that the 1997 Miami mayoral race was invalidated because of sloppy voter rolls, both “dead” people voting and ineligible felons. The Florida legislature decided at that point to crack down on the voter rolls to try to identify ineligible voters.

Whether they did so competently is another matter. But as long as Florida has the no-felons law on the books, some sort of list will be critical for local counties and precincts to validate against.

Let’s hope that any subsequent list produced will be more accurate than the one just tossed out.

Okay, enough with the “Oh My God, He’s a Trial Lawyer!” Edwards slams. While the excesses of civil courts can be weighed against the excesses of businesses who are rightfully sued, I think you can discuss the issue of “tort reform” without painting “trial lawyers” as something you’d scrape off your shoe.

That’s one meme that’s already tiresome, and it’s only going to get worse with time.

(Though, no, I wouldn’t vote for Perry Mason as pres — the dude plays faster and looser with the law, even in a good cause, than anyone should feel comfortable with in a chief executive. Nor do I think he’d take the job.)