Jobber of the Week

Clinton, Bush, whichever, Gillespie was still a lobbyist, which is not exactly a very fashionable or appreciated job in Washington. That he represented one of the most corrupt companies in the last 30 years doesn't exactly establish good PR.

No, Mike. What about the federal taxes? That's not a state issue, that's a federal issue. What do we do about them?

Okay, and what about the breaks a couple gets in federal taxes?

When Kerry was viewed as dead meat in the race. I fail to see how that connects him. Source? That connects the Democrats, but not Kerry (and remember that Ginsberg represented the Bush campaign, not the GOP, and thus the reason he was dropped was because Bush is trying to distance himself.) I think he appeared in some TV ads for them to attract Latino votes? I'll pass on this one until you can come up with a name or some evidence.

Does it matter? He still convinced our elected officials to give more of your money and my money to Ken Lay's band of thieves.

Let's take the whole marriage kerfluffle out of the picture and just say civil unions. Now, in your picturesque America where states decide whether they want civil unions or not, let's pretend a couple gets a union in a state which has them, and then moves into a state which took the "get back in the closet, you fags" method of accepting no unions, no nothing. One person gets sick and is taken to the hospital. Their partner can't be with them because the partner has all the privelages of a common stranger in this state. You see a problem here? The couple has lost civil liberties by moving into a state which won't accept their civil union from their last state.

Terry McAwful is campaigning. I just searched the entire article you posted for the word Kerry and no results came up in regards to him actually saying anything about campaigning during the convention. And yeah, former Enron lobbyist and current GOP head Ed Gillespie was over the news during the DNC as well. I remember this clearly because I was in a Las Vegas hotel room wishing I had C-SPAN so I could watch without the talking heads. I did get a small token gift though with "BALOONS BALOONS GO BALOONS WHERE IS THE CONFETTI COME ON GUYS GO ALL BALOONS." This time it'll either be C-SPAN or HDnet.

There's stuff at stake that falls outside the boundaries of state. Tax breaks and civil liberties for couples, for instance. There should be Civil Unions on the federal level. States can decide for themselves if the term marriage is appropriate or not.

I asked for information and you gave me bullshit because someone once said Bush knew. Great. Evidence without assassins and Hitler involved? Then let's hear it.

I agree with that. I wish the medical community would do more to stop the practice on their own, not support PBAs. Bans, on the other hand, I'm not sure. My main issue with abortion laws have been, suprisingly, not the religious angle that it seems I'm always focused on, but a distaste of the idea of men deciding through law what a woman can choose to have done on her body. I wish, for instance, doctors would just refuse to do the proceedure except maybe for the most extreme circumstances (i.e. life of the mother is at stake.)

I don't approve of PBAs, but I don't approve of bans, either. Ambivalence is my middle name here.

I'm going to have to print that for some people, Mike. Seeing someone pretend this is even fair is a hoot. I just love the MoveOn Hitler Ads that were included in the table for no reason (they're linked to two people who are already linked to one another) and the Mafia Hitman who has no ties to any politicians but was only included so we could Six Degrees of John Kerry with mafiosos.

George Elliott, 1996: "The fact that he chased an armed enemy down is something not to be looked down upon, but it was an act of courage." George Elliott, 2003: "When he came back from the well-publicized action where he beached his boat in middle of ambush and chased a VC around a hootch and ended his life, when he came back and I heard his debrief, I said, 'John, I don't know whether you should be court-martialed or given a medal, court-martialed for leaving your ship, your post.' But I ended up writing it up for a Silver Star, which is well deserved, and I have no regrets or second thoughts at all about that." George Elliott, 2004: "While I suppose the fleeing, wounded Viet Cong could have been backpedaling, I have never heard this faintly suggested by anyone, and I do not understand why he would have to turn around to face Kerry if he were fleeing backward. The difference is not material to any of my opinions. Had I known the facts, I would not have recommended Kerry for the Silver Star for simply pursuing and dispatching a single wounded Viet Cong." *chuckle, snicker, snicker..* "I was in Cambodia, sir." "I doubt he [Kerry] was there, either!"

It's not a decades thing, it's a variety thing. There's gotta be more to rock than what I listed above, AC/DC, and Black Sabbath.

This is the second time you've written something about TV scheduling that winds up being related to country in a far other time zone than the ones the majority of the board is located. Can you please use a [uK] or something in your title in the future? It'll save you a lot of grief from American & Canadian fans.

That statement was written, but I almost considered introducing it in "And now, Bob Dole would like to talk about one of Bob Dole's favorite subjects, namely, Bob Dole." And now, let's welcome our newest(?) liar, Mr. John O'Neill, who lied to President Nixon himself about being in Cambodia: Damage control is now in session, though to his credit O'Neill has decided to be his own spin doctor: "Well, yeah, okay, I lied, but this guy LIED A LOT!"

As we approached the enemy, there was a brief exchange of gunfire. I took a grenade in hand, pulled the pin, and tossed it in the direction of the farmhouse. It wasn't a very good pitch (remember, I was used to catching passes, not throwing them.) In the darkness, the grenade must have struck a tree and bounced off. It exploded nearby, sending a sliver of metal into my leg-the sort of injury the Army patched up with Mercurochrome and a Purple Heart. -- Bob Dole's response to Bob Dole's Purple Heart

That was a joke, right? I LOLed damn hard when I saw they threw in the Hitler ads. The mobster connected to one guy with no political connection whatsoever made it feel like one of those Onion infographs.

I mean that he didn't speak up this year until recently. As Kerry was gaining momentum and eventually became the clear pick for the candidacy O'Neill didn't do any talk shows or appear on any news networks, even Fox, to warn Americans about supporting Kerry. You claimed that he was working as hard as he could in processing affidavits and so much other work that SwiftVets as a 527 wound up not appearing on the radar until pretty late in the campaign, but somewhere in the middle of all that O'Neill managed to find the time to author a 256 page book. Yes, you're right, O'Neill did appear in a timely fashion in the seventies when he was contacted by the Nixon administration to "destroy this young demagogue before he becomes another Ralph Nader," but the timing of SwiftVets in relation to the campaign and O'Neill's silence until that point in the election has all the timelyness of an ambush. Their representatives in interviews have had difficulty with talk show hosts, trying to spin that their accusations on Kerry are not an endorsement of President Bush, but merely a lack of endorsement for Kerry. I think it's pretty hard to declare yourself a moderate in that position, but if we take them at their word, the co-author's comments about "BJ Bill" and "Hell-ary" among others isn't exactly helping them work towards that goal. Did they all quit and talk for VVAW as well then? Because some of these guys were pretty loyal until suddently "Well, sorry John, but I'm going to make your VVAW work an issue now if you're running for the Oval Office." Exactly what else in there is useful besides what's already released (citations, after-actions, OERs, etc etc.) If he received a blemish on his service record it would show up on those. Now, perhaps there's pages of those missing but I think they're all there. I think they've made some claims that aren't true while I think some claims have been more truthful. So yes, I think they are spreading lies but I don't think everyone involved is lying non-stop. Even if it's just purely out of convenience and coincidence and not coordinated, it's still the same result. He sits there humble and innocent while the other guy gets the shit kicked out of him all over the papers and TV. Did you know that 45% of Americans have seen or heard of the SwiftVets ad even though it's only aired in three states? Do you know how that happened? A hint: "John Kerry's Band of Brothers" in your sig there is majorily responsible. Yep.

See the line "one of Richard Nixon's old contacts". It doesn't exactly help when the big new shocker best-selling book by the controversial non-partisan SwiftVets for Truth group is written by someone so one-sided. Imagine if I wrote a SHOCKING TELLALL book about a popular Republican in two years. Do you not think the stuff I have written on this board isn't going to come back and discredit me? Heck, you'd probably be emailing my most lefty posts to the politician in question. Thurlow's Bronze Star citation lists the same non-existant enemy combat that he speaks out about regarding Kerry's medal. Okay, one guy. And you can't deny it's a little suspicous that the guys who were actually on the boat aside from one person have such a radically different view than the people who weren't on the boat. It's pretty hard when the typical response is that Kerry not only wrote every record everyone involved is mentioned in, but used different initials on different documents as well. How you even believe that or what you think the motives behind that are is beyond me. Kerry's changing his story is certainly an issue, but is nowhere near the amount of coincidences I mentioned above. If that was the case you'd expect more out of SwiftVets. I think all 264 of them are hurt to varying degrees by Kerry's anti-war activity. I think some have brought across information that has caused Kerry to change his story and could have done some help to clear the air, but the amount of unsubstantiated claims that go against the records has done far more to create political smog. I think, again, it all comes down to the protestor days and that these people think he backstabbed them for badmouthing the armed forces. In many interviews they always come back to that. It's the same tactic he either used or exploited, depending on how connected you think he is, with John McCain. Sit and apologize and keep your hands clean while an allied group does all the dirty work. Did Clinton say, "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service"?

Well then, care to hook me up?

Fine. I refer to these guys as liars because so far there haven't been any records that support their side of the story, one of their men has an award for a rescue in the middle of hostile fire that he says didn't exist, it's headed by one of Richard Nixon's old contacts that didn't come forward to speak out against Kerry until weeks before the election but has spent plenty of time writing a book about Kerry with a FreeRepublic regular who has made some less than modest statements about Democrats. What all of this comes down to is that they feel betrayed that Kerry spoke for VVAW and that's only what these guys have in common. Oh, and that they all served in other boats while the people who served in Kerry's boat have nothing but praise. There's some major credibility problems here outside of the raw politics of running the attack ad, and so rational and clear-thinking people are now skeptical and cynical of all the SwiftVet claims. The problem in this thread is that "rational and clear-thinking people" isn't including A MikeSC at the moment.

I can lights in my house because I like lights. I can have lights and marijuana in my house and the lights are still legal, the marijuana is not. I think we'll just have to disagree on this point. I'm trying to say what the violation is. Faulty wiring. AND, in a seperate charge, posession. When you're posessing the drugs, that's illegal. That doesn't make the lights any less legal if you're doing everything properly. You still don't seem to understand that this is being done to make an example out of this guy, certainly with a murder charge instead of manslaughter that's pretty obvious. A murder should mean he intentionally started a fire so that a firefighter would die. My opinion is that someone thought it was unfair that the firefighters died for this guy's pot and brought these ludicrous charges against him to send a "DON'T GROW POT" message to the populace. I just don't see why they don't investigate the wiring to use that against him. That certainly makes more sense and isn't stretching the intent of law. If you're hunting in a zone designated for hunting, your only doing what was expected in that area and the fire happened due to a situation beyond your control. Which is, again, different here. Because this was, I'd 90% be sure, not beyond this guy's control. I just think it's vitally important in the legal system that the charges be accurate. You don't arrest a guy for a nonviolent robbery and charge him with murder and business fraud.

UbiSoft has just released a game called The Political Machine. For those who don't know, this is basically like SimPolitics. As you can take many established politicians, the current breed of politicians, or make your own politician and try to act as their campaign manager in various races. They've tried to copy the feel of everything from the candidates themselves to the media as far as they can without being sued for copyright infringement or slander. Here's some screenshots to get you interested: Someone's Democrat running against GWB: Special Interest money, anyone? Ad creation John Kerry appears on the Bill O'Malley show Bill Clinton sets up an HQ: And with troublemaker characters such as protestors and activist people and just plain loons. This guy seems kind of familiar: He certainly is rather fat on the game screen: Granted, in 10 years the issues will be entirely different and nobody will be arguing over stuff like the Affirmative Action and the War On Terror (I hope), but I still think some of you guys might be interested in this. It also has online play. Anyone up for a game?