| WIKI | FAQ | Tech FAQ | |
 http://csua.com/feed/ | |
| ||||||
| 7/14 |
| 2004/7/5-6 [Politics/Domestic/911, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:31169 Activity:insanely high |
5/7 Why does anyone take Moore seriously? His movies are fiction,
not documentaties. First columbine now 911.
Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 911
http://davekopel.com/Terror/Fiftysix-Deceits-in-Fahrenheit-911.htm
\_ written by a democrat who voted for nader.
\_ holy shit! he voted his concious instead of his party! traitor!
kill him! burn the witch! he violated group think! he has
independent thought! destroy the infection!
\_ "independent thought" != intelligence.
\_ its relevant bc its written by a dem, not hannity or foxnews.
\_ A Dem who writes for the National Review. NRO has spent
the last six months openly campaigning for Bush and
slamming Kerry, so they are hardly an objective source.
\_ even before seeing 911, I do not see how any reasonable,
compassionate person could vote for gwbush again.
\_ compassionate? meaning what? you take my money and give it
to yourself and others who haven't earned it through the
power of the federal and state government? get a job and
you won't need compassion.
\_ no, i don't sit around thinking of ways to steal your
money and give it to welfare queens. I am an equal
opportunity bush despiser. there's lots of reasons
to not vote for george bush, i could easily make
a list of several hundred good ones not involving
taxes.
\_ It is a common fallacy of the politically maladroit
to assume that compassion has anything to with
politics. It does not. Politics is about ambition,
and ambition plays to what is expedient and necessary.
How is your Boston Brahmin any more or less despicable
than the Texan? You need wake up and smell the coffee.
Believing that compassion rules human behavior is
something that wisdom and common sense should have easily
discredited.
\_ And yet he sold his platform in 2000 on "compassionate
conservatism". We all knew the term was bullshit, and
yet it sold.
\_ No, it didn't. People voted against Gore because
he did poorly in the debates and is a crackpot.
Very few voted 'for' Bush in 2000. Gore's own
home state wouldn't even vote for him.
\_ Funny, I seem to remember Gore got over 50
percent of the vote...
\_ Funny, you seem to remember wrong. 48.38%.
http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/2000presgeresults.htm
\_ Perhaps. But like any good game, politics requires
either compromise or utter domination. For a short
while there, the Repubs had the latter: the House,
the Senate, the Presidency, the Bench, and the
support of the People. Recently, they seem to have
lost the latter two and confused the former two.
This requires compromise, and the Texan (and his
Cabinet) are notorious for being poor compromisers.
The Boston Brahmin is famed for being able to come
to reasonable compromises that diminish neither side.
\_ Famed? I call bullshit. I've *never* heard
anyone claim the most liberal voting Senator is
famed for any such thing.
\_ HE'S A FLIP FLOPPING LIBERAL, I TELL YOU!
(For the clue impaired, "flip flop" is right
wing speak for compromise.)
\_ Incidentally, whatever else may be true,
'flip-flopping' is perhaps the most damaging
smear against Democrats in the Republican
arsenal, in terms of real effects. -- ilyas
\_ What happened to 'waffling'?
\_ you mean it's not a piece of electronics!?
\_ Because the dems are out of power and they need someone like
Moore. The Reps used to use Limbaugh when they were out of power.
The opposition party always needs a wacky muckracking spokesman
to rally the troops. Moor's just the latest in a long line.
\_ Yes Rush is a firebrand but he's never this deceitful.
\_ Bull. Rush spews false stats, misquotes, and is almost
psychotically hypocritical.
\_ Uh? Rush doesn't tend to give any stats at all, when he
does he's quoting someone else, and his quotes are all
checkable online. Where is he a hypocrite? He was never
an anti-drug crusader so turning out to be a drug addict
doesn't make him a hypocrite. Do you know *anything* about
the man or are you just spewing the DNC talking points? I
wonder if you've even listened to his show for more than
5 minutes, if ever.
\_ http://www.fair.org/extra/0311/limbaugh-drugs.html
You are wrong, again. As usual.
\_ More Limbaugh Lies:
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/limbaugh-debates-reality.html
\_ As opposed to CNN, NYTimes, ABC, etc. which is just 100% fact. Yup.
\_ By the kind of argument employed in that url, everyday there
are 10 imes more "deceits" in any of the above than F911.
\_ I've been saying that about the media for years on the motd
but people always call me a crackpot for saying the main-
stream media is inaccurate, biased, or in any way
unreliable. Are you a crackpot, too?
\_ If that means considering mainstream media inaccurate
rather than accusing them of bias along particular
directions, yes.
\_ well, i think you're both off base. if "news" means
15 minutes of ads, 10 minutes of sports, 10 minutes of
weather, 10 minutes of "puppy saved in local lake"
and five minutes of sound bites with pretty pictures
about what's actually going on in the world, who gives
a shit if it's biased or wrong? that's just not the
point. the point is that no responsible journalist
is *ever* going to be able to reduce the news to a
five minute cartoon, and as long as that's all people
will take for their news, we have a serious problem.
I blame the morons who don't bother to *read*, not
the tv news networks that respond accurately to
the demand of the news consumer.
\_ You'd feel differently if it was *your* puppy.
\_ not likely. in my experience, they'd get the
name of the puppy wrong, then say the police
rescued it when it was really the fire department,
and incorrectly name the lake from which it
was rescued.
\_ When your sources include Slate articles by Chris Hitchens, you
really must be scraping the barrel.
\- are you in fact the only person in the world
who refers to Christopher Hitchens as "Chris"?
\_ No, I'm in good company:
http://csua.org/u/81y
However, I promise not to call you "Par."
\_ Either the material is true or it is not. If you have to
attack the source instead of the truthfulness of the material
presented, you're not even in the barrel anymore.
\_ Hitchen's article is a fact-free zone - its just a bloviating
screed.
\_ Maybe. You expected anyone to actually read the URL before
commenting?
\_ So you're saying that the clip in the movie at Camp David
does *not* show Bush sitting next to Tony Blair?
\_ 50 of these "deceits" are not even lies, by any stretch of the
imagination. It is a "deceit" to show that Bush sat and read in
a classroom for nine minutes after being informed of the 9/11
attacks? The author calls it a deceit because Moore offers no
attacks? The author calls it a "lie" because Moore offers no
other suggestion as to what Bush should have been doing....
Whaaaat? Most of the rest are the same. He calls Moore a
"liar" for not presenting both sides of controversial
topics. This is a good example of "bias" but a terrible
example of a "lie." This guy is a big hypocrite anyway,
if you read any of his columns, he does not bother to
present both sides of any views. |
| 7/14 |
|
| www.fec.gov/pubrec/2000presgeresults.htm Back to Top of Page ADDRESSES AND PARTY DESIGNATIONS OF 2000 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES ON THE GENERAL ELECTION BALLOTS (Note: Links are provided to an index of campaign finance reports filed by a candidate's principal campaign committee. |
| www.fair.org/extra/0311/limbaugh-drugs.html And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods, which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up. What this says to me is that too many whites are getting away with drug use. Too many whites are getting away with trafficking in this stuff. The answer to this disparity is not to start letting people out of jail because we're not putting others in jail who are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too. We are becoming too tolerant as a society, folks, especially of crime, in too many parts of the country.... This country certainly appears to be tolerant, forgive and forget. I mean, you know as well as I do, you go out and commit the worst murder in the world and you just say you're sorry, people go, "Oh, OK. Finally we got tough, and the crime rate has been falling ever since, so what's wrong? com (8/18/03) In the audio link below, I go into detail about these non-thinking talking points that "you can't tell people what to do with their bodies" and "you can't legislate morality." First of all, we tell people what they can do to their bodies all the time--no cocaine, no prostitution, no throwing yourself off a building. Joe Fernandez came to New York from Miami, ladies and gentlemen, to be schools chancellor.... Now he is embattled--he's got a book that just came out, an autobiography that's soon to come out, I think, in which he admits that he was a mainliner as a teen-ager. He triumphed over that profound obstacle in his life and has gone on to become this great schools chancellor.... Plays a clip of Fernandez saying that the message of his teenage drug use is "to not give up on our kids." Reach out and try to help them, not give up on the kids, give them condoms and teach them about a bunch of stuff that is worthless in terms of preparing them for their future as adults in the greatest country on Earth, teaching them all this social gobbledygook. He gets involved in drugs and ends up, ladies and gentlemen, as a newly elected official in Washington, DC.... So I'm sure Joe Fernandez is looking down there saying, "Hey, there's a future for, you know, drug users in Washington, DC." "I know every expert in the world will disagree with me, but I don't buy into the disease part of it. The first time you reach for a substance you are making a choice. Every time you go back, you are making a personal choice. And his point is that we are rationalizing all this irresponsibility and all the choices people are making and we're blaming not them, but society for it. All these Hollywood celebrities say the reason they're weird and bizarre is because they were abused by their parents. So we're going to pay for that kind of rehab, too, and we shouldn't. I mean, if she wants to legalize drugs, send the people who want to do drugs to London and Zurich and let's be rid of them. The problem with legalizing drugs is, it's just another abhorrent example of human behavior that we've suddenly decided, "Hey, we can't handle it. We've given up and we're going to sanction the destruction of lives. I'm appalled at people who simply want to look at all this abhorrent behavior and say, "Hey, you know, we can't control it anymore. It's a rotten idea, and those who are for it are purely, 100 percent selfish. |
| www.fair.org/press-releases/limbaugh-debates-reality.html Rush Limbaugh has gotten a lot of mileage out of his claim that volcanoes do more harm to the ozone layer than human-produced chemicals. He featured it in his best-selling book, The Way Things Ought to Be (paperback edition pp. Mankind can't possibly equal the output of even one eruption from Pinatubo, much less 4 billion years' worth of them, so how can we destroy ozone?" Limbaugh calls concern about the ozone layer: "balderdash. New York Post, 1/14/94) used the volcano theory as Exhibit A to illustrate Limbaugh's "very well-informed and savvy understanding of the political issues of our time." book that one of the high readings of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere came right after a volcanic eruption--and volcanoes can put more gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race." The alert reader will notice that Sowell has mixed up global warming and the ozone layer, two different problems. Still, Sowell concluded of Limbaugh, "It is obvious that the man has done his homework--and done it well." Nightline (2/4/92) as an environmental "expert," opposite then-Sen. "If you listen to what Senator Gore said," Limbaugh proclaimed, "it is man-made products which are causing the ozone depletion, yet Mount Pinatubo has put 570 times the amount of chlorine into the atmosphere in one eruption than all of man-made chlorofluorocarbons in one year." On his radio show, his syndicated TV show, and in two best-selling books, Limbaugh has advanced the idea that volcanoes are the real ozone culprits. This theory, like so many of Limbaugh's claims, has only one problem: Limbaugh doesn't know what he's talking about. Back to top A Mountain of Distortion "Chlorine from natural sources is soluble, and so it gets rained out of the lower atmosphere," the journal Science explained (6/11/93). "CFCs, in contrast, are insoluble and inert and thus make it to the stratosphere to release their chlorine." Science also noted that chlorine found in the stratosphere-- where it can eat away at Earth's protective ozone layer--is always found with other byproducts of CFCs, and not with the byproducts of natural chlorine sources. "Ozone depletion is real, as certain as Neil Armstrong's landing on the moon," Dr. "Natural causes of ozone depletion are not significant." But Limbaugh didn't rely on atmospheric scientists for his information about the ozone layer--he dismissed them as the "agenda-oriented scientific community." Instead, he turned to Dixy Lee Ray, a former Washington State governor and Atomic Energy Commission chair, who wrote Trashing the Planet--"the most footnoted, documented book I have ever read," Limbaugh says. If you check Ray's footnotes, you'll find that the main source for the volcano theory is Rogelio Maduro, the associate editor of 21st Century Science & Technology, a magazine published by the Lyndon LaRouche network. Maduro is evidently not part of the "agenda-oriented scientific community"--even though he does have a bachelor's degree in geology. The volcano theorists can't even keep their stories straight. In his book, Limbaugh claims that the 1991 Pinatubo eruption put 1000 times as much chlorine into the atmosphere as industry has ever produced through CFCs; yet on Nightline, Pinatubo is alleged to have produced 570 times the equivalent of one year's worth of CFCs. The figure 570 apparently derives from Ray's book--but she said it was Mount Augustine, an Alaskan volcano that erupted in 1976, that put out 570 times as much chlorine as one year's worth of CFCs. Ray's source is a 1980 Science magazine article--but that piece was actually talking about the chlorine produced by a gigantic eruption that occurred 700,000 years ago in California (Science, 6/11/93). Back to top Unchallenged Demagoguery This kind of sloppiness, ignorance and/or fabrication is run of the mill in Limbaugh's commentary, both broadcast and print. From dioxin to Whitewater, from Rodney King to Reaganomics, Rush Limbaugh has a finely honed ability to twist and distort reality. Limbaugh's facts are almost never challenged on his programs. A hostile caller hardly ever gets through the screeners on his radio show, and his TV show is just him doing a monologue in front of his cheering audience. No one in the history of national television has had such a political platform. He has almost never corrected anything he's said--although he did apologize once to the aerosol industry for implying that spray cans still had CFCs in them. US News & World Report piece (8/16/93) by Steven Roberts declared, "The information Mr Limbaugh provides is generally accurate." A National Review cover story (9/6/93) declared him the "Leader of the Opposition." Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who recently officiated at Limbaugh's wedding, says he tapes Limbaugh's radio show and listens to it as he works out (USA Today, 5/13/94). FAIR is publishing a compilation of some of Limbaugh's more obvious whoppers in order to convince journalists and political leaders alike that when Limbaugh says, "I'm not making this up, folks," it's time to duck and cover. Journalists, in particular, have an obligation to challenge Limbaugh's brand of hysteria. Someone who has amassed a powerful political following through the regular use of half-truth and distortion is begging for tough media scrutiny. In 1954, Edward R Murrow confronted another demagogue who had a similar allergy to facts and documentation. Today's TV networks don't ask themselves how they can challenge Limbaugh's reign of error--but how they can profit from him. CBS News, the platform from which Murrow denounced Joe McCarthy, has been seeking to hire Limbaugh as a political commentator. he has forged a media empire largely on unchallenged monologues. Reality--is an attempt at stimulating (or at least simulating) a debate. Bogus Economics LIMBAUGH: On California contractor CC Myers completing repairs 74 days early on the earthquake-damaged Santa Monica Freeway: "There was one key element that made this happen. of giving 25 percent of the job to a minority-owned business and 25 percent to a woman." Affirmative action rules applied: At least 40 percent of the subcontracts went to minority or women-owned firms. Far from getting out of the way, dozens of state employees were on the job 24 hours a day. Furthermore, the federal government picked up the tab for the whole job (LA Times, 5/1/94). LIMBAUGH: "Banks take the risks in issuing student loans and they are entitled to the profits." resulted in a bigger gap between the haves and the have-nots. Figures compiled by the Congressional Budget Office dispel that myth." Its numbers for after-tax incomes show that in 1980, the richest fifth of our country had eight times the income of the poorest fifth. LIMBAUGH: Comparing the 1950s with the present: "And I might point out that poverty and economic disparities between the lower and upper classes were greater during the former period." Inequality surpassed the 1950 level in 1982 and rose steadily to all-time highs in 1992. The budget figures show that actual construction of public housing increased during the Reagan years." In terms of 1993 dollars, the HUD budget for the construction of new public housing was slashed from $63 billion in 1980 to $683 million in 1988. LIMBAUGH: "The poorest people in America are better off than the mainstream families of Europe." The average cash income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans is $5,226; the average cash income of four major European nations--Germany, France, United Kingdom and Italy--is $19,708. LIMBAUGH: "There's no such thing as an implied contract." LIMBAUGH: "Ladies and gentlemen, we now know why there is this institutional opposition to low tax rates in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. When you can trace the lowering of tax rates on grain from 90 percent to 20 percent giving seven fat years during the days of Pharaoh in Egypt, why then you are tracing the roots of lower taxes and rising prosperity to religion.... You can trace individual prosperity, economic growth back to the Bible, the Old Testament. Genesis 41 is about the wisdom of instituting taxes, not cutting them. In other words, a 20 per... |
| csua.org/u/81y -> users.rcn.com/peterk.enteract/studsletter.html There was a throwaway reference in Hitchens's piece that caught my attention. It was a reference to Gore Vidal, at whom he threw a rabbit punch, among others. I was suddenly reminded of a moment in the late, late, late of the evening when Hitch and I got smashed. During those blurry moments at my house, and very delightful they were, he confided that in some quarters he was regarded as the successor to Gore Vidal as America's preeminent man of letters. I've a hunch that Vidal may have a comment on that, especially now. nor the nature of our approach toward the mass murderer. It is the manner in which he has behaved toward those who differ with him: his ad hominem assaults on their intelligence and integrity. It is his vulgarity of language, so unlike the guy I knew, that knocked me for a loop. I have always admired Hitchens's insights, elegance of style and sharpness of wit. But the turn he has taken - the sharp one - is more in the direction of Becky than of Orwell. I'm afraid that his psyche is now more possessed of vanity than of fairness. I am somewhat embarrassed in revealing a conversation that took place under the influence of booze. Yet I am merely pointing out that below-the-belt punching is a game that two can play. STUDS TERKEL PS: Chris, I miss your stuff in The Nation very much. It discombobulates me that your stalwart Orwellian self has become aligned with the wanton boy swatting flies. That a wanton boy, at this moment in history, is the most powerful man in the world is an absurd fact. It's a scenario that can have been written only by that master of outrageous humor WC Fields. It grieves me that one as gifted as you has chosen to play second banana to the wanton boy in a burlesque skit that's not very funny. We'd reflect, of course, on the wanton boy's appointment of Kissinger as truth-seeker. But as we mellowed with a drink or two, we'd probably reminisce about our dear old friend Jessica Mitford and what she'd make of things today; Five gets you ten she'd have said, "Christopher Hitchens, poor boy, since his conversion, has been transmorgrified from a witty observer of the human comedy to a bloody bore, seated at the far-right end of the bar." As you may surmise, Kiddo, it would wind up as a somewhat less than pleasant visit. I'd find the memory of Mitford much better company than the presence of Hitchens. Thus, at this moment, I'm drinking alone, hoisting one to Jessica (Decca, as we called her) and her dreams; |
| davekopel.com/Terror/Fiftysix-Deceits-in-Fahrenheit-911.htm This report was first posted on the web on the morning of July 1 Since then, I've revised several sections in response to reader requests for clarifications, and have added additional deceits which have been pointed out by readers or journalists. As result, the number of listed deceits has been raised from 56 to 59. Thanks to the readers who have written to point out additional deceits or to point out items which need clarification. Also thanks to the readers who have written in defense of Moore. Moore's defenders have made two main points: First, notwithstanding the specific falsehoods, isn't the film as a whole filled with many important truths? The first part (Bush, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan) is so permeated with lies that most of the scenes amount to lies. The second, shorter part involves domestic issues and the Patriot Act. So far, I've identified only one clear falsehood in this segment (Rep. So this part, at least arguably, presents useful information. The third part, on Iraq has several outright falsehoods--such as the Saddam regime's murder of Americans, and the regime's connection with al Qaeda. Other scenes in the third part--such as Iraqi casualties, interviews with American soldiers, and the material on bereaved mother Lila Lipscomb--are not blatant lies; but the information presented is so extremely one-sided (the only Iraqi casualties are innocents, nobody in Iraq is grateful for liberation, all the American soldiers are disillusioned, except for the sadists) that the overall picture of the Iraq War is false. Second, say the Moore supporters, what about the Bush lies? Well there are plenty of lies from the Bush administration which should concern everyone. For example, the Bush administration suppressed data from its own Department of Health and Human Services which showed that the cost of the new Prescription Drug Benefit would be much larger than the administration claimed. This lie was critical to passage of the Bush drug benefit bill. Similarly, Bush's characterization of his immigration proposal as not granting "amnesty" to illegal aliens is quite misleading; although the Bush proposal does not formally grant amnesty, the net result is the same as widespread amnesty. But two wrongs don't make a right, and the right response to Presidential lies is not more lies from his political opponents. Moreover, regarding the issues presented in Fahrenheit 911, the evidence of Bush lies is extremely thin. Moore shows Bush claiming that a particular day at the ranch in Crawford, Texas, was a working vacation, but Bush appears to be dissembling. Later, after Osama bin Laden was driven into hiding but was not captured, Bush unconvincingly claims not to spend much time thinking about bin Laden. Within Fahrenheit 911, most of rest of alleged Bush administration lies actually involve Moore's fabrications to create the appearance of a lie--such as when Moore chops a Condoleezza Rice quote to make her say something when she actually said the opposite. The one significant Bush administration lie exposed in the film involves the so-called Patriot Act; as Fahrenheit accurately claims, at least some of the material in the Patriot Act had nothing to do with 9/11, and instead involved long-sought items on the FBI agenda which had previously been unable to pass Congress, but which were enacted by Congress under Bush administration assurances that they were essential to fighting terrorism. There are many articles which have pointed out the distortions, falsehoods, and lies in the film Fahrenheit 911. This report compiles the Fahrenheit 911 deceits which have been identified by a wide variety of reviewers. In addition, I identify some inaccuracies which have not been addressed by other writers. The report follows the approximate order in which the movie covers particular topics: the Bush family, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. This report focuses solely on factual issues, and not on aesthetic criticism of the film. To understand the deceptions, it helps to understand Moores ideological position. So let us start with Moores belief that the September 11 attacks on the United States were insignificant. Edward Koch, the former Democratic Mayor of New York City, writes: A year after 9/11, I was part of a panel discussion on BBC-TVs Question Time show which aired live in the United Kingdom. A portion of my commentary at that time follows: One of the panelists was Michael MooreDuring the warm-up before the studio audience, Moore said something along the lines of I dont know why we are making so much of an act of terror. It is three times more likely that you will be struck by lightening than die from an act of terrorI mention this exchange because it was not televised, occurring as it did before the show went live. It shows where he was coming from long before he produced Fahrenheit 9/11. Koch, Moores propaganda film cheapens debate, polarizes nation, World Tribune, June 28, 2004. By the way, I don't disagree with the point that it is reasonable to consider the number of deaths from any particular problem, including terrorism, in assessing how serious the problem is. Moore's point, however, was willfully oblivious to the fact that al Qaeda did not intend 9/11 to be the last word; the organization was working on additional attacks, and if the organization obtained the right weapons, millions of people might be killed. More fundamentally, even if Moore's argument in London is conceded to be legitimate, it contradicts Fahrenheit 911's presentation of Moore as intensely concerned about the September 11 attacks. As we go through the long list of lies and tricks in Fahrenheit 911, keep in mind that Michael Moore has assembled a war room of political operatives and lawyers in order to respond to criticism of Fahrenheit 911 and to file defamation suits. spread rumors to the press about John Kerry's alleged extra-marital affair. Of course if there are any genuine errors in this report, the errors will be promptly corrected. On July 5, I removed a complaint about a Presidential approval poll number, which I had wrongly thought was not supported by data. Conversely, because Moore has a paid expert staff which is monitoring criticism of the movie, it is reasonable to assume thatunless I have specifically retracted some item in this reportMoore and his staff have not offered a persuasive rebuttal. A few are false statements Moore has made when defending the film. We are first shown the Al Gore rocking on stage with famous musicians and a high-spirited crowd. Moore creates the impression that Gore was celebrating his victory in Florida. Actually, the rally took place in the early hours of election day, before polls had even opened. Gore did campaign in Florida on election day, but went home to Tennessee to await the results. The Florida Victory sign reflected Gores hopes, not any actual election results. Gore Campaigns Into Election Day, Associated Press, Nov. All of a sudden the other networks said, Hey, if Fox said it, it must be true. We then see NBC anchor Tom Brokaw stating, All of us networks made a mistake and projected Florida in the Al Gore column. Moore thus creates the false impression that the networks withdrew their claim about Gore winning Florida when they heard that Fox said that Bush won Florida. In fact, the networks which called Florida for Gore did so early in the eveningbefore polls had even closed in the Florida panhandle, which is part of the Central Time Zone. This was 10 minutes before polls closed in the Florida panhandle. Moore never lets the audience know that Fox was among the networks which made the error of calling Florida for Gore prematurely. Only ABC had waited until the Florida polls were closed. The premature calls probably cost Bush thousands of votes from the conservative panhandle, as discouraged last-minute voters heard that their state had already been decided, and many voters who were waiting in line left the polling place. In Florida, as elsewhere, voters who have arrived at the polling place before closing time often end up voting after closing time, because of long lines. The conventional wisdom of politics is th... |