John Edwards Rally. Maple Grove, Minnesota.
Except for Hubert Humphrey, there have been few visits of presidential candidates to Minnesota. It was just was not worth it for them to come here to gain votes. Now that we are a 'battleground' state, we get tons of attention. Yesterday, Bush made yet another stop in Chanhassen, MN. Today, John Edwards came for a visit.
John Edwards came to a rally at the Maple Grove High School (Minnesota). Was actually fun. Waited in line with about five thousand of supporters. The entire Maple Grove police department turned out to direct traffic (borrowing some members of neighboring Plymouth).
Hawkers went up and down the rows of people selling tee shirts and buttons.
Was such a gorgeous day. I wonder how it would have worked out if it was cold or rainy? As it was, the weather was perfect to enjoy waiting outside.
Everything ran late of course. We finally started to enter the building. The first 2,500 of us were herded into an overcrowded gym. The others went to an auditorium and then some other places.
There were some speakers that were supposed to get us excited. Deborah Watt (running for 3rd congressional district) gave a nice speech. Klobuchar gave a rousing speech. The others were pretty dismal.
Edwards speech was dynamic. He was great to listen to. Very personable. Actually, exciting. Expressionable. Very animated. The speech itself was the usual. Attacks on Bush and Cheney. Lots of reference to the Cheney / Edwards debate.
What really struck me was that he was not nasty in anything that he said. All that he talked about was presented in a positive light. Even his attacks on the Republicans was very nice compared to what one expects from a Vice Presidential candidate (in campaigns, VP candidates are usually considered the 'attack dogs' to tear down the opposition).
Was a nice way to spend a portion of a beautiful Sunday.
Bush's Timber Company
If you watched the last debate, one of the big jokes that helped to bouy Bush's image and to relax him for the remainder of the debate was when he tore into Kerry for descibing his timber growing LLC. Kerry was attempting to portray some miss use of small businesses by very wealthy individuals.
"I own a timber company? That's news to me!"
FactCheck (you know, the web site that Cheney attempted to reference as being fair and impartial), said that, Bush is a small business owner of a timber growing company! The following is a link to a portion of one of Bush's published 2003 tax disclosure:
http://www.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/BushTreeGrowingCompany.pdf
George the Menace
Can't get lawn signs?
One group of about twenty Minneapolis neighbors decided to do something unique to support their candidate. They decided to create a television ad.
These neighbors, middle class, not wealthy, decided to start their own 527 group. You know, the famous loophole in the campaign finance laws that permitted the Swift Boat lies. The difference is this group has little in the way of money. No secret funding by wealthy individuals. Together, they scrounged up about a thousand dollars. Apparently this is the first 527 that was put together by a group of disgruntled neighbors without money.
The ad is a humorous voice over of Osama Bin Laden supporting the Bush campaign. Osama tells us how Bush has dramatically helped their recruitment efforts.
The ad may or may not ever get on television. It costs a lot of money to run the ad. Even if they do get the money, television stations are not required to accept the ad.
But you can view it. Go to http://www.georgethemenace.org/index.html.
Of course, the Kerry campaign has denounced this effort as not presenting facts in a positive light.
VP Debates
Funny thing w/the VP debates.
During the debate, Cheney made a statement that an independent group sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania that checks the validity of candidate claims, has verified that he has done nothing wrong. He then went on to say that anyone could call in to http://www.factcheck.com.
Factcheck.com was inundated with literally millions of people attempting to view their site. However, factcheck.com was the wrong web site!!! Factcheck.com, owned by an offshore company, forwards web sites requests to sponsored services. These services pay factcheck.com a fee for click through to their sites. Because of the Cheney gaff, factcheck.com was billing these sponsored services a fortune for click throughs. To avoid making their customers angry, factcheck.com started to forward all requests to another web site: http://www.georgesoros.com. George Soros is a multi-billionaire that hates Bush! Imagine people's surprise when they ended up at that site (by the way, I was going to send you the Soros site before this even happened).
The proper site that Cheney should have mentioned was http://www.factcheck.org.
However, if you go to that site, you will find that Cheney is only partially exonerated for his influence to help Halliburton. And, of course, the site includes Cheney's gaff in it's list of inaccuracies that the candidate made. Much of the site seems to call attention to Bush / Cheney misrepresentation of facts! I have no idea why Cheney would have referenced this type of site as they certainly do not present the Bush / Cheney campaign in a positive light. If I have time, when access to that site is down, I'll copy some text that is interesting. Right now, trying to even get near that site only produces timeouts - they do not have the capacity to handle all of this web traffic.
All in all, the news post analysis of the vice president debate was fascinating. I read a bunch of articles. Amazing how vicious Cheney was in some and Edwards was in others. There were even those that called the debate a draw.
http://news.google.com/?hl=en&ncl=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12901-2004Oct6.html
Other news of interest:
The commission that looked into whether Iraq had any weapons of mass destruction presented a thousand page paper to their congressional oversight committee. Their conclusion: there was not any indication that there were weapons of mass destruction.
http://news.google.com/?hl=en&ncl=http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml%3Ftype%3DtopNews%26storyID%3D6433959
Again, with the news, there are many who say 'so what' - that we should have been in this war anyhow. Boy, is that gung-ho, given that was the main reason why our president got us into this war.
For you volcano watchers .. geologists are lowering expectations that Mt. St. Helens will erupt. Everyone is disappointed. It is always fun to watch nature do it's thing when no one would get hurt.
More Political Stuff
Sorry about this .. but going through this wealth of stuff will take some time. So, relax, read, learn, argue, and let me know your thoughts.
The first item is funny. The next two are actually fairly deep (if you follow the threads of information). The fourth and fifth items are keepers (will go on our link home page). Excellent summary of current polls. The sixth is for us conspiracy theorists. The last is a link to the latest Zogby editorial. These guys are ones that I wrote to you about before - that are often far different than all other polls in how they view things - yet are more often then not right on.
Make your own Bush Stump Speech
The following is funny. Make your own Bush stump speech!
http://mrsun.us/2004/09/make-your-own-george-w-bush-stump.html
Kerry Haters for Kerry
This site is for the vast majority of Kerry supports. Those that do not like Kerry, but HATE Bush! They try to find things that will make them like Kerry more.
http://www.kerryhatersforkerry.com/
Sample comments from an individual posting his reason for voting for Kerry:
"I agree completely. I was a Bush 41 delegate and a strong McCain supporter. Kerry sucks, but I'm casting an institutional vote for gridlock. Kerry will veto an extension of Bush's tax cuts and Republicans will filibuster his programs. Result: fiscal discipline."
" I agree with nearly everything Kerry says, but can not bring myself to watch this man on TV."
When I saw Fahrenheit 9/11, all I could think was "If the Republicans tried to do a film like this about John Kerry, it would be unwatchable. It would be the biggest bomb in motion picture history, because no one would pay money to spend 2 hrs. looking at John Kerry."
"I concurred with everything Michael Moore said in this movie, and part of its appeal was seeing Bush acting like an idiot. That quality is great for comedians, actors and Survivor contestants. But it does not belong in the leader of the free world. Bush is not the only reason America is hated overseas, but he's a large part of it. It's time to kick this appealing idiot out of the White House. "
John Kerry is a Douche Bag - But I 'm Voting for him Anyway
This person actually likes Kerry, and argues that the way Kerry is pictured is wrong.
http://johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com/
After all, Kerry loves riding his motorcycle, wind surfing, skeet shooting, snow boards
Electoral Vote
Excellent analysis. Concentration on potential for achieving electoral votes (rather than popular). Kerry is far behind getting the electoral votes.
When starting this site .. it will attempt a connection on another port with your computer. DENY THE CONNECTION. No harm, but I don't like the idea of sites doing that.
http://www.electoral-vote.com/
Real Clear Politics
http://www.realclearpolitics.com
Talks about many political issues. Has reference to many of the daily polls around the country.
Current polls put Bush slightly ahead or just about tied with Kerry. However, translating these to electoral votes, Bush is very much in the lead.
Much of the site seems to support Bush - i.e., I do not think it is even handed. However, stats are useful.
Interested in Halliburton conspiracy theories?
http://www.geocities.com/francis_uy/halliburton.html.
Zogby editorial
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=873
Very positive about the chances for Kerry. 9/30/2004.
