Democrats' Poppycock and the 2000 Presidential Election

To: Sen. Hillary Clinton

October 28, 2002

Following the 2000 elections, I studied Florida's election statutes intently. The post-election tactics employed by Al Gore's lawyers were ineffectual: They squandered precious time immediately following the election with "preliminary toy challenges" rather than moving quickly to the "serious real challenges" that might have proved effective under different circumstances.

The Gore camp's lawyers were so intent on stealing the election with their shenanigans that they failed to get a state-wide recount underway quickly, say by mid-November. Had they done so, there would have been plenty of time to complete that recount as required by our Constitution by mid-December. The Democrats' only problem with doing that? Such a recount would have shown that President Bush won a majority of the votes legally cast in Florida and would thus receive all of its electoral votes. No recounts since then (many conducted by left- or liberal-leaning newspapers and other organizations) have indicated otherwise.

Democrats should have learned a few things from the Florida fiasco.

1. Carefully examine a real ballot before you have your Democrat minions instruct voters to "mark the second box on the ballot." A ballot can meet a statutory requirement to list candidates by party order from most votes cast to least votes cast in the last governor's race without putting the vote boxes in that order. Florida Democrats demonstrated that with their infamous butterfly ballot, the crucially misdesigned one in Broward County. Many who "voted wrong" there undoubtedly did so because they dutifully followed improper instructions. On butterfly ballots tested after the 2000 election, even third-graders were able to figure out which box corresponded to which candidate. Corollary: Don't expect to win elections by busing derelicts off the streets or near-senile patients from nursing homes to cast their votes at polling places. Instead, have them vote by absentee ballot where a Democrat can guide their hands to mark the "right" box. Or, resurrect that hallowed Democrat practice of getting the dead to vote for your candidates, the tactic that swung the 1960 Presidential Election into your win column.

2. Don't try to win elections by disenfranchising military personnel who vote by absentee ballot, those serving out-of-state or overseas, at least not in Florida. Florida's election laws let votes count if the voter's intent can reasonably be determined despite technical errors, or even illegal acts. For example, under Florida law, a person involved in illegally registering voters can be convicted of a third-class felony but those he registered illegally still get to vote and have their votes count. Bottom line: Don't push the envelope too far.

3. If you want votes recounted in a state-wide election, don't try to pick and choose for recount only Democrat-controlled counties. As Al Gore's mantra went, "Every [legal] vote must count." That includes votes in Republican-controlled counties. That includes votes in Western Florida, in the Central Time Zone. That includes votes cast by those serving overseas in the military. If you want military personnel to vote for Democrats, have Democrats show some interest in the well-being of those in the military. The military vote heavily for Republicans because they know where their bread is buttered. Can't say I blame them. The US Supreme Court made the right decision: If votes are to be recounted, all have to be recounted, not just those in counties with large Democrat majorities. And all have to be recounted using the same standards.

4. Don't count on a corrupt court to ignore the law whether the court is local, county, or state, or even the US Supreme Court. Sure, you got your way with the New Jersey Supreme Court, a court apparently composed of scofflaws. The law didn't fit the situation the Democrats created for themselves, so the Supreme Court decided to ignore the law, to sort of change it. If the law was not unconstitutional, it should have been enforced and Torricelli's name should have remained on the ballot. There was nothing obviously wrong with the New Jersey law; the problems were the state party's decision to run Torricelli and his own late decision to drop out. On the other hand, if a law is stupid, change it as soon as possible. I am unwilling to teach people to flout the law and expect no consequences. If you violate the law, expect to go to jail. If something is worth fighting for, fight for it. If you're right about a law's being bad, it's worth the time and effort to flout it and go to jail. Laws don't get changed just because you want them changed. To get a law changed, you have to work at it. Doing so also requires both legislative and executive action, not just a judiciary who think another law would be better. The New Jersy Court didn't strike down the no-change-to-a-ballot-within-fifty-one-days-of-an- election law; they just ignored it. Who's to say now when a New Jersey ballot can be changed? The day of an election? Minnesota allows ballot changes up to four days or so before an election; they allow registration the day of the election. Who is sponsoring the efforts now afoot to bring in people from other states the day of the election so they can vote in Minnesota? Ah, yes, every Democrat and every Socialist vote must count, even if the voters don't live in the state where they are voting.

5. Finally, stop your posturing about getting The Constitution changed to elect Presidents and Vice Presidents by popular vote. Your disingenuous efforts to mislead people into believing that's going to happen are shameful. The electoral vote is here to stay and you know it. Even if you could get two-thirds of both houses to propose such an amendment, you know three-fourths of the states would never ratify it. It takes only thirteen states to block any amendment--by either of a state's two houses--so amendments don't come easily. (Oh, you say, I keep forgetting the Democrats' way. If you don't like a law, you just ignore it. Even a law about amending The Constitution? Are you planning a coup?) The states with smaller populations are not about to give up that Great Compromise on electoral votes. Without that Great Compromise we woudn't even have a United States. On the other hand, there should be plenty of opportunities to change state laws to apportion electoral votes based on a state's popular vote. That's reasonable and it's as close as we'll ever get to electing our Presidents by nationwide popular vote.

6. So what's new with the Clintons? Oral sex in the Oval Office while talking on the phone about committing troops to military action isn't sex? Humptydumptyism at its peak! The President was very good at compartmentalizing, was he? He thought he was alone? And, even if he wasn't alone, it was a private act? Poppycock. Poppycock. Poppycock. Not when he was placing our sons and daughters in harm's way--not while he was putting romantic notions in Monica Lewinsky's head, putting a small curved cylindrical object in her mouth, and playing with cigars in her presence. It was just a "vast right-wing conspiracy"? Poppycock. Lying to a grand jury is neither illegal nor wrong? Poppycock. His answer might depend on "what the meaning of 'is' is"? Oh, that's what it was, a private act of consensual non-sex. Poppycock. Poppycock. Poppycock. So what's new with the Clintons?

Have a nice day.

Erle W Machiavellean
Tulsa, OK

Email Abuse: Year 2000 AIDS NEEDLE HOAX

There's nothing funny about the gas pump AIDS hoax. (See below.) There's nothing funny about AIDS. Some of the following references are from an article by Daniel Q. Haney (copyright 2000 Associated Press).

Dr. Roy M. Anderson of Oxford University: "This is undoubtedly the most serious infectious disease in recorded human history." Yet you have to go to the inside pages of the newspapers to read about the AIDS epidemic. Why? Because oil prices are high? Because the DJIA moved 3%? Because the front page is taken up with telling us how Roy Williams declined an offer to move from the University of Kansas to the University of North Carolina as basketball coach? Or is it because AIDS affects "only" homosexuals, drug users, and the promiscuous? Or because "three-quarters of all HIV-infected people live" in southern Africa and are not white?

The infected Africans do not live long. Man, woman, and child--15 million have died of AIDS; 25 million are expected to die in the next few years. If "next few years" means 10 years, the 25 million means 6800 dead a day from AIDS; 20 years means 3400 a day. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday... Saturday. Sunday. No weekends off. No holidays. No vacations. Last week, this week, next week. Year after year after year AIDS kills. Relentlessly, ruthlessly.

Perhaps if we ignore it, it'll go away. AIDS is no longer the deadly killer we've known for the past twenty years. Correct. It's deadlier than ever. Ruthless, relentless, no heart, no mind, no soul. Just an entity that kills. Then evolves and kills more. No, AIDS won't just go away. We have to make it go away. You and I. We made putting a man on the moon a national priority forty years ago and we did it. We did away with smallpox; we've almost done away with polio. If we make doing away with AIDS a national priority, we can do that, too.

Gun control, legal marijuana, MADD, PETA, Save the Whales.... Now is not the time for these causes, important though they may be to many. Pay attention. Pay attention right now. Combatting AIDS is important. Combatting AIDS is urgent. These other causes lack urgency compared to AIDS. You can't compare them at all. Millions upon millions have died, are dying, and will continue to die from AIDS. Cigarette companies have been told to pay over billion for illnesses affecting 500,000 Floridians who smoked. That many will die in three months in Africa alone. You'd have to sink three Titantics and crash two 747s a day to kill that many. AIDS is a disaster of incredible proportions. Are we just unable to accept so many deaths from the disease? Do the numbers frighten us so much we can't react?

Haney also wrote: "The AIDS medicines that have dramatically improved survival in the United States and Europe are simply too expensive and hard to deliver for most of the world's infected." The logistics of delivery is an understandable but solvable problem. Who knows why the medicine is "simply too expensive"? Shouldn't production in much larger quantities result in lower prices? How difficult would that be? Couldn't the drugs be made available for less in poor countries? Maybe the Senate or House should have hearings on possible price fixing in the drug industry instead of going after oil and tobacco. The drug companies may not be guilty of dooing anything wrong at all, but Senate or House hearings would guarantee media coverage and certainly help focus needed attention on the severity of the AIDS epidemic.

Next time you want to use the internet to pass along a joke, a salacious picture, or yet another Ponzi scheme, use it instead to enlighten someone about AIDS. About the need for money to finance education on protective measures and to fund research into more effective and less costly AIDS medicines. About increasing production of the current medicines and then getting those medicines to the places that need them the most. About the need for help in southern Africa. While you're thinking of it, send a check of your own. Write to or call your Congressman.

Talk to your children, too. Remember, AIDS does not discriminate on the basis of age or sex or color or nationality. Or on the basis of dancing and drinking and smoking or going to church on Sunday.

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The telephone number for the Jacksonville Sheriff's Department is 1.904.630.0500, obtained from information after asking for the Jacksonville Police Department. "Is this the Jacksonville Police Department?" The woman who answered responded patiently, "No, this is the Sheriff's Department; Jacksonville doesn't have a police department. Is this about the email?" Obviously they have already received all the calls they need on this. The City of Jacksonville was consolidated into the County of Jacksonville, so they have only a Sheriff's Department, not a Police Department. Since there is no police department in Jacksonville, FL, an email from Captain Abraham Sands of the Jacksonville Police Department is a hoax.

Cruel hoaxes such as this belittle those who suffer from AIDS. They waste time (yours, mine, the operator's, etc.) and internet bandwidth (Yes, I'm adding to the load.). They also add unnecessary work to an already overloaded law enforcement system. Not just the Jacksonville Sheriff's Department, but also those who will end up tracking down the fustilarian who started this. What should his punishment be when they catch him? (Rhetorical) Others with sick minds may even find a way to obtain infected needles and actually implement the hoax. Then what should the hoax originator's punishment be?

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The DANGEROUS PRANK is the hoax email.
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**********DANGEROUS PRANK:*****************
Please read and forward to anyone you know who drives.

My name is Captain Abraham Sands of the Jacksonville, Florida Police Department. I have been asked by state and local authorities to write this email in order to get the word out to car drivers of a very dangerous prank that is occurring in numerous states. Some person or persons have been affixing hypodermic needles to the underside of gas pump handles. These needles appear to be infected with HIV positive blood. In the Jacksonville area alone there have been 17 cases of people being stuck by these needles over the past five months.

We have verified reports of at least 12 others in various states around the country. It is believed that these may be copycat incidents due to someone reading about the crimes or seeing them reported on the television. At this point no one has been arrested and catching the perpetrator(s) has become our top priority.

Shockingly, of the 17 people who where stuck, eight have tested HIV positive and because of the nature of the disease, the others could test positive in a couple years. Evidently the consumers go to fill their car with gas, and when picking up the pump handle get stuck with the infected needle. IT IS IMPERATIVE TO CAREFULLY CHECK THE HANDLE of the gas pump each time you use one. LOOK AT EVERY SURFACE YOUR HAND MAY TOUCH, INCLUDING UNDER THE HANDLE. If you do find a needle affixed to one, immediately contact your local police department so they can collect the evidence .
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PLEASE HELP US BY MAINTAINING A vigilance AND BY FORWARDING THIS EMAIL TO ANYONE YOU KNOW WHO DRIVES. THE MORE PEOPLE WHO KNOW OF THIS THE BETTER PROTECTED WE CAN ALL BE.
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Said by Paul C, of Bob Ginivan, "He speaketh in paragraphs."