And that means more of crap is on the way to pollute our civic life... _____________________ GOP pollster says Bush effort to define Kerry negatively 'isn't mission accomplished' - LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer Thursday, August 12, 2004 (08-12) 17:49 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's multimillion-dollar attempt to define Democrat John Kerry negatively through advertising hasn't done a good enough job and "isn't mission accomplished," a Republican pollster says. "The Bush campaign needs to move Kerry further to the left to make him unelectable," pollster Tony Fabrizio wrote Thursday in a memo. Continuing to allow Kerry to be seen by voters as "a benign liberal," Fabrizio wrote, is "a grave and costly strategic error." The memo outlined results of a poll Fabrizio's firm took of voters in 19 states where most of Bush's television ads have run. The poll found that the Bush-Cheney campaign's effort "isn't mission accomplished,"' wrote Fabrizio, who was Bob Dole's pollster in the Republican's unsuccessful 1996 presidential bid. Matthew Dowd, the Bush-Cheney campaign's chief strategist, bristled at Fabrizio's criticism, saying the campaign's strategy has succeeded. "Our goal all along as far as Kerry is concerned is to highlight his record and how he presents himself to the public," Dowd said. "We wanted to show that he's indecisive, doesn't stick with his positions, flip-flops, is out of the mainstream and wrong." The campaign spent about $90 million from March through July largely saturating TV airwaves in battleground states with commercials. Most of the ads criticized Kerry, portraying him as weak on terrorism and wrong on taxes, as well as a pessimist. Believing they succeeded in defining Kerry, the Bush-Cheney strategists switched gears this month, with the campaign devoting most of its commercials to presenting the president's priorities and second-term agenda. The campaign also is running a radio commercial in 19 states saying that Kerry's tough talk on taxes and terrorism doesn't square with his Senate voting record. Still, for the most part, Bush's advertising now is about himself, not Kerry. Independent polls show Kerry has been dogged by the label flip-flopper, which may be attributed both to Bush's commercials and the Democrat's own struggle to find his voice on Iraq. Fabrizio, who supports Bush, said his polling shows that large numbers of voters overall and, more importantly, large numbers of undecided and independent voters, don't know about the key anti-Kerry messages Bush's campaign tried to plant in their minds through ads. "By making more voters aware and having them see those messages as true, directly increases the number of voters who see Kerry as a flip-flopper and as too liberal to be president," Fabrizio said. URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/08/12/politics2049EDT0781.DTL ______________________ As for me, I'm heading to the big trees... http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/sequoia/incident/2004/deep/ With any luck I can forget about politics for a couple of weeks and come back mentally rested around the first of September. Until then, you folks have fun and play nice, a part of which means not posting made-up junk. By the way, no orders through the system from FEMA to go to Florida as of this afternoon...
Whenever you grow up, you can stop calling people names. I post these things here for discussion not for promotion. They may all have elements of truth and falsehood which can be discussed. If there are falsehoods, don't you think it better exposed here or elsewhere? Rather than trying to ridicule me, you should be thanking me. If I really wanted to just "promote" it, this is the last place I would come. Are you saying that the stuff from JohnKerry.com or the DNC is not fabricated? Please....
<b>Originally posted by andymoon IIRC, In such a way that it ripped the intestines out of a twelve year old girl forcing her to be hooked up to a machine for 12 hours a day for the rest of her life. Sounds like EXACTLY what I would want a good trial lawyer for.</b> I've tried to find the details of the story but haven't been able to locate them. The point I was getting at is that it was my understanding that the drain mechanism had been tampered with by the family and so they got a big award based on sympathy and deep pockets. I don't really see that as righting a wrong. Doesn't the family have some responibility for doing something stupid... if that is, in fact, the story? <b>Are you being deliberately obtuse? Who do YOU think doctored the original email and then sent it out? Do you believe that Nader's folks were out trying to discredit Edwards? To quote Stossell, "Give me a break!" </b> It could have been doctored by any idiot with a word processor. Why the conspiratorial charges that end up on Karl Rove's desk? Now I ask, who is being obtuse-- deliberate or not? Do you have a shred of evidence that the RNC is in any way associated with this. As I understood it when it came to my desk, this had come out as a personal email message from a friend not from some PAC or the RNC itself.</b>
"I think I said that I got it from the friend of a friend. It could have been the author but I didn't read it that way-- more as something just passed on from the friend of a friend who knew the author."
And where did you get that understanding? We had a long discussion on this with articles about the case and nobody that I saw trotted out ANYTHING even vaguely like what you just said. Are you sure you didn't hear it on the O'Reilly Factor? That is what bothers me about the GOP these days. They seem to feel like it is perfectly OK to, as Krugman stated, "make s*** up" and run with it like it is the truth. OF COURSE IT DIDN'T COME FROM THE RNC DIRECTLY!!! The real point is that people like you just pass this obviously bogus crap around and all of a sudden it becomes truth to some people. YOU engage in those tactics by just believing that this COULD be true, even when all evidence points to it being a load of bulls***, as you did numerous times before in the list of threads Sam pointed out. It is dishonest and it appears that this is the only way Bush can win. It sickens me that Rush and O'Reilly can just get up and lie, it nauseates me that millions of people pass around bogus emails like this one and just buy it, and it infuriates me that people continue to deny that this is a concerted effort led by the GOP. I am quite certain that not every hoax email out there (probably very few if any) originates with Bush and the RNC, but it doesn't have to for it to be a GOP attack tactic.
<b>Originally posted by andymoon And where did you get that understanding? We had a long discussion on this with articles about the case and nobody that I saw trotted out ANYTHING even vaguely like what you just said. Are you sure you didn't hear it on the O'Reilly Factor?</b> http://www.monkeytime.org/lakey.html#accident June 29, 1993 - Drain that injured girl lacked cover RALEIGH -- A safety cover was off the wading-pool drain that critically injured a 5-year-old girl last week, Wake County inspectors said Monday. The dome-like plastic cover was in place at Medfield Area Recreation Club on June 11 when a county inspector checked out the wading pool and allowed it to open for the summer, records show. But the cover was off Thursday evening, when Valerie Lakey visited the pool with her family, a county health official said. The strong suction pulled Valerie into the 6-inch-wide drain, pulling out part of her intestines. She remained in critical condition Monday at Wake Medical Center. "How it got off, we don't know," said Keith Glover, director of environmental health for the Wake Health Department. "We know that kids play with those things. You could take a dime or penny and unscrew it." The cover was supposed to be held down by four screws...Even if the covers are screwed down, Glover said, they are relatively easy to remove...In fact, nearly all cases where children have been injured by pool drains involved covers that had been removed or had broken away. In Durham in 1991, a 3-year-old girl needed two operations after sitting on an uncovered drain at Hollow Rock Racquet & Swim Club... "I don't believe this has anything to do with product design -- it's an issue of maintenance, an issue of a missing cover and the child sitting down on it," said Ken Giles, a spokesman for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission..."Somehow these covers are being taken off or broken off or bent and aren't re-secured. What happens is the child sits down on the drain and the tremendous force of the pump literally eviscerates them." The National Spa and Pool Institute, along with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, issued a list of precautions for pool owners and managers in 1982. It states that covers must be checked daily to see whether they are in good repair and to make sure they cannot be removed without tools. Pools where covers are missing or damaged should be closed, the institute says... "The only way the public is guaranteed to be safe is if the pools out there are maintained by knowledgeable people," said Mike Donathan, manager of Leisure Concepts, a pool builder. "Unfortunately, some of these pools are looked after by college kids or other people who don't have the hydraulic experience to know an uncovered drain is a trap." <b>That is what bothers me about the GOP these days. They seem to feel like it is perfectly OK to, as Krugman stated, "make s*** up" and run with it like it is the truth.OF COURSE IT DIDN'T COME FROM THE RNC DIRECTLY!!!</b> Here is what you wrote: "It is telling that the GOP has to resort to such tactics in their attempts to smear their opponents." You are blaming the party not the individual(s) who doctored the original letter. You shoulda been a trial lawyer.... <b>The real point is that people like you just pass this obviously bogus crap around and all of a sudden it becomes truth to some people. YOU engage in those tactics by just believing that this COULD be true, even when all evidence points to it being a load of bulls***, as you did numerous times before in the list of threads Sam pointed out.</b> Are you charging that the entirety of the piece is bogus? <b>It is dishonest and it appears that this is the only way Bush can win. It sickens me that Rush and O'Reilly can just get up and lie, it nauseates me that millions of people pass around bogus emails like this one and just buy it, and it infuriates me that people continue to deny that this is a concerted effort led by the GOP.</b> It is truly amazing how everything Democratic is perfect, whole and good while everything Republican is stupid, vile, and evil. <b>I am quite certain that not every hoax email out there (probably very few if any) originates with Bush and the RNC, but it doesn't have to for it to be a GOP attack tactic.</b> Politicos attack. So what else is new?
That is a far cry from the family "doing something stupid" as you claimed. Someone took the cover off the drain, but that is something the company should have taken into account when making the drain. They were partly responsible for making a drain that the cover could be removed so completely. How did you get from this article that the FAMILY should have been at fault and not the company? When was the last time you saw RM95, SF, or BJ try to pass off an obviously false email as the truth (as basso has several times)? The individuals you mentioned are part of the GOP as the GOP is the party with the most to gain by discrediting Edwards. The party IS at fault for creating an atmosphere where people feel it is OK to do this crap. The party is at fault for creating an atmosphere where truth takes a back seat to innuendo and lies. Since the AUTHOR of the piece would not confirm what was bogus and what was real, then yes, the entire piece must be treated as bogus. When the AUTHOR repudiates it, why do people like YOU continue to try to defend it? I never said anything that remotely lauds the Democrats as "perfect, whole and good." It still sickens me that Rush and O'Reilly can just get up and lie and still have nearly half of the voters believe them time after time, despite their proven track record of dishonesty. The Dems engage in mud slinging just as the GOP does, but I cannot think of any Dem radio or TV hosts who just out and out LIE on their programs. Politicos attack, yes. In fact, ALL politicos attack. However, it seems that the GOP do not have any problem with O'Reilly just lying his a$$ off at every turn. If they did, they would rebuke him in some way, but he is part of their machine and there is no way they do anything to alienate him, despite his proven track record of out and out lying.
And, as I have said at least a dozen times before, I take everything that Moore does with a grain of salt the size of a deer lick. I believe that most of his work would be much better if you just edited out every instance of his voice. I will probably not see F9-11 because "The Manchurian Candidate" is a much better way to spend my moviegoing dollars and I just had to get rid of Netflix (and since I DAMN sure won't rent that piece of crap, I will end up not seeing it at all). The biggest difference, though, is that Moore does not have a daily broadcast where he just wholesale makes s*** up and expects people to believe it. Moore is bad, but O'Reilly is, as Krugman stated, "a pathological liar" who just fabricates any "evidence" he needs on the spot.
<b>Originally posted by andymoon That is a far cry from the family "doing something stupid" as you claimed.</b> Sorry that I falsely accused the family, but I knew that the facts of the case were that someone took the drain screen off. One piece I read said that the company's culpability was in not specifically stating in their instructions that the screen needed to be screwed down (with the screws provided of course). <b>Someone took the cover off the drain, but that is something the company should have taken into account when making the drain. They were partly responsible for making a drain that the cover could be removed so completely.</b> Covers have to be taken off of drains for cleaning and maintenance. Do you really see $25 Million of culpability on the part of the drain manufacturer here? <b>How did you get from this article that the FAMILY should have been at fault and not the company?</b> See above... <b>When was the last time you saw RM95, SF, or BJ try to pass off an obviously false email as the truth (as basso has several times)?</b> How is it "obviously" false? Several days have gone by since this rebuttal surfaced. The part that you all are so hung up on is the part I just skimmed past. I posted it for other reasons. <b>The individuals you mentioned are part of the GOP as the GOP is the party with the most to gain by discrediting Edwards. The party IS at fault for creating an atmosphere where people feel it is OK to do this crap. The party is at fault for creating an atmosphere where truth takes a back seat to innuendo and lies.</b> What individuals did I mention other than Karl Rove. Are you bringing Rove back into this or not? <b>Since the AUTHOR of the piece would not confirm what was bogus and what was real, then yes, the entire piece must be treated as bogus. When the AUTHOR repudiates it, why do people like YOU continue to try to defend it?</b> The part I'm interested in is the case we are discussing here. The author did not repudiate that, did he? He repudiated the details of how neighborly or un-neighborly Edwards was. That is obviously poppycock; I paid that no mind and you think that is why I posted the letter here. <b>I never said anything that remotely lauds the Democrats as "perfect, whole and good." It still sickens me that Rush and O'Reilly can just get up and lie and still have nearly half of the voters believe them time after time, despite their proven track record of dishonesty The Dems engage in mud slinging just as the GOP does, but I cannot think of any Dem radio or TV hosts who just out and out LIE on their programs. Politicos attack, yes. In fact, ALL politicos attack. However, it seems that the GOP do not have any problem with O'Reilly just lying his a$$ off at every turn. If they did, they would rebuke him in some way, but he is part of their machine and there is no way they do anything to alienate him, despite his proven track record of out and out lying. .</b> Hyperbole. I refer back to my original Dems Good, Repubs Bad observation about your POV.
They were also culpable in not using screws that require a special tool to remove. They do that in elevators and bathroom stalls for crying out loud, how hard would it have been to do the same for the drain? The real point is that some people cannot handle a large verdict of ANY kind, even in a case like this where a twelve year old has to be hooked up to machines for the rest of her life. In addition, this was NOT the only accident with this drain, IIRC, there were several injuries caused by the same drain. Neither I nor you saw the facts of the case presented, so how could EITHER of us make that determination? I tend to think that they do have that kind of culpability when their product caused such significant injuries. You seem to have posted it because it slings mud at Edwards. This one was not "obviously" false until the author came out and disavowed it. There have been several other emails, however, that were discredited by Snopes.com and had been discredited for years, yet you (and basso) continued to defend the allegations in those emails even after they were proven to be bogus. I am hung up on this ENTIRE email, which should be regarded as totally bogus since the author has flat out said that someone went in and made up s*** to add to it. You said "You are blaming the party not the individual(s)" and I was referring to the individual(s) you mentioned in that statement. I am quite sure it was not Rove himself that edited the email, but I maintain that these types of things would not happen if the GOP did not foster an environment where ANY type of information that could discredit the opponent (accurate or lies) is welcome. Some people in the GOP seem to think that taking a letter written by a neighbor of Edwards and editing it to make it more inflammatory is perfectly OK. Where did they get that idea? John McCain didn't OK it. ANYTHING in that letter is suspect. That includes details of any cases as well as how "neighborly" Edwards is. If the author disavows ANYTHING in that email, he disavows ALL of it since he specifically said he would not discuss what he wrote in the email and what was edited. The case we are discussing was tried by a judge, heard by a jury, and a verdict was returned by that jury. Who are YOU to claim that the verdict wasn't fair? It hasn't been overturned on appeal and the company paid the damages. How is that an unjust verdict? WTF are you talking about?!?! I NEVER made even an inference that "Dems Good, Repubs Bad" and you accuse me a second time? Who is being the partisan hack here? Sure isn't me, considering that I bashed the Dems too.
1. Many steps could have been taken to have prevented the little girl's tragedy. Hindsight is so sharp that it can cost an innocent company (and thier insuror) $25 Million. And it cost every subsequent purchase of that draining system some extra money to pay for the fine and the escalating premiums. 2. A jury let OJ go free too. Yeah, different standard but same imperfection in the system. 3. There was no appeal because they don't want to be subjected to punitive damages if found guilty again. This was an emotionally tried case. I'm not saying that Edwards isn't brilliant...just predatory.
If this is the type of "campaigning" the Republicans have been reduced to, then they obviously see the writing on the wall. DESPERATION
And their engineers SHOULD have thought about things a little more before they put out the product. The company WAS NOT innocent, their product caused MASSIVE injuries, and thankfully they were forced to pay a verdict that will force them to make their product safer. Red herring. Really? He is predatory for doing his job and taking a company whose product injured people to court? You have a seriously twisted view of trial lawyers that seems to be common to most GOP members. Is it because they contribute to the Dems, or is there some other reason?
Handguns don't kill people, people kill people. As you pointed out, others had been injured similarly. Why is this case worth so much more? My twisted view is in having a problem with a record-setting settlement which is all out of proportion. How do you feel about the trial lawyers who are reeling it in from tobacco settlements?
Because in this one, A TWELVE YEAR OLD HAD HER INTESTINES RIPPED OUT! From what I understand, it was the most severe of the injuries and SHOULD have had a larger verdict. It was decided by the jury and the judge though it was an acceptable verdict for someone who will have to spend the rest of her life hooked up to a machine for 12 hours a day. How is this verdict out of proportion at all? A little girl has to spend the rest of her life hooked up to machines for 12 hours a day because of a product that this company put out. They paid a verdict that was fair (according to the judge and jury) and will hopefully cause them to reengineer their product so that it does not cause any more injuries. As far as tobacco settlements, that is the risk that the tobacco companies take by putting out a product that is as dangerous as cigarettes are.
Actually, she was 5 at the time. In one previous case, the victim died. I don't know about the other. Either way, the company chose to settle and they've fixed the drains.
