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Did Kerry Use a Cheat Sheet?

mrbrown1602 writes "The Drudge Report is reporting that repeated viewing of video from the first Presidential Debate shows Senator John Kerry reaching into his coat pocket for what looks like to be a piece of paper, and he proceeds to unfold it on the lectern. According to the rules set by the Commission on Presidential Debates, candidates are not allowed to bring anything with them on stage (even something as simple as a pen, which is what Kerry's people says it was), and everything they may need (water, tissues, pens, etc.) are provided at the lectern. So what DID Senator Kerry bring out there, anyways?" There's also a QuickTime movie.

14 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. Kerry's people? by wizbit · · Score: 5, Informative

    [a pen] ...which is what Kerry's people said it was

    No, not Kerry's people, you linked the NY Post, one of the more conservative-leaning newspapers in the nation. And if you'd RTFA, you'd know that they reviewed footage from Fox News, the preeminent right-leaning news channel. The paper's "finding"?

    But the mystery was solved when The Post reviewed a Fox News Channel feed from Thursday's debate: Kerry pulled out . . . a black pen.

    All the Post did was repeat rumor and speculation on the internet. Not surprisingly, it's a Kerry spin attempt in pudge's view.

    Okay.

  2. Who Cares? by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Drudge Report is nothing more than a Republican mouth-piece for mud slinging. Why would this load of crap from Drudge surprise anyone, and why would anyone pay attention to it?

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    1. Re:Who Cares? by Beatbyte · · Score: 1, Informative

      What does the messenger matter.

      If it is true, it is true. Correct?

      Would it be better if it came from NBC's liberal media?

    2. Re:Who Cares? by follower_of_christ · · Score: 3, Informative
  3. Already debunked by metalhed77 · · Score: 4, Informative

    God this is so old and debunked trash. The guy who broke it allready has noted that it was a pen. According to the rabidly right wing fox news.

    Jesus christ, this kind of wild speculation doesn't belong on slashdot. Oh wait, nevermind.....

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  4. Not a cheat sheet exactly. by seasleepy · · Score: 2, Informative

    Uh.... it was a pen.

  5. Re:So what is this? by sgant · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is from "wow, someone emailed a rumor to me, must be true! I'll print a story about it" Drudge?

    The guy has no credibility at all and isn't even a journalist...just some shmoe that started a web site. He's not someone people should get they're news from, unless you like it for the entertainment value.

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  6. Re:Naked? by Rahga · · Score: 3, Informative

    Slightly offtopic, but I see great things for the future of women in politics if such a situation was agreed upon by the parties for the next set of debates.

  7. Re:Yeah, but like... by HavokDevNull · · Score: 3, Informative

    "Nobody has been able to shoot down a single fact in the movie." LOL ok here we go...

    1. The Gore victory rally is not celebrating a Florida win. It was held before the polls had even opened.

    2. Like all the other networks, Fox mistakenly said that Gore had won in Florida. The first network to retract the Florida mistake was CBS, not Fox.

    3. A 6-month study by a consortium of major newspapers shows that Bush would have won the Florida recount under any of the terms which Gore sought in his lawsuits.

    4. Investigation by the Palm Beach Post and others shows that race was not a reason why election officials mistakenly disqualified some voters because they were incorrectly thought to have felony convictions.

    5. Bush's Presidency before 9/11 was not in serious trouble. No commentator said that he looked like a lame-duck president. Congress had passed his #1 bill (the tax cut) and was
    on the way to passing his #2 bill (the education bill). The scene at the end of the movie in which Bush tells a rich audience "I call you my base" was from an October 2000 charity fund-raiser. Both Gore and Bush spoke at the fund-raiser and, as is the custom at the fund-raiser, made fun of themselves.

    and here is 54 more facts distorted
    http://www.davekopel.com/Terror/Fiftysix-Deceits-i n-Fahrenheit-911.htm

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  8. But was bush wearing a radio?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/08/bulge /index_np.html
    http://www.isbushwired.com/

    Apparently, there was a bulge on Bush's back during the first one. Speculation as to what it really was, but many people are leaning to a radio prompter. So was Bush reciting what Rove was saying during the debate?

    Perhaps the commission should frisk the candidates and jam RF. That would take care of both the Bush and Kerry theories.

  9. Re:Yeah, but like... by Sevn · · Score: 1, Informative

    LOL, here I go. Kopel has been shot down pretty hard already. I'd LOVE to see you say anything about the Saudi Arabia connection and information. That's kinda SLIGHTLY more important than the tiny things that you are still wrong about.

    1. "With information provided from the Voter News Service, NBC was the first network to project Gore the winner in Florida at 7:48 pm. At 7:50 pm ,CNN and CBS project Gore the winner in Florida as well." By 8:02 pm , all five networks and the Associated Press had called Gore the winner in Florida. Even the VNS called Gore the winner at 7:52 pm. At 2:16 am, Fox calls Florida for Bush, NBC follows at 2:16 am. ABC is the last network to call the Florida for Bush, at 2:20 am, while AP and VNS never call Florida for Bush. HERE

    2. Ten minutes after the top of the hour, network excitement was again beginning to build. At 2:16 a.m., the call was made: Fox News Channel, with Bush's first cousin John Ellis running its election desk, was the first to project Florida -- and the presidency -- for the Texas governor. Within minutes, the other networks followed suit. "George Bush, Governor of Texas will become the 43rd President of the United States," CNN's Bernard Shaw announced atop a graphic montage of a smiling Bush. "At 18 minutes past two o'clock Eastern time, CNN declares that George Walker Bush has won Florida's 25 electoral votes and this should put him over the top. HERE

    But it's just the liberal media right?

    3. The Florida Department of State awarded a $4 million contract to the Boca Raton-based Database Technologies Inc. (subsidiary of ChoicePoint). They were tasked with finding improperly registered voters in the state's database, but mistakes were rampant. "At one point, the list included as felons 8,000 former Texas residents who had been convicted of misdemeanors." St. Petersburg Times (Florida), December 21, 2003.

    4. Database Technologies, a subsidiary of ChoicePoint, "was responsible for bungling an overhaul of Florida's voter registration records, with the result that thousands of people, disproportionately black, were disenfranchised in the 2000 election. Had they been able to vote, they might have swung the state, and thus the presidency, for Al Gore, who lostin Florida. Oliver Burkeman, Jo Tuckman, "Firm in Florida Election Fiasco Earns Millions from Files on Foreigners," The Guardian, May 5, 2003 HERE. See also, Atlanta-Journal-Constitution, May 28, 2001.

    5. A] consortium [Tribune Co., owner of the Times; Associated Press; CNN; the New York Times; the Palm Beach Post; the St. Petersburg Times; the Wall Street Journal; and the Washington Post] hired the NORC [National Opinion Research Center, a nonpartisan research organization affiliated with the University of Chicago] to view each untallied ballot and gather information about how it was marked. The media organizations then used computers to sort and tabulate votes, based on varying scenarios that had been raised during the post-election scramble in Florida. Under any standard that tabulated all disputed votes statewide, Mr. Gore erased Mr. Bush's advantage and emerged with a tiny lead that ranged from 42 to 171 votes. Donald Lambro, "Recount Provides No Firm Answers," Washington Times, November 12, 2001.

    As for any other comments, WHO CARES. How important are your tiny points compared to the huge looming things presented by the movie that you simple CAN NOT REFUTE. Go ahead. Take on the Saudi Arabia connection. Take on the military spending and cut funding for OUR SOLDIERS. Take on the Unocal connections. Take on the Carlyle group connnections. YOU CAN'T. You may draw comfort from taking issue with moores ridiculously slanted style, but you can't shoot down a single fact in the movie. And you haven't. So sorry. Thank you for playing.

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  10. Re:I agree by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Informative

    Reagan cheated on his 1980 "there you go again" debate against Carter. His campaign manager, (later CIA director) William Casey, got stolen copies of Carter's debate briefing notebooks, against which they coached the old actor. That resounding catchphrase was seen in a new light after the truth was revealed, but of course it was too late to do anything after Reagan was elected. The same stalling process is going on here with Bush's cheating, and deniers in this thread are part of it.

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  11. Re:Was Bush Wired During Debate? by werfele · · Score: 3, Informative
    Check out this article at Salon.com that suggests Bush was wearing an audio receiver at the first debate...
    That particular horse was beaten to death here, although if true it would seem to violate the spirit of things more than bringing in a few notes.
  12. Re:This is fucking ridiculous by protohiro1 · · Score: 2, Informative

    That's a bold statement. Fifty times. My rough count is that it was a slow day in Iraq and 22 people died as a result of the occupation or the insurgency. So you are claiming that at least 1,100 people died without cause when Saddam was in power. Meaning that as a result of Saddam's rule roughly 9.6 million people were killed. This is quite clearly not true. This wasn't a holocaust. Saddam was a bad man but you are giving him more credit than he deserved. Around 5,000 people were killed in Saddam's gas attack on the kurds. There are no exact numbers on the shi'a uprising in 1991, but it wasn't millions. A horrible moment in history, but you seem to be alleging that this happened every five days in Iraq under saddam, which it didn't.

    I am guessing you were exagerating and I am being a pedant. But I am willing to bet that Iraq is more dangerous for the average Iraqi today that it was two years ago.

    Now, possibly you are refering to the situation during the sanctions, a time during which something between 350,000 and 1.2 million excess deaths are alleged to have been caused by the economic sanctions on iraq. A serious toll to be sure. The situation that caused this resulted also from a severly damaged infrastructure which has not been repaired, so it is unclear how much better things are in terms of sanitation, food supply and water in comparison to the under sanctions. Whether or not the infratructure and food suppy issues have been since resolved are unclear, so it is hard to say whether the humanitarian situaion during sanctions has really been alieviated. It is very difficult to pronounce "net gains" for the people of iraq in terms of death. Regardless it is not the kind of arithmatic you want to be doing. Even if there is a net improvment in death in Iraq, these deaths are our fault now. Saying that more would have died had we not invaded is a tenuous assertion at best. More difficult still is to argue that we are not responsable for the death that continues in iraq because it may have been worse had we done nothing. If someone jumps from a building and you shoot them on the way down you are still guilty of murder.

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