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Kerry Blows Red Sox Stats, Again, and Again
This week John Kerry twice messed up the Red Sox playoff scores, in one game proclaiming them to be ahead 10-9, in another 7-1. The Sox never had 10 runs in the first game (they went from 9 to 11 on Mark Bellhorn's two-run homer off the right field foul pole), and scored six in the second (see footballfansfortruth.us for more info). For those of you who are not Boston-area natives, you might not understand that Red Sox loyalty is far greater than political loyalty, and while this might not cause anyone to vote for Bush, it might make Kerry voters stay home. Worse, many Red Sox fans have vowed to see the Sox win a World Series before they die, so tens of thousands of Kerry voters could die before November 2. Of course, this won't affect Massachusetts, Vermont, or Rhode Island, and probably not Maine, but New Hampshire is a possibility.
This... is lame. God I can't wait 'til the election is over, and the pro-kerry and pro-bush supporters stop taking drugs....
I'm glad /. is finally showing a non-bias towards the candidates. Especially over such an important issue as this during a time of war, crappy economy, etc.
Where is the free world headed if we elect a man who can't keep track of baseball scores while trying to win an election?
No sig for you!!
If Kerry is going to get faulty intelligence, I'd rather it be on baseball scores than on, say, whether a country should be invaded.
Personally I think it's disgusting that people would change their vote based on how much a candidate knows about a sporting event. Of course it does make Kerry look rather silly if he just pretended to be interested; but on the other hand the fact that candidates feel they must be seen to like baseball is pretty sad (and reflects very badly on the electorate).
"Madness is something rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, peoples, ages it is the rule." -- Nietzsche
...after reading the title...whew!
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Linus Torvalds repeatedly misspelled the word 'kernel' in smp.c. Twice he wrote 'kernl' and three times he used 'kernal'. Not being a Slashdot regular, you might not know how important spelling is. This might not move any users to BSD, but it could keep a few nerds from recompiling their kernal until patches are submitted.
What? John Kerry can't keep his Red Sox scores straight? Well, fuck me gently with a chainsaw! I've clearly been supporting the wrong man all along! How can we possibly expect strong leadership from a man who doesn't watch enough SportsCenter?
Please. Did it ever occur to anyone that John Kerry might be a little bit busy, considering that there's one week to go before Election Day? Naw, that couldn't be it.
Here's an idea: After the election, Malda deletes the entire Politics section from production, and burns any backup tape from a date that the Politics section was active. His editorial staff has already proven that they're juvenile half-wits. We didn't need a two-party pissing contest to reinforce it.
This sig intentionally left blank.
One candidate has messed up the score of the Bosox series a couple of times, keeping in mind that the series is also taking place during the busiest most demanding time of his life.
The other candidate traded Sammy Sosa for Harold Baines and Fred Manrique, and as a sidenote also rushed us into a terrible protracted destablizing and unnecessary war in the middle east while running up record deficits and presiding over a massive job loss.
Make your choice, America.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
There are a good number of political issues that do matter to Slashdoters. Perhaps we could discuss those?
P.S.: Pudge - Just because michael posts Stupid Crap, doesn't mean you have counter by posting more of the opposite type.
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
In the third debate, Kerry was asked if homosexuality was a choice (the unspoken bit there was "and therefore okay to discriminate against"). Taking what Kerry said in response to this question as some sort of attack exposes a latent homophobia -- it assumes that being gay or having a gay family member is something to be ashamed of.
Mary Cheney wasn't in the closet. She isn't a private figure. Kerry didn't out her or expose her to sudden scrutiny. She's a prominant gay American who advises the Vice President and has worked as an advisor on GLB issues to, among others, Coors. The VP himself has talked about her as a reason for disagreeing with the anti-gay marriage amendment.
Kerry didn't insult her. He didn't, for instance, suggest she was just faking gay for attention (like Bush seemed to suggest all gay people might be doing). He didn't call for discrimination against her to be written into the Constitution of the United States. He didn't talk about her any differently than either Candidate talked about each others families in that debate. If Jenna Bush were happily married and Kerry mentioned that, would there be this outcry? Of course not.
Some people say Kerry cynically mentioned her being gay as a way to turn off the homophobes at the extreme right of the GOP. This is suggesting that Kerry should have somehow tempered his answer to a direct question in the debate in order not to piss off bigots in the other party. Yeah. Hey, if the right wants these small-minded assholes on their team, that's their deal and they can get back to work recuiting them. Me, I'm happy to be on the other side.
Now, I take this a little personally because I have friends and family members who are gay, and I love them. Seeing some dickless excuse for a politician suggest they don't deserve the sort of rights that my wife and I have and then try to pass if off as "defending marriage" makes me very, very angry. So if my tone seems a little harsh and uncharacteristically unfunny, you'll excuse me for this one post.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
The Washington Times? You have anything about this "booing" from a respected/non-insane paper?
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
I know you're joking here, but...
Where do most of those Canadian drugs come from? The United States.
The Canadian government meets with US pharmaceutical companies and negotiates price breaks for bulk purchases. The US pharmaceutical companies go along with this because if they don't, then they will sell almost zero quantities to Canada.
You really think that the US pharmaceutical companies are going to willingly double, triple or even quadruple the amount of pills shipped to Canada in order to meet the needs of US citizens who want to re-import the drugs back to the US?
If you're allowing the idea of re-imported drugs from Canada to influence your voting choice, you really need to re-think your decision.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
...but doesn't anyone else think that it looks bad when the only anti-Kerry submission on /. in the past week or so is a humor piece?
Rob
Wow. I have spent considerable time in the past putting together well-linked relevant stories, only to have them rejected. Not that I'm grousing about it, but what exactly is this?
Is it a 'most of our political posts bash bush, so let's try and keep it balanced' kind of a story? WTF? Is this a goddamn political blog? There are hundreds of those out there, why did we have to drag it in here, and worse still, couldn't we try to stick to relevant issues, or barring that, actual fucking news?
Are we all supposed to spin off of some technological analysis of this gaffe? (Kerry must have been getting his 'updates' from Windows XP. he he.)
I mean, can someone step up and tell me what possible reason someone would think that should be posted. And for that matter, why would an editor accept it?
I had this sinking feeling that having a politics section would somehow cloud the otherwise mostly worthwhile content on slashdot, but I never could have predicted the results would be this dismal.
True, but [the existence of WMD] was the ONLY reason presented by our government for unilateral action against the will of the UN and most of our allies.
You're quite wrong, if for no other reason that there were two reasons given in the congressional authorization for war, and one of them was merely to enforce UN resolutions. Also, enforcing UN resolutions was presented by the Bush administration many times during the buildup to war, and even a significant part of Powell's presentation to the UN in Feb 2002 was concerned more with violations of UN resolutions than actual existence of WMD. Sorry, you're just wrong.
While the president insists that he did everything perfectly
That is a lie. He never said any such thing. Kerry said Bush said that, but Kerry was lying when he did.
and would do the same again knowing what he knows now.
As far as the larger picture of going in, yes. As far as details along the way, no, he did not say this.
We are talking about a political candidate (Nerd check: FAILED) and that candidate's sports knowledge (Nerd check: FAILED).
I'm hard pressed to think of anything that matters LESS to me than if Kerry correctly remembered baseball game scores.
"...for Pudge."
This is a really bizarre blanket statement with little basis in reality.
Yay blanket assertions!
Come on -- on one hand you have baseball, on the other you have the absolutely worst president in recent memory. What's worse -- a simple gaffe about sports statistics (big surprise: not everyone gives a damn about such minutae), vs another four years of this nightmare? Somehow I think Pudge is resoundingly incorrect on this one.
But still, it's nice to see that he feels comfortable enough in his position as one of the "official" voices of Slashdot to use the site as a soapbox for his cranky politics... :-)
Or not. You never can tell!
???
This article seems to be some new application of the phrase "news for nerds, stuff that matters" that flouts just about every term in the phrase. Impressive.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
But when you make a simple mistake -- one which, I note, remains uncorrected in the article text as I write this (I can't decide if that's integrity or not) -- it's okay, but when Kerry makes one, he's somehow hopelessly out of touch?
What's the difference? The fact that he's running for office and you're not?
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
The President has been asked directly (3 times, IIRC) to name any mistakes he's made. He couldn't come up with one, large OR small.
Therefore he thinks he's done everything perfectly. Perfection is the absence of mistakes.
You are incorrect. Bush said specifically he had made mistakes, he just didn't say what any of them were. That is inconsistent with the view that he said, or thinks, that he has made no mistakes. Check yourself.
Look, both Bush and Kerry misspeak ALL THE TIME; it's simply the nature of American politics. As a citizen, it's your civic duty to seek out the misstatements of both candidates and determine which has been speaking the more dangerous/egregious misstatements (and, yes, in some cases, outright lies). This means more than just reading the National Review's bashing points of one candidate.
As for Kerry's goose-hunting, it's a shallow photo-op. He has time for it because he think it'll get him votes, whereas he's probably calculated that following the world series won't give him as much benefit. Don't tell me Bush has never engaged in a shallow photo-op when he should've been running the country.
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
If you read the original statement, the use of the phrase "the president insists that he did everything perfectly" was in relation to the invasion of Iraq.
And he never insisted that, nor even implied it.
They only time the president has every critically admitted a flaw about the unilateral invasion of Iraq, was when he stated we were too successful in taking Iraq, and we weren't prepared for that success. In every other case, he has defended his decisions and stated that he would make them again.
There was no unilateral invasion of Iraq. Please stop lying. Unilateral has a specific definition, understood by all, and the fact that multiple nations were involved means it was not unilateral. You only hurt any case you're trying to make when you use such blatantly deceptive language.
And Bush said he made mistakes in Iraq. You're simply wrong. Two months ago, he said he miscalculated the conditions in postwar Iraq. It was big news; it's odd you didn't know about it.
The justification given to congress implied the backing of the UN
That is absolutely false. You are just making things up. It was well understood at the time that specific authorization or backing of the UN would not be required. No words to that effect appear in the bill itself, and, in fact, amendments requiring additional action by the UN were defeated. Further, our government officials said at the time that we reserved the right to act, under the passed law, without UN approval.
This was well-understood by everyone at the time. You're attempting to rewrite history.
We unilaterally invaded Iraq
That never happened, but I already addressed this in my previous reply, so I won't belabor the obvious point.
The UN as a whole wanted the inspection process to finish, and progress was being made.
No, it wasn't. Iraq had irrevocably failed to comply with UN Resolution 1441. There was no chance whatsoever that they could ever comply with UN Resolution 1441, because it called for Iraq's immediate compliance, and we know that Iraq repeatedly refused to comply with several key issues. On some, it eventually gave in (such as on the SA-2 missiles); while on others, it never did (such as on interviews with scientists outside of Iraq). But eventual compliance still constitutes a breach, because of the initial refusal.
Beyond that obvious legal point, it is still true that even regardless of the lack of required immediate cooperation, they kept stalling, never intending to fully cooperate. We uncovered former sites after the invasion that were never disclosed, though they were required to be.
The process was a failure. You cannot make progress on a failed operation.
So yes, there were two reasons presented. 1) Iraq's WMDs, and 2) Iraq's unwillingness to follow the UN security resolution 1441 on Iraq's WMDs.
Those were the two reasons Powell focused on, yes. Of course, the administration talked about several others, including terrorist aid (which Powell also mentioned), most of which is not in dispute (direct aid to suicide bombers in Palestine; harboring terrorists, some of whom had killed Americans, like Abu Nidal; allowing terrorists to operate freely in his country; etc.). And then there's the broader reason of stability and security, which everyone in the region agreed that Hussein was a continued threat to (this was stated as a matter of fact by the unanimously adopted Resolution 1441). And the fact that Hussein tried to assassinate a US President, and regularly attacked American planes for a dozen years.
There were a whole lot of reasons.
No, but he has inferred it numerous times.
No, YOU inferred it, and he never implied it.
During the second debate, he claimed his biggest mistakes in office were appointments of people.
Again, you're making things up. He never said that. He said he made some mistakes in appointing people, but neither the question nor the answer implied those were his biggest mitakes. And saying he made some mistakes is not an implication he did not make others, so you're just wrong, again.
In a news conference in April of this year when asked what mistakes he said : "I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't - you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one"
You are attempting to prove he thinks he has done everything perfectly by showing he said he is confident he has not? Are you drunk?
So, literally, yes the president has never stated that "I did everything perfectly", but he has most defiantly implied it.
No, he did not. You're lying.
Calling such an inference, a lie, shows a ignorance of logic.
You have a lot of gall to lie about what Bush said in the second debate, and to say that being confident he has made mistakes is evidence he thinks he has not made any, and then accuse me of being ignorant.
Sorry, but parents aren't the only ones who get to "make rules", as you say--I'm perfectly capable of developing a sense of ethics on my own.
I didn't say "parents" in general. I said, when you are talking about THEIR children, THEY get to make the rules.
I'm certain she wasn't wounded for having been acknowledged as a gay woman by the opposition
I never said she was. I said it is wrong to use your opponent's child to score points for yourself.
What you're saying with regards to Keyes and Santorum is that it's ok to insult a politician's kid if, through doing so, you're not trying to attack the politician's ideas.
I said no such thing. I didn't excuse it. I said it was different.
I don't have kids (yes, I know, "I can't possibly understand")
I didn't say you can't understand. However, if you are a parent, you DO understand. It is possible for you to not understand without being a parent, but the fact that you didn't told me you're not.
Really, you misrepresented almost everything I said in your reply. Please think a little bit more next time.
Your arguments are logically flawed. "You can't possibly understand" and "it's slimy because I said so" don't cut it.
Again, I never said the former. As to the latter, I said that only in the sense that "it is slimy because Dick and Lynne say so," which is true, because they are the parents, and they make the rules. You don't even have to agree, it doesn't matter, because almost all parents agree, and it has nothing to do with homosexuality: it has to do with using the child of your opponent to gain points for yourself. Any parent in that position would be pissed off, which is what makes it true.
And he never insisted that, nor even implied it.
.
No, but he leads people to infer it.
There was no no unilateral invasion of Iraq. [ed] ?
Ok, then where was the support of the UN, and the resolution that we were enforcing? The US and the UK invaded Iraq, no UN troops were involved. A majority of the permanent UN security council (France, Russia, China) condemned the action. During the first five months of the war, the only casualties were US and UK. Yes, two nations were involved, but both were acting in defiance of international opinions and support. It was a very one sided decision
he said he miscalculated
I believe that I mentioned his admission in the argument that you quoted.
But he did not admit a mistake, just a "post-war miscalculation". In the article you link, he said, 'just as his father has done, that he would resist going "on the couch" to rethink decisions.' Again, implying he would not change any of his decisions if he were to make them again.
Every time history repeats itself, the price goes up. -- John A. Appleman
I am living proof of the Peter Principle
When asked to name his major mistakes, and the only thing he could come up with are:
in an April press conference: (paraphrasing, not quoting) Can't think of anything off the top of my head. You should have given me that question written in advance.
In the NYT article: (paraphrasing) We miscalculated how fast and efficently that we would win.
during the second debate: (again, paraphrasing) Some appointments, but don't want to name them.
These are not lies or misrepresentations. You claim I misquote or misremember these instances, but it is not so. These are all well publisized events, and in each instance his exact words were chosen carefully. When I hear/read these words, I infer that he is claiming that he has not made mistakes in Iraq (other than miscalculating how fast we would win). Infering this does not take a leap of faith, and only reflects poorly on me to Bush supporters.
The problem is that what he said was non-specific and interruptible based on the listener's current beliefs. When he claims no mistakes, non-supporters hear "I'm perefect". When he says history will judge him, supporters hear "I've made mistakes". In reality, he has said nothing. Great politics, horrible leadership.
Doesn't change the fact that as a nation, we are now credibly bankrupt. We have no way to lead with current world situations or upcoming problems. Again, an incredible lack of leadership.
I am living proof of the Peter Principle
I never believed that Hussein had WMD.
What? In your journal you state "We know Iraq had some WMD agents and delivery systems. What is in question is whether they had *significant* programs for *NBC* weaponry (that is, nuclear, biological, chemical): and the answer to that question, by all indications, is No. But that doesn't mean there were no WMD: in fact, there were."
Lie seems to be your favorite word. no wonder.
I am living proof of the Peter Principle