-Caveat Lector- [Bushes really *DO* "take the cake." Just CONTEMPLATE FOR A FEW SECONDS the audacity in this!] http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/11/politics/11ELEC.html New York Times Saturday, November 11, 2000 Bush and Advisers, Confident of a Victory in Recount, Urge Gore Not to Stand in Way By FRANK BRUNI AUSTIN, Tex., Nov. 10 � Gov. George W. Bush and his advisers said today that they were moving forward with preparations for a new administration and beseeched Vice President Al Gore not to stand in their way, cautioning that legal challenges to the election could yield wrangling without end. Although they acknowledged that there were absentee ballots in Florida still to be tallied, they said that a nearly complete recount of the overwhelming majority of votes demonstrated that Mr. Bush had won both the state and the presidency, though barely. "The vote here in Florida was very close, but when it was counted Governor Bush was the winner," Mr. Bush's chief representative in Florida, James A. Baker III, said at a news conference today. "For the good of the country and for the sake of our standing in the world, the campaigning should end and the business of an orderly transition should begin," Mr. Baker, a former secretary of state, said. The latest results from Tuesday's election contined to show Mr. Gore with a lead in the nationwide popular vote, by a margin of 218,441 votes. But in Florida, whose 25 electoral votes hold the key to the outcome, Mr. Bush led by 327 votes, according to the latest unofficial tally of votes that were recounted over the past few days. In their comments today, Mr. Bush and his aides tailored their words and actions to underscore the assertion that Mr. Bush had, essentially, won the election by winning Florida. When Mr. Bush spoke briefly with reporters at the governor's mansion here this afternoon, the placement of his chair and the tableau of advisers around him evoked a meeting in the Oval Office. "It's in our country's best interest that we plan in a responsible way for a possible administration," said Mr. Bush, making his first public comments in more than 48 hours. The strain of one of the strangest weeks in the history of American politics was obvious in his eyes, which looked tired, and his speech, which was halting and faint. "I am mindful that there are still votes to be counted," he added, referring to the absentee ballots, which the Bush campaign believes will strongly favor the Texas governor. But, Mr. Bush said, "I think it's up to us to prepare the groundwork for an administration that will be ready to function on Day One." Sitting near him were Dick Cheney, his would-be vice president, and Andrew Card, the likely chief of staff in a Bush White House. Both men were scheduled to meet with Mr. Bush at his ranch near Waco this weekend. As Mr. Bush took a tentative half- step toward the presidency, his advisers and the vice president's aides battled over the propriety of the manual recounts of votes in several Florida counties that were set to begin tomorrow. "The more often ballots are recounted, especially by hand, the more likely it is that human errors, like lost ballots and other risks, will be introduced," Mr. Baker said. "This frustrates the very reason why we have moved from hand counting to machine counting." According to several Republican officials, the Bush campaign was considering the possibility of seeking a legal injunction against the recounts, but campaign officials had not reached a decision late tonight. The State of Florida has already conducted a mechanical recount of votes, and the Bush and Gore campaigns waged a heated war of words today over whether that was enough, each side claiming the moral high ground and dressing its actions in the garb of patriotism. Concerning one of the disputes, the Florida secretary of state, Katherine Harris, said today that the so-called butterfly ballot used in Palm Beach County, which led to some confusion among voters on Tuesday, was legal. But Gore campaign officials continued to insist that it was illegal. Beyond Florida, other states in which the candidates ran neck and neck threatened to become scenes of prolonged legal action and intensive scrutiny of the voting process. Republican officials strongly hinted that if the Gore campaign pressed its case in Florida, they might follow suit in states like Wisconsin and Iowa that Mr. Bush lost by thin margins. That specter hovered between the lines of comments made by Mr. Baker at a news conference in a room in the Senate Office Building in Tallahassee. Mr. Baker used phrases like "rule of law," "the good of the country" and "the sake of our standing in the world" to call on Mr. Gore and his advisers to accept defeat � providing that the uncounted absentee ballots did not cut in their favor � and move on. "Let the country step back for a minute and pause and think about what's at stake here," said Mr. Baker, using a tone of moral suasion and even invoking Richard M. Nixon's actions in 1960 as a potential model for Mr. Gore. Mr. Nixon did not contest a narrow loss in that presidential election to John F. Kennedy. "The purpose of our national election is to establish a constitutional government, not unending legal wrangling," Mr. Baker said. Less than two hours later, in the same room of the same Senate building, aides to Mr. Gore held their own news conference. They said they were adamant in their resolve to make sure that there were not flaws in the voting process that wound up shortchanging their candidate � and costing him the presidency. "Other systems of government may work faster," said William M. Daley, the chairman of the Gore campaign. "Curtailing voters' rights may get a result that is faster. But no system of government is more just or more enduring than ours." "I hope," Mr. Daley added, "that our friends in the Bush campaign will join us in our efforts to get the fairest and most accurate vote count here in Florida." Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore ran so closely in Florida that the state teetered between the Gore, Bush and undecided columns all Tuesday night and well into Wednesday morning; A recount was required by state law. Although returns in a few other states were also so close that an unequivocal victor has yet to be determined, it is almost certain that the winner of Florida's 25 electoral votes is the next president of the United States. State officials will not formally complete or certify their mechanical recount of all 67 counties in Florida for several days, but an unofficial tally by the Associated Press gave Mr. Bush a 327-vote lead. That total may change in the manual recounts that are to begin at 8 a.m. Saturday in Palm Beach and Volusia Counties, in response to requests from the Gore campaign. Palm Beach election officials will check ballots from three precincts, while those in Volusia will recount ballots from the entire county. Officials in Broward County, which is heavily Democratic, were to manually recount ballots in three precincts, beginning on Monday. The vote in those precincts, county elections officials said, was overwhelmingly for Vice President Gore � 3,554, compared to 133 for Bush. But the county Democratic Party chairman, Mitch Caesar, said that as many as 6,686 ballots may have gone uncounted because of the shortcomings in the machine count. The completion of the mechanical recount, which shaved but did not eliminate Mr. Bush's lead, prompted the Bush campaign today to begin using words like win and winner. Even so, Mr. Bush himself stopped short of announcing Cabinet appointments or staging any sort of celebration. "We're taking our time," Mr. Bush said. "We're in a very low-key manner." Outside the mansion, a group of protesters drew attention to what Democrats have claimed were irregularities in the Florida voting. Mr. Bush was asked what he would say to those Americans who would deem a Bush presidency illegitimate. "I would say we have a Constitution," he said. "I will live by the Constitution. We've had two vote counts already, and I'm pleased with what's happened." Mr. Bush seemed utterly spent and got confused about the name of a reporter whom he knew well. There was a large adhesive bandage on his cheek, covering what his campaign's communications director, Karen P. Hughes, said was a boil-like infection that was not a serious condition. Mr. Gore, who had traveled from Nashville to Washington, did not make any public comments today, but allowed television cameras to film him and his family playing touch football on the grounds of the vice president's house. Both men's demeanors belied the frantic activity and truculent remarks of their aides and the bustle of Republicans and Democrats trying to amass evidence in Florida to support their positions. Manual recounts are sometimes able to detect votes that machines do not, and Republicans argued that holding such recounts only in counties that have drawn Democrats' attention � and have a majority of Democrats � was unfair to the rest of Florida. "Treating those votes in a different way from other counties is absolutely unfair and illegal," said Haley Barbour, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee who advises the Bush campaign. Warren Christopher, the former secretary of state who is leading the Gore team in Florida, spoke at the same news conference that Mr. Daley did; he said that such actions would be well within the Gore campaign's rights. Mr. Christopher also balked at the notion, raised by Mr. Baker, that there was some danger in a period of time in which there was no clear president-elect. "We're only three days away from the election itself," he said. "I don't see any threat to our Constitution; indeed, what we're doing is a constitutional process." ================================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: *Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends ================================================================= <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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