Joel,
I have one problem with Safire's remark concerning the 11 states that passed measures against gay marriage ...
I would not consider either Oregon or Michigan to be bastions of the "evangelical right". I think a better, more thoughtful explaination needs to come out concerning those states. Simply tossing out the knee-jerk "evengelical right" answer might not only be inaccurate, it might be dangerous because it might cause education/outreach efforts to be misguided.
Politics, Everyday, All day... morning, noon and night....
-
Apollonaris Zeus
- Posts: 3716
- Joined: Sun Sep 14, 2003 11:17 am
Ding, Dong the witch is dead! the witch is dead!
Yes the Bitch is dead!
John Ashecroft is deffinately out!!!!!!!!
My Ex-Governor is IN!!!!!
Marc Racicot is going to replace him!
He's not about to take the stands that Johnny did on your constitutional rights!
Montanan's are very defensive on your private rights. In fact, it's part of our state constitution. You have a a right to personal privacy!
Good bye bitch!
He's also protective about women's rights and believes to a women's choice!
A II Z
Yes the Bitch is dead!
John Ashecroft is deffinately out!!!!!!!!
My Ex-Governor is IN!!!!!
Marc Racicot is going to replace him!
He's not about to take the stands that Johnny did on your constitutional rights!
Montanan's are very defensive on your private rights. In fact, it's part of our state constitution. You have a a right to personal privacy!
Good bye bitch!
He's also protective about women's rights and believes to a women's choice!
A II Z
-
geekster
- Posts: 4865
- Joined: Wed Sep 08, 2004 2:53 pm
- Location: Hospice For The Terminally Breathing
- Contact:
Hey ... A-Z ... you have a cite for that appointment?
I just did a quick global news search and I am not seeing the announcement anywhere. I have seen him on a short list of likely candidates for the position but I have not seen any announcement of an appointment yet. Nothing on the AP wire either ... http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/
I just did a quick global news search and I am not seeing the announcement anywhere. I have seen him on a short list of likely candidates for the position but I have not seen any announcement of an appointment yet. Nothing on the AP wire either ... http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/
Pabst Blue Ribbon - The beer that made Gerlach famous.
-
Simply Joel
- Posts: 3483
- Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2004 9:08 am
- Location: Land of Lincoln
- Contact:
Please note, I did not start a new thread of purely anti-democrat banter to "rub your noses" about the Republican party successes (reference Calico whateverhisnameis),,,
Yet, this morning, for whatever reason (being poor losers, having small penises, too large of ears, whatever appropirately applies) my fellow citizens/e-playans from the losing party created absolutely virulent threads from questionably credible sources singing the same old anti-Bush tune which left the charts on 2 November 2004... you lost the election, get over it. And I have even gone so far as to exercise almost every bit of graciousness i possess to ensure i didn't post too much gleee in John Kerry's loss. Now, please note, i didn't actually say i was celebrating the Bush win... that should be telling to some of you, others will simply overlook it and continue their shrieking about the unfairness of this, the decline of that... and the environment going the path of the DODO bird.... hey, take a fucking breath, your brains need the oxygen.
so... where do i stand on all this?
#1 i still support the constitution and its officers, no matter what numbskull occupies the office... whether it was Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton or Bush... and frankly, i was unimpressed with every single one of them during their tenure... only Carter has truly redeemed himself in my eyes.
#2. i will always have a conservative perspective, because i am an old fart... and i believe people should "police" their own behavior instead of letting someone make a law to control said behavior.
#3 i am nearly physically ill with all the fucking anti-Bush this, anti-Bush that... couldn't you find it somewhere within yourselves to be pro-this or pro-that without all the rancorous commentary... because it (the commentary) isn't convincing me, and for the most part on the e-playa, you are preaching to the choir...
now having said all that... i will post pundit's words here on this thread, and chuckle... and know that in less than 1 year another election for congress will begin... and yes, Ann Coulter can be virulent and rancorous... but i do take her opinion as that... one person's opinion.. and bitingly funny one at that. I don't always agree with her, but i do believe she has the right to an opinion... yet even her opinion doesn't compare to the anti-Bush nonsense recently posted. However, I don't see any sense of humor, insight or introspection, just hate, in the most recent non-republican/non-right of center posts...
a little advice to those who may still be reading this... don't take life too seriously folks, nobody gets out alive.
now onto to something entertaining..
ONE LAST FLIP-FLOP
by Ann Coulter
I guess John Kerry went into the primary without a plan to win the election.
The Democrats threw everything they had at this election. They ran a phony Vietnam War hero and a phony Southerner. They had middle-aged women executives at MTV hawking "Rock the Vote" to entice the most uninformed young people to vote for Kerry. They had Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews and New York Times darling Eminem. They had documentaries, books, the universities, Hollywood (and the French!) on their side.
They had liberal thugs ransacking Bush-Cheney headquarters, stealing Bush-Cheney signs and slashing the tires of Bush-Cheney get-out-the-vote vans on Election Day. In Colorado, they traded voter registrations for crack cocaine. In Ohio, they registered Mary Poppins and Dick Tracy. In South Carolina, Emily's List called Republican households and gave them incorrect information about the location of polling places.
The media campaigned heavily for Kerry with endless Abu Ghraib coverage, phony National Guard documents and, days before the election, false news reports that hundreds of tons of munitions had been looted in Iraq.
The Democrats' cheating never stopped. The big story of this election is the fraudulent exit polls on Election Day. Strange as it seems to me, it is well acknowledged that people are more likely to come out and vote for a winner. Early exit polls showing Kerry the clear winner could be expected to depress the vote for Bush.
Stunningly inaccurate exit polls released around noon on Election Day convinced news anchors, talking heads and even the campaigns that Kerry would win walking away. But at 9 p.m., when the first actual results began to come in, the election flipped to Bush. It was the first Kerry flip-flop that actually served the national interest.
The exit polls were absurd: They showed Kerry winning Pennsylvania by 20 points and Bush tied with Kerry in Mississippi. Only monkey business can explain the wildly pro-Kerry exit polls -- admittedly hard to believe with a party that has behaved so honorably throughout this campaign. Michael Barone speculates that the sites of exit polling were leaked to the Democrats, and Democrats sent large numbers of voters to those polls to take exit polls and throw the results.
But for all their chicanery, vote-stealing, Hollywood starlets, fake polls and faux patriotism, the Democrats were wiped out on Election Day.
Bush won the largest popular vote in history with a 3.5 million margin. Indeed, simply by getting a majority of the country to vote for him -- the left's most hated politician since Richard Nixon -- Bush did something "rock star" Bill Clinton never did. Bush maintained or increased his vote in every state but Vermont. Republicans picked up seats in the House and Senate, and continue to dominate state governorships. Also making history of a sort, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle lost his election, marking the first time in half a century a Senate leader has been defeated.
To Michael Moore, George Soros, Terry McAuliffe, Dan Rather, Al Franken and the whole gang at Air America Radio -- you were great, guys! Thanks for the help! We couldn't have done it without you!
Of course, we could have done it a lot earlier on election night but for "Boy Genius" Karl Rove. It's absurd that the election was as close as it was. The nation is at war, Bush is a magnificent wartime leader, and the night before the election we didn't know if a liberal tax-and-spend, Vietnam War-protesting senator from Massachusetts would beat him.
If Rove is "the architect" -- as Bush called him in his acceptance speech -- then he is the architect of high TV ratings, not a Republican victory. By keeping the race so tight, Rove ensured that a race that should have been a runaway Bush victory would not be over until the wee hours of the morning.
As we now know, the most important issue to voters was not terrorism, but moral values. Marriage amendments won by lopsided majorities in all 11 states where they were on the ballot. Even in Oregon, the state targeted by gay marriage advocates as their best shot of defeating a marriage amendment, the amendment passed by 57 percent -- a figure noticeable for being larger than the percentage of votes cast for Bush in Oregon. In the great state of Mississippi, the marriage amendment passed with 86 percent of the vote.
Seventy percent to 80 percent of Americans oppose gay marriage and partial-birth abortion. Far from appealing exclusively to a narrow Republican base, opposition to gay marriage is strongest among the Democratic base: blacks, Hispanics, blue-collar workers and the elderly. There were marriage amendments on the ballot in Michigan and Ohio. Bush won Ohio narrowly and lost Michigan by only 2 points. How different might that have been if Bush hadn't run from the issue.
But Rove concluded Bush should stay mum on gay marriage and partial-birth abortion -- contravening the politicians' rule of thumb: Talk about your positions that are wildly popular with voters. "Boy Genius" Rove decided Bush shouldn't even run radio ads on gay marriage, and at the last minute, Bush started claiming he was in favor of civil unions, just like John Kerry.
Amazingly, it was the Democrats -- the ones who support gay marriage -- who used the gay issue for political advantage, most famously when Kerry gay-baited Mary Cheney during the third debate.
The one toss-up Senate seat lost by the Republicans was Pete Coors in Colorado, where the Democrats did not hesitate to run commercials of a bacchanalian gay festival in Canada sponsored by Coors Brewing Co. The most narrow Republican win in a toss-up Senate race was in Alaska, where the Republican candidate was another "progressive" on the social issues.
When contemplating a former New York mayor as their next presidential candidate, Republicans should remember: This election should have been over sometime in August, not 1 a.m. election night.
COPYRIGHT 2004 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
Yet, this morning, for whatever reason (being poor losers, having small penises, too large of ears, whatever appropirately applies) my fellow citizens/e-playans from the losing party created absolutely virulent threads from questionably credible sources singing the same old anti-Bush tune which left the charts on 2 November 2004... you lost the election, get over it. And I have even gone so far as to exercise almost every bit of graciousness i possess to ensure i didn't post too much gleee in John Kerry's loss. Now, please note, i didn't actually say i was celebrating the Bush win... that should be telling to some of you, others will simply overlook it and continue their shrieking about the unfairness of this, the decline of that... and the environment going the path of the DODO bird.... hey, take a fucking breath, your brains need the oxygen.
so... where do i stand on all this?
#1 i still support the constitution and its officers, no matter what numbskull occupies the office... whether it was Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton or Bush... and frankly, i was unimpressed with every single one of them during their tenure... only Carter has truly redeemed himself in my eyes.
#2. i will always have a conservative perspective, because i am an old fart... and i believe people should "police" their own behavior instead of letting someone make a law to control said behavior.
#3 i am nearly physically ill with all the fucking anti-Bush this, anti-Bush that... couldn't you find it somewhere within yourselves to be pro-this or pro-that without all the rancorous commentary... because it (the commentary) isn't convincing me, and for the most part on the e-playa, you are preaching to the choir...
now having said all that... i will post pundit's words here on this thread, and chuckle... and know that in less than 1 year another election for congress will begin... and yes, Ann Coulter can be virulent and rancorous... but i do take her opinion as that... one person's opinion.. and bitingly funny one at that. I don't always agree with her, but i do believe she has the right to an opinion... yet even her opinion doesn't compare to the anti-Bush nonsense recently posted. However, I don't see any sense of humor, insight or introspection, just hate, in the most recent non-republican/non-right of center posts...
a little advice to those who may still be reading this... don't take life too seriously folks, nobody gets out alive.
now onto to something entertaining..
ONE LAST FLIP-FLOP
by Ann Coulter
I guess John Kerry went into the primary without a plan to win the election.
The Democrats threw everything they had at this election. They ran a phony Vietnam War hero and a phony Southerner. They had middle-aged women executives at MTV hawking "Rock the Vote" to entice the most uninformed young people to vote for Kerry. They had Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews and New York Times darling Eminem. They had documentaries, books, the universities, Hollywood (and the French!) on their side.
They had liberal thugs ransacking Bush-Cheney headquarters, stealing Bush-Cheney signs and slashing the tires of Bush-Cheney get-out-the-vote vans on Election Day. In Colorado, they traded voter registrations for crack cocaine. In Ohio, they registered Mary Poppins and Dick Tracy. In South Carolina, Emily's List called Republican households and gave them incorrect information about the location of polling places.
The media campaigned heavily for Kerry with endless Abu Ghraib coverage, phony National Guard documents and, days before the election, false news reports that hundreds of tons of munitions had been looted in Iraq.
The Democrats' cheating never stopped. The big story of this election is the fraudulent exit polls on Election Day. Strange as it seems to me, it is well acknowledged that people are more likely to come out and vote for a winner. Early exit polls showing Kerry the clear winner could be expected to depress the vote for Bush.
Stunningly inaccurate exit polls released around noon on Election Day convinced news anchors, talking heads and even the campaigns that Kerry would win walking away. But at 9 p.m., when the first actual results began to come in, the election flipped to Bush. It was the first Kerry flip-flop that actually served the national interest.
The exit polls were absurd: They showed Kerry winning Pennsylvania by 20 points and Bush tied with Kerry in Mississippi. Only monkey business can explain the wildly pro-Kerry exit polls -- admittedly hard to believe with a party that has behaved so honorably throughout this campaign. Michael Barone speculates that the sites of exit polling were leaked to the Democrats, and Democrats sent large numbers of voters to those polls to take exit polls and throw the results.
But for all their chicanery, vote-stealing, Hollywood starlets, fake polls and faux patriotism, the Democrats were wiped out on Election Day.
Bush won the largest popular vote in history with a 3.5 million margin. Indeed, simply by getting a majority of the country to vote for him -- the left's most hated politician since Richard Nixon -- Bush did something "rock star" Bill Clinton never did. Bush maintained or increased his vote in every state but Vermont. Republicans picked up seats in the House and Senate, and continue to dominate state governorships. Also making history of a sort, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle lost his election, marking the first time in half a century a Senate leader has been defeated.
To Michael Moore, George Soros, Terry McAuliffe, Dan Rather, Al Franken and the whole gang at Air America Radio -- you were great, guys! Thanks for the help! We couldn't have done it without you!
Of course, we could have done it a lot earlier on election night but for "Boy Genius" Karl Rove. It's absurd that the election was as close as it was. The nation is at war, Bush is a magnificent wartime leader, and the night before the election we didn't know if a liberal tax-and-spend, Vietnam War-protesting senator from Massachusetts would beat him.
If Rove is "the architect" -- as Bush called him in his acceptance speech -- then he is the architect of high TV ratings, not a Republican victory. By keeping the race so tight, Rove ensured that a race that should have been a runaway Bush victory would not be over until the wee hours of the morning.
As we now know, the most important issue to voters was not terrorism, but moral values. Marriage amendments won by lopsided majorities in all 11 states where they were on the ballot. Even in Oregon, the state targeted by gay marriage advocates as their best shot of defeating a marriage amendment, the amendment passed by 57 percent -- a figure noticeable for being larger than the percentage of votes cast for Bush in Oregon. In the great state of Mississippi, the marriage amendment passed with 86 percent of the vote.
Seventy percent to 80 percent of Americans oppose gay marriage and partial-birth abortion. Far from appealing exclusively to a narrow Republican base, opposition to gay marriage is strongest among the Democratic base: blacks, Hispanics, blue-collar workers and the elderly. There were marriage amendments on the ballot in Michigan and Ohio. Bush won Ohio narrowly and lost Michigan by only 2 points. How different might that have been if Bush hadn't run from the issue.
But Rove concluded Bush should stay mum on gay marriage and partial-birth abortion -- contravening the politicians' rule of thumb: Talk about your positions that are wildly popular with voters. "Boy Genius" Rove decided Bush shouldn't even run radio ads on gay marriage, and at the last minute, Bush started claiming he was in favor of civil unions, just like John Kerry.
Amazingly, it was the Democrats -- the ones who support gay marriage -- who used the gay issue for political advantage, most famously when Kerry gay-baited Mary Cheney during the third debate.
The one toss-up Senate seat lost by the Republicans was Pete Coors in Colorado, where the Democrats did not hesitate to run commercials of a bacchanalian gay festival in Canada sponsored by Coors Brewing Co. The most narrow Republican win in a toss-up Senate race was in Alaska, where the Republican candidate was another "progressive" on the social issues.
When contemplating a former New York mayor as their next presidential candidate, Republicans should remember: This election should have been over sometime in August, not 1 a.m. election night.
COPYRIGHT 2004 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
Democrats... snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, daily!
slap my salmon, baby
slap my salmon, baby
-
Simply Joel
- Posts: 3483
- Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2004 9:08 am
- Location: Land of Lincoln
- Contact:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 4, 2004
Bush Says Changes Inevitable in Cabinet
By REUTERS
Filed at 7:44 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Thursday that changes are inevitable in his Cabinet in a second term, and Republicans said there would be new faces but perhaps not right away in some of the top jobs.
At a post-election news conference, Bush said he would do some thinking about the shape of his Cabinet and senior White House staff during a long weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat outside Washington.
``In the Cabinet, there will be some changes. I don't know who they will be. It's inevitable there will be changes. It happens in every administration,'' he said.
Many Republicans think both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell will leave, if not immediately, then after a reasonable interval.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said there are priorities remaining that Rumsfeld, 72, wants to do not only on Iraq but on continuing to reshape the U.S. military from its Cold War past into a more agile 21st century force.
Di Rita said he could not state Rumsfeld's intentions, but told reporters, ``He's at work. He's doing his job. He's thinking about the future. And there's a lot of work to be done in this department.''
``What we're doing in terms of transforming this department into a 21st century institution is closer to the beginning than to the end,'' Di Rita said.
Rumsfeld's deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, would be considered a candidate to replace Rumsfeld, but as a leading voice for the Iraq war over weapons of mass destruction that were never found, his confirmation by the U.S. Senate could be difficult.
Powell, in many ways a lonesome dove in a hawkish administration, was long thought to be on his way out. But there are indications he could stay on at least for a while.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher would not speculate on Powell's future but said Powell, in the morning staff meeting, talked about ``a very active upcoming agenda of foreign policy that he and the president have planned, and that it will be our duty, along with the secretary, to implement.''
POWELL'S PLANS
Boucher also outlined Powell's plans for several trips abroad over the next few weeks and said the department's agenda also included the Iraqi and Afghan elections in January and the spring respectively.
Justice Department sources have said privately for weeks that Attorney General John Ashcroft is not likely to continue in a second term. Ashcroft, who missed nearly a month of work earlier this year because of pancreatitis and surgery to remove his gallbladder, may cite health reasons for resigning.
A Justice Department spokesman would not make any official comment on whether Ashcroft would continue in a second term. But a source close to Ashcroft said he had made no decision on what to do if Bush asked him to stay on.
``I understand that he's energized by the election results,'' the source said.
When Ashcroft departs, a former deputy, Larry Thompson, would be a likely successor, Republican officials said.
Treasury Secretary John Snow may depart after a period of time, possibly replaced by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick or White House budget chief Josh Bolten, or a long-time Bush supporter from California, Gerald Parsky.
Commerce Secretary Don Evans, Bush's best friend, has been considered a possible successor to White House chief of staff Andrew Card if Card leaves. Card has given no indication lately that he is leaving.
Many think Evans wants to go back to Texas.
Also believed to be gone in a second Bush term: Homeland Secretary Tom Ridge, Education Secretary Rod Paige, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, and Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta, among others.
A key question is what happens to Bush's trusted national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. The talk about her is that she could stay in her job, eventually move to Defense or State, or go back to California.
Many administration officials believe if Bush were to ask his close confidante to stay on in some top capacity, she would do so. But Rice, weary of the long hours, has often talked of going back to Stanford University.
Her low-key deputy, Stephen Hadley, is a possible successor to Rice as national security adviser.
Former Sen. John Danforth, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a possible secretary of state candidate.
Kyle McSlarrow, the current deputy energy secretary, is being mentioned as a replacement for the possible departure of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, whose tenure has been punctuated by record high oil and gasoline prices.
Copyright 2004 Reuters Ltd.
November 4, 2004
Bush Says Changes Inevitable in Cabinet
By REUTERS
Filed at 7:44 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Thursday that changes are inevitable in his Cabinet in a second term, and Republicans said there would be new faces but perhaps not right away in some of the top jobs.
At a post-election news conference, Bush said he would do some thinking about the shape of his Cabinet and senior White House staff during a long weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat outside Washington.
``In the Cabinet, there will be some changes. I don't know who they will be. It's inevitable there will be changes. It happens in every administration,'' he said.
Many Republicans think both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell will leave, if not immediately, then after a reasonable interval.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said there are priorities remaining that Rumsfeld, 72, wants to do not only on Iraq but on continuing to reshape the U.S. military from its Cold War past into a more agile 21st century force.
Di Rita said he could not state Rumsfeld's intentions, but told reporters, ``He's at work. He's doing his job. He's thinking about the future. And there's a lot of work to be done in this department.''
``What we're doing in terms of transforming this department into a 21st century institution is closer to the beginning than to the end,'' Di Rita said.
Rumsfeld's deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, would be considered a candidate to replace Rumsfeld, but as a leading voice for the Iraq war over weapons of mass destruction that were never found, his confirmation by the U.S. Senate could be difficult.
Powell, in many ways a lonesome dove in a hawkish administration, was long thought to be on his way out. But there are indications he could stay on at least for a while.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher would not speculate on Powell's future but said Powell, in the morning staff meeting, talked about ``a very active upcoming agenda of foreign policy that he and the president have planned, and that it will be our duty, along with the secretary, to implement.''
POWELL'S PLANS
Boucher also outlined Powell's plans for several trips abroad over the next few weeks and said the department's agenda also included the Iraqi and Afghan elections in January and the spring respectively.
Justice Department sources have said privately for weeks that Attorney General John Ashcroft is not likely to continue in a second term. Ashcroft, who missed nearly a month of work earlier this year because of pancreatitis and surgery to remove his gallbladder, may cite health reasons for resigning.
A Justice Department spokesman would not make any official comment on whether Ashcroft would continue in a second term. But a source close to Ashcroft said he had made no decision on what to do if Bush asked him to stay on.
``I understand that he's energized by the election results,'' the source said.
When Ashcroft departs, a former deputy, Larry Thompson, would be a likely successor, Republican officials said.
Treasury Secretary John Snow may depart after a period of time, possibly replaced by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick or White House budget chief Josh Bolten, or a long-time Bush supporter from California, Gerald Parsky.
Commerce Secretary Don Evans, Bush's best friend, has been considered a possible successor to White House chief of staff Andrew Card if Card leaves. Card has given no indication lately that he is leaving.
Many think Evans wants to go back to Texas.
Also believed to be gone in a second Bush term: Homeland Secretary Tom Ridge, Education Secretary Rod Paige, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, and Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta, among others.
A key question is what happens to Bush's trusted national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. The talk about her is that she could stay in her job, eventually move to Defense or State, or go back to California.
Many administration officials believe if Bush were to ask his close confidante to stay on in some top capacity, she would do so. But Rice, weary of the long hours, has often talked of going back to Stanford University.
Her low-key deputy, Stephen Hadley, is a possible successor to Rice as national security adviser.
Former Sen. John Danforth, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a possible secretary of state candidate.
Kyle McSlarrow, the current deputy energy secretary, is being mentioned as a replacement for the possible departure of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, whose tenure has been punctuated by record high oil and gasoline prices.
Copyright 2004 Reuters Ltd.
Democrats... snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, daily!
slap my salmon, baby
slap my salmon, baby
-
Apollonaris Zeus
- Posts: 3716
- Joined: Sun Sep 14, 2003 11:17 am
He is a puppet that believes what ever he does he is doing GOD's work.Simply Joel wrote:and our president isn't a figurehead?
of course, to most here, he is George Bush, the Boogey Man....
He squadered our Armed forces in Iraq and will now have to go to war with the one country that has been the prime source of terrorism in the world, Iran.
Saddly for Powell he's nothing but a " House Nigger" to this Administration and its southern white supporters. Powell now knows that.
Condolizza Rice- the same! Both were used!
In a way, I'm glad that Kerry didn't win, because the shit will hit the fan very soon and the biggest Budget Cuts will take place in the history of the US. All will be placed on the Republicans and not Kerry and the Democratic Party.
"Justice Department sources have said privately for weeks that Attorney General John Ashcroft is not likely to continue in a second term. Ashcroft, who missed nearly a month of work earlier this year because of pancreatitis and surgery to remove his gallbladder, may cite health reasons for resigning"
Read- John just shut the fuck up for a month or two so we can fool some people into voting for us!
"Oh, and he is pro-life, not pro-choice as far as I can tell. Was that a joke?"- The Geekster
He is Pro Choice and Pro-life at least that was his recorded position as District Attorney and Governor in Montana and perhaps one reason that he was not chosen for General Attorney in the first place. I have no cite on that appointment, but he continues to come up in most discussions on who will replace Ashole since he was one of the possible Bush Canidates for that position. Many Montanans were very upset that the only placement he received for his help as a Bush promoter was a legal job as an Enron lawyer- a real good payback up the ass!
A II Z
-
geekster
- Posts: 4865
- Joined: Wed Sep 08, 2004 2:53 pm
- Location: Hospice For The Terminally Breathing
- Contact:
Not really. He was given Chairman of the Republican National Committee. That is pretty good payback. He basically decides what local candidates get what funding, keeps them "in line" with the party, etc. A pretty powerful position, really, until being replaced by Ed Gillespie when he went to be Bush's campaign manager.
He was probably the most powerful Republican outside the President as far as REAL power (not fame).
He was probably the most powerful Republican outside the President as far as REAL power (not fame).
Pabst Blue Ribbon - The beer that made Gerlach famous.
-
cowboyangel
- Posts: 6986
- Joined: Fri May 14, 2004 10:32 pm
Star Trek Meets Patanjalis Yoga Sutras
Air Force report calls for $7.5M to study psychic teleportation
Fri Nov 5, 6:33 AM ET
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
Star Trek fans may be happy to hear that the Air Force has paid to study psychic teleportation.
• Bone marrow found for woman seeking South Asian donors
• Microsoft to provide early warning of security flaws
• Machine error gives Bush 3,893 extra votes in Ohio
• Rocket carrying Air Force GPS launches into orbit
• Complaints posted on personal Web site spark lawsuit
Search USATODAY.com
But scientists aren't so thrilled.
The Air Force Research Lab's August "Teleportation Physics Report," posted earlier this week on the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Web site, struck a raw nerve with physicists and critics of wasteful military spending.
In the report, author Eric Davis says psychic teleportation, moving yourself from location to location through mind powers, is "quite real and can be controlled." The 88-page report also reviews a range of teleportation concepts and experiments:
• Quantum teleportation, a technique demonstrated in the last decade that shifts the characteristics, but not the location, of sub-atomic particles at great distances.
• Wormholes, a highly theoretical possibility whereby the intense gravitational field near black holes could rip open entrances to distant locales.
• Psychokinesis, or psychic teleportation. In support of the idea, the report cites UFO reports, Soviet and Chinese studies of psychics and U.S. military studies of spoon-bending phenomena.
"It is in large part crackpot physics," says physicist Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University, author of The Physics of Star Trek, a book detailing the physical limits that prevent teleportation. He describes the Air Force report as "some things adapted from reasonable theoretical studies, and other things from nonsensical ones."
Some experts have long criticized what they see as a military sweet tooth for junk science. A "remote viewing" project, for example, undertaken by defense intelligence services and declassified in 1994, sought to see whether psychic powers could be employed to spy on the Soviet Union. The teleportation report "raises questions of scientific quality control at the Air Force," the FAS' Steven Aftergood says.
Davis, a physicist with Warp Drive Metrics of Las Vegas, couldn't be reached for comment. The Air Force paid $25,000 for the report, part of a $20.5 million advanced rocket and missile design contract. The report calls for $7.5 million to conduct psychic teleportation experiments.
"The views expressed in the report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the Air Force, the Department of Defense (news - web sites) or the U.S. Government," says an Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) statement sent to USA TODAY. "There are no plans by the AFRL Propulsion Directorate for additional funding on this contract."
Explaining why the lab sponsored the study, AFRL spokesman Ranney Adams said, "If we don't turn over stones, we don't know if we have missed something."
Fri Nov 5, 6:33 AM ET
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
Star Trek fans may be happy to hear that the Air Force has paid to study psychic teleportation.
• Bone marrow found for woman seeking South Asian donors
• Microsoft to provide early warning of security flaws
• Machine error gives Bush 3,893 extra votes in Ohio
• Rocket carrying Air Force GPS launches into orbit
• Complaints posted on personal Web site spark lawsuit
Search USATODAY.com
But scientists aren't so thrilled.
The Air Force Research Lab's August "Teleportation Physics Report," posted earlier this week on the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Web site, struck a raw nerve with physicists and critics of wasteful military spending.
In the report, author Eric Davis says psychic teleportation, moving yourself from location to location through mind powers, is "quite real and can be controlled." The 88-page report also reviews a range of teleportation concepts and experiments:
• Quantum teleportation, a technique demonstrated in the last decade that shifts the characteristics, but not the location, of sub-atomic particles at great distances.
• Wormholes, a highly theoretical possibility whereby the intense gravitational field near black holes could rip open entrances to distant locales.
• Psychokinesis, or psychic teleportation. In support of the idea, the report cites UFO reports, Soviet and Chinese studies of psychics and U.S. military studies of spoon-bending phenomena.
"It is in large part crackpot physics," says physicist Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University, author of The Physics of Star Trek, a book detailing the physical limits that prevent teleportation. He describes the Air Force report as "some things adapted from reasonable theoretical studies, and other things from nonsensical ones."
Some experts have long criticized what they see as a military sweet tooth for junk science. A "remote viewing" project, for example, undertaken by defense intelligence services and declassified in 1994, sought to see whether psychic powers could be employed to spy on the Soviet Union. The teleportation report "raises questions of scientific quality control at the Air Force," the FAS' Steven Aftergood says.
Davis, a physicist with Warp Drive Metrics of Las Vegas, couldn't be reached for comment. The Air Force paid $25,000 for the report, part of a $20.5 million advanced rocket and missile design contract. The report calls for $7.5 million to conduct psychic teleportation experiments.
"The views expressed in the report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the Air Force, the Department of Defense (news - web sites) or the U.S. Government," says an Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) statement sent to USA TODAY. "There are no plans by the AFRL Propulsion Directorate for additional funding on this contract."
Explaining why the lab sponsored the study, AFRL spokesman Ranney Adams said, "If we don't turn over stones, we don't know if we have missed something."
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believe is false."- William Casey, CIA Director 1981
-
Simply Joel
- Posts: 3483
- Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2004 9:08 am
- Location: Land of Lincoln
- Contact:
goood morning... it is politics, 24/7
November 6, 2004
The Values-Vote Myth
By DAVID BROOKS
Every election year, we in the commentariat come up with a story line to explain the result, and the story line has to have two features. First, it has to be completely wrong. Second, it has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them.
In past years, the story line has involved Angry White Males, or Willie Horton-bashing racists. This year, the official story is that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls to put George Bush over the top.
This theory certainly flatters liberals, and it is certainly wrong.
Here are the facts. As Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center points out, there was no disproportionate surge in the evangelical vote this year. Evangelicals made up the same share of the electorate this year as they did in 2000. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who are pro-life. Sixteen percent of voters said abortions should be illegal in all circumstances. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who say they pray daily.
It's true that Bush did get a few more evangelicals to vote Republican, but Kohut, whose final poll nailed the election result dead-on, reminds us that public opinion on gay issues over all has been moving leftward over the years. Majorities oppose gay marriage, but in the exit polls Tuesday, 25 percent of the voters supported gay marriage and 35 percent of voters supported civil unions. There is a big middle on gay rights issues, as there is on most social issues.
Much of the misinterpretation of this election derives from a poorly worded question in the exit polls. When asked about the issue that most influenced their vote, voters were given the option of saying "moral values." But that phrase can mean anything - or nothing. Who doesn't vote on moral values? If you ask an inept question, you get a misleading result.
The reality is that this was a broad victory for the president. Bush did better this year than he did in 2000 in 45 out of the 50 states. He did better in New York, Connecticut and, amazingly, Massachusetts. That's hardly the Bible Belt. Bush, on the other hand, did not gain significantly in the 11 states with gay marriage referendums.
He won because 53 percent of voters approved of his performance as president. Fifty-eight percent of them trust Bush to fight terrorism. They had roughly equal confidence in Bush and Kerry to handle the economy. Most approved of the decision to go to war in Iraq. Most see it as part of the war on terror.
The fact is that if you think we are safer now, you probably voted for Bush. If you think we are less safe, you probably voted for Kerry. That's policy, not fundamentalism. The upsurge in voters was an upsurge of people with conservative policy views, whether they are religious or not.
The red and blue maps that have been popping up in the papers again this week are certainly striking, but they conceal as much as they reveal. I've spent the past four years traveling to 36 states and writing millions of words trying to understand this values divide, and I can tell you there is no one explanation. It's ridiculous to say, as some liberals have this week, that we are perpetually refighting the Scopes trial, with the metro forces of enlightenment and reason arrayed against the retro forces of dogma and reaction.
In the first place, there is an immense diversity of opinion within regions, towns and families. Second, the values divide is a complex layering of conflicting views about faith, leadership, individualism, American exceptionalism, suburbia, Wal-Mart, decorum, economic opportunity, natural law, manliness, bourgeois virtues and a zillion other issues.
But the same insularity that caused many liberals to lose touch with the rest of the country now causes them to simplify, misunderstand and condescend to the people who voted for Bush. If you want to understand why Democrats keep losing elections, just listen to some coastal and university town liberals talk about how conformist and intolerant people in Red America are. It makes you wonder: why is it that people who are completely closed-minded talk endlessly about how open-minded they are?
What we are seeing is a diverse but stable Republican coalition gradually eclipsing a diverse and stable Democratic coalition. Social issues are important, but they don't come close to telling the whole story. Some of the liberal reaction reminds me of a phrase I came across recently: The rage of the drowning man.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
The Values-Vote Myth
By DAVID BROOKS
Every election year, we in the commentariat come up with a story line to explain the result, and the story line has to have two features. First, it has to be completely wrong. Second, it has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them.
In past years, the story line has involved Angry White Males, or Willie Horton-bashing racists. This year, the official story is that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls to put George Bush over the top.
This theory certainly flatters liberals, and it is certainly wrong.
Here are the facts. As Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center points out, there was no disproportionate surge in the evangelical vote this year. Evangelicals made up the same share of the electorate this year as they did in 2000. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who are pro-life. Sixteen percent of voters said abortions should be illegal in all circumstances. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who say they pray daily.
It's true that Bush did get a few more evangelicals to vote Republican, but Kohut, whose final poll nailed the election result dead-on, reminds us that public opinion on gay issues over all has been moving leftward over the years. Majorities oppose gay marriage, but in the exit polls Tuesday, 25 percent of the voters supported gay marriage and 35 percent of voters supported civil unions. There is a big middle on gay rights issues, as there is on most social issues.
Much of the misinterpretation of this election derives from a poorly worded question in the exit polls. When asked about the issue that most influenced their vote, voters were given the option of saying "moral values." But that phrase can mean anything - or nothing. Who doesn't vote on moral values? If you ask an inept question, you get a misleading result.
The reality is that this was a broad victory for the president. Bush did better this year than he did in 2000 in 45 out of the 50 states. He did better in New York, Connecticut and, amazingly, Massachusetts. That's hardly the Bible Belt. Bush, on the other hand, did not gain significantly in the 11 states with gay marriage referendums.
He won because 53 percent of voters approved of his performance as president. Fifty-eight percent of them trust Bush to fight terrorism. They had roughly equal confidence in Bush and Kerry to handle the economy. Most approved of the decision to go to war in Iraq. Most see it as part of the war on terror.
The fact is that if you think we are safer now, you probably voted for Bush. If you think we are less safe, you probably voted for Kerry. That's policy, not fundamentalism. The upsurge in voters was an upsurge of people with conservative policy views, whether they are religious or not.
The red and blue maps that have been popping up in the papers again this week are certainly striking, but they conceal as much as they reveal. I've spent the past four years traveling to 36 states and writing millions of words trying to understand this values divide, and I can tell you there is no one explanation. It's ridiculous to say, as some liberals have this week, that we are perpetually refighting the Scopes trial, with the metro forces of enlightenment and reason arrayed against the retro forces of dogma and reaction.
'Scopes trial': a highly publicized trial in 1925 when John Thomas Scopes violated a Tennessee state law by teaching evolution in high school
In the first place, there is an immense diversity of opinion within regions, towns and families. Second, the values divide is a complex layering of conflicting views about faith, leadership, individualism, American exceptionalism, suburbia, Wal-Mart, decorum, economic opportunity, natural law, manliness, bourgeois virtues and a zillion other issues.
But the same insularity that caused many liberals to lose touch with the rest of the country now causes them to simplify, misunderstand and condescend to the people who voted for Bush. If you want to understand why Democrats keep losing elections, just listen to some coastal and university town liberals talk about how conformist and intolerant people in Red America are. It makes you wonder: why is it that people who are completely closed-minded talk endlessly about how open-minded they are?
What we are seeing is a diverse but stable Republican coalition gradually eclipsing a diverse and stable Democratic coalition. Social issues are important, but they don't come close to telling the whole story. Some of the liberal reaction reminds me of a phrase I came across recently: The rage of the drowning man.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
-
tonytohono
- Posts: 1559
- Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2004 8:37 pm
- Contact:
I am glad that in all of this return to morality, and conservative idealism, that seems to be running so rampant on this site (there are seriously more conservative minded people on the eplaya than on the Fox news forums – what kind of contradictory paradox is that?) that we have forgotten every other nation on this planet. What a bunch of imperialistic crap. (Excuse me Senator, what do you call Tony Blair and Poland?)
I’m going to laugh when China gets tired of our shit, and long after we run out of nuclear missiles they still have enough war revenged victims to steam roll us. Hey, that was being facetious.
You guys are probably the same isolationists who are complaining over on the decline of BM thread and all of the other BM sucks ever since they eliminated anarchy threads, whine whine whine, huh? Why didn’t we just fence off the playa 5 years ago, back when we had the chance. That didn’t work, but all hope is not lost. Maybe we can join GW and fence off our nation from the rest of the world… shit, at least then we wouldn’t have to worry about those damn foreigners coming to BM – idea: kill two birds with one stone.
I’m sick of you selfish pricks talking about open minds and all of that other shit. What a bunch of hot winded self righteous punks. Oh, I’m not republican, I just have every single fact there is that supports them memorized and ready to quote at a moments notice. I didn’t even vote for GW, I voted for Mr. Libertarian because I knew Cali had the vote sewn up anyway. Blah blah blah. Give me a break. I’ll bet you were the Ahnold-clones driving the Humvees out on the playa, werncha?
I guess you have to be a conservative money grubbing freak to afford to bring a $300,000 RV out on the playa with 600 gallons of diesel and enough liquor to take the place of a good pair of rose tinted Prada sunglasses, which you don’t want anyone to see you wearing outside. And we all know that GW is the best protection for a good bank roll.
And for your information I am not a liberal. The first time I registered to vote it was as a republican, and my first vote went for Reagan. As a result the first time my nose was broken was payback. Some recent release from a mental hospital due to (thanks Ronnie) tax cuts walked up to me in the street and round housed me.
Wander a foreign country and see how far so little money can go to make a world of a difference in someone else’s life. It’s not liberal… it’s reality.
Anyone read the last letters from some of the soldiers who died in Iraq in that Friday issue of Life that comes in the paper? Read it. Tell me what you think of the war in Iraq then. Tell me what you think when you read about a 20 year old woman talking about the first time she saw a dead body when the Iraqis wheel barreled a dead body up to their camp and said something to the effect it was the US’ fault, deal with it.
Are you guys really happy with the way things are? How can you be serious?
I’m going to laugh when China gets tired of our shit, and long after we run out of nuclear missiles they still have enough war revenged victims to steam roll us. Hey, that was being facetious.
You guys are probably the same isolationists who are complaining over on the decline of BM thread and all of the other BM sucks ever since they eliminated anarchy threads, whine whine whine, huh? Why didn’t we just fence off the playa 5 years ago, back when we had the chance. That didn’t work, but all hope is not lost. Maybe we can join GW and fence off our nation from the rest of the world… shit, at least then we wouldn’t have to worry about those damn foreigners coming to BM – idea: kill two birds with one stone.
I’m sick of you selfish pricks talking about open minds and all of that other shit. What a bunch of hot winded self righteous punks. Oh, I’m not republican, I just have every single fact there is that supports them memorized and ready to quote at a moments notice. I didn’t even vote for GW, I voted for Mr. Libertarian because I knew Cali had the vote sewn up anyway. Blah blah blah. Give me a break. I’ll bet you were the Ahnold-clones driving the Humvees out on the playa, werncha?
I guess you have to be a conservative money grubbing freak to afford to bring a $300,000 RV out on the playa with 600 gallons of diesel and enough liquor to take the place of a good pair of rose tinted Prada sunglasses, which you don’t want anyone to see you wearing outside. And we all know that GW is the best protection for a good bank roll.
And for your information I am not a liberal. The first time I registered to vote it was as a republican, and my first vote went for Reagan. As a result the first time my nose was broken was payback. Some recent release from a mental hospital due to (thanks Ronnie) tax cuts walked up to me in the street and round housed me.
Wander a foreign country and see how far so little money can go to make a world of a difference in someone else’s life. It’s not liberal… it’s reality.
Anyone read the last letters from some of the soldiers who died in Iraq in that Friday issue of Life that comes in the paper? Read it. Tell me what you think of the war in Iraq then. Tell me what you think when you read about a 20 year old woman talking about the first time she saw a dead body when the Iraqis wheel barreled a dead body up to their camp and said something to the effect it was the US’ fault, deal with it.
Are you guys really happy with the way things are? How can you be serious?
-
geekster
- Posts: 4865
- Joined: Wed Sep 08, 2004 2:53 pm
- Location: Hospice For The Terminally Breathing
- Contact:
Tony, I wouldn't say that I have heard so much "conservatism" here. I haven't seen anyone come out as being opposed to gay rights or a woman's choice. I HAVE seen some anti-anti-gun talk but that is from people that from what I can tell voted Kerry for the most part. If anything I have seen a more Libertarian slant. Personal freedoms with limits on government.
I don't think anyone is being isolationist either. See, there is one important thing that the media tends to gloss over. France sees itself as a potential leader of a potential superpower ... the EU. They need to posture against the US wherever possible in order to differentiate themselves. It wouldn't matter who is elected President, they would probably still never go along with ANY US foreign policy at this point unless it was somehow directly related to European security in general or specifically France. France has Germany in its pocket because Germany depends on France for their domestic energy needs. Germany is shutting down their nuke plants but has no coal or oil to speak of. France is in a huge nuclear electric program and can sell provide enery cheaply to other EU countries. Germany is going to pretty much shut up and do what France tells them to do.
The UN sits on the sidelines sniping with criticism but offering no constructive suggestions in Iraq. In fact, it is doing the same thing in Sudan where people are being slaughtered by their own government. They sit there gnashing their teeth and wringing their hands, wave their arms around every once in a while but in the end do nothing. Annan's recent comments on Fallujah are a typical example. He says not to attack or it might affect people's attitudes and therefore their vote in an election in January. Well, Mr. Annan, if nothing is done, those people won't have a chance to vote at ALL. Just exactly is YOUR proposal to sort things out? You don't HAVE one, do you? It is easy to find fault when you never intend to offer a solution of your own.
It isn't isolationism so much as it is dealing with the reality of a UN that has become irrelevant and a France that seeks purposely to work at cross purposes with the US whenever it can just to blaze their own path. No amount of US diplomacy is going to fix that. There is nothing WE can do to make the UN act or the French be less arrogant. Just ask the Germans. They will tell you. Privately. So SOMEONE on this planet NEED to act otherwise there will be "multilateral talks" forever and ever while people around the world are slaughtered. THAT is the legacy of the UN.
There are currently military forces of one amount or another from 28 other countries in Iraq. Not as many troops or countries as we would LIKE to see but to say we are there with just the UK and Poland isn't fair to Australia and Japan to name two others off the top of my head. Oh, and Iraq was a major issue in Australia's elections. The incumbant won there too.
http://www.economist.com/agenda/display ... id=3283723
I don't think anyone is being isolationist either. See, there is one important thing that the media tends to gloss over. France sees itself as a potential leader of a potential superpower ... the EU. They need to posture against the US wherever possible in order to differentiate themselves. It wouldn't matter who is elected President, they would probably still never go along with ANY US foreign policy at this point unless it was somehow directly related to European security in general or specifically France. France has Germany in its pocket because Germany depends on France for their domestic energy needs. Germany is shutting down their nuke plants but has no coal or oil to speak of. France is in a huge nuclear electric program and can sell provide enery cheaply to other EU countries. Germany is going to pretty much shut up and do what France tells them to do.
The UN sits on the sidelines sniping with criticism but offering no constructive suggestions in Iraq. In fact, it is doing the same thing in Sudan where people are being slaughtered by their own government. They sit there gnashing their teeth and wringing their hands, wave their arms around every once in a while but in the end do nothing. Annan's recent comments on Fallujah are a typical example. He says not to attack or it might affect people's attitudes and therefore their vote in an election in January. Well, Mr. Annan, if nothing is done, those people won't have a chance to vote at ALL. Just exactly is YOUR proposal to sort things out? You don't HAVE one, do you? It is easy to find fault when you never intend to offer a solution of your own.
It isn't isolationism so much as it is dealing with the reality of a UN that has become irrelevant and a France that seeks purposely to work at cross purposes with the US whenever it can just to blaze their own path. No amount of US diplomacy is going to fix that. There is nothing WE can do to make the UN act or the French be less arrogant. Just ask the Germans. They will tell you. Privately. So SOMEONE on this planet NEED to act otherwise there will be "multilateral talks" forever and ever while people around the world are slaughtered. THAT is the legacy of the UN.
There are currently military forces of one amount or another from 28 other countries in Iraq. Not as many troops or countries as we would LIKE to see but to say we are there with just the UK and Poland isn't fair to Australia and Japan to name two others off the top of my head. Oh, and Iraq was a major issue in Australia's elections. The incumbant won there too.
http://www.economist.com/agenda/display ... id=3283723
Pabst Blue Ribbon - The beer that made Gerlach famous.
-
sparkletarte
- Posts: 1020
- Joined: Mon May 03, 2004 12:00 pm
- Location: valley of the dolls
~
Geeky...
France publicly condeming American actions is not 'posturing'. They don't like what Bush does and are one of the few countries in the world to come out and say it. Lots of countries agree but are afraid of American trade/monetary retaliation to say anything. Bush has a 5% approval rating in the rest of the world- does that not tell you anything? No one like him! He's dangerous. I applaud the French for being so vocal and standing their ground. I sure wish the Canadian government would tell Bush to go fuck himeself, so do plenty of Canadians.
In the schoolyard of the world, Bush and US are definitely the bullies.
France publicly condeming American actions is not 'posturing'. They don't like what Bush does and are one of the few countries in the world to come out and say it. Lots of countries agree but are afraid of American trade/monetary retaliation to say anything. Bush has a 5% approval rating in the rest of the world- does that not tell you anything? No one like him! He's dangerous. I applaud the French for being so vocal and standing their ground. I sure wish the Canadian government would tell Bush to go fuck himeself, so do plenty of Canadians.
Excuse me, but 'US' and 'diplomacy' are not two words that go together with Bush in command. Yes, you could say the French are arrogant generally as a culture, however their actions are not born of arrogance. Bush, on the other hand, is extraordinarily arrogant.No amount of US diplomacy is going to fix that. There is nothing WE can do to make the UN act or the French be less arrogant.
I don't recall anyone ever asking or giving the US permission to police the world. If you think that is your job, then why are you the hold out on the International Court? Why is your country the main hold out of the Kyoto accord? Why are you not in Sudan or other African countries where thousands are bring 'slaughtered' every fucking day? Why do you not have more countries agreeing with you on Iraq? Why does Bush have to threaten countries (you're with us or you're with the terrorists) to get anyone to agree with him? Might does not equal right.So SOMEONE on this planet NEED to act otherwise there will be "multilateral talks" forever and ever while people around the world are slaughtered.
In the schoolyard of the world, Bush and US are definitely the bullies.
-
geekster
- Posts: 4865
- Joined: Wed Sep 08, 2004 2:53 pm
- Location: Hospice For The Terminally Breathing
- Contact:
While you are correct that nobody ever gave or asked permission, someone HAS to play the role. France is trying to here without much success ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3989127.stm
From time to time SOMEONE has to step in. Who stepped in to save Muslims being slaughtered by Serbs? We did. Nobody else would.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3989127.stm
From time to time SOMEONE has to step in. Who stepped in to save Muslims being slaughtered by Serbs? We did. Nobody else would.
Pabst Blue Ribbon - The beer that made Gerlach famous.
-
sparkletarte
- Posts: 1020
- Joined: Mon May 03, 2004 12:00 pm
- Location: valley of the dolls
From time to time? Do I really need to list the hundreds of countries the US has invaded/installed pupper leaders/whatever?
Who stepped in to help the Vietnamese? You did, and so well. And that one time, when plenty of other countries stepped in help when Germany got out of control, you were so on that! Oh, wait, no you weren't, you waited a couple years. And how is Afganistan doing nowadays?
Who stepped in to help the Vietnamese? You did, and so well. And that one time, when plenty of other countries stepped in help when Germany got out of control, you were so on that! Oh, wait, no you weren't, you waited a couple years. And how is Afganistan doing nowadays?
-
geekster
- Posts: 4865
- Joined: Wed Sep 08, 2004 2:53 pm
- Location: Hospice For The Terminally Breathing
- Contact:
Oh, and I didn't get that Bush was being arrogant when the US, UK, and Spain talked about introducing a joint resolution to the UN Security council and France rejected it out of hand before it was even shown.
I hear there rhetoric about Bush being so arrogant but in looking at the various proposals, I see France being obtsinate most of the time. You offer to work with people, offer to bend over backwards ... and when they finally say they aren't going to listen no matter what you have to say, then you must just go on. And that is pretty much what happened.
I know what people on the left WANT to believe and I know what keeps being repeated, I am just saying that if I don't listen to the drivel from either the left or the right and take a look at things for myself and reach my own conclusion ... in my opinion Bush did what I would expect any American president to do. Hell, just the fact that he even WENT to the UN in the first place was something interesting to me. That he even gave that avenue a CHANCE. Did Clinton go to the UN when he bombed the parmaceutical plant in Sudan? Did he go to the UN when he started bombing Kosovo? Nope. What about when he attacked Afghanistan with cruise missiles? Nope.
I hear there rhetoric about Bush being so arrogant but in looking at the various proposals, I see France being obtsinate most of the time. You offer to work with people, offer to bend over backwards ... and when they finally say they aren't going to listen no matter what you have to say, then you must just go on. And that is pretty much what happened.
I know what people on the left WANT to believe and I know what keeps being repeated, I am just saying that if I don't listen to the drivel from either the left or the right and take a look at things for myself and reach my own conclusion ... in my opinion Bush did what I would expect any American president to do. Hell, just the fact that he even WENT to the UN in the first place was something interesting to me. That he even gave that avenue a CHANCE. Did Clinton go to the UN when he bombed the parmaceutical plant in Sudan? Did he go to the UN when he started bombing Kosovo? Nope. What about when he attacked Afghanistan with cruise missiles? Nope.
Pabst Blue Ribbon - The beer that made Gerlach famous.
-
geekster
- Posts: 4865
- Joined: Wed Sep 08, 2004 2:53 pm
- Location: Hospice For The Terminally Breathing
- Contact:
Let's talk post cold war, shall we? If you want to talk about Viet Nam and Iran (1953) and all kinds of stuff like that, you are going to need to start bringing up names like Truman, Kennedy, Johnson ... they aren't exactly Republicans (I am assuming you are a Democrat?).sparkletarte wrote:From time to time? Do I really need to list the hundreds of countries the US has invaded/installed pupper leaders/whatever?
Who stepped in to help the Vietnamese? You did, and so well. And that one time, when plenty of other countries stepped in help when Germany got out of control, you were so on that! Oh, wait, no you weren't, you waited a couple years. And how is Afganistan doing nowadays?
The US overall is NOT a bad country, as strange as it may be for some to believe.
Pabst Blue Ribbon - The beer that made Gerlach famous.
-
tonytohono
- Posts: 1559
- Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2004 8:37 pm
- Contact:
geekster says
Being informed is essential in our society. Being misinformed, or incompletely informed can be fatal, or at the least mighty dangerous.
Don't get me wrong - I am not knocking my fellow eplayans. Everyone has a right to their opinion, and that is what makes this forum so cool, and so unlike the rest. Although we have our differences, and we may flame and bash, or even cuss about it sometimes, at the end of the day we can go over to the bar and still be okay. That is the best fricking thing about eplaya. I mean isn’t that what America is supposed to be about? Cheers to every one of you.
But supporting the conservative ideal is being conservative, like it or not. What else are you going to label it? And referring to democrats and liberals as whiners, out of touch with reality, what have you.... or I’ll admit, vice versa… definitely places you in one corner or the other. What it comes down to is that there is left and right. You can be nearer to center, but you are still going to be on one side or the other. What I am trying to say is that where I come from, if you are not for, you are against. If you are content that Bush won, if you have no fears of what his reign might bring, well then, I’m calling you conservative.
When I speak of conservatism I am not speaking only of “gay rights or women's choice”, BUT that is what is most likely going to be effected by results of this election. So, even if these people are not directly standing against that, in essence they are, because that is what Bush stands for. He is passionately against gay marriage and pro choice. Can you deny that? I mean I seem to remember (What was it a year ago?) that he claimed it was up to the states to decide on gay marriage. Then getting on down the road toward the election I seem to recall him flip flopping and suggesting there might be a need for an amendment.
As far as the EU and the UN go… I don’t like a lot of the things they stand for either. Most of those countries like France, Germany and Russia, were showing a preference to not go to war with Iraq, most likely because of debt, and fuel supply. Whatever. But I’m not so sure Bush’s plan was not motivated by something other than WMD to begin with. I do not trust that man (Sam I am), I do not trust any man who claims that God came to him and told him he should be president. I don’t trust any government, creed, religion, sect, whatever, that claims they have the light of any god in their corner.
When I heard him say something to the effect of, “You’d be upset too if that man tried to kill your daddy” I knew we were in trouble. I have witnesses that will tell you my first comment. We’re going to war with Iraq, he intends to salvage daddy’s honor. And I was right. Granted he got just enough of a lame excuse together to pull it off. I don’t believe it was right. Sadam was a prick and he deserved to go away, but going the imperialist route was the wrong way.
I’m ranting I know. But the entire reason for this rant is this.
You guys who side with Bush, talk to me. Do you really feel comfortable with his agenda? I mean are you happy with it? How are you going to feel if they start trying to amend the constitution? How are you going to feel if he gets us backed in the corner and we have to go to war with a country that has a lot bigger nut than Iraq did? How are you going to feel if they do have to reinstitute the draft? How will you feel when your nephew has to go to war? How will you feel when your uncle has to spend the majority of the third year in a conflict because he signed up to protect our national interests, not an international conflict? You people actually like this shit? So you have money and Bush helps assure that is doesn’t dissipate quite as quickly. Are you that far removed that you have no concern for who is actually going to pay off that deficit?
Because what it comes down to is that if you voted for him, you gave him the cash to back his agenda, and he intends to spend it.
Come on, help me out here.
A few days ago, like right before the election there were a couple of exchanges here going on involving the liberals and so on... I wasn't a part of it. I was lurking. Then the election went off and all of a sudden there is all of this backlash like "Bush won, how do you like me now" stuff. Posts rained down like hell hath no fury (from cowboys and people who seem to love to have thy salmon slappathed). Most of the quotes involved long articles, countless links and quotes - you've seen them. These people are passionate about their beliefs and go that extra mile to present that. Great.Tony, I wouldn't say that I have heard so much "conservatism" here.
Being informed is essential in our society. Being misinformed, or incompletely informed can be fatal, or at the least mighty dangerous.
Don't get me wrong - I am not knocking my fellow eplayans. Everyone has a right to their opinion, and that is what makes this forum so cool, and so unlike the rest. Although we have our differences, and we may flame and bash, or even cuss about it sometimes, at the end of the day we can go over to the bar and still be okay. That is the best fricking thing about eplaya. I mean isn’t that what America is supposed to be about? Cheers to every one of you.
But supporting the conservative ideal is being conservative, like it or not. What else are you going to label it? And referring to democrats and liberals as whiners, out of touch with reality, what have you.... or I’ll admit, vice versa… definitely places you in one corner or the other. What it comes down to is that there is left and right. You can be nearer to center, but you are still going to be on one side or the other. What I am trying to say is that where I come from, if you are not for, you are against. If you are content that Bush won, if you have no fears of what his reign might bring, well then, I’m calling you conservative.
When I speak of conservatism I am not speaking only of “gay rights or women's choice”, BUT that is what is most likely going to be effected by results of this election. So, even if these people are not directly standing against that, in essence they are, because that is what Bush stands for. He is passionately against gay marriage and pro choice. Can you deny that? I mean I seem to remember (What was it a year ago?) that he claimed it was up to the states to decide on gay marriage. Then getting on down the road toward the election I seem to recall him flip flopping and suggesting there might be a need for an amendment.
As far as the EU and the UN go… I don’t like a lot of the things they stand for either. Most of those countries like France, Germany and Russia, were showing a preference to not go to war with Iraq, most likely because of debt, and fuel supply. Whatever. But I’m not so sure Bush’s plan was not motivated by something other than WMD to begin with. I do not trust that man (Sam I am), I do not trust any man who claims that God came to him and told him he should be president. I don’t trust any government, creed, religion, sect, whatever, that claims they have the light of any god in their corner.
When I heard him say something to the effect of, “You’d be upset too if that man tried to kill your daddy” I knew we were in trouble. I have witnesses that will tell you my first comment. We’re going to war with Iraq, he intends to salvage daddy’s honor. And I was right. Granted he got just enough of a lame excuse together to pull it off. I don’t believe it was right. Sadam was a prick and he deserved to go away, but going the imperialist route was the wrong way.
I’m ranting I know. But the entire reason for this rant is this.
You guys who side with Bush, talk to me. Do you really feel comfortable with his agenda? I mean are you happy with it? How are you going to feel if they start trying to amend the constitution? How are you going to feel if he gets us backed in the corner and we have to go to war with a country that has a lot bigger nut than Iraq did? How are you going to feel if they do have to reinstitute the draft? How will you feel when your nephew has to go to war? How will you feel when your uncle has to spend the majority of the third year in a conflict because he signed up to protect our national interests, not an international conflict? You people actually like this shit? So you have money and Bush helps assure that is doesn’t dissipate quite as quickly. Are you that far removed that you have no concern for who is actually going to pay off that deficit?
Because what it comes down to is that if you voted for him, you gave him the cash to back his agenda, and he intends to spend it.
Come on, help me out here.
-
sparkletarte
- Posts: 1020
- Joined: Mon May 03, 2004 12:00 pm
- Location: valley of the dolls
~
I don't care which political party is in power, or what their name is, when they do the same shit.they aren't exactly Republicans (I am assuming you are a Democrat?).
I am not a Democrat- I don't live in the States. From what I know of them, they are pretty close to the same thing, just under a different name, with slightly different values.
-
Simply Joel
- Posts: 3483
- Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2004 9:08 am
- Location: Land of Lincoln
- Contact:
Re: ~
sparkletarte, might does not equal right, nor does weakness, and any host of adjectives or nouns one would enjoy placing in the referenced sentence.sparkletarte wrote:Might does not equal right.
In the schoolyard of the world, Bush and US are definitely the bullies.
if i may add to your second statement... if we are bullies, then we have also been saviors, i believe the USA and Bush to be more than one or two dimensional entities... what are the other kids in the schoolyard doing?
Russia has Chechnya, China has internal issues with farmers and you could call Taiwan an internal issue but others see it as international, North Korea can't feed itself, the Sudanese massacres continue... the Euroean Union... most of which are complicit in the "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia-Herzgovinia, who have i left out? actually, Canada escapes the list because they have maintained some high moral ground, sort of like the big bullies younger brother who wishes his brother would cool it with being the world's economic engine. that schoolground of nations?
Democrats... snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, daily!
slap my salmon, baby
slap my salmon, baby
-
geekster
- Posts: 4865
- Joined: Wed Sep 08, 2004 2:53 pm
- Location: Hospice For The Terminally Breathing
- Contact:
It's okay. I don't think most people have an inkling of how things are going to change over the next 10 years with China and India's economy growing like gangbusters. We are talking about ONE HALF of the population of the entire world living in just those two countries. ONE HALF of the population of the world moving from donkey cart to Mercedes Benz in one generation. They are going to absolutely dwarf our economy and in the world playground, we aren't going to amount to a pinch of owl scat. You want to see some nasty wars? You just wait until some halfwit religious ideolog puts the crimp on China's economy. I don't think they are going to be all that interested in "world opinion".
In 10 years we will be an interesting economy, but not the dominant one. Not anymore.
In 10 years we will be an interesting economy, but not the dominant one. Not anymore.
Pabst Blue Ribbon - The beer that made Gerlach famous.
-
tonytohono
- Posts: 1559
- Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2004 8:37 pm
- Contact:
From this morning's paper:
MACHINE ERROR AIDS BUSH
An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3.893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, Ohio, elections officials said Friday.
Franklin County’s unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry’s 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush’s total should have been 365.
Deducting the erroneous Bush votes from his total could not change the election’s outcome, and there were no signs of other errors in Ohio’s electronic machines, said Carlo Loparo, spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. Bush won the state by 136,000 votes.
-Associated Press
Take this how you want to Bush fans.
An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3.893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, Ohio, elections officials said Friday.
Franklin County’s unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry’s 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush’s total should have been 365.
Deducting the erroneous Bush votes from his total could not change the election’s outcome, and there were no signs of other errors in Ohio’s electronic machines, said Carlo Loparo, spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. Bush won the state by 136,000 votes.
-Associated Press
Take this how you want to Bush fans.
-
DVD Burner
- Posts: 11031
- Joined: Fri Dec 12, 2003 3:09 am
- Burning Since: 1986
- Camp Name: White Trash Camp
- Contact:
Re: From this morning's paper:
Dood, This is very old news:tonytohono wrote:MACHINE ERROR AIDS BUSH
An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3.893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, Ohio, elections officials said Friday.
Franklin County’s unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry’s 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush’s total should have been 365.
Deducting the erroneous Bush votes from his total could not change the election’s outcome, and there were no signs of other errors in Ohio’s electronic machines, said Carlo Loparo, spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. Bush won the state by 136,000 votes.
-Associated Press
Take this how you want to Bush fans.
Diebold Internal Memos Admit Voting Machine Flaws
Posted by admin on Sunday, September 28, 2003 10:36 PM
by CONSPIRACY PLANET
September 28, 2003
In a preemptive strike to discourage further negative publicity, Diebold Election Systems has demanded that voting activist site BlackBoxVoting.org remove internal memos which admit that Diebold's high tech voting machines are easily susceptible to vote fraud.
Dated Oct. 2001, the memo by Diebold's principal engineer Ken Clark concedes that it is quite simple to do an "end run" around the Diebold GEMS voting software, used in both touch screen and optical scan voting machines, and that this "back door" has already been used in elections. Diebold states that the memos are authentic, but claims copyright protection.
According to Black Box Voting.com's Bev Smith, this is what Clark has written --
CLARK: "Right now you can open GEMS' .mdb file with MS-Access, and alter its contents. That includes the audit log. This isn't anything new."
CLARK: "Being able to end-run the database has admittedly got people out of a bind though. Jane (I think it was Jane) did some fancy footwork on the .mdb file in Gaston recently. I know our dealers do it. King County is famous for it. That's why we've never put a password on the file before."
Diebold's own memos authenticate the security flaw Harris wrote about on July 8, 2003 (http://www.blackboxvoting.org/access-diebold.htm).
In contrast to their rebuttal to the Johns Hopkins report,which confirmed serious flaws with the voting machine software, Diebold has never denied that Harris reviewed actual certified versions of its software used in real elections and never contended that her analysis is wrong.
Clark's memo explains that the ability to tamper with election results which was exposed by Harris was well known by senior programmers at Diebold.
According to Harris, the memos also show that Metamor (now Ciber), the Independent Testing Authority (ITA) entrusted with testing voting machine software, called attention to the security flaw in Oct. 2001 but was persuaded not to reveal it in their report:
NEL FINBERG: "Jennifer Price at Metamor (about to be Ciber) has indicated that she can access the GEMS Access database and alter the Audit log without entering a password. What is the position of our development staff on this issue? Can we justify this?"
Principal engineer Clark acknowledges the security weakness and replies:
CLARK: "If you don't bring this up you might skate through Metamor."
He goes on to say: CLARK: "Bottom line on Metamor is to find out what it is going to take to make them happy." Metamor agreed to overlook the flaw.
FINBERG: "For now Metamor accepts the requirement to restrict the server password to authorized staff in the jurisdiction, and that it should be the responsibility of the jurisdiction to restrict knowledge of this password. So no action is necessary in this matter, at this time."
Finberg's response says the software has been approved because the user of the software will have a password. However, Harris showed in the same July 8 report that the GEMS password can be overwritten in five minutes by any 14-year old.
This leaves only the Windows NT security which is altogether outside the Diebold voting system. Unfortunately, other memos indicate that the less secure Windows XP system is now being installed, moving away from a previous requirement for Windows NT, which had at least some built-in security.
The Diebold memos also demonstrate that the company made fraudulent claims to the state of Georgia when selling its system.
Georgia voting machine R.F.P. March 2002: IV. PHASE I, DIEBOLD TECHNICAL PROPOSAL: "Generated entries on the audit log cannot be terminated or interfered with by program control or by human intervention."
R.F.P. March 2002: IV. PHASE I, TECHNICAL PROPOSAL: "Beyond the standard array of Windows NT-based layered and encrypted security, GEMS application provides all the security measures necessary for complete system security." Principal engineer Ken Clark also notes that the security flaw has been in place for at least a decade:
CLARK: "This isn't anything new. In VTS, you can open the database with progress and do the same. This is all about Florida, and we have had VTS certified in Florida under the status quo for nearly ten years."
In her defense, Harris contends that her right to publish the memos, which were given to her by a Diebold employee, supercedes Diebold's right to copyright protection because:
1) The Ken Clark memo demonstrates intent to break the law. The flaw violates both FEC standards and most state statutes. In California, for example, it is against the law to sell a voting system that is not tamper-resistant.
2) The publication of the memos serves an overriding public interest.
3) Other memos provide additional evidence of failure to follow the law, and reveal new security flaws. Specifically:
At least two sets of memos discuss using cell phones to intercept and transmit vote data.
Most importantly, the memos document that Diebold has been using changed versions of software in elections, versions that were never submitted for certification at all. In other words, none of the testing and certification protections apply, and no one, not the ITA, the secretary of state, or any election official have any idea what is contained in the lines of code in those uncertified programs.
According to Harris, this means that only three people in the world know what's in the Diebold software code used to run several elections, particularly in California. Two of these individuals are Canadian and one is a Russian living in Canada. Their names: Ken Clark, Talbot Iredale (a stockholder), and Dmitry Papushin.
Harris provided a CD containing the memos to her congressman; at least two other members of congress in other states were also given the memos. A "rig-a-vote" CD from California activist Jim March containing step by step instructions with bona fide Diebold software showing how to change the audit log, overwrite the password, and change the votes during the midst of an election.
Over 500 activists in the USA, Canada, Europe and the South Pacific now have the Diebold memos.
* Diebold software is easy to tamper, according to Diebold's own principal engineer
* Diebold has been using untested, uncertified software in elections
* Diebold has been experimenting with insecure and unauthorized remote communications, including use of cell phones to intercept and transfer vote data during real elections.
* Diebold has submitted sales literature that misrepresents its system.
In conclusion, the Diebold memos demonstrate that the company made fraudulent claims to the state of Georgia when selling its system
and they prove that Diebold knew about the security flaws, and
admit to allowing election officials to alter the final audit log.
Actual copies of internal Diebold memos which show that uncertified software is being used in elections, and that Diebold programmers intentionally can be found at
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0309/S00150.htm - 45k - Sep 22, 2003 and at
http://why-war.com/resources/
http://www.equalccw.com/dieboldtestnotes.html. http://www.smashthetrifecta.com/
According to Bev Harris, this is the conclusion of the Diebold voting machine debacle --
1. Diebold issued a pull-down demand under DMCA for the BlackBoxVoting.org web site, citing a link posted on a forum in the site and claiming that the link allowed web visitors to visit an unrelated page, containing Diebold internal memos, to which they say they own the copyright.
2. Not only was BlackBoxVoting.org pulled down, but ALL of the documents, databases and programming for approximately 500 pages of material, most of which did not relate to Diebold at all, was confiscated, upon the (incorrect) advice of a North Carolina attorney named James Baker.
Dozens of web pages were pulled down which had nothing whatever to do with the disputed information. First, the offending item was a post in a forum which contained a link. Nothing in DMCA allows Diebold to abuse the law to pull down unrelated web pages, but this is the direct result of their threat. To make matters more egregious, we were then prohibited from accessing the ftp server even to retrieve our files in order to place them elsewhere. After David Allen, the publisher of Black Box Voting, negotiated with the ISP, they decided to ignore their attorney's advice and reinstate access to the ftp server, and we have secured a First Amendment attorney to force the reinstatement of the site itself.
3. The confiscated pages included personal contact information for 200 activists, and the private strategy sessions for voting machine activists. BlackBoxVoting.org received no satisfactory explanation as to what authority they were confiscated under. We will demand a formal statement from the ISP that logs every single person who looked at them, accessed the files, or made copies of them.
"The .org site had an active discussion going on among people from all over the US and world about election security and flaws found in Diebold's voting system software. The idea that these discussion boards were confiscated is rather chilling. The discussions were password protected and not open for public view.
"In addition to the impact this action will have on the election security debate, it also may represent the first time the DMCA has been used to shut down a discussion. Although I don't know much about the DMCA, I do think it wasn't written with this kind of purpose in mind." -- Kim Alexander, California Voter Foundation
4. Does Diebold even have a legitimate claim to copyright? Most of the memos in question were written in Canada, and resided on a server in Canada up to and including 2003 after Diebold bought a Canadian company called Global Election Systems. In Canada, company correspondence, even internal memos, is not protected by copyright. To date we have been unable to find evidence, other than a claim in a letter, that Diebold even owns the copyright to these memos.
5. These memos are more properly termed "Evidence," because they contain evidence of a pattern of lawbreaking that dates back at least to 1999. An injunction needs to be filed immediately in California based on evidence contained in these memos, before forcing citizens in 14 counties to vote on these machines in the recall election in a few days.
6. Lexis-Nexis has turned up some interesting information pertaining to the origins of Global Election Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of North American Professional Technologies, Inc., which was in turn a wholly owned subsidiary of MacroTrends Ventures International, Ltd.
Charles Hong Lee is one of the principals with these firms. He has been tied to participation in a scheme to bilk immigrants out of some $47 million; he is also connected with a scandal in which a Mr. Graye was prosecuted, relating to Vinex Wines.
Charles Hong Lee was also involved with something called "The Vancouver Maneuver," a stock pump & dump scheme that bilked investors out of millions in connection with an entertainment company and something called Beverly Development.
Charles Hong Lee was a principal with Global Election Systems, along with the late Clinton Rickards.
Talbot Iredale, currently the V.P. for Research and Development for Diebold Election Systems, began with the company in 1991, right around the time the Vancouver Maneuver was exposed in Barron's magazine. This is the pedigree from whence the Diebold Memos arose.
Sophia Lee, who may or may not be related to Charles Hong Lee, was in San Luis Obispo County, California on the day that a vote tally mysteriously popped up on the Internet five hours before the polls closed. She is the support tech for King County, Washington which Diebold principal engineer Ken Clark refers to as being "famous" for doing "end runs" around the voting system using a Microsoft Access hack, and her name is referenced in a strange series of memos for Volusia County, Florida in which programmers and techs discuss the unexplained appearance of an illicit set of votes that replaced the correct set.
This was the notorious 16,022 votes which were removed from Al Gore's tally on election night when a mysterious, and now "lost" memory card uploaded and overwrote the correct totals.
These disappearing votes were noticed by a clerk, who set alarm bells ringing and the tally was corrected, but Diebold programmers now say, in the memos, that the replacement vote upload can't be found.
They concede that an extra vote upload was done, and Vice President of Research Talbot Iredale says in the memos that it may have been illicit.
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel ... 945&page=1
Now to top it off the VP. of Diebold admitted that he would do all that was nessasary to make sure Bush got into office again.
You guys are pretty much taking this laying on your backs. The only way to deal with the situation at hand is to play by the same rules which I really dont belive any of you have the stomach for which Joel already knows.
https://www.facebook.com/NeXTCODER
-
tonytohono
- Posts: 1559
- Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2004 8:37 pm
- Contact:
-
Simply Joel
- Posts: 3483
- Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2004 9:08 am
- Location: Land of Lincoln
- Contact:
I wish for the Palestinians, the wisdom to stop the violence
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 7, 2004
Footprints in the Sand
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
It is a sad but fitting coda to Yasir Arafat's career that the prospect of his death seemed to unlock more hope and possibilities than the reality of his life.
His corrupt, self-interested rule had created a situation whereby Palestinian aspirations seemed to have gotten locked away with him, under house arrest in Ramallah, well beyond the reach of creative diplomacy. Only human biology could liberate them again - and so it has.
In the early 1990's, I sided with those Israelis who, though no fans of Arafat, were ready to deal with him at Oslo in the name of normalcy for both Israelis and Palestinians. But once it became clear, after the collapse of the Camp David talks, that no deal was possible with Arafat, I wished for his speedy disappearance. He was a bad man, not simply for the way he introduced a whole new level of terrorism to world politics, but because of the crimes he committed against his own people. There, history will judge him very harshly.
Google is a wonderful tool. I spent time the other day Googling every variation I could of the words: "Yasir Arafat and Palestine and education." I couldn't come up with a single speech, or even full paragraph, in which Arafat laid out his vision for how Palestinians would educate their youth and nurture their talents. Maybe all his speeches on that subject were never translated from Arabic. Or maybe they just don't exist - because this was never his priority. His obsession was with Palestinian "land," not Palestinian "life." Google the words "Yasir Arafat and martyrdom and jihad," and the matches go on for pages.
After every defeat, Arafat stood on the ruins and flashed a victory sign. While his wife lived in Paris and his cronies lined their pockets, two generations of Palestinians remained in their poverty and displacement, because he never had the courage to tell them the truth: "Palestine will have to be divided with the Jews forever. We must make the best final deal we can over the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem - without double talk about getting the rest later - and then build the finest society that we can." Had he ever given that speech - in Arabic - had he ever adopted the nonviolence of Gandhi, Arafat would have had three Palestinian states by now - Israel's reckless settlements notwithstanding.
The fact that he didn't was not a mistake in judgment but an expression of character. For him, it was better to die in Paris, and have two generations of Palestinians die in exile, than be the Arab leader who officially and unambiguously agreed to share Jerusalem with the Jews. I can understand why stateless Palestinians would revere Arafat for the way he put their cause on the world map - but that became an end for him rather than a means, which is why his historical impact will be as lasting as a footprint in the desert.
Arafat's exit from the stage, combined with the downfall of Saddam Hussein, is a real moment of opportunity for the Arab world: Under Saddam and Arafat, Iraqi and Palestinian nationalisms were devoid of any positive agenda for developing all the men and women in those two societies. They were focused on the negative agendas of resisting outsiders and buying more weapons than computers - because that is what served their one-man rulers. This negative nationalism kept their people mobilized, externally focused and never able to ask about education budgets, let alone democracy. As the Arabic saying went, "No voice should be louder than the battle." And no voices were louder in insisting on that than Arafat's and Saddam's.
But if you have societies held together by a voluntary social contract among its constituent populations, and by institutions, you don't need one-man rule. You don't need to mobilize the whole society around resistance to outsiders. And you don't need the suppression of every group in the society, other than the tribe of the one-man ruler - with all the violence and extremism that such suppression brings.
And that's why so much is riding on how Palestinians and Iraqis replace the one-man rulers who so distorted their societies. Will they each use this moment to hold elections and build a bridge to a society of institutions and laws, or will they simply build a bridge to another one-man ruler? If it is the latter, then the U.N. is going to continue putting out reports about the lack of human development in the Arab world. If it is the former, I am certain that within a decade when you Google the words "Iraq, Palestine, educational innovation and scientific breakthroughs," you will actually come up with some matches.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
November 7, 2004
Footprints in the Sand
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
It is a sad but fitting coda to Yasir Arafat's career that the prospect of his death seemed to unlock more hope and possibilities than the reality of his life.
His corrupt, self-interested rule had created a situation whereby Palestinian aspirations seemed to have gotten locked away with him, under house arrest in Ramallah, well beyond the reach of creative diplomacy. Only human biology could liberate them again - and so it has.
In the early 1990's, I sided with those Israelis who, though no fans of Arafat, were ready to deal with him at Oslo in the name of normalcy for both Israelis and Palestinians. But once it became clear, after the collapse of the Camp David talks, that no deal was possible with Arafat, I wished for his speedy disappearance. He was a bad man, not simply for the way he introduced a whole new level of terrorism to world politics, but because of the crimes he committed against his own people. There, history will judge him very harshly.
Google is a wonderful tool. I spent time the other day Googling every variation I could of the words: "Yasir Arafat and Palestine and education." I couldn't come up with a single speech, or even full paragraph, in which Arafat laid out his vision for how Palestinians would educate their youth and nurture their talents. Maybe all his speeches on that subject were never translated from Arabic. Or maybe they just don't exist - because this was never his priority. His obsession was with Palestinian "land," not Palestinian "life." Google the words "Yasir Arafat and martyrdom and jihad," and the matches go on for pages.
After every defeat, Arafat stood on the ruins and flashed a victory sign. While his wife lived in Paris and his cronies lined their pockets, two generations of Palestinians remained in their poverty and displacement, because he never had the courage to tell them the truth: "Palestine will have to be divided with the Jews forever. We must make the best final deal we can over the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem - without double talk about getting the rest later - and then build the finest society that we can." Had he ever given that speech - in Arabic - had he ever adopted the nonviolence of Gandhi, Arafat would have had three Palestinian states by now - Israel's reckless settlements notwithstanding.
The fact that he didn't was not a mistake in judgment but an expression of character. For him, it was better to die in Paris, and have two generations of Palestinians die in exile, than be the Arab leader who officially and unambiguously agreed to share Jerusalem with the Jews. I can understand why stateless Palestinians would revere Arafat for the way he put their cause on the world map - but that became an end for him rather than a means, which is why his historical impact will be as lasting as a footprint in the desert.
Arafat's exit from the stage, combined with the downfall of Saddam Hussein, is a real moment of opportunity for the Arab world: Under Saddam and Arafat, Iraqi and Palestinian nationalisms were devoid of any positive agenda for developing all the men and women in those two societies. They were focused on the negative agendas of resisting outsiders and buying more weapons than computers - because that is what served their one-man rulers. This negative nationalism kept their people mobilized, externally focused and never able to ask about education budgets, let alone democracy. As the Arabic saying went, "No voice should be louder than the battle." And no voices were louder in insisting on that than Arafat's and Saddam's.
But if you have societies held together by a voluntary social contract among its constituent populations, and by institutions, you don't need one-man rule. You don't need to mobilize the whole society around resistance to outsiders. And you don't need the suppression of every group in the society, other than the tribe of the one-man ruler - with all the violence and extremism that such suppression brings.
And that's why so much is riding on how Palestinians and Iraqis replace the one-man rulers who so distorted their societies. Will they each use this moment to hold elections and build a bridge to a society of institutions and laws, or will they simply build a bridge to another one-man ruler? If it is the latter, then the U.N. is going to continue putting out reports about the lack of human development in the Arab world. If it is the former, I am certain that within a decade when you Google the words "Iraq, Palestine, educational innovation and scientific breakthroughs," you will actually come up with some matches.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
-
DVD Burner
- Posts: 11031
- Joined: Fri Dec 12, 2003 3:09 am
- Burning Since: 1986
- Camp Name: White Trash Camp
- Contact:
-
geekster
- Posts: 4865
- Joined: Wed Sep 08, 2004 2:53 pm
- Location: Hospice For The Terminally Breathing
- Contact:
Well, honestly, Burner ... that Arafat was listed as the 9th richest head of state in the world, in a region where his people are living in terrible poverty, should speak volumes on its own without any further commentary being required.
Sometimes I honestly believe that there are people that never want an end to the Palestinian problem because they are making a good living off of things just the way they are. A settlement might mean a reduction in the pouring in of donations to their organizations. The establishment of a real state with a real treasury and real budget with real oversight by elected lawmakers must scare the crap out of them.
From what I have been reading in the past couple of days, it seems that the Palestinian Authority has been run like an Arafat sole proprietorship. In fact, there is currently a big row with his wife about who is going to get the money when he dies.
It's all about money at this point, and may well have been for the past several years.
Sometimes I honestly believe that there are people that never want an end to the Palestinian problem because they are making a good living off of things just the way they are. A settlement might mean a reduction in the pouring in of donations to their organizations. The establishment of a real state with a real treasury and real budget with real oversight by elected lawmakers must scare the crap out of them.
From what I have been reading in the past couple of days, it seems that the Palestinian Authority has been run like an Arafat sole proprietorship. In fact, there is currently a big row with his wife about who is going to get the money when he dies.
It's all about money at this point, and may well have been for the past several years.
Pabst Blue Ribbon - The beer that made Gerlach famous.