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The rules work differently depending on which party's partisans happen to have the most mod points when such comments are made.......

The analogy between the situations is pretty weak.

1) Was Obama ever president of Clearwire? No. Some guy lobbying Obama (not even in his administration) is an executive v.p. of Clearwire.
2) Is the Obama administration going to give Clearwire billions of dollars? No. It's going to make a decision that arstechnica argues might help Clearwire by delaying a competitor.
3) Did Clearwire overcharge the government $1 Billion in "the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career" according to a govt. contract officer with 20 years of experience? No. (It's not even possible, since Clearwire isn't getting a payoff from taxpayers).

So equating the two situations only shows that your judgement is clouded by partisanship.

You're reading the WRONG economists... http://www.rense.com/general26/ftw.htm http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=99 95 http://economicapocalypse.blogspot.com/ http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/mar/20asoc.htm http://www.michaelmandeville.com/collapse2006/inde x.htm

The incidents in Ohio?

too bad i blanked my political forums :/

hold on lemme see what i can dig up - i remember the incidents on memory

Inappropriate tampering with the machines: http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121604Z.shtml
Inproper voting machine allocation - i used to have a source for this but i cannot find it now and i don't haev time to [i'm at work]

here is one i confirmed with my own eyes from the PDF
"2. Stryguy on the DemocraticUnderground.com found a huge anomaly in Franklin County Ohio. One polling location registered a Bush victory 4258-260. Wow- impressive Bush support eh? Funny how the vote (in this precinct) on all the other races was like 350-250. It seems like 4,000 Bush lovers came to the polls to vote for Bush and nothing else."
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=41 75 (VERY information heavy link - go here!)

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1114-02.ht m

some simple googling will get you a wealth of information. There were more clear instances of irregularities in the US election than in the Ukranian election that Bush called fraudulent. Also the "descrepency with the exist polls" Bush, and everyone, cited as evidence of fraud in the Ukranian election also took place happened more severely in the US election (see bellacio org link for charts). One statistican from an ivy league school (yale i believe) said the likelyhood that the exits polls, that showed kerry winning, were wrong was 250 million:1 AGAINST them being incorrect or some smiliar number

grr where i should have made backups

As the saying goes, Let's eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

HopeSeekr of xMule

Walt Andersons charges -
THE TAX CHARGES

Mr. Anderson founded and operated Mid Atlantic Telecom (based in Washington, DC) for ten (10) years. The company was sold to a large public company (Rochester Tel, later Frontier Communications) in 1993. Mr. Anderson arranged for a percentage of the proceeds of this sale to go to a charitable /not-for-profit organization which he created called Smaller World Trust. The Trust was set up outside the United States in the British Virgin Islands. This allowed the endowment of the Trust (provided by Anderson) to grow tax free.

The significant and material issue in the tax case against Anderson is if he is the owner of the assets in the Trust or is simply the founder and manager of these assets.

The US Government claims he should pay taxes on these assets which were held outside the United States. Anderson did not receive any portion of these assets and received only a small management fee (which he reported and paid taxes on) and the reimbursement of expenses for his activities related to the management of the Trust.

Gold & Appel Transfer S.A. (Gold & Appel) was one of the Trust assets. Gold & Appel was a venture capital/business development corporation which invested and managed the initial endowment for Anderson. This initial contribution of around 6 million US dollars grew rapidly.

Ironic since the real crims of evil are the Bush Govt - http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=99 95
Collapse of U.S. Economy Imminent

In its attempt to establish a world empire dominating every nation on the planet, the U.S. has exhausted its ability to finance the expansion and the country now faces imminent financial collapse. From all indications, it looks like 2006 will spell the end for America.

Consider these five important points:

-Point #1 The U.S., Great Britain and Israel are preparing to attack Iran. As it appears the main reason for invading Iraq was to stop it from selling oil in Euros, likewise Iran has plans to dump the dollar come March 2006.

-Point #2 U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow issued a warning recently that the U.S. Government is on the verge of collapse - as the statutory debt limit imposed by Congress of $8.184 trillion dollars would be reached in mid-February - the government would then be unable to continue its normal operations. Considering the current total U.S. debt stands at $8.162 trillion dollars, once the official debt ceiling ($8.184 trillion) is reached, the U.S. government's credit abroad (its borrowing power) is gone. Those countries (mainly China) who presently keep America afloat by holding U.S. Treasury Notes, will most likely no longer continue doing so.

-Point #3 Bank Of America and Compass Bank managers (probably all other U.S. banks too) have been instructing their employees in the last few weeks on how to respond to customer demands in the event of a collapse of the U.S. economy - specifically telling the employees that only agents from the Department Of Homeland Security will have authority to decide what belongings customers may have from their safe deposit boxes - and that precious metals and other valuables will not be released to U.S. citizens. The bank employees have been strictly prohibited from revealing the banks' new "guidelines" to anyone. (however, employees have been talking to friends and family)

etc.. read on.

USA is TOAST, run for Canada.

You are kidding, right? I think Sgrena is flattering herself a bit much if she really thinks the US wanted her dead - someone that up to that point was as far as the US was concerned still a hostage. The Italians *did not* tell the US that they were coming, with their just freed hostage. I also find it interesting that she claims the car was riddled with 400 rounds, which would make me ask if that were really the case, why is she still alive?

The italians also claimed they were driving just 30mph, though satellite pics indicates otherwise.

Sgrena also claimed that was able to pickup handfuls of bullets off of the seats of her car, supporting her claim of 400 rounds fired. Anyone who knows anything about ballistics knows bullets do not pass through one side of a car and then land harmlessly on the seat. They would either embed themselves in the opposite side of the vehicle, or pass all the way through. They would also probably be way too hot to touch.

She also at one point claimed to have been shot with a 4 inch tank round. People who are shot by 4" rounds do not live to talk about it.

I think the true story here is that Sgrena didn't like the US before this happened, and is inclined to try and paint by any means the US as the responsible party here.

Why not? I haven't seen a good reason yet for government to provide any services beyond resolving property disputes.

Why not? Halliburton.

Cuba - under a strict embargo and with a superpower in direct opposition, has been doing far better than many other Carribian states - look at Haiti, for example. Heck, Cuba's lifespan is almost as long as that of the US. What a horrible example. There are plenty of examples of socialist collapse out there, but Cuba's a rather poor example

The current regime would never have survived its initial forray into communism without Soviet patronage and brutal repression (which continues to this day.. that's "better"?). And they're "thriving" now because of other countries (in Europe and elsewhere) that enjoy having Cuba as a tropical destination, and are willing to overlook the attrocious human rights situation there. Hard to imagine a better example than a place that's willing to imprison and even execute people for trying to leave. "Strong-man" run socialism sure is wonderful! Just like Chavez says it is!

the long term strikers / the thuggish election tactics

I'm blaming all sides involved on this sort of thing. That general level of chaos, protest, violence, and industry-wrecking-to-make-a-point is exactly the sort of self-inflicted wounds I mentioned earlier.

[the pretension ... brand new, properly tuned form of Socialism that will magically bring prosperity ...]

Please quote Chavez talking about such a thing. He supports socialism - but, heck, even Spain is under a socialist government. What's the big deal?

Let's see... from a progressive blogger's coverage of a recent Chavez appearance in Brazil: "Everyday I become more convinced, there is no doubt in my mind, and as many intellectuals have said, that it is necessary to transcend capitalism. But capitalism can't be transcended from within capitalism itself, but through socialism, true socialism..."

Or, from no less of a socialist voice than the UK's Socialist Worker Online, "Chavez gets more radical every year ... He was always sympathetic to the left, but in the last couple of years he's started to make references to Marx and Trotsky ... One of the reasons that Chavez did so well in the referendum is that he gave citizenship to two million people in Venezuela. These people were economic migrants from across Latin America..."

Or, take a second to read a well-known German liberal's complaints about Chavez essentially giving socialism a bad name.

Or, maybe another article quoting him on his contention that only socialism (vs. a market economy) can improve his country's circumstances.

Until then, it's not our responsibility - if we want to support democracy, we need to accept that Venezuela's poor are sticking up for this guy.

But we (and every open, democratic, non-corrupt culture) have a very, very strong interest in this. They're the #5 oil exporter in the world, they're striking deals with China, Iran, etc., and that truly matters if you care about the nature of totalitarian regimes and those that make money off of them.

Pencil marks don't smudge. Ink does. That's why we use pencils. Unless the detection device is a wad of rubber, the pencil marks will remain, if they were put there correctly.

I'm not sure I agree with you there. I can smudge a pencil mark off with my sweaty finger, especially if it isn't made very dark. Pencil is, after all, just graphite and clay pressed together. A quick Google search on "pencil smudges" finds at least a few sites about handwriting and pencils that agree with me. I think you can agree it is harder to smudge off a laser printed ballot, right?

Having watched people follow "idiot-proof" input methods, I don't think that having input methods that disallow invalid entries solves the problem. All it does is make the problem less easy to see, because now we have what looks like a valid ballot. An invalid ballot is an indication of some other problem, and forcing the voter to create a valid ballot only hides that problem.

Instead, your solution leads to "spoiled" ballots, and every ballot that is "spoiled" leads to a cry of "I've been disenfranchised!" or "The <winning party> has cheated!" (note: I'm not making any statement as to the validity of these claims - valid or not, I would just like to have fewer spoiled ballots, and therefore fewer chances for either this type of problem to occur or to be claimed by the loser.)

It is impossible for an input method to disallow certain choices without also assisting the user in making a choice. That assistance will always bias towards some result.

Again, your system allows someone to mark both candidate A and candidate B, and doesn't alert them to this, and essentially throws their vote away as spoiled. I don't think it would be biased to warn the voter that their choice is invalid, reset it so there is NO choice for that office (which is what you would do by spoiling their ballot) and telling them they should choose one candidate again. The two possible outcomes are A) no vote is cast (same as a spoiled ballot) or B) they actually choose one candidate. How is that biased?

His mention of Levaquin reminded me of another user's JE on yeast infections. Some good stuff there. Not to mention that quinolones (PDF link) have an anecdotal history of being some nasty stuff.

...the electronics van for prompting George W. Bush. ;)

But not all military are in love with George Bush, no matter what Duke and the TV news tells us. You won't see stuff like this on the nightly news:

"As a military family with a combined total of 57 years of active service in the U. S. Army, myself, son, and daughter-in-law have accumulated over 80 combat medals, one or more of us have served in Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, El Salvador, Kosovo, Bosnia, and three of us served together during Desert Storm. My son recently returned from the Iraq War, his third war, and, being fed up with Bush lies and back-to-back deployments, applied to be discharged from his "indefinite enlistment" status."

"Six days later he was under investigation for making "disloyal comments" about George Bush...which amounted to saying in general conversation with other soldiers that "Bush should have never started the war" and "Bush is no military leader." He was charged under Article-15 and was denied an attorney and could not cross-examine the case against him..."

Read more of this letter here.

But not all military are in love with George Bush, no matter what Duke and the TV news tells us. You won't see stuff like this on the nightly news:

"As a military family with a combined total of 57 years of active service in the U. S. Army, myself, son, and daughter-in-law have accumulated over 80 combat medals, one or more of us have served in Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, El Salvador, Kosovo, Bosnia, and three of us served together during Desert Storm. My son recently returned from the Iraq War, his third war, and, being fed up with Bush lies and back-to-back deployments, applied to be discharged from his "indefinite enlistment" status."

"Six days later he was under investigation for making "disloyal comments" about George Bush...which amounted to saying in general conversation with other soldiers that "Bush should have never started the war" and "Bush is no military leader." He was charged under Article-15 and was denied an attorney and could not cross-examine the case against him..."

Read more of this letter here.

Yeh! why wasn't this a scandal in USA? here's another story.