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However, one inference that I have drawn from various statistical analyses of Bush's support base (the "Red States"), is that there's a good deal of hypocrisy (unconscious, or otherwise) among those who vote reflexively Republican in those states, and advance cliched arguments along the lines of "Democrats are the types who want to live off welfare" or argue that their "moral values" are superior to those of "Massachusetts liberals".

For instance, take a look at this page. An excerpt: "The report shows that of the 32 states (and the District of Columbia) that are "winners" -- receiving more in federal spending than they pay in federal taxes -- 76% are Red States that voted for George Bush in 2000. Indeed, 17 of the 20 (85%) states receiving the most federal spending per dollar of federal taxes paid are Red States. Here are the Top 10 states that feed at the federal trough (with Red States highlighted in bold)".

I think most people realize unconsciously that the coastal economies subsidize the less densely populated "heartland" (I know this is somewhat simplistic but it's essentially true IMO), but the extent and distribution is surprising.

The other interesting (but not-so-surprising) bit of info was on divorce rates tabulated by state. An excerpt: "The Associated Press, using data supplied by the US Census Bureau, found that the highest divorce rates are to be found in the Bible Belt. The AP report stated that "the divorce rates in these conservative states are roughly 50 percent above the national average of 4.2 per thousand people." The 10 Southern states with some of the highest divorce rates were Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. By comparison nine states in the Northeast were among those with the lowest divorce rates: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont." There are various possible reasons for this (including people marrying younger and so on), but certainly the "sanctity of marriage" is far more at risk in the Bible belt than in the east.

Turns out the main engine for that (oil) has an infrastructure that's relatively easy to disrupt. Thank goodness (and the troops) that the oil fields weren't set on fire like last time, but production just hasn't been anything close to the pre-invasion estimates.

I agree Iraq has more long-term potential, but a successful example of reconstruction in Afghanistan would make the P.R. job in Iraq a lot easier.

...basically, we are boxing Iran in.

...and that's one of the reasons they are pursuing, or at least trying to give the impression they may pursue, nuclear weapons. Note that the other member of the "Axis of Eeevil" is also pursuing nukes. They figure that's the best way to fend off a U.S. invasion.

Chalabi was one of the darlings of the administration, and it now appears he may have been working for Iran, quite possibly feeding them intel and us disinformation. Iran may not like the U.S. at all, but they've been at actual war w/Iraq not that long ago. It appears to be one of the reasons Saddam was running his WMD bluff, to keep Iran out.

maybe you haven't noticed they [Afghanistan] are well on their way.

Warlords (i.e. armed thugs) are still running big chunks of the country. The elections went well, but I think a lot of that was that most of the people who'd want to interfere with them have been drawn into Iraq. The 'warlords' aren't being pushed on heroin, so they haven't fought much, but that can't continue indefinitely if long-term progress is to be made.

Yeah, it's a long-term commitment. I wish we'd gotten way further along before we'd moved on to the next long-term commitment.

They expected a lot more resistance in the opening weeks of the event.

They also expected to be greeted as liberators. There was never a question that the U.S. military would kix six kinds of crap out of the Iraqi army. There should have been a lot more planning for the post-military campaign. They were seriously expecting to be at vastly reduced troop strength by September of last year.

This isn't all 'soldiers who went to ground'. The foreign insurgents are causing plenty of trouble and have plenty of active and passive support from big chunks of the populace, and this shouldn't be a surprise.

[International support] would not increase appreciably under a Kerry administration

Well, it could hardly get much worse. And Europe's a lot closer to the area than the U.S.; they have an interest in avoiding a catastrophic failure there. Even if we don't get actual troops, money and material is a huge chunk (perhaps the largest piece) of all in a military operation (which, let's face it, this still is).

Ok, fair enough. But look, if he was facing a threat of invasion, then why didn't he just allow them to go in? Answer me that?

For a time, the 4th Amendment.

It's a spectacular display of stupidity on someone's part given that:

"Democrats and Republicans alike see gold in both the civilian and military camps."
Guardian

I'm posting from a cybercafe in Bangkok and still can't see the Bush site. It's OK though because I'm already set on Kerry. If you're still not sure who you're voting for consider that the Republicans will almost certainly retain control of Congress (legislative brance), Seven out of nine of the current Sup ream Court justices were appointed by Republican Presidents, and the majority of State Governors are Republican.

So, with the next President certainly appointing at least one Supreme Court Justice, there would be very little in the way of checking pure Republican power.

A little balance is a good thing, yes?

Of course with me, Mattel learned their lesson, as they didn't say a word about Mattelabuse.com or BarbieSLAPP.com.
But, they didn't learn their lesson before they were ordered to pay $1.8 million to a photographer that they sued for using the Barbie image.

He was a prosecutor only after he lost his first bid for a congressional seat, I think this around 1972 almost right out of Vietnam. He was following almost precisely JFK's footsteps but JFK won his congressional in 1946 while Kerry lost and it set his political career, and JFK emulation, way back which is when he did the prosecutor stint. If he had had his way he would have gone straight in to Congress like JFK, whose life he pretty much ripped off wholesale.

Here is the The Globe on his forgotten middle years.

I guess we can agree to disagree on what qualifies as real work. Prosecutors, especially "top" prosecuters, are political jobs, its a job lawyer/politicians do until an office they want opens up. Its not a job he would have done if his early political career hadn't flopped.

Would the Boston Globe count as a "respected/non-insane paper"?

Plone runs on top of the Zope application server. Zope is quite secure, and it scales up reliably to manage huge web sites, like The Boston Globe.

-Don

http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=31787

"This is a first report. We do not know when -- if those weapons did exist at that facility -- they were last seen, and under whose control they were last in," Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita said.

"It's very possible -- certainly it's plausible -- that it was the Saddam Hussein regime that last had control of these things," he told AFP.

No way! Saddam might have last had control of those weapons? I'm shocked, just shocked. Isn't that why we invaded Iraq? Don't forget the weapons weren't just stacked up waiting for the US to come along and inventory. The US has already destroyed hundreds of tons of weapons. They've got more work to do.

You make it sound like the military was hanging out playing baseball while the terrorists were looting the safe. But that's not what the story seems to be now, does it?

-Brent

for the uninformed about nuclear weapons in Iraq go here.

And as for the WMD read the full Duelfer Report and see what Saddam was really up to. He was bribing Kerry's biggest allies (France and Germany) with oil contracts (who was coalition of the bribed??), and was trying to get the sanctions lifted so he could continue his WMD production. Even Clinton knew that he was making them, Blix knew, and so did the UN. Before you go off on a Micheal Moore propoganda trip, read the real facts.

I know Bush is not a very popular president, a lot of people are angry about Florida 2000, but would you rather have someone who you know to make the right descision based on his morals or someone who takes a poll everyday and changes based on that data.

My 2 cents

Linky

Get that strawman detector calibrated, eh?

If people really thought that CNN failed them, they would dump them and move to another news outlet. Oh wait, whether I like it or not they already have; they moved to (yuck) Fox News.

But the problem is self perpetuating. Why would people think that CNN has failed them? They people who moved to Fox News did so because Fox News tells them stories with a spin or bias that they like, not need to hear. I listen to Mike Savage on the radio from time to time specifically because I think he's a tool. I want to make sure that his arguments still sound half-educated and nonsensical to make sure that I'm still certain about my convictions. We have way too many Americans who turn to the news for self-affirmation rather than to be intellectually challenged, and it's one of the most subtle yet critical problems I see in American society.

100 Facts and 1 Opinion

by JUDD LEGUM

[from the November 8, 2004 issue]

Click here to download, circulate and distribute a PDF version of this article.

IRAQ

1. The Bush Administration has spent more than $140 billion on a war of choice in Iraq.

Source: American Progress

2. The Bush Administration sent troops into battle without adequate body armor or armored Humvees.

Sources: Fox News, The Boston Globe

3. The Bush Administration ignored estimates from Gen. Eric Shinseki that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq.

Source: PBS

4. Vice President Cheney said Americans "will, in fact, be greeted as liberators" in Iraq.

Source: The Washington Post

5. During the Bush Administration's war in Iraq, more than 1,000 US troops have lost their lives and more than 7,000 have been injured.

Source: globalsecurity.org

6. In May 2003, President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit, stood under a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," and triumphantly announced that major combat operations were over in Iraq. Asked if he had any regrets about the stunt, Bush said he would do it all over again.

Source: Yahoo News

7. Vice President Cheney said that Iraq was "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11." The bipartisan 9/11 Commission found that Iraq had no involvement in the 9/11 attacks and no collaborative operational relationship with Al Qaeda.

Source: MSNBC , 9-11 Commission

8. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said that high-strength aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," warning "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." The government's top nuclear scientists had told the Administration the tubes were "too narrow, too heavy, too long" to be of use in developing nuclear weapons and could be used for other purposes.

Source: New York Times

9. The Bush Administration has spent just $1.1 billion of the $18.4 billion Congress approved for Iraqi reconstruction.

Source: USA Today

10. According to the Administration's handpicked weapon's inspector, Charles Duelfer, there is "no evidence that Hussein had passed illicit weapons material to al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations, or had any intent to do so." After the release of the report, Bush continued to insist, "There was a risk--a real risk--that Sa

One futuristic but likely scenario is Korean/Chinese soldiers battling American national guardsmen in Los Angeles. When groups like the Korean-Americans refuse to assimilate, they become a problem.

Slashdot reported on this previously, when the Boston Globe did an article on it last October.

the intent of the research is to clone human embryos in order to extract the stem cells from them.

This isn't about 'brave new world' or 'dr. mengeles,' it's about stem cell research.

''This is exactly the kind of work that we envisioned for the Harvard Stem Cell Institute," said Harvard biologist Douglas Melton, the senior researcher on one of the teams. ''We want new ways to study and hopefully cure diseases."

boston globe 13 oct article by Garth Cook, "Harvard Teams Want OK to Clone"

jeez

This is a clear example of getting taxpayers to fund the RIAA's private war, Schultz said. (Wired)

Operation Digital Gridlock has resulted in the seizure of more than 40 terabytes of intellectual property being exchanged illegally over peer-to-peer networks since the effort began in August. (Information Week)

Intellectual property industries account for 6 per cent of the US gross domestic product, employ more than five million people, and contribute US$626 billion to the US economy, Mr Ashcroft said. (SMH)

Such theft costs American companies $250 billion per year, the report estimated. Sales of copyrighted materials alone accounted for 6 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product in 2002. Companies that produce films, music, books, software and other copyrighted material employed 4 percent of the nation's work force in 2002, the report said. (The Mercury Times)

Specifically, the report asks Congress to introduce legislation that would permit wiretaps to be used in investigating serious intellectual property offences and that would create a new crime of the importation of pirated products. (SMH)

The report also endorsed the rights of companies to compel Internet service providers to turn over the names of people who have traded copyright-protected items online. That power is included in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but has been challenged by companies that want to protect the identity of their subscribers. (Boston.com)

US Attorney Debra Yang said that intellectual property is lifeblood of south California region. This is an issue that has been of utter and utmost importance to our community here in Los Angeles, she said. (China View)

The task force proposed a dozen changes to rules governing criminal enforcement of intellectual property law and also called for the opening of five new anti-piracy offices across the United States. (news.com.au)

Dan Glickman, the new president of the Hollywood studios' influential lobbying body, the Motion Picture Association of America, applauded the aggressive initiatives aimed at protecting his industry. Piracy of intellectual property is a massive, global problem with far-reaching implications on the US economy, he said. In addition to hard goods piracy, which is rampant throughout the world, peer-to-peer networks that facilitate illegal file sharing are some of the most dangerous threats to copyright ownership today, he said. (news.com.au)

Ashcroft declined to comment on the Supreme Court's action, saying that his department might have to be involved in future, similar cases. But he defended the task force's recommendations. We believe people in the private sector have a responsibility to address these threats in the civil dimension as the law allows them and we have a responsibility to address these matters criminally, Ashcroft told The Associated Press in an interview. (The Mercury Times/AP)

The report also suggested expanding educational efforts in schools to prevent illegal file sharing. It also included principles to be adopted when evaluating pen

This isn't the first time a 3rd party candidate has been kicked out of the debates. In October 2000, Ralph Nader had a ticket to attend the one of the debates. Instead of his ticket being honored, he was not allowed in. See CNN and Nader's own account of what happened.

In February 2004, Nader and a slew of other 2000 third party candidates and parties sued the FEC over the debates. One of the exhibits contained in the lawsuit is a "face book" that was used by debate planners to know which third party candidates to keep out of the debates. See this Boston Post story and a press release about the lawsuit.

Here are the "face book" images:
Page 1 (Has photos of Winona LaDuke, Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, and Ezola Foster)
Page 2 (Has photos of Howard Philips, John Hagelin, and Nat Goldhaber)
Page 3 (Has a photo of Russ Verney)

Link
Link
Link

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/01 /11/bush_began_iraq_plan_pre_911_oneill_says/

This is a great idea. Why aren't we fully exploiting the power of the wind?

This is an example of the obstacles that American power generating windmills are facing. If ever there was a NIMBY group it's these people. Someone wants to build an offshore set of windmills to power about 3/4 of Cape Cod and surrounding areas in Massachusetts. Since Massachusetts is heavily dependent on important electricity and oil, this seems like a great solution.

Undoubtedly there are some ecological implications, but the NIMBY group clearly is magnifying these issues in order to shoot down the whole idea; they're fishing for excuses. They don't want to have to look at windmills. This is where some federal leadership may be required in order to get the U.S. off its foreign energy dependency.

It's as if it's defining something to simply make a cut at it.

Yes, that was Ambrose Bierce's whole point. Thanks for helping us summarize the Devil's Dictionary so succinctly.

Then you go on to invent two of your own definitions, trying to play Ambrose's game. But he's a little better at it than you, because his definition is inarguably true. I mean, really, exactly what claim in the following might you dispute?

"FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."

Even the very faithful must concede on each individual point. By contrast, the "definitions" you give are simply false.

"Atheist: A person too stupid to realize the practicality of religion"

False. In fact, many atheists recognize that religion is tremendously practical.

"Atheist: A person living in a constant state of hypocrisy by critisizing religious zeal

False. The majority of atheists are happy to sit back and not stir up a ruckus. And even zealous atheists don't hold a candle to the efforts put in by a hard-core theist.

"We conclude that the Legislature intended (the law) strictly to prohibit all secret recordings by members of the public, including recordings of police officers or other public officials interacting with members of the public, when made without their permission or knowledge," Justice John M. Greaney wrote in the majority opinion.

• Kerry's story about how Nixon sent him to Cambodia during Christmas, and how this was "seared, seared" in his memory. Only now we find out that he was never in Cambodia, and Nixon wasn't even president then anyways.

Wrong on several counts; he never said Nixon sent him -- here's an anti-kerry blog with a compendium of Kerry's Cambodia quotes here's another -- show me a "Nixon sent" quote or you'll have to retract. Sure, Kerry mentions Nixon, but he never says what you claim. Next, on June 16, 1971 O'Neill told Nixon that "I was in Cambodia, sir." This was recorded by Nixon's secret taping system. That story even made it to freepers, so you have no excuse for missing it!

What we have is, in the 1970's both Kerry and O'Neill agreeing they were in Cambodia, and in 2004 O'Neill changing his story. To you this is proof Kerry lied? A number of vets have come out against O'Neill's group's claims. Read about it here. According to this article, Kerry's boat was very near the border; how can you prove he wasn't on the Cambodian side?

• It was also seared in his memory about when he was in Vietnam when he heard MLK Jr. was shot. Only MLK Jr. was shot months before Kerry went to Vietnam.

Correct, Kerry is in error here, although Kerry never uses the word "seared" regarding that memory. Kerry was on the USS Gridley, mostly in the Gulf of Tonkin. Exactly how far is that from Vietnamese territorial waters?

• Kerry has admitted that his first Purple Heart "may have" been self-inflicted (by accident). This is mainly because Kerry's journal from the time stated that they hadn't been attacked yet.

False. Kerry admitted no such thing. The "self inflicted" claim comes from this line of logic: Kerry was first wounded Dec 2, then wrote in his journal Dec 11 "A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn't been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven't been shot at are allowed to be cocky,". Kerry-haters, reading this journal entry, have claimed the wound must have been self-inflicted, but Kerry said no such thing.

• Kerry said he got an honorable discharge before schmoozing with the North Vietnamese, but in fact he was still an officer.

False. Kerry never said he was discharged when he met with the North Vietnamese in Paris. The error is in an AP timeline; not in Kerry materials. You can read about it here. Show me where Kerry claims he was discharged before Paris, or retract.

• He now claims that he requested and signed up for the most dangerous job in the Vietnam War, but in actuality he tried to sign up for the safest. (After failing to get a deferment.) How do we know this? Not only because of records (swift boats were changed from easy coastal patrols to dangerous river missions after Kerry signed up). But we also have Kerry's own admission of this fact a few years ago.

False. Show me where Kerry claims he "requested" the "most dangerous job." Kerry explains he volunteered for the Swift Boats so he could be near the action but not in it. Here's a direct quote: "They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing." It is a measure of K

First Mention is in this 7/15/04 Peter Gammons piece. Most of it is about Baseball, but here's the relevant paragraph:

Thing called love

We have been led to cynically believe that many politicians are disingenuous and generally phony, but few will ever beat Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. This man, who changed his middle initial to be JFK and at an anti-Vietnam rally threw someone else's medals into the water, made a self-promotion appearance with Boston talk-show maven Eddie Andelman and claimed he was a big Red Sox fan from his days growing up in Groton, Mass. And at the promotion he said Eddie Yost was his favorite player.

This remarkable paragraph contains three assertions about Kerry: "middle initial", "medals", and "Yost." The first two are erroneous, and the third is not testable. "Middle initial" is false -- Kerry's middle name is his mother's maiden name, Forbes, a famous old Boston name. Gammons has an error in his "medals" story, Kerry threw ribbons over a fence; not medals in the water. You can read Thomas Oliphant's eyewitness account here or here. To summarize, Gammons makes three assertions about Kerry, and the first to are erroneous. What about the third? I don't know any way to prove a negative, but the very first mention of the "Yost" story that I can find, in Boston or anywhere else, is that 7/15 Gammons column. It's all over the blogsphere now, but Gammons has first mention. Given Gammons' other errors, I don't find it very credible.

Now just to complicate matters, Gammons brings up the "Yost" story again five days later in another column. Again, it's mostly about baseball, but here's the relevant paragraph:

So who puts the bug in candidates' ears about seeming what they are not? John Kerry last week professed to be a big fan of "Manny Ortez," then re-emphasized the phoofery by correcting it to "David Ortez." No, that was Dave (Baby) Cortez and "The Happy Organ." A few years back Kerry went on a Boston station with Eddie Andelman and said "my favorite Red Sox player of all time is The Walking Man, Eddie Yost," who never played for the Red Sox. Kerry is going to sweep New England. He's going to get 70 percent of the vote in Massachusetts. He doesn't have to be a Red Sox fan, all he has to do is not be John Ashcroft.

This time, the "Yost" story is folded in with less controversial claims. If you're an anti-Kerry blogger, this version looks less foolish, but given the first mention amongst two canards, I don't find it credible on Gammons' say-so alone. I say bring me independent confirmation or dump it.

And now a bit on the meta-story. Let me shamelessy copy the Daily Howler and quote David Broder:

In a year when war in Iraq, the threat of terrorism and looming problems with the federal budget and the nation's health care system cry out for serious debate, the news organizations on which people should be able to depend have been diverted into chasing sham events: a scurrilous and largely inaccurate attack on the Vietnam service of John Kerry and a forged document charging President Bush with disobeying an order for an Air National Guard physical.

Almost. Ladies and gentleman, we're watching a brilliant campaign at

Although Anne Kornblut's Boston Globe framing of the conclusion of the debate about debates is typical LINK ("Despite tussles over the timing and format, the 90-minute debates will take place more or less as initially proposed; only the subjects of the first and third debates have changed."), in fact, James Baker, by accepting all four debates (3 presidential and 1 veep), seems to have gotten some other key, little-Noticed changes in return.

What the Bush campaign got changed:

1. The first widely watched and covered debate will be on foreign policy and national security, rather than domestic policy.

2. No direct engagement between the candidates is allowed -- the Commission's proposed plan had actually encouraged such dynamic-changing contact.

3. As "Miss (Nicolle) Devenish" told the Washington Times : "the agreement reached yesterday also will make 'very clear whenever the candidates attempt to filibuster or grandstand. There is a light that will flash for TV audiences when that happens -- a historic first,' she said. 'Moderators have to sign on and say they agree with the rules, or we'll find new moderators.'"

4. The voters at the town-hall debate won't be undecideds, but, rather "soft" supporters of each side -- and we have yet to figure out what that means or why Team Bush prefered that -- but Baker got it.

5. The candidates can't address each other with "proposed pledges" (although rhetorical questions are allowed!!).

6. The town-hallers can't ask follow ups or participate after they ask their one question -- avoiding any prospect of a "Richmond" moment.

The Commission itself and the moderators have not been heard from, but our guts tell us two things:

A. This deal will stick.

B. If George Walker Bush already owed James Addison Baker big time after Florida, he owes him bigger time now.

> a) You assume some political connections were used? What
> were they? Who alleges this? Did Bush himself do anything? Do
> Bush's FATHER do anything? Who is to blame for this.
> Unsubstantiated FUD. Troll.

Ben Barnes, then Lt. Governor of Texas, admitted he got Bush into the National Guard:

> "I got a young man named George W. Bush into the Texas
> National Guard when I was lieutenant governor, and I'm not
> necessarily proud of that. But I did it.

Bush was son of a then senator and former ambassador. He served in what many called the "champagne" unit in the Texas National Guard. Bush admitted he had no experience to get him into the guard, and he scored in the bottom 25% on the pilots' test. Bush's records admit this.

> Guess you haven't been watching the news recently when
> Staudt and others in the guard and of the guard went on TV.

> That's how fast the liberla media jumped on this story once
> they thought they had something they could run with

The questionable documents have done a lot to muddy the waters, but the fact remains that the crux of the question of Bush's service was not dependent on a single document. I agree that CBS News should have fact-checked better. However, it would be nice if the Bush supporters as charged up in determining the authenticity of a now-shown fraudulent document that lead us to war.

But that doesn't absolve Bush from not finishing his duty, which has been corroborated in ways apart from the documents. For example, in Bush's records, Bush flew only 22 months of the 53 he owed. Salon has more details on the documents that Bush should have filed but did not when he decided to stop flying:

--Quote--

> Bush flew for the last time on April 16, 1972. Upon entering
> the Guard, Bush agreed to fly for 60 months. After his training
> was complete, he owed 53 months of flying.

> But he flew for only 22 of those 53 months.

> Upon being accepted for pilot training, Bush promised to
> serve with his parent (Texas) Guard unit for five years once he > completed his pilot training.

> But Bush served as a pilot with his parent unit for just two
> years.

> In May 1972 Bush left the Houston Guard base for Alabama.
> According to Air Force regulations, Bush was supposed to
> obtain prior authorization before leaving Texas to join a new
> Guard unit in Alabama.

> But Bush failed to get the authorization.

> In requesting a permanent transfer to a nonflying unit in
> Alabama in 1972, Bush was supposed to sign an
> acknowledgment that he received relocation counseling.

> But no such document exists.

> He was supposed to receive a certification of satisfactory
> participation from his unit.

> But Bush did not.

> On May 26, 1972, Lt. Col. Reese Bricken, commander of the
> 9921st Air Reserve Squadron at Maxwell Air Force Base in
> Alabama, informed Bush that a transfer to his nonflying unit
> would be unsuitable for a fully trained pilot such as he was,
> and that Bush would not be able to fulfill any of his remaining
> two years of flight obligation.

> But Bush pressed on with his transfer request nonetheless.

> Bush's transfer request to the 9921st was eventually denied by
> the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, which meant he
> was still obligated to attend training sessions one weekend a
> month with his Texas unit in Houston.

> But Bush failed to attend weekend drills in May, June, July,
> August and September. He also failed to request permission
> to make up those days at the time.

> According to Air Force regulations,

See http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/bush /national_guard/

The Globe (and CBS) showed pretty darn conclusively that Bush reneged, was AWOL, that it was covered up/excused, and that he's lying and/or stonewalling when he says different and at the same time, he and his proxies are attacking Kerry's war record.

But these documents... They get shown to be forgeries and we forget (POOF!) the whole, real, well-rounded story. If these documents weren't plants, then Karl Rove couldn't have hoped for a better lucky break.

You dangle a shiny toy in front of the American public and it immediately forgets that its sippy-cup exists.

From TFA (Boston.com):
"This is an extremely big deal. Kryptonite is the Microsoft of locks," said Brown, who estimates hundreds of thousands of the U-locks have been sold over the years. Kryptonite will not divulge sales numbers.

Well, they certainly are more like Microsoft now. Good for them :)

(quote is from this article linked from the bikeforums.net FA.)

According to Boston News, he allegedly "infiltrated Democratic Judiciary Committee computer files" and copied "thousands of memos and passing some on to the media".

He says he was "just following orders" as a previous poster has said, and that they should be in court instead of him. They should be in court WITH him.

Even though someone told him to do something that he knew was wrong, he allegedly did it anyway. I hate when people cop-out by saying "I was just following orders."

"You know, the Nazis had pieces of flare they made the Jews wear."

Chris

It's true that nobody can predict the future 100%, but according to U.S. intelligence the prospects are pretty dim. Even Republicans are very concerned.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the French also were involved in Vietnam, as its colonial power. Will John Kerry's nefarious weak-kneed continental foppishness never cease to disgust red-blooded Americans?

The "Wait a minute, don't you think he looks kind of... French...?" moment may have been as low a moment for the American electoral process as Karl Rove's South Carolina push polls implying John McCain had sired a mixed-race child out of wedlock. Hear all about it from McCain's own campaign people.

Not that the "Frenchie" thing was near as disturbing, as a tactic -- it didn't smack so outrageously of the most extreme possible "Southern Strategy." But it was if anything even more puerile, which has got to be a record.

Brown University got $100M today. Bill's cheap! :)

Ah, no. That sig was part of a proposed set of amendments to the U.S. Constitution, designed to help all Americans comply with *Christian* Biblical Law. It's meant to complement the recent attempts at amending the U.S. Constitution to prevent homosexual-type gay Americans from marrying.

If you missed it, when the Texas Republican Party announced its platform earlier this year, it included a plank defining the U.S. as a "Christian Nation."

AMENDMENT XXVIII.
No state may sanction marriage between people of the same gender (Nothing mentioned in the Bible).

AMENDMENT XXIX.
No state may sanction marriage between a man and a woman who was married previously but has since divorced (Matthew 5:32).

AMENDMENT XXX.
No state may sanction marriage involving a widow (unless it is to her brother-in-law-sea amendment 34). All women whose husbands have passed away are to refrain from intimacy and pleasure for the remainder of their lives (1 Timothy 5:5-15).

AMENDMENT XXXI.
No state may sanction marriage between people of different races (Deuteronomy 7:3; Numbers 25:6-8; 36:3-9; 1 Kings 11:2; Esra 9:2; Nehemiah 13:25-27).

AMENDMENT XXXII.
No state may sanction marriage between a Christian and a non Christian (2 John 1:9-11; 2 Corinthians 6:14-17).

AMENDMENT XXXIII.
No state may sanction marriage involving a man who has had sexual thoughts about a woman other than the one he intends to marry (Matthew
5:28).

AMENDMENT XXXIV.
No state may sanction marriage between a man whose brother has passed away and any woman other than his brother's widow. Each state must require the brother of a deceased man to marry his brother's widow (Deuteronomy 25:5-10).

AMENDMENT XXXV
No state may sanction marriage between a man and any woman unwilling to promise in her wedding vows to obey her husband and submit to his every whim (Ephesians 5:22-24; 1 Corinthians 11:3; Colossionas 3:18; 1 Timothy 2:11-12; Titus 2:3, 5; 1 Peter 3:1).

AMENDMENT XXXVII
No state may sanction marriage in which the wedding ceremony is to occur during the woman's menstrual cycle unless the prospective spouses agree to refrain from intimate relations until the woman's period of uncleanness has terminated (Levitious 18:19, 20:18; Ezekiel 1825-6).

AMENDMENT XXXVIII
No state may sanction marriage between a minister and any woman other than a virgin (Levitious 21:13-14).

AMENDMENT XXXIX
No state may sanction marriage between a rapist and any woman other than his victim. States must require a rapist to marry his victim (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) unless the victim failed to cry out, in which case the rapist is relieved of this obligation (Deuteronomy 22:23-24).

AMENDMENT XXXX
No state may sanction marriage between a man and an aggressive or contentious woman (Proverbs 21:9, 21:19, 25:24, 27:15).

there vote truly is irrellevant if cast for Kerry in Massachussetts

Kerry supports amending the constitution to restrict rights of one group.

Republicans would like this to be a campaign to be a referendum on gay marriage, because apparently 56% of voters oppose gay marriage Wouldn't it be great to win the support of that 40% who say that they support gay marriage, while really illustrating the ideals of the libertarian party?

How can you get those votes? Do you plan to actively pursue them?

Thank you very much for running. I recognize that running as a 3rd party candidate is draining fiscally, physically and emotionally. I salute you for living up to the principles envisioned by our forefathers, and doing your part to contribute to the health of our country.

I'm not implying it. After three days of research, I'm saying it outright. These memos are forgeries, and inept ones at that.

You weren't listening to anyone before, you shithead.

See the article in the Boston Globe: Authenticity backed on Bush documents. I think I did quite well, considering I am not a full-time document investigator.

Denial is thinking George W. Bush is not a recovered alcoholic, and that he is able to be fully mentally engaged in being a leader. Don't you see the puzzled look on his face as he reads things that are written for him?

Have you ever seen the "presidential moments" on the Late Show with David Letterman? These are network footage of George W. Bush doing something really inappropriate. According to Letterman, and a lot of people, George W. Bush doesn't really want to be there. That seems right to me. Bill Clinton, a child of severe alcoholics and severely affected by it, but not an alcoholic himself, at least has an interest in government. To me it seems that GWB has no real interest.

Look at the recent presidents:

Richard Nixon: Twenty-four of the top officials in his administration went to jail for extremely serious crimes. He himself was pardoned.

Jimmy Carter: A good man, but far too inexperienced at running large organizations to be president.

Ronald Reagan: An ACOA, Adult Child of Alcoholics. His father was a severe drunk, and very abusive. Reagan exhibited a lot of the characteristics of ACOAs.

George H. W. Bush: Raised an alcoholic. His grandchildren have severe problems with drugs. Life in the Bush family is so stressful that the children turn to drugs to try to cope:

"The daughter of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was arrested... ... while allegedly trying to buy the anti-anxiety drug Xanax." (Jeb Bush is George W. Bush's brother.) Noelle Bush was arrested and charged with fraud, not for trying to buy marijuana, but for trying to buy an anti-anxiety drug. Why was she willing to break the law to buy a drug to become less anxious? Because living in her family is very anxiety-producing?

George W. Bush's daughters seem to be imitating their alcoholic father. The BBC article, Alcohol sentence for Bush daughter, says that "Barbara and Jenna Bush were both charged." Ask yourself, why do these teenage women feel they need a drug like alcohol so badly that they are willing to break the law?

Bill Clinton: Severely affected by the fact that both of this parents were violent alcoholics. President Clinton would often seem like he was lying even when he wasn't.

George W. Bush: A recovered alcoholic. George W. Bush was arrested once for the crime of DUI and Dick Cheney twice:

George W. Bush DUI, 1st record of arrest George W. Bush DUI, 2nd record of arrest

Dick Cheney DUI, record of 1st arrest Dick Cheney DUI, record of 2nd arrest

DUI means "Driving Under the Influence" of alcohol. A DUI is a conviction for a very serious crime, a crime that endangers everyone on the road, a crime that often kills people. A DUI conviction means that the driver felt such a strong need to be drunk that he or she was willing to take a chance of murder.

According to his wife Laura Bush and George W. Bush himself, she threatened to leave him because of his drinking.

Denial is thinking that all of this doesn't matter. Denial is thinking that the U.S. does not have a leadership problem.

And see, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Forget the truth, just bash the other side and hope that it sticks. Democrats are loathe to attack the substance of what the Swift Vets have to say. There are numerous, specific charges that Kerry could easily refute, if they were untrue.

However, it seems that the more that is revealed about Kerry's time in Vietnam, the more questions it produces.

OK, so the Daily Show showed that most of the funding for the Swift Vets came from Republicans... did you honestly think that Democrats were going to fund them? That still doesn't have any bearing on the substance of the attacks which, again, could be easily refuted if they were false. Turn your brain on.

And probably another little bit of truth that wasn't revealed on the Daily Show... did you know that John O'Neill, the author of Unfit for Command, voted for Al Gore in 2000 because he thought that George Bush was just an "empty suit"?

He has said repeatedly that the Swift Vets would still be doing what they're doing, even if Kerry were running on the Republican ticket. He's not pro-Bush, he's just anti-Kerry.

I frequently get asked why I "throw away" my vote by voting for a third-party candidate for President.

Sometimes people are nice about it, but too often it is an accusation. Apparently *I* am responsible for the fact that Al Gore did not get elected in 2000.

I have written on this subject before, but I wanted to cover some other information today.

One reason I vote for third party candidates is that they bring to the table issues that the major candidates may not normally mention. In order to try to sway third-party candidates, the major candidates will co-op some of the platform of smaller candidates. Had Al Gore paid more attention to *why* people were voting for Nader, he might have pulled in some more votes. Had he pulled in about 600 more votes in Florida, what would have happened?

From Open Debates: "Third-party candidates have introduced popular and groundbreaking issues that were eventually co-opted by the major parties, such as: the abolition of slavery, unemployment insurance, social security, child labor laws, public schools, public power, the direct election of senators, the graduated income tax, paid vacation, the 40-hour work week, the formation of labor unions, and democratic tools like the initiative, the referendum and the recall."

In related news - "The Commission on Presidential Debates may have violated federal election laws when it refused to allow any third-party presidential candidates into the debate halls to watch the 2000 presidential debates, a federal judge has ruled."

I would definitely suggest checking out the entire Open Debates sites. Pay special attention to the New section that has editorials from tons of newspapers calling for the inclusion of third-party candidates in the debates.

I seldom use Microsoft Word. Office 2000 does not have that feature, that I can see. The control over baseline shift would need to be very fine, and Word has not had fine control, at least up to and including Office 2000. (We are completely converting to Open Office.)

Could you try it yourself? I presume you have a more recent version of Microsoft Office. Focus on the way the doubled letters, like ll and tt, are sometimes, but not always, at a different height. I had a conversation about that with an IBM service technician. The effect is connected with the inertia of the type ball and the fact that the play in the mechanism is affected by where the ball was before it typed a letter. In the word "tell", the look of type from a poorly adjusted machine would be affected by the fact that the first L was typed after an E, and the second L was typed after an L.

But that's a little beside the point. Someone who knew that shifting the baseline would make one person out of a thousand realize that the documents were genuine, would be smart enough to do the job with other software. I've never used Quark Express, but, from conversations with typesetters I know it has extremely fine control.

I'm really happy with what I've said. My revised comments are copied below. I'm just someone who remembers the old machines because he so much wanted one. But my comments are corroborated by a document expert:

See the article in the Boston Globe, Authenticity backed on Bush documents:

"Bouffard, the Ohio document specialist, said that he had dismissed the Bush documents in an interview with The New York Times because the letters and formatting of the Bush memos did not match any of the 4,000 samples in his database. But Bouffard yesterday said that he had not considered one of the machines whose type is not logged in his database: the IBM Selectric Composer. Once he compared the Bush memos to Selectric Composer samples obtained from Interpol, the international police agency, Bouffard said his view shifted.

"In the Times interview, Bouffard had also questioned whether the military would have used the Composer, a large machine. But Bouffard yesterday provided a document indicating that as early as April 1969 -- three years before the dates of the CBS memos -- the Air Force had completed service testing for the Composer, possibly in preparation for purchasing the typewriters.

"As for the raised "th" that appears in the Bush memos -- to refer, for example, to units such as the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron -- Bouffard said that custom characters on the Composer's metal typehead ball were available in the 1970s, and that the military could have ordered such custom balls from IBM.

" 'You can't just say that this is definitively the mark of a computer,' Bouffard said."

The document expert is missing a point, however. The type balls were VERY expensive, and very brittle. There were people who offered to repair broken type balls, and those people had the ability to put unusual characters on the ball. That was one of the services they offered.

This statement in the article from the man's son is completely credible to me: 'Also suspicious is Killian's son, Gary D. Killian of Houston. "I still contend that my father would not have written these documents. I know the type of man he was -- if he felt he was being pressured, he'd confront it head on, not write a memo about it," Killian, 51, said in a telephone interview. His father died in 1984.'

Back then people often didn't type their own memos. It was very common that someone unusual would have one of the Composers because people who didn't understand them but had power and money would order them, and find that their secretaries would refuse to use them, because they were more complicated. Why would powerful people order them? Because back then a

If he was doing coke at the time he was flying combat simulations, his remains would be in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico right now (assuming he was even let into the plane, which would not be very likely.)

Why? Nobody says he was doing coke WHILE he was flying. It't not like if you snort coke you stay high for weeks on end. It's a party drug; the effects wear off the next day.

To even qualify to fly those missions requires a very advanced knowledge of Aviation. He may have been a slacker in regard to his college classes, but he obviously applied himself when it came to his Guard training.

Yeah, but cutting and running kinda negates all that, don't it? If he had any backbone whatsoever he'd face up to his problems and admit it.

He moved to Georgia to work on a friend's political campaign, and had already earned more than enough points at that point to never have to fly again, so the military was more than happy to accommodate his desire to serve out his time in Georgia.

Ah, see, that's just flat out wrong. Either tha, or a lie. You appear to be a conservative, so the latter is probably correct. But to quote:

1) 60 Minutes II: "Larry Korb, an assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan has reviewed the Mr. Bush's record and believes he did not fulfill his contract.

'Essentially, Bush gamed the system to avoid serving his country the way that most of his contemporaries had to,' Korb said.

2) Boston Globe: "On July 30, 1973, shortly before he moved from Houston to Cambridge, Bush signed a document that declared, 'It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months... ' Under Guard regulations, Bush had 60 days to locate a new unit.

"But Bush never signed up with a Boston-area unit. In 1999, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett told the Washington Post that Bush finished his six-year commitment at a Boston area Air Force Reserve unit after he left Houston. Not so, Bartlett now concedes. 'I must have misspoke,' Bartlett, who is now the White House communications director, said in a recent interview."

He didn't serve in combat, but he served, which is more than former President Clinton could say. Weren't you people saying that military service (or lack thereof) didn't matter? You know, back when Clinton was running against a war hero Senator?

You people, hmm? It's not about the service, it's about the lying and the lack of personal accountability. Bush has been propped up by daddy's friends and symnpathetic supporters for YEARS, and has never had to be accountable for his actions.

Fire that aristocratic bitch.

Please provide sources for your contention that Bush lied about his record.

Gladly. Not that it will matter to you, though, will it? Hell, evidence for conservatives is just an excuse to exercise their rhetorical skills.

Lie: CNN 2/13/04: "We've released all of [the documents]. You should take our word for it and this is the evidence."

Fact: AP 9/9/04: "After the [60 Minutes II] broadcast, the White House, without comment, released to the news media two of the memos, one ordering Bush to report for his physical exam and the other suspending him from flight status."

Lie: Bush, NBC 2/9/04: "Well, I was going to Harvard Business School and worked it out with the military."

Fact: Boston Globe, 9/8/2004: "On July 30, 1973, shortly before he moved from Houston to Cambridge, Bush signed a document that declared, 'It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months... ' Under Guard regulations, Bush had 60 days to locate a new unit.

"But Bush never signed up with a Boston-area unit. In 1999, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett told the Washington Post that Bush finished his six-year commitment at a Boston area Air Force Reserve unit after he left Houston. Not so, Bartlett now concedes. 'I must have misspoke," Bartlett, who is now the White House communications director, said in a recent interview."

I could keep going all day with this crap, but it won't matter one slice of cheese to you. If there is one thing I have learned, it's that conservatives have abrogated all pretense of morality seeking the truth, and instead just seek myriad ways to twist the truth to their advantage.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion /oped/articles/2004/04/29/the_kerry_medals_mystery /

But I'm not going to let this devolve into who lied about what, because both sides lied about things related to and/or surrounding their military experience, and I just provided you one one extremely clear example for Kerry (nevermind that several individuals have specifically said that Kerry has categorically lied about things that happened while in Vietnam, said he was in Cambodia when it was impossible for him to be, etc...then the Kerry camp comes out and says "Navy documents refute X, Y, and Z" and the Bush camp does exactly the same thing).

I call bullshit on the liberal media. That's just a catch-all used by conservatives to ignore anything and everything in the media they don't agree with. Like global warming, caused by green house gases, that was suppose to be some liberal idea. Well now even the Bush administration has stated that human action from driving automobiles to running power plants helped cause global warming.

Now, Salon for example is liberal, but I don't think they are hiding that fact. Most of the media is relatively conservative.

On a side note:
I think most people confuse a free society with a liberal society. If you live in a free society there will be things that offend you. Just because they offend you doesn't mean they are liberal or conservative. They just don't align with your beliefs. That's the beauty of democracy.

Well, since the Globe carried this story, maybe you should just give it some time.

I find it amusing that when saving things on my cell phone it shows me a diskette picture!

speaking of dinosaurs, Phone booths are now a wonder from antiquity.

Wasn't this an old Slashdot article?
Here's a link to the article published in December 30, 2003:

http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2003/1 2/30/century_old_math_problem_may_have_been_solved / The Yahoo article's pretty sparse, nothing's changed, and the Boston article's pretty sparse.

real unemployment 9.6%

Everybody knows, that only privately owned companies are able to deliver quality goods at affordable prices to consumers. That is why the Chinese Communist experiment must fail. They will over-regulate the business process and drive costs into the sky. It is inevitable.

Only an agile managment that has a profit oriented agenda can reduce the overhead of overemployment in profit un-generating activities. (There was a focus on production, established by management, combined with taking minimum action to meet regulatory requirements that resulted in the acceptance of degraded conditions." )

Obviously, Captains of Business must take calculated risks when they try to compete with other entrepreneurs. (An unexpected leak of boric acid has eaten through nearly six full inches of solid high-grade metal in a critical internal component. Only 3/8 of an inch of carbon steel protection was left in tact when the hole was discovered in February. Soon thereafter a second hole was discovered, raising widespread fears that the reactor could be riddled with untold other seriously deriorated sites.)

What the industry does not need is Big Government mendling and fumbling in the day-to-day activities of the managment. A government employed beaurocratic overeducated engineer obviously can not have anyidea what a prospering production company needs.( Bush administration is moving to replace government safety requirements at federal nuclear facilities with standards written by contractors -- after Congress directed the government to start fining the contractors for violations. Long-established government minimum standards at the more than two dozen nuclear weapons plants and research labs around the nation would become unenforceable guidelines under the Energy Department proposal.)

When regulations are needed, the power industry will put in place voluntary requirements aimed at preventing blackouts. ( administered NAERC, which lacks the ability to hand down penalties. Many reliability rules were ignored during the outages.)

A rigid, self-regulation regime in the form of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will prevent any security anomalies. ( NRC says there is no real danger. But in the same releases it pointed out that the acid has compromised an extremely important safety
feature common to all pressurized water reactors. The NRC gets its funding from the industry it regulates.)

Only private companies are able to deliver the constantly needed supply of electric power at affordable prices.( in its interim report, the task force largely blamed FirstEnergy Corp)

That is why free market will rule, and big government must fail.