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My favorite is fox news. They have been caught several times "accidentally" switching the R to a D for scandals with politicians. http://buzzflash.com/commentar...

Fox News doesn't talk about it either. Are you saying they're liberal?

Jesus healed people for free, condemn a fig tree to wither for not producing, and flipped tables of merchants in the temple. Jesus was Liberal, Communist, and Anti-Capitalist.

You're thinking of Supply-Side Jesus

Yeah, it's a pretty odd reading. Reminds me of the Gospel of Supply Side Jesus.

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/09/17_franken.html

The only people I see portraying Jesus as some kind of champion of free markets and capitalism would be nuts over at Conservapedia, and the Christians who think it normal that they live in luxury that couldn't be any more removed from the lifestyle of Jesus and his early followers if they relocated to a moonbase built of gold, staffed by sex slaves and powered by the tears of orphans.

Well, I have an issue with this. From the article:

While that will give an immediate boost, more is needed from governments, which have provided the bulk of the $22.6 billion that has been raised by the Geneva-based organization to date for its work in 150 countries.

The commitment of governments was shaken last year when the fund reported "grave misuse of funds" in four recipient nations, prompting some donors such as Germany and Sweden to freeze their donations.

Why do coutnries pay into this foundation that invests primarily in American funds and stocks? Why do they not setup their own charities that invest in their own stocks or -- better yet -- give it directly to the institutions of medical research?

This perplexes me to no end. This foundation is at the mercy of the stock market and rely on money managers to post returns every year so that it can give those returns to the targeted countries and research -- right up until a crisis causes those funds to greatly shrink.

I have complained about this before and been called "full of bullshit" and I guess this is just one thing that my opinion and concern diverges on from the rest of the readers here. This is charity in the form of keeping the capital inside America's border and shaving off returns. The money stays at work in America and no such stock or company or infrastructure is built up in the countries that could truly use it and truly need it.

When you're talking billions of dollars, you're talking enough money to start internal institutions and programs that could create jobs or better education as well as do medical research. Instead this money stays in the coffers of rich Western companies and even after the returns are "given" to the countries, it is given in the form of purchased medicines often made by American companies. And that strategy of deciding where your donations gets spent doesn't always work out like you would expect.

It's great he donates all that money but that method is never going to change anything. The real winners here are the companies that get huge cash infusions from the foundation in the form of investment (like Monsanto) and Big Pharma who gets the revenue from all the AIDS medicine that is bought and shipped. Exactly why are foreign governments investing in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation instead of finding a better solution?

Bring on the "look a gift horse in the mouth" posts. They may be right but there has to be a better way to use this money to accomplish these goals. It's almost designed to be a perpetual medicine exporting machine.

You are mixing up two things here. There's the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, and there's the Global Aids Fund.

Bill Gates just donated money to the latter, which depends on donations from individual countries, is run out of Geneva (not by the Gates foundation) and has criticized for being poorly managed.

The Gate Foundation invested in Monsanto, which is the link you provided, not the Global Aids fund. I'm not aware of foreign countries investing in the Gates Foundation.

As unsavory as it might be for charities to be using donated money to invest, the purpose here is long-term viability. The purpose of the Gates Foundation is to fund things that might not show tangible results for decades that traditional, government-directed research and public health funds cannot address. This type of planning is pointless if you can't guarantee the Gates fund will be able to sustain funding for such projects on a decade timescale, which is simply not possible without some sort of long term financial investing. It would be nice if the inves

Even the general Slashdot feeling towards Microsoft, it is true that his (and Melinda's) work is great. Let's hope he keeps it up!

Well, I have an issue with this. From the article:

While that will give an immediate boost, more is needed from governments, which have provided the bulk of the $22.6 billion that has been raised by the Geneva-based organization to date for its work in 150 countries.

The commitment of governments was shaken last year when the fund reported "grave misuse of funds" in four recipient nations, prompting some donors such as Germany and Sweden to freeze their donations.

Why do coutnries pay into this foundation that invests primarily in American funds and stocks? Why do they not setup their own charities that invest in their own stocks or -- better yet -- give it directly to the institutions of medical research?

This perplexes me to no end. This foundation is at the mercy of the stock market and rely on money managers to post returns every year so that it can give those returns to the targeted countries and research -- right up until a crisis causes those funds to greatly shrink.

I have complained about this before and been called "full of bullshit" and I guess this is just one thing that my opinion and concern diverges on from the rest of the readers here. This is charity in the form of keeping the capital inside America's border and shaving off returns. The money stays at work in America and no such stock or company or infrastructure is built up in the countries that could truly use it and truly need it.

When you're talking billions of dollars, you're talking enough money to start internal institutions and programs that could create jobs or better education as well as do medical research. Instead this money stays in the coffers of rich Western companies and even after the returns are "given" to the countries, it is given in the form of purchased medicines often made by American companies. And that strategy of deciding where your donations gets spent doesn't always work out like you would expect.

It's great he donates all that money but that method is never going to change anything. The real winners here are the companies that get huge cash infusions from the foundation in the form of investment (like Monsanto) and Big Pharma who gets the revenue from all the AIDS medicine that is bought and shipped. Exactly why are foreign governments investing in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation instead of finding a better solution?

Bring on the "look a gift horse in the mouth" posts. They may be right but there has to be a better way to use this money to accomplish these goals. It's almost designed to be a perpetual medicine exporting machine.

Praise the Lord. Let us give thanks, and generous tax-deductible contributions to Supply Side Jesus

Mining normally involves tailings, except for Coal. With coal, they simply strip mine it as you have pointed out.

Tell that to people in Roane County, Tennessee, who's land was contaminated by the Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill in 2008, the coal s Tell that tolurry spill in southern Belmont County, Ohio last week, or any number of other coal slurry spills. Tell that to those who see mountain removal in action. Google has some before and after photos of it. Or tell it to those miners trapped in that Chilean mine. How about the 13 miners who died when the Sago Mine Disaster happened in West Virginia in 2006.

In the end, you have to pick your poison on where you are going to get your energy. Myself? I will take geo-thermal.

You pick the energy source by what's available in any given location. Use geothermal where it is available, solar, where it is sunny, and wind where it's windy. The one advantage geothermal has over others is that it can provide a baseload, it can constantly generate electricity.

Ideally, we would allow all energy to compete on a level field, rather than allowing politicians to pick it by who lines their pockets.

That is something I've been advocating for years.

Falcon

Oh really? Go to this website and check out the links. The majority are all from reputable sources. You will notice that the links from many of them are broken. Intentionally. For fear of public backlash. They knew. They all knew it was coming, they may not have known about the fine-grained details, but many of them knew not to fly, not to be in New York, and other poignant details about the oncoming attack.

Thanks for the reply, and it's an interesting analogy with the human body and cancer. Still, the human body is about 90% bacterial cells by number, and about 10% bacteria by weight, so it that sense the human immune system is in that sense mostly a legal constitution about getting some bacteria to work well together. :-)

Also, note that populations of living things tend to change over time, so some dissenting cells (mutations) may lead to a very different next generation (though that is rare).

Also, note that classically entropy is about a "closed system". In an "open system" with an energy flux, like the Earth getting thousands of times what our industry uses from solar energy, and with an infinite cosmos for material expansion, different laws or different perspectives may apply, since the energy flux and endless matter can be used to rebuild systems (or duplicate systems, or spread duplicates).
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=entropy+closed+system
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=entropy+open+system

Anyway, the most fundamental issue, as told to me by the late professor Larry Slobodkin (very wise guy) in a course on Philosophy and Ecology, is that even if every organism in the universe behaved a certain way, human still have moral choices to make, and could decide to do things differently. I think the same is true for physics. Whatever we see when we look at the physics of the world, people still make moral choices. Although another way to look at that, as a variant on Einstein's point, is to look at the idea of Memetics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics

But, even with that idea, ultimately human reason still rests on emotion (or religion) as Einstein suggest.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
Or, George Lakoff saying that:
http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/3014
Or, Antonio R. Damasio saying that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error
Or, E.F. Schumacher saying that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_for_the_Perplexed

Again, science can tell you what is, what was, and even the theoretical limits of what might be possible, but it can't tell you what should be. Only emotion (or some sort of religion) can tell you that. Or, taken to another level, politics.

Although, as is pointed out here:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
it seems the biggest political issue is often that professions (including science) usually deny they have politics built in to them, so, stating they actually do have politics of various sorts is a political issue... :-) So, what we have now is a poverty crisis in the USA related to jobs, but people claim it has nothing to do with politics (or religion, or emotion), it is just "economics". Or we have an illness crisis in the US, but people claim it has nothing to do with politics (or religion, or emotion), but again, it is just about professional choices, economics, health science, and so on.

Also related:
"ivan illich: deschooling, conviviality and the possibilities for informal education and lifelong learning"
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-illic.htm
"Known for his critique of modernization and the corrupting impact of institutions, Ivan Illich's concern with deschooling, learning webs and the disabling effect of professions has struck a chord among m

IIRC, Plato's argument against democracy in favor of an intellectual meritocracy was that the ignorant have as much decision-making power as the informed.

Kinda seductive in this age of Flygate.

Prior to 911 we didn't consider suicide hijackings to be a threat.

The CIA did. Link

Sigh. For example, Scott Ritter, who was a senior member of the "UN" inspection team (the UNSCOM) on the ground in Iraq, tell his experiences in an interview here. Note that after Ritter voiced his objections in the run-up to the war, a US-based police "sting" operation, by a miraculously-timed poof of magic, claimed to have caught him talking to an officer pretending to be a teenage girl on the Internet, for which he was arrested. The arrest was most effectively used to ensure that most US media did not try to ask his opinion. Naturally, all charges were dropped after the war started as the "evidence" against him, also by magic apparently, evaporated completely.

The poster before me already pointed you to the statements by Hans Blix who managed the overall UN inspection process.

As to the Neocon designs, they proudly published them as part of The Project For New American Century, as far back in the 1990s. Note the "signatories of the statement of principles", amongst them: Wolfowitz, Rumslfeld, Cheney etc.

As to the non-US media, I have no time to dig up the articles from 2002/3 for your pleasure, but there is plenty of them on Google if you have the inclination. But one hint that should be immediately obvious to you is the size of anti-war demonstrations that occurred in Europe before the war. The head count was into millions.

Regardless of what Wikipedia want's to claim, In the US, Liberals and liberalism is little more then socialist pushing government controls under the guise of freedom and enlightenment.

That is only because people like you refuse to correct people when they use a word incorrectly. And it's not just wiki that uses that definition. Merriam Webster has "liberal" as meaning "of, favoring, or based upon the principles of liberalism" and "liberalism" as "b: a theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard". OneLook has more definitions along this line. Fact is is the first liberals used "liberal" to mean liberty and laissez-faire economics and self-regulating markets. Thomas Jefferson was one of those liberals as was Thomas Paine.

Falcon

You're kidding me, right? I thought everyone knew about Supply Side Jesus!

Envision your own car putting you in jail.
(hint: disable OnStar, Blackbox, Bluetooth ...)
Since EVERYTHING else is bugged why stop there.

http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/06/02/far06001.html

The Secrets of Microsoft's Sync:
(a previous comment)

[PLAY] Funeral For A Friend - Elton John

http://digg.com/microsoft/The_Secrets_of_Microsoft_s_Sync?t=13126894#c13126894

The country's very oath invokes the Christian god. The pledge of allegiance

The phrase "under god" in the USA Pledge of Allegiance was only added to the pledge around 1959 while Ike was president.

The expectation in the courtroom is that I swear to god

You're not required to swear to "god" in a US court. If you aren't Christian or otherwise object to swearing on a bible they have to allow you some other sort of swearing in.

My own taxes are being directly funneled into "faith-based initiatives."

Yeap, King George has taxpayer dollars going to his faith based organizations. What's more, though I haven't verified it yet, is that only Judaic, Christian, and Muslim groups are given money. In 2004 Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, "confirmed that no direct federal grants from his program had gone to a non-Christian religious group. This kind of religious favoritism is exactly what the Constitution's establishment clause was put in place to prevent."

I'm all for your religious scientists pursuing ID

Just don't try to have it taught in schools as a science, it's not.

The president has certainly hinted that would be his preference.
http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/2002/10/29_Dicta tor.html

Just because you're clinically depressed doesn't mean the world isn't depressing :). But it's always been that way, and Americans with some self awareness have so many sources of joy and hope, when we can appreciate them.

What gets me through is other people who've caught on to the big picture scam, talking with them, learning from them, teaching them, laughing with them, and, when sometimes gaping in horror at the latest outrage, at least gaping in good company. I like the Daily Kos. When I want to wallow in bad news, I enjoy BuzzFlash. And when I want to run with a crowd of ignorant, but often smart nerds who sometimes teach me something, sometimes learn something, and sometimes just serve as a worthy target for venting some rage, I like Slashdot. Too much, probably. It's better to talk with a live human outside somewhere. Reminds you how complex reality is, and how fit we are to live in it.

Take for example Elliot D. Cohen who authored the first story. He writes profusely for the Democratic Underground DOT com with many unfounded stories about George Bush. In reading some of these others pieces it is obvious that that man doesn't understand anything about war, military actions or American History. In his article titled "How Do You Spell DICTATOR"? if he truly believes the President to be a dictator he obviously hasn't read any thing about Abraham Lincoln who was a real tyrant.

Cohen probably believes that Peter III of Russia was a military genius

And if you use standard accrual accounting methods then some estimate the debt at $49 trillion. Which is why people all over the world are running from the dollar.

the other supports the welfare state of Jesus

Well, if, then only that of Supply Side Jesus.

No, it's obvious. If you want it from an actual prosecutor, read the book.

Here's a whole book on how to indict Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell before a Grand Jury.

Vote By Mail is the answer. To broken/crooked voting machines in polling places, at least. Then we've got to make sure the machines that count the votes aren't broken/crooked. But there's so much fewer of them, not operating in realtime, that it becomes a manageable IT problem rather than an IT nightmare.

We should probably replace the counting machines with humans, picked from random volunteers and OK'd (and monitored) by each party on the counted ballots, recorded on videotape. One step at a time.

The tech is, as usual, neutral. It's the technocrats, the people controlling the machine, who determine whether it helps or hurts us.

All told, people in power do things which lead to lying. We can both agree on that. But the real concern I have is in terms of the things they lie about, and the scope of the lies, and the extent to which they actively try to disseminate once caught.

What makes it news is the magnitude and impact of the lie.

Canadian governments almost invariably get caught. We just had an election which turned on the fact that the previous government in power got caught in a set of elaborate lies about funnelling money to PR firms. We spent more money investigating this than they'd funneled over. I'd call that, relatively speaking, a small lie. And certainly less newsworthy than any of the lies you hear from the US government. (Again, not trying to be a troll, here!)

Dude, I'm terribly sorry about you wasting your money like that. You do realize that we now have a president for life, one George W. Bush?

And you know who is doing this.....

The Gestapo isn't going to stop them from voting or rig the election.

The programmer who was paid to actually write the code (not that this is hard to do) for a politician in florida. His affidavit can be found here http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/12/images/CC_Af fidavit_120604.pdf

Thank you for reinforcing the vapid California stereotype.

All Schwarznazi's ballot initiatives go down in flames, except the one putting the state into a lot more debt. Not only do you ignore how all his other policies were rejected. You also ignore how he lied about fixing the budget, got elected by lying about how giant the debt is, then "fixed" it by creating a lot more debt. And your fellow Californians sucked it right down.

Next up, you pretend Californians don't vote for Schwarznazi because he's a Hollywood star. You justify this by saying that Davis wasn't Hollywood - but he got thrown out, you clown. Somehow voting for nonstars other times means you skindeepers didn't vote for actors in Reagan and Schwarznazi. You cite two other potential candidates whose resume consists of... being Hollywood stars, though not big enough to be as popular as Schwarznazi. Ringing the "duh" bell as hard as you can.

Schwarznazi campaigned for Bush, even outside California, which he said he wouldn't do, because Bush was so unpopular in California, though popular elsewhere. You're a gang of liars, you California Schwarznazi boosters. Like the lie you're trying that I said Bush is unpopular because of his deficits. Which I didn't say - I just said he's as unpopular as his deficits are high. Worth noting because not only are Schwarznazi's deficits high, including that new debt you're crowing about, but Bush's debt is is somewhere between 45 and 65 $TRILLION, so high the country can't pay it back. Which also figures into his unpopularity, along with Iraq, among people who can count that high. You can't - 45 is clearly out of your reach. But about a quarter of voters surveyed last month said the economy was more important than even Iraq. Your boys are blowing both, and worshippers like you don't even care.

Sure, you're not a Republican. Noone's a Republican anymore, right? You're an "independent", of course. So you vote for Republicans, and pretend you don't. And if you believe that Hollywood is "liberal", you're wearing a mouse suit in Disneyland.

I might have thought up the nickname "Schwarznazi", but I'm not unique. He's a nazi, just like he said, no matter what other arguments about Schwarznazi you want to lose with me. All my points are meaningful, backed by facts. I don't need some Lalaland liar like you to call me clever. Or spew lies while calling me on the facts.

Now turn your glowing eyeballs back to your TV. I'm sure there's something good on, like a California Republican pretending they're got the state's trains running on time, if only those damn secular Hollywood liberals would just lie down on the tracks, or at least get into the cattlecars.

I don't get it. What's invalid about that DKos story from the Senate floor? They're not "hardliners", they're actual moderate Democrats. Hardliners are people like Al Sharpton. DKos might look farther left than "midleft", because politicians have swung so far to the "right": their corporate sponsor agenda. You want to see hardline Democrat blogging? Check out BuzzFlash. If the mass media covered the actual hard left as much as they cover the hard right (without denoting their bias), these distinctions would be much easier to spot.

We're not that far offtopic, considering that I replied to the story with a prediction that Republicans will use the "Internet attack on god" as cover to stop Internet coverage of politics and corporate activity. The people aren't split on simple party lines, but the Net Neutrality amendment defeat on strict party lines shows that politicians surely are. Which means they're disconnected from the people.

Ding, ding, mod parent up. The people of Nazi Germany thought they were free too:

http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.h tml

the dirty secret of successful totalitarian control is rooting out the dissidents quietly while making sure the people who go along with it think "if I'm not doing anything "wrong" what do I have to worry about...?" Keep a constant watch on the watchers, some good resources to start:

Libertarian/Paleo right

http://antiwar.com/
http://www.lewrockwell.com/
http://www.amconmag.com/

Moderate:

http://buzzflash.com/
http://moveon.org/

Left:

http://counterpunch.org/
http://commondreams.org/
http://indymedia.org/

That should keep you busy for a while...

"And that's great, except some of the grey-list sites are kind of blocked so basically you can't get porn off it, among other things."

I wonder how good their access to news is considering that 85% of our troops think that their role in Iraq is to retaliate against Saddam for his role in 9-11. There seems to be a disconnect between what the troops believe and what the President has publicly stated before and after the war started.

>I don't think 2004 was fixed...

I used to think that, but now I'm not so sure.

Invading Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the events of September 11, 2001.

It had everything to do with a political blunder made by Bush the First. He made the mistake of comparing Saddam Hussein to Hitler. After that point, Saddam was serious political liability for Mr. Bush's administration. A man so evil, a man who is just like Hitler must be disposed of; you can't make a deal with that kind of man. Other politicians got behind this. Then when Clinton became president, he couldn't deal with Saddam either, because after all, Saddam is Hitler. Dealing with him would be political suicide.

You should read some interviews with Scott Ritter. The man is an ex-marine and one of the head UN arms inspectors who was looking for WMDs in Iraq. Guess what? The ones they found had been destroyed. The ones they know existed, but were never found, have a specific shelf life that ran out before the millenium. Saddam's government was being pretty cooperative. Iraq had no WMDs when the US invaded.

Invading Iraq was never about Weapons of Mass Destruction. It was never about Al Qaida. The domestic propaganda machine has been working non-stop to have you believe it was. Invading Iraq was about political problems for US politicians.

http://buzzflash.com/farrell/06/02/far06003.html

Detention Camp Jitters

by Maureen Farrell

"Recent pronouncements from the Bush Administration and national security initiatives put in place in the Reagan era could see internment camps and martial law in the United States."
-- The Sydney Morning Herald, July 27, 2002

In 1984, the Rex-84 readiness exercise program was conducted by 34 federal departments and agencies, reportedly as an exercise to handle an influx of illegal aliens crossing the Mexican/U.S. border. Brought to Americans' attention during the Iran-contra hearings, the exercise, which was conducted alongside another drill, "Night Train 84," also tested military readiness to round up and detain citizens in case of massive civil unrest.

None of that ever happened, of course, and in many respects, it seems silly to even mention it. After all, other Reagan-era initiatives, like the Armageddon exercises Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld participated in, are far more interesting. Then, too, despite a brief moment of sunlight in the 1970s (when Congress, according to former President and CIA director George H.W. Bush, "unleashed a bunch of untutored little jerks out there"), emergency detention plans had been in place since the 1950s, without incident. Americans have not been herded into camps since World War II, so why worry about it now?

For some, the answer comes in the form of yet another government contract awarded to Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root to build "temporary detention facilities" in case of an "immigration emergency." Reminiscent of Rex 84, which was conducted on the premise of preparing for "an influx of immigrants," there is reason to believe that hoards of poor, tired immigrants are not the true concern. As Tom Hennessy of the Press-Telegram recently pointed out, "there already are thousands of beds in place at various U.S. locations for the purpose of housing illegal immigrants." So what else might these centers be used for?

Given predictions that another terror attack is all but certain, it seems far more likely that the centers would be used for post-911-type detentions of immigrants rather than a sudden deluge. "Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters," Daniel Ellsberg remarked. "They've already done this on a smaller scale, with the 'special registration' detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo." As it turns out, immigrants aren't the only concern. As a news brief in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution explains:

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary immigration detention centers to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root. KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department in case of an unexpected influx of immigrants or to house people after a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space, the company said.

Hurricane Katrina gave Americans a glimpse of how a natural disaster scenario might play out. John Brinkerhoff, one of the FEMA officials behind the Reagan-era martial law and internment directives who "planned for the detention of at least 21 million American Negroes in assembly centers or relocation camps" began defending the Pentagon's desire to deploy troops on American streets in 2002, and sure enough, after Hurricane Katrina, Blackwater mercenaries were brought in to police the streets of New Orleans -- as soldiers were instructed to "shoot to kill" looters. Brinkerhoff also told PBS that, "The United States itself is now for the first time since the War of 1812 a theater of war. That means that we should apply, in my view, the same kind of command structure in the United States that we apply in other theaters of war."

Which brings us to the KBR spokesman's final statement regarding

In the interests of not making a book-length post:

http://www.bushlies.net/pages/10/
Top ten lies.

http://bushwatch.org/bushlies.htm
With more lies from administration officials as well as Bush

http://www.bushlies.net/pages/1/
War on terror lies.

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/07/22_lie s.html
Iraq lies.

http://pearly-abraham.tripod.com/htmls/bushlies1.h tml
More lies.

Google " "bush lies" OR "Bush administration lies" " for another million or so pages.

In future elections we may expect to no longer hear any such troublesome reports. The decade old was disbanded following it's troublesome reporting on the election in 2000.

Back in my marching days, I marched against the covert CIA war in Central America. Those terrorists and torturers are still currently working for the US government. So I know about the dark history of which you speak. I also grew up in New York, where I still live, so I know about the IRA mob here, and their fundraising. FWIW, IRA funding dried up before 2001, when arms dealing was no longer the most lucrative investment in Ireland - tech factories and call centers stole their thunder in the 1990s. I despise all terrorism - and I'm not afraid to say so, even face-to-face with the animals in person, here in NYC where that can get you into some serious "trouble".

But I can't completely identify with your blanket statements. About terrorism, I asked which NATO actions qualify as terrorism, and you replied "all of their terrorism is terrorism", which says nothing. About my own ability to speak out against terrorism, you say that since "the US" practices terrorism, that I cannot criticize it. Well, as I uniformly denounce terrorism, do what I can to vote for people who I think will oppose it (especially our own), and do what I can to fight the fear of terrorism with knowledge, I think you cast your net too wide.

Funny, maybe; but what... entity... modded this insightful?

Assuming he doesn't outright completely suspend elections or the constitution (which even a Republican Congress and a packed Supreme Court would go apeshit over), he'd need to have the 22nd Amendment repealed. This would require another amendment, much like the 21st repealed prohibition. This would require ratification of three quarters of the states-- 38, assuming no new states are admitted, and no current states split.

In the2004 presidential election, Bush carried only 32 states. Given that he has not massively increased his popularity since (especially given current sentiments on term limits), I'd consider the 61st Amendment far more likely.

There's also the question of whether such an amendment could realistically happen in time for Bush to run in 2008. A state-called convention seems unlikely. While some amendments have passed really quickly, others took longer. Given that it would be relatively controversial, it seems not unreasonable to believe it would take a year after getting out of congress. Furthermore, given the shennanigans that the Republican Senate lacked the votes to obtain cloture against a filibuster, it seems unlikely they would have be able to pass such an amendment.

Only the faithful are allowed in, and possible dissenters are given the boot...

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/05/05/int05019 .html

I beg to differ...

A paper came out shortly after the Nov '04 election showing how exit poll data differend from official tallies in Florida, Ohio & Pennsylvania. Exit polls in all 3 states showed a Kerry win. Official results has Bush winning Florida & Ohio, and Kerry winning Pennsylvania by a much smaller margin than exit polling showed. Given the long, accurate-within-a-margin-of-error track record of exit polls, the probability of the exit polls being that wrong in all 3 states is 662,000 to 1.
http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/ale04090.htm l

And who decides to not vote just because e-vote machines are in use? The method used to cast my vote at the polling station is the LAST thing on my mind when I go to vote.

Recently, UniLect had their e-vote machines decertified in Pennsylvania, thanks to the efforts of 1 citizen who coughed up $450 for a re-evaluation of their functionality. The results were pretty embarassing for UniLect, to say the least, and I'm baffled as to how this wasn't discovered BEFORE the election: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001364.htm

ES&S's explanation for the thousands of extra Bush votes counted by their machines in Franklin County, Ohio in Nov '04 was that the card reader they had hooked up their tabulation laptop was sending the data to the laptop too quickly for the laptop to process it, so some data got dropped. This is either a huge lie, or only demonstrates some magnificent incompetence in ES&S's development team: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001184.htm Either way, they should also have their e-vote machines decertified. Here's to hoping.

The Miama Herald also reported this week that their ES&S machines counted more votes than voters in Nov '04: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001390.htm

And the fact that Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc, sent a fundraising letter to Republicans in Ohio in 2003 saying that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year" casts doubt on the legitimacy of all reported results from Diebold machines in Ohio in Nov '04.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.ht m

I realize that nothing that humans do is perfect, but these e-vote machines used in '04 show a definite trend towards "much less perfect" than in previous elections.

Post your link to the source of this "news". I can't find it on Google. Link not to a rightist blogger or Freerepublic, but a to a transcript of the comment, WITH CONTEXT, or at least an article from a credible news source referring to this. No, Rush is not acceptable. And he does not provide transcripts, anyway.

And as for Dobbs, he has indeed jumped onto the rightist train and is riding for the sunset, so his attitude as a "journalist" is indeed up for comment. He's dropped the mask of a reporter and has become a right-wing agitator. So it goes.

At Daily Kos or Talking Points Memo or even Buzzflash, the answer to the Drudge, they exhaustively document and link each reference to an actual news article from a credible source. "Everybody knows" is not credible as a source.

This "Franken is calling names" stinks of the old Orwellian trick of smearing the enemy with that which your side is most certainly guilty. If you know you can be called on your actions, make a lot of noise establishing "controversey" about those who will call you out, to diminish their stature. Slash, smear, distort, MAKE NOISE, and the enemy's best efforts to expose your actions can be at best summed up as calling the kettle black by those whose knowledge of the discussion is not exactly exhaustive.

Air America Radio,, with Franken as midday host, has done more to clean the rightist clocks in one year than the entire Democratic party has done in twenty.

'cos the Bush voters living in "Jesusland" would refuse to use it, going on about the Book of Revelation, man's mark required to buy or sell, etc.

The President of America George W Bush is a failed busines man with a criminal record. Renowned for overseeing the most number of executions in his stint as Taxes governot. Advocated more death sentences than any other governor in American history (all 4 pages of it).

You can download and read Bush's resume from the Internet.

For the curious, the President of America's website runs Apache on Solaris.

Here bush entertains some people in white coats with some shadow play

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/09/17_fra nken.html

you'll probably like this.

Why weren't there charges filed if things were missing.
Is it because it was not true?
I've heard everything from missing 'W's on keyboards to grafitti on the walls. But no evidence.
You think that it is that difficult for a Republican to take a photograph?

Or you think that Bush's Brain is a liar?
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/09/30_rov e.html

http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/12/images/CC_Af fidavit_120604.pdf