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The president of Diebold said he would deliver the votes to Bush. And he did.

Fortunately, today comes more bad news for the Democrats. Their long awaited investigation into voter fraud found no evidence of voter fraud by the GOP and their deranged poster boy, Dean was forced into a humilating admission.

A five-month study for the Democratic National Committee found that more than one in four Ohio voters experienced problems at the polls last fall, but the study did not find evidence of widespread election fraud that might have contributed to President Bush's narrow victory there.

In a stinging reply to the report, Mr. Mehlman agreed that there were numerous election abuses that took place in Ohio last year, but said they were perpetrated by Democrats or their political allies. In one instance, he said, "Democrat allies attempted to disenfranchise Ohio voters by submitting registration cards for Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Michael Jordan."

...

"Overwhelmingly," this report said, "these problems were reportedly traced primarily" to four Democratic political allies who supported Mr. Kerry: ACORN, America Coming Together, the AFL-CIO and the NAACP National Voter Fund.

My impression is that the Bush family is the most corrupt family every to have political power in the United States. These are people who believe that they are more than 100% right, and that other people don't matter.

It does not surprise me that Jeb Bush's state is involved in voting machine vulnerabilities. Quote from the story "... vendors such as Diebold have too much influence in the administration of elections, a view that resonated with Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, the founder of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition."

The president of Diebold said he would deliver the votes to Bush. And he did.

I wrote short reviews of books and movies about the corruption, but I only barely touched the surface: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government. Note that, although Michael Moore's manner of expression is sloppy, other authors supported his main points in the movie Fahrenheit 9/11. For example, George W. Bush does hold hands with Saudi leaders, his father was at a meeting with a brother of Osama bin Laden on the day before 9/11, and so on.

Never has my signature been more appropriate...

Just for starters, you might want to look at these for two of your claims.

Rove Investigation Still ongoing

Army Recruitment Crisis

(I'd stop to refute more, but the constant beeping has given me a headache...)

"A survey of public opinion in 16 countries released by the Pew Global Attitudes Project on June 23 found a dismal opinion of the U.S. Most said the world was more dangerous after the downfall of Saddam Hussein, rated China more favorably than the U.S., and said the world would be better off if a group of countries emerged as a rival to U.S. military power."

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0703-25.htm

If other countries have a better opinion of China than the U.S. maybe it is time to reflect that the U.S. is doing something _very_ wrong?

He's referring to this, but the controversy is not over any re-routing, a huge proportion of world inet traffic already routes through NYC, it's over whether the NSA has the jurisdiction to evesdrop on international traffic that starts at a foreign source and ends at a foreign point but routes via the NYC switches.

And American hands are clean? NOT!

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1223-11.htm

Now tell the whole story or STFU.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0614-34.htm

Global warming deserves our urgent attention but it pays to think about what nuclear power can and cannot contribute. One respected global energy scenario developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates a three-fold increase in carbon emissions between 1997 and 2100, even with an eight-fold increase in nuclear generation. If coal replaced all the nuclear generation in this scenario, carbon emissions in 2100 increase a mere 20 percent. Working the other way, if nuclear power were to replace all coal, carbon emissions would fall 20 percent. To achieve that goal, 1,000-megawatt reactors would need to be built at a rate of 85-90 plants per year this century.

Neither Schwartz nor Brand considers the weapons proliferation risks. If uranium limits force a shift to breeder technology, the amount of weapons-usable plutonium circulating in global commerce would be about 5 million kilograms per year; only 10 kilograms are needed to make a nuclear weapon.

Perhaps we will find more uranium and not require breeder technology. In that event, this scenario would require 2,000 uranium enrichment facilities around the world. If they were making fuel for pebble bed reactors, each plant would be doing about 84 percent of the enrichment necessary for producing weapons grade uranium. Suppose a plant chose to start with the pebble bed fuel and make weapons grade uranium instead -- each facility could make 875 bombs per year. Weapons grade uranium bombs, in sharp contrast to their plutonium cousins, are almost foolproof to design and require no testing, an important distinction for diplomatic intervention.

Negroponte, a Torturer's Friend

According to a detailed investigation the Baltimore Sun did in 1995, Negroponte covered up some of the most grotesque human rights abuses imaginable. The CIA organized, trained, and financed an army unit called Battalion 316, the paper said. Its specialty was torture. And it kidnapped, tortured, and killed hundreds of Hondurans, the Sun reported. It "used shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves." The U.S. embassy in Honduras knew about the human rights abuses but did not want this embarrassing information to become public, the paper said.

Bush to Tap Negroponte as Intel Director

Negroponte, who speaks five languages and has held official posts in eight countries, served as a member of President Reagan's National Security Council from 1987-1989 after serving as the U.S. ambassador to Honduras. Wyden said Negroponte's time in Honduras is the reason why he voted against the nominee. The senator said Negroponte was too evasive at his confirmation hearing last week, inadequately reported human rights abuses by death squads in Honduras and aided Contra rebels during the fight between the guerrillas and the Sandinista government in neighboring Nicaragua. "I believe the record of the ambassador's service there is particularly telling in terms of his judgment and his willingness to confront difficult facts, which I believe are two key requirements for the director of national intelligence," Wyden said.

It makes about as much sense as Greenpeace investing in, say, Dow Chemical or ExxonMobil.

But I have to hand it to him for the audacious originality of the idea.

Actually, it's quite common for people who oppose a company to buy shares in order to protest at their shareholder meetings. Infact, I know at least one case where Greenpeace have done this, they bought shares in Amoco to try and block oil drilling in Alaska. See this page for more info on that case.

Implying a moral equivelence to the USSR simply betrays your political bias.

Yeah, whoever said that was way out of line. Americans may fight tooth and nail for the right to torture people, strap electrodes to their balls and shove sticks up their asses, but the guy in a black suit here tells me to tell you that the official line is that the CIA planes flying in Europe do not, in fact, travel to Siberia (which is incidentally in Asia), and they disavow any knowlege of anyone named Sergy.

Did you know that Clinton, Reagan and Carter all excercised the exact same authority?

Ah, yes, the "the guy before me did it first" excuse. Why don't we just start demanding that all our presidents be accused rapists, to preserve that fine tradition that Clinton started? THIS is why our country is going to hell in a handbasket. It's not because we took "Christ" out of "Christmas" or whatever bullshit the televangelists would have you believe, it's because we've started aiming low, and hold our leaders to bullshit standards. For once, I'd like to see someone elected who was better than the people who came before.

As for being found legal in 2002, is this what you were talking about? A secret court assembled specifically for the purpose of taking care of these secret wiretaps found them legal as the very first ruling they issued? Shock! Next thing you know, the Republicans will publically apologize for threatening appeals court judges who refused to side with them on Schiavo's case. Because obviously these judges are never wrong.

Instances of malfeasance by multinational pharmas during the course of clinical trials in third world countries have been well documented: see for instance this story about Pfizer's behavior in a Nigerian meningitis test; and this story (referred to in Marcia Angell's book) about ethics violations in an Ugandan HIV study.

What the GP is pointing out is that Dubya & Company will cite chapter and verse when it suits their interests, but have absolutely no problem ignoring the same chapter and verse the instant they find it inconvenient.

By the way, Dubya & Company don't need to use the military to 'guard' polling places...they've already got that covered.

Oh man, fuck Christmas.

Seriously - are you kidding me with this "There's a war on Christmas" bullshit? FOX News wasn't raking in enough cash already from all the Christmas commercials for Kill 'em All Barbie and Girls Gone Wild Brand Toddler Gear ? They had to start publishing books about some bogus attack on Christianity? And who did they pick to lead this particular charge?

John fucking Gibson. This guy has wiener written all over him.

Bill O'Reilly gets all the credit as the biggest nutcase in FOXville, but Gibson really deserves his own special wing in the happy house. This motherfucker's embedded assignment reads "Up Karl Rove's ass."

What makes him such a dick? I mean, besides making a fortune by screaming hysterically about how oppressed Christians are by the other twenty percent? How about advocating bombing countries that don't vote the way we want in their own elections? Way to encourage democracy, fuckhead. And maybe he was kidding when he wished, on air, that the French had gotten the 2012 Olympics instead of the Brits so the terrorists would "blow up Paris," but it might have been just a touch over the top to call for it again on the day of the London train bombings. Classy move, asshole.

And really? That's just scratching the fucking surface. Anyone remember who was responsible for the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City? John does: Iraq. And speaking of Iraq, Gibson thinks Rove deserves a fucking medal for outing that CIA agent. And, like any good reporter, he wanted to burn the Florida ballots after his buddy Bush got "elected" rather than, I don't know, count them? "Is this a case where knowing the facts actually would be worse than not knowing?" That right there is why sometimes it's useful for journalists to go to, what do you call that fucking place? Oh yeah, journalism school.

And now he's all worked up about Christmas being stolen. What is this, the fucking Fairytale Network? It's a national fucking holiday and we're spending gobs of our hard-earned tax dollars on wreaths and lights for your special Santa day. But these bastards are all "But they call them Holiday trees!" Here's a clue: no, they fucking don't. Ok, maybe in a couple places, like on FOXNews.com and at the White House, but if Christmas is under attack, I'm Kris fucking Kringle.

And guess who's stealing Christmas, according to Gibson. Go on -- guess. "A cabal of secularists, so-called humanists, trial lawyers, cultural relativists, and liberal, guilt-wra

*No roads
And what do you call what we have now? I call it "rocks, holes, and unofficial speedbumps". I'm considering throwing in the towel on trying to maintain an SUV, for gods sake, because I can't drive regularly without something getting screwed up on it: shock absorbers, electrical problems, etc.

*No police protection
Good. The last instance of "police protection" I received was being pulled over and ticketed $20 for not wearing a seatbelt. I'd pay not to get that kind of "protection".

*No fire departments
We've had three cases here recently of firemen getting caught starting fires. Two weeks ago there were twelve mysterious grassfires all over the state in one day. And guess who put them out? Volunteer fire departments.

*No primary or secondary education
        *As a result of which, 90% of our middle class would be being paid substinance level wages, working 12-16 hour days to be able to eat. You know, like we did before we enacted regulations to stop that shit.
You can get an education without the help of the government. And if you're too dumb to do so, you're better off working 12 hours a day, because it would be wasted on you. By the way, my mother has a college degree, and works 10 hours a day in a factory, so let's not pretend that education has much to do with working conditions or job availability.

*No military, so we'd likely be part of China by now
If I had back the taxes that I pay and freedoms that I sacrifice to support all the ridiculous US military excursions around the globe, I'd do just fine defending my country the way it was intended to be defended: by citizens, not by mercenaries. As it is, the US government more often attacks US citizens and creates terrorists and dictators than protects us from foreign threats. And the Chinese nuclear arsenal was built by a man educated through the generosity of the US taxpayer. So, no, I don't exactly see how my taxes are being used to protect us from China, or anyone else.

*No social security, so we'd have elderly people competing for jobs in order to live
I don't give a shit. Young people compete for jobs in order to live. There's nothing magical about the elderly that makes them immune to the decisions they have made in their lifetime, good and bad. Life sucks, you have 70 years to learn to deal with it. If you haven't done so by then, tough. Don't expect to impose your stupidity on future generations.

*A large homeless problem, as elderly people will frequently lose the competition
Elderly people can live with their families, like they have done for thousands of years. Those without families should have that much more retirement money to live off of.

*A much lower expected lifespan, due to the above and lack of medicaid
Yeah well everybody dies. Get over yourself. And lifespan is more affected by improvements in healthcare for the young than by using the elderly as an excuse to ruin the economy.

*Garbage all over, since we wouldn't have garbage pickup and people would refuse to pay
I have (private) garbage pickup. And I pay for it. And if I didn't, it would get burnt in an incinerator or buried in the backyard, which is exactly what the garbage people do with it anyways.

Did you know....

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_comp any.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004 /03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitraki s/031004fitrakis.html

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=26
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.ph p

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.

http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.ht m
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel 27.html

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates /pfindex.html

Did you know....

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_comp any.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004 /03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitraki s/031004fitrakis.html

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=26
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.ph p

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.

http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.ht m
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel 27.html

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates /pfindex.html

Companies are already looking to place products in reruns of older shows, going as far as to insert digial products. Video-technology company Princeton Video Image has for years used digital imaging to insert virtual first-down lines (with corporate logos) in football games and completely photorealistic but nonexistent "signs" behind home plate at baseball games. Now it wants to move into reruns, with technology that can seamlessly insert 3-D objects into video footage-a Pepsi on a desktop, a Lexus at a curbside, a box of Tide on a countertop-where there was nothing before. PVI is negotiating to do placements in reruns of Law & Order and hopes to strike deals with other syndicators and even first-run shows. "You could sell a box of cereal in the kitchen one [airing]," says PVI vice president Paul Slagle, "and dish soap in the next." PVI's Holy Grail: customizing insertions using interactive-TV technology-which is still distant and speculative-that would store viewer information (demographic details, even interactive purchases) as Web browsers do. Your TV would figure, Slagle says, "whether you're riper for a Cadillac or a Saturn." http://www.time.com/time/pacific/magazine/20010625 /tv.html

Also the whole Tivo increasing product placemnet is nothing new. Here are a few articles from as far back as 2001:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/TV/02/18/apontv.ad s.everywhere.ap/
http://webserve.govst.edu/users/ghrank/Advertising /Pitch/1-hi/product_placing.htm
http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,5 29039,00.html
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=176 457&seqNum=2
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0124-02.ht m

And here is Buisness Week's product placment hall of fame from 1998: http://www.businessweek.com/1998/25/b3583062.htm

Did you know that in the US in 2006, more children will grow up in homes that have declared bankruptcy than will grow up with divorced parents?

Did you also know that as of 2004, over 50% of all bankruptcies in the US are directly related to a major medical illness somewhere in the family?

50% Medical Bankruptcy article (2005)
Article stating number of bankruptcies in 1999 (~ 500,000 families)
Article stating number of bankruptcies in 2001 (~ 1.5 million families)

Did you know that in the US in 2006, more children will grow up in homes that have declared bankruptcy than will grow up with divorced parents?

Did you also know that as of 2004, over 50% of all bankruptcies in the US are directly related to a major medical illness somewhere in the family?

50% Medical Bankruptcy article (2005)
Article stating number of bankruptcies in 1999 (~ 500,000 families)
Article stating number of bankruptcies in 2001 (~ 1.5 million families)

And even spookier, this link says:

Johns Hopkins researchers at the Information Security Institute issued a report declaring that Diebold's electronic voting software contained "stunning flaws." The researchers concluded that vote totals could be altered at the voting machines and by remote access.

and:

Wired News reported that ". . . a former worker in Diebold's Georgia warehouse says the company installed patches on its machine before the state's 2002 gubernatorial election that were never certified by independent testing authorities or cleared with Georgia election officials." Questions were raised in Texas when three Republican candidates in Comal County each received exactly the same number of votes - 18,181.

It gets spookier still when you look at Diebold's CEO Bob Urosevich's ties to the Republican Party and strong fundamentalist backgrounds. Whereever Diebold goes, the article says, historic Republic upsets follow.

"I do wonder if there's a good interface for "moderating" blogs, so that, for example, if one is sponsored by Candidate X in a sneaky way, and someone finds out, it can appear beside the name of the blog."

Actually, what you are suggesting was formerly an FCC rule.

What I am referring to was a rule known as the "Fairness Doctrine" which was repealed in 1987 http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0212-03.htm

This rule required that every political or controversial opinion aired on radio or television, had to be fairly balanced with opposing views. But now that rule is gone, and one-sided political campaigns are now the norm.

That is why we hear many dozens of anti-drug ads daily, for example, with no rebuttal allowed. It's also why we hear one right-wing talk show after another, 24 hours a day, with no opposition; one party, one opinion, marching in lockstep.

Now if we could just get them to run the trains on time, we could forget about the hassle with airport security.

Michael

This is actually incorrect. From Robert Hinckley, a former corporate lawyer with 23 years of experience:

"In Maine, where I live, this duty of directors is in Section 716 of the business corporation act, which reads: ...the directors and officers of a corporation shall exercise their powers and discharge their duties with a view to the interests of the corporation and of the shareholders....

Although the wording of this provision differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, its legal effect does not. This provision is the motive behind all corporate actions everywhere in the world. Distilled to its essence, it says that the people who run corporations have a legal duty to shareholders, and that duty is to make money. Failing this duty can leave directors and officers open to being sued by shareholders."

The full article is available here: http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0119-04.htm

Google has some interesting provisions in their corporate charter that make it difficult to go against the wishes of the founders, but Google as a corporate entity is unique. They're a really good example of what an alternative to the current system could look like. Or at least they're moving in the right direction.

Socialism is a hard to define bastard term- it originally was an offshoot of communism, but now tends to be used to describe economic systems where the government (not the people!) control the means of production.

No...A socialist more honestly (in my observation, at least) is usually a closet Communist who doesn't want to admit such to himself or other people. (usually because he's scared that nobody will listen to his opinions if he does) The term "progressive" is another such euphemism for closet Communism. Most of the authors on commondreams.org (as but one example of "progressive" closet Communist websites) would protest violently if accused of being Communist, but yet the site hosts blatant Marxist advocacy such as this.

Ditto for the Nazis. (Although they were fascists, not Commies) They used the term "national socialist" because it combined connotations of nationalism/patriotism, and socialism...both terms which they thought would appeal to the population and sound like what they wanted to hear.

There's never been a bigger lie told than the one about Communism dying with the collapse of the Soviet Union. What that lie has done has been to make Communism far more palatable...because it enables Communists to maintain and propogate their existing belief systems under such euphemisms as the above.

Microsoft were correct to call Stallman a Communist. By definition, he is...because he insists that the means of production (source code/tools for creating programs in this case) be owned/freely usable by the workers. (programmers) You might say that there is a distinction between end users and programmers (the "workers" in this context) but the UNIX paradigm in particular makes no such distinction. Whether or not it is a good or bad thing is a subject for another debate, but it is true that the paradigms Stallman advocates put capitalism (at least where software is concerned) on the endangered species list. The reason why is because Stallman has the attitude that his way is the *only* correct or acceptable way...he is completely intolerant of views differing from his own.

In some situations, I do actually think that a Communist-like economic approach can be a good thing...for intangibles like power generation, net access, software, and so on. But for physical objects it doesn't work.

Capitalism works on the presumption of the creation of a monopoly, or the *scarcity* of a given commodity...so for physical non-renewables like oil, precious metals, and even agriculture, it works well. Economic Communism on the other hand does have some viable applications, but is much more favourable to dealing with intangible commodities that are abundant/inexhaustible. (Which is why software piracy/trading is as prevalent as it is, and why open source itself can work) This is repugnant to the exclusively capitalistic mind because it does not involve hard fiat currency changing hands, but what such capitalist fanatics are missing is that trade still takes place, just not in monetary form...if you have a file that I want, and I have a file that you want, we both upload, and we both get what we want. So in that sense it's closer to barter. Capitalism is hostile to barter/non-liquid forms of trade because it holds the use of liquid (capital) to be the catalyst which starts/enables its reaction, if you like.

The trick is to be willing to accept both Capitalism and economic Communism on an emotional as well as an intellectual level, and to be able to determine which paradigm is likely to be more viable in each situation. They're both part of the ecosystem, and they can both work to solve different economic problems...the real problem is when people start insisting that only one of them should exist at the expense/exclusion of the other.

A few? Most of them do that, although their activities are usually marked "special interest", like, say, the Walton's anti-public-school campaigns which are both a "republican" and a "libertarian" cause. Speaking of Waltons, they alone comprise something like 20% of the list of billionaires and you cannot find more fanatical right-wingers then they are.

Back in reality, the Democratic party in the U.S. gets much more of it's contributions from large individual contributions than the Republican party does, both in terms of percentage of contributions and in terms of total contributions.

Yes, specially the likes of Howard Dean, no? Speaking of contributions, where do you pull your numbers out of, your ass as usual? Here is what Washington Post has on this, which mentions a 3:1 ratio of big businesses and their owners (read: billionaires and millionaires) support for Republicans vs Democrats (in 2002). Unless of course you consider organized labour being "a billionaire".

The budget of the National Science Foundation was slashed to increase support for pork, the NSA, and NASA, and hundreds of NSF graduate research fellowships were replaced with a new fellowship to support security research. Scientists across the country have been reeling for a couple years now, especially those going up for tenure. Before this, about 1 in 6 NSF proposals got funded. Today its about 1 in 20.

This seems like a poorly thought-out comment to me. Basically, you are claiming that all environmentalists are terrorists and/or insane? I guess the same would then apply to all Christians, given some of the less than intelligent things a small fractions of their number have done in the past.

The CNN article doesn't really have much detail. Some trivial googling yielded the following links:

http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/marine/nlfa.asp
http://www.eurocbc.org/sonar_lfas_implicated_in_wh ale_deaths_30oct2002page1253.html

which have more useful information. I think the bigger problem is that the US Navy want to deploy a large scale, permanent sonar system to monitor the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Such a system would flood both areas of sea with very high volume sonar:

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file =/headlines01/0618-03.htm

Anyway, there is a lot of additional information around about this. Personally, I think the problem of finding submarines should be solvable in a more elegant way than flooding 2 oceans with sonar.

Cheers,

Rhys Hill

Shit, even though I previewed twice, I didn't notice this. That first link was supposed to be:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0130-11.htm

Although the conservation group changed its name to the Worldwide Fund for Nature 15 years ago, in the United States it is still known by the original World Wildlife Fund. In 1994, it entered into an agreement with the wrestling federation over the use of the trademark initials. Since then, however, both have expanded their presence on the Internet, where they have almost identical web site addresses.

As a result of the court ruling, however, the wrestling enterprise will be allowed to retain limited use of its initials in the United States only. It will be required to relinquish its prized web site address.

Every nation should be represented in a fair and democratic Internet administration, not just the people we like.

I care more about liberty than about democracy. If you (and a majority of your peers) decide to limit my freedom, I don't really care if you did it democratically or not. Curtailing liberty is wrong. Those who would do so should not be allowed to participate.

Funny, I just read this which is exactly the same idea. Quite the day when a libertarian links to CommonDreams to make a point. Here's another link showing that unfettered democracy is not the best idea. A majority is not right simply because it is a majority.

Insane? Read http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1118-22.htm before you start again. Not many people think "insanity" when observing Bev Harris, who has gone out of her way to document the voting process, and discovered blatant tampering of election data in 2004.
Ask yourself why election officials in multiple electoral regions went out of their way to destroy (or, at the most charitable best, make inaccessible) original poll tapes, and provided clearly doctored...ummm...copies?...to a group of people making what should be a routine public records request. I would be interested in an explanation that doesn't involve election tampering.

Because it can trigger the next ice age, like a less dramatized version of "The Day After Tomorrow." "if enough cold, fresh water coming from the melting polar ice caps and the melting glaciers of Greenland flows into the northern Atlantic, it will shut down the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe and northeastern North America warm. The worst-case scenario would be a full-blown return of the last ice age - in a period as short as 2 to 3 years from its onset - and the mid-case scenario would be a period like the "little ice age" of a few centuries ago that disrupted worldwide weather patterns leading to extremely harsh winters, droughts, worldwide desertification, crop failures, and wars around the world." http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_age s.html http://www.21stcenturyradio.com/articles/02/101014 0.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12 374,1083419,00.html http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0130-11.htm Or just google it yourself.

We should also hold posters responsible for hate speech disguised as insightful.

What IRAQ false pretenses? From a liberal website no less:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0624-09.ht m
They had atomic programs.

Mike Brown after Katrina
This was a local, state and Federal failure to communicate. We have never had such problems here in Florida after a hurricane. FEMA should assist, not assume control. You do realize everyone went to bed Monday night happy that New Orleans got spared. Watch discovery channel sometime and broaden your horizons.

Since this and other military robots will most likely be used on civilians who resist military occupation.

Don't think it wouldn't happen. I've met several high level people with very very very strong political views (they were also assholes).

"My point is they were not targeting nerds" How about they are only interested in your money, nothing else...?

The wrestling WWF was operating as the "WWF" with permission from the other WWF (World Wildlife Fund). The animal WWF got pissed over the way the wrestling WWF was using the WWF trademark and decided to revoke that permission.

Here's a link to a story about it.

Note that Apple Computers operates under a similar deal with Apple Records, and ran into some trouble with them over starting up iTunes.

Several forces at work here. One is religion. Global Warming is basically part of the religious beliefs of the New Age, Gaia worshiping 'progressive' crowd in charge of Slashdot editorial decisionmaking. To them, Katrina is Gaia's way of lashing out at the wickedness of Bush's Amerika. When they don't believe Bush himself conjured the storm as part of his pact with Lucifier to bring ruin and destruction to black people. Or in short, they are barking moonbats.

Huh? Oh silly me! La! La! La! La! La! I can't hear you! Bush is our glorious leader who can do no wrong! La! La! La! La! Global Warming doesn't exist! La! La! La! La! La! La!

You're right. There are two different worlds. The one based on reality and the one given by the RNC.

Whether you belive in creationism or God- you would think that serving God requires us to take care of what God blessed us with.

I would like to think that but there is no commandment to be a good steward! They expect the earth to be destroyed in "the rapture" and they think that will be a good thing!

Bill Moyers had some insightful comments about it: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1206-10.htm

And also, here's the full story on the snickers thief: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/040700-01.ht m ...again, I think the jury did their job in light of all the facts.

You are saying that one or two nukes for any country should be enough. Clearly not for america or Russia. If i can draw your attention to Here, America have the second largest nuclar arsenal in the world only second to the Russians.
"believed to consist of between 21,000-40,000 warheads (2001 Estimate). Even using the lowest estimates of the Russian nuclear arsenal, the Russians currently possess an arsenal consisting of at least three times as many nuclear warheads as the United States."

Just the American arsenal alone is enough to blow up the world 800 times over (no reference its from my bad memory (however prove me wrong)). And to add a nother sence of fear as one grows the other grows too. Face it neither country is going to surrender their right to stockpile nuclar WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (notice the hyppicrtical emphesis) and now the US has a way to fire off nukes without any concent a hell of a lot of people are going to die by nukes. Im not saying in 6 month or even a year but in the next 40 years somthing is going to go horribly wrong. "Maby they could start with Redmond."

Quote: Not to slight Russia, but with all of their economic troubles

you mean "troubles" like this,& this?

now, i'm the last person to support the IMF, to say nothing of Russia's choice to pay "them" off rather than focus such monies into social needs, but paying off early a 7 billion USD debt seems like there's some to go around. i agree it is tragic Russia doesn't use the money to take care of its inherit social problems, but perhaps they're modeling themselves after some other big country's spending habits

Quote: its troubling that their space program is comparable to ours in many ways...

yes, god forbid another country do something better than Americans. oh wait... most of the world does many things better than Americans. Unless you count Greed, we are better than everyone at that.

I hate to see more of this tired "we" are good and "they" are not rhetoric. As an American, I have to ask when will the propoganda inflated "red threat" die like racism is supposed to have in our "great" country? Hmm, it sounds like someone else has been sleeping under a rock? =)

Land of the free? " With a record-setting 2 million people locked up in American jails and prisons, the United States has overtaken Russia and has a higher percentage of its citizens behind bars than any other country." ... "On a per capita basis, according to the best available figures, the United States has three times more prisoners than Iran, four times more than Poland, five times more than Tanzania and seven times more than Germany. Maryland has more citizens in prison and jail (an estimated 35,200) than all of Canada (31,600), though Canada's population is six times greater." ... "A major cause of the increase is the war on drugs. In 1980, says Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project in Washington, about 40,000 Americans were locked up solely for drug offenses. Now the number is 450,000, three-fourths of them black or Hispanic, although drug use is no higher in those groups than among whites." http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0601-01.ht m I'm sorry: a free country would not lock up half a million people for engaging in recreational pharmaceutical use or business activities related to it.

Can you take apart and modify your own electronic equipment ? in the US you can't

Can you get a fair trial in front of your peers ? in the US you can't

Can you read books in your library without fear of being persecuted ? in the US you can't

Can you report stories as a journalist without fear of revealing your sources and being jailed ? in the US you can't

freedom is a good idea but its not working out very well in USA

Have you tried CNN.COM or The Palm Beach Post or Newsmax or The Washington Post or how about USA Today.

In case you think any of those are too Bush friendly try out the New York Times.

Outside of media sources there is also the Wiki entry.

As for the panhandle disenfranchisement try:

Newsmax again.

Or the US Senate investigation.

As for the disenfranchisement of voters through poorly created criminal lists try:

Common Dreams (reprinting a Palm Beach Post article)

John Lott (you can read the whole thing but his conclusion sections should do)

Essentially the criminal lists did little to affect the vote, and most calls of African American disenfranchisement (the Democrats backbone support) were actually due to a disproportionally high vote rejection rate in 'Black districts', not the lists. But as several reviews have shown, these were do to voter error in marking their ballots, not any particular attempt to actively disenfranchise them. And before you try to make a case that they used different style ballots in 'Black Districts' (which was the case in some areas) remember, those districts, being predominately Democrat, were run by Democratic election boards who designed those ballots.

There was a good site that summarizes all the various debates, but I can't seem to find it right now. If I do I'll reply with a link. As for the Supremes roll in all this, it's pretty much a a moot point but if you want to dig further at least 7 justices saw some problem with the way the Florida Supreme Court had ordered the count to go forward, and at least 3 saw the December 12th deadline as an important part of their decision. They vast majority had issues with the lower courts rulings but each of the SCJs had a different idea as to what the solution should be.

The Salvation Army is anti-gay. That is unfortunate.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1113-06.ht m

http://outrage.nabumedia.com/pressrelease.asp?ID=1 61

http://www.glaad.org/media/np_archive_detail.php?i d=354

Please keep this in mind when you consider donating to them. Thank you.

Josh

To learn more about Hugo Chavez's term as President of Venezuela, go to:

"Why Hugo Chavez Won a Landslide Victory"
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0817-01.htm

or:

"Hugo Chavez is Crazy!"
http://www.alternet.org/story/16255/

To learn more about George Bush's term as President of the United States, go to any gas station.

Well i'm not saying they have to work in our interest, but at least respect us and maintain normal diplomatic relationships, not instigating coups, or openly funding radical non democratic groups.

As an US citizen, you would be very suprised at the amount of money the US administration spends in illegal activities in Venezuela.

In the links i provided you can read some of the details.

Regional integration is one of the long term goals, and one of the main foreign policies for Venezuela. It is a type of integration that goes beyond trade agreements, in fact it gives priority to social, political and cultural aspects as well.

Its not exactly that we are standing up to the states, its more like the US administration wants their rules imposed on us, without us having any chance to discuss anything. They pretend we go to Washington d.c. and sign without reading whatever they wish. Any objection, is good enough for Bush to declare us part of the "axis of evil, communists, etc".

For example, they would love to see PDVSA, the state oil company, sold to private interests. Well who do you think PDVSA is competing with in the international market? Exactly, the multinational oil companies, which the Bush administration is closely related with. Im sure they would love to buy it all, but our current constitution, discussed and approved by the majority of the people in the referendum of 1999, forbids this.

Here are some more links:
http://www.embavenez-us.org/constitution/intro.htm
http://www.handsoffvenezuela.org/
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/v enezuela/
http://www.veninfo.org/
http://www.embavenez-us.org/
http://www.vicuk.org/

Richard Stallman has many comments about Venezuela (he has been here many times) http://www.stallman.org/
In fact, he is calling to "Protest Bush by buying gas from Citgo." by citing an article made by Jeff Cohen: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0516-25.htm

Citgo belongs to PDVSA, which means us:
http://www.citgo.com/

We ship daily 1500000 barrels of oil to the United States. of these, 660000 go to Citgo.

Here are some interesting oil facts:

- An oil tanker from Venezuela takes from 4 to 5 days to reach the south coast in USA. The same oil tanker coming from the middle east, takes about 40 days.
- Venezuelan oil is heavier than average (requires more refining), and it has a lower international price (about 10US$ less per barrel).
- Because its not so profitable and enviromentally friendly, there have been no new refineries built in the United States in the past 25 years.
- Refining capacity in the States has peaked at 100% capacity for many years already, getting more oil to the market won't lower prices anymore, and the global demand of oil has already reached maximun production ("Peak Oil" levels).
- Citgo owns 8 of those not so profitable refineries...
- USA with 7% population of the world consumes 27% of total oil production. Please guys, support energy efficiency usage and alternative methods.
- China and India are demanding more and more fuel, we have already established good relationships with them.

A couple of documentaries i recommend you to watch:

http://endofsuburbia.com/
http://www.chavezthefilm.com/

> Oh yes. Because, you know, angry rioting crowds are really friendly once you get to know them.

Well lets start of with this, few sane people go around killing as a part of a riot. That is unless you have really pissed them off.
What about getting rid of the cause of the anger?
Or even if they go to the rioting stage, why not ask them to sit down a talk about how you can improve things?
Yes at times shotting them might be the only thing you can do to stop greater suffering, but that cop/army personal might think "Hey, why not zap them with the nonlethal lighting gun" as the first thing to do rather then the last.

>Nobody (well, nobody except some weirdos like China and so forth) is using weapons (non-lethal or not) against peaceful dissenters.

Well on this last thing you said the US police have done such things a quick google for 'police rubber bullets' came up with this http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0407-06.ht m .

OK, I'll bite instead of modding you troll. What the hell are you thinking? Don't you realise the internet was developed in the public sector? Those universities and medical centers are the same early-adopting testbeds that created the infrastructure to allow you to bang out your jingoistic nonsense with your one free hand today. I presume, incidentally, that you are posting this using some kind of advanced gopher client, and not HTTP, since you don't appear to have heard of that particular European invention. Likewise, presumably you're not using any GNU products (MIT), Linux, Berkeley Unix, or anything else that might challenge your pickled-in-vinegar worldview. Jeez. You are a prime idiot. No doubt you will be happy to learn that George Bush, quite possibly an idol of yours, has quietly slashed NSF funding, as part of his war on science. Presumably this will not damage the future of the Internet, however, since I am sure that a fine libertarian like you was first in line to donate his Bush tax refund check to some private Internet Reseach Trust or other.

But also, Japan had been entirely decimated and rose from the ashes with U.S. help. Iraq's level of suffering after the war was trivial compared to that of the Japanese; accordingly, the level of improvement brought by the Americans has been minimal.

But even one more thing is true: we brought a humongous force (350,000) into Japan and locked it down tight. No such action occurred in Iraq. Perhaps that would have been impossible to do? But if we could have managed it, then the roadside bombings, sabotage, and looting would have been much less.

So here's the hard question: why didn't we take in enough troops to lock Iraq down? Were we just not serious enough about the war? Were the military planners intimidated by the shifting political winds? (link for those who wish to recall those times) Did we fear that Hussein really did have a nuke and would vaporize a large number of our troops? I wish I could be a fly on the wall in the pre-planning of the war, because two things are clear:

1) Rumsfeld is not, in general, an idiot, BUT

2) The Iraq war appears to have been horribly planned and mismanaged.

Those who think that we went into Iraq to further some conspiracy to get their oil are giving the administration far too much credit for forethought, IMO.