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I think it's appropriate to reference the source of the article when possible. This one started out here, on the Christian Science Monitor.

Can anyone reply to my post with a corresponding list of things Dems have done?

Sure:
-Republican forms get tossed in the trash but not Republican forms...
- Democratic registration for completely fictional people...
- Fraudulent, forged Democratic registrations as well dumping a full years worth of paperwork on the registrars lap in the last minute to ensure they weren't looked at and INTENTIONALLY putting down false information for Republicans or simply not turning them in.

- Texas Democrats who Gerrymandered in their redistricting efforts... (The recent successful Republican effort was tit for tat revenge for the 1990 redistricting that The Almanac for American Politics called "The most partisan redistricting in the '90 cycle in the nation." and "the shrewdest gerrymander" of it's time. A gerrymander that resulted in a house delegation that was 17 to 15 Democratic despite 56% of the voters at the polls voting for a Republican congressman.

- CBS (as partisan as Sinclair or Fox) doing it's traditional 60 Minutes week-before-the-election hit piece early this year using obvious forgeries and giving the Kerry campaign advanced notice so they could exploit it with their operation "Fortunate Son"

-Florida 1998 -- Massive voter fraud uncovered that eventually leads to the election being overturned. The efforts during the next cycle (2000) all efforts to prevent fraud demagogued as "disenfranchising black voters" by the EXACT same people who had perpetuated the fraud.

Read about 'How OBL got away' in this article, which ran in the CS Monitor back in March/02.

Speaking of people of Greek descent and "Greek citizenship", how about the Greek Olympic baseball team?

People in Greece don't play much baseball, but they fielded a team for the Olympics by finding people who were "ethnically" Greek.

Here are a couple of relevant articles from the
Christian Science Monitor and MSNBC

Many Iraqis wanted it and a free Iraq influences the rest of the middle east. Iran has been close to revolution for a long time, and with free countries on two of their borders, it may not be long before the silent majority in Iran revolt.

I agree that many Iraqis wanted a free Iraq -- free from Saddam Hussein. According to stuff I've read, however, the Shiite majority want to run the government. This could be problematic as far as the US is concerned, as the Shiites' priorities are different from the US.

Can you prove that there would have been less deaths?

I believe that was my point -- you can't prove one way or the other, so it's not the greatest point to bring up.

Saddam wasn't going anywhere and UN sanctions were killing more people than the first and second wars.

I don't like this rationalization: More deaths due to poor health care and lack of food is worse than less deaths due to war. Shouldn't we try to prevent both? Any preventable death is bad. People shouldn't be starving -- there's enough food in the world for everyone. War is hell. In this so-called civilized world, neither should occur. But they do, and that's not right.

There's this, too. The guy does pretty much what you describe but adds some kind of metal infrastructure as well. The structure of this type that was up in the panhandle of Florida through a hurricane fared remarkably well.

FOX CBS ABC NBC CNN Prn N/P
20% 30% 39% 45% 45% 53% 77% None of the 3
80% 71% 61% 55% 55% 47% 23% 1 or more

Among those who primarily watch Fox, those who pay more attention are more likely to have misperceptions. Only those who mostly get their news from print media have fewer misperceptions as they pay more attention.

Christian science monitor article.

I do know that the US Soldiers, in particular the Marines, are over there fighting and dying fully believing...the guys really doing the fighting really want the Iraqi's to be free

One Marine officer in Ramadi who had lost several men said he was thinking about throwing his medals over the White House wall...

"9 out of 10 of the people I talk to, it wouldn't matter who ran against Bush - they'd vote for them."...

"Nobody I know wants Bush...This whole war was based on lies."...

"First they said they have WMD and nuclear weapons, then it was to get Saddam Hussein out of office, and then to rebuild Iraq. I want to fight for my nation and for my family, to protect the United States against enemies foreign and domestic, not to protect Iraqi civilians or deal with Sadr's militia."...

"We shouldn't be here," said one Marine infantryman bluntly. "There was no reason for invading this country in the first place. We just came here...and killed a lot of innocent people."

Or those who distract their airspace watch from airplanes crashing into buildings by ordering up full-scale airplane-crashing-into-building studies. "[I thought,] is this part of the exercise?" -- Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold of Tyndall AFB to ABC News (Incidentally, Uncle Prescott Bush Jr has longstanding business interests in China. He went on a major business trip there right after Tiananmen. "There are big opportunities in China, and Americans can't afford to be shut out." (qv) Herbert the Pervert followed 10 days later. Prescott met with Aoki Corp, later deemed by the Senate Foreign Relations C'tee to have bribed Noriega ~M$4. You want something to condemn, look at the hedge. Lastly: We may not have been given an accurate Tiananmen story at the time.)

It's probably worth mentioning again, as we discuss smarter cars, that insurance companies are declaring a car "totaled" more quickly these days, even with relatively minor structural damage, because the cost of replacing all of these electronic gizmos after an accident is adding signficantly to the typical repair cost. Reference, for example: http://csmonitor.com/2004/0419/p13s02-wmgn.html

So as we contemplate even smarter cars with even more electronics installed, even relatively minor accidents might result in a car being declared "totaled" and thereby increase insurance costs overall. Ironically, it may not be the purchase cost of the electronics that eventually constrains the smart-car market (particularly since smart electronics seem to get cheaper all the time), but rather the insurance considerations instead!

but is the military vote really republican?

the christian science monitor today is running a story on anti-bush troops in iraq. give it a read -- and remember that the last time the u.s. was involved in a major land war a lot of the vetrans and enlisted men wound up developing strong anti-war stances... john kerry, for instance.

If the US government started massive spending on the "Dig a Big Hole In the Ground" project, PCGDP would rise but nobody would say the US was being more productive.

That's why it's 'charged with' and not 'convicted of' or 'guilty of'

Top 10 Reasons to Vote for John Kerry:

10. John Kerry would handle the war in Iraq differently. I think.
9. He's got better hair.
8. John Kerry will personally create thousands of jobs in America.
7. He has a plan for America's future. I think.
6. George Bush stole the last election.
5. I think John Kerry may have served in Vietnam.
4. George Bush didn't go to Vietnam, AND he skipped a physical!
3. The french people and the rest of the world all like him best.
2. Didn't he get some medals in Vietnam?
1. He's Not George Bush! (TM)


Top 10 Reasons to Vote for George Bush:

10. George Bush is Tough on Terrorism.(TM)
9. He supports educating children.
8. George Bush freed all those Afgan and Iraqi people. Personally.
7. He will lower your taxes.
6. George Bush was President on September 11th, 2001.
5. John Kerry's medals are fakes.
4. Those CBS memos were forged, duh.
3. The french people and the rest of the world all hate him most.
2. He's not as rich as John Kerry.
1. George Bush will keep America safe.

Certainly not if there if there is a substantial risk of fuel cost rises for current preferred energy generation methods in a timeframe less than or on the close order of the lead time for putting a currently-nonexistant wind plant on the grid (both for construction and dealing with NIMBY locational issues that may arise).

Large supply shocks are MINDBOGGLINGLY bad for the economy especially for something as fundamental these days as the cost of electricity, and are far worse for consumers than for corporations or corporate stockholders-- especially for the corporations producing the shocked supply. You don't remember the economy of the early 1970's very well, do you? It royally sucked. "Those who do not study their history...."

It takes time to develop the engineering expertise to make wind plants economical, efficient, and integrated into a fairly regular cyclical demand grid (nontrivial given the intermittency of wind supply). Subsidies make it look at least marginally economical to build plants now. Once you have people building plants, greed will drive them to try to figure out how to improve them to make more money... which will start pushing the calendar on developing the aforementioned expertise, so that we will (hopefully) have it before the need for it is critical. Yeah, it's a "carrot for the jackass" approach, but given the number of stupid jackasses in the US, and given the traditions of this country, we really can't use a stick exclusively.

And what's wrong with foreign aid? Can't we do something nice for people once in awhile? We certainly could use a better reputation as a country.
Actually, foreign aid is one of the reasons we're in the situation we're in. We give aid to the governments of Isreal and Saudi Arabia (though in Saudi Arabia's case we don't have to give them cash - after all, they're getting enough from all that oil. Instead we hook them up with weapons and military training). This is one of the biggest reasons why Arabs and Muslims hate America. I doubt Saudis and Palestinians being brutally repressed by these governments are thanking us for doing "something nice for people once in awhile".

I do think recalling our troops and ending foreign aid would go a long way towards ending terrorism. Would bin Laden give up the Jihad? Probably not. But it would make it a lot harder for him to find recruits (assuming we also got out of Iraq, as Badnarik proposes).

Banning political ads 60 days before an election

"The bottom line is that attack ads won't necessarily stop 60 days before the general election on Nov. 2, even though McCain Feingold requires it. A 527 group, before the 60-day window, can use corporate, labor union, and individual contributions to fund ads. But if the group started a political action committee and raised its funds in the form "hard money" - dollars that are subjected to limits and don't come from union or corporate treasuries - they can continue to advertise through Election Day."

Thats why everyone wants to come over here to go to Harvard or Yale or MIT or Oxford or Stanford or even our high schools.

You may want to check http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0730/p01s01-usgn.htm l or http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1196702/p osts. Oh and BTW, Oxford? *grin*

- Hurga

But what neo-conservatives seem to conveniently forget is that the tax rate isn't a flat percentage. With capital gains tax breaks, estate tax roll backs, offshore investment breaks, etc., a rich person with a good accountant will pay significantly less by percentage than a middle-class person who takes the standard deductions.

How can your assertion regarding tax distribution possibly be true in light of reports such as this? The top 10% of earners earn 40.1% of the money, but pay 66.4% of the income taxes. While the rates aren't in lock-step with the marginal tax rates, they certainly aren't paying "significantly less by percentage".

So before you go throwing labels about (which you accused me of doing with class warfare, although we both know that upper-class and middle-class are non-partisan terms widely used to describe income levels in very general terms)

Don't put words in my mouth - I never said that. I am a strong believer in capitalism and a free market economy. However, I'm also a strong believer in a flat tax with no loopholes - which is not where our current system lies.

I'm in agreement with you that much of our tax policy is so messy because of the loopholes, favoritism, and demagoguery that surround it. My personal preference is the Fair Tax, since it simplifies the system dramatically and eliminates exceptions. Further, it removes the tax burden from the poor while still providing incentive to save, invest, and otherwise improve your financial situation. It also eliminates the offshore loopholes you describe, since it is not based on accountant-manipulated reported income, but on actual purchases that are much harder to manipulate.

You are not the person bearing the brunt of this. People who are already working in very low paying jobs are the people who suffers as underemployment bumps everyone down. Unemployment may not be as high as it has been, but underemployment is epidemic. There are a large number of americans trying to support families on minimum wage.

For the rest of us, real wages are down as productivity increases and corporations continue to tighten their belts. With a tight job market people cannot seek new employment to increase their salaries and benefits, putting further downward pressure on salaries.

citation

If you're looking for a great aggregate of news sites put into context, I highly recommend The Note. While the ABC News site itself has a leftward bias, The Note stands out for being pretty impartial, and extremely thorough. Now that college is back in session, I don't have time to visit it as often, because it's a long read, especially if you follow all of the links.

For a good analysis of things, I prefer the Christian Science Monitor. The bias vacillates, simply because of the variety of guest columnists.

This is patently false. The *only* weapons that contain depleted uranium are some (but not all) anti-tank weapons. These included the 40 mm shells fired by the cannon on the A-10... No bullets contain depleted Uranium.

Uhh... Okay, the A10 fires "40 mm shells". Most everyone else in the world (including the army) call them bullets. Those bullets contain uranium. They fired over 300,000 of these bullets in Iraq. The normal combat mix for these 30-mm rounds is five DU bullets to 1 - a mix that would have left about 75 tons of DU in Iraq.

The only thing "patently false" in this discussion is your post. How do you manage to fit your foot in your mouth with your head so far up your ass?

Yes they are hot.

"that the time when you don't trust the government might be a few days too late to do anything."

I imagine that I will get flamed for this, but I think the statement above is very true, esp. concerning England. Personal ownership of fire arms is a much easier and, in my opinion, much more effective way of preventing crime. Violent crime in Britian as risen greatly since the fire arm ban. Bobbies are now being issued guns. If you want crime to go away, get guns in the hands of the citizens.

Just to show I am not talking out of my ass.

Apparently Violent Gun Crime has gone up 20% in the last year

" Later in the week the home secretary is to host a summit on tackling gun crime, which figures due out on Thursday are expected to show has risen sharply......It is expected the figures will show a 20% increase in firearm offences in England and Wales."

Another article from the BBC about it

Another Article

Heu Fox News gets in on the action too, you decide!

In all fairness, I have tried to include several sources and not just gun nut sites in the US. Flame away

That idea seems to be fading.

AHAHAH you're so funny, I nearly burst out laughing here.

Terrorism is a military issue, since it invloves defending the entire US against a foreign army

N O its not. Who's dumb now? the grandparent? or you, who just died because you succumbed to your profiling crap and decided to ignore the real threat of angry white men?

You need massive resources on top of smarts, luck and determination to pull off such an attack.

Right, it takes massive resources to fill up a 55 gallon drum with gasoline and kick it from the back of your pickup truck into the middle of an interstate? There's all sorts of ways a single lone person could wreak havoc without "massive" resources or even luck. Oh, but like any true Republican you're only concerned about the good ol' buds at the RNC. Just like on 9/11 when "key" leaders were evacuated immediately under the continuity of government plan. Which was supposed to evacuate all of congress, but well, the Democrats didn't matter so much, so they had to wait for their turn to come hours later.

I am a dark skinned male, with a crew cut and in my 20's

See above as to why this kind of profiling is doomed to fail catastrophically.

Yah, I agree, it's far from "scientific". It's odd though, I thought you could assign a weight to each answer.

Just for fun, here's another one:
http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/quiz/neoc onQuiz.html

It tells me I'm a Liberal, although actually, I mistrust authority to much to be liberal with it.

I was recently reading about hybrid cars that would be able to sell their excess electricity back to the power grid

Actually there's a booming organ black market where poor people from all over the world donate organs for money to those who can afford it. The Christian Science Monitor has a really interesting article dealing with this hot topic. A fascinating, yet disturbing read.

Actually there's a booming organ black market where poor people from all over the world donate organs for money to those who can afford it. The Christian Science Monitor has a really interesting article dealing with this hot topic. A fascinating, yet disturbing read.

Japan's entry into WWII was motivated in part by a desire for Manchurian oil.

A major theme of the Cold War was control over Mideast Oil.

The oil wars parent mentions are referenced here

That said, there is still a lot to be said in favor of oil, as you point out. I prefer to blame human nature rather than black gold.

Right about Aspen, CO, but wrong about the year and the provider. It was in the early 00's. I can't find the actual date, but a 2003 Wired article says "several years ago." The network, engineered by Jim Selby covers 120 square miles in Aspen and the ski resorts around it. I saw something on TechTV about it a few years ago, but I can't find anything on their website. Here are some links I found:

A quick Google for aspen wireless jim selby returns 268 results.

Astrotufing sounds and feels like an internet-myth. Got a real, proven case of it?

Sure. There are many confessed ex-astroturfers. There's a continum from traditional product-sponsorship to non-celebrity product placement (college hotties paid to show off their new camera phones in the top clubs) down through to anonymous, non-copywritten advocacy. To them, it's all just marketing, and there are no qualms to spilling the beans once the contract is over (unless the contract went further, of course)

More interesting to you might be the proven case of Microsoft astroturfing, which was back in 1998, just when they needed the appearance of grateful computer-users to help them out at the Supreme Court. They sponsored the creation of the Freedom to Innovate Network, which back then was not hosted on microsoft.com, nor labelled as professional. That same crew plugged their site on BBSes like this. They were caught doing it then... it's easy to assume that they've continued, but are now too skilled to be easily caught.

Also, this website records falsehoods that were widely considered akin to astroturfing.

Saddam in no way posed a threat to you. He did not support terrorists. It a lie, he was a threat only to his people.

You are smoking crack. Iraq has been on the Council on Foreign Relations State Sponsors of terrorism for 2 decades. The US state department Indicted Iraq with these words "Al Qaeda reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq". Iraq openly sponsored Ansar al-Islam (led by Bin Laden trained Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), Hamas, PKK, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, and the Abu Nidal Organization. Hussein even offered Bin Laden asylum when he was kicked out of Afghanistan by the Taliban in 1999. There are many more examples (1, 2) if you ever bothered to do some research.

Bin Laden is on record calling Saddam a "Socialist Infidel".

He is also on record encouraging the entire muslim world to unit with Iraq to fight against western powers.

I don't know what this deal is with France being the only country asking for evidence instead of biasd inteligence and political cliche.

France doesn't exactly have a great track record when it comes to defending their own national security.

If the threat of Saddam were real wouldn't they want to jump in the ring with us?

Not when the gravy train called the UN "Oil for Food" program was funneling billions in cash and oil their way. Would you want to attack when your hand was still in the cookie jar?

Well, locally, the Sierra Club chapter is actually accomplishing some things I support, but the national organization is a whole different enchilada. I see them as no more than a lobbying firm that harvests revenue and legitimacy from the local chapters, where the real work is getting done.

Hell, they almost lost the whole org to a board take over led by former leader of Greenpeace, Capt. Paul Watson.

Given that the current trend towards lighter, more advanced cars to comply with emissions standards had resulted in current cars being more expensive to repair than to replace, I'm not sure I'm all that thrilled about these supposed cars of the future. Is it me, or have we lost something from those days when a kid could buy his first car with the wages of a summer job and repairs could be done in the garage?

Patents for an idea makes sense, in part, when an inventor wanted to protect his or her ability to profit or control the result of their effort. Patents and intellectual property protections were designed to prevent people from using your idea or effort to their betterment at your expense.

You're putting the cart before the horse. Patents and Copyright were not introduced in order to protect the business interests of inventors or authors, this was only the means. The ends were to encourage more innovation, as outlined in Section 8 sentence 8 of the US Constitution:

The Congress shall have power (...) To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

These rights (patents, copyright, trademarks and trade secrets, which are only contractual) are now being gathered under the collective, misleading name of intellectual property, in an effort to bypass the original justification of these rights, formerly referred to as exclusivity rights, in order to turn the means into the ends.

So first there were exclusivity rights, which were meant to serve the public, and whose benefits to the inventor/author (or rather, the patent or copyright owner) are merely incidental. Now justification and means are to be reversed. Intellectual property is meant to serve the rights holders, and benefits to society are merely incidental. More importantly, it does not even matter if society as a whole suffers from IP legislation. Logic patents and copyright are or are now intended to be perfect instruments of power for corporations. Large stashes of patents allow large software companies to lock out competition by smaller companies, and monopolize markets. Likewise, large music labels, which now are the copyright holders to almost all songs they release, are successfully lobbying for ever more severe copyright laws in an effort to shut down alternative promotion channels like P2P and independent internet radio stations. The big labels are afraid that, while airwaves are scarce and can easily be controlled by payola, Internet traffic is basically unlimited in range. You cannot have 500 national radio stations since the frequency bands are limited, but you can easily operate 5000 Internet radio stations without any bandwidth collisions. Incidentally, while the RIAA claims to have suffered massive losses due to Internet "piracy", many independent labels have experienced benefits from increased promotion of their music via P2P and other channels such as (the former) mp3.com and independent internet radio.

I see the intellectual property movement as part of a general neoliberal self-referential justification of capitalism, where the original goal of improving living conditions for the population is increasingly irrelevant. Today's capitalism is intended to be implemented for capitalism's sake, not because it would make lives of men better as compared to marketplace economies with a stronger balance between public and private property. The manipulations of the Californian power market, or the privatization of water supplies into monopolists' hands in South America are just two examples of many.

The idea that FDR knew Pearl Harbor was coming has, unfortunately, been used by some individuals with unsavory political affiliations. My own view of the matter is that it was probably a good thing in the long run, as no war has ever been so morally cut-and-dry as WW2--however, it says something of who FDR was, I think. It has been years since I studied this seriously, but this article from the Institute for Historical Review does a very nice job of summarizing the debate, and the history of the debate.

The phrase "mouthpiece of American imperialism," comes from an Al Jazeera executive recently interviewed on the Daily Show, describing how he is recieved in the Arab world. The documentary Control Room deals with this extensively, I understand (though I'm still trying to find some way to see it). Arab leaders hate the network, which has helped its popularity greatly. Their popularity stems primarily from the vivid debates they start, by allowing all sides to be represented. While I do watch CNN every morning as I get ready for work and regularly scan the AP news wire, I've come to use Al Jazeera's English edition increasingly as a news source. It is a very different view of things, that's certain, but I've not yet found any consistent bias except in their willingness to let the other side--whether they're terrorist murderers or imperialist conquerors--have their say.

Read Dean's book. Ashcroft has been pissing on the FOIA since he entered office. There's plenty of evidence that he lied, over and over again. I watched him do it to a Congressional investigation a couple weeks ago. They threatened him with contempt of Congress, but he just sat there glowering. They asked him to submit documents and he refused. They asked for a reason and he refused to give one. They suggested executive privelege and he said no. He forced the Patriot act through congress and suggested that even taking the time to read the bill before signing it would make them unpatriotic. He refused to open gun records of suspected terrorists for fear of pissing off his buddies in the NRA. He refused to investigate anthrax attacks in the US once it became clear that the prime suspect was an American. He refused to investigate the thousands of anthrax hoax attacks targeted at abortion clinics after 9/11. He encouraged government agencies to deny all FOIA requests on principle. He's been having peaceful advocacy groups with no terrorist ties watched and infiltrated, while practically ignoring home grown terrorist threats (including cases involving WMD, such as this one). All the while he wastes our money and resources fighting smut. Now this? A legitimate FOIA request, and his reason for denying it is utter transparent bullshit. He's the Attorney General. The American people deserve better than this.

Boston is also "randomly" searching its subway passengers. The Supreme Court ruled this month that Americans must give their name to police who ask, even without cause, or be arrested. Freedom's just another word for something left to lose.

It tells me that the site is heavily biased (they even describe themselves as "opinionated", and that they "tell you what we really think and believe about what's happening in the world"), and therefore NOT "news". (Yes, by this standard, I would also probably discount FoxNews.) Do you have other sources, or is this the best you can come up with?

How about this interview with David Kay or this overview of his final report or CNN's coverage, or this detailed report that discusses some of the reasoning behind David Kay's findings. I would have gladly linked to Fox News as well, as these official findings are virtually "unspinnable", but I can't find any Fox News coverage of Kay's final report (it may exist, I'm just saying I couldn't find it with Google - please point it out if you come across it). If you'll recall, Kay's initial, interim report also found no evidence of the type of WMD stockpiles or activities that Bush and Powell claimed we would certainly find in Iraq. However, Kay expressed great optimism that the alleged WMD would indeed be found (this was well covered and emphasized on Fox News) and attributed his lack of evidence to, in essence, timing, as there was still much work ahead at that point. Kay later stated that his initial optimism was based on the same erroneous, disproven "intelligence" that was eventually presented as justification for the invasion of Iraq. David Kay was not the only weapons inspector to carry out the task of finding Iraqi WMD. Remember Hans Blix? I've heard quite a bit of typical, hateful, conservative vitriol spewed in his direction, but I have yet to hear a factual criticism of his professional credentials or a substantive accusation of bias against him. Here is a summary of his findings within the rather enlightening context of current events. There are also the findings of Scott Ritter to consider. Even more despised than Hans Blix, the factual content of his work in Iraq and, again, his professional credentials, have not been effectively challenged. Here is an article he wrote in which he mentions his findings on Iraqi WMD among other topics and an interview in Time magazine in which they ask him some of the "tough" questions (i.e. weak and unsupported personal attacks, as is the Republican habit) his critics have raised. If you want more detailed sources on the findings of any of these weapons inspectors, Google is your friend. I challenge - no, I *defy* you to produce even one credible source (judging from your comment about Fox News, I think we more or less agree on the meaning of "credible") that contradicts the findings of these weapons inspectors. If you can't produce such a counterpoint, you are left with no rational conclusion but to accept that the Bush administration either incompetently or willfully misled the American people and the entire world by claiming that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States when, in fact, he literally had no capability to attack us.

Where shall I begin? How about allowing his sons to torture Iraqi citizens? How about re-routing rivers, to punish villages that spawned political enemies? How about using chemical weapons on Kurdish people in the north? If you think for a moment that allowing such actions to go on unchecked is none of our business, then you're more of an animal than the worst Bush-basher thinks of Bush and the rest of his administration. There are, of course, other reasons involved, but if you need me to tell you what they are, then you haven't bo

There's the rub, eh? Are we dodging details again? A decision made by the highest court, which overrides the state's court; the decision mandates that you must give this information to any police officer when requested; and that same information could be self-incrimination? Or does that possibility not exist in your world? I'm curious, will you delcare this "an edge case" and say that the probability of prior statement occuring approaches nil; or will you claim "irrelevence" due to the possibility of arrest by other means? Here's an old one to trot out: the CS Monitor article is discredited because the summary of the judgement is incorrectly stated, and therefore the news article provided is unreliable. Or is there some other "Ace" you have? I want to know - Elaborate!

So what is your going rate for conversations? Of course, you'll have to get me to agree to your contractual terms, but we'll work out something equitable. After all, we all know that everyone agrees to these terms, at all times, because you've explained this before.

Oh, who am I kidding? You didn't even finish part of the last conversation we had. Why should I expect you to follow-through now?

Here's a great offer for you: Look, I can admit I'm wrong when I'm wrong. If I'm wrong, fine - I'll admit it here, in front of everyone else. I'm human. I have the unfortunate possibility that there can be an error on my part in any part of my judgement. So...prove me wrong, no harm done, you get to look good, everyone goes back to work, some will be patching crappy Windows servers, some will not, and we're all happy. You'll have to do two things though; provide obtainable, well-known references for your statements, and provide a logical connection between all statements to facilitate the concept you'll use to prove me wrong. It's really simple, it's fun, educational, and we'll both have a great time!

PS. of course, the first three arguements I've given in the request to elaborate all have logical fallicies in them and are, therefore, ineligible for your reuse.

Here in Boston, the transit police are implementing a policy of randomly checking the IDs and bags of subway and train riders. They will be patrolling trains (with police dogs) starting before the upcoming Democratic National Convention in July. This is not a temporary policy change for the DNC, it is a permanent change.

The CSM is essentially secular. See the 'about us' pages. Seems that the naming of the CSM was a rather unpopular move by the paper's creator, Mary Baker Eddy - the rest of the staff didn't seem to want to call it that, since it's not really Christian at all...

Reunite Church and State?
Maybe the government should give funding to churches. Do you think they also fund mosques ?

Hold citizens with[out] trial or bail?
Hmm, even the CATO Institute seems to think this is a bad idea.

Nation building without proper cause?
Well, the US gives lots of money to Israel. As for Iraq and Afghanistan: you call that building?!?!

Tax breaks that only benefit the rich?
Here's what Paul Krugman had to say on the subject.

Dismantle the EPA and let Corporations write Enviro Laws?
It's called the "Clear Skies Initiative", probably because it clearly pollutes the sky. There's also Cheney's Energy Task force, but I can't give you supporting evidence because it is being withheld, even from the Government Accounting Office.

Create a Police State where you can spy on cizitens with impunity?
We're reading about this right now.

> No thinking person denies there are problems with the US system of government, it's current
> government, and many of the social, political and economic systems we have here.

> We don't run slave labor camps, populated by people whose opinion on political matters differs
> from that of the government.

Don't be so certain about THAT!?! The US has 1 in 37 adults living behind bars; the highest incarceration level in the world. Many US states "farm" their prison inmates out as slave labour!
US notches world's highest incarceration rate
This rate is FIVE times higher than China! So who's living in the Free World?
"If current trends continue, it means that a black male in the United States would have about a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison during his lifetime. . a white male, 1 in 17."
Which nation is a police state?
.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0521/p09s01-coop.htm l

Normally, I wouldn't quote the CS Monitor because, well, my flatulence is more informative than their overly biased bullshit. However, the irony is just too sweet to pass up the opportunity.

'War on Terror' != 'Invasion of Iraq'.

Wrong. The invasion of Iraq is an integral part of the war on terror.

There are no links between September 11 and Iraq.

Of course there are.

1. September 11 was perpetrated by a group of fanatics who call themselves al-Qaida (the foundation). Al-Qaida isn't a nation, it's not a religion. It's more like a political party, albeit one with guns and bombs.

2. In order to capture or kill the members of al-Qaida, we went to war in Afghanistan in late 2001.

3. In late November or early December of 2001, some refugees from al-Qaida fled Afghanistan and went to northern Iraq. There they joined up with members of an organization called Jund al-Islam (soldiers of Islam) to form a new group, Ansar al-Islam (supporters of Islam). Ansar al-Islam was very closely tied to al-Qaida. In some ways, it was a splinter group. In some ways, it was an ally. In some ways, Ansar al-Islam and al-Qaida were two names for the same group.

4. Jund al-Islam had been strictly a Kurdish group. They'd had loose ties with Baghdad, but nothing formal. After they merged with al-Qaida to form Ansar al-Islam, they established very close ties with Baghdad. A guy named Abu Wa'el, one of the leaders of Ansar al-Islam, was on the payroll of Iraqi Military Intelligence and served as the liaison between Baghdad, Ansar al-Islam, and other al-Qaida remnants in central Asia.

5. Among the members of al-Qaida who formed Ansar al-Islam is a real sweet guy named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He was a close associate of Osama bin Laden throughout the 1990's and the early 2000's. He fled Afghanistan in late 2001 and set up shop in Iraq along with the other al-Qaida refugees. In the summer of 2002 he underwent surgery in Baghdad, in one of Saddam's hospitals. (It was once thought he had a leg amputated. Records uncovered during the invasion of Iraq show that that's not true. The nature of Zarqawi's surgery remains uncertain, but his presence in a Baghdad hospital in the summer of 2002 is certain.)

6. In late 2002, with war looming, Zarqawi started establishing cells in Baghdad in preparation for what he expected would be extensive urban fighting. He acquired weapons from Saddam's army during this time, including (evidently) chemical artillery shells. Fortunately for us he doesn't have an artillery piece with which to launch them, and setting them as roadside explosives isn't an effective way to use them.

7. But wait, there's more, just for the heck of it. Saddam's ties to terrorism went beyond al-Qaida and Ansar al-Islam. He provided safe harbor for Abu Nidal, the terrorist behind numerous attacks on the West during the 80's. (Abu Nidal, incidentally, was found dead in his home in Baghdad in 2002. The official cause of death according to the Iraqi government was four self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head and chest.) Saddam also funded terrorist operations in Israel. His support for terrorism wasn't limited to one group or faction.

Now, let me summarize this. The Taliban provided aid and safe harbor to terrorists calling themselves al-Qaida, so we destroyed that regime. Saddam's regime provided aid and safe harbor to some of the same men calling themselves Ansar al-Islam, so we destroyed that regime.

Tell me again how the invasion of Iraq isn't related to the war on terror?

(Sources: The Christian Science Monitor and ABC News. More sources are readily available. Google 'em up.)

Ansar having ties to al qaeda and to Iraq does NOT logically imply that iraq/hussein has ties with al qaeda.

You would have been better served by spending less time on "logic" and more time reading.

Among other known Ansar leaders, Mohamed says Abu Wa'el was the most influential, was on the Iraqi intelligence payroll, and served as a liaison between Baghdad and Al Qaeda.

Excellent post. However, you left out the best article about Saddam's ties to al-Qaida.