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There are at least three reasons why we shouldn't trust their dirty, nasty, evil b0xen:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboa rd.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=11874&mesg_ id=19911/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/10/1172/9052 /
http://avirubin.com/vote.pdf/
Violation of warranty? Sure. I can see that.
Still, nobody is answering the question: "why on earth are computers the best answer to solving the handicaped voter problem?"
I could hire some little old ladies for minimum wage and get them to help disadvantaged people cast their ballots for less than $27 million!
Or, at the very least, if these machines are supposed to be SO easy to use, just get one or two of them for each precinct. You don't need every parking stall to be handicap accessible, and you don't need all of your voting booths to be, either.
In my mind, Bruce Funk is the only sane election official in the whole state.

> Microchips whouldn't exist if not for research done in space

So what. There are thousands of children dying of starvation in this country each year because of Bush. He has done nothing about it. He is guilty of killing thousands of children. OK, so you rich idiots have your iPods. What about all of the blood on the hands of Republicans? I don't even see how someone could call you Republicans human.

Skinner
http://democraticunderground.com/

• The county in question (Palm Beach) was won by Kerry. This seems to imply that any irregularities they found would not have changed the 2004 election.
• BlackBoxVoting.org is run by Bev Harris who is a bit of a (my opinion) conspiracy nutjob. She's was banned from DemocraticUnderground.com, another pro-democrat voting rights site. Why? People on the forums "questioned her credibility" and she started threatening to sue the site and forum admins for libel.
• Palm Beach country's election officials are democrats.
• They don't report finding any particular party-bias in the "anomalies".

It seems to me that the "anomalies" that get reported are, by and large, statistical noise. It's nothing new... it's just that the results have received an unprecedented amount of scrutiny since the incredibly close 2000 election.

Slashdot is becoming more and more like http://www.democraticunderground.com/ every day. Too bad, too. It just makes it too annoying to visit. I still come for the tech news, but more and more of the topics are political instead of technology oriented. Even the technology stories get politicized by the time the second comment is posted. All it takes to get modded up is to post something

A lot of the comments in this thread show a clear misunderstanding of the wire tapping program, but arguing with them won't change anything. Minds around here are too closed to other ideas, and too paranoid to believe that anyone with an R after their name might actually be doing the right thing. It disappoints me as an independent with conservative and libertarian leanings to see such blatant partisanship overriding the real issues.

The Washington Post has been busily spinning Abramoff's Republican bribery scandal. But even after the WP deleting hundreds of critical emails on the pretense of "obscenity", the fact remains that the WP has only fabricated images of false reports of Abramoff wish lists - far from evidence that Abramoff directed any money. And in light of the longstanding history of tribal representation by Democrats, and longterm donations, the only evidence of Abramoff's involvement is that Democrats got less money than previously.

And much more importantly, far from evidence that Democrats took bribes. Abramoff has now pleaded guilty to bribing Republicans. That is solid. The rest is spin, and worse.

Monday appears to be the vote for his ascendance to the US Supreme Court. Contact you senators and tell them what you think.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/

Bev Harris is an acknowledged kook who used to do the Art Bell circuit but got promoted to legitmacy because her people are so effective at pushing these stories to media like Slashdot. Boom, she's an EFF award winner. The black box voting people are bigtime astro-turfers and they use willing sites like slashdot to make BBV seem more legitimate and draw in more marks. Read up on BBV: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboa rd.php?az=view_all&address=203x340188 Gee, could we get some stories about how communism is bad from the John Birch soceity while were at it?

For those still following this thread, an archived version of the page with the later-deleted comments has been put on Democratic Underground. Discussion about this at Daily Kos, including a list of which comments were specifically deleted.

The full thread that was so "offensive" can be found here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/archive/2006/ wapo/

Looks to me like the comments, archived at the URL below, while biting and harsh, were not "hate speech" and had almost zero profanity: http://www.democraticunderground.com/archive/2006/ wapo/

The thoroughly nonpartisan *cough!* democratic underground has a cache of all the original comments before the board was shut down. Frankly, it looks to me like the Washington Post's omsbusdman (woman) got her panties in a knit not over harsh comments, but over her unwillingness to respond to substantiative errors in her post.

Looks to me like the comments, archived at the URL below, while biting and harsh, were not "hate speech" and had almost zero profanity:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/archive/2006/ wapo/

The answer to the mystery of the NSA snooping scandal - why did they break the law when it was so ludicrously easy to get FISA warrants? - appears to be developing: they weren't just wiretapping, they were data mining. They were using Echelon to 'Able Danger' the whole country (this is Poindexter's Total Information Awareness, which is supposedly dead, in action). The problem is that FISA was enacted prior to the current capability for data mining, and didn't anticipate how ubiquitous it could be. The reason they couldn't use FISA is that they would have had to obtain a FISA warrant for every person in the country. Data mining requires that you follow each link discovered by your snooping, and wouldn't work if it had to be subjected to FISA or the Constitution. The NYT article, now being spun as resisted by the Bush Administration (as if the NYT would publish anything without Rove's say-so), appears to itself be part of the spinning, a limited hang-out to cover up the bigger scandal.

Here is a link I think you might find interesting.

Rise of the Neocons
http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.p hp/PNAC_101

Sounds like we're pretty much there...

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.p hp/Fascism

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

As I have said before on Wikipedia, on the top of the front page of Wikipedia, it breaks almost all articles into eight master categories. On the Mathematics and Science categories it does fine. On the History and Society pages, it does an awful job. As far as the History and Society pages, they have just gotten worse and worse over time. Jimbo is lucky Seigenthaler is a free speech advocate and is raising the issue in the press instead of suing the hell out of him and Wikipedia. I foresee alternative wikis springing up to handle history and so forth. The left-leaning Democratic Underground has started Demopedia, although I'm unaware of Free Republic or any other conservative site starting a conservative counter to Wikipedia yet. Anyhow, I'm sure that's the route it will go down I'm sure, a balkanization of certain categories.

Just go visit Democrat Underground or Daily Kos. You will find many articles that discuss violence against authority and the death of our President and Vice President. Heck Air America Radio between fundraising breaks and stealing money from poor children has had several commentators advocate the assassination of our President.

I am always amazed at the shouts from the left that they are being "oppressed" in this country. I am going practically deaf from their oppression. Its like a Monty Python sketch. If you want to see truly speech oppressive societies, just look at Europe and their numerous speech codes/laws.

If some American blog advocated setting fire to police stations and lynching Dick & George, it would also be "cracked down" upon.

Wrong! Have you tried visiting any liberal discussion groups or blogs for the last 5 years? Give this bastion of Bush love a shot then talk to me about how our speech is restricted in the US.

So that's basically it, there is a spectrum of categories from where Wikipedia works well and has reliable information (mathematics, history and technology categories) to where it is just edit wars that get worse and worse (society and history categories). Wikipedia is fairly reliable about what ideas Godel had about mathematics, Wikipedia is completely unreliable if you are interested in reading about say France's Front National or Vietnam's National Liberation Front. Wikipedia has not gotten better over the years in this regard, it has gotten worse. There are left wing wiki encyclopedias like Demopedia, Dkosopedia and Anarchopedia, and right-leaning ones like Wikinfo, and I predict over the coming years these alternative wikis will become quite large.

One recent example I can give, one guy just popped up who is accusing virtually every left-wing or liberal person in the 1950's was a Soviet spy, and by virtually everyone I mean editing hundreds of biographies and inserting that they were spies. Doing this is fine if done in the right way, but he is a bit nutty or stubborn or whatever and he has a dozen people reverting his stuff but that doesn't do much good. Then we have Lyndon Larouche followers come in as well. Or way out communists saying nutty things. Wikipedia would probably be better off if these people all went off to their own respective wikis.

You miss my entire point. Saying "you're wrong, and you're clearly irrational, irresponsible, or immoral because you disagree with me" is the problem. Your lack of tolerance for bigotry extends (to judge by your /. posts) to treating half the nation as less than (mature, responsible) humans, because they clearly hold different values than you.

If you ever accept the fact that someone who opposes homosexual marraige, or who drives a SUV, or who thinks Bush is doing what's right for this nation, might just be a moral, responsible, rational person, just with a different set of values than you, than you might stop being an intolerant bigot yourself (again, going by your posts, which might not be your best side). You might also have a chance to pursuade these people that you're right, which is sort of useful in a democracy.

Not targeted so much at you specifically, but I suspect you fit this mold: Look at how well you think Bush did before his re-election. Did he get re-elected because half of America are evil greedy idiots, or because the left so alienated the right that they were unable to actually pursuade the uncertain voters to switch sides? During the Veitnam war, anti-war protesters did things that they knew would hurt their own cause, because the protest was about condemning those evil greedy war supporters to feel good about yourself, not about actually stopping the war. Morality didn't enter into it. Now there are anti-war protestors at military hospitals, and the left has returned to the same pattern - the goal is clearly to dispense vitriol, not to achieve some moral goal.

How is this different from racism again? It looks exactly like racism to me. The supportive comments especialy. When you act like those from a different culture are less than you, you have become what you hate.

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. -- Ronald Reagan, the greatest president in the history of the Republic, was taken bodily into Heaven on Saturday at the age of 93.

While I know Slashdot got co-opted by the DU some time ago, please remember the new posting rules.

1) No cross-posting from the DemocraticUnderground.com
2) Any cross-posts will be marked as Redundant or Incite-ful.
3) Try to keep some sense of reality. While demagoguery and hyperbole will increase your karma, too much of it just makes you look like a nutjob.

> couldn't send relief until 3 to 4 days AFTER the hurricane hit

WTF you damn Bush apologist. Why are you claiming Bush has sent supplies? The people on the ground know he hasn't. Even Shep Smith on the network your type worships, Faux News, said there has been NO help. He has seen NO water being given-out. He has seen NO food being given-out. Geraldo, also from the same group of Bush-worshiping idiots, said the same last night. He held-up a 10 month-old baby that Bush refused to help. When even Faux admits Bush has made sure NO help has reached the area, even someone like you should give-up the lie.

Skinner

Visit
http://democraticunderground.com/ for the real story on this Bush-created Holocaust

> Bataan has been active since almost day one.

That is a lie. Bush ordered the Bataan to leave the area. He personally has prevented the Bataan, like he has personally prevented the US Army, from helping. How about checking on your facts before repeating Bush lies?

Skinner

For the real story on the Bush Holocaust, go to
http://www.democraticunderground.com/

I see the larger problem with Wikipedia in that it is run by a millionaire, Jimbo Wales, who has said he manages it according to the philosophy of Ludwig von Mises. And the powers-that-be who have a hand in shaping rules, what content gets in, which users get banned, follow on some level from this.

While anyone can contribute, in a democratic fashion, there is a counter-force to this, in the same manner that the US is a democratic republic, with a counterforce of an authoritarian financial hierarchy, with landlords and tenants, moneylenders and debtors, company owners and workers. In the same manner, while anyone can contribute to Wikipedia, the "cabal" as they themselves mockingly call it, headed by Jimbo Wales, and with his various lieutenants in Arbcom (the Arbitration Committee), on the Mediation Committee, as bureaucrats, as admins, exercises a great deal of change over things, and points in the direction things will go.

There is a project on Wikipedia whose premise is that the English Wikipedia users are mostly from England and its former colonies and they have a certain view of the world. Plus demographically the users are generally people like me, white male professionals from the US and whatnot. Wikipedia says it is "neutral point of view" on topics like Palestine and Israel, the US vs. the USSR and that sort of thing, but that's BS. But anyhow the "counetring systematic bias" project mainly works on things by spending time writing articles about stuff most white male professionals from the US don't spend much time thinking about, like culture in Burundi and stuff like that.

Wikipedia does very well in it's top categories of mathematics and science, because most everyone is on the same page about these things. Wikipedia completely falls apart in terms of neutrality with things like the John Kerry and George W. Bush pages. They are not neutral. And it has not gotten better, and I am not Panglossian about the worsening situation, unlike the Wikipedia core group. It is obvious to me that the main categories that experience massive edit wars and fights like history and society, will eventually break off into different wikis. The most hardcore John Kerry people will go to one of the wikis, the most hardcore Bush people will go to another wiki. Then these groups might draw more people. This has already happened to some extent. And I tell people - don't bang your head against a brick wall. See how these things will not work out for you on Wikipedia, then go check out a wiki encyclopedia run by either a conservative (wikinfo) or by liberals (dkosopedia or Demopedia). And if all you're interested in is looking up articles on Wikipedia in quantum mechanics - well then, you'll probably be happy with Wikipedia. And I'm sure all the non-political people would love to see all the fanatic Air America listeners and Fox News watchers leave (actually that's being mild, communists and fascists are the real ends of the extremes that exist on Wikipedia).

The Democratic Underground uses the wiki engine in their Dem-Pedia the problem occurs when the site owners know so little about their own software that things like this example can happen. Wouldnt it have been easier to just e-mail the guy rather than go through the whole mess? Sometimes the people who are doing themalicious changes A. May know more about the software than you do, and B. Be doing it for a specific goal. Its worth noting that just by responding to some of these people problems can be avoided.


http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.p hp?title=Special:Recentchanges&hideminor=0&hideliu =0&hidebots=1&limit=50&days=7&limit=100

This is Hillary Clinton (a democrat) who is raising the fuss. Add to that the fact that one of the biggest anti-violent video game crusaders has been Joe Leiberman (a democrat, and vice presidential candidate in 2000) and you can see that it's simply all politicians that are raising their voice, not just the "religious right".

It's not like video games are a protected form of free speech or anything. Gotta love that super violent Resident of Evil Creek game.

As for heat-filled rhetoric from the left.... aren't you aware of the left's new developing Internet epicenter???: ;-)
http://www.dailykos.com/
http://www.democraticunderground.com/

Actually, it seems to me that Wilson implied that the VP or someone with close ties to the Whitehouse sent him. He used muddled and ambiguous language in some interviews and in his NYT Op-Ed to accomplish this. So yes, several officials (Cheney, Tenet, Rice) felt it was necessary to set the record straight as to whether or not they had any knowledge of or role in Wilson and his trip beforehand. Also several journalists and interviewers made the same interpretation of Wilson's account of events, and subsequently gave him multiple opportunities to set the record or straight.... which he did ...with some more ambiguous language.

Interestingly, this is only one of many, many fascinating bits of this story. It's an awesome story, in my opinion, because I get to witness the way the media and the left in exuberant zeal have been getting ahead of themselves in this story, and their pursuits. The crow is beginning to be served. (not that anyone but the real newshounds will be around to witness the media and the extreme left eating- not that they are humble or honest enough to eat- haha.)

> They only had not to attack Pearl Harbour.

You're assuming two things. First that they really did. It's illogical to think that the Japanese could have sunk so many ships that far from home without the help of the US Navy. The hawks in the Navy wanted war. They knew they would have to sacrifice some of thier own to see their dream come true.

Also, you're assuming Japan wasn't forced into defending themselves. After the US started the economic war of aggression against them, they had no choice but to defend themselves. The US attacked Japan in an attempt to start a war just as the US is now doing to the Muslims.

Please read a little history before posting garbage like that.

Skinner
http://www.democraticunderground.com/

God luv ya, AC, and perect timing on a Friday afternoon to boot.

Seriously: I read this submission and couldn't get that famous image of that student in China standing up against a tank out of my mind. Gosh, you think that fellow went home at the end of the day and blogged about it? Ooh, ooh, I know, I know, he posted to Democratic Underground, making a poll and asking for consensus...

BTW, the grinding sound you hear is John Peter Zenger tumbling about in his grave.

Yes, this does indeed smack of Democratic Underground. Oh well...I did get the flamebait and it felt surprisingly good. :)

J'aime les gros roberts!

When I was in France they thought I was Canadian (sp?) because I spoke french but not with a french accent. Voilà, I'm from Canada. Seriously though I didn't meet a rude french person the whole time I was there (south of france and paris area too). Maybe it was because it was in August when everyone is on vacation/holiday.

Damn you in Canada with your social programs and politicians that aren't dickshits

I remember reading a /. post about this about a year ago. Only the word "extrude" quickly morphed in the comments to "crap", and thus the machine became the incredible house-crapping robot. Or moonbot. Not to be confused with moonbat. .

At least we "geeks" have not been so foolish as to forget history. The FBI *earned* the mistrust and fear that we, and other people who haven't already been brainwashed yet. The story of COINTELPRO is a case in point. There are many other similarly creepy programs that they've embarked on in their history, and since the Patriot act has practically removed the checks on their authority that once existed, there is more reason than ever to be mistrustful and fearful of them.

Wikipedia may look open and mutable at first, but it is not. Most people learn this the hard way, get discouraged and stop contributing to wiki encyclopedias altogether. I am/was very involved in Wikipedia over the past year, and say this from experience. Hopefully the painful frustration around this discovery will not prevent people from contributing to wiki encyclopedia's other than Wikipedia. Unfortunately, most people begin getting frustrated, think they can beat the system, then disappear from Wikipedia and every other wiki encyclopedia altogether, which is unfortunate. Even Wikipedia administrators like w:User:172 and w:User:secretlondon have been badgered off of Wikipedia, not to mention a host of users.

While Wikipedia itself will always be the way it is, articles are licensed under the GFDL, which is one positive thing. Unfortunately, most of the articles are garbage. Even the well-written articles have other people come in later and introduce the same bias you can find in the corporate media. It is like gold surrounded by dung. If I transfer a Wikipedia article to another wiki, I almost always use an old version of it, before people came in and started modifying it.

Good wikis to check out are:

• Infoshop's OpenWiki - a general wiki with an anarchist bent (and run in an authoritarian fashion)
• Anarchopedia - a general wiki with an anarchist bent (and run in an anarchic fashion)
• Sourcewatch (was "Disinfopedia")- a good progressive wiki with a focus on think tanks, lobbyists, public relations firms and so forth
• dKosopedia - a "left/progressive/liberal/Democratic" wiki
• Demopedia - the "liberal/progressive" Democratic Underground's wiki

I urge you to contribute to these wiki's for historical, political, economic and other such subjects as Wikipedia is hopeless for these topics. The views reflect the owner's, which is as it almost always is. Thus, you will feel better building the new society within the shell of the old in these other places, where you will be part of a welcoming instead of hostile community. And of course, especially since Wikipedia uses the GNU FDL, continue to contribute to pages on the w:brontosaurus and such, but realize that Wikipedia will always have biased historical articles, and trying to fight it is pointless, the deck is stacked against you. We'll write our history on these wiki's, the conservatives will write theirs on Wikipedia and other wikis, and that's how it is.

He said it in a fund-raising letter. Diebold systems are incredibly easy to hack, and almost certainly helped in the voting irregularities in the 2004 election.

To top it off, a highly partisan republican, Kenneth Blackwell, managed the votes in Ohio and has been uncooperative in investigations.

This says nothing of the exit poll discrepancies...

He said it in a fund-raising letter. Diebold systems are incredibly easy to hack, and almost certainly helped in the voting irregularities in the 2004 election.

To top it off, a highly partisan republican, Kenneth Blackwell, managed the votes in Ohio and has been uncooperative in investigations.

This says nothing of the exit poll discrepancies...

I won't tax you by asking you to back up any of these claims or cite sources. After all, you're not some huge media company. :)

Bloggers think they're going to be the revolution of the press, and that they'll take the place of the New York Times and Washinton Post, and Newscorp will crumble at their feet.

I certainly don't see any major blogers making any such claims. Blogs will not replace big media in the same way that newspapers did not replace books. They are not out to destroy old media, they are out to destroy the MONOPOLY old media has on information. If you don't like it, stick to television. It has short films and pictures, and not so many viewpoints so you don't have to worry about getting confused.

Not with the half-assed misinformation and melodrama on the vast majority of the political and "news" blogs I've seen (to say nothing of the wild spitting and sputtering in the comments).

Again... are you taking about big blogs like Insty or Jarvis? Or are you taking about tiny blogs that nobody reads? You'll notice the calmer, more even-handed blogs tend to rise above the spittle-spewers, in the same way that CBS News always rated higher than Morton Downey, Jr, The Rush Limbaugh Show, or Donahue.

Not as long as they have no problem with their complete and utter lack of accountability

Oh no! People are publishing without asking permission. Who will contol these people?!?!

Who the fuck should they be accountable TO, I ask you? They are accountable in the sense that if they have no information or false information, people will no longer read them. What other accountability do you need?

of any type, and the vicious, one-sided partisan nature designed solely to incite vitriol in their groupthink audiences.

I can't imagine where you come off calling blogs GROUPTHINK. Visit a thousand blogs and you'll find a thousand different views. Even among those that agree will have different reasons for their views. Are you really suggesting that everyone stating their views for the world to see is inferior to the television / newspaper monopoly?

Not while they do nothing more than constantly pat each other on their virtual backs and reinforce their own worldviews and twisted near-conspiracy theories, ignoring any and all other sides of the story while simultaneously thinking of themselves as "open minded"

This isn't a problem with blogs. This is a problem with every political person since three cavemen voted on who was going to be in charge of widlebeast procurement. News flash: People with strong opinions will express them forcefully.

...and the only revealers of "the truth".

Everyone who has an opinion believes they have the truth. How is this in any way related to blogs? You see lots of closed-minded politial hacks on the editorial pages, the sunday morning political shows, and talk radio.

Which is better: The "truth" as seen by the editor, or the "Truth" as seen by thousands of interested people who want a better life for themselves, and all of whom have varying opinions on how things ought to be done? Blogs run the full spectrum of views from the ararchists over at No-Treason to the collectivists at DNC Underground, and everything in between.

[...] But many, particularly political blogs, have no regard for anything but the furtherance of their own agendas, taking things wildly out of context, and going on vindictive missions to build a one-sided case to paint the target of their ire in the worst possible light, without any consideration for any other motivations or other sides of the stories.

If the same were true of

This is Slashdot. Everything is a result of conspiratorial oppression by the fanatical religious right wing fascist government. You know the drill. It's not much better than Democratic Underground these days.

Then these people can be your Texaco station.

....have similar problems of their very own.

Discussion and some photos

I enjoy some blogs, although I have to admit that the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty bad. Here's a few which I personally find interesting and read regularly. I'm a neuro, space, and robotics geek, so the list is biased as such.

* Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) News: The most thorough spaceflight blog around, focusing on reusable systems.
* NASA Watch: A well-known site with regular critiques of NASA.
* Free Republic: Like slashdot, but for ultra-conservatives. I sometimes like to go there to get a better understanding of what goes through the heads of people who think differently from me.
* Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log: "Quantum fluctuations in space, science, and exploration"
* Democratic Underground: The extreme left's version of Free Republic.
* Instapundit: The slashdot-equivalent of political weblogging, with a somewhat libertarian slant. Known for causing "Instalanches" on innocent web servers, analogous to "Slashdottings."
* Daily Kos: Probably the most influential liberal blog.
* Transterrestrial Musings: a libertarian space analyst who helped me understand why it's possible to be intelligent and support the war in Iraq at the same time. He sometimes posts some fantastic satires.
* theferrett's livejournal: sometimes writes some very insightful and well-composed essays
* spacexploration livejournal community: Space-related miscellany and discussion.
* politicsforum livejournal community: Sometimes has some pretty intelligent political discussion.
* robots.net: Robotics news
* Space Politics: "Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway"
* Rocket Man Blog: Rarely updated, but has very insightful and informed analysis of spaceflight and rocketry.
* Howard Lovy's NanoBot: Nanotechnology news and commentary

Yeah, because FreeRepublic is the only nutty site on the internet. (Actually, sadly, /. is starting to look more like the lunatic fringe that is DU every day.)

See this for Bev Harris's account of receiving a tip that "the news has been locked down tight."

Here'st the logic as I see it:

1. The Bush Republican faction (not all Republicans, but the Bush folks) has shown no ethical constraint in its tactics to achieve its goals (e.g., lies about WMD evidence, Kerry's Viet Nam record, McCain's adopted child).

2. As Bev Harris's crew has demonstrated, the Diebold vote tabulators were designed (intentionally or not - although there was a known computer fraud felon on the programming team) so as to be trivial to hack.

3. Ohio and Florida have Secretaries of State who are highly-partisan Republicans; in the case of Florida working directly under the president's brother; in the case of Ohio someone who tried to disqualify voter registrations based on paper stock (which would have violated the Voting Rights Act).

4. So we're supposed to suppose that people who have the means (vulnerable technology, officials in place, no discernable ethical restraint against dishonesty), and the motive (a belief that they are doing God's will appears to predominate among them), then were restrained from manipulating the vote count because ... what? There was an angel hovering over every voting booth and tabulator holding a flaming sword to fend them off?

Government officials should have done the best they can; now it is time for the people to do the best they can by taking action, playing detective, finding irregulations, voter intimidation or even fraud as pointed out by BBV: Help America Audit -- 5 Things You Can Do Immediately, among others.

Here's my concern. First, that's posted on a decidedly partisan site. And, most disturbingly, NO WHERE in that list does it say anything about the two bills in the House and Senate that will add permanent, voter-verified paper receipts to every ballot cast, as well as add additional tamper-proofing measures. (Both linked and mentioned in my parent post.)

Instead, it encourages people who have no experience to start scrutinizing voting returns in counties, putting bumper stickers and signs on their cars, showing politically charged films, annoying techniques for "urgently" "blurting out" random, ridiculous comments related to e-voting, already assuming there's fraud (no, seriously, anyone who didn't visit the link, you HAVE to see this), complaining everywhere possible, even apparently advocating vandalizing property that does not belong to you to get out ostensibly divisive, incendiary messages about e-voting fraud, etc.

Almost everything under the sun, in fact, except the one thing that can actually help: passing a blanket federal law to require all jurisdictions to use equipment that provides the ONE thing that solves this problem completely: a voter-verified permanent paper trail for every vote.

But they'd rather fuel the flames who think Bush has now stolen not one, but two elections, and concentrate on conspiracy theories and, best of all, it opens with:

I was tipped off by a person very high up in TV that the news has been locked down tight, and there will be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2. Even the journalists are pretty horrified. My source said they've also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time, and he was calling from somewhere else. He was trying to figure out how to get the real news out on vote fraud.

Um. Wow.

I don't even know where to go with that.

An appeal to authority from an ANONYMOUS person, who claims that the ENTIRE media has been "locked down tight", implying that there was widespread fraud that already illegitimately handed Bush the election. And, of course, that NO media organization at all will talk about it. How convenient. Wow. No, that's not fucking designed specifically to get democraticunderground's readers pissed off, nope, not at all.

You'd think someone really concerned about this would urge people to contact their representatives and senators to support the legislation that will fix this. Or, maybe that it would even *mention* the proposed legislation, considering that it's over a year old. But nope, instead it's better to keep the hatred, vitriol, and rhetoric flowin'.

Electronic voting, while a neat idea to speed up the vote counting process, seems to have run into a number of glitches (over 1100 nationwide) this November 2nd. In addition to seemingly random problems in Florida [1, 2], Ohio [1], and North Carolina [1], there are allegations of systematic fraud based on statistical comparison of exit polls to final results in precincts with audit trails and those without. It is also interesting that in Florida, the voting patterns do not match the voter registration patterns as they do nationwide. This has attracted the attention of numerous civil rights groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation that has filed at least two lawsuits since election day, and BlackboxVoting.org that has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain computer logs and documents from 3000 counties and districts across the US. Equally disturbing is the fact that CNN has (since Nov 2) changed its exit polling results to reflect the actual results. This has attracted the attention of Congressmen John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida who have jointly requested that the GAO immediately investigate the efficacy of e-voting machines.

In case you are thinking that this is just sour grapes from Democrats who lost the election, think again. BlackboxVoting.org has been investigating e-voting fraud for years. Likewise, the CEO of Diebold, one of the e-voting machine manufacturers has been quoted as saying "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." And if that's not conflict of interest enough for you, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel (now resigned) is an owner of the largest e-voting machine company ES&S.

Other numerous problems have been found with the machines from nearly every company in the past [1, 2, 3]. Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, has been investigating such machines on his own and has found a number of security issues. Swarthmore students stood up to Diebold in November of 2003 after discovering

I didn't vote for Bush... [...] closet [...]

How is it that we can build reliable, accountable systems to handle power, money, and everything else in our society, but somehow it's fundamentally impossible to expect that it could be done with voting. As I've said, I AGREE that we should have a paper trail:

But they haven't gone down that road because the whole purpose of e-voting was to eliminate paper ballots, and all the headaches (spoilage, recounts, disenfranchisement via old/malfunctioning mechanical equipment, etc.) that go along with them.

It's the responsibility of the government and municipalities to demand hardware that provides what they need (i.e., a paper audit trail). No e-voting vendor is going to refuse to build something that municipalities will buy.

Another data point: Democratic Underground has evidence for a systematic 5% swing from exit polls to the final result, in Bush's favour... only in states using the Diebold tabulators . Pretty horrifying stuff. As Brit I have to offer my sympathy & support for true supporters of democracy in the USA, whoever they voted for.

Okay, this site has a graph of exit polls among various states (scroll almost all the way to the bottom) compared to the overall results. They are grouped into the paper ballot states and the non paper ballot states. You can see the obvious differences between these two groups.

Now that said, I don't know where these numbers came from or how trustable this site is. But you asked for the numbers, so here they are.