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I wonder where your *real* world is? In the US, the poor get more from the government than they pay in taxes. And everyone got a tax cut.

(BTW, the top 20% pay 63% of the taxes. http://www.factcheck.org/article280.html)

He was a lecturer in Constitutional law at University of Chicago, not a professor.

For what it's worth, the University of Chicago disagrees with you:

Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track.

Nothing gets rid of the mud quicker than an intellectual "car wash". The more people become aware of sites like Media Matters and Fact Check, the less likely they'll be to buy into the bullshit.

Wouldn't it be great if that were true? But it's probably not. The incident was reported in 2005 in the Capitol Hill Blue blog, but it appears that Capitol Hill Blue is not a highly reliable source. The U of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Political Fact Check calls this story "extremely unlikely" and says, "the Web site that reported those words has a history of quoting phony sources and retracting bogus stories."

The initial sibling comment has shown your claims regarding Lew Rockwell are obviously false.

Ron Paul is the "Distinguished Counselor" of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. They publish his latest book - forward by Lew Rockwell.

Ron Paul also openly associates himself with their of the John Birch Society and thinks its ridiculous that someone would think its bad that he would.

Clearly you aren't interested in the truth, just in backing your guy. I linked several times to news sources. You then criticize my sources and link Judicial Watch of all places as a source when the first adjective it uses to describe itself is by political ideology ("conservative"). Even your second mentioned site identifies judicialwatch as "a conservative legal group that dogged the Clintons through the 1990s with a stream of document demands and related lawsuits" not a reliable source of facts.

Stop pushing this closet Republican crap. See the factcheck.org article debunking this: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/peas_in_a_pod.html

huckabee doesn't believe in evolution. immediately disqualified.

while i think the income tax system needs to be changed (i prefer removal), the fair tax doesn't seem like such a good idea: http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/unspinning_the_fairtax.html. assuming factcheck is correct.

i don't think you can have any income tax system that is truly "fair" and won't get gamed.

Bush/Cheney did claim that there was an Al Qaeda / Iraq connection and that Iraq had WMD, and that this posed a clear an present danger to the security of the United States. But then when faced with contrary information, e.g., from Joseph Wilson that Iraq was not in fact trying to obtain Uranium from Niger, Bush/Cheney attacked Wilson (by revealing his wife Valerie Plame was a CIA operative), instead of revising their public story.

Al Qaeda did have connections to Iraq, though not strong. The invasion of Iraq was never sold as being because Iraq and Al Qaeda had strong connections, despite what the history revisionists say. At the time of the invasion, Most Dems, Reps, and governments of the world believed Iraq had WMDs. Even Iraqi leadership believed it. Saddam Hussein was perpetrating a fraud on everyone because the belief of him having WMD was almost as good as actually having them. It should also be noted that a grand jury bent on charging the administration concerning the Valerie Plame "revelation" wasn't able to come up with any charges whatsoever except for a single perjury.

Later Bush/Cheney nefariously blamed "intelligence failures" when in fact they knew better than anyone else that there was no credible threat from Iraq. Cheney was encumbered by a conflict of interest because, in classic Washington revolving-door style, he was re-entering politics having just served as CEO of Halliburton who ended up profiting heavily from the Iraq war. This is absolutely relevant!

The CIA itself admitted the intelligence failures. You can't say that they were just covering because they've also been critical of the administration. The intelligence agencies of a lot of other countries also failed as they believed the same thing. As for Cheney's Halliburton connection, It's been shown that Cheney doesn't gain anything from Halliburton and hasn't since he left the company.

Bush, as commander-in-chief, is guilty of Dereliction of Duty by both starting an unnecessary war based on lies, and then grossly incompetently managing that war. The deaths of American service men and women were absolutely avoidable because they war was unnecessary and avoidable. Abusing power, and abusing the trust and dedication of military personnel by getting them killed unnecessarily is absolutely criminal and cannot go unpunished.

There were some obvious mistakes made during the invasion and occupation. Most of those have been corrected. The fact remains that no war of this caliber has had as few American casualties as this one. No war plan is perfect but this one is far from a grossly incompetent mismanagement.

The death of every American serviceperson and Iraqi civilian due to the war in Iraq is an individual charge of manslaughter against Bush.

Uh, yeah. Right.

There should also be criminal repercussions for the lesser, but still significant crimes, of distracting the US military away from the war against terrorism (in Afghanistan) to a distraction in Iraq, right when the US was most vulnerable to terrorism (after 9/11). The enormous waste of money is also criminal mismanagement.

I hate to break it to you, but the War on Terror is in more places than Afghanistan. I have 2 cousins that just got back from the African "front" in the War on Terror. If you want to read about successes in the War on Terror, check out what we're doing in Africa.

Don't be dissuaded or intimidated by misinformation on Wikipedia, the rabid invective of idiots on FOX News, or snide comments

This is why I read slashdot. Where else do you find editors with such mental agility that they can completely contradict themselves in the mere space of 16 words?

The "lie" part of the yellowcake issue is the lie Bush put in the State of the Union address, which said that Iraq was seeking to import yellowcake from Nigeria. Yellowcake itself is a pretty common substance, created by any uranium mining process. Simply having yellowcake is a far, far cry from having the desire or ability to detonate a nuke within the United States.

Are you serious? You doubt Saddam wanted a nuclear bomb and detonate it here? I bet you said that with a strait face too. You really have no clue who Saddam was, do you? Sorry, your thought was just so.... I'll say amazing I can't believe it. As for the State of the Union propagada from the left about the yellowcake - Factcheck did an analysis on it here - http://www.factcheck.org/bushs_16_words_on_iraq_ur anium.html . You obviously don't understand what was known at the time, by whom and why something is believed and when something is a lie. It wasn't a lie and if you look at what fact check says I think you will have to agree. I could be wrong on that, however I can hope you will understand what they wrote. (insert Geico caveman joke here)

Nobody disputes that hundreds of degraded shells and canisters of sarin and other chemical weapons were found in Iraq. Are these the "500 WMDs" you're talking about? If so, what a pathetic cry from what we expected to find.

Are you serious? Plenty of people still dispute a WMD of any kind was ever found, indeed the guy I was responding to it seems by what he wrote. I don't know what you were expecting. Are you even aware that we invaded based on Saddam violating the 1992 cease fire? The same agreement he was violating on a daily basis? We invaded for exactly those WMDs because that is what was specified in the 1992 agreement. Clearly you have been reading far too much propaganda from the left. The administration did mention that Saddam had yellowcake (Shown in my previous reply), a nuclear facility (Readily verified by thousands of sources), and nuclear scientists (again verified all over the place). Gee, someone might think he wants to build a nuclear device. Imagine that. As for the "degraded" shells you talk about, a number of them have been used as IEDs and were still very much effective. Regardless, the US just finished up destroying old chemical weapons from the 1950s. That is right, 1950s - does that sound depleted to you? From time to time they still find old chemical weapons in Washington DC from when they used to make them there during WW I. That is right, nearly a century ago. They are still very dangerous. Saying they are "depleted" is a joke. They would still kill you just as dead.

If you think George Tenet -- by the mere fact of being a Clinton appointee -- somehow puts the Seal of Clintonian Approval on everything to come out of the CIA in the run-up to the war, well, your thinking is far too muddled for me to understand or to repair.

Yea, I should have worded that a bit better reading what I wrote. I can see why you would think that. What I meant is it goes to show that Bush didn't "install" his man at the CIA to push his agenda as so many seem to think. Further, he didn't "make up" the evidence or Tenet would have seen to it Bush was hung out to dry. It also shows there was no change in thinking from the Clinton years - bombing Iraq on a daily basis during the Clinton administration to the Bush administration's handling of Iraq in the early days. Same people over there, same advice. Advice the rest of the world believed as well. Something you don't seem to understand. A lot of people on slashdot seem to think Bush came to office hell bent on going to war with Iraq. Some even say it was over oil which is very logic challenged. We already owned those fields by the food for oil program that was in place for nearly a decade. Iron fist security provided by Saddam. We got cheap oil, no hassle. B

Unfortunately for us, FactCheck limits its interest to politics, although... this sorta posturing might even qualify as politics. Maybe they'll register the domain FactCheck.BIZ as well and start a new branch?

You're right -- it's trollish, mainly because it's wrong. Go to fact check here for the actual truth. Cheney has received some deferred compensation and turned over a bunch of his stock options to charity. Apart from that, he has no continuing interest.

Or how about the complete misunderstanding (or more likely intentional *twisting* but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt) of the truth that flew over *your* head

He had the stock prior to taking office from when he was an executive in Halliburton, before he became VP he setup a number of things just to make sure that there wouldn't be any financial profiting: http://www.factcheck.org/article261.html

1) He receives a residual income from Halliburton from when he was working there, this is a guaranteed quantity of money if Halliburton does well or does poorly. The only way it could be at risk is if Halliburton would go bankrupt (like that's going to happen), but to placate even that chance he took out an insurance policy prior to becoming VP that would continue this income even if Halliburton went bankrupt. So he has absolutely no benefit if Halliburton profits or not from the war regarding this income.

2) The stock option deal was in place again prior to becoming VP, 2 days before he became the VP he singed a legal document that could not be waived or revoked that from that point on any and all after tax profits going forward would be given to three charities. So rather than any profiting those options are losing money every year as the value of them decrease due to inflation every year. He can't receive any benefits from war profiting, but the university of washington (40%), George Washington University (40%), and Capital Partners for Education (20%) would, and I'm sure that he started a war so that the universities could increase there coffers.

Would you like to show me the massively *OBVIOUS* conflict of interest there? Please do, back what you are saying up.

1) He lied when he claimed he was sent to Africa under the direction of VP Cheney's office. That's the whole reason reporters started digging into this in the first place because it didn't make sense that Cheney would send a war critic to verify WMD claims. It turned out that it was his wife, not Cheney, who sent him.

2) He lied when he claimed that his trip did not find any facts to support the claim that Iraq had sought Uranium from Africa. In fact, it was his testimony to the CIA that confirmed Iraq had sent an delegation to Niger for the purpose of "uranium yellowcake sales". The Senate Intelligence Committee report concluded that Wilson's trip to Niger "lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal."

3) He lied when he claimed that the identity of his wife was revealed by the White House in an effort to rebuke him for disagreeing with their war stance. We know for a fact that the identity of his wife was accidentally revealed by Richard Armitage, a State Department war critic who didn't have any motive to criminally disclose the identity of Wilson's wife.

P.S. Remember when Cheney refused to sell his Haliburton stock when appointed VP?

http://www.factcheck.org/article261.html

OK, Cheney may be easy to dislike, but why is it that so many people still have their facts wrong about Cheney and his financial interest in Haliburton? Everyone who believes this should carefully re-evaluate their news sources and see where biased implications like these are coming from.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania thoroughly researched Cheney's financial ties to Haliburton during the 2004 presidential election and found that "Cheney doesn't gain a penny from Halliburton's contracts". The compensation he received was simply deferred income he had already earned while he worked for Haliburton.

See this article on factcheck.org for a thorough analysis of Cheney and his alleged financial connection to Haliburton

Try one that is in demand. Let us assume you start learning it today. I bet you it will be obsolete by the time you're certified/degreed/etc.

It's called "just in time" employment.

BTW when you have a wife and kids, that kind of stability is never good for your family. You call it adapt and change; you might also know it as "latch key kids".

We need some balance, and the balance is shifted way too far against the working class. The middle class is shrinking. http://www.factcheck.org/article249.html

A big ugly howl should come when the American (shrinking) middle class realizes that they were tapped for the $'s to provide the converters for the unwashed masses to continue receiving their dose of corporate shillage.

This whole forced march to HD-TV is a farce.

For decades media companies resisted migrating to technology that European and Asian markets already enjoyed, due to cost. It was only after the the meme of "consumer as continual revenue stream" took hold, coupled with a wholly sold-out political climate, that *any* of this shite became more than a marketer wet dream.

The sad thing here (to me: a conservative) is that the Democrats made traction with labeling Republicans as not being fiscally responsible. Sure, the Republicans spent more than I had wanted them to, but on every appropration spent less than what the Dems wanted to spend. What did the Democrats not like about prescription drugs? (Answer: didn't spend enough); Homeland Security Funding? (Answer: Not enough funds for infrastructure, roads, firemen, etc...); No-Child Left Behind? (Answer: unfunded mandate!); Veterans Spending? (Answer: It goes up but they call it a cut).

So yes, the Republicans spent too much but the Democrats wanted to spend more. Why did they do this? It is called compromise. Ironically, by compromising with the Democrats (which is what I thought everyone wanted the two parties to do...) the Republicans gave them ammunition with which to finish them off...

In fact, in a heated election like this one many voters are more aware of a position of the person they are voting against than those of the person they are implicitly or explicitly voting for.

This is the guy who wanted to make it so the taxpayers had to pay twice to get weather information. We would pay for the information once through our taxes via the National Weather Service and then a second time through a private organization.

This is also the guy who said in his book that education is not the way for the poor to get out of their rut (I'm paraphrasing). Throw in the family values crap, the fact that he shafted the taxpayers for thousands of dollars and refuses to pay the money back, and that he doesn't even live in PA any more, and those are just some of the reasons why I want him out.

As I said in my Allen comment, he, Santorum, in no way represents me. In six years, I'll be voting against Casey unless he can show me he deserves to be kept.

"Over 100 Democratic elected officials are opposing Democrat trial lawyer Ellen Simon. Liberal Ellen Simon served as the president of the ACLU, a radical organization that defends hard-core criminals at the man/boy love association (North American Man/Boy Love Association), a national group that preys on our children. One Democratic mayor called Simon's actions 'utterly disgusting.' He's right. Ellen Simon: radical, liberal and wrong for Arizona."

BusinessWeek takes a look at how political campaigns are taking the time-honored tradition of political mudslinging digital. One notable example: In the Virginia Senate race incumbent Republican George Allen held a comfortable lead over challenger Jim Webb until one of Webb's camera-toting aides captured footage of Allen making a racial slur during a campaign stop.

At least the elected representatives have at least a basic understanding of lawmaking and its repurcussions. As well, they act as a buffer between the lawbook and this week's media-fed clamor to "think of the children!".

Explain the umpteen state laws passed to curb the sales of 'violent video games'...and where they were summarily ruled unconstitutional by the judicial branch.

Even more important, representatives serve as a point of accountability. Their name and reputation are associated with their votes and actions, and this must have at least a slight restraining effect.

Votes and actions are used both for and against. I won't go into details, mostly because it's a pain to go back, but check out http://www.factcheck.org/ (not .com, like Cheney said back in '04) and check out all the ways voting records are misused, misinterpreted and flat out lied about. And then wonder how people don't look this up and call them on it.

(My personal favorite is how Reps call out Dems for "voting to raise taxes" when the actual vote was a 'Nay' on a tax decrease)

http://www.vote-smart.org/index.htm
http://www.factcheck.org/

Just for a start.

Your fellow Americans are dying by the thousands. You have a *duty* to be informed. You have time to read before you vote. Think as critically and openmindedly as if you were debugging a problem at work. This isn't some bleeding tribal football rivalry thing where you're supposed to cheer for "your side" and dismiss the other. Know what you care about, find out who REALLY supports it, and if nobody does then in the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster then go vote against the worst ones! Thought experiment: imagine where Iraq would be today if they'd been able to pick the *lesser* of two evils every four years. Picking the lesser of two evils is worth dying for, let alone driving to the polls.

This election is pivotal. Turnout will decide it. Remember that usually only a third of voters turn out for midterms, so you're voting for three people. Drag along another three customary nonvoters from your LAN party and you're voting for a dozen people.

Start simple, check if you're registered to vote.

Some one should make a show out of that.

Why do execs say such funny things away from their engineering teams? And why do I get the sneaking suspicion that some group at Google has actually figured out how to do this?

Anyway, until this is beyond hype, I find the Annenberg Fact Check to be the most reliable source out there.

Which is why the middle class is shrinking. But don't believe me. Read this. http://www.factcheck.org/article249.html

Well, I didn't believe you, and checked myself. That article talks about the middle class change in 2003. What about in 2004 and 2005? Turns out that in 2004 and 2005 the middle class gained by +0.4% and +0.2%, respectively, while the lower-income group changed by 0.0% and -0.5%, respectively, using the same measures of middle and lower class as used in the referenced article.

These were certainly surprising results to me. I'm no Bush apologist, which is why I found these results surprising.

--Rob

That means, a lot of college degreed CIS/CS/MIS grads who are working at Wal Mart or other lower paying jobs because their degrees that they got after 1995, with tons of student loan debt, are worth little if anything because of offshoring.

Let me repeat: they have jobs, ergo they're not unemployed. But they have jobs that are different, and far, far lower paying, than what they were trained for. Which is why the middle class is shrinking. But don't believe me. Read this. http://www.factcheck.org/article249.html

BTW the United States goes by a U3 style of unemployment measurement which puts us at 4.7%; if we go by Europe's U6 standard, the BLS says we're closer to the 9% level. That is very close to Europe's horrible unemployment rate which you hear so much about on Fox News.

The Swiftboat ads involved people who actually served during the time that John Kerry did and desired to state their opinion of the illegitimacy of his military decorations and military service in general - exactly who do you think such statements should be coming from?

Who indeed.

One of the veterans who says Kerry wasn't under fire was himself awarded a Bronze Star for aiding others "in the face of enemy fire" during the same incident.

Elliott, who had been Kerry's commanding officer, was quoted by the Boston Globe Aug 6 as saying he had made a "terrible mistake" in signing the affidavit against Kerry, in which Elliott suggested Kerry hadn't told him the truth about how he killed the enemy soldier. Later Elliott signed a second affidavit saying he still stands by the words in the TV ad. But Elliott also made what he called an "immaterial clarification" - saying he has no first-hand information that Kerry was less than forthright about what he did to win the Silver Star.

In general, the people serving directly with Kerry would be in the position to remark on his service, except in in the cases where those people are proven liars with a political agenda.

Bottom line, the problem with the Swiftboat ads is not in their truth. The problem is the truth didn't matter--it was ALL about politics.

Think there's some question about Kerry's service? How about a guy who lost 3 limbs in the same war? How about a guy who spent a couple years as a POW? All were 'swiftboated.'

And even if the worst said about Kerry's service is true, it stills compares rather favorably to the service records for George 'stopped showing up physicals when they started giving drug tests' Bush and Dick 'I had other priorities' Cheney.

To bring it around on topic, to do business with people who make it their job to defame and disparage real American heroes does NOT fall under the guidelines of "do no evil."

The Swiftboat ads involved people who actually served during the time that John Kerry did and desired to state their opinion of the illegitimacy of his military decorations and military service in general - exactly who do you think such statements should be coming from?

The whole point is, the ads didn't come from such people, though they were designed to appear as if they had. That's what astroturfing is all about.

• The "vets" in the story by their own admission had no personal knowledge of the events in question
• Some of the "vets" were Bush staffers
• The ads were put together by DCI employees (see link in story)
• The ads were funded by the Republicans, not by the vets (see first link, above)
• The affidavits they used were modified from what some of the vets had said
• ...and so on and so forth.

They were, in short, highly sophisticated trolls.

--MarkusQ

Wow... you don't know how to interpret data from graphs do you? A superficial look at the graph shows huge deficits during the Bush I and Bush II administrations with surpluses during the Clinton administration. But that isn't the story - when did the changes occur? The upswing from deficit to surplus clearly began (from the same chart) smack in the middle of Bush Sr's admin, while the slip from surplus to deficit began in the later years of the Clinton admin. Sure it took a couple years to actually cross the zero, because the economy has inertia, but the freight train was coming.

Put another way - take the derivative of the data. Positive values = heading toward surplus, negative values = heading toward deficit.

/No, my scarcasm filter isn't broken, I just wanted to set the record straight on this particular issue.

"What garbage. You're calling free market enterprise a zero-sum game."

Actually, it's a negative sum game. How so? Because America's poor class is growing faster than the rich class, and the middle class is shrinking. Aside from the filthy rich, consumer buying power is shrinking. Wages are currently falling against inflation.

Offshoring has reduced the amount of jobs in this country in relation to the growing populace. No new industries are coming to provide the number of well paying jobs that tech and manufacturing did. Biotech is already on its way out, just in case you were planning on countering with that example.

BTW bite me, looneytarian mods. Nothing I say can be countered with facts because they ARE facts.

Shrinking middle class, growing poor class: http://www.factcheck.org/article249.html

Biotech being offshored: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2004/04/18/BUGAI66E7I1.DTL

Wages not keeping up with inflation: http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/2005/04/21/sections/ business/business_nation/article_489293.php

So, yes, this IS a negative sum game.

I call you out now. Put aside your theories and back up your "plus sum game" with hard documented facts. I'll even let you cheat: feel free to use Fox News and the Heritage Foundation if you feel you need to.

http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=249

It's easy to fault Bush and to make him sound like a two year old. Oftentimes, it just requires you to copy and paste something he said.

But I would like to point out that there is a good article regarding this matter and it happens to take a look at it without political bias (if you believe that's possible).

Essentially what I'm asking you is, "Would a Democratic president be doing anything differently?" That's hard to decide--both sides are all talk and no action on this subject.

"These lawsuits can and do fly in at will states (the vast majority of states, BTW, are at-will). My own company was the victim of one, and it lost. Its simple, so long as there are laws that saw you can't fire an employee for reason X, and almost all do, be it minority status, sexual harrasment, handicaps, etc, you might be put into a position where you have to prove that was NOT the reason they were let go. If you give a negative recommendation, you/your company could be sued for libel/slander, so you better have hard facts to back up what you are saying, arrest convictions, drug tests, whatever. You can hope the person you are giving the negative reference to doesn't tell, or that he's not an agent of the former employee confirming the reference, but I imagine your manager won't appriciate being dragged into court over even a frivolous suit."

I call utter bullshit on this. Post some proof that this happens with any amount of regularity.

"b & c) You've clearly missed the point of "Who moved my cheese?" If you can't make a living in your technology area anymore, find something else to do. Maybe jump specializations, pay for some retraining, or even leave tech altogether. Open a restaurant, build custom furniture, sell tornado insurance. And the size of the cheese is immaterial, smaller cheese just means there should be fewer mice tring to eat it, if there are too many mice, just keep looking."

Are you out of your mind? Less cheese does not mean there are fewer mice trying to eat it. There's always the same number of mice, until some drop off and die.

Finding something else to do means adapting to the service economy - you know, waiters, cashiers, and the like. Is it any wonder wages are being outpaced by inflation?

"And I never mentioned moving to India. So lay off the foolish strawman arguements and lame character assasinations."

Moving to india is your only logical option when it comes to chasing the good jobs. It's not what you said, but it is the ultimate consequence of what you said. Jobs are exploding in India, not the US.

And exactly what will people retraining fort? None of that crap you posted was profitable. Restaurants? A dime a dozen.

That's the whole thing, there is no new big thing any more. Biotech and nanotech are both going overseas as we speak. We have 200,000 people studying for a degree in biotech and by the time they're out of college the market will be oversaturated.

All fields of work are oversaturated now.

Why?

Because six billion people are competing for America's job market, that's why.

I'm a manager. I see countless numbers of resumes from qualified people for jobs that we announce. You're just some peanut gallery cheap labor conservative trying to convince the rest of us to stick our heads in the sand and deny that something is very wrong with this economy.

Your restaurant, tornado insurance company, and custom furniture business are a) competing in an already overcrowded market for b) a rapidly shrinking middle class which is increasingly unable to afford your goods (hence the precipitous rise in consumer credit debt) and will c) inevitably be unable to service their debt and will stop buying your product.

The last time we had economic conditions like this America went through a depression, but hey, who cares about history when we have the ostrich syndrome?

Is it any wonder most Americans see America's economy as going sour? Oh yeah, I figured I'd throw that in to prevent you from accusing me of "chicken little" thinking.

BTW at least I can back up my claims with documentation. Can you?

Your getting your facts mixed up. Check out http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html they have a better time table over the stuff you are forgetting.

Well, sure, I would have traded with Hitler. A country with a healthy, trade-based economy doesn't commit genocide or start world wars.

A country that does its level best to isolate its internal interests from those of the world around it, on the other hand.... well, history tells us what to expect in that case.

I would have traded with Nazi Germany, while the measures you're advocating would turn us into Nazi Germany.

Again: if free trade is good externally, it's good internally, too.

There's no cosmic mandate that entitles you to live better than five hundred million equally-qualified Indians.

If you can sustain your current position only at the point of a gun, that's a problem for all of us.

Nope, not being politically biased; but going more on facts. On the campaign trail kerry was claiming responsibility for it, that's the big reason. Heck even factcheck.org attributes it to Kerry and must be playing partisan politics as well since they don't mention anybody else.

http://www.factcheck.org/article246.html

"The ad says Kerry "was fighting for legislation to cut off terrorist money laundering before 9/11." And in fact, a section of a Kerry bill on money-laundering was virtually copied into the PATRIOT Act and praised by Bush administration officials."

Maybe the sooner you realize that both sides are dicks the better for you, because it would appear that you might just be a zealot that can't let anybody on your "side" have a complaint against them. Look into Kerry's history he's got some serious privacy issues in his closet...

(Kerry, FWIW, talked about eliminating some of the tax incentives that encourage companies to offshore. At least he understood the problem and had an appropriate, if timid, response.)

No, Kerry didn't understand the problem. The tax "incentives" that supposedly encourages companies to offshore aren't "incentives" at all. This so-called "incentive" is that the US corporate tax rate is much higher than most other countries, so companies have a valid reason to shift their operations and profits to countries with lower tax rates. Kerry's solution to this was to increase corporate taxes by taxing profits on goods that were produced overseas.

Fact Check:
In fact, tax experts say the incentive has been there for decades - since there has been a corporate income tax. It's not Bush's doing.

The incentive exists because the US taxes corporations at rates higher than most other countries. According to the Institute for International Economics, the effective rate for US corporations was just over 30% in 2002, while mainland China's effective corporate rate was only 11.3%, Britain's 18.2%, Mexico's 15.1% and Indonesia's a miniscule 0.2%.

there is plenty of oversight. Red Cross visits

And they have documented "inumane treatment" of prisoners.

"Proven" torture at Gitmo? You mean allegations of torture by people who've been released from Gitmo.

Umm, the government has admitted to using torture at Gitmo.

And I like how torture has been watered down to being anything that might discomfort anyone at any point in time, compared to say, the torture that Americans at Hanoi Hilton received

And I love how the Bush administration has redefined torture so narrowly as to only cover injury serious enough to cause death or organ failure. You are sticking your head in the sand if you think that none of the techniques we use on prisoners qualify as torture.

Listen to bedwetters like you whine incessantly is torture in and of itself.

Why does questioning the use of force by the state make you a pussy? I never understood that. If anything, apologetics for those in power always seemed a lot more cowardly to me.

And I guarantee listening to people whine about our government abusing its power is not nearly as bad as being waterboarded.

That was good, mgabrys. :)

As I said, for the most part, fine arts people don't make rent. A handful of workers at Pixar - the very best of the best in this universe and beyond - don't make that statement untrue.

I bet you a ton of fine arts grads apply there all the time and get turned down. Feh and meh that.

We need those entry level jobs - software testing and tech support - back - in order to revive what is commonly understood to be a sagging middle class.

http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=249 --- this is not a liberal blog.

The shrinking middle class problem was documented in 2003. There's no evidence to show this has reversed in 2006.

Hmmm, do you have any data to support your assertion that President Bush is indeed cutting school funding?

According to the Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2007 -- Section 4 -- Federal Government Outlays by Agency that is simply not the case. Spending for the Department of Education is much higher and increased much more sharply under Bush than his predecessor (2006 EST $83 Billion versus 2000 $33 Billion). There is a sharp dropoff at 2007 to EST $64 Billion but this is still above 2004 levels -- perhaps this is the cut that you are talking about?

These sorts of accusations are of course nothing new. I would like to make a bold proposal that Slashdot posters actually take the time to read the articles, fact-check, and follow up with relevant posts.

Telecom companies pushing for a forced conversion to all-digital television broadcasts ran ads in Washington DC and elsewhere highlighting benefits for firemen, police officers, and other "first responders," who stand to receive improved communications capabilities and gear. The ad calls digital TV a "win-win solution" benefiting both consumers and the emergency responders.

The ad is true as far as it goes, but misleading because it implies that the digital-TV bill taking shape in Congress would have only winners. In fact, there would be losers, too. According to the GAO, an estimated 21 million households now get TV only through a standard, analog TV set, and would be forced either to junk their set and buy a new digital set, or to obtain a new converter that manufacturers estimate will cost about $50.

Also not mentioned is that taxpayers will be asked to contribute up to $3 billion to subsidize the conversion. That money would come from the proceeds expected from auctioning off some of the airwaves now used by TV broadcasters.

The funding of the ad is also something of a mystery. One source told us it was financed by Motorola, which stands to profit from the transition by selling new police, fire and emergency radio equipment. Motorola wouldn't confirm that, nor would they deny it.

HEAVENS! THE SKY IS FALLING! Oh wait, maybe you should read some *more* articles then (and I'm actually supplying the links) http://www.factcheck.org/article148.html, essentially:
"...in fact, the current projected deficit was equaled or exceeded in four years during the Reagan administration and two years in the term of Bush's father."
And those were what again? Just before periods of UNPRECEDENTED ECONOMIC GROWTH.

Hm. Wonder if there's a correlation there?

Oh yeah, and the above comparison, to be apples/apples, is only examining RECENT budgets. The deficit for the US gov't in 1943 was more than 30%. Today it's 4.5%.

But hey, don't let me stop your Anti-Bush rant. It's so trendy now, and so simple, all you must do is believe the main media sources without question. So easy!

New slashdot categories in 2006: Anti-Bush +1, Pro-US -1.

Actually, my post was more on-topic than yours, I believe.

I'm fine with other people distilling research to make it easier for a voter to grok. But it's still research, and should be done by any voter. Uninformed voting favors those with more money and name recognition instead of those who will do a better job or better represent the voter's interest.

In general, I think uninformed voters will almost always cause more problems for a democracy than people who don't know or care staying home, and thus I tend to oppose knee-jerk "get out the vote" contentless campaigns.

Just to add some content to my post, I'll post a few sites where you can do some meta-research (read distilled opinions about candidates and issues) in addition to the http://www.vote-smart.org/ site mentioned in the grandparent post:
* League of Women Voters (look for local leagues for local issues): http://www.lwv.org/
* FactCheck.org: http://www.factcheck.org/
* Google for your city/state and "voting information": http://www.google.com/

Ooo! Ooo! I'm one. I'll try to answer.

ranting about games and sex causing social decline

Oh wait. No, I don't buy that line. Uberconservative Republican hacks like Senator Hillary Clinton might want our tax dollars to investigate violence and sex in games, but I'm one conservative who does NOT. LESS governmenting spending on this bullshit.

"Yeah! I mean, do you know what's happened to rates of violent youth crime and teen pregancny in the last ten years?" They always answer that they're at unprecedented levels

Hmmm. Maybe I'm NOT conservative, because I don't believe that either. It's the George Bush cronies and conservative right-wing nuts like Senator Clinton, Howard Dean, and John Kerry who have recently been found playing up false numbers for activities that we generally frown upon as being measures of moral decay in our society. No, Republicans, screw you, I'm not buying into that line.

and then are thrown off when I tell them that they've actually been falling quite steadily.

Amen brother. And what's been happening for the last 10-15 years? Unprecedented prosperity, even when you consider the recession a few years ago. Crime rates almost always drop when people are making more money.

Teen pregancy is even at its lowest rate since we began taking statistics in the '40s, down from the all-time high in 1991.

Go go gadget condoms!

What would be really amusing to me is if they discovered, in 20 years, that untold psychological damage to children was done by The Sims. People spending all day running households like gods, torturing and killing families and developing these horribly twisted personalities. I mean, take a horribly violent, depraved movie -- for example, Saw, and ask what game the creators would probably enjoy playing?

uhhh.. The Sims 2 is actually on the list of morally reprehensible games that Jack is crusading against. Seriously.