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http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/29393.html

"drug war...single most devastating...social policy since slavery"

i recall (but can't find) an article about how the revenue from the income tax enabled prohibition to be passed...it hadn't made any progress in congress (hehe: pro- opposite of con-) while tax revenue was dependent on alcohol...and it wasn't repealed until the depression cut income tax revenue sufficiently that they had to...

Republicans at the state level want this too. It's even in TFA, if you care to RTFA. Of course, the blame will be shifted to Democrats, because we all know that Republicans never raise taxes...

And that governments, law enforcement entities, and municipalities have increasing access to and leverage technologies to become more effective at the jobs with which they are charged by the public?

In order to back up that statement you have to prove to me that they are indeed being used to perform the jobs that they are charged with as opposed to engaging in their own forms of spying, and that they are more effective.

In the former case I would point out that the jobs of governments and police officers is to serve the citizens in their community. All too often however that has been twisted to the point where said individuals are, in fact, using their powers to pursue private agendas against the very citizens they claim to protect. Here in the U.S. for example during World War I laws were passed making it a crime to criticize the president "for our protection". During World War II the massive information compiled as part of the Census was used to hunt down American Citizens of Japanese descent and throw them into prison "for their own protection". During the Kennedy years the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover used the powers of his office to spy on politicians he disproved of and to subvert both the anti-war and civil rights movements including the well-documented blackmailing of Martin Luther King. During the 60's Nixon used the tools available to spy on his political rivals. In more recent years 'anti-terror' tools have been used to spy on anti-war groups (because how dare we oppose the Iraq war) and execute increasingly harsh surveillance of "problem communities" (aka black neighborhoods) in the War On Drugs.

In each case the claim was that they were serving their constituents. Nixon himself said that he "thought it would be bad for the country if the president lost an election". And despite claims that it "won't happen again" we can see even modern U.S. Congressmen claiming that it is a good idea:

On February 4, 2003, during a radio talk show, a North Carolina Congressman, Howard Coble, defended the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. "We were at war," Coble noted. "Some [Japanese-Americans] probably were intent on doing harm to us, just as some of these Arab-Americans are probably intent on doing harm to us [today]". (source here

Similar comments have been made about the recent attempts to spy on American's internet use and telephone traffic "for our own good".

Which brings me to my second point. There is, indeed little to no evidence that the modern tools (e.g. large scale databases or CCTV networks) actually help prevent crime which is, after all the goal. With repsect to "big name" items like the terror suspect lists and the internet surveillance their effectiveness is difficult to judge as they are largely secretive (too secretive) and the evidence that they obtain will never be used in a court of law. While the Justice department likes to point to high-name cases like Jose Padilla and the rest of us like to point out that Padilla is a) being charged in a carefully rigged situation, b) being charged for a small fraction of what they claimed they could prove but did not, and c) is himself surrounded by many many cases which seem likely to never reach trial because nothing at all really happened.

If you want a better arguing point we should look at the large-scale sweeps that were done in New York shortly after 9/11. While these netted a few illegal aliens (at least one of whom died under highly questionable circumstances) and pissed off a large segment of an otherwise legitimate population it failed to net anything useful. But this too might be considered "exceptional".

So let us turn to the daily street crime scenario. While some noise has been made about Chicago's heavy use of surveillance cameras and databases there is little scientific evidence that the cameras "did the trick". While Chicago's rate of cri

I guess you don't know much about iran.

Iran is perhaps the most extreme fundamentalist muslim nation in the world.

They're leader preaches for hate of everything non-muslim, and for the destruction of the western society.

Perhaps you should read some of the latest speeches from Ahmadinijad and about iran:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C2-200705067 7%2C00.html&cid=0
http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/international/index .ssf?/base/international-36/117096206117070.xml&st orylist=international
http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/35552.html
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat= Politics&loid=8.0.384504986&par=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RXL2HKEOGw&mode=re lated&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wkF3Pkup5g&mode=re lated&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRkQMv-3R2k&mode=re lated&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6q2h1lKOF0&mode=re lated&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nMak6VnH4U&mode=re lated&search=

and many many more... just open your eyes and realize who you're talking about.

1. Yet another reason to use encrypted email
2. Yet another reason to impeach him
3. Yet another reason to abolish presidential signing statements
4. Yet another reason to 'not trust the government'

In another 2 to 4 years SCOTUS will *probably* overturn this version of the bill, should it become law, just like they did in the Hamdi case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaser_Hamdi

I only say "probably" because now we have Alito and Roberts instead of O'Connor and Rehnquist, with Alito being decidedly more conservative than the swing vote that was O'Connor.

Then, if this happens, we'll be right back where we started, with two changes:
1) Bush will no longer be in office.
2) Likely, the House or Senate will be in Democrat majority.

The fact that the House, Senate and Presidency have been in fairly consistent GOP control since 2000 has made for some pretty lopsided legislation and judicial appointments, with this bill being just one more sorry example.

Hopefully this will change on Nov 7th, but I'm not holding my breath; it is said that in life we should *Hope* for the best and *Prepare* for the worst. It's just too bad we've been doing so much preparing for 6 years straight: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianlloyd/42959310/
http://hnn.us/articles/5019.html

I was waiting for that. In case you don't know, the report was from a highly-selective leak, that was think massaged by reporters at the NYT suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome.

The NIE was declassified, and is available here: http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/Declassified_NIE _Key_Judgments.pdf

A close reading reveals it to be...pablum.

In ralated news, al Qaeda is not polling all too well in Iraq: http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/30289.html

You're free to quote this (vastly-inflated) count because Saddam's no longer in charge. I'd bet he'd have killed six times as many people in the same time.

In related news, al Qaeda is polling badly in Iraq: http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/30289.html

But that doesn't serve *your* story line, does it?

I fished around a little and found a link for the actual research paper the article is based on. The paper itself requires a subscription, but here's the abstract:

The atmospheric implications of radiation belt remediation

C. J. Rodger, M. A. Clilverd, Th. Ulich, P. T. Verronen, E. Turunen, N. R. Thomson

Abstract: High altitude nuclear explosions (HANEs) and geomagnetic storms can produce large scale injections of relativistic particles into the inner radiation belts. It is recognised that these large increases in >1 MeV trapped electron fluxes can shorten the operational lifetime of low Earth orbiting satellites, threatening a large, valuable population. Therefore, studies are being undertaken to bring about practical human control of the radiation belts, termed "Radiation Belt Remediation" (RBR). Here we consider the upper atmospheric consequences of an RBR system operating over either 1 or 10 days. The RBR-forced neutral chemistry changes, leading to NOx enhancements and Ox depletions, are significant during the timescale of the precipitation but are generally not long-lasting. The magnitudes, time-scales, and altitudes of these changes are no more significant than those observed during large solar proton events. In contrast, RBR-operation will lead to unusually intense HF blackouts for about the first half of the operation time, producing large scale disruptions to radio communication and navigation systems. While the neutral atmosphere changes are not particularly important, HF disruptions could be an important area for policy makers to consider, particularly for the remediation of natural injections.

I'd never heard of the "radiation belt remediation" procedure that was mentioned in the article, so I dug around some more and located the following paper:

Remediation of radiation belts using electrostatic tether structures

Abstract: Scattering of energetic charged particles by high-voltage electrostatic tether structures may present a technically and economically viable method of rapidly remediating radiation belts caused by both natural processes and manmade events. In this paper, we describe a concept for a system of electrostatic tether structures designed to rapidly remediate an artificial radiation belt caused by a high altitude nuclear detonation. We then investigate the scaling of the system size and power requirements with the tether voltage and other design parameters. These scaling analyses indicate that a conventional single-line tether design cannot provide sufficient performance to achieve a system design that is viable. We then propose innovative multiwire tether geometry and show that this tether design can significantly improve the overall performance of the electrostatic system, enabling the requirements for total power and number of satellite systems to be reduced to levels that are both technically and economically viable.


The slashdot submission and popular press-article (but not the research paper) engages in some fear-mongering about how the US is supposedly planning on deploying RBR, but I haven't found any sources which confirm this to actually be the case. It should probably be mentioned that DARPA funds almost everything under the sun, usually without much expectation of it actually being of practical use. I mean, this is the same DARPA that funded psychic telepathy research and mechanical elephants for the jungles of Vietnam.

Regardless of whether or not it's practical, radiation belt remediation still seems like interesting research. It'd be a shame if fear-mongering about this being a "US plot to disrupt worldwide communications" or something resulted in funding for this research being cut off.

Please cite (not just mention) a repetition of Franklin's kite experiment according to Franklin's published methodology.

The page you linked is a long discussion, without rigor or evidence, of circumstantial implications for Franklin's story's plausibility, boiling down to "he wouldn't risk his scientific or resulting political credibility on such a hoax". When his scientific reputation was being stolen, preempted by European plagiarists, the target of the hoax, which would have protected his reputation.

The very page you linked has a response citing analysis of repetition attempts, which electrocuted the experimenter following Franklin's methodology, and the relevant differences in methodology (grounding) that protected the "successful" experimenters.

The always murky field of historical inference yields to the facts of scientific history. If you want charges of sensationalism to stick, you should look at the easily-available counterarguments to the hype you're pushing, which are dry facts.

I am sorry but a scientist should not try to be a historian unless they are trained in history. The arugment is very weak. Franklin never clains to have been struck by lightening. Collecting atmospheric current is the same principle used in the lightning rods Franklin invented. The story was confirmed in later years by Franklin's son. And most importantly the experiment has been repeated sucessfully many, many times.
Here is a rebuttal to that book by a legitimate historian http://hnn.us/articles/1770.html.
Saying Franklin's experiment was a hoax is nothing more than sensationalism focused on selling more copies of books.

I think the best way to get rid of pork is to go back to the state governments electing the members of Senate, instead of having the people elect them.

Yeah, that worked so well before...State governments are of course known for being free of corruption, cronyism, and polticial machines that block out any citizen involvment.

And of course State governments wouldn't have any motivation for sending Senators who would bring pork to their State. No sir-ee-bob.

BTW, I have this bridge for sale. E-mail me for details, you'll love it. :-)

Very good. Now, look at a breakdown of education by county in those states, and in most of them you're going to find the counties with the highest rate of college education voted Republican.

Wrong. I went through this painful process in 2000 and the uneducated bible belters in the most rural counties were the most likely to vote Republican. If the most educated voters tend to vote Republican, one would expect that the Republicans would easily carry states like Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. Instead, they carry states like Alabama, West Virginia, and Arkansas.

Um, wrong again. Blue collar workers are more likely to be smokers than white-collar workers. How many Republican labor unions do you know of?

No, you are wrong, wrong, wrong. You mistake the educated union leaders, who recognize that the Democrats are their allies and that the GOP is their enemy, from the rank and file who believe that prayer in school is good, teaching creationism is better, and that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11.

The government is not rewriting history, just denying access to it.

The head of the national archives and records administration (NARA), a supposedly independent administration, has been replaced at the request of top levels of the Bush regime. Not only is that rather unusual, but there are some big issues with the new appointment, Weinstein. All that means is that NARA now has a politcal appointee at its head, unlikely to stand up for freedom of information.

Naturally, subsequent administations never cut back on these practices. Once an agency has an authority and a budget, it's very hard to remove either...

And who authorized the war? That's right, Congress did (linky). A democratically elected (at least in theory) body of representatives.

If only it were true. He seems to be able to lie us into a war, shred the constitution, hand out important government jobs like stocking stuffers to incompetent nitwits, give aid and comfort to our enemies in time of war, suppress political descent, and run up enormous debt in our name to enrich his backers, and there doesn't seem to be anything the hand wringing "opposition" party can do to stop him.

If only he sucked , he's be out of there so fast his head would spin.

--MarkusQ

Well your opinion is also very popular among our worst citizens as well. How this isn't offtopic when this should be about "Introverts Have More Brain Activity?" is a mystery. Apart from the /. groupthink, just a note on "Worst.President.Ever.",
where historians were polled on the worst Presidents of the US.

"And then there was this split ballot, comparing the George W. Bush presidencies failures in distinct areas. The George W. Bush presidency is the worst since:

In terms of economic damage, Reagan.
In terms of imperialism, T Roosevelt.
In terms of dishonesty in government, Nixon.
In terms of affable incompetence, Harding.
In terms of corruption, Grant.
In terms of general lassitude and cluelessness, Coolidge.
In terms of personal dishonesty, Clinton.
In terms of religious arrogance, Wilson."

So just because you're emotional about a current president doesn't necessarily make it the Worst.Ever. More likely it's your emotions in hysterics making such a "judgement" call.

Here's another source, admittedly it's probably better supported.

Two black eyes and 10 pissy telegrams! Does this sound like mass hysteria to you? Alas, history has preserved in amber the perception that The War Of The Worlds broadcast was the epitome of mass hysteria.

So the people of the U.S.A. had fallen for a hoax -- but the report of the spread of panic is something of a hoax itself.

But you don't need to trust me, you can Google for this stuff on your own.

Firstly - I am assuming you are american. Apologies if you are not.

Before you go off about the nazis - what about the bloody US? How are they so different?

From http://www.hnn.us/articles/1551.html

Following are the remarks Mr. Platt made to the California senate judiciary committee, June 24, 2003, regarding senate resolution no. 20 - relative to eugenics.

Since the spring 2002, state governments in Virginia, Oregon, and South Carolina, have published statements of apology to tens of thousands of patients, mostly poor women, who were sterilized against their will in state hospitals between the 1900s and 1960s. In March 2003, Governor Davis and Attorney General Lockyer added their regrets for the injustices committed in the name of "race betterment." Now, the California Senate is considering a resolution, authored by Senator Dede Alpert (D-San Diego), which "expresses profound regret over the state's past role in the eugenics movement" and "urges every citizen of the state to become familiar with the history of the eugenics movement, in the hope that a more educated and tolerant populace will reject any similar abhorrent pseudoscientific movement should it arise in the future."

In 1924, the Immigration Act of 1924 was passed, with eugenicists for the first time playing a central role in the Congressional debate as expert advisers on the threat of "inferior stock" from Eastern and Southern Europe. [2] This reduced the number of immigrants from abroad to fifteen percent from previous years, to control the number of "unfit" individuals entering the country. The new Act strengthened existing laws prohibiting race mixing in an attempt to maintain the gene pool. Eugenic considerations also lay behind the adoption of incest laws in much of the USA and were used to justify many anti-miscegenation laws.

Or from wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics:

Some states sterilized "imbeciles" for much of the 20th century. The US Supreme Court ruled in the 1927 Buck v. Bell case that the state of Virginia could sterilize those they thought unfit. The most significant era of eugenic sterilization was between 1907 and 1963 when over 64,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized under eugenic legislation in the United States. A favorable report on the results of the sterilizations in California, by far the most sterilizing state, was published in book form by the biologist Paul Popenoe and was widely cited by the Nazi government as evidence that wide-reaching sterilization programs were feasible and humane. When Nazi administrators went on trial for war crimes in Nuremberg after World War II they justified the mass-sterilizations (over 450,000 in less than a decade) by citing the United States as their inspiration.(emphasis mine)

One other thing to remember is that Clinton ran his choices before the republicans before he nominated them before the republicans came to power in the 1994 election. That's why in 1993 the judiciary committee voted unanimously to accept Ruth Bader Ginsburg and unanimously voted for Stephen Breyer in 1994 when democrats were still in charge. He made a real effort to work with them. For Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the senate voted 96 to 3 in favor. For Stephen Breyer was confirmed 89 to 9. Bush, on the other hand, has done everything within his power to totally ignore the democrats or even antagonize them. See http://hnn.us/articles/13357.html for a history of Clinton's appointees.

That's the difference between "lies" and "bullshit". Bush might technically have not "lied", if the British government had "learned" such a fact. Even if some official in the British government "learned" that fact from one source, and then learned that fact was a lie - Bush technically could have told the truth by qualifying his statement as a fact "learned by the British". But it's really just bullshit.

That doesn't mean that Bush's statement wasn't also a "lie". As we now know, the British government had actually learned about Bush that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" - British for "Bush is bullshitting everyone so he can invade Iraq". Americans are starting to find the difference between lies and bullshit to be meaningless: it's all becoming known generally as "bushit". Especially as THERE WAS NO URANIUM, THERE WAS NO WMD, BUSH LIED TO INVADE IRAQ, WHERE'S OSAMA?

Here is a quote from Chalmers Johnson's "The Arithmetic of America's Military Bases Abroad: What Does It All Add Up to?":

According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and has another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories. Pentagon bureaucrats calculate that it would require at least $113.2 billion to replace just the foreign bases -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic product of most countries -- and an estimated $591,519.8 million to replace all of them. The military high command deploys to our overseas bases some 253,288 uniformed personnel, plus an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employs an additional 44,446 locally hired foreigners. The Pentagon claims that these bases contain 44,870 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and that it leases 4,844 more.

These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The Report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the U.S. military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11.

http://hnn.us/articles/3097.html

How is such massive foreign deployment serving American freedom? In fact it is far more likely that the resentment created by excessive interventions will ultimately harm US interests. Even when foreign deployment creates close ties abroad, those ties are often with repressive governments with terrible human rights records.

It used to be that conservatives lived up to their name and opposed foreign adventures and large standing armies. Properly speaking those who, like you, support the status quo of a massive network of overseas bases should be refered to as "militarists", "jingoists", or even "imperialists" rather than "conservatives" or "patriots".

There we go! Someone pulled out the "Anything-that-is-not-in-the-constitution-is-illeg al." arguement.

Go home and eat a cherry tree, would ya? While you're at it, get some political history down that gullet as well. You'd be surprised how different the world seems without those blinders on...

Filibusters were NOT "courtesey" rules. They are placed there because wiser people than you or the current congress realized the tyranny of the majority in the legal process. They've been adjusted over the years to prevent a bare majority from steamrolling a minority in close legislation.

It's not perfect, but here's an interesting point: Strom Thurmond used it to oppose civil rights, but the same group that was such a big proponent of civil rights legislation, the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) is in support of keeping the filibuster that for so long delayed civil rights legislation. The NAACP just has the balls to realize that it's a valuable tool for all of us, not just to annoy the current political party. The US government is not actually designed to be a mob, like Sen. Frist would have you believe.

Check out the history before spouting off on things like this. I'll give you a bit of help, since research is obviously not your strong point.

http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/8709.html

The article specifically talks about government(s) and organizations wanting archival technology to last as long, if not longer than previous data. In this context, this is a very important and serious undertaking. Not to long ago, some janitors cleaning out the basement of a government building about to be destroyed in DC discovered pay ledgers dating all the way back to 1791. They were all still in pristine condition and legible. They not only told how much each delegate was paid each day, but also provide concrete dates as to when they arrived & left.

Read more about it here http://hnn.us/comments/5103.html

Civil War

War Between the States

War of the Rebellion

War of Northern Aggression

War for Southern Freedom

The Recent Unpleasantness

The current administration doesn't want to help compile their own "I messed up..."-list.

This comes at a time when lots of records from Bush I and the aftermath of the Reagan years are becoming available. For example, records from Gulf War v 1.0 are set to be made public. So are records that would clear up some big questions in the Iran-Contra (aka Arms for Hostages) scandals.

Yes, you're right, it is really a trivial matter. Oh wait... I forgot that there are over SEVEN-freaking-hundred of them. If a base in damn near every strategic location on the globe doesn't indicate a new kind of empire, then it's a meaningless word. Google for 'Chalmers Johnson' for a nice overview.

The USA has minor holdings in both major oceans, like the remnants of any colonial power. Here's the CIA's listing of American "Dependencies:"

American Samoa, Baker Island, Guam, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Islands, Navassa Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Palmyra Atoll, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Wake Island note: from 18 July 1947 until 1 October 1994, the US administered the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. It entered into a political relationship with all four political units: the Northern Mariana Islands is a commonwealth in political union with the US (effective 3 November 1986); Palau concluded a Compact of Free Association with the US (effective 1 October 1994); the Federated States of Micronesia signed a Compact of Free Association with the US (effective 3 November 1986); the Republic of the Marshall Islands signed a Compact of Free Association with the US (effective 21 October 1986)

In addition to these direct footprints of empire, the US has the ability to recommend, set, and enforce policy over much of the world. Even Brzezinski points out that "Europe is still predominantly an American protectorate."

The purposes of USA's military presence around the world are pretty clear to those on the outside. Imagine a German base on the edge of Bangor, a French base outside of Cleveland, a Canadian base in Fargo, a Japanese base in Seattle, a Venezuelan base in Miami. How would the locals feel? What would it mean to US nationalism? It isn't a disingenuous question. If you pooh-pooh the 'thought experiment' on grounds of impossibility, it is an indication of a disinclination to think outside of the doctrine of Pax Americana.

FOIA inquires that are won in court shouldn't be returned without the information content redacted. To a very great extent the workings of our government need to become less secretive lest we lose the freedoms we cherish.

The Bush junta has recently replaced the head of NARA (National Archives and Records Administration). The new director will be in office at a time when the records from Bush's father are scheduled to be subject to the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and could be opened. Other areas which can be affected are, obviously, the 2000 election scandal, the events (misdeeds) permitting the Sept 11 2001 attack, the controversy about the decision to attack Iraq and, last but not least, irregularities regarding the 2004 election.

The new director will also oversee the Electronic Records Management e-government and the Electronic Records Archives projects. Note that electronic records, unlike paper, go away by default unless timely, correct, and proactive action is planned and taken.

Now there are many different views on those controversial topics, but getting the relevant government records into the light of day is about the only democratic way to resolve those questions.

so, we ignored North Korea, and attacked Iraq?

What gave you the silly idea that we are ignoring North Korea?

not even through this mysterious "attempt on ghwb's life"

Its not that mysterious

Iraq has never been a threat. Never.

Tell that to Iran. Or Kuwait. Or Israel. Or Saudi Arabia. Or the Kurds. Or the Iraqi people. Or Russian intelligence.

In fact, I bet you wouldn't recognize a threat even if it hijacked your planes and flew them into your buildings...

I really hate being paranoid, but sometimes you got to deduce certain things in certain contexts; government implies authority, which in turn implies that some information regarding diverse operations of said government must be restricted to all but a select few. Case in point: do you know entirely what's going on in Fallujah at the moment? Do the grunts know? Or is it feasible to suggest that no one but the top brass knows?

http://hnn.us/articles/3097.html/

For Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan, which has been an American military colony for the past fifty-eight years, the report deceptively lists only one Marine base, Camp Butler, when in fact Okinawa "hosts" ten Marine Corps bases, including Marine Corps Air Station Futenma occupying 1,186 acres in the center of that modest-sized island's second largest city. (Manhattan's Central Park, by contrast, is only 843 acres.) The Pentagon similarly fails to note all of the $5-billion-worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases in other people's countries, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure, although it has been distinctly on the rise in recent years.

I say again, blaming the son for the sins of the father is unworthy of a civilized person, and comparable to medieval or Nazi theories of collective Jewish guilt.

And if you are going to bring up W's grandfather Prescott Bush, where is your condemnation of Ted Kennedy, whose father was an open anti-Semite and admirer of Hitler.

-ccm

They attempted to strike civilian targets...

Actually, yes. American "privateers" attacked civilian merchant ships.

And certainly American forces have attacked civilian targets since then (the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, the nuclear attacks on Japan).

I think you might have meant to say that they used guerrilla warfare, which is true. But its a little different than "terrorism"...

The difference pretty much depends on who gets to write the history and the "rules" of war.

Youre post was so rife with disinformation I had to reply.

>The many thousands of Kurds and Iraqi Shi'ites gassed during Bush I and Clinton

The gassing of the Kurds happened in 1988, before Gulf War I and Clinton. Also, remember 1988, Saddam was friend and lover of all things US! I have photos of Rumsfeld shaking his hand if you want one.

>Actually, we don't know that, since we never had any confirmation that the reactors they were actually using for weapons research were ever "sealed" to begin with.

Its common accepted fact that those were REAL UN seals, sealing REAL URANIUM.

>The notion that they developed such a program in three years is laughable.

They escalated to a controlled threat under clinton to launching test missiles over Japan under Bush, while laughing at the US. You tell me whose foreign policy made more sense. They can hit Alaska and possibly California now.

They simply took advantage of the Bush admin's incompetence and focus on oil rich nations.

>Actually, most nations believed that the Iraqis still had WMDs

This stuff that has been debunked before the war even started. UN, Scott Ritter, Blix's reports, Saddam's son in law, etc. On top of it Powell using discredited info at the UN told the world this was a sham war. Cherry-picking reports with huge cavaets and presenting them to the public Cheney style does not a WMD threat make.

Please, tune into Fox News tonight and tomorrow for better talking points.

I truthfully don't know the whole story either

I truthfully don't know the whole story either

Pete Seeger of "The Weavers" (friend to Woodie Guthrie and fellow folk musician) talks about the Folk Process here.

There's another discussion here:

Pete Seeger, at the time, was referring to Woody Guthrie's habit of using the tunes of spirituals as the framework for his own writing, as well as the "folk process" of borrowing and modifying melodies or words as songs got passed from one person to another. (There are certain traditional songs which exist in literally dozens of distinct variations. Pete Seeger himself is notorious for making slight changes to the words of other songwriters; you can often tell when someone has learned a song from a Pete Seeger recording instead of the original songwriter....)

More here.

I also read an interview a few days ago with Pete Seeger in some weekly magazine, and in the article there was an interesting description of how "This Land Is Your Land" was written. Apparently it was written over a few years, and the line "this land was made for you and me" was changed from something else, although I can't remember what the original line was (something less universal). Anyone involved in this lawsuit might want to consult Seeger.

W

This is a side-bit, but I recommend y'all check out this 1955 transcript of an interview/interrogation between Pete Seeger and the House Unamerican Activities Committee.

Lott's numbers don't even add up. He states that 5% of blacks are Republicans. If 50% of their votes were rejected, that means that 50% of 5% or 2.5% of black votes were rejected even if not one black Democrat ballot was rejected. But Lott claims that 1 out of 125 (less than 1%) of black votes were rejected. I guess the rejection rate for black Democrat votes must have been negative.

More here.

All of this, of course, ignores the fact that when the President of the United States decides to embrace the doctrine of preemptive war, claiming that there is an imminent threat to his own nation, the burdern of proof is on him to support those claims. Let's see the evidence of WMDs in Iraq. How about those aerial drones that could be used against the US? An Iraq-Al Qaeda link? Some uranium from Africa? Anything?

In Vietnam, we have some documentation of Kennedy's change of momentum, from increase of Eisenhower's initial troop level, to withdrawal, right at the moment of Kennedy's assassination. Which was followed by Johnson's reversal of that change, to escalation. To complete our disagreement over the various presidential manipulations of that war, I note that Nixon widened the war into Laos and Cambodia, and anywhere else it suited him, except out of the conflict as he had promised. Vietnam was an example of politicans' competence at entering, and incompetence at exiting, exacerbated by warriors' competence at killing.

In Iraq, we have lots of documentation of Bush's singleminded pursuit of his war. I expect we agree that the US was required to defend Kuwait after Iraq invaded it, as our various military treaties so required (UN, etc), in support of a sensible geopolitical strategy. But Bush Sr's administration allowed Iraq to invade, even replying that we had no position on such Iraqi threats just prior. And the exit strategy was unclear, as Bush Sr was apparently aware of the ungovernable threat we'd own, if we destroyed Hussein, as we now do. Clinton's status quo (for us, for Iraqi people, it was a cruel downward spiral) was adequate to create new opportunities for new exits. If it were coupled with covert actions protecting a legitimate successor government to Hussein's, it would have been worth the wait. But instead that opportunity was squandered.

The real problem surrounding Iraq is unwinding the Gordian Knot woven by the British when they organized the defeated Ottoman Empire as its own worst enemy. Starting at the most obvious equitable rearrangement, Kurdistan would be the best stable, pluralist state on which to base a Pax Americana in the region. But that would threaten Turkey, Syria, and Jordan, which exert substantial political influence over the US. As well as threaten the various other pipelinistans in Central Asia, which exert so much economic influence over global petrobiz.

You and I (neither of us Democrats nor Republicans, it turns out) have better understanding of American mistakes than of actual solutions. We probably represent some of the better thinking, about risks to peaceful solutions, obtainable in America. What is totally missing from these solutions, and criticisms of failure, is an Iraqi party capable of solutions - at least, one that's not actually a front for some of the previous failures, like Chalabi and Pachachi.

So I attach the current disaster in Iraq to Bush; mainly Jr, but rooted in Sr. The lies upon which the current war were built (WMD, exit strategy, finance, etc) are playing out in destruction. So Bush is bad. The interim "maintenance" by Clinton, without a real solution, was bad, but reflected the complexity we agree defines the country, as well as the complexity of Clinton's difficulties managing the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. So Clinton was "not good enough". Clinton is no longer a pressing issue, while Bush is, as he stands for reelection. As American voters, we are unfortunately faced only with the question "is Bush good or bad?", and my answer is clear.

In fact, the entire invasion of Iraq was suggested by the Brits back in 1918 . One might even suggest that the present mess is in no small part the Brits' fault.

It's been widely argued that Iwo Jima picture was shot few times, by asking soldiers to re-raise the flag again.

Some go even further by saying that the flag was never raised, but prominent historians have reached a common consensus that it was indeed raised, albeit the picture was not good enough, so they re-created the scene for perfection purposes.

#1: This link quotes two men as stating they saw Bush when he was based in Alabama, the time that the Demo'rats (and you) claim he was AWOL. One mentions that he was his drill partner, and that Bush was present at all drills.

#2: While I cannot find proof that Bush has not attended any funerals of fallen soldiers (although there is plenty of rhetoric about him not attending), I did find this link which mentions several war time presidents, some of which and some of which did not attend troops funerals. Some who did, only attended those of children of family members or of men they personally met. Criticizing Bush for not going to these funerals is silly as he is not the only president to not do this.

#3: However, people are more likely to commit suicide today than ever before, too. Suicide, as any psychologist will tell you, is about depression, not about disagreement with a war. While, yes, there have been soldiers who filed "consciensious objector" status so they do not have to fight (but only 3 that I know of so far). It's possible that troops are depressed in Iraq due to a number of factors (heck, they are being shot at), but this does not mean they do not agree with the efforts.

#4: You're taking what I said out of context, which is what you Demo'rats like to do. The full statement was, "... the troops love hearing how Bill Clinton and Dick Clarke failed to deal with Iraq in 1997 as Clinton had planned." That statement is factually accurate. Clinton HAD planned to deal with Iraq in 1997 and FAILED to do so. This means, he did NOT do it, therefore he failed. I did not say that the situation in Iraq was Clinton's fault, it was Saddam's fault and the inability of the U.N. to uphold their own laws.

#5: However, in previous testimony, recordinds, and emails Clarke says the COMPLETE OPPOSITE. The GOP believes he lied under oath", and Clark praises Bush at a seperate point, and in his resignation letter, also praises Bush on how he handled 9/11. So what is it? Is he lying now... or was he lying then? Either way, he cannot be trusted... yet you believe him. Curious...

#6: Which you conveniently left out, this page says that Clarke is not a registered Democrat, but wants to be. And you can be registered "independant" as I am, so just because you're not registered demo'rat doesn't mean you need to be registered republican. So, of course, if he wants to be a registered Demo'rat, that re-enforces my assertion that he is doing this for political purposes.

#7: I don't have to respond to this one since You have stopped arguing this point.

There's your proof... have a good day!

Oh how I wish that were more true. Maybe it is in some narrow sense, like with a service-oriented company (are you listening Intuit?), but not for the nut-and-bolts economy, and certainly not with nasties like Monsanto, BASF, those who financed the Nazis and supplied them with vehicles and steel (ad infinitum with other totalitarian states), land-mine and explosive toy manufacturers, and Haliburton (and the like, who plan ahead on profiting from the more gruesome effects of war). The list just goes on: profitable companies, propelled ahead through innovations and opportunity-making designed by assholes. And I mean that in a relative sense, because even though the sweatshop economy ultimately relies on assholes farther down the chain, there are few other options, so even nice companies/managers have to choose these parts/products. Generally, there is an alternative, a kinder gentler friendlier and oh yeah ethical route, but it doesn't enhance shareholder value.

Do try to at least attempt to find the truth before you presume to speak with such confidence.

America is at war with Saddam. America has always been at war with Saddam.

America is at war with Osama. America has always been at war with Osama.

time 6.14.02 reporting doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling

America is fighting a new kind of war.

Remember who used the term "white n---ers" on national TV? It certainly wasn't a Republican. Your own partisan bigotry doesn't help your cause.

Well, it's not any more corrupt than one company owning the platform that 90% of the world operates on, then claiming that all the little fish can compete fairly against them and that they have no advantage owning the system....

If the Republicans own the voting system (and yes, I *know* they don't legally own the system, just as Microsoft doesn't *legally* own SCO), I highly doubt that they would use it to benefit themselves. I mean, come on! That would be unethical.

Each house sets its own procedural rules. The House would explode if debate were not strictly limited -- there's just too many of 'em. The Senate is a more deliberative body. I found a brief history of the filibuster that -sounds- accurate (should be verified). I was interested to learn just now that the cloture majority required has changed over time. The filibuster has a storied history, as it has been invoked over some of the most divisive question to come before the Congress.

If you'd like another example of how the Congress doesn't work as people suppose, read about the phenomenal power of the committees to shape legislation, or keep it off the floor altogether so that it can't be voted on. One of the most powerful committees? The Rules Committee! (Pork-master Byrd -- half his state is named after him -- is often noted for his formidible command of parliamentary rules.)

Oops, are we off-topic? Nah, civics is always a good thing.

Here are two more sources contradicting Mr. Fisher's view:

• a senate debate on the subject from 1994, with substantial discussion of the issues and body of precedent.
• a piece on the subject from George Mason University's History News Network