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I don't think you understand. Governments are not held in check by some silly pieces of ink on paper, they are held in check by the combined ability and will of the people to keep them at bay.

People in the government will happily ignore any laws they see fit until someone calls them on it, and other people with similar amounts of power and similar views back them up on it (for example, a court with a judge who agrees). Please see here for one of the most recent illegal schemes performed by people in the US government.

Democracy is a myth designed to make the weak think they play by the same rules as the strong.

CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF IRAQI OILFIELDS (Their caps, not mine)

First three docs:

Iraq Oil Map.PDF

Iraq Oil Foreign Suitors.2.PDF

Iraq Oil Foreign Suitors.1.PDF

So, before the war, the Vice President, like, has this task force thing, and they won't tell anybody what they talked about. But they had a map of the Iraqi oilfields AND lists of people who would be intersted in those fields. Oh, and the VIP himself? He's still pulling down mad money from Halliburton, to the tune of about half-a-mill a year.

But "War for Oil"? Man, that's just CRAZY talk right there. CRAZY.

CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF IRAQI OILFIELDS (Their caps, not mine)

First three docs:

Iraq Oil Map.PDF

Iraq Oil Foreign Suitors.2.PDF

Iraq Oil Foreign Suitors.1.PDF

So, before the war, the Vice President, like, has this task force thing, and they won't tell anybody what they talked about. But they had a map of the Iraqi oilfields AND lists of people who would be intersted in those fields. Oh, and the VIP himself? He's still pulling down mad money from Halliburton, to the tune of about half-a-mill a year.

But "War for Oil"? Man, that's just CRAZY talk right there. CRAZY.

CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF IRAQI OILFIELDS (Their caps, not mine)

First three docs:

Iraq Oil Map.PDF

Iraq Oil Foreign Suitors.2.PDF

Iraq Oil Foreign Suitors.1.PDF

So, before the war, the Vice President, like, has this task force thing, and they won't tell anybody what they talked about. But they had a map of the Iraqi oilfields AND lists of people who would be intersted in those fields. Oh, and the VIP himself? He's still pulling down mad money from Halliburton, to the tune of about half-a-mill a year.

But "War for Oil"? Man, that's just CRAZY talk right there. CRAZY.

CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF IRAQI OILFIELDS (Their caps, not mine)

First three docs:

Iraq Oil Map.PDF

Iraq Oil Foreign Suitors.2.PDF

Iraq Oil Foreign Suitors.1.PDF

So, before the war, the Vice President, like, has this task force thing, and they won't tell anybody what they talked about. But they had a map of the Iraqi oilfields AND lists of people who would be intersted in those fields. Oh, and the VIP himself? He's still pulling down mad money from Halliburton, to the tune of about half-a-mill a year.

But "War for Oil"? Man, that's just CRAZY talk right there. CRAZY.

I really couldn't care less whether the documents are fake (which the preponderance of evidence seems to show). The point is that it doesn't matter anymore. This election is not about Vietnam, yet that's all Kerry can seem to talk about.

But if it's going to be about Vietnam, because that's where Kerry's people are going to put it, then so be it. Questions about Kerry's service are par for the course. And his own stories do not match up. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Fact: Lehman didn't write nor authorize Kerry's amended award. Here's the article.

Fact: The Department of the Navy is investigating whether Kerry wore an inappropriate device on his Sliver Star. This is a separate issue from the Swift Vets, brought by a different group. Here's the Press Release. The mere accusation of wearing an inappropriate device led Adm. Boorda to commit suicide. It's not a light matter.

Of course the motive for this is not hard to see, they think that if they can muddy the waters then people will become confused about which one went to Vietnam and was awarded three purple hearts and which went AWOL from the national guard and lied about it afterwards.

And as I said, it doesn't make a difference to me. I'm not going to accuse Bush of being AWOL. I'm not going to criticize what Kerry did in Vietnam. I'm not going to look to see if his wounds were self-inflicted. It doesn't matter.

Your leader is caught in a lie sir, a dirty dishonorable lie.

Keep repeating it, maybe it'll stick. More likely, you'll sound like a narrow-minded fool.

I don't care. I don't support Bush because of what he did thirty years ago. Why would I support Kerry for what he did thirty years ago?

I voted against Bush in 2000, and my support for him now is based solely on what he's done in office. Kerry, on the other hand, has no principles. And his voting record shows him to be on the wrong side of history time and again. Voted against many weapons systems. Voted against Gulf War I. Supported a nuclear freeze. Supported the Sandinistas. I could go on and on.

It's propaganda if it doesn't provide contrary evidence. What contrary evidence wasn't provided? Did, perhaps, Bush Jr. and Sr. NOT meet with Saudi officials? Is this not a particularly damaging piece of evidence?

In short: what is *factually* not true about what Moore presented? And please, try to use your own words.

A victim's widow's website, seeking 9-11 answers

A prior knowledge database and archive

David Schippers, impeachment prosecutor and ex mafia buster/ prosecutor, tries to get Ashcroft's attention to warn of pending imminent attack, gets ignored

Priot knowledge of impending attacks transmitted to US government by other governments, including by Putin: Financial ireregularities in airline stocks up to that day: other indications of government priot knowledge

LetsRoll911 extensive 911 archive and links section, along with logs showing who is interested in the site, worth a look

Fed agents ordered to NOT investigate terrorist ties once they get close to saudi arabi and bush family

More:FBI agent whistleblower tells he was blocked by "orders" from following terrorist money trail

Infowars.com 9-11 archive, the grand daddy of them all

There's lots more, LOTS more,any search engine out there is slap fulla links to news articles and views and dataon this subject. The above is just a small sample of the real info out there and the interest. I can guarantee you neither I, nor all these other people are going to "shut up" over this reichstagg-fire coup d'etat that took place.

But,thanks for the opportunity to reply! And it doesn't bother me a whit to be called names, or be disagreed with! After you have been beat, gassed, threatened with death, been lied about in court, had evidence planted, and various things like that...plus getting to know quite a few insiders in the system who are willing to talk off the record and clue you in to some *quite interesting things*, people who are honest people and true patriots... well ..anything someone on the net can say to you is sorta silly in the way of "hurt", as in "neener neener". It just won't work, but thanks for playing! Everyday, people all over the net are reading similar posts, and going to look for data for themselves. That's how it should be, take a gander at the evidence, see what ya think, it's the american way and stuff. And someone is going to read this, maybe not reply, but go look for themselves, and get hip. It's a good thing.

In DC, this is called `Business As Usual`.

Skip from this incident of Republicans spying back to the years during the Clinton White House, wherein the FBI was found to have pulled confidential files on tons of prominent Republicans and provided that information (quite illegally).

Quick link to info on Filegate

Quick summary for people who don't remember 1998: "[There was a] class action suit on behalf of the more than 900 Bush and Reagan appointees and possibly others whose FBI files were unlawfully obtained by the Clinton White House. Louis Freeh, Director of the FBI, has admitted that there was an "egregious violation of privacy without justification."

It goes around, it comes around, Watergate wasn't the first time, and this isn't the last time.

Politics.

feh.

In all seriousness, are the Franch genuinely unaware of that fact? By the way, I was wrong about Iran -- Siemens built their reactors, not a French company. The planned Libyan reactor is a mixed French/Belgian project.

Troll... may I ask why?

Cheney was CEO of Halliburton. When he stated he was going to be running for VP of the US he stepped down to being Halliburton's chairman of the Board. Then left Halliburton in August of 2000. What's interesting is Halliburton was super nice to him and awarded him $20,000,000.00 (despite his origional severence package required he be awarded only $2,100,000.00 and required him to stay until he was 62. He's 59.) He owns more than a million shares (over $10,000,000.00 worth) of this commpany. Why was Halliburton so nice to Cheney despite his leaving before he was supposed to? Large companies aren't really known for being nice guys to anyone (especially former employees) unless it's in their best interest.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/08/12/ cheney.parachute.ap/

You'll also note than Halliburton was busted for extremely fishy and illegal accounting in July of 2002.
http://money.cnn.com/2002/07/10/news/cheney_lawsui t/

Well somewhere this vanished and accoring to http://www.judicialwatch.org/2221.shtml the whitehouse stopped the court order illegally. I'm not sure if I believe that story, but I haven't heard anything about this case since July of 2002. Anyone know anything about what happened to the charges?

Since Bush was elected (or placed in office by Florida's Supreme Court, rather) Halliburton has been handed many federal contracts worth many billions of dollars.

I simply can't stand the thought of my tax dollars and my friends in the military are being abused for the profit of someone who already has more money than anyone could need.

For more interesting articles concerning Halliburton and Cheney:

http://www.observer.co.uk/bush/story/0,8224,759141 ,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,912515 ,00.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/13/business/13HALL. html

The US already attempted a "regime change" in Venezuela this year. This "regime change" was an effort to install a leader that would privatize Venezuela's oil industry. Privatization would allow foreign investors to manipulate the price of oil. Venezuela is an OPEC country so this would have a world-wide effect (imagine Enron on a global scale). If I remember correctly Venezuela broke the oil embargo in the 70's.

To bring us back on topic... The US government does a lot of awful things like this that the people of the US would not approve of. There is no reason a democratic government should be overthrowing other governments. This war, like the war on drugs, is a racket and a sham.

There are a lot of unanswered questions about 9/11. All we can do is continue to search for answers to the questions of who stood down that day and who is making money off this.

From your previous post, i rather suspected that you're (formally or informally) trolling for the Dems, but this one proves it. As much as i dislike this phony and destructive Left-Right political paradigm, people like you (and that right-wing idiot who didn't do any fact checking) insist on keeping the ball rolling.

My Sincere Apologies to the thinking/rational members of the /. Community for the excesive length, but "tossed off" facts require real context. SORRY!

Let's deconstruct some of the above post, why don't we?

"Once again you are lying. Insdustries give much more money to republicans while unions tend to give more to democrats. It's the classic struggle. Teachers, cops, firemen, plumbers etc support democrats while CEOs support republicans.

In the last two Federal cycles, Republicans received about 625 million dollars and Democrats received 449 million, or the Democrats recieved about 70% of revenues the Republicans received. Don't know about where you live, but around here, 449 MILLION DOLLARS is a lot of money.

here are some links to real data, you can find verified numbers for just about anything, if you look;

Common Cause
Judical Watch
Federal Election Commission
Roll Call Magazine
Library of Congress' THOMAS legislative info site
Vote dot Com
TownHall dot Com
Pew Research Center (reasonably balanced/verified poll data)

You also neglected to mention some rather important things. Especially as you seem to be attempting to tie the current economic probs to a particular party.

1. The vast majority of Technology CEOs supported Clinton and Gore, and routinely give big donations to the Democratic Party.

2. The vast majority of CEOs in the Finance sectors (stock brokerages, investment banks, bond houses) are also Democrats and are amongst the Dems biggest contributors

3. The Republican Party gets much more of its money from individual "grass roots" contributors (i.e., people sending in twenty or fifty bucks) than the Democratic Party does.

Whereas, the Democratic Party gets the vast majority of its donations from corporations, with very few dollars coming from "grass roots" donations. That's a kinda important point in this discussino, since you seem to be so wound about corporate donations.

4. The two largest contributor groups of the Democratic Party are two of the most regressive and damaging special interests in America. Teachers Unions (NOT the teachers themselves -- for whom i have HUGE respect by and large) and Trial Lawyers.

Teachers Unions have gutted and stalled any meaningful educational reform in this country for 30 years, while students' test scores have plummeted (and they continue to actively obstruct schoool reform) and Trial Lawyers are making it virtually impossible for anyone to start a new business in America without hugely expensive liability insurance (which many entrepeneurs cannot afford). I've done several tech startups in Cali -- next one WON'T be here, i'm done with this messed up state.

Trial lawyers are also increasing the price of virtually every product we buy with frivolous deep pockets liability lawsuits.

The key determinent in politcal fundraising actually seems to be, not so much supposed politcal affiliation, but rather who has control of the House. When the Dems had control of the House (and the White House) they outraised the Republicans by about an average of 20%.

The actual reality is that corporations will give money to whoever can deliver the goods. That will always favor the Party in the Majority. We have the best legislators money can (and does) buy. But, why would any corporation want to waste money on a legislator in the Minority??? What sense does that make? You spend money to buy influence, PERIOD.

When the Republicans took control of the House, they found that they could outraise the Dems, especially in "party building" monies. The reason is generally held to be that whoever controls the House, controls the purse strings. If you're looking for bucks, you go to the Majority Party.

"Once again you are lying. Insdustries give much more money to republicans while unions tend to give more to democrats. It's the classic struggle. Teachers, cops, firemen, plumbers etc support democrats while CEOs support republicans."

nice troll! actually cops and firefighters vote mostly republican (about 68% nationwide), teachers do indeed vote mostly democrat (about 82% nationwide -- though that's starting to change -- there's been nearly a 10% increase nationwide of teachers who are voting republican in the last decade, whoda thunk it?)

(i have no idea how plumbers vote), you're sidestepping the fact that it's actually police and fire unions who give big amounts of their members' dues to far-left candidates.

"All of this adds up to the grim fact that republicans get a ton more money then democrats over all.

True kinda/sorta, but certainly NOT "..a ton more", through the next election cycle, there will probably be about 18-22% advantage for the Republicans. Or about the same numbers that the Dems had over the Republicans when they controlled the House and Senate.

A significant difference, but certainly not fatal. Clearly the Dems aren't attacting voters the way they used to. The Republicans are (and have always been) the "Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight", when it comes to image projection. So, that pretty much suggests that the Dems are just losing their appeal. The Republicans are usually not adroit enough at attack politics, they're too busy blowing off their own media toes. (Look at Bill Simon in Cali,-- this guy couldn't get a BJ in a whorehouse, what were the Republicans thinking????)

From about the 1960's to the late 1980's, the Dems had an (by your standards "large") advantage in money raising. When the Republicans and Gingrich took over the Congress in the '94 mid-terms, the money gap started favoring the Republicans.

My favorite though is "...Combine that with the conservative media and you can explain how they control the country."

Where would this conservatie media be? You've got the looney-tunes Washington Times, the spooky strange FoxNewsChannel and that's about it.

Meanwhile, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washingpost, Time, Newsweek, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS, and most big city newspapers might as well just print the DNC's "Message of the Day".

Limbaugh gives the Republicans a pretty large presence on talk radio. (despite a decade of dire predictions by the Left about Limbaugh fading away, he's still do quite well, fascinating. i woulda never thunk it.)

But the most successful "politics" shows on TV are O'Reilly (yeech, i'm waiting for Bill to allow a guest to complete a sentence before he starts screaming at them) and Larry King, who spends more time discussing his own opinons than his guests. I can't watch EITHER of them without getting a headache. So, I don't.

O'Reilly is hardly a conservative, and while King is technically a liberal, as O'Reilly continues to pummel King in the ratings, King has drifted back to the center.

So the vast majority of media in this country is pretty much Center-Left.

It is also boring, trite and doesn't spend any real time discussing any alternatives to the obviously dysfunctional Left-Right paradigm that has captured the votes of the majority of the few voting Americans and turned off/over about half the eligble voters in America.

I voted for Nader before, and it looks like i'll be doing it again in '04.

Gary Winnick, BTW, close friend of Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the DNC. Who made $100,000 go to $18 million with another questionable stock trade, of Global Crossing stock.

What were you saying about politicians and their business cronies again?

Ho Hum. Back to hypocrisy as usual for Democrats. And class warfare! An oldie but a goodie!

The best place for advertising would be on the dollar bills themselves.

I mean, they're buying the government anyway - why not be honest about it?

An interesting side note on the whole liberal v. conservative thing: when driving home last night I heard an interesting piece on NPR (bet you can guess which side of liberal/conservative that puts me on :) about Judicial Watch. This organization was put together from scratch in '94, primarily with donations from conservative groups and individuals, in order to generally harass the Clinton administration over their various illegal and questionable activities. They were the poster child for conservative attack dogs.

But now that there's a new administration, apparently Judicial Watch is still on a roll, taking on the Bush administration! They're currently going after, among others, House Whip Tom Delay for selling access to the Bush administration. Apparently this is causing a bit of consternation among conservatives, who had assumed that Judicial Watch was bought and paid for and would stay that way :)

So my point, if I even have one, is that there are still individuals and organizations out there who are insane, cranky, or perhaps actually even principled enough to take on whomever is letting down their country. It made me happy to hear about this; hopefully it will brighten your day a little too.

Vaapcon was much more recent and I knew a few feminists that got caught up in the net.

There is this report that showed up in the WSJ: The Ex-President Bush Sr. may be in business with the Bin Laden Family Conglomerate through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm. There is enough stuff there that this could be very bad for GWB, especially in these times.

Well, depends which Clinton/China thing to which he's referring. They're kinda intermeshed, but involved two separate things:

• The transfer of sensitive satellite encryption data to China. Loral helped China's satellite launch program, which simultaneously helped their missile program, even though China is thought to be exporting missile and nuclear technology to countries like Iran and Pakistan. Their actions would have been in violation of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, except for the fact that Bill Clinton signed a waiver allowing Loral to do go ahead. By the way, Bernard Schwartz, Loral's CEO just happened to be Bill Clinton's biggest donor at the time. You can read the details in a legal brief produced for a class action lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch on behalf of Loral shareholders at www.judicialwatch.org/Loral.html
• All that Chinese money which ended up in the Democratic National Committe's pockets before the 1996 elections. You've probably heard of some of the players here: John Huang, Jonny Chung, Charlie Trie, a Ms. Liu (forgot her first name), et al. This resulted in high placement for some of these people and their associates at the Clinton Commerce Department, which accordingly gave China some sweetheart treatment. Classified satellite documents were taken from the Department by Chinese spies, and the investigation is ongoing. This stuff has been mentioned in a lot of different places, but for something which ties the parts together (those which are known so far), you should check out www.judicialwatch.org/interim.htm and see Part III: Commercegate/Chinagate.

You might notice that both of my links point to the Judicial Watch web site. Well, you can thank Janet Reno for that, since she has been showing some major reluctance toward having the Justice Department investigate this. So much so that many of the Chinese players have fled the country. Instead, Judicial Watch (a non-profit organization which is definitely no friend of Clinton and his administration) and The New York Times have been about the only players on the forefront of making sure that the public finally learns what really happened.

Cheers,
ZicoKnow@hotmail.com

Well, depends which Clinton/China thing to which he's referring. They're kinda intermeshed, but involved two separate things:

• The transfer of sensitive satellite encryption data to China. Loral helped China's satellite launch program, which simultaneously helped their missile program, even though China is thought to be exporting missile and nuclear technology to countries like Iran and Pakistan. Their actions would have been in violation of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, except for the fact that Bill Clinton signed a waiver allowing Loral to do go ahead. By the way, Bernard Schwartz, Loral's CEO just happened to be Bill Clinton's biggest donor at the time. You can read the details in a legal brief produced for a class action lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch on behalf of Loral shareholders at www.judicialwatch.org/Loral.html
• All that Chinese money which ended up in the Democratic National Committe's pockets before the 1996 elections. You've probably heard of some of the players here: John Huang, Jonny Chung, Charlie Trie, a Ms. Liu (forgot her first name), et al. This resulted in high placement for some of these people and their associates at the Clinton Commerce Department, which accordingly gave China some sweetheart treatment. Classified satellite documents were taken from the Department by Chinese spies, and the investigation is ongoing. This stuff has been mentioned in a lot of different places, but for something which ties the parts together (those which are known so far), you should check out www.judicialwatch.org/interim.htm and see Part III: Commercegate/Chinagate.

You might notice that both of my links point to the Judicial Watch web site. Well, you can thank Janet Reno for that, since she has been showing some major reluctance toward having the Justice Department investigate this. So much so that many of the Chinese players have fled the country. Instead, Judicial Watch (a non-profit organization which is definitely no friend of Clinton and his administration) and The New York Times have been about the only players on the forefront of making sure that the public finally learns what really happened.

Cheers,
ZicoKnow@hotmail.com