Slashdot Mirror

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2461415.ece

Economists have been critical of Greenspans 2003 decision to cut interest rates which, they argue, helped create the housing bubble, the collapse of which provoked this summers banking crisis.

So Bush wasn't president at that time?

Or here back in 2004: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/overcoming_the_bubble_economy.php

The damage from the overvalued dollar threatens to be even more dangerous. With President Bush largely maintaining the high dollar policy, the trade deficit and foreign debt have continued to rise at a rapid pace. The current account deficit hit an incredible $660 billion in the most recent quarter, more than 5.7 percent of GDP. This deficit will push total foreign debt to more than $3 trillion by the end of this year. On its current path, it will exceed $7 trillionapproximately 50 percent of GDPby 2009.

The deficit is actually $9 trillion, not $7 trillion, and that's a full year ahead of schedule. What ever happened to "the buck stops here?"

And I guess Bush never said this back in 2002, which was the signal to lower loan standards http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020618-1.html - my comments in italics ...

But I believe owning something is a part of the American Dream, as well. I believe when somebody owns their own home, they're realizing the American Dream. They can say it's my home, it's nobody else's home. (Applause.) And we saw that yesterday in Atlanta, when we went to the new homes of the new homeowners. And I saw with pride firsthand, the man say, welcome to my home. He didn't say, welcome to government's home; he didn't say, welcome to my neighbor's home; he said, welcome to my home. I own the home, and you're welcome to come in the home, and I appreciate it. (Applause.) He was a proud man. He was proud that he owns the property. And I was proud for him. And I want that pride to extend all throughout our country.

One of the things that we've got to do is to address problems straight on and deal with them in a way that helps us meet goals. And so I want to talk about a couple of goals and -- one goal and a problem.

The goal is, everybody who wants to own a home has got a shot at doing so. The problem is we have what we call a homeownership gap in America. Three-quarters of Anglos own their homes, and yet less than 50 percent of African Americans and Hispanics own homes. That ownership gap signals that something might be wrong in the land of plenty. And we need to do something about it.

We now know that not everyone who wants a home should be able to get one just because they can fog a mirror.

We are here in Washington, D.C. to address problems. So I've set this goal for the country. We want 5.5 million more homeowners by 2010 -- million more minority homeowners by 2010. (Applause.) Five-and-a-half million families by 2010 will own a home. That is our goal. It is a realistic goal. But it's going to mean we're going to have to work hard to achieve the goal, all of us. And by all of us, I mean not only the federal government, but the private sector, as well.

this was the initial go-ahead by Bush for the private sector to eas up on lending standards for mortgages

And so I want to, one, encourage you to do everything you can to work in a realistic, smart way to get this done. I repeat, we're here for a reason. And part of the reason is to make this dream extend everywhere.

so the mortgage industry came out with all sorts of snake-oil financial schemes, to extend the "dream" everywhere - ev

Wattenberg has as much of an agenda as anyone else. He comes from the American Enterprise Institute, remember...? Sure, Europe and Japan's populations will decline, but the rest of the world, including the U.S., will continue to rise. Resources for the increasing population will be strained to the breaking point, especially with Climate Change in the mix.

How will the U.S. respond? Well, the Pentago is already looking into it.

The majority of votes cast in 2004 were for Kerry.

The majority of votes counted in 2004 were for Bush.

Similarly in 2000, if we went on what voters intended, Gore would have won by a fairly easy margin.

The discrepancy is about a million votes. What accounts for the million vote discrepancy is that the rate of voter spoilage is closely tied to race, and race is tied to political party. If you don't subscribe to conspiracy theories, the cause is that blacks (who vote strongly democratic) tend to live in poor areas with poor equipment that is more likely to malfunction. If you do subscribe to (mild) conspiracy theories, there is no shortage of reasons why politicians prefer voting systems that can be manipulated, and there are no shortage of examples where they have engaged that preference.

Don't look for this in the mainstream news though. At least not in this country. :-(

Perhaps they should have had Bush's people set it up for them:
  http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/04/24/gops_c yber_election_hit_squad_exposed.php/

Thanks to mandatory sentencing stupidity, the United States has the largest number of incarcerated citizens relative to it's population. I'd say that may justify the "prison camp" definition.

Here's a link, there's probably something better out there.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/12/11/incarc eration_nation.php

You can find some more fascinating videos on the Net about this and of course other topics to read. YouTube/Google has videos of Michael Badnarik discussing the subject, and www.cato.org probably has some basic primers on classical liberalism, libertarianism, and self-determination.

Yea, Michael Badnarik got my vote in 2004. If I lived in the district he's running to represent in Texas he'd get my vote again. Ron Paul would also get my vote. Actually if you go through his, Badnarik's website, he has some good stuff on the subject as well. One I like is about a speech Davy Crocket gave in the House of Representatives when they were debating a bill, "Not Yours to Give". Other good sources on classical liberalism are Thomas Paine, his Common Sense being pretty intro. Alexis de Tocqueville is another pretty good source on classical liberalism as is Adam Smith.

This time with link... It comes down to the machines. Just as poor people get the crap schools and crap hospitals, they get the crap voting machines.

You must be blissfully unaware of the past 5-6 years of administration appointees. I almost envy you. Nearly ALL appointees over any sort of regulatory watchdog, scientific fact-finding, or pork-laden government spending bureau of the government has been an industry lobbyist of some sort who is assured to make sure that said industry (which donates lots of money to the Republicans) will make out like a bandit (literally) on the taxpayer's dime or taint and all evidence that gets in the way of said industry's profits.

Read more here:
Bush Has Appointed Over 100 Lobbyists as 'Regulators'
WhiteHouseForSale.org | Contributors and Paybacks Articles
Evidence that this has been a pattern of behavior as far back as when he was governor.
Some info on two of the officials reviewing the Dubai Ports World deal
An even longer list of crony appointees

The Bush administration is one of the more shameful examples of cronyism in modern US history. The term "conflict of interest" doesn't begin to cover it. Then, when you can't find a person with experience as an industry shill, you can always go to political advocates with no experience in the field (but solid Bush support):

Michael Brown's two political appointees deputees in FEMA
A petition for Bush to make political appointments with a list of 6 good examples
The Hertiage Foundation even endorsed making political appointees over experienced civil servants in 2001! ...No really, 7 ridiculous arguments straight from the horse's mouth! (How's FEMA workin' out there, HF?)
Why, just look how many Heritage Foundation flacks are now in the administration.

Any wonder why the DHS hasn't done hardly anything useful, why FEMA had someone with no emergency relief experience installed as it's head, why scientists are abandoning NASA, the EPA, the CDC, etc. in droves, and why hundreds of IRS agents that audit capital gains and estate taxes have been downsized? It's government with the wheels taken off -- oriented explicitly to do nothing but enrich special interests by people who have publicly stated that that's all they believe the government exists to do in the first place.

What, you didn't think they meant that they'd try to STOP it when they said that, did you? Yeah, I was fooled too, but not anymore. It's time we get people back in power who believe that the government is meant to serve the people. People who believe that it's part of the solution and not part of the problem. Otherwise, as we've seen, the temptation to just exploit "the problem" is just too much.

Over seventy percent of all products sold at Wal-Mart are made in China. In 2004 it was estimated that $18 billion of WM's stock was of Chinese origin.

Check out the Frontline PBS special on the trade defecit. I don't think it's exaggerated by any means.

I don't believe we're anywhere near to running out of oil in the next 1000 years

No oil shortage???

gas prices
news article
http://www.hummer.com/

It's funny though because I've never seen the Democratics argue for a system that includes formal checks against exit polls for these apparently obvious anomalies.

Checks of voting results against exit polls are traditionally an "informal" function of the Fourth Estate. These duties are contracted out to organizations made up of trained professionals (e.g. statistician, sociologists) who specialize in compensating for extraneous variables to remove bias and assure a degree of confidence in the results. In return, the media organizations that pay for these polls gain prestige and a reputation for journalistic integrity as a function of the accuracy of the polls. An infamous counterexample is the Chicago Tribune's erroneous headline "Dewey Beats Truman" in 1948, which was based on a biased sampling methodology, due to phone polling when, in 1948, the distribution of telephones favored wealthy Dewey voters rather than poor Truman supporters. Certainly the reputation of the Tribune suffered, and they must still blush whenever the famous picture of Truman holding up their front page comes up.

Since then, the sophistication of polling has increased dramatically. A good article with reference can be found here:

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/letters_debating_ exit_polls.php

Some select quotes:

"...prominent survey researchers (e.g., Asner 1999, Cantril 1991:142), political scientists (e.g., Edwards & Wayne 1999:84), and journalists (e.g., Jurkowitz 2000) concur that they (exit polls) are highly reliable. As far back as 1987, political columnist David Broder wrote that exit polls "are the most useful analytic tool developed in my working life" (1987:253). Edwards & Wayne (1999:84) caution only that, "... the problem with exit polls lies in their accuracy (rather than inaccuracy). They give the press access to predict the outcome before the elections have been concluded."

"An exit pollster himself for more than 20 years, St. Louis University Professor of Political Science Ken Warren (2003) has never had an error greater than 2 percent, except one time--in a 1982 St. Louis primary. In that election, massive voter fraud was subsequently uncovered."

"Temple University professor of mathematics John Allen Paulos wrote in a column in the Philadelphia Inquirer that... "huge differences between the final tallies and the exit poll percentages occurred in 10 of the 11 battleground states, all of them in Bush's favor. If the people sampled in the exit polls were a random sample of voters, Freeman's standard statistical techniques show that these large discrepancies are way, way beyond the margins of error." (In regards to Mr. Baker's charge of unimpressive credentials, I note that Paulos, a prominent mathematician and author, was the winner of the 2003 American Association for the Advancement of Science award for the promotion of public understanding of science).

"Because of their reliability, exit polls are used to verify elections around the world. When exit polls deviated from the official count in Serbia and the former Soviet Republics of Belarus, Georgia, and the Ukraine; the world--led by the United States--accepted exit poll numbers over the official count, and in three of these nations, the election results were successfully overturned."

As for further sources, there is a wealth of links in other posts under this topic. I have been though and read the majority of these links for myself, and I stand by my statements based on the extensive research that has been done. My real research topic for tonight was supposed to be "Bubble-like visualization of UWB propagation in immersive environments", so you will forgive me if I invite you to get in touch with your own "Inner Google Monkey", if you really want to find out the truth.

Kenneth Starr's successor, Robert Ray, released a report in September of 2000 that stated "This office determined that the evidence was insufficient to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that either President or Mrs. Clinton knowingly participated in any criminal conduct." Ray's report effectively ended the Whitewater investigation.

I think the Libertarians would be more successful if they limited their scope to human freedom, as opposed to corporate freedom. I don't vote for them because I don't believe in a free market. Just like the government needs strict limitations on its size and power, I think corporations do too.

I do believe in free markets and the right of each person to benefit from their labor. But corportations don't make the free market, they can be a part of it but they are not the free market. It's said corporations only purpose is to maximize profits for the shareholders however originally the charters for corporations specifically stipulated that they had to serve the common good. However the corporate aristocracy has been pretty successful at buying off governments and public officals, politicans. As Thomas Jefferson said in 1814, "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." Another Thomas, Thomas Paine writer of the book "Common Sense" called corporations evil. In "The Wealth of Nations" Adam Smith father of capitalism, says "In ancient times, too, it was usual to attempt to regulate the profits of merchants and other dealers, by regulating the price of provisions and ether goods. The assize of bread is, so far as I know, the only remnant of this ancient usage. Where there is an exclusive corporation, it may, perhaps, be proper to regulate the price of the first necessary of life; but, where there is none, the competition will regulate it much better than any assize."

Fact is is early supporters including the father of freemarket capitalism and libertarians were wary of corporations and believed they needed to be help accountable and regulated lest they become what they have, wielding real political power, and early laws held to this. Unfortuantely, just as any other economic system suffers from it, capitalism also suffers from greed.

Libertarians, just as other freemarketers, also want government to stop subsidizing businesses. Here's what one libertarian writes on the Libertarian Party website:

"But while individual welfare needs to be gradually phased out, two of the three types of corporate welfare need to be eliminated immediately."

The first is the government payout. Writing huge checks to corporations like McDonald's or ADM has got to end now.

The second is tax breaks: Corporations rarely get breaks based on merit or need. The corporations that get the biggest breaks are those that lobby the best. Yes, I know the Libertarian Party wants to get rid of the IRS, but we have to be realistic. That will never happen until we have a majority in power. Therefore, equality must come before elimination.

The third kind of corporate welfare is the kind I have been talking about in this essay. Since taxpayers are being forced to supplement the income of the minimum wage workers, we are picking up a part of the labor expense paid by big corporations like McDonald's and Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, this type of corporate welfare will be a necessity for some time to come.

Then there's stuff like the recent USSC ruling in the Kelo v. City of New London eminent domain case. As with the previous medical marijuana and other rulings that limit or interfer in rights, this ruling has been condemned by libertarians, and should be by freemarketers too.

To say that libertarians care more about corporations that individuals is either a mjor distortion or an out right lie about libertarians.

Then you're in favor of adding a "consumption" tax to account for the real cost of products. Add on a tax per pound for garbage, but allow free drop off of recyclables. Add on extra gas taxes. Add on disposal taxes on sale of anything that poses specific problems (e.g. CRTs).

Yeap! I'm very much in favor of a consumption tax (sales tax on nonessential items) and user fees. And pollution taxes. Get rid of income taxes!!! Well except maybe for those who make 100, 1000, or maybe 10,000 tyme what the lowest paid fulltime worker in a business makes. But at least in the USA if government were to follow the limits put on it by the USA Constitution then there wouldn't be this perceived need for high taxes.

The free market won't do it, but those are real costs that a "rational" person would pay (unless it is voluntary, thus allowing freeloaders).

A true free market would do it, however there isn't a true free market. What exists today is the corporate aristocracy Thomas Jefferson warned of and which Adam Smith and Thomas Paine would of railed against.

Oh, and congratulations to the parent poster for being an actual conservative, rather than the current leading brand of NeoCon. You're a rarity these days. I never thought I'd see the day when Reagan looked like a better alternative to the current primate occupying the Oval.

If you mean by conservative and Reagan as a smaller and limited government then there's two problems. First it wasn't conservatives who stood for small and limited government, in the 1700s it was liberals (classical liberals for some) that wanted this. Three big examples of this Liberalism are Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith or Adam Smith (Institute) , and Thomas Paine (Network) , or TomPaine.common Sense .

Secondly Reagan didn't reduce the overall size of government, under him government bloomed. I don't recall most of it but "Liberty" magazine had an article in one issue with the numbers in dollars on how big some parts of government got and it wasn't just the military that did. The parts I recall are the "War on Drugs" and education but there were others as well.

Conservativism at one point in time stood for smaller government, it wasn't until the 80s during the Reagan administration did the definition change. (the Neoconservatism era)

Actually it was liberals who stood for a small and limited government, as did the two Thomases, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine(or TomPaine.common sense). To get a good idea of what liberals stood for read Thomas Paine's "Common Sense", "Rights Of Man" or other books of his.

Dear Patriots:

Remember, what I told you back in November 2004:

Faith, Family, and Values won't defend the world's most dangerous and inarticulate "leader" from high crimes and felonies

Sincerely,
Kilgore Trout

Iraq: When Was The Die Cast?
John Prados
May 03, 2005

John Prados is a senior fellow with the National Security Archive in Washington, DC. He is author of Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War (The New Press).

Coming just days after the release of the original secret legal advice given to the British government on the lack of foundation in international law for invading Iraq, a fresh leak out of London now reveals with stunning clarity that the goal of overthrowing Saddam Hussein was set at least a year in advance.

Emerging in the final days before the UK's parliamentary election, a memo leaked to the London Sunday Times reveals that Bush decided to go to war by April of 2002, and that by July of that same year it was clear that the United States would fabricate the intelligence necessary to justify the war.

The Bush administration's pious rhetoric about strengthening the United Nations was strictly for public consumption. Its talk about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction--as Lord Goldsmith's legal opinion demonstrates--was crucial because the only avenue offering a fig leaf of legal justification for war was to claim to be enforcing U.N. disarmament resolutions. And President Bush's repeated assertions that no decision had been made about attacking Iraq were plainly false.

Decision Made: November 2001-April 2002

Military planning for Iraq actually began in November 2001, while the campaign in Afghanistan absorbed the public's attention. In his memoirs, American field commander General Tommy Franks tells us that on December 4, in his very first briefing of the existing U.S. contingency plan for Iraq, Franks told defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld that, "I am assuming the principle objective will be to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein." Rumsfeld replied that the president would make the ultimate decision but that, "That is my assumption too." After several weeks of fleshing out the preliminary concept, General Franks presented it to George W. Bush at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas, on December 28. At that meeting Franks told the group that regime change and WMD removal were the working assumptions behind his concept, with "a murmur of assent" being the reaction of those at the table or watching the teleconference. At the end of the presentation, Bush expressed confidence that diplomacy and international pressure would make military action unnecessary.

Neither in his various statements to the media nor in interviews--including those with Bob Woodward--has Bush ever recounted his evolving thinking or detailed his actions. However, reports show that at the same time of Frank's planning--around the end of 2001--the president signed a directive authorizing the CIA to act against Saddam. Bush subsequently targeted Iraq as a member of his invented "Axis of Evil" in the State of the Union address in late January 2002. When asked on February 6, 2002, about the administration's desire for regime change in Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell replied, "We are looking at a variety of options that would bring that about." This was the day before General Franks presented a more detailed war plan to Bush and the National Security Council at the White House. Bush specifically told the press on February 12, regarding his options on Iraq, "I'll keep them close to my vest."

The following month Vice President Richard Cheney made an extensive tour of European and Middle Eastern nations which failed to enlist much support for action against Iraq. This made the attitude of the British a vital question for Bush. Prime Minister Tony Blair visited the United Stat

Are you a Randian? How about an Objectivist? I started to read one of her books, is it "Atlas Shrugged" with the architect? But I didn't finish it, I may later. My sister used to be a Randian, read and loved almost all of her books, but them she found out about Objectivism and that turn her off as she's Christian. As for myself the books I read and loved were Adam Sith's "On Wealth of Nations" and Thomas Paine's or TomPaine.com, "Common Sense" and others in a collection of his. A new one I loved is "Natural Capitalism.

Umh, not at all on both counts (besides, wave-power is not supposed to replace 100% of energy supply.. it's supposed to go with other measures such as wind, solar (which gets more efficient all the time, esp. thanks to nano-tech), geothermal.. higher efficiency buildings, cars, industries, etc).

I suggest you get informed on the subject.. Starting with this.

I suggest you read this on nuclea power. You might change your tune.

And btw, we have lots of green technologies available now, it's just that it's way too lucrative for the oil/nuclear/etc industry (especially since they are so heavily subsidized) to let go.. And so they spend massive amount of cash to convince the public that they are indispensable.

Is when nuclear energy is going to be put back on the agenda. I mean compared to coal it is squeaky clean!

Yes, but compared to coal everything looks clean.

Here's a nice read about nuclear energy.

Replacing a few coal plants with nuclear could be a way to make a change for the better fast, but nuclear shouldn't be seen a panacea and it should too be replaced with truly clean sources of energy as fast as possible.

The problems with nuclear power are pretty well outlined here, I think. Give it a read, it fills some of the holes left in the the recend Wired article that most here have probably seen.

Nuclear has many advantages, but we must not turn a blind eye to its shortcomings.

Wow that is really stretching to tie thoses two together.

Um, considering that the Social Security surplus is currently funding 20% of the general deficit - no, it isn't.

When the Social Security trust fund runs out, the US government will need to borrow money until the baby boomers die off. That demographic lump will go away, and it's actually possible the problem will never happen.

When the Social Security trust fund runs out of money, the government borrows to pay for the trustees. The Social Security surplus now - caused by Greenspan and Reagan doubling payroll taxes in the 80s - is actually pre-paying for this borrowing.

What theoretically should be happening is the US government paying down the deficit, and preparing to borrow when the trust fund runs out. Given that Bush reversed Clinton's surplus and is spending money like a drunken sailor, he wants to reneg on those promises and promise the moon. His plan won't kick in until 2009, when he's safely gone.

You did know that social security is taking in more than it's paying out now, right? And those funds go straight into the general pool?

So, let's summarize from your perspective: current budget deficits that are weakening the dollar and appear to be structural: OK. Budget defecits that won't kick in for 40 or 50 years because they've been prepaid for? Not only much worse, but totally different!

If the payroll tax hike in the 80s is meaningless - the way Bush says it is - then US govenment bonds are worthless. Hello, major economic meltdown. (By the way, most of Bush's money is in US government bonds. I don't think he really feels they are worthless.)

But then I am not a hate filled person who considers every corrected mistake a lie

I hate stupidity. Would you please show me where Bush admitted that Social Security won't be bankrupt in 2042, or that US government bonds aren't worthless? By the way, the non-partisan CBO says that Social Security won't exhaust its trust funds until 2052. Wow, ten years of solvency right there!

Every year or two, the date of social security meltdown gets pushed back another year. If this happens often enough, problem solved.

Can you show me where Bush admitted that voluntary pollution controls and abstinence-only education don't work. Oh! How about all those times he apologized for taking credit for bills that he had opposed, or even vetoed? (Bush even opposed the Iraqi vote for over a year - imagine what would have happened if the vote were last May, like Sistanti originally wanted?)

You could also show the cite where Bush admitted that going into Iraq without a post-war plan was a mistake.

I know, I know - I'm full of hate for clinging to reality.

You know - or you probably don't - 10 years ago, the crisis was scheduled to happen sooner than 2018 and 2042. Do you know why this is? I bet not.

Like the chump you are, you repeat your 2% talking point. The Social Security trustees use an amazingly pessimistic forecast, while the private account numbers are done with an optimistic one.

This is repeatedly and deliberately using misleading numbers to create a phony 'crisis', then proposing a "solution" that doesn't address the problem. If you don't think this is lying, today's Republican party is the right party for you.

Since you seem to not want to look any further than your brow, here is more information on Bush going AWOL.

Or, look here.

Or, here.

``It seemed an annoyance at first, but later on we realized it is a great source of revenue, so why on earth would we change anything about it.''

• First, they save themselves a shipload of money in preventing the problems.
• Second, they are the guys that will clean up the mess afterwards, for proper rewarding of course.
• They will even be called heroes and nobody will ever disagree with their methods.

We have to find a way of unmasking these criminals. They do have a name, the ``neo-conservatives.''

The theory is that both provisional and spoiled ballots are overwhelmingly for Kerry. You can read more about the precise numbers in this article by Greg Palast, the BBC reporter who uncovered the disenfranchisement in Florida. The recount will test whether his theory is true.

Provisional ballots are cast when there is some doubt over whether a voter is legally allowed to vote. In Ohio, the GOP hired people to "challenge" likely Kerry (ie. black) voters, which probably resulted in some being unable to vote at all and others being given provisional ballots. These are currently being counted, and (like absentee ballots) were excluded from the totals given on election night.

Spoiled ballots tend to be much more common in poorer areas, because these use older, less reliable voting and counting machines. (I mean less reliable compared to newer machines with a paper trail, not the black boxes.) These are what Cobb and Badnarik are aiming to count. Unlike Florida, Ohio has clear rules on hanging chads, etc., so a count of spoiled ballots shouldn't result in legal challenges.

This isn't about Diebold or black box voting: Nearly all the voting machines in Ohio do keep a voter-verifiable paper trail (which is why a recount is possible), and none of them are made by Diebold.

Bush Hijacked the election and we have to live with the consequence for Four More Years because nobody is going to anything to fight it. What else is there to say...?
The most infamous one so far is Kerry Won. I live in the state of flordia and i know how floridians think. This state is democrat period. The polls on the last week even showed it. And so did the Exit Polling. And please save me the Liberal Whining as the former site is non-partisan, and of course the liberals will show that this election was robbed again because they would be the only ones who have interest to prove it!

Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.

So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.

---Story here

-FL

stolenelection2004.com
votergate.tv
Outrage in Ohio
Was the Ohio Election Honest and Fair?
Kerry Won
Shoplifting the Presidency?
Ultimate Felony Against Democracy

Surprising Pattern of Florida's Election Results
votes for party president versus voters registered
exit_poll(gif)
Florida2004chart

openvotingconsortium.org
verifiedvoting.org/eirs
electionprotection2004.org
The Rise of Open-Source Politics
cpsr.net

Presume once congress & the administration are aware to the purported problems they'll respond rapidly with "Help America Vote Act - II".

stolenelection2004.com
votergate.tv
Outrage in Ohio Was the Ohio Election Honest and Fair?
Kerry Won
Shoplifting the Presidency?
Ultimate Felony Against Democracy

Surprising Pattern of Florida's Election Results
votes for party president versus voters registered
exit_poll(gif)
Florida2004chart

openvotingconsortium.org
verifiedvoting.org/eirs
electionprotection2004.org
The Rise of Open-Source Politics
http://www.cpsr.net

Presume once congress & the administration are aware to the purported problems they respond rapidly with "Help America Vote Act - II".

I cannot totally agree. I know a LOT of guys who, to this day are very pro-Bush, very pro-war and who are video game addicts and whose behavior is clearly influenced by that kind of thinking; it infects their normal day to day dialogue, it affects what they think about, and it affects the decisions they make in life. Numerous of them have also either served or are currently serving in the military. I know quite a spread of people and this is not, I think, a localized phenomenon.

Whether video games came before or after the process of their world view is not the point. That such people are going to exist regardless of media is not the point. --The point is that such media is the lubricant which greases the machine of society, and social movements build a sort of gravity which can pull others along on behavioral trajectories which they would not necessarily have chosen otherwise. As we have seen, and what the recent election demonstrates, if you can get enough people following a certain trajectory, then the whole system will follow suit and become committed.

Sure, there are going to be people like you who are able to keep a firmer grasp on their own psyches. Heck, I played a lot of C&C-type games when I was younger. But, as we have seen, one only needs to lull about half a population into following an emperor in order to retain a lock on power.

If any single cause was too successful, spotlights would shine. Cumulative effects are where it's at.

-FL

According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer...
http://www.cleveland.com/election/plain dealer/inde x.ssf?/base/news/109956457262001.xml

Kerry won

The deeper you dig the more dirt piles up.

Mandate
this
lying
cheating
sinners.

don't be so sure

I can't find the article that I referenced in my previous post (I read it a couple of months ago), but I was able to find this story on the same subject and the underlying causes:

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/4201

The root of the problem boils down to the vast amount of influence that large industries and companies have in affecting legislation. President Bush in particular has embraced the lobbyists with open arms, in many cases appointent the lobbyists themselves in his administration!

This deals a major blow to public rights. The funding is done by OUR money, but the rights get turned over to companies who charge US outrageous prices for OUR technology.

Perhaps, if your representatives have to take any notice of their electorate. But:

"It was bad enough that in 2001 both Republicans and Democrats elevated incumbent protection in redistricting to new levels. In California, for example, incumbent U.S. House Democrats paid $20,000 apiece to a redistricting consultant"the brother of an incumbent"to have "designer districts" drawn for them. Republicans went along with this cozy arrangement in exchange for their own safe seats. The result was an unbroken parade of landslide wins, with no challenger to an incumbent winning even 40 percent of the vote. "

I say don't bother setting them up.

When you try to counter sue for libel/slander/whatever, they'll just say to the court 'Entrapment', the case will be dismissed (or tied up on appeal 'forever minus a day'), and that will be that.

Remember kids: In a government corrupted by corporate interests, Money Talks.

The best way to fight back is to boycott the ??AA's goods and services. 'Speak' to them in the only language they understand: Money Talks.

"We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end.
It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. . . .
It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes
me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war,
corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places
will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong
its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth
is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety
of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.
God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."

Excellent article on Wal-Mart!

I went to tompaine.com, which had originally published it, and found more articles by the same author. Back to Basics was a very thoughtful look at the outsourcing debate.

I haven't seen anyone credible suggest that we turn back the clock. What I've seen, primarily, is suggestions that we find ways to reduce our impact on our environment. The "global warming skeptics" tend to use language similar to yours, about simple black-vs.-white worldviews... and then go on to paint everyone arguing for restrictions, changes or even just more careful planning as anti-technology neanderthals. This is just as much of an excluded middle fallacy as what the skeptics are accusing the scientists of. (And please notice how frequently we're asked to accept that reports produced by environmental NGOs are tainted because they have an "agenda," but reports produced by industry groups with an unquestionable interest in the specific outcome they always find are good science.)

According to the EPA (which you'll recall is routinely attacked by the "alarmist environmentalists" for being far too conservative), "There is certainty that human activities are rapidly adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, and that these gases tend to warm our planet"; the IGCC concluded in 2001 that the observed warming trend is "unlikely to be natural in origin." Slashdottians keep fighting a battle which is already over. There are many legitimate questions as to how much we are contributing to the warming trend, but the question of whether human activity is contributing is a done deal. You're right -- there's no point in "wasting energy trying to decide who's to blame," but it does not follow that there is no point in moderating our contributions to that warming trend whether or not we are a primary cause (or even a major contributor).

The other point that tends to get lost on Slashdot discussions of this topic is that technologists and scientists are providing solutions to these problems, not merely bemoaning them. It is sadly ironic that those promoting new developments in renewable energy, low-impact building techniques and resource conservation practices are, apparently, being so successfully painted as the luddites. This is not about "the evils of technology," this is about keeping up with it.

If you want us to "prepare for the worst and try our best to ride out the storm," then you should be in agreement with most of those tree-huggin' Nobel Prize winners and "green capitalists" like Amory Lovins. What's blocking us from those preparations aren't the environmentalists and climatologists -- it's the people who have a vested interest in current, higher-pollution methods and products.

And it doesn't have to be that way. BP Energy's power plants have actually been lower than what the supposedly industry-destroying Kyoto Protocol would have required for over two years now, and they did at no net cost to the company.

[BP CEO] Browne calls the net economic benefit "a positive surprise -- because it begins to answer the fears expressed by those who believed that the costs of taking precautionary action would be huge and unsustainable." In the United States, these false fears have been fed to the public by the coal industry lobby and by many electric power and oil companies. They back their claims by using the work of economists whose climate policy models assume that only a large energy tax -- the "magic bullet" that Browne decries -- will cut emissions. Not surprisingly, these abstract models project high costs, but they are diametrically opposed to BP's empirical evidence of what works and how much it will cost.

Look. Could human-affected global warming be a repeat of the Y2K Bug scare, in which, after nothing happened, people derided all the Chicken Littles for believing in impending doom? I certainly hope so! The thing is, we'll never be able to "prove" whether the reason nothing serious happened is because people listened to those Chicken Littles and scrambled like hell to fix problems that could be identified and addressed.

The effect of the "missing" labor market on the unemployment rate -- The unusually prolonged loss of jobs has caused an unprecedented number of people to refrain from actively looking for work, and therefore to be excluded from the unemployment measurement. Had the labor force grown more in line with the population--as it has in past labor slumps--another 2.3 million people would have been in the labor force in October 2003. This "missing" labor force is significant because the unemployment rate would have been 7.4 percent had the 2.3 million "missing" workers been considered as unemployed.2 The 7.4 percent unemployment figure provides a better measure of current slack in the labor market than the actual unemployment rate of 6.0 percent. The 1.4 percentage-point difference reflects the people pushed to the sidelines of the labor market who can be expected to seek work again once job prospects improve. As a result, the official unemployment rate should not be expected to fall very much when the employment picture actually begins to improve.

Nope, it isn't just you. The problem is not enough Americans are paying attention and noticed(or maybe just don't care... got problems of their own to deal with)

Go checkout Regan's Legacy. It does a decent job of quickly explaining when&why things started heading down the crapper.

In a bizarre twist, the Court's initial grant of "personhood" to corporations, such that they enjoy constitutional protections at all, is attributed to an 1886 Supreme Court decision that refused to address the issue. In published versions of the ruling, a court reporter inaccurately summed up the case as deciding that corporation were "persons" entitled to protection by the Equal Protection Clause, when in fact the Court explicitly avoided doing just that. Yet for some reason, the Supreme Court has adopted that as the meaning of the case.

Since that time, the Supreme Court has extended some constitutional protections to corporations, and denied others. For example, corporations enjoy due process protection and some limited free speech, but are not protected by the Fifth Amendment's right to guard against self-incrimination, by the "privileges and immunities" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, nor by the Fourth Amendment's right to privacy. The Court has made these determinations on an ad hoc basis, with little consistency as to why and when a corporation enjoys constitutional protection.

You're right, we don't know what the net effect is, but I'll note you get a double boost in the summer. When you capture photons at the window and generate electricity from them, not only do you get the power, you're also reducing the heat entering the building.

Same idea as a green rooftop.

Hmm... considering that windows with greater surface area exposed to the sun would be better for generating more electricity, I wonder if we'll see more buildings like this one.

1. scans of actual military records obtained from FOIA
2. accompanying analysis
3. another analysis

As expected, the case for the impeachmentment of the Cheney-Rumsfeld regime grows as we learn more about the forged case for war

Thanks in advance,
W00t

Finally, someone with enough courage to state
that George W. Bush Is A Liar

Rejoice, for impeachment is near!!!!

Cheers,
W00t

Challenge the trustworthiness
of the President of the United States of America

Very truly yours,
A Patriot

Greetings, patriots:

Read more about the
Moron-In-Command's military service record
here

Cheers,
W00t

Amusing, but on a more serious note, didn't anyone find the following just the least bit suspicious?

"Benson said the company's motor design is thought to be the largest of its type in the world. It uses clean and inexpensive propellants, namely Nitrous Oxide (Laughing Gas) and HTPB (tire rubber)."

Burning rubber is -incredibly- toxic. Note the pictures of the rocket firing? Lots of yellow flame(meaning low-temperature, incomplete combustion- watch the shuttle some time, you -can't- really see the flame out of the liquid fuel motors, it's so damn hot) and TONS of thick, thick black smoke?

I tried googling around, and found out that HTPB stands for "hydroxy terminated polybutadiene"- it's commonly used as a binder in normal solid rocket motors, and...oddly enough, it seems Saddam liked HTPB too. Okay, so I'm getting the sense that Space.com grossly oversimplified HTPB as "tire rubber."

The only thing I could find on the "how clean is it?" question was a page detailing various solid rocket fuels. Interesting to note that HTPB is NOT listed under the section titled "fuels that meet clean air requirements", but then again, the whole nitrous bit isn't mentioned either. I'm no rocket scientist :-), so maybe the nitrous oxide gets things goin' enough that everything burns cleanly; it is, afterall, a pretty sweet oxidizer.

I'd personally like to know more about this, as I think the space shuttle needs to be put through some emissions testing. Lots of states require on-dyno testing; imagine dyno-testing that puppy. Maybe NASA can just slip the guy two twenties(it is the space shuttle after all, one twenty probably wouldn't be enough) and get the sticker...