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... Badnarik, Cobb, and Nader are gathering funding for a recount ...

Nader is to cut a $2,000 check to the NH authorities. While Cobb and Badnarik have enough to pay for the Ohio recount.

Please. She's either a liar or incompetent, and probably both. You don't seem to be aware that she is currently position the National Security Advisor -- i.e., the person who should have known about 9/11 before it happened. From the Washington Post:

Just weeks ago, Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, made a trip to the Middle East that was widely seen as advancing the peace process. There was speculation that she would be a likely choice for secretary of state, and hopes among Republicans that she could become governor of California and even, someday, president.

But she has since become enmeshed in the controversy over the administration's use of intelligence about Iraq's weapons in the run-up to war. She has been made to appear out of the loop by colleagues' claims that she did not read or recall vital pieces of intelligence. And she has made statements about U.S. intelligence on Iraq that have been contradicted by facts that later emerged.

The remarks by Rice and her associates raise two uncomfortable possibilities for the national security adviser. Either she missed or overlooked numerous warnings from intelligence agencies seeking to put caveats on claims about Iraq's nuclear weapons program, or she made public claims that she knew to be false.

And nobody rewards failure like Bush, so Secretary of State it is.

This was news last year. More than a year ago he said he would resign after one term. article.

According to a story in the Washington Post, the scale of the problem is much larger than "20 cases" might sound like. Each of these cases may involve tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of doses of counterfeit drugs, many of which are resold back to the major pharma companies, so your local drug store can't tell that they came from a shady middleman rather than directly from Merck's factories.

Phony medicines have surfaced in pharmacies from Florida to Hawaii, including tens of thousands of doses discovered in warehouses of the Big Three wholesalers.

Last summer, nearly 200,000 tablets of Lipitor, the world's best-selling cholesterol-lowering medication, was found to be counterfeit and recalled by a small Missouri wholesaler. Some of the pills had already reached Rite Aid and CVS pharmacies.

It can be harder to become licensed as a beautician than as a pharmaceutical distributor. With a $700 permit fee and a $200 bond, a pair of Florida manicurists got a license to sell intravenous drugs. An auto body shop owner in Miami got a license to sell drugs in Maryland. Nevada awarded a license to a 23-year-old former restaurant hostess to operate an Internet pharmacy that specialized in narcotics.

Florida gave licenses to at least a half-dozen felons, records show. Two states -- Georgia and Tennessee -- gave a wholesaler license to James R. Suozzo of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a convicted cocaine user with a long history of heroin abuse, investigative records show. Suozzo's background surfaced when he was arrested in February on suspicion of attempting to sell adulterated Procrit, Epogen and Neupogen to another small wholesaler.

New York has the best water in of any city in the entire world

uhmmm... WRONG ! or did I miss the joke?

Many portions of Isam feel that any other religion is inferior and almost sinful, and thus many hate Jews, Christians, etc.

Uh, huh. That would be why the Quran refers to Jews, Christians and Muslims as all "children of the book."

For instance, in the terrorst handbook thing the British found on a raid, there were discussions on why it is ok to torture. The basic idea was that Muslums are allowed to torture others because they are Gods children, while others are not allowed to.

Let me clue you into something - the muslim extremists are about as Islamic as the KKK are Christian. Taking what they say as representative of the religion is a great way to delude yourself, and justify all kinds of terrible things.

But, let's take the response one step further, you say that modern "Christian" societies have progressed beyond such barbaric reasoning? That would explain this memo from the current administration rationalizing torture in the "war on terror."

So, just who now are we suppossed to be rooting for?

Here is a very informative article about this industry:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A216 5-2004Oct27.html

Last week I talked with the CTO Tom Hammer about a business partnership. This company will be bankrupt in 24 months.

Their decision to go with Windows CE was based on cost. The WinCE license is only $3 per box. IMHO their choice of WinCE shows a lack of imagination and a lack of vision. They probably did it because they wanted the partnership with Microsoft. But they also intend to generate a lot of their own content. With this the case they could go with the new DivX VOD codec and be completely independent from MS.

Microsoft is not have the best reputation in Hollywood. They have had a LOT of resistance from the content providers because Hollywood is scared Bill Gates will come down to Hollywood and own them.

The CTO said if they were inclined to change the platform they would move to a dedicated Mpeg4 decoder and bypass the expensive CPU. When I aksed about the ability to change the encoding algorythm in the future his response was that in the consumer industry people only keep these devices for 3 years (my last cable box was older than 3 years - STB is not a consumer product). The guy sounded like he knew NOTHING about the embedded TV box market and the technology out there already.

According to Hammer right now they are only paying around $180 for the hardware. So in their business model they are trying to make money off the hardware AND the service.

IMHO for this kind of business model to really take off they need to loan out the boxes like the cable companies do.

Even more importantly, they have to figure out some way to get the broadband providers (cable companies or the ADSL companies) to bundle their product with their distribution. Since they are competing with the cable companies the prospect of partnering with them is dim, so they are left with one sector to partner with, ADSL companies. If their box provided some other value to the consumer (like games, router, hub, PVR) maybe some ADSL customers would opt in and rent it, but with their content right now there is little compelling reason to get this box. Even more compelling reason to get rid of it if the user doesn't like the service. It's not an integral part of their home network like it would be if it had a router built into the device.

After talking with the Hammer my only thoughts were "How arrogant this guy is!" If you look at the rest of the team on their website you will see that they are really not that top notch. The VC's that invested in this company are going to get burned big time!

Of course, when they're giving the stats in relative percentages, the numbers don't tell the whole story. Yet people were quick to make a judgment call before working out all of the numbers.

With that said, I would have liked to see an even higher turnout. I've read that the national turnout was roughly 60% according to this article.

But part of that was because Wisconsin had high voter turnout (see here), which was 72% statewide and 80% in Dane County (where Madison is). I guess I should blame myself since the campaigns really focused on the swing states... I'm sure the youth turnout in the non-swing states wasn't nearly as high.

This article says the same thing as this post, except it noted towards the end that most of the youth voters are in or have attended college. The non-college youth are the people that I'd like to see vote.

it will cost you a cookie but Webb's Filter is good at rounding up media reactions:
In her usual thorough fashion Cynthia Webb of the Washington Post has summarized the punditry concerning the impact Microsoft's pending search service will have on Google's business . Most of the analysis says MS has a weak product and miles to go to overtake Google...but thats the position they were in vs Netscape once upon a time. The /. story on Mozilla.org pondering addition of search tools to its arsenal should be considered in light of [and sheds a different light on ] development of Microsoft's plans.

FWIW, the last count I was able to find listed:
Ralph Nader: 406,937
Michael Badnarik: 384,171

Updated 11/11/04 2:09 AM ET

Source: Washington Post

2004.11.09: Will MS entry into web search engines hurt Google?
In her usual thorough fashion Cynthia Webb of the Washington Post has summarized the punditry concerning the impact Microsoft's pending search service will have on Google's business . The MS announcement of the service is expected tomorrow. Most of the analysis says MS has a weak product and miles to go to overtake Google...but thats the position they were in vs Netscape once upon a time. The /. story on Mozilla.org pondering addition of search tools to its arsenal should be considered in light of [and sheds a different light on ] development of Microsoft's plans.

Yesterday, Environmentalists claim that over the last 30 years, the polar ice caps have 'lost' 8% of their volume. Oh the HUMANITY!! This report is everywhere you go, and being covered by everyone. At the same time, everyone is ignoring 3 year-old report researched by a Canadian scientist (not environmentalist) debunking the wild-eyed doom-and-gloom rhetoric saying that the ice isn't melting, it is shifting, like slush would.

I remain skeptical.

---
You liberals know you are wrong...get over it

SEATTLE -- National Guard Spec. Ryan Anderson, 27, was sentenced to life in prison after his conviction on charges he tried to aid al Qaeda by detailing ways to destroy U.S. weapons and kill soldiers to undercover agents, the Army said. Anderson, a convert to Islam, was convicted of passing on diagrams of tanks and their vulnerabilities to undercover agents posing as al Qaeda operatives.

# Terrorist cells across America have been broken up, in cities including Buffalo, Seattle, Tampa and Portland (Oregon);

# 368 individuals have been criminally charged in the United States in terrorism investigations;

# Already, 194 individuals have been convicted or have pled guilty in the United States, including shoe-bomber Richard Reid and "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh; and

# Over 515 individuals linked to the September 11th investigation have been removed from the United States.

One of the tapes, found in Madrid, showed possible al-Qaida European operatives casing Las Vegas casinos in 1997 and engaging in casual conversation that included a possible reference to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The tape, which included footage of the MGM Grand, Excalibur and New York-New York casinos, was sent to al-Qaida's leadership to help in the selection of targets, documents obtained by the AP indicated.

Another video, seized from the apartment of a Detroit terror cell, was used as evidence in the first major terrorism trial following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It shows footage of the same three casinos and Disneyland. Prosecutors presented the footage to jurors as terrorists' surveillance of targets they wanted to raze.

Prosecutors won two terror conspiracy convictions in the case, which included evidence that one defendant referred to Las Vegas as the "city of Satan" and spoke about Islamic extremist "brothers" destroying it.

SEATTLE -- National Guard Spec. Ryan Anderson, 27, was sentenced to life in prison after his conviction on charges he tried to aid al Qaeda by detailing ways to destroy U.S. weapons and kill soldiers to undercover agents, the Army said. Anderson, a convert to Islam, was convicted of passing on diagrams of tanks and their vulnerabilities to undercover agents posing as al Qaeda operatives.

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

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

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

British Prime Minister Tony Blair puts the remains in mass graves at 400,000 so far."

Ok. And Saddam had been in power for how long? Two years?

Furthermore, I would expect the majority of those executions happened during the war with Iran [1] and in the aftermath of the Kuwait invasion [2].

All things considered, I'm would be very surprised if the Iraqi people considered the US to be their liberators and champions of freedom.

[1] When Saddam & Rumsfeld were chums
[2] When the US called the Iraqi people to rebel, and then promptly abandoned them to Saddam's mercy, or lack thereof.

Use Firefox + BugMeNot to get to the WashingtonPost article.

Oh, and grow up.

This should work without any registration:

Some Shoppers Find Fewer Happy Returns

p

Heres the story:
get a userid and password:

Lastone i tried that worked was:
Userid: sad@day.com
Password: sadday

Also, I would recon that more innocents have been killed by their own people (i.e. suicide bombers) than have been killed by the US military.

You'd reckon, but you'd be wrong.

Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real..."

We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.

No, that's real. See this article. There are open statements from Republican congressmen about this.

There's been an ongoing Republican effort, starting about ten years ago, to divert donations away from Democrats. Lobbyists used to donate roughly equal amounts to both parties, but that's no longer the case. It's part of Karl Rove's strategy for defunding the Democrats.

Part of this is that Washington lobbyists are now expected to be Republicans, and to assist in Repubican fund-raising.

My favorite quote is "Look at the Canadian Dollar, it's worth almost 80 cents. 4 years ago it was worth 65 cents. Since Canada is our largest trading partner, and we're big importers of Canadian raw materials, this is killing us. You'd think Bush is a Canadian." (It's now worth about 82 cents, thanks to his election win, just look at the huge increase when it became clear he'd won.)

My favorite quote is "Look at the Canadian Dollar, it's worth almost 80 cents. 4 years ago it was worth 65 cents. Since Canada is our largest trading partner, and we're big importers of Canadian raw materials, this is killing us. You'd think Bush is a Canadian." (It's now worth about 82 cents, thanks to his election win, just look at the huge increase when it became clear he'd won.)

Well, the reason it ended up there was that it was one of the first things to pop on a google search for adult stem cell research. How about Wired.com, the Washington Post?

Now, do you have any reasons for opposing fetal stem-cell research?

I see it as unethical to create human life with the purpose of destroying it, particularly when an alternative exists (they even suggest that adult stem cell research has proven more effective, although I haven't really taken the time to fully explore this claim).

Considering that news reports are saying that "moral values" were the deciding factor in the Presidential Election:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A222 21-2004Nov3.html

It might bear considering why that is.

Economic policy between the Democrats and Republicans is largely the same. Sure, Kerry wanted to change a few tax code loopholes, but it wasn't as if he wanted to repeal NAFTA ( which was signed by Clinton, FYI ).

Military / Foriegn policy is about the same between the two parties as well. Kerry voted for the Iraq war, and would not have immediately pulled troops if he would have won.

That leaves social issues to define the diferences between the two parties. On that front, the Republicans have been going to great lengths to court religious / social conservatives:

http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=o id:86467

Looks like it worked.

It's not that a majority of people don't understand the Democratic message, it's that they disagree with it at least on the high profile social issues.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/03/election .main/index.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A195 10-2004Nov2.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/03/politics/campaig n/04electcnd.html?ei=5094&en=ba992171a995deaf&hp=& ex=1099544400&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage?hp&adxnnlx =1099500521-xBRX+5Tp7qQqEOM/W4qi0w
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vot e2004/president.htm

1. Republican talking point.
2. Classic democrat/republican divide. Both parties' platforms are just to the left and right of center.
3. His record speaks for itself with regards to the environment. Energy independence is not feasible, though there are ways to speed up the process. Drilling Alaska would give us oil for 4 years at current consumption - compared to a lifetime of untainted beauty.
4. Listen to AM radio much?
5. Kerry's the bronze and silver star winner - not a "champagne unit" veteran.

That list you quote is "from a list of guests" and is NOT a complete list.It is from the Washington Post and another Post article says "President Bush, insisting that Arafat take more decisive action to rein in Palestinian militants, has refused to invite him to the White House, where Arafat was a frequent guest during the Clinton administration."

From American Spectator:"Bill Clinton, for example, invited a terrorist to the White House who had conspired in the deaths of Americans, even letting him sleep and sate himself at taxpayer expense as an honored guest for weeks at a time. His name was Yasser Arafat, the Kato Kaelin of the Clinton years, bunking so frequently at the White House the press described him as a "constant guest." One of Arafat's terrorists, marveling at his White House residency, was able to brag to the press, "Arafat was a guest at the White House more often than Netanyahu was."

What a stunning example of the slashdot mod system that your partial list is 'insightful'...

That's very interesting considering the lists released by the Clinton administration don't even show Arafat as ever having stayed at the White House. For reference:

First term list of guests
Guests from 1999 through August 2000 (you'll have to click the link in the article to see the list)

Your source to back your claim?

In Northern Virginia, they're using WINVote machines. I used one this morning in North Arlington - and waited TWO HOURS PLUS to vote.

The wait was not due to the machines, though; they only had one set of voter rolls, and one person flipping through them to verify voters. They had us divided up into A-K and L-Z lines. The L-Z line was maybe 30-45 minutes; the A-K line was the aforementioned 2+ hours. I worry about how many people turned away from the lines, just because they didn't man the polls appropriately...

I voted for Gore in 2000. I personally feel that a large segment of the left has jumped off the deep end. Bush may have moved right (as did I) but much of the left moved even farther.

And so, you wish for these extreme changes to be made with a democrat controlled congress (it could happen next election in 2006), executive, and judicial?

And if Kerry wins, with a record of voting against military programs and funding and voting for cuts in intelligence funding, that will be a better alternative?

There is something that everyone should realize: Bush is lying to you. And even when someone points out the lies, he keeps on lying.

I will refer you to the report. Choice quote:

Researchers have estimated that as many as 100,000 more Iraqis - many of them women and children - died since the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq than would have been expected otherwise, based on the death rate before the war.

So these are additional deaths. Obviously most of the armed forces there from the US and Britain that have been killed would be alive as well.

The problem with the retorical question "Is the world better without Saddam?" is that we didn't get rid of Saddam for free and the question is formed in such a way to ignore this cost. A more realistic question is "Was it worth getting rid of Saddam given the cost involved?" which we could debate (as you mention in your reply). Most of Bush's arguments are hollow retorical statements like the above and distorting statements made by Kerry (like saying "I'll never give a veto to another country over US security" implying Kerry would, despite the fact that Kerry has said essentially the same thing as Bush has on the subject). The opposite extreme would be for Kerry to go around telling people "I'm not going to tell the rest of the world to go fuck themselves while we do whatever I feel needs to be done for our own security" which he clearly has not done.

(and remember, after the zillions of post facto recounts, Bush always won under any interpretation that would have passed the equal-protection test.)

A lot of legitimate recounts , except the one Gore wanted favored Gore.

The problem was, as you said, Gore tried to steal the election, and his self centeredness cost him. Had he done the right thing (as in integrity and honesty, not Rush and friends) and asked for a recount for the whole state, things would have been different.

The 2000 election set a precedence, and every election after will be a mess. Both sides have plenty of blame - the president for allowing his state election leader to be the secretary of state, Gore for trying to steal the election by only recounting Democratic counties, so on and so on.

So having machines that incorrectly work is just asking for trouble. Having the maker's of these machines strongly support a single party - of course there is suspicion (not founded, but warranted).

The real question is, "How do we, as a nation, get out of this mess?"

1) A strong, overwhelming victory by the president would have been nice. But he is so incompetent, all he has done is divide the nation more.

1) A strong, overwhelming victory by Kerry would have been nice. But he is a weak candidate and is having trouble gaining much ground vs this nations worst president (ever).

3) A strong third party to "balance" the system. Things got to be really screwed up before this will happen. Maybe there is hope for Nov. 3.

I guess that would only affect 40% of us though.

Ain't that the truth. I read the below this morning and while some of the observations were trenchant ("All politicians are liars"), opting out of the system isn't the proper conclusion.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3439-200 4Oct27?language=printer

"Is it "voluntary" or do they have to follow the political view of their platoon/division leader?"

When the President is addressing a whole unit I think they are following the orders of their Commander in Chief, the President. I'm pretty sure they have no choice but to attend and look happy about it unless they want their life to be made miserable. Maybe they are given an option to not attend but I really doubt it or that anyone would risk a career full of misery by refusing to go.

When you see soldiers behind him in campaign appearances I'm pretty sure the local Republican party officials who screen and loyalty test everyone attending the President's campaign events locate loyal Republican servicemen, encourage them to attend and seat them behind the President so they will be on camera.

However when the President dropped in to Iraq for a suprise Thanksgiving visit the officers in charge of the unit he visited hand picked the people who got in and the rest were turned away from Thanksgiving dinner without explanation and ate MRE's in their tents. Its kind of ironic that the President's photo op, morale building trip actually screwed over everyone in the unit that wasn't the commanders favorite.

60 minutes had a pretty good piece this evening on how the Congress and the Pentagon are screwing the soldiers in Iraq, especially the guard and reserve. 18 months in to the war and many of them are still riding around in unarmored Humvees where they've surrounded in plywood boxes they've filled with sandbags and armor plates off old Iraqi tanks. So much for America's vaunted, gold plated military. Unfortunately its hard to armor the floors which is the weak spot so if they run over a mine or IED they still die or lose their legs. Its noteworthy that in Iraq the KIA count is at historic lows thanks to the quality of the air evacuation and field hospitals. It however means there is a very high rate of soliders who are severely maimed who would have died in previous wars. The casualty count is currently around 9200, 1100 dead and 8100 wounded.

The Pentagon is apparently sending some armored Humvees but amazingly they still dont have armored floors, just doors. Many of the gaurd soldiers have no radios so their families are sending them unencrypted walkie talkies they buy in Walmart which insurgents can listen to. Same story for nigh vision goggles, GPS gear, body armor(though I think body armor is finally getting fixed). Many of the guard units are using M-16's that date from Vietnam which are rated as OK for stateside duty but not combat duty because of the propensity for old M-16's to jam. They are also short on ammunition so they can't target practice. Helicopters, Bradleys, and Abrams tanks are all suffering critical parts shortages.

60 minutes had on Winslow Wheeler, (a.ka. Spartacus). Wheeler has been a congressional staffer in the armed services committee for 30+ years. He was recently forced to resign because he's been writing exposes, under the pen name Spartacus, on pork barrel spending by Congressman on the armed services committee and the Pentagon. There is at least $9 billion in pure pork in this years Defense budget. It appears big ticket, high budget weapons contracts can't be touched to cover this pork, so a good portion of it is shaved out of the budget for maintenance, spares, and basic equipment especially for guard and reserve units. Despite the Bush administration rhetoric to the contrary the Pentagon isn't giving the troops in Iraq some of the most basic, essential equipment to insure their survival.

This is not really a great time to be a grunt slogging through the dirt and mud in Iraq because they are they ass end of the Pentagon.

1. Freedom for Tibet
2. Washington Post
3. Yahoo search results about Tibet

Interestingly, the majority of Chinese support the actions of their government. Consider the fact that more than 50 percent of Hong Kongers prefer social order over democracy despite the fact that the Hong Kongers have full knowledge of the evils of China. More than 60% of the Hong Kongers enthusiastically supported the unification of Hong Kong and China.

The latest action by the Beijing is a thinly veiled attempted to use "smut" as a pretext to censor. Such is the nature of Chinese culture.

oops... that article talks only about partial use in 2002, This one talkes about full use in 2004. It also seems Georgia followed suit. So much for being the only idiots come november 3rd.

In all, there have been over two dozen publications which endorsed Bush for president in 2000 and this time around are behind Kerry.

you mean 3 dozen

36 papers that endorsed Bush in 2000 (including his hometown paper in Crawford, TX) endorsed Kerry this time around, while only 6 went vice-versa (link). The Economist switch surprised me, since they've been defending Bush pretty strongly (recently they ran a poll (PDF) and found that most economists didn't agree with that -- much less the Nobel Prize winners.)

At this stage in the game, however, I've heard that the news coverage that's really going to effect the election is national news coverage culled from wire services like the AP in small town papers in swing states. (The AP doesn't endorse anyone, BTW.)

See Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A395 63-2004Sep21.html/

AUSTIN, Sept. 21 -- Three top political aides to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) were indicted Tuesday on charges of illegally raising political funds from corporations in 2002, much of which was funneled into the Republican takeover of the Texas legislature.

I have karma to burn as well. And I want to hear the truth. So tell me: What's the truth?

This?
this?
this?
or this?

I could go on for hours, but these will do for now. What is it about Bush that has you pitching a tent?

True, but Republicans also like to spend other peoples money. Mostly on "defense", much of it being wasteful or just plain pork*. I respect the Libertarian position, but the Republican position is pretty nasty in my eyes - they are happy to spend our money on killing people and pork projects but refuse to help people in need. That's just amoral in my eyes.
Not that I'm really defending the Democrats per say - when it came down to it, they chose to end social welfare as we know it but didn't cut back their own cronyism.

*references here and here and here and here and here

1) Who said anything about Gay Sex?

2) "It's not like the Pentagon ordered people to be "tortured" in Abu Gharib". My experience differed.

3) I wasn't comparing Bush to bin Laden. I was comparing Bush's moral certainty to bin Laden's. Ever since I saw Bush when he returned to the White House on September 11th and said "this is a Crusade", I've believed that his moral certainty could be his undoing.

I was behind him though, until he invaded Iraq. I knew it was a mistake to 'go it alone' (which is what we, the UK, Australia and Poland did essentially -- don't say "You forgot Poland!") with Rumsfeld's War on the Cheap. Alone we open ourselves up to charges of "War for Oil", which, given the fact that the President and Vice President are both from the Oil Industry, is a reasonable charge. The growing violence in Iraq makes it clear that Muslim extremists think we're occupiers. Another charge that's hard to refute given our Firing of Jay Garner. In other words, if we had elections in late 2003, we'd be home by now.

4) You think I'm Michael Moore? Strange, I don't think you're Anne Coulter. Don't you think they're too busy bar-b-queuing babies to post on slashdot??

You might want to stop demonizing people and see that people who don't agree with you aren't 'hippies' or 'filmmakers'. They're just people who love their country and have different ideas. If we listen to each other, we both might learn something.

It involves posession of a material which, to be produced, requires that a crime be committed which is frequently harmful to the children involved, and therefore implicitly condones the fact that that crime took place.

Yeah that would be a reasonable definition. You'd think the law ended there. There was a case in 2001 where a law (the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996) banning "virtual child porn"- i.e. cartoons- was struck down by the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision on First Amendment grounds. That went close to defining a thought crime. The Child Obscenity and Pornography Prevention Act of 2002 amended the law by adding the words "virtually indistinguishable from" to the statute- creating an exemption for obvious things like cartoons- but still covers "generated images" and "computer generated images" if they're "virtually indistinguishable from" real child porn with real children. That one passed the House but was never considered in the Senate. The Child Obscenity and Pornography Prevention Act of 2003 was included as an amendment to the PROTECT Act (outlawing digitally morphed images, where you paste the kid's head on a naked body). That one doesn't care about whether it's real or fake. It simply outlaws any solicitation to buy or sell child porn advertised as such. See here for details.

It's a lot like flag burning- where constitutional amendments often sit squarely in the way of a desire to be seen as "doing something".

In this Washington Post Writeup", they clearly refer to the "island rule: animals smaller than rabbits get larger; animals larger than rabbits get smaller."

You are either an unfortunate sucker, a subtle humorist, or a pointless troll.

The Internet was not invented by any one person, and it happened without Senator Gore's participation.

Here's a timeline. The script can be slow for some reason (probably related to a recent IP change), so be patient.

The Internet started in 1969, when Gore was a senior at Harvard. He wasn't involved in the ARPANet project. By the time he got to Congress in 1977, it already had over 100 hosts at dozens of sites, and was already showing exponential growth.

Gore supported the technology when he got to Congress, especially in the Senate in the early 90's. Claiming he invented it is just a lie. Claiming he funded its invention is also a lie. Claiming to fund its growth is semantically null; nothing could have stopped it. He was just grandstanding, and doing it so badly it became a joke.

Personally, I think it comes down to Voter Responsibility. If you are going to vote, make sure that you do everything possible before going to the polls to make sure that you won't have problems at the polls. Make sure you contact your Board of Elections to make sure you are on the rolls, and work to correct it before you get to the polls.

Any Slashdotters out there read the Washington Post? I was surprised to see her name atop this op-ed piece on Saturday, Oct. 16. The column ends with this brief description of her:

The writer is former chairman and chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America and a volunteer for gay rights causes.

Yes, let's review:

1. Enron http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2002/tst012802.ht m and http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2001/tst121701.ht m and http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/4/23 /133051.shtml,
2. Global Crossing http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/2/15 /154416.shtml,
3. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ART ICLE_ID=33024,
4. Tyco (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_5 1/b3813001.htm,
5. WorldCom (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2311-20 02Jun29,
6. Adelphia Communications (http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2004-07-09-ri gas-timeline_x.htm),
7. the list goes on and on.

As you say, it was a historic economic impact. We're still feeling the consequences of it today.

The United States isn't a huge social welfare program. President's don't create jobs. If you'd quit swallowing that Leftist Damnocratic Propoganda long enough to take a look at what's really going on, you might not be so ignorant of the facts.

Fact is we're coming out of a recession which was brought about by bad Clinton Economic Policies, and then exacerbated by the attack of 9/11/01, which flushed upwards of 500 billion dollars out of our Economy.

This post is especially ignorant ...

Yes, your post is especially ignorant. Take the time to read the links and do some discovery for yourself, and quit swallowing propaganda, and even you too can learn the truth about our current Clinton Inspired economic woes.