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Electronic Voting in the News
heymarcel writes "After a negative review of the Diebold voting machines by the State Gaming Control Board, it looks like Nevada has gone with a competitor for the upcoming election. And Secretary of State Dean Heller is requiring paper receipts. According to the Associated Press story, Nevada is the first state to do so." There's another story about Nevada voting machines as well. zapf writes "It appears that the major e-Voting machine vendors have banded together to form the 'Election Technology Council.'" Reader SemperUbi writes: "Demand for a voter-verified audit trail is really gaining momentum these days. The Voter Verification Act, introduced yesterday by Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida), would require a voter-verified paper audit trail, ban the use of 'undisclosed' software and wireless communications for voting machines, and require mandatory surprise recounts -- all in time for the November 2004 election. Rep. Holt's HR2239 in the House requires much the same thing. Resistance to both bills may focus on the aggressive timetable, but the effort is worth it -- as Warren Slocum once said, democracy ain't cheap. Take that, Diebold!" And finally, a Maryland newspaper dredges up an internal Diebold email that recommends gouging Maryland if the state wants paper printouts for its Diebold voting system.
Hmmmm !
No need to mark parent troll. It was just informational!
"One prince of the present time, whom it is not well to name, never preaches anything else but peace and good faith, and to both he is most hostile, and either, if he had kept it, would have deprived him of reputation and kingdom many a time."
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince: Concerning The Way In Which Princes Should Keep Faith, Florence, 1532
"You can fool some of the people all of the time and those are the ones you want to concentrate on."
George W. Bush, joking at a Gridiron Club dinner, Washington, D.C., March 2001
"Goodbye Jack Daniels, Hello Jesus!" So it was that George W. Bush says he met the Messiah as he switched the bottle for the Bible on a summer day after his 40th birthday. When he was young and irresponsible, he was really irresponsible, he admits, but all that has changed. Now, they say, his Christian faith permeates his daily life; he starts each day on his knees, reads the Bible and devoutly attends church. The air in the White House is said to be scented with the fragrant incense of prayerfulness, and presidential speeches are spiced with religious metaphors.
Bush envisions himself fulfilling a divine calling, as he heads a global battle that pits the forces of good against the forces evil. He claims God speaks to his mind, directing his actions and inspiring his presidential policy decisions. He says he "felt the call" before his inauguration as Texas governor in 1999, as he listened to Methodist pastor Mark Craig preach on Moses' reluctance to lead. It spoke conviction directly to Bush's heart for abrogation of responsibility. Assembling leading pastors at the governor's mansion for a laying-on of hands, he announced the news: "I've heard the call, I believe God wants me to run for president."
Bush's testimony appears to the sincere evangelical to be genuine; his heart was changed in a "born again" experience, through a personal encounter with Christ leading to repentance, reconciliation with God, and a conviction of God's plan and purpose for his life. Desperate for a breath of moral fresh air after the putrid impropriety that disgraced the Clinton White House, honest Christians who never question the meaning of the word "is," were swayed by Bush's invocation of the name of "Christ." He was, by his own admission, "one of them."
Few doubted and even fewer publicly questioned the veracity of Bush's "born again" claims. But, hey, hey, in those exuberant days that brought the warm glow of Christian fellowship right to the heart of the election campaign, who would have dared to mouth a ripple of doubt? And who could have foreseen that in pursuing their quest for a leader of integrity and compassion in action, the Christian churches, armed with the Bible in one hand and the flag in the other, were just about to exchange one liar in the White House for a better one.
Dominion and deception go claw in glove. From empire to empire there have always existed foul creatures in elegant attire lurking beneath the mud of political intrigue with megalomaniac intent...
Deeply dark elites have always wielded untold influence beneath the mantles of anonymity that keep the powers behind the powers hidden from the public eye. Yet today, as the autocratic American Empire performs its awesome debut on the global stage, some of these dangerous schemers have boldly emerged from their subterranean refuge to reveal their previously hidden lust for power, and are now, in public statements and policy papers, baring their visible teeth.
These nefarious elitists - all too often naively scorned as paper tigers by sensible folk who dismiss conspiracy theories - may have a smile as sweet as sugar and spice, but they also have a nasty snarl and a fearsome bite. The deception that promotes their bid for dominion is the claim that American military dominance over the world is best for everyone, and that this policy - disguised as "democracy" -- is endorsed, even directed by God.
The new elite that slipped from the shadows to direct the Bush administration f
This post is a troll. Mod me down!
((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
Hitler used the 1933 burning of the Reichstag (Parliament) building by a deranged Dutchman to declare a "war on terrorism," establish his legitimacy as a leader (even though he hadn't won a majority in the previous election).
"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their "evil" deeds in their religion.
Two weeks later, the first prison for terrorists was built in Oranianberg, holding the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the nation's flag was everywhere, even printed in newspapers suitable for display.
Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular leader had pushed through legislation, in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it, that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.
To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and State" passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack on the Reichstag building was over by then, the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and the police agencies would be re-restrained.
Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word into common usage. Instead of referring to the nation by its name, he began to refer to it as The Fatherland. As hoped, people's hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was "the" homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign lands.
Within a year of the terrorist attack, Hitler's advisors determined that the various local police and federal agencies around the nation were lacking the clear communication and overall coordinated administration necessary to deal with the terrorist threat facing the nation, including those citizens who were of Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably terrorist sympathizers. He proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of the Fatherland, consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent police, border, and investigative agencies under a single powerful leader.
Most Americans remember his Office of Fatherland Security, known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and Schutzstaffel, simply by its most famous agency's initials: the SS.
And, perhaps most important, he invited his supporters in industry into the halls of government to help build his new detention camps, his new military, and his new empire which was to herald a thousand years of peace. Industry and government worked hand-in-glove, in a new type of pseudo-democracy first proposed by Mussolini and sustained by war.
http://c0balt.com/resources/terror/terror.shtml
Parent OFFTOPIC, but not a troll. The filthy site has indeed been updated. Yeah, Yeah, I'm offtopic too.
My Ass hurts.
1) let a few democrats win, but only those that are republicans in disguise.
2) do not allow any positions of real power to fall to non-republican candidates
3) continue to enslave the people through simple entertainment, cognitive dissonance, and SSRIs for those that the cognitive dissonance doesn't work on.
4) profit
First Al Gore invented the Internet. Now, he has invented the Howard Dean Campaign. He is moving up from those lean years where all he could invent was the beer gut and the beard.
Ireland - 80%
Greece - 78%
Norway - 76%
Portugal - 76%
Belgium - 73%
UK - sans Scotland - 70%
United States - 68%
Italy - 65%
Scotland - 63%
Finland - 62%
Sweden - 60%
Luxembourg - 55%
France - 55%
Netherlands - 53%
Denmark - 50%
Austria - 50%
Germany - 40%
So it looks as if Spain, Ireland, Greece, Norway, Portugal and Belgium all have better home ownership rates than the US. A more interesting figure is which way the rates are headed over time. Home ownership rates in Germany and France, for example, are dropping very quickly.
Not that I have much of clue as to exactly how this pertains to anything under discussion.
And let me just mention that the lameness filter sucks when the majority of one's post is tabular data. The only purpose of this final paragraph is to increase the average character count per line so as to get this post through the lameness filter.