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Hackers Take Aim at Republicans
An anonymous reader writes "Wired reports-- Online protests targeting GOP websites could turn out to be more than symbolic during this month's Republican National Convention, possibly blocking a critical communications tool for the party... "We want to bombard (the Republican sites) with so much traffic that nobody can get in," said CrimethInc, a member of the so-called Black Hat Hackers Bloc. It's one of several groups planning to distribute software tools to reload Republican sites over and over again."
Apologies, but in my opinion massive page reloading to deny service is hardly "hacking". It's not even "cracking". What about reloading a page is innovative, clever, or technical?
"tolerance" and "open-mindedness"
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
One group's voices are being silenced because another group disagrees with them. Now that's respect for freedom of speech!
sig: sauer
I'd better hear the same hue and cry in here as if a group of right-wing extremists were gleefully planning to shut down the DNC, or Nader, or any other such group.
That's just plain wrong. If you don't like someone, then debate them - don't try to shut them up.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
No ifs, ands or buts. Denying others their free speech rights via DDOS - these guys are making all of us and our anti DRM, "info wants to be free", OSS support look like fools. I hope the FBI throws every one of them in jail.
BC
... Personally, while I'm going to probably be voting the same way as these hackers come election day, I don't think this is at all the right way to go about things. If you disagree with someone or some groups actions/beliefs etc, the correct way to beat them is through logic, presenting better arguments, getting a higher listing on google... what these people are doing is much closer to censorship. "We disagree with these people so we aren't going to let them speak" It's also a mistake to believe that every person that's going there is going to be convinced. I know that I have in the past gone to a political candidates website and after reading their beliefs found that I don't match up as closely to them as I previously thought... To me this is just a bunch of script kiddies trying to get attention, and going at something with as little thought as they're used to giving to their actions.
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
Seconded. If one believes that Party X is wrong, wouldn't one wish for as many as possible to be able to view Party X's site and see the wrongness for themselves? This action just reflects discredit on the attackers, who come off as being people who want to hide their *own* wrongness.
Please remember, being anti-Bush does not make one a Democrat, and let's not let the actions of a few unsavory individuals tarnish the reputation of everyone who wants Bush out of office.
This is just like when the media focused on the SCO/spam worms and claimed that linux evangelists were out to destroy the company.
Meanwhile, these "hacktivist" morons manage to be complete failures on both political and technical counts. Remember a few years ago when they tried to DDOS the World Bank and an admin there bounced their packets and flooded them off, instead? How much of a loser do you need to be to get 0wn3d by the World Bank?
And DOSing the Republican website affects the convention how? I suppose doing anything more sophisticated than a page reloading script is beyond them...
"They think we're just a bunch of anarchistic, anti free speech, long hair freaks, who have nothing good to say. They think that we can't win on the merits of our own platform. They think that all we're interested in is making a scene, rather than coming up with constructive, workable ideas.
Let's prove it to 'em!"
The question is just, whether that will be in a couple of months, or in 4 years and a couple of months...
While I hope his re-election campaign will fail (badly), I am not convinced it will.
All the guy needs to do is to occasionally raise (and then silently drop) terror alert levels again to create enough fear in the population to go for his kind of hard-liner politics...
LOL!!!
wow, could you be any more indoctrinated or what?
Yeah, those evil republicans! I know, lets just stop taking half measures and just commit random acts of violence against them... yeah, i mean, they aren't even human right? So it won't matter... yeah, next republican you see, bash her/him over the head with a brick. They have it coming to them, subhumans that they are.
You are a liberal, its your duty! To stand up against the inhuman unfairness of a republican.
This little "stunt" is about as pathetic as anything I've ever heard of... and is just a glowing indication of the inability of the left to engage in the political process in any meaningful way.
And yes, you with the mod points, sucked into the slashbot group-think, I fully expect you to mod this down as troll, flamebait... or wait... use the ULTIMATE cop-out... overrated!
sad robot making broken music
Once again the 'noble' hacker is committing crime - my hero!!!
Intentions aside, people like these need to be removed from society, for they are no better than the ill they wish to remove.
If you want to change a wrong, campaign (marketing) for the change, and VOTE!! Don't commit crimes and then say it was all in the name of justice.
This is like the 'peace' protestors that assault the police or destroy other's property, or the abortion activist murdering a doctor or pro-choicer.
It's time to start skimming the gene pool...
I've seen the increasing drumbeat of anti-GOP protestors everywhere, clearly building towards a childish orgy of vandalism and street violence. It is monumentally naive.
The GOP occupation of NYC is not just designed to exploit 9/11. It is a careful and deliberate attempt to provoke protest. Preferably large, frightening, unruly protest. The more masturbatory rage they can stir up in the city, the louder they'll be laughing on their way back to the white house.
This election will be won with moderates and swing voters. Those are people like your parents. They will not identify with "CrimethInc" and "scruffy, unattractive" street protestors. They will see this event covered from inside the convention looking out.
Every act of violence, provocation, and unruly or disorderly behavior will scare those moderates right into the GOP's arms. Whether it be showing up on 6th Ave. with a mask and a shield, or DDOS'ing a GOP website, this kind of bad conduct is exactly what Republican strategists urgently want. And it will hand them the election on a silver platter.
Don't be a goddamn lemming. Save your "violence" for the voting booth!
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Arent' these Reloading apps similar to DOS apps? Written with the purpose of bringing websites down??
Aren't using DOS apps to bring a webserver down illegal?
In which reality were weapons of mass destrcution found? The Fox News dimension? Even Bush has given up on this and started talking invading Iraq because Saddam Hussein might have the capability to build WMD.
The fact that it's illegal, immature, and not at all conducive to proper political discussion is why people don't understand why anyone would think this is a good idea. Of course, the very fact that you used the word "regime" indicates to me that you are probably too far divorced from fairness and thinking for yourself to understand this.
Here's an anecdote: this is roughly akin to nailing two-by-fours across every door and window in my house so that you can prevent me from coming out and using my freedom of speech because you don't like the views I espouse. If you disagree with what I say, the appropriate response is to write, speak, and make your views known. It is not to simply silence the opposition by preventing them from being heard.
The US doesn't have a big problem with pro-neo-Nazi sentiment in our population. Why? It's not because we ban them from speaking or promoting their views, like in Germany. It's because every time they do speak, they get so thoroughly discredited by the opposition that everyone simply ignores them.
I would urge all people who do not agree with the White House to _write_ them, whether it's by email or snail mail. Call them, even! But I would urge everyone, both in America and elsewhere, to NOT participate in a childish act like DDOS'ing the RNC's website. The politics in this country are awful enough without resorting to a new low.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
The worst part about something like this is that the neo-left needs to be a group that places evidence and facts before ideology.
Listening to Bush speak and extracting information - he supports pre-emptive war, he doesn't support scientific research on most stemcells, his education and domestic policy are faltering - this type of information is what should drive the left to vote for another candidate. The "he's wrong before I've even heard his views" stance is the *worst* way to go about creating a democracy, in fact, it's the best way to silence one.
Democracy is dependant on everyone getting the facts. Interpretations of the facts are tricky, but creating your own set of facts is downright wrong. Silencing speech, in any way, is the first step towards the ideological mess that the "faith-based" Republican party finds themselves in right now: creating facts to fit beliefs about misguided assumptions.
"If you disagree with someone or some group's actions/beliefs"... first requires that you listen to that group's actions or beliefs. I hope - *hope* - that we can get this message across.
How do you defeat the modern Republican party? Not by shouting them down; if you shout them down, their ideals and agenda remain obscured. Let them talk themselves out of office. Let Cheney make stupid remarks about "sensitivity" so we can juxtapose them with the President's sensible remarks on the same subject. Let the President speak, so everyone can hear that he can't even figure out basic subject/verb agreement in a sentence. Let Ashcroft speak, so folks can see just how scarily totalitarian some of his ideas are. Let Rumsfeld speak, so everyone can hear just how egomaniacal and lacking in honest awareness of his own failings he really is. The best enemy of the US Republican Party is its own leadership ... let them speak.
I suppose this is a concept that is hardly difficult for a thinking person to unearth, but as no one above my threshold has yet commented upon it, I'll take the soapbox.
This sort of hacktivism is nothing more then the digital analogue of a violent protest. While I most certainly do not agree with the platform and politics of the GOP, I believe that it is these hackers that pose a greater danger to my 'free speech.' While the Republicans have paid to host a web site and run a server in order to communicate their vision to the world, this wonderful group of people has decided not to fight back with cogent argumentation and stunning logic, but rather with a wildly underwhelming attempt to flood the server.
This sort of free campaign fodder offered to the Republicans can only harm Kerry's cause (though he is no prize pig himself...). Just wait for the War on Terrorism to go electronic: I can't wait for a digital reprisal of Ari Fleisher's 2001 declaration that "People have to watch what they say and watch what they do."
It's time people began to think. I honestly believe that a logical policy analysis reveals the truth. Left to themselves, people reading campaign literature from either side should be able to discern the better candidate. Even card-carrying GOP members that plan to vote a straight ticket deserve to learn what their party stands for and believes.
Now flip the coin. Suppose it were Republicans DDOS'ing progressive web sites such as Salon.com, Kuro5hin, or (heaven forbid) Slashdot. Shouldn't we all have the right to publish in peace? Attack my logic and my political views if you'd like. I'm not here to argue today, but it seems to me that this is obviously a "bad idea."
Yesterday, a wonderful article was published in Salon regarding planned protests of the GOP convention. Article summary: "If militants violently disrupt the GOP convention, it could be Chicago 1968 redux -- and Christmas in August for the Bush campaign." There is nothing like a free victory in a battle not fought.
We recognize the right to free speech, but I personally believe in the right of anyone to be heard. By my personal moral code, the correct way to respond to a man shouting wildly on the street is not to toss a brick his way, but rather to engage in conversation.
So please, think. It might work.
-Scott
It's more petty than anything else.
Why not just go out and stand in front of the RNC's headquarters and block people from entering?
What they should be doing is going out and doing something positive, like getting involed with the political party they feel the most affinity for.
Personally, I think it's just a media ploy by a bunch of lowball egonauts.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Yes, they found a couple of pre-1991 shells that the UN had mistakenly not destroyed. Not the WMD that georgie was talking about. He was talking about Iraq making new WMDs, not this.
Interesting and unfortunate view.
Historically trying to forcibly kill a cultural viewpoint has done nothing of the sort. Take Northern Ireland as an example - whilst the British government were cracking down on the Irish they were queuing to join the IRA. Once the Good Friday agreement had been signed and most of the causes for the problems had been removed then the support began to dry up.
Likewise in the middle east every attempt to control terrorism by blowing up towns, farms and houses (often of people unrelated to the problem) has caused nothing but an escalation of violence. This is why so many people world wide think the approach of the US is doomed to failure and if anything will lead to even more entrenched and violent Islamic radicalism that will last for centuries.
It would be much better to understand and remove the causes for these problems but tackling poverty and lack of education is much more dificult then dropping a few bombs and doesn't give you neo-cons such a stiffy.
If you're still going to vote for Bush, then you're supporting all of the neocon/theocons, whether or not you agree with them.
I'm sorry didn't realise one shell containing a small amount of Sarin counted as a weapon of mass destruction.
RTFA - "However, a senior coalition source has told the BBC the round does not signal the discovery of weapons of mass destruction or the escalation of insurgent activity."
Germany KNOWS that Saddam did have WMD at one point, without a doubt. It also knows that Saddam was never fully cooperative with inspectors. The weapons inspectors could not verify that Iraq had complied, and in fact believed they hadn't, in 1998.
Are we to believe that in the interim period, Iraq secretly destroyed all of its remaining weapons, on its own, with no supervision or involvement of outside monitors, all with no proof or records, all the while Saddam Hussein himself thought he was increasing his investment in WMD?
It's mind-numbingly clear that Iraq had WMD. But the war in Iraq wasn't about WMD - it was a political reason chosen in the hopes of rallying UN support, and the support of the people of the US. The war in Iraq was about a multi-faceted effort to begin exerting influence, forcibly when necessary, in the middle east, in the hopes of stopping Panislamic radicalism in a generation or two rather than in a century or two. There are MANY aspects to this strategy: it's not just about bombing people into oblivion; it's about encouraging free government with a free flow of information, and some beginnings of open economies and markets to attempt to give the young people something to do, something to strive for, as well as full, unfettered access to news, information, and education, instead of focusing their energies on hatred of the West and the Infidel as taught by some segments of radical Islam. It's also, in case you haven't noticed, about the economic well-being of not only the US, but by extension, most of the civilized world.
So yes; in effect, this is a "war for oil". But it's not a war for oil so that greedy, fat Americans can drive Chevy Suburbans. It's a war to ensure the continued prosperity of the Western world, and thus the lives and happiness of hundreds of millions of people. What about the people of Iraq, you say? WE WANT TO HELP THEM, TOO. We don't want to indiscriminately kill innocent people, though the loss of innocent life is a tragic side effect of any military action.
People think that the US just wants to arrogantly steamroll people and kill all the brownskins for oil (while installing a Starbucks and McDonalds on every street corner in Baghdad). It's a fuck of a lot more complicated than that. It's also a fuck of a lot more complicated than simplistic "you're either with us or against us"-type rhetoric. Any thinking person, of any political stripe, would realize that.
The more grotesque, destructive and hate-filled RNC protests turn out to be, the more votes that get swung to Bush. We'll see how it plays out.
I think the actions of the radical Left groups are actually going to turn off a lot of support for Senator Kerry if the Democratic National Committee doesn't distance themselves from them. Does anyone remember the riots in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the protest that turned very ugly during the 1999 World Trade Organization conference in Seattle? These ugly scenes played right into the hands of the people who want law and order, and probably contributed a bit to the Presidential wins of Richard Nixon in 1968 and President Bush in 2000.
These "hacktivists" are going to be grouped among the anarchists, which will defeat their aims.
Sometimes, I think people are so bent on the whole "one nation, under god" in the Pledge of Alliegance that they forget that the Pledge ends "with liberty and justice for all"
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
How the actions of such "activists" differ from the efforts of government, RIAA, MPAA, etc. to restrict our access to information and the truth is left as an exercise for the reader.
Because everyone on slashdot thinks and believes the exact same things, right?
Mind you, I'm against it personally, but I do not believe when I became a slashdot reader I was copy and pasted from the main slashdot template to fit in. I think you are a hypocrite for pushing down free speech of others(to say they support it, etc..)
They won't need to. You should have been in Philadelphia in 2000. The PD there was the best anyone could have asked for. Like many protests, it started out peaceful and ended up violent or stupid. The fact of the matter is republican or democrat doesn't matter much in a mob; getting that many agitated people who tend to be younger and probably easily impressionable and it's a magnet for trouble.
It is, perhaps, a stereotype that most protests are filled with people between the ages of 18 to 25, but from what I've seen it's largely true, with older people leading them. It makes sense though, that's the group of people who have the time to leave their lives for a couple weeks, go accross the country, and protest. They are also the ones willing to live in the streets for a bit and have the energy to keep up that kind of passion. They are also the least likely to actually vote, and the most likely to make an uninformed decision without listening to the rationale on both sides.
Whether or not you agree with me, it's these perceptions developed largely by actually being forced to live in an area where protests were supposed to be "sticking up for me" that automatically makes me label protestors as idiots, no matter what they are out protesting. Republican, Democrat, Antiabortion, prochoice, environmentalist, antiwar, -- all of it is better served by discussion, not screaming. There are few instances I can think of where a protest would do more good than a well written letter.
Never confuse volume with power.
How does this get a 4?
It's mind-numbingly clear that Iraq had WMD
To who?
Where are they?
How come only half the US believe this and most of the rest of the world don't?
It's more clear as time goes on that the premise for the war was shaky at best, due to either incompetent leadership or incompetent intelligence agencies. Saddam HAD weapons of mass destruction but that was a long time ago. As we drew up to war it seemed that he might have some still, but there was certainly no definite evidence. Now it appears there really were non, as we can't find any.
IANA Spaniard, but I thought most Spanish voters were pissed that the government immediately blamed those Basque people when their own intel sources were saying it was Al Qaeda.
i.e., the election was not about "caving" or "standing up" to the terrorists; it was about standing up to a government that was putting ideology ahead of solid intel.
Hmmm... why does that sound familiar?...
All's true that is mistrusted
I don't support Bush even if I tend to agree with Republicans. But even I can see a con job and a grab for oil for what it is.
However that doesn't make a DDOS attack right. If Bush's message is so bad then why shouldn't it be heard. All this does is drive up sympathy and plays in to the terrorist fear mindset that is the cornerstone of the Bush agenda.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
So in the same vein, if you vote for Kerry, you're supporting all the wacko Greenpeace, tree-huggin, anti-capitalist, anti-trade communists, whether or not you agree with them. :)
I'd guess it's the theory that one side is a little closer to what you believe than the other...
HINT: Free speech means everyone gets to express their ideas, not just you.
It's amazing how slashdoters can be so fickle. Free speech is OK as long as it doesn't come from a republican.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Problem is, the hacktivists don't see it that way. They probably don't even LIKE Kerry...many voters don't consider him progressive enough for their tastes and the anti-war folks can't like that he's a decorated veteran even considering his later protests.
They see themselves as being anti-Bush...a separate option from pro-Kerry. But many conservatives don't break it down so granularly...anybody on the other side is on the Other Side, and so we moderates voting Democrat this year are in the same boat as the draft dodging hippies and punk subversives.
In fact, one of the major problems I have with the modern Republican party is that they treat nearly everything as a binary issue. You're either for it or against it, you can't be ambivalent or vote to control the amount of something. In a way, this inflexibility makes the Republican party even more idealistic than the Democrats, and institutes a lot of what the Democrats claim is hypocrisy. How can you have a party that believes that parents should have the right to choose what school their children go to but that they're not bright not moral enough to choose whether or not to keep their child? Easy...each of these issues is broken down differently on that polar scale, and abortion falls cleanly into the "no fucking way" bin. Pragmatic decisions like keeping abortion legal, but dumping money into support and pro-child advertising campaigns to reassure scared young mothers that they don't have to kill their child, are seen as wishy washy liberalism -- even if such programs are met with greater success -- because they do not accept the artifical polarity forced onto the issue by idealistic conservatives. Yes, in a perfect world nobody would choose abortion and everybody would have a father and one parent would be able to be a primary caregiver. But these are cultural problems...and they are impossible to legislate.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Is this the new liberal idea of free speech and choice? Block people from seeing Republican websites, and block them from entering Republican headquarters?
I know it's not all liberals/Democrats, but some of them are completely insane. If they're not actively blocking Ralph Nader from being on the ballot (after all, nobody should have any choices), they're funding smear books and movies. I constantly hear about this "Republican attack machine," but honestly all I ever see is a liberal attack machine.
Okay, so this is off-topic.
Pinging a server isn't illegal either, but it becomes so when you do it in such a way (volume and repitiion) to disrupt traffic
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Sorry I can refute that - I did not believe that Saadam has WMD neither did Hans Blix.
So although you might think you are correct you are wrong.
Just saying it like it are.
They don't believe it because hackers are part of a demographic that's notoriously anti-organized-religion.
:)
With folks like Ashcroft at the helm of one of the more frightening departments of the government, people associate Republicans with money, power, and religion.
What I think most people fail to realize is that right now, neither party really sticks to their core values. The Democrats want to restrict freedoms under the guise of social and economic reform. The Republicans want to restrict freedom under the guise of security and religous appeal.
Which of these looks more dangerous to the typical hacker's social sensibilities? It doesn't matter if in the end, the core of the US is totally ruined and discarded. All people see right now is the road to get there.
Of course, beware the gross generalizations.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
I'm surprised that more people from the left aren't absolutely ashamed of what's going on over there. All the talk of anarchy, black powder on your clothes to confuse the dogs, volunteering for the convention and then not showing up, trying to DoS their website, etc.
God forbid any of these people would go out and campaign for their candidate on the issues. Go door to door asking people to vote for him and telling them why they should. Contribute money to your candidate's campaign. Go to the local campaign headquarters and ask what you can do to help your candidate -- something you can tell your grandchildren about with pride.
The problem with the left is that they're so desperate to defeat Bush that they'll do absolutely anything sort of breaking the law. And I'm sure some won't stop there. Remember, it doesn't have to be a felony or a misdemeanor for something to be wrong or unscrupulous. DoS'ing the GOP's website is going to do absolutely nothing to help your candidate. And neither is causing chaos at the convention.
I, for one, am completely in favor of very strict criminal penalties for anybody who intentionally distrupts the security personnel or infrastructure at the convention or at any high profile event. Send these morons to the city jail for some serious amount of time -- like 90 days. If there's no room for them in the jail, build a tent city outside of town and keep them there.
Protesting is one thing, and you have every right to do that, despite what you and your friends might say about the GOP wanting to silence you. Nobody's going to stop you from protesting, as long as you obey the law. And yes, they might have rules about where you can be. That's not an infringement of free expression. It's a way of attempt to control a potential mob and keep them from intentionally disrupting a location that really does require a lot of security.
Bottom line -- grow up and let the democratic process work. If you really want to help this election, you can get to work educating voters how to vote properly, so we don't have the fiasco we had last time in Florida. Thanks to that lunacy, we unfortunately had to take the whole thing to the courts, which obviously isn't the way a lot of people like to see an election decided.
RP
It seems pretty obvious to me that the 'hactivists' are exactly what they profess the desire to overthrow. They are deciding that its bes tfor people not to see these websites, and therefore not decide for themselves. Some freedom fighters... If they really belived in the opposing force here, in this case the Democrats, they would be confident that their (the Dems) message, weighed against the Repub's message, would be enough for people to make a valid and respectable choice. But to say, "ets silence one of their outlets of expression, so only one side can be heard' is exactly the kind of oppression that these morons think they are fighting. What a bunch of fools.
I'm not trying to criticize you here, but I think I should post a correction: your post is only really meaningful if one does two things:
1. Count only governmental aid. The U.S. is different from most other Western countries in that we are not a centralized, government-controlled society (although admittedly we become more so every year). The percentage of private vs. government aid is much higher for the U.S. that it is for most other countries.
2. Ignore perhaps the most colossal subsidy of all: Defense. For 50 years, the only thing preventing the Red Army from pouring through the Fulda Gap and into Western Europe, or the North Koreans from smashing through the DMZ into South Korea, was the U.S. military. Same situation vis-a-vis China and Taiwan. Freed from the colossal burden of defense spending, those countries used their resources instead to develop stable polities, healthy economies and the freedom to bitch about the U.S. everytime something goes wrong.
- Alaska Jack
After reading the posts on this particular topic, I'm amazed at how quickly the /. community retreats to the rhetorical (albeit slightly better researched and intelligent) arguments on both sides of the Bush vs. Kerry argument.
I'm not going to advocate either candidate here as I don't really think it really matters. Both men have questionable service records during the Vietnam war. I know that service speakes to the character of each man, but just how relevant is a three decades old cold-war conflict to the modern world with regard to the completely different "war on terror"?
The grim reality we need to face is that Bush and Kerry are actually two sides to the same damn coin. Is your real tax burden really going to go down under either administration? Is the government going to be less intrusive under either administration? John Kerry hasn't met a tax increase or bigger governmental progam he didn't like. George W. Bush signed on one of the largest entitlements in over 30 years. While Bush did manage to get tax cuts handed out, how many of us felt a real impact? How many of us really believe that the cause of liberty (which I differentiate from freedom to include a measure of responsibility) will be championed by either man?
Bottom line is with either man, your taxes will go up (if you live here anyway), the government will increase its size, scope, and intrusiveness, and neither man will work toward true liberty for the citizens of the US.
Sure, John Kerry will not appoint someone as scary as Ashcroft as Attorney General, but he will appoint an equally scary Janet Reno clone. Political Correctness will be the blinders Mr. Kerry will strap on each of us to blind us from the harsh realities he doesn't believe we're capable of handeling.
On the other hand, George W. Bush won't hasten the demise of free speech via PC activism, but will use national security to the same end the blinders Mr. Kerry would see implemented. Neither man believes we the people are capable of managing our own lives and protection.
Sure GWB lowered taxes and I've heard the various arguments for and against them (left: only the rich get tax cuts, right: the rich pay the bulk of the taxes so who else should get the cuts) ad nauseum, ad infinitum. Kerry has said he'd repeal the Bush tax cuts, he's raised taxes every times he's been asked, so I believe he'll do it again. Bush tells us that the he wants the tax cuts to be permanent, but increases entitlement spending. Neither candidate is interested in really reducing the tax burden on most families. That would mean cutting too deeply into pet projects of our various congresscritters.
Why is there even a debate here about taxes? What governmental agency has gotten anything right in the past 30 years? We dump more and more money into social problems only to find them getting worse. Why not try a different approach? Oh yeah, beacuase both parties have a vested interest in getting people addicted to the heroine that is government assistance. Neither party wants to see Americans independant, able to successfully function on their own, and provide for their families needs. Republicans want us to need them for personal protection and to be good little consumers, and Democrats want us to need them for everything else.
Under either candidate's adminstrations we'll still have to deal with Ridges Retards poking around our personal possessions at airports. Under either candidate, the war on terror will take a surprisingly similar look and feel as the war on drugs. Color coded alert levels are now a permanent fixture of life here in the USA. Neither candidate will lift a finger to attempt to discredit the animating ideas that inflames those who would do us harm. While Kerry would capitulate to world opinion before acting and allow terrorists the exclusive right to the use of force, Bush's approach tends to feed fuel to the fire.
A vote for Kerry means higher taxes, a PC system designed to inhibit thoughtful int
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Um. "Fair" would mean everyone would pay the same. In other words, I pay $1000/year for roads and Bill Gates would pay $1000/year for roads.
We don't even do that. We don't even pay the same percentage of our income. It's a regressive tax system. Rich people not paying any taxes is a myth. If that were true then why would the top 5% of income earners be footing 50% of the bill (my numbers might not be exact, but they are about right).
Sure, rich people benefit from the government, but guess what? So do we. When's the last time you worked for a poor person. It's the rich people (and not the government like some people seem to think) who create jobs. How is socking it to the very people that create jobs consistent with Kerry's absurd notion of creating 10 million jobs (something he couldn't do because that would mean less than 0% unemployement)? The sad fact is that the Democrats base their platform largely on jealously and class warfare.
And in the interests of being open, I spent about 15 months in the last 30 out of work, largely because of the outsourcing of software development jobs, but you didn't hear me complaining that it was somehow Bush's (or anyone else's) fault. It's a free market, and I was temporary out of luck. So I sucked it in and dealt with it. No one owes me anything (and no, I didn't bother getting unemployement checks either, because I didn't want the Man telling me how to look for a job). Now I'm self-employed and doing just fine.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.