Slashdot Mirror
The Votemaster Is...Andrew Tanenbaum
A reader writes: " www.electoral-vote.com, a site of daily updated maps of the US electoral college based on a number of polls is probably a site that the policially inclined check daily. Well, it has been revealed that the person behind the site, AKA the votemaster, is none other than Andrew Tanenbaum, noted author of numerous CS books." He's also known for a little discussion with someone named Linus Torvalds.
From the other side of the ponds, the story is quite different. About 113,000 people cast their vote here. In this worldwide shadow election: Kerry wins (77.1%), and Bush comes second at 9.1%. Surprisingly, support for Bush is largest in the Middle East (many votes from Israel?). Some hilarious (frightening...) responses by US citizens to this shadow-election can be found here.
Another initiative (about 20,000 people) is here. Results will be published later today.
It's logical that the results are different than those in the US. However, one wonders how much of a hint some (some) US citizens (especially those posting very harsh comments in response to these shadow-elections) need to realize that it's not just the US that matters in this world.
Mod me flamebait, if you wish. But before you do, consider: it's not me delivering the criticism, it's 113,000 people (on behalf of a much larger group). I'm just the messenger boy here...
Support a Europe-related section on Slashdot!
Even before the 'slashdot effect', the site has been unavaiable. All morning.
As I imagine the replies to this post will mostly be drooling fawning over Andrew Tanenbaum, much like the Jon Stewart/Crossfire article, I'd like to actually ask some meaningful questions. (And please note that I have great respect for Tanenbaum, but don't understand a couple of his central points, described below.)
Why does running a statistical analysis website that gathers information on polls and aggregates them into something quasi-meaningful "support" the Democratic candidate?
Yes, yes, I'm well aware that while incognito he had said on numerous occasions that he was a Kerry supporter, and a Democrat. But he himself says:
Why Did You Do This?
In a nutshell, because I want to be proud of America again.
Meaning that Kerry can somehow make him proud again. Ok, fine, but what does running electoral-vote.com have to do with that? The question "Why Did You Do This?" implies that he is "do"ing something to influence people to vote in a particular way, which I simply don't see that website doing. In fact, other than the admittedly editorial sections of the site, I have found the site to be remarkedly unbiased.
He then goes on, at length, describing/proving that the world "hates" Bush/the administration/etc. This comes as absolutely no surprise to me. However - and FORGET about "Bush" for a second - how does "hating" someone have any logical correlation with whether their positions or courses of action are appropriate or inappropriate? That would seem antithetical to the viewpoints of most progressive persons. That's a serious question, but I doubt I'll get any serious answers. And this is an important question, because the fact that so many abroad "hate" Bush, and somehow getting more Americans to understand that, is central to Tanenbaum's multitude of statements on the topic. Why does "hating" someone mean what they're doing is wrong? (I will concede that a leader of a nation being hated probably makes it vastly more difficult to do diplomatic work, but that is somewhat tangential to my core question.)
The rest of this post amounts to what are essentially footnotes on this topic, but I believe are critical to the discussion of the belief that Kerry can somehow to a better job.
So let's address these things. The world "hates" Bush, and Kerry can somehow not only fight terrorism more effectively, but will also bring respect back to the US.
Sen McCain said it best yesterday on Face the Nation:
"I also believe that President Bush has a vision and a view that the war on terror is not going to be over until we have some democracy in the Middle East, and I don't think he means by imposing that at the point of a bayonet. But I do believe that he's correct that the issue of radical Islamic extremism is not going away until those countries have some kind of freedom and democracy, and I think that's his long-term goal."
Now, before you start spitting and sputtering about why the US is in "Iraq", then, well, reread that last statement. I'm not going to beat around the bush, as it were, any more: the US is in "Iraq" because it was an easy target in the region, period. Not because Saddam tried to kill Bush's "daddy", not because Bush is an angry dry drunk, and not because Cheney has a secret plan to line his pockets and that of Halliburton. This isn't a black-and-white zero-sum game where there is only one reason the US is in Iraq. There are myriad reasons. But the prime one is that it is part of a comprehensive, omnibus strategy to bring free or quasi-free governments to the region, in the hopes that more of the same will be encouraged, even as organizations like al-Qaeda redouble their recruiting efforts. This strategy will make things worse in the meantime. Possibly a lot worse. People will hate us. Including some people who will ultimately be protected by our actions (i.e., Europe).
Panislamic radicalism will not go away on its own
Interesting that Andy now refers to MINIX in terms of Linux, no? Considering that Linux is obsolete and all that ... ;-)
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
...more Slashdotters than politically inclined people.
It's easy to tell his sites apart from others. They're hosted on dial up.
I just read the votemaster description, and came over to Slashdot to submit the story. Funny. Despite being a small, self-run website, this is one I don't think Slashdot can even begin to take down (650,000 hits/day), although it's been the subject of DDoS attacks in the past. Being the computer wizard & all-around smart guy that Mr. Minix is, he's prepared for this by setting up backup site (just increment the number if it's down).
Mostly, I can wait to see how Linus is inspired by this project, writes his own version and then invites the global electoral community to help him make it even better. Take that! (j/k)
Most of the electoral votes are in the heartland of the US. If you told an average person on the streets that Europeans want to see Kerry elected, the instinctive response is to vote for Bush. If you don't think Karl Rove is using this to the Republicans' advantage, you're on crack.
We'll see the result tomorrow. I expect something decisive. No two elections are the same.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
If you haven't visited the Current Electoral Vote Predictor site, give it a try. The site is very interesting and his daily updates of the polls in each state is very interesting. The comments in his "News from the Votemaster" might infuriate the conservative third, but are usually insightful, and not pretended to be balanced.
I am living proof of the Peter Principle
I was about to check the site when it died and I thought to myself "I bet someone has gone and posted this on /."... sure enough -_-
picking Kerry to get over 300 electoral votes, it does make you wonder.
Try ...
http://www.electoral-vote2.com/
http://www.electoral-vote6.com/
Result:
Kerry 298
Bush 231
...maybe he shouldn't be running his webserver on Minix.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
He also had has:
www.electoral-vote3.com, www.electoral-vote4.com, www.electoral-vote5.com, and www.electoral-vote6.com
Looks like he's ready for 500-1000 hits/sec - Bring it!
The effect is real. It varies by election and by area. In some places (the Northeast) the effect can be as large as 6% of people who will apparently lie to you on the phone and say they are undecided or voting for the Democrat. In the Midwest it's less pronounced and the effect barely exists in the South, though i've never been very close to a poll done there.
It has something to do with either the Republicans not wanting to answer the phone or alternatively not wanting to be judged by the pollster, i'm sure.
Zogby talks a little about this in one of the FAQs on his website.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
also see:
n ag rams_for_iway.topten
http://www.eff.org/Net_culture/Folklore/Humor/a
RTFA, genius. He is a US citizen.
It was very enlightening to follow along as things went back and forth (with a sprinkling of DoS attacks on the site) and the Votemaster's analysis was always a good read. Kudos to him for a job well done.
Now, for all of the US citizens out there, go vote.
He's a US citizen living abroad:
"My name is Andrew Tanenbaum. I am one of the 7 million U.S. citizens living abroad. I am a professor of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Most of you have never heard of me but in an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny corner of the universe I have done enough stuff that Google has somehow managed to dig up 10,000 pages referring to me."
If you were to set up the same vote for say England you would be luckly to find many people in the US to know who is actually running against Mr Blair.
I just voted this morning and there has apperently been high early voter turnout for the past few weeks. I'm almost more curious to see how high of a voter turnout there will be. If it hits 81.8% or higher, it will be the highest since 1860.
The site and all its hyperlinks have been /.ted. Thats a new beginning I guess.
Thanks.
...for actually providing a reasoned answer.
That's a very interesting phenomenon; I'd heard of it before, but still hadn't realized how pronounced it was.
Still, Tanenbaum doesn't really make reference to that on his site; he acts as if the mere act of running electoral-vote.com somehow helps the Democratic candidate. That's the part I don't understand.
There are several similar sites using slightly different formulas. Another good one is here.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
So. Like... If you're going to try to be a first poster, shouldn't you at least try to respond within 5 minutes after the thread is started?
Actually, he includes a few GOP tracking polls. Because the site only show the most recent polls, the homepage map is frequently all red.
Fact that both Dems and Repbs say he's biased probably says something.
(It's on slashdot because the guy claimed Linux is obsolete by design a long time ago.)
He's a US Citizen, just not living in the United States.
Total Crap. Polls are conducted over a period of time. The votemast firgure out the middle date and picks the poll that has the latest middle data. In the case of a tie, he chooses the poll with the shortest duration.
It doesn't matter if the latest poll is a Strategic Vision poll (thought to be republican-leaning) or a Zogby (who some think is democrat-leaning)
If you've been really watching the site, you'd notice that there have been wild swings from Kerry to Bush in the past.
Now, I think that this is just a crackpot attempt to discredit what has been a really good site (even if I did wish that he'd throw out Strategic Vission).
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
http://www.electoral-vote.com was running Apache on Linux when last queried at 1-Nov-2004 15:33:26 GMT :)
Except he's a US citizen living abroad, which is not the same as not a US citizen.
A friend of mine recently moved to Canada for work and told me that lots of US expats she knows there are voting for the first time in years (often for the first time since they left). If you're living abroad you vote in the last state where you were a resident and you only get to vote for president (maybe senate, too, but I think just prez). Many of those people last lived, and are very likely to vote for Kerry (in Canada, the far right is mostly to the left of the US Dems).
It's going to be an interesting election night...
(sarcasm appreciated except for the nit)
...and is all original. The only reason I was so quick is because as soon as I found out that Tanenbaum was the votemaster, I started preparing this post. It took about a half hour to compile.
And yes, I did the same thing for Jon Stewart. It too went to +5, but then was modded down to -1 in about a half hour.
I've followed this guy's site for the last few months and I think he has recently developed a problem with his intellectual honesty.
He is an unabashed Kerry supporter, not in and of itself a bad thing, but he is discarding poll results favorable to the President in order to show a Kerry victory. For example he claims to have averaged recent polls in Florida but a Quinnipiac poll from 10/27 thru 10/31 shows an EIGHT point Bush lead. How he ends up with a 2 point Kerry advantage with that in the average I don't know.
Today is his worst showing yet, in my opinion, and he may be indirectly helping the President. If Kerry supporters believe their man is going to win and win big then voters who are not as committed may not show up to vote.
Remember Karl Rove asking where the FOUR MILLION evangelicals were in 2000? If people think their man will win regardless of their vote then fewer people will make the effort to vote and strange things can happen.
More or less :b
Because of the 'great compromise', this area has far more electoral power than the aforementioned big states, even though they probably encompass more population than the area I am mentioning.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Bet you're wishing you went with that macrokernel now, eh?
Ok, so actually the site is running Linux/Apache/mod_php.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
If Tanenbaum is the Votemaster, who is the Ballotkeeper?
He has Kerry down to 298, so he's not as biased as he was earlier this morning. ;)
/. linked to someone that has an admitted bias? What's the point of that?
I'm still wondering why
i find this hilarious... since everyone's been heading to the backups, the load on the main site has decreased a whole lot. it's loading pretty quickly. thanks guys! =P
the votemaster, is none other than Andrew Tanenbaum, noted author of numerous CS books." He's also known for a little discussion with someone named Linus Torvalds.
Who the hell is this Linus, and why would you need to explain to computer people Andrew Tanenbaum?
Signed Charlie Daemon
I was in the U.S. for a couple of weeks, so I haven't commented much on ELECTORAL COLLEGE (not that I would have said much had I been around), but for what it is worth, I have a couple of comments now.
As a result of my occupation, I think I know a bit about where politics are going in the next decade or so. Two aspects stand out:
1. MICROPOLITICS VS MONOLITHIC ELECTORAL SYSTEM
Most states are Monolithic Electoral Systems. Votes are tallied in each state and the winner of each state recieves all of the electoral votes for that state. Even if 49.9% of voters are for candidate #2, the 50.1% for candidate #1 means he gets all of the state's electoral votes.
While I could go into a long story here about the relative merits of the two designs, suffice it to say that among the people who actually are in politics, the debate is essentially over. Micropolitics have won.
The only real argument for monolithic electoral systems was performance, and there is now enough evidence showing that micropolitics systems can be just as fast as monolithic electoral systems systems (e.g., Florida 2000 never would have happened if we would have just counted up every American's vote and the candidate with the greatest percent over 40% would win) that it is now all over but the shoutin'.
2. Portability
The Micropolitical Voting system was made to be portable to other future democracies such as Iraq, Afghanistan and has proven that it is scalable to nation states as large as China and India, the Monolithic electoral system would involve much more work in creating districts, states, commonwealths, etc. to the point that it is really not worth porting and would need to be started from scratch.
Don't get me wrong, I am not unhappy with the Electoral System. It will get all the people who want to turn Micropolitics into a true democracy off my back. But in all honesty, I would suggest that people who want a **MODERN** "free" nation look around for a micropolitical-based, portable political system.
He was a lobbyist for the Sierra Club, and said he left the US because he hated it so much. No, he's not biased. (insert sarcasm warning for the hordes of /.'ers with broken sarcasm detectors)
Amazing how in the battleground states where he has Kerry leading, he almost always uses the Zogby poll to validate his predictions.
This site is worthless and obviously partisan. If he really wanted to offer a realistic picture, then he would offer some sort of poll average rather than focusing on one pollster per state. Zogby has publicly said that he expects Kerry to win, and if you examine his and his family's activities, it is pretty clear that he is partisan. Not only that, you can see that in 2000, he was one of only two dissenting pollster opinions in the state of the race.
For a real poll wrap, check: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/polls.html
If you have been waiting so long for this, you should have spent the time spell-checking your submission.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
I've always liked "Four More Wars" myself.
- Andrew S. Tanenbaum, 2004.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Tanenbaum is a US citizen. Read the article.
Go here: Real Clear Politics
Simple as that.
I've just signed legislation that'll outlaw Russia forever. We'll begin bombing in five minutes.
The only thing worse than an un-opposed superpower is a superpower run by someone elected by some small fraction of a country's population.
Get out and vote for God's sake or shut up with all your "America is the beacon of democracy" bullshit and "leader of the free world" garbage. You think you're country is so great? Then vote God damn it!
Professor Tanenbaum has a lot of cred with me for his MINIX work. His OSDI book was the first real taste I had inside Unix, and I've been hooked ever since. Over the years he's also shown quite a bit of ivorytoweritis, which shows that we are all prisoners of the mental environment we construct for ourselves. For instance, from TFWS:
But he apparently misses the obvious converse, that the world media do a spectacularly bad job of informing the rest of the world what's going on in the U.S.
The U.S. Presidential race this year comes down to who wins Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. He thinks Kerry will win.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but he's been wrong before.
sigs, as if you care.
I also included all of the mirror sites: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 8, 9
Twat.
between Tanenbaum and Torvalds, I've discovered that Linus Torvalds really is a dick.
:)
Tanenbaum talked about the merits and critiqued what he saw as flaws of the Linux system. Torvalds ranted about how much Tanenbaum's project "sucks." What a complete dick.
Anyway, it's good to learn new things about Linus.
Electoral-Vote.com is a fantastic web site - especially if you look at the Averaged Polls version (linked from the home page) because it pulls together different state-wide polls and moves them together. Not exactly scientific - but it gives you a better glimpse of where things are moving.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Great. The "Votemaster" hasn't lived in the United States for twenty years.
More like:
Four More Wars!
Four More Wars!
Four More Wars!
Four More Wars!
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
I was checking the electoral-vote site to see what had happened with today's polls, and after a few seconds of surfing the site suddenly stops responding... Ok, server problems, I'll check out Slashdot while they fix them... Holy crap!!! Real-time slashdotting!
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Here is a link to a nice summary of the famous discussion in comp.os.minix between Tanenbaum and Linus over Microkernel vs Monolithic System architectures.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
So all you Democrats need not bother voting tomorrow...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
sadly, it's more like 80 more days. Bush is still president until Jan. 20, inauguration.
Why is it that everytime Andrew Tanenbaum is mentioned on Slashdot, the "infamous thread" must be brought up, and not much else? This man IS UNIX history.
Tanenbaum was around looong before Linus/Linux. Before Linux even began, before Soft Landing Linux, those of us who wanted UNIX on our home computers used/loved Minix.
Minix was the technology that sparked a lifetime love of UNIX for many a users, not just the younger Linux.
Occasionally, I'll reflect on the beautiful blue console of my Amiga, on which I ran Minix off of 3 (as I recall) floppies.
So please, let's not dismiss Andrew Tanenbaum's role in computer history. Remember that his shoulders are the giant's that Linus has been standing on.
I can't wait to see what the people standing on Linus's shoulders come up with...
I check www.electoral-vote.com every morning, and I was wondering why it was so slow this morning. SLASHDOT! Andrew Tanenbaum is a person that gives to society. Yes the world would be a better place if it had more Andrew Tanenbaums.
minux?
There's a rival site that attempts to use "meta analysis" techniques to crack that stubborn +/-3% margin of error. I'm not all that well versed in statistics, so I can't comment with any degree of reliability, but it might be worth a look.
Predicted median with undecideds: Kerry 280 EV, Bush 258 EV
Median outcome, decided voters only: Kerry 252 EV, Bush 286 EV
The author of the site, Sam Wang, has published some of his methodology in the form of a matlab/octave script.
I proud he learned so much here in holland. *grin*
Ha, but how about interrupts!? :-)
-------
Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
he's got 9 servers it seems electoral-vote[2-9].com .... maybe it is time for some dns round robbin action?
Not to be a link whore, but I run an election related site - The Electoral College Vote Calculator - and I can report that traffic is going through the roof today. As of 11 am EST, its already on pace to quadruple yesterday's traffic - and yesterday was a record (5000 unique visitors - as an armchair webmaster, thats quite a lot for me).
All this for a dinky little site that never made it past the second page of the google search results. I can imagine what the servers at some of the more widely publicised sites are going through.
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
Here's some interesting information from a previous Votemaster comment:
The attackers have tried repeatedly to break in, but the server is a rock-solid Linux system which has stood up to everything they threw at it and hasn't crashed since I got it in May.
The full Google cache of the page is here
SourceHosting.net, LLC
Ready. Set. Code.
http://www.sourcehosting.net/
The rest of you arent worth a hill of beans..
(Feeding the troll, oh well...)
You do realize that the anti-US position of the rest of the world is caused by these kinds of postures, don't you?
Support a Europe-related section on Slashdot!
But, in this case, i'll make an educational exception.
Go to Jibjab and watch the first "This Land" video. It explains why an American would vote for Bush pretty effectively. Note Kerry in the S&M gear and Bush riding the missile.
Yeah, that's why.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Make sure to check out his predicted map using an average of the last few polls in each state:
http://www.electoral-vote.com/fin/nov01z.html
(mirrors:)
http://www.electoral-vote2.com/fin/nov01z.html
http://www.electoral-vote3.com/fin/nov01z.html
http://www.electoral-vote4.com/fin/nov01z.html
Makes a slight difference, going from Kerry 298 to Bush 287, eh?
He used to link to the predicted map, and explain it... he even used to default to the average rather than last poll. Now all plugs are off, the Kool-Aid needs to be doled out in huge portions. Does that smell like desperation?
This Brazos county is one of the rare reversal of which the college community is predominately Republican and the nearby residential areas are Democratic.
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I posted this before reading the comments.
A link available for an icon for placement on your personal website can also be had for daily updates.
I have seen 100 electoral vote swings over the last few months.
Does this mean GNU-HURD is officially 12 years late?
The site is slashdotted, so I'll giev you the text here:
"Nader is going to win. In a landslide. A really big landslide. Really."
Yeah, I was surprised too.
Andrew Tannenbaum/Linus Torvalds ticket in 2012!
Here is the tally of the fascination.
-
The Chinese government has stated that it wants Kerry to win.
-
The Australian government has stated that it wants Bush to win.
-
The Russian government has stated that it was Bush to win.
-
Osama Bin Laden has stated that it (yes, "it") wants Kerry to win.
Based solely on the assessment of foreigners, for whom would you now vote?Maybe, the time has come for a real change in power. Write the following on the November ballot.
president: Bill O'Reilly
vice-president: Tammy Bruce
O'Reilly obviously cannot win even if he gets more than 50% of the vote because the rules of most states requires write-in candidates to register their candidacy. Nonetheless, if O'Reilly garners enough of the popular vote, he would have the "Perot Effect". Whoever is president would be forced to listen to O'Reilly and his supporters, altering the direction of the country for the better.
"He's a US citizen living abroad"
Ah. Chalk one more up for "It must be something in the water".
Deleted
that his server is still running minix!?
And this comment is still modded as insightful.
Slashdot, home of the many clueless
If Bush loses the Electoral Vote and wins the Popular vote - as many are projecting because of the expected record turnout in states already "locked" (Texas, Georgia, etc.) - will Republicans still laud the Distinct Wisdom of our Founding Fathers as they did back in 2000? Or will they be calling for the abolition of a Wretched Anachronism that ignores The Will of the People?
I wonder...
As did I my friend
A change to all proportional would take a Constitutional Amendment, and that is likely to be opposed by the small states since winning their marginal elector will take more effort than winning one in a big state. And abolishing the entire Electoral College is virtually unthinkable -- it was designed to give the small states disproportionate influence. What would make them give that up?
The site is mirrored at: 1 2 3 4 so use those if it's to slow mkay?
Note that it predicts quite a different outcome. Also note that (like Tanenbaum) the owner is partisan - however he also seems to have a sane methodology.
Just FYI... :-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Interesting read, but shows the typical view of the neuvo-reich or wanna be's. The US capitalistic engine did not drive all the technology of the 20th century.
We almost lost WWII because of the technology of Japan and Germany, we had to do some serious catching up mid-century, then look at Japan and Korea and now China at the end of the century in terms of technology and manufacturing. We had a large role but if you look at the large number of grad students we have produced that are really foregin students you have to say money isn't everything, and the view that we did it all is viewing history with the same blinders our President has on.
One of the problems we have is that the ones that are making all the big buck's aren't being productive at all, they just own things which is not a productive activity at all. Some do run things but they cut their own check before they pay their people and the ratio the salaries they pay to their salary can be like 1000 to 1. These are the people that favor repealing the minimum wage.
When you figure that these people have already factored the tax into their salaries when they set them, any tax cut is an undeserved raise. They had already stolen from profits to pay their tax. Then they forget that they have done that and claim that that is really what they should be paid and accept that raise quietly. They are factoring in those taxes just like information is factoring into the price of stocks by the same people.
I know lets let them have 100% salary pensions for life too like our retiring senators and congress men do. We can pay for it by cutting our insurance and health benefits for their workers, I know we will get the governement to pay them a little to put their own money asside in a heath savings account and I don't have to share my profits at all. I love it.
And this is the point that drives me crazy, the unexamined assumption behind the "American" crusade to remake the world in its own image.
We get fed again and again this idea that it is our duty as the "Democractic leader of the western world" to bring liberty and freedom to the other nations. The unspoken subtext of this message is, of course, that the only kinds of liberty and freedom which exist are those we in the United States supposedly enjoy.
It's like that quote from Henry Ford which goes something like:
"You can have any color car you want, as long as it's black."
I wish I had a bunch of mod points to push your post into a more visible position. This is the question we ought to be considering as a nation. We need to re-evaluate what sort of role we should be playing in the affairs of the rest of the world, and realize just how many of our problems result from our insistence on meddling in foreign affairs for our own benefit, and our refusal to let other peoples sort out their own issues.
SZ
But he apparently misses the obvious converse, that the world media do a spectacularly bad job of informing the rest of the world what's going on in the U.S.
Does not follow. If I know nothing about Fred, that does not imply that Fred therefor knows nothing about me.
Now it may be true that the rest of the world knows nothing about the USA, but you'd have to offer evidence about it that my perception that The BBC, The Guardian et al give it plenty of quality airtime.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Get rid of Bush and his cronies.
Don't think that that's the right thing to do? Read Tanenbaum's description of what he thinks of Bush and the parallels with a schoolyard bully.
On 9/11 we cried for you. The next time, no one will.
Get rid of Bush and his cronies. Only you can do it, we can't.
In 1936, the Literary Gazette published a poll that predicted a victory for Alf Landon over Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The only problem was that the poll was conducted by telephone, and in the depths of the Great Depression a lot of people couldn't afford a telephone. FDR won in a landslide. Landon only won a state or two.
The cell phone issue reminds me of that situation, although it is not as pervasive. If the turnout of cell-phone-only young people is significant, this could become very interesting.
It wasnt meant as a troll, but an honest expression of how i feel.
But I'm not surprised it was taken that way, and I'm sure ive been modded thru the floor by now...
Personally i dont care how others feel, ( as i dont look outside to form opinions, be it at a personal level or a country level ) but yes i know that attitudes like mine cause others to dislike us.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I think
Mirrors:
www.electoral-vote2.com
What's funny
www.electoral-vote3.com
Is that
www.electoral-vote4.com
This comment can't be posted
www.electoral-vote5.com
because of all the repetition
www.electoral-vote6.com
In the comment
www.electoral-vote7.com
Due to listing all the mirrors
www.electoral-vote8.com
Forgive me if I think this
www.electoral-vote9.com
Is really stupid
--Remove chicken to e-mail
Bush, as the "winner" of the 2000 election,
has used every opportunity to propagandise
for his position in invading Iraq. This
is a major source of confusion to the USA
public, because W's reason for war keeps
changing (according to the real events on
Iraqi soil.) It is said that history is
written by the victors, not the losers.
That old saw was pre-internet, and past
Bush pronouncments have come back, in time,
to haunt him.
"Major combat operations are over".
To date, more that 100,000 Iraqi civilians
have died as a direct result of George W.
Bush's rash rush to war. USA troops killed
are now 1,100 plus, with 5 time that many
seriously wounded. The Iraqi civilian
infrastructure was nominally operating at
80% before the war (due to UN sanctions),
but is now at less than 60%. The primary
tasks of the US troops was the destruction
of the Iraqi army, and the seizure of Iraq's
oil fields & terminals. The composition and
size of the Coalition Force was tailored to
those tasks alone, not for bringing peace and
stability and democracy to the Iraqi people.
That is also why this Bush/Cheney oil war will
not succeed, and why a new political leadership
is needed in the USA. Iraq is not similar to
Vietnam, it is just exactly like Vietnam. The
correct description of the Iraq war: QUAGMIRE.
Bush has destroyed whatever credibility and
American unity that he garnered after 9-11,
and is losing both the war on terror and the
Iraq war at the same time, and from the same
cause: totally fscking insane mismanagement
of the strategy, tactics, goals, and exit of
this war. Iraq has become the locus of terror
in the Middle East. The vast stores of Iraqi
conventional weapons have been negligently
abandoned to the insurgents. US forces were
not tasked with control and security of Iraq's
nuclear weapons research facilities, which were
prompty looted. If the true goals of Bush's
invasion of Iraq were to secure any/all WMD,
it doesn't show up in the execution of this war.
One can only draw the conclusion that this was
not his real goal there -- actions speak loader
than words, and Bush's words are pure kaka.
But American actions affect France, Canada, the U.K., Iraq, Iran, China, North Korea, India, everywhere for that matter.
The worlwide poll results reflect to a minimum extent the feelings generated by the current administration's actions.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
"Including some people who will ultimately be protected by our actions (i.e., Europe)."
You cannot protect your own country ( see september 11 2001 where "Canada" of all place add to intervene.
Also look up Madrid train attacks , thats in Spain (europe).
You Etats-Unians have not learned from your past mistake you cannot win if Canada dont participate. Look at Afghanistan its a peacefull stable place now , still some terrorist actions but not an open revolt like in Iraq.
For things to change in a good way it takes TIME , lots of TIME.
C ourageous
A mericans
N oble
A mericans
D efender of
A mericas
Where the real american where not "of america" , whe are america.
Stop bulshitting yourself , what can be worst then a guy who send you to war on false reason , dont protect your own soil and citizen in your own country when its is primary job , as augmented your debt by almost doubling it , and make your country hated by even the most moderate country in the world.
Normally one of those reason would have you trow him out to sea in a flash , but because its bush you whant to keep him ! come on , please for the sake of your own life think this tru. And vote for anyone else if you dont like kerry just not for bush.
We don't vote in a Prime Minister we elect an MP for our region. Who becomes PM is actually a whole set of systems independent but interelated to representational balance in Parliament.
The discussion between Tanenbaum and Torvalds isn't exactly a flame war like many people think. It's a serious discussion between two serious, intelligent people. And there is no hard feeling between them. And Tanenbaum has done a lot of other things than arguing with Linus Torvalds. IMHO, we should stop referring to Tanenbaum as the guy who argued with Linus Torvalds a million years ago and credit him as the OS theorist that he is.
The amount of people that voted makes the poll pretty worthless, considering the world's population.
One of the things I liked about the site was the Dynamic HTML summary that pops up when you place your cursor over the state. It turns out he uses a script written by Walter Zorn, but removes the notice information and doesn't give him credit for it.
Disappointing, considering his line of work.
Now, Osama blames Bush Senior and Junior for "causing" the terrorist act on September 11 and warns that more terrorist acts will follow. In short Osama is trying to convince voters to support Kerry.
So, yes, Osama Bin Laden supports Kerry, and so do the Chinese. That Osama and Beijing support Kerry is a little disturbing. Ditto for the fact that Korean intelligence agents are rallying the Korean-American community to vote for Kerry and funneling money into Kerry's campaign.
I was wondering why i couldn't get on electoral-vote.com this morning. Thanks slashdot. Now I can't get my daily fix.
I actually hope there are thousands of lawsuits. Besides helping to expose both the D and R partys shenanigans, I want to have them bust up diebold and those other election fraud companies forever, and get rid of the notion of pre hacked black box voting elections, and shakeup the population to stop being such utter sheep when it comes to something as important as this. If it takes a thousand lawsuits, better that than the alternative, which would be a full dictatorship shortly once these machines are entrenched all over and legitimised by an "accepted vote tally" and they know they can get away with it. 2002 was a test, and they "got away with it". If they do the same in 2004, that's it, it's over.
This is my opinion of course, but I think it has a lot of merit based on what we know so far.
I first had issue with anyone who called a multithreaded filesystem "a hack" and his mean spirited flame war with Linus looked uncool.
:-)
Sure, you can disagree with many issues but there needs to be an open mind in the scientific and academic community. Flaming others is a sign of weakness and insecurity. Especially when he told Linus "You would not get good grades in my course..." kind of proves that.
He tried to explain himself later on slashdot saying he merely disagreed with him but I was not too sure.
www.electoral-vote.com is an awesome site that I find truly non biased. I go there every day being a political junky. For those who say he is liberal all I have to say is look at his past entries? When Bush was ahead after the RNC liberals accused him of being a Bush sheep.
What kills me is he using Linux and not Darwin, AIX, or MacOSX which are "not obsolete".
I think Linus has the ultimate say now in the flamewar contest.
http://saveie6.com/
Looks like an informative site. However, it has a pretty dense presentation (which I actually kinda like) but was there something in particular that you wanted me to look at? Like maybe something about electoral-vote.com?
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
Anyone else notice every time you hit the electoral-vote.com you get a bunch of outgoing traffic on tcp port 8088? He's also using the site (actually, I think it's a grad student) for research into planet-lab style distributed computing stuff. (see www.planet-lab.org) j
I have not looked at his code, however he did have accreditation to someone for writing the popup code for a while last week
The reason many Americans would react that way (vote Bush when they hear Europeans vote Kerry) is that the Rightwing propaganda machine has been brainwashing them by demonizing Europe. This propaganda offensive seemed to begin not too long after the news of the strong European social safety net began to leak out of Europe and into the conciousness of many Americans. The old "threat of a good example" strategy of the American propaganda machine. I guess the logic is that if Americans see that Leftist Europe can make the welfare state work, that eventually Americans will get the idea that they can make it work for themselves, too. And that would be bad for corporate/business profits. Same principle more or less applied to every American invasion of or manipulation of all those leftist Asian or Latin American countries. Oh, Guatemala/vietnam/Chile/cuba is going leftist? Well, we will just invade them/back a coup/embargo them....
A threat of a good example might give similar ideas to other countries...So they demonize/propagandize Americans via the mass media, the better to manufacture consent for invasion or a coup.
So the lesson for Europe is, I suppose, you best watch you asses, the Rich people in America and the multinationals don't like your opulent welfare states that keep the citizens from being at the mercy of the upper class/the corporations. So watch out for an invasion/a coup/a trade embargo in a few years, once Rush Limbaugh/The NY Times et al have worked Americans into a hate frenzy at the very mention of the word "Europe".
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Check out these animations based on the electoral-vote.com predictions and polling data over the last few months. http://electoral-vote.caida.org/
I always thought that gallup was one of the most reliable sources of poll data, but I guess I'm wrong.
On electoral-vote.com, Penn is Kerry, 50-46.
On gallup.com, Penn is Bush, 50-46.
On electoral-vote.com, Wisconsin is Kerry, 51-44.
On gallup.com, Wisconsin is Bush, 51-44.
I'm confused, I thought electoral-vote.com used the gallup data where appropriate, but that seems to not be the case. Where can I find the other source data (not the graphs on electoral-vote.com, but rather, the actual site/sites where the data is coming from).
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I just can't stand living in a country where our bombs are smarter then our president.
So naturally, John Kerry is SURGING right before election night... Yeah....
What makes this a troll? Because you disagree with it? Grow up.
Reading this retort, I was immediately reminded of Tannenbaum's comment about the bully in his school. If you really _don't_ care what the rest of the world thinks of the U.S., then don't be surprised when they aren't willing to help us the next time a terrorist attack strikes us.
Considering just how crappy our economic health is at the moment, an international boycott would only make things in the U.S. worse, irregardless of the size of our economy. And I wouldn't be surprised if that came to pass.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Abolish the EC. Or at least get rid of "Winner take all".
If you always do the opposite of what those you dislike do, you're not really going your own way. You are just slavishly following others. That you're going in the opposite direction from them doesn't change the fact that you are a slave to their decisions. You're an "anti sheep" if you will.
A true free thinking rebel has no problem doing exactly what the huge masses of idiots do, if he happens to enjoy it.
http://www.historybuff.com/library/reftruman.html
Dewey Defeats Truman!
This is what I think about everytime I hear the words "Presidential Election and Polling" put together or used in the same article.
The rest of the world cares about the US president because America meddles with the rest of the world, and is far to powerful and militant in its approach to world politics.
...
The present president has shown the rest of the world the US at its worst, and the result is the US is more hated than any other time in recent history.
As for the French president, you can like him or not, he does not send troops and invade countries or bypasses the UN or whatever else Bush did to wreck the world
Andrew understands that increasing turnout generally helps the Democrats more than the Republicans. Doubly so if the voters that he attempts to get to turnout are from a group that heavily favours Democrats (which overseas voters are).
So he created a site that seemed likely to increase interest in the race, and ran advertisments to get overseas voters to sign up and actually vote. Both actions that are likely to help Democrats.
Incidentally this fact about turnout helping Democrats is why you constantly see Democrats being for measures that make it easier to vote (eg motor-voter), and Republicans being against those measures. Oh, neither side offers this as the reason for their respective positions, but both sides are keenly aware that the positions that they take are in their own self-interest.
I'd like to think we can trust poll workers to validate the voters and do their jobs impartially and correctly.
Unfortunately, they've already caused controversy by showing partisanship in early voting... going so far as to point to a candidate on the ballet and telling people that "this is where you vote for president."
I'd be willing to give the majority the benefit of the doubt though. It would be a lot easier to accept the ruling if picture ID were required.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I'd be worried if Kerry DIDN'T masturbate.
I'm sure Bush is completely convinced that masturbation is evil, against the Word of God and a terrorist action.
(Incidentally, that's a lovely country you've got there. Lots of fun - good craic, as they say.)
+++ATH0
You Commie Terrorist! I reject all you say and will vote NOT for Osama, Not for Bush, Not for Kerry!
HA!
This is an aspect of forums like slashdot -- no handling of the topic of a thread's inevitable migration. Still no story that I can recall so clearly demonstrates this facet.
It is somewhat like having a anonymous painting of a house hanging in a museum for years suddenly being attributed to a famous master -- and then having all the discussion center on the qualities of the house, not the painting or the painter.
All my previous sigs now look like this one, I wish they were permanetly recorded when used.
Am I the one who can't wait for the George W. Bush presidential library? What a laugh that place is going to be.
Except he's a US citizen living abroad, which is not the same as not a US citizen.
And it is not the same in exactly the way that being a US citizen living in Texas is not the same as being a US citizen living in California.
The key phrase is that you are still a US citizen with all of the rights and responsibilities thereof. If you make enough, you'll pay US taxes. (There is a healthy tax deduction though.) Males are still supposed to register for the selective service. You have the right to vote. You travel using a US passport.
If you told an average person on the streets that Europeans want to see Kerry elected, the instinctive response is to vote for Bush.
I think that is generally referred to as "cutting off your nose to spite your face".
Europeans would like good US/European relationships, and they are telling Americans what they think would help with that. If American voters don't care, it's at their own peril: in the end, the US has a lot more to lose, while ineffective US leadership may finally force European goverments to get their act together and assert their leadership.
I don't trust it, It appears less scientific than slashdot polls. If Kerry won by that much, or heck even won at all I would eat my hat.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Excellent selective use of information! You are ready to be a spin doctor!
;-)
The links you are pointing to are ones which use a slightly different algorithm that averaged polls over a multi-day period. When the site switched to using that algorithm, he got a lot of complaints from people, and so he switched back. This happened long before today, and if you look through the site history, Bush has been leading more than Kerry with the original algorithm. These choices of algorithms were made well in advance of today's result.
If you go back and look at the Oct. 29 versions of the site, you'll find Kerry losing using the original algorithm and Kerry winning with the averaging algorithm. The original algorithm was what was on the front page. So I guess a couple of days ago he was manipulating things for Bush then?
sigs are a waste of space
I admittedly know about zero about British politics, though it is funny when they show the House of Commons? on CSpan. Anyway, isn't the Prime Minister appointed by his party and not directly elected by the people?
Same difference. They control the election, not me in NJ or you in CA or wherever you are.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I think.. Here's why: Europe and other countries abroad continue to lend money to the USA to finance our deficits. If they really felt so strongly against US policies, quit funding them!
Instead Bush's "go it alone" and "you're either with us or against us" attitude and rhetoric cost us more troops, civilians, dollars, and world support for the goal of liberty. It was completely and utterly stupid and while he's flip-flopped enough back the other way to try to get UN help in Iraq, I cannot reward his administration's shortsightedness with my support.
Also,
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
Gee, before electoral-vote.com got /.'d I could check the site ever day... Now I'll have to hope for an extended recount just to keep the excitement going.
/. for ruining one of my favorite sites with the /. effect.
Thanks
p.s. let's all hope for a clear victory and a more conciliatory tone post election.
In fact, it's all the way up to 306! AT admitted that was because he arbitrarily gave 2/3 of all undecided votes to Kerry! He also admits to giving much of the expected Nader vote to Kerry. His bias is now even more obvious.
European governments would have to convince their besotted (with social programs) populace that spending more than 2% of their GDP on defense is required. How do you evaluate the chances of this happening, and people taking a hit in quality of life for it? I sense a zero chance unless directly attacked, which is doubtful.
However much I support activist defense of the North American mainland, I don't consider Europe a threat, and neither does this administration. Most of your nations still operate under a US-provided nuclear umbrella. "Asserting leadership" is impossible without military might. Europe gave up on that in 1945 or 1956, depending how you look at it.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
This would be same Andy Tanenbaum who created Minix, for forerunner of Linux? And nobody mentioned it?
Wow!
Except I don't remember his real name. And isn't he a convicted felon from that masturbation incident in Florida? Paul Rubens? Something like that?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
No, it's a sausage.
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
For some strange reason the farmers' party kept getting elected...
People will hate us. Including some people who will ultimately be protected by our actions (i.e., Europe).
This idea of America as Protector, for which the rest of the world should be immensely grateful, has puzzled me for a long time. Why do Americans see their country as some sort of Buffy to the world's Sunnydale High?
It's as though no country had ever fought on another country's side before 1917. The French do not continually brag that they "bailed out your asses" in the revolutionary war, nor do they remind you that, if it wasn't for them, you'd "all be speaking English". Why is this?
I finally understand that the "protector" syndrome is a symptom of American isolationism. Many Americans believe that they are naturally separate from Europe, and the rest of the world. This is totally fallacious: America has never been isolated. If you examine it a bit closer, Imperialism lurks close beneath the surface of this belief: all those slogans about "sea to shining sea" and "manifest destiny" have more than a hint of "Lebensraum", and (not to be incendiary) America's splendid isolation was bought with Indian corpses and African slaves (not to mention regular suppression of democracy on the south end of the continent).
Why are Europeans cynical of America's current state? Every single country in Europe has, at one time or another, claimed a God-given mission to "save the world" by converting menacing heathens to (their brand of) Christianity, while plundering and slaving at the same time, of course. Europe also have much experience with terrorism. That's why few outside America are impressed by zealous American chants for (their brand of) Democracy, or transparently stupid promises to eradicate terrorism by fighting wars.
Or scaremongering about the "Panislamic fundamentalist threat", for that matter. Sure, it's an issue. So are nukes. Terrorism ain't new: there were lots of IRA bombs in the UK as I grew up (typically funded by American money, btw). I am also very familiar with the collective hysteria and bad judgement that grips a nation following such attacks; again, at the risk of being condescending, this experience is one that Europeans all have and Americans simply didn't before 9/11 (and it isn't yet over in America).
The WTC attack doesn't make me more scared of terrorism, but I've always been scared of nukes, and hey, the UK and US governments created those! I've noticed recently that young Republicans are constantly trying to get me to be scared of particular issues that they want me to be scared about. It's like they're saying: "nukes don't kill people, Arabs kill people". Well, sorry guys, but just because 9/11 was designed to propel you out of your collective isolationist stupor by kicking you hard in the hubris, doesn't mean that everyone else will react in exactly the same way.
I read that one campaign strategist recently said, off the record, that George Bush's appeal lay in "keeping the war out of America". It is long past time that Americans realised that the "protector" fantasy is a convenient illusion that actually insulates them from the world (with the exception of the very un-insulated soldiers, concern for whom has traditionally been the one issue capable of rousing Americans from apathy during a war). The world does not want America's protection, and will accept it only as long as it is (a) not too tyrannical and (b) free.
The world is pissed at America precisely because of patronising attitudes, like "we're fixing the world for its own good; it's not nice but someone has to do it, and you'll hate us but you better take your medicine". This oozes a Puritan American arrogance that makes many skins crawl, and it's doomed to failure because it's straight out of the nineteenth century, with no awareness of why imperialism didn't work then and won't work now.
ObConciliatoryNote: I'm a Brit expat in California, my wife is American, I love Americans etc etc etc. If only you had co
The bullying part is how the US administration treats its allies, not its enemies. Look at how the US insulted the european countries that opposed them. Look at how they rebuked Canada. Look at how they refused to even allow a UN security council vote on the invasion.
If Saddam Hussein had actually had WMD, and the inspectors had been able to find them, I bet nearly the entire world would have supported invading Iraq. But when it looked like the most of the world wasn't ready to launch the invasion based on "trust us" and wanted to give the weapons inspectors more time, the warmongers in the Bush administration elbowed people out of the way to launch the invasion.
I think that was what I was saying! We don't get to vote for the president and I think that is why we need to change the constitution to allow us to do just that. The un-ammended constitution has many bad ideas that have been fixed by ammendments over the years. As written there, we couldn't even vote for US Senators, they were appointed by the state legistlators. That was a bad idea that was fixed by an ammendment. The constitution is a wonderful document but it's far from flawless. Don't forget that the Bill of Rights was added almost immediately after the constitution was ratified due the fact that the constition did nothing to protect individual rights. If the founding fathers thought that the constitution was to be written in stone, they would not have ammended it themselves within a year.
Note that I'm not for ammending it for any new popular idea; the difficult ratification system that they put in does a good job of keeping most dumb ideas (I know prohibition was pretty darn dumb) but I think that this is one thing that needs to change. Whatever you think about the activities in Florida in 2000, it's just wrong that one candidate can win the popular vote but lose the electoral. And don't think that I'm just saying this because I support the Democrats; Bill Clinton did not get the majority of votes in either 1992 or 1996. It's a posibility that most voters did not want Bill in there but he won anyway. No matter who wins on Tuesday, I the system is broken and needs to be fixed.
Yes, but since the Senate would have to approve the ammendment to change it, it does not seem to be worth the breath arguing it.
The U.S. government has engaged in 24 wars since WW2: The system of violence works by creating fear so rich people can profit.
The lack of respect for other countries has been going on for a long time. The present violence got started in the 1940s when the U.S. government passed laws that it could secretly meddle in the affairs of other countries, and do things that would otherwise be illegal. After that, everyone who wanted to increase their international profits wanted secret action, and many got it.
--
Bush borrows money to kill Iraqis. 140 billion borrowed. With interest, you pay 200 billion. When Saudis attack, invade Iraq?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Remember what happened the year after the 1860 election.
Osama Bin Laden's original purported complaint with the United States was that he wanted American troops out of the "Holy Land" of Saudi Arabia. (When Muslims pray five times daily, they are always facing towards Saudi Arabia)
.
.
.
American troops were there in Saudi Arabia only becaue they needed to enforce the "No Fly Zone" provisions of the treaty that ended the first war with Iraq. Saddam Hussein consistently violated those treaties.
With Saddam Hussein removed, American troops and their military base, which existed there during the entire Clinton era, are now no longer in Saudi Arabia.
Osama Bin Laden got his "wish", so what are the Al Qaeda complaining about now? Bush did exactly what Osama Bin Laden wanted: Bush removed American military bases from the "sacred" Muslim ground. NOW we see in the latest videotape that Osama Bin Laden has changed his tune. He's now claiming that he's been fighting for Palestine all this time! What a laugh, such an obvious and cliche way to gain popularity among the anti-Semites in the Muslim population. Indeed, if Osama Bin Laden really put his money where his mouth is, he would have invested all of his money into Palestinian small businesses and encouraged them to focus their energy on construction, not destruction. Instead, he decided to set up his "utopia" in...Afghanistan. What a utopia that was: women were brutally oppressed and beaten, artists were executed, an ancient Buddhist statue carved into a cliff was demolished by a shoulder missile. Bin Laden was thinking of Palestine the whole time?
If the 9/11 commission complained that a "failure of IMAGINATION" allowed the terrorists to strike, then it didn't take much IMAGINATION to realize that Saddam Hussein was a significant threat. The Duelfur report confirms as much, since it reports that Hussein had weapons that exceeded proscribed limits and were capable of delivering chemical/bioligcal payloads, and that the Iraquis had the intellectual capital to restart the biological and chemical weapons programs. War breeds strange alliances. Remember when Adolf Hitler, supposedly wanting to promote the Third Reich of "pure" Aryan blood, allied with the Japanese Empire...whose citizens didn't look Aryan at all?
If America had just sat on its hands, Hussein's regime would only have gotten stronger (now that we KNOW for certain that France and other countries were secretly pouring money into his regime), the American taxpayers would still be paying for the support of troops in Saudi Arabia, and Osama Bin Laden would still be able to hide behind his supposed "complaint" about the "Holy Land". Putting off a war now would have guaranteed a larger and bloodier war in the future.
There are those who object the American "occupation" of Iraq. Well guess what?
America "occupied" Germany, and Germany's economy is doing great. The Germans are not an "oppressed" people
America "occupied" Japan, and Japan's economy is doing great. The Japanese are not an "oppressed" people
America "occupies" South Korea, and South Korea's economy is doing great. The South Koreans are not an "oppressed" people
The people who oppose the United States are generally Socialist. They are still smarting from the collapse of Communism around the world. It is a typical pattern of Communist agitators to assemble mass demonstrations against capitalists. Remember the large mass demonstrations that occurred just before the second Iraq war commenced? Odd how no large mass demonstrations in Europe have rallied protesting the terrorists who blow up civili
Europeans are getting pretty fed up with US vetoing and breaking already established agreements about everything to do with Israel, climate, nuclear testing, WMDs, weapons in space, etc, etc.
On one hand, the US veto the UN to render it toothless, on the other, UN gets critizised by the Bush administration for being "weak". The hybris and hypocricy is just astounding when you are served the other side of the media than when you're in the US.
Sooner or later, you will just have to face your own culture. I bet, most Americans couldn't stand any other nation behaving as they do themselves. "Treat others as you would do yourself." - is an immortal saying. Now is the time to LIVE those values, not by conquering others, but by conquering your own mind.
We're not out to get you, we adore you. Why do you think we have "Californiacation" all around the world? But it's gone too far, an imbalance have to be corrected.
Unbelievable how moderators are being freaking partisan!!! I repeat: HOLY CRAP!
I just have to laugh!
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Then again, having a foreign national try to influence a US election is sure to inflame reaction if it becomes known, so it just compounds the counterproductive nature of the site.
It's fun to look at, though. I was voting for Bush anyway. I like worst case scenarios.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
rouge = red, rogue is the word you're looking for.
First, it is not "we". If the U.S. government decided that you were a threat to the desires of the rich and powerful, you would be killed. It's that simple.
Second, the U.S. interest in Afghanistan is due to wanting to build an oil pipeline from central Asia to Pakistan. If they are successful, they will give you exactly none of the money.
Bush borrows money to try to make his administration look good. You must pay it back. Are you getting some of the $? No, your responsibility is to pay, not receive.
--
George W. Bush's brother was on 20/20 talking about his prostitutes. Family values?
"... an invasion (too many to list), a kidnapping (Panama), an assassination (Cuba), or a fake coup (Guatemala), you supported it."
You are exactly right, but very, very few Americans understand this.
Anyhow, here is a short list: The U.S. government has bombed 24 countries since the Second World War.
--
Bush's education improvements were partly fraud
I've been one of Andy's students at the Vrij Universiteit and one of best things from his hand that I've read must be How to Prepare Your Input (PDF), a cook book only available electronically. His FAQ is a really nice read too!
You think I was kidding. It might be a joke film but it expresses the point effectively.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Not everybody belives war brings good. How long have we played this silly game? Let's do a recount of accomplishments:
1) How much hate has taken root because of war?
2) How much love has war fostered?
And I don't count patriotism as love, because patriotism is easily turned into hate. It's an unstable, shaky love, mostly abused to control the masses. It's brainwashing, pure and simple. You think your country is better than everybody else? What if you were born somewhere else? Widen your perception and horizon, and you will see we're all in the same boat.
Now, I don't say we should never go to war, because sometimes war is necessary. But it seems some leaders use war just as an excuse to stay in office or for their own personal agenda. One should never rush into war, neither should you wage war against abstract concepts like drugs or terrorism. (Read 1984 for why.)
I commend the US for their bravery and heroism, but at the same time, I ask you to show some humility. If you truly look at yourself, you will see a balance is in order.
US has lots of power, heroism, much that Europe could learn from. But it's just too much in one place, and you could learn some tricks from us too.
There are no categories of US citizenship. All citizens are supposed to be equal.
(The single exception is that foreigners who become citizens cannot be President. That's the only distinction.)
Haiti just recently, Venuzulea, Mexico, etc, etc.
We talk past each other. I'm talking to you like a Bush Administration official would: we see threats and trade opportunities, and we know we have international committments for defense we need to meet. The rest is lower priority.
Europeans act like the world would be all flowers and goodness if we would just stop being so damn militaristic.
There was an old saying that "A Republican is a Democrat who got mugged". Seems applicable here.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Time for AWOL BUSH to start PACKING HIS BAGS!
OK. I'll admit it.
My first exposure to his work was the now infamous exchange with Torvalds. Without knowing enough to make a sound technical judgement, I thought to myself "what a pompous academic ass!"
As time goes on, and I learn more, my respect for Tanenbaum has grown. I'm still too technically ignorant to have a strong opinion about kernel architecture, although I believe that both camps have migrated towards one another a bit ("monolithic" kernels with multiple threads, loadable modules, etc. It strikes me, in my vast blissful domain of ignorance, as an odd sort of parallel to the RISC v. CISC wars of yesteryear.)
My respect for Tanenbaum grew enormously with his response to the whole SCO situation. His responses to SCO's manipulations and the so-called "researcher" from the Alexis de Tocqueville institute were devastatingly clear, cogent, and lacking in pretense. He obviously has a good sense of humor.
Now electoral-vote.com. I've watched the site evolve, looked at the data, and was impressed by the dedication of the person assembling it. Learning that it was Tanenbaum behind it has cemented my appreciation of the man.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Old Europe believes that Hans Blix and the UN Weapons inspectors had everything they needed to inspect for WMD in Iraq.
But there is an inherent contradiction.
The list of suspected sites that Hans Blix was going to visit was provided by the intelligence community.
The intelligence community had been shown to have been wrong about many assumptions.
Therefore, even if Hans Blix had given Iraq a clean bill of health, that would not have guaranteed that Iraq did had no WMD. Iraq in the past had played games with UN Weapons inpsectors before.
Old Europe can't have it both ways -- believing both that the intelligence community was 100% wrong about WMD, and that the intelligence community was 100% right about the list of sites Hans Blix could have visited.
Indeed, in January 2003, Blix voiced concerns about the missing biological weapons and unaccounted nerve gas (http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/27/sprj.irq.transcr ipt.blix/:
Likewise Blix outlined other areas where Saddam Hussein seemed to be playing games:
OK, so the guy who predicted that Risc will kill i386s and GNU Hurd will kill Linux now says Kerry will win? Uh, ok. I guess I'll go congratulate my republican co-workers.
I passed the Turing test.
And I agree with you that we should remove all dictatorships and replace them with some sort of democracy.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Maybe Kerry can give Bush a pretzel... ;)
for instance, Nov01.png
So, can anyone find the link to Nov02_final.png? I'm curious....
He mentioned in his FAQ that he's a good writer. While in school, I managed to collect all of Tannenbaum's books due to the fact that they were required materials for the course I took. Only he could make Structured Computer Organization and Operating Systems: Design and Implementation interenesting. Wait, no he can't. Nobody can do that.
I noticed that Gallup often seemed to be WAY different than other polls (ie back in mid Sept, right after the RNC bounce faded, I recall them putting Bush ahead by 12 points when every other major poll had them in a statistical tie), so I looked into their methodology...
l
They poll based on the previous election's turnout. That is, they start from the assumption that Republican/Democrat turnout (as percentages) in 2004 will be identical to 2000. Since registered Republicans apparently had a higher turnout than registered Democrats in 2000 (40% to 33%), they include proportionately higher numbers of Republicans in their polling sample. That's how they determine their mix of "likely voters". Here's an (admittedly partisan) article on it: http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/002806.htm
As for what polls electoral-vote.com uses, he always uses polls with the most recent median date.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
I'm an American who loves the United States, and I've read extensively about these issues. You are exactly correct. See The CIA trained Osama bin Laden and other Arabs in the techniques of terrorism.
Caution: There is no evidence that anyone from the CIA met bin Laden (and no evidence that they didn't). The entire idea of training people in Afghanistan to be terrorists was the CIA's, and the CIA provided for the training, but did not teach everyone directly. The CIA taught the teachers.
If training terrorists makes the CIA a terrorist organization, then the CIA is the biggest terrorist organization in the world, and makes al Qaeda look under-funded, under-staffed, under-educated, and poorly organized.
For further research you might want to enter "Von Sponeck" and "Halliday" into google, two UN directors of the oil-for-food program who quit because they found that the sanctions destroyed Iraqi society. Although I can't find the number of dead I seem to remember hearing 500 000 Iraqis. (too lazy to really search any further)
Ok, I found some more (although on a severely left leaning site). I do remember this stuff being in the mainstream press in the Netherlands, so I think it is ok (and at least easy to check up if you really wanted to):
May 12, 1996: On "60 Minutes," Lesley Stahl asks Albright: "We have heard that a half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. Is the price worth it?" Albright responds: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."
That should put you in the position of being able to check those numbers, good luck and have a good election day (assuming you're an American of course).
you wrote:
What's fascinating is the sheer control of the media by people who lean to the left, or even further to the left. The biggest spreaders of FUD are you ABC's, CBS's, NBC's, and CNN's. All of them are liberal outlets. The closest one to the right is Fox News, which is still a liberal station.
NONE of those media giants are liberal. And unlike you, I will present actual reasoning, evidence etc to backup my claim. Here goes:
Big Media is liberal on minor, token issues: affirmative action, abortion, gay rights. These are the offically approved liberal issues. But when it comes to the really important issues, the economic issues, Big Media is solidly conservative. For example, recently, we have had a lot of discussion on network and cable tv political news shows about the "Problem with Social Security." And there has been some discussion of "solutions" to this problem. Of all the many times possible solutions have been mentioned on tv news shows, there are only two possible solutions ever listed: raise the age of retirement, and reduce benefits. Gee, what about all the other possible solutions? What about raising the ceiling on the payroll tax? Currently, the payroll tax stops at about $87K, and income above that is not taxed at all for SS purposes. ALso, why not just create a special tax on high incomes and use that to fund SS? For example add a 1% tax on all earned and unearned income above $250K. That would take care of all SS problems, just like that!
But you never hear anything about that on tv because that is a LEFTist solution, and leftists are hardly ever seen on tv. All centrists and rightwingers. Go look at all the broadcast networks and look at each political news show. List all the neutral regular guests and all the rightwing and leftwing regular guests and hosts. Can't think of many leftists, can you? Well, maybe you never paid much attention to that kind of stuff? Maybe you just repeat what you hear on Rush Limbaugh, or what you read in the wall st journal?
Well, there is really only ONE true leftist regularly given a voice on broadcast TV: Bill Moyers, and he is being driven out this year. You might make a case for Eleanor Clift and Lawrence O'Donell on McLaughlin and and Juan Williams on Fox News Sunday, althoug they are really more classic democrats, which is not the same as true liberal/progressive leftist. Also, that lady who is on the PBS show run by the Wall St Journal editorial board.
Now, do you want to run down all the rightwingers on broadcast tv? And then we can get started on cable tv. And that is far worse.
You see, you really don't know much about the situation at all, do you? You just repeat talking points drilled into you by talk radio, WSJ, and other mainstream media outlets.
Anyone think of any other lefists regularly on broadcast TV?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Thanks for the link correction. Neil Bush is not the worst of the Bushes in his personal life.
I recommend a new book, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty. Don't expect any author to be perfect. However, this book is an excellent overview of the Bush family, and the best book by this author. Here is a quote which shows just one more fact about the chronic lying of George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George W. Bush:
"The official family tree provided by the Bush archivists does not include the two mentally retarded daughters of John M. Walker, and lists only two of James Smith Bush's wives, not all four of them; one of Ray Walker's two wives is omitted, and George Herbert Walker III is listed with only two, instead of three, wives."
The Bush family is officially dishonest.
--
Government data compares Democrat and Republican economics.
The only two countries that see the palestenian occupation as just and moral are Israel and the US. Everybody else sees it as immoral and unjust.
I am not even sure that the Bush administrations (either this one or the previous one) saw it as moral or just. Indeed *both* W and his father went as far as withholding foreign aid from Israel and if you look closely at the politics with regard to the foreign aid that was delivered, it is far more slanted against Israel than others might thing (more emphasis on loan guarantees and less on grants, etc).
The problem is that Americans as a whole are far more pro-Israel than they should be, and this ties the administration's hands. Now, it should also be noted that Clinton was far more pro-Israel than either Bush.
But there are funny things here-- this support creates a situation where problems which need to be peacefully resolved don't get resolved. And it means that other countries (Lebannon, f. ex.) will exploit US foreign policy to, say, push the line regarding water rights, etc. So this support doesn't really do Israel any good in the long run.
Israel has peace treaties with two of its neighbors (Jordan and Egypt). Its occupation of the Golan continues to make such treaties impossible with Syria and Lebannon. Netenyahu understood this which was why he had secret meetings with the Assad to discuss this situation. Such meetings eventually went nowhere, primarily because of the way in which Clinton and Barak handled this.
---Hope---
There are a couple of things to be hopeful here. THe first is that the Israeli High Court of Justice has been relatively progressive on addressing issues of the legal rights of Israel's Arab citizens (about 20% of their population) and has even come close to endorsing the ICC. It is likely that practices such as inhuman conditions in prisons and torture will be stopped as the High Court of Justice continues to hear these cases. The only thing missing for the Israeli population to really have liberty is some abolishment of administrative detention and some right similar to that granted by a Habeas petition here in the US. There is a growing movement to ensure that these rights become recognized as a part of law.
Also, despite a lot oft he resistance to it, I think that Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan has the potential to be the first step towards the renewal of a peace process. Sure, Sharon wants to use this to fortify his position with the West Bank settlements, but even this simplifies the solution and makes things easier to eventually resolve. I am not saying Sharon could do it or even that he wants to (Sharon probably lacks credibility as a negotiating partner with both the Israelis and the Palestinians, so negotiating with him would be like negotiating with someone randomly selected from the street corner).
Israel will only have security when the issues of Gaza, Golan, and the West Bank are settled, when rule of law rather than force of arms prevails in the Palestinian lands, and when peace treaties are signed and recognized with all of Israel's neighbors. These will not happen overnight. But it will happen probably within my lifetime. Whether Israel is at that time a Jewish or a secular state will be their choosing. But it will lose some of its association with a single religion because either its Arab citizens (who have larger families and less education) will continue to have more children, or they will be given a fair education and set of economic opportunities and be better integrated into Israeli society.
Israel being against all Arabs is sort of like the US being against all people of African decent. Oh wait....
Not that I expect it to continue indefinitely.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
"Zogby (who some think is democrat-leaning)"
I would describe Zogby as accuracy leaning. He has a strong tendency to be closer to the final result than other pollsters. In 1996, this meant that he had the most Republican of the polls, as most of the error was in the Democrats favor.
Zogby is just very good at interpreting the poll results. He adjusts for such things as undecideds tending to vote for the challenger (about 2 to 1) and Republican voters not being home to answer the phone where others do not. His polling also seems to be more professional than that of other pollsters (more consistent, with fewer jumps and less bias).
Zogby himself seems to be a democrat, but that doesn't seem to have impacted the accuracy of his polls.
It will mean that gerrymandering would affect the presidential election. The winner-take-all part of the electoral system is not as bad as politicians cannot move state boundaries as easily.
My favorite idea which I think is politically possible is to weigh each state's votes so that they total to the number of electors for that state, thus awarding a fractional number of electors to each candidate in each state. This serves a useful purpose so that states with bad weather that reduce turnout are not underepresented, it also makes it palatable to Republicans who do not want proportional representation.
I thought that I was the only person that understood that idea. It's nice to know that Kerry seems to get it, too. I'm not sure that I ever really thought Bush himself, did, but obviously the folks giving him advice knew what they were doing.
Come on, moderators, how about a little non-partisan critical thinking, here. Or is that too much to ask?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Mod parent up!
Not because it's really that deep, but because he's fighting against the people who say stupid uninformed crap and get modded up anyway.
Yep, but it seems like a lot of people want to paint Zogby as a liberal pollster this time around. I think that's a little silly because he's been accurate in the past and, if my candidate was not doing well in a particular state, I'd want to know about it.
However, since Zogby differs from Strategic Vision and Gallup(which seems to be aversampling republicans), some want to call him liberal. I think in the end, everybody will call him right.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
5000 copies of "My Pet Goat".
(I know, it's actually a story called The Pet Goat in a reading textbook).
Somehow fitting nonetheless.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Kind of ironic how I always screw off in OS Design class on my laptop reading slashdot and electoral-vote.com. Taunenbaum wrote the text book for that class.
Yes I know that is more coincidence than irony, but it is kind of funny... ok maybe not
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
I see no question that the cultures themselves have created twisted populations which will never be able to return and be productive together. But there is more to the dynamics than popular politics. And the question is whether there is sufficient flexibility in the mainstream populations on both sides to make it work.
There are two factors which make the current situation unmaintainable from Israel's perspective. These include the economic business cost of the occupation and the way that this poisons the small business climate in places like Jerusalem due to added costs of security, etc.
The second factor is the cost of having the IDF perpetually involved in these areas.
A third factor which is not as serious on the surface but is actually more dangerous in the long run is the political implications of this as the Arab citizens of Israel continue to become a larger percentage of their popularion. Perpetuating the occupation may mean disenfranchizing Arab citizens as some (like the NRP) have suggested, and if this happens, then there is the very distinct possibility that people will not even be able to suggest that Israel is still a democracy, and may be left alone in the world.
Israel is the only country in the world without established borders (today you have two sets of borders: the green line and the area of effective occupation). No law effectively states what land Israel claims. This will happen soon, and I suspect that Gaza will not be on it.
The million-dollar question is what will happen once the pressure to establish borders will actually overcome the current status quo. BTW, I don't have a problem with the security fence as long as those Palestinians on the Israeli side of the fence are given Israeli citizenship, like that will ever happen....
Also, Israel is coming to terms with the question of what it means for the WCJ to essentially state that ratification or not, Israel is bound to the Geneva conventions.
Things are changing. Question is where they will go.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This, interestingly, introduces a little bit of randomness into the system because different pollsters poll different states at different times, and they all have their own methods with accuracies and inaccuracies.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Israel was not founded as you say out of a need for protection against retribution.
t ml
:-(
Indeed the story of the modern state of Israel goes back to the WWI when England decided toreward certain "Zionists" (word they used) by making the British Mandate of Palestine into a homeland for the Jews provided that the people who were living there would have their rights respected. Don't believe me-- do a quick search for the Balfour Declaration..
Another interesting link is this:
http://www.wrmea.com/jews_for_justice/mandate.h
During the years under British rule, however, what was seen was the development of a sort of terrorism done by the Zionists against the native Palestinian Arab population. During the 1948-9 War of Independence, many Palestinians were forced from their homes and their land seized without compensation. This is all a measure of record.
Now, I am not advocating that the Right to Return needs to be literally applied, but I do think that Israel needs to own up to the problems caused 50 years ago and offer some sort of assistance in order to help compensate people for what was taken and give them a good chance at rebuilding wherever they are.
And I think that Israel is getting its shit together. Whether it will happen fast enough is anybody's guess, though
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
here is a short list: The U.S. government has bombed 24 countries since the Second World War.
During the Clinton Administration, the US bombed six nations: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, and Yugoslavia.
Whereas Bush has bombed only two: Afghanistan and Iraq.
Europeans should be cheering for the re-election of the (relatively) peaceful George W. Bush!!
Hey I can afford a mod down after today :-)
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Why was that moderated as overrated? It had a rating of 0 before it was marked as overrated. How can something with a 0 be overrated? The moderators are very strange people.
The "only poll that really matters" is (multiple choice):
1) The one that says my guy is winning
2) The one held on election day
3) The one of the Supreme Court
4) 0wnz0rd by Diebold
Read about some of the inter-allied power politics of WW2. The US supported a Vichy French leader for post-war France, while the UK wanted Charles de Gaulle. In that instance, the UK won. Gabriel Kolko's The Politics of War: 1943-1945 has details.
Electoral-vote is hosted on these guys, who are a small ISP in upstate New York; I previously worked for them.
:)
:)
Andrew Tanenbaum was, at the time I was working there, one of our most problematic customers -- his site kept getting DoSed. Hostrocket has an OC3 and a DS3, but the attackers were able to throw enough traffic to keep it down until our providers could block the traffic before it reached our network.
I did a combo of network admin and support, and spoke with Mr. Tanenbaum a few times. I didn't realize who it was until the second or third time. Apparently my geek-fu was not active the first time
Andy is a nice guy, and we tried really hard to keep his site up -- we were certainly making good money off him! He was very specific in his technical requests (FTP should work so, why do I time out after X minutes, etc), and unfourtunately our support wasn't very good, so we could not solve all his problems.
Hostrocket currently runs RedHat 6 - 9, and was being phased out in favor of Whitebox at the time I was last employed there. I never asked Andy what he thought about us using Linux, but I was tempted
is that why the first computers were built in europe?
...back to work on that asteroid magnet....
MUAAAHAHAHAHAHAH!
How should we understand this? Other people should be happy to be killed by Americans.
Tannenbauer references the Google Cache of a Guardian article, but both the Cache and the original article have been replaced with an apology. Here is the original article:
The Guardian (London) - Final Edition October 23, 2004
The Guide: CHARLIE BROOKER'S screen burn
BY: Charlie Brooker
Heady times. The US election draws ever nearer, and while the rest of the world bangs its head against the floorboards screaming "Please God, not Bush!", the candidates clash head to head in a series of live televised debates. It's a bit like American Idol, but with terrifying global ramifications. You've got to laugh.
Or have you? Have you seen the debates? I urge you to do so. The exemplary BBC News website (www.bbc.co.uk/news) hosts unexpurgated streaming footage of all the recent debates, plus clips from previous encounters, through Reagan and Carter, all the way back to Nixon versus JFK.
Watching Bush v Kerry, two things immediately strike you. First, the opening explanation of the rules makes the whole thing feel like a Radio 4 parlour game. And second, George W Bush is. . . well, he's. . . Jesus, where do you start
The internet's a-buzz with speculation that Bush has been wearing a wire, receiving help from some off-stage lackey. Screen grabs appearing to show a mysterious bulge in the centre of his back are being traded like Top Trumps. Prior to seeing the debate footage, I regarded this with healthy scepticism: the whole "wire" scandal was just wishful thinking on behalf of some amateur Michael Moores, I figured. And then I watched the footage.
Quite frankly, the man's either wired or mad. If it's the former, he should be flung out of office: tarred, feathered and kicked in the nuts. And if it's the latter, his behaviour goes beyond strange, and heads toward terrifying. He looks like he's listening to something we can't hear. He blinks, he mumbles, he lets a sentence trail off, starts a new one, then reverts back to whatever he was saying in the first place. Each time he recalls a statistic (either from memory or the voice in his head), he flashes us a dumb little smile, like a toddler proudly showing off its first bowel movement. Forgive me for employing the language of the playground, but the man's a tool.
So I sit there and I watch this and I start scratching my head, because I'm trying to work out why Bush is afforded any kind of credence or respect whatsoever in his native country. His performance is so transparently bizarre, so feeble and stumbling, it's a miracle he wasn't laughed off the stage. And then I start hunting around the internet, looking to see what the US media made of the whole "wire" debate. And they just let it die. They mentioned it in passing, called it a wacko conspiracy theory and moved on.
Yet whether it turns out to be true or not, right now it's certainly plausible - even if you discount the bulge photos and simply watch the president's ridiculous smirking face. Perhaps he isn't wired. Perhaps he's just gone ga-ga. If you don't ask the questions, you'll never know the truth.
The silence is all the more troubling since in the past the US news media has had no problem at all covering other wacko conspiracy theories, ones with far less evidence to support them. (For infuriating confirmation of this, watch the second part of the must-see documentary series The Power Of Nightmares (Wed, 9pm, BBC2) and witness the absurd hounding of Bill Clinton over the Whitewater and Vince Foster non-scandals.)
Throughout the debate, John Kerry, for his part, looks and sounds a bit like a haunted tree. But at least he's not a lying, sniggering, drink-driving, selfish, reckless, ignorant, dangerous, backward, drooling, twitching, blinking, mouse-faced little cheat. And besides, in a fight between a tree and a bush, I know who I'd favour.
On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?
With all due respect to Mr Tannenbaum (and that's a lot of respect)... 10,000 is nothing. I'm nobody and I have over 1,000 pages referring to me (unusual name, easy to Google). I try to keep a pretty low profile, too -- just a little bit of shameless self-promotion could easily raise that over 10,000. For comparison, "Linus Torvalds" gets 700,000 hits on Google.
Come on, moderators, how about a little non-partisan critical thinking, here. Or is that too much to ask?
Hate to remind you, but this is slashdot^W the USA we're talking about.
I've seen a few people make this comment. It has left me wondering: How, exactly, did he violate the ceasefire?
I know the stated explanation was that the big condition of the ceasefire was that he opened himself up to UN arms inspectors so they could search for WMDs. So kicking out the inspectors was a violation of UN Security Council resolutions, and that justified the invasion.
But we now know there were no WMDs.
He eventually kicked the arms inspectors out, but only after it was obvious to just about everyone in the world that a war was going to start no matter what happened. When you have Bush thumping the table about how you're going to get invaded unless you tell the truth about your WMDs, and your only possible response is, "But I have told the truth about WMDs!" there's no point in cooperating with the UN anymore, is there? He spent an entire decade cooperating with them, and all it got him was an escalating cycle of aggressive posturing from the US.
So I really want to know how, exactly, he violated the ceasefire. It seems to me that war was inevitable due to Bush's completely blockheaded attitude about WMDs, not due to any action or inaction on Hussain's part.
Kofi Annan seems to have asked the same question, in making his comments about the illegality of the US's actions in Iraq. If Hussain had really been in violation of UN resolutions, the war wouldn't have been illegal.
And remember, listening to Bush say he was in violation of UN Security Council resolutions doesn't make it so...
-----
I tried an internal modem, but it hurt when I walked.
As for the diplomatic questions, it's hard to argue when all we have are suppositions. I think that there are ways to sway countries towards or away from certain positions. You are correct in asserting that you cannot drastically alter their position. However, I feel that Bush's tactics swayed countries away from us, and a skilled politician could have swayed countries towards us. I know that he is not "the diplomat", but he definitely is a diplomat. He has met with Tony Blair, personally, several times talking about how the two countries should proceed. And, I think he's done a good job dealing with Blair.
As for environment policy, sure there are some stupid laws on the books. However, if you think allowing more mercury in the water and more particulates in the air is a good thing, then you're welcome to your opinion, but you're just reinforcing the opinion of many here that Bush supporters have their own reality. (Personally, I think that both sides have selective perception, but no matter how hard I try to be selective in favor of Bush, I cannot imagine how he is doing anything but harming the environment.
Oh, and can you find a reference that backs up your claim about setting limits below that of background radiation? I seriously doubt it. I imagine this is one of those Republican urban legends. (There are Democrat urban legends, as well. What makes you a wise observer is whether or not you can pick out urban legends that support your point of view.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Whassamatta? Yew don'd kare fer comik boucks?
"When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." - Mark Twain
Or, in other words: "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Theodore Roosevelt, speaking on President Wilson's crackdown on dissent after the U.S. entered WWI.
"When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." - Mark Twain
MY HAT!!! Cuz nya nya nya I am right, nya nya nay you are wrong!!!
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)