Slashdot Mirror
Election Day Discussion
With the polls now already open in most of the country, this is the official on-topic place for all Slashdot readers to discuss the election itself. And get out and vote if you can. Also, if you haven't noticed, the Slashdot poll shows once and for all where Slashdot readers fall on the election. I'm off to vote in a couple hours. Wonder if we'll have Diebolds in my district.
..it is also obvious that Slashdot has an international readership. Would there be any way to re-run the poll restricting it to US bound IP address to see if the race isn't so runaway for Kerry from the slashdot side?
That being said, I'm all for Kerry to win. But I live in a pretty red state. Though while standing in line to feed my paper ballot marked with a pen into some thing I saw that the few people in front of me had all voted for Kerry/Edwards which I found interesting, considering how little either party has paid attention to North Carolina this year.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Voting was relatively easy/painless in PA. Supposedely lines were long this morning (at least at my polling place). VA people are telling me that their polls had lines in record numbers. My parents waited in line for two hours (1 outside the building, 1 inside).
I'm curious to hear from Ohio voters. Has anyone been challenged yet?
Sig it.
They were touch screen devices that were named "WinVote". The first thing I saw was a blue screen. Man was I scared.
On a side note, I don't remember seeing voter turnout like this before, but the only elections I was involved with in this state were strictly senatorial or congressional. Those times I was in line for a good 10 minutes, this morning was a little over an hour. There was a great turnout and just about everyone in line seemed pretty excited. The folks at the polls who weren't election officials (people from the different parties) did a good job of helping people out without bugging the hell out of us (handing out copies of the ballots, walking the old people to the building and through the line - BUT not to the voting machines).
All in all it was a good experience, and I hope it works like this across the whole country.
Well, the polling places mentioned are in Center City and North Philly, mostly. Those are (especially N. Philly) primarily districts where the Democratic registration would be especially high, so that (to me) indicates they could be GOP votes that were planted. Don't know, and Drudge doesn't tell us. I've been unable to confirm it as well, and Drudge is known for his share of whoppers, but this is a very disturbing report indeed...
The polls are swamped in fairfax. The procedure is as follows:
1) Stand in line to get your id checked. If you are registered you get a blue index card.
2) Stand in a different line with your card and wait for a winvote machine to open up.
3) When it is your turn you present your card to the election worker that supervises the terminal that just opened up. She takes your blue card and unlocks the machine.
4) You vote.
Note that thing differentiating a random person that walked up to the machine and a registered, approved voter is posession of the blue card. Multiple people left after receiving their blue cards, saying they couldn't wait another hour and that they would return later. There is nothing stopping these people from reproducing the cards and returning multiple times. The voting places are an absolute packed madhouse, NO ONE would notice if someone just walked up to the second line with a blue card.
Did anyone else see any other glaring holes in their election procedures?
<high-level position here>
<name of stupid small company here>
In the rest of the democratic world, as far as I know, this is illegal. It seems to us that it goes against having a fair election. And yet in America it is normal practice. Why?
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
I leaned in and looked at the book (breaking every rule in the book by looking at the book) and saw my name and pointed to it. The attendant looked at my name and stated, "but your drivers license says 2950 Ridge Rd, but in my book it says 2951 Ridge Rd" (an address which does not exist)
She spent 20 minutes on the phone with the board of elections trying to figure out what it is she was supposed to do.
Despite having a drivers license with 2950, a voter registration card with 2950, she was bound and determined not to let me vote because her book said 2951. I asked what paperwork I would need to fill out if I wanted to claim that I had moved. She explained that I could fill out the paperwork, but my vote would not be counted until the paperwork cleared. Figuring that would mean my vote would only be counted in a disputed recount situation (if even then) this wasn't acceptable to me either.
Finally another attendant called the Board of Elections (because I was starting to get very agitated) and discovered I could fill out the change of address forms with me, vote, and then turn the forms into the board of elections today.
I'm still not convinced my vote will get counted. I was given an "I Voted" sticker, and wondered if I did or not.
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
All around the world, we're watching you today. We love America, we want you to lead and inspire and show us what democracy and freedom and technology can do. But right now we're feeling scared, confused, and angry about what your President has lead you to do over the past three years.
Please, give us back the America we admire and believe in. Don't turn yourselves into a religious state. Don't turn your back on the UN and the other peoples of the world - in the end we are people first, American or French or Iraqi or Chinese second. Give us back the America that went to the moon and carried out the Berlin airlift and brought us the IT revolution. Give us back the America of Kennedy's vision and MLK's dream.
And please, don't let the world's most successful democracy be reduced to a joke with a repeat of last election's Floridan antics.
Read Pynchon.
What's your source?
Read Pynchon.
> and Drudge is known for his share of whoppers, but this is a very disturbing report indeed...
Disturbing, yes, but it has probably been happening all over the country for decades.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Cheers,
Craig
Corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
The BBC has a pretty cool Flash election map - presumably it'll get updated with results as they come in, but for a European like me there's lots of historical information too.
:-)
Want to find out how states voted in the past? Or read potted summaries of previous candidates and so on? I've learned quite a lot already.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Hi all,
I cannot yet vote in this country but I would like to remind you of the importance of this, and encourage you to vote.
There are certain ideas and principles that are central to the political heritage of our country: freedom of speech and free assembly without fear of persecution, the right to be secure against arbitrary search and seizure, the right to a fair and speedy public trial, and above all, the idea that all people are created equal, and have these unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, regardless of race, origin or religion.
These principles have often distinguished the U.S. from other, less fortunate places places in the world. People have admired it because of that, and the country has been able to hold the moral high ground because of adherence to these ideas.
However, although these rights should be unalienable as values common to all human beings, they cannot be taken for granted unless people take an active role in participating in the political process and ensuring that these values are held up. I have lived under three quite different political systems in my life, and not all of them have allowed its citizens to have these liberties. Through my own experiences and memories of my friends, I have seen how they can be granted and taken away, and it always happens because of either the activity or inactivity of common people, people like you and me.
So please go out and vote, and encourage your friends to do the same. And whatever your political affiliation is, I hope you think about these rights when making your choice.
Thank you.
Targo
When men used to be men
A year ago, my wife and I moved from an apartment to our house.
A week later, we went and got our drivers licenses changed, and both registered.
I registered Green, she registered Republican.
A few months later, we both received our registration cards.
She voted this morning.
When I tried to vote, after waiting for two hours I was told that I wasn't on the rolls. 20 minutes later of me refusing to leave, especially since I had my voter registeration card, they told me that I was registered at my old address.
Which is garbage, because I _never_ registered to vote at my old address.
Evidently, this is pretty common. Now i'm expected to say "Gosh, i'm not going to wait another two hours to vote. I have to get to work."
Well fuck them, i'm voting after work today. I don't care if i'm there for 6 hours.
I'm still disenfranchised, as I cannot vote for my local representatives.
I voted this morning (in Ohio) using the electronic Diebold systems. I am well aware of the issues behind them because of their architecture, but I have to give them credit for their easy interface. If someone says they couldn't use it properly because it is too complex then they probably couldn't operate a shopping cart. If you have not seen them they are a white surface with lights that blink where you have not voted and a solid light where you have. Black boxes group the different candidates and issues. This is nothing like I was expecting. I assumed they had a more ATM like interface, which would have been more difficult to use I think. My only complaint was we only had five machines so I waited in line for two and a half hours (I got there at seven thirty).
Happy voting.
I tried to write-in a vote for Nader in Illinois and was told by my precinct captain that my balot would not be "signed" and counted.
Apparantly, we actually do not have the right to vote for whomever we choose. It is actually up to the states to decide for whom we are allowed to vote.
It really sucks to be told for whom you are allowed to vote.
Well, election day exit polling is a hell of a lot more accurate than the crap leading up to an election. Most of the pre-election polls have sample sizes of about 500-1500 or so yielding margin of errors from about 5%-3%. Sample size is what drives the margin of error. Exit polls have significantly larger sample sizes, so the margin of error can become quite small even when looking at comparatively small numbers.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
John Fund of the Wall Street Journal has an excellent article today about how the election results are going to play out, hour by hour. He tells you what states are going to close their polls at what time, and discusses what are the key races and key factors in the election around the country. Great read.
You have a very good point, but it also begs the question:
Are you supposed to vote for who you think will do a better overall job or who best represents your beliefs and opinions?
Personally, I was really torn by this very question for the last few weeks...
- Tony
Kerry supports a draft? Trustworthy link, please?
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
Ciao
There should be a lot of traffic. This is perhaps the most important election of the current young digerati generation (hate that word, but it fits).
As an aside, I saw something fairly poignant today. I came into the World Trade Center site via the PATH, which I do everyday. There's always visitors (never understood the morbid fascination of looking at the hole; you get a very good view from the PATH train). What was different this morning was where they were standing.
There are photograph placards all along the fence, displaying the WTC at various stages of development, the tribute in light, etc. Typically people walk from placard to placard, take pictures, etc. One placard shows the destruction on 9-11-01 (dust clouds, the famous picture of the firemen at the cementary across the street, etc). For whatever reason, there were a ton of people just staring at that one placard. Noone demonstrating, saying anything, but just staring and thinking.
(aside: Jesus it's hard to post with all of these 503 errors, I can't even check to see if this is redundant)
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Slashdot is slashdotted, so I can't tell if this was posted correctly before:
Facts you should know before you vote:
If you truly love your country, you will not just enjoy the advantages, you will be there for your country when there are problems.
100 Facts and 1 Opinion -- The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration
See The CIA trained Osama bin Laden and other Arabs in the techniques of terrorism.
Government data compares Democrat and Republican economics.
Most media exists to make money. Advertisers are understandably careful not to alienate anyone. It is not possible to develop an accurate opinion of government activities only by listening to the carefully crafted phrases from media employees who would lose their jobs if they seemed to indicate a preference for one policy over another. Books are the major media that are not ad-supported. Here are reviews of 3 movies and 35 books that discuss the corruption of the Bush administration: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
Bush's education improvements were at least partly fraud.
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."
Before, Saddam was killing. Now, the U.S. government is killing and destabilizing, and you pay. Improvement?
15 of the nineteen 9/11 attackers were Saudis. Many don't like the U.S. Gov. influence on their country.
Did you see the network footage of George W. Bush holding hands with a Saudi man the Bush family knows as "Bandar Bush"? Since it was Saudis who attacked on 9/11, why did Bush invade Iraq? Was it a smokescreen to get attention away from the Saudis?
Bush borrows money to kill Iraqis. 140 billion borrowed. With interest, you pay 200 billion. When Saudis attack, invade Iraq?
Is Bush drinking NOW?
George W. Bush's brother was shown in a lawsuit deposition on 20/20 talking about his prostitutes and using government influence to make money. Family values? Neil Bush is different from other relatives of presidents like Billy Carter; he is heavily involved with government corruption and he does his corruption with the help of his family.
The U.S. government has fought 24 wars since World War II. The system of violence works by creating fear so rich people can profit.
Got this message from a tailgating friend in Florida about his wife:
I thought you all would be interested to know what just happened in the past 30 minutes (It is 9:20AM here).
My wife went to the polls. I voted at the same precinct early this morning with no problems. However, when she went to vote, she was not allowed because they said a) she had changed her address one month ago and b) she had voted absentee. Obviously, neither is true.
She is now standing in line at the County Election office who told her they had the absentee records on file for her to review once she shows proof of ID.
It will be fascinating to find out "who" filed a change of address and absentee ballot "in her name". It was obviously intentional (fraudulent) and obviously targeted at a registered Republican.
Get ready for a rocky ride folks.
---
Anyone hear about anything like this happening before?
I think Eminem's new video, "Mosh" is one of the best constructed political anthem's I've heard for our time. Watch it here.
Some disclaimers: It's Eminem, and it's uh, kind of anti-Bush. Whatever you think about either, I still think it's worth watching.
http://www.talknerdy.org
Let's see...
The President lied about Iraq.
Massive invasion of Iraq, illegal.
No WMDs. None since 1991.
100000 Iraqies dead, women and children mostly.
Over 1000 US Troops dead and toll is rising.
US torturing civilians (for none existant WMDs?)
Usama Bin Laden still around... laughing.
And that's just the plain facts. It amazes we who live outside the USA Americans haven't impeached a president who's obviously insane.
I thought this webpage was amusing.
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts. htm
Since the Bush family had placed it's Chosen One in the White House, with his pro-fundementalist anti-humanist bible belt supporters and greedy corporate rapists, America has fallen into the worst state of economic depression, fear, war mongering, racism, and down right fascism since the Civil War.
Once the Bush Junte had it's "Pearl Harbour" they immediately ignored any terrorist threat that might exist (gotta wonder why) in favour of a cartoon war against an "Axis of Evil".
America is lead by a Marvel comicbook character. And Americans wonder why the rest of the world has been refering to GWB as a "moron" (and I'm quoting statesmen before Sept 11/2001).
Instead of doing what would have been logical, having the CIA go get those terrorists (that's why the CIA exists after all), America attacked a nation it already controled! Iraq.
Why?
Well, if you ask certain Americans they tell you that Saddam was a threat to the USA. Well, he wasn't. Not even the White House thought he was a few months before 9/11. So why did America invade Iraq?
And now, they tell me it doesn't matter that the President of the USA lied to Congress to get war powers.
Yeaaaaaa... Americans are finding that it's now "legal" to be jailed without any representation, your home can be searched without a warrent, poverty groups have already been raided and any dissent is met with Gestapo like tactics - the Republican Convention in NY was a disgusting display of an arrogant disregard of peoples rights and freedoms.
The media is now owned by only three large Corporations who whole heartily support the Bush WH. Bush gives them everything they want after all and Corporations don't give a rats ass about laws, rights, or people. Never did. Worse, media has created an ongoing propoganda campaign in favour of the Bush Junte by simply ignoring stories the Bush White House would find embarrassing and, far more telling, would put GWB in jail. Recently, the Bush election camp has declared war on the New York Times in a smear reminisant of the attacks Micheal Moore faces for his documentary. A documentary that is obviously true to eveyone BUT Americans because the rest of the world heard about these things years before. Micheal Moore didn't tell the world anything different, he was telling AMERICANS.
You have to wonder about a nation that goes to war and doesn't care to even justify it. Sorta like Hitler attacking Poland because, as Hitler said, Poland was a threat to the Fatherland. Must have been the cream cakes?
Yet, on the US TV transmitions there is still nothing about what is truely going on. The rest of the world is not living in the bubble of American media (including me) where the facts about America ignoring the source of the Terrorists (Saudi Arabia), where the money for 9/11 came from (Saudi Arabia), and who is responsible (Saudi Arabia again) simply isn't discussed! WTF! And who in the USA has the closest connections to Saudi resident Usama Bin Laden?
The Bush Family.
Now, if that is so why isn't Usama in a jail getting his testies fried right now? Hm? The first thing a cop would do when faced with a murder is talk to everyone involved. The Bush WH packed the entire Bin Laden family in the USA onto a plane the day after 9/11 and sent them home, without interrogation.
Today, we hear the news about how the USA can't even count votes. Is America retarded? Well, one might think so if one wasn't
Party representatives are allowed to touch the Ballots???
Here in Canada, the only people allowed to touch the Ballots are the Deputy Returning Officer (who is sworn to be non-partisan) and the Voter. The DRO isn't allowed to touch the voter list, that's the Poll Clerk's job.
The scrutineers and the candidate's representative (who oversees the scrutineers for their party) aren't allowed to touch anything. They also aren't allowed to talk about politics or have any signs or material which might identify their party etc. asside from their scrutineer badge (which has their name and party).
The election before last, I went up to the table to vote and the Poll Clerk, DRO, and scrutineer were telling me who to vote for. They turned absolutely white when right after putting my ballot in the box I walked over to the candidate's rep (for a different party) handed him my paperwork and got my scrutineer badge. They stopped telling people how to vote after that (I was assigned to their table).
A third party President would likely unite the other two parties against him, allowing Congress to pass veto-proof legislation. It might be interesting, but since there's no viable 3rd party candidate, this isn't a serious option.
A Republican President will keep the House, Senate, and Presidency in the hands of one party. The Republican-controlled Congress has already proven itself to be Bush's lap-dog, giving him anything he asks for. [I'd be just as opposed to the Democrats controlling everything, BTW]. Another 4 years of total Republican control will kill the last vestiges of freedom we have left.
A Democratic president will unite the Democratic minority in Congress behind him. He'll have to struggle and COMPROMISE to get anything done, however, because the Republicans will likely retain control of both houses. This should cancel out the more extreme partisan agendas coming from either party. This will at least keep the far-right fundimentalist Christian wing of the Republican party in check, and they're the ones who really scare me.
The most important issue for me is the fact that potentially 3 supreme court justices are going to die or retire in the next 4 years. Right now the court is balanced between an arch-conservitive wing and a moderate liberal wing, with one swing justice who leans to the left. Another Bush presidency combined with a Republican-controlled House and Senate will allow them to stack the deck with more hard-right, anti-freedom justices like Scalia and Thomas. However, any Kerry appointee will still have to be confirmed by the same Republican Congress; therefore Kerry would have to chose someone moderate in order to get them past the Republicans. Scant as it is, this is the best hope we have to retain at least some of our freedoms and undo some of the worst excesses of the last 4 years.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I get a card, go up to the machine and insert the card and "vote". I get to see my vote before "casting" it, after pressing "Cast Vote" I'm instructed to pull the card back out of the machine and so do so. Now I take that card to some guy and he inserts the card into a small handheld device.
At what point is my vote really cast - when I hit the "Cast Vote" button, or when the card is inserted into that handheld device? If the latter, they didn't show me what the device said. Was my vote really counted? I have no idea.
--- What?
An update:
After an hour in the county election office, my wife was allowed to vote. They confirmed to her that someone fraudulently switched her address and voted absentee for her. They obviously don't know who it is, but they do know the address of where they are located (where the absentee ballot was mailed). All they could promise her was that the county sherriff would be investigating immediately and that the duplicate absentee ballot would be invalid.
In addition, the Hindi news channel was carrying a very detailed analysis of the two candidates. Also, they had a pannel of people give their opinion about what the effects of either candidates foreign policies would be on India. I'd guess that most nation's media are carrying similar analysis and what-is-in-store for me analysis.
It's kind of odd. You get a private little booth to mark the ballot. But then you have to go stand in line and stick it into some kind of motorized paper sucking thing. So while standing in line with nothing to look at I noticed the people who were standing in front of me holding their ballots out in front of them...
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
I live in the Philly suburbs, and when we showed up to vote this morning there was an "extra" person who didn't seem to be official, but checked a computer printout. He didn't find our name, and when we told him that we had been voting there for over 20 years, he kept mumbling "you're not on this list". He went outside to talk to the local sleaze-ball republican politician who is there every year.
The official folks said there was no problem, since we were in the official book (the old-fashioned paper type). I'm wondering how many other Democratic names were "accidentally" lost from the list. I'm also wondering how a first-time voter might react to not being on the list.
I seem to recall hearing about an election process somewhere whereby you could choose from the candidates given, or vote "none of the above." If "none of the above" got a majority/plurality/whatever-ity of the vote, then both/all parties had to find new candidates to nominate until they came up with one palatable enough for the voting populace to actually elect, rather than "settle for."
Would this be such a bad idea for the U.S.?
--- "When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all..."
The point you missed in the blog was that Iraq has been the group that has been consistently, continually targetting the US.
In addition to those points, you have the added benefits of:
* Establishing freedom in the middle east. Be sure, this is a strategic, not a tactical, vision. If Iraq is a free, stable country in 5-10 years, then in 20-30 years we will likely have change following in the other countries
* "If the war was really about putting an end to a threat, than we have failed at that as well." - we haven't failed, we are simply still working on it.
* Moving the war to Iraq, instead of waiting for it to come to us
"The truth of the facts you laid out is that Iraq was no more than one threat out of many, and any direct threat to the US mainland was far smaller than other countries."
Actually, if you look at the details of my blog post, it points out that Iraqi intelligence has had involvement in almost every terrorist act on the US mainland. Several of them are not classified as Iraqis because they are using passports of foreign nationals who they killed when Iraq invaded Kuwait. But the usage of these passports presents pretty clear involvement w/ Iraqi Intelligence.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Meaning Bush has some sense of reality, unlike Kerry the career politician and money-marrier.
What evidence do you have that Bush is a "puppet"? Further, the idea that the President is solely responsible for his entire policy is a joke...he has experts in various narrow fields to advise him. Being President is a management job, and delegation is key.
Bush has done a good job in several respects. His tax policy has stimulated the economy, which is rebounding nicely from the Clinton recession and 9/11. Two million new jobs this year. No attacks on mainland America since 9/11. Two hotbeds of anti-American sentiment moving towards democracy.
Granted Iraq is not an ideal situation right now. However, it is also ridiculous to call it a failure. We had a valid reason to go to war - Saddam's failure to account for his WMDs. We've accomplished far more than we ever did in Vietnam, at the cost of around 1,100 American lives - as opposed to 50,000 lost in Vietnam. (Bear in mind that we lose ~50,000 people a year to traffic accidents, and ~35,000 people a year to the flu.) There is a good chance (if Kerry doesn't win) that Iraq will be transformed into a stable democracy, which would be a tremendous achievement. It could be the start of major, positive change in the Middle East. There is also something to be said for the idea of fighting terror over there rather than here in the streets of America.
I think the majority of Americans are smart enough to sort all this out, and we'll see the result tonight - a solid Bush win.
Now, let's consider the downsides of Kerry.
First of all, we have no idea what he'll do if by some mischance he's elected. His positions have changed constantly during the campaign, no one knows what he'd ultimately decide to do. It's easy to claim you have a "better plan" when you don't actually have to produce any results.
His track record is weak on defense, high on taxation - a classic New England liberal. His behavior in the Vietnam era was inexcusable. He is disliked by the military, and morale will suffer terribly if he's elected. He is ultra-rich yet claiming to speak for the common man. (The Kerry's paid around 15% taxes on $5 million income last year, the Bush's paid around 30% on their income.) Kerry will do nothing differently than Bush on the issue of offshoring, they are both globalists. In fact, he is probably more likely to bump the number of H1-B visas, just as Clinton did when President.
I don't believe Bush is perfect, I don't like the USAPA as currently implemented, and I detest Ashcroft. However, Kerry is such a poor excuse for a candidate, and has such a poor public record, that I have no choice but to support Bush. Sometimes in life we have to make tough decisions. Kerry is simply unacceptable as President.
It boggles my mind that the Democrats couldn't come up with a better candidate. The two party system seems a bad idea about now...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Does this mean that in U.S. you have to show some official who you voted for? No such thing as vote confidentiality?
Finally, we know what Mr. Bush didn't want to let us know about the Bin Laden tape:
n .tape/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/01/binlade
It is interesting how much his arguments make sense. Did Bush ever say something THAT clear? Did he have such a clear strategy when he sent his troops to iraq? We will prevail... Yes, sure. Tell us hat we want to hear and we will not question it further.
The censored version of the tape made everybody wonder, why Bin Laden is supporting Bush. The uncensored version speaks a different language.
I hope Kerry wins, and I hope it will change something. I also hope Bush will pay for what he did to America and the world.
That's great, our troops only killed 15,000 CIVILIANS. What is it called again when you kill civilians to futher a cause, like bombing buildings, Oh thats right its called TERRORISM.
Some of the things that you refrence even the Bush administration has said aren't true. OK city was a case of domestic terrorism, the 9/11 committee says Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. I'm not sure how you link the others with Iraq, but I highly doubt the actual facts back you up considering the other things you have asserted.
As someone else has already pointed out we are there now and Saddam was a real shit, but saying that we are there for untrue reasons helps no one.
Oh, I do agree with you that Reagan did a lot to put us in this situation. That is another thing that worries me about this administration, they seem to think Reagan was some kind of god. Reagan gave us American sponsered terrorists, Saddam gassing his people and Iran, and a huge recession in the late 80's with fiscal policies that Bush is trying to reinstate.
Sorry about the rant.
The book "The Wisdom of Crowds" discusses this. In a nutshell: groups make good decisions even if most of the people in the group have incomplete or even bad information, because the errors in the individual votes tend to cancel each other out. By this argument, even people with only half a clue should vote.
Free, legal music for iTunes users.
www.johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.c om
What about all them people last time around who's votes were thrown out due to lawsuits and all that other nonsense? The first time I was old enough to vote I was disenfranchised. The Ballot was due at the courthouse back home (I was away at college) no later than 8AM Friday morning. I didn't receive my absentee ballot in the mail until Thursday evening the day before it was due. Around 7:30PM was when I made it to pick up my mail that day, so there was no way I could even fill it out and get it overnighted or anything.
When this happens, you really don't feel like voting again because the hypocrisy of your statement compared to the reality of what is actually done with our votes comes through very loud and clear. Your words are nice and all, but the reality is that a lot of people are told explicitly by what is actually done that no, their vote truely does not count for shit.
You simply are not going to get many of these people back to vote again. I sat out the election after they said "screw you" to me, but I've been back last time and today. My vote for the president's office doesn't count for much as I'm in Maryland and it is blatantly owned by whoever the Democrat is at the time, but I checked off a name anyway. (Not that I'm against voting for Kerry, I'm registered republican and I didn't vote for Bush, but I didn't check Kerry's name either.)
Alabama, rightly so in many cases, gets a bad rap for being a backward state, but after reading all of the horrible stories about weird voting machines, [Democratic|Republican] "challenges", disorganized staff, etc. from around the country, I'd like to share my experience...
I drove by my polling place (a suburban neighborhood church) at 7:30 and the line was around the building, so I went on to work. I returned at around 12:30 and the line was more reasonable.
I waited in line for about twenty minutes before I got to the registration table. I showed them my driver's license and voter registration card. They looked up my registration on a form-fed printout of the registration lists and crossed my name out with a yellow highlighter and ruler and handed me a slip of paper. I walked to the next table, gave them the slip of paper and they wrote my ballot number on it, made me sign two side-by-side registers (one printed, one "signed") and gave me the corresponding numbered ballot and a Sharpie marker.
I took it to a privacy cubicle and completed it by connecting the very clear and well-aligned arrows beside the candidates and options of my choice with a big, fat, black line (no possibility of ambiguity unless you are a total idiot). I checked over the ballot, then walked over to the voting machine and fed it in. A beep and a green light told me immediately that all of my votes were registered unambiguously and the paper record of the vote went into a locked tray inside the machine. They gave me a "I voted" sticker and I was on my way.
My only gripe? There are two lines (clearly marked, BTW) for people whose last names start with A-L or M-Z. Everytime I've voted here, the A-L line has, at most, 5 people in in while the M-Z snakes out the door. Unless 'M' is the real clincher, it wouldn't be too hard to split the alphabet to more evenly distribute the lines. If 'M' *is* the culpret, they could even do A-Mi and Mo-Z, but that would probably confuse the moron element.
Why can backward Alabama (or at least our precinct in Huntsville -- can't speak for the rest of the state) get it right while the rest of country is awash in touch screens, mechanical dinosaurs, butterfly ballots, hanging chads, charcoal on tree bark, or whatever else they are forced to use? What is so damned disenfranchising about requiring proof of ID? How hard can it possibly be to cross-check voter registration lists?
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
Then obviously the Clinton administration lied (surprise, surprise) when the list of guests was presented OR the Washington Post, CBS News and all the other news organizations who had the same information failed to include Arafat on the list.
As far as inviting a terrorist to the White House, Bush I did the same thing by inviting Yitzhak Shamir so using that as an article leader really doesn't do anything other than show the bias of the American Spectator.
Further, nowhere in anything you presented does it say that Arafat was the #1 guest during the Clinton administration. The only thing that is mentioned is that Arafat was a frequent guest who stayed there more than Netanyahu. So what? If Netanyahu stayed there for a total of 2 weeks and Arafat was there for 3 weeks that would meet the qualification of staying there more than Netanyahu.
As far as the mod system, well, we all know it's a crap shot.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Troll.
I routinely post pro-conservative points and get modded up, if it is a valid point and not based on onesidedness. "Clinton recession" pointing out Kerry's $5Mil and ignoring Bush's $XMil (which is >5) makes him out to be biased and ranting.
The Economist actually endorsed Kerry, albeit with "a heavy heart". This is not a liberal publication either, folks. It is a conservative publication of the non 'neo' variety, though it is not surprisingly more concerned with the economic, rather than social, side of things. The President got points for his good intentions but in the end they conceded he "has never seemed truely up to the job, let alone his own ambitions for it".
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While it is published in England, the largest part of it's readership is American, and based on how they usually go, it was an endorsement Bush should have had in the bag. Most telling, they wrote that their confidence in him had been "shattered". The criticism was almost entirely foreign policy-based. The editors made it clear that a new approach abroad, as well as a greater distance between himself and the extremes of the religious right, were what they required from him to receive their blessing.
Kerry actually got praise for his voting record as a fiscal conservative and free trade advocate, though it wondered if his recent swing towards protectionism was for real or just politics. He is not without a few big spending projects, like health care, but they guess these probably wont get past a Republican congress anyway. No flying colors here but passing marks in the face of four more years of Bush foreign policy.
Interesting stuff.
http://economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?sto
I'm a first time voter and I asked how to do a write-in on the machines here. The first poll worker asked me if I was voting for Mickey Mouse, told me it messes everything up, and that I didn't want to do it. The next told me she didn't know and would have to get the book out and start reading. Fortunately there happened to be an election official from the county present, who showed me how to do it, and even comforted me by saying that there are a lot of write ins today. He also gave me his number so he could personally replace my voter registration card, which the poll workers had "lost."
Dear poll workers, sorry about "messing everything up," and fuck you.
I am confident that my write in vote will not be counted unless that election official is hanging over their heads.
Horray for the republic?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
You display your bias by calling it the Clinton recession.
Of course it was the Clinton recession. The stock market crashed before Bush's policies could possibly have had any effect.
At any rate, that tax cut resulted in breaking all the records for debt spending. Bush has plunged the USA deeper in debt than was thought imaginable.
Not true. The current deficits are a lower percentage of GDP than at other points historically.
Two hotbeds of anti-American sentiment moving towards democracy.
No, two new hotbeds of anti-American sentiment. Period. Afghanstan is now ruled by drug-pushing warlords and former Taliban rulers, and Iraq has converted a neutral populace (with an anti-American dictator) into a vehemently anti-American populace (with an American-backed dictator). He's done the same thing with Terrorism that he did with taxes - he postponed them in such a way that it will be a hundred times worse for your children.
I disagree. The elections in Afghanistan were a stunning success. I find it amusing that liberals such as yourself heap scorn on something that did so much to advance traditional liberal values such as freedom and women's rights.
There was already a culture of rabid anti-American hate in both of those countries. It now has a chance of getting better, and I assure you that there are strong pro-American factions in both countries now.
(Bear in mind that we lose ~50,000 people a year to traffic accidents, and ~35,000 people a year to the flu.)
Funny, I don't hear you using this justification when discussing the psychotic and aimless reaction to Terrorism. I mean, was it _only_ 3000 people who died in 9/11? Death is death, and whether it was 10 000 or 100 000 Iraqis who're dead for some bad judgement, it still sucks.
Yeah, it was "only" 3,000 (three times as many as the troops we've lost, eh?). However, it could easily have been 30,000 or more if the terrorists had planned a bit better. Not to be callous, but it was equally bad that a major part of our financial infrastructure was taken out. Together, these events caused $1 trillion in damage to the US economy.
The bigger concern is terrorists of whatever ilk coming up with NBC weapons that would take out millions instead of thousands. I think that makes the war against terrorism justifiable in it's present form.
His behaviour in Vietnam was far more excusable than his opponents - he went, he fought, and he found out how horribly it sucked so he did whatever he could to get home (the three-purple-heart-loophole). Then, once home, he informed the people of how badly it sucked. Some people couldn't handle the truth, so they go apeshit on him.
He went, he fought (to some extent, how well or bravely is very open to question). He most likely injured himself for at least one of the Purple Hearts. Then, when he returned, he committed the truly inexcusable act of lying about supposed atrocities committed by American soldiers in Vietnam. This gave aid and comfort to the enemy, and directly hurt American POWs in prison. That alone should disqualify him from being Commander in Chief.
Kerry has shown far more interest in protecting American jobs than Bush (who does not seem to have shown any) so I don't see where you're getting that H1B note. Kerry has actually campaigned on that platform.
Once again, Kerry has paid lip service to something he thinks might get him a few votes. We'll see what happens if he actually gets into a position to do something about it. His wife's company outsources as much as any.
high on taxation
Frankly, the US cannot afford the current levels of taxes and spending. Its like running a million dollars of credit because you don't want to make your car payments.
Of course not. That's why the plan, over time, is to
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Is that when he visited Australia, the Secret Service insisted on wearing weapons inside our Parliament... and for the first time in Australian history weapons were allowed in.
Read Pynchon.
Small, the Democrat running an uphill battle to unseat the popular Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has stuffed all the remnants of his campaign into a used RV emblazoned with the motto, "Think Big -- Vote Small" and is selling the entire package on eBay.
CAMPAIGN IN A VAN!! ALL YOU NEED TO RUN FOR US SENATE!!
In 1996, I was an "election worker trainee" as part of a school program to get students interested in civics. My job was to be one of the people who helped out if people had trouble with the machine and reset the machine for the next voter after they were done.
My state had some very old mechanical voting booths with levers for each candidate or party lines and one big lever for closing and opening the curtain. When you were done voting you were supposed to pull the lever to open the curtain and your votes would be recorded. Anyway sometimes people would have problems and despite being told no fewer than THREE times not to pull the big lever until voting was complete they would use it to open the cutain and ask me a question, at which point the only thing I could say was that they had voted and i'm sorry but you can't vote again.
This is a problem with all current anonymous systems since you can't match the voter to the vote. The scary part about your post was that you pushed "cast ballot" while you were still uncertain about your vote BEFORE consulting the election worker, thereby ensuring that any mistakes will be uncorrectable. It seems to have worked out for you this time, but I can't stress enough that everyone must be sure of their ballot BEFORE casting. The election workers are there to help you.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!