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White House: No Kerry Supporters at IATC Meeting
An anonymous reader writes "Time Magazine is reporting that the Bush Administration is removing U.S. delegates from the Inter-American Telephone Commission because they gave money to John Kerry in last year's election. A Bush spokesman admits it's true: 'We wanted people who would represent the Administration positively, and--call us nutty--it seemed like those who wanted to kick this Administration out of town last November would have some difficulty doing that,' says White House spokesman Trent Duffy. Employees of Qualcomm and Nokia are among those who have been removed from the commission."
The sense of outrage is crushed by the lack of a decent political system to accomadate it. Who's going to actually stand up to our politicians? Commies? Democrats? There are no real non-money biased political organizations out there that anyone can even remotely consider mainstream. The system is designed to stamp them out, look at the green party. And the Libertarians. And of course, look at Ross Perot. There's no room for dissent beyond the approved dissent, and we need major change, and we have no leaders because of the smear-based media. The US is lamed by its politics now instead of uplifted, because we've become so shallow.
Hand me one too. Make sure it's not a Bud, though, I just can't stand that piss-weak stuff. It's nowhere near as fast as a good northwestern Imperial Stout, either.
My little site.
Quite correct -- essentially what the Bush adminstration is telling these telecom companies is that they won't be allowed to send a representative to a conference UNTIL there is a Democratic president! Sounds like a pretty good reason to donate heavily to the Democrats in the next election to me!
No, that's not what they're saying at all. They aren't preventing all Nokia engineers from attending, just the engineers from Nokia who sent personal donations to the Kerry campaign.
This is a very frightening aspect of it- a donation to Kerry can hurt your chances of employment in the tech sector later on. One might imagine this will have a very chilling effect on non-corporate political donations in the next election.
Golly, the president doesn't want his rivals representing him.
What rival? John Kerry was not removed. The punishment was for having an opinion. That is the point. You speak up? You get punished. What good is the Freedom of Speech if using it gets you fired? Being fired for performance is one thing, but being fired because of how you are presumed to have voted is unacceptable.
You are allowed freedom, as long as you are agreeing with Bush. I can't help but wonder what your opinion would have been if it were Democrats firing Republicans.
Learn to love Alaska
One thing that has me outraged is that he has apparently reneged on his campaign of decency, legal gay unions have been shored up in New York, California and Connecticut, abortion shows no sign of being halted and schools still can't make you pray, but the christians have taken off their political goggles, and can't see that he chumped them in a big way.
Kinda vindicates my opinion of American christianity.
Do you honestly believe that the founding fathers encoded violent revolution into the bill of rights?
I'm not exactly a gun nut here... in fact, I don't really like them. However, Jefferson wanted to encode precisely that. Here are a few quotes:
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere."
"what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that his people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms...The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Etc. Jefferson was at the view that all governments will inevitably become corrupt, oppressive, and/or unrepresentative of its citizens; and when that time comes, the people must rise up and overthrow it. I think he'd actually be pleasantly surprised at how long America has gone without a revolution.
Are there any deer in the theater tonight? Get 'em up against the wall.
I believe the difference is, while the administration would like to be able to do all of these things, and does get away with most of this stuff unopposed, the system is not designed to uphold this. The problem isn't the American governmental structure (well, not yet, they haven't wiped their ass with the Consitutition just yet), it is that people are basically allowing them to get away with this. Not out of fear of reprisals (which would enforce the totalitarian assertion), but out of sheer neglect. The country is not being taken away from people's control, they are freely giving it away.
Despite the probable dirty tricks in the last election, it was a free election. We didn't have people staying away from the polls because they feared being shot by the opposition. We didn't have people being strong-armed into voting for the "one party". Truthfully, it was a close election. Bush very well could have gotten voted out, and if he had gotten voted out, Kerry would have become president, and policies and politics would have changed. I somehow doubt we would have seen Bush declare a coup and surround the capital with tanks refusing to cede power. Such a scenario seems pretty plausible in a truly totalitarian regime.
We're not in an ideal situation right now by any means, but let's not cheapen things by saying "OMG! We live in Nazi Germany!" or claiming the republic has fallen. If we think like that, then people are going to become even more apathetic.
Much better to take a real look at things and figure out how to avoid letting things get that bad (because, sure, things could get that bad if people don't wake up). The US could change things if people gave a shit and wanted something different out of their government.
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
Golly, the president doesn't want his rivals representing him. Oh, for shame.
Sure, if this is a "Promote the Republicans" conference, you'd have a point. However, this is a forum for telecom providers and the top ones are essentially Banned by Bush(TM) because they donated to a different political party. What's next? The international committee on human rights abuses can only be attended by republicans? Foreign embassies only staffed by republicans? Want a job in the federal government... I sure hope you're a republican! After all, we don't want any rivals working for Uncle Sam, right?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
The crack-in-LA reporter was Gary Webb. http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/04/dissonance-coope r.php
He committed suicide at the end of 2004 after 20 years of being called a crazy conspiracy theorist. But what he really reported (that the CIA did not care whether their LA informants sold drugs) turned out to be true. The CIA admitted it in an internal investigation prompted by Webb's report and subsequent book.
Wow... you sure have things backwards...
>Are you seriously suggesting that armed rebellion against the government is a right guaranteed by the constitution?
What exactly is a "right"? Your comment seems to suggest that you believe that a "right" is whatever the government allows you to do. How exactly do you protect your "rights" when the government says: "No, you can't do that any more". I know! You can all just sit down and talk about it! Yeah, that will fix the problem. History has shown over and over again that there is only one way to correct the problem of an overly oppressive government.
Also, no, I would not expect any government to say "it's allowed in the constitution so I guess we can't do anything to stop you." any more then the founding fathers expected the British to do. Oppressive governments never do. The fact of the matter is that it would take real work and the sacrifice of a lot of lives to accomplish that. Thats really the problem. People value themselves far more then the greater good or doing the righteous thing. Thats why we are all in the situation we are today, a lack of morality.
And just so you understand my personal position, I don't even own a gun of any kind. I have absolutely no desire to start or join in any "armed rebellion". My hope lies elsewhere when it comes to this worlds problems. This world is beyond hope in my eyes.
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
Except that it's not about the Administration, it's supposed to be about representing the United States (and our telecommunications industry, in this case).
They may also need to be reminded that the President is supposed to represent US and we are not his loyal subjects.
Start Running Better Polls
Especially apt:
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address
I see this term used, "Founding Fathers" quite a bit as if they were a monolithic bunch. They weren't. They were quarrelsome and scrappy, and often disagreed on a number of major and minor issues.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
The main exception I see is the supremacy of the military. This administration talks them up, but its actual treatment of our troops is contemptable. We've all heard of soldiers injured, discharged, then told to repay their enlistment bonus since they didn't complete their term of service. Or told to pay hospital fees while recooperating from loss of limbs. (The argument was that they shouldn't have gotten a food and housing stipend while living on hospital grounds but not in a hospital room, or something equally lame.)
Actually, even that's not an exception. Both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy coddled their top commanders while treating the grunts like shit.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
One point that keeps triggering my sexism detector--look at the gender ratio of the people that have been found culpable in the prisoner torture cases, vs. the gender ration of those that have been publicly acquited.
Now compare these to the ratio for sex offenders in general.
Smells awful fishy to me.
--MarkusQ
The first time the rebels went to an army town and took out a couple dozen military family homes the army would crumble faster than you can imagine. Collateral damage is supposed to be for the enemy, not for the soliders families.
The first time the soliders bank accounts went into overdraw because payroll is disrupted and/or checks bounce the ranks would be decimated. Both from financial constraints and from morale issues.
The first time a unit is actually ordered and purposefully told to attack a rioting/rebellious crowd. Nothing kills morale more than taking out the people you are sworn to protect - not by accident, or lack of training, but by explicit command. All the laws and procedures setup now would be chucked out the window in a full style reveloutionary counter-action. Picking sides will halve, or quarter, the ranks.
In fact, we are growing right now at such a rate that today's billions will be a drop in the bucket tomorrow. This is due to sheer growth and expansion, not based on inflation.
Haha, he ha. Tell another one! Here: In fact, I am growing right now at such a rate that in 10 years, I will be 65 meters tall. That is due to sheer growth and expansion, not inflation.
Assumptions of eternal grow are moronic.
If anything, the fact that we can float such a huge debt and that our debtors are fine with the rates is a testament to the power of our nation.
That's true, and it's something to be ASHAMED of. Where I come from, "bullying" was still considered wrong.
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At the risk of starting a big off-topic rant, I just have to respond to this... If you are poor in America WallMart is great; until they squeeze out local business and hike their prices back up. That is what happened in my tiny freeway exit of a town in Oregon. WallMart moved in and shut down every single local business one by one. That giant red white and blue Borg cube opened a tire center, video rental, grocery section... They put the locally owned video store, grocery store, farmers' market, hardware store, tire shop; everything out of business. Now my little town is dpenednat on WallMart and guess what? They hiked their prices right back up one by one as they shut down each of the small businesses.
Conginve your congress? What country do you live in? Our congress just tried to stick a feeding tube back in a vegitable despite polls ranging from 75-85% public opposition. Yeah, I'm sure if I walk up to congress and say "please stop taking lobbying dollars from WallMart and pass laws to make them play nice" they'll call a special session and Bush will rush back from his ranch to sign the bill! Hillary Clinton used to sit on the freaking WalMart board of directors for crying out loud.
Just increase the minimum wage? Ok, I'll go back to 2000 and un-rig the election 'cause GW ain't gonna do it.
Universial health care? Go back to Canada hippie.. . Here in American we like our poor to suffer! In fact, we seem to enjoy raising taxes on students so we can give $24 billion in substidies to the coal, oil, and gas industries and can drill in ANWR despite overwhelming public opposition. Oh, I know, we'll just force WallMart to unionize. You know, those communist labor unions seem to jive with the neoconservative faith based policy makers. I'm sure they can work something out.
I think it would be a start to get WallMart to obey the law as written. You know, like hiring US citizens and NOT locking them in the store overnight. Perhaps a little less discrimination, and I'm pretty sure mandatory daily propaganda viewing isn't on the up-and-up.
FYI congress is trying to levy something like a 27% terrif on all Chinese imports, so when our economy crumbles after China dumps all it's US T-Bonds in retaliation, WallMart will get what's coming to it!
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.