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Netcraft Shows Smartech Running Ohio Election Servers
goombah99 writes "Netcraft is showing that an event happened in the Ohio 2004 election that is difficult to explain. The Secretary of State's website, which handles election reporting, normally is directed to an Ohio-based IP address hosted by the Ohio Supercomputer Center. On Nov. 3 2004, Netcraft shows the website pointing out of state to a server owned by Smartech Corp. According to the American Registry on Internet Numbers, Smartech's block of IP addresses 64.203.96.0 – 64.203.111.255 encompasses the entire range of addresses owned by the Republican National Committee. Smartech hosted the recently notorious gbw43.com domain used from the White House in apparent violation of the Presidential Records Act, from which thousands of White House emails vanished." Update: 04/25 01:24 GMT by KD : ePluribus Media published a piece called Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again on election eve 2006, when a similar DNS switch to Smartech occurred. They have been investigating the larger story of IT on Capitol Hill and elsewhere for two years.
The President announced today that he as complete faith in the Ohio Supercomputer Center, Smartech Corp. and the RNC, which utterly destroys any remaining credibility they may have had left.
The longer this fellow stays in office, the more he resembles Richard M. Nixon, IMHO.
Nixon is not dead. How do I know? Always two there are, a Master and an Apprentice.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Your own submission answers your question.
Nothing "changed" or was "transferred". http://election.sos.state.oh.us/ is a special web site in operation for elections. Otherwise, it points to http://www.sos.state.oh.us/ as it does now. It appears that the State of Ohio contracted with SmartTech for hosting, processing, and dissemination of the election results via the special elections web site, when it is in operation.
That probably won't be a good enough answer for people, though. Regardless, it appears that SmartTech has obvious ties to the Republican Party, and hosts many sites for various Republican political interests. The Secretary of State of Ohio is a partisan political position. This doesn't mean there aren't questions that can be raised or points to be debated.
The sad truth is that partisans are involved in just about every aspect of the voting and elections process, and that's not going to change, ever.
Witness the decades-old joke from Democratic stronghold cities: "Why did the Democrat walk into the cemetery? To thank his voters."
It's April 2007. Anyone who believes the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen (or not) isn't going to change what they think now.
The Republican Party is dying.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
All in favour of investigating this?
*Half of democrats and no republicans raise their hands*
All opposed?
*No democrats and every republican raise their hands*
No need to investigate then. Nothing to see here, move along!
1. How reliable is the Netcraft data? What would it take to hack Netcraft and make it look like there was a hack of the Ohio SOS?
2. What information do we have that the election.sos.state.oh.us domain was a part of the election procedures during the 2004 election?
3. Was the April 2006 change during a primary election?
Inquiring minds want to know...
Netcraft confirms: Democracy is dead.
Seriously though, this is a rather strange turn of events. And given the Bush administration's history of explaining such strange events, I don't expect a civil debate coming out of this.
Ryan Fenton
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
"Can anyone suggest a good explanations (sic) for this seemingly dubious election-eve transfer?"
Somebody obviously hacked the Netcraft server to make it look like the Republicans were so stupid as to try to steal an election by using their own block of IPs. It also seems amazing that the GOP would wait until the last minute to change the DNS, as it can sometimes take a bit longer than expected for such a transfer to properly propagate. Heck, if they were smart enough to steal an election by changing the DNS, why not spoof the entry to make it look like it pointed to the Democrat Party?
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
This doesn't even pass the smell test.
As the Democrats' own statistician, Jasjeet Sekhon, who coauthored their 2004 post-election report said:
that the election (and by proxy the election website) was not tampered with and that there was no need for a recount. what more proof do you people need?
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
Wierd things:
1)The smart tech site IP address is the first one listed by netcraft. From the link, you can't tell what it was before that.
2) It switched back to smartech on april 22, of last year as seen below.
SMARTECH CORPORATION PO BOX 11181 Chattanooga TN US 37401 64.203.98.137 Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 22-Apr-2006
Is that significant in any way?
3) Smartech uses Windows. That's neither smart, nor tech. Discuss amongst yourselves.
4) Firefox informs me that wierd is not the correct spelling of "weird".
I before e, except after c, except in weigh?
Does that mean its supposed to be pronounced way-rd. Now that is wierd.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
The Republican party didn't win 2004's Presidential election legally. They cheated in many races. I was doing "Get Out The Vote" work in Nevada and witness the Republican intimidation tactics personally. When I saw the news coverage of what was happening in Ohio I wasn't surprised at all. Now there's this, once again, I'm not surprised. The Republicans targeted that state for election tampering and they won as a result. And yet there are Republicans who will defend this to no end. Who will reply to this and basically say "it doesn't matter that the RNC controlled the voting machines at every step, from design, software engineering, fabrication, delivery, vote tabulation, and result announcements!"
Our democracy is in great peril as long as these "win at all costs" idiots are in the game.
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
Which link is responsible for this: "On Nov. 3 2004, Netcraft shows the website pointing out of state to a server owned by Smartech Corp."
I'm not questioning this necessarily, but with all of the links to evidence I'm confused why there was no link for this one...
Ohio: 64.203.98.137
RNC: 64.203.98.0 - 64.203.98.127
There is no evidence presented that the RNC controlled the Ohio server in question. It fell outside the range.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
Since the Internet is a series of tubes, either 1) anyone involved has no idea how it works, but got a free iPod for switching hosting facilities, or 2) its a plan by the geeks to throw the election, which, frankly, is better than the politicians throwing it.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
this data doesn't mean that the RNC fixed the election, but what it could mean is that by having control over the voting reports to the public, they could infact hold back information or skew results before the votes were finalized and this could prevent a late rush to the polls from democrats fearing defeat.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
Am I alone?
I posted a comment on Democratic Underground attempting to explain this news in layman's terms.
a rd.php?az=view_all&address=203x471399
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/dubo
One reply correctly pointed out that election was Nov. 2, not Nov. 4. Which makes the Nov. 3-Nov. 5 hosting service intrusion even more mysterious.
I will be reading with interest what you folks with real expertise can figure out about this.
I say old chap -- is that gun still smoking?
Today's Guardian includes this interesting piece entitled "Fascist America, in 10 easy steps". Guess how many steps down the path we are?
For the benefit of those who won't read it, here's the ten points.
And in other news: Jessica Lynch comes out and condemns the Hollywood show they made of the incident she was involved in.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
http://xkcd.com/c195.html
Fun and educational.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
Nuff' said.
... will it blend?
Yeah, they're just Internet neighbors who never talk. Pure coincidence. I think Ohio asked RNC for a cup of sugar once, but that's it.
So in essence, your "democracy" is in peril because people are not voting. Don't put the blame on the election system. The fact is that you needed to "Get The Vote Out"...your democracy isn't being stolen, it is decaying.
It's a simple matter of complex programming.
"When I die, I want to be buried in Chicago"
"Why?"
"So I can stay politically active!"
Look at the TOP of the firehose: there is another story from the Free Press that is ranked above all the stories on the main page. This one goes a lot further in its accusations.
I don't think there is anything especially nefarious about a state agency and the RNC contracting for hosting with the same company. Big deal. They probably both buy stuff from Wal-Mart too. I think somebody with an axe to grind is leaping to a conclusion that simply is not merited by the evidence given here.
Why is the parent post moderated flamebait?! It's a perfectly realistic possibility in the current climate and it's the obvious implication of the story, to the extent that it's ironically redundant in that it states the obvious.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Personally, anyone found to be a participant in voter fraud should be barred for life from voting.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
think of an explanation.
On election day, the people who run the SOS's DNS point election.sos.state.oh.us to a contractor who has contracted to provide "real time" updates from election data, something the SOS's staff is not equipped to do.
That vendor markets hosting services to political and government entities. It unwisely assigns a governmental web site from the very next block of addresses that are given to a political client, and unfortunately that block of addresses has become implicated in a serious scandal. Note the address is not in the RNC owned block (contrary to the article's title).
Now there are a gazillion possible ethical temptations that marketing yourself to political and government entities entails. So contracts let to such companies should be looked at very closely. But this is no smoking gun; or if there is smoke, it is more likely to involve improper contract selection than anything else.
So, it bears looking into, but is nothing to get excited about yet.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
America Freedom to Fascism:7 7175242198
/.'ers)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-43127302
-Near the end they show a guy giving testimony that he can rig elections with electronic voting machines (old news for us
-voting makes no difference. The same elite still call the shots (and no "lobbying" required!)
-It gets worse...
-Banks print money and charges the US Gov. interest.
-Corp taxes ==> Military (as per constitution)
-Fed Pers income taxes ==> disappears (900+Billion)
-Fort Knox gold has not been audited in decades
-It gets worse, still.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
is there ANY scientific evidence that they did ?
and the democrat statistician used what ? reports from organizations, county offices that were handled by republicans ?
Read radical news here
And some socialist had put Reichstag on fire back in 1933.
dont make believe. it is the mechanism that allows democracies to go down the drain.
if there is something fishy about something, then there IS something fishy there. and there are nothing non-fishy about last 2 elections republicans - excuse me, not republicans, but bush republicans - won. they are totally 'fishful'.
Read radical news here
- Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again
- Ohio's election website still sent real-time results to GOP mirror server
Related storiesGrow your own @ePluribUs Media.
No further comment needed.
Fine nobody is truly neutral, partisans will always be involved, problem is that their involvment in gbw43.com suggests that Smartech may have crossed the line & become crooked. Until the gbw43.com issue is resolved this is an interesting open issue. Even if the gbw43.com is resolved finding Smartech folk in the criminal wrong this doesn't mean that Ohio had its books cooked but... often you see the smoke first & you gotta step up your vigilance at that point, maybe it's just a flash in the pan but maybe not- this will need to be investigated further.
Damn it, this is why the republicans are driving this country into the ground!
The Secretary of State's office is NOT a partisan position. The Secretary swears to protect and defend the constitution (or whatever the equivalent is for Ohio state positions), not to protect the elephant. There should be a clear and unambiguous wall between the office holder's official actions and individual partisan actions, and should never, under any circumstances, use official resources for partisan purposes. When it's inevitable (the classic example being the president flying to events during the election season), the office holder is required to provide appropriate compensation for this use. E.g., equivalent first-class airfare for everyone on AF1, IIRC.
With most secretaries of state, I would agree with you that it's probably nothing more than temporary hosting during a period of high use.
But the outgoing Secretary of State, Blackwell (iirc), was extraordinarily partisan in his official acts. He's the reason why Ohio is usually the center of stolen election allegations. Given his amply documented bad behavior in the past, e.g., attempting to have his gubernatoral opponent disqualified on bogus grounds shortly before the election, a rational person would have no choice but to assume the worst and require proof that it truly was an innocent and unbiased decision.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
...to include "Nixon".
Now, move along. Has anyone ever thought it was to handle the extra traffic from people checking on election returns? Or did you actually believe that the web site was processing votes?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I support two T1 circuits from different ISPs located hundreds of miles apart with IPs that fall within the same /24. It's improbable, but not even close to impossible. Two unrelated servers getting neighboring IPs wouldn't even be odd if they happened to be in the same datacenter.
I'm not saying there isn't a connection, just saying that similar IPs mean all but nothing.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
The sad truth is that partisans are involved in just about every aspect of the voting and elections process, and that's not going to change, ever.
That's because partisans are SUPPOSED to be in charge. They are chosen by the people, in partisan elections. It is the very partisanship that gives the people a choice, along with the understanding to exercise it rationally.
When you hear the term "bi-partisan" you're hearing powermongers on both sides conspiring to deprive the electorate of a choice.
When you hear the term "non-partisan" you're hearing powermongers depriving the electorate of information about candidates' political affiliations.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
So they also linked to Democratic servers? No? Uh, why not? If it's so innocent and just for the election....what purpose was that again? Keep remembering. They controlled the Ohio SOS. They controlled key voting precincts. They controlled the DOJ. They weren't all that careful because they were damn sure that investigations would go nowhere. They linked their elections to an out of state server controlled by the Republican Party. So Rove could see the numbers before anyone and adjust them in other states as well? Remember, it was important to Bush to show that THIS TIME HE HAD THE POPULAR VOTE. It wasn't just electoral numbers that they were going for.
Hard drives have my picture in their post office.
I've done stat analysis too. I concur with you that accusations based on statistical about what happened in florida don't seem to be strongly supported. That is to say the statistics are not conclusive. But I've also follwed the ohio reports pretty closely too. Some of the reports are incorrect. But some can't be so easily debunked. The strongest cases indicate that shoddy voting equipment created long lines that detered voters in selected precincts. It's also now certain that the recounts were rigged (they precounted then selected the precincts without problems for the official counts. And there are precints where the votes and voters don't add up. You always expect some of that so one can never really put a finger on if there was too much or too little. All very statistically nebulous. and hence an opportunity to tilt things and hide in the noise.
This is why getting the results early and having the ability to delay posting them enlarges the opportunity for dirty tricks. For example here's a sort of maxwell's deamon way to rig an eleciton completely legally. If you look at the early returns you will see lots of mistakes. Some will go in your favor some will go against you. If you selectively inquire with precinct judges only on the cases where the votes go against you, you can make gains. Indeed both parties routinely do this after the elections so that's not even science fiction. But now suppose your party, and only your party, is magically granted the power to do this on election night itself. Getting totals "fixed" is a lot easier when things are in flux. a simple phone call can say "Hey that can't be right, read those numbers again" will get you an updated total. After the election is done getting changes is much harder. Hence eraly knowledge helps. Running the reporting site would be a windfall.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If it was 12:15 AM, that could explain a lot.
Time is not given on the NetCraft display.
Also, is it EST or GMT?
Come on, net wizards!
ePluribus Media reported this story back in Nov 2006 -- "Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again"
The NetCraft IP funny business was noted, and the election.sos.state.oh.us was updated and checked on from 2005 onwards, that is why you can look at NetCraft today on see a history of it. The list of domains hosted on SMARTech were also added to Robtex by querying a list of servers with a long list and adding to it over the years.
This was posted by some asshat who read the Free Press article The GOP's cyber election hit squad and is trying to take credit.
Maybe to fix the votes?
I wouldn't put it past whoever is running our elections, especially with all the concern they show about securing our voting systems.
If true, that does look DAMNED suspcious. Just look at the other websites that company hosts. It reads like a Republican "Who's Who."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Dude, you got modded flamebait for harshing someones anti-bush, anti-republican, anti-reality-check buzz.
Someone at /. needs a serious kick in his modding balls.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
... the folks who always chant, "Clinton did it too!"
Spend eight+ years throwing shit at the guy -- who admittedly wasn't all that squeeky clean to begin with -- then spend several more years saying their guys aren't any worse. Even if they weren't mostly disingenuous comparisons, it's not exactly high praise.
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
Look at the full list of that company's clients. It reads like a "Who's Who" of big-name Republicans. It's pretty clear they are a LONG way from non-partisan. Whether this points to outright fraud, it is most certainly not just a coincidence.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
- Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again
- Ohio's election website still sent real-time results to GOP mirror server
Related storiesGrow your own @ePluribUs Media.
http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2006/11/7/11 5314/922
Others above have indicated the real reasons for the IP change. And it's possible that Smartech is a right-leaning company, but that doesn't mean there was any impropriety. If this is meritorious of any investigation, it would be a look into the process by which Smartech was chosen to host and maintain the election results page.
One other interesting question: When the next election comes up, who will do the hosting and maintenance of the results page? The current Secretary of State is a Democrat. If Smartech was chosen for partisan reasons, it's doubtful that Brunner would continue that relationship during the upcoming elections. If they were a low bidder that did a good job, though, then they might maintain the elections results page again in '08.
A troll rating?
For pointing out that two sites sharing the last 8 bits of the IP address are neighbors (not physically natch) and not some random coincidence?
Geesh. You can close your eyes, but that don't make it highly suspicious.
Aren't you forgetting to blame him for bad breath and houseitosus? I mean really half the things you blame him for he had no control over.
"Deficit spending went through the roof (the deficit for the fiscal year 1979 totaled $27.7 billion, and that for 1980 was nearly $59 billion)."
And you think that's worse than the deficits the Bush Administration has?
"High gas prices!"
Do yo blame Bush for the outrageous gas prices of today?
"Iranian hostage crisis."
And exactly how could he have prevented a group of students from taking hostages?
"Failure to rescue Iranian hostages."
They came back alive. You mean failure to forcibly take the hostages back cowboy style. Well sorry your ego didn't get satisfied but like I said they ALL came back unharmed.
"Demoralization and dismantling of the US military."
As a man of peace he didn't feel we needed as big a military but he didn't "demoralized" them.
"Canceled the B1-B program as well as the MBT-70. (Both badly needed to compete with our enemy of the time... the Soviets who had the T-72 and the Tu-160 BLACKJACK"
Well apparently we didn't "need" them as badly as you suggest. We're still here and the Soviet Union isn't.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I think that of them all, my favorite quote was this
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"
The server is not in "RNC" IP space. RNC's IP space is also within the (large) block of addresses assigned to SmartTech. As an IT services company with Republican ties, this is hardly surprising.
I find it interesting that there is so much investigation into voting inconsistencies when Republicans are successful (2004), but not when the Democrats are successful (2006). We're still having stories about 2004, but there has been little interest in talking about the known inconsistencies from 2006.
Average mortgage rates during the Carter administration were over 15%! I don't even pay credit cards 15%!!! ... Inflation was through the roof (12%).
... for a real interest rate of 3%.
Current best mortgage is 5.8%, and most recent inflation was 2.78%, for a real interest rate of 3.02%.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The truth will come out. Bush will probably be out of office before it does, but we will know the truth.
This story is much deeper... Despite the Ohio website being hosted by the same company hosting the RNC, there are screenshots of the website available that
show errors in the numbers that were 'fixed' later in the evening (can you guess where those 'fixed' votes went to?). A website that was hosted on official government servers was redirected
to a group of servers that hosts the RNC (they same that hosts Karl Roves 'secret' email accounts we are learning about). Who the hell knows who had access to logins on those servers and what was manipulated...
Also, there is an ongoing investigation in Ohio that is uncovering problems with the machines, votes that don't add up, and no one can explain why the
exit polls which are historically accurate do not match. Some lame 'values voters' arguments try to brush away the statistical anomaly. And when they didn't match, the pollsters went back and fit their data to the potentially erroneous results (garbage in-garbage out).
People who have claimed there was fraud are moving from the 'tin foil' crowd to the 'its plausible' crowd as evidence grows.
-inside of his drunken delusions. and the press was only half compromised back then, not 99% like it is now. He eventually quit, knowing he had gotten busted lying and being an incompetent skunk. THESE guys, whenever they get busted being liars or skunks, just go "nyah, nyah, we are in charge, we didn't do it, it's all vicious lies, go to hell, go pound sand, we are gonna do whatever we want because guess what?, we control the armed forces and the cops and give them their orders and those orders get followed-if ya know what we mean, you suckers!".
Congress knows this,they know that implied threat is there, that is the main reason you haven't seen any credible actions towards impeachment, it's because these neocons are bonkers mad insane and would go full-bore dictator apesquat nasty if anyone tried to impeach them according to our laws and according to just common decency. Look at the neocon puppet regimes they stuck in around the planet over the last 30-40 years, ALL dictatorships, the greek generals, saddam originally, the shah, pinochet, the argentinian and brazilian generals, noriega in panama, the colonels in el salvador, the contra killers, a big list, all neocon imposed puppets,fully supported until they had no more use for them, to keep pushing for that agenda of theirs, which is *global fascism*.
That's their business model, the modus operandi they have perfected, and this time they are trying to go for the gold, to pull that off here.
No one in Congress wants to get Wellstoned,they aren't all *that* stupid, if anything they have raw survival instincts, and all of them remember that US corrupt Army based anthrax attack on them, to make sure the "patriot" act got passed and to shut them up effectively. And it worked, too.. I mean, c'mon, how blatant does it have to get? These neoCON fascists have no shame, no positive morals, they simply refuse to live in reality other than that of their own choosing.
And to top it off, they bragged in advance that they would have a coup, in so many words, how they would do it, what their agenda would be, and STILL you can't get the mainstream media to cover it much, and I am referring to the org called PNAC, with their sister traitor org called AIPAC, with their reference to a "New Pearl Harbor" event that would be the linchpin to their strategy and would then allow them do what they wanted to do. And it happened, they followed through, and here we are.
They can't (well, refuse is the better word) even understand that with the last election they LOST any mandate to "stay the course",because the majority no longer support such a "course" and want a 180 like right now, they can't understand (this from arrogance and stupidity) that they have already failed it in any number of issues, sheer incompetence, and they never ever understood that the US people, through their elected representatives, tell THEM what to do, and then they are supposed to administer those laws, and *not* make them themselves. They even ignore THAT with their ridiculous "enabling act" type "signing statements". and to make trebly sure, they have been trying to hack the elections as much as they can, again, how freaking blatant does it have to get??
This has been a coup, a vile putrid evil coup, and this new evidence is again another indicator of how far into the depths of illegality they will go, and it needs to be said out loud so the full ramifications of that sink in. These "gents" have no business in any sort of official leadership positions, they are out and out *criminals* through and through.
Oh ok that works for me too. As long as some half assed, let's strap some servers on this bitch, THIS NATIONAL FUCKING PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, you know, cause, well, whatever, we didn't think that only having half of eligible voters show up was going to twist our server farm into the ground. Hey why don't we grab those boxes over there. Yeah those RNC hosts, WTF. Yeah those controls are good enough.
At least in Nigeria they just get a guy with a gun to take the ballot box and drive away with it, because well, you know, they gotta get transported and shit.
I also keep hearing that unemployment is low. Well friend, unemployment numbers are based on the number of people getting unemployment benefits not on the number of people who are really unemployed. One of the things that the Bush administration did to tweak those numbers was to ensure that fewer people were eligible to collect those benefits.
All the "new jobs" being created... Most of them are low paying drone labor.
As far as the economy goes, I wish that people would stop telling me that the economy is doing so well just because the stock prices are up. That may be great for some rich SOBs but I live pay check to pay check. I can't afford to invest heavily in the stock market.
My health care costs are WAY up. Gas prices WAY up. With gas prices so high it won't be long before the cost of transporting all goods drives the price of everything up.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I'm not sure you folks actually understand that. Maybe you get the government you deserve, or the one you have the attention span for, at any rate.
Someone figured this out a couple months ago, because it happened again in the Ohio state elections. http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http:/ /election.sos.state.oh.us
Dear ArcherB,
... are justified by vapor-reality [AKA: Lies].
... I will be happy.
You are spinning delightful dogmatic adelophobic bullshit.
When you are finished spinning delightful dogmatic adelophobic bullshit,
you will have a large load of spun delightful dogmatic adelophobic bullshit,
and remain as clueless as any other dogmatic Washington politician or parochial
K street lobbyist. Revisionist professionals in historyonics (like you) never
change reality by professionally spinning bullshit, they just get very intelligent
adelophobic dogmatist and other disturbed individuals to believe that murder,
treason, torture, war-profiteering
Nazi revisionist professionals justified concentration camps for anyone that was
a target for the propaganda, or morally and ethically opposed (not to war) too
revisionist history (AKA: historyonics, by PGB&staff) and propaganda that justifies
obvious evils. Our politicians have mush to answer for, but if we can just vote
them all out of office frequently
Presidents should only have one four year terms, Senators should only have one term,
and Representatives maybe two terms, but never more. Multiple (maybe three) judges
should be recommended by the US Bar Association for Federal and Supreme Courts and
voted into office by public vote for life or significant mental health problems,
same with Bar recommending distinguished District Attorneys for Federal Prosecutors
(never assigned to home district (required to move districs every ten years or
retire) public vote for life....
I feel sad, about pitiful people that accept mythology/bullshit/..., because they're
irrationally afraid of looking into the deep dark abyss of the unknown [AKA: Truth].
FINAL POINT: "America Love It, Make It Better, or PLEASE Fycking Leave."
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Gas is 2.87 a gallon nation-wide. It peaked at an average of about $3 per gallon last year and the year before. I'm unable to find good graphs with this previous year's data on them, but it looks like the peak was around $3 in today's dollars; I should remind you that we're not being embargoed, and it's still almost as bad as it was then. The media disbanded the Iraqi army? The media put incompetent partisan hacks in charge of the reconstruction effort? The media decided that torture was a great idea? "Kicking major ass" isn't a foreign policy goal, it's a movie tagline--and it's a stupid euphemism for "killing lots of people". Pretending to be the Golden Horde doesn't work when you're also pretending to be George Marshall. Don't blather on about how you're the armies of goodness and light when you also want to kill kill kill, and those corpses were probably Al Qaeda anyway.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Rigging elections, yet another infringement on our rights by the gov't. Add it to the ever-growing list of violations:
They violate the 1st Amendment by opening mail, caging demonstrators and banning books like "America Deceived" from Amazon.America Deceived (book)
They violate the 2nd Amendment by confiscating guns during Katrina.
They violate the 4th Amendment by conducting warrant-less wiretaps.
They violate the 5th and 6th Amendment by suspending habeas corpus.
They violate the 8th Amendment by torturing.
They violate the entire Constitution by starting 2 illegal wars based on lies and on behalf of a foriegn gov't.
Support indy media.
For every worker who becomes unemployed, I'd bet there are plenty more who move to lower-paying jobs, lose benefits, take pay cuts, and otherwise end up in a worse situation than they started in.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
"In the US unemployment is nearing a historic low (no, they cook the books and don't record it at all like they used to, it's still pretty high, but now they do crap like counting flipping burgers as "manufacturing"), the stock market and economy a historic high (nyet, I mean double nyet, they stopped publishing most of the M3 because the printing presses are running full tilt, and they still have to sell your GRANDCHILDREN into economic bondage to fund everything, we are at the lowest savings point and at the highest debt load and ratio ever in our history, and adjusted for inflation the DOW and most of the other indices are piss poor) and petroleum products are expensive but hardly horribly so if all the full-size SUVs I see on the road are any indication(first, they don't count energy and food in the CPI any longer, and as to vehicles, besides todays announcement that toyota is now #1 globally, ford, gm and chrysler are all on the ropes, the new car lots are backed up full, they can't hardly move anything else despite all the rebates and long term financing they can muster, and if you notice, the used car lots are bursting with still pretty new models and the housing bubble is popping and the derivatives exposure is obscene and the hedge funds trading is completely nuts and both private and government pensions are completely gone, they won't be paid except in toilet paper money. We have an extraordinary balance of payments exposure against us, and the only thing keeping the dollar propped up is the foreign holders with so much to lose have to go real real real slow as they gradually pull out to try and slow down the inevitable stampede action).
And so on, I could go on.
You really need to read beyond just the shills headlines and learn to analyze the domestic and global economy better. You've been conned man, you've fallen for a carnival barker's spiel. Wake up. It's in the fine print, in the details, do more research and look at history better.
Like Pelosi and Reid.
Hell, Reid's already admitted that he won't believe any reports of US success in Iraq.
Yeah, who wants a "win-at-all-cost" leader when you can have one running around waving a white flag against anything that moves.
Geez, if Harry Reid witnessed Punxatawny Phil coming out of his burrow on Groundhog Day, Reid would declare that any chance for spring is "lost".
Actually, it does mean exactly that (as I understand it)
The problems applying Geneva Convention in our current difficulties is that it only applies to soldiers representing another government, and the insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan, and that pesy Al Queda group is that they are NOT representing a government.
Also, they don't wear a uniform, so they can be identified - to be protected by the Geneva Convention a soldier needs to be "in uniform" (that's why in the WWII POW movies (Great Escape, others), the prisoners always said their civilian clothes were made from their uniforms, and they usually had their insignia somewhere to display it if caught, to try and "beat" the system. It rarely worked in the movies, I bet it worked less often in real life...
The problem is that the Geneva Convention doesn't cover this type of situation - it was not a concern of the drafters back in the day.
Ken
Ken
To believe the Republican machine was merely the "appearance of impropriety." I understand your reluctance to believe their behavior was completely off the reservation, it would dishevel the universe. But these are fascists and they intended to win no matter how the vote went. To this end they did things we are only beginning to get a handle on...or do you think the DOJ is running as usual? But computers would not also be manipulated and corrupted? Because why? Republicans are too inept? Too good of heart? Too cool? EVERYTHING they did was geared to maintaining power. Everything. But they left the election up to the people? Go sit amongst the clover and watch the pretty clouds.
Hard drives have my picture in their post office.
He's not saying that the top ten percent of income earners pay seventy percent of their income in taxes; he's saying that seventy percent of the tax revenue is provided by that top ten percent, which I'd like to see a reference for. Of course, saying that the rich pay most of the taxes is quite right, for the simple and obvious reason that they have the money. (That graph may be understating the reality; I wouldn't put it past the Heritage Foundation.)
It makes a vicious cycle: the more inequality we have, the larger a share of it the rich pay (under what we have, which is essentially a flat tax system). Clearly the rich are put-upon, so we must slash their taxes. This makes the rich even richer, and their taxes (a smaller proportion of a larger whole) are still a large portion of total tax revenues. We underfund the government, which sucks for poor people, who get poorer as they fall through an increasingly tattered safety net. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If so, wouldn't that be a violation of the Logan Act that all the conservatives claim (incorrectly) that Pelosi violated?
In fact, it's rather hard to imagine a scenario where the hostages get released minutes after Reagan takes office that doesn't entail a violation of the Logan Act.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2006/11/7/1
If you poke around the records a bit, you'll see that we are talking about the Sec'ty of State's website - there was no internet voting, AFAIK. How absolutely unheard of for a web site to migrate to another provider during periods of increased activity! The SOS website was migrated for the Primary and for the Election, the two days of the year the traffic spikes, and she choose a friendly Web Hosting Company - would this be interesting if she choose 1&1 or another independent hosting service?
And the IP addresses issue, puh-leeze, they have many clients that are not the RNC - simply providing a service to the RNC is not a crime - if it were, then caterers, limo drivers, temp agencies, coffee shops, etc. that serve the RNC throughout the year are RNC flunkies...
Seriously, what is the problem - that the SOS website was on a machine physically near Newt Gingrich's website, the election was obviously stolen...
Ken
Would someone direct me to the post where Slashdot was becoming a sub-set of DemocraticUnderground.com? Well, at least Slashdot doesn't censor anyone who isnt a left-wingnut...yet.
If ANWR is so valuable as a strategic reserve, why would we ever take the oil out of it if we weren't using it as such?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
What was the purpose of it?
Hard drives have my picture in their post office.
Tools.
a s_the_2004_election_stolen
Some of you folks are pretty gullible.
Skew the vote 3% - 4%, within the margin of error. Plausible deniability.
This ain't rocket science with collusion.
There are just too many links, in defense of this.
Most of you have had your reality replaced, in other words you've been pwded!
They "hacked" your reasoning, said a few key words - boom!
"We don't need no stinkin' paper trail - NO!"
Blind to the obvious.
Substituted reality - the new bliss.
Authoritarianism, works every time.
Flame away, I'm out.
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/w
http://www.wheresthepaper.org/index.html
http://www.votergateproject.com/
http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/
~hylas
- In Jan 1977 when Jimmy Carter took office in Jan 1977 a British Pound went for $1.72.
- When he left office in Jan 1981 it took $2.42 to get a Pound!
- On the first day of Reagan's second term in Jan 1985 it was $1.11 to the Pound.
I don't see how a $2.00 Pound makes Bush worse than Carter in that regard.
We're having a discussion about this on Democratic Underground, and there's two open questions.a rd.php?az=view_all&address=203x471399
See http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/dubo
It'd be great to get them answered:
(1) The NetCraft hosting history report on BEGINS on Nov. 3, 2004 with SmartTech. Doubt if that's right. Who hosted that website BEFORE Nov. 3? Or was that website created on Nov. 3, 2004?
(2) Is there any way of getting times for the hosting changes on the NetCraft report? Or verifying that they are in GMT?
Come on net wizards, help out.
Social Security isn't a replacement for your personal 401(k), it's an insurance policy in case you get disabled or old. You can also think of it as a tax we pay so that we don't have old, sick, dying people filling up our sidewalks. (Well, to the extent that we would without it--we'd have six times the number of seniors in poverty that we do now.) You can't opt out of that any more than you can opt out of coverage by your local police and fire departments.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Here's a look at the website in 2003, via the Internet Wayback machine:
e lection.sos.state.oh.us
http://web.archive.org/web/20031204153129/http://
So it did exist before Nov. 3, 2004.
would seem right on target to anyone in Nigeria.
Or the USA.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
... than you can opt out of the protection against foreign invasion provided by the army, or of any other common good provided by the government.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
What does it matter if we kill 100 terrorists for every one of our casualties, if our methods of doing so just piss off and alienate people who wouldn't previously have had an axe to grind with us? Do you plan to kill off everyone on the planet who's not American? If not, then body count isn't as important as attacking the root causes of terrorism. As long as we're seen as decadent, immoral, imperialist beasts who kill civilians (yes, even if they really are enemy combatants, if the media calls them civilians that's what people will latch onto), we'll continue to have pissed off people attempting to blow us up. You can't kill all of them.
Read the Alternet story here. Good to see the Netcraft info added in. "There is more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website -- which gave the world the presidential election results -- was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's firing of eight federal prosecutors." I think this will emerge to be a huge story.
Do you mean by achieving stunningly low overhead, or by investing solely in low-risk government bonds? Please explain to me how that justifies the A-P'ing.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Don't forget that the Native Americans who were forceably taken off their land at gunpoint in Georgia and Alabama, had their land stolen, and were deported to wasteland in Oklahoma sued President Jackson in court saying that his action was grossly illegal and unconstitutional (it was). The US Supreme Court agreed and decided the case in the favor of the Native Americans and against the Jackson adminstration. Jackson just ignored them. He bragged: "(Chief Justice) John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it."
Where's there's smoke, there must be fire. Consider the following facts: Bush once stopped for a Slurpee(tm) at a convenience store in Crawford, Texas; Cindy Sheehan choked on a Little Debbie(tm) while on a hunger strike at the same Crawford convenience store. Coincidence? I think not!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Umm, even if this is true, so what? Let's say the Republican conspiracy controlled the Ohio Secretary of State website. How does this help them steal the Ohio electoral votes? It doesn't change thc actual vote counting. What, was the Secretary of State and his web staff desperately trying to get the "real" vote totals out, only to have the Republicans put fake numbers on the website? These people had no other media access other than their own website? Where are they now?
It's hard to take seriously this and other sites of the same type (LGF included) given they have to hide behind the shieid of "private entity" and run an echo chamber of opinion
Way to engage in ad hominem bullshit.
Care to address the point that Reid and most Dems are "lose-at-all-costs" politicians? Or should I say "Dare to address the point..."?
What I see here is that they changed providers to meet a peak demand time as was stated earlier. It's the fact they just bumped it to the republicans that's suspicious. Government is required to submit bids from other vendors and all that. Curious if that happened or if they just gave it to their buddies at an inflated pricetag. Would seem to be the only obvious issue here.
You mean worse, right? Because the Speaker of the House is a government employee (and the head of a branch that is tasked by the Constitution to be involved in all kinds of international affairs - see Article I, section 8), and the President Elect will only assume that position shortly. The "minutes after" scenario is at least suggestive that the hostages were held until he took office under whatever agreement he reached. Why not release them ASAP? If he was going to negotiate illegally, wouldn't that at least make it seem like he was following the spirit of the Logan Act if not the letter?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
If it had been Clinton in the White House, and it was to the DNS host, every damn little snot-nosed Republican/Libertarian brat here would be screaming for an assassination.
Time to RICO the RNC. Before we loose everything (see the below excerpt and link)
mark
Excerpt:
Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.
They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.
As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.
--- end excerpt ---
I shop at Walmart, lots of people shop at Walmart. I wonder how many posters (known IT experts) on slashdot today, use Smartech? It isn't that they both use Smartech, it is that they both use Smartech and that is very unlikely to find by chance.
Laboratree - Scientific collaboration based on OpenSocial.
I'm not trying to troll, but:
Unfortunately, the Sierra Club thinks that this 5% of ANWR is more valuable as a wildlife reserve than a strategic one.
Is a very troubling statement to me. At what point does any amount of environmentalism become valuable, and how do you quantify it? We wouldn't need strategic reserves if we'd spent all the money we spent on this war (420 billion dollars) on renewable resources, incentives for alternative fuels and hybrids (some of which are in place, but we could do better), and (why the fuck not?) EDUCATION.
We'd be almost like a real civilized country. We could expand that education to include stuff like How Not Even The Pope Disagrees With Evolution Anymore, or The Bill of Rights.
In Mexico, you start learning your constitution in 1st grade. Is it middle school in the USA? Or high school?
There has to be a fault in your perspective if you truly support this presidential administration's policies and tactics. They violate basic rules of humanity, dignity, and truth, and do it in my name. After stealing the election.
More proof of which is discussed above. Let's get back on topic.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Interesting, the domains all have A.NS.TRESPASSERS-W.NET listed as a name server... The campaign website for Dick Devos' 2006 gubernatorial campaign in Michigan had that same name server....
I'm not the original AC but..
Care to address the point that talk of "winning" and "losing" is meaningless rhetoric designed to sway simple minded constituents?
Ain't no way Iraq is going to turn into a peaceful America-loving democracy any time soon. Ain't no way Iraq is going to successfully invade and occupy America any time soon.
What you've really got in Iraq is a series of messy compromises with a bunch of people who don't much like each other and who like the USA even less. Anyone who claims they know with any certainty what would happen if the USA stayed or what would happen if the USA left is blowing smoke.
Staying is hugely expensive but it may give the USA slightly more influence than if the USA left. Whether the possibility of a slight degree of influence is worth the massive costs is a matter of opinion. Most Americans are leaning toward "no" but some are still leaning toward "yes".
BTW, if thinking that the USA is losing in Iraq makes someone a Democrat then there sure are a lot of Democrats.
No one has figured out yet the /. submission is someone that read the Free Press article yesterday and now scrubs it of anything useful and posts to front page.
The "Netcraft info" isn't added in. The submission stole just that part and put it here. Also the Alternet article is a copy of the one on Free Press where they again stripped all the useful links off of it.
The CIA helped found the Shah's brutal secret police, SAVAK. Three of the hostages were CIA operatives who were training SAVAK. Of course, the current regime's secret police is essentially the same people; certain apparatuses of state control are useful no matter what political face you paint over your authoritarianism.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The Wall Street Journal had the ten-pound testicles to refer to people too poor to pay income tax as "Lucky Duckies". Wikipedia has an excellent article on the subject; the Ruben Bolling cartoons are quite good. It's absolutely insane how people can unashamedly cry that rich people are oppressed, and no matter how many times I see it, I'm still struck by it.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Or did you mean to imply that the "rules" regarding who was eligible for unemployment payments were restructured so as to limit eligibility for those claiming unemployment status. I believe that is what you intended to convey, however, my original query still remains.
2^3 * 31 * 647
I'm the "he" to which you refer. Again: I compared opting out of social security to opting out of any other common good provided by government--something which works only because everyone pays into it, even though not everyone needs it; in fact, most people may not. You completely missed the point, and argued that my example was wrong because the common goods I described were locally administered. This was entirely orthogonal to my point, but I went along and provided an example that covers the same territory as the social security system original in question. You're continuing to miss the point, so I'm going to write it again:
Common goods work because we can't opt out of them; if we could, the system would fall to the free-rider problem. This is how government-provided services of many kinds work, and it's how social security works. You can no more opt out of social security than you can opt out of any of the others.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Unless you include benefits. Stop spouting this disingenuous crap, please.
Ahh... you're digging out that old canard.
Do you have any proof? ...besides some pundit you saw on Fox News 8 years ago? besides a William Saffire oclumn? besides the political-hack attorneys who threw around these accusations?
I thought not.
This is the real problem they (and now you?) were having:
"How DARE the Democrats seek donations from anyone other then true, red-blooded white, Christian Americans!"
You've fallen for another Republican lie, my friend. (BTW, did you ever consider how much money Chinese companies have funned to the GOP via WALMART?)
Falling real wages, an unemployment rate that's only dropping because people have been out of work so long they're considered to have left the workforce, a steadily rising poverty rate and a negative personal savings rate are also indications Real wages haven't been falling. They've been flat for the poor, at worst. And that is assuming no increase in the quality of the goods that the CPI measures. Actually the recent concern is that wages may be rising to fast and that the productivity boom may be slowing, leading to future inflation worries among some people. The bit about people leaving the workforce isn't true either, same for the poverty rate. It certianly was early on in 2002-2003. Many people did leave the workforce in 2000-2001. Labor force participation has risen again since then and the total number of jobs has risen by millons past the previous high before the last recession in 2001. So a stream of people leaving the workforce hasn't been the case for years, although the beginning of early retirement for baby boomers will continue to have an increasing impact on participation in the workforce. The so-called "negative personal savings" rate is a croc. It doesn't count most of the modern financial instraments that we use to save for college or retirement. It's basically savings accounts and CDs. As the deposits shrink in relative terms to income, this is hardly surprising. It also doesn't take into account the appreciation of existing assets. I'm not arguing that there isn't any room for economic improvement, but the gloom you are spouting isn't current or consistent with the facts.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Of course, in this case Nancy Pelosi was elected, and is an employee (where I'm defining employee as someone who is paid) of the government.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I'm back from coaching and the kid's rehearsal and the other story is persistent above all of the front page stories. As a green, I don't really approve of the smarmy attitude towards the green party in the linked story and it was, after all, the greens and libertarians who requested and paid for a recount in Ohio in 2004 that has since led to convictions in court. But I don't see why the link is not at least added as an update to the current story.s -selling-solar.html
--
Vote with your roof: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
.. none of this really matters. Whoever has the deepest pockets, wins. Lobbying and campaign reform need to happen immediately.. unless those in power WANT a civil war? Causus Belli? What better excuse?
~!J!
This terrorism thing isn't even close to a real war. Even the Republican congresses didn't bother to declare it. Things are different in wartime. This isn't wartime, it's business as usual.
The green and libertarian parties requested and then paid for a recount in Ohio. There have been a couple of convictions so far stemming from this: http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/news/state/1 6536269.htm. Now, since the recount was done fraudulently, are not these parties owed a refund?
0 07/2553 gives greater weight to the idea the election was stolen. If the greens and libertarians don't get a refund, at least I hope they'll get a little credit if this turns out to be proven. To me, democrats have put up weak candidates in the last
two elections, Gore's Rose Garden speech basically shut out any competition after the impeachment but he wasn't ready to run. Kerry's reporting for duty
speech set the tone for his campaign and Bush Lite was a brand that was already taken. Still, it may be some comfort to know that America chose not to
elect Bush even with this poor alternative if, as now seems likely, the evidence comes out clearly that theft occured.
If the recount was fraudulent, what about the original vote? Why the attempted cover-up? This news http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2
Why is this a troll? My AP US history text listed pretty much the same things (minus the military cancellations and "religious right" discussions).
Wikipedia lists most of the same stuff, too. (Scroll down, it's a long article.)
And to further the GP's point: "Bush=Bad" with no reasoning whatsoever is modded up, while "Carter=Bad" with many reasons is modded down. Never mind ye that Carter finally managed to mach Bush's lowest approval rating by the end of his presidency. link and link
DATABASE WOW WOW
Bush aside it should be noted that right-doing of any kind is often Political Suicide.
Then you are not sure :)
Actually reading the notes my guess: 95% there is some corruption (only money stolen), and some chance (10%) that there is a real voting manipulation.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
If no one was taken but the six that were then traded for weapons, you did prove that hostage taking is not an issue, but also that the "appeasement" didn't really embolden anything. The rest of your post was good, but you did sort of try to have your cake and eat it there.
Cheers.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
MOD PARENT UP
As it's at least on-topic and possibly even informative.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power."
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
Oh really? Why, then, the reports that the new Iranian security service, SAVAMA, was SAVAK with a new acronym? Why, then, the installation of Hossein Fardoust as first chief of SAVAMA, since he had been the Shah's right hand man, with the acceptance of his recommendations for people to serve in the "new" organization?
Go on, explain. And please provide some evidence to back up your claims that SAVAK was dismembered after the revolution, instead of just waving your hands about and saying how unlikely it seems to you.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The U.S government is working with groups like the ACLU to systematically suppress Christians and Jews while elevating Muslims to "untouchable" status and people are looking for conspiracies in ip addresses and delete emails. For years, liberals have been crying about separation of church & state regarding issues like prayer in school and the word "god" in the Pledge of Allegiance. They've been pushing for unrestricted abortions. Now, anyone can kill their baby and Muslims are being given special prayer privileges in public schools all over the country. On top of that, the U.S government is prosecuting Marines for alleged crimes that were originally reported to US journalists from enemy combatant. If we fought WWI and WWII this way, we'd all be speaking German. Soldiers are now wearing cameras on their helmets to prove that they were fired upon first when they engage the enemy. This is sad.
I'm an independent agnostic, but something just doesn't seem right about this. It looks to me like the end goal is to make the U.S a Muslim country. First, let's send our military to the Middle East, politicize the war to the point that they can no longer defend themselves and let them all die. Then let's let anyone and everyone kill their babies. Next, lets make Muslims in the U.S completely untouchable in the name of their religious beliefs, but not afford that same privilege to any other religion.
Sorry, but where election results are hosted just isn't important to me. Especially when who is sitting in the White House really isn't all that important. Bush is supposed to be a conservative, but he has no balls. As soon as Hillary is elected, you can say hello to the Islamic Republic of America. I'm not sure it would be any different if Republican managed to pull it off. Everyone is set on guilting America into golbal submission.
Testing a failover now must be done very far ahead of Election Day, to avoid any "appearance of impropriety." As. If. Please keep the facts away from the conspiracy theory!
This entire thread is being redacted per orders from Minitrue. [STOP]
The war in Eurasia is progressing according to plan. [STOP]
War is Peace. For great justice. [EOT]
Let me change a few words in your post to show how facile the argument is...
"That's not fair -- [Bush] was actually a pretty effective president. People only remember [the scandals which will never result in a willing resignation], but he was able to push through a large number of domestic policy changes and had a foreign policy that extended beyond [Iraq]. Whether or not you agree with his politics (and be sure you know what they are before you make that decision), and the crimes he helped cover up, you should at least respect his effectiveness in the office."
Bush has hammered a ton of policy changes through. We're going to be feeling the aftershocks of his presidency for generations to come and many of the changes he's made in the balances between the three branches of government may become permanent. That doesn't mean that he's been an "effective" President.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Jeremy Allison is not the originator of the phrase and shouldn't be attributed with it.
Hanlon's Razor
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The fact that I typoed "genius" is a non-issue. It doesn't make you any smarter or me any less your mental superior.
The State of the Union Address has nothing to do with the reasons and objectives of this war of choice. Apparently you are incapable of grasping the difference between the rhetoric leading up to our cowboy style invasion of Iraq and the attempt by the Bush Administration to morph this mega-blunder into some kind of noble deed.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
The GDP includes deficit spending, which makes GDP growth look artificially high. Subtract the hundreds of billions of dollars that are pumped into the economy by deficit spending every year and then annual GDP growth doesn't look so hot. In fact, we would actually have negative GDP growth (recession) in a few years over the past decade.
If you and I make the same salary, but I spend 3-5% more than you each year by borrowing on a credit card, my lifestyle/consumption will be higher than yours. Unfortunately, I can't sustain that model forever. The same goes for our country.
Also, the deficit numbers reported by the CBO and OMB are bogus. To calculate the actual deficit for a given year, subtract the debt at the end of that year with the debt at the end of the previous year. You'll find that our deficits are actually quite a bit higher than reported by our trusty politicians.
Good Christmas, people, and how much of that almost half a BEELYUN dollars has been *borrowed*? Sheesh. Talk about priorities. Somebody cut off this clown's credit.
And yes, Let's get back on topic. Please!
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I'd forgotten that was ol' Abe's middle name: Abraham Fucking Lincoln. I'd like that middle name! Pimpin! Just so long as you don't read it as a sentence, with one guy named Abraham and the other one Lincoln. That's not quite so much fun. Or maybe it is, if that's your thing. :)
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
"The top 10% of earners pay 70% of the taxes. If that isn't "sharing the wealth," then socialism is much nastier than I thought."
This type of quote is the reason for the colloquialism about there being "Three types of lies, lies, damn lies and statistics. Yea good old "earned income" otherwise known as "wages, tips, other compensation". This is why many business owners pay themselves next to nothing in wages and take the income in ways that are tax avoidable, it is the same reason many CEO's prefer to work for peanuts and stock options. How about capital gains taxes, since this is where the top % make their real gains in wealth? What is the top rate now, 15% or so? And the 15% only applies to the part that exemptions and loopholes have not excluded/hidden. How about the sleazy off shore corporate registration and banking setups? Either you are just a sucker for propaganda or part of the problem. Break the system and we all frickin pay, but if/when it happens those who are seen as the agents of causation are the ones who will pay the most, for a change. Kinda lends a different meaning to the term "you break it you buy it" doesn't it?
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
Loosing means loosing our freedom.
With the patriot act, suspension of habeas corpus, the 4th and 5th amendments destroyed, REAL ID on the horizon, the government scanning all e-mail and building CCTV's and other massive spy systems George Orwell could only dream of, and electronic crowd dispersement weapons..
Hell, the terrorists barley needed to fire a shot.. We took care of the rest all on our own.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
People who flatly state that the alternative to a Christian dictatorship is a Muslim dictatorship have already declared that they'd happily rig any old election. In Germany there were lots of people who used rhetoric against "Jews" to justify Nazism. Remember, the Nazis won a lot of seats before they seized power.
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So what's next? Driving up to British Columbia to file "libel" suits (you can sue for people telling the truth about you in BC) to get the IP numbers of the "trolls" and "terrorists" you are going to lock up in Guantanamo?
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?threshold=-1&
This kind of thinking is extremely dangerous, especially among lawyers and politicians.