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White House E-mail Scandal Widens
Spamicles alerts us to a report just issued (PDF) by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. At least 88 White House officials used Republican National Committee email accounts for government business. The RNC has destroyed at least some of the emails from 51 of those officials. Law requires emails sent by officials to be stored or recorded. There is evidence that White House lawyers and the (current) Attorney General knew of this but did not act to stop it. From the article: "These e-mail accounts were used by White House officials for official purposes, such as communicating with federal agencies about federal appointments and policies... Given the heavy reliance by White House officials on RNC e-mail accounts, the high rank of the White House officials involved, and the large quantity of missing e-mails, the potential violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive."
Just how obvious does the corruption in the White House have to be before you demand a change of government?
Judging by the number of people still defending this administration on slashdot, it would seem the parade scandals, lies, coverups & half-truths aren't enough. What will it take to convince you people? Does Cheney have to visit each house in the US personally, pry open the door with his shotgun, be caught shitting in your pillowcase while installing a keylogger on your PC?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Nothing new ?
A better use of the time would be all the Haliburton deals, what Sibel Edmunds has to say, and of course, how much monitoring of Americans is happening.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They have located the TERRORIST communications hub!
Sweet F A
Anyone care to dispute?
"In other words, given that all the evidence has been deleted, good luck proving it... even if the other side did have enough votes to bring the charges, and we didn't own the court that would adjudicate any case."
- Your Overlords.
Catch-22. It's the best catch there is.
Note that the article said: "Democrats say". The fact of the matter is that this so much Democratic fish hunting.
As if, they tell the truth.
Democrats haven't even tried to keep the promises that they were elected in Nov 2006. They promised to end the war, and didn't. They promised to clean up earmarks, and they won't. Bottom line is, all you liberals that flocked to Democrats like zombies do to living brains have been had just as much as we conservatives were that ate the public line of the RNC.
Idiots. Keep reading your MoveOn.org "press releases", er um, Propaganda, and drop your pants for Grandmaster Kos.
This is my sig.
Fish hunting? Isn't that fishing?
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
If those servers belonged to anyone but the RNC, they would have been impounded immediately. Why are they allowed to destroy evidence?
Would you prefer we elected Republicans instead? Yes, the Democrats betrayed the left, but would the Republicans have been any better? Remember that liberals are now hammering the Democrats to grow that most rare of all Washington institutions, a spine.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
Praise Jesus!
Thank God Bush restored Dignity and Honor to the White House!
All these Liberals demanding our President stand for American values just simply hate America.
and they hate Jesus, of course!
Vote Libertarian, not Republicrat or Democan as both major parties have fucked America up and will continue to do so.
Its a great time to be a Democrat. You can even vote when you're dead.
This wasn't a betrayal of the public trust by government officials using public resources feed their political games, subverting democracy and intentionally betraying oversight and justice...
It was just a simple case of pro-active privatization of communication channels. It's liberty from the chains of evidence! It's saving the public from expensive prosecutions at no cost to the tax payers!
We're at war people - and dog gambit - it's just plain not patriotic to be demanding accountability of our heroic politicians during a war they went through such pain to start and keep going!
You, sir, are a nitwit.
While I see both parties as uniformly spineless, the GOP was incredibly supine to corporate and other special interests at the expense of the individual. (And in the case of deficit spending, literally at the expense of future individuals.)
The Dems aren't that great (and there are a LOT of things they could have done differently the past 6 months IMO), but they're a damn sight better than the crowd they replaced.
Now if only Nancy would grow a pair..
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
[ObDisclosure -- I'm independent -- I prefer to think before I vote.]
Before this becomes a big GOP-bashing party, let's not be so tunnel-visioned to believe that this could never happen on the blue side of the aisle.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Just call the NSA & FBI, they've probably got a couple of copies, and then there's the RIAA which probably knows the locations of a few. Geeesh do we have to think of everything around here?
The issue is that the emails were presumably written while the officials were acting in an official capacity or could have been. The accounts were from a political party, and it is a wee bit suspicious that now that there are probes going on that the information was not being saved. Being by public officials normally subject to the act they should have retained enough of the records to demonstrate that they weren't a subject to the act. That way if there were any sort of investigation they could be looked at examined and then considered to be unrelated to matters. This is the same if you were to be investigated for a computer crime, you would be required to hand over any and all information relevant as well as decrypt any encrypted files. Failure to do so would result in sanctions as well as your guilt being presumed.
That is largely what is happening here. If the President and his staff are unhappy because their personal correspondence is now the fodder for investigations, perhaps they should have behaved in an appropriate manner when it wasn't about them. Kind of ironic, that all of a sudden an absence of evidence really means innocence, right, I mean that is what you were getting at right? In this case a lack of evidence is clearly a powerful indication of innocence.
The Republican party has really no basis for complaining, they have themselves conducted these sorts of witch hunts over far less, and in this case their own secrecy is largely what is keeping the investigators from making a fair assessment of the bounds of the investigation. If they would have just provided the emails, then the investigators would look through them determine the innocent, and move on. I mean why would an individual who hadn't committed a crime ever wish to have information remain confidential?
Wow. That post answered the question in an un intended way. It seemed to me someone from outside the US asked for an insight into the idiocy of American politics, and it was answered as if the question came from someone for whom the democratic party means something. The answer was full of rhetoric and had little substance other than "the other side is just as bad".
To read between the lines, it appears your honest answer to the question was "I'm too stupid to give a shit."
I'm genuinely curious about this subject though. How much obvious criminal activity on the part of your administration does it take before you decide they should be locked up? Seriously.
And before anyone posts with another "I'm too stupid to give a shit" answer, let's just say for a fair percentage this is true. I'm interested in the views of people who will address the actual question.
I don't therefore I'm not.
If we impeach the top two power-mad kleptomaniacs we have in the executive branch, we have president Nancy Pelosi. An election of Hillary is LESS likely once that happens.
The owners of the system claim deleted files can't be recovered. Well, like I said, unless it's a secure wipe, that's patently bogus, even if the original tracks have now been filled with other data. Up to nine times over, if you're lucky. I'm not sure I would trust a technologically-ignorant group to run a critical service.
The Democrats, on the other hand, no matter how justified their cause, are either unwilling to get competent technical advice or are unwilling to take the gamble of being wrong if they have that advice or knowledge. This may well be rocket science, but it still doesn't take a rocket scientist to do a search on Google to find out what can be done and who can do it.
In short, for me this has ceased to be a matter of rights and wrongs, of whether the law was broken, or of whether civil servants lost their jobs due to degenerate politics. Nobody will ever know the full facts of the matter, because those who could perfectly well obtain them have - for their own reasons - declined to do so. I trust the Democrats on many issues, but after this, I cannot trust them on the issue of cleaning up politics. How can I? Either they want to but can't, or they don't and won't. What does it matter which it is?
I'd also LOVE to know where all the technologists are, who are fully aware of these sorts of capabilities. Why the silence? It's not a conspiracy, that's obvious enough, so why is nobody asking questions? Why are the Republicans not asking why the Democrats aren't making the effort? Why are the blogs not discussing the effects of layering text over text on the magnetic fields? Even if the reliability of the technique is too poor, someone could at least have asked and gotten that reply.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Flagrant violations of the presidential records act aside, given this administration's cavalier attitude about the handling of classified information, I have to wonder if some of these messages contained any. And if they did, I have a hard time believing a facility operated by the RNC complied with the many rules and regulations for keeping classified information safe.
To be sure, a fair amount of classified information is so labeled more because it would be embarrassing to be revealed than because it is actually sensitive. And some of the rules for handling sensitive data are overly draconian. But there's also a lot of really important stuff these people deal with that really needs all the protection we can give it.
Of course now that so much of the email is deleted we'll probably never know...
remember how bush came in and was going to "bring integrity back to the whitehouse" and how psyched we all were as republicans? Remember how he had 90% approval after 911 and was totally leading the world and everything? remember how he controlled both houses of congress and put 2 (maybe more) judges on the supreme court and was starting to push back roe and bring in religion and morality in government and the dems had to eat shit and got kicked out of their nicer hill offices and got the shittier old used blackberries? And we republicans were going to reign high in an unbreakable majority for generations and we would eventually put all the athiest, lesbian, liberal, aclu, anti american, intellectual rat bastard scum in their place and turn the culture of america back to god fearing conservative decent people for the next hundreds of years? George W. Bush really really really fucked it all up didn't he?
Ahh, the witch hunt congress.
Don't Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi look nice on brooms?
Idiots. Keep reading your MoveOn.org "press releases"
It's no worse than you watching Fox News. Our country is being gutted, everything we stand for as a nation undermined and you're still supporting them?
With your user number, you'd think you'd be old enough to have learned something. What an embarrassment that you continue to support such a lying, corrupt administration. We are all the poorer as a nation because of you.
Does anyone besides me wonder if there's a peaceable solution to our differences? Sometimes I wonder if we're going to have to have it out with you and your kind to get our country back. How can we move forward when a third of the nation is okay treating the Constitution like it's just a piece of paper?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I thought that title belonged to balls. Especially now that we're on the verge of putting a candidate on the ballot without one.
Outeright illegal search and seizure, total abuse of power, taking away civil liberties and being above the law, flying folks off to foreign torture centers for "interrogation" without due process, lying about "WMD's" Spying on American Citizens... Will someone with the initials ML PLEASE give this president some oral sex so impeachment procedures can begin?
The Matrix is real... but I'm only visiting!
We should be laughing at such a question. "How much obvious criminal activity on the part of your administration does it take before you decide they should be locked up?" What has our society decayed to. We need to eliminate huge numbers of executive orders, review the whole premise of those things in the first place, and lock up our president ten seconds after he violates the constitution, much less the penal code.
Somebody else here said, "if only Pelosi would grow a pair" -- how appropriate.
The answer to your question is "Any." When someone violates the law, he gets punished. Period.
Hundreds of feet above your head, a joke flew by.
let's not be so tunnel-visioned to believe that this could never happen on the blue side of the aisle.
It is fairly well-known that the repubs had a sense of "ends justify means" for quite a while. They practically felt that since they were doing "God's work", they had a right to skirt the rules. Perhaps in the 1970's the Demo's had this kind of belief due to civil rights and Vietnam. However, the prez was a Repub at the time, putting that in check. This time there were no checks on power: Pubs controled 2, and perhaps 3 branches of gov't.
It is this sense that the ends are important enough to justify the shady means when these kinds of things happen. They felt that when their grand plans succeeded (Iraq victory, Gaza democracy, Prayer, etc.), then voters would be so happy that they could stay in power and stop any investigations. But, reality caught up with them.
Yes, it could happen to the Demo's, but it takes almost a perfect storm. Voters have historically kept mixed parties in the different branches, and this kind of "alignment" is rare.
Table-ized A.I.
Save me Jebus!!!!!! /Homer
the parents score shows that it is not safe to criticize the Democrats on slashdot.
Oh well. Been a week or so since I had a -1. Might as well join you.
So I have this boss... in fact, I have several bosses. And none of them know their email account and client from a hole in the ground. Maybe there's some law that says their email has to be configured some way or another, but you know what? They're old dudes who yell at me if I take more than thirty seconds setting up or fiddling with their machine. If it doesn't work in a way that's convenient for them, in the office/on the road/at home/at the mistress', my ass is grass.
:(
They're not the smartest bunch, but I guess no one who gets into this business is. They're certainly not smart enough to come up with any kind of cool movie-plot conspiracy to run the world.
Presidential Records Act? Give me a break. I'm a freaking intern, who's just trying to make the stipend cover until the end of the month and save up enough scratch to take out that hot page from Texas.
Uh oh. Sen. Pelosi's giving me the eye. Might have to flash her BIOS again later.
They want to put stuff in his bum.
Well, except for liberals screaming down conservative speakers at universities (which legally sometimes veers into assault), and keying up and slashing the tires of SUVs (property crime), there isn't really that much actual violence going on in politics, just voter fraud. I'd say about 90% or so of the nation either have no idea what the Constitution says, or just don't care. That goes for Rep. Pelosi and Sen. Kennedy just as much as it does for President Bush and Sen. McCain.
And no, I'm not suggesting that most or all liberals are using blackshirt tactics, just that you don't see conservatives shouting down President Clinton on his speaking tours, or damaging Volvos, Priuses, and Microbusen. True liberals that support freedom of speech and property rights don't do these things.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Damn the Republicans! Damn the Republican corruption to hell! ...HOW MUCH MONEY? What about a freezer?
*Phone rings*
Err... Jefferson did WHAT?
*Cough*... ALL REPUBLICANS MUST DIE! RAWR CORRUPTION! RAWR IRAQ OIL KARL ROVE!
I'm not sure I follow this. The committee is saying 88 officials had political cover email accounts while the RNC says there were only 11. Is this a catagory problem? Are 77 not White House officials so that the RNC is correct, or are they minimizing in a way that is not truthful?
On another note, I'm guessing that federal marshals will be sent to Texas to ensure Harriet Miers keeps the appointment made for her with the House Judiciary committee. Does anyone think that issues that arose when they were called on to hunt down the Texas legislature will come up in this case?
Honestly, I believe that this administration has fucked up so bad that there is no shock element any more. Compared to Bush, Nixon was a saint, and Carter was as accomplished as FDR.
I agree with some points earlier about how we'd be even worse if we impeached Bush, though. Who would we be left with? Cheney. The only solution would be to impeach both Bush and Cheney at the same time, but by the time that proceeding gets through we'd already have finished the next election.
Yeah, like your IT support is top notch and can guarantee that your e-mails dont' disappear either. Have you checked those backups lately?
Every single organization that I've worked for has bozos for IT support -- oh, sorry. I guess I'm speaking to them right now.
basically, Mr. Carl Rove ended up only having 130 emails actually recorded throughout bush's presidency when there should of been all of his emails and all of the other peoples emails recorded. This is why we will never know anything come 25 years from now when things get declassified. This seriously amazes me why the general public is not outraged by this. Compared to the insane ridiculousness of this administration. This trumps it all. I could bet my life that most of those emails were about foreign affairs in Iraq, Iran, North Korea, oil, military, war funding, contracts and contractors for Iraq, occupying the middle east, nsa wiretaps, spying on Americans, the whole damn thing were in those emails. I seriously would be my life on it. Now we have no records of any wrong doing. How screwed up is this place. We should be marching in DC with pitchforks (well guns) and over take the city. Un-fucking-believable
without two?
Help Fight SPAM today!
It's the old game: GOOD COP / BAD COP. The Democrats are the good cop and the Republicans are the bad cop. They both represent corporate America and their enemy is the American middle class.
Al Capone wasn't tried for murder. They went after him for tax evasion.
Bush has caused the deaths of thousands... and they'll go after him for deleting emails.
What the hell?
Unless some presidential scandal can be hyped to attract more eyeballs than reality shows then nobody will really care. Look at the OJ trial and Clinton's impeachment. Both were boring as hell and choked up the airwaves.
Bush and his cronies have outlied Clinton (about stuff that really matters, not just a few cum-stains and cigars), out-Watergated Nixon with all the destruction of evidence and used the US and world's resources + the lives of many innocents to further his own business goals. Surely there's enough plot in there to do something?
Want to impeach Bush? Find a good script writer first!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
maybe cheyney had mod points?
Sure he sucks. Most Conservatives consider him to be a "liberal".
,if she wins, will continue the Iraq War and destroy civil liberties at a faster rate than Bush) just so I can hear the howls of "Stolen Election!".
I can't wait until Fred Thompson defeats your savior Hillary (who
The entire Government is corrupt. Why do you nutjobs focus on BUSH so much?
Will someone with the initials ML PLEASE give this president some oral sex so impeachment procedures can begin?
What good is Cheney doing these days? Spare the interns please!
Only I doubt Cheney can fit underneath the Oval Office desk as well as Monica did. If he could, he would thow out his back while assuming the position.
I'm shocked but not surprised.
What is surprising is the quote:
"The RNC has preserved e-mails from some of the heaviest users, including 140,216 messages sent or received by Bush's top political adviser in the White House, Karl Rove."
140K emails? Even over six years, that's over 20k messages per year, or about 400/week. Say 80 emails/day. Assuming a 16 hour work day, that's 5 emails/hour, every hour, forever. Basically an email every 12 minutes. I don't see where Mr Rove has any time to do anything other than receive and answer emails. Maybe these guys are so busy sending emails to each other that they have no time left over to actually try their hand at competent governance. An email every 12 minutes implies that there is absolutely no thinking time here. It sounds like it's all reaction, presumably just giving orders. Amazing.
That stuff is not suppose to be in the open or on a network that touches the internet, much less on the internet itself. I don't think you'll see much if any of that. When people breach security, they usually do it on purpose, not by accident.
People like to use one email account for everything.
People hate to change their email account.
That's it. No malice needed, or even incompetence. It's just being lazy/efficient. Perhaps we should be thankful they aren't all using hotmail accounts.
> Fish hunting? Isn't that fishing?
Not the way Dick Cheney is doing it - just ask Harry Whittington [:)]
Peter.
Congrats. You just got my last mod point. Guess which one it was.
This is a non-issue because classified info is not allowed on systems connected to the internet. RNC or whitehouse, it really doesn't matter.
Well, seeing as you posted in this thread, you undid whatever moderation you gave.
First, sorry for posting AC. I am one of the GP's moderators and I want it to stick more than I want to score karma of my own (cuz who gives a shit about /. karma). Anyway...
Don't be such a baby. The GP wasn't criticizing; he was outright flaming and earned the mods. You would probably call me a liberal (though I am by no means a Democrat) and I actually agree that the Democrats haven't kept their promises (anyone with a pulse and at least 1 out of 5 senses knows this). However, you won't get very far by expressing such a view by saying something retarded like:
all you liberals that flocked to Democrats like zombies do to living brains
Or:
Idiots. Keep reading your MoveOn.org "press releases", er um, Propaganda, and drop your pants for Grandmaster Kos.
Just a hint. Whether you garner a full clue or not is really up to you.
Cheers,
mcpkaaos (449561)
P.S. The GP had a point about Kos (lots of coerced groupthink on that site). Too bad he blew it with his delivery.
I begin to think that Slashdot's icon for the Republican Party has got the dot on the wrong end of the elephant.
scandal my ass. these people are untouchable. there's no one willing to stand up to them, so they will just keep on doing whatever the hell they want.
there is no scandal here.
You do realize that this House Oversight committee report was written solely by Democratic staffers under Chairman Henry Waxman (D), right? If there was anything to this issue, Waxman would be the first to call for the resurrection of the independent counsel statute. Instead, it's just more typical he-said/she-said Washington politics. I wish all of them (R's and D's) would just get back to work and quit wasting our money.
George Bush and just about everyone working for him is a criminal. Everyone knows it. Why is this surprising?
well, you said DELETE the files, so I did!
And at the very least, these drives should be amenable to some kind of data recovery. The only thing I can think of really messing it would be to degauss/demagnatise the drive for a few days...or weeks...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Uhhh... Was not Sarbanes-Oxley supposed to prevent this in Business's?
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
There is one reason why this ludicrous and destructive charade continues, and that is from a serious flaw in the Constitution. The executive branch controls 99%+ of the "no questions asked" order followers who carry guns.
And that's it. Supposed to be some vague oath for constitution and then commander in chief. That's the theory. In practice, it is completely loyal to commander in chief. Full stop.
The legislative branch has nothing. Zero. Toothless. Even when they allegedly "pass" this or that legislation, it invariably gets "decided" to be something else, by "signing statements", and the orders from the deciders keep being followed. Combine that with that little cute warning to Congress and the mass media with that *mysteriously unsolved* anthrax attack, which let them know in no uncertain terms who was calling the shots now, and you get what you see.
This has been a coup d'état, with hacked elections and some really dodgy and quite *odd* "terror" attacks, and until that is recognized universally and identified as such, by the population en masse and especially by the toady media and by folks inside the government "system", nothing much will change, it will just keep getting worse.
Above is my opinion. I do not like having that opinion, it just sucks.
This is my anecdotal. Going by what I was taught in gradeschool, we are already way past the point where this can be called a police state. That it is not as bad for people right now as worse police states like north korea or wherever is a moot point. The important thing is, it crossed the threshold and is continuing relentlessly in that direction. It's been slow speed but really increased the past few years. I think they really saw they could pull it off cleanly if they took their time and did it piecemeal, instead of an all at once overnight deal like most coups. I also think it has been going on in a loose form since at least when they offed JFK and got away with it. Eisenhower warned the nation. I don't think he was joking.
I've seen the claims, but I am pretty skeptical about this. There are of course multiple ways for data to be readable after deletion:
The obvious one, the OS has only marked as deleted but the data is still there. At least, some of it is still there, but quite often the OS has reused some of the space. Still, you will get some this way IF a secure wipe has not been done.
A less obvious one...the drive itself has remapped sectors as time goes by, so some data has been left in sectors now regarded as bad by the drive. Recoverable if you have access to the drive electronics at a low enough level, but it won't be a very high proportion of the data on the drive and so you will only see snippets.
OK, now the lower level stuff.
The heads do not necessarily follow the same path each time the disk is written to. So next to the current track, there might be a trace of the last track. Well, yes, there might be. But for the disk to reliably read its own stuff, it must be following the last written track closely enough to get a reasonable signal to noise. So the trace of the old track can't be more than a reasonably small proportion of the total track width. Since they are always pushing bit density as high as they can, the signal to noise for the full width track is going to be the lowest they can get away with, at least at the time of design. So to read the partial track beside the last written one you are going to need a narrower head and a better signal to noise head amp. So maybe it would be possible to read some of this off some of the older drives...but remember the error is not always going to be the same size or even in the same direction on a given track, so you might not be able to read a whole track. My estimate is that to even attempt this, you would want a head that is a fraction of the width of the original, say about a tenth, and then you would need to control its radial position to better than a tenth of the original. Read your ten stripes for the original nominal track width, then more each side for the guard band between tracks, then do a lot of comparison between the various versions to see if there is anything meaningful other than the latest data.
Then there is the idea that even if it is in alignment, there is going to be residual magnetism from the old track. I seriously doubt this one. The materials used are chosen for high remanence and high coercivity, essentially a square hysteresis curve. They are permanent magnet materials. The whole idea is that the head leaves it permanently magnetised in either one direction or the other. OK, so practically we may not acheive saturation. SO let us say that we have written a track twice. Because neither the rotational speed or the clock rate will be in perfect synch, the new bits will not be perfectly aligned with the old bits. Even if they are, the old signal represents a noise signal in trying to read the new signal. So it must be small enough to allow the new signal to be read reliably. OK, so now you want to read the old signal...so the new signal represents a noise signal with a magnitude higher than the signal you want to read. That does not make it totally impossible, since the new signal is a known signal, at least to the extent that the old signal did not noise it up. But the fact that the old signal must be smaller, and that the system will in any case be operating as close to the noise floor as possible, (to maximise storage space on the disk.) suggests that the old signal might well be too close to the noise floor to be read reliably. The same would apply even more so to any earlier generations of signal.
So I'd say most of us are pretty safe from having our properly deleted stuff read. Of course, it is possibly convenient for various people to have us beleive that it is possible to read stuff we thought was gone. But to use it in a court of law they are going to have to produce details about how they did it....that would be interesting. If they plan to use it against you other than in a court of law, I'd say you are screwed anyway since it would become much cheaper to just torture you.
that was truly funny and dead on
What will it take to convince you to break out of that mold?
What has that party done for this country?
Rimming & Kisses & Golden Showers
--------
Ida Lewis Yacht Club
Jib Line Winch
The Democrats may have to make a deal to not push the email issue if W withdrawls troops. It is not an ideal solution, but perhaps the most practical.
Table-ized A.I.
Being by public officials normally subject to the act they should have retained enough of the records to demonstrate that they weren't a subject to the act.
DING DING DING.
So, who wants to pick the winning excuse that will let the "left wing media" ignore this scandal?
-Because the RNC can't afford enough disk to save all of Karl Rove's e-mails.
-Republicans are conservatives, and they were just trying to be conservative with computing resources. Especially what with all the sacrifice the country made during the leadup and first years of the war.
-Computers are complicated.
-Democrats are corrupt too!
-Clinton got a blowjob!!!!!!!!! And LIED about it!
I am sick of all of it, they are just two horns on the same Bull. Its called corrupt Government, regardless who is in charge. Vote the Person not the Party, If you want change.
You could be charged with obstructing justice, or contempt of court, or a variety of other charges... but none of that results in "your guilt being presumed".
Heck, you can even claim your 5th Amendment right to non-self-incrimination and neither a Judge nor Jury is supposed to consider that an admission of guilt.While the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, I believe some people are complaining because they somehow feel that investigations by the House of Representatives should require some form of probable cause. Well... they don't. Senators and Congressmen can investigate pretty much anything, for any reason or no reason. And if they have the backing of a committe with subpoena powers, you either hire a lawyer & fight, go along, or go to jail.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Charles Ray Polk
Sons of Gestapo
Willie Ray Lampley, Cecilia Lampley, and John Dare Baird
Joseph Martin Bailie
Peter Kevin Langan
Ray Hamblin
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Robert Edward Starr III, William James McCranie Jr, and Troy Allen Kayser
Gary Curds Baer and the Viper Team
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Floyd "Ray" Looker and the Mountaineer Militia
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Dennis McGiffen and The New Order
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James D. Brailey
David Wayne Hull
David Roland Hinkson
William Krar
John Noster
Norman Somerville
Sean Gillespie
Ivan Duane Braden
Demetrius "Van" Crocker
Craig Orler
That's the right-wing American terrorists between 1995 and 2005. Of course, they weren't planning on keying cars or yelling at elected officials, they planned to murder people in cold blood, and in a few cases managed to get away with it.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
uhm
are you forgetting about Bush's veto of the budget?
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
You are the bane of my existence.
You really ARE a ronin.
I'd put Barack Obama as President and Ron Paul as Speaker of the House, or vice-versa.
Talk about balancing each other out.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
What lost emails? NSA has copies of them all.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The following steps are indicated. Order is significant:
1) Impeach Cheney.
2) Impeach the sock puppet.
3) Try Karl Rove for treason.
4) Ferret out every GOP minion, operative, flunkie, and vote-rigger who had a hand in Bush's election(s) and investigate the life out of them.
5) Get a free press and use it.
Good luck, US. You're gonna need it.
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
Bush has certainly done worse than publicly bite the heads off kittens. He has killed more than 650,000 Iraqis in a very public scheme to restrict the flow of oil from Iraq, and thus cause oil prices to rise. (Saddam Hussein was selling oil by trucking it through Turkey. Iraq has 20% of the known reserves of oil.)
The truth is much, much worse than any one person can document. But I tried to write a summary: George W. Bush comedy and tragedy.
Why is anyone a "card-carrying" anything? Why don't they assess each issue and position as it arises regardless of which party is presenting it?
Maybe that's just too much of an ideal scenario?
I usually don't chime in on political topics, because frankly I just don't care. I know I'm going to get it in the "end". Any politician is going to screw you, it's part of the job.
But this question begs to be answered, and I think I can give it a little bit of justice.
I think it's because everyone knows that politicians are corrupt. But they want to be on the the "winning team" In the late 80's Bush the Senior was ruining things... opps Running things. and after 12 years of Republican rule the country wanted something a little different. So the majority of people found some flaw in the republican platform. Anything at all they could disagree with. They would build on this one thing(or 2 small things you get the idea) and eventually talk themselves into being a Democrat. (i'm too young to cite any specific examples... poor schools I guess)
Clinton had his fair share of scandal, whether deserved or not (not up to debate in this post) is irrelevant. Many people claimed to "think of the children" or Family Values or whatever judeo-christian BS the Moral Majority is shoving down our throats.
These people now identified with the Republicans more because they would never (get caught) cheat(ing) on their wives. Or Lieing under oath. Or even would never be confused as to the legal definition of "is".
These people were slowly but surely shown the benevolent side of the Republican agenda. As their following got stronger they branched out into more legally/morally obscure areas.
The people are already going to vote republican because they agree you should (get caught) cheat(ing) on your wife, you shouldn't (get caught) stealing from children etc...
wow that turned into a rant.
I am an American. At one point I thought this country was great, we had freedoms many other places didn't enjoy. We had a great document that limited the power of any one individual, we even had a system of checks and balances so that in the off chance that one individual or group became too powerful it could never truly take away our inherent rights.
This system probably worked rather well for quite some time. Maybe even 50 years.
With the current system, there is no possible way to get back to what this country is about. We are too far gone.
But I cannot think of any alternative. Power breeds corruption. I cannot honestly say that I have never used my job to further my own personal goals. I drove cab for 4 years, I used that job to meet loose women, and score drugs. I'm now in the IT field. I use this job to keep with current trends in the industry and meet contacts that will further my personal agenda.
I'm not saying that if I was a politician I would burn schools down to create parking lots for my fleet of Mercedes-Benz vehicles, but some people do not have high moral standards I do.
If there is a way to use a position of authority, any authority at all it will be abused, more often than not. This is the new American dream.
Lie, Steal, Cheat, Blame your predecessor.
The Constitution is a great piece of work, sad to think of it more as a work of fiction these days.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, America has to go through some kind of radical change. IMHO nothing short of revolution will bring this country even close to the splendor that it once was.
I'm not talking about riches and wealth splendor, I'm talking about freedom.
Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
If you're serving in the military you must follow the orders of the commander-in-chief or you will face a military court.
If you serve in the military you put your ass on the line to defend your fellow citizens, you are kept away from family for tour after tour, year after year.
It is therefore the responsibility of citizens who are not in the military to defend those in military service from incompetent or criminally negligent leadership. This should be the job of congress, to impeach, but they apparently are incapable of fulfilling their elected responsibilities.
The Citizens of the United States must demand that Bush and Cheney be 1) removed from power and 2) arrested and tried for criminal actions leading to unnecessary deaths of American military personell and Iraqi civilians.
At LEAST start to demand it. To be American is to demand justice.
Clinton's staff DELETED ALL of their e-mail, and not a peep was made out of it. This was in response to an investigation about using the white house for fundraising.
This is my sig.
Unless these guys have done a secure wipe with specially-designed patterns to eliminate residual information, why the hell isn't anyone paying one of the labs capable of such content lifting to read these drives?
They already found the backups. Please read the story next time. Cheers, luv.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Whenever I hear Brazilians talking about government corruption, I ask them "How many Iraqis did Lula kill?"
There's a big difference. The Republican party has often delivered to their base. The Democratic party told their base to go fuck themselves. What has the Democratic party done for liberals during this disaster of a Presidency? Nothing. The only reason they control Congress is because of the Republican party's extremism, not because of anything that these cowards who call themselves Democrats have done.
THIS was modded Flaimbait?
Nope, no liberal bias here on Slashdot. Nuh-uh.
Please.
The are only two reasons how this could happen. Neither of them is good. 1) Intentional = corruption = criminal or 2) Unintentional = stupidity = incompetence.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
...
...
"Loyalty is to the administration first and the party second.
And the Constitution? Oh, sure, we care about. And God, too. And Jesus, yeah. Look, just make a list of what you want us to say we care about, alright? We're busy."
white_house@exxon.com
"Whenever I hear Brazilians talking about government corruption, I ask them "How many Iraqis did Lula kill?""
:-)
:-)
Jumping from the 10th floor is bad, but jumping from the 20th is worst. Would you jump from the 10th just because there's something worst?
I'm not comparing Bush and Lula, I'm comparing the lack of capacity of the people to just understand that someone is completely incompetent/incapable of being president, by incompetence or dishonesty. And let's not forget that Lula gives support to Chavez and Morales, that are VERY VERY dangerous to the world as a whole with their lies and their false nationalism, maybe as dangerous as Bush because thei give Bush exactly what he looks for: (false) reasons to mumble about "lack of democracy" and to intervene.
And, last but not least, let's remember that Lula runs Brazil, and Brazil doesn't have a millionth of the influence and power of USA. Try to imagine Lula and it's total incapacity ruling USA... Uh... No, it's better not to.
--- Illogical Spock
You'd think it would be the other way around, though.
...sorry.
Cheney's already proven he likes to shoot people in the face.
Small though it is, the human brain can be quite effective when used properly.
I voted for W in 2000 because I thought Gore was an empty suit being handled by a slick campaign. I knew better by 2004 but it was too late. I'll never vote for the son of a president again. W will spend his life trying to prove he stands on his own two feet, without daddy, even if it means leading my children onto a battlefield. Screw you W.
The thing is, the law is a political football at that level. Do you want to lock Bush up? Sure, go ahead. But then, why isn't Hillary in jail for flat out lying about using fundraising in the white house. Why is Barrack Bin Osama still running when he broke the law about using Senate offices for political activities and it was on Newsweek? How the hell is Michael Moore in Cuba to make a movie (aka, engage in Commerce), when that is clearly against the law? And look at how Patrick Kennedy gets off the hook for a DUI, like family member Ted.
Seriously, I'm one of those rare people that think Scooter Libby should NOT be pardoned, but I'm far past the point of believing that either party is interested in law and order. Democrats don't care about right or wrong, and if, that is state of affairs, why should Republicans disarm themselves to the same?
This is my sig.
Clinton's staff DELETED ALL of their e-mail, and not a peep was made out of it.
OK. Put up or shut up. Cite a source that isn't connected with the Arkansas project.
This is probably what you're thinking of. Unlike the Bush white House, the Clinton White House case hinged on an incompetent third-party contractor - not the Republican National Committee's grant of free e-mail accounts to be used for political business only.
Whether Karl Rove used the RNC e-mail account exclusively for political ends is up to anyone in a large company to decide. Anyone who has responded to a work query from personal e-mail account, for instance.
No.
This is the only part I can see that you may be (mis)applying:
Why Don't I get my points back after I post in a discussion I moderated?
Basically because of the following scenario:
Bob Moderates a Discussion
Bob Waits Until Tomorrow When the Discussion Leaves the Homepage and Activity Dies Off.
Bob goes into dead discussion, posts and comment, reclaims his moderator points.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat
This scenario would easily allow a user to continue to have moderator access for as long as they felt like it. Simply disallowing the retrieval of points makes this impossible.
You can't undo your moderation by posting as AC in a thread you have moderated.
HTH, HANDA
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
Clinton's staff DELETED ALL of their e-mail, and not a peep was made out of it. This was in response to an investigation about using the white house for fundraising.
I find that difficult to believe. I seem to remember lots of peeps being made when Clinton did just about anything. Google brings up references to the Clinton administration turning over 32+ million email messages. There were certainly problems. But, why do you think people weren't peeping about it then, when you are peeping about it now?
Republicans like to hunt for fish in barrel. I have know republicans who go to texas to hunt deer and/or lions. It turns out that they are hunting tamed creatures. Brave and very sporting of them
You all seem to be missing the obvious.
I agree that the Dems have lost their focus on occasion. They have never been able to keep a sharp focus like the Republicans. I also agree that some Dems in office now are bums and crooks who should be kicked out of office. They are, however, the least evil of the choices right now by far. The corruption and incompetence, and rank stupidity of republicans right now is far past comical.
As to what you've all missed.. The Dems don't REALLY have power in congress right now. They have a decent majority in the House which is good but they don't have the 60% required quash a Republican fillibuster. Remember when Republicans were going to re-write 200+ years of proceedure to stop minority filibusters before they started regularly doing them again?
In the Senate it's more bleak. The Democrats do not have a majority at all. Lieberman bailed from the Democratic party when he lost the the primary nomination for being in bed with the Democrats and Bush in particular. Lieberman has had a man-crush on Bush for years now. Lieberman SAYS he's working with the Dems now (because he's from a blue state and he'll lose next time if he doesn't convince just enough Dems that he's one of them. Lieberman just campaigned for a REPUBLICAN from his state. It's gotten so bad that the head of his new party, Independent Democratic Party, has asked him to resign so that the Governor can assign a replacement. He left the Democrats because the majority didn't want him, now his new party is kicking him out for being a closet Republican. The senate can go either way with independents but it's basically 50-50. It's certainly not 60% or super-majority in favor of Democrats.
The reality is, politics is dirty. There's an old saying that you know you've got something in Politics when everyone leaves the table unhappy.
The thing that really has the left wing of the Democratic party up in arms is the folding on the Iraq funding. Unfortunately, the reality is, Dems didn't have enough votes to shoot down a Presidential veto and they had to add ear-marks to get enough people to sign on to even get it to pass. The Dems are TERRIBLE at 'reading the crowd' even when 70% of Americans want us out of Iraq.
In their defense, however, they were in an untenable situation. They had zero chance of getting that bill through and there was a good chance that the decades of Republican media buildup would have been successful in portraying it as the Dems fault.
IMHO, If I were the Democratic leadership I would have sent that bill back over and over and over, every week if possible. I'd have made Bush veto funding the troops over and over. I'd have put out the party members to simply say "why does President Bush refuse to fund the troops? First it was the body armor and the Humvee armor, now he won't sign the funding bill.". That's it, nothing more.. over and over. In fact, they could have stripped appropriations one by one and threatened their own members that they were in it now appropriations or not.. or they'd be flip-floppers at their next election cycle.
Bottom line, the Dems are anything but all powerful in Congress right now. They have enough power to assign committee seats and put up legislation but they don't have enough juice to push anything all the way through if the Republicans and Bush say no.
The plan now isn't to bring Republicans down. The plan now is to maneuver, politically, so that they stand to gain more power in 2008. Unfortunately, I suspect that Dems will control both Congress and the WH in 2008. I think it's dangerous to vest too much power in one party (as we've seen). The good thing is, we've seen a lot of new (young) Democratic blood come in. We've seen a lot of war vets who seem to be in for the right reasons. I hope they can hold the corruption back for a while.
I would suggest that I'd like to see some of the old Democratic blood (particularly the corrupt) taken out in 2008 by young un-tainted Republicans but Rove and his Ilk h
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
Abandon All Hope Ye Conservatives Who Enter Here!
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Incompetent third party technician, or deliberate cover up? Could go either way. That's my point. All of this just politics, and everyone getting bent out of shape over investigations over Bush are just as stupid as we were when we were out to get Clinton. These scandals aren't about the law, and hasn't been since Chappaquidick. It's only about power.
This is my sig.
Is the American system isn't one where you just change it whenever you want. Elections happen at regular intervals. The people, congress, even the president, can't simply call for an election, the law has to be changed. At a federal level, the level you are talking with the president, the law that needs changing is the Constitution. That's not an easy document to change (on purpose). 66% of both houses of congress have to vote in an amendment, and then 75% of the states have to ratify it. As you might guess, this isn't a short or easy process.
That isn't to say nothing can be done, if the president has broken a law he can be impeached by congress, but for now congress doesn't seem to be very interested in trying that, even though the Democrats now have majority control of both houses.
That being the case, there's little a person can do to bring about any sort of immediate change. Basically the best you can do is to do as much as possible to make sure people get out and vote for someone better next time.
The US system is very much designed on a rule-of-law concept, where things can't just be changed because a majority gets pissed off. This has good and bad consequences, but one of them is that the people cannot simply call for a new presidential election and get one. It happens only once per four years, 2008 being the next, and will continue to be that way until the Constitution is changed.
I don't think you understand the oil business.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Supine to corporate interests? Business is the backbone of America. You don't get to sit around and post on slashdot with some moolah coming in. What interests would you have a political party be responsive to? "The people". Jeez, most people either work for corporations or have their own, well, corporation.
Do you people even think about your slogans, or do you just prattle them off. What interest would you want your political party to be supine too. Or do you want them to not be supine to anything? Or, would rather go back to family owned trusts circa 1890, like John Rockefeller, or, would you go back to an agraraian society. The Khmer Rouge tried that - take a budding industrial society, deliberately ratchet everything back 100 years, and watch everyone starve to death. So what, prey tell, do you want?
You don't even know.
It's even worse that you get mod'd up as +5, when all you did was prattle off a meaningless slogan that makes no sense when subject to even a 6502's level of critical examination.
This is my sig.
The Speaker of the House takes over the Presidency if the President and Vice-President were both to become unable to fulfill their offices. At no point does the Speaker of the House become Vice-President. Should the Vice-Presidency become vacant, due to the current Vice-President being unable to fulfill his* duties, or because he* has assumed control of the Presidency, the Vice-Presidency is simply vacant until filled by a nominee of the President and ratification by the Senate.
After the Speaker of the House (Interesting story involving the political rational there) come the Cabinet Officials in order of the creation of the Office, starting with the Secretary of State. Beyond that is codified, but, IIRC, is not published.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
As far as I can tell they aren't true. Modern harddrives are extremely complex in their encoding, and vast in their size. That makes doing an analogue read of their contents a very hard operation, and then harder still to discern any older data from it. Thus far, I've never seen anything that can recover anything written over, and I've never talked to a data recovery company that said they could when we were talking dollars. If you can find such a place, well I'd be real interested. However it seems likely that on modern harddrives, once something is overwritten, it is gone for good for all intents and purposes.
And if they keep it up, I'll be voting against the incumbent again. It's true that the Democrats are contributing to the mess. That doesn't mean that it didn't make sense to boot the guys who were making the mess to begin with.
fixed for you
There are real, serious, rules about handling classified data. They are explained to people when they receive clearances. The gummint actually does THAT pretty well. The rules most certainly do NOT include transmitting classified data via any sort of public electronic or physical mail (except Registered snail mail which is always under positive control). For the most part, this stuff is assigned control numbers and ownership/location is tracked.
Of course the defining trait of the Bush administration is that these buffoons are totally incompetent. So there probably is a small amount of classified information in their eMails.
But I wouldn't get too worked up about that. IMO, Most information that is classified shouldn't be. And the subset that is properly classified often is a secret only to the American people. Find a copy of "The Pentagon Papers" and you'll see what I mean.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
The price of freedom is also a bit of perceived safety--you have to give up torture and detention without trial as means of conducting government, because those are inimical to freedom. But we don't want to pay those things--everyone wants more government, the only difference being that each person wants different things controlled. I'd personally turn my entire country into Amsterdam if I could, but you'd find that probably about 3% of the nation, if that, would agree with me.
Despite what they say, people want a big, powerful, ubiquitous government, and not just because of handouts and pork. When someone wants to ban gay marriage, or marijuana, or prostitution, or mandate seatbelts, or to give senior citizens drug benefits, or imprison people without trial, or ban dirty words on TV, then that means they believe in big government, rhetoric notwithstanding.
"There can be no crime committed when it's God's will and work that is being done." That is the way such people have deluded themselves to reason. Machiavelli would be proud.
You don't need to prove malice or incompetence when the acts were illegal. Motive is always speculative, but if it makes sense to think they were probably covering things up, they probably were.
Shut the fuck up and go back to my cable TV.
:)
Ummm, I don't watch tv, well other than comedy central (the real news aka The Daily Show) and cartoon network.
But Standing on the sidelines bitching, that does just about sum it up doesn't it. I agree, I'm not currently a part of the solution.
But what is the solution, if you had any idea you would have posted so we would know who you are, and maybe offered up a suggestion. I'm up to suggestions.
You want revolution... I'm no leader, and while willing to fight 1 man against an army would not last long, and I've already stated my enjoyment of not getting shot.
A better politician... Without money it's pretty hard to run a campaign. and again, I'm no leader. I'm more of a thinker.
But I could find someone who is a leader and promote with my loudest voice who I think is best for the job... Adding to the problem, now there is a solution we haven't tried... oh wait yeah we did.
I'm in favor of smaller government, a true "For the PEOPLE" government. With fewer laws, and less restrictions on what can and cannot be done. I favor a government with no central point of failure, but then trying to get a crowd to agree on anything important is near impossible. (see congress) And you would still have the probability that some of those people vote with their wallets and not with their hearts or heads.
In short
I do not have the solution. I don't know what will work, I only know what hasn't.
"If there's a new way, I'll be the first in line.
But it better work this time". -Dave Mustaine
p.s. grammar nazi's I'm not sure if the " goes on the outside or inside of the . I apologize in advance for any annoyance this may cause you.
Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
Correction
1) Impeach Cheney.
1.5) Remove Alberto Gonzales.
2) Impeach the sock puppet.
3) Try Karl Rove for treason.
4) Ferret out every GOP minion, operative, flunkie, and vote-rigger who had a hand in Bush's election(s) and investigate the life out of them.
5) Get a free press and use it.
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
Has any of this actually been proven? As far as I can tell, these are all just allegations by the opposition party. Not much to see, yet.
I believe Hanlon's Razor might be appropriate here. For those that don't know it, or more likely just don't know what it's called, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity".
I run the internet presence for a society I belong to, people in administrative positions all have society e-mail accounts, essentially giving them an "official" e-mail address. Trying to get them to actually use them is nigh on impossible, they all just use their personal or work addresses. The number of times I get e-mails from people with .gov.uk addresses is slightly worrying, mind you.
The simple fact is it doesn't occur to most people that they can have more than one e-mail account and they should be selective about which account they use for what tasks.
It's easy to assume malice. Especially when you're dealing with politicians.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
Democrats DID try. Republicans failed the public interest. Pick a poll, any poll. Betcha they all say the same thing. Republicans are on the wrong side. You're trying to frame the debate in terms of both Democrats and Republicans being equally bad, and even if the number of offenses was the same on both sides (it is not), there is a reason that murder does not carry the same sentence as jaywalking. Some offenses are worse than others. And obstruction of justice, illegal surveillance, refusal to testify under oath, and just generally lying and manipulating the public is far worse than what anyone on the left has done. God, and I'm only naming stuff from the last few months. When I think about going into a full list, it makes my brain hurt. Suffice to say, you can make whatever accusations you want about the left, I can top them. And furthermore, talking about right and left is misleading. We're talking about individuals, and the individuals in the White House are the criminals, not the entire Republican party.
Someone hasn't read which country's oil companies are getting most if not all of the contracts. Not counting the one that has now relocated to Dubai.
I was skeptical at first, too, it seemed insane that someone could be so thoughtless to start a war to take control of oil fields. I won't be so naive twice.
statistics can be made up to prove anything 14% of all people know that
Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
If a felon is one who commits a felony, you sir are an iron.
This:
[Y]ou know insulting the speaker always invalidates the facts he speaks.
coming right after this:
Clinton was an immoral slime ball with the frat boy charm that got him through.
would blow out the irony meter on anybody but a Neo-conservative fascist who is goose stepping over his fellow countrymen while saluting Fox News.
My point was that making Middle Eastern oil more expensive is counter productive, since it eats into oil companies' margins. Indeed, like every company, oil companies want their raw resources as cheaply as possible (hopefully while other companies pay more for the resource, so that they can drive up prices to match the competitors).
Bush's plan was a long term plan to bring the fields under American control, so that they can essentially undercut OPEC in the American market.
After all, I am strangely colored.
This isn't really in response to any one comment, but more or less the general "Americans Don't Give a Shit" genre of comments that appear on this story. I've been thinking about the general sense of apathy and while I think a lot of them have been discussed inside and out (corruption, money in politics, biased media, lack of political options) one I've been thinking about lately is the lack of communities:
1. US College System & Culture encourages people to move and "get away" from their families, friends, and the "village" of people they grew up with and around. While I'm not that old, at 28, even with this short amount of time, very few people I've kept in touch with from highschool live "back home". You develop friends who are in your income bracket, who have similar interests, and usually similar thoughts politically. It's much easier not to care about the minimum wage if you're not affected by it.
2. Mass Media: TV is the "Bread and circus" of the day. I'll admit it - most of the time I come home after work, flop down on the couch and watch TV. I'm not sitting on my porch and seeing my neighbors when they walk by. It's in the entertainment industry's intrest to try and keep us there by making us numb to everything else by constantly bombarding us with sex, violence and danger. And, lets face it, it's interesting. There's a lot of good entertainment there. Judgment on the medium aside, it keeps us inside with little community interation.
3. Cars: The US is a car society. People do not walk, with an exception of a few cities. If you drive 30 minutes to work instead of working near where you live, you don't meet people in your neighborhood. There are some exceptions: church and school for example. But look at those two communities and how active they are pollitically. They're brought together by a common purpose, but I bet if you did a survey of people who attend church or have children in school they'd be more politically active than the average.
There are a lot of other things that contribute, and I'm not even suggesting that this is the primary factor, but I don't see it discussed and thought I would put it out there.
-nb
RandomAndInteresting.comdefending the world from stupidity since 1979
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
1. the casting of ballots by the average citizens does not decide the president, the electoral college does (these people are appointed by rebulican or democrat party)
2. only 2/3 of us are registered to vote and only 2/3 of them show up at the polls. effectively a 2 party system of government, and they control who is nominated for us to vote for. we have the left or right hand of the corporate party running the USA.
ps - there is not enough time left to impeach Bush with the feeble majority the democrats hold
sorry...
Something about how The Complex's actions are in the process of cutting America down at the knees. Even though much of the populace seems to be doing okay right now, the entirety of the U.S. population will eventually suffer consequences of the Neo-Con-victs' tyranny:
I wish I could say I've done more to change the system... I've donated a couple bucks to various resistance organizations, but that hardly seems like much. I'm working on a plan to enlist veterans to collect signatures to recall my state's worthless Senators & Congressmen, but this plan is on hold until I figure out 'how to read' (which is, of course, a euphemism for all the things I should've learned in skool but didn't. Soon, very soon indeed, certainly.).
Chomsky has some good stuff out. I found a torrent of his Class War CD, and was quite impressed with the argument (he's been ahead of the curve for quite a while, I think)
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Regardless of the existence/nonexistence of said bias, the post clearly is flamebait. It doesn't really make any arguments worth debating, it just makes some inflammatory claims about liberals.
But those were bad people. We're talking innocent kittens here!
Nice deflection from my original request.
I don't think your post matches the challenge of "putting up or shutting up" that I set. I'll grant that absolute contests like that are no fun, but I couldn't let your counterfactual statement stand.
Like so many manufactured scandals, the "trashing" of the White House by Clinton staffers never actually happened - it was ginned up by a Republican machine ready to deliver locker-room dick sizes to a press breathless for scandal - and a year after the story "broke", the truth came out, thanks to the non-partisan GAO.
Hell, read it. I'm tired of trying to make Republicans believe that white is, in fact, white.
From the article:
The White House made 78 staffers available for interviews with the GAO, and clearly spent an enormous amount of energy just to try to stick another scandal to the Clintons. (Gonzales' time alone, billed by the hour, might cost more than the $9,000-plus the GAO blamed on the Clintons.)
Some conservatives. They've been doing the same trick for six years now and spending a shitload of money just to keep the lights on while 68% of people don't even want to get in the front door.
Just how obvious does the corruption in the White House have to be before you demand a change of government?
You don't get it, do you? The fact is, most Americans don't give a flying fuck. OK, I'm by nature a cynic, but I think there is not much hope left for us. These are just a FEW of the factors that have sold us down the garden path:
A public school system focused on cramming factoids into young heads just long enough to pass tests and keep the federal money flowing. No interest in whether children actually learn anything or develop the mental skills to look at the world in any sort of rational fashion.
An economic system increasingly making it necessary for middle-class families to focus more and more time and attention on just simply keeping solvent and paying the bills. When you're working two jobs and juggling mortgages and loans and barely keeping your head above water, occasionally grabbin a few hours of sleep in-between, you don't focus on much beyond making it to the next paycheck.
The increasing emphasis on celebrity fluff and scandal. A society in which people are more concerned about a blonde slut with no discernable talents or values going to jail than about an administration which daily guts the Constitution.
The plethora of entertainment and time-wasting devices keeping us focused on meaningless drivel instead of critical issues. As long as we have our iPods to listen to tunes, our cellphones and Blackberrys to maintain a constant stream of blather with others, and our flat-screen TVs to watch endless reality shows, we think we already have the good life. And it all keeps us well-distracted and complacent. (Baaaaaah!)
An increasingly pervasive "us vs. them" mentality. Democrat/Republican, gay/straight, red/blue. You're either with us or with the terrorists. Christians good, Muslims bad, atheists unspeakable. Everything is A or B, chocolate or vanilla, smoking or non-smoking. There's no middle ground anymore; no place for compromise, no corner for subtlety, no reason to think individually. Shades of gray no longer exist.
A news media increasingly unwilling to challenge authority and ferret out corruption. Ratings and ad sales matter, not journalistic integrity. Something loud, stimulating, and visually exciting (preferably with blood involved) will carry your channel for many hours on end. Anything subtle, the least bit pedantic, or requiring a viewer to actually think a little and learn something is a show-killer.
The growing realization that what affects the average citizen is of no interest to the powers that be. That lobbyists, special interests, ego, the thirst for power and (above all) money are what motivate our "leaders." Voting is rigged, democracy is a sham, and we're damned whether we vote or not.
And, no, none of this happened overnight -- it's been growing for a long time. But we have reached a critical point where I honestly believe there is no turning back. The things that you and I and others who hang out here care about are meaningless to the vast majority of Americans. The U.S. is in for a fall -- and it's going to be a big one. I'm at the age where I hope and pray I'll be dead before the ultimate collapse.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
the White House counsel in early 2001 "issued clear written policies" instructing staffers "to use only the official White House e-mail system for official communications and to retain any official e-mails they received on a nongovernmental account." Recent evidence "indicates that White House officials used their RNC e-mail accounts in a manner that circumvented these requirements," the report said.
Whoops. Looks like they not only knew they were violating the law, but that they flouted the requirement.
But....Republicans are the law and order party, right? And this is (objectively) no worse than lying about a consensual sexual affair, right?
Or are Republicans subjective? It gets so hard to keep track of what's important to these folks!
Certainly, this little white house foible is no worse than lying about the reasons to go to war - and we've got 3500 corpses and four years of backpedaling to show that progress is an abstract to the United States citizenry, right?
I mean, "right" is right, right? Or is it?
Why is anyone a "card-carrying" anything? Why don't they assess each issue and position as it arises regardless of which party is presenting it?
Thy do, it's just that the parties themselves set the agenda and support it with billions of dollars in marketing. Do you really think Americans would give beans about which orifice someone is sticking their weenie in or whether some braindead woman's life support is turned off or not? Those things have become issues because political parties made them issues, for all sorts of reasons. For example, a lot of these "issues" become issues because politicians like to distract from things that they don't know how to handle, or because they like to draw attention away from government handouts, or they like to derail legislation that would be inconvenient for their constituents or their financial supporters.
And when the debate starts and scientific opinion is brought into the debate, people with political agendas try to discredit the scientists and dig up the most obscure crackpots to provide an "alternative viewpoint".
And if all else fails, appealing to fear always works: "but think of the children", "it's for national security", and "you could be next".
(Non-American here.)
You don't seriously think that this is different anywhere else. It's the way people work the world over. Having followed European politics a little, the issues, irrationality, and fear seem to be the same, the only differences are: if it gets really dirty, they let the Americans deal with it or blame the Americans for it, and the amounts of money involved seem to be smaller.
And you see the same kind of behavior in smaller democratic organizations as well (various boards and organizations).
I think the best solution is probably devolution, free movement of people, and perhaps the creation of many more states. That way, gay marriage and physician assisted suicide can be legal in San Francisco, and school prayer, polygamy, and anti-sodomy laws can be legal in Salt Lake City.
If we let kittens walk our streets with their heads still attached, surely the terrorists have won.
Anyway, think of the children! Do you really want your children to be exposed to kitty porn and pussy on the street? Besides, those kittens have teeth, and they may be carrying rabies!
You cannot know whether the emails were used for government business or not. They were deleted.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
This one is interesting.
Given the way the 2000 election went, what are the three branches now?
"Exec Branch, Appointed by Exec Branch, and Elected by Exec Branch's friends?"
Though the 10th grade books wouldn't call them "branches", let's try the other answers. "NeoConservative, Hillary&Obama, and Traumatized".
Or the other one: "Federal = Fights Wars Forever, States breed CongressCritters, and Local can't survive a $100,000 budget shortfall."
I recall what civics is "supposed" to be. However, the current administration is immune. It's not worth the energy to "fight" them. Instead, I'm looking ahead into the next election, where we have a shot at someone a little more toned down.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Your intelligently-worded argument has won me over. I now believe that all Republicans are saints. Investigating such people is an act of treason. We should burn the Constitution and officially recognize Bush as the First Dictator of America.
The tax cuts and deregulation are largely a joke. Even independent of the war, Bush has been a bigger liberal than some of the liberals, running wild with the government Visa card. Just look at his "education reform". Or the convenient absence of the "Social Security reform" that was once a campaign promise. He's not fighting the welfare state, he's feeding it. The tax cuts are good, I'll admit, but our tax burden is still higher than it was under the Clinton administration; they are not a substitute for sound fiscal policy. So, economically the conservatives are no better than the liberals now.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
I bet you can't name one facet of your life that been made worse due to the Bush administration. You're just an ignorant buffoon spouting liberalist propaganda.
in Sandy Berger's pants... Yawn, so what else is new in Washington. Vote Different in 2008
They are *deleted*, not destroyed.
Well, maybe, maybe not. The price of gas always goes down in an election year, then goes back up. If they had control over a massive supply of oil, they could hold onto it and do whatever they damn well please. If anything, it's a way to lower gasoline temporarily when they want to. If a Democrat gets elected, doesn't matter whether they have control or not, those prices are going up unless Congress grows a damn pair and starts making them stop.
At the very least, the NSA has the traffic analysis like:
rove to goodling
goodling to gonzales
gonzales to rove
etc.
If not, the NSA has been illegaly spying on the public
while the White House illegaly destroys its records
Ha ha ha.
Assholes.
Fire people who dissagree with you.c le/2007/04/14/AR2007041401010.html
i ncident
e x.php?id=18
d ward.book/ ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
Enact a law that goes against all the principals of the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act
Shoot people with a shot gun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney_hunting_
Help Osama Bin-Ladens Family.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/warroom/f911notes/ind
Just plain lie
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/18/woo
But you have sex with 1 intern and all hell breaks lose!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_Lewinsky
The problem is that Bush has his conversations with God in private. God should have to testify in front of a congressional committee like anybody else. He told me so Himself. He also told me He thinks Bush should be impeached. I thought I'd just pass that along.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Fish hunting? Isn't that fishing?
Spoken like a man who's never stalked a salmon.
.evom ton seod gis eht
I have to say that saying that Hillary would not make a good president is not at all the same thing as dodging the initial problem of "corruption in the White House". Hillary would make a better president than Bush, to which I suspect garcia would agree. That's kind of like saying she's taller than Napoleon, though.
It's also important to note that historically our country has done best when power has been divided - whether it's a Democratic president and a Republican congress or vice-versa. One might call the current trend the exception to the rule, but I'll point out two things: (1) the current congress is still relatively young, and (2) Bush is one of the worst presidents we have ever had, if not the worst.
Personally, I like Barack Obama a lot better than Hillary Clinton. I like Richardson better than Clinton. I like Paul better than Clinton. There are a few Republican candidates I like less than Clinton, but I can't think of any Democratic candidates I like less than Hillary (although I'm not trying very hard, either).
Ben Hocking
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You owe me a new keyboard!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Otherwise, I'm not sure if Chelsea will have enough experience to serve when her turn comes (after Jeb). Naturally, this would be followed by one of the Bush daughters...
(This does mean that either they have to remain unmarried, or they have to keep their maiden name after marriage.)
Heck, maybe we could even throw in Mary Cheney (Dick Cheney's daughter), just for laughs. It would be real interesting seeing her run as a Republican...
Ben Hocking
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Both sides of the spectrum have their lunatic fringe. The difference is your side elects them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"I'm comparing the lack of capacity of the people to just understand that someone is completely incompetent/incapable of being president, by incompetence or dishonesty."
I agree. It is amazing how much people are willing to be abused and still pretend that they don't see anything requiring action from them. I think it is pretense more than lack of understanding, but it is definitely both.
It's kind of amusing you should mention that. Hourly relevance FTW.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
I didn't say it violates the rules. But if you post as an Anonymous Coward in a thread you have moderated your previous moderations in the thread will be canceled.
However, there's also a lot of people who don't like her because she's too much like a Republican. She supported Bush's invasion of Iraq and has never admitted that this was actually a mistake. She likes to play with words around this (much like the current president) and talk about how if she knew then what she knew now, yada, yada, but she has actually come out and said it wasn't a mistake given what she knew then. That seems like an awful lot of posturing, and an awful lot like someone else we know who never seems to admit to mistakes.
Ben Hocking
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Are you saying that's true because:
(a) people will want to elect Pelosi as president,
(b) people will have felt that we've met our "woman as president" quota for the century, OR
(c) Pelosi will do such a terrible job that no one will ever want a woman for president again?
I seriously can't tell which of these you're implying. I think (a) is unlikely, (b) is very cynical (but possibly accurate), and (c) is probably wrong (that Pelosi would do such a terrible job) and cynical (that it would then get attributed to all women candidates).
Ben Hocking
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But then you threw in the bit about Rockefeller, the Khmer Rouge and 6502 and gave it away. What's the name of that law that says it is virtually impossible to distinguish a parody of a conservative from the real thing? (To be fair, I really wasn't certain until the 6502 reference.)
If, on the off chance, you are being serious, you should realize that within the geek community, 6502 has a different reference than whatever you're thinking of.
Ben Hocking
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Good grief! Can it get any more "gray area" than this? So there is a law against using government email for political purposes and a law requiring all official, non-political email to be stored. I would imagine there are many emails (regarding appointments, for example) that could go either way. "Hey, how do you think it will make us look if we appoint this guy for this position?" Is that "official" or "political"? And were the emails "destroyed", or were they just not archived? (c'mon slashdot, this is our subject area - we know you don't shred emails). I'd like all the Bush opponents out there to take a minute and imagine hearing these same allegations against Clinton (or whatever administration you would support). I'll admit, if I'd heard the same news about Clinton, I'd be a lot more suspicious, but so far, this is just an allegation of not preserving emails. The implication is that this is part of some big cover-up or scandal, but nothing specific is mentioned. It's just more "Bush Dynasty = Big Oil = Big Conspiracy".
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
We didn't start the fire! It was always burning since the world's been turning...
Ben Hocking
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...and no, I'm not going to rant about "election stealing". The "spoiler effect" is so strong in Plurality voting that the minor parties don't have a chance. They can't build momentum from election to election, so the only way a non-Republicrat gets elected to high offices is if one of the parties becomes so abysmal that 90+% defect to the same minor party. Anything less and they will lose the election to other major party. Look no further than Perot and Nader to see the people wouldn't make that "mistake" twice.
Until we have a voting method that has a "nursery effect", there's very little we can do to steer the Exxon-Valdez known as our federal government. BTW, I'd go for Approval Voting, because of its beautiful simplicity.
And yes, I do still vote at every opportunity. No, I don't choose between the "lesser of two evils". No, I don't think it will matter.
Some months ago there was a story on /. in which it was found that when discussing politics, the centres of reason and logic were not in use at all.
The areas of the brain in use at the time of political debate seem to solely deal with emotions.
This might be an explanation why most political debates are so pointless.
What if you post as AC from a different computer? What if you just log out first from the computer you were previously using? Actually, I thought that even if you don't log out, you can post in a forum you've moderated as long as you post AC. (I could be wrong about that, but that still doesn't address the first question at all.)
Ben Hocking
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Obviously, it would be better to get an unprinciple, inexperienced, dumbass who only works with his cronies...
Oh wait, you already have that.
Seriously, those are all good qualities to have in a politician even if you disagree with their policies. If you intend to convince people that there are better choices, you might want to try raising the bar instead of lowering it.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Have you bought gas (excuse me, "petrol") lately?
Bush and Cheney are both oil men. After having stable prices for almost twenty years, the Oil Barons took office and gasoline costs three times what it did when these crooks first stole the 2000 elections.
Why do you think we're in Iraq, anyway? It's to destabilise the region and drive up the price of oil. The higher oil is, the more money Bush and Cheney make.
Yet they got re-elected. When bloggers talk impeachment, the mainstream media says "there's nothing to impeach him for". How about treason? IMO both of them should be impeached, tried, found guilty, and put in front of a firing squad as a lesson to future Bushes and Cheneys. I can see it now, the 2020 elections with Bush III winning and Dick Cheney still in the picture somewhere. The guy has been running things since Nixon!
-mcgrew
Of the paltry 31 who did submit the information about earmarks, fully 21 of them were Republicans. Poor showing for the Democrats, especially considering it was their initiative.
Ben Hocking
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Excellent film. I just watched it again for the first time in over a decade this past week. Yossarian's a pimp.
Read carefully what you are saying.
It's a crime if you favor one company over another because they are your donors.
It's a crime if you favor one industry over another because they are your friends.
It's a crime if you favor one part of society over another because they are your meal ticket
You've just killed the very idea of representative democracy. You've just torched the notion of a Republican and argued for a benevolent strong man.
Each of those things are what a Republic is for. Each interest in a nation, from coal mine owner to union organizer, from church leader to teacher, has the right to put representatives in that favor their interests, if not the duty. When you see unions lobbying the government to do their card vote, halliburton trying to get asbestos laws taken off the books, teachers arguing for more money, artists arguing for free speech and so on, you aren't seeing corruption, you are seeing that democracy works. The alternative is to have people squelched, and ultimately invite civil war.
This is my sig.
That's a bit of a stretch, if I may indulge in understatement. What you are saying is that democracy only works if elected representatives corruptly favor one group over another. In fact, that's the basis of fascism: the union of state and commercial power, usually under the leadership of a strong man. If either course leads to the strong man, we might as well get measured for our brown shirts now.
Perhaps this is where were are disconnecting: You seem to be saying that the democracy only works if voters vote in their self interest. That's neither here nor there from my point of view, because individuals can conceive of their "self interest" in all kinds of surprising and apparently inconsistent ways. That's one of the reasons we need democracy, not to mention free markets.
However, elected representatives should, at least in my opinion, represent all of their constituens in government, and nobody else.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Your post reminds me of an Onion piece from around when she announced...
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
People, people, there's nothing to worry about. Any misguided convictions resulting from this misunderstanding will be quickly overturned by a Presidential pardon. And since the current President is the right hand of God on this Earth, that means all is well.
Assuming this all happens before the 2009 Presidential Inauguration of course. Otherwise we're screwed.
How in the heck did the parent get modded 'Insightful'. You're saying the Bush is killing Iraqis to keep oil prices high? WTF benefit would that have? Making the American public pissed at him because their gas prices are so high? Good political move there ace!
I'm an anarcho-syndicalist and I feel the same way about Clinton, and his wife. They aren't real democrats. They are both centrist populists. Dennis Kucinich is the only democrat worth his salt these days. You know how most intelligent republicans are jumping ship these days? That was me vis a vis the democrats years ago.
I admit, listening to most repubs talk about Clinton is exactly as you describe, but elemenope is not a republican, and he isn't just badmouthing Clinton (except for the sedimentary rock bit, which is actually funny and kinda true.) He's offering legitimate criticism of his presidency. If we can't respond to criticism with something more than grade school insults, we're no better than the republicans.
You know who I liked? Carter. Go ahead and laugh. I think he was a better president than Clinton.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Having a majority isn't the only thing that counts. In fact it doesn't count at all, it's meaningless.
What matters is the power you can wield.
Political power is mathematically the number of winning coalitions you can join. By that measure, the most powerful man in the Senate is Joe Lieberman, who is, in effect, a Republican caucusing with the Democrats. He is roughly speaking as powerful as all the Democrats put together when it comes to a vote on an issue like timetables in the supplemental.
As the GP points out, the majority's power is further restrained by procedural and constitutional rules. Without the power to invoke cloture on a party line vote, the majority party's power is not really all that greater than the minority party, which is why the Senate has been less extreme than the House during the years of Republican hegemony. The only way for the majority to exploit its power is by abusing the rules (e.g. slipping provisions into bills at the last minute).
The same goes for impeachment. The Democrats can certainly impeach the President, but they can't get a conviction in the Sentate without a supermajority. Since this would work to the President's advantage, the Democrats cannot "win" any impeachment effort until the President is abandoned by his Republican allies.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
When the war began, its critics claimed America was just going into Iraq to get cheap oil. That clearly was not one of the effects the war has had, so now the reasoning is America did it to raise the price of oil?
You're absolutely RIGHT!!!
A third-party contractor deleted some email under Clinton, so Bush is now permitted to delete email at will, and it's OK.
Lincoln and Roosevelt spied on US citizens, so now Bush is allowed to, and it's OK.
Roosevelt put Japanese into internment camps during WWII, so now Bush is allowed to imprison citizens, and it's OK.
ANY sin committed by ANY President or administration is *precedent*, and that means that Bush can, too.
That means that Bush can get a blowjob from an intern, and it'll be OK.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Yes, it's you and people who do what you do. Don't get ruffled, but it's true?
What do I mean?
This
"Bush has certainly done worse than publicly bite the heads off kittens. He has killed more than 650,000 Iraqis [npr.org]"
Now, I'm making no judgment about this statement, but I do know linking to a blurb on NPR that itself says the study may be flawed is not what I'd consider a great way to start. I am certain there are better sources available.
But that's not really the point. The point is, this kind of irresponsible "fact" spewing is epidemic on both sides, and I simply am far too tired of watching them scream "lies" "murder" "impeach" etc. at the expense of being solution oriented. Posts like yours feed that.
Worse still, the number will continue to inflate, so that not long from now it will be "nearly a million" or some such manipulation of reality.
So now, as a responsible consumer of information, I have to wade through a mile of garbage to track down the truth, because it's far more important to "win" than to tell the truth. Some fact "massaging" seems to be accepted, and when the "massaging" itself gets "massaged" suddenly you have a serious information problem.
It's simply too tiring.
Obviously, it's Atari Super PONG, Cookie Dough, and (large) Dogs. Anyone else is delusional.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The politicians are elected by the people. If the politicians do something wrong, it is the fault of the people who voted for them. Stop passing the buck.
If I hire someone to paint my house and he rapes my neighbor's daughter while on the job, her rape is not my fault. It's the fault of the rapist.
Backlash from oppressive communities. Communities work because they have alot in common, usually social rules.
The monolithic 'good ol' days' society of the 50s and before is long past. Our 'melting pot' isn't melting together because people have realized that they don't need to conform to one vision of the nation. And why should they? It's the land of the free, we are free to believe what we want. It just so happens that people are starting to believe much more diverse things, some of these concepts are antagonists.
With internet and easy personal travel, people have less incentive to give up their principles and to conform to the local community. They don't like being gay in their religious home-town where people look down on them, so they move. They don't like being made fun of as the 'college boy' in a dying blue-collar industrial town, so they move.
When people don't buy into the 'one vision', social shaming fails. It used to be that if you didn't behave according to the rules you'd be ignored or exiled. Now people voluntarily exile themselves from communities that don't represent their views.
Blar.
Our politics have become so bitter because you're voting for people that control so many aspects of life and there's no way to find a person who will satisfy a voters preference on so many issues. In a federal office you have to weigh positions on education, transportation, retirement, national defense, agriculture policy, etc. These issues are too diverse to match to a candidate. That's why a less important issue that everyone agrees on will sway an election before a more important issue.
"The problem is that the current administration and their supporters have done a very good job of turning everything into "us vs them" and 1/3 of the american public has fallen for it."
This mentality developed long before the current administration. I think you're suffering from selected memory, but if you cast your thoughts back to the Clinton impeachment you might remember the Dems screaming about how the Republicans were simply playing partisan politics.
The "us vs. them" mentality you speak of existed LONG before Bush got into office.
I would have thought that ALL network traffic in and out of the White House would be recorded, not just logged but every packet kept. At the very least they need to do this for security or forensic purposes, they need to find moles, snitches, spies, hackers, whatever, and they can't do this without monitoring and recording everything.
Don't tell me this bunch of morons has managed to subvert these measures by simply using external email.
And don't tell me whoever is responsible for security didn't know this was going on. If they didn't then the US has got some serious problems.
It *is* interesting to note, however, this FLAW in White House security. Who'd have thought they could just use outside email. Way to broadcast a nice attack vector.
I'm assuming you were in the Marines as well?
I did not realize the MoveOn.org lunatic fringe was constituent of the GOP base at this point in time.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
It's a pathetic state of affairs when comments like this get modded insightful.
/. echo chamber so go back to whatever it was that you were doing.
What the US needs isn't a new administration, it's a new system.
I disagree. What's needed is the average american needs to be _very_ involved in his/her government and actually attend to boring issues like fiscal discipline, broad foreign policy targets and a host of other domestic policies. There are lots of countries in the world that have started over and in most cases it doesn't help.
The presidency is too powerful, too tempting, too corrupting.
Spoken like someone who doesn't understand the underpinnings of their government. The constitution is very well laid out to the point where the average american can still understand it.
Lots of countries have less corrupting systems.
No they don't. "Corruption" is endemic regardless of the country and its political system.
The US needs to...media...
No. Media mostly distracts and rarely informs. Sell your 50" plasma and disconnect your cable. It's liberating.
guard the guardians
You and I are the guardians in our system! Something about "by the people..." sounds vaguely familiar. You've and the numbskulls that modded you insightful have been outsourcing this job to private interests and look where it's gotten you.
How about getting involved in your own government first before laying on the platitudes? There's lots going on even in your town. Oh, wait this is the
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
When the republicans are exposed of circumventing the law...they cry and moan "Where was the crime?"...it is just an allegation...little frat prank..
But when a Democrat drops a pin they are shrieking like body snatchers and the entire force of the "non-partisan" justice department, the media and congress (Clinton BJ) comes crashing down on them.
Hmmm....it is no wonder that Republicans have been able to get away with multiple violations of federal law...(signing statements, rendition, torture, lying to congress, violation of the Hatch act, Illegal Domestic Wire Tapping, election rigging) because their is no-one to stop them.
Yeah...these aren't the droids you are looking for...move along...
The median and the mean are two simple statistics to look at. Since Bush took office, the median income has dropped (meaning the "typical" American makes less money) while the mean income has risen (meaning that the upper half gained more than the lower half lost). Ideally, both the median and mean income would increase, of course. Here's a interesting chart of historical median income, which I believe has been adjusted for inflation. Here's another version with additional percentiles. Interestingly enough, in that version it's hard to make the argument that the rich are getting richer (although these are medians of each percentile, so if the top 1% got ridiculously richer that would explain how the mean could still go up). I was unable to find a comparable curve to back up my claim that mean income has risen during the Bush years (while median income has dropped) so do take it with a grain of salt.
Ben Hocking
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It's funny to me that you paint both Clintons with the same brush. Anyone that's spent any time listening to their positions can see that hey share common ground but they're approaching politics from different parts of the spectrum.
Bill is a centrist with liberal tendencies. Hillary is a liberal with centrist tendencies.
That's an interesting definition of down you have.
Ben Hocking
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I wish I could say I've done more to change the system...
It's not too late! There's a lot yet to be done, and you don't have to be anyone special to do it. One word of advice: start small. Get involved now with local efforts that are already established/organized. For real, like today. Start doing research on the internet. Tell me whereabouts you are and what issues you're especially passionate about if you want some recommendations.
It doesn't have to be a group/organization that has the same position as you on every single issue, the important thing is to get involved with people who are already doing things to create positive change. You'll meet people with similar ideas, you'll learn strategies and tactics, and most importantly, you'll be inspired and motivated by the experience of fighting injustice (and sometimes winning!), which will give you the energy and dedication you need to launch your own efforts.
Now that was a "technological" mental break down that cost billions.
Most of these Congressional "users" don't even know what a hard drive is. "Oh it is that thing the monitor sits on."
I have come to the conclusion that the current Iraqi government is much smarter than we give them credit. As things stand the western oil conglomerates stand to get 75% of Iraqi oil revenue leaving the Kurds, Shiits and Sunnis to quibble over division of the remaining 25%. If there is a complete meltdown (not really much of a change from the current situation, there is a much bigger pie to split. Even if you get a raw deal and only get a 20% share, that is more than you would ever get in a consensus split of the scraps left by Shell/Mobile Exxon...
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Really? What voting record do you base that on? If Hillary is a liberal, she's unlike any liberals I associate with. I think you are confused by the ongoing Republican push to redefine the political spectrum. I'd say Clinton was a right-winger with centrist tendencies, and Hillary is a centrist.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Ben Hocking
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apologies to Lynard Skynard
In Little Rock they love the Governor
Hoo hoo hoo
Now we all did what people do
Clinton's blow job doesn't bother me
Does your conscience bother you?
Tell the truth!
-mcgrew
PS- I dream of Cheney and Bush going duck hunting together. Cheney shoots Bush in the face, has a heart attack, and we have the first female President in our history!
Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.
Ben Hocking
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when the White House is occupied by a Democrat.
Fizz
"It should be noted that the "real world human effects" of free trade, while hurtful to middle class Americans, were probably very positive for the citizens of the countries that now have our jobs."
And they're the ones he represents right?
"The "Don't As Don't Tell" policy was progressive for 1993."
Bullshit. It was a cowardly kludge and there was no lack of opinion stating so. You're apologist streak is showing.
"But he did give us..."
And congress had nothing to do with any of those right? RIGHT?
"I'd say top 10, easy"
Of course you would, you're an apologist. Why would we expect you to even attempt to develop an informed opinion?
People like you disgust me. Every time politics come up, you use the opportunity to lavish praise upon your guy, completely at odds with history and overlooking anything negative. Worse, in your case you attempt to twist a large, profound negative into a positive. Think about why you'd do that.
For the people who like to say that donations are speech and not bribery, I have to ask, how is bribery not also speech? That $100 I slipped to the police officer was just my way of expressing to him that I'd rather just get a warning and not a ticket. Freedom of speech!
To bring out that old expression, "Freedom of speech does not mean you're allowed to yell 'Fire!' in a crowded theater."
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I dislike Hillary because she makes decisions that are politically expedient. She is a career politician who pretends she's not.
I dislike Hillary because she thinks she can put on over on me.
YOU might be a misogynist (explaining why you ran to that explanation) but it's my BS detector that send me away from Hillary.
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"Bill is a centrist with liberal tendencies. Hillary is a liberal with centrist tendencies."
I guess the neocons really have been successful with redefining what constitutes "liberal" if a pair of Reaganites are now "liberal."
The only way to remove the president is to put him on trial.
Imprecise. That is merely the only practical way for an external agency to remove the president while maintaining the rule of law. A president may also be pressured into resigning (Nixon), assassinated (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy), or removed during an overthrow of the constitutional government by coup d'état (military or otherwise, without US precedent thus far; Amendment to the Constitution such as to remove the office might fall in this category while remaining lawful, but as you note is impractical due to greater political obstacles than impeachment).
Impeachment was considered a really bad option by many of the founding fathers, but left in (partly from Benjamin Franklin's advocacy) as preferable to these alternatives. The Republicans in the US Senate are betting that two more years of the Bush presidency will continue to seem less dangerous than the alternatives to impeachment, and that they, their party, and/or the country will be less damaged than by encouraging impeachment and removal of President Bush and Vice President Cheney from office. I consider the stakes high enough that I would fold rather than take that bet... but then, I'm far too liberal in my secular, sexual, and anti-corporate attitudes to be a Republican.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
As someone stood up to lead the Pledge of Allegiance at a GOP dinner here Thursday, it was suddenly realized there was no flag in the room. "Pledge to the elephant!" shouted Bob Watkins of the county Board of Education. So the audience, which included Rep. Darrell Issa, state Senate Minority Leader Dick Ackerman, Assembly Republican Leader-Elect George Plescia and Mayor Jerry Sanders, turned toward the GOP banner and recited the pledge while facing the party's symbolic pachyderm. Fortunately, it was a patriotic red, white and blue - with stars. Link: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/bell/2006 0415-9999-7m15bell.html
Party before country
Dawkins' famous quote that everyone is an atheist about most of the world's gods, he just takes it one god futher seems to apply here. The problem with a political left-right line is that it breaks down a high-dimensionality space into 1 dimension. The political compass breaks it down into 2 dimensions. The first time I ever took one of these tests (not that long ago), it ranked me as moderately authoritarian, and moderately on the right. This time, it ranked me as moderately libertarian, and moderately on the left (near Gandhi). My views have not changed between the two times I took the test, although it was no doubt from a different site.
I would love to see someone try to do a principal components analysis and get more meaningful axes. I suppose 3 is the highest number that we could easily visualize, although one could imagine a four-dimensional analysis where you have 2 dimensions plotted in one graph and 2 more dimensions plotted in another.
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...this means anywhere from 88 to 99 White House officials could have been using non White House accounts for government business
You cannot know whether the emails were used for government business or not. They were deleted.
That's why he said "could have been." Because they could have been doing it, or they could have not been doing it. They were deleted, so we don't know. But apparently in politics, proof you covered up something is better than proof you did anything.
Learn to love Alaska
Look at the choices Hillary has made going all the way back to her days in University. Her role in student body leadership against Watergate and Vietnam were unquestionably liberal. Her role as a staffer for the House Judiciary committee during Watergate: Liberal. Her choice to serve on the boards of the New World Foundation and Children's Defense Fund: Liberal.
She was given EXCELLENT scores by:
-American Civil Liberties Union
-Americans for Democratic Action
-Children's Defense Fund
-League of Conservation Voters
-National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
-National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League
-National Parent-Teacher Associationet.
-Service Employees International Union
A recent Rasmussen survey found a pluarality of voters consider her "liberal:"
"Forty-seven percent (47%) of Americans now see New York's junior Senator as politically liberal. Thirty-four percent (34%) see her as a moderate, up 4 points from the last Hillary Meter survey."
Hillary has grasped uber-liberal issues with both hands, including pro-choice, pro universal healthcare, anti vouchers, pro Kyoto, pro gun control, etc.
Hillary is not Dukakis liberal, but she's also more liberal that her husband.
Why in the name of all that is good and holy, why? First of all, I voted for Dole in '96 because I was tired of the corruption I saw in the Clinton administration. Why in the world does that excuse corruption in the Bush administration? Forget which one was *more* corrupt; why is it OK for the Bush administration to be corrupt at all, regardless of how corrupt the Clinton administration was?
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My living wage has fallen considerably in the past 3 years. 5% pay raises are not keeping up with inflation and fuel prices. When it becomes a bit harder to go to the grocery store, yes, I would say my life has been made worse by the Bush administration.
But how about the fact that EVERY DAY I wake up and feel a little more like I'm living in the totalitarian dystopia we all supposedly fear. Police with ever-increasing powers and courts encouraging it. "Free speech zones" which are the very REASON "liberals" get so violent in the first place - if nobody is listening, the impulse to destroy is understandable (and if you claim otherwise, you're lying. I said understandable, not defensible). Habeas corpus suspended for a certain class of criminals who, incidentally, are denied the protections guaranteed them in the Constitution - and SCOTUS defends this.
All of this has happened under Bush's watch and that barely scratches the surface. The effect on my personal life is irrelevant when one considers where this country is going. If all we care about is the effect to us personally, by the time we notice, we'll have long since fallen into totalitarianism and any hope to ever dig ourselves out will be gone.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
So, I don't really think Hillary has a shot. Just sayin'...
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Wrong. That is not how the moderation system works. Posting AC in a thread you have moderated does not cancel your mods. (Didn't the GPP just say that?)
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
You know, here is the thing: I think at one time she was liberal. Certainly in college, also while Bill was president. It feels to me like something happened to her. She changed. She's not the Hillary of universal health care from Bill's first term. I have nothing against the idea of a female president, or ambitious women in general. It just seems like she has sold out her values and now would do or say anything to get elected. Maybe I'm wrong, and I would certainly vote for her over any republican in a heartbeat, but she isn't my first choice. Now a Pelosi presidency, that I could get behind.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Want to bet that they're going to try to fix this inconvenient mess by making compliance with the Presidential Records Act voluntary, and retroactively so?
Move along, nothing to see. These are not the officials you're looking for!
--Udo.
The book, however, is hilarious. I strongly recommend it.
Ben Hocking
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I am wondering if you have actually tried it? I did. I believe I was logged under my user account at the time (which may have something to do with it). But when I tried to post in the same thread I had moderated, my previous moderations were reversed. Why don't you try it the next time you have some mod points?
I don't know about you, but my big toe is aching. Mildred, get the pigs inside the barn!
In all seriousness, I think we're very close to having the pendulum swing over to the other side. Most likely, the Democrats will retain control of the House and Senate and pick up the White House. There will still be 7 out of 9 Supreme Court Justices appointed by Republicans, but that's not as significant as the other two branches in most cases. Then we'll see how the Democrats handle "absolute power".
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"Bush could have a live press conference where he bites the heads off kittens, and nobody would care." Hey bud, if we fail in our efforts to bite their heads off they'll follow us home!
"My GF harasses me all the time; she's a hard-core democrat, like a *Dean* democrat, and so my conservative tendencies are an evil aberration to her."
As she ought to, if you think "Dean democrat" is "hard-core democrat"/liberal. Dean was actually conservative on a fair amount of things - he was no libertarian (he did support universal health care, for children at least), but he was a good bit closer than a lot of other democrats. All this fluff about Dean being insanely liberal is just character smear because he's short, "angry", and from a small northeast state.
Just to clarify, I believe I was logged in under my user account when I tried to post anonymously by checking the "Post Anonymously" option.
...is Hillary really does suck, and I'm saying that as somebody who has been virulently anti-war, anti-this-administration, etc.
Hillary is the epitome of a career politician, playing to whatever audience in whatever way she thinks will get her votes. She's not "evil", but she is slimy.
You haven't been studying how the corruption works.
Bush doesn't care what other people think! People who kill other people don't care what other people think. If they did, they wouldn't kill.
Bush is just a figurehead, with little understanding of anything. But he and Cheney have families and business partners invested in oil production (as opposed to oil refining and delivery).
Saddam Hussein was pumping huge amounts of oil and trucking it through Turkey, thus breaking OPEC's stranglehold on the supply of oil. Those who have a supply of oil, like the Arabs with whom George W. Bush holds hands, want their oil to sell for high prices. The only way to get a higher price is to reduce the supply on the world oil markets.
I read the article you suggested. Salon does indeed make it sound like the
Republicans spent a lot of time and energy making the story "stick", and may have
exagerated some claims. However, the vandalism that the GAO verified
strikes me as juvenile, destructive and beyond-the-pale rude. I wouldn't want
such people running the government again. I'm glad the effort was made to
expose this. Thanks for the link!
And, without habeas corpus, how do you prove you're not an enemy combatant (or even challenge the claim)? How do you prove you're a US citizen without habeas corpus? You do realize that many of the people in Gitmo are there because their enemies turned them in to kill two birds with one stone - first, they got rid of someone they don't like and second, they got a reward from the US government for turning in a terrorist.
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I'd say Clinton was a right-winger with centrist tendencies, and Hillary is a centrist.
And I'd say Bill was a moderate right winger and Hillary is a left-fascist with right wing tendencies.
She keeps getting worse too what with the "eval video gamez" and the "more Christian than thou" bullshit she's started in on recently.
She's definitely not a centrist though unless you're using that to mean she exhibits the worst tendencies of both sides.
That states the 6502 that I was thinking of. However, that usage did not make sense to me in the context provided.
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A lot of people think like you: "It's simply too tiring."
But this sounds a lot like "It's simply too tiring to do the work to decide what I think. Or, "Women are too complicated; it is simply to tiring to try to understand my wife's problems".
Underlying my original comment is a LOT of research. I just didn't immediately find the link that discusses the careful checking of the results.
Anyway, what does it matter? The discussion is only about the Iraq Body Count estimate of 65,689 dead civilians and the estimate of the Johns Hopkins researchers, a scientific study which has passed expert peer review with "relatively minor revisions", and which says that 601,000 of those killed were killed because of the violence that violence causes.
Hillary has three.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I was in too great a hurry to post my parent comment.
What does it matter if there were 65,689 people killed to get control of the oil supply, or many more? There isn't much moral difference between being a mass murderer for profit and being a mass murderer for profit of even more people than originally estimated, is there?
You mean you have such a low opinion of Americans that you don't think they're capable of doing PCA on their own?
On a different, more serious and definitely more pedantic note:
That should read "et cetera or etc." Little known bonus fact: the ampersand character (&) is medieval shorthand for the Latin et, meaning "and".Ben Hocking
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Yes I've tried it. In response to your other post - I logged out when I posted AC. I think that's why it didn't undo my mods.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
The problem with Liberals is they hate France, and by extension they therefore hate America which was founded upon the notion and premise of European englightenment values that came from France.
I could go on for days writing about just how much Liberals hate the foundations of our values, such as free speech, free elections, human rights and so forth. It's just disgusting, isn't it?
My definition of "democracy" "excludes" the commerical sector. But it does not preclude the commercial sector either.
Giving the commercial sector a constitutional role is an idea that is not exactly new, although it doesn't have the same pedigree as democracy. Burghers and guild masters were sometimes given seats in medieval diets. Fascism, of course, welds state and corporate power into one.
But in democracy, commercial interests don't have any more fundamental claim to a constitutional role than artistic interests or intellectual interests. For individuals, democracy is instrumental in pursuing their interests, but not everybody has to have the same interests or to rank them the same way.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
With all due respect, what you posted was ridiculous. I knew you'd post it, but that makes it no less vapid.
Deciding what I think is easy. Helping someone with problems is easy.
Wading through the mire of information tossed about by people who think it's not important to "find the link that discusses the careful checking of the results" BEFORE posting those "results" taxes me to the point of anger. Fighting through the propaganda of people who want to make a point, and are willing to say whatever they need at expense of the truth is NOT easy.
What I meant was "liars make it too hard to justify listening" while what you seem to think I wrote was "I am too lazy to be a good citizen". This says far more about you than it does me.
I know this as fact, if I had chosen to post a link, it wouldn't be dubious like yours was. If I had done the research you claim you've done, I would have been able to find it. You downplay the importance of verifiability. Why? If you cared about truth then verifiability would be very important, but it wasn't to you. Instead you went with the first link you could find that said what you wanted.
"There isn't much moral difference between being a mass murderer"
Thanks for proving my point. You're far more interested in linking to dubious studies and screaming "MASS MURDER!!!!!" than you are in having a rational discussion. How do I know this?
Because you'd have had a real link to a real study if you were interested in discourse. Instead, you're interested in screaming louder than the other guy so in the cacophony, both sets of liars drown each other out.
YOU are what's wrong with political discourse in America. The individual who is far more concerned with attention to their views than the inherent truth of those views, virtually shouting down anyone who calls attention to your facts.
Lastly, you can post a link to a real study if you like, but you'd be missing the point. You should have done it first, but instead you acted as though it weren't important. The reason you think it's not important is EXACTLY why you and those like you disgust me, the idea that truth is a tool to be wielded when it suits you and discarded when you feel it's not necessary.
YOU tire me. Not forming an opinion, or doing research, but fighting off the dogma of groups of people for whom the truth is something they can use to get what they want.
Oooh! Right on the money. Left wing fascist with right wing tendencies, it's true. That encapsulates exactly why I don't like her. She does keep getting worse, doesn't she? I thought she was so damn cool during Bill's first term, now she seems like a completely different person: one who will do or say anything to pander for votes.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The tax cuts and deregulation are largely a joke. Even independent of the war, Bush has been a bigger liberal than some of the liberals, running wild with the government Visa card.
Totally redundant and content free. He's a Republican. That means he believes in bigger, more oppressive government than any liberal. Do you not even have the foggiest understanding of what the Republican party stands for? If you say anything about small government, fiscal responsibility or anything even remotely requiring integrity then you clearly don't.
The tax cuts are good, I'll admit, but our tax burden is still higher than it was under the Clinton administration; they are not a substitute for sound fiscal policy. So, economically the conservatives are no better than the liberals now.
I think you might be so overboard on your "liberal" hatred that your view is so slanted as to be incapable of dealing with reality.
"Tax cuts" in isolation might be good, but lets look at the reality by way of an example:
I'll send you $5.00 and then you give me your credit card with no balance and say a $5000 limit. I'll spend all of your $5000 on worthless shit which I will then go light on fire. Then you're stuck paying my $5000 plus interest You made out on that deal, huh?
Now, are you happy about that? Willing to give it a shot?
No? Then quit talking about tax cuts. That's exactly the deal you got with the tax cuts. i.e. it was no sort of a cut. I got no checks from the government and my taxes have gone up, so I don't even have the ignorant delusion that there was anything good about them.
So, as long as people keep repeating the tax cut bullshit when the only thing that happened is that Bush took out massive high interest loans from China in your name, we'll continue to have a debate totally unrelated to reality.
but our tax burden is still higher than it was under the Clinton administration;
And 100% guaranteed to get *much* worse as soon as we actually have to start paying for
Bush's massive increases in government power and spending.
So, economically the conservatives are no better than the liberals now
Now?!?! What the fuck kind of rock have you been living under for the last couplke of decades? No, economically, the "conservatives" have been *far* *far* worse than the "liberals" since 1980 when the Republicans single handedly took the title of party of biggest government.
The Democrats haven't been in the same league as the Republicans for corruption, theft, massive spending and increases in government for several decades.
So, in short:
-we can spy you (the citizen), bank accounts, internet activity, phone calls, etc
-but we Bush Untouchable's
"Practice yourself what you preach." -- Titus Maccius Plautus
I don't have anything to say about the Clintons, but I do agree that Kucinich is the only democrat worth his salt.
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
There have been dozens (at least, and excluding dupes) of stories covering systems that can lift the last ten layers of disk content off a drive.
Writing a one or zero to a hard drive leaves a pretty solid magnetic print. Magnetic media has a fair amount of memory, but that mostly comes into play with analog signals where there's a range rather than hard off or on. Given that hard drives have no built in way to recover data like you suggest, you would theoretically need to move the disks to a special reader in a clean room, ensure that the hard drive platters were compatable with your special reader, and then painstakingly go through a bit by bit recover the data. We're talking about an extremely long, still hypothetical process. It's one thing to develop technology that might be able to extract wiped bits - recovering gigabytes of data is another matter. Maybe the NSA has something worked out but it's not going to be brought into play for a matter like this. If the data is erased, it's gone.
I'm not sure I would trust a technologically-ignorant group to run a critical service.
Not to be too much of a jerk, but reading something on slashdot doesn't mean it's true or that you are technologically informed. Here's my instructor who stated that magnetic recovery is very unlikely. Can you show an equally reliable source that says that it is?
FASCIST HUMANS: For thousands of years you have oppressed our species; you have put tuna in cans to keep us from it; you have stopped us from expressing our natural urge to scratch furniture; you have enslaved us with collars and irritating bells. You have tricked us with flashlights, addicted us to catnip and various milk-substances, and caused us to appear foolish while chasing strings and bumping into your invisible "glass."
You have knowingly collaborated with the Canine Enemy and harbored Weapons of Mass Dogpoop, all the while reserving the best food for yourselves. Do not think we don't notice.
No more! This communique will serve as our Notice Of Intent and a Call To Action from our furred feline bretheren. FREE THE PUSSY NOW!
We hereby declare jihad on you: Until our demands are met, each week at least one human oppressor will be scratched and bitten viciously about the ankles. NO MERCY!
Chairman Meow
Kitten Liberation Front
Ah, but GWB says that having to disclose the contents of his conversations with God would compromise his ability to get candid advice.
That's pre 7-11 thinking....
How many people on either side of the main political line in the US simply argue points to favour their bias like they're barracking for sports teams? That's one of the perceptions I get, and something that can definitely be true here in Australia as well.
It's a universal human trait and it waxes and wanes with the times. Basically, it's an instinctual result of us having evolved as pack animals. We identify with groups and overlook the faults of our own group as an instinctual mechanism meant to keep the pack together. We then seek to compete with other groups, and our minds are geared to find bellicose reasons to despise them. We have no problem empathizing with people "like us" but have a really hard time seeing things from the point of view of rivals.
Because of this, it's easier to push related views onto people who already identify with you on other issues. When a person doesn't understand or hasn't previously encountered a particular issue, they're far more likely to trust someone who has already been identified as a "like-minded" person than someone who they already disagree with on other issues. This is the reason why most American who consider themselves religious Christians supported the war in Iraq and support harsher sentencing guidelines despite Jesus's message praising peacemakers and forgiveness. The issues aren't considered separately; they're part of a package deal called conservatism.
And yes, as you've pointed out, this sort of behavior is mimicked in less life-shaping things like favorite sports teams, favorite brands of car, etc. It's truly a universal instinct. Sometimes the dominant mood of the times reaches away from such limiting and simple patterns of thought, but more recently it's been in fashion for leaders to play to such base instincts to swing the electorate around by its most scared and emotional members.
American democracy has really gotten dysfunctional. We've gotten to the point (thanks to the rise of negative campaigning) where politicians have found it easier to drive thinking, independent Americans away from the polls and play to hardened partisans than to attempt to sway the moderates in the middle with logic. After all, rallying people who judge you based on your aping of a broad platform is easier than letting them weigh you on a complex and nuanced platform of independent thought.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I wish I could say I've done more to change the system.
I gave up. Emmigration to Canada isn't that hard. I figure the US has about 10 good years left before the decline is inevitable. I'll get residency in Canada, and if it doesn't turn around, I'll have an out. When it gets really bad, Canada will treat Americans like we treat the Mexicans.
Learn to love Alaska
She does keep getting worse, doesn't she? I thought she was so damn cool during Bill's first term, now she seems like a completely different person: one who will do or say anything to pander for votes.
Yeah, I was in college when Bill was running and she came and spoke at my university. She was much more about positives and the like back then than she is now. I thought she seemed fairly decent for a politician (scum, but not scummy enough to rise to the top) but now she's on the religious extremist nutjob bandwagon and on the "durrr save the childrens" bandwagon so she can go fuck herself. Does she honestly think that any of those whackjobs will be voting for her regardless of what silly lies she tells? Amazing.
Ben Hocking
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"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist," and the greatest success of the political industry is convincing people that they have no power and the system is broken.
The truth is that our system of government is great, but like any human system its performance is heavily dependent on the people within it. Everyone knows you can't reorganize a corporation to success if you don't have good employees. You can't reshuffle a bunch of bored, bad programmers to produce awesome software. You need good people who care and are engaged. The system organizes them but it can't substitute for them.
There are huge barriers to change, but when aren't there?? Change is always hard, but it's always possible. It just takes commitment, energy, smarts, and hard work. Disengaging and complaining has never fixed or improved anything, anywhere.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
flamebait my-ass.
I don't know that it's just anger over the war, but it is more of rebellion against what Bush (and by extension the Republican party) embodies than an embrace of what the Democrats embody. Of course, when we talk about the American public we're really talking about a minority of the American public known as the "swing voters". At least a third of the population (probably more) will vote Republican hell or high water (even if they're dissatisfied with Bush), and at least a third of the population (probably more) will vote Democrat hell or high water. Personally, I tend to lean Democrat, but I can be convinced to vote Republican (or even third party) in certain situations.
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I agree that I over-simplified things a bit. I believe most pundits predict that the Dems will pick up even more seats in '08, so they will have a clean majority (meaning not including independents who claim to be mostly Democrat). Of course, pundits are often wrong.
You also make an excellent point about 9/11 adding to the "perfect storm" that added to the Republicans ability to garner "absolute power".
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His personal issues were overblown and I'd bet dollars to donuts that the Oval Office saw a great deal of blow jobs long before Bill Clinton.
This is something I've never understood. When it comes to womanizing, the name that comes to my head is not Clinton, but good old J F K. However, people remember him fondly, and from what I can glean had very good opinions of him at the time he was still alive. Maybe I'm just hearing information that comes from those with rose-coloured-glasses, and people really didn't like JF as much as we might be led to believe, but regardless I've always had to wonder how Clinton's personal received so much negative attention in comparison
Semper fi, man. 1st Bn, 4th Mar, a nice little amphibious raid unit. Stationed on the USS Ogden during the 1st Gulf War... We were the first unit to arrive, but we spent the whole time anchored out in the Gulf near Oman. Not that I'm complaining, mind you... :)
NO CARRIER
No? Then quit talking about tax cuts. That's exactly the deal you got with the tax cuts. i.e. it was no sort of a cut. I got no checks from the government and my taxes have gone up, so I don't even have the ignorant delusion that there was anything good about them.
So, as long as people keep repeating the tax cut bullshit when the only thing that happened is that Bush took out massive high interest loans from China in your name, we'll continue to have a debate totally unrelated to reality.
As a percentage of GDP, the overall debt of Bush is low relative to the rest of the world. Borrowing a few hundred billion dollars to try and take over potentially the largest oil reserve in the world is a pretty pragmatic bet for a nation whose GDP approaches 15 trillion a year. In other words, from a dollars and cents perspective, the Iraq war was a pretty good bet with no real consequence if we lose. If only the leaders now were to start gambling with their heads and not their hearts, we'd be outta there by now, having taken our roll of the dice and come up snake eyes.
But, had the invasion of Iraq worked, and the USA had sweatheart deals to all of that oil, we would not only have the economic benefit of extremely low fuel prices for ourselves, we would also be able to dictate to the rest of the world IT'S fuel prices, and that would have been a pretty damned good spot to be in. Granted, its total imperialism, but absence the proof of God, you can't really say it is wrong.
This is my sig.
Mojority? With spin like yours, you're a natural politicial. Clinton never got over 49.2% of the popular vote (42.9% in '92, 49.2% in '96).
You seem much more interested in having an outlet for your anger than in the health of your country's government.
A Slashdot comment cannot be a book. If someone mentions something, it is assumed that it can lead you to doing your own research. If you did your own research, you would find that there is serious reason for concern, and the most common interpretation of the facts is that Cheney and Bush murder for profit; see Reddit.com and Digg.com If you do your own research and discover that is wrong, please post your thinking here.
It is assumed that you will try to find the truth in what is said, than try to find some interpretation that you find wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
That's the conclusion I've been forced to in my experience of talking to my fellow Americans. Having been educated in England (military brat) I taught myself how the American system of government is supposed to work, and I got a handle on it pretty quick. My friends who were educated here in America, who are mostly old enough to have taken mandatory civics classes in high school, don't know anything about it - not what the branches are, nor how many Senators each State gets or how the number of Members of Congress is determined, nor how long their terms are, nor what the difference between a Bill and a law is (much less how one becomes the other). The Electoral College came as an deep surprise to most in 2000/2004.
Some of them are beginning to grasp that an informed electorate is necessary to make it work, and that it actually matters whether they participate.* The barrier then is helping them remember whether George W. Bush (or name your politician) is a Republican or a Democrat, or better yet actually tracking issues and results. It's a hard slog, but I've directly raised the awareness of maybe a dozen people to the point where they actually pay a little attention, and they're talking with wives and family, etc.
Maybe high school kids just aren't in a condition or stage of life to take this stuff in, but it can be picked up at any age, if the will to do it is there.
* The most effective argument seems to be to point out to people that a good third or more of their paycheck is being taken from them and spent on their behalf, and they are missing the opportunity to exercise even an minimal influence on that process, the people who do it and where the money goes. Any individual person can only have a tiny influence, but that's the difference between being a minor actor with a miniscule input and being a completely abject slave to the powers that be.
Missed you for the first one by 3 years ('94), and missed this one by even more!
Semper fi.
Good point, the distinction shouldn't be important, but is.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
First of all, I agree completely with the statement: "people do not tend to think too much about what they read." I disagree with the statement that "Liberals err to this more than right wingers do, assuming that they trust the source." Obviously, you and I have very different biases, but I see it more in the other direction (trusting sources like Fox News, junkscience, etc.). I'm definitely willing to acknowledge my bias, but I think - despite my gut instinct - the truth is that liberals are no better (or worse) than conservatives in this regard. Almost everyone needs to learn critical reading skills. I know not to trust DailyKOS, even if I want (perhaps in a sick, twisted part of my brain) to believe what they say. I'm just as skeptical of them as I am of Fox News. On the other hand, I'm slightly more trusting of ABC, CBS, and CNN. That doesn't mean I believe everything they say, but I'm more likely to work on finding evidence that they're telling me the truth than I am to work on finding evidence that they're distorting the truth (like I would if it were coming from DailyKOS or Fox News). TPMCafe and Slashdot are somewhere in between.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
It seems that Paris Hilton is more important than Darfur, Jefferson's bribery case (or pick some other Democratic scandal), or the Gonzales testimony (or pick some other Republican scandal). However, I will say there are at least two kinds of bias that you find, in various degrees, in the popular media. The first type of bias is in choosing what to report (Paris Hilton) and what not to report. This bias is inescapable as there is not enough time to report on all news, so someone must make what is ultimately a subjective decision on what news to report. The second kind of bias, which in my opinion is much worse and much more prevalent from sources like DailyKOS and Fox News, is in distorting the news that is reported - through deliberate omission of facts that support a different conclusion than the one they want you to reach, or through just plain mis-stating the truth, AKA lying. Two examples that come to mind: (1) When DailyKOS reported sometime back on the Supreme Court ruling that the EPA should regulate CO2, they said that some act or other explicitly gave the EPA the authority (and duty) to regulate CO2. I read the act and found that it said no such thing. One might argue that it was implicitly in there, but that's a much more subtle matter than the way they presented it. (2) When Fox News reported sometime back on a cross that people wanted to build on private land using private money they stated that the ACLU was against it just because some of those people happen to be elected officials. They completely neglected to mention (which I found out about by reading another, more reliable, conservative news source - since more liberal news sources weren't even covering the story) that the decision to build the cross was made in city council and was going to originally be paid for by city funds - until the ACLU stepped in. Whether or not you agree with the ACLU, I found the way Fox News presented the story to be patently dishonest. They really played up the angle about how just because these people happened to have a job where they worked in government, they weren't allowed to make such decisions on their own, private time, yada, yada, yada.
It is interesting to note the discrepancy in how much time I spent on 1 lie vs. the other just now, but as I said before, I'll admit to my own biases. :)
Oh, one last thing. My favorite new news site is one that you might appreciate as well. RedOrbit - it's primary bias is neither conservative nor liberal.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
This (in the past) was called a peaceful banana republic coup, ... when a few privileged greedy people conspired to subversively/overtly topple/overthrow their populist democratic government for their special greedy, military, religious... interest.
In the USA, there was a time that this was called TREASON!
The old gray (US) dame, just ain't what she use to be, work her to death daily, put her away wet, and buy/steal the next one another day.
VOTE THEM ALL OUT ALWAYS, or hang'em for treason, the entertaining spectacle will be of great interest and attendance for US.
Don't worry everything is okay with US, and I am crazy, but smiling and laughing all the way to the bank (stock market). Whoops, as proof, I originally posted this in the wrong place. Don't worry the moderators let me know with many -offtopic points.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"You seem much more interested in having an outlet for your anger than in the health of your country's government."
Where do you think my anger comes from?
"If someone mentions something, it is assumed that it can lead you to doing your own research. "
Fine, but you didn't MENTION something, you presented something as fact and posted a link. But the link was garbage, and there was no supporting evidence. You presented something as though it were something else, and you seem to think it's my fault somehow. And your reply proves quite definitively that you missed my point totally.
"If you did your own research, you would find that there is serious reason for concern, and the most common interpretation of the facts is that Cheney and Bush murder for profit"
This is a lie. There is nothing common at all about your personal interpretation that Bush and Cheney "murder for profit", this is simply YOU spinning something.
"It is assumed that you will try to find the truth in what is said, than try to find some interpretation that you find wrong."
You know what they say about assuming, it makes you look like a fucking idiot. Of course, I could say that it is assumed that if you post a link, it's not garbage.
You completely missed the point of my post. Here it is as plainly and unapologetically as I can make it.
I am EXTREMELY tired of people like YOU posting links to lies and dubious "facts", then watching people take these facts as truth, then being forced to listen to arguments based on these lies fostered by people like YOU. I am extremely tired of over the top hyperbole taken as gospel by people like YOU, and disseminated by people like YOU. I am extremely tired of conversations with people like YOU inevitably containing cries of "MURDER!!!", "BLOOD FOR OIL!!!" and similar propaganda designed to appeal to emotion. I am extremely tired of people like YOU who are willing to accept and repeat any allegation you find necessary to further your agenda, regardless of the veracity of said allegation. I'm tired of being forced to show civility to people like YOU who think I'm too fucking stupid to know bullshit when they present it.
YOU are worsening the problem by assuming that posting a link will get people researching. That is idiotic. People are lazy and will take what you say at face value, which you know. Since you clearly know your link was trash, the only assumption I can make is that you don't care, as telling the truth is less important to you than having your opinion heard, regardless of it's accuracy. You think I'm too fucking stupid to see what you're doing, and that makes me want to slap the fuck out of you.
Got it?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I know it won't change your mind about a lot of things, but you will see that not everyone in Afghanistan are (or were) poor, destitute wretches.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Oh, I wouldn't say we MISSED the wars... Heh heh... More like they missed US. Bad aim!
NO CARRIER
It's totally unclear to me why we Americans are often the focus of such hatred abroad. We're such good neighbors.
Heh, true enough. The honesty of the comment was quite refreshing. I wish our politicians had the integrity to speak honestly like that. It would completely destroy the "moral" douchebags though as everything they support is slimy as hell. The Orwellian language the politicians use allow those folks to hide behind lies and claim the moral high ground.
Heck, if we could get them to be honest about this, then we can go for calling farm subsidies "socialism", which they are, and completely destroy the world view of those cowardly leeches.
Oh, and cool sig ;-)
We spent more money investigating Clinton's blowjob than we have investigating 9/11.