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Diebold Patch May Be Evidence of '02 Election Tampering
An anonymous reader writes "Stephen Spoonamore, founder of IT security firm Cybrinth and former advisor to John McCain, claims he has new evidence of election tampering by Diebold in the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial and senate races. A whistleblower gave Spoonamore a patch that was applied to Diebold machines in person by the Diebold CEO. Spoonamore confirmed that the patch did not correct the clock problem it supposedly addressed, but contained two parallel programs. Without access to the hardware, he could not learn more. He reported his findings to the Justice Department, which has not acted."
the worst thing is even if the next election was rigged no body would really do anything.
Were the Diebold voting machines Euclidean or non-Euclidean? Without this key bit of information, we can't know if these programs intersected or not.
I think I'll vote via absentee ballot and send it via registered mail. Paranoid? Maybe.
> He reported his findings to the Justice Department, which has not acted.
Bush co already patched the justice dept.
No worries.
I live in Atlanta, and lived here in 2002. "King" Roy Barnes and Max Cleland didn't get "robbed" of anything. They lost their elections because they were both liberal Democrats running in a conservative state in a big Republican year. Barnes in particular had become so personally obnoxious that a good many in his own party crossed over to vote against him out of pure spite.
Good grief, people. Put the tinfoil hats away.
If the patch is not suspicious enough, inaction by the Justice Department is damning.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yes, Republicans. For all the screaming about we on the left have been doing about these rigged elections, the Republicans have largely blown it all off as a bunch of whiny, sore losers. And, I say this with actual understanding of their point (I'd be suspicious of our cries as well were the tables turned). I think if you could get Republicans to see how truly corrupt our election system has become, they'd be as outraged as well. But, it's hard to get a credible spokesman (read: a fellow Republican) to come out as vehemently against this as someone like Greg Palast has.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The first flag should've been that it was the CEO who performed the patch. If a CEO _ever_ gets his hands dirty, you can rest assured that there is something illegal going on that needs to be covered up.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
As an IT support person, the scope of the Diebold patch update is suspicious. Why just two counties? Why not the whole state? Why a special trip by the CEO? Too many bells are going off here.
When I did IT updates. I would update a few test configurations and select users then let them run for a bit. Then roll out to the masses. About 2,500 PCs if you will.
The justice department needs to begin investigating this immediately.
This whole situation stinks to high heaven.
Thanks,
Jim
Remember folks, Diebold is now known as "Premier Election Solutions"--they changed their name to get away from the bad PR! So don't call them "Diebold" any more and don't forget!
Just like MediaSentry becoming "SafeNet", we shouldn't be so quick to forget who the scumbags are!
- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
2003;
The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.
O'Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors - known as Rangers and Pioneers - at the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. The next week, he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party's federal campaign fund - partially benefiting Bush - at his mansion in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.
The letter went out the day before Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, also a Republican, was set to qualify Diebold as one of three firms eligible to sell upgraded electronic voting machines to Ohio counties in time for the 2004 election.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
The story says "The computer patch was installed in person by Diebold CEO Bob Urosevich, who flew in from Texas and applied it in just two counties, DeKalb and Fulton, both Democratic strongholds."
If that's accurate, that's astonishing to me.
I don't know much about "The Raw Story," which describes itself as an "alternative" news source. If this had appeared in the mainstream media I would regard it as something close to a smoking gun. I hope this isn't the end of the story.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Three problems with your point:
1) The patch was made to certified machines, thus making them non-certified.
2) It was only applied in 2 counties. (*cough*Democratic counties*cough*) Why not the whole state?
3) I'm fairly certain that if *I* merely open the ballot box or machine during the election, that satisfies the requirement for "tampering" regardless of me touching ballots or flipping bits, and I'd be making an extra stop at the local police precinct before going home.
Of course, it all depends on who's prosecuting and how it gets presented.
But if:
1. it doesn't fix the problem it claims to fix
2. it was personnally installed by the CEO of the vendor's firm
3. it was only installed on a subset of machines (and those in democratic strongholds)
alarm bells should be going off all over the place.
If, at my bank, we tried to push a change that hit even one of the above, ten people would be on the phone to in-house lawyers, compliance, management, etc.
Had one of my new guys yesterday wanting to push a change. "I'll tell you what it does," he said. "Don't bother," I said, "if what it's doing is not obvious, it's not going anywhere."
The CEO personally getting involved is more suspicious to me.
I mean Deibold is a fairly large company, why is the CEO applying patches to products in person?
And how often does he do this?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Why doesn't Diebold allow for open source code?
* They are afraid of scrutiny. They might have errors and some might turn out to be embarrassing.
* Competition might ensue.
* Hide any funny business.
* Have to follow someone else's rules
* Have to spend effort/expense making code available.
* Code files too big as they were written with PowerPoint (tm)
Interesting that he's not mentioned in the summary, but several other sources seem to indicate that Karl Rove is behind this.
Go ahead and mod me down, I've got decent karma.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
perhaps. However, there are many many many factions there. Do you know and trust all their motivations? Some factions might like the war because it is profitable, or gives them an edge in gang fights.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
And how is this making war against the United States or giving Aid and Comfort to it's enemies in time of war? Here in the USA, that's how treason is defined in the Constitution. Calling any and everything you don't like "treason" is exactly why it was defined that way, and why the Constitution specifies that a conviction can only be obtained by direct confession in open court or on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act. I knew that the standards of education here were dropping, but I didn't thing they'd dropped that far.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Jeff Dean, Senior Vice-President and Senior Programmer at Global Election Systems (GES), the company purchased by Diebold in 2002 which became Diebold Election Systems, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft for planting back doors in software he created for ATMs using, according to court documents, a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of two years[8]. In addition to Dean, GES employed a number of other convicted felons in senior positions, including a fraudulent securities trader and a drug trafficker.
Avi Rubin, Professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University and Technical Director of the Information Security Institute has analyzed the source code used in these voting machines and reports "this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts.
Following the publication of this paper, the State of Maryland hired Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to perform another analysis of the Diebold voting machines. SAIC concluded "[t]he system, as implemented in policy, procedure, and technology, is at high risk of compromise."
My point is, Obama should feel pretty safe in Iraq.
Not from the Blackwater goons. And he might want to stay away from the showers.
What?
Hm, you're right, there's only a few dozen websites out there claim Bob Urosevich was the CEO of Diebold Election Systems.
As far as I can tell his "official" title was, Bob Urosevich was the President of Diebold Election Systems from January 2002 until the second half of 2004. Prior to 2002, he was the Chief Operating Officer and President of Global Election Systems (which was bought by Diebold).
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Actually, he was President of Diebold Election Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Diebold... a slight oversight, but not as simply wrong as you make it out to be (and it's understandable how one might confuse it with the parent company). See for example http://web.archive.org/web/20030811034309/www.diebold.com/news/newsdisp.asp?id=2915.
The extremists among the Iraqi insurgency and other terrorist groups are devoted to the idea of pushing the broader Islamic world into open war with the West. They would probably prefer that the winner of the election prolong the occupation so that they can continue to claim to be fighting against Western aggression and collaborators, rather than just killing their own people. The last thing that the kookiest of the terror groups want is a president who is interested in multi-lateral diplomatic settlements to points of conflict between Muslim countries and the US. A diplomatic resolution to conflicts over Iran's nuclear program, for instance, amounts to a disappointing fizzle if you're interested in widening the rift. An invasion and war, on the other hand, would push moderates in Iran into the arms of Islamic radicals that promise to defend them.
why is the CEO applying patches to products in person?
And how often does he do this?
Whenever he needs to get paid
Well, Bart, your uncle Arthur used to have a saying: "Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
Credibility? You want credibility on an anonymous third-hand account of something that allegedly happened six years ago? Get real. There will be many, many claims of fraud, affairs, and other misdeeds against the Republicans in the next four months. To paraphrase Dan Rather "We're sure the story is true, even if the evidence doesn't support it".
IMO, subverting an election would be very close to "in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
The enemies of the Republic would be any that would attempt to subvert the rule of the republic - which would include elections. (This is in practical terms, the equivalent of a coup.)
I'm not sure I exactly agree with this definition, but clearly an argument could be made that subverting elections would in essence be "war" against the republic.
It's certainly on less shaky ground than our governments declaration that all held at Guantanamo are legitimately held "unlawful combatants."
-Greg
FTA: "he identified two parallel programs, both having the full software code and even the same audio instructions for the deaf." And I thought Braille on a drive up ATM was pointless.
You're so cynical that it makes you cool.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I wonder how many people have stopped to think through the implications of this charge. If it's proven to be true, it could very well mean Diebold's CEO is guilty of treason. In a time of war (which President Bush has repeatedly said is the case), that's a death penalty offense. While I don't favour the death penalty, I think you have to take a very serious look at it for somebody who hasn't just killed people, but who has attempted to kill democracy in an entire nation. This particular incident may have been restricted to one state, but Diebold has been very active in attempting to get its machines and methods protected from legal supervision at the federal level.
So what you're saying is, not only are liberals going to actively pursue the death penalty, but they're going to have to admit that we're at war to get there?
I don't know if I see that happening.. But I'm heading to the grocery store for some popcorn, just in case.
(yes, you can mod me down now)
I think if you could get Republicans to see how truly corrupt our election system has become, they'd be as outraged as well. But, it's hard to get a credible spokesman (read: a fellow Republican) to come out as vehemently against this as someone like Greg Palast has.
I think you severely underestimate a *partisan's ability to write off information that could force them into a state of cognitive dissonance.
Abu Ghraib was written off as "hazing" and "a fraternity prank."
I don't really see that mindset getting too outraged over election fraud in their favor.
*This goes both ways really. Anyone remember Dan Rather's fake documents?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
For hundreds of years elections have been held using paper and pencil ballots, and fraud was very difficult to get away with. This is because you have to employ large numbers of people to commit it.
Electronic voting can be subverted very simply indeed, just by one person with the right technical knowledge. All electronic voting should be scrapped until a reasonably secure system can be organised, most likely by open source solutions. Even then there's no real reason for it.
And what the hell was the CEO doing installing patches? Sounds highly suspicous to me.
And how is this making war against the United States or giving Aid and Comfort to it's enemies in time of war?
Well, in the military, your oath is to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign, and domestic. Someone subverting the voting process, which is set forth in the Constitution, could be seen as an attack on the Constitution. Since the primary purpose of the military is to wage war, and their foremost oath is to defend the Constitution, it could follow that this act could be considered making war against the United States.
Another way to look at it is the act of changing the votes could change who has control of Congress, removing the "winning" party from power. This would be an unconstitutional method of changing government, which would be an act of war against the "true government" of the United States.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
It looks like from older sources that the CEO was traveling with a technician who actually installed the patch. The technician has since thought that it was an unusual thing to be doing. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11717105/robert_f_kennedy_jr__will_the_next_election_be_hacked/2 "We were told not to talk to county personnel about it. I received instructions directly from Urosevich. It was very unusual that a president of the company would give an order like that and be involved at that level."
Don't be silly. That's exactly the kind of thing they'd want. They can lie through their teeth, extract all kinds of concessions and appeasement, then point to those concessions as proof that the US is weak, immoral and powerless. Then launch an attack against the US but claim that they didn't do it. After the attack, more rounds of diplomacy and concessions, and the loop continues.
Further, they can point to the weakness of the US and tell the people they are oppressing that there is no help coming from the US -- just like Saddam was doing to his people before the war. Saddam used every city government anti-war resolution against us and his own people, repeatedly broadcasting the fact that the US wasn't going to ever do anything because all the people said they weren't. The fact he was wrong didn't stop him from doing it, and he was only wrong because we have a president that knows when enough is enough.
If you don't think this is how the terrorists operate, review the history of Iraq, or North Korea, which got concessions in exchange for nuclear limitations, and went ahead and built their nuke program anyway after they got the concessions.
An invasion and war, on the other hand, would push moderates in Iran into the arms of Islamic radicals that promise to defend them.
Yes, they win by spinning things either way. They lose if we remove them, which will never happen by talking to them. There is nothing we can say that will make them peaceful. They have no interest in compromise with Satan, unlike many of the people in the US.
I'm not sure I exactly agree with this definition, but clearly an argument could be made that subverting elections would in essence be "war" against the republic.
Umm, election fraud, pure and simple. It's not a new crime, and it has never been held to be treason. It's just more screechy politics that you would laugh at if the other side were making similar charges.
We seem to conveniently forget that extremists are not interested in diplomacy as a solution. Extremists were attacking the West long before the war in Iraq; it is a fallacy to assume they would just revert to killing each other, and leave the West alone.
Iran is case-in-point: The goal of the leadership in Iran has nothing to do with diplomacy; they want their nuclear toys, period, and will risk war to get them. The thought of a peaceful Middle East with a nuclear-armed Iran stretches just that little bit past the bounds of reality.
If a person isn't hungry, food is the wrong negotiating tool.
And he might want to stay away from the showers.
He'll be fine, as long as he wears shower shoes and sprays his feet with Tinactin afterwards. Though some of the fungi in military showers can be pretty tough.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
There has to be a line. Yes, bad things happen in the world, and my heart bleeds a little every time I hear about a child starving to death, or the AIDS epidemic, or genocide. But the United States is only so strong, and only capable of dealing with so much.
Would you, personally, by hand, go out and try to feed EVERY homeless person in your city? Not build a shelter and feed the ones that come in. Actually walk the streets with a bag/shopping cart/truckload/whatever of food, and find the homeless, and feed them?
We spread ourselves too thin. We try to do so much good in so many places that all we manage is a barely mediocre achievement anywhere. I believe that isolationist policies are stupid, but we can't be the world's nanny anymore, we can't kiss everyone's boo-boos anymore. Our economy is in bad enough shape. Pouring so much of it into other places, nay, wasting it, is doing NOTHING to help stabilize ourselves. Yeah, it makes you feel warm and fuzzy to say 'My country feeds starving Nigerian babies' but what nobody says is that our aid programs drain public resources that could be put into health care, education, public works, or reducing the national debt.
Think about it. Yeah, it makes you warm and fuzzy to clothes a homeless man, but if you give him the clothes off your back, now, YOU are naked. How much good can we do to third world countries and those in need if we reduce ourselves to third-world status?
Don't be silly, making speeches is lousy theater. Video of anguished families rending their garments over the corpse of their child killed by an American soldier is a lot more effective in recruiting dissatisfied people than giving a powerpoint presentation about the oppressors.
Your enemies will certainly try to spin anything in their favor (what do you think the job of the White House press secretary is?) because nobody is going to hold a press conference to say "wow, we're idiots, it turns out those other guys are really great, look at this awesome aid package they're giving us!"
You have to convince people not to follow crazy leaders, which is difficult (it's taken eight years for us to ignore ours). You can either kill them mercilessly and terrify everyone into not wanting to risk it, you can give them jobs and food so that they're too comfortable to want to upset the status quo, or you can give them an alternate leader who they believe will be more effective (see: political history of Hamas).
As it stands, we're giving them jobs and then shooting them on their way to work, which doesn't make us look either strong or benevolent, it makes us look alternately malicious and idiotic.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Prescott Bush, the grandfather of our current president, and father of our past president, is guilty of this right here. He was involved in a large corporate-based scheme to overthrow the US government early in the last century. Look it up, I can't make something this crazy up...
" Remember, remember the Fifth of November, The Gunpowder Treason and Plot, I know of no reason Why Gunpowder Treason Should ever be forgot. "
What the parent to your post wrote was that Republicans would be surprised by this, since they have (by and large) been maintaining that complaints of any irregularities in the last couple election cycles are the whining of conspiracy theorists. If they honestly believed that to be true, then yes, in fact, they should be surprised by evidence of election tampering.
I don't know why you're do paranoid that everyone's out to get Republicans -- parent to your post makes a good point that's even sympathetic to the Republicans who have so far refused to believe (or, perhaps, admit) that there was widescale election fraud related to the use of electronic voting machines.
At any rate, you should probably relax your grip on your Republican persecution complex and realize that the parent to your post said nothing at all about the accusation benefiting Republicans...
Question for you -- are you trolling, or are you really that bad at reading comprehension?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Although I am not an unconditional fan of open source. I think it has its uses and its non uses. But this is one definite use. It might be the case that as a matter of law right now, what you say is true--it's not evidence. But I actually don't see how we'd be hurt by having a law that makes it into evidence by making it, ipso facto, a crime to apply an undocumented patch at all.
If you're going to have voting machines at all, it seems to me they ought to have open source programs running on them. (I personally don't care if the programs are free in cost, though I imagine they could be. I only care that they are inspectable by anyone and that it is fair use to copy them to other machines for the purpose of verifying their correctness and aherence to advertised and required spec.) I don't see that anyone other than someone doing something illegal is served by keeping the source secret. The data, of course, might be protected. But the program should be auditable by anyone.
And in such a world, I don't see any reason whatsoever that it shouldn't be a crime for there to be any software applied where its entire content and purpose were not carefully documented. Then it wouldn't require any proof other than that it happened in order to detect wrongdoing; and it could be further a crime to phony up a faulty description of what the patch does, so that then it could be audited for validity by anyone who wants to.
The weak link in all this seems to be the hardware. It's quite hard to look at a box and know what's going on inside it. It requires specialized skill. It likely wouldn't be hard to make a machine with a dummy system for show that had the right program on it and another shadow machine tucked away that had the wrong program, with just some subtle wire somewhere leading to one doing the real voting. Call it "democracy theater" if you like, borrowing on the "security theater" moniker used a lot in other venues these days. Such a charade could be hard to notice. Which is why I prefer paper balloting. It means the entire process is exposed.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Probably not me or anyone in my generation; but the amount of time, money and effort wasted in waging these wars [war on drugs, war on terrorism, war on Islamic fundamentalist etc.] could have been well spent on improving the education system her in US which could have resulted in what you wished there.
I wonder every time when people complain here about the student/teacher ratio - I came from a place where we had 120+ students in almost all my grades and still over 60% of the students managed to graduate with excellent grades.
No Sig for you.!
Though some of the fungi in military showers can be pretty tough.
So can a ground fault
in case first link fails
What?
Because I wrote the patch and I gave it to him and I personally watched him install it.
What? You don't believe me?
Guess I should have posted anonymously.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Saddam had basically nothing to do with the war the US started against Iraq. He was just another dictator (hint - Pakistan was just another dictatorship until recently, but we're not going to invade them any time soon, right?). Iraq did not have a nuke program. It didn't have weapons of mass destruction. The reason given for the war was wrong.
Many, many more people have died in Iraq as a result of the invasion than would have died under Saddam's rule. Extremist religious groups are much more powerful now in Iraq than they were under Saddam's rule.
The old Iraqi government has never been meaningfully linked with any acts of terrorism against western nations. They had nothing to do with Al Quaida.
The US/Allied military invasion has killed far more civilians just in Iraq than terrorists have worldwide in the last 10 years.
These are facts... onto subjective opinion.... You are a true moron if you think that all Iranians believe the west "satan". Honestly, I hope you do not believe that Iranians hate the west and want a uniform Islamic world, because that would show absolute ignorance of Iran. The "they" you talk about are essentially a creation - "they" do not exist.
Also, how is North Korea an example of how terrorists operate? I mean, how on earth do you figure out that North Korea is a bastion of terrorism?
Basically, my advice to you is quit being so scared. These places you demonise are not actually inhabited by demons. They're just generally ordinary people.
OT here I come.
See, now you're trying to make sense, which means those on the Right's eyes will glaze over and they'll just skip to the next comment which mentions terrorist fist-bumps and flag lapel pins.
I'm afraid that instead of trying to engage these people (listeners to right-wing radio), we're just going to have to ignore them and do the best we can for this country without their input. It's probably for the best, all around.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Is that so? Seeing the blue dot next to your name makes me want to ask...
Are you hiring?
Consider this a joke if you aren't hiring, otherwise I'm serious.
Oh, look the story is gone
Not from my squid cache, bro.
A leading cyber-security expert and former adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) says he has fresh evidence regarding election fraud on Diebold electronic voting machines during the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial and senatorial elections.
Stephen Spoonamore is the founder and until recently the CEO of Cybrinth LLC, an information technology policy and security firm that serves Fortune 100 companies. At a little noticed press conference in Columbus, Ohio Thursday, he discussed his investigation of a computer patch that was applied to Diebold Election Systems voting machines in Georgia right before that state's November 2002 election.
Spoonamore is one of the most prominent cyber-security experts in the country. He has appeared on CNN's Lou Dobbs and ABC's World News Tonight, and has security clearances from his work with the intelligence community and other government agencies, as well as the Department of Defense, and is one of the worldâ(TM)s leading authorities on hacking and cyber-espionage.
In 1995, Spoonamore received a civilian citation for his work with the Department of Defense. He was again recognized for his contributions in 2004 by the Department of Homeland Security. Spoonamore is also a registered Republican and until recently was advising the McCain campaign.
Spoonamore received the Diebold patch from a whistleblower close to the office of Cathy Cox, Georgiaâ(TM)s then-Secretary of State. In discussions with RAW STORY, the whistleblower -- who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation -- said that he became suspicious of Diebold's actions in Georgia for two reasons. The first red flag went up when the computer patch was installed in person by Diebold CEO Bob Urosevich, who flew in from Texas and applied it in just two counties, DeKalb and Fulton, both Democratic strongholds. The source states that Cox was not privy to these changes until after the election and that she became particularly concerned over the patch being installed in just those two counties.
The whistleblower said another flag went up when it became apparent that the patch installed by Urosevich had failed to fix a problem with the computer clock, which employees from Diebold and the Georgia Secretary of Stateâ(TM)s office had been told the patch was designed specifically to address.
Some critics of electronic voting raised questions about the 2002 Georgia race even at the time. Incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, who was five percentage points ahead of Republican challenger Saxby Chambliss in polls taken a week before the vote, lost 53% to 46%. Incumbent Democratic Governor Roy Barnes, who led challenger Sonny Perdue in the polls by eleven points, lost 51% to 46%. However, because the Diebold machines used throughout the state provided no paper trail, it was impossible to ask for a recount in either case.
Concerned by the electoral outcome, the whistleblower approached Spoonamore because of his qualifications and asked him to examine the Diebold patch. McCain adviser reported patch to Justice Department
The Ohio press conference was organized by Cliff Arnebeck and three other attorneys, who had filed a challenge to the results of that the 2004 presidential election in Ohio in December, 2004. That challenge was withdrawn, but in August 2006 Arnebeck filed a new case, King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell, alleging civil rights violations in the 2004 voting. The case was stayed in 2007. On Thursday, Arnebeck filed a motion to remove the stay and allow fresh investigation.
Individuals close to Arnebeck's office said Spoonamore confirmed that the patch included nothing to repair a clock problem. Instead, he identified two parallel programs, both having the full software code and even the same audio instructions for the deaf. Spoonamore said he could not understand the need for a second copy of the exact same pr
Just callin' it like I see it.
Having undergone a brief and unpleasant stint attempting to educate American students, IMO you're dead on - the problem with the American educational system is primarily the lousy uninterested Americans that pass through it, more interested in sports, drugs, sex, and popularity (which is largely a function of the first three items) than in actually learning anything. No amount of money will make these degenerates any more interested in learning, and that's the fundamental problem. To put it plainly, nothing about our educational system will improve unless our culture shifts so that the nerd is socially more respected than the jock.
If we talk while our enemy fights, we lose.
Yep and thus India remains firmly under British control.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I doubt Wallmart would want a greeter with Tourette's Syndrome, or undercontrolled Schizophrenia. Not so coincidentally, a disproportionate number (I've heard upwards of 50%) of the homeless population has mental disabilities. The rest? Yes, some are lazy. Some are young people who escaped abuse in a broken home, took up drugs, and are now essentially unemployable. Some people suffer from chronic pain which prevents them from working. Many are women who have escaped abuse, have young children to look after 24/7, and no marketable skills. Have you ever try applying for a job without an address or a change of clothes? Of course, don't let any of these cases get in the way of your simple and elegant world view.
Jeremy
I'm a former typewriter technician from 'those days'. You are ignoring some significant information.
Back 'then', and up to about 1990, typewriters were, as you pointed out, capable of printing fonts other than Courier and Prestige Elite. Such machines were somewhat rare, the most common alternative being Orator from IBM.
More significant, however were two features of 'those' documents: Proportional spacing and text centering. These capabilities were significantly less common, and centering is not a typewriter feature - it is an operator's skill.
Looking at one of the documents here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Guardgif.gif, you can see in the first paragraph the word 'Ellington'. It appears to me that the 'i' is properly spaced for proportional type. This limits the available typeariters at that time to pretyt much the IBM Executive or IBM Composer, neither of which were common, and both would have been uncommon on GSA purchasing. It's possible that the Lt. Colonel who is shown as the author could have a clerk using one of these, but very unlikely.
More interesting, the unit designation in the second paragraph, 111th F.L.S., has the superscripted 'th'. I don't think this was common on even the Composer, but maybe the Excecutive would have had that character. So this document was probably typed on an IBM Excecutive machine?
It doesn't seem likely that this was typed on any Selectric machine. There are characteristics that pretyt much leave out a Selectrtic as the source.
This picture of the document is pretty much inadequate for more serious analysis, sadly. It's been thorugh too many duplications, and many characteristics of the type are lost and useless for further investigation. Looking at the 'r's in the document, some are missing serifs. The word 'MEMORANDUM' has the 'R' dropped significantly, where further on the line the word 'FOR' is fairly well aligned. This is not easy to do on a typewriter, but then again the quality of the picture makes it nearly impossible to do a better analysis.
When I first saw these documents, I was astonished. These were not typed.
Oh, and the centering? On a proportional space machine, this is not a trivial operation. You need to space characters using 1,3,4, or 5 sub-spaces, and I forget the technical term for this level of escapment. A fair amount of training, and practice, are necessary. Maybe the clerk for a Pentagon commander has this skill, but not likely the clerk for a Texas ANG officer.
Nice try, but this was a fake. Though I'd LOVE to see the originals. The ink and impressions would answer a lot of questions. Copies fail these tests.
Give it up. Rather was fooled, and willingly so.
Let's ban all-electronic balloting so WE won't get fooled again, k?
ps- you wrote "The claims that the documents were fake, were based on the incorrect belief that typewriters could not produce superscript "st" and "nd"". Name me four. Hint, one I mentioned above. Second hint, ignore Adler typewriters, none used in GSA back then. Third hint, ignore Smith-Corona, Facit, Underwood, they dndn't make that sort of machine. Fourth hint, stick to IBM, Olympia, Royal. NOt so sure about Royal. You don't know typewriters.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Saddam had basically nothing to do with the war the US started against Iraq.
You mean, other than completely violating - year after year - the terms of the cease fire following his invasion of neighboring Kuwait. Other than regular attacks - with actual anti-aircraft guns and missiles - against the aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones that were set up to protect the populations he had been busy slaughtering in the many thousands in the north and south of Iraq. Other than his ongoing program to build and buy long range missiles (lots of business with North Korea on that front), which continued right up through 2003, in violation of his agreement not to, following his lobbing of SCUDs into Israel as he forces were being pushed back from Kuwait and the Saudi border. Other than his continuous shut-down of the UN inspectors and non-stop obfuscation about his weapons programs, including his refusal to come clean on the disposition of tons of VX gas and related hardware that were anything but imaginary (since they were seen and reported by inpsectors in the early rounds following Kuwait, before they were kicked out by Saddam). So, no, Saddam had nothing to do with his own regime being dismantled, other than a non-stop campaign of smuggling, scraping cash meant for his people's food and health so that he could buy military hardware and build palaces, live fire at coalition troops and aircraft on a regular basis, publicized cash payments to families of suicide bombers (remember the $50,000 checks and photo-ops?) to buy favaor with Hamas and Hezbollah, and more. Nah, he was just "trying to get by under an embargo." An embargo that he could have ended in a minute by simply doing what he said he told the UN he would do after being spanked following his violent invasion of Kuwait.
Many, many more people have died in Iraq as a result of the invasion than would have died under Saddam's rule
He buldozed dirt over mass graves - when anyone bothered to try to cover anything up - as part of a sustained effort that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. And, do you really count Iran's finance, sponsorship, and direct participation in years of destabilizing bombings in Iraq as being "a result of the invasion?" They just can't stop themselves, can they. They have no choice but to ship high explosives to Iraq, and pay the thugs they station there to strap them to mentally impaired women who are then sent into markets to blow up dozens of women and children at a go... because the invasion made them do it. I see.
It didn't have weapons of mass destruction
Other than the ones they used many times, and other than the large stockpiles observed by UN inspectors, but the disposition of which remained a complete mystery. Saddam's regime wouldn't allow further inspections in the areas where they were previously stockpiled, and wouldn't provide the documentation he agreed to provide showing the nature and timing of any disposal process. So, we know they had them - that is simple fact - and where they got to is not known.
You are a true moron if you think that all Iranians believe the west "satan".
Does it matter if the average Iranian thinks that, when the people who run the place, write the checks to people who DO think that way, and are willing to deploy armed insurgents who operate with that notion in mind? No, it doesn't. Not of the people who do NOT think like that aren't willing to tear that murderous theocracy down. Which they aren't willing to do. They support them, by continuing to give them power.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Don't be silly. Al Queda was a marginal, regional group of thugs that happened to have some financial backing until we invaded Iraq. Suddenly, they get support across the Arab world and we lose any of the international sympathy that we had after 9/11. Six years and thousands of American dead and wounded later, Al Queda is strengthening in Afghanistan while their preferred candidate, McCain, promises 100 more years of an "infidel" presence in Iraq. That's almost the same complaint, by the way, that motivated Bin Laden in the first place.
So, even if the Iraqi main street is pacified, the extremists will continue to recruit there; stirring passions in the ignorant, insulted, and under-employed and convincing them that the one hope of Heaven is to strap on a belt of explosives. There's a chance, though, that this message can be blunted if the U.S. can advertise our message of economic freedom and good will while pushing the military presence into the background. Unfortunately, McCain is not the guy to walk that walk and the extremists know this.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.