The relationship between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky was consensual. She was sold out by Linda Tripp. Lewinsky also lied about the relationship under oath before she knew Tripp had been taping their conversations. So why wasn't Monica tried for perjury? Is it only a crime when your political enemies do it?
Microsoft and Sony don't make a profit on their videogame divisions, Nintendo wins that race by default. And the Wii is online, they just haven't rolled out the (free) service yet (which is why none of the launch titles are online-compatible). Basically, you're wrong.
The problem is if everyone thought like you, nobody would look into it. Maybe it's because you're starting with the assumption that we're all pulling our hair out over this story, but from your tone, everything you've said so far sounds like "accurate vote counts aren't important."
We all understand that this is a tiny race in a tiny town for a relatively powerless office. Contrary to your assertion, the initial reaction to this on the DailyKos, from Kos himself, was laughter, not panic. The reason the story is making the rounds is that it humorously illustrates a serious issue, which is the trustworthiness of electronic voting machines.
But go ahead, roll your eyes at all the silly people who think their votes should be counted accurately. Crazy liberals!
I don't see anyone here holding up the conspiracy straw man but you. The fact is, a 3% error rate (ERROR, not FRAUD) is breathtakingly unacceptable when the last two presidential elections and the current makeup of the U.S. senate were decided by races with margins MUCH LESS than 3%. If you're a conservative, as your choice of web sites to malign indicates, you should be foaming at the mouth about what this could mean for the Senate races in Virginia, Missouri, Montana, etc. Or are you operating under the assumption that voting machine errors always favor Republicans?
You're not even reading what I write. If we give him the benefit of the doubt that he was wearing his "Republican Fundraiser" hat that day, then the fact that he works for Diebold is completely irrelevant. The lowliest volunteer going door to door trying to get out the vote for Bush could have said the same thing and nobody would think anything of it. I'm making YOUR argument better than you are.
But my original point was and is that those words coming from someone in his position constitute a conflict of interest and a very real reason not to cast your vote on a proprietary electronic machine. I'm not saying let's never vote electronically, I'm just saying let's boycott obviously flawed and unverifiable solutions.
I've never heard that interpretation of his remarks before, so I googled for the actual quote. Turns out you're completely wrong. The only defense of his comments is that he was wearing his "Republican Fundraiser" hat when he made them, not his "Voting Machine Manufacturer" hat and, to his (slight) credit, he got out of politics after people pointed out this conflict of interest. And if you dismiss the story below because it's from known Librul Media Outlet CBS, then you're the one wearing the tinfoil hat:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml "...A Diebold plot to rig the elections? Where did that idea come from? The rumors began with this letter from Diebold's CEO, Wally Odell, who was moonlighting as a Republican fundraiser. In his invitation to a benefit for Bush last August, he wrote, 'I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president.'
After a public outcry, Odell announced in May that he was getting out of politics.
'Our CEO Wally O'Dell's position from a political standpoint really does not reflect at all in our equipment or the functionality of our equipment. It has nothing to do with how elections are run,' says Radke.
But Rubin says he is not accusing Diebold of rigging elections. 'I'm just saying that they could do it and that we shouldn't allow our elections to be under control of vendors when there are ways of designing voting machines such that the vendors don't have the control of them.'
It's not "kneejerk", it's in response to dozens of documented and unresolved issues, including successful proof-of-concept hacks and allegations if not outright confessions of uncertified code modifications from the manufacturers. Then there are the thousands of personal accounts of machines recording the wrong vote (usually a glitch or operator error, but still not reassuring), and the "it just looks bad" promise by a certain electronic voting machine manufacturer to deliver Ohio to Bush in 2004, which they did by the slimmest of margins and against all predictions.
Exactly: OF COURSE he got criticized for going into Iraq, because none of the conditions you described in your first paragraph applied to Iraq. Maybe that was your point, but it sounded like you were trying to conflate Afghanistan and Iraq to "prove" that the invading the latter was justified.
It's actually THREE free credit reports per year. One from each of the three credit reporting companies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. I know this because I just did all three last week, but you should be able to get one every 4 months as long as you don't use the same company twice within a year.
Couldn't the salesperson explain the fine print? Isn't that their job? Or is this company admitting that their sales people are so dishonest/incompetent that you shouldn't buy anything from them without a third party present to advocate for you.
Wow... I just had a dark vision of the future. Everyone who can afford it retains a gimp lawyer who follows them everywhere they go on a leash. The gimp conducts all of your arguments, goes over all of your contracts, and generally intimidates anyone who does business with you. Those who can't afford this service are screwed.
You're right, this has happened on the other side of the political aisle. The allegations are always dismissed with the defense that it doesn't matter, as long as the judges uphold the law in their decisions. I don't think anyone has made the case that her decision was legally unfounded, so you'll forgive me if I'm unimpressed with attempts to get it overturned on a technicality. And yes, after 12 years of scorched-earth politics from the right, I'll take these small victories however we can get them.
I haven't heard of this conflict of interest. Is it that she's an American citizen and therefore subject to the warrantless wiretapping that she ruled illegal? Or is it that she's a terrist luvin librul and therefore shouldn't be ruling on matters possibly related to terrorism?
Sorry, I couldn't resist formatting the question as a troll, but I really am curious as to what the alleged conflict is.
There have been reports of poll workers being allowed to take electronic voting machines home with them the night before the election. Even if that weren't the case, lots of people have access to these machines in the days/weeks/months leading up to the election. There's nothing about this hack that requires it to be performed the same day.
So what you're saying is, in the old days, only a small group of elites could tamper with election outcomes. Now anyone can do it! Truly, a great day for democracy.
If they really think global warming is real and is going to cause sea level to rise and flood their city, maybe they should be proactive and sell their property to someone who doesn't believe it.
Stupid Malaysian fishermen, just sell your corrugated zinc shacks on Craigslist or something!
I might be willing to buy the bit about recycling paper being bad for the environment with some evidence to back it up, but there are a couple of points you made that are invalid or misleading.
1. Gore was never "in power". Bill Clinton was President and he took more input from his wife than from Gore. You could criticize Gore for not asserting himself more, but very few VPs before Cheney have, that I am aware of (I'm young, Dan Quayle's my major point of reference here).
2. As far as the private jet goes, my understanding is that Gore calculates his entire carbon footprint (home, cars, jets, etc) and purchases offsets in renewable energy from sites like www.carbonfund.org to make his effective footprint zero. How much faith you have in carbon footprint calculations or the effectiveness of purchased offsets is another matter, but you can't call Gore a hypocrite if he believes in both of these things. Another way to look at it is that, if his efforts, wasteful as they may be, result in lots of people collectively reducing their CO2 output by more than Gore is expending, then it will be worthwhile. Either way, you can't seriously expect him to bike across the country or row across the sea to promote his movie.
Wow, you got me. I've fallen into the deep canyon of environmental responsibility. Please save me from my recycling bin and my daily walk to work through the park (or the bus on rainy days). Please open my eyes to the dangers of NOT polluting the air I breathe. Oh, what a fool I've been!
I don't know if you're still reading replies, but I'll take a stab at it:
Due to our superior abstract reasoning skills (which evolved because they helped us survive), humans are prone to depression, mostly from the thought that we're insignificant and nothing we do matters because we're just going to die someday anyway (i.e. nihlism, the thing that makes you smile). Thus we evolved to be artistic, musical and religious because those things kept us from jumping off of cliffs, improving our chances of survival.
Slashdot Mirror
The relationship between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky was consensual. She was sold out by Linda Tripp. Lewinsky also lied about the relationship under oath before she knew Tripp had been taping their conversations. So why wasn't Monica tried for perjury? Is it only a crime when your political enemies do it?
Microsoft and Sony don't make a profit on their videogame divisions, Nintendo wins that race by default. And the Wii is online, they just haven't rolled out the (free) service yet (which is why none of the launch titles are online-compatible). Basically, you're wrong.
It's not wrong at all. They're pointing out Microsoft's failure to rise to the occasion in the face of stiff competition.
This probably goes without saying, but would that be an open-faced sandwich?
The problem is if everyone thought like you, nobody would look into it. Maybe it's because you're starting with the assumption that we're all pulling our hair out over this story, but from your tone, everything you've said so far sounds like "accurate vote counts aren't important."
We all understand that this is a tiny race in a tiny town for a relatively powerless office. Contrary to your assertion, the initial reaction to this on the DailyKos, from Kos himself, was laughter, not panic. The reason the story is making the rounds is that it humorously illustrates a serious issue, which is the trustworthiness of electronic voting machines.
But go ahead, roll your eyes at all the silly people who think their votes should be counted accurately. Crazy liberals!
I don't see anyone here holding up the conspiracy straw man but you. The fact is, a 3% error rate (ERROR, not FRAUD) is breathtakingly unacceptable when the last two presidential elections and the current makeup of the U.S. senate were decided by races with margins MUCH LESS than 3%. If you're a conservative, as your choice of web sites to malign indicates, you should be foaming at the mouth about what this could mean for the Senate races in Virginia, Missouri, Montana, etc. Or are you operating under the assumption that voting machine errors always favor Republicans?
You're not even reading what I write. If we give him the benefit of the doubt that he was wearing his "Republican Fundraiser" hat that day, then the fact that he works for Diebold is completely irrelevant. The lowliest volunteer going door to door trying to get out the vote for Bush could have said the same thing and nobody would think anything of it. I'm making YOUR argument better than you are.
But my original point was and is that those words coming from someone in his position constitute a conflict of interest and a very real reason not to cast your vote on a proprietary electronic machine. I'm not saying let's never vote electronically, I'm just saying let's boycott obviously flawed and unverifiable solutions.
I've never heard that interpretation of his remarks before, so I googled for the actual quote. Turns out you're completely wrong. The only defense of his comments is that he was wearing his "Republican Fundraiser" hat when he made them, not his "Voting Machine Manufacturer" hat and, to his (slight) credit, he got out of politics after people pointed out this conflict of interest. And if you dismiss the story below because it's from known Librul Media Outlet CBS, then you're the one wearing the tinfoil hat:
m ain632436.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/
"...A Diebold plot to rig the elections? Where did that idea come from? The rumors began with this letter from Diebold's CEO, Wally Odell, who was moonlighting as a Republican fundraiser. In his invitation to a benefit for Bush last August, he wrote, 'I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president.'
After a public outcry, Odell announced in May that he was getting out of politics.
'Our CEO Wally O'Dell's position from a political standpoint really does not reflect at all in our equipment or the functionality of our equipment. It has nothing to do with how elections are run,' says Radke.
But Rubin says he is not accusing Diebold of rigging elections. 'I'm just saying that they could do it and that we shouldn't allow our elections to be under control of vendors when there are ways of designing voting machines such that the vendors don't have the control of them.'
It's not "kneejerk", it's in response to dozens of documented and unresolved issues, including successful proof-of-concept hacks and allegations if not outright confessions of uncertified code modifications from the manufacturers. Then there are the thousands of personal accounts of machines recording the wrong vote (usually a glitch or operator error, but still not reassuring), and the "it just looks bad" promise by a certain electronic voting machine manufacturer to deliver Ohio to Bush in 2004, which they did by the slimmest of margins and against all predictions.
Isn't it obvious? Now PHBs can cram 3 workers into a single cube!
It's amazing how many people need that pointed out to them. You should print up bumper stickers.
Exactly: OF COURSE he got criticized for going into Iraq, because none of the conditions you described in your first paragraph applied to Iraq. Maybe that was your point, but it sounded like you were trying to conflate Afghanistan and Iraq to "prove" that the invading the latter was justified.
It's actually THREE free credit reports per year. One from each of the three credit reporting companies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. I know this because I just did all three last week, but you should be able to get one every 4 months as long as you don't use the same company twice within a year.
Couldn't the salesperson explain the fine print? Isn't that their job? Or is this company admitting that their sales people are so dishonest/incompetent that you shouldn't buy anything from them without a third party present to advocate for you.
Wow... I just had a dark vision of the future. Everyone who can afford it retains a gimp lawyer who follows them everywhere they go on a leash. The gimp conducts all of your arguments, goes over all of your contracts, and generally intimidates anyone who does business with you. Those who can't afford this service are screwed.
Nothing beats signing statement. Good ol' signing statement.
You're right, this has happened on the other side of the political aisle. The allegations are always dismissed with the defense that it doesn't matter, as long as the judges uphold the law in their decisions. I don't think anyone has made the case that her decision was legally unfounded, so you'll forgive me if I'm unimpressed with attempts to get it overturned on a technicality. And yes, after 12 years of scorched-earth politics from the right, I'll take these small victories however we can get them.
Oh wow, that's awful. A judge with ties to an organization dedicated to civil liberties. No wonder you're so pissed off.
I haven't heard of this conflict of interest. Is it that she's an American citizen and therefore subject to the warrantless wiretapping that she ruled illegal? Or is it that she's a terrist luvin librul and therefore shouldn't be ruling on matters possibly related to terrorism?
Sorry, I couldn't resist formatting the question as a troll, but I really am curious as to what the alleged conflict is.
There have been reports of poll workers being allowed to take electronic voting machines home with them the night before the election. Even if that weren't the case, lots of people have access to these machines in the days/weeks/months leading up to the election. There's nothing about this hack that requires it to be performed the same day.
So what you're saying is, in the old days, only a small group of elites could tamper with election outcomes. Now anyone can do it! Truly, a great day for democracy.
If they really think global warming is real and is going to cause sea level to rise and flood their city, maybe they should be proactive and sell their property to someone who doesn't believe it.
Stupid Malaysian fishermen, just sell your corrugated zinc shacks on Craigslist or something!
I might be willing to buy the bit about recycling paper being bad for the environment with some evidence to back it up, but there are a couple of points you made that are invalid or misleading.
1. Gore was never "in power". Bill Clinton was President and he took more input from his wife than from Gore. You could criticize Gore for not asserting himself more, but very few VPs before Cheney have, that I am aware of (I'm young, Dan Quayle's my major point of reference here).
2. As far as the private jet goes, my understanding is that Gore calculates his entire carbon footprint (home, cars, jets, etc) and purchases offsets in renewable energy from sites like www.carbonfund.org to make his effective footprint zero. How much faith you have in carbon footprint calculations or the effectiveness of purchased offsets is another matter, but you can't call Gore a hypocrite if he believes in both of these things. Another way to look at it is that, if his efforts, wasteful as they may be, result in lots of people collectively reducing their CO2 output by more than Gore is expending, then it will be worthwhile. Either way, you can't seriously expect him to bike across the country or row across the sea to promote his movie.
Wow, you got me. I've fallen into the deep canyon of environmental responsibility. Please save me from my recycling bin and my daily walk to work through the park (or the bus on rainy days). Please open my eyes to the dangers of NOT polluting the air I breathe. Oh, what a fool I've been!
Wait, is he leading them to a wall or to a cliff? You've clearly put as much thought into this as you have into your blind hatred of Al Gore.
I don't know if you're still reading replies, but I'll take a stab at it:
Due to our superior abstract reasoning skills (which evolved because they helped us survive), humans are prone to depression, mostly from the thought that we're insignificant and nothing we do matters because we're just going to die someday anyway (i.e. nihlism, the thing that makes you smile). Thus we evolved to be artistic, musical and religious because those things kept us from jumping off of cliffs, improving our chances of survival.
QED. Now someone get a grant and prove it.