Does you're side really want to start talking about voting fraud (as opposed to metaphysical "voter intent" and "hanging chads")?
As a matter of fact, YES. Very much so. This is not a Republican issue, or a Democratic issue, or Libertarian or Green or Constitutional or any other party issue. This is an American issue, one which crosses party boundaries and loyalties. It is about the country, not a party, whatever party that may be. The goal is a strong democracy, above and beyond pointing fingers at which party is more guilty.
ANYONE who engages in vote fraud is reprehensible. Saying "Yeah? Well they did it, too!" is no excuse, and, by dividing people into us-versus-them camps, does nothing to advance democracy.
Even if this causes political damage to my party of choice -- and I am a Democrat -- I am willing to accept that if it promotes democracy throughout the land. I will NOT put party loyalty above this most fundamental principle, and I object strenuously to those who do.
You know, it seems to me that Apple has replaced Sun in the high-end server department. Now, I fully admit that servers are not my usual cuppa, so someone with more experience please correct me if I'm wrong. But from where I sit Apple servers look a lot more attractive, and not just on an aesthetics level, either. Sun *used* to be the end-all-be-all when it came to high-end servers, but apart from the Sun Fires it seems that Apple has much more to offer these days.
Use existing police powers, which are powerful and ample. We cannot achieve 100% protection without completely abandoning our dedication to liberty, democracy, and justice, such as they remain. If assuring safety means abandoning these principles, then I would rather be unsafe.
When you say "super glue", most people here think of Superglue(tm), which is cyanoacrylate adhesive, not mollusk snot.
I think I might have found my new.sig.
Plasma is for sucks. DLP is the way to go.
on
CES 2004 Coverage
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Plasma displays seem to have gotten all the media attention for some reason, but DLP projectors and displays are superior in just about every measurable way: brightness, weight, resolution, etc. Plus DLP screens are far less of a maintenance nightmare: the only thing you will ever have to replace is the bulb, and that only once every 3 or 4 years. Plasma screens, on the other hand, are not expected to have a total lifetime of much longer than that.
I wish I had time to reply to more of your message, but I'm at work and busy today. But I did want to respond to this:
How about this: are people who smoke pot unethical? Immoral?
Yes. And no. There are two separate issues to consider: the act of smoking pot, and the breaking of the law. The breaking of the law is immoral, while the pot smoking is not. Whether it is a justifiable action depends upon how much emphasis you place upon obeying the law.
I personally do not think that a prohibition on smoking pot is a justified cause of lawbreaking, but then again I occasionally smoke out.
Your attempt at persecution sympathy is noted, but ultimately fails. I occasionally browse at -1, and I've seen tons of anti-religious posts modded down, sometimes justly, sometimes not. The post you are replying to was no more full of hate than any other energetic critique of a dogma.
Hate: "All Christians should die."
Not: "Christians perform symbolic ritualistic cannibalism. That's freaking weird, man."
I know Christians in America love to tell each other that they are a persecuted minority, but it doesn't hold water under scurtiny.
Why should "everyone" calm down? Because you used a touch screen voting machine, and were herded through with no one in jackboots watching over your shoulder? I don't think so. Nothing in the system you described allowed for any accountability or verification that the vote you made was the one that was actually tallied, and there doesn't appear to be a way to do so using that method.
Without an audit trail there is no way to tell if fraud is being perpetrated or not. So, no, I will not "calm down", and I would hope that you might would reconsider your air of superiority in this matter.
For example, a 4x5 using Velvia color film is in the 200 megapixel range, and the 8x10 would be closer to the gigapixel category using 25 ASA black and white...
Your numbers are way, way off. I don't know where you're getting those, but the results of 4x5 prints from cameras with 5-6 megapixels are indistinguishable from their negative counterparts, even with pro-level 35mm film. This is true of color, sharpness, and resolution. And for really impressive results, the new Kodak 645H digital back for the Hasselblad H1 does captures at 16 megapixels, and can have it's pictures blown up to 20x20 and beyond with no noticable pixelation or loss of image quality. All for the low, low price of $12,000. (Camera body not included.)
The simple fact is that you are mistaken by a factor of about 50 in thinking that 200 megapixels is necessary for 4x5 prints that are comparable to 35mm film. Such results can be achieved with digital cameras today.
I dont think people realize how big of a threat poor computer security can truly be. I hope that this is fixed before a "wakeup call."
Me too. I do wonder, though, how effective any kind of "cyber attack" could really be against the USG. The government has millions of computers, hundreds of different networks, and so forth. If al Qaeda did attempt something against the government's computer systems, I would imagine it would have to be a coordinated attack coming from several different sources at once. Otherwise the effects would not be as dramatic as al Qaeda has shown desire for.
It's always possible that there are a few systems that control communications, but these departments each have their own networks. Time will tell, I suppose. Other than virus released into the wild, though, I haven't seen evidence of any attack of this nature.
I work on a big, important (for our business), expensive website. I love open standards, and fight for them wherever possible. BUT (and it's a big but) when it comes to web stuff, like it or not, IE _is_ the defacto standard.
Then you don't know HTML and/or CSS well enough. Sorry. I, too, work on a major website. We do probably $10 mil a year in business, and get over 10,000 hits a day.
Guess what? It's 95% standards compliant. It works in IE5+, all versions of Mozilla, and NN4.7+, on Mac and Windows. Every developer in our organization abhors targeting IE, and we haven't had to resort to IE-specific hacks for anything. Through the judicious use of CSS and simplified HTML, we have pages that look the same in all major browsers and on different platforms.
Don't tell me it can't be done, because it can. 95% of our users use IE, but we don't code that way, and it doesn't cost us any more money or effort to do so. Coding pages that work across different browsers is a matter of knowledge of the specifications and keeping your markup simple, no matter how many nested tables you might be used.
Compare NASA's funding to the DoD's. Why are you eyeing NASA's paltry pile of dollars when there's a towering mountain right next to it that is largely unneeded?
I'm not. I agree with you that the defense budget is far, far too high. But I think that NASA's budget is too high, also, and that we really need to rethink those priorities before throwing more money away at a space station whose purpose is difficult to defend.
And NASA serves a very important function. We need to figure out how to maintain a growing high-tech society without making all our drinking water taste like MTBE. Learning how to use space to our advantage is an important step.
Why is it important? Both the market and direct federal scientific funding drives successful research outside of the various space programs. Look, I used to be a huge NASA supporter. Heinlein fan, Sagan fan (still am, really), Mars trilogy under my belt, and so forth. But then I realized something: there is a very good chance that it is so difficult to travel through space that we will not be able to successfully emigrate to another planet without advances in propulsion technology on the order of Star Trek. IMO, as long as we are limited to our current means of propulsion and the low speeds given by them, human interplanetary space travel is just not possible. Therefore, our energies can be better spent elsewhere, up until we *do* develop warp drives, or whatever.
And anything that increases our chances of going to space *is* a good act.
Why?
I reject this "six degress of separation" approach to charity. The list of projects that are more deserving of fudning than the space program is as long as my arm. Putting stuff in space is throwing money away, especially when you look at all the ways that the money could be better spent: AIDS vaccine research, genetically modified crops, improved voting systems, implementing means to reduce pollution from coal fired power plants, improved surveilance of crooked corporate executives, increased teacher salaries and new schools, retraining programs for those who have lost manufacturing jobs to overseas labor, and on and on and on.
Money for space is feel good pie-in-the-sky money. The justifications for it are growing increasingly thin in the face of more immediate and FAR easier to justify needs.
Nobody wants to pay taxes, but they all want good schools, safe and well-maintained streets, etc.
I think I'm the only person on the freaking planet who actually considers paying taxes a civic duty, and that pays them willingly and with the knowledge that it is in my best interest to do so. (And no, not in some "if you don't you go to jail" way, either.) Taxes pay for bad things, taxes pay for good things. I oppose the former and support the latter.
Too many people are patriotic right up until you ask them to put their money where their mouth is.
Return to Moon May Be on Agenda: "President Bush's aides are considering a new lunar exploration program and other unifying national goals, including a campaign to promote longevity or fight childhood illness or hunger, as they sift ideas for a fresh agenda for the final year of his term, administration officials said yesterday."
Hmm. Perhaps they would like something to distract from the whole Afghanistan-Iraq thing, and the less than stellar results of those... And the Valerie Plame affair... and vote fraude through unauditable voting systems, like Diebold... and the massive budget and trade deficits.. and the declining value of the dollar...
You think modern conservatives give a rats ass about fiscal policy? Man, hell no. They only care about (a) maintaining power, (b) preparing for the imminent return of Jesus Christ, (c) making sure gays don't marry, and (d) abolishing taxes and the government and government programs which those taxes support. Everything else can go fuck itself.
Diebold machines were used widely in the 2000 election, the 2002 congressional elections, and will be similarly used in 2004. Georgia, for example, exclusively uses Diebold for their polling machines, and other states are similarly locked in (although the list escapes me at this early hour.)
The use of black-box voting systems is a threat to democracy. I believe that opposing it with violence is not only necessary but ethically justified.
Ok, I'll bite. What are we doing 'to' people of different nations around the world? Of late, it sounds like we're sending jobs to them....removing bloody dictators...and helping to resolve conflicts (troops in Bosnia, trying to help Palestine/Israel peace...etc.).
Well, while there have certainly been noble deeds done by the American government, there have also been grave injustices done by them, especially during that long dark time that was the Cold War, when any action that could remotely be justified by "fighting communism" was justified. See: El Salvador, the bombing of South Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War, the support of Pinochet by the U.S. government, the post-WW2 suppression of pro-democratic elements in South Korea, and others. I see nothing less ideological in the current administration than in the thinking behind those foreign policy decisions.
This isn't stuff I'm making up just to make the US look bad. I love my country, but there are elements within its power structure that carry out actions that have no basis in justice or virtue, or really even anything other than short-term gain. As mentioned above, these were frequently justified as fighting communism, now they are justified by saying they are to "fight terror." The pattern, however, is very much the same.
There is no collective responsibility in
practice, because it is not permissible to
apply collective punishment. As a result,
while the people of the U.S. as a collective
unit may be assigned a collective
responsibility in theory, I can't imagine
any possible system of justice which could
enforce that responsibility in practice.
I wholeheartedly agree. The original point was one of ultimate responsibility, which I believe we agree eventually rests upon the heads of the American people. But trying to establish a system of justice on this premise only leads to grave injustices being committed, viz.: 9/11. bin Laden felt/feels that the American people as a whole are targets for the actions taken by their government. This reveals the problems with putting a "blame the people" philosophy into practice, no matter how correct it might be in the abstract.
Assuming you do in fact mean citizens in the US, Americans in general are being taken for a ride by their government. The government is in turn being pushed around by large corporations.
But we, being the citizens of that nation, are ultimately responsible for its behavior. Too bad most Americans are far more interested in playing with their genetalia than in what their government is doing to people of different nations around the world.
I agree with you, though. Control is a central issue. I just disagree with you divorcing the American people from being responsible for the actions of our government. Which is, by the way, why I fully support civil disobedience with a sledgehammer re: Diebold voting machines.
I would suggest you try it, but I have tried the vi plugin and found it lacking. I do J2EE development (servlets, JSPs, etc.), and while I use Eclipse for my servlets and POJOs, I still use vim for my JSPs and other files. That's ok, though, because you can set up Eclipse to open up files using whatever editor you want.
There are plugins that allow you to do JSPs from within Eclipse, giving you access to code completion and so forth. But since I tend to eschew putting actual Java code in my JSPs anyway, I haven't bothered with them.
You didn't answer my question. PROFESSIONAL economists who don't have an axe to grind seem to think the economy is improving, and instead of addressing that, you site specious arguments.
a) Professional economists rarely agree on anything, b) read this. It's from that rabidly socialist commie axe-to-grind newsmag the Economist, and even THEY think American fiscal policy has some issues that have not been addressed by the administration. These issues cannot be ignored without consequences. You must pay the piper eventually.
Interesting quote:
In their most recent poll, members of the National Association of Business Economists described the federal deficit as the biggest problem facing America's economy. A bipartisan coalition of three economic think-tanks--the Committee for Economic Development, the Concord Coalition and the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities--recently declared that, without a change in course, the next decade might be the "most fiscally irresponsible" in the country's history.
Look man, despite what you seem to think, people can wish for the same goal -- a healthy, robust American economy -- and differ about how best to pursue that goal. This does not mean they have "an axe to grind". The Bush administration is not removed from criticism, and trying to defend it against any and all criticism, however justified that criticism might be, just winds up hurting both the President and the country as a whole.
Slashdot Mirror
Does you're side really want to start talking about voting fraud (as opposed to metaphysical "voter intent" and "hanging chads")?
As a matter of fact, YES. Very much so. This is not a Republican issue, or a Democratic issue, or Libertarian or Green or Constitutional or any other party issue. This is an American issue, one which crosses party boundaries and loyalties. It is about the country, not a party, whatever party that may be. The goal is a strong democracy, above and beyond pointing fingers at which party is more guilty.
ANYONE who engages in vote fraud is reprehensible. Saying "Yeah? Well they did it, too!" is no excuse, and, by dividing people into us-versus-them camps, does nothing to advance democracy.
Even if this causes political damage to my party of choice -- and I am a Democrat -- I am willing to accept that if it promotes democracy throughout the land. I will NOT put party loyalty above this most fundamental principle, and I object strenuously to those who do.
Liberty. Justice. Democracy. They're worth fighting for.
You know, it seems to me that Apple has replaced Sun in the high-end server department. Now, I fully admit that servers are not my usual cuppa, so someone with more experience please correct me if I'm wrong. But from where I sit Apple servers look a lot more attractive, and not just on an aesthetics level, either. Sun *used* to be the end-all-be-all when it came to high-end servers, but apart from the Sun Fires it seems that Apple has much more to offer these days.
I don't know about the ESA, but all images that NASA publishes are public domain. I would be surprised if the ESA were any different.
Use existing police powers, which are powerful and ample. We cannot achieve 100% protection without completely abandoning our dedication to liberty, democracy, and justice, such as they remain. If assuring safety means abandoning these principles, then I would rather be unsafe.
Some things are worth more than my life.
When you say "super glue", most people here think of Superglue(tm), which is cyanoacrylate adhesive, not mollusk snot.
I think I might have found my new .sig.
Plasma displays seem to have gotten all the media attention for some reason, but DLP projectors and displays are superior in just about every measurable way: brightness, weight, resolution, etc. Plus DLP screens are far less of a maintenance nightmare: the only thing you will ever have to replace is the bulb, and that only once every 3 or 4 years. Plasma screens, on the other hand, are not expected to have a total lifetime of much longer than that.
Oh yeah, and vim is better than emacs.
I wish I had time to reply to more of your message, but I'm at work and busy today. But I did want to respond to this:
How about this: are people who smoke pot unethical? Immoral?
Yes. And no. There are two separate issues to consider: the act of smoking pot, and the breaking of the law. The breaking of the law is immoral, while the pot smoking is not. Whether it is a justifiable action depends upon how much emphasis you place upon obeying the law.
I personally do not think that a prohibition on smoking pot is a justified cause of lawbreaking, but then again I occasionally smoke out.
I wasted my last mod point last night modding something as funny. After reading your post, I really regret doing that.
Dammit.
Your attempt at persecution sympathy is noted, but ultimately fails. I occasionally browse at -1, and I've seen tons of anti-religious posts modded down, sometimes justly, sometimes not. The post you are replying to was no more full of hate than any other energetic critique of a dogma.
Hate: "All Christians should die."
Not: "Christians perform symbolic ritualistic cannibalism. That's freaking weird, man."
I know Christians in America love to tell each other that they are a persecuted minority, but it doesn't hold water under scurtiny.
Why should "everyone" calm down? Because you used a touch screen voting machine, and were herded through with no one in jackboots watching over your shoulder? I don't think so. Nothing in the system you described allowed for any accountability or verification that the vote you made was the one that was actually tallied, and there doesn't appear to be a way to do so using that method.
Without an audit trail there is no way to tell if fraud is being perpetrated or not. So, no, I will not "calm down", and I would hope that you might would reconsider your air of superiority in this matter.
For example, a 4x5 using Velvia color film is in the 200 megapixel range, and the 8x10 would be closer to the gigapixel category using 25 ASA black and white...
Your numbers are way, way off. I don't know where you're getting those, but the results of 4x5 prints from cameras with 5-6 megapixels are indistinguishable from their negative counterparts, even with pro-level 35mm film. This is true of color, sharpness, and resolution. And for really impressive results, the new Kodak 645H digital back for the Hasselblad H1 does captures at 16 megapixels, and can have it's pictures blown up to 20x20 and beyond with no noticable pixelation or loss of image quality. All for the low, low price of $12,000. (Camera body not included.)
The simple fact is that you are mistaken by a factor of about 50 in thinking that 200 megapixels is necessary for 4x5 prints that are comparable to 35mm film. Such results can be achieved with digital cameras today.
I dont think people realize how big of a threat poor computer security can truly be. I hope that this is fixed before a "wakeup call."
Me too. I do wonder, though, how effective any kind of "cyber attack" could really be against the USG. The government has millions of computers, hundreds of different networks, and so forth. If al Qaeda did attempt something against the government's computer systems, I would imagine it would have to be a coordinated attack coming from several different sources at once. Otherwise the effects would not be as dramatic as al Qaeda has shown desire for.
It's always possible that there are a few systems that control communications, but these departments each have their own networks. Time will tell, I suppose. Other than virus released into the wild, though, I haven't seen evidence of any attack of this nature.
I work on a big, important (for our business), expensive website. I love open standards, and fight for them wherever possible. BUT (and it's a big but) when it comes to web stuff, like it or not, IE _is_ the defacto standard.
Then you don't know HTML and/or CSS well enough. Sorry. I, too, work on a major website. We do probably $10 mil a year in business, and get over 10,000 hits a day.
Guess what? It's 95% standards compliant. It works in IE5+, all versions of Mozilla, and NN4.7+, on Mac and Windows. Every developer in our organization abhors targeting IE, and we haven't had to resort to IE-specific hacks for anything. Through the judicious use of CSS and simplified HTML, we have pages that look the same in all major browsers and on different platforms.
Don't tell me it can't be done, because it can. 95% of our users use IE, but we don't code that way, and it doesn't cost us any more money or effort to do so. Coding pages that work across different browsers is a matter of knowledge of the specifications and keeping your markup simple, no matter how many nested tables you might be used.
Compare NASA's funding to the DoD's. Why are you eyeing NASA's paltry pile of dollars when there's a towering mountain right next to it that is largely unneeded?
I'm not. I agree with you that the defense budget is far, far too high. But I think that NASA's budget is too high, also, and that we really need to rethink those priorities before throwing more money away at a space station whose purpose is difficult to defend.
And NASA serves a very important function. We need to figure out how to maintain a growing high-tech society without making all our drinking water taste like MTBE. Learning how to use space to our advantage is an important step.
Why is it important? Both the market and direct federal scientific funding drives successful research outside of the various space programs. Look, I used to be a huge NASA supporter. Heinlein fan, Sagan fan (still am, really), Mars trilogy under my belt, and so forth. But then I realized something: there is a very good chance that it is so difficult to travel through space that we will not be able to successfully emigrate to another planet without advances in propulsion technology on the order of Star Trek. IMO, as long as we are limited to our current means of propulsion and the low speeds given by them, human interplanetary space travel is just not possible. Therefore, our energies can be better spent elsewhere, up until we *do* develop warp drives, or whatever.
And anything that increases our chances of going to space *is* a good act.
Why?
I reject this "six degress of separation" approach to charity. The list of projects that are more deserving of fudning than the space program is as long as my arm. Putting stuff in space is throwing money away, especially when you look at all the ways that the money could be better spent: AIDS vaccine research, genetically modified crops, improved voting systems, implementing means to reduce pollution from coal fired power plants, improved surveilance of crooked corporate executives, increased teacher salaries and new schools, retraining programs for those who have lost manufacturing jobs to overseas labor, and on and on and on.
Money for space is feel good pie-in-the-sky money. The justifications for it are growing increasingly thin in the face of more immediate and FAR easier to justify needs.
Space: It's not a goal, it's a religion.
Nobody wants to pay taxes, but they all want good schools, safe and well-maintained streets, etc.
I think I'm the only person on the freaking planet who actually considers paying taxes a civic duty, and that pays them willingly and with the knowledge that it is in my best interest to do so. (And no, not in some "if you don't you go to jail" way, either.) Taxes pay for bad things, taxes pay for good things. I oppose the former and support the latter.
Too many people are patriotic right up until you ask them to put their money where their mouth is.
Return to Moon May Be on Agenda : "President Bush's aides are considering a new lunar exploration program and other unifying national goals, including a campaign to promote longevity or fight childhood illness or hunger, as they sift ideas for a fresh agenda for the final year of his term, administration officials said yesterday."
Hmm. Perhaps they would like something to distract from the whole Afghanistan-Iraq thing, and the less than stellar results of those... And the Valerie Plame affair... and vote fraude through unauditable voting systems, like Diebold... and the massive budget and trade deficits.. and the declining value of the dollar...
You think modern conservatives give a rats ass about fiscal policy? Man, hell no. They only care about (a) maintaining power, (b) preparing for the imminent return of Jesus Christ, (c) making sure gays don't marry, and (d) abolishing taxes and the government and government programs which those taxes support. Everything else can go fuck itself.
You THINK I'm kidding.
Using violence does not take power away from the govenment, it gives the government MORE power.
You are right, of course. I should have been more clear: I support destroying Diebold voting machines at the polling locations. Nothing more.
My apologies. It was early.
Diebold machines were used widely in the 2000 election, the 2002 congressional elections, and will be similarly used in 2004. Georgia, for example, exclusively uses Diebold for their polling machines, and other states are similarly locked in (although the list escapes me at this early hour.)
The use of black-box voting systems is a threat to democracy. I believe that opposing it with violence is not only necessary but ethically justified.
Ok, I'll bite. What are we doing 'to' people of different nations around the world? Of late, it sounds like we're sending jobs to them....removing bloody dictators...and helping to resolve conflicts (troops in Bosnia, trying to help Palestine/Israel peace...etc.).
Well, while there have certainly been noble deeds done by the American government, there have also been grave injustices done by them, especially during that long dark time that was the Cold War, when any action that could remotely be justified by "fighting communism" was justified. See: El Salvador, the bombing of South Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War, the support of Pinochet by the U.S. government, the post-WW2 suppression of pro-democratic elements in South Korea, and others. I see nothing less ideological in the current administration than in the thinking behind those foreign policy decisions.
This isn't stuff I'm making up just to make the US look bad. I love my country, but there are elements within its power structure that carry out actions that have no basis in justice or virtue, or really even anything other than short-term gain. As mentioned above, these were frequently justified as fighting communism, now they are justified by saying they are to "fight terror." The pattern, however, is very much the same.
There is no collective responsibility in practice, because it is not permissible to apply collective punishment. As a result, while the people of the U.S. as a collective unit may be assigned a collective responsibility in theory, I can't imagine any possible system of justice which could enforce that responsibility in practice.
I wholeheartedly agree. The original point was one of ultimate responsibility, which I believe we agree eventually rests upon the heads of the American people. But trying to establish a system of justice on this premise only leads to grave injustices being committed, viz.: 9/11. bin Laden felt/feels that the American people as a whole are targets for the actions taken by their government. This reveals the problems with putting a "blame the people" philosophy into practice, no matter how correct it might be in the abstract.
Assuming you do in fact mean citizens in the US, Americans in general are being taken for a ride by their government. The government is in turn being pushed around by large corporations.
But we, being the citizens of that nation, are ultimately responsible for its behavior. Too bad most Americans are far more interested in playing with their genetalia than in what their government is doing to people of different nations around the world.
I agree with you, though. Control is a central issue. I just disagree with you divorcing the American people from being responsible for the actions of our government. Which is, by the way, why I fully support civil disobedience with a sledgehammer re: Diebold voting machines.
I would suggest you try it, but I have tried the vi plugin and found it lacking. I do J2EE development (servlets, JSPs, etc.), and while I use Eclipse for my servlets and POJOs, I still use vim for my JSPs and other files. That's ok, though, because you can set up Eclipse to open up files using whatever editor you want.
There are plugins that allow you to do JSPs from within Eclipse, giving you access to code completion and so forth. But since I tend to eschew putting actual Java code in my JSPs anyway, I haven't bothered with them.
Summary: Eclipse WITH vim is a great combination.
You didn't answer my question. PROFESSIONAL economists who don't have an axe to grind seem to think the economy is improving, and instead of addressing that, you site specious arguments.
a) Professional economists rarely agree on anything, b) read this. It's from that rabidly socialist commie axe-to-grind newsmag the Economist, and even THEY think American fiscal policy has some issues that have not been addressed by the administration. These issues cannot be ignored without consequences. You must pay the piper eventually.
Interesting quote:
In their most recent poll, members of the National Association of Business Economists described the federal deficit as the biggest problem facing America's economy. A bipartisan coalition of three economic think-tanks--the Committee for Economic Development, the Concord Coalition and the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities--recently declared that, without a change in course, the next decade might be the "most fiscally irresponsible" in the country's history.
Look man, despite what you seem to think, people can wish for the same goal -- a healthy, robust American economy -- and differ about how best to pursue that goal. This does not mean they have "an axe to grind". The Bush administration is not removed from criticism, and trying to defend it against any and all criticism, however justified that criticism might be, just winds up hurting both the President and the country as a whole.