The US forced the UK's hands, making them arrest the suspects weeks or months before the Brits had intended. It will make the case harder to prove (they hadn't purchased any airline tickets, some of them hadn't even gotten their passports yet, they hadn't prepared any explosives and the UK--standing up to the US--in insisting on due process) but it fit right in with the Bush administration's plans to swiftboat Ned Lamont and use the arrests for fund raising, so they went ahead anyway.
The general problem with recognizing whether or not warrantless wiretaps will aid a terror investigation is that while it's true that 99% of terrorism investigation will likely never have a need for a warrantless wiretap before they will be found out, there will be that 1%* that would require it to be found out before the attack occurs.
Huh? What would your "1% case" look like? Remember, they can already wiretap for 72 hours before getting the warrant, they can and do get warrants 24/7 (including going to the judges's houses in the middle of the night), and the warrants are essentially never turned down. Furthermore, there are multiple judges, and they have a choice of which one they use, so even the 0.00000001% case where one of the judges in in cahoots with the terrorists seems to me to be covered--they just go to one of the other judges.
Please describe even one case where they'd have to break the law.
--MarkusQ
P.S. For that matter, can you even come up with a plausible reason why they'd want to? The only two I've heard that hold any water at all are that they're trying to eliminate the other two branches of government, and don't want to admit the courts have any authority, or they're following in Nixon's footsteps and spying on political opponents (presumably to get blackmail material). I'd love to hear an alternative that covers the facts.
I find it pretty entertaining that you would ask for sources after making the bizarre and baseless statements about the role you think Karl Rove played in the forgeries without even attempting to back them up.
Where, exactly, do you see me making any baseless statements about what I think Karl Rove did or didn't do in this case? For that matter, where do you see me making statements about what I believe or don't believe about Rove's involvement (if any) in this story? I believe I've sourced all of the things I have claimed Rove has done (and you haven't disputed them), and I have never said that I think Rove was behind this, only that the original poster was not necessarily paranoid for thinking so.
Saying that its unfair to call someone paranoid just because they think there is cheese in their refrigerator is not all the same as claiming that they do have cheese in their refrigerator.
But on to your "sources" for the claim that Bush denied the essence of the forged memos (noting that you actually made the stronger--and obviously untrue--claim that Bush contested "everything" about them):
The White House said multiple times that they made no attempt to authenticate the documents
So? That wasn't the question and you know it. Saying "I haven't authenticated the documents" has absolutely nothing to do with admitting to or denying the statements made in them. You can clearly have both authentic and forged documents that contain both correct and incorrect claims.
the Press Secretary responded that what had been asserted "simply was not the case".
Closer, but still no cigar. What Scotty says in the link you site isn't what you quote him as saying; he says "the commanding officer at the time has categorically stated that what had been asserted simply was not the case." He pointedly refuses to deny the contents, or say that Bush denied them, even when he is pressed. Instead, he offers the "fact" that an unnamed source (possibly one of your dead witnesses) has said that something unspecified was not true.
"see this"
This link doesn't directly address to question I asked you to provide links on but it does indirectly support my position:
For weeks, as the controversy grew, the president did nothing to defend himself. Those who wanted to speak up in his defense, like William Campenni and Bob Harmon, were not contacted by the White House; instead, they decided to go public on their own.
...and does not offer any indication that, at the time that was written, the White House had issued a denial. (Note--releasing documentation of uncontested facts does not constitute a denial of other, related claims).
The rest of your historical background is largely irrelevant, uncontested material, though biased (for example, if you're going to drag in side issues, why leave out the fact that Harriet Miers was paid $19,000.00 to handle the issue of Bush's service records when he was running for governor, and specifically with the accusation that a $23,000,000.00 bribe had been paid to keep the issue of how he got into the guard secret--note that I'm not saying this is relevant, just pointing out that you were very selective in what you chose to include and what you chose to leave out).
if they could make a program that would detect all bugs in a program, it would violate Turing's proof
You have been reduced to saying:
these static analysis tools concentrate on factoring parts of the program (which is guaranteed to be context-sensitive) into regular and context-free parts that are more suitable for analysis. For instance, a lot of security vulnerabilities come from parser bugs, but luckily a lot of languages encountered by parsers are context-free.
In other words, you have gone from claiming that it is possible to write a program that will find all bug in any program (which, the original poster and I agree, is impossible) to arguing that static analysis can find some bugs in some kinds of programs, which no one is disputing.
The problem with your "finite number of states" argument is that, if you are going to allow real-world constraints to intrude, you will run out of time long before you run out of storage space. Even a very fast machine, with a very small amount of memory, will never be able to get through even a vanishingly small proportion of its states before the universe is canceled due to low ratings.
For all intents and purposes, Turing's results apply to real computers, in so far as the actual real world limitations they face don't change the conclusions.
You say this as if it invalidates his point. Since (as you would obviously agree) no computer is more powerful than a Turing machine, if something is impossible for a Turing machine it is necessarily impossible for a computer as well. If anything, your quibble makes his argument stronger.
Our only real difference is that you look at "the system" and you see something that only accepts inputs called "votes," which is mostly ignores. You then (justifiably, given your assumptions) conclude that it's hopeless to try to change things.
I, on the other hand, see a fragile structure that is mostly smoke and mirrors, which derives all it's power from a few simple tricks ("Look over there!", "What's your price?", and "Nice life you got there. It'd be a pity if anything happened to it.") most of which it consistently fails to follow through on. The only reason "the system" seems so stable is that people think it's stable, and nobody dares to try to change it.
You'd probably call me a blind optimist, and I'd say you are unjustifiably pessimistic--but we'd both claim to be realists.
As for the list above, if you stay with your restricted view of things (that the courts aren't a legitimate part of the political process, and that having a criminal convicted of a crime isn't a good way to take them out of circulation) then you are correct. And including Marion Barry in the list didn't really help my case. I just stuck him in when I realized my first Google had turned up almost exclusively Republicans, and I'm tired of being be accused of being partisan when I'm really just fed up with politicians in general.
That won't stop them from going wherever they want via IP addresses. And, in any case, doing it on the boxes themselves is the wrong approach--its known as "honor system security."
The real solution, as another poster suggested, is to do it on the NATing box. For that matter, if the systems are that important and that vulnerable, I would sure hope there's a firewall in the picture somewhere, either on the NATing box or somewhere outward from there. Do it in the firewall. After all that's what firewalls are for.
"If they lie, cheat, steal, etc, 65% of the district will still vote them back into office. Period."
Tell Joe Lieberman. Please. You also might mention it to Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay, Galen Fox, George Ryan, John Rowland, Tom Noe, Marion Barry, Bob Ney, Vince Cianci, Bill Janklow, Jim West, and...well, let's just say there is a limit.
"You're assuming that there's anybody on any ballot, anywhere, that can both be considered "more honest" and "has a chance in hell in unseating an incumbent.""
Yes, I am. They don't have a great shelf life, but they do exist.
"But in general, how can this regurgitated idea of "Work within the system to change the system" accomplish anything when the system in question is designed with the sole purpose of isolating any possible dissent? The system is created especially to resist you."
Ah, but I was created especially to resist it. And "it" in this case is a relative newcommer, while I have the benefit of millions of years of evolution. BTW, the whole "work within the system or not" dichotomy is misleading. Ignore the system and focus on the fact the humans are highly skilled at detecting and smacking down cheaters. This isn't about "the system" it's about standing up for what's right.
Thanks for the comment. I don't personally find it objectionable (or else I wouldn't use it), but I can sympathize with the reaction. My personal hot button is referring to people by derogatory nicknames (e.g. "Turdblossom", which started as Bush's (affectionate?) name for Karl Rove) instead of just giving their real name. So I can relate.
I can't promise I'll drop it completely, but I'm sure I'll be less likely to use it knowing at least one person objects to it.
First off, I complement you on your snark. You do it well. But down to business.
You claim that his argument implies that cause and effect don't mean anything. This is not just a typical straw man argument, it's an obvious one.
What he said:
Don't kid yourself, that would be happening no matter what.
I said:
You claim that the exact same consequences would follow no matter what we did...in essence that cause and effect don't really mean anything.
This is hardly a strawman. In a universe where the exact same things would happen no matter what we did, what exactly would "cause and effect" mean? I defy you to accept his premise and give a cogent definition of causality.
He said "Everything is not simple." If I take your reading (that he is intending "All things are not-simple thus there are no things which are simple," it's even worse for him. For one thing, the situation he describes (the outcome is the same regardless of what we do) would be a direct counter example. You can't get much simpler than that.
You make a great appeal to fear and appeal to emotion to support your causes because we all know how bad those evil republicans are! But this doesn't change his statement that something other than the actions of our politicians is causing the hate aimed at westerners and/or non-muslims. Your argument is weak and the fact that you constantly attempt to change the discussions on/. to republican vs. democrat arguments further reduces your credibility.
Whoa there, buddy. Who said anything about evil Republicans or Republicans vs. Democrats? Certainly not me. I happen to be a life long registered Republican. My argument is against politicians of either party who run up huge deficits, stretch our military to near the breaking point, screw over the vets when they return, let their corporate owners feed at the public trough without restraint, ignore the law and the constitution when it suits them, and kill innocent people (of any nation) and turn the world against us in their blind lust for power.
I can't for the life of me understand why everyone keeps assuming this is "Republicans vs. Democrats" when the "opposition" party's main contribution to this whole fiasco is a bunch of half hearted whining about how they aren't getting their share of the spoils.
And why they hate us should be obvious to anyone who isn't blinded by some sort of partisan / nationalistic / racist dogmatism. What would you be doing today if, instead of going quietly into the night the Soviets had beaten us in the cold war, decided we needed "Regime Change," arrested the President, disbanded our military and police, and were this very minute building huge bases in our heartland, arming the Mexicans so they could come take what they wanted, letting their soldiers rape 14 year old American girls, kill them and their families and burn their bodies, and so on and so forth.
Would you be welcoming our new overlords? Or would you be a "terrorist"?
Spammers are paid a percentage or flat fee based on what is sold with their referrer ID.
I beg to differ. First, such a system would be all but unenforceable, and I can't see the spamers (who are the ones that will be risking prosecution, after all) saying, "Oh sure, you can pay me when you sell something; I can tell you guys are honest." But it also doesn't fit the data. Let's take a look at my in box, shall we?
Some folks selling "C-i-a-l-l-i-s" (or trying to). Looking at the raw message, I see one http: link, to a.info domain, with nothing beyond the FQD. They could of course have a separate domain for each spammer they used, but given how specific their domain name is it doesn't seem likely.
A blank spam. No subject, no body, no referrer ID.
A note from my wife. No referrer ID.
A pump and dump stock scam spam, no response info of any kind, and thus untraceable. No web bugs or other place to hide a refere ID.
A question from one of my company's laywers. No referrer ID that I can see.
A note from a psycho that believes the internet is spying on him. Spam, in a sense, but I think he's trying to warn us out of the goodness of his heart. No ID of any kind, and I suspect that if he knew his emails contain a message ID and a give an idea of the route they followed getting here, he'd faint.
Image spam; quite possibly tracable (I don't know what they image is; I don't fetch 'em).
Guttenspam. No payload.
Another image spam.
A note from my boss commenting on one of my earlier/. posts.
Another anonymous stock tip.
And another.
Watch replicas, one link, with only a FQD.
Sorry, I'm just not seeing the referrer IDs you speak of.
There are two layers at work; the spammers and the "vendors" they spam for. The spammers are paid to spam, but they don't really care if the product sells or not. It's just like any advertising--magazines are paid to print your ads, but if they ads don't work, it's not their problem.
If you extrapolate normal advertising out by a few orders of magnitude (dumber, cheaper, wider distribution, etc.) you get spam. If you don't extrapolate out far enough (and find yourself in direct mail or telemarketing), no worries. Just keep going in that general direction a while longer, and eventually you'll come to spam.
Are you kidding? The Democrats had been rabidly and blindly trying to attack Bush on this issue since he ran for Governor of Texas. National security was perceived as the Republicans biggest strength in the 2004 election, and Democrats were painted as weak. Do you really think that it is all that far-fetched to assume that a Democrat forged these documents in an attempt to undermine the Republicans perceived greatest political
strength while at the same time bring to light an "issue" that they had been trying to capitalize on for years?
This makes no sense. Forged documents wouldn't help them at all, and could (as it turns out, did) hurt them a lot. Nothing in the memos was new, it had (as you point out) all been in the news for years. It's like Mark Ferman(sp?) dropping the glove on OJ; they would have gotten a conviction if they hadn't planted evidence. Now I'd be the first to admit that there are some dim bulbs in the Democratic leadership, but your theory requires them to be clever and stupid at the same time. The Rove theory only require that the perpetrators be clever.
Of course Bush denied it. He went to great lengths to prove that his National Guard service was fulfilled, and that he was honorably discharged from the service. And the only person who would have been qualified to say if the information was "essentially" correct was the author, who was conveniently not around to make any comment.
Please produce a citation to support this. Find me one example where Bush denied the actual claims (and not some plausible sounding non-denial). For that matter, if he was so trying so hard to prove that he had fulfilled his obligation, why couldn't he scrape up anybody that remembered seeing him on base?
The Democrats fear and loathing of Karl Rove is laughable. I guess it makes sense, however. They have spent years trying to convince everybody that the first US President with a Harvard MBA is a complete moron, so they have to find some explanation as to why they keep losing to him. The evil-genius-wizard-behind-the-curtains title for Karl Rove fits that bill.
I am not a Democrat
Bush is the one that convinced me he's an idiot. He can't form a coherent sentence, his ideas suck (immigration is about the only thing he makes sense on) and he's done more than pretty much anyone in history to destroy my party and our country.
Rove's dirty tricks are well documented, and trace directly back to the last great threat to the Republican party, R. M. Nixon. It's his defenders that keep saying he's an "evil-genius"; I just say he's slime.
Please site your source for this. Mine is easy; for example at the time, MSNBC reported:
Yet, it was the White House -- not Kerry's campaign -- that distributed four memos from 1972 and 1973 from Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, now deceased, who was the commander of the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron in Houston where Bush served. The White House obtained the memos from CBS News, which said it was convinced of their authenticity, and the White House did not question their accuracy.
and
Records released this year when Bush's military service re-emerged as a campaign issue contain no evidence that he showed up for duty at all for five months in mid-1972 and document only a few occasions later that year.
And with regards to this:
The people who would know even stated that the information in the memos was essentially correct.
In this case, the only people that would know were dead.
Nuts. They aren't all dead. We aren't talking about a Clinton scandal here. The typist, for example, has said that the memos were forgeries but that the sentiments they expressed were accurate.
--MarkusQ
P.S. As for all your Rove blather, I never said he was evil, or a "super genius", or any of the other stuff you're "rebutting." So save your defenses for someone who cares.
Not even Bush is a great enough moron to attack a nuclear power. And even if he was, I doubt Dick Cheney and the cabinet and the Pentagon are all suicidal enough to let it happen.
I think of all the things I've lost over the years, I miss my faith that there was, somewhere, a limit to human stupidity the most.
Why don't you 'assume' something about the photographer...... after all, he did said that he manipulated the images. It wasn't the evil republicans.
I never said he didn't, and I never said anything about "evil republicans." You ratio of successful "pwnage" as you call it might improve if you actually read the comments you are responding too.
I never said I believe everything the news tells me.
I never said that I believe anything is a "giant evil conspiracy"
I'm not at all sure how being one of the only ones on this sub-thread to provide links to back up my points mean I've "insulated myself into a small little world"
The proven wrong / proven right / psyops plant micro-rant makes no sense
The fact that something (say, the media) can be controlled by someone does not mean it can be controlled by everyone. In fact, it generally means exactly the opposite--if I have total control of something, you perforce have none.
I don't think sounding board means what you think it means.
I agree the inability of the MSM to distinguish fact from fiction is disturbing. However, that is neither here nor there.
I'll assume that you were trying to be sarcastic at several points in your first paragraph, if only because your post makes slightly more sense under that assumption. However, that means that you completely misunderstood my point, so I will spell it out.
Thirty years ago, the Democrats controlled congress, held the presidency, and (if memory serves) had appointed the majority of sitting federal judges. This was what I referred to as the Republicans "being on the mat".
Thirty years is three decades.
Rather than laying down and dying, the Republicans decided to fight back, and today the situation is completely reversed.
They did not do it by accident, nor by luck. It was intentional, and a great deal of time, money and effort was invested in the process.
As for your final paragraph, in the first place I'm not sure what bald-faced lies you are referring to, and in the second your conspiracy of divisiveness is easily explained as a natural consequence of the two party system. In such a system, both parties will look for ways to build a coalition of roughly 51% -- the minimum needed to win, yet leave the fewest number of supporters to be rewarded. You can get the same result in a classroom setting by handing out red and blue jackets. For that matter, the math behind it is rough;y the same as that for the evolutionary forces behind the nearly equal split between the sexes.
I'm assuming that (since you only objected to one point), that you agree with the rest and will focus on the one you singled out:
You insist I do fact-checking on this:
Sort of like the way the fake 60 Minutes article on Bush's little vacation from the Air National Guard was placed by a GOP operative trying to smear CBS and Dan Rather.
It isn't possible to fact-check a bald assertion, because there are no facts there to check. He's put forth a theory; it's on him to prove it.
It certainly is possible to fact check a bald assertion. Of all the things you might want to fact check, a bald assertion is perhaps the easiest. If I say something like "The bulk of Portugal lies to the west of Spain" you will find it much easier to fact check than if I say something like "How like a flower my true love blooms."
Of course, this doesn't always mean that we have the resources to do it. Claims like "The far side of Jupiter is about -170 degrees Celsius" or "Arnold Schwarzenegger wears pink thong underwear" can be hard (expensive, risky, time consuming) to verify. So instead you can do the next best thing, and sanity check the assertion, from multiple directions.
Do we need an explanation at all?
Yes. Everyone agrees that the documents exist, and no one has proven them to be authentic.
Does the proposed explanation fit the known facts?
Yes.
Is there an superior/generally accepted alternative explanation
No, not really. The other proposed explanations (e.g. Terry McCallef(sp) did it) are even weaker.
Does the proposed explanation require anyone to act out of character, or against their own interests?
No, not at all. In fact, the two prime reasons for suspecting Rove are 1) that it's very similar to things he's been known to do in the past (e.g. spreading negative information against his own candidate, such as he did for Harold See, forging documents as he did against Alan Dixon), and 2) it accomplished exactly what he would have wanted
Could the same arguments be turned around?
Not really. Nothing in the memos was contested, and all of it had been previously reported (e.g. by the BBC). Bush never even attempted to deny any of it. The people who would know even stated that the information in the memos was essentially correct. So it wouldn't have helped Kerry's team much at all to have the documents, even if they had been legitimate.
You can go on and on like this, but I don't see how you can make it a "tin foil hat" theory, even if it can't be proved. And bear in mind here that the burden of proof at this point is on you; the original poster asked a (possibly rhetorical) question and you attacked without (so far as I can see) much ground to stand on.
Remember when you fold your hat, you want the shiny side of the foil OUT, or it won't work to protect you from Karl Rove's Mind Control Rays.
Before you start implying that someone is paranoid, you may want to do a little fact checking. Going over the grandparent post line by line:
Would it surprise you to learn that these doctored photos were placed by someone on the far Right trying to discredit the centrist media?
Note that he's not saying that it's true, just suggesting that it might be. And, given that this is a well known technique in spin control / psyops, it isn't an unreasonable questions.
Sort of like the way the fake 60 Minutes article on Bush's little vacation from the Air National Guard was placed by a GOP operative trying to smear CBS and Dan Rather.
Well, he's certainly notalone in this theory, and it is consistent with what Rove is known to have done to Alan Dixon, John McCain, and many others.
The goons on the Right in this country are playing a very deep game.
Goons is subjective, and pejorative, but the rest of this point is darned hard to argue with. When a party rises from the mat to take control of all three branches of the federal Government, is a coordinated effort lasting decades, you'd be hard pressed to call it luck.
and they're morally deformed enough to try to smear the patriotism of a triple amputee war hero.
His name was Max Clealand, and they did just what he said.
It's just fascinating that the paste-eaters at LGF are always the ones who find these doctored photos,
"Always" is an exaduration, and "paste-eaters" is (probably) unjustified, but other than that it is an interesting point. They certainly have found a number of them, and always leaning to the right.
but never say a word about the ones on GOP web sites that show too much smoke on the destroyed World Trade Center.
This did happen, and so far as I know none of them raised a stink, so he's spot on.
Don't kid yourself, that would be happening no matter what. Your stance is incredibly naive. Everything is not simple.
Oh my, how to deconstruct this...there are so many places to start. Going for some low hanging fruit:
You claim that the exact same consequences would follow no matter what we did...in essence that cause and effect don't really mean anything. And then you claim that my stance is naive?
Granted that not everything is simple, that doesn't mean that nothing is simple. If there are two groups that hate each other and you arm them both, but prevent either from eliminating the other, they will both wind up hating you. If you approach someone weaker and pretend to be their friend in order to swipe their stuff, they will generally wind up hating you. If you tell people who are dying of something that you have a cure, and even tell them how to make it, but use force to prevent them from using the cure unless they pay you a sum which is far beyond their means, they will wind up hating you. And on, and on...
Hey, he didn't say it was Republicans calling him...
I never said he did. It might well be Joe "bought-and-paid-for" Lieberman. Or Hillary "screw defending the constitution I have to look tough and centrist even if it means selling out (and think of the children)" Clinton. Or Jane "I heart defense contractors" Harman. Or dozens of others.
Republicans don't have a patent on selling us out, they just happen to be doing so more efficiently at the moment. If the inside the beltway, big donor fueled DLC Democrats could get their heads out of their polls I'm sure they could do just as well.
Likewise, all the parties seem to have a smattering of honest, intelligent, hard working people who will stand up for what they believe in and do the job we sent them for (until somebody makes them an offer they can't refuse, or they die in a small plane crash).
They are also going along with these hair brained ideas because YOU elected them... I don't understand how people can be so anti politicians if you don't like them don't vote for them...
Ah, but I didn't vote for them. And, in several cases, neither did the majority of the people I know. So who did? Beats me. In one case it was the SCOTUS, but that in the rest? Perhaps some sheeple I've never met, perhaps a small team at the company that makes our voting machines, who knows?
The point, of course, is not how they got there, but how we can rid ourselves of them.
In addition to making annoying phone calls, they are also bilking you (and every member of your household) out of tens of thousands of dollars (each) to pay for foreign entanglements (wars, giving weapons to loonies, etc.) to stroke their half baked dreams of empire, selling your rights to the highest corporate bidder, who pay them back with booze and hookers (at your expense of course) and lying to you every chance they get. Oh yeah, and spying on you, paying newscasters to lie to you (again, your tax dollars at work), letting their corporate masters override you and your doctor's decisions about your health care, and hundreds of other things.
Plus that, they are being such jerks in the world at large that people you've never met hate you enough to kill you, just because they represent you.
But if the phone calls are the straw that breaks your camel's back, so be it.
Slashdot Mirror
Subtle?
The US forced the UK's hands, making them arrest the suspects weeks or months before the Brits had intended. It will make the case harder to prove (they hadn't purchased any airline tickets, some of them hadn't even gotten their passports yet, they hadn't prepared any explosives and the UK--standing up to the US--in insisting on due process) but it fit right in with the Bush administration's plans to swiftboat Ned Lamont and use the arrests for fund raising, so they went ahead anyway.
--MarkusQ
Huh? What would your "1% case" look like? Remember, they can already wiretap for 72 hours before getting the warrant, they can and do get warrants 24/7 (including going to the judges's houses in the middle of the night), and the warrants are essentially never turned down. Furthermore, there are multiple judges, and they have a choice of which one they use, so even the 0.00000001% case where one of the judges in in cahoots with the terrorists seems to me to be covered--they just go to one of the other judges.
Please describe even one case where they'd have to break the law.
--MarkusQ
P.S. For that matter, can you even come up with a plausible reason why they'd want to? The only two I've heard that hold any water at all are that they're trying to eliminate the other two branches of government, and don't want to admit the courts have any authority, or they're following in Nixon's footsteps and spying on political opponents (presumably to get blackmail material). I'd love to hear an alternative that covers the facts.
Where, exactly, do you see me making any baseless statements about what I think Karl Rove did or didn't do in this case? For that matter, where do you see me making statements about what I believe or don't believe about Rove's involvement (if any) in this story? I believe I've sourced all of the things I have claimed Rove has done (and you haven't disputed them), and I have never said that I think Rove was behind this, only that the original poster was not necessarily paranoid for thinking so.
Saying that its unfair to call someone paranoid just because they think there is cheese in their refrigerator is not all the same as claiming that they do have cheese in their refrigerator.
But on to your "sources" for the claim that Bush denied the essence of the forged memos (noting that you actually made the stronger--and obviously untrue--claim that Bush contested "everything" about them):
So? That wasn't the question and you know it. Saying "I haven't authenticated the documents" has absolutely nothing to do with admitting to or denying the statements made in them. You can clearly have both authentic and forged documents that contain both correct and incorrect claims.
Closer, but still no cigar. What Scotty says in the link you site isn't what you quote him as saying; he says "the commanding officer at the time has categorically stated that what had been asserted simply was not the case." He pointedly refuses to deny the contents, or say that Bush denied them, even when he is pressed. Instead, he offers the "fact" that an unnamed source (possibly one of your dead witnesses) has said that something unspecified was not true.
This link doesn't directly address to question I asked you to provide links on but it does indirectly support my position:
The rest of your historical background is largely irrelevant, uncontested material, though biased (for example, if you're going to drag in side issues, why leave out the fact that Harriet Miers was paid $19,000.00 to handle the issue of Bush's service records when he was running for governor, and specifically with the accusation that a $23,000,000.00 bribe had been paid to keep the issue of how he got into the guard secret--note that I'm not saying this is relevant, just pointing out that you were very selective in what you chose to include and what you chose to leave out).
--MarkusQ
From disputing his original claim:
You have been reduced to saying:
In other words, you have gone from claiming that it is possible to write a program that will find all bug in any program (which, the original poster and I agree, is impossible) to arguing that static analysis can find some bugs in some kinds of programs, which no one is disputing.
The problem with your "finite number of states" argument is that, if you are going to allow real-world constraints to intrude, you will run out of time long before you run out of storage space. Even a very fast machine, with a very small amount of memory, will never be able to get through even a vanishingly small proportion of its states before the universe is canceled due to low ratings.
For all intents and purposes, Turing's results apply to real computers, in so far as the actual real world limitations they face don't change the conclusions.
--MarkusQ
You say this as if it invalidates his point. Since (as you would obviously agree) no computer is more powerful than a Turing machine, if something is impossible for a Turing machine it is necessarily impossible for a computer as well. If anything, your quibble makes his argument stronger.
--MarkusQ
The odd thing is, I think we mostly agree.
Our only real difference is that you look at "the system" and you see something that only accepts inputs called "votes," which is mostly ignores. You then (justifiably, given your assumptions) conclude that it's hopeless to try to change things.
I, on the other hand, see a fragile structure that is mostly smoke and mirrors, which derives all it's power from a few simple tricks ("Look over there!", "What's your price?", and "Nice life you got there. It'd be a pity if anything happened to it.") most of which it consistently fails to follow through on. The only reason "the system" seems so stable is that people think it's stable, and nobody dares to try to change it.
You'd probably call me a blind optimist, and I'd say you are unjustifiably pessimistic--but we'd both claim to be realists.
As for the list above, if you stay with your restricted view of things (that the courts aren't a legitimate part of the political process, and that having a criminal convicted of a crime isn't a good way to take them out of circulation) then you are correct. And including Marion Barry in the list didn't really help my case. I just stuck him in when I realized my first Google had turned up almost exclusively Republicans, and I'm tired of being be accused of being partisan when I'm really just fed up with politicians in general.
--MarkusQ
That won't stop them from going wherever they want via IP addresses. And, in any case, doing it on the boxes themselves is the wrong approach--its known as "honor system security."
The real solution, as another poster suggested, is to do it on the NATing box. For that matter, if the systems are that important and that vulnerable, I would sure hope there's a firewall in the picture somewhere, either on the NATing box or somewhere outward from there. Do it in the firewall. After all that's what firewalls are for.
--MarkusQ
The people of CT, GA, and MI beg to differ.
Tell Joe Lieberman. Please. You also might mention it to Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay, Galen Fox, George Ryan, John Rowland, Tom Noe, Marion Barry, Bob Ney, Vince Cianci, Bill Janklow, Jim West, and...well, let's just say there is a limit.
Yes, I am. They don't have a great shelf life, but they do exist.
Ah, but I was created especially to resist it. And "it" in this case is a relative newcommer, while I have the benefit of millions of years of evolution. BTW, the whole "work within the system or not" dichotomy is misleading. Ignore the system and focus on the fact the humans are highly skilled at detecting and smacking down cheaters. This isn't about "the system" it's about standing up for what's right.
--MarkusQ
Thanks for the comment. I don't personally find it objectionable (or else I wouldn't use it), but I can sympathize with the reaction. My personal hot button is referring to people by derogatory nicknames (e.g. "Turdblossom", which started as Bush's (affectionate?) name for Karl Rove) instead of just giving their real name. So I can relate.
I can't promise I'll drop it completely, but I'm sure I'll be less likely to use it knowing at least one person objects to it.
--MarkusQ
First off, I complement you on your snark. You do it well. But down to business.
What he said: I said:This is hardly a strawman. In a universe where the exact same things would happen no matter what we did, what exactly would "cause and effect" mean? I defy you to accept his premise and give a cogent definition of causality.
He said "Everything is not simple." If I take your reading (that he is intending "All things are not-simple thus there are no things which are simple," it's even worse for him. For one thing, the situation he describes (the outcome is the same regardless of what we do) would be a direct counter example. You can't get much simpler than that.
Whoa there, buddy. Who said anything about evil Republicans or Republicans vs. Democrats? Certainly not me. I happen to be a life long registered Republican. My argument is against politicians of either party who run up huge deficits, stretch our military to near the breaking point, screw over the vets when they return, let their corporate owners feed at the public trough without restraint, ignore the law and the constitution when it suits them, and kill innocent people (of any nation) and turn the world against us in their blind lust for power.
I can't for the life of me understand why everyone keeps assuming this is "Republicans vs. Democrats" when the "opposition" party's main contribution to this whole fiasco is a bunch of half hearted whining about how they aren't getting their share of the spoils.
And why they hate us should be obvious to anyone who isn't blinded by some sort of partisan / nationalistic / racist dogmatism. What would you be doing today if, instead of going quietly into the night the Soviets had beaten us in the cold war, decided we needed "Regime Change," arrested the President, disbanded our military and police, and were this very minute building huge bases in our heartland, arming the Mexicans so they could come take what they wanted, letting their soldiers rape 14 year old American girls, kill them and their families and burn their bodies, and so on and so forth.
Would you be welcoming our new overlords? Or would you be a "terrorist"?
--MarkusQ
Sorry, I'm just not seeing the referrer IDs you speak of.
--MarkusQ
There are two layers at work; the spammers and the "vendors" they spam for. The spammers are paid to spam, but they don't really care if the product sells or not. It's just like any advertising--magazines are paid to print your ads, but if they ads don't work, it's not their problem.
If you extrapolate normal advertising out by a few orders of magnitude (dumber, cheaper, wider distribution, etc.) you get spam. If you don't extrapolate out far enough (and find yourself in direct mail or telemarketing), no worries. Just keep going in that general direction a while longer, and eventually you'll come to spam.
--MarkusQ
This makes no sense. Forged documents wouldn't help them at all, and could (as it turns out, did) hurt them a lot. Nothing in the memos was new, it had (as you point out) all been in the news for years. It's like Mark Ferman(sp?) dropping the glove on OJ; they would have gotten a conviction if they hadn't planted evidence. Now I'd be the first to admit that there are some dim bulbs in the Democratic leadership, but your theory requires them to be clever and stupid at the same time. The Rove theory only require that the perpetrators be clever.
Please produce a citation to support this. Find me one example where Bush denied the actual claims (and not some plausible sounding non-denial). For that matter, if he was so trying so hard to prove that he had fulfilled his obligation, why couldn't he scrape up anybody that remembered seeing him on base?
--MarkusQ
Please site your source for this. Mine is easy; for example at the time, MSNBC reported:
and And with regards to this: Nuts. They aren't all dead. We aren't talking about a Clinton scandal here. The typist, for example, has said that the memos were forgeries but that the sentiments they expressed were accurate.--MarkusQ
P.S. As for all your Rove blather, I never said he was evil, or a "super genius", or any of the other stuff you're "rebutting." So save your defenses for someone who cares.
Earth, unfortunately.
--MarkusQ
I think of all the things I've lost over the years, I miss my faith that there was, somewhere, a limit to human stupidity the most.
--MarkusQ
I never said he didn't, and I never said anything about "evil republicans." You ratio of successful "pwnage" as you call it might improve if you actually read the comments you are responding too.
--MarkusQ
Hello? Where did all that come from?
Specifically:
- I never said I believe everything the news tells me.
- I never said that I believe anything is a "giant evil conspiracy"
- I'm not at all sure how being one of the only ones on this sub-thread to provide links to back up my points mean I've "insulated myself into a small little world"
- The proven wrong / proven right / psyops plant micro-rant makes no sense
- The fact that something (say, the media) can be controlled by someone does not mean it can be controlled by everyone. In fact, it generally means exactly the opposite--if I have total control of something, you perforce have none.
- I don't think sounding board means what you think it means.
- I agree the inability of the MSM to distinguish fact from fiction is disturbing. However, that is neither here nor there.
--MarkusQI'll assume that you were trying to be sarcastic at several points in your first paragraph, if only because your post makes slightly more sense under that assumption. However, that means that you completely misunderstood my point, so I will spell it out.
Thirty years ago, the Democrats controlled congress, held the presidency, and (if memory serves) had appointed the majority of sitting federal judges. This was what I referred to as the Republicans "being on the mat".
Thirty years is three decades.
Rather than laying down and dying, the Republicans decided to fight back, and today the situation is completely reversed.
They did not do it by accident, nor by luck. It was intentional, and a great deal of time, money and effort was invested in the process.
As for your final paragraph, in the first place I'm not sure what bald-faced lies you are referring to, and in the second your conspiracy of divisiveness is easily explained as a natural consequence of the two party system. In such a system, both parties will look for ways to build a coalition of roughly 51% -- the minimum needed to win, yet leave the fewest number of supporters to be rewarded. You can get the same result in a classroom setting by handing out red and blue jackets. For that matter, the math behind it is rough;y the same as that for the evolutionary forces behind the nearly equal split between the sexes.
--MarkusQ
I'm assuming that (since you only objected to one point), that you agree with the rest and will focus on the one you singled out:
It certainly is possible to fact check a bald assertion. Of all the things you might want to fact check, a bald assertion is perhaps the easiest. If I say something like "The bulk of Portugal lies to the west of Spain" you will find it much easier to fact check than if I say something like "How like a flower my true love blooms."
Of course, this doesn't always mean that we have the resources to do it. Claims like "The far side of Jupiter is about -170 degrees Celsius" or "Arnold Schwarzenegger wears pink thong underwear" can be hard (expensive, risky, time consuming) to verify. So instead you can do the next best thing, and sanity check the assertion, from multiple directions.
Yes. Everyone agrees that the documents exist, and no one has proven them to be authentic.
Yes.
No, not really. The other proposed explanations (e.g. Terry McCallef(sp) did it) are even weaker.
No, not at all. In fact, the two prime reasons for suspecting Rove are 1) that it's very similar to things he's been known to do in the past (e.g. spreading negative information against his own candidate, such as he did for Harold See, forging documents as he did against Alan Dixon), and 2) it accomplished exactly what he would have wanted
Not really. Nothing in the memos was contested, and all of it had been previously reported (e.g. by the BBC). Bush never even attempted to deny any of it. The people who would know even stated that the information in the memos was essentially correct. So it wouldn't have helped Kerry's team much at all to have the documents, even if they had been legitimate.
You can go on and on like this, but I don't see how you can make it a "tin foil hat" theory, even if it can't be proved. And bear in mind here that the burden of proof at this point is on you; the original poster asked a (possibly rhetorical) question and you attacked without (so far as I can see) much ground to stand on.
--MarkusQ
Before you start implying that someone is paranoid, you may want to do a little fact checking. Going over the grandparent post line by line:
- Would it surprise you to learn that these doctored photos were placed by someone on the far Right trying to discredit the centrist media?
- Sort of like the way the fake 60 Minutes article on Bush's little vacation from the Air National Guard was placed by a GOP operative trying to smear CBS and Dan Rather.
- The goons on the Right in this country are playing a very deep game.
- They're sophisticated enough to data mine,
- and they're morally deformed enough to try to smear the patriotism of a triple amputee war hero.
- It's just fascinating that the paste-eaters at LGF are always the ones who find these doctored photos,
- but never say a word about the ones on GOP web sites that show too much smoke on the destroyed World Trade Center.
- With a news media that's run by press agents,
- and a government run by lobbyists,
- you should just be prepared to only believe your own experience, and the media that you absolutely trust.
- Other than that, expect it to be lies.
- Then, get ready for the struggle to save our freedom that is inevitable.
-- MarkusQNote that he's not saying that it's true, just suggesting that it might be. And, given that this is a well known technique in spin control / psyops, it isn't an unreasonable questions.
Well, he's certainly not alone in this theory, and it is consistent with what Rove is known to have done to Alan Dixon, John McCain, and many others.
Goons is subjective, and pejorative, but the rest of this point is darned hard to argue with. When a party rises from the mat to take control of all three branches of the federal Government, is a coordinated effort lasting decades, you'd be hard pressed to call it luck.
Widely known
His name was Max Clealand, and they did just what he said.
"Always" is an exaduration, and "paste-eaters" is (probably) unjustified, but other than that it is an interesting point. They certainly have found a number of them, and always leaning to the right.
This did happen, and so far as I know none of them raised a stink, so he's spot on.
Also well known.
Well, they write the laws, and
If you want to, go ahead and argue that you should believe sources you don't trust.
Thing that aren't true, are...lies. Again, pretty hard to argue with.
Everyone from Ben "A Republic, if you can keep it" Franklin has agreed with this.
--MarkusQ
I never said he did. It might well be Joe "bought-and-paid-for" Lieberman. Or Hillary "screw defending the constitution I have to look tough and centrist even if it means selling out (and think of the children)" Clinton. Or Jane "I heart defense contractors" Harman. Or dozens of others.
Republicans don't have a patent on selling us out, they just happen to be doing so more efficiently at the moment. If the inside the beltway, big donor fueled DLC Democrats could get their heads out of their polls I'm sure they could do just as well.
Likewise, all the parties seem to have a smattering of honest, intelligent, hard working people who will stand up for what they believe in and do the job we sent them for (until somebody makes them an offer they can't refuse, or they die in a small plane crash).
--MarkusQ
Ah, but I didn't vote for them. And, in several cases, neither did the majority of the people I know. So who did? Beats me. In one case it was the SCOTUS, but that in the rest? Perhaps some sheeple I've never met, perhaps a small team at the company that makes our voting machines, who knows?
The point, of course, is not how they got there, but how we can rid ourselves of them.
--MarkusQ
The calls are the least of your problems.
In addition to making annoying phone calls, they are also bilking you (and every member of your household) out of tens of thousands of dollars (each) to pay for foreign entanglements (wars, giving weapons to loonies, etc.) to stroke their half baked dreams of empire, selling your rights to the highest corporate bidder, who pay them back with booze and hookers (at your expense of course) and lying to you every chance they get. Oh yeah, and spying on you, paying newscasters to lie to you (again, your tax dollars at work), letting their corporate masters override you and your doctor's decisions about your health care, and hundreds of other things.
Plus that, they are being such jerks in the world at large that people you've never met hate you enough to kill you, just because they represent you.
But if the phone calls are the straw that breaks your camel's back, so be it.
--MarkusQ