"There are people with vast amounts of money who appreciate exceptional feats of engineering and design."
You're just trying to make something stupid sound cool. It must work because lots of guys with more money than they know what to do with seem to have decided something stupid is cool. Carmack's car for instance is foolish excess though every geek in the place is drooling over it. I'm hoping he came to his senses and is sinking more of his cash in the X prize which is a worthwhile endeavor that will make a difference in the world. Tricking out a car simply doesn't.
If people are in this for the engineering they should be racing on a closed course where they would be tasked to prove the engineering really is good, and maybe put their fat ass on the line driving it. As another reply to your post said there is a lot more to exceptional engineering than counting horsepower and tuning the sound system. Its just stupid and wasteful to the extreme to go to incredible lengths to make a car that can go fast, in a somewhat half ass way, and then park it in a showroom.
I supposed it could be rationalized as an investment and a collectors item. But then the whole concept is predicated on there being a network of stupid guys with more money than they know what to do with that makes it a worthwhile investment.
If you've got the money to waste you would win a lot more respect from your peers if you donated it to medical research, get a building named after you, and maybe save some peoples lives someday. Or donate it to an orphanage or a scholarship fund and give some kids a shot at a life that doesn't suck and at maybe doing something important some day and making a lasting contribution to the world. People would remember you with some respect then, as someone who made a difference in the world, instead of as "a prick" that wasted umpteen millions on cars he never drove.
More importantly exactly what is the point of having a passenger car that can go 250 MPH. If you live in the U.S. and you routinely drive half that speed your driver's license is going be gone in a month.
OK, maybe you live in Germany and you drive on Autobahn's with no speed limit. Then you could maybe crank it up to 200 MPH. At that point you would be on the verge of killing yourself thanks to the huge differential with the rest of the traffic on the highway. If you killed yourself that would be OK but you would probably take one or more people with you and that is not OK.
There is simply no reason to even allow a car with this much power to be licensed for highway driving. If you want the styling great build a car with the same styling and an engine appropriate for highway driving. If you really want to drive this fast, buy a race car and get on a racing circuit. That way when you set out on your path to self destruction you will be on a track full of people with the same death wish and you can kill each other with killing innocent bystanders.
If you buy a car with this much power, and then drive anywhere close to the speed limit you are just a retard compensating for your absence of a penis and or brains.
"Or that everyone who watches NASCAR is a Bush-loving redneck?"
Well not "everyone". Can you tell me with a straight face that the average NASCAR fan, especially in the South, its historical base, isn't WASP, pro Bush, pro Jesus, pro military, pro life, etc. Thats just the demographic, not the stereotype.
"How does moving making you anything but a quitter?"
Yea. I'm just doing what my President said. I'm either with them or against them, its their way or the highway. I choose highway. They don't want compromise, coalition or democracy. They want to dictate their agenda from the right. They want everyone who disagrees to shut up and get the hell out. So I am.
I can't do anything to stop the Republicans now that they've seized power. Not sure anyone can. The Democrats have turned in to a bad joke. I can pray for a Democratic victory in November, but the deck is already stacked against them and I don't think it'll happen. To be honest I just have this overwhelming feeling that if there were any danger of the Republicans getting voted out they are going to rig the election to make sure it doesn't happen.
Not sure it will be necessary to cheat though. There is some real disgust with Bush but Kerry is just a joke. The system managed to nominate two candidates that are both bad...Yale grads, skull and bones members, spoiled rich kids, both pro Patriot act and Pro war in Iraq. I find Kerry to be as disturbing as Bush only in a different way. At least you know where Bush stands on things. I don't think Kerry even knows where he stands because he makes it up based on what he thinks the people he's talking to want to hear at the moment. It was pretty telling that Kerry on Meet the Press fell all over himself to endorse Bush's ass kiss of Sharon. Its a done deal both candidates are in the pocket of the Friends of Israel lobby first and everything else second. As long as the U.S. lets Israel have a free hand to crush and humiliate the Palestinians there is going to be an Arab world hating and attacking the U.S., there is going to be a "War on Terror" and as long as there is a "War on Terror" the Republicans are going to have an excuse to ratchet up the police state at home and wield the military as a club abroad.
"And why don't you suggest any ways to fix what you see as problems?"
I think it would be naive to think America can be fixed. The things that ail America have accumulated over a long time and have reached the point that they are an entrenched cancer, you can't remove it without killing the patient.
I wish one day Americans would wake up and want to learn about the reality of their government and the world but most of them never will and wont change from the comfortable world view they already have. As long as the current two party system, with its media sideshow, is entrenched average American's cant do anything to fix it even if a majority did see the light.
I actually had some hope Dean was going to topple the status quo. So did a lot of other people which is why he had such a big enthusiastic following, most of whom are probably now sitting at home disillusioned and dreading having to vote for Kerry.
Unfortunately Dean was prone to speak with out thinking first and said some stupid things. It was kind of refreshing but he said a few stupid things that the establishment used to destroy him. He was kind of nut case and he would have been a disaster as President but it would have been fun to watch, and to watch the establishment reaction, and to see if he sold out as soon as he got there. Dean was doomed, and I think he knew it, the day he suggested the U.S. deal even handedly with Israel and Palestine. That was about the time media and the establishment caught on he was a danger to the status quo and destroyed him, just in time.
Saying anything that isn't 100% pro Isreal is the third rail in U.S. politics. You touch it and you die. I will provoke a flaming antisemite accusation by saying it but you eventually h
"Besides, what world power hasn't acted in EXACTLY the same manner? I don't see you ripping on them"
Uh, America is the only superpower today. I guess there is the Chinese but they are to busy making money to do much else. I rag on them pretty good too. I guess there is Britain but they are a power only when they cling to American coat tails, as they dream of there empire long gone. I could rag on the French and Germans but the right wing has a monopoly on that ragging.
A big plus in having the Soviet Union around was they did serve to keep America in check. Now America has no check which is why its engaging in a unilateralist agenda predicated on preemptive warfare(synonamous with aggressive warfare which is generally considered a crime) against whomever it feels like taking down. Its also why Bush has decided to unilaterally negotiate for the Palastinians and give whats left of there country away to the Isrealis.
"why can't the people who feel they're the victims of "US cultural imperialism" Just Say No?"
Ah, ignorance is bliss. Countless nations have tried in the last century. Its where the term "Banana Republic" comes from. Everytime a nation(Guatemala, Nicaragua, etc) in the western hemisphere tried to throw out the U.S. and U.S. corporations like United Fruit the U.S. sent in the CIA or the Marines, and installed a right wing dictatorship that was friendly to "US cultural imperialism" and which massacred everyone that wasn't.
I'm pretty sure Iraq is trying to say no to "US cultural imperialism" at the moment. The U.S. is responding with guns and by giving "sovereignty" to some as yet unnamed group(puppet government) on June 30th. The problem is they forgot to mention, until recently, this supposedly sovereign government wont be able to pass ANY laws, and will have no control over coalition or Iraqi security forces. Iraq is going to be under a U.S. controlled puppet government for a long time, the second it isn't the U.S. will get thrown out on its ass. But the U.S. is planing to build permanent military bases there so Iraq is unlikely to be a truly sovereign nation again. Its is America's new base for projecting power in the region. They were using Saudi Arabia for this but the Saudi's were putting to many strings on using their country as a military base. A puppet government in Iraq is ideal as is Iraq ideal for military bases to project power in to the region in general and Syria and Iran in particular.
"So somebody hating me because I'm American is OK, but me hating some hypothetical person from [insert country here] is bad?"
No, both bad, just facts of life. I think it is important to convey that the rest of the world does have good reason to hate America. America does have good reason to hate Arabs, 9/11. There is a difference between Bush and Bin Laden and the 9/11 hijackers. Al Queada wasn't elected by a majority of Arabs to do what they did. George W. was chosen by America and it appears he will be chosen again later this year which indicates a "majority" of American's approve of what he is doing. That does mean that if the world hates George W. Bush for what he is and is doing, they do have reason to hate American's for enabling him.
"how a Constitutional Republic works"
Well I guess you missed the point that America as a constitutional Republic doesn't work anymore, IMHO. Americans for the most part don't have a clue how their government or the world really works. They are choosing it the same way they choose soap. They watch TV commercials (the guy with the best and the most) wins, or they watch the news and let the talking heads tell them who to vote for, like they did in the Democratic primary resulting in the networks moving Kerry from out of contention to winner in the space of a couple weeks, Kerry being about the worst candidate the Democrats could have fielded, and leading to Rove dancing a jig when he was nominated by the networks.
A working Constitutional Republic requires a well informed electorate making wise decisions and voting in large numbers. That isn't the case in America today.
A working Constitutional Republic also presumes the people's elected representative aren't corrupt. Based on last years Medicare "Reform" bill its pretty obvious once the people vote, their representatives go to Washington where they are generally purchased by the highest bidder, and are for the most part not voting based on the welfare of the people they represent, but rather for the welfare of the corporations and the lobbyists who are controlling them.
And of course, a working Constitutional Republic presumes elections are fair, the 2000 presidential election, the 2002 Georgia elections and the entire Diebold scandal suggests the elections are at least massively broken or at worst are being massively rigged to the benefit of the party in power.
I wish America was a working constitutional republic but it really looks like its not or maybe it is and the majority of American's are bad so so is their Republic. It does work in that the Moral Majority and the NASCAR rednecks are a powerful well organized block and it appears they are going to run America to the detriment of the mostly silent liberal minority. But me I'm not gonna fight it from here much longer. Since I don't like it, and I can't change it, I'll just leave (that's the Bush/Cheney crowd you hear cheering in the background) as soon as I pay off my hospital bills and recharge my savings. This time I have to do some work and pick a country that has a culture I can live with long term, and this time I have to get on a track for citizenship and say good by to my American citizenship and passport. I was reluctant to do that when I was in Canada, but that was before Bush and the Republican's seized power. At this point I'm embarrassed to be an American and that doesn't look likely to change in my lifetime.
"How in the heck did the parent post get moderated to Insightful?"
I'm guessing the people with the moderator points must share my view of Americans, either because they aren't American, Candian maybe (lots of Slahdotters aren't American believe it or not) or they are American and secretly agree with me, like the guy from Virginia and were refreshed an American would actually come out and say it. They've been thinking they were the only ones that thought the average American is dumb and arrogant. The world really does understand why we like George W. Bush. When they wrote the book on dumb and arrogant George W. was the case study.
I'm the first to admit the post does stereotype American's though I did do my best at every point to say I wasn't slamming all American's and that I wasn't saying all Canadians are saints.
In my defense I think I would say you call it stereotype, I call it culture. Its just an unfortunate fact of life that American culture raises most American's to be like they are. American's all grow up in schools that are pretty much the same, teaching a blatantly American spin on history and politics, America always right, never wrong, everyone else wrong, defenders of "Freedom and Democracy" in the world, saved the world in World War II and everyone is in our debt(well actually the Soviet Union did 90% of the dirty work in beating the Nazi's) Football important, Knowledge not. They all watch the same TV news which is massively biased to the superior, arrogant American, watch all the same movies, don't read all the same books.
As a learning experience if you get news broadcasts from other countries, even the BBC, try watching them for a while and compare to what you are getting from the U.S. networks. Unless you really are dumb you will learn to see the huge bias in the U.S. networks.
I'm afraid you have to admit America does have a culture, bad as it is, all countries do, if you spend any time living or traveling for extended periods outside the U.S. you will know what I'm talking about. If you've spent all your life in America and blissfully remaining ignorant of the rest of the world, well you just wont understand and you will get defensive and tell me how full of shit I am. Bingo. One reason the world hates the U.S. especially the Muslim world is they hate just about everything about American culture and they hate the fact the U.S. is trying to force it on the entire world in the name of profit./. often rails about how bad it is to have a Windows monoculture in computing. Well thats nothing compared to how horrible it will be when the entire planet has an American monoculture which is where we headed now that the Chinese and pretty much the rest of the world are becoming American style consumerists.
To be honest I can't really stomach America or the average American, American bars or bowling alleys anymore. I was living in Canada for the longest time, should have stayed there. Gotta move out of the U.S. soon. The pubs in Canada are wonderful, friendly places full of friendly unpretentious people for the most part as long as you don't make it obvious you're American. They really seem to dislike Americans for the most part though they are such nice people on average, they are even nice to them. It is a national sport to cheat American's given the opportunity. The nearly universal synonym for Americans...arrogant, dumb and arrogant which is a bad combination.
Its just something about the American way that rings hollow as you get older and more aware of the way the world really is. Go to the bowling alley, down some beers, get drunk, do your best to remain ignorant about the screwed up mess your country is. Pretend your country is a saint, defending "Freedom and Democracy" around the world, never does anything wrong. As long as you've got yours screw the world. Kill all the ragheads, they are barely human anyway. Camel jockeys. American's are just well superior, civilized. Denial.
That would be an OK approach for you to take as far as I'm concerned, if America just screwed up itself but unfortunately its screwing up the rest of the world too.
Maybe you should try traveling a little, and I don't mean going to a resort hotel in the tropics. Try meeting some real people in the rest of the world. especially some that have been on the losing end of America's goodwill, unfortunately they don't always live in the premium vacation spots. Maybe you should try Haiti, its tropical at least.
If you were to travel the world today I think you might find more people hate you than like you just because you're American. They really hate George W. Bush, but they pretty much have to hate you to because your letting him trample the world while your getting drunk at the bowling alley, pretending everything is wonderful in the world and cheering him on.
Maybe you should join the Marines and do your part, kill some ragheads?
"Funny me, I always thought it was to protect our Freedoms(tm)."
We have soldiers to protect the interests of the nation state and in particular the wealthy elite which are the ones that pull its strings and have the most to lose if that nation state isn't protected and doesn't get its way in the world, huge militaries are an especially effective tool for getting your way in the world.
There are times the military defends the ruling elite and coincidentally protects "our Freedoms(tm)" too but its only a coincidence. For example when the U.S. is in imminent danger of invasion by a foreign power, Japan for example might have potentially invaded the U.S. during World War II and the U.S.S.R was obviously a threat to the U.S. during the cold war. The later was kind of a case where the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were mutually threatening to each other though, and they pretty much decimated the third world engaging in proxy wars, you know the U.S.S.R would sponsor brutal socialist guerrillas, the U.S. would sponsor brutal right wing dictators in response. It would have been a somewhat more honest thing for the two to have engaged in a direct shooting war early on so they could have decimated each other and spared the third world from the honor(i.e. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Guatemala, etc).
We also have a lots of soldiers because, at the end of World War II, rather than dismantling the military as we did at the end of World War I we left an overly large military industrial complex(MIC) in place that has, as Eisenhower warned, acquired a life of its own and come to dominate economic and political life in the U.S. Its now kind of an immortal beast, out of control, very focused on transferring wealth from your pocket through taxes and in to the pockets of large corporations and the wealthy elite who are the majority shareholders in them (unless you work for one of them in which case those tax dollars are going in your pockets too though not quite as many dollars as the execs and shareholders are getting). Defense contractors are really about the only form of industry left in the U.S. that isn't going to be completely outsourced to China and India.
Here is a recent interesting example in the Army's new Stryker armored personnel carrier (armored is kind of a misnomer, a Pentagon analyst called it a dune buggy armored in tinfoil):
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair04242004.html
The Stryker is another case, among many, where a Pentagon General advocated a weapons system, helped negotiate the delivery of the lucrative contract to big corporations, General Dynamics and GM this time, at more or less the same time he was negotiating his post retirement career as, you guessed it, a senior VP at General Dynamics with a multimillion dollar compensation package. In this case it was Army Lt. General David K. Heebner who used billions in tax dollars to insure a multimillion dollar executive career and an entry level position in the ruling elite.
There was a brief period after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. the military industrial complex was in serious danger of becoming somewhat irrelevant and going down. Fortunately Saddam came along to play boogie man #1 in the first and second gulf wars.
And of course Osama Bin Laden came along and he is the ultimate boogie man. Well Osama didn't really just come along. He was manufactured by the MIC. They pumped billions of dollars to him, his associates and helped him build what would become Al Queda. This was done of course to fight one of those proxy wars mentioned previously where Osama was a key player in helping the U.S. decimate the Soviet Union by proxy.
http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo04242004.html
Now that the MIC has found an enemy in Islamic fundamentalism it has an enemy that will keep it in tact and very well funded for probably ever. In watching George W. of late I really do think I've started to see the metho
"Maybe when the people realize what has happened to them, they will demand their rights, and feel free to use armed revolution if necessary."
You aren't going to topple the U.S. government with arms anytime soon. Nonviolence, think Ghandi is the only viable approach to defeating the monster that has taken control of America. Study Ghandi's tactics, for example his march to the sea to make salt to defy Britain's colonial tax on salt. Peaceful protests, legal but on the edge and sure to provoke an excessive response from the police state are how you defeat it. Kent State was one of the pivotal moments in turning the tide against Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger. You need to exercise your constitutional rights to free speech and assembly and not violate any laws that count, like don't hurt anyone and don't engage in stupid vandalism like Seattle. You do have to violate any arbitrary laws and ordinances thrown in your way which are designed to make peaceful protest impotent and to deprive you of your right to protest. For example you can't let them put you in fenced areas where the protest is never seen and is irrelevant. This is the dominant tool being used to suppress dissent at the moment.
When peaceful protests gain a critical mass and start informing people and turning people against the gross excesses of their current government, you can count on them overreacting, killing peaceful protesters and when they do they are doomed. Britain's massacre of hundreds of Indians so disgusted the people at home that it undermined Britain's grip on power in India.
There are groups trying to mount protests for the Democratic and Republican conventions. If you want to show your displeasure with the system that is the place to go this year. Think Chicago in 1968. The authorities in those two cities with the help of the Feds are going to do their best to create a giant wall around those conventions in the name of security and anti terrorism but that excuse will also be used to push all peaceful protests out of sight and out of mind and to completely suppress peaceful dissent.
The problem you have is there is a huge percentage of American's who love the current system, they are making a good living under it, they have expensive homes, they can afford the best schools for their children and they will consider you crazy if you suggest anything is wrong in the current system. They wont risk the well being of themselves or their family by rocking the boat. You need to think of creative ways to communicate to them there is something wrong, in particular that democracy and freedom is being stolen from under their noses, in particular by a President who is telling them he is protecting "Freedom and Democracy" 20 times in every speech when he is doing exactly the opposite. This is known as the "big lie". You make it big enough and keep repeating it, the gullible majority ends up believing it when it is the antithesis of reality and truth.
If anyone were to take up arms in the U.S. they would be slaughtered or in prison for life. The U.S. government would do exactly the same thing Saddam did to any of his people who had the audacity to challenge him, for example all the Shia's in the mass graves in Southern Iraq. George H.W. Bush encouraged them to revolt against Saddam after the first gulf war. When they did Bush the elder turned his back, didn't even give them the protection of a no fly zone so Saddam could use helicopters to slaughter them, and now George W. Bush uses those same mass graves as evidence of what a monster Saddam is, when it was his own father that precipitated an armed revolt that is going to lead to slaughter in just about any nation on the planet.
Armed revolt in the U.S. would be going up against the combined might of the FBI, the Secret Service, the ATF, the CIA, the National Gaurd and the U.S. military. They have a massive advantage in intelligence gathering, air superiority and massive arms superiority. Your only hope would be the soldiers and agents woul
Since Diebold has on at least two cases, California and Georgia, intentionally patched voting machines at the last minute with software of unknown origin, I think it unwise to attribute to incompetence something that has all the signs of intentional wrong doing. It would be interesting to see if election law has been updated for the arrival of electronic voting but it would seem to me intentionally patching electronic voting machines with software of unknown origin, right before an election, is election tampering and it should be both a federal and state crime if it isn't already, and the election those machines were used in should be invalidated.
If Diebold, or some accomplice, tampered with the senate race in Georgia in 2002, in particular, they did in fact help seize control of the senate for the Republicans which has given the Republicans enormous power they wouldn't have had otherwise. Giving a party control of the executive branch and both houses of Congress gives them huge lattitudes in passing their agenda. The Republican's have in particular taken to Republican only, secret conference committees in which, rather than resolve differences between the house and senate bills they have been completely rewriting legislation at the personal direction of Dick Cheney and then forcing an up or down vote which their party wins. It would appear to me stealing Georgia, probably thanks to Diebold's machines have in fact already stolen America's Democracy and the same will occur in 2004 unless American voters unite to stop it. Every place using electronics machines without a paper audit trail should ban them from the next election and use paper ballots with big X's next to the candidates name and counted by little old ladies.
Max Cleland running for the Senate in Georgia was ahead 49% to 44% in polls right before the election and lost 53% to 46%. In the Governors races polls showed Barnes ahead of Purdue 48% to 39%. Purdue won 53% to 46%. A last minute swing that big is just amazing. Either statistical polling is worthless or someone is stealing elections.
Its equally disturbing that in 2000 VNS, the single system all the networks used for exit polling had a mysterious total system failure so that no one could compare the actual results with the results of the exit polls. It just happens that system had a new software component developed by Battelle, a well known CIA contractor. It strongly suggests someone was worried there would be an unexplainable mismatch, exit polls being extremely accurate, once again suggesting the 2000 election was also being rigged. In Minnesota the other key senate race in 2002 there was also a big statistical swing from the polls which favored Mondale while the vote went to the Republican.
If there is vote rigging going on the place to look for it is in Senate races and in the presidential race in 2004 in the swing states like Florida which is going all Diebold with no paper trail.
"As a pollworker in Georgia, which was the first state to use electronic voting equipment statewide, I can say unequivocally that electronic voting machines have made our precinct's elections run more smoothly."
Would this be the same Georgia where the two democratic candidates for Governor and the Senate were leading by 10% margin in the polls in 2002 and managed to lose the election. Unless there was some dramatic news from the time of those polls to the election its kind of hard to explain a swing that big unless the election was rigged.
With a few seconds in Google I found this article that suggests Diebold did exactly the same thing in your 2002 Georgia election they just did in California and patched 22,000 machines at the last minute, and apparently got away with it:
Just because your elections seem to "run more smoothly" doesn't mean they weren't being stolen.
The Diebold people in California appear to be very incompetent. They had every advantage in rigging the elections in California, first and fore most they had no paper trail and no way to do a recount and they still got caught.
It appears their people in Georgia must be a much better team. They appear to have blatantly stolen an election in 2002 and people like you are singing praises of them for no obvious reason other than things "ran smoothly" and how easy it was to cast an apparently meaningless vote.
Unless you have really high confidence all the source code in those machines was meticulously audited and that the binaries were built from that exact source under supervision of knowledgable independent parties, not Diebold, the binaries were signed and the signs were checked in every machine at the start of the election day (using signing software that is also rigorously verified) all those other security measures you are placing so much confidence in are meaningless. If Diebold slipped in code that checked for the date of the election, and on election day flipped some percentage of the votes(say 15%) from the party they wanted to lose to the party they wanted win they could steal the election from under your nose and you would still be singing praises of their equipment.
Uh, no, you didn't read his post. He said the Democrats were the ones who wanted to modernize the voting machines because they lost the 2000 election and the Republicans wanted to leave things as they were, with the unavoidable implication that the Democrats were the ones pushing this electronic voting mess. Fact is both parties rush in to HAVA just like they did in passing the Patriot act and voting for the war in Iraq.
Not sure I really follow. We are talking about fraud at the machine level. If a vote was being cast once a minute in a 12 hour election day thats still only 720 votes per machine and I doubt they see anything close to a voter a minute. An election official could easily produce 720 votes in pre-election testing in a fairly short period of time. I think rigging the count just within the election time window is much less likely to be caught. The election officials are much to busy during that window to do random testing of machines.
Of course, if its a some have indicated and Diebold is just patching the machines at the last minute before the election with unknown and untested software that is just blatant indication of fraud and they should be charged and thrown in jail just for doing it.
You are wrong. Nice try to blame it on the Democrats though. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 was a virtual bipartisan stampede on both sides of the isle. It had a long list of Republican and Democratic sponsors. It was a little hard to find good info with a few minutes in google though this Lyndon LaRouche Article does have a writeup on it that includes the list of sponsors and all the essentials which can probably be used to find better info:
It is from Larouche so has to be taken with a heavy does of salt.
This bill was heavily lobbed for by the Information Technology Association of America, which is, you guessed it, the fairly wealthy lobbying arm of the mostly Republican owned companies selling electronic voting machines. Anytime there is a wealthy lobby backing only one side of an issue and handing out campaign contributions Congress can be counted on to make bad decisions favoring that lobby.
This was after 9/11 and Congress was pretty whacked in the head in general then, it was after the 2000 Florida debacle and they were all keen to do something to make sure it didn't happen again even if what they passed is making the system MUCH WORSE and gave the ITAA, which includes Diebold a huge windfall, and dramatically increased the likelihood of a stolen election rather than reducing it.
Anyone in a position to pursue this should make sure the source being used to the builds is placed in a secure place, it is reviewed, a binary is produced from it by election officials and not Diebold, its signed and that the signing is verified before and after the election by the precinct officials, not Diebold.
They should also randomly pull machines out on election day, during voting hours and test them without Diebold's knowledge or assistance. Random testing on election day would do a world of good in catching fraud. They should also consider taking random machines prior to the election and setting the date and time to be in the election window and see if they tally correctly.
If I were Diebold my goal would be to get uncertified, unreviewed binaries in their machine in swing states. That uncertified source would have a date/time check in it. Since they know well in advance when the elections are happening they want to rig, that date time check would have a branch. If its not during the hours of an election it would flawlessly count votes to fool the election officials validating the machines. If the machines think they are within the election window there would be some convoluted code that would flip a predetermined number of votes from the party they want to lose to the party they want to win. I wager no one actually tests the counts from the machine during the election window. If someone had access to a binary from a disputed election it would be interesting to disassemble it and look for date time system calls and see what happens in the logic that follows.
If Diebold is putting uncertified software in their machine you may as well throw any election their machines are used for out the window. To be honest I'm a little amazed they are so incompetent that they are committing these huge gaffes and producing results that are clearly erroneous and are setting off alarm bells. I can only imagine they are pretty incompetent, their machines really are unreliable or they are setting off alarms in elections like California's primary that don't count much, dutifully fixing the problems to look responsible and doing the real dirty work in swing states during the elections that count which will come off flawlessly but will have rigged the results. If they always insure the vote count total was correct and the margins were at least within the realm of possibility they could cheat on elections until the cows come home and no one would catch them without the presence of a paper trail.
"I am totally at a loss to understand this rush to electronic voting."
Its pretty simple really. The party in power wants electronic voting without an audit trail. They approved billions of tax payer dollars to be thrown out to local election officials to insure it was instituted and at the same time insured all the electronic voting machine manufacturers bidding on said systems were controlled by Republican partisans who no doubt went out of their way to propose systems with no paper trail. WHO COULD POSSIBLY WANT A NASTY OLD PAPER TRAIL WHEN YOU CAN HAVE THESE NIFTY ALL ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS. Votes go in here, get turned in to electrons and you magically get a vote count out the other end. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
The Diebold incident in California really sounds like they were practicing for how to steal the election in November, in particular the part about installing uncertified software and getting caught. This is the #1 thing you need to accomplish to steal an election with electronic voting, installing uncertified software. I imagine they chose California to practice because California isn't likely to be a swing state and the primary didn't really count for much. The place they want to smoothly and successfully install their rigged software is in all the close swing states in November when it counts. They also want it in all the states with crucial senate contests.
Bottomline is electronic voting is a way to insure the people who control the machines, which happens to be the Republicans, can hold power if, god forbid, the majority of the electorate realize they are either incompetent or serving the interests of a minority at the expense of the majority and try to, god forbid, vote them out of power. We just can't have that. The Republicans are the only ones we can trust to save America and make the world safe for American hegemony. Those Democrats are dangerous, can't be trusted(well they can't but thats another story).
I don't imagine there are reliable statistics but its a near certainty that the default state for elections is for them to be rigged every time the opportunity exists to do so. The right wingers will no doubt lob out the standard accusation now that the Democrats are the one with the history of stealing elections. Well yes they've stolen them, the Republican's have stolen them, every party and politician, in a close race and with the opportunity to rig an election with a reasonably good chance of not getting caught will do so. Power is the ultimate drug, once people have it they will generally do anything to keep it and get more of it. Its only by nonstop tireless efforts by a large number of volunteers, concerned voters, that elections are made fair and secure. Relying on incompetent bureaucrats and politicians with mixed motives just doesn't cut it.
The gold rush caused by the billions of dollars the congress threw in to the market as a knee jerk reaction to the 2000 fiasco was certain to not create an environment where a reliable voting system would be produced and the rate of change is so high its pretty hard for concerned citizens to do much about it, though a few people are making a noble effort.
A couple nights ago one of the network news shows ran a piece on how unreliable the military mail system is and how its disenfranchising the brave warriors who are defending democracy around the world. They raised the possibility once again that the all votes of the military should be done electronically, so they could be cast in seconds. The end result being millions of votes being run through the Pentagon, with no paper audit trail, under the control of the Secretary of Defense whose job is at stake in the presidential election so he can adjust the outcome as necessary.
To be honest the U.S. in particular is reaching the point it doesn't really deserve a democracy. Maybe the Republicans should just declare a state of emergency and put democracy in the U.S. out of its misery. What's left of it at this point is barely worth saving anyway.
The IT work force came in to being for the most part well after unionization had entered its decline. Ronald Reagan for one turned the tide against unions, in particular, when he fired striking air traffic controllers which is a kind of IT worker.
Somebody I knew 25 years ago described unionized IT workers at Martin Marietta. You apparently needed a unionized worker to tear print outs off band printers, and God help you if you did it yourself. I think the whole place was unionized rather than there being an IT union though.
When cheap container shipping became the norm that severely marginalized the longshoremen which were one of the strongest unions. You don't need many people to run those big cranes versus hand loading and unloading ships. This in turn made it much more attractive to manufacture goods in China or any place else with cheap non-union labor since shipping wasn't the expensive bottleneck it was when ships were hand loaded and the mob was exacting tariffs on cargo. The end result of offshoring was, of course, more devastation to steel workers and assorted other manufacturing unions.
Interestingly enough Elaine Chow's family makes its fortune shipping goods to the U.S. from Taiwan and China so don't operate under the delusion she is any friend of labor in the U.S. and be assured she LOVES outsourcing like most of the Bush administration:
http://www.counterpunch.org/flanders04012004.htm l
The Bush administrations dream is for labor in the U.S. to be pushed down to India and China wage rates, corporate profits to explode as a result and stock valuations go through the roof so the fat cats get rich and working people are in poverty. When they talk about all the great gains in productivity in the U.S. remember that really means people are working more for less money.
If you were to try and start an IT union today the only thing you would accomplish is accelerating the rate at which IT jobs are moved off shore. Welcome to the global economy and thank you for playing. No place I've ever worked would allow anyone who even mentioned the word "union" in the door. Most places would lay you off immediately if you even attempted it.
No time in the last 20 years have I ever worked any place that would even think of paying overtime. Most programming jobs I've had are declared as salaried and if you don't work 60+ hours a week you are considered a slacker and ripe for a layoff.
The place it can make a difference is, for example, is to open peoples eyes to what Bush is doing to trash America's standing in the world, and to stoke hatred of America to unprecedented levels which is at the root of terrorist attacks on the U.S. The Bush administration's bullshit rhetoric that they hate us for our "Freedom and Democracy" is just that, bullshit. The world hates America for all the misery it inflicts on the rest of the world militarily, economically, supporting proxies like Isreal and through its abusive intelligence agencies (there are 15 of them in the U.S. spending $40 billion a year with tentative plans to add two more).
If enough people wake up there is a slim chance they will vote Bush out of office though the fact the Democrats are fielding just about the worst candidate imaginable in Kerry pretty much assures the world of 4 more years of Bush and the next 4 years are certain to be even uglier than this 4 have been.
If nothing else it will be great if new governments are elected in Britain, Australia, Italy and Poland, at the first opportunity, so the U.S. will be completely isolated in the world and then maybe American's will realize they made a real mistake.
P.S.
Rumors are circulating that the U.S. is in process of planting WMD's in Iraq so they can be miraculously discovered, proving the Bush administration right all along and assuring his reelection. Don't be surprised if WMD's turn up in Iraq in the next month or two.
"I have to respectfully disagree with your hypothesis that some form of technology might be able to "solve" the social problem of violence, or any social problem for that matter."
Sorry, but you overlooked the most obvious example. Technology enables communication and communication enables knowledge if its honest communication and not propaganda. Honest communication might be the most powerful force imaginable for putting an end to war, totalitarianism and violence. Pervasive fax machines and communication were integral in keeping Boris Yeltsin in power when the communists attempted to overthow him and return Russia to communism.
The Internet is based on on both the fruits of military research(DARPA) and open source, but the world wide web and most internet protocols and technologies were and are based on open source software.
The Internet like most things can be used for good and evil. It is an obvious potential force in turning the tide against abusive governments. We are sitting here having this discussion now thanks to it. Prior to its existence, and that of BBS's before it, it was extremely difficult for average people to express their opinions and communicate with each other around the globe. They had very few avenues for exposing the dirt about the malignant doings of governments around the world. In that dim time you were relegated to walking around with a picket sign, or writing to a letter to the editor or shouting from a street corner. One way TV was becoming the only medium for mass communication and it was and is being severely abused for brainwashing the masses.
No, if there is anything that will save the world from totalitarianism and violence it will be communication, especially communication that increases awareness among more people about what's really going on in the world, and it isn't the propaganda governments and corporations are churning out on TV. The main obstacle seems to be the people brainwashed by that propaganda seem to be pretty impervious to opening their eyes to reality. I tried really hard with one anonymous coward yesterday in the thread on Indian voting to no avail.
I'm willing to believe Bush didn't lie at least early on. Its a near certainty Cheney and Wolfowitz misled him and he was either gullible, dumb or overly willing to believe a bad case. Bob Woodward describes Cheney as having a "fever" or an obsession with attacking Iraq and he drug the rest of the adminstration along, with Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz helping, at a time they should have stayed focused on Afghanistan and Al Queada. Instead they fought Afghanistan on the cheap using the Northern Alliance as a proxy and they managed to scatter the Taliban and Al Queada instead of capturing or killing them. THEY WERE THE ONES RESPONSIBLE FOR 9/11, beyond a shadow of a doubt, not Saddam and not Iraq.
A couple days ago someone replied to a post basically saying it was OK Bush isn't exactly the most intelligent President we've had. Well its not OK. A President has to be both intelligent, well informed and well versed in a broad range of issues foreign and domestic. If he's not he is extremely prone to making big mistakes and is vulnerable to manipulation by his staff who weren't the ones elected by America to lead this country, and are prone to have ulterior motives. With the exception of Collin Powell Bush's senior advisors appears to be a really sorry crew and he lacks the intelligence to call their bullshit, BULLSHIT.
"and their intelligence agencies all reached the same conclusion as the US and UK intelligence: Saddam almost certainly has WMD's, but we can't prove it conclusively."
Could you cite evidence that anyone agreed with the U.S. intelligence assessment other than its coalition partners, in particular Britain and Australia, some evidence other than the U.S. and British government's claiming everyone agreed with them.
If you followed Bob Woodward's book controversy this week, he indicates the CIA brought all of the evidence they had on Iraq's WMD's to a White House briefing. After seeing it Bush's response was something like, "is that all you've got" or "is that the best you can do".
I don't think any country outside the coalition bought Collin Powell's presentation to the U.N. Showing a truck parked next to an old bunker and claiming it was evidence of a chemical weapons program was farcical. I really can't believe Powell even believed it. I think he'd put on his war uniform like Bush had told him to and was being a good soldier even though he knew it was a sham.
I really doubt Iraq had much of a WMD program left after his son defected in the mid 90's and laid it all out for the West. The UN inspection teams really had done a pretty good job of eliminating what was left after that.
Why everyone who believed Iraq had WMD's did believe is pretty easy to explain. A large group of Iraqi exiles, led by Amad Chalibi in particular, decided to con the U.S. and friends in to toppling Saddam so they could take control of Iraq. To achieve this they sent fake defecters to Cheney and Wolfowitz's "Special Projects" office in the Pentagon and lied about non existent WMD programs to give the U.S. a case for war. Cheney and Wolfowitz were either extremely naive to believe these extremely unreliable defectors with no corroboration or more likely they just wanted to build a case, and since they had no real evidence they were willing to look the other way and use really bad intelligence. The supposed documents showing Saddam was trying to buy Uranium in Niger were really badly forged and no self respecting intelligence agency would have fallen for them. Apparently the CIA didn't but the Wolfowitz's special projects office pumped them in to the oval office anyway.
I really doubt Cheney and Wolfowitz are naive enough to believe this bad intelligence so I'm more inclined to think they cynically used flawed intelligence to fabricate a case for war, a war they fought for other reasons. What their real reasons were in Iraq is still anyone's guess:
- Maybe it was to institute democracy in the middle east. That is hard to believe though since a real Democracy most likely means the Shia's will vote in an Iran friendly Islamic republic which is about the last thing the U.S. could want. This is no doubt why George H.W. Bush didn't topple Saddam the first time around. One thing Saddam was good for in eyes of the U.S. is he kept the Shia majority in Iraq repressed.
- Maybe it was for oil, though if Iraq does ever manage to wrest its independence from the coalition they can easily give the oil contracts back to France and Russia or anyone but the U.S. since the U.S. has alienated nearly every Iraqi. The oil is gone from U.S. control unless the U.S. manages to keep a puppet government in Iraq, like Chalibi's would be, or any Iraqi government will be with 100,000 U.S. troops next door point guns at them.
- Maybe it was to fight the war on terror, if it was it was a really bad choice. The only known AL Queada presence in Iraq under Saddam was in regions of Iraq he didn't control. Saddam simply wasn't an Islamic fundamentalist, he was Islamic only when convenient and Iraq was one of the most secular states in the region under the Baathists. Al Queada must have despised Saddam as a result. The U.S. invasion of Iraq, killing thousands of Iraqi civilians, and Bush kissing Sharon's ass last week are recruiting posters for new waves of Islamic fundementalists who hate America.
" Since WW2, the US has a very strong record of opposing imperialism and overthrowing dictatorships and supporting nationalists."
Keep telling yourself that. The American propaganda which says America is a never ending champion of freedom and democracy and can do no wrong must have worked on you. That weblog is a little to long and has some marginal examples, but it is good because it is comprehensive and lists so many places where America really has trampled democracy around the world despite its empty rhetoric to the country which you seem to believe.
For effect he could have just focused on Iran, Guatemala, Argentina and Chile. All are places where the U.S. toppled democratically elected, nationalist governments and replaced them with ruthless dictators SINCE WORLD WAR II. The fact we installed the Shah in Iran is why the Iranians stormed our Embassy and hate us with a passion to this day. He was about as bad as they come for ruthless dictators. You are just so typical of an average American in that seem to have no clue when it comes to politics or history.
"It didn't happen. There was no US or Nato intervention in Albania. As for Kosovo and Bosnia, Clinton was 100% on the side of good in this one (stopping Serbia's aggression against Kosovo, Bosnia, and Croatia). Clinton even illegally armed Croatia which enabled it to win back the 1/3 of the country stolen by Serb invaders."
The people in Kosovo NATO was saving from Serbia were ethnic Albanians you retard. Kosovo is next to Albania. A reference on the guerilla army that was provoking Serbian retaliation that led to the NATO intervention. The Kosavars weren't quite the innocent victims NATO propaganda made them out to be to justify the intervention. Toppling the last communist states in Europe was the real goal:
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/kla.htm
I doubt you will read it. You seem to prefer sticking to your preconceived world view rather than facing the facts that contradict that view.
"Since the war was not misguided, you are lying in that sentence."
You are hopeless. I give up. You are a classic example of why American's are despised around the world. You are self centered, arrogant, convinced America is always right when it isn't and most probably ignorant of history, politics, cultures other than your own and foreign affairs. You need to travel and read more, something other than just the bible. Here is a little gem to leave you with from Google News today:
The gist of it is America has never been more hated in the Arab world than it is today, thanks to Iraq and Bush puckering up and kissing Sharon's ass last week. This is coming from our supposedly close and moderate allies in the region the heads of Egypt and Jordan.
If Bush continues down his current path and is reelected the U.S. wont have a friend left in the world in two years other than:
- countries with right wing wackos like Bush - countries the U.S. has paid to be friends
If Spain is any indication Bush's few remaining friends in places like Britain, Australia and Italy will get voted out the next time they face elections because the people in the rest of the world hate Bush and they are hating American's more everyday thanks to Bush.
I personally would prefer America were liked and respected around the world, which it was after 9/11 before Bush and his cronies trashed all that goodwill with their extremist unilateral agenda.
"has to compromise on a host of issues that'd better be dealt with but aren't."
In my view the best government is the government that governs least. Parties get dangerous when they have largely unchecked power like the Republicans now have in the U.S. Governments are a lot happier and safer when there is grid lock because it prevents a party from adopting an extremist agenda to the detriment of the minority of the people. Democracy's are bad when some faction acquires a majority of say 51% and can then trample the other 49% with callous disregard. A good democracy strives to represent all people fairly and not just the majority even if that means some laws don't get passed or they have to be watered down.
A government hamstrung by compromise like you describe really does sound pretty good versus what we have in the U.S. at present. If you have satellite and can get CSPAN just watch the house or senate proceeding in the U.S. today and watch what happens when a majority party can steamroller their agenda through while the opposition is largely powerless save for the genius of the Senate fillibuster which the Deomcrats only occasionally develop the backbone to use. Last year's Medicare reform legislation was a particularly blatant example of how undemocratic America is at present.
Here we go again and I should have stopped an hour ago using my handle to argue with a chicken shit right wing anonymous coward..
All I can say is that if you think Fox is the center I cringe at what a right leaning news channel would look like in your world.
"They presented mouthpieces of the Pentagon, yes (as any news station would). They also presented opponents. So what."
Well sorry but every network was wall to wall with retired generals and colonels which is odd if they are all as liberal as you claim they are. The opponents of the war were few and far between before, during and after, until it became apparent the Iraq war was a bad idea, and the Bush Administration suckered the media and the media with a bunch of bold face lies. The Iraqi's didn't shower us with roses when we arrived, they didn't have any weapons of mass destruction worth mentioning, and no one has ever established a link to Al Quaeda. Fact is Saddam wasn't a good Muslim, he was only one when it was politically convenient, and its pretty unlikely Islamic extremists would have anything to do with him. I know you right wingers refused to admit you were misled but you were.
"Real world translation: they fired someone who wanted to lie."
No. only in your special little world. Fox's editors ordered her to read something she knew was a lie and they knew was a lie and she was fired for refusing to. Fox simply has a pretty low standard for truthfullness for good propaganda. Like I said this case went to court and she lost because they judge determined it was Fox's prerogative to knowingly lie on their network.
"I guess it was OK: it was Clinton."
Nope, Kosovo was about as wrong as Iraq was. The Albanians were in fact trying to provoke a NATO intervention, they did and they got NATO to do their dirty work for them. You seem to be branding me as a Democrat lover which is what right wingers think everyone else is. Like I said I have no use for Democrats either and this is just another example of how similar they are to Republicans these days in launching preemptive wars in places which are none of our business. To Clinton's credit his war didn't cost hundreds of billions of dollars and a whole lot fewer Americans died. Clinton also didn't campaign against nation building, Bush did, and now he appears to be doing it all over the place at great expense to the U.S.
The only point I meant to make about Clinton was he was pilloried by the right throughout his 8 years in office, to the point he could barely function, and they never did make anything substantive stick. The Bush administration has been through a string of truly impeachable offenses and like teflon they've all slid right off without a peep, of course it helps that the Congress is controlled by his own party so he can pretty much get away with murder.
"Or how about the 95% percent of the rest of the countries that are not nightmare terrorist dictatorships, and thus won't earn Bush's wrath."
You seem to be a little naive about your beloved countries history which is kind of standard for the flag waving right wingers. I hate to point this out to you but the United States has installed more "nightmare... dictatorships" than any other country you can name:
I guess maybe the operative word is terrorist but that word seems to be applied to anyone who is in the "against us" category from "you are either with us or you're against us". This is one of George Bush's most chilling lines and one that shows his totalitarian leanings more than just about any other.
I guess I could go to Venezuela, they have a democratically elected Socialist government. Oh wait the Bush administration has been trying to topple their government pretty much since Bush was sworn in so I guess your contention that he only goes after "terrorist dictatorships" doesn't really hold. I could go to Columbia, no wa
"You are flat-out lying on this one. Fox News is centrist, not far-right. Also, Fox News is one centrist news channel out of 4+ left-wing ones."
No, you are just proving that you are on the far right. The instant someone says Fox is centrist they have shown their colors. Rupert Murdoch is very right wing, he wont deny it nor will anyone else who is being honest, and so is his network. No one without a massive right wing bias would call Fox News "centrist". Their "Fair and Balanced" slogan is another right wing con to make it sound like what they are saying is in the center when it simply isn't. You just keep proving my point whether you like it or not. If Fox is your idea of the center the center in this country has shifted dramatically from where it was twenty years ago. In the run up to the war on Iraq they were a blatant mouthpiece for the Pentagon. They were running stories that the U.S. was in imminent danger of being sprayed with chemical and biological weapons from Saddam's RPV's to whip up that last bit of pro war frenzy. It was just insane and it just wasn't true. Fox was notworthy for having fired a reporter because she refused to read news that she and her editors knew to be a lie. She sued them and lost. The judge determined that Fox wasn't required to tell the truth.
I also really can't believe you would try to stand up for that Medicare bills. Seniors are overwhelming rejecting it, and for the most part don't even understand it. It throws out a stupid little discount card now to bait them in to being put in to HMO's where they can be denied care on a routine basis in the name of Medicare cost cutting and insurance company profits. Drug and insurance company lobbyists were circling like sharks smelling blood, just out of range of CSPAN's cameras, throughout the debate and its pretty well documented there were massive payoffs occurring in exchance for votes. If there hadn't been it never would have passed. It was a new low for American Democracy. Its not a great statement about you or what your believe in that you pretend nothing wrong happened there.
"Dan Rather".
Well to be honest I can't stand to watch him. Since 9/11 he has, out of necessity, turned in to something of a pro war flag waver, or at least he sure was when backing the war in Iraq was the thing to do. If he's your idea of the "liberal" media today you have once again proven my point.
Instead of dragging this on any more lets just admit it. You are a right winger, you aren't going to change, they seldom do, no point in arguing with you. I'm not sure I'm on the far left. I always decide my position on what I think is right and not what cubbyhole I'm supposed to be in. I hate the Republicans and I don't like the Democrats. Every other party in the U.S. is doomed by a system stacked in favor of the two in power.
The only thing I'm sure of lately is I am deadly afraid of everything the Bush Administration, its backers and its minions, are doing. I would care a little less if they were inflicting their scary agenda on just the U.S. but they unfortunately sit atop the world's largest military intelligence establishment and have developed a propensity for using it, unilaterally, wherever they feel like it. They are, beyond a shadow of a doubt the most dangerous entity in the world today and everyone outside the U.S. knows it. I can't stand Kerry and I'm very confident he doesn't stand a snow ball's chance in hell of winning in November, so when Bush is reelected, I'm acting on the "love it or leave it" motto the right wing likes so much and I'm emigrating. I hope I can find a little out of the way country like Costa Rica that is insignificant enough that the Bush administration will leave it alone. I just simply never want to hear another word of his empty bullshit rhetoric or watch him lie the U.S. in to another war or anything else. Granted Clinton lied about sex. Bush lies about stuff that gets people killed and is costing the U.S. trillions of dollars.
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"There are people with vast amounts of money who appreciate exceptional feats of engineering and design."
You're just trying to make something stupid sound cool. It must work because lots of guys with more money than they know what to do with seem to have decided something stupid is cool. Carmack's car for instance is foolish excess though every geek in the place is drooling over it. I'm hoping he came to his senses and is sinking more of his cash in the X prize which is a worthwhile endeavor that will make a difference in the world. Tricking out a car simply doesn't.
If people are in this for the engineering they should be racing on a closed course where they would be tasked to prove the engineering really is good, and maybe put their fat ass on the line driving it. As another reply to your post said there is a lot more to exceptional engineering than counting horsepower and tuning the sound system. Its just stupid and wasteful to the extreme to go to incredible lengths to make a car that can go fast, in a somewhat half ass way, and then park it in a showroom.
I supposed it could be rationalized as an investment and a collectors item. But then the whole concept is predicated on there being a network of stupid guys with more money than they know what to do with that makes it a worthwhile investment.
If you've got the money to waste you would win a lot more respect from your peers if you donated it to medical research, get a building named after you, and maybe save some peoples lives someday. Or donate it to an orphanage or a scholarship fund and give some kids a shot at a life that doesn't suck and at maybe doing something important some day and making a lasting contribution to the world. People would remember you with some respect then, as someone who made a difference in the world, instead of as "a prick" that wasted umpteen millions on cars he never drove.
"How do you keep a passenger car on the road "
More importantly exactly what is the point of having a passenger car that can go 250 MPH. If you live in the U.S. and you routinely drive half that speed your driver's license is going be gone in a month.
OK, maybe you live in Germany and you drive on Autobahn's with no speed limit. Then you could maybe crank it up to 200 MPH. At that point you would be on the verge of killing yourself thanks to the huge differential with the rest of the traffic on the highway. If you killed yourself that would be OK but you would probably take one or more people with you and that is not OK.
There is simply no reason to even allow a car with this much power to be licensed for highway driving. If you want the styling great build a car with the same styling and an engine appropriate for highway driving. If you really want to drive this fast, buy a race car and get on a racing circuit. That way when you set out on your path to self destruction you will be on a track full of people with the same death wish and you can kill each other with killing innocent bystanders.
If you buy a car with this much power, and then drive anywhere close to the speed limit you are just a retard compensating for your absence of a penis and or brains.
"Or that everyone who watches NASCAR is a Bush-loving redneck?"
Well not "everyone". Can you tell me with a straight face that the average NASCAR fan, especially in the South, its historical base, isn't WASP, pro Bush, pro Jesus, pro military, pro life, etc. Thats just the demographic, not the stereotype.
"How does moving making you anything but a quitter?"
Yea. I'm just doing what my President said. I'm either with them or against them, its their way or the highway. I choose highway. They don't want compromise, coalition or democracy. They want to dictate their agenda from the right. They want everyone who disagrees to shut up and get the hell out. So I am.
I can't do anything to stop the Republicans now that they've seized power. Not sure anyone can. The Democrats have turned in to a bad joke. I can pray for a Democratic victory in November, but the deck is already stacked against them and I don't think it'll happen. To be honest I just have this overwhelming feeling that if there were any danger of the Republicans getting voted out they are going to rig the election to make sure it doesn't happen.
Not sure it will be necessary to cheat though. There is some real disgust with Bush but Kerry is just a joke. The system managed to nominate two candidates that are both bad...Yale grads, skull and bones members, spoiled rich kids, both pro Patriot act and Pro war in Iraq. I find Kerry to be as disturbing as Bush only in a different way. At least you know where Bush stands on things. I don't think Kerry even knows where he stands because he makes it up based on what he thinks the people he's talking to want to hear at the moment. It was pretty telling that Kerry on Meet the Press fell all over himself to endorse Bush's ass kiss of Sharon. Its a done deal both candidates are in the pocket of the Friends of Israel lobby first and everything else second. As long as the U.S. lets Israel have a free hand to crush and humiliate the Palestinians there is going to be an Arab world hating and attacking the U.S., there is going to be a "War on Terror" and as long as there is a "War on Terror" the Republicans are going to have an excuse to ratchet up the police state at home and wield the military as a club abroad.
"And why don't you suggest any ways to fix what you see as problems?"
I think it would be naive to think America can be fixed. The things that ail America have accumulated over a long time and have reached the point that they are an entrenched cancer, you can't remove it without killing the patient.
I wish one day Americans would wake up and want to learn about the reality of their government and the world but most of them never will and wont change from the comfortable world view they already have. As long as the current two party system, with its media sideshow, is entrenched average American's cant do anything to fix it even if a majority did see the light.
I actually had some hope Dean was going to topple the status quo. So did a lot of other people which is why he had such a big enthusiastic following, most of whom are probably now sitting at home disillusioned and dreading having to vote for Kerry.
Unfortunately Dean was prone to speak with out thinking first and said some stupid things. It was kind of refreshing but he said a few stupid things that the establishment used to destroy him. He was kind of nut case and he would have been a disaster as President but it would have been fun to watch, and to watch the establishment reaction, and to see if he sold out as soon as he got there. Dean was doomed, and I think he knew it, the day he suggested the U.S. deal even handedly with Israel and Palestine. That was about the time media and the establishment caught on he was a danger to the status quo and destroyed him, just in time.
Saying anything that isn't 100% pro Isreal is the third rail in U.S. politics. You touch it and you die. I will provoke a flaming antisemite accusation by saying it but you eventually h
"Besides, what world power hasn't acted in EXACTLY the same manner? I don't see you ripping on them"
Uh, America is the only superpower today. I guess there is the Chinese but they are to busy making money to do much else. I rag on them pretty good too. I guess there is Britain but they are a power only when they cling to American coat tails, as they dream of there empire long gone. I could rag on the French and Germans but the right wing has a monopoly on that ragging.
A big plus in having the Soviet Union around was they did serve to keep America in check. Now America has no check which is why its engaging in a unilateralist agenda predicated on preemptive warfare(synonamous with aggressive warfare which is generally considered a crime) against whomever it feels like taking down. Its also why Bush has decided to unilaterally negotiate for the Palastinians and give whats left of there country away to the Isrealis.
"why can't the people who feel they're the victims of "US cultural imperialism" Just Say No?"
Ah, ignorance is bliss. Countless nations have tried in the last century. Its where the term "Banana Republic" comes from. Everytime a nation(Guatemala, Nicaragua, etc) in the western hemisphere tried to throw out the U.S. and U.S. corporations like United Fruit the U.S. sent in the CIA or the Marines, and installed a right wing dictatorship that was friendly to "US cultural imperialism" and which massacred everyone that wasn't.
I'm pretty sure Iraq is trying to say no to "US cultural imperialism" at the moment. The U.S. is responding with guns and by giving "sovereignty" to some as yet unnamed group(puppet government) on June 30th. The problem is they forgot to mention, until recently, this supposedly sovereign government wont be able to pass ANY laws, and will have no control over coalition or Iraqi security forces. Iraq is going to be under a U.S. controlled puppet government for a long time, the second it isn't the U.S. will get thrown out on its ass. But the U.S. is planing to build permanent military bases there so Iraq is unlikely to be a truly sovereign nation again. Its is America's new base for projecting power in the region. They were using Saudi Arabia for this but the Saudi's were putting to many strings on using their country as a military base. A puppet government in Iraq is ideal as is Iraq ideal for military bases to project power in to the region in general and Syria and Iran in particular.
"So somebody hating me because I'm American is OK, but me hating some hypothetical person from [insert country here] is bad?"
No, both bad, just facts of life. I think it is important to convey that the rest of the world does have good reason to hate America. America does have good reason to hate Arabs, 9/11. There is a difference between Bush and Bin Laden and the 9/11 hijackers. Al Queada wasn't elected by a majority of Arabs to do what they did. George W. was chosen by America and it appears he will be chosen again later this year which indicates a "majority" of American's approve of what he is doing. That does mean that if the world hates George W. Bush for what he is and is doing, they do have reason to hate American's for enabling him.
"how a Constitutional Republic works"
Well I guess you missed the point that America as a constitutional Republic doesn't work anymore, IMHO. Americans for the most part don't have a clue how their government or the world really works. They are choosing it the same way they choose soap. They watch TV commercials (the guy with the best and the most) wins, or they watch the news and let the talking heads tell them who to vote for, like they did in the Democratic primary resulting in the networks moving Kerry from out of contention to winner in the space of a couple weeks, Kerry being about the worst candidate the Democrats could have fielded, and leading to Rove dancing a jig when he was nominated by the networks.
A working Constitutional Republic requires a well informed electorate making wise decisions and voting in large numbers. That isn't the case in America today.
A working Constitutional Republic also presumes the people's elected representative aren't corrupt. Based on last years Medicare "Reform" bill its pretty obvious once the people vote, their representatives go to Washington where they are generally purchased by the highest bidder, and are for the most part not voting based on the welfare of the people they represent, but rather for the welfare of the corporations and the lobbyists who are controlling them.
And of course, a working Constitutional Republic presumes elections are fair, the 2000 presidential election, the 2002 Georgia elections and the entire Diebold scandal suggests the elections are at least massively broken or at worst are being massively rigged to the benefit of the party in power.
I wish America was a working constitutional republic but it really looks like its not or maybe it is and the majority of American's are bad so so is their Republic. It does work in that the Moral Majority and the NASCAR rednecks are a powerful well organized block and it appears they are going to run America to the detriment of the mostly silent liberal minority. But me I'm not gonna fight it from here much longer. Since I don't like it, and I can't change it, I'll just leave (that's the Bush/Cheney crowd you hear cheering in the background) as soon as I pay off my hospital bills and recharge my savings. This time I have to do some work and pick a country that has a culture I can live with long term, and this time I have to get on a track for citizenship and say good by to my American citizenship and passport. I was reluctant to do that when I was in Canada, but that was before Bush and the Republican's seized power. At this point I'm embarrassed to be an American and that doesn't look likely to change in my lifetime.
"How in the heck did the parent post get moderated to Insightful?"
/. often rails about how bad it is to have a Windows monoculture in computing. Well thats nothing compared to how horrible it will be when the entire planet has an American monoculture which is where we headed now that the Chinese and pretty much the rest of the world are becoming American style consumerists.
I'm guessing the people with the moderator points must share my view of Americans, either because they aren't American, Candian maybe (lots of Slahdotters aren't American believe it or not) or they are American and secretly agree with me, like the guy from Virginia and were refreshed an American would actually come out and say it. They've been thinking they were the only ones that thought the average American is dumb and arrogant. The world really does understand why we like George W. Bush. When they wrote the book on dumb and arrogant George W. was the case study.
I'm the first to admit the post does stereotype American's though I did do my best at every point to say I wasn't slamming all American's and that I wasn't saying all Canadians are saints.
In my defense I think I would say you call it stereotype, I call it culture. Its just an unfortunate fact of life that American culture raises most American's to be like they are. American's all grow up in schools that are pretty much the same, teaching a blatantly American spin on history and politics, America always right, never wrong, everyone else wrong, defenders of "Freedom and Democracy" in the world, saved the world in World War II and everyone is in our debt(well actually the Soviet Union did 90% of the dirty work in beating the Nazi's) Football important, Knowledge not. They all watch the same TV news which is massively biased to the superior, arrogant American, watch all the same movies, don't read all the same books.
As a learning experience if you get news broadcasts from other countries, even the BBC, try watching them for a while and compare to what you are getting from the U.S. networks. Unless you really are dumb you will learn to see the huge bias in the U.S. networks.
I'm afraid you have to admit America does have a culture, bad as it is, all countries do, if you spend any time living or traveling for extended periods outside the U.S. you will know what I'm talking about. If you've spent all your life in America and blissfully remaining ignorant of the rest of the world, well you just wont understand and you will get defensive and tell me how full of shit I am. Bingo. One reason the world hates the U.S. especially the Muslim world is they hate just about everything about American culture and they hate the fact the U.S. is trying to force it on the entire world in the name of profit.
To be honest I can't really stomach America or the average American, American bars or bowling alleys anymore. I was living in Canada for the longest time, should have stayed there. Gotta move out of the U.S. soon. The pubs in Canada are wonderful, friendly places full of friendly unpretentious people for the most part as long as you don't make it obvious you're American. They really seem to dislike Americans for the most part though they are such nice people on average, they are even nice to them. It is a national sport to cheat American's given the opportunity. The nearly universal synonym for Americans...arrogant, dumb and arrogant which is a bad combination.
Its just something about the American way that rings hollow as you get older and more aware of the way the world really is. Go to the bowling alley, down some beers, get drunk, do your best to remain ignorant about the screwed up mess your country is. Pretend your country is a saint, defending "Freedom and Democracy" around the world, never does anything wrong. As long as you've got yours screw the world. Kill all the ragheads, they are barely human anyway. Camel jockeys. American's are just well superior, civilized. Denial.
That would be an OK approach for you to take as far as I'm concerned, if America just screwed up itself but unfortunately its screwing up the rest of the world too.
Maybe you should try traveling a little, and I don't mean going to a resort hotel in the tropics. Try meeting some real people in the rest of the world. especially some that have been on the losing end of America's goodwill, unfortunately they don't always live in the premium vacation spots. Maybe you should try Haiti, its tropical at least.
If you were to travel the world today I think you might find more people hate you than like you just because you're American. They really hate George W. Bush, but they pretty much have to hate you to because your letting him trample the world while your getting drunk at the bowling alley, pretending everything is wonderful in the world and cheering him on.
Maybe you should join the Marines and do your part, kill some ragheads?
"Say, why do we have soldiers again?"
"Funny me, I always thought it was to protect our Freedoms(tm)."
We have soldiers to protect the interests of the nation state and in particular the wealthy elite which are the ones that pull its strings and have the most to lose if that nation state isn't protected and doesn't get its way in the world, huge militaries are an especially effective tool for getting your way in the world.
There are times the military defends the ruling elite and coincidentally protects "our Freedoms(tm)" too but its only a coincidence. For example when the U.S. is in imminent danger of invasion by a foreign power, Japan for example might have potentially invaded the U.S. during World War II and the U.S.S.R was obviously a threat to the U.S. during the cold war. The later was kind of a case where the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were mutually threatening to each other though, and they pretty much decimated the third world engaging in proxy wars, you know the U.S.S.R would sponsor brutal socialist guerrillas, the U.S. would sponsor brutal right wing dictators in response. It would have been a somewhat more honest thing for the two to have engaged in a direct shooting war early on so they could have decimated each other and spared the third world from the honor(i.e. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Guatemala, etc).
We also have a lots of soldiers because, at the end of World War II, rather than dismantling the military as we did at the end of World War I we left an overly large military industrial complex(MIC) in place that has, as Eisenhower warned, acquired a life of its own and come to dominate economic and political life in the U.S. Its now kind of an immortal beast, out of control, very focused on transferring wealth from your pocket through taxes and in to the pockets of large corporations and the wealthy elite who are the majority shareholders in them (unless you work for one of them in which case those tax dollars are going in your pockets too though not quite as many dollars as the execs and shareholders are getting). Defense contractors are really about the only form of industry left in the U.S. that isn't going to be completely outsourced to China and India.
Here is a recent interesting example in the Army's new Stryker armored personnel carrier (armored is kind of a misnomer, a Pentagon analyst called it a dune buggy armored in tinfoil):
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair04242004.html
The Stryker is another case, among many, where a Pentagon General advocated a weapons system, helped negotiate the delivery of the lucrative contract to big corporations, General Dynamics and GM this time, at more or less the same time he was negotiating his post retirement career as, you guessed it, a senior VP at General Dynamics with a multimillion dollar compensation package. In this case it was Army Lt. General David K. Heebner who used billions in tax dollars to insure a multimillion dollar executive career and an entry level position in the ruling elite.
There was a brief period after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. the military industrial complex was in serious danger of becoming somewhat irrelevant and going down. Fortunately Saddam came along to play boogie man #1 in the first and second gulf wars.
And of course Osama Bin Laden came along and he is the ultimate boogie man. Well Osama didn't really just come along. He was manufactured by the MIC. They pumped billions of dollars to him, his associates and helped him build what would become Al Queda. This was done of course to fight one of those proxy wars mentioned previously where Osama was a key player in helping the U.S. decimate the Soviet Union by proxy.
http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo04242004.html
Now that the MIC has found an enemy in Islamic fundamentalism it has an enemy that will keep it in tact and very well funded for probably ever. In watching George W. of late I really do think I've started to see the metho
"Maybe when the people realize what has happened to them, they will demand their rights, and feel free to use armed revolution if necessary."
You aren't going to topple the U.S. government with arms anytime soon. Nonviolence, think Ghandi is the only viable approach to defeating the monster that has taken control of America. Study Ghandi's tactics, for example his march to the sea to make salt to defy Britain's colonial tax on salt. Peaceful protests, legal but on the edge and sure to provoke an excessive response from the police state are how you defeat it. Kent State was one of the pivotal moments in turning the tide against Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger. You need to exercise your constitutional rights to free speech and assembly and not violate any laws that count, like don't hurt anyone and don't engage in stupid vandalism like Seattle. You do have to violate any arbitrary laws and ordinances thrown in your way which are designed to make peaceful protest impotent and to deprive you of your right to protest. For example you can't let them put you in fenced areas where the protest is never seen and is irrelevant. This is the dominant tool being used to suppress dissent at the moment.
When peaceful protests gain a critical mass and start informing people and turning people against the gross excesses of their current government, you can count on them overreacting, killing peaceful protesters and when they do they are doomed. Britain's massacre of hundreds of Indians so disgusted the people at home that it undermined Britain's grip on power in India.
There are groups trying to mount protests for the Democratic and Republican conventions. If you want to show your displeasure with the system that is the place to go this year. Think Chicago in 1968. The authorities in those two cities with the help of the Feds are going to do their best to create a giant wall around those conventions in the name of security and anti terrorism but that excuse will also be used to push all peaceful protests out of sight and out of mind and to completely suppress peaceful dissent.
The problem you have is there is a huge percentage of American's who love the current system, they are making a good living under it, they have expensive homes, they can afford the best schools for their children and they will consider you crazy if you suggest anything is wrong in the current system. They wont risk the well being of themselves or their family by rocking the boat. You need to think of creative ways to communicate to them there is something wrong, in particular that democracy and freedom is being stolen from under their noses, in particular by a President who is telling them he is protecting "Freedom and Democracy" 20 times in every speech when he is doing exactly the opposite. This is known as the "big lie". You make it big enough and keep repeating it, the gullible majority ends up believing it when it is the antithesis of reality and truth.
If anyone were to take up arms in the U.S. they would be slaughtered or in prison for life. The U.S. government would do exactly the same thing Saddam did to any of his people who had the audacity to challenge him, for example all the Shia's in the mass graves in Southern Iraq. George H.W. Bush encouraged them to revolt against Saddam after the first gulf war. When they did Bush the elder turned his back, didn't even give them the protection of a no fly zone so Saddam could use helicopters to slaughter them, and now George W. Bush uses those same mass graves as evidence of what a monster Saddam is, when it was his own father that precipitated an armed revolt that is going to lead to slaughter in just about any nation on the planet.
Armed revolt in the U.S. would be going up against the combined might of the FBI, the Secret Service, the ATF, the CIA, the National Gaurd and the U.S. military. They have a massive advantage in intelligence gathering, air superiority and massive arms superiority. Your only hope would be the soldiers and agents woul
Since Diebold has on at least two cases, California and Georgia, intentionally patched voting machines at the last minute with software of unknown origin, I think it unwise to attribute to incompetence something that has all the signs of intentional wrong doing. It would be interesting to see if election law has been updated for the arrival of electronic voting but it would seem to me intentionally patching electronic voting machines with software of unknown origin, right before an election, is election tampering and it should be both a federal and state crime if it isn't already, and the election those machines were used in should be invalidated.
If Diebold, or some accomplice, tampered with the senate race in Georgia in 2002, in particular, they did in fact help seize control of the senate for the Republicans which has given the Republicans enormous power they wouldn't have had otherwise. Giving a party control of the executive branch and both houses of Congress gives them huge lattitudes in passing their agenda. The Republican's have in particular taken to Republican only, secret conference committees in which, rather than resolve differences between the house and senate bills they have been completely rewriting legislation at the personal direction of Dick Cheney and then forcing an up or down vote which their party wins. It would appear to me stealing Georgia, probably thanks to Diebold's machines have in fact already stolen America's Democracy and the same will occur in 2004 unless American voters unite to stop it. Every place using electronics machines without a paper audit trail should ban them from the next election and use paper ballots with big X's next to the candidates name and counted by little old ladies.
Max Cleland running for the Senate in Georgia was ahead 49% to 44% in polls right before the election and lost 53% to 46%. In the Governors races polls showed Barnes ahead of Purdue 48% to 39%. Purdue won 53% to 46%. A last minute swing that big is just amazing. Either statistical polling is worthless or someone is stealing elections.
Its equally disturbing that in 2000 VNS, the single system all the networks used for exit polling had a mysterious total system failure so that no one could compare the actual results with the results of the exit polls. It just happens that system had a new software component developed by Battelle, a well known CIA contractor. It strongly suggests someone was worried there would be an unexplainable mismatch, exit polls being extremely accurate, once again suggesting the 2000 election was also being rigged. In Minnesota the other key senate race in 2002 there was also a big statistical swing from the polls which favored Mondale while the vote went to the Republican.
If there is vote rigging going on the place to look for it is in Senate races and in the presidential race in 2004 in the swing states like Florida which is going all Diebold with no paper trail.
"As a pollworker in Georgia, which was the first state to use electronic voting equipment statewide, I can say unequivocally that electronic voting machines have made our precinct's elections run more smoothly."
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Would this be the same Georgia where the two democratic candidates for Governor and the Senate were leading by 10% margin in the polls in 2002 and managed to lose the election. Unless there was some dramatic news from the time of those polls to the election its kind of hard to explain a swing that big unless the election was rigged.
With a few seconds in Google I found this article that suggests Diebold did exactly the same thing in your 2002 Georgia election they just did in California and patched 22,000 machines at the last minute, and apparently got away with it:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0302/S00
Just because your elections seem to "run more smoothly" doesn't mean they weren't being stolen.
The Diebold people in California appear to be very incompetent. They had every advantage in rigging the elections in California, first and fore most they had no paper trail and no way to do a recount and they still got caught.
It appears their people in Georgia must be a much better team. They appear to have blatantly stolen an election in 2002 and people like you are singing praises of them for no obvious reason other than things "ran smoothly" and how easy it was to cast an apparently meaningless vote.
Unless you have really high confidence all the source code in those machines was meticulously audited and that the binaries were built from that exact source under supervision of knowledgable independent parties, not Diebold, the binaries were signed and the signs were checked in every machine at the start of the election day (using signing software that is also rigorously verified) all those other security measures you are placing so much confidence in are meaningless. If Diebold slipped in code that checked for the date of the election, and on election day flipped some percentage of the votes(say 15%) from the party they wanted to lose to the party they wanted win they could steal the election from under your nose and you would still be singing praises of their equipment.
Uh, no, you didn't read his post. He said the Democrats were the ones who wanted to modernize the voting machines because they lost the 2000 election and the Republicans wanted to leave things as they were, with the unavoidable implication that the Democrats were the ones pushing this electronic voting mess. Fact is both parties rush in to HAVA just like they did in passing the Patriot act and voting for the war in Iraq.
Not sure I really follow. We are talking about fraud at the machine level. If a vote was being cast once a minute in a 12 hour election day thats still only 720 votes per machine and I doubt they see anything close to a voter a minute. An election official could easily produce 720 votes in pre-election testing in a fairly short period of time. I think rigging the count just within the election time window is much less likely to be caught. The election officials are much to busy during that window to do random testing of machines.
Of course, if its a some have indicated and Diebold is just patching the machines at the last minute before the election with unknown and untested software that is just blatant indication of fraud and they should be charged and thrown in jail just for doing it.
You are wrong. Nice try to blame it on the Democrats though. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 was a virtual bipartisan stampede on both sides of the isle. It had a long list of Republican and Democratic sponsors. It was a little hard to find good info with a few minutes in google though this Lyndon LaRouche Article does have a writeup on it that includes the list of sponsors and all the essentials which can probably be used to find better info:
l _h ava.html
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/3107repea
It is from Larouche so has to be taken with a heavy does of salt.
This bill was heavily lobbed for by the Information Technology Association of America, which is, you guessed it, the fairly wealthy lobbying arm of the mostly Republican owned companies selling electronic voting machines. Anytime there is a wealthy lobby backing only one side of an issue and handing out campaign contributions Congress can be counted on to make bad decisions favoring that lobby.
This was after 9/11 and Congress was pretty whacked in the head in general then, it was after the 2000 Florida debacle and they were all keen to do something to make sure it didn't happen again even if what they passed is making the system MUCH WORSE and gave the ITAA, which includes Diebold a huge windfall, and dramatically increased the likelihood of a stolen election rather than reducing it.
Anyone in a position to pursue this should make sure the source being used to the builds is placed in a secure place, it is reviewed, a binary is produced from it by election officials and not Diebold, its signed and that the signing is verified before and after the election by the precinct officials, not Diebold.
They should also randomly pull machines out on election day, during voting hours and test them without Diebold's knowledge or assistance. Random testing on election day would do a world of good in catching fraud. They should also consider taking random machines prior to the election and setting the date and time to be in the election window and see if they tally correctly.
If I were Diebold my goal would be to get uncertified, unreviewed binaries in their machine in swing states. That uncertified source would have a date/time check in it. Since they know well in advance when the elections are happening they want to rig, that date time check would have a branch. If its not during the hours of an election it would flawlessly count votes to fool the election officials validating the machines. If the machines think they are within the election window there would be some convoluted code that would flip a predetermined number of votes from the party they want to lose to the party they want to win. I wager no one actually tests the counts from the machine during the election window. If someone had access to a binary from a disputed election it would be interesting to disassemble it and look for date time system calls and see what happens in the logic that follows.
If Diebold is putting uncertified software in their machine you may as well throw any election their machines are used for out the window. To be honest I'm a little amazed they are so incompetent that they are committing these huge gaffes and producing results that are clearly erroneous and are setting off alarm bells. I can only imagine they are pretty incompetent, their machines really are unreliable or they are setting off alarms in elections like California's primary that don't count much, dutifully fixing the problems to look responsible and doing the real dirty work in swing states during the elections that count which will come off flawlessly but will have rigged the results. If they always insure the vote count total was correct and the margins were at least within the realm of possibility they could cheat on elections until the cows come home and no one would catch them without the presence of a paper trail.
"I am totally at a loss to understand this rush to electronic voting."
Its pretty simple really. The party in power wants electronic voting without an audit trail. They approved billions of tax payer dollars to be thrown out to local election officials to insure it was instituted and at the same time insured all the electronic voting machine manufacturers bidding on said systems were controlled by Republican partisans who no doubt went out of their way to propose systems with no paper trail. WHO COULD POSSIBLY WANT A NASTY OLD PAPER TRAIL WHEN YOU CAN HAVE THESE NIFTY ALL ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS. Votes go in here, get turned in to electrons and you magically get a vote count out the other end. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
The Diebold incident in California really sounds like they were practicing for how to steal the election in November, in particular the part about installing uncertified software and getting caught. This is the #1 thing you need to accomplish to steal an election with electronic voting, installing uncertified software. I imagine they chose California to practice because California isn't likely to be a swing state and the primary didn't really count for much. The place they want to smoothly and successfully install their rigged software is in all the close swing states in November when it counts. They also want it in all the states with crucial senate contests.
Bottomline is electronic voting is a way to insure the people who control the machines, which happens to be the Republicans, can hold power if, god forbid, the majority of the electorate realize they are either incompetent or serving the interests of a minority at the expense of the majority and try to, god forbid, vote them out of power. We just can't have that. The Republicans are the only ones we can trust to save America and make the world safe for American hegemony. Those Democrats are dangerous, can't be trusted(well they can't but thats another story).
I don't imagine there are reliable statistics but its a near certainty that the default state for elections is for them to be rigged every time the opportunity exists to do so. The right wingers will no doubt lob out the standard accusation now that the Democrats are the one with the history of stealing elections. Well yes they've stolen them, the Republican's have stolen them, every party and politician, in a close race and with the opportunity to rig an election with a reasonably good chance of not getting caught will do so. Power is the ultimate drug, once people have it they will generally do anything to keep it and get more of it. Its only by nonstop tireless efforts by a large number of volunteers, concerned voters, that elections are made fair and secure. Relying on incompetent bureaucrats and politicians with mixed motives just doesn't cut it.
The gold rush caused by the billions of dollars the congress threw in to the market as a knee jerk reaction to the 2000 fiasco was certain to not create an environment where a reliable voting system would be produced and the rate of change is so high its pretty hard for concerned citizens to do much about it, though a few people are making a noble effort.
A couple nights ago one of the network news shows ran a piece on how unreliable the military mail system is and how its disenfranchising the brave warriors who are defending democracy around the world. They raised the possibility once again that the all votes of the military should be done electronically, so they could be cast in seconds. The end result being millions of votes being run through the Pentagon, with no paper audit trail, under the control of the Secretary of Defense whose job is at stake in the presidential election so he can adjust the outcome as necessary.
To be honest the U.S. in particular is reaching the point it doesn't really deserve a democracy. Maybe the Republicans should just declare a state of emergency and put democracy in the U.S. out of its misery. What's left of it at this point is barely worth saving anyway.
The IT work force came in to being for the most part well after unionization had entered its decline. Ronald Reagan for one turned the tide against unions, in particular, when he fired striking air traffic controllers which is a kind of IT worker.
m l
Somebody I knew 25 years ago described unionized IT workers at Martin Marietta. You apparently needed a unionized worker to tear print outs off band printers, and God help you if you did it yourself. I think the whole place was unionized rather than there being an IT union though.
When cheap container shipping became the norm that severely marginalized the longshoremen which were one of the strongest unions. You don't need many people to run those big cranes versus hand loading and unloading ships. This in turn made it much more attractive to manufacture goods in China or any place else with cheap non-union labor since shipping wasn't the expensive bottleneck it was when ships were hand loaded and the mob was exacting tariffs on cargo. The end result of offshoring was, of course, more devastation to steel workers and assorted other manufacturing unions.
Interestingly enough Elaine Chow's family makes its fortune shipping goods to the U.S. from Taiwan and China so don't operate under the delusion she is any friend of labor in the U.S. and be assured she LOVES outsourcing like most of the Bush administration:
http://www.counterpunch.org/flanders04012004.ht
The Bush administrations dream is for labor in the U.S. to be pushed down to India and China wage rates, corporate profits to explode as a result and stock valuations go through the roof so the fat cats get rich and working people are in poverty. When they talk about all the great gains in productivity in the U.S. remember that really means people are working more for less money.
If you were to try and start an IT union today the only thing you would accomplish is accelerating the rate at which IT jobs are moved off shore. Welcome to the global economy and thank you for playing. No place I've ever worked would allow anyone who even mentioned the word "union" in the door. Most places would lay you off immediately if you even attempted it.
No time in the last 20 years have I ever worked any place that would even think of paying overtime. Most programming jobs I've had are declared as salaried and if you don't work 60+ hours a week you are considered a slacker and ripe for a layoff.
The place it can make a difference is, for example, is to open peoples eyes to what Bush is doing to trash America's standing in the world, and to stoke hatred of America to unprecedented levels which is at the root of terrorist attacks on the U.S. The Bush administration's bullshit rhetoric that they hate us for our "Freedom and Democracy" is just that, bullshit. The world hates America for all the misery it inflicts on the rest of the world militarily, economically, supporting proxies like Isreal and through its abusive intelligence agencies (there are 15 of them in the U.S. spending $40 billion a year with tentative plans to add two more).
If enough people wake up there is a slim chance they will vote Bush out of office though the fact the Democrats are fielding just about the worst candidate imaginable in Kerry pretty much assures the world of 4 more years of Bush and the next 4 years are certain to be even uglier than this 4 have been.
If nothing else it will be great if new governments are elected in Britain, Australia, Italy and Poland, at the first opportunity, so the U.S. will be completely isolated in the world and then maybe American's will realize they made a real mistake.
P.S.
Rumors are circulating that the U.S. is in process of planting WMD's in Iraq so they can be miraculously discovered, proving the Bush administration right all along and assuring his reelection. Don't be surprised if WMD's turn up in Iraq in the next month or two.
"I have to respectfully disagree with your hypothesis that some form of technology might be able to "solve" the social problem of violence, or any social problem for that matter."
Sorry, but you overlooked the most obvious example. Technology enables communication and communication enables knowledge if its honest communication and not propaganda. Honest communication might be the most powerful force imaginable for putting an end to war, totalitarianism and violence. Pervasive fax machines and communication were integral in keeping Boris Yeltsin in power when the communists attempted to overthow him and return Russia to communism.
The Internet is based on on both the fruits of military research(DARPA) and open source, but the world wide web and most internet protocols and technologies were and are based on open source software.
The Internet like most things can be used for good and evil. It is an obvious potential force in turning the tide against abusive governments. We are sitting here having this discussion now thanks to it. Prior to its existence, and that of BBS's before it, it was extremely difficult for average people to express their opinions and communicate with each other around the globe. They had very few avenues for exposing the dirt about the malignant doings of governments around the world. In that dim time you were relegated to walking around with a picket sign, or writing to a letter to the editor or shouting from a street corner. One way TV was becoming the only medium for mass communication and it was and is being severely abused for brainwashing the masses.
No, if there is anything that will save the world from totalitarianism and violence it will be communication, especially communication that increases awareness among more people about what's really going on in the world, and it isn't the propaganda governments and corporations are churning out on TV. The main obstacle seems to be the people brainwashed by that propaganda seem to be pretty impervious to opening their eyes to reality. I tried really hard with one anonymous coward yesterday in the thread on Indian voting to no avail.
"If Bush actually lied"
I'm willing to believe Bush didn't lie at least early on. Its a near certainty Cheney and Wolfowitz misled him and he was either gullible, dumb or overly willing to believe a bad case. Bob Woodward describes Cheney as having a "fever" or an obsession with attacking Iraq and he drug the rest of the adminstration along, with Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz helping, at a time they should have stayed focused on Afghanistan and Al Queada. Instead they fought Afghanistan on the cheap using the Northern Alliance as a proxy and they managed to scatter the Taliban and Al Queada instead of capturing or killing them. THEY WERE THE ONES RESPONSIBLE FOR 9/11, beyond a shadow of a doubt, not Saddam and not Iraq.
A couple days ago someone replied to a post basically saying it was OK Bush isn't exactly the most intelligent President we've had. Well its not OK. A President has to be both intelligent, well informed and well versed in a broad range of issues foreign and domestic. If he's not he is extremely prone to making big mistakes and is vulnerable to manipulation by his staff who weren't the ones elected by America to lead this country, and are prone to have ulterior motives. With the exception of Collin Powell Bush's senior advisors appears to be a really sorry crew and he lacks the intelligence to call their bullshit, BULLSHIT.
"and their intelligence agencies all reached the same conclusion as the US and UK intelligence: Saddam almost certainly has WMD's, but we can't prove it conclusively."
Could you cite evidence that anyone agreed with the U.S. intelligence assessment other than its coalition partners, in particular Britain and Australia, some evidence other than the U.S. and British government's claiming everyone agreed with them.
If you followed Bob Woodward's book controversy this week, he indicates the CIA brought all of the evidence they had on Iraq's WMD's to a White House briefing. After seeing it Bush's response was something like, "is that all you've got" or "is that the best you can do".
I don't think any country outside the coalition bought Collin Powell's presentation to the U.N. Showing a truck parked next to an old bunker and claiming it was evidence of a chemical weapons program was farcical. I really can't believe Powell even believed it. I think he'd put on his war uniform like Bush had told him to and was being a good soldier even though he knew it was a sham.
I really doubt Iraq had much of a WMD program left after his son defected in the mid 90's and laid it all out for the West. The UN inspection teams really had done a pretty good job of eliminating what was left after that.
Why everyone who believed Iraq had WMD's did believe is pretty easy to explain. A large group of Iraqi exiles, led by Amad Chalibi in particular, decided to con the U.S. and friends in to toppling Saddam so they could take control of Iraq. To achieve this they sent fake defecters to Cheney and Wolfowitz's "Special Projects" office in the Pentagon and lied about non existent WMD programs to give the U.S. a case for war. Cheney and Wolfowitz were either extremely naive to believe these extremely unreliable defectors with no corroboration or more likely they just wanted to build a case, and since they had no real evidence they were willing to look the other way and use really bad intelligence. The supposed documents showing Saddam was trying to buy Uranium in Niger were really badly forged and no self respecting intelligence agency would have fallen for them. Apparently the CIA didn't but the Wolfowitz's special projects office pumped them in to the oval office anyway.
I really doubt Cheney and Wolfowitz are naive enough to believe this bad intelligence so I'm more inclined to think they cynically used flawed intelligence to fabricate a case for war, a war they fought for other reasons. What their real reasons were in Iraq is still anyone's guess:
- Maybe it was to institute democracy in the middle east. That is hard to believe though since a real Democracy most likely means the Shia's will vote in an Iran friendly Islamic republic which is about the last thing the U.S. could want. This is no doubt why George H.W. Bush didn't topple Saddam the first time around. One thing Saddam was good for in eyes of the U.S. is he kept the Shia majority in Iraq repressed.
- Maybe it was for oil, though if Iraq does ever manage to wrest its independence from the coalition they can easily give the oil contracts back to France and Russia or anyone but the U.S. since the U.S. has alienated nearly every Iraqi. The oil is gone from U.S. control unless the U.S. manages to keep a puppet government in Iraq, like Chalibi's would be, or any Iraqi government will be with 100,000 U.S. troops next door point guns at them.
- Maybe it was to fight the war on terror, if it was it was a really bad choice. The only known AL Queada presence in Iraq under Saddam was in regions of Iraq he didn't control. Saddam simply wasn't an Islamic fundamentalist, he was Islamic only when convenient and Iraq was one of the most secular states in the region under the Baathists. Al Queada must have despised Saddam as a result. The U.S. invasion of Iraq, killing thousands of Iraqi civilians, and Bush kissing Sharon's ass last week are recruiting posters for new waves of Islamic fundementalists who hate America.
" Since WW2, the US has a very strong record of opposing imperialism and overthrowing dictatorships and supporting nationalists."
1 97 136,00.html
Keep telling yourself that. The American propaganda which says America is a never ending champion of freedom and democracy and can do no wrong must have worked on you. That weblog is a little to long and has some marginal examples, but it is good because it is comprehensive and lists so many places where America really has trampled democracy around the world despite its empty rhetoric to the country which you seem to believe.
For effect he could have just focused on Iran, Guatemala, Argentina and Chile. All are places where the U.S. toppled democratically elected, nationalist governments and replaced them with ruthless dictators SINCE WORLD WAR II. The fact we installed the Shah in Iran is why the Iranians stormed our Embassy and hate us with a passion to this day. He was about as bad as they come for ruthless dictators. You are just so typical of an average American in that seem to have no clue when it comes to politics or history.
"It didn't happen. There was no US or Nato intervention in Albania. As for Kosovo and Bosnia, Clinton was 100% on the side of good in this one (stopping Serbia's aggression against Kosovo, Bosnia, and Croatia). Clinton even illegally armed Croatia which enabled it to win back the 1/3 of the country stolen by Serb invaders."
The people in Kosovo NATO was saving from Serbia were ethnic Albanians you retard. Kosovo is next to Albania. A reference on the guerilla army that was provoking Serbian retaliation that led to the NATO intervention. The Kosavars weren't quite the innocent victims NATO propaganda made them out to be to justify the intervention. Toppling the last communist states in Europe was the real goal:
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/kla.htm
I doubt you will read it. You seem to prefer sticking to your preconceived world view rather than facing the facts that contradict that view.
"Since the war was not misguided, you are lying in that sentence."
You are hopeless. I give up. You are a classic example of why American's are despised around the world. You are self centered, arrogant, convinced America is always right when it isn't and most probably ignorant of history, politics, cultures other than your own and foreign affairs. You need to travel and read more, something other than just the bible. Here is a little gem to leave you with from Google News today:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1
The gist of it is America has never been more hated in the Arab world than it is today, thanks to Iraq and Bush puckering up and kissing Sharon's ass last week. This is coming from our supposedly close and moderate allies in the region the heads of Egypt and Jordan.
If Bush continues down his current path and is reelected the U.S. wont have a friend left in the world in two years other than:
- countries with right wing wackos like Bush
- countries the U.S. has paid to be friends
If Spain is any indication Bush's few remaining friends in places like Britain, Australia and Italy will get voted out the next time they face elections because the people in the rest of the world hate Bush and they are hating American's more everyday thanks to Bush.
I personally would prefer America were liked and respected around the world, which it was after 9/11 before Bush and his cronies trashed all that goodwill with their extremist unilateral agenda.
"has to compromise on a host of issues that'd better be dealt with but aren't."
In my view the best government is the government that governs least. Parties get dangerous when they have largely unchecked power like the Republicans now have in the U.S. Governments are a lot happier and safer when there is grid lock because it prevents a party from adopting an extremist agenda to the detriment of the minority of the people. Democracy's are bad when some faction acquires a majority of say 51% and can then trample the other 49% with callous disregard. A good democracy strives to represent all people fairly and not just the majority even if that means some laws don't get passed or they have to be watered down.
A government hamstrung by compromise like you describe really does sound pretty good versus what we have in the U.S. at present. If you have satellite and can get CSPAN just watch the house or senate proceeding in the U.S. today and watch what happens when a majority party can steamroller their agenda through while the opposition is largely powerless save for the genius of the Senate fillibuster which the Deomcrats only occasionally develop the backbone to use. Last year's Medicare reform legislation was a particularly blatant example of how undemocratic America is at present.
Here we go again and I should have stopped an hour ago using my handle to argue with a chicken shit right wing anonymous coward..
... dictatorships" than any other country you can name:
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All I can say is that if you think Fox is the center I cringe at what a right leaning news channel would look like in your world.
"They presented mouthpieces of the Pentagon, yes (as any news station would). They also presented opponents. So what."
Well sorry but every network was wall to wall with retired generals and colonels which is odd if they are all as liberal as you claim they are. The opponents of the war were few and far between before, during and after, until it became apparent the Iraq war was a bad idea, and the Bush Administration suckered the media and the media with a bunch of bold face lies. The Iraqi's didn't shower us with roses when we arrived, they didn't have any weapons of mass destruction worth mentioning, and no one has ever established a link to Al Quaeda. Fact is Saddam wasn't a good Muslim, he was only one when it was politically convenient, and its pretty unlikely Islamic extremists would have anything to do with him. I know you right wingers refused to admit you were misled but you were.
"Real world translation: they fired someone who wanted to lie."
No. only in your special little world. Fox's editors ordered her to read something she knew was a lie and they knew was a lie and she was fired for refusing to. Fox simply has a pretty low standard for truthfullness for good propaganda. Like I said this case went to court and she lost because they judge determined it was Fox's prerogative to knowingly lie on their network.
"I guess it was OK: it was Clinton."
Nope, Kosovo was about as wrong as Iraq was. The Albanians were in fact trying to provoke a NATO intervention, they did and they got NATO to do their dirty work for them. You seem to be branding me as a Democrat lover which is what right wingers think everyone else is. Like I said I have no use for Democrats either and this is just another example of how similar they are to Republicans these days in launching preemptive wars in places which are none of our business. To Clinton's credit his war didn't cost hundreds of billions of dollars and a whole lot fewer Americans died. Clinton also didn't campaign against nation building, Bush did, and now he appears to be doing it all over the place at great expense to the U.S.
The only point I meant to make about Clinton was he was pilloried by the right throughout his 8 years in office, to the point he could barely function, and they never did make anything substantive stick. The Bush administration has been through a string of truly impeachable offenses and like teflon they've all slid right off without a peep, of course it helps that the Congress is controlled by his own party so he can pretty much get away with murder.
"Or how about the 95% percent of the rest of the countries that are not nightmare terrorist dictatorships, and thus won't earn Bush's wrath."
You seem to be a little naive about your beloved countries history which is kind of standard for the flag waving right wingers. I hate to point this out to you but the United States has installed more "nightmare
http://www.isp.nwu.edu/~fprefect/politics/timeli ne
I guess maybe the operative word is terrorist but that word seems to be applied to anyone who is in the "against us" category from "you are either with us or you're against us". This is one of George Bush's most chilling lines and one that shows his totalitarian leanings more than just about any other.
I guess I could go to Venezuela, they have a democratically elected Socialist government. Oh wait the Bush administration has been trying to topple their government pretty much since Bush was sworn in so I guess your contention that he only goes after "terrorist dictatorships" doesn't really hold. I could go to Columbia, no wa
"You are flat-out lying on this one. Fox News is centrist, not far-right. Also, Fox News is one centrist news channel out of 4+ left-wing ones."
No, you are just proving that you are on the far right. The instant someone says Fox is centrist they have shown their colors. Rupert Murdoch is very right wing, he wont deny it nor will anyone else who is being honest, and so is his network. No one without a massive right wing bias would call Fox News "centrist". Their "Fair and Balanced" slogan is another right wing con to make it sound like what they are saying is in the center when it simply isn't. You just keep proving my point whether you like it or not. If Fox is your idea of the center the center in this country has shifted dramatically from where it was twenty years ago. In the run up to the war on Iraq they were a blatant mouthpiece for the Pentagon. They were running stories that the U.S. was in imminent danger of being sprayed with chemical and biological weapons from Saddam's RPV's to whip up that last bit of pro war frenzy. It was just insane and it just wasn't true. Fox was notworthy for having fired a reporter because she refused to read news that she and her editors knew to be a lie. She sued them and lost. The judge determined that Fox wasn't required to tell the truth.
I also really can't believe you would try to stand up for that Medicare bills. Seniors are overwhelming rejecting it, and for the most part don't even understand it. It throws out a stupid little discount card now to bait them in to being put in to HMO's where they can be denied care on a routine basis in the name of Medicare cost cutting and insurance company profits. Drug and insurance company lobbyists were circling like sharks smelling blood, just out of range of CSPAN's cameras, throughout the debate and its pretty well documented there were massive payoffs occurring in exchance for votes. If there hadn't been it never would have passed. It was a new low for American Democracy. Its not a great statement about you or what your believe in that you pretend nothing wrong happened there.
"Dan Rather".
Well to be honest I can't stand to watch him. Since 9/11 he has, out of necessity, turned in to something of a pro war flag waver, or at least he sure was when backing the war in Iraq was the thing to do. If he's your idea of the "liberal" media today you have once again proven my point.
Instead of dragging this on any more lets just admit it. You are a right winger, you aren't going to change, they seldom do, no point in arguing with you. I'm not sure I'm on the far left. I always decide my position on what I think is right and not what cubbyhole I'm supposed to be in. I hate the Republicans and I don't like the Democrats. Every other party in the U.S. is doomed by a system stacked in favor of the two in power.
The only thing I'm sure of lately is I am deadly afraid of everything the Bush Administration, its backers and its minions, are doing. I would care a little less if they were inflicting their scary agenda on just the U.S. but they unfortunately sit atop the world's largest military intelligence establishment and have developed a propensity for using it, unilaterally, wherever they feel like it. They are, beyond a shadow of a doubt the most dangerous entity in the world today and everyone outside the U.S. knows it. I can't stand Kerry and I'm very confident he doesn't stand a snow ball's chance in hell of winning in November, so when Bush is reelected, I'm acting on the "love it or leave it" motto the right wing likes so much and I'm emigrating. I hope I can find a little out of the way country like Costa Rica that is insignificant enough that the Bush administration will leave it alone. I just simply never want to hear another word of his empty bullshit rhetoric or watch him lie the U.S. in to another war or anything else. Granted Clinton lied about sex. Bush lies about stuff that gets people killed and is costing the U.S. trillions of dollars.