In fact, I have a well-formed set of thoughts on this subject. I think you'll agree that... um, hold on....
...
Sorry, I was interrupted by someone asking my opinion about how well I'm being isolated from people I don't know asking my opinion about things. And, who are you, again?
Actually, I think that political and charity-type stuff is pretty much completely fitting through the holes left in that legislation. I will say though, that the normal unsolicited commercial stuff more or less came to a screeching halt after I put my listed home number on the do not call list. It actually worked.
Why aren't the Muslims ratting out the terrorists?
Sort of a good question. "The Muslims" is a little vague. Why do the ones culturally closest to the jihaddists keep quiet? Because they'd rather back their culture, I presume, than face what those people are doing to their culture. Of course, that has nothing to do with your ability to get a couple of your friends and physically stop someone from trashing a store at your peaceful demonstration.
Why aren't the Christians ratting out the abortion bombers?
Again, not a very good question. "The Christians," I'm guessing, aren't a homogenous enough group to even describe in that way. The better question would be, "Why aren't the militant anti-abortionists giving up the people they support?" Which is pretty self explanatory.
Why isn't the NRA ratting out gunmen?
Now that's just a ridiculous question. That's like asking why people who go to NASCAR events don't rat out drunk drivers. "The gunmen" (in the sense that I assume you mean: criminals) are rarely NRA members, and for that matter rarely use legitimately purchased and carried firearms.
Leave it to scentcone to morally justify the police state. yet again.
What the hell are you talking about? We're talking about a tool. A non-lethal tool. Which people you elect to assign police officers and shape law enforcement in your city, county, and state are what dictate when and how those tools are used.
Do you consider park police horses an enabler of a police state? Wooden batons? Pepper spray? A strong arm? A four-door sedan painted a certain way? A shotgun? A.357? So, since we've had those things for decades, it's been a police state all this time? Or are you one of those people that confuses what people do with what tools they use or have available?
Leave it to you to make a spurious, irrational statement just for the sake of lashing out in a way that you're hoping will appeal to the occasional, weak-witted passer-by with no sense of causality.
Oh, and thank you for what you do for a living. And for taking the time to render informed, articulate responses, even for idiots like the complete moron to whom you were just responding.
I don't want a small number of well-armed police officers with the ability to control huge numbers of people.
So, that means that the only way that a, say, college-town police force can deal with several hundred drunken idiots adding to a pile of burning cars in the middle of the main street after a freakin' football game is to: give them simple weapons, and have vastly more of them. Or, you could elect local officials that have wise policies, and pay for professional enough police to allow a more minimal force, while still equipping them to deal with hundreds of "peace activists" that are smashing business windows or blocking the road to a hospital... without marching out literally hundreds of cops (at which point you'd be referring to their military numbers, rather than their tools).
I think you missed the point of the original post. He is asking why these weapons being used by the military on American soil? More pointedly, why is the military being used against civilians on American soil? That is not their purpose.
But who has said that the US military would be the ones using these tools, in a test capacity, along the non-lethal tools that law enforcement already uses? Just because a military officer thinks it's a good idea to be able to say to the world that we consider a new tool non-lethal enough that even within our own borders, our law enforcement considers it a viable option. No, it's not the purpose of the US militar to be used "against" US citizens on our soil, and if you're paying attention on this topic, you'll see that no one is saying that. Sheesh!
Why, because the commanders in the ranks of your municipal police department answer to no one? Because the media isn't watching events like that? Because the mayor or governor they work for has no authority over them and their policies?
The police already have vastly more dangerous/lethal tools at their disposal. These are simply different tools. Just because both the military and the police each use teargas doesn't mean it's a "recipe for abuse." Same thing for a crowd dispersing technology that doesn't (unlike teargas) involve ballistic projectiles, incindiary mechanisms, and vision/respiratory damage. Why haven't you been railing about that for the past several decades? That's much worse.
You mean, assigned to people that are probably pretty happy to have the job, and may use it as a stepping stone to career in law enforcement or security management in the private sector? OK, just checking.
Crowd control applied to American citizens is a law enforcement function.
Right. So what makes you think it's the Air Force that would be testing it? Law enforcement is called upon, routinely, to deal with crowds of jackasses that are burning cars because their sports team lost (or won! whatever - doesn't matter - let's burn stuff!). There are plenty of opportunities for domestic law enforcement specialists to evaluate and test this sort of thing so that when the military does have need for it (which they clearly already do), no one in France can say how mean we are in the way we're not killing someone who is throwing a flaming bucket of gasoline at an embassy car full of diplomats.
After all the liberty limiting, rights abolishing moves, now your administration, in conjunction with the military, is preparing to literally beat down u.s. citizens.
Right, because Dixiecrats and other fine folks never used firehoses in the 1960's, or anything like that. Come on.
This is about not killing the very people you're talking about not making uncomfortable. Molotov cocktail-throwing crowds in front of an embassy, for example. Let's say someone from your camp, politically, is visiting an embassy or some similar facility with AFMPs, or Marines, etc., watching over them. Someone with an AK-47 is in the crowd and lets loose. At your guy. Which would you rather: the Marines make all of those people run off with a temporary headache, or the Marines use lethal force? Oh, I see: you'd rather not offend them, and have that ambassador and his entourage killed or trapped in the building. OK, as long as we're clear on that. Thanks!
...as power out at the datacenter. The whole reason that businesses park their e-commerce platforms (and web services, and increasingly their accounting platforms and messaging systems) out at a for-real datacenter is so that when their local office utilities puke, their customers can still "see" them online, send them an e-mail without it getting spooled up or bounced, etc.
In the sense that a good datacenter's got local power generation covered, the failure of the larger cloud is the bigger risk. I know, not for all business profiles (like call centers, etc). But I'd say that the "we don't care if our cubicles are in the dark, as long as our web site is up" description probably fits 80% of my clients. Just sayin'.
The Baroque Cycle? Are you out of your mind? I like a lot of Stephenson (and even waited in line to have him sign Quicksilver), but Baroque Cycle is what Dickens would have written had he been paid by the word instead of by the pound.
No problem! We have different tastes. I completey relished it, and understood, at the tail end of a lengthy bit o' prose, why he took his time getting where he was going. I liked it, a lot. In fact, much more than Snowcrash. For that matter, the lengthier exposition in Cryptonomicon didn't have nearly the pleasant feel and movement to it that I think he polished in the BC. To each our own, of course.
Just because *some* people are rioting doesn't mean they all are, but guess what happens when the pigs show up? They put a stop to anything and everything, and to hell with your freedom of speech.
So why aren't you stopping the destructive people in your midst, to show that you're actually committed to peaceful speech and non-aggressive demonstration of your point of view? If you tolerate the guy standing right next to you who is swinging a two-by-four at someone's windshield or getting ready to torch a Starbucks - why aren't you jumping at the chance to show the "pigs" (um, nice way to indicate your lack of hostility, there) that there is no need for crowd control, because the crowd is controlling itself?
No? I didn't think so. "Anonymous Coward" has never been more accurate. Ever.
The question you should be asking is "Why is the Military being used for civillian law enforcment?"
They're not. Here's a scenario for you:
You're with a platoon of Marines assigned to guard a US Embassy, or perhaps to support the local military in their protection of a local elected official (say, the Interior Minister of Carjakistan, who is friendly to democracy but tends to have angry mobs pointed at him by his local political opponents in the city where they're trying to put together a function municipal government that doesn't involve daily beheadings). A couple of busses pull up with that day's duly designated Angry Mob(s). They start screaming, throwing rocks, etc. Then, some shots ring out from the crowd, at the Marines.
So, they can fire over the heads of the crowd, hoping to disperse them. The people willing to attack some Marines don't really care about that tactic one way or the other, so that's something of a non-starter. Or, they can fire into the crowd, making them disperse into smaller body parts, and hopefully also killing the people who are shooting at whatever building they're in. That works, but has the unfortunate side effect of killing the people who were bussed in as angry-crowd-cover by the militants. Marines look bad on CNN for that one. Or, they can trot out a new toy or two that makes it pretty much unbearable to be in that crowd in the first place, AK-47 under your cross-dressing burkha or not. Unarmed civilians don't die, and Interior Minister gets to go to work on the police force that's ultimately supposed to handle these situations.
If I'm a Marine, I'm all for this. Likewise Air Force MPs (who are often guarding facilities that get swamped with representatives from Unruly Crowd Central Casting), etc.
The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
Dude, this is slashdot. Please get it right:
Harry Potter, I - VI (through which most slashdotters learned to conjugate verbs)
The Thursday panel of "Mary Worth" from the second week of July, 1988 (look, if you have to ask, you're just not cool)
The Count Of Monte Cristo (the original "Fight The Man While Being, and Being Richer Than, The Man" story)
OK, seriously: Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. Truly a modern classic. Simply incredible, and too good to be on most people's lists since they couldn't rise to the occasion of reading it. There was one page in the second book which I found contextually annoying because it was only very entertaining and interesting.
This reminds me of the time that Bill Clinton was video taped in front of some scale model of a new federal building (or was it a White House gingerbread house on display for the holidays?). Regardless - his immediate reaction on seeing the scale model was that it looked like it had been built for Robert Reich (his 4'-10" Labor Secretary, a cabinet member). Reich (just like the woman with whom Arnold was joking) took it in stride, and frequently jokes about his height himself.
But: such media coverage as even covered a crack like that was mostly in the form of the talking heads chuckling right along with Clinton, their pet guy. If Arnold had made that same remark, he'd get lit up way worse than he has been over this recent bit of nonsense. Political Correctness is bad enough, but it's even worse when it's applied capriciously by people who are not offended, but are trying very hard to make other people feel that they should be offended, because they score some feeble political points in doing so.
I doubt that it takes much more than a single election worker to disrupt the vote in this manner, so there's not much of a "conspiracy" required; just a touch of ruthlessness and a basic understanding of the needs of the moment. Why one particular party gets the preponderance of benefit from these disruptions is something I'm sure you'd say we shouldn't worry our silly little heads over.
Run that past the teams of people that rehearsed this process, that drew up the checklist of items to be delivered, that were supposed to check FOR the items when all was delivered to the precincts, etc. This was done incorrectly across two hundred and thiry eight polling places. Your "lone gunman" must have been a very busy guy. Perhaps the thing you're actually noticing is that in counties that tend to have a heavily Democratic political element (which tend to also populate the election boards and staff the polling places in areas that are so heavily skewed, demographically), that there's just a prevailing incompetence among those people? I don't find that suggestion any more offensive than your suggestion that the other party snuck the cards out of 238 deliveries.
Actually, this fits the pattern pretty well. You know, like the butterfly ballots in Florida that everyone was screaming about as biased against Gore. Designed by a Democrat, approved by a Democrat-heavy election board, and previewed by that state's voters in advance. Perhaps this is just another example of exactly that type of inattention to detail, poor execution, and sloppy oversight by complacent people in an area totally tilted towards Democratic candidates regardless - who didn't think they had much on the line, and acted that way. So, what's the more likely scenario: crafty Republican operatives brainwashing Florida's Democrat ballot designer, and also slipping smart cards out of the supplies for 238 precinct distribution (a notion, you'll find, that hasn't even been mentioned by the people involved, because they're obviously well aware that they just hosed it up, plain and simple), or: people are lazy and make more mistakes when they don't think they have anything to fret about.
I'm sorry but the above is utter bullshit. People have rational minds that can subdue their natural urges, in fact the future will be one of technologies that enhance one's discipline and removal of backward and feral evolutionary baggage that holds humanity back from living in near utopian societies.
Let's see... my observation, based on what we all see around us every day, is BS... but you're quite comfortable making predictions about (and apparently wanting) us to play with (what, DNA) in a way that will just-perfectly fine tune human behavior, evolved over millions of years, to suppress just those things that prevent us from living in Utopia? Care with the words "utter" and "bullshit," there.
I'd feel a little bit more comfortable with the "oops" hypothesis if this kind of thing ever happened in primarily conservative Republican precincts...
Um, wait a second here. You've got a slow process (involving poll workers forgetting to pack things on a truck), in a county (Montgomer) where virtually all of the polls and election boards are staffed by the resident Democrats. Are you so uncomfortable with the possibility that a likely-mostly-Democrat staff forgot to put a box on a truck that you'd rather propose some conspiracy?
Um, this is Montgomery County MD. There are no Republicans here, just Democrats. I didn't even bother to vote because all the Republicans were running unopposed except for the school board. The Republicans are all going to loose in the general election. Which party is going to care enough to fix the results?
Huh! Imagine me meeting (on slashdot!) the only other resident of Montgomery County, MD that knows voting other than Democrat today (primaries) is a pointless exercise. I'm still getting over the pleasant shock of getting Erlich elected, but the Steele campaign is going to be a hoot, especially if Mfume wins in the dem primary. I can't wait to watch the local politics-hounds twist themselves in knots over that one.
OK, so, good luck, oh other-voice-in-the-wilderness.
Electronic voting machines just add another big layer of complexity to a process that really doesn't need to be so hard. A paper ballot has just two parts, the ballot sheet and a pen. If the ballot sheet breaks, the voter can just grab a new one, and the whole process gets held up for a minute, instead of hours or more. If someone forgets the pens, you can run to corner store and grab a box, or chances are enough of the first batch of voters will happen to have pens with them that they don't mind leaving behind.
I really envy you that you didn't lose any minutes of your life watching coverage of election commission workers in Florida holding up paper ballots to the light and arguing over stray marks and dents and scuffs in order to guess what the voter's real intention was when he/she seems to have made two marks, or none that were completely obvious.
The whole point of the machine (whether electronic, as we're discussing, or mechanical like the older lever systems) is to remove any ambiguity, both in the intention of the casting and process of the counting of votes. Yes, yes, all systems can have vulnerabilities. But I'd say that asking a table of three people to have a magic seance over a badly marked paper ballot to determine who that person really was thinking about when they bumped the pen near Gore's name, but partly pressed out the chad near Bush's name, and crossed out Buchannon's name - that has got to never happen again. I'd be happiest to have machines just like Maryland is now using, but which also spit out a paper tape, cash-register-style, into a locked container hanging off the back. Of course, humans are going to touch those, too. So the conspiracy fetishists will always have something to drool over.
It's not an entire computer people, it's just a very simple kiosk. Christ, I could probably write some software that would do the job better than these boobs.
Yes, but would you have the presence of mind to keep your yap shut when you don't know what they hell you're talking about? Obviously not.
The machines all worked just fine. The people who provision the polling places forgot to pack and deliver the smart cards that are part of casting your vote. They were late. They delivered them later, and everything went fine, technically. Would you have the same rant if it had been YOUR machine, and someone forgot to pack the power cords? Jeez, just RTFA before you pounce.
For example, you had 238 precincts that didn't get to vote on time. Says a Montgomery County boar of elections supervisor:
"They didn't get to use voting machines to cast their ballots because the county's 238 precincts didn't get needed voter access cards.
"These are the cards that you put into the machines to activate the machines," Nancy Dacek, president of the Montgomery County Board of Elections, tells WTOP. "We have a crew that packs them and for some reason, inadvertently, the access cards were left out."
Which isn't much different than someone not delivering boxes of good old fashioned paper ballots, if that's what those precincts had been expected to use. But no, I'm sure we'll hear how somehow the Governor of the state made the "crew that packs them" hose it up on purpose, blah blah. Or better yet, GWB personally slipped out of the White House to remove the cards from the trucks, just to get everyone even more riled up. *sigh*
'The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in lace of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.'
-Socrates (possibly miss-attributed but still very old)
I understand your point (that every generation has always looked at their neighbor's kids and rolled their eyes), but some generations do grow up to be, demographically, losers. Not to pick on any individuals, per se, but on how cultures can go adrift. It happens, and has happened. But things happen faster now, and with much great consequence than ever before.
Let me ask you this, how many people in the third world have you actually spoken to? How many deep conversations on their world views have you had?
You mean, like my neighbor and his extended family from Cameroon? He installs CAT5 for a living. And cleans carpets at night. And details cars on weekends. His wife works two jobs, too. They're anxious to get ahead enough to go back to Africa and do what they can to get their hometowns that much farther ahead, too. They don't resent prosperity, they're working their asses off to produce it for themselves. I've talked with them many times, at great length. They consider the incursion of the jihaddists into Africa (a la Sudan) to be the single greatest thing, next to AIDS, to threaten the movement of that part of the world into the modern world. It's no mystery that people like Zawahiri proclaim that to be their next frontier.
Or maybe you mean the family that lives on the other side of me. Husband and wife each raised poor, in Central and South America. Three generations living the house so they can afford to be here, working. They also want to see their home countries (Nicaragua and Venezuela, in their cases) to join the rest of the world's prosperity and relative local peace. They consider Hugo Chavez (just back from visiting his "brother" the president of Iran!) and his idealogy to be the greatest threat to true growth in that part of the world. The people across the street from me are from Indonesia. Next to them are Malaysians. We've made good friends with the Romanians around back. All of that is taken into the context of what I say.
Your hypothetical young Muslim man may indeed be having resentment and retro-grade solutions poured into his ear by his local preachers and culture - but his basic capacity for reason, as a human, takes some pretty deliberate turning off if he's one of those college educated, world-traveling monsters who decided that the people in his home country will somehow be learn better trades, have a thriving local economy, and enjoy days of milk and honey if only everyone in the WTC would die. I'm not having a lot of sympathy for the Mohammad Attas of the world.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, I have a well-formed set of thoughts on this subject. I think you'll agree that ... um, hold on....
...
Sorry, I was interrupted by someone asking my opinion about how well I'm being isolated from people I don't know asking my opinion about things. And, who are you, again?
Actually, I think that political and charity-type stuff is pretty much completely fitting through the holes left in that legislation. I will say though, that the normal unsolicited commercial stuff more or less came to a screeching halt after I put my listed home number on the do not call list. It actually worked.
Why aren't the Muslims ratting out the terrorists?
Sort of a good question. "The Muslims" is a little vague. Why do the ones culturally closest to the jihaddists keep quiet? Because they'd rather back their culture, I presume, than face what those people are doing to their culture. Of course, that has nothing to do with your ability to get a couple of your friends and physically stop someone from trashing a store at your peaceful demonstration.
Why aren't the Christians ratting out the abortion bombers?
Again, not a very good question. "The Christians," I'm guessing, aren't a homogenous enough group to even describe in that way. The better question would be, "Why aren't the militant anti-abortionists giving up the people they support?" Which is pretty self explanatory.
Why isn't the NRA ratting out gunmen?
Now that's just a ridiculous question. That's like asking why people who go to NASCAR events don't rat out drunk drivers. "The gunmen" (in the sense that I assume you mean: criminals) are rarely NRA members, and for that matter rarely use legitimately purchased and carried firearms.
Leave it to scentcone to morally justify the police state. yet again.
.357? So, since we've had those things for decades, it's been a police state all this time? Or are you one of those people that confuses what people do with what tools they use or have available?
What the hell are you talking about? We're talking about a tool. A non-lethal tool. Which people you elect to assign police officers and shape law enforcement in your city, county, and state are what dictate when and how those tools are used.
Do you consider park police horses an enabler of a police state? Wooden batons? Pepper spray? A strong arm? A four-door sedan painted a certain way? A shotgun? A
Leave it to you to make a spurious, irrational statement just for the sake of lashing out in a way that you're hoping will appeal to the occasional, weak-witted passer-by with no sense of causality.
Direct. Hit.
Oh, and thank you for what you do for a living. And for taking the time to render informed, articulate responses, even for idiots like the complete moron to whom you were just responding.
I don't want a small number of well-armed police officers with the ability to control huge numbers of people.
... without marching out literally hundreds of cops (at which point you'd be referring to their military numbers, rather than their tools).
So, that means that the only way that a, say, college-town police force can deal with several hundred drunken idiots adding to a pile of burning cars in the middle of the main street after a freakin' football game is to: give them simple weapons, and have vastly more of them. Or, you could elect local officials that have wise policies, and pay for professional enough police to allow a more minimal force, while still equipping them to deal with hundreds of "peace activists" that are smashing business windows or blocking the road to a hospital
I think you missed the point of the original post. He is asking why these weapons being used by the military on American soil? More pointedly, why is the military being used against civilians on American soil? That is not their purpose.
But who has said that the US military would be the ones using these tools, in a test capacity, along the non-lethal tools that law enforcement already uses? Just because a military officer thinks it's a good idea to be able to say to the world that we consider a new tool non-lethal enough that even within our own borders, our law enforcement considers it a viable option. No, it's not the purpose of the US militar to be used "against" US citizens on our soil, and if you're paying attention on this topic, you'll see that no one is saying that. Sheesh!
It's a recipe for abuse.
Why, because the commanders in the ranks of your municipal police department answer to no one? Because the media isn't watching events like that? Because the mayor or governor they work for has no authority over them and their policies?
The police already have vastly more dangerous/lethal tools at their disposal. These are simply different tools. Just because both the military and the police each use teargas doesn't mean it's a "recipe for abuse." Same thing for a crowd dispersing technology that doesn't (unlike teargas) involve ballistic projectiles, incindiary mechanisms, and vision/respiratory damage. Why haven't you been railing about that for the past several decades? That's much worse.
pawned off on civs
You mean, assigned to people that are probably pretty happy to have the job, and may use it as a stepping stone to career in law enforcement or security management in the private sector? OK, just checking.
Crowd control applied to American citizens is a law enforcement function.
Right. So what makes you think it's the Air Force that would be testing it? Law enforcement is called upon, routinely, to deal with crowds of jackasses that are burning cars because their sports team lost (or won! whatever - doesn't matter - let's burn stuff!). There are plenty of opportunities for domestic law enforcement specialists to evaluate and test this sort of thing so that when the military does have need for it (which they clearly already do), no one in France can say how mean we are in the way we're not killing someone who is throwing a flaming bucket of gasoline at an embassy car full of diplomats.
After all the liberty limiting, rights abolishing moves, now your administration, in conjunction with the military, is preparing to literally beat down u.s. citizens.
Right, because Dixiecrats and other fine folks never used firehoses in the 1960's, or anything like that. Come on.
This is about not killing the very people you're talking about not making uncomfortable. Molotov cocktail-throwing crowds in front of an embassy, for example. Let's say someone from your camp, politically, is visiting an embassy or some similar facility with AFMPs, or Marines, etc., watching over them. Someone with an AK-47 is in the crowd and lets loose. At your guy. Which would you rather: the Marines make all of those people run off with a temporary headache, or the Marines use lethal force? Oh, I see: you'd rather not offend them, and have that ambassador and his entourage killed or trapped in the building. OK, as long as we're clear on that. Thanks!
...as power out at the datacenter. The whole reason that businesses park their e-commerce platforms (and web services, and increasingly their accounting platforms and messaging systems) out at a for-real datacenter is so that when their local office utilities puke, their customers can still "see" them online, send them an e-mail without it getting spooled up or bounced, etc.
In the sense that a good datacenter's got local power generation covered, the failure of the larger cloud is the bigger risk. I know, not for all business profiles (like call centers, etc). But I'd say that the "we don't care if our cubicles are in the dark, as long as our web site is up" description probably fits 80% of my clients. Just sayin'.
The Baroque Cycle? Are you out of your mind? I like a lot of Stephenson (and even waited in line to have him sign Quicksilver), but Baroque Cycle is what Dickens would have written had he been paid by the word instead of by the pound.
No problem! We have different tastes. I completey relished it, and understood, at the tail end of a lengthy bit o' prose, why he took his time getting where he was going. I liked it, a lot. In fact, much more than Snowcrash. For that matter, the lengthier exposition in Cryptonomicon didn't have nearly the pleasant feel and movement to it that I think he polished in the BC. To each our own, of course.
Just because *some* people are rioting doesn't mean they all are, but guess what happens when the pigs show up? They put a stop to anything and everything, and to hell with your freedom of speech.
So why aren't you stopping the destructive people in your midst, to show that you're actually committed to peaceful speech and non-aggressive demonstration of your point of view? If you tolerate the guy standing right next to you who is swinging a two-by-four at someone's windshield or getting ready to torch a Starbucks - why aren't you jumping at the chance to show the "pigs" (um, nice way to indicate your lack of hostility, there) that there is no need for crowd control, because the crowd is controlling itself?
No? I didn't think so. "Anonymous Coward" has never been more accurate. Ever.
The question you should be asking is "Why is the Military being used for civillian law enforcment?"
They're not. Here's a scenario for you:
You're with a platoon of Marines assigned to guard a US Embassy, or perhaps to support the local military in their protection of a local elected official (say, the Interior Minister of Carjakistan, who is friendly to democracy but tends to have angry mobs pointed at him by his local political opponents in the city where they're trying to put together a function municipal government that doesn't involve daily beheadings). A couple of busses pull up with that day's duly designated Angry Mob(s). They start screaming, throwing rocks, etc. Then, some shots ring out from the crowd, at the Marines.
So, they can fire over the heads of the crowd, hoping to disperse them. The people willing to attack some Marines don't really care about that tactic one way or the other, so that's something of a non-starter. Or, they can fire into the crowd, making them disperse into smaller body parts, and hopefully also killing the people who are shooting at whatever building they're in. That works, but has the unfortunate side effect of killing the people who were bussed in as angry-crowd-cover by the militants. Marines look bad on CNN for that one. Or, they can trot out a new toy or two that makes it pretty much unbearable to be in that crowd in the first place, AK-47 under your cross-dressing burkha or not. Unarmed civilians don't die, and Interior Minister gets to go to work on the police force that's ultimately supposed to handle these situations.
If I'm a Marine, I'm all for this. Likewise Air Force MPs (who are often guarding facilities that get swamped with representatives from Unruly Crowd Central Casting), etc.
The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
Dude, this is slashdot. Please get it right:
Harry Potter, I - VI (through which most slashdotters learned to conjugate verbs)
The Thursday panel of "Mary Worth" from the second week of July, 1988 (look, if you have to ask, you're just not cool)
The Count Of Monte Cristo (the original "Fight The Man While Being, and Being Richer Than, The Man" story)
OK, seriously: Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. Truly a modern classic. Simply incredible, and too good to be on most people's lists since they couldn't rise to the occasion of reading it. There was one page in the second book which I found contextually annoying because it was only very entertaining and interesting.
This reminds me of the time that Bill Clinton was video taped in front of some scale model of a new federal building (or was it a White House gingerbread house on display for the holidays?). Regardless - his immediate reaction on seeing the scale model was that it looked like it had been built for Robert Reich (his 4'-10" Labor Secretary, a cabinet member). Reich (just like the woman with whom Arnold was joking) took it in stride, and frequently jokes about his height himself.
But: such media coverage as even covered a crack like that was mostly in the form of the talking heads chuckling right along with Clinton, their pet guy. If Arnold had made that same remark, he'd get lit up way worse than he has been over this recent bit of nonsense. Political Correctness is bad enough, but it's even worse when it's applied capriciously by people who are not offended, but are trying very hard to make other people feel that they should be offended, because they score some feeble political points in doing so.
I doubt that it takes much more than a single election worker to disrupt the vote in this manner, so there's not much of a "conspiracy" required; just a touch of ruthlessness and a basic understanding of the needs of the moment. Why one particular party gets the preponderance of benefit from these disruptions is something I'm sure you'd say we shouldn't worry our silly little heads over.
Run that past the teams of people that rehearsed this process, that drew up the checklist of items to be delivered, that were supposed to check FOR the items when all was delivered to the precincts, etc. This was done incorrectly across two hundred and thiry eight polling places. Your "lone gunman" must have been a very busy guy. Perhaps the thing you're actually noticing is that in counties that tend to have a heavily Democratic political element (which tend to also populate the election boards and staff the polling places in areas that are so heavily skewed, demographically), that there's just a prevailing incompetence among those people? I don't find that suggestion any more offensive than your suggestion that the other party snuck the cards out of 238 deliveries.
Actually, this fits the pattern pretty well. You know, like the butterfly ballots in Florida that everyone was screaming about as biased against Gore. Designed by a Democrat, approved by a Democrat-heavy election board, and previewed by that state's voters in advance. Perhaps this is just another example of exactly that type of inattention to detail, poor execution, and sloppy oversight by complacent people in an area totally tilted towards Democratic candidates regardless - who didn't think they had much on the line, and acted that way. So, what's the more likely scenario: crafty Republican operatives brainwashing Florida's Democrat ballot designer, and also slipping smart cards out of the supplies for 238 precinct distribution (a notion, you'll find, that hasn't even been mentioned by the people involved, because they're obviously well aware that they just hosed it up, plain and simple), or: people are lazy and make more mistakes when they don't think they have anything to fret about.
I'm sorry but the above is utter bullshit. People have rational minds that can subdue their natural urges, in fact the future will be one of technologies that enhance one's discipline and removal of backward and feral evolutionary baggage that holds humanity back from living in near utopian societies.
Let's see... my observation, based on what we all see around us every day, is BS... but you're quite comfortable making predictions about (and apparently wanting) us to play with (what, DNA) in a way that will just-perfectly fine tune human behavior, evolved over millions of years, to suppress just those things that prevent us from living in Utopia? Care with the words "utter" and "bullshit," there.
I'd feel a little bit more comfortable with the "oops" hypothesis if this kind of thing ever happened in primarily conservative Republican precincts...
Um, wait a second here. You've got a slow process (involving poll workers forgetting to pack things on a truck), in a county (Montgomer) where virtually all of the polls and election boards are staffed by the resident Democrats. Are you so uncomfortable with the possibility that a likely-mostly-Democrat staff forgot to put a box on a truck that you'd rather propose some conspiracy?
Um, this is Montgomery County MD. There are no Republicans here, just Democrats. I didn't even bother to vote because all the Republicans were running unopposed except for the school board. The Republicans are all going to loose in the general election. Which party is going to care enough to fix the results?
Huh! Imagine me meeting (on slashdot!) the only other resident of Montgomery County, MD that knows voting other than Democrat today (primaries) is a pointless exercise. I'm still getting over the pleasant shock of getting Erlich elected, but the Steele campaign is going to be a hoot, especially if Mfume wins in the dem primary. I can't wait to watch the local politics-hounds twist themselves in knots over that one.
OK, so, good luck, oh other-voice-in-the-wilderness.
Electronic voting machines just add another big layer of complexity to a process that really doesn't need to be so hard. A paper ballot has just two parts, the ballot sheet and a pen. If the ballot sheet breaks, the voter can just grab a new one, and the whole process gets held up for a minute, instead of hours or more. If someone forgets the pens, you can run to corner store and grab a box, or chances are enough of the first batch of voters will happen to have pens with them that they don't mind leaving behind.
I really envy you that you didn't lose any minutes of your life watching coverage of election commission workers in Florida holding up paper ballots to the light and arguing over stray marks and dents and scuffs in order to guess what the voter's real intention was when he/she seems to have made two marks, or none that were completely obvious.
The whole point of the machine (whether electronic, as we're discussing, or mechanical like the older lever systems) is to remove any ambiguity, both in the intention of the casting and process of the counting of votes. Yes, yes, all systems can have vulnerabilities. But I'd say that asking a table of three people to have a magic seance over a badly marked paper ballot to determine who that person really was thinking about when they bumped the pen near Gore's name, but partly pressed out the chad near Bush's name, and crossed out Buchannon's name - that has got to never happen again. I'd be happiest to have machines just like Maryland is now using, but which also spit out a paper tape, cash-register-style, into a locked container hanging off the back. Of course, humans are going to touch those, too. So the conspiracy fetishists will always have something to drool over.
It's not an entire computer people, it's just a very simple kiosk. Christ, I could probably write some software that would do the job better than these boobs.
Yes, but would you have the presence of mind to keep your yap shut when you don't know what they hell you're talking about? Obviously not.
The machines all worked just fine. The people who provision the polling places forgot to pack and deliver the smart cards that are part of casting your vote. They were late. They delivered them later, and everything went fine, technically. Would you have the same rant if it had been YOUR machine, and someone forgot to pack the power cords? Jeez, just RTFA before you pounce.
For example, you had 238 precincts that didn't get to vote on time. Says a Montgomery County boar of elections supervisor:
"They didn't get to use voting machines to cast their ballots because the county's 238 precincts didn't get needed voter access cards.
"These are the cards that you put into the machines to activate the machines," Nancy Dacek, president of the Montgomery County Board of Elections, tells WTOP. "We have a crew that packs them and for some reason, inadvertently, the access cards were left out."
Which isn't much different than someone not delivering boxes of good old fashioned paper ballots, if that's what those precincts had been expected to use. But no, I'm sure we'll hear how somehow the Governor of the state made the "crew that packs them" hose it up on purpose, blah blah. Or better yet, GWB personally slipped out of the White House to remove the cards from the trucks, just to get everyone even more riled up. *sigh*
'The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in lace of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.'
-Socrates (possibly miss-attributed but still very old)
I understand your point (that every generation has always looked at their neighbor's kids and rolled their eyes), but some generations do grow up to be, demographically, losers. Not to pick on any individuals, per se, but on how cultures can go adrift. It happens, and has happened. But things happen faster now, and with much great consequence than ever before.
Let me ask you this, how many people in the third world have you actually spoken to? How many deep conversations on their world views have you had?
You mean, like my neighbor and his extended family from Cameroon? He installs CAT5 for a living. And cleans carpets at night. And details cars on weekends. His wife works two jobs, too. They're anxious to get ahead enough to go back to Africa and do what they can to get their hometowns that much farther ahead, too. They don't resent prosperity, they're working their asses off to produce it for themselves. I've talked with them many times, at great length. They consider the incursion of the jihaddists into Africa (a la Sudan) to be the single greatest thing, next to AIDS, to threaten the movement of that part of the world into the modern world. It's no mystery that people like Zawahiri proclaim that to be their next frontier.
Or maybe you mean the family that lives on the other side of me. Husband and wife each raised poor, in Central and South America. Three generations living the house so they can afford to be here, working. They also want to see their home countries (Nicaragua and Venezuela, in their cases) to join the rest of the world's prosperity and relative local peace. They consider Hugo Chavez (just back from visiting his "brother" the president of Iran!) and his idealogy to be the greatest threat to true growth in that part of the world. The people across the street from me are from Indonesia. Next to them are Malaysians. We've made good friends with the Romanians around back. All of that is taken into the context of what I say.
Your hypothetical young Muslim man may indeed be having resentment and retro-grade solutions poured into his ear by his local preachers and culture - but his basic capacity for reason, as a human, takes some pretty deliberate turning off if he's one of those college educated, world-traveling monsters who decided that the people in his home country will somehow be learn better trades, have a thriving local economy, and enjoy days of milk and honey if only everyone in the WTC would die. I'm not having a lot of sympathy for the Mohammad Attas of the world.