They won't listen. This site is full of pimply-faced teenagers who have no since of perspective, and hold irrational, dogmatic beliefs that are dangerous to the security of the free world. If they had their way, it would be illegal to investigate terrorists at all.
Civil rights, in this case, is simply a pretext for incoherently bashing somebody that they don't like after a simply cursory reading of a summary of an article which in turn summarized another article, which omitted some information after withholding the entire story for a year.
Such is the immaturity of Slashdot's readership (generally speaking, of course... there are some genuinely intelligent people here).
...to see how utterly simplistic a forum full of self-important, would-be intellectuals can be. Wouldn't it be nice to not have to intercept international phone calls and emails for about 500 people who are strongly suspected of being terrorists? Yes.
Would you rather have allowed terrorists to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge and killed who-knows-how-many people in the process? That is exactly what you are saying.
Most of us who are reasonable understand that protecting the rights (which arguably weren't violated, by the way) of terrorists should take a backseat to saving lives. Everyone of you who are whining and moaning are openly admitting that you prefer that the Brooklyn Bridge not exist today and that people had died in its destruction to the surveilance of a few likely terrorists.
Furthermore, every last one of you would be badmouthing Bush for letting the Brooklyn Bridge be destroyed and for not stopping it if he hadn't allowed this surveilance. You're all a bunch of small-minded hypocrites.
First of all, Bush NEVER said that the threat was imminent. He said very, very, very clearly to anyone who felt compelled to actually pay attention at the time that we had to act before the threat was imminent. He then tacked on "Since when do mass murderers announce their intentions to their victims?" or some such rhetorical question. I'm sure you didn't miss it... it was in the 2003 State of the Union Address.
Also, you seem to under the impression that Bush was just making things up out of thin air, when in fact the entire planet believed that Hussein possessed the WMDs, including Saddam's own cabinet and perhaps Saddam himself. The intelligence used came from intelligence agencies around the planet, including the French, Germans, and Italians. And don't forget that Vladimir Putin has said that he told Bush prior to the invasion that he had reliable intelligence that Iraq was planning to attack the US on US soil.
This stuff has been rehashed a million times, and noone who has a clue what they are really talking about would even try the "Bush lied" insinuation around people who pay attention.
You may find this video to be a bit fascinating... actually, you will probably be shocked, as insulated as you seem to be from the actual state of affairs prior to the invasion.
You are pretty dense. The money was already allocated and the Bush administration slashed it by 80%. Since the Iraq war, the lion's share of the Army Corp of engineers time , man power and our tax dollares are going in to a futile effort to rebuild Iraq instead of the U.S.
You probably are aware by now that you have been thoroughly debunked, but just in case...
From the Chicago Tribune. The levee that failed had already had the work that wasn't funded for the others. It is a non sequitor. Get over it.
Additionally, raising the levees is a moot point. They didn't overflow, they BROKE.
Your the one being irrational. He is doing something completely wrong, diverting $300 billion dollars in to the otherside of the world in to a bottomless pit, while the U.S. goes down the tubes.
Yes, because we all know that the decision to invade Iraq in March of 2003 was made on August 31,2005 as Katrina was wreaking havoc on the Gulf Coast.
Do you guys have any informed or otherwise sensible criticisms? That would be nice. But right now you are talking out of your ass out of hatred of a man whom you have never met but for whom you have, nonetheless, developed a very unhealthy obsession, it appears.
Also (I guess this is as good a place as any)... the problems in New Orleans post-storm have very little to do with the federal government. The mayor of N.O. (the guy bitching on the radio today) waited until Sunday to order the evacuation of the city, despite the pleading of President Bush to order an evacuation on Saturday.
They sent people to the Superdome, with no means of distributing relief supplies once they got there--in fact, there were NO SUPPLIES there. They just shoved them in an arena.
None of the cities transportation resources were used to evacuate those who couldn't evacuate themselves. There a pic floating around tonight of hundreds of school busses sitting unused in a flooded parking lot. The city also has hundreds of mass transit busses that weren't used.
The national guard wasn't mobilized immediately (for the ignorant amongst you, the NG is under the control of the GOVERNOR, not the president).
After the storm, the city government was virtually AWOL. There was little or no police presence. Looters were completely unchecked.
The federal government moved very quickly as the true extent of the problem became obvious early Wednesday... remember, on Monday night and Tuesday N.O. had "dodged a bullet" (the phrase du jour in the media that day). On Wednesday, convoys of navy ships were deployed to N.O, including the USS Bataan--which carries helicopters and is capable of making drinkable water--and the USS Comfort for medical care.
I live in Orlando, Florida, and I experienced THREE hurricanes last year. In each of them, it was the city and county who organized the relief operations, and who appealed to the state for aid, who in turn worked with the feds. FEMA is at the disposal of the local and state governments who are coordinating the relief.
Unfortunately, the local government in New Orleans is run by an incompetent, apparently, who would rather blame everyone in the world except for himself. The federal agencies can't do much good if the people running the effort in the city/state don't have a clue. They are designed to build on a foundation that simply was not set up by the local officials. Now that the feds and other city governments are involved (like Houston, for example) things are working much more smoothly. You are completely misplacing blame here... it's sad that you felt the need to start blaming people at this juncture in the first place, to be honest.
It's a pity that so many here are so mired in irrational loathing and can't recognize the good that is now being done.
I hate to break it to you, but this will barely register as even the tiniest blip on Lockheed-Martin's bottom line ($212M / $30+B represents about 0.2% of total revenues). It isn't about providing the executives of Lockheed-Martin with yet another banner bonus year. Everything isn't some conspiracy theory, guys. Slashdot has a serious problem with paranoia.
No... what they said has been pissing them off is the fact that we are "infidels". The people they are blowing up in police stations... their crime is "embracing the evil principle of democracy," to quote al-Zarqawi.
We aren't imposing anything. ANd what does that say about your prejudices to think that just because they have brown skin they don't want to be free?
Gives pause for thought on the most effective way of going about things doesn't it ?
No, actually. In fact, it sounds like the success of the UKs operations roughtly matches that of those in the US. The organizer is yet to be caught in both, the people who killed themselves are of course dead, and those who botched their attacks (Richard Reid here, failed bombers there) are in custody.
The US though (and, actually, Britain as well) are attempting to actually tackle and eliminate the root cause of terrorism--oppression/tyranny in the Middle East. By raising two new democracies smack dab in the middle of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen, etc, the coalition forces have planted the seed for the freedoms that will relegate terrorists to the fringes of society. The people who previously supported or at least looked up to terrorists will reject them as they gain more of a stake in their own future and their own lives.
Since the invasion of Afghanistan, we have see elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, a popular uprising in support of freedom in Lebanon and Ukraine and Kyrzystan, minor national elections in Saudi Arabia (still no women though... it's a start at least), women GAINING the right to vote in Kuwait, Mubarak in Egypt has announced elections, elections in Lebanon, elections in Palestine, and other occurences. In other places, there are positive signs... in the UAE, for example, the academic advisory council (to the government) recommended embracing democracy, lest they fall behind their neighbors.
Good stuff is happening right in front of your eyes... the very thing that feeds terrorism--oppression--is slowly but surely being uprooted before us. It's easy to get caught up in the cause du jour and jump on the bandwagon of anti-war activism. But what is being done there is reshaping the region in a way that will improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the region and make us safer in the long run.
Eliminate the cess pool of tyranny and oppression in the Middle East and the very people who are now forced to turn to terror to improve their lot in life will defeat it for us. As long as people are forced to choose between oppression and joining the ranks of the oppressors, we will have these problems in a world that is getting smaller with each passing day.
If you want to take on the "root cause" of terror (and I'm talking to everyone, not meaning to single out ryanov), quit the bitching about Iraq and Afghanistan and start actually... you know... supporting what we're doing there. It's the only thing in the long run that has a prayer of winning the war on terror, to the extent that it can be "won".
I'm not sure that you have the slightest clue what you are talking about. With all due respect, you sound like you are ignorantly quoting Michael Moore talking points.
The invasion of Iraq was not illegal, under any reasonable interpretation of any law. At its most clear cut, it was simply a resumption of hostilities that ended with a cease fire in 1991, the terms of which were routinely violated by Hussein thereafter for 12 years. Furthermore, resolution 1441 coupled with the Feb 2003 testimony of Hans Blix that Iraq was in material breech of 1441 also provides pretty solid ground for the invasion. This has all been argued before... you are parroting a talking point that has already been thoroughly beaten down many times.
Coalition forces have gone to ridiculous lengths to avoid civilian casualties. That is one of the stupidest, least-informed comments that gets thrown around by misinformed or ignorant, reflexively anti-war types.
Iraq's economy is booming, not turning into a "new breeding ground of people living in poverty".
Poverty is not the root cause of terrorism. Political oppression is, both intuitively (to those of us who possess intuition) and according to a Harvard study which confirms what common sense already tells some of us: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/11.04/05- terror.html
It's not BS. The average White House correspondent is pretty damned liberal. That is self-evident.
Unless you are using some leftist-political spectrum where Marxism is considered centrist.
Rather (CBS), Jordan (CNN)... Gannon??!?
on
Open Source Journalism
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Why is Kos getting so worked up over a reporter noone has ever heard of who works for a news agency that noone has ever heard of... ???
Meanwhile--in the real world--"open-source journalists" have held to account (forced resignation or retirement of) 2 huge media figures: Dan Rather at CBS and Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN.
I guess it's better to arrive late than never, but let's not pretend that "bringing down" whats-his-name Gannon even approaches the level of significance of Rather and Jordan.
The fact that the media chooses this particular incident to extoll the virtues of "open source journalism" betrays their true motives.
BTW, if I made any typos or weird sentences, no smarmy comments... its late.
The majority of these were well within the margin of error, making it officially a 'dead heat' in the words of the pollsters themselves.
It's a statistical tie when 1 of them is within the margin of error. When 29 out of 33 polls over a one month period show the same thing, it's almost a statistical certainty.
The election is only the more scientific poll if it was actually free of massive fraud. There are warning signs that fraud occured, the questions is how much.
First of all, I'm sure the signs appear much worse than they actually are if you suffer from the sort of paranoia that drives these people to run around digging through peoples trash and make assumptions about exactly what they find there. That aside, why are you guys so insistent that the one oddball poll, the exit poll, which was known to have critical flaws in this election, was the correct one? It is an absolutely silly and laughable premise.
The exit poll numbers show Kerry winning Florida by five points
Well, once again, 9 different polls conducted in Florida over the week prior to the election show an average Bush lead of.6%, which is clearly in the margin of error. But for the exit poll to be assumed correct when it is equal to the most extreme outlier among Florida polls prior is the height of stupidity.
The historical trend for quite some time is that the undecideds break for the challenger, at least that is the 'common wisdom' that was being spouted all over the media.
Its true that it was being spouted all over the media, but they are typically idiots. In reality, however, the "incumbant rule" is spotty and practically useless in terms of predicting things. Additionally, voter turnout demographics did not pan out the way it was expected (all of those brainwashed Michael Moore stoners forgot to vote), and on top of all of that is the fact that we are at war.
You can't use wives tales and myths to justify launching some big "investigation" (fishing expedition?) into dillusions of systematic and widespread fraud on a scale that would have been unprecedented in WORLD history.
This election wasn't close. Get over it. Ohio wasn't even that close.
The final phone polls showed the election a dead heat well within the final margin of error of 4 to 5 percent
No, they didn't. Go look at the list of every national poll I linked. In the week prior to the election Bush was up in 11 of 15 polls, tied in 2, and Kerry won 2 of the 15.
A claim like that without facts to back it up can be taken no more seriously than...
Reread the section right above the quote. That is what you might call statistically solid evidence... The odds of the exit polls being correct, especially with the known problems (over-sampling urban areas and women), and all of those other polls being wrong is immeasurably small.
To argue otherwise betrays the true desperation on your part.
Either the exit polls are wrong or the election is wrong
Yes, the exit polls are wrong. The election, which is a much more scientifically sound poll with about 120 million participants, is correct. Any suspicion otherwise is rooted in paranoia and fantasy.
Also interesting is that the pollster John Zogby, who called the popular vote within a half a percent in 2000, called the election for Kerry this time.
Why don't we just stop having elections and let Zogby tell us who won? Instead of spreading baseless conspiracy theories, why don't you read the explanation of why he was wrong from Zogby himself?
http://zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=928
Also, when talking about exit polls, I think you are latching onto those early afternoon ones that weren't even supposed to be public because they were so innaccurate (you know, the ones that showed Kerry up 20 points in PA). Of course, as this dialogue progresses, your tendency to latch onto things is becoming more apparant.
The expectation was that undecideds and newly registered voters would break for Kerry.
I don't know why. That isn't how they historically break within the last 3 days.
The exit polls were clearly flawed, and they are not sufficient to based your study upon.
If you look at all of the national polls taken in the month or so prior to the election, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry.htm l, you will see that the exit polls are an extreme outlier. To use that data would be absurd. The fact that the exit polling data was so ridiculously far out of line with the rest of the polls is exactly why I, and many, many others, immediately smelled a rat when those completely unbelievable numbers came out early in the afternoon.
And that doesn't even take into consideration the fact that they were known to have been skewed toward urban areas.
Oh, and re: Diebold... what makes you guys think that they would actually engage in fraudulent activity after all of the nutjobs that have been blaming everything on them for 3 or 4 years?
The problem with the discarded tapes being backups is that the backups should still match the official reported totals... but those tapes don't.
I don't think so. No totals are official until absentee ballots are counted. I don't think that there would be a poll-only total anywhere to be found... any totals officially available would be the combined polls and absentee.
Also, where are you getting the idea that the tapes do not match the offical totals? I'm not accusing you of making anything up, but I didn't see anything about that in the article. What are the discrepancies that they are claiming and where are they documented?
Optical scan and other paper trailed systems are still subject to fraud, but it is harder to...
I agree that paper ballots are absolutely the best option. I think that if kinks were worked out of the computerized systems they could be a good alternative, but at this point paper is not only the simplest, but the best as well. In my opinion, there is no reason why computer-based systems (touch-screen, etc) cannot be designed so that it simply is not possible to alter anything. There is no need to have the data available on a network, there is no need to allow software to be loaded onto the machine... I just don't understand why they have to have issues.
Swapping votes? How in the hell did noone notice that "bug" before selling the things?
I do, personally, think the notion that machines would be predisposed to cheat for a particular party simply because of the company that makes it is a silly one. I just don't see how a computer would be able to recognize that selection 'A' is the 'right guy' to cheat for... I imagine that these things can be used for other types of voting measures... ballot initiatives, etc... so there should simply be n number of options... party affiliation would (or should) certainly not be a recognizable piece of info from the machines perspective.
Can you imagine? "Proposition 2: Yes (Republican) No (Democrat)"... party affiliation is clearly not a required piece of information (aside from functioning as "user information" type data).
I'll have to look at it again later, but if I recall correctly there were a few thousand spoiled ballots in Volusia as well. Not spoiled due to voter error, but due to bad ballots or something. A lot of people were ticked off because they had know way to know who had voted.
That could very well explain bags of discarded tapes. I admittedly don't know though. I don't think this group you cite is being taken very seriously though, because there has been ZERO coverage of this around here. And reading the piece you linked to, I did notice that the article is more suggestive than factual. And, frankly, I thought the explanation that they discarded ones were now-unneeded backups makes perfect sense.
These people are just digging. They have no interest in "investigating" or "getting to the bottom"... their sole purpose is to deligitimze the President and erode the public's confidence in the electoral process. If groups like this hadn't exhibited a pattern of such unproductive behavior for the past 4 years, I might take them seriously. At this point, I believe their credibility is on par with that of Michael Moore. The fact that every kook leftist with a computer is floating ridiculous conspiracy theories doesn't help, either.
Ok, let me clarify some things. The "break in trends" wasn't with who won the counties... the break was in who increased their margins relative to 1996 and 2000.
It is no secret that Bush pulled more Democrats into his column than Kerry pulled Republicans. The republican base was lined up much more solidly behind Bush than it was in 2000, and Kerry's "base", if such a thing can be said to have existed, was not very enthusiastic about him. Many democrats, even, had reservations about his ability to prosecute the war on terror. It is not "unexpected", as you say, that heavily democratic counties will "trend toward" Bush relative to 1996 and 2000, while still very heavily favoring Kerry.
Once again, there is nothing sinister here. The reason the "trend" appears to primarily affect the counties using the high tech machines is because those are the wealthier, more populous, and, thus, more heavily democratic counties. The democrats are the ones who lost voters within their own party to the other side relative to the last 2 elections, and that is why those counties trended toward Bush relative to the last 2 elections.
It isn't a conspiracy with the machines, but, rather, a function of the same demographics that allow a county to use those machines.
If I had to guess why the reported totals favored Bush over the poll tapes, I would say it is likely due to the fact that Bush had an enormous advantage in absentee ballots, which weren't counted until days later.
Once again, it's a silly conspiracy theory and nothing more.
Can you please link to whereever it is you are getting this misleading information? People "throwing out" vote totals? Please link.
The preloaded voting machines were out of Pennsylvania, a state that John Kerry won handily, which renders it a non-issue.
I do agree, though, that if there is legitimate voter fraud, it should be investigated and the offenders should be prosecuted regardless of who it helped or where it happened.
I think those "preloaded" votes were satisfactorily explained. Trust me, when I first heard about them it set off big alarm bells with me as well.
I'm sorry, but I think this is a solution in search of a problem. The numbers are reported to the Secretary of State by the canvassing boards.
Also, since I forgot to mention it... I believe you were citing the Ohio machine "preloaded" with votes as evidence of fraud. Let's not forget that it was the Republican party that filed the complaint about those preloaded votes... so to turn around now and accuse it of being a republican fraud attempt is illogical at best.
And the counties using touch screen machines did not trend toward Bush. Go back and read that link I included in the last post.
Yes, to supplement my last post... you can find a map of the Florida showing the voting systems used here:
http://ustogether.org/election04/mitteldorf/Liddle.htm
Just eyeballing it, I can say with a fairly high level of confidence that every single touch-screen county (the blue ones) are run by Democrats.
Let's quit pretending with this silly fraud theory.
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They won't listen. This site is full of pimply-faced teenagers who have no since of perspective, and hold irrational, dogmatic beliefs that are dangerous to the security of the free world. If they had their way, it would be illegal to investigate terrorists at all.
Civil rights, in this case, is simply a pretext for incoherently bashing somebody that they don't like after a simply cursory reading of a summary of an article which in turn summarized another article, which omitted some information after withholding the entire story for a year.
Such is the immaturity of Slashdot's readership (generally speaking, of course... there are some genuinely intelligent people here).
...to see how utterly simplistic a forum full of self-important, would-be intellectuals can be. Wouldn't it be nice to not have to intercept international phone calls and emails for about 500 people who are strongly suspected of being terrorists? Yes.
Would you rather have allowed terrorists to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge and killed who-knows-how-many people in the process? That is exactly what you are saying.
Most of us who are reasonable understand that protecting the rights (which arguably weren't violated, by the way) of terrorists should take a backseat to saving lives. Everyone of you who are whining and moaning are openly admitting that you prefer that the Brooklyn Bridge not exist today and that people had died in its destruction to the surveilance of a few likely terrorists.
Furthermore, every last one of you would be badmouthing Bush for letting the Brooklyn Bridge be destroyed and for not stopping it if he hadn't allowed this surveilance. You're all a bunch of small-minded hypocrites.
First of all, Bush NEVER said that the threat was imminent. He said very, very, very clearly to anyone who felt compelled to actually pay attention at the time that we had to act before the threat was imminent. He then tacked on "Since when do mass murderers announce their intentions to their victims?" or some such rhetorical question. I'm sure you didn't miss it... it was in the 2003 State of the Union Address.
m v
Also, you seem to under the impression that Bush was just making things up out of thin air, when in fact the entire planet believed that Hussein possessed the WMDs, including Saddam's own cabinet and perhaps Saddam himself. The intelligence used came from intelligence agencies around the planet, including the French, Germans, and Italians. And don't forget that Vladimir Putin has said that he told Bush prior to the invasion that he had reliable intelligence that Iraq was planning to attack the US on US soil.
This stuff has been rehashed a million times, and noone who has a clue what they are really talking about would even try the "Bush lied" insinuation around people who pay attention.
You may find this video to be a bit fascinating... actually, you will probably be shocked, as insulated as you seem to be from the actual state of affairs prior to the invasion.
http://www.humanracewatch.com/video/therealdeal.w
It goes on for quite a long time, but you'll get the point after one or two or three or ten minutes.
Oddly enough, Geraldo Riveira was getting pretty hands on with the people.
You are pretty dense. The money was already allocated and the Bush administration slashed it by 80%. Since the Iraq war, the lion's share of the Army Corp of engineers time , man power and our tax dollares are going in to a futile effort to rebuild Iraq instead of the U.S.
You probably are aware by now that you have been thoroughly debunked, but just in case...
From the Chicago Tribune. The levee that failed had already had the work that wasn't funded for the others. It is a non sequitor. Get over it.
Additionally, raising the levees is a moot point. They didn't overflow, they BROKE.
Your the one being irrational. He is doing something completely wrong, diverting $300 billion dollars in to the otherside of the world in to a bottomless pit, while the U.S. goes down the tubes.
Yes, because we all know that the decision to invade Iraq in March of 2003 was made on August 31,2005 as Katrina was wreaking havoc on the Gulf Coast.
Do you guys have any informed or otherwise sensible criticisms? That would be nice. But right now you are talking out of your ass out of hatred of a man whom you have never met but for whom you have, nonetheless, developed a very unhealthy obsession, it appears.
Also (I guess this is as good a place as any)... the problems in New Orleans post-storm have very little to do with the federal government. The mayor of N.O. (the guy bitching on the radio today) waited until Sunday to order the evacuation of the city, despite the pleading of President Bush to order an evacuation on Saturday.
They sent people to the Superdome, with no means of distributing relief supplies once they got there--in fact, there were NO SUPPLIES there. They just shoved them in an arena.
None of the cities transportation resources were used to evacuate those who couldn't evacuate themselves. There a pic floating around tonight of hundreds of school busses sitting unused in a flooded parking lot. The city also has hundreds of mass transit busses that weren't used.
The national guard wasn't mobilized immediately (for the ignorant amongst you, the NG is under the control of the GOVERNOR, not the president).
After the storm, the city government was virtually AWOL. There was little or no police presence. Looters were completely unchecked.
The federal government moved very quickly as the true extent of the problem became obvious early Wednesday... remember, on Monday night and Tuesday N.O. had "dodged a bullet" (the phrase du jour in the media that day). On Wednesday, convoys of navy ships were deployed to N.O, including the USS Bataan--which carries helicopters and is capable of making drinkable water--and the USS Comfort for medical care.
I live in Orlando, Florida, and I experienced THREE hurricanes last year. In each of them, it was the city and county who organized the relief operations, and who appealed to the state for aid, who in turn worked with the feds. FEMA is at the disposal of the local and state governments who are coordinating the relief.
Unfortunately, the local government in New Orleans is run by an incompetent, apparently, who would rather blame everyone in the world except for himself. The federal agencies can't do much good if the people running the effort in the city/state don't have a clue. They are designed to build on a foundation that simply was not set up by the local officials. Now that the feds and other city governments are involved (like Houston, for example) things are working much more smoothly. You are completely misplacing blame here... it's sad that you felt the need to start blaming people at this juncture in the first place, to be honest.
It's a pity that so many here are so mired in irrational loathing and can't recognize the good that is now being done.
I hate to break it to you, but this will barely register as even the tiniest blip on Lockheed-Martin's bottom line ($212M / $30+B represents about 0.2% of total revenues). It isn't about providing the executives of Lockheed-Martin with yet another banner bonus year. Everything isn't some conspiracy theory, guys. Slashdot has a serious problem with paranoia.
I know, I know we don't believe what they say, and they're really just jealous of our huge plasma TV's and overclocked l33t hardware...
You also seem to have confused the Iraqi people with "them".
No... what they said has been pissing them off is the fact that we are "infidels". The people they are blowing up in police stations... their crime is "embracing the evil principle of democracy," to quote al-Zarqawi.
We aren't imposing anything. ANd what does that say about your prejudices to think that just because they have brown skin they don't want to be free?
Gives pause for thought on the most effective way of going about things doesn't it ? No, actually. In fact, it sounds like the success of the UKs operations roughtly matches that of those in the US. The organizer is yet to be caught in both, the people who killed themselves are of course dead, and those who botched their attacks (Richard Reid here, failed bombers there) are in custody.
9 5a7-63b7-41d5-b273-4dec11fa9d2a.html
The US though (and, actually, Britain as well) are attempting to actually tackle and eliminate the root cause of terrorism--oppression/tyranny in the Middle East. By raising two new democracies smack dab in the middle of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen, etc, the coalition forces have planted the seed for the freedoms that will relegate terrorists to the fringes of society. The people who previously supported or at least looked up to terrorists will reject them as they gain more of a stake in their own future and their own lives.
This is already happening: http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/07/86ed
Since the invasion of Afghanistan, we have see elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, a popular uprising in support of freedom in Lebanon and Ukraine and Kyrzystan, minor national elections in Saudi Arabia (still no women though... it's a start at least), women GAINING the right to vote in Kuwait, Mubarak in Egypt has announced elections, elections in Lebanon, elections in Palestine, and other occurences. In other places, there are positive signs... in the UAE, for example, the academic advisory council (to the government) recommended embracing democracy, lest they fall behind their neighbors.
Good stuff is happening right in front of your eyes... the very thing that feeds terrorism--oppression--is slowly but surely being uprooted before us. It's easy to get caught up in the cause du jour and jump on the bandwagon of anti-war activism. But what is being done there is reshaping the region in a way that will improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the region and make us safer in the long run.
The root cause has nothing to do with the past. It has to do with the present. http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/11.04/05- terror.html
Eliminate the cess pool of tyranny and oppression in the Middle East and the very people who are now forced to turn to terror to improve their lot in life will defeat it for us. As long as people are forced to choose between oppression and joining the ranks of the oppressors, we will have these problems in a world that is getting smaller with each passing day.
If you want to take on the "root cause" of terror (and I'm talking to everyone, not meaning to single out ryanov), quit the bitching about Iraq and Afghanistan and start actually... you know... supporting what we're doing there. It's the only thing in the long run that has a prayer of winning the war on terror, to the extent that it can be "won".
I'm not sure that you have the slightest clue what you are talking about. With all due respect, you sound like you are ignorantly quoting Michael Moore talking points.
- terror.html
The invasion of Iraq was not illegal, under any reasonable interpretation of any law. At its most clear cut, it was simply a resumption of hostilities that ended with a cease fire in 1991, the terms of which were routinely violated by Hussein thereafter for 12 years. Furthermore, resolution 1441 coupled with the Feb 2003 testimony of Hans Blix that Iraq was in material breech of 1441 also provides pretty solid ground for the invasion. This has all been argued before... you are parroting a talking point that has already been thoroughly beaten down many times.
Coalition forces have gone to ridiculous lengths to avoid civilian casualties. That is one of the stupidest, least-informed comments that gets thrown around by misinformed or ignorant, reflexively anti-war types.
Iraq's economy is booming, not turning into a "new breeding ground of people living in poverty".
Poverty is not the root cause of terrorism. Political oppression is, both intuitively (to those of us who possess intuition) and according to a Harvard study which confirms what common sense already tells some of us: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/11.04/05
Yeah... that was a pretty stupid, immature, and ill-informed comment.
There is a database of those sites at http://haganah.us/haganah/index.htm
It's not BS. The average White House correspondent is pretty damned liberal. That is self-evident.
Unless you are using some leftist-political spectrum where Marxism is considered centrist.
Why is Kos getting so worked up over a reporter noone has ever heard of who works for a news agency that noone has ever heard of... ??? Meanwhile--in the real world--"open-source journalists" have held to account (forced resignation or retirement of) 2 huge media figures: Dan Rather at CBS and Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN.
I guess it's better to arrive late than never, but let's not pretend that "bringing down" whats-his-name Gannon even approaches the level of significance of Rather and Jordan.
The fact that the media chooses this particular incident to extoll the virtues of "open source journalism" betrays their true motives.
BTW, if I made any typos or weird sentences, no smarmy comments... its late.
Happy turkey day!
The majority of these were well within the margin of error, making it officially a 'dead heat' in the words of the pollsters themselves.
.6%, which is clearly in the margin of error. But for the exit poll to be assumed correct when it is equal to the most extreme outlier among Florida polls prior is the height of stupidity.
It's a statistical tie when 1 of them is within the margin of error. When 29 out of 33 polls over a one month period show the same thing, it's almost a statistical certainty.
The election is only the more scientific poll if it was actually free of massive fraud. There are warning signs that fraud occured, the questions is how much.
First of all, I'm sure the signs appear much worse than they actually are if you suffer from the sort of paranoia that drives these people to run around digging through peoples trash and make assumptions about exactly what they find there. That aside, why are you guys so insistent that the one oddball poll, the exit poll, which was known to have critical flaws in this election, was the correct one? It is an absolutely silly and laughable premise.
The exit poll numbers show Kerry winning Florida by five points
Well, once again, 9 different polls conducted in Florida over the week prior to the election show an average Bush lead of
The historical trend for quite some time is that the undecideds break for the challenger, at least that is the 'common wisdom' that was being spouted all over the media.
Its true that it was being spouted all over the media, but they are typically idiots. In reality, however, the "incumbant rule" is spotty and practically useless in terms of predicting things. Additionally, voter turnout demographics did not pan out the way it was expected (all of those brainwashed Michael Moore stoners forgot to vote), and on top of all of that is the fact that we are at war.
You can't use wives tales and myths to justify launching some big "investigation" (fishing expedition?) into dillusions of systematic and widespread fraud on a scale that would have been unprecedented in WORLD history.
This election wasn't close. Get over it. Ohio wasn't even that close.
The final phone polls showed the election a dead heat well within the final margin of error of 4 to 5 percent
No, they didn't. Go look at the list of every national poll I linked. In the week prior to the election Bush was up in 11 of 15 polls, tied in 2, and Kerry won 2 of the 15.
A claim like that without facts to back it up can be taken no more seriously than...
Reread the section right above the quote. That is what you might call statistically solid evidence... The odds of the exit polls being correct, especially with the known problems (over-sampling urban areas and women), and all of those other polls being wrong is immeasurably small.
To argue otherwise betrays the true desperation on your part.
Either the exit polls are wrong or the election is wrong Yes, the exit polls are wrong. The election, which is a much more scientifically sound poll with about 120 million participants, is correct. Any suspicion otherwise is rooted in paranoia and fantasy.
Also interesting is that the pollster John Zogby, who called the popular vote within a half a percent in 2000, called the election for Kerry this time.
Why don't we just stop having elections and let Zogby tell us who won? Instead of spreading baseless conspiracy theories, why don't you read the explanation of why he was wrong from Zogby himself? http://zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=928
Also, when talking about exit polls, I think you are latching onto those early afternoon ones that weren't even supposed to be public because they were so innaccurate (you know, the ones that showed Kerry up 20 points in PA). Of course, as this dialogue progresses, your tendency to latch onto things is becoming more apparant.
The expectation was that undecideds and newly registered voters would break for Kerry.
I don't know why. That isn't how they historically break within the last 3 days.
The exit polls were clearly flawed, and they are not sufficient to based your study upon.
m l, you will see that the exit polls are an extreme outlier. To use that data would be absurd. The fact that the exit polling data was so ridiculously far out of line with the rest of the polls is exactly why I, and many, many others, immediately smelled a rat when those completely unbelievable numbers came out early in the afternoon.
If you look at all of the national polls taken in the month or so prior to the election, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry.ht
And that doesn't even take into consideration the fact that they were known to have been skewed toward urban areas.
Oh, and re: Diebold... what makes you guys think that they would actually engage in fraudulent activity after all of the nutjobs that have been blaming everything on them for 3 or 4 years?
The problem with the discarded tapes being backups is that the backups should still match the official reported totals... but those tapes don't.
I don't think so. No totals are official until absentee ballots are counted. I don't think that there would be a poll-only total anywhere to be found... any totals officially available would be the combined polls and absentee.
Also, where are you getting the idea that the tapes do not match the offical totals? I'm not accusing you of making anything up, but I didn't see anything about that in the article. What are the discrepancies that they are claiming and where are they documented?
Optical scan and other paper trailed systems are still subject to fraud, but it is harder to...
I agree that paper ballots are absolutely the best option. I think that if kinks were worked out of the computerized systems they could be a good alternative, but at this point paper is not only the simplest, but the best as well. In my opinion, there is no reason why computer-based systems (touch-screen, etc) cannot be designed so that it simply is not possible to alter anything. There is no need to have the data available on a network, there is no need to allow software to be loaded onto the machine... I just don't understand why they have to have issues.
Swapping votes? How in the hell did noone notice that "bug" before selling the things?
I do, personally, think the notion that machines would be predisposed to cheat for a particular party simply because of the company that makes it is a silly one. I just don't see how a computer would be able to recognize that selection 'A' is the 'right guy' to cheat for... I imagine that these things can be used for other types of voting measures... ballot initiatives, etc... so there should simply be n number of options... party affiliation would (or should) certainly not be a recognizable piece of info from the machines perspective.
Can you imagine? "Proposition 2: Yes (Republican) No (Democrat)"... party affiliation is clearly not a required piece of information (aside from functioning as "user information" type data).
I'll have to look at it again later, but if I recall correctly there were a few thousand spoiled ballots in Volusia as well. Not spoiled due to voter error, but due to bad ballots or something. A lot of people were ticked off because they had know way to know who had voted.
That could very well explain bags of discarded tapes. I admittedly don't know though. I don't think this group you cite is being taken very seriously though, because there has been ZERO coverage of this around here. And reading the piece you linked to, I did notice that the article is more suggestive than factual. And, frankly, I thought the explanation that they discarded ones were now-unneeded backups makes perfect sense.
These people are just digging. They have no interest in "investigating" or "getting to the bottom"... their sole purpose is to deligitimze the President and erode the public's confidence in the electoral process. If groups like this hadn't exhibited a pattern of such unproductive behavior for the past 4 years, I might take them seriously. At this point, I believe their credibility is on par with that of Michael Moore. The fact that every kook leftist with a computer is floating ridiculous conspiracy theories doesn't help, either.
Ok, let me clarify some things. The "break in trends" wasn't with who won the counties... the break was in who increased their margins relative to 1996 and 2000.
It is no secret that Bush pulled more Democrats into his column than Kerry pulled Republicans. The republican base was lined up much more solidly behind Bush than it was in 2000, and Kerry's "base", if such a thing can be said to have existed, was not very enthusiastic about him. Many democrats, even, had reservations about his ability to prosecute the war on terror. It is not "unexpected", as you say, that heavily democratic counties will "trend toward" Bush relative to 1996 and 2000, while still very heavily favoring Kerry.
Once again, there is nothing sinister here. The reason the "trend" appears to primarily affect the counties using the high tech machines is because those are the wealthier, more populous, and, thus, more heavily democratic counties. The democrats are the ones who lost voters within their own party to the other side relative to the last 2 elections, and that is why those counties trended toward Bush relative to the last 2 elections.
It isn't a conspiracy with the machines, but, rather, a function of the same demographics that allow a county to use those machines.
If I had to guess why the reported totals favored Bush over the poll tapes, I would say it is likely due to the fact that Bush had an enormous advantage in absentee ballots, which weren't counted until days later. Once again, it's a silly conspiracy theory and nothing more. Can you please link to whereever it is you are getting this misleading information? People "throwing out" vote totals? Please link. The preloaded voting machines were out of Pennsylvania, a state that John Kerry won handily, which renders it a non-issue. I do agree, though, that if there is legitimate voter fraud, it should be investigated and the offenders should be prosecuted regardless of who it helped or where it happened. I think those "preloaded" votes were satisfactorily explained. Trust me, when I first heard about them it set off big alarm bells with me as well.
I'm sorry, but I think this is a solution in search of a problem. The numbers are reported to the Secretary of State by the canvassing boards. Also, since I forgot to mention it... I believe you were citing the Ohio machine "preloaded" with votes as evidence of fraud. Let's not forget that it was the Republican party that filed the complaint about those preloaded votes... so to turn around now and accuse it of being a republican fraud attempt is illogical at best. And the counties using touch screen machines did not trend toward Bush. Go back and read that link I included in the last post.
Yes, to supplement my last post... you can find a map of the Florida showing the voting systems used here: http://ustogether.org/election04/mitteldorf/Liddle .htm
Just eyeballing it, I can say with a fairly high level of confidence that every single touch-screen county (the blue ones) are run by Democrats.
Let's quit pretending with this silly fraud theory.