> He's saying we will all pirate his movies as soon as they are > posted somewhere
Well, count the number of people suggesting you find a laser disk version on Bit Torrent. There are at least a half a dozen posted on this story already.
> There was a Senator Bush? >I must have missed it. > BTW, his father was ambassador to China LATER you > ass monkey.
Mr. Congeniality is correct. George H.W. Bush was a two-term representative (1966-1970), but he lost his senate run twice (in 1964 and in 1970). I regret the error. George W. Bush was the grandson of a senator, Prescott Bush.
Furthermore, George H. W. Bush was Ambassador to the United Nations, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Chief of the U. S. Liaison Office in the People's Republic of China, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The rest, I'm sure everyone knows.
> a) You assume some political connections were used? What > were they? Who alleges this? Did Bush himself do anything? Do > Bush's FATHER do anything? Who is to blame for this. > Unsubstantiated FUD. Troll.
Ben Barnes, then Lt. Governor of Texas, admitted he got Bush into the National Guard:
> "I got a young man named George W. Bush into the Texas > National Guard when I was lieutenant governor, and I'm not > necessarily proud of that. But I did it.
Bush was son of a then senator and former ambassador. He served in what many called the "champagne" unit in the Texas National Guard. Bush admitted he had no experience to get him into the guard, and he scored in the bottom 25% on the pilots' test. Bush's records admit this.
> Guess you haven't been watching the news recently when > Staudt and others in the guard and of the guard went on TV.
> That's how fast the liberla media jumped on this story once > they thought they had something they could run with
The questionable documents have done a lot to muddy the waters, but the fact remains that the crux of the question of Bush's service was not dependent on a single document. I agree that CBS News should have fact-checked better. However, it would be nice if the Bush supporters as charged up in determining the authenticity of a now-shown fraudulent document that lead us to war.
But that doesn't absolve Bush from not finishing his duty, which has been corroborated in ways apart from the documents. For example, in Bush's records, Bush flew only 22 months of the 53 he owed. Salon has more details on the documents that Bush should have filed but did not when he decided to stop flying:
--Quote--
> Bush flew for the last time on April 16, 1972. Upon entering > the Guard, Bush agreed to fly for 60 months. After his training > was complete, he owed 53 months of flying.
> But he flew for only 22 of those 53 months.
> Upon being accepted for pilot training, Bush promised to > serve with his parent (Texas) Guard unit for five years once he > completed his pilot training.
> But Bush served as a pilot with his parent unit for just two > years.
> In May 1972 Bush left the Houston Guard base for Alabama. > According to Air Force regulations, Bush was supposed to > obtain prior authorization before leaving Texas to join a new > Guard unit in Alabama.
> But Bush failed to get the authorization.
> In requesting a permanent transfer to a nonflying unit in > Alabama in 1972, Bush was supposed to sign an > acknowledgment that he received relocation counseling.
> But no such document exists.
> He was supposed to receive a certification of satisfactory > participation from his unit.
> But Bush did not.
> On May 26, 1972, Lt. Col. Reese Bricken, commander of the > 9921st Air Reserve Squadron at Maxwell Air Force Base in > Alabama, informed Bush that a transfer to his nonflying unit > would be unsuitable for a fully trained pilot such as he was, > and that Bush would not be able to fulfill any of his remaining > two years of flight obligation.
> But Bush pressed on with his transfer request nonetheless.
> Bush's transfer request to the 9921st was eventually denied by > the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, which meant he > was still obligated to attend training sessions one weekend a > month with his Texas unit in Houston.
> But Bush failed to attend weekend drills in May, June, July, > August and September. He also failed to request permission > to make up those days at the time.
politics.slashdot.org is rapidly turning into one of my least favorites because I've noticed that the moderation system is running amuck! Never before have I seen such a split in moderations where a single comment can be rated "informative" and "troll" numerous times in the same story. And many moderators with a chip on their shoulder start using "offtopic" and "overrated" to try to protect their own karma during metamoderation. Here's an example of where it happened to me recently. And it's not just the political posts (though I suspect it happens there most often), but in a Star Wars story. I still can't believe this post got called a "troll"! I'm sure many others can come up with their own examples.
It seems that there may be too many people moderating these days, and little accountability, a single person doesn't have to have an agenda; you can have a group of likeminded people who want to squelch dissenting opinions pummel a relatively decent post down into the noise of hot grits posts.
DailyKos has a better system where moderations aren't anonymous, so you can see how people are moderating. Then again, if DailyKos had the same traffic as Slashdot, maybe its moderation system would get corrupted too.
Maybe the ultimate problem is that people don't respect others' views, or they prize too highly the views of people that they may agree with but use bad logic or specious reasoning. It's probably indicative of the growing polarization in our country. As people start migrating to sandboxes where only likeminded people congregate (which blogs, especially political ones, can lead to), they become less tolerant of opinions that challenge their own.
> Having MORE articles regarding the Swift Boat Vets for Truth > doesn't mean the press looked into their records. Having LESS > articles that match your keywords doesn't mean the Bush > didn't go after Bush any less.
The original point was the poster claimed that the press covered Bush's desertion story more than the SBVT's lies. I showed that the claim was not true. I showed that during previous campaigns, the press did not publish as many articles looking into Bush's service as they have given space to the SBVT, who have been discredited by all major news sources.
As for your later post searching on Google News, while I applaud your attempt, I remind you Lexis-Nexis is the standard for doing research; Google News is hardly a substitute.
Google News does not prevent re-indexing news stories, and it will index stories that aren't directly about a topic, but just tangentially mention it (that's why Google bombing works on the web). For example, your second search term would probably count stories talking about Bush's elective war in Iraq and how he sent the National Guard in to fight there. You have to be judicious in your search to make sure you don't count those stories. Third, you have to set up the search according to dates to show if the press covered Bush's desertion before the 2004 election, which was the point of the original post.
Finally, you did a search for "Swift Boat Vets Truth". However their actual name is "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth". I suspect that if you did your search for their actual name, and not an abbreviation, you'd get thousands of more hits, even on Google News.
So you don't win the home version, but thanks for playing.
> By the way - Name ONE charge that the Swift Boat Vets have > retracted
No charge has been retracted since they're liars. But every claim they've made has been proven false. The Associated Press, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal have all established that the claims are false. Furthermore, the New York Times established the numerous ties between the Bush campaign and the SBVT cabal. The Boston Globe called their lies "laughable".
The truth is some Bush supporters refuse to admit that their candidate shirked on his duty when it was his time, while John Kerry proudly served his country.
Imagine if Clinton had attempted the same character assassination against Dole in 1996. It would have been wrong then, and it is wrong now.
> Try the Lexis-Nexis search for "George W. Bush" and "National > Guard" and "Service" and see how many hits you get then.
If there are fewer articles than for Kerry and the lying SBVT, do you concede I proved my point? To recap, I did a search for "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" and "John Kerry" and "Vietnam" in the past six months and I got 248 hits.
Between 1992 and 1996, I searched for "George W. Bush" and "National Guard" and "Service". I got exactly one article, in the Washington Post from Oct 13, 1992.
Between 1996 and 2000? Try 54 articles.
So there were fewer articles using the search times you provided than the ones I provided. And it still shows that back when Bush was running, the press looked into his questionable National Guard service less than the liars that are attacking Kerry's service.
Not that any of the above will convince everyone. Some people are surprisingly successful at inoculating their opinions against the facts.
> We know the Washington Post is liberal, we know the > Washington Times is conservative, and that there are plenty of > people who would disagree with either of those claims.
Republicans have been trying hard to call the mainstream media "Liberally-biased" forever. This comes from the fact that whenever the press reports on Republicans doing something wrong, they're biased. Republicans started on this because the Washington Post exposed Watergate, which is what started the whole "bias" claim. The Washington Times, on the other hand, was founded in 1982 by the Moonies as a conservative newspaper and help provide conservative spin to the news.
The truth is the press is far more interested in sensationalism and getting the "scoop" first, to have a bias towards Democrats or Liberals. One would have to ignore facts to say otherwise. Let's look at an example. During 1998 and 1999, the so-called "Liberal-biased" Washington Post published 233 articles about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. On the other hand, regarding the allegations that George H. W. Bush had a long-time affair with staffer Jennifer Fitzgerald, the Washington Post dedicated exactly two articles published in August 1992 and Sept 1993. So much for the Washington Post having a Liberal bias.
However, Republicans have succeeded in the "big lie" where if you make an accusation long enough and often enough, people will believe it. By claiming that there is a Liberal bias, it allows them to explain away negative stories, while promoting stories that help them ("see, even the 'Liberal-biased media' says so"). At the same time, it also allows the Republicans to have blatantly partisan news organizations like Fox News and the Washington Times for what they claim is balance. As Matt Labash, a writer for the conservative Weekly Standard (like Fox News, it's owned by Rupert Murdock) put it:
> "We've created this cottage industry in which it pays to be > unobjective. It pays to be subjective as much as possible. It's a > great way to have your cake and eat it, too. Criticize other > people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. > It's a great little racket. I'm glad we found it, actually."
> That's the whole idea behind the First Amendment isn't it?
In as far as this question goes, your statement can't be moderated high enough. (as of this post, you're at +4; let's see what the moderators with a chip on their shoulder do to your comment)
The press is the only business that I'm aware of that is protected explicitly by the U.S. Constitution. With that protection comes a huge amount of responsibility. As Thomas Jefferson said, if he had a choice between a free government and no press and a free press and no government, he'd take the latter. The reason this is important is because people can't make smart decisions unless they have the right information.
However, as of late, I think the press is abdicating their constitutionally protected role. I ran across a scary, but telling fact. The Christian Science Monitor reported that after the 9/11 attack only 3% of people polled thought that Iraq was behind it. However, a steady drumbeat of the Bush administration insinuating that Iraq was behind the attacks turned this around. For example, during Bush's prime time press conference during March of 2003, he mentioned Saddam Hussein and 9/11 in the same sentence often, talking about 9/11 eight times trying to make his case in going to war in Iraq (while simultaneously forgetting he was going to find Osama bin Laden dead or alive). The White House's misinformation campaign worked. Just before the war, 44% of people polled in a Knight-Ridder poll said that some or most of the hijackers were from Iraq. In Sept 2003, the Associated Press reported that 70 percent of people believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks. The truth is Iraq had nothing to do with Sept 11, and 17 out of 19 of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.
If the press had been doing its job, we wouldn't have seen 70% of the American people believing in a lie.
I couldn't tell if you were trying to be sarcastic or not. I'll assume you're not. It is completely ridiculous to suggest that the press has spent more time investigating Bush than they did giving free press to the lying SBVT group.
The lying SBVT dominated the news cycle for weeks. As reported by the New York Times, among others, they were coordinated by the Bush administration, and the SBVT claims were contradicted by official Navy records, by eyewitnesses, and by their own statements prior to the campaign.
On the other hand, Bush has gotten a free pass for
a) Using political connections to get in to the National Guard, when he was far from the best candidate to get in b) Not fulfilling his duty once he was in there c) Lying about his service and claiming he flew with his unit for years
Official National Guard records, including those released by the White House, contradict Bush's statements. Others in the National Guard corroborate the fact that Bush did not fulfill his duty. To this day, Bush has been incapable of naming a single person who saw him in Alabama when he was supposed to be training there. Bush claims he signed up for a unit up north (Connecticut, I think), but he never showed up to that at all.
The national media ignored Bush's stint with a champaign unit in the National Guard during Vietnam, with small exceptions, during the 2000 campaign. I know many Bush supporters would like to believe otherwise, but it's fact.
To illustrate this fact, I did a Lexis-Nexis search for "George W. Bush" and "National Guard" and "Vietnam"
from 1992 through 1996: 8 hits 1996 through 2000: 90 hits
Then I did a search for "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" and "John Kerry" and "Vietnam" in the past six months. How many hits? 248!
Okay, so clearly the liars trying to trash John Kerry are getting nearly three times the press in the past six months as the press has spent looking into legitimate issues with Bush's record in the past 12 years.
Is Bush's Vietnam record (or lack of it) relevant to today? To some extent, no. The war was more than 30 years ago. But for a president who calls himself the "war president", who insists he was for the Vietnam war, who started an elective war under false pretenses and shifting reasons, and who is dangerously stretching our military resources, it is important to know what that person was doing when it was their time to serve.
> I don't recall any stories about Picasso sneaking into museums > with a paintbrush to touch up his old work
Picasso actually painted over a previous painting to create his "Rue de Montmartre". the previous painting had a theme similar to his "Le Moulin de la Galette" painting. Salon has more details here:
> On Sept. 14, the show "A Hidden Picasso" opens for a two- > month exhibition at the Guggenheim Bilbao, in Bilbao, Spain. > There on display (thanks to digital technology) will be a full- > color version of a painting that Picasso made in 1900, and > discarded. He then reused the canvas, painting atop it the > famous "Rue de Montmartre."
No word if any of the paintings contained a CG Jabba the Hutt.
> The fact that you can't see through the ships now is cool. He > says he wants Han to talk to Jabba at the begining of EP I, OK, > I'll buy that too, albeit poorly done.
That footage was left on the cutting room floor for the simple reason that it didn't look the way he wanted. I'd hardly say that the rubber Jabba is intrinsically better than the CG Jabba. They both look fake. Luckily, Lucas is fixing this in the DVD version.
> Is he saying that he didn't > have the technology to allow greedo to fire first when he made > the original EP IV? That's BS, he's rewriting it now as a 'big > hollywood name' as opposed to creating a vision and running > with it as he did in the first making of the movie.
Greedo sounds like a make-or-break situation. The fact that people actually care about this is shows that Lucas had to make this a change.
Lucas intended to show Han actually being threatened by Greedo. Lucas probably thought that this would be obvious by the fact that Greedo had his gun drawn and was making threatening statements. In Lucas's mind, this was self-defense, although Han's cavalier attitude towards the killing ("Sorry 'bout the mess") still fit into his pragmatic, mercenary attitude (both you and Leia seem to like a scoundrel).
However, many people took this scene to mean that Han offed a guy who wasn't an imminent threat to him. Those people probably liked the idea, and thus they think that Lucas somehow changed Han's character by clarifying the scene.
Lucas realized that this was clearly ambiguous to the audience. Sometimes you want ambiguity: Why did Obi Wan allow himself to be struck down? What did Shmi really mean when she said Anakin had no father? Why did Darth Vader stop Boba Fett from shooting Chewie? Why were the Ewoks so fucking ANNOYING??...ahem. Anyway...
In this case, Lucas did not want this ambiguity. He did not want people to think that Han was a murderer. So Lucas made a change to remove the ambiguity.
The fact that so many people think that Lucas changed Han's character proves that Lucas had to make the change because people did not understand what was going on.
Fine, if you now hate the movie and Lucas and the world because Lucas never intended Han to be a sociopath, that's fine. There are plenty of copies of Starship Troopers for you to purchase and enjoy.
> you don't know WHAT point he's trying to get across
Lucas hasn't made any fundamental changes to his movies. Better special effects, better music, some character clarification all go towards making his movies today what he wanted them to be back then. In fact, with Episodes I-III (presumably), he's actually clarified his message for his movies -- i.e. you can't be a serial killer and then convert on your deathbed. He says fundamentally good people can make horrible decisions, but eventually make a choice to be good again.
But maybe his real message is, "Chill, pal. It's just a movie."
> Ok - one question - why have they not been released on DVD > until now?
I imagine you'd have to ask Lucas, but I suspect it's related to a number of reasons. First, it's probably because when he released Episodes IV-VI, he wanted to release them right; that is, the same quality as Episodes I and II. So he wanted to take the time to restore the films to better than new quality (from what I've heard, they've done an excellent job in restoring the pictures).
I also expect that Lucas knew that funding a restoration of the Star Wars movies would be expensive, but if he could leverage new technologies that came about from Episodes I and II, it would be a lot cheaper. For example, the CG in Episode II is more elaborate than in Episode I. I would expect then that creating Episode I-level effects using the technology in Episode II would be cheaper than they were during Episode I (assuming Lucas uses cutting edge technology during the production of each movie). Thus, by the time he gets to Episode III, doing the effects he needed to redo Episodes IV-VI would be far less expensive.
Finally, by releasing Episodes IV-VI in time for Christmas, he builds demand for Episode III arriving in May 2005. So by the time May 2005 rolls around, you will be able to see all six episodes as a whole.
If Lucas were really trying to milk people, he would have released the Special Edition versions of the movies (already digital) on DVD with no additional work, and then released the current set. However, Lucas waited until he had the time to make it the way he wanted.
> I mean if people want to keep throwing money at the guy by > buying the same movies over and over again then that's their > business but I can't help feeling that it's exploitation.
No one is demanding that everyone buy every copy of every movie. You go buy a version, then Lucas comes out with a new one with incremental improvements. The market for people buying Star Wars movies is large enough that Lucas can come out with slightly different versions on a periodic basis to match constant demand. The product remains fresh because the version bought a couple of years later is slightly different. However, just because Lucas refreshes his product doesn't mean you have to buy another version. Not unless you've got a psychological need to own the "definitive version".
I bought the Special Edition Full Screen (gold package) VHS version. The old, unremastered full screen version of Star Wars went to Half Price Books (and the complementary versions of ESB and ROTJ recorded from cable TV went into the trash). The only regret I had was there was a widescreen version (silver box) released about three months later. Did I buy it when it came out? No, I just accepted the fact that I didn't want to buy the set again.
Years later, I now have a chance to buy the version on DVD. Cool. I'll buy the widescreen version, but I realize that it's likely in 2005, there might be a set with Episodes I-VI. I can either wait and buy that version (if released), or buy the offered versions in two weeks.
Being a rational consumer is about trade-offs. If you've got a neurotic need to own the "definitive version", then you'd better resign yourself to buying a new version every couple of years.
> These are the kinds things which whiny nerds like me are > complaining about.
One would think that reading this thread, hundreds of people absolutely hate what Lucas has done to his movies. However, looking more carefully, it seems we've got a relatively small crowd of really angry people posting millions of times to a story for a movie they hate with every fiber in their bones. It seems the time could be better spent if they would get together with a co-op of like-minded individuals, and make their own version of Star Wars, where Han Solo is a trigger-happy murderer and rubber suits are king.
It's Lucas's movie. He had a vision for the movie, and he was clearly disappointed that he couldn't make that movie because of the limitations of effects in those days. Now he has the chance to get closer to his vision. Yes, his vision does include flatulent animals, but, hey it's his right.
As a fan of Star Wars since 1978 (when I was old enough to see Star Wars in the theater), I like the changes Lucas made to his movies. I think that if every time Lucas released a version of his movies for a new format with no changes ("Well, I used that rubber suit in 1975, and it looks good in 2004!"), that would be a bit disappointing. I saw the documentary last night, and it was clear that Lucas was embarrassed by the cantina scene. I think Mark Hamill said it was like something out of the Nutcracker Suite. So, Lucas makes a few changes to make the movie he intended.
I like Episodes I and II, too. And no matter how many times rabid Slashdot posters like to say otherwise, Jar Jar is no more annoying than C3PO in the Episodes IV-VI or a screenful of Ewoks.
> US official suggests that the mushroom cloud might be > caused by a forest fire. A little bit of physics knowledge > [layman/common-sense] makes this suggestion laughable
You're missing the point. If the government can get people to argue back and forth about whether a forest fire would create a 2-mile cloud and a crater, the people won't spend time thinking Bush's missteps regarding North Korea (and foreign policy in general). Just like if you can get people arguing about the typeface of a typewriter, they'll ignore the fact that witnesses and records say that Bush did not fulfill his National Guard duties and we deserve to know why.
If you can get people to argue about a particular branch on a tree, they'll forget to consider the forest.
> I don't think the "war on terra" is going to scale up very well > to nuclear war
Worse than that. The Bush administration has known that Pakistan is the country that gave nuclear technology to North Korea, as reported by the New York Times in October 2002:
> American intelligence officials have concluded that Pakistan, a > vital ally since last year's terrorist attacks, was a major > supplier of critical equipment for North Korea's newly revealed > clandestine nuclear weapons program, current and former > senior American officials said today.
The article went on to say that the Bush administration kept North Korea's admission they had nuclear weapons secret for nearly two weeks so the information wouldn't come out during the abbreviated debate on whether Congress should give authorization to the President to go to war in Iraq.
So, Pakistan is the one that gave nuclear technology to South Korea. And Pakistan is also the country that we've contracted out the search for Osama and the other al Qaeda, while we search for WMDs^C^C^C^C WMD-related program activities in Iraq. So this is going to make a huge impact on the search for the people behind the 9/11 attack.
First, you're mischaracterizing Kerry's testimony. Kerry served his country with honor, and he had every right to protest the war when he came home.
Second,
> George Bush did what he could to avoid personally going to > war. He doesn't campaign on it.
Let's see. Remember, that whole Mission Accomplished thing? George W. Bush is the first president in American history to have donned a military uniform while in office. All for a publicity stunt. Bush calls himself a "war president". Bush goes to war in Iraq as a first resort. So, I'd say he campaigns on it. A "war president" deserves to have his war record gone over with a fine tooth comb. That doesn't mean you can lie about his record, but the facts are facts. Kerry's official Navy record corroborates his statements of valor, and the statements of eyewitnesses. Bush's are the opposite.
Bush used family influence to get out of Vietnam. Then he used family influence to get out of serving in a champaign unit in the National Guard (guarding Texas from the Viet Cong).The U.S. government spends $1M to train its pilots, and with Bush in the champaign unit, he never had to fear going to war. Why would he bail out of that? The fact that he shirked his duty the same year they instituted random drug testing is just a coincidence, I'm sure.
> One example, politicalcompass.com puts Kerry nearly center > on a graph of left/right and also of authoritarian/libertarian, > with GWB further right and authoritarian than Kerry.
I guess it goes to show that one should be careful in labeling people. To a Nazi*, everybody's a radical leftist.
* Note to itchy Godwin** wannabes: I'm not calling Bush a Nazi
** I just thought of this; Now that there's a politics section, maybe Slashdot*** should add a moderation score for "Godwin's Law". Whether it's -1 or +1, could be set in the user preferences
*** Yes, I thought it was funny to have to multiple asterisks in this post since the earlier parent had a missing asterisk.
> "There's not a single bear in sight--the 'Bear Patrol' is working > like a charm".
That episode of the Simpsons should be required viewing for anyone trying to forward a "bear patrol" argument that the war on terror is going just great.
Oh, you mean like when yesterday, it was reported that the 1,000 U.S. soldier was killed in action, and the official response from the Bush administration was, "We are also thinking about all the victims of 9/11", which in truth was a non sequitur, but it was an attempt to get people to think that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 attacks (to justify the war), even though there's no reason to believe it was true. Somehow it would be poetic justice if the Bush administration fell because of presumption of relevance.
Not that I think Moore is guilty of this; I saw F9/11 and I've read the criticisms, and it seems to me that the bulk of the complaints are that Moore is trying to make the viewer draw the wrong conclusion. But the fact is, Moore is presenting the facts, and a reasonable person would draw the right conclusion.
Not to mention the fact that Jeb Bush worked to have thousands of African Americans purged from the voter rolls prior the election by misclassifying them as felons. As reported in the New York Times, he's tried to do it again in 2004 and then tried to keep the voter rolls secret.
> I first read the title as "G5 iMac to come in marble blaster > gold" and thought Apple was going back to making funky- > colored computers.
No kidding. Dammit, Apple! Do you know how many types of iPods you'll have to develop and sell to live down the 'Flower Power' iMac? Don't do this to yourself again.
Slashdot Mirror
> He's saying we will all pirate his movies as soon as they are
> posted somewhere
Well, count the number of people suggesting you find a laser disk version on Bit Torrent. There are at least a half a dozen posted on this story already.
Lucas may be right
> There was a Senator Bush?
>I must have missed it.
> BTW, his father was ambassador to China LATER you
> ass monkey.
Mr. Congeniality is correct. George H.W. Bush was a two-term representative (1966-1970), but he lost his senate run twice (in 1964 and in 1970). I regret the error. George W. Bush was the grandson of a senator, Prescott Bush.
Furthermore, George H. W. Bush was Ambassador to the United Nations, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Chief of the U. S. Liaison Office in the People's Republic of China, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The rest, I'm sure everyone knows.
> a) You assume some political connections were used? What
> were they? Who alleges this? Did Bush himself do anything? Do
> Bush's FATHER do anything? Who is to blame for this.
> Unsubstantiated FUD. Troll.
Ben Barnes, then Lt. Governor of Texas, admitted he got Bush into the National Guard:
> "I got a young man named George W. Bush into the Texas
> National Guard when I was lieutenant governor, and I'm not
> necessarily proud of that. But I did it.
Bush was son of a then senator and former ambassador. He served in what many called the "champagne" unit in the Texas National Guard. Bush admitted he had no experience to get him into the guard, and he scored in the bottom 25% on the pilots' test. Bush's records admit this.
> Guess you haven't been watching the news recently when
> Staudt and others in the guard and of the guard went on TV.
> That's how fast the liberla media jumped on this story once
> they thought they had something they could run with
The questionable documents have done a lot to muddy the waters, but the fact remains that the crux of the question of Bush's service was not dependent on a single document. I agree that CBS News should have fact-checked better. However, it would be nice if the Bush supporters as charged up in determining the authenticity of a now-shown fraudulent document that lead us to war.
But that doesn't absolve Bush from not finishing his duty, which has been corroborated in ways apart from the documents. For example, in Bush's records, Bush flew only 22 months of the 53 he owed. Salon has more details on the documents that Bush should have filed but did not when he decided to stop flying:
--Quote--
> Bush flew for the last time on April 16, 1972. Upon entering
> the Guard, Bush agreed to fly for 60 months. After his training
> was complete, he owed 53 months of flying.
> But he flew for only 22 of those 53 months.
> Upon being accepted for pilot training, Bush promised to
> serve with his parent (Texas) Guard unit for five years once he > completed his pilot training.
> But Bush served as a pilot with his parent unit for just two
> years.
> In May 1972 Bush left the Houston Guard base for Alabama.
> According to Air Force regulations, Bush was supposed to
> obtain prior authorization before leaving Texas to join a new
> Guard unit in Alabama.
> But Bush failed to get the authorization.
> In requesting a permanent transfer to a nonflying unit in
> Alabama in 1972, Bush was supposed to sign an
> acknowledgment that he received relocation counseling.
> But no such document exists.
> He was supposed to receive a certification of satisfactory
> participation from his unit.
> But Bush did not.
> On May 26, 1972, Lt. Col. Reese Bricken, commander of the
> 9921st Air Reserve Squadron at Maxwell Air Force Base in
> Alabama, informed Bush that a transfer to his nonflying unit
> would be unsuitable for a fully trained pilot such as he was,
> and that Bush would not be able to fulfill any of his remaining
> two years of flight obligation.
> But Bush pressed on with his transfer request nonetheless.
> Bush's transfer request to the 9921st was eventually denied by
> the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, which meant he
> was still obligated to attend training sessions one weekend a
> month with his Texas unit in Houston.
> But Bush failed to attend weekend drills in May, June, July,
> August and September. He also failed to request permission
> to make up those days at the time.
> According to Air Force regulations,
I like DailyKos.
politics.slashdot.org is rapidly turning into one of my least favorites because I've noticed that the moderation system is running amuck! Never before have I seen such a split in moderations where a single comment can be rated "informative" and "troll" numerous times in the same story. And many moderators with a chip on their shoulder start using "offtopic" and "overrated" to try to protect their own karma during metamoderation. Here's an example of where it happened to me recently. And it's not just the political posts (though I suspect it happens there most often), but in a Star Wars story. I still can't believe this post got called a "troll"! I'm sure many others can come up with their own examples.
It seems that there may be too many people moderating these days, and little accountability, a single person doesn't have to have an agenda; you can have a group of likeminded people who want to squelch dissenting opinions pummel a relatively decent post down into the noise of hot grits posts.
DailyKos has a better system where moderations aren't anonymous, so you can see how people are moderating. Then again, if DailyKos had the same traffic as Slashdot, maybe its moderation system would get corrupted too.
Maybe the ultimate problem is that people don't respect others' views, or they prize too highly the views of people that they may agree with but use bad logic or specious reasoning. It's probably indicative of the growing polarization in our country. As people start migrating to sandboxes where only likeminded people congregate (which blogs, especially political ones, can lead to), they become less tolerant of opinions that challenge their own.
> Having MORE articles regarding the Swift Boat Vets for Truth
> doesn't mean the press looked into their records. Having LESS
> articles that match your keywords doesn't mean the Bush
> didn't go after Bush any less.
The original point was the poster claimed that the press covered Bush's desertion story more than the SBVT's lies. I showed that the claim was not true. I showed that during previous campaigns, the press did not publish as many articles looking into Bush's service as they have given space to the SBVT, who have been discredited by all major news sources.
As for your later post searching on Google News, while I applaud your attempt, I remind you Lexis-Nexis is the standard for doing research; Google News is hardly a substitute.
Google News does not prevent re-indexing news stories, and it will index stories that aren't directly about a topic, but just tangentially mention it (that's why Google bombing works on the web). For example, your second search term would probably count stories talking about Bush's elective war in Iraq and how he sent the National Guard in to fight there. You have to be judicious in your search to make sure you don't count those stories. Third, you have to set up the search according to dates to show if the press covered Bush's desertion before the 2004 election, which was the point of the original post.
Finally, you did a search for "Swift Boat Vets Truth". However their actual name is "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth". I suspect that if you did your search for their actual name, and not an abbreviation, you'd get thousands of more hits, even on Google News.
So you don't win the home version, but thanks for playing.
> By the way - Name ONE charge that the Swift Boat Vets have
> retracted
No charge has been retracted since they're liars. But every claim they've made has been proven false. The Associated Press, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal have all established that the claims are false. Furthermore, the New York Times established the numerous ties between the Bush campaign and the SBVT cabal. The Boston Globe called their lies "laughable".
The truth is some Bush supporters refuse to admit that their candidate shirked on his duty when it was his time, while John Kerry proudly served his country.
Imagine if Clinton had attempted the same character assassination against Dole in 1996. It would have been wrong then, and it is wrong now.
> Try the Lexis-Nexis search for "George W. Bush" and "National
> Guard" and "Service" and see how many hits you get then.
If there are fewer articles than for Kerry and the lying SBVT, do you concede I proved my point? To recap, I did a search for "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" and "John Kerry" and "Vietnam" in the past six months and I got 248 hits.
Between 1992 and 1996, I searched for "George W. Bush" and "National Guard" and "Service". I got exactly one article, in the Washington Post from Oct 13, 1992.
Between 1996 and 2000? Try 54 articles.
So there were fewer articles using the search times you provided than the ones I provided. And it still shows that back when Bush was running, the press looked into his questionable National Guard service less than the liars that are attacking Kerry's service.
Not that any of the above will convince everyone. Some people are surprisingly successful at inoculating their opinions against the facts.
> We know the Washington Post is liberal, we know the
> Washington Times is conservative, and that there are plenty of
> people who would disagree with either of those claims.
Republicans have been trying hard to call the mainstream media "Liberally-biased" forever. This comes from the fact that whenever the press reports on Republicans doing something wrong, they're biased. Republicans started on this because the Washington Post exposed Watergate, which is what started the whole "bias" claim. The Washington Times, on the other hand, was founded in 1982 by the Moonies as a conservative newspaper and help provide conservative spin to the news.
The truth is the press is far more interested in sensationalism and getting the "scoop" first, to have a bias towards Democrats or Liberals. One would have to ignore facts to say otherwise. Let's look at an example. During 1998 and 1999, the so-called "Liberal-biased" Washington Post published 233 articles about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. On the other hand, regarding the allegations that George H. W. Bush had a long-time affair with staffer Jennifer Fitzgerald, the Washington Post dedicated exactly two articles published in August 1992 and Sept 1993. So much for the Washington Post having a Liberal bias.
However, Republicans have succeeded in the "big lie" where if you make an accusation long enough and often enough, people will believe it. By claiming that there is a Liberal bias, it allows them to explain away negative stories, while promoting stories that help them ("see, even the 'Liberal-biased media' says so"). At the same time, it also allows the Republicans to have blatantly partisan news organizations like Fox News and the Washington Times for what they claim is balance. As Matt Labash, a writer for the conservative Weekly Standard (like Fox News, it's owned by Rupert Murdock) put it:
> "We've created this cottage industry in which it pays to be
> unobjective. It pays to be subjective as much as possible. It's a
> great way to have your cake and eat it, too. Criticize other
> people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want.
> It's a great little racket. I'm glad we found it, actually."
> That's the whole idea behind the First Amendment isn't it?
In as far as this question goes, your statement can't be moderated high enough. (as of this post, you're at +4; let's see what the moderators with a chip on their shoulder do to your comment)
The press is the only business that I'm aware of that is protected explicitly by the U.S. Constitution. With that protection comes a huge amount of responsibility. As Thomas Jefferson said, if he had a choice between a free government and no press and a free press and no government, he'd take the latter. The reason this is important is because people can't make smart decisions unless they have the right information.
However, as of late, I think the press is abdicating their constitutionally protected role. I ran across a scary, but telling fact. The Christian Science Monitor reported that after the 9/11 attack only 3% of people polled thought that Iraq was behind it. However, a steady drumbeat of the Bush administration insinuating that Iraq was behind the attacks turned this around. For example, during Bush's prime time press conference during March of 2003, he mentioned Saddam Hussein and 9/11 in the same sentence often, talking about 9/11 eight times trying to make his case in going to war in Iraq (while simultaneously forgetting he was going to find Osama bin Laden dead or alive). The White House's misinformation campaign worked. Just before the war, 44% of people polled in a Knight-Ridder poll said that some or most of the hijackers were from Iraq. In Sept 2003, the Associated Press reported that 70 percent of people believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks. The truth is Iraq had nothing to do with Sept 11, and 17 out of 19 of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.
If the press had been doing its job, we wouldn't have seen 70% of the American people believing in a lie.
I couldn't tell if you were trying to be sarcastic or not. I'll assume you're not. It is completely ridiculous to suggest that the press has spent more time investigating Bush than they did giving free press to the lying SBVT group.
The lying SBVT dominated the news cycle for weeks. As reported by the New York Times, among others, they were coordinated by the Bush administration, and the SBVT claims were contradicted by official Navy records, by eyewitnesses, and by their own statements prior to the campaign.
On the other hand, Bush has gotten a free pass for
a) Using political connections to get in to the National Guard, when he was far from the best candidate to get in
b) Not fulfilling his duty once he was in there
c) Lying about his service and claiming he flew with his unit for years
Official National Guard records, including those released by the White House, contradict Bush's statements. Others in the National Guard corroborate the fact that Bush did not fulfill his duty. To this day, Bush has been incapable of naming a single person who saw him in Alabama when he was supposed to be training there. Bush claims he signed up for a unit up north (Connecticut, I think), but he never showed up to that at all.
The national media ignored Bush's stint with a champaign unit in the National Guard during Vietnam, with small exceptions, during the 2000 campaign. I know many Bush supporters would like to believe otherwise, but it's fact.
To illustrate this fact, I did a Lexis-Nexis search for "George W. Bush" and "National Guard" and "Vietnam"
from 1992 through 1996: 8 hits
1996 through 2000: 90 hits
Then I did a search for "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" and "John Kerry" and "Vietnam" in the past six months. How many hits? 248!
Okay, so clearly the liars trying to trash John Kerry are getting nearly three times the press in the past six months as the press has spent looking into legitimate issues with Bush's record in the past 12 years.
Is Bush's Vietnam record (or lack of it) relevant to today? To some extent, no. The war was more than 30 years ago. But for a president who calls himself the "war president", who insists he was for the Vietnam war, who started an elective war under false pretenses and shifting reasons, and who is dangerously stretching our military resources, it is important to know what that person was doing when it was their time to serve.
> I don't recall any stories about Picasso sneaking into museums
> with a paintbrush to touch up his old work
Picasso actually painted over a previous painting to create his "Rue de Montmartre". the previous painting had a theme similar to his "Le Moulin de la Galette" painting. Salon has more details here:
> On Sept. 14, the show "A Hidden Picasso" opens for a two-
> month exhibition at the Guggenheim Bilbao, in Bilbao, Spain.
> There on display (thanks to digital technology) will be a full-
> color version of a painting that Picasso made in 1900, and
> discarded. He then reused the canvas, painting atop it the
> famous "Rue de Montmartre."
No word if any of the paintings contained a CG Jabba the Hutt.
> The fact that you can't see through the ships now is cool. He
...ahem. Anyway ...
> says he wants Han to talk to Jabba at the begining of EP I, OK,
> I'll buy that too, albeit poorly done.
That footage was left on the cutting room floor for the simple reason that it didn't look the way he wanted. I'd hardly say that the rubber Jabba is intrinsically better than the CG Jabba. They both look fake. Luckily, Lucas is fixing this in the DVD version.
> Is he saying that he didn't
> have the technology to allow greedo to fire first when he made
> the original EP IV? That's BS, he's rewriting it now as a 'big
> hollywood name' as opposed to creating a vision and running
> with it as he did in the first making of the movie.
Greedo sounds like a make-or-break situation. The fact that people actually care about this is shows that Lucas had to make this a change.
Lucas intended to show Han actually being threatened by Greedo. Lucas probably thought that this would be obvious by the fact that Greedo had his gun drawn and was making threatening statements. In Lucas's mind, this was self-defense, although Han's cavalier attitude towards the killing ("Sorry 'bout the mess") still fit into his pragmatic, mercenary attitude (both you and Leia seem to like a scoundrel).
However, many people took this scene to mean that Han offed a guy who wasn't an imminent threat to him. Those people probably liked the idea, and thus they think that Lucas somehow changed Han's character by clarifying the scene.
Lucas realized that this was clearly ambiguous to the audience. Sometimes you want ambiguity: Why did Obi Wan allow himself to be struck down? What did Shmi really mean when she said Anakin had no father? Why did Darth Vader stop Boba Fett from shooting Chewie? Why were the Ewoks so fucking ANNOYING??
In this case, Lucas did not want this ambiguity. He did not want people to think that Han was a murderer. So Lucas made a change to remove the ambiguity.
The fact that so many people think that Lucas changed Han's character proves that Lucas had to make the change because people did not understand what was going on.
Fine, if you now hate the movie and Lucas and the world because Lucas never intended Han to be a sociopath, that's fine. There are plenty of copies of Starship Troopers for you to purchase and enjoy.
> you don't know WHAT point he's trying to get across
Lucas hasn't made any fundamental changes to his movies. Better special effects, better music, some character clarification all go towards making his movies today what he wanted them to be back then. In fact, with Episodes I-III (presumably), he's actually clarified his message for his movies -- i.e. you can't be a serial killer and then convert on your deathbed. He says fundamentally good people can make horrible decisions, but eventually make a choice to be good again.
But maybe his real message is, "Chill, pal. It's just a movie."
> Ok - one question - why have they not been released on DVD
> until now?
I imagine you'd have to ask Lucas, but I suspect it's related to a number of reasons. First, it's probably because when he released Episodes IV-VI, he wanted to release them right; that is, the same quality as Episodes I and II. So he wanted to take the time to restore the films to better than new quality (from what I've heard, they've done an excellent job in restoring the pictures).
I also expect that Lucas knew that funding a restoration of the Star Wars movies would be expensive, but if he could leverage new technologies that came about from Episodes I and II, it would be a lot cheaper. For example, the CG in Episode II is more elaborate than in Episode I. I would expect then that creating Episode I-level effects using the technology in Episode II would be cheaper than they were during Episode I (assuming Lucas uses cutting edge technology during the production of each movie). Thus, by the time he gets to Episode III, doing the effects he needed to redo Episodes IV-VI would be far less expensive.
Finally, by releasing Episodes IV-VI in time for Christmas, he builds demand for Episode III arriving in May 2005. So by the time May 2005 rolls around, you will be able to see all six episodes as a whole.
If Lucas were really trying to milk people, he would have released the Special Edition versions of the movies (already digital) on DVD with no additional work, and then released the current set. However, Lucas waited until he had the time to make it the way he wanted.
> I mean if people want to keep throwing money at the guy by
> buying the same movies over and over again then that's their
> business but I can't help feeling that it's exploitation.
No one is demanding that everyone buy every copy of every movie. You go buy a version, then Lucas comes out with a new one with incremental improvements. The market for people buying Star Wars movies is large enough that Lucas can come out with slightly different versions on a periodic basis to match constant demand. The product remains fresh because the version bought a couple of years later is slightly different. However, just because Lucas refreshes his product doesn't mean you have to buy another version. Not unless you've got a psychological need to own the "definitive version".
I bought the Special Edition Full Screen (gold package) VHS version. The old, unremastered full screen version of Star Wars went to Half Price Books (and the complementary versions of ESB and ROTJ recorded from cable TV went into the trash). The only regret I had was there was a widescreen version (silver box) released about three months later. Did I buy it when it came out? No, I just accepted the fact that I didn't want to buy the set again.
Years later, I now have a chance to buy the version on DVD. Cool. I'll buy the widescreen version, but I realize that it's likely in 2005, there might be a set with Episodes I-VI. I can either wait and buy that version (if released), or buy the offered versions in two weeks.
Being a rational consumer is about trade-offs. If you've got a neurotic need to own the "definitive version", then you'd better resign yourself to buying a new version every couple of years.
> These are the kinds things which whiny nerds like me are
> complaining about.
One would think that reading this thread, hundreds of people absolutely hate what Lucas has done to his movies. However, looking more carefully, it seems we've got a relatively small crowd of really angry people posting millions of times to a story for a movie they hate with every fiber in their bones. It seems the time could be better spent if they would get together with a co-op of like-minded individuals, and make their own version of Star Wars, where Han Solo is a trigger-happy murderer and rubber suits are king.
It's Lucas's movie. He had a vision for the movie, and he was clearly disappointed that he couldn't make that movie because of the limitations of effects in those days. Now he has the chance to get closer to his vision. Yes, his vision does include flatulent animals, but, hey it's his right.
As a fan of Star Wars since 1978 (when I was old enough to see Star Wars in the theater), I like the changes Lucas made to his movies. I think that if every time Lucas released a version of his movies for a new format with no changes ("Well, I used that rubber suit in 1975, and it looks good in 2004!"), that would be a bit disappointing. I saw the documentary last night, and it was clear that Lucas was embarrassed by the cantina scene. I think Mark Hamill said it was like something out of the Nutcracker Suite. So, Lucas makes a few changes to make the movie he intended.
I like Episodes I and II, too. And no matter how many times rabid Slashdot posters like to say otherwise, Jar Jar is no more annoying than C3PO in the Episodes IV-VI or a screenful of Ewoks.
> US official suggests that the mushroom cloud might be
> caused by a forest fire. A little bit of physics knowledge
> [layman/common-sense] makes this suggestion laughable
You're missing the point. If the government can get people to argue back and forth about whether a forest fire would create a 2-mile cloud and a crater, the people won't spend time thinking Bush's missteps regarding North Korea (and foreign policy in general). Just like if you can get people arguing about the typeface of a typewriter, they'll ignore the fact that witnesses and records say that Bush did not fulfill his National Guard duties and we deserve to know why.
If you can get people to argue about a particular branch on a tree, they'll forget to consider the forest.
> I don't think the "war on terra" is going to scale up very well
> to nuclear war
Worse than that. The Bush administration has known that Pakistan is the country that gave nuclear technology to North Korea, as reported by the New York Times in October 2002:
> American intelligence officials have concluded that Pakistan, a
> vital ally since last year's terrorist attacks, was a major
> supplier of critical equipment for North Korea's newly revealed
> clandestine nuclear weapons program, current and former
> senior American officials said today.
The article went on to say that the Bush administration kept North Korea's admission they had nuclear weapons secret for nearly two weeks so the information wouldn't come out during the abbreviated debate on whether Congress should give authorization to the President to go to war in Iraq.
So, Pakistan is the one that gave nuclear technology to South Korea. And Pakistan is also the country that we've contracted out the search for Osama and the other al Qaeda, while we search for WMDs^C^C^C^C WMD-related program activities in Iraq. So this is going to make a huge impact on the search for the people behind the 9/11 attack.
First, you're mischaracterizing Kerry's testimony. Kerry served his country with honor, and he had every right to protest the war when he came home.
Second,
> George Bush did what he could to avoid personally going to
> war. He doesn't campaign on it.
Let's see. Remember, that whole Mission Accomplished thing? George W. Bush is the first president in American history to have donned a military uniform while in office. All for a publicity stunt. Bush calls himself a "war president". Bush goes to war in Iraq as a first resort. So, I'd say he campaigns on it. A "war president" deserves to have his war record gone over with a fine tooth comb. That doesn't mean you can lie about his record, but the facts are facts. Kerry's official Navy record corroborates his statements of valor, and the statements of eyewitnesses. Bush's are the opposite.
Bush used family influence to get out of Vietnam. Then he used family influence to get out of serving in a champaign unit in the National Guard (guarding Texas from the Viet Cong).The U.S. government spends $1M to train its pilots, and with Bush in the champaign unit, he never had to fear going to war. Why would he bail out of that? The fact that he shirked his duty the same year they instituted random drug testing is just a coincidence, I'm sure.
> One example, politicalcompass.com puts Kerry nearly center
> on a graph of left/right and also of authoritarian/libertarian,
> with GWB further right and authoritarian than Kerry.
I guess it goes to show that one should be careful in labeling people. To a Nazi*, everybody's a radical leftist.
* Note to itchy Godwin** wannabes: I'm not calling Bush a Nazi
** I just thought of this; Now that there's a politics section, maybe Slashdot*** should add a moderation score for "Godwin's Law". Whether it's -1 or +1, could be set in the user preferences
*** Yes, I thought it was funny to have to multiple asterisks in this post since the earlier parent had a missing asterisk.
> "There's not a single bear in sight--the 'Bear Patrol' is working
> like a charm".
That episode of the Simpsons should be required viewing for anyone trying to forward a "bear patrol" argument that the war on terror is going just great.
> "Presumption of Relevance,"
Oh, you mean like when yesterday, it was reported that the 1,000 U.S. soldier was killed in action, and the official response from the Bush administration was, "We are also thinking about all the victims of 9/11", which in truth was a non sequitur, but it was an attempt to get people to think that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 attacks (to justify the war), even though there's no reason to believe it was true. Somehow it would be poetic justice if the Bush administration fell because of presumption of relevance.
Not that I think Moore is guilty of this; I saw F9/11 and I've read the criticisms, and it seems to me that the bulk of the complaints are that Moore is trying to make the viewer draw the wrong conclusion. But the fact is, Moore is presenting the facts, and a reasonable person would draw the right conclusion.
> more votes had been cast for Gore than for Bush
Not to mention the fact that Jeb Bush worked to have thousands of African Americans purged from the voter rolls prior the election by misclassifying them as felons. As reported in the New York Times, he's tried to do it again in 2004 and then tried to keep the voter rolls secret.
But the iPod comes with a free Frogurt.
The Frogurt is also cursed.
> look! it can dance and root out trees if you show him too! and
> he can... hum... that's about it
You forgot the most important aspect of the creature: the non-stop pooping all over Eden. That's a feature I could have done without.
I liked Black and White for a while, but playing it is like baby-sitting a two year old.
> I first read the title as "G5 iMac to come in marble blaster
> gold" and thought Apple was going back to making funky-
> colored computers.
No kidding. Dammit, Apple! Do you know how many types of iPods you'll have to develop and sell to live down the 'Flower Power' iMac? Don't do this to yourself again.