the shoot-first, verify-later car that Bush had been steering<.i>
If Bush is only steering, who has his (or her) foot on the gas?
Oh, I wish I had saved that article. My memory is so terrible, so if I screw this up, please forgive me.
But I think it was Colin Powell Jr talking about the internet. He said something to the effect of, the internet is an excellent place for consumers, but he wasn't so sure about its value as a medium for the spread of (in context) politically unsavory ideas.
I think the article was about the unfiltered news offered by the internet - meaning unfiltered by those with a commercial interest in supporting the political status quo by influencing what gets reported and what gets buried.
I found his statement disturbing on a number of levels, not the least of which being his obvious preference that we remain consumers rather than thinking individuals seeking a variety of viewpoints.
A good way to remember is to remember what hasn't been done. An interesting piece, 20 unanswered questions, in the Philadelphia Daily News.
Hmm. If throwing money at schools won't solve the problems of the school systems, why do you suppose throwing money at terrorism will make it go away? This is the Rebublican rhetorical model. Throwing money at something never solves anything. We don't need more money to rebuild Iraq, we need to test the rebuilders with standardized tests and get rid of the ones who can't cut it. We don't need more soldiers, we need to test the ones we have and make sure they are up to the standard of the war on terror.
The government run War on Terror is a miserable failure, and throwing more money at it won't solve anything. What we need are War on Terrorism Vouchers. I want to put my tax money where I think it can best be used to stamp out terrorism.
The timeline is the one that bothers me the most. I can't help wondering about the gaping hole in the air defenses over DC that day. It is marginally within the bounds of credibility that a slow response prevented the protection of New York, but given the time elapsed and the nearness of the DC air defenses... well, if I were reading that story, I'd have to say that's a gaping plot hole that destroys the reader's suspension of disbelief. What do you mean, they don't react? They have to react. They can't sit on their hands that long. It's not believable. You are scrambling planes from 300 miles away because you, the writer, know that they cannot arrive in time, thus making your implausible scenario possible. I don't buy it.
Jo:
No, those have been floating around the conspiracy circles since the dates cited. I recall reading them some time ago. I don't know if they have been disproved, but I kinda doubt it, seeing as how the MP cites them in his piece. I'm sure he wouldn't want to be easily discredited and fully researched all his claims. At least, if I were in his position, that's what I would do.
Also, after the whole bin Laden family/Snopes.com fiasco last week, you've got to distrust the debunkers nearly as much as the conspriracy theorists. I don't think Snopes has a political agenda, but even honest neutral debunkers can be suckered by experts with political agendas.
I think this is a momentous piece, because it is the first time anyone in such a high political position has made such damaging statements to this administration. The American media will likely never repeat his statements unless someone gets brave and reports on the article itself.
doesn't lamp oil tend to come in large plastic bottles these days?
It comes by the gallon jug or the quart bottle. I don't recommend using them for lamps, as they are plastic, as you say. But an empty fifth of bourbon or wine bottle makes an excellent lamp.
Those huge bottles of cheap-ass wine make good water storage bottles... if you don't live in a seismic zone, like I do. Our most likely disaster would likely destroy any water supply stored in glass bottles. Actually, the best thing to do (if you regularly drink bottled water) is to buy up a huge supply of bottled water all at one, then drink out of it and replace it normally, so that you always have several gallons of relatively fresh bottled water on hand.
Other good things to have - a butane burner and several cans of butane. I got mine at the Chinese market. Comes in handy if you have an electric stove.
A manual can opener. Don't end up like Sylvester with a cabinet full of cans of kitty food and no way to open them. (Learned this after an ice storm.)
Analog phone - I bought mine from a hotel supply, it even has a little red light on top. When Memphis got nailed by the big storm in July, our entire phone system at work went down, and they realized that there wasn't a single analog phone in the building. Add to that the cell phone service became extremely spotty.
Candles are good, but I prefer a nice big bottle of lamp oil. As Teresa noted, you can make a lamp out of nearly anything, but they do sell a simple stopper-and-wick that can be used to turn nearly any bottle into a lamp. And it burns a hell of a lot longer that candles.
... except that I can't wait to pick up a copy of "Heisenburg's Accordian". Appearing at a bookstore near you. Briefly. Maybe.
Nor is it against the law donate to the party of your choice.
Nor is it against the law to publish who receives how much money from whom. It is public domain.
Defensive as you are about this, doesn't it concern you in the least that the officers (I won't say all, because I don't know that it is all of them, but it certainly looks that way) of a company that produces electronic voting machines that cannot be audited donate to the Republican party in what appears to be a block?
Ok, I have no qualms about positing a conspiracy theory.
Do you suppose that maybe they allowed the al-Tuwaitha facility to be looted so that, should they need it, they could produce some weapons grade uranium as proof that Iraq had an ongoing nuclear program, without having to show any evidence where it came from other than the "buyer" who claims to have looted it from an Iraqi nuclear facility. And heaven knows, they wouldn't lie to us about that, would they?
This story also smacks of a version of "it fell of the back of a truck."
Not that this particularly qualifies me, but I was once a HazMat specialist for FedEx. Although I am not sure about the label being in English, I do know that the radioactive symbol is universally used because things are labelled in different languages, except by people who forge documents from Niger. I no longer have access to my hazmat manual, but "Pure Uranium Oxide" doesn't sound like proper terminology either.
Don't worry. Someone will catch these flagrant errors and correct them before the 6 o'clock news. It takes time to develop a proper story and give it legs and clean up all the contradictory material from the initial report.
were presented to the people to judge as they saw fit
That's a mild way to put it. Not once was Max's patriotism challenged? Ha!
"In a recent press release, Chambliss accused his opponent of "breaking his oath to protect and defend the Constitution" because Cleland had voted "yes" on a routine Chemical Weapons Treaty amendment allowing inspectors from neighboring nations like Syria and Iran to serve on U.N. inspection teams in Iraq."
http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2002-07-03/flipside.html
That would be a press release... from Saxby Chambliss... I guess when you say "not once", you mean "obviously, it was more than once."
"Chambliss forces put Osama Bin Laden's picture into one ad against Cleland decrying his lack of support for Mr. Bush's version of Homeland Security legislation."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/31/eveningnews/main527650.shtml
Lovely unbiased presentation, isn't it? Here, Georgia, you decide if Max Cleland is supporting Osama bin Laden.
But did Cleland really oppose Homeland Security? No, just George Bush's version. "Cleland, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, supports a different version of Homeland Security legislation than the president."
Or maybe you are parsing the word patriotism to make your statement techinically true, like someone else's famous "is". Like Saxby did when he said, "I mean Max is a nice guy. I never said anything but that his voting record is so out of touch with the way a majority of Georgians think." He never said anything but that Max broke his oath of office.
I talked to the congressman. He is one of the few who actually answers my questions and addresses my concerns. We sometimes disagree on things, sometimes we agree. But he always responds. I just got an email from him today about something else.
I would prefer that the manufacturers of voting machines not have political affiliations at all. That is unrealistic, so it would be nice if there were a balance. Scroll to the bottom of http://www.bartcop.com/diebold.htm and see who the officers of Diebold donate money to.
Then of course there is this:
"One underlying issue is whether Hagel (R-Nebraska) properly disclosed his financial ties to Election Systems & Software (ES&S), a company that makes nearly half the voting machines used in the United States, including all those used in his native Nebraska." "Hagel, who was reelected last November by a lopsided majority, declined to comment on the ethics filing matter." This is from http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
Oh, and by the way, one of ES&S's largest owners is Omaha World-Herald Company, decribed in the previous link as ultra-conservative.
Maybe these are nebulous links. Over there are some more. And more over there. In Texas, in Florida, in Georgia, in Tennessee, in Nebraska. Spread out, it looks like clouds of coincidence. But rake it all together and it looks like shit, smells like shit.
Maybe I am an alarmist. Maybe they aren't the Taliban wing. Maybe they are just the Saudi princes. In any case, they won't be executing non-believers until after the election. Patriot Act II provides for that, you know.
As for identity theft, let me add my own squeeze of conspiracy juice. Not long after 9/11, a state employee was discovered providing drivers licenses illegally. Her accomplices were all suspiciously middle eastern. The day before she was to appear in court, she swerved off a country road and slammed into a telephone pole, the car exploded, and she was burned to a crisp.
Witnesses to the accident said the interior of the car was on fire BEFORE it swerved off the road.
Coroner's conclusion - suicide. Apparently, she performed self-immolation with gasoline while driving. I suppose it makes it much more difficult to provide believable bullshit when those pesky witnesses talk to the media before you can properly intimidate them.
And to top it off, I don't think charges were ever brought against the men because of lack of evidence. What happened to them afterward, I don't know. Deported, I assume.
It was indeed a lovely pun. My responding pun was much more crude. She wouldn't need a hole if there were a trap door.. well, nevermind.
I'm glad to see this story is finally catching on, as it has been circulating in conspiracy circles since 2000. This only touches on the problems.
I wrote to my Congressman about this. There is a bill in the House right now that would require states to use machines that produce a verifiable paper trail. See, that's the main problem with the Diebold machines and others - they don't. You punch a button. There is no way to verify that the button you pushed in the vote that was recorded. No way. If the election is close, there is no way to recount those votes. End of story. So I wrote to my congressman asking him to please support this bill that's in the house. He said he had read the bill and couldn't support it because there were no measures to provide Federal money to make sure states use the verifiable machines. Translated - we can't afford fair and free elections, so we'll just pretend. Anyway, if he had read the bill, he would see that it does in fact take that into account and provides for the states to use other election tallying systems until they can replace their crappy electronic ones.
He is, by the way, a Democrat.
Dennis Slater does make one good point - this country's history is rife with election fraud. Now we have machines that allow people to game the system invisibly. No way to catch them, unless you catch them with their fingers on the keypad changing vote totals.
What Dennis misses is that the three major electronic voting machine makers all have ties to the Taliban wing of the Republican party. Including Diebold. Giving out cigs to homeless people in Chicago just doesn't compare with having an evangelist writing the computer code that counts the votes.
As for the bartcop page, I believe he corrected that Illinois governor result on his main page the day after he posted that, but apparently forgot to correct it on the linked page.
I'm not as sure as I once was that there's a unified field theory that can explain all the extremes of this kind of misbehavior.
From personal experience, my own carefully cultivated fundamentalist faith was pinged upon learning the history of Christianity and its many changes. What else, I wondered, have they lied about? Those doubts led to a prolonged extraction from the church. My mother worries about my soul.
Wait a minute, I thought assumption involved going through the ceiling, not the door.
Trap door of assumption, then.
Even more so, there's a danger in using one sect's libel against another as the basic template for your critical model, which is what really gets up Lis's nose and I don't blame her.
I don't blame her, either. I certainly understand her reaction. I apologize, and vow to more critically examine my assumptions in the future.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2003 | 49 |
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