This works for me. The rest of it is well one person’s views. I doubt the neocons are going to leave Bush anytime soon, but you do make a good point. We are on our way to making this official American foreign policy and it will be just as good for the Middle East as it was for Europe and East Asia AND it looks like it will remain policy regardless of whether Bush is elected or not. AND lest anyone think this was through some sort of Jewish conspiracy and trickery, au contraire, the point has been made that 30 years of ignoring the Middle East or holding worthless dialogue have failed. The terror attacks only increased. We must fight Islamofascism to the death just as we did with the original variety and communism. The American people understand that. We will ultimately prevail (could take 20 to 30 years or even longer though). Too bad we always have to do these things alone but … it’s probably better not to have Europeans like the Germans and certainly the French there gumming things up with their side deals and Machiavellian tactics.
[quote=“fred smith”]
…We must fight Islamofascism to the death just as we did with the original variety and communism. The American people understand that. We will ultimately prevail…blah blah gurgle…[/quote]
We must fight touchscreen voting machines to the death just as we did with original vote rigging and buying and dictatorships. The American people DON’T understand that. Paper must ultimately prevail.
Interview with John Kerry on MTV:
mtv.com/chooseorlose/feature … ry_033004/
[quote]
Yago: Well, we know that you were into rock and roll when you were in high school, and we know that you play the guitar now. Are there any trends out there in music, or even in popular culture in general, that have piqued your interest?
Kerry: Oh sure. I follow and I’m interested. I don’t always like, but I’m interested. I mean, I never was into heavy metal. I didn’t really like it. I’m fascinated by rap and by hip-hop. I think there’s a lot of poetry in it. There’s a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you’d better listen to it pretty carefully, 'cause it’s important. I still find the musicians of our generation are appreciated and extraordinarily relevant to most of the young people I talk to today. When I go to a Bruce Springsteen concert or when I did go to the Grateful Dead, when Jerry Garcia was still alive, or when I’d go to the Rolling Stones, for instance, it’s all gens
I don’t know, Alien, I’m having trouble getting with this one.
Maybe if we lived in world without ATM’s and I’d never experienced the thrill of doing banking online with a bank half way around the world I might see the potential for electronic voting to go awry but I’m just not picking up any signs of alien life forms here (no disrespect intended).
What kind of sensors are you using? Maybe we should look into having them calibrated to see if that’s the problem.
[quote=“spook”]I don’t know, Alien, I’m having trouble getting with this one.
Maybe if we lived in world without ATM’s and I’d never experienced the thrill of doing banking online with a bank half way around the world I might see the potential for electronic voting to go awry but I’m just not picking up any signs of alien life forms here (no disrespect intended).
What kind of sensors are you using? Maybe we should look into having them calibrated to see if that’s the problem.[/quote]
At least you get paper receipts with ATMs, spook.
Not so with Diebold Accuvote TS machines!
:bluemad:
Interesting:
My experience as an Election Judge in Baltimore County
by Avi Rubin
avirubin.com/judge.html
[quote]Every hour, we also counted the totals on the machines and compared them to the totals in the registration roster that we used to check people in. I was amazed at the number of countings and pieces of paper that we shuffled throughout the day in what was billed as a paperless electronic election.
There were also some security issues that I found to be much worse than I expected. All of the tallies are kept on PCMCIA cards. At the end of the election, each of those cards is loaded onto one machine, designated as the zero machine. (I found it interesting that Diebold numbered the machines 0 through n-1, disproving my notion that they don’t have anyone on board who knows anything about Computer Science.) The zero machine is then connected to a modem, and the tallies are sent to a central place, where they are incorporated with the tallies of other precincts. In our case, the phone line was not working properly, so we went to the backup plan. The zero machine combined all the tallies from the PCMCIA cards that were loaded one at a time onto the machine. It then printed out the final tallies. One copy of that went onto the outside door of the building where there were talliers and poll watchers eagerly waiting. The other was put into a pouch with all of the PCMCIA cards, each wrapped in a printed tally of the machine to which it corresponds, and that pouch was driven by the two head judges to the board of elections office.
The security risk I saw was that Diebold had designated which machine would be the zero machine, and at one point, all of the vote tallies were loaded onto that one machine in memory. That would be the perfect point to completely change the tallies. There is no need to attack all of the machines at a precinct if someone could tamper with the zero machine. In fact, even when the modem is used, it is only the zero machine that makes the call. In the code we examined, that phone call is not protected correctly with cryptography. Perhaps that has been fixed. I was glad to see that the administrator PIN actually used in the election was not the 1111 that we used in our training, and that we had seen in the code.
One thing absolutely amazed me. With very few exceptions, the voters really LOVED the machines. They raved about them to us judges. The most common comment was “That was so easy.” I can see why people take so much offense at the notion that the machines are completely insecure. Given my role today, I just smiled and nodded. I was not about to tell voters that the machines they had just voted on were so insecure. I was curious that voters did not seem to question how their votes were recorded. The voter verifiability that I find so precious did not seem to be on the minds of these voters. One woman did come up to Joy and complain that she wanted a paper ballot to verify. But, Joy managed to convince her that these machines were state of the art and that there was nothing to worry about, which was followed by a smile and a wink in my direction. I just kept quiet, given the circumstances. As an election judge, my job is to make the election work as well as possible, and creating doubts in the voters’ minds at the polls does not figure into my idea of responsible behavior. [b]Perhaps the lightest moment in the day came when one voter standing at his machine asked in the most deadpan voice, “What do I do if it says it is rebooting?” Head judge Marie turned white, and Joy’s mouth dropped. My heart started to beat quickly, when he laughed and said “just kidding.” There was about a two second pause of silence followed by roaring laughter from everyone.
I found the reaction to that joke interesting. Everybody was willing to believe that this had happened, and yet when it became clear that it didn’t, we all felt relief. I’m sure that the other judges would have claimed that this was impossible, and yet, for a brief instant, they all thought it had happened.[/b]
There were a few unusual moments related to my previous work on e-voting. Several people recognized me from TV appearances and from the paper. Yesterday, I was on two CNN shows and the local ABC station criticising Diebold’s voting machines, and last week, I was on the Today show and on TechTV. One voter who I was checking in, leaned over and said, “I know who you are.” I just smiled. Then he asked me if he should even bother voting, and if I thought the machines would “hold out”. I answered that my views were well known, but that today I was an election judge. Another voter asked me, “Aren’t you that hacker guy?”
In the beginning of the election, we printed a “zero tape” of each machine. I found this to be the kind of charade that a confidence man would play when performing some sleight of hand. So, the machines printed each candidates name with a zero next to it. Somehow, that is supposed to mean that there are no votes counted on the machine? I don’t know. I think I could write a five line computer program that would print the zero tally, and I don’t see how that ties into the security of the election. In fact, that was not the only procedure that I thought served more as eye candy than real security. For example, the process for collecting the smartcards was for the unit judge to take the card from the voter and put it on a piano that was across the room. Every 15 minutes or so, the unit judge would take the cards and give them back to us book judges. When a Diebold rep showed up, I asked her about this, and she said that it was done to give the voters a sense that nothing was being kept on the smartcards about their voting session. After my experience today, I can say with total confidence that this would not have ocurred to any of the voters we had.[/quote]
World set back 10 years by Bush’s new world order, says Blair aide
[quote=“European”]
World set back 10 years by Bush’s new world order, says Blair aide
society.guardian.co.UK/environme … 17,00.html[/quote]
Yeah, like the Middle East was really an economic, social and cultural dynamo… 
hey ya’ll. i am in the states these days. i was at busch stadium when george w. stopped by. oh, my what an ugly sight. everyone around me was booing. it is surprising to hear reports that cheers far out numbered the cheers. me? i shup up and watched the sniper teams on the roof of the stadium and the blatantly active duty military guys busting their humps trying to pose as beer vendors. woulda been funny if it wasn’t so harrowing. for you who don’t know, st.louis fans are famous for being polite and applauding even the most basic “hustling” play.
jobs? in america? quick gimme a lead. yeah, lotsa jobs at hardees/mcd’s, but job you can earn a living at? scarace as hen’s teeth. how bad? i drove fifty miles to apply as a carnival worker. and i wasn’t even called back. can’t even get hired as a carnie. the coal mine took my application, but nothing. the newspaper took my application as a laborer (5.50/hr with split shift: 8-noon and then 2000-0400) but went for another candidate. the interviewer was afraid i made too much in my last job (teaching in taiwan) and would be “spoiled”. had a lead as a chinese teacher, but they wanted a “real chinese” for the job. (paybacks are a b*tch.)
as you know statistics beget lies. alot of statistics are beting tossed around fearlessly here.
the general consenus around here is that bush has already agreed to lose the next election.
so instead of showing how the statistics are flawed, you resort to condemning statistics altogether and relying on anecdotal evidence.
funny how you’re in st. louis but live in such a bubble. considering that the last polls i’ve seen in missouri had bush up by 7 points, you are pronouncing a general consensus that bush will lose based on what? your gut feeling?
[quote=“skeptic yank”]jobs? in America? quick gimme a lead. yeah, lotsa jobs at hardees/mcd’s, but job you can earn a living at? scarace as hen’s teeth. how bad? i drove fifty miles to apply as a carnival worker. and I wasn’t even called back. can’t even get hired as a carnie. the coal mine took my application, but nothing. the newspaper took my application as a laborer (5.50/hr with split shift: 8-noon and then 2000-0400) but went for another candidate. the interviewer was afraid I made too much in my last job (teaching in Taiwan) and would be “spoiled”. had a lead as a Chinese teacher, but they wanted a “real Chinese” for the job. (paybacks are a b*tch.)
[/quote]
the general theme i got from this paragraph was “any unskilled idiot can get a job as a carnie/coal miner/laborer. and if someone like me who is better than people who usually work these jobs can’t get hired, that must mean noone can.”
personally, i wouldn’t hire someone who thought they were better than the job.
[quote=“USAToday CNN Gallup Poll”]
Bush support holds despite Iraq, 9/11 hearings
President Bush’s lead over Democrat John Kerry has widened a bit in a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll despite two weeks that have been dominated by a deteriorating security situation in Iraq and criticism of his administration’s handling of the terrorism threat before the Sept. 11 attacks.
The survey, taken Friday through Sunday, showed Bush leading Kerry 51% to 46% among likely voters, slightly wider than the 3-point lead he held in early April. The shifts were within the margin of error of +/ 4 percentage points in the sample of likely voters. (Complete poll results)
The president’s job approval rating was steady at 52%.
Analysts in both parties say the lack of movement underscores how polarized the electorate is. Seven months before Election Day, they say, most people’s minds are made up.[/quote]
[quote=“ABC News Poll”]
Poll Finds Presidential Ratings Steady or Rising
April 19
you know you’ve got a weak democratic candidate when iraq is developing into a worst case scenerio and bush is still leading in the polls.
Flipper:
Rising, but this makes sense. Would you want a multiculti feel good type in office while we are at war? That said, what goes up…
Even though I despise Bush. I don’t think the swing states will go to Kerry. Kerry campaign is too underfunded.
Damn those neocons.
I pray Kerry wins though.
Fed says US growth “widespread” through early April
Wed Apr 21, 2004 02:02 PM ET
WASHINGTON, April 21 (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve on Wednesday gave the U.S. economy an upbeat assessment, saying economic growth and hiring had picked up in recent weeks.
“Economic activity increased across the nation from mid-February through early April. The growth was widespread as retail sales moved up noticeably, and manufacturing, mining, energy, tourism, and services all grew,” the Fed said in its “beige book” report, an anecdotal summary of conditions in the central bank’s 12 regional districts across the nation.
“Labor markets tightened somewhat with modest wage increases,” the Fed said. However, it also noted "significant increases" in worker health benefit costs.
Kinda like “Yeah I smoked dope but I didn’t inhale.”
[quote]Bush
Thank you, Closet Queen, for that list, and, yes, it does go on and on. All politicians need to do what they must to reward the people that support them and nearly all will do what they can to reward themselves, but, regardless of how one might feel about how the Bush administration has handled foreign policy and what not, no administration in recent history has gone as far as this one or has been as egregious in its handouts.
That alone should be enough for any reasonable, well-informed person to question the motives and statements of this administration at every step.
Why so proportionately few have done so is beyond me.