I'ts been my, perhaps mistaken understanding, that homosexuals come from the union of two hetereosexuals. Even more remarkable is, much more often than not, both the male and female of said union(s), are avowedly straight; having of course, at one point during their sexual development, chosesn to adopt the 'straight' lifestyle over the 'queer' lifestyle.

Makes one wonder what sort of example is being set by parents whose children 'choose' to be queer over straight? Given all the benefits to be had by straights in our society, those particular families must be horrific to live in, when the children eschew the wonders and glories that are straightdom and opt for the fear and worry of being queer.

lol @ gay marriage

Yeah because homosexuals choose to be gay and heterosexuals choose not to.
You obviously do not know anyone who is gay. Furthermore, it is people like you who do not deserve to raise children. Passing along your ignorance is far worse than anything two people with alternate lifestyles could ever do.

Marriage was started by churches. Who are you to define it for them?

"Marriage was started by churches. Who are you to define it for them?"

And some churches recognize gay marriage. What's your point aside from showing your ignorance? What do you not understand about equal rights? Nobody is saying that they want to force any church to perform a marriage that they do not sanction. Get a clue.

Thanks for the article, Rob. Best of luck to you!

I don't remember choosing to be straight, it never crossed my mind. I think all these people who believe homosexuality is a choice have themselves made a choice to remain in the closet. For us straight folks the issue doesn't seem to come up, you self-hating closet-cases.

Gay marriage is coming, hide your precious babies!!! They might meet a leather daddy, which we would all be forced to marry if activist judges get their way!!!

"Religious opponents of gay rights are essentially calling upon the government to bring about a state of affairs that would better satisfy their own religious views at the expense of others'. That does not appear to be a function of government that the drafters of the Establishment Clause had in mind."

So Polygamy is also ok right? the one man one woman thing is largely religious, so don't force your religion on me and say I can't practice polygamy. Since a lot of our criminal law is based on the ten commandments killing, stealing...I think we need to get rid of that too. Don't force your religion on me rob.

Rob, no matter how thoughtful you think your articles may be, you'll never be as cute as Rob Deters. Give it up, guy.

Rob, your hairstyle ain't makin' it. You belong on the next episode of Queer Eye. Yes, Rob, you do need help in that area ASAP!

OK, Rob, maybe I was a little harsh about your hairstyle, but seriously, you can do better! Whaddaya say?

I think Rob's hair makes him look hot. rarrrr!

don't talk to gay people.. you'll get AIDS.. (blatant ignorance bitches lol)

"So Polygamy is also ok right? the one man one woman thing is largely religious, so don't force your religion on me and say I can't practice polygamy"

I don't think anyone has ever argued that there is a distinct group who for biological reasons are compelled to marry multiple partners (though it may be a biological impulse in all of us). Again, this goes back to whether you think homosexuality is a choice. If you do, then I agree with the poster above in guessing that you are simply fighting your own gay urges because straight people don't face a "choice".

"Don't force your religion on me"

Umm the stealing and killing rules do have their roots in the 10 commandments, but if you are interested in the survival of humans, its a good thing to let genetic defects kill off the bad humans while the better ones slowly evolve..

In addition, without those 10 commandments.. you would have probably been dead by now.. since most activists, anarchists, protesters, etc.. are weaklings.. and extremely annoying.. kind of like cockroaches that most would love to step on..

as for actual religion, Bible, Koran, etc- based.. that's another thing which you don't have to adhere to..

as for gays, they'll probably go to heaven but all their protesting and activism just makes them in the top 5 annoying classes of people.. wish i could just kick 'em in the balls.. lol

Lesbians are HOT! Except those with short hair! And Any Traces of Hair. And Those That Play Rugby. But Porn Lesbians Are H.O.T! So is Paris Hilton Though, Tira Banks -> HOT, Trangender -> NOT.

LGBT should have a civil war between L G B & T.

But Porn Lesbians Are H.O.T!

Not necessarily. Many of the those "lesbians" are actually straight girls who are willing to do something they really don't enjoy doing to make some cash. In fact, many of them are teenage runaways, in case you haven't noticed how underage a lot of them seem to be.

Hey, no guilt trip on ya, I just want to help correct your perception. I'm a lez and I look at porn too, but having learned the truth about how the porn industry works, I'd feel extremely awkward pinching my poozle while clicking through galleries of underage girls who may be trying to earn cash to survive and not just to buy a new iPod.

The issue is whether the governement should be in the business of telling people who they can and can't marry. I don't beleive in big government as a true conservative, and therfore I am for gay marraige. It is not the government's place to tell people who they can and can't marry.

great article rob. some really ignorant comments but we're all used to it. don't question the validity of peoples' sexualities people. you don't make any logical arguments. you've lost and bigotry will eventually fail.

Wait until they get married and then later find out there's no divorce - LOL.

What's next? Marriage between men and horses?

But seriously, just stop sticking things where they don't belong and the world will be a better place.

"What's next? Marriage between men and horses?"

Yer thinking of Sweden:

Animal sex is not illegal in Sweden, and every year between 200 and 300 pets are injured because of sexual assaults.

The estimate was presented by Svenska Veterinärforbundet, the Swedish veterinary organization, and it is now trying to make the authorities and the public more aware of animals' suffering. The organization claim the problem has increased during the last couple of years, even if most people are unaware of it.

"We have seen an increase since 1999 when child pornography became illegal," said Johan Beck-Friis. "It appears, in other words, as there are some people who have replaced children with animals. In both circumstances, it is sex with defenceless individuals."

http://pub.tv2.no/nettavisen/english/article177749.ece

Saying gay marriage would allow for marriage to animals is a logical fallacy:the slippery slope.

Why hasn't hetero-marraige led to marraige to animals? Is there something about hetero marriage that makes this slippery slope impossible which same-sex marriage makes possible?

The answer of course is no. And besides who gives a fuck if people marry animals? I'd rather marry a mollusk than most conservatives here.

"Why hasn't hetero-marraige led to marraige to animals?"

Marraige between man and woman is primarily predicated on sex for the purpose of procreation.

Sex between humans and animals does not lead to progeny (except possibly in your case).

In the case of human cells' invading the germ line, the chimeric animals might then carry human eggs and sperm, and in mating could therefore generate a fertilized human egg. Hardly anyone would desire to be conceived by a pair of mice. To forestall such discomforting possibilities, the committee ruled that chimeric animals should not be allowed to mate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/science/03chim.html

"Marraige between man and woman is primarily predicated on sex for the purpose of procreation."

This is so obviously wrong I barely know where to begin.

1) There is no need to be married to have children as many people in our society have proven. Therefore, there is no link between procreation and marraige.

2) There is no reason that a man and a woman are inherently better parents than 2 men or two women and your statement blatantly ignores the many same sex couples with children and the many hetero couples who do not.

3) Marriage has nothing to do with biology. It is a social institution that was founded to guarantee the passage of property and wealth from generation to generation.

4) If we take your argument to be true than any marriage of people who do not have children or of people who cannot have children should also be dissolved or disallowed.

5)There is absolutely no reason to be against equality in marriage unless you hate gay people and think that they do not deserve the same rights that hetero people do. All of the arguments advanced above against gay marraige are simply justifications for your beleife that the "gay lifestyle" is immoral. Perhaps you should take a look at your own morality before you start casting aspersions on others.

Right now I'm embedded in the deep south for my job and I can honestly say that their public school system is just atrocious, as evident by the undereducated people abound. It is really amazing how easy it is to tell the difference between somebody educated in the south and somebody educated in the north. It is not that the southerners are stupid, it just that their school systems and funding for education are just laughable. And what was the biggest issue in the bible belt this year? Gay marriage. Who cares if we are all a bunch of morons who can't speak, but we mustn't let the queers get married! It's truly amazing to me how people will vote against their own well being just to cock block someone else that has nothing to do with them but that they don't agree with.

"Marriage has nothing to do with biology. It is a social institution that was founded to guarantee the passage of property and wealth from generation to generation."

How're those generations generated? Seems that "sex for the purpose of procreation" might be involved. Also, most of "passage of property and wealth from generation to generation" seems to involve a biological connection between those generations.

For me it's all about financial incentives for the breeding of future taxpayers. I'd limit the benefits of marriage to only those raising future taxpayers if I could - and I wouldn't care about their sexual orientation.

I'm also against off-shoring procreation as I don't think that the immigrants will be as predisposed to pay taxes to support SS for old people to whom they have no biological or cultural connection what-so-ever.

Canada seems to believe otherwise.

"Canada's low birth rate, about 1.61 children per couple, means the country needs immigrants to maintain its population of 33 million, Rosenblatt said. The United States is holding steady at 2.08 children per couple."

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0503canada03.html

There is no need for marriage to procreate. End of argument. If you are against equal marriage then either you think that the government should be in the business of telling people who they can marry, or you think that gay "people" do not deserve the same rights as straight "people". Those are the two possibilites of the argument. Have fun with your stupidity asslicks.

Whether they are married or not has no effect on whether same sex couples have children or not. Therfore your above argument is logically flawed. This issue has nothing to do with children as gay people have children all the time-take a look at the cover of this week's Isthmus- when they are not married as do straight people.

This is a civil rights issue and being against it is a position that is irreconcilable with logic and ethics.

It's a financial issue. I'd like to see my mother marry my sister so that Mom would be covered by my sisters insurance. It would sure save the family money and they do love each other. If you object then you must think that the government should be in the business of telling people who they can marry.

LMFAO. Your argument is totally specious. I seriously hope you are kidding. It is an example of the slippery slope fallacy, and an example of the conservative simpistic tendency to think in black and white. We legislate gradations all the time.
Ex.
We allow someone to shoot someone in self-defense but not for whatever reason they wish. Allowing self-defense shooting doesn't mean that everyone is allowed to shoot anyone else willy nilly.

We allow only people over the age of 18 and who are citizens to vote. This doesn't mean that everyone has the right to vote or that no one has that right.

We allow for different punishments in murder cases.

and so on and so on and so on.

It is, as I said above, completely specious reasoning conjured to fit your preconceived bias of disliking gays.

We allow gay people to have sex, but we don't allow bestiality or incest. Why would allowing gay people to get married all of a sudden mean that we would sanction incestuous or bestial marriage? Completely specious and faulty reasoning.

Why don't you just admit that the real reason you don't want two people of the same sex to have equal rights in marriage is that you dislike gay people and are a homophobe?

With all the important issues in the world I can't beleive that conservatives think that the mst important one is gay marriage.

Hey our boys are getting slaughtered in a war that it is now proven Bush lied about, but hey! We can't let them fags marry! That would be bad for the country! Oh and let's approve another 80 billion fo reconstruction in Iraq so we can line Halliburton's pockets! But those gays getting healthcare is impinging on my pocketbook!

Sickening and really just pathetic. You must be really uncoomfortable with your own sexuality to be that up in arms about denying other people the right to live as they please.

"...but we don't allow bestiality or incest."

See the Sweden link up-thread for example of slippery slope been slid. And what's wrong about incest that isn't wrong about same-sex sex?

still beating that dead horse? What's wrong with same sex sex that isn't wrong with hetero-sex? Can you prove to me that homo-sex is in any way detrimental to our society when hetero sex is not? If anything it is the opposite. More people should be gay so we wouldn't have so many unplanned pregnancies and idiotic parents running around both of which add to our social and economic problems.

I refuse to engage your bestiality debate because it is completely specious. Marriage is not an institution that extends to animals or inanimate objects.

I will comment though, that your homophobia is really shining through. Why not let two people who love one another get married? Is there somoething so terribly wrong with that?

See this guy thinks that homosex is unnatural and therefore no matter what logic you use on him he will keep coming back to his stupid talking points.

Better to just ignore him and hope he comes out of the closet someday before he has to hire a dominant top behind his wife's back.

The sweden thread has nothing to do with this debate. It says that pedophiles have replaced children with animals.

Pedophilia has nothing to do with homosexuality. Just more of your ignorance,fear,and prejudice shining through.

It's not about "living your life as you please"... you fags already do that....but demanding we accept and condone your fucked up lifestyles and diseases is a different matter

I completely agree with the guy above me. It is one thing for homosexuals to be allowed to live their lives as they please, it is totally different to ask that society put a stamp of approval on that devient and disease-filled behavior.

1.) Same sex behavior is unnatural and a proven health risk. It is more of a health risk than smoking or using drugs. Society does not condone smoking, and using drugs is illegal because society cares about the health and welfare of its citizens. Why does the same not apply to same sex behavior? Has anyone ever wondered why gays and lesbians live shorter lives than heterosexuals? In the case of gays, the difference is significant.

2.) The is a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia. Gays are more likely to be child molesters. There exists research to back this up.

3.) This IS NOT a civil rights issue. Civil rights are based on INNATE and IMMUTABLE characteristics, such as race and gender. NO ONE has ever proven homosexuality to inborn... it is most likely a developmental condition. It does not make sense to make sexual feelings and sexual behavior a civil rights issue. Blacks were denied the right to vote and were once held as slaves. can the same be said of homosexuals? Don't think so.

Thank you.

Truthful

1) Wrong. The majorit of HIV cases are now among heterosexual women.

2)There is no connection. There is also research proving that the holocaust doesn't exist. Looking at a prebuscent child is just as disgusting for a normal gay person as it is for a normal heterosexual person. I would like to see these studies. A quick google serach showed that all of the studies I could find that "proved" this were all from Christian sites that are anti-gay. Less biased research done by universities finds "The empirical research does not show that gay or bisexual men are any more likely than heterosexual men to molest children. This is not to argue that homosexual and bisexual men never molest children. But there is no scientific basis for asserting that they are more likely than heterosexual men to do so. And, as explained above, many child molesters cannot be characterized as having an adult sexual orientation at all; they are fixated on children."

3) Rights ARE based on "immutable"characteristics. One of those is that people are people. Your conclusion here assumes your premise that gay people are not equal to heteros otherwise as people hey should have the same rights. Equal marraige is a cicil rights issue. I bet you would ahve been arguing against blacks being allowed to vote as well? Afater all what would be next? Pigs voting? Sickening...

As I have said above numerous times. Your ignorance and homophobia are clear here. Why do you care so much? I can only conclude that you feel threatened in some way by gay people. I am sorry that you are so unsure of your own sexuality that you need society to tell you that it is wrong. As a straight man, that's right I am straight, I can't see why two guys getting married (or two women) could possibly bother you. All of your reasons are merely manufactured to fit your homphobic biases. Unlike you social conservatives, as a liberal, I am for giving MORE people freedoms not for denying people freedoms.

Conservatives are all about the government telling people what they can and can't do now. Whatever happened to your party/philosophy?

A simple question for those that think that being gay is a "lifestyle choice": Why would anyone choose a lifestyle that makes them the butt of jokes and slurs (the above usage of "you fags" for example), relegates them to second class citizenship where they do not have the same rights as other Americans, and where they are accused of having heinous criminal tendencies like "pedophilia" and "spreading disease"?

What a lifestyle! Where can I sign up? It sounds great!

Give me a fucking break. I bet you bumpkin- backwater homphobes also think that poor people choose to be poor and blacks and hispanics choose to go to jail in higher numbers. Pathetic.

"The is a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia. Gays are more likely to be child molesters. There exists research to back this up."

That's right! Let's lock up all the Catholic priests and throw away the key!

"There is also research proving that the holocaust doesn't exist."

Where the fuck did that come from? What does the Holocaust have to do with any of this, other than the Nazis wanted to kill all homosexuals?

Yeah, sure, there's research proving the Holocaust never happened. It's all been conducted by people who are so thoroughly discredited that only the most bigoted morons on the planet believe anything they have to say.

So why don't you take your Holocaust denial and go fuck yourself, you twisted piece of shit?

Hey buddy, calm down. I think it was pretty obvious that the guy quoting the Holocaust "studies" only to prove how moronic it is to quote "scientific studies" when they are ran by conservative ideologues.

Yeah, learn to read in context before lashing out jackass.

So let me get what you are saying: Studies showing a link between homosexuality and pedophilia are inaccurate, because they are "conservative"? So by that "logic", are studies showing the opposite inaccurate, because they are liberal?

There is a difference between conservatives citing a study as proof of a certain point of view and conservatives (or liberals, or libertarians, etc) commissioning a study to prove their point of view. There is a huge difference.

Are you suggesting that gay groups are somehow honest and impartial? Can any serious person claim taht to be the case? Gay groups are the quite stealthy and manipulative (and good at it, judging from some of the comments here)and I am always skeptical of what they say.

Tell me this: Why has NAMBLA participated in gay parades? Why is a well-known NAMBLA member and activist now a writer (or until recently was)for the gay magazine "Guide"? Why was NAMBLA part of the international gay organization, which subsequently got kicked out of the UN after the revelation was made? Why have gay groups across the country and across the world asked for the lowering of age of consent laws (thereby aiding child molesters and pedophiles)? Could this all be a conservative plot to make gays look bad?

(Before someone jumps on that, I am NOT saying that all or most gays are pedophiles, but simply that gays are more likely that heterosexual males to be interested in children. There is an obvious homosexual tendency to be with young boys, while there is almost no corresponding heterosexual tendency to be with young girls).

Truthful

http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html

Before you claim that homosexuals are more likely to molest children look at this link. Most child molesters are neither gay nor straight. They do not have an adult sexual preference.

Also, continuing to spread the MYTH that gays molest children and will ruin society is just ignorant and makes you look like a horse's ass.

If you are going to call yourself "Truthful" try and look at all the facts.
And I would trust UC Davis over a religious group any day of the week.

"Are you suggesting that gay groups are somehow honest and impartial?"

Well if studies that contradicted the religious right "studies" were done by a group like Gay Men for America or something then you would have a valid point. Unfortunately for you all such studies are done by research universities that have, you know, qualifications to study science, unlike the privately funded religious right groups.

Is irony lost on these people? How can they dare have the audacity to accuse liberal gay activists of supporting pedophilia when it is their catholic priests who rape boy after little boy. You hypercritical conservatives can all go to hell, and take your pedophillia embrassing religion with you.

homosexuality is NOT an immutable characteristic, and is therefore NOT entitled to Constitutional protection

"Homosexuality is NOT an immutable characteristic, and is therefore NOT entitled to Constitutional protection"

This makes absolutely no sense. As I pointed out above, this assumes the premise that being homosexual makes you somehow inferior to straight people. If you start with that premise then you will end up with your conclusion because your premise already assumes it.

The equal protection clause is based on people not on sexuality, and therefore the question can only apply if you beleive that homosexuals are not people with equal rights needing protection.

You look really dumb here as you keep constructing house-of-cards arguments to support an insupportable position. Just admit that you are against eqality in marriage because of your personal beliefs and that is completely a bigoted opinion based on misperception and homphobia

There is a difference between a study done by a research institution conducted scientifically, and a study done by religious groups that think that gays are immoral. Oh what a surprise when their studies back-up their beliefs!

This is indicative with a larger problem that conservatives have. They ignore any facts or evidence that don't fit with their preconceived biases. Their justification for this is that if something doesn't agree with them it must be "liberal". So when a news story favors Bush in the media they agree with it and point to it as evidence, but when it talks about Bush's SS plan does nothing for solvency they scream "liberal media". It's a really twisted way of looking at the world, and makes arguing with them almost impossible.

"Why would anyone choose a lifestyle that makes them the butt of jokes and slurs"

There are a number of bad habits and addictions that one wonders why people choose. Many result in death, disease or disfigurement. Achoholics and crack addicts come to mind - why would anyone choose those lifestyles?

I think it's just mental people who need extra attention and were never loved by their parents.

oh and equal protection arguments for homos always fail and always will

But, alas, they won't fail for moronic small penised and angry because of it redneck pricks like you.

If it is possible to believe that a black man doesn't choose to be black, he only exists, then why can't you believe that somone is just gay? Someone might say a stupid person would only rely on shallow, superficial evidence of born traits, but I say if these rednecks place so much of their faith in an invisible man in the sky why can't they believe that there is something inside gay people that makes them the way they are?

because there is no credible scientific evidence to support your assertion

There isn't any scientific evidence to support a man in the sky who watches everything you do and loves you but will knowingly send you to burn for all eternity either.

There are a number of bad habits and addictions that one wonders why people choose.

And here folks, is the crux of it, as I said, you believe being gay is immoral, that is the same thing as a drug addiction and therefore when you start with that premise it is impossible to convince you otherwise.

No point in arguing anymore then, they don't listen to opinions that are different from what they already believe.

One last question though: Why should the state sanction marriage between men and women considering that it the number one scene of child abuse, child molestation, domestic abuse, murder, beating, robbery, domestic disturbances, theft and drug sales?

those are ridiculous assertions with no factual evidence

why does the state pay for your AIDS treatment when you could have prevented it by not sticking things where they don't belong?

http://english.pravda.ru/accidents/21/96/383/14637_pedophile.html

"why does the state pay for your AIDS treatment when you could have prevented it by not sticking things where they don't belong?"

I feel sorry for this poster and his general ignorance.

"those are ridiculous assertions with no factual evidence"

Wow, it's amazing how fast these people will resort to logical arguments when it is against their institutions. But when it comes to gay they can make all the ridiculous assertions they want. And by the way, they aren't assertions, they are actual fact. I mean just look at some of these things: of course heterosexual relationships have more domestic abuse because there are more heterosexual relationships, of course there is more molestation and abuse because they have greater access to children then a homosexual couple. The point is not that one lifestyle is better than the other. The point, moron, is that there are stupid assholes in ever catagory of humanity (like, for example, yourself), and you can make the same moronic arguments against heterosexual love just as much as homosexual love because anyone who is only out to prove their own belief correct will always find evidence to support their own close minded view.

Any guy who likes a woman's boobs is unnatural. Boobs have no place in procreation. Neither does the ass. If you look at a girl's ass and like it you are a deviant and should not be allowed to marry. Sex is only for procreation and if you like boobs and asses you are obviously immoral.

Also, since IV drug users spread diseases we shouldn't allow them to marry either. If anyone has ever had a common cold they shouldn't be allowed to marry either because they spread diseases with all their sneezing and nose blowing, and allowing them to marry would be the state sanctioning the spread of common colds. Actually, to make it line up with the case of gays better, we should ban anyone from getting married that has the POTENTIAL to spread the common cold and engages in risky behaviors like touching things in public or breathing in a common space.

Marriage should only be about penile insertion into vaginas preferrably through some sort of sterile plastic sheet. Sex is not meant to be enjoyed.

"Boobs have no place in procreation."

What would be the point of procreation if the procreated have nothing to eat?

"Neither does the ass."

Never did understand the whole "can't be to thin" thing - What would be the point of procreation if the procreated can't get out because the pelvis is too small?

"Also, since IV drug users spread diseases we shouldn't allow them to marry either."

I agree completely.

lmfao. Sarcasm is lost on these dolts.

You never answered the question gay boy -- why should I have to pay for your sinful disease?

As an independant, it is easy to see how both coservatives and liberals choose to believe whatever it is that backs up there point of view, so none of you should be suprised by the other sides bias. The biggest problem with have in this country is that neither side is willing to admit that they are actually all the same when it comes to dismissing the others points of view as biased. Case in point is Liberals who listen to Air America believe Rush is biased but air america isn't and Conservatives who listen to Rush but complain that air america is biased. Face it. Both air america and Rush ARE very biased and generally only present 1 side of every story, which is unfortunately the story behind almost ALL political info we receive.

"You never answered the question gay boy -- why should I have to pay for your sinful disease?"

I am not a "gay boy" in fact I am not even gay. Yes, as hard as it might be for you to believe straight people hate ignorant homophobes like you too.

I will answer your question with another question "Why should gay people have to pay to educate you hickabilly children who you teach to hate them?"

to the independent above: I appreciate you trying to weigh both sides. The problem is that the mainstream media is NOT liberal. It is not conservative either. It is corporate. In my opinion this makes it more conservative than liberal since the conservative party is more aligned toward corporate interests.

Take for instance this Blair memo that came out last week. Where is the outrage? The memo PROVES that Bush manufactured intelligence to get us into Iraq, yet the American media is completely silent on it.

What about the growing insurgensy in Iraq that experts are saying will lead to civil war? No coverage of that either.

The fact that a gay prostitute has unfetterd access to the White House? No coverage.

And the list goes on.

I agree with you that Air America nad the like are biased, but they are not journalism, neither is Rush. So I don't fault either of them for being biased. They are infotainement shows. The real problem is that an increasingly fewer number of mega-corporations run our media and are only going to cover stories that are in their best interest whether that helps liberals or conservatives. The problem is that when it comes to helping people or making money for corporations, the current media will side with corporate intersts every time until they are pushed into recognizing a story by the populace because if they didn't they would be exposed for the sham they are.

I suggest watching a film of Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent for more info on this. Like I said, independent poster, I appreciate your viewpoint. I just think it is being a bit navie to assume that the MSM is unbiased or equally biased toward liberal and conservative viewpoints. Mediamatters.org, run by a former republican turned liberal, can also shed more light on the conservative bias in the media.

to the independent above: I appreciate you trying to weight both sides. The problem is that the mainstream media is NOT liberal. It is not conservative wither. It is corporate. In my opinion this makes it more conservative than liberal since the conservative party is more aligned toward corporate interests. Take for instance this Blair memo that came out last week. Where is the outrage? The memo PROVES that Bush manufactured intelligence to get us into Iraq, yet the American media is completely silent on it.

What about the growing insurgensy in Iraq that experts are saying will lead to civil war? No coverage of that either.

The fact that a gay prostitute has unfetterd access to the White House? No coverage.

And the list goes on.

I agree with you that Air America nad the like are biased, but they are not journalism, neither is Rush. So I don't fault either of them for being biased. They are infotainement shows. The real proble is that corporations run our media and are only going to cover stories that are in their best interest whether that helps liberals or conservatives. The problem is that when it comes to helping people or making money for corporations, the current media will side with corporate intersts every time until they are pushed into recognizing a story by the populace because if they didn't they would be exposed for the sham they are.

I suggest watching a film of Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent for more info on this. Like I said, independent poster, I appreciate your viewpoint. I just think it is being a bit navie to assume that the MSM is unbiased or equally biased toward liberal and conservative viewpoints. Mediamatters.org, run by a former republican turned liberal, can also shed more light onthe conservative bias in the media.

"lmfao. Sarcasm is lost on these dolts."

Hmmmmm, never heard of the reverse-double sacasm?

"Hmmmmm, never heard of the reverse-double sacasm?"

Never heard of the double reverse triple sarcasm?

For every book or article you mention to try and show the MSM is conservative, i can throw out a book or article that also will show it is liberal. The problem is deciding where the middle is as a point of reference so one can try to determine where the MSM falls. To a ditto head the MSM will come across as liberal, where an avid Michael Moore fan the MSM will come across as conservative. I appreciate your suggestion of reading Chomsky and would suggest you read the book Bias, which is by Bernard Goldberg a liberal turned conservative who worked in the MSM. If your assumption that MSM is naturally conservative because most of it is corporate owned, how do you explain why then are Newspapers so liberal, considering most of them,like the networks are corporate owned?

The more things change... Roughly ten years ago, I celebrated the criminal indictment of Elliott Abrams for lying to Congress by writing an Op-Ed in the New York Times on the increasing acceptance of official deception. (I was just starting my dissertation on the topic back then.) The piece got bogged down, however, when an editor refused to allow me even to imply that then-President Bush was also lying to the country. I noted that such reticence made the entire exercise feel a bit absurd. He did not dispute this point but explained that Times policy simply would not allow it. I asked for a compromise. I was offered the following: "Either take it out and a million people will read you tomorrow, or leave it in and send it around to your friends." (It was a better line before e-mail.) Anyway, I took it out, but I think it was the last time I've appeared on that page.

President Bush is a liar. There, I said it, but most of the mainstream media won't. Liberal pundits Michael Kinsley, Paul Krugman and Richard Cohen have addressed the issue on the Op-Ed pages, but almost all news pages and network broadcasts pretend not to notice. In the one significant effort by a national daily to deal with Bush's consistent pattern of mendacity, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank could not bring himself (or was not allowed) to utter the crucial words. Instead, readers were treated to such complicated linguistic circumlocutions as: Bush's statements represented "embroidering key assertions" and were clearly "dubious, if not wrong." The President's "rhetoric has taken some flights of fancy," he has "taken some liberties," "omitted qualifiers" and "simply outpace[d] the facts." But "Bush lied"? Never.

Ben Bradlee explains, "Even the very best newspapers have never learned how to handle public figures who lie with a straight face. No editor would dare print this version of Nixon's first comments on Watergate for instance. 'The Watergate break-in involved matters of national security, President Nixon told a national TV audience last night, and for that reason he would be unable to comment on the bizarre burglary. That is a lie.'"

CONTINUED BELOW
Part of the reason is deference to the office and the belief that the American public will not accept a mere reporter calling the President a liar. Part of the reason is the culture of Washington--where it is somehow worse to call a person a liar in public than to be one. A final reason is political. Some reporters are just political activists with columns who prefer useful lies to the truth. For instance, Robert Novak once told me that he "admired" Elliott Abrams for lying to him in a television interview about illegal US acts of war against Nicaragua because he agreed with the cause.

Let us note, moreover, that Bradlee's observation, offered in 1997, did not apply to President Clinton. Reporters were positively eager to call Clinton a liar, although his lies were about private matters about which many of us, including many reporters, lie all the time. "I'd like to be able to tell my children, 'You should tell the truth,'" Stuart Taylor Jr. of the National Journal said on Meet the Press. "I'd like to be able to tell them, 'You should respect the President.' And I'd like to be able to tell them both things at the same time." David Gergen, who had worked for both Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon as well as Clinton and therefore could not claim to be a stranger to official dishonesty, decried what he termed "the deep and searing violation [that] took place when he not only lied to the country, but co-opted his friends and lied to them." Chris Matthews kvetched, "Clinton lies knowing that you know he's lying. It's brutal and it subjugates the person who's being lied to. I resent deeply being constantly lied to." George Will, a frequent apologist for the lies of Reagan and now Bush, went so far as to insist that Clinton's "calculated, sustained lying has involved an extraordinarily corrupting assault on language, which is the uniquely human capacity that makes persuasion, and hence popular government, possible."

George W. Bush does not lie about sex, I suppose--merely about war and peace. Most particularly he has consistently lied about Iraq's nuclear capabilities as well as its missile-delivery capabilities. Take a look at Milbank's gingerly worded page-one October 22 Post story if you doubt me. To cite just two particularly egregious examples, Bush tried to frighten Americans by claiming that Iraq possesses a fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used "for missions targeting the United States." Previously he insisted that a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed the Iraqis to be "six months away from developing a weapon." Both of these statements are false, but they are working. Nearly three-quarters of Americans surveyed think that Saddam is currently helping Al Qaeda; 71 percent think it is likely he was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks.

What I want to know is why this kind of lying is apparently OK. Isn't it worse to refer "repeatedly to intelligence...that remains largely unverified"--as the Wall Street Journal puts it--in order to trick the nation into war, as Bush and other top US officials have done, than to lie about a blowjob? Isn't it worse to put "pressure...on the intelligence agencies to deliberately slant estimates," as USA Today worded its report? Isn't it more damaging to offer "cooked information," in the words of the CIA's former chief of counterterrorism, when you are asking young men and women to die for your lies? Don't we revile Lyndon Johnson for having done just that with his dishonest Gulf of Tonkin resolution?

Here's Bradlee again: "Just think for a minute how history might have changed if Americans had known then that their leaders felt the war was going to hell in a handbasket. In the next seven years, thousands of American lives and more thousands of Asian lives would have been saved. The country might never have lost faith in its leaders."

Reporters and editors who "protect" their readers and viewers from the truth about Bush's lies are doing the nation--and ultimately George W. Bush--no favors. Take a look at the names at that long black wall on the Mall. Consider the tragic legacy of LBJ's failed presidency. Ask yourself just who is being served when the media allow Bush to lie, repeatedly, with impunity, in order to take the nation into war.

Dude, don't post full articles. Its really annoying.

I think that thinking that bias is completely relative is an error. If the media were liberal, why did it turn Monica Lewinsky into a 4 year media spectacle? On the other hand there is a GAY PROSTITUTE in the Bush White House who was allowed to come and go as he pleased with no check out or check in times on occasions when there were no press conferences, and we have not heard a peep out of the media on that.

Anyone who thinks if Clinton had a female prostitute in the white house, let alone a gay one, the media wouldn't have been all over it is naive.

Whether you think the press SHOULD do this is not the point, (I personally don't) the point is that for the media the Bush administration is beyond repraoch. Name one critical story that the media has published on Bush? One. The Dan Rather memos (most of which were true and the 2 in question have never been proven forged) is the only case I can think of. The problem is that if the media reports that people died in Iraq conservatives scream "MEDIA BIAS! MEDIA BIAS!". This is not media bias, it is reporting a fact.

As I said, if you think that corporations like GE and VIACOM care moer about being unbiased than about their bottom line, you are willfully naive.

Every other country in the world understands what the US is doing right now in Iraq and that it is wrong. The only reason that more Americans don't realize this is that the media doesn't report stories that undermine the President's position.

The country is woefully unprepared for a terror attack almost 4 years later. A Cesna flew in the DC airspace yesterday and people were running around like headless chickens. The administration has done almost nothing to make us more secure at home, and by violating international law to invade Iraq has made Iraq a recruiting ground for terrorists for years to come. I didn't want Saddam there either, but we should have waitied for UN approval so that America wasn't sepcifically targeted. Now we have between 30 and 100 thousand ded civilians whose relatives will hate the Us for years to come. The media never reports any of this. When was the last time you heard a Iraqi casualty count on the news?

There is little discussion of issues of political importance, instead we get murders and runaway brides 24 hours a day.

You can claim that there are "sources on both sides". Well, as I said above, there are sources that claim the holocaust didn't happen and that Global warming is a myth as well. That doesn't make it so. There are sources and then there are sources.

I am intersted in a FREE press, one that is independent of finacial contributions from political sources. One that will report all the facts and allow us to make up our own minds. So I agree with you on that point, but to think that big business is not biased in the direction of big business is just willfully naive.

Don't think that the media is conservative? Take a look at this article published by ABC itself today:

------------------------------
ABC NEWS SUMMARY
Brides gotta run, planes gotta stray, and cable news networks gotta find a way to fill a lot of programming hours as cheaply as possible. (CNBC gets to talk about the booming April retail sales numbers, and the NRA's television network will replay the Secretary of State on Larry King over and over.)

We say with all the genuine apolitical and non-partisan human concern that we can muster that the death and carnage in Iraq is truly staggering.

And/but we are sort of resigned to the Notion that it simply isn't going to break through to American news organizations, or, for the most part, Americans.

Democrats are so thoroughly spooked by John Kerry's loss --- and Republicans so inspired by their stay-the-course Commander in Chief --- that what is hands down the biggest story every day in the world will get almost no coverage. No conflict at home = no coverage.
-----------------------

And there you have it. They acknowledge that it is a humanitarian disaster, but they won't cover it because of profit reasons.

'nuff said.

it's about time they open some treatment centers to cure these gays of their obvious mental disease

" Global warming is a myth "

We may not know for some time - science is more political than science on this issue:

***

"I don't have firm conclusions about the phenomenon of global warming (is it occuring in any sustained way?) or of the likely causes for it if it is occurring. I know just enough about modeling and simulation of weather and climate to know I'm way in over my head on that one. What increasingly appears to be the case, however, is that the public, scientific debate on these issues is deliberately being distorted."

http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006762.php

On the temperature of the Earth:
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view350.html#temperature

SATELLITES RECORD WEAKENING NORTH ATLANTIC CURRENT

Whether the trend is part of a natural cycle or the result of other factors related to global warming is unknown.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2004/0415gyre.html

The most significant discrepancy with Oreskes' results concern abstracts that are undecided whether human activities are the dominant driving force of recent warming. My analysis shows that a significant number of abstracts reject what Oreskes calls the 'consensus view'. In fact, there are almost three times as many abstracts that are unconvinced of the notion of anthropogenic climate change than those that explicitly endorse it
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail360.html#Saturday

Gay rights are a myth.

We may not know about global warming until it is too late!

Common sense dictates that you prepare for acatastrophe by doing your best to prevent it, not throwing up your hands and saying "Well some people disagree, so let's just keep pumping pollution into the atmosphere."

------------------------
lobal Warming: Fact vs. Myth

How do we know global warming is real? Who is responsible, and how can it be addressed? These pages summarize what is known - and some of the prevalent misconceptions - regarding this critical environmental problem.

MYTH: Even if the Earth is warming, we can't be sure how much, if any, of the warming is caused by human activities.

FACT: There is international scientific consensus that most of the warming over the last 50 years is due to human activities, not natural causes.

Over millions of years, animals and plants lived, died and were compressed to form huge deposits of oil, gas and coal. In little more than 300 years, however, we have burned a large amount of this storehouse of carbon to supply energy. Today, the by-products of fossil fuel use - billions of tons of carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide), methane, and other greenhouse gases - form a blanket around the Earth, trapping heat form the sun, unnaturally raising temperatures on the ground, and steadily changing our climate.

The impacts associated with this deceptively small change in temperature are evident in all corners of the globe. There is heavier rainfall in some areas, and droughts in others. Glaciers are melting, Spring is arriving earlier, oceans are warming, and coral reefs are dying.

[Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2001. Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, Technical Summary.]

MYTH: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts an increase in the global average temperature of only 2.5

All well and good if your blind faith in the "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" is well placed. Maybe it's the one UN controlled organization that is always right and maybe not.

The IPCC has often been accused of being an implacable monolith and of having imposed a dogma of contrived consensus for politically motivated reasons. Some scientists, even within the climate community, have expressed reservations regarding the "consensus science" produced by the Panel. There are those who say that the IPCC should try to ensure a more balanced, informed and professional treatment of the economic and statistical aspects of its work.

Is the IPCC promoting nuclear power plants, it's the only realistic means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the short term.

AWESOME! GOOD JOB!

Maybe you should look beyond the IPCC?

"The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is supposed to act as the world's honest broker on global warming issues, is now hopelessly compromised. One prominent scientist resigned in protest at one of its lead authors associating himself with scientifically unsupported assertions. One of the world's most prominent economists judiciously terms the panel's handling of economic data as "at fault" and questions how representative of current economic thought the panel is."

"...the organization needs to reinvent itself free from the biases and self-affirmation exercises that currently plague it."

http://www.techcentralstation.com/013105E.html

Don't bother trying to reason with these conservatives. Consider this:

They think global warming is a myth even though there is an international scientific consensus on it existing.

BUT The bearded man in the sky whom there is absolutely no evidence for, exists 100% certainly.

These same people think that bombing hundreds of thousands of women and children and killing them is spreading freedom.

These same people think that poor people choose to be poor and blacks and hispanics choose to go to jail and live in pverty in higher numbers.

These same people see nothing wrong with ssending other people to die for a cause that they won't join up for.

These same people think that they shouldn't have to pay their fair share of taxes but should be allowed to use public resources whenever they need to.

So, please please please, liberals who come here: Just stop arguing with them. They are complete hypocritical imbeciles. There is no hope of ever reaching them with logic because they will never be convinced away from their backwater, hick, homophobic, priveleged, guns and god, corporations before people, me before everyone else, virulent strain of anger and greed.

So just stop arguing with them and go have a beer. They are unhappy souls whose parents obviously ever loved them and are just looking for attention by being the biggest assholes they can be.

Just ignore them and go have a beer.

Why do you assume all republicans/conservatives are religious fanatics and are selfish rich people? You complain about their arguments when your arguments are basically same.Argument being. My sources of news and information are more reliable than your sources of news and information.

Something you might find amazing is that all the examples the poster above made about the MSM not wanting to report stuff, all your examples WERE covered by Fox News. HMMM kinda makes you wonder doesnt it?

The Chicken Littles were sure we'd be gravely over-populated, starving and/or eating soylent green by now. Today they run the IPCC.

(PS. Im a confirmed athiest - not an agnostic, an athiest, a registered Bright. I don't believe in superstition, religious OR "scientific").

***

There are a great many more environmental romantics than there are scientists. That's fortunate, since their inspiration means that most people in developed socie

Ahh this beer tastes good doesn't it fellow libs?

Ignoring sure is the way to go when it comes to conservatrolls.

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/writing/2004/11/red_blue_world.html

The real mandate.

Sooooo, beer goggles aren't just for bar time anymore!

not if you are a liberal -- how else can a person so stupid make it through the day

Liberals drink your beeeeeeeers!

We deserve them! Look at who we have to breathe the same air as!

na na na na boo boo

The beauty of it is that you are losers -- we have everything - Congress, the Presidency, the Supreme Court and the governorships......what do you stupid liberals have? Tammy Baldwin LOL

"The beauty of it is that you are losers -- we have everything - Congress, the Presidency, the Supreme Court and the governorships......what do you stupid liberals have? Tammy Baldwin LOL"

Remember that when the country goes to crap and the administration down in flames. Remember that when we invade Iran next month. Remember that Dems had nothing to do with it because they have no power. Here is your chance Republicans! Prove us wrong! Turn around the massive deicit! Make us safe from a terrorist attack! Clean up the environment!

If those 3 things happen in the next 4 years, I will become a Republican for life. Unlike you, I don't see this as a football game where I root for one team or another. I am for whichever party gets the job done. So far what I have seen on the Republican watch:

Massive deficit spending
Increased cost of living
Less job security
Fewer jobs and higher unemployment
The largest terrorist attack ever on our soil
Routine torture and detention of prisoners that have not been charged
Increased polution

So that is Bush Junior's track record so far. There shouldn't be any room for excuses since Republicans control every branch of government. Let's see what you can do.

9-11 was Clinton's fault.

" 9-11 was Clinton's fault."

Oh? Was this because he didn't have any time to prevent terrorism because he was busy defending himself against a ridiculous impeachment investigation that prevented him from doing his job?

Republicans: All for personal responsibility until it comes to them taking some.

If something happens on your watch it is your fault. Period. He had over a year in office to make any changes in National Security policy.

If 9-11 was anyone's "fault" it was Bush I's. He was the one that put the military bases in Saudi Arabia which was Bin Ladne's reasonfor attacking on 9-11.

Keep shifting the blame wacko. Your precious president could never have made a mistake, right? Despite the fact that he is best friends with the Bin Laden's and that he is an oil man, I bet that had no influence over our invasion either.

Keep on drinking the Kool-Aid you ignorant fucker.

We will just never know what notations were on those documents that Berger stuffed in his socks and then destroyed but they may have been harmful to the "Clinton didn't know" meme.

Put away your tinfoil hat buddy.

Berger plead guity - read the paper buddy.

It is a conspiracy that those documents had anything to do with 9-11. Where are the documents? The evidence? There is none.

You look good in that tinfoil hat. I hear it keeps the "liberal" media from brainwashing you into believing in science and due process.

These idiot liberals have been watching too many michael moore videos

"Where are the documents? The evidence? There is none."

Of course not, Berger confessed to shedding the documents. Why do you suppose he did that? The only reasonble explanation is that he wanted to eliminate the notations made by Clinton administration officials.

Lmfao. So it was all Clinton's fault as usual. I suppose our record trade deficit is his fault as well? And the quagmire in Iraq?

Low recruiting? Clinton's fault.

Gay prostitute in the White House? Clinton did that as well.

The fact Bush didn't even read memo entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US"? That was Clinton as well.

That evil Bill. He always seems to pop up everytime it would seem like the Bush administration utterly mishandled things.

Give it up. You take credit for anything good and anything bad blame on a guy who left office 5 years ago. Lmfao. Please stop. You are making my sides hurt. So silly...LMFAO

I guess "personal responsisiblity" is a fine mantra to scream at mothers whose husbands left them and need welfare to temporarily support their kids while they get back on their feet, but when it comes to Junior Bush the mantra is "The buck stops anywhere but here!"

#1 The story about the gay prostitute turned out to be false.
#2 Noone needed a memo to know that Bin Laden wanted to strike inside the US considering HE ALREADY HAD. And yes Clinton choose not to respond. The problem was'nt knowing he wated to attak us, it was knowing when and where. Unfortunately you cannot argue the fact that the Clinton years had a negative effect on intelligence gathering. But i know you'll try.
#3 Quagmire in Iraq? By who's definition? Let me guess YOURS(unbised of course.
#4 Please explain how Bush has anything to do with the trade deficit?
#5 Most replublicans have no problem helping those less fortunate, I work for a non-profit that is primarly funded by wealthy replublicans. And NO its not a political non-profit!
#6 I'm guessing that example of the women who's husband left her is the exception not the rule. Chances are that person was never married and KNEW the father was'nt going to stick around long before she ever opened her legs to him!!
#7 Not all conservatives/republicans are religious, so stop insuniating that. Thanks.
#8 Please tell me what you think Berger's agenda was?

1) Actually it was quite true. Look at the Secret Service notes for his visits. Here is the story that was never covered by the mainstream media: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/man-called-jeff.html

2) If Bush was so aware and Clinton so incompetent, why didn't Bush take steps before 9-11? If Bush was aware that Osama might attack, why did he go into the school classromm AFTER the first plane struck the tower?

3) 1600 dead soldiers, deaths on the rise, 3 years and no exit strategy, 1000k civilians killed. The country still not rebuilt. 4 billion dollars missing. Sounds like a quagmire to me.

4)Lmfao. It is not the trade deficit, but the dudget deficit. Bush has increased spending while decreasing revenue. Therfore we now have a massive deficit.

5)By definition republicans do not want to help others. That is in your party platform.

6)Proves the above point.

7)Where did I insinuate that? There's no evidence for that in my post, but I guess since you like to make up conspiracy theories based on no evidence that is hardly surprising.

8) Please tell me what Cheney's agenda is in closed door meetings with energy companies that he won't allow the publiuc to access the minutes of? Maybe that we are going to give them the oil profits after we falsify info so we can invade Iraq?

"why didn't Bush take steps before 9-11?"

"Congressional leaders are scrambling to begin impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush following several unprecedented federal security measures that critics say constitute an unconscionable assault on American civil liberties."

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/kathleenparker/kp20020522.shtml

No doubt it's now going too far with the "security measures" but the pendulum never stops in the middle and the government screws up anything it touches.

Never the less, the USA is at war with people that teach their children that everybody that does not believe EXACTLY what they believe should be killed to the last man, woman and child. As bad as you think of Bush and his crew, they are pretty mild compared to the evil fanatics that set out to kill innocent civilians.

"Maybe that we are going to give them the oil profits"

There was absolutely more money to be made by being a friend of Saddam. If oil was the objective we should have left him in Kuwait. He would have taken Saudi Arabia next and he'd be pumping all three counties dry to pay for more palaces and arms. He'd probably be marching on Iran (again) by now.

Please. C'mon. Who among us hasn't shoved classified documents into his pants and jacket by accident? It happens.

You're reviewing some notes -- OK, classified notes, but it's not like they're the secret formula for Coke or anything. Somehow they get in your clothing. Maybe you're the sort of person who's always putting things in your pants, and every night you empty out the contents -- a gallon of milk, some lawn statuary, some D-cell batteries, one shoe, loose rosary beads. And hey, what's this? Dang: classified documents.

Well, better do the right thing, and return them. But somehow they get cut up and thrown away. You're bad. But it's not like you were intending to sell them to the Chinese, or worse, Fox News.

***

Justice concluded that he didn't really mean to destroy or cover up evidence of Clinton administration failings that might come up in 9/11 hearings. But it seems somewhat inconsistent with Berger's own admission that he scissored the things to shreds, no? Ah, but they were copies, that's all. Nothing more. But were they copies with damning notes in the margins, perhaps? And that's why he took five, destroyed three and "misfiled" the other two?

We'll never know! The cement fist of Official Media Incuriosity has descended, and that's the end of that chapter.

But imagine the howls if a Bush administration official had admitted to stealing documents about terrorist threat warnings. Air America hosts would get nodes on their vocal cords the size of grapefruits from shouting about the crime and the sentence. And people would listen, for once: It would be news. Big news. Bad news, with all the hot juicy elements of a great political scandal: Stolen documents. A lying official. Suspect testimony. Terrorist warnings unheeded. Rumors of pants. But no: It's lost in the backwash of grief over the pope, never to be mentioned again.

http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/lileks040605.html

1600 Americans dead in Iraq. 15,000 injured. 100,000 civilians dead and this has what to do with Clinton?

I am no fan of Clinton either by the way...but blaming 9-11 on Clinton is like blaming it on Bush I. After all, if Reagan and Bush I hadn't trained Osama in tactical operations and supported him in Afghanistan making him into a hero, then he would never have had the popular base or training necessary to execute attacks. If Bush I hadn't placed military bases in the Muslim Holy land then Osama wouldn't have attacked. IfRumsfeld hadn't given Saddam weapons then he wouldn't have been a "threat" to his neighbors. etc etc. etc.

This line of reasoning is stupid. It could go all the way back to Adam and Eve. The buck has to stop somewhere and it SHOULD stop with Bush-though he is incapable of admitting a mistake. He should have come out after 9-11 and said "We were caught unaware. No one expected this, but we should have foreseen it based on intelligence gathered in the last 20 years (ie under both Dems and Reps). However, we are now aware of these terrorists and their intetions and we will go and get them in Afghanistan and then take precatuions to make sure it doenst happen again."

Instead he bungled it by getting us into a war in Iraq that was planned before 9-11 and in which "facts were fixed around policy" (Blair memo). This is incontrovertible.

Like many Dems. I was for invading Afghanistan, but Iraq was exploiting 9-11 for his own political agenda. He didn't listen to a slew of experts who told him that it would be a long unwinnable war-including his own Colin Powell who had first hand experience in Vietnam while Bush was shirking his National Guard duty.

Really, please Republicans, if you think Iraq is a success you are being blind. There is no winning that war. It is a war of attrition now and it was obvious it was going to be that way from the start. The Bush administration went in on evidence that was scanty at best, knowingly fabricated at worst and 1600 of our soldiers are dead.

You can't blame Iraq on Clinton altough you might try. At what point do things stop being Clinton's fault? The administration had plenty of time to do a national security review between when Bush took office and 9-11. Call it an oversight or an unexpected blindspot if you will, but trying to blame it on Clinton is just sheer nonsense and you know it.

Since Bush has taken office and invaded countries that cannot compete with our conventional military, he has escalated the nuclear arms race. Now NK and Iran are going to have nuclear capabilities. Invading Iraq was a bad idea and has made the world a more dangerous place than ever.

Meanwhile, Bush holds hands with the Saudi leaders when most of the terrorists were Saudis. If there is a country that should be scrutinized it is Suadi Arabia. Brutal dictators, no democracy, produced the hijackers of 9-11 and instead we have Bush HOLDING HANDS with them.

As far as it being cheaper to keep Saddam in power. That is absurd. The oil companies are NOT METERING the oil in Iraq. They are just atking it for free without a penny going to Iraq. Check for yourself Executive Order 13303 gives oil companies the right to all profits resulting from oil in Iraq. This is the money that was supposed to be going toward reconstruction. The Bushies are fleecing us by handing over no-bid contracts to personal friends and then giving them 70 billion dollar bonues because they didn't "screw up". Are you kidding me? i can't beleive you Repubs aren't pissed baout the way they are stealing "your" tax money. This is billions of dollars making the other things you rail against look like small change (bike path improvements, raises for state employees).

I just really can't understand how you can support EVERYTHING this administration does. I lean more liberal, but that doesn't mean that I support everything that Dems do. Come on! There are obviously problms here. The American people know it too despite the corporate stranglehold on our media that squashes an dissent. It's sad actually that you place your party before your country. YOu and I have more in common than you and Bush or Clinton and I. If we could just get past this ridiculous mentatility that parties are like football teams we might actually get something accomplished, but you seem utterly unwilling to admit that Iraq was a disaster and still is, and that Bush's policy of spending and getting us into debt very well might be ruining our economy. It's sad...

Based on your arguments, every war in history would have been bungled at one point during the war. I am not a replublican, in fact I have voted independent, democrat and replublican in presidential elections and every time i did'nt expect them to be perfect, nor did i need to agree with them on every issue. A few flaws in your argument are 100,000 civilians killed(where does that number come from? Ive heard 30,000 - 100,000 which is kinda a big span)
What is a slew of people? and what made them more beleivable than the people who did'nt say it is an unwinnable war?
I see dissent in the news everyday, so i'm not real sure what your point is about the media.
The GAO found that haliburton was the ONLY company that could do what was needed in Iraq.(by the way Clinton's administration also contracted with them)
My main point about Clinton is that if your going to put forth the theory that Bush LIED about WMD's then alot of other people apparently were lying as well.
Do you really believe that North Korea and Iran started trying to make Nuclear weapons after Bush was elected? My guess is had it not been for Bush, we wouldnt know anything about their plans until it was too late.

Your statement that there's no winning the war in Iraq, SAYS WHO? YOU...

Iraq is unwinnable. It's simply a fact. As soon as we leave civil war is going to break out. Saddam was a brutal dictator, but kept the country together with his iron fist. We are not making any progress in Iraq as far as stopping the insurgency. This si because they are not going to recognize any government the US puts in place. Its an unwinnable situation. We can DECLARE victory, but Bush already did that, and we are still there. The administration doesn;t want a pullout, they want bases there. So there was never any endgame here other than setting up strategic military positions. The gov't used terror to justify invading a country that they wanted to invade before 9-11.

As far as Clinton lying-of course he lied! That's what politicians do! All we can do is attempt to minimize this. That's why we need a real third party that will get the corporate shills out of our government. Both the Dems and Reps are awash in corporate money. Until that ends there will never be democracy in this country again. The difference between the two is just who is bribing them and that controls their actions.

Halliburton can be contracted. I am fine with that. However, they should not be handed over a 70 billion dollar bonus simply for not screwing up! Especially not when we are already deficit spending at a higher rate thatn ever in our history.

What I said was thatBush bungled the so called "war on terror" by invading Iraq. Iraq created more terrorists rather than helping to solve the problem. Common sense tells you that you can't simply kill off all the terrorists. We can't apitualte to terrorists either. However, we can begin to recognize that the reason that they are supported by more than just an extreme fringe of Muslims is that the Middle East has some legtimate beefs with our foreign policy. That would be a start. Unilateral bombing and taking over of countries is exactly the reason theat we have been targeted in the first place. It simply increases the cycle of violence and hatred.

It is clear to most of the American people (57%) that Bush mishandled the war in Iraq. We were not adequately prepared. bush fired genreals that told him that they neeeded more troops and that this was not going to be an easy win. He willfully ignored any evidence that wasn't waht he wanted to hear. That is a problem with the current administration that seems endemic to me. If someone speaks against the radical neo-con agenda they are let go. Most Americans are not for what the neo-cons support: global empire, consolidation of power in the exec branch, less environmental and civil regulation, deficit spending, etc. They have managed to keep power becasue of their powerful corporate alllies in the media and in their treasury chests.

Let's be clear. I am not a conservative, but I would be okay with an old school conservative president who wanted less gov't spending, less world intervention, more freedom for states etc. That is a philosophy I can work with, and argue with. The current administration (and to a lesser exten Clinton before him and of course Bush I and Reagan before him) is not conservative fiscally or socially. They want to spend moeny we don't have, want to dismantle regulations that protect people from corporate polluters and unethical practices (like CC companies being able to raise your CC rate for any reason-and no I don't have a CC), and want to consolidate power in the executive branch effectively bypassing the checks and balance to the constitution.

I am actually concerned for our country's future. We are a debtor country and are still spending, but other nations are showing an unwillingness to buy our debt anymore (T-bill sales dropped 47% in March and can no longer cover our trade gap). We are meddling in countries and sending our troops to die without thinking it over carefully or haivng exit strategies. We are policing the lives of individuals and erdoing constitutional protected rights-warrants are no longer needed, privacy rights are no longer present, the free press has been eroded. This is what I mean. You and I can argue about the practicalities of conservatism or liberalism all day-and I am fine with that, but what we currently have is an administration that is neither. They are radical and do not represent the American people's beliefs or intersts. It genuinely makes me concerned.

This is an example of the kind of conservative I would like to see in charge of the republican party instead of the neocons:

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/roberts.cgi

Bush didn't win the elcetion. He stole it. That is enough evidence for me.

If you still think the 2004 election was legitimate, then here are some other things you must also believe if you really believe that George W. Bush won the election:

1. That the exit polls were WRONG.
2. That Zogby's 5pm election day calls for Kerry winning OH and FL were WRONG. He was exactly RIGHT in his 2000 final poll.
3. That Harris' last minute polling for Kerry was WRONG. He was exactly RIGHT in his 2000 final poll.
4. That the Incumbent Rule (that undecideds break for the challenger) was WRONG.
5. That the 50% Rule was WRONG (that an incumbent doesn't do better than his final polling)
6. That the Approval Rating Rule was WRONG (that an incumbent with less than 50% approval will most likely lose the election)
7. That Greg Palast was WRONG when he said that even before the election, 1 million votes were stolen from Kerry. He was the ONLY reporter to break the fact that 90,000 Florida blacks were disenfranchised in 2000.
8. That it was just a COINCIDENCE that the exit polls were CORRECT where there WAS a PAPER TRAIL and INCORRECT (+5% for Bush) where there was NO PAPER TRAIL.
9. That the surge in new young voters had NO positive effect for Kerry.
10. That Bush BEAT 99-1 mathematical odds in winning the election.
11. That Kerry did WORSE than Gore against an opponent who LOST the support of SCORES of Republican newspapers who were for Bush in 2000.
12. That Bush did better than an 18 national poll average which showed him tied with Kerry at 47. In other words, Bush got 80% of the undecided vote to end up with a 51-48 majority - when ALL professional pollsters agree that the undecided vote ALWAYS goes to the challenger.
13. That voting machines made by Republicans with no paper trail and with no software publication, which have been proven by thousands of computer scientists to be vulnerable in scores of ways, were NOT tampered with in this election.
14. That people who voted for Bush were not anxious to speak to exit pollsters in the states that Bush had to win (like Florida and Ohio) where the exit polls were off, but wanted to be polled in states that he had sewn up (like Arizona, Louisiana and Arkansas) where the exit polls were exactly correct.
15. That Democrats who voted for Kerry were very anxious to be exit-polled, especially in Florida and Ohio (and that this is what accounts for the discrepancy between the exit polls and the actual votes in these two critical states).
16. That women were much more likely to be polled early in the day in Florida and Ohio. That is another reason why the exit polls were wrong in those states. In those states in which the exit polls were correct to within one percent, women did not come out early.
17. That network newscasters who claim that those who consider the possibility of fraud are just wild conspiracy theorists do not have an agenda.
18. That it is just a coincidence that only since the 2000 presidential election have exit polls failed to agree with the actual vote - and that Bush won both disputed elections.
19. That exit polls are not to be trusted in the United States, even though they are used throughout the world to monitor elections for fraud.
20. That even though more votes were cast than there were eligible voters in many precincts of critical states, it is not an issue that needs to be covered in the media.
21. That the absence of a paper ballot trail for touch screen computers does not encourage fraud, even though they have been proven by hundreds of computer experts to be highly vulnerable to fraudulent attack.
22. That statistical tests which indicate a high probability of fraud are just conspiratorial junk science.
23. That Bush's vote tallies could exceed his exit poll percentage in FL by 4%. Based on 2846 individuals exit polled, the polling margin of error was 1.84%. The odds of this occurrence: 1 out of 1667.
24. That his vote tallies could exceed his exit poll percentage in OH by 3%. Based on 1963 individuals exit polled, the polling margin of error was 2.21%. The odds of this occurrence: 1 out of 333.
25. That his vote tallies could exceed his exit poll percentages in 41 out of 51 states. The odds of this occurrence: 1 out of 135,000.
26. That his vote tallies could exceed the margin of error in 16 states. Not one state vote tally exceeded the MOE for Kerry. The odds of this occurrence: 1 out of 13.5 Trillion.
27. That his vote tallies could exceed a 2% exit poll margin of error in 23 states. The probability of this occurrence: as close to ZERO as you can get.
28. That of 88 documented touch screen incidents, 86 voters would see their vote for Kerry come up Bush - and only TWO from Bush to Kerry. The probability of this occurrence: as close to ZERO as you can get.
29. That Mitofsky (who ran the exit polls), with 25 years of experience, has lost his exit polling touch.
30. That by disputing the Ukrainian elections, the Bush administration would base its case on the accuracy of U.S. sponsored exit polling, while at the same time ignoring exit polls in the U.S. presidential election, which the media reported Kerry was winning handily.
31. That Bush could overcome Kerry's 50.8% - 48.2% lead in the National Exit Poll Sub-sample (13,047 polled) and win the popular vote: 51.2% - 48.4%, a 3.0% increase from the exit poll to the vote tally, far beyond the 0.86% margin of error. The odds of this occurrence: 1 out of 282 Billion.
32. According to a London-based insurance actuary, the odds of all of these things happening in ONE election, let alone two elections in a row, are too astronomical to be calculated!

WOW - what a long list of bullshit!

The mainstream media is just so in love with Bush and his policies that they have buried all these stories - yeah, that's the ticket.

Better make sure your tin-foil hat is on nice and tight - and watch out for those black helicopters!

FUCK YOUR THOUGHTS AND YOUR FEELINGS, YOU DON'T KNOW WARREN G. HARDING!

Please give me one valid reason for not wanting paper trails on voting machines? and explain why Republicans would vote against paper trails if they were planning on winning the election fair and square?

CAlling me a tinfoil hat wearer doesn't Disprove the facts above.

Deal with the facts.

Refute the facts.

Otherwise you are just slinging insults meant to illegitimize my position.

If it is so outrageous, and I asuch a wacko, then tell me why I am wrong.

Jim Lampley
The Biggest Story of Our Lives

At 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on Election Day, I checked the sportsbook odds in Las Vegas and via the offshore bookmakers to see the odds as of that moment on the Presidential election. John Kerry was a two-to-one favorite. You can look it up.

People who have lived in the sports world as I have, bettors in particular, have a feel for what I am about to say about this: these people are extremely scientific in their assessments. These people understand which information to trust and which indicators to consult in determining where to place a dividing line to influence bets, and they are not in the business of being completely wrong. Oddsmakers consulted exit polling and knew what it meant and acknowledged in their oddsmaking at that moment that John Kerry was winning the election.

And he most certainly was, at least if the votes had been fairly and legally counted. What happened instead was the biggest crime in the history of the nation, and the collective media silence which has followed is the greatest fourth-estate failure ever on our soil.

Many of the participants in this blog have graduate school educations. It is damned near impossible to go to graduate school in any but the most artistic disciplines without having to learn about the basics of social research and its uncanny accuracy and validity. We know that professionally conceived samples simply do not yield results which vary six, eight, ten points from eventual data returns, thaty's why there are identifiable margins for error. We know that margins for error are valid, and that results have fallen within the error range for every Presidential election for the past fifty years prior to last fall. NEVER have exit polls varied by beyond-error margins in a single state, not since 1948 when this kind of polling began. In this past election it happened in ten states, all of them swing states, all of them in Bush's favor. Coincidence? Of course not.

Karl Rove isn't capable of conceiving and executing such a grandiose crime? Wake up. They did it. The silence of traditional media on this subject is enough to establish their newfound bankruptcy. The revolution will have to start here. I challenge every other thinker at the Huffington Post: is there any greater imperative than to reverse this crime and reestablish democracy in America? Why the mass silence? Let's go to work with the circumstantial evidence, begin to narrow from the outside in, and find some witnesses who will turn. That's how they cracked Watergate. This is bigger, and I never dreamed I would say that in my baby boomer lifetime.

"If it is so outrageous, and I asuch a wacko, then tell me why I am wrong."

When it doesn't seem to even have risen to the standards of 60 Minutes or NEWSWEEK then I gotta call bullshit.

For all it's faults, the electorial college at least limits these crazy stories to a couple of states. The recounts would still be going on today if the total popular vote was used.

http://www.huffingtonstoast.com/

MUCH tastier than Huffington Post!

I am still waiting for someone to explain to me how Bush beat billion to one odds.

AND why Republicans would vote against paper trails for voting machines.

Wasn't it the democracts who pushed for electronic voting in the first place? Remember the infamous "butterfly ballot - it was designed by a dummycrat.

I myself would prefer paper ballots marked with pencils and counted by humans, as long as there were safeguards against fraud.

ps. Billion to one odds? Only in your fantasy world.

pps. What are the odds that Kerry will EVER allow his military records to become public? Now there's a true long-shot!

Final precinct-level data just released by the Ohio secretary of state illuminate surprising details about President Bush's victory in this battleground state. And campaign leaders for Bush and Sen. John Kerry are revealing for the first time how they struggled in the final hours to win Ohio.

http://election.redstate.org/story/2005/5/16/85110/7427

Contrary to the best efforts of conspiracy theorists across the country, the Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004 prepared by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International or the National Election Pool (NEP), which was just released to the public, finds that exit polls do not support the allegations of fraud due to rigging of voting equipment.

This report validates most of the arguments that Republicans and statisticians made about why the exit polls were incorrect. It also laid bare the whining of the far left that cannot let the election result stand. Less exciting than the standard conspiracies, it looks like sampling error and other factors lead to more Kerry voters being interviewed and less Bush supporters. More from the report below.

On November 2, 2004, the Election System created by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool (NEP) produced election estimates and exit poll data for analysis in 120 races in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In addition, between January and March 2004, Edison and Mitofsky conducted exit polls for 23 Democratic Primaries and Caucuses. For every election, the system delivered on its main goals: there were no incorrect NEP winner projections, and the exit poll data produced on election day were used on-air and in print by the six members of the NEP (AP, ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX and NBC) as well as several dozen media organizations who subscribed to that data. However, the estimates produced by the exit poll data on November 2nd were not as accurate as we have produced with previous exit polls. Our investigation of the differences between the exit poll estimates and the actual vote count point to one primary reason: in a number of precincts a higher than average Within Precinct Error most likely due to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters. There have been partisan overstatements in previous elections, more often overstating the Democrat, but occasionally overstating the Republican. While the size of the average exit poll error has varied, it was higher in 2004 than in previous years for which we have data. This report measures the errors in the exit poll estimates and attempts to identify the factors that contributed to these errors.

The exit poll estimates in the 2004 general election overstated John Kerry's share of the vote nationally and in many states. There were 26 states in which the estimates produced by the exit poll data overstated the vote for John Kerry by more than one standard error, and there were four states in which the exit poll estimates overstated the vote for George W. Bush by more than one standard error. The inaccuracies in the exit poll estimates were not due to the sample selection of the polling locations at which the exit polls were conducted. We have not discovered any systematic problem in how the exit poll data were collected and processed. Exit polls do not support the allegations of fraud due to rigging of voting equipment.

It is difficult to pinpoint precisely the reasons that, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polls than Bush voters. There were certainly motivational factors that are impossible to quantify, but which led to Kerry voters being less likely than Bush voters to refuse to take the survey. In addition there are interactions between respondents and interviewers that can contribute to differential non-response rates. We can identify some factors that appear to have contributed, even in a small way, to the discrepancy. These include:

Distance restrictions imposed upon our interviewers by election officials at the state and local level

Weather conditions which lowered completion rates at certain polling locations

Multiple precincts voting at the same location as the precinct in our sample

Polling locations with a large number of total voters where a smaller portion of voters was selected to be asked to fill out questionnaires

Interviewer characteristics such as age, which were more often related to precinct error this year than in past elections We plan further analysis on the following factors:

Interviewer training and election day procedures

Interviewing rate calculations

Interviewer characteristics

Precinct characteristics * Questionnaire length and design We also suggest the following changes for future exit polls:

Working to improve cooperation with state and local election officials Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System page 5 January 19, 2005

Improvements in interviewing training procedures

Changes in our procedures for hiring, recruiting and monitoring interviewers

Even with these improvements, differences in response rates between Democratic and Republican voters may still occur in future elections. However, we believe that these steps will help to minimize the discrepancies.

It is also important to note that the exit poll estimates did not lead to a single incorrect NEP winner projection on election night. The Election Night System does not rely solely on exit polls in its computations and estimates. After voting is completed, reported vote totals are entered into the system. Edison/Mitofsky and the NEP members do not project the outcome of close races until a significant number of actual votes are counted. As in past elections, the final exit poll data used for analysis in 2004 was adjusted to match the actual vote returns by geographic region within each state. Thus, the discrepancy due to differing response rates was minimized and did not significantly affect the analysis of the vote. The exit polls reliably describe the composition of the electorate and how certain demographic subgroups voted.

http://election.redstate.org/story/2005/1/19/14112/5589

Contrary to the best efforts of conspiracy theorists across the country, the Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004 prepared by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International or the National Election Pool (NEP), which was just released to the public, finds that exit polls do not support the allegations of fraud due to rigging of voting equipment.

This report validates most of the arguments that Republicans and statisticians made about why the exit polls were incorrect. It also laid bare the whining of the far left that cannot let the election result stand. Less exciting than the standard conspiracies, it looks like sampling error and other factors lead to more Kerry voters being interviewed and less Bush supporters. More from the report below.

On November 2, 2004, the Election System created by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool (NEP) produced election estimates and exit poll data for analysis in 120 races in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In addition, between January and March 2004, Edison and Mitofsky conducted exit polls for 23 Democratic Primaries and Caucuses. For every election, the system delivered on its main goals: there were no incorrect NEP winner projections, and the exit poll data produced on election day were used on-air and in print by the six members of the NEP (AP, ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX and NBC) as well as several dozen media organizations who subscribed to that data. However, the estimates produced by the exit poll data on November 2nd were not as accurate as we have produced with previous exit polls. Our investigation of the differences between the exit poll estimates and the actual vote count point to one primary reason: in a number of precincts a higher than average Within Precinct Error most likely due to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters. There have been partisan overstatements in previous elections, more often overstating the Democrat, but occasionally overstating the Republican. While the size of the average exit poll error has varied, it was higher in 2004 than in previous years for which we have data. This report measures the errors in the exit poll estimates and attempts to identify the factors that contributed to these errors.

The exit poll estimates in the 2004 general election overstated John Kerry's share of the vote nationally and in many states. There were 26 states in which the estimates produced by the exit poll data overstated the vote for John Kerry by more than one standard error, and there were four states in which the exit poll estimates overstated the vote for George W. Bush by more than one standard error. The inaccuracies in the exit poll estimates were not due to the sample selection of the polling locations at which the exit polls were conducted. We have not discovered any systematic problem in how the exit poll data were collected and processed. Exit polls do not support the allegations of fraud due to rigging of voting equipment.

It is difficult to pinpoint precisely the reasons that, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polls than Bush voters. There were certainly motivational factors that are impossible to quantify, but which led to Kerry voters being less likely than Bush voters to refuse to take the survey. In addition there are interactions between respondents and interviewers that can contribute to differential non-response rates. We can identify some factors that appear to have contributed, even in a small way, to the discrepancy. These include:

Distance restrictions imposed upon our interviewers by election officials at the state and local level

Weather conditions which lowered completion rates at certain polling locations

Multiple precincts voting at the same location as the precinct in our sample

Polling locations with a large number of total voters where a smaller portion of voters was selected to be asked to fill out questionnaires

Interviewer characteristics such as age, which were more often related to precinct error this year than in past elections We plan further analysis on the following factors:

Interviewer training and election day procedures

Interviewing rate calculations

Interviewer characteristics

Precinct characteristics * Questionnaire length and design We also suggest the following changes for future exit polls:

Working to improve cooperation with state and local election officials Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System page 5 January 19, 2005

Improvements in interviewing training procedures

Changes in our procedures for hiring, recruiting and monitoring interviewers

Even with these improvements, differences in response rates between Democratic and Republican voters may still occur in future elections. However, we believe that these steps will help to minimize the discrepancies.

It is also important to note that the exit poll estimates did not lead to a single incorrect NEP winner projection on election night. The Election Night System does not rely solely on exit polls in its computations and estimates. After voting is completed, reported vote totals are entered into the system. Edison/Mitofsky and the NEP members do not project the outcome of close races until a significant number of actual votes are counted. As in past elections, the final exit poll data used for analysis in 2004 was adjusted to match the actual vote returns by geographic region within each state. Thus, the discrepancy due to differing response rates was minimized and did not significantly affect the analysis of the vote. The exit polls reliably describe the composition of the electorate and how certain demographic subgroups voted.

http://election.redstate.org/story/2005/1/19/14112/5589

I suppose you think this guy is a shill for Bush? Somehow I think NOT!

Steve Rosenthal is the chief executive officer of America Coming Together. He was the political director of the AFL-CIO from 1996 to 2002.

Okay, We Lost Ohio. The Question Is, Why?

By Steve Rosenthal
Sunday, December 5, 2004; Page B03

When it came to getting out the Democratic vote in Ohio during the presidential election, we hit our target numbers. My organization, America Coming Together, along with our 32 America Votes partner organizations, the Democratic National Committee and the Kerry-Edwards campaign not only exceeded our turnout goals for the Buckeye State, but far exceeded anything the Democrats have done in the past.

And we still lost. President Bush won the election by fewer than 130,000 votes out of 5.6 million cast in Ohio, according to the state's latest figures. We added 554,000 votes to our totals, but the Republicans countered with 508,000, enough to keep the state in their column.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34157-2004Dec3.html

Sorry to introduce something on topic but...

Q. When is it politically correct to beat gays and kill women?

A. When the beaters and killers are "oppressed Muslims"!

http://www.reason.com/cy/cy051705.shtml

On April 30, American journalist Chris Crain became the victim of a hate crime in Amsterdam. While walking in the street holding hands with his partner, he was savagely beaten by seven men shouting antigay slurs. A few days later, Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Program at the Human Rights Watch, expressed some sympathy for the gay-bashers. Crain's attackers were reportedly Moroccan immigrants.

Do Muslims support the normalization of gay rights?

The election was stolen, but it doesn't matter. The faster the country goes to crap, the faster we can seced from the Southern states that are screwing the rest of the country over.

Republicnas: How does it feel to know that the only reason your party is in power is because of a bunch of brain-dead hicks that think Dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark?

That must really inspire confidence.

Another conservative voice of reason, John Cole:

http://www.balloon-juice.com/archives/005188.html

And that is what is most disturbing about the short-sighted and indefensible position of the 'uber-patriots.' Put aside the demagoguery, the denial, and the smears. Put aside the wishful thinking, the demonization of the media, and the claims that anyone who is outraged by this abuse is un-American, anti-military, hyperventilating over nothing, or out to get the President (which I am decidedly not). Instead, spend 1/10th of the energy you spend defending the status quo and urge the Republicans to use our majority status and the trappings of power we now enjoy with the control of Congress and the Presidency, and stop the torture and abuse. Do that, and your critics won't have anything to complain about.

Why is it that few, if any, members of the Republican party have called for congressional investigations? I wonder if that would be the same response for Hugh and the Republicans in Congress if Clinton were President? We have time for investigating the use of steroids in professional sports, seemingly endless debates about Senate filibusters, and a whole bevy of unimportant issues, but when it comes to torture, the prevailing attitude is 'Let's just pretend nothing happened and villify anyone who refuses to go along.'

If some have their way, a full accounting of the nefarious misdeeds of a few won't happen, because that would require that we accept blame for what has been done in our name, and that might require a level of candor and responsibility that many do not seem to possess. That would require an honest and open debate, a full documentation of events, and accountability. As it is, I will leave it to Hugh and the rest of his supporters to figure out how the status quo is the 'Christian' response to torture and murder. Maybe he is just taking a page from the Catholic church's response to child abuse.
SNIP

"The election was stolen, but it doesn't matter."

Gore's Legacy - no election will ever not be stolen again.

Actually I think that is Bush's legacy.

Nope - even Dick Nixon was un-willing to contest a stolen election, he thought it would be bad for the country. Gore had no such compunction.

But you see...If Bush hadn't been appointed by the Supreme Court and had allowed all the votes to be counted, Gore wouldn't have had to contest the election. So actually the election being stolen is Bush's legacy...

Bush our two-time appointed resident. What a mandate!

It sure is funny how exit polls were accurate in states with no black box voting machines, but in states with no paper trail the exit polls were mysteriously wrong..and always to Bush's benefit!

It must have been the exit polls fault, not those black box machines with no way to verify results. I think I will just take Diebold's word that they are not rigged after all it isn't like he said "I will deliver Ohio to you" or anything like that to Bush.

Oh yeah. Another thing. I am sure it was simply a system glitch that everytime the machines made a verifiable mistake they went to Bush.

No, the election was fair and square. All those machines were definitely not hacked into and Bush beat billion to one odds in winning.

Geez, I wish he would teach me how to do that so I could win the lottery!

It really up in the air as to who first "stole" a presidential election - what is certain is that Gore was the first to contest the supposed theft - so the "stolen election" meme will forever be Gore's legacy.

The legacy is to the person who stole the election and crushed American Democracy forever. The day that Bush was appointed president by the Supreme Court will be forever viewed as the beginning of the end of the experiment of democracy in the United States.

Bush's legacy will also be the mistrust of the Us and the ruining of our economy.

He has showed our weakness to other countries in the world and taken us to the brink of nuclear war. He has rolled back environmental protections and alienated our allies.

When he invades Iran next month the 1000,000 civilians dead in Iraq will be forgotten amidst the massive pile of corpses that we will leave in our wake.

If there is a hell, GW is certainly going there. a lot of Dems too, I admit, but a special place will be saved for this traitor to country, democracy, reason, and humanity. I just hope we can stop him before it is too late by taking back the Senate in 2006

" The day that Bush was appointed president by the Supreme Court..."

Ther was no day like that, there was only a decision that there had been enough recounts. All subsequnt studies showed Bush winning FL.

Umm sorry dude. Maybe the free republic and fox news showed that but most Americans know that Bush stole Florida just like he stole Ohio. Look at all the evidence below and refute it point by point or else I have won this argument.
---------------------
The Presidential Election of 2000 was stolen by the Bush-Cheney Campaign and the Florida GOP, Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, County Election Officials, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Media, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The list below documents all of the crimes that were committed to steal the election. These were not isolated instances of carelessness - they were deliberate election fraud. We believe these crimes are so serious that they should be given a name: FLORIDAGATE.

FLORIDAGATE is the nation's biggest scandal since Watergate. So why isn't the mainstream media reporting the story? Because the media - especially the huge broadcast networks - were participants in the crime, and are now participants in the coverup. So is Attorney General John Ashcroft, who should be investigating these crimes. Meanwhile, Democratic leaders in Washington are afraid to demand a thorough investigation, because they know they would be viciously attacked by the Republican propaganda machine.

We demand a thorough investigation of FLORIDAGATE. Sign our petition.

We are fighting a heroic battle to bring FLORIDAGATE to the attention of the American people - and the world. We need your support! Please contribute today.

To comment on the crimes cited below, click here.

Read the Boston Statement detailing how Bush stole the presidency.
Bush-Cheney Campaign and the Florida GOP

1. Absentee ballot law (FL GOP)

The Florida Republican Party sent a letter with Jeb's signature and the Florida state seal urging Florida Republicans to vote by absentee ballots. But Florida law (which was made even stricter in 1998) is not a "vote-by-mail" system - voters must have a valid reason for voting by mail. The Republican Party was thus encouraging Republican voters to break the law.

Florida's absentee ballot laws were tightened because of the 1997 Miami absentee ballot scandal that resulted in the voiding of ALL absentees and the overturn of the election. The man who engineered that massive fraud - Mayoral candidate Xavier Suarez - played a key role in the GOP absentee effort in 2000.
2. Absentee Ballot Law, Voting Rights Act (FL GOP, Seminole County, Martin County)

With the active assistance of GOP Election Supervisors, FL GOP officials sent GOP operatives to illegally alter over 2,500 defective Republican absentee ballot applications, while at least 550 Democratic applications were ignored.
3. Conspiracy to Interfere with the Lawful Count of the Votes (Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris)

When the TV networks called Florida for Gore, Bush campaign spokespeople (Rove, Matalin, etc.) went on TV to declare the results were wrong and would soon be changed. Was there already a plan to use state and local government powers to interfere with the lawful counting of votes?
4. FL Absentee Ballot Law

Pressured canvassing boards in Republican counties to violate Florida's election laws and count clearly illegal overseas Republican absentee ballots, while fighting to prevent Democratic counties from counting similar absentee ballots
5. 14th Amendment, Voting Rights Act

Forced hand counting of heavily Republican absentee ballots that the machines couldn't read - while delaying and blocking hand counting of poll-cast ballots in heavily Democratic counties that the machines couldn't read, thus treating ballots differently and discriminating against black voters
* GOP Stalling Tactics in Palm Beach
6. Legal ethics

Urged courts to block hand counts in Democratic counties in FL while urging courts to conduct hand counts in NM
7. Interference with Administration of Elections; Assault (Rep. John Sweeney, Congressional staff, etc)

On 11/21, organized a riot in Miami/Dade County that intimidated the canvassing board into stopping its hand count, and then assaulted Joe Geller, chair of the Dade County Democratic executive committee. This riot was paid for by the Bush recount committee.
8. Abuse of Congressional office for partisan politics; politicization of active-duty military (Rep. Steve Buyer, Rep. Tillie Fowler, Michael Higgins, Rob Carter)

On 11/22, Rep. Buyer gave the Pentagon a list of active duty sailors whose ballots had been rejected as invalid, which was provided by Florida Republican operative Rob Carter. Buyer demanded their e-mail addresses immediately. Buyer's aide Michael Higgins then contacted the sailors and put them in touch with Carter, who enlisted these sailors in a propaganda campaign to attack Vice President Al Gore as anti-military, and to pressure county officials to count invalid ballots. Carter also supplied Rep. Tillie Fowler with stories from service members, which she used to denounce Gore at a rally.
9. FEC Disclosure

Failure to disclose how the $8 million the Bush campaign raised for its Florida recount effort
10. IRS Disclosure

Failure to disclose the occupation and employer of thousands of recount donors

Governor Jeb Bush

1. Absentee Ballot Law

Letter sent by Florida Republican Party with Jeb's signature and the Florida state seal urged Florida Republicans to vote by absentee ballot, regardless of whether they had a valid legal reason for doing so.
2. Abuse of State Seal

Letter sent by Florida Republican party with Jeb's signature and the Florida state seal urging Florida Republicans to vote by absentee ballots
3. Abuse of Office for Partisan Purposes; Interference with Administration of Elections

Jeb and his staff made 95 phone calls made to Bush/Cheney Presidential campaign after Jeb said he'd recused himself; he visited the Bush/GOP headquarters in Tallahassee; he participated in at least 1 Bush strategy conference call; 6 of the 95 calls were on the day GOP thugs stopped the Miami-Dade recount
4. Abuse of Office for Partisan Purposes

Called special session of legislature to intimidate county officials and judges
5. 14th Amendment (Florida Legislature)

2001 Election Reform law perpetuates the election problems that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to be in violation of the 14th Amendment.

Secretary of State Katherine Harris

1. Voting Rights Act Section 5 (Bucky Mitchell, Michael Cochran, Elaine Baxter)

Misrepresentation of the felons list statute, failure to provide available documents directly relevant to the pre-clearance review
2. Voting Rights Act Section 5 (Clay Roberts, Bucky Mitchell)

Knowing failure to obtain pre-clearance for significant changes in policies and procedures pursuant to the implementation of the felons list law which resulted in the removal of legal voters from the registration rolls in at least one of 5 pre-clearance counties in Florida
3. Disenfranchisement of Legal Voters

Knowingly purged felons from states where voting rights were automatically restored upon release, contrary to clear court rulings. Knowingly included non-felons in its purge through its "wide net" policy (accepting a 90% name-match in 1999, and an 80% match in 2000).
4. Ballot Design Law

Sent out a sample ballot design to county elections supervisors that split the 10 Presidential candidates on the ballots onto 2 pages
5. Uniform Administration of Election Law: Assistance to Voters

Failure to oversee training of poll workers to ensure proper assistance to voters
6. Americans with Disabilities Act (Jeb Bush, Counties)

Failure to make voting machines fully accessible to the handicapped
7. Mandatory Machine Recount Law

20 counties never did the mandatory machine recount as required by state election law.
8. Overseas Absentee Ballot Law

Allowed illegal overseas absentee ballots to be counted and included in the certified total
9. Uniform Administration of Election Law

Coordination (conspiracy) between Harris lawyers and Bush/GOP lawyers; Deliberate misinterpretation of the law for partisan purposes
10. Uniform Administration of Elections: Hand Recount Law

Inconsistent application of hand count law: accepted manual recounts from some counties, but denied Palm Beach permission to conduct hand count
11. Use of Government Office for Politics

Allowed Republican operatives Andrew Goodman and J.M. Stipanovich to use her state computers and offices during the recount; Communications Director Donald Tighe admitted writing partisan speeches during the campaign.

These political activities were found on Harris' computer. 1) On 1/29/00, a speech written for a Republican meeting that declared: "We are READY TO LEAD!" 2) On 3/14/00, a set of campaign talking points for George W. Bush. 3) On 11/14/00, an examination of the campaign finances of FL Supreme Court Justice Barbara Pariente - who was reviewing important election cases. 4) A list of contributors to Harris' 1998 Democratic opponent, Karen Gievers (undated).

Harris claims Stipanovich and Goodman were "volunteers," but Goodman billed Harris $12,000 for his work, and Harris initially approved the bill (Palm Beach Post, 8/23/01)
12. Abuse of Discretion in Violation of Florida Supreme Court Order

The Florida Supreme Court ordered Harris to accept the Palm Beach recount until 9 a.m. on 11/27; she refused to accept them after 5 p.m. on 11/26
13. Conflict of Interest; Use of Office for Political Gain

While overseeing the recount, Harris expressed interest in appointment as Ambassador under Bush
14. Public Records

Reinstalled Windows and erased files on state computers used by Republican operatives Andrew Goodman and J.M Stipanovich

County Election Officials

1. Voter Registration Law and Voting Rights Act

Failure to process thousands of voter registration forms before the election, including many from historically black colleges
2. Absentee Ballot Law (Okaloosa)

Sent hundreds or thousands of absentee ballots to voters who did NOT request one
3. Absentee Ballot Law (Bay)

Republicans turned in "handfuls" and in one case a suitcase-full of absentee ballots in defiance of a law that provides people may submit no more than two absentee ballots other than their own or that of a family member
4. Ballot design law (Palm Beach)

Butterfly ballot
5. Sample ballot law (Duval)

Sample ballot differed significantly from actual ballot - sample ballot listed 10 candidates on 1 page, while actual ballot spread candidates over 2 pages
6. Voting Rights Act

Substandard voting machinery in predominantly minority precincts that produced ballot spoilage up to 40%; Failure to provide voter assistance in Spanish (Osceola County) and Creole (Miami-Dade); reports of intimidation of minority voters
7. Voting machine law (Punch Card)

Failure to properly maintain machines, including misalignment and accumulation of chads
8. Election Day law

Closed polling places without notice; Turned away voters who were on line at 7 pm when polls closed
9. Voting machine law (Miami-Dade)

Use of malfunctioning voting machines
10. Voting Machine Law (Optiscan)

Failure to provide machine-readable pens
11. Voting Machine Law (Palm Beach)

Misaligned ballots, as described by Rabbi Yellin; Use of malfunctioning voting machines in county elections office
* Miami Herald 8/28/01: Democratic State Representative Calls for Criminal Investigation of Teresa Lepore
12. Negligence (Palm Beach)

Failure to respond to complaints about confusing ballot and voting mistakes
13. Intent of the voter

Nearly all counties failed to count machine-unreadable votes where the intent of the voter was clear. This includes "write-in overvotes" that must specifically be counted by law.
* Palm Beach Canvassing Board rejects dimpled ballots
14. Mandatory machine recount law

20 counties never did the mandatory machine recount as required by state election law.
15. Racial Discrimination (Escambia)

Disabled optiscan technology that prevents errors on poll-cast votes, but "duplicated" (fixed) absentee votes with errors.
16. Different Treatment of Machine-Unreadable Ballots

Various Republican counties hand-counted absentee ballots that could not be machine-read (thus favoring Republicans), but refused to hand-count poll-cast ballots that could not be machine-read (thus harming Democrats)
17. Ballot tampering fraud (Escambia and other Northern counties)

Estimated 7,100 ballots were destroyed in 11 counties
18. Ballot tampering; Open meetings law (Optiscan)

Secret duplication of 10,000 optiscan-unreadable absentee ballots in 26 heavily Republican counties in central and north Florida. These ballots favored George W. Bush by more than 2 to 1.
19. Fraud (Duval)

Republican elections supervisor John Stafford lied about the number of under and overvotes to the Gore campaign during the 72-hour window for requesting a recount, telling the Gore campaign there were only 2-300 votes disqualified, when there were actually 27,000.
20. Recount law (Miami-Dade)

Refusal to conduct hand count
21. Absentee Ballot Law (Orange)

Refused to count stateside absentees postmarked before Election Day, while counting overseas absentees with no postmark or date
22. Public Records Law (Palm Beach)

Destruction of computer records of 2000 Presidential vote

U.S. Supreme Court

1. Conflict of Interest

Four members of the Supreme Court majority in Bush v. Gore had conflicts and should have recused themselves: O'Connor, Thomas, Scalia, and Rehnquist. In August 2001, three Justices recused themselves from the case of Napoleon Beazley, who was sentenced to death for the murder of the father of J. Michael Luttig, a well-connected federal appeals court judge.
2. US Law on Emergency Injunctive Relief

Granted emergency relief to George W. Bush to stop the manual 4. Count of 60,000 uncounted votes as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, on the theory that counting all of the votes would cause "irreparable harm" to Bush.
3. 14th Amendment

In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court declared the the 14th Amendment prohibited variations in vote counting by county officials, contrary to all precedents - and explicitly refused to set a precedent for future cases. In the same ruling, the Court accepted 2,490 overseas absentee ballots that were counted without any consistent standard and produced a net gain of 630 votes for Bush - greater than his 537-vote margin of victory.
4. Presidential Elections; Appointment of Electors (3 USC Chapter 1 Section 5)

On December 12, 2000, the Supreme Court intentionally misrepresented the law as saying that Electors had to be chosen by December 12, when the true deadline was December 18.

Media

1. Corporate Contribution to Federal Campaign (FOX)

George W. Bush spoke by phone with his cousin John Ellis at FOX News shortly before FOX incorrectly projected Bush as the winner at 2 a.m. on Election Night, which prompted Al Gore to temporarily concede and defined him as the presumptive loser.
2. Corporate Contributions to Federal Campaign; Broadcast License Requirement to Serve the Public Interest (FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS)

The broadcast networks consistenly ignored Bush's flaws and inconsistencies, while scrutinizing Gore's flaws and inconsistencies
3. Corporate Contribution to Federal Campaign; Violation of Broadcast License (NBC/Jack Welch)

On Election Night, GE CEO Jack Welch reportedly ordered the network to call Florida for Bush, even though the results were too close to call.
* Rep. Henry Waxman's Repeated Requests for Videotapes Promised by NBC News President Andrew Lack

Attorney General John Ashcroft

1. Failure to Investigate

DoJ has received THOUSANDS of complaints, but is investigating only 12. Complaints include serious allegations of fraud, such as pre-punched ballots in heavily African American and Democratic precincts in Miami/Dade and Broward Counties

My, what a big long list of bull shit you have!

I bring facts and you call names.

From the Republican playbook: When backed into a corner because the facts PROVE you are wrong, start calling names.

That might work on the hick, racists, creationist, illiterates that make up the Republican base, but it doesn't play well to the rest of the country.

When we get the message out that this vote was rigged and the one in 2004 as well, that Bush rigged the intelligence to invade Iraq, and that 100's of thousands of people are dead because of the repugs greed and bloodlust, you will still be calling names as we put Bush in jail and try him for war crimes.

I guess you might as well give up then, if the evil genius Bush is too much for you.

Wait twenty years and we'll see if the people of the Middle East don't consider Bush to be their liberator.

I lived thru BS about Reagan and now he is recognized as the liberator of those formerly enslaved by the old Soviet system.

But you just keep baying at the moon, it won't matter in the end.

Kerry conceded, but then he's really a Bush shill, unlike the true Dummycrat.

"...can only mean the Dems, lacking anything to rally around for the next four years, want to keep the victim-magic going and will hang on long enough to create the auro of 'another stolen election' for their base."

http://instapundit.com/archives/018981.php

Still waiting for a Repubican to explain to me why Republicans voted against paper trails...

If they weren't planning on stealing the election, why didn't they want the results to be verifiable?

Why were the exit polls 'wrong' only in states with no paper trail?

Still waiting for you to stop calling names and actually answer my question.

Reagan was no "liberator" and is only praised in right wing circle jerks like you have been visiting.

The Soviets wanted to end the Cold War back in the 70's but the same neocons who are in power now kept it going:

This war was fabricated and 9-11 was used as an excuse. Try reading for a change and look at the quotes from public documents below. PNAC was planning this war as early as 1998.

umsfeld & Bush's Iraq War Plan Was Formulated In 1998

By Jason Leopold

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz undertook a full-fledged lobbying campaign in 1998 to get former President Bill Clinton to start a war with Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein's regime claiming that the country posed a threat to the United States, according to documents obtained from a former Clinton aide.

This new information begs the question: what is really driving the Bush Administration's desire to start a war with Iraq if two of Bush's future top defense officials were already planting the seeds for an attack five years ago?

In 1998, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were working in the private sector. Both were involved with the right-wing think tank Project for a New American Century, which was established in 1997 by William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, to promote global leadership and dictate American foreign policy.

While Clinton was dealing with the worldwide threat from Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz wrote to Clinton urging him to use military force against Iraq and remove Hussein from power because the country posed a threat to the United States due to its alleged ability to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The Jan 26, 1998 letter sent to Clinton from the Project for the New American Century said a war with Iraq should be initiated even if the United States could not muster support from its allies in the United Nations. Kristol also signed the letter.

"We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War," says the letter. "In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power."

"We urge you to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council," says the letter.

The full contents of the Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz letter can be viewed at:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm (and attached below)

Clinton rebuffed the advice from the future Bush Administration officials saying he was focusing his attention on dismantling Al-Qaeda cells, according to a copy of the response Clinton sent to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Kristol.

Unsatisfied with Clinton's response, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Kristol and others from the Project for the New American Century wrote another letter on May 29, 1998 to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Republican Majority Leader Trent Lott saying that the United States should, "establish and maintain a strong U.S. military presence in the region, and be prepared to use that force to protect our vital interests in the Gulf - and, if necessary, to help remove Saddam from power."

"We should take whatever steps are necessary to challenge Saddam Hussein's claim to be Iraq's legitimate ruler, including indicting him as a war criminal," says the letter to Gingrich and Lott.

"U.S. policy should have as its explicit goal removing Saddam Hussein's regime from power and establishing a peaceful and democratic Iraq in its place. We recognize that this goal will not be achieved easily. But the alternative is to leave the initiative to Saddam, who will continue to strengthen his position at home and in the region. Only the U.S. can lead the way in demonstrating that his rule is not legitimate and that time is not on the side of his regime."

The letter to Gingrich and Lott can be viewed at:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqletter1998.htm (and attached below)

The White House would not comment on the letters, or on whether Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz possessed any intelligence information that suggested Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States at the time. The letters offered no hard evidence that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction.

The Clinton aide said the former President believed that the policy of, "containing Saddam Hussein in a box", was successful and that the Iraqi regime did not pose any threat to U.S. interests at the time.

President Clinton, "never considered war with Iraq an option," the former aide said. "We were encouraged by the UN weapons inspectors and believed they had a good handle on the situation."

Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Kristol, however, disagreed; saying the only way to deal with Hussein was by initiating a full-scale war.

"The policy of "containment" of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months," Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Kristol wrote in their letter to Clinton.

"As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy."

Those alleged threats posed by Iraq, and the advice Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol, first offered the attention of the Clinton Administration five years ago have now become the blueprint for how the Bush Administration is dealing with the Iraq.

The existence of the Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz "war" letters is just another reason to question the Bush Administration's desire to go to war with Iraq now instead of dealing with other pressing issues such as Al-Qaeda. Because the letters were written in 1998 it proves that this war was planned well before 9-11 and casts further doubt on the administration's claims that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9-11 terrorist attacks, and that this is a key part of their motivation.

If you'd stop putting things where they don't belong none of this would be a problem.

"If you'd stop putting things where they don't belong none of this would be a problem."

Actually if you stopped voicing your ignorant comments the world would be a much better place. Its people like you, not homosexuals, that ruin everything.

So instead of refuting arguments logically, Republicans use a smoke screen as usual:

Liberal media!

Tin foil hat!

Flip flop!

dummycrat!

you spelled X wrong!

This doesn't belong here!

All just ways to avoid dealing with the facts . You are wrong. The election was stolen, Republicans didn't want a paper trail because they were stealing it, they lied to us about Iraq, they are lying to us about Iran, and people are dead and dying because of your ignorance. You have blood on your hands.

"Reagan was no "liberator" and is only praised in right wing circle jerks like you have been visiting."

But then maybe you should read what Lech Walesa had to say about it:

Friday, June 11, 2004

Lech Walesa, winner of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize, was president of Poland from 1990 to 1995
GDANSK, Poland-- Lech Walesa, winner of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize, was president of Poland from 1990 to 1995. He shared his thoughts today about Ronald Reagan,

When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.

Poles fought for their freedom for so many years that they hold in special esteem those who backed them in their struggle. Support was the test of friendship. President Reagan was such a friend. His policy of aiding democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe in the dark days of the Cold War meant a lot to us.

We knew he believed in a few simple principles such as human rights, democracy and civil society. He was someone who was convinced that the citizen is not for the state, but vice-versa, and that freedom is an innate right.

I often wondered why Ronald Reagan did this, taking the risks he did, in supporting us at Solidarity, as well as dissident movements in other countries behind the Iron Curtain, while pushing a defense buildup that pushed the Soviet economy over the brink. Let's remember that it was a time of recession in the U.S. and a time when the American public was more interested in their own domestic affairs.

It took a leader with a vision to convince them that there are greater things worth fighting for. Did he seek any profit in such a policy?

Though our freedom movements were in line with the foreign policy of the United States, I doubt it.

I distinguish between two kinds of politicians. There are those who view politics as a tactical game, a game in which they do not reveal any individuality, in which they lose their own face. There are, however, leaders for whom politics is a means of defending and furthering values. For them, it is a moral pursuit.

They do so because the values they cherish are endangered. They're convinced that there are values worth living for, and even values worth dying for.

Otherwise they would consider their life and work pointless. Only such politicians are great politicians and Ronald Reagan was one of them.

The 1980s were a curious time--a time of realization that a new age was upon us. Communism was coming to an end. It had used up its means and possibilities. The ground was set for change. But this change needed the cooperation, or unspoken understanding, of different political players.

Now, from the perspective of our time, it is obvious that like the pieces of a global chain of events, Ronald Reagan, John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and even Mikhail Gorbachev helped bring about this new age in Europe. We at Solidarity like to claim more than a little credit, too, for bringing about the end of the Cold War.

In the Europe of the 1980s, Ronald Reagan presented a vision. For us in Central and Eastern Europe, that meant freedom from the Soviets. Mr. Reagan was no ostrich who hoped that problems might just go away. He thought that problems are there to be faced. This is exactly what he did.

Every time I met President Reagan, at his private estate in California or at the Lenin shipyard here in Gdansk, I was amazed by his modesty and even temper. He didn't fit the stereotype of the world leader that he was.

Privately, we were like opposite sides of a magnet: He was always composed; I was a raging tower of emotions eager to act. We were so different yet we never had a problem with understanding one another.

I respected his honesty and good humor. It gave me confidence in his policies and his resolve. He supported my struggle, but what unified us, unmistakably, were our similar values and shared goals.

I have often been asked in the United States to sign the poster that many Americans consider very significant. Prepared for the first almost-free parliamentary elections in Poland in 1989, the poster shows Gary Cooper as the lonely sheriff in the American Western, "High Noon." Under the headline "At High Noon" runs the red Solidarity banner and the date--June 4, 1989--of the poll. It

was a simple but effective gimmick that, at the time, was misunderstood by the Communists. They, in fact, tried to ridicule the freedom movement in Poland as an invention of the "Wild" West, especially the U.S.

But the poster had the opposite impact: Cowboys in Western clothes had become a powerful symbol for Poles. Cowboys fight for justice, fight against evil, and fight for freedom, both physical and spiritual. Solidarity trounced the Communists in that election, paving the way for a democratic government in Poland.

It is always so touching when people bring this poster up to me to autograph it. They have cherished it for so many years and it has become the emblem of the battle that we all fought together.

As I say repeatedly, we owe so much to all those who supported us. Perhaps in the early years, we didn't express enough gratitude. We were so busy introducing all the necessary economic and political reforms in our reborn country.

Yet President Ronald Reagan must have realized what remarkable changes he brought to Poland, and indeed the rest of the world. And I hope he felt gratified.

He should have.

Here is another opinion on what REagan's legacy is:

Ronald Reagan's Legacy
by Mark Weisbrot

Ronald Reagan was a man who fought for what he believed in, and he changed the world more than probably any American in the twentieth century. He changed not only the conservative movement, the Republican party, his country and the world -- but also his opponents, known as liberals. As a result of his achievements, the typical liberal Member of Congress today sits to the right of Richard Nixon on a number of economic issues, including tax policy.

The Great Communicator, as he was called, was capable of charming millions of Americans with his soothing, grandfatherly demeanor. In 1984 there were polls indicating that most of those who voted to re-elect him disagreed with him on the issues. In short, the "Reagan revolution" would probably never have happened without his unrivalled leadership skills.

His death has unleashed a torrent of commentary on the significance of this revolution, and so it is important to set the record straight. His economic policies were mostly a failure. Partly this was because he had promised something arithmetically impossible: to increase military spending, cut taxes, and balance the budget. He kept the first two promises, delivering the largest peacetime military build-up in American history, and cutting taxes massively, mostly for upper-income households.

But budget deficits soared to record heights. The national debt doubled, as a percentage of the economy, before Mr. Reagan's successors were able to bring it under control. This "military Keynesianism" did pull the economy out of the 1982 recession, but the 1980s still chalked up the slowest growth of any decade in the post-World War II era. And income was redistributed to the wealthy as never before: during the 1980s, most of the country's income gains went to the top 1 or 2 percent of households.

Mr. Reagan also helped redistribute American income and wealth with a bold assault on American labor. In 1981 he summarily fired 12,000 air traffic controllers who went on strike for better working conditions. This ushered in a new and dark era of labor relations, with employers now free to "permanently replace" striking workers. The median real wage failed to grow during the decade of the 1980s.

The Reagan revolution caused even more economic damage internationally, for example by changing policy at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Thus began the era of "structural adjustment" -- a set of economic policies that has become so discredited worldwide that the IMF and World Bank no longer use the term. The 1980s became "the lost decade" for Latin America, the region most affected by Washington's foreign economic policy. Income per person actually shrank for the decade, a rare historical event, and the region has yet to come close to its pre-1980s growth rates.

Mr. Reagan is often credited with having caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, but this is doubtful. He did use the Cold War as a pretext for other interventions, including funding and support for horrific violence against the civilian population of Central America. In 1999 the United Nations determined that the massacres of tens of thousands of Guatemalans, mostly indigenous people, constituted "genocide." These massacres -- often involving grotesque torture -- reached their peak under the rule of Mr. Reagan's ally, the Guatemalan General Rios Montt. Tens of thousands of Salvadorans were also murdered during Mr. Reagan's presidency by death squads affiliated with the U.S.-funded Salvadoran military.

But it was Mr. Reagan's efforts to overthrow the government -- democratically elected in 1984 -- of poor, underdeveloped Nicaragua that almost brought down his presidency. Congress cut off aid to Mr. Reagan's proxy army, the Contras, as a result of pressure from Americans -- led by religious groups -- who were disgusted by the Contras' tactics of murdering unarmed teachers and health care workers.

The Reagan administration continued to run the war from the basement of the White House, and paid for part of it with the proceeds of illegal arms sales to Iran. Hence the Iran-Contra scandal, in which Mr. Reagan escaped prosecution because his subordinates claimed that he had no knowledge of their crimes.

The Reagan revolution continues today: the "war on terror" has replaced the Cold War as pretext for intervention abroad, including the disastrous war in Iraq. Tax cuts for the rich and huge increases in military spending have revived the era of giant budget deficits. As the Great Communicator used to say, "There they go again."

That the same Weisbrot that shills for President Chávez - yeah he knows more about what happened in Poland and eastern Europe than Lech Walesa - NOT!

Among the lesser known, but perhaps most dangerous, of the featured speakers is one Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the grandiloquently named Center for Economic and Policy Research. A member in good standing of the DC lefty think-tank community, Weisbrot strikes me as the most dangerous kind of chavista apologist, because the propaganda he publishes out of CEPR comes cloaked in the stylistic conventions of academia, and that makes it look to the uninitiated like more or less credible independent analysis. If you've followed the issues he covers, though, you can recognize his writing as more or less unadulterated government propaganda. In a sense, what's most remarkable about his analysis is its failure to go an inch beyond tired old chavista arguments founded on misrepresentation that enjoy near-zero credibility among anyone who knows anything about the issues at hand.

No doubt Reagan spent alot of money, but then he won WW III without a lot of bloodshed. I grew up wondering if (and sometimes when) the world would end in a nuclear holocaust. My children didn't have any "duck and cover" drills to prepare for a nuclear attack. I give Reagan credit for that. Before Reagan there was no thought of winning the Cold War - only co-existing:

One day in 1977 Ronald Reagan asked Richard Allen, who would become his first national security adviser, if Mr. Allen would like to hear his theory of the Cold War. "Some people think I'm simplistic," Mr. Reagan said, "but there's a difference between being simplistic and being simple. My theory of the Cold War is that we win and they lose. What do you think about that?"

***

The Soviet Union certainly did suffer from economic stagnation. But its economy had been growing feebly since at least the early '70s. What changed during the '80s wasn't so much the economy of the U.S.S.R. as the economy of the U.S., which responded to the policies of Mr. Reagan by growing dramatically. By the time he left office, American output had expanded by an amount nearly equal to the entire economy of what was then West Germany.

***

And by launching the Strategic Defense Initiative, he had confronted the Soviets with the need to make massive new investments in their nuclear arsenal. "We didn't have to build a complete version of SDI to make their calculations difficult," Henry Kissinger says. "If the Soviets no longer knew how many missiles would get through, then they might have had to launch hundreds more to have had a chance of success. You can see why SDI had them so rattled." The Soviet case of imperial overreach came courtesy of Ronald Reagan.

***

During the '70s, the U.S. looked like a nation in decline, just about as Karl Marx would have predicted. "The symptoms of . . . [a] crisis in the American spirit are all around us," President Carter said in an address from the Oval Office on July 15, 1979. Then, in 1981, Ronald Reagan took office. "The crisis we are facing today," he said in his first inaugural address, requires "our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds. . . . And after all, why shouldn't we believe that? We are Americans." The American people responded with renewed patriotism and self-confidence. "Morning Again in America," the campaign slogan for Mr. Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign, may have been derided in the media, but it captured the mood of the nation that returned him to office by 49 out of 50 states.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005211

Actually the Soveit Union was not beat by Reagan's sepnding at all.
And compaaring Reagan running up massive budget deficits and WWII where people were being systematically exterminated should remove you immediately from any argument. The two are not equivalent.
-------------------------
Did Reagan's Military Build-Up Really Lead to Victory in the Cold War?
By Lawrence S. Wittner
Mr. Wittner teaches history at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford University Press).

Lawrence Wittner's latest book

In an op-ed published in the New York Times on January 5, Professor Kiron Skinner, co-editor of Reagan: A Life in Letters, repeats the familiar refrain of Republican triumphalists that Ronald Reagan's aggressive rhetoric and military policies improved Soviet-American relations and led to the end of the Cold War.

This fairy tale may warm the hearts of true believers in the efficacy of military buildups and wars, but it has little resemblance to reality.

In fact, Soviet-American relations went into a deep freeze until early 1985. Horrified by the Reagan administration's nuclear buildup and loose talk of nuclear war, the Soviet government ratcheted up its own military might. The new Soviet party leader, Yuri Andropov, concluded that "peace cannot be obtained from the imperialists by begging for it. It can be upheld only by relying on the invincible might of the Soviet armed forces." Responding to U.S. missile deployment in Western Europe in December 1983, the Kremlin broke off arms control negotiations, resumed the SS-20 nuclear missile deployment that it had previously halted, placed SS-23 nuclear missiles in East Germany and Czechoslovakia , and moved Soviet nuclear submarines closer to the coasts of the United States . In late 1984, the Kremlin incorporated a 45 percent increase in military spending into its next five-year plan.

Reagan's "evil empire" speech of March 1983 was widely noted in the Soviet Union , recalled Vladimir Slipchenko, then a member of the Soviet General Staff. "The military, the armed forces . . . used this," he added, "as a reason to begin a very intense preparation inside the military for a state of war." Furthermore, "we started to run huge strategic exercises. . . . These were the first military exercises in which we really tested our mobilization. We didn't just exercise the ground forces but also the strategic arms." Therefore, "for the military, the period when we were called the evil empire was actually very good and useful, because we achieved a very high military readiness. . . . We also rehearsed the situation when a non-nuclear war might turn into a nuclear war."

Soviet leaders, terrified that the Reagan administration was preparing a nuclear first strike against their country, nearly launched a nuclear war. In November 1983, during NATO's Able Archer military exercises, the jittery Soviet government became convinced that, under cover of the exercises, a U.S. nuclear attack upon the Soviet Union was underway. Consequently, Soviet nuclear forces were alerted, command staffs reviewed their strike missions, and nuclear weapons were readied for action. "The world did not quite reach the edge of the nuclear abyss," recalled Oleg Gordievsky, a U.S. intelligence agent within the KGB. "But during Able Archer 83 it had . . . come frighteningly close."

Thus, as Anatoly Dobrynin, the longtime Soviet ambassador to the United States, recalled: "The impact of Reagan's hard-line policy . . . was exactly the opposite of the one intended by Washington . It strengthened those in the Politburo, the Central Committee, and the security apparatus who had been pressing for a mirror-image of Reagan's own policy."

In the period up to early 1985, it was Reagan who began a policy reversal. Reagan entered the White House as a fanatic foe of the Soviet Union and as a staunch opponent of every nuclear arms control and disarmament agreement negotiated by his Democratic and Republican predecessors. Not surprisingly, he and his entourage initially called for a massive nuclear buildup and talked glibly of waging nuclear war. But, battered by antinuclear protests, frustrated by Congress, badgered by uneasy allies, and confronted by an obdurate Soviet leadership, Reagan softened his hard line. His administration opened arms control negotiations, championed a "zero option" for Euromissiles, compromised on strategic nuclear weapons, and observed the limits of the unratified SALT II treaty (which, previously, Reagan had condemned as "appeasement"). Starting in April 1982, Reagan began declaring publicly that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." He added: "To those who protest against nuclear war, I can only say: `I'm with you!'"

As these last remarks indicate, Reagan was seriously rattled by popular agitation against the nuclear arms race. In October 1983, in the context of the massive protests against Euromissile deployment, he told his startled secretary of state: "If things get hotter and hotter and arms control remains an issue, maybe I should go see Andropov and propose eliminating all nuclear weapons." On January 16, 1984, he followed up on this idea. Over the objections of other administration officials, he delivered a remarkable public address, calling for peace with the Soviet Union and a nuclear-free world.

In short, in the period leading up to March 1985, Reagan and Soviet officials confronted each other eyeball-to-eyeball, and it was Reagan who repeatedly blinked.

Only in March 1985, with the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev, did Reagan find a Soviet leader ready to implement a program of peace and disarmament. Gorbachev, of course, differed from his immediate predecessors in that he came from the ranks of Soviet reformers, who favored peace and democratization. What is not as well known is that Gorbachev's ideas were profoundly influenced by the world nuclear disarmament movement. As he declared: "The new thinking took into account and absorbed the conclusions and demands of . . . the public and the scientific community, of the movements of physicians, scientists, and ecologists, and of various antiwar organizations." Thus, Gorbachev and his circle were ready to reject the traditional "peace through strength" basis of Soviet (and American) foreign policy. In subsequent years, he and Reagan pushed past the obstacles erected by the hawks in both their countries to halt the nuclear arms race and end the Cold War.

If the contrasting version of these events--the triumphalist version trumpeted by Professor Skinner--is to hold water, surely there should be some evidence for it in Soviet sources. After all, the foundation of the triumphalist case is the idea that the Soviet Union surrendered when confronted with U.S. military "strength." But despite the numerous Soviet documents that have been declassified, the many statements that have been made by former Soviet officials, and the memoirs that have been written by former Soviet leaders, no evidence for the triumphalist contention has emerged.

Furthermore, former Soviet officials have repeatedly rejected it. Asked if a U.S. government hard line had forced the Soviet government to become more conciliatory, Aleksandr Yakovlev, one of Gorbachev's top foreign policy advisors, replied: "It played no role. None. I can tell you with the fullest responsibility." Arbatov, also a key Gorbachev foreign policy advisor, called the idea that a U.S. military buildup helped alter Soviet policy "absolute nonsense." Soviet changes, he said, "not only ripened inside the country but originated within it." Dobrynin did give the U.S. government some credit, but not for the efficacy of its military strength. "If Reagan "had not abandoned his hostile stance toward the Soviet Union ," recalled the Soviet diplomat, "Gorbachev would not have been able to launch his reforms and his `new thinking,'" but "would have been forced to continue the conservative foreign and domestic policies of his predecessors." When Gorbachev was asked about the triumphalist claim, made during the 1992 presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush, he replied simply: "I suppose these are necessary things in a campaign. But if this idea is serious, then it is a very big delusion."

Should we believe in illusions? For decades, U.S. government officials, historians, and the pundits told us that the Kennedy administration's military mobilization during the Cuban missile crisis led to its peaceful resolution. Then, suddenly, key U.S. officials revealed that the crisis had been overcome thanks to U.S. concessions. Now the hawks are again busy, pumping us up with triumphalist fantasies about the end of the Cold War. Should we not feel some skepticism about this process, particularly when--as in the case of Professor Skinner--it is openly employed to justify current U.S. foreign policy?

Are you really trying to tell me that Mr. Peanut would have won WW III - that Reagan made no difference?

One thing for sure, Jimmy Carter would NEVER have worried the Soviets. The USSR would have sent in tanks to crush the Polish revolution. Soviet control was maintained by hard-line puppet Communist dictatorships backed by secret police and ultimately by the Soviet Red Army. Twice, in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968, Soviet tanks were used to suppress attempts at freedom, while in the divided city of Berlin a wall was erected in 1961 to keep the people in. In Poland in 1981 the Soviets considered intervention but stepped back from the brink.

You can trot out all the left-wing BS artists you want, but without Reagan the USSR would still exist, the Berlin Wall would still be there and eastern Europe would still be under Soviet control.

G.W.Bush and John Kerry accidentally wound up at the same barbershop at the same time while stopping for a little touchup while campaigning. As they sat in adjacent chairs, worked on by different barbers, not a word was spoken. The barbers were even afraid to start a conversation, for fear it would turn to politics.

As the barbers each finished their haircuts, the one working on Kerry reached for some scented hair tonic to splash on, but Kerry quickly held up his hand, smiled, and said, "No thanks, Johnny! My wife, Ta-ray-za (Teresa), will smell that and think I've been gallivanting in a whorehouse!" Everyone in his entourage laughed.

The other barber turned to Bush and said, "I suppose you don't want any tonic on your hair either, Mr. President?"

Bush replied, "No, go ahead, Mike. My wife doesn't know what the inside of a whorehouse smells like!"

"are you really trying to tell me that Mr. Peanut would have won WW III - that Reagan made no difference?"

No, actually Gorbachev and other high up Soviet officials are telling you that Reagan's anatgonisitic military policies made them more resolute in the arms race, and that it was only when Reagan backed down taht they backed down.

But hey what would Gorbacheve know about the inner workings of the Soviet governement? I am sure your right-wing pundits know what REALLY happened.
---------------------
For your review:

"Reagan's "evil empire" speech of March 1983 was widely noted in the Soviet Union , recalled Vladimir Slipchenko, then a member of the Soviet General Staff. "The military, the armed forces . . . used this," he added, "as a reason to begin a very intense preparation inside the military for a state of war." Furthermore, "we started to run huge strategic exercises. . . . These were the first military exercises in which we really tested our mobilization. We didn't just exercise the ground forces but also the strategic arms." Therefore, "for the military, the period when we were called the evil empire was actually very good and useful, because we achieved a very high military readiness. . . . We also rehearsed the situation when a non-nuclear war might turn into a nuclear war."

"Soviet leaders, terrified that the Reagan administration was preparing a nuclear first strike against their country, nearly launched a nuclear war."

"Asked if a U.S. government hard line had forced the Soviet government to become more conciliatory, Aleksandr Yakovlev, one of Gorbachev's top foreign policy advisors, replied: "It played no role. None. I can tell you with the fullest responsibility." Arbatov, also a key Gorbachev foreign policy advisor, called the idea that a U.S. military buildup helped alter Soviet policy "absolute nonsense." Soviet changes, he said, "not only ripened inside the country but originated within it." Dobrynin did give the U.S. government some credit, but not for the efficacy of its military strength. "If Reagan "had not abandoned his hostile stance toward the Soviet Union ," recalled the Soviet diplomat, "Gorbachev would not have been able to launch his reforms and his `new thinking,'" but "would have been forced to continue the conservative foreign and domestic policies of his predecessors." When Gorbachev was asked about the triumphalist claim, made during the 1992 presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush, he replied simply: "I suppose these are necessary things in a campaign. But if this idea is serious, then it is a very big delusion."

So how are you going to spin those so you can sling to your pre-held bias despite the facts clearly proving you wrong?

Insofar as leaders of either country are assigned credit for ending the Cold War, Reagan deserves the lion's share. He led the US during the reign of three Soviet Leaders. He was tough, as he should have been, with the first two, and recognized the willingness and desire to negotiate in Gorbachev, a leader from a different generation than all previous Soviet leaders.

On Reagan you are just as right now as these people were then:

Thursday, June 10, 2004

WHAT THEY SAID: In honor of president Reagan's funeral, here's a useful corrective to the notion that his legacy was always celebrated. Today, almost everyone concedes his historical significance. But that wasn't what was said at the time. Here's a smattering of commentary from the 1980s.

"A few years from now, I believe, Reaganism will seem a weird and improbable memory, a strange interlude of national hallucination, rather as the McCarthyism of the early 1950s and the youth rebellion of the late 1960s appear to us today." - Arthur "Always Wrong" Schlesinger, Washington Post, May 1, 1988.

"I wonder how many people, reading about the [Evil Empire'] speech or seeing bits on television, really noticed its outrageous character... Primitive: that is the only word for it. ... What is the world to think when the greatest of powers is led by a man who applies to the most difficult human problem a simplistic theology -- one in fact rejected by most theologians?... What must the leaders of Western Europe think of such a speech? They look to the head of the alliance for rhetoric that can persuade them and their constituents. What they get from Ronald Reagan is a mirror image of crude Soviet rhetoric. And it is more than rhetoric: everyone must sense that. The real Ronald Reagan was speaking in Orlando. The exaggeration and the simplicities are there not only in the rhetoric but in the process by which he makes decisions." - Anthony Lewis, New York Times, March 10, 1983

"Something like the speech to the evangelicals is not presidential, it's not something a president should say. If the Russians are infinitely evil and we are infinitely good, then the logical first step is a nuclear first strike. Words like that frighten the American public and antagonize the Soviets. What good is that?" - Rick Hertzberg, New Yorker macher, quoted in the Washington Post, March 29, 1983.

"President Reagan has substituted a mindless militarism for a foreign policy, rattling arms from El Salvador to Saudi Arabia, frightening our friends from Japan to West Germany. He proposes a 50 percent increase in 'defense expenditures.' Much of it will be dissipated in the self-defeating spiral of an open-ended nuclear-arms race that poses a greater threat to our own internal and external security than all the Communist propaganda that ever emanated from Moscow. Already, the cost of Reagan policies is devastating to our country in economic strength, in diplomatic influence, in national security, in moral stature." -- John B. Oakes, former senior editor, New York Times, November 1, 1981.

"All evidence indicates that the Reagan administration has abandoned both containment and détente for a very different objective: destroying the Soviet Union as a world power and possibly even its Communist system. [This is a] potentially fatal form of Sovietphobia... a pathological rather than a healthy response to the Soviet Union." -- Princeton Professor Stephen Cohen, 1983.

"'We've really got to start talking,' says George Ball, undersecretary of state in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. 'The fact is we've let these fellows get away with murder, and the situation now is much too serious for that.' To ideological men like Ronald Reagan, new information is only useful if it confirms old prejudices. Though he is shrewd enough to bend and budge under pressure (hence, for example, his abandonment of old positions on Taiwan), in his heart Reagan knows he has always been right about the nature of the world, of communism, of America's proper role." - Robert Kaiser, Washington Post, October 30, 1983.

"Are we rushing headlong into the next step of those 40 years of progressions by which we do something then they do something, by which we pretend that we're going to build this and it will somehow strengthen our deterrent then they do it, and low and behold, the next thing we know is, the President of the United States is addressing the nation saying, 'My fellow Americans, I hate to tell you this, but the Soviet Union is deploying more of these, and we have to respond, and I'm asking the Congress for more money in order to respond.' Star Wars is guaranteed to do that, and it's guaranteed to threaten the heavens -- the one line we haven't yet crossed with weaponry: the heavens." -- Senator John Kerry, on SDI, the program that brought the evil empire to its knees, August 5, 1986.

"In his distaste for bilateral efforts to manage the superpower rivalry and his instinctive predilection for unilateral ones, Reagan is counting on American technological and economic predominance to prevail in the end. The most striking, and questionable, theme in his star wars speech was his apparent belief that the U.S. could mobilize its scientific community and its economic resources in quest of an impenetrable antiballistic-missile shield over the entire nation without triggering perilously destabilizing countermeasures, both offensive and defensive, on the part of the U.S.S.R. Reagan's views notwithstanding, there is little reason to hope that the many handicaps of the Soviet economy will be decisively advantageous to the U.S. in the long run, allowing the U.S. to 'beat' the U.S.S.R. in an arms race." -- Strobe Talbott, Time, April 18, 1983.

"Ronald Reagan came to Europe to persuade people that he is not the shallow, nuclear cowboy of certain unkind assessments. Said White House spokesman David Gergen, on the eve of departure, 'Some in Europe do not know or understand him.' But now that the president has been among them for over a week, Europeans may think they got him right the first time. In Rome, he made a stab at identifying himself as a 'pilgrim for peace.' But by the time he got to London he had reverted to type as a cold warrior. And yesterday in Bonn, he reiterated his commitment to 'peace through strength' -- which is fancy talk for continuing the nuclear arms race." - Mary McGrory, Washington Post, June 10, 1982.

Rest in peace, Mr President. And know that after all these years, you were right - and all these people were clearly, emphatically, embarrassingly, wrong.

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2004_06_06_dish_archive.html#108692129124348215

This morning Dinesh D'Souza punctures the left's retrospective conviction that Communism's fall was inevitable, and that Reagan therefore had nothing to do with it:

Writing on Ronald Reagan's achievements in Newsweek, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. notes, "Reagan's admirers contend that his costly re-armament program caused the Soviet collapse. Maybe so; but surely the thing that did in the Russians was that time had proved communism an economic, political and moral disaster."
Funny: Here's Schlesinger in 1982, observing that "Those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse" are "wishful thinkers who are only kidding themselves."

Many historians and pundits have refused to credit Ronald Reagan's policies for helping to bring about the Cold War victory, blaming communism's chronic economic problems. Yet, like Scheslinger, they failed to describe it as inevitable while Reagan was actually in office.

In 1982, the learned Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer of Columbia University wrote in Foreign Affairs: "The Soviet Union is not now nor will it be during the next decade in the throes of a true systemic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused reserves of political and social stability."

But the genius award undoubtedly goes to Lester Thurow, an MIT economist and well-known author who, as late as 1989, wrote: "Can economic command significantly . . . accelerate the growth process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it can. . . . Today the Soviet Union is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States."

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/006865.php#006865

Anybody who thinks Carter would have won WW III (also known as the Cold War) is an idiot. He probably would have kept them in business by giving them bribe money if his North Korea disaster is any example of his skills.

***

We are old enough to recall how Carter proudly announced that the United States had overcome its "inordinate fear of Communism," famously planted a kiss on the cheek of Leonid Brezhnev, and then reacted with shock when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

We also recall how followers of Ayatollah Khomeni took 67 Americans hostage at the American embassy in Tehran. Over the succeeding 444 days, the Carter administration tried idle threats, vain pleas, and ineffectual military action to resolve the hostage crisis. Only the landslide election and subsequent inauguration of Ronald Reagan ultimately freed the hostages and ended the protracted national humiliation.

Henry Kissinger observed that the Carter administration had managed the extraordinary feat of having achieved, at one and the same time, "the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War."

http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2004/06/the_peacenik_pr.html

In truth, while most issues of recent political history are 'open questions', the particular issue that Mrs Kendall alighted upon is not. We have the testimony of Aleksandr Bessmertnykh and Eduard Shevardnadze, both Soviet Foreign Minister under Mikhail Gorbachev: they are adamant that Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative was crucial in convincing the Soviet Union that it had no alternative to concluding arms control agreements and undertaking internal reform.

Reagan's political skills encompassed being able to convince American conservatives that he was one of them; yet he was not. Indeed on the nuclear issue - the one above all on which European protestors converged to denounce him - he was far the most left-wing President ever to hold office. I value Reagan in many respects and consider his commitment to the ideals of political liberty to have been admirable. As the historian Robert Conquest has pointed out, those who complained at Reagan's designation of the USSR as an 'evil empire' never explained whether it was the noun or the adjective they objected to. But the principal reason for my admiration is that Reagan was not the resolute conservative President he is widely assumed to have been.

Reagan seems to have been strongly influenced by the Soviet response to the US and Nato military exercise in November 1983 known as 'Able Archer'. Oleg Gordievsky, then a British agent in the KGB, confirms that the Soviet leadership genuinely mistook this as evidence of a planned nuclear attack, to which their own military doctrine prescribed a pre-emptive nuclear strike. For reasons that remain unknown to western analysts, they obviously did not follow that course. Almost from that moment, Reagan changed the emphasis of his diplomacy towards bilateral summitry and rhetorical reassurance, and took personal charge of foreign policy from his own State Department bureaucracy. The evidence of this shift is presented in compelling detail in Beth A. Fischer's The Reagan Reversal, and I would recommend this lucid and illuminating analysis to any reader who doubts my account.

What does this tell us about Reagan? First, he was prepared to adapt his statecraft to the world around him. Secondly, his biblical literalism and belief in Armageddon, so far from making him a 'trigger-happy' President, impressed upon him the urgency of preventing nuclear war. Thirdly, his personal direction of foreign policy refutes the notion of Reagan as a President dependent on his advisers. Fourthly, he put in place this change of policy before the advent on the scene of Time magazine's badly-chosen 'Man of the Decade', Mikhail Gorbachev; fifthly, the fact that the Soviet leadership so grotesquely misconstrued western intentions supports not the conventional peace movement case for detente and disarmament, but the liberal anti-Communist conviction - which Reagan articulated brilliantly - that pacific relations depend ultimately on the supersession of dictatorship rather than on negotiation with it. All of these points are immensely to the credit of President Reagan, and are exactly contrary to the conventional image of him as being inept and uninterested.

This just shows why it is impossible to argue with consevatives for even when confronted with the fact that you are obviously wrong, you still cling to your party beleifs. You put party before country, before liberty, and certainly before facts...

GORBACHEV SAID THAT REAGAN HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SOVIET UNION"S COLLAPSE!!!!!!!!!

AND THAT REAGAN"S "TOUGHNESS" CAUSED THEM TO BECOME MORE RESOLUTE!!!

But like I said, I am sure your conservative, Reagan loving right-wing pundits are completely unbiased in their analysis and know much more about what happened in the Soviet governement than the people who were actually there leading it and making the decisions.

Goddamn you are fucking stupid and annoying. I hope something heavy falls on your head so I can pull the plug on you like Terry Schiavo and make the world a better place.

So these guys don't count?

We have the testimony of Aleksandr Bessmertnykh and Eduard Shevardnadze, both Soviet Foreign Minister under Mikhail Gorbachev: they are adamant that Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative was crucial in convincing the Soviet Union that it had no alternative to concluding arms control agreements and undertaking internal reform.

***

"AND THAT REAGAN"S "TOUGHNESS" CAUSED THEM TO BECOME MORE RESOLUTE!!!"

So resolute that they lost - bozo. You always go to the losers to find out why the game went the way it did?

Look into the Gorbachev archives a little - don't just cherry-pick to match your bias.

***

Gorbachev said that every time he came to America, he went to California to pay his respects to President Reagan. This time, he said, he wasn't sure that Reagan still recognized him. Nevertheless, Gorbachev said, as long as Reagan lived, whether Reagan knew him or not, he would never come to America without going to see him. It's funny how, after a few years, I've forgotten everything Gorbachev said about policy matters, but I've never forgotten that human tribute.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/006881.php

What's next? You going to tell me how Neville Chamberlain was right all along? That there would have been peace if not for right-wing idiots that wanted war?

ps. I see you've arrived at the usual left-wing fascist solution of killing anyone who doesn't toe the party line.

Why is that republicans are all idiots just because you can find 1 person to quote who backs up your argument. I guess i missed the memo that said Gorbachev is the end all to credible info about the former USSR.

LMFAO. Uhhhh Gorbachev was the one who was in the reform party when the Cold War ended. He was the leader of the Soviet Union. I think he might know a little more about what influenced his policy decisions than your right wing pundits.

I suppose that you think that Soviet journalists know what influences American policy better than the President does? No?

Well just reverse it and that's what your saying about the Soviet Union.

Again, here is what Gorby said

" When Gorbachev was asked about the triumphalist claim [that Reagan's policies brought about the end of the ColdWar], made during the 1992 presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush, he replied simply: "I suppose these are necessary things in a campaign. But if this idea is serious, then it is a very big delusion."

You are suffering under that "very big delusion" as you have been pumped full of right wing hype in order to justify aggressive military actions.

"Gorbachev was the one who was in the reform party when the Cold War ended."

Yes and Reagan was the primary reason that there WAS a reform party for Gorby to be in.

Here was Gorbachev speaking at a session of the Politburo in October 1986, days before he traveled to Reykjavik, Iceland to offer Reagan a groundbreaking disarmament plan, including a 50 percent reduction in nuclear arsenals. If he didn't propose these cuts, Gorbachev told his colleagues:

[W]e will be pulled into an arms race that is beyond our capabilities, and we will lose it because we are at the limit of our capabilities. ... If the new round [of an arms race] begins, the pressures on our economy will be unbelievable.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2102081/

In the last couple years of the Reagan administration, Reagan would propose extravagant measures in arms reductions. His hawkish aides would go along with them, thinking the Soviets would reject them (and the United States would win a propaganda victory). Then, to the surprise of everyone (except perhaps Reagan, who meant the proposals without cynicism), Gorbachev would accept them.

In the end, Reagan and Gorbachev needed each other. Gorbachev needed to move swiftly if his reforms were to take hold. Reagan exerted the pressure that forced him to move swiftly and offered the rewards that made his foes and skeptics in the Politburo think the cutbacks might be worth it.

Gorbachev wasn't the only decisive presence. If Reagan hadn't been president--if Jimmy Carter or Walter Mondale had defeated him or if Reagan had died and George H.W. Bush taken his place--Gorbachev almost certainly would not have received the push or reinforcement that he needed. Those other politicians would have been too traditional, too cautious, to push such radical proposals (zero nukes and SDI) or to take Gorbachev's radicalism at face value.

It was Reagan, in other words, who seems to have been largely responsible for inducing a loss of nerve that caused Moscow to seek a new approach. Gorbachev's assignment was not merely to find a new way to deal with the country's economic problems but also to figure out how to cope with the empire's reversals abroad. For this reason, Ilya Zaslavsky, who served in the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies, said later that the true originator of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) was not Mikhail Gorbachev but Ronald Reagan.

http://www.thehistorynet.com/ahi/blreaganwoncoldwar/index2.html

"Yes and Reagan was the primary reason that there WAS a reform party for Gorby to be in."

Yes, after Reagan backed down from his "evil empire" rhetoric as the article I posted above noted. Before Reagan showed a willingness to back down from the arms race the Soviets were determined to stick it out.

I don't give a shit if Reagan gets credit or not,as unlike conservatives I don't put party allegiances before facts, but don't tell me that Reagan intimidated the Soviets into submission. It was diplomacy that ended the cold war-after Reagan backed down from his hard line stance.

The reason this is important is because the same thing is happening right now with Iran and NK. Intimidating countries run by the powerful elite only makes them more resolved. Look at what we did after 9-11 as evidence. The government here didn't think "Gee Osama thinks we're evil, better cave in and change". Then of course Bush lied us into Iraq and let Osama -a good friend of his family- get away.

In other words, it is the policy you are advocating that I have a problem with, not the fact that it happened on Reagan's watch.

But explain this to me:

Why is it to Reagan's credit and praise that the Cold War ended on his watch, but not Bush's fault that 9-11 happened on his watch?

You gotta take your pick. You can't take credit for the good things and blame other people for the bad. Otherwise you need to take a long hard look at yourself as it sure becomes convenenient that the REpublicans do everything perfectly.

Speaking of which, please name one mistake that the Bush administration has made in their foreign policy, an instance where the Dems were correct, so that you can demonstrate that you don't put your party before your country. Otherwise, I and anyone else stillr eading this will be forced to conclude that you are merely a blind sheep who supports your party whether evidence backs it up or not.

By the way, what do you make of the Downing Street Memo? Still think that Bush was misled by faulty intelligence or are you willing to admit that he outright changed the facts to fit his policy (just as you are doing with Reagan)?

I Used To Be a Neocon

by Drew O'Neill
by Drew O'Neill

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Two years ago I was a neocon. I supported Bush's war on Iraq and I called everyone who didn't a liberal Kool-aid drinker. I voted for Bush in 2000 and I listened to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and just about any right-winger on the radio that I could get a four-word talking point from to use against liberals. I would say things such as "liberals won't defend America," "shut up and sing," "freedom is on the march," and "you're a great American." I supported the war at first because I bought into the lies and propaganda.

I no longer do. I'm a recovering neocon.

The fact is, the neocon movement is a lot like a cult. I don't remember how I got so involved and the details are hazy on how I got out. I just woke up one day and said "WTF!" and then ran outside to rip the "bring it on" sticker off of my car bumper. What pulled me in to the neocon cult however was a combination of American nationalism and group mentality. It was a time when questioning the government's response to Iraq divided you between being with your country and government at a time of need, or against them. I wanted to be with them.

So this cult took me in and I watched Fox News, I bought Factor Gear and I was brainwashed into common reflexes for liberals and dissenters. When I heard dissent in the media over Iraq I'd call it liberal bias. If someone presented me any website that mentioned a "war for oil" or the phrase "illegal war" I would blow the site off as conspiracy hogwash. When someone would talk ill of the President and his march to war, I would call them a liberal and anti-American. When someone would say that Saddam was not a threat after I was done calling them part of the liberal "hate America" crowd, I would launch into a diatribe that Saddam was Hitler-like and hell bent on world domination. If someone persisted I would take out my wild card:

"Saddam believes he's the reincarnation of King Nebuchadnezzar, and he's harboring Al Queda!"

I couldn't believe these liberals. I was outraged. The audacity of them to question our President during a time of war! I listened to similar sentiments on right wing radio while driving to work to reinforce my belief.

Little did I know at the time, but I was an important part of the neocon movement. I was but a tiny wheel in the machine of neoconservatism, but the survival of the neocon agenda depends on millions of us tiny wheels, or it cannot go anywhere. Most of all the neocon agenda depends on a much bigger wheel, the media. For the neocon machine to roll, the big wheel of the media must pull the millions of tiny wheels without the tiny wheels knowing they are being pulled.

This is a difficult trick that requires the media to be an active participant in government deception. To imply that they do so knowingly would be too conspiratorial, and it would be too grand an operation to be plausible. In truth, the mainstream media doesn't believe they are participating in lies.

During the build-up to the war they were being pulled without knowing it, by the engine of the U. S. government. This swarm of nationalism begat a pro-American media, a complacent media, a lapdog media and a corporate media that to this day will not inform the American public.

When the Bush Administration was found to be creating fake news propaganda for public consumption the media did not inform the public. When the Bush administration marched towards pre-emptive war with Iraq the media was a lapdog instead of a watchdog. When the Bush administration described the assault on the Iraqi public as Shock and Awe, the media used that phrase to scroll alongside the words "War on Terror" without questioning if the assault on Iraq had anything to do with terrorism. When the Bush Administration tore into the U. S. Constitution with the Patriot Act, causing the illegal imprisonment of American citizens while denying them counsel, the media acted more like a timid cocker spaniel than an aggressive Doberman pincher, and failed to defend a sacred American document. When the UK's Downing Street memo implicated the Bush Administration as being hell bent on a pre-emptive invasion on Iraq before even going to the UN, the American media was silent and once again failed to inform the public.

But the tiny wheels still want to call the media liberal. The tiny wheels still want to say the media isn't reporting the good things happening in Iraq. Most of all the tiny wheels do not know about the big wheel that's pulling them. But now I do. That's why I am an ex-neocon and I am in recovery. It's more clear to me now than ever that the most American thing one can do is speak out against the actions of their country because it means you love your country.

And in the end it doesn't matter if we are liberals or conservatives because all that matters is that we are on the side of the U.S. Constitution and of international law. Both of which have been thrown into the toilet by this administration. At least the Qur'an has company.

It was the prisoners who flushed the Koran - not their guards.

Where's "international law" when innocent hostages are getting their heads chopped off on TV?

Sure pal, no liberal media. What's yer next act, no liberal professors in Madison?

Not to worry, the USA is soon to be eclipsed by China - I'm sure they'll do a much better job of observing "international law".
http://www.uscc.gov/researchpapers/2000_2003/reports/analysis.htm

To quote: Conclusion

While industrial and military self-sufficiency was U.S. policy for more than two centuries, that policy no longer exists. Instead, the U.S. Government has elected, through many uncoordinated decisions made over a number of years, to globalize the U.S. economy and its defense industrial base.

Consequently, the U.S. manufacturing sector is rapidly hollowing out. Basic and high technology industries are shifting their production, research and development, and now back office functions to other nations. A host of U.S. policies are encouraging these shifts.

One consequence of this policy shift and the economic hollowing out is that a large and growing portion of the manufactured goods used in both the U.S. economy and the U.S. defense sectors are coming from factories based in other nations. More significant, more than half of all merchandise imported into the United States, other than from Canada and Mexico, now comes from factories located in China and the nations that immediately surround it.

Another result is that as the U.S. military increases its reliance on readily available commercial technologies, it is also relying on suppliers located in other nations. Moreover, many of these components, particularly electronics are coming from China and the nations clustered around it. The two key policy questions this raises are: Would that long supply line across the Pacific be secure in time of war and are reliable alternatives available?

Today, the United States Government does not know the source of many key components used in its weapons systems. Without that knowledge, the Department of Defense cannot assure the reliability of supply during a time of prolonged warfare.

Nor can the United States be assured of the integrity of many items it is using in its vast system of electronic networks that underpin both the domestic and military economies. Increasingly, these networks rely on imported components that are vulnerable to sabotage or being modified to carry "Trojan horse" programs and viruses that could be used against the United States in an information war. Moreover, a number of sources claim that China's military doctrine is to make a first strike at an adversary's information system. This is the U.S. "Achilles heel."

Ultimately, the key concern identified in this study is less that of the transfer of high technology capacities to China, which is inevitable, but the hollowing of the US defense industrial base, which is not.

Actually allegations of putting the Quran in the toilet are completely true as admitted by the state deaprtment:

Pentagon Confirms Koran Incidents
'Mishandling' Cases Preceded Guidelines Established in 2003

By Josh White and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, May 27, 2005; Page A01

Pentagon officials said yesterday that investigators have identified five incidents of military guards and an interrogator "mishandling" the Koran at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but characterized the episodes as minor and said most occurred before specific rules on the treatment of Muslim holy items were issued.

Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said investigators have looked into 13 specific allegations of Koran desecration at the prison dating to early 2002 and have determined eight of them to be unfounded, lacking credibility or the result of accidental touching of the holy book. Of the five cases of mishandling, three were "very likely" deliberate and two were "very likely accidental," he said. But Hood declined to provide details, citing an ongoing investigation."

"Another newly released document, dated January 2004, suggested that the FBI would "finally make an arrest" in connection with "interrogations in June 2003 when an FBI agent was impersonated." No such arrest has been publicly announced.

In several e-mails, FBI agents angrily complained about the impersonations and suggested that the ruse was aimed in part at avoiding blame for any subsequent public allegations of abuse.

The earlier documents also included e-mails from FBI agents who said they had witnessed Guantanamo Bay detainees being shackled to the floor for days at a time, deprived of food and water and left to defecate on themselves."

I can smell the freedom! Oh no wait, that's the shit stink of letting uncharged, indefinitely detained prisoners shit on themselves.

"Actually allegations of putting the Quran in the toilet are completely true as admitted by the state deaprtment:"

Do you even read what you quote? I didn't see anything about a toilet.

I did read the story and saw this tho:

But the Pentagon said yesterday that the same prisoner, who is still in custody, was reinterviewed on May 14 and "did not corroborate" his earlier claim about the Koran.

and this:

Whitman said in his statement last night that al Qaeda members have been trained to lie about their treatment during incarceration, and that officials at Guantanamo Bay have had "a great deal of sensitivity to the importance of the Koran and other religious items and practices and . . . extensive procedures were put in place to respect the cultural dignity of the Koran." In January 2003, the Pentagon issued rules for handling the holy book.

***

Flushing Out the Story

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 27, 2005; 8:51 AM

The latest, from the New York Times: "An American military inquiry has uncovered five instances in which guards or interrogators at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba mishandled the Koran, but found 'no credible evidence' to substantiate claims that it was ever flushed down a toilet, the chief of the investigation said on Thursday.

***

All in all, they are on vacation compared to how prisoners are treated by the terrorists - I'd rather shit myself than have my head cut off.

All Korans should be removed from Gitmo to preclude any possibility of abuse. I understand burning is the prescibed method of disposal. It should be a public and world-wide telivised burning so everyone knows it was done properly. Sometimes, exactly following all the rules can really piss off the rulemakers. After all, the approved method of disposing of US Flags has long been that they be destroyed by burning but look how upset some people get about flag burning they see on TV.

Aren't NEWSWEEK and the WP owned by the same people?

***

In this morning's coverage of Koran abuse allegations at Gitmo, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Boston Globe, Reuters, and Associated Press all mention in their lead paragraph that the Pentagon found no credible evidence that a guard flushed the Koran down a toilet. The Washington Post, on the other hand, does not bother to mention the Koran-flushing incident until its fourth paragraph and does not note until the thirteenth paragraph that the detainee who made that allegation has retracted it.

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/002578.htm

A number of detainees were concerned about relatively mundane issues such as lack of privacy, lack of bed sheets, being unwillingly photographed, the guards' use of profanity, and bad food (like "the zoo," said one critic). If lack of privacy or bed sheets is a detainee's main concern, it is doubtful that the detainee is being tortured (unless the definition of "torture" is so ridiculously broad as to be meaningless).

Several detainees indicated they had not experienced any mistreatment whatsoever at Gitmo, including one detainee who claimed he was mistreated at Kandahar prior to his transfer to Cuba.

One detainee disputed claims that guards had mistreated the Koran. The detainee said that riots resulted from claims that a guard dropped the Koran. In actuality, the detainee said, a detainee dropped the Koran then blamed a guard. (This detainee is apparently more skeptical of Koran-abuse allegations than the Washington Post, which neglected to mention this tidbit.)

In one case, Gitmo interrogators apologized to a detainee for interviewing him prior to the end of Ramadan, giving lie to the MSM portrayal of guards and interrogators as Koran-dropping, Koran-kicking, Koran-flushing, Islamophobic thugs.

Don't take my word for it. But don't take Kos's word for it either. Or the Washington Post's. Go read some or all of the FBI documents yourself and draw your own conclusions.

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/002566.htm

You wanted one mistake the Bush administration has made in foreign policy, here's 1, Going to the UN before taking Saddam out. Any organization (UN) that claims to care about human rights has no credibility when they sit back and allow dictators like saddam to take and keep power.

Wow, so this is what the extremists idiots do when summer comes and they are loaded with free time. Unless you are discussing Feingold or McCain all politicians are scum.

Yup, that Feingold/McCain election funding disaster was sure an exellent example of the bipartisan bull shit that results from the evil party working with the stupid party to produce an evil stupid law!

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SPAM cleanup on aisle 3

Well, the French elite are pissed off now - even the French proles can't be counted on to vote as their betters have determined best. Maybe they'll be able to find some extra votes ala Washington state.

***

The latest news? France has rejected the EU Constitution, effectively terminating that gigantic mistake for the foreseeable future. Unless, as when Ireland rejected an EU "proposal" a few years back, the EU angrily makes the French vote again and again until it obtains the desired result.

Sort of like how Democrats treat ballot counting in the U.S....

You know you're a Republican when...

...Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.

...trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is Communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

...A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.

...Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.

...the best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.

...providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.

...global warming is junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

...being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

Namecalling is a sure sign of one of two things:

An intelligent mind which realizes it is losing the argument; or

A lazy mind no longer willing to engage the argument.

Can i still be a republican if i don't agree with any of those?

"Can i still be a republican if i don't agree with any of those?"

I am and I don't, but then athiest, pro-choice, anti-ID republicans are pretty thin on the ground.

If you don't want to be called names I would suggest stoppping suppporting the Bush terror regime.

April 12, 2005
By Ernest Partridge, The Crisis Papers

The 2006 mid-term election - a scenario:

By late summer, 2006, the United States is in a desperate condition. Following the collapse of the dollar in international currency markets, there has been a cascade of business failures and mortgage foreclosures, and a precipitous rise in unemployment, as the US economy slides inexorably into a depression. Meanwhile, the June 2005 American attack on Iran and the continuing war in Iraq has made the United States an international pariah state; thus the community of nations shows no inclination whatever to rescue the United States from its economic collapse.

In the run-up to the 2006 election, the mainstream media has once again fallen in line behind the Republicans, blaming the depression on the Clinton Administration, al Qaeda, and/or betrayal by "Old Europe." The crimes and outrages of the Bush/GOP syndicate have been unreported by the media, as Democratic war veterans running for office against GOP draft-dodgers have once again been castigated as "unpatriotic."

For their part, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and the religious right have proclaimed that these economic and diplomatic catastrophes manifest God's judgment on the American people for their toleration of gays, abortion, the ACLU, the teaching of evolution, and independent judges.

This time, the public is unconvinced by the GOP propaganda, as massive protest demonstrations erupt throughout the country. Finally fed up with the lies and greed of the GOP, and finally aware of just how much their livelihood and their future has been plundered by Bushenomics, more than two-thirds of the voters are about to go to the polls determined to throw out the Republican Congress.

While a few honest polls forecast a landslide victory for the Democrats, most of these polls have not been published.

The Republican-owned and Republican-coded "black-box" voting machines once again perform as intended, and the Republicans retain control of Congress.

The astonished and disappointed public is once again told to "get over it."

Beyond that, my crystal ball becomes cloudy.

The implied question in this scenario is clear: if GOP partisans own the voting machines, count the votes, refuse to allow independent validation of the tallies, and if the Republicans choose to take advantage of this opportunity for fraud, is there any way -- any way at all -- that the Democrats could win the 2006 election and regain control of Congress?

If not, then why do the Democrats persist in looking hopefully to 2006 - "the next time?" After all, 2002 and 2004 were "the next time," and there is abundant evidence that in both cases, the peoples' will was reversed by the Diebold and ES&S black boxes.

Clearly, the Democratic Party and its allies look forward to victory in 2006 because they are in denial: they simply cannot bring themselves to face the compelling evidence that in the United States today, the electoral process is rigged, thus the will of the people is irrelevant to the governance of the nation, and thus the United States has ceased to be a democracy.

Neither the 2004 Democratic Party candidate, John Kerry, nor the Party's Chairman, Howard Dean, will publicly entertain the notion that the fix is in. The issue of electoral fraud is simply not on the agenda of the Democratic National Committee. Prominent progressives such as Vermont's Bernie Sanders, Al Franken, Paul Begala, and Arianna Huffington insist that Bush won the election, "fair and square," and that the "anomalies" in Florida and Ohio were not sufficient to have determined the outcome.

As for the media, actor and activist Peter Coyote reports that there is a lock-down order throughout the mainstream media that the issue of electoral integrity is simply not to be mentioned. Violation of the order can be a career-ender. And in fact, with the exception of Keith Olbermann, one is hard-pressed to identify anyone in the MSM who has mentioned the issue.

And so today, political discourse is captivated by the assumption that in 2004 George Bush won a majority of both the popular and the electoral votes, and thus, unlike 2000, is now the undisputably legitimate President of the United States. In addition, it is assumed without debate that the Republicans have legitimate control of the Congress. The "success" of the Republicans and the "failure" of the Democrats is now the frame within which all political discussion resides.

Suppose instead that in 2002 and 2004 every intended vote had been correctly counted, and as a result John Kerry was now the President, and the Democrats controlled the Senate and quite possibly the House as well. The pundits would now be writing about the resurgence of liberalism and the Democratic Party, and, at the same time, speculating as to the causes of the "failure" of The Right, and the public's rejection of George Bush.

The evidence of massive election fraud in 2004 is compelling, and continues to accumulate, despite the media lock-down. Just last week, a group of university statisticians released a report which calculates at a million to one the probability that the discrepancy between the exit polls (indicating a Kerry victory) and the final results was due to random error.

Because I have discussed at length the evidence for fraud in the 2004 election, I will not repeat it here. But for those who wish to have yet another look at the evidence, see The Crisis Papers page, "Was Election 2004 a Fraud?" Suffice to say that as the evidence accumulates, the media remains mute and the public remains unconcerned.

Clear, contrary evidence that the election returns were accurate and the outcome legitimate is simply non-existent. This is because the election procedure was designed to not provide validation. The software source-codes were secret, there was no paper record, and there was no parallel validation procedure for the centralized compilation of voting totals. To the repeated plea for validation, all that the voting-machine technicians could say is "trust us" -- "us" being partisan Republicans who built, coded, and operated the voting machines.

Aside from the now-familiar GOP retorts of "get over it!" and "don't be paranoid," the crux of the case of electoral legitimacy is "they wouldn't dare rig the election," or alternatively, "the Republicans have too much respect for our democracy to do such a thing."

With much less provocation than this, the citizens of Ukraine and the Republic of Georgia demanded, and got, new elections, which reversed the outcomes of the corrupted elections.

As most CSI and Law and Order viewers are well aware, in their search for suspects, detectives look first of all for "means, motive and opportunity."

The means for election fraud are so obvious and indisputable that even the Republicans will not dispute them. The means, of course, are the machines and secret software of the Diebold and ES&S corporations that recorded more than 30% of the votes cast, and 80% of the votes centrally compiled, in the 2004 Presidential election.

The lack of an independent paper record or any other mode of verification, the minuscule chance of discovery, and the accommodating silence of the media provides the opportunity.

There remains the question of motive.

Remember, first of all, that 2004 was not an ordinary Presidential re-election contest whereby, should the incumbent lose, he graciously concedes to the winner and then retires to play golf, give speeches at one-hundred grand a pop, or even do sufficient good deeds to eventually win a Nobel Peace Prize.

In this election, the stakes were much higher. The Republicans gathered and invested a half billion dollars in order to win, and they did so for good reason. In Bush's first term, billions of dollars were transferred from the poor, the middle class, the federal treasury, and future generations, to the super-wealthy, with many billions more to come in a second Bush term. Many of Bush's friends and benefactors, possibly including his Vice President, have engaged in massive graft and bribery -- for example, hundreds of millions of dollars of Iraq reconstruction funds "lost" by Halliburton, and billions of dollars of California utility bills swindled by Enron. Still more crimes: Condi Rice's perjury before the 9/11 commission, the "outing" of CIA agent Valerie Plame, Tom DeLay's attempted bribery of Congressman Nick Smith. God only knows what else a Democratic Attorney General and Democratic Congressional investigations might uncover.

The Bush syndicate did not simply wish to stay in office. They plausibly had an even greater motive to stay out of the Federal slammer.

So it comes down to this: in the 2004 election, the Bush team and the Republican party had a treasure trove of means and opportunity dropped in their laps. They could, if they chose, key in any election result they wanted; for example, they could swing a Senate race by nine points or a Governor's race by fifteen points (as it appears they did in Georgia, 2002). And, if the 2004 early exit polls were in fact accurate, in the Presidential race it now appears that they could drop the Democrat's percentage by five points, and boost the Republican's total by the same amount. Thanks to the secret codes and back-door access to the voting machines, and thanks in addition to the cooperation of the corporate media, they could do all this without fear of detection.

Mindful of the record of this Administration during the past four years, the enormous personal and financial consequences, as noted above, of an election defeat, and the likelihood of that defeat as indicated by the polls, can we really expect them to have said, in effect, "yes, we could steal this election without consequence, but it wouldn't be right, so we choose to be honest?"

If you believe this, then I have a stack of Enron stock that I'd like to sell you.

Clearly, the Bush syndicate had abundant means, motive and opportunity to commit a crime against the state, in a word treason, and there is compelling evidence that they have done just that. Neither the enforced silence of the media nor the cowardly inaction of the Democrats mitigate this evidence by one iota.

The over-arching question, then, is "when will the public wake up to this silent coup d'etat?"

For the issue before us is no longer the protection of American democracy. It's too late for that. The issue instead is the restoration of American democracy. And at the moment, that issue is very much in doubt.

Another posting from the tin-foil hat contingent.

No need to argue politics as long as the republicans control the voting machines.

Funny how republicans will never refute the facts of the stolen election but instead call names. I guess in their world statistical impossibilities are facts and everyone else is a "tinfoil hat" wearer.

The conspiracy theory here is that Bush won the election. There is more evidence for UFO's than that Bush won the elction.

As I recall, it was the dummycrats that insisted that paper ballots be eliminated. This had something to do with dummycrats not being able to understand how to use the infamous "butterfly ballots" which were, of course, designed by a dummycrat.

I would suggest that all elections be done using paper ballots but that would involve using pencils, which can be sharp and could injure unwary dummycrats - and then they would insist on eliminating paper and then ...

No one has a problem with electronic voting machines it is the fact that they don't have a paper trail that is the problem.

Democrats: We need to make voting easier, lets use electronic touch screen machines with paper trails.

Republicans: Yes lets use electronic machines but we are firmly against their being a paper trail.

I have yet to hear a republican explain why their party members were so firmly against paper trails.

What did they have to lose by having a record of how people voted if they were not manipulating the votes?

I don't know of any Republicans that refuse to have a paper trail but then I don't have any idea of what this "paper trail" would consist of. What would the paper trail process be? What would be recorded? When would the record be made? What kind of paper would be used? Who has custody of the paper? What would be done with the paper?

t has been a long day for Clinton Curtis.

Curtis, who signed an affidavit which has been delivered to the House Judiciary Committee, has accused Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) of requesting the development of software which would allow vote totals to be tampered. Feeney, who now sits on Judiciary, was then the general counsel and lobbyist for Curtis'-then employer, Yang Enterprises, as well as a rising star of the Florida state congress.

His allegations have raised a deluge of questions. Why now? What is his agenda? What made him decide to come forward?

The 46-year-old fielded some of these questions Monday in an exclusive interview with RAW STORY.

Curtis says he first leveled charges to the CIA, the FBI and other agencies, none of whom seemed to take an interest, and in a book, published in September. None of these venues, he said, drew much concern. So when he heard of a $200,000 award being offered by the nonprofit group Justice through Music for proof of voting fraud, he bit.

"I contacted Justice through Music," Curtis says. But "I told him that I didn't want the reward because I didn't want to taint the equation."

A spokesman for Justice through Music confirmed the reward is still available.

Since then, he has found an outlet among those in the blogosphere, where his affidavit was first released on The Brad Blog. Two newspapers have begun the process of vetting his claims. The Floridian's appearance in Washington, and the delivery of his affidavit to Congress, may signal a deeper investigation in progress.

While he stresses that the development of a prototype of vote-rigging software does not of itself indicate fraud took place, he is certain that the intent of Rep. Feeney, who he charges commissioned the code, was to taint the election.

Curtis has been tangled in long-running disputes with Feeney that date back to his years as a state legislator. Feeney was cleared on an ethics violation charge after the Feeney-friendly ethics committee (Feeney was speaker of the Florida House) found no wrongdoing.

"He definitely had the intent to do it," Curtis says. "And he bragged about trying to adjust the vote in the previous [2002] election, not with the machines but the minority lists and things like that."

"They're willing to win," he says. "They're willing to play the game and win."

Curtis doesn't mince words in his opinion of Feeney: on his website, he calls him a "total piece of crap." When representing Yang Enterprises, Curtis' former employer, Feeney was the only dually registered lobbyist and state congressman, and he once promised to put Florida in the Bush column in 2000 even if it meant defying the courts.

For his part, Feeney has strenuously denied the wrongdoing of Curtis' previous charges. On this claim, however, he has remained decidedly mum. Two calls placed by RAW STORY Monday were not returned.

When asked why it took him so long to come forward with his story, Curtis stresses that even after hearing that there was intent to potentially use the program for ill ends, he knew it would never work, because the source code would have to be vetted before it was approved for Florida's voting machines.

That was, until it became clear that those providing the source code for voting machines would not provide access to their code. Despite the fact that federal officials called for access to the code, nothing was done.

In a way, he says he blames Democrats for not requiring a paper trail for Florida voters.

"I can't believe the Democrats were stupid enough to allow [this]," he says. "I can't imagine anyone going to a bank and not getting a receipt. But yet we have our voting machines that way. It strikes me as really odd that machines like that could even exist."

If the program were used, he says, its probably too late to ever detect.

"If you inspect the code, you will see it," he states. "Once the vote is flipped, you will not. Once it flips those, the other number is permanently gone. There's not receipt, there's no trace, there's no track."

"You could be watching the guy do it, and unless you watched his every move, you would never know," he adds.

What does he hope to get out of his claims?

"If the Democrats ever want to win again, they need to change," he says. "You've got to get rid
of the machines and replace [them] with verifiable source code that only counts votes."

This way, he says, you can "get a standard, clean vote."

Knowing that another Florida investigator investigating his charges in Florida was found dead, in what was ruled a suicide but which he and others still have questions about doesn't deter him he says. Safety, he claims, is less important than the story he's trying to get out.

"Sometimes you just have to give that up," he says. "Some things are more important. The more the story gets out, and the more I say, the safer I am."

And adds, "Probably."

Posting whole articles is really annoying.

The fact that the exit polls were only wrong in places with electronic voting machines, and then only with those machines that had no paper trail (ie. receipt or record of some kind on paper) certainly seems like ground enough to me to at least warrant examination and explanation. That is not a conspiracy theory. It is a fact. It might simply have been a system glitch, but since there is no paper trail we can never know. Of course it does seem odd that the mistakes that were caught were 98% in favor of Bush rather than Kerry.

It amazes me that Republicans want to make this into a partisan issue. Are you so blinded by your party loyalties? Something screwy happened with the machines and if the situation were reversed and Kerry won, I'd be in favor of investigating it as well.

The fact that our electoral process may well have been tampered with seems like it should concern all Americans-at least those that don't put party before country. I find it disgusting and traitorous that you would rather see a Republican administration in office illegally rather than the candidate that the people have chosen-whomever that might be.

As I have said before, there was no reason for REpublicans not to want a paper tally as well as an electronic one unless they were planning on doing something to the vote tally.

Bush beat statistically impossible odds in beating the exit polls. And exit polls were only inaccurate in states with these machines.

How can you explain that away? He might have won anyway-fine. All people like me want is an investigation. We spent 50 billion investigating whether Clinto lied about adultery, but we can't investigate our own process being rigged.

Remember Republicans, you might agree with the Bush policies now, but what happens if they start getting even more rightwing and you find them intolerable? then your vote won't count anymore than the rest of ours...

I'm a Republican and I want paper ballots!

Anyone in their right mind wants a paper trail for votes.

That is why I question why the Republicans decided to eliminate paper trails from e-voting machines.

I don't think most republican officials were in on vote manipulation if it happened, they were simply voting the party line, but someone somewhere had a reason for wanting the votecount to be unverifiable.

My favored rationale for the exit poll failure is that Bush haters were so motivated that they were early to the polls and thus over-represented while Bush supporters waited until after work - or voted absentee like five voters at my house.

An evil idea is that the pollsters were Kerry supporters and hoped that early calls of Kerry winning would affect the results.

Here are some other thoughts:

***

Here's a guess. Perhaps most of them were conducted in cities, not small towns and rural areas, skewing the results toward Kerry. Urban voters are more likely to be Democrats, after all. This is just a guess, though. As far as I know, media outlets haven't published their exit poll methodologies.

***

"Either there is a huge methodological flaw in the exit polling data, or there has been a transformative change in the nature of the electorate. The former is far more likely."

http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_11_02_corner-archive.asp#044639

Exit polls are so accurate that we use them in other countries to check for vote rigging.

Before 2000 the accuracy of exit polls was approaching zero ever since they started. They do not only conduct polls in cities, they are well aware of that bias and countless others. Lets not forget that these are polling companies that compete with one another. The more accurate they are the more business they get.

Furthermore the articl published this week shows that changing vote tallies would be insanely easy:

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/11811936.htm
-----------------------
All it takes is the right access.

Get that, and an election worker could manipulate voting results in the computers that read paper ballots - without leaving any digital fingerprints.

That was the verdict after Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho invited a team of researchers to look for holes in election software.

The group wasn't able to crack the Diebold system from outside the office. But, at the computer itself, they changed vote tallies, completely unrecorded.

Sancho said it illustrates the need for tight physical security, as well as a paper trail that can verify results, which the Legislature has rejected.

Black Box Voting, the non-profit that ran the test and published a report on the Internet, pointed to the findings as proof of an elections system clearly vulnerable to corruption.

But state officials in charge of overseeing elections pooh-poohed the test process and dismissed the group's report.

"Information on a blog site is not viable or credible," said Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for the Department of State.
----------------------

Notice that the state legislature that does not want paper trails is Republican controlled.

Yet again, I ask what other reason could there possible be for this other than messing with the tally?

If everything is on the up and up, paper trails should be no problem. So why are Florida republicans dead set against them?

I am all for voter Id's too by the way, as long as everyone knows they need one when they register to vote or in states like here it is made a PSA. I don't want fraud on either side.

All I ask is that people admit that there is real evidence here that calls for an investigation. Dismissing it as a conspiracy theory is absurd. Maybe it was simply a machine error, but something odd is definitely going on with the e-voting machines.

Since I am more liberal than conservative and since most errors caught were for bush and since republicans are the ones who want no record of the vote, I tend to think that someones hands were in the cookie jar here. Not everyone has to beleive that, but I think anyone in their right mind should be for verifiable, standardized voting procedures that are as impartial as possible and allow as many people to vote as possible.

I still don't see any explaination of what a "paper trail" is or how it would work. It sounds good but exactly what is it.

PS. The best paper trail is using paper ballots.

I am surprised that you can't understand what a paper trail is, but I guess I need to explain it to you.

After you vote on a touch screen machine it would print out a receipt of who you voted for that could be kept and counted later if the results were questioned.

The current machines where the exit polls were wrong have no paper record, only electronic tallies. There is no way to check the vote count. Whatever the machine says, is the vote count.

Democrats wanted a paper trail. Republicans like those in Florida have blocked any paper evidence from the machines. Diebold makes ATM machines that have paper receipts so it is not a technology issue. Colorado has machines with paper trails. Their exit polls were correct.

I have no problem with paper ballots, but I don't see how they are any more efficent than emachines with paper receipts.

The real issue here is: what is the republican motive behind voting against verifiable voting? And why were the exit polls inaccurate in only those places where these paperless machines were?

Its funny how the same polling companies had spot on results in states where vote counts could be checked, but in places where there was no way to check the vote tally all of a sudden their methods became so inaccurate as to make the results way outside the margin of error. This holds true whether the state/county/precinct went for kerry or bush.

Still think it is a tinfoil hat conspiracy?

"After you vote on a touch screen machine it would print out a receipt of who you voted for that could be kept and counted later if the results were questioned."

The receipt is kept by me? What happens if I lose my receipt? Who's going to count it later and how do they decide it needs to re-counted? What if not everyone brings their receipt in? How is the secret ballot maintained? Do I get another receipt for my original receipt?

Yup, that Feingold/McCain election funding disaster was sure an exellent example of the bipartisan bull shit that results from the evil party working with the stupid party to produce an evil stupid law!

More on the idiocy of McCain-Feingold:

Will McCain-Feingold Control Political Bloggers?

Faced with a mandate from a federal court to extend some aspects of campaign finance laws to include the Internet, the FEC finds itself in the awkward position of proposing rules it didn't want to write in the first place.

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3509786

"The receipt is kept by me? What happens if I lose my receipt? Who's going to count it later and how do they decide it needs to re-counted? What if not everyone brings their receipt in? How is the secret ballot maintained? Do I get another receipt for my original receipt?"

Are you kidding me man?

You're not really this stupid, are you?

The receipt is kept by me?

-No, it would be kept the same way paper ballots are kept.

What happens if I lose my receipt?
-N/A

Who's going to count it later and how do they decide it needs to re-counted?

-I have no idea. Presumably the same way they do now. If the victory is within a certain margin of error. or they could just always count the receipts and see if they match the electronic tally

What if not everyone brings their receipt in?

-N/A
How is the secret ballot maintained?
same way as now

Do I get another receipt for my original receipt?

-n/a

I am not saying that e-voting is a good thing, but you have still not answered why republicans voted against such paper trails.

Nor have you answered why the states that had machines with no paper trails were the only ones that were outside the margin of error.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE IRAQ QUAGMIRE

WE ARE BEING FLEECED FOR OUR TAX DOLLARS WHILE CREATING GENEREATIONS MORE OF TERRORISTS

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8101422/site/newsweek/
Living and working in Iraq, it's hard not to succumb to despair. At last count America has pumped at least $7 billion into reconstruction projects, with little to show for it but the hostility of ordinary Iraqis, who still have an 18 percent unemployment rate. Most of the cash goes to U.S. contractors who spend much of it on personal security. Basic services like electricity, water and sewers still aren't up to prewar levels. Electricity is especially vital in a country where summer temperatures commonly reach 125 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet only 15 percent of Iraqis have reliable electrical service. In the capital, where it counts most, it's only 4 percent.

The most powerful army in human history can't even protect a two-mile stretch of road. The Airport Highway connects both the international airport and Baghdad's main American military base, Camp Victory, to the city center. At night U.S. troops secure the road for the use of dignitaries; they close it to traffic and shoot at any unauthorized vehicles. More troops and more helicopters could help make the whole country safer. Instead the Pentagon has been drawing down the number of helicopters. And America never deployed nearly enough soldiers. They couldn't stop the orgy of looting that followed Saddam's fall. Now their primary mission is self-defense at any cost--which only deepens Iraqis' resentment.

The four-square-mile Green Zone, the one place in Baghdad where foreigners are reasonably safe, could be a showcase of American values and abilities. Instead the American enclave is a trash-strewn wasteland of Mad Max-style fortifications. The traffic lights don't work because no one has bothered to fix them. The garbage rarely gets collected. Some of the worst ambassadors in U.S. history are the GIs at the Green Zone's checkpoints. They've repeatedly punched Iraqi ministers, accidentally shot at visiting dignitaries and behave (even on good days) with all the courtesy of nightclub bouncers--to Americans and Iraqis alike. Not that U.S. soldiers in Iraq have much to smile about. They're overworked, much ignored on the home front and widely despised in Iraq, with little to look forward to but the distant end of their tours--and in most cases, another tour soon to follow. Many are reservists who, when they get home, often face the wreckage of careers and family.

President Bush's approach to North Korea and Iran has been the right one, but the United States will have to take the initiative sooner or later to deal directly with those nations rather than rely on surrogate negotiators, former President Bill Clinton told FOX News' Greta Van Susteren.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,158713,00.html