- Primary-school enrollment has jumped 20 percent over the Saddam years, according to the Brookings Institution's Iraq Index.
- Iraq's GDP rebounded by an estimated 50 percent in 2004, according to the IMF, mostly due to increased oil revenues. About one-third of Iraqis are unemployed -- an alarming rate -- but this is significantly better than two years ago, when half or more of Iraqis were unemployed.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Washington Times — Under-reported News from Iraq
Today's Washington Times starts a new series of under-reported stories from Iraq. In today's editorial, the Times notes:
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110 comments:
More evidence that Kerry was right:
. TERRORIZING IRAQI CHILDREN
Picking up where Chrenkoff left off, I suppose. Good for them.
Welcome to the Iraq Stock Market!
Don't forget the dinar.
David remember the Domino theory? Remember how all of Indochina was going to turn communist if we left Vietnam? What happened? Is Thailand communist? Cambodia might still be a halfassed monarchy today if Kissinger and Nixon hadn't destabilized it. But they did and who stopped Pol Pot? Why the Vietnamese who hated the Red Chinese supported goon on their border murdering millions of his own people. Then what did they do when they booted PP's butt out of power? They left.
Huh? The Domino theory was that if Viet Nam fell, SE Asia would fall. And sure enugh, Viet Nam is communist (and how many millions died in "re-education" and trying to escape?); Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge (six million in the killng fields and a 13 year civil war to throw them out); Laos fell to the Pathet Lao; Burma is now a "Socialist republic". So you're notion that the Domino Theory didn't hold is that Thailand managed to resist?
Don't be a fool.
If 68% of your GDP is based on oil when the price goes up so does your GDP Petey. They could be making more but unfortunately they are pumping at lower rates than they were in Saddam's time. Partly because of the insurgency and partly because Saddam seriously damaged some wells with reckless pumping techniques in the year before the invasion.
Hmmm. Iraq is producing about 2.1 million bpd now, down from a max of 2.6 million bpd. They've lost capacity through the insugency and because Saddam pissed in the soup. They're regaining capacity because the US and Japan are spending big money to help, and the money is now going to a popularly elected government instead of being used to build palaces, line the pockets of middlemen, and be buried as US cash in people's back yards. Despite all that, they expect to be back to prewar capacity by 1Q06.
What was your point again? Your argument seems a little unclear.
Markg8: No other nations are stepping up to help Bush help Iraq.
TOKYO, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Iraq plans to boost its crude oil production by about a quarter to reach pre-war levels of 2.6 million barrels per day (bpd) next year, Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum said on Tuesday.
Output will rise as Japan helps violence-torn Iraq improve its southern oil terminals, the main gateway for overseas shipments, boosting exports to 2 million bpd, officials said after a meeting between the countries' top energy policy-makers.
"Cambodians murdering millions of their own"?
Don't tell that to Noam Chomsky, you'll be excommunicated. Don't you know, that never happened.
Seneca how many millions died in "re-education" and trying to escape Vietnam? A lot less than died during the war.
I'd probably place a bet on that --- people weren't risking death to escape South Viet Nam during the war --- but in any case, your point would be what? Surely you're not sufficiently uneducated as to think there wasn't a war before the US?
We left the SV the third largest air force in the world. What we didn't leave them was a functioning uncorrupt government. They didn't have the will to fight for the kind of government we believe in because they didn't have the kind of government we believe in.
Funny you should mention that, given that they actually had a functioning government when we left. Then the Congress cut off all aid in '73, and the NVA and their Russian sponsors poured something like 40 divisions across the border. If you had a little more education from someplace other than CBS retrospectives, you'd know the ARVN fought hard and well, but were overwhelmed by (as usual in any protracted struggle) the side with better logistics.
And why did the NVA have better logistics? Because a Democrat-controlled congress cut the ARVN's supply lines.
Really, Mark, try to think more than a snarky sentence ahead, you're no fun to play with.
Markg8:
Yeah I've heard many times over the last 3 years about how oil output, water or electricity is going to increase.
Reality:
Electricity production in Iraq averages 4,700 megawatts, a total that exceeds pre-war levels, servicing an estimated 14 million Iraqi homes.
Mark:
You are a moron. No one wants to be occupied, but they want the terrorists and the Baathists even less.
Needless to say when we can leave we will.
I remember when the Iraqi blogger Salman Pax asked George Galloway if the fact that more than 80% of the Iraqi people wanted the coalition to stay until the Iraqis could provide for their own security meant any difference to him, Galloway did not deny it, he just said it was not the job of the coalition to provide security for the Iraqis.
I guess the left thinks that the Iraqis are hoping the west will abandom then again, like they did after the Gulf War so that hundreds of thousands of them can end up in mass graves. Yep, I am sure that is what they want.
I remember the antiwar people during Viet Nam because I was one of them. When the South fell and the communists took over and starting killing people, a lot of the leaders in the US were happy about it. They did not care about the boat people or the reeducation camps and they were completely indifferent to the Khmer Rouge. They wanted the communists to win.
It disgusted me enough at the time that I became disillusioned with the American Left. The fact that they are still out there peddling their sanitized view of the Killing Fields and the boat people speaks volumes of their pathological flights of fancy.
BTW, mark, if we were going to set back and let the fascists have their way in Iraq you guys really should have started burning flags back in the 90's when the left still pretended they were not fascists themselves.
But no, Clinton pretty well made confilct inevitable and then sat back and let someone else do the heavy lifting.
Plausible deniability. In a decade if Iraq actually works out the Democrats will be saying the whole thing was their idea in the first place. That is how they operate.
They managed to take all the credit for the Civil Rights Act didn't they?
And the North Vietnamese treated all the South Vietnamese as brothers and provided for their every need and and wanted nothing but the best for them and there were never any boat people....
and the Viet Cong were only interested in doing the right thing and never wiped out any villages or anything and the communists all over the world came out in loud protests when the Khmer Rouge began systematic slaughter.......
mark:
Why would I want to start a war in Viet Nam? I am not French.
I am just telling you that there were a lot of communists in the American left. After all it was decades ago and being a communist was kinda cool.
In fact Chomsky loved the Khmer Rouge.
And if you think the insurgents can not win in Iraq then why not allow the elections to take place and the Iraqis to finish up building their Security forces?
This is where the left has shot itself in the foot, by aligning itself with the head hackers and demanding an immediate withdrawal they have actually created a situation in which it is less likely that we can leave right away.
These guys will follow us home, you are fooling yourself if you think they will not.
The terrorists are fanatics, they can not win but that did not keep Osama from sending those planes and if they percieve we are weak they will use that weakness. And everyone will suffer.
In truth I think it will take a long time before Iraq really settles down and there may be a low level fight there for years. But then the same is true for Afghanistan.
So why don't all you revionist historians and self hating former lefties advocate starting another Vietnam War?
Because a skillful carpenter sometimes uses a hammer, and sometimes uses an awl.
I'm sure they'll greet us with flowers and candy this time. Sure you'll be safe at home behind your keyboards but your conscience will be salved in the blood of more untold thousands if not millions.
Actually, Mark, I volunteered during Viet Nam (failed the physical), and spent many years doing intelligence work.
Make up your minds will ya? You say the insurgents can't win in Iraq and I agree with that.
Sadly, Mark, you're wrong again: under certain conditions the insurgents can win.
Is there any point in imflaming the situation by killing more?
Yes: stopping killing the insurgents and leaving is the condition under which they could win.
Hey, if that Iraqi girl with the kitty cats says her life is hell, then I say give OPEC to Osama and fall back to America First.
Screw China & Japan, too--and lets kill WalMart and get the UAW back up and running so our most vulnerable Americans can be kept on the blue plantations, poor and pliable!
But, shouldn't we first try to ascertain if maybe the kid with the kittys and the hellish life might be squabbling with Ma & Pa over hoodoo the dishes?
"Saint Ronnie"--I was down there, for fluidos de Perforacion and CorpoVen, in the 70s and 80s. I know what the Sandinistas were up to, and I know what JFKerry and Tom "oops, that wasn't combat?" Harkin were doing to help Daniel Ortega, and I know how hugely much better the Latin American economies--and the people who make the markets, from fruit stall vendors to copper mine workers--have been doing since "Saint Ronnie" got rid of the commies for them.
The little people that Kerry and Harkin were down there pretending to care about (as they worked their DC politcal angles) didn't have a chance before "Saint Ronnie" took them in hand--and the people who're invested in the Kerry 'sort-of' America never forgave him for the great humanitarian work.
Or, more precisely, for doing it at the head of the party that prevents them from being the ONLY party.
So, hate Ronnie viciously...until Bush43 comes along, and then float "Well, we *loved* Ronnie, so if we hate Bush, it MUST be because Bush is *really* bad."
Truth is, the American Left is *the* monumental global disaster of the last half of the 20th century for all humanity. And this characterization is extremely clear, seen from outside our borders.
You move coalition troops out of Iraq and you rob the insurgents of their single best and only effective recruiting argument among their countrymen.
Oh, nonsense. The religious fascists, perhaps. I don't think so, honestly; there never seems to be a lack of reasons why the religious fascists want to attack the US, and as we've seen if they don't attack us in the Middle East, they're perfectly happy to come to us. But the religious fascists and the suicidal aren't being recruited in Iraq anyway; if we withdrew to Kuwait or Dubai or something, they'd just go to Kuwait and Dubai.
(And Murtha's idea of moving them to Okinawa is just embarrassing; he's a field officer for Gods' sakes, he knows better than that.)
But the rest of them are just revanchists: they're not motivated by the occupation, they're motivated by it having been their ox that got gored. They don't get free money and the tenderloin any more, they're having to share in the whole steer.
Oh, by the way, Mark --- Ragdha's post was from August, and its talking about life being made hell by the revanchists and fascists, not the US. That's why the revanchists are having such a rough time with general popularity in Iraq.
I'm a sick f**K? When the likes of you have spent a lifetime gladly looking the other way and whistling a merry tune while the Saddams of the world fill up mass graves with hundreds of thousands--millions--of murdered, tortured human beings, men, women, and children, because the Gov't Party is more likely to toss you a little work in a federal attic or two?
I call utter and swinishly contemptible fraud on anyone who smart enough to write MarkG8 posts and yet refuses--for obvious partisan/domestic/political motives--to admit the reality of truth, and put an enormously heavier weighting upon eliminating a vast perpetual hereditary-state holocaust/genocide apparatus than they put upon whatever temporary--albeit terribly sad--violence that, in lieu of which--by demonstrable historical record of decades of soft-power including a limited demo of hard-power--the legalized fascist state horror would have flourished indefinitely, forever into the future.
Would that be Jimmy "Castro's Cocoanut" Carter?
300,000 found--so far--in mass graves in Iraq, one million killed in Saddam's invasion of neighborS (both combat and murder), 40,000 unsuspecting civilians the world over murdered in terror by a global gang of death-cultists run by thugs trying to get hold of OPEC,trillions of $$$ of global economic output lost (read as lowered quality-of-life for all humans) and the main thing bothering SmirkG8 is that some kid's granny couldn't organize a trip to the UK.
Seneca in case you haven't noticed Islamist terrorism isn't relegated to Iraq. The Iraq war didn't stop the attacks in London, Spain, Turkey, etc. etc. If anything they inspired them.
What? Wasn't that my point, ie, that Islamic fascism doesn't confine its terrorism to Iraq and didn't start it with the invasion?
As to "if anything it inspired them", I allowed for that possibility and explained why I don't think it's likely.
Honest, I begin to think you are a 'bot, if only because you seem to respond with rehashes of old arguments when the details get confusing.
The Baathists who don't want to give up their "tenderloin" etc. make up a tiny minority of the population. The foreign jihadis an even tinier subset.
Yes, exactly.
Not just by the Sunnis but by everyone. Let's not make the same mistake with the next government.
There's 20+ million who want us out and 20,000 or so who want to keep us there as targets. Accede to the will of the people or admit you could care less what they want. Admit that wrecking a major Arab country is what you want, not democracy.
Admit that you're setting up straw men because you keep losing on the facts. Admit that you're intellectually overdrawn and morally bankrupt. Admit that you don't care for the wogs anyway, you just want your side to win politically.
Hey, this is kind of fun --- and a lot easier than making an argument. I see why it appeals to you so.
So easy to get the little teapot perking!
Lessee, your post, you got two things:
one, I'm a profiteer? Nope, in no way, shape or form. I'm just a semi-retired livestock hand out in the sticks. Austin grew so fast toward me that when i finally got tired of beans, and got #3 of 4 thru UTexas (#2/nation), real-estate had American dreamed me up to where I could sell the biz and live--frooglee--off the proceeds. I'm looking for another venture, tho--if I move to Joisy, reckon you can get me into the contruction materials-that-fall-off-trucks business?
Two, nothing the USA does or has done will ever be anything but criminal until we put your thugs back into office. So we helped Saddam before he became a Mad Butcher? Yes, indeedy--didn't want anything but a stalemate in the Iraq/Iran War--what would YOU have done? Back Iran to victory, and have had your latest googled-up-history pretend bete-noire, the *theocracy* in place two decades ago? Here's your analogy, start with Lincoln providing public services to slave states until April 1861. The sick F**K! Let's look at all the international trade ties between FDR and the Axis up until the Axis went a-butchering. Same deal, my little petty street urchin, same deal as Saddam. Go steal a history book.
BTW Mark, it was a Republican president, not Clinton who finally went after Saddam. What is more he had fewer Democrats voting to push the Butcher of Baghdad out of Kuwait than Bush 2 had to remove him from power.
So what is this "until Clinton came along" crap?
This is so typical of liberals...we supported getting rid of him after we supported to leave him alone before we supported getting rid of him....
whatever.
Saddam's real friends were never the US or the UK, which is borne out by facts [not your paranoid ravings], his real friends were the same people who turned the UN food for oil program into a scam.
And since then come the lies:
6,800 Children die a month because of sanctions...to be replaced by 100,000 civilians dead, to be replaced by Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas and Zarqawi were nto terrorists until the US got there. Before that they taught preschool.
Tell me, when does the left say they are sorry? I remember when the Soviets took it upon themselves to invade Afghanistan, there was no flag burning. The lefties could have cared less that the communists killed a million Afghanis.
How many people do the communists get to kill? How many people do the fascists like Saddam get to slaughter and drive from their country before people like Mark stop and think maybe there is something in this world worse than a Republican?
I want the troops out of Iraq as badly as any shrieking lefty, but I want them to leave when the people of Iraq have a fighting chance to survive and their mission is completed.
That apparently is not what mark wants, he seems to be terrified that we might succeed.
you are a disgrace mark. If you had a choice no doubt you would put Saddam right back in there and if he put that 14 year old girl through a plastic shredder and her family in a mass grave you would not lift a finger to help her. Hypocrite.
"They're wrecking the country."
No, YOU and your ilk are all that's wrong with the country.
You think every 12 yr old can't see thru your list of politically-attacked administration folks? (you can have Cunningham, he DID do bad--the rest are trying to preserve your nation for your ingrate ass)
You people would go after Mother Theresa if she voted against your candidate. She'd be "dishonestly giving her life for the poor", somehow. You'd find a way.
Democrats are fine, but you BDS nutjobs really *are* making the world sick.
Wot a sanctimonious humanitarian BS act, wrapped in the American flag. Jeezis Kee-rist Almighty.
Most of Iraqis have faith in the future and most Iraqis are glad Saddam is gone. According to the polls.
If guys like mark had their way most Iraqis would not have a future and Saddam would still be in power, so why should we think mark speaks for most Iraqis?
Do they want to be occupied? No one ever said they did. But that does not mean they want to be abandoned either.
Remember Katrina? People were outraged that men with guns were not in Lousiana sooner.Does that mean the US was going to occupy New Orleans?
When the new government is elected they can decide what to do, but the truth is to someone like mark, Saddam was more legitimate than anyone the Iraqis might vote for.
Speaking of wrecking the country.... in terms of convictions, indictiments, etc the Clinton administration wins hands down..The Bushies are not even close.
We got so used to the soap opera in the Oval office that it barely registered when Sandy Burglar crammed classified documents into his pants and took them home to shred them....
It was just oh well, that is Slick Willie and the gang.
Seneca 20+ million Iraqis are strawmen?
Mark, look up what a "straw man argument" is and get back to me. I hate having a battle of wits with the half-armed.
As to the facts on which you're losing, if you go back through the thread you'll find a number of points at which you've made a factual assertion which turns out not to correspond with the facts. I've pretty consistently marked those as "Markg8:" and "Reality:".
As to the rest, well, obviously we disagree. I disagree with my collegues as well, because I don't think the BDS people are wrecking the country. Believing that would mean believing they're consequential enough to wreck the country, and they aren't.
Yep, that's what the PRC-military crews inside their shiny new "skipped-a-janet Reno/win ho lee-decade-of-development" nuclear missile subs say:
"Ahhh, this is Slick Willy and the gang!"
seneca:
Actually I think they are doing the Demcoratic party more damage than they are the country.
Peter, organized gangs aree stealing building materials all over the Katrina-abandoned zone. they're stripping ten grand worth of plywood off damaged buildings every night, just around New Orleans and Biloxi.
Is this G8 the same nitwit that disappeared to "Costa Rica" for a few weeks--and is now back in Joisy hawking water-damaged black-market plywood?
Har-fricken-har--our conscience-driven, big-hearted, full-of-civic-duty Marky-Mark?
"Hi, I'm Mr. Rodgers...I hope you can't say "Bill-of-Lading".
Well, okay, Mark, since you quit being quite so nasty, i won't sic my Secret Service pals on you.
Sure--you're right--bad meddling by the West in the Mideast since WWI.
Arab despots were for sale, and ours only had to meet one criterion--they weren't with the USSR.
The USSR, as you would know if you hadn't been jackin' hubcaps during the era, was an existential threat to this nation especially and the globe in general.
So, realpolitik it was.
But, do we pay penance by flushing ourselves and the new generations of Arabs down the terlit?
Or do we go forward, unable to change the past, only able to try to do what's right, going forward?
And yes, Austin, the 'blue"county in a sea of red--IS a political cesspool.
Austin = Travis County--must set THAT right.
But, you really should go put the plywood back.
mark:
buddy is not the one that is wearing all the hats my friend.
Besides, why is it mutually exclusive to help the Iraqis and ourselves?
For years and years I have been hearing about blowback and the fact that the US has not done more to deal with the root problems of terrorims, etc and that is why there is terrorism yada yada.
So if we help the Iraqis to live in a country with a political system the likes of which most westerners take for granted and assume is their right...why wouldn't that help us?
Most people today say that if we had dealt differently with Germany and forgiven the debt, etc after WW1 there might not have been a WW2.
It is called forward thinking.
BTW, anybody who wants to understand Mark's list of charges--the Prescott Bush/nazi bit and all--can type in their browser window [www.google.com] and follow the pointers to the potpourri of articles on those subjects. Don't read the nuyjobs, stay with reputable sources, and see what all Mark "forgot". I'd do it, but, jeez, it's like vacuuming--too easy, and too time consuming. Better to just avoid walking on the floor. Put your computer next to the fridge, get a good roller chair, stop all that "moving around" silliness.
"nuyjobs": people who are crazy to redo the Nam/DC Nutcraker Suite "Dying Swan" act. Seasonal!
(started out a typo tho)
Well the history of the West and the Muslim world is very long and there is enough sin to go around.
How far back do we go?
792? The Crusades? 1492 and the expulsion of the Muslims [and Jews]from Spain?
The gates of Vienna in 1683? Constantinople falling to the Muslims and becoming Istanbul?
Osama can live back there and so can the strutting Arab strong men... but maybe the people of the Middle East want to be a part of the world in a way that does not always accompany a picture of an oil rig or a burning car or a head hacker ranting God is Great in Arabic.
BTW I have time for all this today because it is a freaking Winter Wonderland out there.
But I have to go to work tomorrow.
damn the luck.
mark:
I am not defending Cunningham, who would? But puhleaze.... in terms of bribes or whatever the Demcorats are not angels. Remember Jim Wright? Wasn't that his name? The Democrat that had to give up a leadership position in the House about a decade or so ago? I mean hell, we can play this game forever.
And this fantasy that Democrats have going with the voting machines is typical. It is like the polls, make sure you poll too many Democrats so that the poll says what you want and then got all pissed when reality hits. Democrats are like that woman saying "Do I look fat in this"? They don't want to hear the truth.
Demcorats get caught cheating, red handed all the time. I mean it is embarassing and they just act like some guy who farts and then pretends that if he ignores it, no one will smell it.
I left the Democrat party because of this kind of silly crap.
For instance, Halliburton. I grew up in a small town in OK and Halliburton was one of the major employers there. It has been around for years and years. Clinton gave them a no bid contract in Kosovo in the 90's and the bid was extended to Iraq. They are one of the largest defence contractors in America and they would be whether Cheney ever worked at the company or not. If Tom Ridge would have been the VP instead of Cheney, Halliburton would have gotten the same deal and no one would have even made an issue of it.
But the Democrats all eager to find some weird little conspiracy theory make an issue of it, oh yeah, the Bushies went through all this for a contract for a company that Cheney used to be associated with. That is so STUPID.
Really. And btw, I think DeLay will get off and I think Earle is a hack and I think Wilson and Plame are liars.
Mark:
I am sorry about your mom. I know how it is.
I watched both of my parents die.
I'm just amazed at the loop these birds have running. It's like, I charge you, Peter, with inside trading, and you eventually beat the charge--because you didn't DO it. But you have to prove everytthing you didn't do, the longer you stay in politics, the more success you have at it. meanwhile, the trumped-ups are repeated endlesslyas fact by the virtue-free, and when you finally beat the charge, well, you're just a lucky crook who 'beat the charge'.
Mark, you say people are getting sick of it--you're damn right, and what I've said just above is what they're getting sick of.
Back before the Dems sunk so low into bribery and intimidation, this politicizing morality, and criminalizing politics, hadn't been seen in this country since Teapot Dome and Tammany Hall.
Your little nothing of a 'stained dress' was *The* leader of the Free World (the iconic Quintessential American), in the Oval, with a kid his daughter's age, after which he lied to the courts--and all of it on TV in front of the nation's children.
Glad you see that as a trifle, when someone like Frist sells some stock when he thinks it's topped--like we all do--is serious crime.
Martha Stewart? I think she got screwed royally. Did Frist do that? Who *was* that prosecutor?
TERRYE--glad you got a snow day! :-)
The stained dress--let me tell you about the world across the borders. they don't think "bad Clinton"--they know Clinton's type--they think "What a bunch of stupid, shallow, unstable idiots Americans are to have elected one of those types!"
And they're partly--your part--RIGHT!
Unfortunately, the world's truly dangerous take these clues as signals to "go hot" on us.
Why us? Rivalry--we compete everywhere--but also, like you, just plain old semi-psychotic jealousy and envy.
I'm truly sorry about your family troubles--been there, too--but, y'know, GWB didn't ask to be born--and he didn't order up rich parents. It AIN"T his fault! And he's tried hard to pay back his luck. The Delta Dart was a widowmaker, he's done the unpopular but right thing over and over as Tex Gov and as pres (not perfect, but good), he tithes TEN PERCENT of total income to charity (check and see what GOP vs Dems "give"--kerry/Heinz doesn't break into the one percent area), and in no way deserves the extreme, psychotic, perpetual lies you guys spend all your time promulgating into "familiar charges".
mark:
In terms of indictments and convictions the Clinton administration was the most corrupt in a century.
There were 15 convctions out of Whitewter alone.
Two cabinet members indicted.
Hillary Clinton said "I don't know" or "I don't remember" more than 250 times under oath.
Hands down.
As for Delay, I don't much like the guy but he is not as bad as Blanco or the idiot Governor in New Jersey who put his male lover who was not even a citizen in charge of Homeland Security.
And Reid took money from Indian Tribes too, that is going to cause both parties trouble. The McCAin Feingold Act was a disaster.
And ofcourse Chuck Schumer's aides stealing Steele's social security number and getting his credit report.
Get off your high horse. And yeah people are tired of the self righteous Democrats slashing tires and taking bribes and acting like the walk on water.
Electronic vote theft? You, from the party of ten million paranoid investigative lawyers, can think this? GOOD GOD, Man! Get a GRIP!
Buddy:
Bush is not as rich as John Kerry is; if Kerry had won he and his wife would have been the richest first couple in the history of the country.
And then of course there are the caviar socialists in Manhattan and Hollywood who think that if we just slap another $20 bucks a month on the welfare check and put more people on medicaid then they will have done their bit.
They just love the little people who raise their children for them and clean up after them and walk the dog when they jump on the jet and burn up a thousand gallons of jet fuel to go on a shopping trip.
The Republicans are so declasse.
It is said that the reason the criminal mind has no conscience is that it lacks the capacity to understand that all other minds are not like their own.
If you can believe in such an enveloping conspiracy, then what you're saying to me is that you'd love to pull something like that off yourself--and would, if you could.
The thought that most people would never ever game the Constitution, is evidently beyond your imagination.
Mark:
Well I was a Democrat until Clinton sent me over the edge..
But I am not so pissed at him about Monica. He was a serial womanizer and no doubt if he had been a Republican he would neve would have made it to the White House. The rape allegation alone would have buried him and while the media might lie for Clinton, they would never lie for a Republican. The double standard is breathtaking.
I think the Republicans should have settled for censure of Clinton myself and I find Clinton's taking money from the Chinese to more disturbing than his being a sexual predator.
As for Frist, I think the whole thing is silly, from what I hear there is nothing to it. I think that a lot of this stuff is just politics.
SEC has no power to to refuse a suit. It's not a court. If it gets complaints, it investigates. Like the sheriff--if you call, he comes. May not be squat going on but somebody trying to fry an enemy, but he can't make that judgement. It's "job description".
Like your daily mention of Rummy meeting Saddam. If you'd gone to high school with Son of Sam, would you be a serial killer? Your reliance on that photo makes me feel like an idiot for wasting the day answering you.
Buddy:
It is actually the Free Masons, they run the world. There is something comforting about conspiracy. It explains so much.
The amazing thing is if Clinton had taken out Osama when he had the chance, there might not have been a 9/11.
And if the Democrats and their partisan friends in the media {isn't it shocking the way the NYT always endorses a Democrat?] had put half as much energy into dealing with Saddam and cleaning up the UN years ago as they have into trying to destroy Bush there might not have been a war.
The truth is Clinton screwed things up and then dumped it on the next guy. The intel, the food for oil program, the Iraqi Liberation Act followed by futile threats and bombings...just one big Fuck up.
Terrye--I agree with you, wrt clinton. Censure was the remedy. Impeachment just made him a glamour-boy outlaw, with his constituency being fed the blue-nose conservative pic so EZ to sell.
T^errye, Clinton damn near took the whole fricken world into a globally-linked crime/government syndicate. the UN stuff is literally breathtaking--it's being damped because it's TOO big. Paul Martin has just fallen in Canada--and look what Bush's OIF exposure did to the fascisto-theme of the (old-model) EU!
If Clinton really destroyed the last of Saddam's weapons I missed the news flash on that.
Was the next president supposed to have psychic abilities or something?
The truth is those weapons could be anywhere, in fact illegal Iraqi weapons have turned up as far away as Holland, at least that is what the UN says. We did not exactly sneak up on the son of a bitch.
And then ofcourse there were the illegal programs with which more weapons could have been made.
1.7 tons of enriched uranium. Thousands of gallons of illegal chemicals etc, centrafuges in rose gradens, and on and on. According to Kay and Deufler there were hundreds of violations.
But that is ok. The world was only kidding and who cares about the Marsh Arabs and the Kurds and the Shia?...if they die they die. In fact I don't doubt that is what they wanted.
Better dead than occupied, right mark?
Mark--what you're saying is that the Dem leaders in DC think yuo're okay for blog-trolling but don't come near them in public. Ths shit you're popping off would have turned the planet inside out by now.
for your own sake, you've GOT to start analyzing the sources and intent of your study material--or else you're gonna flip out, and end up John Hinckley's bitch somewhere under deep lock and key.
What the hell difference does it make what kind of voting machines there are? When/if Democrats lose they are just going to claim they got cheated whether there are paper ballots or not.
I live in a rural county. Poor. We have been using the same machines forever without any problems.
I don't think mark realizes that elections are controlled on local levels. If there are mistakes in Democrat districts, guess who is to blame?
Here in Indiana Evan Bayh is fighting people having to show ID when they vote.
Why is that? Why are so many Democrats fighting the idea of showing ID to vote, even when the state offers to pay?
Mark, if you really believe in a conspiracy that large, I pity you. You are beyond hope or help or reason.
Time and again Democrats make these ludicrous stupid charges, there are investigations and all that and every damn time they are either proven wrong or it just happens to be that they themselves are the most likely to cheat. From Wisconsin Illinois to New Jersey to Ohio the Democrats get caught doing something wrong and they just pretend not to notice.
Just like they pretend that 62 million Americans voted for George Bush, more than Clinton ever got.
IN fact if not for Perot Clinton would never have made it all.
I should say they pretend 62 million people did not vote for Bush..
but needless to say mark will not see that as a typo but a sign from God.
Paper ballots? You either don't know--or maybe you DO know--that the famous 'chads', so concentrated in 90% Dem precincts, resulted from unsuccessful punch-thrus of STACKED paper ballots.
One-voter with one-ballot couldn't MAKE a 'chad', unless under near-laboratory-fine (delicate)conditions and controls.
Really--your party's 2000 Florida act was like nothing so much as a butglar who goes ballistic when the home-owner drops by.
Later, the only way to not admit it was to invent conspiracy--and the necessary conspiracy then required an over-the-top faux reaction.
And from that far out, you guys just can't find your way back home.
Ha! Terrye, God made me say "butglar".
Dems are like a prison population--can't even do simple crime without getting the graybar hotel, and then once inside, every last one of 'em convinces himself that he's innocent and it's all some giant conspiracy to deprive him of his crack and swag. So, he's ALWAYS really, really outraged.
mark--what would YOU call a UN, African continent, & Eurasia thoroughly on the take at the top, and partying down during the one-million murder Rwandan Holocaust??
Not to mention the AQ Khan organization, sowing thickly the seeds of Armaggedon while Maddy Albright negotiated a video camera to be put in the NoKo nuke factory--but forgot the extension cord?
All matters tick-tick-ticking away on Bush's plate the instant he took office.
If gore had won in 2000, who would've stopped AQ Khan? Gore was ALREADY on the Riady payroll--the 'iced tea defense?--and Osama's 911 plan was ALREADY in motion. Who would've forced Palestine toward moderation without OeF & OIF? Who would've stopped OIF from finishing the UN as a non-criminal organization? Who? Who? Who? If none of this bothers you, Mark, then you must really be a screwed-up dude. hey, sorry, man. Repent. it's never too late.
There's your typical Dem--stand there at the door telling someone what you're gonna do to 'em, while someone takes off the coat, rolls up the sleeves, and knocks ya cold in mid-rant. ;-)
Hope you're having fish...and alphabet soup.
that's right--google IS weak with acronyms. Too many of 'em...OEF might be Olivia's Eclectic Furniture, or Operation Enduring Freedom.
Okay, Mark--I'm done, too. Boy, did we ever pulverize the living doo-doo out of you! But you win--I goofed off the day and didn't do squat-a-vous to further any capitalistic piggery.
mark:
They never said that at all. In fact Kay said he did not whether or not the weapons had been moved out of the country.
The point is you are going backwards. I remember before the war when Clinton was saying those weapons were there. As late as July 2003 Bill Clinton was saying the weapons were there.
He had two years left in his tern after he bombed Iraq, if he could not prove conclusively in that time that the weapons were there how was Bush supposed to know?
Besides there were several reasons for the invasion, stockpiles were only one and Saddam was defiant to the end. He has no one but himself to blame.
"Why do I get the impression you'll never answer the door?"
Because that happens to you up and down your street, 20 or 30 times every day?
Well I enjoyed reading this thread, I suppose, though perhaps my time could have been more usefully spent. Mark really didn't bring anything new to the table. But good for you guys to keep in practice.
Sorry Terrye and BL but Peter wins for best line... "political scandal it is worse than a Senator having a dead girl in his car."
Mark, sounds to me as if you have been reading way too much Robert A. Wilson and Pynchon. They have a great ability for creating worlds that don't and have never existed.
Quite honestly you don't sound as if you are a happy person. I know it makes you feel important, bearing the burdens of the entire world on your shoulders, but really, there are other folks out there who are making sure you continue to have the freedom to believe in your fantasy world. Lighten up.
That would be these guys, right, Luther?
DeLay pretty blatantly broke Texas campaign laws to get his majority in the TX legislature that allowed them to gerrymander their way to keeping a majority in the US House.
Which would be why the campaign finance law charges were just dismissed with prejudice.
Frist looks like he obviously engaged in the same kind of insider trading that got Martha Stewart sent to the hoosegaw.
And did so with such amazing prescience that he had started the process of getting Senate Ethics Committee approval to make the sale four months before the bad quarter ended. In other words, his information was so inside that he knew what the results of the quarter would be a month before the quarter started.
See, Mark, this is the problem: you don't keep up on the facts, you just memorize points from, I dunno, Kos or DU or something. So you make assertions like "80 percent of the Iraqis hate us", which can be traced back to DU but for which no one seems to be able to confirm the poll; you assert DeLay blatantly violated Texas campaign finance laws after the Democrat judge in Travis Couny has already dismissed the charges; you don't find out any counter-infomation about Frist. It hurts what remaining credibility you might have --- something of which, having gone through this several times with you already, you don't have much.
Unless you have a lot of faith in electronic paperless voting machines
you ought to be scared Seneca.
Oddly, I'm more in agreement with you than not on this. Happens in my non-blog life I'm a computer security expert --- and I don't mean I'm a sysadmin who knows how to set permissions, I mean I invented some of the major techniques, did a good bit of fairly important work, and am called upon to work on inventing new kinds of secure systems by DoD.
I'm not thrilled with paperless, auditless voting machines at all.
Including the big gray mechanical ones.
But I'm also quite experienced with these issues, and have followed voting issues since I was turned down fo a job on an election commission because I didn't have the right party affiliation. And I'll tell you what: before you worry about supposed possibility of hacking the Diebold machines --- lots of reasons not to worry much about them --- I'd worry about absentee ballots, the voting deceased, multiple voters and so on. The old fashioned ways are best, and there were at least a half dozen races last election that were decided by things like undiscovered absentee ballots found in a drawer.
Again, the issue here is that you're arguing but doing so without being up to date.
And you just repeat the errors: Here, a little further down: But comparing a majority leader who broke congressional rules to make some side cash with bulk sales of his vanity books to one that broke campaign laws and laundered campaign cash through the RNC is a stretch. Those are the charges that were dismissed again. We could go on --- for example, the Texas State Democrats made an identical trasaction, for even mo9re money, at the same time --- but there's no point. The fact is that you're repeating as fact a charge that was never even tried, was dismissed.
Buddy the SEC is investigating Frist not the Democratic party so get off your high horse.
Mark, "the SEC is investigating" isn't a conviction. Ever hear of "innocent until proven guilty"?
For that matter, are you aware that if DeLay were a Democrat, he wouldn't have had to step down as Majority Leader? That's a Republican party rule, not a House rule.
t is actually the Free Masons, they run the world.
We don't either.
Dems need to take us back to a pre-money, barter-type economy. That way, if some goats were donated to one element of the GOP, and the same exact goats later showed up over-quota somewhere else, then they'd have Ronnie Earle's case against the principle of fungibility.
As is, it's tough not to use "money" in a system that transfers value with "money".
And if voter verified paper ballots are no big deal then why do so many Repubs in congress fight it? After the BS in OH last year and FL in 2000 why shouldn't we have elections we all can trust?
Mark: East St Louis. You want to worry about vote fraud, look at a case in which it was proven.
Guys, don't stop now! If we keep teasing him, we might get this up to 200 comments!
Seneca, at a ratio of--what--100 to 1 Dem to GOP? --the only fraud case that will bother Gee-Ate is the "1".
In case mark don't know it, to toss a case outta court "with prejudice" means the judge is angry at the degree, level, and nature of the case's abuse of the judicial system.
It's a stiging slap across the face of whomever brought the case.
In this event, it is the same crowd of angry Ann Richards loyalists in Austin who--still p*ssed off over "shrub" beating Ann for gov, are (were) behind MemoGate.
I know this for a fact, there is no doubt, I know several of the players--tho we no longer small-talk. Why not? Because the ploy was an attempt to bring down a sitting, wartime president via a set-up case of fraud. I did not approve.
Dan Rather lost his job--but elsewhere, and/or other times, he and Mapes and a dozen others would've been in trouble with the law--at least civilly.
But Bush said, "Awww, it's the silly season, let 'em off the hook."
So, they respect his generous spirit by going after DeLay--whose crime was straightening out some old Dem gerrymanders that had long screwed the residents out of their desired representation.
Wot a crew. Feh.
Does this mean that when the
Dead Democrats take over there could be a deceased President in the Whitehouse.
The ramifications of this are stupendous,everyone since 1776 is eligible.It will certainly cut down on sexual scandals
Like we used to say in medical school: you want to be a pathologist; patients are dying to see you.
Dan's daughter of course is in Austin, too, with some sort of job or something, and was in it up to her little red book & kerchief.
Bentley is okay, Peter, but someone has used the ashtray, and I really need a new one without the wear and tear.
Hey, I was gonna start a cemetary for that reason--people dying to get in!
Aces of you, old chap..I can't be arsed with the sullied model, I've let it to the upstairs staff, last seen reversing down the tarmac in a beastly anti-clockwise spin, gone a bit barmy at the luck, you know.
okay--gotta flag on the 200--promised the littlest turd I'd watch Lard of the Wrings with her.
been delightful!
HAVA is what he's talking about, Peter. The "give felons the vote" proposal.
Mark, the new Dec 10 tone is very nice--even if you did call us hoars.
I know you probly hate Norman Ornstein, he being a conservative intellekshul, but here's his paper on HAVA.
The paper's title:
Testimony of Norman J. Ornstein
Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
Commission on Federal Election Reform
June 30, 2005
James Baker III Institute for Public Policy
Rice University, Houston, Texas
I'm not sure that drummer jokes are s quite what I had in mind when I said we should tease mark enough to get to 200 comments. That said, however:
Q: What did the drummer get on his IQ test?
A: Drool.
Mark, I've just scanned HR550 -- I'm not reading the damned thing until I've have more coffee -- but on first look it looks okay. I'm not sure about the requirement to open-source the machines. I'm generally in favor of open source software, but I'm also in favor of people being able to make a living; beyond that simply opening the source doesn't guarantee it's used correctly. I think I'd prefer a Common Criteria requirement.
But in any case, worrying about the voting machines seems to me to be a mistake: voting problems have a lot more to do with county commissions in machine (the other kind of machine) towns.
The Diebold thing is another one of those conspiracy theory fantasies that requires a conspiracy among hundreds of people who uniformly keep their mouths shut.
Sorry, I told you I hadn't had enough coffee. The audit requirement sounds like a good general idea. I'm definitely in favor of requiring a physical audit trail. I'd like to see that audit trail include a cryptographic signature to identify a valid ballot, although I can't decide yet whether it's possible to do that in a way that convincingly preserves anonymity.
"...requires a conspiracy among hundreds of people who uniformly keep their mouths shut.'
That right there kills a lot of conspiracy viabilities.
Requiring conspirators to have the opposing character traits--say, honor, reliability, strength to keep quiet in the face of book deal$ and sundry latterly phenomenae, is to mix oil & water.
Enough continual energy applied might achieve an exceeding weak suspension, which collapses the instant the agitation subsides. There IS no solution, the problem is insoluble--thank goodness.
Mark--call my whole LIFE crotchety, that's closer to the mark. Ha--do you think you could get closer to the mark, Mark?
but, for starters, withoput going to GooGoo, Nixon's historical archives all say the same thing--he feared a recount would damage the nation.
latest big time Dem election thefts, a NW governor (I get Wash & Oregon confused), and Tiny Tom's Indians in one of the Dakotas.
last time I was cute i ended up married, with 4 kids, and mortgaged up the arse. Who wants to be cute?
Quick, check the police blotter--who lost 3200 back in...uh...dammit where's my cakyoolater?
Good post, Mark--I agree with the need for reform. Motor-Voter is one nice fat sump-hole we could shuck, for starters. And photo ID is a no-brainer, the Dem argument ag/ it is paper-thin and totally specious. Drop that, too. Anybody ag/ photo ID is suspect in my eyes.
I grew up in a log cabin in Illinois. Had to split fence rails for a living. Learnt me ciphers by firelight at night, with a piece of chalk on the back of a shovel. Later, I won the Civil War--which, lemme tellya, was NOT civil.
Quick, quick, police blotter, missing seersucker suit back in...dammit WHERE'S MY kakulaider?
By that 'peter' naming theory, 'mark' would be ma & pa's reminder that the kid exists.
back on topic, HAVA is a mess--the felon enfranchisment will never float red America, as the fear would be that all the felons would bloc-vote out of some small NE state, say, Massachusetts, and then install anti-rule-of-law senators-for-life.
There are proposals to not only pay for it, but to send election workers TO the elderly's homes to register them--on the voter's particular request.
The Dem argument ag/ that is, "These people do not want the gov't knocking on their doors".
Whew--talk about a self-licking ice cream cone...pure tautologism.
SHOULD casting a vote for the future of the nation, *BE* utterly effortless?
If so, why?
We can't do any more chads, that's for DAMN sure.
White Billionaires that having made it, prefer a gov't that strangles-in-the-crib any possible future competitors?
Jeez--hate to leave this thread--but got company coming, and the maid hasn't shown up since I borrowed that twenty bucks from her.
okay, this and I've gotta run--MARK--those folks under disacussion have not been disenfranchised by outside forces--they have *chosen* to disenfranchise *themselves*.
having said that, yes, the drug sentencing laws have ruined far too many non-violent offenders who were merely in a temporary phase of life. Bye 4 now--
If you guys check out DREs you'll see just how easily they can be manipulated without anyone being the wiser.
DRE's? I get what you're talking about from context, but I'm nt recognizing the TLA. In any case, though, I have looked into it --- I'm a computer security and formal methods guy with an interest in politics, after all --- and I disagree that it's all that easy. There are basically two scenarios here: the code is being suborned on purpose, or the code has a flaw that can be exploited by someone outside.
Purposeful subornation requires someone to build in the (mis-)feature, AND to somehow make sure that the change doesn't show up to anyone else. It's not impossible, the classic case being Ken Thompson's hack to give himself root permission on all UNIX machines: he didn't hack the UNIX code, he hacked the compiler to insert his back door when it compiled the code. This sort of trick is very fragile, though --- and depends on /_337 S|<1|_|_Z that aren't common.
Suborning code through unintended flaws is even harder, requires access to the programs to start with, and is similarly vulnerable to small version changes.
In both cases, then, you depend on someone to do it who has the skillz, has the motivation, and who then never says anything about it forever after.
But then consider the old-fashioned ways: voting multiple times, paying for votes, using a marker to alter paper ballots, or simply to make more ballots. None of them require technical skill, there aren't many people who have to keep the secret, and they're the people directly involved with the election, with patronage jobs that may depend on keeping the party that gave them the job in office.
What I would do: issue a voting card to every legitimate voter, no card no vote; collect the cards seperately and audit number of cards against number of ballots; and dye everyone's index finger, like they do in Iraq.
back on topic, HAVA is a mess--the felon enfranchisment will never float red America,
Actually, I think some states do allow felons to vote automatically.
...as the fear would be that all the felons would bloc-vote out of some small NE state, say, Massachusetts, and then install anti-rule-of-law senators-for-life.
You mean they haven't?
I don't know about you Seneca but in NJ we register and we're issued a voter registration card. When I moved I had to rereg at my new address. I did that and they sent me a new card. Then a few weeks later they sent me another letter saying I had to sign and return a form to prove I lived at that address or my registration would be invalid. Whenever I vote I have to sign in and they compare it to my signature they have on file. I assume most states have the same procedures. If there's some vast conspiracy to get around this by forgery where's the proof?
East St Louis.
Come on Mark, you're not trying to claim that you're ignorant of previous problems with vote fraud?
If so, google for "Tammany Hall", "Boss Tweed" and "Daley Machine", as well as "East St Louis" and "vote fraud".
Boss Tweed has been dead since about 1873. Tammany Hall almost as long. The Democratic majority in Chicago is offset in the collar counties with just as much if not more funny business. And East St. Louis? C'mon it's one of the poorest towns in the nation. They don't decide anything.
Nice dodge, Mark, but no cigar. I was pointing out that you don't need voting machines to have voter fraud. You attempt to dance past that, do a quick tu quoque (look it up) and argue that Republicans have intimidated voters.
Not, I presume, by hacking their voting machines.
Mark, you really need a little practice on this "logical argument" thing. There's a lovely book I'd recommend: The Trivium: the Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric.
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