Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Mostly White National Media Help Cover For Bush
Headline says Roberts to be quizzed on Bybee memo. National media almost completely silent on the fact that the current administration appears to have simply hidden or destroyed embarassing affirmative action documents from the records of JG Roberts. It's doubly sad for me, because I hadn't actually guessed he was going to be worse than an anti-abortion, anti-feminist, pro-torture, pro-police state, pro-corporate loser. The LA Times, for example, runs this story which says things like "library officials ha[ve] failed to find the memo" and "The Reagan library acknowledged the absence of the documents" and "White House officials, asserting that Leahy had no grounds for complaint, provided a copy of an Aug. 15 statement from the archivist of the United States saying that the contents of the affirmative action file had been reconstructed from copies of the documents filed elsewhere." That's three downtoning comments before we get to the heart of the matter, as explained by Senator Leahy yesterday. The Bush adminstration reviewers _saw_ the document, and then lost it. Now, I personally tend to believe that GW Bush wants to downplay his parties recent racist past, and instead focus on the imaginary sky fairy. But that means maybe he shouldn't be burying embarassing documents. So, if the Bush administration had to bury these affirmative action documents, we can assume JG Roberts is really "white." The mostly-white, national media is ignoring the story. Document shredding isn't important anymore, as long as it is the Bush administration's tail that is being saved from the chopper. And the LA Times seems best. SF Chron makes it sound like all of Roberts affirmative action documents have been exposed. USA Today, the most widely read newspaper in America, also fails to mention it. The NY Times totally covers for the Bush administration, calling the missing documents "los[t]." This has always been the case. The NY Times in another peice again covers for the Bush administration, by mentioning the affirmative action memos that have been released without discussing those that have been hidden.Monday, August 29, 2005
Funny Things I've Said Lately
"Mars Needs CEOs." This is funny because lots of CEOs suck, and sending them to a planet without any industry might be good. "I come from a long line of single-celled animals." Life on Earth included only single-celled animals, to the best of our knowledge, for 1,000,000,000 years. I figure most of them didn't live long, so it is a very long line of single-celled animals.A Chance For Peace
In a real sense, the Republicans have nothing I can sense in common with this philosophy, shared by DD Eisenhower on April 16, 1953. Later, the junior Senator from Massachusetts called Eisenhower "soft on defense" and beat RM Nixon in a closely contested election. Chance for Peace"First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.
"Second: No nation's security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow-nations.
"Third: Any nation's right to form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.
"Fourth: Any nation's attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.
"And fifth: A nation's hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations."
" Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
"This world in arms is not spending money alone.
"It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
"The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
"It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
"It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
"It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
"We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.
"We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
"This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
" This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
The Frauds in the Florida Legislature
In Florida, they recently passed a "Jessica Lunsford" law, which is a reform of Florida law. It increases and decreases penalties related to sex crimes against people under twelve years of age. This is, at least, the fourth time in the last 25 years that Florida has changed its sexual predation laws. This is apparent when you review the actual text of the act, in lines 390-406. But the fact that this legislature, over and over again, keeps changing its mind is not the most insane part of the Florida criminal code. I will make a small table of crimes, to show you how insane their priorities are.| Line (from Act) | Felony Degree | Crime |
| 440 | Life | Sex offenses against people under 12 |
| 539 | 1st | Theft from someone over 65 |
| 561 | 1st | Cocaine trafficking, from one to seven ounces |
| 542 | 1st | Carjacking without a weapon |
| 447 | 2nd | Firing a missile into a building |
| 445 | 2nd | Throwing a bomb into a public place |
| 529 | 2nd | Turning someone under 16 into a prostitute |
Who Was JG Roberts?
I have to admit, I was wondering. Who is happiest about the nomination of JG Roberts? It turns out that one powerful, right-wing christian conservative is incredibly happy, J Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice. What is the ACLJ? According to them, it is a "Law firm founded by Pat Robertson to represent Christians in church-state cases." ACLJ's Sekulow was not asked about his views of assassination this morning on Washington Journal, when he explained that JG Roberts his #1 choice for Supreme Court nominee, and a personal friend of seventeen years.Saturday, August 27, 2005
J Bolton is a Man of Reform
- Remove encouragements to reduce nukes by nuclear powers. More bombs are good for Bush's defense contractor friends.
- Remove any references to the International Criminal Court, because we all know justice gets in the way of God's President Bush, "Torture Memo" Gonzales, "Bomber" Rumsfeld, and the rest
- Forget fighting poverty. The best thing for them is more open markets. The Bolton reforms spreading free market reforms.
- "spreading democracy," although I haven't heard what Bolton/Bush plan to use as a freedom spreader next time
- Increased emphasis on bombing countries to get your way
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Hugo Chavez Venezuela: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Apparently it will come via mpeg/mp3. VenezuelaAnalysis has a page on the movie. I just got finished watching it. I had some misconceptions about the events that were cleared up. The movie refrained from making certain leaps of logic (e.g. that the snipers were placed there by the coup-plotters) and did a fantastic job. The cameras were rolling inside the palace as the Generals arrived, as Chavez was taken away, as Carmona and his Attorney General disbanded the government, as the palace guard staged a counter-coup, as Chavez returned. It's a fantastic movie. I highly recommend it, but don't know where you can get it. I have a copy on my machine if you'd like to get a copy.UPDATE: The Documenataries subsection of ChomskyTorrents.org has it, if you can manage torrents.
My "Local" Naval Base Saved
Well, it's about two hours away, but the local politicians are all cheering. I never read one word on why this was a particularly important base. That said, I believe it is a very bad idea to reduce the number of bases much. They should be, to some degree, denuded of activity and personnel, but not actually sold off. Put into storage is the best way. One reason for many smaller bases rather than a few bases in states like Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas (GW Bush must still be worried that the Viet Cong will strike Texas) is that, as the number of real military operations decreases, the skill and professionalism of our military will decrease. Smaller bases let everyone get a go at running a base. A large base means that one asshole Major General could ruin the careers of a lot of people, because they don't see things his way. Perhaps he is a three star (Lieutenant General) and sees "evil" in black splotches in pictures. Would you want to work for that nut? Would you constantly be able to keep your tongue as he uses mysticism to make choices on assignments? Doch, especially in the current context, putting our military in few, very large bases is a bad idea. Doch is the word from the German that is very useful to answer questions posed in the negative. For example, Chinese and English differ on how to answer the question "You don't want sausage in your yogurt, do you?" Bharatians (people from India) might answer that with a "Yes" because they want them. English speakers would answer that with a "No" because they don't want them, as if to say "No, I don't". Chinese speakers would answer that with a "Yes" because they don't want them, as if to say "Yes, you are right, I don't want them". German speakers, although they have "Ja" for "Yes" and "Nein" for "No" have "Doch," a special word that answers questions like that without the confusion. It might be translated as "on the contrary."Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Anyone Want To Help?
I need a volunteer to help get the numbers on the current BRAC bill. The bill will (likely?) be amendable in the Senate, and, in any event, there ought to be an overall view of the process. I plan to present it graphically. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take some number of the pages of the Bill Text and produce them in a regular format. Something like...Ch|Sec|Sub|Unit |From |To
1 |10 |a |air defense artillery units |unknown |Fort Sill, OK
1 |10 |a |1st Armored Division |Germany, Korea |Fort Bliss, TX
1 |10 |a |various echelon above division units |Germany, Korea |Fort Bliss, TX
Any takers? It's a massive bill, which will cost 2,400,000,000 dollars to implement, and might save close to 50,000,000,000 dollars (net present value) over twenty years.
Gaza Strip Disengagement Post
I hope, but I just don't know. If I knew how it'd work out, even in the short term, I'd be here telling you. So, I was cruising around the net, and I found a blog (Writes Like She Talks) that linked to a nice article by Amos Oz, a secular Israeli, and I was cruising around that site (YNet), and found some other good stuff.- IDF won't be leaving until October (IHT)
- Gaza still can't operate it's own airport?
- Tel Aviv not particularly friendly to ex-settlers in tent city
UPDATE: Gene Lyons wrote this long-ish but fine review of the Left Behind garbage called The Apocalypse Will Be Televised.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Informative Poll
NewsBlog5000 has a great poll, "What is your favorite Bush Administration scandal?" Please give this funny blog's poll a vote.You'll Read It Hear First
The Constitutional Process in Iraq. Apparently, the Constitutional Commission was asking a US staffer(Jonathon Morrow) of the Institute for Peace about the Constitution. The actual negotiation is going on between the top two Shia (al-Hakim, head of SCIRI/Badr and Jafaari, the PM) and the top two Kurds (Barzani of PUK and Talabani of KDP, the President). The nice way to say it, from the US Institute of Peace speaker, was that the top leadership is engaged in the political process. But it is not great news to note that the Constitutional Commission (which, unlike the dealmakers, contain Sunnis) is not part of the process. Me? I wouldn't look for a commission so small I could control it. I'd want each major tribe to send a representative, and each Governor, and then have an in house election to cull their numbers (of course, using a ranked ballot voting system, which will prevent all but the smallest minorities from being left out). Oh, and the Constitutional Court will, as of the latest draft, will contain Islamic Clerics to determine whether or not they are Islam-consistent. Kinda like, but not just like, Iran.Monday, August 22, 2005
Minimal Number of Americans Confused
Without explanation, 36% still think Bush is doing a good job, according to the most recent American Research Group. Meanwhile, the Global War On Terror is harassing ravers who party in the general vicinity of the President.Election 2002 Fraud, NH Style
McGee is in jail, Raymond is on the way, and Tobin, the 2002 Regional Director for the RNC, just got $722,000 to cover his lawyer's fees. From the article in the Dover, New Hampshire Foster's Daily, State Republicans "paid to jam get-out-the-vote telephone lines on Election Day 2002. Republican John E. Sununu beat Democrat Jeanne Shaheen in one of the closest U.S. Senate races in the country that day."Sunday, August 21, 2005
I'm a Battler
I battle on the soon-to-be-defunct Chrenkoff's blog. One guy there called me a "one man comment insurgency." I battle on at least one other blog, I have another I'm working on, and another couple under consideration. I hate the head-nodding agreement of the propaganda machine of the current government in America. I'd rather have a battle than this status quo. My recommendation? Pick a blog. battle.Q: What blog should I pick?
A: You want something that interests you, of course. I wouldn't recommend LGF or the Freep, but sometimes a poignant message there can be better than elsewhere.
Q: Do I respond to commenters, or just the blog posts?
A: I imagine that to gain the respect of the commenters, you are going to have to battle them first. If they respond directly to you (with the respect you deserve) than it will probably be best to respond. Show them you know your shit. School them. However, some of these morons will never learn, and never stop harassing you with stupidities. In that case, you have to evolve to deal with them.
Q: Why do you do it? What was your plan?
A: The people who spread these lies are of a variety of sorts. Many of them simply lack many pertinent facts, and rely on partisan outfits for information. That, and the fact that the Democrat Party doesn't do all that much educating of the electorate, either. It might be nice to have a President who was Educator-in-Chief, but we don't, and we likely won't. These liars must be countered at the stem, they must be made to feel uncomfortable, to make sure they know not everyone is a chorus of Yes-Men, and not every one is a dupe. That said, don't play every card you have. Save something in reserve, if only to make sure you are you.
Q: Well, thanks for the interview...
A: Why you cheezy motherfucker..
[ A Fight Ensues ]
Bush's "Champagne" Service
Molly Ivins, in her book Shrub, lists the son of Texas Governor John Connally, the son of Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, and the son of Texas Senator John Tower, along with members of the Dallas Cowboys football franchise (the only blacks) as members of Bush's "Champagne Unit" in the Texas Air National Guard.
The 111th was where GW Bush met James Bath.
If you want to look at Bush's dereliction of duty, Paul Lukasiak's pages are still best.
If you want a detailed, in-depth history of the F-102, where I got many of the facts for this post, Mr J Baugher is the source.
Wikipedia hosts this timeline of Bush service.
This post is about the life cycle of the F-102A Delta Dagger and how it kept GW Bush, a young lieutenant in the US Air Force, as far as possible from danger during the Viet Nam War, while making him appear to be a fighter jock.
Short History of the F-102A
After the Soviets unveiled the Tupelov-4 long-range, heavy bomber at the October 1947 Moscow Air Show, the top brass of the newly formed US Air Force decided to create an "interceptor fighter" to deal with the threat. The interceptor waits until the Soviets launch a bomber attack, flies as fast as possible to meet them, and then fires missiles to destroy them before they reach allied territory. Convair eventually got the contract for what turned out to be the first super-sonic and first delta-winged aircraft in the Air Force. As an "anti-bomber" aircraft, the plane saw very little service in Viet Nam, although since the Air Force had so many of them, a few did see some action. Only two of the more than 800 hundred produced are known to have been destroyed by enemy fire, namely, ground fire from the North Vietnamese. In Viet Nam, all told, four others were lost on the ground, and eight were lost in operational accidents. I have heard the plane described as the "safest plane in the Air Force." A couple explanatory notes for the image I made above. Please ignore the rounded edges of the bars, they are just for appearances. I removed them from the last two lines to show that the F-102A was completely removed from the Pacific Theatre in December, 1969, and Bush didn't start training in the F-102A until Decemeber 29th, 1969. One further note. In the run up to the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, RM Nixon and the Air Force put the 111th briefly on "alert" status. However, GW Bush was no longer qualified to fly the F-102A.Saturday, August 20, 2005
This Made Me Mad/Sad
A PhD from Pomona establishes the degree of voter fraud in the 2004 election. In other news, which doesn't even come close to counter-balancing the above allegations (which must have been managed by government officials) one woman, Constance Milstein, who in the last six years has given $300,000 to the Democrat Party (and reportedly held a large Al Gore fundraiser), settled out of court for a $5,000 the charges that she arranged to give people ten people packs of cigarettes for votes. In Wisconsin, which JF Kerry won by 11,384 votes. I guess since, 40 years ago, JF Kennedy's people in Chicago stole an election, the Republicans have carte blance for a century or more. I read that the Milstein family is worth 5 billion dollars. I think that's another reason the Republicans should support an estate tax.Thursday, August 18, 2005
In the New Glorious Iraq
In the new, glorious Iraq, visiting the website of the famous Iraqi bloggers Raed Jarrar and Riverbend can easily lead to arrest, detention and torture.I made friends with almost everyone there that day, and then I slept, it was a long day, I was so worried about my family, how would I let them know that I wasn’t killed in a car bomb, or kidnapped? I’m sure they don’t expect that I ran away from the house to go party with my friends or join the circus!and
I wasn’t released till Saturday morning [of the 9th day], after I was forced to sign a paper committing that I wouldn’t tell the families of the arrested people that they are arrested, and that I wouldn’t tell anyone about anything that happened while I was arrested or tell them what I saw inside the jail, and that I would report any case of breaking the law that I know about to the authorities (at this point I laughed and asked: even if someone drove his car through a red traffic light?), and that I wouldn’t visit terrorism websites.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Monday, August 15, 2005
Gatumba Massacre
A darn fined peice of work from Bartholomew's Notes on Religion. 150+ people massacred by Hutus, happened in Burundi, one year ago.Neo-Aristotelian? Stupidity
This link to the Math Academy is official math, and it is a pretty easy read about infinity. It includes a good history, which explains how Aristotle didn't accept infinity, and the eventual acceptance of it took a long time, and made Georg Cantor a controversial figure. Galileo helped start the infinity ball rolling with this, called Galileo's ParadoxGalileo (b. 1564) had given the matter [infinity] much thought, and noticed the following curious fact: if you take the set of natural numbers and remove exactly half of them, the remainder is as large a set as it was before. This can be seen, for example, by removing all the odd numbers from the set, so that only the even numbers remain. By then pairing every natural number n with the even number 2n, we see that the set of even numbers is equinumerous with the set of all natural numbers. Galileo had hit upon the very principle by which mathematicians in our day actually define the notion of infinite set, but to him it was too outlandish a result to warrant further study. He considered it a paradox, and “Galileo's Paradox” it has been called ever since.I simply can't accept this. I recognize the existence of infinity, and that there are infinite rational numbers between any other two rational numbers, but I don't want to accept that there is a 1-to-1 mapping between the even integers and the integers. For any integer x greater than 2, the number of whole integers less than x is always twice the number of evens, or twice that number plus one. This is not a limit sequence. The number of "evens" is always slightly less than half, or exactly half, of the number of integers less than any real number. If I was right, at least some definitions of infinity would have to be changed. I simply think that it should be possible for sets of infinite cardinality to have non-equal cardinality.
Back in college, I was OK at math. I scored in the top 25% of the annual Putnam exam one year, one of 1989, 1990 or 1991. A combination of factors (J Glick being better at math than I, combined with limited occupational options for professional mathematicians) caused me to switch my emphasis to economics. I figured it was halfways between math and art.
Sunday, August 14, 2005
What Will We See Next?
Michelle Malkin, following a host of less famous right wing blatherers, is posting material suggesting Sandy Berger stole the Able Danger documents. Yes, this seems likely. After a secret military intelligence data-mining team was told it legally couldn't hand the information over to the FBI, the team put it in the National Archives. Case closed.Also thanks to Roger L Simon, allegations repeated by Slate's L Wamsley, Jim Geraghty at National Review/TKS suggests it, and is repeated by PowerLineBlog, an editorial in the "mainstream" Investor's Business Daily (brokenly) linked to by Instapundit and a literal plethora of other ninnies.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Thursday, August 11, 2005
My Condorcet Re-analysis
I believe in Condorcet voting, a mathematical system for voting first described by the Marquis de Condorcet. I decided to look back into history and see which US Presidential elections would have had different outcomes if we had had this mathematically based voting system. To be the subect of further research, an election had to have three or more candidates. If a state has more than 50% of the vote for one candidate, Condorcet would not change the results. This assumes sincere voting. No allegations of vote fraud, rigging, stacking or miscounting are discussed or considered. If the vote was thrown to the US House (see 1824) the House could use Condorcet voting. I was very pleased with the outcome. In many instances, America would have been a less racist, even as it was being truer to its electorate. Two important elections before the Civil War would have been won by opponents of slavery. Wilson would have been unlikely to bring segregation to Washington, DC. Famously, A Jackson would have won the election of 1824, even though most other famous elections, including Lincoln's, remain the same. More recent results favor both parties. WJ Clinton probably won in 1992, and GW Bush would not have won in 2000. This is, with mathematical certainty, the best way to vote for Presidents. It did not exist when America was founded, although it was invented, later, by a good from of Jefferson by the name of the Marquis de Condorcet.| Year | New Victor | The new victor is in bold face if I am 100% positive of the result |
| 1824 | A Jackson | JQ Adams vs A Jackson vs W Crawford vs H Clay. There are experts on this matter, it is too complicated for anything less than expert analysis. It appears that, even though Clay hated Adams and Jackson personally, he would have favored the policies of Adams. However, it is also likely that people who favored Crawford would have favored Jackson. Using this bare minimum of facts, combined with an original EV count of Jackson 99, Adams 84, Crawford 41 and Clay 37, the result of Condorcet balloting in the US House (where the election was thrown) would have favored Jackson to a great degree. Considering how almost each state had its own policy at that time, and many of the states split their electors at first, it really is not easy to say. Based on the Poole/Rosenthal technique, but relying on the existing voting system, authors J Jenkins and B Sala show that the "corrupt bargain" thesis is likely wrong, in any event. |
| 1844 | H Clay | H Clay/T Frelinghuysen's vote was split by the abolitionist Liberty Party. Assuming 100% support for the Whigs over Democrats JK Polk and G Dallas, the votes for the states of Michigan and New York would have switched columns under a Condorcet system. The original electoral vote victory was 170 for Polk to 105 for Clay. The new total would be 146 Clay to 129 Polk. Ignoring Michigan's 5 electoral votes, let's examine New York and their 36. The actual vote total for the State is 237,588 for Polk, 232,482 for Clay, and 15,812 for Birney. To win, Clay would have needed 10,460 of the Liberty Party's vote, or almost exactly 2/3rds. Considering the Liberty Party is a radical abolitionist party, and the Democrats at that represented the southern slave-holding aristocracy, this is more than likely. Clay was a lifelong enemy of slavery, although he was not radical about it. |
| 1848 | L Cass | Free Soil Party (Liberty + some Whigs), with Martin Van Buren as their candidate, splits the Democrat vote away from long-time politician Lewis Cass (appointed Governor of Michigan by James Madison) and elects Zachary Taylor, who had never held political office before. This split is well known to political historians. |
| 1884 | JG Blaine | SG Cleveland vs JG Blaine. BF Butler, a Radical Republican (think liberal democrat) was the Democrat Governor of Massachusetts (think M Bloomberg, Republican Mayor of New York), who entered the race on the Greenback ticket in order to split the Democrat vote and cause Cleveland to lose. The Republican, Blaine, would have been the second choice of a Greenback voter. It also appears, if the infamous "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion" statement had any truth to it, that the Prohibitionists would have favored Blaine. |
| 1888 | I need more information. B Harrison was seen as close to the elites, so probably wouldn't have gotten the two labor party votes (Union Labor and United Labor) while I imagine the Prohibition vote would have gone for B Harrison. I'm not sure. | |
| 1912 | T Roosevelt | WH Taft and T Roosevelt split the Republican vote. I calculate that almost all Republicans would have picked the other Republican, Taft or Roosevelt, above Wilson. I also imagine that the Socialist vote breaks for the Republicans. Using this, Wilson only wins the eleven states of the former Confederacy. This result is, by far, the biggest change in any of the elections in terms of number of states changing hands. An estimate of the new electoral vote total goes with Roosevelt 227, Taft 164, and Wilson 140. This doesn't give Roosevelt the required EV votes to win a majority, which means the race would be thrown to the US House. The Democrats had just taken control of the House. One can use this page to see that 23 State delegations were majority Democrats, and 21 majority Republican. Three, Rhode Island, New Mexico and Maine, were evenly split. I simply can't guess. It'd be nice for me to think of Wilson losing. |
| 1916 | The problem here is the first World War. Hughes was seen as slightly more pro-war than Wilson (preparedness). Yet Socialist AL Benson criticized Wilson for his preparedness position, and left the Socialists (with a faction) when they blamed the US for the war. Hughes would have needed only 55% of the Socialist vote in California to win. To add confusion, however, the Prohibition party got enough votes in California that it would take Hughes 86% of the California vote to lose 100% of the Prohibition vote. If the Prohibition vote is pro-Hughes, well, it still is up in the air. Only three states weren't won by a majority, and only California can change the result. | |
| 1992 | GHW Bush | GHW Bush needed 101 more electoral votes to win. If he had, nationwide, more than 66% of Perot voters behind him, he would have won the election. Actually, he just needed 2/3rds in Georgia, New Hampshire, Ohio, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, Colorado, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Maine, Connecticutt and Iowa. |
| 2000 | A Gore | Even if every other third party broke 100% for GW Bush, A Gore needed about 71% of the R Nader vote in Florida or 82% of the Nader vote (losing 100% of all others) in New Hampshire to win those states, either would have given him the victory. |
| 1796 | Only one elector didn't choose J Adams or T Jefferson as their first choice, and so couldn't have changed the 71 to 68 result. |
| 1800 | This famous election, if Democratic-Republican and Federalists stayed true to form, would not have been changed if Condorcet voting methods had been used. |
| 1852 | The Free Soilers might have changed the result in Delaware, Connecticutt and Ohio, but that wouldn't have been enough to put W Scott ahead of F Peirce. |
| 1856 | The Whig-American Party, a major, anti-immigrant, anti-catholic, pro-bible, third party that nominated former President M Fillmore, could not have J Fremont the win over J Buchanan even if they supported J Fremont 100%. |
| 1860 | Lincoln vs Breckenridge vs Douglas vs Bell. The only two states that Lincoln won by plurality (with less than 50%, but still the greatest number of votes) were California and Oregon. Since they only had seven EVs between them, and the EV tally was Lincoln 180, Breckenridge 72, Bell 39 and Douglas 12, it would not have changed the result. |
| 1876 | RB Hayes vs S Tilden was not swayed by Greenback Party nominee P Cooper |
| 1892 | The Populist Party was more pro-Democrat, and the Democrats won, so J Weaver didn't change the SG Cleveland victory over B Harrison. |
| 1948 | There's no chance the progressives or dixiecrats would have voted for Dewey, is there? |
| 1960 | If Nixon received 95% of the third party vote in New Jersey and Illinois, he might have won. That seems very unlikely. The total of third party votes in Illinois was under a quarter of one percent. |
| 1968 | Four out of five G Wallace voters were RM Nixon supporters. |
| 1976 | I imagine that most E McCarthy voters would have been JE Carter supporters. |
| 1996 | WJ Clinton could lose 92 electoral votes if the HR Perot vote goes 81% for R Dole, and the other third parties split evenly. However, that still isn't enough in this 379-159 race. The fourth biggest party, the Greens, would likely have broken for WJ Clinton. |
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Really Bad News
Sure, I think Bush is an idiot, and a fool, and a tool, but I don't actually want murder, mayhem and malfeasance in al-Iraq. The Mayor of Baghdad, not Tikrit, not some village in the desert, was pushed out by armed militia (Badr/SCIRI, not Sadr) and replaced by a member of that faction. Apparently it happened August 8th, but the news was suppressed inside the US for 24 hours.UPDATE: Apparently protestors are being shot for calling for the removal of the Governor of al-Muthanna province. One dead and forty injured.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Tidbits
- H and WJ Clinton and A Gore, Jr have associates now working for Rupert Murdoch to help Fox and News Corp fight the Nielsen ratings. At least they have honor! Fox is claiming that the meters are racist even though they show massive increases for channels like BET. My guess? Murdoch has been gaming the paper diary system.
- Hedge Funds, which are a basically a formalized system for rich people avoiding the regulations poorer investors must follow, have been alleged to be paying doctors for what seems to amount to "insider trading" information. Senator C Grassley, Republican of Iowa, is on the case. The SEC apparently had heard and was thinking of investigating. Hedge Fund legislation is only one step to stopping the increasing control of rich people over our lives (tip: the Arnie Arnesen show).
- Already "private placements" are gaining on Hedge Funds for market share. A private placement involves a company skipping regulations as long as they pitch their investment speeches to no more than 35 non-millionaire investors. You read that right. As long as you don't try to sell to more than 35 people who don't have $1,000,000 in assets (or earn more than $200,000/year) you can file under Regulation D. Don't worry, even though you can't advertise, you can hire a hedge fund to find rich clients for you. Remember, not more than 35 non-elites, please! (inadvertent tip to a magazine called "Inc.", who actually thinks is great news).
Over the Top, Drug Inspired Lyrics
I'm like a B-19 / Loaded With Benzedrine / When I'm On the Scene / I Punch a Hole Through the SkyBenzedrine is an amphetamine whose wiki I altered to add this song. I don't know the author of the words, but the singer here is Fred Astaire. Those darn rap stars!
UPDATE! Fred Astaire is not, in fact, a rap star. He's an icon of 1940s-60s American musicals. To protect a picture perfect perception of past glories, this post will self-destruct in five million years.
Why Is Bush Hiding Abortion Statistics?
To an amazing degree, the recent Republican electoral success can't be grossly pinned on morality or values. I sincerely doubt that most Christians are in any way more moral than most everyone else. In fact, I'm sure they aren't. The source of the electoral success is demon Democrats, who like Hitler before them, have killed roughly 40,000,000 innocent people in their "death camps," also known as abortutuaries. With over 1,000,000 abortions per year (about 10,000/year in the second half of pregnancy) and over 32 years since Roe, the "abortion industry" is doing a slower, but equally deadly job as the author of Mein Kampf, as the founder of Planner Parenthood, Margaret "Hitler" Sanger, undoubtedly intended. Most Democrats now supporting legal abortion are, in fact, in the pay of the incredibly lucrative "abortion industry." OK, OK, OK, this is insane crap. The comparisons are repeated by nitwits, the Sanger stories are lies that are infecting the youth (see the link above), and Hitler's program was run by the government, and the government (at least since Roe) isn't involuntarily giving anyone an abortion. But that's what we are up against, a mass hysteria. If one simply categorically declares that life begins at conception, then the "person's" life is taken without due process of law. Earlier anti-abortion nitwits believed the whole person was contained in either a sperm or ovum. The christian bible itself, long the tool of idiots worldwide, only comes close to the abortion matter in its whole text once, in Exodus 21:22. Some varied translations are presented in the link (from pro-life perspective).And when men fight and strike a pregnant woman and her children go forth, and there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the husband of the woman may put upon him; and he shall give by the judges. But if there is injury, you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.This obviously is talking about someone striking the woman, and has nothing to do with the decision of the mother, or parents, at all. Parents are forced to kill their children if the children stike the parents (kicking in the womb, anyone?) or if the child curses the parents, Exodus 21:15 and 21:17, respectively. None of that concerns what is obvious today, namely, GW Bush is hiding US abortion statistics. Since 1969, the CDC had been collecting and, soon thereafter, reporting on abortions and teen pregnancy. Since 2000, both of those have stopped. This link is to the main CDC births statistics page, offered for completeness. Glenn Stassen, a religious person, wrote an editorial suggesting that abortion rates increased. Without what I would call due diligence, FactCheck.org rebutted this, exclusively relying on the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), but who themselves rely on only somewhat limited data from 43 states. The AGI acknowledges that the rate of decline in abortions slowed in 2001 and 2002, but, again, there is no data for 2003 or 2004 in their May 2005 report. Regarding the number of states participating, they say "Because these abortion estimates are not based on a comprehensive census, they are subject to some limitations and should be considered provisional." Why is the Bush administration suppressing CDC abortion and teen pregnancy statistics? I imagine Glenn Stassen jumped a little too eagerly at the truth, even though his reasoning was sound. The ever worsening economic situations, he said, would obviously lead to more abortions. Why are the pro-life nutjobs completely silent? They are Bush's fools, the wind beneath his sails, bringing us to shores of blood and death. Congratulations, religious conservatives!
I was remiss in not mentiong the Didache. it's place as a non-official biblical text is paralleled here. This catholic site ends up giving it as much credence as certain of the gnostic gospels. It was definitely excised at some early date, for some reason, since it was only rediscovered in the late 1800s.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Iraq Update
I am fighting the Bush administration's perspective of events. In the last three months in Iraq there have been more attacks by insurgents than any three months since the war started. Source: The Brookings Institute's Iraq Index, page 19.The Syrian Ambassador, C-SPAN's efforts
Before the Ambassador spoke, they had Edward Walker, President of the Middle East Institute, repeat every allegation against Syria you have heard in the popular press, including those which have not been proved. Walker asserts that the Syrians would change "their situation" (I think it was obvious he meant the government) if they only knew how. He asserts, moronically, that Syrians are pro-American. He produces the stupidest possible explanation for Assad's rise to power. He was the last guy's son, and he glosses over that incredibly. It's basically a monarchy. Monarchy sucks, but this guy is a fool.To Round Out the Day
A lightweight discussion of presidential retreats was followed by someone fawning over Arnold the GropenFührer and then another hour of Bernard Goldberg, author of Bias, discussing 100 people he hates. What a fair and balanced day on C-SPAN's BookTV! After all, Bush & Company won over 50% of the vote, and by modern Republican rules of the House, that means they are entitled to two/thirds of all committee funding. The Democrats were never completely even with the committee budgets, either, but they were far more in line with reality. I wonder if the anti-Iran thing didn't count as a "Democrat" thing now. The Democrats are mostly just as stupid as the Republicans on Israel and the Middle East. Where far right wingers want a total hands off policy, the left wing has people like Kucinich who want something resembling the continued US action, but in a less pro-Israel way.C-SPAN Follows This With
Clinton Bashing! Will Clinton bashing ever get stale? Don't ask C-SPAN! HOLY PARTISANSHIP, Batman, this Clinton basher is moving to lead the Washington Post's National News division (if I heard that correctly.) So, this anus-gazer will now be in large part responsible for shaping American opinion. UPDATE: This author, John Harris, a Washington Post reporter, is basically critical of WJ Clinton, but not, in fact, anywhere near the level of a Limbaugh. He seems quite fair, but the interviewer is obviously much more from the Clinton-bashing perspective. To a great degree, it was the interviewer's introduction that shaped the above post. UPDATE2: Although it will start at 9pm on a Sunday, C-SPAN plans to air extensive stuff with Syria's Ambassador tonight. Therefore, while everyone is still paying attention, they must air right-wing, coup-mongering stuff. It's only fair, right?Republican Party War Mongering
Feckless, weak American leadership is leading us to nuclear Armageddon with Iran according to Kenneth Timmerman, author of "Countdown to Crisis." Kenneth Timmerman relies extensively on the plea bargain deal with an ex-UBL associate. According to Timmerman, if we had only listened to this one guy, we could have stopped the 1996 embassy bombing in Kenya and Tanzania. He says that the intelligence community HID all relations between Iran and al-Qaeda. That's right, Timmerman is saying the US intelligence community is protecting Iran. Probably because al-Qaeda and the Iranian government control the CIA. I mean, what other logic could their be? He also claims the Iranian government was the government to help arrange 9/11. Timmerman is a nut. He wants us to incite the Iranian people to revolt. He wants us to arm them with guns to overthrow the Iranian government. He says the recent elections were a total rejection of clerical rule. "Never has regime change been so ... vital." He calls Iran a "virtual nuclear weapons state." "Virtual," of course, because they are NOT a nuclear weapons state, although he believes it has. What evidence? None. He says John Kerry is helping the Iranians stay in power. "Go figure," he says. This guy is a fuckwit who says the Iranians rigged the election. Why does this fuckwit think that, when their guy didn't even get to the second round? He claims the Iranians who counted the votes rigged things. He doesn't seem to have the slightest CLUE about nuclear bombs. This guy is so unbelievably fuct. His only saving grace is that he doesn't want to go for all out war. Listen to this guy talk about Israel! What is emerging in Europe is the deep-rooted, ancient anti-semitism. Well, fucknut, aren't most Americans Europeans in origin? Yes. So, is it Europe's soil, or drinking water? Don't be such a idiot! Even though the intelligence community recent came out saying it would ten years before Iran got a bomb, he thinks we can't wait 18 months, and says "you can't assume they do not have one now." Unfreakingbelievable. He says that when Porter Goss said that he had an "excellent idea" where UBL was, that he meant Iran. Crown Forum published this, and they are effectively committing treason against the United States.Thursday, August 04, 2005
Bismarck the Bastard
A most peaceful 100 years in European History occured while, in part, they were trying to divide up the world. Between the defeat of Napoleon and WWI, there were not many wars in Europe (none for the first 15 years, although it can easily be argued that the world suffered European proxy wars). Outside three wars of Italian unification, and the Carlist wars(Spanish Succession) almost every European war was a machination of Otto von Bismarck (the three Schleswig-Holstein Wars, the Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War, and meddling in the later Carlist Wars). This war-monger is the founder of the "realist" school of political thought, to which the phrase "by any means necessary" seems fitting. The Bush administration contains many self-proclaimed "realists." Like the term "right" (as in "right wing"), "realism" is a false name for a sometimes reasonable way to look at things. A few scholars pretend Bismarck used war as a last resort. One simply can not orchestrate over a half-dozen wars and have that be true. The result of Bismarck's efforts was the Second Reich, from where we get the term "police state." The Second Reich started WWI (after Bismarck died). It was replaced by the Weimar Republic after that war. It was back to the Second Reich, in a rejection of Weimar, that neo-con intellectual founder Leo Strauss drooled. You probably knew all this, so I'll add this tidbit on Bismarck for free. Bismarck put together the Berlin Conference, which divided up Africa. From the article...Although controlling the slave trade and promoting humanitarian idealism were promoted as the focus of the conference, the conference only passed empty resolutions about the ending of slave trade and providing for the welfare of Africa. In truth, the result of the Conference was a method of dividing the continent of Africa between the European powers.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Odd Tidbits Of History
From Friendly Fire (in the comments) over at Today in Iraq I read...As Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill wrote to Lloyd George on September 1, 1922, arguing that Britain should prepare toDuring the period of the outbreak of the Crimean War (an interesting war in its own right, being one of the only major inter-European wars that wasn't started by O Bismarck during the period between the Congress of Vienna and the first World War), I read about this happening
clear out . . . we are paying eight millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having.
Lloyd George rebuked him for being insufficiently far-sighted:
. . . if we leave we may find a year or two after we have departed that we have handed over to the French and Americans some of the richest oilfields in the world.
The catalyst for war was a growing dispute from 1840s over the religious custody of Christian Holy Places in Palestine. Catholic monks under French protection had tended the Jerusalem and Bethlehem holy places since the sixteenth century, and this had been guaranteed in perpetuity by the Ottoman capitulations of 1740. These privileges, as well as French pilgrimages, lapsed during the turbulent anticlerical French revolutionary and Napoleonic era. Louis Napoleon, seeing the possibilities for political influence, sought reinstatement of the capitulations in 1852, and, after his coronation as Emperor, his concern about religion in the East became a rallying cry for French Catholics. The Sultan supported French claims of jurisdiction. Tsar Nikolai I objected that Russia was the true defender of Christianity in the East, that such a protectorate existed by the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji (1774), and that Greek Orthodox were by far the majority Christians (ten million) in the East. The dispute broke into violence in Jerusalem between Catholic and Orthodox monks, and the Muslim governor intervened in 1847 to prevent Christian killing Christian. More importantly, French imperial intrigues revived Russian proposals for dividing the Ottoman empire. The tsar secretly sounded out the British about dismembering the Ottoman empire, but the British, continuing Palmerston's policy of containing Russia, indicated they would do all they could to keep the dying empire alive.
Iran Update: Drumbeat Iran from PubDomProgress
M Miller at PublicDomainProgress has this post, called Drumbeat: Iran, including some recent articles on Iran. Predictably, FrontPageMag is war-mongering, and so is NY Times E Bumiller, but refereshingly D Linzer at the WaPo seems to be making an effort to muffle the drums.The Neo-Cons Hated Iraq
The left and right often seem to alternate shows on BookTV on C-SPAN. Khidhir Hamza is one of the frauds who lied us into this war. He lied and claimed to be "Saddam's Bombmaker" (the name of his book). He lied and explained the current state of Iraqi technology in nuclear weapons as _possessing_ a nuclear bomb. He lied. C-SPAN 3 is currently re-airing this liar (without any caveats, luring the unsuspecting into false views). I notice it was originally broadcast five days before Election 2000.UPDATE (2005-08-05): C-SPAN is airing it again this morning on C-SPAN 3.
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