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Wednesday, August 18, 2004

The week so far...

It seems someone in the administration forgot to mention an important little fact that emerged from an analysis of Department of Education data. Apparently the darling of the right, Charter Schools (basically private schools run on public funds) not only are no better than regular public schools, they’re worse! The administration released the data without comment. It took a teacher's union to sift through the data to get the news released. (How much do you want to bet had the news been different it would have been announced by the White House) Now it may seem like I'm being critical here of the administration but truly... I find it amazing that this administration released the data at all. I could easily see how it could be a national security issue. Now that Al Qaeda knows that our charter schools are failing the nation is truly in trouble.

So we need a wake-up call. Not to be overly depressing but the likelihood of a nuclear attack in the country is VERY high. Nuclear terror “experts” (how does one become that?) say that there is a better (better?) than even chance of a 10-kilo ton nuke blast in one of our cities in the next ten (yes, 10) years. This should send chills down anyone’s spine. What do either our present administration (our brave chicken hawks) or the incoming (oops too soon) Kerry administration have in mind to prevent this from occurring? Not much really. It seems that we need a two fold approach to this issue. Try to prevent shipments in of such a bomb and preparing for the worst. What should we do, for example, if we find that the bomb was purchased from Pakistan or North Korea?



The FBI has been knocking on doors intimidating potential protesters. Do you think that there MIGHT be something just a LITTLE better for them to do?

In Florida, state police are knocking on the doors of black get-out-the-vote organizers. It stems from an investigation into voter fraud. The state has claimed that there were voting irregularities in municipal elections in Orlando. The state investigator explained why they were only looking into the activities of African American voting campaigns by saying, "That's just the people we selected out of a random sample to interview."

This brings us to the whole problem of the upcoming election. As long as this election is close it may well be “won” by fraud. Crude tactics like the above and the “ethnic” cleansing of the voter rolls not withstanding, far more can be made of simply making votes disappear. In another twist to the whole electronic voting thing is news from, you guessed it, Florida of election records disappearing due to a hard drive failure.

The good news. The latest poll shows Colorado now dead even with 47% for Kerry and 47% for the ape.

Latest Poll Numbers: Kerry 317 Bush 202

5 comments:

Ken said...

More on Republican openmindedness:

The T-Shirt Test

Richard Leiby reports in The Washington Post's Reliable Source column about John Prather, an Ohio math professor, and the T-shirt experiment he conducted a few weeks ago.

"The experiment: A college professor wears a Kerry-Edwards shirt to a rally for President Bush, then a Bush for President shirt to a John Kerry rally.

"Result: Bush people make the subject remove his shirt, then give him the boot. The Kerry people don't make a peep."

Matt said...

The "haves" are always more threatened than the "have-nots". Besides, people who wear Kerry/Edwards T-Shirts to Bush campaign rallies are unpatriotic, unAmerican, and likely involved with terrorist activities.

Matt said...

The "haves" are always more threatened than the "have-nots". Besides, people who wear Kerry/Edwards T-Shirts to Bush campaign rallies are unpatriotic, unAmerican, and likely involved with terrorist activities.

gberke said...

The "not much, really" noting differences between Bush and Kerry are not helpful: what we DO know is that Bush will say anything and everything and is bound by nothing at all: everything changes, everything is managed. So, gonna get that asshole out of the goddam country? or not?
On the un-Kerry side, that guy needs a serious bitch slapping: he is quoted as saying that KNOWING WHAT HE DOES NOW he would still have gone into Iraq

Anonymous said...

A rebuttal to John Prather's experience

1) From his experience with the security at the first rally in Cambridge, John wishes to portray the Republican party as insensitive and restrictive toward people. However, in subsequent discussions, he said that he thought that it was the Secret Service that asked him to leave. So, if anyone was insensitive toward him, it was the Secret Service, not the Republican party. The primary duty of the Secret Service is to protect the President of the United States. Therefore, John must feel that his "rights" are more important than the safety of the President.

2) The few minutes that he wore a Bush t-shirt at the Kerry rally pale to the hour-and-a-half that he wore the Kerry shirt in line for the first Bush rally. Also, it is much easier to notice an individual's clothing when they are standing in a line than when they are crowded together in a group.

3) It was the security people at the Cambridge rally that asked John to change his shirt, while the security at the Kerry rally didn't notice anything. It is entirely possible that the Kerry security people are so obtuse that they failed to notice the possible disruption.

4) John Prather is "mild-mannered"? As a co-worker of John, I can tell you that "mild-mannered" is NOT an adjective normally applied to John. He normally takes great joy in annoying various people.

5) The rallies for President Bush were private events. The ball field and the arena were rented by the Bush/Cheney campaign, and as such, they have the right to allow (or disallow) certain people into the rally. Restaurants often have signs that they "reserve the right to refuse service to anyone;" this is the same concept as applied at the rallies.

6) Private businesses and events are allowed to set their own dress code and may remove people who violate it. For example, the Cedar Point amusement park states "Clothing that might offend other guests is not allowed . . . At every entrance there are signs stating that 'Cedar Point reserves the right to refuse admission to anyone not properly dressed,'" and "Inappropriate items cannot be worn inside out." So, it can be seen that it is not uncommon for people who wear clothing that is deemed offensive to other people to be asked to leave an area.

7) John states that he wondered if he was on a watch list for the August 29 Bush rally. Besides the fact that he announced on the news that he was going to attempt the same thing again, it is probable that someone attempted to alert the rally organizers that a troublemaker was going to try to gain access to the rally. If a thief announced that he was going to try break into a bank, there are very few people who would complain that security was keeping an eye out for him. It is the responsibility of security to watch for possible troublemakers and to remove them before they can cause any problems.

8) Though John says that he wasn't going to protest or to cause trouble, only people close to him would know if he intended to remain true to his word. How many of the 9-11 terrorists told the truth when they entered the US? Did their visas say that they were going to hijack planes and kill people? I doubt it. This is not meant to imply in any way that John is a terrorist; it just points out that some people can be less than honest about their intentions.