Netcraft Shows Smartech Running Ohio Election Servers 688
goombah99 writes "Netcraft is showing that an event happened in the Ohio 2004 election that is difficult to explain. The Secretary of State's website, which handles election reporting, normally is directed to an Ohio-based IP address hosted by the Ohio Supercomputer Center. On Nov. 3 2004, Netcraft shows the website pointing out of state to a server owned by Smartech Corp. According to the American Registry on Internet Numbers, Smartech's block of IP addresses 64.203.96.0 – 64.203.111.255 encompasses the entire range of addresses owned by the Republican National Committee. Smartech hosted the recently notorious gbw43.com domain used from the White House in apparent violation of the Presidential Records Act, from which thousands of White House emails vanished." Update: 04/25 01:24 GMT by KD : ePluribus Media published a piece called Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again on election eve 2006, when a similar DNS switch to Smartech occurred. They have been investigating the larger story of IT on Capitol Hill and elsewhere for two years.
Breaking News (Score:4, Funny)
The President announced today that he as complete faith in the Ohio Supercomputer Center, Smartech Corp. and the RNC, which utterly destroys any remaining credibility they may have had left.
The longer this fellow stays in office, the more he resembles Richard M. Nixon, IMHO.
Nixon is not dead. How do I know? Always two there are, a Master and an Apprentice.
Re:Breaking News (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be an interesting question to ask the president whether he thought Nixon was a shady character as president and whether Nixon's activities and actions were of a questionable if not illegal behavior. Could he agree with History's assessment of Nixon while at the same time continue to claim he is within his rights and is acting in the best interest of the nation?
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Example:
Shooting someone is illegal, yet you go out into times square and shoot someone in the face. A cop comes out and looks at the dead guy, looks at you, and sort of shrugs and walks off. Do you feel like you broke the law? What if you do it every day before work, and eventually a cop says "Hey, maybe it'd be a good idea to stop shooting people". Did you break the law then?
We re
Social Security is *insurance*. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Breaking News (Score:5, Interesting)
Append Godwin (Score:3)
...to include "Nixon".
Now, move along. Has anyone ever thought it was to handle the extra traffic from people checking on election returns? Or did you actually believe that the web site was processing votes?
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My Gods!
The Secretary of State is an elected, partisan position in every single state of the union. However, the "vote counting" is done at the local precinct level, usually by county elections staff which in some cases are elected, some cases appointed, some cases partisan, some not.
The web site in question is just a site for reporting result to the electorate. It
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I morphed them, and it was surprising how little work it was:
http://www.dougshaw.com/experiments/presidents.ht
Re:Breaking News (Score:5, Funny)
AOLers found
Re:Breaking News (Score:4, Insightful)
The economy isn't blasting along. Spending is. It's not the same thing. It's just digging a hole that will have to be got out of later, somehow.
Re:Breaking News (Score:4, Insightful)
How many people even remember the topic of this Slashdot story at this point?
The Matrix so completely has you...
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Re:Breaking News (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Breaking News (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/income/2006
The statements about the stock market are meaningless without knowing where the indexes come from, how they are derived, and most importantly: using multiple specific indexes centered around economic health stock indicators.
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/04/13/savi
Gas prices are around $3.20/Gal here and have been going up. It is getting to the point that it is no longer news worthy to report on the astronomic gas prices because they are becomming a standard. With the major gas companies all reporting record profits and bonuses for the upper management, there is a disconnect between the welfare of the people and the inherrant corporate goals of making a profit for such a vital infrastructure as gasoline. I hope I'm not alone in thinking that some services should be regulated by the government. If only to limit the maximum percentage of personal profit from sales of a vital infrastructure.
If we don't need to push alternative fuel souorces right now with aggressive legislation, then we should have the resources to keep our country running without sending additional billions overseas for oil. Paying the areas of the world that supposedly harbor terrorists. They have an economy just like ours, if there is an influx of money in a region then they prosper. "Trickle down" to the enemy is a bad way to support our troops. This government has reversed and hobbled legislation that could have kept us in the front running technology to become independant. No specific technology will help us now. It must be a multifacited environmental/political/economic push to be better at providing and distributing what we consume. Trash, electricity, and commuting fuel all need to be addressed a whole lot better than they are now. The political grandstanding and photo ops don't cut it. Real action and real commitment from the people in charge (automakers and elected officials) will keep this country a world power, or let it fall into mockery on the world stage, their actions will lead us, and we are responsible for our complicity.
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1. All the major indices with the exception of the tech-heavy NASDAQ are at or near all-time highs, including the broadest-based (i.e. Russell 2000). The NASDAQ is at post-bubble highs.
2. Most individual stocks are not "trading low," whatever that means. See my comment
Re:Breaking News (Score:5, Interesting)
If you believe the mass media have any sort of "left" agenda, or have any agenda whatsoever beyond getting the next advertising deal, you need to buy more tinfoil. The only agenda most American media companies has is to make money; some do it by pandering to religious conservatives, some do it by pandering to Democrats, others are trying to woo the traditional conservative (the small government type, not the current brand of conservatives). If all mass media pandered to the same group as in a nation-wide "agenda", you'd have a vacuum of ad dollars, which we do not have.
And yes, I do see combatant body counts. All the time, in fact, and you would too if you read media outside of the US or read some non-mainstream news sources, or at least not the "big" outlets.
Re:Breaking News (Score:4, Interesting)
Googled. At the very top - Taliban behead Afghan officer [cnn.com]. Yep, we sure do have them running and hiding, violence from members of the Taliban sure has been obliterated.
You'd think the administration and the Pentagon would be quick to hype up the ass-kicking to deflect against Iraq. The Admin does. The Pentagon does not. The press ignores both.
The Pentagon is filled to the brim with cronies using psyops to attempt to direct the media's attention. The administration doesn't know their asshole from their elbow. Fox News certainly caters to conservatives and LOVES reporting victories, but you still see death counts even on that terrible excuse for a 'news' network. The deaths of American soldiers AND Iraqis/Afghanis/etc are equally important for legitimate news dissemination. The problem with American news sources is Journalism has taken a backseat to commercialism. Why do you think we keep seeing Rev. Jesse Jackson and Robert Novak still getting published in newspapers? Its usually flamebait and it sells (even their names alone instill anger in people, but it still sells.)
Next, you say:
If you believe the mass media have any sort of "left" agenda, or have any agenda whatsoever beyond getting the next advertising deal, you need to buy more tinfoil.
and
And yes, I do see combatant body counts. All the time, in fact, and you would too if you read media outside of the US or read some non-mainstream news sources, or at least not the "big" outlets.
Which kinda proves my point. The US media does not present any US military victories, just "how many US soldiers died today." Why should I have to go outside US media outlets to find out how many "insurgents" we are killing vs. how many soldiers we are losing. It's kinda hard to keep score when all you see is how many scores opponent has. Don't get me wrong, this is not a game, but if we attack an Al Qaeda stronghold and kill 10,000 insurgents and lose 5 US soldiers, all I see reported is how Al Qaeda killed five soldiers today. Are you telling me that's not pushing an agenda?
The US media does not present *many US military victories because a.) they don't have the same appeal for ratings (commercialism) and b.) WHAT military victories are worth reporting, US Spec Ops kill insurgents, insurgents bomb the hell out of a market and kill 200 people, 9 Soldiers killed by roadside bomb, etc., etc. The fact is, we are getting our asses kicked because there is no way to fight an insurgency shy of just killing everyone (which, btw, is how Saddam ran things). On a side note, its not the media's job to keep troop morale up, and if you are a soldier or related to one, soldiers are there to do what they are ordered to and not complain about media coverage, they signed up for it.
Have you been off the grid for the past 6 years? Have you listened to any interviews or statements Dick Cheney or anyone at an administration press conference has given about ANYTHING to do with ANYTHING in the past 6 years?
Its called cognitive dissonance and you need to rise above it. Until then, bask in your one sided ignorance while human beings, including small children, are dying.
Cheers.
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"Why should I have to go outside US media outlets to find out how many "insurgents" we are killing vs. how many soldiers we are losing."
Chances are you will never find any source that will reliably report how many "insurgents" are being killed in an insurgency. It is a notoriously hard number to arrive at for a host of reasons. The main one being "insurgents" don't wear uniforms and dog tags. They basically look like civilians except they are packing, and they can pick up or drop a weapon in a heart beat
Re:Breaking News (Score:5, Interesting)
Losing means we are losing our country's dignity by continuing our unprovoked invasion of another country.
Losing means we are losing our brightest stars, sacrificing for political reasons those who would most readily pick up arms in defense of this country. This includes many of our bravest and brightest. What would do more good for this country, having a soldier in Iraq, toiling in endless war, or having that person back at home, raising their children to become good people like themselves?
Losing primarily means that this is not considered by either side to be a conventional war, with winners and losers. The violence and indignation will go on for as long as we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it will continue after we leave. The fighting will continue indefinitely. And as such, given that we are foreign invaders, and our "enemies" are defending their home, we cannot "win."
That's kind of monstrous, isn't it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gas is 2.87 a gallon [doe.gov] nation-wide. It peaked at an average of about $3 per gallon last year and the year before. I'm unable to find good graphs with this previous year's data on them, but it looks like the peak was around $3 in today's dollars; I should remind you that we're not being embargoed, and it's still almost as bad as it was then. The media disbanded the Iraqi army? The media put incompetent partisan hacks in charge of the reconstruction effort? The media decided that torture was a great idea? "Kicking major ass" isn't a foreign policy goal, it's a movie tagline--and it's a stupid euphemism for "killing lots of people". Pretending to be the Golden Horde doesn't work when you're also pretending to be George Marshall. Don't blather on about how you're the armies of goodness and light when you also want to kill kill kill, and those corpses were probably Al Qaeda anyway.
Re:Breaking News (Score:4, Informative)
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The unemployment rate is below 5%. It doesn't get much better without forced labor!
While 5% unemployment is generally regarded as very good, the economist's term "unemployed" does not accurately capture the number of people not working in the country. The term "unemployment" is actually the number of people who have recently applied for unemployment benefits, or who are temporarily unemployed but still seeking work. This number is reported
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Re:Breaking News (Score:5, Informative)
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This is ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. (Score:4, Insightful)
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I used to work in telecom (MCI), now I work in the medical field and make less money. Not only tha
Re:Breaking News (Score:5, Insightful)
Fascinating, that 10% you're talking about also earns 95% of the countries wealth in a year! Meanwhile the 90% that earns 5% of the country's wealth each year is paying 30% of the taxes! Wow, what a burden that must be for the bottom 90%, paying 6 times the rate the top 10% does.
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Here are the numbers.
The top 10% earned 3.049 trillion dollars and paid
The bottom 90% earned 3.9 trillion dollars and paid
For a total of
What about the top 1% though?
1.3 Trillion
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Considering that a fair amount of the services protect investments by the wealthy, protect the wealthy from the vagaries of social upheavals and provide protection of the owners from foreign incursions, that would be an entirely reasonable view to take.
Compare with previous aristocratic and feudal societies; the upper classes could protect themselves by keeping armed forces, but it more or less always eventu
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"First, almost all of the new jobs created in July were in the service industries (generally lower paying jobs with worse benefits) as the employment picture is still very bleak in the manufacturing and good producing sectors (generally higher paying jobs with better benefits)."
Source: OMBwatch [ombwatch.org]
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And an article interpreting that government report: article [blogspot.com]
"Look at the jobs we are creating. Yes construction (higher paying jobs) rebounded but much of the real growth is in leisure and hospitality, which are very low paying jobs."
Re:Breaking News (Score:4, Informative)
Well there were lies told before Vietnam (we didn't even admit we were there for a long time). There was also lying that led to the U.S. invasion of Cuba. And the U.S. invasion of Mexico. And Panama (okay, so we didn't invade Panama, but parking our gunboats in a way that blocked Columbia from a chunk of their own territory is close enough for me). Seeing as not many Presidents even had the Geneva Convention, I will ignore this. If you look at the spirit of the Geneva Convention though you will find many presidents who would be in violation if it existed in their day. See the CIA, and every President since 1947. Are you serious? Do you remember this thing called Japanese internment camps? Ever look into how Abraham Fucking Lincoln had some of his opposition jailed for being his opposition? Well seeing as the NSA was the agency involved with ECHELON, I would say at least every President since the early 1960's.
Re:Breaking News (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is insightful?
If I posted "Just because Windows 98 has lots of security holes doesn't mean OpenBSD/FreeBSD/NetBSD is any more secure. I'm pretty sure that's true. I'll have to do some research to back this up", would I really get modded insightful?
From the actual text of GCIII (1949), Part 1, Article 2, para 3 [wikisource.org]:
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around 30 reasons
30? I mean I know it was a new one every day, but I didn't realize we were up to 30.
Why does the far left support groups like Hamas and Al Quada
Here's a relatively simple answer: They don't. Opposing the war in Iraq ~= support for Al Quaeda. That's a pretty important point to grasp. In fact, if you can't grasp how that is possible, ho boy, I really don't know where to start.
And you actually explain cogently why lefties don't support Muslim terro
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I remember someone characterizing Carter, with his long diplomatic career, as a much better ex-President than President.
Re:Breaking News (Score:5, Informative)
Where do I begin:
Carter was more in the "Religious Right's" pocket than Bush ever will be.
Inflation was through the roof (12%).
Unemployment was high (7%).
Devaluation of the dollar.
Failure to rescue Iranian hostages.
Re:Breaking News (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I'm pretty sure the president appoints the members of the Federal Reserve. As president, he should have acted to reverse their course through whatever means he has as Executive in Chief. Saying their was nothing he could do is a cop-out. That's a lot like the other side saying Clinton had nothing to do with economic expansion. Presidents own their economies and have the power to right the ships, no matter how politically unpopular it is.
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From the Federal Reserve [federalreserve.gov] site:
The Federal Reserve is designed to be resistent to political changes. Also, Carter appointed Paul Volcker as Chairman and he served through 1987. If it about picking the right Federal Reserve Chairman, perhaps Carter deserves more credit - as Carter's Wikipedi
Re:Breaking News (Score:5, Informative)
A common misunderstanding Carter was handed a disfunctional military by Nixon, Ford, and Donnie Rumsfeld -- who was as much a disaster in his first tour at Defense as he was in his second. Carter INCREASED real military spending by 3% in each of his four budgets (which were 1978,1979,1980 and 1981 BTW not 1976-1980) That's just about the same rate that Reagan increased spending until Congress eventually stepped in and decided that the US had about as big a military as it could afford. Defense spending as a percentage of GDP was 4.7 percent when Carter took office. It was 5.2 percent when he left.
Don't believe me? Look it up. It's public record.
Re:Breaking News (Score:4, Informative)
Further problems with the economy (although most resulted from the deficit spending for that tragic military-industrial-complex profit endeavor, the Vietnam War) resulted from the Arab Oil Boycott due to Nixon's aiding Israel in the Yom Kippur War, nothing Jimmy Carter ever did.
Also, it was Jimmy Carter who put in place those trade boycotts with the Soviet Union after they invaded Afghanistan - something which was bringing them to their knees, economically speaking, but the same trade boycotts that Ronald Reagan immediately ended by his 23rd day in the White House.
And as a sidebar, it bears mentioning that the horrible throwaway mission, Operation Eagle Claw (the abortive attempt to rescue the American hostages held in Iran - and it certainly appeared to be nothing more than a BS mission by many of us combat vets), was planned by no other than General Richard Secord, latter deeply involved in Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal and an individual with a very shady past....
Re:Breaking News (Score:4, Informative)
Oh noes!! Bring religious and being in the "religious right's" pocket are two different things. I don't think Carter is going around telling people that God came down to the White House and told him 'no more booze'.
Average mortgage rates during the Carter administration were over 15%! I don't even pay credit cards 15%!!!
Give it time.
Inflation was through the roof (12%).
Strong Fed has been keeping it low. Yay.
Unemployment was high (7%).
Unemployment is measured differently now than then. It's possible that unemployment now using the same measurements would be the same or higher.
Deficit spending went through the roof (the deficit for the fiscal year 1979 totaled $27.7 billion, and that for 1980 was nearly $59 billion).
What is it now? Oh right $521 Billion [whitehouse.gov]. And that's after having balanced the budget in the late '90s. So going from 0 to $521B is a bit more impressive.
Devaluation of the dollar.
$2 gets you a pound
Gas shortages.
Not sure why this hasn't happened yet. But $4/gal gas, here we come!
Iranian hostage crisis.
Failure to rescue Iranian hostages.
Funny how that ended just as Reagan took office. And how a later scandal was called Iran/Contra. Huh.
Demoralization and dismantling of the US military
Yea, the day after Bush blames Democrats for keeping the troops in Iraq longer than they should, Gates says all tours get extended from 12 months to 15 months.
Canceled the B1-B program as well as the MBT-70. (Both badly needed to compete with our enemy of the time... the Soviets who had the T-72 and the Tu-160 BLACKJACK)
We still beat the Russians, right?
Need I go on?
Oh, please do. I don't see anything about Carter tortuing American citizens, or spying on their telephone or banking records. The Internets wasn't quite the same now as then, so I'll give Bush a pass on spying on that, at least in comparing to Carter. Maybe Carter is to blame for Walter Reed, or K Street, or leaking Wilson's name, or any of the collection of other scandals we've seen in the past 6 years that makes losing money on a failed land deal look almost..innocent.
But you go on.
Re:Breaking News (Score:5, Insightful)
In your world,
You don't think the tax revenue from the capitol gains cut and the roth IRA conversion which was temporary had anything to do with this do you?
And I'm wondering about,
You don't think this had anything to do with the oil embargo do you? Or could it be the government price controls that lead people to believe tankers were waiting just outside US waters waiting on the government to increase the market cap?
Could this be because Reagan ended up outspending the russians and with his famous MAD scenario, took the only real leverage the Russians had off the table?
Could this pass be also because Clinton started the spying on the Internet and the programs only matured under Bush? Green lantern?
well, To be truthful, I don't have any questions here, just some clarifications. Leaking of wilson's name or more precisely his wife, PLame was done by Richard Armatage, a democrat and the special council knew this from the very beginning of his investigation. But more importantly, The land deal was a direct result of Carters policy and the collapse of the savings and loans along with the loss of farms too.
Carter tried to improve the economy by letting the banks invest directly in real estate were before all they could do is back a loan and broker the sale of a mortgage. When the banks dumped all their money into it, it drove real estate prices through the roof and eventually caused the bottom to fall out of the market once the prices for land became so high, a normal person couldn't afford it anymore. This forced the banks to scramble for funds to operate and they started foreclosing on mortgages in an attempt to bring cash flow into the system. Eventually this backfired and caused the loan collapse and the rose law firm was right in the middle of it with the Whitewater land speculation.
But because of this, Farmers were seeing land prices go from $25 -$100 an acre to over $2500 and acre and they took loans out to buy modernized farm equipment with the expectations that the prices would continue to rise and with the increased productivity of the new equipment they thought they could sell a few acres and afford the payments. once the banks dropped and the bottom fell forcing the bailouts, these farmers now owned a huge sum that they couldn't plant themselves out of and their land values dropped so much that selling the farm wouldn't even cover it.
This leads us into the farm crisis were family farms were being foreclosed to cover the debts of the banks and eventually the savings and loan bailout. The good thing about this was the instillation of the FDIC insurance and limits to the amounts of money that can be loaned out with a required amount to be placed in reserve.
Unfortunately, All this good stuff could have been avoided with a little more government oversight and some limits imposed on the banks concerning the investment properties. IT should have works on paper but failed miserably in practice. If you are old enough to remember how life was back then, you will know that it is much better today is and how wrong of a statement losing money on a failed
Re:Breaking News (Score:5, Insightful)
Its more likely the Soviet Union collapsed be because the Russians foolishly got bogged down in a decade long war in Afghanistan. A war that tore Russia apart from the inside. The scarred veterans returning from the horrors of Afghanistan were an integral part of the uprising against the Communist party that sent them there.
The only credit I'm willing to give Reagan in toppling the Soviet Union was the weapons he gave the Muhjadeen. As a cruel and ironic twist it turns out he was also helping build the Taliban and Al Qaeda at the same time. Reagan's arms build up had no clearly defined role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its main accomplishment was to enrich U.S. defense contractors. Most of the weapons he spent massive sums on were a joke, Star Wars never did anything worthwhile, his battleships were billion dollar artillery pieces that just diverted funds from more useful projects, and the B-2 and B-1B were a complete joke that are largely shunned to this day in favor of the B-52 which cost a fraction of the price.
I would give far more credit to Pope John Paul and Gorbachev for toppling the U.S.S.R than Reagan. They used peaceful persuasion, and accomplished a lot more, than squandering money on staggeringly expensive and largely ineffective weapons.
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This
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It wasn't until Carter's Treasury Dept. folks decided to change how taxation was going to apply to religious private schools in the south that this particular voting block switched sides overnight. This resulted in the Republicans being saddled with the religious right and forever screwing up the right wing and American politics.
That does not follow. Even if we stipulate for this argument that your identified lynchpin did result in the then-democratic voting incipient "religious right" (hereafter "theoc
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This is part of why you consider him worse than Bush? The total deficit for Bush's first term was $648 billion. His second term isn't quite as bad, but it's still a lot worse than it ever was during Carter's years.
H
Re:Breaking News (Score:4, Interesting)
So now let's look at what you complained about (slightly re-arranged)...
Devaluation of the dollar.
Inflation was through the roof (12%).
Average mortgage rates during the Carter administration were over 15%! I don't even pay credit cards 15%!!!
Which invariably leads to...
Unemployment was high (7%).
Deficit spending went through the roof (the deficit for the fiscal year 1979 totaled $27.7 billion, and that for 1980 was nearly $59 billion).
You can't blame Carter for these things. That's not to say he did anything to improve the situation, far from it, but let's at least try to blame the right people for the right problems (not that Carter was lacking in them).
> Canceled the B1-B program as well as the MBT-70. (Both badly
> needed to compete with our enemy of the time... the Soviets who
> had the T-72 and the Tu-160 BLACKJACK)
Pfft.
The MBT-70 was cancelled in 1971. What did he do, go back in time?
Carter did not cancel the B-1B, he cancelled the B-1A. And he replaced it with B-52/ALCM, which EVERYONE not directly tied to the contract will freely admit was a much better system (1500 very small subsonic low-level targets vs 100 -- no brainer). He also funded ATB, or stealth, which was a way better solution.
Regan did an extremely good job of spinning these to make it look like Carter was a moron. But that's just politics.
Again, I'm not trying to support the guy, but these are terrible arguments.
Maury
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I can't find any reference for that. Are you sure you are not confusing this with Rutherford Hayes' wife Lemonade Lucy [suite101.com] in 1878?
As an avid homebrewer myself, I am certainly appreciative of Carter's signature on HR1337 [byo.com] in 1978 that legalized brewing beer in your home.
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No, it made me feel humiliated, as did the rest of the country.
Doesn't it make you feel humiliated to be a citizen of a country whose government is despised by virtually everyone else in the world? I'm in the UK, BTW, one of the staunchest allies of the USA over the last century, but I have to tell you that there's not a cat in hell's chance we'll join the next US military action we're invited to. It would be political suicide. Your president is an international laughing stock. There's a round on a popular UK radio show - listened to by let's say a "mature" audience (
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"Ooops, sorry! didn't mean to mess it up!"
It's a fucking WAR, jackass. If you're going to start one... when you're already in one, especially... you better be damn sure, not selectively filtering your CIA reports and LYING.
You know, colin powell? The UN? Yeah, the administration had been told all that was wrong already. He said it anyway. That's LYING. Very simple.
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I wouldn't point that out if you like Reagan. (Score:3, Insightful)
And this is meaningful? Do you really think that foreign policy should revolve around your ego? What else are you willing to have your country to do avoid the dreaded sting of unmanliness? Does feeling like a part of all that torturing and bombing help?
I give up, how many American citizens have been kidnapped by Iran since t
Re:Breaking News (Score:4, Insightful)
Behold, most of what's wrong with the US in just one sentence.
Re:Breaking News (Score:5, Insightful)
P.S. shouldn't your alias be "Archie B" as in Bunker?
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Logan Act? (Score:3, Insightful)
If so, wouldn't that be a violation of the Logan Act that all the conservatives claim (incorrectly) that Pelosi violated?
In fact, it's rather hard to imagine a scenario where the hostages get released minutes after Reagan takes office that doesn't entail a violation of the Logan Act.
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Europe is dumping US dollars in record numbers because of Mexico's economy?!?
Asia is dumping dollars too. But before you point to that as symptomatic of some "Asian decline", they're, along with the vast majority of the world's Forex traders, changing their dollars to Euros.
So, no, I don't buy that blowoff.
Misunderstanding (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing "changed" or was "transferred". http://election.sos.state.oh.us/ [state.oh.us] is a special web site in operation for elections. Otherwise, it points to http://www.sos.state.oh.us/ [state.oh.us] as it does now. It appears that the State of Ohio contracted with SmartTech for hosting, processing, and dissemination of the election results via the special elections web site, when it is in operation.
That probably won't be a good enough answer for people, though. Regardless, it appears that SmartTech has obvious ties to the Republican Party, and hosts many sites for various Republican political interests. The Secretary of State of Ohio is a partisan political position. This doesn't mean there aren't questions that can be raised or points to be debated.
The sad truth is that partisans are involved in just about every aspect of the voting and elections process, and that's not going to change, ever.
Witness the decades-old joke from Democratic stronghold cities: "Why did the Democrat walk into the cemetery? To thank his voters."
It's April 2007. Anyone who believes the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen (or not) isn't going to change what they think now.
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Wait, what am I thinking? No, it's more evidence of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
Re:Misunderstanding (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Misunderstanding (Score:5, Insightful)
--crazy tin foil hat guy
Re:Misunderstanding (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally debunked the UC Berkeley study (cough) which "proved" the Flordia results were rigged. Though they hid it in a bunch of technical nonsense, essentially what they said was that they had a model to predict the outcome of results in Florida (based on past elections in 1996 and 2000) and since the 2004 numbers were different from what they expected, the results were rigged. QED.
Needless to say, this is complete hokum, and they should have been laughed out of the room instead of published.
Seems to me there's more evidence for a vast left wing conspiracy.
Maxwell's deamon (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why getting the results early and having the ability to delay posting them enlarges the opportunity for dirty tricks. For example here's a sort of maxwell's deamon way to rig an eleciton completely legally. If you look at the early returns you will see lots of mistakes. Some will go in your favor some will go against you. If you selectively inquire with precinct judges only on the cases where the votes go against you, you can make gains. Indeed both parties routinely do this after the elections so that's not even science fiction. But now suppose your party, and only your party, is magically granted the power to do this on election night itself. Getting totals "fixed" is a lot easier when things are in flux. a simple phone call can say "Hey that can't be right, read those numbers again" will get you an updated total. After the election is done getting changes is much harder. Hence eraly knowledge helps. Running the reporting site would be a windfall.
Re:Misunderstanding (Score:5, Interesting)
That may be true, but let me share a personal anecdote. Studying in Ohio during 2004, I was glad that my vote might "count" for something, and eagerly anticipated the elections. Being in a (rich and somewhat elitist) college town, you can imagine that liberal sentiment was widespread. Sure, there were a few Bush supporters, but almost everyone I knew of planned on voting Kerry. This is a sizable group of people, several thousand.
The (Republican) voting officials assigned us just TWO voting machines, which coincidentally turned out to be the two oldest in the county. One broke after about an hour in use.
Personally, I ended up standing in line almost 11 hours to vote. Some people stayed in excess of 13 hours (by far the highest in the nation). Needless to say, our votes didn't make it into the county tallies.
Meanwhile, the "townies" (rural and overwhelmingly Bush supporters according to results) had surplus machines, and faced no wait.
I'm not saying that Kerry would have won anyway, but just the brazenness of these people's anti-competitive activities astounded me. I can certainly believe that lesser forms of the same or similar methods were enforced in other areas of the state. IIRC, Ken Blackwell, then Secretary of State (no idea if he still is), said that he would do whatever it took to re-elect Bush. I think that's a quote, but I'm not certain. Certainly, this implies no illegal activity, but given the political climate, I certainly wouldn't rule it out.
Re:Misunderstanding (Score:4, Insightful)
Finally, there's other potential problems. As I said there are other checks on the votes, but it seems they really are not in use. Ohio was such a mess that it still is hard to match up precinct totals with final totals. Some of this is due to artifacts in the way they attribute absentee votes to precincts as virtual voters causing more apparent votes than voters signing in. In other cases the discrepancies in the poll books go the other way. And in some cases precincts post "corrected" total late. Now you might think a person could get all the data and sort it all out. But the fact is that in practice this is not really possible. There just never seems to be one set of books. If you go to many web sites to day, New Mexico, for example, you can do the addition yourself and find that the sum of the precinct totals on the SOS's website is not the sum of the election, and some counties had more votes than voters while others had undervotes in the tens of percent. In fact there are even errors that simply are accepted because the canvassing board accepted them.
Ordinary citizens usually don't have standing to contest elections. And it can literally be expensive for candidates to do so. Generally they don't get back any bonds they put up unless the election actually changes outcome. And with electronic voting they become more reluctant to do so since theirs nothing to recount (and so the totals won't change).
Thus in a close election changing the vote totals at the "top" is not even a completely crazy notion since it's in practice hard to verify.
For these reasons it's imperative that the vote counting system not have egreious opportunities to inflame partisan suspicions. It does not matter so much what was done, if anything, but if it expanded the opportunity for this to be done. Perceptions matter a lot.
In this case some reports say the crew that set up this site was the same one now being accused of the phone jamming dirty tricks against the DNC. So it's not really so far fetched to be suspicious.
Sec State is NOT a partisan position! (Score:5, Informative)
The Secretary of State's office is NOT a partisan position. The Secretary swears to protect and defend the constitution (or whatever the equivalent is for Ohio state positions), not to protect the elephant. There should be a clear and unambiguous wall between the office holder's official actions and individual partisan actions, and should never, under any circumstances, use official resources for partisan purposes. When it's inevitable (the classic example being the president flying to events during the election season), the office holder is required to provide appropriate compensation for this use. E.g., equivalent first-class airfare for everyone on AF1, IIRC.
With most secretaries of state, I would agree with you that it's probably nothing more than temporary hosting during a period of high use.
But the outgoing Secretary of State, Blackwell (iirc), was extraordinarily partisan in his official acts. He's the reason why Ohio is usually the center of stolen election allegations. Given his amply documented bad behavior in the past, e.g., attempting to have his gubernatoral opponent disqualified on bogus grounds shortly before the election, a rational person would have no choice but to assume the worst and require proof that it truly was an innocent and unbiased decision.
Re:Misunderstanding (Score:4, Insightful)
And there's your problem. Elections Canada [elections.ca] is an independent agency set up by the Canadian Parliament. Returning Officers [elections.ca] are hired for 10-year periods to run the election in every electoral district. All staff, from the Chief Electoral Officer at the top to the poll clerk at the bottom have to be non-partisan and the people at the top can't be members of political parties or have recently held office before their appointments.
You often hear of political scandals in Canada, but not electoral ones. The best example of that is recounts: recounts happen automatically if there is a difference between the top two candidates of 0.1% of the total vote. However, a losing candidate can request one outside that range if they saw instances of electoral fraud. Do you know when the last time a recount (not even a new election, just a recount) was ordered due to electoral fraud? Because I don't. There you go.
Netcraft confirms it! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Netcraft confirms it! (Score:4, Funny)
-But who confirms Netcraft? (5, Funny)
-In Soviet Russia, Netcraft confirms YOU! (5, Funny)
-That doesn't even make sense, dude. (5, Funny)
Accountability, bah. (Score:2, Insightful)
*Half of democrats and no republicans raise their hands*
All opposed?
*No democrats and every republican raise their hands*
No need to investigate then. Nothing to see here, move along!
How reliable is the data? (Score:3, Insightful)
1. How reliable is the Netcraft data? What would it take to hack Netcraft and make it look like there was a hack of the Ohio SOS?
2. What information do we have that the election.sos.state.oh.us domain was a part of the election procedures during the 2004 election?
3. Was the April 2006 change during a primary election?
Inquiring minds want to know...
Re:How reliable is the data? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How reliable is the data? (Score:5, Interesting)
This was submitted yesterday when this was still news:
I fail to understand... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Obvious . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Somebody obviously hacked the Netcraft server to make it look like the Republicans were so stupid as to try to steal an election by using their own block of IPs. It also seems amazing that the GOP would wait until the last minute to change the DNS, as it can sometimes take a bit longer than expected for such a transfer to properly propagate. Heck, if they were smart enough to steal an election by changing the DNS, why not spoof the entry to make it look like it pointed to the Democrat Party?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You fail at political dialogue.
Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
This doesn't even pass the smell test.
As the Democrats' own statistician, Jasjeet Sekhon, who coauthored their 2004 post-election report said:
Which article? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not questioning this necessarily, but with all of the links to evidence I'm confused why there was no link for this one...
Wrong IPs (Score:5, Informative)
RNC: 64.203.98.0 - 64.203.98.127
There is no evidence presented that the RNC controlled the Ohio server in question. It fell outside the range.
Jeremy Allison said it best (Score:5, Funny)
Since the Internet is a series of tubes, either 1) anyone involved has no idea how it works, but got a free iPod for switching hosting facilities, or 2) its a plan by the geeks to throw the election, which, frankly, is better than the politicians throwing it.
as an Ohio resident... (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly right (Score:3, Informative)
The NetCraft IP funny business was noted, and the election.sos.state.oh.us was updated and checked on from 2005 onwards, that is why you can look at NetCraft today on see a history of it. The list of domains hosted on SMARTech [robtex.com] were also added to Robtex by querying a list of servers with a long list and adding to it over the years.
This was posted by some asshat who
Fascism in the USA (Score:4, Insightful)
Today's Guardian [guardian.co.uk] includes this interesting piece entitled "Fascist America, in 10 easy steps". Guess how many steps down the path we are?
For the benefit of those who won't read it, here's the ten points.
And in other news: Jessica Lynch [guardian.co.uk] comes out and condemns the Hollywood show they made of the incident she was involved in.
So Ohio and RNC use the same host? So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
See, the Republicans are right. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, anyone found to be a participant in voter fraud [washingtonpost.com] should be barred for life from voting.
I can (Score:5, Insightful)
On election day, the people who run the SOS's DNS point election.sos.state.oh.us to a contractor who has contracted to provide "real time" updates from election data, something the SOS's staff is not equipped to do.
That vendor markets hosting services to political and government entities. It unwisely assigns a governmental web site from the very next block of addresses that are given to a political client, and unfortunately that block of addresses has become implicated in a serious scandal. Note the address is not in the RNC owned block (contrary to the article's title).
Now there are a gazillion possible ethical temptations that marketing yourself to political and government entities entails. So contracts let to such companies should be looked at very closely. But this is no smoking gun; or if there is smoke, it is more likely to involve improper contract selection than anything else.
So, it bears looking into, but is nothing to get excited about yet.
Original Ohio Election Story HERE: check data (Score:5, Informative)
How stupid is this? (Score:4, Interesting)
And the IP addresses issue, puh-leeze, they have many clients that are not the RNC - simply providing a service to the RNC is not a crime - if it were, then caterers, limo drivers, temp agencies, coffee shops, etc. that serve the RNC throughout the year are RNC flunkies...
Seriously, what is the problem - that the SOS website was on a machine physically near Newt Gingrich's website, the election was obviously stolen...
How does this conspiracy work? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cheaters. (Score:5, Informative)
Well, what a relief that the democrats would never stoop to grandstanding, using foreign money to fund campaigns, submit thousands of fraudulant voter registrations in key races, retain congressmen caught with $90k of bribe cash in their freezers (and put them on the Homeland Security oversight committee! you can't make stuff like that up!), etc. Do you REALLY think that the other party's habit of doing things like taking election cash from China as donations through a monestary in California DOESN'T count as "win at all costs?" You need a different complaint.
Re:Cheaters. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you really want to do something, get a "no consecutive terms on Capitol Hill" law enacted in your own state. Make them come home and live under the laws they passed for the past two to six years while holding an elected office. Eliminate their special pension plans, forcing them to live under the same Social Security and Medicare plan they force everyone else to live under.
Change in the way our government works will not occur until the people wise up and realize they're being strung along with lots of lip service and "feel good" knee-jerk reaction laws.
I have no plans to hold my breath waiting for that change, however.
Re:Wierd (Score:5, Informative)
Search for wierd [google.com]:
Did you mean: weird
Even more interesting is that the search for 'weird' and 'smartech' eventually leads to this interesting blog post [neomeme.net] which lists "Strange Domains Registered by the RNC"
"After you've got your minority support locked away, you can then begin the attack ads:" (from the blog post)
"...and, of course, to anticipate attacks by grabbing(and squatting on) those domains first:" (from the blog post)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This was first reported on by ePluribus Media back in Nov. 2006
Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again [epluribusmedia.org]
And again summarized yesterday by Columbus Free Press
The GOP's cyber election hit squad [freepress.org]
Re:Netcraft confirms... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Rigging elections, we already knew that. (Score:4, Interesting)