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bassexpander
Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Location: Someplace you'd rather be.
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 Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 4:20 pm Post subject: |
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Hillary hates the China trade imbalance.
Not sure what Obama thinks about it.
That seems to be the problem with Obama... he doesn't seem to stand for anything concrete except, "Let's come together."
It may be his undoing. |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:19 pm Post subject: |
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QUESTION:
What do Europeans have to say re: AmeriKan vote fraud?
1-16-08: How New Hampshire is sizing up
We are finding in New Hampshire: the best of the best in MOST situations, but considerable naivete and in some areas, and an alarming and wilfull negligence.
Among the "best of the best" of New Hampshire situations:
(1) Beautiful, community oriented hand counted paper ballots in more than one hundred jurisdictions.
(2) Very democratic and participatory township structure of government, combined with very high level of representation of local areas in the state legislature
(3) Amazing level of responsiveness of public officials. Secretary of State Bill Gardner, for example, answers questions personally and tirelessly from just about everyone. Many, many high level officials perfectly willing to talk with and answer all questions from the public.
(4) Beautiful, participatory 100% hand counted recounts.
(5) Very good public records laws. If they have it in their possession, they let you see it THAT DAY. Along those lines, Paddy Shaffer did a hand written records request today which elicited some very good information. The dream team here is in the process of editing another request as I write this.
On the almost schizophrenically BAD side:
(1) A reckless reliance on a sole source private contractor. Not particularly bothered that the company has private chain of custody during critical points, no policy or even apparent concern with having convicted felons involved in the voting system.
(2) Use of a system with known defects without even taking any mitigation steps that other states took.
(3) NO REQUIREMENT to even save the memory cards. The explanation is that they get a disk with the "program" on it. VotersUnite attorney Jon Bonifaz questioned the assistant attorney general on this closely today, because federal law requires records retention of 22 months on electronic media.
New Hampshire has a haphazard policy of allowing the memory cards to be kept, or not, with a chain of custody, or not, shipping back to LHS, or not, and it's perfectly okay with New Hampshire if the memory cards are erased altogether the day after the election. They profess to believe that if they just have LHS ship them a disk containing some purported program -- BEFORE the election, when there aren't even any votes registered -- everything is okay. No one could tell us if this is the memory card program, or the GEMS database file, or the optical scan chip. They seem to have no idea what they are doing with this and I would call this wilfull ignorance ... more
1-15-08: Can recount chain of custody be rescued?
At this point we can pretty much guarantee the New Hampshire recount for Kucinich will match -- and that's not a good thing, because unless chain of custody can be documented properly, the recount doesn't provide real answers.
Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich did not order a statewide recount today, only two counties, and the Republican candidate, Albert Howard, was cut out of the recount altogether. I'll write more on the details later this week.
I have been doing field work since Saturday here in New Hampshire. Donations have been helping underwrite the costs of a citizen dream team: I invited some outstanding people to join me here to evaluate chain of custody for the recount: Susan Pynchon (Florida Fair Elections Coalition, has helped unravel the Sarasota situation); Melisa Urda (Illinois Ballot Integrity Project, has helped get the Illinois attorney general to issue a special directive ordering DuPage County to follow the law); and Paddy Shaffer (Ohio Election Justice Campaign, with Richard Hayes Phillips helped unravel the ballot chain of custody in Ohio). Others, like Election Defense Alliance Sally Castleman, have been organizing a team of citizen videographers, while Bruce O'Dell and Theron Horton have been quietly crunching the numbers to pinpoint locations with unusual footprints. (I also hoped to have the great Kathleen Wynne, but had to red-eye out to New Hampshire on such short notice that the timing didn't work this time.)
VERDICT: New Hampshire is unable to document its chain of custody properly, lacks written procedures, its secretary of state has said he doesn't know where its memory cards are, and LHS has been encroaching on state elections with near-total control. I'll be preparing a Special Report when I return from New Hampshire with documents and video to support this assessment.
VIDEO CAMERA CONFISCATION?
In New Hampshire, ballots are brought from each town and ward to a central location for recounts. We got a tip today that the location would be the state archive building, so we went there hoping for a walk-through.
There, police told us that videotaping the delivery of the ballots and the unloading of the ballots, would be prohibited and cameras would be confiscated if people were caught doing this. The rationale, we were told, was that they had placed the ballot delivery area in a state building with a parking lot that belonged to a mental hospital located on the grounds about a block away.
On the theory that ... more ...
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 10:10 am Post subject: Re: Europe, Iowa and NH |
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| VanIslander wrote: |
| thepeel wrote: |
| Many French youth from immigrant families are wearing Obama t-shirts, Richomme told the newspaper Liberation, though he added that the French mainstream "are not ready" to see a dark-skinned immigrant as president. |
Yet they were ready to see a Hungarian immigrant of no French heritage other than his upbringing |
True, but it's not Hungarians who are equivalent to African-Americans as the most marginalized group in French society. That "honor" goes to black and North African immigrants. So, the precise equivalent to Obama would be an arab from Algeria(let's say) running for the presidecntial nomination of either the Socialists or one of the Gaullist groupings. As far as I know(could be wrong) that didn't happen in the last election cycle in France.
Mind you, I'm taken to understand that Sakorzy has a Muslim in his cabinet. Then again, so does Bush, and in a fairly sensitive post. (That latter fact being proof positive that any current GOP supporter who's scared of Obama for having a Muslim father is a freaking moron.) |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 10:38 am Post subject: Re: Europe, Iowa and NH |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
| Then again, so does Bush, and in a fairly sensitive post. |
The Bush family and the House of Saud/King Abdullah are together like a pair of spoons. They need one token Muslim, at least.
That fact only scares me to the extent that it serves their own purposes and not those of the citizens of their respective countries.
Last edited by caniff on Fri Jan 18, 2008 10:41 am; edited 1 time in total |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 10:40 am Post subject: |
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I know that most people don't know anything about Singaporean politics, and why would they. But this lovely little country has some serious problems and Singaporeans are very apathetic. Singapore is also the most pro-American place I've ever lived. My conversations over dinner/beers is almost 100% about Obama now. These people are on the one hand very excited for America (Singaporeans see in America a mirror of their own racial issues, though of differing history) and the other hand depressed at the advances America has made when compared to this city. Many of my friends, of Malay, Indian and Chinese stock, are genuinely excited about Obama.
Singapore:
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Have we lost our audacity to hope?
I�m completely unashamed to admit that watching Barack Obama give his Iowa Caucus victory speech sent shivers down my spine and made me more than a little misty eyed.
This wasn�t the first time I felt this way watching him speak: I remember the same reaction following his speeches ever since he gave the keynote address to the Democratic National Congress (DNC) in 2004, the speech that launched him to international prominence.
But this isn�t a paean to American politics or Barack Obama.
In fact, I credit much of that cathartic release to a transposition of emotion I feel at the inspiration deficit from our local political scene.
Singapore�s earlier �audacity of hope�
Perhaps it�s understandable that inspiration has only ever played a marginal role in our politics. Our larger-than-life founding father Lee Kuan Yew�s only political ideology was that he was an adherent to none.
The party he founded rode the communist tiger in opposition before taking a keenly capitalist tack in government. Pragmatism was then, and still is now, one of the keystones of PAP philosophy.
It wasn�t always this way. In the early years, a scrappy idealism characterized Singapore�s struggle for survival. Lee Kuan Yew himself recalls the grim realities of knuckle duster politics, and old guard memoirs exude gritty pride at having to find economic manna in the desert of independence. Pragmatism then was a dogged hope for survival. In the language of Barack Obama�s campaign, our founding fathers embodied the �audacity of hope�, and turned that hope into a reality.
As a survival tool, dogmatic non-dogmatism suited our country well. But in a less positive fashion, our country�s political landscape has been indelibly altered by that choice.
Pragmatism and the Holy Grail
As affluence set in after the initial decades of economic struggle, hope and idealism took divergent paths. Our fight against the odds to survive independence became a more prosaic story to keep the good times going and growing. Our GDP was chugging along just fine, and by the 1990s per capita income had started to match those of European countries.
Sometime back, our national narrative was defined as the search for the Holy Grail of the 5Cs. In 2008, the five Cs are a quaint anachronism of the 90s. �Only five?!� I can almost hear a surprised new yuppie initiate exclaim. What about Cove (Sentosa Cove)?
Singaporeans want good schools for their children to go to, upgrading, job security. They may even frame these wants as their hopes and dreams: two children and a golden retriever housed in a semi-detached somewhere in Singaporean suburbia.
Economic stability is the central platform the PAP has used to stay in power all these years. It is the metaphorical, almost now truistic, bread and butter. In our years of affluence, the politics of hope has become the politics of want.
Opposition�s different approaches
The opposition has found itself tsunamied by this narrative of pragmatic success, unable to offer a compelling alternative to the PAP. The Worker�s Party (WP) has decided that the PAP model of pragmatism is a tried, tested and proven winning solution.
As part of its focus on bread and butter issues, it introduced the idea of the �New Poor�, shorthand for middle class families hard done by despite macroeconomic growth, into our political dictionary. It hopes to chip away slowly at PAP hegemony.
The Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) has tried to retell the Singapore story in totality, and asks Singaporeans to accept a very different history of our country. To the SDP, our political system is one steeped in autocracy, and civil disobedience is the only antidote to a near police state.
They remind me of the partisans of Zion in the movie The Matrix, seeking to alert the rest of us to harsh repression beneath the veneer of an idyllic existence.
On the PAP�s part, it recognizes that recreating the revolutionary zeal that enabled Singapore to prevail against the odds is necessary less the country lapse into complacent ennui. The challenges of the 1997 Asian Financial crisis and the SARS epidemic are constantly held up as examples of us being able to weather the storms with the stoic grit and strong leadership that saw us through the early days. In the national narrative, these are the modern equivalents of our Battle of Britain.
That election after election has returned the PAP to power with convincing margins might point to the failure of the opposition narratives to excite the imagination of Singaporeans. Perhaps it is here that another look at the US elections is apposite.
Lesson for Singapore�s opposition
John Edwards has been a perennial candidate for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination ever since his first run for the White House in 2004. His message is strikingly similar to Barack Obama�s: he has wrapped himself in the message of change. However, his change is a shrill populist harangue pitched at working class Americans left by the wayside by lobbyists and corporations. He constantly decries the emergence of �two Americas�, one for the privileged, another for the poor.
His loss in 2004 as well as his failure to gain traction this election cycle holds a lesson to our opposition politicians would do well to learn from: pandering to sectoral interests excite the imagination of a sector of the electorate, it is hard to hit critical mass unless this sector is in the majority. For the SDP, this sector is hard core oppositionists, for the WP, its cache is middle of the road opposition sympathizers.
An artificial Singapore story
But because opposition narratives are so weak does not validate the national narrative the government is trying to forge. One cannot but help feel a certain artificiality in the way the Singapore story has become synonymous with the story of the leadership of the PAP. And our financial and SARS crises pale in comparison to the emotional scope and imaginative appeal of our independence. Crises, anyway, are reactive. Crises do not a national narrative make.
In Obama�s DNC speech, he proclaimed �we are not red states or blue states, we are the United States of America� in reference to Republican and Democratic parties� colors. It is a line he still uses on his stump speech in this election, and the results of the Iowa Caucus bore out its efficacy: he managed to overwhelmingly attract those who identified themselves as independent voters.
Inspiration � going beyond the material
Material gain is universally desired, but as Obama�s rise has shown, politics can and should transcend the material. Similarly, our politicians will have to speak beyond their political constituencies with an eye to more than winning elections. They need to speak to history as it will be seen years later, and create a national narrative that will shape our country�s destiny, whatever that may be.
Will Singapore�s political figures be able to speak beyond the converted and bridge the divide between economic pragmatism and democratic ideals? Will we be able to write the next chapter in the Singapore story that can recapture the idealism of yesteryear while channeling an aspirational vision of the years ahead?
Will politicians be ready to speak of more than development plans and economic blueprints, step out of their comfort zone, and dare to elucidate an aspirational politics, over and on top of a perspirational one?
Until they do, optimists like me will be left watching the US election cycle for our dose of vicarious inspiration. |
http://theonlinecitizen.com/2008/01/17/have-we-lost-our-audacity-to-hope/
I've come across this theme time and time again. The advances in America, which until now the world has been ignorant of, are a cause for reflection about the domestic situations around the world. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 10:57 am Post subject: Re: Europe, Iowa and NH |
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| caniff wrote: |
| On the other hand wrote: |
| Then again, so does Bush, and in a fairly sensitive post. |
The Bush family and the House of Saud/King Abdullah are together like a pair of spoons. They need one token Muslim, at least.
That fact only scares me to the extent that it serves their own purposes and not those of the citizens of their respective countries. |
Yeah, but I could easily imagine a person not being aware that Bush has all these Muslim friends. That information isn't exactly something you're gonna read about in the papers every day. But, if you're clued-in enough to know that Obama's father was a Muslim, then it strikes me as somewhat odd that you wouldn't have also heard that Zalmay Khalizad is the highest ranking Muslim ever to serve in an American administration. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 10:59 am Post subject: |
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| thepeel wrote: |
| I've come across this theme time and time again. The advances in America, which until now the world has been ignorant of, are a cause for reflection about the domestic situations around the world. |
"If I can..make it there, I'll make it..anywhere..."? |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:00 am Post subject: |
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| Dunno. If you put your mind to it? |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:04 am Post subject: |
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| thepeel wrote: |
| Dunno. If you put your mind to it? |
Not me, personally, you smart-ass. I was throwing in a great norae-bang song lyric as a way of saying what I thought about the....
You know what I meant. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:07 am Post subject: Re: Europe, Iowa and NH |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
| caniff wrote: |
| On the other hand wrote: |
| Then again, so does Bush, and in a fairly sensitive post. |
The Bush family and the House of Saud/King Abdullah are together like a pair of spoons. They need one token Muslim, at least.
That fact only scares me to the extent that it serves their own purposes and not those of the citizens of their respective countries. |
Yeah, but I could easily imagine a person not being aware that Bush has all these Muslim friends. That information isn't exactly something you're gonna read about in the papers every day. But, if you're clued-in enough to know that Obama's father was a Muslim, then it strikes me as somewhat odd that you wouldn't have also heard that Zalmay Khalizad is the highest ranking Muslim ever to serve in an American administration. |
PR
edit: OTOH, I see your point. Unfortunately, as an American, I have nearly lost faith in the ability of my countrymen to stop watching American Idol or some such vacuous trype and try to understand what is really happening.
American Idol has ruined America.
Last edited by caniff on Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:12 am; edited 1 time in total |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:09 am Post subject: |
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I don't understand. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:13 am Post subject: |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
I don't understand. |
Public Relations (my bad), as in I thought it was an attempt to put a Muslim face on the administration's saying that the government's actions weren't a 'crusade' against Islam, even though Bush stupidly pretty much said as much in his prior speeches.
Last edited by caniff on Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:16 am; edited 1 time in total |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:14 am Post subject: |
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| caniff wrote: |
| thepeel wrote: |
| Dunno. If you put your mind to it? |
Not me, personally, you smart-ass. I was throwing in a great norae-bang song lyric as a way of saying what I thought about the....
You know what I meant. |
Hey, you never drunk post? Cut a guy some slack. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:17 am Post subject: |
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| thepeel wrote: |
| caniff wrote: |
| thepeel wrote: |
| Dunno. If you put your mind to it? |
Not me, personally, you smart-ass. I was throwing in a great norae-bang song lyric as a way of saying what I thought about the....
You know what I meant. |
Hey, you never drunk post? Cut a guy some slack. |
Slack has been cut.
edit: I worked 16 hours today (not straight, but still), made a nice sum, bought a crapload of makkoli with the expectation I would drink it all, but have only consumed two bottles after helping my wife shower my three cats (Persian cats! - You see! I'm not anti-Muslim!), cleaned out my fish tank, and now I have attempted to relax with Dave's.
It's too much for one man.
I'm seeing double I am so freaking tired. Thank god I don't work tomorrow.
God bless us. Hopefully I go to dreamland soon. This cigarette tastes pretty good.
So!! (eyes try to focus), what was the topic?  ...... (caniff slides off his chair)...... |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 4:24 pm Post subject: |
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Completely off topic:
I have to ask to anyone who might know: Is there any chance at all that Vladimir Putin and Mark Knopfler were twins who were separated at birth? (It's caniff's avatar that makes me ask this.) |
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