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Re: Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue
by Chris Kuethe 06 Nov '04

06 Nov '04

Fun bits to read, somewhat related to Owell and the perceived notional differences between various... extremists. http://www.campusprogram.com/reference/en/wikipedia/f/fa/fascism.html http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/opinion/essays/storgaard1.html http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm Certainly one could infer from reading "Politics and the English Language" that Orwell could've or would've thought such a thing. If anyone finds it before I do, post a link, will ya? CK On Sat, 6 Nov 2004 18:38:21 -0500, R.A. Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> wrote: > > At 9:31 AM -0800 11/6/04, James Donald wrote: > >As George Orwell observed, anyone who thinks there is a significant > >difference between nazis and commies is in favor of one or the other. > > I'm going to have hunt that one up for my .sig file. > > Thank you. > > > > Cheers, > RAH > > -- > ----------------- > R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> > The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> > 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA > "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, > [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to > experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' > > -- GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too?

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No, Canada!
by R.A. Hettinga 06 Nov '04

06 Nov '04

<http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2004/11/06/no_canada?mode=…> The Boston Globe THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING No, Canada! You don't want to go there By Alex Beam, Globe Staff | November 6, 2004 You have probably heard the idle chatter: ''I'm thinking of moving to Canada." You may have received the JPEG Sent 'Round the World, labeling the northern part of North America -- the right-thinking part, as liberals would have it -- as the United States of Canada, and the pro-Bush leaning ''red" US states as Jesusland. It sounds so alluring. Good beer. Cheap Viagra. Hardly any crime. Friendly, if somewhat ineffectual, people. Terrific, if underappreciated, novelists. (This means you, Rohinton Mistry.) Secure borders, courtesy of the US Department of Defense. But before you pack, consider this: There are plenty of reasons not to move to Canada. Let me count the ways. 1. They don't really want you. Canada is full of losers like you. If you're really rich, or a brain surgeon, maybe. But if you are, say, a newspaper reporter, be prepared to wait at least a year just to live there legally, and several more years to become a citizen. If you have some special qualifications, like a PhD, plus a lot of work experience, and if you are under 50, you have a better chance of crashing the gates of Snow Mexico. Or if you're loaded. That's right. If you have a net worth of $800,000 Canadian or more, and are willing to invest $400,000 of it in Canada, come on in! And you thought George Bush's America was a plutocracy. . . . Think again. 2. Speaking of brain surgery -- have you tried Buffalo? Here is what John Kerry didn't tell you: The problem with free, single-payer health care is that you get what you pay for. Even the Canadians acknowledge that their health system is in crisis. (Sound familiar?) They speak about the inequities of their two-tiered system, where publicly funded patients wait weeks, if not months, to consult specialists or have routine surgery, while private patients get quick service. In fact, it's a three-tiered system. The very well-to-do travel to the United States for some procedures. We refer you to a recent editorial in The Windsor (Ontario) Star: ''A growing number of sick and tired Canadians are beginning to look to the US for ideas on how to improve our failing health-care system. But Kerry, inexplicably, is looking north for health care ideas." 3. Parlez-vous francais? Somehow I doubt it. And yet if you want to work for the Canadian government -- the country's largest employer -- chances are that you have to be bilingual. And the private sector is following suit. C'est dur, eh? 4. How do you like your free speech -- well chilled? Canada has no First Amendment and adheres to primitive British-style libel laws. Here is a hilarious definition of defamation la Canadienne, from the Media Libel website: ''A defamatory statement exists if the publication tends to lower the plaintiff's reputation in the estimation of those who are commonly referred to as 'right thinking' members of society." Allow me to reiterate my widely known position: Celine Dion is the greatest singer who ever lived. Just this year, the Canadian Parliament passed what the religious right has branded a ''Chill Bill," or ''The Bible as Hate Speech Bill," effectively preventing churches from using the Bible to preach against homosexuality. ''With the passage of Bill C-250, Canada has now embarked upon a course of criminalization of dissent," according to a statement released this spring by the Catholic Civil Rights League. Fine, you say. Enough gay-bashing by Bible-waving Christian loonies. But remember John Ashcroft's motto: Your rights are next. 5. It's the black hole of sports fandom. You would seriously consider leaving the home of North America's greatest baseball team -- ever -- and of North America's greatest football team, for . . . what? Canadian football is played on a field that's too long (that's why each team has 12 players), and there are only three downs. Huh? Fifty percent of Canada's Major League Baseball infrastructure -- les Montral Expos just decamped for Washington, D.C., because of audience indifference. Canada's one great sports treasure, professional hockey, isn't being played this year. You hadn't noticed? And you can't even name its national sport, can you? What if that question is on the citizenship application? 6. Have you heard the joke about the Canadian dollar? Not lately. Without putting too fine a point on this, Canadian currency has been laying a Euro-style smackdown on the US greenback. What this means to you: less purchasing power. Wait, there's more. You think you're living in a high-tax state right now? Hahahahahaha. 7. The biggest argument against immigrating to Canada is: You're going in the wrong direction! With all due respect to our northern neighbors, anyone who is anyone bolted years ago. Peter Jennings, Mike Myers, Joni Mitchell, Jim Carrey, Frank Gehry (would they take him back?) -- the list goes on and on. Have talent, will travel -- southward. You might want to ask yourself why. So please, think twice. They don't want you, and we would prefer that you stay. If the new administration is a problem, just don't turn on your television for the next four years. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Broward machines count backward
by R.A. Hettinga 06 Nov '04

06 Nov '04

<http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politics/content/news/epaper/2004/11/05/a29a_B…> Palm Beach Post Broward machines count backward By Eliot Kleinberg Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Friday, November 05, 2004 FORT LAUDERDALE - It had to happen. Things were just going too smoothly. Early Thursday, as Broward County elections officials wrapped up after a long day of canvassing votes, something unusual caught their eye. Tallies should go up as more votes are counted. That's simple math. But in some races, the numbers had gone . . . down. Officials found the software used in Broward can handle only 32,000 votes per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward. Why a voting system would be designed to count backward was a mystery to Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman. She was on the phone late Wednesday with Omaha-based Elections Systems and Software. Bad numbers showed up only in running tallies through the day, not the final one. Final tallies were reached by cross-checking machine totals, and officials are confident they are accurate. The glitch affected only the 97,434 absentee ballots, Broward Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes said. All were placed in their own precincts and optical scanners totaled votes, which were then fed to a main computer. That's where the counting problems surfaced. They affected only votes for constitutional amendments 4 through 8, because they were on the only page that was exactly the same on all county absentee ballots. The same software is used in Martin and Miami-Dade counties; Palm Beach and St. Lucie counties use different companies. The problem cropped up in the 2002 election. Lieberman said ES&S told her it had sent software upgrades to the Florida Secretary of State's office, but that the office kept rejecting the software. The state said that's not true. Broward elections officials said they had thought the problem was fixed. Secretary of State spokeswoman Jenny Nash said all counties using this system had been told that such problems would occur if a precinct is set up in a way that would allow votes to get above 32,000. She said Broward should have split the absentee ballots into four separate precincts to avoid that and that a Broward elections employee since has admitted to not doing that. But Lieberman said later, "No election employee has come to the canvassing board and made the statements that Jenny Nash said occurred." Late Thursday, ES&S issued a statement reiterating that it learned of the problems in 2002 and said the software upgrades would be submitted to Hood's office next year. The company was working with the counties it serves to make sure ballots don't exceed capacity and said no other counties reported similar problems. "While the county bears the ultimate responsibility for programming the ballot and structuring the precincts, we . . . regret any confusion the discrepancy in early vote totals has caused," the statement said. After several calls to the company during the day were not returned, an ES&S spokeswoman said late Thursday she did not know whether ES&S contacted the secretary of state two years ago or whether the software is designed to count backward. While the problem surfaced two years ago, it was under a different Br oward elections supervisor and a different secretary of state. Snipes said she had not known about the 2002 snafu. Later, Lieberman said, "I am not passing judgments and I'm not pointing a finger." But she said that if ES&S is found to be at fault, actions might include penalizing ES&S or even defaulting on its contract. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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RE: No, Canada!
by Tyler Durden 06 Nov '04

06 Nov '04

Wow. What kind of fucking idiot wrote this thing? A piece like this can actually get published? This is the biggest set of arguments I've seen yet for moving TO Canada! BTW: I always thought that "Economic Immigration" was an excellent idea....it siphoned off tons of Hong Kong millionares before the PRC took over. The US should have been doing it in addition to the non-Express route. -TD >From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> >To: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: No, Canada! >Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 09:57:22 -0500 > ><http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2004/11/06/no_canada?mode=…> > >The Boston Globe >THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING >No, Canada! > >You don't want to go there > >By Alex Beam, Globe Staff | November 6, 2004 > >You have probably heard the idle chatter: ''I'm thinking of moving to >Canada." You may have received the JPEG Sent 'Round the World, labeling the >northern part of North America -- the right-thinking part, as liberals >would have it -- as the United States of Canada, and the pro-Bush leaning >''red" US states as Jesusland. > >It sounds so alluring. Good beer. Cheap Viagra. Hardly any crime. Friendly, >if somewhat ineffectual, people. Terrific, if underappreciated, novelists. >(This means you, Rohinton Mistry.) Secure borders, courtesy of the US >Department of Defense. > >But before you pack, consider this: There are plenty of reasons not to >move to Canada. Let me count the ways. > >1. They don't really want you. Canada is full of losers like you. If you're >really rich, or a brain surgeon, maybe. But if you are, say, a newspaper >reporter, be prepared to wait at least a year just to live there legally, >and several more years to become a citizen. > >If you have some special qualifications, like a PhD, plus a lot of work >experience, and if you are under 50, you have a better chance of crashing >the gates of Snow Mexico. Or if you're loaded. That's right. If you have a >net worth of $800,000 Canadian or more, and are willing to invest $400,000 >of it in Canada, come on in! And you thought George Bush's America was a >plutocracy. . . . Think again. > >2. Speaking of brain surgery -- have you tried Buffalo? Here is what John >Kerry didn't tell you: The problem with free, single-payer health care is >that you get what you pay for. > >Even the Canadians acknowledge that their health system is in crisis. >(Sound familiar?) They speak about the inequities of their two-tiered >system, where publicly funded patients wait weeks, if not months, to >consult specialists or have routine surgery, while private patients get >quick service. In fact, it's a three-tiered system. The very well-to-do >travel to the United States for some procedures. > >We refer you to a recent editorial in The Windsor (Ontario) Star: ''A >growing number of sick and tired Canadians are beginning to look to the US >for ideas on how to improve our failing health-care system. But Kerry, >inexplicably, is looking north for health care ideas." > >3. Parlez-vous francais? Somehow I doubt it. And yet if you want to work >for the Canadian government -- the country's largest employer -- chances >are that you have to be bilingual. And the private sector is following >suit. C'est dur, eh? > >4. How do you like your free speech -- well chilled? Canada has no First >Amendment and adheres to primitive British-style libel laws. > >Here is a hilarious definition of defamation la Canadienne, from the Media >Libel website: ''A defamatory statement exists if the publication tends to >lower the plaintiff's reputation in the estimation of those who are >commonly referred to as 'right thinking' members of society." Allow me to >reiterate my widely known position: Celine Dion is the greatest singer who >ever lived. > >Just this year, the Canadian Parliament passed what the religious right has >branded a ''Chill Bill," or ''The Bible as Hate Speech Bill," effectively >preventing churches from using the Bible to preach against homosexuality. >''With the passage of Bill C-250, Canada has now embarked upon a course of >criminalization of dissent," according to a statement released this spring >by the Catholic Civil Rights League. > >Fine, you say. Enough gay-bashing by Bible-waving Christian loonies. But >remember John Ashcroft's motto: Your rights are next. > >5. It's the black hole of sports fandom. You would seriously consider >leaving the home of North America's greatest baseball team -- ever -- and >of North America's greatest football team, for . . . what? Canadian >football is played on a field that's too long (that's why each team has 12 >players), and there are only three downs. Huh? > >Fifty percent of Canada's Major League Baseball infrastructure -- les >Montral Expos just decamped for Washington, D.C., because of audience >indifference. Canada's one great sports treasure, professional hockey, >isn't being played this year. You hadn't noticed? > >And you can't even name its national sport, can you? What if that question >is on the citizenship application? > >6. Have you heard the joke about the Canadian dollar? Not lately. Without >putting too fine a point on this, Canadian currency has been laying a >Euro-style smackdown on the US greenback. What this means to you: less >purchasing power. > >Wait, there's more. You think you're living in a high-tax state right now? >Hahahahahaha. > >7. The biggest argument against immigrating to Canada is: You're going in >the wrong direction! With all due respect to our northern neighbors, anyone >who is anyone bolted years ago. > >Peter Jennings, Mike Myers, Joni Mitchell, Jim Carrey, Frank Gehry (would >they take him back?) -- the list goes on and on. Have talent, will travel >-- southward. You might want to ask yourself why. > >So please, think twice. They don't want you, and we would prefer that you >stay. If the new administration is a problem, just don't turn on your >television for the next four years. > > >-- >----------------- >R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> >The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> >44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA >"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, >[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to >experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/

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Re: Hi
by Mv 06 Nov '04

06 Nov '04

:) [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/octet-stream which had a name of price.scr]

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Kerry Kept Money Coming With the Internet as His ATM
by R.A. Hettinga 06 Nov '04

06 Nov '04

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/politics/campaign/06internet.html?pagewan…> The New York Times November 6, 2004 FUND-RAISING Kerry Kept Money Coming With the Internet as His ATM By GLEN JUSTICE WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 - The power of the Internet in this year's election can be summed up in the story of Sam Warren, an Alabama voter who had never made a political contribution before but found himself donating 21 times to Senator John Kerry - all without opening his checkbook. Mr. Warren gave when the senator won the Super Tuesday primaries. He gave when the campaign sent him an e-mail message. He gave during the Democratic convention. By Election Day, Mr. Warren had given almost $2,000. "I surprised even myself," he said. "It's so easy to do. All you do is click-click with a Visa card." The emergence of the Internet as a major fund-raising tool is arguably the largest single change to the campaign finance system to come from this year's presidential race, allowing thousands of contributors like Mr. Warren to react instantly to campaign events as they happen. Although Howard Dean set the pace during the primaries, raising roughly $20 million, no one capitalized more on Internet fund-raising than Mr. Kerry. With a sophisticated marketing effort to keep people clicking, he emerged as the largest online fund-raiser in politics, bringing in about $82 million over the Internet - more than the $50 million Al Gore raised from all individual contributors in 2000. The Bush campaign, which used its Internet site primarily to organize voters, raised about $14 million online. The Internet helped Mr. Kerry cut President Bush's financial lead substantially. Mr. Bush raised about $273 million, while Mr. Kerry raised about $249 million. The amount Mr. Kerry raised online virtually ensures that few presidential and Congressional campaigns will develop in the future without the Internet in mind. "This is arguably the most powerful tool for political engagement we've ever seen," said Simon Rosenthal, president of the New Democratic Network. "It made it easier for the average citizen to participate in politics. Every moment they interact with the campaign can be a direct-response moment. They can watch a speech on TV, get motivated and give money." And they did. Though there is no precise tally of how many people gave to the candidates over the Internet, the amount of cash from people giving less than $200 increased fourfold from 2000, according to the Campaign Finance Institute, which studies presidential financing. Online fund-raising spread quickly, allowing candidates, parties and advocacy groups a low-cost supplement to big-donor fund-raising. The Internet pioneer MoveOn.org, which advocated Mr. Bush's defeat, raised millions. At the popular liberal Web log Daily Kos, its founder, Markos Moulitsas, directed more than $750,000 to the Democratic party and candidates from 6,500 contributors. Just a mention on the blog was worth thousands to a campaign. Even Amazon.com got involved, offering links that raised $300,000 for presidential candidates. "We were happy to make it as easy for people to contribute as it is to buy the latest Harry Potter book," the company said in a letter to customers. It was just four years ago that Senator John McCain made headlines when he raised more than $1 million online after winning the New Hampshire primary. This year, Dr. Dean created his entire campaign around the Internet, relying on it for fund-raising and organization and pioneering many of the techniques that have become standard practice. The campaign posted its fund-raising goals, long a taboo in the political world, and sent a relentless stream of fund-raising e-mail messages, liberally sharing information about why it needed the money and what it would pay for. And it took chances. "The Dean campaign really experimented a lot," said Nicco Mele, the campaign's Webmaster. "The Kerry campaign doesn't have that approach." Mr. Kerry's campaign came late to online fund-raising. He raised just $1.2 million in 2003, with an Internet team in the basement of a Washington townhouse. But the campaign awoke to the possibilities when Dr. Dean's fund-raising began to soar. Josh Ross, a 32-year-old former Republican with a Silicon Valley background, came aboard in late November 2003 to marshal the effort, but it was a period when Mr. Kerry was sagging in the polls and fund-raising had slowed. "Josh was building a car, but he didn't have a whole lot of gas," said David Thorne, Mr. Kerry's longtime friend and former brother-in-law, who was instrumental in creating the campaign's Internet program. The situation turned when Mr. Kerry won in Iowa. The Internet team persuaded campaign leaders to insert a mention of the Web site in the victory speech. Mr. Thorne made a late-night run to Kinko's to create a JohnKerry.com placard for the lectern. When the candidate mentioned the site, hits shot skyward. "There were never any nonbelievers after that," said Mary Beth Cahill, Mr. Kerry's campaign manager. When the campaign moved its headquarters, Mr. Ross ultimately found himself overseeing more than 30 people from a corner office on the sixth floor. Mr. Ross talked about running the operation like a business, with a heavy focus on quantifiable results. "We're not here to entertain," he said. The results often shattered records. The campaign raised $2.3 million online the day after Super Tuesday and $2.7 million the day after that. The one-day record of $5.7 million was set when Mr. Kerry accepted the Democratic nomination. Some campaign finance experts say that Mr. Kerry simply inherited the energetic donors whom Dr. Dean created, and that the campaign did not go far enough to engage them. Others say that anti-Bush sentiment drove the large numbers, and that any Democratic nominee was bound to make millions online. "Part of it is that they had the sizzle," said Ellen Malcolm, a veteran Democratic fund-raiser. "That's a very short-term fund-raising thing. We still all have a lot to learn about these sizzle donors." But the Kerry campaign made great strides to engage its online supporters. It publicized a petition calling for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's resignation that drew hundreds of thousands of signatures. When Senator John Edwards joined the ticket, the decision was first announced online. The campaign challenged supporters to raise $10 million in 10 days online, and succeeded. It also spent a lot of time testing which wording in e-mail messages and on the Web site drew the most contributions. With 2.6 million supporters on the campaign's e-mail list and a Web page averaging 250,000 daily visitors during peak times, even small increases in the percentage of people who donated could equal large gains. "You start adding those nickels up and it makes a dramatic, dramatic difference," Mr. Ross said. The campaign learned that fund-raising letters do poorly on Monday. E-mail messages are best sent around 11 a.m., after people have cleared their mailbox of unwanted "spam." And contributions swell at lunchtime on both coasts, when people spend time online. Mr. Ross's team also tested e-mail subject lines. On the day of Mr. Kerry's convention speech in July - which was also the last day the campaign could raise private money before switching to public financing - the campaign sent out a long letter and a shorter letter, some carrying the subject line "this is it" and some saying "last chance." The short version with the "last chance" heading did best and was delivered en masse. The Web page was also engineered to bring in money. One example was the "splash page," the first thing that new visitors see. At one point, Mr. Ross and his colleagues had 30 versions of the page up on a wall. They tested photos until they settled on a picture of Mr. Kerry flashing the thumbs up. They tested headlines until they chose "Make history with us." Even a small contribution button toward the bottom, which was bringing in more than $75,000 a day at its peak, was maximized. The campaign tested four different versions before finding that the label "contribute before deadline" increased the number of donations by 35 percent. "We have no problem testing our own assumptions," Mr. Ross said. "We don't do anything based on a guess." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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'Perilous Times': War of Words
by R.A. Hettinga 06 Nov '04

06 Nov '04

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/books/review/07HITCHENS.html?8hpib=&pagew…> The New York Times November 7, 2004 'Perilous Times': War of Words By CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS PERILOUS TIMES Free Speech in Wartime, From the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism. By Geoffrey R. Stone. llustrated. 730 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $35. OWEVER seductively it may be phrased, the offer of an exchange of liberty for security has a totalitarian hook sticking out of its protectively colored bait. Societies that make the trade have very often ended up with neither liberty nor security. But on the other hand (as Fay Wray entitled her own memoir of monstrousness in New York) totalitarianism can present a much more menacing threat from without. I have heard serious people describe the reign of our pious present attorney general as fascistic. Given that jihadist armed forces could still be in our midst, that might be looking for fascism in all the wrong places. What this argument has long needed is the discipline of historical perspective, and Geoffrey R. Stone, a professor of law and former dean at the University of Chicago, has come forward at precisely the right moment with an imposing book that offers precisely that. In ''Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime, From the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism,'' he shows how the United States has balanced (and unbalanced) the scale of freedom versus the exigencies of self-defense. And he also demonstrates a kind of evolutionary learning curve, whereby the courts have distilled some of our dearly bought experience. America's first experiment with a national-security state was at once its most unambivalently disastrous and its shortest lived. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were, to begin with, flagrantly partisan. The easiest proof of this is the exemption of the vice president from the list of official persons who could be calumniated, simply because the anti-Federalist Thomas Jefferson was at that time the holder of the office. They also vastly exaggerated the threat from revolutionary France and flatly negated the spirit and letter of the First Amendment. Editors were imprisoned; foreign-born friends of America like Thaddeus Kosciusko had already felt compelled to leave the country. So great was the eventual revulsion from this that, six and a half decades after the acts were repealed, President Lincoln had no choice but to read the most viperous editorials in the Democratic press, describing him as a demented tyrant bent upon a bloody war of self-aggrandizement. Stone's pages on this period are completely absorbing. He shows that Lincoln did imprison or fine the occasional editor, but with scant relish for the business, and that wartime censorship was so easily evaded as to be no censorship at all. The crisis came, rather, over conscription and the concomitant suspension of habeas corpus. Lincoln's secretary of state, William Seward, was widely quoted as having told the British minister: ''I can touch a bell on my right hand and order the arrest of a citizen in Ohio. I can touch the bell again and order the imprisonment of a citizen of New York, and no power on earth but that of the president can release them. Can the queen of England, in her dominions, say as much?'' This boastful inversion of the original purposes of the American Revolution may have been overstated for effect, but not by much. Lincoln did order nighttime arrests, and did ignore Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's ruling that a president had no power to deny habeas corpus. Taney's position is that the Constitution reserves such extreme measures only for the Congress. If a president wants to assume such powers, he cannot do so without at least resorting to the courts, which Lincoln steadily declined to do. Instead, he rather demagogically demanded to know why the law should force him to shoot ''a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert.'' The cause celebre here became that of Clement Vallandigham, a leader of the Copperheads, northern Democrats sympathetic to the South, who spiritedly opposed both conscription and emancipation. He was arrested, then exiled from the Union. I have never seen it argued that this measure had any influence on the desertion rate (improbable in any case, given that the thought of the firing squad probably had a greater effect on the mind of the simple-minded soldier boy). The best that can be said is that Lincoln seems to have sensed the absurdity of his own logic, and regularly urged local commanders not to embarrass him by locking up people who merely uttered anti-Union sentiments. The next two wartime crises involved the killing of foreigners rather than Americans, and in both cases the ''loyalty'' of ethnic or national minorities was in question. During World War I, the persecution of German-Americans put H. L. Mencken in a permanent state of alienated rage, while Woodrow Wilson outdid Lincoln in vindictiveness by refusing to release Eugene V. Debs, America's finest socialist, until well after the war was over. Debs had been imprisoned for urging Americans to take no part in an imperialist war; but against recent immigrants, mainly Jews, the weapon of deportation was also employed. It's from this period that we have Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's notorious observation about shouting ''fire'' in a crowded theater as a symbolic limitation on free expression. (The antiwar forces might have retorted that the theater actually was on fire.) Holmes, however, became disgusted by some of the excesses of authority, and made some important rulings the other way. In the run-up to World War II, Franklin Roosevelt swung out against the antiwar isolationists with Lincoln's vigor, denouncing Charles Lindbergh as a second Vallandigham. The trial of William Dudley Pelley, leader of the fascist Silver Shirt militia, provided the war years' test case. Pelley had taken the Nazi side, proclaimed an administration conspiracy to exploit Pearl Harbor and announced that Americans were being drafted to fight a Jewish war. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison and served 10, which meant that he also stayed inside until after the war was over. (Stone does not notice the irony that he served his time in the penitentiary at Terre Haute, Ind., birthplace of Debs and today the site of his museum.) In a fascinating discussion of the case, Stone shows that Pelley was right in one respect about Pearl Harbor: the Roosevelt administration really did cover up the extent of the damage inflicted by the Japanese. Official statements described burned and sunken battleships as still afloat. Stone also provides a meticulous discussion of the internment of the Japanese-American population, even though this was not exactly a ''free speech'' question. If this argument ran in a straight line, one would expect the United States, after one civil war and two global conflicts, to have many fewer liberties than it had in the 1850's. But the effect is as much dialectical as it is cumulative, if not more so. As Stone demonstrates, the courts have made concessions based on precedent. In the Pelley case, a court of appeals reconsidered the Espionage Act of 1917, under which Pelley had been charged, to refine and dilute the definition of subversive speech. There was a line to be observed, demarcating the propagation of deliberate falsehood from the circulation of disputable opinions. By the time the United States was next divided in wartime, during the Vietnam years, the courts were ready to rule that speech and action should in effect be considered separately. In one case, it was ordered that Julian Bond, the charismatic young civil-rights campaigner, could be seated in the Georgia legislature despite his opposition to the draft. In another, it was decided that an Ohio Klansman named Clarence Brandenburg should be allowed to go on yelling his head off. So the cases of Bond and Brandenburg are now cited as joint precedents and, as Stone points out, there have been no federal prosecutions for speech or ''incitement'' since Sept. 11, 2001. It might be too soon, not to say too complacent, to make a case for American exceptionalism in this regard. And Stone does not take up the peacetime panic after the 1995 bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City that produced the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which is still employed for prosecutions and deportations. There was enough law already on the books, you might say, before the passage of the Patriot Act. And surely one central part of that act -- the correct decision to allow the sharing of intelligence between foreign and domestic agencies -- could have been made for its own sake. One closes this admirable book more than ever determined that the authors of the Constitution were right the first time, and that the only amendment necessary might be a prohibition on the passage of any law within six months of any atrocity, foreign or domestic. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS is a columnist for Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School University. His new collection of essays, ''Love, Poverty and War,'' is forthcoming this winter. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue
by Nomen Nescio 06 Nov '04

06 Nov '04

John Young: > Tyler, > > Commie is the term used here like is nazi used elsewhere > as the most fearsome if thoughtless epithet. Nazi here is a > term of endearment, and also admirable role model by some. > > Calling someone both is not allowed, check the FAQ under impurity. > > Tim May, praise Allah, always claimed cypherpunks was a fair and > balanced forum thanks to the one person of the left here who > was fingered affectionately like a house rodent, an easy target for > errant shooters. > > CJ is not to be recalled, ever. > > Jim Bell still sends "very important" legal papers, the latest > yesterday, which describe the way things should be understood. But > who can believe an MIT chemist political prisoner. > > CJ and Jim jailed by the Democratic freedom-fighters. "CJ" is "CJ Parker", who posted a few emails to this list back in early 2003? I guess I haven't been around long enough to know all famous cpunks who have been posting to the list. Maybe someone could tell in short who those were, I guess there are one or two on the list who weren't around and would appreciate the stories. I think I remember having read about Bell, something about him having threatened FBI agents or something? Does Jim Bell post emails somewhere today?

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Singin' this'll be the day that it died
by Tim Benham 05 Nov '04

05 Nov '04

A long, long time agob& I can still remember How the dollar used to make me smile. And I knew if I had my chance I'd sell the currency of France And, maybe, I'd be happy for awhile. But all our spending made me shiver With every T-bill we'd deliver. Bad news on the doorstep; I couldn't take one more step. I can't remember if I cried When I heard our politicians lied But something touched me deep inside The day the dollar died. So bye-bye, dollar assets good-bye Sold my Chevy at the levee 'cause my pension ran dry. Them good old boys were drinkin' sake to try Singin' this'll be the day that it died This'll be the day that it died. Did you write Whitehouse.gov Or have you a Yen to fall in love If Japan will tell you so? Now, do you believe in oil 'n coal Can China fill our import hole And can we teach them how to grow real slow? Well I know the country's fit and trim 'Cause the jobs are in the Pacific Rim. We all knew savers lose Man, I dug not having to choose. We were living off the almighty buck We got their goods and they were stuck But I knew we were out of luck The day the dollar died. I started singin' Bye-bye, dollar assets good-bye Sold my Chevy at the levee 'cause my pension ran dry. Them good old boys were drinkin' sake to try Singin' this'll be the day that it died This'll be the day that it died. Now for ten years we were sure we owned All the stocks and bonds and mortgage loans But that's not how it's gonna be. When we've spent it all like kings and queens In clothes we bought from The Philippines The Asians pick the reserve currency. Oh, and while the king was looking down, Their central bankers came to town. Our stocks and bonds were spurned Those dollars were returned. And while unions filled their books with Marx The President said drill in parks Our thermostats froze in the dark The day the dollar died. We were singin' Bye-bye, dollar assets good-bye Sold my Chevy at the levee 'cause my pension ran dry. Them good old boys were drinkin' sake to try Singin' this'll be the day that it died This'll be the day that it died. . Helter skelter in a summer swelter The equity's gone from your leveraged shelter Fannie and Freddie are falling fast. Crash, they landed, but in a new class Full faith and credit have long since passed With Congress, in denial, out of gas. Now the Wal-Mart there has cheap perfume With imports filling every room. We all got up to dance Oh, but we never got the chance. The consumers tried to take the field The central banks refused to yield Do you recall what was revealed The day the dollar died? We started singin' Bye-bye, dollar assets good-bye Sold my Chevy at the levee 'cause my pension ran dry. Them good old boys were drinkin' sake to try Singin' this'll be the day that it died This'll be the day that it died. Oh, and there we were all in one place Our credit rating in disgrace With no time left to start again. So come on: Al be nimble, Al be quick! Al, cut rates by 50 ticks 'cause credit is the debtor's only friend. Oh, and as I watched him on the stage My hands were clenched in fists of rage No congressman in hell Could buy what he would sell. And as the rates climbed high into the night To stem the U.S. asset flight The IMF said, "Yes, that's right" The day the dollar died They were singin' Bye-bye, dollar assets good-bye Sold my Chevy at the levee 'cause my pension ran dry. Them good old boys were drinkin' sake to try Singin' this'll be the day that it died This'll be the day that it died. I met a girl who sang the blues And I asked her if we still could choose But she just smiled and turned away. I went down to the Medicare store Where we'd spent our dollars years before But the man there said those dollars wouldn't pay. And in the streets the children screamed The seniors cried and the workers steamed But not a word was spoken The commitments all were broken. And the three men I admire most: Faber, Rogers, and Bill Gross Were at the forex trading post The day the dollar died. And they were singin' Bye-bye, dollar assets good-bye Sold my Chevy at the levee 'cause my pension ran dry. Them good old boys were drinkin' sake to try Singin' this'll be the day that it died This'll be the day that it died. They were singin' Bye-bye, dollar assets good-bye Sold my Chevy at the levee 'cause my pension ran dry. Them good old boys were drinkin' sake to try Singin' this'll be the day that it died. -- Harry Chernoff is an independent economist in Great Falls, VA (with apologies to Don McLean)

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Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes
by R.A. Hettinga 05 Nov '04

05 Nov '04

<http://apnews.myway.com/article/20041105/D865R1DO0.html> Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes Email this Story Nov 5, 11:56 AM (ET) COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said. Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush actually received 365 votes in the precinct, Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, told The Columbus Dispatch. State and county election officials did not immediately respond to requests by The Associated Press for more details about the voting system and its vendor, and whether the error, if repeated elsewhere in Ohio, could have affected the outcome. Bush won the state by more than 136,000 votes, according to unofficial results, and Kerry conceded the election on Wednesday after acknowledging that 155,000 provisional ballots yet to be counted in Ohio would not change the result. The Secretary of State's Office said Friday it could not revise Bush's total until the county reported the error. The Ohio glitch is among a handful of computer troubles that have emerged since Tuesday's elections. In one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost because officials mistakenly believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. And in San Francisco, a malfunction with custom voting software could delay efforts to declare the winners of four races for county supervisor. In the Ohio precinct in question, the votes are recorded onto a cartridge. On one of the three machines at that precinct, a malfunction occurred in the recording process, Damschroder said. He could not explain how the malfunction occurred. (AP) Voters waited up to three hours to cast ballots after one of two voting machines failed to work at... Full Image Damschroder said people who had seen poll results on the election board's Web site called to point out the discrepancy. The error would have been discovered when the official count for the election is performed later this month, he said. The reader also recorded zero votes in a county commissioner race on the machine. Workers checked the cartridge against memory banks in the voting machine and each showed that 115 people voted for Bush on that machine. With the other machines, the total for Bush in the precinct added up to 365 votes. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, a glitch occurred with software designed for the city's new "ranked-choice voting," in which voters list their top three choices for municipal offices. If no candidate gets a majority of first-place votes outright, voters' second and third-place preferences are then distributed among candidates who weren't eliminated in the first round. When the San Francisco Department of Elections tried a test run on Wednesday of the program that does the redistribution, some of the votes didn't get counted and skewed the results, director John Arntz said. "All the information is there," Arntz said. "It's just not arriving the way it was supposed to." A technician from the Omaha, Neb. company that designed the software, Election Systems & Software Inc., was working to diagnose and fix the problem. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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