Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Iraq the Vote

http://iowaniceguy.blogspot.com/2004/09/betty-bowers-iraq-vote.html

Cable news is useless. TURN IT OFF.

http://web.takebackthemedia.com/geeklog/public_html/article.php?story=20040916070023934

Angus King endorses Kerry

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/040922kingkerry.shtml

A Leak Probe Gone Awry

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/27/opinion/27mon2.html?ex=buzzflash&pagewanted=print&position=

Crowd cheers after Heinz Kerry rebuts heckler

http://9news.com/acm_news.aspx?OSGNAME=KUSA&IKOBJECTID=36f146a1-0abe-421a-018e-f62f7c8edb48&TEMPLATEID=4525fe63-ac1f-02d8-002a-f131478a1f55

Next president will pick scores of judges

http://news.bostonherald.com/election/view.bg?articleid=46173

NH widow fights 9-11 estate challenge linked to President Bush

http://tomflocco.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=79

Video of Cynthia McKinney from several months ago

http://www.guerrillanews.com/cynthia_mckinney/qt_lo.html

Jonathan Stein: The Idiot Bush Supporter of the Day!

Donkey Farm: A Democrat Story
Jonathan M. Stein
Monday, Sept. 27, 2004 While George Orwell’s classic novel "1984" is a treatise on how totalitarian regimes maintain control over their populations, "Animal Farm: A Fairy Story" is essentially an essay on how totalitarian regimes acquire and ascend to power.
The contention here isn’t necessarily that Democrats endeavor to establish a totalitarian regime in America; the contention is that the methods and tactics John Kerry and the Democrats are using in their quest to ascend to power are strikingly similar to those outlined by Orwell.
Story Continues Below
"Animal Farm" centers around a revolt on Manor Farm, set in England. Furious over the conditions on Manor Farm and the way the human farmer, Mr. Jones, treated the animals, the animals staged a rebellion and ejected Jones and his men from the farm.
The triumphant animals renamed Manor Farm “Animal Farm.” However, the more intelligent animals, the pigs, quickly discovered that they could use their superior intellect to manipulate and dominate the less-intelligent animals, who didn’t understand what was happening until it was too late.
Eventually, the pigs, led by a pig named Napoleon, took control of the farm and established a regime far worse than that of Jones. In the end, fittingly, the pigs restored the farm’s original human name, Manor Farm.
Directly after the initial rebellion, the animals established “Seven Commandments” for the animals to live by. The first two were 1) whatever goes upon two legs (i.e., man) is an enemy and 2) whatever goes upon four legs (i.e., animals) ... is a friend.
When the least intelligent of the animals, the sheep, had trouble grasping this concept, the pigs discovered that they could convey their propaganda more effectively by distilling the more complex concepts into oversimplified slogans. So Squealer, effectively the pigs’ minister of propaganda, taught the sheep a simple platitude: “Four legs good, two legs bad.” The sheep ran around all day bleating this slogan.
When I hear John Kerry say, in his stump speech, “W stands for wrong,” all I hear is “Four legs good, two legs bad.” When I watched leftists running around New York during the convention with signs that said “Bush lied,” all I thought was “Four legs good, two legs bad.” It seems the Democrats have found their flock of sheep.
One pig, Snowball, was expelled from the farm after a vociferous disagreement with Napoleon – Orwell’s allusion to Trotsky. Soon thereafter, the pigs would blame any disaster or mishap that occurred on Snowball, making him the ethereal scapegoat – an inscrutable, phantasmal mastermind. If the windmill was destroyed, it was Snowball’s fault; if eggs were stolen from the hen house, it was Snowball’s fault; if there was any act of sabotage on the farm, it was Snowball’s fault, etc.
If the Democrats are caught passing forged documents to CBS, it’s Karl Rove’s fault; if Vietnam veterans oppose and expose John Kerry in a television ad, it’s Karl Rove’s fault; if the Democrats can’t get their message out ... It’s Karl Rove’s fault. Karl Rove has effectively become Snowball.
Anytime Napoleon or the other pigs felt that the animals on the farm were starting to catch on and wise up to what was truly happening on the farm, the pigs would resort to their ace in the hole: scare tactics. If the pigs’ dictates were not followed, warned Napoleon, farmer Jones would come back! As baseless as this threat was, it always successfully scared the other animals into compliance. They would do anything so long as Jones would not return.
The Democrats have mastered this tactic: If you don’t vote for John Kerry, you won’t have health insurance; if you don’t vote for John Kerry, you won’t have Social Security; if you don’t vote for John Kerry, the draft will come back. If you don’t vote for John Kerry, Jones will come back!
As the pigs acquired more and more power, they took on more and more human characteristics, until they eventually were even walking on two legs. To get away with this, of course, they had to modify the original “Seven Commandments,” while convincing the other animals that the commandments had not, in fact, been modified at all.
To help achieve this end, this deception, the pigs taught the sheep a new slogan: “Four legs good, two legs better!” In the end, the pigs had but one commandment: All Animals are equal, but some Animals are more equal than others. This, in a nutshell, seems to be the contemporary maxim of the Democrats.

Audit Finds FBI Has Large Translation Backlog

NewsMax.com WiresMonday, Sept. 27, 2004 WASHINGTON – The FBI has a backlog of hundreds of thousands of hours of untranslated audio recordings from terrorism and espionage investigations, despite large increases in money and personnel for translations since the 2001 terror attacks, a Justice Department audit released Monday said.In addition, the audit by Glenn A. Fine, the agency's inspector general, found that more than one-third of al-Qaida intercepts authorized by a secret federal court were not reviewed within 12 hours of collection as required by FBI Director Robert Mueller.

"Our audit highlighted the significant challenges facing the FBI to ensure that translation of key information is performed timely and accurately," Fine said.
The audit was completed in July in classified form. The version released Monday was edited to remove sections classified as "secret" by the FBI.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 123,000 hours of audio in languages associated with terrorism still had not been reviewed as of April 2004, the audit found. In addition, more than 370,000 hours of audio associated with counterintelligence had not been reviewed.
This backlog existed even though the FBI's language services funding had increased from $21.5 million in fiscal 2001 to about $70 million in fiscal 2004. The number of linguists has risen from 883 to 1,214 over that period.
The FBI also is not meeting Mueller's requirement that all al-Qaida communications collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act be reviewed within 12 hours of interception. During April 2004, the audit found, 36 percent of such communications were not even received at FBI headquarters within 12 hours.
The audit found that the FBI still lacks the necessary language personnel to do all the needed translation work and that limitations in its technology, especially in computer storage capacity, also cause problems that lead to backlogs.
The audit made 18 recommendations for the FBI, many of which have already been implemented, Fine said. FBI officials told auditors they are hiring linguists as quickly as possible.
"The FBI appears to be taking steps to address these issues, which are critical components of the FBI's counterterrorism and counterintelligence efforts," Fine said.
© 2004 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.