...and more on the current state of our "democracy"

This article from Black Box Voting is interesting.

Two Florida counties have rejected Diebold electronic voting machines after a hacker proved that the machines were hackable in ways Diebold has repeatedly asserted were impossible.

Specifically in the hack in question, the memory cards on the voting machines was pre-loaded with positive and negative votes, but marked as cleared so that it returned a "zero report". Once legitimate votes were cast, the pre-loaded positives and negatives were added in, and so the result of the test vote, which legitimately should have been 6-2 instead were reported to the central tabulator machine as 1-7, with no detection of the hack.

By the way, this is quite different from the 30-second hack Bev Harris demonstrated for Howard Dean and the world on television a year ago. In that case, it was shown that the Central Tabulator machine for the Diebold system keeps its votes in an unencrypted MS Access database file, which can be opened outside of the Diebold software system in MS Access and modified directly, thus changing the voting results undetectably by the Diebold machine.

Oh, and while Florida is throwing the machines out, Ohio legislators seem poised to exempt electronic voting machines from public scrutiny and make it illegal to challenge the vote count of any Federal election in Ohio.

Remember when we all grew up believing our vote actually counted?

Liam.

It's Official: I've been phone tapped

According to this article in the Boston Globe, I have definitely been tapped.

Far from the initial arguments by the Administration that the warrantless phone taps were only used to monitor suspected terrorists, in fact it appears they were used to tap virtually all international communication, and a fair amount of domestic as well.

My parents took a trip through Europe this year, and they called me on at least two occasions. So this whole warrantless search thing takes on a new meaning for me, when I know that it's highly possible that it affects me in ways more than theoretical.

Now, I know the answer I'm going to get from a lot of people. It'll be something like "Well, you're not a terrorist, so you have nothing to hide, right?" or "No Federal agents came pounding on your door, why are you so concerned?"

But that avoids the point. I'm not supposed to be subject to random searches by my government without a warrant. If I'm not talking on the phone with a known terrorist (and since I myself am not a known terrorist), there's no reason why my conversation should be monitored, and if there's some reason to believe it SHOULD be, there should be oversight to make sure that the reason is true and just.

Oh, and according to this gem from US News and World Report, apparently listening in isn't all they've been doing without warrants. Under a program to monitor for suspicious activity and possible nuclear bombs, over a hundred Muslim sites in and around Washington DC have been monitored for background radiation levels.

On its face, this may be reasonable. But this monitoring often required investigators to enter the property to set up monitors. Which should have required a warrant, but none was ever requested or granted.

And I still want to know WHY. The FISA court is top secret. Warrants can be requested up to 72 hours later, as long as the requesting agency can show good reason why waiting until the warrant could be issued would have hampered the investigation. It would not have been difficult to comply with the law. If their purpose was honest and on the up-and-up, there should have been no trouble getting the warrants approved, and as a secret court, the fact that someone was being monitored need never have become public.

I can only assume, therefore, that there was something in the various monitoring going on that was NOT above board, something which the Administration knew would never pass even the extremely lenient standards of the FISA court, and which they didn't want anyone to know about. Which appears to be what this article from the New York Times is saying.

We can't allow the Administration to simply say "Trust us, we're doing this while protecting your civil liberties". The point of warrants and courts is to have oversight, to make sure that someone other than the fox is guarding the hen house.

Liam.

Unto Us a Son is Born

Three days before we celebrate the Son born to all of Man, Janet and I celebrate the birth of our own son.

Liam Daniel was born on 12/22. He was 8 lbs 4 oz and 19.5 inches long.

And he is beautiful.

Everyone is healthy.

Liam, the elder.

News Item Everyone Should See

This is not some liberal smear source, except to those who have accepted the extreme Right Wing's premise that all main stream media are lying shills for the left.

But for the rest of us non-conspiracy theorists...

The New York Times reports that President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to tap phone calls and e-mails without warrants.

Now, in the interest of fairness, at least according to this report, this only affected international calls and e-mails (calls and e-mails from the U.S. to foreign countries and vice versa). Still, it marks an unprecedented level of unchecked, unmonitored and unregulated spying on U.S. citizens.

By the way, for those who insist that, as part of the Main Stream Media, the NY Times is a liberal rag not to be trusted, note that the story is actually over a year old. The Administration asked the Times not to run the story when they first got wind of it, over a year ago, and they (the Times) capitulated.

It's interesting to think what effect this might have had on the election, had it come out in a timely fashion. Right about the time John Kerry was being maligned as a fear-monger by touting the idea that the cost of the Iraq war could rise to over 200 billion dollars (gee, he was right), no one was hearing that President Bush was secretly overriding the Fourth Amendment.

The only good news to come out of this is that news of this violation of basic Constitutional rights snapped a number of Senators back to reality and caused them pause before rubber stamping the odious sections of the Patriot Act.

Liam.

P.S. The NY Times article quoted is not the only one out there. Links to some additional reporting on the issue:

Yahoo News.
Bloomberg report on Secretary of State Rice's statement on the issue
An AP report also on Yahoo that Bush personally authorized the program more than 3 dozen times since October 2001.
Washington Post's story on the reaction to the story on Capitol Hill.

Republican Because of Abortion Issue

[Note: Janet apparently posted this under my account rather than her own. So as not to confuse people who are quite sure I'm a left wing moonbat commie liberal, I just wanted to point out that this post is from Janet. --Liam]

I have so much experience in this area. I've always been Republican mostly because of the Abortion issue. I am strongly against abortion, and wanted to align myself with others who felt the same way.

I have always been Pro life and will continue to be such, but the Republican party has one tactic for getting abortion numbers reduced. Get rid of Roe V Wade. Abortion was legal before RVW, it was state to state regulated, but it was legal. If RVW is overturned, it will go back to being a state issue.

I would love to see us attack abortion as a social problem. I've seen the number of abortions level off in my lifetime, and very very little has been done to reduce the number of women who experience unwanted pregnancies. Very Very little has been done to help women who experience unwanted pregnancies. Republicans don't fund studies on the long term damage of abortion. Adoption is easier overseas. There is so little done to help women who actually choose to have their babies, and Republicans are attempting to reduce the benefits available to single mothers. There is no new party line legislation that makes fathers of unwanted pregnancies more accountable.

So, the message offered to a woman who is experiencing an unwanted pregnancy is this: Getting an abortion is easy and inexpensive. We suspect that there are long term issues with having an abortion (but, we only have anecdotal evidence of this, no proof). We believe that it is wrong to abort pregnancies, that life actually begins at conception. You will be wrong to abort your pregnancy. Good Luck.

Lets separate adoption from Social Services. Social Services spend so much of thiner wonderful effort saving abused children, they have very little resources for adoption of infants, housing of women who are experiencing unwanted pregnancies, and getting good health care for those women who choose adoption. Lets give the option of adoption a high place. Lets glorify women who gave their infants up for adoption. Lets take the stigma off of them all together. They made a bad selfish choice, but the one that they made to get out of the situation was so beautiful and wonderful and selfless.

Lets fund studies on the long term mental damage done by abortion. Lets fund studies on the positive impact of adoption on the moms who give infants up for adoption. Lets publish those studies and shove them down the throats of OB-Gyns and the public. Lets do what we can to eliminate the abortion clinics (we don't need them, we have Ob-Gyns who can perform them). When an abortion is discussed between a Doctor and a Patient, it is in the patient's best interest (and therefore an obligation of the doctor) to continue with the pregnancy and give the baby up for adoption (and we really need the studies to back this up, we need to prove this beyond any reasonable doubt), so any reputable doctor will counsel against abortion (and most OB-Gyns love babies).

Attacked this way, instead of legislation only, abortions can be reduced to such a low number. I wish that Republicans could prove that they are against abortion, that they want the number of babies aborted to be greatly reduced, but until they do I am not one of them. The actions that they take socially actually have an end result of increasing the number of abortions (I cannot back this up with proof, later, I will do the research).

I am for the rights of the infants, but since those infants reside in the body of another woman, we have to assist these women. These women need to be convinced to allow the baby to use their bodies, not coerced. I'm guessing (again, no research at this time) that most of the women and girls who have abortions are quite torn on the decision. We need more to push them away from the inexpensive and easy, not by making it more difficult and more expensive (if more expensive worked, the rich would smoke and the poor wouldn't), but by making it easier to carry the baby to term. Make it financially possible for her to get health care, to keep housing. Lets get rid altogether of the social stigma of giving a baby up for adoption. Lets do all we can to get rid of the 'accepted knowledge' that giving a baby up for adoption is very very difficult. Lets do all we can to get out the actual knowledge that giving up a baby for adoption is very satisfying, very loving, and will uplift her status.

Lets reduce the number of abortion. We don't need Republicans to do this, we can do it by aligning ourselves with others who feel the same way.

Party Lines

Not a day goes by lately when you don’t read some article about how one party or the other lacks a consistent message. The charge is often leveled at Democrats, but nearly as often of late it’s another flavor of the same charge “Republicans Break Ranks.”

I propose that this is the problem with politics in America. No, not the breaking of ranks, or the lacking of consistency of message, but the belief (which seems to be nearly universal) that there SHOULD be a unity of message and of action.

Party line is a horrible thing, because it removes any ability for the voters to know where a candidate actually stands on an issue. When a Republican or a Democrat stands up and espouses the view common to their party, one is left to wonder whether it’s a talking point or an actual, deeply held belief by the candidate.

Case in point: abortion. Nearly everyone in one of the major parties pays lip service to the idea that abortion should be illegal under all circumstances and is immoral, etc. Nearly everyone in the other major party talks up the idea that any limitation on abortion is tantamount to putting women into slavery and expecting them to go back to being barefoot and pregnant, serving their husband in all things.

Where are the pols who don’t have a definite opinion? Where are the ones who, like most people I know, see the world in shades of gray instead of black and white? The ones who struggle with the idea that on the one hand abortion is not a positive thing and should be limited, but on the other hand that perhaps this is not an area where one person’s morality should be allowed to force another person’s actions?

When we expect our leaders to speak with one voice, we ignore that different people have different strengths and dissent is a good thing, making sure all sides of an issue are considered before action is taken.

I, for one, am GLAD that on certain issues the Democrats don’t have a consistent message. I hope the Republicans can join them. Then we can have honest and real debate in this country, and we can stop pretending that everyone falls neatly into one of two camps.

Who says that if I’m against the death penalty I also have to be in favor of tax and spend? Who says that if I’m Christian I also have to be for the war? What happened to individuals?

Our country will be much better off when we stop electing parties and start electing people, and when we can have an honest weighing of the values at hand in determining which candidate to vote for.

Oh, and one more thing about party lines: They’re often entirely political. Most Republicans know that one of the worst things that could happen to their party is for abortion to actually be made illegal. As long as we have party lines, that’s a big one that resonates with a lot of America. Take it out of the mix and most Americans are liberal. Really. Read the polls on issues, when the issues are presented without any labels like “Liberal” or “Conservative”, the majority sides with the traditionally “liberal” view point on almost all issues except abortion, which is nearly 50/50. And so many Republicans will posture about making abortion illegal, but they know that if they actually succeeded in doing so, they’d lose their one strongest weapon while handing the energy of the indignant fringe to the Democratic party, who could now garner huge support from the “pro choice” crowd.

What it comes down to is when a person asks me for my vote, I want to be able to examine their list of beliefs, throw out the issues I don’t really care about, and then see how many of the issues I DO care about are on the candidate’s issues list as well, and how well his or her opinion matches mine. As long as what I get out of each candidate is party line, that’s very hard to do.

For example, I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, happy with the Democratic party right now. But it’s no secret to anyone that I think President Bush is the worst President in living memory, and has done more damage (and more lasting damage) to the country than Osama bin Laden did on 9/11. So right now, my number one issue is fixing the damage, to our finances, to our reputation and to our security that has been foisted on us by this Administration. I’m sure there are any number of Republicans who could do the job, but rare is the one of them who will even admit there is a problem.

Heck, John McCain, a man I once respected as an honest voice in a dishonest game, seems to have decided that playing nice with the party is more important than having principles. To hear him talk these days, things are going swimmingly over in Iraq, and it’s absolutely right and proper that we’re there. I’m sorry, Mr. McCain, but you just lost my vote if you run again.

As any psychologist, the first step to solving any problem is to admit you HAVE a problem. Talking points, party line and “consistent message” merely gives me the (probably false) impression that the entire Republican party doesn’t realize anything is wrong.

Liam.

Values Under Attack, written by Janet

If I say that my values are under attack, then I should be able to show you an attack. I hear O'Reiley (sp?) talk over and over again about how 'Merry Christmas' is under attack and about how merchants should be grateful that the Baby Jesus was born and the Christmas Holiday was adopted. They should (according to Mr. O'Reiley) be bending over backward to say Merry Christmas at every chance, and if they aren't doing so... then this is an attack on the wonderful celebration of the birth of Christ.

Rational thought, something that my father taught me from his knee: When someone brings up a topic, even the fact that they brought it up has meaning. Every speaker has an agenda, and what is the agenda of Mr. O'Reiley? Is it to preserve our holiday? I doubt it. Christmas is strong, both as a cultural event and as a Christian event. My children love lighting candles, counting the days until the baby Jesus is born, shopping for gifts for their loved ones, preparing for the season of Christmas (which pales in the Catholic Church when preparing for the Easter season, a holiday that is defining of the Christian Religion). They love the beautiful Christmas decorations that the towns put up, and the elaborate ones that some people do, just to please the community. Christmas isn't under attack. So, why is Bill O'Reilley talking about it?

Rational Thought, Continued: What evidence is he using to prove that his values are under attack? That some stores, in order to get both the Christmas shoppers and the Hanunaka shoppers are saying, "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". He is calling for a boycott of such institutions. Sorry, WTF. mate? How is "Happy Holidays" eroding anything? Schools are not doing a Christmas Pageant showing the birth of Christ like they did when I was a child. Do I find this offensive, should he? No, it is just acknowledging that the Christmas Pageant is a Christian tradition, not an American one (and America is built on Christian Values, which is wonderful. Tolerance isn't a Christian value, which is fine, but Tolerance is a value, and should be encouraged because the alternative is non-Christian and non-American). Since a play isn't a value, how can the lack of a play be an attack on a value? They don't put hate mongering in its place, they put beautiful children singing badly (see Liam's post on our humor page on last year's pageant).

Rational Thought, Version 3: The legalization of Homosexual Unions are under attack. Proof, attempted legislation. The evidence of WMDs are under attack. Proof: investigations on both the intelligence, and review of the behavior of our leaders since 9/11. The Homeland Security Bill is under attack. Proof: Constant introduced legislation which weakens the powers given to the Office of Homeland Security.

I'm not really even disputing his use of the words 'under attack'. I just want to introduce the questions that my father taught me to ask. Why is he talking about this? Where is he getting his evidence? Is the evidence proof of his original statement?

Christmas celebrated as a Christian holiday is a beautiful thing. We mixed pagan rituals (Decorated trees, gifts, and lights and such) and Christian purpose (to celebrate the coming of Christ, our savior). We give gifts and we eat huge meals (this part isn't part of the Christian holiday, this is a part of the pagan ritual). We go to Church and we talk about living in the Grace granted us by our savior (this part is the 'Reason for the Season'). I heard one priest put it like this... "The birth of Christ is like a flashlight in a dark room, from the moment he was conceived everything changed. The grace under which Adam and Eve lived in, before eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, has been restored. The light that he brought was the warmest most forgiving event ever. Things are different now, we are burdened with the Knowledge granted, but we have the freedom to be human (and make mistakes) and we have the Grace (His acceptance of us as humans who make wrong choices, with the LOVE of a parent). This beautiful concept, which actually causes me to weep when I think and pray on it, cannot be attacked by the words "Happy Holidays". Those words allow me to share my joy of the wonderful gift of grace with my Jewish brothers and sisters as they celebrate their own holiday, Hanuaka.

Voter Fraud Just Ain't What She Used To Be

I’m surprised this isn’t getting more press, but the Government Accountability Office has issued this report which details wide spread voting irregularities surrounding the Diebold voting machines. The GAO is generally known as a thorough, impartial watchdog within the government, so when their report echoes a lot of what has been widely dismissed as “conspiracy theories”, we should all sit up and take notice.

The report is the result of a request by Congressman John Conyers to investigate the voting machines after the House Judiciary Committee received more than 27,000 complaints following the 2004 elections. As I’ve mentioned before, Warren O’Dell, CEO of Diebold, pledged before the election to do whatever was necessary to deliver Ohio to George Bush.

Borrowing a well written summary of some of the findings (originally written by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman in October of this year), the report found:

1. Some electronic voting machines "did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected." In other words, the GAO now confirms that electronic voting machines provided an open door to flip an entire vote count. More than 800,000 votes were cast in Ohio on electronic voting machines, some seven times Bush's official margin of victory.

2. "It was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate." Numerous sworn statements and affidavits assert that this did happen in Ohio 2004.

3. "Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level." 3. Falsifying election results without leaving any evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards can easily be done, according to the GAO.

4. The GAO also confirms that access to the voting network was easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to the whole network. This critical finding confirms that rigging the 2004 vote did not require a "widespread conspiracy" but rather the cooperation of a very small number of operatives with the power to tap into the networked machines and thus change large numbers of votes at will. With 800,000 votes cast on electronic machines in Ohio, flipping the number needed to give Bush 118,775 could be easily done by just one programmer.

5. Access to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed passwords. So even relatively amateur hackers could have gained access to and altered the Ohio vote tallies.

6. The locks protecting access to the system were easily picked and keys were simple to copy, meaning, again, getting into the system was an easy matter.

7. One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine would cause the entire network to fail, re-emphasizing the fragility of the system on which the Presidency of the United States was decided.

8. GAO identified further problems with the security protocols and background screening practices for vendor personnel, confirming still more easy access to the system.

Keep in mind, this is on top of the first ever case of exit polling being more than the statistical margin of error off from the actual results. (Interestingly, the second ever case came this year, also in OH, on the ballot question of whether the use of Diebold electronic voting machines should be investigated. How odd that a poll ON Diebold machines, that has a huge potential impact on future Diebold profits, would come in in Diebold's favor when polls showed a 2/3s majority leaning the other way.)

Election officials in at least two counties (Mahoning and Franklin) have admitted that they had at least 18 machines which, when a user tried to vote for John Kerry, would highlight George Bush’s name instead. Voters unfamiliar with the new machines might not have noticed and registered a vote they didn’t mean to register. Totals in both counties for Kerry were suspiciously low.

One voting machine in Mahoning County recorded a negative count of Kerry votes. The problem was reportedly fixed, but should we really have a voting system that allows for the possibility of returning NEGATIVE votes for a candidate?

One polling location recorded nearly 4000 votes for Bush when the location records show only 638 people voted there.

In Miami County, after the county’s central tabulator machine had registered a 100% tally of the vote, the count suddenly jumped by 19,000.

In New Mexico, John Kerry lost every single precinct where touch-screen voting machines were used, in numbers that didn’t match traditional party affiliation or ethnicity totals for the rest of the state.

And keep in mind the stories on election night of polling places still open and still having lines several hours long at 2 in the morning. These districts with too few voting machines (and fewer than they traditionally had had) were all in urban and college areas, traditionally Democratic supporters.

Even forgetting for the moment that every case of irregularity favored Bush over Kerry (statistically unlikely), these sorts of wide-scale problems in the election system should have us all screaming for oversight. If the 2004 election had taken place in another country, we would be decrying the illegitimacy of the result.

Liam.

(Although I have seen virtually all of the reports here listed in other places, I have borrowed heavily from a concise recap of them by Lyn Davis Lear.)

Thoughts on Revelations

[I posted this earlier tonight as a response to a comment on an earlier post. However, as has occasionally happened before, it got big enough and had enough points I really liked that I've decided to tweak it slightly and give it top level billing, for those who read the blog but don't follow the comments. This was in response to someone who, in part, was slamming the Catholic church, but if you want to read my response to that part, you'll need to check out the comments to the "Church Lady" post from a couple of days ago. --Liam]

My recollection (and I admit it's been a while since I read it) is that my impression was that while yes, the anti-christ would be followed by the multitudes EVENTUALLY, I never felt that meant it had to be a magical, overnight transaction. My impression was always that Revelations was warning us to the seductive nature of evil and the fact that it can be smooth and charming and attract a lot of followers. And I also don’t recall feeling like the rapture would necessarily happen before the anti-christ came to prominence, only before he came to full power. If the rapture is going to happen before any of the actions in Revelations come to pass, why tell us about them? What’s the point in warning us how to recognize the end times when they come to pass, if there’s no chance at all of recognizing them and working to stop them?

If you are a believer in Revelations as a literal prophecy, then I submit that it’s important to be MORE critically thinking about your leaders rather than LESS so. Peek behind the veneer. Look for rats in the wainscoting. Our society today is RIPE for an anti-christ figure to show up, because an appallingly large percentage of our population seems to believe in leaders solely because they have managed to co-opt Christian principals and convince the electorate that they and only they are the party of Christian ideals.

When a society is so willing to follow a glib tongue based solely on that tongue’s own assurances that it’s the only truly Christian leader we have right now, based on a bit of lip service and shockingly little active evidence, it’s clear that someone with the personal magnetism of the anti-christ could easily convince them to follow him.

Whether you take Revelations as literally true or a cautionary allegory, however, there are good lessons to be learned there. Lessons which, especially in this post 9/11 United States, we would all do well to learn. Question authority. Do your best to understand, not merely follow. Consider the ramifications of actions. It’s why I continue to trumpet the baby-steps in the wrong direction with things like the Patriot Act and resistance to anti-torture legislation. Evil rarely comes in large, recognizable packages. Generally it comes in small, reasonable seeming units, eroding away our resistance slowly, inexorably, until one day we look up and think “how the heck did we get HERE?”

Whenever I hear someone say “Why do you care so much about the Enemy Combatants? You’re not a terrorist, it doesn’t effect you!” I want to scream “Open your eyes! Giving a President the power to declare someone outside the protection and purview of our laws, even in the most heinous of cases, puts a tiny crack in the foundation of our free society, and once a crack forms in the foundation, moisture and erosion will, over time, widen it.”

I have to think if Revelations comes literally true, that the anti-Christ will most likely NOT come out of a large, established church. Far more likely he will show up as some new, non-affiliated “Christian” preacher, winning people over to his brand of seductive faux-Christianity without having to overcome years of baggage and bad press. Let’s face it, it’s going to be a long time before someone in prominence at (for example) the Catholic church can gain the kind of main stream following necessary to convince a majority to willingly take the mark of the beast. There are too many people who reject the institution of the Catholic church (not rejecting Christianity, just the politics involved in any large organization made up of human beings).

Ultimately, we need to open our eyes. We need to look beyond our leaders' words to their deeds. It’s true of you subscribe to the literal word of Revelations (understand what you’re really being asked to do before accepting the mark of the beast at the behest of your leader), and it’s just as true in secular life. If you believe in (and vote for) your leaders solely due to the lip service they pay to your religion, take the time to compare their actions to the words of (in this case) Jesus and see just how closely they really match. And then ask yourself, which is really better, a sinner who attended church every Sunday (Clinton) or one who only actually gets to church when there’s a photo opportunity (Bush)?

It astounds me that the Republicans can use their fear-mongering tactics to convince the nation that freedom of religion is actually an attack on Christianity and parlay that fear (once sown) into popular support for some highly UN-Christian policies. Can you honestly say that the Republicans are more closely aligned with Christian principles than other parties? Or, if you look past the bogus “Christianity under attack” rhetoric, does it seem like it really is merely lip service designed to convince those who don’t think critically about what they are told?

Liam.

Fiscal Responsibility

I've been thinking lately that perhaps our country is going down the tubes. Not necessarily morally or ethically, and not specifically because of anything any particular leader has done, but because as a whole we're just not a fiscally responsible bunch of human beings.

The problem is, it's at just about all levels. Starting at the lowest. Personal debt is at record rates in our country. The idea of waiting until you can afford a thing is gone, replaced with easy credit.

The average adult in this country has a mortgage, at least one car payment, several revolving lines of credit and credit cards, and very little savings. The average credit card user carries a balance month to month, if not every month, than certainly on a regular basis.

Most citizens are extended to (or beyond) their limits.

Growing a little bit larger, I live in a planned community. This doesn't mean much except that we have a separate yearly fee (over and above taxes) to pay for our community tennis courts, road maintenance, the golf course, and a number of other amenities. The Board of this particular community has put forth a plan to borrow several million dollars to make improvements, build a lot more amenities (ones that it doesn't appear the majority of residents really even want) and generally change a batch of stuff around. Last year, they started assessing a "property transfer" fee each time a house is sold, and we were told that this money was supposed to be to pay for these sorts of projects, but now that they have this new project, magically that money doesn't seem to exist, and we're being told how low the capital reserves are, and so may we please please borrow several million dollars.

Well, several million dollars spread across 1900 homes works out to be well over $1000 per home. Keep in mind that, if these people are typical of today's consumer, they're already in debt to their limit and haven't got a lot of spare resources.

Growing a little bit larger, our town recently borrowed money in order to build a new town hall building. Typical of government projects, it was supposed to be done "By the beginning of August" and here we are into December and it's still not done. But in the mean while, that money will ultimately come from somewhere. Thin air? Golden egg laying geese? Nope, the same citizens who have maxed out their personal resources and also will now owe $1000+ in our planned community will ultimately be responsible.

Growing a little bit larger, I know a number of the States are borrowing money in the same fashion. I don't honestly have any good examples about my own state right now, but it wouldn't surprise me. Who is ultimately responsible for that? Right. The citizens who already have their personal debt and local debts.

And then we have the Federal government, which could work hard to balance the budget but then couldn't keep it balanced for more than a year or two before returning to MASSIVE deficit spending. The Federal Government has increased the national debt by $7750 per citizen in the last five years. And who is ultimately responsible for that money? Do you think it's going to come from magical Federal Reserve elves? No, ultimately that money comes from taxes on the same people who already owe to their personal limit, then owe some local governmental debt, then some state debt, then a bit under $20,000 of National debt that we owed back when the budget was momentarily balanced.

So tell me what happens when the creditors come a-calling? Some of them are pretty well structured. My bank is not likely to come asking me to pay off my entire mortgage loan as long as I make my payments on time. But our whole economy, from the tiny to the huge runs on loans. What happens when the loans dry up, when our credit rating becomes so saturated by debt that no one will loan us money?

And what happens if, heaven forbid, China or one of our other major creditors tries to collect on that debt? The house of card comes tumbling down, that's what. Because those citizens who are that badly in debt at all levels are stones from which no blood can be squeezed. And those at the bottom, they're getting even more screwed. Going out and putting in the sweat of their labor for the pittance that is Minimum Wage, finding more and more companies are slipping out of paying for any kinds of medical or other benefits, they're getting deeper and deeper in the hole, and now they're having dirt shoveled onto their heads.

We're in deep fiscal poop, and I don't think most of us really know it yet.

Liam.

A Note About Comments

Folks,

In the last day or two, I've had a couple of times when the "Word Verification" feature of comments wasn't working properly. Tonight, for example, it keeps giving me the SAME word verification, and then telling me I'm typing it incorrectly.

Since my intent is not to prevent people from posting comments (and since several spammers seem to have figured out ways around that anyway, I've had to delete a few spam comments lately), I'm moving to moderated comments.

This means that when you post a comment, instead of posting immediately, it will be held until I can approve it.

It is not my intention to stifle debate here, and I promise I will post every comment that comes in, as long as it is even remotely on topic. The only comments I have deleted in the past and will continue to reject are spam comments whose sole objective is to try to get people to go to some web site or other.

Liam.

I can hear the Church Lady now...

Hmmmm. I came across some information today which should be interesting to those who are both Catholic and supporters of the current Administration. (My wife has, at times in her life, been both, which makes it an interesting pairing for me).

I have done a lot of research on this to try to determine the veracity of the story. Ultimately, I have to rely on the source, and so to give you some independent ability to check yourself, here is a brief bio of the author.

According to the piece (written about a year ago), Pope John Paul II feared that George W. Bush was the anti-christ of the Book of Revalations... and he was concerned that he wasn't younger and stronger to confront the possibility.

Whether Bush actually is said anti-christ or not, or even whether the late Pope ultimately came to believe or refute his suspicions, I think it's telling that the actions of this President are such that it was even in question.

I'll finish off by quoting the piece itself:

WASHINGTON DC -- According to freelance journalist Wayne Madsen, "George W Bush's blood lust, his repeated commitment to Christian beliefs and his constant references to 'evil doers,' in the eyes of many devout Catholic leaders, bear all the hallmarks of the one warned about in the Book of Revelations--the anti-Christ."

Madsen, a Washington-based writer and columnist, who often writes for Counterpunch, says that people close to the pope claim that amid these concerns, the pontiff wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations. John Paul II has always believed the world was on the precipice of the final confrontation between Good and Evil as foretold in the New Testament.

Before he became pope, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla said, "We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel."

The pope worked tirelessly to convince leaders of nations on the UN Security Council to oppose Bush's war resolution on Iraq. Vatican sources claim they had not seen the pope more animated and determined since he fell ill to Parkinson's Disease. In the end, the pope did convince the leaders of Mexico, Chile, Cameroon and Guinea to oppose the U.S. resolution.

Madsen contends that "Bush is a dangerous right-wing ideologue who couples his political fanaticism with a neo-Christian blood cult."

Liam.

On an entirely different note...

I went back and forth with the idea of posting this to the Humor blog, because that's kind of where it belongs, but I figured this one needed a break from the relentless pounding of the corruption that is the current Administration, and so...

This could only happen in America.

A sport called "Chessboxing". Rounds alternate between four minutes of chess and two minutes of pounding the crap out of each other. Victory can be had either by checkmating your opponent or knocking him out (there are other ways to win, presumably a scoring system after all of the rounds have passed).

I can't decide if this is genius or sheer stupidity, and I guess that's the mark of a great idea.

Liam.