Pangloss

Right, absolutely. Which is why we need to (a) secure the border, and (b) provide a path to citizenship for the people already here, instead of constantly haranguing them as "illegals" (i.e. the "criminilization" issue) and start finding ways to integrate them into society (something we're supposed to be pretty good at). What I don't understand is why this position, this combination of elements, is interpreted by some elements as "anti-immigrant". Doesn't it make sense to control the influx? Also, isn't the failure to adequately control the influx (i.e. "they're coming in faster than we can integrate them") at the heart of the UK's immigration issues? Why is the BBC admonishing us for not doing the very thing that's gotten them into trouble? I agree with this as well, and I think you've indicated a good line of demarkation between conservatives who are honestly trying to contribute to a solution (as I shamelessly classify myself), and conservatives who would really prefer a closed border and an end to immigration. (I would point out, by the way, that President Bush is firmly in the former category. It's one of the areas in which he's *lost* base-right support.)

Well it may or it may not. That just goes to show how two-party focused we are. I'm reminded of a famous quote by one of the creators of South Park, in talking about the centrist position their show takes. He said "I hate conservatives, but I REALLY f'ing hate liberals!"

That's an unfair generalization of what ecoli said, and I think you owe him an apology (unless you were just joking around). Just because someone recognizes and is concerned about overcrowded hospitals doesn't mean they don't care about healing the sick. This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about -- thanks for illustrating perfectly the entire point of this thread.

Well that's two wrongs making a right -- just because legal citizens cheat on their taxes doesn't mean we should allow illegal immigrants to evade them. We make efforts to stop the former, so we should certainly make efforts to stop the latter. Fair is fair. But sure, I agree with much of your sentiment. What I think you may be failing to recognize is that many conservatives (especially the moderate ones like myself) have a valid point as well. The only "big deal" here from my perspective is the BBC's act of demonization of the opposing viewpoint. (Edit: Damn, cross-posted with ecoli. Oh well.)

What can we do about it? Here are a couple suggestions: 1) Educate the voter. If people understand the process better, then not only are they less vulnerable to wild interpretations like these, but they're also less vulnerable to actual vote manipulation. They can better evaluate how and why changes need to be implemented. 2) Remove partisan politics from the equation. I'd like to see the president appoint a bipartisan committee including retired centrist politicians and key scientists and/or mathemeticians to revamp the voting process and assess electronic voting systems.

I know I've already said my piece on this but I just can't help myself. (grin) I just want to point out the Kennedy's entire argument is based around statistics, which he manipulates, interprets and/or otherwise uses as needed. What's not so obvious are the statistics he ignores. For example, all but three states in the 2004 presidential election went exactly the same way that they went in 2000. Or the fact that 153 counties that voted for Clinton in 1996 or Gore in 2000 voted for Bush in 2004 (that's a lot of "tampering"!). Or the fact that 98% of the incumbents in 2004 were re-elected (which speaks to larger trends that Kennedy prefers to ignore, not to mention larger dangers like gerrymandering). None of those statistics prove anything, but then none of Kennedy's statistics do either. Which is, of course, my point. Numbers can be misleading. But ideologues with numbers are always misleading. Those numbers come from George Will's Newsweek column in late February, which may be found here.

I added a little warning to Bettina's post about the sound being kinda loud. Thanks for passing this along, it was neat.

By the way (not that this is a minor aside), I hope I didn't give the impression that the issues regarding things like the absentee ballots and electronic voting boxes are anything less than legitimate. It's only the "we know for a fact the Republicans stole this election" angle that angers me. In reviewing Mokele's post I realized that that's really what Mok's focusing on (the legitimate concerns), and I hope I didn't distract from that with my criticism of Kennedy's agenda. This may in the end be one of those rare cases where the bipolar nature of politics actually causes some beneficial change to come about. The unitary nature of the problem and the fact that both sides want the same goal seems to suggest a potential push in that direction. Regarding the exit polls, I'd have to see how their accuracy compared with previous elections, and how their methods changed. Unfortunately that kind of logical skepticism was glaringly absent from Kennedy's piece.

Actually I don't know that Rolling Stone's journalism isn't respectable, so much as the fact that it's not journalism, at least in the sense of reporting the news. (I'm a fan of the Stone, at least in so far as it has reported on the music industry over the years. I'm reading a Lester Bangs book as we speak.) The story in this case isn't reporting anyway -- it's an op/ed opinion piece. But certainly there's no question that Rolling Stone's editorial slant is strongly to the left. Not that that matters -- Kennedy could have had this piece published in the Wall Street Journal if he'd wanted to. There's no real evidence that the election was stolen. Just rumors and innuendo and plenty of straw men in the form of individual statements, which of course are irrelevent on the scale of ~120 million voters. It's sad statement about politics in America that a Kennedy speaks so definitively on the subject, in the face of total lack of evidence, merely because the winners were Republicans. There's plenty of evidence of problems, i.e. votes not being counted and so forth. But if memory serves, there were not only fewer such problems than in 2000, there were fewer such problems than we normally see. And as I said, NO evidence of actual tampering. None. Zippo. Zilch. Nada. Nothin'. Some of the allegations and implications in the piece are just... pathetic. 1) That there was a "media blackout" (for which no evidence is even presented, just the proving-a-negative claim that few stories on this subject have appeared). 2) That only Republicans believe the election wasn't rigged, and that this somehow stands as evidence that it was. 3) He goes on at great length about all the things Republicans did, but completely fails to mention all the efforts by Democrats to perform all the same kinds of actions that he claims were used to "deny people the vote". For example, he talks about the thousands of lawyers that the Republican party hired, but doesn't mention that the Democratic party did exactly the same thing! 4) Ah forget it. I could go on like this for hours. What's the point? I'm surprised that he didn't stoop to the favorite phrase of conspiracy theorists everywhere: "You'll never convince me that...." Because that's what this is -- it's a 9/11 conspiracy territory, enobled only by the fact that... well... it's not about 9/11. Since it is about Republicans, though, somehow that's okay. I think we all know this tune. Thankfully, very few people are singing along.

We probably kill more of the latter each year than the former.

I meant the general position itself (as posited by the BBC), not necessarily YT personally. It's an interesting angle, but it feels like a stretch to me. Perhaps because I'm predisposed in that direction now, though. I'll give it some thought. I agree with this point.

What's wrong, or what's illegal? Okay, I'll answer them both. 1) "What's illegal?" The answer to this question can be seen in the fact that your country doesn't allow people to enter without permission any more than mine does. If I want to come to the UK, I have to have a Passport. If I don't have one, I go home. If I manage to run past the Customs official, I am in violation of YOUR laws. What's so hard to understand about that? Why do you politicize that simple concept? 2) "What's wrong?" In my opinion there's nothing wrong with what they want. The only issue is one of whether we (the US citizenry) are to be allowed to exert control over our own nation. Surely we are, and our immigration policy is hardly an example of torture and abuse, it is in fact an historical example of freedom and opportunity. So I fail to see how either (a) the immigrants are doing anything morally wrong (which we seem to agree on), or (b) the citizens of the US are doing anything wrong (which you don't seem to agree with me on). There. I've answered your question (as did Ecoli). You cannot say that I have not.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised to hear that you have less than 10,000 people guarding your built-in moat. (shrug) So basically what you're saying is that you have a wide-open border in the UK. Anybody can come there, no rules, no controls, no questions asked, no papers necessary, free healthcare, free home, free furniture, dental care, medical care and even curtains. Interesting. Do they also get a job? (Edit: Wups, I forgot it's 10k in the Border Patrol.)

Yeah, no question about it. Some of you may recall me asking a couple of years ago about news sources, and ever since then I've been following BBC News off and on mainly due to the recommendations I got here. They really are the top shelf. More to the point, I don't condemn a news services just because a story now and then has a little bias. I've done that in the past (including on this board), and it's never really gotten me anywhere -- people have shown me the trap that lies in that reasoning pretty clearly. (chuckle) This one just stuck in my craw, so I thought I'd toss it out there and see if I was just off base or if this might be one of those cases. Sounds like some folks agree, which is cool.

I have no problem with people distinguishing between violent perpetrators and those who crossed the border illegally. I often drive my car in excess of the speed limit; doesn't mean I'm about to rob a bank. By all means, let's be fair to these people, in so far as they are human beings. Nobody's suggesting we through them into the nearest guillotine. What I have a problem with is the demonization of people who simply want to control access to their country. Great Britain controls its border. Why can't the US? Come on YT, isn't that position just a WEEEEE bit hypocritical?

Sure, it's gotten better. 5% of the freight traffic is now inspected instead of 3%. At this rate we'll be fully secure... by the year 2054. ;-) You're right, NYC has done a fine job on security. So. What do you need my money for? (grin) (I don't think you owe us any apologies, btw, and I might've been a bit harsh or call-out-ish in my post after your "fly-over" comment, but I assure you it wasn't my intent. I'm not aiming any personal criticisms here; we're just discussin'.)

I was just perusing the Internet and ran across a story that just struck me as kinda blatant in its bias. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5040372.stm Um, hello, is there something about the word "illegal" that is hard to understand? Oh no, god forbid we should criminalize those friendly, law-abiding illegals! (cough) Wow. That's about as blatant as it gets, right there.

I find it hard to believe that no money is being spent on security at the Statue of Liberty. In fact I find it hard to believe that the story at the top of this thread is actually indicating what it purports to be indicating -- that no federal money is being spent on security at NYC landmarks. I find it more likely that it's a small piece of a much larger package, in which a great deal of federal money is being spent on NYC landmarks. But as I said, I'm keeping an open mind about it. The story riles me up and pokes my sense of skepticism, but I'm certainly opposed to cutting off all federal spending on NYC landmarks. I simply don't want to see an overreaction to this story (as strongly indicated by several replies in this thread).

But Jim, MvVeigh doesn't count, he wasn't a "real" terrorist. He only killed a hundred+ "fly-over Americans". That's just not the same thing at all. Get with the program here! ;^} Friendly kidding aside, I think you put it well there. We're always going to have a disproportionate amount of cash spent on certain cities like NYC and LA and various landmarks and so forth. The unfortunate thing about this particular straw man is that it blinds us to more serious concerns. We still have 97% of all shipping traffic entering the country with no security whatsoever. The border is pourous, and airport security is a bad joke. But by golly we need to throw billions more at the Statue of Liberty. Perspective is CRITICAL in issues like security. But perspective is the one thing that's MISSING from mainstream-media/straw-man stories like these. Can you imagine a network administrator that fell prey to straw men like these? He'd be out of a job in a heartbeat if he, say, bought a fancy and expensive firewall, but left the administrator's password on the DEFAULT value. But that's what the mainstream media is constantly haranguing us to do with stories like this.

See what I mean? ^ Straw men work, and there's a reason why they use 'em.

This story has to be viewed in the context of the long-standing controversy over prior Federal money spent on "homeland security" in New York. Obviously NYC has important historical landmarks, and readers should not get hung up on that point. I don't particularly care how some bureaucrat phrases his paperwork, and neither should you. I haven't decided one way or another on this issue, but I saw this story presented "live" on ABC News by Brian Ross on Thursday and my gut reaction was "Great, yet another MSM straw man." I was amazed they didn't tell me how Shiela, a single working mom, has been adversely affected by this dangerous new trend. But I guess they didn't have time for her story last night.

Hehe, well put Sisyphus. You know you're right -- I can't remember looking forward to a midterm election with such anticipation before (such as it is).

Pushing people's buttons should be a cause for celebration, not the reverse.

It's a patently bad move by a congress that seems to have forgotten that its own approval rating is even lower than the president's.