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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
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Chippewa
SFN Regular
USA
1496 Posts |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 08/04/2004 : 01:04:14 [Permalink]
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What amazes me is that these less-than-compentent, less-than-honest individuals actually managed to make a living and stay out of jail before getting into government.
The GOP convention is going to be noteworthy. I think that the selective orange 'alert' was cynicly put up to confound the inevatable demonstrations around Madison Square Garden. Or am I just being more paranoid than usual?
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Robb
SFN Regular
USA
1223 Posts |
Posted - 08/04/2004 : 06:02:12 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by filthy
What amazes me is that these less-than-compentent, less-than-honest individuals actually managed to make a living and stay out of jail before getting into government.
The GOP convention is going to be noteworthy. I think that the selective orange 'alert' was cynicly put up to confound the inevatable demonstrations around Madison Square Garden. Or am I just being more paranoid than usual?
The Democratic convention did not need a terror alert to remove the demenstrators from around the Fleet Center to a place where nobody could see them. |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 08/04/2004 : 06:33:24 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Kil
Hmmmmmm...
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=XSYWDOPQEVXY0CRBAELCFFA?type=topNews&storyID=5862618
It does make one think. However, as noted by many people, including some who wrote letters to the NY Times, Ridge and the DHS are in a bit of a bind. If you do issue an alert, it looks political. If you don't, and something happens, you get the blame. But since you can't-- ostensibly for security reasons-- detail just why it is that you've issued an alert the day after the Democratic convention, there will always be a shroud of suspicion.
Was the alert politically motivated (say, to shift media attention/publicity from Kerry elsewhere)? We don't know. But unfortunately, the nature of politics these days (especially with this administration) means that we are forced to be suspicious of the movites of such announcements, which in turn draws attention from the actual alert.
Ugh. This whole country's going to hell in a handbasket. |
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satans_mom
Skeptic Friend
USA
148 Posts |
Posted - 08/05/2004 : 14:26:34 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Cuneiformist
[quote}
Ugh. This whole country's going to hell in a handbasket.
Well spoken. |
Yo mama's so fat, she's on both sides of the family.
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 08/05/2004 : 16:02:46 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Robb
quote:
Originally posted by filthy
What amazes me is that these less-than-compentent, less-than-honest individuals actually managed to make a living and stay out of jail before getting into government.
The GOP convention is going to be noteworthy. I think that the selective orange 'alert' was cynicly put up to confound the inevatable demonstrations around Madison Square Garden. Or am I just being more paranoid than usual?
The Democratic convention did not need a terror alert to remove the demenstrators from around the Fleet Center to a place where nobody could see them.
True enough. But, if what I've read is accurate, the demonstrations didn't amount to much. Therefore, it is a pity and a disappointment that the Democrats borrowed a page from Bush's book. As I recall, there were only a handful of arrests.
The NYC protests promise to be huge and at least a potential embarassment as a very large number of people get hauled off. It is within the range of possibility that crowd control could deteriorate into serious fighting and from there to riot. It's happened before.
We shall see.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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| Edited by - filthy on 08/05/2004 16:04:04 |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 08/08/2004 : 14:27:28 [Permalink]
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The argument, "you are damned if you do or if you don't", is bogus. The problem for me was the announcement was made via a 'press conference'. Big announcement coming up!! Big announcement, everybody pay attention!! Here we are. Listen up. Your president is doing a great job....
Past announcements were, "we have nothing specific". Now they do so it warranted a 'press conference'. I haven't seen anyone in the press press Mr Ridge as to why the past info wasn't specific when that part of the announced information wasn't particularly new.
None of the recent terror alert press conferences seemed to be worthy of this type of announcement. A press release would have been sufficient, don't you think? Then maybe some warnings to the tenants of the specific buildings in question. There were lots of possibilities. Press conferences by the Republicans have been a campaign technique used especially heavily since the Florida vote re-count(not).
It drove me nuts then as well. Not because the Republicans kept calling conferences, but because the news media, I presume not noticing, sucked them up as if they really were special announcements. Instead the conferences were just free air time. Press conference announcements controlled the news content almost completely.
And the news media never checked on the truthfulness of any of the conference spins. And the dumb Democrats didn't get the hang of the technique as well as the Republicans did so they didn't get equal access.
Well I saw Tom Ridge interviewed by Aaron Brown recently about the politics of the announcements. Every time Ridge denied politics were the motive, he smiled. At no other time did he smile during the interview. There is a technique of watching for inappropriate facial expressions as potentially detecting lying that has shown some scientific validity. IMO, the press conference was a scam. And unfortunately, it may be they are paying more attention to politics than to the bad guys. |
| Edited by - beskeptigal on 08/08/2004 14:29:35 |
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