Posts by Alastair Thompson
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Ok....
Hi everybody. Since you not got book and I have you can ask me questions....
And for starters you get this gem... (page 147)
"You need to know now that the experienced people you have will NOT work in a government run by McCully. I and others will not tolerate him exercising the same influence he does now."
Guess who said that....
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Simon Wrote:
if your drunk husband leaves your house and wanders around punching other people then we have a right to criticise not only his drunkenness but the root causes of such
Damn right....
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TV3 just had an item on it.
Video of the phone ringing and everything.
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Interesting Kos Post On VA Recount Law & Why Allen has no choice but to concede.
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Ooops....beaten by David by 30 mins.....
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Looks like it will all be over soon. No recounts no Nothing. Asssociate Press is reporting....
Democrats Take Control of the Senate
The new AP count showed Webb with 1,172,538 votes and Allen with 1,165,302, a difference of 7,236. Virginia has had two statewide vote recounts in modern history, but both resulted in vote changes of no more than a few hundred votes.
An adviser to Allen, speaking on condition of anonymity because his boss had not formally decided to end the campaign, said the senator wanted to wait until most of canvassing was completed before announcing his decision, possibly as early as Thursday evening.
The adviser said that Allen was disinclined to request a recount if the final vote spread was similar to that of election night.
The victory puts Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., in line to become Senate majority leader. He has led the Democrats since Tom Daschle, D-S.D., was defeated two years ago.
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Another wrinkle...
Exactly which third of the Senate is up for reelection in any given cycle also has a direct impact on this number.
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Let me translate Che...
Because the red states are smaller and because every state gets 2 senators it follows that the Senate is not at all proportional.
E.G.
Illinois, NewYork and California.. = 6 senators
Wyoming, Nevada, Utah = 6 senatorsHowever there are lots of republicans in New York and CA which also get to vote so the total vote % split doesn't necessarily follow this pattern.
Now I am confusing myself.
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What about the UK plane plot that was uncovered a few months back? There was a plot to blow up the Brooklyn bridge in 2002 or 2003 that was uncovered due to intelligence sharing enabled by the Patriot Act.
Well that was the Brits. And because they never suffered from Watergate and McCarthur their willingness to be spied upon is considerably greater than that of the US public.
Interestingly there is nothing to stop UK spooks (or US spooks seconded to MI6) using NSA Echelon's system to spy on yanks to their hearts content anyway.
If you capture a bad guy in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq who has a bunch of US phone numbers on his laptop or written down somewhere, why an earth wouldn't you listen in on any calls made? Wouldn't it be madness not to?
You miss the point. James. Its not the spying. Its the illegal spying. The FISA warrant system allows the NSA to seek warrants retrospectively to tap as many US phones as they want to. But the FISA warrant system has oversight. What Bush did was ignore the law that says - because of exceesses in the past - that spying requires oversight and bypassed it illegally.
Ditto torture.
Ditto Gitmo.
Ditto the signing statements referred to by David Slack above in which Bush signs legislation and then - sometimes secretly - instructs the executive to ignore it or interpret it in ways which on their face do not seem supportable.
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Clarke
Occam's Razor suggests that the simple explanations tend to be the correct ones. And surely the real reason America hasn't suffered a wave of Al Qaeda attacks after 9/11 is because Al Qaeda no longer has the capability.
Or alternatively the reason is that "freedom hating" Al Qaeda hasn't bothered attacking America because America seems to be perfectly capable of tearing apart its freedoms without any assistance required.
James,
The level of understanding of American politics has improved immensely thanks to the web. Hence the moderately informed people you find around here.
If when visiting home you find the average Kiwi understanding of US culture and motivations lacking it is possibly because our media are completely hopeless at reporting it.
Our Newspapers carry middle of the road wire copy. Metro Magazine has recently sacked its award winning feature writer Jon Stephenson to concentrate on reporting Auckland.
Radio NZ interviews are better but this mornings post election coverage was fairly terrible, the conservative from central otago wasn't to bad but if you want to find out about a remarkable victory for the left in US politics the Rand Corporation is a strange place to seek out an informed opinion.
Meanhwile TV is inherently facile and tries but 5 minutes with Tim Wilson on the late news can't go that far.
Prime TV is better. Fox News & David Letterman.
I just wish we had The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Countdown with Keith Olbermann.