Citizens @ MindSay 
Israel has far fewer restrictions
Over the last week, many are asking why India does not "do a Gaza" on Pakistan, referring, of course, to an emulation of Israel's use of force against Terrorists Hamas-run Palestine, a territory from which rockets rain down on Israeli soil with reliable frequency (if not reliable destructiveness ...).
The answer for this question comes always with a painful grip on reality, is simple: India does not because it cannot.
Here are five reasons why:
1. India is not a military goliath in relation to Pakistan in the way Israel is to the Palestinian territories. India does not have the immunity, the confidence and the military free hand that result from an overwhelming military superiority over an opponent. Israel's foe is a non-sovereign entity that enjoys the most precarious form of self-governance. Pakistan, for all its dysfunction, is a proper country with a proper army, superior by far to the tin-pot Arab forces that Israel has had to combat over time. Pakistan has nukes, to boot. Any assault on Pakistani territory carries with it an apocalyptic risk for India. This is, in fact, Pakistan's trump card. (This explains, also, why Israel is determined to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran.)
2. Even if India could attack Pakistan without fear of nuclear retaliation, the rationale for "doing a Gaza" is, arguably, not fully present: Israel had been attacked consistently by the very force--Hamas--that was in political control of the territory from which the attacks occurred. By contrast, terrorist attacks on India, while originating in Pakistan, are not authored by the Pakistani government. India can-- and does--contend that Pakistan's government should shut down the terrorist training camps on Pakistani soil. (In this insistence, India has unequivocal support from Washington.) Yet only a consistent and demonstrable pattern of dereliction by Pakistani authorities-- which would need to be dereliction verging on complicity with the terrorists--would furnish India with sufficient grounds to hold the Pakistani state culpable.
3. Israel enjoys impressive support from many countries especially from the Americans, in contrast to the Palestinians. No other state--apart, perhaps, from Britain--evokes as much favor in American public opinion as does Israel. This is not merely the result of the much-vaunted "Israel lobby" (to use a label deployed by its detractors), but also because of the very real depth of cultural interpenetration between American and Israeli society. This fraternal feeling buys Israel an enviable immunity in the conduct of its strategic defense. India, by contrast--while considerably more admired and favored in American public opinion than Pakistan--enjoys scarcely a fraction of Israel's "pull" in Washington when it comes to questions of the use of force beyond its borders.
4. Pakistan is strategically significant to the United States; the Palestinians are not. This gives Washington scant incentive to rein in the Israelis, but a major incentive to rein in any Indian impulse to strike at Pakistan. However justified the Indian anger against Pakistan over the recent invasion of Mumbai by Pakistani terrorists, the last thing that the U.S. wants right now is an attack--no matter how surgical--by India against Pakistan-based terror camps. This would almost certainly result in a wholesale shift of Pakistani troops away from their western, Afghan front toward the eastern boundary with India--and would leave the American Afghan campaign in some considerable disarray, at least in the short term. So Washington has asked for, and received, the gift of Indian patience. And although India recognizes that it is not wholly without options to mobilize quickly for punitive, surgical strikes in a "strategic space," it would--right now--settle for a trial of the accused terrorist leaders in U.S. courts. (Seven U.S Citizens were killed in Mumbai: Under U.S. law, those responsible--and this should include Pakistani intelligence masterminds--have to be brought to justice.)
5. Israel has the privilege of an international pariah to ignore international public opinion in its use of force against the Palestinians. A state with which few others have diplomatic relations can turn the tables on those that would anathematize it by saying, Hang diplomacy. India, by contrast, has no such luxury. It is a prisoner of its own global aspirations--and pretensions.
Well I have kept quite on Mindsay about how I feel about the economic bail out. And after getting a little more information, talking to a few people (including accountants and one friend that works for the IRS), and then hearing that the House defeated the bail out bill; I felt it was time to open my mouth.
I say good for the House of Reps for defeating the dayum thing! If you didn't know the buy out wouldn't have saved anyone? Including us peons of the middle and poor classes? If anything it would have harmed those of us that pay more taxes in then the rich ppl!
If you think I am shitting, you should have talked to your accountant and made a few phone calls to the IRS. If the bail out would have gone through, come Febuary when the next installment of the bail out was destined to happen, those of us who pay in to taxes and get tax returns would have been ass out! The big wigs and the politicians that wrote the bail out contract had it in their bill that if it came to pass, they would have taken everyone's tax return at next tax time.
Now normally I am not a big Michael Moore fan, but Mr. Moore with the help of MIT Financial Students, came up with a different plan for the same amount of money of the first bail out. That plan would have given each US Citizen 15-20 million dollars apeice. Not couples but apeice. Basically giving us back our own money. Do you know what all of us could have done with that money? We could have stabilized the economy! Those banks who are sitting on bad loans, could have been paid off by those that are paying on the bad loans. The housing market would have boomed! Morgateges would have been paid off, those of us that rent would have been able to go out and buy a house. The car industry would have increased because of everyone going out and buying new vechiles. The Retail industry would have increased with ppl doing home maintanice, buying items they have been needing but couldn't afford, and the travel industry would have boomed also! Not to mention we would have helped to bail out the financal institutions by investing our money. Back bills would have been paid off, increasing business investments of companies that would have seen a windfall of money coming at them!
Instead of helping these super rich coroprate men, they should look into helping the American People. And I have said it before and I'll say it again; I know right were we can get soem extra cash and clean up a budget or two! Take the dayum outragous income that still living Presidents and their wives get and cut it in 3/4 of what it is! They have done their job they shouldn't be getting that much money after the fact they did their job in office. The wives shouldn't get shit! They didn't do anything for our gov't. OOOOOOO they were ambassadors what ever. They weren't on the pay roll they don't get retirement! Same with the preisdential widows! Their ol men made a butt load of money. If they didn't invest it properally not the tax payers problems!
Okay that little rant is over with.:d So I finally put my two cents in on the bail out. I think we the people should get the money to pay off our back bills, our morgatages, and go out and help the economy instead of giving it to the banks that screwed up and gave out bad loans!
For the past few years, I and many other ppl have been feeling like we have been living in a increasing Communist Country. Our various freedoms and the right to do the most basic things has become illegal or taxed the hell out of. Did our Founding Fathers NOT start this country to get away from gov't rule and stupid assinine lack of common sense?
But US Citizens do not dispare! We are NOT alone in how our gov't is becoming a Communist Rule and telling us what we can do, how to do what they tell us we can do, and all that jive! The Britions are no better off then we are! Only difference is their anal retintive gov't calls their taxes and stupid ass laws "Sin Taxes".
The UK not only went after smoking but now they are going after drinking. And cars! Hey at least they are being fair if you ask my opinon on that! Not only are they making it illegal to kill oneself with smoke by making it almost unattinable to smoke anywhere but your house, now the UK is hiking their already HIGH booze tax up another 6%. They are now trying to do away with the "pub" scene. The car issue is along the lines of SUVs and bigger vechiles. For many US Citizens they have no clue exactly how expensive it is over in the UK.
Case in point when us US Citizens were bitching about paying 1.70 plus a gallon on gas the UK Citizens were already paying about 3-4 bucks a gallon for gas. So just imagine what they are paying now with US Citizens paying about 3-4 bucks a gallon for gas. They are looking at almost a 10 dollar a gallon gas fill.
Many British Citizens are speaking out on these "Sin" Taxes. Baisc enjoyment for many ppl of drinking, smoking, and driving vechiles they already paid otu the ass on are now "SINS" and they will be taxed for it. Citizens over in the UK have pointed out that their ecomony is just as shitty as the US's and the gov't is stupid ass hell for hiking these taxes because it will NOT stop ppl from drinking or smoking. If a person wants to drink and smoke they are going to. It won't stop them from driving their vechiles anymore than US Citizens have stopped driving big vechiles. All it is going to do is cost the Gov't money by loss of revenue.
And once our lovely gov'ts tax basic enjoyments to death and cause the majority of citizens in their country to stop doing what they enjoy, and cost the gov't revenue they will start taxing to death basic everyday living items even more than they already do. Because we all know that it isn't the gov't that keeps our countries running. It is the citizens and how they are taxed to death and then told we have no say in anything. We are told how to live our lives, what we can and can't do.
Saying this to anyone in our gov'ts can consitute a treason act if we act against it. Even when the US Consitution says the US Citizens have the right to rise up and clean out our own gov't. If we should do this we are committing a treasonist act even though we have a consitutional right to do so. In otherwords, if the Citizens of the US finally wise up and stop their bitching and act, we are dayumed. If we continue our bitching and do nothing we are dayumed. At least the US Citizens have a small recourse with our Consititution. I am not sure what the British Citizens have for recourse.
Got to love our Communist Gov'ts that use the guise of democrocy to beat down their citizens.
Just read the article on the new illegal immigrant law in OK!
Can we say a bunch of whiners!
We can't get jobs cause we need papers!
We have to have elabrote escape plans for our families in case one of us gets deported!
I lost 80% of my work force becasue all my workers are scared to work in a state like OK!
Blah Blah Blah Blah!
I have said it before and I'll say it again.
I have NO PROBLEMS with LEGAL immigrants or hell even ILLEGAL who are at least attempting to get legalized. I agree that our gov't make it riduclusly hard and way too expensive to become a legal immigrant especially when our grandparents and great grandparents did it for free!
But stop your bitching about having to finally step up and show legal paperwork saying you all can work in the US! Stop your bitching if your company goes belly up because you supported the illegals over US Citizens and are now loosing money!
We have to take care of our OWN citizens before we can help Mexicos!
It's that time again . . . The time to place our trust into the hands of those individuals who will represent us (Registrars of Voters, election officials, electronic voting machines/ companies, Help America Vote Act 2002, Direct Recording Electronic et cetera) and to whom we place responsibility for upholding the Constitution, and protecting our rights.
But when the people of a town, city or state exert their right to vote without open, honest elections and with a secret ballot they run the risk of choosing cowards and fools to public office; who will lead us into wars, do away with simple protections, destroy our families and children, promote slavery, use torture and mercenaries whenever they feel it necessary, murder the Americans they are supposed to protect, and leave our borders wide open? If those are not the ideals you hope to attain, then perhaps you were not voting as instructed on the State's machines. It is necessary to educate people to think differently.
Officials are supposedly standing guard in every county and state to help avoid electronic or other electoral fraud from occurring. The idea is to protect fair and honest elections with secret ballots, so that no citizen is intimidated when they vote. These official protections were deemed necessary since electoral fraud has an ancient tradition and those who crave for power and control of our government are constantly seeking new ways of changing outcomes, either by commission or omission. There are individuals and even small groups of voters who are not above using deliberate trickery to gain an advantage and give a few more votes to the candidate they favor.
Although voting machines have been around for decades, they were proven to be noisy, heavy and hard to move around. As a result, their use was fairly limited.
Counting votes on punched cards by computers . . . The beginning of the new millennium, combined with an abrupt and violent collapse that brought on disastrous consequences of the 2000 election, brought in new dangers in the form of electronic voting machines whose technical complexity is beyond the knowledge of local election officials. Control of elections by state and federal government was also increased. These changes were falsely designed to increase the convenience and decrease the cost of elections.
One of the biggest complaints relating to these electronic voting machines, is the lack of a paper trail with which to verify results. Even worse, these new machines are susceptible to hackers, or deceitful programmers.
In practice the results of these changes have often been disastrous and public trust in elections and official has dropped sharply. Still, election officials exerted force on citizens to vote on these machines and insist they, and the voting machine companies, know what is best. With this they screeched out a high-pitched noise, You shall trust us.
The Registrar of Voters Tony Anchundo, who in the November 2006 election in California, requested and expected voters to wait in long lines to vote on Direct Recording Electronic and instructed poll workers to refrain from revealing to the voters that they may ask for a paper ballot and avoid the wait. Of course, the voters blindly trusted Anchundo only to discover that it was obviously a bad idea. Hence, he pled guilty of 43 criminal counts, including charges of forgery, fraudulent appropriation of funds, embezzlement, altering of accounts and grand theft of nearly $80,000 of the county’s monies.
Electronic voting machines were to blame for a near disastrous collapse in the 2004 primary elections in California. In San Diego County about 40 percent of the machines malfunctioned, which was blamed on incompetent testing. In the November 2006 congressional race in Sarasota County, Florida 18,000 votes were lost on Direct Recording Electronics, and the Courts of Law refused to allow examination of the voting machines and a Republican went to Congress as a result. (<http://www.votersunite.org>.)
While elections are nothing new to most of us, attempts by the government to fix the problem has only made the situation worse. Many veered the blame on the Help America Vote Act, which was passed by Congressman Bob Ney and lobbyist Jack Abramnoff, who were both convicted of felonies and sentenced to jail. (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Ney>) Yet, the American people are still stuck with Help America Vote Act and electronic voting machines, even if they have proven to be but a disaster for elections.
Still, election officials are demanding that we vote on these ancient machines and have faith in the results. The method by which an election can be stolen isn't as important as the fact that electronic voting with a capital "V" inflates like dough the means by which election fraud can be accomplished while taking away protections that in other times existed. Counting votes electronically in a black box in large measure makes ineffective the morality of a secret ballot. We have climbed from a secret ballot to a secret count. If the members of our state or other political communities cannot verify that ballots are counted precisely then to manipulate the vote count in the black box is fairly easy to imagine.
Another problem is that the election officials have been shown to be arithmetically challenged. When Direct Recording Electronic voting was introduced, a couple to none of them had taken the time necessary or used intelligence to perform the simple calculation that shows only about 70 voters are able to use one Direct Recording Electronic in a typical 12-hour voting day. (An example - 12 hours = 720 minutes, averages 10 minutes for each voter to vote = 72 voters per machine. This process forces citizens to stand in line for hours to vote on unreasonably costly machines the people do not trust, and that have proven to be unpopular.)
Another cunning maneuver to gain an advantage created by Help America Vote Act is a voter’s registration database for citizens to confirm that they are registered in the database, what about the fraudulent registrations? Any hacker, contractor, or administrator can easily add as many registered voters they want to add, where in the past, those contemplating election frauds had to literally corrupt each county’s voter registration database. Today, they can corrupt a whole state with one hack.
To worsen the problem, most nearby regions also permit citizens to register by mail. When one uses this method, the citizen may mail in as many voter registration forms as her or he would like. Except when the ones who commit an illegal action are so careless as to mail in all the registrations in a single envelope, and all in the same handwriting. Once a mail registration form is accepted, the wrongdoers simply requests an absentee ballot and votes it. Naturally, signature verification on the mail ballot matches the signature on the fraudulent form. The situation is worsened by the use of electronic polls books, particularly when those e-poll books are using wireless communications.
As the use of no excuse absentee ballots went to 50% or more of all ballots cast in many elections, rather than fix the underlying problems many election officials proposed holding elections entirely by mail. Excuses like cost and convenience was put forth as justification for using such an admittedly fraud-prone method of voting. However, cost and convenience, particularly for election officials, should not be of real importance in such a fundamental process.
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