[QUOTE=FoieGrasIsEvil]
Well I fully comprehend that, but there’s no need to be rude simply because we disagree.
[/QUOTE]
Yes there is. This is the internet, created specifically for everyone to indulge in all those tantrums they never got to have when they were eight years old.
Remember - if you don’t have spittle on your screen you’re not using the internet properly.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
I disagree. The big issue in Watergate was an elected official using the powers of his office to influence his own re-election. That’s a big step down the path to dictatorship. It’s worse than anything Clinton or Bush ever tried.
[/QUOTE]
That, in fact, WAS the issue that lead to Gonzo’s resignation. It is also the issue with the GAO investigation. There is no way to determine if the non-FISA electronic surveillance program is being misused or not…but if I were the democratic party, I would sure as shit be using strong encryption in any and all emails having to do with strategy.
[QUOTE=Scylla]
Because of the way your brains have been set up by evolution there are ten classic mistakes that you human beings will make over and over again.
Some of these you can be taught to overcome. Perhaps the most stubborn and intractable of these mistakes is something called “my side bias.” This occurs when you are so entrenched in your position that you are incapable of thought from any other perspective. You credit arguments that support your position as having strong credibility, and those that are antagonistic as having weak.
Strongly correlated to “my side bias” is “not noticing,” and “not seeing the whole picture.”
Now, assuming the impossible, which is that your puny brains could see things as my people do, it would become obvious to you what the sad state of affairs here really is.
Why does the Bush administration not wish to open an email from the EPA? Hmmm. How many conservatives do you think work there? How many people friendly to the Bush administration? How many supporters do you think he has there?
Probably the White House perceives the EPA as hostile and biased.
As such, it regards the output as compromised.
If there is any doubt that this is not so, the EPA proves the White House’s point by a willingness to attribute motives.
From the link:
“Both documents, as prepared by the E.P.A., “showed that the Clean Air Act can work for certain sectors of the economy, to reduce greenhouse gases,” one of the senior E.P.A. officials said. “That’s not what the administration wants to show. They want to show that the Clean Air Act can’t work.”
Why would they open an email from a clearly antagonistic source, thus giving it weight and credence?
If the EPA wishes its reports to be taken seriously they need to abandon the mind-reading claims and lose the attitude.
It’s not doing itself, this country, the Bush administration or the government any favors with this kind of behavior.
That you are all incapable of seeing this sad state of affairs, and put aside partisan differences in order to correct this self perpetuating systemic failure of your own government to provide its executive branch with neutral information that it can trust is sad.
Millions of years ago your ancestors did the same thing when one band of monkeys would shit in a water hole so another band of monkeys couldn’t drink from it. Then and now you forget that you will get thirsty again.
[/QUOTE]
That’s the sort of thinking that leads to all those software development projects infamously going extraordinarily over budget and over deadline. Instead of asking how long a feature will take to implement, management decides that it will take X long on its own initiative and considers it settled. In the case of software development, this happens because the sort of person to become a programmer is by and large passive aggressive and are easy to run over in a meeting, but short of any particular basis on which to doubt the word of your experts, you’re just shitting in your own bed.
And the only basis that you’re suggesting is that the EPA is all liberals. Well what about the Republican ex-heads of the EPA who are supporting the results?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10913795 (5 Republicans, 1 Democrat)
http://www.rep.org/opinions/op-eds/43.html (Russell Train, Republican)
http://www.rep.org/news/GEvol7/ge7.1_eye.html (Christine Whitman, Republican)
Republicans for Environmental Protection support the fact that the EPA uses Republican methods to conserve, but are mad that the EPA is going with current-day Republican moves to lessen their ability:
http://www.rep.org/opinions/weblog/weblog05-12-5.html
And they get annoyed when the EPA sides with Democrats instead of science:
http://www.rep.org/opinions/op-eds/100.html
And yet, they support the EPA:
http://www.rep.org/opinions/letters/4.html
What evidence do you have that the Republican founded and traditionally Republican run EPA is a festering bastion of Liberals?
Now the WH has announced there will be no regulation of greenhouse gas emissions during the remainder of Bush’s term.
And the EPA has reversed its position. One wonders whether there might not have been a certain amount of arm-twisting.