ChasingBlueSky

And there was such strong proof that SH was the cause of 9/11 Clinton and W both failed to bring OBL to justice. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-1018earlyvoting,0,6958865,print.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines Computer problems reported at Broward early voting sites By Jean-Paul Renaud & Sarah Halasz sun-sentinel.com October 18, 2004, 3:50 PM EDT As long lines gathered at polls, early voters at nine of Broward County's 14 sites ran into computer-generated problems on Monday. Gisela Salas, of the Broward Elections Office, said workers had problems connecting with a live database that is used to verify that a voter is properly registered in the county. The sites, Salas said, that were unaffected were at satellite offices in Deerfield Beach, Hollywood, Lauderhill, Pembroke Pines and Plantation. All 14 of the branch offices had problems with the database connection. Many of the sites had numerous voters lined up to cast their ballots. Some reported waiting in lines up to 2-1/2 hours to vote. A work-around was created by calling in each voter's name to the main Election's Office in Fort Lauderdale. Two office workers were assigned to each phone, Salas said, for a slowed verification process. The workers would plug into the database, and verify that the voter in one of the branch sites was indeed registered to vote. Shortly after 2 p.m., some of the branch sites, which were using laptop computers, began getting back online and gaining access to the database. And shortly after 3 p.m., all but one of the branch sites -- the one in Oakland Park -- were back online. Salas said it was not yet known what went wrong to cause the glitch. Voters at several sites said poll workers told them the problems started 20 minutes to 30 minutes after the early polling stations opened at 8:30 a.m. The stations close at 6 p.m. At the Tamarac branch public library, where voting stopped after the computer glitch, Sally Zwanger, a poll watcher for the Kerry campaign, claimed the problems reflected the inability of Gov. Jeb Bush's administration to fix voting problems left over from the 2000 election. "The worst thing to hear was, 'I support Kerry, but I can't wait in this line,'" she said. "We are having a repeat of 2000, and it's only in Florida that this could happen. This administration would do anything to ensure that he [Bush] stays in office." Zwanger said at one point there were 63 people in line, most of whom had gone home without voting by 11 a.m. She also said waiting voters were told at 8:30 a.m. that every voting location in Broward County was closed. But she found out after calling the Broward County Elections Office headquarters that the Plantation location and four others were still open. Susan Emert waited for two hours - starting at 8:20 a.m. -- before she finally had to leave for work. "They had all the time from when they said the voting machines will be used, all the time to perfect them, and here we are, up the creek," she said, throwing her arms wildly up in the air. "This is really another black eye for the county. I'm so fed up." Before leaving, however, Emert was able to get a number from an elections official. It will allow her to receive priority placement in the line when she returns. Most of the voters waiting in the line were seniors, and many shared Emert's frustration. They repeatedly uttered phrases such as, "This is ridiculous," and "This is so frustrating." Lucien Gennaro, a police aide in Coral Springs, waited for an hour at a public library to cast his vote Monday morning, before he had to leave for work. ``A lot of people who were waiting just left. I'll try again tomorrow,'' he said. ``It was a little frustrating after what happened in 2000.'' In Palm Beach County, the center of the madness during the 2000 presidential recount, a state legislator said she wasn't given a complete absentee ballot when she asked not to use the electronic touch-screen machines. In Orange County, the computer system that lists voters briefly crashed, paralyzing voting in Orlando and its immediate suburbs. And in Broward County several sites had problems with laptops connected to elections headquarters. State Rep. Shelley Vana, D-Lantana, was the seventh person in line Monday at a Palm Beach County early voting site. She said the paper absentee ballot she received was missing one of its two pages, including the proposed amendments to the state constitution. She said election workers were indifferent when she pointed out the oversight. ``There was absolutely no concern on the part of the folks at the Supervisor of Elections Office that this page was missing. This is not a good start. If there are incomplete ballots out there, I can't imagine I would be the only one getting it,'' she said. Elections supervisor Theresa LePore did not immediately return a call for comment. In Orange County, the computers went down for about 10 minutes shortly after voting began, said Margaret Dunn, the senior deputy elections supervisor. She said she did not know what caused the problem, but speculated a faulty Internet connection may have been to blame. Texas, Colorado and Arkansas also began casting early ballots Monday, 15 days before Election Day. Other key states this year have already begun in-person voting, including Iowa, Nevada, Ohio and New Mexico. In Palm Beach County, a steady flow of voters cast early ballots. Robin Punches, a stay-at-home mom from West Palm Beach, said she came early to vote because she heard it would increase the chance of her vote being accurately counted. It was her first time using the touch-screen voting machines. ``It tells you exactly what to do. It's idiot proof,'' she said. In Tallahassee, a few students camped out overnight in front of the Leon County Courthouse to raise awareness of early voting, and were first to vote Monday morning. The Rev. Jesse Jackson was in Tallahassee Monday, rallying students at Florida A&M University. ``Vote early and get the kinks out of the system,'' the former Democratic presidential candidate told students before riding with them on buses to the courthouse. In Miami-Dade County, where early voting sites were to open later Monday, about 150 people gathered for a rally led by the Rev. Al Sharpton and former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. Some people were carrying homemade signs that said ``Early Voting Counts'' and ``Every Vote Matters.'' Early voting was introduced in Florida after the 2000 election, in which this crucial state decided the result by only 537 votes and introduced topics such as butterfly ballots and hanging chads to the national debate. Both President Bush and his Democratic challenger, John Kerry, arranged campaign swings through the Sunshine State over the weekend to coincide with the start of early voting. Some groups are urging voters to cast a paper absentee ballot, as Vana did, because of concerns over the state's new touch-screen voting machines and any potential recounts. Voters Monday could chose either method. ``It's going to be changing the way candidates campaign because they have to get their message out to people two to three weeks earlier than in the past,'' LePore said last week. Even as voters turned out, lawyers were going to court in Fort Lauderdale to argue a lawsuit over the lack of paper backup on the electronic machines. Some have criticized the concept of early voting, saying it increases opportunities for vote fraud without significantly boosting voter participation. Still, most states offer the option of early voting. Duval County, the most populous county in the state to open just one early voting site, will open at least two more as soon as possible, Hood announced Monday. A Jacksonville city attorney had said it was too late to open additional sites, even though the city council committed money to the idea. Gov. Jeb Bush had opposed the one-site plan, and Hood urged the city to open more polling places. Earlier Monday, protesters had gathered outside the Duval election supervisor's office, carrying signs and singing civil-rights songs. Election officials say that although the early voting efforts create more work in a busy election year, they're pushing for voters to get to the polls and make their voices heard any way they can. ``As long as people vote, we're happy,'' said LePore, who lost her re-election bid in August. ``But if something really bad happens about a candidate two days before an election, you can't change your vote.'' _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

I sat down at Borders the other day for about four hours or so....I poured over a variety of the political books out there. Both books are very biased and you can almost see the agenda on the page without reading the text. Unfit Commander does read more like a biography than a smear campaign like Unfit for Command does. Commander also goes the route that Command does by grabbing people from Bush's past and quoting them on how he wasn't there, etc. Command seems to have a bit more shine put on it from the editors and publishers. From what I read of both books, I wasn't impressed. They were both terrible pieces of non-fiction. I just find it interesting how much more press Unfit For Command got from the "Liberal Media" and you don't hear much about Commander. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

But he has been losing face! And I think he has been giving all of it to Kerry. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

To prevent him from achieving martyr status? - Jim Could be, or he just expired in some cave somewhere and his followers let him be. The idea that he is alive and untouchable by America makes him appear more powerful. And the claim I read about Bush pulling him out in Oct to win the election? I'm sure he will do it from Area 51 from the deck of the crashed alien spaceship we have there. Do you really think he would stay in such a tight fight where he is losing face on a daily basis? Hell no, that trump card would have been played already. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

That's pretty funny - because I am known to be such a reckless jumper. I lead by example when I am the dz. I've been called the safety bitch and mother hen by more than a few jumpers. But the best part? The conservative advice I have been handing out? I now hear those new jumpers passing on the same safe advice and now leading by example as well. The culture of the jumpers I know is not complacent. I've been around long enough to remember when the Stiletto was a death machine in the pre-Velocity days and how you could only jump an EXT if you had thousands of jumps. I understand how quick perspectives change in this sport. However, you can preach safety only so much. Sometimes you have to let the kid touch the hot stove and get burned. You got burned and made your mistakes - sometimes you need to let others do it as well. Preach too much and they just don't listen. And I do listen to the lessons of those that have been in the sport a long time. I have hours of conversations with people like Roger Nelson, Kirk Smith, Sky and Rainbo who have seen just about every aspect of this sport and can put it into perspective and really boil it down to what matters. Which means what? The ground still won't budge. I saw the lowest pull of my short time in this sport at Rantoul - a three way round low pull contest that broke around 1k and they all made sure they turned off their AAD before the jump. I counted a four second canopy ride from one of them - his Nepture showing 400 feet for a deployment. (ask some of the Hellfish about it - he was hanging around that tent a lot) So, something like this is ok to do, but if you have a Cypres fire, it isn't? Again, I see otherwise. I even watched a guy bitch out his wife in front of the entire DZ after she had a Cyrpes fire. I've seen very few Cypres fires at home - it isn't until I travel that I see them elsewhere, and usually at boogies. But you still went out and did dumb things anyhow - despite what they said to you. And rock n roll is the devils work!!! Once again, I don't see it as dire as you do. Yes, I have traveled - 27 dzs in five years and countless boogies. I understand that as I have been down that road as well. But I did have full respect of this sport before those deaths. Team Funnel was created to help promote safety long before we lost our first friend...I know this because I helped create that group with seven other guys that felt the same way about the sport as I did. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

His letter of concern has surfaced after repeated statements by President Bush (news - web sites) that he is determined to ensure that U.S. troops fighting in Iraq have all that they need to execute their missions. "I have pledged, as has the secretary of defense, to give our troops everything that is necessary to complete their mission with the utmost safety," he said in May. Earlier this month in Manchester, N.H., he said, "When America puts our troops in combat, I believe they deserve the best training, the best equipment, the full support of our government _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

I have and do. I don't think it is as dire as you portray it. There are a few dense jumpers that I know of that believe they are bullet proof. But overall, the jumpers that I know and hang with are a very safe group of people and are not complacent at all. We make jokes, but what we do in the air is no where near those jokes. This tendency to feel that a younger generation is more out of control is very typical. You hear parents say it all the time about their kids. You hear Baby Boomers saying it about Gen X, etc. This is a cycle that has happened time and time again. You are looking back through your own mistakes at the current generation of jumpers and claiming that they are complacent. But your own actions that you claimed on this board (pulling low, hooking it in, etc) were probably getting the same claims from the generation of jumpers before you. Your perspective has changed, but the situation is still the same. Yes, jumpers are still going to die at a rate of about 30 a year as the stats show. As Bill Booth says, jumpers find new ways to kill themselves every year. This generation it is low hooks. Who knows what it will be next. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

My guess would be that most new jumpers get them now, and a lot of the older generation have converted over as well. Also, there are now more turbine DZs that can churn out more jumps over a weekend. And then there are the DZ that require a Cyrpess. Thus, more jumps with an AAD increases the chances of a fire. The number of fires we have now will be higher by default. We would need the exact number of Cypres units in a rig over the years compared to the amount of fires to get a true understanding of how complacent the sport has/has not become. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

They should air that here in this country as well. After all, its not news, right? Therefore it doesn't deserve equal time. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Sorry, busy reading this right now: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060792450/qid=1098119751/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-1745108-3526544?v=glance&s=books _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

From my understanding, the route was to be only in the Green Zone - right through the area that was bombed last week. What these troops realized is that there is no longer a safe zone or an easy mission and that we are in reverse when it comes to making progress (bombs in the green zone prove that). Don't you like to stack the deck in your favor while jumping? I'm sure they would like to do the same as well. However, those in charge have failed in doing what was necessary to give our troops what is needed to do their job and come back home in one piece. This entire war has been mismanaged. Here is something to think about - if this is the sort of thing that was traditional from draft troops in previous wars....maybe that says a lot about the morale and beliefs our current troops have. Maybe its not as rosey and perfect as Bush claims it to be. Maybe that book of letters from troops in Iraq tells the truth? _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

I realize that armor will not stop everything. But how many troops would still be alive if they had the right armor? If it saves just one troop, then it was worth the effort. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

QuoteYou miss the people? Go visit...hang out, discuss lunch options, tell people off. No problem for me. [/url] I would do that, but there are only two other people in my office and they are both workaholics. The plus side is that I have an office again (first time in years) and this one has windows overlooking the Sears Tower. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Sonic has some really good Root Beer floats as well. But nothing is as good as the ones A&W makes. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

But in the long run it may save more lives. I bet the armor shows up there now. These 18 troops may end up in jail, but in the end run they may have helped other troops over there. Also, how is it that the troops are supposed to trust the chain of command when they do not provide the proper gear to do their job and stay alive? Mutiny starts at the top with inaction or negligence. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Thanks for your opinion. We'll add that to the 6 billion others in the world. I didn't realize that there are 6 billion other people who think Bush is a disgrace to the office of President. But I can't say I'm surprised. The intersting thing, John, is that he points out how one person's opinion doesn't count or matter because there are 6 billion other people. Then he lets us know his opinion. Flip Flop? _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

The Chicago Tribune endorsed Bush as of this weekend. They are part of the media, and they are not supporting a liberal candidate. Shoots that theory to hell about ALL media has a liberal bias. No? Also, as a reminder, the Chicago Tribune is one of the largest newspaper publications in this country. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

So throw enough troops at a problem and it should solve it, right? So, they are there to catch bullets without protection? Maybe we wouldn't have over 1000 dead troops if they had the proper armor? Yes, they signed the contract, and yes it is a war. But the chain of command should have sent our troops in prepared. This wasn't a war that came out of the blue - we decided when it started!! Therefore, the supply chain should have taken care of them. Once again, poor planning by the part of this administration. The troops are expected to do their end and die while no one else does their side of the deal? _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

I have to drop off a tuxedo in N. Riverside tomorrow - so I am going to ask to leave work early and then stop by Blake Lamb after that. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

She was a belly jumper....was on the 2000 300-way attempt. A really heads up jumper, very gentle personality and a smile that just didn't quit...even when times were bad for her. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

And all those people would be distracted by trying to redial, etc. Some of us have voice dial and hands free units...or even a bluetooth headset. No different than talking to someone in the car for me. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Apparently you were not at Rantoul this year. I saw more low pulls and AAD fires in a two hour period than I have during my five years in this sport. Oh yea, and of course the Mr Bill Landing (technically the all-time winner of the low pull contest). [tangent] The interesting part? Watching a chronic low-puller bitch out one of them. Don't you love double standards? Thats the one thing about this sport I've never understood - how many double standards there are.[/tangent] _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

But what did Kerry do? Sit on his hind end for 40 minutes "not thinking" until he was told to evacuate. Yep. 33 minutes longer than Bush, and you think Kerry is going to be a better terrorism President. First off - I haven't heard that one before - where did you get that tidbit? 2nd - Kerry is not immediatly responsible for the welfare of the country in his current office. However, the President of the United States is. Command level decisions needed to come from him....instead My Pet Goat was more important than national security. _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....

Wow, my head is spinning after this one. Have Scary Election Scenarios Increased? By NANCY BENAC, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Despite all the vows of "never again" after the Florida fiasco of 2000, the scary scenarios for Election Day 2004 seem only to have increased: A tie vote in the Electoral College. A terrorist strike on Election Day. A disputed outcome in a critical state. "When we talk about it around here, we just sigh," says Walter Berns, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and an expert on the Electoral College. "I just hope it's a clear victory so we don't have Florida all over again all over the place." With the electorate sharply divided, the chance of a deadlock in the Electoral College seems all the more real this time after the long-in-limbo outcome of 2000. The National Archives offers an "Electoral College calculator" on its Web site so armchair prognosticators can see just how easy it could be to have the candidates come out even. For example, if just New Hampshire and Nevada (or West Virginia) shifted from favoring Bush to the Democrats this time, there could be a 269-269 tie, leaving it to the House to pick the next president and the Senate to pick the new vice president come January. That would leave open the jarring possibility of a Bush-Edwards or Kerry-Cheney pairing, depending on the political leanings of the new House and Senate. More likely is the chance that results from one or more states could be up in the air for a while because of a recount, challenges to provisional or absentee ballots or lawsuits related to other voting problems. Both parties have lawyers primed to pounce at any target of opportunity this time. And the opportunity for challenges has grown under a new federal law requiring all states to allow people to cast provisional votes if their names don't appear on registration rolls. "With objections raised and legal teams in place, we could have a hell of a fight," said Thomas Mann, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution. Michael White, the federal official responsible for coordinating certain aspects of the Electoral College, says he'll be keeping an especially close eye on Colorado, where voters are considering a referendum to divide the state's electoral votes proportionally among the candidates rather than using the existing winner-takes-all formula. A lawsuit is virtually guaranteed if the referendum is approved, meaning the state's nine electoral votes could be a lingering question long after Election Day. "That's kind of the nightmare scenario, having the whole thing up in the air on election night," White said. Another quirk involves "faithless electors," who refuse to cast their electoral votes for the person chosen by their state's voters. This rarely happens — only 10 times in history — but even one this year could be critical. And one of the five Republican electors from West Virginia is holding out the possibility of withholding his vote for Bush if the president carries the state. The notion of a split decision between the popular vote and the Electoral College tally, which seemed rather unlikely before 2000, now is almost old hat. Mann, for his part, hopes that if this election splits the opposite way from 2000 — with Bush winning the popular vote and Kerry the electoral count — it might ignite a movement to junk the Electoral College altogether. The idea got some traction after the 2000 vote, but lost momentum when small states raised objections and got sidelined altogether when priorities shifted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Those attacks, meanwhile, have given rise to a whole new catalog of nightmare scenarios associated with terrorism. The notion was reinforced when 191 people in Madrid were killed in terrorist bombings last March just three days before Spain's elections. Most people have forgotten, if they ever knew it, that 9/11 was a local election day in New York City. Gov. George Pataki postponed the balloting for two weeks. It would be a far more complicated matter to postpone presidential voting in all or part of the nation. AEI scholars John Fortier and Norman Ornstein have written a paper for Election Law Journal on the implications of a terrorist attack any time between the presidential primaries and Inauguration Day. They find troubling gaps in the procedures for handling such situations, and say the federal government, national political parties and the states all have work to do. For example, they write, if a terrorist attack at the Inauguration killed the new president and vice president as well as top members of Congress, the line of succession would lead to the Cabinet, but the new president's Cabinet wouldn't have been nominated yet and the old president's team could well have resigned as of noon on Jan. 20. Their proposed fix: have the out-going president nominate one or more members of the incoming president's Cabinet in advance, so Congress could confirm them a few hours ahead of the Inauguration. Then one of those people could be sent away to ensure someone was safe. Fortier and Ornstein scold those who say that even exploring the possibilities of an election-related attack could heighten the risk of one happening. "Dismissal of these problems or failure to think about this is irresponsible," they write. "Scenarios we would have dismissed a few years ago as the stuff of Tom Clancy novels are all too real." ___ National Archives' "Electoral College calculator:" http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/electoral_college/calculator.html American Enterprise Institute seminar on Electoral College: http://www.aei.org/events/eventID.927,filter./event_detail.asp _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again.....