Global

Hi,

Just thought I'd say that I worked on ATM systems at a major bank when I was younger. I was there until they changed out the old 910 models for the 911 ATMs. ATMs haven't changed much in the last 15 - 20 years. Remarkably little.

For what it's worth, I wrote a scenario for the bank showing how to remove all the money from an ATM with no record. You see, the ATMs would not print either a journal entry or a receipt without a command to do so, which was independent of the command to dispense bills. Not much happened as a result except some meetings.

So even if you have printed receipts, that isn't anywhere near enough to ensure electronic voting machines are honest. You can only know if they are honest if you can easily count and compare the hardcopy record with the electronic record. There is no reason to believe that the receipt corresponds to the journal or the journal agrees with the vote recorded. They won't agree unless someone makes sure they do.

Dr. Fitrakis,

I'm not sure this is your correct e-mail address, but in case it is, I wanted to briefly give you a few facts related to your portrayal of my company's role with the State of Maryland's voting system.

First, Bill Owens was never the CEO of SAIC and he has not been with the company for quite some time. There have only been two CEOs in the 35-year history of the company: Dr. J. Robert Beyster, our founder, and Kenneth Dahlberg, who took over on November 3, 2003. Neither man had any contact with the SAIC employees who conducted the Maryland study.

Second, our study for the State of Maryland on Diebold's system was relatively critical. That the state chose to proceed with the system was its prerogative. If you check the record, you will find that Professor Rubin of Johns Hopkins praised our report and believed that its findings were cause for the state to come to a different conclusion.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have gone and gotten themselves in big trouble. For those of you who do not follow the business pages, I only wish we were talking about pregnant teen-agers. Fannie and Freddie are the two government-sponsored mortgage companies that help most of us buy homes. Trouble is, they've run themselves into big-time debt -- they've doubled the amount they owe in just the last five years. When I say big-time, try $2 trillion. And guess who's on the hook if these things go under? Congratulations, taxpayers.

            This week, Alan Greenspan, the Great Pooh-Bah of the financial world, opined in his usual Delphic style before the Senate Banking Committee, "To fend off possible future systemic difficulties, which we assess as likely if the expansion continues unabated, preventive actions are required sooner rather than later." The Wall Street Journal helpfully translates this as, "Act quickly." Hard to tell with Greenspan: I yield to the Journal's long experience in Greenspan translation, but it could also mean, "Push the panic button now!"

Listening to Democrats screaming about Ralph Nader's entry into the presidential race I finally understand the mindset of those Communist dictatorships that used to take such trouble to ensure that the final count showed a 99 percent Yes vote for the CP candidate. It's a totalitarian logic. "Anybody But Bush," chorus the Democrats. But they don't mean that. They mean "Nobody But Kerry." And if John Edward wins big in the primaries next week, they'll start shouting, "Nobody But Edwards."

If "Building Seven" says nothing to you, you have lots of company.  On 9/11 it caught fire and fell to the ground, all 47 stories.  Yet today, two and a half years later, no one knows why--that is, unless they are privy to some inside knowledge.  When World Trade Center Tower One (WTC 1) collapsed so inconceivably at 10:28 a.m., WTC 7, to its north, began sprouting fires that could be seen through windows, here and there.  Seven hours later it was a heap of smoking debris that looked exactly like a demolition by use of explosives, a pile of rubble within its own footprint.  

Halliburton and its former chief executive, Vice President Dick Cheney, could become President Bush's Achilles heel come the November presidential election.

On Monday, the Pentagon said it launched a criminal investigation into allegations that Halliburton Inc. subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root overcharged the federal government upwards of $65 million for fuel delivered into Baghdad during the Iraq war.

Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall has repeatedly said that the company did not intentionally overcharge the government. To hear her tell it, Halliburton was being a good corporate citizen because the company's accountants, who she said uncovered evidence of the overcharges during a routine audit last year, immediately brought it to the attention of Pentagon officials. But Halliburton's got a rap sheet a mile long so when the company says it's innocent its hard to take their word for it.

President Bush today called for passage of the Federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that if ratified, would define marriage as a union only between one man and one woman.

"What this president has done is appalling and is not in defense of anything, instead its a promotion of hate and bigotry against taxpaying American citizens solely on the basis of their sexual orientation" says Perry Slone, Director of Ohio Citizens for Social Justice (OCSJ), an organization working to create social change and address social justice issues.

"This man is only interested in getting himself re-elected, and those of us who support diversity and freedom must do everything we can do to defeat him and also work to defeat this hateful Amendment" says Slone.

Democratic Presidential candidates John Kerry and John Edwards, are opposed to same-sex marriage, but they also oppose a constitutional amendment, saying that its an issue that should be decided by the states and not the federal government.

Ok, you mention that Bush has the worst economy since Herbert Hoover, but what exactly did he do to make it so bad. You have to admit that the recession officially began under Clinton's watch, not to mention corporate scandals-- which Bush didn't cause, and 9/11 you have to admit was a blow to the economy. So specifically what did Bush do?

bush may have inherited a slight recession, but he turned it into a depression by turning a surplus into a deficit, shifting the tax burden onto middle american consumers, encouraging corruption, escalating income stratification, running up gargantuan military commitments, killing off renewable energy, decimating the natural environment, gutting the economic reporting apparatus and much more...

AUSTIN, Texas -- With so many delights on our political plate, it's hard to know where to begin. Take that knee-slapping joke by Education Secretary Rod Paige: He called our largest teachers' union "a terrorist organization." In fun, of course. Gosh darn, HEE-HAW! All over the nation, teachers are just chuckling away.

            Paige is upset with the National Education Association because it is lobbying in Washington to give states more flexibility and more money in meeting the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. If that makes the NEA a terrorist organization, what does it make the Utah legislature, where its House of Representatives voted 64 to 8 not to comply with any provisions of the law not fully financed by the federal government? And how are we to categorize the Virginia House of Delegates, which voted 98 to 1 to ask Congress to exempt Virginia from the law?