Politics, Everyday, All day... morning, noon and night....

[joel the ornery]

Please feel free to express your political opinions or the opinions of others...

[Last Real Burner]

Politics Suck. And so do others opinions of it.


"I live in my own little world, but it's ok... They know me here."

policically,
mr smith

[DE FACTO]

Well it's about time you came up with this thread.


I dont want to pay taxes to this government any more. I'd raher pay taxes to BM.



How's that for politics?

[DVD Burner]

DAMN! wong sock again.

[joel the ornery]

http://www.engineerguy.com/

With the U.S. primary season nearly over, and the general election ahead, it's time to focus on how we vote. Wanting no repeat of the Florida voting fiasco of the 2000 Presidential Election, many states now use electronic voting - just touching a computer screen casts a vote. I'm wary, though, that this new technology may simply sweep any problems we've had into an electronic void without solving them.

We are tossing out the Votomatic Ballot Tally System, invented in 1963. With these machiens citizens punched holes in special index cards to cast votes, which could then be counted quickly by a computer. Most importantly, though, the Votomatic System left an audit trail - that is, actual ballots that can be recounted by machine, or if desired by hand. As we learned in Florida in 2000 what exactly constitutes a valid vote isn't clear: Does the card need to be punched completely, or need a voter only indent the card?

To avoid making these decisions, state officials are turning toward electronic voting. They hype electronic voting emphasizing how it can help voters: For example, voters often invalidate their punch card ballots by choosing too many candidates, an electronic system can alert a voter about an improper ballot.

In spite of many advantages, I'm leery of electronic voting. I've written many computer programs in my life and have learned that no software is foolproof. And I worry about security: Recently someone stole the Diebold company's voting machine software, displaying it on a web site, giving hackers a blueprint for attacking the machines.

Perhaps all this can be solved giving us nice and clean electronic balloting: Just press a button on a touch screen and the machine records your vote. Or does it?

So far, electronic voting machines have actually subtracted votes instead of adding them. And in Florida electronic voting machines found that 137 people who'd showed up and gone into the booth had no recorded votes. Did these people just choose not to vote once they got in the booth, or did the machines fail? We'll never know because electronic voting machine don't leave an audit trail.

So, the key to reliable electronic voting is old-fashioned: It's paper. The machine should record the vote electronically, but also spit out a small card with the vote printed on it. A card that can be recounted if necessary. While it seems a simple solution, many voting machine companies oppose it. It's too complicated, expensive and complex they say, arguing that it's inefficient.

When we heard cries like this - that we need electronic voting because it is clean, neat, and efficient - we should remember that democracy is often a very messy thing. In fact, there's a name for a society with efficient and time-saving voting procedures, it's called a dictatorship!

[juanicoheal]

No matter how neat and tidy electronic information may seem, in order to truly 'prove' anything requires a hard copy.

Accounting processes such as electoral polling should have as many safeguards of accuracy as possible.

If voters refuse to use the electronic version, alternatives will be necessary. - how are absentee ballots counted? Braille ballots?

[DVD Burner]

No matter how neat and tidy electronic information may seem, in order to truly 'prove' anything requires a hard copy.

Accounting processes such as electoral polling should have as many safeguards of accuracy as possible.

If voters refuse to use the electronic version, alternatives will be necessary. - how are absentee ballots counted? Braille ballots?

Would Mail-in balots be an alternative in the mean time ?

Personally I really dont belive whatever the people do along the coventional lines will make any diffrence against the powers that be.


You are right about these paperless voting machines, placed in 15 counties in Florida, but I don't see finding another way to vote or voting for Kerry, or any of the above solving this or any of the countries current problems.

Voting will not get rid of the shadow government and low I.Q. bullies that run not only this country but the world.

and if anyone thinks that a bunch of peaceful protests and writings to your representatives is going to help you, you are ignoring and underestimating just how bent 4 generations of the Bush family violently can and will be.

Hey,I know everyone means well when it comes to voting, honesty, patriotism and all but one of the ways that the world works goes like this.
Bush, Cheney, wolfowitz and the lot, along with their followers will stop at nothing to keep the front that they've won the election of next no matter what.
anyone that didn't see it coming in 2000 (which are many) will start to learn this year. I wouldn't put it passed these "Bush" people to suddenly have some kind of national emergency that causes them to claim Marshall law in order to prevent the vote from happening.

These guys are a very very sneaky, keniving, maliciously violent bunch. Mark my word they will pull a new one. Nothing cynical about it. They have been up to this for a very long time and have a very specific mission. They have every intention to show all their cards soon.

Please don't miss understand me. I am not a democrat/republican or independent. just a realist

[DVD Burner]

and yes I do have a suggestion to a solution. just would like to see other proposals.

[juanicoheal]

DVD - with the conspiracy theories zooming in and out of that post - one would think that you're a "Coast to Coast" listener....

If it is true that the 'shadow goverment' is reallly running things, would it be safe to say that the voters are really just picking their sock puppet/mouthpiece? And in doing so telling the 'shadow' exactly how much they want to be hidden?

I suppose it doesn't surprise you that it's an oil-family president that goes after the middle east, and gas prices go up during his term.

[DVD Burner]

DVD - with the conspiracy theories zooming in and out of that post - one would think that you're a "Coast to Coast" listener....

no conspiracy theories here. it's just as well as Powell in Pakistan helping Musharraf make Pakistan a non-NATO ally so that Pakistan can buy more weapons from the U.S. This is the way the world works.

geroge sr. needs to get rid of all that extra gear that he owns.
george w. needs to help decrease the value of the american dollar so that the euro can continue to become stable at it's higher value.

that is the way it is. Globalization rules along with the monarchy and the bush dynasty.
The thing is, what is or can anyone really do about it?
Can anything be done about the new world order?

[juanicoheal]

so that Pakistan can buy more weapons from the U.S. This is the way the world works.

Isn't this strategy what ultimately caused 9/11 ????

Well, I guess the CIA training didn't hurt.

[KellY]

One thing that drives me crazy about the whole e-voting thing is that discussions always seem to be punchcard vs. touchscreen. I lived for years in Sonoma county and our ballot was filled in with a pen like an SAT test. No hanging chads, no dimples, still a paper trail. Why not put those in Florida?

Oh, wait, that means the vote might get counted more accurately...

[DVD Burner]

Isn't this strategy what ultimately caused 9/11 ????

Well, I guess the CIA training didn't hurt.

Oh hey, when it came to the CIA I was told to use cites.

I think you may need to use cites.

[Force]

Personally I really dont belive whatever the people do along the coventional lines will make any diffrence against the powers that be.

Yeah, with what Bush did last time around, I'll be voting with a paper absentee ballot this time. I've had way too much experience with both electronic technology and politicians to trust either or both not to monkey with my vote.

I still have a problem to solve, though- I'd like to vote for Nader just to thumb my nose at the 2-party system and try and change the perception that a 3rd candidate can never win, but I don't want Bush getting reelected.

I also have to factor into the equation that Kerry is every bit as much as Bush the slimy politician, so voting for him is basically a vote for a slim hope that he's not as much of an idiot as Bush.

What I'd REALLY like to do is just vote for Carol Mosely Brown to really thumb my nose at the whole frigging mess. Anyone know of a website that says how many votes she got nominating her as the Dem candidate (like I did, even though I knew she'd already dropped out)?

[Markov Chaney]

I can't imagine that anyone could be as slimey as Bush. As a rule I can't stand Democrats or Republicans, but Kerry will get my vote this year. Not that I like Kerry, but I just can't stomach the thought of four more years of Bush.

[Force]

One thing that drives me crazy about the whole e-voting thing is that discussions always seem to be punchcard vs. touchscreen. I lived for years in Sonoma county and our ballot was filled in with a pen like an SAT test. No hanging chads, no dimples, still a paper trail. Why not put those in Florida?

Oh, wait, that means the vote might get counted more accurately...

You bring up a good point- since it's both cheaper and more accurate to use the system you mention instead of punchcards, why would we switch over to an electronic system that even though it's been around for over twenty years is still full of bugs and idiosyncrasies?

One possible answer is because a shiny screen that's colorful and mimics stuff we've seen in science fiction movies and TV shows is sexy. Yes, that's how frigging dumb the decision-making process can be.

Another reason, depending on how much corruption you may believe there is, is that it would allow the hijacking of your vote to be much simpler.

Diebold and other computer voting companies have furiously resisted having to add a paper printout mechanism to their voting machines. This could be interpreted in many ways- either (or some combination of);

a) They are part of the conspiracy to hijack your vote,

b) They don't want the added expense of building a paper printing mechanism into the machine,

c) They don't want people to see a several thousand dollar machine printing out a PIECE OF PAPER, highlighting the stupidity of moving the printing process from one high-speed professional printer to many thousands of slower, more expensive printers scattered around the country, all needing technicians to maintain them, people to be trained to use them, etc., etc., etc.

The evoting proponents will tell you it enables a faster and more accurate count of votes, but just doing a tiny little bit of research reveals that to be a bald-faced lie. Based on evoting machines' history thus far, we can say that it enables a faster INACCURATE count of votes.

[joel the ornery]

Software of Democracy
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

My favorite building in Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, is a corporate complex called the "Golden Enclave." In some ways, the whole tech sector in Bangalore could be called India's "Golden Enclave" — disconnected from the country's bad governance, as companies create their own walled enclaves, with their own electricity, bus service, telecommunications and security, and disconnected from the countryside, where many Indians still live in abject poverty.

As long as these two liabilities of inept governance and endemic poverty are not addressed, India can't really take off and become a big-time technology competitor of the United States. The information revolution, though, has given India, for the first time, some real resources and tools to address its chronic ailments. Will it seize this opportunity? This is India's "to be or not to be" question.

Says Vivek Paul, president of the cutting-edge Indian software giant Wipro: "In some sense, all that this globalization of information technology and [outsourcing] has done is to give India pin money to reform itself." If India "blows it," well, the opportunities may still be out there, "but India won't be a beneficiary in the long run," he said. "The beneficiaries will be those who are most flexible and able to organize themselves around the opportunities." Mr. Paul said he believed India would seize this moment.

But it will require some radical changes in politics: While India has the hardware of democracy — free elections — it still lacks a lot of the software — decent, responsive, transparent local government. While China has none of the hardware of democracy, in the form of free elections, its institutions have been better at building infrastructure and services for China's people and foreign investors.

When I was in Bangalore recently, my hotel room was across the hall from that of a visiting executive of a major U.S. multinational, which operates in India and China, and we used to chat. One day, in a whisper, he said to me that if he compared what China and India had done by way of building infrastructure in the last decade, India lost badly. Bangalore may be India's Silicon Valley, but its airport (finally being replaced) is like a seedy bus station with airplanes.

Few people in India with energy and smarts would think of going into politics. People don't expect or demand much from their representatives and therefore they are not interested in paying them much in taxes, so most local governments are starved of both revenues and talent.

Krishna Prasad, an editor for Outlook magazine and one of the brightest young journalists I met in India, said to me that criminalization and corruption, caste and communal differences have infected Indian politics to such a degree that it attracts all "the wrong kind of people." So India has a virtuous cycle working in economics and a vicious cycle working in politics. "Each time the government tries to put its foot in the door in IT [information technology]," he said, "the IT guys say: `Please stay away. We did this without you. We don't need you now to mess things up.' "

That attitude is not healthy, because you can't have a successful IT industry when every company has to build its own infrastructure. America's greatest competitive advantages are the flexibility of its economy and the quality of its infrastructure, rule of law and regulatory institutions. Knowledge workers are mobile and they like to live in nice, stable places. My hope is that the knowledge workers now spearheading India's economic revolution will feel compelled to spearhead a political revolution.

There are signs. Consider Ramesh Ramanathan, an Indian-born former Citibank executive, who returned to India to lead an N.G.O., Janaagraha, dedicated to improving local governance.

India's independence revolution in 1947 began in urban India and its political reform revolution is also going to begin in urban India — "this time fueled by the forces of globalization," he said to me in his Bangalore office, surrounded by young volunteers. "Globalization is creating the affluent urban Indian who is going to demand more from government and is not going to be content with islands of affluence. [Because] it will be impossible for them to fully take advantage of the opportunities globalization is giving them without airports and roads and sidewalks . . . acceptable in any city in the world. And the only way they are going to get that delivered is if they get engaged in government. We have [in India] a motto: `Elect and forget.' And what we need is to `elect and engage.' "

[joel the ornery]

Creeping Democracy
By WILLIAM SAFIRE


WASHINGTON — "Democratic creep" is not a derogation of a liberal candidate. On the contrary, it is the process — now well under way — by which free nations will win the world war on terror.
In Afghanistan, once a hotbed of Qaeda training and Taliban tyranny, nobody can deny we helped bring forth the beginnings of democratic government. Afghans, including newly liberated women, are helping track down fugitive killers.
In Iraq, we mourn our losses this past year, which now approach 2 percent of U.S. casualties in the Korean conflict. Many Iraqis died, too, but literally tens of thousands are alive today because Saddam did not have the power to torture and execute them — as mass graves tell us he did every year of his savage misrule.
Nobody can be certain that Iraq will remain whole and free after we turn over sovereignty on June 30. But prospects look far better than predicted by defeatists who claimed a year ago that political freedom had no chance of taking root in hostile Arab soil.
Free electricity keeps TV sets and air-conditioners humming, oil is flowing, schools and businesses have come to life. Unemployment, now over 30 percent, will surely drop as the $18 billion appropriated by the U.S. Congress — part of the $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan — begins to flow heavily next month into reconstruction by Iraqi workers. (The W.P.A. lives.)
We are training a civilian defense corps, twice the size of a joint Shiite-Sunni-Kurdish army, to take over free Iraq's battle against the Ansar-Qaeda terrorists and Baathist diehards. With the transfer of political power to a transitional Iraqi government, public fury at the mortar and rocket attacks on "soft target" civilians will be a nationalizing, not a destabilizing, force — directed not at occupiers but against the terrorist invaders.
Next year, a trio of local politicians will emerge to lead the country. "Three John Edwardses are out there awaiting their chance," says one observer.
Optimistic? In the grand design to uproot the causes of the rise of radical Islamic terrorism, defeat is no option. We have to believe in the popular success of a combination of democracy and prosperity. In this generation, the world has seen the power of the human desire for freedom.
From Kuwait to Qatar, the coalition's overthrow of Saddam has been a political tonic. Libya's dictator is making weaponry concessions lest his economy be wrecked and he be ousted. Repressive Iran is ripening for revolution. Egypt's boss and Saudi Arabia's princes are nervous because an arc of democracy bids fair to extend from Turkey through Iraq to Israel, with literate, enterprising populations blazing a path to liberating prosperity in the greater Middle East.
Syria's sullen Bashar al-Assad is feeling the heat. He benefited most from Saddam's corruption, probably provided a hiding place for Iraqi weapons and a route of entry into Iraq for Qaeda killers. His troops illegally occupy Lebanon; he supports Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists in rocket attacks and suicide bombings. His so-called intelligence sharing has been singularly unproductive.
A million and a half Kurds live in Syria, despised by the rulers in Damascus. After Syrian Kurds saw the blessings of freedom flow to their ethnic comrades in Iraq, some were emboldened to respond to Arab taunting at a soccer game. Bashar's goons, remembering his father's bloody "Hamas rules," shot a score of the unarmed protesters as a warning to the quarter-million Kurds the dictator keeps stateless.
Congress, more hawkish than President Bush on this state sponsor of terror, passed the Syria Accountability Act four months ago with large majorities; this week, he is expected to put some of its authorized economic squeeze on Bashar. He should consider that Step One.
This unified American message — substantial largess for free Iraq contrasted with the start of serious sanctions for despotic Syria — will not be lost on the Arab League meeting in Tunisia.
Success of democracy in Iraq is the key to democratic reform throughout the greater Middle East. When that reform dawns in Ramallah, there can be an independent, contiguous Palestine. When creeping democracy gradually brings a better life to people of the region, the basis for hatred and terror will erode and the suicide bomber will pass from the scene.

[AuldAne]

which now approach 2 percent of U.S. casualties in the Korean conflict

True, we aren't fighting China. Give Bush another few years.

Heh. Mostly kidding. I certainly hope all he says is true. Although I think that some of the pessimism regarding Iraq is overwrought (and politically motivated), the Middle East does have a way of disappointing the optimists.

[stuart]

from the toronto star

All people who have any concern for human rights, justice and integrity should be overjoyed by the capture of Saddam Hussein, and should be awaiting a fair trial for him by an international tribunal.

An indictment of Saddam's atrocities would include not only his slaughter and gassing of Kurds in 1988 but also, rather crucially, his massacre of the Shiite rebels who might have overthrown him in 1991.

At the time, Washington and its allies held the "strikingly unanimous view (that) whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for his country's stability than did those who have suffered his repression," reported Alan Cowell in the New York Times.

Last December, Jack Straw, Britain's foreign secretary, released a dossier of Saddam's crimes drawn almost entirely from the period of firm U.S.-British support of Saddam.

With the usual display of moral integrity, Straw's report and Washington's reaction overlooked that support.

Such practices reflect a trap deeply rooted in the intellectual culture generally – a trap sometimes called the doctrine of change of course, invoked in the United States every two or three years. The content of the doctrine is: "Yes, in the past we did some wrong things because of innocence or inadvertence. But now that's all over, so let's not waste anymore time on this boring, stale stuff."

The doctrine is dishonest and cowardly, but it does have advantages: It protects us from the danger of understanding what is happening before our eyes.

For example, the Bush administration's original reason for going to war in Iraq was to save the world from a tyrant developing weapons of mass destruction and cultivating links to terror. Nobody believes that now, not even Bush's speech writers.

The new reason is that we invaded Iraq to establish a democracy there and, in fact, to democratize the whole Middle East.

Sometimes, the repetition of this democracy-building posture reaches the level of rapturous acclaim.

Last month, for example, David Ignatius, the Washington Post commentator, described the invasion of Iraq as "the most idealistic war in modern times" – fought solely to bring democracy to Iraq and the region. Ignatius was particularly impressed with Paul Wolfowitz, "the Bush administration's idealist in chief," whom he described as a genuine intellectual who "bleeds for (the Arab world's) oppression and dreams of liberating it."

Maybe that helps explain Wolfowitz's career – like his strong support for Suharto in Indonesia, one of the last century's worst mass murderers and aggressors, when Wolfowitz was ambassador to that country under Ronald Reagan.

As the State Department official responsible for Asian affairs under Reagan, Wolfowitz oversaw support for the murderous dictators Chun of South Korea and Marcos of the Philippines.

All this is irrelevant because of the convenient doctrine of change of course.

So, yes, Wolfowitz's heart bleeds for the victims of oppression – and if the record shows the opposite, it's just that boring old stuff that we want to forget about.

One might recall another recent illustration of Wolfowitz's love of democracy. The Turkish parliament, heeding its population's near-unanimous opposition to war in Iraq, refused to let U.S. forces deploy fully from Turkey. This caused absolute fury in Washington.

Wolfowitz denounced the Turkish military for failing to intervene to overturn the decision. Turkey was listening to its people, not taking orders from Crawford, Texas, or Washington, D.C.

The most recent chapter is Wolfowitz's "Determination and Findings" on bidding for lavish reconstruction contracts in Iraq. Excluded are countries where the government dared to take the same position as the vast majority of the population.

Wolfowitz's alleged grounds are "security interests," which are non-existent, though the visceral hatred of democracy is hard to miss – along with the fact that Halliburton and Bechtel corporations will be free to "compete" with the vibrant democracy of Uzbekistan and the Solomon Islands, but not with leading industrial societies.

What's revealing and important to the future is that Washington's display of contempt for democracy went side by side with a chorus of adulation about its yearning for democracy. To be able to carry that off is an impressive achievement, hard to mimic even in a totalitarian state.

Iraqis have some insight into this process of conquerors and conquered.

The British created Iraq for their own interests. When they ran that part of the world, they discussed how to set up what they called Arab facades – weak, pliable governments, parliamentary if possible, so long as the British effectively ruled.

Who would expect that the United States would ever permit an independent Iraqi government to exist? Especially now that Washington has reserved the right to set up permanent military bases there, in the heart of the world's greatest oil-producing region, and has imposed an economic regime that no sovereign country would accept, putting the country's fate in the hands of Western corporations.

Throughout history, even the harshest and most shameful measures are regularly accompanied by professions of noble intent – and rhetoric about bestowing freedom and independence.

An honest look would only generalize Thomas Jefferson's observation on the world situation of his day: "We believe no more in Bonaparte's fighting merely for the liberties of the seas than in Great Britain's fighting for the liberties of mankind. The object is the same, to draw to themselves the power, the wealth and the resources of other nations."

[DVD Burner]

Cut and paste! Cut and paste! Cut and paste!..........

Hey,

I dont know about you but I have a bunch of Repubicans and Democrats that are really great friends of mine, and we love a great debate.
joel and force seem to be repubicans, (they know I really get a kick out of them) though I'm not democrat, republican or independant, I like them.....love them very much. but I do not see any independant views on how the world really is. or at least what any republican view points are.
all I see is a lot of cut and paste issues.
so what of it.

are we gonna see any real opinions about what anyone's opinions are about what the world is really all about?

really.......what's up wit that?



yes I'm startin some shit.

what of it.




(no comments huh?......I figure)

[joel the ornery]

While radical fundamentalist conservative Christians cause me concern, I must pose this question.

Do you think radical fundamentalist Islamists would allow a burning man event within their sphere of influence?

[DVD Burner]

While radical fundamentalist conservative Christians cause me concern, I must pose this question.

Do you think radical fundamentalist Islamists would allow a burning man event within their sphere of influence?

YES!

I have plenty of islamist,fundamentalist conservative Christian friends.

I'm in the prosses of converting them into Burners.

Really. and it seems like they are willing to convert.

[DVD Burner]

dont forget the buddist.

[stuart]

While radical fundamentalist conservative Christians cause me concern, I must pose this question.

Do you think radical fundamentalist Islamists would allow a burning man event within their sphere of influence?

is this a false dichotomy or begging the question?

radical fundamentalist conservative Christians would NOT allow a burning man event within their sphere of influence. Nor would the islamic fundamentalists. Just like they would NOT allow for abortion. You will note that we still have both. Fortunately for the event, and other things as well, we do not quite yet live in that country.

[Force]

Sorry, I'm independent. I approach each issue from a common sense point of view.

To me, robotically agreeing to everything "your" party puts forth is absolutely moronic. And it's not "your" party, as much as you might think it is. "Your" party is nothing more than a mechanism to use your money and your vote to give some sociopaths a job and keep you feeling like someone is pulling for you so you don't riot in the streets over how your money's being routed to political cronies.

[DVD Burner]

I hope this is political enough...........



what's up with Condaliza Rice's hairdoo?

[joel the ornery]

I hope this is political enough...........
what's up with Condaliza Rice's hairdoo?

you had to ask....

http://www.uppity-negro.com/archives/000219.html


Also picked up a copy of The Onion print edition, which Minnesotans insist on telling me doesn't exist, and Bean Soup Times, which I might have to subscribe to. A brief excerpt from South Side Reality TV:

Secret agents had hustled Tanu off to Washington to advise Condoleezza Rice on a new hair style and wardrobe. It seems some people were complaining that she had that "Mary Tyler Moore" look; and maybe braids and beads would toughen her image and help the administration in the hood. Tanu gave me a quick call before she left and mumbled something about a total color analysis and a feng shui make over, too. I pretended to understand what she was talking about, but in reality had no idea of what she was saying. I promised to look at her work that night when Dr. Rice gave her nightly briefing on cable.

[DVD Burner]

Secret agents had hustled Tanu off to Washington to advise Condoleezza Rice on a new hair style and wardrobe. It seems some people were complaining that she had that "Mary Tyler Moore" look; and maybe braids and beads would toughen her image and help the administration in the hood.

Lord have mercy. I really hope that does'nt happen.......then again that would be rather funny huh?

I need all the humor I can get from this administration. what am I gonna do without Bush if he does'nt get another 4 years.

I mean you just can't make funny shit like this up;
It's still funny.

[joel the ornery]

March 28, 2004
Awaking to a Dream
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

I have a confession to make: I am the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and I didn't listen to one second of the 9/11 hearings and I didn't read one story in the paper about them. Not one second. Not one story.

Lord knows, it's not out of indifference to 9/11. It's because I made up my mind about that event a long time ago: It was not a failure of intelligence, it was a failure of imagination. We could have had perfect intelligence on all the key pieces of 9/11, but the fact is we lacked — for the very best of reasons — people with evil enough imaginations to put those pieces together and realize that 19 young men were going to hijack four airplanes for suicide attacks against our national symbols and kill as many innocent civilians as they could, for no stated reason at all.

Imagination is on my mind a lot these days, because it seems to me that the only people with imagination in the world right now are the bad guys. As my friend, the Middle East analyst Stephen P. Cohen, says, "That is the characteristic of our time — all the imagination is in the hands of the evildoers."

I am so hungry for a positive surprise. I am so hungry to hear a politician, a statesman, a business leader surprise me in a good way. It has been so long. It's been over 10 years since Yitzhak Rabin thrust out his hand to Yasir Arafat on the White House lawn. Yes, yes, I know, Arafat turned out to be a fraud. But for a brief, shining moment, an old warrior, Mr. Rabin, stepped out of himself, his past, and all his scar tissue, and imagined something different. It's been a long time.

I have this routine. I get up every morning around 6 a.m., fire up my computer, call up AOL's news page and then hold my breath to see what outrage has happened in the world overnight. A massive bombing in Iraq or Madrid? More murderous violence in Israel? A hotel going up in flames in Bali or a synagogue in Istanbul? More U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq?

I so hunger to wake up and be surprised with some really good news — by someone who totally steps out of himself or herself, imagines something different and thrusts out a hand.

I want to wake up and read that President Bush has decided to offer a real alternative to the stalled Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming. I want to wake up and read that 10,000 Palestinian mothers marched on Hamas headquarters to demand that their sons and daughters never again be recruited for suicide bombings. I want to wake up and read that Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia invited Ariel Sharon to his home in Riyadh to personally hand him the Abdullah peace plan and Mr. Sharon responded by freezing Israeli settlements as a good-will gesture.

I want to wake up and read that General Motors has decided it will no longer make gas-guzzling Hummers and President Bush has decided to replace his limousine with an armor-plated Toyota Prius, a hybrid car that gets over 40 miles to the gallon.

I want to wake up and read that Dick Cheney has apologized to the U.N. and all our allies for being wrong about W.M.D. in Iraq, but then appealed to our allies to join with the U.S. in an even more important project — helping Iraqis build some kind of democratic framework. I want to wake up and read that Tom DeLay called for a tax hike on the rich in order to save Social Security and Medicare for the next generation and to finance all our underfunded education programs.

I want to wake up and read that Justice Antonin Scalia has recused himself from ruling on the case involving Mr. Cheney's energy task force when it comes before the Supreme Court — not because Mr. Scalia did anything illegal in duck hunting with the V.P., but because our Supreme Court is so sacred, so vital to what makes our society special — its rule of law — that he wouldn't want to do anything that might have even a whiff of impropriety.

I want to wake up and read that Mr. Bush has announced a Manhattan Project to develop renewable energies that will end America's addiction to crude oil by 2010. I want to wake up and read that Mel Gibson just announced that his next film will be called "Moses" and all the profits will be donated to the Holocaust Museum.

Most of all, I want to wake up and read that John Kerry just asked John McCain to be his vice president, because if Mr. Kerry wins he intends not to waste his four years avoiding America's hardest problems — health care, deficits, energy, education — but to tackle them, and that can only be done with a bipartisan spirit and bipartisan team.