John, I need your help here.  You are telling us:
"All governments lie."

Yet in the same breath you excuse Child Kerry who has been in the
Federal government for 20+ years, far longer than his opponent I might
add, for being tricked into voting for the use of force against Saddam.
I will also point out that Kerry was on the Senate intelligence
committee and thus has been privy to the same intelligence that Bush
used to decide to go to war and he supported the decision.

You tell us:
"All governments lie."

Yet you explain to us why you defend the man who wants to increase the
size and scope of government.  If government lies, perhaps it should be
brought under control, it certainly should not be enlarged in the
forlorn hope it will stop lying.

Another question, why is it ok for Kerry to base his campaign on the
fact he served in Vietnam but it is incorrect for 254+ veterans to bring
up what Kerry did in Vietnam and especially what he did after he
returned from Vietnam?

I will not point out the other fallacies in your opinions; I will leave
them to others to chew on if they elect to do so.


Matthew, I disagree with your premise regarding OT postings.  First off,
if anyone simply doesn't want to receive these postings, a mechanism
exists whereby they will not even come to your mailbox.  Another
mechanism also exists if you want to sift through the various OT, it's
called the delete key.

Let me point out a few things, or more appropriately, let me voice my
opinion on a few things.

First, if the bandwidth was limited and an OT post would prevent an
on-topic message from coming through, I would be in total favor of
eradicating OT posts from the list.  However, I will point out that such
is definitely not the case.  Indeed, I have seen (many) days when there
are no OT postings and the list is totally silent.

The prime purpose of this list has not been impacted one iota by the OT
postings.  Questions are still being answered at the same speed as ever
and new concepts are explored when discovered.

To my mind these OT postings have had three benefits.  1- I have seen
people respond to OT postings as their first ever foray into this list
and then participate in answering and asking technical questions.  It is
as if participation in OT threads broke the ice for them.  That is
priceless, the more minds participating on this list, the better.

2- The OT postings are various and sometimes quite well researched and
challenging.  I submit to you the current case of the fake CBS
documents.  The original story of the discovery of the "documents" was
reported on this list, twice, by someone who is arguably the most
blindly partisan, albeit incoherent person on the list.  Nobody bit.  It
wasn't until late Thursday evening when a link was posted, pointing to a
story that was calling into question the validity of the documents.  I
was vaguely aware of the developing scandal at CBS, but was not
following it closely.

On Friday and this weekend, there have been various messages about the
anachronistic use of technology to forge pre-computer era documents,
including a couple of posts, notably one from Wirt, explaining how
unlikely these documents could be real. I have learned things about
typewriters that I had either forgotten or never knew. It was a great
learning experience and would not have occurred were it not for the OT
threads on this erudite list.

The fact one can do research on the Internet and then produce links to
better inform the list is to me one of the greatest strengths of this
discussion format.  Even though CBS News, Dan Rather and the rest of the
MSM dismiss us (Internet users,) this medium is a force to be reckoned
with.  The MSM (Main Stream Media) can no longer pull the wool over our
eyes, from either side Left or Right.  With the Internet you can find
out things on your own.  You do not have to wait to be told what to
think by Dan Rather and his ilk.

This mode of information gathering goes for all aspects of life, not
just politics.  But you have to be able to form your own opinions and be
able to separate the facts from the spin.  Before, we only had the spin
from the MSM, now we can see all forms of spin and can get an indication
of what the facts are.  A perfect example of this is the existence of
Urban Legends debunking sites.

3- The OT postings have given me the opportunities to look into other
peoples' worldviews.  It has been enormously entertaining and
enlightening to see how, in my opinion, normally sane people can be so
colossally wrong about things.  Where else can you see some
entrepreneurs howling for more socialism?  :-)  I consider the opinions
on this list to be a microcosm of the more educated world at large.
Here one can see how the spin from different sides of various issues is
either accepted or rejected or even at times, ignored.

So I say, keep up the OT, unless it prevents HP3000-related questions
from getting through and be answered.

Denys

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