I thought I'd add that most of the RC commands are available from the Vista
CMD prompt in Win RE.
http://blogs.msdn.com/winre/default.aspx
CH
Mission Accomplished in 2003 he said. The chicken runaway Bush attacking
Kerry if people are dumb enough to follow the head fake. Cheney (5
deferments) attacking Kerry. 20,000 from my state headed Iraq third time.
Get ready for a draft boys and girls unless the complete pullout of the
epicenter of current daily ethnic cleansing the US has precipitated
happens.
http://radio.weblogs.com/0107064/MyImages/bush_twins_draft.jpg
http://ratchetup.typepad.com/iraq/images/Dovercasket08.jpg
Vote
www.darcybruner.com former Softie PM running for Congress if you can.
Area near the MSFT campus beginning to wake from their deep slumber
including some Softies:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/u...f7f9672111c219&ex=1162357200&pagewanted=print
October 30, 2006
Liberal Republican Suburb Turns Furious With G.O.P.
By JODI KANTOR
BELLEVUE, Wash., Oct. 24 — The M.B.A.’s have had it. The engineers are
fuming.
For as long as anyone here can remember, Bellevue has been a stronghold of
socially liberal Republicanism. First, it was a prosperous Seattle bedroom
community, then a technological boomtown, where employees of Microsoft and
Internet start-ups consistently voted for fiscal restraint and hands-off
government.
But now, voters here are accusing the party in power of overspending and
overreaching — and when they do, they sound like people who write
manifestos, not software code.
“I’m a mild-mannered guy,†Michael Mattison, a partner in a software venture
development firm, said as he stabbed a piece of halibut in the sunlit dining
room of a local bistro. “But we can no longer be subdued.â€
Bellevue has been growing more Democratic for several years, thanks to an
influx of liberal voters and a professional class that is changing teams.
This year, Bellevue may send its first Democrat to Congress. Darcy Burner,
who even supporters admit is inexperienced, may unseat Representative Dave
Reichert, a well-liked, longtime public servant, simply because constituents
want Democratic control of the House of Representatives.
“I am a Republican and have traditionally voted that way,†Tony Schuler, an
operations services manager at Microsoft with a Harvard M.B.A., said as he
sat with his wife, Deanna, in their home above Lake Sammamish. But Mr.
Schuler abhors what he sees as a new Republican habit of meddling in private
affairs.
“The Schiavo case. Tapping people without a warrant. Whether or not people
are gay,†he said. “Let people be free! It’s not government’s job to
interfere with those things.â€
In Bellevue, the professional is political. Rather than religion or culture,
what unites the diverse population — a quarter of residents are foreign
born — are the values of their workplaces: technological innovation,
accuracy, efficiency.
And this year, one issue incenses them above all others: restrictions on
embryonic stem cell research.
It is a matter of concern across the country, even across parties. But for
many engineers and their ilk, restriction of stem cell research is what gay
marriage is to conservative Christians, a phenomenon so counter to their
basic values that they cannot vote for any candidate who supports it. After
all, for Bellevue’s professionals, science is not only a means of creating
wealth but also an idealistic pursuit, the most promising way they know of
improving the human condition.
“For hundreds of years, science has had its own jurisprudence over the
truth. It’s called peer review, and it works pretty well,†said Mr.
Mattison, whose father had Alzheimer’s and his uncle Parkinson’s disease. “I’m
outraged that a mere politician would interpret science for me.â€
Voters like Mr. Mattison should be “natural constituents of Republicans,â€
said Robert E. Lang, a professor of urban planning at Virginia Tech who did
research on Bellevue for a coming book on fast-growing “boomburbs,†which
have city-size populations but suburb-like atmospheres. “They’re golfers,â€
Mr. Lang said. (Actually, Mr. Mattison prefers fly-fishing with private
guides.)
Voters here also describe themselves as “obsessed†by the mounting national
debt, which Mr. Mattison calls a “greater threat than terrorism†to the
nation’s health.
Lara Peterson, a single mother who markets hardware for Microsoft, said, “It
makes me insane to know that we had this huge budget surplus, and yet we’ve
run up such debt in a six-year period.â€
Ms. Peterson has adopted two daughters from China and is working on a third.
As Gwen, her eldest, considered whether biting into an apple would dislodge
her dangling front teeth, Ms. Peterson acknowledged that her fixation was
personal.
China gains “so much power and control by carrying so much of our debt,â€
said Ms. Peterson, who described herself as a Democrat who often crosses
party lines. If the United States one day resists repayment, she said, her
girls will “never have an ability to have a relationship with their
country.â€
The politics of Microsoft employees is a subdrama unto itself. In the 2000
presidential election, many voted for President Bush, who was expected to
curtail the Clinton administration’s antitrust case against the company. But
now “the vibe is pretty Democratic,†Ms. Peterson said, and many employees
who cursed the Democrats just a few years ago now plan on voting for the
party.
Microsoft looms so large here, it influences the views even of those it does
not employ. Several members of the First Congregational Church of Bellevue,
speaking over home-pressed apple cider, said they were mortified by America’s
role abroad in a way they had not been since the Vietnam War.
They do have one source of global pride, though: Bill and Melinda Gates’
work in Africa, which they see as a kind of alternative to official foreign
policy and an example of how the United States should be helping the most
troubled spots on earth.
When she travels abroad, said Mary Nassif, a school psychologist, “I may not
take pride in being American, but I love saying I’m from Seattle.â€
On a recent evening, immigrants gathered at the Crossroads Mall, where the
food court’s attempt at internationalism — a pad Thai vendor here, some
trays of tandoori there — seemed bland compared with its mix of Eritrean,
Laotian and Somali patrons. These immigrants, many from conservative
religious backgrounds, are among the Bellevue Republicans who feel the
strongest connection to their party on social issues.
Take Pia and Bong Bernadino, who moved here in 2002 from New Jersey,
boarding a train without jobs or even acquaintances awaiting them. Ms.
Bernadino had been scheduled to meet a friend in the lobby of the World
Trade Center at 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001; both she and the friend were late.
Later, she taught at a kindergarten on Canal Street, where the students were
so traumatized, they used their coloring time to draw babies falling out of
the sky.
The Bernadinos moved west to escape their shock and to pursue Mr. Bernadino’s
long-held dream of working for Microsoft. Now Mr. Bernadino spends his days
there as a game developer and his evenings running a Web design business
with his wife; they also plan to start an online store for novels signed by
their authors. They are saving for a house and sending money home to family
in the Philippines.
This year, as always, they are voting for candidates “with a strong family
orientation,†Mr. Bernadino said. “We’re very devout Catholics. If someone
is promoting pro-choice it may be questionable for us.â€
Their other concern is diversity. To their delight, the ballot they received
in the mail this year had translations in seven languages, including their
native Tagalog. “This is paradise, the land of opportunity,†Ms. Bernadino
said of Bellevue.
Sheraz Malik, 29, is a Pakistani Muslim who came to the United States alone
10 years ago and became a citizen. Mr. Malik co-founded a long-distance
Internet telephone service, which he used to court his fiancée, a Pakistani
woman in Dubai. (It is not exactly an arranged marriage, he explained
between bites of a hot dog; his parents shortlisted candidates, and after a
year of online conversations, he chose one.)
Though Republican policies are generally favorable to his native country and
his religious values, Mr. Malik said, he has drifted toward the Democrats
since Sept. 11. “When the U.K. had the train blast, they didn’t go out and
start bombing people,†he said. “They examined what they were doing wrong,
both in terms of security and why a British-born Pakistani would do that.â€
Soon he will cast an even more profound vote than the one in November,
deciding whether to bring his bride here or move with her back to Pakistan.
If he leaves, it will be partly because of post-Sept. 11 changes, like
immigration registration measures and what he sees as a general erosion of
due process.
“If you’re fighting for freedom outside the U.S. and then you suppress
freedom at home,†he said, “then what are you fighting for in the first
place?â€
________________________
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/o...torials and Op-Ed/Editorials&pagewanted=print
October 31, 2006
Editorial
The Untracked Guns of Iraq
About the last thing the United States ought to be doing in Iraq is
funneling weapons into black-market weapons bazaars, as sectarian militias
arm themselves for civil war. Yet that is just what Washington may have been
doing for the past several years, thanks to an inexplicable decision that
standard Pentagon regulations for registering weapons transfers did not
apply to the Iraq war.
Of more than 500,000 weapons turned over to the Iraqi Ministries of Defense
and Interior since the American invasion — including rocket-propelled
grenade launchers, assault rifles, machine guns and sniper rifles — the
serial numbers of only 12,128 were properly recorded. Some 370,000 of these
weapons, some of which are undoubtedly being used to kill American troops,
were paid for by United States taxpayers, under the Orwellian-titled Iraq
Relief and Reconstruction Fund.
This chilling information comes to us from the Special Inspector General for
Iraq Reconstruction, which has distinguished itself as the most vigilant
agency monitoring the money spent on the Iraq conflict. The agency, led by a
Republican lawyer who once worked in the Bush White House, has previously
reported on the contracting lapses and failures of supervision that allowed
billions of taxpayer dollars to be wasted instead of being used to rebuild
Iraq.
The latest special inspector general’s report came in response to a request
from Senator John Warner, another conscientious Republican. As chairman of
the Armed Services Committee, Senator Warner wanted to be sure that the
Iraqi security ministries had the skills and resources necessary to make
good use of the huge quantities of arms that Washington has been turning
over to them.
It turns out that the Pentagon not only failed to register the weapons, but
also failed to provide the spare parts, repair manuals and maintenance
technicians needed to keep them in working order. The agency found that
Iraqi security forces are still heavily dependent on Washington’s support
for the most basic military functions. And with America planning to scale
back much of that support over the next year, it is far from clear whether
Baghdad is preparing to pick up the slack.
Separately, the inspector general’s office also found insecurity so rampant
in six Iraqi provinces — five of them in the predominantly Shiite south —
that America’s joint military and civil reconstruction teams could not
operate there effectively.
These findings go a long way toward explaining why Iraq appears to be ever
more violent, with no clear plans yet coming from Baghdad or Washington that
seem likely to restore a semblance of order.
