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I believe it's essentially about someone running what is essentially a hotel without paying the taxes that hotels are supposed to pay.

See http://www.balloon-juice.com/2...

I've always considered Facebook to be a little "transient", short, not for real conversation. But WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Twitter? Is this an indication that kids today have lost the ability to have meaningful communication? If it can't be said in 140 chars or less it's not worth communicating? There is a discussion at Balloon Juice about the current way of raising kids: Apparently face-to-face social interaction is passe* with the kids these days, and school shootings are up.

*According to Google, the use of the word "passe" was really big in 1800 and again in 1900, but has steadily decreased since then.

Sad, funny, what's the difference? I've seen a lot of posts like that on FB, though... "I will unfriend anybody who [has a different opinion on politics]."

Not just politics. I'd bet that you'd find people who will unfriend anyone who has a different opinion on Bleach Subbed or the latest installment of Mass Effect.

But to get back to the politics part, I saw this yesterday and your post reminded me of it. I can understand taking politics really seriously, but I've got enough in-laws from various parts of the former Yugoslavia to know that you can take the tribalism of politics way too far.

We're all used to hearing one side call the other "insane" or "evil" or "the antichrist" or "inhuman" because our commercial media is full of that kind of stuff. But when you start seeing friends or family in those overheated terms because of their political views, it's a sure sign that you've let yourself be used by someone else's political agenda, pumped into your head by some media big-mouth.

It's a shame that more people don't realize that the "other side" is mostly just scared.

Sorry, here is the link to the Caterpillar story I referenced above.

Megan McArdle is not a liberal source. http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/08/04/under-pressure/

"I have a hard time getting worked up about it - a government that views none of my personal correspondence as confidential really can't bitch when this sort of thing happens."

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/11/28/wikileaks-reaction/

Carter had at least one tangible achievement to boast of, although he didn't get any credit for it until long after leaving office.

Collins is a Republican Senator from Maine, and faces a hard choice in her 2008 reelection bid.

Maine is a fairly moderate state, and Collins is in a position very similar to Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. That is, in order to appeal to the voters of Maine she has to take reasonably moderate positions. However, in order to maintain her status as a card carrying Republican, she has to appeal to the kooks.

Chafee in trying to appeal to the moderates of Rhode Island, made the kooks in the Republican party angry. So they launched a primary challenger against him in the name of Stephen Laffey. This primary challenger weakened Chafee's position, because it pointed out to independents in the state just how kooky the Republicans have become. So despite years of services, a solid reputation, he lost pretty handidly.

Collins doesn't want the same thing ot happen to her. So to fend off a primary challenge, she's trying to establish her credentials with the kooks. Picking something innocuous that nobody really knows or cares about, she's decided to attack moveon.org. Had she instead decided to champion their latest nutty cause of attacking 12 year olds for speaking in favor of SCHIP, that might have gotten her some negative press back home with regular people and that's not good. So by attacking something the kooks hate, that normal people don't really care about, she's in safe territory.

Just getting the ad out on google.com wouldn't have been enough, because nobody would have paid much attention to it. So it was necessary to place the ad in such a way as to cause it to be rejected. But not too whacko, using bad language would have drawn attention to regular people. So they lucked out on this trademark infringement thing.

Because if there is nothing the kooks love more(left, right, it doesn't matter), it is feeling like they are victims of a giant conspiracy to get them. Plus, it is easier to get the press to pick up on your ad being rejected then it is that it is running and nobody is looking at it.

This news article was intended for right-wing kooks to read, so they'd see Susan Collins as one of their own.

We were told this massive bureacracy was necessary to fight terrorism. We gave them lots of money and damn near everyuthing that had been on the law enforcement communities wish list since Oklahoma city, and now, after the fool's trade-off of protections of liberty for security of terrorism, they are using those tools and that money and their authority for issues that fall decidedly out of the realm of war on terror. Just like all those whacky bastards at the ACLU said. Just like all the the crazy Big L libertarians said they would.

They don't seem so whacky and crazy anymore, do they?
-John Cole