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In our ongoing "Soft War" with China, Jack Abramoff and Dennis Hastert are a double agents.

It's like a James Bond story, if Bond were a child molester posing as a religious gangster.

Try makeing any untoward comments about your almighty presedent, and how to depose him (violently or otherwise) and then see where your constitution gets you....

If that were true, these hives of scum and villainy would've been shut down long ago. Last time I checked, they're still up and running. Thanks for playing, though.

This piece just about sums up the situation for me. Quote:

People online from central America sometime laugh at us, I notice. They laugh and joke because we haven't realized yet that things have changed. They know what we have become. It's a common story where they come from. They never thought it would happen here, but now that it has, they think it's kind of cute that we don't realize what has happened to us.

Have you seen how Fox news is reporting on the Foley incident??? they're effectively claiming that he's a Democrat!!!

Although i never heard of RAW, i see he was the hero during the New Age era, where
he mixed rare known facts about the Illuminati, with fiction and occasionally added
some jokes. I guess in the heydays of his work he was very popular amongst people
who knew something about this cult.

However things have changed, This Illuminati, Kaballa, Mason stuff has turned out
to be not fiction or satire but the scary truth. Just remember Hugo Chavez's
recent appearance inside the U.N. What happened at the U.N. is of major importance.
Hugo Chavez steals the show at the U.N. quoting from Noam Chomsky latest book
"Hegemony or Survival" [1]. Although wearing a normal suit, he did a almost genuine act
of exorcism from behind the council speakers table:

http://www.niburu.nl/showarticle.php?articleID=143 86
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2006/9/23/213219/ 005/59#c59
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_ 23036.shtml
http://www.counterpunch.org/chavez09202006.html

"The devil is right at home. The devil, the devil himself, is right
in the house.

"And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the devil came here.
Right here." [crosses himself] "And it smells of sulfur still today.

Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president
of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil,
came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of
the world."

The real media file can be found here :

"Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan Pres., at U.N. General Assembly"
rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/ter/ter092006_chav ez.rm

Recently Greg Palast did a exclusive interview with Hugo Chavez from
his home in Venezuela :

"Hugo Chavez: An Exclusive Interview with Greg Palast"
http://www.gregpalast.com/hugo-chavez-an-exclusive -interview-with-greg-palast

pnm:rm.bbc.net.uk/news/olmedia/1985000/video_19856 70_ven22_palast_vi.rm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/ar chive/1985670.stm

So why is this a important breakthrough? It seems the tide is turning.
If Bushes hegemony was a reality, Hugo Chavez would never been able to
make this speech. Also remember that the President of Iran recently
made his heroic appearance in New York. The crock hunter may have died,
but here's the real hero :

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/iranian-presid ent-steals-the-show-in-new-york/2006/09/22/1158431 902380.html

As the plot is folding, the analogy with Tolkiens trilogy, The Lord of
the Rings, is certainly there. "The Evil Eye" on top of the pyramid is
evident. The analogy with the Ring to rule all others Rings may not
seem so straightforward. It seems that this Ring is commonly known as
the holy grail, but the holy grail is a hoax in itself. So what is the
holy grail in fact? Chris Everard from EnigmaTV made a serious attempt
[2] to explain things. He claims that the full knowledge and
understanding of a scripture called The Cabballah is what ordinary man
can give ultimate power with the culmination in power the capability to
kill someone with a

The biggest drivers for job growth right now are housing and health care - job growth in any other sector over the past 6 years has been very small. And the housing bubble will burst fairly soon.

Housing: The Engine of This Expansion

They blew that one too, with the Republican House leadership covering up their own boy rape. Republican Mark Foley immediately resigned after exposure by ABC News last Friday, but the rest of the Republican House that's so hot on their Homophobia Amendment and other gay-baiting still has their jobs. For another month, anyway, until they're all up for firing on TUE November 7, 2006.

Bill Clinton said last Sunday night or whenever it was that He "left a anti-terror strategy." I guess that turned out to be a lie if Rice was being pressured to set one herself.

Non sequitor. It's entirely possible (indeed seems likely) that Clinton's people left a strategy (which may or may not have been comprehensive or effective), which Bush's people never adopted. If I leave you a cookbook and you never open it, it can be true both that I left you my fablous peanut butter/chocolate pie recipe, and that someone is pressuring you to come up with a dessert recipe.

Why are the only political stories on Slashdot left-wing propaganda?

What, are you saying that reality has a liberal bias?

Over the past few decades, the right wing has consistently aligned itself with ignorance: creationism, junk science, bad international intelligence. Take the religious right, stir in neocon ambitions for an American empire, sprinkle in corporate greed, and watch as any respect for truth rapidly evaporates from the mix.

The /. readership is more educated than the average American, and so places a higher value on acurate information and critical thinking. In contempory America, this puts them at odds with the leaders of the Republican party.

In a month, on TUE November 7, 2006, Americans can vote whether to fire their Representative in the House, and probably half their Senators, too.

Here's how your Representative voted for Theocracy Protection (unless they're a Democrat, in which case they probably voted against it).
Here's how your Representative voted for torture (unless they're a Democrat, in which case they probably voted against it).

Here's how your Senators voted for torture (unless they're a Democrat, in which case they probably voted against it).
Here's how your Senators killed any control over US torture (again mostly excepting Democrats).
The Senate is waiting to approve Theocracy Protection until after the November election.

Go to the polls and fire these people who are speaking in your name for torture and theocracy, an America run on the model of the Spanish Inquisition. Keep our country ruled by the people, instead of a class of professional torture priests.

Sure, it's from DailyKos, but it still puts things in perspective.

The company was authorized to put together ballots, program machines and train poll workers across the state - all without any official supervision. "We ran the election," says Hood. "We had 356 people that Diebold brought into the state. Diebold opened and closed the polls and tabulated the votes. Diebold convinced (Georgia Secretary of State Cathy) Cox that it would be best if the company ran everything due to the time constraints, and in the interest of a trouble-free election, she let us do it."

Then, one muggy day in mid-August, Hood was surprised to see the president of Diebold's election unit, Bob Urosevich, arrive in Georgia from his headquarters in Texas. With the primaries looming, Urosevich was personally distributing a "patch," a little piece of software designed to correct glitches in the computer program. "We were told that it was intended to fix the clock in the system, which it didn't do," Hood says. "The curious thing is the very swift, covert way this was done."

"It was an unauthorized patch, and they were trying to keep it secret from the state," Hood told me. "We were told not to talk to county personnel about it. I received instructions directly from Urosevich. It was very unusual that a president of the company would give an order like that and be involved at that level."

Excuses excuses excuses. We see smoke and mirrors from the democratic party that doesn't want to admit that they have been unable the last two presidential elections to present a legitimate contender for president. Trust me if the Democrats could put forward a candidate that was even halfway decent he would win the election in a landslide. Instead we get candidates that are wanted by the leftist fringe that has started to infest the democratic party. Just like the republicans have their anti-science, pro-war, pro-israel right wing idealogues. The democrats have their anti-religion, pro-appeasement, anti-israel etc left wing idealogues. Both of the parties are slowly starting to become controlled by these people. Hopefully it will result in a legitimate third political party with moderate policies (which is what I would like).

Fraud happens, there were several legitimate cases of Democrats committing election fraud such as the son of Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis. and some of his friends being arrested for slashing the tires of 25 cars and vans rented by republicans to help get people without transportation to voter sites (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-24-ti res-slashed_x.htm). Also as another voter said democrats nation wide are famous for having dead people vote for them.

It truly depresses me as I see slashdot.org politically becoming like http://dailykos.com/ when really you should be focusing on things besides crying about how the democrats lost the elections and republicans must be evil because (insert celebrity) said so.

You have the guy running Ohio's Bush campaign as the Secretary of State. This is the guy who make sure the election is "fair and balanced".

Btw-- Salon had a guy write a rebuttle, which was in turn rebutted a few times.

Funny how you don't think that Powell's FCC wrote the report and that Martin is shredding it along with his "purge". Especially since Martin changed the rules under the projections contradicted by this report. And funny how you don't match Bush's appointment of Martin as chief and Clinton's of Powell as a mere member with the differences between their FCCs. Some how "it's Clinton's fault".

That's rooted in some truth. Powell's term chairing the FCC was defined by the Republican Congress whose laws it had to work. Enhanced by Clinton's own right-of-center corporate policies, and his "seeking the middle" even as it was dragged further rightwards by extreme rightwing activism.

You are a victim of the "Overton Window". It's a political technique used to great effect mainly by rightist activists. People like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh (among many, like James Dobson and Fred Phelps) demand extreme positions that serve not to deliver those positions in reality. Rather they just drag the limited window of public acceptance across the entire political spectrum further towards their positions. It's the political mechanics of the "straw man" argument in action, fake arguments designed only to make alternatives look better than what is being argued.

Your example of MoveOn.org and Net Neutrality is related. Telcos, cablecos and other monopolistic ISPs are paying Congress and Hollywood/MadisonAve millions to legislate destroying the "level playing field" of the Internet. MoveOn.org, which survives only on that openness, takes a position to keep it open. The dispute starts out extremely unbalanced, as Net Neutrality is in the center of the possibilities (100% free, mandatory, universal Internet use is the other extreme from the ISPs' position). MoveOn.org arrived after Net Neutrality was already threatened (even doomed, if left on course) by Republicans like Senator Ted Stevens and the rest of his Congressional controlling majority. Somehow MoveOn.org is demonized for making the already-partisan debate "partisan" by opposing the target of their standard mission, which was now threatening their existence. It's related to the Overton Window because the debate is reduced to some fake "balance" between the center and the extreme right, dragging it far right of center. No one of consequence in America even takes the far left position, because even the center is demonized as being "far left".

The fact is that Bush's Republican Party has polarized the country as much as in the depths of the Vietnam War, rolling towards Civil War proportions. When Democrats and their allies respond within that polarized context they were thrust into, they are framed as the polarizers. When they get "vitriolic" about things like the Iraq War, letting Osama run loose, $45 TRILLION debts, illegal eavesdropping, torture, they're somehow the ones making it hard to get the truth.

I suggest you look closer at the partisan boundaries created by the Republican Party. Including John McCain, now dropping like a hot potato his "moderate" positions not only with theocrats, but also with torturers. While Lieberman's crass abuse of Connecticut Democrats and his Democrat brand reveals a man interested only in power, ready to discard his constituents and allies whenever he wants more. "Bipartisan" through collaboration with an unacceptable policy. Those two Republicans (despite their pandering to get the "moderate" crumbs left over by the Party) are betrayers, even of the "core values" they most stand for. If you're that distracted by them as "moderate", when they'd be obvious rightwingers without the Overton Window to distort the scene, then you need to open the window and look directly at these awful fakes.

Somebody hack just one state and get Mickey Mouse elected...

Haven't you heard?

As a Canadian who has read Slashdot for many years, will someone please explain to me what is so hard about voting?

1. Take a piece of paper.
2. Mark an X in a big box CLEARLY beside the candidate you want.
3. Put it in the ballot box.

Can it really be that simple? Yes!

They used that kind of ballot in the 2006 elections in Mexico, and even had a recount, but there are still cries of fraud from the losing side.

With link to what poster believes is really the ultimate blog post, what will jam your browser solid unless you have oodles of RAM were you to open the 2k+ comments at the bottom of said ultimate blog post.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/25/03646/ 9549

Reminder that poster DID warn you about getting your browser jammed up.

The zinc mine claim is bogus. Quoting from a correction published in USA Today:

In a column that appeared Aug. 10 on the Forum Page, writer Peter Schweizer inaccurately stated that former vice president Al Gore receives royalties from a zinc mine on his property in Tennessee despite his environmental advocacy. He no longer does, as the mine was closed in 2003.

(I doubt that WingNutDaily published a similar correction). Regarding your other claims, can I recommend you read this page on DailyKos? Certainly, this is not an impartial article, but it does provide citations to back up its claims.

I look forward to hearing your response. I close with a further quote, from the DailyKos page:

Gore does in fact take advantage of the green power options his utility offers, and was in the process of adding photovoltaic solar cells to his house when the article came out.

There's lots of good posts. I'm glad we geeks are talking about this important issue.

I spoke briefly with Bev Harris recently. See below.

I'm at work, so I need to make this brief. Just four points.

First, the two pillars of our democracy (United States of America) are private voting and public counting. We adopted the Australian Ballot (aka secret ballot) a while back. Things like electronic voting and forced mail voting (e.g. 100% vote by mail) take away the secret ballot. Here in Washington State, our constitution says we need a secret ballot. Disagree if you want. There's lots of ideas. Like voting receipts and no more secret ballots. But please start by changing our laws. Meanwhile, any attempt to take away the secret ballot (private voting) is unconstitutional.

Second, there is no technical way to have an electronic voting system which both preserves the secret ballot and the public vote count. If the ballots are secret, then there's no verifiability, meaning no public count. If the system is verifiable, then there's no secret ballot. You can have one or the other, but not both. Electronic counting, as with the precinct-based optical scanners, can be done constitutionally.

Third, currently the most reliable way to vote in the USA is to use a voter-correctable precinct-based optical scanner (PBOS). Sorry, I don't have the cites handy (my bad), but dig a little and you can find the research on this. Brennan Center, GAO reports, MIT Voter Project, etc. The basic idea is that you mark a ballot and feed it into a machine. If there's a problem, the machine spits the ballot back out, giving the voter a chance to correct the problem. Yes, these machines need to be better designed, open source, yadda, yadda. But before anyone proposes a better system, please work to understand the best system currently available. (Thank you for your patience.)

Many juridictions have wisely moved away from touchscreens and other DREs and adopted PBOS systems with a low-cost, verifiable solution for disabled voting. TrueVoteCT.org just had a huge win. And Voter Action sued and got the touchscreens in New Mexico replaced with PBOS systems. (Please visit both orgs and give them cash. Activism is not cheap!)

Fourth, and lastly, Bev Harris made an incredibly important point: Our elections have to be understandable for all the voters. Blackbox Voting has spents years digging and researching. I've personally spent 2 years learning all that I can about elections, voting, and these systems. I'm a computer geek and I readily admit that I had to work pretty hard to understand stuff. Bev has a lot of contact with experts, computer scientists, security dudes, etc. Her point is that we cannot rely on those sage gurus to weigh in on our election systems. We all need to understand how our democracy works. Not just the wonks. That means our election and voting systems must be simple and straightforward.

(PS- I saw Bev during King County Washington's "logic and accuracy testing" of our new Diebold AccuVote TSx touchscreens last Tuesday. You can read "Report: Testing of Diebold AccuVote TSx" on my blog, on WashBlog, or on dailyKos. Please holler if anyone has questions. I'll do my best to reply in a timely fashion.)

I just posted an article of support on Daily Kos. I hope it helps. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/3/14505/93572 A lot of people support what you're doing, and I hope you're hearing from at least some of them.

I'm fascinated by France's cyclic role developing Iran into such a major pain. They hid the Ayatollah Khomeini for decades, too. The Shah was an asshole, helped into keeping the throne by Teddy Roosevelt's son Kermit Roosevelt, who also had some heavy work in Central America for the CIA.

The lesson that should be painfully obvious to anyone looking is that the CIA, America's secret police, controls the profitable parts of the US government for dynasties of American industrialists. I just hope it's not too late to stop them from literally selling off the country to foreigners.

This product is available at a discount from http://dailykos.com/

Get them while they're still hot!!!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/8/24/102112/777

Just before coming down to speak with you, I called Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus and congratulated them on their success today. As I see it, in this campaign, we've just finished the first half and the Classical Planet team is ahead, but in the second half, our team -- Team Pluto -- is going to surge forward to victory.

I am, of course, disappointed by the results, but I am not discouraged. I am not disappointed because I lost my planetary status, but because the old politics of scholarship and intellectual integrity won today.

I expect my opponents will continue to do in the future what they have done today: Belittle me instead of coming up with ideas to avoid having to rewrite science textbooks.

I will continue to offer the astronomers a different path forward to make my Solar system and orbit a better place to live and work, and that's what I want to do for another six million more years.

I know a lot of people in this system, and not just "classical planets", are angry about the direction in which the Solar system is moving, and so am I.

Tomorrow morning, our campaign will file the necessary petition with the International Astronomical Union so that we can continue this campaign for a new astronomy of unity and purpose. I will always do what is right for my orbit and Solar system regardless of what the political consequences may be.

Tomorrow is a brand new day. Tomorrow we launch a new campaign -- Team Pluto -- Asteroids, non-conforming celestial objects and planets.

Thanks,

Mike

We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom -- symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning -- signifying renewal, as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe -- the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

This much we pledge -- and more.

Any Democrat using language like that today would be labeled a religious extremist, Neocon,... or even Presid

1. Argumentum ad hominem (tu quoque).

2. Commentary regarding Clinton's wiretaps.

3. Interesting article from the right about Clinton's requests for wiretapping authority, 5 years before 9/11.

-Mike

If you make $12 TRILLION a year, then you have the bigger problem. If you need to borrow more next year, and the year after that, and I can afford to let you slide if you just give me more control of the world you dominate, then you have the bigger problem.

The US is no deadbeat - it's doesn't fail to pay its debts. It's among the best investments ever in the world. And its collateral is by far the best to seize.

Besides, China cares nothing for shame. Its mafia government cares only for power. Power that Bush has handed it in unprecedented amounts. In exchange for lots of Chinese bribes to Bush's Republican Party

Bruce Schneier, the dean of crypto and security processes generally, yesterday debunked this plot as "implausible".

A British diplomat (to Uzbekistan, an actual center of the Qaeda War) warns us to be skeptical of the plot. Especially its timing, which was premature for destroying a possible network, but right on time to steal headlines from a primary defeat from a leading neocon that drew defensive scare propaganda from Bush and Cheney even though it's a Democratic primary.

As we see more and more of our Republican government terrorizing us on their campaign schedule, we have more chances to turn against them, and fight our own war against terror ourselves, in our own minds and at the polls. We can replace anyone in the House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/15/01945/8792 apparently the writer is against the war on drugs, but the readership is mostly confused and incomprehensible there... Maybe slashdotters should be posting on these liberal and other conservative blogs about war on drugs, instead of or in addition to preaching to the choir here.

An air traveler from Europe to the US is discussing their take on these developments at Daily Kos.

#telnet mail.joe2006.com 25
Trying 69.56.129.130...
Connected to mail.joe2006.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220-server1.myhostcamp.com ESMTP Exim 4.52 #1 Tue, 08 Aug 2006 15:08:14 -0700
220-We do not authorize the use of this system to transport unsolicited, 220 and/or bulk e-mail.
helo server1.myhostcamp.com Hello [65.96.230.83]
mail from:anonymous@anonymous.com OK
rcpt to:kos@dailykos.com
[my IP address removed] is currently not permitted to relay through this server. Perhaps you have not logged into the pop/imap server in the last 30 minutes or do not have SMTP Authentication turned on in your email client.

#telnet mail.joe2006.com 110
Trying 69.56.129.130...
Connected to mail.joe2006.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK POP3 server1 [cppop 20.0] at [69.56.129.130]
user joe
+OK Need a password
pass idontknow
-ERR Username/Password Mismatch
Connection closed by foreign host.

if you want to look at the big picture, then let's look at everything in it.

The editorial (pro- Net Doublecharge, anti-Neutrality) is by "Timothy B. Lee". The Web was invented by Tim Berners Lee, who strongly advocates Net Neutrality.

This editorial is obviously an astroturf fraud. That the NY Times is publishing on its once mighty Op-Ed page.

Every American should be thinking about how much corporate mass media has to gain by promoting these corporate kleptocracy thinktanks which wear the political figleafs of making up Intelligent Design fairytales as they go along. Because they're running the show. Into the ground. With us gagged in the trunk.

Incidentally, at least some of the news coverage suggested that the two soldiers were captured within Lebanon itself. Of course, it's entirely possible this is due to Hezbollah's definition of "Lebanon" differing from the rest of the world's. In any case, I wouldn't trust the IDF to be honest about what really happened - their record of honesty on politically inconvenient matters isn't exactly the best (see also: unarmed civilians, shooting of).

I still suspect the main reason for the rather excessive Israeli military response is internal politics within Israel itself - it's important for his future political career that Ehud Olmert appears strong in the face of outside attacks. Of course, I could be wrong.

Um, you don't need to run for President to make a difference. And you don't need to run in a minority party (ie. irrelevant outside a parliamentary system), either.

Cases in point:

Stephen Thibodeau (inspired by DailyKos)
(also inspired by DailyKos)

And I've seen more announce their campaigns for offices small and large on DailyKos.

Now, you may scoff, they'll just become corrupted. Perhaps eventually. But you have to get the power to do something before you can do it. All steps forward in America have come from some person or group grabbing some power and making the change, and sometimes those somebodies have been "fresh" politicians.

And if you say, "good for them, but I'm a conservative" - well, hey, surely with all the "traditional conservative" and "libertarian conservative" criticism of Bush and his administration lately, surely many such people will start running for offices large and small to exert power on the Republican Party and "take it back?" Surely all is not lost?

Um, you don't need to run for President to make a difference. And you don't need to run in a minority party (ie. irrelevant outside a parliamentary system), either.

Cases in point:

Stephen Thibodeau (inspired by DailyKos)
(also inspired by DailyKos)

And I've seen more announce their campaigns for offices small and large on DailyKos.

Now, you may scoff, they'll just become corrupted. Perhaps eventually. But you have to get the power to do something before you can do it. All steps forward in America have come from some person or group grabbing some power and making the change, and sometimes those somebodies have been "fresh" politicians.

And if you say, "good for them, but I'm a conservative" - well, hey, surely with all the "traditional conservative" and "libertarian conservative" criticism of Bush and his administration lately, surely many such people will start running for offices large and small to exert power on the Republican Party and "take it back?" Surely all is not lost?

Impeachment can be initiated by a single state in Congress. It doesn't require the entire House, a majority, a full committee, or even a team of Congressmembers. Of course, after impeachment is initiated, a majority of the House must vote to impeach - and the Senate must try and convict.

But that means you can work on state politicians, not just Congressmembers, to initiate the process.

Initiating impeachment is much easier than practically everyone thinks. And it should be much more common. Can you imagine how lawless the general population would be if it were so difficult and rare to initiate indictment for misdemeanors and felonies? Because impeachment is the equivalent for elected officials who are usually above the law by law, to protect the political process from political abuse of the criminal process. It should not surprise anyone that the political population is so criminal when impeachment is so extremely rarely initiated, let alone completed.

But the only barrier to political justice is public ignorance. Get educated, and educate someone else, for a better America.

When you figure out a way to convince both parties comfortable in the two-party system to give up their power to proportional representation, then we can start looking for third parties that match our pet ideas.

Until then, Libertarian Dems is where the power needs to shift. Are you up to being part of the solution?

I'm just part of a ridiculously small minority of people who are abhorred by what's going on, and would be regardless of what party was running the show this week.

No, it's not that small a group of people, you're just letting your political prejudice keep you from looking in the right places.

This criminal administration is totally out of control.

Developing a vaccine for this threat requires knowing what the threat is, and as yet, there have been no confirmed cases of human-human transmission.

WHO has in fact acknowledged H2H2H transmission. Details here.

Bush is threatening to use his first-ever veto over his Republican Congress to keep public funding from increasing embryonic stemcell research the way it subsidizes all the rest of American medical R&D.

The Republican Party is the theocrat party. The free Internet is already under Republican attack. As soon as they realize they can cover their corporate takeover with a "religious protection" figleaf, they'll leap on it.

Actually, Bush's executive order says nothing that has any effect. What it "means" is subject to lots of discussion. But of course an executive order cannot contradict an express Supreme Court decision. Even if that decision is unjust, or if the court is loaded with Bush's corporate appointees.

The only way to counter a Supreme Court decision, which interprets actions in the context of American laws, is to make new laws. That power is reserved to the Congress, not the president, as anyone who ever saw Schoolhouse Rock knows.

Despite the neocon "unitary executive" ("king") philosophy, the president is optional (when Congress overrides a presidential veto), but Congress never is, when making laws.

Of course, with Republicans controlling all three branches of our government, it's hard to tell how the powers are separated. Of course, that's why Republicans are doing all these antiamerican actions, while they have the chance.

And when Bush can sign such a BS order, and have naive people post, publish and read on Slashdot that it somehow "repeals" a Court decision (the correct term is "rescind", even when that is actually the effect), we can tell why they do it. Because when people believe it, it has effect. Even when it's the kind of destruction of America that our enemies have always dreamed of.

They'll help the cause because of something the Right Wing in the U.S. has understood for some time:

The Overton Window.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/9/11515/72574
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

In short: if you make people talk/think about a more extreme position than your own, your own becomes more acceptable.

Go Pirate Party!

This is a crappy link to dailykos but the issue is interesting:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/4/1723/98702

Who owns the new passages and land opened up by warming?

Go Canada!

I don't think I've ever seen such a look of misery and dejection on the face of my daughter as I just did a moment ago. She just couldn't understand why the President would be going to Iraq when so many things are wrong in this country. "Doesn't Mr. Bush care about us anymore?" she asked pitifully.

I sat down with her on the sofa and (as calmly as I could) tried to explain to her why the President seems to be abandoning his country. "Honey, I think his boss, Mr. Rove, sent Mr. Bush out of the country in order to keep himself out of the newspapers. You see, he wasn't sure if he was going to be arrested today or not, and so he planned Mr. Bush's trip ahead of time just in case..."

I tried to keep my voice steady, but it became increasingly difficult - the rage and feelings of helplessness were just too much. I think my daughter could tell something was wrong. I found myself at such a loss for words - nothing made any sense; nothing makes sense anymore. I finally had to admit, "Honey, I just don't know - I don't know what's going on in this country anymore..."

When I finished her lower lip started to tremble and her eyes began to fill with tears, "Daddy" she said, "why are the Republicans doing this to the country?" Well, that was it for me: I finally fell apart. She just fell into my arms and we both began sobbing for several minutes.

For once she had to comfort me and get me back on my feet. Sometimes I just think it's too much, but seeing the strength in my young daughter's voice helped me to get through.

(M4d pr0ps to CheChe!)

And CNN is publishing industry press releases as news, but hey, what's new?

Notice no disclosure that he's completely freaking paid for by the telecom industry, who do you think Public Strategies' clients are? And "Hands off the Internet"? That's an astro-turf campaign, noticed the crappy wanna-be underground looking propaganda that's been popping up on blog-ads, that's them. More info at DailyKos.

Editor's note: Mike McCurry is a partner at Public Strategies Washington Inc. where he provides strategic communications counsel. He is a co-chairman of Hands off the Internet, a coalition of telecommunication-related businesses. McCurry served as press secretary to President Bill Clinton from 1995 until 1998.

More coverage by kos, john marshall, la times, matt stoller.

This is just like the telcos claims over open access. Every regional telco has been granted monopoly status for years, we the users paid for that infrastructure, and we'll use the same model in the future if need be. These claims of eminent domain are horseshit distractions. They were when they strangled and drowned the CLECs and they are now as they try to do to the Internet what the cell companies have done to wireless. I don't use my phone other than to talk, data services currently lack value over the cell networks in the existing price structure. They want to impose the same pricing structure possibilities on their segments of the Internet. Just like access to the copper, they want you to pay for what you've already paid for. Mike McCurry is getting paid to help these people steal from you; for this payment, he's trying to convince you that being stolen from is in your best interest.

These assholes will kill the goose that laid the golden egg if allowed. Support Save the Internet, don't let them do it.

Stop them cause Mike McCurry is a Jeff Gannon-wannabe manwhore.

And CNN is publishing industry press releases as news, but hey, what's new?

Notice no disclosure that he's completely freaking paid for by the telecom industry, who do you think Public Strategies' clients are? And "Hands off the Internet"? That's an astro-turf campaign, noticed the crappy wanna-be underground looking propaganda that's been popping up on blog-ads, that's them. More info at DailyKos.

Editor's note: Mike McCurry is a partner at Public Strategies Washington Inc. where he provides strategic communications counsel. He is a co-chairman of Hands off the Internet, a coalition of telecommunication-related businesses. McCurry served as press secretary to President Bill Clinton from 1995 until 1998.

More coverage by kos, john marshall, la times, matt stoller.

This is just like the telcos claims over open access. Every regional telco has been granted monopoly status for years, we the users paid for that infrastructure, and we'll use the same model in the future if need be. These claims of eminent domain are horseshit distractions. They were when they strangled and drowned the CLECs and they are now as they try to do to the Internet what the cell companies have done to wireless. I don't use my phone other than to talk, data services currently lack value over the cell networks in the existing price structure. They want to impose the same pricing structure possibilities on their segments of the Internet. Just like access to the copper, they want you to pay for what you've already paid for. Mike McCurry is getting paid to help these people steal from you; for this payment, he's trying to convince you that being stolen from is in your best interest.

These assholes will kill the goose that laid the golden egg if allowed. Support Save the Internet, don't let them do it.

Stop them cause Mike McCurry is a Jeff Gannon-wannabe manwhore.

Ann Coulter is the rightwing Anchor Troll in their "Overton Window" strategy.

It's a simple way to force the public debate "spectrum window" to your end of the spectrum by trolling unthinkable statements in public. Successful trolls create only predictable responses, not any further development of the ideas. So the "unthinkable" is now part of the public conversation, without risking rejection by anyone actually thinking about it. Changing the ideas in the public window of the spectrum moves the window closer to the new idea. Now the window includes more of the thinkable ideas that were excluded or marginalized, while the window excludes or marginalizes the ideas previously more in the "center", but further away from the troll.

The only risk with overtonning the window is that the troll discredits its entire end of the spectrum by association. Which is why it's important that the troll make as extreme, ridiculous comments as possible. And frequently defend their statements with "I was just kidding". The associates who benefit from the troll in their neighborhood must also not even repudiate the troll, as any association (positive or negative) is contagious. The troll must work alone. Though of course they can be paid by the same beneficiaries, or have their "home markets" all subsidized by the same beneficiaries.

Now Ann Coulter actually makes sense, probably for the first time. As do her fellow trolls like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and most of the rightwing talkradioheads.

McCurry's name is mud in the Democratic activist community, of which Daily Kos is an important part. Hopefully, he'll be so radioactive after this that legislators won't want to be associated publically with him.

He should quit whining, suck it up, and deal. Influence peddling for a living has its occupational hazards. Especially when one tries to sell it to the wrong people.

Perhaps Exxon-Mobil can find him a PR job. Or NAMBLA.