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New Orleans didn't have to be a disaster. What's the right blaming it on? The gays.
Loss of life certainly could have been prevented. So either blame the government (for not being prepared) or God (for killing thousands of innocent people to get at a few homosexuals). Don't blame the storm.

Here he is playing country music star while people are dying:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/8/31/1442/5 3877

Of course there's an element of luck, too, as well as the '49er effect: that is, the ones that get there first stand a better chance of getting rich. But if you get there early and have a good product, you have a chance of attaining the critical mass that attracts not only listeners but collaborators. Slashdot as a tech website is an example. Among blogs, Daily Kos would be another. And I would put the Skepticality podcast in that category, potentially: it is well produced (decent recording, excellent editing and pacing, smart format), intelligent, has likable hosts, and has started attracting some well-known interviewees like James Randi. It's here to stay, I'd bet.

The distinction between corporate and indie is less important, I think, than the question of how an excellent late-comer can crack the barrier of the existing hierarchy. (The one heartening thing is that firstcomers tend to drop off the top of the pyramid when people realize they're just not that good or interesting, witness Adam Curry's drop in the rankings.)

No, actually, they're not untrue.

And 1998 was mid-sanctions, long after the end of the Gulf War.

This has no bearing on 2002 and 2003 specifcally, granted, but the point remains.

I also didn't say that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program.

What I do know was that Iraq was in continuing and egregious violation of numerous binding and in-force Chapter VII UN Security Council resolutions, so whether or not Iraq attempted to purchase uranium again after 1998 is irrelevant.

Further, I said "indirectly". Wilson's wife most certainly had a hand in offering up his name. That she called the Niger report "crazy", and then her own husband went to investigate said claims, raises what we call a conflict of interest. An appearance of impropriety, in the same vein as concerns raise about DeLay having his spouse work on his campaign. There may not actually be any impropriety in either case; it is the appearance that is critically important.

Why do you think Plame is involved in this in the first place? It wasn't because the administration wanted to "get back at" Wilson by vindictively ruining his the career of his wife who is completely unrelated to the events; the whole reason she was ever an issue is precisely BECAUSE she was working in this specific area at the CIA and had a hand in offering/suggesting/promoting/etc. her husband for an investigative trip on this very topic. Even DailyKos in its "debunking" story acknowledges her involvement. The administration wanted to use this appearance of impropriety to discredit Wilson's claims.

Let me just reiterate: the whole reason Plame's name came up was because of the direct and close involvement of her husband here with her own workgroup and her own specific area of work; if she was a CIA operative working on, say, signals intelligence for the Indian subcontinent, her name never would have come up.

I'm not saying it was right. What I am saying is that it wasn't just random pettiness. If Wilson's wife had nothing to do with this at all, her name would never have come up, no matter who mentioned it first. But it was her own workgroup in the CIA who sent her husband to Africa to investigate this "crazy report" (her words). If you can't see a conflict there (but do in the case of DeLay, for example), you've got partisan blinders on.

Yes but a GOP "media playbook" has surfaced online and contains juicy details like

# When talking to women, use words women like, such as love, from the heart, and for the children - no matter what is being said.

# When talking about our environment, use the words healthy, clean, and safe - even if you're advocating policies that increase pollution.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/7/14/211527/166 Daily Kos points out that the London bombers were part of a cell whose members were alerted to their compromised position by the White House's leak of the capture of one of their members, a leak intended to draw attention away from last year's Democratic National Convention. "Those arrests were the arrests that the Bush administration botched by announcing a heightened security alert the week of the Democratic Convention. Because the US let the cat out of the bag, the media got a hold of Khan's name, his Al Qaeda contacts found out he was co-opted, and they fled."

As for heat-filled rhetoric from the left.... aren't you aware of the left's new developing Internet epicenter???: ;-)
http://www.dailykos.com/
http://www.democraticunderground.com/

Actually, it seems to me that Wilson implied that the VP or someone with close ties to the Whitehouse sent him. He used muddled and ambiguous language in some interviews and in his NYT Op-Ed to accomplish this. So yes, several officials (Cheney, Tenet, Rice) felt it was necessary to set the record straight as to whether or not they had any knowledge of or role in Wilson and his trip beforehand. Also several journalists and interviewers made the same interpretation of Wilson's account of events, and subsequently gave him multiple opportunities to set the record or straight.... which he did ...with some more ambiguous language.

Interestingly, this is only one of many, many fascinating bits of this story. It's an awesome story, in my opinion, because I get to witness the way the media and the left in exuberant zeal have been getting ahead of themselves in this story, and their pursuits. The crow is beginning to be served. (not that anyone but the real newshounds will be around to witness the media and the extreme left eating- not that they are humble or honest enough to eat- haha.)

Um, I don't think these are all the same people. Most "treehuggers" I know of are quite in favor of wind power, and well aware that it poses no threat to birds.

If there really are a bunch of media stories about the dangers to birds of wind turbines, I can't help but think the source of these stories may be attributed to either 1) creative but lazy reporters dreaming up stories to fill their quotas, and/or 2) energy industry competitors and NIMBYs who don't want wind power catching on and will dream up anything to that end.

Probably not very many, if any at all.

If the experiments bear out the hypothesis it may come to be regarded as a theory or law of nature.

That comment is both copyright infringment and plagiarism (which is worse). You copied from this book without attribution, a link, or any indication you were not the author of that text.

Compare against this weblog to see how to quote from a text in an intellectually-honest style.

Apparently, since Bush is threatening to veto (although he has never used his veto to date) this legislation unless they put the provision in question back in the bill, they will do exactly that in conference committee.

A poster on the Daily Kos made mention about it, but I can't find a direct link.

Diebold was running an ftp server from which various items were freely available.

http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/dieboldftp.h tml
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/10/1172/9052
http://www.google.com/search?q=diebold+source+code

And Slashdot related stories about Diebold
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aslashdot.org +diebold+source+code&btnG=Search

I'm not familiar with certification process of voting machines but maybe the State also has a copy of the source code.

Who still uses Perl for web stuff?

Ohh, I don't know... how about Amazon and Salon? Kuro5hin and all the other Scoop based sites like DailyKos and MyDD. And now that I think about it, MovableType, TypePad, and LiveJournal are all writen in Perl.

Newsweek's reporting on the Koran desecration at Guantánamo is substantiated by prior news reports and sources

So, you're a little early to be calling the fight.

You know, I'm as atheistic and completely non-religious as the next slashdotter, but it's attitudes like this that help destroy any hope of rational discourse between the two sides of this argument.

I am a Christian however I have a very different perspective on this than you

Get back to me when mainstream American christians applaud murder in their god's name.

The term mainstream is meaningless in this context. The Taliban never were a majority in Afghanistan and radical Christian conservatives never have been a majority here, but at this moment they are a very influential group. That said, here's a radical Christian who has sympathy for murder in God's name

Seriously, if you're going to compare religious people to the Taliban, you might as well go all the way and compare them to Nazis so we can invoke Godwin's law on your ass.. ;)

It's never easy to tell when something passes from just a disturbing mania to ouright lunacy. Like you, I generally don't find the activities between current Christian conservatives in the US and the radical theocrats of other nations equivalent, but the parallels are becoming disturbing.

Koz has a interesting take on this too

I fail to see how this has anything to do with Slashdot. It's not tech, it's not Linux/F/OSS, and not anything else that I would consider Slashdot material. Since when has this place become a repository of whatever stupid "news" there happens to float around online?

Not only is this kind of political post irrelevant to Slashdot, but it also encourages people from other sites to come here and enforce their idea of ideological purity.

Turns out that Microsoft's use of the word "innovation" is a real winner.

According to TFA, the main task of JFCCNW is to bring down websites that don't portray America in good light.

It is going to be more of a PR-damage limitation excercise than anything else. And a good way to spend millions of taxpayer money.


Until they start going after opposition sites like Daily Kos or Eschaton because they're critical of the current administration. Collateral damage in the War on Terror, you know.

Don't think it could happen here? GOP Denial of Service attack on New Hampshire Democratic Phone Bank

Post your link to the source of this "news". I can't find it on Google. Link not to a rightist blogger or Freerepublic, but a to a transcript of the comment, WITH CONTEXT, or at least an article from a credible news source referring to this. No, Rush is not acceptable. And he does not provide transcripts, anyway.

And as for Dobbs, he has indeed jumped onto the rightist train and is riding for the sunset, so his attitude as a "journalist" is indeed up for comment. He's dropped the mask of a reporter and has become a right-wing agitator. So it goes.

At Daily Kos or Talking Points Memo or even Buzzflash, the answer to the Drudge, they exhaustively document and link each reference to an actual news article from a credible source. "Everybody knows" is not credible as a source.

This "Franken is calling names" stinks of the old Orwellian trick of smearing the enemy with that which your side is most certainly guilty. If you know you can be called on your actions, make a lot of noise establishing "controversey" about those who will call you out, to diminish their stature. Slash, smear, distort, MAKE NOISE, and the enemy's best efforts to expose your actions can be at best summed up as calling the kettle black by those whose knowledge of the discussion is not exactly exhaustive.

Air America Radio,, with Franken as midday host, has done more to clean the rightist clocks in one year than the entire Democratic party has done in twenty.

• All an internet is, is a group of connected networks, and yes the concept was invented decades ago. However, the Internet - note the capitalization - with its petabytes of deta, millions of hosts, educational and consumer access was the work of business, government and higher education. And considering you can't name a government official more involved in the creation of the Internet as it is today than Al Gore, his origional comment was entirely appropirate.

If your going to compete with the likes of Rush, Hannity, and the right you need to deliver facts and keep the slant off. Do not copy unless your doing so out of sincere flattery for someone else's job well done. Lastly do not EVER go off on a tirade that borders on a political stump speech.

Sean Hannity quotes about the war in Kosovo that sound exactly like the sort of quotes about the War in Iraq that he criticises as Unamerican.

The Center for American Progress creates a list of on-air lies by Sean Hannity in response to being challenged someone to "defend and explain one example where I -- where I said something that was so false." (Points 5 & 13 are the weakest IMHO.)

Sean Hannity suggested early in the Abu Ghraib scandal that photos of the torture of prisoners were a DNC plot. (Note that this post tried to defend the infamous CBS memos before they were verified to be false.)

Rush Limbaugh defends Abu Ghraib torturers as boys performing harmless pranks and blowing off steam.

Limbaugh spins an article about advances in medical technology as disappointment in the low levels of fatalities in the war by the anti-war camp to our troops while in Iraq.

Nuclear power produces highly toxic waste and byproducts.

I don't see how VP Cheney will allow this to happen. Without DARPA doing basic research, the Internet would not exist as we know it. And without the Internet, no eBay. And without eBay, our economy would truly be in the dumps.

I'd say the voting machine manufacturers have spoken. Exit polls showed a different outcome.

just as willing to implement fiscal irresponsibility as the Democrats

Ah, another Republican talking point that needs to be put to rest. Who's had the most balanced budgets/suprluses? Democratic presidents. Who's had the largest defecits? Republicans.

As someone once observed, Democrats tax and spend, Republicans borrow and spend.

Sorry, but my interpretation of a blog is a self-absorbed self-referential monologue about one or more subjects that's been transcribed and marked up with html. Sort of like public masturbation, but with css styling.

Your interpretation is inaccurate. Although there are many blogs that do contain nothing but trash, there are lots of others that cover news stories and provide perspectives otherwise unavailable through the mass media.

Blogs are a way for people to easily communicate their thoughts to a wide audience, nothing more, nothing less. Some of them are bad, some are good, but to write off all blogs just because you've never seen a good one is ignorant.

If the US court system was working properly they would know the game was up, and not waste their time.

Originally, the FEC extempted the Internet entirely from regulation, but a court said they weren't allowed to do so. Quoting CNet:

In 2002, the FEC exempted the Internet by a 4-2 vote, but U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last fall overturned that decision. "The commission's exclusion of Internet communications from the coordinated communications regulation severely undermines" the campaign finance law's purposes, Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

There is a solution that would stop the Internet from being regulated at all by the FEC. The judge's decision is based on the premise that campaign finance law applies to the Internet. So, Sen. Harry Reid has a solution: a bill that would add one single sentence to campaign finance law exempting "communications over the Internet."

How does that make me wrong? Conservatism works on more than one axis.

You have been wrong because your brand of fundamentalist conservatism which you share with your alma matter teaches mythology contrary to the evidence that God has left for us, simply because it is inconsistent with someone's edition of "holy scripture."

Those of us who count ourselves as true conservatives do not squander precious resources to fight unwinnable wars designed to steal the same resources they squander.

Do you realize what would happen to OSDN if someone posted illegal porn on one of your servers, and the prosecution called you to the stand to state your views about the appropriate punnishment for explaining sex to children?

I demand that you resign.

Technically, that was last year. This year they're too busy calling people stupid assholes.

Seems like "Open Source" means something different nowadays.

Me, I preferred the calls for open-sourcing Natalie Portman...

If you trust an ATM with your money -- couldn't we trust it with votes?

I don't really trust an ATM with my money. I trust my bank to refund my money if the machine screws up, because it's not in the best interest of the bank to lose my business and quite possibly face criminal charges (there's a camera there after all) over something like $200 (which is about the maximum I'd ever transact in cash through an ATM).

If a bank screwed 1,000 people out of $20 in a day, you can bet that this would be discovered. If diebold screwed 100,000 people out of their vote, it's likely no one would know the difference, because this is quite within the margin of error of the exit polls (especially when the exit polls get changed after the results come in).

Hmm, perhaps if more energy had been put into their support by the people who are doing the pandering now, or by the oh-so-cool DailyKos?

DailyKos gets overenthused at times, but Kos himself commented strongly hereagainst chasing conspiracy theories.

While there may be overlap, even you admit that there is new stuff in the Clinton-Boxer proposal. Are your objections to the new stuff? (I've yet to read either HAVA or The full Clinton proposal but will do so now that I know about them)

DailyKos recently uncovered a fake reporter in the White House press core. I'd say that's a pretty striking accomplishment.

Consider that you are posting on Slashdot, Dave. And you do it quite regularly. Meaning you read it quite regularly.

Unfortunately class action law suits are generally rigged to reward lawyers, not the victims. It is gross.

Not in the slightest. In filing the suit, the lawyers take all of the risks while the members take none. As in if the case isn't won, they don't get paid. The defendant gets punished and you get some compensation, without having to do any work. You get something for nothing, and you complain because someone else got more? Just who is really being greedy here?

It's been said that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making the world think he didn't exist. Well, the devil has been one-upped. The greatest trick in the world has been pulled by Republicans and big business, tricking people into thinking that standing up for themselves by filing a lawsuit (frequently your only option for redress) is BAD because some LAYWERS might get some MONEY! Heaven forbid!

More to the point, if you really get screwed over, why do you care who gets the money as long as it's out of the hands of the person who screwed you? Do you think that the first thought that came to the mind of the husband of Faye Martinez was, "well, I'd like to sue the plant for letting my wife die, but it's better that the plant keep its cash rather than risk giving some money to a lawyer!!!"

Lawsuits aren't just to give you money, they are to punish the guilty party. Give the money to Bill Gates or even some nice druglord from Columbia, it's more punishment for those who wronged you. Here's another example: the case that asshat supreme Tucker Carlson repeated dismissed as a jacuzzi case. In fact, everyone who pushes so called "tort reform" should read this and then drink a nice, tall glass of STFU. The details weren't published, but it has been guestimated that Edwards got $8 million out of a $25 million settlement. Do you think the parents of the girl who's guts were sucked out by a defective pool were pissed that Edwards got $8 million, or are they elated that he refused to settle and another $8 million out of the hands of the people who put their daughter on IV's and poop bags for the rest of her life?

And of course there's this brilliant tidbit where he blasts CNN's crossfire for being theater instead of actual news. The best part is when conservative crossfire host Tucker Carlson tries to ask Jon Stewart why he gave Kerry softball questions when he was on the Daily Show, Stewart responded (paraphrased from memory) "What I didn't realize, and maybe this explains alot, is that CNN takes its queues on integrity from Comedy Central. The show that leads into mine is puppets making crank phone calls."

Jon Stewart is brilliant, and since the Daily Show has the satirical factor embedded in it, it allows him more freedom than most other media outlets. And ironically in many cases he does a better job at explaining the news. For example, Daily Show viewers tend to be more informed than viewers of many other programs.

Struck a cord with the common man? Come on, Howard Dean was a joke, and it shows there is a leadership problem at the top of the Dem party.

Oh, yes, Howard Dean is a joke among the common man. That must be why thousands of individuals generated over $106,061.77 in Democratic contributions in just two days in order to endorse his leadership.

Nay-saying's a lot of fun, isn't it?

And when it does, Diebold and ES&S vote for you anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Prove It.

Analysis of Diebold voting machines

"[Diebold's] committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

- Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc., August 14 2004

DailyKos

Of course, the burden of proof is really on Diebold to prove their machines are secure against intentional tampering.

"Why am I always being asked to prove these systems aren't secure? The burden of proof ought to be on the vendor. You ask about the hardware. 'Secret.' The software? 'Secret.' What's the cryptography? 'Can't tell you because that'll compromise the secrecy of the machines.'... Federal testing procedures? 'Secret'! Results of the tests? 'Secret'! Basically we are required to have blind faith."

- Dr. David Dill, Stanford

Details at Daily Kos.

Kos clearly states that he is MarKOS Moulitsas Zúniga.

Jeff Gannon does not, he was hiding his identity.

"Gannon (or Guckert, if you prefer) resigned over links to inappropriate pornography. These links were uncovered during what basically amounted to a witch hunt."

It's true that some people have crowed about the hypocrisy of an openly right-wing pundit being associated with gay sex sites. It's also true that some people have said that this hypocrisy is the story. BUT it's also true that the people doing the original research have decried this time and again. They've said repeatedly that this is not the story.

Of course, if you'd read the group's press release, you'd already know that there is not one word about the gay sex sites. Some cranks may be crowing about a photo of Gannon/Guckert in tighty-whiteys, but the people who are doing the actual research are deliberately not. They seem to think it's enough that a guy with two days' training, working for a news organisation that was four days old should be able to get a White House press pass using a false name. They also find it strange that on many occasions 'Gannon' wrote articles in which text lifted directly from Republican press briefings appeared unattributed. Most importantly, they worry that he might have been used to leak a story that resulted in an undercover CIA operative being outed. That last one is a felony offense, and is punishable by hard time in a federal prison.

For some small-minded people it's about the gay sex sites. For most, though, it's about the systematic subversion of the Free Press.

If Gannon/Guckert, a reporter from an independent online non-mainstream news site, cannot get a White House press pass then no blogger/open source journalist will get a pass.

Well, certainly not with a website that's only five days old.

A fundamental tenet of open source journalism is being able to pass comment on it and to contribute.

If you try to sign up on his big "journalism" website, there's a 24 hour delay before you can post comments and a one week delay before you can post diaries.

Maybe I'm being paranoid here, but isn't it convenient that if you want to sign up and post a comment about a story that you want others to see, you won't be able to do so until the story (and so your comment) have dropped off the front page? Could it be that Kos isn't really interested in fostering debate at all and just wants an echo chamber for his buddies?

if you'd look at the DailyKos diaries, you'd see the unprecedented level of collabo among all the folks who dig the logwork... it's damned impressive. link

We can't make fun of it anymore.

No one cares about Mr. Lopez, because as he himself said, "It's peanuts." But if a whole bunch of people get together and sue, then we're talking multiple peanuts! But don't worry, here comes the U.S. Senate to the rescue! (Bank of America's rescue, that is...)

Hmm, I wonder if those bloggers might have posted any response to this story? After all, they've only had 12 hours so far today. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/14/02014/6287 , http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/1/13/231623/665 , and http://www.pandagon.net/mtarchives/004427.html

Markos addresses it Here

He was transparent about it and kept a constant reminder about it at the top of the page. Hardly close to the Williams scandal.

How about this: some of the documents were an insanely bad forgery. Humorously bad. They were easily recreated in Microsoft Word with the default settings. No settings need to be changed - the default margins, tab-stops, and font all matched up perfectly. Pixel-perfectly.

Read this and this and summarise just HOW exactly that the documents could be created in Microsoft Word is relevant. Also, you are completely wrong about "default settings" as anyone with a cursory knowledge of the debate would know.

CBS's mistake was in insisting the documents were primary sources, when they weren't. It still isn't clear whether the documents are forgeries or genuine, CBS just could not prove they were genuine, nor did they go through appropriate steps to find this out, this is why they are being punished.

Nothing Fox News has done has come anywhere near this

How about just making up a statement by Kerry and reporting it as news?

How about this: some of the documents were an insanely bad forgery. Humorously bad. They were easily recreated in Microsoft Word with the default settings. No settings need to be changed - the default margins, tab-stops, and font all matched up perfectly. Pixel-perfectly.

Read this and this and summarise just HOW exactly that the documents could be created in Microsoft Word is relevant. Also, you are completely wrong about "default settings" as anyone with a cursory knowledge of the debate would know.

CBS's mistake was in insisting the documents were primary sources, when they weren't. It still isn't clear whether the documents are forgeries or genuine, CBS just could not prove they were genuine, nor did they go through appropriate steps to find this out, this is why they are being punished.

Nothing Fox News has done has come anywhere near this

How about just making up a statement by Kerry and reporting it as news?