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This.

Maybe the EPA and most the rest of the federal government needs to be cut down to a fraction of its bloated size

Were you alive before the EPA existed? I was. I grew up two miles from a Monsanto plant. Cars had no AC back then but you still rolled the windows up on a blistering hot summer day when you drove past because the air burned your lungs. If you think the invisible hand of the free market will reduce pollution you're delusional. My dad had a 1964 VW bug when I was a kid, it got maybe 20 mpg on the highway. My 2002 Concorde gets 30+ and it's a big comfortable sedan. The EPA is saving me money.

This isn't a new rule, it's a tiny tightening of an old rule. It's a reduction from 15ppm to 12ppm. They're not making you throw your stove out, they're saying you can't sell an old stove. Who trades their wood stove in??

This is much ado about nothing. That said, I wish they'd tighten up the rules about maintaining school buses. Those things belch diesel smoke and stink badly. They're a hell of a lot worse than wood stoves.

Ever driven past a gasoline refinery? If you think the EPA is bloated you either own a lot of oil and coal stock or have been deluded by those who do. IMO the EPA isn't doing enough.

Indeed. You would think the daily rag in a state capital would be digging, but the Springfield State Journal-Register is close to worthless. From looking at it you would think that every crime, fire, and accident is reported but few actually are. They want you to pay for worthless "news" as well as being subjected to popups, popunders, animated ads and all the very worse, annoying advertising? They're insane. The local TV station, wics, does more investigative reporting. There's a police scandal right now that they uncovered; the daily paper sort of repeats their nightly news of it in the next day's paper.

Meanwhile, we have a weekly paper that even the paper edition is absolutely free, its advertising is non-intrusive, and it does do investigative reporting. It also has movie reviews, a "pub crawl" section highlighting live music, recipes, etc. The SJ-R no longer has an editorial cartoonist; he was let go in their last round of layoffs. The Illinois Times hired him after the SJ-R layed him off. There are also a couple of syndicated cartoons.

Traditional newspapers are dead. There's way too much good free news to pay for it, especially when the free is better than the paid.

Wow, yet another "crazy Mooslims" story. Meanwhile, the United States government has just re-upped warrantless wiretapping and indefinite military detention of Americans. And a recent document release shows the collusion between the banks and the highest levels of government in crushing the Occupy movement.

Meanwhile, both sides of the coin, I mean aisle, are thankful for the media/public fixation on the Sandy Hook shootings. Democrats, because focusing liberal rage on mass shootings distracts from FISA and the NDAA and cuts to Social Security onto the issue of gun control, which will go nowhere. Republicans, because it will get the NRA and the teabaggers all poutraged about "taking their guns away" rather than the Fascism of the combination of government and corporate power. But hey, I guess it's a change from threatening Iran with armageddon over the nuclear weapons program our own government admits they don't have.

But hey, lets forget about Bush's worldwide torture regime, forget about Obama's drone wars and violation of the War Powers Act, and focus on what those Crazy Mooslims are doing this week. Nevermind when those corrupt theocratic governments are to our left on fundamental civil liberties.

No, for the willfully obtuse, that's not saying that the U.S. == theocratic third would countries. It's saying we should not throw stones in fucking glass houses until we've taken steps to ensure our own shit does not stink. Stop the fucking shrieking about their molehills from on top your mountain.

Oh, please. No one is trying to seize firearms. Period. End of story.

http://thismodernworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/TMW2011-01-12acolorlowres-copy-2.jpg

What reasonable people want is for high-capacity magazines to be outlawed. There's no reason you need 15/30/100 (!) in a clip. I personally know hunters and if any of them needed that many bullets to put a deer down, they'd quit hunting.

Every major shooting - Cho, Holmes, Loughner, Lanza, etc etc - all had high capacity magazines. How many fewer people would be dead if those shooters could have been stopped while they were reloading?

http://thismodernworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/TMW2011-01-12acolorlowres-copy.jpg

That's from two massacres ago.

End the Wars
Tax the Rich
This isn't Rocket Science

Courtesy of Tom Tomorrow:

http://thismodernworld.com/archives/6027

Like hell it's not! Rocket science is easy compared to fixing the human race!

End the Wars
Tax the Rich
This isn't Rocket Science

Courtesy of Tom Tomorrow:

http://thismodernworld.com/archives/6027

WTH is "Moonbats" anyway?

You've never seen This Modern World?

Political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow reminds us about

that oddly specific moment where Andrea Mitchell, in the course of interviewing New York Times reporter James Risen about his reporting on the NSA and government wiretapping, asked if he knew anything about the administration spying on Christiane Amanpour â" a question the network promptly scrubbed from the transcription.

I'd forgotten about that incident.

The Bush administration has its own list of scandals, of course. But just as significant a scandal may be the way that our so-called media hid from its audience the true scope of government wrongdoing. Recall that the New York Times sat on the NSA wiretapping scandal for a year before it thought it was time to let us citizens know. If it turns out that the industry that was supposed to be keeping the public informed about things like violations of the Constitution by top elected officials was deliberately concealing that information, it may be time to reconsider whether we have a press in America that's worthy of the name, and what we can do about it.

Anyway, Tom Tomorrow asks what other revelations about the Bush administration are likely to follow. Anyone have any ideas?

I propose that we ship them all immediately to Iraq for a quick lesson in what REALLY matters.

It happened to at least one student. This is the problem with them posting the full name (and sometimes contact information) of the women they attack. Note the sentence "Some of the messages included false claims about sexual activity and diseases." in the Washington Post article.

Aside from that, I'm pretty sure it's considered some kind of threatening to post pictures of someone, post their full name and email address, and go on rapturously about how you'd really like to "hate-fuck" them. But I'll have to check with my legal staff to see if that's actually out of bounds.

Yes, of course, there are men who've been stalked and had their careers torpedoed because of the cheeto-stained warriors over at AutoAdmit. Would you be so kind as to mention them?

Well I for one would have some kids write cute messages on Isreali shells while their mother watches so that when the Lebanese children's skulls are crushed and bodies ripped apart, they'll know who hates them. That would punish the terrorists who've forced Israel to kill 1000 civilians including 300 children. What else could they do to defend themselves? I don't know how you can have a ceasefire with terrorists, except the one Israel had with Hamas and GB had with the IRA, and some other examples that are inconvenient to those who don't mind killing so many kids to protect a handful of their own.

Weren't they just trying to get back a kidnapped soldier at first? This whole conflict has a Iraq War-level of goal-switching and escalation. At this rate they will be invading Syria to protect Lebanon from Israel having to bomb it anymore, and doing their best to start a new Arab War (beyond what they've already done). Go Israel.

Of course, if you've been silly enough to use a debit card, you're out the money for six months or however long it takes until the bank gets around to deciding that you didn't really spend the money. Happened to Tom Tomorrow.

Just set your home page to a google search for the text of the 4th amendment. See here (whence I stole this idea).

... comparing him to Michael Moore... plain irrational... classical liberal... as opposed to marxist...

I mean, I know this country is afflicted, I just didn't realize I was subpoenoed to appear in front of McCrathy's ghost already.... Oh, wait, a letter... From the White House! I mean, it's got the logo and everything! I'm so excited to open it... [ knock knock ]

Is this the same bug that seems to hit Tom Tomorrow's website? At home, browsing with OS X Firefox 1.0, it sometimes it seems the page will be loading fine, then WHAMMO, only the blogad column is left and you can't reload to fix it. It's damn odd. (there's also a weird "wyciwyg://" URI invloved somehow. )

"So the Reagan-era dream of a space umbrella keeping us all safe from harm is about to be realized...as long as the enemy attacks us on a sunny day and gives us the target coordinates in advance."

http://www.thismodernworld.com/ good bloggage and good cartoons too

...and which party is trying to intimidate "get out the vote" campaigners in Florida? http://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/mtarchives/w eek_2004_08_15.html#001700

For those of you who want a real economist's viewpoint, I suggest you real Paul Krugman (also in the Times), who actually is an economist (Enough so to have several economic research papers published and to be allowed to teach the subject at Princeton, unlike Friedman, who has been nothing except a writer and gabber since he left school).

For those of you who want a real economist's viewpoint, I suggest you real Paul Krugman (also in the Times), who actually is an economist (Enough so to have several economic research papers published and to be allowed to teach the subject at Princeton, unlike Friedman, who has been nothing except a writer and gabber since he left school).

A minor problem is that Friedman is full of shit, but who needs facts when you've got a newspaper to sell?

Yamini Narayanan is an Indian-born 35-year-old with a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Oklahoma. After graduation, she worked for a U.S. computer company in Virginia and recently moved back to Bangalore with her husband to be closer to family. When I asked her how she felt about the outsourcing of jobs from her adopted country, America, to her native country, India, she responded with a revealing story:

"I just read about a guy in America who lost his job to India and he made a T-shirt that said, `I lost my job to India and all I got was this [lousy] T-shirt.' And he made all kinds of money." Only in America, she said, shaking her head, would someone figure out how to profit from his own unemployment. And that, she insisted, was the reason America need not fear outsourcing to India: America is so much more innovative a place than any other country.

He goes on to make his usual case: Americans needn't fear globalization, because our innate pluckiness will always overcome any obstacle. I was a little curious about that guy who made all the money off those shirts, though, and after doing a little Googling I found what I thought was a rather glaring flaw in the anecdote: the shirtmaker was neither unemployed nor American.

Except I got that one wrong. Sort of. You see, Friedman responded, pointing out that there was, in fact, an American selling a similar shirt:

The argument seems to be that it was a British Web site that came up with the idea of the T-shirt -- ``My job was lost Indiaand all I got was this lousy T-shirt'' -- and therefore the whole premise of my column was wrong, that Americans are not innovative.

First, all one has to do is Google that phrase and you will discover that it is not only a British Web site offeringthis t-shirt for sale, but that a U.S.-based Web site, indeed one located in Palo Alto where so many jobs have been lost, has been selling the same T-shirt for some time. It is the online design-your-own t-shirt and apparel store, Zazzle.com

So either someone in America copied it -- or independently came up with the idea themselves and therefore it is not aBritish exclusive. The point I was making about the innovative nature of American society and institutions obviously rests on more than a T-shirt.

Well, the larger point may rest on more, but the specific column is planted firmly atop that anecdotal t-shirt. And it was still an anecdote I found...questionable.

So I tracked down this guy--to whom, let us remember, Friedman personally pointed as a justification for the anecdote upon which Sunday's column was predicated--and sent him an email, and asked (1) if he is or was unemployed and, (2) if he's made a bundle of money off his shirts. (Also (3), if he's an American, which he is--Friedman got that much right.)

His name is Gary Young, and he was gracious enough to respond promptly:

Wow! So that WAS my shirt Friedman was talking about. I had seen the article and laughed...

To answer your questions:

1. No, I didn't lose my job YET. My department has been told month after month for the last 6 months that we'd be next in line to be offshored. Several peers at my work have had their jobs sent to India, and my partner had his job offshored.

2. Have I made all kinds of money? This is where I laughed the hardest. I've made about $10 profit total.

So there you have it. At the risk of beating a dead horse, I'll say i

Yamini Narayanan is an Indian-born 35-year-old with a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Oklahoma. After graduation, she worked for a U.S. computer company in Virginia and recently moved back to Bangalore with her husband to be closer to family. When I asked her how she felt about the outsourcing of jobs from her adopted country, America, to her native country, India, she responded with a revealing story:

"I just read about a guy in America who lost his job to India and he made a T-shirt that said, `I lost my job to India and all I got was this [lousy] T-shirt.' And he made all kinds of money." Only in America, she said, shaking her head, would someone figure out how to profit from his own unemployment. And that, she insisted, was the reason America need not fear outsourcing to India: America is so much more innovative a place than any other country.

He goes on to make his usual case: Americans needn't fear globalization, because our innate pluckiness will always overcome any obstacle. I was a little curious about that guy who made all the money off those shirts, though, and after doing a little Googling I found what I thought was a rather glaring flaw in the anecdote: the shirtmaker was neither unemployed nor American.

Except I got that one wrong. Sort of. You see, Friedman responded, pointing out that there was, in fact, an American selling a similar shirt:

The argument seems to be that it was a British Web site that came up with the idea of the T-shirt -- ``My job was lost Indiaand all I got was this lousy T-shirt'' -- and therefore the whole premise of my column was wrong, that Americans are not innovative.

First, all one has to do is Google that phrase and you will discover that it is not only a British Web site offeringthis t-shirt for sale, but that a U.S.-based Web site, indeed one located in Palo Alto where so many jobs have been lost, has been selling the same T-shirt for some time. It is the online design-your-own t-shirt and apparel store, Zazzle.com

So either someone in America copied it -- or independently came up with the idea themselves and therefore it is not aBritish exclusive. The point I was making about the innovative nature of American society and institutions obviously rests on more than a T-shirt.

Well, the larger point may rest on more, but the specific column is planted firmly atop that anecdotal t-shirt. And it was still an anecdote I found...questionable.

So I tracked down this guy--to whom, let us remember, Friedman personally pointed as a justification for the anecdote upon which Sunday's column was predicated--and sent him an email, and asked (1) if he is or was unemployed and, (2) if he's made a bundle of money off his shirts. (Also (3), if he's an American, which he is--Friedman got that much right.)

His name is Gary Young, and he was gracious enough to respond promptly:

Wow! So that WAS my shirt Friedman was talking about. I had seen the article and laughed...

To answer your questions:

1. No, I didn't lose my job YET. My department has been told month after month for the last 6 months that we'd be next in line to be offshored. Several peers at my work have had their jobs sent to India, and my partner had his job offshored.

2. Have I made all kinds of money? This is where I laughed the hardest. I've made about $10 profit total.

So there you have it. At the risk of beating a dead horse, I'll say i

Yamini Narayanan is an Indian-born 35-year-old with a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Oklahoma. After graduation, she worked for a U.S. computer company in Virginia and recently moved back to Bangalore with her husband to be closer to family. When I asked her how she felt about the outsourcing of jobs from her adopted country, America, to her native country, India, she responded with a revealing story:

"I just read about a guy in America who lost his job to India and he made a T-shirt that said, `I lost my job to India and all I got was this [lousy] T-shirt.' And he made all kinds of money." Only in America, she said, shaking her head, would someone figure out how to profit from his own unemployment. And that, she insisted, was the reason America need not fear outsourcing to India: America is so much more innovative a place than any other country.

He goes on to make his usual case: Americans needn't fear globalization, because our innate pluckiness will always overcome any obstacle. I was a little curious about that guy who made all the money off those shirts, though, and after doing a little Googling I found what I thought was a rather glaring flaw in the anecdote: the shirtmaker was neither unemployed nor American.

Except I got that one wrong. Sort of. You see, Friedman responded, pointing out that there was, in fact, an American selling a similar shirt:

The argument seems to be that it was a British Web site that came up with the idea of the T-shirt -- ``My job was lost Indiaand all I got was this lousy T-shirt'' -- and therefore the whole premise of my column was wrong, that Americans are not innovative.

First, all one has to do is Google that phrase and you will discover that it is not only a British Web site offeringthis t-shirt for sale, but that a U.S.-based Web site, indeed one located in Palo Alto where so many jobs have been lost, has been selling the same T-shirt for some time. It is the online design-your-own t-shirt and apparel store, Zazzle.com

So either someone in America copied it -- or independently came up with the idea themselves and therefore it is not aBritish exclusive. The point I was making about the innovative nature of American society and institutions obviously rests on more than a T-shirt.

Well, the larger point may rest on more, but the specific column is planted firmly atop that anecdotal t-shirt. And it was still an anecdote I found...questionable.

So I tracked down this guy--to whom, let us remember, Friedman personally pointed as a justification for the anecdote upon which Sunday's column was predicated--and sent him an email, and asked (1) if he is or was unemployed and, (2) if he's made a bundle of money off his shirts. (Also (3), if he's an American, which he is--Friedman got that much right.)

His name is Gary Young, and he was gracious enough to respond promptly:

Wow! So that WAS my shirt Friedman was talking about. I had seen the article and laughed...

To answer your questions:

1. No, I didn't lose my job YET. My department has been told month after month for the last 6 months that we'd be next in line to be offshored. Several peers at my work have had their jobs sent to India, and my partner had his job offshored.

2. Have I made all kinds of money? This is where I laughed the hardest. I've made about $10 profit total.

So there you have it. At the risk of beating a dead horse, I'll say i

I just read about a guy in America who lost his job to India and he made a T-shirt that said, `I lost my job to India and all I got was this [lousy] T-shirt.' And he made all kinds of money." Only in America, she said, shaking her head, would someone figure out how to profit from his own unemployment. And that, she insisted, was the reason America need not fear outsourcing to India: America is so much more innovative a place than any other country.

Friedman bloviates further, using the T-shirt anecdote to tout American superior innovation that renders these outsourced job losses as trivial.

But once again, the reality detached scribe is exposed again. This time, famed progressive cartoonist Tom Tomorrow got the straight dope on Friedman's "Americans profiting from their unemployment" spiel. It turns out, that the savvy entrepreneur highlighted in Friedman's piece is neither American nor unemployed.

Then, Friedman fired off a missive to the skeptical cartoonist in defense of his corporatist claptrap:

First, all one has to do is Google that phrase and you will discover that it is not only a British Web site offeringthis t-shirt for sale, but that a U.S.-based Web site, indeed one located in Palo Alto where so many jobs have been lost, has been selling the same T-shirt for some time. It is the online design-your-own t-shirt and apparel store, Zazzle.com

Mr. Tomorrow treaded on and located the enterprising zazzle.com proprietor, eager to discover if his tech career unemployment had led to new found riches. Here is how Mr. Gary Young answered the query:

Wow! So that WAS my shirt Friedman was talking about. I had seen the article and laughed...

1. No, I didn't lose my job YET. My department has been told month after month for the last 6 months that we'd be next in line to be offshored. Several peers at my work have had their jobs sent to India, and my partner had his job offshored.

2. Have I made all kinds of money? This is where I laughed the hardest. I've made about $10 profit total.

I just read about a guy in America who lost his job to India and he made a T-shirt that said, `I lost my job to India and all I got was this [lousy] T-shirt.' And he made all kinds of money." Only in America, she said, shaking her head, would someone figure out how to profit from his own unemployment. And that, she insisted, was the reason America need not fear outsourcing to India: America is so much more innovative a place than any other country.

Friedman bloviates further, using the T-shirt anecdote to tout American superior innovation that renders these outsourced job losses as trivial.

But once again, the reality detached scribe is exposed again. This time, famed progressive cartoonist Tom Tomorrow got the straight dope on Friedman's "Americans profiting from their unemployment" spiel. It turns out, that the savvy entrepreneur highlighted in Friedman's piece is neither American nor unemployed.

Then, Friedman fired off a missive to the skeptical cartoonist in defense of his corporatist claptrap:

First, all one has to do is Google that phrase and you will discover that it is not only a British Web site offeringthis t-shirt for sale, but that a U.S.-based Web site, indeed one located in Palo Alto where so many jobs have been lost, has been selling the same T-shirt for some time. It is the online design-your-own t-shirt and apparel store, Zazzle.com

Mr. Tomorrow treaded on and located the enterprising zazzle.com proprietor, eager to discover if his tech career unemployment had led to new found riches. Here is how Mr. Gary Young answered the query:

Wow! So that WAS my shirt Friedman was talking about. I had seen the article and laughed...

1. No, I didn't lose my job YET. My department has been told month after month for the last 6 months that we'd be next in line to be offshored. Several peers at my work have had their jobs sent to India, and my partner had his job offshored.

2. Have I made all kinds of money? This is where I laughed the hardest. I've made about $10 profit total.

I just read about a guy in America who lost his job to India and he made a T-shirt that said, `I lost my job to India and all I got was this [lousy] T-shirt.' And he made all kinds of money." Only in America, she said, shaking her head, would someone figure out how to profit from his own unemployment. And that, she insisted, was the reason America need not fear outsourcing to India: America is so much more innovative a place than any other country.

Friedman bloviates further, using the T-shirt anecdote to tout American superior innovation that renders these outsourced job losses as trivial.

But once again, the reality detached scribe is exposed again. This time, famed progressive cartoonist Tom Tomorrow got the straight dope on Friedman's "Americans profiting from their unemployment" spiel. It turns out, that the savvy entrepreneur highlighted in Friedman's piece is neither American nor unemployed.

Then, Friedman fired off a missive to the skeptical cartoonist in defense of his corporatist claptrap:

First, all one has to do is Google that phrase and you will discover that it is not only a British Web site offeringthis t-shirt for sale, but that a U.S.-based Web site, indeed one located in Palo Alto where so many jobs have been lost, has been selling the same T-shirt for some time. It is the online design-your-own t-shirt and apparel store, Zazzle.com

Mr. Tomorrow treaded on and located the enterprising zazzle.com proprietor, eager to discover if his tech career unemployment had led to new found riches. Here is how Mr. Gary Young answered the query:

Wow! So that WAS my shirt Friedman was talking about. I had seen the article and laughed...

1. No, I didn't lose my job YET. My department has been told month after month for the last 6 months that we'd be next in line to be offshored. Several peers at my work have had their jobs sent to India, and my partner had his job offshored.

2. Have I made all kinds of money? This is where I laughed the hardest. I've made about $10 profit total.

Tom Tomorrow strikes again. The creator of "This Modern World" responds to Friedman's rose-colored view of things. Go here Friedman points to a guy who started selling t-shirts after he was outsourced, thereby proving that creative Americans will pull through. Tom points out that "selling novelty t-shirts is not a replacement for a decent paying job with health benefits."

Check Out This Modern World for some more commentary on this...

Part of the issue hinges on whether the US jobs of the companies mentioned are being affected.

One person has family who work in one of the US Carrier plants. That plant is closing and the work is being transferred to three other US based Carrier plants, and one in Mexico. The one that is closing is a Union plant. The other ones... aren't.

So, the company is doing its best to screw the US workers for as much as it can. Carrier also have (who'd have thought) non US plants. just because the brand name is American, it doesn't mean that any of the workers who made/packed that product are in the US.

Z.

To have a little fun with the whole "politically damaging photographs on the internet" bit, Tom Tomorrow cooked up one of Dubya having a good ol' time doing some table-top dancing during a party at Yale

Strictly in good fun, of course (and to illustrate the point)...

Nader's critique is, essentially, that there is a cancer on the body politic--and he's right about that. The problem in the year 2004 is that the body politic is also suffering from multiple wounds and blunt force trauma, we're in the emergency room and it's a damn mess and there's blood everywhere and the doctors are working furiously but it's anybody's guess how things are gonna turn out. We are in triage, and we have to deal with the immediate problems, or the long-term ones won't matter anyway.

The reason is is that much of our bias, one way or another, has come from the media. Yes, much of it can be based on facts, but I think we'd all be lying to ourselves considering the amount of biased media out there.

The media only has a small amount of time to cover the country, world, infotainment, sports, etc. (Headline News notwithstanding), so there has to be some limitations to what editorial spectrum they present. Most of the time, it's middle of the road/conservative. When Noam Chomsky has a talk show, then we can argue about the extent of liberal bias in the media.

I think it was a Tom Tomorrow comic that had the media in pseudo-heated debate about the first Gulf War. Ahh yes, here they are:

Equating non-equivalence, and arguing from an initial fallacy (I'm sure there are real rhetorical terms for those, but I'm too lazy to look them up; not lazy enough to read those comics, though!)

The reason is is that much of our bias, one way or another, has come from the media. Yes, much of it can be based on facts, but I think we'd all be lying to ourselves considering the amount of biased media out there.

The media only has a small amount of time to cover the country, world, infotainment, sports, etc. (Headline News notwithstanding), so there has to be some limitations to what editorial spectrum they present. Most of the time, it's middle of the road/conservative. When Noam Chomsky has a talk show, then we can argue about the extent of liberal bias in the media.

I think it was a Tom Tomorrow comic that had the media in pseudo-heated debate about the first Gulf War. Ahh yes, here they are:

Equating non-equivalence, and arguing from an initial fallacy (I'm sure there are real rhetorical terms for those, but I'm too lazy to look them up; not lazy enough to read those comics, though!)

For those Fox News viewers out there...

The majority of Sept 11 Hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, there are demonstable links between Saudi Arabia and Al Qaeda, but very few obvious links between Iraq and Al Qaeda...

However to quote the Travel Journal of Bob Harris reporting from Bali...

"Speaking of which, I just saw five minutes of Fox News Channel, which is on the cable feed along with tourist-friendly news channels from England, Australia, France, Japan, and Germany.

Only on the American channel: a curvy blonde in a leather skirt and go-go boots was tossing GOP-daily-fax questions to a uniformed Army general, whose responses were given neither thought nor rebuttal.

I have yet to see anything comparably stupid in any industrialized democracy, anywhere on the planet. This is much closer to what state-run media look like, although few put quite the same premium on hot chicks."

Add to that the research that showed that people who relied on Fox News were more likely to be wrong about current affairs and America is looking worse and worse... And before anyone starts I live in America and like it... mostly.

Z.

Why would Johnny have to learn how to push buttons at the voting booth? Or do you mean that it'd be smart for him to affirm his vote for Republican?

Underground Comics:
Daniel Clowes
------------
Ghost World (The Comic)
David Boring
20th Century Eightball
------------

Robert Crumb
------------
Book of Mr. Natural
The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat
Complete Crumb (several volumes)
------------

Harvey Pekar
------------
American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar
The New American Splendor Anthology
Our Cancer Year
------------

Maus: A Survivor's Tale (by Art Spiegelman)

Comic Culture:
Ghost World (the Terry Zwigoff movie based on the Daniel Clowes comic of the same name)
Crumb (a biography of underground comic artist Robert Crumb)
American Splendor (a biography of underground comic artist Harvey Pekar)

Online Comics:
Dilbert
Calvin and Hobbes
Ziggy
Sexy Losers (hentai parodies, Not Safe For Work)
This Modern World ("Fair and Balanced" political cartoons with a clear liberal slant)
The Editorial Cartoons of Clay Bennett (2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist)
Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonists Index (2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist)

Anyone who knows of more good, free online comics links, or of some little know starving underground artists with godlike skills, feel free to add to this list! (note: excessive use of adjectives due to attempt of avoidance of the overwhelmingly troublesome, inflammatory, odious, objectionable, innefective, senseless, inappropriate, obtuse, antisocial, disjunctive, annoying, obnoxious, irritating, monotonous, wearisome, dull, dispirited, lackluster, uninspired, babble bubble bobble, puzzling, bewildering, headache-inducing, useless, stupid, lame slashdot usefulness filter.)

Both Todd Allen and Scott McCloud have so far overlooked the potential for using web-based syndication (RSS, SOAP, etc.) and weblogs as an important, rapidly growing method for promoting comics.

Almost all major weblogs and newspapers feature an RSS feed nowadays, but they are also important for online comic strips too. Eight of the ten most popular RSS feeds read by LiveJournal users are for comic strips, with a "scraped" feed of Calvin in Hobbes coming in as the most popular feed. Currently, it only has around 3,000 readers, but if you start adding in everyone else out there reading Calvin & Hobbes' RSS feed with some other type of reader, you're talking about a serious, rapidly growing number of recurring readers -- the kind of people most likely to buy merchandise or donate to help support their favorite artists.

Web-based syndication can be a good thing for comic creators. Tom Tomorrow gains extra readers for his weblog and his cartoons with his RSS feed, and there are several comic strip artists out there using weblogs to post their latest strips, interact with their fans, promote new merchandise, and, yes, automatically create syndicated feeds.

Because tools like Syndirella or Cheesegrater are making it easier for people to scrape content off of websites, it's safe to say that we are in the early stages of a "Napsterization" of comics on the Internet.

This could be bad news for the big syndicates and even for the publishers, but it could be great news for the artists. Yes, they might have to give their work away for free, but they can also control how their work is syndicated, too. They can decide for themselves what their business model will be and promote it using their own weblogs, with their own syndicated feed.

All they need is an online tip jar...

It is free to read. You have to sit through a very short ad to get a free one day pass.

This site is the only one that I will go through a registration process or an advertisement to view. Mostly for This Modern World

The article itself on Salon.com is just an overview. No big loss if you don't read it. However, I think it is interesting that the independent press seems to share the same values about open source that most of the people here seem to have.

The use of "scintilla" is what really sells this one.

like this, this, this, or this.

These kinds of attitudes, if not confronted, really could develop into something similar. Yes, America is different, but it's terrifying to see how many people are willing to give up critical rights (and critical thinking) just to drop their odds of getting hurt by terrorists from 0.005% to 0.004%.

According to a recent article in Newsweek, Ashcroft really considered widespread suspension of habeas corpus.

To answer your question:
Apparently you will never be an entrepeneur or business exec in modern america because you don't have that incredibly strong desire to harvest as much money from as many people as you possibly can no matter the cost (unless it gets to blatantly illegal, maybe not even then though) for as long as possible. If you had the ganas, it not be hard to understand why things are the way they are here in This Modern World

You might find these other Projects at the Office of Information Awareness worth a look. Satire cartoonist Tom Tomorrow mentions them in two very funny and recent comics, here and here

Tom Tomorrow spells it out

Saturday, August 24, 2002

Fair and balanced

A little while back, I linked to this LA Times op-ed by Jonathan Turley discussing John Ashcroft's plans to build internment camps for American citizens, a plan which, according to Turley, had been "disclosed...but little publicized."

Well, this blogging thing is kind of hit and run, and of course I don't have the resources to fact check the LA Times. But a few readers wrote in puzzled at their inability to find anything further on the topic via Google. I have occasional access to Lexis and I've had it in the back of my mind to do more research, but as it turns out, a conservative blogger whose site is named, straightforwardly, Right Wing News, is on the case (found via Instapundit). And leaving aside ideological differences, this one does appear to be, well, pretty much nonsense. (Afterthought: I mean the concentration camp rhetoric here, not Turley's larger point about unconstitutionally detaining American citizens, which any regular reader of this blog knows I've been ranting about for quite some time.)

This writer, John Hawkins, contacted Turley directly, and as it turns out, Turley's entire op-ed was based on this paragraph from an article in the Wall Street Journal:

The White House is considering creating a high-level committee to decide which prisoners should be denied access to federal courts. The Goose Creek, S.C., facility that houses Mr. Padilla -- mostly empty since it was designated in January to hold foreigners captured in the U.S. and facing military tribunals -- now has a special wing that could be used to jail about 20 U.S. citizens if the government were to deem them enemy combatants, a senior administration official said."

Hawkins goes on to note, I think correctly:

First off, whatever you may think of possibly jailing 20 "enemy combatants" without trial, doing so certainly does not in any way, shape, or form mean you've created a "camp." Furthermore, how does imprisoning 20 men in one Navy brig somehow constitute creating "camps", much less having a "camp plan?" Worse yet, to compare jailing less than two dozen people believed to be connected to terrorist organizations to putting 120,000+ Americans in camps based on their ethnicity goes beyond gross exaggeration into what many people would call deliberate deception.

It seems to me that there's enough really troubling stuff going on right now to keep us all busy wailing and weeping and gnashing our teeth twenty-four-goddamn-seven, without resorting to these kinds of tactics. The Padilla case is horrifying on its own merits, particularly now that it's been revealed that the government has no real evidence against him. An American citizen has been arbitrarily stripped of his rights, on little more than John Ashcroft's say-so. There's no need to gild this particular lilly--the case speaks for itself. (Or at least it should. I don't follow the right-leaning blogosphere closely, so as always I could be wrong(TM), but I haven't seen a lot of outrage over this. In fact, what I see far more often are snarky dismissive put-downs directed toward people who are worried about these self-evident threats to civil liberties. But that's probably another rant.)

At any rate, I don't think it does anyone any good to, basically, make shit up out of thin air. It only undermines your case, gives people cause to write you off as a goofball. If anyone has any actual information here, any real evidence of Ashcroft's plans to start building concentration camps, please feel free to let me know. But I'm not interested in paranoid fantasies with no basis in reality. Reality is scary enough by itself these days.

posted by Tom Tomorrow at 10:26 AM| link

I believe that things go to far (in the eyes of the law) once you start taking an action to carry out your threats.

Buying a gun, getting the floorplans to the building, etc would be enoughto lock you up under consipirsy charges. Mearly saying you'd like to isn't enough.

Hey, perhaps losing the 1st Am. isn't so bad if we get to throw Ann Coulter in jail!

P.S.: This is a joke. It's not worth it, not even for such a noble cause.

For more on this subject, read Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, which explains how the seven media filters make sure nothing nasty (like, for instance, the truth) reaches the public. It's a quite heavy book to read, but very interesting.

Also, for brilliant US political satire comics, something I discovered yesterday: This Modern World, by Tom Tomorrow. (I don't think the penguin is related to Linux though.)

Aiigh! This suddenly reminds me (particularly that juicy, slurpy opening quotation) of those old '50s propaganda items like Appreciate America, where "patriotism" and "being a good American" (whatever that means) are automatically equated with "doing your part" (not incidentally what everyone else is doing).

So let's all be good Americans, well, those of us who are Americans (--points finger--), and spy on our neighbours, secure our piece of cyberspace, and whatever else our fearless leader says we should do, because then those damn Commi^H^H^H^H^Hterrorists won't be able to eat us all up as we sleep in our (all-American) beds at night.

Theme music: "Exhuming McCarthy," REM, Document

That's pretty funny. It's also pretty funny that most of us paying homage to Office Space are doing so from a cubicle somewhere in corporate IT land.

It reminds me of a theory put forward by Tom Tomorrow about Dilbert.

In this op-ed piece, he suggests "that fellow cartoonist Scott Adams might actually be "providing a valuable service for all those idiotic bosses" he parodies in his syndicated strip, Dilbert -- "by giving their employees a safety valve that's just edgy enough to ring true, without inspiring anyone to actually question the fundamental assumptions of corporate America."

It's a compelling idea that could apply to Office Space just as well.