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Translation: In a Democrat controlled congress the Democrats could not convince their own people to reject this bill. Thus the bill passed with the help of some Democrats voting for this bill.

My favorite cartoon about the Gonzales' "I don't recall" stuff.

Well said. Indeed, Haliburton has no interest above protecting us, the American people. If they choose to move their top execs to a country with no extradition treaty with the U.S., it is certainly because they wish to save us, the taxpayers, the unnecessary expense of a silly investigation that could only lead to the further unnecessary expense of incarcerating them. We should thank them for not wanting us to worry our pretty little heads about such nasty things.

Really, I can almost visualize you as a doe-eyed character in This Modern World .

Who wants to bet that Dick Cheney isn't living in Dubai within a year after he leaves office (or maybe even before)?

That's on page 262 of the book. On the next page, it states that there were 636 articles about global warming in the popular press in the last 14 years, and that 53% of those articles expressed doubt about global warming.

"We'll take an objective look at both sides of the issue."

If clinton would have been on the ball instead of thinking with his balls, bin laden would have been caught as he had several chances to get him and chose not to.

Haha, Tom Tomorrow has a good comic strip about this:
http://www.workingforchange.com/webgraphics/WFC/TM W09-20-06.jpg

how the CA special emissions work. What if you have a car you've bought outside the state.

The CA "special" emissions work largely by becoming the de facto standard, since their emissions standards get adopted by several other states, not just California. Roughly 25% of the cars made meet whatever the Californians required at the time it was made, because to put it simply, it would cost more to design separate Civic, California Editions and Civic, Everyone Else Editions, except when the cost of manufacture is greater than the cost of designing a completely separate poorer-mileage version of the car.

Interesting fact I found looking this stuff up: Only California can make more-stringent emissions requirements (see paragraph 6 about "why should anyone care"). No state can require less pollution than California requires.

And yes, if you want to register a car in California it has to pass California's tests. Or you pay more. If your chips don't make the exhaust exceed their smog levels or whatever they're checking for these days, then I'm pretty sure that they won't make you change them. Of course, you could always just forget to mention them ;)

You must be blissfully unaware of the past 5-6 years of administration appointees. I almost envy you. Nearly ALL appointees over any sort of regulatory watchdog, scientific fact-finding, or pork-laden government spending bureau of the government has been an industry lobbyist of some sort who is assured to make sure that said industry (which donates lots of money to the Republicans) will make out like a bandit (literally) on the taxpayer's dime or taint and all evidence that gets in the way of said industry's profits.

Read more here:
Bush Has Appointed Over 100 Lobbyists as 'Regulators'
WhiteHouseForSale.org | Contributors and Paybacks Articles
Evidence that this has been a pattern of behavior as far back as when he was governor.
Some info on two of the officials reviewing the Dubai Ports World deal
An even longer list of crony appointees

The Bush administration is one of the more shameful examples of cronyism in modern US history. The term "conflict of interest" doesn't begin to cover it. Then, when you can't find a person with experience as an industry shill, you can always go to political advocates with no experience in the field (but solid Bush support):

Michael Brown's two political appointees deputees in FEMA
A petition for Bush to make political appointments with a list of 6 good examples
The Hertiage Foundation even endorsed making political appointees over experienced civil servants in 2001! ...No really, 7 ridiculous arguments straight from the horse's mouth! (How's FEMA workin' out there, HF?)
Why, just look how many Heritage Foundation flacks are now in the administration.

Any wonder why the DHS hasn't done hardly anything useful, why FEMA had someone with no emergency relief experience installed as it's head, why scientists are abandoning NASA, the EPA, the CDC, etc. in droves, and why hundreds of IRS agents that audit capital gains and estate taxes have been downsized? It's government with the wheels taken off -- oriented explicitly to do nothing but enrich special interests by people who have publicly stated that that's all they believe the government exists to do in the first place.

What, you didn't think they meant that they'd try to STOP it when they said that, did you? Yeah, I was fooled too, but not anymore. It's time we get people back in power who believe that the government is meant to serve the people. People who believe that it's part of the solution and not part of the problem. Otherwise, as we've seen, the temptation to just exploit "the problem" is just too much.

...switch providers. "Hang up on NSA accomplices AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon Working Assets is the only telephone company participating in the ACLU's lawsuit against the National Security Agency. We believe that the warrantless monitoring of phone conversations ordered by the Bush administration is illegal and unacceptable. We oppose the sale of domestic calling records to the NSA by AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon." Know of another company offering free G.W. Bush doormats for new subscribers? http://www.workingforchange.com/webgraphics/nsa05- 15-06.html

Marching Orders? Rush gives Marching orders, NPR just tries to tell the news. They have been on such a tight leash by the conservatives that dole out their funding even independant studies show they are more likely to be biased against liberal views than for them.

But really that is beside the point. If anything, it's quaint that NPR is putting up a story about the subgenius movement. It shows that it is just entering the radar of the American conciousness. Last night they had a story explaining to everyone what a Chav was and now this. Wow.

I don't think Rush would cover either of these topics. For one, he is a non-ironic Chav Two, he is a non-ironic subgenius and three he's an ironic conservative. He's definitely deep undercover. http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=1 9635/

An insightful comic strip about the bad bill:
http://www.workingforchange.com/webgraphics/WFC/sp 052206.gif

http://www.workingforchange.com/webgraphics/WFC/TM W05-17-06.jpg

Interesting you should use that bit of nonsense. Someone pointed out the fallacy in that excuse rather well:

http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=2 0323

After all, if the Dubya camp are innocent, WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?

What's it going to take, them coming on TV and just announcing it?

Nah, even that won't shake shake the faith of hardcore Bushites. Maybe if he nuked Iowa? http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=1 9635

Yea innocent people should have nothing to hide!

http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=2 0323

... there are a legion of Guys With Web Sites to keep them honest!

Molly Ivans seems to think democracy died in Texas, in 2002. There are signs it died ealier.

You thought wrong.

Why does their maternity matter?

I think this this comic sums it up well.

Without wanting to be flame-bait, the Republican part engages in what I call "henry ford" freedom:
You can have any freedom you want, as long as it's Republican

oh no, the democrats dont do this at all **cough cough** gun ban **cough cough**

Or how does this strike you?

Companies are out to make a profit not a political statement.

Companies are out to do what their owners want them to do. Some, such as Patagonia, or Working Assets, do make political statements because their owner(s) want them to. Others, such as Nike have learned (been taught, actually) the economic advantages of corporate responsibility (and disadvantages of a lack thereof).

Investors, i.e., the shareholders, want a monetary return, not a political return on their investment. As an investor in Cisco I would sell immediately if I knew Cisco was going to quit selling to one of the largest markets in existence because they were going to make a political statment

Other investors want many things, some of which you might not care about. The way to find out what percentage of them want a certain thing is to poll them on it. Blocking such a poll based on the opinions of management is ridiculous. Management works for the owners.

Only if all companies did this would that then make an impact. (And yes, I know you have to start somewhere, but why don't you start with the people in China first?)

Because I don't own shares in the people of China.

Reminds me of the last pane of a recent This Modern World. Remember folks, Michael Moore is *not* the left's political equivalent of Ann Coulter.

heh... liberal bias

Geek Tweek!

Are you not aware, for example, that Bush completely blew Clinton's surplus and his balanced budget, the first time the budget was balanced for thirty years, and your supposedly conservative president just threw it away for a cheap political stunt, that tax cut you're so enamored of?

Or that No Child Left Behind is mind-boggingly underfunded and ineffective?

Or that Bush lies? Like, never tells the truth? Ever? Like, not once?

Do you choose not to believe this information, or have you just not heard about it?

And I'm just touching on a few of the more minor issues with Bush and his administration. Let's not even mention the total fuckup in Iraq, which surely you can't be as ignorant about as you claim. You'll excuse me if I don't believe you when you say you're not voting for Bush. You have no idea why you shouldn't vote for Bush. You're either not interested enough to educate yourself properly on the issues, or you're a dyed-in-the-wool Republican pretending to be independent to convince others that Dubya is truly god, as he himself believes. If you're the former, get a clue and turn off CNN (the Convservative News Network) and Faux News. If you're the latter, then just fuck off.

(1) ... The Kerry campaign trying to stop the broadcast through legal and procedural actions. How does this enhance free speech?

Interesting issue. Are there any limits on the freedom of a broadcaster? Just ask Howard Stern!

A TV station or a radio station uses a public resource, the RF spectrum, essentially for free. That's a big government subsidy (think how much cell phone providers pay for a few MHz of spectrum.). Not only that, but the FCC polices the spectrum -- if I try to set up a 50KW RF amp and broadcast in any Sinclair licensed frequency/area, the FCC will come down on me like a ton of bricks, shut me down and throw me in jail.

In return for exclusive use of protected spectrum, broadcasters agree to certain conditions. For a long time they had no choice, but now there's cable, and satellite, neither of which has exclusive use of a public resource, and on those media broadcasters are much more free to define content (Howard Stern will be moving to satellite radio, and I've heard that Michael Moore is trying to present a cable pay per view event before Nov 2).

What are the FCC conditions? Here's the FCC's brief description. In particular there's the FCC Fairness Doctrine and the Equal Time rule. I think a fair application of equal time might be to broadcast the anti- Kerry movie one night, and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 in the same timeslot the next night. Somehow I doubt Sinclair Broadcasting is devoted enough to free speech to do that.

Actually, your free speech question may be a red herring here. Sinclair doesn't have a great track record on free speech. Last May, Sinclair censored Ted Koppel's Nightline broadcast of the names of our Iraq war dead. Check out this story quoting John McCain:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) sent a letter to the president and CEO of Sinclair Broadcast Group, David Smith, about the broadcaster's decision to pre-empt Friday night's broadcast of "Nightline.

"I write to strongly protest your decision to instruct Sinclair's ABC affiliates to preempt this evening's Nightline program. I find deeply offensive Sinclair's objection to Nightline's intention to broadcast the names and photographs of Americans who gave their lives in service to our country in Iraq," McCain wrote.

"I supported the President's decision to go to war in Iraq, and remain a strong supporter of that decision," McCain continued.

"But every American has a responsibility to understand fully the terrible costs of war and the extraordinary sacrifices it requires of those brave men and women who volunteer to defend the rest of us; lest we ever forget or grow insensitive to how grave a decision it is for our government to order Americans into combat," he wrote.

. . .

"It is, in short, sir, unpatriotic. I hope it meets with the public opprobrium it most certainly deserves," he concluded.

My conclusion: these Sinclair folks are hardly paragons of free speech.

(2) I would suggest you see the broadcast before protesting. Maybe it isn't what you think it is -- who knows?

Great idea! Will you babysit my kids while I'm doing that? I'm willing to let the marketplace decide this issue too. Fahrenheit 9/11 was a for-profit venture that has earned somewhere in the neighborhood of $250,000,000. I'd say th

Dude with normal happy life:
I like Cheney.

Liberal Underworld:
Hiss hiss !!! spit growl!!!


Nah, you just like Dick...
But who doesn't? He's just like us!

If people dislike Clinton because he dodged the draft, then how come they don't dislike Bush?
I mean, he got his father to pull some strings, so he got out of going to Vietnam...

I got a young man named George W. Bush into the Texas Air Guard - and I'm ashamed

Not necessarily. If 8-10% or 5-30% of cluster-bomblets lie unexploded in schoolyards in the mid east, it doesn't matter that much to the military so long as the 60% that exploded killed whomever they were trying to drop them on.

Same probably goes for ICBMs. It doesn't as much how many fail, as much as how many happen to work.

Bush is about the only person who can either over rule or remove O'Keefe and Bush has a history of supporting people he appoints. Kerry flip flops so much that whatever he says he would do about Hubble if he were President doesn't carry much weight in my mind.

You mean the newspaper owned by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the man who was recently coronated on Capitol Hill [entertaining account] in the presence of a number of Congressmen?

Can you spot the double taxation?

I don't think you need to look any further than Darleen Druyen to find an example where your statement doesn't hold water. An Air Force civil servent she steered a huge pork laden contract for tankers to Boeing and then took a high paying job at.... Boeing. The only reason she was busted was because independent watch dogs and people with integrity like John McCain hounded this deal relentlessly. The Bush administration wouldn't have said a thing.

Or you could look at the Medicare "reform" bill where the Medicare administrator was actively suppressing the bill's true cost to get it passed while at the same time he was job shopping, with Bush administration consent, with the health care companies set to make a windfall when the bill passed. As soon as it did the Bush administration had to revise steeply up the true cost by something like a hundred billion dollars.

As long as there is a revolving door between government service and government contractors the procurement system is extremely vulnerable to corruption. The obvious Halliburton example is Cheney who as Secretary of Defense, improved the procurement prospects for Halliburton and KBR and then took a job as CEO. Now he is VP and can help them some more especially by stirring up a war in Iraq where they are making windfalls on the logistics and oil field service contracts. When he retires as VP he can go back to Halliburton, or a place like it, where they will hand him a bucket full of stock options for his previous service all on the up and up. George H.W.Bush does something similar with the Carlisle Group, one of Saudi Arabia's major defense contractors. He gives short speeches in return for 6 figure paychecks.

You are correct KBR has been feeding at the Army's trough for so long that its not like Cheney started it. They were doing most of the same things in Vietnam when they were Brown and Root. They are permanently wired for all Army contracts and are so politically and militarily connected in both parties its unlikely to change, though the Democrats have developed a reason to change their support for them in the future thanks to Cheney and Iraq.

It does smack of perpetual corruption but so does most of the Federal government whether it be under Democrat or Republican control.

Have you ever listened to NPR? Or do you just regurgitate what FOX News tells you? Because that's really a source of non-biased coverage. You know, just because people keep saying the media is liberal doesn't make it true.

NPR is probably one of the more interesting news agencies out there. You'll here stories there that you won't hear anywhere else. Not because of a political stance, but because they are not trying to get ratings to get advertisers. There stories are much more interesting for those with half a brain.

Besides, the current administration deserves as much heat as can be brought on them. They've gotten a very easy ride from this supposed liberal media.

The Halloween installment of This Modern World from 2003 mentions this frightening topic. In case anyone here didn't see it, here's the link.

You're right: what's the point of ridding a country from a vicious dictator who (1) brutalizes his own population, (2) destroys the environment, (3) instigates war and (4) supports terrorism unless you actually get some financial benefit from it?!?

(1) Agreed. (2) Not sure. (3) Yes, but with US support on both sides (Iran-Iraq war). (4) False.

1983 HANDSHAKE #1
http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=1 4912

2003 HANDSHAKE #2
http://www.thememoryhole.org/pol/us-and-uz.htm

Strange choice, too. Calls to mind this cartoon, to say nothing of the symbolism inherent in the Matrix trilogy. Why do they want to voulentarily attract such negative associations?

Didn't you notice the new subpoenaless powers just given to federal authorities in December?

Do you have any idea how much power has been taken away from the Judiciary in the past three years, and been given to the Executive branch?

Have you not noticed the new redistricting, combining Dem districts, and splitting Repub districts? Greatly reducing Dem numbers in Congress? The normal 10-year (agreed) redistricting was re-redistricted after elections that gave Repubs control -- it's a Tom DeLay program. One redistricted precinct in PA was actually shaped like a finger pointing at the home of a Dem congressman. Regardless of your views, do you think a monopoly is the best system? Depending on one source for your food/car/job/news/govt/etc? Because that's where we're going now at breakneck speed, Bucko.

Are you not aware that Gen. Tommy Franks recently said that in the case of another major attack, the Constitution may have to be suspended. So who decides? Hasn't America been through some pretty tough times without suspending the Constitution? Do you have any idea what all of this really means?! Surely you haven't actually thought this through.

There has recently been historic undermining of the US Constitution, intentionally promulgated by the ruling Party, which is bringing us to dictatorship.

You can't cover this up with charges of "paranoia".

I know, Halloween was last week. Its still funny.
This Modern World Comic.

Here's the most recent This Modern World comic by Tom Tomorrow for those of you who are into biting political humor....

This Modern World comic for 10.28.03

How do you like my Halloween Costume?

Lead by none other than Martin Luther King III.
http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/petition. cfm?itemid=14993

deathcow

Personaly though, I think only people who care enough about politics to actualy know what's really going on should vote. I think people who vote just because someone told them they should are the most likly people to vote down party lines. But if you must put "Go and VOTE" on a peice of paper, you could at least say what canidate to vote for. (If it is some wacky independent it actualy might become a legitimate flash mob, sorta, although it wouldn't confuse people untill they see that on one day, at one location, canidate x, got more votes than he did in his previous three attempts at office. Just please, make sure it's someone you wouldn't mind if he got elected.

On second thought, this is a very BAD idea, we don't want to tamper with the elections. It's already been done.

ActForChange Petition: Stop the Florida-tion of the 2004 Election

Sponsored by Martin Luther King III and Greg Palast (author of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy") this petition calls for a halt to computerizing the elctions until the process is shown to be resistant to manipulation, fraud, and racial bias.

Read some of Palast's book (pertinent chapters available on his website) for the hardest-hitting investigation into the 2000 Florida elections. Quite the eye opener as to how corrupt the system, irregardless of who won, actually is. The most shocking part, however, is that the main stream press, still to this day, has never picked up on any of his findings.

Us voters, Republican, Democrat or otherwise, have a responsibilty to see that our democratic process is never again misused so horribly.

The Bush Admin proposed to have no overtime pay for even those contractors who get it now -- since most software developers make over a certain threshold of money per year.

For all others, they propose to let employers substitute comp time, and they have a year to make good on it. If they go under or you leave a job, you get nothing, and there's no enforcement.

Check out this url or do a search on Bush and overtime.

act for change

The Bush administration has proposed changing federal overtime rules and eroding the 40-hour workweekâ"reducing overtime protections and cutting the pay of hundreds of thousands of America's workers.

With a failing economy, millions out of work and staggering health care and prescription drug costs, this is a burden America's workers should NOT have to bear. The overtime rules protect workers from bosses who would impose unbearably long hours if they didn't have to pay extra for overtime work. Many workers would have less predictable work schedules because of the increased demand for overtime work.

Unfortunately, the Dems are dead, and there's no one else to save the country from our beloved Schutzstaffel.

I think it sounds great, if total ananomity is certain (the US gov't may not like that considering the recent directions its taking... heh). On the other hand, perhaps an optional version with some security features would be nice, such as an on-card pin number to frustrate a thief/mugger.

No kidding.

If you're gonna be virtually protesting, at least virtually protest something real by quickly and easily emailing your representatives on actual issues that affect real human lives.

No kidding. At LEAST become an "armchair activist" -- you can attempt to change the status quo from the comfort of your computer desk!

Working for Change lets you e-mail the appropriate elected officials for your area. It's easy -- they provide a pre-written, customizable e-mail that you sign. Click send, and it automatically goes to your appropriate representatives. It also attaches your appropriate information (name, address, etc) so they can determine that you're actually a constituant (which is very important to elected officials).

Usually, you'll get a snail-mail reply from the people you write to. It's kinda nice to get something in the mail besides bills, AND feel like you're helping a cause at the same time...

That said....

So when's a Slashdot reader gonna run for office?!? Unfortunately, I'm not quite old enough to run for President yet -- you have to be 35 and I'm about a decade short...