Jenner is dreaming of a universal tax that pays for everyone's music consumption. It's always the musician's dream that everyone would pay to keep them making music. For thousands of years we worked that way, either with everyone making music that we all passed around as folk music and dancing, or priests collecting sacrifices to keep chanting, or kings collecting taxes to commission composers, or any/all of those. The past few centuries we specialized musicians who traded in music, selling composition or performance either per transaction, or on retainer/salary. During that whole time, most people shared music by performing it ourselves, in our homes, at our celebrations, in the shower, whistling while working. Even new, popular songs.
We changed the format when we could record music, first on paper as instructions for playing ("sheet music" for people, then "piano rolls" for machines, eventually "records", "tapes", etc). The distributor of the music, usually a "record label", controlled the trade and made most of the money. Musicians got disconnected from the getting paid directly, and the kind of music people consumed got twisted by the kind of music the distributor wanted to sell.
Now the format has just changed again. It's much more difficult for the record labels to control the distribution than ever before, since the days of wandering musicians and people spreading our own folk songs. So the 20th Century music business has lost its main way to get money to pay its musicians, without finding a new way. Musicians, and people who care about them like Jenner, are pining for the older days when everyone contributed to all the musicians, one way or another.
But that way is gone, too. The closest we have in our society of explicit transaction is government taxes. Everyone hates those, especially when they're "unfair". Like when you don't listen to music much or at all, or you're listening to a tiny fraction of the music that others listen to. Or kids have to pay with money they don't have, or parents have to pay for the whole family. There's no fair way to "blanket" whole large groups with a tax like that. And then how does the collected tax get paid to the "musicians"? Per song? Registered to a copyright office? Per cover version? As much payment for a 30 second "song" that no one but the musician ever heard, as for a huge pop hit, or a lifetime of operas? Who's a "musician"?
There's probably a way to collect money for every online transaction. Per-listen streaming. That won't catch replays, and P2P is unpolicable. The current rates of $0.0007 per listen are way too high, so they might cover the losses from the rest, but eventually the rest will be most everything, without the cost or the extra transaction overhead to pay the royalty.
But that model points at the real way. Musicians and their management can control when big publishers publish copies of their songs, like in commercials. Those can get a big licensing fee to reflect their popularity and the value they generate in the publication of the commercial. Same for movies and TV. With all the other payment transactions disappearing, most media will include more music - and more video and other media, for that matter. The unpaid transactions will increase the value of the bigger transactions that can be tracked, so the higher price of the big licensed events will pay for the smaller unlicensed ones, while using the unlicensed one's generated value.
Meanwhile, musicians will sell what they can control. They will sell T-shirts, admission to live concerts and other personal appearances, along with realtime premieres of recordings. They will sell licenses for relicensing in large transactions. Eventually, giving away the music will be the cheapest promotion for the musician.
And even when they don't get paid, they'll still make music. Because making music is a compulsion, not a business. Musicians are notoriously bad at business, especially the best musicians. Maybe if their lives become more like they were before the business was in charge of the music, the music will be back in charge again.
Gannett is also the owner/publisher of the various Military Times newspapers.
Tomorrow, the day before the US Congressional election, all the Military Times individual papers will publish a rare joint editorial calling for the immediate resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defense Secretary. I don't know that those military papers have ever called for a Defense Sect'y to resign before, and surely not the day before an election. That editorial is aligned with its military readers, rather than its Pentagon and military contractor "suppliers" who both support Rumsfeld, and often report to him.
It looks like Gannett is choosing to plug in directly to its consumers to survive the ongoing shakeout of plummeting newspaper circulation. The real question about the "revolution" at major newspapers is not whether these Gannett moves are the beginning, but rather whether they're an exit strategy, and whether to victory.
Nah, my life is pretty meaningful. Just because hitting Slashdot and replying to a message is difficult for your limited capacity doesn't mean it's hard for me.
It's taken me about 10 minutes total in the past day to get you to barf all over your concern for my life. Since replying is so hard for you, then I'm having a little fun with ease, while you're getting all twisted.
What a sad person you are, to spend so much time complaining that I'm spending so much time spitting in your face, when it's nothing to me.
When the news covers stories about Bush going AWOL from his Vietnam-away-from-Vietnam National Guard service through the Summer during Bush's reelection campaign, Republicans call that timing "inappropriate", too - it's election season. Of course Americans don't usually pay attention to any non-entertainment stories until at latest right before we have to make a decision. So journalists have to tell political stories during political campaigns. When else should they do so? And since campaigns now are perpetual, the main activity of even elected politicians, when is the time to reveal ugly stories about politicians "running for election"?
This whole notion that news must come at a time convenient for politicians is insane - the worst attack on our political process other than the bribes at the root of most of the stories. It's like the "Free Speech Zones" Bush has created to make the rest of the country outside the Zones into a "No Freedom Zone". Free speech/press as long as no one can listen.
It's pretty clear that Karl Rove is the ultimate abuser of these political manipulations. On Tuesday, you get to fire your House representative if they're keeping Rove's machine working against us, and hire someone who can answer to you and your neighbors instead of to Bush and Rove. And probably your senator, too. Get a few of your neighbors together, get everyone to vote, and then go to any free speech zone - they're everywhere - and have an adult beverage while talking about how fun revolution can be when it's part of the system, and no one gets hurt.
Haha, trolls play a stupid game thinking I care about bashing you. You're a gay Republican pedophile. There's nothing wrong with being gay, but being a gay Republican is like being a Communist Republican - or maybe like one of those Slave Cabin Republicans we see trotted out to entice Black people once in a while.
It's gay Republican pedophiles like you who give gay people a bad name - in Republicans' eyes. Decent people like me know that the worst part about you gay Republican pedophiles is that you're Republicans.
Sad how you think it's a big deal to post to Slashdot a lot, but you're doing it. I have all kinds of time while busy waiting on other things to post to Slashdot. Especially when I can get gay Republican pedophile trolls like you to show how stupid and self-hating you are.
Come on, lets have some more trollery - it only makes me kick you harder.
Listen to an Anonymous Bushworshipper Coward if you want more "torture, shredded Habeas Corpus, thousands of kidnapped people in CIA prisons around the world, "signing statements" vowing to break the law he just signed, martial law powers, leaving the country only by his permission..."
Slashdot, where ACs, Trolls and TrollMods feast on Flamebait like their own ambrosia.
Now I know where some of those $BILLIONS stolen from the Iraq budget went: into Anonymous Coward terrorbots which just lie to deny Republican TV ads repeating Osama's terrorism, lie to deny Bush and Rumsfeld surrendering to the Taliban in Pakistan, and lie to deny the terrorists running the US from the Bush White House.
Even a 'bot can hate America, and you most certainly do.
What is "the other side" saying? Worse than what Bush and his Republicans are doing?
Let's not have some purely theoretical tautology. Let's hear some notes from the real world that somehow explain how voting to give Bush more power is tolerable, at this late stage of the game, with all Bush has done against America.
As I said, I don't care what terms you use, except how they reveal your hidden biases.
I haven't "staked" you to any "ideology". You say you haven't defended Bush's agenda, yet you attacked the article revealing their agenda with Godwin's Fallacy. The kind of stunt that protects repeat fascist operations. Even if you don't "intend" to defend Bush's agenda, your actual sympathies have you defending them with a trick that your conscience would prohibit, if you were really unbiased.
You are now just projecting your fears about yourself onto me, strawmen. Instead of finally explaining why you'd use the propaganda "leftist" term. Which means nothing as a term, but reveals where you get you propaganda from. It's the language that you speak that reveals the country you're from.
So enough of your developmentally stunted mewlings. You're the one who is so lazy you won't even examine your own bias, when you draw it out in front of everyone. You're the one insisting on doing all these things you complain I'm doing - I expect therefore you'd do all the things you'd accuse "leftists" of doing. You're the one flailing around Godwin's Fallacy as if it were anything but a coverup of nazis, old and new. I've learned nothing from you but your tedious defects. No more free schooling from me - you're on your own. And increasingly so, if the popularity of your brand of propaganda is any indication.
"Leftist" is a term that has no meaning, except it reminds Americans of "leftist" terrorists and militants in "Communist" revolutions from 1940-1990.
It originated in the left side of the French parliament in the 1790s.
Yet you use it, because it has resonance for you. So deeply do you protect your attachment to that propaganda term that you don't even answer why you use it, though that was my question. Instead, you spend time explaining how Republicans "aren't doing us any favors either". The kind of weak criticism, compared to the strong, direct criticism of those you call "leftist", that reveals you as sympathetic to the Republicans. So you answered my question anyway, though you surely didn't expect to.
I'm not surprised you don't vote for Bush. I'm sure you're a "Libertarian". Closet Republicans usually are.
Of course it's a fair analogy. Bush is not the first president with a Congress run by his own party. But together their cooperation is unprecedented.
And Congressmembers and their staff, even when part of an opposition party, also know which passed bills will get vetoes. And then there are the many veto overrides in history - why can't a Republican Congress override Bush's veto? On stemcells, or on torture, or anything else Bush wants but is bad for the country? Terry Schiavo?
It's not nearly as complex as you strive to make it to cover for the lockstep Republican government. The obvious fact is that Bush's Republican government works against the American system of competing Executive/Legislative branches that usually stop the worst abuses of each. Instead, excuses like "it's too hard to stop it" fall to pieces when they don't even try to stop them, but rather race to help.
There are degrees of antichristianity. Jesus' mother Mary is an example of someone far more Christian than antichristian. Bush, by using Jesus' name to break so many of Jesus' rules, by killing, lying, coveting, and so many other sins on such a grand scale, all in Jesus' name, is so antichristian that he is an antichrist. I wouldn't say that Mary was an antichrist, though she was antichristian to some degree, as are all humans, even the human Jesus in the bible stories about him.
Those who are wise should live in the real world, learn from the old stories preserved through hundreds of generations of people living mostly in the real world, and prepare for peace.
Because the truly wise know that preparing for war brings war. Preparing for "World War three" is just another way of working for the antichrists who want to destroy the world. Suiciders, who are going to hell, if perhaps by a scenic route.
And what is this ideology that you're talking about? What does it have to do with the "left"?
I don't care what word you use, except that I appreciate your using "leftist" and "Republicans" as a display of your bias. "Leftist" is a disparaging word used by their opponents, while "Republicans" is their own chosen brand name.
You're repeating the Republican propaganda, even while you "don't think much of Republicans" these days. It's that unthinking cooperation that Republicans depend on.
Except that, while "the lesser of two evils" does mean choosing something still evil, it does mean choosing the lesser. Choosing something not evil (find me one, not just something "even less evil") that lets the greater evil win is choosing to let the greater evil win.
There's a reason people choose the lesser of two evils, even though we all know how that works.
Republicans are authoritarians. That's not "gut instinct", it's "do what you're told". My gut instinct is to kick the authoritarian in the face. Fortunately, my intellect controls my foot.
[JOHN] DEAN: The lead researcher in this field told me, he said, "I look at the numbers of the United States and I see about 23% of the population who are pure right-wing authoritarian followers." They're not going to change. They're going to march over the cliff. [...] they're growing, and they have a tremendous influence on Republican politics
Where are the "trees and hippies" Democrats? That's the Republican message about Democrats. Democrats are as corporate as Republicans, just less fascist corporations, and more labor corporations ("unions"). Trees and hippies don't get any representation, except in Republican emotional messages about Democrats - to treehaters and hippiehaters.
"Leftist" groups vs "Conservative circles". You reveal that you're more inclined to believe the "Conservatives", who are the only ones calling those others "leftists".
So you spit up the gibberish Godwin's Fallacy to keep people from seeing Bush's latest attack on our freedom, which we're discussing in this story.
Hillary Clinton is appearing on only one ballot on Tuesday: reelection as NY senator. Which New Yorkers will probably choose by 2 or 3 to one.
The Democrats elected on "Anybody But Bush" in 2004 aren't so bad. "Anybody But Democrats" gets us more Bush. We do not have the convenience of voting for someone else who will stop Bush.
Though I encourage people who don't like their Democratic candidate to vote for a Libertarian, unless that particular Libertarian is just another closet Republican or even a fascist (plenty are). Mainly because it splits the Republican vote - because Tuesday's actual election is more important than the election reform that is not on the agenda. But also because it increases how obvious is the need in America to get out of the duopoly that lets people inherit power by default.
Until we get to something like Instant Runoff Voting, or abolishing Parties as criminal conspiracies, or replacing them with nonexclusive, noncoordinating mere endorsement mills, we're stuck with the duopoly. We have to play the hand we're dealt, while working to change the dealer.
Bush has vetoed only one bill sent him from his Republican Congress: stemcell research. Which, though extremely popular with Americans, wasn't cleared by a veto override.
So sending more Republicans (and "Democrats" like Lieberman (Lieberman-CT)) to Congress on Tuesday, who will rubberstamp Bush the way they've rubberstamped him for 6 years, is voting more power to Bush. Voting for others who will stop Bush, and make laws that actually protect us from evil dictators like Bush, is the way the US law works.
Slashdot Mirror
Jenner is dreaming of a universal tax that pays for everyone's music consumption. It's always the musician's dream that everyone would pay to keep them making music. For thousands of years we worked that way, either with everyone making music that we all passed around as folk music and dancing, or priests collecting sacrifices to keep chanting, or kings collecting taxes to commission composers, or any/all of those. The past few centuries we specialized musicians who traded in music, selling composition or performance either per transaction, or on retainer/salary. During that whole time, most people shared music by performing it ourselves, in our homes, at our celebrations, in the shower, whistling while working. Even new, popular songs.
We changed the format when we could record music, first on paper as instructions for playing ("sheet music" for people, then "piano rolls" for machines, eventually "records", "tapes", etc). The distributor of the music, usually a "record label", controlled the trade and made most of the money. Musicians got disconnected from the getting paid directly, and the kind of music people consumed got twisted by the kind of music the distributor wanted to sell.
Now the format has just changed again. It's much more difficult for the record labels to control the distribution than ever before, since the days of wandering musicians and people spreading our own folk songs. So the 20th Century music business has lost its main way to get money to pay its musicians, without finding a new way. Musicians, and people who care about them like Jenner, are pining for the older days when everyone contributed to all the musicians, one way or another.
But that way is gone, too. The closest we have in our society of explicit transaction is government taxes. Everyone hates those, especially when they're "unfair". Like when you don't listen to music much or at all, or you're listening to a tiny fraction of the music that others listen to. Or kids have to pay with money they don't have, or parents have to pay for the whole family. There's no fair way to "blanket" whole large groups with a tax like that. And then how does the collected tax get paid to the "musicians"? Per song? Registered to a copyright office? Per cover version? As much payment for a 30 second "song" that no one but the musician ever heard, as for a huge pop hit, or a lifetime of operas? Who's a "musician"?
There's probably a way to collect money for every online transaction. Per-listen streaming. That won't catch replays, and P2P is unpolicable. The current rates of $0.0007 per listen are way too high, so they might cover the losses from the rest, but eventually the rest will be most everything, without the cost or the extra transaction overhead to pay the royalty.
But that model points at the real way. Musicians and their management can control when big publishers publish copies of their songs, like in commercials. Those can get a big licensing fee to reflect their popularity and the value they generate in the publication of the commercial. Same for movies and TV. With all the other payment transactions disappearing, most media will include more music - and more video and other media, for that matter. The unpaid transactions will increase the value of the bigger transactions that can be tracked, so the higher price of the big licensed events will pay for the smaller unlicensed ones, while using the unlicensed one's generated value.
Meanwhile, musicians will sell what they can control. They will sell T-shirts, admission to live concerts and other personal appearances, along with realtime premieres of recordings. They will sell licenses for relicensing in large transactions. Eventually, giving away the music will be the cheapest promotion for the musician.
And even when they don't get paid, they'll still make music. Because making music is a compulsion, not a business. Musicians are notoriously bad at business, especially the best musicians. Maybe if their lives become more like they were before the business was in charge of the music, the music will be back in charge again.
Gannett is also the owner/publisher of the various Military Times newspapers.
Tomorrow, the day before the US Congressional election, all the Military Times individual papers will publish a rare joint editorial calling for the immediate resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defense Secretary. I don't know that those military papers have ever called for a Defense Sect'y to resign before, and surely not the day before an election. That editorial is aligned with its military readers, rather than its Pentagon and military contractor "suppliers" who both support Rumsfeld, and often report to him.
It looks like Gannett is choosing to plug in directly to its consumers to survive the ongoing shakeout of plummeting newspaper circulation. The real question about the "revolution" at major newspapers is not whether these Gannett moves are the beginning, but rather whether they're an exit strategy, and whether to victory.
Nah, my life is pretty meaningful. Just because hitting Slashdot and replying to a message is difficult for your limited capacity doesn't mean it's hard for me.
It's taken me about 10 minutes total in the past day to get you to barf all over your concern for my life. Since replying is so hard for you, then I'm having a little fun with ease, while you're getting all twisted.
What a sad person you are, to spend so much time complaining that I'm spending so much time spitting in your face, when it's nothing to me.
When the news covers stories about Bush going AWOL from his Vietnam-away-from-Vietnam National Guard service through the Summer during Bush's reelection campaign, Republicans call that timing "inappropriate", too - it's election season. Of course Americans don't usually pay attention to any non-entertainment stories until at latest right before we have to make a decision. So journalists have to tell political stories during political campaigns. When else should they do so? And since campaigns now are perpetual, the main activity of even elected politicians, when is the time to reveal ugly stories about politicians "running for election"?
This whole notion that news must come at a time convenient for politicians is insane - the worst attack on our political process other than the bribes at the root of most of the stories. It's like the "Free Speech Zones" Bush has created to make the rest of the country outside the Zones into a "No Freedom Zone". Free speech/press as long as no one can listen.
It's pretty clear that Karl Rove is the ultimate abuser of these political manipulations. On Tuesday, you get to fire your House representative if they're keeping Rove's machine working against us, and hire someone who can answer to you and your neighbors instead of to Bush and Rove. And probably your senator, too. Get a few of your neighbors together, get everyone to vote, and then go to any free speech zone - they're everywhere - and have an adult beverage while talking about how fun revolution can be when it's part of the system, and no one gets hurt.
Gay. Republican. Pedophile.
Haha, trolls play a stupid game thinking I care about bashing you. You're a gay Republican pedophile. There's nothing wrong with being gay, but being a gay Republican is like being a Communist Republican - or maybe like one of those Slave Cabin Republicans we see trotted out to entice Black people once in a while.
It's gay Republican pedophiles like you who give gay people a bad name - in Republicans' eyes. Decent people like me know that the worst part about you gay Republican pedophiles is that you're Republicans.
Sad how you think it's a big deal to post to Slashdot a lot, but you're doing it. I have all kinds of time while busy waiting on other things to post to Slashdot. Especially when I can get gay Republican pedophile trolls like you to show how stupid and self-hating you are.
Come on, lets have some more trollery - it only makes me kick you harder.
Gay Republican pedophile, where's Osama?
Listen to an Anonymous Bushworshipper Coward if you want more "torture, shredded Habeas Corpus, thousands of kidnapped people in CIA prisons around the world, "signing statements" vowing to break the law he just signed, martial law powers, leaving the country only by his permission..."
Slashdot, where ACs, Trolls and TrollMods feast on Flamebait like their own ambrosia.
Now I know where some of those $BILLIONS stolen from the Iraq budget went: into Anonymous Coward terrorbots which just lie to deny Republican TV ads repeating Osama's terrorism, lie to deny Bush and Rumsfeld surrendering to the Taliban in Pakistan, and lie to deny the terrorists running the US from the Bush White House.
Even a 'bot can hate America, and you most certainly do.
Like what? What have the Democrats said that promises to be far worse?
I don't think a terrorist running the US makes much sense, but it's obvious that it's true.
WHERE'S OSAMA? I keep hearing his words in Republican election ads.
WHERE'S OSAMA? I keep seeing his wet dreams come true in Bush's policies.
WHERE'S OSAMA?
It's not really my problem that you're a gay Republican pedophile just because you're evil. Why would I "choke" on something I knew all along?
You'll have plenty of company in your gay pedophile Republican horde on Tuesday. Just not enough to matter.
Gay pedophile Republican. Wear it like a shit brand on your forehead.
Another Anonymous Moron Coward with circular logic as their mode of weakbrained attack.
I'm living in the real world, where Slashdot is a harmless diversion. You're going to hell in circles.
What is "the other side" saying? Worse than what Bush and his Republicans are doing?
Let's not have some purely theoretical tautology. Let's hear some notes from the real world that somehow explain how voting to give Bush more power is tolerable, at this late stage of the game, with all Bush has done against America.
So you're the poster child for Republican voters. Thanks for sharing that with all the readers.
Are you a gay pedophile just to piss me off, too? Of course I have nothing to do with your worthless life. I'm just your excuse for being evil.
Anonymous Republican pedophile Coward.
You're really quite the Rorshach.
As I said, I don't care what terms you use, except how they reveal your hidden biases.
I haven't "staked" you to any "ideology". You say you haven't defended Bush's agenda, yet you attacked the article revealing their agenda with Godwin's Fallacy. The kind of stunt that protects repeat fascist operations. Even if you don't "intend" to defend Bush's agenda, your actual sympathies have you defending them with a trick that your conscience would prohibit, if you were really unbiased.
You are now just projecting your fears about yourself onto me, strawmen. Instead of finally explaining why you'd use the propaganda "leftist" term. Which means nothing as a term, but reveals where you get you propaganda from. It's the language that you speak that reveals the country you're from.
So enough of your developmentally stunted mewlings. You're the one who is so lazy you won't even examine your own bias, when you draw it out in front of everyone. You're the one insisting on doing all these things you complain I'm doing - I expect therefore you'd do all the things you'd accuse "leftists" of doing. You're the one flailing around Godwin's Fallacy as if it were anything but a coverup of nazis, old and new. I've learned nothing from you but your tedious defects. No more free schooling from me - you're on your own. And increasingly so, if the popularity of your brand of propaganda is any indication.
"Leftist" is a term that has no meaning, except it reminds Americans of "leftist" terrorists and militants in "Communist" revolutions from 1940-1990.
It originated in the left side of the French parliament in the 1790s.
Yet you use it, because it has resonance for you. So deeply do you protect your attachment to that propaganda term that you don't even answer why you use it, though that was my question. Instead, you spend time explaining how Republicans "aren't doing us any favors either". The kind of weak criticism, compared to the strong, direct criticism of those you call "leftist", that reveals you as sympathetic to the Republicans. So you answered my question anyway, though you surely didn't expect to.
I'm not surprised you don't vote for Bush. I'm sure you're a "Libertarian". Closet Republicans usually are.
Of course it's a fair analogy. Bush is not the first president with a Congress run by his own party. But together their cooperation is unprecedented.
And Congressmembers and their staff, even when part of an opposition party, also know which passed bills will get vetoes. And then there are the many veto overrides in history - why can't a Republican Congress override Bush's veto? On stemcells, or on torture, or anything else Bush wants but is bad for the country? Terry Schiavo?
It's not nearly as complex as you strive to make it to cover for the lockstep Republican government. The obvious fact is that Bush's Republican government works against the American system of competing Executive/Legislative branches that usually stop the worst abuses of each. Instead, excuses like "it's too hard to stop it" fall to pieces when they don't even try to stop them, but rather race to help.
There are degrees of antichristianity. Jesus' mother Mary is an example of someone far more Christian than antichristian. Bush, by using Jesus' name to break so many of Jesus' rules, by killing, lying, coveting, and so many other sins on such a grand scale, all in Jesus' name, is so antichristian that he is an antichrist. I wouldn't say that Mary was an antichrist, though she was antichristian to some degree, as are all humans, even the human Jesus in the bible stories about him.
Those who are wise should live in the real world, learn from the old stories preserved through hundreds of generations of people living mostly in the real world, and prepare for peace.
Because the truly wise know that preparing for war brings war. Preparing for "World War three" is just another way of working for the antichrists who want to destroy the world. Suiciders, who are going to hell, if perhaps by a scenic route.
And what is this ideology that you're talking about? What does it have to do with the "left"?
I don't care what word you use, except that I appreciate your using "leftist" and "Republicans" as a display of your bias. "Leftist" is a disparaging word used by their opponents, while "Republicans" is their own chosen brand name.
You're repeating the Republican propaganda, even while you "don't think much of Republicans" these days. It's that unthinking cooperation that Republicans depend on.
Except that, while "the lesser of two evils" does mean choosing something still evil, it does mean choosing the lesser. Choosing something not evil (find me one, not just something "even less evil") that lets the greater evil win is choosing to let the greater evil win.
There's a reason people choose the lesser of two evils, even though we all know how that works.
Where are the "trees and hippies" Democrats? That's the Republican message about Democrats. Democrats are as corporate as Republicans, just less fascist corporations, and more labor corporations ("unions"). Trees and hippies don't get any representation, except in Republican emotional messages about Democrats - to treehaters and hippiehaters.
"Leftist" groups vs "Conservative circles". You reveal that you're more inclined to believe the "Conservatives", who are the only ones calling those others "leftists".
So you spit up the gibberish Godwin's Fallacy to keep people from seeing Bush's latest attack on our freedom, which we're discussing in this story.
You're a sheep in wolf's clothing.
Hillary Clinton is appearing on only one ballot on Tuesday: reelection as NY senator. Which New Yorkers will probably choose by 2 or 3 to one.
The Democrats elected on "Anybody But Bush" in 2004 aren't so bad. "Anybody But Democrats" gets us more Bush. We do not have the convenience of voting for someone else who will stop Bush.
Though I encourage people who don't like their Democratic candidate to vote for a Libertarian, unless that particular Libertarian is just another closet Republican or even a fascist (plenty are). Mainly because it splits the Republican vote - because Tuesday's actual election is more important than the election reform that is not on the agenda. But also because it increases how obvious is the need in America to get out of the duopoly that lets people inherit power by default.
Until we get to something like Instant Runoff Voting, or abolishing Parties as criminal conspiracies, or replacing them with nonexclusive, noncoordinating mere endorsement mills, we're stuck with the duopoly. We have to play the hand we're dealt, while working to change the dealer.
If you hate your next-door neighbor, why do either of you vote for someone who will screw both of you?
Bush has vetoed only one bill sent him from his Republican Congress: stemcell research. Which, though extremely popular with Americans, wasn't cleared by a veto override.
So sending more Republicans (and "Democrats" like Lieberman (Lieberman-CT)) to Congress on Tuesday, who will rubberstamp Bush the way they've rubberstamped him for 6 years, is voting more power to Bush. Voting for others who will stop Bush, and make laws that actually protect us from evil dictators like Bush, is the way the US law works.