There was a time, when Clinton was in office, that your statement would have been basically true; give or take a few issues.
However, with a Repulican as president, talk radio has become nothing more than a mouth piece for the white house, much in the same way the media was for Clinton when he was in office.
If you think they aren't politically correct, call in and voice your opposition to the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on [insert your favorite war here].
In reality, they are about as politically correct as you can get, you just get a different politically correct viewpoint.
While people at work spend enormous amounts of time adding stuff to their spam filters, I came up with a solution that also dramatically reduces my spam. All I do is change e-mail addresses about once a year now. My second tip is to register your own domain name, as getting away from a major ISP domain name seems to be the second best way to get a large drop in the volume of spam. And my third tip is, if you have to have a public e-mail address on a web page, make it a temp address and change it about once a month...putting an image of the address on your web page so that you can be reasonably sure e-mail you get at this address came from an actual person.
If you do these three things, you will have almost zero spam.
Whether it is at SAMS club, where everything isn't always a good deal, or online, you just have to be smart about what you buy. And as far as shipping, it is even possible to avoid that. For instance, if I want something from Amazon.com that cost 15.00, with their free shipping for orders over 25.00, you can pick something else out that costs 10.00...and get free shipping. I was able to get a couple of DVDs from Amazon for about the same price I could have gotten them at Wal-Mart...with the exception that Wal-Mart has a limited selection of DVDs and Amazon has a huge selection.
I do agree though, even ordering stuff off of Ebay, some people really try and stick it to you on shipping.
I don't know about as a home computer, but since it already runs on 12 volts, this could make an excellent car MP3 player. Someone said something about it being more than 100.00 dollars with a monitor, but 100.00 bucks and little LCD monitor to browse your MP3 list...and I'll buy one for each vehicle I own.:) I went to the web page but there wasn't much information. How much storage space do these things have again?
I have always said Napster's big mistake was not opening the servers up, something like Open Napster, and selling a really slick, really useful client for about 5.00 a pop. Why they couldn't have seen that is beyond me, other than they were blinded by sheer greed. If just a small percentage of the downloaders bought the progrom, they would have made millions...legally and nobody could have touched them.
Usurper_ii
Re: headache from RF?...studies forthcoming!
on
WiMax: When, Not If
·
· Score: 1
The firefighters could save a lot of time and money by just consulting you.
I know a large amount of people who smoke and they are all just fine. I've known smokers who lived longer than some non-smokers. And my great-grandmother, who lived to be 99 (or 100?) dipped snuff right up until the end.
Therefore, all of those studies on tobacco can't be true because I have seen the above things with my own two eyes! And the tobacco industry keeps talking about the studies that didn't show an increase in cancer among smokers, too! Why doesn't anyone mention these studies?
ltbarcly: 1 Billion Anecdotes != Data
Bob Dylan: "Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head, Pretending he just doesn't see?"
Re: headache from RF?...studies forthcoming!
on
WiMax: When, Not If
·
· Score: 1
This is an excellent article on radiation from cell phones:
You can find this article at:
http://www.alternativemedicine.com/ and search for cell phone. The name of the article is "You Make The Call."
-=-=-= Studies show that people who don't think cell phones have adverse health effects need to have their heads examined.
-=-=-=-
Cell phones are not just here to stay. They have evolved into ever more versatile and powerful devices and have become indispensable to our way of life. Why, then, can't we make these technological marvels safe?
Of course, according to the cell phone industry, cell phones are perfectly harmless: "After a substantial amount of research, scientists and governments around the world continue to reaffirm that there is no public health threat from the use of wireless phones," says Tom Wheeler, president and CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA).
According to numerous prominent researchers, that statement is nonsense. Henry Lai, Ph.D., is a research professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington. Over the last several years he has conducted cell phone studies funded originally by the U.S. Navy and Air Force and later by the National Institutes of Health. "I have a list of about 600 research papers from the past ten years alone, 70 percent of which show definite effects from exposure to this kind of radiation," says Lai, "but the industry continues to say that there is nothing to worry about."
What about cell phones and cancer, the most publicized concern? "Studies have been conducted to determine whether there is an association between cellular telephone use and an increased risk of certain types of cancer," according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). "Although the majority of these studies have not supported any such association, scientists caution that more research needs to be done before conclusions can be drawn about the risk of cancer from cellular telephones."
"More research" is the mantra of all three groups - industry, government and scientists - each with their differing motives. And, in fact, more research is needed - but not to prove that cell phones do pose a health threat: That has been proven beyond any doubt. Swedish researcher Clas Tegenfeld, who is writing a book on biological effects of electromagnetic fields, says "Already there are at least 15,000 scientific reports on the subject. I am afraid the truth is that we don't want to know."
There have, in fact, been several studies that show no correlation between cell phone use and cancer. These studies were conducted by respected institutions and researchers and the results published in peer-reviewed journals. However, these were all simple statistical studies that compared the incidence of brain cancer among cell phone users to that of the general population. Typical of these studies is an oft-cited one from Sweden that was published in the July 1999 issue of the International Journal of Oncology. According to the NCI, "This study compared cellular telephone use in a group of 209 individuals who had brain tumors (the case group) with a group of 425 people without brain cancer (the control group). The study reported a statistically nonsignificant increased risk for brain tumors on the side of the head on which the cellular telephone was used. However, researchers found no overall increase in the risk for brain tumors with cellular telephone use."
Does this prove that cell phone use does not lead to increased risk of brain cancer? No. As the NCI itself points out, "Cancers that take a long time to develop would not have been detected by these studies." What has been shown in numerous studies, however, is that the radiation coming from cell phones does have measurable effects on brain cells that can lead to cancer, as well as neurological diseases.
Lai's experiments are instructive in this regard. One of his main findings was that radiation from cell phones at levels below current
Re: headache from RF?...studies forthcoming!
on
WiMax: When, Not If
·
· Score: 1
Re:So, what's so cool about it?
on
WiMax: When, Not If
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The key words in your post are: over flat terrain.
I work for a wireless ISP using Canopy equipment. It works excellent when you have line of sight. A company in a good location, say West Texas, could make some money. But if you happen to be in say, East Texas, where there are tons of hills and trees, it is horrible.
Canopy is and was ahead of its time. But before this stuff really takes off, the Line of Sight issue is going to have to be done away with.
Usurper_ii
Re: headache from RF?...studies forthcoming!
on
WiMax: When, Not If
·
· Score: 1
[Right now RF is putting food on my table. I'm not totally unbiased in the radiation-emitting radio/cell phone issue, however, as I lost a brother, a heavy cell phone user, to a brain tumor just this year and also work in a building with a 300 foot tower located three feet away from the back of the building...and just got my first cell phone after avoiding the darn things like the plague all of these years. -- Usurper_ii]
Jeffrey Silva wrote:
At the annual International Association of Fire Fighters, a call for a moratorium on new cell towers located on fire stations was called for until possible health effects can be examined.
Firefighters plan to seek nearly $1 million for the study, said Janet Newton, president of the EMR Policy Institute. The group is working with other firefighter advocates on the cell-tower issue. Cash-strapped cities and townships are paid by mobile-phone carriers to erect towers near fire stations, which tend to reside in densely populated areas.
Lt. Ron Cronin, who spearheaded the passage of the cell-tower measure at the IAFF convention, stated, "Some firefighters with cell towers currently located on their stations are experiencing symptoms that put our first responders at risk." "It is important to be sure we understand what effects these towers may have on the firefighters living in these stations. If the jakes in the fire house are suffering from headaches, can't respond quickly and their ability to make decisions is clouded by a sort of brain fog, then entire communities they are protecting will clearly be at risk."
The easy way to defeat your "same amount of money so why not" argument is in your own statement....Rather than making sure that the artists get some kind of money for their work and that the label gets some kind of money for their investing in the artists, you funnel money to either the russian mob or profiteers. So long as people like you will take the cheapest (or free) way out of a situation, regardless of legality or ethics, your argument will not work. The ease and cheapness of digital transmittion sees to that.
Well, there are plenty of places I could have gotten the same music for free. However, I chose to part with hard earned money because they do things the way it should be done. If an American company offered an equal service, I would give them an equal amount of hard-earned money. In fact, I used emusic.com back when they offered unlimited downloads, and I probably spent 100 - 200 dollars with them before they choked and started to suck.
The fact is that the Russian site does pay the artists some money, too. So they, the artists, aren't getting filthy rich off of it, so what? I personally don't give a rat's ass. I don't mind if they make a nice living, but the reality is that the days of the filthy-rich superstar are coming to an end. Thank the lord! They can work for a living just like everyone else.
As far as funding the Russian mob: smoking pot supports terrorist, piracy supports terrorist...it all makes for good soundbites and you need to work something in about protecting the children or something! {g}
Oh, and the numbers used about the current amount of profit in the industry coming from music buyers purchasing 6 CDs per year came from a very legit source...I just can't remember who wrote it so I can't give a source. Just because I didn't give a source does not mean I read it on the onion.com!
I read somewhere that all of the profit that is currently made in the record industry is based off of music fans buying an average of 6 compact disks per year (I guess they average that, some buy more, some buy less). But the point is, if heavy music buyers spent an amount of money on downloads that roughly equaled six CDs, the same amount of money would still be changing hands. And if they did it right, I guess even more money would change hands.
Now here is my experience with that dubiously legal Russian site vs. my experiences on itunes.
I have downloaded two songs from itunes. They were free because I won the songs in the Pepsi give-away. I wanted to buy some and even looked quite a bit...but there was nothing that really jumped out at me.
After seeing a post on/. about the Russian site, I nervously joined it. In only a couple of months, I have spent 25.00. I have downloaded lots of stuff I used to own on cassette but got stolen from me in a break-in at a place I used to rent. I downloaded a lot of stuff I have on albums, but can't listen to anymore.
There is enough there that I could easily spend 10.00 a month and download stuff just to see what it sounds like. I enjoy the service so much, I would probably spend more money in a year than the price of six regular-priced CDs.
If record companies could only see the light, there is a ton of money in a legal site that equaled or excelled over that dubiously legal Russian site.
And I can tell you, I was never a heavy user of P2P, but I hardly remember what that was like after using the dubiously legal Russian site. I can't imagine having to go back to it, either.
If nothing else, I'm glad the site is there to provide some competition to the US/RIAA monopoly.
While I don't think it is going to happen, I thought this was a really interesting article on the draft issue...and it came out of the Family Circle of all places. If my wife hadn't had it laying around, I would have probably never even heard about this. -- Usurper_ii
Could your child be drafted? by Jan Goodwin
High-school seniors have a lot on their minds these days--applying to college, getting accepted, finding the funds to pay for it, then worrying about whether they can get a job once they graduate. One thing they hadn't counted on, however, was being drafted into the military when they turn 18.
There hasn't been a draft in the United States since 1973, but indications are strong that next year that may change. And for the first time, young women as well as men can expect to be called.
Why a return to the draft? Because our troops (stationed in two-thirds of the world's countries) are spread so thinly, and because high casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan have dramatically reduced recruitment and reenlist-ment levels. A poll taken last year by Stars and Stripes, a Pentagon-funded newspaper for service personnel, found that 49 percent of respondents were not planning to reenlist.
According to retired U.S. Army Colonel David Hackworth, a military analyst and one of the most decorated officers in the army, the U.S. military is now so shorthanded that a whopping 40 percent of the 135,000 troops being rotated into Iraq are National Guard members and reservists. Adds Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY); '"We haven't called up this level of reservists since the Korean War."
What's more, if House and Senate bills HR163 and S89 pass, the loophole 'of college, used by many to avoid serving in Vietnam, will be closed next time around. All men and women ages 18 to 26 would be eligible for induction once they have completed high school. Further, the Smart Border Declaration, signed by Canadian and U.S. officials in December 2001, should keep would-be draft dodgers in this country.
Congressman Rangel, author of the House bill, which is now before the Armed Services Committee (Ernest Hollings [D-SC] authored the Senate version), explains that the Administration's commitment to a prolonged presence in the Middle East, the prospect of additional military interventions, and the fact that "half of Guards and reservists say they have no intention to stay in" are strong indicators that "ultimately we will run out of bodies."
"We shouldn't need a draft," says Rangel, "but now that we've been involved in a war, the patriotic thing is shared sacrifice. Currently, the rich get a tax cut, and the poor get a chance to make the ultimate sacrifice."
Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), addressing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April, concurred. "Why shouldn't we ask all our citizens to bear some responsibility and pay some price?'" he said.
Feeling a Draft?
The Administration denies that a draft is in the works. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has stated: "We're not going to reimplement a draft. There is no need for it. The disadvantages of using compulsion to bring into the armed forces the men and women needed are notable."
But, says Ron Paul, M.D., an eight-term Republican congressman from Texas and a former Air Force surgeon, '"You don't listen to what they say, you watch what they do. The Administration says no, but what we've gotten from the Pentagon and elsewhere is yes."
One sign of that, says Rick Jahnkow, program coordinator of the nonprofit Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities, was that last fall "[Presidential adviser] Karl Rove polled Republican members of Congress on how they felt about the draft. They said they'd support the President."
"This is not surprising," comments Dr. Paul, who sits on the International Relations Committee and was one of only six Republican congressmen who vote
While it is neat they held up to the test, I have had several just quit working and they had little to no abuse at all. One was for my wife's camera and one for my mp3 player...and neither one that went bad was probably much more than a year old.
I work for an wireless ISP using Motorola Canopy. Canopy equipment can go up to 4 Mbps, up and down, and it works and works well. The down side is that it is expensive, a "fixed" wireless product, and requires Line of Sight to the customer. Let me say that last thing is the kicker. While the equipment may work fantastic, and we have customers working up to 7 miles away, if they can't actually see the tower, you can forget about signing up that customer. Trees, hills, buildings in the way? Lost customer.
And this means that as an ISP using Motorola Canopy, your location can make or break you. If you are in West Texas in the right spot, you might have a great business. But move over to East Texas, and you can sign up a handful of people off of a 300 ft tower. It's crazy.
The problem is that the units are 200 mw and just don't have the power to go through anything.
The FCC really needs to find a spectrum where they can boost the power up to something useable. Let me tell you, Motorola Canopy equipment with some power behind it would be some cool stuff.
Anyway, I haven't read the article yet (imagine that), but I'm going to assume that 300 Mbps is LoS between the units? As I said in a post yesterday, the holy grail of wireless is something that works well through trees. Whoever does that, and if they manage to patent it, will have power similar to the One Ring.
line of sight, it would be a three to five mile radius working through trees...and even hills. Now someone pulling that off cheaply and legally would be like pulling Excalibur out of its rock and it would impress the hell out of me. (by the way, I'm involved in a wireless ISP that is getting hammered by the local terrain).
Funny thing about the whole deal. I work for a 2-way radio company that has a table in a back room full of 800 Mhz radios. The radios came from companies that were using them. When Nextel purchased the 800 Mhz spectrum, we (back before I started) had to sell all of these companies new radios in a different spectrum. Well, Nextel has yet to build out in my area and it has been several years since all of this took place.
I overheard some of our current customers complaining that they thought the whole deal was phony and created to sell them new radios. And I could see where they are coming from since Nextel didn't build out and it has been years, it does make us look a little bad (each one of the radios on that back table is hundreds of dollars, so this was a *huge* amount of money spread across a lot of companies).
It would be almost a kind of irony if Nextel's customers had to buy new phones. First it makes companies have to spend a lot of money, then it turns around and makes consumers spend a lot of money.
Maybe Nextel's catch phrase should be: Nextel, we make a lot of money change hands.
(And if anyone was wondering, the 800 Mhz radios can be used for non-profit emergency-type stuff (VFD, first responders, sheriff, etc.), so my company has just started building out an 800 Mhz system and has started installing all of the radios and is eating all of the installation cost!)
I don't know the validity of the message below but it is certainly interesting. Personally, I'm not a huge Michael Moore fan but I would go see this movie if it came out! -- Usurper_ii
--------- Forwarded message ----------
Folks,
I don't know whether you heard, but Michael Moore is planning to expose the medical establishment next. I can hardly wait!
But I get the feeling he doesn't know more than the tip of the iceberg (the mistakes they themselves own up to, like syringes misplaced inside surgery victims, "wrong" drugs and drug doses, "unnecessary" surgeries, and so on).
I proposed to my newbie raw friend in S. Diego that some of us should try to educated him further about this subject before he makes that movie. She decided to pick up the ball and roll with it!
At his website (www.michaelmoore.com), his email address is listed as mike@michaelmoore.com. It says that he tries to read them all, but doesn't have time to answer most of them. If you have something to tell him about Natural Hygiene, here is your chance to have an impact on him personally and maybe millions if he becomes convinced!
I hear you may be doing an expose on the medical mafia. I strongly urge you to read the article on the link above. I have a copy of the book, now out of print, called "The Drug Story." If you want I can send you a photocopy of it. It creates a paradigm shift in one's way of thinking about modern so-called medicine (really toxic). The best and true way is to get the body to heal itself through fasting and a pure diet, which I have done! Ralph Moss is also an excellent author on cancer industry expose.
Let me know if I can send you the book. It is mind-boggling. I really hope you expose the entire fraud of how modern medicine is held hostage by the pharmaceutical company and their bogus medicines that only cover up symptoms but make the body more toxic than ever. (EX: chemo kills 6 billion healthy cells for each cancer cell.) As the article and book point out, Rockefeller created drugs for profit, created the American Medical Assoc. to discredit any natural healer, bought out the media to censor/discredit articles on natural healing and also formed the insurance to pay for his products. He also funded only medical schools that taught his drug use. He made all doctors go from healers and knowers of natural remedies to profesional, legalized drug pushers just to build up his kingdom. The pharmaceutical cartel is responsible for more deaths than anyone when you consider how they have covered up the truth about how the body can heal itself of cancer and other maladies quite easily.
One of the things that keeps coming up since our troops have gone into harm's way is that they are fighting for our freedom. If a war supporter is asked about the protesters, invariably, the response is that our soldiers are fighting so that the protesters have the freedom to protest.
Could this be true? Is it possible that Saddam's six or seven Scud missiles -- which we can't even agree on as to if they were the "permitted"
Scuds or the "illegal" Scuds -- could have affected our freedom here in America?
To hear it from anyone in the military, every war we have ever fought was for
our freedom here in the US.
Well, was Desert Storm to preserve our freedom? If Saddam had continued to occupy Kuwait after wegave him the green light to take it, would anyone here in America have lost any freedom whatsoever? Well, we might have ended up paying higher prices for gas or -- oh the horror -- been
forced to employ Americans to work here in America to pump up American oil.
Does anyone remember the economy in Texas when oil was a booming industry here? I do, and it was nice. Having jobs to put food on the table and keep a roof over your head...with enough left over to save up for the future or
send your kids off to college, that sounds like freedom; and instead of keeping that here in America, we closed down entire towns and exported the jobs to the OPEC nations...the very nations that openly despise us.
So if Desert Storm wasn't for our freedom, what was it for? When Saddam originally invaded Kuwait, President Bush, Sr., turned to the United Nations, not the U.S. Constitution to which he'd sworn a solemn oath, for
authorization for his military moves. He then began to state his goals
-- over and over again:
September 11, 1990 televised address: "Out of these
troubled times, our fifth objective -- a new world order
-- can emerge.... We are now in sight of a United Nations that performs
as envisioned by its founders."
January 7, 1991 interview in U.S. News &
World Report: "I think that what's at stake
here is the new world order. What's at stake here is whether we can have
disputes peacefully resolved in the future by a reinvigorated United Nations."
January 9, 1991 Press Conference: "[The Gulf crisis] has
to do with a new world order. And that new world order is only going to be
enhanced if this newly activated peacekeeping function of the United Nations
proves to be effective."
January 16, 1991 televised address: "When we are
successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this new world order, an
order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to
fulfill the promise and vision of the UN's founders."
August 1991 National Security Strategy of the United States issued
by the White House and personally signed by George Bush: "In the
Gulf, we saw the United Nations playing the role dreamed of by it's
founders.... I hope history will record that the Gulf crisis was the crucible
of the new world order."
So here it is painfully obvious that just because we went to war, it wasn't
to preserve our freedom here in America, but to empower the United Nations. In
fact, not only did Desert Storm not have anything to do with our freedom but in
all actuality was more so to enslave us than to free us (those employing the
term "New World Order" have sought socialism (economic control) and world
government (political control) over mankind. This was also the goal of
Bush Sr. for our nation and for the world).
So it is possible for our troops to be in harm's way and it not be for
our freedom. And if it is not for our freedom in general but specifically for
the "right to protest," legislation is being proposed in Oregon that could make
protesting an act of terroris
who think there is no way to support our troops yet bash their mission or their command in chief:
If a person has to support the troops' mission no matter what...were the citizens of Germany just supposed to support Hitler no matter what? Were they supposed to be "patriotic" and support the troops as they rounded up the Jews?
Now I'm not exactly comparing Bush to Hitler here...but what I'm trying to say is that a person can "not want to see our troops come in harms way" and yet not support the mission they are on. For an intelligent person, what the mission is has to figure into if they support the mission or not. To do otherwise, is a blind flag-waving patriotism that is actually dangerous. A true patriot would ask if the war was a just war and if the war was constitutional. If it is not those things, then it is not unpatriotic to not support it, it is true patriotism.
The night before last, the Independent Film Channel played a 30-minute press conference with Michael Moore that he gave at the Cannes Film Festival. I was really impressed with what he had to say and I think the movie might be worth watching. Rather than being just about Bush, he spent a lot of time talking about how Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 (a.k.a. the truth) and how public opinion was manipulated to stir up support for the war. I'm kind of wanting to see it, surprisingly. The reviews are already in:
IMDB User Comments:Michael Moore is a traitor to his country
I had a lot of driving to do at work the last couple of days and listened to a lot of WBAP 820. There was a lot of talk about Fahrenheit 9/11 and Michael Moore. Every single bit of it was venomous and hate filled. From Rush to Hannity, to every single person on there, there is no way to support our troops while attacking their mission or their commander in chief. And if you happen to do so, you are considered a traitor to the country.
It's so weird because on every other topic, I usually agree with the majority of what these guys have to say. But they make me so mad on the war issue that I feel like some kind of left-wing liberal. I was actually wanting to e-mail them all yesterday and give them a piece of my mind, but decided not to because they would probably turn me in to home land security.
One thing I will say, though, Rush was out and Walter Williams took his place for the day. I still like him.
Fahrenheit 9/11: A Conservative Critique by William Norman Grigg
I just returned from viewing Fahrenheit 9/11 here in Appleton, WI. I went to the 1:30 PM showing, which was - astonishingly - sold out. The crowd was overwhelmingly white and middle-class (this IS Wisconsin, remember), ranging in age from early teens to retirees. The people were polite, friendly, well-mannered (something we shouldn't take for granted on the part of contemporary theater crowds). There was tumultuous applause at the end, punctuated by a moment of reflective silence as we read the dedication card invoking those murdered by terrorists on 9/11, and those murdered through state terrorism in the aftermath.
The film itself very much reflects its creator: It's shaggy, flabby, occasionally witty, and frequently infuriating. It will have a HUGE impact because Moore - his facile leftist economics notwithstanding - has nailed his case against the Bush regime flush to the plank. It will be all but impossible for anybody who sits still and watches this film to view Bush the Lesser as anything other than a petty, spiteful, dim-witted, bloody-handed little fool - and the figurehead of a murderous power elite. This explains why the Bu'ushists are threatening to go Abu Ghraib on Moore: They're busted.
The most powerful moments in the film are those that humanize U.S. troops, several of whom are shown on-screen criticizing the regime. A major arc of the film is devoted to a Flint, Michigan housewife from a military family whose son, just prior to being killed in Iraq, wrote a letter condemning "George 'I wanna be like my Daddy' Bush" for staging this useless, unjust war. Moore himself, who narrates the film (and makes himself too much a part of the story, incidentally) observes that the largest immorality of this entire enterprise is the actions of a dishonest president lying our country into war and forcing decent young men (and women) to do immoral things.
It should be pointed out as well that the film - despite being lambasted as an exercise in unalloyed Bush-bashing - doesn't spare Democrats who acquiesced in Bush the Lesser's power grabs and his criminal war against Iraq. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle comes off particularly poorly, which in his case merely requires a recording device of some kind.
An interesting encounter immediately after seeing the film underscores its fundamentally non-partisan nature. Some poor schlep had positioned himself outside the theater with a clipboard soliciting signatures on a nominating position for a would-be Democrat congressional candidate. A couple of people seized the petition and started to sign. Impertinent sort that I am, I asked, "What's this fellow's position on the war?"
The scribbling stopped, and several sets of eyes focused intently on the hapless volunteer. "Well, um, ah, he thinks we should do something," he began, stammeringly. "Ah, he just thinks we should be more careful." On hearing this, a lady looked at her husband, who had signed the petition, and snapped, "Scratch off your name." I told the volunteer that I'm what most people would regard as an "ultra-conservative - not just a `conservative' - but if your guy came out against the war I'd vote for him, and knock on doors." "Well, I can't really address all the details of his positions," the increasingly flustered guy responded. "Just let him know what I said," I suggested, telling him that there are a lot of people who have the same point of view.
I chatted with several other people as they left the theater, all of them roughly my age (early 40s) and of similar economic and cultural background. Each of them indicated that he or she would urge friends to see the film - which means that it will have "legs" even if the GOP and FEC were to choke off advertising somehow.
There were no screaming Bolsheviks (one viewer had an anti-animal rights T-shirt) or marijuana-scented bohemians in the crowd. This wasn't the sort of crowd you'd see at a Phish concert, or storming McDonald's at an an
It would be possible, I think, to add a couple of phone lines that people could dial into the Intranet. This would expand the area back out to the old BBS range.
I ran a Wildcat! BBS back in the day, with two phone lines. After BBSs died, I wanted to do exactly what this topic is about, only people could dial into it and access it with their web browser instead of proprietary BBS software (I had my idea before wireless was out there).
Slashdot Mirror
There was a time, when Clinton was in office, that your statement would have been basically true; give or take a few issues.
However, with a Repulican as president, talk radio has become nothing more than a mouth piece for the white house, much in the same way the media was for Clinton when he was in office.
If you think they aren't politically correct, call in and voice your opposition to the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on [insert your favorite war here].
In reality, they are about as politically correct as you can get, you just get a different politically correct viewpoint.
Usurper_ii
While people at work spend enormous amounts of time adding stuff to their spam filters, I came up with a solution that also dramatically reduces my spam. All I do is change e-mail addresses about once a year now. My second tip is to register your own domain name, as getting away from a major ISP domain name seems to be the second best way to get a large drop in the volume of spam. And my third tip is, if you have to have a public e-mail address on a web page, make it a temp address and change it about once a month...putting an image of the address on your web page so that you can be reasonably sure e-mail you get at this address came from an actual person.
If you do these three things, you will have almost zero spam.
Usurper_ii
Whether it is at SAMS club, where everything isn't always a good deal, or online, you just have to be smart about what you buy. And as far as shipping, it is even possible to avoid that. For instance, if I want something from Amazon.com that cost 15.00, with their free shipping for orders over 25.00, you can pick something else out that costs 10.00...and get free shipping. I was able to get a couple of DVDs from Amazon for about the same price I could have gotten them at Wal-Mart...with the exception that Wal-Mart has a limited selection of DVDs and Amazon has a huge selection.
I do agree though, even ordering stuff off of Ebay, some people really try and stick it to you on shipping.
Usurper_ii
I don't know about as a home computer, but since it already runs on 12 volts, this could make an excellent car MP3 player. Someone said something about it being more than 100.00 dollars with a monitor, but 100.00 bucks and little LCD monitor to browse your MP3 list...and I'll buy one for each vehicle I own. :) I went to the web page but there wasn't much information. How much storage space do these things have again?
Usurper_ii
I have always said Napster's big mistake was not opening the servers up, something like Open Napster, and selling a really slick, really useful client for about 5.00 a pop. Why they couldn't have seen that is beyond me, other than they were blinded by sheer greed. If just a small percentage of the downloaders bought the progrom, they would have made millions...legally and nobody could have touched them.
Usurper_ii
The firefighters could save a lot of time and money by just consulting you.
I know a large amount of people who smoke and they are all just fine. I've known smokers who lived longer than some non-smokers. And my great-grandmother, who lived to be 99 (or 100?) dipped snuff right up until the end.
Therefore, all of those studies on tobacco can't be true because I have seen the above things with my own two eyes! And the tobacco industry keeps talking about the studies that didn't show an increase in cancer among smokers, too! Why doesn't anyone mention these studies?
ltbarcly:
1 Billion Anecdotes != Data
Bob Dylan:
"Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?"
Usurper_ii
This is a few months old, but I think Dvorak is right on this one:
The Looming Legal Threat to Wi-Fi
Usurper_ii
This is an excellent article on radiation from cell phones:
You can find this article at:
http://www.alternativemedicine.com/ and search
for cell phone. The name of the article is "You
Make The Call."
-=-=-=
Studies show that people who don't think cell phones have adverse health effects need to have their heads examined.
-=-=-=-
Cell phones are not just here to stay. They have evolved into ever more versatile and powerful devices and have become indispensable to our way of life. Why, then, can't we make these technological marvels safe?
Of course, according to the cell phone industry, cell phones are perfectly harmless: "After a substantial amount of research, scientists and governments around the world continue to reaffirm that there is no public health threat from the use of wireless phones," says Tom Wheeler, president and CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA).
According to numerous prominent researchers, that statement is nonsense. Henry Lai, Ph.D., is a research professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington. Over the last several years he has conducted cell phone studies funded originally by the U.S. Navy and Air Force and later by the National Institutes of Health. "I have a list of about 600 research papers from the past ten years alone, 70 percent of which show definite effects from exposure to this kind of radiation," says Lai, "but the industry continues to say that there is nothing to worry about."
What about cell phones and cancer, the most publicized concern? "Studies have been conducted to determine whether there is an association between cellular telephone use and an increased risk of certain types of cancer," according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). "Although the majority of these studies have not supported any such association, scientists caution that more research needs to be done before conclusions can be drawn about the risk of cancer from cellular telephones."
"More research" is the mantra of all three groups - industry, government and scientists - each with their differing motives. And, in fact, more research is needed - but not to prove that cell phones do pose a health threat: That has been proven beyond any doubt. Swedish researcher Clas Tegenfeld, who is writing a book on biological effects of electromagnetic fields, says "Already there are at least 15,000 scientific reports on the subject. I am afraid the truth is that we don't want to know."
There have, in fact, been several studies that show no correlation between cell phone use and cancer. These studies were conducted by respected institutions and researchers and the results published in peer-reviewed journals. However, these were all simple statistical studies that compared the incidence of brain cancer among cell phone users to that of the general population. Typical of these studies is an oft-cited one from Sweden that was published in the July 1999 issue of the International Journal of Oncology. According to the NCI, "This study compared cellular telephone use in a group of 209 individuals who had brain tumors (the case group) with a group of 425 people without brain cancer (the control group). The study reported a statistically nonsignificant increased risk for brain tumors on the side of the head on which the cellular telephone was used. However, researchers found no overall increase in the risk for brain tumors with cellular telephone use."
Does this prove that cell phone use does not lead to increased risk of brain cancer? No. As the NCI itself points out, "Cancers that take a long time to develop would not have been detected by these studies." What has been shown in numerous studies, however, is that the radiation coming from cell phones does have measurable effects on brain cells that can lead to cancer, as well as neurological diseases.
Lai's experiments are instructive in this regard. One of his main findings was that radiation from cell phones at levels below current
have found that regions near AM radio-broadcasting towers had 70 percent more leukemia deaths than those without.' The article continues: 'The study, to be published in an upcoming issue of the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, also found that cancer deaths were 29 percent higher near such transmitters.' While 'their study did not prove a direct link between cancer and the transmitters', the FDA and the World Health Organization are urging more studies, especially of radio waves from cell phones."
The key words in your post are: over flat terrain.
I work for a wireless ISP using Canopy equipment. It works excellent when you have line of sight. A company in a good location, say West Texas, could make some money. But if you happen to be in say, East Texas, where there are tons of hills and trees, it is horrible.
Canopy is and was ahead of its time. But before this stuff really takes off, the Line of Sight issue is going to have to be done away with.
Usurper_ii
[Right now RF is putting food on my table. I'm not totally unbiased in the radiation-emitting radio/cell phone issue, however, as I lost a brother, a heavy cell phone user, to a brain tumor just this year and also work in a building with a 300 foot tower located three feet away from the back of the building...and just got my first cell phone after avoiding the darn things like the plague all of these years. -- Usurper_ii]
Jeffrey Silva wrote:
At the annual International Association of Fire Fighters, a call for a moratorium on new cell towers located on fire stations was called for until possible health effects can be examined.
Firefighters plan to seek nearly $1 million for the study, said Janet Newton, president of the EMR Policy Institute. The group is working with other firefighter advocates on the cell-tower issue. Cash-strapped cities and townships are paid by mobile-phone carriers to erect towers near fire stations, which tend to reside in densely populated areas.
Lt. Ron Cronin, who spearheaded the passage of the cell-tower measure at the IAFF convention, stated, "Some firefighters with cell towers currently located on their stations are experiencing symptoms that put our first responders at risk." "It is important to be sure we understand what effects these towers may have on the firefighters living in these stations. If the jakes in the fire house are suffering from headaches, can't respond quickly and their ability to make decisions is clouded by a sort of brain fog, then entire communities they are protecting will clearly be at risk."
RCR wireless news, August 30, 2004, p. 25
The easy way to defeat your "same amount of money so why not" argument is in your own statement....Rather than making sure that the artists get some kind of money for their work and that the label gets some kind of money for their investing in the artists, you funnel money to either the russian mob or profiteers. So long as people like you will take the cheapest (or free) way out of a situation, regardless of legality or ethics, your argument will not work. The ease and cheapness of digital transmittion sees to that.
Well, there are plenty of places I could have gotten the same music for free. However, I chose to part with hard earned money because they do things the way it should be done. If an American company offered an equal service, I would give them an equal amount of hard-earned money. In fact, I used emusic.com back when they offered unlimited downloads, and I probably spent 100 - 200 dollars with them before they choked and started to suck.
The fact is that the Russian site does pay the artists some money, too. So they, the artists, aren't getting filthy rich off of it, so what? I personally don't give a rat's ass. I don't mind if they make a nice living, but the reality is that the days of the filthy-rich superstar are coming to an end. Thank the lord! They can work for a living just like everyone else.
As far as funding the Russian mob: smoking pot supports terrorist, piracy supports terrorist...it all makes for good soundbites and you need to work something in about protecting the children or something! {g}
Oh, and the numbers used about the current amount of profit in the industry coming from music buyers purchasing 6 CDs per year came from a very legit source...I just can't remember who wrote it so I can't give a source. Just because I didn't give a source does not mean I read it on the onion.com!
Usurper_ii
I read somewhere that all of the profit that is currently made in the record industry is based off of music fans buying an average of 6 compact disks per year (I guess they average that, some buy more, some buy less). But the point is, if heavy music buyers spent an amount of money on downloads that roughly equaled six CDs, the same amount of money would still be changing hands. And if they did it right, I guess even more money would change hands.
/. about the Russian site, I nervously joined it. In only a couple of months, I have spent 25.00. I have downloaded lots of stuff I used to own on cassette but got stolen from me in a break-in at a place I used to rent. I downloaded a lot of stuff I have on albums, but can't listen to anymore.
Now here is my experience with that dubiously legal Russian site vs. my experiences on itunes.
I have downloaded two songs from itunes. They were free because I won the songs in the Pepsi give-away. I wanted to buy some and even looked quite a bit...but there was nothing that really jumped out at me.
After seeing a post on
There is enough there that I could easily spend 10.00 a month and download stuff just to see what it sounds like. I enjoy the service so much, I would probably spend more money in a year than the price of six regular-priced CDs.
If record companies could only see the light, there is a ton of money in a legal site that equaled or excelled over that dubiously legal Russian site.
And I can tell you, I was never a heavy user of P2P, but I hardly remember what that was like after using the dubiously legal Russian site. I can't imagine having to go back to it, either.
If nothing else, I'm glad the site is there to provide some competition to the US/RIAA monopoly.
Usurper_ii
While I don't think it is going to happen, I thought this was a really interesting article on the draft issue...and it came out of the Family Circle of all places. If my wife hadn't had it laying around, I would have probably never even heard about this. -- Usurper_ii
Could your child be drafted?
by Jan Goodwin
High-school seniors have a lot on their minds these days--applying to
college, getting accepted, finding the funds to pay for it, then worrying
about whether they can get a job once they graduate. One thing they hadn't
counted on, however, was being drafted into the military when they turn 18.
There hasn't been a draft in the United States since 1973, but indications
are strong that next year that may change. And for the first time, young
women as well as men can expect to be called.
Why a return to the draft? Because our troops (stationed in two-thirds of
the world's countries) are spread so thinly, and because high casualty rates
in Iraq and Afghanistan have dramatically reduced recruitment and
reenlist-ment levels. A poll taken last year by Stars and Stripes, a
Pentagon-funded newspaper for service personnel, found that 49 percent of
respondents were not planning to reenlist.
According to retired U.S. Army Colonel David Hackworth, a military analyst
and one of the most decorated officers in the army, the U.S. military is now
so shorthanded that a whopping 40 percent of the 135,000 troops being
rotated into Iraq are National Guard members and reservists. Adds
Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY); '"We haven't called up this level of
reservists since the Korean War."
What's more, if House and Senate bills HR163 and S89 pass, the loophole 'of
college, used by many to avoid serving in Vietnam, will be closed next time
around. All men and women ages 18 to 26 would be eligible for induction once
they have completed high school. Further, the Smart Border Declaration,
signed by Canadian and U.S. officials in December 2001, should keep would-be
draft dodgers in this country.
Congressman Rangel, author of the House bill, which is now before the Armed
Services Committee (Ernest Hollings [D-SC] authored the Senate version),
explains that the Administration's commitment to a prolonged presence in the
Middle East, the prospect of additional military interventions, and the fact
that "half of Guards and reservists say they have no intention to stay in"
are strong indicators that "ultimately we will run out of bodies."
"We shouldn't need a draft," says Rangel, "but now that we've been involved
in a war, the patriotic thing is shared sacrifice. Currently, the rich get a
tax cut, and the poor get a chance to make the ultimate sacrifice."
Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), addressing the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee in April, concurred. "Why shouldn't we ask all our citizens to
bear some responsibility and pay some price?'" he said.
Feeling a Draft?
The Administration denies that a draft is in the works. Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld has stated: "We're not going to reimplement a draft. There
is no need for it. The disadvantages of using compulsion to bring into the
armed forces the men and women needed are notable."
But, says Ron Paul, M.D., an eight-term Republican congressman from Texas
and a former Air Force surgeon, '"You don't listen to what they say, you
watch what they do. The Administration says no, but what we've gotten from
the Pentagon and elsewhere is yes."
One sign of that, says Rick Jahnkow, program coordinator of the nonprofit
Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities, was that last fall
"[Presidential adviser] Karl Rove polled Republican members of Congress on
how they felt about the draft. They said they'd support the President."
"This is not surprising," comments Dr. Paul, who sits on the International
Relations Committee and was one of only six Republican congressmen who vote
at the very moment their presence in other scientific and engineering disciplines has soared.
Maybe because they are smarter and are going where the money is?
Usurper_ii
While it is neat they held up to the test, I have had several just quit working and they had little to no abuse at all. One was for my wife's camera and one for my mp3 player...and neither one that went bad was probably much more than a year old.
Usurper_ii
I work for an wireless ISP using Motorola Canopy. Canopy equipment can go up to 4 Mbps, up and down, and it works and works well. The down side is that it is expensive, a "fixed" wireless product, and requires Line of Sight to the customer. Let me say that last thing is the kicker. While the equipment may work fantastic, and we have customers working up to 7 miles away, if they can't actually see the tower, you can forget about signing up that customer. Trees, hills, buildings in the way? Lost customer.
And this means that as an ISP using Motorola Canopy, your location can make or break you. If you are in West Texas in the right spot, you might have a great business. But move over to East Texas, and you can sign up a handful of people off of a 300 ft tower. It's crazy.
The problem is that the units are 200 mw and just don't have the power to go through anything.
The FCC really needs to find a spectrum where they can boost the power up to something useable. Let me tell you, Motorola Canopy equipment with some power behind it would be some cool stuff.
Anyway, I haven't read the article yet (imagine that), but I'm going to assume that 300 Mbps is LoS between the units? As I said in a post yesterday, the holy grail of wireless is something that works well through trees. Whoever does that, and if they manage to patent it, will have power similar to the One Ring.
Usurper_ii
line of sight, it would be a three to five mile radius working through trees...and even hills. Now someone pulling that off cheaply and legally would be like pulling Excalibur out of its rock and it would impress the hell out of me. (by the way, I'm involved in a wireless ISP that is getting hammered by the local terrain).
Usurper_ii
Funny thing about the whole deal. I work for a 2-way radio company that has a table in a back room full of 800 Mhz radios. The radios came from companies that were using them. When Nextel purchased the 800 Mhz spectrum, we (back before I started) had to sell all of these companies new radios in a different spectrum. Well, Nextel has yet to build out in my area and it has been several years since all of this took place.
I overheard some of our current customers complaining that they thought the whole deal was phony and created to sell them new radios. And I could see where they are coming from since Nextel didn't build out and it has been years, it does make us look a little bad (each one of the radios on that back table is hundreds of dollars, so this was a *huge* amount of money spread across a lot of companies).
It would be almost a kind of irony if Nextel's customers had to buy new phones. First it makes companies have to spend a lot of money, then it turns around and makes consumers spend a lot of money.
Maybe Nextel's catch phrase should be: Nextel, we make a lot of money change hands.
(And if anyone was wondering, the 800 Mhz radios can be used for non-profit emergency-type stuff (VFD, first responders, sheriff, etc.), so my company has just started building out an 800 Mhz system and has started installing all of the radios and is eating all of the installation cost!)
Usurper_ii
I don't know the validity of the message below but it is certainly interesting. Personally, I'm not a huge Michael Moore fan but I would go see this movie if it came out! -- Usurper_ii
--------- Forwarded message ----------
Folks,
I don't know whether you heard, but Michael Moore is planning to expose
the medical establishment next. I can hardly wait!
But I get the feeling he doesn't know more than the tip of the iceberg
(the mistakes they themselves own up to, like syringes misplaced inside
surgery victims, "wrong" drugs and drug doses, "unnecessary" surgeries,
and so on).
I proposed to my newbie raw friend in S. Diego that some of us should try
to educated him further about this subject before he makes that movie.
She decided to pick up the ball and roll with it!
At his website (www.michaelmoore.com), his email address is listed as
mike@michaelmoore.com. It says that he tries to read them all, but
doesn't have time to answer most of them. If you have something to tell
him about Natural Hygiene, here is your chance to have an impact on him
personally and maybe millions if he becomes convinced!
This is what she wrote:
--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Susan"
Here's what I sent MM---tag! Your turn now.
http://educate-yourself.org/fc/drugstory.shtml
Dear Michael,
I hear you may be doing an expose on the medical mafia. I strongly urge
you to read the article on the link above. I have a copy of the book, now
out of print, called "The Drug Story." If you want I can send you a
photocopy of it. It creates a paradigm shift in one's way of thinking
about modern so-called medicine (really toxic). The best and true way is
to get the body to heal itself through fasting and a pure diet, which I
have done! Ralph Moss is also an excellent author on cancer industry
expose.
Let me know if I can send you the book. It is mind-boggling. I really
hope you expose the entire fraud of how modern medicine is held hostage
by the pharmaceutical company and their bogus medicines that only cover
up symptoms but make the body more toxic than ever. (EX: chemo kills 6
billion healthy cells for each cancer cell.) As the article and book
point out, Rockefeller created drugs for profit, created the American
Medical Assoc. to discredit any natural healer, bought out the media to
censor/discredit articles on natural healing and also formed the
insurance to pay for his products. He also funded only medical schools
that taught his drug use. He made all doctors go from healers and knowers
of natural remedies to profesional, legalized drug pushers just to build
up his kingdom. The pharmaceutical cartel is responsible for more deaths
than anyone when you consider how they have covered up the truth about
how the body can heal itself of cancer and other maladies quite easily.
Thanks!
Sincerely,
Susan
Fighting For Our Freedom?
One of the things that keeps coming up since our troops have gone into harm's way is that they are fighting for our freedom. If a war supporter is asked about the protesters, invariably, the response is that our soldiers are fighting so that the protesters have the freedom to protest.
Could this be true? Is it possible that Saddam's six or seven Scud missiles -- which we can't even agree on as to if they were the "permitted" Scuds or the "illegal" Scuds -- could have affected our freedom here in America? To hear it from anyone in the military, every war we have ever fought was for our freedom here in the US.
Well, was Desert Storm to preserve our freedom? If Saddam had continued to occupy Kuwait after we gave him the green light to take it, would anyone here in America have lost any freedom whatsoever? Well, we might have ended up paying higher prices for gas or -- oh the horror -- been forced to employ Americans to work here in America to pump up American oil.
Does anyone remember the economy in Texas when oil was a booming industry here? I do, and it was nice. Having jobs to put food on the table and keep a roof over your head...with enough left over to save up for the future or send your kids off to college, that sounds like freedom; and instead of keeping that here in America, we closed down entire towns and exported the jobs to the OPEC nations...the very nations that openly despise us.
So if Desert Storm wasn't for our freedom, what was it for? When Saddam originally invaded Kuwait, President Bush, Sr., turned to the United Nations, not the U.S. Constitution to which he'd sworn a solemn oath, for authorization for his military moves. He then began to state his goals -- over and over again:
So here it is painfully obvious that just because we went to war, it wasn't to preserve our freedom here in America, but to empower the United Nations. In fact, not only did Desert Storm not have anything to do with our freedom but in all actuality was more so to enslave us than to free us (those employing the term "New World Order" have sought socialism (economic control) and world government (political control) over mankind. This was also the goal of Bush Sr. for our nation and for the world).
So it is possible for our troops to be in harm's way and it not be for our freedom. And if it is not for our freedom in general but specifically for the "right to protest," legislation is being proposed in Oregon that could make protesting an act of terroris
who think there is no way to support our troops yet bash their mission or their command in chief:
If a person has to support the troops' mission no matter what...were the citizens of Germany just supposed to support Hitler no matter what? Were they supposed to be "patriotic" and support the troops as they rounded up the Jews?
Now I'm not exactly comparing Bush to Hitler here...but what I'm trying to say is that a person can "not want to see our troops come in harms way" and yet not support the mission they are on. For an intelligent person, what the mission is has to figure into if they support the mission or not. To do otherwise, is a blind flag-waving patriotism that is actually dangerous. A true patriot would ask if the war was a just war and if the war was constitutional. If it is not those things, then it is not unpatriotic to not support it, it is true patriotism.
Usurper_ii
The night before last, the Independent Film Channel played a 30-minute press conference with Michael Moore that he gave at the Cannes Film Festival. I was really impressed with what he had to say and I think the movie might be worth watching. Rather than being just about Bush, he spent a lot of time talking about how Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 (a.k.a. the truth) and how public opinion was manipulated to stir up support for the war. I'm kind of wanting to see it, surprisingly. The reviews are already in:
IMDB User Comments: Michael Moore is a traitor to his country
I had a lot of driving to do at work the last couple of days and listened to a lot of WBAP 820. There was a lot of talk about Fahrenheit 9/11 and Michael Moore. Every single bit of it was venomous and hate filled. From Rush to Hannity, to every single person on there, there is no way to support our troops while attacking their mission or their commander in chief. And if you happen to do so, you are considered a traitor to the country.
It's so weird because on every other topic, I usually agree with the majority of what these guys have to say. But they make me so mad on the war issue that I feel like some kind of left-wing liberal. I was actually wanting to e-mail them all yesterday and give them a piece of my mind, but decided not to because they would probably turn me in to home land security.
One thing I will say, though, Rush was out and Walter Williams took his place for the day. I still like him.
Usurper_ii
Fahrenheit 9/11: A Conservative Critique
by William Norman Grigg
I just returned from viewing Fahrenheit 9/11 here in Appleton, WI. I went to the 1:30 PM showing, which was - astonishingly - sold out. The crowd was overwhelmingly white and middle-class (this IS Wisconsin, remember), ranging in age from early teens to retirees. The people were polite, friendly, well-mannered (something we shouldn't take for granted on the part of contemporary theater crowds). There was tumultuous applause at the end, punctuated by a moment of reflective silence as we read the dedication card invoking those murdered by terrorists on 9/11, and those murdered through state terrorism in the aftermath.
The film itself very much reflects its creator: It's shaggy, flabby, occasionally witty, and frequently infuriating. It will have a HUGE impact because Moore - his facile leftist economics notwithstanding - has nailed his case against the Bush regime flush to the plank. It will be all but impossible for anybody who sits still and watches this film to view Bush the Lesser as anything other than a petty, spiteful, dim-witted, bloody-handed little fool - and the figurehead of a murderous power elite. This explains why the Bu'ushists are threatening to go Abu Ghraib on Moore: They're busted.
The most powerful moments in the film are those that humanize U.S. troops, several of whom are shown on-screen criticizing the regime. A major arc of the film is devoted to a Flint, Michigan housewife from a military family whose son, just prior to being killed in Iraq, wrote a letter condemning "George 'I wanna be like my Daddy' Bush" for staging this useless, unjust war. Moore himself, who narrates the film (and makes himself too much a part of the story, incidentally) observes that the largest immorality of this entire enterprise is the actions of a dishonest president lying our country into war and forcing decent young men (and women) to do immoral things.
It should be pointed out as well that the film - despite being lambasted as an exercise in unalloyed Bush-bashing - doesn't spare Democrats who acquiesced in Bush the Lesser's power grabs and his criminal war against Iraq. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle comes off particularly poorly, which in his case merely requires a recording device of some kind.
An interesting encounter immediately after seeing the film underscores its fundamentally non-partisan nature. Some poor schlep had positioned himself outside the theater with a clipboard soliciting signatures on a nominating position for a would-be Democrat congressional candidate. A couple of people seized the petition and started to sign. Impertinent sort that I am, I asked, "What's this fellow's position on the war?"
The scribbling stopped, and several sets of eyes focused intently on the hapless volunteer. "Well, um, ah, he thinks we should do something," he began, stammeringly. "Ah, he just thinks we should be more careful." On hearing this, a lady looked at her husband, who had signed the petition, and snapped, "Scratch off your name." I told the volunteer that I'm what most people would regard as an "ultra-conservative - not just a `conservative' - but if your guy came out against the war I'd vote for him, and knock on doors." "Well, I can't really address all the details of his positions," the increasingly flustered guy responded. "Just let him know what I said," I suggested, telling him that there are a lot of people who have the same point of view.
I chatted with several other people as they left the theater, all of them roughly my age (early 40s) and of similar economic and cultural background. Each of them indicated that he or she would urge friends to see the film - which means that it will have "legs" even if the GOP and FEC were to choke off advertising somehow.
There were no screaming Bolsheviks (one viewer had an anti-animal rights T-shirt) or marijuana-scented bohemians in the crowd. This wasn't the sort of crowd you'd see at a Phish concert, or storming McDonald's at an an
It would be possible, I think, to add a couple of phone lines that people could dial into the Intranet. This would expand the area back out to the old BBS range.
I ran a Wildcat! BBS back in the day, with two phone lines. After BBSs died, I wanted to do exactly what this topic is about, only people could dial into it and access it with their web browser instead of proprietary BBS software (I had my idea before wireless was out there).
Usurper_ii