Tag: politics

lipstick on a sinking ship

A recent Anti-Palin rally was the largest Alaska political rally in the history of the state.

from Cherie Priest:

So who is this woman anyway, and what do we know about her?
Well, let’s see.

She tries to force abstinence-only education, because apparently her daughter is more special than everybody else’s; and she crows about the “decision” her daughter has made to keep an unexpected/unwanted child — even while bracing herself to strip the decision-making ability from other women (even in case of rape). Speaking of rape, when Palin was in charge in Wasilla, victimized women had to pay for their own rape kits in order to “save money.” What a feminist!

She doesn’t believe in global warming; she advocates the hunting of Alaskan wolves via the sportsmanlike activity of exhausting them with low-flying airplanes and then shooting them to death with high-powered rifles.* She’s fought tooth and nail to keep polar bears off the endangered species list. What an environmentalist!

In a real fit of pique, this “fiscally responsible” “maverick” who bleeds integrity billed the state of Alaska for 312 nights which she spent in her own home. She advocates the banning of books from public libraries, and once threatened to fire a librarian who vigorously opposed attempts to do so. But that’s not so surprising, considering there’s ample evidence to suggest that she also tried to get her ex-brother-in-law fired, too. What an upstanding public servant who would never abuse power!

Left to her own devices, she’d just as soon take her state and mount a secession from the union. That whole “Bridge to Nowhere” thing? Yeah, she’s a rather mistaken when she sings about her virtue in refusing it. She’s also been known to fudge her travel/diplomacy credentials. And oh, wait. There’s that whole malarkey about the jet she so cavalierly sold. That didn’t happen like she said it did, either. But maybe she was just confused. The record will reflect that she’s not much of a businessperson. What a qualified leader!

Gosh. She sounds like a real peach.
(And all this with just a >2-year stint as governor and a 7-year run as a small-town mayor.)

Also: bOINGbOING – Sarah Palin: spammer and digital secrecy scofflaw.

Is anyone else being warmed by the media backlash that seems to be springing up in her wake? Every bit of bad news about her seems to bring an Obama win just that much closer, which, it’s true, will not fix everything overnight, but should at least slow the crashing disaster that seems to be the modern U.S.

I like that Palin sort of guarantees an Obama win

  • Speaking before the Pentecostal church, Palin painted the current war in Iraq as a messianic affair in which the United States could act out the will of the Lord. “Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God,” she exhorted the congregants. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”
  • “Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff’s department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than “fire code violations,” and early this morning, the Sheriff’s department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying.”
  • “Was the U.S. media admirably discreet or just plain ineffectual in covering news of the arrest of three men suspected of plotting to assassinate Barack Obama during his acceptance speech at Invesco Field? First, consider the evidence: One of the men arrested, Nathan Johnson said the other two men, Tharin Gartrell and Shawn Robert Adolph, “had planned to kill Barack Obama…on Thursday…,” which was why they were in Denver, and that “Adolph was going to shoot Obama from a high vantage point using a 22-250 rifle which had been sighted at 750 yards.” According to the FBI, “Johnson was directly asked if they had come to Denver to kill Obama and he responded in the affirmative.”
  • “Tucked deep into a recent proposal from the Bush administration is a provision that has received almost no public attention, yet in many ways captures one of President Bush’s defining legacies: an affirmation that the United States is still at war with Al Qaeda. The language, part of a proposal for hearing legal appeals from detainees at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, goes beyond political symbolism. Echoing a measure that Congress passed just days after the Sept. 11 attacks, it carries significant legal and public policy implications for Mr. Bush, and potentially his successor, to claim the imprimatur of Congress to use the tools of war, including detention, interrogation and surveillance, against the enemy, legal and political analysts say.”

    • are they even trying anymore?

    Please compare:

    Telegraph UK: George Bush surprised world leaders with a joke about his poor record on the environment as he left the G8 summit in Japan. The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.” He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

    The Onion: At a special Earth Day event Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney inhaled his first-ever breath of oxygen. “I am…proud to stand before you today and…breathe in the same gas used by…millions of Americans,” said a wheezing and gasping Cheney, whose body is accustomed to compounds of chlorine and sulfur dioxide. “One breath, however, is enough for me. I’m glad the stuff will be out of the atmosphere forever in a few decades.” Cheney then left the press conference to attend a cardiac health awareness dinner, where he feasted on human hearts.

    situationist comedy

    Karriere is a fairly new Copenhagen bar completely designed by over 30 artists, (Robert Stadler, Douglas Gordon, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Olafur Eliasson, etc.), who worked on everything from the name to the interior.

    Most interestingly, the cost of certain drinks at the Karriere Bar have been reworked into an installation piece by Kenneth Balfelt, who conceived of a price policy that experiments with perceived social structures. The new prices are determined by how you display yourself and it’s the waiters and bartenders who decide if someone qualifies.

    Some examples: Activist and hippie types pay extra for organic soda, unless they’re homeless, in which case they get a discount on cafe cortado, yuppies pay extra for beer, and gay couples who french kiss get a discount on apfelschorle.

    There’s many of various discounts, and for all sorts of things, speaking danish when you’re obviously foreign, being a multiracial table, etc., hardly any which seem politically correct, but all of which might prove interesting to interact with. I imagine friends gathering in groups, trying to work out how many discounts they can snag in one go.

    RUN DMCA

    Government of Canada to Table Bill to Amend the Copyright Act: “OTTAWA, June 11, 2008 — The Honourable Jim Prentice, Minister of Industry, and the Honourable Josée Verner, Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages, and Minister for La Francophonie, will deliver brief statements and answer media inquiries shortly after the tabling of a bill to amend the Copyright Act. Members of the media will also be able to attend a technical briefing and lock-up prior to the tabling of the bill to amend the Copyright Act.”

    from Corey Doctorow via bOINGbOING, (emphasis mine):

    Here it is, folks, at long last: Industry Canada Minister Jim Prentice is about to introduce his Canadian version of America’s disastrous Digital Millennium Copyright Act tomorrow. In so doing, he is violating his own party’s promise to seek public consultation on all treaty accession bills, he’s ignoring the cries of rightsholders, industry, educators, artists, librarians, citizens’ rights groups, legal scholars and pretty much everyone with a stake in this, except the US Trade Representative and the US Ambassador, who, apparently, have had ample opportunity to chat with the Minister and give him his marching orders.

    Watch this space [the bOINGbOING post – jh] — we’ll have all kinds of ways for you to call your MP, the Minister’s office, and everyone else with a say in this sordid, ugly sellout. In 1998, the US bill criminalized the majority of American net-users at the stroke of a pen with a bill that cost tens of thousands of downloaders their life’s savings, allowed the entertainment industry to destroy innovative companies and devices, and did not reduced infringement or pay a single artist. Ten years of this misery and absurdity, ten years of trying to make the Internet worse at copying, and all it’s done is drive a rift between customers and musicians and allowed the music industry to piss away the business opportunity of a lifetime with lawsuits and saber-rattling.

    Canada can do better. Certainly, it can’t possibly do any worse — unless men like Prentice continue to make law without allowing Canadians to get a say in it.

    Help this article on Digg.

    UPDATE: Turns out the proposed Canadian DMCA is worse than the American one.

    I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked

    cruising left due east

    Fifty years ago, a judge ruled that Ginsberg’s Howl was not obscene (and ergo, could be read by children in classrooms) but now?

    Now it won’t be read on the air at a NY public radio broadcasting station for fear the FCC will fine them $325,000 for every ‘bad’ word.

    people are wearing red today in solidarity, but I can’t see that it helps

    Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’d know by now that Myanmar (or Burma) is in the midst of a violent crackdown against peaceful demonstrations by monks and other citizens.

    via neat-o-rama: Because of tight control of information, news from the capital city of Yangoon trickle out too slowly through regular media channels.

    Here’s where the Internet and blogs step in to fill the void. For instance, take a blogger named Ko Htike, whose website has become one of the main outlets of information:

    Armed with a laptop, a blogger named Ko Htike has thrust himself into the middle of the violent crackdown against monks and other peaceful demonstrators in his homeland of Myanmar.

    From more than 5,500 miles away, he’s one of the few people getting much needed information out to the world.

    He runs the blog out of his London apartment, waking up at 3 a.m. every day to review the latest digitally smuggled photos, video and information that’s sent in to him.

    With few Western journalists allowed in Myanmar, Htike’s blog is one of the main information outlets. He said he has as many as 40 people in Myanmar sending him photos or calling him with information. They often take the photos from windows from their homes, he said.

    Myanmar’s military junta has forbidden such images, and anyone who sends them is risking their lives.

    Links: CNN Article | Ko Htike’s blog [in Burmese and English] | An Overview by bOINGbOING

    jason0x21 says:

    They’ve shut off the Internets and cracked down on the press, but the cell network is presumably still up (at least, it’s not mentioned in the article). What appears to be common in “unwired” countries is a dense, effective cellular network infrastructure. Why? It’s way easier and cheaper to deploy, and makes more sense that wiring your country for POTS (plain old telephone service). I’m guessing that the government can’t afford to shut down the cellular network.

    It’s clear that that’s a big liability, because with the cellular network still up, stuff still gets to the Internet. It packs a punch, and easily bests shitty propaganda.

    yes, that is a disco in an elevator. Don’t you want one too?

    The dead-rain weather hasn’t been allowing me to continue my pictures. I decided I wanted six when I was done, but so far I’ve only got four of the pretty little things. I have no lights, you see, so I rely on sunlight and my living-room wall. If these clouds keep up, I’m going to have to borrow gear from VFS to finish the set.

    And, apropros of nothing, as more and more of these clips pile up, it’s been solidifying in my mind that the Wacky Right of America are overdue the label postmodern. The republicans seem to have stopped thinking of themselves as a universal entity and more a righteous legion under fire, The Other, a group that, in claiming victimhood, so deny any responsibility they may have for everyone else. I’m sure this could be applied a little deeper, but that’s about as far as I feel like going with it. I’d still like to have a nice evening.