This video was found on YouTube by someone who subscribes to my CPF0000 mailing list. Quite enlightening, don’t you think?[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/bDsIFspVzfI" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Here’s my contribution to spreading the word.
Ok, yeah, it’s Saturday Night Live … and, yup, it’s the election season … but I really enjoyed Barak Obama’s cameo on TV … [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/ndQM0X5rhfE” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]
And, yes, I still think that Clinton has absolutely no right to her current position in the Senate … and absolutely will not vote for her in the primary. If she happens to win the primary, I will do a write in vote for president.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush has commuted the prison term of former White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who faced 30 months in prison after his March conviction on federal charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators.
CNN – Bush commutes Libby’s prison sentence
Poor attempts at rhyme aside … this is absolutely ridiculous … how the hell can Bush justify this?
Based on recent actions … it’s clear to me that the executive branch of our government considers themselves above the law.
Have you ever wondered if Open Source software could be a factor in the success or failure of a political candidate?
Douglas Karr has an interesting political analysis on his blog … Which candidates are running which servers.
Here’s a quick breakdown …
Very interesting analysis … and it pretty much breaks down the way I would expect, and hope, it would.
As a believer in free content, I salute Senator Obama for his request to license the democratic debates under the Creative Commons (Attribution) license.
I am a strong believer in the importance of copyright, especially in a digital age. But there is no reason that this particular class of content needs the protection. We have incentive enough to debate. The networks have incentive enough to broadcast those debates. Rather than restricting the product of those debates, we should instead make sure that our democracy and citizens have the chance to benefit from them in all the ways that technology makes possible.
– Obama’s Letter to Howard Dean
Bravo.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has announced that he has filed papers to create a presidential exploratory committee. The announcement, which was made on his Web site, is a first step in the senator’s potential 2008 run for president.
– NPR: Obama Pursues Presidential Candidacy
Although I’m sure Obama would make a fine president … and I would / will probably vote for him … I’m not sure he’s quite ready for the presidency (he’s only been a senator for 2 years) and I’m SURE that the country isn’t ready (there are far too many bigoted people out there).
I worry that, if he runs, the democratic voters will be polarized … and that will cause us to loose the Whitehouse again.
[tags]president, obama, whitehouse, politics[/tags]
According to this quiz, I’m a Libertarian.
I never thought of myself as a Libertarian, but I guess it fits … although I don’t agree with most of libertarian gun control ideas.
I guess justice isn’t blind after all …
A federal judge ruled today that the government’s warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it.
– Judge orders end to NSA wiretapping — Baltimore Sun
In her ruling, Judge Diggs states:
“In this case, the President has acted, undisputedly, as FISA forbids. FISA is the expressed statutory policy of our Congress. The presidential power, therefore, was exercised at its lowest ebb and cannot be sustained.”
[tags]FISA, spying, easedropping, bush, national security[/tags]
This is just way TOO painful …
Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) explained why he voted against the amendment and gave an amazing primer on how the internet works.
There’s one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.
But this service isn’t going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.
Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?
I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.
So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes.
We aren’t earning anything by going on that internet. Now I’m not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people […]
The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says “No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet”. No, I’m not finished. I want people to understand my position, I’m not going to take a lot of time. [?]
They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck.
It’s a series of tubes.
And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?
Do you know why?
Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can’t afford getting delayed by other people.
[…]
Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.
Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it’s not using what consumers use every day.
It’s not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.
The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me.
And this guy is a senator?
For a nation “addicted to oil,” as President Bush put it, Senate Republicans have a proposal that can only be described as enabling: Put $100 back into the pocket of every taxpayer.
The proposal, unveiled Thursday, has been roundly criticized not only by Democrats but also by fiscal conservatives who warn it will widen the deficit while doing little to encourage energy conservation.
“It could be one of the dumbest ideas of the year,” said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the conservative Cato Institute. “I haven’t looked at all of the ideas yet, but it’s got to be right up there.”
Taylor pointed out that as proposed, the rebate would go only to people who paid federal income tax last year, meaning it would be no help at all to the millions of low-income Americans who pay no income taxes but arguably suffer the most in times of rising fuel prices. About 100 million taxpayers would qualify for the rebate, which would be limited to filers with incomes under $150,000 for couples or about $100,000 for singles. It would cost more than $10 billion.
– $100 rebate plan called costly, ineffective – Martin Wolk: Eye on the Economy – MSNBC.com
We love how a conservative numbers guy has to point out the obvious flaw in the GOP’s otherwise damn fine plan.
What shall we do with this munificent benefit, this tremendous windfall? Why, it will buy us about 2 tanks of gas eachl – an amount that’s pretty meaningless to both Ginny and I given our lightfoot driving habits. So what shall we do with our $100 gas rebate, assuming that this bill passes (and you can bet that the push will be on to pass it just in time for ‘lectioneering, kids, because after all it’s a “please-vote-for-me-in-November” ploy by the GOP).
Here are a few ideas we have about what we’ll do with the (theoretical) rebate. They all involve endorsing or re-directing the rebate to a more deserving target – this may not be possible depending on how it’s structured, so it may be necessary to deposit it and write a check, but I’m hoping endorsing to third parties will be possible. You’ll see why:
Please feel free to steal this idea, or enlarge on it. Think of the good that could be done – $100 isn’t that much money to Ginny or I, but it’s a lot of money to a poor person, or to a non-profit trying to eke every last penny out of a small budget.
Note: This post also appears, almost word for word, on Ginny’s blog … we worked on it together.
[tags]car, gas, rebate, frist, hybrid[/tags]