NOTE: this blog is no longer active as of 12/07. New one: http://blog.kirchhof.com
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Fri, 31 Dec 2004
Happy New Year
Just a quick post to wish all of you a happy new year. It's been a
rollercoaster of a year over here in my world, and 2005 looks to be a
good one. I hope that the same is true for you. I'll be getting back
to regular postings next week.
Posted at 11:49 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Fri, 24 Dec 2004
Seasons Greetings
I'd like to take a moment and wish all of you a very Merry
Christmas and/or a very happy holiday season. It's been an interesting
year of changes (and one notable lack of a change.) 2005 looks to be
shaping up into a fulfilling year; I hope that the same is true for
you.
I started doing this to blow off steam, mainly for myself and
friends, and to cut down on e-mail traffic. It turns out that I like
doing it, and enough of you folks visit regularly to make it worth
doing. (We seem to be at about ninety to one hundred regular visitors now.)
I thank all of you, and I extend my heartfelt wishes for a peaceful
and prosperous new year to you and yours.
Posted at 17:35 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Thu, 23 Dec 2004
Challanges
You can't make this stuff up. What a bunch of maroons.
Posted at 09:46 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Wed, 22 Dec 2004
A Great Resource For This Time
The First Amendment Project at
the University of Minnesota has a great collection of case law and
other material related to free speech. Especially interesting is their
primary
sources page, many of the documents (and some things like conversation
transcripts) that produced important rulings related to free speech.
This is probably a good time to refamiliarize yourself with your
Bill Of Rights. (Thanks to ACSBlog for this one.)
Posted at 20:32 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Ever Have One Of Those Days?
Just saw this on Blogpulse.
Posted at 09:48 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Sun, 19 Dec 2004
The Battle For America
You'll need quicktime to Watch This.
Posted at 09:32 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Sat, 18 Dec 2004
On Your Rights
First, how many of you actually know your rights when you encounter
a police officer? The Center for Constitutional
Rights does, and they have an excellent "HowTo" article available here, dating from the RNC. Get it. Memorize it. Utilize it.
All of this comes from a link in an article by John Perry Barlow, who is
doing us all a service by challenging an airline search on
Constitutional grounds. His account of his arrest makes for extremely interesting reading.
After you read that one, this
article will bring you up to date -- the court appearance was on
Wednesday.
Posted at 11:26 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Sun, 19 Dec 2004
Well, this is neat
Science Daily has a really interesting article
about a new diet being studied by doctors in England. I don't usually pay
much attention to this type of thing, but the numbers here are pretty
astounding...
Scientists in this week's Christmas issue of the BMJ have discovered
the 'Polymeal', a set of ingredients which cuts the risk of heart
(cardiovascular) disease by 76% and significantly increases life
expectancy.
Results of dining on the Polymeal were most dramatic for men, who
were projected to live on average 6.6 years longer in total than those
not eating the meal. Men will also live for nine years longer without
succumbing to heart disease, and those that do will suffer it for less
years of their lives.
Women eating the Polymeal will also live significantly longer,
nearly five years more than women not eating the meal. They will also
put off the onset of heart disease for eight years longer.
The Polymeal includes wine, fish, dark chocolate, fruits and
vegetables, almonds and garlic, eaten on a daily basis (but four times
a week for fish). Scientists reviewed the medical literature on how
much each ingredient cuts heart disease, blood pressure or cholesterol
levels by varying amounts, (150ml wine daily for instance reduces
heart disease by 32%) and worked out the combined effect of the
ingredients. They then calculated the potential effect across an
ongoing study of American adults.
Original article is available on the British
Medical Journal site.
Posted at 09:50 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Sat, 18 Dec 2004
They're In!
This year's Bulwer-Lytton
Fiction Contest results are in. Dave Zobel of Manhattan Beach, CA
is this years winner, with the poignant entry:
She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight
. . . summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a
shrimp's tail . . . though the term "love affair" now struck her as a
ridiculous euphemism . . . not unlike "sand vein," which is after all
an intestine, not a vein . . . and that tarry substance inside
certainly isn't sand . . . and that brought her back to Ramon.
(For those who are unfamiliar with the contest, here's the blurb:)
An international literary parody contest, the competition honors
the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George
Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly
simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to
imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii"
(1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the
expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the
great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his
novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts"
beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."
This year's unintentional (e.g. real prose) winner comes from Lyman Littlefield, "Sights from the Long Tree":
'Twas morning--the sun rose under the brightest auspices, and the thin, vaporous clouds that flitted in the heavens, continued gradually to flee away before the gentle morning breeze, that seemed wont to greet their golden visages with the soft rustle of its dewy wings--until not a hand's breadth of them were seen remaining to mar the spotless beauty of the ethereal blue.
I kind of like the Historical Fiction winner:
Galileo Galilei gazed expectantly through his newly invented telescope and then recoiled in sudden horror -- his prized thoroughbred's severed neck, threateningly discarded in a murky mass of interstellar dust (known to future generations as the Horsehead Nebula), left little doubt about where the Godfather and his Vatican musclemen stood on the recent geocentric/heliocentric debate.
Good times, good times....
Posted at 10:21 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Fri, 17 Dec 2004
Horrifying Christmas Presents, Part 1
The Cubes
Posted at 10:36 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Thu, 16 Dec 2004
Just In Time For The Holidays
"It's a Wonderful Life." In 30 seconds. With Bunnies.
Posted at 13:17 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Oh My Lord
Okay all you hipsters. Be the first on your block to do the latest
utterly
stupid thing to your body in the name of fashion.
Posted at 13:03 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Wolves at the Door
Way back in May, one of the first posts that I did here was on the
about-to-explode housing
bubble. Today, The Economist weighs
in and it's not pretty. Housing prices are up in the entire
industrialized world well past what has proven to be sustainable
historically.
In some countries, notably America, France and Sweden, the property
market is still heating up. The average price of American homes jumped
by 13% in the year to the third quarter -- the fastest increase on record
in real terms. Prices rose at double-digit rates in half of all
American states; in five states, including California, and in
Washington, DC, they soared by more than 20%. French house prices have
increased by 15% over the past year, causing the Bank of France to
express concern about the risk of a speculative bubble.
Calculations by The Economist suggest that house prices have hit
record levels in relation to incomes in America, Australia, Britain,
France, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain. In other
words, ratios of prices to incomes are now above levels that have
proved unsustainable in the past. Taking the average ratio of house
prices to incomes in 1975-2000 as a baseline, American house prices
are now almost 30% overvalued.
And interest rates are going up again, too.
What does this mean? If you're going to sell, sell now. If you're
going to refinance, refinance now -- the refinancing companies are on
their last legs and hungry to deal. If you own a home and are happy
with your investment, do everything that you can to make sure that you
keep it.
Whatever you do, don't switch to an Adjustable Rate Mortgage,
and don't pull every dime of equity out of your house at current
valuations. A 70% valuation of your best appraisal is
conservative, and probably as good a number as any based upon what the
economists are saying.
If you're going to buy, wait a year or two. It's going to be a
huge mess, and it will be a buyer's market in the not-so-distant
future.
The original article I cited in May is still
very much worth a read.
Posted at 09:11 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Tue, 14 Dec 2004
Arr!
It's very important that you go right now and get your very own Pirate Name.
Signed,
"Black Harry Cash"
Posted at 09:32 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Mon, 13 Dec 2004
Brave New World
The ACLU has commissioned a
wonderful piece from an ad agency called Sedapa; it has to do with
your privacy. It's very well done -- even your dittohead relatives can
understand this one. If you have Flash installed, you can take a look
at it over at
AdCritic.
Posted at 07:38 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Sun, 12 Dec 2004
Vote (With) Your Pocketbook
The good folks over at Buy
Blue have given us a nice little holiday gift this year. They've
put together a list
of who contributed to which political campaign, and how much. For
example, WalMart gave 2 million this election cycle, 80% of it to
Republicans. Costco gave $208K, 98% to Democratic candidates.
Enjoy your shopping experience this season, and go have a Sonic
burger when you want to take a break -- they gave 100% of their
contributions to Democrats this year.
Posted at 21:17 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Sat, 11 Dec 2004
...and I beheld a Whitehorse...
DEC 9 -- Canada's Supreme Court ruled
today that the Canadian government can go forward with its plan to
legalize same-sex marriages. The court declared that the government has
the right to define marriage as, "the lawful union of two persons to
the exclusion of all others." In its holding the court found, "Canada
is a pluralistic society [and] Marriage from the perspective of the
state is a civil institution." The court also ruled that religious
officials and organizations can't be forced to perform same-sex
marriages, per the Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In related news, all civil institutions in Canada immediately broke
down, 62% of the population subsequently 'turned homosexual' and
abandoned their children, food supplies disappeared, and rampant
cannibalism and devil worshipping was immediately in
evidence. Meanwhile, Radical Christian Clerics publicly worried about
an expected upsurge in sabbath-breaking and its deleterious influence
upon the financing of their political action committees.
Posted at 09:42 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Thu, 09 Dec 2004
Did you Know?
Did you know....
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies:
Diebold and ES&S.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold
2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or
oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign
organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to
helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886
5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitrakis/031004fitrakis.html
6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush
family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the
Senate Ethics Committee.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/...
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php
7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel27.html
8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.
http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of
any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data
coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in
by voters.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates/pfindex.html
10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines,
all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm
11. Diebold is based in Ohio.
http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm
12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as senior managers and
developers to help write the central compiler computer code that
counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml
13. Jeff Dean, Diebold's Senior Vice-President and senior programmer on Diebold's central compiler code, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf
14. Diebold Senior Vice-President Jeff Dean was convicted of planting
back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication"
to evade detection over a period of 2 years.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf
15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.
http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/26/loc_elexoh.html
16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the
security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs
could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! (See the movie
here http://blackboxvoting.org/baxter/baxterVPR.mov.)
http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190
17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch
screen voting machines with no paper trail.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml
18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and
reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html
http://www.yuricareport.com/...
http://www.rise4news.net/extravotes.html
http://www.ilcaonline.org/...
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm
19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/local/7628725.htm
20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush
-- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending
further investigation.
http://www.yuricareport.com/...
http://www.computerworld.com/...
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/tens_of_thousands.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.html
http://uscountvotes.org/
This is by Angry Girl via Truthout's Congressional Hearing Blog.
Folks, study up. This election may not be over yet.
Posted at 14:15 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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The Urban Archipelago
Reading Lasso's
always-interesting work this morning, I note that he points out an
article in the
Stranger, Seattle's alt weekly. It's a wonderful read. Here are
some (somewhat sizable) excerpts:
[...]
It's time for the Democrats to face reality: They are the party of
urban America. If the cities elected our president, if urban voters
determined the outcome, John F. Kerry would have won by a
landslide. Urban voters are the Democratic base.
THE URBAN ARCHIPELAGO
It's time to state something that we've felt for a long time but
have been too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and
Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We
are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of
America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion--New
York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San
Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states too--a
fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our
islands in Colorado; Austin is our island in Texas; Las Vegas is our
island in Nevada; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in
Florida. Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland "values"
like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more
intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this
country. And we are the real Americans. They--rural, red-state voters,
the denizens of the exurbs--are not real Americans. They are rubes,
fools, and hate-mongers. Red Virginia prohibits any contract between
same-sex couples. Compassionate? Texas allows the death penalty to be
applied to teenaged criminals and has historically executed the
mentally retarded. (When the Supreme Court ruled executions of the
mentally retarded unconstitutional in 2002, Texas officials, including
Governor Rick Perry, responded by claiming that the state had no
mentally retarded inmates on death row--a claim the state was able to
make because it does not test inmates for mental retardation.) Dumb?
The Sierra Club has reported that Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma,
Alabama, and Tennessee squander over half of their federal
transportation money on building new roads rather than public transit.
[...]
For Democrats, it's the cities, stupid--not the rural areas, not
the prickly, hateful "heartland," but the sane, sensible
cities--including the cities trapped in the heartland. Pandering to
rural voters is a waste of time. Again, look at the second map. Look
at the urban blue spots in red states like Iowa, Colorado, and New
Mexico--there's almost as much blue in those states as there is in
Washington, Oregon, and California. And the challenge for the
Democrats is not just to organize in the blue areas but to grow
them. And to do that, Democrats need to pursue policies that encourage
urban growth (mass transit, affordable housing, city services), and
Democrats need to openly and aggressively champion urban values. By
focusing on the cities the Dems can create a tribal identity to combat
the white, Christian, rural, and suburban identity that the
Republicans have cornered. And it's sitting right there, on every
electoral map, staring them in the face: The cities.
[...]
That's only part of a lengthy and fine article. I can't say that I
agree with all of it -- especially encouraging urban growth, as I
can't see how any rational person can encourage population growth of
any kind. But it is a very nice piece of work. Read the whole thing
here. Excellent points, the best being "Don't pander to them. Make
their votes smaller than yours."
I've lived in both the country and the city. Trying to analyse the
true nature of the cognitive dissonance between the two is always a
challenge. For example, country folks tend to be the most rabid of
privacy advocates -- what happens on their land is sacrosanct and none
of your friggin' business. One on one, rural folks are the finest
people in the world, and there's nothing that they wouldn't do to help
out regardless of your personal politics. And yet they can and do tell
the rest of the world how to live in a heartbeat. They think that a
monolithic group of Supreme Court Justices, Homosexuals, Hedonists,
Satan Worshipers and Gun Confiscators are waiting outside their gates
for the slightest sign of weakness -- and fume over it while they go
to the feed store with the AM radio talk show turned on, to buy the
latest batch of "Round Up resistant" genetically engineered soybeans to
plant while they watch huge agribusiness interests buy up all of their
friend's farms.
But there are genuine differences in the way that life is
lived. Paraphrasing one of Lasso's readers, "In the city, sirens are
normal and gunshots are bad; in the country, gunshots are normal and
sirens are bad." We can and should create a more diversified legal
framework that addresses some of the foundational differences between
rural and urban necessities. But there are more pressing issues to
address.
In the Texas that I grew up in, privacy and tolerance were
foundational. One of the worst things that you could say about a
person was that "he spends his time looking in other people's
windows," meaning he doesn't mind his own business. I don't know when
that changed, but it has. Somewhere along the line, a fundamentalist
attitude that everyone has to be exactly like Me has taken root
in our rural areas, and it needs to be flatly rejected and politically
defeated. The much-vaunted "Heartland Values" of our modern day are no
values at all. They're just a primitive and badly misinformed tribalism,
led by radical clerics and exploited by profit motivated corporations.
At some point you have to, to ressurect another phrase from my
childhood, "let 'em sleep in their own bed."
To quote Rep. Pat Shroeder: "The Pledge of Allegiance ends with
the words 'with liberty and justice for all.' Which part of 'all' do
you not understand?"
A Real American is tolerant and inclusive. A Real American
is informed, involved and proudly concerned for the common welfare of
all citizens. And if you don't get that, you have a long, long
way to go before you can stand at your Pearly Gates and expect to get
a backstage pass handed to you.
Summary: If you can't join 'em, beat 'em.
Posted at 10:23 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Wed, 08 Dec 2004
Two for two today
Again, from the Austin Business Journal:
Austin Mayor Will Wynn has been named person of the year by the Real Estate Council of Austin.
A surreal day over here in Randyland....
Posted at 19:11 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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What is with this guy?
Bush's brand new Little Tinpot Dictator uniform:
Posted at 11:59 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Austinite Of The Year?
Austin
Business Journal reports that "Transportation champion Pete
Winstead has been named the 2004 Austinite of the Year by the Greater
Austin Chamber of Commerce." Winstead is former chairman of the Texas
Turnpike Authority (appointed by G. W. Bush) and a primary mover in
paving anything he doesn't already own. One of the "gang
of four" that rammed SH130 through CAMPO. Lover of toll roads,
especially SH45 south.
Pretty.
I have a better idea: let's pave over the headquarters of
the Austin Chamber of Commerce.
Posted at 10:33 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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To The Point...
Via Josh
Marshall, this is one of the most succinct summaries of my
feelings for this administration that I've seen. It's from Ed
Kilgore over at NewDonkey:
[...]
And for the first time in my life, I had a hard time
understanding how friends and family members--people with whom I
thought I shared a lot--could bring themselves to vote for the other
guy. To put it bluntly, I didn't see any honest case for giving Bush a
second term, and was angered by the dishonest case--he's done a
brilliant job of fighting terrorists, he's a tower of wisdom and
resolve, he's going to control big government, he's going to protect
traditional values, he's got a second-term agenda to create an
"ownership society"--advanced by his campaign.
Moreover, I came to believe strongly that the real agenda of the
people closest to Bush--including his political advisors and much of
the Republican congressional leadership--was not only dishonest, but
deeply cynical and irresponsible: a drive to simultaneously wreck the
federal government and to perpetuate their control over the wreckage as
long as possible through the exercise of the rawest sort of
institutional power and corruption. And moreover, this belief made me
angry at even those Republicans who did not share that agenda, because
they were helping to promote it against their own best instincts.
But do these feelings extend to Bush personally? Yes and no. On the
one hand, many of his (perhaps contrived) red-state personality traits
don't bother me, a red-state native, at all: the swagger, the
nicknames, the scriptural references in his speeches, even the
anti-intellectualism. Both Chait and Rosen say Bush reminds them of
certain children of extreme privilege they knew in high school. I
didn't know anybody who went to prep schools or had Ivy League--much
less Top Ruling Class--aspirations when I was in high school, so Bush
doesn't bring back those kind of memories. What I most dislike about
Bush personally is his happy complicity in the GOP myth-making machine
that treats him not as a rich kid who found a new spiritual home in
Texas, but as the opposite: a salt-of-the-earth character who's
achieved world-historical greatness as the Winston Churchill of his
time. That's a double lie, and he lives it every day.
[...]
Posted at 09:14 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Tue, 07 Dec 2004
Jon Stewart's 'America' Named Book of Year
From the Statesman:
NEW YORK Jon Stewart's "America (The Book)," the television
commentator's million-selling riff on politics and other matters of
satire, has been named Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, the
industry trade magazine.
In announcing the award Monday, Publishers Weekly called the book
"a serious critique of the two-party system, the corporations that
finance it and the 'spineless cowards in the press' who 'aggressively
print allegation and rumor independent of accuracy and fairness.'"
Stewart's book was released in September and immediately topped
best-seller lists even as Wal-Mart declined to stock the book, citing
a page featuring the faces of the nine Supreme Court justices
superimposed over naked bodies. The page facing the nude photos has
cutouts of the justices' robes, complete with a caption asking readers
to "restore their dignity by matching each justice with his or her
respective robe."
Posted at 10:21 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Ahh, the screaming masses of outraged citizens
Via Slashdot:
"Mediaweek is reporting that complaints
to the FCC are rising. Powell spoke before congress, detailing
that the complaints are up from 14,000 in 2002, to nearly 240,000 in
2003. There were only 350 complaints during 2000 and 2001. Powell
failed to mention however that 99.8% of those complaints came from PTC
(Parents Television Council). The article does mention he may have
been unaware of this fact. Jonathan Rintels (president of the Center
for Creative Voices in Media) commented, 'It means that really a tiny
minority with a very focused political agenda is trying to censor
American television and radio.'"
Children, that means that a big 480 complaints to Michael Powell's
FCC were possibly legitimate. 239520 were from some wingnut religious group run
by L
Brent Bozell. They're the same folks who had to pay $3.5
million and apologize to World Wrestling Entertainment after
losing a defamation suit a couple of years ago.
For a good laugh, go read their pompous, self-righteous FAQ.
Posted at 09:29 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Fri, 03 Dec 2004
Ahh... Jocularity, Jocularity...
From an e-mail, author unknown:
Some things to Do Before the Inaugural:
1. Get that abortion you've always wanted.
2. Drink a nice clean glass of water.
3. Cash your social security check.
4. See a doctor of your own choosing.
5. Spend quality time with your draft age child/grandchild.
6. Visit Syria, or any foreign country for that matter.
7. Get that gas mask you've been putting off buying.
8. Hoard gasoline.
10. Borrow books from library before they're banned - Constitutional
law books, Catcher in the Rye, Harry Potter, Tropic of Cancer, etc.
11. If you have an idea for an art piece involving a crucifix - do it
now.
12. Come out - then go back in - HURRY!
13. Jam in all the Alzheimer's stem cell research you can.
14. Stay out late before the curfews start.
15. Go see Bruce Springsteen before he has his "accident."
16. Go see Mount Rushmore before the Reagan addition.
17. Use the phrase -- "you can't do that -- this is America."
18. If you're white -- marry a black person, if you're black -- marry
a white person.
19. Take a walk in Yosemite, without being hit by a snowmobile or a
base-jumper.
20. Enroll your kid in an accelerated art or music class.
21. Start your school day without a prayer.
22. Pass on the secrets of evolution to future generations.
23. Learn French.
24. Attend a commitment ceremony with your gay friends.
25. Take a factory tour anywhere in the US.
26. Try to take photographs of animals on the endangered species list.
27. Visit Florida before the polar ice caps melt.
28. Visit Nevada before it becomes radioactive.
29. Visit Alaska before "The Big Spill."
30. Visit Massachusetts while it is still a State.
Posted at 07:33 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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Thu, 02 Dec 2004
Inclusion is too controversial
From today's American Progress Action Fund mail:
CBS and NBC are refusing to air an ad produced by the United Church of
Christ (http://www.ucc.org/news/r112904.htm)
(UCC) because it advocates religious inclusion. The ad shows bouncers
turning away a variety of people at the door of a church -- including
ethnic minorities and two men who may be a homosexual couple. The
announcer says, "Jesus doesn't turn people away. Neither do we. No
matter who you are or where you are on life's journey you are welcome
here." (You can watch the advertisement here (http://www.stillspeaking.com/default.htm)
). In a letter to the UCC, CBS is refusing to air the advertisement
because the commercial "touches on the exclusion of gay couples and
other minority groups by other individuals and organizations." Also,
CBS found the ad "unacceptable" because "the Executive Branch has
recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a
union between a man and a woman." NBC similarly declared the ad "too
controversial." The ad has been accepted and will air on a number of
networks (http://www.ucc.org/news/u113004a.htm)
, including ABC Family, AMC, BET, Discovery, Fox, Hallmark, History,
Nick@Nite, TBS, TNT, Travel and TV Land. Email CBS (http://www.cbs.com/info/user_services/fb_global_form.shtml)
and NBC (Nightly@NBC.com) and
tell them to air the advertisement because everyone in this country --
not just the Bush administration -- should be able to freely express
their opinions.
Posted at 08:59 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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