God Rigs Election: It's Bush In A "blowout"

[shereads]

I just want accurate maps; 2/3 Texas, 1/3 U.S.A. and the rest of the world in one of the corners.

Texas has lost some serious map-acreage entitlement points because of Dubya. You're the size of Maryland now.

Sorry.

 

[minsue]

Running shoes, even my comfy hand me downs cost too much to throw, even if the target is a transpalanted Brit hiding out in the icy wilds of Canada Considering it's cold enough here to have me seriously considering the fur lined bra in one of the lingerie catalogs I get I would say whatever punishment your essay earns you, you have alreay paid you prennace in full

My only real objection is when you characterize BushCo as a band of Criminals. Whenever I hear that phrase my little historian's mind shoots straight to Nazi and Japanese propaganda decrying FDR & his Criminal band. I don't doubt a through investigation at BushCo would turn up a few criminals, but I think here you were letting your own anger and prejudice get the better of you. The essay was powerful and concise as it was. It would have been less offensive without the inflamatory rhetoric.

Of course I am probably the only one here who has read back issues of Der Spenner so it may be just me that it hit the wrong way.

-Colly

I thought I was at least marginally more well-read than the average American, but now I must hang my head in shame. Not only have I not read back issues of Der Spenner, I don't have the faintest idea what the hell that is.

- Mindy, hiding in my corner

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I thought I was at least marginally more well-read than the average American, but now I must hang my head in shame. Not only have I not read back issues of Der Spenner, I don't have the faintest idea what the hell that is.

- Mindy, hiding in my corner

ROFLMAO,

What the hell it is is badly typoed

Der Sturmer

A very anti semetic nazi rag published by Jules Streicher who was the self titled Number one Jew hater in Germany

-Colly

 

[shereads]

Not only have I not read back issues of Der Spenner, I don't have the faintest idea what the hell that is.
]

Der Spenner was der spen doktor for der fuhrer.

Also the nickname of a famous dj who worked the clubs in Berlin before the war.

 

[minsue]

ROFLMAO,

What the hell it is is badly typoed

Der Sturmer

A very anti semetic nazi rag published by Jules Streicher who was the self titled Number one Jew hater in Germany

-Colly

Ah, I see. I think I like Sher's explanation better.

- Mindy, more educated than I was 5 minutes ago

 

[KenJames]

Texas has lost some serious map-acreage entitlement points because of Dubya. You're the size of Maryland now.

Sorry.

You'll never convince a Texan of that.

Anyway, George II was born in Connecticut and the family home is in Maine.

On the other hand, my lover was born in San Diego, but his Texan parents imported a bucket of Texas dirt to put under the bed so he could be "born on Texas soil." The doctor was from Texas, too. Since I was born in Colorado and raised in Wyoming, I have to live with being a mere naturalized Texan.

 

[BlackSnake]

"No, I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God". George Bush Sr., August 27, 1987

That was funny.

We're changing the currency anyway..."We Trust No One", "In Money We Trust"...What shall it be?

 

[shereads]

I lived in Houston for four years.

No comment on Houston.

Austin is nice, and San Antonio has a gorgeous zoo.

You'll never convince a Texan of that.

Anyway, George II was born in Connecticut and the family home is in Maine.

On the other hand, my lover was born in San Diego, but his Texan parents imported a bucket of Texas dirt to put under the bed so he could be "born on Texas soil." The doctor was from Texas, too. Since I was born in Colorado and raised in Wyoming, I have to live with being a mere naturalized Texan.

 

[shereads]

Well, Minsue, it looks as if we won't be seeing the winning "Bush in 30 seconds" commercial on the SuperBowl after all.

This is on the front page of today's Salon.com:

MoveOn knocked out of Super Bowl
The upstart political organization learns that there's no right to free speech on network TV -- even for those who can pay for it.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Michelle Goldberg



Jan. 16, 2004 _|_ Every so often clients call Richard Laermer, CEO of the entertainment and public interest P.R. film RLM, with what they think is a brilliant and novel idea. "I can't tell you how many times somebody has called me and said, 'Hey, I've got a great idea for a media attack. I want to put a naked person in an ad and try to run it in the New York Times, and they're going to turn it down and I'll release that they turned it down,'" he says. Censorship, Laermer has learned, can be its own kind of publicity.

If so, MoveOn.org might reap its dubious benefits. On Thursday, CBS rejected the winner of MoveOn's "Bush in 30 Seconds" ad contest. The online advocacy group was trying to buy airtime to run the commercial, which criticizes the Bush administration's run-up of federal debt, during the Super Bowl, a Feb. 1 event expected to draw 90 million viewers. The ad will run around 30 times on CNN from Jan. 17-21.

MoveOn's contest, which challenged members to capture the administration's depredations in homemade commercials, had already been tinged with controversy. Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, denounced MoveOn after it emerged that two of more than a thousand contest entries posted on MoveOn's Web site compared President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler.

The ad that won the contest, "Child's Pay," was a low-key attack on Bush's fiscal irresponsibility that's unlikely to make anyone very angry. But the Drudge Report's Matt Drudge further stoked right-wing rage by publishing a partial transcript of the awards ceremony MoveOn held in Manhattan Monday, which was full of denunciations of the president. One of the ceremony's performers, Margaret Cho, was soon after bombarded with messages like this one, from someone named Chris Smith: "F$@# you you oriental c$%& . you are not even an american. You are soooo stupid. Go f$@# yourself and go back to Asia you slanted eye whore."

Clearly, MoveOn has upset many on the right. But as Ad Age's Washington bureau chief Ira Teinowitz reported, CBS said it wasn't controversy that made it turn down MoveOn's commercial, and its $1.6 million. Instead, the network said the spot violates its policy against running any political issue ads at all.

"Ads which do not promote the selling of things basically are not welcome," says Eli Pariser, MoveOn's campaigns director. "The scary thing about it is that advertising at this point is one of the only ways you can even get access to the media. To have it restricted on the basis of viewpoints is dangerous."

Dangerous, perhaps, but common. CBS's policy is shared by ABC and NBC, and some cable channels, including MTV. Thus, every few years, an advocacy group will win a bit of notoriety when the networks refuse to sell it commercial airtime. In 1997, anti-consumerist activist Kalle Lasn was rejected when he tried to buy a Thanksgiving Day commercial promoting "Buy Nothing Day," his anti-shopping initiative. Last year, MTV refused to run an antiwar ad directed by Oscar-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple. This year, CBS also turned down a Super Bowl spot that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals tried to buy for $2 million. The rejected ad argues that eating meat causes impotence by clogging arteries. According to PETA, it "features a pair of scantily clad women who try to seduce the pizza man but discover that he can't deliver 'the sausage.' Things pick up when they test the prowess of a vegetarian delivery boy."

Groups can circumvent the network regulations by buying local airtime on network affiliates, which needn't adhere to their parent stations' policies. Yet buying up enough local airtime to reach a nationwide audience is far more expensive than buying the time on a network. And local stations can also refuse ads on political grounds. In December, for example, a New Hampshire ABC affiliate, WMUR, refused to run an ad from a union, the American Federation of Government Employees, that criticized the administration for giving no-bid contracts to campaign contributors like Halliburton. The station said the ad was potentially defamatory to Halliburton, even though the accusations it made echoed those from an internal Defense Department audit that accused the company of overcharging in Iraq."

There's no legal recourse for groups denied the chance to buy themselves a soapbox. Given the public nature of the airwaves, one might think that at least some First Amendment protections would obtain. In fact, though, there's no right to free speech on network TV, even for those who can pay for it.

"I can tell you exactly what the rules are," says Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard. "The rules are exactly what the owner of the news medium wants them to be, and they are not rules, they are simply choices. For many news organizations, the rules are governed by such things as taste and accuracy. In the case of some, the question of taste slips over into finding the message disagreeable or believing that the audience would find that message disagreeable. The long and short of it is they don't have to run any advertisement they don't want to."

That also means the networks are free to bend their own rules against issue ads when the ads in question strike them as inoffensive. According to Teinowitz, CBS actually plans to run three such ads during the Super Bowl -- an anti-smoking spot, a public service announcement about AIDS, and a commercial from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Of course, the drug war is controversial to plenty of people, and the mere mention of AIDS upsets others, but the networks are under no obligation to be consistent.

"What I've learned in my year of doing political advertising is that the powers that be can reject an ad at any time for any reason without explanation," says Pariser. "It's one of the really thoroughly undemocratic parts of the media process."

There is a small upside, though. "I think MoveOn loves this," says Jones. "If they could get on the Super Bowl it would cost them God knows how much money. By having this kind of controversy, it doesn't cost them a dime and they get a lot of attention."

 

[minsue]

Well, Minsue, it looks as if we won't be seeing the winning "Bush in 30 seconds" commercial on the SuperBowl after all.

Yeah, well, I'm having a supremely shitty day today so nothing surprises me.

Score one for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

- Mindy

 

[shereads]

And the Mars rebuilding contract goes to...

Hell. Even I didn't see this one coming:

Jan. 16, 2004 _|_ Joe Conason's Journal, salon.com

Return to the red planet with Dick Cheney

Halliburton executives apparently regard Mars as a potential profit center, according to today's Washington Post. As reported in this A1 story by Mike Allen and Greg Schneider, the vice president's former employer has been promoting the notion of drilling the Red Planet for several years. The Post cites a 2000 article from Oil & Gas Journal by Steve Streich, a "veteran Halliburton scientific adviser," as "an example of private industry's hunger for a Mars mission." Streich promoted the Mars mission not only for the sake of knowledge and exploration but also because it would improve "our abilities to support oil and gas demands on Earth" by advancing technology.

In other words, NASA would pay Halliburton and other firms billions of dollars to perform research and development on Mars-bound technologies that they would use for profitable exploration on this planet. No doubt those scientific advances would be useful here long before anybody lands on Mars.

Nothing wrong with any of that, of course -- but isn't Dick Cheney the blustering guy who once boasted that "the government had absolutely nothing to do with" the millions he earned at Halliburton?

That notion is a big lie -- both in Cheney's own case and in historical terms. Halliburton and its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, have always depended quite heavily on federal favors and contracts -- and they have profited from the space program from the beginning. Back in its bipartisan days, they built what is now the Johnson Space Center near Houston. A Brown & Root unit is still the prime contractor there -- so to whatever extent Bush expands the NASA budget, Halliburton is certain to benefit.

There is no doubt that Cheney's old company is at the center of the space-industrial complex. (I never suggested, however, that Halliburton wants to "drill for oil" on Mars, as an indignant but rather dim blogger complained.)

 

[KenJames]

Re: And the Mars rebuilding contract goes to...

. . . Halliburton and its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, have always depended quite heavily on federal favors and contracts -- and they have profited from the space program from the beginning. Back in its bipartisan days, they built what is now the Johnson Space Center near Houston. A Brown & Root unit is still the prime contractor there -- so to whatever extent Bush expands the NASA budget, Halliburton is certain to benefit . . .

Brown & Root – If I remember correctly, they were the prime contractor on the South Texas Nuclear Project, which suffered massive cost overruns, was completed years behind schedule, and was so shoddily constructed that additional hundreds of millions of dollars had to be spent on rework before it came on-line.

I also think NASA's fifteen billion dollar budget is pocket change compared to the importance of the programs and that throwing an additional billion into the pot is mere ineffective grandstanding.

Still, NASA is now abandoning the Hubbell space telescope, one of the most cost-effective projects ever, in terms of scientific knowledge returned, to divert the funds to "more important" efforts.

 

[Quasimodem]

have heard a lot of carping about Bush’s proposed return to the Moon, and later Mars, from political pundits, scientists, and even astronauts. People have charged and counterchange each other over the validity of his numbers. Various economists offer differing models for pricing the cost of these trips.

Others object to the implied privatization of space, as contained in Bush’s plans, suggesting that private industry will pick up some of the R&D, when to date, private industry has proven itself long on Development, but short on Research.

My objection, however, is the primary goal.

Of what possible use could a colony on the moon be for the people of earth? After fighting up through the earth’s deep gravity-well, what is the incentive to slide down into another gravity-well, the Moon’s, from which astronauts would have to ascend, to escape?

What benefit would be derived from gaining the moon’s surface? What activity could be better conducted at the moon’s one-sixth gravity, which could not be better conducted in the zero gravity of space, or in the artificial weight of a centrifuge-designed space satellite?

In 1969, the moon was arguably a useful goal, as a symbolic destination. In 2004, having already attained and abandoned the moon, of what possible use is it to return?

I have no conflict with man’s attempt to journey into space. It is the one last frontier to explore, the last resource to tap. In spirit, the venture is similar to man’s voyages onto the ocean, five centuries earlier. But space, unlike the ocean, is no less formidable than the destination, the surface of the moon, which is being sought.

When Columbus gained the islands of the Carribean, he was in a far safer position than when he was still adrift upon the ocean’s surface. When future astronauts gain the surface of the moon, they will be in a significantly less desirable area to exploit, and an appreciably more difficult place from which to return home.

To date, I have heard few NASA complaints, but I can’t help wonder from which strata we are hearing? Are they the comments of the directors, examining a shining new budget, or do they come from the scientists who’s work it is to devise a sane approach to the conquest of space?

In any case, it seems singularly ill advised to be postulating colonies on the moon, at a time when NASA is writing off the Hubble Telescope because it cannot be reached expeditiously enough for necessary maintenance.

 

[shereads]

Quasi, three reasons:

1) "The vision thing." People carped about Bush One not being an idea man. Bush Two wants us to know he's a man of vision, not just a huckster.

2) Loyalty to friends. Since Halliburton has been caught scamming us out of millions in Iraq, new frontiers are needed. Plus, if we can learn new drilling techniques at gov't expense because it's part of the space program, we can use up what's left of this planet's fossil fuels faster and more efficiently.

3) There's nothing else to spend the money on.

 

[KenJames]

Quasi, I can't think of any rational rebuttal for any of your points. On an emotional level, I feel that space stations, moon colonies and missions to Mars and beyond are essential. Without frontiers, humans will go mad and kill each other, like rats in cages.

A handful of men sailed to the New World with Columbus and fewer returned. But that voyage opened up a universe of new possibilities.

I repeat my contention that NASA's budget is pocket change and Bush's proposed increase is insignificant. Humanity went from powered flight to a moon landing in 66 years. The technology in the motion picture "2001" was a conservative extrapolation of the progress we'd have made if we'd maintained that level of effort. As it was, we reached the moon, said "it's Miller time," and effectively sat on our collective butts for the next 30+ years.

A few years ago, I was sitting in the kitchen with my dad, stepmother and lover, looking at satellite images on the TV weather report. This was in Wyoming, where everyone pays attention to the weather, because it can kill you really quick if you're not careful.

My stepmother, not looking at the TV, was saying, "I don't know why we're spending money on this space stuff. What's it good for?"

What have we gained from "this space stuff" so far? Weather prediction about as accurate as chaos theory will allow, miniaturization that allows kitchen TVs, the computers we're using to conduct this discussion . . .

 

[Quasimodem]

shereads,

I have no objection to King George advising US taxpayers to piss their money against the wall. I just object to him telling them it would be a good idea to piss it against a wall that already houses a live fuse box.

If that’s the best vision W can expouse to milk the public coffers, he is more of a feeb than even I suspected.

 

[KenJames]

Quasi, three reasons:

1) "The vision thing." People carped about Bush One not being an idea man. Bush Two wants us to know he's a man of vision, not just a huckster.

2) Loyalty to friends. Since Halliburton has been caught scamming us out of millions in Iraq, new frontiers are needed. Plus, if we can learn new drilling techniques at gov't expense because it's part of the space program, we can use up what's left of this planet's fossil fuels faster and more efficiently.

3) There's nothing else to spend the money on.

4) To give buckets of money to Bush's friends at Boeing and Lockheed-Martin.

Maybe it's just because I grew up on science fiction (and liberals are notorious for thinking with their hearts rather than their heads), but I still think the space program is worth much more than what we're spending (or going to spend) on it.

 

[KenJames]

shereads,

I have no objection to King George advising US taxpayers to piss their money against the wall. I just object to him telling them it would be a good idea to piss it against a wall that already houses a live fuse box.

If that’s the best vision W can expouse to milk the public coffers, he is more of a feeb than even I suspected.

That's King George II, if you please!

 

[shereads]

I love the idea of manned space exploration. But I love it because I'm not hungry and I'm not currently uninsured.

I think it's a luxury that should be indulged after we have run out of under-educated children, under-fed ones, and above all after we have solved the major issue that today's children will face as adults: the looming energy crisis that's inevitable once we have used up fossil fuels.

Nobody knows how to make new fossil fuels.

Why aren't we scrambling to spend research billions on sustainable energy sources.

Well, we know why. The status quo is the basis for a substantial amount of personal wealth for the people who run things.

But I mean rhetorically, why.

Anybody ever wonder why, with the technology advances that we've seen over the past few decades, it's not possible to create a car tire that is permanent?

Anybody wonder if it is possible, but would put a huge industry out of business, despite the savings to the environment and the saving of resources?

 

[Gary Chambers]

Is anyone familar with the work of architect, Paolo Soleri? I ask because although I admit space beckons us, I also agree with Sher that we have problems to solve on terra-firma first. Soleri designed cities (designs, for perhaps he's still with us, I haven't checked) that can accommodate a huge population in peace and comfort with minimal impact on our environment. He does this by turning the maxim of acrhitecture, form follows function, upside down. Soleri says function must start following form. This makes him a heretic in the acrhitectural community, but his designs inspire futuristic thinkers like Ken and Quasi. He designs for the space age.

Soleri has a community under construction in Arizona called Arcosanti. My next Lit story is very loosely based on him, as I consider him a hero for our time and I'm sure that history will list him as a man well ahead of his time.

 

[Edward Teach]

Re: And the Mars rebuilding contract goes to...

Hell. Even I didn't see this one coming:

Jan. 16, 2004 _|_ Joe Conason's Journal, salon.com

Return to the red planet with Dick Cheney

Halliburton executives apparently regard Mars as a potential profit center, according to today's Washington Post. As reported in this A1 story by Mike Allen and Greg Schneider, the vice president's former employer has been promoting the notion of drilling the Red Planet for several years. The Post cites a 2000 article from Oil & Gas Journal by Steve Streich, a "veteran Halliburton scientific adviser," as "an example of private industry's hunger for a Mars mission." Streich promoted the Mars mission not only for the sake of knowledge and exploration but also because it would improve "our abilities to support oil and gas demands on Earth" by advancing technology.

In other words, NASA would pay Halliburton and other firms billions of dollars to perform research and development on Mars-bound technologies that they would use for profitable exploration on this planet. No doubt those scientific advances would be useful here long before anybody lands on Mars.

Nothing wrong with any of that, of course -- but isn't Dick Cheney the blustering guy who once boasted that "the government had absolutely nothing to do with" the millions he earned at Halliburton?

That notion is a big lie -- both in Cheney's own case and in historical terms. Halliburton and its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, have always depended quite heavily on federal favors and contracts -- and they have profited from the space program from the beginning. Back in its bipartisan days, they built what is now the Johnson Space Center near Houston. A Brown & Root unit is still the prime contractor there -- so to whatever extent Bush expands the NASA budget, Halliburton is certain to benefit.

There is no doubt that Cheney's old company is at the center of the space-industrial complex. (I never suggested, however, that Halliburton wants to "drill for oil" on Mars, as an indignant but rather dim blogger complained.)

Un-fucking-believable.

Further, I saw today that a Mars exploration would likely cost a trillion dollars.

 

[shereads]

Re: Re: And the Mars rebuilding contract goes to...

Un-fucking-believable.

Further, I saw today that a Mars exploration would likely cost a trillion dollars.

Hey, we knew there had to be an explanation for Dubya's sudden interest in space science. I thought he was going to send Rumsfeld to Mars but that didn't make sense because it would take too long to prevent any embarrassment.

The trillion dollars is a total, Teach.

"Only twelve billion for the initial phase," is what I heard.

 

[Edward Teach]

Re: Re: Re: And the Mars rebuilding contract goes to...

Hey, we knew there had to be an explanation for Dubya's sudden interest in space science. I thought he was going to send Rumsfeld to Mars but that didn't make sense because it would take too long to prevent any embarrassment.

The trillion dollars is a total, Teach.

"Only twelve billion for the initial phase," is what I heard.

Gee, thanks, She. I feel much better now.

 

[shereads]

Re: Re: Re: Re: And the Mars rebuilding contract goes to...

Gee, thanks, She. I feel much better now.

I exist to bring sunshine into the lives of others, Teach.

My work is done here. Off to bed.



"A billion here, a billion there...Pretty soon you're talking about real money."
--Senator Everett Dirksen

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Re: And the Mars rebuilding contract goes to...

Hell. Even I didn't see this one coming:

Jan. 16, 2004 _|_ Joe Conason's Journal, salon.com

Return to the red planet with Dick Cheney

Halliburton executives apparently regard Mars as a potential profit center, according to today's Washington Post. As reported in this A1 story by Mike Allen and Greg Schneider, the vice president's former employer has been promoting the notion of drilling the Red Planet for several years. The Post cites a 2000 article from Oil & Gas Journal by Steve Streich, a "veteran Halliburton scientific adviser," as "an example of private industry's hunger for a Mars mission." Streich promoted the Mars mission not only for the sake of knowledge and exploration but also because it would improve "our abilities to support oil and gas demands on Earth" by advancing technology.

In other words, NASA would pay Halliburton and other firms billions of dollars to perform research and development on Mars-bound technologies that they would use for profitable exploration on this planet. No doubt those scientific advances would be useful here long before anybody lands on Mars.

Nothing wrong with any of that, of course -- but isn't Dick Cheney the blustering guy who once boasted that "the government had absolutely nothing to do with" the millions he earned at Halliburton?

That notion is a big lie -- both in Cheney's own case and in historical terms. Halliburton and its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, have always depended quite heavily on federal favors and contracts -- and they have profited from the space program from the beginning. Back in its bipartisan days, they built what is now the Johnson Space Center near Houston. A Brown & Root unit is still the prime contractor there -- so to whatever extent Bush expands the NASA budget, Halliburton is certain to benefit.

There is no doubt that Cheney's old company is at the center of the space-industrial complex. (I never suggested, however, that Halliburton wants to "drill for oil" on Mars, as an indignant but rather dim blogger complained.)

I'll start by saying I am for a base on the moon and for exploration of Mars. I am not, however a scientist. So perhaps someone can answer me this. Aren't oil, natual Gas and Coal by products of carbon based life? They aren't called fossil fuels because they are old are they. Assuming I am correct, isn't it debateable at best that Mars ever sustained large bodies of water for a sufficent period to foster life, Much less sustained life at one point?

Am I off base here or does Haliburton know something we don't? If I am not off base and we assume they don't know something we don't then this article sounds like about the flimsiest dodge I ever heard of to have the government pay for research into new drilling techniques.

-Colly