First let me get this out of the way: Yes this site is still dead, and yes this century still sucks.

But it is with works like Freeheld perhaps this century will suck a little less.

Yep, it was almost exactly 53 weeks ago we first mentioned the Cynthia Wade's Freeheld, and last week the film was nominated for a Best Documentary Short Subject Oscar!

Congrats Cynthia!

A couple of posts below is the trailer for the movie, so I thought I'd now post an interview with Cynthia shortly after she got the news.



Now we go back to being closed. Again thanks for visiting all these years.

- rob 3:25 PM - [PermaLink] -

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This Century Sucks
3/6/2003 – 11/28/2007 (maybe)

Does this mean this century no longer sucks? Need you ask?

This century is sucking in ever more frightening and sad ways every day. But I’m done with posting about it – at least for a while.

This isn’t my site by any means, no one really owns it, but of the 5,200 posts the vast majority are mine, and if I stop posting, will anyone sweep away the blogwebs that will grow? As it is we were already at around 5,000 posts at the beginning of the year; this site was on life-support since the spring.

But even though I’m no longer really posting regularly these days, I still am thinking about the site, and what I should post next, etc. I think I’d like other thoughts to be thought instead.

I liked to think this site was a bit different than the rest and that our combination of earnest optimism with cynical snark made it enjoyable. Besides it was also a bit of a mental game trying to figure out what I actually meant to say underneath the pile of misspelled words and bizarre grammar. I’ve learned some things in the years posting for this site, for instance - I now know that grammar is in fact not spelled grammer, even though it really should be.

But maybe you’d like to post to TCS. It’ll still be sitting here. If you’ve read this site for a while you know what our interests are, and fitting into our lack of editorial style is easy.

Not many rules: No statements urging violence, no insults directed to non-public folks. Anger at military decisions perhaps, but not military personal, blah blah blah. We are a very civil site for a site with the word “sucks” in its title. Even if I’m not posting I still can kill a post if I want.

If you are interested in posting to this site email rob at this century dot org and I’ll send you an invite. We’d love to have you, we really would love to have this baby continue to grow. Maybe I’ll visit.

And thank you all for visiting. Really.

We hope you enjoyed your time here – we did. Though the site is only 4 and a half years old, for a blog it may mean it is time for a rest in the old age home.

- rob 5:37 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Don't forget to see:



Freeheld

I tell you you're going to hear more and more about this film this year. Great job Cynthia!

Go to the Freeheld site to learn more.

- rob 11:29 PM - [PermaLink] -

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To make change we've got to let people understand being green makes greenbacks.

Make money. Generate wealth. Create jobs. Boost the economy.

Saving the world and doing the right thing is just a side effect.

Al Gore joins Kleiner Perkins to save the planet
The recovering politician is teaming with a legendary venture capitalist and bigtime moneyman to make over the $6 trillion global energy business.

The recovering politician, environmental activist, and Nobel laureate is adding another title to his résumé: venture capitalist. After "a conversation that's gone on for a year and a half," according to Gore, he has decided to join his old pal John Doerr as an active, hands-on partner at Kleiner Perkins, Silicon Valley's preeminent venture firm.

The move is more than another Colin Powell moment (the former Secretary of State signed on as a Kleiner "strategic limited partner" two years ago and has hardly been heard from since). Gore is joining the firm as Kleiner makes a risky move beyond information technology and health-care investing into the fast-growing and increasingly competitive arena of "clean technology."

This goes back to something we've harped on here.

We need to make changes. Invest in education, invest in science, help the poor, provide healthcare, invest in energy research, etc. All these goody goody things can only happen when they are sold as benefits to the economy. All those things are good business. The tax burdens are temporary. The wealth generated by these things will make the tax intake increase dramatically without new taxes. Think of it as trickle down. Where the down is the government.

There is money in good things.

- rob 5:26 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Oh by the way - 9/11 is an ad slogan for "products" that Bush already was bringing to market.

We all know that the Iraq invasion was planned long before 9/11.

But it looks like illegal spying on Americans was already in the pipe line as well.

Former CEO Says U.S. Punished Phone Firm

A former Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a conviction for insider trading, has alleged that the government withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company thought might be illegal.

Former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to court documents unsealed in Denver this week.

Details about the alleged NSA program have been redacted from the documents, but Nacchio's lawyer said last year that the NSA had approached the company about participating in a warrantless surveillance program to gather information about Americans' phone records.

Okay Mr. Nacchio may not be a good source, but folks shouldn't we all start asking, when was the PATRIOT Act written? Did they really write it, pass it, and make it a law in just 45 days?

(and yes this article is a month old - your point?)

- rob 4:50 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Long term damage to our nation.

Opportunity after opportunity missed - because oil men only think of oil.

America needs oil - it is the black blood of our economy.

Because of this dependence we've spent trillions on a fruitless war in Iraq, costing us not only our surplus, but the life of thousands of our citizens, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens, and our long term security; as we pushed untold hundreds of young men into the arms of al Qaeda. The Iraq War is al Qaeda's dream recruiting scenario.

Image if those trillions were sent on energy initiatives in America.

• Billions could be spent on repairing our freeways thus improving gas mileage and employing thousands.
• Building and improving our mass transit options. The fuel savings would only be surpassed by the number of new jobs and quality of life improvements
• Billions on alternative energy sources, solar where it makes sense, geothermal, hydro, so many options readily available
• Billions of research on new sources such as using tidal forces or massive "heat funnels".
• Billions spent on science education and general science research. Energy is everywhere, but like the phrase "water water everywhere but not a drop to drink" we don't know how to get to it - we can learn.

This isn't fantasy or utopian ideas. If someone wasn't beholden to defense contractors and oil lobbyists they would realize these things would enhance our national security dramatically. Rather than the present course of action which has led to a weakening of our national security, our economy, and our moral standing.

Oil Price Rise Causes Global Shift in Wealth

High oil prices are fueling one of the biggest transfers of wealth in history. Oil consumers are paying $4 billion to $5 billion more for crude oil every day than they did just five years ago, pumping more than $2 trillion into the coffers of oil companies and oil-producing nations this year alone.
...
In the United States, the rising bill for imported petroleum lowers already anemic consumer savings rates, adds to inflation, worsens the trade deficit, undermines the dollar and makes it more difficult for the Federal Reserve to balance its competing goals of fighting inflation and sustaining growth.

For years we could afford our deficit because the world worked to prop up the American dollar. We were the world's gold standard. But any chinks in our armour, any weaknesses we have had Bush has worked hard over the past seven years to expand and shine a spotlight on for the world to see. The world is rushing to find a new gold standard, and they have switched to black gold, oil that is. The price of oil will just go up and up. Bush's friends will just get richer and richer and he'll just go to bed thinking that he was just such a damn good president that no one can even grasp how good he is. And he smirks and washes his hands and doesn't even notices the spots that won't come off.

I thought this picture worked well with this ramble, though I've never read the book.

- rob 4:39 PM - [PermaLink] -

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I haven't watched it yet.

I hear it is really good.

Let's watch it together.



Here's how it begins:

It is a fact startling in its cynical simplicity and it requires cynical and simple words to be properly expressed: The presidency of George W. Bush has now devolved into a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush.

All the petulancy, all the childish threats, all the blank-stare stupidity; all the invocations of World War III, all the sophistic questions about which terrorist attacks we wanted him not to stop, all the phony secrets; all the claims of executive privilege, all the stumbling tap-dancing of his nominees, all the verbal flatulence of his apologists...

All of it is now, after one revelation last week, transparently clear for what it is: the pathetic and desperate manipulation of the government, the refocusing of our entire nation, toward keeping this mock president and this unstable vice president and this departed wildly self-overrating attorney general, and the others, from potential prosecution for having approved or ordered the illegal torture of prisoners being held in the name of this country.

Read it all and give Olbermann some internet traffic love:

Olbermann: On waterboarding and torture

- rob 7:58 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Remember when you just saw snowflakes when it was snowing?

First we learn "snowflakes" are cute children who started out as left over blastocysts from fertility clinics.

Now we learn that "snowflakes" are actually little pronouncements of evil from another one of the Bush Administration's sith lords: From the Desk of Donald Rumsfeld . . .

In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid "physical labor" and wrote of the need to "keep elevating the threat," "link Iraq to Iran" and develop "bumper sticker statements" to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war.

The memos, often referred to as "snowflakes," shed light on Rumsfeld's brusque management style and on his efforts to address key challenges during his tenure as Pentagon chief.

Image src: Georgettesworld: The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

- rob 6:02 PM - [PermaLink] -

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So it started with this.

Richardson on Roswell

Seriously, Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, called on the government to declassify all Roswell documents. He brought it up himself when Chris Matthews was joking about Kucinich's UFO answer. He said the government hasn't 'come clean' on the issue.

And my friend Papa Smurf noted: I don't understand if he was referring to the issue of aliens, or the issue of government secrecy in general. If it was aliens, he needs to be put to pasture.

To which my friend Arthur Dietrich noted: I do like his progressive position on Big Foot

Me: However he's strongly against outsourcing menial labor to the bigfoot community. While that's a good position to have with labor I think it is pandering a bit and not being strongly behind his so called progressive Big Foot stance.

Arthur Dietrich answers: At least he is not proposing fences between the US and Canada to stop undocumented Sasquatches from entering the country. I am not sure he is as open to Chupacabra coming in from Mexico.

Which leaves me to my original realization that this year's best campaign sticker would be:

Richardson and Kucinich 2008: because the 21st century better well have some fucking aliens

- rob 5:54 PM - [PermaLink] -

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The mouse that shook the world

Scientists have been astounded by the creation of a genetically modified "supermouse" with extraordinary physical abilities – comparable to the performance of the very best athletes – raising the prospect that the discovery may one day be used to transform people's capacities.
...
American scientists who created the mice – they now have a breeding colony of 500 – said that they were stunned by their abilities, especially given that the animals came about as a result of a standard genetic modification to a single metabolism gene shared with humans.

Hmmm... this all sounds familiar...

The progeny of a human genetic engineering project established themselves as supermen and attempted world domination. The most notable of them, Khan Noonien Singh, conquered a quarter of the planet, mostly Asia. They ended up fighting amongst themselves and were eventually overthrown due to their disunity. Khan, however, escaped into space with a group of his followers only to be encountered by the USS Enterprise after spending centuries in suspended animation aboard the pre-warp starship "Botany Bay".

The Eugenics Wars are a narrative explanation within Star Trek continuity as to why humanity has not enhanced itself or otherwise achieved superhuman levels despite the story taking place in a time and setting where technology exists which should obviously be capable of doing so.

Oh yeah - Star Trek did it first.

- rob 5:41 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American people."
- Teddy Roosevelt



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 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt



"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions, but laws must and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
- Thomas Jefferson



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"I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves."
- John F. Kennedy



"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

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"There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America." - Bill Clinton.