ITMFA – VP edition
posted by TheDon

The Sunday chuckleheads seemed endlessly amused by that whacky VP and his unconstitutional antics. We are not amused. When the phrase “Nixonian stonewalling” seems inadequate to describe an administration, and when the VP shows such contempt for congress that he doesn’t even try to justify his activities anymore, it’s time to act. My mother used to say “If you act like Nixon, I’m going to treat you like Nixon”, or something like that. It’s time to treat this administration like the outlaw enemies of the Constitution that they are, and I’m not just talking about Congress. The MIA stenographer press corps needs to step up to the plate and earn their constitutionally protected status.

I hear people that I respect making the argument that impeachment is only an option, and that it would be a distraction from the Democratic legislative agenda.

Defending the Constitution is NOT an optional exercise, it is an oath that every congresscritter swore. There is no longer any doubt that these people are an ongoing threat to our Constitution, and to the lives and freedoms of people around the world. Their sneering contempt for the legislative branch and the people they represent has to be answered with force, and the biggest power congress has is the power to impeach.

And I have to ask… WHAT Democratic legislative agenda? I know there is one, but not one which will ever pass with the current Senate or President. Nothing of substance will pass the Senate (or even reach the floor), and if something accidentally passes, President Numbnuts has finally found the veto pen.

These guys are stonewalling because it’s the only way to make it to January 2009 still in office. It’s time to stand up for the people and their Constitution. An impeachment can even be a proxy war-crimes trial. I think the public would cheer on any process to get these criminals out of office, even if it eventually fails in the Senate. But I think that any Senator who refuses to vote for conviction on the serious crimes commited by this administration will be tossed out.

ITMFA – and the VP he rode in on.

Sunday Funnies
posted by TheDon

Meat The Press

Chertoff on TERROR in LONDON!!!
I guess England isn’t fighting them over there hard enough.
Weird… Chertoff first says we don’t know if there is “an international link”, then says, “And as far as the Homeland is concerned, we do not see any specific connection to the Homeland at this point in time.”
This is a complete 180 on administration policy. I thought every evil thought came from Al-Qeda, and every bomb was built by OBL himself. And this whole “Homeland” schtick still sounds a bit pre-1940’s Germany to me.
Chertoff says that in light of the activities in England that they is going to be “surging of our air marshall capabilities”. Sigh. It’s like their hearts aren’t even in to scaring us that much anymore. But he does remind us that AQ is still talking about attacking us. Heightened sense of awareness, blah blah. You know it’s just killing these guys that AQ won’t attack us here. They are sure that every attack is worth one more republican president.
Timmeh asks Chertoff if he’s surprised that we don’t get hit harder by car bombs, etc. MC “reminds” him that we were hit by a car bomb – in 1993 at the World Trade Center! And by Timmothy McVeigh! Hilarious! I think he just made Timmeh’s point for him.
MC praises vigilance by ordinary citizens. Doesn’t bring up wiretapping, break-ins and mail snatching. hmmmm….
And now Leahy.
Timmeh asks about subpeonas affecting our national security. Leahy squashes that bit of silliness. Timmeh seems to struggle with the concept of “legal” versus “illegal”. “Checks and balances” makes him cock his head like a dog listening to algebra. He pretends not to understand the phrase “Nixonian stonewalling”. Leahy indulges him with civics 101, and calls out Gonzo. Nice.
Timmeh: What does “full force of the law” mean? Are we headed to a Constitutional Crisis.
A: No, we’re already there. Get comfortable, we’re gonna be there for a while. (Actually, Leahy says that he hopes not.)
Timmeh presents Fred Fielding’s BS letter as a good offer. Leahy deconstructs it and mocks it. Sweet. Timmeh presents a hypothetical which won’t happen. Leahy is a very, very patient man. He mentions that the next Gonzo appearance will be an “open book exam” – the questions submitted a week ahead. Bold prediction: this will NOT help his “memory”.
Leahy give his excuse for voting for John Roberts, and admits that he is “extraordinarily disappointed” with the cavalier way Brown V. Board was thrown aside, among other things. Yeah. Welcome to our world. Turns out Roberts is exactly who we said he is. Duh.
Round Table with some fucktard David Brody from the Christian Broadcasting Network? WTF?!?!?
Immigration defeat. Yeah. I’ll cry myself to sleep for a couple of weeks over that. With a Democratic president, and more/better Democrats in congress we’ll get a much better bill. We have to solve the problem, but not on the terms of the Chamber of Commerce.
Brody hits the righty talking points that W isn’t a conservative. Riiiiiiiight.
Timmeh asks Tavis Smiley about Obama vs Clinton, esp in the African-American community. Nice. I’m sure it wasn’t because he’s Black. Positive, in fact.
Obama is raising a lot more primary money that Hillary, and with a huge number of donors. This is going to be an interesting race. Two flawed candidates, both of them far superior to anyone on the other side.
People tell the Mason-Dixon poll that they wouldn’t vote for Hillary under any circumstances. Yeah. What if the opponent is Giuliani? I thought so.
hillaryis44.com – anonymous insider site which trashes Obama. Fun! Look for lots more like this before this cycle is over.
Kids 17-29 strongly prefer Dems, esp Hillary and Obama. Nothing like a war, even without a draft, to keep people away from the GOOPs. And gay-bashing. And immigrant-bashing. Race baiting. etc.
Giuliani has flip-flopped on gay rights and abortion. Call Mike Wallace. But the righties have figured out that picking judges is important, so he’s playing that song loud. And 9/11, 9/11, 9/11.
Brody admits that evangelicals like simple-minded black/white right/wrong people, and Rudy is like that. ugh. Two terms of that has been more than enough, thank you.
56% of Iowa Republicans want all troops out of Iraq within six months. Just damn. Iowa.
Evangelical leaders are ready to take down Rudy. But…but…but… who will they support? The Mormon? The lobbyist womanizer? The straight-out-the-ass talker? Who? Maybe they can run Pat Robertson again. Or maybe Brownback? Huckabee? George Allen isn’t busy… This could actually be car-wreck fun.
The CIA released the “family jewels”. Wow! I’m glad they don’t spy on Americans or kidnap people anymore! What dark days have passed!

Fawkes News

Topics: Terror! Immigration reform is dead! How can we protect the border? The Fairness Doctrine. Hey! Mark Green! I’ll have to watch that segment. But not Chertoff again today.
(fast-forward)
The Fairness Doctrine. I’ll admit I don’t care that much because it’s not going to happen any more than the Amnesty Bill was going to pass. But I will watch for Air America owner Mark Green, since I subscribe to his network’s podcasts. To clarify – I would care a great deal if I thought anyone’s First Ammendment rights were in danger, but they aren’t. Now if they want to get back to diversifying media ownership, I’m in, but we won’t see that until the next president. This just sounds like more ginning up the base because them libruls are after Rush. Yawn.
Kewl. Mark Green brings in the truth to combat Wallace and some other grinning right-wing idiot named Mike Gallagher. Everyone but Green sticks to the lie that this is a real issue that someone is trying to push into law. Wallace is a snotty little bitch who doesn’t want Green talking about his views, just the strawman. As usual. Green’s against censorship and monopolies. 1,000 hours to zero conservative vs liberal talk doesn’t seem “fair and balanced” to Green.
Roundtable
The Supreme Court has turned to the right. Suprise! Who could have seen that coming? Except, you know, everybody NOT in the Senate Democratic caucus.
Everyone agrees that the Supremes are singing out of the right sides of their mouths. A string of 5-4 decisions will do that. Kristol can’t stop grinning.
Juan thinks this court would have been different with Gonzo and Meirs on it instead of Roberts and Alito. I suspect it would have been much more right-wing, with three numb-nuts (Gonzo, Meirs and Thomas) following Scalia’s lead, with Kennedy giving them 5-4 decisions. I never thought I would miss Sandra Day O’Connor this much.
Kristol is so giddy that you have to suspect that’s he’s been “celebrating” the court decisions. A lot.
Amnesty is still dead. Hume is happy. Everyone seems surprised that Bush didn’t go for “border security first”. Guess what. W does NOT care about border security, even a little. He only cares about getting the Chamber of Commerce some cheap labor. Period. Why would he agree to pay for a fence when it might cut off the cheap labor, and no guest-worker program?
I agree with Juan (and W) that this must be done comprehensively, but the smell of bigotry was strong on this issue. Let’s just wait until we can control the issue and get the bill we want.
Brit points out that the conversations he hears don’t mention “Mexicans” or “Latinos”, but “illegals”, so it wasn’t racist. Ummmm… yeah… most people understand that naked bigotry won’t win many arguments, so they use the code. Guess what – when they said “illegal” they weren’t talking about Bosnians, or Irish immigrants, or Brits, or Ozzies. They meant the brown ones.
Power Player
Oh. My. God. Grover Norquist. Thanks for giving a platform to Mr Drown It In A Bathtub. In fairness, he is a power player, and not a museum curator.

This Weak

Terror in London. Amnesty RIP. Dick Lugar opposes the War. Chertoff and Lieberman. The Supreme Court. This is gonna be fast. The roundtable has Bay Buchanan?!?! ugh. But it is fun to watch Donna Brazile chew her up and spit her out.
First Chertoff – (fast forward)
Now Lieberman. You know how the first ff gets you 4X, then 15X, 60X, and finally 300X? I need one even faster for this lying tool.
Ok, I had to listen. As expected, things are just now turning around (again), and we should give them a chance (again). Maybe he’s like the guy in Memento, with no short-term memory. He seems fascinated with the “new” strategy of clear, build and hold. Yeah. New. I know. Bless his heart. He’s never going to agree to get out of Iraq.
(fast forward)
Panel time
The Supremes. Donna Brazile calls Roberts’ words Orwellian. Nice. She’s worked up in the best possible way. Bay is, of course, thrilled with stopping all that discrimination against white children. Cokie makes a pitch for better public schools. Hear, hear!
Everybody thinks these decisions will focus the public on the consequences of picking a president, and who gets on the court. The bad news is that none of the righties are likely to resign soon, except maybe Kennedy.
Cheney. Everyone seems amused by that zany, magnificent bastard. Bay is in awe.
Executive priviledge. Comparisons between Clinton and W. Yawn. This is going to court, and won’t be over until he’s out of office.
Bay says it just looks like the Dems are going after W on all of these issues trying to bring him down, and it’s killing them in the polls. I don’t really remember this argument being made by her side in the 90’s. Even a little.
Skank Coulter, the crack-whore of the GOOPs. Ick.
More primary stuff. Yawn.
If you have an erection longer than 4 hours call a doctor. That might have been a commercial.
In Memoriam
Liz Clairborne.
John J Flynt (GA congressman)
Joel Siegel (movie reviewer)
33 service members (average age – 25, median age – 23)
Voice – James Earl Jones is teaching kids about literacy.
funnies
curtain

TGIF! Drinks are on me!
posted by TheDon

It’s been that kind of a week. The internets truck at work had a flat tire, and my sinful, sinful home electronics were stricken by lightning. I seem to have missed a lot of news. Did you know that Dick Cheney is evil and powerful? Me either! And guess how long it will take Georgia to resegregate schools. Go on, guess. You’re waaaaaay too optimistic. Robert Gates is concerned that scores of our soldiers will die every month that… wait for it… (it’s not what you would hope for)… we have to wait for more heavily armored Humvees. The patriots in Iraq are making more deadly bombs than our current vehicles can handle, so let’s armour up! They’ll NEVER figure out how to kill our soldiers in the new vehicles! Really! I guess bringing them home isn’t a possibility.
So let’s have a frosty one. You know that feeling you get after the party when you look around and think, “What the hell am I going to do with all this Corona?”? I have a solution, and as you probably suspect, it involves adding liquor to it. I’m like a chocoholic, only with alcohol.
All of these drinks involve pouring a shot of something into a beer. Experiment all you want – it’s educational and fun! A beer with a shot of whiskey in it is called a boilermaker, and has long been the defining characteristic of hard-core sorrow and pain. I’ll see your boilermaker and raise you.
Troublemaker – make that a shot of tequila

Beerbon – use bourbon – a southern classic
Twizzler – just add sambuca
Nutcracker – frangelico
Beerberry – chambord
Pirate’s Gold – rum
Big Red – Cinnamon schnapps

the only limit is the size of your liquor cabinet. Go nuts!

Resegregation Nation: Next up, the Supreme Court Rules That Integrated Water Fountains Violate the Constitution

Resegregation Nation: Next up, the Supreme Court Rules That Integrated Water Fountains Violate the Constitution
Posted by Mikhaela Reid

All you closet Klansmen out there, you would-be Bull O’Connors and George Wallaces, listen up: it is officially time to party! Get out your balloons and confetti, and iron your best white robes, because the Bush Supreme Court has officially declared that racial integration and diversity DON’T MATTER AT ALL. The Bush court says that not only is segregation totally cool (as long as it’s the “natural” result of segregated housing areas), it’s actively RACIST to oppose segregation. Why? Because racial diversity is AGAINST the spirit of Brown vs. Board of Education.

Yes, that’s right–it’s against the spirit of the decision that made it possible for children of all colors to go to school together to encourage children of all colors to go to school together. The only way to avoid racism is to DENY it and ignore it and NOT DO ANYTHING TO STOP IT. That’s what being “colorblind” is all about!

As the NAACP’s Theodore Shaw put it on The Newshour With Jim Lehrer tonight, it doesn’t get much more Orwellian than this. This is Civil Rights Lite to the extreme. Hence the vigorous dissent:

[Souter] said the chief justice’s invocation of Brown vs. Board of Education was “a cruel irony” when the opinion in fact “rewrites the history of one of this court’s most important decisions” by ignoring the context in which it was issued and the Supreme Court’s subsequent understanding of it to permit voluntary programs of the sort that were now invalidated.

I was particularly horrified by the anti-integration argument that many parents “don’t want this” (“this”, presumably, being the horror of their children going to school with black kids). For example, here’s Roger Clegg, president of the deceptively named “Center for Equal Opportunity” (his group filed an amicus brief in the case) celebrating the anti-integration decision on the NewsHour:

I think that school boards are also going to be sensitive to the fact that most parents don’t like it when they are told that where they can send their children to school depends on what color they are.

And…

I think the question is whether anyone believes that a politically correct racial and ethnic mix, that kind of diversity, is worth the price of racial discrimination. And I think that most Americans would say that, no, it is not.

Sure, lots of Americans–bigoted and ignorant ones–protested school integration back in the day because they didn’t want it, either. That didn’t make them RIGHT. That was the whole POINT of Brown vs. Board! As the NAACP’s Shaw put it:

This [integration] is not about school districts telling people that they can’t go to school on the basis of their skin color. This is about school districts trying to continue to fulfill the promise of Brown and to avoid segregation. In no way is this comparable to the kind of regime of segregation and discrimination that existed under Jim Crow.

Exactly.

Finally, while we’re on the topic of Brown vs. Board of Education, this is particularly bad timing, because I just did a dystopian cartoon for Lambda Legal wondering “What would life be like without integrated schools?”:

Prepare to find out. And God Bless Our Colorblind America, where the playing field is level, everyone has an equal chance, and white kids can just learn about colored folks on their Tee-Vees!

Next up: The Supreme Court rules that allowing black people and white people to drink from the same water fountains is racist.

P.S. I would have called this cartoon “Separate But Equal: The Sequel”, but I already drew a cartoon with that title. Oh well.

P.P.S. Just so it’s clear–in the cartoon, the kids of color are locked up in a “Jim Crow Max Security Educational Facility” not because they’re troublemakers or deserve to be there, but because they live under racist segregation.

Cross-posted at Boiling Point Blog.

Why Wall Street Journal Reporters didn’t show up for work today
Posted by Mikhaela Reid

Were I still an employee of the Wall Street Journal, I might not have shown up for work this morning, thanks to Rupert Murdoch’s insane quest to dominate the world with right-wing wingnut faux news crap.

Even long-time readers might be surprised to hear that I worked full-time for three years (through the end of 2006) as an information graphics journalist at the Wall Street Journal, initially for the Money & Investing section and more recently for the Economy page. I made 2-5 daily charts and graphics, mostly tracking economic indicators and analyzing trends in the stock and bond markets. I also did the occasional medical or technical illustration, including a graphic about abdominal aortic aneurysms that accompanied a Pulitzer-Prize-winning front page series. (Read old blog post here…)

I was also part of the union, and participated in several union actions regarding benefit cuts, pay cuts and large-scale layoffs (I’ll spare you the slogans, but it was pretty damn cool to see financial reporters carrying signs and chanting old-school labor song-type lyrics).

The Wall Street Journal is a top-notch paper with reporters and editors of the highest caliber and in-depth investigative reporting and features you can’t find anywhere else. Aside from the New York Times, it’s the only paper I read almost cover-to-cover every day (with the notable exception of the editorial page, which I take in very small doses on a strong stomach).

So as you can imagine, I’ve been following the news about Rupert Murdoch’s attempts to add Dow Jones to his stable of faux news outlets with growing horror and disbelief. Does anyone REALLY think he would allow the WSJ to preserve its editorial integrity? For example, via CNN I read that even the “editorial integrity protection” deal would give Murdoch sole discretion to pick top editors. I can picture Bill O’Reilly leading the Politics & Economy team now!

Via Romanesko, I just heard that many of my former colleagues chose to stay home today in protest. From the union’s release:

Wall Street Journal reporters across the country chose not to show up to work this morning.

We did so for two reasons.

First, The Wall Street Journal’s long tradition of independence, which has been the hallmark of our news coverage for decades, is threatened today. We, along with hundreds of other Dow Jones employees represented by the Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees, want to demonstrate our conviction that the Journal’s editorial integrity depends on an owner committed to journalistic independence.

Second, by our absence from newsrooms around the country, we are reminding Dow Jones management that the quality of its publications depends on a top-quality professional staff. Dow Jones currently is in contract negotiations with its primary union, seeking severe cutbacks in our health benefits and limits on our pay. It is beyond debate that the professionals who create The Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones publications every day deserve a fair contract that rewards their achievements. At a time when Dow Jones is finding the resources to award golden parachutes to 135 top executives, it should not be seeking to eviscerate employees’ health benefits and impose salary adjustments that amount to a pay cut.

We put the reputation of The Wall Street Journal and the needs of its readers first. That’s why we will be back at our desks this afternoon, producing the day’s news reports. But we hope this demonstration will remind those entrusted with the future of Dow Jones that our publications’ integrity must be protected, and sustained, from top to bottom.

I hope it makes a difference. But my guess is, Dow Jones current owners just see dollar signs and will salve their consciences with lies about “preserving editorial independence” until its too late.

MOCCA festival pix: Cartoonists With Attitude, Alison Bechdel and more!
Posted by Mikhaela Reid

No good comics convention is complete without Ted Rall; still, we muddled through while Ted continued his Stan-Trek:


MOCCA 07: Ayo and Cartoonists With Attitude Masheka Wood, Brian McFadden and Mikhaela Reid

Ayo + Cartoonists With Attitude Masheka Wood, Brian McFadden and Mikhaela Reid

MOCCA 07: Fictional Character Alison Bechdel ("Fun Home") and Mikhaela Reid ("Boiling Point")MOCCA '07: Mikhaela Reid and Barry "Ampersand" Deutsch drawing each other faces!

Legendary Fun Home author and Dyke to Watch Out For Alison Bechdel and Mikhaela Reid; Mikhaela Reid and Barry “Ampersand” Deutsch drawing each other faces

MOCCA '07: Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me, 30 Days) with Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela!MOCCA 07: Masheka Wood and Frank ReynosoMOCCA 2007: On-the-spot commissioned birthday card front

Muckraking filmmaker Morgan Spurlock with his copy of Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela!; Masheka Wood and Frank Reynoso; cover of on-the-spot commissioned birthday card for a George-Bush-averse one-year-old

Cartoonists Masheka Wood and AyoTop Shelf 10th Anniversary Party: Brian McFadden, Keith Knight

Masheka Wood and Ayo; Brian McFadden and Keith Knight with free booze and food at the Top Shelf 10th Anniversary Party

Last year, the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art’s Art Festival was a low point for many of us alternative political cartoonists–we felt so alienated, disconnected and unloved and sold so few books that we decided to form the group Cartoonists With Attitude to help get more attention at conventions.

Apparently it worked. I’m happy to report that MOCCA this year was a whole other comics convention beast. All kinds of great comics readers, cool sales, and awe-inspiring cartoonists to hang out with, plus some cool comics discoveries. The tough part was keeping any of the money we earned and not immediately spending it on other comics.

The convention was also packed with alums from the Attitudeseries of books Ted edited for NBM: myself, Brian, Alison Bechdel, Barry Deutsch, Neil Swaab, R Stevens, Scott Bateman and others. Clearly, it’s all about the Attitude.

If you scroll through my whole MOCCA photoset, you’ll see I also got to chat with Hilary Price of “Rhymes With Orange” fame, who was attending her first comics convention to promote her book Reigning Cats and Dogs. Hilary is syndicated and popular for good reason.

More later on some of the cool comics I picked up at the event!

Shortwave Report for Central Asia, Part 4
Posted by Susan Stark (Parts 1, 2, and 3 are in the Archives)

CLANDESTINE AND PIRATE RADIO

Radio itself was invented by Guglielmo Marconi, or at least he gets the credit for it (in my opinion, Nicola Tesla, the Yugoslav inventor, is the one who invents the radio).

In the very early days of radio, radio functioned very much as the internet does today in communication. There wasn’t much regulation for this newfangled hobby. Anybody who had a functioning transmitter/receiver could and did use it. Two or more people could use the same frequency (let’s say, at 1290AM, for example), and hold a long distance conversation. Two violinists on two sides of the Atlantic could have a duet over the radio, and others tuning into the same frequency could listen in. The very first DJs appeared, playing recorded music, with no one dictating what music to play.

In the United States, all that changed with the formation of the FCC, or Federal Communications Commission. Similar “regulatory” bodies appeared in other countries. The excuse for these regulations were complaints that broadcasters were interfering with one another, but the best explanation is control. It is harder to propagandize against another country, for example, if people in both countries are in regular communication with each other. Also, during World War 1, the government brought up the excuse of “security” (you know, spies communicate).

Nevertheless, despite all the current regulation, unregulated, or “pirate radio”, still operates. It’s very difficult for AM and FM pirate stations to stay on the air, even when they eventually try to play by the rules and ask for a license. Sometimes pirate radio operates out of a house or apartment, or even out of an automobile (although that can be difficult without a power source). In a lot of cases pirate radio broadcasts from a boat or ship. This type of broadcasting is more common than people think: There are several pirate broadcasters operating in New York City, at any given time. The success of these transmissions vary according to the quality of the transmitter and the ability to keep the transmitter outside vs. inside. But a pirate can reach a good number of people here due to the population density of NYC neighborhoods. Shortwave is a better way to reach a good audience through unregulated radio, across huge distances.

Clandestine Broadcasting:

Clandestine radio is similar, yet different than pirate radio. A clandestine transmission usually transmits from one country to another, for the purpose of circumventing the ideology and political control of the target country. It can either be transmitted by another government (usually), or by dissidents from the target country living abroad (sometimes). Examples of this are Radio Marti, broadcast by the US government to Cuba, as well as a few private stations run out of Miami by Cuban exiles. North Korea is also a frequent target for clandestine broadcasts. When a country is experiencing civil war or internal conflict, there can be clandestine transmissions targeted *within* the country. Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kashmir are examples regions where internal clandestine radio operations are used.

In my opinion, virtually all shortwave transmissions are clandestine in nature, because they are able to bypass the imaginary lines that humans have created to separate one country and region from another. And if a country is repressive enough, then virtually *any* shortwave broadcast passing through that country is clandestine. During Taliban rule in Afghanistan (1996-2001), it is safe to say that all shortwave into the country was clandestine because it presented music and female voices on the air, both banned by the Taliban. The broadcaster “All India Radio” certainly doesn’t consider itself clandestine when it belts out Bollywood film tunes, but it was to a Taliban-era listener in Kabul at night, wearing headphones. And while the United States is not nearly as repressive as the Taliban, I and many others where fortunate to have a different point of view in early 2003 when most of the media in the US were pimping the Iraq Invasion. “Deutsche Welle” of Germany and “Radio Havana Cuba” of Cuba were among those presenting a refreshingly different viewpoint, but they aren’t listed or considered clandestine in nature.

Of course, Central Asia has been a recipient of clandestine broadcasts, most notably Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (as mentioned in Shortwave Report Part 3) from the United States. But what is weird about this is that Radio Liberty also appears to have *AM* and *FM* broadcasts in these countries as well. Are they broadcasting from satellite or within the country? I guess when you grease enough local palms, you get your access.

But other countries broadcast clandestinely in Central Asia. In 2002, the Voice of Tibet, a transmission from dissident Tibetans, was broadcast from Kazakhstan into Chinese-occupied Tibet.

JAMMING

Of course, as you can well imagine, the intended recipient countries of clandestine radio, or at least their governments, don’t appreciate these broadcasts. That’s where jamming comes in.

The recipient country of a clandestine broadcast, in order to keep their subjects in the dark, will jam the transmission. This mainly involves transmitting another broadcast on the exact same frequency, using different noises such as beeps or car engines. Of course you can’t hear the original through this mess.

The original broadcasters, however, can circumvent jamming by changing their frequency on a regular basis. Unfortunately, this forces those attempting to receive the broadcast into moving their radio tuner up and down the dial to find whatever heresy their government disapproves of.

That’s it for now.

Kissing gay teens getting kicked off busses, out of yearbooks
Posted by Mikhaela Reid

What is up with this bigoted nonsense and this bigoted nonsense? Leave the gay and bisexual teens to kiss in peace like their straight peers, people!

If I were a parent in Portland, I’d be horrified that two 14-year-olds girls were kicked off a bus and stranded in the street by a bigoted bus driver. Even more crazy, the girls were on their way to the LGBT youth center. MESSED UP.

War Crimes
posted by TheDon
Atlanta right-wing hate yakker Neal Boortz seems to be confused. I’m here to unconfuse him. In a piece about Jane Fonda, he says this:

Bush and Cheney are not war criminals. First of all, Cheney is not the commander and chief. Only the president has that role – get it right. And “war crimes” implies that that America violated some international law. Go ahead, Jane. Give me a cite!

O……kay… only the commander-in-chief can commit a war crime. And only international law is used to prosecute war crimes. That’s too stupid to even respond to, but here’s your cite: The Geneva Conventions. A bonus cite would be this.

He then gets all Howie Mandel over Saddam Hussein’s cousin getting a death sentence, despite the fact that he is/was NOT the commander-in-chief.

Now here is a criminal for you. Saddam Hussein’s cousin was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court yesterday. He is going to hang. And that is exactly how it should be. He helped with the killing of hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shite Muslims. Using chemicals weapons to wipe out people based on their religion … THAT’S a war crime. Let’s see if Hamas Jane has anything to say about this guy!

It’s ok, Jane, I’ll handle this one. Read slowly, Neal, it involves accusing some of your heroes of crimes. Chemical Ali was a war criminal who commited despicable acts. If I ever believed in the death penalty, he would be near the head of the line. Having said that, he didn’t perform his deeds in a vacuum. His arsenal was only possible because of the assistance of the USA, and the blind eye they turned towards his barbaric crimes. If he is guilty of a war crime, then so are his co-conspirators, including Donald Rumsfeld, George H. W. Bush, and the late Ronald Reagan, along with a cast of thousands.

You’re welcome.

Why I blog about the dogs
posted by TheDon

On Saturday we put 6 more dogs in their forever homes, including Eddy, who was in the program for over 2 years. Sometimes it takes a while to find just the right home, even for the best of dogs.
People sometimes question the time and money I put into dog rescue, and tell me there are more important things I could do with both. That is probably true, but irrelevant. Most activities can be criticized as being less important than something else. Why worry about homeless dogs when there are homeless people? Why worry about gay rights when there are innocent people on death row? Why worry about abortion rights when our soldiers are dying in Iraq? Why worry about contractor corrpution when there are terrorist trying to kill us? Why watch TV when you could be writing to Congress? Why clean the house when you could be marching with a sign?
There are a lot of things wrong in our great country, and I think they all need advocates. Some causes are well represented, well funded, well advertised. Some are not. Some causes have strong advocacy and legal standing, some do not.
Dog adoption is much more mainstream than it used to be in most of the country. Even in Georgia, everyone at least knows what it is. But we still have a never-ending supply of unwanted dogs. In metro Atlanta, we kill over 90,000 dogs and cats every year. I can’t stop homelessness. I can’t stop the war in Iraq, or the coming one in Iran. I can’t stop bigotry. But I can do something about the slaughter of dogs in my little corner of the world – Atlanta.
We have an agriculture department far more concerned with dog breeders than dog ownership. We fight attempts which nakedly try to shut down dog rescue and to characterize dog rescuers as nuts. We are fighting a long, hard battle, against long odds, but one day we will win.
So why the dogs? Why not the children? Why not the war? Why not the civil rights? I actually help with all of them where I can, but I do spend most of my money and time on the dogs. There are laws protecting children, the homeless, the hungry, even though they are sometimes inadequate. There are countless government agencies, non-profit organizations and church groups advocating and helping. But not for the dogs. They can’t speak for themselves, and they are not well represented where it counts – in the legislature or in the courts.
I have a special place in my heart for the truly helpless – I am a liberal, after all – and these dogs count as some of the most helpless and voiceless. My heart is with them, and I unapologetically advocate for them. If you think there are more important ways for me to spend my time, I encourage you to go ahead and do those things. Make a difference – that’s all I’m trying to do.
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