I think Tucker just called Republicans stupid
posted by TheDon

The Beach Gestapo
posted by Susan Stark

I love the beach. I love the water. I love the sound of the waves and the wind caressing me.

I’ve loved this ever since I was a little girl in Michigan, swimming in the great, fresh-water lakes that surround the state. And it’s the same here in New York, the same beautiful sand, water, waves, and wind. As an adult I swim in the salt-water of the Atlantic.

But one thing I and other New Yorkers could do without are the obsessive and harassing park personnel and policies, otherwise known as the Beach Gestapo.

Once, on Staten Island, I walked from the train to the beach, got in the water, and was promptly told by a passing personnel that I must, MUST be in a designated swimming area with lifeguards. I had to walk a half a mile north to this area, only to see that the area was only several yards long, and was crammed with noisy people and their kids. I like my beach experience quiet, so I walked as far away from the crowd as possible, while still in range of the lifeguards. I should not have had to do all of that, because a simple sign saying “NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY, SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK” would have sufficed in most places. Not here, apparently.

The Beach Gestapo also goes around at 6pm sharp to tell everyone to get out of the water because the beach is closing. Shocking. I never heard of that practice until I moved here.

There are very few personnel at Coney Island Beach in Brooklyn telling folks to leave the water “immediately, or else”, but the last time I was there, there were signs on the bathroom doors telling people that they cannot use the bathroom to change clothes. This would’ve made sense if the city provided a place to change clothes, but there wasn’t a building in sight where you could do that. I changed clothes in the bathroom anyway, and so did everyone else. A nice bit of psychological warfare, if you ask me.

And finally, there are those who have been ticketed for leaving their stuff on the beach while they go into the water. Doing something like that is completely normal to the rest of us, but apparently not to the city. (Gee, too bad they didn’t have a maid to watch it for them, right Bloomberg?)

I have a word for the Beach Gestapo and everyone else reading this. The wealthy go to Fire Island and the Hamptons to swim. They do not swim in the city. I am a resident of New York City, and my hard-earned tax dollars pay for these beaches, and I will use them to my heart’s content. And so will every other New York City resident. You are not going to force us out with your personnel and your mind-games. We are not going to back down. Give it up.

TGIF! Drinks are on me!
posted by TheDon
It’s 90 degrees in Atlanta today, so our drink is a summer classic. Refreshing and wonderful.
Caipirinha
cut a lime into eighths and put it into the bottom of a glass
pour 1 Tablespoon sugar on the limes
crush the sugar into the limes with a pestle or wooden spoon, completely juicing them and dissolving the sugar
pour in 1/2 cup rum (Brazilian rum – cachaca preferred)
stir
put a handfull of ice on top and stir again
cheers!

I will never go to an Indiana County Fair
posted by TheDon
Not with this kind of stuff going on:

BAGHDAD (AP) – In a dawn strike Friday, unidentified gunmen attacked the house
of the police chief in Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, killing his wife, two brothers and 11 guards, Diyala provincial police reported.The attackers also abducted two sons and a daughter of police chief Col. Ali Dilayan al-Jorani, police said. The chief, head of central Baqouba’s Balda police station, wasn’t at home at the time, they said.

Can you even imagine the brutality of this attack? ELEVEN guards killed, along with the wife and two brothers! Yikes. I’m guessing this will make them hate us for our freedoms even more.

I meant for OTHER people…
posted by TheDon
If a conservative is a Democrat who has been mugged, I guess a liberal is a Republican who has had a slip-and-fall. According to ACSBlog, Robert Bork joins the long list of “tort reform” advocates who want a little taste of the pain and suffering money.

Judge Robert Bork, one of the fathers of the modern judicial conservative movement whose nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate, is seeking $1,000,000 in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages, after he slipped and fell at the Yale Club of New York City. Judge Bork was scheduled to give a speech at the club, but he fell when mounting the dais, and injured his head and left leg. He alleges that the Yale Club is liable for the $1m plus punitive damages because they “wantonly, willfully, and recklessly” failed to provide staging which he could climb safely.
Judge Bork has been a leading advocate of restricting plaintiffs’ ability to recover through tort law. In a 2002 article published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy–the official journal of the Federalist Society–Bork argued that frivolous claims and excessive punitive damage awards have caused the Constitution to evolve into a document which would allow Congress to enact tort reforms that would have been unconstitutional at the framing.

$1 million, huh? His left leg must be priceless, because at MOST an injury to his head is worth $1.25.

A Progressive Appointment
posted by TheDon

Bush’s appointment of a gay Surgeon General is a big step forward for his hate-filled regime. Although James Holsinger is not the first gay appointee in the administration, he is the most openly gay one since Ken Mehlman.

Think Progress has Holsinger’s story,

including founding a church that “ministers to people who no longer wish to be gay or lesbian.”

Look for him in a public restroom near you.

Like father, Like son
posted by TheDon

It has long been known that Chimpy takes after his mother. His temper, his cruelty, his beady-eyed stupidity, his disregard for all things decent are a perfect reflection of the former First Lady. Now, finally, we see King George share some characteristics with dear old dad.

Scooter Libby just became the highest ranking government official to get sentenced since the heady days of Iran-Contra. The disregard for the Constitution, extra-governmental intelligence gathering, the war-mongering, the corporate cronyism? That’s from dad.

Internet Suppression and Amnesty International
posted by Susan Stark

Lately, Amnesty International has broadened it’s human rights focus to include foreign government suppression of the internet, and the use of IT companies like Google and Yahoo to supply information to these governments about dissidents using their services. The examples that Amnesty uses are countries like China, Vietnam, Tunisia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.

I’ll take Amnesty’s word for it that these countries are indeed repressing the internet and using the internet to track down dissidents. But unfortunately, there is one country that Amnesty overlooks at it’s website:

The United States.

Yes, the US is currently trying to censor the internet, with dissidents along with it. Companies like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner provide the bandwidth which internet traffic flows through. The Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are the vehicles which drive on this information superhighway, and websites are the people inside the vehicles. The bandwidth providers wish to institute tolls along this highway whenever and wherever they wish, and the ISPs that can’t pay the tolls will be stuck, and those that can will pass through with ease. These tolls will be passed on to websites.

This means that the more money a website gives to it’s network, the more access it has on the internet.

This is plainly discriminatory, and it’s plain censorship. Smaller internet businesses will suffer because they can’t pay what larger businesses can, and people with ideas and opinions will only get heard according to what they can pay. Which means that a corporate hack like Rush Limbaugh will pass with ease on the highway, but not an anarchist in Kansas City. On the flip side, a liberal corporate hack like Air America will pass through more quickly than an Alabaman with a confederate flag on his truck.

As it stands right now, we can get to the anarchist and the Alabaman just as quickly as Limbaugh and Air America, but if the cable and telephone bandwidth providers have their way, we won’t in the future.

And it’s not just websites. Internet radio is also currently in jeopardy. On March 2, 2007, there was a ruling passed by the Copyright Royalty Board that increased the royalties internet radio must pay to artists and record labels by 500%. Most internet radio would have to go out of business if it had to pay these royalties. And ironically, most artists and record labels are against this, because it would cut off a very important venue for their music to be heard. Internet radio is currently fighting tooth and nail against this ruling.

This may not be a dictatorship censoring dissident websites and putting the dissidents in jail, but it is just as serious. If Amnesty International treats Chinese internet censorship as a human rights issue, then it should treat American and corporate internet censorship as a human rights issue as well. If censorship by the Tunisian government is wrong, than so is censorship by Comcast.

Amnesty International’s website: http://irrepressible.info

Save The Internet website: http://www.savetheinternet.com/

Save Internet Radio: http://www.savenetradio.org/