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Sunday, December 22, 2002 |
US Dept of Untruth prospers - Rumsfeld. "And then there was the Office of Strategic Influence. You may recall that. And 'oh my goodness gracious isn't that terrible, Henny Penny the sky is going to fall.' I went down that next day and said fine, if you want to savage this thing, fine, I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have." [The Register]
1:38:15 PM 
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Feds Want To See Enron Videotape President George W. Bush, who then was governor of Texas, also took part in the skit, as did his father. The governor's father also offered a send-off to Kinder, thanking him for helping his son reach the governor's mansion. "You have been fantastic to the Bush family," the elder Bush said. "I don't think anybody did more than you did to support George." [Daypop Top 40]
If there was ever any doubt that our current president was in bed with Enron, we're now going to get video evidence of that fact.
1:15:09 PM
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Going Electronic, Denver Reveals Long-Term Surveillance The Denver police have gathered information on unsuspecting local activists since the 1950's, secretly storing what they learned on simple index cards in a huge cabinet at police headquarters. When the cabinet filled up recently, the police thought they had an easy solution, a powerful computer program from a company called Orion Scientific Systems. Among those the police spied on were nuns, advocates for American Indians and church organizations. To make matters worse, the software called many of the groups "criminal extremists." [Daypop Top 40]
12:55:39 PM
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Government Spying (on You) Keeps Growing The Bush administration's ardent desire to spy on us is no longer news. But a New York Times report Friday, describing a budding plan to tap just about all Internet communications, is chilling even by Bush standards. The White House claimed that privacy would be honored in its effort to beef up cybersecurity. Oh, sure. This government believes it has a right, and a need, to know everything about us. This same government has a mania for secrecy that goes far beyond anything in recent history. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
12:09:45 PM
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Rounding Up the Foreigners Clumsy is the mildest word to describe the INS/Justice Department roundup. It seems designed to intimidate. It's also gives off a whiff of an ugly past, when America put Japanese citizens into concentration camps during World War II. I thought we'd learned the lesson from that. Maybe not. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
12:07:59 PM
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March of the "lucky duckies". How did a callous and inaccurate argument for taxing the poor become part of the conservative agenda and the White House playbook? [Salon.com]
More on the "tax the poor, they're not paying their share" agenda of the Republicans. As this quotation points out, it's really all about lowering taxes for the rich:
Like many of the tax measures conservatives embrace, however, these new cuts will favor the wealthiest Americans. Indeed, that's the political rub of flattening taxes: If you want to replace a progressive tax system -- one in which wealthier people pay higher tax rates -- with a flat tax and still maintain comparable government revenue, you can't avoid cutting taxes for the rich and raising taxes on the middle class and the poor.
Note to the Silent Majority: If you let the Republicans push this through, your taxes will go up. Don't let the rhetoric fool you; it's simple math.
12:03:14 PM
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Information Awareness Office Website Deletes Its Logo The government's Information Awareness Office -- you know, the Defense agency that's running the Total Information Awareness Program, the huge database that will track everything about everyone in the US and beyond, helmed by convicted felon John Poindexter -- keeps getting more shy. First, the IAO took down the biographies of its senior staff. Now, the IAO has removed its eye-death-ray logo, which was denounced far and wide as being Orwellian, Masonic, and just plain creepy as hell. [Daypop Top 40]
11:54:49 AM
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Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wife's Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There? There was nothing poetic in my reaction to the arrest report. I didn't crumple it in my fist and swear that justice would be served, promising to sacrifice my resources and time to see that it would. I simply stared. Clearly the officer didn't have the guts to write down what had really happened. It might not look too good to see that stuff about the pregnant woman in tears because she'd been humiliated. Instead this was the official scenario being presented for the permanent record. It doesn't even matter that it's the most implausible sounding situation you can think of. [Daypop Top 40]
Pretty scary story. If you read this and don't think "it could happen to me", you're ignoring the facts, and history. We're not that far from living in a fascist regime these days. Give Ashcroft and crew a few more years, and we will be.
11:52:01 AM
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Confederates in the attic. In the wake of the Lott debacle, President Bush faces questions about the way his campaign used the Confederate flag to win the South Carolina primary. [Salon.com]
10:49:19 AM
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Sen. Murray asks students to ponder bin Laden's popularity "He's been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day-care facilities, building health-care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven't done that," Senator Patty Murray said. "How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?" [Daypop Top 40]
Finally, a Democrat with the stones to point out an unpleasant truth -- we are building a factory to turn out new terrorists. We can kill all of today's terrorists, and the conditions in the Middle East -- which America has a strong hand in perpetuating -- will just make more of them.
Of course, the Republicans will take this opportunity to try and make us forget what a racist bigot Trent Lott is, by screaming for Sen. Murry's head...
10:24:19 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Michael Alderete.
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