The Inner Loop picks up on the mind-boggling attempt by Republicans to pick up support in the community by attacking Democrats on Social Security:

The Inner Loop: Targets

Somewhere along the line, Republicans decided that Social Security was a winning issue for them in these mid-term elections. It’s not exactly clear why the GOP thought they could own this issue, coming just a year after the president wrapped up his unpopular tour promoting his plan to reorganize the benefit system.

WHAM13 also detects a whiff of bovine excrement:

13WHAM-TV || Rochester - Political Attack Ads - Fact or Fiction

Jane Flasch - Election is near–and the closer it gets, the more political ads you see. But can you believe what they say? Jack Davis is running for congress and Republicans are running an ad attacking his stand on social security. The ad uses his own words from a 2004 interview in which he says, “I think we should increase the retirement age. We can have a means test on it.” We call that a faction–part fact and part fiction.

Here’s the thing: it has become unfashionable to put your party affiliation on your signage these days.  This is especially true among Republicans in the current season, but it’s generally been the trend for the last few election cycles on both sides.  That makes some degree of sense in the current environment: you’d rather have a candidate run on his own notoriety (or even lack there of) than have to run against the impression of his party which may or may not be popular in the district

But everybody knows who wanted to privatize Social Security last year, and he t’warn’t no Democrat.  Even if (and this is true) Tom Reynolds did not support the privatization scheme, his ass is going to be on the “R” line come election day.  Those people who are pissed enough about the Social Security debacle may just click all the “D’s,” indiscriminate of the names of the candidates.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the Social Security thing is the gift that keeps on giving.  It’s like part Republican Herpes, part Neo-Con Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.  (Her-publican Neo-Con-pulsive Disorder?  HNCD?)  I don’t know why, but the Republicans just keep sticking their fingers into that light socket over and over again.  In fact, Dubya only just got done saying he’s bringing back the SS proposal yet again on This Week with George Stephanopoulis.  Hurray!  Let’s hear more about Social Security before the elections!

Technorati Tags: Republicans, Mid-Terms, Sleaze

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I honestly don’t know quite how to feel about this latest ploy:

JohnKerry.com - 3 at the buzzer…

So here’s the deal; vote for your favorite House and Senate netroots candidates on Wednesday, November 1 from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST. The Senate candidate and the 2 House candidates with the most votes will get the last JohnKerry.com fundraising email of the cycle. We’ll challenge our 3 million person online community to get these fighters over the top in the last few days.

We’re trying to take back Congress and restore some semblance of order in our quickly-fading democracy, and they treat it like a cheesy radio promotion.  John Kerry and JohnKerry.com dangle much-needed funds over the heads of our candidates and cry, “what’s your favourite radio station?!?!?!?!?!?!?!”

I suppose that there is another way to look at it: they’re trying to get the base pumped up and voting.  I’m doing the same thing on YouTube.com, MySpace.com, in emails and everywhere else I don’t think I’m preaching to the choir.  I obviously can’t say I disagree with the sentiment, it just comes across all wrong.  And I suppose it doesn’t help that the only race I’ve watched in any great detail is the Kuhl/Massa race, and Eric Massa is one of those for whom the last minute funds are being held in absentia.

And much though I wish they could have found a better way to do this - much though I wish they wouldn’t treat their base like teenagers at a TOOL concert - I have to admit that the results of this poll should prove interesting on a number of levels.  First of all, in the House race, I’ve never heard of any of these candidates other than of course Eric Massa.  That to me means that the results should ultimately prove an effective barometer for who among those candidates are most likely to win: the most likely voters in this contest will be local to the districts in which each candidate is running.  Yes, I realize that we’re only talking about Democrats, here, but since Republicans tend to do better in races with lower turnout, the odds are those candidates who can get more votes here have a more energized base and therefore a better shot at winning.

Come to think of it, this is perhaps not the best move on that level: they may be tipping their hand too soon.  But what the hell?  Vote for Eric Massa.  How cool would it be for the whole nation to be talking about the Dem sweep in New York?  Northern Liberal?  Damned straight!

Technorati Tags: Democrats, Mid-Terms

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OK, so I’ve been very quiet lately.  That’s at least in part because I’m waiting for the elections to be over with.  I really don’t have too much I want to talk about.  It’s also in part because I’m working on other projects right now that are diverting my attention.  In case anyone was wondering, here’s the list:

1. New version of WordPress installed!  If you haven’t already, those of you using WP are going to want to update soon.  This update eliminated a problem with Widgets in the previous version, so I have been able to:
2. Doing some cleanup!  Yes, I’ve reorganized the Widgets on the sidebars a bit.  They were getting cluttered and had long ago ceased to make any sense on any level.  I’ve gotten rid of some stuff (coComment is officially in the toilet), moved some stuff and reconfigured still more stuff.  I think it looks better, but we shall see as time passes.
3. Learning Flash!  I’ve been procrastinating on building a site to show off our honeymoon, but I can do so no longer.  I decided Flash would be the way to go for this project, so now I’m trying to learn how to use Flash when not using Swish.  Swish is a great app for basic stuff, but it doesn’t compress very well.
4. Learning JavaScript and AJAX!  Yes, this was to be my new project once the DFEv4.0 project was done.  There are so many thing for which I need the AJAX functionality to complete, I simply have to buckle down and learn.
5. Reading Tempting Faith.  This is a great book.  I’m going to write a review, I just haven’t had time.  Also I reviewed Joey Bs, the French restaurant in Packetts Landing, but I havent’ been able to post it yet because I need a picture.  They, in the meanwhile, are undergoing some major renovations and so it will have to wait.

Whoopha!  So, yeah.  It’s been busy in DragonFlyEye-land.  I hope to get a bit more active with the blogging and article writing in the next week or so.

Greetings and salutations to the blog-ghouls and web-goblins out there!  Happy Halloween, and a Blessed Samhain to you all!  Tonight is the night to think about those we’ve lost, on this night when the veils between this world and the one that awaits are especially thin.

But, it’s also about costumes and candy.  That’s really important, too.  Over by me on Mt. Vernon Ave, it’s going to be another waist-high Park Avenue Fest, just like last year, I am certain.  Its supposed to be like 65 degrees all day.  The wife and I got loads of candy at the ready, I have my costume (40’s gangster getup with the black hat, white tie and pinstripe suit), and the pumpkins are carved.  The camera is at the ready as well.  We’re gonna have a blast!

And for you, the Putrefied Progressives, the Lycanthropic Liberals, the Wretched Rochestarians, the Boo Yorkers, I give my very first Flash presentation.  I created it about two years ago or so.  I’ve got much better tools now, but this one did the trick.

It is amazing, in a bubble, to think of Los Alamos National Laboratory as rife with security gaps.  This is, after all, where the nuclear bomb was invented all those years ago, and you can bet that’s not the last of the story.  Still, in this modern age of microscopic technology, anything is possible.  Take the case of these jump drives that turned up in the hands of some meth-addicted kid in California:

lamonitor.com: The Online News Source for Los Alamos

“I have no idea what’s on it because I didn’t get a chance to look,” Stone said. Stone refused to reveal the man’s name. He said he traded another local man some meth for a jump drive about a year ago. “I vaguely remember it contained information about nuclear waste sites around Los Alamos,” Stone said. “I erased it and used the drive for myself.” A second flash drive was lying on the kitchen counter, he said adding that the third drive was on Jessica Quintana’s key chain. Quintana is the woman who lived in the mobile home at 2025 East Jemez Road #250 where police discovered the drives on Oct. 17. Quintana has lived in the mobile home for a couple of months and was reportedly in the process of buying it.

Continue reading the story, it’s worth it just to see how good you are at following nonsense narratives.  The author of the article employs some curious phrasology such as “arrested from,” to add to the challenge.  Then again, it’s Sunday morning and no, I didn’t remember Daylight’s Savings, so the problem could be me.  In any event, who got the key fobs from whom matters little to me.
» Continue Reading…

I heartily agree with GroovyGreen’s sentiment: November could not come soon enough.  Of course, we stll need to get Bush out of office, which we cannot do for a few more years, probably.  Still, something’s gotta give:

GroovyGreen.com - Start Today :: Save Tomorrow : Blog Archive : Bush Admin Appoints Exxon’s Lee Raymond To Solve America’s Energy Crisis

Could November come any sooner? Not only will ExxonMobil announce third-quarter profits tomorrow, they’ve also got to be smiling from ear-to-ear about the recent appointment of former ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond to lead an influential study to develop policy solutions to America’s energy crisis! How ironic is that? The genius behind this appointment is energy secretary Samuel Bodman — another Bush standout with obvious ties to Big Oil.

BTW, please check out the article on GroovyGreen and do not miss the letter-signing campaign!!

Technorati Tags: Environment, Big Oil, Crony

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This is very interesting.

As I’m reading through Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, the new book on the Faith Based Initiatives of George Bush’s White House, he is discussing the events of 911 from his perspective inside the White House. He describes the chaos of people running for cover and Secret Service men searching the skies and crowd for potential enemies. He also says in no uncertain terms that his eyes followed the gaze of the ever-alert Secret Service and he saw “silver-bellied airliner with two engines beneath each wing,” directly over White House airspace.

This is the airplane that is so much in dispute among the “Loose Change,” “911 Press for Truth” crowd that distrusts the official (woefully incomplete) account of events of that day. Primarily at issue here (for those of you who don’t keep up with these sorts of things) is that what hit the Pentagon doesn’t really seem based on circumstantial evidence to have been a plane. Many have suspected a rocket, and even gone as far as to suggest a US Patriot missle. At the same time, there are a number of reported sightings of an airplane over the capitol and even over White House airspace around the same time as the Pentagon was hit. While there was some chatter about this in live coverage of the events of 911, none of it made the official record, none of it was followed up on by the media and no mention can be found in the The 9/11 Commission Report.

I’m not suggesting that David Kuo is himself a believer in the alternate realities presented by the above-cited groups.  Neither am I suggesting that the mere existence of an airplane over the White House on 911 is proof of anything.  What I am saying is that here is a relatively unbiased report of the same thing seen by so many other people but utterly unexplained by the official record, and I find that interesting by itself.  Particularly in the way he describes it.  There is such a phenomenon as a person’s mind blending what others have said into what they remember (the name of this phenomenon escapes me at the moment), but Kuo doesn’t strike me as having spent a whole lot of time with The Lone Gunmen, so it’s hard to imagine where this suggestion would have come from.

He’s a gem.  Just watch as his world explodes around him, and he makes his best pitch to down-play the importance of the upcoming mid-term elections:

Think Progress » Novak: ‘This Is Going To Be One Of The Least Important Elections That I Have Seen’

Yet some conservatives are trying to downplay the stakes of the upcoming election. This morning on Meet the Press, conservative pundit Robert Novak said, “I would make the argument that this is one of the least important elections that I have seen.” Watch it:

Hmm. . .  I would think you could make the case for almost anything at all other than that.  Even the Republican Revolution seemed less likely in ‘94 than does the upcoming “onslaught” as Novak calls it.  They’re predicting as many as twenty seats lost in the House alone.  Good try, Bob-o.

Technorati Tags: Novak, Republicans, Mid-term

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Yep.  Just got the book, and put down my other one (or two, depending on how you look at it) to jump straight into it.  Now, as a teaser, I’m going to do what every other commentator on politics and culture does when a book first comes out: I’m going to quote something fromt the forward.  Unlike most commentators, however, I’m not going to pretend I read the whole thing:

When I talk to neighbors or strangers and tell them that I try my best to follow Jesus, many look at me queerly.  I’ve come to learn that their first thoughts about me ar political ones - they figure I don’t care about the environment, I support the war in Iraq, I oppose abortion, I am ambivalent about the poor, I want public schools to evangelize students, and I must hate gays and lesbians.  That is what they associate with my faith.  And it isn’t just a Washington thing.  I’ve heard it everywhere.  Moreover, in the heat of many political moments, I have been what they feared.  I have been far more partisan than Christian.  I hated Bill Clinton, yet he is a Christian just like me.  I took sides on issues that don’t have much to do with my faith.  Above all, I let the passions of politics distract me from what matters in life.  By some “severe mercy,” however, God has given me the chance to step back and take a look at it all. . . .

I’m thinking that whatever I might have thought about this book, I might be in for a surprise from a thoughtful and well-reasoned man.  I’m looking forward to this.

Nothing more to add, here.  I just want to make sure we all see it.  Kevin Tillman’s eloquence speaks volumes about where we are in this country, from the perspective of someone whose left and come back to find it all changed.  Let’s hope Kevin gets his wish and we start changing things right after his brother’s birthday:

Truthdig - Reports - After Pat’s Birthday

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Technorati Tags: Kevin Tillman, Iraq, Democracy

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