Good news for Democrats in NY26: Jon Powers’ campaign is gathering steam and getting attention from the right people.  WesPac raised a lot of money last year for the elections they stumped for, now they’ve turned their attention to Western New York and the Teacher-Veteran-Humanitarian running to unseat Tom DeLay Reynolds:

Jon Powers for Congress » Blog Archive » Wes Clark Calls for Support for Jon Powers

As a veteran and Votevet candidate, I am excited that one of our military’s most respected and successful commanders is invested in our efforts to bring new leadership to our district.

Reading Jon’s bio is interesting.  He is a native of the area who enrolled in the ROTC to become a teacher, served in Iraq as a platoon leader, came back home and decided to go back into harms way to combine his teaching skills with his Iraqi experience to form the War Kids Relief that educates kids in Iraq with the hopes of preventing them from slipping into the terrorist path.  That’s a very intriguing resume for a Representative of the 26th: a veteran for the Conservatives to admire and a humanitarian for us hippies to admire.

Unfortunately, his site is currently a bit sparse on policy positions at the moment.  I’m hoping they flesh that out in the coming months.

Technorati Tags: Jon Powers, NY26, Tom Reynolds, 2008

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Editor’s Note:  I regret to inform you that am unable at the present time to disguise my snarkiness over this story.  My sincerest apologies to all of you who are looking for higher-minded discourse, but this is just fucking stupid and irritating, especially since I can count on seeing this non-story all over my local news, network news and CNN.  For those of you who cannot deal with anger, I suggest you look elsewhere.  For the rest, you might want to employ some sort of splash guard before continuing on, lest you get a bit of vitriol on you. . .

Nothing like watching the media go nuts over a story.  Nothing like watching the media prove itself to be the tool of corporate interests.  Yeah, I love that.

To whit, the latest scandal in the SiCKO saga: the film (clutch the pearls!) has been leaked on them Innernets:

Advertising Age - Michael Moore’s ‘Sicko’ Leaked Onto Web

If the breach is as wide as it appears — and this reporter downloaded a copy and watched it late Thursday night with ease — Moore, and his distributor, The Weinstein Company, have a every film maker’s worst marketing nightmare on their hands — how to persuade people to go to the theater to see a show that’s available free on the Internet. (Officials at the Weinstein Company were unavailable for comment late Thursday evening.)

Ooh!  Well, that your dumb ass was able to download the movie is, in fact, proof of. . .  something.  Maybe that you bribed your kid into showing you how (or just doing it for you, which is the more likely option).  Fucking Tool.

Every single, solitary movie that has been pre-released on DVDs to advertisers and marketers has been cracked and leaked since there have been commercially-available DVD burners.  How many movies would that be?  All of them.  Guess what?  There is positively no definable evidence whatsoever that leaked movies have prevented even one person from going to the movies.  Certainly, the market for over-priced movies and rape-room prices on popcorn has gone no where.

And in a few weeks, when the movie has positively ablated all previous records for documentary box-office takings including his own - when it’s painfully obvious the media has once again been proven entirely wrong - you’ll see the media come back with, “Whoa!  That was a close one for Micheal Moore!  Incredible that he could make any money at all after that!!”

Don’t believe the hype: they’re trying to pour cold water on the movie by letting everyone know that you can get it for free.  They’re making it seem like a big deal, when in actual fact, the biggest deal is that the media is advertising for bootleggers!  All in the name of higher profits for Big Pharma.  The media is complicit in encouraging bootlegging and stealing the profits of one business because they’re under the thumb of another.

Here’s a joke for you:

Anyone who would know how to get that movie already has, and would doubtless have had it with our without the media’s help.  The rest will still have to pay.  I bet you most who have it for free go see it in the theaters, too.  Nothing’s changed.

Technorati Tags: SiCKO, Micheal Moore, Documentary, Bootlegging, Media, Hype

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The D&C has a great article on the war protesters who’ve gotten louder and more numerous in Rochester over the last year.  I remember the war protest on East Ave being a small gathering of 50-somethings, shivering solitarily against the cold.  Now the protest stretches down the block and through generations.

But what interested me most in the article was the following passage covering the pro-war community’s response:

Anti-war voices turn up the volume || Democrat & Chronicle: Local News

Supporters of the war say that withdrawal of U.S. troops would lead to greater bloodshed in Iraq and that the war is a matter of American self-defense.

“I think people better understand how we got our freedom,” said the Rev. Carley Touchstone of Glad Tidings Church in Irondequoit, adding:

“Freedom came from defending ourselves against evil empires. Terrorism is one of those evil empires.”

Whoa.  I guess that whole “Glad Tidings” thing is subjective. . .

Actually, on this Flag Day I rather think a lesson in how we got our freedom would be very instructive, indeed.   » Continue Reading…

The summer concerts are getting warmed up, and the wife and I are aching to go see some shows!

I just found out that Rusted Root will be playing a free show at the Jazz Fest, on East and Alexander, this Saturday. I’d like to go check them out, since I missed all the times that they played at Milestones for a $5 cover charge before they were famous. Then Dudley Dawson plays at the Dubland Underground, which is a show I know I probably won’t make, but I’d like to.

But the big bands are starting up as well. RUSH got it’s set list leaked, and OM-F*ing-G is it cool! In fact, I dare say it’s the coolest set list I’ve ever seen, and the wife scored us soundboard seats at Darien Lake for the 4th of July show. Better still is the fact that a lot of bands have been relaxing their rules about cameras at shows (since, after all, camera phones have made them pretty irrelevant, anyway), so with luck, I’ll be able to get some cool shots of the band when we go. I hope, I hope, I hope. . .

But for sure, I can get pictures of Tori Amos this go round. I’ve always been something of a minor fan, but Sarah is positively nuts for Tori. And with shows like this, I think Tori may just make me a believer:

But I’m going to try to avoid being one of those intensely annoying fans that crowds her meet-and-greets, if I can. Shouldn’t be hard. . .

Don’t get me wrong.  I want to be energy-efficient, to live in a country not dependent on foreign oil, and a world not covered in the salt water of former glaciers.  But when people talk about Ethanol like it’s going to solve all our problems, it’s just crazy talk.  Basic math does not support it.

The three top runners in the Democratic race are, I think, trying to discuss energy policy in a rational tone.  And discussing alternative fuels as a reality rather than a far-off concept is beneficial.  However, FactCheck.org takes them to task for painting entirely too-rosey pictures of our Ethanol future:

FactCheck.org: Audacious Ethanol Hopes?

Presidential candidates have been soliciting votes in Iowa, one of the nation’s leading ethanol producing states. But how practical are plans for a growing role for E85 — a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline? . . .  Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as well as former Sen. John Edwards. We find their statistics to be accurate as far as they go, but we also find they don’t go very far.

A lot of what FactCheck.org says on the subject dovetails nicely with my own research of a year or so ago.  I am led, therefore, to the natural conclusion that FactCheck.org writers are frequent readers of this website.  Yeah, right.

Technorati Tags: Ethanol, E85, Energy Efficiency, Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards

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An amusingly on-message email announcement hipped us all to the facts: Eric Massa has hired a local media company to develop his media strategy for the upcoming election. An excerpt from the mailer:

Hiring Locally Means Supporting the Community… Eric Massa Hires Novak Media for 2008 Congressional Campaign:

*ROCHESTER N.Y - *Today, NY-29^th Congressional Candidate Eric Massa announced he has hired Paul Novak and the team at Novak Media to act as his media advisors for the 2008 election. Novak is a lifelong New Yorker, and has owned and operated Novak Media for over 20 years.

“I needed a media advisor that both knew the District and has a proven track record of success,” said Congressional Candidate Eric Massa. “Paul Novak has both of these boxes checked off on his resume.”

I’m glad to see our man coming up with a savvy media strategy, however unfortunate I find the media situation in modern politics.  Last year, though his message was good, Eric Massa’s coverage on television wasn’t quite so hot.  Money, of course, probably played a large role.  But how you spend the money is at least as important as how much you have to spend, and getting a media guy who knows when to buy advertising and when not to has gotta help.

So I suspect we’ll all be seeing a lot more of Eric Massa this year than we did last year.  Not just in commercials, but I would think that any good media specialist would leverage the news media to their best advantage as well.  This should be interesting.

The Democrat and Chronicle has a new editorial beseeching Maggie Brooks to consider bipartisan solutions to the budget problem now that her plan has failed miserably:

Brooks’ sales-tax plan is dead, but budget needs remain. || Democrat & Chronicle: Editorials

(June 13, 2007) — Now that County Executive Maggie Brooks’ sales tax/deficit reduction plan has sunk to the bottom — it was an agonizingly slow descent — she and the Legislature, working with the city and the towns, can devise an alternative plan to cut costs and balance the budget. And debate over direction and policy should be a centerpiece of the upcoming campaign for county executive.

It may even be possible to find a solution that at least improves the situation a bit, but really, until we can get a handle on the mandates from the state and federal level under control, we’re just spinning out wheels. And if you want to know about mandates, you should ask a teacher. More on the Dark Side of the Flip. . .   » Continue Reading…

Hey, just a stupid observation:

I’m reading The Onion for the first time in a few years and I can’t help but notice how much it looks like City Newspaper’s new website.  I mean, like, almost exactly the same.  Slightly different colors, an additional navigation bar at the top, but that’s about it.

Weird.

Read the following passage and see if you can detect, as Josh Marshall did, what is missing:

Republicans block Gonzales ‘no confidence’ vote - CNN.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans blocked the Senate’s no-confidence vote on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Monday, rejecting a symbolic Democratic effort to prod him from office despite blistering criticism from lawmakers in both parties.

The 53-38 vote to move the resolution to full debate fell seven short of the 60 required. In bringing the matter up, Democrats dared Republicans to vote their true feelings about an attorney general who has alienated even the White House’s strongest defenders by bungling the firings of federal prosecutors and claiming not to recall the details.

Didn’t this used to get called a “Filibuster?”  And wasn’t it the Republicans who decried attempts to use it because they demanded an “up or down vote,” on the issue of the day?  I guess what we really needed was just to get rid of that awful word and call it something else.

Oh, no!  Of course the MSM isn’t carrying the water for the Republicans!  That’s just crazy talk.

Technorati Tags: Republicans, Filibuster, Sleaze, Double-Standard, Hypocrites

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On my way to work this morning, I passed by the park at Court and Clinton. There is a van covered completely in Honey Bunches of Oats advertisements parked on the Court side, with half a dozen twenty-somethings in attendance, all standing around watching one guy put together a folding table.

This could be huge, people!

Unfortunately, as a contract wage slave, I was unable to investigate further as my presence was expected elsewhere. But those of you in the Rochester area keen to get to the bottom of a story (RT, I’m looking in your direction!) can consider this a rock-solid tip: there’s something going down on Court St. and it looks like it could get crunchy.