wow. that's pretty damn impressive.

politicalpunk.com | artists or magicians?

Unsurprisingly, it tagged me as a Left Liberal, although i was only one tick away from the border with centrist.

I think that fits.

World's Smallest Political Quiz

[yeah, of course. i mean, you've hit the core of many critical issues of civil rights activity. The school, in their efforts to honor MLK, *should* have had an award for "Civil Rights Activist of the Year" for the student most committed to working toward social change or whatever. I agree that it's not really useful, when you're trying to talk about equality, about color blindness or whatnot, that you create race-based categories for honoring people. If your initial argument was "that award seems offensively narrow" i'd probably agree. The article doesn't indicate the criteria for the award, and says only that it's given to a "distinguished" individual selected by teachers. Ostensibly it could be given for excellence in sports as much as in academics or activism or anything else, though i would hope all elements would be taken into account. Seems like a fairly hollow award in a narrow field of competitors, but if i say that, it's offensive to the students that have recieved it in the past, and who are almost certainly deserving of honor, regardless of race.

fundamentally, the only way to move beyond these kinds of issues is to not base activities, awards or whatever on race at all... base them on cultural influences, historical movements or leaders, or common interest, but racializing things only perpetuates a racial view of the world.]-k

RE: You are not African-American, You are White

] As one who does not support Dean, I would like to say
] this to you: DON'T GIVE UP. You have done an incredible
] thing. You inspired an entire nation to stand up to
] George W. Bush. Your impact on this election will be felt
] for years to come. Every bit of energy you put into Dr.
] Dean's candidacy was -- and is -- worth it. He took on
] Bush when others wouldn't. He put corporate America on
] notice that he is coming after them. And he called the
] Democrats out for what they truly are: a bunch of
] spineless, wishy-washy appeasers who have sold out the
] working people of America. Everyone in every campaign
] owes you and your candidate a huge debt of thanks.

[ i feel i have to say, i don't always like michael moore... he's got some inconsistencies i find hard to overlook, but this is a nice defense of Dean. If i'd heard him say last week that Dean was too passionate to win the election, i'd have scoffed, but it seems like that's the truth. people want a president who says the things they want to hear, but not too loudly. personally, i think this is the entire problem with the democratic party. too much meek complicity and apologising. *i* think outrage is the only thing that will motivate people to get off their ass and vote. however, people don't want outrage... they want to sit comforatably and believe it's all gonna be alright and not have to get worked up about anything. for that reason alone, Dean may not be electable. it's too bad. i may have to change my signature to "Unnamed Viable Opposition Candidate in 2004". alas, i don't have a lot of faith that moore's message will be taken to heart. it's gonna be tough for the 600,000 people who invested time, money and emotion in support of this candidate to see him go down and retain any hope for the process at all. Four years from now, i may look back and feel pride in having a small part in a campaign that energized people for a short time, but i'm gonna be gunshy about going out on a limb again. i'd prefer to look back on a presidency which restored some real pride to the democrats across the nation. at this point, the media's got me believing i've wasted my time (or, as the case may be, money), in the long run, no matter what michael moore says. i hope, such as i still am able, that my beliefs are shattered. lets see how the debate goes. ]-k

Michael Moore.com : Mike's Message

] Dean has not expressed any regrets. "There were 3,500
] screaming kids in that room who'd worked their hearts out
] for me in Iowa, all of them waving an American flag," he
] said. "I thought I owed it to them to buck up their
] spirits and I was pleased that I did."
]
] Goldman said Dean needed to stop explaining himself and
] start tuning in to what America was saying.
]
] "What he needs to do is to start laughing at himself
] instead of defending himself. Americans don't like
] candidates filled with rage," he said.

and that about sums it up. i agree with the satement about how to rebound from this. Don't get overly defensive about it, and maybe even express contrition (not that *I* think it's necessary, but everyone else on the earth seems to think so). Something that indicates he may have been over the top monday night, but that the passion of his campaign shouldn't be used against him. Passion is a good thing, most of the time.

Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage

] SCO earlier this month sent a letter to the 535 members
] of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate from
] company President and CEO Darl McBride, raising concerns
] about open-source software and its General Public License
] (GPL), the company confirmed on Wednesday.

Yikes!

[yeah, SCO seems to be totally grasping at straws now. Tomorrow (today maybe?) is the day of reckoning when the court determines if SCO actually complied with the discovery motions as ordered. It seems likely that they have not done so, and that they're due for a serious smackdown. or at least, we'd like to hope that's the case. -k]

SCO Goes to Washington in Linux Battle

]] A small group of Westside High School students plastered
]] the school Monday with posters advocating that a white
]] student from South Africa receive the "Distinguished
]] African American Student Award" next year.
]
]WTF is this? It seems that Blacks professing they are "African ]American" is prefectly ok, but for a white guy to profess his ]nationality, it is "inappropriate and insensitive." What kind of ]bullshit double standard is that? If anything he is more ]African-American they any of these people: He was born in African, ]he lives in America. How many of these other students running for ]African-American Student of the year can say that?

more than anything, this exposes the problem with the term "african american". In a literal, semantic sense, this kid was probably the only truly african person in the school, but lets be honest, that's not what they meant. the award was designed to recognise a black student in honor of MLK's efforts for civil rights. it has nothing to do with africa, and this kid, or his family, should've recognized that. This boys campain may have been innocent, but it wasn't very smart. Somehow a stigma got attached to the term "black", which i understand, and am sensitive to, but "african-american" has it's own set of problems, as this case proves.

Anyway, i'm not sure suspensions were necessary, but I certainly don't think would make sense for this kid to win an honor that was really not designed for him, and only made sense because someone didn't completely think out the consequences of a particular P.C. term. People love to smugly exploit semantic inconsistencies and loopholes like this, but it's not gonna work very often. At best, it'll spur debate about how to refine the definitions we use.

You are not African-American, You are White

] Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary
] Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a
] year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically
] passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The
] Globe.
]
] From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003,
] members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer
] glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic
] communications without a password. Trolling through
] hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points
] and accounts of private meetings discussing which
] judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what
] tactics.

This is another fucking outrage that the media will probably happily bury under 36 more hours of that Dean clip. My faith in journalism is virtually non-existent as it is, and every story they miss because they're busy giving people the sensational train-wreck reality tv shite that the public wants, reather than the news and information that people NEED, etches away a little bit more.

[incidentally, General Dynamics sounds familiar... is that the same company memestreams user Jessica works for? -k]

Boston.com / News / Nation / Infiltration of files seen as extensive

between Kos' post and the comments, this is a pretty good summary of the primary situation as it stands.

Of course the media is all over Kerry's piece right now, and continues to harangue Dean for rallying his supporters. God forbid we should want a politician with some spirit.

Daily Kos || Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation.

] DRE (direct recording electronic) voting systems have
] been widely criticized elsewhere for various deficiencies
] and security vulnerabilities: that their software is
] totally closed and proprietary; that the software
] undergoes insufficient scrutiny during qualification and
] certification; that they are especially vulnerable to
] various forms of insider (programmer) attacks; and that
] DREs have no voter-verified audit trails (paper or
] otherwise) that could largely circumvent these problems
] and improve voter confidence. All of these criticisms,
] which we endorse, apply directly to SERVE as well.

there are a bunch more issues brought up, but this one is enough for me.

not good.

SERVE Analysis