Should I put this under Humor?

Cheney blames Democrats for High Gas Prices

Got a kick out of this, thought I'd share.

Blonde gets Locked in her Car

I like the part where he is prohibited from doing anything ***whatsoever*** politically to change the government.

Raise the Fist webmaster released from Prison - on probation.

Oh, but we are so FREE in America.

Dolemite wrote:

] Why was there a Homeland Security officer doing the work for
] US Customs, or is this report blurring the lines between those
] agencies? Not having crossed a US Border on foot or by car,
] I'm not aware of the logistics involved, but in air and ship
] terminals, Customs is in a completely different area than
] Homeland Security. If the Department of Homeland Security is
] trying to take on the roles of all the other agencies, it just
] makes me even more afraid of our loss of rights. Next thing
] you know they'll be beating someone up for crossing the border
] with $1 bootleg DVDs from China.
]
] Dolemite

Customs was rolled into the Department of Homeland Security, so it wouldn't surprise me if people are slightly confused about their roles.

And now one of the recommendations of the 9/11 commission is to appoint someone over the FBI and CIA. The whole FBI looks inside, CIA looks outside thing (not that I believe that facade for a second) they just want to do that away too.

How long before each individual unit of intelligence and enforcement gets rolled into DHS? One large monolithic "piece of code" if you will. Yeah, that will run like a well oiled machine, fershure.

RE: U.S. officer arrested for beating a Chinese

I LOVED Tereasa's speech. I loved her red power suit. OMG I so want a first lady that would help bring some spunk back into the white house.

HEr display of languages I did not take as a court of immigrants, but as a peacock display of how very intelligent she was. She speaks **********5*********** fluently. She'll be a very good diplomatic asset and I imagine that she never has to limit herself to US NEWS.

I'm not a Kerry fan - I am a Teresa Heinz fan. She's smart and confident - with a sexiness that comes from being at home in her own skin at any age.

Its a good reflection on Kerry that he loves and has picked a smart confident woman as his partner. That tells me that he is not on some cowboy ego keep the woman down trip.

I got her message- she wants to see people all over the world lifted up and she wants to see Americans leading in doing that.

That is a very good thing for the US to do in order to gain world respect and cooperation. I'd rather see the Peace Corps helping 3rd world countries expand their own job market and economies than our corporations over there training all their folks to pretend to be Americans, making them take new work day Amercian names, just to take US jobs. That is eventually going to cause a lot of US resentment.

How would you like it if the company you worked for told you that in order to work for them you had to pretend to be someone else, effectively lying every day of your life? I'd probably go postal in a year or two.

Night two of the DNC!

Very insightful article. I enjoyed this one and learned alot.

] Unless we have a climate that will allow more independent
] media companies to survive, a dangerously high percentage
] of what we see--and what we don't see--will be shaped by
] the profit motives and political interests of large,
] publicly traded conglomerates. The economy will suffer,
] and so will the quality of our public life. Let me be
] clear: As a business proposition, consolidation makes
] sense. The moguls behind the mergers are acting in their
] corporate interests and playing by the rules. We just
] shouldn't have those rules. They make sense for a
] corporation. But for a society, it's like over-fishing
] the oceans. When the independent businesses are gone,
] where will the new ideas come from? We have to do more
] than keep media giants from growing larger; they're
] already too big. We need a new set of rules that will
] break these huge companies to pieces.

Read this. All of this. Every last word. Ted Turner is discussing how bloated companies are using lobbying the FCC and using unfair/crazy laws to enforce a business model that does not work, and would not work in a truly Free Market Economy.

Jason, the core of the arguement that Ted makes is the same argument that I was making to you at the Vortex that day regarding the MPAA/RIAA and the DMCA.

'My Beef With Big Media' by Ted Turner

Common Cause, MoveOn.org, and a bunch of other organizations have launched a campaign to take on Fox for pretending partisan news is "fair and balanced." They've posted a really horrifying but funny video clip highlighting Bill O'Reilly's hypocrisy as well as a complaint to the FTC at:

http://www.moveon.org/fox/

Check it out and send them some email if you like. The plan is to deluge them.

The challenges to Fox's partisanship are mounting. It's crucial that we voice our disgust with Fox's deceptive advertising now.

I used the following in my message body - I follow web law very closely and thus trademark and copyright laws. I know this passage in the Lanham act that says that generic trademarks are not legal - This is what has kicked some granted trademarks in the bootie when challenged:

It is a fundamental principle marking an outer boundary of the trademark monopoly that, although trademark rights may be acquired in a word or image with descriptive qualities, the acquisition of such rights will not prevent others from using the word or image in good faith in its descriptive sense, and not as a trademark. See Abercrombie & Fitch Co. v. Hunting World, Inc., 537 F.2d 4, 12-13 (2d Cir. 1976); Sunmark, Inc. v. Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc., 64 F.3d 1055, 1058 (7th Cir. 1995); United States Shoe Corp. v. Brown Group, Inc., 740 F. Supp. 196, 198-99 (S.D.N.Y. 1990); Holzwarth v. Hulse, 14 N.Y.S.2d 181, 181 (Sup. Ct. 1939); Johnson & Johnson v. Seabury & Johnson, 67 A. 36, 38 (N.J. 1907); Restatement (Third) of Unfair Competition § 28 (1995); 3A Louis Altman, Callmann on Unfair Competition, Trademarks and Monopolies § 21.24 (4th ed. 1983); Margreth Barrett, Intellectual Property 760-61 (1995). The principle is of great importance because it protects the right of society at large to use words or images in their primary descriptive sense, as against the claims of a trademark owner to exclusivity. See U.S. Shoe, 740 F. Supp. at 198-199. This common-law principle is codified in the Lanham Act, which provides that fair use is established where "the use of the name, term, or device charged to be an infringement is a use, otherwise than as a mark, . . . which is descriptive of and used fairly and in good faith only to describe the goods or services of . . . [a] party, or their geographic origin." 15 U.S.C. § 1115(b)(4).

Fair and balanced was used as a descriptive term long before FOX news decided to take it away from the world.

Moveon.org launches attack against Fox/ Fox trademarking 'fair and balanced'

If there is a single flaw that I see in the FBI, CIA or indeed most business today - they hire way too many people based on paper degrees- and people are way too often educated beyond their level of competency.
An intelligence agency full of white educated football playing jocks. Just what this country needs when dealing with middle eastern terrorists, cyber criminals and drug dealers. How about an occasional really smart self educated fat cheeto munching keyboard cowboy OCD genius? Now that might be an asset.
By now, almost everyone knows that the CIA is a mess. Almost everyone knows that what it needs is a top-to-bottom overhaul.

Almost everyone is wrong.

Without question, the intelligence community needs fixing. Unfortunately, the debate over reforming the CIA seems to be going off track. Nothing makes Washington's policy wonks more comfortable than rearranging an organization chart.

Reforming the Culture at CIA

He studied at the Emanuel School in Wandsworth and later read physics at the Queen's College, Oxford, where he was banned from using the university's computer after being caught hacking.

Tim Berners Lee banned from university after being caught hacking - Now Knighted

I love all the jibjab animations.

This one is too funny.

JIBJAB does 'This land is our land' Political Humor at its best