Heavy Metal in Baghdad

Found a trailer of a new documentary about heavy metal music in Baghdad.

On the film's site, the film is described as thus:

Heavy Metal in Baghdad is a feature film documentary that follows the Iraqi heavy metal band Acrassicauda from the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 to the present day. Playing heavy metal in a Muslim country has always been a difficult (if not impossible) proposition but after Saddam’s regime was toppled, there was a brief moment for the band in which real freedom seemed possible. That hope was quickly dashed as their country fell into a bloody insurgency. From 2003-2006, Iraq disintegrated around them while Acrassicauda struggled to stay together and stay alive, always refusing to let their heavy metal dreams die. Their story echoes the unspoken hopes of an entire generation of young Iraqis.

Guess what. Now I'm thinking about voting Republican

Watch the video and you'll see why.

New Evidence: Palin Had Direct Role In Charging Rape Victims For Exams

Talking about adding insult to injury. In Palin's world, if you're raped, you have to pay to get your rapist convicted. And if he impregnated you, you would have to have his child.

You'd be triple-screwed!

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com Under Sarah Palin's administration, Wasilla cut funds that had previously paid for the medical exams and began charging victims or their health insurers the $500 to $1200 fees. Although Palin spokeswoman Maria Comella wrote USA Today earlier this week that the GOP vice presidential nominee "does not believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test...To suggest otherwise is a deliberate misrepresentation of her commitment to supporting victims and bringing violent criminals to justice," Palin, as mayor, fired police chief Irl Stambaugh and replaced him with Charlie Fannon, who with Palin's knowledge, slashed the budget for the exams and began charging the city's victims of sexual assault. The city budget documents demonstrate Palin read and signed off on the new budget. A year later, alarmed Alaska lawmakers passed legislation outlawing the practice.

Dave Winer nails McCain and Palin and admonishes the press

Man, Dave Winer posted a hell of an article in response to Gov. Palin's interview, as well as McCain's campaign in general. He also includes summaries and links to reponses by other commentators and columnists. And the righteous fury is delicious.

Here is one of my favorite parts:

The news should not report a controversy, they should report that McCain is telling a desipicable lie. Until that lie is acknowledged, retracted and apologized for, both to Obama and to the electorate, McCain should not receive any of the services of the press. The first question in any interview should be "Why are you lying and when will you admit that you are and stop." If he continues to lie, that's the end of the interview. The reporter wraps it up and leaves. You can't continue to interview someone who you know is lying. Reporters do it all the time, but this must stop now.

And, as I told him in my comments to his article, his words made me feel proud to be an American...and a Democrat.

Dave Winer: If the press will just do their job, all will be OK

Palin Links Iraq to Sept. 11 In Talk to Troops in Alaska

Gov. Palin has said "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq." And by her speech to a brigade of Alaskan soldiers, it's pretty obvious.

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska, Sept. 11 -- Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans." The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself.

Sarah Palin just makes up stuff, instead of admitting she doesn't know

It's one thing when you don't know the answer. It's another when you won't admit you don't. And it's yet another thing when you just make up answers. (We all know somebody like that, right? Would you want them to have their finger on the button?)

After Gov. Palin was asked whether she had met any heads of state, she ays many VPs never met a head of state before they took office. Not true. Here's a small list of VPs that did: Cheney, Gore, Quayle, H.W. Bush, Mondale.

Thinks the Bush Doctrine equals fighting Islamic extremists. Wrong again. The Bush Doctrine is the belief that America is just in pre-emptively attacking a sovereign nation if we believe they are a threat to us.

Remember, Governer. Not choosing an answer on the SAT gives you a zero on the answer. Answering incorrectly, gives you a minus 1/4. (Thanks to Andy for the correction)

I was mentioned on CSPAN during the Republican convention

Last week, I found a article on Huffington Post about Gov. Palin speaking at her church. I posted a link to the article on Twitter. Blogger ThePete saw it in my Twitter stream and posted it on his blog. Then, Leslie Bradshaw, who was working with CSPAN, posted my and ThePete's posts on the CSPAN Campaign 2008 site, AND mentioned both of us on air during the RNC convention. (The mention is at 0:29)

Amazing world, huh?



(If you'd like to see the entire video, including footage of Gov. Palin speaking at her church, go here.)

Giving Drop.io a try

Started to use Drop.io today. Testing the ability to email a video to a drop and embedding that video in this blog. So I took a (bad) cellphone video of my workplace and emailed it. Works pretty well.

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

Here are some other cool things about the service:

- Email Interactivity
- Mobile version
- send voicemail messages
- send stuff via MMS
- fax stuff
- subscribe to an RSS feed
- get update messages via Twitter
- subscribe as a podcast
- download all the contents as a single zip
- embed pieces of content into other sites

One blogger thinks Obama is doing exactly what he should be doing

I swear, my mood about the election has been pogo-ing up and down the past few days. So I was happy to read this article by blogger Zentralis.

clipped from tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com 1) He waited until polls gave McBush a lead. 2) He let the McCain people lie like crazy without saying too much. 3) He held off on the negative stuff until McBush’s money limit kicked in. 4) He’s directly attacking the hypocritical new "McBush is change" strategy RIGHT AFTER the Republican convention where McBush had very little to say about change. Obama’s "they’ll do anything to get elected" is much more effective framed this way and as a bonus he has weakened McBush’s stupid "lose a war to win an election" goofball argument. 5) He now says, "What they are going to try to do is what they always do, which is attack, go on the negative, distort, mislead, assert," Obama said, as members of his invitation-only audience of 350 began yelling "Lie! Lie!" 6) He now says, "The American people aren't stupid" a lot more often than he did before.

Vincent Bugliosi speaks about his book "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder"

I found this video on the blog Hot Potato Mash

On Wednesday, famed Charles Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi spoke to a packed and enthusiastic crowd of more than 350 Angelinos about his new book, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.” While Bugliosi’s talk will eventually appear on C-SPAN, you can view it first in its entirety below…

Graham Hill recommends making a microloan to combat bad media days

I just discovered this article via a twitter by @huffingpost.

The author recommends making a microloan to a developing-world entrepreneur in order to combate news-induced blues:

Fortunately, though when politics and the media fail us, one of the few antidotes for the gray clouds amassing over our happy green dream world is thoughtful action.

But how in the world does one make a loan to someone who may be on the other side of the world? Visit Kiva.org, Opportunity International, or ACCION.

America's dislike for educational elitism may explain the current election

clipped from chronicle.com "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public," H.L. Mencken The most influential book in that genre is surely Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963), in which he argues that the American dislike for educational elitism derives from a number of interlocking cultural legacies, including religious fundamentalism, populism, the privileging of "common sense" over esoteric knowledge, the pragmatic values of business and science, and the cult of the self-made man. If the situation was bad in Hofstadter's time, it's grown steadily worse over the past 40 years. The anti-intellectual legacy he described has often been used by the political right — since at least the McCarthy era — to label any complication of the usual pieties of patriotism, religion, and capitalism as subversive, dangerous, and un-American. And, one might add, the left has its own mirror-image dogmas.

Michael Moore's "Slacker Uprising" will be free for download

The movie looks awesome. Like crack for liberals. Go to the site and leave your email to eventually download it for free.

"Jesus was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate was a Governor."

I don't know who said it, but I believe the comment that I used as the headline to this post summed up the ridiculousness of the GOP slamming community organizers. By the way, you can get merchandise of this quote here.

Also, what surprised me is that they were putting down people that were putting down people that are fixing society's ills, often WITHOUT using the taxpayers' money.

Here's a collection of some other responses to the GOP's slamming of community organizers.

Newsweek's senior Washington Correspondent, Howard Fineman

John Stewart

Roland Martin

Keeping Up the Fight

On a pro-Obama blog, a McCain supporter asked if the Obama supporters were frightened by Gov. Palin's speech. I responded honestly thus...

I’m a major Obama supporter, and I will be 100% honest and say that I am worried. But not that “my candidate” will lose. But that my country will lose. I’ve always liked McCain…when he was moderate. And if he was still the same person he was when he was moderate, I wouldn’t be that worried if he won. But now he’s gotten so right-wing, that I fear many things, including sinking even more money and lives into pointless wars. And I also fear our economy is just going to get worse, unemployment is going to keep rising, and much of the world will flooded over in 20 years.

Much of that speech last night seemed very hateful. And the speakers and the audience looked so afraid. And fear doesn’t make a very good foundation for society. It has lead to some horrible things in the past. And, our founding father’s were aware of the danger. James Madison said…

“If Tyranny and Opression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”

I had discoverd this blog, and others, after a day of not feeling too hopeful. It encouraged me to see Obama supporters continuing to fight the fight. So it convinced me to at least start to express my views on why I think it's so important that Obama be our next president. So, I plan to do as such on my personal blog, and this one.

So, special thanks to bloggers like Oliver Willis for convincing me to keep up the fight.

Palin believes that the Iraq invasion is "a task that is from God."

The following is taken from an article by The Huffington Post

Speaking before the Pentecostal church, Palin painted the current war in Iraq as a messianic affair in which the United States could act out the will of the Lord.

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God," she exhorted the congregants. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

Okay. Now I'm scared.