Tea Baggers Go Home

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President Barack Obama did not cause the economic problems we face today, but he was elected by a majority of smart people in this country who believe him when he says he wants to work every day to try and solve the problems, rather than blaming them on the tired, the poor and the Latinos who aspire to come to America and work hard.

For that you want to shoot him, and pray to your god that he die today?

If that is your prayer, you have no god. Either he doesn’t exist, or you have no clue what a god should be like. You can’t even heed the words of George W. Bush’s favorite philosopher, who spent his short life on earth serving food to the poor and healing the sick. The American empire these days is often compared to the Roman Empire. You remember what the Romans did to Jesus, surely, with the tacit approval of the Scribes and the Pharisees.

Unless no one has ever told you before, let me tell you to your face today. You are not being “Christ-like” when you oppose a national health care plan in this country. You need to crawl back into that dungeon you call a den in your suburban house, go back to watching Glenn Beck on Fox News and eating your greasy meat, and shut the hell up. You do your country and your religion more harm than good by showing your ignorance in a public park.

On the other hand, just keep on protesting. The more you do, the more normal Americans will wake up and realize they have no stomach for the right wing of the Republican Party. It was independent exurbanites — and college kids — who put Obama over the top in 2008, not hippies or queers in San Francisco. Get over it.

Once this health care bill passes and everybody moves beyond the emotion of the fight and sees that the world did not end as we know it, things may actually improve in this country and we may actually inch back toward the promise of freedom that exists on that Statue of Liberty.

Maybe the American Dream is just a fantasy and always has been, like some of my artist and writer friends think. Maybe there is no such thing and never was, but I for one will not lay down and stop believing it’s possible. I can’t. We can’t. That is the fight. That is the cause.

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Art on Pause is Born

http://artonpause.com/

I'm still in the process of tweaking the code, and I'll probably end up using a custom solution in the end, but I just wanted to get something online ASAP.

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Dyin' in this country-ass fucked up town...

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Socialvibe WTF?!

From their own website:
"SocialVibe received $4.2 million in Series A funding led by Redpoint Ventures in December 2007. Redpoint Ventures has over $2 billion under management, 34 IPO's and 54 upside acquisitions. SocialVibe allocates a sizable majority of our monthly income to charitable donations. Points earned by members determine the amount of our monthly charity funds that will be given to each charity partner. We currently donate to charities on a quarterly basis. As of December 2008, we have donated over $200,000 to our partner charities."

That's quite a "sizable majority". Ha! Hardly "charitable". Somebody is getting rich from this shit.

So, what is SocialVibe? More from their site:
"SocialVibe is a social media tool that allows people to utilize their online influence to make a real difference. Members choose a brand to endorse, which earns them opportunities to get brand perks and points within SocialVibe. The points that members earn are then turned into funds for the charitable cause of their choice."

Mmmm... Yesssss... Lap it up, sheep, lap it up....

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Haven't updated in a while...

I'm aware... I've just kinda let this thing sit on the back-burner lately. I'm going to write a bookmarklet script that shares links on this site, so that'll at least get new content flowing, if nothing more than interesting links that I stumble across and anything I have to say about them.

I also got one of my lenses back, so I'll be shooting more interesting photos in the coming weeks. It's a nice feeling finding out that you didn't throw $300 down the drain by getting drunk and leaving a lens at a friend's place. :D Glad to have it back, it's been missing for months.

Anyway... Been doing a bit of coding on Linews... Working on a remote publishing system so I can give clients monthly access or something and not worry about code theft or doing updates on many sites. Just makes sense... Keep the code in one place, and just push out the content to the clients. We actually did this for a CMS at one of my previous jobs, so I've got a general idea of what needs to be done, etc.

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FALLOUT: Coming Home from the War in Iraq

"FALLOUT: Coming Home from the War in Iraq" is not just another documentary about the war in Iraq. These firsthand witnesses explain how their experiences have affected them and altered their views on the war, the media, the public, and the leaders who put their lives on the line. FALLOUT is the premiere film of Ava Lowrey, an 18 year old film/video activist from rural Alabama. Her short videos on the war in Iraq have received international attention from news outlets including CNN, MTV, The New York Times, Le Monde(France), and Rolling Stone Magazine. Together with her brother Gordon, Ava set out with a single camcorder and drove across the South East to interview three veterans. Honest and straightforward, this unbiased documentary gives Staff Sergeant James C. Bailey, Corporal Michael Prysner, and Staff Sergeant Charlie Carlson a platform to open up with the public and share stories and opinions that might otherwise go unheard.


Staff Sergeant James C. Bailey, Corporal Michael Prysner, and Staff Sergeant Charlie Carlson are three very different people, but each shares a common experience - the war in Iraq. Together these three veterans recount their experiences in the war and share the challenges they faced both in Iraq and returning home to a nation that is unaware of the harsh reality on the ground in Iraq.



Staff Sergeant James C. Bailey, a 20 year veteran of the Tennessee Army National Guard, is a loving husband and proud father of two. Bailey joined the military for the same reasons many young men do- he wanted to serve his country and find work outside of a factory in his small hometown. He has been to Iraq three times during his military career- once during the Gulf War and twice during the current war in Iraq. Staff Sergeant Bailey has recently retired from the military after returning from his third tour in Iraq. Today, like many of his fellow Veterans, he is unemployed, living day to day and dreading the walk to the mailbox to gather the bill collector's notices. As a retired member of the National Guard he cannot draw retirement pay until he is 62 years old. As Bailey says, "The electric company doesn't go along with the idea of paying your bill twenty years from now and my children can't eat on the promise of money that will come in well after they are grown. It's funny how everyone worries about Wall Street, the banks and the auto industry but the American Veteran can't afford to live in the country that he or she sacrificed so much to preserve."



Corporal Michael Prysner was 17 when he joined the military because of patriotism. He shipped out for basic training on his 18th birthday and was excited to serve his country and travel the world. Like many young men Prysner had a romantic view of the military prior to joining and imagine a life of excitement in new places. In 2003 he was deployed to Iraq where he remained for 12 months. Prior to deploying Prysner says he didn't form any opinions about the war in Iraq and Saddam's weapon capabilities. As a military member who had spent months training for battle he was excited for the opportunity to serve his country, but during his time in Iraq his views about the war and the military began to change. Since returning home Prysner has become an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, an organizations founded by Iraq war veterans in July 2004 to give a voice to the large number of active duty service people and veterans who are against this war, but are under various pressures to remain silent. In 2008 Prysner participated in Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan, an event at which U.S. veterans provided accounts of their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.



Staff Sergeant Charlie Carlson grew up in a military family and followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather by joining the military. From 2003-2004 he served in Iraq as a squad leader in a combat military police company and lived in an old cigarette factory called Camp Marlboro in the area of Baghdad called Sadir City. Carlson also previously fought in the Gulf War and had doubts about the Bush administration's claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. While serving in the current Iraq war he wrote letters and emails about his day to day experiences on the ground. These letters were published in the the Seminole Herald in Sanford, Florida as "The Iraqi Diaries" and gave readers up-close documentation of the war as seen by a soldier. These letters later caused Staff Sergeant Carlson to be investigated and eventually accused of speaking out against former President Bush. After 14 years of service he was demoted to Sergeant, had his pay suspended for six months, and was given 45 days of extra duty. Carlson is no longer in the military.

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