If there’s anything you should know about me, it’s that I’m lazy. Dead lazy. I’ll start things and let them hang in the wind until they aren’t relavent anymore. I have 5 saved drafts of articles that I started in April and May that are so out of date that, even if I still felt strongly enough about the topic to actually write them, would be of absolutely zero interest to anyone (as if anyone was interested in anything I had to say to begin with). So, this post is a dump of all the links from those various dead articles, arranged topicaly. (Plus a few other misc links I had lying around).
I have returned from the Decemberists concert in Indianapolis, and am working diligently to restore as much of The Small Island Nation website as I can. Those damn dirty spambots wrote over the wiki version so many times they maxed-out the memory alloted to P.M. Wiki and killed it. This means I am unable to recover anything from the wreckage, so I nuked it. The only remaining vestiges of S.I.N. are on Bluwiki, and this represents perhaps 50% of the material I lost. To save that material from destruction, I’m creating a group of static pages for it. This will serve as a stop-gap until I can figure out how I want to proceed.
[EDIT 6:40pm - I found the Evolver theme that I thought was so neat in an HTML version courtasy of OSWD via GLIntercept.]
So, I decided to check up on my neglected Small Island Nation wiki this morning, only to find that some spambot had deleted the contents of the main page and replaced it with links to porn. And, when I go to revert the damage, the database has written over the “real” page. Now, I need to re-do the entire wiki from the originals I have stored here. And I somehow need to disable editing for the wiki…
[EDIT 10:44 - PM Wiki is unable to let me edit it at all. So, I nuked it. I haven't the foggiest what I'm going to replace it with, but it's done for now. Spammers usually clutter things up, but in this case, they went truely over the line when the DESTROYED CONTENT. Fuckers.]
As you may have been following on the news, now that congress is in recess, and that congressmen are holding “town hall” meetings, trying to figure out their constituent’s wishes vis-a-vis healthcare reform. This could be a good opportunity for an honest back-and-forth between the people and their representatives; for example, congresspeople could make a mass push to put this “elderly euthanasia” nonsense to rest, or find out what the man-on-the-street thinks. Instead, certain groups are acting in bad faith and trying to turn these town-hall gatherings into shouting matches, shutting down actual discourse between the people and their government for the sole purpose of keeping the public in the dark and turning functioning democracy into cheap theater. This is an enormous damn shame and a kick in the pants to the democratic process. Argument in good faith assures that the people will be able to make an informed decision and the best result will result. Argument in bad faith shows that you do not believe your position to be strong enough to survive on its merits, and must resort to tricks and ploys to confuse the masses. Killing rational debate kills democracy.
Right-Wing Harassment Strategy Against Dems Detailed In Memo: ‘Yell,’ ‘Stand Up And Shout Out,’ ‘Rattle Him’
Town Hall Mob
‘Grassroots Protester’ Actually GOP Official
Todd Akin Jokes About Activists Lynching His Democratic Colleagues
Democrats Gird for Town-Hall Protests: Contains a mention of a democratic lawmaker being “physically assaulted.”
[EDIT 12-August-2009: Added the below]:
Florida Town Hall Turns into Violent Scuffle
The Best Health-care Town Hall Confrontation So Far
There’s something for everyone out there on the internet. You could even, if you knew where to look, find paintings of the President of the United States buck-ass naked on a unicorn. From Dan Lacey, the Painter of Pancakes comes a gallery of paintings of Barack Obama riding this magical mythical beast. His goal: “Bridging Political Divides Through The Appreciation Of Paintings of People With Pancakes On Their Heads and Barack Obama Nude On A Unicorn.” His results: damn creepy.
[Via Wild Ammo]
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