Rayne Today

FireDogLake's siun pointed this evening to danah boyd’s paper on the potential social schism between Facebook and MySpace. danah is one sharp cookie. I'd caught the paper earlier in the week via SmartMobs . However I disagree with her premise that there is a socio-economic bifurcation between the two technologies. Facebook was originally launched by students at Harvard to allow students to keep in touch with one another as well as do self-promotion. It caught on and has rapidly caught up with and in many cases outpaced other “YASNS” (Yet Another Social Network Software) programs. Because it was designed as something more like a hybrid communication tool-cum-yearbook, it doesn’t serve the same purposes that a blog fulfills, although it’s possible to syndicate (cross-publish) one’s blog content to their own Facebook page. MySpace, on the other hand, was designed as a YASNS with more blog-like capability including customization of HTML, while serving as a social communicat...

The fourth part in a series by Washington Post's Barton Gellman and Jo Becker discusses Dick Cheney's impact on the environment through his direct intervention in agency decision making. In particular, Cheney's push for increased irrigation access for farmers in Oregon's Klamath River Basin led to a major fish kill over the short term and a long term impact on fish stocks But why did Cheney even bother with an issue like irrigation when there were more pressing matters at hand? Certainly the loss of Oregon by Bush/Cheney in 2000 by a very narrow margin, as cited in the article, was a likely motivator. Farmers and ranchers are more likely to be conservative voters, and ensuring their success through access to irrigation waters would improve the chances of taking Oregon in a subsequent bid for re-election. Were there other factors in play, though? Charles Swindells, a Bush Pioneer and frequent donor to the Republican Party and candidates , hails from Portland Oregon; ...

He's able to claim executive privilege over Vice Presidential documents as if he were a member of the Executive Branch. He's able to claim that he is immune to oversight by the Legislature as part of the Legislative Branch. He's both at the same time! I say we open the box and find out exactly what he is, just like Schroedinger's proverbial cat . Granted, the outcome is likely messy, but we'd have a solid answer besides this lame and twisted thought experiment we know as the Cheney Vice Presidency.

Scarecrow's covered the Energy Bill twice this week at Firedoglake; he notes the Senate version passed making a lot of people unhappy. Let's face it: this is splitting the baby. NOBODY is going to be happy, and the people of the state of Michigan who've borne the brunt of the automotive industry woes are not going to be better off no matter how this bill was written or passed. I'm going to explain how we got to this point, and I'm going to say some things that will truly piss off some people. But until they get past the pissed off part and start looking hard at the past and present, there will be no future for the automotive industry in America. In the past, the automotive industry was like a fall back safety school. If you went to one of several colleges in the United States and got 3.0 or better average grades, you were reasonably assured a job in the auto industry if you had a degree in mechanical, plant or industrial engineering. This is NOT how you c...

Oh. My. God. I just read the anonymous complaints from the USDOJ Civil Rights Division that TPMMuckraker posted . I want to barf. I want to tell Bradley Schlozman to f*ck off to his face, tell him that he is evil incarnate. Any man who willfully persecutes expectant and new mothers for their gender and their impending parenthood is just that. EVIL. "Good Americans". Yes, just like "Good Germans," or "Good Nazis". That's what Schlozman wanted to put in the slots of every position of the Civil Rights Division at the USDOJ, white male Christians. Might as well have said "Aryan." Just last night I had an argument with a Democrat who told me there's no need to worry about discrimination against women and gays, that it wasn't an issue. What a naive fool. Schlozman makes it all too clear that gender, race, politics and pregnancy are all things for which one will still be discriminated against by people like Schlozman, by people th...

I wish I could pull an all-nighter, to comb through all 46 pages of emails and attachments dumped by the Department of Justice . There are so many interesting tidbits surfacing with just a cursory pass. 1. Ken Lee of EOP refers to Lam as “one of the USAs under the replacement plan” in an email to Sampson sent the week after the Pearl Harbor dismissals; Lee further asks “if there were any issues/problems when se was (presumably) notified of this plan last week?” Where’s the plan , Sampson?? It wasn’t just a chicken scratched list on a discarded piece of paper floating in your left hand drawer; it was a PLAN , as in conspiracy. 2. I’m also fond of the chick-to-chick email that Goodling sent to Paulose, pointing out that Tim Griffin is getting hassled about his interim appointment even though he is an experienced prosecutor with an Oxford education. Hah. Even Goodling must know her RegentU education is a piece of crap if she groks the imprimatur Oxford can convey. I'll bet em...

I was just chatting at FireDogLake about hillbillies and crackers when I had a flashback from a cross-country trip I took with my folks the summer I was sixteen. Imagine being cooped up in a VW microbus from Michigan to California with three siblings, my folks and my grandfather. We stopped somewhere in northern Texas for lunch at a diner decked out with knotty pine paneling and the requisite red-naugahyde-chrome chairs and de rigeur red-and-white gingham curtains. The middle-aged gum-cracking waitress took my then-13-year-old sister's order, then asked her in the fastest possible Texas twang, "Whutchewannawetyercudwit?" Sis's eyebrows rose up into her hairline as she glanced around and then looked at me for an interpretation. I said, "She asked you what you want to drink." "Milk, please," choked out Sis. I've never heard that phrase since, nearly thirty years later.

Emptywheel read and listed the entire inventory of letters sent to Judge Reggie Walton , some pleading for leniency and some asking for stiff punitive action. Those asking for leniency often mentioned what a great father Libby is. As a parent I call bullhockey. No, in fact, my kids have heard me use the term bullshit , and they understand the meaning of the word. So there. Bullshit. As parents we spend a lot of time and energy teaching morals and ethics to our children. Telling the truth is one of those ethics about which we invest a lot of time, including the parable about George Washington and the cherry tree when they are in early grade school, to more complex lessons like Watergate and deception when they are in high school. The truth underpins our democracy; we cannot make informed decisions as individuals and people without it. No good and decent father lies to the FBI and makes false statements in regards to the outing of a CIA operative under deepest cover. It goes aga...

As I commented at FireDogLake about Monica Goodling in light of the DOJ's document dump last night: Oh. Man. I hope the testosterone-enriched members of the community didn’t buy that “stupid little good girl” act that Goodling sent up. This bit in particular is going to get her spanked: “We had given her two options - one formal w/order number, one with informal - no number — they decided to go with informal unnumbered. She said the cover memo needs to go thru OLC - not DAG or OASG.” [source: email from Mari Santangelo to Robert Marshall, dd. 22-FEB-06 4:44p] She deliberately avoided the DAG’s and OASG’s office; in the background, on the date of this particular email, the PatActII is being debated and is not approved until the end of the month, with the Delegation of Authority signed on 01-MAR-06 (need to double-check the date) almost immediately after the PatActII passed. Within weeks of this time, Thomas Heffelfinger will announce he is leaving USA-MN position. Our “stupi...

A single entry that Josh Marshall posted this past week really got under my skin, in a number of different ways. First, I think we've reached a point where so damn much corruption has passed under the bridge that we can't hang onto the sheer volume of facts that are rushing by us in a torrent. Secondly, I'm so angry that this has happened, that we've let these bastards bury us under so much bullsh*t that people who should be making connections between dots simply can't. Aren't we brighter than these criminals? Aren't there more of us than them? Can't we put this altogether and see it for what it is? The post in question dd. May 31, 2007 -- 02:12 PM EST cites an email by a reader JR: Re your argument that the quest for oil is a parsimonious explanation for the Iraq war. I have long doubted this proposition. Big Oil may be venal in its pursuit of profit, but it has an intimate knowledge of non-western political structures, and it's far from stupid....