Category: Politics

Colbert does NYT OP-ED

Has the sky fallen? Cause our fav conservative Stephen Colbert has a guest Op-Ed column in the New York Times. It damn funny too. Here is my favorite part. Being a southerner of Appalachian descent… it makes me laugh out loud.

So why I am writing Miss Dowd’s column today? Simple. Because I believe the 2008 election, unlike all previous elections, is important. And a lot of Americans feel confused about the current crop of presidential candidates.

For instance, Hillary Clinton. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to be scared of her so Democrats will think they should nominate her when she’s actually easy to beat, or if I’m supposed to be scared of her because she’s legitimately scary.

Or Rudy Giuliani. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to support him because he’s the one who can beat Hillary if she gets nominated, or if I’m supposed to support him because he’s legitimately scary.

And Fred Thompson. In my opinion “Law & Order” never sufficiently explained why the Manhattan D.A. had an accent like an Appalachian catfish wrestler.

I think I just heard Colbert claim he was “the son of a poor appalachian turd miner. The Grandson of a goat ball licker.”.

via Andy Bechtel

Question for Presidential Candidates about Public Broadband

The site 10Questions.com is gathering video questions for presidential candidates. Think of it as a truly democratic YouTube debate without CNN. There are two phases. Round one: 1. You ask a video question to the presidential candidates. 2. You vote on the best questions. 3. The top ten questions get selected. This part ends on November 14. Round two: 1. The top ten questions are presented to the candidates. 2. Candidates post their video answers. 3. You decide if they actually answered the questions. That part starts November 17 and ends December 31.

Here is my question and video:
If you become president what would you do to support the creation of publicly owned broadband? By both municipalities and community groups.

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play

Go add yours now! Its your chance to participate directly. This is how our 21st century democracy should operate!

BTW – Ruby has a video question up on blip.tv and 10questions.com about transparency.

I'm voting for Sally Greene

This first thing that come to my mind when I think of Sally Greene’s record as a council person is her work to end homelessness. She has done a lot of real work towards solving this problem.

Homelessness isn’t a easy issue. Nor one that could easily win you votes. So to have done real work on this issue, as a politician, is impressive. For me this really demonstrates how much Sally really cares about people.

Sally is on the steering committee for the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness and was instrumental in the creation of the 10-year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness. She has steadfastly opposed efforts to regulate panhandling in Chapel Hill. Too many people think banning so called undesirable people from Franklin Street will make a real difference. At best all it does is brush a problem and people under a rug.

Few elected officials are looking at the root causes that put people onto the streets. Even fewer are working towards real creative solutions. The causes of homelessness are extremely complicated and deserves a detailed response. Sally does this in a real way with real results.

I’m also impressed with how Sally works with her fellow council members. She asks good questions at council meetings. Its obvious she has spent time building the trust of her fellow council members. Her professional style is worthy of respect. This is the job we elected her to do and she does it well.

The next four years we will need Sally’s experience getting effective policies passed. She is trusted, intelligent, and progressive. So when you go to the voting booth this november think about the people who share your values. But vote for the candidates that have the ability to create policy that will see your values made real.

Donate to Help OP Grow

Please donate to the Orange Politics fundraising drive to help pay for site improvements. Read more here.

Our last update was 3 years ago, and OP is seriously needing better identity management and improved community tools. I think drupal will be a good solution for us, and I hope to work with the good folks at Advantage Labs to make OP more useful and (and more stable) than ever.

The work will involve importing all of our posts and comments from WordPress to drupal, configuring our a new drupal system, and getting us set up on a new server. I will probably be able to create a new drupal “theme” to match what OP looks like myself, so we should not have to pay for that. I expect this work to cost at least $1,000 (not including monthly hosting fees), so I am setting that as our target.

Using drupal will allow us to have individual blogs for each registered and verified user of OP. That means no more hoping Ruby will approve your guest post and not knowing when it will be published. On the new site, you can post whatever you like, within some limits, and the community will vote on which entries go to the front page, similar to the way BlueNC.com and DailyKos.com are managed.

Please chip in, and ask your friends to support this effort so that OrangePolitics can be an even better progressive community resource!

More Truth to Power Sen. Edwards

via AlterNet:

Sen. Edwards campaigning in New Hampsire:

“Real change starts with being honest — the system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken. It’s rigged by greedy corporate powers to protect corporate profits. It’s rigged by the very wealthy to ensure they become even wealthier. At the end of the day, it’s rigged by all those who benefit from the established order of things. For them, more of the same means more money and more power. They’ll do anything they can to keep things just the way they are — not for the country, but for themselves.”

“[The system is] controlled by big corporations, the lobbyists they hire to protect their bottom line and the politicians who curry their favor and carry their water. And it’s perpetuated by a media that too often fawns over the establishment, but fails to seriously cover the challenges we face or the solutions being proposed. This is the game of American politics and in this game, the interests of regular Americans don’t stand a chance.”

It’s a structural argument, and Edwards didn’t pull punches in calling out his fellow Democrats, saying: “We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other.” The rhetoric was a clear signal that Edwards is going to beat the drums of reform as a contrast to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

I heard part of this quote today on NPR. They did a really bad job describing the details and context of this statement. Both local NRR (WUNC) and national NPR introduced this statement like, ‘Oh now.. haha… here he goes again with his risky “rhetoric”.’ [sarcastic NPR misquote done for comedic outrage effect]

Feh! What he was really doing was speaking truth to power! Good for him!

AT&T Spies on you AND Censors Speech

Last week AT&T got caught cutting part of a live Perl Jam concert when singer Eddy Vedder criticized President Bush.

During the performance of “Daughter” the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” but were cut from the webcast:

– “George Bush, leave this world alone.” (the second time it was sung); and

– “George Bush find yourself another home.”

This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media.

AT&T’s actions strike at the heart of the public’s concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.

via Perl Jam website

AT&T spokes people have denied, spun, and apologized. Turns out this wasn’t the first time they’ve done this.

One fan who contacted The Times Friday said AT&T’s Blue Room webcast bleeped the sound during performances by the Flaming Lips and the John Butler Trio at the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee in June.

via LA Times

Nor was it an accident. A “crew member” who worked on this live video feed has spoken to Wired magazine saying,

“I can definitively say that at a previous event where AT&T was covering the show, the instructions were to shut it down if there was any swearing or if anybody starts getting political. Granted, they didn’t say to shut down any Anti-Bush comments or anything specific to any point of view or party, but ‘getting political’ was mentioned.”

As if helping the American government spy on its own people wasn’t enough these Net Neutrality deniers are guilty just of what we thought. They have no intention of keeping the Internet free for all to use equally. Its is now very clear that AT&T intends to let us plebes use THEIR network how THEY see fit. Does that sound very American to you?

So iPhone owners… is this enough for you to reconsider using AT&T?

More Info:
AT&T Gets Caught in its Own Spin Cycle

Crew Member: Previous AT&T Show Had “No Politics” Policy

AT&T apologizes for censoring performer webcasts (LA Times)

Pearl Jam protests censoring of Lollapalooza webcast (LA Times)

Whistle-Blower Outs NSA Spy Room

Orange County, NC Elections Maps

Over on Orange Politics Ruby has posted a entry with links to some amazing Google Maps.
Southern Orange County NC Election Info Map

Last week I created a Google map of all of the candidates in Orange County in this year’s municipal and school board races. Now excellent electoral map maker Damon Seils has added two very helpful resources: a map of every polling site in the county, and another map of the voting precincts. All of these maps will be permanently available on the election info page: orangepolitics.org/elections-2007

This is going to be so useful to so many people. I’ve wanted to know exactly where the local precincts are. Google Maps rock! Overlaying several different kinds of data with Geo info can tell so much. I want to thank Damon Seils and B. Hammill for all their work on this! Also thank you Ruby for putting this out there for people to use. She has lots of other good ideas for maps too.

Now what I would like to see is to see is candidates overlayed with a map showing the average density and average income of each precinct.

Clap, Clap, Clap!

(Map Legend: Flags = poling places, Orange Boxes w/White lines = precincts, purple pins = Carrboro Candidates homes, yellow pins = School Board Candidates homes, blue pins = Chapel Hill Candidates homes)

Millian tries to kick out Sheehan

WCHL reports that mall manager Nathan Millian attempted to throw Cindy Sheehan off Carr Mill property when she was meeting with Mark Chilton and impeachment activists yesterday. Eventually Shehan was allowed to stay at Panzanella. Here is the MP3.

Regardless how you feel about Ms. Sheehan’s politics, is this any way to treat a nationally-known guest? It certainly no way to treat anyone else.

What motivates Nathan Millian to butt heads with a Mayor’s lunch guest? I don’t buy the disruption of business argument. Ms. Sheehan brought a lot of free publicity to Carr Mill and the Town of Carrboro. Why did Mr. Millian squander it by being so rude?

Cross posted from Orange Politics