Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

Via the Guardian, the surveillance society is going global:

"A comprehensive transatlantic pact clearing the way for the unprecedented supply of private data on European citizens to the American authorities is to be promoted by France in support of the US-driven campaign to combat terrorism and transnational crime.

The French government is expected to use its six-month presidency of the EU, starting tomorrow, to build on 18 months of confidential negotiations between Washington and Brussels aimed at clearing the complex legal obstacles to the exchange of personal information with the Americans.

The controversial proposed pact, a "framework agreement" on common data protection principles, is likely to enable the Americans to access the credit card histories, banking details and travel habits of Europeans, although senior officials in Brussels deny US reports that the Americans will also be able to snoop on the internet browsing records of Europeans."  Read more 

Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike President Sarkozy and his administration?

you can go to Network Solutions where you register domain names and see who the noble Clinton supporters are who own this inspiring site:

clintons ffor mccain
Registrant:
Republican National Committee
310 First Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
US
Domain Name: CLINTONSFORMCCAIN.COM

Administrative Contact , Technical Contact :
Republican National Committee
dns@rnchq.org
310 First Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
US
Phone: 202-863-8500
Fax: 202-863-8851
Record created on 15-May-2008

Always nice to know who your fellow travellers are.  Read more 

As it happens, (and in light of today’s endorsement) Naomi Klein has a column in the Guardian regarding Obama’s economic policies. And she’s not impressed, to say the least:  Read more 

They sure don’t act like winners.

From Reclusive Leftist:

This comment is showing up in moderation queues throughout the Hillary-supporting blogosphere:

When I watched her speech this morning, I felt something genuine in her voice. When she talked about dedicating her life to making America a better place, you could tell that was her deepest conviction.

She seemed a little hesitant endorsing Obama, but she also seemed very confident when she said we cannot afford to allow the Republicans to hold The White House for another 4 years or more.

In the end, I think Hillary’s decision to support Obama was what she feels is the best course for our country to follow. I’ve supported her so far, so there’s no reason for me to doubt her now.

Let’s take back The White House for the Democrats and make America a better place.

Har! The name attached to the comment is different depending on the blog; the pattern seems to be to choose the name of a regular commenter.

So I drop in at the Confluence and I see:  Read more 

(reposted from a comment on Avedon’s blog)

How can leverage be built, or used, without the threat of a negative outcome?

If votes from Clinton supporters are desired, doesn’t someone have to ask for them?

Doesn’t someone have to stop insulting them by continually saying their opinions are invalid, that their power is either illusory or unimportant, or that they are delusional for wanting to wield that power in the first place?

Since there are no third parties worth even that much of a damn to consistently field downticket candidates in every state, how else should Clinton supporters — who have been called everything from bitches, dried-up divorcees, to racists — behave, but to offer their votes to the McCain campaign if their policy concerns are not discussed with respect?  Read more 

Never mind, they’ll come back. They always do, you know. Women get cruelly battered and still keep returning to their batterer. BUT NOT THIS TIME!

“No self respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her self.” - Susan B. Anthony, 1872

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26966166@N0…

We still support Hillary despite the combined power of the Democratic Party hacks, the Media Whores, and the illicit money men of the Obama campaign who have waged a vicious, nasty, hate filled, sexist campaign against her.

They continually battered her and when they battered her, they battered us.  Read more 

“Obama is not, one of his senior advisers assured me Tuesday night, going to spend a lot of time in the next few months wooing Clinton supporters whose feelings may be hurting.”—Politico

Riiiiight…all 18 million of us are supposed to run after the bus riiiight now and feel as if we will be left behind if we don’t get on…but how can you get on the bus if you’ve already been thrown underneath it?

Er, my vote is worth the same now or in November.

In any case, Obama makes it clear, yet again, that he doesn’t want our votes.

One word: Denver.

Go write Clinton again and tell her to stay in. She can still win the nomination—and if she doesn’t stay in until August, how many of the things we believe in, like universal health care, social security without private accounts,  Read more 

is my congressional representative. It’s so embarrassing, really. He’s apparently completely out of ideas as to how to run a campaign. I like Kay Barnes’s response ad to this tactless attack.

(For more on the national coverage of Graves’ pathetic ad, go here.)

If you want to learn more about Graves, you should go read this article. It’s pretty informative and tells you about all you need to know about Sam Graves’ thuggish campaign tactics.

I’m so proud he’s my congressional rep.

So we’ll never get the racists/sexists to vote for this year’s Dem. But dood, I missed this one. Cliff:

McCain’s most recent exams show a range of health issues common in aging: He frequently has precancerous skin lesions removed, and in February had an early stage squamous cell carcinoma, an easily cured skin cancer, removed. He had benign colon growths called polyps taken out during a routine colonoscopy in March.

The SCLM buried that one, I’m sure. You can still do your part, tho. Seriously, being “weak” is a great sin to the minds of the rethug Base. McStain is tired, sick, and weak. Again. Remind your neighbors and friends today: he’s not Fit to Lead, and it’s time for some new, fresh blood to be in charge.

Update: pass these around today. heh.

I’m feel so moved! Unfortunately, he’s not very bright. This was his response to my WWTSBQ 2.0 - Neverending Story… hold on to your seats:

“I’d like to keep things as civil as possible, but I think these points deserve some discussion. I’d like to leave discussions of gender and race out if you please, and also issues of policy, because we would get off-topic. I want to talk about the delegate count and the nomination. Fact 1: there is no way for Hillary to win the majority of pledged delegates. I don’t think superdelegates should override the will of the voters, but they have been coming out more and more strongly for Obama as this campaign has gone on.  Read more 

From CBS:

This afternoon, Barack Obama responded to Hillary Clinton’s comments yesterday when she referenced th assassination of Robert F. Kennedy as a reason she’s staying in the race this year. Obama said he believes that Clinton was not trying to be offensive.

“I have learned that when you are campaigning for as many months as Senator Clinton and I have been campaigning, sometimes you get careless in terms of the statements that you make and I think that is what happened here,” Obama said in a radio interview today.

“Senator Clinton says that she did not intend any offense by it and I will take her at her word on that.”  Read more 

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

 Read more 

Let’s look at one of Obama’s main advisers…the one who supports Social Security “reform” that destroys the current system…

“Obama’s Economic Brain Trust Breaks With ‘Status Quo’ (Update1)

By Rich Miller and Matthew Benjamin
Bloomberg.com
May 10, 2007

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=2…

…Three academics — Austan Goolsbee, 37, a University of Chicago professor and columnist for The New York Times, Jeffrey Liebman, 39, a pension and poverty expert at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and David Cutler, 41, a Harvard health economist — form the core of Obama’s economic team….  Read more 

This is why she’s scary smart:

What is my point here? Namely, that the Left Blogosphere has always behaved like this, they have always swarmed and spewed at their favorite target of hate, the Clintons, and that their embrace of Obama is purely instrumental. They don’t give a damn if he can win the general. They are obsessed with preventing the Clintons from returning to power. If he can do that, then they’ll be back to bashing him since he will have served his useful purpose.

There is always hope, and we are never defeated, as long as truth survives.

I interrupt work on my dissertation to join WV, KY in giving a great big cheek scratch to the media and Obama’s WWTSBQ minions in the blogosphere. Here’s my song dedication to ya’ll. (You can fast-forward to the last minute or so.)  Read more 

Good God. A child of six could spot the logical problems with this lead:

Likely Democratic nominee Barack Obama has begun a top-secret search for a running mate, fresh signs that the general election campaign is well under way and the primary race against Hillary Rodham Clinton is basically over.

R-i-i-g-h-t. A “top secret” search that somehow makes it right onto the AP wire. What is this? American Idol? Wait. Don’t answer that.

The story moved at 10:26 EST. Anybody know when Axelrod’s conference call is? I’m guessing 10:00AM.

And AP’s stenographer is … Guess who?  Read more 

Air America Radio host Thom Hartmann sent this out in an e-mail blast this morning (emphasis added):

The issue at hand for the Democratic Party for winning in ‘08 is not losing to McCain but losing to a divided Democratic party. The first thing Obama should do if nominated is put Hillary on the ticket. Will the Republicans have a field day with her on the ticket? Yes! Is their [sic] some bad blood in the water due to some negative campaign strategies on the part of the Clintons? Probably. Can Hillary be a tough fighter able to play tough allowing Obama to stay higher above the fray?  Read more 

As we would expect a meta-leader to do.* Politico sets the record straight. May 6:

An Obama senior adviser, who asked that his name be withheld to speak candidly, told Politico the next day: “On May 20, we’re going to declare victory.”

May 19? Not so much. Barack “No Mas” Obama didn’t close the deal. Again.

Today, the Obama Movement is back-pedaling on the whole “Let’s celebrate our seizure of power!” thing, and I’m betting whichever operative sold the idea to the man is going to lose his Blackberry account. And whoever got delegated the job of canceling this turkey without embarrassing anyone and then couldn’t deliver is going back to piece-work under the third-shift lights in Axelrod’s warehouse full of astro-turfers. Savor, savor the Movement’s spin today: It’s hyper-competent:

Concerned about appearing presumptuous or antagonistic towards Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama will not declare victory in the Democratic nomination fight Tuesday in the event he wins enough pledged delegates to claim a majority. Rather, he’ll tiptoe right up to the line, without explicitly asserting the race is over…

… he’ll get people to believe it. That’s the meta. You might also call it the con.

Leaders lead, as Atrios is fond of saying. They don’t tiptoe right up to the line, do they?  Read more 

“Madrugada Jones | xxxxxxx@yyyy.com | spinachflame.wordpress.com | IP: foo.bar.foo

I respect Hillary a great deal and think she’d make a terrific president. But I’m for Obama and I think you have to ask yourself, if the roles were reversed and Hillary was out ahead in the delegate count (not to mention the superdelegate count) and Barack was trying to get the delegates from MI and FL seated, do you honestly think she’d let them be seated?? You’ve got to be kidding me. She’d do the same exact thing he’s doing, which is well within the rules the DNC established. To me, this proves Obama’s political savvy.

New cartoons here: http://spinachflame.wordpress.com/

Not Spam — May 16, 2:36 PM — [ View Post ]
#

spinachflame | llllllllll@zzzzz.com | IP: Bar.foo.bar

I respect Hillary a great deal and think she’d make a terrific president. But I’m for Obama and I think you have to ask yourself, if the roles were reversed and Hillary was out ahead in the delegate count (not to mention the superdelegate count) and Barack was trying to get the delegates from MI and FL seated, do you honestly think she’d let them be seated?? You’ve got to be kidding me. She’d do the same exact thing he’s doing, which is well within the rules the DNC established. To me, this proves Obama’s political savvy.”  Read more 

Death Gap Widens Between Educated and Those Not

WEDNESDAY, May 14 (HealthDay News) — Being well-educated can lengthen your life span, according to new study.

The research, published in the May 14 issue ofPLoS ONE, shows that the gap in overall death rates between Americans with less than a high school education and college graduates increased rapidly from 1993 to 2001.

The implication here is that less well educated people don’t know how to take care of themselves. This is part of a larger PR drive for “wellness programs” which our corporate misleadership hope will subsitute for action on healthcare.  Read more 

How on earth did this Op Ed get published? That is what I want to know.

Here is Edward Luttwak, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member in good standing of the Washington foreign policy establishment, all dues paid up, (which probably answers my opening question), speculating in this morning’s New York Times about the security implications of an Obama presidency, for Obama himself and for the country, unembarrassed to tell us that Obama’s conversion to Christianity makes him ripe for punishment by beheading, no less, or at best, by stoning or by hanging.  Read more 

Hullabaloo is losing it’s collective mind. Today we see tristero going gaga over D-Day’s “The Obama Party” post from yesterday:

Win or lose, for good or otherwise, it really appears that Obama is in a position to renovate the Democratic party. As dday mentions, this does not necessarily mean that that reform will make the party more conducive to liberal and progressive ideas. As I see it, however, by displacing the sclerotic leaders who managed, incredibly, to make both the 2004 election and the 2000 race so close that a candidate as clearly awful as Bush could steal the presidency (once if not twice), there are potential opportunities for liberals.

[…]  Read more 

Some Obama supporters have truly entered a state that is referred to in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (DSM-IV) as “Bat-shit Crazy.”

At the normally sane Hullabaloo we get this from D-Day:  Read more 

WKJM appears to have gone tone deaf. If he was not always tone deaf. Great and unintentionally revealing headline:

Clinton Attacks “Elite Opinion” On Gas Tax Holiday

And your point would be, Josh?  Read more 

Seems the Obamessiah sang a different tune when he was an Illinois state senator..
He thinks its a gimmick today..but back then, he voted for it…

“He said drying up gas tax collections would batter highway construction, costing North Carolina up to 7,000 jobs, while saving consumers little.

“We’re arguing over a gimmick that would save you half a tank of gas over the course of the entire summer so that everyone in Washington can pat themselves on the back and say they did something,” said Obama.

“Well, let me tell you, this isn’t an idea designed to get you through the summer, it’s designed to get them through an election,” said Obama. He said his call for middle-class tax cuts would be far more beneficial than suspending gas tax collections.  Read more