Now and Then - Not much difference

Death, Lies and Videotape

[Caution: graphic video not suitable for work or children. Full-length version here.]

from crooks and liars 

By nonny mouse

On the fifth of April, WikiLeaks released a classified US military video from an Apache helicopter gunship as it killed over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad in 2007, including two Reuters new staff, as well as seriously wounding two young children. One of the journalists, gravely wounded in the attack, was then shot in a second barrage as he tried to crawl away, and his body run over by a Humvee. Since the attack, Reuters had been attempting to obtain this video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success. Now it is public for the first time.
Wikileak’s organisers were given the footage by an unnamed source, which they then decrypted and posted on-line. So far, the Pentagon has had no response. The high-quality video, according to BBC’s Adam Brookes in Washington, appears to be authentic, and includes the recording of the pilot’s radio transmission and troops on the ground. Wikileaks has also published a statement from Reuters news editor-in-chief David Schlessinger saying that the video was ‘graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism and the tragedies that can result’.
Wikileaks has complained of surveillance and harassment by the US and other governments, primarily for their role in leaking documents on sensitive subjects, from the assassination of human rights lawyers in Nairobi, photos of murders committed in Tibet followed by a mass attack on Swedish servers by Chinese computers in retaliation, threats by the head of Germany’s BNP of prosecution over a report of CIA involvement in Kosovo,and more. This tiny blogsite, which won Amnesty International’s 2009 media award, is nearly broke and has depended on donations from human rights groups, journalists, technology experts and simply concerned individuals for survival, a ludicrous game of David and Goliath of the internet.
But it seems someone within the DoD or US Army Counterintelligence or CIA or somewhere still believes in the public’s right to know what our elected government is up to. According to documents leaked to Wikileaks, even our own government has conspired to shut down the organization, including exposing sources and identifying whistleblowers and retaliating by termination of employment, criminal prosecution, defamation of the organization to weaken its credibility. The lessons of Valerie Plame and the Freedom of Information Act be damned.
Be warned. This video is not for the faint-hearted. I watched the whole thing. It made me feel ill, but I watched it all. It's the least I could do for those people who lost their lives. At one point you can even see one of the men from the van trying to rescue the wounded journalist looking up at the helicopter, he knew it was there. He knew what he was risking, and tried to help anyway. The bravery of that man is astounding. And he died. If it were left up to our own government, he would have died without you or I or anyone else ever knowing, our ignorance the biggest weapon in any military arsenal. If this ungodly, horrible war is ever to end, it is not only the public’s right to know what we have done and are still doing in Iraq, and Afghanistan, it is our responsibility to demand to know.
What truly bothers me is the absolute callousness of the conversation going on in the Apache helicopter. Beyond the 'fucking prick' and the 'bastards' comments, it's the laughter, particularly during the shooting as if it's all just a video game, cheering each other on as the wounded journalist crawls on the ground, willing him to reach for a ‘weapon’ so they can shoot him again, laughing when his body is run over by a military truck. The comment when the crew realized children have been wounded was shocking: ‘Well, it’s their own fault for bringing their kids to a battle.'
Bringing their kids to a battle? Those children live there! This wasn't a 'battlefield' - it was just an ordinary neighbourhood that got pasted by an American helicopter, twice. We brought the war to them. Where the hell were the kids supposed to have been? Loma Linda? Ann Arbor? Tampa?
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Happy Easter

Large Hadron Collider A Success—And We're Still Alive! (We Think)

The scientists at CERN momentarily forgot how to speak like, well, scientists, and got a little carried away on Twitter after they successfully saw particle collisions for the first time. [CERN] <-click on this link for video
from Gizmodo

More from AP

The world's largest atom smasher has set a record for high-energy collisions by crashing two proton beams at three times more force than ever before.

The $10 billion Large Hadron Collider directed the beams into each other Tuesday as part of its ambitious bid to reveal details about theoretical particles and microforces.

The collisions start a new era of science for researchers working on the machine below the Swiss-French border at Geneva.

Scientists at a control room at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, broke into applause when the first successful collisions were recorded. Their colleagues from around the world were tuning in by remote links.

Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.
Saul Alinsky 

Lou Reed - Dirty Boulevard

Sara Palin "Real Americans cling to their religion and guns"
Wolf  "I guess I'm not a Real American"

Update Going Green

I've had the Surge for a week now and it works great. It adds a little weight to the Ipod Touch but fits comfortly in your hand. There haven't been that many sunny days so it takes a while to get a full solar charge. It doesn't take long to get charged when hooked upto my PC using the supplied USB cable. No problems sincing to Itunes. Only problem is that the hole for the auto out plug is too small. Works only with my earbuds but not with my earphones or external speaker. No problem when using Bluetooth or WiFi, in fact I am posting this using the Blogger app over WiFi. My rating for the Surge is 4 stars out of 5 cause the phone plug hole is too small.

Quinnipiac poll on Tea Parties confirms yet again that they are arch-conservatives

By John Amato crooks and liars

My inbox is a full-time job all of its own, but I do get a lot of useful information passed on to me. Quinnipiac released a new poll about the Tea Party movement and the results are everything C&L has been saying about them.

Looking at voters who consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement:

• 74 percent are Republicans or independent voters leaning Republican;
• 16 percent are Democrats or independent voters leaning Democratic;
• 5 percent are solidly independent;
• 45 percent are men;
• 55 percent are women;
• 88 percent are white;
• 77 percent voted for Sen. John McCain in 2008;
• 15 percent voted for President Barack Obama.

A total of 19 percent of American voters trust government to do the right thing "almost all of the time" or "most of the time," compared to only 4 percent of Tea Party members.

While only 33 percent of all voters have a favorable opinion of Sarah Palin, 72 percent of Tea Party members have a favorable opinion of her.

The Teabaggers are essentially an extension of the conservative movement -- only, Fox News needed to tap into the body politic as far right as they could go to energize it. And in that Ailes-directed task, they were very successful. I laugh when I hear the MSM try to explain them to their audiences. They refuse to tell the truth about them in any detail or even admit the fact that they were cultivated with great care by Fox News.

And if you hear people trying to tell you that they are angry Independent voters, well, use this poll, our articles and, of course, Digby.

The Hard Core Right

In case anyone's still thinking that the teabaggers are "independent" middle of the road types who disdain both the right and the left equally,this new Quinnipiac Poll should finally put that to rest.

Ed Kilgore summarizes:

...the Tea Party folk [are] basically, very conservative Republicans determined to pressure the GOP to move to the right or suffer the consequences--in other words, a radicalized GOP base.

The alternative explanation has been that the Tea Partiers represent independent voters who are fed up with government and will join with Republicans to create a stable majority in this "center-right nation" if and only if Republicans stop talking about cultural issues and focus on lower taxes, smaller government and the economy. Nothing in the Quinnipiac poll supports that proposition. On question after question, self-identified Tea Partiers (13% of the total sample) are much closer in their views to self-identified Republicans than to self-identified independents. Most notably, the approval/disapproval rating for the Republican Party is 60/20 among Tea Partiers and 28/42 among indies. Among those voting in 2008, Tea Partiers went for McCain by a margin of 77/15; indies split down the middle (going for McCain 46/42). Tea Partiers have a favorable view of Sarah Palin by a 72/14 margin (significantly higher than among Republicans), while indies have an unfavorable view of her by a 49/34 margin. Tea Partiers self-identify as Republicans or Republican-leaners by a 74/16 margin. These are not the same people by any stretch of the imagination.

The poll doesn't ask enough questions to get at the details of Tea Party ideology, but it also doesn't supply any ammunition to the common perception that Tea Partiers are libertarians at heart, and/or that they are displacing the Christian Right within the conservative coalition. Actually, 21% of self-identified white "born-again" evangelicals consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement, well above the 13% figure for all voters. And the the two categories of voters share a rare positive attachment to Sarah Palin (white "born-agains" approve of her by a 55/29 margin, Tea Partiers by a 72/14 margin).

At some point, the more questionable assumptions that pundits are making about the Tea Folk--they are right-trending independents, they are hostile to the Christian Right--need to yield to empirical evidence. Now would be a good time to start.

Considering the media just figured out that some of the opposition to the bill over the past few months was from liberals who wanted a public option or single payer, I'm not holding my breath on that.

But it really doesn't take a poll to see that these tea partiers are ill-informed, Beck watching right wingers. All you have to do is read their signs and listen to what they say. They are the hardcore GOP base. And they are very, very sore losers. It's one of their defining characteristics.

The media will fight this fairly accurate assessment of them tooth and nail, but they'll see starting in the 2010 midterms if the teabaggers are a real third party. Sarah Palin and Karl Rove have been begging the Tea Partiers not to form their own party, but I really doubt they need them for that. There will be a few groups that break off and do their own thing, but if I had to put a number on it, then I'd say about 88% of them will join the GOP in the end.

My Ipod Touch

I've had my ITouch for a few years and I love it. As of this moment it has 628 songs, 4 Videos and 161 Apps with 1.1 GB left over in it's 16 GB Memory. I have AirStash a Wireless Pocketable Media Server on Pre-order and that will add up to 32 gigs. This little machine is a great portable computer as well as a cool game machine.

Here are some of the Apps and Games I like.

Every ITouch comes with these basic Apps.

Apples Safari Web Browser - I've tried other browsers but so far Safari is the best

An E-mail Program for multi accounts - Google, AOL, Hotmail on mine

Calendar

Clock

Contact List that can be used with e-mail and Apps

Stocks

YouTube

Maps

Voice Memos - You need earbuds with a mic

Notepad

Calculator

Weather - I use The Weather Channels App instead

Itunes

App Store

Settings

Photos - for got to tell yins I have 470 photos

Video

My favorite Apps

Twitter - Twittelator - I've tried most of them but this one is the best for me

WiFi Get Plus - Finds Hot Spots

Bing - The MS search app

Taptu - Another search app

MySpace - Better than the one on my Blackberry but not as good as

Facebook - Great Free App

iGift4u - Add on for FB Lets you update staus, has quotes, jokes, news, Youtube plus more

Live Cams

PA Traffic Cams

Google Earth

Google App - does everything google

Skype - Voice or txt only

Meebo - all txt chat programs in one

NASA

Kindle - Yeah I use it a lot to read my Kindle books

Wikipedia

Pandora - net radio

IMDB

Amazon

Yahoo -everything Yahoo

White House - yeah The Pres. loves the net

Quakewatch

NPR News

Call tacker

Those are just a few of the apps I like

Games and other stuff

Flick Fishing

Flick Bowling

IBeer

Zippo Lighter

Atomic Fart

Ask Ozzy

Family Guy

Avatar

Star Trek

Sims 3

C64 - Commodore C64 Emulator - waiting for Elite to come out for it

Snood

Doodle Jump

Scoops

Myst

6 diff car racing games

Bejeweled 2

4 diff pinball games, I like The Deep

FaceFighter put your own pics and fight them (bush is cool)

NCCA Live - all the games live

LED Football

4 diff snowboard games - Shaun White is best but no 1/2 pipe

Madden NFL 2010

Tiger Woods

3 diff poker games, play the same one I play on FB

3 Tarot, 1 Rune, 1 IChing and 2 horoscope apps

6 music apps Rock Band and Metalica Taptap used the most

2 Bird Watching apps

Plus many more

I am often asked When are you gonna get an IPad. My answer for now Never! Why? Because 1. you never by the 1st version of any high tech gadget. 2. Pissed at Steve Jobs for causing the price of e-books to go up. 3. Waiting for version 4 ( I have V2) of The Touch.