Dictator Bush - The Time to Be Scared Is NOW
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: Save Democracy
Mysterious ?George W. Bush: Our Leader? Clear Channel Political Public Service Billboard Graces Orlando Freeway



Raw Story | November 22 2004

A billboard recently put up in Orlando bearing a smiling photograph of President Bush with the words ?Our Leader? is raising eyebrows among progressives who feel the poster is akin to that of propaganda used by tyrannical regimes.

RAW STORY confirmed the billboard?s existence Monday evening. At our behest, a member of an Orlando media organization drove past the billboard on two occasions and verified that it was indeed the one pictured.

The billboard pictured, which is on I-4, says that it is a ?political public service message brought to you by Clear Channel Outdoor.?

The member, who declined to be named out of concern for their employer, discovered a second billboard bearing the same image along the same route, paid for by Charles W. Clayton Jr.

Clear Channel Outdoor Orlando said they could not respond to requests for comment this week because their press person was ?away.? They referred calls to their San Antonio corporate parent, which did not return two messages for comment.

One Orlando resident penned a concerned letter to the (registration-restricted) Orlando Sentinel on Saturday about the billboard. As the site is restricted to members, the letter appears below.

?The first thing I thought was, when was the last time I have seen a president on a billboard?? wrote resident Dianna Lawson. ?Didn?t Saddam Hussein have his picture up everywhere? What next, a statue??

Reporters at the Orlando Sentinel told RAW STORY they?d also seen the photograph.

Others said they?d seen a similar sign in Jacksonville along I-95.

?We don?t do political advertising,? said Clear Channel sales representative Brad Parsons in Jacksonville. He said the photograph was bogus.

A second Jacksonville rep acknowledged the company did political advertising but only when paid for by a third party. When asked if he would look at the picture for verification, he declined to give out his email address.

The posted was first noticed by the liberal forum Democratic Underground.

Developing? Additional photographs forthcoming?

The letter in the Orlando Sentinel:

Billboard message

On my way to work Wednesday morning, I looked up and saw a giant billboard with a picture of George W. Bush and the words ?OUR LEADER? under it. The first thing I thought was, when was the last time I have seen a president on a billboard? What is going on? Didn?t Saddam Hussein have his picture up everywhere? What next, a statue?

I am so concerned with our country and the division. I still stand by my vote, which was for John Kerry. George W. Bush has a lot of work to do to change the way I feel. Putting him up on a billboard does not make him a better president. His actions speak louder than words.

I wonder if anyone else finds the president?s picture on a billboard odd? I?m sorry, but it reminds me of countries with dictators, and it seems people are making him out to be the messiah, the savior of our world.

Fear, fear, fear. I?m tired of being afraid.

Dianna Lawson
Orlando

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GUESS WHO ELSE HAS BILLBOARDS! THAT'S RIGHT! KIM JONG-IL AND SADDAM HUSSEIN!

Another Case of Intelligence - I am a Girlie Man apparently...
Mood:  energetic
Topic: Save Democracy
Anti-Schwarzenegger Website Gets Support

Los Angeles Times | November 29 2004

A week after a group set up a website to oppose changing the U.S. Constitution to allow Arnold Schwarzenegger to become president, more than 3 million people have visited the site, and more than $10,000 have been pledged to the campaign.

The money will go toward a campaign by nationally syndicated radio talk-show host Alex Jones and his group Americans Against Arnold to air commercials on radio and cable television to rally opposition to the proposed legislation.

Jones, who lives in Austin, Texas, hopes to put the cable ads on television in California to counter commercials supporting a constitutional change that would allow foreign-born citizens, including Schwarzenegger, to seek the highest office in the country.

"I personally am against a foreign-born person being president," said Jones, a former Republican who is now a Libertarian. "People want their president to be born in this country."

He is also troubled by Schwarzenegger's past, which includes allegations that he groped women, used steroids and schemed about his eventual rise to power. "The guy has all of the classic symptoms of a megalomaniac," Jones said.

A Schwarzenegger spokesman declined to comment.

But Schwarzenegger supporters have sent e-mails to the anti-Arnold site to warn that they are messing with the wrong man.

Said one e-mail: "He will smash you like the girlie men you are."

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Web Won't Let Government Hide
Mood:  mischievious
Topic: Save Democracy
Given the government keeps tabs on the world using armies of agents, algorithms and wiretaps, how can a citizen compete? Try a browser.

Governments at every level these days are providing less information about their inner workings, sometimes using fear of terrorism as an excuse. But it's precisely times like these that mandate citizens' rights to check the efficiency of their government and hold those who fail accountable, open government advocates say.

The government itself won't make it easy, so an increasing number of websites and data crunchers are stepping in to provide information about the inner workings of government.

For starters, there's Google's little-known government specific search engine. Those proficient with crafting search terms can find Attorney General John Ashcroft's office number, gee-whiz nanotechnology movies and NASA's Microgravity Man comic strip. One can even find homeland security alerts about truck bombs (PDF) and the intelligence needs of the FBI.

Another trove of information is George Washington University's National Security Archive, which contains thousands of documents acquired through patient Freedom of Information Act requests. And there's CoolGov, a blog devoted to ferreting out quirky tidbits such as videos of airline crashes.

Those interested in the nitty-gritty of how and why the government hides information can subscribe to Stephen Aftergood's Secrecy News listserv, which is part of his work as the director of Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy.

Aftergood, who publishes a couple times a week, has built up an archive of previously unpublished reports created for Congress and information about the CIA's ongoing opposition to the publication of its budget.

Chris Hoofnagle, a lawyer for the Electronic Privacy Information Center (which is known for its prowess with Freedom of Information Act requests), calls Aftergood's work a must-read for anyone interested in a "nuanced interpretation of government information policy."

Aftergood uses FOIA requests only sparingly though, calling them cumbersome, relying instead on contacts and tips.

"Information has gravitational properties," Aftergood said. "Over time, more and more information flows to me."

When asked what motivates him, Aftergood gives both a principled and pragmatic answer.

"Openness is essential to self-government," Aftergood said. "If we mean to be our own rulers, then we need access to information. What keeps me going, though, is that, fortunately, a lot of this work is fun -- it is fun to collect information and to share it with like-minded others and to discover that small groups of interested citizens can be more effective and agile than large government bureaucracies."

Aftergood is not the only one-man information bank on the internet.

Russ Kick keeps information alive at The Memory Hole, where he archives documents pulled from government websites. He is famous for successfully using FOIA to obtain and publish photos of American soldiers' coffins being unloaded at the Dover Air Force Base.

John Young, a New York City architect, has been running the encyclopedic Cryptome since 1996, when he was inspired by the Cypherpunk mailing list to start learning about dual-use government technology.

Since the terrorist attacks on his city in 2001, Young has been striving to post as much information as possible, including lists of intelligence agents and pictures of vulnerable gas mains in New York City, as well as satellite images and maps of government officials' residences.

Though he has been criticized for providing information that could help terrorists, Young said he is helping to debunk the idea that hiding information will keep the country safe.

"We aren't experts, so if we can find it -- these folks are much smarter than we give them credit for, they are almost certain to already have it," Young said. "They use the internet avidly and have a lot more time to do this than I do. If I can find it and not let it be known, it creates a greater hazard."

EPIC's Hoofnagle sees these efforts as part of an "overall system that has a skeptical worldview of government action."

"Our FOIA work has proven it pays to be skeptical," Hoofnagle said. "EPIC is perhaps best known for our FOIA requests into the Carnivore system, which the FBI described as a precise and surgical computer forensic tool that turned out to be more like a vacuum cleaner.

"Unless one can put their hands on the actual agency documents, the public has to rely upon representations that may be jaundiced."

Original

The Map Referred to Below
Mood:  chillin'
Topic: Save Democracy

Stages of Grief
Mood:  energetic
Topic: Save Democracy
Views > November 22, 2004
Stages of Grief
By Susan J. Douglas

Democrats and progressives need to focus on state legislatures, congressional races, and get some Secretaries of State on our side next time around.

It is on refrigerators throughout the land: the map of California and the West Coast, the upper Midwest and the Northeast annexed to and named ?The United States of Canada,? the red states below labeled ?Jesusland.?

The red-and-blue, them-versus-us iconography so beloved by the press?imposed on us four years ago?makes our divisions seem dramatic indeed. Of course, it visually overstates the strength of evangelicals in our country. Nonetheless, when coupled with Cheney?s immediate claim of a ?mandate? (not to mention Bush?s idiotic ?political capital? boast), the sea of red sent many of us into a deep depression.

But, as the Shirelles reminded us, the darkest hour is just before dawn. So it?s time to review the stages of post-Kerry-defeat grief so we can heal ourselves and, indeed, move on.

Stage 1: Shock Many of us were barely functional on Wednesday, wondering how could it be that a guy so obviously and patently incompetent and deceptive, as documented by so many sources?and a faith-based zealot to boot?got reelected?

Stage 2: Shock and Awe We were sickened, but awestruck, that Cheney had the chutzpah to claim a mandate with only 286 electoral votes and a 130,000-vote margin of victory in Ohio, which various reporters and investigators already find very suspect. We were awed that Bush insisted that what you do with political capital is spend it right away?although we shouldn?t have been, given what this thinking has done for the deficit.

Stage 3: Alienation So maybe we accepted that the nation is not dominated by a bunch of Bible-banging Neanderthals. But depression returned when we kept thinking it was dominated by ignorant dunces. Bob Herbert and Bob McChesney, both citing a University of Maryland poll, reported that nearly 70 percent of Bush supporters believed there was ?clear evidence? that Saddam Hussein was working closely with al Qaeda; a third were convinced WMDs had been found in Iraq. What part of the 9/11 hearings, the bestseller list for the last six months and extensive news coverage did these people miss?

Of course, most of them were probably watching Fox News, whose viewers have been demonstrated to be more ignorant about current affairs than viewers of other news sources.

Stage 4: Wait a Minute By Friday, even Republicans were in on this one. Lyn Nofziger, Former Reagan adviser, David Brooks, Garry Wills and of course, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, Mark Crispin Miller, and many others were challenging the ?mandate? claim and debunking the notion that ?moral values??e.g., homophobia, opposition to abortion and belief in the virgin birth and creationism (not to mention ?the rapture,? which, fortunately, always makes me think of the hit song by Blondie)?prompted the majority of Republicans to vote for Bush.

As Gary Langer, director of polling for ABC News noted, ?moral values? can mean a lot of things; 15 percent of non-churchgoers and 12 percent of liberals chose it as the most important issue to them. Exit polls documented that 55 percent of voters said abortions should be legal and a whopping 60 percent supported either gay marriage (25 percent) or civil unions (another 35 percent).

Stage 5: Defiance and Assertion This phase is really building steam, and it is where we need to be, ASAP. Both NPR and ABC news, the day after the election, featured stories about ?moral values,? which included counterpoints from religious leaders and everyday people who asserted that the discussion should focus, centrally, on the dubious morality of war and bombing innocent people, on issues of economic justice, on the environment, on the lack of health insurance for 45 million, and on the staggering rate of child poverty in the United States. These are moral values, and the Democrats must claim them. Now.

Defiance and assertion also mean redefining ?the mandate.? The Republicans are determined to cast the electorate as primarily a group of faith-based anti-government conservatives. The Democrats must produce another representation. This is not to dismiss the disturbing rise of people who are determined to bring fundamentalism into government policy. But it is to assert the truth: Bible bangers are not the new majority.

Stage 6: Mobilize The Democrats and progressives need to do what the Republicans started doing back in the late 1970s: Focus on the state legislatures, congressional races and, hey, let?s get some Secretaries of State on our side next time around. Young women, and women of all ages, are going to need to fight like never before in the face of a guaranteed assault on Roe v. Wade. And the previous four years and this election emphasize how important media reform is, particularly the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, which the Reagan Administration abolished in 1987. We see the results of too much Rush and O?Reilly without any balance: voters who don?t have the facts.

This is our country; it is not a revival tent. We must continue to fight to save it.