Though it may not be obvious, the road marks in this amorphous thing called Web 2.0 are political: grassroots participation, forging new connections, and empowering from the ground up. The ideal democratic process is participatory and the Web 2.0 phenomenon is about democratizing digital technology.

http://www.wired.com/...

Last weekend he attended the Online News Association Conference in Wash DC and said it was a gross mistake.

Some excerpts:

I am routinely harangued by mainstream media as well, who neither understand blogging or care to. The most common attack is that bloggers are not and never will be objective in their writing for one reason or another. I assumed giving a little bit of criticism back would spark debate, not ostracism. But I found that mainstream media is not comfortable being questioned. I assume that's because they've insulated themselves from feedback, and therefore haven't grown a thick skin.

Barry Goldwater :
"I don't have any respect for the Religious Right."
"Every good Christian should line up and kick Jerry Falwell's ass."
"The religious factions will go on imposing their will on others,"
"A woman has a right to an abortion."

"I am a conservative Republican," Barry Goldwater wrote in a 1994 Washington Post essay, "but I believe in democracy and the separation of church and state."

James Owen
National Geographic News
August 10, 2006
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...

People in the United States are much less likely to accept Darwin's idea that humans evolved from apes than adults in other Western nations, a number of surveys show.

A new study of those surveys suggests that the main reason for this lies in a unique confluence of religion, politics, and the public understanding of biological science in the United States.

Democrats who love to play the stock market now have a chance to really toe the party line.

Blue Investment Management said it plans offer its Blue Fund, which invests only in companies that give the majority of their political contributions to Democratic candidates and adhere to progressive values, the company announced in a SEC filing earlier this week.

http://biz.yahoo.com/...

SOURCE: Obscure Trade Settlement Could Create $480 Million Slush Fund for White House
http://thinkprogress.org/...

The resolution of an obscure trade dispute involving imports of Canadian lumber to the United States could result in a $480 million slush fund for the White House, according to a lawyer familiar with the case.

Author and Pentagon advisor John Arquilla believes that today's big weapons systems are wrong for modern battle.

By Mark Williams

In 2007, the Pentagon's budget will exceed the combined military spending of every other country in the world. In round numbers, according to the U.S. Department of Defense's own Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), published this past February, the American military will spend more than $440 billion next year, supplemented with another $120 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It would be more reassuring, then, if the Pentagon's four-year plan for how its strategic priorities and force structure align with its budget made for less schizophrenic reading.

Our Mission

Whether you are a normal searcher, someone trying to download illegal material, a terrorist looking to build a bomb, or just hunting porn, we at Patriot Search welcome you!

Our mission is to provide the best possible search engine to you while at the same time, making sure the government is informed should you search for something obscure, illegal, or unpatriotic.

Instead of letting the government waste tax money by going through complicated procedures to get user and search data from Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves or Google, users of Patriot Search make sure their queries end up right where they belong - in the databases of the government and its various agencies.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. added 125,000 new jobs in 2005, and the retailer also announced Tuesday that its average hourly wage for full-time store associates rose from $9.68 to $10.11 over the year.

Time for more snow job drivel from from our Treasury Secretary

http://www.mobilevoter.org/

Google Bidding to Provide Free Wireless Internet Access to All of San Francisco
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/051001/google_wireless_internet.html?.v=3

Google in San Francisco: 'Wireless overlord'?
http://news.com.com/Google+in+San+Francisco+Wireless+overlord/2100-1039_3-5886968.html?part=rss& tag=5886968&subj=news

Here's a blog I bet few Kossacks know about but should

IP & Democracy
http://www.ipdemocracy.com/

And there's more ( and it gets better ) on the flip...

The new platform, which was shown at Demo Fall today, in Huntington Beach, Calif., boasts streaming video, voice, music and photos combined in a novice-level interface aimed at serving users from all levels and backgrounds.

Pubsub Demonstrates the Power of Prospective Search with U.S. Government Watching Tool
PubSub Government Subscriptions Aggregate Customized Political Content from Across the Blogosphere and Syndicated Web Sites

NEW YORK - June 1, 2005 - PubSub.com, the essential prospective search tool for tracking what people are saying about the topics they care about, today announced the launch of PubSub Government, a collection of free, pre-built subscriptions that provide customized delivery of political content from the blogosphere and syndicated Web sites. PubSub's prospective search instantly notifies users as soon as the search terms they have subscribed to are mentioned. The Government subscriptions demonstrate how easy it is for activists, watch groups, campaign managers, journalists, lobbyists, and other citizens to follow what's being said about any of the three branches of the U.S. government, and have that information delivered directly to them.

Why did't hypocrite Laura Bush go to Saudi on her Mideast trip and do a press conference on womens rights.

Dubya and his Saudi buddy Prince Bandar must reall enjoy their get togethers at the pretender cowboys ranch and yuck it up over this issue.

Perhaps a parallel to what America was in the 1950's and 1960's. India is analogous.

Then you have Eastern Europe and so on.

The greatest decades for middle class America were the 50's, 60's 70's. Reagan in the 80's ( although prosperous for many ) was the beginning of the end.

Middle Class America is in decline but most Americans don't yet know because it has not really affected them yet.

Stay tuned...

The authors of the study, "Cyber Security: A Crisis of Prioritization," warn that the current system is "highly vulnerable to attack" and urge a fundamental rethinking of how the nation's computing architectures and technologies should get deployed.