Apologies, Please.

Say you’re sorry, Bill Frist.

[I too am going to join the call. Frist first lied about the substance of Durbin's remarks, and then went on to compare Durbin with jihadists. During time of war - which is the case - this is an accusation of treason. Unless Frist has good evidence of same, his attack goes beyond reasonable partisan political language. - SSN].

This isn’t a debating society and it hasn’t been about ‘civilized discourse’ in a long time. The hard right has shown over and over they will defame, distort, smear, invade countries based on deliberate lies, defend their right to torture, slime anyone who disagrees with them, and in general use the Constitution for Kleenex - so I’m baffled why anyone on the left still thinks this is about being ‘reasonable.’ As if, darn it, we just need to convince those right wing folks to be reasonable again, and then things will be ok.

It ain’t gonna happen. There’s a cultural and political war going on. Let’s not pretend otherwise. Organizing, getting in the streets, mobilizing protests - that’s what’s needed. Not calls for the right to be ‘reasonable.’

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Online services like Feedburner provide blogs with custom RSS feeds, these feeds being the way blogs communicate with other blogs and sites. RSS is the magic that makes blogs happen, allowing them to get info out to the blogosphere quickly. These feeds are part of the blog software and are created automatically. Other sites and blogs can subscribe to them.

These online services also allow a user to create news aggregators, which is the ability to subscribe to and read multiple rss feeds and news sources in one place without having to go to the individual websites, a useful feature indeed.

However, there’s a growing trend of blogs using these online services as their sole rss feed, and this can be problematic. What if the online service goes down or goes out of business? What if they decide your content is “inappropriate?” Worse, and this is already happening, what if they insert ads into the feed?

Blogs should use their own rss feeds whenever possible. Yet that’s not always possible. Blogger and Movable Type do not have native support for podcasting, so these online services have stepped in and offer ways to kludge it. However this means the blog does not have direct control over their own podcast feed!

As far as I know, Radio UserLand (the blog software PoliZeros uses) is the only blog software that supports podcasting completely. It also has a news aggregator. I subscribe to 75 rss feeds in my Radio news aggregator, and that’s how I read most of my news. Then, with one click, I can pop a news item into the editor, edit it, add my own thoughts, then publish it. That is the magic of rss feeds.

Other blog software also needs to support podcasting natively as well as having news aggregators. Blog authors should not cede control of their site by allowing a third party website to create and publish their sole rss feed.

(PoliZeros does have a Feedburner rss feed and we think they are a great site - however this is a secondary feed, not our main or sole feed.)

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Outward bound in-flight movies feature Osama Bin Laden and his cohorts, and return trips almost always have guests on board who - as well as remaining seated with their seatbelts on - are blindfolded, gagged and shackled.

Welcome to the world of Aero Contractors Ltd, the private airline of the CIA hired to fly in the front-line of the war on terror.

Not a good airline to have frequent flier miles with.

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Former 66th Assembly District candidate Chuck Reutter said he has resigned from the Green Party of California, in part because of internal bickering and regional cliques he says exist within the group.

Reutter, the party’s most recognizable figure in Southwest County, issued an e-mail statement this week announcing his resignation. While Reutter said that he “met a lot of wonderful, well-meaning people who were active in the party,” he also indicated he was frustrated with its internal dynamics.

“A political party that dedicates most of its effort to internal politics cannot expand into other communities whose lives the party claims to improve,” Reutter said in the e-mail. “The fact that state party elections are preordained in advance of the state meetings resulting in the rubber stamp election of state and regional party officials was very disheartening.”

Santa Monica City Council member Kevin McKeown resigned a few weeks ago, for many of the same reasons.

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