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The Next Right

I’ve complained in the past about how ineffectual the right side of the blogosphere is; it’s part of the reason I grumble about how I “hate blogging,” in fact. Oh, yeah, we had Rathergate and the Reuters Fauxtography scandal, and a couple other things that hit critical mass, but that’s just a handful of things in the last four years or so. It’s nothing compared to the things the Nutroots gets done, and I’m not even talking about the enormous amounts of money they can raise compared to us.

The difference: While we talk about how they are negative–and they are–they’re also working FOR something. We’re just generally carping from the cheap seats, playing at punditry and media criticism. They’re getting the nutroots agenda heard on Capitol Hill regularly, and they even were able to take down a Senator who was once a Vice-Presidential candidate (Lieberman) in a primary. There’s no way Ned Lamont could have beaten Joe Lieberman in the primary without the Nutroots. And now, the conservative blogosphere is top-heavy with people who are largely lukewarm (or worse) toward our Presidential candidate, and more against the idea of a President Barack Obama. Well, it’s pretty much our own fault as a collective whole.

Enter The Next Right.

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The Next Right is a new project started by Patrick Ruffini, Jon Henke, and Soren Dayton, designed to foster political activism using technology like blogs and other Web 2.0 structures. Patrick Ruffini introduces it here:

If you’re looking for pure-play opinion and link bait on sundry topics from Ann Coulter to Jimmy Carter/Hamas, you won’t find it here. What you will find is in-depth (often unabashedly technical) writing about the election, the polls, the strategy, and the issues. Our analysis will track truth and stay true to the numbers. But it will self-consciously serve a greater purpose — educating YOU to be your own political strategist and start doing something — whether that’s blogging about your local Congressional race or Democratic corruption in your state, organizing fundraising drives, and maybe even managing races or running for office yourself. Only a revival of civic engagement at the grassroots level will create a conservative future we want: one that is pork-free and robust in the defense of our country and its values. We can’t call a switchboard and wait for Washington to fix the mess. We have to do it ourselves, from the ground up, in every state.
[...]
We don’t think this alone will solve the activism gap. Anyone who tells you that they alone have the answer is fooling you. This is not “the Daily Kos of the right.” What we’re hoping to do is create momentum and an intellectual framework for action — because action ultimately starts with narratives and ideas. We want grassroots conservatives and libertarians to start believing that they can make a difference again — a sense all too many have lost. Only you – and not some well-funded 527 — can bring the movement into the future. Only when grassroots conservative have a direct stake in the future of the party are we effective. The Next Right is about creating a vision for a 21st century Republican Party and conservative movement.

We need this. Desperately. Go read more about the how and whys of The Next Right, and sign up to be notified when it’s open for business. TAKE BACK CONTROL OF YOUR GOVERNMENT.

THIS MEANS YOU.

Some days, I hate Google traffic

I STG, it’s like Google sometimes exists (for me) just to bring aggravation in the form of asshat drive-by commenters. Last week, I added at least five white supremacists to The Ban List who descended on the Rozita Swinton post, and yesterday I added a professional troll. The others who bother to comment are almost always either painfully stupid and write like brain-damaged teenagers texting messages to their dumbass friends, they’re dumping massive copypasta, or they’re stupid moonbats spewing their Barry Obama/Howard Dean-supplied talking points. And it’s always on older posts, which means I never get to enjoy a good old-fashioned beat-down on the offenders with the regulars here. Not that a beating is really necessary, when at least 99% of the time they’re just drive-bys anyway. Failtrolls fail.

Sorry, I just had to vent. It’s nice having decent Google search results - it does bring in traffic - but damn, the traffic quality suuuucks.

Internet Fuckwad Theory

I swore I wasn’t going to turn this into a Photoshop blog, but…

Chris found the goatse’d Obama logo for me. Yay! (I was dreading having to cut out the hands from the original myself.)

Obama Goatse

Still feeling too lazy to do any real blogging, even though it’s PA election day. I’m sure I’ll figure something out later.

Stupid American Idol is on tonight, and dammit, I wanna watch the election coverage instead of live-blogging AI idiocy. I think we’ll live-blog AI *and* the election stuff at the same time–just mix it all up into one big hatefest. Vote for None of the Above! (Be here!)

Charlie the Unicorn 2! !!!!!!

OMG OMG OMG I had no idea there was a new one out!!! Thank you, Mesablue! You are so the Banana King!

(For the uninitiated, where the hell have you been? Okay, here’s the first one, n00bs.)

Chaaaarlieeee! There’s no stopping the vortex, Charlie! FUUUGUUUU!

Crucial National Poll Results: 18 million-plus Americans Rickrolled

Clearly, I have not been living up to my responsibilities.

Nationally, the number is 6% — and multiplied out by 300 million Americans, that means at least 18 million Americans have been on the receiving end of the prank. Note that this is likely an underestimation, as the poll was unable to include those under the age of 18. Full results are here.

UPDATE: Best Rickroll ever? HAHAHAHA!

woot is killing my blog

Sorry, I’ve been glued to woot for the last day and a half waiting for a Bag O’ Crap. I’ll be back when the woot-off is over.

In the meantime, will someone please go buy some of those $5.99 2GB SD cards so we can get to the BOC? (Buy three!)

Blogburst: Network Solutions Dhimmis Take Down Geert Wilders’ Anti-Jihad Website

COWARDS!

AMSTERDAM, March 23 (Reuters) - A U.S.-based web service, which Islam critic and Dutch right-wing lawmaker Geert Wilders planned to use to show his film critical of the Koran, said on Saturday that it had inactivated the site due to complaints.

“This site has been suspended while Network Solutions is investigating whether the site’s content is in violation of the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy,” the company said on the site www.fitnathemovie.com

Wilders, who has given few details about his 15-minute film, has said he plans to release ‘Fitna’ on the Internet before the end of the month after Dutch broadcasters declined to show it. Fitna is a Koranic term sometimes translated as “strife”.

Mac’s Mind has organized a blogburst–here’s what you need to do:

Here are the contact numbers and emails. Contact them, flood the call reps and demand they reinstate the site immediately or you will no longer use their services.

Phone: 1-800-333-7680, outside the US 1.570.708.8788.

Bloggers who want this important movie on the truth of Islam to go forward make sure you continue the blogburst.

I’m in…are you? You don’t need a blog to pick up the phone and/or send an email.

Question: You think Network Coward Solutions would take down a site hosting a film critical of Christianity? (Obvious answer: Almost certainly not.)

Muslims Against Sharia:

Muslims Against Sharia neither endorse nor condemn “Fitna”; we have not seen the film. However, we find it disturbing that Network Solution suspended “Fitna” website while hosting a multitude of radical Islamic websites, some of which belong to (or are closely affiliated with) terrorist groups.

Exactly.

More about the film Fitna; also at Wikipedia (usual Wikipedia caveats apply).

More ridiculously unserious stuff

The Rick Roll Firefox extension: It’s “like the whole internet ganging up and rick rolling you at the same time.” God, I love the silliness of the internets.

RollTube - the rick roll firefox extension from fffffat labs on Vimeo.

Who ever said the internet was just a series of tubes, anyway?! (FAIL!)

Internet Flashback

This is pretty cool–wanna see what the internet looked like in the mid-90’s (eons ago, in internet time)? God, it sucked back then. Imagine how much better it will/should be ten years from now.

Lately, I’ve started collecting old VHS tapes about the Internet from the early- to mid-1990s. While most of these are pretty corny — think Gabe and Max’s Internet Thing — they also inadvertently captured pieces of the web that don’t exist anywhere else. The Internet Archive’s earliest snapshots were in late 1996, so anything before that is extremely sparse. The videos, silly as they are, still represent valuable documentation of the early web.

I spent most of the day yesterday working on a workflow to digitize VHS tapes, settling on VCR to MiniDV camera my Macbook Pro with Firewire. These tapes are pretty worn, so the quality’s not great, but that almost adds to their charm.

Here’s the result: the first volume of a two-tape collection called “Internet Power!” from 1995. I’ve included some select quotes and screenshots below.

This is just the video, but you need to go read the quotes and links, too.

Pics or it didn’t happen: The commenter funeral

1. Pwn some uberfail trolls.

2. ???

3. Profit!

Same schtick, different setting: The Commenter Business Meeting.

Don’t understand it? A complete explanation of the terms used is here.

stein hoist Digg (where else?) with the usual critiques in the comments.

I’m Kike And I’m Proud!

You’ll have to wade through it for about 45 minutes, but it’s there.

Hillary hates kittens

And she wears crocs, too.

I know, I posted stuff like this yesterday. With this one you can submit your own. :D

stein hoist Janette

Don’t Blend Me, Bro!

Gotta love the scream, too. ;)

This one’s for raz0r.

(The Beach Boys? Damn right there’s no Beach Boys!)

Can’t sleep?

Maybe this is you too?

duty calls

stein hoist Sandmonkey (from his Facebook)

Anonymous is Legion!

This may be teh best viral internet act evar.

CLEARWATER - Members of Anonymous, a Scientology protest group, marched around downtown Clearwater today holding anti-Scientology signs and wearing wigs, sunglasses, bandanas or hats to disguise their identities.

Most wanted to remain anonymous, fearing retribution from Scientologists, they said.

Scientologists coerce members into paying exorbitant amounts of money, ostracize loved ones they believe to be a danger to the church and harass and stalk critics, said Anonymous member Joshua Nussbaum, a 19-year-old protest organizer.

About 80 protesters, many of whom were in their late teens or early 20s, came out when the event started about 11 a.m. today, Nussbaum said. He said the number swelled to about 180 in the early afternoon.
[...]
Issues between Anonymous and Scientologists sprung up recently after video clips from actor Tom Cruise, a church member, appeared on the Internet. Scientology officials said the clips were copyrighted and asked for them to be removed from YouTube and other sites.

Anonymous then posted a video announcing a campaign to destroy the church and calling for worldwide protests today, Nussbaum said. He said Anonymous felt Scientologists’ actions regarding the clips encroached on freedom of speech.

Worldwide? Check.

Yeah, it’s mostly a bunch of kids, but how great is it that they’re out causing grief for Scientologists? LULZ. They did this today because this would be Lisa McPherson’s birthday, but the cult killed her.

More links here. Also here. Find a ~~Church~~ Cult of $cientology to annoy sometime here.

Newsweek has more about Anonymous vs. the Cult of Scientology.

The attack, says Anonymous, was spurred at least in part by what they consider to be the latest example of the church’s secretive and litigious nature. Earlier this year, an internal 2004 church interview with Tom Cruise was leaked online. The actor, who called being a Scientologist a “blast,” was seen railing against the practice of psychiatry and boasting, among other things, “we are the authorities of the mind … we can bring peace and unite communities.” The church attempted to have the videos taken down from the gossip site Gawker, claiming the material was copyrighted, selectively edited and that Cruise’s performance was meant for private consumption. It’s an argument that does have legal merit. “As I understand it, Scientology has a lot of internal documents and when people try to publish them, Scientology seeks to stop them under copyright law,” Eugene Volokh of the UCLA School of Law tells NEWSWEEK. “The fact is under American law they’re entitled to take their unpublished works and use copyright law to protect them.”

Here’s a video from the head of the Scientologists’ niece, who has left the cult.

Anonymous vs. Scientology Did you know the Cult of Scientology has tax-exempt status? You can thank Slick Willie Clinton and the IRS for that. It’s an expensive, dangerous cult, and they get tax-exempt status. You can help change that. Get informed.