Thanks. What I would do would be to amplify what Kevin says about how the movie showed that there is a different response to terrorists than war.
And that the whole, “Why bother to understand another culture or try to make friends, let’s kick some ass!”

Hey, I didn’t know we could do reviews here! I wanted to review this movie! :-(
Oh well, I too loved the way they brought in the issue of drones and extra judicial killing.

Also I’m soo glad that Spock was the voice of reason, but that Kirk listened to him. Yeah my name sake.

One of the things that I’ve watched the right wing owned media do is use their status as “the press” as a shield to hide actions that are illegal. I’m not talking about getting leaks. I’m specifically talking about News Corp actions in the UK and the News of the World. They used massive privacy violations, phone and computer hacking, pay offs of public officials, thief and fraud to obtain information on celebrities, politicians and ordinary citizens.

There is some evidence that employees of News Corp have hacked into the phones of US private citizens (9/11 victims) yet this has not been exposed in the establishment press here. I know you can’t speak for the journalists at a paper or the management, but why wouldn’t someone like the New York Times pursue this story? Afraid to get into a pissing match with Fox?

I think we know why the government wouldn’t follow up, even if legit, Fox would use this as a rallying cry of victimization (and sadly I think that other media would join it, rather than saying, This is a legit inquiry)

A friend of my introduced the qui tam laws in California. They were used to expose some of the ridiculous waste in Reagan’s “Star Wars” programs. Of course they had classified all the information as “national secrets” so they believed they could classify all the excessive made up charges. To this day what we know about some of this fraud we only know because of the qui tam cases brought up in this area.

The other benefit for this kind of work is that the whistle can be a patriot and not lose his livelyhood. Because if you expose the gravy train the old, “You’ll never work in this industry again!” is very real.

I also want people to use this money to fund journalism and activism that the media used to do before they had their cash cow classified revenue cut out from under them.

Glenn Greenwald has pointed out time and time again in his Salon columns that the establishment press have misrepresented Assange. He has his theory’s what they did. What are yours?

I’m concerned that the press has failed in it’s role of watchdog. There are a number of cases of military contractors ripping of We the People (our government) and I don’t see the establishment press doing this kind of investigative journalism. Therefor I’ve been suggesting that whistleblowers look into Qui tam laws (which allow a private individual, or “whistleblower,” with knowledge of past or present fraud committed against the federal government to bring suit on its behalf. The private individual who assists a prosecution can receive all or part of any penalty imposed.)

What are your thoughts of whistleblowers using these laws as a way to affect change?

( when a whistle blower joins with a prosecutor to bring a case (say for example war profiteering) and gets a percentage of the money recovered.

Thank you for your response. One of the things that can happen with legit whistleblowers is that their lives are destroyed by bringing the truth to the public. By going through the established press it might give you extra credibility, but if your information is damning enough they will cover you anyway. What I have observed is that today’s press do not really want to be in the position of ‘afflicting the comfortable” If you bring the information to them they will not want to be perceived as being on anyone’s “side” so much so that when something is clearly a case of corporate malfeasance or right wing lies, they will not actively help the investigation but bend over backwards to provide balance even if it means creating fake balance.

Thanks for being here. I just read your bio. Wow. Since you hosted the show Digital Age I’d like to ask what are your thoughts on how regular citizens can becoming whistle blowers on important issues today. Since we now have access to “the press” we can “be the media” if we want.

We see is happening to Assange and Manning as well as other whistleblowers. How would you proceed today if you were a whistleblower? Would your actions be different if you were a whistleblower against a military contractor like Kellog Brown and Root vs. a private company?

I’m so old I remember when you needed “frogs” to stick flowers in.
(Read some kind of green foam brick that holds water)

One of the things I always hated to do was spray pesticides or fungicides on the roses. Even at a young age I knew it wasn’t good for the environment (or the people spraying it!) So sometimes I was stop spraying and get black spot or powdery mildew or aphids. Later when I first moved to California I figured out that the key to dealing with those problems with out chemicals was to buy ones that are naturally resistant in that part of the country.

Be sure to keep an eye out for Mrs. Spocko ;-)

When I learned about roses you had to go to the library get books on how to care for them, none of this “google it” stuff.

Of course I used the roses I grew in a feeble attempt to win favor of women at Star Fleet. I had one bush of white roses called Iceburg It was a florabunda and it had great output. I had about 8 of those bushes.

My favorite two were a deep red called, “Mr. Lincoln” and a two colored red and white called “Double Delight”. Great rose, really beautiful. Mr. Lincoln also had great long stems. The one thing I never did figure out was how to arrange the cut flowers. I still don’t know. I bought a bunch of tulips the other day and didn’t have a clue how to arrange them.

I don’t grow roses anymore. The weather in SF in my neighborhood (which is about one block from where Suzanne used to live) is foggy and my backyard is rarely sunny. So none for me. But if I wanted to be serious about growing things now I would be herbs and lettuse in a tub on our porch. But I haven’t yet.

I love roses. I started growing them back in the midwest where you had to cover them ever winter. It was always a crap shoot how to cover them and when to cover and uncover them.

I was the youngest member of our local Rose Society. I won ribbons and a trophy for best hybrid teas in the show by a novice. I was very excited. I love to get awards. But some of the things I was interested in don’t give out awards and trophies like all the sporting people give out.

I had a friend studying at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. He pointed out all the of ways that the RW Christians are violating what Jesus says when they hate on the gays. They often use the Old Testament as their reason, yet Jesus’ New Covenant with the people says that the love is supposed to supersede the Old Testament.
I wish I could bring him along with me when taking to gay hating Christians. “This man has a Ph.D. in theology he will explain to you how you are misreading the bible and are not following the word of Jesus Christ.”

Hi Folks!
Well FDL being out was quite a drag. Realized how much time I spend on it it reading.
I used to work with web hosting companies. The sad thing is that Rackspace probably has an agreement that says they have 99 percent up time and if they don’t provide it you don’t have to pay for the time you are down! Well say you pay 100 dollars a day for server space and bandwidth but you make 500 in ad revenue you only get 100 bucks they aren’t going to give you the 400 dollars in revenue you lost.
However since the outage lasted so long they just might have crossed the 99 percent uptime guarantee. If that is the case sometimes there is extra damages money you can get for lost revenue. Really high end hosting has deals like that, but I don’t know if Rackspace offers it.

At the end of the video they talk about scouts obeying the “scout law’ and keeping themselves “morally straight” I can hear them now. “It says it right there in the oath, MORALLY STRAIGHT!” we can’t change the scout law, it’s the law!