This is a simple diary, there's not a lot to say. I also cross posted a modified version of this on my blog (Left in Lowell) and Blue Mass Group.

For me, not watching the Chinese-hosted Olympics isn't the biggest sacrifice I'll make this summer. (That honor goes to the work I'll be doing to help with this very cool Obama fundraiser, "National Anthem" which my musically-inclined friends at Blue Mass Group are planning. If you're in the Boston area in September, consider buying a ticket.)

No, I'm not the biggest watcher in the country of either the summer or winter Olympics, but this year, I will not watch one damned second of the Games. Why? Because though the Olympics are supposed to be a symbol of cooperation and open spirit, China has actually become more repressive in the lead up to the opening ceremony.

I can't believe no one else caught this, it's so very important and a great development in the ongoing fight to preserve net neutrality - that ability for us to be able to access what we want, when we want it, through the internet, without Comcast or Verizon telling us otherwise, or charging us a premium for it.

Yesterday, there was a public FCC hearing in Cambridge, MA. I couldn't make it to the event, but it was well attended, and the proponents of net neutrality were very well-spoken. WBUR's Curt Nickisch reported on the hearing (you can listen or read the transcript here):

NICKISCH: ...The regulatory panel is investigating how the cable company and Internet provider Comcast is restricting so-called peer-to-peer file sharing. Comcast executive David Cohen vigorously defended his company's right to manage traffic, saying the network would otherwise crash. So he said his company sometimes slows the high bandwidth traffic of some of its customers.

[Cross posted at my own blog, Left in Lowell. The special election to replace Marty Meehan (D-MA) is on October 16th!! Please help if you can! We're in the fight of our lives...]

This sounds like standard Republican lying and fear-mongering - not to mention, smearing an opponent. And did I mention lying? [Link is to a Blue Mass Group posting about a very inflammatory anti-immigrant flyer sent by the Ogonowski campaign.]

Does anyone else think that the so-called "independent" "I'm-not-a-Bush-head" Ogonowski is getting a little direction on his campaign from somewhere else...like, the national Republican party hacks who made immigration their main focus in the last couple of years?

I settled in to watch the second to last (I think) debate of the MA-05 special election between the five candidates vying to replace Rep. Marty Meehan (D) who left earlier this year. Candidates Niki Tsongas (D), Jim Ogonowski (R), Kurt Hayes (I), Patrick Murphy (I), and Kevin Thompson (Constitution Party) gathered on an NECN platform for a televised debate.

As noted in my previous diary, we in the Fifth District of Massachusetts are in the middle of a special election to replace Rep. Marty Meehan, who's leaving to become Chancellor of U-Mass Lowell. (I also mentioned my own endorsement of state Rep. Jamie Eldridge in that diary, and the reasons therein.)

However, now you can get a look at the candidates for yourself. I got permission to post the video of the debate on Iraq (held May 23) online, and for the past five days I've neglected my own blog as I spent most of my spare time working to get all the video clips of the May 23rd Chelmsford Iraq/foreign policy debate online. (Yeah, I know, cry me a river...) Well, I may be no video guru, but I managed to finally get it done.

We're well under way in the special election in the MA fifth congressional district to replace Representative Marty Meehan, who is stepping down to become chancellor of the University of Lowell. I thought some commentary from a progressive local blogger (I blog at Left in Lowell) who's keenly watching the race might interest some readers.

First, I will give you a general rundown, and then the biased view, as I have endorsed a candidate in this race already, and I really want to share why you should be excited and interested to see this person get to Congress.

Outgoing Rep. Meehan, you may recall, has gotten some virtual print here and elsewhere for his massive campaign coffers, which he did not open for 06 Democratic candidates. He's also famous for: his strong support of the campaign finance bill that bloggers loved to hate for its potential impact on their coverage of campaigns; and his staff's deletion from the Meehan Wikipedia entry of the mention of his broken campaign promise to stick to only four terms. (It appears to be back, which is only to be expected.)

[Crossposted on Left in Lowell.]

Beat the Press today called their on-the-outs with the blogosphere last week "an education." At least they seem still interested in learning - that's something.

As I already stated here, they did address some of those core gripes, though they missed a couple points. As a "media critique" sort of show, they are well within their mission to look into the reporting of the NYTimes in their original story about bloggers, so I disagree with Dan Kennedy - if the NYT story seemed incomplete, they should have at least mentioned that. And word to the wise, when reporting what other media says, it might behoove you to talk about the caveats that were in the story.

[Cross posted at my blog, LeftinLowell.com.]

Great Way to Wake Up at 7AM on a Sunday

My alarm clock is set to WBUR and I was having trouble waking up early for a meeting this morning until...

They reported that the Boston Globe has endorsed [grassroots progressive candidate for governor] Deval Patrick!

David [of Blue Mass Group], who was up way too freaking late last night or rather, was up way to late blogging (dude, do you have a life?? heh), beat me to the announcement.

In choosing a governor to run the state, voters look for executive experience, wise issue positions, and the intangible quality of leadership. It is a rare thing when a candidate has all three.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Cross-posted at BOPnews.com]

Ever since I read parts of Jeremy Rifkin's book, The Hydrogen Economy, I've been intrigued by the possibility of true energy freedom - not just from wars in carbon-producing countries or from Big Oil, but energy independence for individuals. Rifkin outlines a possible future where most, or all of us are responsible for generating our own renewable sources of energy, and selling the excess to the grid where others can purchase it. Your location - sunny Arizona or windy Chicago or the coast of Rhode Island - would dictate what type of renewable energy you produced, and you would store it in the form of water split into one of its components, hydrogen. When you need power, say, at night when your solar panels aren't useful, your hydrogen battery kicks in, producing water from the hydrogen - and electricity. You would probably fill your car at your own individual pump, right at home, with that hydrogen as well.

[Posted from my blog, Left in Lowell.]

A must-read book this summer if you are so inclined is Greg Palast's Armed Madhouse. I'm only 83 pages (less than a quarter in) and I've learned more [in the book] then in five years of mainstream media consumption.

Palast illuminations with astounding clarity and levity, through his investigative reporting over the years, the origins of the current Iraq war and the motives of the people who perpetrated it. It was indeed not a war for oil. No, in fact, Palast tells us right in the front cover, there were two wars for oil - two competing war plans, one from the State Department which favored oil companies, and the other created by the neo-conservatives in the Pentagon. The State Department planned a quick toppling of Saddam and return to the status quo afterwards; the neo-cons wanted to topple Saddam, privatize everything in the new US-occupied Iraq, especially the oil and oil infrastructure, and break the back of OPEC by increasing production beyond the OPEC quota.

[Crossposted on my blog, Left in Lowell. A couple of additions/comments added in brackets from the original post.]

Everyone is talking today on the [Massachusetts] blogs about the "amicable separation" of the Goodridges, the [gay] couple whose lawsuit went before the State Supreme Court and changed the face of legal marriage in Massachusetts. A lot of people are wondering what this means for the discussion of gay marriage.

Yesterday, after reading a letter by Josh Silver of FreePress.net on Altercation, regarding the launch of StopBigMedia.com, I wrote a post on my limited-readership local political blog based in Lowell, Massachusetts regarding that launch and the proposed FCC media ownership rules changes which prompted that coalition. I also once again banged the drum of Net Neutrality, which I have been writing about for a while now. As a web designer for small businesses, and a blogger, I know exactly how much the defeat of a law forcing Net Neutrality forever will affect me, my business, my customers, and my readers. I'm knowledgeable enough to understand the technical and practical ramifications. I know that we need to keep the internets fair and equal for all.

But it appears the big telcos are getting savvy about the internet too. My blog was noticed by what appears to be a paid shill for the so-called "Hands off the Internet" coalition, which has already been determined to be a corporate propaganda group. They deceptively pose as "grassroots."

[Cross posted at my blog, LeftinLowell.com]

Let this be a lesson - know your rights, and fight for them, even if it's a pain in the ass. Oh, and boycott Hannafords, if you don't like corporate intimidation to get in the way of the civic duty of citizens.

Your humble blogger was threatened with arrest today by an intimidation tactic which seems common across the state [of Massachusetts, probably across the country].

[Crossposted from my own blog, Left in Lowell, and BOPnews.com. I'm not accusing any particular blog of falling for this, but I didn't see much discussion about the Republicans' use of this issue as yet another wedge for their next election...and I've come to believe this should be the only way we talk about this current immigration debate. Sometimes, it's really not about the issue itself. --Lynne]

There are moments in your political life when you hit yourself in the forehead and say, "d'oh! We've all been punked." It took my husband to point it out to me, which is why I married him - he's an incredibly smart man and  independent thinker.

Last night I drove in to take the T [the subway] to Boston to meet Chris after work. We had a lovely date night. On the red line home, the conversation (as it nearly always does) turns political. The topic? What everyone is talking about, of course. The current immigration debate.

I don't know if this has been diaried about yet...I mean, everything gets diaried about here so I doubt this is new. I did some searching and found nothing, so I decided to post this because I can't believe it's happening without a whimper from almost everyone.

[Crossposted on my blog, Left in Lowell.]

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I do not pretend to understand all the technical issues or applications of this latest attack on a fair and free internet by large corporations, but it boils down to this: Comcast- and Verizon-type companies want more money, and they want to charge you, and the websites you want to view, for the privilege of carrying the data.

Today is Christmas day, and I'm guessing if you looked at American rates of charitable giving throughout the year, you'd see us as most generous in the month of December.

So puzzle me this: why is it we have warm, fuzzy feelings for giving donations to charity but not when our tax dollars are used to help the less fortunate?

With the former, people believe they have done their part in alleviating poverty or helping feed a child and they are lauded. With the latter, I hear the same tired litany about why should their hard-earned money be taken from them and given to some lazy single mother who can't pull herself up by her own bootstraps?

We here in the northeast US are getting whacked with a seasonal winter storm today. It'll be done by tonight, thank goodness, because tomorrow is BlogLeft Massachusetts, the blogger conference, or meet, or gathering, I'm not sure what to call it.

I expect it'll be both a modest meeting and also a powerful one. Sure, it's small, with about 30 people attending; but most of the liberal Massachusetts blogging community will be represented, including lots of people who are traveling out from the west of the state (I hope the roads are cleared on time!). At last count, four state candidates will stop by to meet and greet. We'll talk and brainstorm and hopefully come up with some innovative ways to use blogging to forward the progressive agenda.

The conference will be live blogged by some great bloggers tomorrow HERE at Political Cortex, so check it out!

(My previous diaries on this here and here.)

In a previous diary, I outlined what we in Massachusetts are planning for December 10th - our first bloggers meeting, BlogLeft Massachusetts, a convention of Massachusetts bloggers and blog-interested folk. BlogLeft Massachusetts will be held in Worcester, MA on December 10th, 2005, from 10:30am to 4pm at Tatnuck Bookseller & Cafe. This is your last chance to register for BlogLeft! Get your registrations in this week! Read more details after the flip.