CEPR - Bat Boy Lives! As Do Myths About Social Security:
"The fact that a major Democratic presidential candidate could attack the front-runner in 2007, for not proposing a solution to a problem that is so relatively small and uncertain and nearly four decades away, is testimony to the power and durability of well-financed right-wing propaganda -- especially when there is no matching effort on the other side. The right spent more than two decades, and millions of dollars, discrediting Social Security with nothing more than verbal and accounting tricks - they never even bothered to make their own projections to compete with Social Security's Trustees. Some of the money that altered public opinion came straight from Wall Street financial firms who stood to make a fortune from privatization. These efforts should be regarded as one of the most successful disinformation campaigns in modern history. "

I had a previous link regarding Obama's Social Security errors but Mark Weisbrot makes it clear. This has been a thorn in the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society's sides for decades. They had near complete control of government and were going to make sure SS was killed. This is why the trillions being spent on the war and the billions of dollars in tax cuts don't matter to them: they want government destroyed. They want it bankrupt.

Dickey: The Real Cost of Iraq | Newsweek Voices - Christopher Dickey | Newsweek.com:
"It's been three years since President George W. Bush experienced what he called his 'accountability moment,' i.e., his re-election. And it's a year now since American voters sent a Democratic majority to the House and Senate on the delusional assumption they'd hold this administration responsible for what it's done to the United States and the world. We know how that hasn't happened. So why would the folks in the Bush White House be the least bit perturbed by publicity about the mind-boggling long-term costs of the war in Iraq that they rushed to wage? I don't think they are, and I wouldn't expect them to be. This is an administration that admits no guilt and knows no shame, and in that it is a perfect reflection of what America and Americans look like to the rest of the world."

Christopher Dickey articulates my feelings perfectly in a nicely written piece. They wanted to trash the government and they succeeded beyond measure. This is not funny.

Yochai Benkler: The Wealth of Networks:
"The critical shift represented by the networked information economy is that on the order of a billion people on the planet have the physical capacity to produce and communicate information, knowledge, and culture. This means, in the case of writing, millions or tens of millions of people, rather than a few thousand, get to write in ways that are publicly visible. Of necessity, there will be a wide range.

The probability that any newspaper, however well-heeled, will be able to put together the kind of legal analytic brainpower that my friend Jack Balkin has put together on his blog, Balkinization, is zero. They can't afford it. On the other hand, even the Weekly World News is tame and mainstream by comparison to the quirkiness or plain stupidity some people can exhibit. The range is simply larger. That's what it means to have a truly diverse public sphere.

If you want to find evidence of nonsense, as of course it is important to people whose sense of self-worth depends on the special role traditional mass media play in the public sphere, you will easily find it. If you want to find the opposite, that too is simple. What's left is to wait and see over time whether one overwhelms the other. As I wrote in the book, I do not think we are intellectual lemmings. I don't think we jump over the abyss of drivel, but rather that in this environment of plenty we learn to develop our own sense of which is which, and where to find what. Perfect information about all the good things, we won't have. But we don't have it now either. Instead we have new patterns of linking, filtering, recommendation, that allow us to do reasonably well in navigating a much more diverse and interesting information environment than mass media was able to deliver."

This is what scares the crap out of the current gatekeepers to information. A big big change is happening and they have no idea how to control it and monetize it. Because they can't.

via Kottke

A Real Nanopod: World's Smallest Radio From A Single Carbon Nanotube | Scientific Blogging: "
“The entire radio would easily fit inside a living cell, and this small size allows it to safely interact with biological systems,” Zettl said. “One can envision interfaces with brain or muscle functions, or radio-controlled devices moving through the bloodstream.”"

via Robot Wisdom