I've already voted. This was written 20 years ago, and has some quaintly dated passages, but I'm not as embarrassed by it as I thought I would be (It's been a while since I looked at it.)

http://motley-focus.com/future.html

>>Here's my final word (knock on wood). A link to a post I wrote awhile back:

"Star Trek Socialism"

http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=354<<

Well, good heavens, why did you let me sink into my own confused quagmire when you explained it so well?

Ya'll have made my birthday. Any conversation having to do with Star Trek rather than pure politics has got to cheer me up! Now I have to battle New Jersey drivers and forge a way to the airport.

I meant to say, are you thinking of "We"?

WT--a vote for the movie or the potential future? Or for Harrison Ford over Patrick Stewart ;)

I favored Rutger Hauer, or rather the Roy Batty character. Also Ridley Scott, whose real genius is entirely visual.

This is a particularly obscure yet misanthropic author (like there are only a few like that). I can't remember his name right now, but there is a Wiki entry on him so he wasn't that obscure.

Good to see your comments again after such a long absence. You've put your finger on the real dystopia, I think -- what happens to the nail which sticks up. Not unlike Blade Runner, come to think of it.

He's definitely an American author...

I think I should point out that Blade Runner only uses perhaps a third of the thematic material from Philip K. Dick's original novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? My roomates (none of whom knew Dick's work) went to see the movie on opening night (I had to work). Afterwards, I asked them about a string of six or seven thematic elements, and they just shook their heads "no" at most of them. The biggest omission, of course, is the Mercer Boxes.

This is from a brief online review:

Amidst all of this, a new religion has arisen called Mercerism. It's founder, Wilber Mercer, is an empath who is taking all of mankind's suffering upon his own shoulders. Adherents transmit their pain to him through Mercer Boxes and receive inner peace in return. Now Deckard has been given the assignment of retiring a gang of 8 andys and, to his own horror, he finds that he is starting to develop feelings of empathy for these humanoids while Mercer is telling him that it's wrong to kill the androids, but that he has to go ahead and do it anyway.

While all of Philip K. Dick's books give you the sense that they're set in worlds with many other intersting stories that could be told, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is one that just begs to be more fully explored.

...that started with the Iraq Occupation losing majority support in 2005 and continued with the 42-0 skunking of the Republicans in 2006 in party gains of Governorships, Senate seats and House of Representatitive seats has roots in more than White House war deceit, politicization of government and attacks on the Constitution. It also has roots in the actions of the .1% of the American people this administration actually cares about, and has

frightened and angered many of the 99.9% who aren't considered smart because we aren't rich yet, or at least born to those who are. In the last six years we have seen our pension funds plundered and our projected government benefits slashed. We have seen many Republican members of the federal and state legislatures devote their efforts to reducing the taxes on stock dividend, capital gains and inheritance income below the rate paid on wages. They have even threatened the income of M.D.s who spend their time practicing medicine instead of qualifying for management stock options. There is a certain core of right wing middle class wage-earners who identify with the rich even as they are robbed and lied to, but it looks like a some of them are waking up.

Idiocracy (2006) Mike Judge of Beavis and Butthead and Office Space fame

Most of you never heard about it, right?

http://www.amazon.com/Idiocracy-Luke-Wilson/dp/B000K7VHOG

Billmon observed it was probably loosely based on a satiric sci-fi short story by C.M. Kornbluth from the 1950's, "The Marching Morons".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons

Yes, I too, see something changing out there in the public domain. Glenn's observations and his reporting are appreciated here in Virginia.

Today I wrote David Broder a short letter. Here it is.

D. Broder,

What a pathetic article you wrote comparing "I don't recall" Gonzalez with

Harry Reid. One is a criminal who uses U.S. Attorneys as agents of the Republican

Party. If the attorneys don't cooperate, they are fired.

This story and the 101 acts of malfeasance by the Bush Administration don't interest

a toady like you. You have to be a Republican loyal to W, our disgraceful president.

The Washington Post has gone to the dogs and YOU, just an incompetent old dog

punching the clock.

Name

Address

Millions are abandoning the "traditional" media in favor of the internet. I for one refuse to buy a newspaper or watch network news, what isn't lies I can find online, and what is (most of it) I am not interested in. If I want TV news, I just watch the Daily Show or the Colbert Report. What I see on there, even though it's supposed to be fake, is more real than ABC CBS or NBC. I suspect there are a lot of people just like me too.

Oh, and for you trolls (you know who you are) a ha-ha-ha ha-ha. Your boy, along with his bloody and soiled underpants, is going down, and taking you with him...praise be to Jebus...

http://www.youtube.com/watch_fullscreen?video_id=jFfWKZrW74Y&l=362&t=OEgsToPDskLAn0aacaVs7cB05Wr0ogVp&sk=wHhjWMXyAVqDUX5N_FkkKgU&fs=1&title=Bob%20Dylan%20%20-%20%20Like%20A%20Rolling%20Stone

Try

http://tinyurl.com/

It will shorten those unwieldy URLs down to something that will fit on a page without hanging off the right side.

Tinyurl is free and no registration is required.

...if what anyone who tuned into the first Dem debate witnessed what happened(or didn't happen)when moderator Brian Williams asked the other candidates besides Kucinich to raise a hand if they would support his introduction for articles of impeachment against Cheney. Not a single one did, and the silence of the moment caught on camera is something that as an active Democrat deflated me somewhat. It reminded me of the same silence from other Democrat "leaders" when my Senator proposed the idea to censore Mr. Bush. Feingold later expressed some direct dissapointment with his colleagues by stating he couldn't believe why they would be so timid at a time when Bush's approval numbers were in the toilet and his credibility at the time was no better than suspect.

Here we are around a year later and Bush's standing after even more scandals and an election throwing Republicans out of both House and Senate majorities has to be at the very least no better, and yet all but one of the eight "contenders" still feel it's too risky to take this course? So far I have heard the call for impeachment come from only Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson, who stated that this act would go a long way towards signaling to the rest of the world that the American citizens could be counted on to hold thier leaders responsible for lying our country and others into a disastrous war. Besides an author at the L.A. Times bookfair on C-Span2 this weekend, there have been no others that come to mind.

Sea change? Seems more like a few people on the beach in Milwaukee dreaming they can skip a rock all the way to the Michigan coastline right now. I know most change originates from the grassroots, but it doesn't bloom if the elected "leaders" aren't ready to take the baton for the final sprint to the finish line. So far it doesn't seem any of them are even willing to show up for the track meet.