Video: Kid dragged by his dog

It's hard to tell with these whether they're planned, this one might have been. Still, it's cute.  (Though if I saw this happening to a kid, unplanned, I wouldn't be sitting there giggling.)

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We are the party of the new middle class

AMERICAblog reader Stephen pens a few thoughts on yesterday's health care victory:

We are the party of the "new middle class", that segment of the population that's been decimated by the Republican party. The wage earners upon whose backs JP Morgan, Bank of America, AIG, and the rest of the Republican constituency balance their checkbooks. The families who, from 2000-08 lost a substantial amount of their retirement savings.

We are the ones who bore the brunt of declining home values. We lost a generation to student loan debt (I've been screaming about this issue since 2000). Our salaries have lagged significantly behind the pace of inflation. We use our credit cards to buy groceries. We are at the mercy of an upper class that controls an overwhelming amount of the nation's resources.

They've suppressed wages, partnered with for profit higher education to exponentially increase the cost of obtaining a degree, while at the same time loaning vast amounts of money to 18 year-old kids who become trapped by what one writer many years ago called her "brain's mortgage". How can someone get a decent job without a college degree, yet how could the "old middle class" afford an education without selling their souls to the financial industry?

We are the party that will get you affordable health care, we are the party that will help ease the burden of student loans and rein in education costs.

We are the party that will save your retirement by keeping social security and ensuring continued growth in your 401k.

We are the party that will develop strategies so that the labor market will become a competitive free market again, increasing wages, allowing skilled workers more mobility.

We are the party that will restore home values.

We are the party that will keep your drinking water safe and your air clean.

We are the party that will rebuild our infrastructure.

We are the party that killed Bin Laden.

We told you we'd get Bin Laden and we got him. They told you they'd get him and they failed. They saw Bin Laden as another opportunity to profit at your expense. Your kids die, while Halliburton gets rich.

We are the party that will reduce reliance on foreign oil. How many electric cars and hybrids have reached market over the past 4 years?

They are the party of the rich. They want your money in their pockets, along with your Congressman. They want to pad their bank accounts with taxpayer dollars. They want you to fund their risky investments and bail them out when they fail over and over again. They don't want to pay taxes, at least not at the same rate you do. They don't want to pay for pollution control. They don't want a mobile workforce who ceases to be held hostage by the fear of losing their insurance if they dare speak up about working conditions or wages. They don't want you to keep your tax breaks. They want to keep you desperate and in debt…to them. They want you to be distracted by promises they never intend to keep - see: gay marriage, see: flag burning, see: abortion.

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U.S. Embassy hosts Laos’ first-ever LGBT Pride event

Okay, this is very cool.  The embassy didn't just help sponsor the event, they actually gave their sports field for hosting the event (which gives the event extra gravitas).  From US Embassy Laos:

With support from the U.S. Embassy, Laos held its first-ever Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride event on June 25 in Vientiane. The event, called “Proud to be Us!”, was produced by a group of young Lao LGBT activists and featured music, dance, skits, and dramas exploring issues faced by LGBT people in Laos today, such as discrimination, gender roles, and sexual health.

More than 100 people attended the event, which took place on the sports field of the U.S. Embassy. The guests of honor were U.S. Ambassador Karen Stewart and Dr. Bounpheng Philavong, Director of the Center for HIV/AIDS/STI (CHAS) at the Lao Ministry of Health. During their remarks, both Dr. Bounpheng and Ambassador Stewart congratulated the event organizers for taking an important first step to achieving full acceptance of LGBT people in Lao society.

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The Minitel - truly the first "public" Internet - is gone

The French have pulled the plug on the Minitel, their early experiment (launched in 1982) in creating a public Internet for shopping and other services.

France pulls the plug on the Minitel this weekend, a home-grown precursor of the Internet which brought on-line banking, travel reservations and even sex chats to millions a decade before the World Wide Web.

In a country where resistance to all things “Anglo-Saxon” runs deep, the Minitel evokes both pride at French technological prowess and regret that the country failed to capitalize on the commercial online network, launched in 1982.

By its peak in the late 1990s, some 25 million people in France were using Minitel’s 26,000 services, ranging from checking the weather to buying clothes and booking train tickets.

I remember ads in the Paris Metro would have four digit numbers placed in the corner, that was their Minitel address. Just 4 digits. Made it relatively easy to remember. Rather cool for 1982. Read the rest of this post...

Video: Under the Namibian sky

Chris' wife Joelle just sent me another of those cool videos where they're able to capture the Milky Way.

I get the whole notion of leaving the shutter open a while, but I'm still curious EXACTLY how they do this? Will a good camera capture the milky way like this if the lens stays open half a minute? It sure never happens on my pocket cameras. Or do you have to be in a place like Namibia, where the night sky is unpolluted by light?

The only times I recall seeing the Milky Way are at the beach at night, just as I approached the water. Probably the best stars I've ever seen were on the border of the desert in Morocco. I couldn't believe the number of stars visible. A local bedouin couldn't fathom why I was so amazed. Sadly, this was at the beginning of my digital camera phase, so I only had a cam that took like 50k photos. Sad.

Anyone an expert on this?

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Listen to Gaius today at 3pm Eastern on Ring Of Fire Radio

From Ring of Fire Radio:

Gaius Publius from America Blog will be joining us to talk about how progressives can create powerful, meaningful political movements – movements that can’t be hijacked by a political party.

UPDATE: Rebroadcast on Sunday at 8pm EST. Live Internet stream available.
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The Clash - London Calling

I'm over in London today for Netroots UK. It's a one day event in central London for progressives. I'll be heading over in a bit and am looking forward to meeting up with people and seeing what UK bloggers are doing and talking about. Healthcare is also a big issue these days in the UK as the Conservatives are scheming to unravel the current system and make it more like the disaster that we know of in the US. This is odd since despite the bashing, the NHS (the UK's national health care system) ranks substantially higher than the US system according to the WHO and it's not even close. Read the rest of this post...