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Slate RSS-less?
Is it possible that Slate has no RSS feed? I know Salon and Slate are always cast as competitors and all, and Words have been said in the past twixt them and us. But really, there's lots of good stuff to read there. As I move more and more of my attention away from my bookmarks and to my RSS reader, though, I find that I'm just not keeping up with RSS-less sites.
It would seem awfully strange to me for Microsoft -- a company that has said it is going to weave RSS through its next-generation operating system -- not to provide this basic service for its flagship content property. But if Slate has a headline feed, boy, it's well hidden! (Salon's, which we should probably do a better job of promoting, and which still needs some tinkering, is here -- caveat: If you're not using an RSS reader that link will probably look like a bunch of jammed together text -- and the War Room '04 feed should be up by tomorrow.)
Maybe Robert Scoble has the answer -- or can find one...
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Nazis and Norquist
The ad entries in MoveOn's Bush in 30 Seconds contest that likened Bush to Hitler sparked a national campaign by the Republican party, evoking pained expressions of outrage and horror that anyone would dare liken the perpetrator of the Florida putsch to the perpetrator of the Beer Hall Putsch.
Meanwhile, the arch-conservative anti-tax lobbyist (and close ally of the RNC) Grover Norquist gleefully continues his absurd campaign arguing that opponents of the Bush estate-tax-repeal giveaway are motivated by the same thinking that motivated the Holocaust. The full account in the Forward is here. (Thanks to Dan Gillmor for the link.) Read it -- it's hilarious. To Norquist, it seems that anyone who believes in fair taxation is a socialist, and anyone who is a socialist might as well be labeled a national socialist (never mind that the Nazis rounded up the real socialists when they rounded up the Jews, the gypsies, the gays and everyone else they didn't like).
Norquist's philosophy is, "kill the taxes and you kill the government" -- so why don't we all shut up and stand aside so he and his allies can "starve the [government] beast" until it is small enough "that it could be drowned in a bathtub"? (These are all actual quotes.)
I don't think Norquist, any more than Bush, is a Nazi. But I'll tell you: the guy's rhetoric suggests a seriously disturbed mind. You'd think the Secret Service might want to haul him in for making threats against the government. Unfortunately, in today's Washington, he practically is the government.
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Is there an audio doctor in the house?
Some posters in the comments have raised questions about the video link I posted on Friday, suggesting that it was somehow doctored. I think they're wrong.
I just compared an "official" video (this one, from the L.A. Times) to the amateur, "from the crowd" video, and there's no sign of any difference betwen the two. It's the same exact speech, viewed and heard from a different vantage point. Of course, from the second vantage, the picture looks different; the audio sounds different, too -- such that Dean's famous scream seemed like an almost inaudible coda, not a Yawp Heard Round the World. But there's no difference in the text of what Dean says, contrary to what one comment suggests.
You want to argue that this audio has been tampered with to "undeplay" the scream? Go ahead. You could just as easily argue that the "original" audio that Drudge linked to was tampered with to crank up the volume on the scream.
In fact, what all this most likely represents is the difference between the TV networks' audio feed, direct from the mike onstage, and the in-the-room PA system. I'm going to assume that no one is doctoring anything here until someone can offer some actual evidence.
Can we, uh, move on now?
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