If you don’t know, Michael Steele is the new chairman of the RNC. Real tough race he had to run. He’s black, and he ran against a guy who belonged to an all-white country club and another guy who mailed out CDs with “Barack the Magic Negro” on them.  Yeah, that’s a toughie.

But Michael Steele is a horse’s ass wrapped in a dumb mother fucker. Honestly, like half the stuff this guy says is just DEAD wrong. Not even stuff that’s up for debate. He probably thinks that global warming is caused by dinosaurs knitting sweaters in space.

So the other day Michael Steele said that the government doesn’t create any jobs, they just create work.

Michael Steele is right, but for the wrong reasons.

When the government doles out a bunch of funding to repave a road for example, that creates work (a job in the terms of a ‘task’). The work is then performed by a company that has given people jobs (a job in the terms of ‘employment’). The government job/task is a temporary thing, but so is any job/task from the private sector. If I need my driveway repaved, I call up a construction company. I’m not going to put them on a mother fucking retainer for the rest of my natural born life, that’s just fucking stupid.

So while Michael Steele is correct that the government stimulus and infrastructure spending won’t create any employment jobs directly, and are just temporary fixes, he’s wrong about that being a deterrent from doing them. They will indirectly create jobs through the increased temporary demand, and then the new surge of employment should replace the demand that is lost when the government spending finishes.

Yes this was short, but Michael Steele is a phenomenally incompetent individual, and I legitimately do not want to waste any more of my time on someone so insignificant, until he does something tremendously stupid… again.

Joe La Sac in conjunction with Pepperspray Production and Seattle Independent Media will be showing “Ground Noise and Static” in the University of Puget Sound’s Rotunda at 7pm on November 3rd.  The film chronicles the experiences of demonstrators at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions and their clashes with police.  A discussion is planned for after the showing. Here’s Joe’s detail for the film:

Our goal at the DNC and RNC conventions was to cover what was happening in the streets, not to obtain passes for the scripted and superficial showcases going on inside the armored fortresses. This included a 10 to 15 minute daily video dispatch as well as blogs from each convention. The daily video dispatches are viewable online and were also aired on cable television via Free Speech TV.

If you can’t make the showing, be sure to watch the film here. It discusses use of excessive police force and other law-bending actions at the DNC/RNC that ARE NOT being covered by the mainstream media.

Our goal at the DNC and RNC conventions was to cover what was happening in the streets, not to obtain passes for the scripted and superficial showcases going on inside the armored fortresses. This included a 10 to 15 minute daily video dispatch as well as blogs from each convention. The daily video dispatches are viewable online and were also aired on cable television via Free Speech TV.

Ground Noise and Static was a week-long editing effort between several members of PepperSpray Productions and was directed by Franklin Lopez from subMedia.

This documentary will be shown at UPS, WWU, TESC, and possible UW in the next couple of weeks. I will keep you updated on that.

(DON’T FORGET TO REFRESH FOR UPDATES.)

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This Thursday, for the first time in the history of the universe, The Melon’s Electric Elliot will be live-blogging the Vice-Presidential debate. Who’s winning? Who’s losing? Can one really win a lose a debate with this magnitude of pandering? One thing is for sure, with Electric Elliot at the helm (yes, I’m speaking in 3rd person) everyone will be burned.

Join me at 6pm PST and for an hour and a half of pure verbal murder on these Veep hopefuls. Who came up with Veep anyway? Isn’t VP abbreviated enough? F*cking media idiots!

Civil libertarian Chuck Samuelson, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, talks about the history and causes of Republican and Democrat convention “federalization”. The UPTAKE is an independent media laboratory, and one of the places where myself and others had used for creating our own content.

Click “more” to see the video.

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New York Post photographer Jason Nicholas snapped a photo of me just before his own camera was blown apart by a police riot weapon and then was himself arrested and taken into police custody on Labor Day 2008.

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Without the support of possibly hundreds of community members and others from Minneapolis, St. Paul, Tacoma (and elsewhere) behind me, the police would not have paid any attention to the “journalists” in their jail cells this week. Society and especially the authoritarian organizations such as the police forces do not recognize non-corporate reporters with independent agendas as worthwhile members of an already established media elite. Therefore, there is no “freedom of the press” for us.

Without a loud voice from our viewers, supporters, and our friends, the message would not have gotten through to the authorities in St. Paul. Thank you.

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I would like to tell a story about someone I met in the Ramsey County Jail this week, whom later I found out was tortured by police in the Ramsey County Jail.

Myself, along with eleven others detained at the RNC were sitting in a holding cell, waiting to be dressed in orange jumpsuits and sent to the ‘general population’ of inmates. The police outside were well prepared to control crowds with the weapons they were afforded by the US Federal Government. But inside the jail the resources were fairly low. We had to share blankets, we were not allowed showers, and many of us had to wait until the pepperspray and effects of other weapons wore off (or we were released from the jail) before feeling better.

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Word on the street is our friend Joe was arrested once again filming protests at the RNC. Take a look:

Obviously it’s preposterous for journalists to be arrested in these situations, but it would seem that the group of protesters who were knocking over newspaper dispensers, littering the streets and pushing cops had some force coming. This footage brings about an interesting discussion though.

Is it correct to use the sort of force depicted in this video to get your point across? This group likely felt disenfranchised and frustrated with how they were being treated, but it is effective to act out in this manner? What do you think?

Furthermore, what can citizens do to prevent journalists from being arrested like those that have been at the DNC and RNC? If there isn’t freedom of press, it sounds a lot like chaos.

Good luck, Joe.