I don’t have anything against all blue dogs. I have a sincere appreciation for Blue’s Clues, especially back from the old days of Steve as the host. Kids have a warm and friendly kind of interaction with that animated character. That blue dog is safe and reliable.

I can’t say the same about the Blue Dog Coalition, that group of right wing Democrats in the House of Representatives that has made its mission the destruction of every piece of progressive legislation it can get its hands on. They wrecked health care reform. They kicked climate legislation in the teeth. They pushed for anti-choice amendments every chance they got.

What did we get as a result of these antics from the Blue Dog Democrats? We got 2009 as a year in which the Democrats had more political power than they’ve had in a generation, and yet had extremely little to show for it. The Blue Dogs’ betrayal of the progressive Democratic base opened up populism for the Tea Party, and made Sarah Palin look principled in comparison.

So, I identify a great deal with the sentiment expressed on this political button: Blue Dogs belong on children’s TV, not in the US Congress.

The New York Times reported last week on the existence of a newly expanded FBI program of surveillance in which their agents spy, often covertly, on people and groups in America when there is no evidence of any wrongdoing. These people and groups are targeted by the FBI for surveillance on the basis of their political opinions, their religion, and/or their race. They’re going into unsuspected and unsuspecting churches and other places of religious worship for purposes of “assessment.”

But in the midst of all this subterfuge and skullduggery, there’s one thing the FBI would like to make perfectly clear. Now that they’ve had to admit that this program exists, they insist that we not call it “spying,” because then we’d get upset, and they don’t want us to be upset. They want us to call it something else, but they don’t suggest what.

Well, alrighty then! If we can’t be straightforward and call it the FBI Domestic Spying Program, we’ll have to call it something else, and we’ll have to give it our own name.

To get this process underway, Irregular Times has declared a contest to name the FBI’s non-spying spy program. Last week we asked you to submit your suggestions for the program name, and now it’s time for voting to begin.

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So come on now, get out that twitchy Election Day finger and vote for your favorite! The person whose suggestion proves most popular will win a free 4th Amendment button to be shipped to their home or any other address in the U.S., including 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Then it will be up to you and me to make the FBI program’s new name stick.

The New York Times reports today that the FBI has instituted a newly expanded program in which their agents spy, often covertly, on American people and groups who are suspected of no crime whatsoever. Rather, people are targeted by the FBI for surveillance on the basis of their political opinions, their religion, and/or their race. But the FBI insists that we not call it “spying,” because the idea that our government spies on us will upset us, and the dears at the FBI don’t want us to be upset. As FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni put it after admitting the existence of this program:

I don’t like to think of us as a spy agency because that makes me really nervous. We don’t want to live in an environment where people in the United States think the government is spying on them. That’s an oppressive environment to live in and we don’t want to live that way.

If the FBI wants to spy on innocent people on the basis of their political opinions or religion or race, but they don’t want Americans to think of it as a “spying” program, then let’s be upfront: they’re going to need all the public relations help they can get.

The key thing, I think we all can agree from recent history, is for the FBI not-spying spying program to have a really distracting name. There was the USA Patriot Act, for instance — a great way of selling the gutting of the Bill of Rights. There was the Clear Skies Act to reduce pollution caps. And then there was the Terrorist Surveillance Program the National Security Agency used to record and share the phone sex talk American soldiers overseas had with their spouses back home.

We need something like that to describe the FBI’s un-warranted spying without suspicion program here in the USA. It needs a catchy name to help keep us from thinking that the spying program is actually a spying program.

We here at Irregular Times are such good government-supporting patriots that we’re holding a contest to help name this newly-expanded FBI surveillance program. Here’s the rules:

1. Suggest a new name for the FBI Domestic Not-Spying Spying Program by adding a comment to this post. Submission deadline: Tuesday November 3rd at 9 AM.

2. After all the suggestions for the FBI Not-Spying Spying Program’s new name have come in, we’ll start up an online poll so that people can vote for their favorite.

3. The person who makes the new-name suggestion getting the most votes will win this design on a sturdy metal pinback button. We will ship this 4th Amendment button for free (no shipping charges, no handling charges, no data mining charges) to any address in the United States whatsoever. We’ll send it to you. We’ll send it to your brother. We’ll send it to Aunt Gertie in Wichita. We’ll send it to your Representative or Senator for you. We’ll send it to the President if you like.

I’m going to put only one-name off limits for your submission, and that’s because I’ve thought of it already:

The Fluffy Bunny Protection Program.

Got a better idea for the FBI’s newly expanded surveillance program? Share it in the comments. Even though we’re all on the losing end of the FBI’s Not-Spying program, you still could be a winnah!

Length of time an oil spill from an offshore drilling rig in the Timor Sea has continued, uncontrolled, without any effective response from the oil drilling company: 70 days

Amount of additional time that experts now estimate the oil spill, leaking up to 2,000 barrels of oil per day, will continue, even if the drilling company’s 4th attempt is successful: Three weeks.

The 4th attempt to plug the drill was supposed to take place at the beginning of last week, then was postponed three times until this coming weekend. Now, drilling company PTTEP says it won’t even try to plug the leak causing the oil spill this weekend. Instead, it will just go and gather information about the leak.

Mike Allcorn, head of the oil company’s oil spill response team, said of the efforts to stop the two-and-a-half month long leak, “We remain very positive with the success that we’ve had to date.” Success? The oil spill hasn’t even been slowed down. Allcorn’s crews haven’t even been able to approach the leaking oil platform for fear that it might blow up.

I seem to remember a similar statement of unfounded optimism about oil drilling from here in the United States. “The right course is… the immediate drilling for more oil off of our shores.” – Mitt Romney

My prediction for the 2012 presidential campaign: If Mitt Romney wins the Republican nomination, ExxonMobil will be his running mate.

Amazing news for the 2012 presidential election: Newt Gingrich is considering running for the Republican nomination for President of the United States! In related news:

- Bill Bradley is considering playing professional basketball again
- The Jackson 5, um, Jackson 4, are considering making an entry into the 2010 Summer Music Clinic Boy Band Competition at the University of Wisconsin at Madison
- Rolling Stone is considering dedicating an issue to the many ways in which the young Baby Boom generation will change America
- The Museum of Modern Art is considering an exhibit of the work of unknown artist Pablo Picasso
- NASA is considering funding initial research into a new technology for air transportation, tentatively known as dirigibles

In a display of what it refers to as a new era of open goverment, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has now admitted to the House Intelligence Committee that it had been illegally keeping secrets and lying to Congress about its spying activities. No one should worry, though, said the spy agency, because all of the secrets it kept were very minor.

What was so minor about the secrets that the Director of National Intelligence kept from Congress? That matter could not be discussed, because it’s a classified secret, said the spy agency.

What were the secret programs that the Director of National Intelligence lied to Congress about? That matter could not be discussed. It’s a classified secret.

Can we be sure that the Director of National Intelligence isn’t keeping more secrets from Congress, and not just lying to Congress about its lies? That matter was not discussed by the House Intelligence Committee, but it could have been. The answer is no classified secret. It’s easy to be found by anyone who cares enough to question authority.

Postscript we can believe in: Barack Obama says that he’ll veto any legislation from Congress that attempts to gain more information about these secrets.

If our top generals and television anchors only paid attention to the bumper stickers and buttons of the world, why, our nation wouldn’t be in such grave peril from the waves of Red Menace lapping at our shores. You think I jest? Open your window and lean your head outside. Can’t you hear the lapping, quiet but insistent? Lap, lap, lap. Let us tap into their wisdom to discover the…

Top Ten Signs Your Friend is a Communist

10. Your friend is popular. Stalin was popular, and Stalin was a communist. Aha!

9. Your friend recycles. Is pinko glass #3 or #5? I can never remember.

8. Your friend is a community organizer. Clipboard? Commie. Wait, doesn’t the John Birch Society do canvassing? Shocking!

7. Your friend supports freedom of speech. Typical repressive ideology.

6. Your friend stops broadcasting Friends and Seinfeld. Media rationing, bread lines, no soup for you!

5. Your friend is a deposed aristocrat who wears green and steals money to ransom a king.

4. Your friend wishes he had a major-league baseball team in his neighborhood.

3. Your friend sits on the board of directors of Wal-Mart. There’s nothing redder than plastic bowls made in sweatshops.

2. Your friend is a billionaire hedge fund manager. Some of our needs are a whole lot higher than others.

1. Your friend uses open-source software. What’s next? Lending libraries?

“The time is always right to do what is right.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“At the right time, I’m sure the president will take it on.” – Obama Administration statement on why President Barack Obama is not overturning the discriminatory policy Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as he promised he would.

June 2009: CafePress revokes graphic designers’ ability to set commissions for items featuring their designs on its “marketplace” search engine. Designers’ new mandated commissions are lower than before. At the same time, CafePress raises prices on customers. CafePress increases its own corporate profit margin per item at the expense of both customers and designers.

July 2009: for the first time in the history of the online print-on-demand business, CafePress loses its pageview lead to Zazzle, a competitor that still allows designers to set their own commission.

September 2009: CafePress declares the right to put designers’ images up for sale on any CafePress products, upsetting designers concerned about images of children being put on thong underwear and irking designers who don’t want their images put on products made in overseas sweatshops. CafePress also declares the right at its sole discretion to alter designers’ images as CafePress sees fit.

September 2009: Zazzle widens its new pageview lead over CafePress:

October 2009: ?

The last time that CafePress made changes to its terms of service, it did so openly. The t-shirt, button and bumper sticker printer did not make that mistake again, making a quiet but fundamental change today that may nevertheless push more people away from doing business there.

Corporate, Capitalist CafePress
CafePress is a “print on demand” corporation. The “print on demand” portion of CafePress’ identity involves the printing of images made by graphic designers onto a variety of products — including bumper stickers, buttons and shirts — and the shipping of images to customers. CafePress gets a cut of the profit and graphic designers get a cut of the profit as well. The “corporation” portion of CafePress’ identity means that CafePress is an inhuman entity with inhuman priorities. Those priorities are a maximization of CafePress profit and a minimization of expense. Pay to the people who make shirts for CafePress is an expense. Pay to the people who design graphics for CafePress is an expense. It is the priority of CafePress to minimize those expenses.

Those who have railed against CafePress as somehow “communist” for cutting pay to designers fail to understand that such a dynamic is central to corporate capitalism, and those who defend CafePress for following its capitalist priorities fail to understand that “capitalist” does not necessarily equal “good.” Impersonal enterprises can often hurt people very personally. But reacting to abusive impersonal enterprises as if they were people — crying, yelling, cajoling — won’t work, even if the slights of enterprises like CafePress touch you in the deepest parts of your humanity. Those reactions won’t work because CafePress is inhuman. The most effective course we can take as humans is first to take notice of what is being to done to us by inhuman entities and then to decide what we are willing to do about it.

CafePress Takes Away Choice Over Product Placement
In a quiet e-mail message sent out at 4 o’clock this morning, CafePress corporate representatives sent their “best regards” with a message that as blandly as possible announced another change in terms. “The changes to the Seller Services are minor and will allow us to help you,” declared CafePress. A read of the text of the changes reveals that their nature is neither “minor” nor “helpful.”

Change Number One: If designers make their designs available in the CafePress “Marketplace” (the corporation’s product search engine), then CafePress reserves the right to make those designs available for sale on any product, at CafePress’ sole discretion. Before today, designers had the right to decide on what products their graphic designs would be sold.

There are two reasons this change matters. The first has to do with the ethics of production. As a profit-maximizing corporation, CafePress has found it in its interest to minimize the money it spends for the products it prints on. CafePress has found products tend to be cheaper when shipped internationally, even from as far as Asia, than when they’re produced and shipped within the United States of America. It’s not because shipping huge crates across a vast ocean on oily barges costs less. Rather, it’s because factories in third world countries get away with paying their workers less than the cost of living. Many CafePress designers, who are not corporations but human beings, feel ethically uncomfortable with the idea of participating in this exploitation of human labor for profit. As a result they exercised control over their designs, restricting their product offerings within CafePress to the set of products made in the USA. CafePress just took away that ethical choice for designers who work through the Marketplace.

CafePress Takes Control, Revising Your Work
A second reason the change in control over design placement on products matters is that it reduces artistic discretion. Even if you couldn’t care less whether someone in a third-world factory is paid pennies for sewing a shirt on which CafePress makes more than $10 of profit, you might care about where your precious art expresses itself. You toiled away for five days and nights on that airbrushed painting, and maybe for reasons of pride or integrity of vision (or something more complex-sounding in French) you don’t want to see it stuck on thong underwear or a doggie t-shirt. Before today, you got to decide which products matched your artistic vision. Today, CafePress took away that artistic discretion for designers working through the Marketplace.

That’s not the only change in artistic discretion imposed by CafePress today.

Change Number Two: If designers make their designs available in the CafePress “Marketplace” (again, the corporation’s product search engine), then CafePress reserves the right to alter those designs as it sees fit, including making graphic changes to the design, changing the colors of the design, and altering the placement of the design on a product to match CafePress managers’ sense of appropriateness. If you work through the CafePress Marketplace, control over the design is no longer yours. It’s theirs.

What’s the word for a circumstance in which an entity possesses and has control over something? “Ownership.” CafePress is moving away from a model in which designers and printers were partners, each with their own domain of work and control, with printers owning machines and supplies and designers owning images, their placement and their pricing. CafePress already took control over images’ pricing earlier this year; today CafePress took control over images’ placement, color and basic structure.

CafePress is taking control and assuming ownership of domains designers have exercised control over for the past ten years. If you are a designer with CafePress, what can you do about it?

Option 1: Continue to work with CafePress in the Marketplace and cede control and ownership of your work. Hope that CafePress won’t do anything more drastic in the future.

Option 2: Continue to work with CafePress, but withdraw from the Marketplace. By doing so, you exempt yourself from losing choice over prices, products and images. You may continue to use a CafePress “shop” (your own area that you promote outside CafePress’ Marketplace Search engine, like our www.cafepress.com/irregulargoods shop) and control what happens there. CafePress won’t link in to your shop itself any more, so you have to help yourself in the promotion department.

Option 3: Start seeing other printers. Many people have moved to Zazzle as an alternative printer of bumper stickers and buttons, especially since Zazzle began allowing graphic designers to restrict the range of products their images appear upon. I am particularly enamored of Skreened, a print-on-demand t-shirt operation based out of Columbus, Ohio that specializes in sweatshop-free t-shirts and gives shirt designers an extra-big 11×17 canvas on which to work.

It is my opinion that if too many people follow the course of option #1, conditions for working with CafePress will not get better. Indeed, I think they’ll get worse, as CafePress administration takes stock of what people are willing to bear. But if enough people choose either option #2 or option #3 (or both), CafePress administration will learn that such overt grabs at control and profit are counterproductive, and then will retreat, perhaps even into a corporate simulation of human compassion.

We here at Irregular Times have exercised options #2 and #3, withdrawing from the CafePress Marketplace and pursuing relationships with other printers.

If you work with CafePress, what are you going to do?

Fourteen years ago, the Blue Dog Democrats formed, hoping to take ride on the coattails of Newt Gingrich’s takeover of Congress, collaborating with the Republicans in order to keep on bringing pork barrel spending back home to their districts in spite of being part of the Democratic minority. Ever since then, this coalition has sought to weaken the Democratic Party from within, by pursuing the Republican right wing agenda under the name of the Democrats.

This year, the Blue Dog Democrats have been up to their old tricks. They’ve worked to weaken climate change legislation. They’ve corrupted health care reform legislation too, and slowed its progress so that Republicans would have the summer to pick it to pieces with their ranting and raving about death panels and socialism.

However, there are signs that the Blue Dog game of crass opportunism may be about to run its course. For years, the Blue Dogs have made the safe assumption that progressive Democrats would never mount any opposition to them, because they’d be afraid to endanger the effort to obtain and maintain a Democratic majority in Congress and control over the White House. Since the election of Barack Obama, however, it’s become clear to progressive Democrats that Blue Dogs are as much of a problem as the Republicans, and that a Democratic majority can’t accomplish a progressive agenda as long as the Blue Dogs are on the job.

So, the term Blue Dog, which once shone as a beacon to corrupt politicians that they could have their cake and eat it too, is now becoming a liability. Progressive Democrats are finally catching on that they need to go after the parasitic Blue Dogs, and can turn a Blue Dog affiliation into political poison. That’s why, a year and a half before the 2010 congressional elections, progressives are beginning to see messages like the ones you see here – a bumper sticker against Congressman John Tanner and a campaign button against Jim Cooper – from a progressive perspective, criticizing them for their Blue Dog right wing political activity.

This past March, I looked into the number of searches made by people looking for various forms of gear at CafePress featuring the names of various possible Republican presidential contenders for 2012. (If you log in to CafePress.com, you can find out how many people searched for bumper stickers, buttons or shirts for sale featuring any term over the past day.) At the time, I found that ten times as many people were searching for gear with the names of either John McCain or Sarah Palin as were searching for any other possible 2012 presidential contender.

On March 18, for example, a 41% share of CafePress searches for 8 possible 2012 runners was gobbled up by searches for Sarah Palin gear. 38% of those searches were for John McCain gear. 6% were searching for Bobby Jindal swag, 4% each for Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee, 3% for Ron Paul, 2% for Mitt Romney and a mere 0.7% for Newt Gingrich stickers, buttons or shirts.

At the time, I chalked up the dominance of McCain and Palin gear searches to nostalgia for a not-long-past race. But since then, a lot of political water has flowed under the bridge. How do matters stack up now for those 8 possible presidential contenders?

I just finished checking CafePress search statistics carried out yesterday (August 29, 2009), and here’s the distribution (again, a percentage of searches for all 8 contenders):

36% John McCain, 35% Sarah Palin, 8% Ron Paul, 6% Mitt Romney, 4% Mike Huckabee, 4% Bobby Jindal, 4% Newt Gingrich, 2% Rudy Giuliani.

We could spend a fair amount of time talking about changes at the bottom of the pack, including the rise of Ron Paul to the top of the bottom. But really, the take away lesson is that months later, nearly a year after the presidential election of 2008, John McCain and Sarah Palin are still the top objects of searches for GOP presidential name swag. Are people really hoping that the pair (or some part of them) run again? Or is interest in the next set of GOP 2012 presidential contenders so low that the volume of after-the-fact memorabilia collector swamps it all?

We are reviewing the CafePress advertising module called the Sellit ADPAK by using it. In advertising, unlike so many other aspects of life, what really matters in the end is the bottom line.

We spent $14.99 for one month’s worth of advertising (15,000 ad impressions) for bumper stickers and buttons regarding a hot topic, health care reform. For our stickers and buttons, Sellit whipped up an advertising widget, an image of which you see here. Then Sellit placed the ad widget on websites at a rate of approximately 500 views/day.

Here are our results seven days into the test:

7 days.
18 visitors.
0.5% click-through rate.
78 pageviews.
4 purchases.
$7.92 profit.
$14.99 spent.
$7.07 lost.

If we continue at this rate, we’ll profit $18.95 from the venture.

I’ll keep posting our status every few days. Let’s see what happens!

I am sick and tired of hearing people screeching warnings against “socialized medicine”. Medicine that’s socialized? What does that mean?

It means having a society that takes care of its own people when they get sick. What the heck is so bad about that, for goodness sakes?

We certainly don’t have that kind of society now. What we have now is a society where insurance company bureaucrats ration medical care, sitting on panels that ultimately make life and death decisions about people’s lives, based on what’s profitable rather than what people actually need.

So, you know what? I would rather have socialized medicine than depend on anti-social insurance any longer.