In a recent article on Vilaweb, we learned that conservative parties in the Spanish senate have mistakenly voted in favor of a bill regarding the creation of a .ct top-level domain name for Catalonia. Top-level domain names consisting of two letters are generally reserved for states (in the global sense of the word). Existing examples are .us, .de, and .es (the only one in Spain currently).

The PP and the PSOE voted in favor of this law because they misread the text, thinking they were voting against .ct rather than for it. Good to know that American politicians aren’t the only bozos out there, no?

There is already a .cat top-level domain name.  Three-letter domains indicate pages that relate to cultural or linguistic topics. While scoring one of these did require some moving and shaking, no Spanish nationalists were too concerned when .cat appeared. Here you can find pages in Catalan, pages about Catalan culture, and the pages of many Catalan organizations. All Catalan government pages, however, are still listed under .es as part of the Spanish state.

This time, political leaders are rushing to assure the media that they will correct their mistake when this bill comes back to Congress for ratification. Allowing Catalonia to start listing its government pages under .ct would be in some way admitting that Catalonia is a separate state, entitled to all the trappings of statehood. (God forbid!)

In fact, the institutions that grant domain names are the IANA and ICANN which are run by…the US government. So apparently, all it takes to apply for a top-level domain is US$50,000 and the approval of a US government office. Welcome to the world-wide f*ckfest!

This man could have been our president:
An excerpt from Al Gore’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

When we unite for a moral purpose that is manifestly good and true, the spiritual energy unleashed can transform us. The generation that defeated fascism throughout the world in the 1940s found, in rising to meet their awesome challenge, that they had gained the moral authority and long-term vision to launch the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, and a new level of global cooperation and foresight that unified Europe and facilitated the emergence of democracy and prosperity in Germany, Japan, Italy and much of the world. One of their visionary leaders said, “It is time we steered by the stars and not by the lights of every passing ship.”

…

The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, “One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door.”

The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: “What were you thinking; why didn’t you act?”

Or they will ask instead: “How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?”

We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource. So let us renew it, and say together: “We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act.”

Instead…we got the man who said all of these things:

The following poem is composed entirely of actual quotes from George W. Bush:

Make the Pie Higher

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It’s a world of madmen
And uncertainty
And potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the internet
Become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?

They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish
Can coexist.

Families is where our nation finds hope
Where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!

And we got him twice.