Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Why I Will Vote for Obama

Don't believe me in the tank for his O'ness.  Things like a widening drone war, illegal and indefinite detention in Guantanamo Bay, extra judicial killings of American citizens on executive branch kill lists, have cooled my ardor.

Nevertheless given the choice between voting for a souless vulture capitalist, dressage horse owner, and bloodsucking leech like Willard Romney or Barack Obama, my vote gotta go for O.

Peace out, y'all.


Orlando: The City Mean gets meaner

The city fathers of Orlando, apparently upset at not ranking #1 meanest city towards homeless humans, have started/escalated harassing people downtown.  God forbid Gainesville, FL pass us on the list as they already have the University of FL and we only have U of West Bithlo.

Thus, the Orlando Police Department has decided to crack down on "the homeless problem," by violating the First Amendment rights of people in the City Mean.

Sure we gots drive by shootings, a murder inside a downtown public parking garage, carjacking, and a brawl outside a downtown bar injuring off duty OPD officers, but we have to crack down on those filthy beggar junkies.  God forbid one of them approach us as we try to eat our pricey meals outside, comfortable with our income level and underwater mortgages.  God forbid the asshat, John Potter, quoted below, actually learn to say no to beggars or even--in Jesus' name--offer to buy a meal rather than give cash.

Sure, we can forgive Mr. Potter because he works his ass off trying to keep a roof over his head, and he has probably let the media and popular idea of the homeless problem to pollute his thinking.

What would he think were he to have to make the streets his home?

It helps to define humans without adequate shelter as "the homeless" or a problem; it allows good, decent,honest, church goin' folk to define other of God's children as part of an underclass unworthy of decent treatment or respect.

Way to go, City Mean!

[ORLANDO, Fla. —
The homeless problem in downtown Orlando has gotten so severe, police have put together a special detail.

WFTV's Daralene Jones learned they'll be arresting panhandlers, and others who harass residents.

Not long ago, the city installed collection meters downtown to try to stop the panhandling. They did, but the meters don't bring in much money, which goes to agencies that help the homeless.

John Potter, a server at Metro Espresso Pizza, said he loves everything about working and living downtown, except the homeless problem.

"People sitting at tables, trying to enjoy a meal and they're getting accosted by people wanting money or a cigarette," said Potter.

Potter said that even worse than that, the patio furniture outside has become an open invitation for the homeless to sleep out front overnight.

Other business owners show up in the morning to find urine and feces outside their front doors.

"All of the furniture out here, either you have to tie it up, or it has to come inside," said Potter.

The complaints from downtown business owners and residents have hit city hall.

WFTV found out Orlando police have initiated what they're calling a "transient detail."] emphasis added 'cause phrase really angers me.

THE University of CENTRAL Florida Joins the Big Time: NCAA levies sanctions for recruiting violations

As a proud graduate of THE University of CENTRAL Florida--yes, you can finish albeit at the 3rd school attended: getting expelled for drunken vandalism from first, padding grade point average at community college, a cervical fracture, a year and half at UCF including a great summer term including college work study the library--have watched the progress of athletics program from small time in 1983 to NCAA Division I with mixture of pride and scepticism.


Pride comes from having a university that can have rivalries with other schools and not just as creampuff teams to pay and beat down.  So goodbye Memphis and my buddy Jeff Tibbals, graduate and rocket scientist and hello University of South FL, incongruously located on t west coast of FL, and Jim Dowling geographer and former co-worker.


Nevertheless, at what price comes success?


Today, the NCAA announced sanctions: probation and ban from bowl game bans for the men's football team and probation and no NCAA tournament for the male basketball team, both for 1 year


A local sports announcer just opined that it could have resulted in worse punishment.


Yes, that makes me feel prouder.


Along the way, we had the death of a human being, killed trying to play football, dying during conditioning drills with coaches yelling at him to get up: Ereck Plancher.


Yes, that makes me prouder.


Also, university leaders decided the University needed an on campus football stadium, further angering area residents with abominable traffic and preventing fans like myself downtown from getting to games, perhaps legitimately abandoning dilapidated Citrus Bowl stadium downtown but further separating themselves from the actual city of Orlando.


They built the stadium with private funds from private donors.  Later as Republican dominated state legislature gave questionable tax breaks to businesses and cut taxes on rich folks, all state universities had budgets dramatically cut.  At UCF, no private donors and dollars came forth to prevent cancelling of classes.


Yes, that makes me proud.


So yes, we at UCF made the athletic big time, getting sanctioned like the rest of big boys.  At least, we got busted for routine recruiting violations the rest of 'em do too.  No Penn State stuff here, nosiree, just plain ol' cheatin', dadgummit.


UCF pride indeed.


(Check back later for updates: more links and maybe editing above incorrect account above of basketball sanctions; I'm a trifle angry--the clock struck 6:30 so must commence happy hour adjustment.  Cynicism hurts a bit less with a couple o' beers.

To the bar!)






Dateline actually should read west Bithlo:
[ORLANDO, Fla. —


Central Florida will have to sit out the postseason for a year in men's basketball and football under sanctions the NCAA handed down Tuesday, adding to penalties the school self-imposed after major recruiting violations were uncovered last year in both programs.


UCF also was cited for ''a lack of institutional control'' and fined $50,000.


The penalties were in addition to adding two years to UCF's previously proposed three years' probation, vacating basketball victories, a reduction in basketball scholarships and tighter limits on football recruiting visiting days.]http://www.wftv.com/news/sports/college/ucf-may-face-more-sanctions-ncaa/nP7H7/


Monday, July 30, 2012

29 July in Labor History

[On this date in 1970, the United Farm Workers achieved its greatest victory, ending its five-year grape boycott after growers agreed to a contract, the first in the history of California farm labor.

Farm workers lived pretty tough lives. The itinerant nature and physical stress of the work gave employers tremendous power over their labor. They housed workers in shacks and sometimes not at all, forcing them to sleep under bridges. They paid workers almost nothing. The extreme heat of California farming regions caused heat stroke and deaths. The short-handled hoe workers had to use in order to weed the fields caused severe back problems. Workers were routinely sprayed with pesticides. Institutionalized racism made everything worse with local citizens and police more than happy to unite with owners to keep the Mexicans in their place.]
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2012/07/this-day-in-labor-history-july-29-1970

Zombies Bringing People Together

Finally, someone realized best weapon to counter ignorant hate groups like Westboro "Baptist" Chruch: ridicule.

To that end, some 300 zombies turned out as counter protest against Westboro crazies and their, "God hates fags," signs.  My Jesus doesn't hate anybody, and any sin grieves him dearly, possibly misguided self appointed modern Pharisees grieve Him the most.

Of course if zombies want to eat brains of Westboro idiots, they will find precious few.

[After members of the controversial Kansas-based church announced plans to picket Joint Base Lewis-McChord, a military base south of Seattle, 27-year-old Melissa Neace decided to organize a counter-protest, launching a Facebook group titled "Zombie'ing Westboro Baptist Church AWAY from Fort Lewis!"

"We wanted to turn something negative around, into something people could laugh at and poke fun at," Neace told the News Tribune. "It was the easiest way to divert attention from something so hateful."

About 300 counter-protesters showed up in varying degrees of zombie garb, far outnumbering the picketers from Westboro. According to KIRO in Seattle, just eight protesters from the controversial group showed up.

"I think that their message is very hateful, and Jesus was not a hateful person. He loved everybody," one of the counter-protesters told KIRO.

While it is unclear why Westboro Baptist Church targeted the DuPont military base for its latest effort, the group frequently pickets military funerals. The group believes that deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are God's punishment for the United States' tolerance of homosexuality. Last year, the group announced it would "quadruple" protest efforts after the Supreme Court ruled that such demonstrations are protected by the First Amendment.]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/29/westboro-baptist-church_n_1717142.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=073012&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

Medical Bankruptcy: Trying to Fight Colon Cancer Without Insurance Coverage

Please forgive me for this pun, but blogger quoted below gives the straight poop on life with cancer without health insurance.


It ain't pretty.


Read this and then tell me the richest country in the world cannot afford health care for all like the rest of the industrialized world has.


[Fortunately, in part due to my young age and the extraordinary care I have received at the University of Arizona Cancer Center, I’ve been able to cope quite well so far despite the difficulties of treatment.Unfortunately, cancer treatment is quite expensive, and recently the ASU student insurance plan stopped covering my cost of care. The Aetna student health insurance plan provided by ASU caps the lifetime insurance benefit paid out at $300,000, which the high cost of treatment used up in less than one year.]
http://poopstrong.org/

Mexican Company Moves Jobs to America

[Computerworld - WASHINGTON -- The U.S. has been shipping application development work offshore for years, but cloud computing may help make America a data center services exporter.

Take Grupo Posadas, a large hotel group in Mexico. It has five data centers supporting more than 17,000 guest rooms in over 100 hotels and other lines of business. It runs three of those data centers itself and two others throughoutsourcing partners.

But the company is moving almost all of its IT capability to a data center in Texas run by managed hosting company Savvis.

Posadas CIO Leopoldo Toro Bala said his company plans to sharply reduce its data centers, and will rely on Savvis for cloud-based infrastructure services. Savvis will also provide managed database services.]

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229729/Mexico_hotel_giant_puts_its_IT_in_Texas_?source=CTWNLE_nlt_dailyam_2012-07-30

Saturday, July 28, 2012

The Satire is Strong With This One

Oh.  My.  God of blessed and unending irony, this guy kills Willard Romney metaphorically-gotta add that nowadays--grinds him up into sausage and feeds him to alligators in a dismal FL swamp.

Mobutu Sese Seko, you rock!

[Mitt Romney is getting hosed. Admittedly not in an existentially threatening way, like watching his job get sent to Bangalore while a good health plan evaporates in front of him. But he's still getting hosed—in conservative media, of all places.

This probably sounds rich, considering the things said about him here, but Mitt's manifold shortcomings are so irrepressible that they don't need any help. Just running footage of him doing anything constitutes a pretty substantial critical appraisal. So it's odd to see the Wall Street Journal and theWeekly Standard calling him out. One, they're calling him a rich and shallow guy, which is exactly who they need him to be. Two, apparently this has something to do with jet-skis....

That's the thing. Mitt Romney is a bad candidate entirely on his own merits. He doesn't need any help. He can bury himself. His friends can put down the shovels.

As the weeks grind on, it becomes easier to think of Mitt Romney as Chauncey Gardiner in reverse. He's a smart man who keeps accidentally saying profoundly stupid things. He tries to be ordinary, to avoid embarrassment, then seems like an aristocrat. He's surrounded by privileged handlers who deem him stupid because he's trying to be wisely vague and vaguely wise. In the end, he's going to try to understand all the people who manage him, and instead of walking across the water into beatification, they're going to hold him underwater until he drowns.]

Game of Thrones Attack Ads



http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/game-of-thrones-attack-ads

What to Post After Excruciating Self Examination?

Why the answer seems obvious, silly.  R-A-M-O-N-E-S of course!



Ramones with lyrics.







For those of you to young or others too enamored of the Myth of Raygunz, the B movie actor visited a cemetery in then West Germany containing graves of Hitler's SS, the Schultzstaffel, architects of mass murder on a biblical scale.

Looking at ledgers at Holocaust Resource Center in Maitland, FL, brings a chill to any human soul, ledgers reducing other human lives to tallies of gold teeth and pounds of hair retrieved from corpses.




Why Does It Take a Cartoon to Tell the Truth?

Lee Judge / The Kansas City Star (June 20, 2012)

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/06/18/152702_a153090/mcclatchy-cartoons-for-the-week.html#storylink=cpy


If the Reflections Fits, I Must Own It

Dang, really digging Stay at Home Feminist Mom.

[Let me make it clear that I am talking about people who clearly have Narcissistic Personality Disorder. (I’ll just shorten it to NPD after this, because I am frankly sick of typing the word narcissist. For one thing, I always spell it wrong.) These are not the run of the mill kind of asshats. They are not just a little egocentric or self-centered. Oh no. These are people whose lack of empathy and love make them sociopaths. They are usually charming to people who are not ‘close’ to them, but family members are being emotionally tortured and abused at home. Occasionally this will tip over into stuff that will get them sent to prison, but most of the NPD just quietly torments and psychologically scars those around him/her for their whole lives, before dying and hopefully going to Hell.

Having seen how badly they hurt people, I don’t really have a whole lot of mercy for them.

I also don’t have a lot of mercy or tolerance for them because it’s a million to one chance they will ever change. Ever. Because they refuse to admit there is anything wrong with them. Their behavior is always the fault of those around them. Always. And I cannot stand that kind of vile fuckery.

This makes for complications in my life on several levels.

First, I am a practicing Christian. So I am supposed to embrace mercy and tolerance. But my biggest religious failing, the one that actually kept me from ever trying to be a priest, is the fact that I don’t want God to love and forgive some people. I admit it. People who molest and hurt and kill children? Nope. People who are sociopaths? Nope. I am glad Jesus loves them because I can’t stand their asses and if it were up to me they would be toast. So I knew I could never be a priest because sharing God’s love is in the job description. I am a bitch, not a hypocrite, and it would be hypocritical of me to become a priest because I wouldn’t share divine forgiveness with a child-molester for love nor money.]  emephasis added 'cause describes me to a metaphorical "T" although am anti narcissist 'cause hate myself but STILL believe world revolves around me.
http://bettyfokker.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/narcissistic-people-are-asshats/

What're you gonna do?

Also like the line about "practicing Christian" 'cause boy do I need practice!  Tell folk I'm becoming a christian 'cause reckon it day by day, word by word, and thought by thought thing.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Talking Heads: "Once in a Lifetime"



I Feel Safer Already

[Authorities in Prince George's and Anne Arundel counties have foiled what they believe would have been a mass shooting by a man who was about to be fired from his job, police sources tell ABC 7 News.

Law enforcement sources tell ABC 7's Brad Bell that the suspect, Neil Prescott, 28, was taken into custody in Crofton on Thursday night. According to officials, the man was facing termination from his job as a subcontractor for Pitney Bowes, the document, mailing and shipping company.

“I am a joker and I’m gonna load my guns and blow everybody up,” he allegedly said, according to documents.

He was also wearing a T-Shirt that said: "Guns don't kill people. I do," when authorities took him into custody. Prescott is being held for a psychiatric evaluation and charges are pending.]







Mayors Against Illegal Guns: http://www.demandaplan.org/

Ramones: "Happy Birthday"



Ramones: "I Wanna Be Sedated"

Cracker: "Happy Birthday to Me"

"Feeling thankful for the small things today."

Cracker: "Cracker Soul"

Hey, Hey It's OK to make a little mess out of your life...come and party with your spirit guide."

Cracker: "Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now)"

Dennis Miller had a TV show?  What nut would give that nutjob a TV show?

Weezer: "Troublemaker"

Cracker: "Mr. Wrong"

"Baby, come and spend some time with Mr. Wrong."

Cracker on Conan: "Low"

Happy Birthday




Thanks.  I know I don't look 54.

Can I Also Shoot the Mormons and Baptists Knocking on My Door?

No, you can't shoot evangelists no matter how annoying they might become.  Used to tell Mormons of my Druid beliefs, that I worshiped the bush in the yard.  They did not exactly scurry away but did seem to walk away a bit more briskly.


"Babies in the open.  Fire for effect."


Lord, what a batcrap crazy world we live in!


[A man in Cape Coral, Florida on Wednesday was arrested for shooting and killing an unarmed door-to-door salesman on his property.

Kenneth Bailey Roop, 52, has been charged with second-degree murder for killing 30-year-old Nicholas Rainey.

A co-worker who witnessed the shooting said Rainey had knocked on Roop’s door, but received no answer. While Rainey was walking down the drive-way, Roop pulled up in his pickup truck and asked why Rainey was at his house. Rainey explained that he was selling steak and seafood. The witness said Roop then pulled out a black handgun and shot Rainey. As Rainey lay on the ground, Roop fired another bullet into the back of his head.

Roop later told police that he shot Rainey in the head “for effect” and that he had three no trespassing signs on his property. Roop said he feared for his life.

“I’m not going to give him the chance to do something to me,” he told police. “I was in fear.”

An off-duty Collier County sheriff’s deputy was nearby and heard the gunshots. When she arrived at Roop’s property, she found Rainey dying on the ground while Roop was in his garage reloading his handgun.

“He was telling the officer, ‘he stepped on my property, he trespassed, I’ll kill anybody that steps on my property,’ somewhere along them lines. It was just unbelievable,” one witness told the The News-Press. “She never flinched. She deserves a medal. I don’t think he was done [shooting].”

The deputy ordered Roop to drop his weapon and held him at gunpoint until police officers arrived.

Roop’s neighbors described him as “the neighborhood crazy.” Roop has a concealed weapons permit and approximately 14 firearms.]
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/26/florida-man-kills-door-to-door-salesman-i%E2%80%99ll-kill-anybody-that-steps-on-my-property/




Found at Suburban Guerrilla: http://susiemadrak.com/2012/07/27/stand-your-ground-3/.

Hubris, Meet Mitt Romney

Come to think of it, all the boorish prattling on of "I saved the Olympics," points to grandiose view of self ignoring thousands of managers and workers and billions of dollars in federal grants. and sweetheart deals for campaign contributors.


But to issue an Olympic pin of oneself, made in China?


Truly gauche.

[As head of the Salt Lake Olympics Mitt Romney became the first Olympic executive to approve a series of commemorative pins in his likeness. (They're in the news right now because they were made in China, but their mere existence is its own indictment of Romney's judgment.)]
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/mitt-romney-issued-comically-bizarre-cartoon-mitt#HTWF2



[Now I know there's this whole pin trading culture. When I took my kids to Disneyland, we were inundated by it, and I understand it was a really big thing at the China Summer Olympics. But really, commissioning a series of pins of an executive? That's just...odd. A mascot? Sure. Maybe even the Queen for the London Olympics, I can see. But an executive? Why did anyone think there would be demand for that?

Doncha just love the manly jawline? The silky tresses? The sexy little cleft? Funny, I don't remember that on 
the original. Artistic license, I suppose.]



Thursday, July 26, 2012

Brits Take Offense at Romney's Rudeness

Science Cartoon Contest



Gun Control Should Mean at Least not Shooting Self in Buttocks

[23 year old doofus Todd Canady, who has a concealed carry permit, reaches for his wallet to pay at the local Walmart. He accidentally discharges his handgun into his buttocks. He also injures a woman and child behind him in line. When confronted by an off-duty police officer, he runs.

Now he’s in jail.]


Well, that explains it: freakin' TX.  Went to link so y'all don't have to.

One of 2 people wounded a 5 year old, collateral damage in the war of the NRA on common sense.

[DALLAS, July 24 (UPI) -- Dallas police said they arrested a man whose gun accidentally went off inside a Walmart store, injuring two other customers....

KDFW-TV, Dallas/Fort Worth, said Canady, who has a concealed-weapons permit, was reportedly reaching for his wallet in the checkout line but grabbed the pistol he was carrying instead. The gun went off, wounding Canady in the buttocks. The bullet then hit the floor and sent fragments into the other two victims.]
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/07/24/Texan-accidentally-fires-shot-at-Walmart/UPI-45371343147222/#ixzz21kYE7BAn

Truth About Tax Plans in 1 Easy Chart



KMN (NL,J): Republican Hypocrisy

Kill Me Now (Not Literally, Jesus)


In an unremarkable newspaper story about the hypocrisy of the Romney campaign, 2 private business owners complained about Mr Obama correctly pointing out no company or person in the US works in a vacuum.


The business environment includes roads built by the government, a legal structure to regulate and enforce contracts, federal taxes collected and then disbursed to vendors working for the government, and even special status conferred by the government on firms owned by minorities including disabled humans.


Instead of actually considering the words of President Obama, at least one of 2 business owners preferred to take the words as taken out of context by Fox News and then went on to speak th most laughable words ever quoted on the printed page.


Last 2 paragraphs first:


[...Smith said she didn’t see it {Obama's speech}, only news reports on what was said.


What becomes real in our nation is what people digest,” Smith said. “So if I want to react to what’s real, and I didn’t hear a conversation that occurred on the corner of Fifth and Main between two astute minds, does that mean I’m not able to address the idea, the overall intent of the conversation? I think not.”]

What becomes real in our nation becomes what blatantly partisan hacks blather about on Fox News?

Oh do the souls of Jefferson and Lincoln roll restless in their graves!

The article starts with overview of how government does help these business owners grow their companies.


[...The campaign held a morning event to highlight A.D. Morgan Corporation and Value Enterprise Solutions as Florida small businesses that became successful because of the pluck of their owners and the benefits of the free enterprise system.


Government, in other words, had nothing to do with it.


But the Romney campaign couldn’t have picked more puzzling examples. Far from not needing big government, the Tampa companies have embraced government and benefited from it.


According to its website, A.D. Morgan — a construction firm — has received at least $150 million since 1999 for work on government buildings, prisons, schools and libraries. The figure represents only the total from the fraction of news releases that included a dollar figure. The company lists more than 130 projects that it has completed; nearly all of them are in the public sector.


Value Enterprise Solutions —an information technology company — boasts strong government bona fides, as well. Its Facebook page describes the company as “providing value added service/education to business, local government, federal government, Department of Defense and industry contract organizations.” The Facebook page also describes the company as a “minority/service disabled veteran owned small disadvantaged business.” That’s a designation that gives companies a special status, so in some cases they can be a lone bidder on a project. But that designation is recognized by government, not the private sector.]  emphasis added to highlight hypocrisy

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Austerity for Thee, More Money for the Elites

Either supremely evil bastards or ignorant and insulated from laws of basic economics.  Oddly enough, a few beers makes me lean towards lenient view of merely ignorant.  Whiskey, however, makes me feel mean and want to fry the bastards.


[WASHINGTON -- The poor and middle classes have shouldered by far the heaviest burdens of the global political obsession with austerity policies over the past three years. In the United States, budget cuts have forced states to reduce education, public transportation, affordable housing and other social services. In Europe, welfare cuts have driven some severely disabled individuals to fear for their lives.

But the austerity game also has winners. Cutting or eliminating government programs that benefit the less advantaged has long been an ideological goal of conservatives. Doing so also generates a tidy windfall for the corporate class, as government services are privatized and savings from austerity pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens.

U.S. financial interests that stand to gain from Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security cutbacks "have been the core of the big con," the "propaganda," that those programs are in crisis and must be slashed, said James Galbraith, an economist at the University of Texas.]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23/austerity-wall-street_n_1690838.html

Letterman on Fracking

Apocalypse A'coming: Wall St Journal Agrees With Me!

2 United States.


Of course as purveyor of fiction, the Journal ignores underlying causes of households assuming debt--including homeowners who used equity build up to obtain loans--American companies stopped making stuff in the US of Arrogance through increasing profits by exploiting labor all over the globe, thereby avoiding costs imposed by humane measures to improve health of workers: keeping deadly toxins out of the work place, mandated overtime for over 40 hours work per week, and social security insurance against vicissitudes of old age or catastrophic injury or illness.


Do the math.


Apple exploits workers in China to make "high end" devices as cheap as possible and then sell at highest premium possible.


Buy an iPad; kill a puppy!


(Puppy used here because consumers care more about cute and cuddly puppies rather than human toll crushing people making consumer gadgets.)


[The U.S. and U.K. are two economies. That’s to say they’re each two economies. Both countries are divided into the finance-based asset rich minority and the rest.


The top slice, be it 10%, 1%, or one tenth of 1%, control a vastly disproportionate amount of resources relative to post-war history. By and large, they’ve had a good financial crisis as central banks have pumped up asset prices while governments have helped to reinforce their incomes through deficit spending.


The U.S. corporate sector’s profits make up the highest percentage of U.S. GDP ever.


This is the mirror of job insecurity, low earnings growth, and high unemployment among the majority. It has been made even worse in the U.K. by falling real earnings thanks to high inflation rates over the past five years.]
http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2012/07/25/a-tale-of-two-economies/?mod=wsj_nview_latest

Feed the Hungry? Fugedabout It

[If you’re a liberal, you probably think that feeding people during the worst economic crisis in 80 years is exactly the kind of thing that government is supposed to do. But you won’t find many people who share that view in the House Republican caucus, and that’s one very big reason why neither John Boehner nor Eric Cantor feels any urgency about moving the bill forward. Getting Southern peanut farmers a handout is worth debating — but feeding the poor? Forget about it.]

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/24/why_the_farm_bill_is_doomed_for_now/

US Government DID Create the Internet

Any rational student of history knows this as true by looking at the facts.  Although as with many technological advances such as the telephone or manned flight can have more than one author from different areas of the globe, US scientists working in the military, with the military, and at public and private universities working under federal government grants created the processes which work together as the world wide web.


Current conservatives with their blind ideology hold with myth of Ronald Raygunz that government creates problems and stifles individual human freedom.


"Modern" "conservative" chuckle heads can't even conceive of the notion that people order their society through government to do things we cannot do individually, or by tribe, or even by city or state: the interstate highway system (Thanks, President Eisenhower!), Hoover Dam, or even bloody well landing humans on the moon  (20 July 1969) AND returning them safely to Earth--all projects which increase the commonweal (http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/preamble).


Daresay even the great state of Texas or my humble state home of best place on the planet, Florida, could not have accomplished that absent investment and coordination of federal government through NASA and a virtual army of engineers, technicians, bookkeepers, and bureaucrats.


So yes, idiots and others who ignore facts, government programs led to the creation of the internets.


Of course with the power of google algorithms, you will find mountains of false crap to confirm your own ideology.


Or you can try to find the truth.

[If you spend time looking at the history of the Internet, you’ll find the government there at every step. Researchers working directly for the government and at university labs funded by the government were some of the first people on the planet to think up a worldwide network, and, at the beginning, they were the only people working to build such an outlandish thing. That’s not true just of the Internet. Pop open your smartphone and you’ll find government research at the heart of just about every component, from the batteries to the GPS chip to the microprocessor to the multitouch interface.

This doesn’t mean that the government deserves all credit for creating your phone. But it does mean that President Obama was right—in tech, no one does anything on his own. Useful products are usually the result of years of research by smart people at various instituitions: government labs, university labs, and corporate R&D campuses. The history of the Internet, like much of everything else that makes our world so magical, proves that in the tech industry, it takes a village.

If you want to find out who built the Internet and why, there are a few main sources you should consult. If you’ve got time, read Where Wizards Stay Up Late, Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon’s definitive history of the founding of the worldwide network. If you don’t have much time, look at A Brief History of the Internet, written by many of the scientists who worked on the system in its early days. The many Wikipedia articles on the history of the Internet are also quite helpful. All these sources put the lie to Crovitz’s ridiculously partisan theory that Xerox, and not the government, created the Internet.]

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/07/who_invented_the_internet_the_outrageous_conservative_claim_that_every_tech_innovation_came_from_private_enterprise_.h
tml



Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Aurora Miracle Survivor Needs Help with Medical Bills

See, people who decry Obamacare--saying their freedom infringed upon by having to have health insurance--ignore the fact one instant in this world of mass shootings, car wrecks, even one missed step and broken leg can put anyone no matter how hale and hearty in the emergency room with ruinous medical bills.

Luckily, this lady had a birth defect which saved her brain from grievous injury and her possibly from death.

Nevertheless, 5 hours of brain surgery comes not cheap, and with her mother already with cancer, the family needs help.

[Petra Anderson, 22, was at the midnight premiere of 'The Dark Knight Rises' in Aurora, Colo., when she was shot four times by a gunman who had opened fire in the crowded theater, the Associated Press reports.

Three shotgun pellets hit Anderson's arm and another went through her nose -- riding up the back of her cranium and hitting the back of her skull.

"Her injuries were severe, and her condition was critical…The doctors prior to surgery were concerned because so much of the brain had been traversed by the bullet," Anderson's pastor, Brad Strait, wrote in his blog...

But incredibly, during the five-hour surgery, doctors soon found that Anderson's brain sustained very little damage and the bullet was removed cleanly.

According to Strait, Anderson was saved by a miracle birth "defect" that no one could have anticipated.

"The doctor explains that Petra’s brain has had from birth a small “defect” in it. It is a tiny channel of fluid running through her skull…Only a CAT scan would catch it, and Petra would have never noticed it.

But in Petra’s case, the shotgun buck shot…enters her brain from the exact point of this defect. Like a marble through a small tube, the defect channels the bullet from Petra’s nose through her brain. It turns slightly several times, and comes to rest at the rear of her brain. And in the process, the bullet misses all the vital areas of the brain."]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23/aurora-shooting-survivor-_n_1695792.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=072412&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

Monday, July 23, 2012

National Rifle Association Kills


[In the wake of the latest mass murder in America, the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting spree, the usual talk about how insanely easy it is to acquire assault weapons and heavy ammo seems to fill every inch of air and space.  In the wake of the Columbine shooting--talk, talk, talk.  In the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting--talk, talk, talk. In the wake of the Fort Hood shooting--talk, talk, talk.  In the wake of the Tucson shooting--talk, talk, talk.  The analysis of the dozens of mass shootings in the past 30 years--talk, talk, talk. The consensus is that it's too easy to stockpile the kind of weaponry crazy people use to massacre innocent human beings whose only deficiency is that they manage to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Immediately upon hearing the outcry, the National Rifle Association goes into defensive mode, taking their usual stance that guns don't kill people, gunmen kill people, so you can't blame the guns and you can't blame the easy acquisition of those guns. because only a few gunmen are nuts enough to go out and shoot up a bunch of people.  (The second most popular NRA stance is that if everyone was armed and ready, things like this couldn't happen.)

Crazy, isn't it?  But here's the craziest part:  The NRA gets away with it.  Every single time.  All of America--or at least those in a position to do something about a runaway gun association--seems to be terrified of a powerful lobby whose only public position is advocating widespread use of all types of guns and ammo, including repeaters, military-type assault weapons, "cop-killer" bullets, the whole shebang.

So here's more talk--not that it'll do any more good than the talk before it, but it has become obligatory now.  We use it in place of actually doing something about the legality of assault weapons, the obligations of gun owners (and their associations), and the rights of those who fall victim to this irresponsible nuttiness:
Bill Moyers on Living under the Gun
Adam Gopnik on One More Massacre
E.J Dionne on The Gag Rule on Guns
Daren Samuelsohn on Why Gun Lovers still fear Obama

Scientists to Make Iron Man Suit

Of course, Harvard scientists will make this for the US military.  Nevertheless since I'm blessed by birth in the good ole USA, military surplus will make them available to me within a decade as my constitutional right.


Besides, always found it better to stay a decade behind in technology so others work the bugs out and price comes down for me.  Not quite a luddite but close.

[Computerworld - Harvard University scientists are working on an Iron Man-like smart suit that could improve soldiers' endurance in war zones.

The university received a $2.6 million research grant for the project from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the research arm of the U.S. Department of Defense.

The suit, which is expected to include sensors and its own energy source, will be designed to delay the onset of fatigue, enabling soldiers to travel further in the field, while also supporting the body and protecting it from injuries when the soldier is carrying heavy loads.

A team of bioengineers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard will work on the project.]

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229378/Harvard_scientists_to_build_Iron_Man_like_suit_for_military?source=CTWNLE_nlt_dailyam_2012-07-20

Protesters Block Westboro Beyatches

Hell yeah!!!

[A planned protest by the Westboro Baptist Church was overshadowed Saturday whenthousands of supporters gathered at the funeral of a fallen soldier to block the radical church's effort.

Thousands of people in red shirts formed a "human wall" around the Columbia, Mo. church where 21-year-old Army Specialist Sterling Wyatt's funeral was held. Wyatt was killed in Afghanistan earlier this month...

Westboro Baptist Church frequently pickets military funerals around the country, based on the group's belief that deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan are God's punishment for the United States' tolerance of homosexuality. Last year, the group announced plans to "quadruple" their protest efforts following a Supreme Court decision that ruled such demonstrations are protected by the First Amendment.] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/22/westboro-baptist-church_n_1693548.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=072312&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Kinks, The: "She's Got Everything"

Spirit: "Nature's Way"



Spirit: "Animal Zoo"  http://youtu.be/DUlj7nYnX9k

Dos Estados Unidos

(Ed. note, have but bare clue this means 2 United States, which meant to use as title until thought it would prove progressively ironic and provoke haters, just to get views.  Now, it looks kinda stupid.)


[By HOPE YEN
The Associated Press

The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net...



Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.

"I grew up going to Hawaii every summer. Now I'm here, applying for assistance because it's hard to make ends meet. It's very hard to adjust," said Laura Fritz, 27, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich to poor as she filled out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large swaths of Jefferson County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly double.] emphasis added
http://www.wftv.com/news/ap/social-issues/us-poverty-on-track-to-rise-to-highest-since-1960s/nPzs3/
See also http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/22/us-poverty-level-1960s_n_1692744.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics



Thanks for playing the consumerism game, suckers, laughs Goldman Sachs all the way to their vaults and foreign bank accounts.


Banks created liars loans mortgages, ripped off humans and municipalities without mercy nor any hint of remorse their rapacious greed would cause foreseeable evil social consequences, and have their profits coming back now with resulting obscene bonuses for cratering the world economy.


Homeless Children in America:  Not a bug but feature of capitalism without conscience and conservative chowderheads cutting budgets for social services:


[..After hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit in 2005, advocates for the homeless were horrified to find that the storms had left one in 50 American kids without a home, a record high, according to a report by the Coalition for Family Homelessness. But only a few years later the financial crisis outperformed nature in casting catastrophe on poor Americans. After record foreclosures, layoffs and budget cuts that hit poor families the hardest, America is a country where one out of 45 kids doesn’t have a home. That totals 1.6 million children in 2010 without a permanent place to live, an increase of 448,000 in just three years. Forty percent of the kids are under 6...


The Southern states, which are also some of the nation’s poorest, have the worst access to homeless shelters: Of Mississippi’s (poverty rate 25.87 percent) 82 counties, only 17 offer a family homeless shelter, according to the “Red, White and Blue Book,” which compiles information about services for homeless families. There are 23 in Alabama. Louisiana’s homelessness rate doubled between 2007 and 2009, and that year researchers estimated that 30 percent of the state’s homeless families ended up sleeping in their cars or in abandoned buildings...

“All of a sudden, around the early 1980s we started to see tons of families who were there because of poverty,” Ralph da Costa-Núñez, who worked in Mayor Ed Koch’s administration and is now CEO of Homes for the Homeless, tells AlterNet.
The reasons behind the jump in family homelessness are not complex, Núñez says. “It was the gutting of the safety net. Reagan cut every social program that helped the poor. Then there’s inflation so their aid checks are shrinking. Where are they going? Into the streets, into the shelters.”
The administration was especially keen to cut low-income housing programs. Peter Dreier writes that Reagan created a housing task force, “dominated by politically connected developers, landlords and bankers.” They and the president were in agreement that the market was the best way to address housing for the poor, and instituted cuts in government spending that yielded almost instant results. In 1970, Dreier writes, there were more low-income housing units than families who needed them, but “by 1985 the number of low-cost units had fallen to 5.6 million, and the number of low-income renter households had grown to 8.9 million, a disparity of 3.3 million units.”]  http://www.salon.com/2012/07/19/how_america_became_a_country_that_lets_little_kids_go_homeless_salpart/?source=newsletter
So do the math.  Raygunz cuts the budget for social services, his advisers want the magical unicorn of the free market to provide for low income housing, and then noted socialist and America hater William Jefferson Clinton gutted welfare.  Since free markets live and feed on profits and housing for the working poor would yield as high a return on investment, housing stock plummeted for poor folk.
So cuts + unicorn + more cuts = homeless children and trillions in profits for greedy bloodsucking bastards.
[LONDON, July 22 (Reuters) - Rich individuals and their families have as much as $32 trillion of hidden financial assets in offshore tax havens, representing up to $280 billion in lost income tax revenues, according to research published on Sunday.
The study estimating the extent of global private financial wealth held in offshore accounts - excluding non-financial assets such as real estate, gold, yachts and racehorses - puts the sum at between $21 and $32 trillion.]  emphasis added because it pisses me off.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/22/super-rich-offshore-havens_n_1692608.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics




Schrodinger's Candidate

Schrodinger's Candidate: 






Fake Obama Spokesman with Awesome Ad

You shall know the truth and it will set you free; unless of course you have to conceal the truth by hiding tax returns which would show Willard manipulating tax avoidance havens, charitable trusts, and other dodges to minimize tax liability, then you might not get to become President as ordained by the god of mammon.



Found at http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/07/21/a-retroactive-apology/

Joe Paterno Statue Removed

http://missoulian.com/news/national/statue-of-famed-penn-st-coach-paterno-taken-down/article_3b5060e2-8c69-500a-a606-ed85b507c5c5.html

Sunday Bible Stuff: "Better for me to be challenged by a Biblical passage"

[...When I was young, my family was Episcopalian, but most of my friends were Evangelicals. I got fed up with the way Episcopalians would evasively answer questions about what certain passages in the Bible meant. “What do you think it means?” was a typical response. In contrast, most of my Baptist friends could expect clear authoritative answers.

In hindsight, I recognize that my community was very conscious of that field. They were trying to avoid giving me pat answers. Better for me to be challenged by a Biblical passage than to through life anchored to some interpretation simply because of something my Sunday school teacher said.

Most of the Evangelical families living in the semi-rural south with me actually did believe that there were pat answers. They had no problem teaching the answers which they had learned from their families. And in this process the problems of the Bible are papered over, the challenges are swiftly removed and the contradictions are given a gloss that minimizes them. And since this process has been going on for generations, most of these answers are quite good and sound very reasonable...

So the difference between Fundamentalists and Progressives is not that one the first take the Bible literally and the second pick and choose. Both groups interpret the Bible in ways that minimize or remove certain sections and highlight others. The difference is that the Progressives do it consciously.]
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unreasonablefaith/2012/06/everyone-interprets-some-just-admit-it/