SOPA, Protect-IP, NDAA

SOPA, PROTECT IP, HR 1540 (2012 NDAA)

No more freedom of the press.
No more freedom of association.
No more habeus corpus.


Fascism.

Need I say more?

By the way, If you are reading this, you have downloaded it & taken a copy of it. This is copyrighted material (even though I have not registered my copyright) as all original works are, so beware: you might get five years for this act!

---

Yes, I do need to say more.  It might be pretty easy to bypass the web site filtering proposed by SOPA.  Simply don't use the DNS servers provided by your ISP..  If you don't understand the previous sentence, give up now and start sucking your thumb.  Otherwise, change your DNS setup (on your router or computer) to point to one of the freely available DNS servers not run by an ISP, perhaps one hosted in a different, and perhaps more free, country..   Check out the OpenNic Project (or skip directly to the instructions.)   Here is another list of free DNS providers; I'm sure you can google for others.  Pick one that gives you good performance.  If you savvy, could get set up your own caching DNS and use one of the free DNS addresses as a forwarder to get even better performance--but perhaps your router already does this--or you could try using this tool to figure out a good performing DNS.

Alan Simpson blasts debt impasse

Sometime I think you have to be a former member of Congress to have any sense...

In an interview with The Associated Press, Simpson said both parties in Congress have bowed, at least so far, to lobbying pressure from interest groups as well as members' own interests in getting re-elected in refusing to get behind real austerity measures.
from the Billings Gazette

You see, there is this Taxpayer Protection Pledge that most Republicans have signed and if the were to renege on this pledge they might find campaign contributions diminish. According to Simpson,

...Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, has concentrated on getting GOP politicians to sign a pledge never to support a net increase in taxes.

And the Democrats won;t agree to any package that doesn't have a least some tax increases in it.

Ironically, a fairer tax system would have fewer loopholes and incentives bult into it and that is one of the things the committee was supposed to be working on. However, even Obama is two faced on this issue...

“Either we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share in taxes, or we’re going to have to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare. We can’t afford to do both. Either we gut education and medical research, or we’ve got to reform the tax code so that the most profitable corporations have to give up tax loopholes that other companies don’t get. We can’t afford to do both. This is not class warfare. It’s math.” (Link)

New Tax Cuts to Businesses to Support Hiring and Investment: The President is proposing three tax cuts to provide immediate incentives to hire and invest: (Link)

He's perfectly willing to close loopholes for the wealthy corporations just as long as he can open up new loopholes, er, or incentives. Whatever you want to call them.

printing money

Incredibly, Alan Greenspan said this on "Meet The Press" on August 7th, 2011:

The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.

I think he must be ready to pass away. He doesn't care about the value of the dollar any more or inflation. Alan Greenspan, former protégé of Ayn Rand. No less.



Alan Greenspan, former Fed chairman.

.

stoush

Google and their 'stoush' with Apple.  Odd term to use.

Debt Limit

I'm sure this will all work out in the end, but this Christian Science Monitor article provided some much needed insight I didn't see elsewhere--Brian Williams, are you listening?

...it is becoming ever clearer that the two most important numbers in the debt-ceiling crisis are 1982 and 1990.
[]
What happened in those two years? Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush both agreed to tax increases after Congress promised to make even greater cuts to spending. In both cases, the tax increases took effect, the spending cuts did not.

Another 30,000 Year Monument to Our Arrogance

Assuming that one two three six seven perhaps up to eleven (including one three at the Daiichi facility that wasn't even active at the time of the earthquake that sufferred a fire in a storage pond) of the nuclear reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini and Onagawa power plants don't just explode and contaminate a large percentage of the globe or it doesn't melt through the floor and contaminate the ground water for most of Japan, they will probably be encased and closed forever.  Forever is along time.  Really, only 30,000 years.  As with Chernobyl  a vast area will have to be abandoned for the foreseeable future.  What will out grandchildren think of us?




According to the NeW Your Times (March 15th):


Worryingly, temperatures appeared to be rising in the spent fuel pools at two other reactors at the plant, No. 5 and No. 6, said Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary.

Consent of the Governed

This is great!  I can hardly believe it.  In this day & age there are revolutions happening now!  Incredible.  To think that all these years of the U.S. trying to foment, encourage, cajoul various organizations to overthrow their countries' oppressive governments & autocrats and establish a more democratic government.  And all of that was money seems to have been wasted.  We paid people to revolt and all they did was collect the money.  Did we paid people in Tunisia?  I doubt it.  They wanted freedom from their oppressive and greedy government.  Egypt saw it.  Bahrain. Yemen.  Libya.   I am heartened by this.  My Christian Lebanese friend always tells me that everything that goes on in the Middle East is all about religion.  Religion that I don't understand: Islam and Judaism.  But, these revolutions give me hope that there is more to it, that there are reasonable people there that are willing to stand up, fight back and, hopefully, take charge.

As the U.S. Declaration of Independence states...

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed