Category: Politics

Political commentary and awareness

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Senator Ted Stevens Technophobe – Outted!

Just because you don’t understand it, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t embrace it!

There’s a bipartisan Senate bill that would actually do something good for a change. S. 2590 would create a Google-style public database that would show who gets government money through contracts and grants. But a single anonymous senator has blocked the bill. [Source]

You guessed it! Looks like Senator Ted Stevens. You might recall Senator Ted Stevens as the guy who explained the Internet as "a series of tubes." He is in charge of regulating the Internet and Ted Stevens does not even get it!

It is worth noting that your government may not be living up to your expectations because the elected officials, the ones your vote or lack of vote put into office, are a bunch of old coots. And spare a minute and a half to see John McCain make Jon Stewart spew his coffee while discussing Ted Stevens. (The 3:35 version of the same interview.)

Redstate has further commentary regarding the Pork Busters legislation.

The legislation, also known as the “Federal Funding, Accountability, & Transparency Act”, would create an online, searchable database of federal earmarks. The database would list which member of congress obtained the earmark, how much the earmark is for, what the purpose is for, which local contractors are involved, etc. [Source]

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Feed the conspiracists

Cathy likes to joke about my conspiracy-mindedness. I like to makeup conspiracy theories as jokes. Here is some fuel on rigged elections. The comments make some valid points about why this would be hard to do in practice such as the injected number of votes not matching the recorded number of voters.

I really like the comment that suggests we get a vote receipt like an atm receipt. When the polls close all votes are published on a website. You could then match your vote receipt to the published vote to see if it differed. If it differed then you could dispute it. This would not allow for changing votes because you are reporting that it is different than the information printed on the vote receipt, not that it is different from your memory.

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CORRECTION: TN Does Not Separate Church and State Either

Earlier I posted that Arkansas does not allow Atheists to hold government office nor testify as witnesses. I went on to suggest that TN had been out done in their efforts to live backwards by legislating beliefs and morals. I was wrong. Per Article IX Section 2 of the TN State Constitution.

Section 2. No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards
and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this
state. [Source]

As a matter of fact, religion [implied Christian] is so important to the state of Tennessee that Article IX Section 1 specifically excludes ministers from holding office since their duties are far more important.

Section 1. Whereas ministers of the Gospel are by their profession, dedicated
to God and the care of souls, and ought not to be diverted from the great
duties of their functions; therefore, no minister of the Gospel, or priest of any
denomination whatever, shall be eligible to a seat in either House of the Legislature. [Source]

Arkansas and Tennessee are in good company. Apparently, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas all require the believe of a supreme being and/or afterlife and in some cases you must specifically be a Christian to hold office or be a witness.

So, not only are Atheists going to Hell (a place they don’t believe exists) but they cannot hold one of the most corrupt jobs known to man for which they would go to Hell anyway.

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Fly Half Way Around the Globe, See Atlanta Airport, Go Home!

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Exerpt from The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus as found on a bronze plaque inside The Statue of Liberty [Source]

Except for you and you and, hey, yes, you–the Asian guy.

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Separation of Church and State..except in Arkansas

So, in TN we are doing stupid things with our constitution like dictating morals, telling people whether or not they can get married, and forbidding people from buying dildos. But in Arkansas they have an article in their constitution forbidding Atheists from holding public office or testifying as a witness! I’m calling my state representative! Our stupidity has been one up’d! (See the correction)

Article 19, section 1 of the Arkansas Constitution: Atheists disqualified from holding office or testifying as witness.

No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any court. [Source]

The Arkansas constitution is available online.

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Bush asks Mom, “How do you know his life would have been good?”

Did Bush really say this?!

Dolores Kesterson’s son died in Iraq. She was granted a private meeting with the President.

Dolores tried to give Bush a sense of what type of person Erik had been. She described her son as a “comedian” whose favorite saying was, “Life is good.” The president replied, “How do you know his life would have been good?” [Source]

He followed up with some enlightenment.

Before he concluded their meeting, Bush proclaimed to Dolores, "We won’t know in our lifetime whether or not Iraq was a success." [Source]

In our lifetime?! I can tell now.

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Olga Goes Down

On July 15 I said it was coming. Tom Maszerowski shows us it is here!

OLGA.net, The On-Line Guitar Archive has been served a take-down notice from the NMPA and MPA (whatever the hell they are) referencing the DMCA as grounds. OLGA’s crime: making text files with the chords of songs available for download. How this violates the DMCA beats me. [Source]

For those that have have never visited OLGA, it has been around for ages and is an incredible resource for aspiring musicians. For all practical purposes, it is an education site more than anything else. Regular people interpret, not copy, songs showing the guitar chord changes, riffs and lyrics. The site has inspired me to buy CDs by the artists so that I had the actual music to play along as I learned the song.

This is an atrocity in the name of a lawyer pocketing some dough because the idea that OLGA deprives any artist of revenue is ridiculous. OLGA is a easy target to set a legal precedence in order to tackle the sites that actually make a profit from selling lyrics online.

ogla offline due to legal takedown notice

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The USA Does Not Do World’s Fairs Anymore

There was a World’s Fair in New Orleans in 1984. That was the last US participation. In 2002, the USA had its membership in the Bureau of International Expositions (BIE – the sanctioning body of the World’s Fair) withdrawn due to non-allocation of funds by Congress. Can you say war funding? The US quietly becomes more egocentric and disconnected from the world. I know I as a citizen did not realize until today that we, as a country, no longer participate in the World’s Fair which dates back to 1851. Way to be a world leader!

Look for further discussion at Atomic Tumor.

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Abstinence education in place of Sex education won’t work

Just say no! to naive school boards that try to do away with sex education in favor of abstinence education.

An Ohio school board is expanding sex education following the revelation that 13 percent of one high school’s female students were pregnant last year.

There were 490 female students at Timken High School in 2005, and 65 were pregnant, WEWS-TV in Cleveland reported. [Source]

I wonder how many guys were involved in this?!

Oh, the school board’s response in Ohio?

…the new curriculum moves beyond the "Just Say No" approach…

No kidding!

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Big holes!

So I was reading about the biggest hole in Russia

The gaint hole is actually a diamond mine in Eastern Siberia near the town Mirna. It is 525 meters deep and 1.25 km in the diameter.
…
The suction above the hole resulted in several helicopter crashes, so all flight above the hole is prohibited now.

and learned about Bingham Canyon Copper mine via the post comments. The facts about the mine are fascinating. And the pictures are impressive. I wonder if this is what the West Virginia mountains will look like in 100 years. (see also)

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The US House of Representatives Is Run By Predators

“Social networking sites such as MySpace and chat rooms have allowed sexual predators to sneak into homes and solicit kids,” … [Source]

NO! It is NOT the social networking sites and chat rooms that have allowed the sexual predators to sneak into homes…It is the parents! The parents the parents the parents! You cannot legislate parenting or morals.

Secondly, does anyone fact check anymore! (ironically, I am not going to fact check my next statement) I bet that the above quote is sensationalism and that if you measure the actual rate of incidents concerning sexual predators that you will find it to coincide with the real world. People naively continue to think of the Internet as a game or a book. It is not a game. It is not a book. The Internet is a reflection of the real world! If your 13 year old daughter said, "I’m going to go hang out at a bar near the college." would you give her your credit card and shrug her off in a taxi so that you could focus on all that busy stuff you need to attend to? Of course not! Then why are you doing the same thing with the Internet? Do not allow the greatest technology, the convergence of world knowledge, be crippled by some scared, power hungry technology ignorant people manipulating your vote with hype.

A free society remains free because of the unhindered exchange of information. Burning the books is how to control knowledge and remove freedoms. Filtering software does not work. It filters the wrong information, allows for unfair competition, and is often easily circumvented by those seeking to ignore the filtering.

We have real world predators attacking you right now. Those predators are your senators, lawyers, your president, and other people in government seeking to remove your freedoms and change America forever in the name of leveraging their own beliefs and powers. A government of the people and for the people is only of and for as long as the people keep the government in check and the moment people become too busy to worry about it and being taking sensationalism and generalizations as fact is the moment that the foundation of our society begins to crumb. We are at that moment now!

Contact your representative and ask them just what they were thinking!

Thank you Tom for the link!