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Closed for repairs

Monday, October 22, 2012

Our Internet service has been cutting out periodically. We’ll get five, maybe ten minutes of service, and then it’s down for half an hour or more. A service person is coming Wednesday, so until then, no posts. I’m just hoping I can get this up before it cuts out again. 

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Let these people go

Saturday, October 20, 2012

A few days ago I mentioned that I was reading Chuck Thompson’s book advocating expulsion of the Southern States. I continue to support his basic thesis, but he was wrong about one thing. He wants to keep Texas, mainly on economic grounds. I say, let those people go.

Cheerleaders in the Southeast Texas town of Kountze may continue displaying banners with Bible verses during football games until a lawsuit over the issue is resolved, a judge ruled Thursday.

State District Judge Steve Thomas of Hardin County granted a temporary injunction in a lawsuit that put the town of 2,100 residents in the center of a national debate about religious freedom and the First Amendment.

Thomas ruled that a ban imposed by the Kountze Independent School District appears to have violated the cheerleaders’ rights to religious expression. Because the trial has been set for June 24, the outcome will be a moot point for this football season.

(via Houston Chronicle)

Here’s what’s going on here. The legal issue is not even close. The free speech claim is laughable on a number of fronts, particularly in light of numerous decisions allowing school authorities to restrict student speech in activities that actually involve personal speech, not speech easily attributable to the school itself, such as school newspapers, not to mention personal blogs. The schedule for the “trial” is also laughable. There are no disputed facts here, so there’s no need for such a drawn out schedule, except to protect the football schedule. Count on the judge to need a long time to mull over the issues, maybe all the way through next football season, at which time he’ll discover some novel constitutional principles that will allow this blatant constitutional violation. One has to wonder if the judge would have ruled differently if the banners had read “There is no God but Allah”.

So Texas is free to leave too. We don’t need their state religion of Christianity infused football.

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Friday Night Music

Friday, October 19, 2012

Okay, here’s how I got to this one. I wanted to find a song that would somehow tie into Obama’s “Romnesia” riff (see previous post); something about forgetting (a lost cause, by the way). So, I went to the google, and put in “songs about forgetting” and this is one of the songs that came up. Which is quite strange, because it’s not really about forgetting at all, but maybe the person compiling the list forgot that. Anyway, it’s a fun song, though certainly not the greatest song that’s ever come down the pike. This is the version I first heard, by a British one hit wonder band called The Searchers.

But I learn from youtube that in fact the song was originally by a group called the Clovers. There’s no video available, but here it is, and in my humble opinion it’s far superior.

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Romnesia

Friday, October 19, 2012

Great Politics. Romney can’t match this. He has no timing.

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The rich are different than you and me

Thursday, October 18, 2012

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

But to be fair, both rich and poor are barred from insider trading.

Federal prosecutors want Rajat K. Gupta, once one of the world’s most prominent businessmen, to spend as much as 10 years in prison for insider trading.

Mr. Gupta’??s defense lawyers would rather he spend time in Rwanda.

It is just the latest intriguing twist in the case of Mr. Gupta, who was convicted of leaking boardroom secrets about Goldman Sachs to the hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam.

Article Tools

On Wednesday, prosecutors and defense lawyers filed sentencing memos to Judge Jed S. Rakoff, who is scheduled to sentence Mr. Gupta on Oct. 24 in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Mr. Gupta is the former head of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and the most influential of the 69 individuals convicted in the governmentâ??s sweeping insider-trading crackdown.

Mr. Gupta’s lawyers have pleaded for a lenient sentence of probation, accompanied by an order that he perform community service. Gary P. Naftalis, a lawyer for Mr. Gupta, made an unusual request in recommending that Mr. Gupta, who has played a leadership role in a variety of global humanitarian causes, be sent to Rwanda.

(via NYTimes.com)

It will be interesting to see if the punishment for insider trading is as harsh as that for stealing bread.

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Adventures in copyright

Thursday, October 18, 2012

A few weeks ago I put up a video about Linda McMahon. It was sort of an abridgement of a film made by Jackson Katz. The abridgment itself, as I understand it, was made by Mr. Katz, so I would have to assume that he holds the copyright thereto. He is a crusader against violence against, and degradation of, women, so I’m assuming that he would approve of the use of his video, which is directed against Linda McMahon, in efforts to block her election.

Well, the video I embedded is down, under a claim of copyright from the WWE. But before they could do that, I downloaded it myself, and then posted it on my own account, where they promptly took it down.

Now, I’m no expert on copyright law, but it seems passing strange to me that the video, which is not composed exclusively of WWE performances, could be owned, in whole or in part, by the WWE. One would think that Mr. Katz might have something to say about that. The video documents the way in which women were portrayed and treated by the WWE, and the effect that treatment had on the brain dead males that attend these events. Suffice it to say that at least some of them drew the conclusion that women enjoy being treated that way. To the extent Mr. Katz may have used videos made by the WWE there is a concept known as “fair use” that probably protects him.

The video was most recently available here, but it has also been taken down. If you move fast, you might catch this one, which the WWE apparently has yet to find. It’s not the Katz video, but it’s a particularly horrible example of the way in which Linda and her husband treated women.

The WWE takedown of this video is yet another example of the way in which corporations rule our world. I could have protested the WWE’s action, but I would have had to agree to be sued in California had I chosen to do so. Besides, all youtube would have done was register my protest. If I wanted to do anything about it, I’d have to sue, which would cost me endless time or money, while the WWE could litigate me to death with lawyers whose fees they could write off. In any event, by the time a judge declared my right to post the video, Linda McMahon would either be a Senator or a bad memory.

But look, while it’s still up there, pass the link above on. These videos change minds. One of our Liberal Drinkers showed the Katz video to a woman who had a Linda sign in her yard. She promptly took it down. That’s one less vote for Linda.

UPDATE: Another good video, here.

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Romney’s tax plan detailed

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

You can get the full scoop here.

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Why, oh why?

Monday, October 15, 2012

Okay, I just bailed on the Murphy-McMahon debate. I can’t take it anymore. I have a simple question I would like to ask all Democratic candidates.

When asked about social security or Medicare, every Republican candidate responds with some variant of the claim that he or she will not cut benefits for those saintly seniors currently receiving them. While this claim is probably not true, let us put that aside. That is what they say.

Why is it that not a single Democratic candidate, to my knowledge, turns to the audience and says, for example: What did Linda McMahon just tell you? She just told you that she intends to cut these benefits for the children and grandchildren of the seniors currently receiving them. She’s telling the workers of today that they are paying social security taxes today for benefits she does not intend to let them have. She is telling them that she is comfortable with them getting reduced or no Medicare benefits. She thinks that the seniors of today are as selfish as she is; that all they care about is their own benefits, and they don’t care whether their children or grandchildren get them in the future. I think the American people are better than that.

Isn’t that the response, or some variant of it, that we should hear? Why do Democrats take a pitch like that, right over the plate, and let it go by instead of taking a swing? Do they really buy into the Republican belief that people only care about their own narrow self interests, to the exclusion even of their own children?

Speaking of McMahon, I hear in the other room that she’s claiming she can’t be bought. The response to that is that she doesn’t need to be bought, she’s ready to sell us out without payment. After all, she’s got her snout in the trough for that tax cut; that’s payment enough.

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Can’t happen here, cause it already has

Monday, October 15, 2012

We learn in this morning’s New York Times that inequality is growing in North Korea, further proof of the failure of their system.

DANDONG, China — On her weekly shopping trips to downtown Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, a 52-year-old pig farmer who gave her name as Mrs. Kim tries to ignore the dusting of prosperity that has begun to transform the city in recent years: the newly built apartment blocks, the increasing number of Mercedes-Benzes that zip along once-empty boulevards, the smartly dressed young women who conspicuously gab on their newly acquired cellphones. She has never been to the Rungna People’s Pleasure Ground, a new amusement park where children of the elite howled with delight this summer as they shot down a waterslide.

“Why would I care about the new clothing of government officials and their children when I can’t feed my family?” she asked tartly, wringing her hands as she recounted the chronic malnutrition that has sickened her two sons and taken the lives of less-well-off neighbors.

In the 10 months since Kim Jong-un took the reins of his desperately poor nation following the death of his autocratic father, North Korea — or at least its capital — has acquired more of the trappings of a functioning society, say diplomats, aid groups and academics who have visited in recent months.

But in rare interviews this month with four North Koreans in this border city on government-sanctioned stays, they said that at least so far, they have not felt any improvements in their lives since the installment last December of their youthful leader — a sentiment activists and analysts say they have also heard. In fact, the North Koreans said, their lives have gotten harder, despite Mr. Kim’s tantalizing pronouncements about boosting people’s livelihoods that have fueled outside hopes that the nuclear-armed nation might ease its economically ruinous obsession with military hardware and dabble in Chinese-style market reforms.

(via NYTimes.com)

If only the leaders of North Korea would emerge from their isolationist lairs and take a page from the U.S. to learn how to do things right. Right now, at least according to the picture in the article, North Korean rich enjoy the fruits of exploitation by going bowling. If they would only open their minds and hearts soon they too could have their own car elevators.

Such a backward country.

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Book Review

Sunday, October 14, 2012

At the moment I’m rereading the Hitchhiker’s Guide series, sandwiching each silly installment between works of non-fiction. This post is about the latest slice of, shall we say, literary meat between the tasty bread baked by Douglas Adams.

Despite the title, this is not really a book review, as I’ll content myself to pointing to this review, which appears to be a pretty good take, based on what I’ve read so far.

Regular readers of this blog, should such exist, will know that I am a proponent of Northern secession. The book in question, Chuck Thompson’s Better off Without ‘Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession, takes a slightly different approach, suggesting that we should open the door we shut in 1865 and invite the South out. The net effect being the same, I find myself in agreement with Mr. Thompson. The book is fun, precisely because he vents at just the right targets in just the right way. Since the South in general, and now racists, religionists, anti-intellectuals, homophobes and country music fans, have successfully cast themselves as victims, it is considered taboo to subject them to the vitriol to which we here in the North are freely subjected by the very hypocrites who depend on our tax outflows to preserve their deluded belief that they are small government self sufficient patriots. Thompson will have none of it, so it’s a fun read that makes some serious points.

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