Chronicling the depravities of the State.
Glorious news denizens of Chicago! The High Priest Douche Bag himself, Mayor “Dumb Fuck” Daley, isn’t going to run for re-election. Daley has been an outspoken opponent to civil rights from day one and had done everything in his power to keep the people of his city disarmed (except for the criminals of course). Well it seems he’s going to end is own reign of terror over the city leaving the door open for another contender.
Make sure you pick somebody who isn’t a complete fuckwit.
So we had a crazy person take hostages at the headquarters for the Discovery Channel which ended in him getting blown up and everybody else thankfully uninjured. The left is calling this man a right-wing extremist and the right are calling him a left-wing extremist. I have to agree with Robb Allen and stick with simply calling the man plain all crazy:
Sometimes, crazy is just crazy. It’s a cheap and easy ‘point for your team’ to be able to point out that someone on the other side is a few fries short of a Happy Meal, but it’s not necessarily true. Sure, this Darwin Award Winner espoused radical views that find a better home on the left, but to insist that the left ‘claim him as one of their own’ makes as much sense as saying those on the right are equally responsible for McVeigh.
Some people are just off their rocker and it’s a non-partisan issue. The guy just happened to focus his crazy into eco-centric lunacy instead of revenge for Waco.
We sent our most communist-like president to a communist country to free some schmuck who was stupid enough to cross North Korea’s border.
Frankly I think we should have just left that guy in North Korea as a lesson to everybody not to enter that God forsaken country. Seriously you have to be a complete fucking moron to even venture near the North Korean border.
Why the heck did Gun Owners of America (GOA) get themselves involved in net neutrality? According to Mr. Pratt:
“Back in 2006 we supported net neutrality, as we had been concerned that AOL and others might continue to block pro-second amendment issues,” said Erich Pratt, communications director for GOA.
OK I get the idea that GOA doesn’t like the idea of a filtered Internet but aren’t they a second amendment rights organization? I’m a firm believer that you can’t be an expert in everything and you need to focus your resources on the most critical things. GOA does a lot of complaining that they don’t have a whole lot of money to work with and yet they are splitting that cash between two subjects. Likewise I highly doubt that GOA has any real expertise in the field of net neutrality since they did say the following:
“The issue has now become one of government control of the Internet, and we are 100 percent opposed to that,” Pratt said.
Let me get this straight. You’re an organization that generally hates government involvement in the life of average citizens and you supported the Save The Internet organization. Save The Internet’s primary purpose has always been to get legislation through that will allow government enforcement of net neutrality. As soon as the word legislation is involved it implies government control hence there was no point in the history of the Save The Internet organization that they weren’t about government control. The fact that GOA got involved in net neutrality was questionable to begin with, but then they didn’t realize the organization they were backing was asking for government control shows a severe lack of research into the subject.
Here’s my two cents of advice GOA, leave net neutrality to the experts over at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and keep your focus on whinging about the National Rifle Association (NRA) gun rights. If you get yourself involved in another fight you may very well get sucker punched because you didn’t study whom all was going to show up for the brawl.
A little over a year ago I made a post stating that accused weapons dealer, Viktor Bout, was not being extradited to the United States. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to the story I’ll recap quickly.
Viktor Bout is a man accused of selling weapons to people our government doesn’t like. These sales take place outside of our borders but of course we like to have our noses in the business of everybody else. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) setup a sting operation in Thailand to catch this man and catch them they did. The DEA posed as members of the Farc group of Columbia. The sting operation was a success but that’s when everything stated to go wrong for the DEA. Thailand was not willing to extradite Mr. Bout because their country sees the Farc as a political group not a criminal gang. Due to this Thailand fought extradition and won last year. The United States appealed and won this year.
I mentioned two reasons in my previous post why I don’t believe the charges against Mr. Bout are valid. Go read that to find my opinion. Either way I think Mr. Bout is completely boned now since the following charges are being aimed against him:
Mr Bout, a former Soviet air force officer, faces US charges of conspiring to kill Americans, conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and conspiring to acquire and use an anti-aircraft missile.
Yes the terrorist word was rolled out. This means one of two things; he’s guilty until proven innocent (that’s how our courts seem to run the second terrorism is one of the accusation) or he’s going to be sent to Gitmo without trail. Russia is trying to get him back and maybe we can trade him for a few more of our spies, but I’m doubting that will happen.
Of course if we lost this appeal we found a way to appeal again by simply adding more charges to the list:
American authorities lodged two further charges of money-laundering and electronic fraud against Mr Bout before Friday’s hearing – if their appeal had been rejected, he would have had to remain in jail pending another decision.
Basically we were going to get this man on our soil regardless of what we needed to do.
In the last post I mentioned one of the biggest arguments presented at last night’s event was the only way to stop lobbyists was to allow the government to regulate net neutrality. Guess what? The RIAA, one of the largest lobbyist holders in Washington, is jockeying to make net neutrality laws include filtering and the ability to spy on customer. Who called that one? That’s right I did.
This is why I don’t want government involved with the Internet in any way, shape, or form. Any company large enough can buy them and get whatever the Hell they want passed into law. At least with the ISPs in control (which I’ve mentioned is still going to fuck us over) I have the option of not paying for their service. An additional benefit is any deals groups such as the RIAA want to make will have to be done with each ISP separately. Did I mention that these deals won’t be law and thus ISPs will be free to not make those deals? Oh I didn’t? Well I did now.
Last night I made a major error in judgment. I attended the Save the Internet rally. In my defense I attended it not because I thought I’d agree with what was being presented (that went out the door the second I heard Al Franken was going to be speaking) but because I thought it would be a good forum for debate. My error in judgment was forgetting to fact that “progressive” liberals don’t like debate and thus do everything they can to squash it.
My dumbass detector went off the second I entered the room. I arrived late but two of my friends were there early and happened to save me a seat. The first thing my friend told me upon my sitting down was “this is a liberal’s wet dream.” That’s one Hell of a comment as this friend is a self-professed communist (not a socialist or democrat but he is an honest-to-goodness communist). When a self-professed communist says an event is a liberal circle jerk you know you’re going to lose braincells just by being there.
One of the constant things being parroted by the speakers was the fact telecommunications companies have a powerful lobby in Washington. This was being brought up as a danger because the lobbies would use their might to coerce government into allowing major ISPs to filter and throttle Internet access as they see fit. I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer (as evident by me going to this event) but I still can’t figure out the “logic” they were using. In essence the speakers were saying the only way to prevent powerful lobbyists from using government to ruin our Internet was to… make government regulate our Internet. Wow my brain hurts just from remembering that.
That wasn’t all. After some time they brought out a Latino woman to speak. Unlike most “progressive” liberals I’m not obsessed with the race of another person, it’s irrelevant to me so I didn’t realize this would be significant. Shortly into her speech she bring up a statistic saying only a low percentage (she had an actual number that I’ve forgotten) of Latinos in this country have Internet connectivity and the FCC must do something to correct this. What does the percentage of people connected to the Internet have to do with net neutrality? Your guess is as good as mine really. Frankly I think they wanted to play the race card so badly that they were willing to bring somebody on stage to make an entirely different argument just to bring race into the game. Democrats playing the race card always confuses me since traditionally it’s been the Republican Party (whom I hate equally) that’s supported civil rights for minorities. Hell the slaves were freed by a republican. Either way they love the race card and play it whenever possible.
I’m not sure at exactly what time it was but during the speeches Al Franken excused himself from the event. He made a mention that some of his family members were in town so he wanted to go see them. According to his Wikipedia page (I know not an authoritative source, I don’t care) he resides in Minneapolis so it would seem likely his family would be in town. I’m not going to knock the guy because it could very well be they were family members from out of town but either way he ducked out before any dissent (in other words the public) could speak. That’s usually his method of operating so I wasn’t surprised.
Alas the night moved forward. A panel of speakers were brought out whom simply parroted the ongoing theme of the night. This was more bullshit that really added nothing. Finally came the point where people were able to speak. I didn’t realize this but the only way you were allowed to speak was to sign up and receive a number. One of my friends had a number which he gave to me (apparently I’m more entertaining since I don’t care if I piss off an entire auditorium of people). Before anybody was allowed to speak ground rules were being set which was fine by me. Let me rephrase that it was fine by me until one of the ground rules established was not being able to ask anybody on stage questions. This is why “progressive” liberal events piss me off, they don’t want debates they want obedience. Their motto should be “shut up slave.”
The number I had was 53 and each speaker was allowed up to two minutes to speak. This meant in a worst case scenario I’d have to wait 106 minutes before I could go up and make a statement. Two thing occurred to me at this point; what I was planning on doing was asking the FCC chairman a question and probably wasn’t going to have the chance to speak anyways. Only people with numbers one through 40 were asked to come up which is generally a good way of saying everybody else isn’t going to get time. My group and I stayed there for a short while to see what the statements were going to be and left once we realized that everybody was going to use their entire two minutes.
The first, second, and third speakers took half their time rattling of their credentials (at least it seemed like half their time). After they rattled off why they felt themselves to be so great they would make a statement about how the Internet can’t survive without the government regulating it. Needless to say we left after the third speaker opened her mouth, there was just no point in being there.
After that we went and grabbed a couple of beers hoping to numb the brain damage caused by being there. Seriously I’ve never seen such a circle jerk in my life.
A man in Australia has a good basic idea that would be great with a little fine tuning. Basically he claims to have a saltwater crocodile that can predict the outcome of Australia’s election:
He will put his powers to the test when two chickens of equal weight that bear photographs of the main party leaders are dangled over his enclosure.
Whichever the 5m (16ft) croc chooses will, according to his handlers, win this weekend’s election.
Overall I like this idea but believe there needs to be one change. Instead of dangling chickens bearing the pictures of the candidates over the crocodile I believe the actual candidates should be dangled over the crocodile. Whoever the crocodile chooses would be the de facto loser. This would also ensure only people who really wanted to run for office would do so, not just power hungry goons that are running now.
You know most politicians who want to tax successful rich Americans usually dance around the topic by using flowery terms such as America’s highest earners. Mark Dayton isn’t most politicians:
Progressive Taxes Read my lips, “Tax the rich.” Minnesota’s wealthiest citizens pay only two-thirds of their fair share of state and local taxes. That’s wrong. As Governor, I will raise taxes on the rich of Minnesota, NOT on the rest of Minnesota.
Wait they only pay two thirds of the state’s taxes? Only two thirds? What a condescending asshole. The wealthy make up a minority of the population of this state. The average income in the state of Minnesota was $33,059 in 2001. You know income isn’t that high when the wealthiest don’t number enough to bump the average income up by any meaningful amount. This minority is already paying two thirds of the state’s tax though. What a fucking prick.
Minnesota has a slight problem at the moment. Our largest employer is the state of Minnesota. The state employs 54,900 (not including the 25,976 employees of the University of Minnesota who are also partially on the government payroll) while the second largest employer, Mayo Clinic, employs 37,318. The state employs 17,582 more people than our largest company (that’s actually a non-profit corporation). That’s a whopping 68% more people. The reason for this is the simple fact that many large companies have moved out of Minnesota due to our “progressive” taxes which involve gouging successful companies.
If Mr. Dayton gets into office I’m betting the only employer that will remain in the state is the state. Hell they may actually begin to outsource!
So yeah I found an article in the Red Star that made me laugh. Apparently DFL candidate for Governor, Mark Dayton, made a remark about people that follow him around with cameras. He stated it’s harassment and apparently doesn’t like the surveillance state. This is what happens Mr. Politician when we use your tools against you. Notice how you don’t like being watched 24/7 by cameras? We don’t fucking like it either.