Every Day, No Days Off informs us that the Brady paradise, the United Kingdom, are going to ban starter pistols. Frankly I’m rather shocked that they weren’t already banned.
Tag: Politics
U.N. Proving Once Again That They’re Worthless
Everybody’s favorite organization is proving once again there are no people they’re not willing to fuck over hard. Here’s a video found via Dvorak Uncensored that shows what the U.N. is really doing in Haiti:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbieX5s-jHM]
Yup instead building shelters in convenient locations they’re kicking the Haitian population to the boonies while they drop down some nice air conditioned trailers in primo locations for themselves. Your donations at work ladies and gentlemen.
End the Mandate Act
Since most people I know oppose the Mandated Health Insurance Act this should be interesting. Ron Paul has introduced the End the Mandate Act which would repeal the section of the Health Insurance Enrichment Through Government Abuse Act forcing Americans to purchase government mandated health insurance.
Whether you love him or hate him you had to admit he’s consistent and has a point.
Remember These People Make Regulations
I’m always harping on government interference in our every day lives. Lately I’ve been looking at peoples’ desire to get the government further involved in Internet regulations. Well I’ve already shown the United States government’s incompetence in selecting people to work on Internet regulations when they put Mr. Series of Tubes, Ted Stevens, in charge. Well the latest episode of No Agenda shows us that Britain isn’t any more competent at finding people to work on Internet regulations:
The Right Honourable Stephen Timms is the UK’s “Minister for Digital Britain.” He’s the guy behind the Digital Economy Bill, which makes the US DMCA look good by comparison. Seriously, this is some terrible, terrible lawmaking.
OK got that? Here’s his disqualifications:
Here’s what appears to be a letter the DigiMini sent to another MP, explaining why the Digital Economy Bill needs to go forward. It reads, in part, “Copyright owners are currently able to go on-line (sic), look for material to which they hold the copyright and identify unauthorised sources for that material. They can then seek to download a copy of that material and in so doing capture information about the source including the Intellectual Property (IP) address…”
Yup that’s right. Mr. Minister for Digital Britain himself believes IP in the term IP address stands for intelectual property not Internet protocol (which is actually is). Remember these are the kinds of people making decisions in government. Think about that for a good long time when you decide the government should get involved in regulating anything.
Condolences to Poland
Although it’s probably old news to everybody here I didn’t get a chance to blog this over the weekend so alas I’m offering my condolences to the people of Poland. A good chunk of their government was recently wiped out in a plane crash on April 10th. From the article:
As well as the president and his wife, Maria, a number of senior officials were on the passenger list.
They included the army chief of staff Gen Franciszek Gagor, central bank governor Slawomir Skrzypek and deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer.
I also noticed that this event has sparked a look into Poland’s travel policy for government officials. One of the first questions I had about this crash was why so many high ranking government officials were on the same flight at the same time. Apparently Poland has no policy preventing that which I hope they change soon.
On The FCC Vs. Comcast Case
A while back the FCC brought down the hammer on Comcast telling the not-loved-by-anybody company they could not throttler or filter traffic. Well the courts decided that the FCC didn’t have that authority so Comcast is free to go back to their games again. This has been a major topic of discussion with geeks as of late because it pretty much rips the teeth right out of the idea of net neutrality. Or does it?
The Internet is an interesting creature. It’s predecessor was created during the Cold War as a mechanism to ensure the country didn’t have a single vulnerable point in it’s military communications network. The idea was to create a decentralized system that couldn’t be taken down by one or a handful of nuclear strikes, thus allow us to coordinate a counter-attack. Eventually this research lead to the public Internet that you’re using right now.
From the get go the government has been involved in the Internet. Likewise most of the major ISPs are companies that evolved from the breakup of Ma Bell which was a government sanctioned monopoly over all telecommunications in the country. Needless to say the entire system is infected with government interference. Until a short while ago the rules dictated to the ISPs was they had to allow all traffic to flow across their network without prejudice. This mean they could not throttle traffic crossing their lines that was emitted by or destined to another ISP. These ISPs also couldn’t throttle or filter traffic in any way. Now that this is no longer the case people have been clamoring for the government to enforce net neutrality again.
A lot of people are stating how scary it is to think about these companies have the power to filter traffic and how the only solution available to us is for the government to make laws that prevent this. You know what I find scarier? The government have more control over the Internet. Why? No current representative that I’m aware of has a background in technology, specifically networking. Likewise the government always managed to find the least qualified people to head committees and regulatory groups. Remember, “The Internet is a series of tubes” Ted Stevens from Alaska? Guess what. He was in charge of Internet regulation.
Do we really want people like this making laws that will regulate the Internet? I don’t. But I’m also a fan of net neutrality so what could possibly be done to ensure the Internet stays neutral while the government stays out of it? There are actually several options available.
In order to setup an ISP you need two items controlled by private entities. The first is a block of IP addresses while the second item is one or more domain names. Both of these are controlled by a private company called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). A potential option available would be for ICANN to require ISPs to agree to a series of rules that would in essence be net neutrality. If the ISPs won’t sign the agreement ICANN simply won’t allocate IP addresses or domain names. Simple. If an ISP really doesn’t want to play by these rules they can create their own Internet (you can create multiple global networks separated from one another thus having multiple Internets) and of course nobody will use them.
I’m not suggesting this saying it’s the right solution. This suggestion is being made as a potential mechanism of enforcing net neutrality while also keeping morons government out of the equation. But the idea of putting an entity who put Ted Stevens in a situation to made any regulations on the Internet is frightening.
Bloomberg Throwing a Hissy
Poor Bloomberg. First he spent all that time writing up a 40 point proposal for President Obama on how to further restrict gun ownership without needing to pass laws. Then he sent it off to Obama for consideration. But as Days of our Trailers points out Bloomberg’s proposal has been ignored and he’s throwing a hissy fit about it.
I Never Thought I’d Say This But Go Iowa
Good news citizens of the state south of Minnesota. It seems that the shall-issue concealed carry bill is moving through your legislation. According to the NRA-ILA all that is left is for your governor to sign it. So get on the horn and tell him to sign it when it comes across his desk. It’s about time another state gains shall-issue status instead of “politically-well-connected-issue” status.
The Best Summary of Health Insurance Reform Yet
Says Uncle sums up the passing of the health insurance reform bill. Brilliant.
Some Scary Stuff Going Down in Wisconsin
The NRA just threw out an alert for those of you in Wisconsin. Two anti-gun pieces of legislation have been introduced. I haven’t read through them as of now but here is what they apparently cover:
* Require that all firearm transfers be conducted through a federally licensed dealer except to family members. That means if you wanted to sell your firearm to a friend, you would have to find an FFL and pay whatever transfer fees they felt appropriate.
* Go WAY beyond federal restrictions for firearm possession and prohibit individuals convicted of misdemeanors. This provision is a blatant constitutional violation. In Heller v. D.C., the ruling states that only felony convictions are justified in restricting this constitutionally guaranteed right.
* Also require that all firearms transfers be reported and all guns registered into a centralized database.
* Establish no limitations on who would have access to this database.
So those of you across the Mississippi from me may want to get on the horn with your representatives.