December 2009
33 posts
It's about your liberty, not your party
As you know, the Senate voted to pass Harry Reid’s boondoggle healthcare bill. You can see how your Senators voted here: http://tinyurl.com/yku2upu
But this isn’t over. There are still differences between the House and Senate healthcare bills that can derail the entire project.
And so we continue the fight. Today, let’s remind Congress that we oppose this healthcare bill...
Commentary by Ben Stewart, Greenpeace
“The most progressive U.S. President in a generation
comes to the most important international meeting since the Second World
War and delivers a speech so devoid of substance that he might as well
have made it on speakerphone from a beach in Hawaii. His aides argue in
private that he had no choice, such is the opposition on Capitol Hill to
any action that might challenge the dominance...
bitchville:
Snoop Dogg - Santa Claus Goes...
How you can get Congressional Democrats to oppose...
Even if the Senate passes a bill this week there are still miles to go …
The Senate and House bills will still need to be reconciled, and pass both chambers — that may be difficult
A bill that’s passed can still be repealed, and this one will be particularly vulnerable to that possibility because …
It will take years for all aspects of the bill to be implemented,...
Here we are Stuck by this river, You and I ...
Taken from the Radiohead blog: A rant and some...
I haven’t spoken to Thom yet, but judging by his
entries here and reading today’s papers the outcome of Copenhagen is a
bloody disgrace … I wanted to put something up on DAS, as a kind of
personal round-up to the year (also because I rather pathetically don’t
contribute much to this), so excuse me if I kick off in a somewhat
dejected manner, because in fact none of what I write seems at all...
Give us a chance to Read the Bill
President Obama’s Saturday radio address was almost mystifying in its arrogance and hypocrisy. His own words underscore the need for the Read the Bills Act.
Please tell Congress to delay passing healthcare legislation until the people have had a chance to read it. And tell them to pass the Read the Bills Act.
This is what I wrote in my letter …
President Obama’s Saturday...
“Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If...”
– P.J. O’Rourke
America is staring at total debt of $115 trillion
BIG PICTURE: “It’s a question of how do you achieve the deleveraging. Do you go through a long period of slow growth, high savings and many legal problems or do you accept higher inflation? It would ameliorate the debt bomb and help us work through the deleveraging process” – Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics at Harvard, Former Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund Make no...
WatchAlan Watts - A Conversation with Myself
WatchAmerican Dad - The Rapture for Kids
Thieves steal Auschwitz's 'Arbeit macht frei'...
A gang of thieves in Poland has stolen the infamous wrought iron sign
announcing that “work sets you free” that spans the main gate of the
Auschwitz concentration camp.
The long, curving sign, reading “Arbeit macht frei”, was erected by the
Nazis
soon after the old Auschwitz barracks were converted into a labour and
extermination centre in 1940. It was supposed to suggest that hard work...
Iraqi insurgents hack US drones with $26 software
Iraqi militants are intercepting sensitive video feeds from US predator drones using $26 off-the-shelf software, and the same technique leaves feeds from most military aircraft vulnerable to snooping, according to published reports. Insurgents backed by Iran have regularly accessed the unencrypted video feeds of the unmanned planes, which the Obama administration has increasingly relied on to...
Do you want Congress to waste another decade?
Congressional leaders were planning on raising the
national debt limit by a whopping $1.8 trillion.
Luckily, the end-of-year legislative logjam has
prevented them from doing so. They are likely to pass a short-term
increase to keep the government running for a few months.
But after the New Year, Congress will be back with
a spending agenda which, if not stopped, will raise the national debt...
Patriot Act renewal: No bill is better than a bad...
Three provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act will
expire on December 31. Committees in both the House and Senate have
approved renewal bills, but the House version includes much stronger
civil liberties protections.
Let’s tell Congress to pass the House version, or
pass nothing at all and let these provisions expire using our “I am not
afraid” campaign....
WatchTime-lapse video of Mt Fuji, Miyajima, Iwate
US Congress earmarks $30m for anti-piracy fight
The Motion Picture Assocation of America on Monday graciously stroked US Congress for promising $30 million towards fighting IP crime in 2010. Hollywood’s top lobbyist, MPAA chief executive Dan Glickman, also praised the success of a six-day Yuletide sting against counterfeit DVDs and CDs called “Operation Holiday Hoax.” The earmarked millions is intended to be spent on US...
Senate leaders want to replace one cancer with...
Senate leaders are starting to panic over the
prospects for their cancerous healthcare bill. They can’t seem to find
the votes they need. The main problem seems to be the so-called “public
option” — a complex scheme that would create a tax-funded government
health insurance company. Senate leaders are proposing to remove this
objection by …
Creating a different...
“Biology is more like history than it is like physics. You have to know the past...”
– Carl Sagan
Official: KGB chief ordered Hitler's remains...
The remains of Adolf Hitler were burned in 1970 by Soviet KGB agents
and thrown into a river in Germany on direct orders from the spy
agency’s chief, a top Russian security official said this week. The
head archivist of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) — the
successor to the former Soviet Union’s KGB — confirmed for the first
time the chain of events that...
Will you get caught by the REAL ID deadline?
REAL ID is scheduled to go into effect on January
1. The good news is that it may be repealed by then. The bad news is
that it may be replaced by something worse, the PASS ID.
Please
tell Congress to repeal REAL ID and reject the PASS ID.
This is what I wrote in my letter …
REAL ID has proved to be unworkable and unwanted.
36 states will not be in compliance with REAL
ID by the...
Rand Paul adopts Downsize DC Agenda
I travelled down to Kentucky last Friday to meet
with Dr. Rand Paul, son of Congressman Ron Paul, and candidate for the
U.S. Senate from Kentucky. I was there to discuss our Downsize DC Agenda
proposals — the Read the Bills Act, etc.
We met at a coffee shop. I just arrived after four
hours on the road, walked in, and before I could order anything they
suggested turning on a camera to...
Senator Baucus confesses his deception, but he...
There’s new data you can use to make your case.
Just borrow from (or copy and paste) the sample letter below …
I’m pleased to learn that Senator Baucus finally
confessed, during a debate in the Senate on Wednesday, December 2, that
the true ten-year cost of the healthcare bill will be closer to $2.5
trillion than the nearly $1 trillion cost he has sold to the public.
...
'World's strongest' beer with 32% strength...
Tactical Nuclear Penguin has been unveiled by BrewDog of Fraserburgh, Scotland.
BrewDog was previously branded irresponsible for an 18.2% beer
called Tokyo, which it then followed with a low alcohol beer called
Nanny State. Managing director James Watt said a limited supply
of Tactical Nuclear Penguin would be sold for £30 each. He said: “This beer is about pushing the boundaries, it...
How you can stop worrying and love Ahmadinejad's...
Quotes of the Day:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep
the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by
menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them
imaginary.” — H.L. Mencken
“How do wars start? Diplomats lie to reporters and
then believe what they read in the newspapers.” — Karl Krause
Sometimes I think...
Mental Escapade
Its become more obvious to me that as humanity progresses, the lesser human population will simply become specimens to the research and exploitation of the more intelligent humans, as we are presently experiencing today. But there is not much to be done. It is natural selection.
Bale
Why probe Google for antitrust? It 'does no evil'
For Eric Clemons, Google’s oft-echoed claim that it doesn’t believe in doing evil is reason enough to investigate the web-dominating search giant for antitrust violations. Clemons is a professor of operations and information management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania - a computer-science mind employed by one of the country’s leading business schools - and...
Google Wave
Who would like an invite to this neat web program?
Intel puts cloud on single megachip
Intel’s research team has unveiled a 48-core processor that it claims will usher in a new era of “immersive, social, and perceptive” computing by putting datacenter-style integration on a single chip. And, no, it’s not the long-awaited CPU-GPU mashup, Larrabee. This processor, formerly code-named Rock Creek and now known by the more au courant moniker of Single-chip Cloud...
What you accomplished in November
Your support really is our progress. The speed with which we grow, and the point at which the Downsize DC Army becomes …
Strong enough to communicate its message to everyone, everywhere, every day,
And large enough to make Congress submit in the face of relentless, overwhelming, resistance-numbing pressure,
… really does depend on you, and what you do. And you did a lot in...