January 2010
47 posts
Look what you won in January
Wow, you made some real progress in January. On Christmas Day,
politically, things looked bleak. I
told you, “The fight ends when we say it does.”
You stayed in the fight. The result?
January was a month of victories. Look at how things changed in your
favor in just the last few weeks …
* The cancerous healthcare bill is dead
* President Obama has felt the need to...
Let's Audit The Fed First
DownsizeDC.org is part of a transpartisan
coalition of 40 organizations demanding that an audit of the Federal
Reserve take place before the Senate re-confirms Chairman Ben Bernanke
for another term. You can see the members of this coalition on our blog.
Keep in mind that the issue is not about Mr.
Bernanke, but about Fed transparency, which he opposes. Let’s use his
renomination...
How a Lack of Control Leads to Superstition
Imagine a time in your life when you felt out of control—anything from getting lost to losing a job. Now look at the top illustration on this page. What do you see? Such a scenario was presented to subjects in a 2008 experiment by Jennifer Whitson of the University of Texas at Austin and her colleague Adam Galinsky of Northwestern University. Their study, entitled “Lacking Control Increases...
Enumerated Powers Act: Answering Critics
The Enumerated Powers Act (EPA) requires that
every bill must specify its source of Constitutional authority. Since
our previous report in December, four more Representatives have signed
on as sponsors of the EPA.
You can find the 60 House sponsors here.
And the 22 Senate sponsors here.
The problem is, many in Congress don’t want to be
bothered with this simple requirement. They think...
Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It...
This looks really, really bad. An avid Facebook user named Harman
Bajwa says that his Facebook
vanity Url – Facebook.com/Harman – was unceremoniously revoked
yesterday for violating Facebook’s policies. His new Facebook URL is the
much less memorable facebook.com/profile.php?id=538612932.
Facebook then apparently did a sales deal around the vanity URL with
Harman International.
The notice...
More evidence that pressure works
Quote of the Day: “Politicians
are merely Opportunists, looking for a big parade that’s marching
somewhere. As Opportunists, they can’t pass up the chance to jump in
front of a parade and declare themselves to be the leader. We need to
build a parade so large that Political Opportunists ‘lead us’ to smaller
government.” - Jim Babka
Republican Scott Brown...
No More Business As Usual
Recent backlash against a popular senator is just further evidence that …
The people do have power over their Congressional employees.
We must exert this power. Unless we stop them, Congress will raise the national debt limit in order to cover this year’s gigantic budget deficit.
This is the last thing America needs … or wants. But Congress will continue business as...
The healthcare bill is dying
A Big Government Republican
politician, Scott Brown, saw the massive public opposition to the
healthcare bill, and decided to pander to it. He did this in spite of
his own long history of supporting Big Government schemes, including the
health insurance mandates inflicted on the people of Massachusetts by
Republican Mitt Romney.
The result of Brown’s flip-flop on healthcare is
that...
Transplanted stem cells form proper brain...
Transplanted neurons grown from embryonic stem cells can fully integrate into the brains of young animals, according to new research in the Jan. 20 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. Healthy brains have stable and precise connections between cells that are necessary for normal behavior. This new finding is the first to show that stem cells can be directed not only to become specific brain ...
Diego-san humanoid robot baby
Researchers from the Machine Perception Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego have teamed up with Japanese robotics firm Kokoro Co., Ltd. to create a sophisticated humanoid robot modeled after a 1-year-old child.
The baby robot — named “Diego-san” — is designed to help researchers study how infants develop motor skills during the first year of life, according to a recent...
If you want fewer laws passed, this isn't the way...
Congress passed fewer laws in 2009, but they were nearly three times as large! Please send Congress a letter telling them to stop bundling unrelated legislation by passing DownsizeDC.org’s One Subject At A Time Act (OSTA).
You may copy or borrow from the following letter . . .
I’m disturbed by Congress’s behavior last year . . .
* You passed fewer laws, but they were 3...
Spanish MP's photo used for Osama Bin Laden poster
Our cute lil’ FBI agency at work. _______________________ A Spanish politician has said he was shocked to find out the FBI had used his photo for a digitally-altered image showing how Osama Bin Laden might look. Gaspar Llamazares said he would no longer feel safe travelling to the US after his hair and parts of his face appeared on a most-wanted poster. He said the use of a real person...
WatchCrazy Airplane Lady
World's Apart
by Rodney In an amazing example of what defines the Human Being, the
World’s tallest man and shortest man have met, for the first time.
Sultan Kosen, from Turkey, standing at 246cm tall and aged 27, has met
Chinese Pingping, a 21 year old who stands at only 74cm tall.
The pair were brought together by the Guiness Book of Records, for
the opening of their latest Roadshow.
The pair can...
Can you do more with less?
Is technology crucial to social change — to
getting what you want? Consider …
The printing press was invented in the 1440s. The
Protestant Reformation followed in 1517. The first thing made the second
thing possible. Without the printing press to distribute his arguments
Martin Luther would have influenced few people. Instead, he probably
would have been burned at the stake and...
WatchRed’s Dream - Pixar - 1987
Survey outs Britain as nation of tech twits
One in 20 Britons think Steve Jobs is a Division II footballer, six per cent think a virtual hard disk (VHD) is a sexually transmitted disease, and 10 per cent believe a wireless dongle to be a sex toy. Perhaps that last bit is true in a pinch, but it’s hard to fathom how Apple’s CEO could be mistaken for the redoubtable Steve Death, the late Reading keeper. These surprising...
Modified Mobile Phone Runs on Coca-Cola
Daizi Zheng, a Chinese developer who is currently based in London, has modified a Nokia cell phone to run on Coca-Cola or any other sugary solution. Zheng says the modified phone can run three or four times longer on a single charge than a phone using a conventional lithium ion battery, and can also be fully biodegradable.As Zheng explains, a sugar-powered phone could...
Scientists link brain development to chances of...
The findings bolster the claims by some scientists, like Stanford’s Brian Wandell, who say certain visual abilities must develop properly in childhood and cannot be learned as an adult.
Mike May was 3 years old when a chemical explosion in his family’s garage burned out his left eye and blinded his right one.
Surgeries immediately following the accident couldn’t restore his ...
Does the Clean Air Act cover greenhouse gases?
As we reported in November, the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing regulations to curb so-called, greenhouse gases.
With these regulations, the Obama Administration will bypass Congress entirely and implement their climate change agenda. The administration knows what is good for us. Why mess with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution? Why worry about giving the people ...
Google 'may quit China'
Google, the internet search company, has said it
may shut down its China operations in protest against government
censorship of its search results.
The announcement, which represents a major shift in policy by the
company, follows a recent hacking incident that appeared to target the
accounts of activists using its electronic mail system, Gmail.
...
A SPIRITUAL CONSPIRACY
On the surface of the world right now there is war and violence and things seem dark. But calmly and quietly, at the same time, something else is happening deep down. An inner emergence is taking place and certain individuals are being called to a higher light. It is a silent awakening. From the inside out. From the ground up. This is a Global operation. A Spiritual Conspiracy. There are...
“If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the...”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Your Downsize DC Annual Report for 2009
Overview: Why you should be able to get what you want, but don’t
Republican politicians controlled our government for 8 years, from 2000 to 2008. They made so many messes in so many areas that the American people rejected them. As a result …
Democratic politicians now control the government, and have already done so many things wrong in so many ways that they appear to have already...
Woman blasts off boyfriend’s penis with...
A Russian woman got so upset by the news that her boyfriend intended to leave her that she tied several firecrackers to his penis and exploded them, the Life.ru web-site reports.
The 33-year-old victim, identified as Alik D. had lived with the woman whose name was reported as Kira V. for about two years, but when the girlfriend started suggesting that they should marry, the man refused and said...
puzzlement
Teacher: “What is a tipi?”
Student: “A box for ancient people to hide in?”
How your tax dollars were used to bribe members of...
There’s a famous cartoon of a bird trying to eat a frog. The bird has the frog by the head but can’t swallow it because the frog has the bird by the neck and is choking the life out of it.
Think of the bird as the Democrats, and the frog as either the cancerous healthcare bill, or the poor beleaguered American taxpayer.
We think the Democrats are going to choke on this healthcare...
'Ferropaper' is new technology for small motors,...
PhysOrg.com- Researchers at Purdue University have created a magnetic “ferropaper” that might be used to make low-cost “micromotors” for surgical instruments, tiny tweezers to study cells and miniature speakers. The material is made by impregnating ordinary paper - even newsprint - with a mixture of mineral oil and “magnetic...
“Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or...”
– Sigmund Freud
“The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Those who...”
– William Lyon Phelps (via bitchville)
Can we afford more deficit spending?
The Second Session of the 111th Congress begins today. Let’s tell them what their priority should be this year.
Tell them to cut federal spending! https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/104
You may borrow from or copy this letter:
In 2000, President Clinton projected that the national debt could be eliminated by 2009....
How your Congress spent billions, blindfolded
In the waning hours of 2009 Congress rushed to bundle unrelated bills that they then passed with little consideration or debate. They were so busy with the cancerous healthcare bill that they couldn’t be bothered to behave responsibly. DownsizeDC.org’s “One Subject at a Time Act” would have prevented this.
Please send your representatives a letter asking them to introduce...
Health bills expand IRS role
Internal Revenue Service
agents already try to catch tax cheats and moonshiners. Under the
proposed health care legislation, they would get another assignment:
checking to see whether Americans have health insurance.
The legislation would require most Americans to
have health insurance and to prove it on their federal tax returns.
Those who don’t would pay a penalty to the IRS.
That’s...
AT&T: The end of the wireline telephone is in...
In an historic public response to the US Federal Communications Commission’s request for comments regarding its forthcoming National Broadband Plan, due before Congress on February 17, AT&T acknowledged not the forthcoming obsolescence, but the current obsolescence of the wireline telephone system. Without shame, it even applied the once-degrading acronym “POTS” (Plain Old...
Irish atheists use Bjork, Mark Twain to challenge...
(CNN) — An Irish atheist group has published a series of
quotations on religion in an attempt to challenge a blasphemy law that
went into effect on New Year’s Day. The 25 “blasphemous” quotations include the words of Jesus, Mohammed, Mark Twain, Salman Rushdie and Bjork. Atheist
Ireland published the list on its Web site Friday. It says it aims to
challenge the law, which...
WatchDouglas Futuyma at Evolution, Science and Education Symposium 2009
“You know, if everything in our society was obliterated except the millions of...”
– La Oveja Negra