Cap & Tax update
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, Environment, Politics
First off, the socialists over at Greenpeace (Hey! Don’t look at me. One of the founders quit after it was hijacked by socialists, that’s his story) oppose the democrat‘s Cap & Tax scheme. They claim it’s “not Science-Based; Benefits Polluters.” In this case, they are probably right.
Then there are 9 damned good reasons why some U.S. environmentalists should heartily oppose Waxman-Markey.
Next we have our Dear Leader‘s political appointees at the EPA suppressing real scientific research and studies that don’t agree with the left’s political agenda
The dems are trying to shove this through after blocking hundreds of Republican amendments and then adding a 300+ page amendment of their own under the cover of darkness last night. What are they hiding from the American people?
One Damn Fine Album
American IV: The Man Comes Around by The Man in Black, Johnny Cash.
Deeply moving, powerful music made by a man near the end of a long and rich musical career, staring his own mortality right in the face.
In the movie Walk the Line, Sam Phillips, the producer at Sun Records asks, ” If you was hit by a truck and you was lying out there in that gutter dying, and you had time to sing *one* song. Huh? One song that people would remember before you’re dirt. One song that would let God know how you felt about your time here on Earth. One song that would sum you up.”
Well, in this album J.R. Cash answered that question with every track. Especially touching are The Man Comes Around, Hurt, First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, and Personal Jesus.
Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, who wrote Hurt, had the following to say after seeing Cash’s music video of Hurt:
I pop the video in, and wow… Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps… Wow. [I felt like] I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn’t mine anymore… It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning — different, but every bit as pure.
Leasing ebooks from Amazon
I came to the conclusion a while ago that you don’t buy ebooks from Amazon, you are only leasing them.
First off, the highly restrictive Amazon DRM not only limits access to the ebook to their proprietary Kindle device, it restricts it to your specific device. Once you are done with the ebook, you can loan it to friend or sell it at used book store. If you want your friend to read the book, you have to give them your Kindle, because that is the only place that ebook will be displayed.
Second, Amazon doesn’t pay it’s associates a fee for any Kindle books “sold” through them. Why not? They pay the associates for just about everything else sold through their sites. Could it be that Kindle owners really are not “buying” the ebooks, but are just paying for a very restrictive lease in order to access the ebook?
Next, Megan McArdle just discovered a catch in the Amazon ebook fine print.
…there is always a limit to the number of times you can download a given book. Sometimes, he said, it’s five or six times but at other times it may only be once or twice. And, here’s the kicker folks, once you reach the cap you need to repurchase the book if you want to download it again.
I know people who buy paper books in both hardcover and paperback, but that is a different scenario. You have two separate versions of the book in different formats. One for the shelf and one to carry around and loan to friends. Amazon wants its customers to buy the exact same content, in the exact same format, multiple times, because their business model assumes that their paying customer are thieves.
That is not a consumer friendly business model.
Also posted at Urbin Technology.
Monday Book Pick: The Android’s Dream
The Android’s Dream by John Scalzi
A fun romp through Interstellar politics, romance, advenure and the Android’s Dream, an electric-blue breed of sheep. Yup, that’s a big tip of the hat to Philip K. Dick. There is also a big jab made a religion based on the rantings of a SF writer of “modest talents.”
Friday B-Movie Pick: The Wild Geese
Africa, the 1970s, a golden age for mercenaries. A great cast, with Richard Burton, Sir Roger Moore and Richard Harris leading the way. A solid adventure film with plenty of violence to go around.
The Friday B-Movie Pick Archive.
ACORN thugs attack members of the NY Senate
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, Politics, When democrats attack
NewsDay reports that
Protesters closely aligned with Democrats nearly knocked a Republican senator to the floor and are accused of spitting in the face of his chief of staff.
Sen. James Alesi, of Monroe County, walked out of the chamber later Thursday, not seriously harmed. He said he was disturbed by the crowd of at least 150 people, including those from Citizen Action the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.
Keep in mind that violence from the left nothing new.
Morning Roundup
Let’s start with crude oil prices continuing their climb to rise above $71 a barrel. Remember what happened last summer with a sharp spike in oil prices? That’s right kids, a companion sharp spike in inflation! Pretty much everything you buy had to be shipped in, at least part of the way, by truck. A spike in inflation, especially in food prices, is a tax on everyone, with the poor the hardest hit. What is our Dear Leader going to do about it? The answer to that question is, not a damn thing. Remember that he thinks gas prices up around $4 or $5 a galleon is a “good thing.” He’s doesn’t have to drive the kids around or commute to work, so why should he care if it affects you?
According to Industry Week, the democrat‘s Cap and Tax scheme is a really bad idea for the American economy.
John at Powerline points out that “The days when “whistle blowers” were popular on the left are gone”. The moonbat view is that anyone who dares to “investigate an Obama crony” deserves whatever they get.
While on the topic of our Dear Leader‘s illegal firing of Gerald Walpin, the inspector general of AmeriCorps, Byron York has some advice on how to see that truth gets out.
Michelle Malkin has a story on ObamaCare that our Dear Leader and his cronies don’t want you to read.
According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the democrats’ $1 Trillion Health Care Plan will Cost 23 Million Americans their Private Insurance.
Some leftist homosexuals are starting to figure out that our Dear Leader and the DNC have used them as “useful idiots”. Dudes (and dudettes, and whatever sexual identity you may have), it was clearly obvious to anyone not blinded by an overdose of BDS that you were going to get thrown under the bus by BHO! If you are finally getting serious, not only do you need to stop supporting the democrats, but start firmly supporting the Libertarian Party. It’s the only party that truly doesn’t care what consenting adults do or with each other and strongly believes that it’s none of the government’s business either. Until you do that, the DNC is just going to keep screwing you over in ways you don’t like!
A pattern of abuse and denial at the Obama White House
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, Our Dear Leader, Politics
Another update in our Dear Leader‘s blatantly political firing of an Investigator General for doing his job by finding corruption by BHO’s political appointees.
First Byron York writes in the Washington Examiner about how the Obama White House Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform refuses to answer direct questions from a Senate investigation on matter of the firing of IG Walpin.
What is the Obama administration hiding? My bet is that is the actual truth of the matter is the last thing Team Lightbringer wants to see the light of day.
Next is a Chicago Tribune story, by way of Hot Air, that points out that the Obama White House has a pattern of firing IG’s that don’t toe their strictly political line, instead of doing their job and protecting the taxpayers.
This IG, Neil Barofsky, pointed out that there were “insufficient safeguards on Porkulus spending.”
What is clear is that Barack Hussein Obama and his administration will not stand for anyone questioning their actions, especially government employees who’s job is to undercover fraud and waste and government spending. This is the “transparency” of Team Lightbringer.
New photos posted
In the People and Disney Cast Members galleries.
Whining is not leadership
Bob at Black & Right points out that our Dear Leader is complaining that the entire news media is not acting as the propaganda arm of his administration. BHO expressed his dismay on CNBC.
I’ve got one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration…. That’s a pretty big megaphone. You’d be hard pressed if you watched the entire day to find a positive story about me on that front.
What a whiny crybaby. He has one single cable news network that isn’t proclaiming him “a God”, or stating that their job is promote his administration, and he complains about it on national TV.
Bob nailed the utter hypocrisy of our Dear Leader‘s childish rant.
If memory serves ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, PBS, HBO, Hollywood, the New York Times, Washington Post, Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, Democracy Now!, and hundreds of other newspapers, websites, radio programs, etc. were “devoted to attacking” the very Bush Administration the new president blames for everything at every opportunity.
President Pantywaist sounds just about right.
The joke back in the 2008 primaries was that if Hillary Rodham Clinton gave Barack Hussein Obama one of her balls, then they would both have a pair.
Lot of truth to that joke. HRC is much more than twice the man Barry will ever be.
At least she complained about a “vast right wing conspiracy” that was against her and aggressively fought back. BHO is crying because a single cable news organization isn’t bowing down and genuflecting to him.