SunSmudge

David Simon on the American Oligarchy

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:54:05 -0500

poortaste:

southpol:

DAVID SIMON (interviewed in Vice Magazine):

Why does reform seem so impossible?

We live in an oligarchy. The mother’s milk of American politics is money, and the reason they can’t reform financing, the reason that we can’t have public funding of elections rather than private donations, the reason that K Street is K Street in Washington, is to make sure that no popular sentiment survives. You’re witnessing it now with health care, with the marginalization of any effort to rationally incorporate all Americans under a national banner that says, “We’re in this together.”

But then the critics of a system like that immediately cry socialism.
And of course it’s socialism. These ignorant motherfuckers. What do they think group insurance is, other than socialism? Just the idea of buying group insurance! If socialism is a taint that you cannot abide by, then, goddamn it, you shouldn’t be in any group insurance policy. You should just go out and pay the fucking doctors because when you get 100,000 people together as part of anything, from a union to the AARP, and you say, “Because we have this group actuarially, more of us are going to be healthier than not and therefore we’ll be able to carry forward the idea of group insurance and everybody will have an affordable plan…” That’s fuckin’ socialism. That’s nothing but socialism.

It is, literally.
So the whole idea of group insurance, which of course everyone believes in, like that fellow on YouTube, “Don’t let the government take away my Medicare…” You look at that and you think there’s only one thing that can make people this stupid, and that’s money. When you pay people to change their votes on the basis of money, the wrong shit gets voted for. That’s American democracy at this point. And you get to the Senate and you’re looking at 100 votes, which don’t represent anything in terms of popular representation. When 40 percent of the population controls 60 percent of the votes in the higher house of a bicameral legislature, it’s an oligarchy.

David Simon and Glenn Beck agree?

"We’re talking about robbing soldiers to pay defense executives. They pull this scam like clockwork every year and nobody ever says a word"

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:47:28 -0500

"We’re talking about robbing soldiers to pay defense executives. They pull this scam like clockwork every year and nobody ever says a word":

(via unburyingthelead)

"Cummingtonite is a metamorphic amphibole with the chemical composition (Mg,Fe)7Si8O22(OH)2,..."

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:07:51 -0500

“

Cummingtonite is a metamorphic amphibole with the chemical composition (Mg,Fe)7Si8O22(OH)2, magnesium iron silicate hydroxide. Monoclinic cummingtonite is compositionally similar and polymorphic with orthorhombic anthophyllite, which is a much more common form of magnesium-rich amphibole, the latter being metastable.

Cummingtonite shares few compositional similarities with alkali amphiboles such as arfvedsonite, glaucophane-riebeckite. There is little solubility between these minerals due to different crystal habit and inability of substitution between alkali elements and ferro-magnesian elements within the amphibole structure. Cummingtonite was first described in 1824 for an occurrence near Cummington, Massachusetts, hence the name.[1][2] It is also found in Sweden, South Africa, and Scotland.

”

- Cummingtonite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ron Paul: “I should have socked (Bruno) in the nose”...

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:37:52 -0500

Ron Paul: “I should have socked (Bruno) in the nose” (via JoinRonPaul)

poortaste: TIME Magazine - Person of the Year - Ben...

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:13:22 -0500

poortaste:

TIME Magazine - Person of the Year - Ben Bernanke

Previous Winners: Adolph Hitler, Ayatullah Khomeini, Joseph Stalin , and Nikita Khrushchev

Long live the Empire of Debt and Fiat Money Slavery!

buffleheadcabin: anthropophagous: The U.S. Government has long...

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:06:20 -0500

buffleheadcabin:

anthropophagous:

The U.S. Government has long maintained a policy that they have the right to stop and search anyone at the border. The Department of Homeland Security is now taking the position that “the border” is the 100-mile wide strip that wraps around the “external boundary” of the United States. The ACLU took all the recent census maps and came to a rather surprising conclusion.
What we found is that fully TWO-THIRDS of the United States’ population lives within this Constitution-free or Constitution-lite Zone. That’s 197.4 million people who live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders.[via]

All of Michigan!

I think I live just a mile or two over the line. Lucky me.

Cannabis Spray Reduces Cancer Pain

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:57:01 -0500

Cannabis Spray Reduces Cancer Pain:

freedrugpress:

Cancer patients who used a cannabis mouthspray had their pain levels reduced by 30%, researchers have said.

The cannabis-based spray, like a mouth freshener, was used on 177 patients by…

txtsfrmlstnght: (905): when your english prof writes “this was a real good paper” on your essay, you...

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:50:17 -0500

txtsfrmlstnght:

(905): when your english prof writes “this was a real good paper” on your essay, you know you’re at the wrong college

"Oh I love your religion, full of crazies, virgin birth, water into wine… it’s like Harry..."

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:49:54 -0500

““Oh I love your religion, full of crazies, virgin birth, water into wine… it’s like Harry Potter but it causes genocide and bad folk music.””

- McLean

ummm… thank you awkwardfamilyphotos.com?

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:27:36 -0500

ummm… thank you awkwardfamilyphotos.com?

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun..."

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 20:51:57 -0500

“If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.”

- Bertrand Russell, Russell’s teapot, Wikipedia (via ambivalence)

The ACLU on Net Neutrality

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 20:44:53 -0500

buchino:

The cable industry is saying that Network Neutrality would violate the First Amendment because it would prohibit them from “expressing themselves” by distorting the flow of information over the Internet wires they control. Marvin Ammori has posted an interesting response.

Our view is that it boils down to this: The telecoms play two different roles: as speakers, and access providers.

Internet service providers (ISPs), including cable and telecom companies acting as such, provide information and services. They deliver video feeds and web pages and other content of their own. That is fine and in that regard, they absolutely do have a First Amendment right to provide whatever content they want to provide, or not provide.

But ISPs also play another role: they perform the public function of controlling the wires through and across which everyone’s speech flows. When they control the pipes, it is a free-speech imperative that they do that in a non-discriminatory way — just like the phone companies can’t decide what calls can be made over the phone — to ensure that free speech belongs to all.

It is essential that companies not be permitted to use role number two to advance their own particular interests and viewpoints per their free speech rights under role number one.

—Jay Stanley on Blog of Rights

[Support the ALCU]

(via stevencloud)

"Yesterday, our president mused about the inevitability of war, war’s instrumentality in the pursuit..."

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:40:42 -0500

“Yesterday, our president mused about the inevitability of war, war’s instrumentality in the pursuit of peace and just wars. It is important for us to reflect on his words, because once we believe in the inevitability of war, war becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once we are committed to war’s instrumentality in pursuit of peace, we begin the Orwellian journey to the semantic netherworld where War IS Peace, where the momentum of war overwhelms hopes for peace. And once we wrap doctrines perpetuating war in the arms of justice, we can easily legitimate the wholesale slaughter of innocents. The war against Iraq was based on lies. Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan are based on flawed doctrines of counter-insurgency. War is often not just; sometimes it is just war. And our ability to rethink the terms of our existence, to explore the possibility of peace without war, may well determine whether we end war, or war ends us.””

- Congressman Kucinich’s Response to President Obama’s “Just War” Doctrine

(via @SteveHynd)

(via unburyingthelead)

(via danielholter)

Homeland Security Embarks on Big Brother Programs to Read Our Minds and Emotions

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:23:39 -0500

Homeland Security Embarks on Big Brother Programs to Read Our Minds and Emotions:

ledgergermane:

This past February, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) awarded a one-year, $2.6 million grant to the Cambridge, MA.-based Charles Stark Draper Laboratory to develop computerized sensors capable of detecting a person’s level of “malintent” — or intention to do harm. It’s only the most recent of numerous contracts awarded to Draper and assorted research outfits by the U.S. government over the past few years under the auspices of a project called “Future Attribute Screening Technologies,” or FAST. It’s the next wave of behavior surveillance from DHS and taxpayers have paid some $20 million on it so far.

Conceived as a cutting-edge counter-terrorism tool, the FAST program will ostensibly detect subjects’ bad intentions by monitoring their physiological characteristics, particularly those associated with fear and anxiety. It’s part of a broader “initiative to develop innovative, non-invasive technologies to screen people at security checkpoints,” according to DHS.

The “non-invasive” claim might be a bit of a stretch. A DHS report issued last December outlined some of the possible technological features of FAST, which include “a remote cardiovascular and respiratory sensor” to measure “heart rate, heart rate variability, respiration rate, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia,” a “remote eye tracker” that “uses a camera and processing software to track the position and gaze of the eyes (and, in some instances, the entire head),” “thermal cameras that provide detailed information on the changes in the thermal properties of the skin in the face,” and “a high resolution video that allows for highly detailed images of the face and body … and an audio system for analyzing human voice for pitch change.”

Ultimately, all of these components would be combined to take the form of a “prototypical mobile suite (FAST M2) … used to increase the accuracy and validity of identifying persons with malintent.”

Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and bestselling author who has been one of the most vociferous critics of such new high-tech DHS initiatives, concurs. In fact, he says, all the evidence suggests the opposite. “The problem is the false positives,” he says.

Beyond the fact that ordinary travelers are likely to exhibit many of the symptoms supposedly indicative of malintent (how many people run to catch a plane and end up overheated and out of breath?), compare the rarity of terrorist attacks with the millions of travelers who pass through a security checkpoint. Statistically, Schneier argues, it’s a fool’s errand. “If you run the math, you get several million false positives for every real attack you find. So it ends up being as useless as picking people randomly. If you’re going to spend money on something, you can spend money on dice — it’s cheaper. And equally as effective.”

tomoatmeal: A good part in the 2-Pack Shaker rapping song is...

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:22:01 -0500

tomoatmeal:

A good part in the 2-Pack Shaker rapping song is when 2-Pack tells these guys that they gotta operate the easy way and then this other rapper gets all excited and is like, “I made a G today!,” thinking that he is going to impress 2-Pack, but really 2-Pack is like, “but you did it in a sleazy way.” Naturally, 2-Pack’s disapproval shames the other rapper into silence and you can tell he’s thinking, “Dammit! I just ruined my big chance! Me and my stupid mouth!” And then another rapper snickers at his friend like, “Haha! 2-Pack yelled at you.” But then the 2-Pack rapper scolds both of them: “Okay, out of the studio! Both of you idiots!”

boy, did my insurance rep. deceive me. single-payer public option is sounding pretty good right...

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:25:07 -0500

boy, did my insurance rep. deceive me.

~~single-payer~~ public option is sounding pretty good right about now.

even though I wouldn’t qualify for it anyway.

canada is sounding pretty good…

via thefbomb.org

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:47:43 -0500

via thefbomb.org

My Comments To The Canadian Senate on Bill C-15

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:02:37 -0500

My Comments To The Canadian Senate on Bill C-15:

freedrugpress:

Honourable Senators, thank you for the invitation to testify.

I have read the transcripts of past proceedings and appreciate the hard work this Committee is doing on this vital issue. All…

Eight tips for knowing if you’re boring someone (Psychology Today)

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:50:28 -0500

Eight tips for knowing if you’re boring someone (Psychology Today):

(via psychotherapy)

Pharmacists, Drug Regulators and AMA to Examine Medical Marijuana

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:14:50 -0500

Pharmacists, Drug Regulators and AMA to Examine Medical Marijuana:

freedrugpress:

As pharmacists and drug regulators from across the country convene in Tucson this week for their Winter symposium, they will be discussing medical marijuana, an issue which is headlining…