Author's posts
Jul 08 2011
“Over-regulation cost America more than $1.4 trillion last year!”
US Capitol, July 7, 2011
“Over-regulation cost America more than $1.4 trillion last year!”
…if you believe Representative Elton Gallegly (R-California).
Jul 06 2011
Fits Eight Plus Freight
Jul 03 2011
Obama’s Underclass
Barack Obama, Memorial Day, 2011
In the long view, for the past twenty years an average of about 62% of the over-16 population had jobs, and now that percentage has apparently stabilized at around 58%, reflecting a loss of about 9,000,000 jobs for an over-16 population of 225,000,000 Americans.
.
Jul 01 2011
Money From Music
This chart is only the beginning of the story, and for the tiny fraction of 1% of records that sell (for example) 100,000 full-price copies, the record company will make about $1,000,000 and the average musician will make about $15K.
100,000 copies at $16.98 = $1,698,000.
Record company’s share = 63% = $1,069,740 – $100,000 for recording, promotion, etc = $969,740.
Four musicians share 13% = $220,740 – (28% of $220,740 for management, lawyers, producers) = $158,932
$158,932/4 = $39,733
But then…
The band has to pay back every dime of expenses to the record company!
So that glorious $158,932 turns into $58,932, and when you split it between four musicians, that leaves each of them with…
$14,733.
This is the background of my previous diary about Obama’s plan to lock you off the internet for sharing mp3’s with your friends.
And meanwhile all those shared mp3’s attract more bodies to your favorite band’s crappy little bar venue, where the band gets to keep a relatively whopping 50% of the $5 cover, $2.50 instead of 58¢ from a selling a cd.
Jun 28 2011
Three Strikes and You’re Off the Internet
Illegal copying in some form is undertaken by 96 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds surveyed, falling to 89 per cent of those aged 14-17.
And now if the RIAA or MPAA decide for reasons they don’t really have to explain to anybody that you’re a really naughty pirate, your days of surfing the internet could be over!
Participating ISPs are given plenty of choices on how to respond to the toughest cases. They can select from a “menu” of responses outlined in the plan, such as throttling down an accused customer’s bandwidth speed or limit their access to the Web. For example, a suspected pirate may be allowed to visit only the top 200 Web sites until the illegal file sharing stops. The subscriber may also be required to participate in a program that educates them on copyright law and the rights of content creators. In the past, a graduated response was also supposed to lead to a complete termination of service for chronic file sharers.
But…
Kicking someone off a network is not required under the proposed agreement, the sources said.
Hurrah?
And of course and as always our Dear Leader is fighting for the corporations.
White House Helps Shepherd Deal
In addition to the NCTA, the White House was also instrumental in encouraging the parties [RIAA, MPAA, and the ISP’s] to reach an agreement, the sources confirmed. President Obama has said intellectual property is important to the country’s economy and has vowed to step up the fight against piracy and counterfeiting.
This plan was hatched way back in 2008 by yet another “Democratic friend of the little guy,” former New York State Attorney General and now Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo.
Under the plan, which was brokered by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the music industry will not know the customer’s identity. What this means is that ISPs have now gone into the enforcement business, and this has always been one of the greatest fears of those who have wanted ISPs to remain neutral.
“This is very troubling,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that advocates for Internet rights. “Creating lists of people who can’t get Internet access based on allegations of breaking a law that hasn’t been evaluated in a court of law.
“Lists of people who can’t get Internet access based on allegations of breaking a law that hasn’t been evaluated in a court of law!”
No due process! No appeal!
Welcome to the future.
Jun 27 2011
Safe in Sangin
News from the Sangin District of Helmand Province in Afghanistan…
First Battalion 5th Marines have fought bitterly to secure a “safe zone” of two square kilometres (less than a square mile) around the district bazaar.
And that’s the only “safe zone” in Sangin!
You can’t see two square kilometers on this scale, but maybe if we zoom in…
Nah, you still can’t see our “safe zone,” so let’s zoom again!
Jun 24 2011
Rosa Brooks Leaves the Pentagon
Almost nobody in America ever heard of Rosa Brooks except her enemies. She was very big news for Republicans (and only Republicans) when our brand-new President Barack Obama hired her for a job that ceased to exist when she resigned as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Special Coordinator for Rule of Law and Humanitarian Policy last week, and doesn’t that title make you dizzy!
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Special Coordinator for Rule of Law and Humanitarian Policy! Appointed by the Drone-King Obama, Commander in Chief of an evil little prison on Guantanamo Bay and an unknown number of similar operations all over the world, like our “Detention Facility” in Parwan Province, which Rosa Brooks visited in January 2011 along with Marine Col. William Lietzau, who is currently Chief Warden of the Global War on Terror, and into whose office Rosa Brooks’ portfolio as defender of the rule of law has been unceremoniously dumped.
So now Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Policy Lietzau also oversees the Rule of Law and Humanitarian Policy for the Department of Defense, and what could be more legal and humane than the indefinite detention of an always indefinite number of Muslim gentlemen who have never been and will never be charged with any crime?
This odious transformation transpired in almost total silence and indifference, even inside the Beltway, but only two years ago Fox News was screaming!
RADICALS RUN WILD!
RADICAL LEFTIST ROSA BROOKS NOW OPERATING INSIDE THE PENTAGON!
Bring back Joe McCarthy from the dead! Only HUAC can save us now!
But just how far far left is the “radical leftist” Rosa Brooks? Here’s a sample:
Before 9/11 “al-Qaida was little more than an obscure group of extremist thugs, well financed and intermittently lethal but relatively limited in their global and regional political pull. Today, thanks to U.S. policies, Al-Qaida has become the vast global threat the administration imagined it to be in 2001. Our ham-handed detention and interrogation tactics and our ill-advised invasion of Iraq have alienated vast swathes of the Islamic world, fueling extremism and anti-Americanism.”
So it’s easy to see why Rosa Brooks makes right-wing chicken-hawks like Bill O’Reilly see red, and if her dead-on analysis of the War on Terror wasn’t already bad enough, she even fights back!
When researchers at Indiana University calculated that O’Reilly indulges in “8.88 name-calling incidents per minute” every minute he’s on the air, Dr. Brooks celebrated this “achievement” in the L.A. Times.
Well, color me crazy, but I think we need to give the guy a little credit here. Do you think it’s easy to engage in name-calling every 6.8 seconds? To match O’Reilly’s performance, I would have to insult people 35.52 times in the course of this column. That’s a pace I just can’t hope to maintain, unless I cheat.
So hats off to Bill O’Reilly, that shameless, deceitful, irresponsible, propagandizing right-wing bully!
And my hat’s off to former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Rosa Brooks, that brilliant, funny, dedicated advocate and activist for human dignity and the rule of law.
Jun 24 2011
Two Days in Iraq
Just another day in Baghdad…
BAQUBA – A sticky bomb attached to a car exploded, killing a former member of Saddam Hussein’s outlawed Baath party, in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, police said.
KIRKUK – An employee of Iraq’s Communications Ministry was kidnapped as he rode a motorcycle in eastern Kirkuk, the Kirkuk province security operations centre said.
BAGHDAD – A sticky bomb attached to his car killed a retired lieutenant colonel who served in Saddam Hussein’s army, in Baghdad’s southern Saidiya district, an Interior Ministry source said.
BAQUBA – A gunman on a bicycle, using a silenced weapon, killed the mayor of the Gatoon neighbourhood in Baquba, police said.
BAGHDAD – Gunmen attacked an Iranian oil delegation visiting Iraq for talks, the Iranian oil ministry said. An Iraqi security source said the delegation’s convoy was attacked in central Baghdad and two Iraqi guards were wounded.
MOSUL – A mortar round fired at the Nineveh province security operations centre missed the target and struck a house, killing one person and wounding another, in southern Mosul, police said.
MOSUL – Gunmen attacked a security checkpoint and killed a policeman in western Mosul, police said.
MOSUL – A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed one passer-by and wounded two other people, including a policeman, in central Mosul, police said..
MOSUL – Gunmen threw a hand grenade at a police patrol, wounding four people, including a policeman, in southwestern Mosul, police said.
BAGHDAD – A parked car bomb exploded near a police patrol, killing one passer-by and wounding nine other people, including three policemen, in the Ghazaliya district of western Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.
BAGHDAD – Two roadside bombs struck a convoy carrying a local police chief, wounding him and five other policemen, along with two passers-by, in the Amiriya district of western Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.
BAGHDAD – Two people were wounded by a roadside bomb in the Karrada district of central Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.
BAGHDAD – Two people were wounded by a roadside bomb in the Karrada district of central Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.
BAGHDAD – A bomb targeting a police traffic patrol wounded five people, including two traffic policemen, in the eastern Baghdad district of Zayouna, an Interior Ministry source said.
BAGHDAD – A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol wounded three people, including one policeman, in the southern Jadiriya district of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.
And all in all, June 22, 2011 was a fairly quiet day in Iraq, compared to…
Jun 22 2011
Yin, Yang, and Yada
Yada-lini
Behold the Yada-lini, composed of yin, yang, and an occult third force, the yada, which transforms all apparent distinctions into mush.
Democrats and Republicans?
Yada Yada Yada!
Obama and Bush?
Yada Yada Yada!
USA and al-Qaeda?
Yada Yada Yada!
War and peace?
Yada Yada Yada!
We dwell in the realm of yada, my friends, and none of it means anything!
New album from Justin Bieber?
Yada Yada Yada!
Spiderman 15 at your local multiplex?
Yada Yada Yada!
Yet another election in 2012? 2016? 2020?
Yada Yada Yada!
Jun 20 2011
Notes from Nitwit Nation 11
Over at HuffPo Amanda Terkel notes that Netroots Nation has finally wised up to Obama.
The audience didn’t like (White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer’s) pap answers and he was roundly booed. This would not have happened last year.
As if it fucking matters in 2011!
So where were all those geniuses in 2007, when it was already obvious to anyone of normal intelligence that Obama was nothing but a stinking con-man?
And what does “retarded” really mean?
Delayed!
Impeded!
Behind the curve! Four years too fucking late!
Nitwit Nation!