Internet Is Basic Human Right

The French high court declares the Internet to be a basic human right.  Only in France could having access to a computer and consequently the internet be considered a right.

The Constitutional Council declared access to the internet to be a basic human right, directly opposing the key points of (President) Sarkozy’s law, passed in April, which created the first internet police agency in the democratic world.  The strongly-worded decision means that Mr Sarkozy’s scheme has backfired and inadvertently boosted those who defend the free-for-all culture of the web.

Is it me or does Nicky here look evil?

Tweeting Tyrant

Kim Jong Il aparently has and uses a Twitter account. By the way this guy doesn’t get nearly enough respect for having IL at the end of his name.  It just adds a level of coolness only realized on a middle school  playground. Can you imagine his tweets? “Ate breakfast, watched a movie on TNT, supervised the execution of 10 political rivals.”

The irony here is that for your average North Korean citizen the Internet is a far off dream, inaccessible, illegal, unattainable by all accounts, however the dictator has his own Twitter account. The Internet can be accessed only by the most powerful and well-connected in Pyongyang, while ordinary North Koreans aren’t allowed to possess mobile phones.  Which is why the discovery Monday that the North Korean government has a Twitter page caused a stir in the world known as the Twitterverse.

Condezzla Rice Debates Stanford Student

I think my favorite part during the back and forth is when former Secretary Rice gets the student to admit that he, “did not know that,” and that “I can’t answer that question.”  Do your homework first kid.  Bring on the hate comments.

Swine Flu is Offensive?

It appears that there are certain cultural sensitivities for Jewish and Muslim followers around the name Swine Flu.  Yes, really.

“The outbreak of swine flu should be renamed “Mexican” influenza in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork, said an Israeli health official Monday. Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman said the reference to pigs is offensive to both religions and “we should call this Mexican flu and not swine flu,” he told a news conference at a hospital in central Israel.  Both Judaism and Islam consider pigs unclean and forbid the eating of pork products.”

Apparently pigs are like gods to them and the mere mention of Swine or Pigs upsets their delicate sensibilities.  Seems odd that pigs are the one area these two opposing factions can find agreement on.  I can’t stand hippies but I don’t mind if they’re mentioned in the news.  In fact I rather enjoy reading about my favorite hippies like Dumpster Muffin.

Of course that’s not that different from my liking of Prom Night Dumpster Baby.

Hilarious

A Response To A Moron

I’ve written this blog on and off for over a year now and I’ve gotten hundreds of hate mail responses to different posts. Usually I write the author back to explain my point-of-view a little more thoroughly however in this case this guy is begging to be made an example of.

Here are Bryan the moron’s comments:
Bryan { 04.24.09 at 3:00 pm }

I love it, this article says they were asked to cover up all signs and symbols there….true. This website does NOT tell you that it had nothing to do with religious symbols, they wanted ALL signs and symbols removed for his normal backdrop of flags and a black background, like he does all the time, no matter where he speaks. If that was not bad enough, the writer of this drivel only giving you half the story, then askes you to “put that aside for a moment” and goes on a rant about a visit to a mosque which has NOTHING to do with the story…and never does go back to the White House explanation that was brushed aside to consider the mosque story. Anyone, like Anna Maria, who sucked right up to the teet of this obviously slanted, right wing-nut fringe “article” really need to go back to skool. And Anna has the nerve to call Obama supporters ignorant…..err, scuze me ignorent….or is it ig-nant?? Jesus Christ and Holy Cow some Amerikans are so gullible. For those of you that need assistance, gullible means you are a “sucker” incapable of critical thinking, taking one source as gospel and running with it.

Let’s first start with the fact that he spells his name with that insufferable Y in Bryan. This immediately discredits his take. However, for shits and giggles, let’s continue to evaluate the content of his comments.

He says that, “they (the White House) wanted ALL signs and symbols removed for his normal backdrop of flags and a black background, like he does all the time, no matter where he speaks.” OK, let’s examine this claim. All one needs to do is a simple search under President Obama Speeches and Google turns up literally dozens of pictures, like the one below, that run counter to this Mensa winners claim and he’s only 100 days or so into office.

Obama does not have a standardized podium ESPECIALLY when he addresses private audiences and when he visits foreign countries like the picture shows below. Thus the relevancy of my comparison to Barack’s visit to the Mosque and his speech in front of a Catholic audience.

Continuing on his blog bash Bryan states that it’s a bad thing that I, “rant about a visit to a mosque which has NOTHING to do with the story.” As previously described there is an actual linkage between the two, as they are both non political events. The point here is he would have found this out or known if he wasn’t blindy biased one way or another.

This is actually a point I’ve been wanting to make for some time now. Essentially his intellectual dishonestly is the problem with true ideologues. My sense is that Byran is a liberal based simply on the fact that all comments on this article espouse a response from the far Right or Left and oh yes, his facts are wrong.

The only redeeming quality in his comments is at the end of his pissy diatribe. Here he salvages some grace by stating that, “gullible means you are a “sucker” incapable of critical thinking, taking one source as gospel and running with it.”

He’s actually unwittingly a man of similiar thought though no doubt poorer taste. What he’s trying to tell me, although making a half ass attempt at it, is that the essential problem with politics is the tendency towards two fringe points of view.

This isn’t surprising because understanding ONLY two sides of an issue is marketable and simple. We elect officials to represent us because we do not have time to study all the relevant issues, hold a job, and live a normal life. The media and political parties on both sides understand this and whittle down the arguments into two neat, polar opposites because we don’t have time to study the gray area (nor do most of us care). Thus political parties produce John Kerry’s and George Bush’s when it’s so obvious these are not qualified men and not the leaders when NEED.

My point is what if absolute consistency on any issue from the right or the left, Socialism to Capitalism, from the religiously devout to secular is an indication of mediocre intelligence and lack of intellectual purity? Then that would make Washington a den of mediocrity and Bryan incapable of intellectual honesty.

The Obama Administration allows different backgrounds based on where he’s speaking at hence my reasoning for questioning the physical covering of a religious symbol at a religious univeristy where he accepted the invitation to speak. Obama’s speech was not an address to Congress, the media, or the American people this was an address to a private, religious audience (or at least one can assume a highly religious audience) therefore IT IS surprising that his office has purposely chosen to cover the symbol for Christ.

Obama Administration cuts $100 Million in Proposed Budget

Our savior! From the administration that first brought you the most impressive national spending policy since the New Deal I now introduce The Most Pathetic Attempt at cutting into our national deficit since Reagan funded Star Wars.  Welcome a $100 Million budget cut press-conference (see below).  Sound like a lot? It’s not, you’re just dumb.

The national debt currently stands around $11.2 Trillion. (neither the $100 Million nor the Trillion dollar figure even fit on my ”Little Professor” calculator).

Percentage wise that’s .0009%  of our crushing 11 Trillion dollar national deficit.  To put this into perspective it would take 110 billion more $100 million dollar payments for us to break-even. Please pick up your jaw, reattach it to your face and tune in to your government selling you down the road.

Good idea, let’s hold a press conference to self congratulate ourselves on this amazingly insignificant achievement.  At least someone calls them out on it.

Way to celebrate mediocre achievements.  Say Hi to Hugo.

Why Did Obama ask Georgetown to cover a Christian Religious Symbol?

By now you’ve probably at least read a headline or two about the Obama administration asking Georgetown to cover up IHS, which is a common Christogram based on the first three letters of “Jesus” in Greek, during his speech at Georgetown the nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit University.

Georgetown University says it covered over the monogram “IHS”–symbolizing the name of Jesus Christ—because it was inscribed on a pediment on the stage where President Obama spoke at the university on Tuesday and the White House had asked Georgetown to cover up all signs and symbols there.

Let’s put that aside for a second.  When President Obama recently visited the Middle East he visited a famous Mosque in Turkey. US President Barack Obama visited a landmark mosque in Istanbul Tuesday, following strong messages of US reconciliation with the Islamic world on his maiden trip to a Muslim country. Taking off his shoes as tradition requires, Obama stepped into the 16th-century Sultanahmet Mosque in the ancient heart of Istanbul, accompanied by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

So the question here is why would our President, the President of a predominately Christian country, openly embrace the religious cultures and customs of the Muslim world and openly reject, cover up, the symbols of his own country that of the Christian religion at a Catholic University where he was invited to speak?

I’m sure you all remember how he took advantage, as ALL major candidates do, of religious symbolism during the Presidential campaign when he passed around literature much like the picture below and constantly invoked his Christian roots.  For example here’s a good piece from MSNBC during the campaign cycle: One piece (Campaign literature) features photos of Obama praying with the words “COMMITTED CHRISTIAN” in large letters across the middle. It says Obama will be a president “guided by his Christian faith” and includes a quote from him saying, “I believe in the power of pray.” I guess embracing Christianity was just convenient or necessary during the election.

Why would a “COMMITTED CHRISTIAN” cover up Jesus? Is he making a statement that he’s more powerful than the church?

So when Obama was in Turkey why didn’t he tell the Turks that he wasn’t going to take off his shoes? Was it because he was respecting their traditions like just about any diplomat would do? Chances are this is and was the case.  So then why not respect the tradition of the oldest Catholic college in the country? In his own Country!?  It just doesn’t make any sense?  Why is he doing this.  I have my theories….what are yours?

David Buckner Passes Out On Live TV

David Buckner, no relation to Bill, passed out in equally humilating fashion on the Glenn Beck show today.

Obama the Polling President

President Obama, like most of our modern Presidents, is quickly learning how to take the national temperature.   Presidents have long pooh-poohed polls while privately conducting them. Jimmy Carter had Patrick Caddell, Reagan had Dick Wirthlin, and Bill Clinton relied on Mark Penn for weekly, personal briefings on the numbers.

The only problem here is that Obama campaigned on the fact he was new, somehow different from the old, a man who led by convictions and righteous principles or so he had us think. “Obama declared that “the same old Washington textbook campaigns just won’t do.” Deploring “triangulating and poll-driven positions,” he said that “telling the American people what we think they want to hear instead of telling the American people what they need to hear just won’t do.” The Democratic Party had been at its best, he told the crowd, when “we led, not by polls, but by principles; not by calculation, but by conviction.”

My fear is that Obama’s incessant need to poll the general public instead of leading by his convictions or principles, which he’s apparently short on hence the need to poll, will lead down a path of spaghetti policy.  Spaghetti policy meaning many cross cutting strands of policy all leading in different directions and having no national cohesion.  Polling leads to reactionary behavior hence reactionary policy, not leadership. As FDR said, “a reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.”

Polling is nice when you want to know who might win American Idol but when it comes to politics I would rather have a leader who held to the principles he campaigned on, isn’t that who we voted into office?  Besides there’s no telling where polling data will lead us…

I wonder how giving the queen an ipod polled?

Obama Gives Queen Ipod Containing His Speeches

 In a move that can only be called self indulgent, or to use a favorite word of mine - psychopantic, today President Obama and his wife gave the figure head of England, otherwise known as the Queen, an Ipod containing the following:

• Photos from the Queen’s 2007 White House State Visit
• Photos from the Queen’s 2007 Jamestown, Va., Visit
• Photos from the Queen’s 2007 Richmond, Va., Visit
• Video from the Queen’s 1957 Jamestown Visit
• Video from the Queen’s 2007 Jamestown Visit
• Video from the Queen’s 2007 Richmond Visit
• Photos from President Obama’s Inauguration
• Audio of then-state senator Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and
• Audio of President Obama 2009 Inauguration Address

Not to be out down the Queen returned the favor by giving the King and Queen of America the beta version of the Ipod, a framed portrait of the Royal Family.

Britain’s Press Association reports that the Royal couple gave the Obamas “a silver-framed, signed photograph of themselves.” Am I the only one that finds this funny?