May 31, 2011 archive

In Memoriam: Freedom

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Is this what our brave men and women fought and died for, a police state?  Bush had people arrested at his rallies for tee shirts and bumper stickers, now people are being arrested for dancing which the courts are ruling is a form of “protest”. What would Jefferson have thought about this and the way the Park Police behaved?

CFPB Under Attack

Back in April, we put together an episode to go over the different attacks being levied against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Elizabeth Warren. And last week, during a House Oversight subcommittee hearing that we covered extensively, the animosity harnessed in the legislation we summarized was clearly on display.

The treatment of Ms. Warren is crucial to understanding the motivations behind the attempts to strip the CFPB of power before any of its authority goes into effect. We knew this issue was going to heat up as we drew nearer to July, when much of the CFPB’s authority becomes active.

To account for recent developments, we are re-releasing Episode 10, entitled “Stopping CFPB”. Along with it is an up-to-date one page summary that accounts for recent developments.

Updated one-pager below the fold.

CFPB Under Attack

Back in April, we put together an episode to go over the different attacks being levied against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Elizabeth Warren. And last week, during a House Oversight subcommittee hearing that we covered extensively, the animosity harnessed in the legislation we summarized was clearly on display.

The treatment of Ms. Warren is crucial to understanding the motivations behind the attempts to strip the CFPB of power before any of its authority goes into effect. We knew this issue was going to heat up as we drew nearer to July, when much of the CFPB’s authority becomes active.

To account for recent developments, we are re-releasing Episode 10, entitled “Stopping CFPB”. Along with it is an up-to-date one page summary that accounts for recent developments.

Updated one-pager below the fold.

CFPB Under Attack

Back in April, we put together an episode to go over the different attacks being levied against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Elizabeth Warren. And last week, during a House Oversight subcommittee hearing that we covered extensively, the animosity harnessed in the legislation we summarized was clearly on display.

The treatment of Ms. Warren is crucial to understanding the motivations behind the attempts to strip the CFPB of power before any of its authority goes into effect. We knew this issue was going to heat up as we drew nearer to July, when much of the CFPB’s authority becomes active.

To account for recent developments, we are re-releasing Episode 10, entitled “Stopping CFPB”. Along with it is an up-to-date one page summary that accounts for recent developments.

Updated one-pager below the fold.

Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

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The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is an Open Thread

Le Tour Update

Hi-Wheel GreyEvidently it’s ok for professional bike racers to dope as long as their name isn’t Lance Armstrong who has never, ever tested positive for a banned substance despite the testimony of embittered rivals and former team mates.

You see there is no doubt at all that Alberto Contador tested positive for clenbuterol, a steroid given to cattle to promote faster weight (muscle) gain and used in humans to treat asthma by increasing aerobic capacity and improving the flow of oxygen in the bloodstream.

And this was not just some random off season test.  He actually tested positive during the Tour.

But because he’s not Lance Armstrong the Court of Arbitration for Sport has decided to delay his hearing until safely after this year’s Tour (July 2nd to 24th) so he can defend the title he should be stripped of.

Bad beef my ass.

Today on Daily Kos

JUDAS OBAMA

Today, May 31, 2011, on Daily Kos…

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Yesterday, May 30, 2011, on Daily Kos…

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

The day before yesterday, May 29, 2011, on Daily Kos…

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

And the day before the day before the day before the day before the day before…

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!Hurrah for Obama and the shit-head Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!Hurrah for Obama and the shit-rag Daily Kos!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!

Cartnoon

Captain Hareblower

Memorial Day Parade

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

In Stars Hollow I live on a 5 street cul-de-sac backed by a protected watershed.  For one day each year, for 2 or 3 hours, we’re entirely cut off from civilization by the Memorial Day Parade.  You can tell it’s coming because they take down the eksmas decorations and put up flags on the phone poles (which we leave until July 4th because we’re thrifty like that).

It’s actually a really big neighborhood holiday, you can’t go anywhere because the streets are blocked and everyone congregates along the parade route and gets a chance to gossip about how the kids are doing.

From the time I was an Indian Guide until I graduated Marching Band I was a part of the show, stepping the 2 mile route from the marshaling area to the Town Hall reviewing stand.  For many years I grieved that my neighborhood seemed to be slighted in the musical department as drum majors preserved their performances.

So, once I was beyond caring or retribution, I sidled down the street a bit and at the appropriate moment used my regulation Lifeguard issue Acme Thunderer to give the 4 rhythmic blasts that triggered a roll off in my former compatriots.  The results were quite satisfactory.

Not that I’m advocating low tech hacking or civil disobedience.

Protecting The Constitution & Our Internet Rights

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

In the November elections, one of the greatest losses that the left suffered was Russ Feingold. What we didn’t notice until this past week during the rush to please the right wing and President Obama by renewing the unaltered (un)Patriot Act for four more years was that there were others who had picked up the cause of the left, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Mark Udall (D-CO), Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Tom Udall (D-NM).

Amendment Requires Government to End Practice of Secretly Interpreting Law

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Washington, D.C. – As the Senate prepares to approve a four-year extension of the Patriot Act without public debate about how the executive branch actually interprets controversial provisions in the ten-year-old surveillance law, U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Mark Udall (D-Co.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Tom Udall (D-NM) introduced an amendment to the Patriot Act reauthorization legislation to require the U.S. Attorney General to make the U.S. Government’s official interpretation of the law public.

The amendment also states that it is the “Sense of the Congress” that government officials “should not secretly reinterpret public laws and statutes in a manner that is inconsistent with the public’s understanding of these laws and should not describe the execution of these laws in ways that misinforms or misleads the public.”

Now, Sen. Wyden takes a stand for our internet rights and against the sell out Democrats by placing a hold on the “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011” (pdf) or as is euphemistically known the “Protect IP Act” which is the second try at getting Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which failed to pass the last session thanks to Wyden.

The “Protect IP Act” is a revamping of COICA making it just as bad if not worse:

This version changes the “interactive computer services” language mentioned in our post below to “information location tools,” a term that points back to section 512(d) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In that context it’s been generally understood to refer to search engines, though there’s no guarantee we wouldn’t see efforts to expand the definition in actions under this bill. But in any case, requiring search engines to remove links to an entire website raises serious First Amendment concerns considering the lawful expression that may be hosted on the same domain.

In other words, “the proposed laws could be used to shut down websites that link to other websites that authorities claim to be carrying out infringing activities.”

Gaius Publius at AMERICAblog points out that Homeland Security already has shut down sites:

As evidence, I offer channelsurfing.net and atdhe.net. These domains created no content, as near as I could tell. But they linked to sites that offered sports television over the Internet, and those links were on a game-by-game basis. So, for example, if you didn’t want to subscribe to cable, but wanted to watch ESPN games, you could go to one of these sites, peruse the list of links, choose your game and source, click and watch. Sometimes several sources offered the same game, and you had several links to choose from.

Again, neither of these sites generated the video. They merely offered links to other sites that did. Those other sites perhaps violated intellectual property rights; these sites certainly did not.

Now go ahead and click the links for those sites, and see what happened to them. Yep, that’s the Homeland Security logo.

hree guesses when both of these seizures occurred. If you said “Right before the Super Bowl,” America’s ad and money feast with a football game inside, you wouldn’t be wrong. Homeland Security, the counter-terrorism arm of our national security state, is helping to seize small-people’s property (those sites were property) in order to protect the profits and property of billionaire sports owners and the advertisers who love them.

Not that I wasn’t certain that Obama and friends weren’t in the pockets of billionaires and corporation but it is becoming even more evident that most of the Democratic leadership is no better than the Republicans.

We need more people in Congress like Ron Wyden who are willing to stand for the people who elected them. Like Gaius Publius, I’m making lists of those who are willing.

There’s No Place Like Home

As read by Keith.

Six In The Morning

Karzai: NATO risks being seen as ‘occupying force’

Afghan president says he will no longer allow airstrikes on homes

msnbc.com news services

KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghan President Hamid Karzai angrily warned NATO forces fighting in his country that they risk becoming seen as an “occupying force” if they do not stop attacking Afghan homes with air strikes as they hunt insurgents.

Karzai said he would no longer allow NATO airstrikes on houses because they have caused too many civilian casualties.

A recent strike that mistakenly killed a group of children and women would be the last, he added.




Tuesday’s Headlines:

Food prices to double by 2030, Oxfam warns

Serbia ‘certain’ to reject plea for Mladic trial to be halted

Yemeni ceasefire deal ends

Gaddafi calls for truce, but on his own terms

TEPCO waited 12 hours to announce pump failure at No. 5 reactor

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