BluegrassBulletin.com

Campaign 2012: Fear And Loathing Redux?

Journalist Hunter S. Thompson covered the 1972 presidential campaign of George McGovern more closely than the rest, but in his book "Fear and Loathing On The Campaign Trail" he took journalism to a new level.  His book of collected articles was described as "the least factual, most accurate account" of the election.

To give you a glimpse of just how far news coverage has come in the last 40 years it is amusing to recall that Thompson's employer obtained at "great expense" a first generation fax machine so he could send in his reports from around the country, by deadline.

Today we not only have 24 hour news coverage on radio and television, but we have an army of citizen journalists blogging every detail and varied opinion about the campaigns, every step of the way.

This past weekend Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary.  The circus now moves on to Florida with thousands of eyes and ears looking and listening for anything newsworthy at all to write about which makes the job of bloggers like me all that much easier.

Because of the Internet we are able to read and cross reference every report in a matter of minutes.  We are able to direct you, the reader, right to that source as confirmation for the things we are saying.  We can cull out of the thousands of words being written about the contest those we feel are most important and condense them for your consumption.

We live in a wonderful era where the freedom of expression, speech and the press are mere extensions of the freedom of thought.

As this campaign progresses, keep a sharp eye out for any candidate who seems the least bit mushy on keeping these freedoms alive.  Those are the ones you need to fear, and loathe and ultimately defeat.

Big Brother Update: Scrapping The First Amendment

Are you familiar with SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act)?  How about PIPA (Protect IP Act)?  These two bills are designed to give the mainstream media and the government unprecedented control over the Internet.  These acts will give the government the tools by which to impose censorship, initiate lawsuits and control advertising revenues.

Watch this little video so you can get a better idea of what is at stake.  The First Amendment, freedom of expression and organization will fall under government control.  And guess what else?

Visionary people like Glenn Beck who are plowing new ground in the world of Internet programming could be stifled in the interest of the mainstream media and the government. 

This is scary and serious stuff.  Particularly when you consider that it comes in tandem with the NDAA and the right of the government to seize and detain American citizens who are deemed "belligerent". 

Might it be considered "belligerent" to fight against SOPA and PIPA?  Today it is not, tomorrow it might be.  That is why you need to act now before the wedding of these Orwellian proposals become law.

Speak now, or forever hold your peace.

 

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

I'm Getting Angry And I Know Why

Several years ago now I walked into a computer store for the first time.  Prior to that I felt as if I was pretty much on the cutting edge of technology in my law office.  We had progressed from IBM selectric typewriters, to IBM "mag card" readers to a DOS based 5" dual drive floppy system computer.

My sister told me that what we had was outdated, and that I should explore the newest stuff.  So I went to the store where she shopped, walked in and about 90 seconds later felt myself getting pissed. The owner was a very nice guy (a friend now I might add), extremely knowledgeable and willing to help.  But the store was populated by a bunch of kids, all sitting around computer screens ooo-ing and ahhh-ing over stuff I had no use for.  I specifically recall a couple guys using some sort of photo editing program to take the bikini off of picture of a model.

Then there were all the words I didn't understand, that really made me belligerent.  How was I expected to answer a question about which operating system I wanted when I had no idea what an operating system was?  Processor speeds, RAM, screen resolution, programming, all these words were being fired at me in sentences by the guy who was trying to help me build just what I needed when I had no idea what I needed.  I felt like a foreigner in my own hometown.

Little by little I calmed down over the next few weeks and came to grips with the fact that while I was busy trying to practice law, earn a living, play ball with my youngsters and mow the yard, part of the world I was living in had passed me up.  My anger was born out of the frustrating realization that I hadn't been as attentive as I thought and this whole technology thing snuck up on me.  I didn't like it at all.

Today I feel the same feelings again.  Yes, I have what I believe to be a much more advanced understanding of technology than many of my contemporaries.  I use technology in many ways today, have built my own computer from scratch, have a fair working toolset for using the Internet and social media, but today I had a brief email exchange with my consultant and realized that while I've been sitting here in my easy chair, perfectly comfortable with my accomplishments in the tech field, once again I've been passed by.

I'm not sure I'm really interested in getting up to speed and getting back in the race, though I will admit to a fascination with what's new.  It's just that I am not convinced that in today's world there is much more utility available.  Sure there are gadgets with more dazzle, but, do they make us stronger, or weaker?

Do me this favor, just do this math in your head.  How much is 270 divided by 9?  How about telling me how much 125 multiplied by 5 is?  Or add up these numbers, 60 + 25+ 12 = what?  Ask a college kid to do it.  I think you will find that doing math in your head is becoming a lost art.

Ask a college kid what a percolator is.  No, I'm serious, you will likely be shocked how many don't have a clue.

Sure, Gameboy could be a good training ground for fighter pilots, but out of the thousands of useful idiots it produces, how many join the military, much less learn to fly jets?

Does your teenager ever look up from his cell phone text-a-thon?  I'll bet kids share more words by tweets than they do around the dinner table in a days time.  When's the last time you son or daughter read an entire book, and Face-book doesn't count.

What I learned today that has me so upset is that there is a whole generation of kids out there who apparently love to plug their ears with podcasts about such important things as......how to podcast.  Oh, and if the newest podcaster wants to become successful, all he needs to do is run a podcast about how to make money off of ...wait for it.....podcasting.

When I was 12 years old I placed an ad in the back of a boys magazine that said "send $1 for guaranteed tip on how to make a million dollars".  I actually made about $30 bucks off of it.  What did the people who sent me a dollar get in return?  I sent them a 5 cent post card with this advice "How do you make a million dollars?  Sell something for a dollar to a million people.  Thanks for your help"

I used to see books with snazzy covers teasing that the contents held the secrets to becoming rich.  I always though of my post card advice.

Today I see people making tons of money selling advice online.  "How To Monetize Your Blog", "Make Money From Home On The Internet", "5 Easy Tips How To Become Debt Free".  I see this stuff and get pissed.

First, I'm upset that what I outgrew after my business venture at 12 continues to make money for folks.  I'm also upset that I can't seem to bring myself to be such a blatant self promoter.  But I think I'm more than a little upset to think that we've raised enough folks in the generation behind me who are so enamored by technology that they have become "double dupes".

What do I mean by "double dupes"?  Well, first of all they like technology for technology sake.  I mean, why else would you have an X-box?  Does it mow the yard, drive you to work, cook your food or make anything?  Nope, it's just cool, and fun.

Second, like sheep they can't wait for the I-phone 6 to come out.  The one they've got is doing perfectly well, but the next one is going to be so much cooler.  So they will spend another $600 as soon as it hits the market.  Same thing with I-pad, computers, photoshop, video cameras etc., etc., etc.  Consumer electronics is an addiction with no end.  And like so many other addictions, in many ways it renders its victims useless.

So how do the pushers keep their profits up?  They get the addicts to sell for them.  Now the addict not only gets to feed his addiction, but could end up with his drugs for free and some money to boot.  And on and on it goes, except all the while the IMF, the Federal Reserve, the World Bank and a slew of socialists are perfectly content to let American manufacturing disappear, turn our nation into a nation of consumers, devalue our dollar and render our population into a bunch of mind numbed dolts content to play on their computers all day while the world burns down around them.

Can you understand why I'm pissed?

Well then I hope you will also understand why I applaud Glenn Beck, and have launched a new web based series of my own.  Today's installment will appear on this blog very shortly.

Like it or not, I either have to keep up, get trampled or be left behind.  This country and the cause of liberty mean too much to me to give up, and as long as I'm able I refuse to be left behind.

I'm not so sure I'm going to be able to reach the audience of kids (anybody under 35) who are mesmerized by technology for technology sake, but maybe, just maybe, if I jump into their crib they won't be able to ignore me, and then at least I've got a shot at getting through to a few of them.

Glenn Beck To Test New Technology

Not so long ago I told a friend that the day would soon come when the TV set would be connected to the Internet and that when that happened the world of entertainment would explode.  Well my friends, that day is here.  No longer is your television merely the pipeline for the networks to deliver content.

When I was a boy we had three channels.  They went off at night and left us with a test pattern.  Then they came up with the UHF channels and we went to 4 on our TV, although you still had to get up and cross the room to turn the knob.

For the last two decades the number of people watching the major networks has dropped and the number of people watching "paid TV" on cable or satellite has increased.

Today newer televisions come Internet ready, they can access a virtually limitless library of movies to be watched on demand, and at the same time, you can sit in your recliner, pick up your wireless keyboard, your wireless mouse, turn on  your webcam and video chat across the world on a 60 inch flat screen.  You can surf the web, watch Youtube videos and now, with the launch of Glenn Beck TV this fall, we are about to find ourselves searching everywhere for just the kind of news, sports and entertainment we like from millions of potential vendors, all of it ala carte, or by subscription and much of it surely to be free.

Many people will be watching Glenn Beck's new venture to see if it succeeds, but whether it rivals the cable shows or not won't matter much to Beck.  At $4.95 per subscription he only needs 50,000 subscribers to earn him more than what Fox News was paying him.  And since he already has 80,000 subscribers to his website at $9.95 each, he should hit that target pretty swiftly.

No, you won't have to sit at your computer and watch Beck.  You can lean back in the same chair from which you've been watching him for the past two years, crank him up on the Internet connected to that Big Flatscreen on your wall, and watch his show on demand, much like you did on your DVR.

Beck is certainly taking some risks with this new venture, but he has been known to see the future pretty clearly from time to time.  If his vision is right this time, hold on to your seats.  That explosion I talked about years ago is about to go "boom".

Thought Police At It Again

Can there be any doubt but that the Internet has opened the eyes and minds of millions upon millions of people to sights, sounds, ideas and knowledge they would likely never have experienced otherwise?  It has truly connected the world, people and cultures.  But some people are not friends of liberty, they want control.

Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons have introduced a bill specifically designed to have a chilling effect upon the sharing of information by making it a felony in some cases to "embed" a video, setting the stage to make it criminal to quote a news source, or link to other content in blog posts, articles and other internet writings.

If you embed a YouTube video that turns out to be infringing, and more than 10 people view it because of your link... you could be facing five years in jail. This is, of course, ridiculous, and suggests (yet again) politicians who are regulating a technology they simply do not understand. Should it really be a criminal act to embed a YouTube video, even if you don't know it was infringing...? This could create a massive chilling effect to the very useful service YouTube provides in letting people embed videos. [techdirt.com]

I need a new protest shirt "Free The Internet"

Trump Says Obama Terrible Student, Asks How'd He Get To Harvard

Donald Trump has Barack Obama in his teeth like a bulldog, and he refuses to let go.  In an interview with NBC, Trump continues to ask why there are so many things still unknown about the President of the United States.  This time he suggests that Obama's scholastic records are sealed because he was a terrible student.

Manhattan real estate mogul Donald Trump suggested in an interview Monday that President Barack Obama had been a poor student who did not deserve to be admitted to the Ivy League universities he attended.

"I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?" Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records."

Obama graduated from Columbia University in New York in 1983 with a degree in political science after transferring from Occidental College in California. He went on to Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude 1991 and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

Obama's 2008 campaign did not release his college transcripts, and in his best-selling memoir, "Dreams From My Father," Obama indicated he hadn't always been an academic star. Trump told the AP that Obama's refusal to release his college grades were part of a pattern of concealing information about himself.

"I have friends who have smart sons with great marks, great boards, great everything and they can't get into Harvard," Trump said. "We don't know a thing about this guy. There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about our president." [NBC]

Well maybe this might help explain some of the mystery.

Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour is a Muslim lawyer and a black nationalist who made news in 2008 when it was revealed that he had been a patron of Barack Obama and had recommended the latter for admission to Harvard Law School in 1988.

Before becoming a Muslim, al-Mansour in the 1960s was named Don Warden. He was deeply involved in San Francisco Bay Area racial politics as founder of a group called the African American Association. A close personal adviser to Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, al-Mansour helped the pair establish the Black Panther Party but later broke with them when they entered coalitions with white radical groups.

Al-Mansour is an outspoken hater of the United States, Israel, and white people generally.

H/T to Gateway Pundit

Your Life Is An Open Book

Did you know this?

Today all your personal information that is stored in third party storage space is not considered to be the kind of personal property that would require a court-issued warrant for government to access. If you have email stored at Google, if you use a cloud computing service, or if you have a third party data back up service it is all open for government to view without a warrant because it is in the actual possession of a third party. Currently none of these computer records are considered your private records.

This also holds true for cell phone GPS location records. As the law stands today government can access your cell phone location records and find out where you’ve been and all without a by your leave from the courts.

Make yourself aware of the effort to protect these things.  It is called the "Digital Fourth Amendment Campaign".

Our coalition–led by the free market, pro-liberty groups TechFreedom, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Americans for Tax Reform’s Digital Liberty Project — is dedicated to bringing obsolete laws including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986 into the digital age. These reforms would unleash innovation and competition among cloud computing and mobile service providers by extending to their users the same Fourth Amendment protections that currently apply to digital data stored on local hard drives.

By giving the users of cloud computing and mobile services the same Fourth Amendment protections that currently apply to digital data stored on local hard drives, these reforms would allow these services to flourish, unleashing innovation and enhancing American global competitiveness.

Generation Net

Highlighted on Drudge:

Children are often happier with their online lives than they are with reality, a survey has revealed.

They say they can be exactly who they want to be – and as soon as something is no longer fun they can simply hit the quit button.

The study also shows that, despite concerns about online safety, one in eight young people is in contact with strangers when on the web and often lies about their appearance, age and background.

Researchers for children’s charity Kidscape assessed the online activities of 2,300 11- to 18-year-olds from across the UK and found that 45 per cent said they were sometimes happier online than in their real lives. [DailyMail] (online, of course)

Gee, How Does One Report On This?

A man in Arlington Virginia wrote a post on his blog following the shootings in Arizona which contained these sentences: 

It is absolutely, absolutely unacceptable to shoot indiscriminately. Target only politicians and their staff and leave regular citizens alone. [CBS]

According to the report on a local CBS affiliate, "Police are investigating the “suitability” of 39-year-old Travis Corcoran to have a firearms license" saying "We certainly take this as a credible threat, and credible until we prove otherwise."

The report goes on to say police went to the blogger's residence and removed 11 firearms.

How does one safely report on this?  Obviously no credible threat against the life of any person, whether a member of Congress, a staffer or one of the many homeless people sleeping under bridges should be ignored.  However, with a visit by the police, a criminal investigation and the trampling of your constitutional rights hanging over your head, where does one draw the line when choosing the words, or imagery he/she publishes?

Will this incident have a chilling effect on speech?  Has the debate over the use of words like "targeted" in political discourse now been resolved in favor of those who want all speech subject to government control?

Is this perhaps an glimpse into the future of how Internet use, talk radio and cable television might be treated under the "net neutrality" and "fairness doctrine"?  Is this an example of how our government is being seen by some as "the royal family"  such that any speech against  "the King or Queen" will end up putting one on a fast track to beheading or imprisonment?

Will comedians now have to watch what they say, unless of course they are from the left and joking about the right?

Is it even safe now, when reporting on this man's experience, to ask questions? Or must one agree, out of fear, to advance only the version of the story being told by the armed government agents who entered his home and removed his guns?

And for the rest of the community, what is to be learned from the sight of a man's home being raided by the police, him being led out in cuffs and his guns being confiscated then perhaps displayed lying on a bedsheet?   Are we to be so intimidated by fear of this treatment ourselves that we immediately hold this man in disdain and join the cry to crucify him?

How are we supposed to react?

Do these words, from Rev. Martin Niemoller, mean anything:

When the Nazis came for the Communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a Communist.


When they locked up the Social Democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a Social Democrat.


When they came for the Trade Unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Trade Unionist.


When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.


When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

Or these words from him:

After his former cell mate, Leo Stein was released from Sachsenhausen to go to America, he wrote an article about Niemöller for The National Jewish Monthly. Stein reports that having asked Niemöller why he ever supported the Nazi Party, Niemöller replied:

I find myself wondering about that too. I wonder about it as much as I regret it. Still, it is true that Hitler betrayed me. I had an audience with him, as a representative of the Protestant Church, shortly before he became Chancellor, in 1932. Hitler promised me on his word of honor, to protect the Church, and not to issue any anti-Church laws. He also agreed not to allow pogroms against the Jews, assuring me as follows: "There will be restrictions against the Jews, but there will be no ghettos, no pogroms, in Germany."

I really believed, given the widespread anti-Semitism in Germany, at that time—that Jews should avoid aspiring to Government positions or seats in the Reichstag. There were many Jews, especially among the Zionists, who took a similar stand. Hitler's assurance satisfied me at the time. On the other hand, I hated the growing atheistic movement, which was fostered and promoted by the Social Democrats and the Communists. Their hostility toward the Church made me pin my hopes on Hitler for a while.

I am paying for that mistake now; and not me alone, but thousands of other persons like me. [Wikipedia]

Merry "Digital" Christmas

I hope you enjoy this Youtube video of a Merry Digital Christmas.  Have a GREAT weekend!  And don't forget to buy some of my new products at SCANNERSHIRTS.COM.

Here's the LINK to the video of a "Digital Christmas"