Ahhh Damn that Ben

Between the Socialist Dems and the Neocon Repubs, this country is broke. And to top it off the federal reserve continues to give a big fuck you to the American People by lowering interest rates. I swear if even a third of the population even had a clue there would be a revolution, but between trying to survive with a declining dollar and watching American idol they won't.
Everyday the dollar falls to new lows, Gold is at 800+ an ounce and Oil approaching $100 a barrel, but government data reported the lowest inflation in the last half century, try more like 10-12%? I am not sure how they cooked the books on that one, but hats off to you, you managed to once again fool the sheep.

Poll Shows Paul Ahead of Clinton in Key Demographic

Don't want to live in a socialist society controlled by Hillary and her universal health care, The latest Rasmussen Report makes it clear that the only true anti-war candidate and the only republican candidate that can beat her is Ron Paul Link

Senior Fiat

What is a fiat money system and what can it do for you? Well investopedia put it this way.

"Money that a government has declared to be legal tender, despite the fact that it has no intrinsic value and is not backed by reserves. Historically, most currencies were based on physical commodities such as gold or silver, but fiat money is based solely on faith."

Currency based solely on faith; so one would assume that if people are kind enough play along and accept the dollar as a legal currency, Then the government would do it's best to make sure the dollar would keep it's value.
Well in a Utopian society that would be the case, but one just needs to look at the news today and read the headlines .
The dollar fell to another new low against the euro
Warren Buffett said he expected the dollar to weaken further

Why is this happening? Well first a little history

The US used to be on the Gold standard, this basically meant the gold was legal currency, and any notes the government printed was backed by gold reserves. At any time the holder of the note could in theory exchange it for it's weight in gold. The main purpose of this was to limit government spending, it could only spend what it had. The founding fathers knew of the dangers of a fiat currency. The founding fathers experienced the damage it caused . Most of the revolutionary war was financed by worthless currency called "Continentals". hence the phrase "Not worth a Continental". They were so concerned that they included the following in the Constitution.

Article 1 section 10 clearly states
"No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility."

So clearly the system we have in place today violates the constitution, Why do we allow this? Next post what led to our current system, why our dollar is inflating and what might happen down the road.

War Criminal

War Criminal, War Criminal! You got to hand it to them Code Pink girls, Agree with them or not at least they are willing to take a stand, That is more then i can say about most of the country. I was rather amused at this video until the police started removing the other members of Code Pink for no apparent reason.

Ubuntu (Ooo. Boon. Too)

Alright back and ready! First up for you Linux Nerds or just Want to try out Linux. The newest and greatest flava of Linux is out Ubuntu 7.10 don't believe me just check out this eye candy!


The new version of Ubuntu comes with compiz fusion seen above. This is the future, Vista, OS X Leopard eat your heart out. Now the cool thing is there are a number of ways you can try out Linux without losing your windows installation. First you would need to download the ubuntu iso image here.

Just burn the image to a cd and boot off it. It will load a working version into your RAM without installing a thing. If you like what you see you can install it and dual boot windows or Ubuntu.

The second way is to use VMware this is basically a program That allows you to use a second OS running on top of windows\Linux. You can download Vmware here

Support the FAIR USE Act of 2007

Support the FAIR USE Act of 2007

Reps. Rick Boucher and John Doolittle's FAIR USE Act would remove some of the entertainment industry's most draconian anti-innovation weapons and chip away at the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) broad restrictions on fair use. Use the form below and tell Congress to help restore balance in copyright now.

Technology companies play a game of Russian roulette whenever they create products with both infringing and non-infringing uses. Current "secondary liability" standards don't provide enough certainty, and if innovators guess wrong, they can be hit with statutory damages as high as $30,000 per work infringed. When it comes to mass-market products like the iPod or TiVo, damages could run into the trillions of dollars -- more than enough to bankrupt anyone from the smallest start-ups to the biggest companies. Unlike in other areas, the private assets of corporate officers, directors and investors are not shielded from liability in copyright cases.

The FAIR USE Act would limit the availability of statutory damages for secondary liability and allow innovators to make more reasonable business decisions about manageable levels of legal risk. Meanwhile, copyright owners could still get injunctions and actual damages for harm suffered, putting them in no worse a position than civil litigants in most other areas.

The bill would also codify the Supreme Court's "Betamax doctrine" as it pertains to hardware devices, making clear that manufacturers cannot be held liable based on the design of technologies with substantial non-infringing uses.

Finally, the bill would loosen the grip of the DMCA, which restricts circumvention of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions even for lawful uses. The FAIR Use Act adds 12 exemptions, including the ability to circumvent for classic fair use purposes like news reporting, research, commentary, and criticism.

Broader DMCA and copyright reform remains absolutely necessary, but, if passed, this bill would be a big first step in the right direction. Take action to support it now.

Link

5,000 U.S. Troops Still There by December 2006!

Talk about missing the mark, Newly released or should i saw obtained by the freedom of information act. The government planed to only have 5,000 troops in Iraq by December of last year, Here are some of the highlights.

• A provisional government would be in place by 'D-Day ( Looks like someone didn't study there history)
  
• the post-hostilities phase would be a matter of mere 'months ( still going strong)
  
• November 2001, President Bush asked Rumsfeld about the status of plans for war with Iraq. He asked for an updated approach, but did not want to attract attention ( hum wonder why could it be he should have been going after Bin Laden instead of Saddam?)
• In the end, Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Prime Minister Tony Blair persuaded President Bush that the U.S. needed to go to the U.N. to try to legitimize the invasion ( Bush didn't even want to go to the UN, No wonder he gave a half assed effort)

There is to much good stuff, I advise everyone to see what there fearless leaders have been up to. Link

Any doubts about the housing bubble.

If there is any doubts that housing is on the way down. Nothing is more simple the a chart. from thebubblebuster.com link

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

You would think with billions spent developing Advanced Access Content System (the new DRM software for HD-DVD and Blueray disk) That it would take more then a couple months for hackers to find a way to hack it, or in this case just finding the master key. Not really a hack but when you have the master key to all disk who needs a hack. When will the MPAA learn from the mistakes of the RIAA. Copy protected disc are soooo 1999, the future is content downloaded or streamed online. If you chose to live in the past at least allow me to make a copy of the dora the explorer disk i just bought and own...

Same old from the NAVY

I am often surprised by Humans lack of compassion for the planet and it's inhabitants. We tend to live for or own needs with little respect for future generations. So when the California Coastal Commission found that current NAVY sonar use endangered marine animals especially wales and dolphins, they voted to limit the use, and lower the decimal levels. Of course the Navy wasn't happy, and there response was

"The sonar training, which is just one part of the overall exercise, uses the same basic sonar training the Navy has used without incident for the last 30 years in the ocean off Southern California, where the number of marine mammals has been increasing," the Navy's statement declared.

Despite the mountain of evidence to prove otherwise, They Basically said F U to the Coastal commission and all residents of California, I understand the need to protect our coast but at what cost. Link

Sex vs Clothes and the winner is?

We all know that women prefer many things more then Sex, Like

Sour apple rings or peach,
The Tyra Banks show
cold sores
mushy bananas
etc

Well according to a reuters poll, "Women on average say they would be willing to give up sex for 15 months for a closet full of new apparel", yep you heard right 15 months! just for clothes, but it gets worse. "with 2 percent ready to abstain from sex for three years in exchange for new duds" Three Years without sex for some gap jeans! WTF

furthermore "Sixty-one percent of women polled said it would be worse to lose their favorite article of clothing than give up sex for a month."
Men obviously your doing something wrong, Do some research, experiment on your women, because we need to turn this around. If women are happy sexually, it's a double plus for us, one we get more sex and two the women spend less on clothes. Link

King of the throne

As a man that looks at my toilet as more then a toilet. The toilet is my escape, it's where i collect my thoughts and contemplate the meaning of life. And it seems this love of toilets crosses all gender lines because i often find my wife just sitting on the toilet, reading a book (magazine) or doing homework. Well it seems roto rooter created the ultimate "Pimped Out John". The unit comes equipped with a LCD TV, Laptop, iPod music player and speakers, Xbox video game console, and refrigerator filled with an assortment of goodness. Best of all you can win this, one lucky contestant will have this in there home. I already entered and you can too. Link

Congrats Al

Looks like (President) Al Gore has been nominated for the noble peace prize for his work promoting, and educating the public about Global Warming. Congrats Al you have my vote for 2008.

" OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Former Vice President Al Gore was nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his wide-reaching efforts to draw the world's attention to the dangers of global warming, a Norwegian lawmaker said Thursday."
Link

Mom bubble baths are soooo 2006

The era of bubble baths has come to an end, a company out of the UK is selling a powder product that absorbs 400 times its own weight turning plain old boring bath water into a mass of gooey goodness. When the kids (or adults ???) are done just add the dissolver packet and the goo is no more.
Link

Oh Brandy

It seems that things can't any better for pop singer Brandy ( Brandy Norwood). While driving along the 405 in her pimped out 2007 Land Rover on december 30, 2006 she failed to notice traffic had slowed ahead. The results were a four car accident, and the death of wife/ mother Awatef Aboudihaj, 38. The family of Aboudihaj have filled a civil suit for $50 million,

"LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Singer-actress Brandy was sued for $50 million (25.5 million pounds) on Tuesday by the family of a woman killed in a four-car freeway crash which police have blamed on the 27-year-old performer."

It's a sad outcome and i hope Brandy's next car is a BMW Mini. Oh did i ever tell you the time Barry Watson ( 7th Heaven) cut me off and almost hit me on the 101, and the time David Carradine (Kill Bill) was in front of me taking both lanes and going 2 miles per hour? I guess it not just Brandy that doesn't know how to drive, But I'll save those stories for next time.

Link

A bright Ideal!

It's sad when California has to lead the way to try to reduce energy waist. While our federal government continues to deny that global warming even exist, even going so far as to pressure scientist to alter scientific findings . Well a bill has just been inroduced that would ban incandescent light bulbs by 2012, Replacing them with the florescent variety.

"LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California lawmaker wants to make his state the first to ban incandescent lightbulbs as part of California's groundbreaking initiatives to reduce energy use and greenhouse gases blamed for global warming."

I am all for it, but i am just as guilty as anyone. Last year i replaced almost all the light bulbs in my house with florescent bulbs, only to change them back a month later. I just found the glare to much and they didn't seem to work well with dimmers. I guess i will save them for 2012.... Link

Harry Potter is a Bad boy

It seems that Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) Has shed his glasses, among other things in Peter Shaffer's play Equus. I understand he needs to shed his childhood image so more power to him, but some of the responses have been mildly entertaining.

"We as parents feel Daniel should not appear nude. Our nine-year-old son looks up to him as a role model. We are very disappointed and will avoid the future movies he makes."

If the best role model your 9 year old has is Harry Potter, Then you need to call nanny 911 and work on your parenting skills. He took off his clothes that's it, when have we as a society become so ashamed of the human body.

Link

Vista Launch

I have become more and more interested in DRM restrictions, And since today the newest offering from Microsoft goes on sale. Anyone who is looking to upgrade to Vista should think twice, check out DefectiveByDesign

Vista was designed to be restrictive and just the amount of extra power being used by the PC just make sure my copy of Weird Al is legit is outrageous. I am a big fan of open source software, and believe open source is key to keeping information available to all.

Apple of my Eye

Well lets start this off in third gear. I have no real problems with Apple, they do design nice looking computers and consumer products, and there OS is all eye candy. What I am tired of is rabid apple fans that defend them and claim they can do no wrong. Which is why i find the news coming out of Mac News Network ironic, When apple starts suing there own fans something has got to be wrong.

"The Mac News Network is reporting that Apple has declined to to appeal its loss in last year's Apple v. Does decision. MacNN, which is affiliated with Apple Insider, one of the sites targeted by Apple, says that Apple has paid nearly $700,000 to cover the sites' legal fees."

Link