January 31, 2008

My humble attempt at a viral internet image

This is a mutant offspring of the internet and twisted boredom. I found all of the pictures on Google Images, the fonts were downloaded off of some site that I can't even remember, and of course the background color and action lines are courtesy of Microsoft Paint.

frog the mountie punter shatteredsoapbox drafted

Hope ya like it. If you do, spread it around, I 'accidentally' put the name of this blog on there so maybe it will get some steady traffic over here if it actually does get viral...

January 30, 2008

Greg Palast on the State of the Union

From gregpalast.com:

One Bush Left Behind


Here’s your question, class:

In his State of the Union, the President asked Congress for $300 million for poor kids in the inner city. As there are, officially, 15 million children in America living in poverty, how much is that per child? Correct! $20.

Here’s your second question. The President also demanded that Congress extend his tax cuts. The cost: $4.3 trillion over ten years. The big recipients are millionaires. And the number of millionaires happens, not coincidentally, to equal the number of poor kids, roughly 15 million of them. OK class: what is the cost of the tax cut per millionaire? That’s right, Richie, $287,000 apiece.

Mr. Bush said, “In neighborhoods across our country, there are boys and girls with dreams. And a decent education is their only hope of achieving them.”

So how much educational dreaming will $20 buy?

-George Bush’s alma mater, Phillips Andover Academy, tells us their annual tuition is $37,200. The $20 “Pell Grant for Kids,” as the White House calls it, will buy a poor kid about 35 minutes of this educational dream. So they’ll have to wake up quickly.

clickhereforallofit

Wow.

Some great plan for America, right? Does Bush not expect anyone to do the math? Maybe he wasn't thinking of all 15 million impoverished children, I'm sure that's just a "whiny liberal guestimate or something."

One more year of Bush is too long.

January 29, 2008

Untraceable: don't let it fool you (some spoilage)

I saw that movie Untraceable last week.

It was pretty good, it was entertaining and everything, and it' s a pretty awesome idea for a movie. I'd go as far to say that it's one of the most inventive original movies to come out in a while. But I've just got to say that anyone who thinks that anything in that movie could actually happen really needs to come to terms with reality.

There's this quick, totally incidental scene about a politician who supports net neutrality. The first victim in the movie gets placed in this politician's car as a sick joke from the webmaster/murderer. The main character explains the irony to her co-worker who, despite being an FBI agent, has to ask, "Net neutrality, what's that?" And, within about three seconds, the main character spits out this over-simplified, sarcastic, and false remark about net neutrality....unfortunately I can't remember what the remark was, it was so much in passing that I couldn't retain the actual quote, just the meaning.

Long story short:the movie's probably intended to scare people into opposing net neutrality.

The whole reason why there's such great hype around the movie is because "It could really happen!" But there's no way in Hell that it could. See if I'm right, here's what happens:

The FBI hits a major roadblock right off the bat: "The NSA won't let us use their technology to track the website, DANG!" For some strange reason I don't think the National Security Agency would just simply tell the FBI, "Sorry, we can't help you track this guy who's killing people with his website, we're not aloud to violate privacy, blame the craaaaazy liberal Democrats in Congress."

(This has to happen in the movie, obviously, otherwise it'd be a hell of a lot shorter and less interesting and wouldn't make piles of money for people that already have many piles of money.)

The reason why the site is so hard to track is because somehow it uses several different IP addresses from all over the world, eventually settling on Russian IP addresses that are totally out of their jurisdiction. Not once do they contact Russia and ask if they can help. "He's using Russian IP's, it's out of our jurisdiction, let's wait for the next victims to show up and look for clues in the live stream as they die! MAN this is hard!"

Now that I've spoiled much of the basic plot line for you, I think you can see why the events in Untraceable are unrealistic at best. I could go on, but I gotta ask, who reads this blog?

Exactly.

January 28, 2008

The NOSAVAGE campaign is excersizing free speech, not stifling it

From Huffington Post courtesy of Alternet.org:

Michael Savage's Hate Speech Catches up with Him

At least four major firms have pulled advertising from Michael Savage's nationally syndicated radio show following a campaign highlighting his inflammatory rhetoric.
One other company, Geico insurance, is expected to follow suit. The campaign, launched recently by Brave New Films, generated thousands of calls urging advertisers on the Savage Nation show to sever financial ties to the widely popular (and frequently offensive) talk host.

In less than a week, four agreed to pull their ads from the show, including Union Bank of California (whose representative says they were advertisers on the Savage show by mistake and were glad to be taken off), Intuit, Chattem, ITT Technical Institute.

click
hereforallofit

I emphasize "pulled advertising" and "highlighting" because I think they're the backbone of the NOSAVAGE campaign, whether they know it or not. NOSAVAGE is calling up the sponsors of Michael Savages show and telling them what he actually says on his show and asks them if they really want to support this guy's program. A handful have already said, "You know what, we don't want to be associated with such a racist motherfucker," and pulled their ads.

THAT'S NOT STIFLING FREE SPEECH, that's expressing it. Savage can be a racist, Brave New Films and their NOSAVAGE campaign can be liberal ask his sponsors if they really want to support him. They're not trying to make it illegal to spout racist and uninformed garbage, they're trying to make it unprofitable. There's nothing hypocritical about it, and I say this because I'm sure there are plenty of people saying just the opposite (or will as soon as they hear about it).

It's not like they're trying to get the government to ban fascist rhetoric from the media. THAT would be stifling free speech. If sponsors don't want to fund a show, no matter what the content, they don't have to. That's business, quite literally. If there's a "major firm" that doesn't mind being associated with Savage, they can sponsor him and he can stay on the air. All the NOSAVAGE campaign is doing is just making sure that the sponsors know it's contents.

So Savage fans, or "supporters of free speech," don't bash Brave New Films for calling attention to what Savage actually says on his show, take it up with the sponsors, they're the ones who pulled the ads. (and it ain't like he's off the air yet)

January 21, 2008

White separatists protest in Jena, La.

From the AP courtesy of mercurynews.com:

JENA, La.—About 50 white separatists protested the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday Monday in this tiny town, which was thrust into the spotlight months ago by 20,000 demonstrators who claimed prosecutors discriminated against blacks.

Police separated participants in the "pro-majority" rally organized by the Learned, Miss.-based Nationalist Movement from a racially mixed group of about 100 counter-demonstrators outside the LaSalle Parish Courthouse. There was no violence and one arrest, a counter-demonstrator.

clickhereforallofit

50 racist protesters, twice as many counter-protesters. As horrible as it was to piss on Dr. King's grave like those supremacists did today, it's good to know that for every American racist there's two people who are willing to go out and meet them in the streets to protest their ignorance.

Last month I made a couple of videos about American whites who claim to be the new victims of racism. It's bullshit and we've got to call them on it at every instance possible. We're never going to tackle corporate crimes against humanity if blacks and whites still can't get along after all of this time.