Tag: US

Selling our future

Bill Moyers’ Global Environment Citizen Award acceptance speech is a pointed commentary on the current state of affairs in the US Government in regards to our environment.

It’s being sold, piece by piece, to the highest bidder, to be used as the highest bidder pleases regardless of consequences. The politicians allowing this to happen do not care, because the consequences will not be apparent until long after they’re gone from politics and thus won’t negatively affect their chances of re-election.

I wonder if my grandchildren can sue GWB’s grandchildren for destroying the world? I doubt it.

-TPP

Has the entertainment industry completely bought out the government?

The entertainment industry is big, and it’s powerful, but I never thought they ran the United States. Even when the DMCA was passed I didn’t think so. But today I read two news stories that make me wonder.

The first one is so absurd you really have to read it twice to believe it. It seems the FCC is claiming it has authority to regulate all instrumentalities, facilities, and apparatus “associated with the overall circuit of messages sent and received” via all interstate radio and wire communication. That, btw, includes personal computers, PVRs, and any other device that could receive digital TV signals now or in the future. FCC’s basis for this argument is that they have to do it to make HDTV adoption happen. This is why the FCC now thinks they can dictate what you can or, rather, can not do with your audiovisual gadgetry.

The second item comes straight from the lobbying arm of the RIAA and MPAA via your friendly entertainment industry representatives in the US Senate. It seems like there’s a new copyright bill in the books every week. This time it’s something called the Intellectual Property Protection Act (HR2391). Now, it has all the usual “share music or movies online and go to prison for the rest of your life” stuff all the other bills have, but this bill goes even further. It actually has the audacity to prohibit skipping commercials or other promotional announcements when recording movies for home viewing. At least they let you skip the commercials when viewing the recording though, for now.

-TPP

Ohio is a dead heat

At the time of writing Florida appears to have gone to Bush, so Ohio is almost certainly the deciding state.

Right now the votes go as follows:

Bush: 2,245,388
Kerry: 2,112,297

But if you take a look at the county level votes Cuyahoga, the most densely populated county in the state is voting overwhelmingly in favor of Kerry, and only has 76% of the votes counted. Assuming the votes are being tallied at an even pace, there’s roughly 100,000 votes left in the county, of which roughly 65% will go to Kerry. That’s 30,000 more votes for Kerry than for Bush.

Bush will win Ohio by about 50,000 – 75,000 votes, and will get elected again.

-TPP

Florida 2000 – child’s play, 2004 will be worse

If you thought the 2000 presidential elections in Florida were bad, just wait till November.

Greg Palast, the American born reporter now living in UK who also broke the story about the voting list irregularities in the 2000 Florida elections, is reporting the Republicans are planning on disrupting voting in the state’s African-American voting districts in Florida.

There are reports from several states of similar tactics by the Republicans:

Voter registration forms change party affiliation from Democrat to Republican in Pennsylvania
Mass voter challenges in primarily Democrat communities of Ohio

Obviously forged or false registrations are an issue, but it looks like the Republicans are going out all barrels blazing trying to block as many Democrats from voting as possible.

Instead of trying to encourage people to vote, the Republicans appear to be doing their best to get people NOT to vote. What is wrong with these people?

-TPP

Bush makes no mistakes. Really?

The second presidential debate is over, and while I think Bush did a better job than in the first one, he still lost. He looked visibly angry most of the time, and was almost yelling his responses to the audience. Very unprofessional.

But the most amazing moment of the debate came with his response to the last question of the night. A member of the audience asked him to name three decisions he has made during his presidency that he, in hindsight, thinks were mistakes and how did he try to correct them.

Bush couldn’t name one, other than joking about making mistakes in appointing people. That is truly amazing. Instead he appeared to know the true motivation of the question, and jumped into defending his decision to go to war against Iraq. Seems like the question hit a sore spot to me.

Nevertheless his answer reminds me of something I said a few months back about interviewing job candidates, and let’s face it, Bush is interviewing for a job.

Having been interviewing job candidates for a position with my current company, for what feels like forever, questions about mistakes or challenging situations in the past, and what was learned from them, is one of the best questions to use to disqualify candidates.

We had one hero answer the question something along the lines of:

“I look at other people’s work, and I see a lot of faults. I’ve yet to see anything wrong with my work.”

He will not be hired. Pity the employer who does.

I pity the US, if Bush is hired.

-TPP

The INDUCE Act is dead, for now

According to the Newsday article, Orrin Hatch, Hollywood’s best buddy, has withdrawn the INDUCE Act after failed negotiations between consumer groups, technology companies, which both oppose the bill, and the proponents of the bill (RIAA, MPAA).

Let’s see what will Mr. Hatch cook up next. Hopefully he will not be re-elected and gets his promised post as an entertainment industry lobbyist. Funny how bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hcampaign contributions work…

-TPP