Weaver95

Or so goes this Cnet article anyways.

Now, i’m not sure about this one.  I don’t know the history behind the story, and I’ve only read this one article about it.  However - I do know that there are plenty of powerful interests (both government and private sector) that would like to see tighter controls on internet communications.  Everything from file trading to bloggers like myself are considered a threat to the status quo.  To the government, bloggers are uppity whiny people who just won’t shut up and go away.  To the press, we’re competition.  To private industry, we’re all a bunch of dirty file trading thieves.   So a lot of people inside the beltway would like to see certain things on the internet just go away, or be tightly regulated and controlled (for ‘public safety’ i’m sure).

According to this article, the legislation would give the President the ability to declare a ‘cyber emergency’ and grant him the authority to do whatever is necessary to deal with the problem.  I know of nothing that would constitute a ‘cyber emergency’.  Even infowar has it’s limitations - just look at what happened in Iran…the guys with guns beat the guys with twitter accounts.  So why the federal government wants the ability to clamp down on all internet communications is curious, to say the least.  I do know that governments all over the world looked at the effect of twitter on shaping public policy during the Iranian election conflict, so maybe that’s what this bill is intended to address: after all, if THIS country felt that an election had been rigged, odds are we’d be better armed than most local police departments.

However, I don’t really want to believe that my government is planning on ways to clamp down on political commentary from the blogosphere.  So i’m going to choose to believe that this bill (which is still in committee) is just an unfinished draft with details yet to be completed.  Granted - it’s being done behind closed doors, which is wrong in and of itself, but it’s just a work in progress with many a step yet to go before it gets close to a vote.  But mark your calendars folks, and make sure to put S.773 on your watch list!

Oh yes, he did it again.  Seems that he ‘forgot’ to report a couple extra millions that he had around the house. Actually, he forgot to include a couple of houses as well.

Now, if you or I had ‘forgot’ to tell the IRS about a couple extra million bucks of income do you think we’d be permitted to just quietly ‘amend’ our tax returns without any problems?  Because if I did that, I’d expect to be paying a fine and then getting an audit.  The reason I don’t cheat on my taxes is because i’m not politically powerful and connected.  Rangel writes the damn tax code - he apparently feels that gives him the right to just ignore tax laws that govern how the rest of us live.

Lest you be tempted to forgive Mr. Rangel for a tiny slip with the calculator, first consider this:

This voyage of personal financial discovery brings Mr. Rangel’s net worth for 2007 to somewhere between $1.028 million and $2.495 million, while his previous statement came in at $516,015 and $1.316 million.

Charlie’s little slip effectively DOUBLED his net worth.  In other words, Rangel hid over half his income from the IRS.  Half.  His.  Income.  If you or I hid half our income from the IRS we’d be in a jail cell right now.

One or two missed items (even big ticket items) could be understandable.  But when you get caught hiding half your income from the tax man, I think we’ve gone beyond any reasonable definition of ‘mistake’.  Either Rangel is so clueless concerning tax law that he can’t even get his own taxes right OR he’s criminally fraudulent and should be prosecuted by the IRS to the fullest extent of the law.  And if Rangel pleads ignorance, then why in the hell is he writing the tax law!?  I’m sorry but no matter how you look at this, Charlie has no business being involved in writing the tax code.  If he’s incompetent, then he should be fired.  If he’s a tax dodging cheater, then he’s a crook and has no business writing the tax law(s).  Either way - he has no business writing the tax law.

*sigh*

As bad as this situation is, what really frustrates me is that I know nothing will happen to Charlie.  One law for the rich and powerful, another for you and I, my fellow readers.  Rangel won’t pay a fine, he’ll never face an audit.  He’ll get re-elected by his district.  And he’ll go on to steal more money and not pay his taxes on it.  Because that’s what rich and powerful people do - meanwhile the rest of us face higher taxes and have to bow and scrape to hold on to our jobs.

So much for equal protection under the law.  Remember this come next election cycle.  Don’t vote (D) or (R) anymore.  find someone - find ANYONE - different, and vote for them.

I am seriously considering adding a ‘war on drugs’ tag to my blog.

For those of you who might have missed it, last week Mexico legalized drugs.  Not drug dealing mind you, but their legislature defined ‘personal use’ as being entirely legal.  They also made some provisions for drug treatment, and are shifting away from blaming people for being addicted.  The idea being that locking up an addict just means that when they get out, they’ll go get high again because they’re still an addict.  The thinking goes - treat the addict as a public health problem and not as a criminal and you’ll reduce drugs.

Not surprisingly, there are people here in the US who do not like this approach.  Which is an attitude I simply do not understand.  We’ve tried prohibition with alcohol and that didn’t work.  We’re still trying prohibition with cannabis, meth, designer drugs, opiates and all the rest and THAT isn’t working.  We scoop up addicts and lock them up (sometimes for years) and when they get out, they go right back to getting high.  We have spent BILLIONS of dollars on the War on Drugs and despite all the hardware, all the manpower and all that money illegal drugs are not only just as easy to get now as they were 10 years ago, but the prices have dropped.  Oh, and quality has improved to boot.  If this keeps up we should make health care illegal, it might improve services and reduce costs.

My point here being that our entire approach to the War on Drugs isn’t working.  we need to re-think everything we’re doing.  But here’s the US reaction to Mexico’s change in the law:

“It provides an officially sanctioned market for the consumption of the world’s most dangerous drugs,” San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore said. “For the people of San Diego the risk is direct and lethal. There are those who will drive to Mexico to use drugs and return to the U.S. under their influence.”

Never mind that Mexico has decided to try something different.  US officials are afraid someone might show up at a border crossing while coming down of a high.  Which, when you think about it, is sheer insanity.  Drug users aren’t going to dope up and then run the US customs gauntlet at the border crossing.  Even the dumbest crack head avoids the cops as much as possible.

What really offends me about our drug war is how much of a waste of resources it’s become.  Not to mention the fact that we lie about drugs to kids.  well..and voters as well.  A very large portion of the Baby Boomer generation spent a great deal of their youth ‘experimenting’ with cannabis.  They know from first hand experience that it’s harmless.  But every time someone proposes legalization, it gets shot down by the older crowd.  A crowd that KNOWS cannabis isn’t dangerous.  It’s mind boggling.

Ah well.  Back to the topic at hand.  While I can’t say I’m pleased that Mexico decided to make nearly ALL drugs legal for personal use (not all drugs are created equal), at least they’ve decided to change tactics when dealing with legions of drug addicts.  Maybe they’ll make headway in to dealing with the problem of these highly addictive substances.  God knows, our solution isn’t working out so well.

I thought I’d take a break from all the Kennedy funeral stuff and see what else was going on out there in the country today.  I was hoping it would be something uplifting, but of course - it wasn’t.  I found this little gem on my travels around the ‘net.

Eyeing at least $500,000 in lost car tax revenue, the Tax Fraud Unit of the city Assessor’s Office plans to dispatch camera-wielding contractors to crack down on unregistered and improperly registered motor vehicles.

Work is expected to begin in about a month, and will take place all day and into the night, city officials reported Tuesday.

Can you imagine how damaging that sort of thing will be to the local community?  Knowing that not only do you have to worry about speed traps and cops looking to bust you for excessive use of cold medicine, but now agents of the local tax office will be crawling around your backyard at night looking to hit you with additional taxes.

And before you start thinking ‘oh well maybe people should just pay their taxes’ consider just how far these tax collectors are planning to go:

O’Brien said the city may also rely on state aerial photography, income tax returns, voter registrations, library cards and mortgage deeds to show a driver with a vehicle registered out of state is in fact a city resident.

They’re going to use some pretty invasive tactics to get a couple people for not changing a sticker over.  But this is the sort of country we live in now - where local government is using data base filtering and high tech equipment to check on registration tags.  Meanwhile, the cocaine problem continues to grow unchecked.

I hope the local voters bitch slap that tax office. There is no excuse for using that kind of invasive search on such a low priority matter.

I don’t really know what I was expecting from the show today.  Maybe a class act, maybe a knock down bloody awful rant.  I was expecting it to be a good show, or at least an active one.  Turns out, it was actually rather bland.

Rush started off the show a bit late.  All to the good - I figured he was just doing last minute prep for a rockin’ show.  Instead of hitting the pavement running, Rush decided to fill the first 30 minutes of his show with…sound clips.  Lots of sound clips.  Clips of various Democrats all saying nice things about Ted Kennedy.  The one phrase Limbaugh DID use was something he must have thought up on his own, because he used it all day long: ‘Ted Kennedy, lion of the senate - we were his prey’.  So expect to hear that phrase quoted to death for the next couple of weeks.

The rest of the show was mostly various callers.  Boring stuff really, about what you’d expect.  we didn’t get our first Chappaquiddick reference until 12:33 east coast time, much later than anticipated.  The one caller that DID stand out was a woman named ‘Christine’.  She was smart, focused and stayed on message.  She raked Rush over the coals with the whole ‘death panel’ lie, then went after him on living wills and why they’re necessary.  Of course, Rush quietly lost her call during the next commercial break and she didn’t come back.

There were then more callers, a couple of whom who were VERY angry with ‘Christine’.  Rush himself seemed to be extremely upset that a caller was able to stay on message like that.  In fact, Rush was SO pissed off he had Snerdly queue up the tape of the call and replay it….the entire call took about 4 minutes.   Then Rush yelled at the tape for another 6 minutes or so.  Amazing stuff.

The rest of the Limbaugh show was rather boring.  Rush was actually respectful and didn’t hammer home anything about Kennedy’s policy positions or the mistakes of his life.  He actually kept off that stuff for the most part, limiting himself to slamming Pelosi and other Democrats for using Teddy’s death to advance their health care legislation.  There was also a very brief discussion of the situation around who gets to replace Teddy in the Senate.  My view on that is the law shouldn’t be changed, they should wait 5 months and hold their special election just as the local Democrats intended…but given the political pressure from the national party, i’ll bet the law is overturned.  It’s wrong, it’s a disgrace if they do it…but the needs of the DNC come over the rule of law so don’t be surprised if/when Deval Patrick decides to bow to the whims of his superiors.  At any rate, Rush covered the background story and spoke about what he thinks will happen.

I only really listened to the first 2 hours of the show.  I had to take a few notes, and then I have places to go/things to do this afternoon.  plus I wanted to write this entry before I logged off and started on my round of chores.  It’s good to get things down somewhere while impressions are still fresh in my mind, or at least I think so anyway.  My conclusion - Rush was actually semi-respectful.  A bit too attached to his ‘lion of the senate/we were his prey’ line, but that’s fine.  He’s allowed to congratulate himself on his cleverness.  Overall, the show itself was bland, save for the ‘Christine’ incident.  If you didn’t tune in to the show today, you didn’t really miss much.

Yep, it’s true - he’s gone. No more Kennedy in the Senate.

I honestly don’t know what to say about it.  On one hand…Teddy symbolized everything I’ve come to despise about the sad, sorry condition of the US Senate.  Bloated, corrupt and self centered to an almost fanatical degree - he used his family influence and money to (quite literally) get away with murder.  But on the other hand, nobody deserves to die from brain cancer.

*sigh*

well, one thing that nobody can possibly dispute is that like him or not, Teddy was an influential guy.  He was respected by his colleagues and enemies alike.  And even if he was a corrupt bastard, he knew how to do his job.  So in light of that, I give him a tip of the old hat.  I’m also amazed that for so many years Teddy could manage to be on the wrong side of damn near every important vote and issue that this country has seen over the past 40 years.  That alone is an amazing accomplishment.

Something to keep in mind tomorrow while we all read about Teddy’s life and times - there is going to be one HELL of a knock down/drag out fight over who gets to replace Teddy in the US Senate.  This is going to be a nasty, dirty, ugly fight and I hope we get to watch every last second of it on CSPAN!

All kidding aside, I hope that Teddy went quietly and without pain.  I didn’t like the guy’s politics but i’m still a human being (mostly).  Good by Mr. Kennedy, and good luck facing that final session with the man upstairs.

Sometimes you hear news that makes your brain shut down. News like this for example. It makes your brain just shut down.

See, basically the story goes like this:

1. SCO decides they ‘own’ Unix.

2. SCO starts suing…well, the entire world really.

3. the world fights back.

4. lots of random, weird stuff happens.

5. Federal judge rules against SCO.

6. SCO - who’s run by a guy who makes Captain Ahab seem like a reasonable fellow, appeals.

Now, at this point in time - there has been (literally) a ton of documentation that proves SCO didn’t have a case.  Every judge, lawyer and specialist involved said that SCO didn’t have a leg to stand on.  This thing is locked down as solidly as you can possibly get when it comes to something in the law.  decades of legal precedent say SCO’s case is over.

But all the sudden, out of the blue, an appelate  judge ( who didn’t spend much time at all reviewing the case) decides to overturn the ruling.  Wow - just like that, decades of precedent is tossed out the window.  And now SCO is back in the game.  It’s enough to make me think that the appelate judge took a bribe - his ruling literally makes no sense.  it’s that out of whack with the law.

So once more unto the breech my friends.  If SCO wins this thing, then Linux is going to be declared illegal.  And once THAT happens, there goes the entire open source software development community.

Lets start this off with the obvious - meth is bad.  So, in fact, are most of the other drugs out there:  heroin, cocaine, various and sundry designer drugs.  All of which are bad news…in fact the only ‘drug’ out there that really isn’t all that dangerous is cannabis, but that’s a discussion for another time.  Coming back to the topic of THIS post, let’s chat about meth (crystal meth) for a bit.

Meth is some really bad stuff.  It’s made from stuff that’s poison (literally), it drives you insane and destroys your body.  it’s highly addictive - a single hit is enough to hook you for life.  A short life that revolves entirely around eating/smoking more and more of this poison until you eventually die.  It’s one of the scarier drugs out there, and there are some very good reasons for why the drug is on the Schedule I list.

Not only is meth bad for your body, but the means of it’s manufacture is equally dangerous - meth cookers tend to run operations that leave an area drowning in toxic by-products.  plus there is the constant danger of explosions and fire.  A bunch of meth heads cooking more meth and playing with dangerous and explosive chemicals is not good for local property values.  One of the main ingredients to meth is a chemical called pseudoephedrine.  This chemical can be found in most over the counter cold and flu remedies.  So meth cookers would toddle down to the local drug store, buy out the entire stock of sudafed and head up to the hills to cook it down into a batch of meth.

In it’s infinite wisdom, the DEA and FDA didn’t really do much about this situation.  what SHOULD have happened was pseudoephedrine should have been made ‘perscription only’.  But that wouldn’t suit the bottom line of various big pharma companies.  So it was left to the various state legislatures to decide what to do about meth cookers and over the counter drugs.  And the result?  laws that limit how much cold medicine you and I could purchase.  Oh, and of course we have to have our identity recorded.  It was thought that if sales were tracked, then meth cookers would find it impossible to find enough raw material to make batches of meth.

Great idea…in theory. Reality, however had other ideas. Now those meth cookers have found a way to make meth without the need for a large lab set up, or massive amounts of pseudoephedrine.  So all that filing, recording and tracking of legitimate purchases has done NOTHING to stop people from buying the raw materials to make meth and producing more of the poison for themselves.

A bunch of tweakers are smarter than the cops and various state legislatures.  Depressing, isn’t it?  And it just goes to show how unrealistic our drug laws are these days.