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Why Google is Actually Quite Evil


by ThePete 10:00 am 2009-06-23
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See those ads on my site? Yeah–the ones from Google. Those are pretty unfair and yet we’re supposed to believe they are the key to surviving on the Internet as a content provider. The theory is that they’re just like TV commercials or print ads–advertisers pay you to advertise their products. Simple, right?

Wrong.

Google Ads (at least the ones on my website) pay webmasters per click.

How many TV advertisers pay TV networks based on viewers “clicking through” their TV commercials?

How many magazine or newspaper advertisers are paid based on how many people actually go to an advertiser’s website?

So, you get TV, newspapers and magazines getting paid big bucks just show ads.

But as a webmaster, I have to rely on the ability of a Google Ad to find it’s market in my audience. The thing is, I don’t want the ads to be obtrusive, so I go with text-only ads. Of course, it’s against the Terms of Service (ToS) to ask my site visitors to click on ads (even politely), so my only choice is be obnoxious to my audience by going with graphical ads or trust Google to do their job and display the best ads.

Not very fair since Google regularly misinterprets the words on this site. Back during the 2008 presidential election, I was slamming Bush and conservatives who would vote for him and what ads pop up on my site? Republican dating sites.

Well done, Google.

Now, to be honest, I don’t really pay attention to how many unique visitors I get per day. When I have checked I discovered it can range from a few hundred to a few thousand every day. Yet, do I get paid for every unique visitor who has a Google Ad downloaded to his or her browser? No.

Meanwhile, Google gets to traffic in my information, your information, and all the while they claim that their interest is in “not being evil.”

Sorry, G, but displaying your ads is a service I provide to you. Yet you only pay me when people click. You benefit no matter what because your logo is displayed to every visitor I get. Your clients benefit no matter what because their ads are displayed to my audience whether my audience clicks or not.

Does this seem fair to anyone?

So, claiming to not be evil and getting a service from people without paying for it?–that seems pretty evil to me.

Am I going to take the ads down? No way. I make a couple hundred bucks a year off of them and that’s a couple hundred bucks I wouldn’t get otherwise. But imagine how much I’d be making if I were paid based on how often an ad was displayed to a visitor…

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The Next Time Dick Cheney Opens His Fat Mouth Remember This


by ThePete 2:02 am 2009-06-02
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This is semi-old news, but with Cheney making the rounds again recently I felt this story would be good to conjure up–it’s from 2004 but important to think about when Dick Cheney goes on and on about "protecting America."

In an October 12, 2004 article on CommonDreams.org, Jason Leopold wrote about how Dick Cheney was helping Iraq break international law:

The report on Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction, prepared by Charles Duelfer, a former U.N. weapons inspector and head of the Iraqi Survey Group, said Saddam Hussein used revenue from the oil-for-food program and “created a web of front companies and used shadowy deals with foreign governments, corporations, and officials to amass $11 billion in illicit revenue in the decade before the US-led invasion last year," reports The New York Times.

Sure, $11 billion is chump change compared to what we’ve actually spent on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, but that was, to use the old cliche, a lot of money back then. Leopold goes on, however, later in the article, to say:

But the one company that helped Saddam exploit the oil-for-food program in the mid-1990s that wasn’t identified in Duelfer’s report was Halliburton, and the person at the helm of Halliburton at the time of the scheme was Vice President Dick Cheney. Halliburton and its subsidiaries were one of several American and foreign oil supply companies that helped Iraq increase its crude exports from $4 billion in 1997 to nearly $18 billion in 2000 by skirting U.S. laws and selling Iraq spare parts so it could repair its oil fields and pump more oil.

Leopold cites UN documents in the article as his source for this story. While he doesn’t link to the docs themselves in his article, in the face of evidence like this, if true, it’s hard to give any credibility to Cheney at all and I find it very frustrating that the media gives a man like this, who is no longer in power, a voice on TV and on the radio. Frankly, it makes me question the entirety of mainstream media.

As if there wasn’t already enough reasons to mistrust the mainstream media.

One other thing about Cheney: this is more proof that our leaders are just corrupt businessmen who couldn’t care less about human life and just want to make money. If he really thought that Saddam was a bad guy, why did the company he was CEO of do business with him? Because he doesn’t care who is bad or not. It’s all about the green.

Democracy? Republic? Free country?

Nah, it’s called a Corruptocracy.

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ObamaWatch: Obama Admin Considering Indefinite Jailing for Terror Suspects #obamawtf


by ThePete 1:37 pm 2009-05-21
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My sister-in-law, Lisa (she runs OnLisaReinsRadar.com ), Tweeted yesterday about how every day there’s something new from the Obama camp that makes her what to ask "WTF?"

I agreed and suggested a daily ObamaWTF Tweet. Here’s mine for today, taken from today’s DemocracyNow.org headlines:

Obama Considers “Preventive Detention” for Indefinite Jailings

The Obama administration, meanwhile, is reportedly considering a “preventive detention” system that would indefinitely jail terror suspects in the United States without bringing them to trial. The New York Times reports President Obama discussed the proposal at a meeting with human rights advocates at the White House. Two anonymous advocates told the Times that Obama indicated he favored applying the system to future cases, not prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. Obama is set to deliver a speech later today outlining his plans on how to deal with closing Guantanamo.

Original here: www.democracynow.org/2009/5/21/headlines#5

This’ll be no big deal assuming Obama doesn’t do it–but why is he considering this at all? I think there’s an amendment in the Bill of Rights promising due process and a speedy trial or something like that.

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Can We Just Stop Blaming the Poor Folks for Our Crappy Economy PLEASE?


by ThePete 3:06 pm 2009-05-05
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I am sick of seeing/hearing people explain that the cause of our crappy economy is/are the sub-prime mortgage defaults. This seems to place the onus for the mess that is upon us on the poor in the US.

Think about how stupid that is.

Let’s blame the poor for our bad economy.

Right, that’s logical… or it would be, if we lived on Bizarro World. How is it that people with little money can mess things up for those with lots?

First, you have to admit that the defaulted sub-prime loans were just a single factor (of many) in all of this. Then, you have to ask a very important question.

Recently, I came across yet another person on a socnet laying blame for our economic crisis at the feet of people unable to pay off their mortgages. The following is what I posted in response–it includes that very important question:

I think the bigger problem is why soooo many people couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments. If so very many people defaulted that it caused this massive failure of our economy, it seems more important to me that we ask why so many people couldn’t pay their loan payments. Surely, they can’t ALL be “lazy” or whatever.

I’d much rather solve the problem of so many people unable to make enough money to live comfortably, pay their bills and stay healthy.

However, in typical ThePete-fashion, I’ve a bit more to say. So here’s that:

So, if they weren’t all deadbeats, why couldn’t they pay their mortgages? Because they hadn’t seen a raise or a promotion in their jobs in a while? They lost their job because of downsizing, outsourcing or a personal medical issue? How much of those reasons are economically related?

How many of those reasons are related to the business’ well-being put in front of the employee’s well-being? To me this always comes back to all of us putting the right of a company to survive above the right of an individual to have a job that allows them to play their part in society.

And which would you rather do?

1) Prop up a faulty system, allowing the people and structures that failed once an opportunity to fail again

2) Let businesses fail, sending everyone, business owners and employees alike, a massive wake-up call that they can’t just assume everything will just work the way it should without folks paying attention and thinking for themselves

I know I’ve loaded those options a bit, but it strikes me as odd that we should save the employees by saving the bosses who got greedy and were the largest catalyst of all this in the first place.

And on top of that, you’ve got to wonder about a system that is so unstable that, when one thing goes wrong, it falls to pieces.

No, to me there’s something very very basic about our economic that is overflowing with wrongability.

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Think Specter’s Switch to the Democrats Means Anything? You Need to Understand Our One-Party/Two-Head System


by ThePete 1:49 pm 2009-04-28
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Think about it: our system allows for legalized bribery. Every politician is pro-corporate because that’s where the overwhelming majority of their campaign contributions come from. To keep those contributions flowing (which allows them to keep getting re-elected) politicians will do anything these corporate donors ask. Does it really matter if one of them takes money from Coke instead of Pepsi? Or barters favors with agribusinesses instead of the oil industry? What happened to government for the people, by the people?

What’s worse is that some companies and industries will give to both parties to make sure that whomever wins, they’ll have influence.

Back on April 13, 2009 Noam Chomsky was on Democracy Now and he addressed this issue this way:

You can learn a lot from campaign contributions. In fact, one of the best predictors of policy around is Thomas Ferguson’s investment theory of politics, as he calls it—very outstanding political economist—which essentially—I mean, to say it in a sentence, he describes elections as occasions in which groups of investors coalesce and invest to control the state. And he takes a look at the formation of campaign contributors, and it gives you a surprisingly good prediction of what policies are going to be. It goes back a century, New Deal and so on. So, yeah, it can predict pretty well what Obama is going to do. There’s nothing surprising about this. It’s the norm in what’s called political democracy.

I know I’m quoting the infamous Noam Chomsky, but he’s quoting Thomas Ferguson and who cares as long as what they’re both saying is accurate?

Sure, there may be some slight ripples, but ultimately, the problems with our system will still be there no matter which side of the aisle Specter iss sitting on. Our system is built on corruption. Is it any less corrupt because companies you like get their way?

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Dems Debate Whether to Investigate Crimes of Bush Admin or: Why I Refuse Party Affiliation


by ThePete 11:06 am 2009-04-24
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Geh… This is just sad beyond words. WashingtonPost.com is reporting that the Democrats in Washington are torn as to whether or not to go after Bush Admin officials for approving torture.

So, FOR YEARS there have been loads of evidence that the Bush Administration committed crimes. The GAO actually found that they had violated federal law (go to the GAO website and do a search for "covert propaganda"). We all know that acts of torture were committed in Iraq, we know the Bush Admin misled us into war in Iraq and mismanaged our war in Afghanistan.

Yet, no investigation let alone impeachment hearings for any Bushites.

The excuse while Bush was in office was "We can’t impeach him now, there just aren’t enough votes."

Then, once the Democrats took the majority in Congress, the excuse became "Well, there’s not enough time left before Bush steps down."

For anyone who thinks the law should be enforced the last eight years have been very hard.

But it’s not getting any easier now. If EVERYTHING ELSE wasn’t enough for you, Obama just released memos PROVING Bush officials were down with torture–those of us with morals would THINK we’d finally see some criminal charges.

Maybe we still will–but not before the Democrats debate about WHETHER TO ENFORCE THE LAW.

This is why I refuse to be in either political party. The Democrats are wondering if international and US law needs to be enforced and the Republicans feel the law can go to hell if the cause is just.

The most depressing thing of all is that Obama was supposed to change all of this. Now we see that Democrats and Republicans, alike, believe that the law is to be enforced on the little people and that for the rich (mostly white) folks in government, the law is simply not a concern if one’s motives are pure.

I said mostly white, above, because now, apparently, Obama is in violation of the law too–international law demands that war crimminals be prosecuted.

So while I’ll never call him "King Barry," Barack Obama is, and will continue to be, above the law until he goes after the Bush Administration.

Progress?

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US Gov to Boycott Racism Conference in Rare Show of Honesty


by ThePete 10:52 am 2009-04-20
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Reuters.com reported over the weekend that the US will not be attending a United Nations conference on racism. The reason? Apparently, the declaration the conference wants everyone to sign onto calls Zionism racist.

I don’t know about you, but when a single religion/race gets it’s own country, I’m thinking that’s racist.

Regardless of that, however, it seems pretty ridiculous for the USG to decide that because of this one difference of opinion they’re going to boycott the whole thing. For a country founded on the blood of millions of Native Americans, built on the backs of generations of African American slaves, which has exploited cheap immigrant labor from the beginning (and still does to this day) this move by the US seems like a rare example of honesty.

How ironic that we have a black president right now. I suppose it just goes to show you that there is no real difference between the races–a black man can be just as racist as the white guys who came before him.

Or maybe… could this be Classism? After all, the idea here is that we are boycotting the UN conference on racism, thus sacrificing our support of all races in favor of just one–and it’s a race (well, religion, really) stereotypically known for controlling wealth (not that I believe this–I just know others do).

I’ve got nothing against anyone’s belief system (believe what you need to in order to get by, I say) but when you use your religious beliefs to harm the rights of others (COUGHpalestineCOUGH) I start to have problems.

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Obama Administration Lets the Bush Administration Get Away with It


by ThePete 10:24 am 2009-04-17
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From the left-capped post on the Obama Administration releasing memos admitting that the Bush administration tortured available now at DemocracyNow.org:

The so-called “torture” memos from the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel were released as part of a lawsuit and freedom of information request filed by the ACLU. Three of the memos were authored by Steven Bradbury in 2005, then a lawyer in the Office of Legal Counsel, and one in 2002 by then-head of the office, Jay Bybee.

The memos dispassionately describe the use of tactics such as waterboarding, holding prisoners in small dark boxes, exploiting prisoners’ fears of insects, forced nudity, and shackling and depriving them of sleep for as many as 11 days. They also include extensive legal arguments as to why these tactics do not amount to torture under US and international law.

Also from the post:

President Obama issued a statement calling for ‘reflection not retribution’ and reassured CIA officials that they need not fear prosecution.

I guess this shouldn’t be too surprising. In America, if you’re rich, a politician (or, let’s face it, white), you can get away with anything. The banks and auto industry failed to make the best choices for the American people and for themselves, but rather than let them fail, they get rewarded with bailouts.

Likewise, when the previous administration violated laws, ethics and the very principles this country was founded on, they are now being rewarded by being given the gift of "getting away with it" from the Obama Administration.

I’ll tell you, though–it makes you wonder just what Barack’s boys have in mind for his first four years… I mean, why cover the last guy’s ass unless you think your own ass will need covering?

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FLOW (2008)


by ThePete 12:00 pm 2009-04-16
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Buy it!

Would you recommend it? Definitely. In fact, I think most of us in the Western World are so in the dark about water, I think this documentary should be required watching.

Technically any good? While it does come across as very heavy-handed and preachy and doesn’t try too hard to present any opposing view points (though it does try), the facts it presents are undeniable and incredibly disturbing. It’s downright scary how much power big business has over the water in the ground. And just think about how important water is to commerce–as a result, water ends up being the number 3 commodity behind oil and electricity. Yeah. I didn’t know that either. Another fact it presents is that humans account for just 10% of the water use in the world. The rest is split unevenly between agriculture and business–the majority of which goes to business.

How did it leave me feeling? Angry, for two reasons. First, because no one seems to be aware of or have a problem with these giant companies using and controlling so much water. Second because the film pretends that a few isolated victories against these corporations means that we can stop them. Protests have stopped some companies from essentially stealing water, but Coca-Cola, for instance, is a huge company. They didn’t lose that battle in India, they just put their resources someplace else instead of wasting time with a bunch of protesters. So, I could have done without the corny, “speak truth to power” BS and stuck with the fear-mongering since that’s what is needed.

Would you sit through it again? YES! I want to go over the facts presented again and try to pick up on things I missed the first time through. This docu is jammed with interesting stuff and interesting people.

Seriously, watch this movie!!

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All of Your Paranoia about Government and Corporations is Accurate (and then some)


by ThePete 5:41 pm 2009-04-07
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Above: money doesn’t make the world go ’round–but it does keep the system moving.

Yeah, pretty sad when things in the real world happen like they would in a novel–you know when the people you trust betray you in a way you would never have expected? Let me get more specific.

Remember that thing called “government” that’s supposed to protect your rights and help organize society in a way that allows humanity to have an easier, more enjoyable time?

How about corporations? Remember them? They’re the groups of smaller businesses that team up to help better provide for the communities they exist in.

Well, that’s the way both were originally supposed to work, anyway. Alas, they’ve supplanted those wonderful ideals with concerns only for themselves. Corporations have the same rights as we individuals and, while they can’t vote, politicians make sure big businesses are more than equally represented in government.

Capitalism is dead and probably has been for years–it’s only recently that we’ve discovered its body. See, Capitalism too, has been supplanted by the system of Corruptionism.

The basic idea is that our leaders (both political and corporate) tell us that they care about all humans, our rights, the environment and our morals, but all they really care about is taking from us and giving to themselves. We give our money to corporations in exchange for products and services we don’t need (but are literally brainwashed to believe are necessary) and the corporations take that money and pay off politicians to make laws that make it easier for corporations to make even more money off of us.

Politicians are corrupt because they take money for favors. We are corrupt because our money comes from corporations that we then use for things we don’t bother realizing we don’t need. Corporations are corrupt because the people who run the corporations take money, ignore their own morals, and keep the corporate interests going.

Everyone is corrupt in this system.

Maybe the Corruptionist system (like most systems) can actually function to make life easier for us. However, take it to the extreme and we get what we have now.

Last month Matt Taibbi wrote an amazingly in-depth piece that you can find at RollingStone.com that covers the bail-out, the AIG mess, corrupt politicians and most importantly how this whole thing has functioned as a non-violent coup meant to wrest control of government (and therefore us) from our elected leaders. Of course, I’d suggest that our elected officials haven’t had any substantive power for years. Regardless, the reality seems to be that now they don’t. Here’s a bit from Taibbi’s article:

People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they’re not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d’état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — “our partners in the government,” as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.

The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.

That article has been sitting in a tab in Firefox since last month and is so incredibly long I still haven’t finished reading the whole thing. It’s a pretty good read, so far, though.

As much as I’d like to be wrong about this, the moral of the story seems to be that, ultimately, every ounce of stereotypical paranoia any of us have had about politicians and businessmen being liars has been accurate.

Politicians and businessmen are all lying–all the time. They may not even be aware of their own dishonesty, but the reality sure seems to be that eventually, any corporation and every politician will sacrifice what ever it/he/she needs to in order to make as much money as it/he/she can.


Click here to see visit my Disgusting People (Magazine)
page which I set up just days after 911.

One good example of this is when People Magazine put out their 911 Memorial Issue, just a few days after 911. They ran ads opposite pictures of the disaster. My “favorite” was a picture of a man on his knees, mouth agape, seemingly staring across the gap between the page his picture was on and the page facing him which featured an ad for State Farm life insurance.

I emailed the editor and complained. She replied with a bunch of rationalizations and apologized only for my offense. Members of an email list I was subscribed to at the time seemed nonplussed by my offense at People Magazine’s behavior.

“They have to make a living don’t they?” said one person on the list.

Here we are 8 years later and things have only gotten worse. We’re all just fodder for the machine of Corruptionism–we seem generally OK with that and so do our political leaders. So much so that, morals are put aside in favor of bringing in the cash so we can buy our iPods, pay our bills, and feed our kids. Our government takes our money (both directly through taxes and indirectly by having the Fed inject new cash into the system) and gives it to these corporations to keep them going and to quite literally reward them for their horrible behavior.

Just keep doing what you’re doing, the government seems to be saying.

But “corruption” is the right word for it, isn’t it?

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Email Spam Just Isn’t Going to Last


by ThePete 2:51 pm 2009-03-14
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Like it or not, every industry has a cycle–a series of stages it goes through before it does one of two things:

1) Starts over and performs the cycle again

2) Dies forever

I’ve been online since 1995. I’ve seen all manner of email spam. I won’t even bore you with those deets since I know you know what I mean. One thing I have NOT seen is innovation from email spam. I mean, “evolve or die,” right? Well, check out the email I got earlier today:

FINAL NOTIFICATION

from DELL PROMOTION @yuma.twcbc.com>
reply-to dell.headquarter@btinternet.com
to dell@winners.com
date Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 12:36 PM
subject FINAL NOTIFICATION
12:36 PM (3 hours ago)

You have just been awarded,the sum of £750,000GBP in the DELL Award 2009, Anniversary Bonanza. held on March. For Claims email your details to: dell.headquarter@btinternet.com

Names:…………
Address:…………..
Country:…………….
Age:……….
Sex:…………..
Phone/cellphone……..

regard
Mrs. Rose Wood

Now, I’m sure some people out there would still fall for this and I understand how cheap it is to send millions of emails in a heartbeat. But is this REALLY worth their time?

In order for this scam to work, the sucker would have to give all the personal data (but no SSN??), answer the phone when the spammer called back and THEN be dumb enough to give up their bank account number when the spammer says “the only way to get your money is if we wire it to you.”

Uh-huh.

Now, don’t get me wrong–I’m as cynical as the next guy–I’m sure a few people still fall for this stupidity, but, really spammers? Is this the BEST you can come up with after nearly fifteen years of scamming people via email?

What has happened to American innovation?!?!

And it’s not like it takes any effort to suss you fools out. I Googled the first sentence from that email and found this:

candyinn.blogspot.com/

It’s a blog featuring nothing but email spam that includes many similar emails in its content stream.

You spammers are so predictable there’s someone blogging about you.

Pitiful.

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You Really Have to See This: Comparing Bailout Funds to Government Spending Over the Years


by ThePete 4:39 pm 2009-03-09
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Here’s another reason Republicans should shut their fracking GOBS about how the Democrats are wasting spending our tax dollars.  Check out that chart.

Can you believe that shit?

Look at the absurd difference between how much the moonshot ran us, compared to the Bailout.

$237 billion vs. $4,616 billion.

Dude, our leaders are unbelievable fools.

Just to add to that chart, I did a quick bit of Googling and found the Cancer.gov’s numbers on how much was spent by our government on cancer research in 2007: $1367.1 million–not even a billion-and-a-half dollars were spent on cancer research.

So, if my math is right, to save our banks the outlay was 3,000 times the amount spent on cancer research in 2007. (That’s 4,616,500,000,000 ÷ 1,367,100,000 = 3376.85612, according to my Mac’s calculator widget–actually, I had to lop off the bottom six zeroes because it couldn’t handle anything with so many zeroes.)

So, this is our lovely government. Charged with keeping us safe, yet more willing to keep bad banks afloat than to keep our lives, uh, alive.

Incidentally, according to Cancer.org, in 2007, Cancer killed just short of 1.5 million Americans (1,444,920 is the exact number, FYI.) The current estimated population of America is just short of 306 million people. That means that around 1 in 300 people die of cancer in a year. How many people die of bad banking?

Special thanks to my good friend Katabasis at http://i-squared.blogspot.com for pointing me at a VoltageCreative.com blog post written by Wade who made up the chart above based on numbers from a post by Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing.net.

Posted via email from thepete’s posterous

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Rush Limbaugh Talks for an HOUR+ and Reminds Us How He’s Full of Hot Air


by ThePete 2:09 am 2009-03-02
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Seriously, what better a way to remind us you’re a big, fat, lying
windbag than by spinning a web of misleading crap so vast that it
takes you LONGER THAN AN HOUR TO SAY IT.

I thought about doing a quipfest to Rush Limbaugh’s speech at the CPAC conserv-o-rama conference which took place over the weekend in some very Caucasian part of America (made that way by all those Republicans attending the conference). The thing is, the transcript to Rush’s speech is too long–it would literally take me weeks to post the entire thing with my quips in small enough chunks that you’d actually want to read it.

So, I’m not going to bother. Rush doesn’t deserve to have his words repeated AGAIN. I will repeat a few of them in the interest of being critical of him.

Now, the guy behind the website Donkelphant.com, was covering Rush’s speech for his blog that generally tries to be middle-of-the road. He was not pounding on Rush, but he was suggesting that Rush might not be the best person for conservatives to use as their unelected leader. He caught a bit of flack for these comments and that got me thinking once again about, what I think is, the absurdity of being Republican in today’s day and age. I thought I had covered all of my bases on Friday with my post “Rant Time: Why are their Still Republicans?” However, after reading some of what Rush had to say, I decided I had to jump back in the ring.


I’ve never read the book,
but I love the title!
Click to buy it now!

As I said, the transcript to Rush’s speech is HUGE but CNN.com posted some of his comments in an article (see the cap above–I LOVE how Monsanto is sponsoring the article!), so I’ll refer to some of those those. From the article:

“We conservatives have not done a good enough job of
just laying out basically who we are, because we make the mistake of
assuming that people know. What they know is largely incorrect, based
on the way we’re portrayed in pop culture, in the drive-by media, by
the Democrat party,” the conservative talk show host told a mostly
young crowd of energized supporters.

Uhhh, which part of “we don’t think gays should marry” did we not understand?

How better can you explain it when Republicans tell us they don’t think women should be allowed to have abortions? I mean, John McCain, during the 2008 campaign, seemed to think there was a “pro-abortion” movement. He referred to it in one of the debates with his own mouth. Is he part of the drive-by media?

And now that I mention it, aren’t YOU part of the drive-by media, Rush? I love the tactic being used by MANY Republicans these days of accusing others of doing the exact same thing they, themselves, are doing. The Daily Show had a thing recently where they pointed out how Bill O’Reilly hated the paparazzi but was OK when his own camera men hounded politicians with cameras. Same thing here–oh, it’s the media’s fault America doesn’t know who conservatives are! But Rush, you work in the media.

Duh.

More from the article:

“We want every American to be the best he or she
chooses to be. We recognize that we are all individuals. We love and
revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence. We believe that the preamble of the Constitution
contains an inarguable truth, that we are all endowed by our creator
with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, freedom —
and the pursuit of happiness,” he said, pausing several times for
enthusiastic applause.

You want every American to be white and male and all others can be sub-humans. Seriously, Republicans think women should make less than men for the same work done. Republicans think women should not have control over their bodies. Republicans think gays should not be allowed to have state recognized marriages. Republicans think Islamo Fascism is some sort of threat to America (it isn’t). So, I guess the definition Rush and fellow Republicans have for “being the best he or she chooses to be” is an odd one since the above is true. If Republicans really wanted every American to be the best he or she chooses to be, then shouldn’t women get paid the same amount, gays be allowed to get married and women be allowed full control over their bodies?

And hey, wait–”the best he or she chooses to be”? Doesn’t that mean I can screw up my life on purpose and not suffer for it? If I intentionally choose to have a very low standard of “best,” doesn’t that mean I can not get a job, get free food, housing and entertainment compliments of the Republican party? Rush says that’s what he wants–HIS WORDS. ;)

Oh yeah, Rush, if you “loved and revered our founding documents” you would not have been allowing George W. Bush and pals pee all over them for 8 years. Do you even know what “habeus corpus” means? You are a lying bastard to say that you revere the founding documents for anything but their ability to serve as your toilet paper. Extraordinary renditions? Torture? Unfounded wars based on lies? Are those the things the founding documents protect and support?

More from the article:

“He wants people in fear, angst and crisis, fearing
the worst each and every day, because that clears the decks for
President Obama and his pals to come in with the answers, which are
abject failures, historically shown and demonstrated. Doesn’t matter.
They’ll have control of it when it’s all over. And that’s what they
want,” Limbaugh said.

It’s like he thinks we’re all morons–in fact, I think Rush Limbaugh is one of the most cynical assholes who ever lived. Does he think we have not been paying attention to the “abject failures” that have been running the USA for the last 8 years? Does he think we haven’t noticed the way the Bush Administration has trumped up Al Qaeda as some big, bad threat when they’re just a bunch of extremists in the desert?

While we were all being told we could be blown to hell by an Extremist Islamic Nuke, our economy was beginning to show the signs of imminent failure. Funny, AQ hasn’t done shit to us since 911.

Yet, our way of life is dying all the same.

And Rush is telling us Obama’s answers are abject failures.

What GOT US HERE, dipshit?

Proven by history, my ass. OH YES and the Republican answers have been proven successes??

It’s literally like Republicans are vampires–incapable of holding up a mirror and seeing themselves reflected in it.

“They see these inequalities, these inequities that
capitalism produces. How do they try to fix it? Do they try to elevate
those at the bottom? No, they try to tear down the people at the
top.”

“Elevate… at the bottom?” I think you hypocritical Republicans would likely have a problem with that, wouldn’t you? Every time someone wants to give us poor folks a hand-out all you guys want is for us to get a job. Yet here’s Rush saying we should be “elevated.” What the hell does that even mean, anyway? And since it’s the people at the TOP WHO CAUSED THIS MESS aren’t they the first who should pay?

Us poor folks didn’t cause the economy to crash and bleed out. It was the bankers and the businesses–and the politicians who thought the bankers and the businessmen could be trusted to not get greedy.

I could go on and on and on and on, but I have things to do.

Oh yeah and one last thing–Rush wants Republicans to take back the country? Republicans. Didn’t they just have the country for 8 years?

Republicans: Please stay away from Rush Limbaugh. He is saying things that betray you and your beliefs. As an independent, I don’t like a lot of what the Democrats are doing any more than I like what the Republicans have done. But Rush is just trying to polarize you. He’s trying to manipulate you by using the same tactics he accuses Obama of using.

Think for yourself–learn the truth for yourself. It’s hard work, for sure. But if it was easy to think for yourself, everyone would be doing it.

Posted via email from thepete’s posterous

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Wikileaks Cracks Pentagon Encryption; My Faith in Our Leaders is Restored (or NOT)


by ThePete 1:59 pm 2009-02-27
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This is hilarious–well, assuming you think massive incompetence being a Pentagon job requirement is funny. Can you believe this? Apparently there was a password on the politically sensitive file at this URL:

http://oneteam.centcom.mil/isc/Shared%20Documents/NATO%20Master%20Narrative.doc

By the look of it, the only thing protecting the contents of this file is the fact that it’s a password-protected MS Word doc. Wtf?? What bright-eyes thought this would be a good idea? Let’s just leave a politically sensitive WORD DOC in an unprotected directory and expect a fracking MS Word password to keep it safe. WHAT COULD HAPPEN?

So, anyway, the post at Wikileaks.org (see screencap above or original here: https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/N1 ) doesn’t explain how the “encryption” was “cracked” but I suspect it was something simple, like the highly technical process of entering random words until something worked.

You may be wondering what was so politically sensitive in the Word doc. Well, it turns out it was a document meant for NATO officials, and it tells them not to tell anyone that the country of Jordan is involved in helping us with the War Against Terror (aka tWAT) in Afghanistan. What’s the catch with the world knowing Jordan is involved? It’s supposed to be a secret. Apparently, back in 2001 they officially withdrew from the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), which is officially in charge of our efforts in Afghanistan. It seems like they sure didn’t stop helping us.

Why is it a big deal that Jordan is still involved in our Afghani efforts? Well, it seems they’re real big in the torture community. They are also said to be big helpers with our extraordinary renditions program. So, essentially, they help us when we go into one country, kidnap a suspect and deliver said suspect to another country where we ask them questions and let local authorities torture if we don’t like the answers.

In an obviously related story the Pentagon shut their entire site down this afternoon. Gee, I wonder why they did that!

Does anyone still wonder why the world has so much wrong with it when our leaders are smegging moronic enough to use only a single password to protect sensitive information?

OH yeah and the password on the doc? Progress.

Well done, Pentagon! Well done!!

Massive kudos to Twitter-user Zaibatsu who posted about Wikileaks cracking the password on the NATO file.

I wonder if this story will hit CNN or any of the other MSM news “sources.”

Posted via email from thepete’s posterous

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ZEITGEIST (2007)


by ThePete 12:16 pm 2009-02-26
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It’s Documentary Thursday at reviews.thepete.com, when I post a pocket review of a documentary on a given topic that interests me. One thing to bear in mind is that not all documentaries deserve the name “documentary.” However, not all documentaries have to include a British-accented voice-over and a big-money distributor to be worth watching.


Watch or buy it!

Positive Experience/Entertaining? Definitely a positive experience, but I think the filmmaker was a little overzealous with some of the shock treatment-style cinematic devices he uses in this film. This is another in an ever-longer line of “opiniontaries” that generally try to come across as a documentary but ultimately are just trying to put forward their own agenda. Not that this is that different from what other “more acceptable” documentaries do.

Technically any good? This film is incredibly effective. Moving at a quick pace, this film picks you up, carries you along, smacks the crap out of you (and your belief systems) and then drops you off at the side of the road like a cheap prostitute. I’ve heard from friends and strangers that this film changed their lives. I can’t say it changed mine, but it did have an effect.

Over the years I’ve watched a LOT of so-called “conspiracy documentaries.” They all claim to have the answers and the truth and the warnings about the coming “New World Order” blah-blah-blah. I watch them because they are hilarious and, creepily enough, sometimes accurate. Zeitgeist takes the best, most believable of these conspiracy theories and rolls them into one film.

For that reason, I think this is the most effective film to watch if you’re growing dissatisfied with the way the world is run. Zeitgeist does a good job of explaining where our culture comes from and where it is likely going (though I didn’t find myself agreeing with it all the time).

Sadly, it gets mired in 911-related shock tactics that made me wonder if the filmmaker realized how hypocritical he was actually being. Like most opiniontaries, this one gets a few things wrong and the film’s use of what Naomi Klein calls “The Shock Doctrine” as a cinematic technique has the power to undo the rest of the good the film does.

How did it leave me feeling? Definitely educated. After growing up a news-junky and then spending the last seven years exploring the world of conspiracies (for a novel series I’ve written), I do have to say that I have no idea what to believe about our past, present or future. And this film doesn’t help make things clearer.

It does point out a lot of evidence that suggests our civilization is largely built on lies told by power-hungry people who want to control everything through the control of money.

Gotta admit, the film has a point.

Final Rating? GSN – Go See Now – BUT WITH A WARNING: While Zeitgeist is a genuinely powerful and effective movie, it does rely on many of the same tactics it criticizes the “ruling elite” of using to control the masses. It’s important to watch ANY documentary with a clear and critical mind. And most importantly, when you’re done watching it, do some research. Read up on some of the things you’ve been told about.

If nothing else, by presenting such a radically negative view of Western Society, documentaries like this remind us to think for ourselves. Even if you don’t agree, it’s important to consider what other people say. Zeitgeist, I think, nails a lot of things on the head, but it’s not for the faint of heart.

Click the poster image above to go to the official site where you can watch the movie and its sequel (I’ll be reviewing it next week), or buy copies of both on DVD.

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In Case You Missed It: At Least 78 Billion Lost in TARP


by ThePete 4:17 pm 2009-02-10
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Yeah, this kind of thing cracks me up. While the Republifools are freaking out about the Citizen’s Bailout bill that just passed the Senate, no one seems to be raising a big stink about $78 billion being lost when the USG paid $176 billion for $254 billion of bank crap–er–capital purchases from banks. Sure, $78 billion isn’t that much these days (!!) but compared to the stuff the Republicans were bitching about yesterday it seems pretty substantial.

The really frustrating thing for the “law and order” crowd is that former TreasSec Henry “Hank” Paulsen effectively committed fraud on Congress and the American People. According to the February 6, 2009 Bloomberg.com article capped above, the oversight panel in charge of the TARP bailout was run by a woman called Elizabeth Warren. She said, according to the Bloomberg article, that:

The panel asked Paulson in December to value taxpayers’ return on the investments, Warren said. According to Warren, he said they were made “at or near par,” meaning they received about $1 for every $1 invested.

The panel subsequently found the value to be about 66 cents on the dollar, Warren said.

So, if you consider 66% “at or near par” with 100%, then you shouldn’t have a problem. In which case, I’d like to buy all the money in your bank account for 66 cents per dollar. Sound good?

Didn’t think so.

So, here we go again with another example of how Obama will be letting the previous administration get away with lying to the American people.

CHANGE HAS COME TO AMERICA and it looks really familiar!

Oh and in case you think $78 billion still isn’t that much, here’s something else from that Bloomberg article:

“The loss estimate is conservative,” said Representative Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. “It could turn out that those assets in the end are worthless. These are massive handouts to favored institutions to try to make up with taxpayer money the mistakes they made with investor money.”

Yeah, so it’s possibly more than $78 billion. In fact, with the track record of this whole thing, I’m expecting it to definitely be more than $78 billion.

Posted via email from thepete’s posterous

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ObamaWatch: Letting Us Down on Civil Liberties


by ThePete 2:42 pm 2009-02-10
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Maybe President Amabo would do it right?

See how wrong all those racists are? A black guy can be as lame as a white guy! But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So, these five guys were in countries other than America. They were literally snatched from the street, kidnapped, transported to other countries, by American intelligence agents, via aircraft owned by Boeing (Jeppesen is their parent) and then tortured in those countries. They’re now suing Boeing but can’t have their day in court because the USG is invoking the “State Secrets Act” to stop them. The theory is that in order for the five guys to sue, they need evidence from the government that proves Boeing allowed this to happen on their planes. Of course, the USG doesn’t want to give up said evidence because, we assume, it will make them look pretty bad too, right?

Well, right or wrong, the Obama Administration is keeping the State Secrets Acts firmly invoked.

Salon.com’s Gary Greenwald makes the point in a recent opinion piece: “What makes this particularly appalling and inexcusable is that Senate Democrats had long vehemently opposed the use of the “state secrets” privilege in exactly the way that the Bush administration used it in this case, even sponsoring legislation to limits its use and scope.”

So, now, Obama is protecting the Bush 43 Administration by keeping this evidence secret (despite the fact we all know it happened). Why protect the Bush Admin? My only guess is so that the Obama Admin has the latitude to also use the Extraordinary Rendition program to randomly kidnap people off the streets of foreign countries and then spirit them away to countries where torture is legal. From there, the CIA can ask questions, but locals can do the torturing. Well done, Barry!

Geh… now why did I buy that Obama sweatshirt and that Obama T-shirt?

Oh yeah: I had hope.

Of course, I’m not surprised by this–like I said, all men are created equal–in good ways and bad.

Posted via email from thepete’s posterous

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MAXED OUT (2006)


by ThePete 12:00 pm 2009-01-29
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Documentary Thursday brings you my Pocket Review of Maxed Out a documentary/opiniomentary about the credit crisis that contributed to the economic crisis we’re experiencing in America right now. Like In Debt We Trust, this movie came out in 2006 and points out many of the problems that functioned as serious indicators of the rough road we’re currently traveling on. It’s a shame more people don’t watch documentaries! Ah well. On with the review:


Buy it!

Watch it now!
Buy the book!

Positive Experience/Entertaining? Definitely. This documentary was more in-depth regarding the nuts-and-bolts of the credit industry than any docu I’ve seen to date.

Technically any good? This movie is definitely slanted against the credit industry, though based on the facts it presents, I wonder how you could make a pro-credit industry docu without lying your ass off. Regardless, this film talks to both the prey and the predators involved in the credit industry and shows you how both sides function. Most disturbing is seeing how much money the predators can make and how they rationalize taking horrible advantage of people’s trust–or complete lack of intelligence–the film introduces us to one mentally handicapped man who was given a loan. Yep, there are people so corrupt that they will give a man almost incapable of signing his own name.

Needless to say, this film makes a powerful case for a serious reformation of the credit industry.

Final Rating? GSN – Go See Now – this film is something every American should watch. We are being preyed upon by this industry and it’s wrong.

Full disclosure time: I was illegally sued for back debt I didn’t owe and lost the case. The law is useless if you have a judge who won’t see that it is enforced and if you can’t afford a lawyer, that doesn’t help either.

So, I might be a little biased in my review of this film. Then again, I think it’s justified.

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Condi sez: soon we’ll thank Bush. She’s right…


by ThePete 7:44 pm 2008-12-29
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Oh yeah, soon, we’ll be thanking Bush all right…FOR LEAVING!

DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT, GEORGIE!

I’ll also be thanking him for not conjuring up some bullshit excuse
for him staying in the White House past Jan. 20. Of course, I would
have thanked Congress for doing their job and impeaching this lying
criminal, too, but they didn’t do that.

Check out the article the above screengrab comes from here:
www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/28/rice.administration/index.html

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Chances of a WMD Attack in a big city better than 50%??


by ThePete 2:45 am 2008-12-02
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Grabbed this on my iPhone just now and I have to admit that I don’t trust this task force. These guys MUST be lying or hopelessly paranoid. There is no way you could say there’s a better than 50/50 chance that a city will get hit by WMD.
 
Of course, bio or chem weapons I could see as being more likely, but still not a 50% chance, but nukes (which are what we all think of first when we hear the letters “WMD”)?? No way, man, and reporting this story this way is nothing short of alarmist and fear mongering.
 
Reuters is really doing us a disservice by not making it immediately clear that nukes are much less likely than chem or bio. And even knowing that, when I saw that headline and read that first paragraph, I thought they meant their was a better than even chance that nukes would definitely hit a big city–then reality set in and I remembered how the odds of any random big city being hit are dramatically against.
 
Thanks, Reuters, for making us crap our pants…again!
 
Oh and newsflash: government task forces have been getting it wrong for the last 8 years–probably longer–all the press ever does is highlight the fear and bury the logic. Way to unquestioningly quote the party line and question little-to-nothing.

Posted by email from thepete’s posterous

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