Category: Politics

On January 28,¹ I’ll turn 25 years old.

And I’m giving my birthday away.

I don’t need any more crap. I have way too much stuff. Instead of adding to the noise in my life, I’ve decided to donate my birthday to charity: water, the non-profit group that brings clean water to millions of people a year. My modest $400 goal will bring clean water to 20 people.

That’s a lot more important than me getting an iTunes gift card, so go donate now. I have a friend who is going to match whatever I raise, so go crazy.

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The Associated Press:

A top House Republican says GOP lawmakers will go after President Barack Obama’s health care law piece by piece to see if they can make it crumble.

That effort, says Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, will follow a vote to repeal the health care law outright. Such a vote could come early in the new year after the GOP takes control of the House.

Maybe I should have used “jackass” instead of “moron.”

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In an interview with NPR’s Terry Gross:

I think it made me less political and more emotional. The [more] you spend time with the political [world] and media, the less political you become and the more viscerally upset you become at corruption. I don’t consider it political, because ‘political’ I always sort of note as a partisan endeavor. But I have become increasingly unnerved by the depth of corruption that exists at many different levels. I’m less upset with politicians than [with] the media. I feel like politicians — the way I explain it, is when you go to a zoo and a monkey throws feces, it’s a monkey. But when the zookeeper is standing right there and he doesn’t say, ‘Bad monkey’ — somebody’s gotta be the zookeeper. I feel much more strongly about the abdication of responsibility by the media than by political advocates. They’re representing a constituency. Our culture is just a series of checks and balances. The whole idea that we’re in a battle between tyranny and freedom — it’s a series of pendulum swings. And the swings have become less drastic over time. That’s why I feel, not sanguine but at least a little bit less frightful, in that our pendulum swings have become less and less. But what has changed is the media’s sense of their ability to be responsible arbiters. I think they feel fearful. I think there’s this whole idea now that there’s a liberal media conspiracy, and I think they feel if they express any authority or judgment, which is what I imagine is editorial control, they will be vilified.

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Not sure what my earlier post was about? Don’t fear, everything you need to know about the holiday can be seen in this three minute video:

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Frank Costanza, when asked by Kramer about there being a tree in the Festivus celebration:

No, instead, there’s a pole. It requires no decoration. I find tinsel distracting. It’s made from aluminum. Very high strength-to-weight ratio.

Happy holidays.

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First off, here’s Steve Wozniak in an open letter to the FCC:

The Internet has become as important as anything man has ever created. But those freedoms are being chipped away.

[…]

We have very few government agencies that the populace views as looking out for them, the people. The FCC is one of these agencies that is still wearing a white hat. Not only is current action on Net Neutrality one of the most important times ever for the FCC, it’s probably the most momentous and watched action of any government agency in memorable times in terms of setting our perception of whether the government represents the wealthy powers or the average citizen, of whether the government is good or is bad. This decision is important far beyond the domain of the FCC itself.

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ABC 13:

TSA checkpoints at airports are at the front lines of preventing terrorism. When you go through security, you expect to be scanned and searched. And you expect TSA to prevent contraband from getting on planes, but as we’ve learned, that doesn’t always happen.

Houston businessman Farid Seif says it was a startling discovery. He didn’t intend to bring a loaded gun on a flight out of Houston and can’t understand how TSA screeners didn’t catch it.

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The AP:

A Festivus for the rest of us? A convicted drug dealer in California thinks so. He cited his adherence to the holiday celebrated on a famous episode of “Seinfeld” to get better meals at the Orange County jail.

The Orange County Register reported Monday that Malcolm Alarmo King disliked the salami meals served at the jail, so he used his devotion to Festivus as a reason to get kosher meals reserved for inmates with religious needs.

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation:

In a landmark decision issued today in the criminal appeal of U.S. v. Warshak, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the government must have a search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers. Closely tracking arguments made by EFF in its amicus brief, the court found that email users have the same reasonable expectation of privacy in their stored email as they do in their phone calls and postal mail.

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That’s an exact quote from Fox News’ Bob Beckel, talking about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Here’s Ron Paul:

In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, however, we are in big trouble. The truth is that our foreign spying, meddling, and outright military intervention in the post-World War II era has made us less secure, not more.

As usual, Ron Paul speaks sanity in a world of madness.

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Mara Gay for AOL News:

Four-year-old Ryan Thomas was on his way to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., with his parents when TSA agents forced him to take off his leg braces at Philadelphia International Airport in March 2009.

This incident took place in March 2009. The TSA has been out of control for a lot longer than the whole backscatter deal.

Our two-year old son has leg braces to help compensate for his partial hemiplegia, caused by his brain tumor. If we were asked to take them off and have him walk without them due to “safety concerns,” I’d punch the TSA officer in the goddamn mouth.

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What a great sentence in a somewhat odd story.

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