Politics 2012: Let the Bloodletting Begin

A Case for Post-Mortem Euthanasia

The habit of the Republican Party of running animated corpses for president (Ronnie Reagan, Bob Dole, John McCain) is bad enough. But the latest line-up seems like zombified beasts, because they act as if they have the brains of road-kill on an Indiana back-road during an August afternoon. Mr. Bain Capital: I want to fire you. Thank you, O Lord, that I don't work for him. Mr. Faux Bush the Younger: I want to shed more of your blood in Iraq. Damn vampire! Go make Texas invade Mexico or something! At least you'd be disrupting the cocaine supply of some fat Hollywood producer or New York financier.

Well, at least the Jersey Whacko is out of the race.

As much as I hate to admit this, even my State's governor would be a better candidate than any of these losers. Except maybe Ron Paul. And do you really want a Federal Government under Ron Paul, where most of all those Federal loans, grants, annuities, subsidies, and general troughfeed would go away? But no, our governor is not going to run for President, because his wife is not going to let him play.

Indiana: Isn't It Enough of a Southern State?

This year's session of the General Assembly is all about making Indiana a true Southern state. (I am being charitable here, and am substituting the word Southern(er) for the word redneck.) Only Southern states have anti-union legislation (which goes under the label right-to-work); and I can rightly assume that the companies that won't move to Indiana without an anti-union law are from Southern states. The Republicans — the governor and the majority of legislators — are trying obsessively to get make the anti-union bill a law. The Democrats (and their supporters in the industrial towns) will have none of it, and are trying every trick they can pull to stop the bill. Meanwhile, no other legislative work gets done — the only good this fight is bringing about.

And what is the point of anti-union legislation. You can already fire people for incompetence, or for being a social misfit, or for being an abomination to your bosses, or for things like that. Why do we need to degrade the workforce further by making them wage slaves at the local Walmart?

Amazon's Taxing Problem Solved In Indiana

After rabid howls from traditional stores, cajoling by the State and a lawsuit from the State's biggest owner of shopping malls, it looks like Amazon.com has been talked into extracting sales tax from purchases by Hoosiers. But that will not happen until 2014. Amazon.com could get away with this before, even though it has two distribution centers in the State (which is why I could get my books quick and cheap with Amazon).

WordPress Denounces CLOACA

CLOACA is my acronym for the bill, which has had very names at various times, and currently goes by the acronyms SOPA and PIPA. The bill threatens online freedom of speech; creates a de facto Great Firewall of America, undermining State Department efforts to promote Internet freedom; threatens Websites with content that can in any way be construed as violating copyright, even if they don't; threatens to dry up venture capital for Internet-related companies, which would be put at great legal risk; puts users in great legal danger for uploading any content whatsoever; threatens open-source software, especially Mozilla's Firefox; and threatens to undermine DNSSEC and other great strides at Internet security.

WordPress comes out against CLOACA. Hoorah for WordPress!

The Sleep Of Reason Produces &Hellip; Politicans!

Lamar Smith cannot hear you. He does not want to hear you. It disturbs him greatly to hear the faintest drone of your voice. The you, of course, is the growing army of Internet, computer and electronics companies; civil-rights and human-rights organizations; and a growing number of businesses who realize that, if CLOACA becomes law, they will be subject to frivolous legal action that will drive them off the Internet and even lose them millions of dollars in legal damages.

And yet, the Texas congressman who introduced the House of Representatives version of CLOACA claims not to hear the angry army marching on Congress. All that money from the entertainment industry has formed earwax in the congressman's ears, that he may not hear the angry roars of his opponents.

Meet Lamar Smith, representative from Texas, and Chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary.

As Chairman he can kill any bill he doesn't like by denying it a hearing while giving priority to the bills he wants to pass, Like SOPA.

While addressing the massive outcry over SOPA he stated that:

It's a vocal minority. Because they're strident doesn't mean they're either legitimate or large in number. One, they need to read the language. Show me the language. There's nothing they can point to that does what they say it does do. I think their fears are unfounded.

Above is a list of people that have pointed at the language, including law professors and computer experts.

You have a civil war among video game companies, and the successful boycott of a company. How do you ignore that?

It's an election year. This November. Whatever happens, Texas, please kick this guy out of office.

I bet the congressman's district, which includes the back suburbs of Austin and San Antonio, will not give a damn because he has given them goodies. If the stubborn congressman is voted back into office later this year, we may have to punish his district by denying tourism and convention business to Austin and San Antonio, and to have Austin City Limits dropped from PBS stations.

At least some of the congressmen are realizing that there is an army of enemies to CLOACA, including high-level government officials. However, their attempts to make the bill respectable fall flat, because the bill is all bad and cannot be rehabilitated. It has to be dropped.