Broadcast Flag Returns From The Dead, Demands Brains

I picked this up on BoingBoing.net last night, but only lodged my utter disapproval with my senator today, as Illinois was not on the original list, but was added by this morning. Anyway, the Broadcast Flag is back, folks. Hollywood and the MPAA keep trying to push this bill through, and it looks like they're trying to sneak it in under the radar this time. If you need more info, you can check out this; I also have details in my DMCA paper.

Forty-Eight Hours To Stop The Broadcast Flag

The Broadcast Flag was Hollywood's plan to point its remote control at your digital TV. It was a set of bits in the DTV standard that let broadcasters meddle with what could be done with publicly available broadcast video - even if those restrictions stomped on your fair use rights.

The courts struck down the original FCC proposal. Now, the lobbyists have turned to Congress. Rumor has it that a senator will introduce an amendment on Tuesday in the Senate Commerce, Justice, and Science sub-committee to reintroduce the flag. On Thursday, it goes to a full committee vote.

If your state is listed below, then your senator is on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and you can help stop the Flag - but there isn't much time. Please write now.

For Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin constituents.

Contact your Senator using the EFF's easy form

Seriously. How many times do we have to rise up and fight this thing before the lawmakers get the point and understand that Broadcast Flag = Bad? C'mon now. Get out there and write your senator. There isn't a lot of time left.

Response to RJB

*ahem* See that thing up at the top of the page, where it declares, in no small terms, that I am pissed off? Alright, that means that everything I put in this blog pisses me off, generally. I can't help the fact that Sensenbrenner and his beef-witted lackeys continue to piss me off. It happens, and this is my place for venting. I wrote that as one of my first blog entries, if you will recall. If you don't like it, tough noogies, buddy. Also, update your blog, would you? For God's sakes man, even the low and lazy like me update every now and again.

22nd Amendment? Nescessary, if you ask me. You maintain that it's removing your right to vote for whomever you'd like, and I'll agree with that to an extent, but I think it's become an even more important amendment as of late, with the power of the Presidency growing, far surpassing that of any president would have had in the 50s. The last election has proven that round-about 51% of The United States is in someway mentally ill. Run Bush again, and it'll happen again, too, I guarantee... and then, they're will be no place left for the sane. Soylent Green will once again be made out of people, and redneck-ery will rule the day. (Alright, perhaps I'm being overly dramatic, but you get where I'm going with this.)

In conclusion, blow it out your ass, Howard. Thank you, and good day.

Wait just a damn minute...

Alright, I'll be the first to admit that sometimes I am not the most perceptive gent. For instance, I recently spent almost 20 minutes looking for a pair of pliers that I had not but two minutes before put back into their leather holster, which hangs on my hip. That was quite embarrassing, and resulted in me having to sit down and have a recovery gin n' tonic, if simply to kill of those brain cells that decided not to check my hip for the pair of pliers that generally resides there. That being said, I do try to keep up on political news, especially when it refers to "Fearless Leader" and his pack of iniquitous cronies, and I believe I generally do a good job of it, although it's all my poor brain can do to filter through the offal of everyday MSM "journalism" to catch the pearls of true news. However, I didn't hear a peep about this, and actually, came upon it quite by accident, from one of those "kooky conspiracy websites" that people link to in order to provide evidence that Bush really is an alien, or 9/11 was a planned CIA attack, or that small trout live in Dick Cheney and operate him much like a giant muppet Gorg. ("But dear, a gazeebo's a big, smelly animal!") I digress, I was wandering about the website, chuckling about this and that when I finally came upon a piece that caught my eye. It involved the deranged F. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, and a joint resolution, filed in the House, which attempts to repeal the 22nd amendment. By all means, go back and read that sentence again, because if you've gotten this far without your mouth opening wide enough to drive a city busy through, you didn't quite get it. For those that need some reminding (some of my readership has been out of school for many years), the 22nd Amendment to The Constitution is as follows:

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once.

There is, of course, a bit more to it, but it all involves when the Amendment would come into play, and since we don't live in 1950, it won't effect us. Now then, wonderful crackpot Sensenbrenner wants to repeal this Amendment so that his wonderful Dubya can run again. I'm serious. Stop laughing. Here's the text of the joint resolution, one of the first legal documents short enough that I can post it on this site in good conscience:

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the 22nd amendment to the Constitution. (Introduced in House)

HJ 24 IH

109th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. J. RES. 24

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the 22nd amendment to the Constitution.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

February 17, 2005

Mr. HOYER (for himself, Mr. BERMAN, Mr. SENSENBRENNER, Mr. SABO, and Mr. PALLONE) introduced the following joint resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

JOINT RESOLUTION

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the 22nd amendment to the Constitution.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:

`Article --

`The twenty-second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is repealed.'.
[Library of Congress Link]

Do you see now? I'm not joking around, Sensenbrenner and his doofy commrades mean business here. After all, Sensebrenner got his ridiculous REAL ID bill past by embedding it in a "must-pass" piece of funding legislation. Whats to say that he's not sitting on this until the next bit of Iraq War funding comes along, and then slams it on as a rider? However, this isn't really the big issue here. Several minutes after I read this, I asked myself "Why the hell haven't I heard about this yet?" I say several minutes after due to the fact that I spent the first three minutes flicking my finger across my lips and making the "Bdeebdeebdebeebdbee" sound that the dogs in WB cartoons are fond of. Where's the media on this one? Did they say something back in February that I completely and inexplicabley missed? Was there a national debate about why this would be a horrendously bad idea? Did anyone knee-cap Sensenbrenner? I did a bit of searching around the internet, using search terms like "22nd amendment repeal", "H. J. RES. 24" and "completely bat-shit insane", but it appears, aside from one conspiracy website, that no one is talking about this little bit of legislation. Am I missing something? Do legislators try this all the time, and I only stumbled on the most recent version of it, or am I correct in my assumption that the media is missing (or ignoring) this?

I don't think I need to tell anybody why this is a very bad idea, but I will do so, as this is "my show", as they say. It's bad enough that in the past 5 years, the powers of the Presidency have swelled past that of a check and balance in a larger government, and on to a near god-king. What we especially need right now would the ability for the most powerful office in the land becoming a lifetime position (Supreme Court). It intrigues me to think that Bill Clinton might be able to win against Bush (even with all the election stealing), but that's still too much of a risk to allow the ignoramous even one more chance at the office. No thank you.

Am I the only one thats paying any attention to this?

Bluemerica... not the best of ideas

My cousin likes to send me stuff. She has an e-mail list, and sends along things to her friends and family. Most of them are political in nature, and liberal in leaning. Almost all of the time, I read what she sent me, smile or chuckle or become slightly more embittered, and move on. Recently, however, she sent me something that caught my attention. It's an open letter from an unknown Democrat in California (read as a hippy) to the "Red States", declaring that the Blue States are seceding from the Nation to form a happy utopia of "Bluemerica", where everything will be soy lattes and puppy dogs. Here's the text of the e-mail. It's really pretty entertaining.

We're ticked off at the way you've treated California, and we've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of Blumerica.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss. We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share. Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Blumerica will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties. By the way, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.

Sincerely,
Author Unknown in California.

See? It's a cute idea, nothing more. However, I've heard several people throw the word "secession" about, trying to scare the "Red States" by threatening to take away all "the good stuff", if you will. Here's the rub: Bluemerica would be a horrid disaster. We would have to import almost all of our grains, meat, cotton, etc, and while we would be exporting fairly demand-ridden products, our closest option for importing the goods we used to enjoy would be that war-mongering country we just seceded from. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I talked about this with an associate of mine from Harvard, who believed we could be "mighty damn self-sufficient" in Bluemerica. Well, here's how the numbers break down:

2005 Averages from the USDA

Corn Acreage:
b: 26,310,000
r: 53,348,000

Soy Acreage:
b: 21,910,000
r: 51,000,000

Cotton Acerage:
b: 480,000
r: 13,120,000

Wheat Acreage:
b: 7,958,000
r: 50,634,000

Rice Acreage:
b: 560,000
r: 2,798,000

Sorghum Acreage:
b: 169,000
r: 7,231,000

Turkey (per bird (2003 avgs)):
b: 83,749,000
r: 179,251,000

Chickens(per bird (2003 avgs)):
b: 755,000,000
r: 7,794,000,000

Now, according to the US Census Bureau, the population (assuming no "mass exodus" to either side) of Bluemerica would be around 148 million people (148,243,824), whereas the population of "Hicksville" would be around 145 million (145,411,580). Advantage? South, clearly. More ag-land, more grazing land for cattle, a huge food surplus, and a bunch of vindictive bastards who can breed some of the most ignorant poeple I've ever met... just what I want directly to my south. However, all this is moot, because the biggest reason this wouldn't fly hasn't been addressed yet, which is this: I'm not so pissed about the election that I'm going to willingly put myself on the barrel-end of this administrations "foriegn policy." (If you ain't vapid, you's against us!) No way in hell. Next thing you know, we'll be accused of being a tyrannical dictatorship that mistreats it's people by offering them healthcare, and the shit'll start. No thank you. So, while Bluemerica may be a wonderful thought, it's a terrible idea. Plus, I like the way this guy says it better. More cursing.

Stats from:
The USDA
US Census Bureau

A Delightful Bit of Chance

Through some of my random, hobo-ish wandering of the internet, I came upon a political cartoon that struck me as funny and insightful. I visited the artist's website, and was pleasantly surprised to find out that he also pens one of my favorit online comics, Ozy and Millie. I suggest you give both sites a bit of your time. Ozy and Mille may require a bit of digging in the archive, if he's in the middle of a story arc, but both Ozy and Mille and I Drew This are stunningly smart and are well drawn. (I like his sense of line. Very hip.) The comic below is what drew me to his (previously unknown to me) second site, I Drew This. Due to size constraints, I cannot show it on this site at it's full, glorious size. Click on it to see it full-sized.



Brilliance. Go! Flock to his site now!
Shoo!

A Brief Respite

Pardon me for the lapse in posting, but I has just grown so very tired of being outraged all the time. I took a small break, had a few tropical drinks, read a very nice book, and now I'm back, ready for fresh outrage. I'm hoping my buddy JR can join me in the postings that will follow, if nothing else than to serve as "the sobering yin to my raging yang", to paraphrase Ryan Boyle, professional douche. I do hope that JR takes some time out of his "busy schedule" (read as: masturbation and video games) to finally weigh in on some of the issues we have butchered in this arena of political grab-ass. Let's begin, shall we?

TSA, or Transportation Security Administration, continue to sound like a bunch of serious ass-hats to mine ears. Every other day I watch my RSS feed scroll a story pertaining to TSA and their shenanigans. This latest one is fun too, and only succeeds in cementing TSA and it's employees into their positions on my higly-acclaimed "List of Fuck-Nuts That Need To Go." I picked this up off of Bruce Schneier's blog, which is just a wonderful treasure trove of information, and one of my daily stops on the web. [Bruce's Coverage]

Cecilia Beaman is a 57-year-old grandmother, a principal at Pacific Middle School in Des Moines, and as of Sunday is also a suspected terrorist.

This past weekend she and several other chaperones took 37 middle school students to a Heritage Festival band competition in California. The trip included two days at Disneyland.

During the stay she made sandwiches for the kids and was careful to pack the knives she used to prepare those sandwiches in her checked luggage. She says she even alerted security screeners that the knives were in her checked bags and they told her that was OK.

But Beaman says she couldn't find a third knife. It was a 5 1/2 inch bread knife with a rounded tip and a serrated edge. She thought she might have lost or misplaced it during the trip.

On the trip home, screeners with the Transportation Security Administration at Los Angeles International Airport found it deep in the outside pocket of a carry-on cooler. Beaman apologized and told them it was a mistake.

"You've committed a felony," Beaman says a security screener announced. "And you're considered a terrorist."
[Kevin Reece, Komo 1000 News]

Staggering. They can see that she's with 37 children, obviously chaperoning them. She told them about the other knives in her checked luggage, just to be safe. Then, they find a mistakenly placed knife, and treat her like a felon. I like this language, right here : "You've committed a felony... and you're considered a terrorist." No more trial by jury anymore, huh? What happened to innocent until proven guilty? (A laughable situation, I know. Whenever I'm approached by an officer of the law, it's always the exact opposite, but people can dream.) And the use of the word "terrorist"... God that chaps my ass. As a side note, everyone needs to slow down with the "terrorist" labeling, alright? The word has become meaningless now that I hear it every 7 seconds. It used to conjure up images of crazy people blowing up other people for their religious/political beliefs. Now, it just reminds me of Ashcroft, and I HATE that dick. Seriously. Anyway, the article continues:

She says screeners refused to give her paperwork or documentation of her violation, documentation of the pending fine, or a copy of the photograph of the knife.

"They said 'no' and they said it's a national security issue. And I said what about my constitutional rights? And they said 'not at this point ... you don't have any'."

Alright. I'm going to try and remain calm, but as I go through the BoingBoing archives, I continue to find more articles that raise my blood pressure. (Some of the articles I remember, some I don't.) TSA needs to shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down. Not only are there enough stories about people managing to sneak through firearms and huge knives to make those rat-cocks think twice about how effective their screening process is, but there are more than enough stories about the 9-headed beast that is TSA going absolutely apeshit over a goldfish in a bag, or something else equally moronic. In fact, here's some stories, picked up from BoingBoing, that are absolutely ridiculous:

• TSA doesn't allow Zippo camera case past security [Link]


• TSA Screener: 2-book max on flight [Link]


• TSA adds sarcasm to list of aviation risks [Link]


• Dave Nelson versus the TSA [Link]


• Airport luggage inspectors policing thoughtcrime [Link]


• Bea Arthur fights against the TSA [Link]

There are so many more it's ridiculous, but I really don't feel like listing all of them here. Google came up with more than 50 of them, simply from BoingBoing. Warning: Rant approaching. What the fuck? This kind of stupid bullshit isn't going to keep our skies safe. If somebody wants to use our transportation system against us, they fucking will, and having to go a few extra steps to sneak a weapon through isn't going to fucking stop them. Besides, there are all sorts of ways around this cock-fucklery. This is nothing more than an excuse for TSA to take away our freedoms, and Congress sits on their fat asses and APPLAUDS them for doing it. Well screw you nut-fuckers. Seriously... wiffle-bat filled with bees to the groin is what a large portion of Congress needs. Straighten those cock-suckers out. On to the next mind-boggling issue.

I picked this next bit up off Stay Free! Daily. They're lamenting The Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2005 [H.R. 683] which looks like a lovely bit of legislation. Stay Free! Daily uses the a great example to illustrate what the current law is, and what the new law would change:

Say you're in a band that you call Bipolaroid that a certain camera company happens to not appreciate. If Polaroid petitions the trademark office to deny your use of the name, the company would have to prove that your band name dilutes Poloroid's trademark.

This is a relatively difficult task, one defined by the Supreme Court's recent decision in Mosely v. Victoria's Secret. In that case, the court ruled that sex toy shop Victor's Little Secret didn't infringe on the high-end underthings chain. Naturally, corporations hated the decision and have worked ever since to legislatively "correct" it. It looks like they now have their chance.

Under legislation now pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the standard of proof necessary to claim trademark dilution will loosen. Instead of proving dilution, under the proposed law companies will only have to show merely the "likelihood of dilution."

Yeah. This sounds fucking wonderful. Parody will fall by the wayside, small business will be forced to close (Barbie's Restaurant, Victor's Little Secret, etc) we will pushed into a more restrictive set of copyright laws designed to fuck the consumer in every possible way shape and form. GOD DAMNIT, who keeps signing this shit into law? I mean, this one is still up for vote, but that doesn't mean it's not going to get in. For fuck's sakes, the Real ID Act made it in, this has no chance of failing. Fuck all this noise, dude. WHAT THE FUCK? Seriously.

The revolution's coming, motherfuckers...