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World's Fastest Broadband at $20 Per Home - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Sun, 03 May 2009 08:31:05 -0700

From the page: "World's Fastest Broadband at $20 Per Home
By Saul Hansell

"If you get excited about the prospect of really, really fast broadband Internet service, here's a statistic that will make heart race. Or your blood boil. Or both.

Pretty much the fastest consumer broadband in the world is the 160-megabit-per-second service offered by J:Com, the largest cable company in Japan. Here's how much the company had to invest to upgrade its network to provide that speed: $20 per home passed.

The cable modem needed for that speed costs about $60, compared with about $30 for the current generation."

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The gist of the article is basically, the near monopolies that US cable companies enjoyy in the US keeps our internet speeds slow and our wallets gouged.

Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 09:06:30 -0700

It's a little hard to read against this background, but odds are you are in the red pie slice on the left, which represents 80% of the country and the 9% of the financial wealth we scrabble for. Lol.

When Glen Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Asshole Coulter weap for the economic future of the US if we get social reform, they ain't weaping for you. They support wealth redistribution as long as it continues to be away from you and toward people like themselves and the people who give them their platform to preach from.

They are worried about the 91% of the US wealth held by the top 20% of the country. Think about how that works out.
If you have a group of 10 people sharing $100, 2 of them would have $91 of that 100 and 8 of those 10 would be fighting among themselves for the remaining $9.

Forget Red vs. Blue -- Its the Educated vs. People Easily Fooled by Propaganda | Media and Technology | AlterNet

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:17:36 -0800

From the page: "Forget Red vs. Blue -- It's the Educated vs. People Easily Fooled by Propaganda"

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig. Posted November 12, 2008.

"Millions of Americans live in a non-reality-based belief system informed by childish cliches - they can barely differentiate between lies and truth. "

"We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and cliches. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities."

"There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation's population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year. But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into this image-based existence. A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book."

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The hard core stupids. They breed faster and they can damage in one term what it took generations to build.

Science Fiction Button Set

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:01:11 -0800

Cool buttons

Daily Kos: Down the Republican Rabbit Hole

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:59:27 -0800

From the page: "The Community Reinvestment Act and other red lining laws weren't passed to force banks to make loans to African-Americans and other minorities. They were there to make the rules consistent. Previous to the passage of the CRA, minorities were often required to have better credit, and make larger down payments to get loans equivalent to those awarded whites. Nothing in these laws required that banks lower their lending standards, only that they be fair, consistent, and operate in a "safe and secure" way. There was no evidence then, and no evidence now, that minorities with the same initial credit rating as whites tend to default on their loans at any greater rate.

Want proof? Mortgage failure rate in 2000: 1%. 2001: 1%. 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006? One (1) as in ONE percent. But wait! Everything that Carter, Reno, and Clinton could do was already in there. The nefarious community organizers of ACORN had already grown their little oak trees of pressure. Carter's poor people had been sitting in their new homes so long, that many of those initial mortgages were paid off and gone.

What does legislation passed 31 years ago have to do with problems today? Nothing. Neither do tweaks Clinton made to that legislation in the mid 90s. The real culprits require a much shorter trip down memory lane.

Subprime mortgages (and all mortgages, really) are a fraction of the current problem. The bailout would have been enough to buy out every subprime mortgage in foreclosure across the country. In fact, it was enough to do that several times over. So why not do that?

The reason is that the purpose of the bailout (at least as Treasury Secretary Paulson sees it) isn't to stop mortgage foreclosures, but to save the banks. And the banks have some self-inflicted problems that make those mortgages an afterthought.

For example, the wonderful credit default swap. In essence, credit default swaps are (or were) nothing but insurance policies for loans. And yet in 2007 the total number of credit default swaps traded far exceeded the value of all loans. In fact, it may have touched $70 trillion dollars, which puts it above the gross domestic product of the entire planet..."

George W. Bush ADMITS He Authorized The Classified Leaks - Democratic Underground

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:27:42 -0800

Scottie McClellan saying Bush confirmed to him that he had in fact been the one authorizing the leak of covert agent Valerie Plame's identity to the press. Which is the opposite, of course, of what Bush publicly said about firing anyone connected with the leak, and which by the way is also a federal crime.

The Raw Story | Obama bars door to lobbyists in transition

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:50:28 -0800

From the page: "Obama bars door to lobbyists in transition
AFP
Published: Tuesday November 11, 2008

Barack Obama's aides on Tuesday promised the "most open and transparent" transfer of power in history, unveiling new rules limiting the role of lobbyists as he puts together his administration."

Palin assets estimated to top $1 million | Detroit Free Press | Freep.com

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:16:21 -0800

If I did my math right, the Palins pulled in close to $300K last year. Their assets are worth $1.2 million. Why were the Republicans claiming it was necessary for them to use campaign funds to buy clothing for her and her family?

University of Dundee: Department of Forensic Medicine

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 20:32:23 -0800

Interesting powerpoint presentation on bloodspatter patterns. Some slides are fairly grisly. Not for the faint of heart.

Sarah Palin blamed by the US Secret Service for death threats against Barack Obama - Telegraph

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 17:16:44 -0800

From the page: "Sarah Palin blamed by the US Secret Service over death threats against Barack Obama
Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign.

By Tim Shipman in Washington
Last Updated: 4:04PM GMT 08 Nov 2008
Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign.
Palin's tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists Photo: Reuters

The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.

The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.

But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.

The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks."