I'm a writer, editor and project manager at a large international publishing company. I'm also a bit of a geek and a triathlete, although the fried chicken and sweet tea is battling me on that one.
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National Suicide. Good title.
Senate Moves forward on financial bill
TodayThe Senate is expected to begin formal debate on the financial reform bill tomorrow, following word tonight of a potential compromise between Democratic and Republican lawmakers. The news comes after three days of failed attempts by Democratic leaders to land the 60 votes needed to close debate and move forward to a final vote. Sen. Maj. Leader Harry Reid spoke from the Senate floor tonight and said, "It's time to move this debate from the sidelines to the playing field.
I've been wondering when this would happen. I always said that if I were Harry Reid I'd call the vote three times a day and four on Sunday. I'd make the Republicans go on record over and over again opposing the reform bill.
This is a pretty good bill, though I do worry a bit about it's impact on my insurance company, USAA. That said, we can't deal with another meltdown like the last one.
Distance: 1.2 Mile Swim
56 Mile Bike
13.1 Mile Run
Alright, so this is what I'm doing for my 30th Birthday. 70.3 or bust. With an injured ankle, I'm hoping it's not a bust.
Yup, a webOS tablet
Of course a webOS tablet makes sense. The OS is already optimized for web content and can run on nearly any hardware right now. All HP engineers would need to do is, well, install it. WebOS could lead to some legitimate iPad contenders with Flash support natively built into the slick OS that already has an established developer’s channel.
I'm a pretty big fan of Palm. Had a Pilot III, Treo Smartphone, etc. Great stuff. No love lost with HP though, a few crappy computers. That said, happy to see someone see a future in Palm. Even if I didn't have a soft spot for Palm, I'd still like to see a bit more competition in the smartphone market. Apple is just seeing some challenges from Google/Nexus One/Droid/HTC Hero, but it's always good to mix it up a bit.
Ariz House: Check Obama's Citizenship
POSTED: 7:15 pm MST April 19, 2010UPDATED: 10:04 am MST April 21, 2010PHOENIX -- The Arizona House on Monday voted for a provision that would require President Barack Obama to show his birth certificate if he hopes to be on the state's ballot when he runs for reelection.The House voted 31-22 to add the provision to a separate bill. The measure still faces a formal vote.It would require U.S. presidential candidates who want to appear on the ballot in Arizona to submit documents proving they meet the constitutional requirements to be president.Phoenix Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema said the bill is one of several measures that are making Arizona "the laughing stock of the nation."Mesa Republican Rep. Cecil Ash said he has no reason to doubt Obama's citizenship but supports the measure because it could help end doubt.
- ELSEWHERE ON KPHO.COM: Police arrested a group of student protesters who chained themselves to the front doors of the state Capitol building Tuesday in defiance of the newly-passed immigration enforcement bill.
Read More: Immigration Protesters Arrested At CapitolMORE SLIDESHOWS: For images from the bizarre to the tragic to breaking news, visit the KPHO.com slideshow section and click away! ]Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A special thanks to Arizona, proving that it's not just the South that's infected with stupid politicians.
By Ty Tagami
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgians worried about having miniature computer circuits inserted into their bodies without their consent can rest a little easier now that their state lawmakers have taken action.
http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=167uj254l/M=600693332.600709145.408638246.4038659...*http://clk.pointroll.com/bc/?a=1328371&c=1&i=C3840400-5DA3-04BD-0208-...://clients.pointroll.com/apps/CouponsInc/coupon.ashx%3Fcollect=247701323%26plcmt=1003095%26adid=1328371" target="_blank">http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/cxm.atl_journal_con/;io=1992;lid=18;sz=300x250...?" target="_blank" />The state Senate voted overwhelmingly Thursday for legislation that would prohibit involuntary implantation of microchips in any body part.
“By passing this bill, we are sending the message that Georgia is committed to upholding its citizens’ constitutional rights and protection of their person,” the bill's author, Sen. Chip Pearson (R-Dawsonville), said in a written statement. He said technology is moving fast and “we must be careful that it doesn’t come at the harm of citizens. The benefits of a microchip that can be internally implanted are also available in many external forms.”
The Senate voted 47-2 in favor of the bill.
The Internet is awash with rumors about the government inserting microchips into people's heads without their consent or knowledge. This bill would prohibit that.
If Senate Bill 235 becomes law, it would ban microchip implantation against a person's will regardless of that person's age.
The Microchip Consent Act of 2010 defines a "microchip" as "any microdevice, sensor, transmitter, mechanism, electronically readable marking, or nanotechnology that is passively or actively capable of transmitting or receiving information."
The legislation exempts pacemakers from its prohibition.
The act would amend the assault and battery portion of the Georgia code to make it illegal to require insertion in exchange for any benefit, including employment, promotion or "any means that causes a person to acquiesce."
The bill would make involuntary installations a misdemeanor, and it would establish penalties for unwanted insertions. It also would create guidelines for voluntary implantation and require that only physicians put microchips into people.
Again, thanks Georgia, taking the heat off SC
Last week, the Georgia Senate gave sanction to a bizarre, destructive and racially condescending conspiracy theory. By a 33-14 vote, it approved a bill that purports to outlaw the attempted genocide of black Americans through abortion.
Under the bill’s language, a health care provider could be convicted of a felony and sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for performing an abortion “with the intent to prevent an unborn child from being born based upon the race, color, or gender of the unborn child or the race or color of either parent of that unborn child.”
The bill is inspired by a claim that abortion providers are engaged in a conspiracy to reduce the number of black children born in this country. As Georgia Right to Life has argued in billboards and other outlets, “black children are an endangered species” that need the protection of law against a campaign to eradicate them.
As proof of that campaign’s existence, Georgia Right to Life cites the fact that more than twice as many black women sought abortions in Georgia in 2008 as did white women, even though the state’s population is just 30 percent black.
They do not mention, however, that black women in Georgia also have a pregnancy rate almost twice as high as white women, according to statistics compiled by the Guttmacher Institute. Nor do they point out that the black birth rate in Georgia is about 60 percent higher than for white women.
Those numbers are hardly surprising. The high rate of out-of-wedlock births among black American teenagers represents a continuing cultural, social and economic challenge. Furthermore, liberals and conservatives alike can agree that abortion is not an acceptable solution to that problem.
The best approach is suggested by the fact that in societies around the world, pregnancy rates fall as levels of education and affluence in a community increase.
Until approval of SB 529, the dumbest legislation to pass the House or Senate this year had been a bill to outlaw forced implantation of microchips in human beings, which also passed the Senate. However, while it may rival the genocide-by-abortion bill in terms of weirdness, the microchip bill was at least largely harmless.
The abortion bill, on the other hand, puts the state Senate on record as endorsing the claim that black Americans are being targeted for elimination by health care providers. That’s absurd and flat-out wrong.
Debate over the measure reflected that absurdity. One Republican senator said it was a good thing that Barack Obama’s white mother didn’t choose to abort her pregnancy to avoid the shame of giving birth to a black baby. Sen. Tommie Williams (R-Lyons) argued that without the bill’s provisions criminalizing “coerced abortions,” we could find ourselves following the path of China, where abortions are mandated by government.
Sen. Vincent Fort, an Atlanta Democrat, detected “a whiff of mendacity if not hypocrisy” in conservative concern for black Georgians. Perhaps the most telling observation came from Sen. Hardie Davis, a black pro-life Democrat from Augusta.
“Some things,” he said, “cannot be legislated.”
(Davis was among nine senators who did not cast a vote on the final measure.)
There was a time in recent memory when the Senate was considered the more sane of the two chambers. Strange legislation usually emanated from the House and was allowed to die untouched in the more sober-minded Senate. That has clearly changed.
This year, versions of both the microchip and genocide-by-abortions bills were introduced in the House as well as Senate, but House leadership was wise enough to allow both measures to fade away unnoticed.
In the Senate, lunacy reigns.
Just when you thought SC won the award for dumbest elected officials
From Paul Carr's Article on TechCrunch:
The iPad is emphatically not a serious readers’ device: the only people who would genuinely consider it a Kindle killer are those for whom the idea of reading for pleasure died years ago; if it was ever alive. The people who will spout bullshit like “I read on screen all day” when what they really mean is “I read the first three paragraphs of the New York Times article I saw linked on Twitter before retweeting it; and then I repeat that process for the next eight hours while pretending to work.” That’s reading in the way that rubbing against women on the subway is sex.
