Beyond The Broken Spectrum

Cable, satellite TV and other video providers have asked the government to intervene in ongoing fee disputes with TV networks — big-money fights that are expected to escalate this year as more contracts expire. Read More

So these people want the government to step in because their tv watching is getting disrupted. This is truly a new level of laziness. When the consumer gets lazy and begins to depend on others instead of themselves, problems arise.

This sort of stuff is actually good because it will make the companies more competitive and open up the market to companies that can do a better job of providing the services that customers want. The consumers only have to vote with their money and feet, when they will though, I’m beginning to wonder.

A German woman fearing that Earth would be sucked into oblivion in a black hole failed on Tuesday in her court attempt to halt the world’s most powerful atom-smasher. The Constitutional Court in the western Germany city of Karlsruhe threw out the woman’s appeal because she was “unable to give a coherent account of how her fears would come about.” Read More

It is people like this that have let their close mindedness and false superstitions based on no real evidence deprive the world of so many technological advances. These people and their way of thinking are a detriment to society.

After railing against the Patriot Act as a senator and campaigning against it while running for President, it seems that the president and most Democrats have had a change of heart. On a Saturday no less, when most underhanded deals seem to be made while hardly anyone is paying attention, he quietly signed a one year extension on the Patriot Act, as is without any sort of reform to the legislation to protect civil liberties.

After the Senate passed the extension Wednesday, the House voted 315 to 97 Thursday to extend the act. The Patriot Act extension wasn’t the main body of legislation though, rather it was an amendment that was added to a Medicare reform bill without any sort of debate or accountability, voted on by voice vote to approve the amendment so that no politician would have to have their name attached to such an outrageous amendment. The vote is known as Roll Call 67, “On Motion to Concur in Senate Amendments” for H.R. 3961, the Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act.

After such a grotesque abuse of power, it is assumed that the media would be all over this. However, from taking a look around, most media outlets are either downplaying the extension, or not reporting on it at all. Even the left leaning news agencies are quiet on this one, after years of denouncing former president Bush for the act. The media has failed us, and surely not for the first or last time. They’re just another extension of the political machine that threatens our country. Be wary of what you hear, or don’t hear for this matter, in the mainstream media. They’re here to keep the status quo in power.

It seems the Democrats are no different from the Republicans when they come to power and are just as willing to continue the suppression of our civil liberties. It amazes me how such a man would gain the Nobel peace prize by escalating a war and supporting the encroachment of privacy at home. The Republicans are hypocrites as well, clearly going against their stance against Medicare extensions so that they can have their precious privacy infringing act renewed.

What really amazes me though is how people can continue to support such politicians, basically forgetting that the lesser of two evils is still pretty evil. Its time to break with tradition folks, as its obvious that’s only digging us deeper into the hole. Its time to try something different by giving those independent and third party candidates a chance to step up and lead. Otherwise this is all we’re going to get, more taxes, more war, and more economical problems.

So who in the House voted in favor to infringe on our rights; 162 Democrats and 153 Republicans, with 20 representatives not voting. Lets have a look: (more…)

In her 88 years, Florence Siegel has learned how to relax: A glass of red wine. A crisp copy of The New York Times, if she can wrest it from her husband. Some classical music, preferably Bach. And every night like clockwork, she lifts a pipe to her lips and smokes marijuana.

Long a fixture among young people, use of the country’s most popular illicit drug is now growing among the AARP set, as the massive generation of baby boomers who came of age in the 1960s and ’70s grows older.

The number of people aged 50 and older reporting marijuana use in the prior year went up from 1.9 percent to 2.9 percent from 2002 to 2008, according to surveys from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The rise was most dramatic among 55- to 59-year-olds, whose reported marijuana use more than tripled from 1.6 percent in 2002 to 5.1 percent.

Observers expect further increases as 78 million boomers born between 1945 and 1964 age. For many boomers, the drug never held the stigma it did for previous generations, and they tried it decades ago.

Some have used it ever since, while others are revisiting the habit in retirement, either for recreation or as a way to cope with the aches and pains of aging. Read More

For years, Pastor Lamar Beverly-Davis has been opening the doors to the faded-red carpeted sanctuary of his Word Is God Worship Center at 3320 W. Vliet St. as an overnight shelter for the homeless during Milwaukee’s bitterly cold winter nights.

For about three months during the winter, the homeless can get food, a sleeping bag and a spot on the sanctuary floor for the night before heading out the next morning, he says.

“We do more for cats and dogs than for people,” he said. “I do this as an act of compassion and because there’s a need,” he explained with conviction.

He added that he doesn’t ask for money or permission from anyone.

Wearing an orange baseball cap with a white cross on the front, Beverly-Davis said Wednesday he believes he’s doing the right thing by sheltering the cold and homeless.

City officials don’t totally agree. Read More

Drug companies manipulated the World Health Organization into downgrading its definition of a pandemic so they could cash in on a swine flu outbreak, it is claimed.

An inquiry heard yesterday that the WHO allegedly softened its criteria for declaring a H1N1 flu pandemic last spring – just weeks before announcing there was a worldwide outbreak.

Critics said the decision was driven by pharmaceutical companies desperate to recoup the billions of pounds they had invested in researching and developing pandemic vaccines after the bird flu scares in 2006 and 2007.

Read more: Daily Mail

Article from Mises Institute

Whenever a natural disaster or violent insurrection causes the downfall of a corrupt government, various commentators cannot resist labeling the result “anarchy” and then citing the chaotic situation as an apparently obvious refutation of the ideas of Murray Rothbard. Critics of Rothbardian anarchocapitalism often point to mafia-infested Sicily, gangland Chicago, modern-day Colombia, Somalia, and of course now Haiti, as ostensible examples of a free market in police and law.

The week after the earthquake hit, commenter “Greg” posed this typical question on my blog: “How’s that anarchy thing working out in Haiti?” (more…)

Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama’s closest confidants.  Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama’s head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs.”  In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems “false conspiracy theories” about the Government.  This would be designed to increase citizens’ faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists.  The paper’s abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here. Read More

The Supreme Court of Minnesota on Thursday upheld the drunk driving conviction of a man caught asleep behind the wheel of a vehicle that would not start. At 11:30pm on June 11, 2007, police found Daryl Fleck sleeping in his own legally parked car in his apartment complex parking lot. The vehicle’s engine was cold to the touch, indicating it had not been driven recently. The keys were in the center console, not the ignition. Fleck admitted to having consumed around a dozen beers that night. Officers at the scene arrested him, and his blood alcohol level was found to be .18.

Laws covering driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) have evolved over the years to cover the situations where police find a parked, but recently driven, vehicle with a drunk behind the wheel. In the 1992 case Minnesota v. Starfield, the court found a drunk passenger sitting in a vehicle stuck in a ditch guilty of DUI, but not because it could prove she really was the one who drove and caused the accident. Instead, the court ruled that “towing assistance [was] likely available” creating the theoretical possibility that the immobile vehicle could “easily” be made mobile. These defendants have been charged under an expanded definition that suggests having “dominion and control” with the mere potential to drive is a crime. Intending to sleep off a night of drinking treated as the same crime as attempting to drive home under this legal theory which does not take motive into account. [Think about this: You're drunk. You get into your car in order to sleep off your condition so that you can be sober enough to drive later on—yet that's still considered drunk driving!!!]

As Fleck was an unsympathetic figure with multiple DUI convictions in his past, prosecutors had no problem convincing a jury to convict. The court took up Fleck’s case to expand the precedent to cover the case of mere presence in an undriven—and perhaps undrivable—car into the definition of drunk driving. The court relied on Fleck’s drunken claim that his car was operable to set aside the physical evidence to the contrary. [This has to be the first time in modern jurisprudence where eyewitness testimony holds more weight than the actual physical evidence!! Talk about setting a landmark precedent.]

Widely believed to be dead, there is now supposedly a new tape released by Bin Laden claiming responsibility for the Christmas day attempt to blow up a plane headed to Michigan.

Research the evidence and find out for yourself, but I am now counting myself in the category of people that believe the CIA and/or other government/special interest entities are  behind these tapes and videos in an effort to sustain our disastrous foreign policy and the “war on terrorism.”  For them, war is good for business, as budgets are inflated and there is plenty of contract money to be had. All of this goes away when a war ends, which is one of the main reasons why it has taken so long for the failed and costly war on drugs to wind down.

Call me what you want, crazy, conspiracy theorist, whatever. However there is little doubt in my mind that the American people are intentionally being lied to so that more and more of our money can be taken from us to benefit the war mongers in Washington and all of their special interest buddies.

The Obama administration this month awarded a $25 million federal contract for work in Afghanistan to a company owned by a prominent Democratic campaign contributor without entertaining competitive bids, Fox News has learned.

For nearly $4.5 million a year, the State Department assigned a 16-person security detail to protect six U.S. contractors in Iraq who already had a team of hired guards they didn’t really need.

The expensive miscue is one of many described in an audit issued Monday of a $2.5 billion State Department contract with DynCorp International for training Iraq’s police force.

The department repeatedly failed to oversee the contract properly, according to the audit by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. The findings also suggest the department remains ill-equipped to watch over the vast amount of U.S. money flowing into Afghanistan. Read the article at Fox News

Ellie Light sure gets around.

In recent weeks, Light has published virtually identical “Letters to the Editor” in support of President Barack Obama in more than a dozen newspapers.Every letter claimed a different residence for Light that happened to be in the newspaper’s circulation area.

“It’s time for Americans to realize that governing is hard work, and that a president can’t just wave a magic wand and fix everything,” said a letter from alleged Philadelphian Ellie Light, that was published in the Jan. 19 edition of The Philadelphia Daily News.

A letter from Light in the Jan. 20 edition of the San Francisco Examiner concluded with an identical sentence, but with an address for Light all the way across the country in Daly City, California.

Variations of Light’s letter ran in Ohio’s Mansfield News Journal on Jan. 13, with Light claiming an address in Mansfield; in New Mexico’s Ruidoso News on Jan. 12, claiming an address in Three Rivers; in South Carolina’s The Sun News on Jan. 18, claiming an address in Myrtle Beach; and in the Daily News Leader of Staunton, Virginia on Jan. 15, claiming an address in Waynesboro. Her publications list includes other papers in Ohio, West Virginia, Maine, Michigan, Iowa, Pennsylvania and California, all claiming separate addresses. Read More

It seems Obama’s political machine, Organizing For America, could be behind these fake letters.

The Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling has now declared that corporations and unions have the same rights that people do, and will now be allowed to buy elections till their heart’s content. We need to give George Bush a big thank you for making this possible, as his two picks Roberts and Alito  helped to make up the majority ruling along with Kennedy, Thomas, and Scalia to sell we the people out. Short history lesson, Reagan put Kennedy and Scalia in, and Bush Sr. put Thomas on the court, so they deserve our thanks as well for this gracious gift of fascism.

The ruling now allows corporations and unions to finance their own political machines with unlimited amounts of special interest money to campaign for various candidates that will give them special kickbacks when they get into office, and against candidates that would deny government power to help prop up the special interest groups.

A dark period in history for the United States has now gotten even darker, as all three branches of government “four if you count the media”, has now given their stamp of approval in their blatant aid of fascism and corporatism all in their own ways. It is no longer the people who are deciding who gets into office, “in reality, they still are”, but the special interest groups who basically control the politicians because they have deeper pockets than the average person. This only further proves that more controls are needed to ensure our government has less power to enslave us, by setting term limits for all positions within government, including the Supreme Court.

Our country has been stolen from us with the help of the media, politicians, and the judicial system, all enabled by the voters who put them there. Its a sad truth, but the fact of the matter is that most people have no one to blame but themselves, as they take the easy way out and continue to vote for the status-quo politicians in hope that their vote for “the lesser of 2 evils” will eventually pay off and that by some miracle, the trash candidate that they voted for will actually represent their interest in liberty, which never happens. A quote from Albert Einstein defines this issue well “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Senator-elect Brown comes to mind here, where voters wanted something different, yet still voted for a guy that is prime status-quo material, and his horrid record proves it. There wasn’t much difference between him and Coakley, but one has to wonder how many people even saw this. Then there was Joe Kennedy, a true candidate of good change, who received death threats for his involvement in the race. People actually threatened to kill a man, the only candidate running in support of their liberty, so that another candidate that would suppress their liberties, could win. It is mind boggling that these people talk about achieving some real progress in taking our country back, but then turn around and elect more of the same.

Many people falsely believe that we live in a capitalist society, when the truth couldn’t be further from it. Corporatism and special interests thrive and make their dishonest living off the backs of Americans and people from other countries alike through the coercive power of the government. This is a severe problem, but one that cannot be fixed until another problem is addressed, the voters who put people in power that allow this to happen.

Edit: Please see my recent article concerning a reversal of my decision on this subject. This article may only be republished if it includes a clear reference to my second article.

Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.

The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.

U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious “Crusade” in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents.

One of the citations on the gun sights, 2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament, which reads: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Other references include citations from the books of Revelation, Matthew and John dealing with Jesus as “the light of the world.” John 8:12, referred to on the gun sights as JN8:12, reads, “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Trijicon confirmed to ABCNews.com that it adds the biblical codes to the sights sold to the U.S. military. Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions “have always been there” and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is “not Christian.” The company has said the practice began under its founder, Glyn Bindon, a devout Christian from South Africa who was killed in a 2003 plane crash. Read the rest of this article at ABC

—– This is one military contract that must be canceled, as our military is a non-political, non-religious fighting force on behalf of the entire country.