2011 archive
You Can Dial, but You Can’t Hide 0
Verizon sells your soul:
While Verizon insists that it will not provide third parties with any information identifying users on a personal basis, it will give them a wide array of its users’ information, including websites they frequent on their Verizon devices, places where their devices have been, and demographic categories such as gender and age range. Verizon will also share user interests with marketers, such as whether they’re a sports fan, own a pet or what sort of restaurants they frequent.
If you think that someone who has your age, sex, and where you go and when you go there can’t figure out who you are and where your children attend school in a matter of minutes, you need to think again.
If you are unlucky enough to use Verizon, follow the link above for information on how to opt out of this.
Via GNC.
Sign the Petition 0
Microsoft, which is congenitally unable to innovate–everything they sell was created by someone else and either bought or copied and coopted by Redmond–except in “marketing,” has another strategy for ruling the world‘s pocketbooks.
Learn more here and share the link.
Rapturous Thinking Once More All Over Again 0
The old fraud is still at it:
A California ministry has again predicted the end of the world is at hand.
The Oakland-based Family Radio International that stirred a global frenzy when it predicted the rapture would take 200 million Christians to heaven on May 21, now says the cataclysmic event will destroy the globe on Friday (that is, today–ed.).
But the world on Friday was undergoing its usual give and take with no signs of such an event.
Either that or a lot of us didn’t make the cut.
Wingnut Birthers Turn on Their Own 0
Rising star of the right, Florida Senator Mario Rubio, is being attacked by birthers. Some of them are reasoning that, since his parents were Cuban refugees and not citizens, he is not qualified for office, though he is a natural-born United States citizen.
Daniel Ruth reports:
It seems pretty clear that since young Marco Rubio came into this world in Florida and since he was born quite naturally, he is a United States citizen with all of the attendant rights and privileges, including someday rising to the White House if that is what fate has in store for him.
The birthers have hung their pelts on the rather tenuous writings of a relatively obscure 18th century Swiss philosopher, Emer de Vattell, whose 1758 book, The Law of Nations, argued “natural born citizens” should mean only the children born of parents who were already citizens of that nation.
These (and let’s whisper this very quietly — crazy) people are attempting to argue who should and who shouldn’t qualify to become president based on the scribblings of a Swiss guy, writing in French, more than a decade before the start of the American Revolution. That would appear to be about as intellectually honest as a Republican presidential debate.
There is a certain pleasure in watching the crazies attack their own.
That does not render them less crazy.
Twits on Twitter 0
Wingnut twits.
QOTD 0
Barbara Jordan:
But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.
Criminal Minds, Sins of Omission Dept. 0
I read this entire article about degress of* sociopathy and there was no mention of Wall Street.
_______________-
*That’s of, not in. A degree in sociopathy is called an “MBA.”
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Still over 400k:
Some companies are still paring their workforces at the same time demand has fallen short of the level that may spur businesses to expand staff. The lack of employment growth, which is limiting consumer spending and restraining the recovery, underscores the challenge for President Barack Obama, who is trying to push Congress to pass parts of his jobs initiative.
Firing more persons and further decreasing demand will no doubt remedy this situation.
Circling the Wagons 0
Shaun Mullen takes a look at Occupy Wall Street. It’s a good read.
A nugget:
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
Whoops.
By all rights, when banksters steal something, it’s supposed to stay stolen, dammit.
Via Atrios.
Melted Pot 0
It must be tough for Republicans to love America so much but hate almost three-quarters of the people living in it.
