Coming to theaters near you:

Right now, the FCC and Department of Justice are preparing to approve the NBC/Comcast merger — something that would have dire consequences for years to come.

Sign the petition.

The Internet (or at least the network of tubes it runs through) has eventually gotta give as our collective demands grow, and there are signs of this happening. There is a limited amount of bandwith and until that problem is relieved we are heading steadily towards a point where our stuff just won’t fit. A while back Comcast said it would stop allowing users to use Roku or similar devices. Now, in England, T-Mobile has slashed the amount of bandwith its customers can use to levels that would allow normal broadband use down to something more like email with the occasional attachment levels. Meanwhile, the newish Microsoft Phone uses bandwith when it is sitting there doing nothing (why does this not surprise me?) and for this, customers are being charged. Too bad the FCC was gutted by the last administration, perhaps they could find us some bandwith. Like, for instance, the entire AM band. We’re not really using it for anything important, are we?

Gun nuts in the Arizona State Legislature have introduced what they insensitively and stupidly call the Gifford-Zimmerman act, named after the wounded Congresswoman Gifford and her slain aid, requiring the state to train politicians and their staff as part of the process of arming them.

Read about that stupid idea as well as a very close call by one Joe Zamudio, who was the armed citizen at the scene of the Tucson Massacre who almost shot the guy who was holding the gun just taken away from the Teabagger who had killed and wounded all those people.

Zamudio’s brave intervention as proof of the value of being armed, let’s hear the whole story. “I came out of that store, I clicked the safety off, and I was ready,” he explained on Fox and Friends. “I had my hand on my gun. I had it in my jacket pocket here. And I came around the corner like this.” Zamudio demonstrated how his shooting hand was wrapped around the weapon, poised to draw and fire. As he rounded the corner, he saw a man holding a gun. “And that’s who I at first thought was the shooter,” Zamudio recalled. “I told him to ‘Drop it, drop it!’ ”

But the man with the gun wasn’t the shooter. He had wrested the gun away from the shooter. “Had you shot that guy, it would have been a big, fat mess,” the interviewer pointed out.

I wonder what would have happened in Tucson if five or ten people were packing heat, which is the ideal NRA solution to everything.

On January 10, 2011, the Mount Vernon City Schools Board of Education voted 4-1 to terminate the employment of John Freshwater. A middle school science teacher in Mount Vernon, Ohio, Freshwater was accused of inappropriate religious activity in the classroom — including displaying posters with the Ten Commandments and Bible verses, branding crosses on the arms of his students with a high-voltage electrical device, and teaching creationism. After a local family sued Freshwater and the district in 2008, the board voted to begin proceedings to terminate his employment in the district. Finally, after administrative hearings that proceeded sporadically over two years, the referee presiding over the hearings issued his recommendation that the board terminate his employment with the district.

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” I don’t think I give as much credence to my own mind, because I see myself as being very limited and very flawed, and lacking in knowledge, and wisdom and understanding. So, I just take the Bible for what it is, I guess, and recognize that I am not a scientist, not trained to be a scientist. I’m not a deep thinker on all of this. “

I wish this was a joke, but Fred Phelps is only one notch to the right of the next guy, and that guy is only one notch to the right of the next guy, and so on. And, by “to the right” I do mean more insane. As Miss Jean Brodie would say, “That does signify, bitches.”
Continue reading What the Christian Right thinks about the Arizona Shooting →

… and live next to Michele “armed and dangerious” Bachmann’s district …

Ostracize Josh
A man from Rogers, Minnesota…a small town in the Sixth Congressional District represented by Michele Bachmann…went through the trouble of strapping on his Glock .40 caliber handgun and dropping his Kel Tec 380 in his pocket before visiting the site of President Obama’s talk last Saturday in Minneapolis. His name is Josh Hendrickson and both handguns were loaded.

He went to the speech to stand outside and show off his cammo and his guns. The press took note and had a chat with him. Hendrickson told them, “I’m a pretty laid-back guy that loves his kids and his country.”

Hendrickson was released from jail about a month ago after serving for an assault charge. He had pepper-sprayed a customer at the Cub Foods (a grocery store) in Brooklyn Center. Hendrickson was a security guard at the Cub Foods.

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