Affiliate Marketing For Dummies

Although I generally consider this publication to be a right-wing propaganda outlet, I do like to stay informed on how the neo-cons are spinning the latest news stories to their favor. I highly recommend getting your subscription to USA TODAY today! Just click the link below for a special trial offer:

Obama Seeks to Continue Federal Wiretapping Under Patriot Act

Even though President Obama voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act as a senator in 2006, he was opposed to provisions in the Patriot Act granting the FBI (and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies) powers for warrantless surveillance. Critics say that such provisions in the Patriot Act have the effect of nullifying certain rights guaranteed to US citizens under the Constitution of the United States (most notably the right to privacy). Now, as President, Obama seeks to continue those provisions which he himself voted against less than four years ago. Obama even goes further by taking the position that the Federal Government is immune to lawsuits stemming from warrantless wiretapping. We need to tell our Democratic leaders that there is not enough of a difference between them and their Republican counterparts. A government spying on its own citizens is the first sign of a fascist state. It is time to drop the draconian Patriot Act and restore the Bill of Rights. Let your government representatives know that you are in favor of restoring freedom and democracy by repealing the Patriot Act: Send them a letter now!

Financial Bailout

In a 2006 study, the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University(UNI-WIDER)reported that more than half of the world's wealth is in the hands of only 2% of its population, while the poorest half of the world's population owns less than 1% of the world's wealth. The study was based on data obtained from 2000, so it is likely that these numbers changed significantly during the Bush era.

Meanwhile, the US government decides to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the lending industry, even though both the Democrats and Republicans said they and their constituents were against doing so. It's not hard to see who they are really working for is it?

This movie from the Zeitgeist website offers some keen insight into the way things work and how they got so bad. Please share this with as many people as you can.

Democrats v. Republicans

There is not enough difference between the Democrats and Republicans. Both parties have been ripping off the general public, since way before I was born.
Because I lived in very blue voting district during the last presidential election, for the first time in my life I had the luxury of "voting my conscience," instead of voting for "the lesser of two evils."
I voted for the Green Party candidate...not because I thought she would make a great president, but because I really agree with the Green Party agenda, and I wanted to send a message to the Democrats.
I agree that Obama was a better choice than McCain, but only by a small margin. The thing that worried me about Obama right from the beginning was his warlike and hawkish attitudes. We need to stop giving money to the military, and Obama never talked about that.

The Final Frontier

"Human kind, as imperfect as it is, strives towards new horizons, both within and without the body and mind. Space is the ultimate horizon because, paradoxically, it is without end. And in the absence of the possibility of complete fulfillment lies the eternal challenge of the stars."
Wilson, Peebles, Arnold (235).

The United States was built with the pioneering spirit; when the first colonists were coming to America in the 17th and 18th centuries it was a dangerous and frightening enterprise. Most of these migrants just wanted a better life for themselves and their children. Europe at that time was like a pie that had already been sliced up. You were either a land owner or a renter and, if you were the latter, the chances of ever owning your own land were very slim. Once society gets to this point the lower classes start to become restless; these are the people most likely to take the risks associated with the crossing of an ocean into the unknown where they might find their own slice of pie. Today, we are again in a situation where the pie has been sliced up: But this time there is nowhere left to go but upwards.

I have always been interested in the exploration of space. Clearly, it is only a matter of time before the earth becomes uninhabitable, so we will have to colonize space someday anyway. Even if the Earth is spared from collision with a comet or asteroid; even if we don’t destroy ourselves with pollution; even if we are not wiped out by a super-volcano the grim reality exists that in order to survive as a race we must eventually colonize other planets.

The colonization of space will lighten the load on the resources of Mother Earth in many ways. It would also serve to help perpetuate our species. Many people I have spoken to regarding space colonization are against it. One of the things they always bring up is that they feel we should learn to take care of our own planet before we go mucking about with the rest of our celestial neighbors. I feel that this argument is both nearsighted and unrealistic: space in our neighboring area is already a radioactive wasteland. There are no developed life forms that we know of in our solar system which might be damaged. Also, when we begin to colonize our neighboring planets and their satellites we will bring the seeds of the Mother Earth with us...planting and propagating trees, vegetables, and herbs. We will bring with us animals, both domestic and wild. In Mars’ case, the very real possibility exists that we could cultivate the Martian atmosphere through the introduction of chlorofluorocarbons, and oxygen producing plants. In short, we could bring life and beauty to what were once empty and desolate worlds. Of course, a time could come when we are able to travel to nearby stars, and there we may find worlds already teeming with rich and diverse eco-systems: But we won’t have to use their resources for agriculture, mining, hunting, or animal husbandry. We will have the ability to manufacture anything we need, utilizing the unlimited energy we can generate from the safe use of nuclear power in space, and the limitless materials available in the heavens.



Nuclear energy production on Earth is, of course, a terribly dangerous endeavor; the toxic radioactive matter generated cannot be disposed of safely. In space however, nuclear waste could easily be deposited into the Sun, or shot out into the limitless empty space between galaxies. The argument that sending parcels of radioactive waste into the Sun would damage it are ridiculous; the Sun is nothing itself but a giant glob of thermo-nuclear explosions, since the Sun’s diameter is over 244 times that of the Earth the trivial amounts of material that we would be adding to it would have no more effect than the many objects that fall into it every day. Further, in his book The Sun Shines Bright, Isaac Asimov tells us that the Sun loses 4,200,000,000 kilograms of mass every second. There are 31,557,000 seconds in a year, so the Sun will eventually burn up the fuel it has and turn into a red giant; when that happens it will expand to engulf the inner-most planets, including Earth. Unfortunately, we might not have that much time anyway. In Target Earth, Jon Erickson says that the Earth has collided with asteroid and comets many times in the past. “On October 30, 137, the asteroid Hermes shot past Earth at an estimated speed of 22,000 miles per hour…” it was a mile wide and missed us by about 500,000 miles. If it had hit us, it would have generated an explosion equivalent to “100,000 on one-megaton hydrogen bombs,” more explosive force than all the nuclear weapons in the world. Hathor, Oct. 21, 1976, 1988 TA, Sep. 29, and on Mar. 22, 1989 FC, all are asteroids that have narrowly missed striking the Earth. In the event of some global catastrophe, our space colonies could help us by sending us “good packages” from the sky.

The raw materials available in space are limitless; in the The High Road, by Ben Bova, he tells us “we live in a solar system that is incredibly rich in raw materials. More wealth than any emperor could dream of is available for every human being alive in interplanetary space” (75). Just the asteroid belt between the Earth and Mars contains enough raw materials to keep legions of miners busy for centuries. In Spaceships of the Mind, by Nigel Calder, we read “A cubic kilometer of asteroidal material, which might be recovered from a single asteroid, will provide 6900 million tons of iron, 800 million tons of nickel, 40 million tons of cobalt and 8 million tons of copper” (77). With these resources the construction of spaceships, giant orbiting greenhouses, and factories capable of sustaining entire cities on Earth (as well as themselves) would be possible. Additional materials could be found on the Moon, Mars or other satelites. No longer would we have to plunder our own planet for the needs of our race: Instead whatever we needed could be sent to us from the heavens; great packages of food, Medicine, clothing, and building materials could be delivered anywhere on the planet within a few hours notice. It would no longer be necessary to destroy thousands of square miles of rain forest to grow coffee, rubber, and beef. No longer would we have to use our precious supply of fossil fuels to ship these products halfway around the planet: Roads would be used only for the transport of people. The cost would be negligible.

The greatest expense in space flight is escaping the Earth’s gravity well: once in the gentle arms of zero gravity, moving about from one place to another is fairly easy. We now know that the Moon has a considerable amount of water around its polar regions; water can be divided into oxygen and hydrogen, the fuels we need to propel our spacecraft. A colony on the Moon is now not only feasible, but it would pay for itself in a few short decades; we could build factories on the Moon. The lunar gravity is only one sixth that of Earth’s, making the delivery of goods from the moon fairly economical.

Other economic benefits could come from the tourist industry that would develop; souvenirs from space have great value to Earthlings already. Hotels restaurants and adventure packages could bring in billions of dollars. The creation of a new culture would occur; the “Spacers” as we might call them, would have their own dialect. They would develop their own traditions and new customs.

Some say we should learn to control our population in order to preserve our resources: I say let’s make more room for more people. Many of the products we now use on a daily basis are products of the space program; nylon clothing, gore-tex fabric, electronic transistors, and catalytic converters are just a few examples of the rewards we have already seen. Technology serves to increase the wealth of each and every person: Yes, technology is a double edged sword; but a sword with two edges can be a valuable tool when wielded with responsibility and compassion.

David Scott, 1999

It is unfortunate that we will be able to say we were alive when the rivers dried up; when the glaciers melted and the oceans rose; before the big storms came and the beaver and polar-bear died. .. David Scott 07/07/07

Works Cited:

Asimov, Isaac. The Sun Shines Bright, New York: Double day, 1981.

Bova, Ben The High Road Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Calder, Nigel. Spaceships of the Mind, New York: Viking, 1978

Erickson, John. Target Earth!, Pennsylvania: McGraw-Hill, 1991.

Wilson, Andrew, Curtis Peebles, and H.G.P. Arnold, Man in Space. Chicago: CLB, 1993

Mao Dollar

In order to pay for Bush and Cheney's illegal and immoral war, the United States borrowed trillions of dollars from the industrialized nations of the world (most notably, China). In essence, China (and the other industrialized nations) now own most of the United States' assets.

Thanks to neo-conservative policies the world's economy is in ruins; the reputation of the US has been seriously damaged all over the world (especially in Muslim nations); millions of US citizens are out of work; millions of innocent people are dead and things may still get worse before they get better. Now conservatives are complaining that President Obama hasn't "fixed the economy" yet!

I hate to say it, but it will take more than six-months to fix the mess the conservatives have created since Bush took office nearly nine years ago. To those critics of Obama, I say this: You had your chance and you were wrong. Now shut the hell up, while we try to clean up your mess.

Iraqis Celebrate US Troop Withdrawal

The news media has been so focused on the death of Michael Jackson that people in the United States may not have noticed that US troops withdrew from Iraqi cities today.

The Iraqi people noticed though, and they have been celebrating the event with great joy. In an article from the Associated Press, one Iraqi man, Waleed al-Bahadili, is reported to have said "All of us are happy _ Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds on this day....the Americans harmed and insulted us too much." One Iraqi woman said that she "...finally feel[s] liberated."

A flagrant violation of international law, the invasion and occupation of Iraq has lasted over six years. It has destabilized the entire middle-east; caused the needless deaths of thousands (some say millions) of innocent Iraqi civilians, and seriously damaged the reputation of the United States all over the world; it has cost the US taxpayers trillions of dollars and destroyed the United State's (and the world's) economy.

The pullout is mostly symbolic, as some US troops will remain in the cities to "...train and advise Iraqi forces...," while the vast majority of them will be conducting operations from their newly built permanant military bases, outside of the cities.

Coincidental to the pullout, Iraq's oil interests were placed on the world market, allowing international investors to buy shares of Iraqi oil.

Obama Takes Out Fly With Stunning Ninja Speed!

During an interview President Obama was being harrassed by a fly. At first he tried to bat it away, but the persistant fly kept hassling him while he was trying to make a point. Finally, he focused his gaze on the offensive insect, and with a quick motion knocked the little sucker out cold. A camera man filming the interview was actually able to get a clear shot of the stunned insect on the carpet. At first, animal rights activists protested, but the attorney general said the President was acting in self defense. The fly was later executed for its viscious attack on our fearless leader.

Check out the video!

Is Waterboarding Torture?

I my opinion, waterboarding is torture. Check out this video and see how long this guy lasts:

via videosift.com

There is a big difference between what this guy is enduring and what a suspected "terrorist" would be enduring, because he had the option of ending the experiment at any time. The person being "interrogated" doesn't have the ability to stop the procedure and therefore is enduring an excruciating  experience that can and has led to death.

The ACLU has posted the secret memos which they forced the Bush administration to release with a lawsuit; see them here: http://www.aclu.org/accountability/olc.html

Iraqis Mark Sixth Anniversary of Invasion With Protests

Watching the news this morning I noticed that there was little to no mention of the thousands of Iraqis who turned out to protest the invasion and continued occupation of their country.

Even internet searches fail to produce results for the protest, which dwarfed the handful of paid protesters that were filmed pulling down Saddam Hussien's statue with the aid of US soldiers after the sacking of Baghdad in 2003. There are few people who don't remember the video footage of that event, which was aired over and over again.  

The failure of the US media to report on today's protest is reprehensible.  In fact there has been very little mention of Iraq in the news lately.  Meanwhile, US military spending continues to increase, despite the soaring national debt which has resulted from the illegal and immoral war in the middle east.

With some difficulty, I did manage to find this article on the protest. 

I welcome your comments, especially opposing viewpoints...

Bush Administration Tortures and Kills Whales

It has always been my position that the Bush administration and the Republican party in general are enemies of environmental protection and the protection of human rights. I have been citing a lot of articles in the San Francisco Chronicle lately, and there were a couple I noticed today which support my position.

As if we didn't already know it, the Senate Armed Services Committee has confirmed that the Bush administration has been in favor of and encouraged the torture of political and war detainees (prisoners) in contravention of international law and the Geneva Convention.

Also, only six weeks before leaving office, Bush and his gang of war criminals are also doing everything they can to ease restrictions designed to protect endangered species in favor of big business and the oil industry. Is anyone surprised? This kind of thing is consistant with the activities Republican politicians all over the country and at all levels of government.

December 14, 2008 | Scottdavene