Today's Wake County election day. I live less than 500 feet from a polling place. But I can't vote there. Instead, I can only vote at a place three miles from my house, in a part of town that is always choked with traffic before and after work.
It's as if they want to discourage me from voting.
- Periodically in the past year, Abdulfattah "John" Jandali would shoot off an email to Steve Jobs, the son he never met. They were simple notes: "Happy Birthday" or "I hope your health is improving."
It is unclear if Jobs ever wrote back. A person close to Jobs' family said, no, he didn't, while Jandali said he did receive two short replies. The last one arrived six weeks before Jobs' death, Jandali said, and said simply, "Thank you."
Kim Deal is so fucking awesome.
The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill yesterday that would make it a federal crime for U.S. residents to discuss or plan activities on foreign soil that, if carried out in the U.S., would violate the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) -- even if the planned activities are legal in the countries where they're carried out.
"Under this bill, if a young couple plans a wedding in Amsterdam, and as part of the wedding, they plan to buy the bridal party some marijuana, they would be subject to prosecution," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for reforming the country's drug laws. "The strange thing is that the purchase of and smoking the marijuana while you're there wouldn't be illegal. But this law would make planning the wedding from the U.S. a federal crime."
[millionaire job destroyer] Mitt Romney weighed in on the growing Occupy Wall Street movement at a town hall meeting in Florida today. And in the eyes of that particular millionaire businessman, the protests aren’t good.
“I think it’s dangerous, this class warfare,” Romney said, according to National Journal.
Remember kids: it's only class warfare if the shots are coming from below.
The "Mobile Informational Call Act" is an amendment to the Communications Act of 1934 and will allow political organizations, committees, and action groups to contact you on your mobile phone. The new bill, if passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law by the President, would allow political organizations to use automated dialers and robocall-systems to dial your cell phone and hand you off to a live person or play automated messages asking you to contribute to political campaigns or take surveys.
The result, should the bill pass and become law, is that you'll be able to opt-out of specific campaigns and group calling lists, but political organizations that get your number through petitions, calling lists, or affiliated organizations will be able to call your mobile phone whenever they choose.
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As always, the best thing to do is contact your congressional representatives and let them know that you oppose the bill and would like them to oppose the bill as well. The National Political Do Not Contact Registry (NPDNC) has a petition that you can sign to make your opposition to the bill known to your specific representatives.
More, at the links.
I’m not saying it would have been smart for Barack Obama and Harry Reid to lead radical protest marches, but it would have been smart of them to see it as beneficial if someone was doing so. The dynamic in the House GOP where the Tea Party caucus sometimes annoys John Boehner but also repositions him as a moderate and reasonable guy and gives him leverage in the process.
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But Team Obama didn’t want progressive groups to put people in the streets back when he was powerful and prestigious enough that such protests could have given him a commanding position in the center of American politics.
I do love the idea that it's up to President Obama whether or not lefties stage mass protests. As if people are standing around waiting for the go-ahead from the fucking party leadership before they go march in the street.
"Hmmm... I think what I need here is a rowdy leftward foil to play against. Somebody put those hippies in the streets, stat!"