TheWorx

Two British teens were harmed "beyond imagination" in a Tanzania acid attack , apparently, one of them had been singing during Ramadan and, the day before, had been hit by a Muslim woman on account of it; but evidently, additional retaliation was needed. I pray that Muslims will one day learn--as we Christians have--that Allah does not need to be defended against heathens, and neither does a religion need defense if Allah wants it to succeed. In the Old Testament--and Muslims also hold it sacred--we often see God punishing his people for not following his dictates after he had answered their prayers for one thing or another. There were admonitions not to follow other deities but we never see any direct orders from God (via OT or NT) asking that so-and-so group be eliminated strictly for their beliefs. God helps his believers in their struggle for survival even, it is said, helping out their armies but, again, no orders to attack the infidel come from God. Now, interestingly...

If they throw the book at Bradley Manning, there are others who should then be prosecuted under the Espionage Act 18 USC § 793(f) to wit: Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint , plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer— Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both....

On a post by the Guardian on Tweeter, I learned about Godwin's law and how bringing up Nazism as an argument point is indicative that the discussion has degraded to the point where no one has anything logical to add. Mr. Godwin himself says that he created the meme as a means of getting people to think more about the holocaust. The Guardian ‏ @ guardian 55m Why humans are programmed to argue in comment threads http:// t.gu.com/npvUW I disagree with Mr. Godwin on treating Nazism and the holocaust as synonyms. No, I'm not a denier. However, when I have used Nazism in past arguments online, it has always been as a synonym for  nationalism-on-steroids. I was referring to the despotic, the ipse dixit of authority, the fervor that blinded Christian people into toeing the government line.  The holocaust was enabled by a despotic government but it was not a sine qua non of Nazism. To prevent future holocausts, we ne...

Did McVeigh or any other domestic terrorist change our society by what they did? Did their acts result in the trampling of our Bill of Rights? What is so different about the foreign bogeyman? While some may argue that the devastation of 9/11 was not comparable to anything that happened before or since, I argue that normal intelligence channels--w/o   present-day eavesdropping--did manage to warn the powers that be who, for reasons we may never fully know, chose not to act on it. The same thing happened with the Boston Bombers--no one was paying adequate attention.   Some may argue that widespread surveillance may catch domestic terrorists. But we need to remember the crucial aspect of the surveillance process as it is now promulgated. It is necessary to first become aware of an overseas terrorist and his phone numbers without which we cannot tie domestic players with foreign enablers. Here in the states, the NSA would first need to have known of McVeigh's membership in...

I just deleted an old negative blog about Nicholas J. Sacco because he sponsored a bill in the state legislature to restrict drone use in New Jersey. He's the first in the nation that I've heard of who, while not against drones, wants to curtail or restrict their use. I haven't had time to read the bill but I thought I'd commend him for his initiative. I think I can look forward to more legislation from him to safeguard our rights.

Microsoft will gladly transfer all your settings and documents from one drive (or computer) to another but tells you that you have to re-install all your programs individually by hand. Just recently, however, I was able to use a data transfer product that copied even my programs. The reason Microsoft doesn't buy the rights to EzMigration (or steal it outright b/c that's what it's good at) is that this behemoth is paranoid about piracy. They fear that if we are given the ability to transfer everything, we will distribute free copies of Windows all over the globe, and, to prevent charges of hypocrisy, they also will not copy anyone else's program to a new drive. So what does Wall St. have to do with this? In my opinion, any loss of revenue especially from something so easily prevented as piracy is to be stopped at all costs in order to keep the price of stock up and the reason this is so important is that people like Mr. Balmer have their coffers filled from this ungo...

Chavis Carter Death: Suicide Ruling Does Not End Questions In Case Of Handcuffed Arkansas Man There is still doubt as to whether Chavis Carter committed suicide. In my mind, I don't like the fact that the trajectory was "slightly down and backward. Only if Mr. Carter were very flexible would  he have put his head into a position that would explain the trajectory. BTW, was the bullet impact on the roof of the police car mentioned anywhere? Where are the diagrams from the M.E.--why do we have to rely on written descriptions of trajectory? One other major fact, of course, is the family's claim that he was left-handed and the medical examiner stating that the wound was to the right temple--an  obvious contradiction. However, if Mr. Carter had killed himself, it is far sadder than if he had been murdered for it would show that faced with the prospects of possibly losing his college dreams at the hands of drug war mavens who allowed two White men to go while arresting ...

This matter of small businesses and their taxation needs to be put to rest with regard to the effect  increased taxation has on hiring. The owner of an established business deducts, among his numerous expenses, the cost of labor from his taxes. The labor he employs in his business is the minimum required to fulfill his obligations to his customers and meet demand--no more, no less. If he hires beyond what is required, he is doing so for an ulterior purpose other than profits and, as such, obtains some degree of personal satisfaction from the superfluous hiring--that's his prerogative and is not to be considered here. But the true businessman hires only what he needs and deducts the expense from his revenue so as not to subject it to taxation. This businessman then obtains a profit that can be taxed by the government. At this point, it is no different than the salary that is obtained by the vast majority of U.S. taxpayers. If profits over 250,000 dollars are taxed at a hig...

If you are part of an Occupy Wall Street demonstration and you block access to a building or grounds where the President so much as intends to visit, you can be fined and imprisoned for 10 years. It also pertains not just to the President but to any person whom the Secret Service is authorized to protect and who has not specifically declined protection. (You can be jailed if  Obama, Clinton's daughter or--within 120 days of November-- Romney, Santorum, or Gingrich  are visiting or intend to visit; but not Ron Paul as he has declined SS protection.) One section that was deleted is that requiring that prosecution be done in the Federal court where the offense took place. This means that the gov't can now take you to Gitmo if it so pleases. Are you starting to see how tyranny is taking a hold on our society thanks to the "constitutional" scholar we call our President. The other deleted section by its deletion, implies that this law can, by default, supersede any state...

People today are almost totally dependent on others for their livelihood. Gone are the days of hunting, foraging, and even fishing for daily subsistence. Gone are the days of camping out in the forest. Because these options are no longer available to the ordinary man, others must come to their rescue. The problem is that our society has relied on market forces to correct the economy, and stimulus programs have been hit or miss and have taken too long to have an effect. If there is any doubt about the immorality of the U.S. corporation, you need only consider that our economy is in trouble and companies are holding back from investing their cash reserves because they don't wish to jeopardize their bottom line. Let us say that it is a simple business decision and that CEO's are not expected to be moral people because business must be objective to remain competitive. In that case, the solution is to make all businesses hire the unemployed regardless of whether or not they are need...

Unions, Professional Sports, the Media, Wall Street, and the Public Sector are the biggest cancers on our American society. 1. Unions. Through threats and intimidation they raise their members salaries, perks, and benefits while raising consumer prices because you can bet dollars to donuts that the CEO will not take it out of his salary. The answer is no unions or all unions--take your pick. 2. Professional Sports. Who really pays their enormous salaries? The people do, and not just the viewers (that would be fair) but every family that buys a box of Wheaties. The answer is to shift our mentality away from the super jock and towards local non-profit leagues. The top professional players can still form an exhibition team like the Harlem Globetrotters. You can pay to see their razzle dazzle but for the meat and potatoes, go to a local league and be wowed by local heroes. Your buck fifty entrance fee will go to support the community. (just be careful not to let municipal government get th...

The Supreme Court recently struck down laws that prevented corporations from campaigning for political candidates. That the Supreme Court can view corporations as citizens speaks of the blinders that too often guide these nine people down a road to ill-conceived or misguided justice. It is almost as if they were saying, "We are tired of your First Amendment lawsuits. We are going to take free speech and wrap you up in it so tightly that it will suffocate you." Now that corporations have freedom of speech, what else can we bestow on them? Shall we give corporations the right to vote? Shall we banish them to a desert in Arizona when they are found guilty of a crime? If a corporation is an entity with unalienable rights, what about other entities? Do we welcome the Vatican and the rich Muslims into our political arena? I can see why the justices are confused for we bail out and subsidize the corporations like they were relatives. We baptize them into being and dissolve them at ...

In grammar school, I thought unions were great. They were great when the injustices committed against Joe Schmo were atrocious (child labor, pittance pay, toxic environment). Today, I believe that those with unions are parasites on the those without unions. Invariably, those with unions are at an advantage not enjoyed by the rest. They get better pay, job security, benefits, and perks. Not always, of course. The hotel industry has found ways to unionize with unions that are nothing more than fronts of respectability and responsibility--organizations that remind me of Popeye's chicken soup. For non-boomers, Popeye used to make soup by dipping a dead chicken once or twice in hot water and serving the water as chicken soup. So what are the rest of us to do? We can start by considering the possibility of a government option for unionizing. I know, public options can get blown up by the likes of an industry puppet like Joe Lieberman. But we've got Pelosi on our side. She may not be ...

In last year's New Jersey gubernatorial election, Chris Christie was worried that Daggett would spoil his chances of being elected by taking away Christie votes. In a political novel, I fantasized that a rich person like Corzine just might be able to "plant" someone like Daggett in order to do just that. But fantasy or not, Chris Christie had valid concerns and, in looking at the problem, I saw that it was a simple matter to eliminate this problem--you merely let the voters vote twice. If you let the voters vote for their top two candidates, no vote will go to waste. When all votes are tallied, If their first choice (let's say Daggett) falls into third place then, the voters who had a third place candidate as their second choice will have their "first choice" votes transferred to the top two candidates. He's an example. If I voted for Daggett and Christie, and all the first choices tally as Corzine, Christie, and Daggett in third place, my second choice ...

It's hilarious to see the confirmation hearings. You see, the government wants someone like Sotomayor who, as Chuck Schumer has said, has voted with the government in over 90% of her decisions. That is what most in government want. Just like Roosevelt wanted the court to support his Japanese Internment activities and the incumbent Bush wanted to win the election, today's government couldn't give a rat's ass about the rights of the people. The only reason Soto voted against the white firefighters was that she was voting FOR the municipal government's decision. She really has no judicial philosophy other than the right of government to do as it pleases and the people be damned. Where government is not involved (baseball leagues), she might be useful. Overall, however, she would be a sad addition to the court but what else can we expect in a goody two-shoes suck-up candidate. But then, she would not have gotten where she is today if she had not sucked up to those in po...

At Salon.com, a blogger can, at whim, delete any comment that he/she does not like. That's not a salon in my America but it might be one in Stalinist Russia, though. This does not happen at Ariana Huffington's site. Sure, they can delete your comments if they are off topic, abusive, ad hominem, and a few other criteria. But those are site-specified rules not the whim of the blogger who is posting his opinion on a site that has full public access. I'm had stuff deleted on the HPost but I knew after it was deleted that I had gone BloggerPostal according to the rules of the site. What's wrong with the salon.com methods? If we are told that we can comment on a posting/blog, we are tempted to read the whole thing knowing that we can disagree in public with the writer. We take the time to read it and to compose an opinion that was at variance with the blogger. We feel that, in some small way, we can temper the opinions in a balanced way. But instead, the blogger decides that ...

This is the text of the decision made by Judge Sotomayor and two other judges that trounced a student's first amendment rights. My comments are in bold. Some sections were underlined. I am not a lawyer but I can see through the smoke and mirrors of Sotomayor's decision. She's smart--just as much as Douglas and Frankfurter were when they helped the government put 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry behind barbed wire. This is just one girl's quagmire but we all are at risk if Sotomayor doesn't start respecting our constitutional rights. I hope she gets asked about this decision because if she still believes in it, I don't believe she has any right on the Supreme Court. Being chronically unemployed, I now have the time to address these matters. If I had been unemployed at the time of Alito or Scalia, some of their decisions would have received similar treatment. It's not hard to look at legal arguments and see the bull. I strongly recommend that public schools...