Me: It looks like my wedding bouquet! Him: I know what you like. All those other idiots were buying red roses. (Taken with instagram)
This says nothing about bring kosher, but it is at a movie theater so it checks out. Mike Eisenberg. Filmmaker. Hot Dog maker. (Taken with instagram)
Incubator auditions! Sign up!
We are holding auditions for our next Incubator team! You should sign up.
Great place to play! KC Redheart is still doing it up after 3.5 years.
I went to the Museum of Science & Industry today for a private viewing of the Dr. Seuss exhibit with my college’s alumni association.
A few things I learned.
1. Getting up to go to be at a museum at 8am on a Saturday isn’t quite as bad as you think.
2. Museums, like most places, are better with fewer people in them. Especially with fewer children. Nothing against children. I was one. Once. I used to read Dr. Seuss books.
3. Dr. Seuss made private art that he wanted kept hidden until after his death. This stuff was by far the most interesting and beautiful. I think ol’ Teddy Geisel might have incarnated from another planet. Or. Maybe another dimension.
4. It took them 2.5 hours every day to put on Jim Carrey’s make-up for the live-action movie of How The Grinch Stole Christmas. And it took 1 full hour to take it off. Every day. For 90 something days. Being an actor is hard sometimes. Sometimes. But mostly it’s fun. Because you get to laugh at life’s realities.
I hope this happens, not just because the passage of SOPA would be unimaginably destructive to society on so many levels, but also because this would be interesting as hell. Like a temporary digital apocalypse…
Despite a number of warnings from social network and web hosting companies about its potential for governmental abuse, some say that H.R. 3261, commonly known as the Stop Online Piracy Act, has a good shot at passage.
Should this happen, members of the online trade association netCoalition have had “serious discussions about” shutting down part (or all) of free society’s most popular websites and social networks, according to netCoalition head Markham Erickson.
To get a feel for how big this could be, members of netCoalition include search sites such as Google, AOL and Yahoo!, social network powerhouses Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare, online shopping stalwarts PayPal, Amazon and eBay, and Firefox founder Mozilla. Web founders of netCoalition include founders or CEOs of Netscape, Flickr and The Huffington Post.
Did that last paragraph get your attention?
If SOPA passes, netCoalition members are hoping a “nuclear option” of going dark with their sites will force a deluge of user emails, phone calls, and perhaps even angry mobs to the halls of Congress. If Google and Wikipedia’s home pages provided a simple description of why they’ve shut down, along with the legal ramifications of SOPA, that’s a lot of eyeballs getting an eye-full fast.
Via Technorati
Ten years ago.
On October 26, 2001 President George W. Bush signed the USA PATRIOT Act into law. This bill authorized warrantless wiretapping, “sneak and peek” searches of American property without notification, and the seizure of “any tangible thing” relevant to a terrorism investigation in addition to many other provisions. This bill was renewed and expanded in scope by President Barack Obama on May 26, 2011. Since its inception and to this day, independent reporting has revealed that the authority granted by the bill has been abused in almost every possible dimension.
Ten years ago.
On November 13, 2001, President George W. Bush signed the Military Order on the Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism. This order authorized the creation of secret military tribunals for the detention, treatment and trial of non-citizens deemed “terrorists” or “enemy combatants” in the war on terror. These tribunals are appointed at the discretion of the President. Further, the President granted his office the sole authority to determine who is subject to these tribunals via designation as a “terrorist” or “enemy combatant”. Both these tribunals and the designation of “terrorists” or “enemy combatants” operate without public knowledge or independent scrutiny.
Five years ago.
On June 29th, 2006 the Supreme Court ruled that such military tribunals were unauthorized under existing federal law and were in conflict with the Geneva Convention. Less than five months later, on October 17, 2006 the United States Congress and President George W. Bush created and formalized such authority by passing and signing the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Three years ago.
On December 1st, 2008 the Department of Defense planned to train and deploy over 20,000 troops across the continental United States for potential future civil unrest, peacekeeping, and “mass-casualty” scenarios. The target year for deployment is 2011.
This year.
On September 30th, 2011 an American citizen abroad in Yemen was killed by a predator drone at the order of President Barack Obama. No charge, trial, or evidence has been provided or promised by the President.
One month ago.
On November 17th 2011, Occupy movements across the country were simultaneously violently dismantled and evicted by local authorities. It was later revealed that President Barack Obama, through the Department of Homeland Security, had coordinated and advised mayors around the country on how and when to best suppress their own people.
Last week.
On December 1st, 2011 the United States Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 that designated the territorial United States as a militarized “war zone”. Section 1031of the NDAA permits the President to detain ANY UNITED STATES CITIZEN indefinitely without evidence, charge, or trial so long as they are named a terrorist in the secret and inscrutable process named above. Should a citizens detained as such ever actually be charged and tried, they would go through a secret military tribunals rather than a United States court. This militarization of civil law would be the final act in the long degrading of the 133 year old Posse Comitatus Act which was passed to separate the military from domestic law enforcement.
President Barack Obama has threatened to veto the NDAA but not out of concern for the citizenry’s civil liberties. This is not accurate. President Barack Obama’s administration specifically requested the removal of protection for United States citizens from such detention powers and claimed anything less would interfere with his office. Rather, the President’s veto threat is “because the extraordinary powers it would hand him are in some cases less sweeping and more constraining than what he has asserted for himself via frustratingly secret Office of Legal Counsel memos”.
This Week.
On December 5th, 2011 a document was leaked in which the City of London Police force had designated the Occupy London protestors as terrorists. They were classified as equivalents to Al-Qaeda.
Yesterday.
On December 7th, 2011 the United States House of Representatives voted to close hearings on the NDAA’s controversial provisions from public viewing or record. The bill is expected to pass without serious opposition.
Today.
On December 8th, 2011 I learned that the pentagon has given over $500M in military weapons to city police this year for FREE, military drones are planned for domestic surveillance in the near future, and that even PBS is openly questioning whether we live in a police state.
Tomorrow.
I don’t know what fresh attack the government will bring upon the people of our country tomorrow but I do know that it is coming. Join your friends, family, and countrymen in resistance so that our government may remain for, of, and by its people.
Please write your elected representative right now to voice your disastisfaction with the NDAA.
- ataxiwardance
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis No. I (published 23 December 1776)
Yes. We do live in a police state. No question. Drug War? Highest rate of incarceration of any developed nation? What more evidence do you need than what is listed in this post?
Ahem. Consider Ron Paul.
(via sweatydeath)
"`Have you made your peace with your God?’
`I never quarreled with my God.’
`But aren’t you concerned about the next world?’
`One world at a time.’"
`I never quarreled with my God.’
`But aren’t you concerned about the next world?’
`One world at a time.’"
—
Henry David Thoreau, Discussion with his aunt on his deathbed
Oh, right. Yes. One thing at a time.
Good reminder. Thanks, Hank.
"The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet."
— ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”. I’m in Los Angeles. Literally no one walks anywhere. We have so far walked a lot. I like walking. Why don’t people walk? The weather is nice! The sidewalks though are a wheelchair’s nightmare. We saw Drive last might. Whew. I can never tell Ryan Gosling and Ryan Reynolds apart. I am basically your grandmother.
I love this stuff. So delicious. Hydrating. Awesome. With Pulp! Is it normal? I don’t know. Is it because I’m watching Lost for the first time and it makes me feel like I’m on the island? I don’t know. Is it because I don’t drink pop and so this is like a fun and cool treat I get? I don’t know. I just like it. And I like the steel can. I (Taken with instagram)
Let’s remember, there’s at least one other person out there who thinks this is stupid, too, and thinks drugs should be decriminalized. And his name is Ron Paul. Get. On. The. Train.
Disturbing Video shot in Missouri that should wake people up
SWAT team breaks into home, fires seven rounds at family’s pit bull and corgi as a seven-year-old looks on. They found a “small amount” of marijuana, enough for a misdemeanor charge. The parents were then charged with child endangerment.
(via sarijuana)
How does any of this make sense? How can we as a country continue to support action such as this? Was this family an immediate threat to anyone? Even if they had a 100 plants, so what? What actual harm is being produced by this family? Who is terrorizing whom by harshly enforcing these laws? The only harm I see being inflicted here is by overzealous agents of state authority taking an arbitrary law to an extreme.
I find the charges of child endangerment against the parents laughable when it was not the parents who were firing live ammunition inside the home, and it certainly wasn’t the parents who traumatized him by killing his dog and dragging his parents away for an idiotic set of restrictions on a plant that the majority of American now seem to agree should be lifted.
This won’t appear on the mainstream media because it’s too common of an occurrence, and too much money is riding on it, and the most media is seemingly afraid of speaking any kind of truth to power for fear of losing their precious “access”.
If you want drug crime to stop, then stop making possesion and use of drugs a crime and move toward a legalization and treatment paradigm. The only reason we have not from what I can see is that too many people are making too much money and scoring too many easy political points by maintaining our idiotic and failed “War on Drugs”. Either that, or we really are collectively a nation of hypocritical idiots completely cowed by official power.
Wow. They say that the dog was being aggressive, but you can hear in the video that they shoot immediately as soon as they enter and then you hear the dog crying for a little bit. Also, all that armor you’re wearing can’t protect you from a Corgi? This is so disgusting. Over a misdemeanor amount of a drug that pacifies people.
