Obama and Same-Sex Marriage plus North Carolina!
Fresh off the heels of North Carolina banning same-sex marriage and civil unions, and earlier the vice president stating that he supports same-sex marriage, Obama on Wednesday publicly stated that now he supports same-sex marriage as well.
But with roughly 60% of the vote in favor of the ban in North Carolina, and the fact that the state now joins 30 other states with similar measures.. it appears that same-sex marriage is still a hot topic in America.
Is the timing of Obama’s message a smart thing or will it ultimately hurt him in the upcoming election?
In order to answer that I think we need to see what percentage of Americans are in support of gay marriage and what percentage want it banned.
Recent polls show that 50% of Americans support same-sex marriage while 45% oppose it. And the opposition number has been decreasing by 2 to 3 percentage points per year since 2004. So based on those numbers, it appears that Obama has the majority supporting him on this issue.
The problem is that that majority of people may not actually vote… and it’s on Social Issues like Gay Marriage and Abortion that get people off the couch to vote.. so by supporting Gay Marriage, it may make it easier for conservatives to get their voters to the polls come November.
What do you guys think? Smart move or dumb move by Obama to come out in support of Same Sex Marriage?
ICANN is about to open the Internet up to unlimired Top Level Domains.. these are things like .com, .net, .org. etc.
They say that it will allow for a much richer Internet experience, but all it will really do is put more money in ICANN’s pocket and put Billions into the pockets of registrars, while making the Internet less secure as demonstrated in the intro to this video.
How do I know this? Because last year ICANN created the .xxx domain and all it did was force places like the University of Kentucky and Nike to register .xxx domains at $200 a pop to stop porn websites from registering their names and and barely any porn websites bothered registering .xxx because it’s too easy to block their sites there.
So, adding the .xxx top level domain was ultimately a disaster, yet ICANN decided to go ahead open up the Internet to even more top level domains. And this past week ICANN disclosed that 1,268 new top level domains will probably happen next year!
Once those domains are in place the Internet will truly become a very scary place as you will not know whether your bank’s website is chase.bank or was it chase.money? You know what.. to be safe, you should just go to chase.com.. which puts us right back to where we were in the first place! What a joke!
American Drone in Iran and Stuxnet 2.0 Computer Virus?
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This week we pop over to Iran for some interesting news. L et’s get started, start the one minute clock.
Last December an American drone crashed in Iran and the Iranians were very excited as the drone appeared to be in almost perfect condition, allowing them to take the drone apart and learn how these highly secretive and very effective military spying machines are constructed and what their capabilities are.
Well, this past Sunday, Iran claims to have extracted secret intelligence from this drone, claiming that it revealed its previous missions to them, including that this particular drone had flown over Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan prior to him being captured in May of 2011.
Now, this seems highly suspect, as the United States has lots of drones, and it’s very unlikely that this particular one was used in the capture of Bin Laden.
In seemingly unrelated news, Iran this past weekend was forced to shut down its entire oil export infrastructure due to a computer virus somehow being uploaded onto its government computer systems.. similar to the Stuxnet virus that effected its nuclear program in 2010.
The Iranian government is still trying to figure out how that virus was uploaded.
Hmmm.. I wonder if these two stories are somehow related??
Iranians Say They Took Secret Data From Drone
Turned off to politics? That’s exactly what the politicians want.
From the Tom Toles Collection
Source: Washington Post
You think you live in a democracy? See how money buys congressmen and their votes.
The Supreme Court and Strip Searches:
Last week, the extremely activist Supreme Court issued another sharply divided 5-4 ruling with the conservative judges stating that police officers can strip search anyone who has been arrested for any offence, no matter how minor.
As justification for this ruling, conservative justice Kennedy argued that one of the 9/11 terrorists was “ticketed for speeding just two days” before hijacking Flight 93.
Now, I seriously doubt this hijacker would have had a box cutter shoved up his butt two days before hijacking that plane.. so I have no idea how this law would have stopped 9/11 from happening.
Dissenting Justice Breyer wrote that people have been subjected to “the humiliating strip searches after being arrested for such things as having a noisy muffler, failing to use a turn signal and riding a bicycle without an audible bell.” So the intro to this video was not far off from reality.
So.. there we go people.. another right to dignity and freedom taken away by our Supreme Court. What’s next? A ruling that it’s OK to gather ethnic Americans and put them all in internment camps against their will? Oh yeah.. sorry.. the Supreme Court already ruled that that’s constitutional and that law still stands today, believe it or not.
TED Talks: Rob Reid and the Copyright Myth Math. See just how much money the Entertainment Industry is really losing due to “copyright” violations.
Contraception is BAD for you?
Two weeks ago the Obama administration issued a Health and Human Services mandate that companies now have to provide access to contraception for their employees. Seems like a good idea since we have so many unwanted pregnancies these days, right?
Well, no. . Immediately the Catholic Church was appalled and accused the Obama Administration of trampling all over the their religious beliefs.. by forcing them to provide for something the church doesn’t believe in, contraception.
The problem is the fact that approximately 90% of all Catholic women have used contraception at some point in their lives (the same percentage as ALL women by the way).. so if the church is allowed to not honor that obligation, they would be discriminating against Catholic women just because they are Catholic.
The Grand O’l Party - or GOP as most of you know them - jumped all over Obama, for violating the separation of church and state. These are the same people, by the way, that are trying desperately to inject religion into our politics - see “State Santioned Rape” Ultrasound Bill in Virginia.
The problems with this argument is that the Obama administration is actually HONORING the separation of church and state by not giving the Religious organizationsthem an exception.
Think about it. If a religion believes that a woman should be stoned to death for committing adultery, are we supposed to allow that stoning to happen? Nope. Religious beliefs cannot super-cede the law of the land. Nobody is forcing these people to use contraception against their free will, they are merely providing for its availability for those that want or need it, regardless of their religious beliefs.
If you allow religion to affect the laws of the land you are in effect allowing religion to MAKE the laws of the land.
If you don’t want to find yourself living in a country where religious leaders tell you what you can and cannot do, then we need to stop allowing religious leaders from writing our laws.
22 very wealthy people will pick the next US President.
This past week, Obama decided to officially embrace a Super PAC to help him get elected when he had previously stated that Super PACS where a threat to democracy.
Has Obama gone to the dark side you ask?
In a way.. yes.. because it’s the ONLY way he’ll get elected. Period.
The person who spends the most money in an election wins nine times out of ten.
Until recently, there were limits on how much money a company or person could give to a politician for fear of corrupting that politician. Which makes sense, right?
Well.. the Supreme Court felt that there is no proof that politicians can be corrupted by money (yeah right!). In their Citizens United ruling, they opened the floodgates for unlimited contributions by individuals and corporations and even allowed the contributors to remain hidden!
Whereas Obama’s average contribution was $55 from individuals over half of all the money that’s gone to the top Super PACS was given by just 22 donors each giving over a half a million dollars apiece.
That means that the next president could be bought and paid for by just 22 wealthy individuals.
Until the law is reversed, Obama has no choice but to succumb to the dark side to get elected.
Some additional reading on Super PACS:
First Read - First Thoughts: A ‘Super’ reversal
Money Wins Presidency and 9 of 10 Congressional Races in Priciest U.S. Election …
First Read - Group wants investigation of Obama, Romney Super PACs
Opinion: Will 2012 be shaped by social media or super PACs? - Maria Teresa Kumar…
Because your freedom is a terrible thing to waste.
