In a lame duck session of Congress plagued with efficiency and bi-partisanship, President Obama and the Democrat majority Congress passed sweeping new reform of the Christmas holiday. The bill, voted on late last night, will extend the age in which parents have to celebrate and buy Christmas gifts for their children. "A lot of us returned to our districts to spend time with our families and found the houses around ours to be dreary and poorly lit. Business was down, and according to my interns, several of my constituents complained that they were unable to put Christmas gifts under the tree this year. Obviously, Christmas was dying, and we had to act fast" said one House Democrat.
Democrats checked and rechecked the list of votes and it was brought to the floor. There was some last minute confusion when some of the more liberal members of the Democrat party edited the House version of the bill last to include a ban on federal employees and firms receiving government contracts wishing people a merry Christmas. House Republicans were outraged, saying John Boehner, "This was just another example of Democrats trying to subvert a bi-partisan effort because they knew we wouldn't read the bill." House Democrats folded, removing that part of the bill, saying one Nancy Pelosi aide, "We really hoped to keep some of the language in this bill but unfortunately a few of our colleagues across the isle did have an intern read the bill, and more unfortunately, one of those aides was not Jewish."
The bill will mandate that all parents who have only one child buy him or her 22 gifts, parents with 2-4 kids must buy them 8 each, and parents who have from 5-9 kids must buy them 4 each. Parents who have more than 10 children can receive free presents for their children by mailing in a form designating the child's name, age, gender, interests, height, skin tone, place of birth, and social security number. These gifts will be paid for by a new tax on adult couples without kids aged 18-49. The new law also pushes the age that parents must celebrate Christmas with their kids to 26. Republicans protested both of those parts of the bill but were unable to draw compromise with the Democrats. "We're a little concerned about some of the regulations, but we're glad that the word of Christ will be now be handed down by the federal government."
Democrats paraded the bill, saying "Not only will this bill bring back the spirit of Christmas in this country, but it will also help boost the economy during these troubling economic times."
The bill has raised some concern and resentment among couples without children. "I was involved in an accident as child, I can't bear children, now I'm going to be taxed for it?" said one woman from Tennessee, while a New Jersey woman praised the bill saying "My boyfriend and I decided to have children that night. We figured that we might as well have 10 to capitalize on the new bill, and hopefully we can get enough fertilization drugs so we can have them all at once so we can get our own tv show."
A Florida couple made headlines later that day when they decided to put their 11-month old baby up for adoption. "My husband and I did the math and we just couldn't afford to pay for 22-gifts for our baby, but we definitely didn't feel right about a late-late term abortion, so our only option was to put little Jeffrey up for adoption." Under the law, orphans will also receive free gifts, but the mandate is yet to be paid for, as Republicans found enough support from Democrats to threaten a filibuster if the original plan to have children who were raised by two parents pick up 75% of the tab while single parent homes picked up the rest wasn't removed alongside the ban on saying Merry Christmas.
It's unclear what the full impact of this law will have down the line, but for now, the Christmas spirit seems to have returned to Washington.
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Friday, December 24, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Not sure why I'm surprised anymore...
Easing my way back into politics tonight, with two stories I found shocking, and I'm starting to question why I'm shocked by anything these days. First up,
Obama shuts down 73,000 blogs.
I was unaware of this, but last month, the white house attacked several file sharing websites and seized their domain names. Websites like The Pirate Bay(Endorsed with the Zack Mayo Stamp of Approval) and MegaUpload apparently narrowly escaped the wrath of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Agency, which might just be my new least favorite government enforcement agency(Sorry ATF, you'll have to go kill a few more innocent people). Now, the blog website Blogetery was just recently shutdown by the federal government. The owner of the server was strong armed into terminating service for the 73,000. The feds have kept a tight lid on the situation and no one can say why they were terminated beyond that it showed a "history of abuse" taking place on the server(Guilty until proven innocent, I suppose). I would guess that would mean file sharing and infringement of Intellectual Property(IP).
This bothers me for two reasons.
1) The government having the ability to shut down a private freehosting website does not bode well with me. It's very Stalinistic. It reminds me of the tactics of the Iranian government in the recent attempted green revolution(or whatever those crazy Iranians wanted to do). They'd take videos of the beatings and the shootings and post them on youtube and twitter. Soon the Iranian government started shutting down internet access throughout the country. Honestly, before Obama got elected, if you showed me this title "73,000 Blogs Shut Down by Government" I would have sworn it was a story about China. Is this another power we're going to let the executive branch have? Control of the flow of information over the internet. We gave them TV decades ago, mail and telecoms via the Patriot Act, and now the internet? If this doesn't bother you immediately, ask yourself, what's next? Seriously, this sets a HUGE precedent. I don't mean to sound like a stupid right winger conspiracy nut here, but who's to say the Obama can't make a call and have the servers for FOX's websites crash a week before elections in November. Whose to say my account on this website won't be terminated because I've spoken out against my government. "That's impossible." "That'll never happen, it will never come to that." Oh yeah? I think we took the first step today. They didn't shut down the blogs of those people, they silenced them.
2) "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech"
IP is a very, very tricky issue. Sure I want the artists to be able to make a living. But at the same time, all my music may or may not be downloaded from file sharing websites and I simply buy the albums of artists I hold dear to my heart like Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. If I were a representative in our democracy, I would not make policy based off this, but I believe that file sharing is a freedom, a form of speech, and that it is protected by the 1st amendment. I don't receive campaign donations, so it's easy for me to say that.
Side Note: I spoke to an IP lawyer when I was in London. He was a bright guy and he told me he paid for all of his music. He told me a story about a case where a single mother downloaded a few kids movies to show her children on a car ride. She was caught and prosecuted. Found guilty and fined $250,000. The mother's yearly salary was below the poverty level. She'd have to work years just to pay the fine, not to mention raise her kids and feed them and herself. It just makes me wonder, the crime for stealing those movies from a store would probably be a slap on the wrist. Worst comes to worst, a small fine, maybe a few courses to go through. Why is the punishment for file sharing exponentially larger than the punishment for stealing a hard copy of the file?
Second Story,
Journolist: Liberal Journalists conspire to defend Obama and smear dissenters.
I'll give you the link here http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/20/documents-show-media-plotting-to-kill-stories-about-rev-jeremiah-wright/ and if you're too lazy, the title will suffice.
Yes, a group of like minded liberal journalists(from Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic to name a few) proposed plans to smear critics of Obama, going so far as to use allegations of racism to discredit them.
Now, let's pause for a moment. I was on my high school newspaper, I've studied the subject, I appreciate what journalism does for a democracy, and I am generally knowledgeable on the topic. I am not one who subscribes to the notion of there being a radical mainstream media controlled by liberals that's out to get us all. I hate when people on the right say that because I think that even if they have a valid point, it discredits them immediately to anyone on the left listening. After years of watching various networks(mostly CNN) and thinking for myself, I have gone back to watching FOX news. People seem to forget that MSNBC is at least as far to the left as FOX is to the right. CNN used to be in the center/left but now it's simply irrelevant(I miss you Lou Dobbs). I don't do this because "those guys in the mainstream media are lying" or "the libs control all the other news channels." I do it because FOX makes me aware of stories I want to be aware of (Like Obama shutting down blogs) and because my blood pressure cannot handle the continuous stream of yelling caused by the nonsense spewed to me on other news networks, while I only yell at FOX very often.
LONG STORY SHORT, I'm a little disappointed to find that these journalists were doing that(or to even know of it and not raise a flag at the matter). They take an oath to be fair, to be open, to promote truth and to do lots of other ideal things like that, and these journalists did not do that. My subscription to TIME was ended recently and now I'm glad of it. I could hardly stand the prattle of it's columnists any longer(the photojournalism is worth the subscription alone though). I know there are slants out there, I've always thought they weren't a big deal and chosen to accept them as a fact of life and ignore them. To see in cold hard print that these journalists literally conspired to smear critics of Obama softens me up to the notion that "the mainstream media is controlled by liberals," and I thought I'd never come to that state of mind.
Obama shuts down 73,000 blogs.
I was unaware of this, but last month, the white house attacked several file sharing websites and seized their domain names. Websites like The Pirate Bay(Endorsed with the Zack Mayo Stamp of Approval) and MegaUpload apparently narrowly escaped the wrath of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Agency, which might just be my new least favorite government enforcement agency(Sorry ATF, you'll have to go kill a few more innocent people). Now, the blog website Blogetery was just recently shutdown by the federal government. The owner of the server was strong armed into terminating service for the 73,000. The feds have kept a tight lid on the situation and no one can say why they were terminated beyond that it showed a "history of abuse" taking place on the server(Guilty until proven innocent, I suppose). I would guess that would mean file sharing and infringement of Intellectual Property(IP).
This bothers me for two reasons.
1) The government having the ability to shut down a private freehosting website does not bode well with me. It's very Stalinistic. It reminds me of the tactics of the Iranian government in the recent attempted green revolution(or whatever those crazy Iranians wanted to do). They'd take videos of the beatings and the shootings and post them on youtube and twitter. Soon the Iranian government started shutting down internet access throughout the country. Honestly, before Obama got elected, if you showed me this title "73,000 Blogs Shut Down by Government" I would have sworn it was a story about China. Is this another power we're going to let the executive branch have? Control of the flow of information over the internet. We gave them TV decades ago, mail and telecoms via the Patriot Act, and now the internet? If this doesn't bother you immediately, ask yourself, what's next? Seriously, this sets a HUGE precedent. I don't mean to sound like a stupid right winger conspiracy nut here, but who's to say the Obama can't make a call and have the servers for FOX's websites crash a week before elections in November. Whose to say my account on this website won't be terminated because I've spoken out against my government. "That's impossible." "That'll never happen, it will never come to that." Oh yeah? I think we took the first step today. They didn't shut down the blogs of those people, they silenced them.
2) "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech"
IP is a very, very tricky issue. Sure I want the artists to be able to make a living. But at the same time, all my music may or may not be downloaded from file sharing websites and I simply buy the albums of artists I hold dear to my heart like Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. If I were a representative in our democracy, I would not make policy based off this, but I believe that file sharing is a freedom, a form of speech, and that it is protected by the 1st amendment. I don't receive campaign donations, so it's easy for me to say that.
Side Note: I spoke to an IP lawyer when I was in London. He was a bright guy and he told me he paid for all of his music. He told me a story about a case where a single mother downloaded a few kids movies to show her children on a car ride. She was caught and prosecuted. Found guilty and fined $250,000. The mother's yearly salary was below the poverty level. She'd have to work years just to pay the fine, not to mention raise her kids and feed them and herself. It just makes me wonder, the crime for stealing those movies from a store would probably be a slap on the wrist. Worst comes to worst, a small fine, maybe a few courses to go through. Why is the punishment for file sharing exponentially larger than the punishment for stealing a hard copy of the file?
Second Story,
Journolist: Liberal Journalists conspire to defend Obama and smear dissenters.
I'll give you the link here http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/20/documents-show-media-plotting-to-kill-stories-about-rev-jeremiah-wright/ and if you're too lazy, the title will suffice.
Yes, a group of like minded liberal journalists(from Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic to name a few) proposed plans to smear critics of Obama, going so far as to use allegations of racism to discredit them.
Now, let's pause for a moment. I was on my high school newspaper, I've studied the subject, I appreciate what journalism does for a democracy, and I am generally knowledgeable on the topic. I am not one who subscribes to the notion of there being a radical mainstream media controlled by liberals that's out to get us all. I hate when people on the right say that because I think that even if they have a valid point, it discredits them immediately to anyone on the left listening. After years of watching various networks(mostly CNN) and thinking for myself, I have gone back to watching FOX news. People seem to forget that MSNBC is at least as far to the left as FOX is to the right. CNN used to be in the center/left but now it's simply irrelevant(I miss you Lou Dobbs). I don't do this because "those guys in the mainstream media are lying" or "the libs control all the other news channels." I do it because FOX makes me aware of stories I want to be aware of (Like Obama shutting down blogs) and because my blood pressure cannot handle the continuous stream of yelling caused by the nonsense spewed to me on other news networks, while I only yell at FOX very often.
LONG STORY SHORT, I'm a little disappointed to find that these journalists were doing that(or to even know of it and not raise a flag at the matter). They take an oath to be fair, to be open, to promote truth and to do lots of other ideal things like that, and these journalists did not do that. My subscription to TIME was ended recently and now I'm glad of it. I could hardly stand the prattle of it's columnists any longer(the photojournalism is worth the subscription alone though). I know there are slants out there, I've always thought they weren't a big deal and chosen to accept them as a fact of life and ignore them. To see in cold hard print that these journalists literally conspired to smear critics of Obama softens me up to the notion that "the mainstream media is controlled by liberals," and I thought I'd never come to that state of mind.
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