Success Warrior: The Blog That Embraces ADHD

Stepping On Toes

So,

Toad Gingrich's, uhh, toadies decided to make life rough for a Ron Paul supporter.  A lone Ron Paul supporter was out with his sign showing is love for the revolution when Toad's bus stop for a press moment, which the smacktard held in front of the only Ron Paul sign in a 20 mile radius.  Someone finally figured it out and also figured out that the Ron Paul supporter in Florida was wearing flip-flops.  Toad's henchman stepped on the poor guy's feet in order to make him want to leave the area. 

I was going to add something to yesterday's post . . .

Because we can't ever just tell a story in a straight line.

If you look out the window on the right side, you'll see the Grand Canyon.

. . . and this seems like a good place to throw it in as being slightly relevant.

Since I know that you have all read yesterday's post, I'm going to go into more than saying that the United States government is putting the hurt on journalists who dare expose the truth.  One thing that I have seen up close and personal and which is very apparent in the machinations of the government is this theme of attacking people who have the audacity to tell the truth. 

When the cops kick the snot out of peaceful protesters, there are a couple of options available.  One would be to apologize and take steps to see that it doesn't happen again.  The other is to expand the violence to include journalists so that you can keep kicking the snot out of humans but not get the negative publicity.

Toad's people could have stopped the bus somewhere else.  If they somehow missed the bright blue sign and still started the conference, they could have moved.  They could have asked the guy politely to put his sign down for the interview.  Or, they could have resorted to violence in an attempt to force the guy to move out of the public space that he was occupying.

For those that lack morality, force is by far the easier answer when dealing with people who hold different beliefs.  A person could choose to use reason, rationality, logic, persuasion, and sexual favors in order to gain support for an idea but these take a lot of effort and patience.  Believe me when I tell you that I know and I can see how tempting the shortcut called violence could be for people. 

And that's for people who have "good" intentions.  Sociopaths like Newt and Obama know that they would never get the people to throw their support behind the 1% because their is no convincing argument and that leaves force as the only option.  Americans will bail out anyone that the truly corrupt and evil choose to bail out, start war after endless war, and accept a tragic decline in their quality of life because they have no choice. 

Newt's attack on a lone Ron Paul supporter demonstrates what happens when violence becomes that ingrained in a person.  Rationality is gone.  Never mind things like respect or compassion or human rights.  Those concepts are so far out of the reach of people like Newt that he would have to respond with a hearty guffaw and words of mockery for such "naive" ideals.  Violence is how the game is played and if you don't like how "elected officials" are using the violence then you should get involved so that you can decide how to use the violence.  That's the trap, isn't it?  People get sucked into lowering themselves to a moral level equal with the sociopaths responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of people a year.

You'll be happy to know (unless you killed your brain huffing glue to the point where you are a Newt supporter) that the Ron Paul supporter didn't give up his position.  He has bruises and a cut on one of his feet but he, quite literally, stood his ground. 

Being peaceful doesn't mean being a doormat but that's a topic for another day.

Violence begets violence and peace brings peace.  It's hard.  It's slow.  It feels impossible.  It's going to take a lot of education in things like respect, morality, and thinking.

Whoa, whoa, whoa!  I was with you until that last one.

Just grab some cheezy-puffs at the next commercial and you'll feel better.

The transition is not going to be pretty.  It already isn't and it's going to get worse.  For me, the vision of what's on the other side makes it worth it.  Humans are going to take a big step forward in the next little while and while some may see it as scary, I think it's exciting.  I believe that we will see some very amazing things when humans are allowed to cooperate around the planet.  So amazing that at this point in time, we can't even imagine what some of those things are going to be. 

Bullies who step on toes will be outcasts and the idea of voting to give sociopaths unlimited violence potential will sound as outlandish as the idea of owning people sounds to us now.  It will be a bizarre idea read about in history books with students shaking their heads in absolute wonder about how people could ever take part is such an absurd ritual.

Some of us are already there.

Freedom of the Press

So,

I read an article today from Reporters Without Borders about their Press Freedom Index for 2011 - 2012.  No surprise but the United States dropped in ranking going from number 20 to number 47.

Damn you Occupy Wall Street!

Maybe they put too much importance on things like beating journalists with night-sticks.

"The equation is simple: the absence or suppression of civil liberties leads necessarily to the suppression of media freedom. Dictatorships fear and ban information, especially when it may undermine them."

Suppressing the blatant disregard for civil liberties is obviously a big part of the equation but I think there are a couple huge chunks that may have played roles in the plummet in the US ranking, with OWS acting as the catalyst to bring these things to the surface.  The article is big picture taking in the entire world in one article but in the case of the United States, it's vital to include the changing face of "media" and who the spotlight is pointed at when Occupiers start chanting.

The fact that anyone and everyone can be a journalist (although cities are going to be much more strict with press credentials from now on - to keep the riff raff out, doncha know).  When there were only 6 major media corporations controlling the release of information, it was safer to allow journalists near the action because it was easier to tell them which stories to cover and maintain control on what was eventually released to the public.

Similar to watching the Great and Powerful Oz do a "press release", only people who will go along to get along are allowed to participate with a camera.  Anyone allowed to ask Obama questions has to sign a "Softballs Only" agreement.  Before Obama declared himself a third world tyrant, anyone asking a question seeking real information would be banned from any further presidential "press releases", fired, black listed, and called names by the lapdogs still allowed to sit in the same room as Oz.  Today, armed with NDAA, JSOC, and other "laws" repealing the Constitution, any journalist with the balls to ask Obama a question of any informational value will find themselves in Gitmo with electrodes connected to said balls with no legal means of getting released.

Ohhh, the Monica Lewinsky presidential media contract.

To get close to the prez, you have to suck His dick?

Your self-esteem has got to take a hit when you suck the dick of Goldman Sachs' little bitch.

The Great and Powerful Squeak?

Sounds about right.

In today's world though, anyone with a camera, smart phone, or blog is part of the media.  The whole world is watching.  It's impossible to control what goes on the Internet (although Obama is doing His part for the 1% and signed the ACTA Treaty - Yes, it's a direct violation of law for Obama to sign a treaty without Congressional approval but puppet dictators don't pay much attention to Congresses) so, at the moment, police are trying their best to restrict media from being too close when they start pepper spraying and tazing people for committing the crime of being alive.

Weird as it may seem with the bright colors and the voices in my head getting to say their piece, this blog is part of the media.  The old media used to control the release of propaganda information and, as such, were able to really lead people around.  Today, I (and many, many others) are able to talk about peace and freedom in a medium that can reach the entire planet.

Enemy combatant!  Enemy combatant! 

Smartass has been watching OZTV again.  All Obama, all the time.

With the Internet, it's not only possible to show video of the police shooting people in the head with tear gas canisters because the 1% told them to do it, we can also discuss solutions outside the one party, one percent, solution.

This is obviously motivation to suppress freedom of press and freedom of speech and Freedom in general, especially when you couple it with the fact that the alternative media is pointing its cameras at the depraved actions of the 1% and the government officials that they have bought.  The 1% owned the media and were quite happy to report on anything and everything from six inches of the dead body if it had no relation to them.  Now that the cameras are pointed at the 1%, journalists have to be miles away from where the cops are running over people with their scooters.

Freedom of the Press was a great saying while the 1% owned the press resulting in the fact that there wasn't actually any freedom of the press.  Now that the 1% are actually threatened with freedom of the press, their puppets in the United States government are coming down hard on anyone who dares speak or show the truth. 

This brings us back to the quote from Reporters Without Borders but in the case of the United States, the dictatorship isn't held by the government, it's held by the 1% that own the government.  It was so much easier for them before Occupy Wall Street and that's why the United States was mistakenly ranked at number 20.  Now that the 1% are losing control of information and people are starting to look at them, they are reacting violently and the United States press freedom index ranking is going to continue to tank.  Truth is the greatest threat to the 1% and their puppet government and must be suppressed at all costs (using tax payer money of course - don't want anything ruining this year's multi-billion dollar bonus).

7th Day; 7 Words

SOPA then ACTA.  Is Internet Censorship inevitable?

Leave your seven words in the comments.

Saturday Video: State of the Union Subtext

Homework Help: Future of Brick-and-Mortar Stores

So,

In a rare occurrence, I have managed to finish the primary homework assignments for the week.  For the record, it is always my goal to complete everything except the minor follow-up tasks by Thursday afternoon but it has been a rare occurrence when this has happened in the last 6 months or so.  Too often, homework has carried over to Friday or Saturday and even into Sunday, which is the usual due date at 11pm.

I'm going to take advantage of this week's oddity to get a jump on next week's work, which includes tossing out the Homework Help question of the week:

Will brick and mortar shopping disappear?  Why or why not?

I'm actually not going to ask you to answer this question unless your answer is a resounding "Yes!"  If that's the case, I would love to hear your answer.

Instead, I'll answer this one and ask a question of my own that is a variation of the given question because (1) this one seems too simple and (2), as has been pointed out previously, I'm not the kind of person that just accepts what's given.

My answer:

No, and here are a couple of reasons (feel free to add your own).  First, there are some things that have to be experienced before purchasing.  Clothing seems the obvious choice to me, especially shoes.  Sure, companies have increasingly generous return policies but it's much simpler to just go to a shoe store and try them all on right then and there and walk out with the pair that feels right.  Websites can have virtual models with your measurements but even if they make them into 3D images or holograms, it won't tell you what it feels like.  Cars would be another choice that I would throw out there.  Test driving seems mandatory.

Let me amend my intitial answer by adding an "at least not in the near future" behind the "no".  This is a class centered on the Internet taken by students who are attending via the Internet.  It could be very easy to jump to the assumption that everyone has access to the Internet and a way to make payments over the Internet.  However, this is obviously not the case and it may be sometime until everyone has the Internet at their fingertips.

Now it's your turn.  Look into your crystal ball and tell me what you see for the future of e-commerce in relation to brick-and-mortar businesses?  What is on the horizon?  What do you see as highly probable?  More interesting to me, what do you see in the realm of incredible but possible?

Disempowerment

So,

I was reading articles today on piracy (copyright not Somalia) as part of my research into the topic I posted on Monday and I read something that I didn't give much thought to initially.  I was glancing over Obama's misStatement of the Union address later in the morning and I thought back to what I had read in the piracy article and felt like it had missed the actual key issue.  Here's that part of the article on copyright protection:

"The culture of the Internet also needs to be taken into consideration. Referring to the high rates of illegal downloading, Mr. Gurry said “In order to effect a change in attitude, I believe that we need to re-formulate the question that most people see or hear about copyright and the Internet. People do not respond to being called pirates…They would respond, I believe, to a challenge to sharing responsibility for cultural policy. We need to speak less in terms of piracy and more in terms of the threat to the financial viability of culture in the 21^st Century, because it is this which is at risk if we do not have an effective, properly balanced copyright policy.” (Emphasis mine - Complete Article)

The implication that I got from reading this paragraph is that by calling everyone who has ever used content that media corporations would deem as a violation of copyright, you run the risk of creating an adversarial environment.  Pissing everyone off will probably eventually come back on you but this isn't the true danger to media corporations of yelling "Pirate" every time a teenager shares a song with his friend.

What brought my mind back to the article and caused me to actually think about the problem with the pirate label were a couple of comments made by the Great and Powerful Oz in His delusional speech that is supposed to set the tone for His re-election campaign.

What tone is that?  "Ride the crazy train with me!"

Right off a cliff.

In this case, it was nothing that he directly said but something that I thought was telling, which lead my mind down a path that eventually took me back to the thought about labels.

His mind is like a mouse maze.

If he gets to the point, do we get some cheese?

Here's a couple of those innocuous sentences:

"What's at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values."

"One of my proudest possessions is the flag that the SEAL Team took with them on the mission to get bin Laden. On it are each of their names. Some may be Democrats. Some may be Republicans. But that doesn't matter."

For those of you who are Republicrats, it may not be obvious but for me it just jumps right up in my face.  Patriots, heroes, and people with values only come in two flavors, Republican or Democrat.  Independants, you're probably okay as long as you keep flip-flopping between voting for Republicans and Democrats.  Should you ever stop though, you will lose your status as an appropriately obedient part of the one percent's plan and will be an outcast.

And if you aren't with 'em serving them, you're agin' 'em a terrorist.

Here's where the 1% and their mouthpieces, Bush and Obama, make a mistake.

In 2001, the word "terrorist" had a very clear and powerful meaning.  People that blow up buildings with innocent people in them.  A level of evil that is hard to even fathom.  Terrorists were feared and hated because they were terrorists.

Since then, what have Bush and Obama done with the clear and powerful definition of terrorist?  Well, here are some of the things off the top of my head that can earn you the much-feared brand of "Terrorist":

• Not voting for a Republican or Democrat
• Worse yet, making you a level 2 terrorist, is not voting <gasp>
• Displaying a "Don't Tread on Me" flag
• Carrying Ron Paul bumper stickers
• Owning a gun
• Having more than 7 days of food storage

Hell, I live right next to a whole state full of terrorists.  In fact, Mormons in Tennesee had federal agents visit a food storage facility attempting to get a list of names of people who used the facility. 

Now, in branding people as terrorists, the hope of course is to get people to cower to perceived peer pressure and remain obedient to the system.  No one wants to be labeled a terrorist, right?

That may have been true 10 years ago but today, it has become a joke.  Everyone who isn't one of Obama's cult members or who doesn't get their "news" spoon-fed to them by Fox is a terrorist.  The word has lost all of its oomph.  It's meaningless.  Now, if someone tells you something about a terrorist, you have to ask for clarification.  "Do you mean Al Queda terrorist or do you mean Occupy Wall Street terrorist?"

The tactic used to be one of trying to get everyone to aspire to the label of "Patriotic".  As that failed, people were labeled as terrorists or, at least, potential terrorists.  That tactic has been played out as the context of the word has been watered down into uselessness.  The result of this failure to control people mentally and emotionally is obvious in things like the creation of NDAA.  If the one percent can't rely on psy ops to control the public, they'll use the military to keep all the terrorists ordinary citizens in line.  Obedience is the only acceptable behavior.  Anything else is terrorism and must be destroyed.

Attempting to change the behavior of people by applying a negative label to culturally acceptable behavior doesn't change their behavior, it changes the meaning of the word used for the label.

State of the Union 2012

So,

After a 15 minute speech with 30 minutes of rah-rah applause at how well the Great and Powerful Oz can read from a teleprompter, it will probably all boil down to this:

If you aren't part of the 1%, you're fucked.

PS - I'm listening to it as I type this and I am absolutely amazed how full of shit this guy is.  Unless you're paid to applaud, you're probably shaking your head just like I am.  I'm going to have to get the transcript tomorrow just because it will provide humorous blogging material for me.

Homework Help: The Internet and Copyright

So,

As you may have noticed, Typepad's new and improved image uploader is change that you can believe in so let's move on to the homework help questions and hope they get the dang thing fixed in the near future (even though I know you all visit for the articles).

First, the basic questions, then I'll ask my own question:

How has the Internet changed the meaning of copyright and intellectual property? 

What are the limits to what you can "own" and "sell" online?

Now my question:

What do you envision for the future when it comes to the Internet and copyright?  Both from the side of the users as well as from the side seeking protection.  If you mention enforcement, what tools do you see being used and how effective will they be?

I am incredibly curious to hear your thoughts on this issue so please take a moment to toss in some feedback.

7th Day; 7 Words

Sorry Mark, image upload function is broken.

Leave your seven words in the comments.

Saturday Video: Somebody That I Used To Know