Space Cadet

Recently the Patriot Act has been extended, and some even asking to make it permanent.  As court cases have shown in the past that this act is entirely unconstitutional and pokes holes in 6 of the Bill of Rights.  But one thing that i did notice over the last few weeks is the Government advising everyone through the media that the US Terror Threat Level is at the highest it has been since 9/11.  Seems to me as this is some classic scare tactics to convince people that this extension of this unconstitutional act is for their own good.  I am sure later on it will be claimed that because it was extended it kept everyone safe, and i am not entirely sure that it has kept us safe for the almost past 10 years.  Seems that the recent statement by the FBI conducted searches of 40 individuals in its investigation of Anonymous's Internet sit-ins of corporate websites.  Many make the argument of "If you have nothing to hide then this doesn't hurt you".  But to m...

"under democratic systems of checks and balances, no one should be left to judge him- or herself. The wide-ranging powers and discretion of law enforcement officers and their vital position as gatekeepers of the criminal justice system make it imperative that members of the public have a means of redress if officers abuse their powers and seek protection from scrutiny behind the so-called blue wall of silence. As such, bringing an external, community-based perspective to the problem of law enforcement review will promote positive behavior, ensure greater accountability, and deter malpractice." Source This is one of the main ideas I have had for a little over a year now and have considered creating a petition and getting signatures to have it placed onto one of the Massachusetts ballot questions.  The idea is to create a oversight committee for each County that deals with reviewing complaints of police officers and misconduct, similar to internal review.  The problem with IR...

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/how-one-security-firm-tracked-anonymousand-paid-a-heavy-price.ars Many of the documents linked or screen captured in this article i have read prior to seeing them in this so i can vouch for the authenticity of them.  Also note that HBGary and Bank of America have tried to claim that some of the documents are faked you should take into account that the other two Firms have made official apologises.  Which guarantees that the data is not faked in a bit and it is just HBGary and Bank of America going into damage control, makes you wonder what are in those Wikileaks files that has Bank of America scared so shit less.

"According to e-mails obtained by ThinkProgress, the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams to spearhead this effort. Hunton And Williams' attorney Richard Wyatt, who once represented Food Lion in its infamous lawsuit against ABC News, was hired by the Chamber in October of last year. To assist the Chamber, Wyatt and his associates, John Woods and Bob Quackenboss, hired a set of private security firms -- HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) -- to develop tactics for damaging progressive groups and labor unions, in particular ThinkProgress,"   Source More information has been discovered within the corporate emails copied from the HBGary Federal email servers.  On top of the Bank of America hiring the three firms involved in attempting to shut down or discredit Wikileaks, the same three security firms have now been linked to the US Chamber of Commerce through the same law firm.  The tactics seem to be similar g...

Recently there has been a tragedy involving the death of a 8 year old boy and a accident with a Uzi sub machine gun. The even occurred earlier in the week at a gun show in Connecticut when a young child was given a Uzi for practice. The father and the professional gun instructor where both present at them time and in the area watching the boy. What occurred was as the kid fired it the recoil from the weapon caused the gun to accidentally get fired into the boys head killing him. Now it has gotten international attention law makers are trying create a law that will make it illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to fire a automatic weapon. I dont think this ia valid solution for this and to prevent it from occuring again. This is just a tragic accident which could have easily been avoided and a law does not need to be created for this. With this people are trying to figure out who the blame for this belongs to. I do not know all the details from it and more likly then not neither d...

Your Personalized Rate of Return reflecting account balance plus deposits, withdrawals and earnings from 02/09/2008 to 10/09/2008 is -42.856800%. This is a copy and paste from my 401K statement after the days trading on Thursday with another large slide. Now personally this isn't so bad as i receive a 100% employer match for what i put into it so I'm still up about 7%. As well as that fact that i hadn't had the account for more then a month or two so the balance wasn't a significant amount . I stoped contributing to it about 4 weeks ago in anticipation of something fairly bad happening in the market . I never expected it to be as bad as it currently is and i don't think it will stop dropping soon either. This will hit the soon to retire within the next 2-3 years as if its sooner then that its a good idea to switch from a high volatility area such as stocks. And move them to a more secure though less likely to make any real gains area. Forcing some of...

Now I'm sure everyone by now has heard of the 700 Billion in US taxpayer money that will be used to bailout the large private banks in the US. But i was surprised when i talked to a few of my personal Friends that they had no idea what i was talking about when i made mention of it. Which is rather appalling and sad but ill go into that with some other post. It seems the media is hailing this government decision as a god send and the economy is saved. But i think the solution is far to late in coming as I'm predicting the world wide economy will go into a depression. Lenders and Banks will be cautious about who they give loans to as well as the proposed government regulations that will be coming with this plan. So the golden age of the real estate market is over as there will be less potential buyers out there. Now I'm not sure if the plan itself is bad to be perfectly honest. But the timing of it being so late it is basically a useless idea investor confid...