30 Kasım 2012 Cuma

Gospel for the Mass: 12/23/12- Luke 1:39-45

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Joseph and His Life Activities

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A friend wanted some activities about Joseph and his life and this is what I found:

Activities

biblewise.com- Projects & Activities, Puzzles, Mazes, & Coloring, etc., Listen to the Bible Stories (online), Bible Stories and Discussion Questions

timetracts.com- The Story of Joseph

mssscrafts.com- Joseph in Egypt activities

Lessons

ministry-to-children.com- Joseph and His Brothers – Families (Preschool Bible Lesson)

daniellesplace.com- Joseph- A Very Colorful Story (lesson with activities)

hennypenny.ourjunction.com- Joseph (scroll down to several lessons for Joseph with activities for 2 to 5 year olds)

southfloridachurch.org- Click on the age you want (2 through pre-teens), then scroll down for Joseph lessons with activities

dltk-bible.com- The Story of Joseph (lesson with activities)

The Catholic Toolbox- Joseph and His Wonderful Coat Pre K – K Lesson with: Objectives, Word Wall, Bible Story with questions, Songs and/or Finger Plays, Activities, Crafts, Games, Snacks, Coloring/Puzzles, etc.

The Catholic Toolbox- Joseph and His Wonderful Coat 1st Grade On Up Lesson with: Objectives, Review, Vocabulary Words, Bible Story with questions, Activities, Crafts, Games, Snacks, Puzzles/Mazes/Worksheets, etc.

kirkofkildair.org- Joseph: Forgiveness and Redemption (lesson)

sermons4kids.com- Joseph and His Brothers object lesson with group activities, coloring, puzzles, Power Point Presentation, worship bulletin

calvarycurriculum.com- 6 lessons with memory verses, circle the correct words, true or false, fill in the blanks, puzzles, and color sheets.

- Joseph Is Sold By His Brothers
- Joseph and Potiphar
- Joseph in Prison
- Joseph Tests His Brothers
- Joseph Reveals Himself To His Brothers
- Jacob Moves To Egypt

kidsclubs4jesus.com- 5 lessons with puzzles, coloring sheet, Bible readings, questions, memory verses, key points, object lesson, drama, puppets, etc. (These files are set up and formatted so that they can be easily made into weekly booklets for your children's ministry, youth ministry, etc., with 4 sheets of legal paper and two staples).

- Joseph’s Pit
- Cupbearer and Baker
- Pharaoh and Joseph
- Joseph’s Brothers
- Joseph and Israel

baptistwaypress.texasbaptist.org- Joseph- A Person Who Honored God (lesson with activities)

Coloring

calvarywilliamsport.com- Joseph, son of Jacob coloring pages (several posted!)

calvarycurriculum.com- 6 lessons with coloring sheets

- Joseph Is Sold By His Brothers
- Joseph and Potiphar
- Joseph in Prison
- Joseph Tests His Brothers
- Joseph Reveals Himself To His Brothers
- Jacob Moves To Egypt

Crafts

ehow.com- Craft Ideas for the Bible Story of Joseph

gospelhall.org- Joseph- The Man of Many Dreams (Story Wheel)

*Check Lessons above for more crafts.

Games

christianpreschoolprintables.com- This is a file folder game for children who are working on color matching skills. These coats have multiple colors to match so children should be able to easily match single colors before playing this game. Mount the game boards to the file folder and cut out the rest of the coats for playing pieces.

books.google.com- You’re Forgiven Tag
This game will help your kids discover the need for forgiveness in their lives. (The Encyclopedia of Bible Games for Children’s Ministry by Group Publishing, page 29).

sundayschoolsources.com- Joseph and His Brothers Game Board Use this game board with questions of your own to play the game.

The Catholic Toolbox- Joseph And His Coat Of Many Colors (card game)
This is a variation on the popular game of UNO with cards depicting the colored coat of Joseph. Players are trying to empty their hands of cards by playing them to a common pile, matching cards by color, number, or action. The deck is made up of 4 sets of differently colored cards with numbers from 1 to 8. There are also 4 Wild cards, 4 Draw 2 cards, 4 Skip cards, and 4 Reverse. (I wanted to buy this game, but could not find it so I made one.)

The Catholic Toolbox- Joseph and His Brothers (file folder game)
Answer questions about Joseph & His Brothers and receive a bag of grain. The first person to collect 7 bags of grain (representing the 7 years of plenty), wins.

Mini Books

lambsongs.co.nz- Scroll down to these mini books to print out in black/white or color for free.

Joseph Gets A New Coat
Joseph Is Kind To His Brothers

Puzzles & Worksheets

gospelhall.org- Review puzzle for the story of Joseph and his betrayal by his brothers. Students must assemble a group of puzzle pieces with clues written on their sides. Use the questions and answers included in this puzzle or create your own.

More 365 Activities for Kids (do any of the Daniel puzzles, mazes, dot-to-dot, spot the difference, etc. from February 11 - 26)

Joseph’s Amazing Coat (maze)- Amazing Bible Mazes by Anita Reith Stohs, page 6. (Click on Sample and go to page 6.)

The Great Bible Big Fun Activity Book: From the Old and New Testaments by Toni Lind
A Special Coat- Joseph had a special coat. Find the coat that does not have a twin.

Joseph and His Brothers (find the hidden pictures)- Hidden Pictures Explore Hidden Treasures in God’s Word: PK – K by Linda Standke page 5

dltk-bible.com- Joseph puzzles (anagrams, crosswords, cryptogram, mazes, word-mining sheets, word searches)

biblewise.com- Joseph puzzles and mazes

sermons4kids.com- Joseph and His Brothers (word search)

spielemitderbibel.net- Joseph (crossword)

sermons4kids.com- Joseph and His Brothers (crossword)

sermons4kids.com-Joseph and His Brothers (decoder puzzle)

gardenofpraise.com- Joseph (fill in the blanks with word bank)

gardenofpraise.com- Ten Brothers (fill in the blanks with word bank)

The following activities are from: 365 Activities for Kids by Kregel Publications

Can You Find- Here is Joseph in his special coat. Can you find 12 black headed sheep in this picture? (365 Activities for Kids by Kregel Publications, page February 18.)

Find the Difference- Here is Joseph showing off his special coat. Can you discover 10 differences between the two pictures? (365 Activities for Kids by Kregel Publications, page February 19.)

Find the Mistakes- In this picture of Joseph and his coat, the artist made lots of deliberate mistakes. Find at least 10. (365 Activities for Kids by Kregel Publications, page February 20.)

Find the Mistakes- Find at least 10 deliberate mistakes in this picture of Joseph being sold to the Midianites. (365 Activities for Kids by Kregel Publications, page February 22.)

Joseph (maze)- The traders took Joseph across the desert to Egypt. Find the path that takes them to the pyramids of Egypt without climbing over any trees. (365 Activities for Kids by Kregel Publications, page February 23.)

Which is Different?- Here is Joseph in prison in Egypt. Which picture is the odd one out? (365 Activities for Kids by Kregel Publications, page February 25.)

Find the Difference- Joseph was taken out of prison to explain the dreams of the pharaoh. Find at least 10 differences between these two pictures. (365 Activities for Kids by Kregel Publications, page February 26.)

Find the Mistakes- In this picture of Joseph explaining Pharaoh’s dreams, the artist has made lots of deliberate mistakes. Circle them all. There are at least 10. (365 Activities for Kids by Kregel Publications, page February 27.)

Class 12/2/12

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What are you doing in your classroom or home? I think it would be great to see what others are doing to exchange some ideas. I am constantly looking for new activities to do and I know others are too.

This is what I plan on doing with my first grade CCD class:

Review-

• Review - Sign of the Cross, Grace Before Meals, Glory Be

• Review- Last week’s Take Home Sheet

• Review- People at Mass using People at Church Cards.

• Review- Liturgical Objects at Mass (pew, stoup, altar, chalice, ciborium, Body of Christ, Blood of Christ, tabernacle, bells, lectern, ambo, Lectionary, missal, Book of the Gospels) using Liturgical Objects Used at Mass Cards.

Celebrating the Mass Lesson-

Profession of Faith

During the Profession of Faith we stand and declare what we believe in. In the Profession of Faith we state our belief in God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit- the Holy Trinity. (Draw on the board the Trinity symbol with: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.).

The Creed is to be sung or said by the priest together with the people on Sundays and Solemnities. It may be said also at particular celebrations of a more solemn character. If it is sung, it is begun by the priest or, if this is appropriate, by a cantor or by the choir. It is sung, however, it is done by everyone together or by the people alternating with the choir.

If not sung, it is to be recited by everyone together or by two parts of the assembly responding one to the other.

Questions:

Do we stand or sit during the Nicene Creed? (Stand)

Is the Nicene Creed sung or said? (Either)

In the Profession of Faith what do we say we believe in? (Our belief in God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit- the Holy Trinity.)

Celebrating the Mass Activity-

catholicicing.blogspot.com- Nicene Creed Craft: One God

Make craft according to directions. Have students trace the beginning of the Nicene Creed: "I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible." (Printed out on tracing handwriting sheet.) Glue prayer on a piece of construction paper. Glue the bottom part of the hand on the back of the prayer with the hand showing above prayer.

Nicene Creed Tracing Handwriting Sheet- Students write their name on the top line. Students then trace the handwriting sheet and follow directions above.

Lesson Plan-

Birth of Jesus and go over vocabulary words with students. Read story: “The Birth of Jesus” The Usborne Children's Bible by Heather Amery and ask questions from Take Home Sheet that will be sent home today. Note: When I read the story to the students I usually sit in the chair in the corner by the board and have the students sit on the floor in front of me. After the students have answered the questions about the story, I have them go back to their seats to continue with what is on the lesson plan (activity, craft, game, puzzles/worksheets, etc.).

Craft- Introduce craft: Where was Jesus born? (In a stable.)

Directions: Print out Christmas Nativity and trace pictures on paper to print out for students to color. Print out stable background for students. Have students cut out Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, and the lamb and color. Glue characters on stable background.

billybear4kids.com- Christmas Nativity
Scroll down to Christmas Nativity (Paper Doll Cut Outs)

mssscrafts.com- Stable background

Mini Book-

The Birth of Jesus (coloring booklet)

Have students read the mini book out loud in class by taking turns (each read a page) and take home to read to their parents. Students can also color mini book.

Game- Introduce game: What town was Jesus born in? (Bethlehem)

Birth of Jesus (file folder game)- Super Bible Game Book by Linda Standke, page 56 - 57

Puzzles & Worksheets- While students are doing puzzles/worksheets, etc. they may say a prayer. Students are asked to recite 5 prayers by the end of the year. A “We Know Our Prayers” chart is on the bulletin board. If the student can recite the prayer correctly, write the date on the chart, and they get to pick a prize from the prize bag.

Shepherds Find the Baby- Hidden Pictures: Explore Hidden Treasures in God’s Word PK - K by Linda Standke, page 17

Homework- Give each student a The Birth of Jesus Take Home Sheet for their parents to go over with them to review what we have done in class. Parents need to help their child fill this out and bring back to class the following week. Students that complete their homework and bring it back to class will be able to play Homeworkopoly. Each Sunday the students make a mini story book and/or story wheel in class. Students need to read these to their parents (or the parents read to them) the mini book and/or story wheel for homework.

What will you do in your classroom or home? Please comment so I can add the link to your blog to this post. We would love to see what you do!

Crafty Crafters: Punched Tin Candle Holder (Christmas)

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So how crafty are you?

What is your favorite religious craft you make for Christmas?

Here is a craft I make with my students using a tin can:

thecommonroomblog.com- Punched Tin Candle Holder

*Tip: Have the students draw a simple design on paper such as a star, cross, dove, fish, angel, etc. and attach to the can using rubber bands or tape. Remove paper after you punch holes into the can.

Please comment so I can add the link to your blog to this post. We would love to see what you do!

Gospel for the Mass: 12/30/12- Luke 2:41-52

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*Be sure to check out Gospel for the Mass Year C page right below the header for other days that you need Gospel for the Mass activities.

Disclaimer: The posts below contain links to other websites and the content of these sites are evaluated before they are included. These websites can change without warning making links inactive and/or the content altered. We have no control over other websites and we are not responsible for the content that they post.

Luke 1:39-45

Activities

catholicmom.com- Click on the month. Scroll down to the date for Coloring Page, Mass Worksheet, Crossword Puzzle, Word Search, etc.

Theresa at catholickidsbulletin.blogspot.com will post a link to an activity sheet that coordinates with the Catholic Mass. There will be pictures and activities each week to help little kids understand and appreciate the Mass. Most weeks, she will also highlight a Saint whose feast day falls within that week or a liturgical symbol they can watch for at Mass.

sadlierreligion.com- Scroll down to Gospel Reflection, Discussion Questions for the Gospel, and Proclaiming Faith Activities

loyolapress.com- Background on the Gospel and activities for groups and families

silk.net/RelEd/- Resources on the Sunday Readings

msssbible.com- Jesus Grows Up/Jesus in the Temple with tons of resources for illustrating the story, coloring pages/activity sheets, crafts, and songs.

sermons4kids.com- Losing Jesus object lesson with coloring page

sermons4kids.com- In My Father’s House object lesson with group activities, coloring, puzzles, quizzes

sermons4kids.com- Left Behind object lesson with group activities, coloring, puzzles, quizzes

calvarycurriculum.com- The Boy Jesus Visits the Temple #172 lesson with memory verses, circle the correct words, true or false, fill in the blanks, puzzles, and color sheets.

sundayschoollessons.com- Jesus is Lost in Jerusalem lesson

childrensermons.com- Home Alone object lesson

kidssundayschool.com- Jesus and Me: How does a child's life today compare to when Jesus was born? An activity to help kids relate to Jesus.

jesuswalk.com- The Boy Jesus in the Temple lesson with questions.

kidsclubs4jesus.com- My Father's Business lesson with puzzles, coloring sheet, Bible readings, questions, memory verses, key points, object lesson, drama, puppets, etc. (These files are set up and formatted so that they can be easily made into weekly booklets for your children's ministry, youth ministry, etc., with 4 sheets of legal paper and two staples)

sundayschoolsources.com- Jesus’ Childhood lesson with discussions, songs, crafts, games, questions, worksheets, memory work, etc.

The Catholic Toolbox- Jesus in the Temple lesson plan which consists of Objectives, Review, Vocabulary Words, Bible Story with questions, Activities, Crafts, Games, Snacks, Puzzles/Mazes/Worksheets, etc.

textweek.com- Lectionary, Scripture Study and Worship Links and Resources

Coloring

sermons4kids.com- Jesus in the Temple coloring page.

christiananswers.net- Twelve year old Jesus in the temple.

sadlierreligion.com- Color and cut out the Holy Family. (Grade 1 Chapter 3)

Crafts & Games

Young Jesus in the Temple (Story Wheel)- Bible Wheels to Make and Enjoy by Carmen Sorvillo, page 37 & 38.

sermons4kids.com- In My Father’s House group activities (crafts & games)

sermons4kids.com- Left Behind group activities (crafts & games)

Games that Jesus might have played with as a boy: (students can make these for crafts)

Ring and Pin- Make a handheld "ring toss" toy. (The Picture Book of Kids' Crafts and Activities by Roxanne Henderson, page 98).

crafts.kaboose.com- Stick & Ball Game-You can also make this with just a paper/plastic cup instead of a laundry scoop. Use a paper hole punch and make a hole in the cup near the rim to tie the string to.

books.google.com- Change Charades (Jesus Grows Up)- This game will help your kids identify positive behaviors that will help them grow up just like Jesus. (The Encyclopedia of Bible Games for Children’s Ministry, page 70 & 71).

You can change this game to: Brother/Sister, Son/Daughter, Friend, Neighbor and have the children tell you how you can be a good ______ (Brother/Sister, Son/Daughter, Friend, or Neighbor). Call students one at a time to stand behind a chair and to toss a beanbag. Other students wait in their seats until you call them for their turn.

Or write the above on the chalk board and have the students throw a suction cup toy at it. Wherever it lands, they must tell you how you can be a good ______ (Brother/Sister, Son/Daughter, Friend, or Neighbor).

Introduce game: When Jesus was twelve years old, he went to Jerusalem with his parents. The journey took four days and when they arrived the great city was crowded with visitors. Jesus saw many things in Jerusalem and was amazed at what he saw.

What did Jesus see in Jerusalem?

This is a memory game. Have the players seated in a circle. The first player begins by saying, "Jesus went to Jerusalem and he saw many things. He saw a ..........." He can say anything he likes, for example an orange, a pair of shoes, a camel, or a pet dog. The next player in line begins the same way but adds a second object after repeating the first. The third player also begins, “Jesus went to Jerusalem and he saw many things. He saw a ..........." He must repeat the first two objects and then add a third. So it goes on, but if a player can’t repeat or mixes up the order of the objects then he is out.

If you haven't got many players, the same children can keep adding more items. The game continues until one player remains or until time is up. Some lists get very long and are remembered for years by the players. A variation is to decide that the objects chosen must start with the letters of the alphabet in order, for example "apple, bat, cake...zebra." This makes it a little easier to remember. (You could also help the player if necessary so everyone can play).

The Catholic Toolbox- Jesus As A Boy Game (scroll down to Games)

The Catholic Toolbox- Jesus in the Temple (file folder game)- The objective of the game is to be the first to find Jesus in the temple.

Puzzles

Jesus Loves God’s House- Jerusalem was very crowded. The temple was crowded with the teachers of the Law. Can you find young Jesus? (Big Puzzles for Little Hands: Jesus’ Life and Lessons by Carla Williams, page 18).

sermons4kids.com- Maze

sewhttkr.home.comcast.net- Jesus as a Boy. Color all the spaces below that have a dot in them to see where they found him. Also on the page: Read Luke 2:46 and fill in the blanks to see what he was doing when they found him. Solution to this puzzle

sermons4kids.com- Word Search

sermons4kids.com- Word Search

joanyedwards.com- Word Search

sermons4kids.com- Word Shape

Jesus as a Boy- To find out what Jesus was like at your age, match the letter blocks with the blocks of boxes in the puzzle below. Then fill in the letters. (Wa-a-ay Cool Bible Puzzles by Nancy I. Sanders, page 39).

sermons4kids.com- Alphabet Soup

sermons4kids.com- Spiral

sermons4kids.com- Crossword

joanyedwards.com- Crossword

Quizzes

sermons4kids.com- Multiple Choice

sermons4kids.com- Multiple Choice

sermons4kids.com- Fill in the blanks

sermons4kids.com- Fill in the Blanks

29 Kasım 2012 Perşembe

It's Cheap, It's Easy, It's Winners And Losers the 2012 Elections Edition

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What can I say? I'm swamped with getting more NaNoWriMo done...

Losers: I mentioned them in an earlier post. The elite pundit class - especially the conservative ones who came to power during the Reagan administration 30 years ago - really got their butts kicked for publicly anointing their preferred candidate Romney when the stats said otherwise, and even going out of their way to mock the statisticians who focused more on polling results and provable trends.

Winners: Nate Silver and every other statistician who worked on the numbers, stuck to the arithmetic, and proved themselves far more accurate than the pundits who preferred "narrative" and "gut instinct" over facts. Arithmetic, bitches.

Next, the guy making xkcd will chart with unnerving accuracy the flow of Karl Rove's tears.

Winner: the Word of the Year, thanks to Bill Clinton and Nate Silver. Arithmetic.

Loser: Karl Rove. The "genius" for the Republicans, the man responsible for coming up with a winning strategy to get George W. into the White House, exposed by his own network on Election Night being completely out-of-touch YET AGAIN. Why Rove keeps getting treated as a genius is beyond me: his game-plan of playing to the base and do just the bare minimum to get enough independent voters to side with you (the "50-plus-one" plan) is half-lazy, half-reckless, and it relies too much on luck and a broken electoral system. Outside of 2004, when Rove tricked the Democratic leadership to back a weak candidate in Kerry (vulnerable to attacks on his military record and pro-Iraq War vote), this guy really didn't win anything (if it weren't for the Butterfly Ballot in Palm Beach County, Gore would have won Florida and the 2000 election). Rove's one true skill seems to be bluffing. Too bad Obama's a better game-player than Rove, eh?

Losers: The vote suppressors. In battleground states where the Republicans held control of the state legislatures and governorships, there were clear and open attempts to suppress minority, poor, and college-age voters in a blatant and coordinated effort to weaken the turnout of Obama's voting base. Like Pennsylvania. Like Ohio, repeatedly by a Sec of State John Husted who kept defying the demands of the courts (if anyone needs to see jail time over this, it's Husted). Like Florida, where Rick "Yes, I HATE This Guy" Scott tried to slash the voter rolls claiming non-existent fraud, and cut back on early voting days in an effort to cut back voter turnout in key counties like Dade and Broward. Good news is, it looks post-election that their efforts were for naught. In fact, by pushing so hard so publicly to disenfranchise voters across the nation, it seemed to have the effect of getting even more minority voters and college-age voters out to vote... more voters 2012 than there were in 2008.

Winners: Obama's ground game crew. Every volunteer, every campaign office organizer, every person who manned the phones and canvassed the neighborhoods and registered the voters. This was the antidote to the vote suppression efforts. If the Republicans wanted to suppress the vote: make sure there were enough registered voters to overwhelm any suppression. If the Republicans wanted to cut back on voting hours and early voting days: get more people to vote with absentee ballots that get around the restrictions. If long lines were gonna form up at the precincts: make sure the voters know that they have the right to stay in line even past closing hours. It worked.

Losers: Every Republican candidate who wanted to ban abortion and dismissed rape as an issue, especially the Senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock. They got their asses handed to them and kept the Senate safe for the Democratic Party. As a side observation, a major Florida amendment ballot tried to limit abortion access to where the only exception allowed was "the health of the mother". Yes, the ballot DID NOT have an exception to rape/incest, which happen to be very popular exceptions for a vast majority of Americans (even the ones who profess being pro-life: even they know how serious the problem rape and incest are). Result: the ballot went down to defeat by a solid majority. Lesson to the GOP: DO NOT DISMISS RAPE AS A SERIOUS ISSUE.

Losers: Rick Scott. Thanks to his voter suppression efforts, our state was even more ill-prepared for the election turnout than in 2000, making us more a laughing stock than we were back then. Also, 8 of the 11 amendment ballots he and his legislative buddies pushed onto the election suffered major rejections, especially the amendment that tried to Court-Pack the state judicial system to make it more partisan (the amendments that passed were three tax exemption ballots for veterans, widows of veterans and first responders, and low-income seniors: I argued against them mainly because of their origins, the revenue cuts may prove minor given how these changes benefit a slight minority of the populus). Better still, the effort to get three State Court Justices voted off the bench - a clear attempt at forcing vacancies that Scott could fill with cronies - came back with all three judges getting 3/4ths of the vote to RETAIN, a huge slap in the face to Scott.
In short: BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
The big talk I'm hearing right now is how to kick Scott out of office in 2014 when he comes up for re-election. If the state Republicans had any sense, they'd look at Scott's poor polling and run a viable primary candidate to kick him out before the whole state does...

Winners: Marriage equality advocates and Pot Legalization advocates. Two states (almost three, I think one state is still counting ballots) voted in FAVOR of gay marriage rights, while one more state voted down a ballot that would have overturned a legislative pro-gay law. Two states voted to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, a huge salvo in the fight to end a broken and ineffective War on Drugs.

Winners: Women. Women candidates won elective office in huge numbers across the nation at both the state and federal level. Lemme double check, but I think nine women won Senate seats this election, a huge uptick in gender representation in the Upper House of Congress. Guess what, pundits? There was a War on Women, and the women fought back.

Losers: Senate Republicans. Not only did they fail dramatically to garner a slim hold of that wing of Congress - which would have combined with their solid hold of the House - but they lost major leadership from either retirement (Kyl, indy Senator Lieberman) or losing to more liberal Democratic candidates (Scott Brown losing to Elizabeth Warren). The incoming Democratic Senate make-up is going to be more liberal than ever before, and more than likely to weaken if not eliminate the Cloture rule (and by extension the filibuster), the biggest weapon the Senate GOP had in obstructing Obama's policy agendas.

Winner: Me. The blog traffic to my site bounced from single-digits to the hundreds thanks to my article on the Florida 2012 amendment ballots. Especially a huge crowd of viewers conducting search terms from Japan. Wow. Now, if I can get you new viewers to consider the fine possibility of buying my ebooks... wait, don't go! Sniff, it gets so lonely here...

Loser: Well, yeah, had to mention him sooner or later. Hi, Mitt.

Winner: Barack Obama.

And now, with his Anger Translator Luther:

Luther: "“I mean, you know how much money they spent trying to get rid of this? Millions, son! I said millions!"

Losers: Speaking of those millions, the billionaires who shipped tens of not hundreds of millions of dollars into unregulated SuperPACs in an effort to make Obama a One-Termer. What you all get for your value, dawgs? NOTHING! ALL THAT MONEY WASTED BWHAHAHAHA!

Instead of being afraid of how Citizens United may make it easier for the wealthy to win elections - which 2012 proved the opposite - there needs to be a genuine investigation into what happened with all that money that got funneled into Karl Rove's and others' SuperPACs. There seems to be a lot of waste happening there: not many ads made, almost no ground game like how Obama organized, a great number of reports of how the people "managing" the SuperPACs walked off with huge salaries and bonuses they paid themselves... I'm serious. Campaigning has turned into a BILLION-DOLLAR industry and there's little oversight: it's the perfect scam for con artists...

Winners: every person in Dade and Broward Counties who stood in line for 7,8, God love 'em probably 10 hours on Election Night. The Obama campaign made sure the word got out that the law ensures any person standing in line at the Closing time (7 pm EST) had the right to stay in line and get their vote in, no matter how late it got past that. This is democracy in action. While it was a damn shame they had to wait so long, God Bless Them for doing so. And next time, let's make it easier on them to get their votes in and counted.

Did I miss anyone?

The Middle East As The Center Of The Storm

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There is, once again, little peace between Israel and Palestine as disparate peoples as much as nations. There may be a ceasefire in place now with Gaza, but ceasefires can end without the resolution of both sides to stop the downward cycle of violence.

There is still an ongoing civil war in Syria, with tens of thousands dead, tens of thousands as refugees... and no honest solution in sight other than outright war that few other nations, including the bordering Turkey, have the stomach or budget to fight...

Iran has been living the horrors of occupation by their own leadership since the uprisings of 2009 (that an old blog entry from then is STILL getting hits on my little-viewed blog on a daily basis amazes me), combined with a global sanctions against the regime's nuclear program that's hurting the civilian economy but not the elites', leaving that a very unhappy place at the moment.

Egypt, coming off the high point of a relatively powerful yet low-on-body-counts uprising against their own dictatorship in 2011 and with a delicately well-managed crafting of that Israel/Gaza ceasefire, is now coping with an arrogant move by the newly elected President Morsi where he claimed sweeping extra-constitutional powers (basically making himself a new dictator replacing the old dictator), bringing the protestors back out into the same streets and gathering spots they've been at just one-and-a-half years ago. Good Lord, can anybody catch a break here...?

And Libya's not entirely stabilized either after the overthrow of (misspelled name here). The attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi is but a smaller part of ongoing street violence between the militants and the more open, pro-democracy groups trying to rebuild after decades of brutal dictatorship.

And this doesn't even include the ongoing quagmire that is the U.S. Occupation of Afghanistan, nor the ongoing unrest in Pakistan.

I have no solutions. I doubt anyone does, at least a solution that WON'T piss everyone off. I have pity for any person going into foreign policy as a career, if you ever get signed in to do a job in that region. Madness would be the only sane response the way things are going...

The Bhagavad Gita's Primary Message

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Welcome back, fans of Latin and Greek root words as they pertain to English vocabulary! I and my colleagues in Portland, OR have just finished putting out our SAT and GRE vocabulary online learning system that has been a labor of love. Hence, I have a few moments to discuss yet another amazing text that I've just perused, The Bhagavad Gita as translated by Eknath Easwaran. This Hindu/Yoga text, probably the most enlightening religious text I have yet to learn from, has one primary message in it that supersedes all others: The Freedom That Comes from Renunciation. Let's first take a quick look at the Latin roots of the word "renunciation:"

re-: from the Latin root "re" meaning "back, again."
nunciat: from the Latin root word nuntio, nuntiare, nuntiavi, nuntiatus: "announce, report, send a message." Thus, renunciation is the taking in of something, and sending it back out into the world, or not acquiring the desire for the "message" you want in the first place. SAT and GRE English vocabulary words that come from this root include: renounce, denounce, denunciation, enunciatem and annunciation.

The freedom that comes from renunciation is a simple concept, and it works like this. In chapter two of the Bhagavad Gita, we find the following verse:

You have the right to work, but never to the
fruit of work. You should never engage in action
for the sake of reward, nor should you long for
inaction.

This, to me, is almost the meaning of life itself. Imagine that, if you were to do work with no selfish thoughts of what you were going to get out of it; that is, you renounce all results of the work, all that which you hope to gain from the work, such as material success, power, wealth, etc. This would bring about a state of moksha, or freedom. One would never have to worry again, scheme again, be disappointed again when things didn't work out.

In point of fact, Krishna, the Lord of Yoga in The Bhagavad Gita, tells Arjuna, his disciple, that those who do not desire or hanker for the fruit of their actions, the desired results, attain spiritual perfection, and in fact get everything they want. Whereas those who strive and think only about what's in it for them gain, in the end, nothing but disappointment. This renunciation of the fruit of action (note this is not giving up the action itself!) is, in Sanskrit, tyaga. Imagine working selflessly. And thereby freeing yourself from the bondage and pain that comes from lack of success (or sometimes even from success itself, which often brings about unintended entanglements in the swirling mass that is maya).

Namaste.

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Thomson joins vid-streamers' rush for MPEG-DASH

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Thomson joins vid-streamers' rush for MPEG-DASH

Posted: 09 Sep 2012 03:03 AM PDT

Web vid spec has Microsoft on board, but Apple's still hanging back

Now that the web vid spec MPEG DASH has been published and interoperability testing is well underway, vendors are starting to put their cards on the table with serious deployments. One of the first to build DASH into products is Thomson Video Networks, which is now supporting it in its ViBE VS7000 multi-screen video platform, with the help of multi-media software company VisualOn. The DASH support is built into VisualOn's multi-media player that Thomson now incorporates into ViBE for cross-platform audio and video playback on target devices.…

GNOME hacker: Culture isn't holding desktop Linux back

To contact us Click HERE

GNOME hacker: Culture isn't holding desktop Linux back

GNOME hacker: Culture isn't holding desktop Linux back
Thomas-Rasset faces $220,000 file-sharing bill after losing appeal
Intel to turn Ultrabooks, all-in-one desktops into giant tablets
Intel demos next-generation voice and gesture interfaces
Touch tech firms tap Intel for factory cash
iPhone to account for half of US economy by 2030 - projection
Microsoft betas System Center service pack for unified control
Day-long outage 'not a hack,' claims GoDaddy
Al-Jazeera's mobe news feed hijacked by pro-Assad hacktivists
UK.gov blacklists Fujitsu from future contracts - report
Pirate Bay co-founder named in probe into Logica, tax office hacks
Viewsonic 22in Android 'tablet' hands-on review
Who'll save the 100 most endangered species? Microsoft, apparently
Zombie PC herders issue commands from Tor hideout
Google's Nexus 7 tabs 'can't perform' if flash RAM crammed
There is life after the death of Microsoft’s Windows 8 Start button
Cable offers to shower UK biz in taxpayer gold to stimulate growth
Shuttleworth drops one million cluster bucks on Ceph upstart
Google skids car insurance comparison engine onto rivals' lawn
Backroom music streamer Omnifone palms first profit
Windows 8? Nah: Win Phone 8 should give Apple the fear
Laugh all you want at 'the cloud' - it'll be worth '$100bn by 2016'
Phone-hack saga: Prison officer cuffed in cop bung probe
Profs: Massive use of wind turbines WON'T destroy the environment
Everything Everywhere swept away by its own 4G hype tsunami
More 'iPad Mini' tat pics leak ahead of Apple's big unzip
What a card: Brit boffin Alan Turing stars in Monopoly tribute set
So many devices, so little policy
Acer racks up Xeon E5s, picks fight with US server bad boys
Blighty battles Oz for stratospheric supremacy
Array biz Nimble: Quick, lob us $40m before storage giants wallop us
Gov IT bods must shield their budgets from gov's knife – Socitm
Want to avoid another cookie law mess? Talk to EU bods next time
WD to parade flash-disk mutant for Wall St moneybags this week
Apple's soon-to-be-slurped securo firm shrugs off crypto warning
Ambitious Alibaba wants to take on Android
Microsoft urges devs to 'lead Windows 8 app land grab'
Archos 101 XS 10.1in Android tablet review
Samsung accused of sex discrimination in China plant
Oz court to test AdWords' WHOLE BUSINESS MODEL
iPad no flight risk says Federal Aviation Authority
UK's loyalty set for £1.2bn Huawei reward
AMD previews Piledriver, Ivy Bridge SeaMicro microservers
McAfee: Emma Watson riskiest celebrity search
Hacker uses Kindle as Raspberry Pi screen
Firefox support extended to older Android mobiles
Intel contextual awareness: 'We know what your wife is up to'
Scientists provide a measure of uncertainty
NZ software giants join patent bill protest
E-publisher 'fesses up: 'Apple UDIDs were ours'

GNOME hacker: Culture isn't holding desktop Linux back

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 02:13 PM PDT

'There is no single simple issue to fix'

Open source bigwigs like Alan Cox, Miguel De Icaza, and Linus Torvalds can bicker all they want, says GNOME hacker Michael Meeks, but changing developer culture won't do a thing to attract more consumers to the Linux desktop.…

Thomas-Rasset faces $220,000 file-sharing bill after losing appeal

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 01:46 PM PDT

Court rules $9,250 per track is constitutionally fair

Nearly five years after being found guilty of file-sharing in the media industry's first jury trial on the issue, Minnesotan mother of four Jammie Thomas-Rasset is back where she started after the appeals court upheld the original verdict.…

Intel to turn Ultrabooks, all-in-one desktops into giant tablets

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 12:49 PM PDT

Can't beat 'em, join 'em

IDF 2012 Intel wants to turn laptops and even desktops into tablets in order to reverse the decline in the personal computer market. To that end, it unwrapped two form-factors it will be promoting to get tablet-hungry consumers back buying PCs.…

Intel demos next-generation voice and gesture interfaces

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 12:25 PM PDT

Offers a million bucks for the best 'perceptual computing' idea

IDF 2012 Intel wants computers to be as smart as humans in how they understand voices and gestures – and it's offering $1m to the best idea that can help achieve that goal.…

Touch tech firms tap Intel for factory cash

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 12:18 PM PDT

Chip giant to keep Win8 touch bandwagon rolling

IDF 2012 Intel has been pumping money into the touchscreen component business in order to encourage the production of panels of 13in and up to make sure there are enough of them for vendors to build all the touch-enabled Windows 8 notebooks Intel hopes World+Dog will want.…

iPhone to account for half of US economy by 2030 - projection

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 12:07 PM PDT

America to get rich selling Foxconn gizmos to itself!

Strange, terrible, yet curiously inevitable news today - the day before iPhone 5 day. Analysis based on figures from hefty Wall Street brains appears to show that the Jesus Phone is set to account for a large chunk - perhaps the majority - of US economic activity within a matter of decades.…

Microsoft betas System Center service pack for unified control

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 11:33 AM PDT

SP1 beta increases InTune integration

Redmond's been talking about how System Center will be at the heart of its reboot of the Windows franchise for months now, and now it has released the beta of its first service pack.…

Day-long outage 'not a hack,' claims GoDaddy

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 10:53 AM PDT

Just a little router trouble, that's all

Domain registrar GoDaddy has commented on the daylong DNS outage that downed many of its customers' websites on Monday, saying that not only was a hacker not responsible, but that the service interruption wasn't the result of a DDoS attack at all.…

Al-Jazeera's mobe news feed hijacked by pro-Assad hacktivists

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 10:24 AM PDT

More breaking news on the conflict in Syria

Pro-Syrian government hacktivists have cracked the mobile update service of al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite news network.…

UK.gov blacklists Fujitsu from future contracts - report

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 09:24 AM PDT

Not good enough for government work. Cutting

Japanese IT group Fujitsu is among several companies that have been "blacklisted" by the UK Government, claims the Financial Times.…

Pirate Bay co-founder named in probe into Logica, tax office hacks

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 09:02 AM PDT

Warg hauled back to Sweden for copyright cooler stint

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, a co-founder of download haven The Pirate Bay, is back in Sweden - and now faces allegations of playing a role in an attack on the country's taxmen and IT consultancy biz Logica.…

Viewsonic 22in Android 'tablet' hands-on review

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 08:28 AM PDT

Passes the Google test and then some

First look There was birthday cake aplenty at Viewsonic's 25th anniversary event in London today that also saw the introduction of three new products covering an innovative range of display options.…

Who'll save the 100 most endangered species? Microsoft, apparently

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 08:06 AM PDT

No, not Nokia engineers. Well, not this time

Microsoft has pledged software and expertise in a battle to save the world's most endangered species - and we don't mean Nokia engineers.…

Zombie PC herders issue commands from Tor hideout

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 07:42 AM PDT

Bury command server deep in the onion

Security researchers have discovered a botnet that uses the Tor anonymiser network to hide its command nodes.…

Google's Nexus 7 tabs 'can't perform' if flash RAM crammed

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 07:18 AM PDT

Fondling fandroids say slab needs hard reset

Reports are filtering in that some Google Nexus 7 tablets slow to a crawl once the memory starts filling up, and require a hard reset to bring them back to the admirable speed expected of Google's flagship hardware.…

There is life after the death of Microsoft’s Windows 8 Start button

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 07:01 AM PDT

Keep calm and download these handy tools

Comment The disappearance of the Start button in Microsoft's new Windows has proved unsettling for users. "I want Start. Start I say," said an early tester in a post entitled "Worst 60 minutes in my entire life".…

Cable offers to shower UK biz in taxpayer gold to stimulate growth

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 06:29 AM PDT

Govt-backed bank may pump bioscience, tech sectors

Blighty's Business Secretary Vince Cable pulled back the curtains on his new biz investment bank this morning.…

Shuttleworth drops one million cluster bucks on Ceph upstart

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 06:00 AM PDT

Linux moneybags funds Um Bongo's cloudy file system

Billionaire Linux kingpin Mark Shuttleworth has injected $1m into storage startup Inktank to bring the team's distributed file system Ceph to cloud computing.…

Google skids car insurance comparison engine onto rivals' lawn

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 05:42 AM PDT

Now, Brits, tell us everything about your motors

Google is now offering to compare car insurance prices for Brits following the company's acquisition of BeatThatQuote.…

Backroom music streamer Omnifone palms first profit

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 05:24 AM PDT

Stuffs wallet with Sony and BlackBerry cash

Privately owned music services pioneer Omnifone boasted its first ever annual profit this morning. The company provides a platform for streaming services including that of Sony (Music Unlimited) and RIM (BBM Music) and operates in 28 markets. Omnifone was founded in 2003 and launched its first service, MusicStation, in 2007. It has notched up several firsts, including the first cloud streaming service and the first licensed scan-and-match service.…

Windows 8? Nah: Win Phone 8 should give Apple the fear

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 05:01 AM PDT

Tiled phone, not PC, could put Redmond on top

Open ... and Shut Windows Phone 8 might spell the beginning of a climb to relevance for a desktop vendor breaking out its latest PC operating system at almost the same time.…

Laugh all you want at 'the cloud' - it'll be worth '$100bn by 2016'

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 04:44 AM PDT

Public-facing services to coin it, predicts IDC

Some $100bn will be slurped up by public IT cloud services by 2016, according to the crystal-ball gazers at IDC.…

Phone-hack saga: Prison officer cuffed in cop bung probe

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 04:26 AM PDT

Operation Elveden nets another suspect

A 31-year-old prison officer was arrested at his home in Northampton this morning as part of Scotland Yard's investigation into alleged bungs to cops. The probe is related to the Met's ongoing phone-hacking inquiry.…

Profs: Massive use of wind turbines WON'T destroy the environment

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 04:17 AM PDT

Would destroy the economy, though

Windy professors in the States have produced research in which they say that massive use of wind power would not, as had been thought, damage the planet's atmosphere and cause undesirable climate changes. They also argue that it would be "practical" to obtain half the energy required by the human race using wind turbines.…

Everything Everywhere swept away by its own 4G hype tsunami

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 04:02 AM PDT

EE rises to promise 16 cities next-gen mobe broadband

Everything Everywhere is no more: long live EE and 4G. The mobile operator now gets to watch its children, Orange and T-Mobile, starve to death as they're denied access to the 4G feast.…

More 'iPad Mini' tat pics leak ahead of Apple's big unzip

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 03:43 AM PDT

Rumour mill in overdrive for 7in tablet

Rumours that Apple will launch an "iPad mini" at its unveiling event tomorrow intensified today after more pictures of cases leaked online and retailers started advertising screen protectors for a 7in slab.…

What a card: Brit boffin Alan Turing stars in Monopoly tribute set

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 03:14 AM PDT

Bletchley Park flogs custom board in honour of code-breaker

He may not have made it onto the £10 banknote, but the face of WWII code-breaking hero Alan Turing now adorns the back of the silly money that's boxed into a new custom Monopoly set.…

So many devices, so little policy

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 02:45 AM PDT

So what are you waiting for?

Live event Every one of your users has a computer at home, maybe a laptop, definitely a phone, and likes to log in from someone else's computer from time to time. They're carrying your data around, but often not your security policy.…

Acer racks up Xeon E5s, picks fight with US server bad boys

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 02:44 AM PDT

From little seeds giant oaks shipments grow

It has been a while since Taiwanese server and PC maker Acer has made some noise in the server racket, but the company is plodding along after planting its seeds on United States soil in February 2011 with a revamping of its Xeon-based servers.…

Blighty battles Oz for stratospheric supremacy

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 02:28 AM PDT

Amateur ballooning rivals meet for head-to-head showdown

Pics The friendly rivalry between Brit and Oz amateur High Altitude Ballooning (HAB) enthusiasts hit new heights over the weekend when the two nations went head-to-head in a stratospheric clash of high-altitude titans.…

Array biz Nimble: Quick, lob us $40m before storage giants wallop us

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 01:58 AM PDT

Hybrid racker needs VC cash

Hybrid flash and disk drive array start-up Nimble Storage has been given $40.7m in venture capital funding to boost sales, marketing and engineering.…

Gov IT bods must shield their budgets from gov's knife – Socitm

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 01:42 AM PDT

Increased use of council ICT services putting the squeeze on managers

A report from the public sector IT directors' group Socitm has identified four ongoing priorities for ICT managers in the wake of continuing austerity.…

Want to avoid another cookie law mess? Talk to EU bods next time

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 01:19 AM PDT

'Dear ICO, sue us ... We're sick of you and this ridiculous cookie law'

UK businesses should actively involve themselves in the debate over changes to EU law if they want to avoid problems stemming from the way those laws are drafted, an expert has advised.…

WD to parade flash-disk mutant for Wall St moneybags this week

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 01:02 AM PDT

Thinner, 'extreme' capacities promised

Western Digital will face investors on Thursday and tell them what the world's new number-one disk drive supplier is going to do to stay at the top.…

Apple's soon-to-be-slurped securo firm shrugs off crypto warning

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 12:33 AM PDT

Windows passwords exposure confusion

AuthenTec, the security firm that's the target of an $356m acquisition by Apple, has denied reports that possible cryptographic weaknesses in its fingerprint scanner software pose a risk to the security of laptops.…

Ambitious Alibaba wants to take on Android

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 12:30 AM PDT

There's only one way to settle this...FIGHT!

Not content with dominating the massive Chinese e-commerce market, local hero Alibaba now wants to chase Android into the sea by making its cloud-based Aliyun mobile operating system China's preferred smartphone OS.…

Microsoft urges devs to 'lead Windows 8 app land grab'

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 12:11 AM PDT

Give the people what they want - ASAP

Microsoft has urged developers to "lead the land grab" by developing Windows 8 apps ASAP.…

Archos 101 XS 10.1in Android tablet review

Posted: 11 Sep 2012 12:00 AM PDT

Magnetic keyblet combo, anyone?

Archos has built a decent business making budget Android tablets, so I suspect the word 'merde' echoed loudly around the Igny HQ when Google pulled the rug asunder with its low Nexus 7 pricing. Archos hasn't given up though and has now released a new device pitched as a budget alternative to the Asus Transformer Pad.…

Samsung accused of sex discrimination in China plant

Posted: 10 Sep 2012 10:47 PM PDT

Electronics giant's woes continue as CLW turns the knife

South Korean electronics behemoth Samsung has been hit by fresh allegations of impropriety at one of its manufacturing plants in China, this time involving purported sexual discrimination in its hiring policy.…

Oz court to test AdWords' WHOLE BUSINESS MODEL

Posted: 10 Sep 2012 10:05 PM PDT

Regulator insists ad placements can misled and deceive

Australia's High Court, from which no appeal is possible, will this week hear a case in which Google stands accused of intentionally deceiving and misleading consumers by automatically placing ads according to advertisers' requested keywords.…

iPad no flight risk says Federal Aviation Authority

Posted: 10 Sep 2012 09:28 PM PDT

American Airlines allowed to use in-cockpit fondleslabs "in all phases of flight"

Being asked to switch off your electronic devices during the takeoff and landing phases of a flight now looks even more anachronistic, after American Airlines announced it has been given permission to let its pilots use iPads in the cockpit "in all phases of flight".…

UK's loyalty set for £1.2bn Huawei reward

Posted: 10 Sep 2012 08:50 PM PDT

There's a good boy...

The UK economy is set to get a much needed boost on Tuesday when Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei announces an expected £1.2bn investment including hundreds of jobs.…

AMD previews Piledriver, Ivy Bridge SeaMicro microservers

Posted: 10 Sep 2012 06:56 PM PDT

Stretches Freedom interconnect fabric out to storage

SeaMicro is not longer an independent company, but you would not have guessed that if you were dropped in from outer space to attend the launch of the new SM15000 microserver in San Francisco on Monday afternoon. Advanced Micro Devices may own SeaMicro, but the company went out of its way to support the latest "Ivy Bridge" Xeon E3-1200 v2 processor from rival Intel as well as its own forthcoming "Piledriver" Opteron processor as new compute nodes in a new SeaMicro chassis.…

McAfee: Emma Watson riskiest celebrity search

Posted: 10 Sep 2012 05:50 PM PDT

Malwaria activissima

In McAfee's latest survey of the celebrity searches most likely to lead to malware infection, Emma Watson – perhaps best known as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films – has taken the top spot, knocking off model Heidi Klum from last year's most-likely-to-infect honors.…

Hacker uses Kindle as Raspberry Pi screen

Posted: 10 Sep 2012 05:34 PM PDT

DIY instructions await the brave or foolish

A hacker named Gef has rigged up his Raspberry Pi to use a Kindle e-reader as its monitor.…

Firefox support extended to older Android mobiles

Posted: 10 Sep 2012 05:22 PM PDT

Experimental builds for phones with ARMv6 chips

The Mozilla Foundation would like to see its Firefox browser running on more mobile phones. But since almost no handsets ship with Firefox pre-installed, that means getting the software onto more of the phones that are already out there – even if they use older hardware.…

Intel contextual awareness: 'We know what your wife is up to'

Posted: 10 Sep 2012 04:38 PM PDT

Knows when its best to call, text, or just leave her alone

IDF 2012 Intel Labs is working on a technology that uses what it calls "contextual awareness" to advise you of the best method to use when contacting others.…

Scientists provide a measure of uncertainty

Posted: 10 Sep 2012 04:16 PM PDT

What would Heisenberg's position be?

A group of Canadian PhD researchers claim to have obtained information beyond the "Heisenberg limit" using a technique called "weak measurement".…

NZ software giants join patent bill protest

Posted: 10 Sep 2012 03:45 PM PDT

Petitioning against patent trolls

Updated: govt says "no" New Zealand's largest software exporters, Jade and Orion Healthcare, have lined up with the NZ Open Source Society, InternetNZ, and local industry lobby NZRise to ask the government to revise its proposed patent laws.…

E-publisher 'fesses up: 'Apple UDIDs were ours'

Posted: 10 Sep 2012 03:14 PM PDT

BlueToad clears FBI of device data collection

It seems both Apple and the FBI were telling the truth: the Apple UDIDs published last week didn't come from either organization, with an American e-publisher posting a statement that the data was stolen from its systems.…

28 Kasım 2012 Çarşamba

What To Expect From Obama's Convention Speech 2012

To contact us Click HERE
I didn't come up with a "What To Expect" for the Democrats' convention in Charlotte, mostly because I really did not know which approach they would take: offense (going after Romney/Ryan for being one-percenters obsessed with harsh tax cuts and even harsher spending cuts) or defense (trying to explain all the things Obama did do during his 3 1/2 years of being in the White House).

The possibility they would do both was there, but unlikely in my mind. And it turns out I was well off-target. For the most part it has been a healthy (or unhealthy depending on your POV) mix of speakers hitting at Romney's weak job-creation record and weak record supporting minorities and women, alongside speakers highlighting the accomplishments of Obama's administration on the steady economic rebuilding efforts.

Topped off by what has become an instant classic of a speech from former President Bill Clinton that both slammed Romney and the Republicans as well as promote Obama at the same time.

There's still a little time left here before Obama should be performing his acceptance speech at the convention, though, so I could take a moment here to take a few wild guesses to what Obama will say:

An obvious thank-you to Bill Clinton;
An obvious I-love-you to Michelle and the kids;
A long and focused description of a jobs-stimulus program Obama hopes to get done if re-elected;
A short quip-worthy attempt to mock Republican inability offer any substantive proposals outside of "trust us";
An avoidance of Eastwooding: dude, it should be about class, and digging in that direction wouldn't be worth it;
A tribute to the soldiers (a theme in the DNC convention, something that the Republicans for all their flag-waving patriotism refused to do);
A call to action! Thrilling exhortation! ...oh wait, I'm channeling a pretty funny Doonesbury parody of your standard graduation valedictions... my bad.

So, anybody ready for a DNC bounce of more than 5 points?

Romney's Ever Fixed Mark

To contact us Click HERE
Gen. Chang - I AM AS CONSTANT AS THE NORTHERN STAR!
Dr. McCoy - I'd give real money if he'd shut up...
- Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country

It's not enough to point how just how often and how severe that Mitt Romney changes his story, changes his opinion, changes his political stance: how he, in fact, LIES on nearly every issue.

It's not enough to pile on to the observation of how Romney's currently best-known nickname got to be "Mr. Etch-A-Sketch".

It needs to be pointed out as often as possible how Mitt Romney is the LEAST-LIKED Presidential candidate in AGES, but that's not the point of this blog entry here.

The point of this article is to focus on what Mitt Romney REALLY WANTS if he becomes President. It's kind of hard to do when he's got this well-deserved reputation for flip-flopping and pandering in such a way it's made other panderers - both Clintons come to mind - look like sagacious pillars of consistency. But beneath all the bluster, behind all the constant "re-inventing" and "re-branding", at the base of EVERYTHING on Mitt's clouded and passed-over agenda (the one where he keeps saying "Trust me" as though that's always a good-enough answer): there is one consistent item on the agenda Mitt has NEVER renounced and ALWAYS persisted.

A massive tax cut.

Everything else on the table - abortion, foreign policy, Medicare/Medicaid and health care reform in general, education costs, energy needs - Romney has flipped on at least once this year.

But the tax cut plan, despite the occasional "tweaks" to how it's presented, has pretty much remained the same. And it's remained the core element of Romney's economic package, as though the massive tax cut will solve all woes, create all jobs, save all mankind.

Even though a majority of Americans ought to f-cking know better by now. Considering we've had a Republican President pass a massive tax cut plan roughly 11 years ago, and we've had all this time to see what the results have been (first chart from Ezra Klein, second chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) :

The Tax Rate of the cuts for upper income clearly get bigger, doubling and tripling in size for the top three brackets. What does this say about the tax burden for upper income Americans? How regressive have these Bush tax cuts really been?


Note how most of the deficit causes shrink eventually: The Bush Tax Cuts NEVER SHRINK AND IN FACT GET BIGGER

And consider this: Romney wants his tax cut plan to go DEEPER than the Bush tax cuts ever went. He's asking for a $5 TRILLION cut, ostensibly across the board except for the fact that he's scaling it more for upper income over middle-and-lower incomes. Because hidden in his tax proposal, Mitt wants to kill off the Alternative Minimum Tax and the Earned Income Tax Credit (both of which benefit middle and lower class taxpayers). Check this chart (from Klein's guest-blogger Dylan Matthews):

Everyone under $25,000 income has to pay MORE taxes by 1 to 2 percent, while the jump from $147,000 to $150,000 income from a 2 percent cut straight up to a 6 percent cut.

This is what Mitt Romney wants. This is his obsession, his passion, his ever-fixed mark. Everything else on his platform changes from day-to-day like the Etch A Sketch candidate he is. He wants this massive tax cut.

Even though FOR THE LOVE OF GOD we have all seen that tax cuts - especially cuts that are NOT PAID FOR by targeted spending cuts to balance it out - DO NOT WORK. Even though we've got economic experts - from the usual suspects like Krugman to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center to serious fiscal Republicans like David Frum - screaming how Romney's tax plan is IMPOSSIBLE. Romney is insisting on this tax cut plan, claiming it will "create jobs," "create growth," "fix government."

Tax cuts are not job creators : direct investment into business expansion and start-ups are. Tax cuts do not stimulate the economy. Tax cuts do not help curb spending: not only did spending get out of control during the GOP-led Bush era by so-called fiscal conservatives, but even hardcore fiscal conservative Ben Stein is now noting that at the current tax rates - "they're too low" - there aren't enough spending cuts to flatten out the deficit.

And Romney wants to make the tax rates LOWER. No matter the excuse or justification. He just does.

This alone should be disqualifying Mitt Romney from even being a Presidential candidate, for God's sake. But he's up there on the ballot, and GOD HELP US the polls are getting too close for comfort.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT VOTE FOR MITT ROMNEY.