This amendment to the Small Business Act is a gift to the businesses who need it least. Redefining the definition of a “small” business so that medium to large businesses that are up to 49% owned by Venture Capitalists to allow them to access funds that have always been directed to what are truly small businesses run by one person, will kill the part of the economy that most needs the help, and develops the most jobs at lower levels, especially in PA. Redirecting those funds to companies controlled by Wall Streeters and VC types, who are largely responsible for the current economic crisis, does no one any good except the Wall Streeters and VC types, and rewards them for their bad behavior.

Please contact your Representative and ask them to oppose this awful amendment.

Technorati Tags: Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, Small Business, Venture Capitalists

First of all, Obama currently leads by 131 Delegates, which includes the superdelegates who have committed so far. He also leads significantly in the Popular Vote. In order for Clinton to have had a “Clear Win” in PA she would have had to take enough of the popular vote so that the result would have given her ALL the delegates. That didn’t happen. And Obama managed to keep enough of the vote in a state that Hillary had been predicted to win big, that the difference in the numbers, though technically a win, were not so clearcut a win in reality.

Second of all, the Jeremiah Wright issue resulted in an awe inspiring speech that many have compared to the best speeches of some of our top orators– Kennedy, King, and Lincoln.

So, what does Mainstream Media have to gain by trashing Obama? Howzabout a propagandized divisiveness in the Democratic Party, and possibly 4 more years of Repuglycan Deregulation?

If ever there was a clear pointer at the damage done by Media Consolidation, this Presidential Campaign Coverage by Mainstream Media is it. I hope Congress fixes this, since the FCC screwed it up again.

Technorati Tags: Big Media Reform, FCC, Framing the Debate, Media and the Presidential Campaign, Media Consolidation

And now comes the absolutely unforgivable part– they were doing it by injecting third party ads, from an incompetent company called Barefruit, on subdomain dns errors, as the image shows (click image for a large view.) Which means that, up until I fixed it on my own domains, if someone accidentally typed in ww.bitchslappin.net they wouldn’t get firefox’s error page which SHOWS you what your potential error was. They would instead be highjacked and brought to an EARTHLINK page showing third party ads, ads which, btw, were highly insecure via code injection. So not only were they stealing MY traffic, they were also putting MY visitors at risk! Big risk at that- the wired blog talks about cookie theft, which can cause major havoc if you have cookies set for webmail or for admin areas of your own websites, opening these avenues to spammers. They also talk about phishing using injection. From the article:

Ironically, I’m a member of the Earthlink Consumer Advisory Board. I posted on that forum over the weekend when this issue came to light in a Washington Post article. I’ve gotten some very sympathetic comments from the non-Earthlink-Employee members of the community, but the Earthlink Employee members have yet to weigh in on this.

For the record, Earthlink isn’t the only ISP doing this. Verizon, QWest, Comcast, and others are also highjacking nonexistent subdomain error traffic, and some of them have also used Barefruit to serve their ads.

If you have your own domains you want to protect, you need to institute a wildcard subdomain 301 redirect, so that any erroneous subdomain entry will redirect to your index page. Since I’m on shared hosting this had to be done by my support guys, since it involved a change in the dns record and the httpd.config file. If you do use a subdomain, you should probably mention this in the support request. I don’t use subdomains, so it wasn’t an issue for me.

And if you, as an Earthlink user, want to opt out of this adserving mess, you can. You need to change your dns servers to these:

207.69.188.171 (west coast)

207.69.188.172 (east coast)

by following the directions here.

Whether that can be done on Verizon I don’t know, since some of my friends who use them have told me that they’re locked into using Verizon software to get online via dsl (WHY????) and that there’s very little they can change. I suspect FiOS is even more locked down. If you’re on a different ISP I would look at changing nameservers. If your ISP doesn’t provide clean ones with no ads, like Earthlink does as an option (though I didn’t know this until reading the Wired article!) you can use the nameservers at OpenDNS (this is ad supported, but very clear about it and they serve their own ads) or it’s possible there are others you can use. I actually have my own nameservers set up for my domains, and I’ve got a support question into my domain name registrar to see if these can be used for that purpose.

Chris Marshall of Earthlink, I can definitively state that this “service” has NOT provided a “positive experience” for THIS “internet user.” You, as a company, better get your message straight, and if you TRULY support Net Neutrality, you’ll stop highjacking the last mile connection for your own greedy purposes.

Technorati Tags: Comcast, DNS Error Highjacking, Earthlink, Net Neutrality, QWest, Verizon, Web Security

The video goes through all the linear stages of our current production cycle, from the extraction of the raw resources to the dump where the stuff ends up when it’s no longer considered useful. It also talks about planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence, how they came about, and the result. All along the supposedly linear chain, the video adds in the real costs to our bodies, our environment, and our well being as a world society. One of the best explanations the video goes into is how Wall Street defines Economic Externalities, and how they really don’t exist when compared to the real cost of the goods produced, the real cost to the environment, to the people who are exposed to the toxins during production, even to the Big Box Employee who doesn’t have enough health insurance, right through the cost of disposal and landfilling, along with the cost of the resulting pollution on that end of the cycle.

I urge everyone to watch this video. Even more importantly, show it to your kids.

Technorati Tags: Economic Externality, Perceived Obsolescence, Planned Obsolescence, Real Cost of Goods, Stuff, Sustainability

I gotta tell you, it’s gotten so bad I had to turn my phone’s ringer off. It’s either that or block calls that come through as “Unavailable” on caller ID, if that’s possible.

This is pathetic. Who the hell wants to pick up the phone to listen to a RECORDING??? This is also counterproductive, because it’s extremely annoying and most definitely alienating voters. Not only that, it smacks of desperation.

And I’m sure she’s borrowed dough to mount this assault on my phone. Well, Hillary Clinton, I’m gonna tell you this. You would have been better off spending the dough to bribe George Stephanopoulos, Charlie Gibson and the ABC bosses to talk about the ISSUES. You would have been better off spending the dough to bribe Bill to stay home and keep his mouth shut. You would have been better off NOT spending the dough at all and going home to New York.

And Obama would have EVERYONE’S VOTE if he started a no call list for political calls.

Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton Phone Robots, Political No Call List

From a recent NY Times article on the prosecution of the 8 kids who were indicted in the beating:

Much as my heart goes out to Ms. Lindsay and her parents, YouTube and MySpace are not to blame here. It’s pretty obvious to me that none of these kids was adequately supervised, including Ms. Lindsay. And the kids who did the beating were obviously never taught empathy nor compassion for others.

40 years ago TV was to blame. Kids watched Tom and Jerry and learned that it was okay to beat each other up from a cartoon cat, or at least that’s what the newspapers said during similar incidents of the time. 80 years ago I imagine that some people blamed radio shows for kids acting out. We know there were bullies then since Popeye the Sailor Man was born as a radio show in the 1930’s and he had to deal with bully Bluto repeatedly. But at least in that radio show, kids were given a role model in Popeye. Who are their role models now? 2 Pistols? Britney?

Parents need to look at themselves and see if they are indeed spending the necessary time with their kids, and instilling in them proper values and respect for others. But it’s not only the parents. In a society that tears extended families apart, who is supervising the kids when both parents work?

When are we, as a society, going to take responsibility for our own offspring? When are we, as a society, going to take responsibility for what globalization, Big Media, and the Corporate Culture has done to our kids and families?

Technorati Tags: Big Media, Extended Families, Globalization, Parenting

This was the general flow of the conversation:

I’ve had a clue that this is how things work, but did some reading over the last day and confirmed that Xarin basically has it in a nutshell, much to my dismay.

Now, if Wall Street, and The Fed, and Congress, and The Top Dogs, and all the Corporate types know this, then every time anything about Energy (Iraq War, anyone?) comes up in Congress or any of the Agencies (FTC or DOI, anyone?) you can bet they’re not going to vote in the direction of Alternative Energy any more than they have to (it’s called lip service.) It’ll just CONTINUE to be BUSINESS AS USUAL until we are, as a country, and possibly as a planet, bankrupt monetarily, bankrupt morally, bankrupt ethically, bankrupt environmentally, and bankrupt genetically.

So — what is the answer? The revolution will have to be a groundswell, a from the bottom up sort of revolution (as all true revolutions are.) What can you do? Lessen your own personal dependence on Oil by lessening your consumption of both Gas and Electricity, for starters. Grow your own food, or buy locally grown food (less energy and fuel used to get it to you. Better for you too!) and fight the backwards state level legislation sponsored by companies like Monsanto who are trying to make it impossible for us to buy our food this way. Add a solar shed to the south wall of your home. Consider building a Wind Generator, if your local zoning and state power grid laws allow (and check for state and federal alternative energy incentives and grant money for these! There isn’t as much as there should be, but there is some, so let’s USE IT!)

There are lots more things we can do. It’s all about choices, and we have to start voting with our wallets and start putting companies out of business that aren’t with the program, and start voting politicians out of office who don’t represent the will and the welfare of the people. And we all need to get our news from alternative sources. Big Media is not covering the real story, since Big Media depends on the Oil Economy for its own well being.

Technorati Tags: Alternative Energy, Sustainability, The Oil Economy

Technorati Tags: Andrew Sullivan., David Addington, Rumsfeld, Torture Memo, Yoo

Which leads us that much further down the road to fascism. One can only imagine the invention, prior to the next presidential inauguration, of a Terrorist Incident that allows Bush to seize property (and how much you wanna bet it won’t be Republican property he seizes) and declare Martial Law. And when that day comes Big Media will feature a story about Britney.

Technorati Tags: Big Media Failure, Bush, NYTimes, Torture Memo

Our taxpayer dollars at work. Now the USDA is handing him $267 Million. Boggles the mind, doesn’t it? One has to wonder what he did or said or didn’t say or do to get that kind of largesse from a Government Agency that’s been known to pass out the Pork to Politician’s Pals.

And if you read the complaint, it says that ICG promised new BroadBand Technologies and Broadband buildout– the same stuff Open Range is promising to Rural America.

From the complaint:

Apparently the accounting was screwy and the stock WAY overvalued. Typical Pump and Dump, with the company going belly up, probably right after the principles cashed out.

Hmm, I gotta wonder who else works for this outfit . . .

Thanks go to Dave Burstein for the hint that led me to the above links.

Technorati Tags: Open Range Communications, USDA Guaranteed Loan Program