Liberal Times

The ban on gays in the military comes to an end today. Signed into law by Bill Clinton in the 90s, the law resulted in an increase in gays being discharged from the service. Today, after nearly 20 years, the law is finally being set aside and gays are allowed to serve openly for the first time in the United States military.

But you just know not everybody is celebrating. Somewhere out there a Republican politician, a right wing talk show host, or the Pat Robertson and Westboro Baptists types have asked their interns, strategists, and lackeys to try to tie any sort of military failure to the new military policy. In mere days or months every time a bomb goes off they’ll blame the new gay inclusive policy. The next major natural disaster will be used to say God is angry at America for allowing gays into the military. Right wing talk show hosts will bring former military men in who have terrible tales of having to serve under a gay commanding officer, and highlight any and every mistake that commanding officer may have ever made.

The sad thing is that these right wing foes of democracy are predictable, yet every time they do this we are all left surprised. Not this time. I’m calling it out before it happens. I’m ready to tell them where they can take their inbred crazy talk.

HBO’s online service HBO Go is still lacking the ability for individuals to subscribe without purchasing a cable plan including HBO. Despite the company putting more and more offering onto the new service, they have opted out of making subscription to the online service an Ala Carte purchase.

Many of us would be happy to pay the same price as the cable channel for access to HBO’s shows. It is unfortunate that this obvious revenue stream is being skipped entirely.

Democrats need to make their own demands. For every 1% of the federal budget we cut, the corporate and wealthy should see their income tax increase by 1% (with NO loopholes, that tax rate MUST be paid. PERIOD.) THAT is a compromise I could live with. We control the Senate AND the Presidency­. They only control congress. We have more leverage than the Republican­s, yet they are controllin­g the process.

The Scissor Sisters have a new single coming out tomorrow at 8am UK. (about midnight tonight Pacific time.)

Sounds exciting! If you have XM satelite radio you can listen to the premiere.

Here is the closing song on their new album.

Once again the wealthy are going to get the benefit of socialism while the rest of us have to live in a barbaric kill or be killed capitalist economy. Of course rather than allowing BP to go bankrupt there is going to be a taxpayer funded bail out for the company.

Here’s an analogy for you.

Let’s say your neighbor put in the cheapest legally permitted sewer pipes in his home, and then one day his sewer pipes burst and flooded the entire town with crap. If here were like Goldman Sachs he would just tell all his neighbors to suck it up and give him cash to stop the sewage, and clean it up.

Yep. That’s the way America works these days. I thought that bringing the Democrats in would solve this problem, however it seems to have done little to stem the tide of handouts to the ultra wealthy.

We as voters must boycott anybody who votes to give money to the rich from the taxpayer’s treasury.

When exactly did Apple go from cool to just creepy? I think it was sometime at the beginning of April when Apple released their cool new iPad device. The world media had gone bonkers for the announcement a few months earlier, and now the device was out. Along with the device came new applications in the Apple App Store for the iPad. Along with those approved applications came many many rejected applications.

While some apps were rejected for proper reasons (failing to adhere to Apple’s user interface standards, memory leaks, broken apps, etc…) there were apps that were rejected for what appeared to be Apple’s dislike for the content in the apps. In one case Apple rejected the cartoon app of Mark Fiore who had just won a Pulitzer for his cartoons. It seems that Apple has decided that on a full fledged computing device they are the sole decision maker about what is or isn’t appropriate for display on your or my device. That’s not cool, that’s just creepy.

Next comes the case of the 4th Generation iPhone lost in a peninsula bar by one of Apple’s software engineers. Another patron finds the phone but is unable to locate it, and a few days/weeks later he sells the phone to Gizmodo. And here is where the real creepiness begins:

“California police have served a search warrant and seized computers from Jason Chen, the Gizmodo editor who unveiled the 4th-generation iPhone to the world. Gawker Media’s COO has replied claiming that the warrant was served illegally due to Mr. Chen’s status as a journalist. The plot thickens…” — Read More @Slashdot.

And a revelation later in the day shows that Apple sent their security team to the finder of the phone’s home to search it. Demanding they be allowed to do so:

People identifying themselves as representing Apple last week visited and sought permission to search the Silicon Valley address of the college-age man who came into possession of a next-generation iPhone prototype, according to a person involved with the find. — Read More @Wired
.

Then news comes from Steve Wozniak, a founding member of Apple, Employee #1 and major share holder:

During last week’s iPhone leak saga, Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, reached out to us with a story: The morning of the iPad launch, an engineer showed Woz an iPad for two minutes. For this he was fired. — Read More @Gizmodo.

My love affair with Apple is rapidly coming to an end. Apple has become a PR disaster going from Coolest Brand On Earth to Creepiest Company Ever in just a months time.

Looks like the SEC is finally going to take down Goldman Sachs for defrauding the public. Newspaper reports indicate that the firm sold securities that were set up to fail.

Keli Mcgregor is dead. So what, he owned a baseball team and undoubtedly got lots of free tax payer dollars for a stadium like most baseball teams do. By the way, it is spelled Keli, not Kelly.

So today Gizmodo outted the engineer who lost the upcoming 4th Generation iPhone. They did it in a way that was rather tacky, and now the internet is buzzing with the fate of Apple engineer Gray Powell.

What is interesting is that in the last hour his name by itself was ranked 85th in all Google searches. Many Hollywoodo PR agents would kill to have their star/project rank that high.

Not soon enough if you ask me. That miserable troll of a man lived far too long a hate filled life. Sure he died wealthy and adored by millions of his fellow hate loving evangelicals… but he still died after living a life consumed by hatred. Pity is something I don’t have for him, he made the choice to live that life and did it out of greed for the dollars his fellow evangelicals sent as their own special form a praise for his special form of hatred.

Good riddance. The world is better without you.