Because accountability is for suckers.

If you have been paying attention, you may have noticed that the United States government has reached a level of [choose your favorite] stupidity, ludicrousness, lack of institutional memory, brazen disregard for anything resembling reality, inferred hallucinogenic drug use, soul crushing asshattery, and intelligence insulting rhetoric that has surpassed any and all measure. I lament for our descendants and am redefining the upper bound of contemptuousness for the Federalist system.

Case in point, as beautifully and satisfyingly portrayed on Mr. Stewart’s lovely show:

I hope there will be a return to accountability and common sense within my lifetime. I also hope to live forever. I think the chances for both are just about equal.

BONUS: Pictures from the conflict zone taken by a local. [EnglishRussia.com]

People can be stupid. Really stupid [BBC]:

Officials had blocked Sex Fruit, Keenan Got Lucy and Yeah Detroit, he said, but Number 16 Bus Shelter, Violence and Midnight Chardonnay had been allowed.

So Crumbum Habberdasher Sir Monkeyface is still available?

Belarus, Flash Mobs and the Ice Cream Revolution

In Belarus, young people are employing flash mobs to push the boundaries of what the government will tolerate in terms of free assembly. Last Friday, flash mobbers descended upon a public square in the capital Minsk to gather together and eat ice cream. No rally, no speeches, no sit-in nor march – just standing around and eating ice cream

[Thx George]

Now they’re not even pretending you have privacy or 4th Amendment protections. If the president says…

I’ve been watching with interest the State’s takeover of the 1-cent local option sales tax, under the guise of ‘funding education’. While not fundamentally opposed to taxation, I am opposed to the idea of redirecting money that is slated for a specific purpose to pet projects or just budget shore-up (usually due to ‘unshoring’ somewhere else), without any explanation. So color me unsurprised by the following development, stated in his usually ‘eloquent’ way by State29: Local Option Sales Tax Money To Be Diverted To Corporate Welfare?

He also links to a resource I had not yet played with: BillWatch (Iowa Legislature). Am interested to see if its worth a damn. I’m guessing that none of the Local Mandatory Sales Tax will be going to foster and ensure transparency tools such as these…

Sorry I haven’t been around, but we’ll always have NEWSISH:

• How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook – more and more I hate Facebook. Did you know this?
• Court orders Bush administration to disclose telecom lobbying ties. What about senators? – Good news for Law and order types.
• Leahy takes next step toward holding White House in contempt – It must be ‘grow a pair’ day…
• Venus: Earth’s twin planet? – Cool pictures to boot.
• No Hoff, and now this? – I guess not all remakes can be as good as Battlestar.
• Feds pushing states on gun database – ‘there is no guarantee that the information wouldn’t be used for other purposes‘. You mean the gov’t isn’t completely trustworthy? I would add the question of competency to that as well…nothing like losing 4 million persons mental health records. But its for our own protection, of course…
• This could never be abused either…
• VA GOP will demand ‘oath’ of February primary voters – I can smell the ’08 confidence…
• And if you screen wasn’t cluttered with enough ads…

Some local, some telco, somebody put together some newsish:

• New development beginning to transform block hit hard by tornado – I’ve been wondering what the deal was with that building. Also in the article is info on Hieronymous Square and the Tim Dwight/Three Bulls project, now named “301” as opposed to the poor choice of “The Vu”, a moniker also belonging to a chain of strip clubs. Click here to see the area they are talking about.
• Bread Garden to move into Tait’s
• Aussie Claims Copper Broadband now 200x Faster
• Verizon discovers symmetry, offers 20/20 symmetrical FiOS service
• Comcast shooting itself in the foot with traffic shaping “explanations”
• Meet Your Future Employee– Supposedly, I belong to the group they are talking about in this article.
• Tancredo Calls ICE Against Durbin Press Conference
• ICANN probing “insider trading” allegations with domain name registrations – a follow up from a previous link about Verisign
• No Joke: Colbert’s Campaign May Run Afoul of Law – And this would be different than whose candidacy?
• Stupid stupid stupid. To reiterate: The current FCC Commisioners are either completely clueless or quite fond of fucking things up. Think I’m blowing up your ass? A small-time ISP employee puts it this way in a Fark comment:
  

  verizon and the other telco’s have no interest in playing ball with the small ISP’s they never have. The only reason they “allowed” us to use their last mile was because the Gov. told them to.

  They have been whittling away at the service offers to ISP’s since day 1. It first started when they stop allowing us to buy in to different markets, they grandfathered you in if you were already there but no longer allow companies to buy new latas. Then when FIOS started they began removing all the copper to the home so their customers had no choice who they would get phone service from because Verizon doesn’t have to share the FIBER network with anyone. So no copper = no phone service from anyone but Verizon, unless you go VOIP. Now they have just been told thatthey no longer need to share anything. This is waht they are going to do.

  They will no longer provide service to independent ISP’s, they will then fire all of the folks they have working at Verizon who deal exclusively with ISP’s (which they have been slowing cutting already anyway). So they will save $ on their employment costs and they will gain a bunch of customers simply by making a software switch in their systems which will point them from their existing ISP to Verizon.

  In our area, resellers would include X-Wires (Qwest) and quite a few of the smaller town cooperatives.

Today’s Vocab Word: noumenon

I eat a burrito after work on Fridays, thusly I call them “Burrito Fridays.” Yes I understand the level of innovation on that naming convention. But thats not why you are here. BRING OUT THE NEWSISH!

• Western Iowans, this is your House Representative. Classy.
• Democratic Lawmaker Pushing Immunity Is Newly Flush With Telco Cash – impropriety is non-partisan
• Anonymous “good samaritans” produce Wikipedia’s best content, says study
• Dodd Will Filibuster Telecom Immunity Bill If Reid Brings It To Vote

Light posting today. Enjoy your weekend.

Today’s vocab word: mantrap