Following a laughable United Nations declaration that high-speed internet access is a basic human right, the Obama Administration is investing north of $400 million to expand broadband into poor, rural areas of the U.S.*snip*
Here is the reasoning: “Given that the internet has become an indispensable tool for realizing a range of human rights, combating inequality and accelerating development and human progress, ensuring universal access to the internet should be a priority for all states,” the famously corrupt world body says in its report. The U.N. also demands that governments offer special “internet literacy skills” training to help the underserved with computer skills. This could very well be the Obama Administration’s next publicly-funded project.
Note to JEM: We are broke. Stop spending. Now. Just STOP IT. We already ensure that poor people have a roof over their head, heat, health care, and food. If they can't afford food, how will they afford computers? And we're REALLY going to create yet another gov't agency to teach rural people how to use the internet? REALLY? A few years ago we paid a gazillion dollars to convert poor people to digital television; please explain to me why we can't give them internet access through that connection. Do we no longer have the scientific minds to figure out how to do this?
And what about our crumbling infrastructure? Antiquated water systems, an electrical grid that is 3rd world-ish, and bridges long past their intended lifespan; shouldn't we be spending what little we have on THOSE problems?
Is there not anything for which in individual is not personally responsible? Not only are we supposed to provide people with everything so that they can spend their time getting degrees in such useful subject as trans-gender studies, we are supposed to write-off their student loans when they don't find $100K a year jobs right out of school.
ReplyDeleteThese people have no real idea how real life works. Not only do these people want the productive to provide for themselves and their families, but the productive are also supposed to supposed to provide for an ever-increacing sloth-class.
It is insane.
You hit the nail on the head, lady red, as always.
ReplyDeleteThe JEM digusts me beyond belief.
Well said, Matt, well said.
ReplyDeleteI'm so done. Truly.
ReplyDelete*puke*
The U.N. also demands that governments offer special “internet literacy skills” training to help the underserved with computer skills.
ReplyDeleteVikram has been sent by New Delhi to attend to the needs of the American boomers.
From where else to you think Vikram came?
There's some kind of wheel involved here, isn't there? I think I've become horribly confused as to how the world works.
ReplyDeleteYes, Luther. I think it's a hamster wheel. I think we're the hamsters.
ReplyDeleteA few years ago we paid a gazillion dollars to convert poor people to digital television; please explain to me why we can't give them internet access through that connection. Do we no longer have the scientific minds to figure out how to do this?
ReplyDeleteCan't give up the airwaves yet. I'm my dictatorship, I'd ban TV and all spectrum everywhere would belong to the internet. But I'm not dictator. Yet.
Of course it's possible to get by on the scraps - no great scientific minds necessary. You just need to cut some corners on things like GPS and grease some palms.
Lewy said ...
ReplyDeleteOf course it's possible to get by on the scraps ...
Until recently I was an optimist and agreed. Not anymore. I still read the Wall Street Journal and it infuriates me every day in several places. Long ago canceled The Economist as pap. Forget any local rags, pure drivel.
Not sure how I devolved in to such a cynical pessimist. I don't like it and it does reduce how much I participate in blogs or personal conversations ... I reek negativity. Who needs that.
Just a few items ....
1. Detroit? You want to move to downtown Detroit? You better have one of those $100K+ jobs if you plan on much, $1800 per month will get you a 1400 SF one/BR loft plus add parking costs plus no grocery within 5 miles. Great fun.
2. Wall Street? Hah! Nothings changed from what I can divine ... and Fanny and Freddie just got another increase in loan guarantee ceiling. Every day another scam or fraud is revealed, and most of the time the USG us hip deep in it. GE makes $14 Billion and pays not a penny in income taxes? The list is endless.
3. Twelve people sit down to trim the budget, and have a 10 year window ... a pitiful and insufficient framework anyway. Can they get it done? No and hell no. What part of "we're broke" don't they get? Why do they think throwing money at problems, without reducing spending, solves them? Cronyism is the main MO in Washington, period.
Now I KNOW that the feds can make cuts, from personal experience. Without being forced to do so we ( I oversaw it) reduced my office size by 65%+ and our budget by more than that ... with no loss in productivity ... actually the work load increased without pain.
I just may regress to reading comic books sooner than later.
First of all, please forgive my Percocet induced lack of response to the well wishers. The surgery went well and I now have a nice collection of stainless steel bone hardware sitting on my desk.
ReplyDeleteSecondly and to the subject, Lady Red, what an absurdity, isn't it. Here we are broker than hell, spending money on something that in the long run doesn't make a damn bit of difference, except to create more jobs in government.
Thirdly. Lewy, my vast reading ain't worth a damn when I can't put it to practical use. Somehow, when I saw Vikram and India in the same sentence it somehow projected me into the karmic wheel. If I were smart enough I'd connect that all together, but forget it.
Fourth, Ari. Comcast decided to empty my entire 'Inbox' all of a sudden. Perhaps just a space saving measure on their part, but a pain in mine. I lost the thread.
Ari, you don't reek of negativity. You're a realist. Those terms can sometimes seem the same but they really aren't. Comic books aren't all that bad.
All the news seems bad nowadays, that's a fact. But we're all still breathing, still eating, still have a warm place to sleep at night.
Okay, the Percoset gave me a brief window, it is fading now.
Back to the wheel... it is a cycle. For each full turn we get a little smarter, a little finer, a little more discerning. It seems more like a race to the end that has been going on for forty thousand years than something that just sprung up.
Luther, glad to know the metal is on the outside and the drugs are on the inside. All is well.
ReplyDelete"If fate is a wheel, then we are the sand that is crushed between the cogs. We are helpless; all we want is power. Even if we can’t protect others by extending our hands we desire a blade for those hands to grasp. The power to crush one’s fate must look like a blade swinging down…" -- Ichigo.
"Revolving... If fate is a wheel, we are the cogs that drive it. We have no choice but to believe that this wheel is flawless and forge on ahead. The power of the individual cogs and their destinations... And the blade that is brought down upon them." -- Rukia
From Bleach, episode 109... the English dubbed version has a slightly different translation; I like them both.
Ari... comic books... yeah. I'm with ya.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading Habibi right now. Giant tome of a graphic novel. Insanely good. Can't keep reading it straight; it's too intense; also can't put it down for any length of time. Highly recommended.
Glad you're now on the road to healing, Luther. God Speed.
ReplyDeleteHugs to you Luther!
ReplyDeleteAridog, you don't reek negativity. You have a good mind and you're not blind to the appalling landslide of Marxist CRAP oozing downhill and infiltrating our lives.
Mooch got booed yesterday at NASCAR. GOOD.
Luther ... Re: Comcast email.
ReplyDeleteI hope I'm understanding what you said here ...
I have used Comcast for years, but I don't use it to write and save email ...(Only exception is road trips with my travel Laptop, where I use Comcast eMail via webmail, for short periods)... I presume you're using Windows, XP or 7. It comes with "Outlook Express" (or if you have Microsoft Office you also have the more featured full "Outlook").
You should configure it for your email receiver/sender from/to Comcast, setting Comcast to forward all email to Outlook and not save a copy (delete the copy). That way Comcast mail box is never full, nor is anything deleted that has been sent to Outlook or Outlook Express.
There are other stand alone email/calender software packages out there as well if you don't like Outlook.
Outlook generally lets you save up 1800-1900 messages per folder, and allows you to create as many folders as you like, including archives. If you get 1800 messages stacked up in your Outlook inbox, well ... you're worse than me in the lazy arse department ... not easy to accomplish.
I'm sure Mac/Apple has similar eMail handlers on board, then you just use the ISP as the courier, not the processor.
For the record, without checking exactly, I have all messages sorted and saved since about year 2000 or before, both work and personal, from both my own PC and my prior work PC and work servers. I don't have to remember what I said, or anyone else said, I have it on file, more or less. It has been handy ... especially in that $10K fiduciary issue I've mentioned before when the Army & US Bank tried to chase me home. I won, they lost. As it should be. Victory to the prepared!! Ya Vohl!! :D
Shit ... proof reading is my friend...
ReplyDeleteThat way Comcast mail box is never full, nor is anything deleted that has NOT been sent to Outlook or Outlook Express.
Lewy ... you want intense (as in if you put it down, you loose track, go numb, etc.) try Henryk Sienkiewicz's (author of "Quo Vadis") historical novel trilogy "With Fire and Sword", "The Deluge", and "Fire in the Steppe."
ReplyDeleteSend up smoke signals if you survive it. Makes "War & Peace" light reading and rivals "The Brothers Karamazov" (Dostoyevsky)for imbroglio ... fitting in that "Brothers" was to be part of an epic series, also, but for the author's death.
I'd had to read Dostoyevsky in college, so I kind of knew what I was getting in to with a part Tarter (distant)/Polish author in Russian controlled turn of the century Poland.
Now that I think about it, I truly believe both Dostoyevsky and Sienkiewicz would be baffled by present day Washington DC and US governance.
Lady Red ... Thank you for your confidence. You're right I'm not blind to the crap shoveled our way today ... I just wish I was. Even the "little" things irritate now ...
ReplyDelete1. The MIA traveling President during serious debt negotiations ... that are going no where. From experience I can almost guarantee that every department and agency can cut between 15% and 25% immediately without ill effect...and cut every agency and see where we are before even looking at defense. First step is a moratorium on any new rule making by any agency for three years minimum, and a requirement that "rules" be reduced, line by line, by 25% or more within those three years. Reason is this: "rules" require staff to enable and enforce...for each any every rule, more bodies. Just-cut-the-crap. Period.
2. On a less than national or global scale, the Penn State scandal vis a vis Jerry Sandusky is telling. I think about it and cannot fathom it. I am enraged. Have our values and character slipped this far?
What I think:
1. Every one of the personnel in the entire football department should be fired (not laterally transferred), without pension, no exceptions ... impossible for them not to have known something long ago in the on going debacle where a retired coach is still on campus in facility showers with young boys. Then shut the football program down completely for 2 years and give every current player a 2 year NCAA extension of eligibility with which to transfer elsewhere.
2. Prosecute everyone they can, including the coward pussy ass punk Mike McQueary, the guy who witnessed the instance of anal rape of a 10 year old and essentially did nothing. Nothing?!!!!! A normal "man" would have beat the shit out of Sandusky (with a chair leg if necessary) and made sure the boy was removed from his clutches and taken directly to the municipal police. He didn't, he "reported it" to other management types. Years passed. WTF??!!!!!
Aridog, the black, evil abyss of the Penn State football program has sickened me beyond words. How could this happen? How could SO MANY adults turn their backs on such depravity?
ReplyDeleteI truly believe that it must have been an open secret among universities nation-wide. Why else would Sandusky retire at such a young age, with no coaching offers? Why was it kept so hush-hush by coaches and admins in other schools?
McQueary should be tried and thrown in prison until he fucking rots. So should the janitor who witnessed another assault. All the coaches and admins should be FIRED and possibly prosecuted as well. ALL OF THEM.
I think we're all sick to death of him. I personally cannot abide the sound of his voice for even a few seconds.
ReplyDeleteWhat amuses me in a perverse way is the whole idea that this was about "cuts." No "cuts" ever were involved, only tiny reductions in additional spending, money we don't have, above and beyond our revenue income. It is NOT savings or a cut if you merely reduce spending what you do not have by a token amount.
ReplyDeleteYou could say they plan to increase spending by a dollar a second, and might, maybe, reduce that by a dime. Hah. x(
Meanwhile, we are entering the fourth year of no passed budget (and the only Congressional budget presented at all was Paul Ryan's) and operating on Continuing Resolutions, the last of which had to be signed by traveler in chief via remote auto-pen, since they couldn't get it done while he was in town.
Now that sounds almost like a savings since CR's are supposed to be limited to 95% max of the prior year's expenditures and no new starts. Bwahahahaha!! You will note that our spending has still increased, right? Lots of cloaked off-budget "appropriations" sneak through and under a CR there is little accountability. As a "Fed" I've been there, seen that.