July 5, 2015

According to Jeb, Trump's off-key message is because he's a recovering Democrat

Jeb Bush said Donald Trump doesn't represent the views of most Republicans, offering his most aggressive comments so far on the real estate titan who's used inflammatory language when talking about immigrants.

"This is a guy who was a Democrat for most of the last decade. I don't think he represents the Republican Party, and his views are way out of the mainstream of what most Republicans think," Bush told reporters after an Independence Day parade in Merrimack, New Hampshire, according to The New York Times.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/04/politics/bush-trump-immigrants/

BZZZT! Game Over. Thank you for playing. Better luck next time, Jeb.

July 4, 2015

Since we're bent on remembering the Civil War this 4th of July, Remember Fort Wagner

To those waving the treasonous rag of the confederacy this 4th of July, remember this sacrifice.

Fort Wagner and the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry



Colonel Robert Shaw

Tired, hungry and proud, the black soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry stood in the light of the setting sun and awaited the call to battle on the evening of July 18, 1863. The air was filled with the rumble of big guns, and the very ground on Morris Island, South Carolina, trembled beneath their feet. The regiment’s baptism of fire had come only two days before, but the memories of that sharp skirmish had already begun to fade in the shadow of the awesome task that now lay before them.

The path that had brought these determined men to the embattled sands of South Carolina had been a long one, born of idealism and fraught with difficulty. That they had succeeded in the face of bigotry and doubt was due in great measure to the colonel who led them. Slight and fair-haired, Robert Gould Shaw appeared even younger than his 25 years. But despite his initial trepidations, the Harvard-educated son of abolitionist parents had assumed the weighty responsibilities of command, and never wavered in his fervent resolve to show friend and foe alike that black soldiers were the fighting equals of their white counterparts.

Suddenly, a mounted general and his staff rode up before the assembled ranks. The officer was handsome and smartly dressed, and grasped the reins of his prancing gray steed with white-gloved hands. Brigadier General George C. Strong pointed down the stretch of sand to the sinister hump of a Confederate earthwork that loomed amidst the roiling smoke and spitting fire of the guns. Loudly, Strong asked, ‘Is there a man here who thinks himself unable to sleep in that fort tonight?’ ‘No!’ shouted the 54th.

The general called out the bearer of the national colors, and grasped the flag. ‘If this man should fall, who will lift the flag and carry it on?’ After the briefest of pauses, Shaw stepped forward, and taking a cigar from between his teeth responded, ‘I will.’ The colonel’s pledge elicited what Adjutant Garth Wilkinson James later described as ‘the deafening cheers of this mighty host of men, about to plunge themselves into the fiery vortex of hell:’


http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/batterywagner/battery-wagner-history-articles/fortwagnerpohanka.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/



William Carney - 54th Massachusetts. Medal of Honor Winner

July 2, 2015

We’ve finally hit the breaking point for the original Internet

It's finally happened. The North American organization responsible for handing out new IP addresses says its banks have run dry.

That's right: ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers, has had to turn down a request for the unique numbers that we assign to each and every smartphone, tablet and PC so they can talk to the Internet. For the first time, ARIN didn't have enough IP addresses left in its stock to satisfy an entire order — and now, it's activated the end-times protocol that will see the few remaining addresses out into the night.

IP addresses are crucial to the operation of the Internet. They're the numbers behind URLs like "google.com" or "facebook.com." They identify every device that connects to the Web, from servers to connected cars. The original designers of the Internet thought they'd only need around 4 billion unique combinations, derived from the series of dots and digits that make up IP addresses everywhere.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/07/02/weve-finally-hit-the-breaking-point-for-the-original-internet/

June 29, 2015

Planned Obsolescence and why Capitalism Can Never Deliver a perfect product

Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence in industrial design is a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life, so it will become obsolete, that is, unfashionable or no longer functional after a certain period of time. The rationale behind the strategy is to generate short-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases (referred to as "shortening the replacement cycle&quot , until customers catch on and move to another product platform.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

This is why pharmaceutical companies have no vested interest in finding permanent cures to any disease. If they did, they would go out of business. Instead, they focus on temporary cures. Why? because money, not society's wellbeing is the primary value in a capitalist society.

This is why we don't have light bulbs that last forever. Why, because once you sell it to one customer you can never sell to that customer ever again.

This is why addictive drugs like tobacco are the perfect product from a capitalist perspective.

If we ever want to solve a problem for good, we cannot rely on capitalism to deliver it; it is not in the best interest of corporations.

To solve it, we must look to the best interest of society and its people first, and that requires a socialist perspective.

June 27, 2015

Hey, Donald? This is what a real Mexican Immigrant looks like

Nora D. Volkow, M.D., became Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health in May 2003. NIDA supports most of the world’s research on the health aspects of drug abuse and addiction.



Dr. Volkow’s work has been instrumental in demonstrating that drug addiction is a disease of the human brain. As a research psychiatrist and scientist, Dr. Volkow pioneered the use of brain imaging to investigate the toxic effects and addictive properties of abusable drugs. Her studies have documented changes in the dopamine system affecting, among others, the functions of frontal brain regions involved with motivation, drive, and pleasure in addiction. She has also made important contributions to the neurobiology of obesity, ADHD, and aging.

Dr. Volkow was born in Mexico, attended the Modern American School, and earned her medical degree from the National University of Mexico in Mexico City, where she received the Robins award for best medical student of her generation. Her psychiatric residency was at New York University, where she earned the Laughlin Fellowship Award as one of the 10 Outstanding Psychiatric Residents in the USA.


http://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/directors-page/biography-dr-nora-volkow


PS: She is also a direct descendant of León Trotsky.

June 27, 2015

Jaime 'El Bronco' Rodriguez rides into power as governor as Mexico punishes government corruption

The horse-riding, tough-talking Jaime “El Bronco” Rodriguez survived two assassination attempts from drug cartels as mayor of a suburb of Monterrey.

Now, in an election marred by violence, Mr Rodriguez has won the governor’s race in the Mexican border state of Nuevo Leon, ousting the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) from a key state that includes the business hub of Monterrey.

Mr Rodriguez’s election as the first independent governor is seen as a protest against party politics. President Enrique Peña Nieto’s PRI lost legislative seats in Sunday’s vote. Mr Rodriguez said after his election: “I think in the whole country, this will help the political parties to renew and transform themselves so they can be better.”

He said his first action as governor would be to attack corruption. “We have to investigate the entire previous government,” he said.




http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/jaime-el-bronco-rodriguez-rides-into-power-as-governor-as-mexico-punishes-government-corruption-10306075.html





Survived two assassination attempts... What they don't say, and what made him famous and respected, is that in one of those assassination attempts, after having escaped, returned to the fight to rescue his body guards. One of them died in his arms. He has lost one son (murdered) and had a daughter kidnapped....

And he has not given up.


That's why he earned the nickname: "El Bronco" (The untamed)

June 25, 2015

So, I hear the Supremes looked into the Abyss, calculated the odds of a Republican rout in 2016...

And stepped back.

Obamacare lives, so that repugs have a fighting chance to survive the next election cycle.

June 23, 2015

Coffee?

https://www.facebook.com/choforon/videos/10153025818002169

Cafétl deslactosadotl con dos de spelndatl = Coffee, lactose free milk, two splendas...

June 23, 2015

If you're racist and you know it, fly the flag

If you're racist and you know it, fly the flag (wave wave)
If you're racist and you know it, fly the flag (wave wave)
If you're racist and you know it, then your rage will surely show it
If you're racist and you know it, fly the flag. (wave)

June 21, 2015

I never did get to see the ending

Saw it in the theater with my girlfriend.

Half way through the movie, they shut it down and asked us to evacuate.

When we left the theater, we saw an angry red sky from horizon to horizon.

A refinery less than a mile away was on fire.

Got to see a cracking tower take off like a rocket, summer-sault in the air, and crash back on top of some tanks... More explosions.

Chaos and confusion.

I remember driving back into the subdivision behind the refinery, where my house was located. Stopped by a cordon of Mexican soldiers in green uniforms and rifles at the ready.

I remember pushing one of them with my truck until he stepped aside and let me through only to be stopped cold several blocks later by a barricade of vehicles.

I raced the last few blocks on foot, feeling the heat coming from the refinery to my right on my face, expecting the whole thing to blow up at any moment.

I made it home, checked that there was nobody there, and ran back out.

I hitched a ride on the way out on a vehicle that was still just leaving the subdivision. My girlfriend still with me.

We got back to my truck and raced as fast as we could to safety.

Cars were crashing into each other every other block, as people ignored traffic signals and ran red lights.

We managed to make it out of the city and to the ranch, about 15 miles outside the city limits.

From there we watched until the fires were brought back under control.

Many dead. Some refinery workers died closing safety valves and draining tanks to reduce the damage.

That was 39 years ago.

I never did get to see the ending of the movie.