Oh Crap, A Republican! [comic]

 

GOP’s Yellow Brick Road [comic]

Should I Use My Browser’s Do-Not-Track Setting?

Wired reports –

Judging by the frenzied claims of lawmakers like US representative Jackie Speier, enabling the Do Not Track feature ranks up there with locking doors and shredding credit card statements. “People have a right to surf the web without Big Brother watching their every move and announcing it to the world,” Speier said last February,when she introduced a bill to regulate online tracking. But none of that really matters, since the setting has no legal muscle. Websites are free to ignore it. And they do. As of June, only five had pledged to follow it—the Associated Press plus four of the hundreds of behavior-tracking ad networks whose raison d’èAtre is figuring out how you view the web.

So, the bottom line is that the ‘Do Not Track’ setting may make you feel better, but it does does no good – just like the Tea Party.

Continue reading the Wired article HERE.

 

 

St. Louis Tea Party’s Planned Protest Of Obama’s Birthday Cancelled Due To Lack Of Support

STL Today reports –

On Thursday, the day Tea Party nemesis Barack Obama turned 50, the local conservative group had planned to hold yet another rally in Kiener Plaza, the stage for several previous successful Tea Party events. But it turns out that everything slows down in August, even the ardent opposition to big government and federal spending. Writing on the group’s website, St. Louis Tea Party organizer Bill Hennessy said Thursday’s rally had been canceled for, among other reasons, a lack of enthusiasm. “Moreover, we received exactly three positive responses to news of the event,” Hennessy wrote. “Maybe because no one heard or because everyone thought it was lame.”

Continue reading HERE.

Middle Class Republicans Are Dumb Asses – Bill Maher [video]

FCC To Launch Disaster Alert System For Cell Phones – Only For High End Phones

Cnet reports –

The Federal Communications Commission is expanding its familiar emergency alert system notifications sent over TV and radio to now include mobile phones. Dubbing the new service PLAN (Personal Localized Alerting Network), the government would target the alerts in the form of text messages sent to cell phones of people who need or want to be notified in the event of an emergency. Developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), PLAN would allow customers of any participating wireless carrier to turn their phones into personal alert systems. The service will initially launch in New York City by the end of this year but is expected to roll out nationwide in 2012 through support from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile. To receive the alerts, a mobile phone must be outfitted with a certain hardware chip, typically found in higher-end phones like the newer iPhone, according to The New York Times. A software upgrade is also required.

Continue reading HERE.

Arizona Governor Initiates Death Panels

(Reuters) – A pacemaker and defibrillator fitted to carpenter Douglas Gravagna’s failing heart makes even rising from the couch of his Phoenix-valley home a battle. But it is not congestive heart failure that is killing him, he says. It is a decision by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to stop funding for some organ transplants as the state struggles to reduce a yawning budget deficit. “She’s signing death warrants — that’s what she’s doing. This is death for me,” says Gravagna, 44, a heavy-set man who takes 14 medications to stay alive. Gravagna is among 98 people denied state Medicaid funding for potentially life-saving transplants and at the forefront of a harrowing battle over the state’s public finances.

Continue reading HERE.