March 09, 2005
Who is a real journalist?
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So - what makes someone a real journalist? Is the guy in this picture a real journalist? He sure is. He's part of the washington press corps and he's president Bush's favorite guy to call on for the "really tough" questions.
You see - blogglers are not only journalists - but they are the only journalists. We still have our freedom as opposed to the networks who are just whitehouse puppets.
For example - today Dan Rather leaves CBS after getting fired by the Bush administration. Presidents get to fire reporters these days. Back in the 1970s Dan Rather was one of the key reporters that led to President Nixon getting fired. Back when the press was free they asserted the freedom of the people to bring down the corrupt government. Now the corrupt government brings dow the media.
To me a real journalist is someone who brings you the real news. When the so called real journalists are really Republican gay male hookers who are hired to parrot the whitehouse line - that's not real journalism. And all the other real journalists know about this and knew about it for the last two years and continue to cover it up.
I find it ammusing that after the CNN report they had a segment reporting on what the bloggers are saying. While the report appears to be about bloggers - it's clear that the mainstream press is now looking at bloggers as a source of news.
Mama Leslie's Cereal Jar
Many of you have been wondering, "Perkel - what makes you so damn smart?" Well - I start the day off with a bowl of cereal from mama Leslie's cereal jar.
This is a trick I picked up from a sturdy wench friend of mine. It's more than just a big glass jar of cereal. It's a way to make cereal any way you want. So many brands of cereal out there and which one to eat? Do I want wheat, or corn, or oats, or rice, or flax seed? Is it too sweet - or not sweet enough? Does it have fiber? And they never put enough fruit or nuts in. So - what do you do?
You buy them all - and combine them any way you want. And that's exactly what I do.
I have about 10 different kinds of cereal and I mix them all together in a big glass jar. I then add lots of raisins - often several kinds of raisins. And the nuts. I have a separate container where I mix the nuts and then add handfulls to the cereal jar. In the container on the side I mix sunflower seeds, walnuts, pecans, almonds, and any other kinds of unsalted ground nuts I can come up with. This makes it easy to add everything at once without having to get out a bunch of little bags of everything.
So - you throw it all together and you mix it all up turning the jar upside down and side to side and it's ready to eat. Never fill the jar more that 80% because it needs room to mix. When the jar gets down to 30% full - you throw in some more cereal and fill it up.
Then when you get up in the morning you just grab a bowl - fill it up - and gobble down the most important meal of the day. It's quick - simple - and probably good for you. So - if you all go out and get you a mama Leslie's cereal jar - maybe someday you can be a dangerous mind like me.
March 08, 2005
Walmart wants truckers to work 16 hours a day
The law restricts truckers to 14 hour work days for traffic safety. Walmart wants to get it up to 16 hours a day. As if 14 hours behind the wheel isn't enough.
I remember back in the early 1980s I used to fix CB radios. I worked at the local truck stop in Strafford Missouri that was located next to the state truck scales. I worked the loot looking for CB radios to fix, or hop up, or add channels to. I had a bag of tools I carried and worked the lot to make a living.
Business was especially good when the "chicken coops were open. Many of these truckers were running overloaded and had to wait till the scales closed so they wouldn't get caught running too heavy.
You see - truckers are pressured into cheating. They are barely making it and are squeezed by high taxes, price of fuel, repairs, regulations, and hungry jurisdictions trying to increase the tax base by robbing the truckers coming through their area. In otder to survive and get home to see their families they will try to get away with driving more than they are allowed to. And if they can work 16 hours a day - the system will force them to do just that.
I remember being out there with the hitchhikers, whores, and drug dealers who would sell truckers "white cross" and methamphedimines so that they can stay awake. I remember one guy who was barely able to stay awake long enough to actually buy the drugs. And he was going to drive non-stop all the way to California. How dangerous is that to the public?
Walmart doesn't give a shit about anyone and they are part of the fascist takove of America. They contributed big time to the Republicans so they will get their way and force truckers to work two more hours a day than they are now. We are all slaves to the man. But we must resist them and stop the deterioriation of honesty.
Syria Speaks!
Letter to the Editor
It's interesting that even though Syria executed the president of Lebanon that the size of the protests against the United States today was far larger than the protests against Syria. I think it speaks to the fact that the rest of the world doesn't trust Bush. Nor should they. We have become the world's biggest threat. In spite of the fact that there are a lot of bad guys out there in the Arab world -the direction we are headed in is far scarier in the long run.
How to beat the high price of gas
Rising gas prices cutting into your lifestyle? I have a way to beat the system. Here are my "secrets to success" that you will find only on Marc Perkel's blog. Here's how it works.
What you do is go out and borrow all the money you can and buy oil company stock. The oil company prices go up because they raise the price of gas and the profits go up and you can buy your gas with what you make in the stock market.
But - you might ask - what if prices go up faster than the stock profits? No problem - borrow more money and buy even more stock. The more people who follow this plan - the faster the stock price goes up. So tell all your friends and neighbors to follow this plan.
Some people might put down this idea and call it wreckless and risky. But this idea has the backing of some of the greatest economic minds in America. Because this is the same plan that Bush and the Republican Party have to "save" Social Security.
Teresa Heinz Kerry speaks out about the Stolen Election
At least someone is finally speaking out. Here's part of an article from the Seattle Post Intelligencer
COUNTING THE VOTES: Heinz Kerry is openly skeptical about results from November's election, particularly in sections of the country where optical scanners were used to record votes.
"Two brothers own 80 percent of the machines used in the United States," Heinz Kerry said. She identified both as "hard-right" Republicans. She argued that it is "very easy to hack into the mother machines."
"We in the United States are not a banana republic," added Heinz Kerry. She argued that Democrats should insist on "accountability and transparency" in how votes are tabulated.
"I fear for '06," she said. "I don't trust it the way it is right now."
March 07, 2005
It's all bad news under Bush
Letter to the Editor
The bad news is coming so fast that I can't write about it all. Do I write about the Italian Journalist being shot? Or the CIA shipping people overseas to be tortured? Or the price of gas going up to record highs? Or the programmer you admitted writing the software to fix the election for Bush? Or that Bush appointed John Bolton, a man who hates the United Nations to the United Nations? Or the destruction of Social Security? Or the ongoing problems like the federal deficit, going deeper and deeper and deeper into debt. The tax cuts for the rich, the war in Iraq, the coming war in Iran - there's just no end to the bad news. If Bush was actually elected - which I don't believe he was - America made a really bad choice.
Jury Duty
I'm supposed to show up for jury duty today. I checked in on the Internet about is and I was supposed to go to http://www.sanmateocourt.org but typed http://www.sanmateocourt.com instead. That web site had a link to another site about juror's rights.
It's an interesting article and the point of it is that as a juror you have the right and duty to override the law if you feel it is unjust -- and -- the government is doing everything they can to keep you from knowing about that. It's called jury nullification which is a term I didn't really like until I found out that it meant jurry nullification of law.
What this means is if you are on a jury and you are told you have to convict someone of a crime that is a bullshit offense - you don't hav to do it. You can find him "not guilty" even if you know for sure that he committed the crime.
The founding fathers gave juries that power so that they can put a human element into the decision making process. The wanted real people to make the final decision and to use their own values to determine if it was "right" to convict someone of a crime. They understood that sometimes the law is imprecise and that someone might have technically committed a crime but the law was being applied in a way that it was never meant to be used. Or - that if a law is just plain unjust then real people can decide to nullify it. It is part of the checks and balances written into the constitution that give 12 people the final decision. A judge has to rule according to the law. A jury does not.
The Article goes into some of the history of why this is so important and how these kinds of decisions have lead to some of our most important freedoms that we enjoy today.
"Jury nullification of law", as it is sometimes called, is a traditional American right defended by the Founding Fathers. Those patriots intended that the jury serve as one of the tests a law must pass through before it assumes enough popular authority to be enforced. Our constitutional designers saw to it that each enactment of law must pass the scrutiny of these tribunals before it gains the authority to punish those who choose to violate any written law. Thomas Jefferson said, "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."
Four decades before Jefferson spoke these words, a jury had established freedom of the press in the colonies by finding John Peter Zenger not guilty of seditious libel. He had been arrested and charged for printing critical but true news stories about the Governor of New York Colony. "Truth is no defense", the court told the jury! But the jury decided to reject bad law, and acquitted.
Why? Because defense attorney Andrew Hamilton informed the jury of its rights: he related the story of William Penn's trial of the courageous London jury which refused to find him guilty of preaching Quaker religious doctrine (at that time an illegal religion). His jurors stood by their verdict even though held without food, water, or toilet facilities for four days. The jurors were fined and imprisoned for refusing to convict William Penn until England's highest court acknowledged their right to reject both law and fact and to find a verdict according to conscience. It was exercise of that right in Penn's trial which eventually led to recognition of free speech, freedom of religion, and of peaceable assembly as individual rights.
American colonial juries regularly thwarted bad law sent over from mother England. Britain then retaliated by restricting both trial by jury and other rights which juries had won or protected. Result? The Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution!
It is your duty to think for yourselves. The judge will not instruct you to do this. In fact may judges are hostile to your rights and duties as jurors.
About 18 months ago, armed with a number of pamphlets explaining the importance to each of us in having the courts fully inform juries of their rights, I stood in the Mendocino County Courthouse. I had been talking about this issue, with courthouse visitors when I was "invited" into Judge James Luther's courtroom by two of his bailiffs. Judge Luther, showed me how in general our courts have eroded. I was told to stop talking to my fellow citizens about their constitutional rights. Their right to understand a jury's role in the court procedure. I was told to stop or be arrested for jury tampering.
March 06, 2005
Saving Social Security
Letter to the Editor
President Bush and I have different views on how to save Social Security. His plan is to destroy Social Security and give the money to his rich friends. My plan to save Social Security is for the people to rise up against the Republicans and take back America before they destroy everything. That is the only way we are going to save Social Security and everything else America stands for.
Programmer comes forward revealing he wrote the code to steal the election
If Clinton were stealing elections - do you think the news media would cover it?
In December 2004, computer programmer Clint Curtis swore in an affidavit that he was asked in 2000 by (now) US Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) to design a software prototype that could "flip" the vote in South Florida voting machines.
That affidavit was first published by blogger Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com. Shortly thereafter, Curtis, in sworn public testimony, shared the details of this story with Democratic members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee who were investigating election fraud charges in Ohio. [video]
In 2000, Curtis was working for a Florida software company called Yang Enterprises Inc. (YEI). Feeney, who was then the incoming Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, was, at the same time, general counsel for YEI and its registered lobbyist. He had previously been Jeb Bush's 1994 running mate for Florida Governor and continues to be a close ally of the Bush family.
Feeney has refused public comment on the matter, while YEI and their attorney (Feeney's former law partner) have denied such an event took place. But the alibis of both Feeney and YEI have been repeatedly discredited and debunked by the reporting of Brad Friedman since December.
Clint Curtis, on the other hand, has a solid record as a whistleblower. He told Florida officials that another YEI employee, an illegal Chinese alien named Hai Lin "Henry" Nee, was engaged in high-tech espionage for China. Nee was subsequently indicted by the feds on related charged and pled guilty last year. YEI's CEO, Mrs. Li-Woan Yang, still denies that Nee worked for them, despite federal reports and weekly time records published on The BRAD BLOG which prove otherwise.
The Florida Inspector General who originally investigated Curtis' claims was found dead in a Georgia motel room two weeks after he told Curtis that "this goes all the way to the top." Police called it a "suicide," but Friedman has discovered a number of troubling new facts and inconsistencies about the police "investigation" (which was re-opened after Friedman's reporting emerged on the Internet) including photographs of the crime scene which the police had previously said in their report did not exist.
Clint Curtis' story has quietly rocked top Republicans from Tallahassee to Capitol Hill. Newspaper accounts of Curtis' affidavit and testimony have been published in various local papers (Feeney's hometown letter received a legal threat from both Feeney and YEI when they ran their story), yet the national media has largely been silent on this story despite the reams of public records, court documents and other hard evidence which confirm Curtis' story while continually debunking both Feeney's and YEI's explanations.