Say Anything Blog

Fox News Reports on the situation:

Arizona State University may have less cheerful sidelines at sporting events next season.

After racy photos of members of the university’s cheerleading squad were spotted on a campus blog called “The Dirty,” the school cut the squad completely, MyFOXPhoenix reported.

The school’s athletic director, Lisa Love, made the decision Thursday evening.The pictures on the blog feature 6 of the cheerleaders posing in nothing but their bras and panties.

Although only six members of the squad are shown in the photographs, the entire 16-member squad will suffer the consequences, MyFOXPhoenix reported.

The cheerleaders told MyFOXPhoenix that the photographs were a result of college kids goofing off, and they believe the decision to disband the team has been in the works for a while. The photographs are two years old, and were taken at a “cheer party.”

First off, GO DEVILS!  Makes me proud to be a Sun Devil myself.  And since I have this weird male quirk of enjoying looking at scantily clad 20 year old cheerleaders, especially ASU Cheerleaders, I did a little research and got the link to the post at the Dirty that contains all the pics.

The Media wants to ensure there is a recession even if consumers and the economy will not cooperate:

For practical purposes, the positive growth numbers are just a technicality. It feels like a recession to American workers, consumers and businesses. A period of significant weakness could persist for months to come, perhaps well into 2009.

What’s equally notable, however, is that this downturn is unfurling slowly and in a muted fashion despite the shocks of soaring energy and food costs and a plunge in real-estate wealth.

Some economists even raise the possibility of something unprecedented in records since World War II: that economic officials will declare a recession even as gross domestic product continues to rise.

In the current economic cycle, much of the direct impact of a consumer slowdown is being felt overseas rather than in the domestic economy.

“In some sense the recession has been outsourced,” as people postpone purchases of BMW cars and South Korean flat-screen TVs while still paying for rent or child care, says Mark Vitner, an economist at Wachovia Corp., a banking firm in Charlotte, N.C. “If you look at the composition of these numbers . . . it really begs the question of whether we’re going to see a decline of GDP at all in 2008.”

For a couple of years now, America’s hunger for imported goods has been cooling, generally rising but at a decelerating pace. In some recent quarters, the pace of imports has actually fallen.

One rule-of-thumb definition of a recession is two quarters when growth turns negative.

All recessions since at least the 1940s, for example, have seen some period of decline in the production of goods and services.

Some economists believe that this year will see such a decline. But they also add that, even without negative growth, a recession may exist based on other criteria such as jobs and income.

“It’s possible,” says Peter Kretzmer, an economist at the Bank of America in New York.

Recessions are officially declared by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private organization in Cambridge, Mass.

Moral of the story-even if we are not in a recession, economists in Cambridge can make shit up and declare one anyway.

Consumer spending is not declining here at home, but imports are slowing.  Why is that?  It is because the American Dollar is weakening and imports are becoming more expensive. 

This is more Clinton crap.  “I feel your pain” even if there is only a little bit of pain.  Dems and the media will create fake pain that does not exist.

How is this any different than Dems being vested in Global Warming to the point that they will ignore the fact that since 1998, the Earth has cooled?  Call it Climate Change not global warming.  How do they ignore the fact that they want a recession, but none exists?  Change how they define a recession.  How do they ignore the real and tangible progress being made in Iraq?  Move the goal posts and talk about political progress and reconciliation.

Dems want a recession, the Earth to boil, and troops to die.  It suits their political agenda and when there is cause for some optomism and when things are actually going well for the American people, they lie about what is going on.

Why did I find myself chuckling at this piece in the Arizona Repugnant:

Struggling with mounting debt and rising prices, faced with the toughest economic times since the early 1990s, Americans are selling prized possessions online and at flea markets at alarming rates.

To meet higher gas, food and prescription-drug bills, they are selling off grandmother’s dishes and their own belongings. Some of the household purging has been extremely painful - families forced to part with heirlooms.

“This is not about downsizing. It’s about needing gas money,” said Nancy Baughman, founder of eBizAuctions, an online-auction service she runs out of her garage in Raleigh, N.C. One formerly affluent customer is now unemployed and had to unload Hermes leather jackets and Versace jeans and silk shirts…

In Daleville, Ala., Ellona Bateman-Lee has turned to eBay and flea markets to empty her three-bedroom mobile home of DVDs, VCRs, stereos and televisions.

She said she needs the cash to help pay for soaring food and utility bills and mounting health-care expenses since her husband, Bob, suffered an electric shock on the job as a dump truck driver in 2006 and is now disabled.

Among her most painful sales: her grandmother’s teakettle. She sold it for $6 on eBay.

“My grandmother raised me, so it hurt,” she said. “We’ve had bouts here and there, but we always got by. This time it’s different.”

OK, so the economy was so good that one customer used to buy Versace jeans and Hermes leather jackets, then lost her job.  Now she has to sell them.  Or how about the economy being so good that another person living in a trailer home whose husband was a dump truck driver being able to collect DVDs, VCRs, stereos, and TVs.

It is a tough economy when people lose their jobs and have to sell their Versace jeans and DVD players.  These people need our help.  We need a government program to ensure that they get to live in total luxury.  Barack is going to save these people from the clutches of middle class living.

When GDP grows at .6% and the media is so deep in recession predictions that they look like fools, they start making shit up.  Just like they have tried to portray our military vets from Iraq as psychopaths despite clear evidence that they suffer from only slightly more cases of mental illness than the general population.

When Iraq stops being an issue and the economy is not in recession, the news must go on.

Run one single time for one single office as a Republican, yet run 8 years later as an oddball conspiracy theorist Independent for the presidential ticket with Lyndon LaRouche, and when you molest your kids, you are a prominent Republican:

A daughter of a civil rights icon who served as a top lieutenant to Martin Luther King Jr. testified Monday that her father regularly molested her beginning when she was 6 years old.

The Rev. James L. Bevel pleaded not guilty to a charge of incest before jury selection began Monday. Prosecutors have said he had sex with a teenage daughter years ago, and told her the sex was part of religious training.

The daughter testified she grew up in a communal lifestyle in which she regularly saw her father having sex with women and she came to perceive her own molestation as normal…

Bevel, 71, was a leading figure in the civil rights movement and was with King when he was assassinated 40 years ago. He also is credited with helping to conceive and organize the Million Man March.

In the 1980s, Bevel became active in Republican Party politics and unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 1984.

Ran as an independent for the Presidency in 1992 as part of a nutjob conspiracy ticket but because he ran in 1984 as a Republican and molested someone, he was active in Republican politics.  I beat RBB to it.  Surprised that he didn’t see “Republican”, “incest”, and “molest” in some meta search that he does and already post it. 

It appears that the media works about as objectively as RBB.  If you can find a way to call someone a Republican and they commit a crime, do it.

Here is a Link to the Station Manager.  Stop screwing around with these guys directly.  Take the beef to their station manager, Clear Channel, and their advertisers.

It is rare that “professionals” in broadcasting or journalism would display such contempt towards bloggers and other writers on the internet as Walton and Johnson have shown to the readers and writers at Say Anything Blog.  They flat out plagarized a post by a contributor at SAB, but when it was pointed out, decided to double down and send out profane and rude e-mails to the folks that complained.

Simply having a show that is “on the edge” and “appeals to adult men” with whatever humor they profess to use is one thing.  Using other people’s work and passing it off as their own is another.

Clear Channel and this station have ethical standards as do most professionals in broadcasting.  These hosts apparently do not.  Consistently the webmaster as well as contributors at Say Anything Blog have tried to simply get an acknowledgement and an appology from the hosts and they have sent e-mails back that included statements as shockingly unprofessional as “fuck off”.

While the bloggers and readers of blogs out there may not be in your general area or folks that your advertisers are specifically targetting, the next step should the hosts fail to appologize and attribute the work to the appropriate author will be to begin contacting advertisers and contacting representatives of Clear Channel themselves.

Thank you for your prompt response and attention to this matter.

Check out their description of their show:

The W&J Radio Show is one of the most respected and universally imitated radio programs in the nation. No show has a more unique mix of “stream of consciousness,” opinionated and compelling talk, celebrity guest, musical elements, fictional characters and famous impersonations, great skit writing and production coupled with powerful interaction that radio audiences seem to appreciate.

They lift their jokes from the internet and then try to pass if off as their own.  Universally imitated?  That is because you steal the shit from other folks on the web, not because they want to be like you.

ASSHATS!

Check this post at their BLOG which I find ironic since they basically have e-mailed “fuck you’s” to bloggers when we question their ethics.

I am gonna hotlink since ettiquette does not apply to these asshats. I linked to their picture at their site, but the image is at all you can upload so they don't ban us from hotlinking.



Notice that the image has a fucking watermark of their show.  Yet here is another copy floating around the net without their watermark on it:



Posting someone else’s joke or someone else’s photo or something from an e-mail forward is perfectly acceptable.  You simply link back to them and offer the simple (h/t) that says thanks for turning me onto this.  A bit of web ettiquette that Jay Tea at Wizbangblog made part of my behavior on the web.

Go through the images on their BLOG that are nothing more than them lifting pictures from e-mails that someone forwarded.

These guys are dirtbags of the highest order.  When kids do this in high school or college, they are thrown out of school.  Apparently these guys never made it to high school to learn their lessons.

By the UN’s own Humanitarian Briefing in April 2003:

Humanitarian Briefing, 16 Apr 2003
Transcript of the UN humanitarian briefing in Amman, Jordan
Geoffrey Keele, Spokesman for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

There has been an outbreak of Blackwater Fever in southern Iraq. This is a waterborne disease also know as Laeshmaniasis.

The Iraqi Refugee Aid Council has told us of 100 cases in Amarah, 70 cases in Nasariya, and an unspecified number of cases in Az Zubair. The ages of the victims are not known, however, Blackwater Fever can be fatal and children under five are the most vulnerable to contracting it.

This disease - spread mainly by sand-flies—causes malnutrition and anaemia and can kill weaker, malnourished children (although no fatalities have been reported in these towns so far).

Symptoms of the disease include fever, weakness, discolouration, bloated stomach due to swollen organs, and black coloured urine due to hemorrhaging. If not treated within 4-6 weeks it leads to severe debility and eventually death.

Given this, our biggest concern is that the first cases of the fever were reported in February before the outbreak of the war. UNICEF immediately procured the drugs needed to treat the fever, but war broke out before we could get them into the country.

At that time, 100 cases had been discovered from Thiqar governorate in the south, to Babylon in the north. These are areas we still do not have access to, and 90% of cases could die without medicine (PENTOSTAM).

UNICEF has 1,000 doses of the medicine and we were able to send 100 vials of it to Nasriya yesterday. In an excellent example of UN - media cooperation, we sent in the life saving medicine with a German television crew. We hope to send 200 vials to Amarah tomorrow.

Nine Trucks caring clean water to the Fao peninsula left Iran today and entered Iraq at the Shalamcheh border crossing. Three other trucks were unable to cross today, but will cross tomorrow instead.

Named after Blackwater, the E-V-I-L Contracting Mercenary company... right?!?!? Liberal heads exploding in 3... 2... 1...

The left is posting things like this gem:

[suggesting Haliburton Fever as a better name] Malaria spreads through contaminated water, as well as mosquito bites. Halliburton served our troops contaminated water, so…

But this rant was the best:

That disease and PARASITES …and these American Doctors are totally ignorant of .The South lost the war to HOOKWORM infections …that the slaves brought over with them from Africa …And this DISEASE is on its way back big time here in America .In West Tennessee hundreds of people are being treated for everything but Parasites .My Grandmother died from Worm Infection .The Parasites gave her a stroke and then she died .She was the cleanest person in the world .I blame Poor city water and under-educated doctors .And these Troops have these Liver Parasites and more than probably other parasite infections .And all it takes is doses of Mebendazolefor HOOKWORM and Rounworm infection the other parasite infections take something else .I seen lots of people who are sick and being cheated by doctors and specialist from quality of life ..Because they are ignorant .I really feel sorry for all these Troops who will come back to a Health Care system that was Broken before they enter the Service .This country needs a big wake up call and BUSH and Cheney need to be IMPEACHED ! Bush went to take care of Africans with out Nets for misquitos …Hey same thing BUSH is happening here …PEOPLE ARE DYING BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO HEALTH CARE AND no GOOD doctors to give the care needed !

Speaking of diseases and treatment, I think I need a vaccination and a tetnus shot simply for allowing my web browser to travel to the filth of DU and Think Progress.

RBB, you are a douche.

From Wiki on Son of the Beach:

Son of the Beach was a television series (2000-2002) that was a spoof of Baywatch, the chief joke being that the studly David Hasselhoff character is instead a normal, pot-bellied and out of shape bald man, but treated exactly the same. Much of the comedy of the series was based on sexual jokes, innuendo and the like. Radio talk show host Howard Stern was one of the executive producers.

The show centered on the adventures of Shore Patrol Force 30 (SPF 30, a pun on the term Sun Protection Factor), led by the pasty, out of shape and clueless lifeguard Notch Johnson. The rest of his patrol consists of B.J. Cummings (the dumb, White big-chested lifeguard), Jamaica St. Croix (the dumb, African-American big-chested lifeguard), Chip Rommel (the dumb, hunky, muscular male lifeguard who is an obvious parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Kimberlee Clark (the smart but flat-chested female lifeguard). Many of the plots revolved around silly action genre clichés and movie parodies, with many of the feature roles played by actors and celebrities such as Mark Hamill, Erik Estrada, Gary Coleman, John Salley, Joey Buttafuoco, Patty Hearst, Adam Carolla, and Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf.

The title is a pun on the phrase “son of a bitch.” Likewise, character names are rife with puns and innuendo. Porcelain Bidet, B.J. Cummings, Jamaica St. Croix, Anita Massengil, and Notch Johnson all refer to some sort of double entendre, while Chip Rommel’s name refers to the “Desert Fox”, further punctuating the fact that the character is German. Kimberlee Clark’s name is a pun on the company Kimberly-Clark, manufacturer of paper products such as Kleenex and Kotex.

For photographic evidence, check here (h/t Wizbang):

Now check Spitzer:

Great show that was on FX for about three years.  Night Stand may have been even funnier:

Mocking Jerry Springer-like talk shows, Night Stand was a fake talk show hosted by lovable, Dick Dietrick, played masterfully by Timothy Stack. Dick would bring on ridiculous guests and go into a plethora of even more ridiculous questions. A Springer/Ricky Lake- type show, the “Dick Dietrick Show” would bring on guests that not even fans of the entire “outrageous” talk show genre would want to see. Many of the themes had sexual overtones, obvious to everyone watching, except for Dick himself who would make comments that everyone else found explicit, but Dick himself thought nothing of it. Soon after he would scold the audience when realizing the sexual overtone, and say, “People, no....no.”

Much has been made about Arizona’s budget crisis and Arizona’s new Employer Sanctions law, including these here and here.  The Employer sanctions law is the controversial Prop 300 passed in 2006. 

But in 2004, Arizona voters also passed an ID law requiring that citizens provide ID to vote or obtain services.  And the Governor has been ignoring most of the meat of the law.  So the backers are taking her ass to court.

Arizona residents would have to show proof of citizenship to get state benefits for health care, food stamps, housing and other services under a motion filed Monday in Maricopa County Superior Court.

The filing, led by supporters of Proposition 200, is the latest involving the controversial law. Arizona voters approved it in 2004 with the aim of blocking illegal immigrants from receiving public benefits.

But the law has been applied to only a handful of welfare programs in the years since, per an opinion offered by state Attorney General Terry Goddard.

Prop. 200 backers say Goddard’s interpretation is too narrow and has never matched the intent of voters.

Message to illegals--you are not welcome to get free shit and work under the table in Arizona.  We don’t want you sucking off the tit of big government welfare programs.  We know that probably means that some hotel rooms might not get cleaned, that some lawns might not get cut, that some dishes in restaurants might not get done, that some fruit might not get picked, or that some construction might not get done.  And we have carefully weighed the costs associated with providing benefits for you and dealing with the associated crime and gang activity and the voters have concluded that you are no longer welcome by votes of 70-30 in two statewide elections.

Thanks for visiting Arizona.  Please depart back to Mexico or country of origin and apply for work visas.  We welcome you back if you come here legally.  And if you don’t want to, head to one of the states that will take you until they see our results and start copying our laws.

Will Franklin of Willisms (and son of site regular Zsa Zsa) writes about one of his favorite topics--domestic net migration frequently at his site.  I want to take it a step further with a discussion of demographics and education in California.

First, let’s take a look at the most recent US Census data on net domestic migration:

New York, in contrast, had the largest annualized net outmigration during the period, averaging 183,000. California (99,000) and Illinois (72,000) were ranked second and third, respectively…

California experienced the largest numerical change in average annual net migration between the 1990s and the 2000–2004 period. While the state continued to experience net outmigration between 2000 and 2004, the average annual net outmigration of 99,000 was smaller than the comparable figure of 221,000 per year during the 1990s.

Net domestic migration is one part of the population picture.  This means that in the 1990’s, 2.2M more US Citizens moved from the state of California than to the state of California.  From 2000-2004, another 500,000 moved and projecting the last three years that the trend remains, that is 3M more citizens leaving California than moving there.

The numbers grow even more ominous when you factor in birth rates.  Studies on fertility rates show that for Whites, Blacks and Asians, the number of births per woman is below the replacement rate of 2.1:

As shown in Figure 2, Latinas have much higher fertility rates than other ethnic groups in California. As of 2005, the total fertility rate for Latinas in California was 2.9 children per woman, substantially higher than for Asians, African Americans, and whites, who all had fertility rates well below the replacement level of 2.1.

According the the Census, the total population of California was 29.75M in 1990.  Of that number, 7.6M were Hispanics and 20.5M were White.  Yet from July 1, 2000, to July 1, 2007, the population of California increased from 34M to 36.5M according to the US Census figures. Of the 34M in 2000, 20.1M were white and 11M were Hispanic.

As I posted earlier today on Neiman’s Homeschooling thread, that leave California in an interesting predicament.  California must test their high school students in Spanish when assessing their scholastic proficiency for No Child Left Behind:

Try this shit on for size from California’s annual No Child Left Behind Tests:

Between spring 1999 and spring 2005, districts were required to administer the SABE/2 to Spanish-speaking English learners (ELs) in grades two through eleven who were enrolled in California public schools fewer than 12 months when the tests were administered. Districts had the option of testing Spanish-speaking English learners who were enrolled in a California public school 12 months or more when the tests were administered. The tests were administered between March 15 and May 14 of each year. Students in grades two through eleven were tested in Spanish reading and language, as well as mathematics in Spanish. Students in grades two through eight were also tested in Spanish spelling. Students were required to take the SABE/2 in addition to taking the required state achievement tests in English for their grades.

Here is what the results show:

For students administered the test as second graders, the average student math score is 69%.  For those tested as twelveth graders, that score drops to 31%.

These figures are directly from California’s testing website. 

For junior in high school, only 35% score at proficient in English, 40% score proficient in Math, 28% in science, and 33% in history.

The numbers are closer to 20% in Los Angeles County and San Bernadino County.

In every sense and at every grade level, Hispanics perform far worse in Math, Reading, Writing, Social Studies, and Science than their White counterparts, even when those exams are administered in Spanish to compensate for language differences.  Whites are leaving California in droves and White women are having children at well below the replacement rate.  These problems of California schools working so hard to educate Hispanic children in most public schools are dragging down the test scores and performance of their white peers.  Pockets of affluence and educated kids still do well, as do most asians, but these are in large part because these kids are isolated due to demographics and home prices from the poorer Hispanics.

In light of the recent home schooling decision, it is becoming apparent--if you are White, affluent, and desire for your children to be educated, you need to move your ass out of California or into a neighborhood so excluse and isolated that they are shielded from the major demographic problems going on.

Ah, the Irony of it all.  Rassmussen reports on some ongoing developing numbers that mirror those that Bat One brought us last week from Gallup:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows John McCain leading both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in general election match-ups. McCain now leads Obama 46% to 43% and Clinton 48% to 43%. McCain has consistently held a modest lead over Clinton but he moved ahead of Obama only after publication of the controversial New York Times article last week (see recent daily results and summary of recent state general election polls). Daily tracking results are collected via nightly telephone surveys and reported on a four-day rolling average basis. The next Presidential Tracking Poll update is scheduled for Thursday at 11:00 a.m.

Just 24% of voters have a favorable opinion on the New York Times in results that vary dramatically along partisan and ideological lines. By a three-to-one margin, those following the story believe the Times released last week’s story with the intent to hurt the McCain campaign rather than to report the news.

You hear that you MSM hacks.  People are catching on.  Perhaps Jason Blair is looking for work and can find some new dirt on McCain.

Nationwide, Obama is viewed favorably by 51% and unfavorably by 46%. McCain’s numbers are 55% favorable, 42% unfavorable. Clinton earns positive reviews from 47% of Likely Voters nationwide and negative assessments from 52% (see recent daily results). McCain is trusted more than Obama when it comes to National Security, the War in Iraq, and the Economy. Obama is trusted more on the issue of Reducing Government Corruption.

This is critical.  It is almost impossible to elect someone whose negatives are larger than their positives (Hillary).  Barack has the benefit of being a pretty face that folks don’t know much about, but as the election draws near, people will listen to what he has said and is saying.  I don’t know how he gets his unfavorables to come down because as of right now, he hasn’t laid out an agenda and already, his negatives are at 46%.

Striking is that McCain is viewed favorably by 55% of the American people and only 42% dislike him.  It is on Dems now to make Barack more likeable and attack McCain.  The NYT tried that last week and it blew up in their faces.  This presents real problems because Americans actually like McCain. He has been around and a major figure since 2000 when he ran for President last time. He has a strong track record and for the most part, folks know what they are getting from him. He has an established "brand" and people have well formented opinions. Obama has no real brand and no real substance. He is about as much of a one trick pony with his "change speech" as the Silk Pony himself with his "two Americas speech". Tough to build a brand when your only substance is being a good speaker.

Hence why it is important for McCain to control his temper and control his rhetoric by running a positive campaign.  Dems are beating the hell out of each other and if McCain runs on the issues against Obama, McCain wins this thing.

Let’s check the use of his name as a prop in the 2004 DNC speech to once and for all end the bullshit name calling about Hillary and her minions and the “right wing hate machine” obliging him by honoring his parents’ wishes:

They would give me an African name, Barack, or ”blessed,” believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. They imagined—They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential…

It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.

If the skinny kid’s parents gave him a funny name believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success, I would hate to deny the wishes of his parents and not call him openly and loudly by that name that they gave him.  It is no barrier to success in my mind, so why should he and others be afraid to call him by his full name?

I believe in hope.  In change.  Isn’t Barack all about changing all these negatives of the world and getting us to sit around the fire and hold hands and sing together?

His parents named him Barack Hussein Obama.  The fact that you don’t like him being refered to by his name is something you should probably take up with his parents, though they are dead now.  Tell them that their hope was misplaced.  That their dream of equality is dead too.  That they effed up and screwed their Messiah son out of his place in history by giving him a “funny name”.  Put this at their feet.

The drunken sailors on leave increased spending during Bush’s economic boom and now the states want the feds to send more money:

At a time when states like Arizona are grappling with billion-dollar budget shortfalls, the federal government is making matters worse by reducing assistance to the states for Medicaid and other social services, Gov. Janet Napolitano told a U.S. Senate panel Tuesday.

Even the economic-stimulus package recently approved by the Democrat-led Congress figures to cost about two dozen states, excluding Arizona, nearly $2 billion this year and next because of corresponding reductions in state corporate and individual income-tax revenues.

So letting citizens of the states keep more of their own money is preventing the states themselves of taking more of it. The states have a right to that money damn it, so the Feds better offset it.

...This fiscal year alone, 18 states face budget shortfalls totaling $14 billion. It gets worse for fiscal 2009, with 21 states projecting shortfalls in excess of $32 billion. For Arizona, Napolitano expects a $1.15 billion shortfall this year, $1.7 billion next.

“States are left with the very real problems of service delivery - educating children, maintaining roads and providing health care - at the same time that we must cut our budgets to compensate for dramatic declines in revenue,” the Arizona Democrat told the panel.

Complicating matters, as commonly happens when the economy slows, states are seeing increased demand for food stamps and unemployment assistance.

But Steve Voeller, president of the conservative Arizona Free Enterprise Club, said any similar federal bailout would serve only to “cover up the fact that the state simply spent too much money on all sorts of things when times were good.”

“Asking for $12 billion in new state spending to provide ‘economic stimulus’ is like telling a drunk to sober up by heading down to the local tavern,” Voeller continued.

While the federal government ponders funding cuts for Medicaid and other state needs, it has already heaped additional costs onto local governments. Napolitano provided a laundry list of complaints:

• Federal funding for homeland-security grants is down by more than half from fiscal 2005.

On the upside, we have not been attacked in 6.5 years and most of the spending increase was in response to 9-11 and much of misguided.  Blame Bush for this for keeping America safe using wiretaps, intelligence, and purging Afghanistan and Iraq of their terror supporting regimes.

• Arizona is owed more than $400 million through a federal program to reimburse states for their costs in jailing illegal immigrants.

Yet Arizona is seeing real progress in the number of illegals in the state simply by enacting employer sanctions laws.  Plus Arizona has stopped spending on entitlements for illegals.  Prop 300 did that.  Surely that money helps offset the cost of jailing illegals.

• The states have received less than $100 million to assist with implementation of a national identification card known as REAL ID. Costs to develop and operate the system range between $3.9 billion and $11 billion over five years.

Dems will fix that when Hillary is elected.  The ACLU was against REAL ID in the first place.  Wait, I guess if we stop he REAL ID, we might have to increase funding for Homeland Security after the terrorists attack us again.

One of Congress’ biggest spending hawks, Rep. Jeff Flake, told The Arizona Republic, “States have a legitimate gripe with the federal government with regard to unfunded mandates, particularly the costs related to illegal immigration.”

But the Arizona Republican added that “Congress may be reluctant to bail the states out when many of them, including Arizona, have been on a spending binge over the last few years.”

So let us build a border fence and states should enact laws like Arizona’s Prop 300.  Illegals are fleeing our state.  Bet that helps huh.

Move_Zig posted on Net Neutrality earlier today and linked to this article from The Nation:

And so, unless there’s some effective opposition, the several-headed vendor that now sells us nearly all our movies, TV, radio, magazines, books, music and web services will soon be selling us our daily papers, too--for the major dailies have, collectively, been lobbying energetically for that big waiver, which stands to make their owners even richer (an expectation that has no doubt had a sweetening effect on coverage of the Bush Administration). Thus the largest US newspaper conglomerates--the New York Times, the Washington Post, Gannett, Knight-Ridder and the Tribune Co.--will soon be formal partners with, say, GE, Murdoch, Disney and/or AT&T; and then the lesser nationwide chains (and the last few independents) will be ingested, too, going the way of most US radio stations. America’s cities could turn into informational “company towns,” with one behemoth owning all the local print organs--daily paper(s), alternative weekly, city magazine--as well as the TV and radio stations, the multiplexes and the cable system. (Recently a federal appeals court told the FCC to drop its rule preventing any one company from serving more than 30 percent of US cable subscribers; and in December, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.) While such a setup may make economic sense, as anticompetitive arrangements tend to do, it has no place in a democracy, where the people have to know more than their masters want to tell them.

So let’s look at the single biggest beef that prompted the Net Neutrality movement in more detail. 

This article lays out the problems that cable customers are having with their data downloads:

Markey filed a bill along with U.S. Rep. Charles Pickering (R- Miss.) in support of Net neutrality, the idea that network providers shouldn’t discriminate against Web sites or various types of traffic. The FCC is investigating complaints that Comcast Corp. has interfered with peer-to-peer traffic associated with file-sharing sites…

“Respect for the free flow of information was bred into our country from its founding,” said Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein. “We must preserve the open and neutral character of the Internet, which has been its hallmark from the very beginning. It is clear consumers don’t want the Internet to be a another version of old media dominated by a number of giants.”

Gilles BianRosa, CEO of Vuze Inc., a video service that uses peer-to-peer technology, said that while his company competes with Comcast in the delivery of content, the latter company holds an unfair advantage. “What we have here is a horse race, and Comcast owns the racetrack,” he said. “I agree the market should decide which services win ... but there is no market without basic ground rules and transparency. ... We believe corporate assurances of good faith are not enough.”…

“This hearing is not about technical details of managing networks; it’s about the future of online TV and the Internet,” Ammori said. “By targeting P2P, Comcast is disrupting investment and innovation in its online competition.”…

“Comcast does not block any Web site, application or protocol, including P2P. Period,” he said. He said that the company “manages” protocols, such as P2P, during limited periods of heavy traffic; does so in limited geographic areas; only manages uploads, not downloads; and delays, but does not block requests for uploads.

Comcast isn’t some standalone company.  It is part of a mega-corporate holding company with AT&T:

Comcast was first incorporated in the state of Pennsylvania in 1969. On November 18, 2002, Comcast and AT&T Broadband combined to form the new Comcast Corporation.

Now, let’s put this in perspective.  What if DirecTV was owned by Viacom and Viacom decided that it wanted to promote its networks on its own system.  In order to do that, they refused to carry HD Feeds of other networks.  Therefore, those other networks were of inferior quality.  And they went one step further, they purposely degraded the signal of their competitors.  Suddenly viewership for CBS and CBS News increased while NBC, ABC and so on suffered because CBS was higher quality.

That is what Comcast is doing.  They are effectively degrading peer to peer communications and other communications on their network so that they free up the bandwidth for their own multimedia services.  They are pushing their content onto consumers by ensuring that their content is of higher quality than the competition.

The idea of net neutrality is that of packet neutrality.  Packets from one source get treated the same as other packets.  Peer to peer packets get treated the same as packets intended for Amazon or Comcast or E-Bay or Sayanythingblog.com.  Net neutrality prevents ISPs from degrading services for sites or protocol in favor of their preferred protocols.

Considering that AOL-Time Warner is one of the largest cable internet providers, how would you like it if AOL-TW degraded users’ connections when they tried to access content from Viacom and vice versa?  Do you want AOL-Time Warner or Comcast or any other ISP discriminating against packets that they don’t like?

Move_Zig was really off the mark to compare this to the Fairness Doctrine or Hillary’s previous remarks.