Florida Goes After Unfair Primary Election System Again: They’ve Scheduled Their Election for Late January, In Violation of Rules that Favor Four States Over All the Others

Florida has again violated the peculiar primary election system that allows Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada to hold their primary elections first, at the expense of the other 46 states. 

They’ve gone ahead and scheduled their primary election for January 31st, which violates RNC rules that state there can be no elections, except for the four favored states, prior to March 6th.  If a state does, they risk losing half of their voting power at the convention under the GOP rules, and all of their voting power at the Democratic convention. 

Florida and Michigan bucked the system four years ago and were punished by the DNC for doing so, and to a lesser extent by the GOP.  (The DNC discounted all Florida and Michigan votes, the RNC docked half the votes).  

The other 45 states should also schedule their primaries prior to March 6th.   What better way to force both parties to change their rules and come up with a system that addresses the needs of ALL the states, and not just the current four?

I have nothing against voters in those four states.  But it’s a system that never should have been agreed to by either party in the first place.  

Liberals Should Remember That They Created the Very Environment that Allowed Right Wing News Media and Talk Radio to Thrive In: If They’re Unhappy With Getting Trounced on TV and on Radio, They Should Realize That The Ones They Should Be Blaming Are Staring Back at Them in the Mirror

Lots of liberals blast Fox News for leaning right (aka pointing stuff out that the liberals would rather sweep under the carpet.)  They go after people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and other conservative talk-radio people for getting people fired up about the never-ending conservative vs. liberal debate on just about every issue.

And they cannot figure out why liberal talk radio programs and channels do not succeed on the air.  Air America went bankrupt because their business model set itself up to fail.  They couldn’t match the audiences that Limbaugh, Hannity and Savage get, nor could they attract the kind of advertisers who purchase airtime by the bushel from their conservative rivals.

And they don’t want to admit that by dominating the news with their own viewpoints for decades, they gave birth to an audience that got tired of the liberal slant on things and was hungry for the other side of the story.  And when conservative talk radio and Fox News came around, their appetites increased. 

Perhaps if the liberal media had done their jobs in presenting the news, without trying to influence it as they have tried to do over the decades, the audience for conservative news and talk radio wouldn’t be so huge and liberal news networks wouldn’t be getting creamed in the ratings, week after week after week.

I don’t have a lot of sympathy for those who cry about Fox News not being a “true” journalistic entity due to THEIR slant on stuff.  Reap what you’ve sown, liberal media.

Key to Saving U.S. Postal Service is Quite Easy: Congress Needs to Quit Making Them Prepay 75 Years Worth of Pensions in Ten Years

In 2006, the USPS made money, and their outstanding debt was $2.1 billion.

In 2011, their projected losses exceed $11 billion, and they’re running into their outstanding debt ceiling of $15 billion and are looking at closing 3,700 post offices, laying off 100,000 people, ending Saturday deliveries and overnight deliveries, and closing down the USPS in mid-2012.

What happened?

People started paying their bills online, and doing other things via the Internet.  That accounts for part of the drop.

The other thing that happened is that Congress passed a law in 2006 that stated  the USPS must prepay 75 years of pensions in 10 years in order to keep their pension plans in good shape for the future.   According to this article, within three years of implementation, the Post Office was $10.2 billion in debt.

Who is the idiot who thought up this dumb law?

75 years worth of pensions in 10 years?  I think prepaying 5-10 years is much more reasonable than 75 years.

If Congress wants to save the Post Office, they should revoke and then rewrite this insanity.   They can fund the retirement program at a much more reasonable rate than what they’re doing now.  And without killing the Post Office too.

WikiLeaks Blames Guardian Newspaper for Allowing Previously Blacked Out Information in U.S. Government Cables to Be Seen: Baloney! WikiLeaks Posted the Information, So They’re Ultimately Responsible and Should Take the Responsibility

All of the data (251,000+ documents) that WikiLeaks has is now accessible on the web, with names of informants included.   All one needs is the password, which is being circulated online.   WikiLeaks is blaming the Guardian newspaper for posting the password, but who posted the material in the first place?

That was not the Guardian, or any other publication who did that.  WIKILEAKS did that.  And they should take total responsibility for any harm that comes to people whose identities were not protected, as WikiLeaks promised that they would.

This is all on WikiLeaks, and Julian Assange,and no one else.  They should quit trying to throw blame onto others.

U.S. Espionage Act of 1917 is Outdated and Needs to Be Fixed: Current Law Can Convict People Without Judges Ever Seeing the Materials

In the last three years, five people have been charged with violations of the 1917 Espionage Act, including one fellow who disclosed that the FBI and the NSA were spying on the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

But at the time that he was convicted, no one knew that; not even the judge assigned to the case.  The man who was convicted was a former FBI Hebrew translator who came to be in possession of top secret material in the form of wiretaps from the Israeli Embassy.  Entire conversations between Embassy officials, their top supporters in this country, and Embassy  conversations with members of Congress were captured electronically, as were emails, faxes and other digital mediums. 

The Obama Administration buried what had happened deep so that it would never come to light, as spying on an ally isn’t a very nice thing to do.

The translator, who was afraid that Israel was going to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, passed the information on to a blogger, who held onto the information for a while, then broke the story in the last few days. 

The government uses the Espionage Act to discipline federal employees who violate government secrecy.   I don’t have a real issue with that point, as the government does need to keep some stuff classified and expects its employees to be secret-keepers and to keep the trust. 

But once someone is charged, like the translator mentioned above who WAS correctly charged with breaking the law, if the government sees fit to bring the case to court, the judge should have an idea of what sort of materials were disclosed.   To blindly allow a conviction without seeing the materials reeks of star chamber justice, which is illegal under U.S. law.

The next time the government brings a case, the judge should tell the government to give him/her more information, or face the possibility of the judge throwing the case straight out of court.

Once the material is given away or sold, the cat’s out of the bag anyways.  Assuring the judge and the jury that a crime by others isn’t being covered up under a veil of secrecy isn’t as big a deal as the original loss of the data or material.