Since the heaviest snow usually falls during this month, native tribes of the north and east most often called February’s full Moon the Full Snow Moon. Some tribes also referred to this Moon as the Full Hunger Moon, since harsh weather conditions in their areas made hunting very difficult.

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This will change the web as it is now forever. YouTube never would have gotten off the ground had this law existed when it started. Facebook and Twitter will no longer be free and open forums. Google search results will be further filtered. Real, valuable content and the free flow of information that is the Internet will be hidden away forever. We have freedom of speech and freedom of the press in this country, but if this law is passed, those freedoms won’t extend to the Internet and will effectively be policed by the entertainment industry.

Please watch this video and then write to your congressmen and attend a town hall or at least spread the word in your social circles.

SOPA breaks the Internet.

Amid the cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howled hungrily outside Indian villages. Thus, the name for January’s full Moon. Sometimes it was also referred to as the Old Moon, or the Moon After Yule.

Fun article on a guy who lived with wolves.

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I thought a quick rundown of the candidates on the Republican side would be fun to look at, too (fun like getting a splinter out is fun, not fun like a waterslide fun), just as a quick comparison of what our options are from the other side of the aisle. To keep this short and sweet, I’ll simplify Politifact’s rating system, which currently has the possible outcomes of a statement’s rating falling into True, Mostly True, Half-true, Mostly False, False and Pants on Fire to three simpler categories: Truth, Half-Truth, and Lies, and then highlight which they do more often.

Lies, Liars and the Rare Truth

Barack Obama

Truth: 48%
Half-Truth: 24%
Lies: 28%

Ron Paul

Truth: 50%
Half-Truth: 14%
Lies: 35%

Jon Huntsman

Truth: 40%
Half-Truth: 27%
Lies: 34%

Mitt Romney

Truth: 40%
Half-Truth: 22%
Lies: 38%

Rick Santorum

Truth: 23%
Half-Truth: 31%
Lies: 46%

Rick Perry

Truth: 23%
Half-Truth: 27%
Lies: 50%

Newt Gingrich

Truth: 15%
Half-Truth: 23%
Lies: 62%

Michelle Bachmann

Truth: 17%
Half-Truth: 11%
Lies: 72%

Analysis

What does this all mean for our nation? The best we can hope for is a president who will tell the whole truth half of the time. That’s where Ron Paul stands as of today, and where Obama falls just short of at 48%. Half-truths are still half-lies as well, mind you. Michelle Bachmann is the biggest liar of all of the potential candidates, even going as far as to blatantly claim that Politifact said she had not lied, when she had and the evidence was right there on their site. She’s followed by Gingrich, Perry and Santorum, our second, third and runner up biggest liars. Huntsman and Romney told the truth 40% of the time, and Ron Paul did so 50% of the time.

Apparently, though, the truth doesn’t matter much in the primaries, as Gingrich, who only managed to make accurate statements 15% of the time, is neck and neck with Romney, a candidate who told the truth 40% of the time (though he also lied 38% of the time…so that says something, too).

Ron Paul, the only Republican potential nominee to come close to the President (who holds the best record by the way), is currently in third place.

Looking at voter loyalty, between the two front runners (Romney & Gingrich), perhaps all hope isn’t lost, as Romney’s numbers with regards to what percentage of the Republican voting population support him have been pretty consistent at around 23-25%. Gingrich varies from 12% back in early November, to skyrocket to 37% as December rolled around and dropping back to his all time low since the spike at 25%. You can only blatantly bullshit people so long before they look for a better bullshitter, I guess.

Best of luck, you lying Republican schmucks (and Ron Paul!)

Donate to President Obama

I personally endorse Obama. I think he’s got a great smile and the anecdotes about him playing basketball with members of his staff really touch my heart! But seriously, he didn’t turn out to be the Black Jesus, but he’s still done a decent job to date. He’s kept more promises than he’s broken or compromised on, and he primarily speaks the truth. I say we do as much as we can to give him another four years to finish the job before we go back to the same old bullshit from guys who all look and come from similar backgrounds (the same ones our last President W. came from).

* There is a well known American Dream that has something to do with a white picket fence and two kids and/or two cars in the driveway. The real American Dream is simply to be able to live free and have the opportunity to succeed based on ability and achievement, not a predetermined path through life based on economic status at birth. Currently this country rewards the already rich and punishes the middle class by making us pay for the greed of the uber-rich. That is not an American Dream. That is a concoction drummed up by Reagan that assumes that if you give the rich a break, eventually that break will “trickle down” to everyone else. Thirty years later, we’re not getting trickled on, just pissed on. Obama wants to stop that shit, the Republicans put the middle class up for hostage whenever he tries to do just that.

Gene Marks, a middle class white man who writes for Forbes Magazine, thinks poor black kids might be better off diving into a computer to look for opportunities, among other things.

John Ridley, a presumably middle class black guy who Wikipedia lists as a “North American Writer” but for the purposes of this article is a commentator for NPR, thinks Gene Marks is laughable, as he is not a poor black kid and therefore has no right to write about them at all, as it sounds in this interview.

Newt Gingrich is a jackass and his statements prove it. Gene Marks is a guy who has some opinions and gets paid to write them. John Ridley is a black man, and so he was born with the authority to say who can and can’t write about black people.

Wait a minute…what? Isn’t it about time we gave up on this “only black people can talk about / criticize / make good-intentioned suggestions toward other black people”? Just because Gene Marks isn’t black, or isn’t a boy, doesn’t mean he can’t write about them and express his opinions. Hilariously, if this was the case, the world of the written word would be incredibly boring. Was Dickens a sick young boy when he wrote about Tiny Tim Cratchet? No, he wasn’t, and yes, he was making recommendations for how groups of people whom he did not belong to might improve their lives. President Obama isn’t an unemployed white woman, but he can still make comments and decisions and recommendations on how those people might improve their lives.

John Ridley is entitled to his position as well, but anyone who advocates that a particular community should be the only one who looks out for that particular community is plain and simply advocating segregation, and I’m pretty sure our country had a helluva time when that was going on. As a middle class white man myself, and as an American, I am free to discuss, criticize and make recommendations to black men, asian women, robotic babies and mutant puppies alike, just as they are allowed to do the same to me. And you’d better believe they do.

Now AT&T is trying to change the definition of unlimited. I received both a txt message and email from AT&T today stating that if I kept using the amount of data that I’m using (remember, I am paying for “unlimited” data), that they’d start throttling my speeds. Their recommendation? Use WiFi.

Well, AT&T, come on over and install a free WiFi setup in my house, and I’ll be glad to use that! Oh, I forgot, you won’t even run your lines up the road to my house, so that’s not going to work. No worries, I have unlimited data…throttled.

Throttling something is by definition not allowing it to be unlimited. Take this example. Farmer Joe promises Miss Debby that if she promises to give him $50 at the beginning of every month, she can come and take as many eggs from his chicken coop as she’d like. Miss Debby thinks this is a great deal, and at first she only takes about 8 eggs a month. But then Miss Debby meets Dr. John Brown, the dashing new guy in town, they marry, and now she needs 16 eggs a month. Three babies later and they’re up to 50 eggs a month. Now Farmer Joe says he’ll still honor his original agreement, and Miss Debby (now Mrs. Dr. John Brown) can still have as many eggs as she’d like a month, but she can only take them home one at a time. Instead of being able to come and collect all 50 eggs in one go, she now needs to make 50 trips. Obviously, that isn’t the original agreement, and it isn’t unlimited, it’s limited to physically how many trips she can make. AT&T is doing the same thing.

Boo, AT&T, boo. You’re only encouraging me to use way more data in spite of you, and then switch to WiFi, as you suggested, once you start slowing my shit down.

It reminds me a little of FourSquare for things to do instead of places to go.

And I’ve got invites over @clicknathan, just hit me up.

Named for the Winter Solstice festivities held round the world, whether they be officially termed “Yule” or now.

Happy Winter Solstice Everyone!

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