Comcast & Big Cable's Big Mistake

Well, seems as if +Comcast and company, via Big Cable, have thought that they could scam us into a two-tier payment system for internet access. Dead wrong, and now they've woken a sleeping giant in the American people and various groups fighting to keep net neutrality. That's right, I'm talking about groups like +Fight for the Future, +Electronic Frontier Foundation, etc. Hell, let's throw +rootsaction in, just for argument's sake. Anyway, the point is this: it's time to tell companies like Comcast, +AT&T, +Verizon FiOS, +Time Warner Cable, that it's time to end the games and to keep the net the way it is, open for everyone at the same dang speed. 

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

I've been seeing a lot of videos on YouTube on the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, with various celebrities taking it on and passing on the torch. I've been touched by the videos and their huge effect on raising awareness of ALS, which stands for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (the actual name of Lou Gehrig's Disease), since a close friend of mine was inflicted with this terrible condition. I feel that I must do a special shoutout to figures like Mark Zuckerberg and Katie Cole, and say thanks for doing your part to help raise awareness.

I haven't decided if I'm going to do the challenge or not, but I can say that I'll think about maybe doing a fund-drive or looking for a charity to donate to. I'll post my final thought when I'm done thinking it out.

This is Jgsf1987.

Mideast quiets down

I'll say with a degree of cautious optimism that the fighting in the Mideast has ended and that it won't reflare for a short while. Still, it's important to note that unless Israel under +Benjamin Netanyahu's leadership changes course in terms of the settlements, and attempts to occupy both the West Bank and Gaza, another flare-up will happen. Israel has weakened Hamas, but not very fully, as it still has some strength to fight another war. However, demographics are not on Israel's side long-term, as there are fewer Jews than Arabs giving birth in the area known as Israel/Palestine. Additionally, many Israeli Jews are leaving Israel primarily to avoid serving in the +Israel Defense Forces. Others are leaving from being fed up with the Orthodox rabbinate kowtowing to the Ultra-Orthodox community on social and economic issues.

To those who are not familiar with Israeli politics, let me say this: the damage done by +Likudnik - ליכודניק and other right-wing parties in Israel is very similar to that done by the +GOP and other right-wing groups here in America. Many in Israel have quit trusting Likud primarily because they see Israel becoming more isolated from its primary ally on the world stage. Think about it, +Barack Obama's administration has become less and less willing to blindly follow Israel's foreign policy objectives in the Mideast. As a matter of fact, the Obama Administration has been more outspoken about Israeli militarism to the point of almost directly calling Netanyahu to task of explaining why Israel will continue to sabotage any further peace talks.

Reason to Renew the Export-Import Bank Charter

To all those who work in small business, or are just trying to put their mark on the global economy, watch and listen to +Barack Obama in this week's weekly address. President Obama couldn't be clearer in explaining that letting the charter for the Export-Import bank expire would give many of you a harder time getting your goods and/or services abroad, either in big business or small. Just understand that should the +House Republicans and +Senate GOP not allow any renewal, it could end up hitting you very heavily in your wallets.

It's time to join the President in telling Congress, specifically the Republicans in both the House of Representatives and the Senate to do their jobs.

This is +Jgsf1987.

Video Source: +The White House

Earthquake in San Francisco Bay Area

I know: San Francisco, Earthquake. Almost makes one think of that big one in 1989. Well, the good news is that this was not as powerful, only a 6.0, compared to the 6.9 or 7.1 in '89. However, this was much shallower, and lasted longer, and unlike that of '89, this came from the Hayward Fault, I believe.

Comcast Playing Games Again

Oh gee, isn't this a surprise...not! Flipping Comcast has yet to get its act together whenever it's billing customers. One would think that customer service & billing actually talk to each other, but they don't. So now to deal with a company of bureaucrats whose heads are in their wallets.

KKK Infilitrates Republican Party & Tea Party

From reading an article on +Addicting Info, it seems like the +Ku Klux Klan's official platform has become intertwined with the +GOP and +The Tea Party's official platforms. How can one be surprised by this development? Anyway, read the article for yourselves and don't be too shocked on its content. Think of all the b******t you hear from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Michele Bachmann. This is where it comes from.

+Jgsf1987

Original Source: +Addicting Info

The Reason Not To Put Troops Back In Iraq

Seeing the coverage of how brazen the Islamic State (IS) has become, it would get many of us thinking that we need troops on the ground taking the fight back to them. This is a mistake, as any US Military presense will only embolden the IS militants. At the same time, there are other militant groups taking on the IS, such as Turkey's PKK (Kirdish Worker's Party), which would effectively turn the US Military into a sitting target.

Letting the PKK take on the IS is a much better option in the sense that like many other militias in the area, who have either been taking on each other or the ruling regime in the state they inhabit, they see the IS as a cancer that needs to be taken out. The United States should simply provide air cover and try to clear a pathway to move the civilians caught in the crossfire out of harm's way.

A final note to make is that there is no military solution to dealing with ISIS, there's only a political one, and that can come only with a unified political voice from the Iraqi people themselves. The Iraqis of all stripes (Sunni, Shi'ite, Kurd, etc.) should feel that they have a voice in their own governance. This was a direct failure of Nouri al-Maliki.

Ferguson Under Seige

Apparently from reading an article on +ABCNews' website, the town of Ferguson, MO, is under seige. And actually, it's by the city's police force, looking to keep the protests from spreading further about the botched investigation of Michael Brown's killer, an officer of the Ferguson PD. As a matter of fact, the situation's gotten so out of whack, that a gentleman, who goes by the name haiku_rs on +Instagram, has been documenting the ongoing struggle to seek justice for Michael Brown.

Some of the photos are just amazing, yet haunting at the same time due in part to the obvious overt racism on display by Ferguson's police. However, I need to make note of the fact that while +Ferguson Police do have a history of racism in enforcing the law, they're not the only department. Basically, what's going on in Ferguson, is a universal problem all over America. There are too many law enforcement agencies still bogged down with racialized criminal profiling. This particular aspect needs to change, and change immediately.

Feeling out of control

I think I'll take a break from talking politics for a brief posting, as I need to say that I'm feeling out of control. Don't worry about me doing something dumb, I'm not planning on that. It's just some circumstances have happened where I've been more reactive than proactive, and I just hate that feeling. It sucks. However, there's not much to do about it.

Just understand, we all have these days, even your's truly, Jgsf1987. Anyway, this shall pass and I'll be back to hitting fast at the GOP, once again.

Thanks for understanding and reading. This is Jgsf1987, out!

More News On The Kookieness Of Our Nation's Far Right Wing

Ha! That title as apparently one can see, doesn't adequately explain the wholeness of the far-right these days.

First off, we need to address one key fact here. Not all Republicans or conservatives are die-hard supporters of the True-Believer/Tea-Party wing of the +GOP. Let's be clear on that. I'm sure that many of you, like myself, know people who are registered Republicans and are not these unreasonable types as the faction mentioned above. I can say this off-hand, as I'm related to one (one who happens to be a fiscal conservative).

Now with that settled, here's what's going on. Apparently there's been a large amount of trolling on both +Twitter and +Instagram aimed towards Robin Williams' daughter. Again much of what it had to do with is Robin's activism in liberal politics. However, a lot of it got downright personal to the point of Zelda largely leaving her accounts dormant. Additionally, there's been talk of Robin Williams taking his own life due to the liberalism on display by none other than +Barack Obama. That's about as bogus as ever.

However, that's not the craziest among the stories. I've noticed that the case involving the death of Michael Brown, there's been a few rather crazy developments. First off, I've read on +Raw Story that the Ku Klux Klan has mounted a fundraising effort for the shooting officer's legal defense. Their claim is that they need to defend a hero who took out a "thug" (direct Klan quote of what they called Brown). This is an exact replay of what happened with Treyvon Martin back in 2012 or Oscar Wild in 2007. The fact still remains, racism is still abound in this country. More so than people could ever imagine. However there's a couple of other articles that I think people ought to read here. One article from DeadSpin shows that many still hold the view that America is a Whites only nation. Don't be so shocked by this, it's fairly common in many parts of America. There's another article from Gawker, which explains clearly that even though Brown was not armed when the police officer in question shot him, his situation is not unusual for young African-American men. Actually it's a tragic and all too familiar narrative, police come in and shoot young Black man. Senseless, and playing to the very reason why we need to do more to make society aware of the deadliness of White Supremacy, when combined with the declaration that we as Americans need to armed to the teeth. I'm sure about 1 thing, those 2 statements are bogus, plain and simple. It's just whack to think that if we could put Blacks in their place then there'd be less of them showing up dead in our news lines. Yeah, that's like racism 101 to believe that.

Something needs to break through

I can report on the news all day long, just like I can report on how life sucks. However, that doesn't really solve the issue of how to make it suck less.

First off, yeah, the whole thing with the Middle East is screwed up. This is primarily because of the power vacuum left over from the invasion of Iraq during the Bush Administration and this is just one portion of why going in there was a bad idea. Now we have ISIS running amok in Northern Iraq and along the pourous border with Syria. However, that's not a complete surprise, as Saddam's removal basically created this vacuum, and if one thinks about it, Bush, Sr.'s reasoning for keeping Saddam in place was because he knew this was how the scenario of his removal would play out. For all those who want to paint me as defending the tyrant Saddam Hussein, let me tell you this, I'm not! Saddam was a tyrant to his people and was an international criminal. While those two previous points stated are 100% true, it wasn't enough of a reason to take him out, nor did it have any strategic sense. The lack of strategic sense comes out of the fact that Saddam was armed by us to bloody up Iran just after the Shah fled and the Ayatollahs took over. If anything, Iran was scared of Saddam as he fought an eight-year war against them.

Then again, there's also the fact that the war between Israel and Gaza has finally started to wind down, to a point. However, for this current cease-fire, I'd be amazed if it even allows some kind of breakthrough for a political solution. I'm not optimistic that either Israel or Palestine (really Gaza) will be able to make some kind of political accord to end the violence cycles. Actually the real guilty party of not allowing a political accord in this sense is Israel, for continuing to prevent a unified voice for the Palestinians. Go figure that Hamas would go all out on Israel, their backs are to the wall, and so they really feel like they've got nothing to lose.

But to get back to my earlier point, there's nothing worthwhile about continuing to sit back and complain and then do nothing to try to resolve my situation or for anyone with their own. We need to realize that in order to make something more functional, the will to do so has to come from within. There's no use blaming outside factors, or getting stuck in, "what-ifs". It's time to go forward, and to make it, something needs to break through.

Ann Coulter's Royally Screwed

Holy Cow! I never thought I'd see the day that Ann Coulter's screwed herself over royally. From what I've seen on +Addicting Info, she's managed to piss off almost the entire conservative Evangelical sphere of the right by blasting one of their own (Dr. Kent Brantly) for taking a missionary trip to Africa in areas heaviest hit by Ebola and contracting the disease. I'm sure she meant to say that he should have put more thought into doing missionary work in the region due to the outbreak, but it seems like that message got garbled up when she tried to blame +Barack Obama and the Democrats. Saying that they should be doing missionary work in America instead of Africa is just whack.

Source: +Addicting Info

Bomb Threats in San Francisco and Oakland

Okay, let me start by saying that I'm getting tired of hearing about bomb threats in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is getting more absurd by the second. Luckily, both turned out to be fakes, but how many fakes will we get before there's a real one? And if there is a real one, how many are likely to be injured and/or killed? This is my concern, and why it's pissing me off as well.

I really wish that someone in law enforcement would capture the wise individual and/or group that is behind these acts. I'd like to know who they're backed by and what their motivation is. Right now, I can't claim that it's terrorism, and I won't. I will say that this is making it difficult for me to get to work, especially when trying to ride the +Bay Area Rapid Transit system downtown.

There's been 2 incidents that have happened this week. The first was last night in Oakland, on an +Alameda Contra Costa Transit bus just outside of the West Oakland +Bay Area Rapid Transit station. The other just happened a few hours ago, just outside the +San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency/+Bay Area Rapid Transit station at Montgomery street in San Francisco.

As I said before, I hope that someone can find this character and arrest them. We need to know who they're affiliated with.

SoCal Lightening Strikes

I'll start by saying that there's been a few stories in the local news here in the San Francisco Bay Area of some fairly frequent lightening strikes down in Southern California, especially near the Los Angeles Metro Area. The latest has happened near Venice Beach, of which I'd have to look at a map to see if that's close to Los Angeles or not. If it is, just drop me a comment and I'll be happy to look into it.

I will say that I'm becoming concerned for a few reasons. One is that I have family down in SoCal, so I just wish for them to be safe. The other reason is a good friend of mine, +KatieColeOfficial, a hella kickass singer, lives down in SoCal as well. To those who are unfamiliar with +KatieColeOfficial, just check out her channel on +YouTube, and you'll see why she's an amazing singer.

This may be because of climate change, or the fact that because of that 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami shifted the Eart 1.3 degrees off of its axis. Then again, there's been a fair amount of tropical depression activity as of recently along the Mexican Pacific Coast. I don't know, but what I do know is, I hope that +KatieColeOfficial is safe. I just wish her well so that she can be out there singing for us.