A mock movie poster warns al-Qaida wants to return to New York City, but authorities say there’s no evidence of an actual threat.

Investigators learned about the online amateur graphic on Monday. The graphic shows the Manhattan skyline at sunset with “Al Qaeda” in bold type followed by “Coming Soon Again in New York.”

Al-Qaida has been blamed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which destroyed the World Trade Center and killed thousands of people.

New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne says an overseas, Arab-language Internet site posted the graphic on its “artwork and design” page. He says the NYPD has been monitoring the site.

FBI spokesman J. Peter Donald says the agency takes all threats seriously and “there is no specific orcredible threat to New York.”

Source: Yahoo News.

The amulet and mask were a 13-year-old boy’s virtual possessions in an online fantasy game. In the real world, he was beaten and threaten with a knife to give them up.

The Dutch Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the theft conviction of a youth who stole another boy’s possessions in the popular online fantasy game RuneScape. Judges ordered the offender to perform 144 hours of community service.

Only a handful of such cases have been heard in the world, and they have reached varying conclusions about the legal status of “virtual goods” — and whether stealing them is real-world theft.

The suspect’s lawyer had argued the amulet and mask “were neither tangible nor material and, unlike for example electricity, had no economic value.”

But the Netherlands’ highest court said the virtual objects had an intrinsic value to the 13-year-old gamer because of “the time and energy he invested” in winning them while playing the game.

The court did not release the offender’s name, only his year of birth — 1992. It said he and another youth beat and kicked the boy and threatened him with a knife until he logged into RuneScape and dropped the objects in 2007.

One of the thieves, who was also playing the game, was then able to pick up the items, making them his virtual property. Both were convicted by a lower court in 2009, but only one of them had appealed to the Supreme Court.

Source: The Chronicle Herald.

Next week, the Senate could be meeting to vote on the Protect IP Act (PIPA), the bill that many people are warning could damage the Internet. It’s a horrible prospect — but this isn’t the first time that Congress has tried to sacrifice a technology at the behest of corporate lobbyists.

Here are 10 other technologies that Congress tried, at one time or another, to legislate out of existence.

Top image: Neal Sanche/Flickr.

1. Video Cassette Recorders (VCRs)

Who Wanted it Killed: The movie studios, mainly. The MPAA’s Jack Valenti famouslytestified before Congress that “the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.”
How it Worked Out: No fewer than six bills were introduced in Congress to control the VCR. The MPAA finally dropped its demands that VCRs be outlawed, but instead supported bills that would require licensing of VCRs, royalties on the sale of blank videocassettes, and a copyright owner’s permission before renting out video tapes. In the end, Congress decided to wait and see what the Supreme Court decided in the famous Sony Vs. Universal case. And then, in 2002, the Digital Millennium Copyright Actrequired all VCRs to include “automatic gain control,” thus making Macrovision copy protection an integral part of all VCRs.

2. The Phonograph

Who Wanted it Killed: John Philip Sousa, the guy who wrote “Stars and Stripes Forever.” He testified before Congress that both the gramophone and the player piano would put musicians out of business. And that they would stifle composers from writing new music by removing “all incentive to further creative work.” In marathon hearings, Sousa and the American Copyright League argued in favor of a bill which would have given copyright owners control over all sales (including resale) of their work.
How it Worked Out: In the end, Congress passed a milder bill, which simply assured musicicans and composers royalties from recordings. Sousa was satisfied, and in 1923, he told Thomas Edison, “You have made the art of the musician immortal, Mr. Edison.”

3. Genetically modified food

Who Wanted it Killed: Environmentalists and food safety advocates. Congress has tried many times over the years to regulate or ban certain types of genetically modified foods, and manybills have been introduced over the years. Most recently, as the Food and Drug Administration has been deciding whether to allow the sale of AquaBounty Technologies’ genetically modified salmon in the U.S., the House of Representativesvoted to block FDA approval of the “AquAdvantage” salmon.
How it Worked Out: In general, U.S. laws remain laxer than those in most other countries. Regarding the salmon issue, it doesn’t look as though the House provision has passed the Senate, or gotten President Obama’s signature. Meanwhile, the FDA still hasn’t made a decision about the “franken-salmon.”

4. Internet gambling

Who Wanted it Killed: The Feds themselves. The Justice Department was very alarmed by the rise of online gambling, especially as run by offshore operators, and concerned that this gambling could serve as a cover for money-laundering.
How it Worked Out: Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, which didn’t outlaw online gambling, but did bar U.S. banks and credit card companies from processing payments to gambling sites. Since then, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) has been trying to restore the legality of online gambling, arguing that we could tax it and generate a lot of revenue, at a time when budgets are under strain.

5. The Whizzinator

Who Wanted it Killed: Pretty much everybody. After Minnesota Vikings running back Onterrio Smith was caught at an airport with one of these devices, which is basically a fake penis that allows you to fool drug urine tests, Congressheld hearings on May 17, 2005. Rep. Bart Stupakheld up Whizzinator advertising and spoke against the national scandal of simulated urination. “How will we stop the flow?” demanded Stupak, as the room exploded in unintended giggles.
How it Worked Out: There was no Federal law against manufacturing such devices, so states were powerless to go after the makers. In the end, the feds never managed to pass an anti-Whizzinator law, but federal prosecutors were able to go after the manufacturers for selling drug paraphernalia.

6. Mp3 players

Who Wanted it Killed: Actually, this is more like a random casualty of a reckless shooter. Congress has tried to pass a few laws to protect copyright owners in the past, which were so broadly written that they would have banned a wide range of technologies, including mp3 players. There was the Induce Act, which would have banned any technology that induces people to violate copyright. Earlier, there was the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, which banned any devices that could be used to read digital content that didn’t have Digital Rights Management (DRM) built in.
How it Worked Out: So far, none of these bills has passed, so your iPod is safe.

7. Margarine

Who Wanted it Killed: The dairy farmers. Margarine was introduced in 1874, after a French chemist named Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès figured out a way to make a cheap butter substitute from beef fat. The dairy industry freaked out, because the much cheaper margarine threatened to drive smaller dairies out of business. They tried passing various state laws, but some of those were shot down in court.
How it Worked Out: The dairy farmers went to Congress, and there were hearings that culminated in the Margarine Act of 1886, which imposed a tax of two cents per pound on margarine — although the original bill called for a ten cent tax instead. This was followed by the Margarine Act of 1906, in which the federal government raised that tax for margarine that was dyed yellow to look like real butter. (Some state laws required margarine to be dyed weird colors, like pink or black.) The state and federal anti-margarine laws were on the books for decades. (For more about the margarine saga, clickhere or here.)

8. Embryonic stem cells

Who Wanted it Killed: Pro-life advocates, mainly. In 1996, Congress passed the Dickey-Wicker amendment, which bans any federal research in which human embryos are created, destroyed or put at risk of harm. This law, which remains on the books, essentially prevented most embryonic stem cell research.
How it Worked Out: In 2001, then-President George W. Bush announced a new policy in which 61 cell lines of existing embryonic stem cells would be allowed for federally-funded research. Congress tried to pass a bill expanding this policy, but Bush vetoed it. Since then, President Obama has tried to abolish the Bush policy, but Obama’s executive order has been tied up in federal courts. (In a related issue, Congress has repeatedly voted to ban human cloning.)

9. DAT (Digital Audio Tape) recorders

Who Wanted it Killed: The music industry, yet again. Congress held hearings throughout the late 1980s over whether to stop this digital technology from coming to consumers. Music industry lobbyists demanded that DAT players be fitted with technology that would degrade the sound quality of any music copied on them, or that sales of DAT tapes include a royalty payment to the music industry.
How it Worked Out: As Stanford’s Mark Lemley puts it, “Digital audio tapes were then subject to a compulsory licensing scheme and were never heard from again by mass-market consumers. The technology flopped once it was put under the control of the content industry.”

10. Assault weapons

Who Wanted it Killed: Gun control advocates. The ban on semi-automatic weapons in 1994 was a major achievement of the Clinton Administration’s first two years — and probably a huge reason why the Democrats lost control over both houses of Congress that year.
How it Worked Out: The federal assault weapons ban was scheduled to sunset after ten years, and it did. The ban expired in 2004, and attempts to renew it were unsuccessful. Image via 2DayBlog.

Additional reporting by Gordon Jackson and Marykate Jasper. Thanks also to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Wendy Seltzer for the suggestions.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

This last week has been crazy, especially if you are a Ron Paul supporter and believe that he is the greatest choice we have to fill the chair in the Oval Office. Some people claim that he is unelectable, such as the uber-douche billionaire Donald Trump. Others claim that he is crazy. As far as I am concerned, none of these concerns are valid, well unless you consider the Founding Fathers crazy or you think a guy who has been reelected to Congress continually since 1976 (minus a 12 year break) is unelectable. Ron Paul has been bucking the trends of a growing socialist state since the Gerald Ford era! So yeah, let’s sweep the guy under the rug and ignore him; if that doesn’t work we’ll call him names.

The fact of the matter is that Ron Paul scares the everliving shit out of people on the left and on the right. He says things that resonate with people and unfortunately for the two big parties, what resonates with people seemingly isn’t what either party represents at their core, at least anymore. Ron Paul is the antithesis to the modern American political system. He represents a school of thought that contradicts all the bullshit rhetoric and talking points of conservative and liberal pundits. He understands economics, freedom and knows what we have to do, and most importantly sacrifice, to survive and eventually thrive once again. Where all these other conservative candidates on the stage competing to be the one to knock off Barack Obama in 2012 claim to be fiscally responsible constitutional conservatives, Ron Paul truly is the only one that fits that bill. Gary Johnson does too but he hasn’t been invited to the debates lately. Johnson is just another guy that they are trying to ignore and bury. The cold hard reality is that these other candidates are all for the Constitution when it suits their agenda. When it doesn’t they use their platform to justify why they need to violate our constitutional rights. It is a classic example of Orwellian doublespeak and doublethink at its finest. Fuck the establishment cocks.

CONTINUED at Original Post.

Remember that guy who uploaded the unfinished copy of X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE? Well, they’ve finally handed him his punishment.

The pirate in question, Gilberto Sanchez admitted back in 2009 that he bought the film on a street corner near his home in the Bronx. In March, Sanchez plead guilty to one count of uploading a copyrighted work being prepared for commercial distribution. He went on to state that he spread the file to Megaupload.com and various other sites. In the prosecutors statements, they spoke of the “damage” that was done in such a short amount of time, “Although Fox was able to get defendant’s Wolverine workprint removed from his Megaupload account within approximately one day, by then, the damage was done and the film had proliferated like wildfire throughout the Internet, resulting in up to millions of infringements.”

Sanchez was sentenced to one year in federal prison by sentenced by U.S. District Judge Margaret Morrow, who described his actions as “extremely serious.”

United States Attorney André Birotte Jr. sees this as a warning to all the pirates out there, “The federal prison sentence handed down in this case sends a strong message of deterrence to would-be Internet pirates. The Justice Department will pursue and prosecute persons who seek to steal the intellectual property of this nation.”

Source: JoBlo.

Lindsay Lohan’s fans have been given an early festive treat – the star’s sexy Playboy cover has leaked online.

The actress stripped off for the $1 million photoshoot, and she promised fans they would get a sneak peek of the sexy shots on America’s Ellen DeGeneres Show on December 15 – ahead of the release of the January/February issue of the men’s magazine.

However, the much-anticipated cover shot – featuring the platinum blonde straddling a red plastic Playboy bunny-shaped chair, which strategically covers her modesty – has leaked online.

Lohan wears nothing but a pair of high heels for the saucy shoot.

Source: Starpulse. Video at link.

*Taken from the Guardian.

A fresh tranche of private emails exchanged between leading climate scientists throughout the last decade was released online on Tuesday. The unauthorised publication is an apparent attempt to repeat the impact of a similar release of emails on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit in late 2009.

The initial email dump was apparently timed to disrupt the Copenhagen climate talks. It prompted three official inquiries in the UK and two in the US into the working practices of climate scientists. Although these were critical of the scientists’ handling of Freedom of Information Act requests and lack of openness they did not find fault with the climate change science they had produced.

Norfolk police have said the new set of emails is “of interest” to their investigation to find the perpetrator of the initial email release who has not yet been identified.

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*Written by Rob Rimes.

1. Introduction:

Not too long ago, I had no idea who the hell Governor Jerry Brown was, other than being a lyrical flourish in the Dead Kennedys’ epic song “California Über Alles”. And shit, that song was released in 1979 which just goes to show just how long this tyrannical cockpuppet has been on the political scene. The song claimed back then that he was going to be president, well that hasn’t happened yet. Truth is, he is a career politician for sure and he even had presidential runs in ’76, ’80 and ’92. He is more than just the current Governor of Cali, in fact, he was their governor once before for two terms that stretched from 1975-1983. I guess the Golden Staters love this shitpickle maroonish tyrant because they elected him as governor once again, 27 years after he left that position. Well, there is that old adage that states, “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.”

Governor Jerry Brown is a tyrant, plain and fucking simple. A part of me fears that this bastard will one day run for president again, maybe in 2016 or 2020. God I fucking hope not because his current tenure as Cali Governor has been full of several attacks on liberty and this fucksack hasn’t even been in office a whole year yet! If anything, this article is being written to lay out the tyrannies he’s committed already, in less than a quarter of a single term. By exposing all this, you will hopefully be deterred from ever giving this guy your vote, whether it is for an unprecedented fourth term as governor or a potential presidential run.

2. Eliminating Parental Rights:

One of the biggest things this tyrant has done, is he has made it so that California preteens can choose whether or not they want the Gardasil vaccine, without their parents’ knowledge. The vaccine supposedly helps prevent certain types of HPV. However, this is the same vaccine that has gotten presidential candidate and Texas Governor Rick Perry into a lot of trouble with a big portion of the voter base. Reason being, the vaccination has received a lot of scrutiny due to the fact that it has been proven to cause harm and in some cases death to individuals who have taken it. Some research even states that the vaccine is ineffective and some studies have concluded that HPV doesn’t cause cancer but Gardasil itself does. You can do your own research on it and decide if the pros outweigh the cons but really, should the decision of partaking in such a controversial medical procedure fall on the shoulders of a 12-year-old child?

The point is, Jerry Brown has eliminated parental rights. I’m sorry but that is just fucking scary. I’m not saying all parents are even good, most parents these days seem pretty shitty. However, an adult is more capable of making these sorts of decisions, especially for their own children. It kind of falls under the same category as abortions in certain states where the child doesn’t have to get parental permission. While I understand that teenagers don’t want their parents knowing that they are sexually active, I still think that until a person is 18-years-old (or emancipated from their parents) that they still have to live under the rule of their parents or legal guardians. That might not seem very libertarian of me but a 12-year-old girl shouldn’t even be in a position to have to make this decision and live with the consequences of her possibly naive choice.

So by giving children the responsibility of adults, is the nanny state now assuming that they can also buy beer, cigarettes and drive cars? Hell, maybe they can work in strip clubs or even prostitute themselves out in areas where hooking is legal. I know these are extreme examples but aren’t the actions of Jerry Brown here extreme? I mean, you basically consider 12-year-old girls to be adults in this case but in other cases they are still children? You can’t have your cake and eat it too. This is just another case of forcing us all to comply with the statist quo.

Fact is, the nanny state has been trying to pry children away from their parents for years. This case is no different. The state is letting you know that they are the parents and that you just have to offer your child, now their child, free room and board until they are old enough to go out and live off of the system, as they are being indoctrinated to do already. Don’t trust mommy and daddy, trust the state kiddos. Oh, and while your at it, be sure to snitch to the state about any suspicious activity your parents may be a part of.

The hypocrisy of this is that the state has laws in place to protect children from sexual predators because the state obviously feels that children can’t make well-informed decisions when it comes to sexual activity due to their undeveloped worldview. Yet they are informed enough to decide on whether or not they can get vaccinated before they commence in sexual activity? It’s fucking horseshit! As real as it can be stated, Jerry Brown condones the exploitation of the children in his own state, which he is sworn to protect. Is he getting kickbacks from Merck like Rick Perry did?

And while young girls are now able to make this crazy decision, Jerry Brown has banned minors from going to tanning salons. Truth is, there is no logic behind any of this hypocritical behavior unless you understand the real agenda here. That agenda is that the state is grooming these children to be zombies reliant on the state itself. Unfortunately the people of California haven’t woken up enough to lambast this bastard. Chances are, he’ll get voted in for a fourth term.

Ultimately, as with everything, this is a state issue as this country has been founded on states’ rights. However, California is apparently full of subservient dumbasses that are seemingly fine with this. Well, I’m not cool with it and if I ever do have a child, they won’t be raised in Killa Cali.

Before I move on, here is something Jerry Brown said recently after vetoing a bill that would have forced minors to wear ski helmets:

I believe parents have the ability and responsibility to make good choices for their children.

What a dickbag.

3. Warrantless Searches & Seizures:

Governor Jerry Brown is one of the biggest pro-police state politicians I have seen in recent memory. Recently, he used his executive power to veto a bill, which has resulted in allowing law enforcement in California to be able to do warrantless on-the-spot cell phone searches. This is a direct attack to the Constitution, more specifically the 4th Amendment, which states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Well, Jerry Brown doesn’t give a fuck about all that noise. You see, now residents of the Golden State who are either suspects to a crime or just simply pulled over on a traffic stop can be forced to hand their mobile device over to the police, who have the power to search it inside and out. In the digital age this means that cops have access to all your private e-mails, pictures, text messages, contacts, call records, cloud-storage services, location-based services, banking activity and everything else you could imagine. I don’t know about you but I have a lot of idiot friends that text me idiot things that could pretty much incriminate me if the cop wanted to be a humorless dick. Many cops are humorless dicks.

This gives police way too much power. Not only that but it strips 37 million people of their constitutional rights. The 4th Amendment exists to stop the abuse of power from the state and to protect the individual and property rights of the American citizen. What Jerry Brown has done here is unacceptable. This isn’t even an issue of states’ rights, it’s an issue of some vile fucksack coming along and taking a huge shit on our nation’s most sacred document. It is a slap in the face of our Founding Fathers and the millions of Golden Staters that are forced to live under this dark cloud of tyranny. Then again, I guess you get what you vote for.

As is always the way with government, what is to stop them from going a mile when you give them an inch? What is going to stop the corruption of crooked cops from finding just enough suspicion to stop you and thumb through your smartphone on a whim? What’s to stop them from finding just enough incriminating evidence to make your life a living hell? You better not back talk them! Hell, you might as well give them the keys to your entire kingdom because they can just peer inside whenever they want anyway.

If Brown is willing to bring forth this sort of tyranny, what is to stop him from eventually expanding this policy to allow for cops to search your home or your car without a warrant? We’re on a slippery slope of statist bullshit and if you can’t see the correlation between warrantless searches and seizures of your phone and warrantless searches and seizures of your other property, then you deserve to live under the iron fist.

4. Illegal Immigration Education:

Governor Jerry Brown made another Rick Perry-esque faux pas, in the eyes of many, when he signed the DREAM Act, thus giving a free college education, paid for by the state a.k.a. your tax dollars, to illegal immigrants in California. Hasn’t this punkass bitch learned from all the heat Rick Perry has caught in the Republican debates as of late? Oh wait, I forgot, Perry is basically a liberal in a conservative suit and Brown is a Democrat, so they are pretty much policy butt buddies and chips off of that old leftist block. I mean, Perry actually was a Democrat once but whatever, this isn’t an article about that jackturd (I already wrote one about him here). Point being, why would Jerry Brown worry about what criticism Rick Perry’s not-so-conservative policies generate in conservatives when his own policies come from a contrasting ideology? Besides, is the DREAM Act as bad as conservatives make it out to be?

Well, the DREAM Act essentially promotes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants but it does so at the expense of the tax payer, whether they want to contribute to the program or not. That is tyrannical in my eyes but that just brings up the whole debate about taxation being theft and I don’t want to go there in this article.

You see, the DREAM Act gives illegal immigrants financial assistance for college. While the economy in California is an shambles, this program will cost the state $14.5 million. Now I am all for promoting a path to citizenship and so are many conservatives, or so they claim when under fire, but is this a wise way to do it? Considering that the DREAM Act isn’t just freely given away and that students have to show that they’ve got a solid GPA and intend to use this opportunity to enrich themselves and thus make our country as a whole more prosperous, I can’t really knock it too hard.

Then again, when really looking at it, why does the government need to dangle this carrot in front of illegal immigrants that actually want to become legal immigrants? Why not just make the path easier, regardless of this bullshit stipulation? Is it because the government perceives a college education as a key element to allowing someone the same rights that those of us born here have? With that logic, should I be stripped of my citizenship because I quit college? It doesn’t really make a lot of sense and it just seems like a type of social engineering.

If someone wants to take the path to citizenship on their own and they make a conscious effort, why do we want to deny them that? Why make it hard on the person that wants to earn a buck and live legally within the system? Sure, we don’t want to have a bunch of new citizens milking the welfare system and getting caught in that web of bullshit but truth is, illegal immigrants already receive several forms of welfare in this country and since they aren’t documented, the chances of them taking advantage of the system is even greater.

Now this sort of contradicts what I wrote about in “Conservatives & Aliens” but since writing that, I’ve read a lot more on the subject and have come to understand how the illegal immigrant can milk the system more than the legal one. The real problem is the welfare state. Abolish it, make the path to citizenship easier and let the chips fall where they may. By giving immigrants these freebies, we are keeping them weak and dependent. Then again, that’s probably just part of a bigger agenda.

5. Open Carry Gun Rights:

Recently, Governor Jerry Brown took a shit on the 2nd Amendment when he banned open carry of guns in the state of California. To many gun hating lefties, this is a pretty solid victory for their ilk but to the rest of us, it is just another display of utter tyranny and an attack against the Constitution.

The problem with banning open carry in California is quite unique, as its strange gun laws make it so that getting even a concealed-carry weapons permit is much more difficult. You see, in Cali, unlike other states, a CCW must be approved or denied by the sole discretion of that county’s sheriff. So if the sheriff doesn’t like you, guess what? No CCW. In other states, anyone can get a CCW as long as they pass a background check and a skills test. It is a pretty simple process and helps prevent any police state or nanny state shenanigans. California is just a fucked up ass backwards place however and many of their laws are just borderline silly, especially this one.

This is a classic example of government control by overreaching their authority and thus taking it to the people. It is the 2nd Amendment that gives people the power to defend all their other constitutional rights. This is probably one of the reasons why progressive liberals are always trying to ban guns. Then again, they also just prescribe to the media-hyped fear about gun violence without looking at the real facts. The fact is, to steal an old adage, an armed society is a polite society. You never hear about gun violence at a gun show, do you? With their logic, a gun show should be a fucking war zone. I’ve covered all this in “Gun Control (is) for Dummies“.

6. The Amazon Tax:

Business is good! Well, not in California for Amazon. You see, they had their business stifled by Jerry Brown’s special Internet sales tax law. The shitty law caused Amazon to basically say “fuck it” and leave the Golden State. In another case of the know-it-all statists trying to milk every penny from every source possible, the unintended consequences of these good intention became very apparent, very quickly when Amazon refused to play the bullshit game.

This law didn’t just attack Amazon, it made it so that all out-of-state online retailers that did business in California had to collect sales tax from Cali customers. This was done to “create jobs” and help “mom & pop” compete with the Internet retail monsters. Yep, government intervention always works. Nope, nothing’s going to go south here!

Did Governor Jerry Brown think about the jobs he would effect by pushing these giant companies away? When I buy used books, DVDs, video games or CDs from Amazon, about half of the items come from “mom & pop” stores in California. Cali has a lot of small stores that benefit from the opportunity Amazon gives them to have storefronts on their supersite. Jerry must have a very small worldview and is unable to see how the last true frontier, the Internet, hugely benefits all of us. Damn you prosperity!

The San Francisco Times, which supports this stupid tax, actually printed this laughable sentence:

Finally, because it will be collecting California sales tax one year from now, the door is now open for Amazon to open a distribution center or warehouse in the country’s most populous state.

Do these fucking idiots really believe that? Funny, because Amazon quit doing business with Cali completely! Did Gov. Brown think this would incentivize Amazon and other large megacompanies to move to his state? Dude must have a fat sack of some O.G. kush cause he’s high as fuck!

So is Amazon still on the outs with Killa Cali? Nope, a deal was made. Well, at least for now.

After Amazon announced that they were leaving Cali, the state panicked like little bitches. California gave Amazon a one-year reprieve from having to comply with this stupid sales tax collection law. Amazon, in return, cannot seek a ballot measure campaign to undo the tax during this reprieve. This pissed off the Democrats of the state who were desperate to raise revenue by any means necessary; their feeble minds always turn to this sort of policy which fails time and time again. Either way, this situation is still a mess and it is anyone’s guess how it will pan out a year or so from now.

7. Conclusion:

Governor Jerry Brown is a statist shitcock that has no concern about liberty and freedom but after reading this, you should now be well aware of that. The problem is, people really really like this guy. He’s charismatic, he’s been around forever and he just knows how to work those Cali peeps like no one else. After eight years of that Terminator guy, who pretty much ran the state into the ground, Californians probably just wanted to see a friendly face. Frankly, I don’t blame them.

The problem is, Jerry Brown is not the answer that California needs. He is a career politician and an establishment heavyweight that has a statist agenda that is going to dig Cali’s financial pit deeper while pushing his state further and further towards an authoritarian model. The only two political parties in California will be the Police State Party and the Nanny State Party. At the end of the day, I hope this guy is perfectly content with where he is at in life now because another run at the White House would be scary. Just stay in Cali dude because it’s pretty far away from me.

*Taken from Yahoo News.

Netflix Inc Chief Executive Reed Hastings reversed an unpopular decision to separate his company’s DVD rental business and online video streaming service, sending the stock up 7 percent in early trading.

U.S. customers will continue to go to Netflix.com for streaming and DVD-by-mail rentals, as the company has dropped plans to move its DVD rentals to a separate business called Qwikster, Hastings announced in a short statement on the company blog on Monday.

Hastings’ earlier plan to put movie and television DVD rentals on a different website, which never went into effect, was one of several missteps in recent months that have helped drive shares of the one-time Wall Street darling down about 60 percent since July.

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*Taken from the Christian Science Monitor.

The oldest known biblical manuscripts in existence, the Dead Sea Scrolls, are now online to everyone in the world with the aid of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and Google.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were written between the first and third centuries B.C. They were hidden in 11 caves in the Judean desert on the shores of the Dead Sea in 68 B.C. to protect them from approaching Roman armies. They were not unearthed again until 1947, when a Bedouin shepherd of the Ta’amra tribe threw a rock in a cave and realized something lay inside.

Most of the scrolls are parchment, or specially prepared animal skins, although some are papyrus. Most are written in Hebrew, although some are in Aramaic or Greek.

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