National sales tax? Yes. In addition to income tax? SCREW THAT!

At long last, some in Washington are saying that it's time to have a national sales tax, which is something that I've been advocating for years.

The problem is that these same people want the sales tax in addition to the pre-existing income tax.

Common around the world, including in Europe, such a tax -- called a value-added tax, or VAT -- has not been seriously considered in the United States. But advocates say few other options can generate the kind of money the nation will need to avert fiscal calamity.

At a White House conference earlier this year on the government's budget problems, a roomful of tax experts pleaded with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to consider a VAT. A recent flurry of books and papers on the subject is attracting genuine, if furtive, interest in Congress. And last month, after wrestling with the White House over the massive deficits projected under Obama's policies, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee declared that a VAT should be part of the debate.

"There is a growing awareness of the need for fundamental tax reform," Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said in an interview. "I think a VAT and a high-end income tax have got to be on the table."

This is fiscal insanity without any clarity of vision.

Here's what should be done: scrap the income tax completely. Doing so would boost the economy in ways that hardly anybody can possibly imagine. It would free up a massive portion of the individual and small business sectors to re-engage in private enterprise. Then have a national sales tax, which is equitable across the board and with no regard to "income brackets". And for good measure, slash corporate tax rates so that more American businesses will be enticed to bring their industries back to the United States.

If those things are done, there will be a domestic financial renaissance the likes of which has not been seen in recent memory.

But to pile new taxes upon those which are already too burdensome for most Americans is to invite inevitable disaster.

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INCREDIBLE fan-made trailer for a GREEN LANTERN movie with Nathan Fillion that you'll never see!

Some dude sliced and diced up a bunch of motion pictures, and ended up with this AWESOME trailer for a Green Lantern movie with Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan.

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Supreme Court feeding frenzy begins anew

A few weeks ago I arrived at a sobering conclusion, that no doubt better minds than my own have long ago already come to: that the United States government and the political processes associated with it have become a by-product of the lack of enlightenment on the part of collective America. The ability to self-govern was something that only a mature and more noble mind could take responsibility for, the Founders recognized. And for awhile, it worked pretty well... before Joe and Jane Six-Pack decided that voting for American Idol was of more pressing concern than having to worry about whether their elected officials deserved to be in office to begin with.

Anyhoo, President Obama has nominated Sonia Sotomayor to replace the outgoing Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. I ain't crazy about her one bit, 'cuz she's already said that the courts are "where policy is made" and that is the absolute last thing that I ever want to hear a prospective Supreme Court justice admit. But that ain't what this post is about...

The process of nominating and confirming a new Supreme Court justice has become everything that is wrong about American politics, and I believe it affirms the notion I mentioned earlier: that it reflects how un-enlightened we have become as a people. Regardless of who is being nominated or by which president, the process of filling a vacant Supreme Court seat has become too politicized, too partisan, too emotional, too ideological, and plain ol' flat-out illogical. And why?

Because the entire concept of who it is that gets to choose who fills a Supreme Court seat has become a mad prize for the power-mad. And in the end, that is all this is about: raw, naked power and being the one to boast about having it.

Dare I or anyone ask aloud: "Are we so civilized as to carry on in this way? Are we really the enlightened people?"

Anyone wanna come back in a few weeks when we're way into the Sonia Sotomayor nomination process, and be able to say that we are?

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A thought for this Memorial Day

Freedom is only always purchased at the highest of cost...

...and it's left to each and every one of us to make sure that it's never lost.

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The Star Trek reboot that could have been

With Star Trek still going warp speed at the box office, it's hard to grasp a time not long ago when the entire Star Trek brand had been written off by many people as a thing that had completely run its course. The previous few movies in the series had been severely lackluster and Star Trek: Enterprise failed to garner appreciable ratings on television.

Such was the state of Trek five years ago in 2004. And at the time J. Michael Straczynski (the creator of Babylon 5 and writer of the recent film The Changeling on top of many other terrific endeavors) and television producer/writer Bryce Zabel (The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, Dark Skies), recognizing the franchise's foundering, conceived of an ambitious plan to "reboot" the entire shebang. A few years later Paramount handed Trek over to J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot. We already know how much of a stellar success that has been... but what about Straczynski and Zabel's treatment?

Bryce Zabel posted the entire "Star Trek: Re-Boot the Universe" treatment on his blog a little less than three years ago. It's quite an interesting read, especially how he and Straczynski re-defined the "Prime Directive" into something much more proactive and driving as a plot element, along with the entire rationale for needing to relaunch the series to begin with.

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The Brick Testament does the Apocalypse!

Brendan Powell Smith's The Brick Testament is one of my very favorite websites ever. Guess it's because I'm a student of the Bible, and also a lifelong LEGO geek. The Brick Testament is devoted to illustrating the scriptures with the classic building blocks. The wildly popular site has been around since 2001... but only now has Smith gotten around to LEGO-rendering the Book of Revelation! If you don't mind some harsh language for dramatic effect, this is definitely a must-see. I think my favorite part of it might be Smith's take on Revelation 12 and the war in Heaven.

So is it humorous? Heretical? An indication that Smith has finally gone too far? Whatever it is, his concise and rollickin'-fun technique with LEGO makes for a far more interesting and thought-provoking examination of Revelation than what the Left Behind novels turned into. For that reason alone, I'm compelled to make The Brick Testament's Book of Revelation recommended reading.

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Pew poll: Independent voters are on the rise

Bad news for both of the major U.S. political parties: Pew Research Center reports that thirty-nine percent of voters now identify themselves as independent: a dramatically sharp increase. Thirty-three percent preferred to be identified as "Democrat" and twenty-two percent wished to be known as "Republican".

So yesterday morning I wrote that politics has become a dreary bore to this blogger. And I can't help but think that this poll by Pew reflects that a lot of Americans share that sentiment also. The Democrats and Republicans are each bleeding away voters... and it's not likely that either of the parties will substantially gain them back in the foreseeable future.

Oh heck, let's call it for what it really is: the Republicans and Democrats are fast becoming marginalized.

Now, I have to wonder how long will it be before the mainstream press finally starts to get a clue. Will it keep portraying the Democrat and Republican parties as "the status quo" even as both parties drive themselves to the fringe of the people's interests? Or will outfits such as Fox News, CNN and the like finally stop "playing it safe" and start doing some semblance of real journalism before getting possibly relegated to the pile of increasing irrelevance like their newspaper brethren?

Hey, it just makes small-time bloggers like me look all the more awesome. "I was unaffiliated when unaffiliated wasn't cool" :-P

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"Mancow" gets waterboarded, decides it IS torture

Chicago radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller had maintained that waterboarding could not possibly be considered torture. And he set out to prove it this morning. Mancow submitted himself to the procedure, which was broadacast on his live show and recorded by a television crew.

What did Mancow say afterward?

"It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that's no joke," Mancow said, likening it to a time when he nearly drowned as a child. "It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back... It was instantaneous...and I don't want to say this: absolutely torture."

"I wanted to prove it wasn't torture," Mancow said. "They cut off our heads, we put water on their face...I got voted to do this but I really thought 'I'm going to laugh this off.'"

Here's the video. Gotta give Mancow some serious props for both going through with this, and having the strength of character to admit that he had been wrong before...

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"Life finds a way."

This is the nest that some birds have made in the satellite television box on the back of my house!

Nevermind all those cables and wires and other potential hazards to wildlife. I'm just astonished that they were able to open the box to begin with... and then build what otherwise looks to be a comfortable avian domicile inside of it.

While I was taking this picture a startled bird flew out. I was able to count a number of eggs within the nest. There is another built atop an outside light beneath the overhang of the roof.

I suppose that wherever there is found a niche - whether left by God or man - that nature is quite adept at filling it.

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FCC can enter your home without warrant if you have a wireless router

If your home network uses a wireless router, or if you have a cordless phone or baby monitor or cellphone or anything that emits radio waves, the Federal Communications Commission has asserted it has the power to enter your property WITHOUT a warrant in order to "inspect" said equipment.

That’s the upshot of the rules the agency has followed for years to monitor licensed television and radio stations, and to crack down on pirate radio broadcasters. And the commission maintains the same policy applies to any licensed or unlicensed radio-frequency device.

“Anything using RF energy — we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference,” says FCC spokesman David Fiske. That includes devices like Wi-Fi routers that use unlicensed spectrum, Fiske says.

The FCC claims it derives its warrantless search power from the Communications Act of 1934, though the constitutionality of the claim has gone untested in the courts. That’s largely because the FCC had little to do with average citizens for most of the last 75 years, when home transmitters were largely reserved to ham-radio operators and CB-radio aficionados. But in 2009, nearly every household in the United States has multiple devices that use radio waves and fall under the FCC’s purview, making the commission’s claimed authority ripe for a court challenge.

“It is a major stretch beyond case law to assert that authority with respect to a private home, which is at the heart of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure,” says Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Lee Tien. “When it is a private home and when you are talking about an over-powered Wi-Fi antenna — the idea they could just go in is honestly quite bizarre.”

George Washington University professor Orin Kerr, a constitutional law expert, also questions the legalilty of the policy.

“The Supreme Court has said that the government can’t make warrantless entries into homes for administrative inspections,” Kerr said via e-mail, refering to a 1967 Supreme Court ruling that housing inspectors needed warrants to force their way into private residences. The FCC’s online FAQ doesn’t explain how the agency gets around that ruling, Kerr adds.

There's more on the Wired.com story linked above, including how this crazy "right" first came to light.

And if any of our friends from the FCC are reading this, I can only say this:

You can have my Linksys router... when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers!

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This is what American politics has turned into

A high-tech, glorified pissing match between the Democrats and Republicans.

Some people have written to me asking why I'm not doing much political commentary anymore. To be honest: it's become a very boring thing to me. I'd rather devote time to considering and then articulating about real ideas, not empty ideology.

And maybe also it's because I cannot help but on some level have already written of America as a lost cause, if she must be dependent upon people like Dick Cheney and Barack Obama and Rush Limbaugh and Nancy Pelosi.

These people and many more have completely forgotten what it means to serve others. They actually believe that because something so eternally vapid as their political parties have given them a measure of power, that it means that God Himself has somehow anointed them over all others.

I'm not here to cheer on any among the morally impotent. I am here to find and celebrate those who possess clarity of character and a higher vision. This blog is going to honor those who have the sense to realize that it is God and not they themselves who are at the center of the universe.

They're out there. And most of them have the unique quality of having never asked for any amount of power at all. They are the ones we should be encouraging to step up to the plate in this country, not the professional political pigs of self-parody.

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Down syndrome and how it fights cancer

This is why I love the Internet so much: you get to learn stuff you otherwise might never have known. And this is why I love blogging so much: it gives me the opportunity to share stuff like this with others who also might never have known it :-)

Apparently it's been recognized for awhile among those in the field that people with Down syndrome (a genetic affliction marked by an extra chromosome) very rarely get cancer. According to an article at Science News about a newly published study in the journal Nature, it may be because of extra production of a cancer-fighting protein in people with Down...

People born with Down syndrome have an extra copy of chromosome 21, instead of the usual two copies — one from each parent. The third chromosome causes genetic aberrations that result in the mental retardation and telltale physical traits that define the condition.

But chromosome 21 carries 231 genes, including some that may well suppress cancer. In the new study, researchers provide evidence that the protein encoded by the RCAN1 gene reins in the rampant blood vessel growth that a tumor needs to thrive. Scientists theorized that having an extra copy of the gene would result in more protein being made and add to an anticancer effect.

Scientists have long suspected that such genetic benefits might accrue from having an extra chromosome 21. A recent study found that people with Down syndrome are only about one-tenth as likely to get a solid-tumor cancer as are people without the syndrome.

There's plenty more of this intriguing study at the link above.

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Perhaps we should call it the "International Still Suit"?

Thanks to a newly-tested and approved recycling system aboard the International Space Station, its long-term crews are now able to drink water recovered from urine, sweat and breath exhalation. It's the first time that water has been acquired and imbibed in space in such a manner.

The new system takes the combined urine of the crew from the toilet, moves it to a big tank, where the water is boiled off, and the vapor collected. The rest of contaminants - the yucky brine in the urine - is thrown away, said Marybeth Edeen, the space station's national lab manager who was in charge of the system.

The water vapor is mixed with water from air condensation, then it goes through filters, much like those put on home taps, Edeen said.

When six crew members are aboard it can make about six gallons from urine in about six hours, Edeen said.

The system sounds very much like the stillsuits worn by the Fremen in the Dune series of novels.

Wonder how long it'll be before some bold entrepreneur approaches NASA about selling drops of "authentic recycled astronaut urine" :-P

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Meet the Big Daddy that you'll play in BIOSHOCK 2 (and game release date?)

It's been known for a few months that in the upcoming BioShock 2 players will be stepping into the boots of the first-ever Big Daddy: the prototype of the ones that you fought in the original BioShock. The cover of the July issue of GamePro reveals the design. And the mag promises to deliver a lot more details when it hits the stands.

(By the way, according to the comments on the above-linked post that's a camera on your Big Daddy's helmet. So research is once again part of a BioShock game.)

Meanwhile, Digital Spy has some more info about BioShock 2's particular moral choices and the first time I've seen a release date given anywhere: October 30th. Just in time for Halloween :-)

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"They call it spreading hope!" It's ABC's trailer for V!

This could be the breakout hit of the 2009-2010 television season. But what has me gushing with joy is the return of the blood-red "V" graffiti! And I especially love how the reboot updates the premise of the original miniseries by having resistance to the Visitors spreading viral on the Internet.

Check out ABC's first trailer for V...

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If you are going to see TERMINATOR SALVATION...

Please don't.

I just got back from the midnight premiere of it. And right now I'm weighing whether or not I should take the time to write a full review of the movie.

So far as I'm concerned the Terminator story ended with Terminator 2: Judgment Day: one of the most perfect sequel movies of all time. Neither of the last two alleged installments have added anything of merit to the saga. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was pretty bad and Terminator Salvation stinks on ice. Just about everything about it is wrong, with the exception of Anton Yelchin as the young Kyle Reese and he's channeling Michael Biehn from the original The Terminator about as well as Karl Urban did DeForrest Kelley in Star Trek.

And speaking of Star Trek: if you haven't seen it yet and were planning on catching Terminator Salvation this weekend, buy a ticket for Star Trek instead. Even if it's your second or third time going to watch it.

Terminator Salvation is everything that is wrong with modern blockbusters: all about special effects to carry the story, instead of complementing the story. And a lot of it makes no sense in the context of established Terminator mythology.

Like I said, in my mind the Terminator saga was concluded with Terminator 2. I had no empathy for the characters in Terminator 3 and I care even less for them in Terminator Salvation. Absent James Cameron coming back to direct a new Terminator film, I shall never plunk down good money to see another one again.

Hell, Batman & Robin and 2008's Godzilla might have been better than Terminator Salvation, if that tells you anything...

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