Comcast Art

And I thought Comcast had no taste. This is what happens when the signal pixelates for hours on end. You get this collage of changing images. This happens on the channels I wrote about here about the signal and having to go through the normal cycle they require to get help to prove that what's happening isn't my fault or their cable receiver, but the signal, either the signal itself or the network bandwidth.

I don't know what it takes beside the comments by the Comcast representatives who offer help but still going through some hoops to arrange an appointment for service, and in the past, it's the same story. They prove it's not the cable receiver but something with Comcast. They promise to tell the engineers but they don't offer to confirm they did or keep me in touch about what happens.

Beside this great changing art, I got either a blank screen or the typical channel display, below.



These two screens alternated for just over three hours from about noon to just after 3:00 pm, and yes on all the channels in the previous post. And all the other channels were fine, except a little halting with some of the HD movie channels. So I'm still interested in an answer and a solution.

And remember it's not the box, that's another problem I'll write about again (HDMI to DVI signal still not always working and the digital audio signal (digital output) doesn't work). I can't prove the latter but I'll post photos of the former.

NRA being stupid

No one would argue the government's terrorists watch list is perfect. It's well into the hundreds of thousands, and it's known many on it are the names are wrong, outdated, or something other than be correct and accurate. And there are frequent stories of innocent people being added to the list mistakenly or being misidentified as someone on the list. It's needs fixing.

But the NRA's stupidity is about the study which found 90% of those on the terrorists watch list were legally allowed to get and did buy guns. As the New York Times reported,

"Gun rights advocates said showing up on a terrorist watch list should not be grounds for being denied a gun."

“We’re concerned about the quality and the integrity of the list,” said Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association. “There have been numerous studies and reports questioning the integrity, and we believe law-abiding people who are on the list by error should not be arbitrarily denied their civil rights” under the Second Amendment."

The NRA doesn't mind criminals having guns - yes, notice they don't argue for criminal background checks, won't allow restrictions on guns show sales, or argue for better laws against crimes commited with guns, but now we know they don't mind terrorists having guns.

It really is all about the guns. The NRA doesn't care about life and property and especially people. They only care about having the unrestricted access to and ownership of guns. That's all they care about, not you or I, and not our right to be safe and secure in our lives. Nor do they care about our country or national safety, the whole of us to be safe and secure.

They would rather everyone walk around with a gun and if anyone decides to use it for whatever reason, that's ok because they had the gun to defend themselves and their rights and they had the right to use it. The NRA believes that's what the Second Amendment guarrantees, except it doesn't.

The Supreme Court got it wrong and forgot the historical context when they wrote that into the Constitution, as many historians and legal scholars have written. It's about context, but a conservative Court said the NRA and people have the full right to be stupid with and about their guns. The country and people be damned, they effectively wrote, guns rule and the NRA rejoiced.

Some day we'll grow up and as adults put guns in their place, but I won't see it in my lifetime. And despite all the crimes commited with guns, the NRA doesn't seem to want to grow up either. I don't know what will change them except maybe someone stickes a gun in their face to see the reality and stupidity of it all.

Fuzzy lies

I was reading the news the State of Illinois won't charge (really lying) Senator Burris with perjury for his testimony in the investigation of his trade of work and money for the Senate seat. The prosecuter said the evidence was vague at best. Like that's stopped other prosecutions into politicians? Like politicians don't know how to lie with a straight face?

This is really a WTF moment. The Senator has never told the truth because he doesn't know it. It's the old adage about not knowing it even if it was a snake who bit him on the ass. And worse, he can't even keep a straight face while he's lying. Everyone knows he lies because it's the old adage about knowing it because he opens his mouth.

And they won't prosecute him for the obvious? And the taped conversations aren't evidence enough? Give the public a break. It's clear the prosecuter wants a slam-dunk case, and so he'd rather the truth be sacrificed for his career? Look at the evidence they convict Scooter Libby. That was less than the stuff they have for Burris, and they won that case.

We have a Senator who is so bad, his own party disowns him. They won't touch him because they know he's guilty. And they should know because senators are the worse liars in this country. We know that if you or I did what Burris did, we'd never see the light outside of jail and then prison for a long time, and we know that politicians are deemed untouchable unless you catch them with the verbal gun in their mouth.

Well, Burris did just that. He fired so many lying verbal shots, it's clear to even the dumbest person he's both an idiot and a liar. But not according to the prosecuter. To him Burris is just another politician, and that's not a crime in Illinois.

Abortion Rights Opponents

If you pay attention to this issue, you likely know Dr. Tiller, a physician in Kansas, was shot and killed during a church service Sunday. The man who shot him was arrested 3 hours later. Abortion rights opponents, as everyone has, denounced the killing saying they use nonviolent ways to get their message across and the laws changed.

Except they don't and they don't denounce all violence against physicians who perform abortions. The office of Dr. Tiller had been bombed at least once and rebuilt with bullet and bomb proofing glass and materials. The office had to engage the services of a private security company for protection from aggressive and violent protesters attacking the office and women accessing the office. And Dr. Tiller shot before. He routinely wore a bullet protection vest and occasionally have a security guard.

In short the abortion right opponents don't seem to denounce measures of violence, even the occasional death of physicians, while promoting the "importance" of human life down to a fetus and the definition of life at the moment of conception. That's hypocritical at best and outragiously mean at worst.

I won't hide my contempt for abortion rights opponents. They advocate the rights for individual to live without inteference by government and other people and then advocate against the rights of a women to do the same with her own body and family planning. In the name of religion, their own interpretation of the Bible.

They don't have problems advocating the killing of people who they think threaten this country. They don't advocate for the rights of people in other countries, those experiencing droughts, famine, oppression, civil war, genocide, and so on. Their view of human rights starts and stops with the issue of abortion.

That's over stating it a bit, many are good people who do argue and advocate if not work to help other for those issues. And I'm talking about the extremists of the lot. But it's a big group of extremists. And they are extremists, by definition and action. They mean to prevent women from exercising their rights, their right to the whole array of information and services for reproduction.

Fighting for that, women's freedom, access and choice for their reproduction, is the issue we all should value and support. It's the basic human right of women. Nothing less. And abortion is one of those services women should have, and in my view, unrestricted except by medical standards and practices, not some arbitrary religious belief.

If the abortion rights opponents were serious about their condemnation of the killing of Dr. Tiller, then hold a vigil for the good doctor in support of his rights and against murder. Or can you not do that because it's against your values? Life isn't it? But you pick and choose who's life is important? Like you're God?