Pity us bloggers, we don't get a shield law

But we do get the FTC on our case when we make a positive statement about a product. Actually the "shield law" (reporters don't have to testify in court) is a bad idea. It gives a really valuable privilege to just a few people. Who is a reporter really? Do part timers count? Free lancers? Michael Yon? (Michael is a free lancer who furnished the best Iraq coverage) And how about humble bloggers like me? If we go the whole route and call us bloggers reporters, then damn near everyone in the country can get out of testifying in court. That over turns two centuries of legal practice. Right now citizens have to testify except against themselves. Clergy, doctors, lawyers, husbands and wives also get an exemption. Reporters have to testify or the judge can lock them up for contempt of court. This happened to a female New York Times reporter in the Valerie Plame case a couple of years ago.
Far as I am concerned if a reporter's testimony will put some lowlife behind bars, or clear an innocent defender, make him testify. The reporters whine that sources will stop talking to them, but that's foolishness and special pleading. Sources talk to reporters cause they have an axe to grind, or they enjoy bragging. Or cause they drink too much. No source in his right mind is going to confess to a crime. There are quite a few sources who aren't in their right minds but that's the way life is.
Then we have the nanny state FTC deciding to regulate us bloggers. We used to have free speech in this country, which means I can say anything I like about stocks, bonds, automobiles, computers, tools, schools, food and anything else on my blog. I can praise them or slam them, that's free speech, or freedom of the press, depending upon whether you call a blog writing or speaking. Doesn't matter, we were free to do it, up until the FTC decided it could regulate this sort of thing.
What constitutional freedom will they take away from us next?
Time for another Tea Party.

Brinks sinks

The TV just ran an ad for home security. The ad explained that new management had changed the name of the company from "Brinks" to "Broadmoor" (or was it "Broadtop"). Was to go. Brinks is a name that goes back to the 1930's or farther. They still talk about the 1950's "Brinks job" here in New England.
New management has decided to increase sales by dropping a household name for an instantly forgettable name. Probably a bunch of MBA's.

Susan Rice UN Ambassador, Master of evasion

Susan Rice was on Meet the Press with David Gregory this morning. The morning NY Times story saying that Iran had all the know how needed to build a bomb was the topic. Rice was talking about "serious" sanctions on Iran. "Such as" asked Gregory. "Very serious" replied Rice. Rice talked about important deadlines. "What date is that deadline" asked Gregory. "Soon, very soon" replied Rice.
All in all, Rice managed to fill up 15 minutes of air time without divulging a thing. Gregory asked all the right questions and Rice evaded each one.
Translation. The Obama administration doesn't know what to do about the Iranian bomb. Time is running out. Once they get the bomb, taking it away from them is dangerous. Much easier to deal with Iran BEFORE they get a bomb.

Congressman admits he never reads the bills

This congressman explains that they work with a plain language version of the health care bill and someone ( staffers? elves? brownies?) translate the plain language version into "legislative language" which is too opaque to be read.
If this is true, then the Congress critters have turned control of the legislation over to the brownies. He who translates something can make the translation come out any way he wants. Especially if he has 1100 pages to hide stuff in.
We should forbid Congressional passage of long long bills. Say what you mean and boil it down to 1000 words or less.

Wide Screen Monitors

Problem, new widescreen monitor everything looks stretched out sideways. Circles become ovals, people look chunky, text looks wider than normal. The old CRT monitor width to height ratio was only 4:3, the new LCD monitor is 16:9.
Fix. Click Start->Settings->Control Panel. Click on the "display" icon. Click the "Settings" tab. Adjust screen resolution up till it matches the resolution of the monitor, in my case 1440 by 900 pixels. Works on my middle aged Compaq with a Radeon 200 Xpress video chipset on the mother board.

Fixing Firefox

My Firefox has been acting up. It stopped remembering passwords and logging me into password protected sites like Facebook, Model Railroader, and this blog. Tried one thing and another thing. I just found a fix.
Firefox maintains for each user a "profile". Profile is a hard disk file folder that holds your bookmarks, your saved passwords, and a grunch of other stuff. Files in the profile can get corrupted and then Firefox starts doing weird things.
The Fix is to start up a pure clean profile. The only thing in your old profile that you care about is your book marks. So export your bookmarks to an html file and import that file into the new profile. Do this from within Firefox. Click on Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks and then click on "Import and Backup" tab. Select "export html" There is a "backup" option but that does something different and will not work here.
Exit Firefox and restart it from the "Run..." selection on the Start Menu. Enter
"firefox -ProfileManager" in the run box. This will present you with a little window with some choices in it. Pick "Create New Profile" and you are done. This starts up a new clean blank profile. All you need to do now, once you get back into Firefox proper, is import the bookmarks.html file that you created earlier.
The new clean profile lacks any saved passwords, so you will have to present your password to each website that needs a password. Keep a sharp eye on the Firefox window and you will see an inconspicuous gray bar appear briefly asking if you want to remember the just entered password. Click "yes" and Firefox will remember the password and present it automatically for you next time.

47% of US citizens pay no income tax

Article is here. This is a scandal. Every citizen should pay some income tax. The poor shouldn't pay much, but they ought to pay something. How can anyone be a responsible voter if they cannot feel the bite of the taxman?