The Whiz Kid Info

The mrvonh Daily

2011-10-26T08:42:00.000-07:00

Obama Leads GOP Rivals, TIME Poll Shows

2011-10-16T10:52:00.000-07:00

Keith Olbermann reads the first collective statement of Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-06T07:31:00.000-07:00

Keith Olbermann reads the first collective statement of Occupy Wall Street
http://current.com/shows/countdown/videos/special-comment-keith-reads-first-collective-statement-of-occupy-wall-street

The BRAD BLOG : Election Fraud

2011-09-28T12:48:00.000-07:00

National Security Lab Hacks Diebold Touch-Screen Voting Machine by Remote Control With $26 in Computer Parts: My New EXCLUSIVE at Salon
The BRAD BLOG : Election Fraud

Get Money Out

2011-09-27T11:26:00.000-07:00

Get Money Out of Politics sign Petition

Occupy Wall Street ~ day 1 - YouTube

2011-09-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

Occupy Wall Street ~ day 1 - YouTube

LIVE AT OCCUPY WALL STREET

Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com

Michael Moore @ Occupy Wall Street - YouTube

2011-09-27T10:46:00.000-07:00

Michael Moore @ Occupy Wall Street - YouTube

Republican Rep Accidentally Admits The GOP Has No Interest In Creating Jobs

2011-09-13T08:05:00.000-07:00

Republican Rep Accidentally Admits The GOP Has No Interest In Creating Jobs

GOP Budget Ends Medicare

2011-04-24T12:26:00.000-07:00

GOP Budget Ends Medicare

More at The Real News

With All The Concern Over Deficits Why So Little Reporting Of "People's Budget" That Fixes It? | OurFuture.org

2011-04-23T07:36:00.000-07:00

With All The Concern Over Deficits Why So Little Reporting Of "People's Budget" That Fixes It? | OurFuture.org

You can't open a newspaper or turn on a radio or TV without being told that the world is going to end because of the deficit. The deficit was caused by tax cuts for the rich, huge military spending increases, two wars and the costs of our health care system. So of course all the solutions we hear about involve gutting the things We, the People (government) do for each other and our economy, not touching the military budget and even more tax cuts for the rich.

Bet you didn't know about The People's Budget. I wrote about it the other day, but you sure won't hear about it in your local newspaper, or on the radio (except a few stations) or on TV, except maybe on one or two of the MSNBC shows.

Why is there so little attention being paid to this plan, in the middle of all this huffing and puffing about the deficit? This plan fixes the deficit by addressing the causes of the deficit.

The People's Budget is a budget plan from the Progressive Caucus of our Congress. Click here for a summary.

From their website:

The CPC proposal:

• Eliminates the deficits and creates a surplus by 2021
• Puts America back to work with a “Make it in America” jobs program
• Protects the social safety net
• Ends the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
• Is FAIR (Fixing America’s Inequality Responsibly)

What the proposal accomplishes:

• Primary budget balance by 2014.
• Budget surplus by 2021.
• Reduces public debt as a share of GDP to 64.1% by 2021, down 16.5 percentage points...
• Reduces deficits by $5.6 trillion over 2012-21...
• Outlays equal to 22.2% of GDP and revenue equal 22.3% of GDP by 2021.

You can read the details in this PDF document.

The Economic Policy Institute has prepared an analysis that you can read here.

So, why do YOU think we aren't hearing about The People's Budget? Who do YOU think all the plans we hear about involve gutting the things We, the People do for each other and our economy, and giving even more tax cuts to the rich?

Democracy Now! | Headlines for April 19, 2011

2011-04-19T09:54:00.000-07:00

Democracy Now! | Headlines for April 19, 2011

Pulitzer Prize Awarded to Online Series on Wall Street

This year’s Pulitzer Prizes have been announced. Jake Bernstein & Jesse Eisinger of ProPublica won best national reporting for their series, "Wall Street Money Machine." It marks the first time the prize has been awarded to a group of stories that were never published in print.

bent12.jpg (JPEG Image, 343x508 pixels)

2011-03-30T12:55:00.000-07:00

bent12.jpg (JPEG Image, 343x508 pixels)

Scott Atran: Why War Is Never Really Rational

2011-03-30T12:39:00.000-07:00

Scott Atran: Why War Is Never Really Rational

"The art of war," Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations, "is certainly the noblest of all arts." In every culture, war is considered society's most noble endeavor (recent threat of nuclear war and mass annihilation has made a slight dent in this universal passion), although what is considered good and noble in one society may well be considered evil and bad in others. War is usually much better than peace at defining who is the group, what are its boundaries, and what it stands for. War is also more compelling and effective in generating solidarity with something larger and more lasting than ourselves. War compresses history and dramatically changes its course. There is urgency, excitement, ecstasy, and altruistic exaltation in war, a mystic feeling of solidarity with something greater than oneself: a tribe, a nation, a movement, Humanity. That's also why cable news so loves it.

War is what most clearly defines who we are, for better or worse. And it has always been that way.

The key justification that President Obama evoked in going to war in Libya, and anywhere else around the globe where America's survival and safety are not directly threatened, is that failure to act "would have been a betrayal of who we are." The message, to remind ourselves and the world, is that America protects people who are menaced with annihilation for wanting freedom.

Obama's erstwhile presidential rival, Senator John McCain, countered that while this moral imperative may be laudable, "the reason why we wage wars is to achieve the results of the policy that we state." And that policy, as the president himself proclaimed, is that "Gaddafi must go."

Politicians and pundits across the ideological spectrum intone that the military mission remains murky, even contradictory, because as Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it: "the goals of this [military] campaign aren't... about seeing [Gaddafi] go. It's about eliminating his ability to kill his own people." So what is the sense of fighting to prevent Gaddafi from massacring his people if, as Adm. Mullen conceded, "certainly, potentially, one outcome" is that the dictator remain in power, potentially to kill again?

Yet the inconsistency between war as a moral imperative versus political policy runs way wider and deeper than the Libya conflict. It goes to the heart of human nature and the character of society. For despite the popular delusion that war is, or ought to be, primarily a matter of political strategy and pragmatic execution, it almost never is. Squaring the circle of war and politics, morality and material interests, is not just Obama's or America's quandary, it is a species-wide dilemma that results from wanting to believe with Aristotle that we humans are fundamentally rational beings, when in fact recent advances in psychology and neuroscience strongly indicate that Enlightenment philosopher David Hume was right to say that "Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions."

Models of rational behavior predict many of society's patterns, such as favored strategies for maximizing profit or likelihood for criminal behavior in terms of "opportunity costs." But seemingly irrational behaviors like war -- in which the measurable costs often far outweigh the measurable benefits -- have stumped thinkers for centuries. The prospect of crippling economic burdens and huge numbers of deaths doesn't necessarily sway people from their positions on whether going to war is the right or wrong choice. One possible explanation is that people are not weighing the pros and cons for advancing material interests at all, but rather using a moral logic of "sacred values" -- convictions that trump all other considerations -- that cannot be quantified.

As Darwin noted in The Descent of Man, and Sun Tzu millennia before in The Art of War, the brave person is the one who is often intensely moral, undismayed by danger and demonstrably willing to kill and die for his beliefs. In the competition between groups of genetic strangers, such as empires and nations or transnational movements and ideologies, the society with greater bravery will win, all things being equal. Consider the American revolutionaries who, defying the greatest empire of the age, pledged "our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor" in the cause of "Liberty or Death," where the desired outcome was highly doubtful.

How many lives should a leader be willing to sacrifice to remove a murderous dictator like Muammar Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein? Most of the theories and models that researchers use to study conflicts like the Libyan or Iraq wars assume that civilians and leaders make a rational calculation: If the total cost of the war is less than the cost of the alternatives, they will support war. But recent studies by psychologist Jeremy Ginges and myself, carried out with the support of the National Science Foundation and the Defense Department, suggest those models are insufficient. Our surveys of people confronted with violent situations in the US, Middle East and Africa suggest that people consistently ignore quantifiable costs and benefits, relying instead on "sacred values."

In one study, we asked 656 Israeli settlers in the West Bank about the dismantlement of their settlement as part of a peace agreement with Palestinians. Some subjects were asked about their willingness to engage in nonviolent protests, whereas others were asked about violence. Besides their willingness to violently resist eviction, the subjects rated how effective they thought the action would be and how morally right the decision was. If the settlers are making the decision rationally, in line with mainstream models, their willingness to engage in a particular form of protest should depend mostly on their estimation of its effectiveness. But if sacred values come into play, that calculus should be clouded.

When it came to nonviolent options such as picketing and blocking streets, the rational behavior model predicted settlers' decisions. But in deciding whether to engage in violence, the settlers defied the rational behavior models. Rather than how effective they thought violence would be in saving their homes, the settlers' willingness to engage in violent protest depended only on how morally correct they considered that option to be. We found similar patterns of "principled" resistance to peace settlements and support for violence, including suicide bombings, among Palestinian refugees who felt "sacred values" were at stake, such as the recognizing their moral right of return to homes in Israel even if they expressed no material or practical interest in actually resettling.

In a series of follow-up surveys among U.S. and Nigerian participants, we confronted subjects with hypothetical hostage situations and asked them if they would approve of a solution -- which was either diplomatic or violent -- for freeing the prisoners. The chance of success varied in terms of the number of hostages who might die. For example, in one version of the survey, when told that their action would result in all hostages being saved, both groups endorsed the plan presented to them. Told that one hostage would die, however, most "diplomats" became reluctant to endorse the proposed response. Those opting for military action had no such qualms. In fact, the most common response suggested that they would support military action even if 99 of 100 hostages died as a consequence.

These and other studies suggest that most societies have "sacred rules" for which their people would fight and risk serious loss and even die rather than compromise. If people perceive one such rule to have been violated, they may feel morally obliged to retaliate against the wrongdoers -- even if the retaliation does more harm than good. Ongoing neuroimaging studies by our research group led by Gregory Berns and his neuroeconomics team at Emory University indicates that sacred values are processed in those parts of the brains that deal with rule-governed behavior (rather than cost-benefit analyses), and are associated with greater emotional activity consistent with sentiments of "moral outrage" when participants perceive a violation of sacred values. In the hostage situation, the abductors were threatening to violate the sacred rule against killing innocent people. That rule was so strong for the participants that they felt morally obliged to meet violence with violence, regardless of the outcome. This is little different from Mr. Obama's seemingly heartfelt sentiment that "as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action."

Every military strategist understands that even the most thought out military plan usually dissolves upon contact with the enemy, and that war generally carries a high measure of uncertainty and likelihood of "unintended consequences." But even the decision to go to war is never just a product of reason and rational calculation, and thus never just "politics by other means," despite what von Clausewitz famously stated in his classic study On War. This, the sentiment of a Prussian regimental officer in the post-Napoleonic era of state interests and strategies to rearrange "the balance of power," disastrously misguided European elites into believing that wars could be started and pursued to a desired end by careful planning (while granting that in the fog of war events sometimes spin out of control). Many of our political and military leaders still believe in this Clausewitz delusion: it's a mainstay in the curricula of U.S. war colleges and the international relations departments of top U.S. universities, and of most military and foreign affairs staffs in the world.

In truth, war is almost always an emotional matter of status and pride, of shedding blood and tearing the flesh of others held dear, of dread and awe and of the instinctual needs to escape from fear, to dominate and to avenge. But war is most profoundly an expression of that peculiar aspect of human nature that expresses our animal origins but which also distinguishes our species from all others that struggle and fight for survival: it defines "who we are" in the search for significance in an otherwise uncaring universe.

Unlike other creatures, humans define the groups to which they belong in abstract terms. Often they kill and die not in order to preserve their own lives or those of the people they love, but for the sake of an idea -- the conception they have formed of themselves. Call it love of group or God, it matters little in the end. This is the "the privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only'" of which Thomas Hobbes wrote in Leviathan. It is a human trait that likely will not change, and which political leaders must learn to manage -- however inescapably murky -- so that their people will endure in a world where an end to war is no more likely than unending day. But to insist that war make perfect rational sense, where means cost effectively lead to clear and practical political ends, may impose an inhuman task that any leader can only sidestep or fudge.

Scott Atran, an anthropologist at France's National Center for Scientific Research, the University of Michigan and John Jay College, is the author of Talking to the Enemy.

Tax the Super Rich now or face a revolution - MarketWatch

2011-03-30T12:25:00.000-07:00

Tax the Super Rich now or face a revolution - MarketWatch

Wimps & Warriors Blog

2011-03-10T07:58:00.000-08:00

2010-12-29T12:59:00.000-08:00

Good Deals

2010-12-29T12:45:00.000-08:00

To Blog Of Not To Blog - That is the Q ?

2010-12-29T12:22:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the easiest way to blog is not always the best place to find a home for your blog. Take for example blogging on a social network site such as Facebook. While it is a great place to place a link to a blog on another site, it is not great for blogging itself. And this is something you absolutely must take into account. There is a way to blog and a way not to blog. There is a time to blog and a time not to blog. There is a place to blog and places where blogging is not going to be as beneficial to you as another place may be. So how do you know how, when and where?
So why is Facebook not a great place to blog? For starters the website is not set up per se for blogging. You can add “notes” but you have to tag each of your friends and followers if they are going to be notified. And then it shows up on their page which may not go over so well if being inundated with “notes” is not their preference. You could wind up losing followers. That means you are not going to be making any money. And you will not make money from your blog alone on Facebook. You will have to put links to your website or to another blogging webpage if you want to utilize ads and banner ads for affiliate programs.
Establishing the fact that social networking sites such as Facebook are out, leaves you with places such as WordPress or even Blogspot.com. There are some ups and downs for each site but they do, at least, allow the use of ads and promoting affiliate programs. You just have to get traffic to the site. That leaves you with the proper time to blog once you figure out where. Try not to post late night blogs because many people will miss out on new blogs if you are consistently posting at odd hours. Try posting at the same time each day or every couple of days. You may not want to even blog every single day for fear of inundating your followers with too much information or repeated information. Have a set number of blogs for the week and stick with that schedule.
All that being said, there is a specific formula (or blueprint) for when to blog, how frequently, and how to get links to your original page and traffic to your individual blog posts. However, all this usually takes a lot of work. Not many people want to devote that kind of time to maintaining their blog on a daily basis. But there is a solution. A quick visit to http://blogblueprint.com/go.php?offer=cityrat69&pid=1 may be the perfect solution to your needs. You can cut down on your work load significantly by using something like Blog Blueprint. Blog Blueprint will help you boost your blog rankings (and traffic) immensely. Best of all, the entire Blog Blueprint tools and system is heavily based on ‘smart’ automation. What is ‘smart’ automation you ask? Get all the details right here: a>
http://whizkidinfo.blogspot.com
http://theratsout.blogspot.com
Related Post:
http://billyvonh.hostablog.net/2010/12/29/so-what-is-a-blog/

Affiliate Scalper Software Review.

2010-12-22T20:35:00.001-08:00

Who Created the Affiliate Scalper System and Can You Really Trust Him? Is the new Affiliate

Scalper software just another scam? Contrary to some speculative claims, this new software

tool's main capability is not to drive free traffic to any website and offer that you choose.

Rather, it is more capable of being able to help users monetize traffic with much better offers

that convert better. Using this program has boosted my conversion rates by a significant

number.
Besides monetizing your offers, this course also taught me where to find the fastest free

traffic scalping sites which I can use to create an income from. Created by a highly

professional and experienced marketer Kevin Houghton, this program combines the use of a

powerful traffic and conversion software with a step by step instructional course teaching

users how to earn an income in the fastest manner possible on the Internet.

What Exactly Does the Affiliate Scalper Help You To Do? Unlike many other software tools that

I have tried but do not live up to their claims, beta testing with this program has shown that

it really does achieve the types of income as shown on its websites. Also, it is worth noting

that the traffic you can get from using this tool is quite targeted and anyone can reasonably

earn a full time income simply monetizing them with affiliate offers without having to collect

leads and so on and so on!

How Is Affiliate Scalper Different from Other Solutions Offered by Other Gurus So Far? Hummm,

ok lets see! Drives high quality traffic to a site has always been the biggest concern for

anyone wishing to generate an online income. Although there have been many solutions offered by

the 'gurus' for these problems including strategy guides, plug-ins and software programs, most

of them have been very disappointing for me while others only work for the very short term.

Affiliate Scalper looks set to be different as it focuses on creating long term residual income

businesses with strategies focused on the long term. Read a FREE report about this Affiliate

Money Making. Learn the truth and get a FREE Affiliate Scalper Bonus Download too!

Is Affiliate Scalper a scam? Visit Here and you tell me!

Money Making Software, How feasible is It?

2010-12-21T08:58:00.000-08:00

Money Making Software, How feasible is It? An explosion of money making software programs and systems is proliferating today’s internet.
It’s so abundantly evident when you make a search and find ever so many products claiming to give lavish lifestyles and unlimited wealth gaining opportunities.

This makes our job as a budding internet entrepreneur somewhat tiresome.
Just take a look yourself –these days you’ll find hundreds of ‘money making’ online products just by typing in a simple phrase like ‘make money online’ into Google.

The question is, how feasible can the best of these systems be?

There are a huge number of genuine money making opportunities online, as a lot of the systems I’ve bought and reviewed over the years have made me a substantial online income while others have merely performed their claims.
The fact is there are equally as many ‘bogus’ or ‘scam’ promising products that can drain your pockets against as many that can quickly fill them. Distinguishing between the ‘genuine’ and ‘bogus’ ones available to the average person (and more so the internet savvy marketer) is a question that’s driven me for a long time.
The fact all the so-called ‘internet gurus’ making vast claims to fame with their ‘proven’ systems and strategies has made it hard to ignore any them to be quite frank! The reason for this is, as most make claim to the same kind of promises, at the same time a lot of the ‘good’ opportunities seem to stick with reoccurring fundamental strategies used widely in the IM world. These use known applications and tools such as Google Ad sense and similar tools with particular techniques that are then, ‘duplicated’ and ‘compounded’.

These are the kind of tools I’ve had great personal success with.

But where and how do we begin as an amateur or even a seasoned pro?

With so many money making software systems, methods and products available how can we be sure to pick the right opportunity?

I tend to go for systems that use autopilot methods to generate money online, coupled with techniques that drive valuable, high-end converting traffic to your sites. One valuable lesson is that nothing is greater than the ‘art of compounding’ and any serious IM (internet marketer) would agree. Having a system or software that works is one thing, but duplicating and compounding the income generated by that system has been my key to recurring success in IM.
To be frank, I was lucky in finding a few systems that worked for me. This was (in part) thanks to one of my close friends who’d introduced me to his ‘own made’ affiliate system (one of my now most affective systems) and this has generated me substantial money online in compartively little time. If you want to read more about his product on their website.

Click Here to Review!

It has paid off, so I’d like to share my experiences for the greater good and to shed some light on some of those big decisions the budding internet entrepreneur will have to make to save them a lot of time in the future.

Free Website With Domain Registration

Extreme Radio Home of Rock

Kickin’ It Up A Notch!

Software by Big John

2010-07-30T12:56:00.000-07:00

Top 5 Social Security Myths

Myth #1: Social Security is going broke.
Reality: There is no Social Security crisis. By 2023, Social Security will have a $4.6 trillion surplus (yes, trillion with a 'T'). It can pay out all scheduled benefits for the next quarter-century with no changes whatsoever.¹ After 2037, it'll still be able to pay out 75% of scheduled benefits—and again, that's without any changes. The program started preparing for the Baby Boomers' retirement decades ago.² Anyone who insists Social Security is broke probably wants to break it themselves.
Myth #2: We have to raise the retirement age because people are living longer.
Reality: This is a red-herring to trick you into agreeing to benefit cuts. Retirees are living about the same amount of time as they were in the 1930s. The reason average life expectancy is higher is mostly because many fewer people die as children than they did 70 years ago.³ What's more, what gains there have been are distributed very unevenly—since 1972, life expectancy increased by 6.5 years for workers in the top half of the income brackets, but by less than 2 years for those in the bottom half.⁴ But those intent on cutting Social Security love this argument because raising the retirement age is the same as an across-the-board benefit cut.
Myth #3: Benefit cuts are the only way to fix Social Security.
Reality: Social Security doesn't need to be fixed. But if we want to strengthen it, here's a better way: Make the rich pay their fair share. If the very rich paid taxes on all of their income, Social Security would be sustainable for decades to come.⁵ Right now, high earners only pay Social Security taxes on the first $106,000 of their income.⁶ But conservatives insist benefit cuts are the only way because they want to protect the super-rich from paying their fair share.
Myth #4: The Social Security Trust Fund has been raided and is full of IOUs
Reality: Not even close to true. The Social Security Trust Fund isn't full of IOUs, it's full of U.S. Treasury Bonds. And those bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.⁷ The reason Social Security holds only treasury bonds is the same reason many Americans do: The federal government has never missed a single interest payment on its debts. President Bush wanted to put Social Security funds in the stock market—which would have been disastrous—but luckily, he failed. So the trillions of dollars in the Social Security Trust Fund, which are separate from the regular budget, are as safe as can be.
Myth #5: Social Security adds to the deficit
Reality: It's not just wrong—it's impossible! By law, Social Security's funds are separate from the budget, and it must pay its own way. That means that Social Security can't add one penny to the deficit.⁸
Defeating these myths is the first step to stopping Social Security cuts. Can you share this list now?
Thanks for all you do.
–Nita, Duncan, Daniel, Kat, and the rest of the team
Sources:
1."To Deficit Hawks: We the People Know Best on Social Security," New Deal 2.0, June 14, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=89703&id=22140-8626882-TynjZ5x&t=4
2. "The Straight Facts on Social Security," Economic Opportunity Institute, September 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=89704&id=22140-8626882-TynjZ5x&t=5
3. "Social Security and the Age of Retirement," Center for Economic and Policy Research, June 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=89705&id=22140-8626882-TynjZ5x&t=6
4. "More on raising the retirement age," Washington Post, July 8, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=89706&id=22140-8626882-TynjZ5x&t=7
5. "Social Security is sustainable," Economic and Policy Institute, May 27, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=89707&id=22140-8626882-TynjZ5x&t=8
6. "Maximum wage contribution and the amount for a credit in 2010," Social Security Administration, April 23, 2010
http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/240
7. "Trust Fund FAQs," Social Security Administration, February 18, 2010
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/fundFAQ.html
8."To Deficit Hawks: We the People Know Best on Social Security," New Deal 2.0, June 14, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=89703&id=22140-8626882-TynjZ5x&t=9

Something to Ckeck Out

2007-04-16T08:42:00.000-07:00

Mountain Train Radio

Check for Show times on www.LiveVideo.com