The Burnman Experience
28Mar/102

Outspoken Peaceful Protest is Terrorism

The title of this arti­cle will likely inspire all sorts of feel­ings in all sorts of peo­ple.  It cer­tainly does with me.  I dis­agree with the sen­ti­ment, but it seemed fit­ting since I believe it is exactly what you will be hear­ing in the rel­a­tively near future.  At least if the pro­posed bill H.R. 2159 passes.

Never heard of H.R. 2159?  It is the “Deny­ing Firearms and Explo­sives to Dan­ger­ous Ter­ror­ists Act of 2009.”  The bill would allow the United States Attor­ney Gen­eral to dis­al­low ter­ror­ists from pur­chas­ing, pos­sess­ing, trans­port­ing, or sell­ing firearms.  While this may not sound like a bad deal at first glance, when you start to think about the impli­ca­tions, it gets a bit dicey.

21Feb/102

Is the Fair Tax Act a fair tax act?

Have you ever heard of the Fair Tax Act?  It is a pro­posed bill which would (with par­al­lel leg­is­la­tion) repeal the 16th Amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion of the United States of Amer­ica, abol­ish­ing the IRS and fed­eral income tax, replac­ing the sys­tem with a national sales tax.  I am still read­ing up on the Fair Tax Act and the orga­ni­za­tion behind the move­ment, so it would be irre­spon­si­ble for me to offer an opin­ion about either at this time.  At first glance, how­ever, it seems like an inter­est­ing idea that deserves some attention.

17Feb/101

Childhood obesity? What about starving children?

Michelle Obama recently launched a new cam­paign to fight child­hood obe­sity and I can’t help but feel frus­trated, angry, and a lit­tle disgusted.

Yes, I know that child­hood obe­sity is a seri­ous issue which faces the youth of Amer­ica, but there is a far more seri­ous issue which needs to be addressed NOW.  There are mil­lions of peo­ple in the United States who do not have enough food.  In 2008 the USDA reported that 17 mil­lion chil­dren lived in house­holds where food was scarce, 1.1 mil­lion of them starv­ing.  Add the adults into the mix, and we’re talk­ing 49 mil­lion peo­ple strug­gling for food.  If you con­sider that the pop­u­la­tion of the United States in 2008 was just over 300 mil­lion peo­ple, that means approx­i­mately 16.3% of all Amer­i­cans strug­gled for food in 2008.

Dur­ing Bar­rack Obama’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, he pledged to elim­i­nate hunger among chil­dren by 2015.  What is being done to bring about the end to child­hood hunger in Amer­ica?  So far, the answer has been to throw more money at exist­ing pro­grams (which are not work­ing) and wait for the econ­omy to recover.

11Sep/090

Shots fired! Shots fired! (not really)

This morn­ing, CNN reported via Twit­ter that a sus­pi­cious boat was in a river near Pres­i­dent Obama with shots fired:

CNN Tweet - Suspicious Boat, Shots Fired

Min­utes later, CNN reported that a the United States Coast Guard attempted to pre­vent a boat from enter­ing a secu­rity zone on the Potomac River near the Pen­ta­gon, where Pres­i­dent Obama was at an event com­mem­o­rat­ing the 9/11 attacks, and again men­tions the police scan­ner reports of shots fired:

9Sep/094

You’re quitting on your country

Barack Obama
As you may well know, Pres­i­dent Obama gave a tele­vised speech to America’s school chil­dren yes­ter­day.  The speech was deemed con­tro­ver­sial by some, and con­cerns that polit­i­cal agenda would be included in what should only be a “stay in school” style speech were voiced by many.  I was one of the many.

Before the White House released “Remarks by the Pres­i­dent in a National Address to America’s School­child­ren,” I was not sure what to expect from the speech.  In today’s polit­i­cally charged envi­ron­ment, I could not help but won­der how much agenda would make its way into the speech.  I was happy to have the oppor­tu­nity to read the speech before it was aired, and while my ini­tial con­cerns were quelled, a cou­ple of new ones took their place.

26Aug/090

Review: Seesmic Web, web based Twitter client

Seesmic Logo
While I per­son­ally pre­fer to use a desk­top client to access my Twit­ter account, I do some­times find myself uti­liz­ing Twitter’s web­site to post Tweets to my time­line.  I am not the biggest fan of Twitter’s web inter­face, as it is lim­ited in func­tion­al­ity com­pared to desk­top clients such as Seesmic, Twhirl, and Tweet­Deck.  For­tu­nately, there is alternative.