At RedState we’ve hammered for a long time the idea that your local politics matter. We also give plenty of attention to federal elections for the House, the Senate, and of course the President.
But governors matter, too. The next governor of South Carolina will affect us all. As will Georgia’s, Ohio’s, and Oregon’s. It doesn’t matter where you live. These Governors, as well as 26 others, are up for election this year and will have veto power over their state’s next Congressional districts.
It’s no good to win in 2010 if we have to give the House back in 2012 because the Democrats gerrymander our majority away. So let’s pay attention to these races.
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When the FCC announced plans to declare that ISPs are no longer information services, but are instead phone companies, the FCC claimed the authority to regulate content and prices on Internet service nationwide. And no matter how many times the neo-Marxists at Free Press (and their front group Save the Internet) claim that Net Neutrality is all about “preserving an open Internet,” the FCC’s actions are all about command and control.
Even Democrats see the problem, as 72 House members of the Democratic persuasion signed a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski urging him to slow down and let the Congress do its job, instead of taking matters into his own hands and defying the law and the courts to do so.
Update: It’d help if I link the right letter.
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Mega Man 3 is when the bosses get much harder, in my estimation, so the battle order becomes more important and less of a convenience than it is in the first few games. But there are goals: Rush Jet is useful before Hard Man, and Shadow Blade is handy all around. But mostly I just want to fight a boss I can beat and then use the vulnerabilities all around. Oh, and the Top Spin has a bug which would be annoying to hit later in the game, so that only doubles the desire to have Shadow Man early. So…
Top Man (Buster), Shadow Man (Top Spin), Gemini Man (Shadow Blade), Needle Man (Gemini Laser), Snake Man (Needle Cannon), Spark Man (Shadow Blade), Magnet Man (Spark Shot), Hard Man (Magnet Missile).
For my own future reference, I’m writing down the order that I fight the Mega Man bosses. Let’s start with the first game.
The early goal for me is to get the Magnet Beam, which is vital against Big Eye, and the Magnet Beam is hidden in the Elec Man stage behind some blocks. But Elec Man is tough to beat with out the Cut Blade. So traditionally I would fight Cut Man, then Guts Man, then Elec Man. A careful eye will notice that Guts Arm beats Cut Man, so my order is:
Guts Man (with Buster), then Cut Man (with Buster actually), then Elec Man (with Cut), then Ice Man (with Elec), then Fire Man (with Buster), then Bomb Man (with Fire).
I fight Fire Man with the Buster because it’s possible to stand in one place, jumping and firing at Fireman, without ever taking a hit. I fight Cut Man with the Buster because he usually runs right to the place I have to stand to grab one of the blocks with the Guts arm.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten sick of watch bands that wear out. My last watch I finally replaced the band with something woven so it wouldn’t wear out. With that solved, the rest of the watch lasted as long as it can, and now that old one (Casio DB-35M) is wearing out badly. It’s about 8-9 years old, it’s nicked up, and the buttons are getting very hard to push. So I went to replace it.
But the band issue was high in my mind, so this time I ended up making a departure from my usual watches, all of which tend to come with the awful resin bands. I shopped and shopped, which was fun because I kept seeing classic styles I longed for when I was a kid. But I know what would happen band-wise, so I kept shopping. But on the other hand, the watches with the better bands tend to be more expensive and more decorative, with fewer features. Hey, I use my countdown timer. I cook things. Also, spending $300 on this was just not an option.
But finally I found the right tradeoff: the Casio AQ-160. Full featured watch with a metal band, which I’ve never had. It even has hands on it, which is something I haven’t had on a watch since I was about 12 or something. And it was only $34 plus tax and shipping from Walmart.
Some people buy watches to look good. I buy workhorses. I look forward to getting years out of this one.
But now I’m tempted to start digging around for watches to put together a history of the watches I’ve used since I was little. Yes, I always liked looking at watches. But that time will be better spent getting the tools I need to shrink this band to fit.
I’ve been saying it all along, that the FCC wants to dictate outcomes in its Net Neutrality power grab. They want to pick who wins and who loses in the market.
Now the FCC’s own wireless competition report said it, per Reason:
Page five of the report, for example, explains that its purpose is to provide “data that can form the basis for inquiries into whether policy levers could produce superior outcomes.”
I already warned about this report, and how the premise of wireless non-competitiveness is obviously a lie, so there’s nothing new there. They have end goals, and the means to get to them are just that. They don’t care about truth or falsehood. Just power.
I hear that Free Press employees all have to see the New Orleans Saints’s old team doctor after one month on the job, because they all get turf toe by that point.
But seriously, they really are. National Journal recently wrote them up (subscription only, unfortunately) but here’s what I think the key takeaway is about the neo-Marxist organization dedicated to the nationalization of all mass media in America:
Most of Free Press’s financing is also concealed. In 2008, the group and its lobbying arm, the Free Press Action Fund, raised $5 million, including $270,330 in public contributions and $3 million from 12 major donors. The group’s Form 990 tax filings do not include the names of 11 out of 12 donors, but Internet searches revealed donations of $225,000 from the Park Foundation and $300,000 from the Ford Foundation. In the same year, the action fund spent $332,967 on lobbying and $89,855 on grassroots efforts, according to its Form 990.
What do they have to hide? Why are the supposed proponents of openness themselves so opaque? Just how do we know that George Soros and Google aren’t behind the hidden donations, as the organization acts in the interests of huge, wealthy Internet firms in the course of its net neutrality special interest lobbying?
We don’t, and until they open up, we have every reason to believe they’re a bunch of fakers who throw big, corporate money around to gin up artificial support. I mean heck, they can’t even give consistent numbers on how large they are.