Brain Turned Off

After last weeks Super Tuesday and a couple of primary/caucuses (can anybody tell me what’s the real difference), It appears that Mitt Romney has established a solid lead in the Republican Race for Presidential nomination.

He is closing in on half of the delegates needed to win, and has more delegates than all other combined. His closest competitor, Rick Santorum, has less than half delegates than Mr. Romney has.

The three remaining competitors are staying in the race.

So he is in front right now, but he does not make the appearance of glorious winner.

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The proposed legislation “Stop Online Privacy Act” (SOPA) and “Protect IP Act” (PIPA) is a good example what big government and corporations are all about.

If Republicans claim to be against big government they should oppose this legislation. Even corporation oppose this bill, such as the not-so-small company Google.

This is stupid legislation at its worst (that why we write about this) for the four reason you can read about here. To point (1) I might add, if you link from you site to one that in turn links to another one with copyrighted material – are you being punished as well? What if you link to a site that is clean, and then sometime later that site puts something problematic?

You can’t possible cover all situations. Besides, how do you determine if something is copyrighted or not (or to be precise: in violation of copyright – after all you are allowed to put copyrighted material on a site if you own the copyright, are you not?

As we have noted in this article, attempts to restrict backfire, as the technology is more advanced to get around any restriction imposed by governments. It is also hypocritical to restrict access to information in your own country while pretending to promote freedom to access information in other countries, like the Middle East or China.

The internet is global, folks.

It seems like the Republican candidates, dropped out or still in race, have no clue what is going on in the world.

Look for instance at the exchange in a recent Republican debate.

Wow – I never heard this accusation before.

If you know just a little bit, you know that Turkey Turkey’s Islamist Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or the AKP), has the majority in the parliament over there (326 of 549). It is an Islamist party, for sure, but if you have many people following the Islam, you would expect that.

But there is also this:
Among the Islamist nations, Turkey is the most moderate of them. Or western-oriented if you like.

Turkey is member of the NATO when Perry was 2 years old. Turkey wants to become a member of the EU. There are difficulties, of course.

But in Turkey you can actually leave the Islam and turn to another religion. The wearing of head scarfs in schools is still prohibited.

Perry says “our president, has a foreign policy that makes our allies very nervous and emboldens our enemies”.

Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea “nervous”?

I doubt that.

Pakistan, yes. That has been problematic.

Israel, maybe. But can you really support everything Israel does? In the Arab uprising this past spring, Israel has been notoriously quiet, as if they don’t know what to make out of it. All the statement you here are stale to say the least. Internally there are discussions whether or not attack Iran militarily.

Perry: “there should be no space between the United States and Israel, period.”

But back to Turkey. It had close relations to Syria, but they have changed since the start of the Syrian uprising. They help Syrian refugees as much as they can – there are just too many.

Turkey ruled by “Islamic terrorist”?

Another quote: “Turkey … are moving far away from the country that I lived in back in the 1970’s as a pilot in the United States Air Force that was our ally, that worked with us, but today we don’t see that”

Back than, Mr. Perry, Turkey was dominated by the military. It was only just recently that the military power has been put under more control of the civilian society.

With so much influence of the militarily-industrial complex to the U.S. government (esp. Congress) one wishes the same for the U.S.

One final quote: “And we need to send a powerful message to countries like Iran, and Syria and Turkey that the United States is serious and that we’re going to have to be dealt with.”

That is, Turkey is not much different from Iran or Syria.

I think that speaks for itself.

If Perry becomes President, Mitt Romney would have a lot of apologizing to do for America. In fact, he actually should do it right now.

Mitt Romney claims that he created 100000 jobs while he was at helm of the Bain Capital.

He doesn’t say, however, how many jobs were lost during that time.

See, according to a CBS News report his campaign “has cited hiring growth in three major companies – Staples, The Sports Authority, and Domino’s – as the backup for the 100,000 figure. That number, however, does not include job losses from companies in which Bain invested.”

Wow. This is like saying, if I go to a casino, I count the winnings but discount the losses.

That way, every trip to a casino would count as a success – for me as a gambler for my wallet, that is.

I can’t recall if even the casinos are so bold to promote their business that way.

The job number does not tell us, how many other jobs were lost by those who were competing against the 3 above mentioned companies. And Staples is a global company serving customers in “26 countries”. Although their own website states same acquisitions after Mr. Romney’s time at Bain, I’m wondering how many jobs were created here in the U.S. or somewhere else.

One more tidbit: the Wall Street Journal reported “22 percent of the companies in which it invested either went bankrupt or shut down, and another eight percent lost all money Bain invested.”

There is only one thing to be sure: Mr. Romney himself made tons of money, which makes him the richest candidate among the Republican hopefuls.

Not that the other candidates are poor either.

It is just getting better and better

Do you hear his thought provoking response on a question about Libya.

Too much “stuff twirling around” his head?

Remember this statement

“When they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say you know, I don’t know. Do you know?”

Is it still twirling from that?

Imagine Mr. Cain negotiating with foreign countries like this, moving visibly uncomfortable in his chair. Do you think foreign leaders would be impressed?

The United States has lost a great deal of respect in the last decade, but I doubt Mr. Cain would be able to get it back. To the contrary.

It seems Herman Cain was trying a few more things in the past…

Sharon Bialek came forward yesterday and accused Herman Cain publicly of groping.

For more details see here

He backed off when asked to, so it didn’t amount to more than just an attempt (not that I condone his behavior, to the contrary – I just mean it in a sense for the purpose of this post). According to the attorneys representing the other still anonymous women their encounter was very similar.

So may be the story is true that he attempted his advance on a German woman who rejected him screaming “NEIN NEIN NEIN!”

Rumors are that Mr. Cain got the idea for the name of his tax plan from that incident….

We cannot ignore this anymore. This has to be addressed by us.

The race in the Republican Party looks more and more like a race of clowns in the circus.

(To all clowns working in circuses and elsewhere: we apologize to you by associating you with the Republican candidates – please don’t be offended by this.)

Take for instance Herman Cain.

In an recent interview with the PBS Newshour he talked about China’s potential military threat to the United States.

Here’s what he said how he wants to address it:

“We already have superiority in terms of our military capability, and I plan to get away from making cutting our defense a priority and make investing in our military capability a priority, going back to my statement: peace through strength and clarity. So yes, they’re a military threat. They’ve indicated that they’re trying to develop nuclear capability, and they want to develop more aircraft carriers like we have.”

For more information see here

Hmm, isn’t China a permanent member of the U.N. security council?

According to Wikipedia, the five permanent members of the Security Council are also the only countries recognized as nuclear-weapon states
(under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty)

And according to the U.S. State Department, China conducted its first test of a nuclear weapon in 1964.

That was 47 years ago.

Herman Cain was in college at that time. So he might not have noticed that due to whatever he did during that time. But if he still doesn’t know this by now, he has quite some catching up to do.

But really, does he know anything beyond burgers and pizzas, anyway? This is a question raised by an editorial in the NY Times.

But hey, he is just trying, too. He succeeds so far, as the other candidates are not much better and are clowns themselves (again: apologies to professional working clowns!).

By the way, he later modified his statement by saying “Maybe I misspoke…What I meant was, China does not have the size of nuclear capability that we have. They do have a nuclear capability”.

I understand it took some time for him to come up with this modification. It appears to be commonplace in his campaign to respond one way and then some time later to “correct” this response. You know what I mean…

There’s a raging dispute going on between the show business industry and the media, in which there is no easy answer.

The Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA (American Federation of Television& Radio Artists) is condeming the website Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB.com) for publishing the true ages of actors and actresses.

For more information see here

“SAG and AFTRA contend this is costing performers jobs, especially those who can pass for younger, because casting directors make use of IMDB.”

Really?

I thought casting is the process to match a role with actors to make it click.

How is it that we have so many teen movies (“coming-of-age”) and high-school settings with actors somewhat older than the age of the characters they play?

Besides, the length of the resume in the IMDB gives some indication how old the actor is, and how long he/she is in the business (isn’t that in favor for older, more mature actors?).

And even if it costs an older performer’s job, the job would be done by a different performer, presumably also a member of one of the unions.

There is no job loss here.

Of course, you can find the age of an actor from other sources, too.

This just amounts to censorship and cover-up.

There have been reports that Miami Heat Star LeBron James has been practicing with the Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary varsity football team.

With the NBA lockout dragging on, what else can you do with your time.

Is he considering a career change?

BrainTurnedOff took the liberty to do some image editing to give you an impression how it would look like…

Rendition of LeBron James playing football

Did we miss it again?

I didn’t really pay to much attention to this this time around, however, someone reminded me about this date. But if it was supposed to be this year – well we are already 4 days past it.

Harold Camping was rather quiet these days (as was his church), understandably after he suffered a stroke, but he is making progress and we wish him well.

As far as the actual events are concerned – well, Gaddafi’s death came one day early so it would fit into the Oct 21 time frame. The news on that day itself was still much of the aftermath of the day before, so if there was something, I didn’t notice.

By the way, I haven’t heard when the doomsday will be re-scheduled. But that leaves the question, what do we do now?