1. Like a Zombie, a stead fast, non wavering belief in freedom. Zombies need to be able to feed whenever and wherever they like, and that requires the freedom to do so.
2. A mindless devotion to honesty. Zombies never lie, and neither should our members.
3. A ravenous thirst for the blood of life – family values! Zombies move in packs, and are more successful as such, and thus believe that a core family is important to the well being of all ZAPP members.
4. ZAPP is totally against corruption in all forms. Zombies cannot be bought off in any fashion – we stick to our primary goal at all times – to feed on the all that life has to offer.
5. Say what you mean. Zombies rarely speak out so when they do it needs to be open, honest, direct, and what is meant to be heard.
6. Solve the problem at hand, not what your constituents want you to do. A Zombie needs to get through a door to feed, break down that door we say! It is the problem.
7. What you do in the privacy of your own house is your business. As long as it hurts nobody it is your business.
8. Freedom of speech – again Zombies don’t talk much thus when we get around to doing it we should be allowed to do so.
9. No taxation without representation! Zombies may not have lots of cash and thus what little we do have we like to know where it is going to use.
10. Equality for all – period. None of this “equality when it serves me best” garbage. Everyone is equal, no matter the situation. Military Draft. College applications. Job and career applications. Salary. Equal.

We will supply updates on the party’s position as often as we have them.

Vive Le ZA! Vive Le ZAPP! When it doubt ZAPP it out!

A bit about me – I believe in equality – but real equality, not the sort of crap where someone wants equality only when  it serves them best. I want true equality – a draft? Women are on the list. Income – women definitely should be paid the same as men. Race should NEVER be a consideration for anything. You get where you are going on merit alone. It is what you know, not who you know. Everything equal – that way nobody has the right or ground to stand on to bitch about inequality. Granted I know my perspective is a ridiculous pipe dream, but what can I say, I am a mental plumber.

So when I heard about this on NPR this morning I got sort of irritated. The story focussed on this idiot who was trying to get arrested. Consume that for a moment. Yes, trying to get arrested. His intent had nothing to do with the recording law – instead he was trying to get arrested over some other law that he didn’t agree with, tape it, and use said tape as an Ah-HAH! moment. Turns out he was arrested for a misdemeanor, but when said tape showed up the small charges got dropped and now he has felony charges and faces 4-15 years in prison. Consume that for a moment.

For using a recording device he could go to prison for longer than someone who used a gun in a crime. This means that in some parts of our country people think that recording devices are more dangerous that guns. Now why would that be? Let us consider the Rodney King incident whereby a bunch of cops did batting practice on Mr. King’s head with their batons. Had said videographer who had taped the event known about the law, and had he been deterred from taping said event because of it, then police brutality like that would not have come to light and thus would have continued. Don’t get me wrong here, to his own admission, Mr. King was no saint, but using his head as a baseball was well over the top for anyone.

My main run though is the equality thing – if someone is allowed to do something I am not I get irate – and if there is an actual law against me doing it, but its cool for someone else to do it because, for some unknown reason, they are outside the law – I get really pissed. So my conclusion? Don’t talk to cops at all. Don’t answer their questions – technically by law you don’t have to. Catch being here of course that not answering a cops questions will most likely get you detained if not arrested, however it also prevents said cop from getting a situation where he can use his right to record everything you say, and you cannot do the same back. If you didn’t know this then you are in serious trouble – most cop cars now have video cameras in them that run at every stop, and often times during the officer’s entire shift – thus be default you are being recorded – just don’t do it back. That traffic ticket you were going to get could get turned into a felony that lands you in prison and will definitely mess up your life FOREVER.

“What we were finding was that the soldiers we’re getting in today’s Army are not in as good shape as they used to be,” said Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, who oversees basic training for the Army. “This is not just an Army issue. This is a national issue.”

Yep, all those Happy Meals and super sized fat burgers etc have turned Americans into super chubs to such a degree that they can’t do basic push ups. Before I go on, yes I can do push ups. The problem has gotten so bad that the military is actually considering removing the push up from basic training. Think about that for a moment. We are so fat that we can’t do a simple push up – and we are expected to go to war? To charge that hill? To take that bunker?

Bring on the remote controlled combat battle droids – at least they don’t need to do push ups – but I bet they can.

Time magazine recently crossed into the world of reporting on ichy topics that most people like to chalk up to Conspiracy Theorist nut jobs – catch is Time Magazine is Main Stream Media – meaning they are not some source which equates to a fat guy with too much free time on his hands coming up with scary stuff in his basement to brood over. No, Time Magazine has been around for decades and actually makes money based quite a bit on REALITY – well.. proposed reality really. So what did they report? Some scary crap.

“Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.” Is their opening paragraph for this article titled “The Government can use GPS to track your every move.”

If some other web source had reported this it would be EASY to chalk up as nut job conspiracy theorist government hate bullshit – but it’s Time Magazine – what do we do now? As I have said in recent times Newsweek has turned into a weird MSM news source that likes to report on stuff that conspiracy theorists do as well – and they are also MSM – so WTF is going on? Is this crap real? Can the government really do this?

Apparently there was a series of court cases in California whereby it was deemed totally ok to do this to people. “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.” NO SEARCH WARRANT? Hmmm. Well they aren’t searching you, technically, they are tracking you – so I can see the loop hole, however that doesn’t make it any less creepy for me. What this really tells me is that parking your car outside your garage is a bad bad idea – but then – you have to drive it somewhere right? Say you park at a restaurant – tracking device installment opportunity.

My favorite part is this: “Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month’s decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people’s. The court’s ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.” Sure is nice to be rich – except I am not.

“Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. “There’s been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there’s one kind of diversity that doesn’t exist,” he wrote. “No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter.” The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of “cultural elitism.”" Think about that for minute – again if you are rich this ruling doesn’t apply to you. How nice.

Of course  it is probably all conspiracy theory bullshit right?

The other piece that NPR covered was what the Fed actually did to help with the economy two years ago – they created 1.25 trillion dollars our of thin air. Apparently to buy the home backed securities they literally created money – and the best part to that is they have no idea if that is a good or a bad thing. Pure awesome.

*****************************************************************

Who Can A Young Fan Look Up To? It’s Tough

This must be a terrible time for the children of America.  We’ve always been told that our little tykes need to look up to star athletes.  But one way or another, those heroes are either being disgraced or getting injured or just plain disappearing.  At this rate, our nation of worshipful boys and girls will have to turn its lonely eyes away from sports stars to actors, or reality-show people — or even, heaven forbid, to politicians.

It all starts, of course, with Tiger Woods, and we do not have to elaborate on that except to say that now poor Phil Mickelson has arthritis, so golf is down to No. 3.  Only, of course, there is no No. 3.

The networks that bring us golf tournaments are completely discombobulated. They keep showing us Tiger Woods instead of who is actually winning the tournament.  No golf journalists remember how to cover golf the way it was pre-Tiger Woods.  So, as a consequence, not only is Tiger Woods a bad memory we can’t escape, but golf itself has disappeared down a rabbit hole.

Meanwhile, in women’s golf, first Annika Sorenstam, the closest thing to a female Tiger in our time, retired to start a family, and then her successor, Lorena Ochoa, retired to be with her husband — so now the women’s tour doesn’t exist, either.  It’s like Snow White waiting for some tournament to kiss Michelle Wie and finally make her the fairest of them all.

Lance Armstrong is a fading Tinker Bell. Clap, boys and girls, if you’re sucker enough to believe in him.  Ben Roethlisberger, Middle America’s blue-collar quarterback, is suspended for being, well, extremely nasty.  The less said about Roger Clemens, the better.  Too bad for old Roger that he felt obliged to say more.

Michael Phelps actually got beat.  Is that the first leaf of autumn to fall into his pool?  Roger Federer carried tennis on his back.  All of a sudden, he’s just another aging quarterfinalist.  Serena Williams seldom shows up to play, and now she’s really hurt, and can’t play in the U.S. Open.  Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest human ever-ever-ever, got beat, is injured, and his departure from the track is as damaging to the popularity of his sport as it was when Simon left American Idol.

Overnight, LeBron James, who modestly calls himself The Chosen One, went from you’re-so-fine to what-were-you-thinking? — and now everybody outside Miami-Dade County roots against the best player in the game.

Alex Rodriguez hit his 600th home run, and all that did was remind people that the best baseball player of this century is a cheat.

It’s like some evil genius is sitting in some cave, cackling maniacally, as he picks off our poor dear children’s heroes, one by one.  So, please, yes — let’s give a rousing cheer that Brett Favre has once again decided that we need him.  Speaking for the children of America, thank you, Brett, for coming back again; and again; and again.

What is that? Text. Thats right, text, lots of it. Apparently this e-card, meant for my dog, the very dog the Vet looks at on a semi regular basis for us, is filled with text meant for reading. Apparently my Vet knows something about my dog that I do not – apparently he can read. Not only can he read but he can use a computer and has figured out my email account information to access my email account to read this email. Furthermore, given the timing, apparently my dog knew that the email, meant for him, would be in my inbox. Who knew he was capable of this? Here I just thought he was a really cool dog.

I think he should get a job and bring home the bacon. Graaaa…. bacon.

Orwell is alive and well and living in Philadelphia. Brotherly love? My ass.

So who else made the list, and how did they do it? Andrew Breitbart – this is the tool bag who is so self absorbed, and has such a huge desire to break a story – thus being labeled as a real reporter instead of just a blogger like the rest of us losers, that he posted a highly editted video by some Republican Party Douche bag that lead to the ousting of one Shirley Sherrod. That story alone leads us down a path that the fellows of ESPN brought regarding bloggers to begin with – real reporters are supposed to dig into a source to determine validity whereas bloggers, people living totally off of opinion and editorial, do not.

Let us take a quick change of direction here for a moment based on that fact. The people listed in the Newsweek article all live and breathe bullshit. Sure, some of that bullshit is backed by sources, but as we have already covered many of their sources are also bullshit. “Real” news is supposed to be this world where reporters dig for a story, they talk to people in dark alleys, they pay people for the scoop, and they are supposed to find out if said source is worth a crap. The real tragedy here is that this has, in my opinion, deviated to say the least. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, although I have never really considered myself one – more of skeptic really, but in recent times most of these reporters have transformed into the very thing that those ESPN guys were complaining about – professional bloggers – or in more friendly terms editorialists .

So when I looked at the Newsweek.com article was I upset? Not really. Why? Because for we here at Blinkinblogs to have made that list we would have to had become more than just snarky – we’d had to have become liars and media whores – and given our rather dismal readership I can guarantee you that has not happened.

Where did I put that high horse?

Mashable is covering the story live, as well as NY Times.

Also, explained on the Facebook blog.

This person decided that her life would be better without her 2 year old and 18 month old kids so she strangled them. She looked her kids in the eyes and strangled them. She thought about it, she planned it, and she did it, and if that is not the definition of cold blooded premeditated murder I don’t know what is.

I don’t want her to be put to death – that is an easy out. It would be easy for us to say “kill her” and to even go so far as to say she should be suffocated, thus strangled to death, so that she knows exactly what it felt like for her two toddlers in the last moments of their life. Yes that would make an impact, and some would argue that is justice, ultimate final justice, but to me, it is not enough. I want this woman to suffer – and I want that suffering to be shared with the world. I want a message sent to everyone what will happen to you if you kill a kid, any kid.

She need to be placed in a cell. On every single surface of that cell there need to be photos of her kids – looking right at her. I want her to spend the rest of her days in that cell. On every single wall right next to the pictures of her smiling kids there needs to be pics of their dead water swollen bodies. I want her to spend the rest of her days reminded every single second of what she did.

Killing is to good for her – its a way out – the very thing she wanted. I don’t want her to have way out – I want her to spend the rest of her days in hell.

People started to get savvy, technology expanded, developers went from old school to web specific – specialized for the interwebs. With this came new websites with a singular focus – MAKE MONEY. That is right, marketing wizards (I don’t agree with this statement but it is the mainstream belief of what occurred) got involved and showed the nerd nation what their technology can really do – make money. Things exploded into the DotCom era of our history – a time when practically anyone (expect me apparently) could get funding for a company and make godrillions of dollars to only spend it all on fruitless activities (Boo.com anyone?)  ultimately leading everyone down a dismal path of destruction. We all know how that ended – the DotCom bubble burst – suicides and wanna be killing rampages were to follow. The aftermath left people wanting more, and allowed those who didn’t fail to rise to a new level of power.

Google was born. Today they are taking over the world.

Something else arose from the ashes, something amazing, something powerful,  something incredibly narcissistic: Social Networking. There were many early versions that all failed miserably on some level, then came Myspace.com – a website first designed for musicians to share their music and network became a social networking beast for anyone. The problem was they let people do whatever they wanted to within their system, and thus the masses broke its intention, turning it into a graphics and layout competition. The point was lost. Facebook.com did exactly what Myspace.com did, but without the frills, and the catch was all those frills being removed made it better. The mistake of letting people do whatever they want created chaos, and chaos in social networking is bad, thus the genius (apparently there is a debate that there is more than one) behind Facebook.com dwindled it all down to a few simple things:

1. People want to connect with other people
2. People love to talk about themselves
3. People love to talk about other people

The best part here is people love to do those things about absolutely nothing. Facebook.com exploded to such a degree that the youngest self made billionaire was born: Zuckerberg. Now some 300 million people are friends with each other (I personally have lots of Facebook friends that I don’t even know IRL) and they all take their separate turns telling each other stuff about themselves that nobody really cares about but they all pretend they do – like ‘Made chicken for dinner.” and “Going to the dentist.”

This gave birth to another phenomena - Twitter.com. Apparently the act of logging into Facebook and having to deal with an interactive community was just too much for some people – they couldn’t handle the pressure – when all they really wanted to do was have a way to talk about themselves to anyone who would listen. Facebook.com was a community, a fake one in many aspects, but it was one, and that creates undo pressure on the members of that community. So if you could talk about yourself with zero recourse or direct interaction with anyone, and those who were dumb enough to subscribe to your random thoughts and quotes would get spoon fed a constant stream of 140 characters of complete nonsense from you. Narcissism has reached its pinnacle – hasn’t it?

No. The new up and coming craze is the art of doing live video feeds of yourself on the web doing… well.. anything. My niece did  a bit where she walked with a friend through  a Walmart just talking – and people were watching her channel. Was she dancing naked? Nope. Was she teaching anyone anything? Not one iota. Just walking, and shopping and she had subscribers. Ah sweet narcissism had graduated to a new level – we have become so self involved and so self important that we truly believe others are interested in watching us shop, eat, walk, and sit.

Now for the really stupid – FiveOClockCharlie just walked in and told me that people are buying a magic spell to make their butt smaller for $8.95 from a witch on the internet. If that works, anything else will. What a tragedy.

The basic concept as I understand it is the light that would normally bounce off of you allowing others to see you doesn’t in a clear clean fashion. So say you were in the forest or laying on some rocks or what have you, you’d be much harder to see, and impossible to see clearly. Is this valuable? If you are a sniper this is crucial. The funny thing about that article is that they imply that its not really for military use. Here is the thing with that – if I can have almost invisible soldiers, I WILL.

Consider it a different way. Bob loses his job (tax income) and owes lots of money on credit cards (national debt) so he figures the best way to get a new job is to put even more charges on his credit card (increasing his debt). Bob doesn’t get a job (tax income still down) but now owes more money (bigger national debt) so what does he do? He puts even more on his credit card! Do you see where this is going? This is financial suicide at its finest.

The other major issue going on is the USA, and the world in many instances, is looking to the Federal Reserve for magic bullets to solve the crisis. There is even more flawed logic here.  The value of the dollar is based on an interest rate the Fed sets, really a series of interest rates but we won’t go into that here. There is one interest rate that is VERY important and that is the rate that the Fed lends cash money to the USA government. Think that through for a minute – the USA mint prints money, gives it to the Fed who then lends it to the very government that just printed it. Yes this is what happens  - no conspiracy theory – look it up. Anyway that interest rate dictates the turn of much of the world. Another very important interest rate is the one the Fed gives to big banks – which is the rate that Big Banks pay on money that they borrow from the Fed.

The “please save us” theory here is the Fed lowers these interest rates to stem a slide into Recession and Depression by freeing up more money for loans, which banks and thus businesses can get,  hopefully resulting in the economy booming.  The catch of course is that the Fed can make the interest rates just so low – and they are already at the bottom – literally like 1%. So if your grand plan to save the Earth is to lower interest rates, and you are already at the bottom – then you are out of options. Newsweek covers this scenario today here.

The part that people don’t like to think about is two fold:

1. If the interest rate stays low for too long you could get inflation and oddly you may also get deflation – both are scary.
2. If the interest rate is raised you may end up fostering recession – you know the thing we are already in.

So what now? Now people come to the realization that things aren’t getting better any time soon. There are lots of guys on the radio lately that have been saying this, have really been saying this for years, who were constantly dismissed by politicians that somehow knew better. Conspiracy theorist and fear mongers were a few of the brands thrown on them. Irony once again raises her ugly head – these guys were right all along – and has there been a conspiracy? Not yet. Why? Because its all been out in the open since day one – Ignorance and Arrogance.