Ever since this continent was electrificated, Americans have been allowed to plug anything they want into their own electrical outlet.

The history of electricity is a biography of modernism. Originally intended just to light homes, electric power was soon used to run sewing machines, fans, teakettles, and toasters. According to Dr. Rachel P. Maines the fifth electrical appliance to be invented, was a device to treat hysteria (which is used in more homes today, than sewing machines and electric teakettles). Shortly after hysteria was cured, electric irons and vacuum cleaners became feasible.

Following  the big war, came an explosion of things you could stick into an outlet: hair driers, electric drills, popcorn poppers, and television sets Not to mention, those goofy things that have a big belt and motor and are supposed to help you lose weight by jiggling your belly.

Today a home built only a generation ago is woefully inadequate for the number of appliances that need to find a plug. Hence, there has been a great market in power-strips. In my home office, (built in 1959) I actually have one outlet branching off into four different power-strips to handle all the appliances required of my profession.

Before the modern epoch, what you decided to plug in the privacy of your own home was an accepted civil right. If you’re willing to pay the bill, power it up. I have an old RCA refrigerator in my basement that uses far more electricity than a sleek new Korean import but it looks so cool, I don’t mind making my electric meter spin like a circular saw every time I restock it with beer.

A friend of mine, was so enamored with some of the waterfalls of Las Vegas that he built one in his back yard. It was a masterpiece of boulders and whitewater cascading across the 30-foot slope of his lakefront home. He used three high-powered electrical pumps to keep water churning down the hill at a spectacular rate of 25,000 gallons per hour. It took him months to build, but only one electric bill, to realize that it wasn’t a 24/7 attraction, and should only be activated on special occasions. The free market encourages conservation.

When President Bush signed The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 we saw the first limits on which appliances we can use in our homes. (This bill is known by other names, such as the light bulb ban, or the 100 watt stockpiling act of 2012. It was spearheaded by GOP Rep. Fred Upton, who is this/close to assuming the Chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee. That’s right, the GOP Rep who hates Thomas Edison is set to create energy policy for the whole country.) The law was necessary, because most Americans prefer incandescent bulbs. They are more aesthetically pleasing, and help heat your home in the winter. Most people believe the extra money spent is well worth the cost of electricity. After all, what is more economical than sitting in the dark?

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On Sunday, the website Wilileaks began releasing 250,000 US diplomatic cables. We understand that most conservatives, because they are concerned about national security, are upset about this. We are more conflicted. A centralized, federal government should operate as much in the open as possible. Letting a government keep secrets gives them the tools to compromise our liberty.

From the LA Times:

A veteran election attorney filed papers Friday to try to knock Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel off the ballot, charging he does not meet city residency rules.

Under Illinois’ municipal code, a candidate must be a resident of the city for a year prior to the election. Emanuel was working as President Obama’s White House chief of staff until he returned to Chicago last month to campaign for the Feb. 22 election.

Emanuel said he meets the standard because he owns a home here, has voted here and always intended to move back. Lawyer Burt Odelson said the fact that Emanuel rented out his home, instead of leaving it empty, means he’s not a resident.

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Republicans and conservatives in Connecticut may be feeling like all their friends are having a big party, but they are not invited.

While most states in the nation, even some in liberal New England, caught the Tea Party/conservative wave, Connecticut citizens sent all of their incumbent Democratic representatives back to Congress.

And, while Republicans did pick up 14 seats in the Connecticut state house and one in the state senate, the General Assembly will continue to be controlled by Democrats, as it has been for decades.

And, now, the only current, major Republican-held position, that of governor, will be filled by a Democrat as well. Six days after the election, Republican gubernatorial candidate, Tom Foley, a wealthy businessman, new to politics, conceded the race to Democratic candidate, Dan Malloy, the mayor of Stamford, following a ballot controversy.

The troubled ordeal of the governor’s race began in the afternoon of election day, when about half of the city of Bridgeport’s polling stations were discovered to be running out of ballots. It was determined that only 21,000 ballots had been ordered for 70,000 registered voters.

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The great fear of all dictators is provoking rebellion before they are ready to handle it. So the Democrats, our Nation’s aspiring despots, have become refined experts at offering soothing, even encouraging, but always deceptive rhetoric about their sleazy, underhanded power grabs. Supported by a largely complicit mass media, they have brought our country to the breaking point.

But throughout history, the American people have repeatedly shown an amazing capacity for finding innovative solutions, often at the very last minute, to seemingly intractable crises. This fact of the indomitable, resourceful and defiant American spirit literally terrifies the left, and with good reason. They are now outed.

Democratic Party front group Media Matters for America has published yet another attack on Republican Sarah Palin. This one a dishonest portrayal of media coverage of her recent slip of the tongue regarding the crisis on the Korean peninsula.

In a Thanksgiving Day message posted Nov. 25th on her Facebook page, Palin opened her post with a tongue in cheek send-up of President Barack Obama in which no fewer than ten of his verbal gaffes and misstatements were included and sourced.

My fellow Americans in all 57 states, the time has changed for come. With our country founded more than 20 centuries ago, we have much to celebrate – from the FBI’s 100 days to the reforms that bring greater inefficiencies to our health care system. We know that countries like Europe are willing to stand with us in our fight to halt the rise of privacy, and Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s. And let’s face it, everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma and they end up taking up a hospital bed. It costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early, and they got some treatment, and ah, a breathalyzer, or an inhalator. I mean, not a breathalyzer, ah, I don’t know what the term is in Austrian for that…

The point Palin was making was that though everyone occasionally goofs up — including the President, you might not remember hearing about his, “because for the most part the media didn’t consider them newsworthy,” Palin wrote.

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Trying to establish another dynastic succession, North Korea inches closer to outright war. Having totally flubbed domestic policy, let’s hope Obama has hidden skills for foreign policy.

Recently, I attended the Conservatives for Palin, and I gained some insight I think conservatives want to consider moving forward. The group was not like any I have ever known. There were all kinds of people there—Christians, Jews, Hindus, women, men, black, white, Asian, and even Nordic! They were gay, straight, old, young, republican, democrat, libertarian, and independent, and they all had one thing in common…they believe the stringent adherence to the US Constitution is the answer to the problems we have today.

Even if they are quiet, there are those conservatives who struggle with a female president. Dr. Dathan Paterno, noted psychologist and author says the reality is, that there WILL be a woman president in the near future—that it is in the American psyche. What happens if conservatives choose NOT to nominate Sarah Palin? Certainly the liberals will nominate a woman soon, and then they continue the whining about sexism that has worked for them for so long.

Liberals and establishment politicians of all parties seem to have a special venom for the former Governor of Alaska. If she is really so “unelectable” then why all the fuss? “Thou doth protest…”. If she is really so laughable, then why do the jokes about her keep falling flat? Could it be that they obsess about her for the psychological reason that they can’t stand the threat she poses to them? Could it be because they see her as the greatest threat in recent history to their personal goals, and the establishment media and messaging they have used to control politics in this country for a generation? Could it be that the nomination of Sarah Palin for President is a revolution?

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Federal agents in a sting operation arrested a Somali-born teenager just as he tried blowing up a van he believed was loaded with explosives at a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, authorities said.

The bomb was an elaborate fake supplied by the agents and the public was never in danger, authorities said.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, was arrested at 5:40 p.m. Friday just after he dialed a cell phone that he thought would set off the blast but instead brought federal agents and police swooping down on him.

Yelling “Allahu Akbar!”—Arabic for “God is great!”—Mohamud tried to kick agents and police after he was taken into custody, according to prosecutors.

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In my Big Journalism piece, “How an Enviro-Advocacy Group Propped Up Global Warming in the MSM – A Nov 2 Election Connection” I described how the “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” phrase is a viral accusation against global warming skeptic scientists. The beauty of the phrase is its simplicity and powerful influence, even when people misstate organizations associated with it. Al Gore disciples say global warming is a proven fact, all scientists know this, but a minority received massive energy industry funding to say the science isn’t settled.

The phrase is prominently seen in Gore’s movie, full screen in red letters for six seconds, followed by a slide of a very old cigarette advertisement as a setup for the next slide where Gore quoted a supposedly leaked tobacco industry memo, “Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of creating a controversy in the public’s mind.”

Gore didn’t identify the origins of the “reposition” phrase in the movie, so errors occurring when it was repeated it are understandable. I’ve seen offbeat errors where blog writers say the phrase came from “a surgeon general”, that it was “a leaked government memo”, that it is part of  “a movement by politicians to reposition global warming”, or that it was “memos circulated by some of today’s oil companies.”

But Gore himself said this, in a 2008 YouTube video, starting at the 29:10 point,

Exxon Mobil has funded 40 different front groups that have all been a part of a strategic persuasion campaign to, in their own words ‘reposition global warming as theory rather than fact’

This is inexplicably contradictory to the book version of his movie – although it takes one additional step to understand why - when he says in reference to:

…a relatively small but extremely well-funded cadre of special interests, including Exxon Mobil and a few other oil, coal, and utilities companies…. One of the internal memos prepared by this group to guide the employees they hired to run their disinformation campaign was discovered by the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ross Gelbspan. Here was the group’s stated objective: to “reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact.

As I pointed out in my July American Thinker article, Gelbspan is neither the discoverer nor a Pulitzer winner, and a careful examination of his 1997 book The Heat is On reveals he specifically said the “reposition” phrase came exclusively from the 1991 Information Council on the Environment (ICE) public relations campaign, created by group of utility and coal industries.

Utility and coal, not oil – or oil industry associations.

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The always interesting Business Insider has this report:

The Department of Homeland Security’s ICE has launched a major crackdown on websites enabling copyright infringement or selling counterfeits of trademarked goods. In just the past few days ICE has seized at least 12 domains, TorrentFreak reports.

All of these domains now display the image shown here.

Okay, so each of the domains seized is probably breaking the law. Knowingly violating someone’s copyright is rightfully against the law. I don’t know anything about these sites, but, for now, I’ll assume they were selling knock-off goods as the real thing and not as some kind of faux Louis Vuitton. Still, this part of the article bothers me:

The owner of an affected site told TorrentFreak that his domain was taken over without any prior complaints or notification from the court.

So, the sites were seized before the site’s owner heard any charges or had the chance to submit any counter evidence in court. The owners of the sites had their property seized without being allowed to defend themselves. I successfully avoided law school, so I don’t know the exact legal term, but this strikes me as an overstep in their enforcement authority.

But, the article begs an even bigger question: What the hell do fake Guccis have to do with homeland security?

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GM, having teamed up with the federal government to stiff past creditors and shareholders, is now “back,” by which it means, if you ignore all its past bad decisions and debt, it isn’t totally insolvent. (Remember when then-Mayor Barry said crime in DC wasn’t bad if you don’t count the murders?) Well, they decided to spend some large to produce an ad congratulating themselves. Normally somewhat interesting lefty journalist, Taegan Goddard calls it “sensational.” Um…that’s one way to look at it. Totally emotional appeals devoid of all facts are likely to create a sensation, after all.

From the Associated Press:

Europe struggled mightily Friday to keep the debt crisis from engulfing country after country. Portugal passed austerity measuresto fend off the speculative trades pushing it toward a bailout and Ireland rushed to negotiate its own imminent rescue.

As Portugal and Spain insisted they will not seek outside help, creating an eery sense of deja-vu for investors, Europe braced for what seems inevitable—more expensive bailouts.

The Portuguese Parliament approved an unpopular debt-reducing package, including tax hikes and cuts in pay and welfare benefits. But while that helped to avoid a sharper deterioration in bond markets, the sense among analysts was that the move had only bought a little time.

Adding to the pressure, Ireland’s major banks were hit with credit downgrades—one to junk bond status—as speculation mounted that the EU-IMF bailout of Ireland, to be revealed within days, would require investors to take losses, a possibility earlier denied by officials.

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From Claire Berlinski in City Journal:

You see, about a month ago, I asked my mother to bail me out. I knew she’d do it. She’s done it before. She sent me money she’s been saving toward my retirement. I resolved to stop spending money on stupid things. (There was really no excuse for that lamp, Mom, I know. Sorry! In my defense, I was sure there was a genie in it.)

With my mom paying my rent, I’ve been able to charge less for what I write and stay in the black. Voilà, I’m selling a cheaper product (for now) than Reuters and AP. That will teach them where to stuff their “good investment decisions” and their “economies of scale.” I fired the guy who does my odd jobs—it was painful, but it had to be done. So, congratulations to me! I’m making it in this tough business climate, with a little help from Mom. America’s back! And if I’m broke again in a year, I’ll hit her up again. (Don’t forget, Mom, that you really have no choice: no matter what you do, I’m still going to be a huge financial drag on you. If I fail, I’ll end up coming home with all my cats. You don’t want me sleeping on your couch, do you? And you sure don’t want to see what my cats would do to that couch. Antique, I believe it is?)

All of this is, alas, a perfectly accurate description of my financial life. The reader may wonder about my mom’s wisdom in going along with this plan. That’s between me and her—she loves me, and it’s her money, not yours. The money that went to GM was yours, however. And I suppose you must love GM as if it’s your profligate kid, because surely you could not be so credulous as to believe these reports about the spectacular success of the bailout.

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The Ninth Circuit Court recently set forth a ruling on an interesting case involving arbitration clauses in contracts. A couple received two complimentary cell phones from AT&T as part of a bundled-service contract but were charged $30.22 in sales tax required by California law.  As part of their contract, the couple agreed to arbitration.  As part of the arbitration clause AT&T agrees to pay $7500 plus fees if an arbitration award exceeds the amount last offered by AT&T before the settlement.  The couple claimed they were misled and filed a class-action law suit, despite their having signed the contract agreeing to arbitration.

The ruling by the Ninth Circuit, in Laster v AT&T Mobility LLC, called the contract unconscionable and refused to enforce the clause requiring arbitration.  The Court felt that such a clause, by disallowing class action, would result in little enforcement of contracts.  Because the amount involved is small, the individual customer would probably not find it worth the opportunity cost of their time to go to arbitration, and thus AT&T could default on lots of small contracts for minimal amounts and not fear an arbitration settlement.

There are a number of reasons why this ruling should be overturned.  First, it flies in the face of the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925, which was passed to provide certainty to contracts that have arbitration clauses.  The Act requires federal courts to enforce arbitration agreements unless they violate standard contract law doctrine, such as fraud, duress, or are unconscionable.  For a contract to be unconscionable, in this particular case, it must be seen as a scheme of the party in a stronger bargaining position to cheat large numbers of consumers.  The standard arbitration contract doesn’t meet any of these standards.

The contract with AT&T is clear.

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The loud clanging alarm clock went off promptly at 6:00 a.m. as it always did. I hopped off my government-issue twin mattress right away. As an unmarried single dweller, I’m not permitted to own a queen-size mattress, and concealing a king-sizer could even get me a 90-day jail stint if some overzealous bureaucrat were to come knocking. No, for me the twin-size was deemed sufficient “nocturnal  replenishment space” (governmentese for “mattress”). The government didn’t seem to mind that at 6’4” I find my allotted replenishment space a tad confining.

“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” (opening of 1970 Caspar Wrede film)

Anyway, I leapt right into action. Not like in the good old pre-2013 days when I’d take my sweet time and listen to my favorite morning talk radio show under the cozy covers. Unfortunately, ever since the Obama administration’s Broadcast Airwaves Czar reinstituted The Fairness Act in August of 2012, the talk radio shows one by one all faded from the airwaves. Talk radio was simply no longer commercially viable once the stations had to counterbalance with unprofitable Air America-style programming. Well, if it gets me out of bed and becoming a productive member of the labor force one hour sooner, I suppose that’s for the better. As Mr. and Mrs. Obama have reminded me on many occasions, it’s a shared sacrifice. And I know they’re shouldering their portion of the burden just like me.  I’m sure their Nocturnal Replenishment Space is only a Queen.

Solzhenitsyn in the gulag

Today was the first day of the month, which meant I had to get to the Mortgage Relief Assistance Office by 7:30 if I wanted to get a good spot in line for my subsidy. Since that MRA check covers 90% of my mortgage payment, I’m not about to pass it up—even though I could easily make the payment myself from money I squirreled away before the Equity in Compensation Act of 2012 reduced my handsome programmer’s salary by two-thirds. I guess all those years I spent studying the intricacies of digital architecture were not the wise investment in my future I once thought.

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Each year the Christmas season seems to come earlier and earlier.  This is no doubt the product of retailers eager to encourage Americans to spend their hard earned dollars, or more likely borrowed funds they do not have, on consumer goods they have little or no need for.

The reckless spending is encouraged with holiday decorations, radio stations playing Christmas music long before Thanksgiving, advertisements meant to cajole you into spending, and the false urgency created by the now ubiquitous Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.  Despite my best efforts I often succumb to the urge to join everyone else in this nouveau holiday tradition… this year the only question is whether to buy the Nook Color or the Kindle.

I just worry that this buy now, pay later, mentality is going to catch up with us all.

This reckless spending isn’t only seen in the actions of the America public, it’s seen in the attitude of our elected leaders, both in Congress and the White House.

The clearest example of Congress acting like a teenager set free with their parent’s credit card is our national debt.  As President Obama took office in January of 2009 our national debt stood at $10.6 trillion.  Today, less than two years later, the debt has expanded to $13.7 trillion.  The national debt has exploded — over $3 trillion in less than two years!

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The day when a nation deeply in debt tries to forget its troubles with one last spree at the Mall.