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"The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit." I came across this 2012 article today and thought still apropos to the state that we are in. We need to educate ourselves past what politicians and popular news media are telling us to believe.

We support Chiara de Blasio's recovery. The 19-year-old daughter of the mayor elect overcame an alcohol and marijuana dependency she developed last year during her freshman year of college. She's taken a very common issue for college students and become a role model for how to handle it. It's a bit sad that she had to be so public about it, but such is the collateral damage of having a political family. Now that it's off the table, however, we hope her privacy will be respected going forward.

A great Christmas video from the ACLU. But we prefer the original version of the song, so let's do what we can to bring transparency and democratic controls to the NSA. (See attached link.)

So Target disclosed that criminals somehow accessed credit/debit card information for as many as 40 million of its Black Friday retail customers. Alright, it's settled. We gotta go back to a cash-only society. But seriously, if you shopped in a brick-and-mortar Target store in between November 27 and December 1, double-check your transaction history. This is the the kind of thing that justifies having a positive brand image. The press coverage of it has been relatively light, but we wonder how such a breach would be reported if it were to happen to more divisive brands like Walmart.

The sky is falling!! Congress is actually gonna pass a budget without delay or chest-beating brinkmanship! And all it took was Boehner having a spine, and a couple experiments by the to prove the obvious. So kudos to Boehner's nascent spine, and a hearty, forceful pat on the back of the 113th Congress for meeting our minimum expectations. For once.

For a couple days the awesome Instapaper app for iOS is free. This lets you easily save articles from the web for reading later on your mobile device. It's a super productivity enhancer for straphangers. Get it while it's hot!

Miracle on Ludlow Street! The LES was removed from SantaCon's official bar crawl route! Hallelujah! Let the vomit and urine floweth in the streets of other neighborhoods! Thankful NBC-NY for airing our complaints. But other hoods have reason to rejoice too. This miraculous snowfall seems to be keeping the sloppy Santas indoors. God really is merciful!

Korean Friendship Bell Restored We salute Ernest Lee and  the Korean Friendship Bell Preservation Committee for their their volunteer work resulting in the restoration of the Korean Friendship Bell in Angels Gate Park, San Pedro, California. The 17-ton bell was cast in South Korea in the early 1970’s, at a cost of more than $1 million, and was presented to the United States as a gift for our bicentennial. Since then the bell has fallen into disrepair and the city of Los Angeles had neither the money nor the skill to repair the bell. Several years ago the Korean Friendship Bell Preservation Committee was formed and took it upon themselves to find the funds and talent to restore the bell. When local metallurgy experts said restoration of the bell was outside their expertise they eventually identified and contacted Beom Jong Sa, the manufacturer of the bell. The Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism supported the project and paid more than $300,000 to hire the required experts including master metallurgist Chai Dong-Hey, whose mentor created the bell. We hope the city of Los Angeles will find the will and means to maintain the restored treasure that some Koreans consider the West Coast Statue of Liberty. And we hope that visitors to Southern California will include the bell in their itinerary.

Wind Energy Vs Eagle Kills We need a balanced approach between development of wind farms and protection of eagles. And by balanced we mean the number of “acceptable” kills must be independently monitored. Federal officials announced on Dec 6, 2013 that some wind power companies will be allowed to kill and injure bald and golden eagles for up to 30 years without penalty. The regulations include restrictions where the permits will be reevaluated every five years and could be suspended if companies are not meeting requirements. However the government is relying almost exclusively on self-reporting by for-profit companies. Are they serious? If this is the best Obama can do what can we expect when a conservative is in office?

I think it may be time to surf the internet in privacy mode. "Today, an FBI agent can open an intrusive investigation with no reason to suspect criminal activity, and any resulting information can be kept for 20-30 years, even if it has no relationship to the investigation. Similarly, the FBI keeps so-called "suspicious activity reports" that are determined to have no relevance to terrorism – but may reflect Americans' constitutionally protected speech or other activities – for 30 years in a widely-accessible database."

Shutdown plurality voting! - Government shuts down, due to - Ideological fundamentalism in Congress, due to - Ideological fundamentalists voted into Congress by the American people, due to - Dysfunctional, big money, two-party political system generating few election options, due to - Widespread use of simplistic, poorly-representative, winner-takes-all, Plurality Voting system based on single-mark ballots, due to - It being used when the country was founded and now being ingrained in our culture, due to - Single-mark ballots being easy to tabulate by hand. Yes, in 2013, after landing rovers on Mars, sequencing the human genome, and creating a machine than can beat humans on Jeopardy!, Americans still use a simplistic system based on single-mark ballots and plurality voting because historically they were easier to count by hand! Fortunately the Constitution (and local and state law) can be changed. ;) That means it's actually on us. Do we want to move to more evolved, robust systems, such as Preferential Voting (ranked voting) or Proportional Representation (wherever possible), to create a more representative, satisfactory, efficient government? Or do we want to keep our 'merican gladiator system that produces ideological meatheads who'd rather fight on camera than solve problems? More info: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote NGO worth checking out: http://www.fairvote.org/

We believe >iranians want to peacefully coexist with us, despite the rhetoric and actions of their government in recent history. We only want the same, so we are cautiously optimistic about the recent developments. However, until we understand what has brought about this change, we will remain guarded and skeptical.