Zelda things I want to know and share

First of all, if you are here because you Googled a question, this is a long rambling blog. Use the "find" feature and paste your question there. Your browser will ferret out the answer from this mass of information. I use Chrome, and "Find" is under the wrench-shaped icon. If you don't use Chrome, you can probably find "Find" under "Tools"

Now then, for you long way around readers, and in no particular order:

Miyamoto said he chose the name Zelda for the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but coincidentally it is the nick name or diminutive of the old German name Griselda which means "Dark (or Grey) Battle" Some also say it means heroine of that battle. Zelda is Yiddish (a variation on German, basically) for blessed. He may say he chose it because Zelda F. was glamorous, but he struck upon a very appropriate name, don't you think?

Insect Locations:

***"Hey guys, anyone know a good place to get a Skyloft Mantis? Thanks.

They sometimes pop out of the pots outside the knights academy

On the right side of the Goddess statue are a couple of trees and a few bushes. One of the bushes has the Mantis." (http://www.gamespot.com/the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword/forum/messages/platform/wii?topic_id=m-1-61142966&pid=960633)***

This is true. Check all the bushes near those trees, as there are sometimes more than one. Also, if you don't know where to look for the pots, they are under and to the left of the two balconies that are to the left of the main outside entrance. You may remember you had to use those balconies to get to the roof to rescue the cat-lemur pet that pays you back by attacking you every night.

I also found SL Mantis in the Waterfall Cave. One sometimes spawns near the pond where the Firefly spawns, one spawns at the top of the vines. There are 3 pots on your right at the top and the SL Mantis will be under the third pot in. No need to break pot, just lift. I have seen him on top of another platform in that cave, but I can't remember where. (reference: me!)

"The eastern Lanayru desert has a switch that will open a shortcut back to the starting area in the south. Before heading in the door by the Bird Statue, look for the Sand Cicada on the rear side of the structure." (http://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword/The_Generator)

The bird statue is just out side the door to the Stone Cache. At the other end of this building, the end without an entrance, I found two Sand Cicadas on the wall. Also, I saw one on the wall just to the left of the entrance to the temple of time. When I went back it wasn't there, so I tried re-entering the mining facility sentry just inside the temple to the right. When I came out, there were two SC on the wall out side the Temple of Time. The very first time I head and saw a SC was at the very first bird statue of Lanayru. I just went back there and heard it again, but the electric chu chu attacked and the commotion must have scared it off.

Inside the temple under the dust I found Lanayru Ants. I found them under the dust in the northeast corner, but this may change. Within the first mine, LA were in a small room through a crawl space behind a bombketball door, just at your first encounter with sink sank, under the pots there are LA as well.

Gerudo Dragon fly can be found in the Lanayru mines, between the time stone you had to bowl a bomb across sink sand to uncover and to activate, and a chest that was inaccessible from the last room because it is up on a plateau. They are also in the same valley as the Temple of Time. Some are very close to the bird statue of that area, and there are a couple near the valley wall at the end of the area completely opposite the Temple of Time. You have to use mine carts and take the whole trip around, so you have to really need or want them.

To find Eldin Roller, fly to Volcano East in Eldin. As you are facing the bird statue, to your left is the path to the drop down into the depths, where you had to fly to the tops of pillars to reach treasures and a Goddess Cube. Half way down this path on your left is a little hole to crawl through. The bugs are in there. Eldin Roller are also in a Bokoblin camp, but not the one near the temple entrance, the one half way up (or down!) the mountain. There is dig space in the center of one of the huts. Dig and get you net out.

I didn't follow a walkthrough for Skyward Sword. I did check a couple for boss help, though. When I got to the final boss, ZD recommended using my shield, but even though I had the top upgraded shield, it quickly broke. Then I realized that they had told me earlier in the walkthrough how to get the Hylian shield, which is unbreakable. So if you have won the Hylian Shield from the Desert Dragon by defeating 8 bosses in a row, then, yes, using your shield is a good strategy. For some reason, it didn't occur to me to use a Guardian Plus potion when I fought the final bosses. But what the heck, why not? I did use a Stamina Plus and the Potion Medal to fight the hordes of Ghirahim, though. Also for the 2nd and 3rd Imprisoned battles.

Now that I am done with Skyward Sword, I am playing Twilight Princess at last. To get the 3rd bottle you have to find the fishing hole in Upper Zora's River. Go in the door. You don't go to the Lure fishing yet. You walk long the west side of the pond until you see a sign near a bridge. It tells you not to litter, throw BOTTLES into the pond. Zelda Dungeon says merely to fish there to get the bottle, but eHow says to fish off the WEST SIDE of the bridge. That is what worked for me. Bobber fishing only.

I was having trouble finding a poe soul that I missed on Snow Peak, the very first one. Turns out I had it already, but because of this I discovered there is no good description of where to find it. Once you are past the ice floe blocks and climbing the mountain proper, the reekfish scent will take you through a VERY NARROW pass. The right side of this tight squeeze is a boulder. Just after that boulder on the right is the 1st poe of the area. Thank you to this guy for the video her posted that set me straight. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkyYsizZFYA

Oh, the little things that walk throughers don't think to mention. I could not claw shot Argorok's tail. I stood there for five minutes shooting, z-targeting, attempting to hit while hanging from the posts. I Googled "Help! I can't hit Argorok's tail!" and " Can't z-target Argorok's tail" Nothing. When I reread the ZD walkthrough, it said, "Use the iron boots to keep from being swept away by his wing gusts." But he was just hovering there and I was having no trouble keeping my footing. Then it said, "Once you catch his tail, if you haven't already, equip the boots to tug him down." So I thought, stand in the same place, use the same shooting, just put the iron boots on first. And that is what did the trick. No matter where I was, no matter z-target or aim and shoot, without the iron boots equipped, I could not catch his tail to start the battle.

Spirit Tracks is so vast and complicated, I could not manage it without a walkthrough, especially since, because I am a mom, I have to take long breaks, sometimes months long. I was stumped how to get the chests on the roof of castle town because, since I had taken such a long break, I FORGOT I had a song that could summon birds. Duh. Once you have a cucco, it is easy to jump to TWO of the chests, but the northwestern most one was a stumper. I found this advice:

"Take your Cucco up the ramparts one final time and go to the top right corner. Jump onto the building there, then to the one to the left of you. Now for the really tricky part. You should be near one of the Lion Statues that adorn the main path to Hyrule Castle. What you're going to do...is jump off the building you're on and land on that statue. After which you will leap over to the second statue and finally, onto the roof of the building with the final chest. This one has a super-rare treasure in it, which makes it worth the effort. Still, this will most likely take you a few tries. The best tip that I can give you is to make the statue jumps in one motion. If you overthink it, you'll fall off and have to try again."

One: I DID NOT get a super rare treasure. I got Goron Amber. I have freaking 5 now. I think I have a glitch because it seems whenever I find a treasure in a chest it is a freaking Goron Amber. Grr! (What kind of treasure did YOU get? You can answer in the comments section.) Two: His advice for lion jumping didn't work for me. I went slow and once on the first one, lined my self up directly to the left before jumping again. Was it my imagination, or did tapping on the lion's head while I was in the air help direct my landing? It felt that way. If I wasn't told landing on the lions was possible, I never would have gotten this. I am a lousy platform gamer, which means I miss a lot, AND I will only try and fail at something so many times before I assume I am missing because it is programmed that way.

Except one time in Twilight Princess. Early in the game I saw a rupee on a hillside in Ordon near where you can call a hawk that will fetch for you. One such bird fetched a whole cradle, so I thought it a fair assumption that it would fetch the rupee. I needed that rupee to get the sling shot so the game would progress, so I tried 50 times to get that rupee, assuming the problem was me. At the beginning of Skyward Sword it took me 27 times to land with the sailcloth in the circle at the bottom of the Goddess statue because I didn't under stand the controls. To be fair, the icon that guides you at the bottom of the screen shows a remote being tipped side to side, not being pointed downward and upward, which is what you NEED to do. So once I was in Ordon, I figured that I must be controlling the hawk wrong. FINALLY I checked a walkthrough and read "Catch a cucco with the Hawk. Then glide over to the hill with the cucco." From real life I know this is an awful idea because a hawk would severely WOUND any chicken you send it after, rendering it useless for any type of flying or floating, but this is what my kids like to call "Zelda Logic"

So rule one of Zelda Logic, if there is something out of your reach, and their are cuccos around, odds are the cucco is the answer, try the cucco first.

I wanted to collect as many heart containers before looking for the Demon Train, so I fought the guards at the castle at last. The trick for me was NOT what Zelda Dungeon suggested, "Stay to the right and if you see a guard attempt to hit you, quickly turn and hit him first." I am not fast enough apparently. Big failure. But, if I just hit until I saw a guard preparing to strike, then ran away, then came back and hit a few more times, then dodge, hit dodge hit dodge, nothing bad ass, strike and flee like a coward, with THAT strategy, I won on my first try.

"How do you solve the block puzzles at Ends of the Earth Station?"

Then I went to the Ends of the Earth Station. In the western cavern there are 3 block puzzles. Zelda Dungeon was great with the first puzzle, but offered nothing about the 2nd. Obviously soooooo easy for this master gamer, not even worth mentioning, but for me still tricky. I found a video that shows that the answer to the 2nd puzzle is:

Bottom block: up right down left up left

Top block: down right down left up right. I also found that the completed bottom block (ends on the right) sort of got in the way of moving the top block. I moved the bottom (right finishing) block up one until the top (left finishing) block was complete.

Geez, they don't tell you how to do the 3rd one, either. I worked this out from watching that same video:

Left block: (move bottom block right first) down right up (move bottom block left and right block down) left up left (Move bottom block left and left block up to return them to starting point)

Right block: (move bottom block up) down (bottom block left) left up (bottom block down) right up right

Bottom block: (from where you left it working left block) up right down right up left down down

Here is the video I worked this out from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZWRZOk1igc

WTF!?! I just went to do the easy puzzles, in the middle cavern, which even *I* didn't need help with, to collect some (allegedly) random treasure and I got ANOTHER FRIGGIN' GORON AMBER! That makes six in a row, now.

My Response to Ms. Malkin's response to Occupy Oakland

http://www.facebook.com/notes/michelle-malkin/more-ugly-occupy-oakland-pictures-that-wont-make-msm-front-pages/10150341843655677

(Tip: Look at the photos, read her captions, then read my responses.)

“We are better than this: Not really. Anarchy speaks louder than whitewash words" Better than the "whitewash words" "war on terror" that gets painted over the deaths of 100,000+ Iraqi civilians, when there was in fact no WoMD, no connection to 9/11? Sure Saddam was a "bad man" (more whitewash) but 100,000+ people just to get rid of him? NVM our soldiers lives and limbs.

“Fuck the police: Nope, didn’t see anyone of those signs at Tea Party protests" No, but you did see protesters with assault rifles. EVERYWHERE. No such thing at OWS. Even the vandals were not armed. TEA party signs threatened "2nd Amendment solutions" to big government, and what do you know? A Congresswoman was shot in the head, and a Judge murdered.

"From the Port of Oakland blockade scene late tonight…nope, this looks nothing like a Tea Party either" What? Their faces are covered? Again ASSAULT RIFLES AND PISTOLS at Tea Party rallies. VERY INTIMIDATING, and in case of misfire, potentionally dangerous.

You object to signs that say "death to capitalism?" when at the Tea Party the signs said "Death to Obama", our SITTING President? "If Brown can't solve the problem, a browning can?" How menacing is that?

You called one teacher a "union hack" Is that anything like a "hack journalist?"

"Kiddie human shields" There were kids at the Tea Party rallies, too. They carried *toy* guns. GUNS mind you, not signs.

"And as I noted in my column yesterday, one of the leaders of the parade of destruction, rapper Boots Riley, is author/”songwriter” of “5 million ways to kill a CEO,” among other hateful ditties" Through his blatant mismanagement in pursiut of unGodly profits, the CEO of BP killed 11 men. With families. Then publicly wished for *his* life back.

You know very well Ms. Malkin that Tea Party rallies had no arrests because there were no orders from above to clear them off the street. NOT because they were better behaved or in any way less annoying. The elite organized the TP rallies because they hate government regulation and want the People to hate it to, because it interferes with robbing us blind, polluting and poisoning us, basically making them even more insanely wealthy at the expense of all the rest of us. They hate social programs because they make people less desperate to work slave wages and off the clock. They hate unions because their work gave us socialist constructs like "weekends", "sick days" and "overtime". Time is money, and as far as the elite are concerned, our time is their money.

(Lulu's note: This was originally a comment I posted on MM's "photo essay", so I am addressing her fans here.)

You People reading this: You are 99%ers. Your taxes are being frittered on wasteful spending, but not on teachers and food stamps. On subsidies for oil companies, when they already make more money than any other companies on earth, in history. For bankers who got bailout money over bad loans, but also got to keep those loans, so they got paid twice. For war contractors who use the MSM to lie about the threat level from over seas to scare you into sacrificing your health and retirement. And again for oil companies who tell you the billions for war we spend is for spreading democracy, when it is about keeping oil prices low for BP and ExxonMobil, but they DON'T even have the decency to pass the savings on to us, even though our tax dollars and our dead and wounded soldiers paid for that discounted price.

So if you are really feel Taxed Enough Already, you too should be out in the street protesting the fascist coup of "our" elected officials by the richest of the rich. Because they are the ones sucking up all the welfare that is bleeding the working people of this country to death.

Join us.

What is OWS about, anyway?

Matt Taibbi to Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of NYC: People are not protesting for their own entertainment, you asshole. They’re protesting because millions of people were robbed, by your best friends incidentally, and they want their money back.

All of a sudden tonight, my Facebook page had outraged comments, and wall posts, all emanating from the same source: My dear old friend of 20 years, a Republican. He objected to my support of OWS. I began to argue with him. When he posted a USA today article as a rebuttal, I said it was a corporate rag. He said I was a conspiracy freak. We progressed through various points from the news this week, before we cooled off. Then he asked: "So what *is* OWS about, then?" He is the type of guy who really wants to know answers to the questions he asks, and if he wasn't smart and open minded, I wouldn't be his friend. So here on my blog I am going to craft a list of links to stories that explain the outrage. If you would like to help, you can comment below and add links to stories that you recommend. If you are reading this now, know that this entry will update as I come back and add new links to stories I've tracked down.

Let's start with the fact that the 30 biggest, most insanely profitable corporations pay no income tax at all:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/03/us-usa-tax-corporate-idUSTRE7A261C20111103

(And Obama just named the head of GE to his economic advisory panel.)

Oh, and since you are so fond of "Can't have your cake and eat it, too" Let me explain something about the bad mortgage bail out. I will focus on Bank of America, but there were other big bank players with similar stories. First the big banks lobbied to have the long standing federal lending guidelines eliminated, so that they could make high risk loans. Why would they do this? First of all, the market was saturated with loans to decent borrowers, and profits must rise, so business must expand to new customers. Also, high risk borrowers generate late fees, which are much more profitable than interest. So the loans were made. When they started going bad, they dragged the whole housing market down, which caused a domino effect that put decent borrowers under water or worse. When it got really bad, the big banks petitioned for a bail out and got it, but with NO CONDITIONS. If the problem was bad mortgages, the governement could have saved the banks by paying off the bad mortgages. But here is the eat the cake bit: They got to keep all the debt from the bad mortages. The people they liked, they gave them lower payements, but they were still on the hook to pay as agreed. The people who they didn't like, they took their homes. So they got the bailout money for having so many bad loans, but they also got to either make all their borrowers keep paying or got their homes. So for making high risk loans, which you and I would be laughed out of town for doing ("Why did you loan that deadbeat $150,000??") They got paid TWICE. Once with the loans they still have, and the property that they repossessed, and again when the government handed over 100s of billions of dollars. See what OWS is about now? If not, keep reading:

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/10/26/glenn_greenwald_on_two_tiered_us

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405

"It was not Barney Frank who made it possible for Goldman, Sachs to sell the home loan of an occasionally-employed janitor in Oakland or Detroit as something just as safe as, and more profitable than, a United States Treasury Bill. This was something they cooked up entirely by themselves and developed solely with the aim of making more money."

AND

"Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with Merrill Lynch selling $16.5 billion worth of crap mortgage-backed securities to the Connecticut Carpenters Annuity Fund, the Mississippi Public Employees' Retirement System, the Connecticut Carpenters Pension Fund, and the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association. Citigroup and Deutsche Bank did not need to be pushed by Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in crappy MBS to Allstate."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/mike-bloombergs-marie-antoinette-moment-20111103#ixzz1coh9PO2Y

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/matt-taibbi-courts-helping-banks-screw-over-homeowners-20101110

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=228308640558283&set=a.228308403891640.64067.124568187598996&type=1&ref=nf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/ny-times-reporter-confirm_b_500999.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMwLlS3UKHQ&feature=share

http://boingboing.net/2011/10/29/top-us-foreclosure-law-firm-threw-halloween-party-where-staff-dressed-as-homeless-foreclosed-upon-americans.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

And the criminal who runs the firm in the above story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/business/09foreclose.html?_r=2

Got Power?

Or do mega interstate utilities have it all? Do you *remember* local municipal utilites? They answered to the people locally, and profit was not their primary concern. Keeping utilities *working* was the primary concern. Today we have to deal with large conglomerates who got their monoplies by buying elections.

http://www.grist.org/article/2011-10-12-utility-fights-dirty-in-citys-battle-for-clean-local-energy

You can read here about how Boulder is fighting to take their "power back" to get an idea of what your local politician is up against when you call to complain, "My power is STILL out, and I CAN'T take my business elsewhere!" When we were mistreated by our gas company this summer, a HUGE multistate conglomertion that is based in North Carolina, I called my Congressman. He told me "we're working for consumer choice!" That is was I was told 20 years ago, the last time I called. Silly me. I didn't realize that what I was supporting at the time was the deregulation that would give mega business the power to push local providers out of the market. Now I know better. He's been working on "consumer choice" since before we called, and he is still working on it. But still our only choice is this one mega monopoly that cares more about saving a dollar or two than about us taking icy showers for a whole weekend. And if I leave it to Congress and to the state of Massachusetts, with the way politics works today, that *isn't* going to change.

The power companies would like you to believe these outages are as long as they are because of the mess the storms cause. The answer to their delay is simple: Keep a larger stand by staff. Oh, they will tell you that that will raise everyone's rates! But the truth of it is, when you have as many customers as they do, the amount of money they lose the week or or you and your neighbors have no power costs them far less than the cost of keeping more workers on standby. And besides that, do you really care if your power bill is a dollar less a month, if to save that buck you have to risk the week (or more!) of power loss in the act of God lottery we are all forced to play in now?

We lost power for 30 hours after Tropical Storm Irene, and we didn't get the worst of the power interruptions. Some people, who lost power for a week or more, and are fed up, are exploring what the People of Boulder are now struggling and scrapping to do in the face of the big money and dirty tricks of their current private provider. Ah! Such innocence!

http://articles.boston.com/2011-09-18/yourtown/30172423_1_electric-utilities-national-grid-towns-study

Did you miss this story in the corporate run media? I can't imagine why a media industry that garners so much ad revenue from mega utilities, "America's Coal" and "America's Natural Gas" would so thoroughly ignore stories that if widely reported would quickly see an end to their sponsors strangle hold on our service, and the implementation of sustainable, locally produced power.

When the local community runs the utilities, profit is no longer the primary concern. Servicing the people in the way the People want is. You prefer to not use so much coal? You would have a choice if your local community ran your utlities. And back before deruglation (Thanks again, Ronald Reagan... and Bush I... And Clinton!) people had a lot more say in how things were run, and how power was maintained in the face of natural disasters. The people of Boulder have the right idea, but it is about so much more than implementing renewables. It is about knowing the people who make your energy and your energy policy. It is about getting your power *back on* in a far more reasonable amount of time. This is a 99% issue, too. The people making these desicions that leave *you* in the dark (and cold!) for so long are the people who are given repair priority, *or* have whole house back up generators in their posh abodes, or both!

When you are done moving your money, prepare yourselves to take your power back from the mega energy corps, who not only don't answer to the People, they no longer answer to our legistlators.

Power to the People, literally.

Orwell Rolls in his Grave

If you only understood: ‎"The most powerful special interest in Washington today is the media"

The media decides who gets air time, who gets favorable attitudes from their reporters and anchors, who gets investigated, who gets embarrassed. You remember scream of Howard Dean, that got played and replayed, and endlessly ridiculed in the main stream media, until he had no chance of beating Kerry?

What was at the top of Dr. Dean's political agenda? Media re-regulation. Clinton and Gingrinch decimated the laws that protected us from the type of wholesale corruption we suffer now at the hands of the corporate media, leading to a stolen election, wars without end, the Patriot Act. Of course the MSM was going to use its power over public opinion to destroy the man who made it his mission to make the MSM play fair.

Joseph Goebbels said, "What you want in a media system is ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity."

*This* is what I am talking about when I complain about Fox News/MSNBC "rivalry". While they point fingers in outrage at one another, their bosses are making policy, framing the debate miles away from what is important to average people, and directing our money into their investments, directly by selling us crap, and indirectly, using their influence to direct our taxes into what makes them and their friends rich. Who are their friends and sponsors? Banks. Petroleum companies. War contractors. Pharmaceutical companies!

I can't tell you this very important story as well at this film maker can. You must watch. You must share. We can't have Democracy with the MSM running amok as it is, meddling with our information, and flat out ignoring the issues that matter the most to 98% of us. They keep the everyman focused on triviality and culture war, and distracted from the degradation of our constitutional right to live without the corporations getting a cut of absolutely everything we do.

Yes, its 3 hours long. 3 short hours in the face of months and years of MSM absorption. Deprogram yourself, a few minutes at a time. That is what the pause button is for. But once it starts to sink in, you won't be able to tear yourself away. Hmm... It is embedded funny. Just go to YouTube to see it as intended. Peace!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_lYGyIaK80

"If this is News then I don't understand what News is any longer."

A quote from Neil Gaiman's Facebook page regarding this article:

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/polinaut/archive/2011/05/gaiman_to_make.shtml

I took the opportunity to write this comment regarding the current state of "news reporting", and it turned into a dire warning about the importance of Net Neutrality, a story you aren't getting from the "news". No surprise there, since those are exactly the business intersets that stand to profit (hugely) from the end of our free and easy access to what is essentially already ours. My comment to his post:

"The HLN (Formerly "Headline News") ran the story of the couple who made their prom outfits entirely out of duct tape in their 30 minute cycle today. On New England Cable News in their cycle was, "Chefs all over want iPads for the *kitchens!*" and "How to choose the right patio furniture." Neither felt that the continuing irradiation of Northern Japan warranted a minute or so ALL DAY. Even "public" radio has sponsors, and sponsors tell the "news" directors what kind of stories they are willing to sponsor, and which they are not. Mr. Gaiman does not offend any of the corporate supporters of that NPR channel, so hooray for NG! (Lulu's note: I should have read the article first. It was an attack on Mr. Gaiman for accepting taxpayer funds for speaking. Of course corporate media, and corporate supported media, which is what NPR truly is, would pursue this story. The mega-corporations spend their time nitpicking at every tax dollar deposited into any pocket other than theirs, and this is reflected ad nauseam in our daily "news" broadcasts!) Listener/viewer supported is the only way to get real news anymore. Imagine if we didn't have the Internet!

This is why you must support Net Neutrality. Though the Internet belongs to the US (just ask George Bush!) which means it belongs to the People, there is no public means for civilians to access it. Only privately owned means. And on private property 1st Amendment rules do not apply. It's almost as if they planned it that way! ;^) So without Net Neutrality, Verizon and Comcast (etc.) can decide to block pages they don't like, (and so much more!) and the Constitution doesn't apply. At. All.

The GOP has reversed the NN law in the House; they voted it down the night of the threatened shut down, and surprise, surprise this fact didn't make the "news". It heads for the Senate next and the GOP is fighting with the FCC over it now. The GOP is calling NN "Government takeover of the Internet! Interfering in private business!" That's rich. It is a government, taxpayer supported entity, but the People demanding that the private conduits to it respect their Constitutional rights is a "Government take over". They are getting fat and rich giving us access to something that is already ours. Once we lose Net Neutrality, getting it back will be soooooo much harder, because those apposed to it, the ISPs will then be allowed to block your "Bring Back Net Neutrality" Content. Small wonder this isn't making the MSM "news"

http://www.themoralliberal.com/2011/04/22/u-s-house-and-senate-stop-government-takeover-of-the-internet-2/ Here's a hoot. This site calls it self "The Moral Liberal" He is an alleged Liberal who rabidly defends the interests of business over the will of and the rights of the People. This makes him "Moral"? I want you to read this outrageous article and remember: US taxpayers founded the Internet, grew the Internet, and still pay to maintain the great bulk of it. It belongs to you, but you can't access it with out paying these creeps, and they want to exercise *their* rights as private property owners to silence dissent.

Not only should you drop what you are doing right now and call your Senators and the President to demand Net Neutrality, you should ask, why the heck We the People have been tasked with funding this Internet for so many years, yet no *publicly owned* means of *access* to it yet exists? Think about that. After all the many billions spent on it since its inception, not a penny to provide the People access to it through a channel that must respect the 1st Amendment.

If you want real news in future, you had better start making calls and spreading the word. Now.

Why Solar and Wind aren't "feasible" business models (if you crave centralized, concentrated wealth)

"The most inexpensive way to meet your Seismic Qualification is to lie. The industry does it all the time. The government team I worked with caught them once, in 1988, at the Shoreham plant in New York. Correcting the SQ problem at Shoreham would have cost a cool billion, so engineers were told to change the tests from 'failed' to 'passed.'"

https://www.gregpalast.com/no-bs-info-on-japan-nuclearobama-invites-tokyo-electric-to-build-us-nukes-with-taxpayer-funds/

There is no need to lie about the safety of your wind or solar plant. And don't believe the lie of "Solar and Wind are not economically viable" They aren't subsidized at the level of nukes and fossil fuel, and the cost of accidents, like the BP spill (and others!) and nuke accidents are not factored in to the cost analysis. Nor are the health costs caused by the public's exposure to the fuels and their waste products, as part of SOP.

Gee, why would businessmen spend so much money to represent dangerous stuff as more cost effective than clean stuff, to the public through the media, and to our politicians through lobbying? The "Come-back".

Big people with big pockets lobby for government funds for making themselves *more* money. Sustainable by definition has no come-back. Once you have built the green energy device, fuel is forever free, nothing left to sell to people. Who will lobby for free fuel? The people with the money to successfully lobby energy policy are the overlords looking for the come-back. They push dirty fuels instead of crack or smack, but they are just as despicable as drug lords, and just as dangerous.

The dangerous energy industries *also* fight the progress of Green development with pro-dirty propaganda. With their come-back money they buy up media. (MSNBC = GE = nukes... Fox = Prince Al Waleed = Saudi Arabia = petroleum and methane.) And they become sponsors everywhere else. How are you going to make money if you annoy your sponsors by not telling your audience how indispensable their dangerous products are? Or by not ignoring the fact that their products get so much more tax payer support than their Green competition? Or that externalized costs are not factored into the viability equation. What is an externalized cost?

In NC hog farmers are allowed by law to put the hog waste into lagoons, rather than paying for removal or processing. That means very low costs for the hog producers, but for all of their neighbors for miles around? Every breath they take and and every thing they drink or eat tastes like pig shit. So these people pay the price for our cheap McDonalds and Subway bacon. Externalized cost for the producer, still existent for the neighbors. Want to buy a house near a hog farm in NC? Neither does anyone else. So the devaluation of their real estate value is an additional cost, paid for by the neighbors, not by bacon munchers.

Externalized costs for energy production run rampant. Some costs are deferred legally, because they have used their comeback money to influence law makers and to influence public opinion. But when that doesn't work they externalize costs with fraud, like lies and illegal dumping. The burden then lies on the public to sue to recover their losses (like in the case of BP in the Gulf) These legal cost are also not factored into the final cost analysis of dangerous vs. green Want to buy a home in Fukushima?

To implement green works, we have to do far more than just going to the federal government and asking or even demanding. The energy overlords bought up our politicians with their come back money long ago. Democracy can work outside the government. We have to start our own collectives locally with out large government support. We have to form non profits and build our own green power. We have to work with our most local governments and funds (Our town put solar panels all over our new high school and will be covering the middle school next.) The Federal government is all but lost to us on this issue. Locally, it is easy to make the case for green. It's a no-brainer. The Fed will only follow once they see we've pretty much solved the problem without them.

James O'Keefe, MSM sock puppet

Evening news lead: James O'Keefe. Remember by choosing this story the MSM gives him credence. James O'Keefe is in fact a sock puppet for the MSM who, to maintain creditability must refrain from such tactics as his, yet gleefully air his fraudulent stories front and center.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/blog-post/2011/03/james_okeefes_group_also_lunch.html

Phillis Bennis scoffed at us

I was invited to a meeting of this group on February 10th: http://www.justicewithpeace.org/

Noam Chomsky and Phillis Bennis spoke (and left... they're rock stars). We exchanged email addresses and ideas, and passed around a bucket for donations. I met these amazing Somali women, who I want to follow up with, and now I am part of an email circle of about 20 + local progressives. Four hours of my valuable time spent in hopes of "doing something" (!)

Phillis Bennis, who I admire, annoyed me. She asked the group of about 250 how many had marched in protest February 16, 2003 before the invasion of Iraq. I was impressed by how many hands went up (about half), but she scoffed, "Oh, I would expect to see many more." Scoffed. Nice. Did she ask why any one of us didn't make it? Did she ask anyone to volunteer what they had done instead? Nope. Way to encourage people with positive reinforcement!

I had small children in 2003 (they are big enough to march themselves, now) and I was sick on top of it. I get sick often, which is probably why I am so sympathetic to the plights of others. But I didn't do nothing. For weeks before and after the protests, because those were the days before YouTube, and I wasn't tech saavy enough to know how to post videos anywhere else, I was taping HER and others speaking on FreeSpeech TV: Why the war war wrong, why you won't get the the truth about it from the press, etc. I made copy after copy on VHS and mailed them to everyone I knew who didn't yet "know". Then I would call them and bug them. "Did you watch the tape? Please watch it, just once!" "You won't get the truth from the main stream media!" (Which was packed wall to wall with generals and WoMD "experts"). So I couldn't get out and march, but I didn't sit and do nothing! I did what I could, and I did it with every spare moment I had. I didn't go to play dates or "do lunch" or go shopping. I made and mailed tapes. What I wanted to know was: What did those other non-hand raisers do? Something worthwhile, I'll bet. But for Phyllis, if your aren't marching on the street, you deserve to be scoffed at? Because marching made such a big differnce on our Iraq policy? Appealing to our "leaders" by marching in protest doesn't seem to be doing much, so why do we keep falling back on that?

Jason, my husband, also scoffed, calling Phillis a "gate keeper". You might think not, since she is not in the mass media much, but she is much admired in the left of politics. If her message is, "If you're not marching, you don't matter" then that is what her adherents will abide by, right? Marching takes lots of time and energy, keeps folks busy. And what happens? "Our" troops invade anyway, our banks get our tax dollars to pay their bonuses, health care gets "reformed" into an institutionalized hand out for the insurance companies, whose raping of us is what lead to the health care crisis to begin with. Marching doesn't seem to work, but it sure keeps us too busy to figure out something that will.

I think the overlords of this country delight in reporting to us the chaos and the blood shed in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria, because even most of the left want no such thing happening here. We admire the Egyptians, but lets face it, life is so much grimmer there than here, so they have far less to lose. We don't want to destroy what we already have, which is a lot. So keep marching peacefully US citenzens, and see what little good it does you, or see the time and energy it takes, much sound and fury over nothing, and choose to stay home instead...

Can you imagine living in the streets for 17 days? You would have to be unemployed, right? You would be cold. (Even in Egypt it gets cold this time of year, but where I live? Imagine that!) Dirty, hungry. I find the protests pretty discouraging, actually, because just to get a sideways shift, Mubarak for military rule, people had to last 17 days, and many of them had to die, and many, many more were beaten. We aren't going to do that. Yet short of a strike, a general strike, that shuts eveything down and makes everyone miserable, what is going to make an impact on the fascists who keep handing our tax money over to banks, and insurance companies, and war contracters, and petroleum companies...?

So, marching doesn't do much in this country, the press spins it as a parade of crazed malcontents (if they cover it at all!), and the overlords do as they please in spite of it. But if you don't march in protest, what *do* you do, and are your efforts any less valuable? And if marching is the answer, how far are you willing to take it? As far as Egypt? ...Me neither.

Why God Sends Rain To Mexico But Not to the Mid East

Why God Sends Rain To Mexico But Not The Middle East...

Boycott Saudi petroleum

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5633134989&v=wall

On September 11, 2001 the US was attacked by 15 Saudi Nationals with the assistance of 4 Pakistani Nationals. The plan was conceived of by a Saudi national, Osama Bin Laden, and was financed by Saudi Royalty.

http://goo.gl/f34C2

Yet the US defends the Saudi Regime endlessly. Why?There is no democracy, no separation of religion and state, sexual apartheid (which, in its severity, pales South African apartheid of old), and an absolute intolerance for "alternative lifestyles." Slavery still exists there. Medieval punishments are still meted out, yet nothing, nothing bad about Saudi Arabia appears in our press.

We went to war in 1991 to suppress a rival to Saudi Arabia, then again in 2003. We are still there. Now they want us to invade Iran.

http://goo.gl/TNH3y

A Saudi prince is the second largest owner of one of our most influential media conglomerations, News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, the channel that most makes Americans angry at one another, whether they are on the right or the left.

http://goo.gl/LyYJG

When we spend hours in the news talking about the importance of holding to account violators of human rights, why does Saudi Arabia never come up?

There are other places we can buy our gas. We don't have to underwrite tyranny and oppression when we fill our tanks. Please join our boycott and bring freedom to the people of Saudi Arabia, as was done for the people of South Africa.

Peace.

PBS and NPR were lost to me years ago

My liberal and progressive "friends" (and some real ones, too) are urging me to take action to save NPR/PBS from Republican hatchet men. I can't be bothered, and I have three words explanation as to why not: Mobil Masterpiece Theater.

Actually, I have many more words than that. In the run up to the invasion of Iraq we took to calling NPR "National Petroleum Radio" because it was right on the "ask the general" band wagon with every other news outlet, and was taking the WoMD story exactly as it was handed down to the press by the administration.

And I don't want my tax money going to fund reporting "both sides" of the political "debate", either. The right already has enough media coverage. I don't want to fund with taxes one second more, even in the name of this "fairness" The fact that PBS/NPR's funding can be threatened with cuts when ever it leans even slightly to the left is exactly what makes it no longer any more relevant than MSNBC.

I stopped "listening" to PBS years ago the night Frontline showed a report that the nuclear power industry was getting a bum rap, that nukes aren't at all dangerous. Every time I flip to PBS it's showing Riverdance or Three Tenors or Celtic Woman. Rarely, I catch one of its science programs. Those play like corporate PR reels. Read this from the PBS website (your tax dollars paid for this): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/harvest/interviews/grant.html

100% Monsanto propaganda. Please, just read the PBS site. It is PACKED with stuff like the Monsanto piece. Why does the COO of Monsanto need good press anyway? Merely to counter the truth, that they are trying to control all food every where on earth? By being perceived as liberal, PBS gives credence to Monsanto in the eyes of the left. That is very perilous. Liberals are writing to me when I post against GMO alfalfa that only bio technology can save the planet from starvation. That is horseshit, and you all know it as well as I do; it's straight out of the agro-bio-tech propaganda hand book. PBS and NPR are to blame for the dissemination of these lies among the left. They are more than irrelevant. They are dangerous.

I'd rather have every penny of my percentage of tax money that goes to the public system in my pocket so that I can give it to the media I choose, media that does some actual investigative reporting and educating.

So thanks Republicans for saving us some money and for cutting a vital conduit for corporate propaganda into the psyche of the left. Regarding the money you save the taxpayer? I'll take a check, please.