Last year, Americans spent $10.7 trillion shopping. With that much dough, you could buy over 2000 aircraft carriers, 300 private islands, and still have money left over for a latte. Here’s a taste of the things we bought—and how much we spent on them.
Beer: $96 billion—enough to make 199,937,239 barrels!
(Brewers Association)
Pretzels: $550 million
(Reuters)
St. Patrick’s Day: $4.14 billion
(National Retail Federation)
Over-the-Counter Teeth Whiteners: $1.4 billion
(MSNBC)
Sinus Treatments: $5.8 billion
(Centers for Disease Control)
Read the full list at Mental Floss and do check out the rest of the site. bookmark the site and go back often. worth it!
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Senator Rand Paul calls for stopping financial aid to countries that disrespect us including Pakistan and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood
Paul questions the motives behind sending billions, that we have to borrow from China, to a country that has imprisoned the very man who led us to capturing Osama bin Laden.
Go to the site HERE and read it all! Important stuff is always posted on this site. Keeps you up to date with all those nasty ass islamic freaks!
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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Shooter….
Spec Ops: The Line and why we play violent shooter games
In early June, at the E3 convention in Los Angeles, I attended a demo for a game called Splinter Cell: Blacklist. In the demo, I watched the Splinter Cell franchise’s long-established hero, Sam Fisher — operating somewhere in Middle Eastistan — enter a tent, kill two gentlemen, and grab a third. Sam asks this third gentleman where a certain colleague of his might be. The gentleman declines to answer, so Sam sticks his knife into the gentleman’s clavicle. The gamer is then given an onscreen prompt to twirl around his controller’s joystick, which in turn twirls around Sam’s knife in the gentleman’s wound. The screaming gentleman gives Sam the info he needs — and, suddenly, it’s “moral choice” time, for Sam has to choose whether to kill or knock out his freshly tortured victim. Let’s review: a moral choice — after an interactive torture sequence.
We’ve arrived in a strange emotional clime when our popular entertainment frequently depicts torture as briskly effective rather than literally the worst thing one human being can do to another — yea verily, worse even than killing. Inflicting pain and suffering on a captive human being because one person feels like it and the other can’t stop it … is this not what we’re told awaits sinners in hell? Is this not the domain of Satan?
I left the Blacklist demo sick and infuriated, which was a shame, because the person introducing the demo was a game designer I admire and have long wanted to meet. I really wanted to ask this man how he felt, demo-ing that. Ask the programmers and artists, too, how they felt, bringing that moment into this world. I wanted to ask them all what the deal is with this industry we’re a part of. I didn’t. Couldn’t. I know people who’ve been tortured. Someone I know was tortured because of something I wrote about him — a cold little bibelot I’ll take with me to my grave. I described my Blacklist experience to some gamer friends, a couple of whom thought I was overreacting. Overreacting to a blithe, shrugging presentation of the very definition of human evil, all in the name of “entertainment.” I spent a couple days feeling ashamed of being a gamer, of playing or liking military games, of being interested in any of this disgusting bullshit at all.
Read more HERE.
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This is IMPORTANT stuff people, so do read it!
Lamar Smith resurrects SOPA as Intellectual Property Attaché Act
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), architect of SOPA and all-around Internet regulator par excellence, has resurrected his failed bill as the Intellectual Property Attaché Act. The House Judiciary Committee chief and fellow members quietly unveiled their new SOPA zombie bill on July 9.
The bill opens in typical innocuous fashion:
To promote a level playing field for American innovators abroad and American job creation by improving the intellectual property attache´ program, and coordinating and aligning intellectual property policy with compelling economic interests of the United States and freedom.
The act would expand the placement of intellectual property attachés (political operatives, basically) in US embassies around the globe, most likely to strategically influence foreign legislation governing intellectual property. The idea here being that the attaches might convince governments to adopt SOPA-like legislation, which will then make it easier to do so here in the US.
Sec. 2. (g) also empowers the Intellectual Property Attache Program to get involved in countries that are “not identified under section 182(a)(1) of the Trade Act of 1974.” And it empowers attaché to act essentially as agents of corporate copyright interests, not in the general interest of the American people.
IPAA is also notable for defining any “corporation, partnership, other business entity, or other organization” as a “United States Person.”
According to Politico, IPAA was slated for full mark-up yesterday. Stay tuned for more developments in Lamar Smith’s latest round of Internet regulation develops. It should be noted that IP attaché already exist—except now the attaché would be report to the Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) instead of the Department of Commerce.
Go HERE.
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This is for all of you who believe in the right to bear arms! Read it all!!!!
UN gun control treaty will reveal gun laws Obama really supports
Sometime later this week, the UN will finally unveil its Arms Trade Treaty. The exact date the treaty will be released is a secret.
Russia, China, France — with its new Socialist government — Britain and the Obama administration are writing the treaty behind closed doors. Yet even if the final treaty is being kept under wraps, we still have a pretty good idea of some of the requirements that will be in it.
The group writing the treaty is not promising. Russia and Britain ban handguns and many other types of weapons. The possession of guns for self-defense is completely prohibited in China. The Obama administration is undoubtedly the most hostile administration to gun ownership in US history, with Obama having personally supported bans of handguns and semi-automatic weapons before becoming president. And remember the recent scandal where the Obama administration was caught allowing guns go to Mexican drug gangs, hoping it would help push for gun control laws.
The treaty seems unlikely to ever receive the two-thirds majority necessary to be ratified by the US Senate, but that doesn’t mean it still won’t have consequences for Americans. In other countries with parliamentary systems, even if the relatively conservative parties oppose approval, ratification is just a matter of time until a left-wing government takes power. Reduced private gun ownership around the world will surely lead to more pressure for gun control in our own country.
The treaty officially aims to prevent rebels and terrorist groups from getting hold of guns. The treaty claims that at least 250,000 people die each year from armed conflicts and that the vast majority of deaths arise from so-called “small arms” — machine guns, rifles, and handguns.
Read MORE.
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the Looking Spoon
