Search for real estate owners before renting

http://a836-acris.nyc.gov/Scripts/CoverPage.dll/index

The above link enables you to search for city records regarding owned real estate (i.e. who owns the building or apartment you're considering renting)

Ironically, it was provided to me by a scammer - the website proved his claim of ownership to be frudulent.

How many people have incomes over $250,000?

...less than five percent of the population: http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032006/hhinc/new05_000.htm

So, if Obama is proposing to raise taxes only on those making over $250,000, over 95% of people wouldn't see an increase to their tax rate.

Impeach the President?

Say it ain't so: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/11/kucinich.impeach/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

I was led to that link by Mighty Cthulu, from whom I will now be getting my political news.

Star Wars - if they should bar wars, let this one stay

Back in the early 1980s, the Reagan administration proposed the development of a land- and space-based anti-ballistic missile system for the purposes of destroying ballistic missiles bound for the United States. In popular culture, this system (properly known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)) became known as Star Wars, after the movie series of the same name. For a variety of reasons, perhaps most notably the ending of the Cold War, SDI never came to be, but its basic premise was never forgotten.

Over the past year or so, the news has occasionally reported on the U.S.'s intention to place a missile defense site in Poland. Russia, in particular, has been against this development. One way around this would be to incorporate Russia in the project - the project is presently about defending against single missiles launched by a rogue state, which Russia is not. Indeed, Russia proposed this solution, to a degree, but was turned down.

Today, a U.S. ship fired a rocket that destroyed an orbiting satellite. Russia, and particularly China have protested the shooting-down of the satellite. If the U.S. can shoot down one of its own satellites, certainly it can shoot down one of Russia's or China's, and China, of course, shot down one of its own satellites last year.

Stay tuned. This may be the start of the next cold war.

Building a democracy takes time

I'm a little unclear on why people are expecting Iraq to have a stable democracy by now, or in the next six months, or in the next six years. The US, which fought for and initially established its own democracy over 200 years ago, continues to struggle with what it means to be a democracy (our president was for a Constitutional amendment to deny civil rights to a subgroup of American citizens). For us to expect a country which had democracy forced upon them,* which is composed of three rival groups of people, and which is situated in one of the least stable regions of the planet to be a fully functional democracy in less than a decade is absurd.

* Given that democracy is government whose power derives from the people, can it realy be forced? Doesn't it need to develop within the people?

FBI wiretap disconncted due to unpaid phone bill

The Bush, Jr administration has long argued that surveillance of potential terrorists (such as yours truly, no doubt) is so important that the government should not need to seek a court order before tapping suspect phone lines. Given the level of importance here, I was more than a little amused and bemused to learn that the success of these highly important wiretaps is threatened not only by the ACLU and the Supreme Court, but by the poor accounting practices. It appears that a wiretap includes the establishment of a new phone line, presumably running from the tapped line to J. Edgar Hoover's desk, and somehow the FBI had overlooked paying the bill for some of those lines for long enough that they were disconnected for nonpayment.

I suppose that I'm relieved, both because the government isn't getting a free ride and because someone has stood up to Bush, Jr and won. Perhaps Verizon can get us out of Iraq, too.

For those who are at work and can't listen to the NPR segment, here's the story from a few other agencies: ABC, Reuters, MSNBC, BBC,