“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter,” he told the students. “And with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it’s putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy.”

Everyone was so focused on the jab at the technology industry that they missed the critical point afterwards, especially at the very end.  How is any of this technology putting any pressure on the country and democracy?  How could it?

By making available to people a new avenue of information, a new method of bypassing the media gateway that had existed for generations, literally allowing the individual to consume and work through a torrent of information that had previously been a trickle, the Internet and the services it has allowed to grow and flourish have upended multiple established systems and procedures, and opened the eyes of the American people for the first time in several generations to the disgusting tactics the government has been using against them.  The lines of communication are now permanently wide open and Obama doesn’t like that one bit.

Why?  He hates it because it has torn away the only protection he and his cronies and like-minded allies on the Left had – ignorance.  As cliched as it sounds, knowledge is power and Obama knows that.  He’s very well aware of the threat posed by those who use the Internet in its various incarnations to communicate with one another (such as Tea Party groups, sites like RedState, chat and message boards, and so on), and so he’s determined to demean the use of that technology as a distraction while he rewrites the FCC regulations to allow a chokehold to be placed on sites that disagree with him.

To sum it all up, he’s scared.

PS- on the iPad/iPhone/XBox mentions, I’m glad he finally admitted he’s clueless with technology, since he was elected as our Technology President, what with his Blackberry addiction and iPod full of music…

(Personally I hope Christie gets them started on the road to privatization sooner rather than later, but that’s just me)

And what exactly is going on, according to this press release, on March 20 at 2 PM in the NJ Transit Concourse of New York City Pennsylvania Station?

Big party!  Big celebration!  It’s the one year anniversary of the launch of the only express train from New York City to Atlantic City, ACES.  From the release:

The celebration will feature music, giveaways and a cake from Charm City Cakes (featured company of the Food Network’s ACE of Cakes) as a way to say thank you to ACES’ riders.

Now I’m pretty sure this had to be planned well in advance – if you’ve ever watched Ace of Cakes, you know they’re usually very busy and spend a great deal of time on multiple projects with ridiculous amounts of planning.  I’m personally a fan of theirs, having been won over by last season’s finale involving the 100th Episode cake they did for ABC’s hit series, “Lost”.  Their cakes are masterpieces of design and delicacy, and I’ve got to say, I’m fairly certain they don’t usually include a price tag.  In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to find an episode where they mention prices.  Any casual viewer of the show can tell, though, it’s got to be a dang high price tag with the sorts of things they’re willing to do.  These are pieces of art, art that is obviously too rich for most people.

My question is, then: who paid for this?  Who thought that doing something like this would be a good idea in a recession and when the threat of service cuts and fare increases is looming closer every day?  Only NJ Transit could have such hubris as to assume the taxpayer would eat the cost of this.

Granted, the ACES train is not strictly funded by NJ Transit – the funding comes from three major casinos in Atlantic City and NJ Transit, along with the use of Amtrak’s reservation system (NJ Transit does not have a reservation system, nor did they think it prudent to build one for such cases – probably the only good idea they’ve had in the past several years).  The fact is, though, people will look at this and say, NJ Transit is using our money for THIS?  Throwing a party, buying showpiece cakes?  Really?

I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding here – my rage isn’t towards Charm City Cakes at all, I don’t begrudge them making money off of what they do.  They’re very good at it and deserve the ability to charge whatever they want for the beautiful work they do.  I know I certainly couldn’t ever do what they do, and I happily and strongly encourage the free market to continue providing them with the ability to make as much money as they can doing the wonderful things they do week in and week out.

I’m exceedingly upset with the appearance of hubris or the lack of foresight on the part of NJ Transit in allowing this to continue with the controversy over fares and a tendency to spend without limits that has characterized the organization for years and has placed them squarely in the situation they are in right now.

Hope it tastes good, guys.

Somehow, it’s perfectly fine to refer to those of us who are appalled at The Light-Bringer’s “apre moi, le deluge” use of taxpayer funds on whatever his pretty little head can conceive, in a manner any decent person, regardless of politics, would condemn without question.

For some background, ABC tonight begins a miniseries called V, a remake of the NBC miniseries from the 1980s.  The plot centers around human-looking aliens, referred to as Vs for Visitors, whose ships suddenly appear in the skies of most world cities and proclaim that they will solve all of our problems and provide us with their advanced technology and ask nothing in return.  In the original, it becomes very clear that these aliens are quite warlike and decidedly non-human, feasting on little bunnies and desiring to conquer the Earth.

The update supposedly leaves much of the original plot structure in place, with the added, and I must say welcome, spin of the Vs as media darlings and proponents of universal health care, solvers of all problems and resolvers of international conflict.

Sounding familiar?  It gets better.

There are humans who don’t trust them, who question their origins and their purposes, and who actively resist them.  They are considered terrorists.  The Catholic Church is seen as embracing them, with one priest resisting the call from Rome to welcome them as God’s creatures – and, as quoted in the Herald article, rebukes them, saying “Rattlesnakes are God’s creatures, too.”

They bring hope and change.  They are masters of the MSM (from a frequently-running trailer for the show: a reporter asks, “So, where shall we begin?” and the V leader, Anna, replies, “Just don’t ask anything which would paint us in a bad light.”  to which the reporter (Scott Wolf) replies “Excuse me?”).  Their true purposes are hidden, their origins cloaked in secrecy.

This sounds too good to be true – ABC embracing conservative fiction?  I’m sold.

Trailer (YouTube)

Chris Christie and his running mate, Kim Guadagno, stopped in Newark’s tony Forest Hill neighborhood last night, a neighborhood historically bluer than my jeans.

The crowd was a healthy mix of lifelong Democrats, including a fair amount of Obama supporters and voters, and party-line Republicans, but you wouldn’t know it from the way everyone meshed together and happily celebrated before, during, and after his speech.

Watch for yourself – it’s absolutely worth the twenty minutes.

[Edited: fixed HTML for video]