A Complete Aside To Discuss How Much America Currently Sucks

For those of you who are American, I'm sure you know we appear on the precipice of some dark days.  If you've not attempted to access Wikipedia today, you might take a moment to do so- it's not working.  Instead, there is a message up regarding Wikipedia's protest of the legislation before Congress known as SOPA and PIPA.  

This about sums up my feelings on everything.

"The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as House Bill 3261 or H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by House Judiciary Committee Chair Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.  Presented to the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act.


The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement." (Wiki)


This is a big bag of bullshit, since it'd mean the death of great sites like mediafire, megaupload, and every music blog on Earth.  Additionally, large corporations could sue the bejeesus out of any small site they wanted to silence them for their views if there was something that could be construed as copyright infringement on that site... including me.


"The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 or PIPA), also known as Senate Bill 968 or S. 968, is a proposed law with the stated goal of giving the US government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to "rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods", especially those registered outside the U.S. The bill was introduced on May 12, 2011, by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and 11 bipartisan co-sponsors. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that implementation of the bill would cost the federal government $47 million through 2016, to cover enforcement costs and the hiring and training of 22 new special agents and 26 support staff." (Wiki) 


This means we get to pay for policing the internet in other nations, which is even more awesome, since the US is broke as fuck.  Thus, politicians want to blow more of your money on overseas adventures that net the taxpayer nothing but failed downloads and more cops.  


If you're lazy as fuck, feel free to copy my email, which I've got below.  You can find out to whom you should send it by going to Wikipedia and entering your zip code.  For those fuzzy foreigners among you, I guess you can sit around with your thumbs up your asses like you do in any global conflict.  Russians, continue torturing cats or whatever it is you do in your free time.


My email (which I sent to all of my local Congressmen):
I am typically loathe to address my elected representatives due to the fact that I am quite sure that they do not represent me.  In spite of this fact, sir, I am reaching out to you to voice my displeasure with the looming legislation regarding the extension of the United States' burgeoning police state to the internet.  I refer, of course, to the bills before Congress known colloquially as SOPA and PIPA.  While I am sure you and your colleagues stand to gain a great deal monetarily from your support of such legislation, I would appeal to whatever humanity you have left and ask that you refrain from making the lives of your constituents any more awful than you have already done with the last ten years of violent mismanagement of our nation's economy.  


In an America where virtually all hope for a better future is lost, I would ask that you leave us our present.  Congress and the White House have certainly done enough to destroy what's left of our former beacon of freedom, and the limitation of the free flow of information would certainly seal freedom's coffin.


Additionally, I will appeal to your inhuman side ans state, for a fact, that I do not know of a single person who would allow a politician into their home at this point- your profession is viewed with the same distaste people generally reserve for grave robbers and child pornographers. Perhaps if you would find it in your blackened heart to refrain from making our already bleak lives more unpleasant, you could see your approval ratings rise from "I would vigorously defend my property with deadly force against this man's incursion if he happened to chase a stray baseball into my yard" to "I would not spit on that person on the street if given the opportunity".  That, of course, was not a threat, but rather a tongue-in-cheek reference to Congress's historically (and comically) low approval ratings.


A good day to you,


Jameson Lewis


For those of you who don't give a shit about any of this, you're fucking retarded.  In any event, I should have a new Baddest Motherfucker up tomorrow about Stan Efferding, and will give you an update from RAW Unity over the weekend (including a heads up about how Johnny Jackson does).  Until then, tits.