Playboy and the Death of an Era

Looks like the only reason to read Playboy after next year will be the articles. But then again why buy a magazine to ogle beautiful nude women when you got an internet connection?

Playboy to Drop Nudity as Internet Fills Demand

Last month, Cory Jones, a top editor at Playboy, went to see its founder Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion.

In a wood-paneled dining room, with Picasso and de Kooning prints on the walls, Mr. Jones nervously presented a radical suggestion: the magazine, a leader of the revolution that helped take sex in America from furtive to ubiquitous, should stop publishing images of naked women.

Mr. Hefner, now 89, but still listed as editor in chief, agreed. As part of a redesign that will be unveiled next March, the print edition of Playboy will still feature women in provocative poses. But they will no longer be fully nude.~snip~

The print media has found itself having to cede to the internet and the way it has changed peoples consumption of news and entertainment.
Satellite and cable will eventually do so also, kicking and screaming all the way.

New FCC Rules and New Taxes

You know that government has been chomping at the bit to get their greedy hands into the internet because of its enormous potential for taxes,taxes and more taxes.

FCC's net neutrality rules open door to new fee on Internet service

Recently adopted net neutrality regulations soon could make your monthly Internet bill more complicated — and potentially more expensive. 

Every month, consumers pay a small fee on their phone bills for a federal program that uses the money — a total of $8.8 billion raised nationwide last year — to provide affordable access to telecommunications services in rural areas, underserved inner cities and schools. 

Now the fee could start appearing on broadband bills too, in a major expansion of the nearly two-decade-old Universal Service Fund program.
It's not clear yet, however, if most consumers would end up paying more in total USF fees than they do now. 

In approving the tough rules for online traffic in February, the Federal Communications Commission put broadband in the same regulatory category as phone service, opening the door for the charges. ~snip~

To the government,especially democrats, the only reason for anything to exist is to tax it to fill the government coffers.
The internet will be no different as other forms of communication or entertainment go the way of the IBM Selectric typewriter.

Now that the FCC has seized jurisdiction of the internet the door will be opened to levy taxes on it at will driving up the cost and reducing the reliability.

Because Healthcare.gov Worked out so well

I guess it seems that Obama and the democrats continue to believe we're so stupid that we'll trust the same government that gave us Healthcare.gov (at 2 billion dollars) to regulate the internet.

Obama calls for more regulation of Internet providers, industry fires back

President Obama threw down the gauntlet Monday with cable companies and Internet providers by declaring they shouldn’t be allowed to cut deals with online services like YouTube to move their content faster.
It was his most definitive statement to date on so-called “net neutrality,” and escalates a battle that has been simmering for years between industry groups and Internet activists who warn against the creation of Internet “fast lanes.” The president’s statement swiftly drew an aggressive response from trade groups, which are fighting against additional regulation, as well as congressional Republicans.
"We are stunned the president would abandon the longstanding, bipartisan policy of lightly regulating the Internet and calling for extreme" regulation, said Michael Powell, president and CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the primary lobbying arm of the cable industry.~snip~

I'm all for a free and independent internet but I also know that when the excessive and heavy hand of the government gets involved consumer exploitation and partisan favoritism isn't far behind.
This is nothing more than another attempt by democrats and liberals to extort more money in the form of fees from the public.
Government has been a piss poor steward of public money since forever.
Giving them another revenue stream would be irresponsible.

Surviving the Next Four Years

One of the things we have that wasn't around during previous financial and economic hardship is the Internet.
There is a lot of information out there on how to save money, garden, and various other ways to cope with a deprivation of income. It would probably be a good idea to get familiar with these things while you still have Internet access.

A while ago I ran across this lovely woman's videos  on depression era cooking, while she shows different ways to stretch an anemic food budget , she also shares stories of her childhood during the depression.
Nanny Bloomberg obviously wouldn't approve, her recopies are easy and use common, inexpensive ingredients.

Here's a sample of Great Depression Cooking with Clara.



I'll look for other hints and tips to help people get through the next four years of fiscal hardships.

Finally ......I'm Home

Well the last month and a half have been really tumultuous what with my being sick and then moving to a new place. But finally, I got my Internet hooked up and a new home coming to order so I can now pay attention to what's left of the campaign season.

Unfortunately I missed the Romney/Obama debate but I'll look for it on YouTube and watch later, however all I need to know about Obama's poor performance I could find here.

One of the interesting things I observed, while without cable or Internet, was the number of Spiriva and Lifestyle Lift commercials there is on the ABC nightly news.

Wonder if they're trying to pass Diane Sawyer a message.......not exactly playing to the youngest demographic out there are they?
I did catch the Biden/Ryan debate tonight though, not that it really matters much except for the potential Biden comic relief.
Anyway the reason I don't put much stock into VP debates is because we don't elect them and hand the keys to the car to the vice president.
My take on tonights debate is that the liberal media are trying to latch onto anything to mitigate the no show by Obama........If you go by what the alphabet channels are saying then Biden gave another sermon from the mount. But what's really funny is that there are people who are actually cheering for Biden.
You can't tell me that that ain't sad.

Ray Kroc's Curse on America

There are times I believe I should stay off facebook because some of the stuff posted there is beyond vapid.
Every once in a while you'll read about someone condemning McDonald's over the obesity epidemic in America.
As always it starts out with the typical class warfare evil corporation crap bemoaning the profits Mickey D's makes while trying to kill it's customer base from heart disease, diabetes, colon cancer and just plain clogging arteries.

I'm old enough to remember when the McDonald's menu was:

• Hamburger
• Cheeseburger
• Fries
• Vanilla or Chocolate Shake
• Coke

In all that time, through the 60's to now I have never seen anyone force anyone else to eat at McDonald's at gun point......not once.
When I was a kid growing up some of the things we didn't have was X-Boxes, Nintendo, hundreds of channels on cable TV or the Internet.
We had parents who would shoo us out of the house and told us to find something to do.
So we did, we played baseball and football, hide and seek, tag, shoot em up, and wrestling.
We explored the neighborhood, sometimes got in fights and then made up an hour later. When we got older we mowed lawns for money, hired ourselves out to widows and older ladies to do chores or gather empty soda bottles for the refund.
Seems we always had a little money and frankly I don't remember being bored very long.

I know, it sounds positively medieval, but I don't remember very many obese kids either.
That's why I roll my eyes every time I read about someone blaming Mickey D's because their kids are fat.
Maybe they just need to shoo them out of the house and find something to do.