How numbers have shaped the past week or so in the news.

Interesting to see what could have been. Maybe this would help drive home the cost of not letting the Bush Tax cuts expire.

Remember Bristol Palin? She makes more money than you preaching worthless information about abstinence (here’s a hint, studies say it’s a horrible form of birth control in the real world).

She’s like every other televangelist out there. Spewing bullshit and bilking money.

This is the number of bills aimed at restricting women’s health options introduced in the first quarter of 2011 across 49 states. 916 -let that sink in. There is a war on women being waged by the GOP. This is the party that campaigned on fiscal responsibility and job creation. What they’ve spent their time doing instead is trying their best to legislate ultimate control of every vagina in America.

The amount of money Harold Camping spent advertising his prediction that May 21st would be the Rapture. Another 100,000,000 reasons to realize that Christianity takes otherwise smart people and dulls their brain into believe crap like this could ever happen. But one needs to also  understand, this just wasn’t one looney sect of Christians preaching the end of the world:

According to a 2010 Pew Research Center survey, “41 percent say Jesus Christ will return within the next 40 years.” In other words, almost half of the American public is confident that Jesus will appear on Earth (or at least in the clouds above Earth) sometime before 2050.

Almost half of America laughed off the Rapture, not because it was an insane idea, but because they thought it was the wrong date.

I have little doubt that something this stupid would happen to me.

Though it has been quiet, lobbyists are still forcing ACTA on countries like an international date rape fest. If you’ve forgotten about ACTA I blogged about it previously here.

This is just one battle on many fronts put up by the RIAA and MPAA. They’re hitting at the international and national levels. Their latest attack on the US comes on the form of a new bill called PROTECT IP. This is a rebirth of last year’s COICA bill that died.

The upshot here is lobbyists continue to saturate the legal channels with heavy handed bills that, as usual, end up hurting thousands of innocent people in order to target a few individuals that pirate.

And given the latest studies why do people pirate? Because the music and movie industry continues to operate under old business models that restrict ways to access their content that people would otherwise pay for if it was reasonably available!

The best example being Netflix, which is closing in on being the major bandwidth user across the US, allowing easy access to full movies without worries of malware. There has been a noticeable decrease in P2P traffic, which is usually associated with piracy levels, as Netflix gains users.

Not surprisingly, the cable and movie companies continue to fight against Netflix in order to preserve (you guessed it) their old business models.

To date, the RIAA and MPAA have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to preserve these old business models, they bring about wrongful law suits, and they lobby our government to enact draconian bills to shut down swathes of internet address, and blacklist users.

In short, they’re assholes of the top caliber.

Definitely the most powerful thing I’ve read in a long time.

It makes one understand why people created fairy tales, but in the end it’s just that.

Don’t forsake this life for a fairy tale. Live now. Enjoy those around you. Revel in the discovery of new things.

This is all we got, and all we get.

This just goes beyond the pale.

Nothing says, “Have at it boys, fuck personal responsibility, fuck it if she says, “no” – you gotta play ball and you will get cheered. You are a star! It’s your god damn right as a red-blooded male American!

Texas high school cheerleader who was kicked off the squad for refusing to chant the name of a basketball player – the same athlete she said had raped her four months earlier – lost a U.S. Supreme Court appeal Monday.

A federal appeals court ruled in September that the cheerleader was speaking for the school, not herself, and had no right to remain silent when called on to cheer the athlete by name.

The Supreme Court denied review of the case Monday without comment.

Read the rest of this disgusting verdict here.

What does this teach? If you assault women you still get to play on sports teams.

If you refuse to cheer on your attacker, you get kicked off the cheer leading squad.

This perfectly frames the continuing double standard women have to put up with. She’ll be the slut who asked for it and then was a bitch about it.

He’ll be just fine.

Fucking bullshit.