Lets talk about the internet!

   Right now, there are millions of songs you can listen to for free, shows that aired in the 1990s available to watch now, and books, articles, and blogs that are clicks away anytime of the day. This endless entertainment talk about products, shows other's ideas, other's work, and after this leads you to other links that lead to more and more of this never ending waste of time. This is people's lives, their source of income, their way to relieve stress, to vent about opinions on blogs that waste the reader's time but are fun to write (cough. cough.), to play stupid games and escape for a couple hours.
   So what right does Congress have to take away this stupidity? We love this. This is a huge part of the 21st century, a huge part of the revolution of technology that has made this world crazy. I myself am typing this on my brand new MacBook Air, the thinnest laptop ever made, which I got on Monday and had to brag about a little bit. Its amazing!! Its so thin!! Its so small!! Its sexy (it might sound weird, but it is)!! I am writing this while watching 30 Rock, which is an amazing show, btw, and I have several tabs open: Pandora Online Radio, Wikipedia, Webster dictionary, Huffington Post, and of course, Blogger. These are all amazing sites that I visit very often, and love. So why is there a bill threatening all of these sites?
  There is a simple answer to this: copyright infringement. Jackasses like myself and my friends who download our music illegally, who watch old shows all the time on our computers, and who... Well, I don't know anyone who is lame enough to blog. We repost other's words, and share photos that have been reshared so many times that no one knows where they originally started, post videos of people we don't know doing stupid things to social networking sites, showing it to "friends" we have never met and will probably never meet. And according to the leaders of this country, this should be illegal. Why? Why are they messing with something that is such a small issue compared to the economic crisis, the wars we are involved in, the rate of homelessness, or the fact that our education system is an embarrassment?
   You can read the facts on Wikipedia, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act), but the short version is this: every time we download a song for free, we cheat a musician out of 99 cents (which is a huge problem, seeing how musicians such as Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, the top downloaded  artists,  are broke on the streets). Every time we post a video of a small child singing the song of one the those poor, starving Top 40 artists, we are infringing on creative rights. And every time we start a tiny start up business online selling a homemade product, we are infringing on a huge corporations right to sell their own product that they mass produce overseas.
   Wait, what? Corporations? How do corporations figure into a bill that is supposed to be about creative rights and stopping online pirating? Well... Surprise!!! This bill was paid for by corporations, who paid lobbyists to fight for this to get to Congress. Why are corporations that worried about the rights of musicians, artists, actors and YouTube idiots? Well, second surprise of the night: this bill would allow corporations to shut down websites and domain names that might compete with them, before proving that this site had broken any law. You know what happens when a high traffic website closes? Even for a couple days? The traffic moves somewhere else. A couple days offline could destroy a site, and corporations know this. They also sell online. They know how to keep a customer, and how to take more from other people struggling to get by.
   Welcome to America, ladies and gentlemen!! Where corporations decide what bills Congress passes, and redefines what "free speech" means so that nothing will affect their business. I am upset to learn that L'Oreal supports this bill, when I know for a fact that I have several tubes of their lipstick, which I like and planned to buy more of before finding out they are also willing to rewrite the first amendment to stop sales of online makeup, which might put a dent in their sales. I'm not huge for boycotting businesses (except Dominos, the CEO of that place is evil, and I don't care how good their pizza is, I'm keeping my money out of that right-wing asshole's pocket), but I don't like supporting a company that would support this bill. Its the annoying liberal part of me.
   -teenageliberal

We wish he was the best. Actually, hes all we got.

  Herman Cain harassed women he worked with, Newt Gingrich has a sex scandal famous in the political world, Ron Paul is disliked by much of the country, Michelle Bachmann did us all a favor and dropped out, Rick Perry went even more crazy and lost the ability to speak in public without shooting himself in the foot, and Santorum...well, just Google him. That will tell you everything you need to know about him. The debates are mocked by everyone (the best jokes are from SNL, of course), and the unpredictable polls have been noticed by everyone. First its Romney, then its Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, even Hunter and Paul got a couple seconds in the limelight. Yet each of them has something very wrong, a scandal, or belief that gets them in trouble, makes them unpopular. All of them. Except Mitt Romney, the man so boring that he has managed to avoid bad press. Yes, there is new media outrage over some of his business decisions in the past ten years, namely the employees that he has fired, but think about it. It isn't bad enough to knock him off the top of the polls. He didn't sexually harass anyone. He didn't divorce his wife on her death bed so he could marry his mistress. He didn't say he would get rid of the EPA. To put it simply, he hasn't made that one big mistake, the one that everyone one else who had a little bit of a shot has. He has not changed his stance hugely, and his followers have not made headlines for violent actions in his name.
  This does not mean that he is the favorite candidate, the one that everyone wanted. Not even close. The truth is, Mitt Romney is just the only option in their eyes. They can't elect a man with a huge sex scandal behind him, not after the way they attacked Clinton (not that they-and by "they" I mean the die hard right wingers-worry that much about being hypocritical. Gingrich was one of the politicians who led the attack against Clinton in the '90s, while he was having an affair himself. See what I mean?). They can't elect another man from Texas who can't speak in public and would rather be on a farm. So they turn to Mitt, because, lets face it, to them, a Mormon is better than the black man who has been in charge for the past four years (more on that later. Rant about racist older political figures coming up!) Mitt is the last option, unless Sarah Palin suddenly decides at the eleven hour that she does want to be president, which she might. She doesn't seem to think that rules apply to her. Especially rules about grammer and fact checking. Those I don't think she even knows exists.
  I don't know what will happen if the boring rich man gets elected. I know what would happen if Rick Perry gets elected: I move out of the country and pretend to be Canadian for four years. Mitt is a different story, though. Hes stupid, rich and conservative, but he isn't nearly as crazy as some of those morons who think they have a chance. The way Obama has been bending over for the Republicans, things may actually stay the same if one of those same Republicans gets elected. Then again, things right now suck. In fact, the past 12 years of politics have really truly sucked. Bush, the wars, the market crashing, Obama wimping out, this has been an awful time for politics. Its been 12 years since Bush was elected, yet we are still stuck in this hellish period of politics. Two men are running for president, and both sides are voting for them purely because they are the best out of the worst. Hows that for democracy and the American dream?
   -a little depressed, teenageliberal