Satan Claus

The voice of a generation:

"I was all for ObamaCare until I found out I was paying for it."

Another Obama Voter:

"Of course, I want people to have health care. I just didn't realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally."

I still think we are on the road to hell with a cinderblock mashing down the gas pedal, but if there is a chance at turning the car around, Obama and the Democrats have provided it with their unilateral, hyper-partisan, non-consensus, multibillion-dollar barbed-wire suppository up the collective wazoo known as Obamacare.

Paging Dr. Santayana!

Robert Tracinski lists 10 Lessons Learned from Obamacare, and what strikes me is that these are timeless lessons. Nothing new. Many are axiomatic, like “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

Others lessons have been gleaned from the manifold disasters of socialism and various collectivist systems that ignored human nature, or worse, thought they could change it. Thanks to our progressive public school system, successive generations have not learned from such disasters, so people eagerly vote for social engineers with crackpot ideas.

A corollary lesson from Obamacare:

the more you are productive and self-supporting, the more likely you are to end up paying the freight for everyone else. 

Bureaucrats are not accountable to We The People

[Sebilius says] "I'm responsible" for its results--so long as she doesn't have to resign or suffer any actual personal consequences. This is a bureaucrat's conception of "accountability."

On Republican “Sabotage:”

You can use this story to blame the Republicans for "sabotaging" ObamaCare, if you like, but that misses the point. If the government cannot successfully build something when there is political opposition, then the government of a free society cannot build anything ever, because there is always political opposition.

The Law of Intended Consequences

Tracinksi reminds us of Hairy Reed’s famous quote:

"'What we've done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we're far from having something that's going to work forever,' Reid said.

"When then asked by panelist Steve Sebelius whether he meant ultimately the country would have to have a health care system that abandoned insurance as the means of accessing it, Reid said: 'Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.'"

The Emperor has no Clothes

It's going to take king-sized bong-fulls of medical marijuana and barrels of denial for the true believers to continue ignoring their lying eyes and ears. I don’t delight in the plight of the progressive naïfs. I once believed in Santa Claus, and I remember my tears of a lost childhood when I found out the truth.

On the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month

As there seemed to have been some confusion here earlier over Veterans Day vs. Memorial Day, here is the History Channel's take on it:

The End of Kindness

I am a libertarian, but I am not an anarchist.  I believe in human freedom, but I also support our constitutional government.  I recognize the protection government provides society, even as I criticize it for being overweening.  Life is full of contradictions. 

In the past, I have railed against government control of the internet, and I still predict that one day, no one will be able to do anything anonymously on it.  Even now, someone who knows what he is doing can find out who you really are, and track you down to your home. 

I predict the day will come when we all must biometrically establish our identity at the on-ramp to the Digital Superhighway.  Would this be a good thing?  Before answering, please read this article from The Verge:  The End of Kindness.

The article tells stories of three classes of man on woman internet abuse:

* Death and Rape Threats.  A male hacker repeatedly threatened a female software expert, revealed her address and social security number, and planted false prostitution stories of her as well as photoshopped pictures.  The incident drove the famous Java programmer and tech book writer off of the internet and into hiding, as thousands of misogynists followed the creep's attacks with those of their own.  

*  Attack by Criminal Proxy.  Angry ex-boyfriends and husbands who posted Craig's List ads in the name of their ex's asking for men to rape them, leading in many instances to home break-ins and rapes.

* Revenge Porn. Men who post nude photos of their ex-wives and girlfriends.

Big government types see this and recommend more big government.  The answer to this is for on-line communities to police themselves, but the evidence is overwhelming that this has not happened, and anyway, we live in a world where nothing is private anymore. 

This is the point where I should summarize and wrap it all up in an erudite and pithy conclusion, but I am unable.  I could state the obvious about personal responsibility and not giving others sensitive information or naked pictures of yourself.  I could also point our that it is not technology's fault when bad people use it to abuse others.  How about some threadbare platitudes about our sick society and how bad people are everywhere?

I've been sitting on this post for weeks.  I started it in a fever of righteous indignation at the predations these women suffered, but I have no conclusion.  Punish the guilty, shield the innocent, be smart and protect yourself, bla bla bla...

The End of Kindness

Edie Brickell

If you're like me, you remember Edie Brickell from the 1988 album: Edie Brickell & New Bohemians; Shooting Rubber Bands at the Stars and the hit single What I Am.

I was surprised surfing the Billboard Charts to find her and Steve Martin at #2 on the Bluegrass Charts with the Album Love Has Come For You. That's Steve Martin on the Banjo.

Here is an interview with Steve Martin and Edie Brickell

House For All Sinners and Saints

The House For All Sinners & Saints

Is an Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denver Colorado, the "Pastrix" (a title she has adopted from those who don't think women should be pastors) is Nadia Bolz-Weber and her memoir Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint is a New York Times bestseller.  With the liturgical calendar tattooed on one arm and Mary Magdalene from the St Alban's Psalter on the other, along with a mouth like a truck driver she is not your stereotypical  pastor.

 

AMAZON

Presentation

Setting aside politics and theology if you can, for this isn't a post about either, what do you think of her presentation? Her Outreach? For wherever she seems to go she generates controversy and interest in religion. Her congregation spans all aspects of society from ex-felons to state legislators, and she has injected reality into what in many cases for many denominations, can be a stodgy institution.

While we may disagree on politics and theology, I like her and I like what she's doing to the point of, in atypical fashion, I watched the entire hour long interview with her on On Being. 

For the curious, some of her sermons can be found here:

Nadia Bolz-Weber

Crack Open A Cold One

The Walking Dead

Twilight, True Blood, and the Walking Dead

Not to mention everything else from Frankenstein and Dracula to Night of the Living Dead and World War Z, and it seems the CDC.  We seem to have a rabid preoccupation with the undead.

AMC's season premiere of The Walking Dead drew 16.1 million viewers beating every other scripted show on TV and in the 18-49 demographic it beat the NFL Washington-Dallas game.

From Monster to Sex Symbol

Rolling Stone

HBO's defining series since the end of the Sopranos has been the eighth highest rated show on IMDb.  A show primarily about vampires, but with fairies and werewolves thrown in for good measure.  USA Today called it a blood-drenched Gothic Romance.

We do watch True Blood, and I have seen all the Twilight movies, but that is really more my wife's choice.  True Blood is tolerable, but I found the Twilight series rather juvenile, which I do believe is its intended audience.

Theories Abound

Anthropologists, Psychologists, Sociologists all study it and the theories range from latent necrophilia to our unending quest for immortality.

I have to admit, the wife and I also watch Walking Dead, although it is one of the few zombie shows/movies I've ever watched through, with the exception of the British comedic Shawn of the Dead.  I am not a fan of crude blood and gore horror, although Walking Dead seems to transcend that genre, despite all the blood and gore. 

For those who don't like zombies: Seven Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Quickly Fail

They're Everywhere

2012 saw 20 movie releases in the zombie genre, 11 in the vampire genre, and only 9 werewolf films... and three of those had vampires in them.

What do you think? What is our fascination with the undead?

I know, I should have posted this on Halloween, but it was the comments in my November 1st post that got me thinking about it.

Our Best and Brightest

Mickey Kaus, one of my favorite observers on the scene, had this to say about the Obamacare disaster:

The Obama administration is this close to being the object of one of the most vicious forms of condescension in the MSM arsenal: the Call for Wise Men. David Gergen almost gets there in this interview on NPR, and the night is young.

Kaus laments that there are few wise men left who have not been discredited...

Gergen ... too clichéd. Bill Clinton ... wouldn’t take the job anyway. [...] Al Gore has gotten too weird.

Finally, Kaus puts out a call to us, the great unwashed, to suggest wise men and women who should be summoned to help President Obama right his severely-listing ship.

My first thought: Is Doctor Kevorkian still around?

My favorite reader comment:

Ritchie The Riveter
The 300 million problem-solvers who should be handling it among themselves, instead of being subordinated to a small gaggle of alleged Best and Brightest.

Or to put it another way, the Call for Wise Men needs to really be the Call to give this problem back to the REALLY Wise Men and Women who have to live with the results ... and just make sure the way is clear for them to solve this problem, instead of the Best and Brightest trying to jam their socio-economic morality down our throats.

Who or what would you suggest?

All Vampires are not Young and Sexy

Vampires Need Fresh Blood

Why do America’s plutocrats and political overlords want Amnesty and a continuing stream of illegal immigrants? (All dressed up as “Immigration Reform,” of course)

Why go overseas to exploit cheap labor when its so much easier to do it right here in the good ol' U$ of A? By importing cheap labor and keeping our underclass just barely above water with government handouts, America's corporatocracy avoids the unpleasantness of bribing their way through byzantine third-word government bureaucracies in poor, corrupt foreign capitals.  Now, DC is the only byzantine, third-word, poor, corrupt government that must be bribed.  Those Ivy Leaguers sure are efficient!

Mark Krikorian, bête noir of the Open Border Stampedists, wrote an article in National Review detailing how America’s billionaires, modern-day robber barons all, and not a conservative in the bunch, are vampirically thirsting for more immigration. Vampires need fresh blood: The bloodsucking crapitalists thirst for cheap labor, and the government vote-buying Ponzi schemes disguised as ‘social programs’ need an ever increasing inflow of rubes.

Krikorian talks about a propaganda video the oligarchs funded...

there were some amusing bits: Al Cardenas, head of the American Conservative Union, said that we need immigration because our population is declining (in fact, even with zero immigration — zero — our population would continue to increase for generations, beyond which projections are meaningless). 

Also, Tony Massif, lobbyist for California agribusiness, said that if we don’t import more stoop labor from abroad, then we’ll have to import more food, meaning our enemies would “control our food supply.” (You know, because all that corn and wheat in the Midwest is being hand-harvested by Guatemalan peasants.) (National Review)

This is about importing cheap labor to drive down wages. Liberals and labor unions used to call such workers scabs, but because they are undocumented Democrat party voters, it’s all good.

Assimilation? It was a progressive master stroke to mire such antiquated notions in the bog of cultural relativism by asking pensively, “What is an American?” Anyone foolish enough to answer was branded a racist by the Ministry of PC Public Opinion, and that was the end of that foolishness.

Immigrants are not bad people.  I am not one of those who think they come here to mooch off of us. I view them as the Darwinian heroes who have the courage and determination to pick up and make a better life for themselves. But our progressive, Democrat vote-buying nanny state turns these entrepreneurial people with a killer work ethic into typical, grievance-nursing, lazy Americans with their hands out. That is the part that sickens me. We have a burgeoning native-born underclass, dysfunctional and unemployable, yet we import more.

Soros, Zuckerberg, Pelosi and their fellow batwinged oligarchs, fanged plutocrats, and hog-snouted politicians live in their own worlds and don't have to deal with the cultural fallout going on in our working class neighborhoods.

Here is my favorite comment from the National Review article:

gastorgrab
Nationalize the Billionaires!
(If you want to be socialist, put your money where your mouth is.)

Until we get off our knees and start despising the rich and powerful as the parasites they are, nothing will change.

Googligan’s Island

What’s up with those Google barges?

Maybe if we're lucky, the CIA will call in a drone strike and we can watch it on cable tv or our smart phones. Spy organizations are very jealous of one another.


Here were two of my favorite reader comments from the article I read about the Google Barges looming off our coasts like enemy warships:

MWilliams
It's "Gooligans Island" they're going to float their data base into international waters to avoid Taxes, Legal restrictions and the NSA. 

Robert
Its a huge Faraday Box. They know what is coming

My first thought was tax avoidance...

Those Silicon Valley Moguls are the new robber barons. They lavish millions in campaign donations to progressive candidates, but use their power and privilege to avoid paying progressivism’s prices. Typical liberal hypocrites. How many working class jobs have these millionaires created? Hint:  None, unless you consider peddling their useless crap from a shopping mall kiosk fulfilling work. They give us toys made in China to get us to hold still while they suck us dry.

Let’s state it simply, folks. Google is Evil, as is all of Silicon Valley. They don’t produce anything that benefits mankind, they provide scant middle class jobs, they spy on us, and they provide dictators the technology to quash dissent and tyrannize their people.

Elysium?

We’re already there. It’s the political class, the Hollywood elites and the rich and powerful on that spaceship/barge/gated community, with the rest of us stranded down below/grounded/locked out.

UPDATE: Mystery solved! Google is avoiding California’s crushing tax and regulatory burdens. Typical latte leftists. Talk the talk but won’t walk the walk.

Sexual Assaults on Campus

Emily Yoffee and Amanda Hess have two differing views on a too-common problem in the Twisted States of America:

“a young woman, sometimes only a girl, who goes to a party and ends up being raped.”

Emily Yoffe:

Let’s be totally clear: Perpetrators are the ones responsible for committing their crimes, and they should be brought to justice. But we are failing to let women know that when they render themselves defenseless, terrible things can be done to them.

Amanda Hess:

Rape is a societal problem, not a self-help issue. Parents can tell their own daughters not to get drunk, but even if those women follow instructions, it won’t keep other people’s daughters safe. It will just force campus rapists who rely on alcohol to execute their crimes to find other targets. As Yoffe notes, the research of David Lisak suggests that most rapes are committed by a small group of predators who claim a large number of victims. We can prevent the most rapes on campus by putting our efforts toward finding and punishing those perpetrators, not by warning their huge number of potential victims to skip out on parties.

I get what Amanda Hess is saying, but I see her argument as somewhat of a strawman. It’s not that universities refuse to prosecute rape. It is that often they go unreported. So on that front, I believe women should be encouraged to report it to the police asap, as well as seek medical attention where evidence can be collected. To help in this, if they are underage and were drinking, they should also be told ahead of time that any rule-breaking they were involved in incidental to the assault will be taken off the table.

Yoffee has a valid point:  All of us have a fundamental responsibility for our own safety and well-being. I have always loved to drink, but it was very seldom I got smashed when out in public, because I knew I was opening myself up to being a victim. I did let go more often in Germany, because the places I did get really wound up in were very safe and I was with my German friends. I would never do that in the third-world, which includes American cities.

So, what’s my solution to campus sexual assaults?
 
Since over 80% of them involve alcohol, I would make college much harder. College should be an intellectually-challenging experience with so much homework required that partiers will soon find themselves flunked out. If you can drink your way through it, it isn’t really that hard, which means a diploma isn’t all that valuable. As it stands now, for most disciplines, college is little more than a box checked and an expensive rite of passage.

Perhaps the bar should be low for rape, to the point where having sex with a drunk woman can get you charged. What this should ultimately do is push people who want to get laid away from drinking (I know, it’s counter-factual. I was young once).

I’ve already had this talk with my teenage son. You shouldn’t be having sex anyway, but most especially with a woman who has been drinking. It could easily become a life-changing mistake you regret for the rest of your life. That advice applies equally to both sexes.

For a more informed treatment of the issue, see Volokh - She Raped Him, Using Guilt and Arguing

Spooky in 1929

Disney's Skeleton dance was voted as #18 out of 50 by professional animators.

Disney's Haunted House was also released in 1929.  Notice how much more rodent-like Mickey Mouse is as compared to today.

Hallowmas

David Castor: Swedish Lutheran Church on All Hallows

The time period around October 31st and November 1st has been a  traditional holiday in western culture celebrated in many incarnations.  Samhain, Calan Gaeaf, Allantide, The Day of the Dead, All Hallows' Eve to name a few are all manifestations of the celebration, many predate Christianity.  All Saints' Day was celebrated in the medieval church on 13 May, closer to the similar Roman festival of Lemuria, it was moved to November 1st by decree of Louis the Pious in 835, although it was already widely celebrated in the Frankish Empire around that date. 

Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com

Costumes were worn to disguise oneself from the vengeful dead, carved turnips with a candle inside to scare them off, food left on graves as gifts to the departed.  Common to all is remembrance of the dead and the belief that the curtain separating the living from the dead thins, or draws aside. Today, while many dress up in costume and carve jack'o'lanterns from the much larger, and presumably easier to carve pumpkins, outside of Latin culture today, few remember the dead.

Jakub Schikaneder - All Souls' Day

 

Meet the Second Most Powerful Man in the World

According to Forbes, here is the First:

 

 

 

 

Kremlin.ru

Forbes Criteria

1. Whether the candidate has power over lots of people.
2. The financial resources controlled by each person
3. Breadth of power "Multiple Spheres".
4. Use of power.

Runners Up

#3 Ji Xinping

#4 Pope Francis

#5 Angela Merkel

The rest can be found here. 

Do you agree? Disagree? And if so, why?

Why Does Business Support Immigration Reform

Cheap Labor

CBO: Economic Impact of S. 744

The Senate Immigration Reform Bill will:

Increase the size of the labor pool
Increase Unemployment
Decrease Wages
Boost Capital Investment
Raise Productivity
Increase Interest Rates

"new immigrants of working age would participate in the labor force at a higher rate, on average, than other people in that age range in the United States."

Translation: new immigrants will replace or exclude native citizens in the labor pool.

" Employment would increase as the labor force expanded, because the additional population would add to demand for goods and services and, in turn, to the demand for labor. However temporary imbalances in the skills and occupations demanded and supplied in the labor market, as well as other factors, would cause the unemployment rate to be slightly higher for several years"

Translation: Give up your job in construction, hope you enjoy working at McDonalds.

" the wages of lower and higher-skilled workers would tend to be pushed downward"

"The increase in the average wage would not occur for a dozen years."

"For roughly the first decade, the increase in the size of the labor force would make capital relatively scarce"

Translation: Good for Investors, Bad for Borrowers

"an increase in average wages of 12 percent for unauthorized workers who attain legal residency."

Translation: An increase in tax revenue

"Because the bill would increase the rate of growth of the labor force, average wages would be held down in the first decade after enactment by a reduction in the ratio of capital to labor, which would make workers less productive—and therefore lower their wages"

"Although the average wage would be lower than under current law over the first dozen years, the minimum wage would keep the wages of some less skilled workers from falling, dampening businesses’ demand for those workers"

Long Term Effects

Of course, I've cherry-picked the short term effects for the above section.  Long term, greater than 20 years there will be marginal economic improvement on the order of tenths of a percent, e.g. a 0.2% increase in GDP by 2033.

A Decent Joint 25c

From The Vienna Dioscurides 512 AD

I Never Thought I'd See the Day

The title of the post is what I saw on a large store sign outside a marijuana dispensary on US Highway 24.  Today it read "Bubble Hash Oil".  They used to sell chocolates there.  I pass two on the way to work each morning, the one with the sign is called the Eagle's Nest Wellness Center, the other just inside the city limits is called Total Health Care THC.  Never said pot heads didn't have a sense of humor.  For those who don't know, THC or Tetrahydrocannabinol is the active ingredient in marijuana.

Mixed Reactions

So far, the biggest public complaints I have heard have come from adjacent businesses complaining about the pervasive odor of marijuana.  The greatest resistance so far has come not from the public but from our elected representatives.  The county that I live in has banned retail recreational marijuana despite county voter approval of Colorado Amendment 64 as well as 88% of the comments at the public hearing being in favor of allowing them.

The majority of city, town, and county governments seem to be taking a wait and see approach with moratoriums, although Denver approved recreational sales, while Colorado Springs has banned it.   While this affects the ability of retail outlets to conduct business, it does not affect the new Colorado law legalizing possession or use.  Over all, 35 communities in the state have elected to ban retail sales in what is turning out to be a patchwork quilt, for example, El Paso County has banned recreational sales while adjacent Pueblo County has approved them.  Reminds me of dry and wet counties in regards to alcohol sales.

More to Come

On this Novembers ballot voters will decide whether or not to impose a 25% combined excise/sales tax on recreational sales.  If medical sales are any indication this could be big business and big revenue for the state.  El Paso County had roughly 35M in medical sales alone while Denver approached 90M.  

Little Impact

So far, other than the news stories and the odd recreational or medical dispensary here and there, there seems to be little impact to the general public. The government promised debauchery has yet to appear:

We Won't Monitor Your Location

Jalopnik.com

Yeah, and the NSA won't monitor our phones, email, and twitter accounts either.

 

We've posted on this subject previously, but the initiative hasn't yet died out and has been subject to a recent article in the LA Times.

Jalopnik provides a list of what these devices currently record and points out that the data belongs to the owner of the car.  Of course that is data subject to court ordered warrants and insurance company policy provisions, and if you can't get insurance without consenting to provide the data... who really owns it, you or the insurance company?

The government wants this data, or a modified version of it, to tax each driver based on the miles driven.

"This is really a must for our nation"

"It is not something we might choose to do".   Said Hasan Ikhrata of the Southern Kalifornian Association of Governments.  Don't you love being lectured on what our nation must do by former Soviet Bureaucrats of the Moscow Metro?  Who according to multiple sources holds a Bachelor's from Moscow University and Bachelor's and Master's from Zoporozhye University. What's even worse is he a PhD Candidate at the University of Soviet California (USC).

OCR

SCAG.CA.GOV

So we are proud to present Hasan Ikhrata: 

 

 

 With the Western Hero Award

 

 

The True Welfare State

Is it a coincidence that Michelle Obama's Princeton classmate and one-time policy analyst for the GAO is Toni Townes-Whitley, Executive Vice President of the lead company for the Healthcare.gov website design? Daily Caller

According to a June report from the Government Accountability Office, a total of 55 contractors were retained to work on the rollout of the federal health-care marketplace. CGI Federal was the primary one, and had received $88 million out of the $394 million that had been spent at that point.  Washington Post

CGI and it's subsidiaries have a long history of government work:

Canadian Gun Registry: Failed
Hawaii Tax Dept IT: Failed
eHealth Ontario: Failed
Vermont Health Connect: Failed

Fox News 

This, is Normal

Despite many years of attempts at contract reform, the one constant in government contracting is that the government routinely gets screwed.  One can't place sole blame on the contractors though, as the government routinely backs into these things with its pants down around its firmly gripped ankles.

Many people think the movie Pentagon Wars is a fictitious comedy, take my word for it, it's not fiction and the only thing that makes it hilariously funny is the fact that most of what you see is true.  I highly recommend it, not because it is one of the great movies, but because it is highly educational.

And don't think I'm picking on the DoD, what you see is not limited to the Department of Defense but is found throughout our government.

 

One Republic

A couple of weeks ago we showcased a band from Viburnum's neck of the woods.  Here is one from ours - One Republic.

Counting Stars is from their latest album Native and  hit #15 on the Billboard Hot 100.  Went Top 10 in 9 countries and was #1 in the UK for two weeks.

Very Interesting

Consider the following statements:

The best way for the State to become less burdensome on taxpayers is to reduce dependency on it.

Reducing dependency should be a big part of the debate every time the Budget comes around. Instead, the debate is invariably dominated by what government handouts should be spared the knife or even meaningful reform.

Taxpayers never complain as loudly as the various interest groups who have become dependent on this or that welfare benefit

No one ever wants to cut anything. The instinct is always to spend more, to introduce some new benefit at the taxpayers' expense.

Politicians know that the single best way to buy votes is to fight cuts to benefits and, when they can, increase current benefits and introduce new ones.

This is exactly what helped get this country into its present mess. That and artificially inflating the property bubble. The last government, in common with other governments overseas, encouraged banks to lend and lend in order to inflate the economy, so they could raise more tax revenue, spend more and get into office again.

The pressure to grow the State is still enormous. Politicians love lashing out the money. It's easy to condemn anyone who isn't so fond of benefits as 'hard-hearted'. It's the most fantastic trick ever; at one and the same time you can spend other people's money and get to call yourself 'compassionate'.

The entire instinct in politics is to regard people who have private health coverage and private pensions and savings as 'rich'. They are there purely to be taxed and must be made to feel guilty that they have these things. How dare they?

State policy has to be aimed at reducing dependency, not increasing it. We cannot afford the State we have and therefore only those who must be dependent on it should be dependent on it.

You might be surprised

The excerpts above, and I've omitted a paragraph or two, and a word here and there so as to not give it away, came not from American news media or opinion but from the Irish Independent, Ireland's largest selling daily newspaper, not from an American columnist or commentator, but David Quinn, an Irish columnist.

The article is not talking about the American government but the Irish one, the commonality was striking.

Okay, so we're a little upside down today.

 Slainte!

IT'S DOT GOV

Lets go Phishing

More than 700 websites spoofing the Healthcare.gov website have been identified. More than 3000 people have already visited Obama-care.us. Washington Examiner

Stupid is as Stupid Does

Healthcare.com is a legitimate website that has been in operation since 1994.  Experts predict roughly 30% of the traffic intended for Healthcare.gov will inadvertently windup on Healthcare.com.  This is why websites generally register similar or related domain names to redirect customers to the correct site, and avoid domain names that could be easily confused.

 

An old story going back into the 90's is the one about Whitehouse.gov versus Whitehouse.com.  One belongs to the executive branch while the other is an, ahem, adult website.

The domain name peta.org was originally obtained by an organization People Eating Tasty Animals, much to the chagrin of those other, ethical people. Bitlaw

Caveat Emptor

Make sure you know who you're dealing with.

This has been a public service announcement by Western Hero.