The National Day of Prayer Task Force is having a fit over FFRF’s victory, and is targeting the governor with a national campaign urging him to appeal. The task force, housed at Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, has launched a “Save the National Day of Prayer” campaign.

More via Action Alerts – News.

I would also like to add that I believe in the past 10 years there has been a new “wedge”: demanding employees work every waking moment in order to boost productivity without appropriate compensation. 40 hours work-week? You’re dreaming. Almost everyone I know now works at least 50-80 hours per week with trivial additional compensation, if any.

Mishel tells his story with lots of useful numbers. But we can sum up his data in just three quick words. The sharing stopped. Since 1973, average Americans have realized little benefit from rising U.S. economic productivity.

Between 1973 and 2011, that productivity most certainly did rise substantially, by 80.4 percent. That increase, EPI’s Mishel notes, would have easily been “enough to generate large advances in living standards and wages if productivity gains were broadly shared.”

But those gains would not be shared. Average hourly compensation in the United States increased by just 39.2 percent between 1973 and 2011, less than half the increase in productivity.

This 39.2 percent figure actually overstates the increase in compensation average Americans realized — because this hourly compensation total includes the pay of all “employees,” from CEOs to day laborers.

Median U.S. workers — the nation’s most typical workers — didn’t come close to that 39.2 percent. Their pay increased only 10.7 percent from 1973 to 2011.

We have, Mishel explains, two different dynamics at play here. That “wedge” between productivity (up 80.4 percent) and overall hourly compensation (up 39.2 percent) reflects “an overall shift in how much of the income in the economy is received in wages by workers and how much is received by owners of capital.”

Between 1973 and 2011, owners clearly won. Much more of the gains from productivity went to profits and dividends than to wages and salaries.

The second wedge — the gap between “average” hourly earnings (up 39.2 percent) and median hourly earnings (up 10.7 percent) — reflects the exploding gap between executive pay and typical worker pay. Between 1973 and 2011, CEOs clearly won. Their sky-high rewards jacked up our “average” pay figures.

And what about consumers? Average Americans as consumers, like average Americans as workers, haven’t done so well since 1973. Workers have suffered, Mishel relates, as “the prices of things they buy (i.e., consumer goods and services) have risen faster than the items they produce.”

What accounts for all these “wedges” since 1973? Average American working people simply no longer have the economic and political clout they held back in the middle of the 20th century. The shrinking percentage of Americans who belong to trade unions has left collective bargaining a rarity in the private sector.

More via Productivity Doubled — And The Middle Class Got Screwed. What Went Wrong? | Visions | AlterNet.

Today, less than 24 hours after North Carolina’s hateful passage of the discriminatory Amendment One which bans gay marriage and curbs civil unions, President Obama announced his support of same-sex marriage in an interview with ABC.

Earlier in the day, the rumors began to circulate that this was coming. But nothing was confirmed until the 3pm publication of the attention-grabbing, much-sought-after headline: “Obama: ‘Same-Sex Marriage Should be Legal’ followed by “President says his position on marriage has evolved.” 

The president’s actual words in the interview “…it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.” He also credits his family for helping him move forward on the position. Rick Jacobs, President of the Courage Campaign, emailed supporters that  ”This day will go down in history as the beginning of the end of legalized discrimination against LGBT people in America.”

More via Breaking: Obama Endorses Same Sex-Marriage | AlterNet.

I had been using SmoothWall Express (SWE) for at least 10 years and while generally happy with it, I started to get annoyed at the amount of time I had to continually spend getting the mods to work when official updates were pushed down from Smoothie Towers.

The problem is that SWE3 is a rather basic firewall/router for home use, and while it would work fine for almost all home users, some techie geeks like me have use for advanced features such as Intrusion Detection & Prevention (IDS/IPS), full firewall control (advanced ingress & egress rules), VPN (especially OpenVPN for road warriors), and others. Unfortunately SWE3 doesn’t come with any of the functionality I just mentioned, but some really awesome hackers have provided mods to enable this (and much more) functionality. But almost every time an official update is published, most of the advanced mods break. Due to the complexity of the updates or contention for their personal time, sometimes the developers aren’t able to update their mods for considerable amounts of time.

After updates9 broke a lot of my mods, and after patiently waiting a month for the mods to be updated without luck, I decided it was time to move on. I evaluated many firewall/router replacements including:

• IPCop
• Untangle
• ClearOS
• m0n0wall
• pfSense

IPCop and SWE were originally the same thing. Long ago IPCop forked and for a while was far more active in development and community. Now though, it seems IPCop is far behind SWE since SWE3 was published a couple years back. I really wanted to stay away from the mod type functionality that’s common to both IPCop and SWE. Both are built on GNU/Linux distributions.

Untangle and ClearOS are full-fledged firewall/router distros, and can even perform some small server functions such as NAS or file sharing, etc. I really didn’t want something so huge. I did install Untangle but when I found that it installed an entire X GUI and the built-in kernel didn’t have drivers for paravirtualized VMware hardware, I just decided to stop right there. If it had been one or the other, fine… but both? I was put off by that alone. Untangle is based on Debian GNU/Linux.

m0n0wall and pfSense are based on FreeBSD. In fact pfSense is a fork of m0n0wall to add more functionality. m0n0wall is a barebones, extremely lightweight firewall. I needed more functionality than it provides. Enter pfSense.

pfSense has an extensible package selection available right from the Web GUI without having to hack anything. It also is a small install and features a lightweight console. The WebGUI is reliable and featureful. There is an open-vm-tools package that provides the paravirtualized (pv) vmxnet2 driver (not vmxnet3 though). I decided to use pfSense.

Here are some of the things I learned along the way that may help you. These notes assume you have basic knowledge of networking, firewalls, and UNIX. If you don’t, and aren’t willing to put in the many hours to learn, you’re better off sticking with a firewall/router “appliance” such as those sold by NetGear.

Environment:

• VMware ESXi 5.0
• 1 GB RAM allocated
• 2 GB thin vdisk allocated
• LSI Logic virtual disk controller
• vmxnet2 pv network interfaces (but start with E1000, see below)
• Servers behind the firewall: web hosting, storage hosting
• Internet connection: 30M/5M down/up
• Nodes using Internet simultaneously: usually no more than 10

Steps to complete my setup and package add-ons:

1. Install from downloadable ISO into the VMware Guest. Unless you plan on serving thousands of users, I suggest using the 32-bit ISO and creating a 32-bit FreeBSD Guest. I allocated only one CPU core since my load is fairly low. Use the E1000 network drivers at first.
    
2. After installing, assign your network interfaces to WAN, LAN, and any others you may have.
    
3. Follow the instructions on the console to fire up the WebGUI. After logging in the first time, I recommend changing the default password. (System -> User Manager)
    
4. You may want to consider enabling a password on the console, too. (System -> Advanced -> Admin Access)
    
5.  I wanted to make sure the kernel clocks down the CPU core when not in use, so I enabled power management. (System -> Advanced -> Miscellaneous -> Use PowerD)
    
6. Make sure your installation is up-to-date. (System -> Firmware -> Auto Update)
    
7. Add any inbound NAT/PAT rules you need to expose services behind the firewall to the Internet. (Firewall -> NAT -> Port Forward)
    
8. Enable DHCP for your LAN if needed. Pay special attention to some cool features like “Dynamic DNS” (not what you think). Also add any static DNS entries at the bottom you may need for internal resolution. (Services -> DHCP)
    
9.  Enable DNS Forwarding to your ISP if needed (usually yes). Pay attention to some cool features such as DHCP Registration and Static DHCP. (Services -> DNS forwarder)
    
10.  Enable Dynamic DNS services if you use this to set your dynamic ISP IP address to a hostname resolvable on the Internet. (Services -> Dynamic DNS)
     
11. Enable UPnP if you need it for services you may be running on your network such as P2P, games, VoIP, etc. (Services -> UPnP & NAT-PMP)
     
12. Configure OpenVPN if you need road warrior access to your network. Use the Wizard; it makes thing easy! Note that this only sets up the server, not access by clients (the “Client” tab is for peer-to-peer VPN–probably not what you want). When I get to Packages later we’ll see an easy way to get the OpenVPN client packages for connecting remotely. (VPN -> OpenVPN)
     
13. If you host services inside the firewall and want to be able to reach them by FQDN (which would go through the firewall due to IP address matching the public IP address for the FQDN), be sure NAT Reflection options are enabled (uncheck “Disable NAT Reflection for port forwards”). (System -> Advanced -> Firewall / NAT -> Network Address Translation)
     

That’s it for the basics. Now lets get into the Packages I selected for use. (System -> Packages)

• Open-VM-Tools: provides some VMware Tools features such as memory ballooning, pv vmxnet2 driver, etc. The vmxnet3 driver isn’t support yet. After installing, follow this guide to be sure your vmxnet2 driver is loading properly, and then you can delete your E1000 interfaces and replace with vmxnet2 for lower overhead. If you need VLANs, use E1000 because vmxnet2 doesn’t support them. Also use E1000 instead of Flexible because it’s much better performing. After making the change to the virtual hardware you’ll need to reconfigure your interfaces from the console but it only takes a minute. Hint: if you’re using a cable or DSL MODEM that only gives an IP lease to a single MAC address, copy down the MAC address of your WAN-facing virtual interface so you can reuse that on the new vmxnet2 WAN-facing virtual interface (or just reboot your MODEM). If you don’t do the same for your LAN-facing interfaces you may need to reboot nodes or do an ARP flush on them, or just wait a while.
   
• RRD Summary: provides RRD Summary Page, which will give a total amount of traffic passed In/Out during this and the previous month.
   
   
• OpenVPN Client Export Utility: provides a few more tabs in the VPN -> OpenVPN section for downloadable client packages! Hint: create the users first in System -> User Manager and don’t forget to generate a CA for each user!
   
• snort: provides Snort, an open-source network intrusion prevention and detection system (IDS/IPS), combining the benefits of signature, protocol, and anomaly-based inspection. After install, go to Services -> Snort. Create a Snort interface, but don’t start it yet.
   
• In the Global Settings tab, choose to Install rules and enter your Oink code. I also selected Emergingthreats rules.
   
• In the Update tab, click the “Update Rules” button to download the rule sets.
   
• “Alerts” and “Blocked” tabs show rule matches (–IDS) and IP addresses that have been blocked based on the alerts (Intrusion Prevention Service–IPS).
   
• Go back to Snort Interfaces and click Edit for your defined interface.
   
• Set up “If Settings” appropriately.
   
• Go to the “Categories” tab and select all of the categories for which you want IDS/IPS. Nothing is selected by default. I selected everything at first and kept an eye on things for a few days. There were about a dozen rules I deselected after they started blocking legitimate traffic or were unnecessarily filling up my logs. I edited the SSH bruteforce attack rule to remove the requirement of a SYN TCP flag and dropped the threshold from 5 in 60 seconds to 3 in 300 seconds. The original rule–probably due to the SYN flag–wasn’t catching most of the SSH dictionary attacks.
   
• Be sure to enable everything in the “Preprocessors” tab.
   
• Now back to the Snort Interfaces tab and enable your Snort Interface.
   
• There were a few anomalous Alerts filling up my logs and blocking my web access to popular web pages so I created a Suppression list for those specific rules.
   
• Go to Suppress tab and create a suppression list.
   
• I put the following two rules in mine which got rid of all the cruft from my log files and stopped blocking legitimate web sites:
   
• suppress gen_id 120, sig_id 3
   
• suppress gen_id 1, sig_id 2012647
   
• (You can find the gen_id and sig_id from the Alert log in the SID column. The format is gen_id:sig_id:revision_id; you don’t need the revision_id.)
   
• (Want more info on a specific Alert? Enter the SID here.)
   
• Now to enable your Suppression list, go back to Snort Interfaces, edit your interface, and choose your Suppression list from the “Suppression and filtering” dropdown selector.
   
• Don’t forget to go to Services and restart your Snort service to make everything take affect.
   
• Dashboard Widget: Snort: provides a widget on the Dashboard that can show you the most recent Snort Alerts for quick reference. Unfortunately this package is currently broken, but you can fix it by following these instructions. Hint: to enable the widget on the Dashboard, click the Add icon at the top-left of the Dashboard! And you can get to the Dashboard at any time by clicking the pfSense logo at the top-left of the WebGUI or from Status -> Dashboard. Check out the other cool widgets, and drag-and-drop to rearrange to your liking.
   

Well that’s it for now. Everything is working great for me. If you have any Tips or Tricks please let me know! I hope this guide helped get you started!

To extreme social conservatives of the far right, the word “prude” is not an insult — it’s a badge of honor. “Prudes,” they would argue, should be upheld as exemplary role models because a sexually repressive society is also a society with fewer unplanned pregnancies and fewer sexually transmitted diseases. But not only do the facts not bear that out, they also demonstrate that the exact opposite is true. Countries that embrace many of the things social conservatives detest (comprehensive sex education, pro-gay legislation, nude or topless beaches, legal or decriminalized prostitution, adult entertainment) tend to be countries that have less sexual dysfunction than the United States, not more. And when one compares sexual attitudes in the United States to sexual attitudes in Western Europe, it becomes evident that there is a strong correlation between social conservatism and higher rates of teen pregnancy, abortion and sexually transmitted diseases.

The Christian Right would consider the following five European countries to be quite “permissive” when compared to the United States. All of them make a strong case for social liberalism and sexual openness.

via 5 Countries That Do It Better: How Sexual Prudery Makes America a Less Healthy and Happy Place | Sex & Relationships | AlterNet.

As a favor to struggling Americans, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., proposed a federal budget last week ravaging programs for the poor, elderly, disabled, young, veterans, jobless, students and other vulnerable people. Ryan did it, he said, because these programs, food stamps, health insurance, Pell grants, veteran’s hospitals and the like are demeaning.

Yes, demeaning.

So Ryan plunders them and gives the savings to the rich in the form of additional tax breaks.Half of the savings in Ryan’s budget come from destroying health insurance programs. That would cost tens of millions of Americans their coverage.

Uninsured and underinsured toddlers, injured veterans, and disabled workers may die from some curable disease as a result. But at least Ryan will save those people from being demeaned!

via Paul Ryan’s Healthcare Plan: Die Quickly | | AlterNet.

Let me tell you a secret about Bible believers that I know because I was one. Most of them don’t read their Bibles. If they did, they would know that the biblical model of sex and marriage has little to do with the one they so loudly defend. Stories depicted in the Bible include rape, incest, master-slave sexual relations, captive virgins, and more. Now, just because a story is told in the Bible doesn’t mean it is intended as a model for devout behavior. Other factors have to be considered, like whether God commands or forbids the behavior, if the behavior is punished, and if Jesus subsequently indicates the rules have changed, come the New Testament.

Through this lens, you find that the God of the Bible still endorses polygamy and sexual slavery and coerced marriage of young virgins along with monogamy. In fact, he endorses all three to the point of providing detailed regulations. Based on stories of sex and marriage that God rewards and appears to approve one might add incest to the mix. Nowhere does the Bible say, “Don’t have sex with someone who doesn’t want to have sex with you.”

Furthermore, none of the norms that are endorsed and regulated in the Old Testament law – polygamy, sexual slavery, coerced marriage of young girls—are revised, reversed, or condemned by Jesus.

via Captive Virgins, Polygamy, Sex Slaves: What Marriage Would Look Like if We Actually Followed the Bible | Sex & Relationships | AlterNet.

Ever wonder how hedge funds can make 20 percent returns during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, while your savings account grows smaller? Ever wonder how it’s possible for the top hedge fund manager in 2011 to make $1,442,308 an hour, while it takes the average American family over 29 years to earn that much?

Well, a slew of financial writers are quick to tell you that the answer is simple: hedge fund managers are simply much smarter than you are, so get used to it. But that’s nonsense.

Hedge funds make enormous sums of money because they have an edge – one that pushes them out to the ethical limit…and beyond. Their edge often depends on obtaining privileged information that is inaccessible to the rest of us. Sometimes they get information illegally through well-paid sources inside corporate boardrooms, as Raj Rajaratnam did before he was sentenced to 11 years in the hoosegow. In other cases, hedge funds can buy it from congressional “sources.” And they even can get it for free when one of their own is appointed to the highest councils of government.

This sets up a vicious cycle – hedge fund money buys more information which leads to more hedge fund money which buys more information. It doesn’t take long for hedge funds to turn Washington into a wholly owned subsidiary.

But, surely this is a gross exaggeration, isn’t it? If only.

via How Hedge Fund Vampires Use Insider Info to Extract Their Dishonest Fortunes | News & Politics | AlterNet.

So why does it matter? The standard legal and medical definition of the beginning of pregnancy in the US is the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus. By that definition, even if LNG EC did interfere with implantation, it would not interrupt a pregnancy. But there have been aggressive efforts to legally define pregnancy as beginning with the fertilization of an egg, both at the state level in the United States (including a recent failed attempt in Mississippi to define a fertilized egg as a person, with full legal rights and protections) and in numerous cases in Latin America. Constitutional Courts in Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Peru and Honduras have banned or severely restricted access to EC, based on the misunderstanding that LNG EC interrupts the implantation process. In many of these cases, the Plan B product label was offered as evidence. But a document that is based on incomplete or outdated science should not be offered as evidence of anything.

via What’s in a Label? Why the Package Insert for Plan B is Wrong… and Why It Matters. | RH Reality Check.

Koch Brothers Exposed weaves together a series of short films produced over the course of the last year or so as part of an online video campaign of the same name. As principals of Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held corporation in America and one of the nation’s top polluters, the Koch brothers have grown notorious for their funding of think-tanks and astroturf organizations that aim to deregulate business and scale back government programs such as Social Security, Medicare and the new healthcare reform law.

via Robert Greenwald on the New Film ‘Koch Brothers Exposed’ — the 1% at Its Very Worst | Tea Party and the Right | AlterNet.