Good morning all. Happy 5th Birthday, Firefox!
In the international sphere, McClatchy bets the American President will send 30,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan. The decision is not going fast enough for some, with Mr. Paulson praising the Great Saint Reagan who was always decisive in his actions (and almost always threw more troops at a problem), and saying the President needs to emulate him and throw as many troops as are needed at the problem so they can always be doing something. (There’s an introductory aside about the Fort Hood shooter that plays up Muslim paranoia, too, but it’s not the focus of the column.)
The IAEA would like to talk to Tehran about supposed testing of advanced nuclear detonation designs, fearing that such a development puts Tehran much farther along the plan to nuclear bombs than previously thought.
Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez instructed his troops to prepare for war once United States troops obtained access to Colombian military bases, in an attempt to ward of the invasion he feels is coming.
There is some good news - Iraqi lawmakers managed to deal with or sidestep most of the sticking points and pass a bill that will provide for national elections in January.
Domestically, WalMart defends its policies that require employees to take a personal or vacation day before they can take sick leave, even in the middle of the H1N1 pandemic, and that gives people demerits for being sick or taking sick days.
Missing the point in its entirety to make a cheap shot against Islam, an article about the shooter of Fort Hood that apparently places him at the same mosque of the 11 September attackers. Promoting the idea that Islam is a warlike religion that wants to kill everyone, instead of noting a coincidence in a footnote, perhaps in an article about an investigation to see whether that mosque is promoting hateful ideas. Too much to be gained by painting the other as evil, I guess.
Elsewhere on health care, a breakdown of all the House Democratic members who voted against the health care bill, indicating some factors as to why they may have voted against it, like vulnerability of district, Blue Dog status, or a D in a place that is normally pretty R. For the leadership, some advice to the President - start knocking heads together so as to overcome all the stonewalling that is likely to happen in the Senate. Although, depending on your point of view, if the President did throw his support behind a bill, he might be doing more harm than good - at least one doctor thinks the bill is a big slush fund to insurance companies with little bits of real reform tacked on, and instead, we should be focusing on expanding Medicare to cover everyone, making primary care physicians get bigger payments and specialists smaller, and encouraging med students to go into primary care in places where they are most sorely needed. Got to say, that sounds like a nice plan. But the Democrats were never far enough to the Left to actually start there.
Furthermore, the rabid right wing of the Republican Party expressed their outrage and hostility at the lone Republican Congressperson, Joseph Cao of Louisiana, to vote in favor of the House bill, leveling threats of exclusion and dismissing him as not the direction the Republican Party wants to go. Unless, that is, it’s the leadership in Congress, who apparently are fine with Cao’s vote and position. We note, too, that he’s from Louisiana, a state that probably needs affordable health insurance coverage more than most.
In economics, Wall Street bonuses are going to go up 40 percent, which should make a lot of populists howling mad because the economy is nowhere near recovered. The response from Goldman Sachs? "Let them eat cake", in addition to “Jesus endorses self-interest”.
Next verse, same as the worst - the Obama Administration is instructing his lawyers to argue for warrantless wiretaps and unconstitutional searches, while at the same time claiming he’s against those practices. This follows the pattern where Italian courts can convict agents for behaving illegally, while American courts dismiss things that are clearly illegal. Civil libertarians are also very unhappy about the secret ACTA talks that intend on imposing a significantly draconian set of rules regarding copyright,
In the opinions, The Gouverneur Times claims that Bill Owens broke campaign promises the moment he declared support for the House health care bill, promises that he was against cutting benefits or raising taxes and against a public option. They might sound credible, if they didn’t also include clearly untrue things like “the House bill will let illegal immigrants participate in the exchange”.
Ms. McCaughey, of "death panel" fame, posts part of her objections to the House bill. However, with the whopper that she laid down in the first place, what credibility does she have left for the rest? Why is the WSJ printing it, anyway?
Mr. Tanner avoids both of those pitfalls while putting out a column that says the true cost of the House health care bill will be somewhere in the multiple trillions of dollars, assuming planned cuts don't happen and other bills that would add to that cost get passed.
Back on defensible ground, at least, the WSJ says the rising unemployment rate is an appropriate repudiation of the stimulus that happened, so the populace and the Congress should resist calls for another stimulus. Thus, the call comes back after hving been away for a while - All Hail the Private Market, which does everything better than government does.
the new lead laws continue to make problems, says the WSJ and the CPSC, and thus, lots of finger-pointing and not much of getting stuff done.
Mr. Fund claims any commitment to transparency and on-line posting of bills went by the wayside in the newest halth care bill. Guess it was a promise that was too good to be true, especially with time running out on getting the Democratic agenda on its way before the midterm elections.
Last out, from the left, Mr. Krugman fears for us all if the Republican Party continus to become the Teabagger Party, because they might stay just big enough to stop any real work from getting done.
From the right, Bill'O goes cherry-picking the White House visitors list, finding all his favorite liberal targets and...throwing low-level poor-grade insults at them. If that’s what passes for the Bill'O venom these days, I want to know who managed to pull out his fangs.
In technology, a Danish anti-piracy group throws in the towel because of the difficulty of proving that an infringer actually infringed, a voting system that gives voters codes to write that they can then can check to make sure their ballots are accurate and secure, and then supposedly lets independent auditors ensure that votes went to the right places without actually knowing who voted for whom, more research about how real self perceives virtual self, the discovery of an ancient Persian army thoguht lost in a sandstorm around 525 BCE, and Rupert Murdoch says he'll be hiding things behind his paywall from Google searches, believing the people who search and find his results are unimportant. Probably because he’s charging for his content.
Last for tonight, the gender gap of the Otaku - guys like looking at girls, girls like looking at robots.
comments on Dreamwidth.
LiveJournal, Wordpress, and other compatible blog service users can comment on DW posts utilizing their accounts through OpenID.
In the international sphere, McClatchy bets the American President will send 30,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan. The decision is not going fast enough for some, with Mr. Paulson praising the Great Saint Reagan who was always decisive in his actions (and almost always threw more troops at a problem), and saying the President needs to emulate him and throw as many troops as are needed at the problem so they can always be doing something. (There’s an introductory aside about the Fort Hood shooter that plays up Muslim paranoia, too, but it’s not the focus of the column.)
The IAEA would like to talk to Tehran about supposed testing of advanced nuclear detonation designs, fearing that such a development puts Tehran much farther along the plan to nuclear bombs than previously thought.
Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez instructed his troops to prepare for war once United States troops obtained access to Colombian military bases, in an attempt to ward of the invasion he feels is coming.
There is some good news - Iraqi lawmakers managed to deal with or sidestep most of the sticking points and pass a bill that will provide for national elections in January.
Domestically, WalMart defends its policies that require employees to take a personal or vacation day before they can take sick leave, even in the middle of the H1N1 pandemic, and that gives people demerits for being sick or taking sick days.
Missing the point in its entirety to make a cheap shot against Islam, an article about the shooter of Fort Hood that apparently places him at the same mosque of the 11 September attackers. Promoting the idea that Islam is a warlike religion that wants to kill everyone, instead of noting a coincidence in a footnote, perhaps in an article about an investigation to see whether that mosque is promoting hateful ideas. Too much to be gained by painting the other as evil, I guess.
Elsewhere on health care, a breakdown of all the House Democratic members who voted against the health care bill, indicating some factors as to why they may have voted against it, like vulnerability of district, Blue Dog status, or a D in a place that is normally pretty R. For the leadership, some advice to the President - start knocking heads together so as to overcome all the stonewalling that is likely to happen in the Senate. Although, depending on your point of view, if the President did throw his support behind a bill, he might be doing more harm than good - at least one doctor thinks the bill is a big slush fund to insurance companies with little bits of real reform tacked on, and instead, we should be focusing on expanding Medicare to cover everyone, making primary care physicians get bigger payments and specialists smaller, and encouraging med students to go into primary care in places where they are most sorely needed. Got to say, that sounds like a nice plan. But the Democrats were never far enough to the Left to actually start there.
Furthermore, the rabid right wing of the Republican Party expressed their outrage and hostility at the lone Republican Congressperson, Joseph Cao of Louisiana, to vote in favor of the House bill, leveling threats of exclusion and dismissing him as not the direction the Republican Party wants to go. Unless, that is, it’s the leadership in Congress, who apparently are fine with Cao’s vote and position. We note, too, that he’s from Louisiana, a state that probably needs affordable health insurance coverage more than most.
In economics, Wall Street bonuses are going to go up 40 percent, which should make a lot of populists howling mad because the economy is nowhere near recovered. The response from Goldman Sachs? "Let them eat cake", in addition to “Jesus endorses self-interest”.
Next verse, same as the worst - the Obama Administration is instructing his lawyers to argue for warrantless wiretaps and unconstitutional searches, while at the same time claiming he’s against those practices. This follows the pattern where Italian courts can convict agents for behaving illegally, while American courts dismiss things that are clearly illegal. Civil libertarians are also very unhappy about the secret ACTA talks that intend on imposing a significantly draconian set of rules regarding copyright,
In the opinions, The Gouverneur Times claims that Bill Owens broke campaign promises the moment he declared support for the House health care bill, promises that he was against cutting benefits or raising taxes and against a public option. They might sound credible, if they didn’t also include clearly untrue things like “the House bill will let illegal immigrants participate in the exchange”.
Ms. McCaughey, of "death panel" fame, posts part of her objections to the House bill. However, with the whopper that she laid down in the first place, what credibility does she have left for the rest? Why is the WSJ printing it, anyway?
Mr. Tanner avoids both of those pitfalls while putting out a column that says the true cost of the House health care bill will be somewhere in the multiple trillions of dollars, assuming planned cuts don't happen and other bills that would add to that cost get passed.
Back on defensible ground, at least, the WSJ says the rising unemployment rate is an appropriate repudiation of the stimulus that happened, so the populace and the Congress should resist calls for another stimulus. Thus, the call comes back after hving been away for a while - All Hail the Private Market, which does everything better than government does.
the new lead laws continue to make problems, says the WSJ and the CPSC, and thus, lots of finger-pointing and not much of getting stuff done.
Mr. Fund claims any commitment to transparency and on-line posting of bills went by the wayside in the newest halth care bill. Guess it was a promise that was too good to be true, especially with time running out on getting the Democratic agenda on its way before the midterm elections.
Last out, from the left, Mr. Krugman fears for us all if the Republican Party continus to become the Teabagger Party, because they might stay just big enough to stop any real work from getting done.
From the right, Bill'O goes cherry-picking the White House visitors list, finding all his favorite liberal targets and...throwing low-level poor-grade insults at them. If that’s what passes for the Bill'O venom these days, I want to know who managed to pull out his fangs.
In technology, a Danish anti-piracy group throws in the towel because of the difficulty of proving that an infringer actually infringed, a voting system that gives voters codes to write that they can then can check to make sure their ballots are accurate and secure, and then supposedly lets independent auditors ensure that votes went to the right places without actually knowing who voted for whom, more research about how real self perceives virtual self, the discovery of an ancient Persian army thoguht lost in a sandstorm around 525 BCE, and Rupert Murdoch says he'll be hiding things behind his paywall from Google searches, believing the people who search and find his results are unimportant. Probably because he’s charging for his content.
Last for tonight, the gender gap of the Otaku - guys like looking at girls, girls like looking at robots.
LiveJournal, Wordpress, and other compatible blog service users can comment on DW posts utilizing their accounts through OpenID.
- Mood:
awake - Music:Pachelbel - Canon in D
Ah, weekends. How we love thee. Ish.
Starting out today, the Parents Television Council, holder of the number one spot for copmlaints to the FCC (last I knew), is up in arms about a teaser advert for a threesome happening in the Gossip Girl drama. Well, they’re at least trying on something that might be salacious. Others think Sesame Street satire has gone too far, and that Oscar saying “Pox News” is trashy is PBS displaying some sort of liberal bias.
Internationally, U2 plays concert honoring the fall of the Berlin wall...with a 6.5 foot wall separating the concertgoers from the rest of the crowd. While we realize there are too many odd juxtapositions in the world to catch them all, surely this one could have been spotted.
In the conflict zones, United States troops express their displeasure at the use of lightly armored vehicles, especially against opposition that utilizes buried IEDs as a common tactic.
Fallout from the conflict zones includes allegation by a former United Kingdom ambassador that the CIA sent people to countries where torture, forced confessions, and violation of their persons with broken glass bottles were all common and expected.
On religious matters, the European Court of Human Rights has determined that the weaing of crucifixes in Italian schools is a violation of religious and educational freedoms, rejecting the idea that the symbol is one of Italian heritage and culture instead of religion. We’re guessing this ruling will be applied equally to all and that no religious symbols will be permitted to be worn in the schooling. Does that include head coverings, too?
Domestically, most of the news cycle will be focusing on a military psychologist killing 12 and injuring more than 30 in a shooting on the base of Fort Hood, a tragedy at best. There will always be something odd or fringey and entirely not true about it, if it looks like it might somehow try to connect the madman with the president.
Rock on, San Francisco, now proud owners of a ban on cat declawing.
On H1N1 matters, The Health and Human Services secretary admitted to overstating the amount of vaccine available and of being improperly skeptic of the claims made by the manufacturers.
More generally on health matters, The House of Representatives says they will have a bill ready for voting on Saturday of this week, a promise they followed through with, despite also including an amendment increasing prohibitions on federal money being used for abortion procedures, due to their ability to limit the time spent on debate and amendments. This continues despite several members of the opposition taking part in a rally intended to make the Congresscritters afraid of the wingnut portion of their population, a population clearly misinformed about what the bill will actually do.
The persons accused of planning and executing the 11 September attacks will receive trials in civilian courts over Republican objections that those attacks were a matter of war instead of crime, and thus military courts, with laxer rules on evidence and transparency, would be better-suited to the suspects.
Lowe's pays out a $29.5 million settlement regarding required but uncompensated hours for their worker and continues to deny they did anything wrong. After this, a worker spots and anti-EFCA poster in their break room. Because unions are evil when they make people pay for overtime work or make employers stop forcing their hirees to do uncompensated labor.
Officially, unemployment back over 10 percent, although if you ask![[info]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bradhicks, he’ll tell you the number is really either just this side of 20 percent or slightly over, and all those people need to be working instead of having their unemployment benefits extended, thus, the WPA is in order moreso than more unemployment.
On climate, Senator Boxer, committee chair, may utilize rules to allow her to move legislation past the committee, despite the boycott of committee meetings that the opposition party is currently undertaking. Howls of “not bipartisan” ensue, but considering the obstructionist track record so far, rules like this may be the way Democrats get things done.
In opinions, Mr. Reich says the President should sell a bigger stimulus to Congress, based on the argument that bigger stimulus will make for better midterm numbers, as well as continuing to bring the economy back.
The Pandagon people like Mad Men, because it tells it like it was, and make fun of someone who feels uncomfortable and tries to defend the nonexistent idyllic times past, where women were sex-and-cooking appliances and black men stayed out of sight because they knew their place.
The WSJ likes to gather as much happy as it can out of the recent elections, feeling confidence that Republicans are on the ascendancy again and Democrats have to watch out. Mr. Pruden, of the Washington Times, suggests that the President realize that all the problems of the country are his now, and that he should get to fixing them, now unable (in theory) to hide behind the knowledge that this mess was started and exacerbated by the last administration. Against those ideas, Mr. Miniter says some Republicans were not necessarily winners in the last battle, depending on which candidate they backed, as a signal that the purge continues and Republicans will soon be the Conservative Party.
Mr. Gordon says that liberalism has succeeded at the time its current ideology of anticapitalism was needed, and now the liberals need to congratulate themselves and move on, instead of still clinging to a world of sheep, wolves, and shepherds, because the conservatives are changing and evolving into something new. (While they continue to purge people away who don’t fit the hard-right attitude).
Mr Jeffrey says that health care reform plans will turn us into a welfare state, with subsidies for enough people to keep the Democrats in power and fierce taxes and no help for those who make enough to be above that line. All basing itself on the idea that health care and insurance premiums are expensive. So why not reform the insurance premiums and the system there, instead of whinging about a government program that is attempting to do so (even if it will bite the big one)?
Taibbi slams the Goldman Sachs execs for actually saying that Jesus was for greed, profit, and self-interest when he said that we needed to love each other as we do ourselves.
The best thing to do, I would agree, is to forget left and right and focus on doing what is right (with the caveat that the majority is not always right, especially when it wants to act counter to the founding principles of the country.)
Ans we should avoid pontification about how everyone has a point of view in journalism and that accusations of non-objectivity and bias are rendered moot by that, with a little martyr complex thrown in. (“I’m special because I’m counter to them, thus when they say I’m biased, they’re only showing their own biases.”)
The truly worst, however, prefer to attack Holocaust survivors by claiming that Jews are profiting off of the treatment they received during that period, including such gems as “America is a Christian nation, so Jews should shut up”, and “Obama takes his orders from George Soros, who is Jewish.” This was after said survivor took umbrage at a picture comparing the Democratic health care bill with the concentration camps.
In technology, Firefox surpasses IE6 for browser share. Now, here’s hoping IE6 dies in a standards-noncompliant fire. Also, Google unveils the DTN protocol, for interplanetary Internet-type communications, although one would probably not be able to play Quake across worlds with such a thing,
And last out for tonight, velvet paintings of kaiju, including most of the Godzilla cast and Ultraman. Additionally, the letterbox principle works - a camera left at the summit of a climb was returned, as per instructions, after other climbers had taken pictures of themselves at the summit.
Oh, and by the way, did we mention Jesus was born in June?
comments on Dreamwidth.
LiveJournal, Wordpress, and other compatible blog service users can comment on DW posts utilizing their accounts through OpenID.
Starting out today, the Parents Television Council, holder of the number one spot for copmlaints to the FCC (last I knew), is up in arms about a teaser advert for a threesome happening in the Gossip Girl drama. Well, they’re at least trying on something that might be salacious. Others think Sesame Street satire has gone too far, and that Oscar saying “Pox News” is trashy is PBS displaying some sort of liberal bias.
Internationally, U2 plays concert honoring the fall of the Berlin wall...with a 6.5 foot wall separating the concertgoers from the rest of the crowd. While we realize there are too many odd juxtapositions in the world to catch them all, surely this one could have been spotted.
In the conflict zones, United States troops express their displeasure at the use of lightly armored vehicles, especially against opposition that utilizes buried IEDs as a common tactic.
Fallout from the conflict zones includes allegation by a former United Kingdom ambassador that the CIA sent people to countries where torture, forced confessions, and violation of their persons with broken glass bottles were all common and expected.
On religious matters, the European Court of Human Rights has determined that the weaing of crucifixes in Italian schools is a violation of religious and educational freedoms, rejecting the idea that the symbol is one of Italian heritage and culture instead of religion. We’re guessing this ruling will be applied equally to all and that no religious symbols will be permitted to be worn in the schooling. Does that include head coverings, too?
Domestically, most of the news cycle will be focusing on a military psychologist killing 12 and injuring more than 30 in a shooting on the base of Fort Hood, a tragedy at best. There will always be something odd or fringey and entirely not true about it, if it looks like it might somehow try to connect the madman with the president.
Rock on, San Francisco, now proud owners of a ban on cat declawing.
On H1N1 matters, The Health and Human Services secretary admitted to overstating the amount of vaccine available and of being improperly skeptic of the claims made by the manufacturers.
More generally on health matters, The House of Representatives says they will have a bill ready for voting on Saturday of this week, a promise they followed through with, despite also including an amendment increasing prohibitions on federal money being used for abortion procedures, due to their ability to limit the time spent on debate and amendments. This continues despite several members of the opposition taking part in a rally intended to make the Congresscritters afraid of the wingnut portion of their population, a population clearly misinformed about what the bill will actually do.
The persons accused of planning and executing the 11 September attacks will receive trials in civilian courts over Republican objections that those attacks were a matter of war instead of crime, and thus military courts, with laxer rules on evidence and transparency, would be better-suited to the suspects.
Lowe's pays out a $29.5 million settlement regarding required but uncompensated hours for their worker and continues to deny they did anything wrong. After this, a worker spots and anti-EFCA poster in their break room. Because unions are evil when they make people pay for overtime work or make employers stop forcing their hirees to do uncompensated labor.
Officially, unemployment back over 10 percent, although if you ask
bradhicks, he’ll tell you the number is really either just this side of 20 percent or slightly over, and all those people need to be working instead of having their unemployment benefits extended, thus, the WPA is in order moreso than more unemployment.On climate, Senator Boxer, committee chair, may utilize rules to allow her to move legislation past the committee, despite the boycott of committee meetings that the opposition party is currently undertaking. Howls of “not bipartisan” ensue, but considering the obstructionist track record so far, rules like this may be the way Democrats get things done.
In opinions, Mr. Reich says the President should sell a bigger stimulus to Congress, based on the argument that bigger stimulus will make for better midterm numbers, as well as continuing to bring the economy back.
The Pandagon people like Mad Men, because it tells it like it was, and make fun of someone who feels uncomfortable and tries to defend the nonexistent idyllic times past, where women were sex-and-cooking appliances and black men stayed out of sight because they knew their place.
The WSJ likes to gather as much happy as it can out of the recent elections, feeling confidence that Republicans are on the ascendancy again and Democrats have to watch out. Mr. Pruden, of the Washington Times, suggests that the President realize that all the problems of the country are his now, and that he should get to fixing them, now unable (in theory) to hide behind the knowledge that this mess was started and exacerbated by the last administration. Against those ideas, Mr. Miniter says some Republicans were not necessarily winners in the last battle, depending on which candidate they backed, as a signal that the purge continues and Republicans will soon be the Conservative Party.
Mr. Gordon says that liberalism has succeeded at the time its current ideology of anticapitalism was needed, and now the liberals need to congratulate themselves and move on, instead of still clinging to a world of sheep, wolves, and shepherds, because the conservatives are changing and evolving into something new. (While they continue to purge people away who don’t fit the hard-right attitude).
Mr Jeffrey says that health care reform plans will turn us into a welfare state, with subsidies for enough people to keep the Democrats in power and fierce taxes and no help for those who make enough to be above that line. All basing itself on the idea that health care and insurance premiums are expensive. So why not reform the insurance premiums and the system there, instead of whinging about a government program that is attempting to do so (even if it will bite the big one)?
Taibbi slams the Goldman Sachs execs for actually saying that Jesus was for greed, profit, and self-interest when he said that we needed to love each other as we do ourselves.
The best thing to do, I would agree, is to forget left and right and focus on doing what is right (with the caveat that the majority is not always right, especially when it wants to act counter to the founding principles of the country.)
Ans we should avoid pontification about how everyone has a point of view in journalism and that accusations of non-objectivity and bias are rendered moot by that, with a little martyr complex thrown in. (“I’m special because I’m counter to them, thus when they say I’m biased, they’re only showing their own biases.”)
The truly worst, however, prefer to attack Holocaust survivors by claiming that Jews are profiting off of the treatment they received during that period, including such gems as “America is a Christian nation, so Jews should shut up”, and “Obama takes his orders from George Soros, who is Jewish.” This was after said survivor took umbrage at a picture comparing the Democratic health care bill with the concentration camps.
In technology, Firefox surpasses IE6 for browser share. Now, here’s hoping IE6 dies in a standards-noncompliant fire. Also, Google unveils the DTN protocol, for interplanetary Internet-type communications, although one would probably not be able to play Quake across worlds with such a thing,
And last out for tonight, velvet paintings of kaiju, including most of the Godzilla cast and Ultraman. Additionally, the letterbox principle works - a camera left at the summit of a climb was returned, as per instructions, after other climbers had taken pictures of themselves at the summit.
Oh, and by the way, did we mention Jesus was born in June?
LiveJournal, Wordpress, and other compatible blog service users can comment on DW posts utilizing their accounts through OpenID.
- Mood:
accomplished - Music:Nekofrog - The Omen of Jenova
It is now the day after an election. Did you all vote? There were some very important questions on your ballot.
A company interested in building hotels...in...spaaaaaace says they're still on schedule for a 2012 opening.
Saudia Arabia upholds a sentence of beheading and crucifixion for a man who raped children and left one out in the desert to die. No argument for punishment for such a crime, but the question continues to be whether the death penalty is a useful and/or necessary thing to have.
The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department would like a word with the studdy authors claiming there is still a strong distrust of America from Canada, considering the way the numbers shake out and the questions asked. Asking whether you think America is doing good in the world is not a question of trust, it's a question of results. To illustrate, a poll that suggests a lot of people would like to permanently relocate to other countries, usually from places perceived as poor to places perceived as rich, like the United States. Ask a different question, get a different result.
Nroth Korea claims to have added to its nuclear arsenal by weaponizing plutonium. This comes as a push to try for some one-on-one talks between North Korea and the United States.
In your war department, questions on how reliable the M-16 and the associated ammunition are, which is easy to digest, and Mr. Greenwald on the Second Circuit's decision to uphold the idea that government oepratives can break even the Constitutino for purposes of national security, and no preson should be able to bring suit or charge against them, so long as they make that claim. Someone smack the Second Circuit with a cluebat - the judiciary is supposed to try these kinds of cases and make rulings about whether government actions are legal.
A Marine Commandant expresses his support of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on the grounds that openly gay people would be disruptive. More on the plight of homosexuals... right below.
In results now currently available, it appears Maine voters rejected the legalization of homosexual marriage in their state by approximately 53 percent of the voters to 47 percent, which makes for another tough slog on the ground for the country founded on "all men are created equal" to actually make it there. Washington State continues to be within the margins of error, but current results indicate that R-71, the "all but marriage" referendum, will be approved, giving registered domestic partnerships all of the rights and responsibilities of heterosexual marriage, just without the name. Pointing out what should be pretty apparent, Melissa McEwan notes that when you ask the majority whether minorities should have the same rights as them, they tend to say no, and that the legislature and the courts are there to give those people a solid cluebatting that their biases should not be written into the law, especially where those biases conflict with the higher ideals of the country.
An Illinois teacher was suspended from his school for allowing his students to read that the animal kingdom does have examples of homosexual relationships. The article itself was apparently one option in several on spotting bias in writers for an AP English course, so it's not like there weren't other things that could be done. The General says the matter should be reversed, as it was clearly an easy way of teaching people to read critically.
In the race in New York Congressional District 23, the Republican who quit endorsed the Democrat, not the Conservative, and it appears the Democrat won the seat.
A new study concludes that if you carry a gun with you, you're more likely to be shot during an assault. Um, yeah. That seems pretty obvious.
And in the economy, Goldman Sachs was betting on the housing market crashing...and neglected to tell anyone it was doing so, which could be a violation of securities laws. For those who think the current administration cares not about defecits, they're aware that things are getting big, and they do want to do work to bring them down. Which could be a matter of wishes and gestures to those who believe they'll just keep spending, even with these gestures. And then there are the proposals that would leave the too big to fails to get bigger and even harder to fail, instead of trustbusting their butts back to a reasonable, not going to cause collapse if they go down size.
And while all this whirls around our heads, people still have to deal with foreclosures and the labyrinth of paperwork that trying to stave it off consumes.
A McDonald's worker called police to cite teenagers who rapped their order at the drive through for disorderly conduct. The teenagers allege they repeated their order more slowly when the worker accused them of holding up the line. That's bush leagues compared to the columnist who said we shouldn't celebrate as much the victory of an American in the NYC Marathon because he wasn't born in America. Perhaps, instead, he should go cover the gentleman who walked a marathon in laps around his block instead.
There is one good thing, though - the judge who refused to marry interracial couples in Louisiana has resigned his position.
In the opinions, the comment squad crows at the decision of a Planned Parenthood chief to follow her conscience and quit the organization after she decided the group was focusing too much on abortions. In Texas, we note, where the pressure of the antiabortion movement is fairly constant and fairly strong. Good for her for resigning her position instead of trying to hold on to it while not really believing in the organization.
A new game that you hop eyou never have to play - Gender Bias Bingo!, where we lay out all the things that work against women in the workplace (and one against men who step outside their traditional gender roles to be a stay-at-home father).
In Iowa, and around the country, there is disillusionment with President Obama, as the person they thought they elected turns out to be someone else. For some, this means an opportunity to attack the President while continuing to hammer Congress, for others, a chance to taunt the grassroots that turned out in force to elect him.
For those more nakedly opposed to the President, they'll focus on why they feel it's such a snub for the President to not attend an anniversary of the Berlin Wall's falling down and try to put it as more proof the President doesn't believe in the jingoistic rah-rah of Fredom and America: Fuck Yeah!
On the other side of the spectrum, Bay Buchanan says the Republican label is becoming irrelevant, and the GOP should tack both to becoming more ideologically pure and finding candidates who appeal to independents and conservative Democrats, while painting all their opponents with the "Obama brush" as being spend-and-spend fringe left liberals. Sounds like she wants to shed the moderates and become pure, while mysteriously being able to find candidates that do not appeal strictly to the fringe. Good luck on that. After all, even Markos himself will tell you that the way to get the base out to vote is to appeal to them, instead of trying to appeal to both the base and the people who don't like you. On that front, the National Republican Senate Committee took their ball and went home, declaring they would not spend money on primary elections, which could mean the fringe elements could make life difficult for other Republican candidates.
The Washington Examiner says that the White House is inflating their jobs created or saved numbers to look good, a trick the Examiner says they learned from unions, who also make nonexistent positions so they can fill their coffers with money.
On health care, the Republican radio address went back to the familiar well - inter-state competition, tort reform, access to large pools for small businesses, and let states do what thy can to make things better. Which will supposedly fix all the problems, because insurance companies, exempted from trust laws, will clearly compete with each other to drive prices down and services up with just those things. Mr. Sowell certainly thinks all we really need is tort reform and to stop practicing defensive medicine, and all will fix itself. Mr. Hunt goes for a better-seeming argument, that we could just get the 14 million too poor to be insured insured at the cost of half of what the House bill is, and that what the bill does is morally wrong as well as poor stewardship (because of abortions. Always abortions), so it should be opposed. He does assume, of course, that our current programs for the elderly and the young are sufficiently funded and effective for the first part. It does sound, though, like he wanted to write a column about how abortion is wrong and government options that would cover abortions are wrong, but wanted to cover it with something else.
Down near the bottom of the barrel, the AFA's director of issues is distraught that the Girl Scouts can't find a place to meet because there are too many sex offenders around, and so he suggests something more permanent be done to them. Because underage sex and public urination clearly require the same sorts of punishments as rape.
Last out, Columnist Dan Savage on why sexy costumes (for adults) for Halloween is a good thing. And then the decisions for parents when their children want to do things outside the gender stereotype - do you let him and possibly expose him to mockery, or do you tell him not to because of that fear? Luckily, this parent recognizes her child had made up his mind, and she decided to go with it.
In technology, an opinion suggesting the doomsday scenarios of corporate-contolled and blocked Internet will never come to pass, so we need no net neutrality laws or regulations, some rather doomsday scenarios about a secret treaty being negotiated that would remake the Internet into a media cabal's wet dream, kicking off alleged file-sharers, requiring stuff be taken down if copyright violation is alleged against it without proof, and forcing ISPs to actively police the content on their sites for potential copyright violations, research indicating culture, rather than genes, is a better predictor and indicator of altriusm, and a reminder that Bill Gates has been anticompetitive for a very long time now.
Last for tonight, foul moods make for clearer thinking and attention, giving up hope on your chronic condition might make you happier, and good moods are great for creativity. So we need both. Otherwise, we'll never come up with Pie Pops.
Oh, okay, one last thing. Carrie Prejean, according to TMZ, will not be continuing to sue the Miss California Pageant after their lawyer showed a homemade sex tape of Miss Prejean. I'm betting somewhere around here, the torrents already have it, and have been distributing it for months. Those wishing to confirm this for themselves, good luck.
comments on Dreamwidth.
LiveJournal, Wordpress, and other compatible blog service users can comment on DW posts utilizing their accounts through OpenID.
A company interested in building hotels...in...spaaaaaace says they're still on schedule for a 2012 opening.
Saudia Arabia upholds a sentence of beheading and crucifixion for a man who raped children and left one out in the desert to die. No argument for punishment for such a crime, but the question continues to be whether the death penalty is a useful and/or necessary thing to have.
The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department would like a word with the studdy authors claiming there is still a strong distrust of America from Canada, considering the way the numbers shake out and the questions asked. Asking whether you think America is doing good in the world is not a question of trust, it's a question of results. To illustrate, a poll that suggests a lot of people would like to permanently relocate to other countries, usually from places perceived as poor to places perceived as rich, like the United States. Ask a different question, get a different result.
Nroth Korea claims to have added to its nuclear arsenal by weaponizing plutonium. This comes as a push to try for some one-on-one talks between North Korea and the United States.
In your war department, questions on how reliable the M-16 and the associated ammunition are, which is easy to digest, and Mr. Greenwald on the Second Circuit's decision to uphold the idea that government oepratives can break even the Constitutino for purposes of national security, and no preson should be able to bring suit or charge against them, so long as they make that claim. Someone smack the Second Circuit with a cluebat - the judiciary is supposed to try these kinds of cases and make rulings about whether government actions are legal.
A Marine Commandant expresses his support of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on the grounds that openly gay people would be disruptive. More on the plight of homosexuals... right below.
In results now currently available, it appears Maine voters rejected the legalization of homosexual marriage in their state by approximately 53 percent of the voters to 47 percent, which makes for another tough slog on the ground for the country founded on "all men are created equal" to actually make it there. Washington State continues to be within the margins of error, but current results indicate that R-71, the "all but marriage" referendum, will be approved, giving registered domestic partnerships all of the rights and responsibilities of heterosexual marriage, just without the name. Pointing out what should be pretty apparent, Melissa McEwan notes that when you ask the majority whether minorities should have the same rights as them, they tend to say no, and that the legislature and the courts are there to give those people a solid cluebatting that their biases should not be written into the law, especially where those biases conflict with the higher ideals of the country.
An Illinois teacher was suspended from his school for allowing his students to read that the animal kingdom does have examples of homosexual relationships. The article itself was apparently one option in several on spotting bias in writers for an AP English course, so it's not like there weren't other things that could be done. The General says the matter should be reversed, as it was clearly an easy way of teaching people to read critically.
In the race in New York Congressional District 23, the Republican who quit endorsed the Democrat, not the Conservative, and it appears the Democrat won the seat.
A new study concludes that if you carry a gun with you, you're more likely to be shot during an assault. Um, yeah. That seems pretty obvious.
And in the economy, Goldman Sachs was betting on the housing market crashing...and neglected to tell anyone it was doing so, which could be a violation of securities laws. For those who think the current administration cares not about defecits, they're aware that things are getting big, and they do want to do work to bring them down. Which could be a matter of wishes and gestures to those who believe they'll just keep spending, even with these gestures. And then there are the proposals that would leave the too big to fails to get bigger and even harder to fail, instead of trustbusting their butts back to a reasonable, not going to cause collapse if they go down size.
And while all this whirls around our heads, people still have to deal with foreclosures and the labyrinth of paperwork that trying to stave it off consumes.
A McDonald's worker called police to cite teenagers who rapped their order at the drive through for disorderly conduct. The teenagers allege they repeated their order more slowly when the worker accused them of holding up the line. That's bush leagues compared to the columnist who said we shouldn't celebrate as much the victory of an American in the NYC Marathon because he wasn't born in America. Perhaps, instead, he should go cover the gentleman who walked a marathon in laps around his block instead.
There is one good thing, though - the judge who refused to marry interracial couples in Louisiana has resigned his position.
In the opinions, the comment squad crows at the decision of a Planned Parenthood chief to follow her conscience and quit the organization after she decided the group was focusing too much on abortions. In Texas, we note, where the pressure of the antiabortion movement is fairly constant and fairly strong. Good for her for resigning her position instead of trying to hold on to it while not really believing in the organization.
A new game that you hop eyou never have to play - Gender Bias Bingo!, where we lay out all the things that work against women in the workplace (and one against men who step outside their traditional gender roles to be a stay-at-home father).
In Iowa, and around the country, there is disillusionment with President Obama, as the person they thought they elected turns out to be someone else. For some, this means an opportunity to attack the President while continuing to hammer Congress, for others, a chance to taunt the grassroots that turned out in force to elect him.
For those more nakedly opposed to the President, they'll focus on why they feel it's such a snub for the President to not attend an anniversary of the Berlin Wall's falling down and try to put it as more proof the President doesn't believe in the jingoistic rah-rah of Fredom and America: Fuck Yeah!
On the other side of the spectrum, Bay Buchanan says the Republican label is becoming irrelevant, and the GOP should tack both to becoming more ideologically pure and finding candidates who appeal to independents and conservative Democrats, while painting all their opponents with the "Obama brush" as being spend-and-spend fringe left liberals. Sounds like she wants to shed the moderates and become pure, while mysteriously being able to find candidates that do not appeal strictly to the fringe. Good luck on that. After all, even Markos himself will tell you that the way to get the base out to vote is to appeal to them, instead of trying to appeal to both the base and the people who don't like you. On that front, the National Republican Senate Committee took their ball and went home, declaring they would not spend money on primary elections, which could mean the fringe elements could make life difficult for other Republican candidates.
The Washington Examiner says that the White House is inflating their jobs created or saved numbers to look good, a trick the Examiner says they learned from unions, who also make nonexistent positions so they can fill their coffers with money.
On health care, the Republican radio address went back to the familiar well - inter-state competition, tort reform, access to large pools for small businesses, and let states do what thy can to make things better. Which will supposedly fix all the problems, because insurance companies, exempted from trust laws, will clearly compete with each other to drive prices down and services up with just those things. Mr. Sowell certainly thinks all we really need is tort reform and to stop practicing defensive medicine, and all will fix itself. Mr. Hunt goes for a better-seeming argument, that we could just get the 14 million too poor to be insured insured at the cost of half of what the House bill is, and that what the bill does is morally wrong as well as poor stewardship (because of abortions. Always abortions), so it should be opposed. He does assume, of course, that our current programs for the elderly and the young are sufficiently funded and effective for the first part. It does sound, though, like he wanted to write a column about how abortion is wrong and government options that would cover abortions are wrong, but wanted to cover it with something else.
Down near the bottom of the barrel, the AFA's director of issues is distraught that the Girl Scouts can't find a place to meet because there are too many sex offenders around, and so he suggests something more permanent be done to them. Because underage sex and public urination clearly require the same sorts of punishments as rape.
Last out, Columnist Dan Savage on why sexy costumes (for adults) for Halloween is a good thing. And then the decisions for parents when their children want to do things outside the gender stereotype - do you let him and possibly expose him to mockery, or do you tell him not to because of that fear? Luckily, this parent recognizes her child had made up his mind, and she decided to go with it.
In technology, an opinion suggesting the doomsday scenarios of corporate-contolled and blocked Internet will never come to pass, so we need no net neutrality laws or regulations, some rather doomsday scenarios about a secret treaty being negotiated that would remake the Internet into a media cabal's wet dream, kicking off alleged file-sharers, requiring stuff be taken down if copyright violation is alleged against it without proof, and forcing ISPs to actively police the content on their sites for potential copyright violations, research indicating culture, rather than genes, is a better predictor and indicator of altriusm, and a reminder that Bill Gates has been anticompetitive for a very long time now.
Last for tonight, foul moods make for clearer thinking and attention, giving up hope on your chronic condition might make you happier, and good moods are great for creativity. So we need both. Otherwise, we'll never come up with Pie Pops.
Oh, okay, one last thing. Carrie Prejean, according to TMZ, will not be continuing to sue the Miss California Pageant after their lawyer showed a homemade sex tape of Miss Prejean. I'm betting somewhere around here, the torrents already have it, and have been distributing it for months. Those wishing to confirm this for themselves, good luck.
LiveJournal, Wordpress, and other compatible blog service users can comment on DW posts utilizing their accounts through OpenID.
- Mood: happy
- Music:Dream theater - A Change of Seasons
Good morning, people who make us smile. Do you all have your happiness hats attached, and you're not feeling the digging of the spine into your heads? Good, let's begin. Err, after you turn your clock back, that is. And deal with your lead generation scams that never say you're going to pay out at the end of their "free" or in-game currency rewarded test.
The American Library Association and Safeway are teaming up to produce ceral boxes with infoblurbs about libraries on the back. So library usage for the healthy mind, breakfast cereal for the healthy body? I dunno, I think we should be on the backs of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs for maximum expsoure. Well, either that, or we should find the witches who are supposedly hexing all the Halloween candy and ask them to hex the people into coming in and getting a library card or something.
Pakistan suffers another car bombing, confirmed deaths are over 100. A question to those with better historical memory than I - until we were actively involved in regions like these, did we devote nearly as much ink and e-ink to the turmoils of the area?
Afghanistan's first runner up in the most recent elections has dropped out of the runoff in protest over perceived corruption in the upcoming vote.
A presentation to the United Nations suggests that the United States's practice of using unmanned aerial vehicles to attack targets may be in violation of international law against summary executions.
The standoff in Honduras comes to a close with a unity government that will operate until elections in January.
The United Kingdom's chief drug adviser is calling for a re-ranking of drugs, one that would make alcohol more dangerous that cannabis or E.
Finally, The United States will be lifting a travel ban on persons who have HIV/AIDS.
In domestic news, Hey, look! The economy went up! Won't be feeling that for a while, though. What we may be feeling, however, is increased pressure on corporations to stay honest and not look the other way on irregularities or generate irregularities in the first place.
Elsewhere in the economy, The White House also responded to criticism claiming the Cash for Clunkers Program cost the taxpayers $24,000 per car.
Also, The House health care reform bill is currently 1,990 pages. Question is, does it actually create reform? Or will it just cost significant amounts of money without achieving significant ends?
A Florida man is suing on religious discrimination grounds after he was dismissed from Home Depot for wearing a button that said "One Nation Under God", in violation of the company's policy that only corporate-approved buttons may be worn on employee uniforms. Probably why there is a policy like that - to make it very hard for someone to sue they were dismissed under protected grounds.
the Republican candidate for a special election for Congress has ragequit because far too many people were accusing her of not being conservative enough to be a Republican, highlighting just how much power the very conservative faction has in the party right now, and possibly sending a warning to the major parties that they might have to start competing for the people they thought were part of their base.
President Obama did something his predecessor did not - he made a trip to Dover Air Force Base to salute and observe the return of fallen soldiers on their way to their final resting place. For which at least one Cheney criticized him for politicizing the fallen. (And some of the comment squad there thinks it's a cheap photo-op.) The previous administration did meet privately with families of the war dead, however, so if he was trying to ignore the consequences of the war, he didn't completely succeed.
Care and treatment for H1N1 may be so expensive that even the insured run up against the lifetime maximum of their insurance plans, after which the bills continue to mount, without any insurance plan coverage and without any other insurance plan being willing to cover them for their pre-existing condition, no doubt. This makese the bill coming to the floors pretty important, and Mr. Krugman says we should go with what appears, even if it isn't the most perfect thing, and centrists still sitting the fence or even opposing it should take a hard look at why they oppose it and make sure they aren't opposing it for phantom reasons. As the matter is, so long as Americans continue to value destruction of life over prolonging it, health care reform will continue to be an uphill fight.
A Presidential appointment of ambassador to Spain is being held up by Senator Grassley over a tangentially-related matter regarding the firing of a watchdog. There are really two stories in here - one about the use of holding up an appointment to force the administration's hand on something else entirely, which smacks of dirty pool, and the continued references by the Times article to how much money the nominee gave to the Obama campaign, with the implications that this is a bad practice and should be stopped. It would be nice if Senator Grassley would either give a better reason for his hold than the nominee's support of the firing, and that the Times continues to keep its contribution-reward story in the article it wrote.
The Senate Republicans release a list of ten stimulus-funded projects they think are very silly, while ignoring all the serious and useful ones. Furthermore, some of those I can see as having very real scientific use, like the one looking for radioactive rabbit droppings. They'll tell you pretty easily about the levels of contamination in an area.
Finally, the President issued an executive order resotring many of the powers and oversight capabilities of the Intelligence Oversight Board, rolling back weakening changes the previous administrator made.
In the opinions, some interesting thoughts, via Mr. Gorbachev, from Mr. George H.W. Bush, calling the saint of Republicanism, Ronald Reagan, "extreme" and that he was supported by "blockheads". I guess we're seeing more now that the Republicans were a coalition of diverse people coming together than a singly unified idological group. Vanity Fair runs a piece "written" by Levi Johnston showcasing the dysfunction of the Pailn family, and especially the matriarch of that group.
Mr. Jenkins, Jr. starts off with the belief that the government is betting all it can that spending money left and right is what will bring us out of the recession, aligning his distate for both any sort of outrage that bankers are giving the free money they got to pay executive bonuses and for the helath care reform plan that is currently being debated, and suggesting things like raising the retirement age and instituting a flat tax are the things we need. The WSJ takes up the attack on health care, citing a recent WellPoint (an insurance company) study that modeled their own data and concluded (naturally) that insurance premiums would go way up under the Senate Finance bill, and then praise Joe Lieberman for his willingness to defect from the Democratic caucus in support of a filibuster.
Far further out on the fringe, Mr. Sowell offers his opinion that the President is setting out to become a dictator, through the usage of appointed, unelected "czars" that praise dictators, (whom, if it weren't for the Opposition Party Network, would still be stealthily achieving their agenda, unnoticed) the indoctrination of schoolchildren into doing assignments praising the president and into sexual practices that are contrary to the values of what "most" Americans think, and passing big, long bills quickly. (And, of course, all the people the President associated with earlier on in life. He's rewarding them, too.) Then there's the second part, where he accuses the President of making the same mistakes that let Hitler come to power, things like pleasing your enemies by angering your friends, and making America unreliable, the people of letting him do it without strenuous protest.
Last in opinions, Mr. Hawkins details his messages for "elite" Republicans, explaining to them that their base has gone away from them and they must become more teabagger-like if they wish to stay in office, with a focus on staying ideologically pure and parroting whatever it is their base throws at them, without checking first to see if it has brains to it. Then again, considering at 14% of a surveyed populace thought Fox News was mostly liberal, there may not be hope for certain segments of the conservative base.
In technologies, stem cells have been transformed into the precursors to sperm and egg cells, a camera can capture the action of a neuron firing, a computing interface that uses muscle movement in the hands and arms to create gestural interaction, attemtping to build glaciers to replace the ones melting, cultures with collectivist orientations tend away from depression, an iPhone app the purports to translate between spoken Spanish and English, and DARPA wants to test how well people use their networks to solve time-critical problems that are large-scope, by spotting red balloons scattered across the nation. In a two-week timeframe.
Last for tonight, a town-sized illusion of circles
Oh, and one other thing - video games have been doing a lot of pandering to an ubermacho stereotype lately...could we please not do that? There are a freaking boatload of gamers who are not male, and even more who think the idea of machismo and jerkishness is a quick trip to the banninator. After all, we have plenty of exampled of jerkishness, and when laid out and illustrated, they drive the point home even more than the text itself.
comments on Dreamwidth.
LiveJournal, Wordpress, and other compatible blog service users can comment on DW posts utilizing their accounts through OpenID.
The American Library Association and Safeway are teaming up to produce ceral boxes with infoblurbs about libraries on the back. So library usage for the healthy mind, breakfast cereal for the healthy body? I dunno, I think we should be on the backs of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs for maximum expsoure. Well, either that, or we should find the witches who are supposedly hexing all the Halloween candy and ask them to hex the people into coming in and getting a library card or something.
Pakistan suffers another car bombing, confirmed deaths are over 100. A question to those with better historical memory than I - until we were actively involved in regions like these, did we devote nearly as much ink and e-ink to the turmoils of the area?
Afghanistan's first runner up in the most recent elections has dropped out of the runoff in protest over perceived corruption in the upcoming vote.
A presentation to the United Nations suggests that the United States's practice of using unmanned aerial vehicles to attack targets may be in violation of international law against summary executions.
The standoff in Honduras comes to a close with a unity government that will operate until elections in January.
The United Kingdom's chief drug adviser is calling for a re-ranking of drugs, one that would make alcohol more dangerous that cannabis or E.
Finally, The United States will be lifting a travel ban on persons who have HIV/AIDS.
In domestic news, Hey, look! The economy went up! Won't be feeling that for a while, though. What we may be feeling, however, is increased pressure on corporations to stay honest and not look the other way on irregularities or generate irregularities in the first place.
Elsewhere in the economy, The White House also responded to criticism claiming the Cash for Clunkers Program cost the taxpayers $24,000 per car.
Also, The House health care reform bill is currently 1,990 pages. Question is, does it actually create reform? Or will it just cost significant amounts of money without achieving significant ends?
A Florida man is suing on religious discrimination grounds after he was dismissed from Home Depot for wearing a button that said "One Nation Under God", in violation of the company's policy that only corporate-approved buttons may be worn on employee uniforms. Probably why there is a policy like that - to make it very hard for someone to sue they were dismissed under protected grounds.
the Republican candidate for a special election for Congress has ragequit because far too many people were accusing her of not being conservative enough to be a Republican, highlighting just how much power the very conservative faction has in the party right now, and possibly sending a warning to the major parties that they might have to start competing for the people they thought were part of their base.
President Obama did something his predecessor did not - he made a trip to Dover Air Force Base to salute and observe the return of fallen soldiers on their way to their final resting place. For which at least one Cheney criticized him for politicizing the fallen. (And some of the comment squad there thinks it's a cheap photo-op.) The previous administration did meet privately with families of the war dead, however, so if he was trying to ignore the consequences of the war, he didn't completely succeed.
Care and treatment for H1N1 may be so expensive that even the insured run up against the lifetime maximum of their insurance plans, after which the bills continue to mount, without any insurance plan coverage and without any other insurance plan being willing to cover them for their pre-existing condition, no doubt. This makese the bill coming to the floors pretty important, and Mr. Krugman says we should go with what appears, even if it isn't the most perfect thing, and centrists still sitting the fence or even opposing it should take a hard look at why they oppose it and make sure they aren't opposing it for phantom reasons. As the matter is, so long as Americans continue to value destruction of life over prolonging it, health care reform will continue to be an uphill fight.
A Presidential appointment of ambassador to Spain is being held up by Senator Grassley over a tangentially-related matter regarding the firing of a watchdog. There are really two stories in here - one about the use of holding up an appointment to force the administration's hand on something else entirely, which smacks of dirty pool, and the continued references by the Times article to how much money the nominee gave to the Obama campaign, with the implications that this is a bad practice and should be stopped. It would be nice if Senator Grassley would either give a better reason for his hold than the nominee's support of the firing, and that the Times continues to keep its contribution-reward story in the article it wrote.
The Senate Republicans release a list of ten stimulus-funded projects they think are very silly, while ignoring all the serious and useful ones. Furthermore, some of those I can see as having very real scientific use, like the one looking for radioactive rabbit droppings. They'll tell you pretty easily about the levels of contamination in an area.
Finally, the President issued an executive order resotring many of the powers and oversight capabilities of the Intelligence Oversight Board, rolling back weakening changes the previous administrator made.
In the opinions, some interesting thoughts, via Mr. Gorbachev, from Mr. George H.W. Bush, calling the saint of Republicanism, Ronald Reagan, "extreme" and that he was supported by "blockheads". I guess we're seeing more now that the Republicans were a coalition of diverse people coming together than a singly unified idological group. Vanity Fair runs a piece "written" by Levi Johnston showcasing the dysfunction of the Pailn family, and especially the matriarch of that group.
Mr. Jenkins, Jr. starts off with the belief that the government is betting all it can that spending money left and right is what will bring us out of the recession, aligning his distate for both any sort of outrage that bankers are giving the free money they got to pay executive bonuses and for the helath care reform plan that is currently being debated, and suggesting things like raising the retirement age and instituting a flat tax are the things we need. The WSJ takes up the attack on health care, citing a recent WellPoint (an insurance company) study that modeled their own data and concluded (naturally) that insurance premiums would go way up under the Senate Finance bill, and then praise Joe Lieberman for his willingness to defect from the Democratic caucus in support of a filibuster.
Far further out on the fringe, Mr. Sowell offers his opinion that the President is setting out to become a dictator, through the usage of appointed, unelected "czars" that praise dictators, (whom, if it weren't for the Opposition Party Network, would still be stealthily achieving their agenda, unnoticed) the indoctrination of schoolchildren into doing assignments praising the president and into sexual practices that are contrary to the values of what "most" Americans think, and passing big, long bills quickly. (And, of course, all the people the President associated with earlier on in life. He's rewarding them, too.) Then there's the second part, where he accuses the President of making the same mistakes that let Hitler come to power, things like pleasing your enemies by angering your friends, and making America unreliable, the people of letting him do it without strenuous protest.
Last in opinions, Mr. Hawkins details his messages for "elite" Republicans, explaining to them that their base has gone away from them and they must become more teabagger-like if they wish to stay in office, with a focus on staying ideologically pure and parroting whatever it is their base throws at them, without checking first to see if it has brains to it. Then again, considering at 14% of a surveyed populace thought Fox News was mostly liberal, there may not be hope for certain segments of the conservative base.
In technologies, stem cells have been transformed into the precursors to sperm and egg cells, a camera can capture the action of a neuron firing, a computing interface that uses muscle movement in the hands and arms to create gestural interaction, attemtping to build glaciers to replace the ones melting, cultures with collectivist orientations tend away from depression, an iPhone app the purports to translate between spoken Spanish and English, and DARPA wants to test how well people use their networks to solve time-critical problems that are large-scope, by spotting red balloons scattered across the nation. In a two-week timeframe.
Last for tonight, a town-sized illusion of circles
Oh, and one other thing - video games have been doing a lot of pandering to an ubermacho stereotype lately...could we please not do that? There are a freaking boatload of gamers who are not male, and even more who think the idea of machismo and jerkishness is a quick trip to the banninator. After all, we have plenty of exampled of jerkishness, and when laid out and illustrated, they drive the point home even more than the text itself.
LiveJournal, Wordpress, and other compatible blog service users can comment on DW posts utilizing their accounts through OpenID.
- Mood:
cold - Music:Nobuo Uematsu - Into the Darkness
Up top, for those who have children or are interested in the effects marketing has on those who do have children, The Walt Disney Company, who purchased the makers of the Baby Einstein series of videos, are offering refunds for up to four DVDs purchased as part of a settlement for a lawsuit alleging the DVDs did not increase intelligence in babies, as was claimed.
Instead, why not use something like The University of Utah's sliding scale of common objects all the way down to an atom of carbon.
Out in the world today, a Saudi journalist was sentenced to sixty lashes for her part in an episode of a program detailing boasts and frank talk about the sex lives of people in the country. We have great allies, don't we?
Not that the Middle east is the only place where such things happen. In Kenya, a priest blamed the marriage of two homosexual men in London as a failure of women to do their jobs to seduce and capture men for procreation.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed his doubts about the United States' reliability as an ally, over several issues including the kerfuffle about the election fraud</a>. On the United States side of the conflict, some of the members of the military there hope the United States stays on until they feel confident their mission is accomplished. (The article would like you to believe all the troops there want to stay until the mission is finished, but I doubt all of them believe that in their own heads.)
United Nations nuclear inspectors took a tour of the latest "secret" facility in Iran.
The United Nations is scaling back expectations of a climate change treaty, based upon the recalcitrance of several nations toward carbon reductions. For the reasons of refusal from several nations, Investor's Business Daily says the Untied States should refuse, too, so as to not waste money on what they consider to be a sham. Others have more dire warnings about such a treaty, claiming that it will establish a world government that the United States will cede control of itself to, which is a bit on the dire (and tin foil hat) side. Straddling somewhere in the middle is Mr. Stephens, who reviews a book and gives praise to people who think there might be a simple solution to the problem, if you are stupid enough to believe there is one, in his opinion.
Last for this section, the Scientologists took a big fine in France, but the court stopped short of banning them from the country altogether. Of course, since Scientology is rapidly being replaced by Fictionology, soon this will no longer be a problem.
On the domestic side of things, the government's response and distribution of H1N1 vaccinations may be used as a precursor to how the government would run all of health care, for good or for ill, depending on how it turns out. On the writing of bills, critics of the current process say there have been too many closed-door meetings and not enough transparency, including a lot of the promises made by candidate Obama. Now, some of that may be kvetching from a party that seems determined to oppose whatever happens at all costs and is looking for more hooks to display more "secret plots" or other material, but more transparency is good as a general statement.
While we still ahve the don't ask, don't tell policy, the President did sign the Matthew Shepard Act into law, adding gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability onto the list of bias crimes. Good for him, but there's still better to be done.
According to the Senate majority leader, the Senate bill going to the floor will have a public option in it, although it may be an option that states can then choose to opt out of.
The latest possible objection to the health care bills - Does the government have the constitutional authority to require everyone purchase a product or service? Well, we do require insurance to be carried on automobiles and houses, should we decide to purchase them, so one could extend that logic out to requiring someone keep their bodies in good order, since they own them.
There will be a subpoenaing of documents related to the Countrywide financial scandal, including Congresscritters, which the WSJ finds a good thing, but we all should be happy with if the investigation is thorough and spares no person from the eye or the full force of justice if they're found to have engaged in inappropriate action.
The Washington Times believes top donors to the Obama campaign are being rewarded with special sneak peeks and sessions inside the White House, including using the theater and the bowling alley. In response, The White house said most of the people being rewarded has other affiliations with the White House than being donors, many of which were longer-lasting than the contributions.
An investigation is ongoing into the issuance of tickets to non English-speaking drivers, for which the chief of police in Dallas says a federal law requiring commercial drivers to speak English was misapplied.
And last out, the previous administrator has signed on to be a speaker at a series of motivational speaking seminars...which have, in between their star speakers, several high-pressure sales attempts to get people to buy other things they will probably not need, according to the Rachel Maddow show.
In the opinions, Mr. Brooks gives his reasons for the increased opposition to health care reform in polls - it strips choice from the people and gives it to the government (a government already doing too much, they say), makes our innovators and medical professionals less important, so they won't work as hard to develop new drugs and heal people and Americans are people who believe the poor should suffer for being poor, err, people should take responsibility for their actions (as opposed to all those freeloaders who will wait until they are sick to get insurance). As an aside, that poll question referenced? The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department would like a word, possibly on the end of a cluebat, with the question framers about how to avoid bias.
Mr. McGurn fires scattershot at the Obama presidency and its supporters, claiming all they do is blame Mr. Bush for their problems, instead of taking responsibility, but misses at every turn. Statements made by White House staffers and the President are either given hidden meanings or Mr. McGurn believes they are not the truth, despite, for example, the previous administration being significantly hostile to science and stem cell research. Politico aims to turn the tables and ask "What if Bush had done that?" as a way of chastising the media for being clearly in favor of Mr. Obama. Finally, Mr. Phillips says the liberals are the jackbooted thugs seeking to squash all dissent from their views, while conservatives are trying to be civil and play by the rules. Has Mr. Phillips been looking at the teabaggers and others of that ilk? They're certainly not playing civil, and they consider themselves more conservative than conservatives. The spectrum is always in place. If you want to accuse the White House of being further on the left than others, go ahead. But don't try to generalize it outward to say "All liberals are this."
Ms. Zito brandishes poll data saying the populace is not happy with their government, regardless of their political affiliation. True enough. Question now is whether or not that means the election of real change agents, or merely flipping the coin back over to another side.
Mr. Shinn says that the United States needs to committ to the long term in Afghanistan, because insurgent groups will do their best to simply wait out their opponents.
The editors of the WSJ say that the United States should attempt to influence more trade agreements in East Asia, so as to stop China from becoming the power there that dictates trade.
The WSJ is after TARP and hopes that it is closed down as swiftly as possible, because it has become an all-purpose bailout fund, instead of the limited thing it was supposed to be.
Tonight's technology: the first wind turbine ever, in 1941, 15 minutes of sensory deprivation is all you need to induce hallucinations, because the brain abhors a vacuum of stimuli, finding pathways to attack to reverse the cognitive impairment caused b sleep deprivation, meaning college students will be testing those out as much as possible during finals week, circumin found in turmeric may be deadly to cancer cells, so get a taste for some spice to toast your tumors, and an augmented reality system that lets people see as if a wall wasn't there.
Last for tonight, the esteemed Will English IV tells us how Dance Dance Revolution helped him get fit and keep his asthma in check. That, and one unfortunate juxtaposition thanks to the CNN website redesign.
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Instead, why not use something like The University of Utah's sliding scale of common objects all the way down to an atom of carbon.
Out in the world today, a Saudi journalist was sentenced to sixty lashes for her part in an episode of a program detailing boasts and frank talk about the sex lives of people in the country. We have great allies, don't we?
Not that the Middle east is the only place where such things happen. In Kenya, a priest blamed the marriage of two homosexual men in London as a failure of women to do their jobs to seduce and capture men for procreation.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed his doubts about the United States' reliability as an ally, over several issues including the kerfuffle about the election fraud</a>. On the United States side of the conflict, some of the members of the military there hope the United States stays on until they feel confident their mission is accomplished. (The article would like you to believe all the troops there want to stay until the mission is finished, but I doubt all of them believe that in their own heads.)
United Nations nuclear inspectors took a tour of the latest "secret" facility in Iran.
The United Nations is scaling back expectations of a climate change treaty, based upon the recalcitrance of several nations toward carbon reductions. For the reasons of refusal from several nations, Investor's Business Daily says the Untied States should refuse, too, so as to not waste money on what they consider to be a sham. Others have more dire warnings about such a treaty, claiming that it will establish a world government that the United States will cede control of itself to, which is a bit on the dire (and tin foil hat) side. Straddling somewhere in the middle is Mr. Stephens, who reviews a book and gives praise to people who think there might be a simple solution to the problem, if you are stupid enough to believe there is one, in his opinion.
Last for this section, the Scientologists took a big fine in France, but the court stopped short of banning them from the country altogether. Of course, since Scientology is rapidly being replaced by Fictionology, soon this will no longer be a problem.
On the domestic side of things, the government's response and distribution of H1N1 vaccinations may be used as a precursor to how the government would run all of health care, for good or for ill, depending on how it turns out. On the writing of bills, critics of the current process say there have been too many closed-door meetings and not enough transparency, including a lot of the promises made by candidate Obama. Now, some of that may be kvetching from a party that seems determined to oppose whatever happens at all costs and is looking for more hooks to display more "secret plots" or other material, but more transparency is good as a general statement.
While we still ahve the don't ask, don't tell policy, the President did sign the Matthew Shepard Act into law, adding gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability onto the list of bias crimes. Good for him, but there's still better to be done.
According to the Senate majority leader, the Senate bill going to the floor will have a public option in it, although it may be an option that states can then choose to opt out of.
The latest possible objection to the health care bills - Does the government have the constitutional authority to require everyone purchase a product or service? Well, we do require insurance to be carried on automobiles and houses, should we decide to purchase them, so one could extend that logic out to requiring someone keep their bodies in good order, since they own them.
There will be a subpoenaing of documents related to the Countrywide financial scandal, including Congresscritters, which the WSJ finds a good thing, but we all should be happy with if the investigation is thorough and spares no person from the eye or the full force of justice if they're found to have engaged in inappropriate action.
The Washington Times believes top donors to the Obama campaign are being rewarded with special sneak peeks and sessions inside the White House, including using the theater and the bowling alley. In response, The White house said most of the people being rewarded has other affiliations with the White House than being donors, many of which were longer-lasting than the contributions.
An investigation is ongoing into the issuance of tickets to non English-speaking drivers, for which the chief of police in Dallas says a federal law requiring commercial drivers to speak English was misapplied.
And last out, the previous administrator has signed on to be a speaker at a series of motivational speaking seminars...which have, in between their star speakers, several high-pressure sales attempts to get people to buy other things they will probably not need, according to the Rachel Maddow show.
In the opinions, Mr. Brooks gives his reasons for the increased opposition to health care reform in polls - it strips choice from the people and gives it to the government (a government already doing too much, they say), makes our innovators and medical professionals less important, so they won't work as hard to develop new drugs and heal people and Americans are people who believe the poor should suffer for being poor, err, people should take responsibility for their actions (as opposed to all those freeloaders who will wait until they are sick to get insurance). As an aside, that poll question referenced? The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Department would like a word, possibly on the end of a cluebat, with the question framers about how to avoid bias.
Mr. McGurn fires scattershot at the Obama presidency and its supporters, claiming all they do is blame Mr. Bush for their problems, instead of taking responsibility, but misses at every turn. Statements made by White House staffers and the President are either given hidden meanings or Mr. McGurn believes they are not the truth, despite, for example, the previous administration being significantly hostile to science and stem cell research. Politico aims to turn the tables and ask "What if Bush had done that?" as a way of chastising the media for being clearly in favor of Mr. Obama. Finally, Mr. Phillips says the liberals are the jackbooted thugs seeking to squash all dissent from their views, while conservatives are trying to be civil and play by the rules. Has Mr. Phillips been looking at the teabaggers and others of that ilk? They're certainly not playing civil, and they consider themselves more conservative than conservatives. The spectrum is always in place. If you want to accuse the White House of being further on the left than others, go ahead. But don't try to generalize it outward to say "All liberals are this."
Ms. Zito brandishes poll data saying the populace is not happy with their government, regardless of their political affiliation. True enough. Question now is whether or not that means the election of real change agents, or merely flipping the coin back over to another side.
Mr. Shinn says that the United States needs to committ to the long term in Afghanistan, because insurgent groups will do their best to simply wait out their opponents.
The editors of the WSJ say that the United States should attempt to influence more trade agreements in East Asia, so as to stop China from becoming the power there that dictates trade.
The WSJ is after TARP and hopes that it is closed down as swiftly as possible, because it has become an all-purpose bailout fund, instead of the limited thing it was supposed to be.
Tonight's technology: the first wind turbine ever, in 1941, 15 minutes of sensory deprivation is all you need to induce hallucinations, because the brain abhors a vacuum of stimuli, finding pathways to attack to reverse the cognitive impairment caused b sleep deprivation, meaning college students will be testing those out as much as possible during finals week, circumin found in turmeric may be deadly to cancer cells, so get a taste for some spice to toast your tumors, and an augmented reality system that lets people see as if a wall wasn't there.
Last for tonight, the esteemed Will English IV tells us how Dance Dance Revolution helped him get fit and keep his asthma in check. That, and one unfortunate juxtaposition thanks to the CNN website redesign.
LiveJournal, Wordpress, and other compatible blog service users can comment on DW posts utilizing their accounts through OpenID.
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Page Summary
- silveradept : Back into normality - 9 November 2009 [+0]
- silveradept : And there was weekend - 5-8 November 2009 [+0]
- silveradept : Post-election aftermath - 3-4 November 2009 [+0]
- silveradept : It's all in new timeframes - 29 October-1 November, 2009 [+2]
- silveradept : Two days together in the media - 27-28 October 2009 [+2]
