Once more into the breach, d00ds! - 16 July 2008

There was a rather long exhibition game last night, and the American League won in fifteen innings, on a sacrifice fly and a close play at the plate, after having had a similar play at the plate go the NL’s way because of an awesome arm in center field.

So, let’s get to the other news stuff. We’ll start up top with some items that are being singled out for derision, scorn, mockery, and vitriol. Doing conservative bidding, even though it’s actually for a song, a Florida billboard proudly proclaims "Please don't Vote for a Democrat" while using the burning WTC buildings as the backdrop. Yep, it’s for a song, but I’m sure the GOP campaign would run something like that if they felt they could get away with it. They’re trying hard as it is to paint the Democratic candidate as unfit for national security and inviting another terror attack on the United States. I think the public backlash would be big enough against the party, though, that they dont’ want to officially try something like that. But now that someone else has, they’ll probably be able to talk about it on media outlets and other places without too much fear.

Also getting the “ARGH!” treatment, an item that’s already seen a lot of play across the Unabashed Feminism department, The United States Department of Health and Human Services has a draft memo proposing the idea that conception begins at...somewhere, making it possible for anti-choice advocates to press their claim that hormonal birth control is an abortifacent, which then potentially permits persons guided by their “conscience” to deny a woman contraception, both pre- and post-sex, because she can’t prove she’s not pregnant, if she’s been having sex, and/or because they believe that birth control causes abortions (by killing the fertilized egg or preventing it from implanting), something their “conscience” can’t allow them to participate in. It’s a potentially new and dangerous precedent and lays groundwork for basically overturning the Roe decision without an actual court challenge, all based on whether the conscience of the dispensary or the doctor will allow for birth control and abortions. Jezebel rips the Department a new rectal orifice, keeping to broadcast standard, but nammah_darling provides a more personal touch and perspective, including great indignation that the proposal is designed to counter progressive state decisions that require contraception be distributed to rape victims and such. Before totally setting the buttons to “nuke ‘em all“, there is the chance that this will be outrage over nothing. It depends on leaked documents, which may be dismissesd or otherwise told to go to hell, where they belong. cr0wgrrl has produced a concise link sequence for further information, including a Planned Parenthood campaign to garner lots of letters opposing the potential regulation.

Going multi-country-like, the government of Belgium dissolved over more independence for speakers of other languages. Possibly to the point where the country itself may fracture, if the article is to be believed. Anyone nearby that can give us more information?

Some narrative juxtaposition, which could help certain campaigns. Iraq is getting better, including the restarting of religious pilgrimages and visits from foreign dignitaries, but
Afghanistan is getting worse, including an Olympic track athlete from the country vanishing, although it’s not known under what circumstances she’s vanished. And we're sending people to listen to Iran, but not to negotiate, so there’s tension there, too. And CNS wants us to remember that there's a religious discrimination resolution being looked at in the UN which they think will be used as a way to silence people from legitimately criticizing extremist religious beliefs, or as a way of shielding laws that kill or seriously maim members of other religions or those who wish to convert away.

Domestically, Mr. Bush nixed the executive order ban on offshore drilling, challenging the Congress to nix the legislative ban. For Liberal Seagull, even if Congress goes along, it's a pipe dream to believe gas prices will come down because of it and that we should be looking into long-term clean solutions, instead of short-term dirty ones. The Wall Street Journal believes that the Congress won't even hold hearing on the matter, and Alan Caruba beleives the desire to switch over to wind power is stupid, because, doggone it, we need price relief now and there’s all that oil right there, and even just saying we’ll tap it means prices will go down, and wind power only works when its windy, and it doesn’t provide lots of energy, so we shouldn’t invest in making much more of it to increase the percentage of power it provides, because it’s too expensive and won’t help our oil problems at all. CNS quotes an unnamed source that Congress is looking into plans to relieve energy prices, with the idea of developing plans for short and long terms.

Mr. Bush also did his best to reassure Americans that the economy is doing well, despite the current difficulties, emphasising the FDIC guarantee of each person’s deposits. So we shouldn’t panic if it looks like our banks and mortgage companies are going under, or are invoking the evil clauses of our mortgages, really. Our deposits are insured.

Arlen Specter and Joe Liberman will introduce a bill to protect American authors from being forced to pay libel damages in other countries if the material is protected and non-liberlous in America, trying to stem the idea of suing American authors in English courts when they write about subjects like terror financing.

Candidate-wise, Senator Obama's candidacy hasn't changed much in race relations, according to an NYT/CBS poll. Surprise...? Whites view the black candidate unfavorably, blacks view the white candidate unfavorably, and whites, speaking from the position of privilege, think race relations are good. But that things won’t improve if we have a President Obama. Those statistics and percentages give us a bit of a contradiction, don’t they? Think relations are good, but don’t like the minority candidate and don’t think things will improve if he’s elected. We’re hoping that’s because of actual policy differences and not, like, racism or anything.

The New Yorker runs the piece on Senator Obama's years from Chicago to the current Presidential run, hoping to show what politics forged the Senator into the person he is today. This was the article what went with the cover mentioned yesterday, and for which The American Thinker believes Senator Obama has very thin skin about, because, well, look at all the stuff that conservatives have to deal with as a satire, because cargo planes filled with coffins marked as ”Bush-Cheney Industries“ and pictures of the two captioned ”liars“ are obviously satiricial. Wait, no, those are true, sorry. The devil horns and comparisons to Naziism and genocide are probably a bit over the top, but they’re rooted in facts, not in propoganda or hearsay about someone’s religious affiliations and rumored ”support“ or terrorists. Jon Stewart suggests that the Obama camp get over it, because it's a cartoon and there are more important things to talk about. Which would be an excellent idea, if the American populace would take that tack and leave it by the wayside. But I don’t think they will, and I doubt conservatives will let such a sterling picture go by without harping on it.

In the opinion columns, P! tells us that to hope is foolish, especially when one hopes in political candidates, and the smarter money is on realizing what’s coming down the pipe and helping each other prepare for it, including attacks on Iran, the further erosion of liberties, and the continued financial difficulties getting worse.

John Bolton calls for Israel to sabotage Iran's nuclear capability and the United States to follow it up with regime change, before Iran delivers on making nuclear weapons, and so that a government that won’t be nuclear-inclined will take power in the area. Not to put a schoolyard taunt on it, but you and what army, Mr. Bolton?

The WSJ thinks that taking N. Korea off the list of state-sponsored terror is a bad idea, because of the reluctance they show in letting South Korea investigate whether a killed tourist really did wander into a restricted military zone.

In science and technology, you know things are bad at NASA when the director says that China could beat NASA back to the Moon, with their many successes in manned spaceflight. Additionally, stressing out lots ages the immune system, according to UCLA scientists. There’s also an umbrella that works as a self-defense tool and long-life, low-voltage flash drives/chips.

The best of the crop, however, involves University of Texas' pathologists believing they've found a weak spot in the armor of HIV by finding a part of the virus that is unchanging, and then using antibodies produced by lupus sufferers to attack this unchanging point. Human trials are to follow. If this could reverse or prevent infection and kill off one of the most dangerous vituses of our time, I think there would be dancing in the streets.

For keeping us all in order and on top of things, The Happiness Project offers eight realistic tips to improve productivity, which can be tailored in their execution to your personal needs.

And last for tonight, that "in the library" smell - a house spray and perfume attempting to capture the essence of old books. If you’ve got that, then you could show it off to people who are looking for a cheap place to crash, aka CouchSurfing. There’s also Running for office, in XKCD-style, and a story of ducks finding their way to water... with a little help. D’awww.

Quickzoom and gone. - 17 July 2008

Happy Birthday to J. Michael Straczynski, creator and writer of both Babylon 5 and the Spider-Man arc that led to the current retcon. Hey, they’re not all going to be winners, JMS. Happy Birthday anyway. Londo/G’Kar ‘08? I would think Vir/G’Kar would be a better ticket.

Internationally, there could be some fallout from the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt, as it appears there was misuse of the symbol of the International Red Cross, jeopardizing the neutrality of the symbol and potentially invoking a war crimes prosecution.

The revolving troop door continues - out of Iraq, into Afghanistan, rather than, say, back home for a rest or anything like that.

Canada has said they will let the tribunal of Guantanamo play out for Omar Khadr, claiming that the videos that were gracing the pages of the newspapers were already known to the government and they decided to let the trial proceed, anyway. Although, if it continues to go as well as the trials of some 9/11 hijackers, where important documents and motions aren't delivered or translated into a readable language, the Canadian government may want to reconsider. For the trials, even giving assistance to the feds after the fact may not lessen the penalties sought.

The Pope's message of apology for victims of priest abuse was sabotaged by a bishop's remarks on the matter, calling it “dwelling crankily, as a few people are doing, on old wounds”. The victims of such abuse would beg to differ. Apparently, however, the bishop "mis-spoke", apparently deciding that it's the media's fault for dwelling on the matter, and that the victims have heartfelt compassion and sympathy for what happened from the bishop and the higher-ups in the church. Additionally, it’s now not known completely whether the pontiff will actually unreservedly apologize for the matter, if the signals from his office are to be believed over the person himself. In that sense, the giant CF that priest abuse is/was... continues.

In domestic news, the President currently has the authority to detain American citizens in military institutions indefinitely, with the Fourth Circuit backing the idea that the President can disregard the goddamn piece of paper, declare someone an enemy combatant, and hold them indefinitely without charge or trial. In addition to reading some of Little Brother, I’m remembering that old panic about whether or not the current administration would actually give up power.

In other domestic-sphere stuff, a forgivable mistake, namely a car window was broken trying revive an unconscious baby... doll. The doll, however, is lifelike enough that it can be mistaken for a real baby. The creator of the dolls has warned her customers not to go out without holding the dolls like real babies. Whoops. Seems better justified here to err on the side of caution and lifesaving.

PZ Meyers has another update on the Christ on a Cracker situation - A wife was fired from her job because she used her work email to send death threats... except it wasn't her, it was her husband. Oh, those wacky, wacky people. Even better, the husband admitted to sending the mail from his account, and then got mad at PZ and all the people who complained about the death threat to the wife's employer, rather than, say, owning up that he screwed up and got his wife fired, and that this whole thing is his doing and his fault?

Furthermore, although this should be a truism and something that people know by now, you don’t f**k around with the librarians - they will stomp mudholes in your censorship arguments. Exhibit A: Library Board members in Batavia voted 4-2 to move a Planned Parenthood site from Young Adult to Web Reference collection. The two dissenting votes were because they thought the website should stay on the Young Adult page. So really, the library board voted 6-0 to keep the link to the Planned Parenthood site. The request for reconsideration was from people who wanted the library to stop linking to the PP site altogether. Exhibit B: A thoughtfully-crafted, well-written, and very articulate letter from a library director, Jamie LaRue, to a parent objecting to a children's book because it portrayed a homosexual marriage as normal. Masterfully weaving in the library’s commitment to intellectual freedom, the intended purpose of a collection to have quills and thorns and pokey bits and lost of viewpoints, while continuing to respect and praise the person challenging as a human being and parent fostering the love of reading and trying to teach values to their children (regardless of whether we agree with those values), LaRue’s letter is a great example of how libraries operate. Would that we could be that articulate in front-line conversations with angry parents.

Unabashed Feminism comes through in the clutch, to add more potential misery in the news section, with the sobering reality that there is no such thing as domestic violence in Russia, and it shows. When did the news get so depressing, again?

Beware the opinion columns, where Chris Floyd sees the rise of Fascists and allied "opposition" parties in most Western democracies, spearheaded in Italy, but spreading cancerously all across the West. For more opinions about how Democrats still have lots of members who look more and more like wolves in liberal clothing, American Samizdat runs an ad for Regina Thomas, who was stomped 3-to-1 in an election, but represents the actual liberal that AS wants Democrats to be, Musings & Migraines thinks we're seeing Obama's true positions, linking to Adloph Reed, Jr.'s depiction of the Senator as no real friend of liberals or minorities, even as he says that Obama should be voted for and elected, if one believes that a President Obama will stop the avowed thugs from doing more explicit damage, and Maureen Dowd worries that the Senator will be perceived as lacking humor, a position for which Liberal Eagle says, "Um, we want a candidate who takes himself seriously". The election is serious business, considering. There will be plenty of opportunities to mock and make fun of the Senator, especially if he does win the election. Taking the candidate seriously (in a good way), Dan Senor gives a list of people to meet when Senator Obama goes to Iraq, all people that Senor hopes will impress upon the Senator the need to continue the current strategy and the wisdom of the current administrator.

Cal Thomas finds it unacceptable that a Saudi-funded school in Virginia would have anti-American material in it, through the dubious comparison that no Christian or Jewish school would be permitted to exist in Saudi Arabia. Which either makes us a great nation because we’re willing to let minority religion schools operate, and in fact are expressly forbidden by the Constitution from interfering in them in most circumstances, or a horrible nation, as Cal would have it, for letting such schools exist in the first place and train people that will inevitably turn around and bomb us.

Ken Blackwell would have you believe liberals everywhere are assaulting religion and morals, free speech (through the reintroduction of a Fairness Doctrine), and the foundations of America, because liberals want people with same-sex orientations not to be singled out for discrimination in who they choose to legally partner with and believe they will make massive gains in airtime if both sides are represented equally everywhere. Well, media bias can go either way, depending on what you choose to define as the media and what they’re talking about on any given day. The bit about getting homosexuals to enjoy the same contract rights as heterosexuals, that should be a no-brainer for a government that claims not to discriminate based on religious belief in matters of law. Rebecca Hagelin and the Heritage Foundation want you to believe government spending will only get worse, because of pesky entitlements, and not at all because of a runaway war cost that continues to be financed in deficit spending outside of the federal budget or bailing out failing institutions, or high prices of goods, all of which would go down, the Wall Street Journal insists, if the government would abandon its current path and return back toward Reaganomics.

Anyway, Kristen Fyfe contends that there is war going on in the minds and hearts of teenagers, because they live in a society that media-saturates them, glorifies sex and violence, and leads to all these awful statistics happening, like teenagers getting pregnant (which more contraceptives and education about could probably quell), or getting high (the marijuana probably isn’t important, the meth very well could be), and aren’t getting enough exercise, because we’re all sitting down and watching TV/playing video games/engaging in media that glorifies violence and bad behavior and assaults our traditional values. This sounds awfully damn familiar, but I can’t quite... oh, yes, it’s the same things that have been said for decades and generations of children. We’re still turning out fine for the most part, and could use some help in catching and assisting those that are falling through the cracks and need more help than most, thanks. It was TV first, and R-rated movies, and now it’s video games on the violence front, and there was “Cartoon All-Stars” and other such things to convince us not to take drugs, and there’s still the “abstinence (good!) or preganancy and all the STDs/HIV you can get because you had sex, no matter what protection method you used (Baaaad.)” joke of sex ed. Been there, done that, could use some progress instead of regression, thanks. And you're no help, either, Benedict XVI, although kudos on the environmental message.

Last out of this column, Victor Davis Hanson wants the country to return to being a manufacturing and hardworking giant, eschewing lawyers, managers, politicians, and feel-good schooling in favor of manufacturing, tilling soil, and jobs that make America into a goods-producing machine, grown from schools that teach knowledge rather than self-help. And hopefully smart enough to take Paul Wyerich's claims that Osama bin Laden has smuggled suitcase nukes into America and is ready to detonate them across the country if America attacks Iran with the right grains of salt needed.

In sci-tech, Time interviews moot, the founder of 4chan. Congratulations, you’ve made it big. And the Anonymous Hordes just keep on rickrolling. There’s also the possibility of floating colonies on Venus, bubbles of Earth air with cities inside, that can study the place and live on it. Assuming we can find a material that resists corrosion in the Venusian atmosphere.

Last for tonight, the Parable of Steve, or Discordians are not just Strife and Nonsense. Some of them scientifically analyze tanuki droppings while also being ceremonial figureheads. Not that we know the Emperor is a Discordian, but it seemed like the right kind of thing for one to do.