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In the international sphere, the outgoing Israeli Prime Minister made remarks that Israel must be willing to give up East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights if peace between Israel, Palestine, and Syria is to be achieved. As the lame duck, I suspect he can now say things closer to his truer beliefs, rather than having to toe the party line.
Having been aggressive about getting American troops out of Iraq, the Iraqi Prime Minister is now reportedly considering a security pact to keep U.S. troops in the country past the expiry of their United Nations mandate. Apparently, things are still sufficiently bad that doctors are soon to be permitted to carry weapons in self-defense.
And look! A new video attributed to al-Qaeda about Pakistan, which is awfully convenient. And some nuttery about the way the President of Pakistan treated a Vice-Presidential candidate.
The President of Afghanistan is asking the King of Saudi Arabia to mediate his talks with the Taliban, figuring most likely that the King's weight and Saudi Arabia's status as a Muslim heavyweight will bring people to the table. The President of Afghanistan also thanked the American people for financing the operations going on in his country over the last seven years.
A bomb threat sparked a stampede from an Indian temple that killed 168 and wounded at least 100 more, which is a result that would no doubt be quite pleasing to someone wanting to inflict more terror in the densely packed country. This is why you don't yell "Fire!" in a crowded room.
Domestically, the police in Dayton are not calling the spraying of an irritant that cause the evacuation of a mosque a hate crime, because they find no motivation that the people who did it were acting out of bias. For context, a DVD and several advertisements for a movie titled "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" had arrived in area homes and newspapers recently. So, if the police determine a crime to have happened, they'd then have to determine if it was motivated by hate of Islam. Could be a slow process. On the positive side, if there is such a thing, at least it was only an irritant spray that cleared out. It could have easily been someone with explosives or combustible liquids.
Thirty-three pastors decide to flaunt the IRS rules on tax-exempt status by preaching sermons that endorse particular candidates, daring the IRS to pull their exemptions so that the IRS can be sued by the Alliance Defense Fund and hopefully find a sympathetic tribunal somewhere that will say, "Oh, sure, that provision about free exercise of religion really means that the pastor can endorse anybody he wants and threaten the spiritual health of anyone who votes for the unapproved candidate." Even worse, for at least one of the pastors, this was nothing more than cynical manipulation and hypocrisy.
Of course, even with eyes on the economy's meltdown, billions-to-a-trillion dollars are being passed as "defense"appropriations to maintain our current troop levels, homeland insecurity, and other such wonderful things. Of which fractions of the amounts being spent could theoretically pay for more valuable services for years. Some of that defense spending should be diverted to the cyberwar divisions, according to the House cybersecurity chairman, who believes that our protections are pretty weak.
A new wrinkle for abortions in Indiana - several counties are considering requiring doctors who perform the proecdure have admitting privileges at local hospitals, which could severely hurt clinics' abilities to provide, because the doctors in those do not often have those privileges. If you can't make it illegal, make it impossible, I guess.
PETA's "stupid, stupid rat creatures" department has a doozie - advertisements promoting a discredited hypothesis that milk and autism are linked to each other. Which makes people who actually are vegetarian and/or interested in animal health and safety simply headdesk more.
In the opinions, Alan Caruba blames environmentalists and the Democratic Party for stopping the American populace from accessing cheap energy because they block more drilling and refining, preferring to discount the possibilities of clean energy by saying that it won't generate enough energy right now and won't stop the dependence on foreign oil that we have now, and those evul Democrats and their environmental allies just want to stop us from having all the cheap energy that we can drill for.
Brett Stephens decides it's his duty to offer the VP debate moderators questions designed to cast Seantor Biden in a bad light, based on his votes and experience,
The WSJ continues to blame both sides for the defeat of the Paulson-Bush bailout, Robert Morgenthau feels too much capital has escaped to foreign shores where the United States government can't capture or tax it, there was the posibility of making it so banks didn't need reserves in their vaults as of October 1, there's talk of how Europe is suffering as well, and things have apparently gotten bad enough that Judy Shelton's idea that we should return to a metal-based money standard makes it into he WSJ's opinion pages.
Somewhat more meta than that, the suggestion that truth no longer matters in reality and those who can manipulate the consensus of the masses are the people who will succeed in the new world. The media is the message, the media is the message, and those who control the media control the messages.
In the departments devoted to science, solar cells that are 40% efficient, a new record, taking the principles behind light-bending "invisibility cloaks" and applying them to bending tsunami waves around populated areas, which would be quite the trick, especially if it could also be applied to bend high-force wind around those populated areas and shuffle them up certain coridors where they won't hurt anything. Hurricane coming? No problem, we'll just shunt it away. And, another highly-improbable way the LHC could end the world.
Last for tonight, a pretty woman and a beautiful cat, because we need a good positive note to end on.
Having been aggressive about getting American troops out of Iraq, the Iraqi Prime Minister is now reportedly considering a security pact to keep U.S. troops in the country past the expiry of their United Nations mandate. Apparently, things are still sufficiently bad that doctors are soon to be permitted to carry weapons in self-defense.
And look! A new video attributed to al-Qaeda about Pakistan, which is awfully convenient. And some nuttery about the way the President of Pakistan treated a Vice-Presidential candidate.
The President of Afghanistan is asking the King of Saudi Arabia to mediate his talks with the Taliban, figuring most likely that the King's weight and Saudi Arabia's status as a Muslim heavyweight will bring people to the table. The President of Afghanistan also thanked the American people for financing the operations going on in his country over the last seven years.
A bomb threat sparked a stampede from an Indian temple that killed 168 and wounded at least 100 more, which is a result that would no doubt be quite pleasing to someone wanting to inflict more terror in the densely packed country. This is why you don't yell "Fire!" in a crowded room.
Domestically, the police in Dayton are not calling the spraying of an irritant that cause the evacuation of a mosque a hate crime, because they find no motivation that the people who did it were acting out of bias. For context, a DVD and several advertisements for a movie titled "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" had arrived in area homes and newspapers recently. So, if the police determine a crime to have happened, they'd then have to determine if it was motivated by hate of Islam. Could be a slow process. On the positive side, if there is such a thing, at least it was only an irritant spray that cleared out. It could have easily been someone with explosives or combustible liquids.
Thirty-three pastors decide to flaunt the IRS rules on tax-exempt status by preaching sermons that endorse particular candidates, daring the IRS to pull their exemptions so that the IRS can be sued by the Alliance Defense Fund and hopefully find a sympathetic tribunal somewhere that will say, "Oh, sure, that provision about free exercise of religion really means that the pastor can endorse anybody he wants and threaten the spiritual health of anyone who votes for the unapproved candidate." Even worse, for at least one of the pastors, this was nothing more than cynical manipulation and hypocrisy.
Of course, even with eyes on the economy's meltdown, billions-to-a-trillion dollars are being passed as "defense"appropriations to maintain our current troop levels, homeland insecurity, and other such wonderful things. Of which fractions of the amounts being spent could theoretically pay for more valuable services for years. Some of that defense spending should be diverted to the cyberwar divisions, according to the House cybersecurity chairman, who believes that our protections are pretty weak.
A new wrinkle for abortions in Indiana - several counties are considering requiring doctors who perform the proecdure have admitting privileges at local hospitals, which could severely hurt clinics' abilities to provide, because the doctors in those do not often have those privileges. If you can't make it illegal, make it impossible, I guess.
PETA's "stupid, stupid rat creatures" department has a doozie - advertisements promoting a discredited hypothesis that milk and autism are linked to each other. Which makes people who actually are vegetarian and/or interested in animal health and safety simply headdesk more.
In the opinions, Alan Caruba blames environmentalists and the Democratic Party for stopping the American populace from accessing cheap energy because they block more drilling and refining, preferring to discount the possibilities of clean energy by saying that it won't generate enough energy right now and won't stop the dependence on foreign oil that we have now, and those evul Democrats and their environmental allies just want to stop us from having all the cheap energy that we can drill for.
Brett Stephens decides it's his duty to offer the VP debate moderators questions designed to cast Seantor Biden in a bad light, based on his votes and experience,
The WSJ continues to blame both sides for the defeat of the Paulson-Bush bailout, Robert Morgenthau feels too much capital has escaped to foreign shores where the United States government can't capture or tax it, there was the posibility of making it so banks didn't need reserves in their vaults as of October 1, there's talk of how Europe is suffering as well, and things have apparently gotten bad enough that Judy Shelton's idea that we should return to a metal-based money standard makes it into he WSJ's opinion pages.
Somewhat more meta than that, the suggestion that truth no longer matters in reality and those who can manipulate the consensus of the masses are the people who will succeed in the new world. The media is the message, the media is the message, and those who control the media control the messages.
In the departments devoted to science, solar cells that are 40% efficient, a new record, taking the principles behind light-bending "invisibility cloaks" and applying them to bending tsunami waves around populated areas, which would be quite the trick, especially if it could also be applied to bend high-force wind around those populated areas and shuffle them up certain coridors where they won't hurt anything. Hurricane coming? No problem, we'll just shunt it away. And, another highly-improbable way the LHC could end the world.
Last for tonight, a pretty woman and a beautiful cat, because we need a good positive note to end on.
