Almost the end of this cycle - 30 December 2008

Up top, no matter what sort of animosity we might have had to her mother, congratulations to Bristol Palin for surviving childbirth and delivering a healthy boy. In other celebrity matters, that's Sir Terry Pratchett, civilian, and Disney bails on the Narnia franchise.

Internationally, now provoked, Israel intends on pounding the hell out of the Gaza area to achieve a cease-fire on therms it wants to dictate. The United States President continued to blame Hamas, the President-elect was silent on the matter. Bret Stephens suggests scorched earth by Israel against those who work against it, while Wesley Pruden assumes we're all going to blame Israel for its aggression, rather than those who truly deserve it and keep refusing a good peace settlement. Justin Raimondo thinks the whole thing is about Washington, not Gaza and that the expected “better terms” are what Israel wants when the new administration steps in to try and stop the struggle by forcing it back out of the spotlight and continuing to support Israel. Think collaboration and the ultimate goal actualyl being what Stephens suggested be out in the open.

Somalia's president has quit, and Thailand has a new Prime Minister, although he’s also facing down protesters and opposition in the streets.

The United States is worried about Cambodia, a nation with excellent tolerance for various religions, because Combodians are making ties to Persian Gulf states and the U.S. believes that radical Islam will inevitably follow those goods and money, will take hold in Cambodia, and then take over Cambodia. It’s like Domino theory all over again, I swear.

Domestically, here comes the next Republican scandal, named "Barack the Magic Negro". Which is bad enough by itself, but then the great stuff comes when the song gets defended and several Republicans say they have no problem with it, because they don’t see it as racist or intended to be racist in any way. There was a chance to dismiss it as a fringe element lunacy, fit for Rush and the Dittoheads, and then run away screaming, but no, people chose to defend it, and thus, they have earned every character of their designation as stupid, stupid rat creatures. They have earned this honor along with the person who annotated a UPS signature "terrorist" after a Sikh man, wearing the appropriate garb, signed for the package. These labels don’t apply, though, to those people who did actually stand up and say the song was wrong.

Blagojevich has tapped a successor to Senator Obama's seat, Roland Burris. The question now becomes whether the Senate can and will make good on their threat to not seat any appointment made by the Governor, regardless of the qualifications of the person selected.

One of the Members of Congress wants them to vote on whether or not to give themselves their automatic pay raise for this year, not that he’s hand any success getting to that point before. He might have an argument for this upcoming year. The greater gesture might be having all the Members of Congress and the Executive work at minimum wage and see how fast it stays where it is.

The United States military officially claims it has no VX nerve gas weapons, having destoyed the last mine at the disposal facility. Good for them. Not so good involves a soldier accused of selling IEDs to gang members, no doubt building on the skills he obtained in his two tours of Iraq defusing, deconstructing, and watching them explode. Nothing in the article indicates whether or not the accused soldier had gang ties before his tours. Might this be a warning to the military that lowering the recruiting standards to certain points may come to backfire, when those people come home and put their new skills to work? Plus, while we’re talking about improvements, citizenship for those who are volunteering to die in foreign countries might not be bad, either.

Revision to an MRFF lawsuit, alleging pervasive religious bias in the military and that they don't take complaints of religious discrimination serious enough, adding in Air Force sponsorship of religious exercises, distribution of Bibles to the natives in Iraq, et cetera.

Florida was a strange place this year, as their news demonstrates. Tasered emus and all.

In the opinions, first, and quite importantly, Christopher Hitchens nails why most people are displeased with Rick Warren as the inauguration invocation cleric - including some questions that we should be asking of the President-elect. Will Pastor Warren stand by his assertion that Jews cannot enter heaven? How about his mentor’s statement that Mormons aren’t Christians? And is it wise to have someone who eagerly expects the end of the world, confident in his own salvation, to give the invocation when he may get his wish and find out how wrong we all are about our heavenly fate? Y’know, unimportant stuff.

The campaign to vindicate the outgoing administrator or claim that history will continues, with apparently the new saddest consequence of 9/11 being how it diverted the administration away from what it could have been. Well, at least, that’s the implication I get out of it, and when put that way, actually, I kind of agree. Although I would say that the actions following the tragedy are the sad part taht moved the administration away from what it could have been, saying that the tragedy itself change it is at least in the ballpark. although, that does bring to mind the speculation of what the presidency would have been like had, say, the disasters not happened. Remember, this is the group that spent 1.6 billion USD spent from 2003-2006 on public relations by the outgoing administration in the whitewash effort, used fake firefighters for photo-ops at disaster sites.

Settling back into more usual territory, Mark Hendrickson feels that the populace, no wait, the elite, is killing the country, with demanding ever more fom the government, feeling entitled to it, and refusing to work to better themselves, preferring the government trough to the market, drowning our morals in Britney Spears... but the real blame falling on educators who teach children that this is their right, politicians who steal from the taxpayer to give to the undeserving, and the federal government, who claims to be on the side of the little guy and then arranges for the corporate and government masters to take everything from them. So what looked like it was going to be a screed against the populace turns out to be “Oh, no, the populace is too stupid to break free of their ideological chains and be libertarians. We have to go after the people who make them this way.” In some ways, his sights are lined up right. In others, well, three inches at ten yars. Kind of like heaping all the blame of Detroit failure on the shoulders of the UAW and the union's penetration into the structureof the companies, and glibly insisting that the perfect solution is for the government to force te UAW into a relationship like the ones that foreign automakers have - basically not unionized, at comparable salaries and benefits. Then, of course, the Big Three become profitable... and wonder why nobody is buying their cars. Again.

Fouad Ajami resurrects Samuel Huntington as the prescient prophet of 1993, pointing out how he predicted the impulses of the country to go global or imperial, both with ruinous consequences, predicting the Islamic world as the next great conflict, and espousing the idea of an American Creed - the things we need to hold onto dearly to ensure that America stays America: the English language, Christianity, religious commitment, English concepts of the rule of law, the responsibility of rulers, and the rights of individuals, all derived from the culture of the founding fathers.

William Rusher has an assignment for the Republican Party: Build an affirmative case. Then present it so that the populace understands why the Republicans are better for us than the Democrats, not through minor matters or negative campaigning, but on the premise that Republicanism is in all ways much more sound policy for the populace, in keeping government in check and having a good foreign policy that eliminates threats to the nation.

The WSJ decries the idea of giving more to minority-led foundations as a "race-baiting money grab", based on the idea that foundations should care more about results rather than the demographics of the grants they fund. Merit and then some to that idea. What I’m missing in this situation is whether the claim made that minority-led organizations might have an idea on how to go about spending foundation dollars effectively is true. I doubt that anyone could prove that big foundations are discriminating against minority organizations, but neither do I believe the claim that this is an attempt to fund minority college graduates to do work in nonprofits. Statistical percentages only do so much. Perhaps the low funding rate is because those organizations can’t necessarily spare someone long enough to do grant writing courses, or applications, or interviews, because they don’t have funding? I have no idea. I just feel that the truth is neither of the sides represented in the opinion piece. Anyone who works with or in nonprofits that can lend a hand here?

Sally Pipes is certain that the Obama administration will attempt to make us all on the government plan for health care, and that it will collapse and die from the expense, the politicization, and regulation, resulting in rationed care that’s ineffective, drugs that aren’t available because they’re not cost-efficient, and all sorts of other things that will tweak the populace because we expect to be able to get anything for treatment and have it be affordable. (Not that our private insurance actually does any such thing, either.)

Out of the opinions, Burt Prelutsky ridicules the populace and the elected officials though quotations from older writers, disgsuising them as things that make us laugh or as words of wisdom. The WSJ smirks at Venezuela, Iran, and Russia, feeling that the falling oil prices will hurt their leaders and make it difficult for them to do anything to hurt anyone else.

Let’s do the science and technology thing. We’ll start with looking for water ice on Luna, even as NASA has an uncertain future, the difficulties of programming for multicore processors, with some amount on how silicon chips are hitting one of the thresholds that could make Moore blink and that molecular-size computing could help break, as well as a possible return to the roots of supercomputing to optize work for multicores without having to do too much reprogramming, images of art projects constructed on the nano scale, isolation of the genes that made a 1918 flu outbreak lethal, an emerging field that uses diet as a way of controlling disease or preventing it. And, of course, The Pink Tentacle Top Ten List.

At the very last, Cracked declares this year the year the geeks took over, through fourth wall breaches, mostly. Additionally, something that should be a parody, and isn’t: the discreet packaging was, well, less than discreet. At least it was honest, even if it probably required the hasty construction of some homemade upset stomach remedy.

Last night for this year - ready the cleaning - 31 December 2008

And thats it for this year. Ring in the new, say goodbye to the old, wonder again why we change over the calendar in the middle of the cold season (here) or in the middle of the warm season (there), when it would probably be smarter to do so at an equinox point.

And thus, your last news update for 2008 Cue Beaker singing Ode to Joy in the round.

Which means more retrospectives, like a list of the best albums of this year, videos of robots in action, and the year in materials. Trumping all others, The General has the year in review focusing on the very important segment of the hairstyles of prominent politicians.

A University of Miami professor concludes that religion is a useful tool in teaching self-control and long-term thinking, based on a review of reasearch. Which either could be "See? God really is important to morals" or "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him", depending on your perspective. Religion is a motivator and helps with impulse control and providing a framework for acceptable and unacceptable behavior. It also works as the opiate of the masses in some cases, because some people even set aside their impulse for self-preservation in pursuit of what they perceive to be religious goals. Jesus is a gateway drug, apparently.

The United Kingdom is reaching into the bedrooms with a new law designed to ban "extreme" porn. And being The Law, it is a clumsy, imprecise object that will no doubt catch a lot of people who are doing consenting adult things in the privacy of their homes or clubs and possibly taking pictures of it. Tied up a model and took pictures to demonstrate to a friend how to do it to their partner? Possibly "extreme" porn, depending on where you are. All this comes about because someone went violent-rage on someone else, and people claim it was the violent porn that he was addicted to that made him do it. Mm-hmm. And I'm sure that whatever weapons he used in the task should be banned, too, because if he didn't have them, he would have been fine. Finally, though, a word of advice for the protesters - don't burn the works, plaster the halls and walls of the Parliament building with them. Make the MPs have to wade through seas of images to get to their jobs.

Of all the success stories you hear from Iraq and the regional areas, remember that in Kurdistan, many very young girls go through female genital mutilation, and they believe the culture and the religion both demand that it be done, despite the pain it causes, even going so far as to declare that those who haven't gone through the procedure are unclean and shouldn't be serving meals. There's still work to do there, even if the major governmental functions have been restored.

A major supply line to NATO and United States troops in Afghanistan has been closed by Pakistan as they raid areas around it to try and flush out militants ambushing supply trains.

Chemistry enthusiast arrested for being chemistry enthusiast, first, because the police believed he was generatign crystal meth in his house, then when the meth thing fell through, because they felt he was generating explosive compounds. The town around him says, "WTF?" and now the kid can't do chemistry except in supervised experiments until he's 26, and has to tell his university chemistry department about the charges leveled against him. Because he had scientific curiosity. This is a situation where I can clearly say that the terrorists have won. Turning our police force into terrorists who arrest without thinking, and then still decide to ruin someone's record even when they've done nothing wrong. Well, okay, it's probably optimism that I think this is paranoia brought on by relatively recent events. The police have probably been doing these sorts of things, especially against young people, for a while now, and we're just getting a snapshot into that world.

As Israel shells Gaza, protestors in Tehran raid the British embassy compound. Because they can't protest at an Israel embassy, considering Iran probably doesn't recognize their existence. Still, misdirected anger much? Although Israel's hostile stance toward boats aiming for mercy medical missions in Gaza isn't helping, even knowing that the government might suspect they were weapons or other arms dealing. Where I can confirm that people think such a mission is terrorist support by radical leftists is in the opinion columns back here in the United States. Thanks a bunch, Front Page Magazine, for confirming that you think medical missions to Gaza are terrorist support.

It's a six-year term for the Russian president now, signed into law by Mr. Medvedev. This is considered a move to bring the current prime minister back to the Presidency after he was constitutionally forced to step down in 2008. Power politics in Russia, where strong men make the rules, regardless of the trappings of democracy. Sounds a little too much like what we have here. Leon Aron thinks it's the beginning signs of a Russian crisis, so forethought on how to handle it is necessary. Even with Russian forecasters predicting the end of America.

Domestically, want a reason why no person should ever be uninsured? Have a look at the healing fields, where volunteers dispense medical treatment to the uninsured for a period of three days in Virginia. Think about how that amy be the only medical care those people get this entire year. And then think about how a nation with the prosperity we claim to enjoy can feel morally sound abou itself while members of its populave suffer from the lack of care. Even if they'll balk at the idea of subsidizing and making available all sorts of treatments, at the very least nobody should ever have to feel that going to a doctor, or a dentist, will bankrupt them from the visit and the checkup. Especially for children. We must be ruthless against the forces that conspire to ensure that children have no chance in the world.

In the opinions, because we always seek the source of power, Inspector Lohman shows what a tangled web our corporate masters weave, deluding us and stripping us of our reality and power, mostly through the laws that grant personhood status to corporations, making them gods. They can basically hold out for money and refuse to carry programming and all their customers will be cheesed, but can really do nothing about it until the money is paid up.

The Unabashed Feminism Department gets a field day with Dennis Prager. In two columns, he describes why it's better for a wife to almost always say yes if her husband wants sex, regardless of her own feelings. Part One makes men into sex-crazed animals who measure their entire worth, and whether their wife loves them, by whether their wife gives it up for them regularly, and wifes don't understand ior pis-tosh this idea and wonder why their men don't connect with them anymore. I note that the unmarrid are excluded, likely as people living in sin or able, in his mind, to get sex from anyone they want, and so the married folk are the ones who need counseling. Says something about partnering for life with a single person, I think. Anyway, Part II is all about how letting mood rule over sex is a concept of the past and a disservice to the duties and obligations of the marriage bed. Because we don't let our moods rule us on whether we want to go to work, we shouldn't let moods rule us on obligations of whether or not the married man gets sex. Plus, sex is an obligation, not some romantic hippy feeling thing, says Prager, and so wives should understand this and "lie back and think of the Queen" or something equally fantasy-laden. Sounds familiar, I'm sure, considering it's been used as a way of keeping women in their place for years. I'd say this column espouses many of the virtues of finding alternate ways of making arrangements, instead of the monogamous marriage route - if women get forced into a duty they don't want, then the men get miserable because the women aren't giving them what they want, and affairs are sure to follow. Might also be a good time to discuss the changing face fo the relationship - perhaps marriage is still a god idea, but the terms regarding sex and intimacy need redefinition so that both sides can be happy and enjoy their lives - even if it does mean the presence of the official mistress.

Comedian David Limbaugh attacks Joe Biden over the matter of Richard Cheney, challenging him to figure out whether he's mad because Cheney wanted to consolidate legislative power in the executive or whether Cheney acted outside the bounds of the vice-presidency, declaring both to be ridiculous, because the outgoing administrator has always been the final decision-maker in the last eight years and has never put Cheney in charge of something he shouldn't be, and offering up a new definition of "unitary executive" than the one we're used to - a simple idea that the President is in charge of the executive branch, rather than the lie we've been fed, according to him, that it means an executive in charge of all three branches. He then closes with a "wait for the Obama regime" proclamation, if we want to see what executive controlling all is really about.

Bruce Thornton climbs on his liberal-bash soapbox, declaring that the criticism of the outgoing administrator during his term amounted to childishness, with disregard for basic facts and willful ignorance as their cornerstones. The populace doesn't know their history or basic facts, but instead chooses to enshrine opinions they like as facts. Apparently, those enshrined opinions that lack factual status include the reasons for the Iraq War, the assault on Constitutional rights, and the way taht the government and the populace have reacted to those of Islamic religion or Arabic descent. He exhorts conservatives to do the adult criticism of Obama that he feels liberals lacked, talking about policy and philosophy rather than throwing tantrums. Notwithstanding his own, of course.

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. blames CAFE standards as the reason why the Detroit hree are dying, and that we should repeal them to let them do what they do best - make big SUVs and light trucks, the things that are profitable. More generally, Paul Rubin opines on how the Internet makes the market work better... and worse, James Bacchus says "Free Trade is good stimulus", so approve those agreements and drop tarriffs, while Thomas Frank says we should not be so eager to proclaim that the free market is all, because, after all, it did kind of just screw us horribly when it wasn't projected to.

The WSJ thinks it will be a bang-up year for 2009 with the Democrats, based on what's carrying over from this year, including appointed Senate seats, bids to make it there, and the ongoing saga of politics. And cries to actually give the populace a voting system they can be confident in and that is accurate.

In technology and the wonders of science (SCIENCE!), those dumb animals aren't nearly as dumb as dumb humans think, although the humans are trying to find new ways of powering animal mind-control devices, the upcoming year set to be warmer than many, which will no doubt continue fueling the climate change debate, a NASA report on the Columbia disaster that faulted equipment and procedure for preventing accident recovery or giving the astronauts a chance to live, more reasons why working the body helps the brain, artificial retinas to help the populace see, fuel cells that generate electricity through biology, and a possible breakthrough in deciphering the sounds of the dolphins. Maybe soon we'll be able to understand them when they say "So long and thanks for all the fish."

Of course, last for tonight, the Lake Superior State List of Words To Be Banned from usage in the coming year. This year's winners include "maverick", "staycation", and "going green" Oh, and less than three. Plus, some nice art for the road, and some without creatures in it, at least not without their vehicles. Enjoy yourselves and be safe.