Blarrrrgh - 29 January 2009

G’day, peoples! We’re back for yet another round of throwing links at you until you collapse or die. (Media overload at it’s finest, we assure you.) For those wondering how Governor F-word fared at his impeachment... unanimous vote. Bye, bye, Governor F-word.

More of that free learning stuff. It’s too bad that all this wonderful knowledge won’t actually grant you any degree credit. Without the hoops of the parchment, the smartest person in the world would still be working minimum wage. *sigh*

Ugh. Monster got hacked, so some of the data on the site is now in the hands of unsavory people. Keep an eye on people trying to social engineer your stuff or use your password for other services you may subscribe to.

The American Library Association's Association of Library Services to Children department lost their vice president and Notable Children's video chairs in a hit-and-run collision - the accident is described, although the ALSC affiliations are not. The ALSC blog has tributes from their colleagues and people who probably have only met them through e-mail or conference attendance.

Hopping up to the international desk, Iceland's new prime minister is the first to be openly a homosexual and holding the office. So, anyone laying bets on when the first uncloseted President will be elected?

Staying in the sexual theme, but not in a good way, the director of CIA operations in Algeria is under investigation concerning allegations that he drugged and then raped two women, while also making secret tapes of the affair.

Iran is on everyone’s mind these days. a frontrunning candidate in the prime minister of Israel contest said Iranian nuclear capability is a higher-priority affair than fixing the global economy, even as alleged letters to Iran as a way of trying to get the country to soften on its radical positions get drafted by the State Department of the United States. The Iranian president responded to President Obama's overtures with a demand that President Obama apologize for the attacks the United States has committed on Iranian citizens.

The shaky cease-fire in Gaza underscored the President's special envoy's visit, and he went to work on trying to figure out how to make it stick, suggesting that holding borders open to prevent weapons and other goods being smuggled in might be a good opportunity.

On the domestic desk, apparently bradhicks isn’t the only person thinking the WPA would be the right stimulus for these times - The Field notes that there were a lot of good works of art created from NEA grants at the time, and feeding artists to do their work means that the people who do want assembly-line or service profession jobs can get them and excel at them too. The House of Representatives passed the current super-stimulus incarnation, despite no Republican voting for the measure. Which means either the backbenchers have been whipped into line on this one, or it’s going to be a very rough ride for the President, especially on his want to be able to work with both sides. Also, working on the other part of bradhicks‘s point, Will Bunch says we need to get past the myth of Reagan, because conservative idolization is making things worse, and when liberals are okay with Reagan’s policies, they contribute to the hurt.

President Obama emerged from his first Pentagon briefing a more informed President, avoiding specific dates or timelines for a withdrawal from Iraq. Likely wisely, as gunmen attacked several political candidates in the upcoming Iraqi elections. There are a lot of candidates for very few seats, so this will be a good test to see who wins and whether the elections can be done without major violence. On Afghanistan, the President may be taking a harsher line with President Karzai, who may be seen as an impediment rather than as an ally in the fight there.

Here’s something to make you blink twice - SarahPAC, an organization claiming to be the official PAC of Governor Palin. Excepting for a couple things. One, right on the main page - “Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.” And the other - it’s based in Virginia. Not Alaska. I think Governor Palin might want to know who’s appropriating her image and likeness for their own political purposes, wheter intending on endorsing or suing. The General has candidates for SarahPAC to support.

For those seeking lulz, or more ammunition to send the legions of the Anonymous out to wreak the chaos they do so well, Nancy Cartwright, voice of Bart Simpson, has recorded a call favoring Scientology, apparently using the Bart voice here and there during the call. The situation everyone seems to be gunning for is Fox vs. Scientology over the unauthorized use of one of their character properties. Whcih could be a very long fight if both sides stay obstinate.

A restaurant owner pistol-whipped a customer when he complained that the food he'd bought was prepared incorrectly. A significantly worse version of “No soup for you!” Or possibly a ha, ha, only serious Russian reversal about food orders.

Boeing donated $1 million to a fund intending to build a Dr. King memorial on the National Mall. Wait, from what I hear, Boeing is one of those places that’s planning on layoffs unless another war breaks out and we need more stuff. So that’s a bit skeevy by itself. No offense to Dr. King, who is beyond such things anyway, but I think Boeing could use that $1 million more to pay workers that will design and/or build things that will keep them in business. Speaking of money spent, Dr. King, and the current President, the Black Commentator's Larry Pinkney sees that the populace continues to fool itself into thinking that Barack Obama brings real change, when he’s a perversion of Dr. King’s dream, because he will bleed the people while servicing the corporations, continues to send people to die while those corporations profit, we still lack single-payer health care in the country, and other things that make him a “pro-apartheid Zionist”, a tool of the elite that has mastered the art of convincing the people the Emperor’s clothes are fantastic.

An interview by Radar Magazine with the founder and architect of Cryptome, talking about mass amounts of data, the need to verify such data and separate out the misinformation laid down as part of standard practices, and how much smoke goes on in the operations of people who want to keep their deeds secret. And a whole lot about the personality that the founder puts out, perhaps as an act to fool agents, perhaps becauset that’s the way he is.

And because it bridges the gap between news and opinions excellently, The team of rivals is making a team of czars, and there are a lot of people waiting for someone to step on someone else's toes, of which Turd Blossom is one, thinking that there's not enough space in the West Wing for all the management changes the President wants.

John Yoo revisits the Guantanamo Bay punching bag, declaring the decision to close the facility returning to the idea that law enforcement should be handling terrorism, when clearly it’s a matter of national intelligence, so the CIA is totally justified in holding prisoners there and applying coercive techniques, including waterboarding. Plus, the civilian justice system is geared totally wrong toward detaining, gathering intelligence from, and trying terrorists. They might, y’know, get the right to a lawyer and stuff.

Daniel Henninger muses on how Mr. Geithner managed to avoid getting axed when so many others have been dismissed for less during the Democratic campaigns. He also believes that it’s disingenuous to let Mr. Geithner in while gearing up for possible criminal reviews of the former administrator’s people and actions. Tony Blankley comes back to the "Who is Barack Obama" line, by projecting onto him someone who intends on turning us into a collectivist nation, by using the lines from the speeches that indicate that people project onto the President what they want to see. Additionally, Mr. Blankley feels that the President has not been forthcoming with his policy positions, using his vagueness to get elected (before he lurches the country into full-scale communism?) Jacob Sullum takes this idea a bit further, focusing on the new green economy, where he feels there's a lot of snake oil. The WSJ's bugbear is health care spending. Lawrence Lindsey says screw spending, let's just cut the payroll taxes.

Christopher Merola provides the furthest line on this, considering the President a socialist and asking why nobody ever thought to inquire about the "content of his character", figuring that if we knew all of this about him, including how socialist he is, how he associates with people of disrepute, and how much of a free pass he got from the media, we would have never elected him. Michael Medved joins comedian Rush Limbaugh in hoping that the new President fails, this time by emulating the "qorthless" presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Speaking of the comedian, Rush Limbaugh, perhaps drunk on the perceived authority he wields, having been called out by name by the President, suggests his version of a stimulus plan - spending and tax cuts, based on the percentage of the populace that voted for the major party candidate of each of them. So 54% of the money is spending, 46% is tax cuts, and we see whose plan actually works.

On the tail end of the opinionated matter, Alan Sears firmly believes that homosexuals should forever stay second-class citizens, characterizing the Obama Whitehouse site’s willingness to work for equality as working for “special rights”, and then going down the stock arguments - homosexuals shouldn’t be considered victims of hate crimes, churches and religious organizations will be forced to hire homosexuals, with those that deny it based on their religious beliefs prosecuted for those same hate crimes or for discrimination, the definition of marriage will become worthless as anybody can get it, including all the “counterfeits” of marriage such as polygamy, and that by letting homosexuals adopt, we destroy the basis of family and American society, namely heterosexual marriage and his version of Abrahamic faith.

In technology, Apple's not letting apps out into the iPhone app store that have sexual or potentially sexual purposes, like a program that makes things bounce, the best picture we have yet of an exoplanet, a suggestion that we get good at climate engineering, because we're going to need it, even as former NASA heads on climate change say they've turned skeptic, plagarism-spotting algorithms being used to compare genomes, another Kindle design on the way, LED lights getting more efficient and cheaper, taking advantage of the processing power saturation point by providing enough stuff to do stuff at a very low cost, and a cloned puppy delivered to a family in Florida. Oh, and having a live-in girlfriend may extend male fertility.

Last for tonight, classic pulp SF covers that io9 thinks display pure id, making a classic book...better?...by adding zombies, Dave Gibbons talks about Watchmen, and the photography or modeling of Elene Usdin.

One of those ideas that get into your head at work...

I'll probably need some sort of confirmation on this, but I think that I can tell when someone is going to be a "bad influence" on the other children, or is a bully/problem, in a Berenstein Bears book. They wear a headband. I think Too-Tall did, and there was a book with a Miranda who wore a headband. Maybe it's the evil symbol of Berenestein-world, or some subtle mind-control device that turns those bears evil. Maybe there will be a "Berenstein Bears meet the Evil Mind-Controlling Aliens" book.

Oh, thank Prime it's the weekend - 30 January 2009

Greets, yo. Still not feeling all that great, but now I have a weekend to get better. Hopefully I don't have to cancel on a social engagement, but if I continue on this path, which it looks like I will, I'm invoking the "Friends don't infect Friends" rule and staying in bed. Or maybe the earthquake that happened while I was still asleep threw me further out of whack.

By the way, did everyone catch that Turd Blossom is going to ignore another Congressional subpoena, claiming the executive privilege of the last administrator as the justification on why he doesn't have to go? Yeah. I think that one's going over like a lead balloon. And, despite his appeal to the current President to continue to give him immunity, I think this is going to end in a contempt citation and possibly his arrest for the same. Sorry, Fox, your correspondent will be sitting for a while until he decides to testify.

Plus, as cash flows into companies from TARP and other funds, they're paying out executive bonuses. Luckily, once he heard of it, President Obama called it "the height of irresponsibility" and promised to make things work better. The NY Attorney General might be looking to have some bonuses returned, because of how gauche it is to pay performance bonuses to executives that ran the company down enough that they needed bailouts. Did we mention there's a recession going on?

In Iraq, hey, look, audits! And not just for Iraq, but for Afghanistan, too. Their conclusions? It's a mess in Afghanistan, and reconstruction in Iraq is goign to get a little screwy, because of the whole lack of capital and cheap oil prices.

the latest statue in Tikrit is a shoe, replacing the statue of Saddam in a strange sort of way, and giving praise to the person who threw both of his shoes at the former administrator. The artist insists the work is not political. With elections upcoming in Iraq the residents of Mosul may be more concerned about security rather than footwear. As are some of the U.S. troops, with the army recalling body armor currently rated as unsafe by the Inspector General, based on the possibility that the armor was not tested properly.

Perhaps causing a small cheer among liberals and the anti-war, Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq will not be renewed for the upcoming year. This is possibly both a repudiation of Blackwater, who has a few incidents of shooting civilians to its discredit, and growing confidence that Iraqi police and military forces can handle the job. To its credit, Blackwater says that they will be gone within 72 hours if the State Department tells them to pack it up.

A one-day strike in France attempted to generate more support for the ordinary worker, but it looks as to have been of limited effect, and the government didn't spring to any sort of action afterward.

Domestically, a judge of the military tribunals has refused to honor President Obama's request that the trials be suspended, the President signed executive orders aimed at leveling the playing field between unions and employers, considering the previous administration's stance too much in favor of employers, in addition to signing into law the Lilly Ledbetter-named bill as his first law of his Presidency, although breaking a campaign promise about putting it up and making it available for public comment before signing it, and he apparently likes the Steelers in the padded rugby game on Sunday.

Here's something to help out the idea of "green jobs" as actual stimulus - there are more jobs currently in creating wind power than there are in coal power. To the comment crew, however, that's nice, but otherwise unuseful, if not downright misleading numbers. On the matter of the actual stimulus bill, instead of the aura of harmony and unity, some very partisan comments come out after the passage of the House bill, which could be expected, considering zero House Republicans voted for the measure. Additionally, a provision in the bill that requires iron and steel for infrastructure projects to be produced in the United States is raising protectionist hackles.

Following on a story from a few days ago, the mother who gave birth to eight already has six children at home. Which raises a whole different host of questions like, "What's someone with six children already undergoing fertility treatments for?" as well as the questions of logistics, now expanded to fourteen instead of eight children.

new claims in the case of Governor Palin's church burning down. According to WND, it was not only arson, but a murder attempt. That by itself should get plenty of people investigating, yet... still nothing from the MSM. And despite claims that the MSM is sitting on it because the culprits could be liberals, I think that if this really were a murder attempt, the MSM would be quite interested in it. So what gives, huh? The General blames child witches.

A gent stabbed his girlfriend with a knife, claiming that he was going to take back the breast implants that he paid for her to have. The implants were damaged in the assault. What are the odds that this was part of a bad breakup or acrimonious divorce?

The Boy Scouts of America, championed as environmental stewards and conservationists, have been selling land and taking profits from clearcut or high-impact logging operations, often to raise revenues that weren't coming in because of the policy the BSA has on who can join their ranks.

A comparison not worth missing - empty housing units in 2008 were almost five times the number of homeless in 2007. So there's space to house all the homeless, but there's not necessarily will to do it. Probably like how there's more than enough food to feed everyone, but not the will to do it, either.

Opinion time, where you can get enough heat and spice to make sure that your ramen tastes a little different.

Larry Elder opes the festivities by... complaining that the MSM will never, ever, ever, say anything bad about their BFF, President Obama, downplaying his big, scary, things and not paying attention to others. Kimberley Strassel sees a stealth campaign to nationalize health care, stuck in the SCHIP expansions and the stimulus bill and The WSJ compains about possible incentives for Hollywood, likely to be used as an example of what the WSJ believes are the dire consequences of abandoning leadership to Nancy Pelosi, based on how Republican suggestions and tax cuts were apparently shed from the stimulus bill as more Democratic spending was piled on. (And they're claiming not to be fooled that social engagements are actual bipartisanship.) Because the President and/or the Democratic leadership passed the nakedly partisan bill, Peggy Noonan says, they missed a golden opportunity to pass a good bill, one that had both parties' input, and one that recognized the new era, instead of thinking that the old ways of spending would work.

As we consider spending money that we don't really have, Ulrich Volz suggests that members of the G-20 create a fund that will help developing an smaller countries get credit when they need it. The WSJ advises against something like this, preferring that the U.S. spur entrepreneurship and private citizens getting loans instead of governments.

George Schultz says we need to think really long-term about this if we want to avoid bigger problems down the road, perhaps in entitlements instead of housing.

The WSJ is aiming for Chris Dodd to release documents that he said he would release regarding his own Countrywide scandal, even as he demands that Treasury get money back that was used to pay out bonuses. Good for the goose, good for the gander.

Hans von Spakovsky revisits a contentious issue during the election process, and concludes that those states that required voters to show identification did just fine for turnout, because it's patently easy for anyone to obtain a government-issued identification, and turnout was bigger in the voter-ID states, too. Uh, apples and oranges on that last one?

And at the end, David Keene thinks that turning over the names of Iraqis who interpret for American soldiers is signing their death warrants by making them terror targets. This is supposed to be the new, secure Iraq. If you think the Iraqi forces can't protect someone from terror because they helped the United States out, say so. Don't just complain that a contractor is doing their government-required duty in turning over names for tax purposes.

In technology, gold mined from sewage sludge, which reminds me of a bit about someone falling into a pile of excrement and somehow coming up smelling like thorny flowers, watching two galaxies collide makes for some interesting pictures, as the black hole at the center of the collision sucks up whatever it can. There's also using the analogy of a bathtub overflowing to describe the effects of climate change, with the implication that most people don't recognize there's a problem until the tub overflows, the Army's continued interest in mind-controlled insects, finding methods to make carbon graphene work in electronics, so that it can be conductor, insulator, and potentially everything else in between, meaning possible organic computing, which would work well with nerve interfaces between machines and organic components, learning a bit more about how the brain controls parasites and infections in its own backyard, preparation for a possible volcano eruption in Alaska, and a browser plug in that semantically analyzes and deconstructs the links you click on during a search, then provides new links on the search page based on what you clicked on, so that as you resolve ambiguity, the results become more tailored to what you're looking for.

At the end for tonight, whisky-byproducts become power. Bottoms up? That, and some ways of getting something for nothing, some of which may be small, others which may be potentially huge.

And yes, Fox picked up the Narnia franchise, so there will be more movies.