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Starting up top, Happy birthday to Abraham Lincoln (ded) and Charles Darwin (also ded). One can jump on the Devolve-me train and get an image of an earlier you.
Above our petty national boundaries, two satellites attempted to occupy the same space-time coordinates, and left behind a big cloud of space debris as the aftermath. Down further to earth, but with much more sparks and costumes, pictures of the lantern festival, including molten iron throwing and fireworks, including one show that caught a building on fire by accident.
In the thick of things with countries and entities that prefer more violent interpretations of Islam to their own ends, or make women into second-class citizens that get charged with crimes if they report a rape, recall that there are ways of making Islam a peaceful religion, as the Sufis point out here.
This Valentine’s Day, someone who believed that women shouldn’t be going into bars in India, and then acted on that by attacking the women will be receiving quite the gift - several hundred pairs of pink underwear. For more information, peruse the Consortium of Pug-going, Loose, and Forward Women's page for the campaign.
Elsewhere in the world, Pakistan admits that some of the Mumbai terror attacks were planned on its soil, and is bringing criminal charges against some of the participants. That doesn’t mean there isn’t still a lot of work to do in Afghanistan.
On matters of the United States, Los Alamos is missing computers again, although this time there are supposedly no classified documents missing.
Mr. Gregg, appointed to be Commerce secretary, withdraws himself from the process, once again requiring the President to go find someone to take on a Cabinet-level position.
Pennsylvania judges were accused of convicting juveniles and sending them to certain detention facilities in exchange for kickbacks, jailing kids for very minor offenses and against the recommendation of probation officers. Does judgeship pay that poorly that we have to worry about whether corruption will appear on the supposedly independent judiciary?
Stimulus bill compromise ready, with apparent negotiations and concessions to all. Excepting Republicans, who feel left out because they didn’t get their every whim catered to when they threw a fit. Despite all the media hooplah, the final product may look a lot like what the President wanted in the first place, which could indicate a masterful method of manipulation that gets what he wants and manages to make his opponents look bad. Of course, the Republicans are helping by making themselves look really bad through the careless dissemination of information in an attempt to raise their own status, without thinking what that information can do.
Which leads into opinions nicely, where Mr. Hayward says President Obama should be taking lessons from Reagan on how he presents himself to the people, declaring that the Democrats have lost the ability to make an argument and are instead relying on the mandate of the voters to get their material passed, instead of relishing and making arguments with the people on why his things work best. And then predicts dire consequences for the economy because President Obama is apparently letting Congress unleash the Doomsday Device of Reagan’s economic plans, through authorizing bailouts and spending. Apparently, a lot of people believe that Mr. Obama is a Republican, and that Ronald Reagan was the greatest president in the last century, worthy of emulation by both sides of the aisle, and any president who isn’t a perfect Reagan can only do harm.
Talking economics, Michael Hudson believes that anything different than debt write-downs, restructuring law to favor debtors, and instituting some new taxes on securities and real estate is just giving Wall Street more money to do this bubble all over again with, using tax money as bonuses and continuing to squeeze people dry. Less overachingly disparaging, but still on stimulus matters, Mr. Henninger believes the stimulus package is a way of marking time until the economy recovers on its own, while also transferring a lot of money to Democratic allies to spend it back when campaign races come through in 2010, an opinion that Mr. Turd Blossom concurs on, believing the President will pay large costs, economically and politically, for getting his stimulus bill passed.
I do believe I see some cannibalism coming on. Is there a word for something like the bacchic madness, where peopel turn on each other and rip each other to shreds? In this case, it’s not because of drink and revelry, but because one believes someone else is a traitor? Whatever that word/phrase is, Dick Morris feels the Republicans should sign the death warrants of the three Republicans who helped pass the stimulus plan, possibly through that frenzied tearing as Republicans implode on each other (again, like they did with the McCain/Palin thing?). The WSJ also focuses blame for whatever effects the stimulus has on the three Rpublicans, since they helped the Democrats do the dirty deed.
Ms. Shelton feels that now is the time to return to commodity standards, instead of being forced to rely on fiat money, and believes that if people had the option to choose between Federal Reserve notes and gold and silver of their own, they’d want and exclusively use gold and silver instead of paper. Because, naturally, there are sufficient stocks of those commodities that we can do our international business in those terms instead of relying on the full faith and credit of the United States.
Opinions elsewhere note Israel shifted to the right in the recent elections, regardless of who forms government, which could make for some interesting foreign policy tapdancing, suggest that the global financial crisis should pave the way for a restructuring of the way we view the globe, with coalitions of nations in charge, rather than a superpower, with orderly debt writing down, and with necessary investments made in green technology.
In technology, the effects of napalm alternatives... that made brick stalctites, developing robotic arms that respond to brain commands for those in wheelchairs and for those not in wheelchairs, curing "bubble boy" syndrome with an 80% success rate through gene therapy, buying solar power from the Mojave desert, trying to spot comets that are not high albedo, utilizing chemicals to give damaged hearts more oxygen, and people who do their best to make sure our digital information survives with us to the next generation.
Additionally, we may be closer to identifying genes that produce autism spectrum disorders, which would be a great thing, and hopefully we can use it to prevent tragedies where an autistic and apparently violent man killed his mother, and is now facing potential murder charges for the act. Which means prison, rather than mental help, and another point where justice falls down on taking care of the mentally troubled.
Above our petty national boundaries, two satellites attempted to occupy the same space-time coordinates, and left behind a big cloud of space debris as the aftermath. Down further to earth, but with much more sparks and costumes, pictures of the lantern festival, including molten iron throwing and fireworks, including one show that caught a building on fire by accident.
In the thick of things with countries and entities that prefer more violent interpretations of Islam to their own ends, or make women into second-class citizens that get charged with crimes if they report a rape, recall that there are ways of making Islam a peaceful religion, as the Sufis point out here.
This Valentine’s Day, someone who believed that women shouldn’t be going into bars in India, and then acted on that by attacking the women will be receiving quite the gift - several hundred pairs of pink underwear. For more information, peruse the Consortium of Pug-going, Loose, and Forward Women's page for the campaign.
Elsewhere in the world, Pakistan admits that some of the Mumbai terror attacks were planned on its soil, and is bringing criminal charges against some of the participants. That doesn’t mean there isn’t still a lot of work to do in Afghanistan.
On matters of the United States, Los Alamos is missing computers again, although this time there are supposedly no classified documents missing.
Mr. Gregg, appointed to be Commerce secretary, withdraws himself from the process, once again requiring the President to go find someone to take on a Cabinet-level position.
Pennsylvania judges were accused of convicting juveniles and sending them to certain detention facilities in exchange for kickbacks, jailing kids for very minor offenses and against the recommendation of probation officers. Does judgeship pay that poorly that we have to worry about whether corruption will appear on the supposedly independent judiciary?
Stimulus bill compromise ready, with apparent negotiations and concessions to all. Excepting Republicans, who feel left out because they didn’t get their every whim catered to when they threw a fit. Despite all the media hooplah, the final product may look a lot like what the President wanted in the first place, which could indicate a masterful method of manipulation that gets what he wants and manages to make his opponents look bad. Of course, the Republicans are helping by making themselves look really bad through the careless dissemination of information in an attempt to raise their own status, without thinking what that information can do.
Which leads into opinions nicely, where Mr. Hayward says President Obama should be taking lessons from Reagan on how he presents himself to the people, declaring that the Democrats have lost the ability to make an argument and are instead relying on the mandate of the voters to get their material passed, instead of relishing and making arguments with the people on why his things work best. And then predicts dire consequences for the economy because President Obama is apparently letting Congress unleash the Doomsday Device of Reagan’s economic plans, through authorizing bailouts and spending. Apparently, a lot of people believe that Mr. Obama is a Republican, and that Ronald Reagan was the greatest president in the last century, worthy of emulation by both sides of the aisle, and any president who isn’t a perfect Reagan can only do harm.
Talking economics, Michael Hudson believes that anything different than debt write-downs, restructuring law to favor debtors, and instituting some new taxes on securities and real estate is just giving Wall Street more money to do this bubble all over again with, using tax money as bonuses and continuing to squeeze people dry. Less overachingly disparaging, but still on stimulus matters, Mr. Henninger believes the stimulus package is a way of marking time until the economy recovers on its own, while also transferring a lot of money to Democratic allies to spend it back when campaign races come through in 2010, an opinion that Mr. Turd Blossom concurs on, believing the President will pay large costs, economically and politically, for getting his stimulus bill passed.
I do believe I see some cannibalism coming on. Is there a word for something like the bacchic madness, where peopel turn on each other and rip each other to shreds? In this case, it’s not because of drink and revelry, but because one believes someone else is a traitor? Whatever that word/phrase is, Dick Morris feels the Republicans should sign the death warrants of the three Republicans who helped pass the stimulus plan, possibly through that frenzied tearing as Republicans implode on each other (again, like they did with the McCain/Palin thing?). The WSJ also focuses blame for whatever effects the stimulus has on the three Rpublicans, since they helped the Democrats do the dirty deed.
Ms. Shelton feels that now is the time to return to commodity standards, instead of being forced to rely on fiat money, and believes that if people had the option to choose between Federal Reserve notes and gold and silver of their own, they’d want and exclusively use gold and silver instead of paper. Because, naturally, there are sufficient stocks of those commodities that we can do our international business in those terms instead of relying on the full faith and credit of the United States.
Opinions elsewhere note Israel shifted to the right in the recent elections, regardless of who forms government, which could make for some interesting foreign policy tapdancing, suggest that the global financial crisis should pave the way for a restructuring of the way we view the globe, with coalitions of nations in charge, rather than a superpower, with orderly debt writing down, and with necessary investments made in green technology.
In technology, the effects of napalm alternatives... that made brick stalctites, developing robotic arms that respond to brain commands for those in wheelchairs and for those not in wheelchairs, curing "bubble boy" syndrome with an 80% success rate through gene therapy, buying solar power from the Mojave desert, trying to spot comets that are not high albedo, utilizing chemicals to give damaged hearts more oxygen, and people who do their best to make sure our digital information survives with us to the next generation.
Additionally, we may be closer to identifying genes that produce autism spectrum disorders, which would be a great thing, and hopefully we can use it to prevent tragedies where an autistic and apparently violent man killed his mother, and is now facing potential murder charges for the act. Which means prison, rather than mental help, and another point where justice falls down on taking care of the mentally troubled.
