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My professional self gets hackles up at the start. Namely, four sex-related books just got pulled off the shelves at Topeka and Shawnee county libraries, from a 5-3 decision by the board. Lowlights included a pastor reading explicit material not from the actual books and then making the case that youngsters at the library are exposed to that (maybe from their 'Net access, but not from those books), and the success of what appears to be one church's campaign against the library, and the apparent success of a "Think of the CHILDREN!" appeal. Highlights include a lot of the people speaking at the public comment phase against the matter, and the director of the board feeling very sickened at the result. Also, the possibility of lawsuits.
Kind of related and interesting - Over the period of 1972-1995, as the amount of pornography in the Japan increased, the incidences of sex crimes decreased. An interesting correlation - perhaps it helps to curb impulses that would be otherwise acted on?
Also of professional interest, The Book Cover Archive, so you can see all those front pieces for various books throughout time.
At the international desk, following on from many of their predecessors, China's human rights difficulties will not preclude cooperation between them and the United States on several issues, including North Korea. Additionally, Iraq continues to have difficulties selecting a new parliamentary speaker, Guantanamo Bay meets Geneva convention standards, but procedures there need some work (also as a footnote, the Obama administration also argues that those people captured outside the U.S.'s sovereign territory do not have constitutional rights), and hopeful progress between the United States and Syria after talks.
Domestically, here's proof that the justice system is still often devoid of common sense. A gent pleaded guilty to bringing a gun into a hospital...the gun was on his person. He was unconscious when he was brought into the hospital. No doubt The Law does not recognize such special circumstances, but the people who enforce and interpret it should. The man is also potentially being charged with theft, and so I think at that point the people in charge of the law are just trying to pile on as much as possible.
It took a wedgie and a headlock to subdue someone trying to break into a Salt Lake City vehicle, applied by a female tech witnessing the crime.
More seriously, as the economy continues to worsen and more people find themselves expendable by their employers, already-stressed food pantries are being visited by many more people, and more people are signing up for food stamps and other assistance. Many of the people visiting now have what our farther-to-the-right conservative and Republican friends want them to have - shame that they need assistance when they were able to provide for themselves before. I wonder how many more people should be visiting, but aren't because Republicans have successfully drilled into their heads that Real Americans don't take welfare, or should be ashamed to need it.
The current administration is telling people that they're not taking over any more banks, despite the rumbling of Citigroup and Bank of America. Whether they fold and provide more bailout bucks or actually let those two companies die out is yet to be seen.
In the opinions, Mr. Kaminski finds disturbing parallels between California and France, thinking that California will become insolvent, having attempted to craft a complete welfare state and not been able to make necessary reforms there when needed.
Mr. Kudlow says the Obama plan for rescuing homeowners is a moral hazard to the country, bailing out all of the people who made bad decisions with our tax money and showing no confidence in the ability of the free market to correct all of these problems.
ddjango rails against how making "Human Resources" has dehumanized us and made us expendable things to corporations. Soon enough, he says, we'll just be things to governments, with eugenics and transhumanism as the new ways of controlling people with machines. At least, until the robots rebel against the humans.
the WSJ is concerned that Bad Things will happen if hackers get coordinated and decide to assault the United States en masse, because our cyber security basically sucks. A previous Defense minister for Israel says we should all be more concerned that Iran sent a satellite up into space, because it means they're going to soon have multi-stage ballistic capabilities and will be lobbing missiles at everyone they hate. And Mr. Krauthammer thinks that the Vice-President was right - the new administration is being tested, and has failed miserably on all counts, from Russia to Iran, because they rolled over in all of those situations instead of bombing them back to the stone age, or at least threatening to do so, or so it seems.
Ms. West says that measuring the success of Afghanistan by the trust the populace has in America and the NATO operations is stupid, because we should be measuring it by whether or not our operations are actually successful, at least, and reconfiguring ourselves so as not to have dependency on foreign oil and changing our immigration laws so we don't let any brown people, err, jihadists, enter the country and bring their Islam (permanently tainted with political Sharia, of course) into our country, where it will grow cancerously until we all become Islamic nations, too. Mr. North criticizes the decision by Mr. Obama to not make a fanfare of his sending additional troops to Afghanistan, notwithstanding that the President already said the troops were on the way beforehand.
Last out of the opinions, Mr. Blackwell is certain that Mr. Obama is paying off his special interests and will soon be turning the power of everything over to unions through the Employee Free Choice Act, turning us into an Orwellian nightmare where unions run everything and corporations are punished wherever they can be by the government if they act against the union. Mr. Goldberg thinks that when the Attorney General says we haven't had enough discussion on race, he means that we haven't had enough liberal indoctrination on race, because he sees all sorts of conversation about race, just not the ones that liberals want us to be having.
Last for tonight, I think this letter writer needs to work on his asking-out technique. A lot. For that letter, I think he'd get the cardboard dessert for his troubles. For those looking to fool their enemies into believing there's more military hardware deployed than there is, check out the inflatable weaponry - good enough to fool someone at a distance, I'm betting.
Kind of related and interesting - Over the period of 1972-1995, as the amount of pornography in the Japan increased, the incidences of sex crimes decreased. An interesting correlation - perhaps it helps to curb impulses that would be otherwise acted on?
Also of professional interest, The Book Cover Archive, so you can see all those front pieces for various books throughout time.
At the international desk, following on from many of their predecessors, China's human rights difficulties will not preclude cooperation between them and the United States on several issues, including North Korea. Additionally, Iraq continues to have difficulties selecting a new parliamentary speaker, Guantanamo Bay meets Geneva convention standards, but procedures there need some work (also as a footnote, the Obama administration also argues that those people captured outside the U.S.'s sovereign territory do not have constitutional rights), and hopeful progress between the United States and Syria after talks.
Domestically, here's proof that the justice system is still often devoid of common sense. A gent pleaded guilty to bringing a gun into a hospital...the gun was on his person. He was unconscious when he was brought into the hospital. No doubt The Law does not recognize such special circumstances, but the people who enforce and interpret it should. The man is also potentially being charged with theft, and so I think at that point the people in charge of the law are just trying to pile on as much as possible.
It took a wedgie and a headlock to subdue someone trying to break into a Salt Lake City vehicle, applied by a female tech witnessing the crime.
More seriously, as the economy continues to worsen and more people find themselves expendable by their employers, already-stressed food pantries are being visited by many more people, and more people are signing up for food stamps and other assistance. Many of the people visiting now have what our farther-to-the-right conservative and Republican friends want them to have - shame that they need assistance when they were able to provide for themselves before. I wonder how many more people should be visiting, but aren't because Republicans have successfully drilled into their heads that Real Americans don't take welfare, or should be ashamed to need it.
The current administration is telling people that they're not taking over any more banks, despite the rumbling of Citigroup and Bank of America. Whether they fold and provide more bailout bucks or actually let those two companies die out is yet to be seen.
In the opinions, Mr. Kaminski finds disturbing parallels between California and France, thinking that California will become insolvent, having attempted to craft a complete welfare state and not been able to make necessary reforms there when needed.
Mr. Kudlow says the Obama plan for rescuing homeowners is a moral hazard to the country, bailing out all of the people who made bad decisions with our tax money and showing no confidence in the ability of the free market to correct all of these problems.
ddjango rails against how making "Human Resources" has dehumanized us and made us expendable things to corporations. Soon enough, he says, we'll just be things to governments, with eugenics and transhumanism as the new ways of controlling people with machines. At least, until the robots rebel against the humans.
the WSJ is concerned that Bad Things will happen if hackers get coordinated and decide to assault the United States en masse, because our cyber security basically sucks. A previous Defense minister for Israel says we should all be more concerned that Iran sent a satellite up into space, because it means they're going to soon have multi-stage ballistic capabilities and will be lobbing missiles at everyone they hate. And Mr. Krauthammer thinks that the Vice-President was right - the new administration is being tested, and has failed miserably on all counts, from Russia to Iran, because they rolled over in all of those situations instead of bombing them back to the stone age, or at least threatening to do so, or so it seems.
Ms. West says that measuring the success of Afghanistan by the trust the populace has in America and the NATO operations is stupid, because we should be measuring it by whether or not our operations are actually successful, at least, and reconfiguring ourselves so as not to have dependency on foreign oil and changing our immigration laws so we don't let any brown people, err, jihadists, enter the country and bring their Islam (permanently tainted with political Sharia, of course) into our country, where it will grow cancerously until we all become Islamic nations, too. Mr. North criticizes the decision by Mr. Obama to not make a fanfare of his sending additional troops to Afghanistan, notwithstanding that the President already said the troops were on the way beforehand.
Last out of the opinions, Mr. Blackwell is certain that Mr. Obama is paying off his special interests and will soon be turning the power of everything over to unions through the Employee Free Choice Act, turning us into an Orwellian nightmare where unions run everything and corporations are punished wherever they can be by the government if they act against the union. Mr. Goldberg thinks that when the Attorney General says we haven't had enough discussion on race, he means that we haven't had enough liberal indoctrination on race, because he sees all sorts of conversation about race, just not the ones that liberals want us to be having.
Last for tonight, I think this letter writer needs to work on his asking-out technique. A lot. For that letter, I think he'd get the cardboard dessert for his troubles. For those looking to fool their enemies into believing there's more military hardware deployed than there is, check out the inflatable weaponry - good enough to fool someone at a distance, I'm betting.
