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Caught up on the weekend - 11 May 2009
May. 12th, 2009 09:49 amOut in the world, poetry and music in Basra, after the drumbeats of war have hit hardest there, General Petraeus optimistic about Pakistan, a United States journalist in Iran sentenced to eight years in prison for espionage had her sentence reduced to two years, suspended, and then was freed from jail, and what a layoff feels like for many having to give it, in the small and medium-sized companies that employ most of the workforce.
Of interest to the people in the United States - stamp prices just went up again.
The following several segment blocks contain, well, a lot of stupidity. Read at your own need for laughs or rage.
A health and safety officer has banned the usage of ladders in a library, which puts many of the top-shelf books out of reach, because the library doesn't really want to move the books to comply with the new regulation. Might not have shelf space for it, either.
Witch hunts still going on, still killing people, still not being addressed in Papua New Guinea, mostly because the police force is understaffed and underfunded and the mentality behind witch hunts is similar to the one behind lynch mobs - until the populace changes, the police probably can't do a whole lot about it.
Domestically, A Georgia governor candidate has admitted to homosexuality and bestiality, and doesn't think either will hurt his campaign...of getting Georgia to secede and/or declare federal and other laws nullified.
The Wall Street Journal will soon become obsolete, as it will be introducing a micropayments system for articles and subscriptions.
Mr. Cheney continues to harp that the current President is making the country less safe, as well as justifing items that are torture under the Geneva conventions. Mr. North alerts us to a bill in the Congress that would make the fulfillment of the promise to close Guantanamo Bay even harder by requiring states and governors to approve the transfer of setainees into their jurisdictions, a NIMBY response.
The people responsible for the National Day of Prayer felt snubbed when President Obama didn't turn up to their event, or even acknowledge it, no doubt furthering the idea that he's secretly an atheist commie. Bill'O thinks the flak from Miss California's frank and honest statements about marriage is a liberal attempt to silence her free speech. No, Bill, it's people expressing their opinion of her opinions.
Mr. Kuhner blames liberals everywhere, but especially in the United States, for the continued violence and genocide in Darfur, declaring with confidence that only through a United States-led military intervention will the killing stop. With the implication "...because there will be nobody left to shoot back."
In your "and these people are administrating schools" department, An Ohio Fundamentalist school said a student would be suspended if he went to the public school prom of his girlfriend, because the school forbids such things as dancing, kissing, and rock music (all of which would be in attendance, we suspect). The student went anyway, and the school made good on their threat, suspending him, barring him from graduation, and giving him incompletes for the year's remaining schoolwork. Religious freedom bites hard sometimes. In other places, it kills. The mother of a thirteen year-old boy testified and insisted that he would not go back on chemotherapy to defeat Hodgkin's lymphoma because chemotherapy conflicted with the family's religious beliefs, instead prefering to use remedies and techniques found on the Internet. Going off the chemo reduces the boy's survival chances from 95 percent to 5.
Beating out that, though, is the anti-choice segment getting upset that an author of books for children endorses Planned Parenthood. Considering that Judy Blume has written a lot of non rose-colored books about growing up and sexual maturation, this should be a surprise to no person that she endorses safe practices and those places that offer sound advice and services to the young. What they should be surprised at is rape victims receiving bills for the testing kit used to gather evidence.
Trumping that, in the "he's got a television show" department, Mr. Hannity went after the President for selecting mustard on his burger when he made a stop at a restaurant in Arlignton, Va. So, after someone covers one inane thing, someone else decides to turn it into an avenue of attack. Kind of like haircut costs, windsurfing, bowling, and a lot of other things that are unimportant but suddenly become fodder for political attacks or are determined to show character.
Okay, that's enough of that stupidity.
The President delivered a few jokes of his own at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, apparently skewering everyone he could, including himself, along the way. That was received well. Other bits of humor apparently were not.
After that, the President wants us to be proud of the billions of dollars cut from a several trillions of dollars budget, with the Defense Department suffering the most, but for which Fox News and the WSJ are fixated on $60 million in "new taxes" and pointing out where other people decide not to go through with carbon cap-and-trade taxations. They are at least not creating straw men to knock down about cap-and-trade, as Mr. Barton does.
The AP, at least, points out transportation spending may not be going to the highest-unemployment places.
In opinions, The WSj thinks Ford should be the car company winner, because they didn't get a bailout, but that they will likely lose, because they didn't get a bailout.
The Republican Party insists that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats go down with them if torture investigations are opened, because, they tell us, Congress knew everything and approved of it.
Messrs. Smith and Berlau think that competition between governments on tax rates and the like is good for the economy, and that President Obama is refusing to participate in it when he goes after places as tax havens, instead of doing what The Market demands and lowering taxes on corporations.
The WSJ is convinced any sort of public health insurance option means government control with everyone on it, because everything else has gone this way as well, because retirees are politically powerful. (And everyone's living logner, too, but that's not what they want to focus on.)
Last out, The Slacktivist asks why empathy has become a four-letter word in some circles.
In science and technology, scientists still working on the means to produce FTL travel, using a robot originally designed to be a receptionist as a substitute teacher for a bit, how accepting or rejecting stem cells could shape the political and economic atmosphere of states, seed bombs, a possible way of recapturing zones that have been turned into deserts or deforested, a village in India that has 250 sets of twins and some scientists trying to figure out why, illustrations of the use of stasis tubes (almost always on women, and with carefully placed designs), and robots that autonomously wipe the floor.
Last for tonight, humorist Douglas Adams's guide to Australia. And 3D Realms goes bust, so Duke Nukem Forever's development cycle is now, well, indefinite. Thankfully, you won't have to pay $400 for the privilege of that. Instead, you can buy Made in Ore, which will let you design WarioWare-style games yourself.
On the postscript, art intending to raise the awareness of who the homeless are in your country.
Of interest to the people in the United States - stamp prices just went up again.
The following several segment blocks contain, well, a lot of stupidity. Read at your own need for laughs or rage.
A health and safety officer has banned the usage of ladders in a library, which puts many of the top-shelf books out of reach, because the library doesn't really want to move the books to comply with the new regulation. Might not have shelf space for it, either.
Witch hunts still going on, still killing people, still not being addressed in Papua New Guinea, mostly because the police force is understaffed and underfunded and the mentality behind witch hunts is similar to the one behind lynch mobs - until the populace changes, the police probably can't do a whole lot about it.
Domestically, A Georgia governor candidate has admitted to homosexuality and bestiality, and doesn't think either will hurt his campaign...of getting Georgia to secede and/or declare federal and other laws nullified.
The Wall Street Journal will soon become obsolete, as it will be introducing a micropayments system for articles and subscriptions.
Mr. Cheney continues to harp that the current President is making the country less safe, as well as justifing items that are torture under the Geneva conventions. Mr. North alerts us to a bill in the Congress that would make the fulfillment of the promise to close Guantanamo Bay even harder by requiring states and governors to approve the transfer of setainees into their jurisdictions, a NIMBY response.
The people responsible for the National Day of Prayer felt snubbed when President Obama didn't turn up to their event, or even acknowledge it, no doubt furthering the idea that he's secretly an atheist commie. Bill'O thinks the flak from Miss California's frank and honest statements about marriage is a liberal attempt to silence her free speech. No, Bill, it's people expressing their opinion of her opinions.
Mr. Kuhner blames liberals everywhere, but especially in the United States, for the continued violence and genocide in Darfur, declaring with confidence that only through a United States-led military intervention will the killing stop. With the implication "...because there will be nobody left to shoot back."
In your "and these people are administrating schools" department, An Ohio Fundamentalist school said a student would be suspended if he went to the public school prom of his girlfriend, because the school forbids such things as dancing, kissing, and rock music (all of which would be in attendance, we suspect). The student went anyway, and the school made good on their threat, suspending him, barring him from graduation, and giving him incompletes for the year's remaining schoolwork. Religious freedom bites hard sometimes. In other places, it kills. The mother of a thirteen year-old boy testified and insisted that he would not go back on chemotherapy to defeat Hodgkin's lymphoma because chemotherapy conflicted with the family's religious beliefs, instead prefering to use remedies and techniques found on the Internet. Going off the chemo reduces the boy's survival chances from 95 percent to 5.
Beating out that, though, is the anti-choice segment getting upset that an author of books for children endorses Planned Parenthood. Considering that Judy Blume has written a lot of non rose-colored books about growing up and sexual maturation, this should be a surprise to no person that she endorses safe practices and those places that offer sound advice and services to the young. What they should be surprised at is rape victims receiving bills for the testing kit used to gather evidence.
Trumping that, in the "he's got a television show" department, Mr. Hannity went after the President for selecting mustard on his burger when he made a stop at a restaurant in Arlignton, Va. So, after someone covers one inane thing, someone else decides to turn it into an avenue of attack. Kind of like haircut costs, windsurfing, bowling, and a lot of other things that are unimportant but suddenly become fodder for political attacks or are determined to show character.
Okay, that's enough of that stupidity.
The President delivered a few jokes of his own at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, apparently skewering everyone he could, including himself, along the way. That was received well. Other bits of humor apparently were not.
After that, the President wants us to be proud of the billions of dollars cut from a several trillions of dollars budget, with the Defense Department suffering the most, but for which Fox News and the WSJ are fixated on $60 million in "new taxes" and pointing out where other people decide not to go through with carbon cap-and-trade taxations. They are at least not creating straw men to knock down about cap-and-trade, as Mr. Barton does.
The AP, at least, points out transportation spending may not be going to the highest-unemployment places.
In opinions, The WSj thinks Ford should be the car company winner, because they didn't get a bailout, but that they will likely lose, because they didn't get a bailout.
The Republican Party insists that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats go down with them if torture investigations are opened, because, they tell us, Congress knew everything and approved of it.
Messrs. Smith and Berlau think that competition between governments on tax rates and the like is good for the economy, and that President Obama is refusing to participate in it when he goes after places as tax havens, instead of doing what The Market demands and lowering taxes on corporations.
The WSJ is convinced any sort of public health insurance option means government control with everyone on it, because everything else has gone this way as well, because retirees are politically powerful. (And everyone's living logner, too, but that's not what they want to focus on.)
Last out, The Slacktivist asks why empathy has become a four-letter word in some circles.
In science and technology, scientists still working on the means to produce FTL travel, using a robot originally designed to be a receptionist as a substitute teacher for a bit, how accepting or rejecting stem cells could shape the political and economic atmosphere of states, seed bombs, a possible way of recapturing zones that have been turned into deserts or deforested, a village in India that has 250 sets of twins and some scientists trying to figure out why, illustrations of the use of stasis tubes (almost always on women, and with carefully placed designs), and robots that autonomously wipe the floor.
Last for tonight, humorist Douglas Adams's guide to Australia. And 3D Realms goes bust, so Duke Nukem Forever's development cycle is now, well, indefinite. Thankfully, you won't have to pay $400 for the privilege of that. Instead, you can buy Made in Ore, which will let you design WarioWare-style games yourself.
On the postscript, art intending to raise the awareness of who the homeless are in your country.
