Jul. 14th, 2009

silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
Greetings, everyone. Quite the weekend of material. To make your heart melt, before all the rest arrives, Tuesday, a service dog trained to help with emotional post-war distress, as well as making sure his soldier takes his meds on time. The dog knows how to do things like generate space, sense distress, and even help soldiers determine whether what they are looking at is real or not by barking.

We are also impressed with a person who can transform currency notes into intricate origami pieces.

Reltaed to our professional pursuits, most Americans believe science has had a positive effect on life, but they don't believe our science is the best in the world. (The scientists are split on the thought) Perhaps the low opinion of our science is really a low opinion of our attitudes toward and how we teach our sciences. Polling the scientists, they agree that the media simplifies things too much, the public expects science to do unrealistic things, and the public lacks scientific nollij in worrying amounts. The people, perhaps because of that lack of knowledge, also believe differently regarding anthropogenic climate change and evolution through natural selection.

The Pope and President Obama met privately, wih the Pope gifting the President with several recent documents explaining the Vatican's position on conception, artificial insemination, and genetic and embryonic research. He appears to be doing better than people making big noise about Prime Minister Stephen Harper taking communion at a Catholic service, despite being a Protestant, and apaprently slipping the wafer into his jacket pocket, with the comment squad equally divided between “The Priest messed up, b/c non-Catholics aren’t supposed to get it”, “Harper shouldn’t have gone up - clearly he did no research, the git”, and “zOMG! Harper Hates Catholics!”

President Obama also issued an ultimatum of sorts, declaring Iran had until September to comply with regulations and sanctions on their nuclear program or face tougher, unspecified consequences. Iran also has resurgent protesters to work around if it hopes to keep power. Of which Iraq has been rather silent, actually. Russia doesn't want you to forget about their democrats, though.

Mr. Obama also indicated that it was time for African countries to start pulling themselves into the new century, and that aid coming from the West would be structured to help self-sufficiency.

Confirming what was suspected around the world for a while, Kim Jong-Il has pancreatic cancer that threatens his life. Thus, the succession games. Maybe even the assault on South Korean and American cybersystems is part of this, too.

Lest anyone think other countries are perfect in their dealings with other religions and nationalities, observe this story from Germany of an Egyptain woman stabbed because she wore a religious symbol of her faith. We add to this a comment that sometimes we can’t even deal with our own properly - a man beat his daughter with a chunk of concrete for her refusal to attend church services, and then wonders what all the fuss is about. And there are the places where the religious interpretations are pretty screwed up - whip lashes against women for wearing pants, for example.

The United Kingdom's National Health Service is distributing leaflets to students indicating that having an orgasm a day will contribute to good health. This is the obverse of the coin that says “Have safe sex” - the one that says have enjoyable, pleasurable, safe sex, and there are health benefits. Of course, since it’s about sexual behavior by young people, not for procreation, and it actually says what everyone knows - that people do have sex for pleasure, not everyone is on board for this.

And there was the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.

Domestically, as the hearings for Sonia Sotomayor get underway, the Republicans appear to be sticking with strategy of painting the nominee as someone who disregards the rule of law in favor of her own personal, political, possibly race-motivated feelings. Perhaps, before they do, they should have a chat with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the currently sitting Justice, and ask her opinion on the matter.

The Director fo the CIA canned a very secret, very serious program that had been running since 2001. Yeah, that’s all the details. The director apparently informed the Congress the day after he was informed that it was running, and thuse previous administrations and directors have kept vital information from the Congress. And guess who’s involved in this cover-up. None other than Richard Cheney, apparently the person who gave the orders to director Panetta to keep this program secret.

Oh, and malfeasance goes all the way to the top - it turns out it was the previous administrator who ordered the run on then-Attorney General Ashcroft to authorize a surveillance program while he was recovering from surgery. And then, according to Oblermann, not only did he not get his authorization, he then had then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez sign off on it. Prosecutions can begin any time now, really.

While the Century of the Fruitbat continues to march onward, there are still plenty of places where the progressive attitude has not sunk in - witness Exhibit A, El Paso, where two men kissed and were promptly ejected from a restaurant. The police department endorsed the ejection on the grounds that private establishments can refuse service to anyone at any time. According to an account of one of the men there, the police officer threatened to cite them for “homosexual conduct”, enforcing a law that was overturned more than six years ago. There is also Exhibit B, Salt Lake City, potentially involving the Church of the Latter-Day Saints, where two men claim to have been detained for a kiss on the cheek, and were cited for trespassing. The Church claims they were being lewd and that public displays of affection weren’t allowed on church property and asked them to stop, at which point the men became profane.

And then, Exhibit C, of a different nature, where a pool gave sixty paying African American children the boot, and then said others were worried the kids would change the complexion of the camp. Apparently, upon the arrival of the black kids, all the white kids got out and the white parents said such things like “What are all these black kids doing here?” and “I’m worried they’ll do something to my child.” the attendant then apparently told the black kids “We don’t serve your kind here.” The club is terminating their membership and offering a refund. We think the kids should have a swim-in. The Club says it's a misunderstanding, and another place has stepped in to give the campers a place to swim. Of course, the General has praise for the whiteness and advice on how to procees.

Roland Burris, picked as the replacement for Senator Obama by Governor F-Word, has announced he will not be seeking to be elected in 2010. Whether involved or no, the scandalous nature of the dealings of Governor F-Word probably pretty well sank any chance he had before he could consider it.

A new development in one of the several running Republican sex scandals, an investigation into whether Senator Ensign allegedly tried to pay off his paramour for her to keep quiet about the affair. No, wait, not the Senator, his family. To the tune of about $100,000. Some of which may have been campaign funds or severance designed as hush money. Let's do that investigative thing.

And a new possibility on the horizon - an unnamed GOP senator was apparently toughing the inner thigh of a male reporter, and no, he wouldn’t say who.

A dad asked his son to help him dump the body of a prostitute.

The Bureau of Prisons, at one point, decided to restrict access to President Obama's book material, and although they have reversed themselves, the fact that they were doing it in the first place is problematic.

And AIG is paying out bonuses to executives again. They're hoping the government will give them their blessing.

In opinions, belief that re-election, or even re-nomination, for the President depends on whether he can actually get any of his audacious reforms passed in versions that will actually do what they're supposed to. And while The President is confident he can get health care reform passed, the question is still whether it’s real reform or not.

Mr. Cline thinks a case to be held over before the Supremes might be a way for the Court to decide corporations can directly donate, and thus show who’s been bought and paid for by whome. It will make for more corruption, but more corruption might finally make the people decide they want real change.

A "Thomas Paine" suggests that California pay its IOUs in marijuana futures, through legalization and then using that money to become good for legal pot, and thus gain quite a bit of revenue.

Mr. Cannon reflects on Sarah Palin, and suggests the MSM had a lot to do with her demise, by the fact that much of the outlets favored the Demcorats, and thus went easy on Joe Biden while savaging Sarah Palin. After all of this, The Slacktivist is glad to have made it through the latest round of newspaper cuts, but has survivor's guilt about it, as well as condemning the experiment being run that's trying to find just how few people can put out a newspaper that some people will read.

Mr. Nagl and Mr. Rice suggest the United States lay out capital for enterprise investment, as a shift from combat to post-combat operations, so that the private industries of Iraq can gear up to get going.

Mr. Payne says nuclear reduction talks are bad, because the U.S. will cut functional material and Russia will simply let its old stuff age out, and others say a nuclear-free world is a bad thing, because of the deterrence possibilities of those weapons. Mr. Krauthammer says nukees are a smokescreen by which Russia intends to rebuild an empire, and the United States is letting them by negotiating on things like nukes and missile shields and the like.

Mr. Bryce complains about the continued subsidy of corn ethanol, which clearly doesn't work and only lives because of subsidies, while Mr. Lazear says we don't need a second stimulus, because the first hasn&apot;t done a whole lot for us right now, and the stimulus is really a way of getting more government spending up and running, not a way of making the economy better.

Mr. Penn is worried that smartphones will be the new addiction for young people, with some “Telltale signs” and perhaps a wink and a nod at the famed CrackBerry addiction of the President.

In the run up to the quiche department, yet more about how the President's plan results in care rationing, Mr. Turd Blossom on how we can't trust the president because the numbers he used to push through stimulus haven't met with reality (and thus, his health care proposal numbers are suspect), The WSj saying the President's public-option inevitably leads to single-payer, government-dominated health care, which will crowd out the private sector and make costs balloon, even as the Obama Administration plays insurance and pharmaceutical companies like suckers, promising them one thing and then demanding what they really wanted, anyway - single-payer insurance that the private sector will pay for, blah-blah.

Competing for the quiche, at the bronze level, Mr. Gaffney takes a specific incident of extremism and generalizes it outward, taking the stoning of a woman under Iran’s interpretation of Sharia and making it a representation of all Sharia, so we have to fight it from getting into our country and turning us all into people afraid to tell the stoners that they’re wrong and doing something illegal.

The WSJ revisits the CIA "misleading" and accuses the Congress of putting the Speaker's reputation above that of the national interest, with the expanded intelligence briefing bill and the continued demands for Mr. Panetta to correct his statement about the CIA not misleading the Congress as a general rule or policy.

And The WSJ tells us the G-8 basically commanded the Earth not to rise in temperature, with all the talks and possible accords on climate change coming from there. Ms. Charen agrees, and considers Mr. Obama's position on climate change to be religious fervor from a president who said he would restore science in the country. Cast your votes for that winner... now.

Up one level, at the silver point, Mr. Bozell, accusing filmmaker Oliver Stone of being a lousy historian because his films are not kind to Republicans. Does that mean I can call Mr. Bozell a lousy politician and a horrible President, because he writes columns about politics and culture, some of which use untruths in them for drama? Or should I instead turn my attention to Mr. Beck, complaining that the questions today were softballs, despite there being no actual questions asked.

Also at this level, Mr. Elder, telling us we have to fight the good fight against Obamanomics, as well as declaring that the United States has no business intervening in other countries, unless our national security is at stake, and that we should have followed this policy quite a bit in our past. Of course, he doesn’t like the Republicans, because they also supported bailouts, but the Democrats continued spending, increasing the government share of GDP just means we’re headed for an inflation crash.

On Gold Quiche level, though, Mr. Kennedy relates stories of CEOs, bank managers, and others who feel that the current President is generating a "climate of fear" in private industry and are convinced he's on a determined track to destroy private industry and the economy. Mr. Kennedy regales us with tales of liberals making plans to leave the country when the previous administrator was elected...and neglects to mention how much they were ridiculed for this, and it turned out not to be the doomsday scenario during that time, as well. And now CEOs want to leave because they’re afraid of the government? Almost enough to make me want to smile sweetly and say, “Fine. Passport office is on the left. Take some time outside the country if you like, and then tell us again whether leaving was a smart decision.” Really, why would a president want to destroy the economy? I think Mr. Kennedy’s metaphor is apt. That he’s not deriding his fellows for their panic, but instead presenting this as a Clear Danger, means he didn’t learn when he was pointing and laughing at the liberals.

And, the Heritage Foundation says "Look at all the plots we foiled! Clearly, this means we have to keep up, if not increase, the funding we have for counterterrorism and not slack off an inch!quot;. Yes, terrorists got caught. Terrorists were getting caught beforehand. Pay more attention to the point you made about there not being an attack, and thus it being difficult to judge effectiveness. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Otherwise, I have a tiger-repeller to sell you. And actually, compare that to the Southern Poverty Law Center list of 77 domestic terrorists caught - they might be more active than the foreign ones. Isn’t that funny?

Last out, though, ddjango tells us to look inside ourselves and admit the truth - electing Hope and Change meant that a new acting company came in, but the problems and the things that still continue to harm us continued unabated - bceause Washington is running the country in the interests of their corporate masters, not us, and will continue to do so until we give real change to the populace. I wonder, then, whether Mr. Henninger's comments about the need to export our democratic system and condemn systems that look democratic but are repressive should be so outward-focused. The people speaking about how Russia and Iran are democratic are not totally lying - the people get to vote, and theoretically, their voice is heard... when it suits the powers that are to listen to them. Sound like anywhere closer to home, too? Think about this, too - the powers that are in corporations are the ones sucking up all the resources - so while making ourselves more simple is a great thing, and not using more than we have to, we’d have to make serious changes to the way we do things industrially and corporately if we wanted to make a real impact on things.

In technology, prosthetics to help the animal kingdom, caloric restriction as a way of expanding lifespan in monkeys, a virus spreading through the Twitterverse because of links, Microsoft putting on free on-line components of Word, Excel, and OneNote as part of competition with Google, The Amazon river is dated to 11 million years, synthetic trees that allegedly suck out carbon, projectile tasers, a mechanical cheetah, and putting your pub on wheels, thus making it a mobile, in some cases, even pedal-powered, bar. That'll make the robot smile.

Oh, and if you were wondering, cats do adapt to control humans, too.

Almost last for tonight, a more cheerful apocaplyse, one where the animals are prominent as the human influences are now returning to nature, cheap laughs from silly signs, and finally figuring out where all that freedom stuff comes from.

Last for tonight, cussing someone or something out increases our tolerance for pain. So the next time something foul escapes your lips, realize that it’s somehow helping you regulate your emotions and make it so you can endure more.

Now it’s time to go play the latest in games for girls... so I can make fun of them.

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silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
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