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Up top, Auto-Tune The News is back, with a beat that’s better than what they’ve done in the last few attemtps. So there’s Couric, Palin, and the climate change bill, all in a convenient and perfectly-pitched package. Enjoy. Be aware, though, that Huxley may have been correct, instead of Orwell. Still, even Palin Auto-Tunes well. Couric still sounds better.
Happy 10th birthday, you eight billion USD-valued sponge.
Out in the world today, a child was tricked into coming to a hospital, where he was given shock therapy for an addiction his parents think he had, and he had to learn to abide by the rules of the place he was at before they would declare him cured and let him go. Does this sound familiar? Whether to make someone “ex-gay”, to fix their “defiant behavior” or for a potentially nonexistent addiction, it’s the same treatment, probably aimed more at breaking the spirit of someone than in curing any sort of addictive behavior.
And in Japan, there’s one segment of the economy that’s doing well - short-term-stay hotels, colloquially "Love Hotels" are still popular, even in down times - sometimes for getting a few moments of privacy in an otherwise hectic world, others for various fetish and fannish ways. Real estate being what it is on the islands, I don’t know if someone could start making new inroads there, but I’ve thought this is a concept that could carry over to America - admittedly, even if they did become more fully love hotels where affairs and others met for quickies during the day or night.
In the domestic sphere, depending on who you believe, Judge Sotomayor disavowed and retreated from the still out-of-context remarks about "wise Latina" judges or stood her ground on the remarks, saying they had been msiniterpreted, and that the law ultimately guides her, while frustrating Republicans that she would not give specifics of positions on their pet button-pushers. At least one friend on Twitter has noted the irony of old Republican white men questioning a Latina woman about racially-charged remarks, and Mr. Olbermann pointed out that Mr. Sessions, doing the questioning, was a particular point of irony, considering he was denied federal judgeship based on standing by remarks he had previously said about how he thought the KKK was okay, until he found out they were potheads. Either way, despite the ugly formatting, here are ten things we wouldn't mind hearing Judge Sotomayor say in her hearings.
Perhaps the best nonpartisan opinion penned on the matter so far goes to Mr. Barnett, who says instead of asking about cases and precedents, we should be asking about clauses and interpretations, so as to get meaningful knowledge out of a nominee, without asking them to say how they will rule in one particular specific circumstance. Since, ultimately, the Court is about Constitutionality, perhaps asking how a nominee interprets the Constitution would be a good thing. Gold star to you, Mr. Barnett.
Elsewhere in the country, it turns out the secret program withheld from the Congress was a program to kill al-Qaeda leaders, and that it never really got off the ground. (Among other things in this digest, including that the Episcopal Church in the Untied States has decided homosexuals can be ordained. Go, Episcopalians, go!)
Hey, Senator from Arizona (not that one), look at all the stuff that won't happen if you cancel the stimulus cash. The governor is okay with the stimulus stuff, but the Senator in question feels like he’s being bullied when the White House releases letters from cabinet secretaries to the Arizona Governor about all the stuff that’s in line for Arizona, if they take the money.
Speaking of money, isn&apo;t it nice to know that most of the country is scrambling to capture a mere 15 percent of all the wealth held in the country, while the top 20 percent hold 85 percent of the wealth, and the top 1 percent hold nearly 35 percent themselves? No wonder everyone always feels like there isn’t enough to go around. Makes those “soak the rich” taxes look delicious, assuming that the government can actually collect on them without it punishing the people further down the way.
Oh, hey, the Senate health care bill passed committee. And it taxes people with high adjusted gross income to help pay for the cost of the health care. Getting closer to that final form. Of course, this means Mr. Boortz will start pulling out the links to make you believe its a bad idea, going to hurt small businesses and force retirees to pay loads of money when they retire.
The Washington Times digs up a potential conflict of interest between a Representative and the bill he authored helping "green" banks - the Representative has investments in a bank that would probably qualify.
And last before opinions, dumb criminal alarm - the first rule of getting away with a Fight Club-style bomb attack is you don't brag about your Fight Club-style bomb attack to your friends.
In opinions, Ms. O'Grady pontificates on how legal and justified the Honduran arrest and expulsion was, based on recent history in and around the country.
Ms. Parker defends Sarah Palin's decision to step down as correct, based on her continued support, even though she should, by all rights and purposes, be toast on the political circuit from here on out, according to the CW. But she’s a maverick, and does mavericky things, and so her unconventionality is playing out just fine. I’m betting she’ll make more as the ex than as the officeholder, anyway.
The WSJ defends the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, considering them to have reduced casualties, because of their ability to distinguish between targets and civilians and their ability to deliver low-yield explosives in a precise manner. So long as they’re also okay with the idea that there should always be a human on the other end of that, it’s a decent opinion.
They also expectantly drum their fingers at the Democratic Party after several members of the Washington D.C. Council sent a letter expressing support for the voucher program currently slated to die if Congress does not renew it. That’s not their worst material yet, though.
Regarding climate change, Mr. Vail suggests that talk of renewables transitions may be off base because we don't know what the return on investment, in terms of carbon emissions, we'd be getting - whether the necessary emission now will be recuperated over time or fast enough over time. For those unconvinced that CO2 emissions are even the thing to be talking about in regard to the temperature of the earth rising, A Skeptic's Handbook in PDF form tackles some of the arguments and fallacies made by those claiming carbon emissions are the cause of global warming.
Messrs. Gall and Simpson use the recent Washington Post flap to advocate for the removal of any restrictions on corporate spending for or against political actions, because the media get to be as political as they want, spend money as they want endorsing or opposing, and nobody complains that they’re exercising undue influence on politics. Furthermore, they tell us, events like the Post planned are commonplace occurrences, and the only problem here is that the Post got caught. If we remove the finance requirements, then we stop censoring the corporations. I’ll offer a trade - if we remove corporate campaign finance requirements, we require that all lobbyists who have any corporations paying them or who are advocating for corporate interests cease their actions completely. They can lobby and spend all they want to have their preferred candidate elected, but once elected, they must stop any influence attempts and trust their candidate will advocate their interests for them. Sounds like a fair deal to me.
Let’s talk quiche, yo. The WSJ comes out against a minimum wage increase, insisting that it will prune more jobs from the people that need them the most - 16-24 year olds and single mothers, and arguing that things like the Earned Income Tax Credit and other once-a-year payments make it so that a single mother, say, “earns” a wage about twice what she actually earns in pay. During the other months of the year, does that mother has enough money in her paychecks to take care of the basic needs of her children? I doubt it. If raising the minimum wage kills jobs, shouldn’t we be looking at the reasons why employers aren’t going to hire people at the higher rate and find ways of fixing that? Maybe, say, by taking the giant cost of health care off their shoulders and putting it across the tax base?
Ms. Cheney comes out swinging and does one better, denouncing the President for promoting the Russian version of the Cold War, as opposed to what she says is the truth, and for not defending America from the vicious lies of people like Daniel Ortega. Because we were the ultimate force for good during the Cold War, to whom the Godless Communists could not stand up to in the end, even as they ran a brutal and repressive regime. Uh, Liz? If they ran a brutal and repressive regime, they doomed themselves to failure from the beginning. Plus, when talking about how reducing American and Russian nuclear weapon stockpiles won’t convince budding nuclear nations to give up their weapons, you also forget that the amount reduced to is probably still enough to glass anywhere in the world, if not reduce the world to its component atoms. Why one needs a thousand missiles to shoot down one is still not readily comprehensible. As for Ortega and others, do you think strident denial by a President is the right way to respond to off-the-wall claims? Or would smiling and ignoring them be the better way to disarm them?
But at the very nadir of this routine, an army major claimed his deployment orders were illegal because... the President is not a natural-born citizen, is thus not the President and commander-in-chief, and that following those orders would be a violation of international law, in his opinion. His deployment orders were nixed, for reasons the Army is not disclosing. The lawyer is claiming victory and crowing that any “birther” can now object to their deployment on those grounds.
And occupying the very bottom with them, the committee supposed to determine Texas's social science textbook curriculum, which has three people, selected by government functionaries if not elected representatives, advocating for less history, less minorities, and more religious hagiographic bullshit, recommending the removal of Thurgood Marshall, Cesar Chavez, and Anne Hutchinson (as well as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln from early grades), substituting characters such as Sam Houston, Harriet Tubman, and Billy Graham (who would get a segment on fundamentalism along with himself). They’d also like to change our “democratic” values to “republican” values, which, while potentially accurate, sounds a little too politically motivated to be pure. They do make a decent suggestion in asking for more primary document study, which is what makes history interesting (especially when paired with someone who knows what parts to highlight). The non-conservative-appointed members would like a little less “democracy versus evil” in the Cold War, and more minorities and minority contributions, because, well, they were here, too. I do think, however, that the Rebel Yell has found, in her analysis, the perfect reason why more religion in public education would be a bad thing - it would make US more like THEM, by which I mean the die-hard conservative Chrstians might be mortified to find they're following the path that the heathen and apostate Wahabist Muslims (used to) take to education. In a somewhat funny way, the Wahabist Muslims have been making effors to put more history and less religion in their education.
To cleanse our palate of all that, The General offers his advice on how to find and weed out people who have The Gay before they get sent off on LDS missions.
In technology, Google Voice to Android handhelds and Blackberry devices, making VoIP that much better and easier, proposing an experiment to test whether light beams can be teleported, an excellent 3-dimensional map of the physical brain assists in the removal of a tumor, and wind turbines that challenge conventional designs.
Last for tonight, inadequate electromagnetic shielding makes for interesting paperclip dancing and reasons to keep your dinosaur off drugs.
Oh, yes, and some movie based on a book came out. Sorry, I was too busy watching the baseball game. The one that the President threw the first pitch out to.
Happy 10th birthday, you eight billion USD-valued sponge.
Out in the world today, a child was tricked into coming to a hospital, where he was given shock therapy for an addiction his parents think he had, and he had to learn to abide by the rules of the place he was at before they would declare him cured and let him go. Does this sound familiar? Whether to make someone “ex-gay”, to fix their “defiant behavior” or for a potentially nonexistent addiction, it’s the same treatment, probably aimed more at breaking the spirit of someone than in curing any sort of addictive behavior.
And in Japan, there’s one segment of the economy that’s doing well - short-term-stay hotels, colloquially "Love Hotels" are still popular, even in down times - sometimes for getting a few moments of privacy in an otherwise hectic world, others for various fetish and fannish ways. Real estate being what it is on the islands, I don’t know if someone could start making new inroads there, but I’ve thought this is a concept that could carry over to America - admittedly, even if they did become more fully love hotels where affairs and others met for quickies during the day or night.
In the domestic sphere, depending on who you believe, Judge Sotomayor disavowed and retreated from the still out-of-context remarks about "wise Latina" judges or stood her ground on the remarks, saying they had been msiniterpreted, and that the law ultimately guides her, while frustrating Republicans that she would not give specifics of positions on their pet button-pushers. At least one friend on Twitter has noted the irony of old Republican white men questioning a Latina woman about racially-charged remarks, and Mr. Olbermann pointed out that Mr. Sessions, doing the questioning, was a particular point of irony, considering he was denied federal judgeship based on standing by remarks he had previously said about how he thought the KKK was okay, until he found out they were potheads. Either way, despite the ugly formatting, here are ten things we wouldn't mind hearing Judge Sotomayor say in her hearings.
Perhaps the best nonpartisan opinion penned on the matter so far goes to Mr. Barnett, who says instead of asking about cases and precedents, we should be asking about clauses and interpretations, so as to get meaningful knowledge out of a nominee, without asking them to say how they will rule in one particular specific circumstance. Since, ultimately, the Court is about Constitutionality, perhaps asking how a nominee interprets the Constitution would be a good thing. Gold star to you, Mr. Barnett.
Elsewhere in the country, it turns out the secret program withheld from the Congress was a program to kill al-Qaeda leaders, and that it never really got off the ground. (Among other things in this digest, including that the Episcopal Church in the Untied States has decided homosexuals can be ordained. Go, Episcopalians, go!)
Hey, Senator from Arizona (not that one), look at all the stuff that won't happen if you cancel the stimulus cash. The governor is okay with the stimulus stuff, but the Senator in question feels like he’s being bullied when the White House releases letters from cabinet secretaries to the Arizona Governor about all the stuff that’s in line for Arizona, if they take the money.
Speaking of money, isn&apo;t it nice to know that most of the country is scrambling to capture a mere 15 percent of all the wealth held in the country, while the top 20 percent hold 85 percent of the wealth, and the top 1 percent hold nearly 35 percent themselves? No wonder everyone always feels like there isn’t enough to go around. Makes those “soak the rich” taxes look delicious, assuming that the government can actually collect on them without it punishing the people further down the way.
Oh, hey, the Senate health care bill passed committee. And it taxes people with high adjusted gross income to help pay for the cost of the health care. Getting closer to that final form. Of course, this means Mr. Boortz will start pulling out the links to make you believe its a bad idea, going to hurt small businesses and force retirees to pay loads of money when they retire.
The Washington Times digs up a potential conflict of interest between a Representative and the bill he authored helping "green" banks - the Representative has investments in a bank that would probably qualify.
And last before opinions, dumb criminal alarm - the first rule of getting away with a Fight Club-style bomb attack is you don't brag about your Fight Club-style bomb attack to your friends.
In opinions, Ms. O'Grady pontificates on how legal and justified the Honduran arrest and expulsion was, based on recent history in and around the country.
Ms. Parker defends Sarah Palin's decision to step down as correct, based on her continued support, even though she should, by all rights and purposes, be toast on the political circuit from here on out, according to the CW. But she’s a maverick, and does mavericky things, and so her unconventionality is playing out just fine. I’m betting she’ll make more as the ex than as the officeholder, anyway.
The WSJ defends the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, considering them to have reduced casualties, because of their ability to distinguish between targets and civilians and their ability to deliver low-yield explosives in a precise manner. So long as they’re also okay with the idea that there should always be a human on the other end of that, it’s a decent opinion.
They also expectantly drum their fingers at the Democratic Party after several members of the Washington D.C. Council sent a letter expressing support for the voucher program currently slated to die if Congress does not renew it. That’s not their worst material yet, though.
Regarding climate change, Mr. Vail suggests that talk of renewables transitions may be off base because we don't know what the return on investment, in terms of carbon emissions, we'd be getting - whether the necessary emission now will be recuperated over time or fast enough over time. For those unconvinced that CO2 emissions are even the thing to be talking about in regard to the temperature of the earth rising, A Skeptic's Handbook in PDF form tackles some of the arguments and fallacies made by those claiming carbon emissions are the cause of global warming.
Messrs. Gall and Simpson use the recent Washington Post flap to advocate for the removal of any restrictions on corporate spending for or against political actions, because the media get to be as political as they want, spend money as they want endorsing or opposing, and nobody complains that they’re exercising undue influence on politics. Furthermore, they tell us, events like the Post planned are commonplace occurrences, and the only problem here is that the Post got caught. If we remove the finance requirements, then we stop censoring the corporations. I’ll offer a trade - if we remove corporate campaign finance requirements, we require that all lobbyists who have any corporations paying them or who are advocating for corporate interests cease their actions completely. They can lobby and spend all they want to have their preferred candidate elected, but once elected, they must stop any influence attempts and trust their candidate will advocate their interests for them. Sounds like a fair deal to me.
Let’s talk quiche, yo. The WSJ comes out against a minimum wage increase, insisting that it will prune more jobs from the people that need them the most - 16-24 year olds and single mothers, and arguing that things like the Earned Income Tax Credit and other once-a-year payments make it so that a single mother, say, “earns” a wage about twice what she actually earns in pay. During the other months of the year, does that mother has enough money in her paychecks to take care of the basic needs of her children? I doubt it. If raising the minimum wage kills jobs, shouldn’t we be looking at the reasons why employers aren’t going to hire people at the higher rate and find ways of fixing that? Maybe, say, by taking the giant cost of health care off their shoulders and putting it across the tax base?
Ms. Cheney comes out swinging and does one better, denouncing the President for promoting the Russian version of the Cold War, as opposed to what she says is the truth, and for not defending America from the vicious lies of people like Daniel Ortega. Because we were the ultimate force for good during the Cold War, to whom the Godless Communists could not stand up to in the end, even as they ran a brutal and repressive regime. Uh, Liz? If they ran a brutal and repressive regime, they doomed themselves to failure from the beginning. Plus, when talking about how reducing American and Russian nuclear weapon stockpiles won’t convince budding nuclear nations to give up their weapons, you also forget that the amount reduced to is probably still enough to glass anywhere in the world, if not reduce the world to its component atoms. Why one needs a thousand missiles to shoot down one is still not readily comprehensible. As for Ortega and others, do you think strident denial by a President is the right way to respond to off-the-wall claims? Or would smiling and ignoring them be the better way to disarm them?
But at the very nadir of this routine, an army major claimed his deployment orders were illegal because... the President is not a natural-born citizen, is thus not the President and commander-in-chief, and that following those orders would be a violation of international law, in his opinion. His deployment orders were nixed, for reasons the Army is not disclosing. The lawyer is claiming victory and crowing that any “birther” can now object to their deployment on those grounds.
And occupying the very bottom with them, the committee supposed to determine Texas's social science textbook curriculum, which has three people, selected by government functionaries if not elected representatives, advocating for less history, less minorities, and more religious hagiographic bullshit, recommending the removal of Thurgood Marshall, Cesar Chavez, and Anne Hutchinson (as well as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln from early grades), substituting characters such as Sam Houston, Harriet Tubman, and Billy Graham (who would get a segment on fundamentalism along with himself). They’d also like to change our “democratic” values to “republican” values, which, while potentially accurate, sounds a little too politically motivated to be pure. They do make a decent suggestion in asking for more primary document study, which is what makes history interesting (especially when paired with someone who knows what parts to highlight). The non-conservative-appointed members would like a little less “democracy versus evil” in the Cold War, and more minorities and minority contributions, because, well, they were here, too. I do think, however, that the Rebel Yell has found, in her analysis, the perfect reason why more religion in public education would be a bad thing - it would make US more like THEM, by which I mean the die-hard conservative Chrstians might be mortified to find they're following the path that the heathen and apostate Wahabist Muslims (used to) take to education. In a somewhat funny way, the Wahabist Muslims have been making effors to put more history and less religion in their education.
To cleanse our palate of all that, The General offers his advice on how to find and weed out people who have The Gay before they get sent off on LDS missions.
In technology, Google Voice to Android handhelds and Blackberry devices, making VoIP that much better and easier, proposing an experiment to test whether light beams can be teleported, an excellent 3-dimensional map of the physical brain assists in the removal of a tumor, and wind turbines that challenge conventional designs.
Last for tonight, inadequate electromagnetic shielding makes for interesting paperclip dancing and reasons to keep your dinosaur off drugs.
Oh, yes, and some movie based on a book came out. Sorry, I was too busy watching the baseball game. The one that the President threw the first pitch out to.
