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Greetings, everyone. Have you tried the soup today?
The players in the Dead Pool get more active every day - this time we lost an iconic broadcaster of the era just past - Walter Cronkite left the world at 92 years of age. The older you get, the more people you know end up dying, both famous and not. Walter Cronkite, though, was the voice of much of our modern history, reporting on many of the iconic imagery and stories of the later 20th century. A librarian in the area reflects on Cronkite's death, and how she might have become a journalist had journalism been more Cronkite than advertising and "Fair and Balanced".
Professionally speaking, I think Cat and Girl nailed it - the only people who seem to believe in bun-haired librarians are fetishists and journalists. And then Utne Reader follows on with an excellent piece - it's not that we're not reading, it's that we have no friggin clue what do with the information barrage. That’s where information professionals like librarians come in - we can teach you how to cope, how to sift and search, and how to tell whether you’re reading a racist whackjob or a serious scholar.
Out in the world, the Taliban of Afghanistan has threatened to kill an American soldier if America does not cease operations in two villages in the country. In response, the military has threatened to target those villages with increased troop presence and raids.
Bombers smuggled explosives into their rooms in luxury hotels in Jakarta an detonated them, with at least eight dead and fifty wounded.
Protesters in Iran chanted slogans during Friday prayer services and received tear gas from the police as a reward. Offshore, Israeli warships headed to the Red Sea, for what may be a rehearsal for a strike against Iran. May not be wise to hit the country when they’re still having internal arguments about who’s actually in charge there.
Domestically, some Amazon readers awoke to find that a book they had paid for and downloaded to their Kindle was removed and the book's cost was credited to them. Amazon later explained the books had been uploaded by someone who did not have the rights to them, but acknowledged that the idea of simly deleting books remotely from Kindles with no explanation was a bad, bad idea. The most interesting part? The books were “1984” and “Animal Farm”. That’s the funny thing about technology and devices that phone home - it cedes control of your stuff to someone else, even if you think you bought and own the material. Kindles look more and more like a bad idea if you want to actually own your books.
Out does a quick piece on Megan McCain, someonw whom I hope is vaulted to a position of power in the Republican Party soon, because of her willingness to tell the old guard to go screw themselves, and her position in favor of gays being able to marry, as well as (and this is highly cynical) being both young and a woman, to help the Republicans shed an “old-boys club” image.
The engineering firm Siemens stands to lose significant money if their venture with Nokia to sell surveillance equipment to Iran results in the award of a Los Angeles Metropolitan Authority contract to another firm.
More of the continuing saga of mobile home owners having the carpet yanked out from under them - a couple that bought their mobile home, then ran into financial difficulties, to find out there was no equity in their house, it was classified as a car, and it was depreciating like a vehicle. Plus, they don’t own the land the home sits on, despite having to make it fairly permanent to that land. So they’re paying rent, too, and face eviction if they miss that, or repossession, not foreclosure, of their home, which doesn’t require nearly as much court ordering. The Slacktivist presents an excellent solution - buy the land. All of it. With taxpayer dollars. Turn all those communities resident-owned, and turn their rent payments into mortgage payments. That way, all those homes that are depreciating like cars now appreciate like the houses they’re supposed to be.
Starbucks is trying to look less like Starbucks and more like the places that hate Starbucks - adding alcohol, some space changes, and dropping out the Starbucks branding everywhere. Will it work in the Piney Northwest Mountain Latte area? Well, we’ll see...
A car dealer in Missouri offers a voucher for the price of an AK-47 with the purchase of a vehicle. This, after a similar successful promotion last year for the price of a handgun. I’m impressed with his ingenuity, but somewhat disturbed at his choice of weapon. Or that he’s offering the voucher at all. And worry about “road rage” incidents on the way back from the gun shop.
The Congressional Budget Office seems to be flipping around on health care plans - first it was too expensive, then it seemed to be okay, and now, according to the Washington Times, the plans put out will not curb the increasing cost of health care.
Bringing forth the opinions, the conservatives come out swinging - accusing the government's public plan of basically outlawing new private insurance plans from being written after the bill becomes law. Uh, which bill are you referring to? A quick THOMAS search tells me there are more than one that could be under this rubric. Be specific. Give me a sponsor, at least. That would be in addition to all the complaints about higher taxes, the CBO report, and the apparent speed at which the bill is being pushed through as well as the tsk-tsking at pharmaceutical companies being played by making promises on their end, only to have the bill back out on them.
Elsewhere, Ms. Noonan talks about how our cultural narcissism is keeping us from doing bigger space exploration, the lack of substance to the Sotomayor interview, Al Franken's new job, and how Hillary Clinton will be back, possibly emerging as an anti-Obama Democrat. Mr. Krauthammer takes that first point and devotes a column to it, saying that we should be pushing harder to go out and do, instead of retiring the shuttle and feeling pleased with the ISS (a “tinkertoy”, in his words).
Jeremy and Ariel Rabkin think that United States should be doing more to combat Iranian censorship - satellite phones, better and encrypted proxies and traffic, and trying to dismantle the censorious control from the outside, with the government’s seal of approval.
Messrs. Rivkin and Casey deplore the recent decision by the U.S. SCOTUS that detainees held in Afghanicstan air bases are entitled to habeas rights, considering it judges stepping into the role of being policy makers and commanders. The public opinion needs to rise up against them and put them back in their place, says they.
The WSJ puts out an unsigned indicating that the solutions to undocumented workers are not with the employers, but with the government's policy on limiting the number of legitimate immigrants (although it takes a while to get there), and the government’s program ideas (raids and/or the verification system) won’t ever be perfect, or convince the populous the country is serious about immigration reform. So criminals and illegal immigrants will always be able to scam a system, no matter what system, employers will hire them, knowingly or not, and this is proof that the correct way to go is to throw open the doors? This sounds like a surprisingly liberal editorial from a normally conservative paper. But, because it’s businesspeople who are apparently being hurt by this, I guess that contextualizes it enough to be in character. Even like this, though, there will always be an underclass and a demand for the undocumented, mostly for purely capitalistic reasons - you can pay them less and they have fewer avenues of complaint if you treat them poorly. So even adding to the number of legitimate immigrants won’t necessarily solve the problem. (Might help with it some, ni certain places, though.)
I think Mr. Heninger is just interested in how much President Obama has been making good speeches, and wants to see if he can deliver and lead on those speeches, lacking too many major crisis events to build his speaking and legislation on, or disasters to react to so that he can get his policies passed. In a weird sort of way, Mr. Heninger might be grudgingly accepting the possibility that President Obama can still get stuff done without some outside event to prod (or scare sh*tless) the people into acting.
And there’s a lot of stuff to get done. Mr. Bageant reminds us of the existence of the underclass, both black and white, male and female, all the people who exist, but that elites don't believe shouold be helped or cared for, because they violated some elite norm, like having a child without the husband, or being someone who had to work hard labor all his life, only to be broken with no insurance and no way of getting enoguh to sustain him to Social Security. Y’know, Those People. The ones who should be brought up, not stomped down, and without any of the guilt trip or groveling expectations that accompanies the elites deigning to throw a few scraps.
But, hitting the stride to receive pastry, The WSJ takes what would be a sane cautionary tale about acting rashly against Iran and twists it into a warning against the United States engaging with Iran, believing that the United States is conferring legitimacy on the leadership by demanding they start talking before September. One would think the protests would be a motivating factor for the government to start making promises to quell the people, and to negotiate to avoid having missiles start arriving in their territory from Israel or elsewhere. Or, the regime could stall out and hope that they get hit, so they can then justify cracking down more on the protestors, and shifting blame for death and destruction away from themselves. That the United States is going to lean on them as well isn’t giving them legitimacy, it’s putting on pressure for them to abdicate or do something really good to win the hearts of their people.
Going one better than that - Mr. Rove accusing the President of moving the goalposts on his stimulus effects, from “immediate” to “a couple years down the road”, the Democrats of trying to make it permanent spending increases, and claiming the Republican of tax breaks as superior in both cost and in job creation in relation to the stimulus (50% more jobs created... so we’d just be losing jobs at half the rate?) and Mr. Harsanyi, saying that if the benefits of the new health care plan are so great, everyone should share in their cost, and then going to point out that everyone will, because the people who are going to be taxed for it will not hire people, invest less, and open less businesses, along with the standard bits about rationed care and claiming the real solution to the problem is to curb government spending and cut entitlements instead of expanding them. Well, if everyone can afford the taxes needed to pay it, Mr. Harsanyi, they could probably all afford private insurance, excepting for the people that won’t cover them or will make it prohibitively expensive for someone else to do so. And, you know, I get the feling that even if everyone had to pay the burden of it, those rich people would still mysteriously hire less people, invest less, and do as much as they can to avoid actually paying taxes on their wealth, because they can afford to have people do that for them. It would be the poorer people who need both the coverage and tax relief who paid for it, probably while those rich people took advantage of it. Wouldn’t it be better to try and build excellent capital as people trying to do something for the rest of us, either by purchasing premiums or supporting the idea of paying some extra tax so that everyone can be healthy, instead of appearing Scrooge-like and miserly in trying to pay as little as possible and complaining about the expense of what would definitely be a public good?
At the top, though, John Yoo attempts to defend why he endorsed the breaking of the law, with an inaccurate first sentence and going downhill from there, claiming the FISA law as outdated and asserting that Presidents have always had the power to wiretap enemy signals without warrants.
In technology, Vague Scientist, the publication most of the public reads, a startup that wants to try and find a way of kickstaring stem cells resident in the body to heal naturally, a discovery that the DNA in different cell types is different, not similar, another demonstration that the brain can reroute on the fly, transforming squares into rectangels to compensate for missing data in a blind spot after one eye is covered, artistic talent linked to a genetic mutation that also can manifest schizophrenic behavior, giving another nod to the idea that genius and insanity are closely linked, and the Lunar Recon Orbiter has taken pictures of the Apollo 11 lunar landing site.
Last for tonight, police are searching for a man who likes to slash balls. Exercise balls, you pervs. And, yes, there is such a thing as a toypedo.
The players in the Dead Pool get more active every day - this time we lost an iconic broadcaster of the era just past - Walter Cronkite left the world at 92 years of age. The older you get, the more people you know end up dying, both famous and not. Walter Cronkite, though, was the voice of much of our modern history, reporting on many of the iconic imagery and stories of the later 20th century. A librarian in the area reflects on Cronkite's death, and how she might have become a journalist had journalism been more Cronkite than advertising and "Fair and Balanced".
Professionally speaking, I think Cat and Girl nailed it - the only people who seem to believe in bun-haired librarians are fetishists and journalists. And then Utne Reader follows on with an excellent piece - it's not that we're not reading, it's that we have no friggin clue what do with the information barrage. That’s where information professionals like librarians come in - we can teach you how to cope, how to sift and search, and how to tell whether you’re reading a racist whackjob or a serious scholar.
Out in the world, the Taliban of Afghanistan has threatened to kill an American soldier if America does not cease operations in two villages in the country. In response, the military has threatened to target those villages with increased troop presence and raids.
Bombers smuggled explosives into their rooms in luxury hotels in Jakarta an detonated them, with at least eight dead and fifty wounded.
Protesters in Iran chanted slogans during Friday prayer services and received tear gas from the police as a reward. Offshore, Israeli warships headed to the Red Sea, for what may be a rehearsal for a strike against Iran. May not be wise to hit the country when they’re still having internal arguments about who’s actually in charge there.
Domestically, some Amazon readers awoke to find that a book they had paid for and downloaded to their Kindle was removed and the book's cost was credited to them. Amazon later explained the books had been uploaded by someone who did not have the rights to them, but acknowledged that the idea of simly deleting books remotely from Kindles with no explanation was a bad, bad idea. The most interesting part? The books were “1984” and “Animal Farm”. That’s the funny thing about technology and devices that phone home - it cedes control of your stuff to someone else, even if you think you bought and own the material. Kindles look more and more like a bad idea if you want to actually own your books.
Out does a quick piece on Megan McCain, someonw whom I hope is vaulted to a position of power in the Republican Party soon, because of her willingness to tell the old guard to go screw themselves, and her position in favor of gays being able to marry, as well as (and this is highly cynical) being both young and a woman, to help the Republicans shed an “old-boys club” image.
The engineering firm Siemens stands to lose significant money if their venture with Nokia to sell surveillance equipment to Iran results in the award of a Los Angeles Metropolitan Authority contract to another firm.
More of the continuing saga of mobile home owners having the carpet yanked out from under them - a couple that bought their mobile home, then ran into financial difficulties, to find out there was no equity in their house, it was classified as a car, and it was depreciating like a vehicle. Plus, they don’t own the land the home sits on, despite having to make it fairly permanent to that land. So they’re paying rent, too, and face eviction if they miss that, or repossession, not foreclosure, of their home, which doesn’t require nearly as much court ordering. The Slacktivist presents an excellent solution - buy the land. All of it. With taxpayer dollars. Turn all those communities resident-owned, and turn their rent payments into mortgage payments. That way, all those homes that are depreciating like cars now appreciate like the houses they’re supposed to be.
Starbucks is trying to look less like Starbucks and more like the places that hate Starbucks - adding alcohol, some space changes, and dropping out the Starbucks branding everywhere. Will it work in the Piney Northwest Mountain Latte area? Well, we’ll see...
A car dealer in Missouri offers a voucher for the price of an AK-47 with the purchase of a vehicle. This, after a similar successful promotion last year for the price of a handgun. I’m impressed with his ingenuity, but somewhat disturbed at his choice of weapon. Or that he’s offering the voucher at all. And worry about “road rage” incidents on the way back from the gun shop.
The Congressional Budget Office seems to be flipping around on health care plans - first it was too expensive, then it seemed to be okay, and now, according to the Washington Times, the plans put out will not curb the increasing cost of health care.
Bringing forth the opinions, the conservatives come out swinging - accusing the government's public plan of basically outlawing new private insurance plans from being written after the bill becomes law. Uh, which bill are you referring to? A quick THOMAS search tells me there are more than one that could be under this rubric. Be specific. Give me a sponsor, at least. That would be in addition to all the complaints about higher taxes, the CBO report, and the apparent speed at which the bill is being pushed through as well as the tsk-tsking at pharmaceutical companies being played by making promises on their end, only to have the bill back out on them.
Elsewhere, Ms. Noonan talks about how our cultural narcissism is keeping us from doing bigger space exploration, the lack of substance to the Sotomayor interview, Al Franken's new job, and how Hillary Clinton will be back, possibly emerging as an anti-Obama Democrat. Mr. Krauthammer takes that first point and devotes a column to it, saying that we should be pushing harder to go out and do, instead of retiring the shuttle and feeling pleased with the ISS (a “tinkertoy”, in his words).
Jeremy and Ariel Rabkin think that United States should be doing more to combat Iranian censorship - satellite phones, better and encrypted proxies and traffic, and trying to dismantle the censorious control from the outside, with the government’s seal of approval.
Messrs. Rivkin and Casey deplore the recent decision by the U.S. SCOTUS that detainees held in Afghanicstan air bases are entitled to habeas rights, considering it judges stepping into the role of being policy makers and commanders. The public opinion needs to rise up against them and put them back in their place, says they.
The WSJ puts out an unsigned indicating that the solutions to undocumented workers are not with the employers, but with the government's policy on limiting the number of legitimate immigrants (although it takes a while to get there), and the government’s program ideas (raids and/or the verification system) won’t ever be perfect, or convince the populous the country is serious about immigration reform. So criminals and illegal immigrants will always be able to scam a system, no matter what system, employers will hire them, knowingly or not, and this is proof that the correct way to go is to throw open the doors? This sounds like a surprisingly liberal editorial from a normally conservative paper. But, because it’s businesspeople who are apparently being hurt by this, I guess that contextualizes it enough to be in character. Even like this, though, there will always be an underclass and a demand for the undocumented, mostly for purely capitalistic reasons - you can pay them less and they have fewer avenues of complaint if you treat them poorly. So even adding to the number of legitimate immigrants won’t necessarily solve the problem. (Might help with it some, ni certain places, though.)
I think Mr. Heninger is just interested in how much President Obama has been making good speeches, and wants to see if he can deliver and lead on those speeches, lacking too many major crisis events to build his speaking and legislation on, or disasters to react to so that he can get his policies passed. In a weird sort of way, Mr. Heninger might be grudgingly accepting the possibility that President Obama can still get stuff done without some outside event to prod (or scare sh*tless) the people into acting.
And there’s a lot of stuff to get done. Mr. Bageant reminds us of the existence of the underclass, both black and white, male and female, all the people who exist, but that elites don't believe shouold be helped or cared for, because they violated some elite norm, like having a child without the husband, or being someone who had to work hard labor all his life, only to be broken with no insurance and no way of getting enoguh to sustain him to Social Security. Y’know, Those People. The ones who should be brought up, not stomped down, and without any of the guilt trip or groveling expectations that accompanies the elites deigning to throw a few scraps.
But, hitting the stride to receive pastry, The WSJ takes what would be a sane cautionary tale about acting rashly against Iran and twists it into a warning against the United States engaging with Iran, believing that the United States is conferring legitimacy on the leadership by demanding they start talking before September. One would think the protests would be a motivating factor for the government to start making promises to quell the people, and to negotiate to avoid having missiles start arriving in their territory from Israel or elsewhere. Or, the regime could stall out and hope that they get hit, so they can then justify cracking down more on the protestors, and shifting blame for death and destruction away from themselves. That the United States is going to lean on them as well isn’t giving them legitimacy, it’s putting on pressure for them to abdicate or do something really good to win the hearts of their people.
Going one better than that - Mr. Rove accusing the President of moving the goalposts on his stimulus effects, from “immediate” to “a couple years down the road”, the Democrats of trying to make it permanent spending increases, and claiming the Republican of tax breaks as superior in both cost and in job creation in relation to the stimulus (50% more jobs created... so we’d just be losing jobs at half the rate?) and Mr. Harsanyi, saying that if the benefits of the new health care plan are so great, everyone should share in their cost, and then going to point out that everyone will, because the people who are going to be taxed for it will not hire people, invest less, and open less businesses, along with the standard bits about rationed care and claiming the real solution to the problem is to curb government spending and cut entitlements instead of expanding them. Well, if everyone can afford the taxes needed to pay it, Mr. Harsanyi, they could probably all afford private insurance, excepting for the people that won’t cover them or will make it prohibitively expensive for someone else to do so. And, you know, I get the feling that even if everyone had to pay the burden of it, those rich people would still mysteriously hire less people, invest less, and do as much as they can to avoid actually paying taxes on their wealth, because they can afford to have people do that for them. It would be the poorer people who need both the coverage and tax relief who paid for it, probably while those rich people took advantage of it. Wouldn’t it be better to try and build excellent capital as people trying to do something for the rest of us, either by purchasing premiums or supporting the idea of paying some extra tax so that everyone can be healthy, instead of appearing Scrooge-like and miserly in trying to pay as little as possible and complaining about the expense of what would definitely be a public good?
At the top, though, John Yoo attempts to defend why he endorsed the breaking of the law, with an inaccurate first sentence and going downhill from there, claiming the FISA law as outdated and asserting that Presidents have always had the power to wiretap enemy signals without warrants.
In technology, Vague Scientist, the publication most of the public reads, a startup that wants to try and find a way of kickstaring stem cells resident in the body to heal naturally, a discovery that the DNA in different cell types is different, not similar, another demonstration that the brain can reroute on the fly, transforming squares into rectangels to compensate for missing data in a blind spot after one eye is covered, artistic talent linked to a genetic mutation that also can manifest schizophrenic behavior, giving another nod to the idea that genius and insanity are closely linked, and the Lunar Recon Orbiter has taken pictures of the Apollo 11 lunar landing site.
Last for tonight, police are searching for a man who likes to slash balls. Exercise balls, you pervs. And, yes, there is such a thing as a toypedo.
