At some point, there will be descriptive titles - 31 July-1 August 2009

Interesting things in the mail - because the economy bites, my student loan interest went down. Which means my payments went down - which gives me more money that I can use to burn through the principal faster with my big hearty “screw usury” at the end of the year. If things pick back up, it’ll only be temporary, of course, but for the moment, I should be able to really put the hurt on for next year when it comes to chipping away at that principal. While I’d love to be rid of the thing completely, the more I can hammer away at it, the less I end up paying in the long run, even when the interest rates go back up.

Up top... no, you can't make this up - a victim registered a complaint that he was robbed while he was receiving oral sex. Lock your doors when you do stuff like that, y’know?

Also in the world of We Still Aren’t Making This Up - casting decisions and Avatar: The Last Airbender. In simple visual form.

Okay, one more. Still Not Making This Up - more proof that the Internet can be used as an unfiltered soundboard. To horrible results. And all the "oppression of white people" stuff going on, too.

Before the regular news, a shout-out to Congresscritter Anthony Weiner, who introduced an amendment to the health care bill to spike Medicare, forcing Republicans to go on record that they don't really hate all government-run health-care.

Out in the world today, mourners for Neda met the batons and beating of the Iranian police, both official and unofficial.

Sir Terry Pratchett joins the debate in favor of assisted death. Considering the degenerative disease he has, I can see why he would want to be helped across the threshold before things for too bad. For American conservatives, remember how sad it was to watch Reagan die out from the mythic being he’s been? And for those who have seen it happen, we know that it’s tough to watch someone clearly not able to function or live keep going in pain, confusion, disorientation, and all the rest, waiting for the reaper to collect them.

Domestically, a big black eye for the lazy and lying police of Brooklyn, arresting students mourning the loss of one of their own and then making up stuff about them, based on their past histories and the gang-ridden areas where they live and go to school.

Speaking of misbehavior, hopefully charges or suits will be brought against the firm that sent letters from a nonexistent position at a minority group voicing opposition to a particular piece of legislation.

the cash for clunkers program is going down.... wait, no, wait.... the government puts a whole lot more money into the cash for clunkers program.

And, oh, hey, look what’s appeared - a health care bill clears the hurdle of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which means it moves forward to the House floor, for possible final markup and passage after the August recess.

If you were worried that Al Franken would not be making a name for himself on the hill, the Minnesota Senator gave T. Boone Pickens, the money behind the Swift Boat advertisements of 2004, both barrels about his sponsoring and paying for those advertisements.

Last out before opinions - because he said the whie police officer acted stupidly, the President's approval among white people went down and his approval among minorities went up. Post-racial society, my ass.

In the opinions, Mr. Blake points out a very messy part of the laws with regard to websites - can you be charged with hate speech in another country if people in that country can access your website? In the case of the Heretical Two, it appears that this is the case - English citizens, publishing in California, arrested and charged with hate speech, despite some of their material being freely available on the Internet Archive. Precisely whose jurisdiction rules the Internet - the nationality of the citizens publishing, regardless of where they publish? The laws of the country where the website’s servers are? Who’s on first, here?

Mr. Brookes feels he has enough proof to say that Obama foreign policy is making the country weaker. His examples? Iran, North Korea, Russia/Eastern Europe, and Latin American dictators. All of which bedeviled his predecessor, too, who didn’t make a whole lot in great strides towards resolution on them, either.

Mr. Prager pens a column that can be summed up in one sentence: Because people we don't like support the idea that the Honduran coup was illegitimate, it must have been legit and the U.S. should support that position. The WSJ agrees with that somewhat, in ridiculing the revocation of diplomatic visas for Honduras while the current government is in place.

And because you can’t have opinion columns without health care discussion, the WSJ puts out an unsigned saying that any tax increases to pay for a public option or employer-mandated insurace will only result in fewer jobs, because wages won’t be able to fall, so companies will be forced to not hire as many people to make up for their increased costs. Assuming they can insure themselves, because "everyone knows" the health care bill will prevent large businesses from insuring themselves, forcing them into the government’s gravitational spiral. They also see the possibility of government-sponsored health co-ops as the public option in better clothing, with the same results of driving out private competition.

Last out on health care, the WSJ prints an op-ed from Myrna Ulfik, who took an experimental vaccine in Germany for her lymphoma, is feeling better ,and believes that the health-care public-option would have preferred she take standard treatment instead of new innovations, and that such would have probably killed her. It’s putting a human story on the talking point that public option plans means faceless bureaucrats taking over and making all the decisions, instead of doctors, and that they will invariably prefer non-innovative solutions because innovation is expensive and not used by everyone. (So, rationing and waits that will kill people, instead of being able to get everything immediately. Talking point #2).

In competition for the pastry, Ms. Burlingame believes that there should never be any concessions to Richard Reid in letting him talk to people or worship in his religious manner, because he’s a terrorist and a Muslim, and will only use those things to continue his fight from behind prison walls. It’s always nice to know when someone’s looking out for you in this kind of manner.

Just missing out on the prizes, Mr. Williams pens a column indicating how he believes the Presidents overstepped their Constitutional authority in the New Deal, and that Obama is now, managing the economy to ever worser depths, citing as proof the parts of the Constitution that indicate only Congress has the power to spend, and founder reasoning that they interpreted it to mean on limited things. And spend they are, with bills that became laws that became things the executive had to administer. I don’t see anything resembling a overstepping there. All the bills came through Congress, were passed by them, and then signed by the President. Like these ones were. And while the founders are insightful in how they imagined it, they left the document flexible enough for this disaster scenario to happen legally.

However, on the bronze level tonight, Mr. Turd Blossom accuses the President of using the tactics of fear to push through his health-care reforms. We’re sorry, no person affiliated with the last administration as much as you were, Mr. Rove, may use the idea of “the politics of fear” without incurring a technical foul for flagrant violations, and then tack on another for saying the United States has the greatest health-care system. I repeat, if you want to be seen as players who are serious about this, start presenting proposals. I still haven’t seen one yet - amendments and ideas and things that “should be” in the Democratic bill, sure, but no actual, say, alternative bill and proposal.

Also sharing this honor with Mr. Turd Blossom, Ms. Herzog says the government is going to institute year-round schooling so they can indoctrinate your children and remove parents as authority figures in their children's lives! Yes, the schools will indoctrinate and brainwash them, homsechooling will be outlawed, and it’s all to benefit the teacher’s unions and pay them more money for nothing! (She also calls Phyllis Schlafly brilliant. Credibility takes three permanent damage.) For that to happen, parents would have to abdicate their responsibilities as educators, enforcers, and ideologues and let the school take over completely. For that to happen, schools would have to have a lot more power than they do now, like the ability to actually discipline, the ability to actually educate, instead of teaching to tests that are the barest minimum of fact regurgitation, yet have a great amount of funding riding on them, and the ability to make their lessons interesting and challenging without getting a firestorm of complaints about the grades Johnny is getting and the worry that he might be held back for not knowing his stuff.

But, because opinion columnists, no matter how strange, still do not compare to current members of the Congress, our silver winner tonight is Representative Eric Cantor, when asked about birthers, blames the left-wing media and their constant smacktalk about the factless conspiracy for why the birthers have gotten as strong as they can, rather than choosing to denounce his own fellows and others who are continuing to float the idea and give it legitimacy. So he’s trying to appeal to the wingnut base without actually endorsing himself as a wingnut. Big bad idea, and one that often bites back. What’s scarier? 58 percent of the GOP either are birthers or "aren't sure" about the fact that the President is an American citizen.

Landing himself squarely in the worst-person debate and tonight’s gold quiche recippient is the surgeon who is suing another surgeon for using his patented technique (of how to hold a scalpel and the size of an initial incision) and asking for royalties. There’s something inherently wrong about “You can’t use my technique without paying me for it” in the medical profession, where such things could stop life-saving procedures from being done if insurance/health organizations and/or doctors can’t afford or don’t want to pay the patent fees. One would think there’s enough of an overriding public interest to block this idea from getting going.

In technology, delivering agents to help immunize against malaria through... mosquitoes, using the same delivery mechanism as malaria infections, and a prototype of a micro robot that can crawl through the body.

Last out of tonight, a grand collection of grand pianos, a bunch of attractive vampire men and a bunch of attractive vampire women.

New Month, New News - 2 August 2009

Up top, because it keeps getting all sorts of play across the Intarwebs, perhaps because it reinforces, breaks, or both, the sexy librarian stereotype, or because it blows people’s minds to think this, The Texas Library Association is putting together a pin-up calendar of some of their librarians with ink. Support your libraries, says I. If this interests you, buy one. If not, check out a study that suggests how overconfident a student is might relate to how well they can read - someone who thinks too highly of themselves may bite off more than they can chew and then let it sit and not improve, because “it’s too hard”, whereas someone who can more accurately assess themselves might shelve that book , go get an easier one, and work their way back up to the tougher one later, resulting in better reading skill in life.

Remember the whitewashing of Avatar: The Last Airbender? Think that’s an isolated incident? Think agaaaaaain. Meet Justine Larbalestier, whose main character in her novel is black, with short nappy hair that she wears straight, absolutely none of which is reflected in the while, long-haired girl on the cover of her book. As many of my author friends have noted, authors do not have control over what appears on their covers, and the white-washing phenomenon is widespread. That, and the publishing house is defending their choices based on what they think will sell. They realize that covers can often make or break a book, but then they insist on making their covers like everyone else’s. I’d be less inclined to read that story if it looks like one of a hundred other teen pop trash novels out there - if you sell me a good cover, I’m more inclined to read it.

In the world today, residents of the Philippines mourn the passing of the leader who brough them to democracy from dictatorship, the remains of the first pilot lost in the 1991 invasion of Iraq have been discovered, violence against Christians by Muslims in Indonesia, supposedly in retaliation for a defacement of a Koran, and Hungarian authorities detained four people on suspicion they were carrying out unlicensed experiments with stem cells.

Inside the borders of the U.S., newly declassified documentation indicates the presence of a military informant in a group of anarchists in the Olympia-Tacoma, Washington area. This is not shocking or surprising, and I know it should be, but it almost seems a given these days that the government is always spying on someone who holds views against them or is against their wars. I don’t think they can make any sort of Posse Comitatus violation stick, but it would be nice to try, to get people on the record about what they think he government can and can’t do with organizations.

Over the August recess, members of Congress are planning on heading home and holding meetings to talk with their constituents about the stuff they’re voting on in Washington. Palling, but perhaps not able to execute, because the town hall meetings are increasingly becoming centers of wild shouting, mobs and picketers, and conspiracy wingnuttery, preventing the intelligent discourse that a town hall meeting is supposed to be. What’s worse? These disruptions are not random events, but a planned campaign to rattle Democrats and make them think their constituency is turning against them because of the way they are voting so far, with the intended effect that the demoralized Dems go back and change their votes on things like health care. To that effect, they may even be bringing in ringers from outside the constituency of those Congresscritters to disrupt their attempts to provide actual information.

In opinions, a suggestion that there may be good Christian values in films, despite bad language, and that when Clint Eastwood directs, he provides positive Christian role models, even if he makes them into superheroes with a largely absent church and a lack of people to support and work with the religious superhero.

Mr. Cline opines about how the Gates arrest is indicative of the growing police state we have, where an officer can basically arrest someone for talking to them in a way they don&aops;t like or for suggesting that police are servants of the public, not their masters. Racism aside (or as part of it), he even notes the people who are supposed to be for more individual freedom are not making a whole lot of noise about how this was an act of abuse, instead choosing to focus on the mirage that the President called the officer stupid, when he called the action stupid.

J. Justin Wilson suggests unions want EFCA so they can create more chapters to prop up their pensions from the dues of the new members. Hrm. Wonder how much of that pension money invested has lost value in the economic crash, creating the shortfall. Mr. Wilson also runs a red herring with talk of how union officer pensions are different than the rank-and-file’s, trying for a “some animals are more equal than others” line.

The WSJ takes a run at obesity rates, suggesting the end to agricultural subsidies and requiring people put a stake in their own health, perhaps with lower premiums for the healthy, instead of prohibiting insurers from drafting policies that scale their rates up or down depedning on the health of the person being insured.

Mr. Harsayani feels no hope from the up-and-coming generation, no desire to have things bigger than their forefathers, concentrating on using less and being happy with it. Because they have no optimism about the future, apparently, and have bought into the claim that if we continue the eay we’re going, there won’t be much left when we get done. Mr. Harsayani thinks we’ll shake it off eventually and make our lives better than our parents, in all the ways they made theirs better than the ones before them.

Mr. Scott encourages young people to join the world of politics and get involved in political careers, using Reagan and Barack Obama both as examples (sort of - he praises Mr. Obama’s recognition that Reagan was an influential person in his time) as to why young people need to get involved, not feel afraid, and help shape the next generation. Even his conservative push deserves applause, because the current Republican Party needs an infusion of fresh ideas and faces.

In competition for worst honors, A morning guest host on MSNBC, Donny Deutsch, brought back an old meme, suggesting that Sarah Palin's popularity was based on her sex appeal, instead of her base-pleasing stances. I can’t say that sex doesn’t sell, and that there may be plenty of people who would say “I‘d hit that“, but by now, I think many of them would add the caveat ”so long as she doesn’t say anything.“ Mrs. Palin has made her policies clear, and I think more people are interested in preventing or pursuing those rather than whether or not Mrs. Palin qualifies as a MILF.

Speaking of sex, the obverse of the bronze quiche coin goes to Colleen Raezler, who complains about how much ABC features sex, gender identity, and sexual activity in their stories, and of course, of uncritically showcasing and giving tacit or explicit approval to all the perversions that go on, like ”suggar daddies“, the economic benefits of taxing brothels, websites that help married people have affairs, people who feel attraction to inanimate objects, et cetera. I’m surprised there wasn’t a complaint about furries, myself. ”ABC is just airing propaganda for progressive sexual mores, and abnormal sexual predilections and relationships.“ she says, because they aren’t apparently devoting enough airtime to people who feel all of this is sick, wrong, and should be stopped, or at least closeted again. Because it’s better to have gumnen killing children at a homosexual-friendly youth center than openly homosexual people being nominated for clergy positions.

A runner-up to the worst person in the world tonight, Steven Metalitz says that it's silly for people to think their DRM'd music will last forever, and that if your authentication servers should be taken down, you should have to re-buy the music, rather than have the right to strip the DRM out of it and keep the music that you bought. The cabals would rather force you to have to keep rebuying a new license to their property than to actually let you own it.

But, because someone’s life was lost, tonight’s worst person in the world is the father who substituted prayer for medicine and let his daughter die from a treatable condition. The part about ”putting the doctor before God“ is odd - one would think doctors are doing God’s work when they heal the sick.

In technology, Mount Rushmore is getting a laser scan, to create an incredibly detailed map of the monument preservable for future generations, PingWire, which aggregates the various pictures beingn posted to the photo services favored by Twitterites and displays them, devoid of context, someone attempted to fool a bunch of hackers with a fake ATM, and Bobby McFerrin performing some brain hacking utilizing the pentatonic scale.

Last for tonight, Na naaaaaa, na-na-na na na na na, Katmari Wedding-cy!. Hooray for people getting hitched the way they want to!