Blarghination - 4 August 2009

Up top, creppily cuddly C'thulhu crochet, and Wilt The Stilt, The Governator, and Andre the Giant all together for one picture.

Which is cool. And then there are the pictures as yet incomplete in LOVE ME, a work in progress about a 17 year-old's struggles with generational poverty. She wants to get out. She may not be able to. So far, though, she’s alive. The mother who drank well above the limit and did drugs didn't. Neither did some of the kids in her van that were with her while she was driving drunk and high.

Out in the world today, telescreens and Thought Police for families the UK government thinks are at risk, to make sure that nutrition is good, bedtimes are early, and War is Peace.

The United States Pentagon would like to speed production and funding of a new weapon designed to destroy underground bunkers.

The Supreme Leader of Iran officially endorsed the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with the swearing-in to happen on Wednesday, even as others suggest that a new sustained revolution may be underway. The opposition certainly isn’t giving up their crusade. Will this struggle generate enough cracks as to bring down the Supreme Leader? Time will tell.

Speaking of elections, rockets help to mark the run-up to elections in Afghanistan.

Inside the United States, the professor at the center of the recent brouhaha between himself and the Cambridge police department revealed he received death and bomb threats, some accusing him of being a racist. Yeah, we’re not at that post-racial society yet. Perhaps were at the antithesis-point, where now instead of minorities calling out white people as racists, whether true or not, white people are calling out minorities as racists, whether true or not. It would be interesting to think this has something to do with Barack Obama’s election, but I really just can’t ascribe that kind of power to the man.

To those who think they finally found their smoking gun, a birth certificate from Kenya for Barack Obama, well.... good luck on that. All the ones produced so far are fakes, with major errors or in-jokes or deliberate statements of their non-authenticity. the latest one is just another fake in a litany thereof, but it does seem to be helping to unhinge the Birthers further so that they might even become too fringe for the Republican Party. Besides, as anyone knows, nebris has the real birth certificate.

A couple members of the Obama administration suggested that the promise of no new taxes for those in the middle class may be a dud, because of new borrowing and having to pay for health care reforms. A lot of that possibility depends on whose math you use to calculate costs, but the best predictions still end up missing the mark in lots of ways.

A possible solution to where to put Guantanamo detainees - supermax prisons that have courtrooms inside their complexes, so that there’s no risk of escape and those detainees are still able to use their rights and appeals. If you are someone who believes they should have any sort of right, including the one not to be detained indefinitiely without trial.

Elsewhere, a bit about how people who persevere tend to succeed, while only sort of alluding to the idea that people with passion produce perseverance more readily than those who don’t. There is a nice bit about how praising effort produces better results than praising innate talent, because the talent people end up thinking they don’t have the talent if things get too hard for them. (Hey, I’ve been there.)

Last out before opinions, those against the widespread availability of all sorts of guns may find some hope if Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed, according to the Washington Times,

In opinions, Mr. Bageant howls for America, where the corporate state has taken over, the people confined in that world, the system completely triumphing over the people, to the point where the people are completely dependent on corporations and they own us, Mr. Lamb worries of a different apocalypse, where science basically confirms that we are completely bio-mechanical and our consciousness is an illusion we use on ourselves, and Ms. LaRue is concerned that the Department of Justice is willing to let black activists threaten white people at polls while not providing protection for anti-gay ministers from being charged with hate crimes. Mostly because, I’m guessing, of the activists using racially-charged language, like “White power doesn’t rule here” and of being armed with and showing batons while at and observing the polls. What makes this more curious is that Justice had already won some default judgments before dropping charges. More information, when it appears, I guess.

Mr. Donohue is irritated that unions use their pension funds' proxy votes to advance the interests of union, sometimes on issues away from the management of the pension funds.

Mr. Moore interviews Mr. McCain, painting him in s sympathetic light as the not-bitter Congressional anti-pork warrior who was steamrolled by hostile media and an all hat, no cattle smooth talker.

The WSJ opines that The Market (all praise to its name) was especially good in reacting to the financial crash and that nothing the government did, either in prevention or in trying to ease the stimulus decline, has worked at all. Typical for the Murdoch-owned conservative paper. Have no idea whether it’s true at all. Probably will never have any idea whether it’s true or not. The WSJ also trashes the cash for clunkers program as transfer payments and letting some people have other taxpaters pay for their new cars. At least Mr. Anwyl suggests that the program, while successful, may not mean more car sales with more money put into it, because all the people who wanted to buy and take advantage already have and are waiting for the extra cash to clear their purchases, instead of more money making more people want to buy more cars.

When not talking about how the economy is being run into the ground, The WSJ expresses their characteristic hostility to teacher's unions, citing what they see of as two examples where union decisions are making things worse for the students, by demanding teachers that work long hours at a charter school be paid more for them, and by asking a city to not hire un-unionized teacher’s aides (who are supposedly less-trained and qualified than the ones being hired directly outside the union for half the price and without benefits).

Ms. Noonan channels the ghost of one President, on how to get Barack Obama to pass his health care reform and look good, while letting Republicans save face, and one still living on how the Republicans can get back into the narrative and reclaim control of their party.

Bill'O just misses the quiche, despite impersonating a Founding Father in explaining why President Obama's health care reforms should fail, because he says Franklin wouldn’t have voted for a public option on the basis that it was the public voting themselves money. Bill’O does believe the system can be reformed from the inside, and there should be a safety net of government-run clinics for those who don’t or can’t have health insurance, but that the American populace believes in pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, wants lower taxes and less government interference. Despite also supporting health-care reform and a public option, depending on which polls you read. The Slacktivist provides the counterpoint, of the moral superiority junkies who have to keep telling themselves and each other bigger lies about what the enemy is planning to do to them so they can continue having their moral-superiority fix, even when it has long since crossed the line from a lie based in reality to complete and total fantasy.

This makes Mr. Cohen part our bronze quiche winner, for his insistence that President Obama, on foreign policy, is the same as his predecessor, with worse results, which doesn’t speak all that well for said predecessor, as well as making decisions like talking to Syria, which can only end in disaster.

Up at the silver level, Shelby Steele accuses Dr. Gates and Barack Obama both of playing to the racial narrative of the United States, with Gates casting himself as an oppressed black man at the hands of a racist cop and the President providing support to that narrative, while the officer arresting him acted outside his own racial narrative, as best I can tell, by not beating and/or killing the uppity black man when he questioned his authority. The supposed “post-racial” snapping back into that all-too-racial attitude, tsk, tsk. Mr. Brietbart piles on and earns his share of silver by accusing the president of using the "beer summit" to stifle any real discussion on race, because it was becoming apparent the results would not be favorable to Dr. Gates and the President, and Mr. Crowley would be seen as a stalwart policeman doing his not-racially-charged-at-all duty in the face of the racist and race-baiting Harvard professor and his similarly radically-trained, race-grievanced, and anti-white president. As a side bonus, the idea of multiculturalism would be exposed as something Americans hate, oppose, and see as racism and bigotry. Against whom, Mr. Breitbart? Are you too afraid to say that you believe America sees all this as racism against white people? The leaders of the Republican Party, like Rush Limbaugh, have already said so, so you shouldn’t be hesitant.

However, up top, despite the muck that we had to wade through to get this far, someone has outdone both of them. Mr. George says that justices making a decision on whether or not homosexuals can get married would repeat the error of Roe v. Wade, which is not a bad point in and of itself to make, but then he gives his support - marriage has its own history that should be respected, and because marriages produce children, and are intended to produce children, they’re special among relationships. The definition of marriage is at stake here, he says, and if we let others call their things marriage, it no longer is about people loving each other exclusively and bmaking and raising children, but is instead a convenient thing for people to do to indicate their preferences for each other, which would mean that homosexuals and polyamorous people can and should be able to get married, but in those circumstances, THE CHILDREN WILL SUFFER. THINK OF THE CHILDREN. The veneer of “we should let the democratic process decide this, and The People’s Will Be Done” is only being advanced because referenda and initiatives have resulted in the preservation of this traditional definition - he is largely silent about the states where the legislature, composed of elected persons, passed it anyway. There are plenty of test beds to prove your assertion that children suffer when homosexuals (or poly people) can get married. Prove it. Otherwise, you’re using democracy as a fig leaf to hide behind your assertions that marriage should be special because it involves sex that produces children. If that’s the case, then I assume you’re okay with arranged marraiges, loveless marriages, and marriages of convenience to make sure there are heirs to the family line, as well as a significant amount of extramarital affairs as people seek fulfillment outside of their marriages, possibly resulting in unsafe sex pracices and the further spread of disease. If this sounds familiar, it’s because some part of the History You Should Have Learned In School, Had You Been Paying Attention actually stuck.

In technologies, a regrown mouse tooth, thanks to SCIENCE, mapping cities that have long since been underwater, thanks to SCIENCE, a semisuccessful cloning of an extinct animal, also thanks to SCIENCE!, making it possible to get brain tumors to fluoresce, thanks to nanoparticles that can cross the blood-brain barrier, a self-contained bubble, portable and deployable wherever needed, Mr. Crovitz's opinion that technology and content-creation industries have outgrown antitrust provisions and will lead to their repeal, hopefully sooner rather than later, the legion of cyber-limb walkers, worries over what exactly defines a field of engagement or an attack worth a reprisal in the cyber warfare department, using paper and mood ring ink to make cheap multicolored displays, and utilizing other senses and force feedback to permit the sightless to drive vehicles and navigate around obstacles - clicks and beeps to indicate the presence of objects (scanned using laser sensors), and vibrations on a vest to indicate how close the car is to an object and when it might be a good time to stop.

Last for tonight, clearly there is an Iron Man sequel in the works, or something, for Stark Industries is hiring.

And, if you want to imagine life a little happier than what is is now, the author of the Happiness Project wants you to imagine your life without a significant good event that happened to you - it can certainly get scary quickly if you choose the right thing.