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Greetings, all of you. Program was alternatingly a success and a bust, and I learned a lot for what to do next time - including not ever trusting something will do what it does because you saw it work with someone else.
It’s Banned Books Week this week. Celebrate your freedom to read by checking out a book about two male penguins who adopt. It’s the number one book on the challenge list for...three years running now, I believe.
Before we begin - a feat of textual rearrangement. Well, and the Abraham Lincoln Facebook page.
A philosophical question for you to ponder as you read - What if Phillip K. Dick were the religious prophet, instead of L. Ron Hubbard? Is there, perhaps, a superior third alternative that would be better than Dick and Hubbard?
And something else to keep in mind, if you parent or see others parenting, regularly spanking children as a disciplinary measure may lower their IQs - the stress of living in a house where they might get smacked means they might redirect resources they could use to getting smarter into just trying to survive in their house.
Out in the world, the big story appears to be the calling-out of Iran for building a new and secret nuclear enrichment facility by the United States and some of its allies, at the G-20 conference and a few days before talks were slated to begin about he nuclear program. While apparently knowing about the program beforehand, those governments waited to reveal until they could achieve maximal impact and possibly convince the recalcitrant members fo the Security Council to go along with sanctions. In response, Iran defended the plant, claiming it was not in violation of any rules and Iran test-fired short-range missiles. The response from conservative circles appears to be they've been playing you like a fiddle and will continue to do so unless you actually do something against them that's more than sanctions. They will feel bolstered by Venezuela's admission that it seeks uranium and is doing so with Iran's help.
Domestically, Sometimes the Internets show off our worst parts, such as a Facebook poll asking whether the President should be killed, on which the Secret Service investigated and the poll was taken down. Sometimes it shows more than it should, in the case of the police officer who apparently stuck his genitals in the mouths of calves - for which animal cruelty charges were dropped because nobody knew whether the calves liked it or not (The General elaborates upon how this act is a true show of conservative patriotism). It also shows how people who are appeared on shows about how pretty they are can be accused of torturing and killing their girlfriends. There are also parents who prefer homeopathic rememdies to allopathic remedies, resulting in the death of their child from something preventable, police officers using electric stun weapons far more than they should be, and on people that it's not smart or sane to do so on, and a Department of Justice official telling us the PATRIOT Act was used mostly against drug-related criminals, not terror-related criminals.
Unemployment among the young? About half of them. So it should be no surprise there are record numbers of people competing for what few openings there are.
The following is depressing. A new poll indicates Americans think Wal-Mart is the best symbol of America. I think they’re right - relentless cost-cutting, anti-union sentiment, big boxiness writ large, and all in the name of lower prices. Yeah, that’s us.
Also, a woman in Ohio dies from swine flu, after putting off the doctor visit because she was uninsured. To compound the meaning of this, the woman was in the constituency of one of the Congresscritters most opposed to actual health care reform, Minority Leader Boehner.
And talking about health care, a tweet from someone happy about a miscarriage because of the way abortions are in Wisconsin sparked condemnnation that she was happy about the miscarriage instead of conversations about the wait time the abortion takes. Thus, the rules from this that our Unabashed Feminsm Department may want to track - women should always be happy to be pregnant, and should always be sad if their baby miscarries. Add on “Women should always be trying to get pregnant so as to raise more soldiers for God”, and you’ve pretty well got Quiverfull and several other patriarchical movements.
Thus, having landed in Feminism territory, perhaps the obverse of the Nice Guy(TM), nicely explained - the Nice Girl(TM) who wants a man to be everything she wants him to be and blames herself (or him) for when things don't happen as fast or as committed as she wants them to.
The protests against the G-20 summit meet some of the latest in non-lethal technology - a sonic cannon. One wonders whether the police and military appreciate protesters that they can use their new toys against without it seeming like they’re testing things on them. Not to mention that seeing protesters as the kind of thing that requires this kind of stuff is also rather disturbing. Ms. Weiss makes fun of the whole thing, though, comparing it to a spectacle put on for the passers-by, where the protestors really aren’t protesting the things they think they are, and that all that wonderful capitalism and walth makes it so they can go to the market and but food and supplies for their protests. To which the response, “your doin it rong” may be applicable, but i suspect much of the country is more with Ms. Weiss’s lampshade-hanging than in figuring out what the protesters are really protesting.
In the interests of disclosure, before opinions, these are the people and entities who gave the most to Barack Obama's campaign, and thus might be considered the people he is beholden to. The Democrats in general are suffering a lack of funding, perhas because they’re stalling out on the things some of them promised and the promises the President made to get elected.
In opinions, Mr. Frank says the Democrats should put on their gloves and come out swinging, instead of hoping for civility and compromise that will only make the fringe run rougher-shod over them.
Mr. Cline, at the General's, follows the logic through how stright porn leads to gay sex leads to maybe group sex but definitely leads to socialism, which is, of course, Bad and Wrong, because they all challenge the authoritarian, God-given system many conservatives have invested their livelihoods in maintaining and perpetuating.
A refreshing break from self-promotion, perhaps fueled by cynicism, or why we haven't heard more about the Denver terror arrest. Which doesn’t stop people from saying because he was there and plotting, the intelligence-gathering outside the rule of law has to continue.
Mr. Scarborough goes on the offensive against other conservatives, declaring he's putting together an honor roll for those who turn against the fringe that seems to be dominating the right wing.
Mark Ames wants to know why nobody's interested in investigating why a caring person would shoot up his company - he suggests its because the oligarchs who run the town and control it all don't want the people deciding they've had enough, too.
Ms. Schake says we need to get serious about Afghanistan or get out, which means putting effort into civilian reconstruction and nonmilitary triumphs. The United States Defense Secretary, Mr. Gates, suggested exiting Afghanistan early would be a mistake.
Mr. Fund says that there's a need for a three day waiting period on any new legislation, so the people can read it and understand it, and so that Democrats can't rush through a bill right before elections.
And speaking of new legislation, on health care, the public options we're discussing will fail, according to Mr. Dixon, but if we selected the smallest bill which extends Medicare to all, we might get the real public option we wanted. That would be excellent. Instead, though, we’re fighting the highly and finely-tuend PR apparatus of the insurance industry, which includes Congresscritters, front “non-profits”, shills, and most of the other dirty tricks you can think of. So, to put pressure on the other side, the Daily Kos offers up some names and phone numbers to call.
On the other side, Allysia Finley says that Americans are slobs and smokers and no amount of health care reform can fix that for us, and really, if you take away the smoking and the obesity and the homicide, Americans have the highest life-expectancy in the world, honest! Following that vein, Mr. DuPont says it&apos all a secret plan to take over health care, and that we're doing just fine, thanks, providing statistics about breast and prostate cancer mortality as his evidence, sandwiches between “the government will tax you or fine you to death and the costs will be astronomical.” (His proposed solution, opening up the markets to cross-state competition, making coverage portable and tax-deductible, regardless of where you get it from, and enacting tort reform could easily be taken up by a public option, and probably done better.) The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics department would like a word with you both...
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised Census workers are seen with distrust and anti-government sentiment, especially considering all the anti-Obama sentiment riled up in the town halls and the halls of Congress.
In technology, LSD has made it back to the laboratory, the sunspots have returned, and people will misremember something if given falsified video evidence (which, I think, fits in the with the research that has people make up things that weren’t there if they’re prompted to answer questions about it).
Last for tonight, another intiative to get people important to the history of the nation to tell their stories. This is good. There is also... blood energy drink, with apparently the same nutritional content and...taste of blood. Now all the wanna-be vamps can decide whether they really want to sparkle in the sunlight! Us? We’re going to have happy pills instead. Or perhaps a half-golden, half-red apple. Why no, it’s not poison-urrk!
(One last postscript - how one should think about surviving an unplanned freefall from very far up. Their hint? Use what’s around you to generate drag so that you don’t fall nearly as fast, and then hit things that will help reduce your velocity gradually before you achieve touchdown.)
It’s Banned Books Week this week. Celebrate your freedom to read by checking out a book about two male penguins who adopt. It’s the number one book on the challenge list for...three years running now, I believe.
Before we begin - a feat of textual rearrangement. Well, and the Abraham Lincoln Facebook page.
A philosophical question for you to ponder as you read - What if Phillip K. Dick were the religious prophet, instead of L. Ron Hubbard? Is there, perhaps, a superior third alternative that would be better than Dick and Hubbard?
And something else to keep in mind, if you parent or see others parenting, regularly spanking children as a disciplinary measure may lower their IQs - the stress of living in a house where they might get smacked means they might redirect resources they could use to getting smarter into just trying to survive in their house.
Out in the world, the big story appears to be the calling-out of Iran for building a new and secret nuclear enrichment facility by the United States and some of its allies, at the G-20 conference and a few days before talks were slated to begin about he nuclear program. While apparently knowing about the program beforehand, those governments waited to reveal until they could achieve maximal impact and possibly convince the recalcitrant members fo the Security Council to go along with sanctions. In response, Iran defended the plant, claiming it was not in violation of any rules and Iran test-fired short-range missiles. The response from conservative circles appears to be they've been playing you like a fiddle and will continue to do so unless you actually do something against them that's more than sanctions. They will feel bolstered by Venezuela's admission that it seeks uranium and is doing so with Iran's help.
Domestically, Sometimes the Internets show off our worst parts, such as a Facebook poll asking whether the President should be killed, on which the Secret Service investigated and the poll was taken down. Sometimes it shows more than it should, in the case of the police officer who apparently stuck his genitals in the mouths of calves - for which animal cruelty charges were dropped because nobody knew whether the calves liked it or not (The General elaborates upon how this act is a true show of conservative patriotism). It also shows how people who are appeared on shows about how pretty they are can be accused of torturing and killing their girlfriends. There are also parents who prefer homeopathic rememdies to allopathic remedies, resulting in the death of their child from something preventable, police officers using electric stun weapons far more than they should be, and on people that it's not smart or sane to do so on, and a Department of Justice official telling us the PATRIOT Act was used mostly against drug-related criminals, not terror-related criminals.
Unemployment among the young? About half of them. So it should be no surprise there are record numbers of people competing for what few openings there are.
The following is depressing. A new poll indicates Americans think Wal-Mart is the best symbol of America. I think they’re right - relentless cost-cutting, anti-union sentiment, big boxiness writ large, and all in the name of lower prices. Yeah, that’s us.
Also, a woman in Ohio dies from swine flu, after putting off the doctor visit because she was uninsured. To compound the meaning of this, the woman was in the constituency of one of the Congresscritters most opposed to actual health care reform, Minority Leader Boehner.
And talking about health care, a tweet from someone happy about a miscarriage because of the way abortions are in Wisconsin sparked condemnnation that she was happy about the miscarriage instead of conversations about the wait time the abortion takes. Thus, the rules from this that our Unabashed Feminsm Department may want to track - women should always be happy to be pregnant, and should always be sad if their baby miscarries. Add on “Women should always be trying to get pregnant so as to raise more soldiers for God”, and you’ve pretty well got Quiverfull and several other patriarchical movements.
Thus, having landed in Feminism territory, perhaps the obverse of the Nice Guy(TM), nicely explained - the Nice Girl(TM) who wants a man to be everything she wants him to be and blames herself (or him) for when things don't happen as fast or as committed as she wants them to.
The protests against the G-20 summit meet some of the latest in non-lethal technology - a sonic cannon. One wonders whether the police and military appreciate protesters that they can use their new toys against without it seeming like they’re testing things on them. Not to mention that seeing protesters as the kind of thing that requires this kind of stuff is also rather disturbing. Ms. Weiss makes fun of the whole thing, though, comparing it to a spectacle put on for the passers-by, where the protestors really aren’t protesting the things they think they are, and that all that wonderful capitalism and walth makes it so they can go to the market and but food and supplies for their protests. To which the response, “your doin it rong” may be applicable, but i suspect much of the country is more with Ms. Weiss’s lampshade-hanging than in figuring out what the protesters are really protesting.
In the interests of disclosure, before opinions, these are the people and entities who gave the most to Barack Obama's campaign, and thus might be considered the people he is beholden to. The Democrats in general are suffering a lack of funding, perhas because they’re stalling out on the things some of them promised and the promises the President made to get elected.
In opinions, Mr. Frank says the Democrats should put on their gloves and come out swinging, instead of hoping for civility and compromise that will only make the fringe run rougher-shod over them.
Mr. Cline, at the General's, follows the logic through how stright porn leads to gay sex leads to maybe group sex but definitely leads to socialism, which is, of course, Bad and Wrong, because they all challenge the authoritarian, God-given system many conservatives have invested their livelihoods in maintaining and perpetuating.
A refreshing break from self-promotion, perhaps fueled by cynicism, or why we haven't heard more about the Denver terror arrest. Which doesn’t stop people from saying because he was there and plotting, the intelligence-gathering outside the rule of law has to continue.
Mr. Scarborough goes on the offensive against other conservatives, declaring he's putting together an honor roll for those who turn against the fringe that seems to be dominating the right wing.
Mark Ames wants to know why nobody's interested in investigating why a caring person would shoot up his company - he suggests its because the oligarchs who run the town and control it all don't want the people deciding they've had enough, too.
Ms. Schake says we need to get serious about Afghanistan or get out, which means putting effort into civilian reconstruction and nonmilitary triumphs. The United States Defense Secretary, Mr. Gates, suggested exiting Afghanistan early would be a mistake.
Mr. Fund says that there's a need for a three day waiting period on any new legislation, so the people can read it and understand it, and so that Democrats can't rush through a bill right before elections.
And speaking of new legislation, on health care, the public options we're discussing will fail, according to Mr. Dixon, but if we selected the smallest bill which extends Medicare to all, we might get the real public option we wanted. That would be excellent. Instead, though, we’re fighting the highly and finely-tuend PR apparatus of the insurance industry, which includes Congresscritters, front “non-profits”, shills, and most of the other dirty tricks you can think of. So, to put pressure on the other side, the Daily Kos offers up some names and phone numbers to call.
On the other side, Allysia Finley says that Americans are slobs and smokers and no amount of health care reform can fix that for us, and really, if you take away the smoking and the obesity and the homicide, Americans have the highest life-expectancy in the world, honest! Following that vein, Mr. DuPont says it&apos all a secret plan to take over health care, and that we're doing just fine, thanks, providing statistics about breast and prostate cancer mortality as his evidence, sandwiches between “the government will tax you or fine you to death and the costs will be astronomical.” (His proposed solution, opening up the markets to cross-state competition, making coverage portable and tax-deductible, regardless of where you get it from, and enacting tort reform could easily be taken up by a public option, and probably done better.) The Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics department would like a word with you both...
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised Census workers are seen with distrust and anti-government sentiment, especially considering all the anti-Obama sentiment riled up in the town halls and the halls of Congress.
In technology, LSD has made it back to the laboratory, the sunspots have returned, and people will misremember something if given falsified video evidence (which, I think, fits in the with the research that has people make up things that weren’t there if they’re prompted to answer questions about it).
Last for tonight, another intiative to get people important to the history of the nation to tell their stories. This is good. There is also... blood energy drink, with apparently the same nutritional content and...taste of blood. Now all the wanna-be vamps can decide whether they really want to sparkle in the sunlight! Us? We’re going to have happy pills instead. Or perhaps a half-golden, half-red apple. Why no, it’s not poison-urrk!
(One last postscript - how one should think about surviving an unplanned freefall from very far up. Their hint? Use what’s around you to generate drag so that you don’t fall nearly as fast, and then hit things that will help reduce your velocity gradually before you achieve touchdown.)
