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Freaking tired - 08 October 2009
Oct. 8th, 2009 11:55 pmApologies for lateness, but life interfered up to this particular point and prevented me from getting you yesterday’s news goodies.
Out in the world today, human rights groups are worried that the President they were promised is not the President they’re going to get, with the President’s refusal to meet with the Dalai Lama as another sign that human rights aren’t important to the current administration. The WSJ piles on, mostly because the Dalai Lama is a prominent figure and Mr. Obama is breaking a chain of visits stretching to 1991, but also because they think they see hypocrisy in throwing tarrifs at Chinese tires, which could anger them, but using possible anger as an excuse for not meeting.
Russia confirms that it intends to enrich uranium in Russia for one of the reactors in Iran. We’re assuming this is for civilian purposes, because Russia has an interest in not letting other people into the nuclear club.
Sometiems, in the theater of war, your best asset is a farmer high on opium who just had his bike swiped by the opposition. Also in that article: infrastructure and logistics matter. In Afghanistan, U.S. and NATO troops have neither.
Finally, pirates went after what they thought was an unarmed ship. They were wrong. It turned out to be a French naval vessel. The pirates were captured.
Doemstically, the newest Supreme Court justice stepped into her role firmly, asking more questions in cases heard than Clarence Thomas has in years.
E. coli, despite continued inspections of ground hamburger, continues to flourish and infect people. The inspection process is not doing what it is suppoed to do...in addition to all the details that say hamburger is not uniformly consistent-grade meat and industry players themselves sem very intent in making sure nobody tests their product for contamination, despite the risk involved to the consumer.
This is not Calvin and Hobbes, thus the mother letting her daughter ride in a cardboard box strapped to the top with a clothes hanger is going to get arrested for child endangerment. And rightly so.
Here’s your health care horror story for today - Trying to move from private insurance to a cheaper plan, a mother and her daughter found themselves denied for non-existent conditions erroneously attached to them.
Also in the ridiculous file, The FBI has charged a Pittsburgh man with using his Twitter feed to help G-20 demonstrators evade police. The charge is “hindering prosecution”, but the fact that this arrest is happening at all bodes ill for being able to use social media platforms to affect any sort of change at all.
Finally, the Unabashed Feminism Department has new targets to hurt - the thirty GOP Senators who voted against Al Franken's amendment to force any defense contractor served with allegations of sexual assault, battery or discrimination to let such things proceed to court, isntead of using their contract agreements to shunt such things to arbitration, upon pain of losing their defense contracts. Whatever it is, regardless of what it is, if it’s proposed by a Demcorat, someone’s against it. Even when common sense tells them they shouldn’t be. High-profile Republicans against it include Senator Sessions of Alabama and Senator Vitter of Lousiana. (Looks like Senator Stand-Up is continuing to be the policy wonk people were sure he couldn’t be, because of his comedic background.)
In the opinions, the Slacktivist gives his opinion of the Conservative Bible Project, not as "further along the fringe", but as "inevitable result of American evangelism".
Mr. McCaffrey praises the scientist willing to try an experimental cure for a deadly cancer on their son in hopes of the cure working. While the cure failed to save the son’s life, it has now made its pass through trials and will be available to others. Mr. McCaffrey is really praising the scientist being willing to risk his reputation and the entire project being canned by the FDA to help the child. The insinuation there is “Shouldn’t all drugs be able to get to their trials fast enough to save lives?”
On a different facet, Teh WSJ says the plan to extend coverage in teh Baucus bill will do so at the expense of "fewer and less innovative ways of extending and improving lives" because specialists will be hit with penalties for too much resource use. This continues the myopic view that the Baucus bill is the only bill with a chance of survival and being signed, and will trump all other possible reform bills. recognizing the possibility of something else, the WSJ says Republicans shoudl demand that the Democrats agree to a conference provision that would prevent them from reimposing a public option into the conference bill if and when the Senate bill fails to pass one. It would be stupid for the Democrats to go along with such a thing - if the public option reappears in the conference bill, then the party in power wants it and should pass it. If I recall correctly, the conference bill has to re-pass both houses anyway, so Republicans and conservaDems who really do feel it’s a bad thing can vote against it in their own chambers. Should it still make it to the President, well, good fight, but you lose.
Mr. Cohen criticizes the President as somehow being not ready to lead on the issue of Afghanistan, trying to pin him in between his unwillingness to blindly commit troops and the seeming unwinnability of Afghanistan so that the only course of action for the President to do to seem Presidential is send more troops and keep trying to win Afghanistan (because it is somehow more winnable than, say, Vietnam). Mr. Moyar says we should have more troops now so that strategies, whatever they may be, will actually succeed and the future will see us turning over operations to the locals.
Mr. McGurn criticizes the Democratic Party for not letting one of their own bring an amendment to the health care bills that would explicitly ban federal funding for abortions. Is that in addition to all the other explicit bans on federal funding for abortion, or have they somehow magically disappeared and need to be reaffirmed? Furthemore, at what point did the populace get to say where their tax money was spent, other than through the mechanic of Congressional pressure and elections? If we really are supposed to be able to control where our money is spent, we should get a checklist or something, so we can say, “My taxes will not be spent on war, can be spent on health care for all, education for all, and on any bill that bans lobbyists from the halls of government”. Otherwise, we’re giving them the money to spend as they see fit. We supposedly elected wise people who know where the money is best spent. If we didn’t, then maybe we need to elect people who do.
Mr. Hassett says the government should not be subsidizing and encouraing green jobs, because they aren't competitive enough in the job marketplace to survive on their own.
the NYT criticizes the administration for their want to make it easier for government to force reporters to reveal their sources in cases of leaks the Administration deems to be important to national security.
And now, back after hiatus, let’s check in on the worst of the worst. Mr. Stephens dispatches us from the future, a world where as a part of negotiations with Iran, Israel was forced to give up their (still unacknowledged but known) nuclear weapons on the anniversary of a conference where Nazis planned out the extinctino of Jews. Melodrama much? Not to mention it won’t happen, no matter how bad you imagine relations between Israel and the United States getting.
Doing him one worse, and going back to the Terror! Fear! well, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann make their case for the government to keep its extralegal powers granted in the PATRIOT Act because there have been (supposedly) no abuses and lots of terror attacks prevented because of those powers. Ends justifies the means reasoning again, which should be incompatible with “we are a nation of laws” and that we obey those laws, instead of ignoring them whenever inconvenient.
In technology, check out some of the pictures from the CEATEC Japan technology show, a really big picture of the galactic center, the possibilty of a manned Mars mission taking 39 days to get there, thanks to new rocket designs, augmented reality replacing the World Trade Center buildings through apps for Android and iPhone, the universe has more entropy that originally thought, adding feedback to robot operators, so the bomb disposal robot operator has an idea of what the thing he’s carrying or manipulating feels like, and life returns to normal for a man with a successful two-hand transplant.
Last for tonight, fictitious swearwords, all primed and ready for use in one’s next conversation.
Out in the world today, human rights groups are worried that the President they were promised is not the President they’re going to get, with the President’s refusal to meet with the Dalai Lama as another sign that human rights aren’t important to the current administration. The WSJ piles on, mostly because the Dalai Lama is a prominent figure and Mr. Obama is breaking a chain of visits stretching to 1991, but also because they think they see hypocrisy in throwing tarrifs at Chinese tires, which could anger them, but using possible anger as an excuse for not meeting.
Russia confirms that it intends to enrich uranium in Russia for one of the reactors in Iran. We’re assuming this is for civilian purposes, because Russia has an interest in not letting other people into the nuclear club.
Sometiems, in the theater of war, your best asset is a farmer high on opium who just had his bike swiped by the opposition. Also in that article: infrastructure and logistics matter. In Afghanistan, U.S. and NATO troops have neither.
Finally, pirates went after what they thought was an unarmed ship. They were wrong. It turned out to be a French naval vessel. The pirates were captured.
Doemstically, the newest Supreme Court justice stepped into her role firmly, asking more questions in cases heard than Clarence Thomas has in years.
E. coli, despite continued inspections of ground hamburger, continues to flourish and infect people. The inspection process is not doing what it is suppoed to do...in addition to all the details that say hamburger is not uniformly consistent-grade meat and industry players themselves sem very intent in making sure nobody tests their product for contamination, despite the risk involved to the consumer.
This is not Calvin and Hobbes, thus the mother letting her daughter ride in a cardboard box strapped to the top with a clothes hanger is going to get arrested for child endangerment. And rightly so.
Here’s your health care horror story for today - Trying to move from private insurance to a cheaper plan, a mother and her daughter found themselves denied for non-existent conditions erroneously attached to them.
Also in the ridiculous file, The FBI has charged a Pittsburgh man with using his Twitter feed to help G-20 demonstrators evade police. The charge is “hindering prosecution”, but the fact that this arrest is happening at all bodes ill for being able to use social media platforms to affect any sort of change at all.
Finally, the Unabashed Feminism Department has new targets to hurt - the thirty GOP Senators who voted against Al Franken's amendment to force any defense contractor served with allegations of sexual assault, battery or discrimination to let such things proceed to court, isntead of using their contract agreements to shunt such things to arbitration, upon pain of losing their defense contracts. Whatever it is, regardless of what it is, if it’s proposed by a Demcorat, someone’s against it. Even when common sense tells them they shouldn’t be. High-profile Republicans against it include Senator Sessions of Alabama and Senator Vitter of Lousiana. (Looks like Senator Stand-Up is continuing to be the policy wonk people were sure he couldn’t be, because of his comedic background.)
In the opinions, the Slacktivist gives his opinion of the Conservative Bible Project, not as "further along the fringe", but as "inevitable result of American evangelism".
Mr. McCaffrey praises the scientist willing to try an experimental cure for a deadly cancer on their son in hopes of the cure working. While the cure failed to save the son’s life, it has now made its pass through trials and will be available to others. Mr. McCaffrey is really praising the scientist being willing to risk his reputation and the entire project being canned by the FDA to help the child. The insinuation there is “Shouldn’t all drugs be able to get to their trials fast enough to save lives?”
On a different facet, Teh WSJ says the plan to extend coverage in teh Baucus bill will do so at the expense of "fewer and less innovative ways of extending and improving lives" because specialists will be hit with penalties for too much resource use. This continues the myopic view that the Baucus bill is the only bill with a chance of survival and being signed, and will trump all other possible reform bills. recognizing the possibility of something else, the WSJ says Republicans shoudl demand that the Democrats agree to a conference provision that would prevent them from reimposing a public option into the conference bill if and when the Senate bill fails to pass one. It would be stupid for the Democrats to go along with such a thing - if the public option reappears in the conference bill, then the party in power wants it and should pass it. If I recall correctly, the conference bill has to re-pass both houses anyway, so Republicans and conservaDems who really do feel it’s a bad thing can vote against it in their own chambers. Should it still make it to the President, well, good fight, but you lose.
Mr. Cohen criticizes the President as somehow being not ready to lead on the issue of Afghanistan, trying to pin him in between his unwillingness to blindly commit troops and the seeming unwinnability of Afghanistan so that the only course of action for the President to do to seem Presidential is send more troops and keep trying to win Afghanistan (because it is somehow more winnable than, say, Vietnam). Mr. Moyar says we should have more troops now so that strategies, whatever they may be, will actually succeed and the future will see us turning over operations to the locals.
Mr. McGurn criticizes the Democratic Party for not letting one of their own bring an amendment to the health care bills that would explicitly ban federal funding for abortions. Is that in addition to all the other explicit bans on federal funding for abortion, or have they somehow magically disappeared and need to be reaffirmed? Furthemore, at what point did the populace get to say where their tax money was spent, other than through the mechanic of Congressional pressure and elections? If we really are supposed to be able to control where our money is spent, we should get a checklist or something, so we can say, “My taxes will not be spent on war, can be spent on health care for all, education for all, and on any bill that bans lobbyists from the halls of government”. Otherwise, we’re giving them the money to spend as they see fit. We supposedly elected wise people who know where the money is best spent. If we didn’t, then maybe we need to elect people who do.
Mr. Hassett says the government should not be subsidizing and encouraing green jobs, because they aren't competitive enough in the job marketplace to survive on their own.
the NYT criticizes the administration for their want to make it easier for government to force reporters to reveal their sources in cases of leaks the Administration deems to be important to national security.
And now, back after hiatus, let’s check in on the worst of the worst. Mr. Stephens dispatches us from the future, a world where as a part of negotiations with Iran, Israel was forced to give up their (still unacknowledged but known) nuclear weapons on the anniversary of a conference where Nazis planned out the extinctino of Jews. Melodrama much? Not to mention it won’t happen, no matter how bad you imagine relations between Israel and the United States getting.
Doing him one worse, and going back to the Terror! Fear! well, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann make their case for the government to keep its extralegal powers granted in the PATRIOT Act because there have been (supposedly) no abuses and lots of terror attacks prevented because of those powers. Ends justifies the means reasoning again, which should be incompatible with “we are a nation of laws” and that we obey those laws, instead of ignoring them whenever inconvenient.
In technology, check out some of the pictures from the CEATEC Japan technology show, a really big picture of the galactic center, the possibilty of a manned Mars mission taking 39 days to get there, thanks to new rocket designs, augmented reality replacing the World Trade Center buildings through apps for Android and iPhone, the universe has more entropy that originally thought, adding feedback to robot operators, so the bomb disposal robot operator has an idea of what the thing he’s carrying or manipulating feels like, and life returns to normal for a man with a successful two-hand transplant.
Last for tonight, fictitious swearwords, all primed and ready for use in one’s next conversation.
