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Zo. Big weekend and all. Caught up on some older stuff, like suits that claim to be able to repel or destroy flu viruses that come in contact with them, and some newer stuff, like the Congresscritter that wants you to believe because 200 Census workers may have been mistakenly hired despite having criminal records, every Census worker potentially coming to your door is a rapist or child molester. Unlike Mr. Chaffetz, however, the Census Bureau is looking to fix the problem.
As part of the October month, safety guide to avoiding zombie attacks while out collecting treats.
International news begins with the firing of the top American in the U.N. Afghanistan mission, before the last ballots of a hotly disputed election have been counted, with accusations of fraud accommodation flying from both sides of the dispute.
Additionally, some high-stakes negotiation from the Secretary of State sealed a deal between Armenia and Turkey.
The Pentagon may win an argument that will permit it to not show the public photographs of detainee abuse and maltreatment in Iraq and Afghanistan if the White House gives the secretary of defense power over whether or not to release them, attempting to get around lawsuits against the government that so far have sided with the need to release the photos.
The Pakistani intelligence service accused the American intelligence service of hoarding information and giving no actionable intelligence.
Finally, North Korea tested several short-range missiles on Friday, and Iran sentenced another election protester to death.
Domestically, ever wonder how many minimum-wage jobs each of the top 8 CEO salaries could support? Thousands, by themselves. And not everyone gets a rags-to-riches story like the person who created Alvin and the Chipmunks does. Or persistence paying off with publication after twenty years of odd jobs.
President Obama again told the populace he wanted to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but was lacking in details. This engenders a more skeptical response from those who believe it’s a bad policy and should be ended immediately.
while American banks still close for today, the students are getting a more complete picture of how colonists and natives, including Columbus, interacted with each other, usually to the strong detriment of the natives.
A book recommendation coming up - Salon interviews Buss, of Meston and Buss, who have written a book about why women have sex - mostly for the same reasons men do. There’s a lot of gene selection and evolutionary behavior in there, too, which helps to explain why the best men are usually taken, and a lot of other useful things.
Finally, despite having gotten a bill in a Senate committee that catered to their very whims, the insurance companies are now mounting a campaign against it now that the politicians are making changes to it that would make the populace avoid being in complete thrall to said companies. It’s kind of like the 900-pound gorilla in a room throwing a tantrum because he’s not getting his way exactly the way he wants it. Problem is, that tantrum would result in higher insurance premiums for everyone.
In opinions, an interview with Barbara Ehrenreich, author of a book telling us how our culture of positive thinking (in prosperity-gospel and/or The Secret ways) is dooming us all.
The General offers helpful advice for Senator Vitter's Death Valley trip. The General is also offering moral support to teabagger-Americans who don't understand why racist, hate-filled comments about the President would engender negative comments, when all they’re doing is expressing the burden of what a white man must carry, and he offers praise for the students in Texas that use their free Gideon-distributed bibles to physically beat Jewish students and to roll marijuana joints, thus ingesting, sort of, the Word.
Mr. Kadish says we need to get serious about our national debt, because last year, some 40% of our taxes are used merely to finance it. D’you think that if the government said, “Okay. If you agree to pay us all the taxes you actually owe us, instead of what you say you owe us, and we’ll put all that money in excess of last year’s budget toward paying down the national debt”, d’you think the people at the very top of our corporate chains would be willing to do so? I mean, we’d be able to say it would result in lower taxes overall, if as we paid things down, we were able to use more current revenue toward paying for programs and eventually be able to lower the tax rate, if everyone got into the habit of paying what they really owed, instead of trying to hide it all. And then people wouldn’t have to worry about social programs we couldn’t afford, because the revenues would be enough to actually cover them.
Mr. Wesbury says the economy is recovering from the recession, but that if the government enacts new programs and taxes, the recovery will stall out, because government destroys jobs and wealth when it spends more as a part of GDP. So, he says, get out of the way, government - raising the minimum wage was a mistake, and anything else on top of that will only make things worse. Pretty standard Republican response to things. The WSJ says that temporary credits for hiring new workers won't create jobs either, and the only real way to do it is to reduce the payroll tax using unspent stimulus money, which by the way, is also not working because unemployment is higher than projected. Still the standard line - spending doesn’t work, cutting taxes always does.
Mr. Woosley thinks this Administration is opposed to any peace solution that would let Jews live in Palestine, based on them not appearing to be interested in some statements made by a Fatah leader about how Jews would enjoy at least as many rights in Palestine as Arabs do in Israel.
Mr. Sorley suggests the things we should learn from Vietnam is that the strategy in use before the Americans pulled out was working, and had we stayed in, would have worked. Thus, instead of going away from Afghanistan, he says, we should re-adopt the clear and hold strategy, give it enough troops to work, and ride it out, instead of being pushed by political winds.
Most of the opinions, however, seem to center around the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Barack Obama. The WSJ says Iranian protesters should have received the Nobel, to validate their electoral struggle and to draw attention to those currently facing execution for their part in the electoral protests, Messrs. Mosk and Dinan speculate that the award is for not being George W. Bush, a position Mr. Fund echoes, while also declaring that this awarding turns the Peace Prize into a joke and/or cheapens it significantly, as an award for what they hope the President will do, instead of what he has done. Ms. Noonan agrees, while adding on that it was always an award for liberals given by liberals, and that it hurts the President because it seems to make true all the claims about his Messianic self, somehow becoming an award to applaud the end of American exceptionalism. What Ms. Noonan says the President should do is explain how America deserves the award, the America of conservatives, of starting wars to end fighting, of inventing great things that Europe rides the coattails on, of Americans who are the best in the world and that the world looks up to with wide-eyed wonderment. He should get the spotlight off himself, she says, and talk about the country that made him President of the greatest nation ever.
Some of the stronger accusations against him include that Mr. Obama is a war criminal, by the laws of Nuremberg, and thus a Peace Prize is wholly unsuited to him, and that being at the head of a war machine killing people in other countries is also not working for peace.
Last out, Bill'O gives himself and Fox News a self-congratulations for thirteen years of existence of delivering the world inflammatory opinions, all the while claiming to be a fair and balanced organization, and that their popularity means they’re doing something right (as does their continued infuriation liberals and “the intelligentsia” - further proof they’re doing something right.)
In technology and science, the proposition that most dinosaur species we know of now don't exist, because what we think of as new species might have been the descendants of older species, Wikileaks offering news organizations an uploader feature, which will let journalists use leaked data exclusively for a period of time before the data becomes part of the Wikileaks database, a jawbone has been created from stem cells, experimental canisters of microbial life on Earth are being scattered into deep space to see if they survive, Russia planning another visit to Venus, water ice has been confirmed on an asteroid, species on Terra are facing an accelerated extinction rate, due to Humes and their development and harvesting practices, the first measurements of a persistent current in metals, smaller and more efficient batteries powered by radioactive isotopes, new knowledge indicating juggling grows brain networks, and ten things you didn’t know about the Hubble Telescope.
Last for tonight, the possibility that "created" should be "separated" in the first few lines of Genesis, and yet another sign that Presidents seem to like certain hand signs.
Oh, one postscript - Nightlight, the Harvard Lampoon parody of Twilight. And now that we know women are more on social media than men, we can expect quite a bit more fandom wank when Nightlight gets seeded into the Twihards.
As part of the October month, safety guide to avoiding zombie attacks while out collecting treats.
International news begins with the firing of the top American in the U.N. Afghanistan mission, before the last ballots of a hotly disputed election have been counted, with accusations of fraud accommodation flying from both sides of the dispute.
Additionally, some high-stakes negotiation from the Secretary of State sealed a deal between Armenia and Turkey.
The Pentagon may win an argument that will permit it to not show the public photographs of detainee abuse and maltreatment in Iraq and Afghanistan if the White House gives the secretary of defense power over whether or not to release them, attempting to get around lawsuits against the government that so far have sided with the need to release the photos.
The Pakistani intelligence service accused the American intelligence service of hoarding information and giving no actionable intelligence.
Finally, North Korea tested several short-range missiles on Friday, and Iran sentenced another election protester to death.
Domestically, ever wonder how many minimum-wage jobs each of the top 8 CEO salaries could support? Thousands, by themselves. And not everyone gets a rags-to-riches story like the person who created Alvin and the Chipmunks does. Or persistence paying off with publication after twenty years of odd jobs.
President Obama again told the populace he wanted to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but was lacking in details. This engenders a more skeptical response from those who believe it’s a bad policy and should be ended immediately.
while American banks still close for today, the students are getting a more complete picture of how colonists and natives, including Columbus, interacted with each other, usually to the strong detriment of the natives.
A book recommendation coming up - Salon interviews Buss, of Meston and Buss, who have written a book about why women have sex - mostly for the same reasons men do. There’s a lot of gene selection and evolutionary behavior in there, too, which helps to explain why the best men are usually taken, and a lot of other useful things.
Finally, despite having gotten a bill in a Senate committee that catered to their very whims, the insurance companies are now mounting a campaign against it now that the politicians are making changes to it that would make the populace avoid being in complete thrall to said companies. It’s kind of like the 900-pound gorilla in a room throwing a tantrum because he’s not getting his way exactly the way he wants it. Problem is, that tantrum would result in higher insurance premiums for everyone.
In opinions, an interview with Barbara Ehrenreich, author of a book telling us how our culture of positive thinking (in prosperity-gospel and/or The Secret ways) is dooming us all.
The General offers helpful advice for Senator Vitter's Death Valley trip. The General is also offering moral support to teabagger-Americans who don't understand why racist, hate-filled comments about the President would engender negative comments, when all they’re doing is expressing the burden of what a white man must carry, and he offers praise for the students in Texas that use their free Gideon-distributed bibles to physically beat Jewish students and to roll marijuana joints, thus ingesting, sort of, the Word.
Mr. Kadish says we need to get serious about our national debt, because last year, some 40% of our taxes are used merely to finance it. D’you think that if the government said, “Okay. If you agree to pay us all the taxes you actually owe us, instead of what you say you owe us, and we’ll put all that money in excess of last year’s budget toward paying down the national debt”, d’you think the people at the very top of our corporate chains would be willing to do so? I mean, we’d be able to say it would result in lower taxes overall, if as we paid things down, we were able to use more current revenue toward paying for programs and eventually be able to lower the tax rate, if everyone got into the habit of paying what they really owed, instead of trying to hide it all. And then people wouldn’t have to worry about social programs we couldn’t afford, because the revenues would be enough to actually cover them.
Mr. Wesbury says the economy is recovering from the recession, but that if the government enacts new programs and taxes, the recovery will stall out, because government destroys jobs and wealth when it spends more as a part of GDP. So, he says, get out of the way, government - raising the minimum wage was a mistake, and anything else on top of that will only make things worse. Pretty standard Republican response to things. The WSJ says that temporary credits for hiring new workers won't create jobs either, and the only real way to do it is to reduce the payroll tax using unspent stimulus money, which by the way, is also not working because unemployment is higher than projected. Still the standard line - spending doesn’t work, cutting taxes always does.
Mr. Woosley thinks this Administration is opposed to any peace solution that would let Jews live in Palestine, based on them not appearing to be interested in some statements made by a Fatah leader about how Jews would enjoy at least as many rights in Palestine as Arabs do in Israel.
Mr. Sorley suggests the things we should learn from Vietnam is that the strategy in use before the Americans pulled out was working, and had we stayed in, would have worked. Thus, instead of going away from Afghanistan, he says, we should re-adopt the clear and hold strategy, give it enough troops to work, and ride it out, instead of being pushed by political winds.
Most of the opinions, however, seem to center around the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Barack Obama. The WSJ says Iranian protesters should have received the Nobel, to validate their electoral struggle and to draw attention to those currently facing execution for their part in the electoral protests, Messrs. Mosk and Dinan speculate that the award is for not being George W. Bush, a position Mr. Fund echoes, while also declaring that this awarding turns the Peace Prize into a joke and/or cheapens it significantly, as an award for what they hope the President will do, instead of what he has done. Ms. Noonan agrees, while adding on that it was always an award for liberals given by liberals, and that it hurts the President because it seems to make true all the claims about his Messianic self, somehow becoming an award to applaud the end of American exceptionalism. What Ms. Noonan says the President should do is explain how America deserves the award, the America of conservatives, of starting wars to end fighting, of inventing great things that Europe rides the coattails on, of Americans who are the best in the world and that the world looks up to with wide-eyed wonderment. He should get the spotlight off himself, she says, and talk about the country that made him President of the greatest nation ever.
Some of the stronger accusations against him include that Mr. Obama is a war criminal, by the laws of Nuremberg, and thus a Peace Prize is wholly unsuited to him, and that being at the head of a war machine killing people in other countries is also not working for peace.
Last out, Bill'O gives himself and Fox News a self-congratulations for thirteen years of existence of delivering the world inflammatory opinions, all the while claiming to be a fair and balanced organization, and that their popularity means they’re doing something right (as does their continued infuriation liberals and “the intelligentsia” - further proof they’re doing something right.)
In technology and science, the proposition that most dinosaur species we know of now don't exist, because what we think of as new species might have been the descendants of older species, Wikileaks offering news organizations an uploader feature, which will let journalists use leaked data exclusively for a period of time before the data becomes part of the Wikileaks database, a jawbone has been created from stem cells, experimental canisters of microbial life on Earth are being scattered into deep space to see if they survive, Russia planning another visit to Venus, water ice has been confirmed on an asteroid, species on Terra are facing an accelerated extinction rate, due to Humes and their development and harvesting practices, the first measurements of a persistent current in metals, smaller and more efficient batteries powered by radioactive isotopes, new knowledge indicating juggling grows brain networks, and ten things you didn’t know about the Hubble Telescope.
Last for tonight, the possibility that "created" should be "separated" in the first few lines of Genesis, and yet another sign that Presidents seem to like certain hand signs.
Oh, one postscript - Nightlight, the Harvard Lampoon parody of Twilight. And now that we know women are more on social media than men, we can expect quite a bit more fandom wank when Nightlight gets seeded into the Twihards.
