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Back into normality - 9 November 2009
Nov. 10th, 2009 01:08 amGood morning all. Happy 5th Birthday, Firefox!
In the international sphere, McClatchy bets the American President will send 30,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan. The decision is not going fast enough for some, with Mr. Paulson praising the Great Saint Reagan who was always decisive in his actions (and almost always threw more troops at a problem), and saying the President needs to emulate him and throw as many troops as are needed at the problem so they can always be doing something. (There’s an introductory aside about the Fort Hood shooter that plays up Muslim paranoia, too, but it’s not the focus of the column.)
The IAEA would like to talk to Tehran about supposed testing of advanced nuclear detonation designs, fearing that such a development puts Tehran much farther along the plan to nuclear bombs than previously thought.
Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez instructed his troops to prepare for war once United States troops obtained access to Colombian military bases, in an attempt to ward of the invasion he feels is coming.
There is some good news - Iraqi lawmakers managed to deal with or sidestep most of the sticking points and pass a bill that will provide for national elections in January.
Domestically, WalMart defends its policies that require employees to take a personal or vacation day before they can take sick leave, even in the middle of the H1N1 pandemic, and that gives people demerits for being sick or taking sick days.
Missing the point in its entirety to make a cheap shot against Islam, an article about the shooter of Fort Hood that apparently places him at the same mosque of the 11 September attackers. Promoting the idea that Islam is a warlike religion that wants to kill everyone, instead of noting a coincidence in a footnote, perhaps in an article about an investigation to see whether that mosque is promoting hateful ideas. Too much to be gained by painting the other as evil, I guess.
Elsewhere on health care, a breakdown of all the House Democratic members who voted against the health care bill, indicating some factors as to why they may have voted against it, like vulnerability of district, Blue Dog status, or a D in a place that is normally pretty R. For the leadership, some advice to the President - start knocking heads together so as to overcome all the stonewalling that is likely to happen in the Senate. Although, depending on your point of view, if the President did throw his support behind a bill, he might be doing more harm than good - at least one doctor thinks the bill is a big slush fund to insurance companies with little bits of real reform tacked on, and instead, we should be focusing on expanding Medicare to cover everyone, making primary care physicians get bigger payments and specialists smaller, and encouraging med students to go into primary care in places where they are most sorely needed. Got to say, that sounds like a nice plan. But the Democrats were never far enough to the Left to actually start there.
Furthermore, the rabid right wing of the Republican Party expressed their outrage and hostility at the lone Republican Congressperson, Joseph Cao of Louisiana, to vote in favor of the House bill, leveling threats of exclusion and dismissing him as not the direction the Republican Party wants to go. Unless, that is, it’s the leadership in Congress, who apparently are fine with Cao’s vote and position. We note, too, that he’s from Louisiana, a state that probably needs affordable health insurance coverage more than most.
In economics, Wall Street bonuses are going to go up 40 percent, which should make a lot of populists howling mad because the economy is nowhere near recovered. The response from Goldman Sachs? "Let them eat cake", in addition to “Jesus endorses self-interest”.
Next verse, same as the worst - the Obama Administration is instructing his lawyers to argue for warrantless wiretaps and unconstitutional searches, while at the same time claiming he’s against those practices. This follows the pattern where Italian courts can convict agents for behaving illegally, while American courts dismiss things that are clearly illegal. Civil libertarians are also very unhappy about the secret ACTA talks that intend on imposing a significantly draconian set of rules regarding copyright,
In the opinions, The Gouverneur Times claims that Bill Owens broke campaign promises the moment he declared support for the House health care bill, promises that he was against cutting benefits or raising taxes and against a public option. They might sound credible, if they didn’t also include clearly untrue things like “the House bill will let illegal immigrants participate in the exchange”.
Ms. McCaughey, of "death panel" fame, posts part of her objections to the House bill. However, with the whopper that she laid down in the first place, what credibility does she have left for the rest? Why is the WSJ printing it, anyway?
Mr. Tanner avoids both of those pitfalls while putting out a column that says the true cost of the House health care bill will be somewhere in the multiple trillions of dollars, assuming planned cuts don't happen and other bills that would add to that cost get passed.
Back on defensible ground, at least, the WSJ says the rising unemployment rate is an appropriate repudiation of the stimulus that happened, so the populace and the Congress should resist calls for another stimulus. Thus, the call comes back after hving been away for a while - All Hail the Private Market, which does everything better than government does.
the new lead laws continue to make problems, says the WSJ and the CPSC, and thus, lots of finger-pointing and not much of getting stuff done.
Mr. Fund claims any commitment to transparency and on-line posting of bills went by the wayside in the newest halth care bill. Guess it was a promise that was too good to be true, especially with time running out on getting the Democratic agenda on its way before the midterm elections.
Last out, from the left, Mr. Krugman fears for us all if the Republican Party continus to become the Teabagger Party, because they might stay just big enough to stop any real work from getting done.
From the right, Bill'O goes cherry-picking the White House visitors list, finding all his favorite liberal targets and...throwing low-level poor-grade insults at them. If that’s what passes for the Bill'O venom these days, I want to know who managed to pull out his fangs.
In technology, a Danish anti-piracy group throws in the towel because of the difficulty of proving that an infringer actually infringed, a voting system that gives voters codes to write that they can then can check to make sure their ballots are accurate and secure, and then supposedly lets independent auditors ensure that votes went to the right places without actually knowing who voted for whom, more research about how real self perceives virtual self, the discovery of an ancient Persian army thoguht lost in a sandstorm around 525 BCE, and Rupert Murdoch says he'll be hiding things behind his paywall from Google searches, believing the people who search and find his results are unimportant. Probably because he’s charging for his content.
Last for tonight, the gender gap of the Otaku - guys like looking at girls, girls like looking at robots.
In the international sphere, McClatchy bets the American President will send 30,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan. The decision is not going fast enough for some, with Mr. Paulson praising the Great Saint Reagan who was always decisive in his actions (and almost always threw more troops at a problem), and saying the President needs to emulate him and throw as many troops as are needed at the problem so they can always be doing something. (There’s an introductory aside about the Fort Hood shooter that plays up Muslim paranoia, too, but it’s not the focus of the column.)
The IAEA would like to talk to Tehran about supposed testing of advanced nuclear detonation designs, fearing that such a development puts Tehran much farther along the plan to nuclear bombs than previously thought.
Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez instructed his troops to prepare for war once United States troops obtained access to Colombian military bases, in an attempt to ward of the invasion he feels is coming.
There is some good news - Iraqi lawmakers managed to deal with or sidestep most of the sticking points and pass a bill that will provide for national elections in January.
Domestically, WalMart defends its policies that require employees to take a personal or vacation day before they can take sick leave, even in the middle of the H1N1 pandemic, and that gives people demerits for being sick or taking sick days.
Missing the point in its entirety to make a cheap shot against Islam, an article about the shooter of Fort Hood that apparently places him at the same mosque of the 11 September attackers. Promoting the idea that Islam is a warlike religion that wants to kill everyone, instead of noting a coincidence in a footnote, perhaps in an article about an investigation to see whether that mosque is promoting hateful ideas. Too much to be gained by painting the other as evil, I guess.
Elsewhere on health care, a breakdown of all the House Democratic members who voted against the health care bill, indicating some factors as to why they may have voted against it, like vulnerability of district, Blue Dog status, or a D in a place that is normally pretty R. For the leadership, some advice to the President - start knocking heads together so as to overcome all the stonewalling that is likely to happen in the Senate. Although, depending on your point of view, if the President did throw his support behind a bill, he might be doing more harm than good - at least one doctor thinks the bill is a big slush fund to insurance companies with little bits of real reform tacked on, and instead, we should be focusing on expanding Medicare to cover everyone, making primary care physicians get bigger payments and specialists smaller, and encouraging med students to go into primary care in places where they are most sorely needed. Got to say, that sounds like a nice plan. But the Democrats were never far enough to the Left to actually start there.
Furthermore, the rabid right wing of the Republican Party expressed their outrage and hostility at the lone Republican Congressperson, Joseph Cao of Louisiana, to vote in favor of the House bill, leveling threats of exclusion and dismissing him as not the direction the Republican Party wants to go. Unless, that is, it’s the leadership in Congress, who apparently are fine with Cao’s vote and position. We note, too, that he’s from Louisiana, a state that probably needs affordable health insurance coverage more than most.
In economics, Wall Street bonuses are going to go up 40 percent, which should make a lot of populists howling mad because the economy is nowhere near recovered. The response from Goldman Sachs? "Let them eat cake", in addition to “Jesus endorses self-interest”.
Next verse, same as the worst - the Obama Administration is instructing his lawyers to argue for warrantless wiretaps and unconstitutional searches, while at the same time claiming he’s against those practices. This follows the pattern where Italian courts can convict agents for behaving illegally, while American courts dismiss things that are clearly illegal. Civil libertarians are also very unhappy about the secret ACTA talks that intend on imposing a significantly draconian set of rules regarding copyright,
In the opinions, The Gouverneur Times claims that Bill Owens broke campaign promises the moment he declared support for the House health care bill, promises that he was against cutting benefits or raising taxes and against a public option. They might sound credible, if they didn’t also include clearly untrue things like “the House bill will let illegal immigrants participate in the exchange”.
Ms. McCaughey, of "death panel" fame, posts part of her objections to the House bill. However, with the whopper that she laid down in the first place, what credibility does she have left for the rest? Why is the WSJ printing it, anyway?
Mr. Tanner avoids both of those pitfalls while putting out a column that says the true cost of the House health care bill will be somewhere in the multiple trillions of dollars, assuming planned cuts don't happen and other bills that would add to that cost get passed.
Back on defensible ground, at least, the WSJ says the rising unemployment rate is an appropriate repudiation of the stimulus that happened, so the populace and the Congress should resist calls for another stimulus. Thus, the call comes back after hving been away for a while - All Hail the Private Market, which does everything better than government does.
the new lead laws continue to make problems, says the WSJ and the CPSC, and thus, lots of finger-pointing and not much of getting stuff done.
Mr. Fund claims any commitment to transparency and on-line posting of bills went by the wayside in the newest halth care bill. Guess it was a promise that was too good to be true, especially with time running out on getting the Democratic agenda on its way before the midterm elections.
Last out, from the left, Mr. Krugman fears for us all if the Republican Party continus to become the Teabagger Party, because they might stay just big enough to stop any real work from getting done.
From the right, Bill'O goes cherry-picking the White House visitors list, finding all his favorite liberal targets and...throwing low-level poor-grade insults at them. If that’s what passes for the Bill'O venom these days, I want to know who managed to pull out his fangs.
In technology, a Danish anti-piracy group throws in the towel because of the difficulty of proving that an infringer actually infringed, a voting system that gives voters codes to write that they can then can check to make sure their ballots are accurate and secure, and then supposedly lets independent auditors ensure that votes went to the right places without actually knowing who voted for whom, more research about how real self perceives virtual self, the discovery of an ancient Persian army thoguht lost in a sandstorm around 525 BCE, and Rupert Murdoch says he'll be hiding things behind his paywall from Google searches, believing the people who search and find his results are unimportant. Probably because he’s charging for his content.
Last for tonight, the gender gap of the Otaku - guys like looking at girls, girls like looking at robots.
