![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Not quite what we had - 17 November 2009
Nov. 18th, 2009 09:49 amUp top, for those in despair or needing some, the pessimist mug, to remind you perpetually that your glass will always pass the half-empty point. Thus, properly depressed, you can read the UFW call for people to help them in a situation at Ruby Ridge Farms where an owner is alleged to be firing people because they support unionization, as well as threatening to shoot them and engaging in unfair labor practices.
To cheer you up considerably (or at least drown the pain), a team has been contracted to go to Anarctica to try and drill up some bottles of one hundred year-old scotch, hopefully getting enough so that the scotch can be replicated and sold on the market again.
Internationally, Argentina! Now with homosexual marriages!. At least, assuming the judge's order stands.
Despite all the other violence, insecurity, and danger, the mobile phone business in Somalia is doing pretty well. Communications is important, as an essential part of survival in a hostile environment.
An attack in Afghanistan is thought to have targeted a meeting between the Afghans and the French, killing twelve Afghanis nearby. In Iraq, thirteen kidnapped and then executed.
And, of course, when involved in one criminal enterprise, getting involved in another is no trick at all, or: Drug trade and insurgency work well together.
Domestically, slap a big fat FAIL on the New York Fed for abdicating their responsibility as a regulator and instead behaving as a creditor that just gave money without strings or regulations. Further on the economy, the recession has sparked an increase in shoplifting, whether to maintain the illusion of a no longer affordable lifestyle, or because they feel the system is too broken down to make it so they can actually afford or buy the things they're stealing.
Soem persons who received tax breaks may have ot repay the government some money, based on holding more than one job or being in a marriage where both people work. Thus, the tax code and its foibles can snare anyone. Might be worth trying to simplify it some.
On opinions, Mr. Karon praises the President's insistence that new plans for Afghanistan include how the United States will transfer the responsibility of fighting the domestic insurgency to the Afghan government and military.
On the matter of federal trials for terror suspects, Mr. Yoo, author of memoranda that authorized torture of detainees in the custody of the United States, says the trials will force the government to reveal intelligence sources, classified information, and the methods they used, all to the benefit of terror organizations. Huh. From what I heard from the liberal sources, one of the prosecutors remarked that they could still make a guilty case "without all that torture stuff", which suggests to me there's more than enough conventionally-obtained information that requires no classified divulgences to make a go at a conviction. And besides, Mr. Yoo, you have no credibility commenting on this matter, considering your memoranda may have made it harder to obtain a conviction.
Mr. Lomborg suggests the world's priorities are misplaced - concentration on anthropogenic climate change in lieu of food aid and making sure the world does not go hungry is aiming for the wrong goal.
In health care, The WSJ raises the spectre of death panels again, this time against the call for Meidcare to have a global budget, which means bureaucrats decide how much Medicare must spend, without exception, and certainly killing plenty of people in their penny-pinching. Assuming, of course, they don't find myriad new ways to tax the population into paying for the entitlement, instead. Kind of a no-win situation they're painting, either higher taxes or higher deaths. The Republicans hate taxes and the Democrats are not too fond of deaths. Also, Medicare as an income redistribution program? Bullsh*t. Medicare recipients do not receive cash payments, if I recall correctly, so that can't be income redistribution. Complain all you like about the wealthy being taxed, but don't make stuff up.
On the economy, the WSJ is also hoping that Treasury Secretary Geithner will neglect to renew TARP's authorization, considering the money spent so far to have been wasteful and damaging, and that the country would do bettr simply not spending it.
Last out, Mr. Harris, of the Guardian, on the female face of the tea party movement, which is interesting. Bachmann, Palin, Coulter, Malkin - even if it seems like Republicanism is all about being the Old Boys Club, the teabag part has soem very prominent females leading the charge. This is good, in the sense of "hey, women making waves!" and bad in the sense of what they're making waves about, which often seems to include making sure their ability to make waves is severely curtailed, but it might be amusing to think of the teaparty movement as benefiting from a feminist idea, even if it decries feminism every chance it gets. There is much to be unpacked on this, I'm sure...
In tech, Apple files a patent for a process that would force you to view and/or listen to ads periodically to use devices, a move that would likely trash any good will Apple has built over the years, or flop horribly because nobody wants to be subjected to constant ads. It's the SchoolBooks of Little Brother, and we saw how well those worked.
Elsewhere, DARPA thinks freezing brains is the way to go to prevent traumatic injuries from causing significantly more damage, another space shuttle inspection to see if there's damage, considering how damage can cause for an explosive break-up, a battery designed to last for 25 years by running on certain radioisotopes, and men who hook up and shack up with smart women live longer, because those smart women help the men maintain their health, through diet adn through discouragement of stupid and harmful things.
Last out, The word fo the year is "unfriend", apparently, which is more of an antonym of friending, itself a definition in the entry of friend, rather than a real neologism, like "sexting".
To cheer you up considerably (or at least drown the pain), a team has been contracted to go to Anarctica to try and drill up some bottles of one hundred year-old scotch, hopefully getting enough so that the scotch can be replicated and sold on the market again.
Internationally, Argentina! Now with homosexual marriages!. At least, assuming the judge's order stands.
Despite all the other violence, insecurity, and danger, the mobile phone business in Somalia is doing pretty well. Communications is important, as an essential part of survival in a hostile environment.
An attack in Afghanistan is thought to have targeted a meeting between the Afghans and the French, killing twelve Afghanis nearby. In Iraq, thirteen kidnapped and then executed.
And, of course, when involved in one criminal enterprise, getting involved in another is no trick at all, or: Drug trade and insurgency work well together.
Domestically, slap a big fat FAIL on the New York Fed for abdicating their responsibility as a regulator and instead behaving as a creditor that just gave money without strings or regulations. Further on the economy, the recession has sparked an increase in shoplifting, whether to maintain the illusion of a no longer affordable lifestyle, or because they feel the system is too broken down to make it so they can actually afford or buy the things they're stealing.
Soem persons who received tax breaks may have ot repay the government some money, based on holding more than one job or being in a marriage where both people work. Thus, the tax code and its foibles can snare anyone. Might be worth trying to simplify it some.
On opinions, Mr. Karon praises the President's insistence that new plans for Afghanistan include how the United States will transfer the responsibility of fighting the domestic insurgency to the Afghan government and military.
On the matter of federal trials for terror suspects, Mr. Yoo, author of memoranda that authorized torture of detainees in the custody of the United States, says the trials will force the government to reveal intelligence sources, classified information, and the methods they used, all to the benefit of terror organizations. Huh. From what I heard from the liberal sources, one of the prosecutors remarked that they could still make a guilty case "without all that torture stuff", which suggests to me there's more than enough conventionally-obtained information that requires no classified divulgences to make a go at a conviction. And besides, Mr. Yoo, you have no credibility commenting on this matter, considering your memoranda may have made it harder to obtain a conviction.
Mr. Lomborg suggests the world's priorities are misplaced - concentration on anthropogenic climate change in lieu of food aid and making sure the world does not go hungry is aiming for the wrong goal.
In health care, The WSJ raises the spectre of death panels again, this time against the call for Meidcare to have a global budget, which means bureaucrats decide how much Medicare must spend, without exception, and certainly killing plenty of people in their penny-pinching. Assuming, of course, they don't find myriad new ways to tax the population into paying for the entitlement, instead. Kind of a no-win situation they're painting, either higher taxes or higher deaths. The Republicans hate taxes and the Democrats are not too fond of deaths. Also, Medicare as an income redistribution program? Bullsh*t. Medicare recipients do not receive cash payments, if I recall correctly, so that can't be income redistribution. Complain all you like about the wealthy being taxed, but don't make stuff up.
On the economy, the WSJ is also hoping that Treasury Secretary Geithner will neglect to renew TARP's authorization, considering the money spent so far to have been wasteful and damaging, and that the country would do bettr simply not spending it.
Last out, Mr. Harris, of the Guardian, on the female face of the tea party movement, which is interesting. Bachmann, Palin, Coulter, Malkin - even if it seems like Republicanism is all about being the Old Boys Club, the teabag part has soem very prominent females leading the charge. This is good, in the sense of "hey, women making waves!" and bad in the sense of what they're making waves about, which often seems to include making sure their ability to make waves is severely curtailed, but it might be amusing to think of the teaparty movement as benefiting from a feminist idea, even if it decries feminism every chance it gets. There is much to be unpacked on this, I'm sure...
In tech, Apple files a patent for a process that would force you to view and/or listen to ads periodically to use devices, a move that would likely trash any good will Apple has built over the years, or flop horribly because nobody wants to be subjected to constant ads. It's the SchoolBooks of Little Brother, and we saw how well those worked.
Elsewhere, DARPA thinks freezing brains is the way to go to prevent traumatic injuries from causing significantly more damage, another space shuttle inspection to see if there's damage, considering how damage can cause for an explosive break-up, a battery designed to last for 25 years by running on certain radioisotopes, and men who hook up and shack up with smart women live longer, because those smart women help the men maintain their health, through diet adn through discouragement of stupid and harmful things.
Last out, The word fo the year is "unfriend", apparently, which is more of an antonym of friending, itself a definition in the entry of friend, rather than a real neologism, like "sexting".
