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Salutations, people of great technological prowress. Observe our world in our time period, a place where the lack of a direct mention of any godly being in a holiday speech by a President is apparently big enough to warrant writing (for those who wish to comb the original, The White House Provides, at least until the administration changes.), although I can’t tell whether the article is “Yay” or “Boo!” on such a speech.
In the world today, a report recently released accused the police force of Ireland of knowing about and helping to cover up Catholic priest abuse scandals for decades.
United States President Barack Obama delivered his decision for Afghanistan yesterday - 30,000 additional troops to be sent, on a swift timetable, with promises that the troops would begin coming home around July 2011. Whther that will also mean the possibility that all the troops there will also start coming home after taht point is yet to be determined. Their task may be hindered simply by a lack of confidence that their Afghan counterparts will be effective enough to take over when they do go. Now that there is a decision done, one may begin queuing the "soldiers died while Obama dithered" angle of attack.
The independence of Kosovo and Serbian unwillingness to let go of the province continues its warguments before a panel of judges of the Inernational Court of Justice, which will make a nonbdinging advisory opinion on the matter sometime next year.
Domestically, if you wanted a sign that things have clearly gone pear-shaped in the way we handled bacnk bailouts and the like, go no further than that bank execs and workers are obtaining firearms in case the people decide the banks must die, and the general increase in spending on security services by several firms's CEOs.
On the matters of The Gay, a humorous protest against a sign-carrying homosexuality-is-a-sin proclaimer turned into a more significant coutner-protest, as another group took up the opposition more seriously. As one sees bell-ringers ouside and around, an AmericaBlog writer requests that you remember the Salvation Army discriminates against homosexuals.
Elsewhere, as par of the VEWPRF festivities, some Huston-area charities, including the Salvation Army check immigration legality before distributing their largesse. For both of these items, the General suggests despositing a slip indicating how you would enjoy donating to the Salvation Army, but won't because of their discriminatory practices.
On the recent scandal regarding the East Anglia CRU and climate data, one of the central figures in the leaked e-mails has resigned his position, as well he should, considering the evidence pointing at him that he tried to get others to manipulate their data. Still, the opinions come, including ones that claim being afraid of climate change hurts children, by instilling in them the “brainwashing” of the environmentalists and the left that beleive in responsible planetary stewardship, and shortchanging them the actual knowledge needed to test and be skeptical of hypotheses. While I agree that we need more real science in the classrooms and our lives, I still beleive that one entity acting does not a conspiracy make. Mr. Crovitz has the right idea - this entity's actions damage the case for climate change and make it harder for anyone to trust the next report that comes out, regardless of whether you choose to make a big deal out of it or not based on the popular consensus.
Local News, conservative-style? While the AlterNet piece says it may be something to worry about, as someone who has been in places where the locals are conservative, sometimes to the Fox News degree, I don’t think the threat is as big as Alternet is making it out to be. Perhaps because in a lot of places in the world, it would only be confirming what the people there belive anyway. More potentially threatening is Mr. Murdoch's desires to allow one media company to own multiple format outlets, mixing broadcast and print, although he wants you to be afraid of the government trying to help journalists through subsidization or nonprofit-in-exchange-for-nonendorsement statuses.
In the opinions, The Agitator takes umbrage at the idea that all blogs steal their content from true news sources, pointing out several occasions where the reverse has happened, and that it took partisan media outlets, sometimes, to break an important story that the news ignored.
Rather than praise the Swiss decision to ban minarets, the WSJ complains that the ban didn't actually do what really needed to happen, while setting themselves up for being painted as intolerant. Their suggestion was to continue fearing their Muslim neighbors while trying to make them assimilate, and trying to make sure the Europeans outbreed the Muslims. This sounds familiar... where I have heard it before?
The WSJ complains about an eminent domain case that went all the wrong ways, and we agree - New York state’s ability to declare a property blighted and then hand it over to a developer, and then having judges agree that that was the only thing that really mattered, means the people and residents about to be squished by the developer get a bootprint on their faces.
Ms. O'Grady does not resist crowing that Hondurans had an election without incident, painting it as a refutation of colonial ambitions by strong men like Hugo Chavez, with asubtle jab at the Obama administration that they should have been on this side all along, fighting the obvious socialist plot to destablize Honduras and install a dictator. Had that actually been what happened, I’m pretty sure the administration would have said something.
the WSJ continues to sound the drums of sanctions or war against Iran, characterizing those actions as the only ones with any chance of making Iran divert from its nuclear course.
Ms. Kurokawa returns to an almost Palin-esque "Drill, Baby, Drill", by complaining about new possible ways of accounting that take make transportation of energy also part of its climate footprint. She says this will raise the price of doing more domestic mining and drilling, so that Americans don’t have cheaper energy through the exploration of their harder-to-reach reserves. In the current economic situation, and because corporations always pass their additional costs onto consumers, this is bad, she says. I still have no idea whether the country has any real plans to general significant amounts of energy from cleaner sources, so I’d say that reserves drilling and cheap energy should wait, if it can, until it can be exploited as the stepping-stool into a more clean and renewable power grid.
Last out, Mr. Ajami attests to the long-standing nature of many conflicts across the Middle East and further east, claiming that the Obama novelty was never sufficient to achieve change, and now that it has worn off, Mr. Obama will find himself in a worse position than before, because of how Mr. Ajami characterizes his foreign policy to this point.
And finally, Comedian David Limbaugh on the "largest socialistic transformation we’ve yet seen in this nation" - health care reform. Lost in his continued bloviation about the Socialist-in-Chief, his belief that liberals are a group trying to destroy America, and his insistence that the plans will de facto nationalize health care, even if the de jure part never arrives, is a possibly decent argument that the President has not been keeping his promises about a debt-neutral, defecit-friendly health care reform plan. But, that depends on whose numbers you read as to defecit-neutrality and long-term shrinking of costs, as well as how you choose to do the accounting for those costs.
In the sciences, the genetics that make men may also be part of the reason why men don't live so long, although for those looking for the eventual Outbreeding of the Male, there was cause of interest in that mice were created with no male genetic material at all, suggesting a process that eventually might expand into Humes, female longevity appears to be improved if women keep their ovaries, new pressure sensors that would help robots be a bit more human in their touch, and a small machine that can test your DNA to see whether you're going to be affected by certain medications more, less, or not at all.
In the world today, a report recently released accused the police force of Ireland of knowing about and helping to cover up Catholic priest abuse scandals for decades.
United States President Barack Obama delivered his decision for Afghanistan yesterday - 30,000 additional troops to be sent, on a swift timetable, with promises that the troops would begin coming home around July 2011. Whther that will also mean the possibility that all the troops there will also start coming home after taht point is yet to be determined. Their task may be hindered simply by a lack of confidence that their Afghan counterparts will be effective enough to take over when they do go. Now that there is a decision done, one may begin queuing the "soldiers died while Obama dithered" angle of attack.
The independence of Kosovo and Serbian unwillingness to let go of the province continues its warguments before a panel of judges of the Inernational Court of Justice, which will make a nonbdinging advisory opinion on the matter sometime next year.
Domestically, if you wanted a sign that things have clearly gone pear-shaped in the way we handled bacnk bailouts and the like, go no further than that bank execs and workers are obtaining firearms in case the people decide the banks must die, and the general increase in spending on security services by several firms's CEOs.
On the matters of The Gay, a humorous protest against a sign-carrying homosexuality-is-a-sin proclaimer turned into a more significant coutner-protest, as another group took up the opposition more seriously. As one sees bell-ringers ouside and around, an AmericaBlog writer requests that you remember the Salvation Army discriminates against homosexuals.
Elsewhere, as par of the VEWPRF festivities, some Huston-area charities, including the Salvation Army check immigration legality before distributing their largesse. For both of these items, the General suggests despositing a slip indicating how you would enjoy donating to the Salvation Army, but won't because of their discriminatory practices.
On the recent scandal regarding the East Anglia CRU and climate data, one of the central figures in the leaked e-mails has resigned his position, as well he should, considering the evidence pointing at him that he tried to get others to manipulate their data. Still, the opinions come, including ones that claim being afraid of climate change hurts children, by instilling in them the “brainwashing” of the environmentalists and the left that beleive in responsible planetary stewardship, and shortchanging them the actual knowledge needed to test and be skeptical of hypotheses. While I agree that we need more real science in the classrooms and our lives, I still beleive that one entity acting does not a conspiracy make. Mr. Crovitz has the right idea - this entity's actions damage the case for climate change and make it harder for anyone to trust the next report that comes out, regardless of whether you choose to make a big deal out of it or not based on the popular consensus.
Local News, conservative-style? While the AlterNet piece says it may be something to worry about, as someone who has been in places where the locals are conservative, sometimes to the Fox News degree, I don’t think the threat is as big as Alternet is making it out to be. Perhaps because in a lot of places in the world, it would only be confirming what the people there belive anyway. More potentially threatening is Mr. Murdoch's desires to allow one media company to own multiple format outlets, mixing broadcast and print, although he wants you to be afraid of the government trying to help journalists through subsidization or nonprofit-in-exchange-for-nonendorsement statuses.
In the opinions, The Agitator takes umbrage at the idea that all blogs steal their content from true news sources, pointing out several occasions where the reverse has happened, and that it took partisan media outlets, sometimes, to break an important story that the news ignored.
Rather than praise the Swiss decision to ban minarets, the WSJ complains that the ban didn't actually do what really needed to happen, while setting themselves up for being painted as intolerant. Their suggestion was to continue fearing their Muslim neighbors while trying to make them assimilate, and trying to make sure the Europeans outbreed the Muslims. This sounds familiar... where I have heard it before?
The WSJ complains about an eminent domain case that went all the wrong ways, and we agree - New York state’s ability to declare a property blighted and then hand it over to a developer, and then having judges agree that that was the only thing that really mattered, means the people and residents about to be squished by the developer get a bootprint on their faces.
Ms. O'Grady does not resist crowing that Hondurans had an election without incident, painting it as a refutation of colonial ambitions by strong men like Hugo Chavez, with asubtle jab at the Obama administration that they should have been on this side all along, fighting the obvious socialist plot to destablize Honduras and install a dictator. Had that actually been what happened, I’m pretty sure the administration would have said something.
the WSJ continues to sound the drums of sanctions or war against Iran, characterizing those actions as the only ones with any chance of making Iran divert from its nuclear course.
Ms. Kurokawa returns to an almost Palin-esque "Drill, Baby, Drill", by complaining about new possible ways of accounting that take make transportation of energy also part of its climate footprint. She says this will raise the price of doing more domestic mining and drilling, so that Americans don’t have cheaper energy through the exploration of their harder-to-reach reserves. In the current economic situation, and because corporations always pass their additional costs onto consumers, this is bad, she says. I still have no idea whether the country has any real plans to general significant amounts of energy from cleaner sources, so I’d say that reserves drilling and cheap energy should wait, if it can, until it can be exploited as the stepping-stool into a more clean and renewable power grid.
Last out, Mr. Ajami attests to the long-standing nature of many conflicts across the Middle East and further east, claiming that the Obama novelty was never sufficient to achieve change, and now that it has worn off, Mr. Obama will find himself in a worse position than before, because of how Mr. Ajami characterizes his foreign policy to this point.
And finally, Comedian David Limbaugh on the "largest socialistic transformation we’ve yet seen in this nation" - health care reform. Lost in his continued bloviation about the Socialist-in-Chief, his belief that liberals are a group trying to destroy America, and his insistence that the plans will de facto nationalize health care, even if the de jure part never arrives, is a possibly decent argument that the President has not been keeping his promises about a debt-neutral, defecit-friendly health care reform plan. But, that depends on whose numbers you read as to defecit-neutrality and long-term shrinking of costs, as well as how you choose to do the accounting for those costs.
In the sciences, the genetics that make men may also be part of the reason why men don't live so long, although for those looking for the eventual Outbreeding of the Male, there was cause of interest in that mice were created with no male genetic material at all, suggesting a process that eventually might expand into Humes, female longevity appears to be improved if women keep their ovaries, new pressure sensors that would help robots be a bit more human in their touch, and a small machine that can test your DNA to see whether you're going to be affected by certain medications more, less, or not at all.
