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Cheers, all, and we’re glad to be back.
Another moment from LiveJournal, where outbound links were being redirected through another server, sometimes depositing people well off the target of their intended location. According to the updates, this is an incompetence over malice item, but there was no announcement, nor was there any vetting done of the affiliate code that produced this problem.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
droewyn offers a solution for logged-in users should the problem return, although those logged out of the site may still see themselves unceremoniously redirected. If one wishes to abandon such monkeyshines altogether, the code fork Dreamwidth or one of the other LJ-based sites may be your best bet for a new destination.
We note, perhaps with an increasing degree of cynicism, that anti-homsexual lawmakers are getting increasingly brazen about the kinds of homosexual behavior they engage in. And get a pass or “forgiveness” on, while legal private clubs, liberal churches, and other "undesirables" are run out of town without anyone to stand up for them. Not to mention the increased stress that comes from living in a state that bans homosexual marriage and the consensus opinion that homosexuals are the most discriminated-against minority group.
That said, Century of the Fruitbat continues on apace - Washington D.C. now permits homosexual marriage.
In the international realm tonight, a photo essay of the people who really do spot and disarm IEDs for a living.
In the “Zero Tolerance is Still Stupid” department, women who refuse to go through the full-body image scanners at airports in the United Kingdom were refused the ability to fly on a plane. Because there was no way of accopmlishing the task intended other than through the image machine, regardless of one’s feelings about machine-induced nudity.
The United Kingdom also has an atheist found guilty of religious harrassment because he left anti-religious literature in a prayer room. His argument in his defense was that he should be allowed to attempt to convert people to nonreligion in the same manner that the religious try to convert him, and enjoy the same protections that evangelizers do. Sounds about right to me.
Arguments against climate change and refutations thereof, based on various scientific works. So that when The Washington Times tries to make you turn against climate change because people profit from promoting it, you can ask them to make a scientific argument against the cause, as one knows well that climate change opponents make plenty on their opposition, too. At least the President of the Flat Earth Society seems sane in his strangeness.
Domestically, a gunman attempted to enter the Pentagon building, but was shot and killed by the guards outside. The guards and the person exchanged fire, the guards were wounded in the process.
A possible reversal is in the works for civilian trials of accused terrorists such as Kalid Sheik Mohammed, returning them to the military commissions system. Even on those rumors, several groups registered their opposition to returning to the secret military trials, believing that the justice system is in deed up to the task fo trying accused terrorists.
The Whtie House had its first officially recognized visit with atheists. The religious right was, predictably, hopping mad that the athesists were getting any time at all.
The Senate did not pass a bill that would have given Social Security recipients another $250 to try and help offset their greater costs.
For those saying budget reconciliation processes are somehow any sort of “nuclear option” or third rail against bipartisanship or consensus, recall that a lot of the previous reconciliation efforts have been, well, partisan when the other party was in power.
AIG employees are pretty ungrateful that their company was saved at taxpayer expense and then turned into the poster boy for what went wrong with that saving, according to transcripts of employees. In other words, they feel like they’ve been scapegoated for a problem they fixed as soon as they had the funds. The point is, however, that they are responsible for some of the misery inflicted on others, misery they haven't really had to feel. It just happens that this time we don’t drag them out to Dr. Guillotine’s invention when they say “No bread? Eh. Let them eat cake.”
a Maryland bill about SWAT accountability has turned up an interesting statistic - the SWAT raided an average of 4.5 times per day, and most of it for serving warrants or arrests in nonviolent felonies and misdemeanors, instead of the special situations a Special weapons and Tactics team would originally be needed for.
In terms of Congressional races, this one must be interesting - Representative Grayson is the leading Democrat... and the leading challenger to Representative Grayson. I’ll bet he wishes the election were today.
Speaking of possible election-related material, teabaggers gear up for more attempts to protest the health care bills that have passed one house of Congress. This still seems like they’re saying “Please! Let private enterprise drop me arbitrarily and violate me with rate increases!” I’m sure, however, we will find many impassioned defenses (and some of them might even make some sense) in the opinions section.
Last out, a proposal to put Ronald Reagan's face on the $50 USD bill. Well, he is dead, so that clears a major hurdle. However, I don’t think the Gipper is the person we want on our bills, not yet. Unless, of course, one wants to print bills that can cover his share of the debt.
Technology starts with a hydrocarbon joining the superconductor scene, a compound in beer that might have promise in fighting prostate cancer, the reality of giant garbage islands in the oceans, and what we can try to do to at least slow down the damage, a portable hydroelectric plant that generates about 500 watts, the blogosphere giving voice to officially suppressed views in Saudi Arabia,
Furthermore, the person in charge of cyber security for the White House tells us that the idea of a giant cyberwar that the United States is losing is completely wrong. Not first because cyberwar indicates a unified THEM we are fighting against, much like The Terrorists, when reality is not so.
Beginning opinions, Mr. Cesca provides a detailed analysis of the Tea Party - it's all about racism at the core, past the loud shouting and onsensical positions and the like. And they manage to get away with it without being called out or fired for doing so (perhaps because they use code words wonderfully).
Another great example of Lied, Damned Lies, and Statistics - without context, numbers can make it look like religious people are more agreeable and friendly and atheists are just plan ol' mean.
On more political matters, let’s start with health care. Mr. Norris thinks the argument begins and ends at the Tenth Amendment, but also thinks the past record of government and health care should be reason enough to kill any bill. From there, Mr. York says the administration defies the will of the public in going forward, while also admitting that the people like the components of the bill itself. His explanation is that the people are nervous about seeing it all together in one big package. That might make sense. Mr. Towery is convinced that it's nothing more than a power grab by politicians to control our lives. The third explanation is from Mr. Krauthammer, who suggests that the populace is balking at the bill because they see how it will be paid for and don't like that, despite liking the individual provisions. Okay, Krauthammer, you win Occam’s Razor for this round, which allows you to bring in an unsigned from the WSJ about the budgeting gimmicks and accounting practices that allow the administration to mislead the population about the true cost of the plan in support. The WSJ attemtps to blow up reconciliation into a big scary monster that has never been used for something of this magnitude before - except where it has, that is, in passing tax cuts, among other things.
Mr. Blackwell settles into a column about how Abortion Is Wrong, using twin stories of a clinic with a doctor with a checkered past getting shut down and a story (linked earlier by us, we believe) about the value of touch. In Mr. Blackwell’s world, this one abortion doctor is the exemplar for all abortions - dirty, dangerous, and full of bad touches instead of supportive ones. However, he doesn’t go as far afield or lie nearly as much as Ms. Yoest, whose insistence that the Senate health care bill will allow for federal funding of abortions is bullshit. At best, she can threaten that if things change, abortions will be allowed, but that would require the Hyde Amendment, which hasn’t failed to pass yet, to not pass.
Regardless of how it turns out, Mr. Pruden is correct on one thing - the next campaign will likely be on repealing whatever gets passed. Assuming it does get passed - after all, it might require the House to trust the Senate, something that doesn’t do as well as you might think.
Mr. Boortz opens the jobs section with derision for the President on the effectiveness of his jobs legislation, and the apparent gigantic spooking of small business that is Barack Obama and his health care plans, while snidely saying “The President is supposed to defend the Constitution, not provide jobs! Nyeah!” Furthermore, he tries to paint unions as strongarm thugs who will more than happily hurt and threaten someone if they don't want to unionize, with “card check” legislation as a way of making it easier for them to make those threats and get more union members. We think this is a case of projection, as there is documented evidence of employers trying out those threats over time, but I don’t recall too many cases of union intimidation.
On education, Mr. Will praises the authors of a book that tells parents to praise effort instead of ability, to let kids get enough sleep, and to let their children suffer the indignitiees of unfairness or differences in skill and possibly even let them lose. I’m curious now as to whether the “pampered children” that these people are railing against actually exist, or whether the idiosyncracies of one place or another have all been rolled together into a giant monster.
Last out, on a more general note, Mr. Williams still believes that current Democrats and liberals think they know more than you do and that they should be able to control your life, so they can point you in a direction that will put you on a better path. a href=“http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2010/03/03/keep_your_laws_off_my_body?page=full”>Mr. Stossel beleives we should repeal laws against prostitution and drug use, in the game of keeping the government's hands off our bodies. And Mr. Thomas says we have to fight the trend of becoming more dependent on government to provide us with our necessities, lest we lose the ability to be independent and fight that government when it intends on hurting us or controlling our lives. (Rise up, you unemployed, and cast off the chains of your government dependence. You know, the stuff that’s keeping you fed and able to keep looking for work.)
Last for tonight, show the world you love someone else by inscribing your names on a lock and then hanging it in a public place.
Another moment from LiveJournal, where outbound links were being redirected through another server, sometimes depositing people well off the target of their intended location. According to the updates, this is an incompetence over malice item, but there was no announcement, nor was there any vetting done of the affiliate code that produced this problem.
droewyn offers a solution for logged-in users should the problem return, although those logged out of the site may still see themselves unceremoniously redirected. If one wishes to abandon such monkeyshines altogether, the code fork Dreamwidth or one of the other LJ-based sites may be your best bet for a new destination.We note, perhaps with an increasing degree of cynicism, that anti-homsexual lawmakers are getting increasingly brazen about the kinds of homosexual behavior they engage in. And get a pass or “forgiveness” on, while legal private clubs, liberal churches, and other "undesirables" are run out of town without anyone to stand up for them. Not to mention the increased stress that comes from living in a state that bans homosexual marriage and the consensus opinion that homosexuals are the most discriminated-against minority group.
That said, Century of the Fruitbat continues on apace - Washington D.C. now permits homosexual marriage.
In the international realm tonight, a photo essay of the people who really do spot and disarm IEDs for a living.
In the “Zero Tolerance is Still Stupid” department, women who refuse to go through the full-body image scanners at airports in the United Kingdom were refused the ability to fly on a plane. Because there was no way of accopmlishing the task intended other than through the image machine, regardless of one’s feelings about machine-induced nudity.
The United Kingdom also has an atheist found guilty of religious harrassment because he left anti-religious literature in a prayer room. His argument in his defense was that he should be allowed to attempt to convert people to nonreligion in the same manner that the religious try to convert him, and enjoy the same protections that evangelizers do. Sounds about right to me.
Arguments against climate change and refutations thereof, based on various scientific works. So that when The Washington Times tries to make you turn against climate change because people profit from promoting it, you can ask them to make a scientific argument against the cause, as one knows well that climate change opponents make plenty on their opposition, too. At least the President of the Flat Earth Society seems sane in his strangeness.
Domestically, a gunman attempted to enter the Pentagon building, but was shot and killed by the guards outside. The guards and the person exchanged fire, the guards were wounded in the process.
A possible reversal is in the works for civilian trials of accused terrorists such as Kalid Sheik Mohammed, returning them to the military commissions system. Even on those rumors, several groups registered their opposition to returning to the secret military trials, believing that the justice system is in deed up to the task fo trying accused terrorists.
The Whtie House had its first officially recognized visit with atheists. The religious right was, predictably, hopping mad that the athesists were getting any time at all.
The Senate did not pass a bill that would have given Social Security recipients another $250 to try and help offset their greater costs.
For those saying budget reconciliation processes are somehow any sort of “nuclear option” or third rail against bipartisanship or consensus, recall that a lot of the previous reconciliation efforts have been, well, partisan when the other party was in power.
AIG employees are pretty ungrateful that their company was saved at taxpayer expense and then turned into the poster boy for what went wrong with that saving, according to transcripts of employees. In other words, they feel like they’ve been scapegoated for a problem they fixed as soon as they had the funds. The point is, however, that they are responsible for some of the misery inflicted on others, misery they haven't really had to feel. It just happens that this time we don’t drag them out to Dr. Guillotine’s invention when they say “No bread? Eh. Let them eat cake.”
a Maryland bill about SWAT accountability has turned up an interesting statistic - the SWAT raided an average of 4.5 times per day, and most of it for serving warrants or arrests in nonviolent felonies and misdemeanors, instead of the special situations a Special weapons and Tactics team would originally be needed for.
In terms of Congressional races, this one must be interesting - Representative Grayson is the leading Democrat... and the leading challenger to Representative Grayson. I’ll bet he wishes the election were today.
Speaking of possible election-related material, teabaggers gear up for more attempts to protest the health care bills that have passed one house of Congress. This still seems like they’re saying “Please! Let private enterprise drop me arbitrarily and violate me with rate increases!” I’m sure, however, we will find many impassioned defenses (and some of them might even make some sense) in the opinions section.
Last out, a proposal to put Ronald Reagan's face on the $50 USD bill. Well, he is dead, so that clears a major hurdle. However, I don’t think the Gipper is the person we want on our bills, not yet. Unless, of course, one wants to print bills that can cover his share of the debt.
Technology starts with a hydrocarbon joining the superconductor scene, a compound in beer that might have promise in fighting prostate cancer, the reality of giant garbage islands in the oceans, and what we can try to do to at least slow down the damage, a portable hydroelectric plant that generates about 500 watts, the blogosphere giving voice to officially suppressed views in Saudi Arabia,
Furthermore, the person in charge of cyber security for the White House tells us that the idea of a giant cyberwar that the United States is losing is completely wrong. Not first because cyberwar indicates a unified THEM we are fighting against, much like The Terrorists, when reality is not so.
Beginning opinions, Mr. Cesca provides a detailed analysis of the Tea Party - it's all about racism at the core, past the loud shouting and onsensical positions and the like. And they manage to get away with it without being called out or fired for doing so (perhaps because they use code words wonderfully).
Another great example of Lied, Damned Lies, and Statistics - without context, numbers can make it look like religious people are more agreeable and friendly and atheists are just plan ol' mean.
On more political matters, let’s start with health care. Mr. Norris thinks the argument begins and ends at the Tenth Amendment, but also thinks the past record of government and health care should be reason enough to kill any bill. From there, Mr. York says the administration defies the will of the public in going forward, while also admitting that the people like the components of the bill itself. His explanation is that the people are nervous about seeing it all together in one big package. That might make sense. Mr. Towery is convinced that it's nothing more than a power grab by politicians to control our lives. The third explanation is from Mr. Krauthammer, who suggests that the populace is balking at the bill because they see how it will be paid for and don't like that, despite liking the individual provisions. Okay, Krauthammer, you win Occam’s Razor for this round, which allows you to bring in an unsigned from the WSJ about the budgeting gimmicks and accounting practices that allow the administration to mislead the population about the true cost of the plan in support. The WSJ attemtps to blow up reconciliation into a big scary monster that has never been used for something of this magnitude before - except where it has, that is, in passing tax cuts, among other things.
Mr. Blackwell settles into a column about how Abortion Is Wrong, using twin stories of a clinic with a doctor with a checkered past getting shut down and a story (linked earlier by us, we believe) about the value of touch. In Mr. Blackwell’s world, this one abortion doctor is the exemplar for all abortions - dirty, dangerous, and full of bad touches instead of supportive ones. However, he doesn’t go as far afield or lie nearly as much as Ms. Yoest, whose insistence that the Senate health care bill will allow for federal funding of abortions is bullshit. At best, she can threaten that if things change, abortions will be allowed, but that would require the Hyde Amendment, which hasn’t failed to pass yet, to not pass.
Regardless of how it turns out, Mr. Pruden is correct on one thing - the next campaign will likely be on repealing whatever gets passed. Assuming it does get passed - after all, it might require the House to trust the Senate, something that doesn’t do as well as you might think.
Mr. Boortz opens the jobs section with derision for the President on the effectiveness of his jobs legislation, and the apparent gigantic spooking of small business that is Barack Obama and his health care plans, while snidely saying “The President is supposed to defend the Constitution, not provide jobs! Nyeah!” Furthermore, he tries to paint unions as strongarm thugs who will more than happily hurt and threaten someone if they don't want to unionize, with “card check” legislation as a way of making it easier for them to make those threats and get more union members. We think this is a case of projection, as there is documented evidence of employers trying out those threats over time, but I don’t recall too many cases of union intimidation.
On education, Mr. Will praises the authors of a book that tells parents to praise effort instead of ability, to let kids get enough sleep, and to let their children suffer the indignitiees of unfairness or differences in skill and possibly even let them lose. I’m curious now as to whether the “pampered children” that these people are railing against actually exist, or whether the idiosyncracies of one place or another have all been rolled together into a giant monster.
Last out, on a more general note, Mr. Williams still believes that current Democrats and liberals think they know more than you do and that they should be able to control your life, so they can point you in a direction that will put you on a better path. a href=“http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2010/03/03/keep_your_laws_off_my_body?page=full”>Mr. Stossel beleives we should repeal laws against prostitution and drug use, in the game of keeping the government's hands off our bodies. And Mr. Thomas says we have to fight the trend of becoming more dependent on government to provide us with our necessities, lest we lose the ability to be independent and fight that government when it intends on hurting us or controlling our lives. (Rise up, you unemployed, and cast off the chains of your government dependence. You know, the stuff that’s keeping you fed and able to keep looking for work.)
Last for tonight, show the world you love someone else by inscribing your names on a lock and then hanging it in a public place.
